From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 1 01:59:00 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:59:00 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Recent safety hazards at aging nuclear plants Message-ID: <01C5361B.51D46CA0.shovland@mindspring.com> In the past three years, old or worn-out equipment has caused dozens of incidents requiring plants to shut down. December 9, 2001 BY CHRIS KNAP The Orange County Register Since January 1999, worn-out equipment at U.S. nuclear power plants has caused more than 50 fires, radiation or steam leaks, or other serious safety hazards requiring shutdown of the nuclear reactor. Here are details of some of the most serious accidents: January 1999: Inadequate maintenance led to a six-hour hydrogen fire on the roof of the control building at J.A. Fitzpatrick in Syracuse, N.Y., forcing a plant shutdown. August 1999: A cooling- water drain line in Callaway, Mo., broke because of severe corrosion, forcing a reactor shutdown. A subsequent inspection revealed at least 10 areas where pipes had decayed and were in danger of breaking. 1999-2000: Millstone in Waterford, Conn., had to repeatedly shut down due to failures of the reactor control-rod drive system, including control rods that came loose and dropped into the reactor. The plant operator blamed failed insulation and damaged electrical leads. February 2000: A steam generator tube ruptured at Indian Point 2 in New York, contaminating 19,000 gallons of cooling water and releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. May 2000: A failed electrical conductor at Diablo Canyon 1 in San Luis Obispo County triggered a fire that cut power to the coolant and circulating water pumps that keep the nuclear core from overheating. August 2000: Peach Bottom Unit 3, in Pennsylvania, was forced into emergency shutdown when an instrument valve failed and caused a leak of contaminated reactor cool ant outside of primary containment. A similar valve failure and leak of radiation had occurred May 28, 2000, but the valves were not replaced. October 2000: At V.C. Summer, in South Carolina, a 29- inch diameter coolant pipe, with walls more than 2 inches thick, suffered a crack due to water stress corrosion, creating a leak of radioactive cooling water. Crack indications were later found at four more reactor inlets. November 2000 to April 2001: After receiving a 20-year license extension, operators of Oconee 1, in Seneca, S.C., found 19 cracks in the reactor where control rods pass through to the nuclear core. Radioactive cooling water had been leaking into the containment sump. In February nine leaks were found in Oconee 3, which had been taken down for refueling. Oconee 2 was later found to have four leaking control-rod nozzles. January 2001: Failure of an 18-year-old valve at North Anna, Va., created a leak of radioactive coolant of more than 10 gallons per minute, forcing a shutdown of the reactor. February 2001: A 20-year-old circuit breaker at San Onofre 3, near Camp Pendleton, failed to close, creating a 4000-volt arc and fire that cut power to coolant control systems, drowned emergency switching valves and shut down emergency oil pumps, destroying the Unit 3 generator shaft. Currently, 150 identical breakers remain in service at the plant. February 2001: After Arkansas 1 was re-licensed for 20 years, extensive cracking was found on the control-rod drives and thermocouple nozzles entering the nuclear reactor. August 2001: Failure of a valve at Palo Verde 3, in Arizona, caused a leak of radioactive cooling water from the irradiated fuel-cooling pool into the reactor containment building, forcing a reactor shutdown. Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspection reports, incident reports and technical bulletins. From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 1 03:09:42 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 19:09:42 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Anti-Aging: The best things I have found so far Message-ID: <01C53625.32485C20.shovland@mindspring.com> 1. The Anti-Aging Solution by Giampapa(MD), Pero(PhD), and Zimmerman(CN) If you want a fast start on the biochemistry of aging and what we can do about it, get this. The most starting point is their assertion that if we provide the proper inputs, we can repair our DNA and how it is expressed. 2. The Perricone Promise and The Perricone Prescription(CD) by Nicholas Perricone MD. Giampapa etc talk about the inside of the cell. Perricone has a lot to say about the cell membrane and how to repair and maintain it. 3. Fantastic Voyage by Kurzweil and Grossman(MD) Their point is that if we can take care of ourselves for the next 20 years or so then new technologies will be invented that will allow us to live even longer and have it be worth the bother :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From HowlBloom at aol.com Fri Apr 1 03:31:11 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:31:11 EST Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <142.42b2be3d.2f7e1a7f@aol.com> re: (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_million s.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html%20) A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only in damaged form. Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it works: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47.) Where would such auto-associative circuits exist in a plant cell? Here are some wild guesses: * In the entire cell, including its membrane, its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes, and its genome; * * Or in the entire cell and its context within the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing roles. Howard re: ____________________________________ New York Times March 23, 2005 Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene By _NICHOLAS WADE_ (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-pe r) n a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in T?bingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2614 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1968 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 392 bytes Desc: not available URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 1 05:23:28 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 21:23:28 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <01C53637.E25C5410.shovland@mindspring.com> At this point in time we think we are doing well if we can sequence genes. What will we find as we begin to analyze the patterns? Will the whole be holographically encoded in the part? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:31 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; ursus at earthlink.net; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism re: (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytime s.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad =pf_million s.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html%20) A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only in damaged form. Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it works: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47.) Where would such auto-associative circuits exist in a plant cell? Here are some wild guesses: * In the entire cell, including its membrane, its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes, and its genome; * * Or in the entire cell and its context within the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing roles. Howard re: ____________________________________ New York Times March 23, 2005 Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene By _NICHOLAS WADE_ (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq= 19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-pe r) n a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net << File: ATT00000.html >> << File: clip_image001.gif >> << File: clip_image002.gif >> << File: clip_image003.gif >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 14:52:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:52:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP Editorial: After Terri Schiavo Message-ID: After Terri Schiavo http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17377-2005Mar31 [This just about represents my views, if I were to speak nicely (and not like Mr. Mencken). Perhaps I should.] Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A26 THE DEATH yesterday of Terri Schiavo concludes a legal battle, but its moral quandaries live on. The Schiavo case gripped the nation because of the lines drawn between life and death, and the middle ground of dementia or coma, agonizingly hard areas to delineate. In addition, because of a mute understanding that this subject is too awful to contemplate, a discussion of Schiavo-like choices has not fully penetrated the public square. It will be a healthy thing if this taboo is permanently shattered. We may not want to discuss death, but it will come to all of us. And, because of medical technology, more people will be empowered, or perhaps some would say condemned, to make judgments about when life is worth living, and when not. A century ago, death usually came abruptly; the most frequent causes were pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrhea and injuries, sudden killers all. Today, the average American spends two years disabled enough to need help with the routine activities of living; and growing numbers survive to be 85 and older, at which point they have a 50 percent chance of suffering dementia before they die. In 2000, there were 4.2 million Americans in the 85-plus cohort, but by 2030 there will be nearly 9 million, according to a paper for the Rand institute by Joanne Lynn and David M. Adamson. We speak of people being "snatched from life." Death, for more and more Americans, however, is the final stumble in a slow decline. We have not adjusted to this transformation, in emotional, moral or economic terms. Death is often portrayed in the movies as gunfights or as heroic battles against diseases. Less discussed are the fading figures in hospices where agonizing questions about the end of life, pain, dementia and, yes, financial costs are confronted. We speak of medicine as "saving lives." But at some point, arguably, medicine isn't so much about saving life as managing the options for parting with it. Many Americans, and not just social conservatives, feel that life is always worth preserving and that wavering from this principle opens the door to selfish relatives who don't want the burden of caring for the vulnerable. It's an honorable outlook -- also a natural one. Many believe on religious grounds that life is sacrosanct. With the survival instinct hard-wired into human nature, others find it difficult to contemplate the extinction of the self. Yet there has to be space in a free society for others to differ: to draw up living wills that specify limits to life-prolonging medical interventions, and perhaps also to opt for assisted suicide. It isn't possible for government to withdraw from this sphere altogether. The Terri Schiavo case featured two claims to speak on her behalf; inevitably Florida's legal system had to adjudicate between them and to decide what standard of evidence was necessary to establish that Mrs. Schiavo herself would have chosen to die. Equally, laws permitting assisted suicide, such as the one in Oregon, require government to create and enforce tight limits on its use. But it's clear that, on a matter as imponderable as this one, the federal role should be minimized. Thanks to Terri Schiavo, a national conversation is, we hope, beginning. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 14:53:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:53:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Auster: "Theocrats" for Terri Schiavo Message-ID: "Theocrats" for Terri Schiavo http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17570 "Theocrats" for Terri Schiavo By [1]Lawrence Auster [2]FrontPageMagazine.com | April 1, 2005 How are we to explain liberal's and leftists' support for disconnecting Terri Schiavo from her feeding tube and making her die a slow death, while she is guarded by police officers who prevent anyone from even putting a drop of water to her lips? And how are we to explain the liberals' belief that conservatives, who want to prevent this horror from occurring, are religious dictators intruding into a purely private matter? Most people think that the liberals are driven by their pro-abortion ideology, which takes the form of opposition to the Christian idea that Terri's radically limited life is nevertheless a human life and so worthy of protection. But that can't be the liberals' whole motivation. To demonstrate this, let us suppose that Terri's husband Michael had wanted Terri to go on living on the feeding tube, or, alternatively, that Michael had handed legal guardianship to Terri's parents and they had wanted her to go on living on the feeding tube. In either of those cases, the liberals would have had no problem with Terri's continued existence. The issue of her living or dying wouldn't even have come up. In other words, the very factors in this case upon which the liberals' supposedly principled anti-life position seems to be based are contingent. If Michael had not wanted Terri to die, the liberals wouldn't want her to die either; indeed, they wouldn't be thinking twice about the case, notwithstanding their current expressions of horror at the idea of a person living her whole life on a feeding tube. And since, in this hypothetical scenario, the liberals themselves would be consenting to Terri's living in that condition, they obviously wouldn't be calling conservatives "theocrats" and "religious fanatics" for wanting the same thing that the liberals themselves would be agreeing to. Therefore the liberal position cannot be simply that a person in Terri's situation ought to die. Rather, the liberal position seems to be that personal choiceMichael's personal choiceought to prevail. But this explanation also fails to hold up, as we can see from the following considerations: (1) Terri's parents and siblings love her and want her to live; (2) Terri's parents and siblings are convinced that Terri has consciousness and is not in a vegetative state; (3) Michael has two children by his common law wife of many years, and so logically ought to divorce Terri and let the guardianship revert to Terri's parents. Given these factors, Michael's right to decide on Terri's life and death ceases to seem so sacred. Why, then, would liberals side so absolutely with Michael's (highly doubtful) right to have his wife's existence terminated, while they completely dismiss the Schindlers' (correct and understandable) desire to be made her guardians and to save her life? If individual rights and personal choice are the liberals' bottom line, why must the personal preference of Michael, who has (understandably) moved on with his life, be seen as inviolable, but the personal preference of Terri's parents, who have not moved on with their lives but want to care for their daughter, must be equated with theocratic tyranny and resisted at all costs? Michael's right of guardianship stems from his status as Terri's husband. But he's given up that status in all but name by starting a new family. Since when are liberals so solicitous of traditional marital bonds and the rights of husbands over their wiveslet alone the right of an estranged husband to have his wife killed? Liberal famously regard marriage as an ever-changing institution, to be reshaped to suit changing human needs. Why then do the liberals treat the Shiavo's marriage, and Michael's rights proceeding therefrom, as written in stone, even though it has long since come to an end? Why don't the liberals simply call on Michael to divorce Terri and let the Schindlers take care of her? As all these questions suggest, there remains something mysterious and uncanny at the heart of the liberals' position on this issue. Their passionate conviction that Terri must die cannot be explained in terms of any recognizable liberal perspective, whether a disbelief in the soul, the desire to dispense with a less-than-complete human life that inconveniences others, a devotion to serving the rights and desires of individuals, or an easy-going attitude toward the traditional bonds and duties of marriage. Therefore, I would argue, their position on the Schiavo case can only be explained as stemming from something extrinsic to the case itself, namely their bigoted animus against conservatives: since conservatives support Terri Schiavo's right to live, liberals must oppose it. As a liberal professor recently said to an acquaintance of mine (and these were his exact words), "Anything Tom DeLay and those conservatives are for, I'm against." This reactiveness is a symptom of the extremism that has taken over left-liberals since 9/11. As the conservative writer Jim Kalb points out, prior to 9/11, even when liberal positions were disastrously wrong, they still had a more or less predictable, liberal logic to them that a conservative could understand. But since 9/11, liberals in their hatred of Bush and of conservatives have descended into sheer irrationalism, in the process giving up even those liberal principles that were decent. Thus, prior to 9/11, liberals would no doubt have taken the Schindler's side, as representing the rights of an oppressed and helpless individual. But after 9/11 (with some notable exceptions, such as Jesse Jackson), they do not. What is it about 9/11 that has had this effect on the left? The post-9/11 world has placed liberals and leftists under an unbearable pressure. The Islamist attack on our country propelled us into a conflict, perhaps a decades-long conflict, with a mortal enemy. But liberals can't stand the idea that we have an enemy, let alone a mortal enemy, a "them," whose very existence justifies our use of force. Therefore such an enemy must be seen as a product of "root causes" generated by us. Further, in keeping with the inverted moral order of liberalism, the more threatening such an enemy really is, the more vile must be the root causes within ourselves that are creating that enemy. The more wicked our enemy actually is, the more judgmental, greedy, cynical, dishonest, uncompassionate, racist, and imperialistic we must be for fighting him. If our enemy seeks a theocratic dictatorship over the whole world (which is the case), we must be seen as seeking a theocratic dictatorship over the whole world, even though there has never been anything remotely like a theocratic dictatorship in our entire history. Thus the liberals' helpless rage, both against the war on Islamic theocracy and against the conservatism that has become dominant in American politics as a result of that war, takes the form of a floating indictment of conservatives as the real theocrats. This attitude is then projected onto any issue that may arise between conservatives and liberals, such as the battle over the fate of Terri Schiavo: Terri's right to live is passionately backed by conservatives; conservatives are theocrats; therefore Terri is a symbol of theocracy, and therefore Terri must die. [3]Lawrence Auster is the author of [4]Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at [5]View from the Right. References 1. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=650 2. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=17570 3. mailto:Lawrence.auster at att.net 4. http://www.aicfoundation.com/booklets.htm 5. http://www.amnation.com/vfr From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 14:56:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:56:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Chronicle Colloquy: The Crisis in Liberal Education Message-ID: The Crisis in Liberal Education The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/03/liberal_ed/ [I had a question answered.] Thursday, March 31, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time The topic Do research universities relegate undergraduate education to the margins? Last year Harvard University made headlines when it announced a plan to change its core curriculum. This year the Association of American Colleges and Universities has begun trying to spark discussion of what a "liberal education" is across different types of institutions. Can such efforts succeed? Are faculty members at research universities ever likely to be superior undergraduate instructors? Given the increasing breadth and complexity of disciplinary knowledge, and the splintering of disciplines into specialties, should undergraduate education emphasize a common knowledge or a way of learning? How can administrators, forced by economic realities to prize efficiency in undergraduate education, deal with such questions? Do changes in the nature of the university preclude substantial change? ? [43]Liberal Education on the Ropes (4/1/2005) The guest Stanley N. Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies and president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, offers his views on this topic in an essay in this week's Chronicle Review. _________________________________________________________________ A transcript of the chat follows. _________________________________________________________________ Malcolm Scully (Moderator): Good Afternoon and welcome to our live discussion about the health--or ill health--of liberal education at major research universities. I'm Malcolm Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large, and I'll be moderating. Our guest is Stanley N. Katz, director of Princeton University's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies and president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. In an April 1 article in The Chronicle Review, he asked whether liberal education can succeed in the modern research university and suggested that incremental reforms like the ones proposed in recent years do not go far enough to address the changing landscape of higher education. Thank you for joining us, Professor Katz. _________________________________________________________________ Stanley N. Katz: I am looking forward to this Colloquy, but I am a little apprehensive about it, never having done anything of this sort. So please bear with me. Basically, however, I publish in the Chronicle because I get such wonderful response from the paper, and this seems a great enhancement to the feedback I usually get. The initial response to my article on liberal education is that I am too pessimistic. I would be delighted to be convinced that is true. I am aware that people my age can become nostalgic, and as an historian I know the false allure of arguments for golden ages in the past. But I have thought a lot about liberal education, and it has been my primary concern as an educator since I first began teaching as a graduate student in 1957 -- nearly fifty years ago. I mention in the article the fantasy of having a golden wand to change undergraduate education as I would wish, and several people have asked me what I would do. I want to answer that in a way that will frustrate many of you, since my response is that what I would do would probably be different in every research university (my chosen arena). I feel strongly that there are no general institutional solutions to these problems. The problems are general, but the solutions are necessarily local, dependent upon the nature and place of the institution, its history and mission, its particular student body, and so forth. I think the challenge is for those of us who care deeply that something beyond vocational and disciplinary education be part of undergraduate (and especially underclass) experience feel empowered to work within our institutions for workable, pragmatic reforms. I certainly do not believe that there is a specifiable, limited body of knowledge that must form the core of liberal education. But I do think that some body of knowledge about Western culture is essential in this country, that at least one other culture be attended to, and that a small number of intensive explorations into large intellectual problems (defined as problems, not disciplines) need to be part of the process of underclass education. Beyond that, I am very interested in your suggestions. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U: Two questions - In one campus study (at a public university widely praised for its general education program) over 50% of the faculty said that they "frequently" talk to students about liberal education and its importance. But only 12% of the first year students and 13% of the seniors said that they frequently hear from the faculty about liberal education. What advice would you give the faculty of that university? Do you think liberal education can ever be a priority for students if we discuss it mainly or exclusively in terms of general education? Wouldn't it make more sense to tie the aims of liberal education (inquiry and analysis, communication, civic and ethical responsibility, integrative learning) directly to students' majors? Stanley N. Katz: Carol, I have a mini-lecture entitled "the department as the enemy of education." Disciplinary departments can do an excellent job of disciplinary training, but the reason why I am concerned with general education is that if we do not empower students to learn generally, they will never learn liberally. I think there is a tension between general and departmental education. I think we need both. But if the department dominates, as it now does, I do not see how we are going to provide a significantly general education. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Maura, Public Research Intensive University: Is the current fuzziness of the academy's definition of a liberal education in someway linked with the increased emphasis on the "commercialization" and "privitization" of the public university? Stanley N. Katz: Yes, I think so. This is something that both David Kirp and Derek Bok have written about recently, and I am in general agreement that the commercialization of the university has created both values and institutional arrangements that run athwart liberal education. On the other hand, commercialization does not make it impossible for faculty to try to articulate what is going wrong, and to propose solutions to revive or enhance liberal education. Jerry Graff always talks about "teaching the conflicts," and that is not a bad strategy here. If faculty can point out what they think the contradictions and tensions created for liberal education by commercialization are, that may be one of the ways in which we can begin to address the problem meaningfully. I think the burden is on those faculty who care to carry the battle for liberal education forward. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Robert Benedetti: In years past the hallmark of a liberal education was sufficient breath to appreciate a wide range of possible experiences and to treasure learning for its own sake, much as Henry Adams might have done. Is the foundation or justification for a liberal education undergoing a shift away from definitions which value the development of the individual self to definitions which focus on the making of democratic citizens? In other words, is the new standard for a liberal education closer to one that would satisfy Cicero than Henry Adams? Is the liberally educated person today more likely to be engaged in the public square than to be swept up by an aesthetic or spiritual epiphany? Robert Benedetti Executive Director Jacoby Center Universtiy of the Pacific Stanley N. Katz: An interesting question. I don't see the contradiction, though. I think that at least from the beginning of the twentieth century U.S. higher education has been committed to the creation of a democratic citizenry. Certainly the World War I emphasis on general education at Columbia and elsewhere was at least partly inspired by explicit democratic imperatives. And of course Dewey always insisted upon the link between education and democracy (at all levels of education). But the sort of values-oriented version of liberal education (call it Adamsish if you like) should enhance the democratic version. After all, there is no inherent conflict between democracy and meritocratic elitism, and I believe that liberal eduation should form the basis for both. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Dee Abrahamse, California State University, Long Beach: Why does the discussion of liberal education, like so many issues, focus on the dichotomy between major research universities and small liberal arts colleges? The largest number of students will graduate from comprehensive universities, and it is here that the focus of the future of the liberal arts will succeed or fail. Will these universities adopt research models with over-specialized curriculum, or will they become national leaders in championing new models of liberal education for undergraduates? Stanley N. Katz: This is an important question, and a number of respondents have asked related questions. My article focuses on research universities only because I am a fish that swims in that particular pond. But I know that there are other fish and other ponds, and they are equally important. But I know a lot less about them, and do not want to pretend more than I actually know. My strong impression is that liberal education is alive and well in the four year liberal arts colleges, although it is clear that they have a multiplicity of different approaches. I believe that the most selective of the colleges have the easiest time in being self-determining as to their curricula, and therefore as to the extent to which they can explore different strategies for achieving liberal arts education. Wonderful work is being done here. But I think the less selective colleges have a big problem with vocationalism, since job training is what parents (and students) want, and since a diploma from a lesser known college may not be perceived as being as intrinsically valuable as one from the best known and most selective colleges. Ernie Boyer pointed this out some time ago. Ernie was very enthusiastic about the general or comprehensive universities. I have done a little work with a couple of networks of these institutions, and from that experience I know that many of them are seriously committed to liberal education (as well as to vocational and disciplinary approaches). I think in some ways they may be doing better work than the research universities, in part because faculty disciplinary professionalism is a less dominant influence on faculty behavior and administration response. I think we need a lot more empirical information to be sure. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Richard Guarasci,President , Wagner College: Given the impressive list of curricular innovations, such as learning communities experiential and service learning as well as many new pedagogical classroom strategies, are large universities monitoring the newest and successful practices at the smaller liberal arts colleges where curricular effeciency and substantive learning are prized? Are the different sectors talking with and learning from each other? Stanley N. Katz: I do not really know the answer, but I suspect that to ask this question is to suggest that they are not. That would be my guess. I think you point to something important in higher education, and that is what I take to be an increasing fragmentation of the different levels of higher education with a consequent difficulty of communicating across the levels -- much less moving across. It would be worth a serious study, but my hunch is that we as faculty are now even more compartmentalized in particular types of educational structures than we were a generation ago. More important, it is currently so hard to import new curricular strategies into any large institution that even better ideas might not solve the problem. Of course, if there are presidents like you who care, that would make a decisive difference on their campuses! SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Jack Meacham, University at Buffalo, SUNY: Stanley Katz raises the question of whether research universities can purport to offer undergraduates a liberal education. I would rephrase the question to ask whether ANY college or university can purport to offer undergraduates a liberal education. Katz concerns himself primarily with how liberal education has been defined. My concern is primarily with whether we will be able to find any qualified professors to provide the liberal education curriculum, regardless of how defined, to today's students. Our nation's research universities have largely abandoned their commitment to liberal education and now train doctoral students--and the coming generations of assistant professors--only narrowly within sub-disciplines. These newer, younger generations of professors have had no exposure to a liberal education in their own education. They have no conception of what a liberal education might entail, of how to construct and maintain a liberal education curriculum, or of how to engage their students as Thomas Kuhn did so well for Stanley Katz. The transmission of the vision and reality of liberal education from professor to student, who then becomes a professor, has been broken. How can we restart this cycle? If our nation's four-year liberal-arts colleges truly wish to offer their students a liberal education, they must join together and insist to the research universities that they will no longer hire new doctorates who are narrowly trained and poorly educated. We must work together to transform the graduate programs at our nation's research universities so that those who aspire to teach will themselves have been the beneficiaries of a liberal education. My question: Is Princeton University graduating any doctorates who are truly prepared to provide undergraduates with a liberal education? If not, what can Princeton University do to strengthen its doctoral training programs? Stanley N. Katz: A fair question. I said in an earlier response that one of the answers has to be revamped doctoral education, one that both includes a serious commitment to training for teaching and a commitment to taking a generous ("liberal"?) view of graduate disciplinary training. One of our problems has been excessively specialized and narrow training and dissertation topics. But, as you suggest, it is a vicious cycle that we are in. I think that many institutions, especially liberal arts colleges (where many research u. PhD students go)are insisting more on teaching experience, curricular imagination, and breadth of view. We in the research universities need that pressure -- if faculty know they need to train their students differently to get them jobs, I think they will begin to do it. But it is slow. This is another issue, but I think we also need educational leaders to lead on this subject -- and speak out on the sorts of teachers we need to be training in the best universities. Where is Larry Summers when we need him? SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Raymond Rodrigues, Skidmore: Could part of our difficulty in trying to determine how a liberal education would be achieved lie in our perceiving "general education" or "the core" or any other appropriate term as a foundation, a beginning? What if we were to attempt to conceive a liberal education as the result of an undergraduate education rather than the foundation for one? Then we would assess whether students had acquired a liberal education at the end of their four (or six or ten) years. Few faculty own general education, but all are committed to their disciplines. Wouldn't viewing a liberal education as the sum total of one's education do more to involve the disciplines, even granting the focus upon research in one's field? Stanley N. Katz: I understand, and what you are suggesting is enormously important if we are to take outcome assessment for undergraduate education seriously. In some sense, of course, all four years count. Agreed. But I confess that I am focused on the first two years, give or take, because I suspect that from the point of view of cognitive development what we do early on makes a decisive difference to longer term outcomes. But I am sypathetic to efforts to liberalize the last two years, especially with capstone seminars and the like. This needs more attention. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Frank Forman, U.S. Department of Education: I very much appreciate your making the distinction between content and cognitive process. I am very much a process man myself. I have asked countless adults to recall the quadratic formula they supposedly learned in the ninth grade. Almost no one can. The same forgetting is almost as true of other subjects. So why go to school beyond the eighth grade? Process is answer: you learn how to think. Alas, this is almost impossible to measure, so school reform continues to emphasize stuffing more content into kids heads. Let me ask you what a nearly pure process education would be like. I'm thinking of an eight-semester critical thinking curriculum. You can't get a semester's course in medicine, but if you did, students would learn about the *process* of diagnosing failure in a complex system. A semester's course in law would be about the process of making fine distinctions (legal vs. illegal). Economics is about keeping cost and choice uppermost in mind. Engineering is about making do with rules of thumb. Marxism is about group struggle. Add or substitute your own. Archeology uses everything. In fact, life uses everything. How does this sequence sound to you as part of a liberal education? (Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for the U.S. Dept. of Education.) Stanley N. Katz: I am a process guy, and I am in substantial agreement. But I think there is a nexus between process and content. It is not so obvious with the quadratic equation (I think I still remember!), but it is certainly true in much or most of science, social science and humanities. Process is what helps us learn about content, and we do internalize, criticize and reuse content. I think the dialectic between process and content is what forms the core of liberal education. I take it that this is what Lee Shulman and Howard Gardner are talking about when they speak of the importance of content knowledge in cognition. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Naomi F. Collins, Consultant: How can the concept and content of liberal education be expanded to incorporate a global perspective? That is, how might liberal arts fields incorporate a broader vision; and how mightliberal arts methods and approaches be "used" to provide a broader perspective on the impact of globalization (that that provided by business, market, and economic approaches and forces)? Stanley N. Katz: Well, Naomi, I would not privilege "globalization" anymore than I would privilege "diversity," although I would think of diversity as a value and globalization as a social process (that needs to be studied and understood). I cannot imagine that a rich portfolio of general education courses would not contain a great deal of material on globalization, starting with approaches to global history, and coming up to present developments. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Karen Winkler: If simply reforming the undergraduate curriculum will no longer provide quality undergraduate education in the modern research university, where would you start to make changes? Stanley N. Katz: Nasty question, Karen. In my dream world I would of course create "Liberal U.," where everything would work according to my principles and ideas. But that is not going to happen. I am an incrementalist. I think on most campuses it will be the actions of small numbers of faculty who create courses or small curricular structures to embody the ideas of liberal and general education who will make the difference. And I am committed to the notion that we need to reimagine graduate doctoral education significantly in order to recruit and train the sorts of PhDs who will understand and commit to general education in their teaching careers. We have, of course, a chicken and egg problem here, but a prestigious university with a few departments committed to this sort of program could get away with it -- and they could place their students. This is incrementalist, but it would be a good place to start. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Cyrus Veeser, Bentley College: Dr. Katz identifies two developments affecting undergraduate education--structural changes in research universities, and the explosion of knowledge in science, social science, and humanities over the past century. His article is pessimistic about the ability of universities to "recenter" undergrad education given the "breadth and complexity of the intellectual content students now confront." Is that endgame? Or does he have some hope that an "essential core of knowledge" relevant to students in the early 21st century could be devised? Stanley N. Katz: It surely is not the endgame. I am not THAT pessimistic! But I do think we need some new strategies for breaking out of the current dilemma. I think that many of them have already been developed in smaller institutions, especially four year colleges. We need to think which strategies make sense for particular institutions, and how to institutionalize them. We have adopted useful new strategies recently, the freshman seminar's recent popularity being a good example -- but we have not tied the institutional innovation to pedagogical content innovation. I think that is the frontier to which we have to address ourselves now. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Michael Davis, Illinois Institute of Technology: There is justified concern that undergraduate education tends to be too narrow, too dominated by "the major". The way to resolve that problem is simply to limit the number of courses that can be taken in any one department or that a department can require of its majors (or both). Why assume that, in addition, there is a need for a set curriculum for all students? "Liberal education" seems to be a sort of non-major major. What evidence is there that such requirements actually achieve anything, much less that they achieve what they purportedly aim at? Should not the burden of proof lie with those who claim the right to direct the lives of others? Stanley N. Katz: A straightforward answer would be that we have for a century or more experimented with non-structured education. Charles Eliot's elective system paved the way, after all. More recently Brown University and many colleges have versions of low-structure approaches. I would guess (but do not know) that this is effective for some students. But on the whole I think there is a lot to be said for a combination of reasonably deep knowledge (the major)and broad knowledge/process (general education) in preparing a liberally educated young person. That is the balance that American higher education had arrived at by the 1960s, in my judgement, and I think there was a lot to be said for it. But, like everything else, it needs to be reinvented to be suitable to current challenges. The answer cannot simply be to go back. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from W. Jones,Texas A&M: Should diversity education be a part of the new Core curriculm? Stanley N. Katz: At the risk of being thought a curmudgeon, I don't think so. At least not in the sense I suspect you intend. "Diversity" is surely a value in any approach to general education. But diversity as a contemporary social value does not need to be singled out from other values, in my view. Insofar as institutions want structural approaches to promoting diversity (and I favor this), it can and should be done through various kinds of modeling and institutional arrangements. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Malcolm Scully (Moderator): We have about 20 minutes left. Keep your questions coming. Malcolm Scully _________________________________________________________________ Question from Michael G. Hall, U. of Texas at Austin: Could we not raise large issues by insisting on the world history context of the usual history topics? For example, Jamestown could serve as an entryway for discussion of Europe's ongoing encounter with primitive people, the onset and demise of African slavery, comparative New World colonization, the world capitalist system, changes in poliical assumptions from James I to George III, and change from Renaissance to Enlightenment. All these are conexts of Virgina's colonial history. Stanley N. Katz: Hi, Michael. Of course! I think that World History is an excellent example of new/old approaches to the revivification of liberal education. World history uses new techniques and traditional historical techniques, but it reveals things that traditional national/chronological history cannot. There are, I feel sure, comparable opportunities in most fields. My own passion at the moment is for comparison -- an old and difficult technique, but one that helps both teachers and students see old configurations in new ways. I am sure you would agree. Like you, I started out in early American history. I now study transitions to democracy in the contemporary world, but having studied Jamestown has given me an enornmous intellectual leg-up in what I am now trying to do. Best, SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Roger W. Bowen, AAUP: In your CHE article, you suggest that it will be difficult to make "qualitative judgments" about curriculum reform "unless we are safely beyond the conflicts of the culture wars..." and add that this "seems problematic at the current moment in American history." Why do the culture wars continue to plague higher education; and what should educators be doing to put an end to the "wars"? Stanley N. Katz: I wish I knew, Roger. Universities are, as you know, part of society, and we live in a very conflicted society. At the moment I am very concerned with the sort of identity politics that is disrupting so many universities in different ways. Take three examples -- Harvard, Columbia and Colorado. We will work these problems out, but they are deep and difficult. That is one side of the problem. The other is the extent to which so many university faculty distance themselves from anything other than their own disciplinary (or, more likely, subdisciplinary) world. They cannot engage the problems most likely to be urgent for undergraduate students -- and they are not likely to be much interested in addressing larger educational problems. So we are caught between overly-intense involvement, and overly-distanced non-involvement. But in the end the universities are here to train people to maintain the democracy, and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that fact. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from Neal Gill and Russell Brickey, Purdue University: Does the proliferation of cyber-culture, particularly at research institutions, make it even more difficult to pursue liberal arts instruction? In other words, how might we encourage a more deliberative, reflective process in our students while they are being constantly bombarded by the immediate and sensational nature of the online experience? Stanley N. Katz: Well, I would say just the opposite. We need to speak to students in the languages to which they respond. I am experimenting myself with teaching on the web and using technology (though I am a novice), and I think there are many exciting possiblities. The digital humanities offer tremendous opportunities to teachers, and the same is true in other fields. The problem is frequently that institutions do not provide the equipment, technical support or reward for faculty to learn and use such approaches. I think we need to incorporate cyber-learning into the mix of liberal education, and I think we can improve liberal education as we do. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Scott Mattoon, Choate Rosemary Hall: How influential is the current Advanced Placement program in high schools in the shaping (or limiting) of liberal education at the university level? Despite the dependence of high schools on university admissions requirements, do universities feel bound in any way to the kind of curriculum and enterprise espoused by the AP program? Stanley N. Katz: Well, I think one of the places the system of higher education is failing us is in building transitions between high school and college. The College Board was originally built to address that problem in a thoughtful and systematic way, but it is not clear to me that it is capable of doing that anymore. This, I think, is both the fault of the CB itself and of the dramatic changes in student population and institutional proliferation. The AP exam and AP courses were meant to enhance the relationship between school and college, but I worry that they are now simply upping the pressure in school without doing much to enhance student experience in college. To the extent that AP course provide elite challenges in the schools (and provide teachers with breathing room intellectually), they can be a very good thing. But to the extent that they are simply an expensive hurdle, and tie students into very traditional disciplinary approaches, they are not necessarily a good thing for liberal education at the tertiary level. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from robin.v.catmur at dartmouth.edu: In the face of burgeoning research priorities held by "Colleges" (Universities), it is tempting to sacrifice general education to the lure of faculty generated research dollars, scientific PR coups, and reams of peer-reviewed published articles. My first question is institution-specific: if Professor Katz is familiar with Dartmouth College, would he agree or disagree that we manage to walk this tightrope fairly well, compared to others, and to what does he attribute our successes (or, our lack of success, if he disagrees)? Second, what would he propose as the alternative to allowing and even encouraging certain specializations ("majors or concentrations, by any other name) when the undergraduates themselves place a high value on the exposures and opportunities afforded within a liberal arts College "surrounded" by a significant research institution? "The content of knowledge appropriate to our...society", as Professor Katz says, is in fact determined in no small part by what the students want and need, in order to succeed post-graduation in a significantly different world, is it not? Thank you - Robin Catmur Dartmouth College Stanley N. Katz: I am a great admirer of Dartmouth, Robin. In fact the original draft of this article was prepared for a conference on liberal education hosted by Prof. Jonathan Crewe at your humanities center last fall. I think that Dartmouth has an enormous advantage, one that it has seized, in its size. It is simply easier with a moderately sized student body and faculty, to keep things in perspective and under control. It also requires enlightened leadership, which you have had in your presidents for some time. Dartmouth is a great liberal arts college, and has used its resources well. But it is a different question about specialization. Majors serve many students well, but in the ideal I would rather see the option of special created specializations to suit the interests/needs of particular students. A start on that is the current programs focused on problems, not disciplines -- Afro-Am, Women's Studies and the like. But we could also encourage more free-form problem clusters for students interested in poverty, and other discrete issues. This is harder to administer than the current set of majors, and would require new faculty arrangments. But it is not beyond our capacities to be much more flexible in the last two years of college. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Question from ME Madigan, grad student, Univ Neb Lincoln: Is the effort to continue to serve the public good creating a push for all of us to become more vocational? Stanley N. Katz: I don't think it has to. The "public good" is served by the creation of independent, critically thinking and creative people. The historical aim of liberal education is to prepare students for democratic citizenship, and Dewey and others believed that general education was the best way to do that. So do I. This is not to say that someone who majors in a vocational subject cannot be a good citizen, but it is to say that if that person is also liberally educated (no contradiction), she will be an even better citizen. I really believe that. SNK _________________________________________________________________ Malcolm Scully (Moderator): We've come to the end of our allotted time. Many thanks to Professor Katz and to all those who submitted questions. I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of them. Clearly Professor Katz has raised a crucial issue, and we appreciate the thoughtfulness of the questions and the answers. References 43. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i30/30b00601.htm From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 14:58:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:58:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Rafal Smigrodzki: Neuroscience twist in Schiavo case Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 21:47:37 -0800 From: Rafal Smigrodzki To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org Subject: [wta-talk] Neuroscience twist in Schiavo case Quoting "Hughes, James J." : >> A bioethicist friends notes: >> >> According to Judge Greer's order, one of the affidavits in the last >> motion (along the affidavits about Terri Schiavo's alleged vocalization >> of March 18, which, as the Judge points out, was not mentioned in the >> motion of March 23) is from an unnamed "inventor of a technological >> device that detects brainwaves and translates them to words." The >> affidavit, according to the order, "described a device that would >> allegedly permit a person such as Terri Schiavo to communicate "using >> the modulated equivalent of prevocalized thoughts" which would then be >> translated into words using pattern recognition software." Rafal: So far it is impossible to use EEG for vocalization or thought-reading, although a limited form of control through EEG (e.g. moving a cursor) has been achieved in persons with normal EEG. According to the court testimony, Schiavo has a non-reactive, very low-voltage EEG. So we have a double whammy - a guy claiming to achieve from non-existent input an output which so far was impossible to derive even from a high-quality input. Total bunk. Rafal From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 14:59:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 09:59:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Turning on DeLay Message-ID: Turning on DeLay http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9109-2005Mar29 By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 29, 2005; 8:37 AM In media terms, it's an earthquake almost as loud as Walter Cronkite turning against the Vietnam War. Tom DeLay has got to be thinking: Et tu, Wall Street Journal? Let's be clear: The Journal's editorial page, champion of conservatives and scourge of liberals, has a biblical quality for many on the right. They look to it for guidance, if not divine inspiration. And the page, run by Paul Gigot after the long reign of Robert Bartley, does not come from the we-believe-this-but-the-other-side-has-a-good-point school. In sharp, sometimes caustic language, it almost always backs conservatives and Republicans over liberals and Democrats. The Journal ran so many anti-Clinton editorials on Whitewater that they were turned into several books. Which is why yesterday's editorial slapping the Texas congressman is likely to reverberate for some time to come, and perhaps embolden DeLay's critics. The Republican Party has been solidly behind DeLay (except for the likes of the former House ethics chairman who got bounced by the leadership after the panel admonished the majority leader three times last year). The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times have written numerous pieces about ethics allegations involving DeLay, from fundraising questions (three of his associates are under indictment back home) to lobbyist-financed foreign junkets. But it hasn't been much of a television story--too complicated and all that--and conservative commentators haven't really broken ranks, until now. The Journal editorial summarizes what it calls the "rap sheet" against DeLay: The earlier citations, such as offering to endorse then-congressman Nick Smith's son for office if Smith would vote for the Medicare prescription drug bill. The fundraising probe by a Texas prosecutor (a "partisan Democrat"). The junkets, such as one to the Northern Marianas Islands with lobbyist-under-investigation Jack Abramoff, who represented the garment industry there. And guess what? DeLay later led an effort to extend the Islands' exemption from U.S. immigration and labor laws. "By now," says the Journal, "you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear as to what those troubles are--something to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an 'odor': nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse. "The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself." It gets more pungent as it goes on: "The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets. "Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and [Ed] Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader. "Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out." Hmmm. Maybe I mixed things up and this was actually a New York Times editorial. DeLay emerged as a champion of keeping Terri Schiavo alive, in what some critics said was an attempt to deflect attention from his own problems. Here's a [3]NYT report on the latest strange twist in that case: "The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups. "'These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler's legal battle to keep Terri's estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,' says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo's father. 'These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!' "Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish." Have the Dems been ducking on Schiavo? That's a smart move, says the New Republic's [4]Michelle Cottle: "With public sentiment against religious conservatives and their GOP lapdogs, some prominent liberals--including columnists Maureen Dowd and Richard Cohen--have been grumbling about the Dems' failure to take a tough stand on this issue. Democrats are being urged to bash Republicans for exploiting a private tragedy, for hypocritically abandoning their typical obsession with states' rights, and for, as Dowd sees it, pushing to turn this great republic into an intolerant theocracy. If ever they hope to shed their image as quivering girly men, so the argument goes, the Democratic Party cannot stand around letting Republicans hog the spotlight on an issue where most Americans disagree with them. "Bad advice. Terrible. Political madness. Regardless of what the polls show, Terri Schiavo is a no-win issue for Democrats, and their best course of action is to lie low and wait for the media storm to pass. "For starters, this issue offers none of the emotional oomph for the Democrats' base that it does for Republicans'. As politically self-serving as they may look to you and me, Tom DeLay et al. are storing up major brownie points with social conservatives for this impassioned display of their commitment to the 'culture of life.' Unfortunately, Democrats, by contrast, are unlikely to set many moderate or liberal hearts aflutter by blathering on about spousal rights, the sanctity of the courts, or even privacy rights. Such talk comes across as too wonkish, too legalistic, too much like John Kerry. And while the right to die may be a worthy cause, is it really something to be championed at this particular moment by a party already freaked out about its morally relativistic if not downright godless image? "What's more, while the made-for-TV theatrics of the 'Save Terri' folks have made them an easy object of ridicule for non-conservatives, the reality is that there are enough questions about Michael Schiavo's behavior over the past decade to make you wonder if he's really the sort of hero a political party should hitch its wagon to." In Slate, [5]Michael Crowley says one group of Republicans are no longer superheroes: "To them, pay-as-you-go is a means of restoring sanity to the budget. They are the Senate's plucky band of Republican moderates: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and John McCain of Arizona. "In recent years these moderates have become heroes to Democrats -- paragons of conscience and bravery -- and pariahs to conservatives -- heretic "Daschle Republicans." As the GOP has moved to the right, the moderates have struggled valiantly to stand firm in the center, voting repeatedly with Democrats on key issues. I've heard some Democrats fawningly dub them the Fantastic Four, after the team of comic-book superheroes who unwittingly acquired supernatural powers from the cosmic ray of a solar flare. OK, McCain may not be much like the Thing, Chafee isn't as hot as the Human Torch, and neither Collins nor Snowe would want to be dubbed the Invisible Woman (crafty as she was!). But by the standards of hyper-partisan Washington, there has been something almost supernatural about the way these senators defy their party's aggressive right wing on behalf of their principles. In the recent past, the Fantastic Four have been a useful check on congressional GOP excesses. Of late, however, their powers are waning. "Hopes were high for last week's pay-as-you-go vote, because the moderates succeeded in pushing through just such a measure a year ago. Rather than accede then to pay-as-you-go rules, furious GOP leaders opted for the spectacle of passing no budget resolution at all. It was a significant moral and public-relations victory for the mod squad. But this year things were different. When pay-as-you-go came to a Senate vote again last week, it failed to pass despite the intense efforts of the Fantastic Four. That's one of several defeats the moderates have suffered recently. Last week, when the Senate defeated an effort to block oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the moderates voted with the Democrats once again, and once again it didn't matter. Most tellingly, perhaps, it looks increasingly likely that the mods won't be able to stop the most radical move the Senate has seen in years: the Republican push to deploy the 'nuclear option' that would rewrite Senate rules to end filibusters of judicial nominees." Here's what I consider a troubling court ruling, from the [6]Los Angeles Times. I'm the first to say that journalists shouldn't be able to quote Person A libeling Person B without proof, but what if it's said in a public proceeding? "The Supreme Court refused Monday to shield the news media from being sued for accurately reporting a politician's false charges against a rival. Instead, the justices let stand a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that a newspaper can be forced to pay damages for having reported that a city councilman called the mayor and the council president 'liars,' 'queers' and 'child molesters.' "The case turned on whether the 1st Amendment's protection for the freedom of the press includes a 'neutral reporting privilege.' Most judges around the nation have said the press does not enjoy this privilege. . . . "The case that reached the high court began 10 years ago when the Daily Local News in West Chester, Pa. printed a story entitled, 'Slurs, Insults drag town into controversy.' It reported that the City Council in nearby Parkesburg had been torn apart by shouting matches and fistfights. The most outspoken councilman was William T. Glenn Sr. In comments during the meeting and in an interview with a news reporter, Glenn referred to Mayor Alan Wolfe and Councilman James Norton as 'liars' and a 'bunch of draft dodgers.'" Glenn "also strongly suggested that they were homosexuals who had put themselves 'in a position that gave them an opportunity to have access to children.' When asked to respond, Norton was quoted as saying: 'If Mr. Glenn has made comments as bizarre as that, then I feel very sad for him, and I hope he can get the help he needs.'" The Supreme Court set no precedent by declining the case. Ah, but which part was during the interview, when the reporter should have exercised some restraint? And what do they put in the water in West Chester, Pa.? John Hinderaker of Powerline has a new piece up, this one in the [7]Weekly Standard, challenging the media reports that Schiavo talking points were distributed to Republican senators. He says I erred in saying that he posted on his blog some comments from an anonymous ABC staffer; Hinderaker says he simply promised not to use the person's name. If you're a tabloid editor, your heart is racing over the latest turn in the Michael Jackson case, as the [8]New York Post reports: "The judge in Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial yesterday dropped a "nuclear bomb" on the star's stunned defense -- allowing evidence that would allegedly link Jacko to sexual acts involving five boys, including actor Macaulay Culkin. "One of the five purported victims -- the son of Jacko's ex-maid -- is set to testify that the Gloved One laid more than a friendly glove on him, twice fondling him outside his clothing and once thrusting his hands down the boy's pants, prosecutors said. "Culkin, however, the former child star of 'Home Alone' fame, has repeatedly denied that he was ever molested by Jackson." Jackson would have been well advised to stay home alone. How much do you want to know about the personal lives of your friendly neighborhood bloggers? The Washington Monthly's [9]Kevin Drum reveals a bit of himself with this post: "I've long felt that occasionally mixing in personal blogging with purely news-driven blogging is useful because it provides my readers with a better perspective of who I am and whether or not they should care what I have to say. It's also fun. This why you get catblogging here, as well as random pet peeve blogging, TV blogging, and linguistic blogging. These posts almost always provoke a few comments from people who want to know why I'm wasting their time with this stuff when GEORGE BUSH IS BUSY TURNING AMERICA INTO A FASCIST STATE! -- but that's the whole point. If this kind of thing makes you think I'm not a serious person, then this probably isn't a blog you should bother reading. "On the other hand, we all draw different limits around our lives -- and that includes limits around the amount of rage and frustration we're willing to expose. Like Prof B, I suffer from chronic depression, though, also like Prof B, it's obviously not debilitating. It just sucks. And while I'm not sure what choices she's made in her non-anonymous life, I chose long ago to mention this very seldom and to very few people. (If you're not sure why, go ahead and let your boss know that you're a chronic depressive and see what happens. For many people, their careers would be over.) I know from experience that my moods change, and while my mood is never what you'd call ebullient, the depressive cycles always eventually give way to something that's at least neutral. While I'm in a down cycle, though, I'm very conscious that I'm in the grip of bad brain chemistry, and my way of coping is to keep myself under very tight control. Don't react. Minimize human contact. Under no circumstances lose control of my temper. "Is this the right choice? I don't know. But it's the one I've made. And it does affect my blogging. For the most part, I keep an even tone because that's just what comes naturally to me, but other times it's a struggle." Speaking of which, I didn't get much sleep last night and am feeling cranky. . . . From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 15:01:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:01:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Replies to Brooks: So Long, Mets? Think '69. '86. Think Again. Message-ID: The New York Times > Opinion > So Long, Mets? Think '69. '86. Think Again. (5 Letters) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/31/opinion/l31brooks.html March 31, 2005 To the Editor: Re "Whose Team Am I On?," by David Brooks (column, March 29): Like Mr. Brooks, I immigrated to Washington from New York many years ago, carrying with me a passion for the New York Mets. As a child growing up in the 1970's, I became accustomed to watching the likes of Willie Monta?ez and Steve Henderson bumble their way through season after hapless season. In 1977, I cried when the Mets traded Tom Seaver. Those tears turned to joy nine years later when Mookie Wilson's ground ball saved our season. I was sad to read that Mr. Brooks sees Washington's grass as greener than Shea Stadium's and is ready to abandon the Mets for the promise of the Nationals. Troubled by the Mets' loss of innocence through big-player signings and bad-player signings, he sees a fresh start with the Nats. A fling with the Nats will not ease his pain, because the Mets' problems are emblematic of the problems of all professional sports - prima donna players and greedy and detached owners. So, Mr. Brooks, have your fling. At day's end, though, your cheating heart will return to your first and only true love. James I. Menapace Gaithersburg, Md., March 29, 2005 o To the Editor: To answer David Brooks, there is nothing wrong or unusual about adopting the team of your "new" locale (the Washington Nationals) as your own, even though you fear it is a betrayal of your first baseball love (the New York Mets). You grew up at a magic time, and the 1969 Mets were a magic team. That magic will never leave you. It hasn't left me, and I grew up in San Diego. You will root for the Nationals on some level, even a very loyal and emotional one. But you will not betray the Mets, because you cannot. Your deepest love will always be with those magic Mets, and that girl you proposed to in 1986, on the 40th win. Patrick Gorse Pasadena, Calif., March 30, 2005 o To the Editor: When I was 7, my family moved from Boston to Seattle. My father encouraged me to drop my loyalty to the miserable Red Sox and transfer it to the more miserable Mariners. The Mariners proved as adept as the Red Sox at blowing leads and failing to translate winning seasons into post-season success. They spent the first decade we lived in Seattle at the bottom, cheered on by a few half-hearted fans in the concrete tomb of the Kingdome. We still consider ourselves heroic martyrs for not having dumped them years ago. In this spirit, I say to David Brooks: Devote yourself to the Washington Nationals. No doubt they will stink at first. Lackluster crowds seem assured. You will be one of the few, the proud, who actually root for this ridiculous expansion venture. But when the team finally makes it to the World Series, you and your kids will be able to say, "We were there." Ariela Migdal Kibbutz Maale Gilboa, Israel March 29, 2005 o To the Editor: Abandon the New York Mets? David Brooks, say it isn't so! Do you really think the Washington Nationals will embody anything more than a transplanted team in a transplanted capital, peopled by citizens transplanted from everywhere else? The Nats will never be authentic, in the same way that D.C. bagels and pizza will never be authentic. They'll be soulless and drifting in a city that has never found its soul and drifts only right or left. But ... I, too, am a Mets-loving Washington immigrant from the New York City area. And I, too, am feeling that tug to accept my place in the D.C. community by switching loyalties to the Nationals. How can I even entertain this disloyal notion? I still want my Piazza with my pizza. But I will adapt, buy a hat and cheer for the Nats. After 11 years, the D.C. bagels aren't so bad anymore. Theresa L. Raphael Olney, Md., March 29, 2005 o To the Editor: Such is the relationship that conservatives have with "ideals." First the G.O.P. ended its long embrace of the "ideal" of a balanced budget, then it began to selectively overlook the "ideal" of states' rights - and now this. Go figure. Marshall Gilinsky New York, March 29, 2005 From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 15:13:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:13:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Answering Islam: The Great Scientific Miracles and Discoveries in the Noble Quran and Islam. Message-ID: The Great Scientific Miracles and Discoveries in the Noble Quran and Islam. http://www.answering-islam.com/sci_quran.htm [It is wonderful to know that the Noble Quran confirms that the earth is rotating around its axle. It would be best to click on the URL to get graphics.] Allah Almighty promising to show us His Miracles in the outside Universe and in our Embryology: "We will soon show them Our signs in the Universe and INSIDE THEIR SELVES, until it will become quite clear to them that it is the truth. Is it not sufficient as regards your Lord that He is a witness over all things? (The Noble Quran, 41:53)" Very Important Discovery: A new star forming out of a cloud of gas and dust (nebula), which is one of the remnants of the "smoke" that was the origin of the whole universe. (The Space Atlas, Heather and Henbest, page 50) Allah Almighty said: "Then He turned to the heaven when it was smoke...(The Noble Quran, 41:11)" [3]The Noble Quran on the Origin of the Universe Only Islam claims that the universe was originated from Dust and Hot Gas, or Smoke. Another Very Important Discovery: Allah Almighty Said: "And when the heaven splitteth asunder and becometh ROSY LIKE RED HIDE - (The Noble Quran, 55:37)" What Allah Almighty is Saying here is that when Galaxies explode, they form a red-rose-shaped explosion. He is also telling us that the Universe will all turn into red exploded galaxies looking like red or reddish roses when the Day of Judgement happens. In the Arabic Noble Verse, "wardatan" was translated as "ROSY" above. The root word "WARDA" in Arabic LITERALLY means "ROSE" or "FLOWER". The "tan" at the end of "wardatan" is not part of the word. It is only an Arabic PUNCTUATION that only changes the sound of the word for grammatical rules. It is pronounced as "ten", with the "a" being short. The reason why the above word was not written as "wardaten" is because in many parts of the world, the English word "ten" (number 10) is pronounced as "tin". Only the American-English pronounce the "e" as a short "a". Most of the world uses the British-English system and they pronounce the "e" as "i", and the "o" as it is, such as "stop" pronounced as "stope". The American-English pronounces the "o" as a thick "a". Also, if we were to add two Arabic characters, "alif" and "noon" at the end of "warda", it would change the pronunciation to "taan" (wardataan), and it then becomes two "wardas"; plural. **** Explosion of Galaxies can not be seen with the naked eye. It also can not be seen with regular telescopes. You need the special Government-owned and NASA-owned "Hubble Space" Super Telescope. The point from all of this is that Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him could not have come up with any of this on his own 1500 years ago! [4]The explosion of Stars (FORMING RED ROSES), Galaxies and the Universe in the Noble Quran had been confirmed by NASA. Dr. Zahlool Al-Najjar is a great Muslim Geologist and Scientist who wrote many books, publications ([7]131 publications as shown on his resume in English), and 10s of journals and reports proving many of the Noble Quranic Geological and Scientific Claims to be accurate through Modern Science and Technologies. He is well known in the Scientists community of Geology in both the US and Europe, because much of his work and research, especially during his early days of scientific research, was done in these countries while he resided and studied in them. Science in Islam: The sub sections here are: 1- Life originated from water and dust in the Noble Quran. 2- The Earth's rotation, formation, and Oceanology. 3- The Universe, Astronomy, UFOs and Space Shuttles. 4- Embryology, Human Anatomy, Formation, and Creation from the time of sexual intercourse to the time of birth. 5- The number 19 code in the Noble Quran. 6- Medicine, Insects and Animals. 7- Psychology. 8- Great Web Sites and Online Books. More great resources and web site are available online. 9- Rebuttals. 10- Prophecies. 1- Life originated from water and dust in the Noble Quran: [8]Life originated from water in the Noble Quran. [9]Life and our physical bodies originated from CLAY - The Noble Quran Claimed it and Science confirmed it! 2- The Earth's rotation, formation and Oceanology: [10]The Noble Quran confirms that the earth is rotating around its axle. [11]Allah Almighty said that the earth is "egg-shaped". [12]The Earth is round according to Islam. [13]Did the Noble Quran really say that the sun sets and rises on the earth? [14]The amazing creation of earth and iron in the Noble Quran. Iron came from space, and the Noble Quran mentioned it. [15]The 7 properties of earth in the Noble Quran and Science. Read the first section of the article. [16]Rebuttal to the "Heaven" and "Stars in the lower Heaven" in Noble Verses 37:6 and 65:12. Read the "Rebuttals" section in the article. This was an attempt to refute the fact that Allah Almighty Claimed that He Created 7 Ozone Layers as well as 7 different Heavens. [17]The dead turning into Fossils and Iron. The Noble Quran Claimed it, and Science today Confirmed it! Outside Supporting articles: [18]http://www.universalunity.net/iron.htm This article shows the Mathematical Codes of Iron in the Noble Quran and Science, and shows how Science confirmed Allah Almighty's Divine Claim in Noble Verses 17:49-50 about the dead converting into rocks and iron. In case the web site is down, you can [19]access the article on my site. [20]http://www.universalunity.net/iron2.htm More elaborations on Noble Verses 17:49-51. In case the web site is down, you can [21]access the article on my site. [22]Living Creatures were sent down from space. Science confirms the Noble Quran's Claim. [23]The amazing creation of earth and mountains in the Noble Quran. Science confirms that mountains prevent the earth from shaking while it is revolving around itself. The Noble Quran made a similar claim. [24]Geology in the Noble Quran - See the Scientific confirmation. [25]Oceanology in the Noble Quran - See the Scientific confirmation. The barriers between waters in both science and the Noble Quran. [26]The darkness of oceans and disappearance of light was mentioned in the Noble Quran and confirmed by Science. 3- The Universe, Astronomy, UFOs and Space Shuttles: [27]The amazing creation of earth and iron in the Noble Quran. Iron came from space, and the Noble Quran mentioned it. [28]Living Creatures were sent down from space. Science confirms the Noble Quran's Claim. [29]Allah Almighty talked about lack of Oxygen and painful low pressure in space. Science confirmed the Noble Quran's Divine Claim. [30]The Noble Quran and Astronomers both claim that the Universe is 18 billion years old. [31]The Big Bang Theory and the Cosmic Crunch in the Noble Quran. Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him predicted around the time when the Cosmic Crunch occurs, the Sun would rise from the West. [32]The Noble Quran on the Origin of the Universe. This article has pictures and quotes from Western scientific books that accurately confirm the astronomical claims of the Noble Quran. The Noble Quran was the only book that claimed that the universe originated from Hot Gas or Smoke. Science proved that this claim is true. [33]The explosion of Stars (FORMING RED ROSES), Galaxies and the Universe in the Noble Quran had been confirmed by NASA. [34]Comparison between Allah Almighty's claims about His Creation, and the scientific discoveries that 100% agree with Him. Claims such as: The universe is expanding, the existence of the sun's orbit, the protective atmosphere to the earth, Embryology and many more. [35]Allah Almighty said in the Noble Quran that He is "Expanding" the Universe. Scientists already proved this claim to be true. [36]The "Clot" and the Creation of the Universe in the Noble Quran. [37]Is there mention of U.F.Os or other Human Planets in the Noble Quran? [38]What does the sun orbit? [39]Einstein's time relativity in the Noble Quran. [40]UFOs and Space Shuttles were explicitly mentioned in the Noble Quran! Even the communication with UFOs was prophesied in the Noble Quran. [41]Aliens and UFOs in the Noble Quran. [42]Black Holes and Piercing Stars in the Noble Quran were confirmed by Science. 4- Embryology, Human Anatomy, Formation and Creation from the time of sexual intercourse to the time of birth: [43]The Noble Quran on Human Embryonic Development. [44]Embryology in the Noble Quran. The three stages of the fetus formation in the Noble Quran and Science. [45]Abortion in Islam is a crime! The fetus is a human child in Islam. [46]The Noble Quran on the Cerebrum: Lying is generated from the person's forehead. [47]The region in the brain that controls our movements - In Noble Quran and confirmed by Science. [48]Sex determination and human creation in Islam. Allah Almighty and Prophet Muhammad both claimed that the human gender is determined by the male's ejaculated semen. [49]Were human cloning and gender alteration prophesied in Islam? [50]Why does the Noble Quran, while speaking about determination of the identity of the individual, speak specifically about finger tips? The Noble Quran recognized that finger tips (finger prints) are unique! [51]The blood circulation and the production of milk in the Breast: In the Noble Quran and Science. [52]Breastfeeding for 2 years in the Noble Quran. Science had confirmed Islam's Divine Claims. [53]Thinking with the heart besides the brain in the Noble Quran was proven by Science. 5- The number 19 code in the Noble Quran: [54]The Miracle of the number 19 in the Noble Quran. Yes, the number 19 is miraculous in the Noble Quran and was proven to be essential in many of the Scientific Theories and Discoveries. But it doesn't at all support Rashad Khalifa's removal of two Noble Verses from the Noble Quran, and his claim to be GOD Almighty's Messenger. 6- Medicine, Insects and Animals: [55]Animals' urine and it's relationship to medicine in Islam. [56]Camels could help cure humans. [57]Honey was proven to be healing for humans as was mentioned in the Noble Quran. [58]The fly insect and its cure: Mentioned in Islam and confirmed by Science (Bacteriophages). 7- Psychology: [59]The psychological Wisdom of Prayers in Islam was proven in Science and Psychology. [60]The Wisdom of the age of 40 in the Noble Quran, which had been Scientifically and Psychologically proven to be True. See why Allah Almighty is more forgiving to those who are under the age of 40, and how Science and Psychology proved that people under 40 are less mature and tend to make more irresponsible decisions (i.e., mistakes and sins). 8- Great Web Sites: [61]http://www.it-is-truth.org/ This is an awesome web site that has Western scientific information that accurately confirms the Noble Quran's claims about astronomy, biology, geology and other sciences. [62]http://www.universalunity.net/universe.htm A great site with excellent articles that are backed quotes and proofs about science in the Noble Quran. [63]unify.jpg (61178 bytes) Brother Muhammad Asadi's web site IS RICH with irrefutable scientific facts and details that match many of the Noble Quran's Verses. He has done a wonderful job in explaining things in good details and providing detailed OBJECTIVE analysis that prove the Noble Quran's Scientific Miracles. You can visit his web site at: [64]http://www.rationalreality.com. [65]book-cover-small.jpg (13251 bytes) A great book that contains several articles backed by good Scientific references that prove several of the Noble Quran's Scientific Miracles. [66]http://www.islam-guide.com/. [68]http://www.harunyahya.com/ [69]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_darwinism.php [70]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_atheism.php [71]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_design_nature.php [72]Miracles of the Noble Quran. Video files. [73]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_miracles_quran.php [74]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_quran_archaeology.php [75]http://www.harunyahya.com/c_myth_called_matter.php [76]The Bible, the Quran and Science. Written by Dr Maurice Bucaille. In his work, Dr. Baucille proves that the Quran correctly stated scientific facts unknown at the time of the Prophet - showing its divine origin! [77]A web site for the number 19 miracle in the Noble Quran. [78]Evaluating Islam as a Religion based on Divine Revelation. [79]Quran Prior to Science and Civilization, Astro, Islam, Mlivo. [80]Black Holes and Piercing Stars in the Noble Quran were confirmed by Science. 9- Rebuttals: [81]Does the Noble Quran support "The Earth moves around the Sun" theory? Rebuttal to Mr. Avijit Roy's challenge. [82]My rebuttal to Avijit Roy's "Does the Quran support the Earth moves around the Sun theory" response. [83]My rebuttal to Avijit Roy's "Does Quran have any Scientific miracles?" article. [84]Did the Noble Quran really say that the sun sets and rises on the earth? [85]A Muslim response to criticism of Embryology in the Noble Quran. By Nadeem Arif Najmi. [86]Allah Almighty said that the earth is "egg-shaped". Rebuttal to the Christian "Answering Islam" team about "dahaha" in the Noble Quran. 10- Prophecies: Please visit [87]The Noble Quran section, and read the "Prophecies" sub section to see the great Prophecies that were fulfilled only in the Noble Quran. The Noble Quran also made mention and promised the discovery of lost ancient cities and people's bodies, and these promises were all fulfilled today. _________________________________________________________________ Please email me at [88]Osama Abdallah Back to either [89]www.aol40.com or [90]www.answering-christianity.com Both sites are exactly the same [91]Purpose of this site. You are visitor number: [92] [fastcounter?1061971+2123949] since 4/13/1999. [93]Chat with other visitors [94]Download Arabic Songs References 1. http://www.answering-islam.com/quransearch.htm 2. http://www.answering-islam.com/\%22#\" 3. http://www.answering-islam.com/the_universe.htm 4. http://www.answering-islam.com/red_galaxy.htm 5. http://www.elnaggarzr.com/ 6. http://www.elnaggarzr.com/ 7. http://www.elnaggarzr.com/CV-E.htm 8. http://www.answering-islam.com/origin_of_life.htm 9. http://www.answering-islam.com/life_from_clay.htm 10. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth_rotation.htm 11. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth_in_islam.htm 12. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth_round.htm 13. http://www.answering-islam.com/sunrise_sunset.htm 14. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth.htm 15. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth.htm 16. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth.htm 17. http://www.answering-islam.com/from_dead_to_iron.htm 18. http://www.universalunity.net/iron.htm 19. http://www.answering-islam.com/iron1.htm 20. http://www.universalunity.net/iron2.htm 21. http://www.answering-islam.com/iron2.htm 22. http://www.answering-islam.com/life_from_space.htm 23. http://www.answering-islam.com/mountains.htm 24. http://www.answering-islam.com/geology.htm 25. http://www.answering-islam.com/oceanology.htm 26. http://www.answering-islam.com/darkness_of_oceans.htm 27. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth.htm 28. http://www.answering-islam.com/life_from_space.htm 29. http://www.answering-islam.com/space_pressure_in_noble_quran.htm 30. http://www.answering-islam.com/18_billion_years.htm 31. http://www.answering-islam.com/hot_gas.htm 32. http://www.answering-islam.com/the_universe.htm 33. http://www.answering-islam.com/red_galaxy.htm 34. http://www.answering-islam.com/allah_and_science.htm 35. http://www.answering-islam.com/6_days.htm 36. http://www.answering-islam.com/clot_formation.htm 37. http://www.answering-islam.com/ufo.htm 38. http://www.answering-islam.com/sun_orbit.htm 39. http://www.answering-islam.com/time_relativity.htm 40. http://www.answering-islam.com/ufo.htm 41. http://www.answering-islam.com/aliens_in_quran.htm 42. http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_37.html 43. http://www.answering-islam.com/embryonic_development.htm 44. http://www.answering-islam.com/embryology.htm 45. http://www.answering-islam.com/abortion_is_crime.htm 46. http://www.answering-islam.com/forehead.htm 47. http://www.answering-islam.com/movement_control.htm 48. http://www.answering-islam.com/sex_determination.htm 49. http://www.answering-islam.com/creation_alteration.htm 50. http://www.answering-islam.com/fingertips.htm 51. http://www.answering-islam.com/production_of_milk.htm 52. http://www.answering-islam.com/breast_feeding.htm 53. http://www.answering-islam.com/thinking_with_heart.htm 54. http://www.answering-islam.com/fakir60/fakir60.htm 55. http://www.answering-islam.com/urine.htm 56. http://www.answering-islam.com/camels_cure_humans.htm 57. http://www.answering-islam.com/honey_healing.htm 58. http://www.answering-islam.com/hadiths_of_the_fly.htm 59. http://www.answering-islam.com/psychology_of_prayers.htm 60. http://www.answering-islam.com/mercy_of_allah.htm 61. http://www.it-is-truth.org/ 62. http://www.universalunity.net/universe.htm 63. http://www.rationalreality.com/ 64. http://www.rationalreality.com/ 65. http://www.islam-guide.com/ 66. http://www.islam-guide.com/ 67. http://www.harunyahya.com/ 68. http://www.harunyahya.com/ 69. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_darwinism.php 70. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_refutation_atheism.php 71. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_design_nature.php 72. http://www.hyahya.org/m_video_miracles_quran.php 73. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_miracles_quran.php 74. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_quran_archaeology.php 75. http://www.harunyahya.com/c_myth_called_matter.php 76. http://home.swipnet.se/islam/quran-bible.htm 77. http://numerical19.tripod.com/ 78. http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/questions.jsp?point=3&id=328 79. http://www.quranm.multicom.ba/science/astronomy.htm 80. http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_37.html 81. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth_rotation_challenge.htm 82. http://www.answering-islam.com/avijit_roy_response_rebuttal.htm 83. http://www.answering-islam.com/avijit_roy_quran_science_miracles_rebuttal.htm 84. http://www.answering-islam.com/sunrise_sunset.htm 85. http://www.answering-islam.com/nadeem_embryology.htm 86. http://www.answering-islam.com/earth_in_islam.htm 87. http://www.answering-islam.com/quran.htm 88. http://www.answering-islam.com/emailme.htm 89. http://www.aol40.com/ 90. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ 91. http://www.answering-islam.com/purpose.htm 92. http://member.linkexchange.com/cgi-bin/fc/fastcounter-login?1061971 93. http://www.answering-islam.com/chat.htm 94. http://www.answering-islam.com/music.htm From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 15:20:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:20:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Muslim Freethinkers: Why I Am Not a Muslim Message-ID: Why I Am Not a Muslim http://geocities.com/muslimfreethinkers/why_i_am_not_a_muslim.htm [I have started reading the book and spoke of it to the local libertarian atheist, Dean Ahmed, and he denounced the book in no uncertain terms. I brought up the manifest contradictions in the Koran, and he angrily said there are no contradictions in the Koran but that the contradictions were in me. He did not like my attacking his non-existent god! Identity, once again, proves stronger than reason.] A review of the book By Dr. Ali Sina In Why I Am Not A Muslim, Ibn Warraq, exposes the bitter truth about Islam without sugarcoating it. He is learned and his book is well documented. He lashes out at the western intellectuals who instead of condemning the assassination order of a savage man like Khomeini against Salman Rushdi, chose to criticize Rushdi for his book The Satanic Verses because it was not "politically correct". Warraq talks about the brutal treatments of all those who fell under the domination of Islam, from the time of Muhammad to the present days. He talks about the minorities, philosophers, women and slaves in Islam. Jews were massacred and exiled by Muhammad in Medina and Kheibar; their belongings were distributed among the "believers", their women and children taken as slaves. This heinous act of barbarism was repeated time and again throughout history with Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and in recent years with Ahmedies, Baha'is and other minorities in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, India, Syria and everywhere Islam reined. Warraq talks about the origin of Islam, its pagan background and the influence of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism on Muhammad. He talks about the origin of Allah in Arab culture, about the early days of Muhammad as a preacher and his rivalry with another storyteller "Al Nadir" and his revenge against him. Warraq traces back the origin of many Islamic rituals to Arab superstitions and Muhammad's strange belief in jinns, demons and other shadowy beings. He also describes how Muhammad rehashed the biblical nonsense about creation, Noah's Ark, birth of Christ etc. while misunderstanding a lot of it, like confusing Mary the mother of Christ with Miriam sister of Aaron, or the Christian belief in Trinity. You will learn about Muhammad's bizarre view of cosmology, science, history, and medicine. (He prescribed drinking the urine of camel as a remedy against stomachache!). Then you will learn about Muhammad's metamorphosis from preacher to despot. How his call for tolerance, when he was still in Mecca and weak changed to the cry of killing and looting when he became powerful in Medina. You will learn how Muhammad encouraged his handful of followers to attack the caravans, kill the men, rape the women and bring the booty (20% for himself) to please Allah, while assuring them that if they are killed their rewards will be "young boys", rivers of wine, and many hurries in the other world. All what Warraq says is backed by Quran and Ahadith. The reader becomes familiar with Muhammad's favorite way of eliminating his opponents, namely assassination. Asma Bint Marwan a poetess who wrote against the prophet was assassinated by his order in the middle of the night while nursing her infant. Her five small children where forced to convert to Islam. Muhammad's hit list also included Ka'b Ibn al-Ashraf and Abu Rafi who spoke against him and had to be taken out traitorously. This policy was adopted by Muslims throughout the history and is being practiced up to this day. What we call terrorism, to a Muslim is Jihad (holly war). The much-publicized fetwa against Rushdi is an example. Among other things we learn about Muhammad's preference for young girls (Ayesha was 9 years old when he consummated his "marriage" with her) rather at an advanced age and how he is unabashed to make Allah reveal Quranic verses to justify his lust for women and his sexual appetite. Warraq makes a thorough study of the totalitarian nature of Islam. He even goes as far as to compare the impact of monotheism on human rights versus polytheism and atheism. For all those who still wonder why Muslims hate so much the west I recommend reading this book. There is a whole chapter dedicated to this subject. Winwoods Reade said; "A sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man" This fact applies to no one more than to Muslims. Here is the proof: "When you meet the unbelievers, strike off their heads; then when you have made wide slaughter among them, carefully tie up the remaining captives." (Quran47.4). "And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God [i.e. moshrekin.] wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is Gracious, Merciful."(Quran 9:5) And as for Christians and Jews who rejected him he has this to say: "Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been given and believe not in God, or the last day, and who forbid not that which God and His Apostle have forbidden..."( Quran. 9:29) These are the injunctions of Muhammad's Gracious and Merciful God. How can a "good Muslim" disobey these explicit "divine" mandates? And how can one who observes them be a "good person"? This is the question that sincere Muslims must ask themselves. I am not insinuating that there are no good people amongst Muslims. Good and bad people are distributed in equal proportions in all nations. Yet in Islam good people are often forced to do bad things and go against their conscience. They often convince themselves that in this apparent injustice there must be a hidden wisdom that they do not understand and that God knows better. Many good people who claim to be Muslims are often ignorant of true Islam and dismiss the real orthodox Muslims as hard-liners and fundamentalists. But as Ibn Warraq in "Why I am not a Muslim" points out, unlike Christianity, Islam does not leave room for leniency and tolerance. Islam and fundamentalism are synonymous terms. You have to break the laws of Muhammad, just to keep your humanity and be good. No amount of intellectual acrobatics performed by Muslim apologists can justify the intolerant and ruthlessness of Muhammad's religion. "Why I Am Not A Muslim" is worth its weight in gold. Warraq's book by far is the best source I found on Islam. He tells the truth and pays no lip service. The book's only flaw is that it is not translated into the language of people who are victims of Islam. I am sure that will be taken care of too. Islam was established through force and bloodshed. No argument, no reason, no logic was ever given but the blade of the sword. Masses were kept in ignorance. Muslims have no knowledge of Quran and are not aware of its naivete and inhumane character. Should they read Quran in their own language and understand it, they would be disappointed to see the book, far from being a "miracle", is a hoax; poorly written, full of errors and bereft of beauty. Islam has silenced all voices of reason throughout the history. But now is a different time. The Internet, although strictly censored in Islamic countries, is becoming accessible even to Muslims. Freethinkers can write and publish without the fear of persecution. I foresee that ere long, the same devout Muslims will turn their back, against their religion and will endeavor to liberate the rest of humanity from the claws of religion in general and Islam in particular. Warraq talks about "Arab Imperialism and Islamic Colonialism". He explains eloquently how through Islam, many civilized nations lost their identity, their dignity and humanity to bow in front of a savage god of a bunch of uncultured Arabs and follow the wimps of a fanatic and schizophrenic bloodthirsty madman of Arabia. Islam is the enemy of science, of freethinking, of reason and of human rights. It acts as a powerful break on the advancement of civilization. Warraq keenly points out that "Islamic Civilization" is a contradiction in terms. You can either be Islamic or civilized. In another place he argues that also "Islamic Philosophy" is a contradiction in terms, because philosophy was regarded as a "foreign science, which led to heresy, doubt, and total unbelief". Brilliant minds like Zacharia Razi and Avicena never believed in Islam and were attacked by Muslims. More recent intellectuals and freethinkers don't fare better. For example Ali Dashti, the brilliant scholar and the author of "23 years"; a book written about Muhammad and his 23 years of prophetic life, was incarcerated while in his 80s during Khomeni's rule and died in prison. In Warraq's own words: "Thus we had the spectacle of periodic persecution of various group considered either doctrinally suspect or politically subversive; individuals (philosophers, poets, theologians, scientists, rationalists, dualists, freethinkers, and mystics) were imprisoned, tortured, crucified, mutilated, and hanged; their writings burned. Significantly, none of the heretical works of Ibn Rawandi, Ibn Warraq, Ibn al-Muqaffa, and al-Razi has survived. Other individuals are forced to flee from one ruler to another more tolerant ruler (e.g. al-Amidi). Some were exiled or banished (Averroes). Many were forced to disguise their true views and opinions by difficult or ambiguous language. Those who managed to get away with blasphemy were those protected by the powerful and influential." From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 15:35:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:35:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Answering Christianity: GOD Almighty supposedly Changing His Mind (abrogation) in the Bible. Message-ID: GOD Almighty supposedly Changing His Mind (abrogation) in the Bible. http://www.answering-christianity.com/abrogation_in_bible.htm [The Answering Islam site has a sister site, Answering Christianity. The article below is about contradictions in the Bible. I wonder if it's author got his material from a *Christian* freethinker site. Christians and freethinkers have be at one another, with Christians resolving the putative contradictions the freethinkers come up with (and with counterarugments thereto, for well over a century and a half. There's also a Mormon site answering the attacks other Christians level against the Saints.] "and Jehovah repenteth of the evil which He hath spoken of doing to His people." ([4]Exodus 32:14) GOD Almighty supposedly Changing His Mind (abrogation) in the Bible: The sections of this article are: 1- Irrefutable samples where GOD Almighty Changed His Mind in the Bible. 1. What saves the Bible followers? This is the most serious contradiction in the Bible. 2. Is murder of innocent people allowed or not? 3. Can a brother marry his biological sister or not? 4. Can the Bible followers work on Saturday or not? 5. Is bowing down to GOD Almighty allowed or not? 6. Can the strong and rich be punished for adultery or not? 7. Are non-Jews dogs or not? Jesus slipped and said they are, and then instantly changed his mind. Hilarious indeed! 8. Is divorce allowed or not? 2- Christians abrogating the Bible. 1. Is eating swine prohibited or not? 2. Is following the Old Testament's social laws mandatory or not? 3. Is polygamy allowed or not? 3- Conclusion. 1- Irrefutable samples where GOD Almighty Changed His Mind in the Bible: Christians often object to Allah Almighty's Divine Command in the Noble Quran for substituting His previous Divine Revelations with the Noble Quran, and for substituting some of the Divine temporary Commands that He Revealed in the Noble Quran for specific situations with newer ones: "None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that God Hath power over all things? (The Noble Quran, 2:106)" "We ordained therein for them: "Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself. And if any fail to judge by (the light of) what God hath revealed, they are (No better than) wrong-doers. (The Noble Quran, 5:45)" CAPTION: An Example of the Noble Quran Abrogating the Bible: Noble Verse 24:33 "Let those who find not the wherewithal for marriage keep themselves chaste, until God gives them means out of His grace. And if any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing (to enable them to earn their freedom for a certain sum), give them such a deed if ye know any good in them: yea, give them something yourselves out of the means which God has given to you. But force not your maids to prostitution when they desire chastity, in order that ye may make a gain in the goods of this life. But if anyone compels them, yet, after such compulsion, is God, Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful (to them)," ABROGATED: Leviticus 25:44-46 "Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly." Allah Almighty in the Noble Quran Commands the Muslims to free their slaves if the slaves want to be free, and to pay them money too so they can have a good jump start in life. In the Bible on the other hand, we see slaves not being allowed to be freed at all. Not only that, but they and their children must be inherited as slaves forever. Please visit: [5]Human equality and freedom in Islam Vs the Bible. Let us look at some of GOD Almighty's serious and unexplainable abrogations in the Bible: 1- What saves the Bible followers? Perhaps one of the worst and most serious contradictions that exist in the Bible is this one, because it is about Salvation! What saves the Bible followers? Righteousness alone? " "But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself. "Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, HE WILL SURELY LIVE because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself." (From the NIV Bible, Ezekiel 3:19-21)" Jesus? "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (From the NIV Bible, John 3:15-17)" "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (From the NIV Bible, John 14:5-7)" Please visit: [6]Jesus GUARANTEED Paradise to all non-trinitarians. 2- One of the Bible's 10 basic Pillars, the ten commandments, says: "Thou shalt not kill. (Exodus 20:13)." Yet, we see GOD Almighty Commanding His servants to not only kill the enemy's men, but also the innocent children and non-virgin women who have not done anything to anyone: "Now kill all the boys [innocent kids]. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. (Numbers 31:17-18)" If Exodus 20:13 was supposed to be the basic pillar that prevents the Bible followers from committing murders against innocent people, then how is Numbers 31:17-18 justified then when GOD Almighty Himself nullified His own Commands and decided to kill innocent children and virgin girls perhaps by the thousands? It is most ironic that GOD Almighty prohibited ordinary murders but supposedly allowed massacres to be done by the mass!! Did you Know: Extreme fundamentalists and racists from among the Christians such as Pat Robertson and George W. Bush who could careless about who dies and who doesn't in wars from innocent people are WELL KNOWN FOR THEIR CARELESSNESS about the deaths of innocent civilians? The 100s of thousands of innocent Iraqis that died in the previous Persian Gulf wars [[7]1] [[8]2] [[9]3], and [10]the deformed Iraqi children from the US' Deplete Uranium bombs clearly and irrefutably prove this. Also, we must not forget that the biggest blood sheds and terrorism that took place throughout the world happened by Christians. World Wars I and II prove this. The white Christian race would literally wipe out nations out of the face of the earth if their interests are threatened. We also must not forget about the African slaves who were forcefully brought to the US by the Europeans and were forced to embrace the polytheist trinitarian pagan christianity to at least earn their freedom. Last and most definitely not least, we must not forget about the Native Americans (Red Indians) and how the white Christian man literally killed more than 90% of their population throughout the lands. The white Christian man is the biggest terrorist this world ever known!! 3- GOD prohibiting brothers from marrying their biological sisters after He initially allowed it for Abraham and Sarah: "And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. (Genesis 20:12)" "Cursed be he that lieth with his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen. (Deuteronomy 27:22)" It is important to know that in the same book of Genesis, GOD Almighty did Speak directly with Abraham. For instance: Genesis 12:1-3 1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. 2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Yet, GOD never prohibited Abraham from marrying his own biological sister, Sarah! So, Deuteronomy 27:22 is indeed an abrogation to the previous Law! Please visit: [11]The Bible claims that Sarah (Isaac's mother) was Abraham's biological sister. 4- Can the Bible followers work on Saturday or not? No: "Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. (Exodus 31:14)" "Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. (Exodus 31:15)" "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death. (Exodus 35:2)" Yes: "And it was the sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes. (John 9:14)" John 7:22-24 22 Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. 23 If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? 24 Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. Mark 6:1-3 1 And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him. 2 And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 5- Jesus compromised his own teachings regarding Prayers. He commanded his followers to Pray in a certain way and he then compromised it by bowing down to GOD Almighty. He only prostrated to GOD Almighty once during his most desperate times with his face down to the ground, while we Muslims do it everyday in our 5-daily set of Prayers. He also did the "vain repetitions" ENDLESSLY all night long while he prohibited his followers from doing it. The article is too long to post here. Therefore, please visit: [12]Jesus is a hypocrite for bowing down to GOD only during his desperate times. Islam is the only solution and salvation! It's funny that even the Jesus of the corrupt bible prayed to GOD Almighty as we Muslims do by prostrating his face down to the ground before GOD Almighty. The difference between the Jesus of the bible and the Muslims, however, is that we Muslims Glorify and Honor GOD Almighty through prostrating to Him at least in 5-daily sets of Prayers everyday. The Jesus of the corrupt bible on the other hand was a hypocrite who only bowed down to GOD Almighty once during his most desperate times. Jesus' previous teachings of "prayers" to his followers obviously did not Glorify and Honor GOD Almighty to the fullest, nor did they mean much to Jesus when he desperately needed GOD Almighty. They were the first to be compromised by him. Quite ludicrous indeed! 6- Abrogation in Adultery punishment in the Bible! According to the Mosaic Law, the punishment for adultery and coveting your neighbor's wife is death: "If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman MUST DIE. (From the NIV Bible, Deuteronomy 22:22)" "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. (From the NIV Bible, Leviticus 20:10)" "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. (From the NIV Bible, Exodus 20:17)" Let us now look at what David did with his neighbor's wife in the Bible: "One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, 'Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the WIFE of Uriah the Hittite?' Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home. (From the NIV Bible, 2 Samuel 11:2-4)" Here is how David was punished! 2 Samuel 12:7-8 7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD , the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. ............. 2 Samuel 12:12-14 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' " 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD ." Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. 14 But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die." How come David wasn't Commanded to be put to death by GOD Almighty? Instead, the child died instead of David. I wonder how the missionaries would've barked about this story if it were in the Noble Quran instead of their [13]X-Rated Pornographic Bible, the book of women's vaginas and breasts taste like "wine", and brothers can "suck" their sisters' and lovers' privates. The Noble Quran WOULD'VE been "wrong" if Prophet Muhammad INSTEAD was forgiven from such sin! By the way, our beloved and blessed Prophet NEVER EVER committed any such or similar sin! 7- Are non-Jews dogs or not? I'd like to start this section by presenting this Noble Verse from the Noble Quran: "Do they not ponder on the Qur'an? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy. (The Noble Quran, 4:82)" Below we will see the overwhelming amount of corruption that exists in the New Testament. Jesus was defeated by the woman's wisdom: "A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, 'Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession. Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, 'Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.' He [Jesus] answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.' The woman came and knelt before him. 'Lord, help me!' she said. He [Jesus] replied 'It is not right to take the children's [Jews] bread [blessings and miracles reserved for them] and toss it to their dogs [the Gentiles].' 'Yes, Lord' she said, 'but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.' Then Jesus answered, 'Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.' And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (From the NIV Bible, Matthew 15:22-28)" It's funny how Jesus supposedly in the book of [14]man-made alterations and corruption, the New Testament, instantaneously ABROGATED his views and decision about the non-Jewish woman and people in general being equivalent to dogs when compared to the Jews. It is important to note that the woman, in this corrupted book, from the very start showed that she is a "believer" (what ever that meant back then). So it wasn't a matter of a "disbeliever" or pagan seeking Jesus' help. The woman's wisdom defeated Jesus, the so-called "Creator of the Universe"! Jesus, within a second, changed his racist and trash-mouthed views against her from being a "dog" to a human being who deserves to be helped. "I was sent ONLY to..." clearly and irrefutably means that Jesus initially claimed that he wasn't sent to none other than the Jews! So what if the woman failed with Jesus?? It seems that Jesus in the [15]corrupted book of the new testament changed his racist and filthy views only because the woman begged him. I wonder if the woman never did this and instead answered him inappropriately after he called her and all gentiles as "dogs", would the gentiles today still be considered as the Jews' dogs? Most probably yes. It doesn't take much for a racist to go back to his old habits and generalizing evil beliefs. Again, don't forget that the woman initially showed that she was a believer! Jesus rejected her only because she was a Gentile! The contradiction and man-made corruption in the text are clear! The "Jesus" of the corrupted book of new testament is clearly not the Creator of the Universe as the lie of trinity claims. Allow me to quote Jesus himself, or what's put on his mouth, regarding those so-called masters: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. (From the NIV Bible, Matthew 23:37)" No Prophets killers can ever be better than any human being that GOD Almighty Created! Those so-called masters can not be better than anyone or any race that exists on earth. In fact, the dung that I personally or anyone for this matter flush in the toilet is better than them and those worthless words that were uttered on the tongue of Jesus in the book of racism and lies, the New Testament. Let alone, them being the masters. So much for them being better than me, a non-Jew, and me being their "dog". Because the bible is not Divine and is filled with man's lies, it is easy to find unanswerable contradictions in it. Jesus' views were clearly absurd and allow me to say, stupid. At one point, the Jews were the masters, and because he was satisfied with them, he ignored the fact that they were the Prophets' killers. But after they disappointed him, the balance changed and they became bad, and it was now ok to go and preach to the Gentiles (the non-Jews). So in other words: 1- Have the Jews been ok with Jesus, the Gentiles would not have received any preaching. 2- The face of christianity today would be totally different. "Christianity" today would be limited to "only the lost sheep of Israel," i.e., the Jews. 3- Like I mentioned above, have the woman failed with Jesus, the Gentiles today would still be considered as the "Jews' dogs". Of course me as a Muslim, I don't believe that the foul dirt that was put on Jesus' mouth or anything that exists in the NT is Divine. Again, as Allah Almighty Said: "Do they not ponder on the Qur'an? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy. (The Noble Quran, 4:82)" Only the verses in the Bible and Hadiths (collection of Prophet Muhammad's, peace be upon him, words) that directly agree with the Noble Quran [16]are considered close to the Truth, but not quite the Truth. The Jesus of Islam is not the Jesus of the bible. The book of lies, the New Testament, [17]is filled with man's alteration and corruption. I have provided ample quotes from bible theologians and a long list of contradictions that clearly and irrefutably prove this! Also visit: [18]What is the place of Jesus, Jews and Christians in Islam? See the type of Jews and Christians that GOD Almighty is Satisfied with in Islam. So now the question to you is: Do you honestly call this absurdity about Jesus being a trash-mouthed racist and then changing instantaneously in the book of lies as Divine Revelations from GOD Almighty? Where is the Divine Wisdom and Perfection in that? I only see double-standard hypocrisy and CLEAR-CUT stupidity! Let's just briefly compare the above lies with the Divine Justice and Revelations in the Noble Quran: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well-acquainted. (The Noble Quran, 49:13)" For more details, please visit: [19]Human Equality and Liberation of Slaves in Islam VS racism in the bible. 8- Is divorce allowed or not? Matthew 5 31 "You have heard that the law of Moses says, `A man can divorce his wife by merely giving her a letter of divorce.' 32 But I say that a man who divorces his wife, unless she has been unfaithful, causes her to commit adultery. And anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. While GOD Almighty in the Old Testament allowed for divorce if the two spouses could no longer get along with each others, the New Testament claims that Jesus said that divorce is not allowed, unless the wife is unfaithful to him, i.e., she is either a loose woman or an adulterous. 2- Christians abrogating the Bible: 1- Eating swine while it is prohibited in the Bible. "And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. (Leviticus 11:7-8)" There goes your Christmas and Easter ham and pork. It amazes me how the polytheist trinitarian pagan christians are the world's biggest consumers of pork meat! Talk about respecting GOD Almighty and obeying His Divine Will! 2- Not following the Social Laws of the Old Testament. If you believe that you don't have to follow the OT's Social Laws, then I must ask you: 1- Can you marry your father's former wife? 2- Can you marry your own sister? 3- If you're a Hindu (male Hindus are allowed to marry their sisters' daughters) and you just recently embraced Christianity, then are you allowed to marry your sister's daughter whom you probably fell in love with before or at least had strong feelings toward, or was probably spoken for, when she was young while you were a Hindu? 4- Can you marry your son's former wife, or daughter's former husband, if you're a dad or mom? 5- CAN YOU MARRY YOUR OWN MOTHER???? The New Testament hardly contains any social law. It certainly doesn't address any of the questions I raised! Only the Old Testament is thorough and contains all of the Social Laws that define the limits of marriage and relationships and other social issues. For points #1&2 above, if the polytheist trinitarian pagans EAT PORK because it is not prohibited in the NT, then SHOULDN'T that also allow for them to start marrying their own siblings (brothers and sisters) or their nieces and nephews, OR EVEN THEIR OWN PARENTS?? I mean, who's really to say no if the NT doesn't prohibit it!! HECK, they're now allowing for men to marry men and women to marry women! What's next? Marry your own dog because the New Testament doesn't say no?! You think some christians wouldn't do it? So if you now agree with me that you must follow the Old Testament's Social Laws, then shouldn't you also follow the following: "And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death. (Exodus 21:17)" "For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. (Leviticus 20:9)" "And he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24:16)" Renegades/Apostates: Must they be killed? "If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying: Let us go and worship other gods (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other, or gods of other religions), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. (Deuteronomy 13:6-9)" "And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens, .....and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die. (Deuteronomy 17:3-5)" Very confusing, isn't it? Please visit: [20]Christians are Commanded to follow the Old Testament. 3- Christians prohibiting polygamy, while Jesus and the Old Testament clearly allowed it! The article is too long to post here. All of Jesus' and the Old Testament's quotes, along with Christian sects and web sites that support polygamy are located at: [21]Polygamy is allowed in the Bible's Old and New Testaments. 3- Conclusion: It is quite clear and beyond question that the Bible contains many abrogations. There Christians' bogus claim about Islam being false because Allah Almighty substituted some of His Holy and Divine Laws in the Noble Quran with Others is soundly debunked in this article! All Praise due to Allah Almighty. Also, it is important to know that the reason why the christian societies today are blasphemous ones (they worship porn, sex and money) is because they live in total darkness and confusion. As we've seen above from the small samples that I provided, it is very easy for a christian to get confused and lost and end up in sin while thinking it is ok. This is what you get out of satan's religions on earth! Islam is the only solution and salvation! Even the Jesus of the bible prayed to GOD Almighty as we Muslims do by prostrating his face down to the ground before GOD Almighty. The difference between the Jesus of the bible and the Muslims, however, is that we Muslims Glorify and Honor GOD Almighty through prostrating to Him at least in 5-daily sets of Prayers everyday. The Jesus of the corrupt bible on the other hand was a hypocrite who only bowed down to GOD Almighty once during his most desperate times. Jesus' previous teachings of "prayers" to his followers obviously did not Glorify and Honor GOD Almighty to the fullest, nor did they mean much to Jesus when he desperately needed GOD Almighty. They were the first to be compromised by him. Quite ludicrous indeed! As I mentioned in section 1 point 7, the Jesus of the corrupt bible is not the Jesus of Islam. Christianity today is the real cause of the corruption and blasphemy that the christian world is living in today. Therefore, embrace Islam, the one and only true Monotheistic Religion today and the only Divine Religion that teaches real discipline in life, and you will be saved. [22]Errors and History of Contradictions and Corruption in the Bible. [23]Christians are Commanded to follow the Old Testament. [24]Allah, Islam, Quran, Muhammad questions and answers. [25]What is the place of Jews, Christians and non-Muslims in Islam? [26]Answering Trinity. [27]"Allah" was GOD Almighty's Original Name in the Bible according to the Hebrew and Aramaic sources. _________________________________________________________________ Please email me at [28]Osama Abdallah Back to either [29]www.aol40.com or [30]www.answering-christianity.com Both sites are exactly the same [31]Purpose of this site. You are visitor number: [32] [fastcounter?1061971+2123949] since 4/13/1999. [33]Chat with other visitors [34]Download Arabic Songs References 1. http://www.answering-christianity.com/quransearch.htm 2. http://www.answering-christianity.com/%22 3. http://www.answering-christianity.com/%22#/" 4. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2032:14;&version=15; 5. http://www.answering-christianity.com/human.htm 6. http://www.answering-christianity.com/jesus_paradise.htm 7. http://www.answering-christianity.com/iraq_lost_many_civilians.htm 8. http://www.answering-christianity.com/iraqs_holocaust.htm 9. http://www.answering-christianity.com/deplete_uranium.htm 10. http://www.answering-christianity.com/iraqi_torture.htm 11. http://www.answering-christianity.com/abraham_sarah.htm 12. http://www.answering-christianity.com/jesus_hypocrite.htm 13. http://www.answering-christianity.com/x_rated.htm 14. http://www.answering-christianity.com/authors_gospels.htm 15. http://www.answering-christianity.com/authors_gospels.htm 16. http://www.answering-christianity.com/warning.htm 17. http://www.answering-christianity.com/authors_gospels.htm 18. http://www.answering-christianity.com/blessed_jesus.htm 19. http://www.answering-christianity.com/human.htm 20. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ot.htm 21. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ntpoly.htm 22. http://www.answering-christianity.com/contra.htm 23. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ot.htm 24. http://www.answering-christianity.com/islam_quran.htm 25. http://www.answering-christianity.com/jesus_in_islam.htm 26. http://www.answering-christianity.com/at.htm 27. http://www.answering-christianity.com/allah.htm 28. http://www.answering-christianity.com/emailme.htm 29. http://www.aol40.com/ 30. http://www.answering-christianity.com/ 31. http://www.answering-christianity.com/purpose.htm 32. http://member.linkexchange.com/cgi-bin/fc/fastcounter-login?1061971 33. http://www.answering-christianity.com/chat.htm 34. http://www.answering-christianity.com/music.htm From ursus at earthlink.net Fri Apr 1 16:54:49 2005 From: ursus at earthlink.net (Greg Bear) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 08:54:49 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] RE: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism In-Reply-To: <142.42b2be3d.2f7e1a7f@aol.com> Message-ID: This fabulous bit of science is very evocative. My best guess is that such ?pattern memory??while some of it could be stored in cytosol elements, etc.,--is most likely stored in the vast unexplored territories of ?junk? DNA?perhaps in fragments of genes, pseudogenes, etc., with non-gene RNA elements acting as controls, inhibitors, etc. Could be wrong, but this sort of reconstructive memory does seem essential to life. Best! Greg _____ From: HowlBloom at aol.com [mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:31 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; ursus at earthlink.net; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism re: The New York Times A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only in damaged form. Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it works: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47.) Where would such auto-associative circuits exist in a plant cell? Here are some wild guesses: * In the entire cell, including its membrane, its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes, and its genome; * * Or in the entire cell and its context within the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing roles. Howard re: _____ New York Times March 23, 2005 Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene By NICHOLAS WADE In a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in T?bingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2614 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1968 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 392 bytes Desc: not available URL: From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:26:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:26:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Foucault: The Crisis of Medicine or the Crisis of Antimedicine? Message-ID: The Crisis of Medicine or the Crisis of Antimedicine? Michel Foucault Foucault Studies, No 1, pp. 5-19, December 2004 [This is worth reading in its entirety. It is amazingly prescient and could have been written in 2004, not 1974.] Translated by Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr. (Professor Emeritus, University of Hawai'i), William J. King (University of Hawai'i) and Clare O'Farrell (Queensland University of Technology)1 1 [Ed.] Clare O'Farrell made very extensive changes working from the French version while preserving some of the variations that exist in the Spanish version. Editorial changes were also made by Stuart Elden and Morris Rabinowitz. 2 [Ed.] Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: the Expropriation of Health, London, Calder and Boyars, 1975. NOTE: This was the first of three lectures given by Michel Foucault on social medicine in October 1974 at the Institute of Social Medicine, Biomedical Center, of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was originally published in Portuguese translation as "Crisis de un modelo en la medicina?", Revista centroamericana de Ciencas de la Salud, No 3, January-April 1976, pp. 197-209; and in Spanish as "La crisis de la medicina o la crisis de la antimedicina", Educacion Medica y Salud, Vol 10 No 2, 1976, pp. 152-70. The version in Dits et ?crits, (Paris: Gallimard), vol III, pp. 40-58, is a retranslation of the Portuguese back into French. We have translated this article from Spanish and thank PAHO Publications for their permission to publish it. We have also compared it to the French translation by Dominique Reyni?. I would like to open this lecture by drawing attention to a question which is beginning to be widely discussed: should we speak of a crisis of medicine or a crisis of antimedicine? In this context I shall refer to Ivan Illich's book Medical Nemesis: the Expropriation of Health,2 which, given the major impact it has had and will continue to have in the coming months, focuses world public opinion on the problem of the current functioning of the institutions of medical knowledge and power. But to analyze this phenomenon, I shall begin from at an earlier period, the years between 1940 and 1945, or more exactly the year 1942, when the famous Beveridge Plan was elaborated. This plan served as a model for the organization of health after the Second World War in England and in many other countries. The date of this Plan has a symbolic value. In 1942 - at the height of the World War in which 40,000,000 people lost their lives - it was not the right to life that was adopted as a principle, but a different and more substantial and complex right: the right to health. At a time when the War was causing large-scale destruction, society assumed the explicit task of ensuring its members not only life, but also a healthy life. Apart from its symbolic value, this date is very important for several reasons: 1. The Beveridge Plan signals that the State was taking charge of health. It might be argued that this was not new, since from the eighteenth century onwards it has been one of the functions of the State, not a fundamental one but still one of vital importance, to guarantee the physical health of its citizens. Nonetheless, until middle of the twentieth century, for the State guaranteeing health meant essentially the preservation of national physical strength, the work force and its capacity of production, and military force. Until then, the goals of State medicine had been, principally, if not racial, then at least nationalist. With the Beveridge plan, health was transformed into an object of State concern, not for the benefit of the State, but for the benefit of individuals. Man's right to maintain his body in good health became an object of State action. As a consequence, the terms of the problem were reversed: the concept of the healthy individual in the service of the State was replaced by that of the State in the service of the healthy individual. 2. It is not only a question of a reversal of rights, but also of what might be called a morality of the body. In the nineteenth century an abundant literature on health, on the obligation of individuals to secure their health and that of their family, etc. made its appearance in every country in the world. The concept of cleanliness, of hygiene, occupied a central place in all these moral exhortations concerning health. Numerous publications insisted on cleanliness as an indispensable prerequisite for good health. Health would allow people to work so that children could survive and ensure social labour and production in their turn. Cleanliness ensured good health for the individual and those surrounding him. In the second half of the twentieth century another concept arose. It was no longer a question of an obligation to practise cleanliness and hygiene in order to enjoy good health, but of the right to be sick as one wishes and as is necessary. The right to stop work began to take shape and became more important than the former obligation to practise cleanliness that had characterized the moral relation of individuals with their bodies. 3. With the Beveridge Plan health entered the field of macroeconomics. The costs involved in health, from the loss of work days, to the necessity of covering those risks stopped being phenomena that could be resolved through the use of pension funds or with mostly private insurance. From then on, health - or the absence of health - the totality of conditions which allowed the health of individuals to be insured, became an expense, which due to its size became one of the major items of the State budget, regardless of what system of financing was used. Health began to enter the calculations of the macro-economy. Through the avenue of health, illnesses and the need to ensure the necessities of health led to a certain economic redistribution. From the beginning of the present century one of the functions of budgetary policy in the many countries has been ensuring a certain equalization of income, if not of property, through the tax system. This redistribution did not, however, depend on taxes, but on the system of regulation and economic coverage of health and illnesses. In ensuring for all the same opportunities for receiving treatment, there was an attempt to correct inequalities in income. Health, illness, and the body began to have their social locations and, at the same time, were converted into a means of individual socialization. 4. Health became the object of an intense political struggle. At the end of the Second World War and with the triumphant election of the Labour party in England in 1945, there was no political party or political campaign, in any developed country, that did not address the problem of health and the way in which the State would ensure and finance this type of expenditure. The British elections of 1945, as well as those relating to the pension plans in France in 1947, which saw the victory of the representatives of the Conf?d?ration g?n?rale du travail [General Confederation of Workers], mark the importance of the political struggle over health. Taking the Beveridge Plan as a point of symbolic reference, one can observe over the ten years from 1940-1950 the formulation of a new series of rights, a new morality, a new economics, a new politics of the body. Historians have accustomed us to drawing a careful and meticulous relation between what people say and what they think, the historical development of their representations and theories and the history of the human spirit. Nevertheless, it is curious to note that they have always ignored that fundamental chapter that is the history of the human body. In my opinion, the years 1940-1950 should be chosen as dates of reference marking the birth of this new system of rights, this new morality, this new politics and this new economy of the body in the modern Western world. Since then, the body of the individual has become one of the chief objectives of State intervention, one of the major objects of which the State must take charge. In a humorous vein, we might make an historical comparison. When the Roman Empire was crystallized in Constantine's era, the State, for the first time in the history of the Mediterranean world, took on the task of caring for souls. The Christian State not only had to fulfil the traditional functions of the Empire, but also had to allow souls to attain salvation, even if it had to force them to. Thus, the soul became one of the objects of State intervention. All the great theocracies, from Constantine to the mixed theocracies of eighteenth century Europe, were political regimes in which the salvation of the soul was one of the principal objectives. One could say that the present situation has actually been developing since the eighteenth century not a theocracy, but a 'somatocracy'. We live in a regime that sees the care of the body, corporal health, the relation between illness and health, etc. as appropriate areas of State intervention. It is precisely the birth of this somatocracy, in crisis since its origins, that I am proposing to analyze. At the moment medicine assumed its modern functions, by means of a characteristic process of nationalization, medical technology was experiencing one of its rare but extremely significant advances. The discovery of antibiotics and with them the possibility of effectively fighting for the first time against infectious diseases, was in fact contemporary with the birth of the major systems of social security. It was a dazzling technological advance, at the very moment a great political, economic, social, and legal mutation of medicine was taking place. The crisis became apparent from this moment on, with the simultaneous manifestation of two phenomena: on the one hand, technological progress signalling an essential advance in the fight against disease; on the other hand, the new economic and political functioning of medicine. These two phenomena did not lead to the improvement of health that had been hoped for, but rather to a curious stagnation in the benefits that could have arisen from medicine and public health. This is one of the earlier aspects of the crisis I am trying to analyze. I will be referring to some of its effects to show that that the recent development of medicine, including its nationalization and socialization - of which the Beveridge Plan gives a general vision - is of earlier origin. Actually, one must not think that medicine up until now has remained an individual or contractual type of activity that takes place between patient and doctor, and which has only recently taken social tasks on board. On the contrary, I shall try to demonstrate that medicine has been a social activity since the eighteenth century. In a certain sense, 'social medicine' does not exist because all medicine is already social. Medicine has always been a social practice. What does not exist is non-social medicine, clinical individualizing medicine, medicine of the singular relation. All this is a myth that defended and justified a certain form of social practice of medicine: private professional practice. Thus, if in reality medicine is social, at least since its great rise in the eighteenth century, the present crisis is not really new, and its historical roots must be sought in the social practice of medicine. As a consequence, I shall not be posing the problem in the terms used by Illich and his disciples: medicine or antimedicine, should we save medicine or not? The problem is not whether to have individual or social medicine, but whether to question the model of the development of medicine beginning in the eighteenth century, that is, from when what we might describe as the 'take off' of medicine occurred. This 'take off' of health in the developed world was accompanied by a technical and epistemological removal of important obstacles in medicine and in a series of social practices. And it is precisely these specific forms of 'take off' that have produced the current crisis. The problem can be posed in the following terms: (1) what was that model of development? (2) to what extent can it be corrected? (3) to what extent can it be used today in societies or populations that have not experienced the European and American model of economic and political development? To sum up, what is this model of development? Can it be corrected and applied in other places? I would now like to expose some hidden aspects of this current crisis. Scientificity and Efficacy of Medicine In the first place, I would like to refer to the separation or distortion that exists between the scientificity of medicine and the positive nature of its effects, or between the scientificity and the efficacy of medicine. It was not necessary to wait for Illich or the disciples of anti-medicine to know that one of the capabilities of medicine is killing. Medicine kills, it has always killed, and it has always been aware of this. What is important, is that until recent times the negative effects of medicine remained inscribed within the register of medical ignorance. Medicine killed through the doctor's ignorance or because medicine itself was ignorant. It was not a true science, but rather a rhapsody of ill-founded, poorly established and unverified sets of knowledge. The harmfulness of medicine was judged in proportion to its non-scientificity. But what emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, was the fact that medicine could be dangerous, not through its ignorance and falseness, but through its knowledge, precisely because it was a science. Illich and those who are inspired by him uncovered a series of data around this theme, but I am not sure how well elaborated they are. One must set aside different spectacular results designed for the consumption of journalists. I shall not dwell therefore on the considerable decrease in mortality during a doctors strike in Israel; nor shall I mention well-recorded facts whose statistical elaboration does not allow the definition or discovery of what is being dealt with. This is the case in relation to the investigation by the National Institutes of Health (USA) according to which in 1970, 1,500,000 persons were hospitalized due to the consumption of medications. These statistics are upsetting but do not afford convincing proof, as they do not indicate the manner in which these medications were administered, or who consumed them, etc. Neither shall I analyze the famous investigation of Robert Talley, who demonstrated that in 1967, 3,000 North Americans died in hospitals from the side effects of medications. All that taken as a whole does not have great significance nor is it based on a valid analysis.3 There are other factors that need to be known. For example, one needs to know the how these medications were administered, if the problems were a result of an error by the doctor, the hospital staff or the patient himself, etc. Nor shall I dwell on the statistics concerning surgical operations, particularly in relation to certain studies of hysterectomies in California that indicate that out of 5,500 cases, 14% of the operations failed, 25% of the patients died young, and that in only 40% of the cases was the operation necessary. All these facts, made notorious by Illich, relate to the ability or ignorance of the doctors, without casting doubt on medicine itself in its scientificity. On the other hand what appears to me to be much more interesting and which poses the real problem is what one might call positive iatrogenicity, rather than iatrogenicity4: the harmful effects of medication due not to errors of diagnosis or the accidental ingestion of those substances, but to the action of medical practice itself, in so far as it has a rational basis. At present, the instruments that doctors and medicine in general have at their disposal cause certain effects, precisely because of their efficacy. Some of these effects are purely harmful and others are unable to be controlled, which leads the human species into a perilous area of history, into a field of probabilities and risks, the magnitude of which cannot be precisely measured. 3 [Ed.] Letters in relation to this study can be found in Robert B. Talley, Marc F. Laventurier, and C. Joseph Stetler, 'Letters: Drug Induced Illness.' Journal of the American Medical Association 229, no. 8 (1974) pp. 1043-44. It is known, for example, that anti-infectious treatment, the highly successful struggle carried out against infectious agents, led to a general decrease of the threshold of the organism's sensitivity to hostile agents. This means that to the extent that the organism can defend itself better, it protects itself, naturally, but on the other hand, it is more fragile and more exposed if one restricts contact with the stimuli which provoke defences. More generally, one can say that through the very effect of medications - positive and therapeutic effects - there occurs a disturbance, even destruction, of the ecosystem, not only at the individual level, but also at the level of the human species itself. Bacterial and viral protection, which represent both a risk and a protection for the organism, with which it has functioned until then, undergoes a change as a result of the therapeutic intervention, thus becoming exposed to attacks against which the organism had previously been protected. Nobody knows where the genetic manipulation of the genetic potential of living cells in bacteria or in viruses will lead. It has become technically possible to develop agents that attack the human body against which there are no means of defence. One could forge an absolute biological weapon against man and the human species without the means of defence against this absolute weapon being developed at the same time. This has led American laboratories to call for the prohibition of some genetic manipulations that are at present technically possible. We thus enter a new dimension of what we might call medical risk. Medical risk, that is the inextricable link between the positive and negative effects of medicine, is not new: it dates from the moment when the positive effects of medicine were accompanied by various negative and harmful consequences. With regards to this there are numerous examples that signpost the history of modern medicine dating from the eighteenth century. In that century, for the first time, medicine acquired sufficient power to allow certain patients to become healthy enough to leave a hospital. Until the middle of the eighteenth century people generally did not survive a stay in a hospital. People entered this institution to die. The medical technique of the eighteenth century did not allow the hospitalized individual to leave the institution alive. The hospital was a cloister where one went to breathe one's last; it was a true 'mortuary'. 4 [Ed.] Caused by a doctor, from iatros, physician. Another example of a significant medical advance accompanied by a great increase in mortality was the discovery of anaesthetics and the technique of general anaesthesia in the years from 1844 to 1847. As soon as a person could be put to sleep surgical operations could be performed, and the surgeons of the time devoted themselves to this work with great enthusiasm. But at the time they did not have access to sterilized instruments. Sterile surgical technique was not introduced into medical practice until 1870. After the Franco-Prussian war and the relative success of German doctors, it became a current practice in many countries. As soon as individuals could be anaesthetized, the pain barrier - the natural protection of the organism - disappeared and one could proceed with any operation whatsoever. In the absence of sterile surgical technique, there was no doubt that every operation was not only risky, but led to almost certain death. For example, during the war of 1870, a famous French surgeon, Gu?rin, performed amputations on several wounded men, but only succeeded in saving one; the others died. This is a typical example of the way medicine has always functioned, on the basis of its own failures and the risks it has taken. There has been no major medical advance that has not paid the price in various negative consequences. This characteristic phenomenon of the history of modern medicine has acquired a new dimension today in so far as that, until the most recent decades, medical risk concerned only the individual under care. At most, one could adversely affect the individual's direct descendants, that is, the power of a possible negative action limited itself to a family or its descendants. Nowadays, with the techniques at the disposal of medicine, the possibility for modifying the genetic cell structure not only affects the individual or his descendants but the entire human race. Every aspect of life now becomes the subject of medical intervention. We do no know yet whether man is capable of fabricating a living being which will make it possible to modify the entire history of life and the future of life. A new dimension of medical possibilities arises that I shall call bio-history. The doctor and the biologist are no longer working at the level of the individual and his descendants, but are beginning to work at the level of life itself and its fundamental events. This is a very important element in bio-history. It has been known since Darwin that life evolved, that the evolution of living species is determined, to a certain degree, by accidents which might be of a historical nature. Darwin knew, for example, that enclosure in England, a purely economic and legal practice, had modified the English fauna and flora. The general laws of life, therefore, were then linked to that historical occurrence. In our days something new is in the process of being discovered; the history of man and life are profoundly intertwined. The history of man does not simply continue life, nor is simply content to reproduce it, but to a certain extent renews it, and can exercise a certain number of fundamental effects on its processes. This is one of the great risks of contemporary medicine and one of the reasons for the uneasiness communicated from doctors to patients, from technicians to the general population, with regards to the effects of medical action. A series of phenomena, like the radical and bucolic rejection of medicine in favour of a non-technical reconciliation with nature, themes of millenarianism and the fear of an apocalyptic end of the species, represent the vague echo in public awareness of this technical uneasiness that biologists and doctors are beginning to feel with regards to the effects of their own practice and their own knowledge. Not knowing stops being dangerous when the danger feared is knowledge itself. Knowledge is dangerous, not only because of its immediate consequences for individuals or groups of individuals, but also at the level of history itself. This is one of the fundamental characteristics of the present crisis. Undefined Medicalization The second characteristic is what I am going to call the phenomenon of undefined 'medicalization'. It is often argued that in the twentieth century medicine began to function outside its traditional field as defined by the wishes of the patient, his pain, his symptoms, his malaise. This area defined medical treatment and circumscribed its field of activity, which was determined by a domain of objects called illnesses and which gave medical status to the patient's demands. It was thus that the domain specific to medicine was defined. There is no doubt that if this is its specific domain, contemporary medicine has gone considerably beyond it for several reasons. In the first place, medicine responds to another theme which is not defined by the wishes of the patient, wishes which now exist only in limited cases. More frequently, medicine is imposed on the individual, ill or not, as an act of authority. One can cite several examples in this instance. Today, nobody is employed without a report from a doctor who has the authority to examine the individual. There is a systematic and compulsory policy of 'screening', of tracking down disease in the population, a process which does not answer any patient demand. In some countries, a person accused of having committed a crime, that is, an infringement considered as sufficiently serious to be judged by the courts, must submit to compulsory examination by a psychiatric expert. In France, it is compulsory for every individual coming under the purview of the legal system, even if it is a correctional court. These are examples of a type of a familiar medical intervention that does not derive from the patient's wishes. In the second place, the objects that make up the area of medical treatment are not just restricted to diseases. I offer two examples. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, sexuality, sexual behaviour, sexual deviations or anomalies have been linked to medical treatment, without a doctor's saying, unless he is naive, that a sexual anomaly is a disease. The systematic treatment by medical therapists of homosexuals in Eastern European countries is characteristic of the 'medicalization' of something that is not a disease, either from the point of view of the person under treatment or the doctor. More generally, it might be argued that health has been transformed into an object of medical treatment. Everything that ensures the health of the individual; whether it be the purification of water, housing conditions or urban life styles, is today a field for medical intervention that is no longer linked exclusively to diseases. Actually, the authoritarian intervention of medicine in an ever widening field of individual or collective existence is an absolutely characteristic fact. Today medicine is endowed with an authoritarian power with normalizing functions that go beyond the existence of diseases and the wishes of the patient. If the jurists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are considered to have invented a social system that had to be governed by a system of codified laws, it might be argued that in the twentieth century doctors are in the process of inventing a society, not of law, but of the norm. What governs society are not legal codes but the perpetual distinction between normal and abnormal, a perpetual enterprise of restoring the system of normality. This is one of the characteristics of contemporary medicine, although it may easily be demonstrated that it is a question of an old phenomenon, linked to the medical 'take off'. Since the eighteenth century, medicine has continually involved itself in what is not its business, that is, in matters other than patients and diseases. It was precisely in this manner that epistemological obstacles were able to be removed at the end of the eighteenth century. Until sometime between 1720 to 1750, the activities of doctors focused on the demands of patients and their diseases. Thus has it been since the Middle Ages, with arguably non-existent scientific and therapeutic results. Eighteenth century medicine freed itself from the scientific and therapeutic stagnation in which it had been mired beginning in the medieval period. From this moment on, medicine began to consider fields other than ill people and became interested in aspects other than diseases, changing from being essentially clinical to being social. The four major processes which characterize medicine in the eighteenth century, are as follows: 1. Appearance of a medical authority, which is not restricted to the authority of knowledge, or of the erudite person who knows how to refer to the right authors. Medical authority is a social authority that can make decisions concerning a town, a district, an institution, or a regulation. It is the manifestation of what the Germans called Staatsmedizin, medicine of the State. 2. Appearance of a medical field of intervention distinct from diseases: air, water, construction, terrains, sewerage, etc. In the eighteenth century all this became the object of medicine. 3. Introduction of an site of collective medicalization: namely, the hospital. Before the eighteenth century, the hospital was not an institution of medicalization, but of aid to the poor awaiting death. 4. Introduction of mechanisms of medical administration: recording of data, collection and comparison of statistics, etc. With a base in the hospital and in all these social controls, medicine was able to gain momentum, and clinical medicine acquired totally new dimensions. To the extent that medicine became a social practice instead of an individual one, opportunities were opened up for anatomical pathology, for hospital medicine and the advances symbolized by the names of Bichat, La?nnec, Bayle, et al. As a consequence, medicine dedicated itself to areas other than diseases, areas not governed by the wishes of the sick person. This is an old phenomenon that forms one of the fundamental characteristics of modern medicine. But what more particularly characterizes the present phase in this general tendency is that in recent decades, medicine in acting beyond its traditional boundaries of ill people and diseases is taking over other areas. If in the eighteenth century, medicine had in fact gone beyond its classic limits there were still things that remained outside medicine and did not seem to be 'medicalizable'. There were fields outside medicine and one could conceive of the existence of a bodily practice, a hygiene, a sexual morality etc., that was not controlled or codified by medicine. The French Revolution, for example, conceived of a series of projects concerning a morality of the body, a hygiene of the body, that were not in any way under the control of doctors. A kind of happy political order was imagined, in which the management of the human body, hygiene, diet and the control of sexuality corresponded to a collective and spontaneous consciousness. This ideal of a non-medical regulation of the body and of human conduct can be found throughout the nineteenth century in the work of Raspail for example.5 What is diabolical about the present situation is that whenever we want to refer to a realm outside medicine we find that it has already been medicalized. And when one wishes to object to medicine's deficiencies, its drawbacks and its harmful effects, this is done in the name of a more complete, more refined and widespread medical knowledge. I should like to mention an example in this regard: Illich and his followers point out that therapeutic medicine, which responds to a symptomatology and blocks the apparent symptoms of diseases, is bad medicine. They propose in its stead a demedicalized art of health made up of hygiene, diet, lifestyle, work and housing conditions etc. But what is hygiene at present except a series of rules set in place and codified by biological and medical knowledge, when it is not medical authority itself that has elaborated it? Anti-medicine can only oppose medicine with facts or projects that have been already set up by a certain type of medicine. I am going to cite another example taken from the field of psychiatry. It might be argued that the first form of antipsychiatry was psychoanalysis. At the end of the nineteenth psychoanalysis was aimed at the demedicalization of various phenomena that the major psychiatric symptomatology of that same century had classified as illnesses. This antipsychiatry is a psychoanalysis, not only of hysteria and neurosis, which Freud tried to take away from psychiatrists, but also of the daily conduct which now forms the object of psychoanalytic activity. Even if psychoanalysis is now opposed by antipsychiatry and antipsychoanalysis, it is still a matter of a type of activity and discourse based on a medical perspective and knowledge. One cannot get away from medicalization, and every effort towards this end ends up referring to medical knowledge. 5 [Ed.] Fran?ois Vincent Raspail, Histoire naturelle de la sant? et de la maladie, suivie du formulaire pour une nouvelle m?thode de traitement hygi?nique et curatif, Paris: A. Levavasseur, 2 Volumes, 1843. Finally, I would like to take an example from the field of criminality and criminal psychiatry. The question posed by the penal codes of the nineteenth century consisted in determining whether an individual was mentally ill or delinquent. According to the French Code of 1810, one could not be both delinquent and insane. If you were mad, you were not delinquent, and the act committed was a symptom, not a crime, and as a result you could not be sentenced. Today an individual considered as delinquent has to submit to examination as though he were mad before being sentenced. In a certain way, at the end of the day, he is always condemned as insane. In France at least, a psychiatric expert is not summoned to give an opinion as to whether the individual was responsible for the crime. The examination is limited to finding out whether the individual is dangerous or not. What does this concept of dangerous mean? One of two things: either the psychiatrist responds that the person under treatment is not dangerous, that is, that he is not ill and is not manifesting any pathology, and that since he is not dangerous there is no reason to sentence him. (His non-pathologization allows sentence not to be passed). Or else the doctor says that the subject is dangerous because he had a frustrated childhood, because his superego is weak, because he has no notion of reality, that he has a paranoid constitution, etc. In this case the individual has been 'pathologized' and may be imprisoned, but he will be imprisoned because he has been identified as ill. So then, the old dichotomy in the Civil Code, which defined the subject as being either delinquent or mad, is eliminated. As a result there remain two possibilities, being slightly sick and really delinquent, or being somewhat delinquent but really sick. The delinquent is unable to escape his pathology. Recently in France, an ex-inmate wrote a book to make people understand that he stole not because his mother weaned him too soon or because his superego was weak or that he suffered from paranoia, but because he was born to steal and be a thief.6 Pathology has become a general form of social regulation. There is no longer anything outside medicine. Fichte spoke of the 'closed commercial State' to describe the situation of Prussia in 1810.7 One might argue in relation to modern society that we live in the 'open medical States' in which medicalization is without limits. Certain popular resistances to medicalization are due precisely to this perpetual and constant predomination. 6 [Ed.] Foucault is probably referring to Serge Livrozet, De la prison ? la r?volte. Paris: Mercure de France, 1973. Foucault's preface to this book also appears in Dits et ?crits. Paris: Gallimard, 1994, vol II, pp. 394-416. 7 [Ed.] Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Der geschlossne Handelsstaat, T?bingen: Coota, 1800. There is no complete translation into English, but for selections, see Hans Reiss (ed.), The Political Thought of the German Romantics, 1793-1815, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955, pp. 86-102. The Political Economy of Medicine Finally I should like to speak of another characteristic of modern medicine, namely, what might be called the political economy of medicine. Here again, it is not a question of a recent phenomenon, since beginning in the eighteenth century medicine and health have been presented as an economic problem. Medicine developed at the end of the eighteenth century in response to economic conditions. One must not forget that the first major epidemic studied in France in the eighteenth century and which led to a national data gathering was not really an epidemic but an epizootic. It was the catastrophic loss of life of herds of cattle in the south of France that contributed to the origin of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Academy of Medicine in France was born from an epizootic, not from an epidemic, which demonstrates that economic problems were what motivated the beginning of the organization of this medicine. It might also be argued that the great neurology of Duchenne de Boulogne, Charcot, et al., was born in the wake of the railroad accidents and work accidents that occurred around 1860, at the same time that the problems of insurance, work incapacity and the civil responsibility of employers and transporters, etc. were being posed. The economic question is certainly present in the history of medicine. But what turns out to be peculiar to the present situation is that medicine is linked to major economic problems in a different way from the traditional links. Previously, medicine was expected to provide society with strong individuals who were capable of working, of ensuring the constancy, improvement and reproduction of the work force. Medicine was called on as an instrument for the maintenance and reproduction of the work force essential to the functioning of modern society. At present, medicine connects with the economy by another route. Not simply in so far as it is capable of reproducing the work force, but also in that it can directly produce wealth in that health is a need for some and a luxury for others. Health becomes a consumer object, which can be produced by pharmaceutical laboratories, doctors, etc., and consumed by both potential and actual patients. As such, it has acquired economic and market value. Thus the human body has been brought twice over into the market: first by people selling their capacity to work, and second, through the intermediary of health. Consequently, the human body once again enters an economic market as soon as it is susceptible to diseases and health, to well being or to malaise, to joy or to pain, and to the extent that it is the object of sensations, desires, etc. As soon as the human body enters the market, through health consumption, various phenomena appear which lead to dysfunctions in the contemporary system of health and medicine. Contrary to what one might expect, the introduction of the human body and of health into the system of consumption and the market did not correlatively and proportionally raise the standard of health. The introduction of health into an economic system that could be calculated and measured showed that the standard of health did not have the same social effects as the standard of living. The standard of living is defined by the consumer index. If the growth of consumption leads to an increase in the standard of living, in contrast, the growth of medical consumption does not proportionally improve the level of health. Health economists have made various studies demonstrating this. For example, Charles Levinson, in a 1964 study of the production of health, showed that an increase of 1% in the consumption of medical services led to a decrease in the level of mortality by 0.1%. This deviation might be considered as normal but only occurs as a purely fictitious model. When medical consumption is placed in a real setting, it can be observed that environmental variables, in particular food consumption, education and family income, are factors that have more influence than medical consumption on the rate of mortality. Thus, an increased income may exercise a negative effect on mortality that is twice as effective as the consumption of medication. That is, if incomes increase only in the same proportion as the consumption of medical services, the benefits of the increase in medical consumption will be cancelled out by the small increase in income. Likewise, education is two and one-half times more important for the standard of living than medical consumption. It follows that, in order to live longer, a higher level of education is preferable to the consumption of medicine. If medical consumption is placed in the context of other variables that have an effect on the rate of mortality, it will be observed that this factor is the weakest of all. Statistics in 1970 indicate that, despite a constant increase in medical consumption, the rate of mortality, which is one of the most important indicators of health, did not decrease, and remains greater for men than for women. Consequently, the level of medical consumption and the level of health have no direct relation, which reveals the economic paradox of an increase in consumption that is not accompanied by any positive effect on health, morbidity and mortality. Another paradox of the introduction of health into the political economy is that the social changes that were expected to occur via the systems of social security did not occur as expected. In reality, the inequality of consumption of medical services remains just as significant as before. The rich continue to make use of medical services more than the poor. This is the case today in France. The result is that the weakest consumers, who are also the poorest, fund the over consumption of the rich. In addition, scientific research and the great proportion of the most valuable and expensive hospital equipment are financed by social security payments, whereas the private sectors are the most profitable because they use relatively less complicated technical equipment. What in France is called the hospital hotel business, that is, a brief hospitalization for minor procedures, such as a minor operation, is supported in this way by the collective and social financing of diseases. Thus, we can see that the equalization of medical consumption that was expected from social security was watered down in favour of a system that tends more and more to reinforce the major inequalities in relation to illness and death that characterized nineteenth century society. Today, the right to equal health for all is caught in a mechanism which transforms it into an inequality. Doctors are confronted with the following problem: who profits from the social financing of medicine, the profits derived from health? Apparently doctors, but this is not in fact the case. The remuneration that doctors receive, however elevated it might be in certain countries, represents only a minor proportion of the economic benefits derived from illness and health. Those who make the biggest profits from health are the major pharmaceutical companies. In fact, the pharmaceutical industry is supported by the collective financing of health and illness through social security payments from funds paid by people required to insure their health. If health consumers - that is, those who are covered by social security - are not yet fully aware of this situation, doctors are perfectly well aware of it. These professionals are more and more aware that they are being turned into almost mechanized intermediaries between the pharmaceutical industry and client demand, that is, into simple distributors of medicine and medication. We are living a situation in which certain phenomena have led to a crisis. These phenomena have not fundamentally changed since the eighteenth century, a period that marked the appearance of a political economy of health with processes of generalized medicalization and mechanisms of bio-history. The current so-called crisis in medicine is only a series of exacerbated supplementary phenomena that modify some aspects of the tendency, but did not create it. The present situation must not be considered in terms of medicine or antimedicine, or whether or not medicine should be paid for, or whether we should return to a type of natural hygiene or paramedical bucolicism. These alternatives do not make sense. On the other hand what does make sense - and it is in this context that certain historical studies may turn out to be useful - is to try to understand the health and medical 'take off' in Western societies since the eighteenth century. It is important to know which model was used and how it can be changed. Finally, societies that were not exposed to this model of medical development must be examined. These societies, because of their colonial or semi-colonial status, had only a remote or secondary relation to those medical structures and are now asking for medicalization. They have a right to do so because infectious diseases affect millions of people, and it would not be valid to use an argument, in the name of an antimedical bucolicism, that if these countries do not suffer from these infections they will later experience degenerative illnesses as in Europe. It must be determined whether the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European model of medical development should be reproduced as is, or modified and to what extent it can be effectively applied to these societies without the negative consequences we already know. Therefore, I believe that an examination of the history of medicine has a certain utility. It is a matter of acquiring a better knowledge, not so much of the present crisis in medicine, which is a false concept, but of the model for the historical development of medicine since the eighteenth century with a view to seeing how it is possible to change it. This is the same problem that prompted modern economists to engage in the study of the European economic 'take off' in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a view to seeing how this model of development could be adapted to non-industrialized societies. One needs to adopt the same modesty and pride as the economists in order to argue that medicine should not be rejected or adopted as such; that medicine forms part of an historical system. It is not a pure science, but is part of an economic system and of a system of power. It is necessary to determine what the links are between medicine, economics, power and society in order to see to what extent the model might be rectified or applied. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:28:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:28:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Foucault Scholars Gain a New Society and Journal Message-ID: Foucault Scholars Gain a New Society and Journal News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.8 http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/03/2005030803n.htm [2]By RICHARD BYRNE Martin Parkins has held a number of jobs, including prominent positions in the corporate side of book publishing and in nongovernmental organizations dedicated to serving refugees, and also as a teacher in New York City public schools. But his latest task is to be the champion of the philosopher Michel Foucault, who died in 1984 at the age of 57. In September 2004, Mr. Parkins was chosen as the first executive director of the new [3]Foucault Society. The society, which unveiled its Web site this month, will promote the French thinker's ideas inside academe and beyond it into the public square. Plans for a resource center and archive in New York City devoted to Foucault's work are also under way. The organization already boasts a who's who of prominent Foucault scholars on its board of advisers, and will convene its first symposium on May 13 (a one-day gathering called "Foucault Now!") at the New School University in New York City. Mr. Parkins cites a "real resurgence in interest in Foucault" -- which also includes a new independent electronic journal devoted to his work -- as a factor in the society's fast start. "That's why we've come so far so quickly," he said in a recent interview. In addition to the Web site and first symposium, a second symposium at the New School -- dealing with Foucault, the body, and gender -- already is planned for October. As much of French philosophy and criticism's high tide of influence in the 1960s and 1970s has receded slowly from American academe in recent decades, Foucault's influence continues to grow. His most prominent works in English translation -- 1965's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, 1973's The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, 1977's Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, and the three volumes of The History of Sexuality (1976 and 1984) -- continue to hold great appeal for philosophers, historians, and literary critics. But his often-provocative ideas about organizational power and resistance to it have percolated into a variety of other disciplines as well, including criminal justice, medicine, and queer studies. "Foucault died 21 years ago, and the 20th century has passed," said Richard Lynch, the coordinator of the [4]Foucault Circle, a small group of American academics devoted to discussing Foucault's ideas. (The circle recently held its fifth annual meeting at Rollins College, in Orlando, Fla.) "Now the question is being asked, Does Foucault belong in the canon? My feeling is that interest in Foucault is not just a flirtation, but the beginning of a recognition of his importance for a number of different disciplines ... and also that his work is of enduring importance." A Place to Publish The new society is only one new player in the Foucault arena. The other addition to the field is a new electronic journal, [5]Foucault Studies, which published its first issue in December 2004. Editorial duties for the journal are split among three editors, who reside on three continents: Stuart R. Elden, a lecturer in geography at the University of Durham, in England; Clare O'Farrell, a lecturer in the school of Cultural and Language Studies in Education at Queensland University of Technology, in Australia; and Alan Rosenberg, a professor of philosophy at Queens College, of the City University of New York. The journal was founded, Mr. Rosenberg said, because "there was a real need for younger scholars working on Foucault to find a place to publish." The lack of such places, he added, is partly because the thinker "crosses so many boundaries." Thus, a journal dedicated solely to Foucault's work was needed. According to Mr. Rosenberg, the editors of Foucault Studies approached a number of academic publishers without success. Then they had the idea to place the journal online. So far, he said, the distances between the editors have created "only one or two problems." "Editing the journal this way would have been impossible without the Internet," he said. The journal's inaugural issue contains a translation of a 1974 lecture given by Foucault ("The Crisis of Medicine or the Crisis of Anti-Medicine?"), as well as a number of articles and reviews. Of particular interest to those interested in the development of the French philosopher's thought is a review essay by Brad Elliott Stone, a professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, on the only two English translations issued thus far of Foucault's lectures at the College of France in the mid-1970s. (To date, six volumes of Foucault's lectures at the college have been published in French.) Mr. Lynch, who contributed two bibliographical works to the first issue of Foucault Studies, says that the lectures are keys to unraveling Foucault's growth as a thinker. While Foucault's books were conceived "as works of art," he observes, the lectures "let you hear him thinking out loud." Beyond the Academy One of the goals of the Foucault Society, Mr. Parkins said, is to push Foucault's ideas into arenas far from academe. Like his colleagues at Foucault Studies, he hopes to attract students and younger scholars to the organization. He would also like to engage artists, activists, and people in other professions in discussions about Foucault. "Our board of advisers is a little too academic right now," he conceded. "We're working on that. ... We need diversity." Mr. Parkins believes that his own varied experiences in and out of academe may help bridge that gap. He has a B.A. in philosophy and an M.A. in religion from Yale University. He also holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in education from Hunter College, of the City University of New York. "I have a very diverse background," he says, "but a strong business background, a lot of strategic planning and nonprofit management." Among the society's goals is to secure a home for itself and the resource center that it envisions for Foucault scholars. Yet Mr. Parkins says that the society is seeking an institution that will grant it significant autonomy as well. "A lot of what we're going to do is probably going to be cutting edge, and is probably going to be controversial," he said. "I'm counting on that, actually. Too close an affiliation with any major organization or institutions risks having them dictate the programming, or withdraw support, or any of that game-playing." One of the key ideas in Foucault's thought is that power is too fluid to be possessed, but rather it must be used. Mr. Parkins says that the philosophy behind the society hews closely to that idea. "The point is not to beatify Foucault," he said, "but to use his ideas and methods." References 2. mailto:Richard.Byrne at chronicle.com 3. http://www.foucaultsociety.org/ 4. http://www.siu.edu/~foucault/ 5. http://www.qut.edu.au/edu/cpol/foucst/index1.html From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:30:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:30:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] American Conservative: Marxism of the Right Message-ID: Marxism of the Right http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html March 14, 2005 Issue by Robert Locke Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake. There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties--I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism--enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace "street" libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We've seen Marxists pull that before. This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society. The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon's wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments. Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill. Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue? Libertarians rightly concede that one's freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person's, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle of "an it harm none, do as thou wilt," is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn't like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can't do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it. Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental failing of libertarianism's believers but an intrinsic temptation of the doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism. Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution? In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question. Furthermore, if limiting freedom today may prolong it tomorrow, then limiting freedom tomorrow may prolong it the day after and so on, so the right amount of freedom may in fact be limited freedom in perpetuity. But if limited freedom is the right choice, then libertarianism, which makes freedom an absolute, is simply wrong. If all we want is limited freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean conservatism that reveres traditional liberties. There is no need to embrace outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is America's traditional liberties. Libertarianism's abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile. Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a "natural order" of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred. And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one. Empirically, most people don't actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don't elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don't choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians. The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians' claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what's best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving. And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn't lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record. A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a na?ve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme. Libertarian na?vet? extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny. Libertarians are also na?ve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more. This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better. Robert Locke writes from New York City. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:31:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:31:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] American Conservative: In Defense of Freedom Message-ID: In Defense of Freedom http://amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article2.html March 14, 2005 Issue by Daniel McCarthy Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote a marvelously cynical manual of eristics called The Art of Always Being Right. The philosopher advised his readers against resort to logic; ad hominem attacks and other plays upon the passions could be much more effective. Put the opponent's argument in some odious category, he urged. Conservatives are long accustomed to residing in such a category: as their enemies would have it, conservatism is the ideology of the rich, the racist, and the illiterate. That this caricature bears no resemblance at all to the philosophy and social thought of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver or Robert Nisbet, is irrelevant. The stereotype endures not because it is true but because it is useful. Sadly, a few conservatives seem to have learned nothing from their experience at the hands of the Left and are no less quick to present an ill-informed and malicious caricature of libertarians than leftists are to give a similarly distorted interpretation of conservatism. Rather than addressing the arguments of libertarians, these polemicists slander their foes as hedonists or Nietzscheans. In fact, there are libertine libertarians, just as there are affluent and bigoted conservatives. But libertinism itself is as distinct from libertarianism as worship of Mammon or hatred of blacks is distinct from conservatism. Libertarianism is a political philosophy, not a complete system of ethics or metaphysics. Political philosophies address specifically the state and, more generally, justice in human society. The distinguishing characteristic of libertarianism is that it applies to the state the same ethical rules that apply to everyone else. Given that murder and theft are wrong--views not unique to libertarianism, of course--the libertarian contends that the state, which is to say those individuals who purport to act in the name of the common good, has no more right to seize the property of others, beat them, conscript them, or otherwise harm them than any other institution or individual has. Beyond this, libertarianism says only that a society without institutionalized violence can indeed exist and even thrive. For some exceptionally Christ-like people no demonstration of feasibility is needed. Doing what is right is enough, regardless of whether it brings wealth or happiness or even daily bread. But most people are not like that; they want security and prosperity--they ask, not unreasonably, not only "is it right?" but "can it work?" Following upon this is a tendency to deny that necessary evils are evils at all. Yes, the state seizes tax money and jails those who do not pay, actions that would be denounced as gangsterism if undertaken by a private organization. But if the only way life can go on is to have the government provide defense and other necessities, such expropriations might have to be called something other than robbery. Moderate libertarians say just that. They propose that the state should do those necessary things that it alone can do--and only those things. Radical libertarians contend there is nothing good that only the state can provide--even its seemingly essential functions are better served by the market and voluntary institutions. The differences between thoroughgoing libertarians and moderates are profound, but the immediate prescriptions of each are similar enough: cut taxes, slash spending, no more foreign adventurism. Discovering just which functions of government are necessary, or showing how life can be led in the absence of institutional coercion altogether, is no easy task. Any power that the state assumes typically comes to be seen in retrospect as absolutely essential. America long got by well without a Federal Reserve or a Food and Drug Administration, yet today it is almost unthinkable that they could be abolished. Coercive and grandiose statist solutions to problems real or imagined have the effect of crowding out voluntary approaches, so that sooner or later the government fix comes to seem the only one. Even the most statist conservative in America today does not call for nationalizing health care. Yet in every country in which a national health service is a fait accompli, conservatives do not dream of abolishing it--certainly Britain's Tories, even under Thatcher, did not. The public in such countries takes socialized medicine for granted; the alternative is practically pre-civilized. Once, conservatives really did intend to repeal the New Deal. Now a Republican president talks about saving Social Security--albeit with a phony "privatization" plan--as if society would collapse in the absence of mandatory savings or government social insurance. Conservatives complain about the media's erstwhile tendency to label Soviet hardliners as Russian "conservatives," but it's hard to escape the conclusion that if Communism were a government program, the Republican Party would be trying to save it, too. Consider the about-face that conservatives in this country have pulled with respect to the Department of Education--one could name other departments as well--which once was targeted for elimination and now is funded more generously than ever. Economics is of some help here, showing both that government is not necessary for prosperity and that in fact state intervention into the free market hurts the very people it's supposed to help. Rent control makes affordable apartments scarce. The minimum wage exacerbates unemployment. And a basic law of economics is that you get more of what you subsidize: doles encourage unemployment. Economics suggests ways in which services now provided poorly and counterproductively by government can be made available without coercion. The limits of this are worth keeping in mind, however, and are kept in mind by libertarians. Economics is not psychology; study of production and exchange does not tell a person what he should buy. Relative valuation of goods--without which there can be no economics, since exchange only takes place when each party values what the other is offering more than what he himself is selling--does not imply a relativistic ethics. The ethical assumption of libertarianism--that it is wrong to murder and steal--is absolute, and other values may be absolute as well. Libertarians are not wholly dependent on economics to show how freedom works, however. From Lord Acton onward, libertarians have taken a keen interest in history, and noncoercive institutions have a long established empirical record. Conservatives should be aware of the evidence. Over the past 200 years the power of the state has grown exponentially: in earlier eras private initiative and civil society provided most of the goods that the state now pretends to supply. Indeed, as libertarian historian-theorists have noted, as state power grows so civil society proportionally diminishes. Before Social Security, families and churches cared for the elderly. Now it is easier for young people to forget their parents and grandparents in old age; let the government take care of them. Social networks decay when they aren't used, and the state crowds out civil society. There is something rather counterintuitive--or just plain nonsensical--to the belief that bureaucrats and politicians care more about the elderly than families and communities do. The same holds true for the notion that the state upholds the interests of children. No, libertarians do not want to see youngsters emancipated from their parents. The family is natural and is not upheld, even allowing for corporal punishment, primarily by force. The power of state over individual and society, on the other hand, is rather different. Government is nobody's parent, and the idea that President Bush would be in any sense the father of citizens who are wiser and more just than he is perversion. When the state treats adults as children, infantilizing its subjects, the more prudent and older becomes subservient to the more reckless and younger, for society antedates the state. Social conservatives have long faced an apparent paradox. No matter how Christian the president and members of his party claim to be, no matter how many "solid" conservatives are elected Congress, the fabric of the social order continues to fray. At some point the question must be asked, is this because there still aren't enough good people in government?--how many would ever be enough? Or is it because the state by nature, far from buttressing the organs of civilization and the way of life dear to conservatives, instead undermines those very things? As Albert Jay Nock once observed, sending in good people to reform the state is like sending in virgins to reform the whorehouse. The free market sometimes involves things that conservatives dislike, such as pornography. What should be considered here, however, is not how the market performs relative to some idealized abstraction of the state run by wise and pure censors, but how a specific market compares to a particular state. If there is a market for pornography there is sure to be a constituency for it, too. Moreover, the state produces far worse depravities of its own: Playboy may be bad, but one is not forced to subsidize it, unlike public-school sex ed, Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts), and Lynndie England's S&M jamboree with Iraqi prisoners of war. One can avoid pornography on the market, but everyone pays for the depravities of the political class. That is not about to change. The state, since it acts by compulsion, cannot inculcate real virtue in anyone but only a hypocritical and ersatz kind. One can compel action but not belief. No wonder then that as the scope of the state has grown, patriotism has degenerated into warmongering and religion has succumbed to politicization and scandal. The moral muscles atrophy in the absence of personal responsibility. That some self-identified conservatives cannot seem to tell the difference between self-responsibility and compulsion, or between the standards of civil society and those of the state, demonstrates just how thorough the process of crowding out genuine virtue with the coercive counterfeit actually is. Consider the involvement of the state in marriage. Presently the state defines marriage for all, and there is considerable angst among traditionalists that government will redefine the institution to include homosexual unions. This concern is not misplaced: if gay marriage is given state sanction, the force of law will support demands by wedded homosexuals to receive the same privileges from civil society--including churches and religious charities--that married heterosexuals receive. In the absence of state involvement in marriage and in telling businesses and nonprofit organizations whom they can hire, however, individuals, churches, and businesses could make up their own minds as to which marriages they considered legitimate and could act accordingly. This is not a matter of imposing on anyone; libertarianism allows different standards to prevail in different places rather than dragging everyone down to the level of the state. The libertarian rests content to let Utah be Utah and San Francisco be San Francisco--and to let Iraq be Iraq. If the property owners of a neighborhood wanted to establish a certain set of common moral standards, they could do so. Other places could do differently. Libertarianism thus responds to the reality of difference, including profound cultural and religious difference, much better than other political philosophies, which are left trying to smash square pegs into round holes. Libertarian societies in all their variety would not be utopias, of course. Libertarianism does not propose an end to evil or even to coercion, but only the flourishing of civilization in the absence of institutionalized coercion. Crime would not disappear, poor taste would still exist, and even conservative communities would remain beset with imperfection. Removing the privileges of the state would make these evils smaller, less centralized, and more manageable, however. This picture is no abstraction or economic construct; it arises from the practice of actual institutions. The record of civil society and the free market is as old as the human race. The libertarian idea of society would hold true even if a degree of coercion were absolutely necessary and ineradicable: the more authority residing in civil society rather than the state, the better. But there are at least a few prima facie considerations that lend weight to so-called radical libertarianism. The most widely agreed upon of all so-called public goods, national defense, is not what it seems. The mightiest military on earth failed to prevent the atrocity on 9/11. On the contrary, U.S. interference in the Middle East and support for thuggish regimes has endangered Americans. Is a country ripe for invasion without a standing army? The last 200-odd years have shown many instances, including our own Revolutionary War, where guerrilla forces have been more effective than regular armies. Nor is there any need for conscription when people want to defend their homes; conscription is what states need to make people fight for causes in which they don't believe. A libertarian order is not coming any time soon, but it should be plain to anyone who undertakes the investigation that the solution to war, bureaucracy, taxation, personal irresponsibility, and the rot of culture is not more government, it's less. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:33:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:33:19 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] TCS: Marxism of the Right? Message-ID: Marxism of the Right? http://www.techcentralstation.com/031005F.html By Max Borders Published 03/10/2005 Until [18]this article by Robert Locke appeared in The American Conservative, conservatives and libertarians have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship. After all, there is so much on which they agree. But can it last? Distortions like this one should make us wonder: "Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government." Since Mr. Locke tempers these characterizations of the lib-curious with the word "often," one can no more verify his claim than take issue with it. Still, I should mention that I know a number of libertarians who don't even drink caffeine -- much less smoke crack -- due to their personal and religious choices. As one of my colleagues is fond of saying to those ignorant about our movement: "You're thinking of libertinism." Mr. Locke is, perhaps, guilty of the same error. And that's what makes this article titled "The Marxism of the Right" so fascinating in its contradictions. One can assume that Mr. Locke counts himself among those ready to wield the power of the state in defense of his cloudy notions of "the moral," i.e. to prevent the ambitious from getting too avaricious (one of the seven deadly sins, you know), or to keep sexual eccentrics from using VapoRub in ways unintended by God. If anything is clear in his article, it's that Mr. Locke's only contact with libertarian thought comes from "cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill." Consider this definition: "This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism." The notion that libertarians believe society ought to be run based on "selfishness" indicates that Mr. Locke frequents cocktail parties with [19]Objectivists, not libertarians. First of all, most libertarians don't think society should be "run" at all, rather -- as Hayek taught -- society should essentially [20]run itself. If we have the appropriate rules of non-harm enshrined in proper institutions, society is, while a complex system, a self-regulating one. The very notion that it can be "run" is a form of the fatal conceit, which has evidently entranced Mr. Locke. Social norms like citizenship, community, patriotism and the like can be wonderful (and diverse) epiphenomena of these underlying rules -- but they are meaningless without said rules. And they don't need to be enforced by religious zealots, communitarians, or lesser Pat Buchanans. Mr. Locke goes on to say: "Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics." Notice how Mr. Locke attempts to create a dichotomy through philosophical claptrap. First, he wants to pigeon-hole all libertarians into the simplistic category of a priorism. While some of us are Kantians or (eh hem) Lockeans, such is certainly not universal in our ranks. Indeed there are at least as many types of libertarian as there are prefixes to be fitted with "con." Are such fallacies of generalization typical among paleo-cons? Libertarian thinkers like James Buchanan and Jan Narveson, for example, are contractarians, which means they don't rely on a priori truths for their justification and are -- in many senses -- moral skeptics. If the charge of a priorism was meant to suggest that libertarians simply don't use evidence to support their claims, I would say that is just false -- and wonder about such a curious accusation coming from one who claims that the existence of pornography "vulgarizes" society. (I can't think of anything less empirically verifiable.) The assertion that Marx "reduced social life to economics" is amusing if not misguided. While I realize that Marx's labor theory of value was economics in some vague sense, most contemporary economists are reluctant to give a footnote to Marx in Econ 101 textbooks. Perhaps the better description of Marxist thought is an attempt to "reduce social life to materialism." This more accurate description of Marx has nothing to do with libertarianism, and with that correction, Mr. Locke's cutely constructed "mirror-image" theory collapses. Mr. Locke's biggest mistake comes in the common -- but false -- conflation between individualism and selfishness. All we libertarians are saying is that we are prepared to direct our own "altruistic" and "collectivist" urges in ways that the government simply cannot and, indeed, should not. We are collaborative and cooperative -- and radically so. And, yes, we think that since the market in goods and services is dynamic, the market in making positive changes in peoples lives can be dynamic too. Call it Tocquevillianism on steroids. If Mr. Locke would like to call this a reduction of everything to economics, I suppose we're guilty. In a sense, we do believe that all human values are economic. One makes an economic choice when he gives his money to Bob Jones U or the Nature Conservancy, rather than to Wal-Mart. But if Mr. Locke thinks that doing "moral good" means the government should continue stripping resources away from people and their communities to be managed by the moral elite in Washington, he is more than mistaken -- he is a part of the problem. I will forego any lengthy criticism of Mr. Locke's quasi-philosophical discussion on the nature of "good," which terminates in this sentence: "Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill." But I will say that if we were all Churchills, we would have no heroes. For the state to get involved with trying to create Churchills is not only likely to fail, it is likely to infantilize a population. Do we want to "create" people incapable of independent action? If we are to take Mr. Locke's implicit rationale to its logical conclusion, we should expect his manual for "how to make inherently good choices and live a worthy life" in the next edition of The American Conservative. I must admit, Mr. Locke does raise some good questions about the nature of common goods: "But some [goods], like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?" Libertarians often disagree about the nature of common goods, and a lot of great innovations have come out of these discussions. But these disagreements are no more fatal to our movement than conservatives' internal arguments about whether the Ten Commandments should sit in state courthouses or whether the war in Iraq was justified. Libertarians have been the ones asking whether some private roads might actually be a sound alternative to traffic snarls. (Only now are conservative politicos picking up on innovations like HOT lanes.) Libertarians are the ones asking if private initiatives and market forces will help clean the air and conserve natural lands more effectively (and efficiently). And while no serious libertarian discusses the idea of tracing pollutants back to smoke-stacks, we were the first to propose market alternatives to the environmental regulatory morass that was begun under -- and we proudly lay claim to insightful theories like [21]public choice that show how government can scarcely well provide for the "public good" even if it wanted to. But according to Mr. Locke, libertarians need to consider other "hard questions," like: HQ: "What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners?" A: Why would we want to cripple our economy in pursuit of an autarkic fantasy? (Besides, how can vehicles without oil protect us?) HQ: "What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society?" A: This is like asking whether we need a state religion to preserve religiosity. HQ: "What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?" A: Why can't we simply have constitutional checks on redistribution? Granted, some of Mr. Locke's cited "hard questions" are hard, and we've been going over them for a long time. In addition to questions about genuinely public goods, we wonder about whether conscription might be necessary to protect our freedoms in war; or whether open borders without assimilation are dangerous to our institutions. Some libertarians are pragmatic, not just "abstract and absolutist." Most libertarians don't think of children as full agents deserving full freedom despite Mr. Locke's invented claims of libertarian "idiocy." And while there are some [22]extreme libertarians who are against state-sanctioned care for the senile or the insane, few if any libertarians are opposed to volunteer-driven and philanthropically funded care for those who represent a danger to themselves or others -- and this might require oversight of some form to ensure folks aren't harmed. On the question of drug legalization, Mr. Locke would have done well to put his pen down. Even [23]some conservatives are starting to see that the War on Drugs has done little or nothing to clean up inner cities and has created an underclass of prison inmates unnecessarily. The resources the state has wasted in trying to control people's personal lives is appalling, and its failure is evident (yes, there is empirical data for this fact). And "drug users who caused trouble" would be put in prison. Why Mr. Locke assumes otherwise is disturbing, because it appears he really hasn't looked to libertarian resources on this. Putting drug users who cause trouble into prison is a heck of a lot simpler and less costly than imprisoning people simply for possessing or using drugs -- all out of a moral imperative that is not universally shared. The sad part about this article is that Robert Locke sounds like many people. Behind all of his golden mean rhetoric, Locke assumes that an inefficient bureaucracy with a monopoly on power can not only spare us from the "extreme costs" of our free choices, but effectively identify them. Many good thinkers since Frederic Bastiat have spent the last century and a half showing how unintended consequences end up doing us more harm than good. We should wonder how Mr. Locke or anyone else thinks he has finally figured out how to fix complex society. This anointed power-class, while they usually disagree on almost every policy issue, does agree on one thing: that they should be in power. Locke believes he has reached the point of full-tilt profundity when he claims: "Empirically, most people don't actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don't elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don't choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians." Mr. Locke should consider something more ironic. In a truly free society, people will be just as able to enter into collective arrangements with people who have also chosen to forego so-called "absolute freedom." Mr. Locke and I can start a Hutterite commune where everybody shares the work and bows hourly to a statue of Edmund Burke as a condition of residing there. I can't imagine why in the world Mr. Locke puts so much faith in democracy while simultaneously implying that inexpensive foreign laborers that might turn 'commie pink' on us should be kept out. Locke's economic assertions in this next passage rival those of Paul Krugman: "There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme." There is not the space here to explain the complexities of economics to Mr. Locke, but suffice it to say that Japan has been successful despite stultifying regulation, and those regulations (most notably in banking) are showing signs of making the country's economy [24]sclerotic. Russia, on the other hand, has only been "free" for fifteen years and has lived close to a century without the formal or informal institutions to make a market economy and a free society tick. Nevertheless, it is still growing at close to [25]six percent per year. I will close this article without addressing Mr. Locke's visions of how libertarianism in practice would unleash "sadomasochism" and other caligulan horrors. Suffice it to say that libertarians know that we are able to exercise self-restraint not because the Great Nanny in Washington threatens us with chastening, but because we belong to communities, families, and relationships in which the values of healthy living are naturally grown orders. Max Borders is a libertarian by day, libertine by night in the Washington, DC area. References 18. http://www.amconmag.com/2005_03_14/article1.html 19. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer 20. http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/876.html 21. http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/Booklet.pdf 22. http://www.szasz.com/ 23. http://aei.org/publications/bookID.812,filter./book_detail.asp 24. http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/07/bloomberg/sxyen.html 25. http://www.russiajournal.com/news/cnews-article.shtml?nd=47259 From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:33:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:33:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] James M. Buchanan: Public Choice: The Origins and Development of a Research Program Message-ID: Public Choice: The Origins and Development of a Research Program* James M. Buchanan Center for Study of Public Choice George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia My subtitle identifies public choice as a research program rather than as a discipline or even a subdiscipline. (The Lakatosian definition seems to fit closely.) A research program incorporates acceptance of a hard core of presuppositions that impose limits on the domain of scientific inquiry while, at the same time, insulating such inquiry from essentially irrelevant criticism. The hard core in public choice can be summarized in three presuppositions: (1) methodological individualism, (2) rational choice, and (3) politics-as-exchange. The first two of these scientific building blocks are those that inform basic economics and will raise few criticisms from economists, although they become central in noneconomists' attacks on the whole enterprise. The third element in the hard core is less familiar, and I shall discuss this feature of public choice more fully later. Temporally, this research program involves a half century during which it originated, developed, and matured. Although there were precursors, some of whom will enter the narrative that follows, we can date the origins of public choice from midcentury. And this fact, in itself, is of considerable interest. Viewed retrospectively, from the vantage point of 2003, the scientific-explanatory "gap" that public choice emerged to fill seems so large that the development of the program seems to have been inevitable. As they emerged from World War II, governments, even in Western democracies, were allocating between one-third and one-half of their total product through collective-political institutions rather than through markets. Economists, however, were devoting their efforts almost exclusively to explanations-understandings of the market sector. No attention was being paid to political-collective decision making. Practitioners in political science were no better. They had developed no explanatory basis, no theory as it were, from which operationally falsifiable hypotheses might be derived. The whole politicized sector of social interaction was, therefore, "crying out" for explanatory models designed to help understand the empirical reality that was observed. My own piddling first entry into the subject matter (Buchanan 1949) was little more than a call for those economists who examined taxes and spending to pay some attention to the models of politics that were assumed to be in existence. And, except for the important, but neglected, paper by Howard Bowen (1943), even those who made the recognized seminal contributions did not seem to appreciate the fact that they were entering uncharted territory. Majority Cycles Almost simultaneously, Duncan Black and Kenneth Arrow commenced their work on two quite separate problems, although their results converged with consequences that are by now familiar. Black was concerned with the working of majority-voting rules in small committee settings: How did voting results emerge from separate individual orderings, when collective alternatives (proposals, motions, etc.) were presented in a sequence of pairwise choices? Black found, to his surprise, that only two persons had worked out some of the elementary logic-the French nobleman Condorcet and Charles Dodgson, an Oxford logician more familiarly known under the name of Lewis Carroll. Black (1948, 1958), who was working in Wales, did not attract much early attention, either in his own country or elsewhere. Arrow sought to answer the question: Is it possible to aggregate separate individual orderings over social states so as to generate a "social" ordering that would satisfy reasonable conditions for rationality akin to those that characterized the individual orderings? Arrow commenced from within the tradition of what was then called "theoretical welfare economics." With the demolition of utilitarianism in 1932 at the hands of Lionel Robbins in his The Nature and the Significance of Economic Science, economists rediscovered Pareto, but the Paretian classificatory scheme did not allow for a means of selecting among the many positions that met the criterion for Pareto efficiency or optimality. Using the formal tools of symbolic logic, Arrow reached the seemingly dramatic conclusion that no such social ordering may be derived unless some restrictions are placed on the individual preference orderings. The now-famous impossibility theorem, as published in Arrow's book Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), exerted a major impact on the thinking of economists and political scientists and stimulated an extended discussion. Arrow, and Black less emphatically, was taken to have shown that democracy, interpreted as equivalent to majority voting, could not work. Both of these scientists had discovered, or rediscovered, the phenomenon of majority cycles, and they rigorously demonstrated that, under some sets of preference orderings, majority voting in a sequence of pairwise comparisons would generate continuous cycles, with no equilibrium or stopping point. The central point may be easily illustrated in the three-voter, three-alternative setting, as shown in the figure. Note that each of the three voters, labeled 1, 2, and 3, has a consistent ordering over the three options for choice, A, B, and C. Note also, however, that, when put to a pairwise sequence of majority votes, A will defeat B; B will, in turn, defeat C, but C will defeat A. There is no alternative that will command a majority over all of the other options. Figure 1 2 3 A B C B C A C A B Median Voter Models Black, in particular, wanted to resuscitate the majority-voting rule, as the legitimate means of reaching group decisions. He discovered that if the alternatives for collective choice can be arrayed along a single dimension in such fashion that each voter's preferences exhibit single-peakedness, then the worrisome majority cycles would not occur. Instead, in this setting, the alternatives preferred by the voter whose preferences are median for the group would be majority-preferred to any other alternatives. This result, referred to as the "median voter theorem," was quickly incorporated into both analytical and empirical research. The single-peakedness required remains highly plausible in many settings. Suppose that the choice options, A, B, and C, are alternative levels of spending on a collective outlay, say, on education. It is surely plausible that someone should prefer high spending (A), to medium spending (B), to low spending (C), hence the ordering for the first voter in the figure. It is also plausible that a voter, say 2, might prefer medium spending (B) to low spending (C), and this in turn to high spending (A), the ordering shown for the second voter. But look at the ordering for the third voter in the figure. This voter prefers low spending (C), but his second choice is high spending (A) which he prefers over medium spending (B), which seems a rather bizarre ordering in some settings. Yet it is precisely such anomalies in orderings that are necessary to generate the majority-voting cycles. The median voter theorem seemed initially to be explanatory over wide ranges of collective action. It was evident early on, however, and also had been recognized by Black himself, that once collective choices involve more than a single dimension, majority cycles must occur even if all voters exhibit single-peakedness in preferences over each of the dimensions considered separately. Majority voting seemed to be basically unstable in the sense that it could not produce a unique collective choice; a political equilibrium could not be reached. Is Collective Rationality Desirable? It was at this point that I entered the discussion with a generalized critique of the whole corpus of analysis generated by the Arrow-Black approach (Buchanan 1954a, 1954b). If, indeed, preferences differ over collective alternatives, and if these preferences are such as to generate cycles in voting outcomes, would not this result be precisely that which is best? Any attainment of a unique solution by majority voting would amount to the permanent imposition of the majority's will on the outvoted minority. Would not a guaranteed rotation, as produced through the cycle, be the preferred sequence here? In such a cyclical sequence, the members of the minority in the first round are enabled to come back in subsequent rounds and ascend to majority membership. My concern, then and later, was always with means of preventing discrimination against members of minorities rather than ensuring that, somehow, majority rule produced stable sets of political outcomes. Examined from an economist's perspective, what guarantee could majority rule offer against collective actions that were inefficient in the standard Pareto sense? Clearly, the natural feature of majority voting is the separation of the interests of members of the majority from those of the minority. On any single voting sequence, some persons in the inclusive polity must lose and others must gain. How can collective choice be made more efficient? And more just? Wicksell and the Rule of Unanimity At this point, I introduce the great Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, who is the most important of all precursory figures in public choice, especially for my own work and for what we now call "constitutional economics." In his dissertation published in 1896, Wicksell was concerned about both the injustice and the inefficiency of untrammeled majority rule in parliamentary assemblies. He did not discover the possibility of the majority cycle, but he did recognize that majorities were quite likely to enact legislation aimed at benefiting the constituencies of their own members at the expense of those members left outside of the majority coalitions. Majority rule seemed quite likely to impose net costs or damages on large segments of the taxpayer-beneficiary group. Why should members of such minorities, facing discrimination, lend their support to political structures? Unless all groups can somehow benefit from the ultimate exchange with the government, how can overall stability be maintained? These considerations led Wicksell to question the efficacy of majority rule itself. And to ensure both enhanced efficiency and increased justice in the fundamental dealings of the individual with governmental authority (the state), Wicksell proposed that the voting rule be modified in the direction of unanimity. If the agreement of all persons in the voting group should be required to implement collective action, then this result, in itself, would guarantee that all persons secure net gains and, further, that the projects so approved yield, overall, benefits in excess of costs. Wicksell recognized that, if applied in a literal voting setting, a requirement of unanimity would produce a stalemate, since it allows each and every person to play off against all others in the group. Such a recognition, however, does not change the value of the unanimity rule as a benchmark for comparative evaluation. In suggestions for practical constitutional reforms, Wicksell supported changes in voting rules from simple to qualified majorities, perhaps, for example, the requirement of five-sixths approval for collective proposals. My own serendipitous discovery of Wicksell's neglected work in 1948, followed by my later translation of this work from German, introduced the important contribution to English-language scholars and laid the groundwork for later developments in what we now call "constitutional economics," which I shall discuss more fully below. The Endogeneity of Alternatives In their analyses, Black and Arrow had assumed, more or less implicitly, that the alternatives for collective choice, among which the voting rule generates an outcome, are exogenous to the process itself, that is, that the motions, candidates, or proposals exist prior to the selection process itself. For Wicksell, this exogeneity could not be present, but he did not, himself, recognize the relevance of this difference. Gordon Tullock, with whom I began to work at the University of Virginia in 1958, wrote a seminal paper on majority rule (Tullock 1959) that made the endogeneity of the choice options a central feature, although, even here, he did not recognize the generality of the distinction. Tullock's example was that of farmers-voters, each of whom wants to have his local road repaired with costs borne by the whole community of taxpayers. Majority-voting rules, as these allow for separate coalitions of farmers, generate results that impose costs on all farmers, while producing inefficiently large outlays on all local roads. These results emerge because majority-voting rules, as the institutions for making collective choices, allow any and all potential coalitions to advance taxing-spending proposals endogenously-proposals that would never arise from outside, so to speak. The Calculus of Consent If majority-voting rules operate so as to produce inefficient and unjust outcomes, and if political stability is secured only by discrimination against minorities, how can democracy, as the organizing principle for political structure, possibly claim normative legitimacy? The Wicksellian criterion for achieving justice and efficiency in collective action, namely the shift from majority-voting rules toward unanimity, seems institutionally impractical. But, without some such reform, how could persons, as voters-taxpayers-beneficiaries be assured that the ultimate exchange with the state would yield net benefits? That the whole game of politics be positive sum? At this point, and in implicit response to these questions, Tullock and I commenced to work on what was to become our book The Calculus of Consent, published in 1962. The central contribution of our book was to impose a two-level structure of collective decision making: we distinguished between what may be called "ordinary politics" (indicated by decisions made, often by majority voting, in legislative assemblies) and "constitutional politics" (indicated by decisions made on the set of framework rules within which the operation of ordinary politics is allowed to proceed). We were not, of course, inventing this two-level distinction as descriptive of political reality; both in legal theory and in practice, constitutional law had long been distinguished from statute law. What we did was to bring this quite familiar distinction into the corpus of the theoretical analysis of politics, the research program that was just on the verge of being developed in the 1950s and 1960s. This distinction allowed us to answer the questions posed previously. Less-than-unanimity rules, and even majority rules, may be allowed to operate over the decisions made through ordinary politics provided that there is generalized consensus on the "constitution," on the inclusive set of framework rules that place boundaries on what ordinary politics can and cannot do. In this fashion, the analysis in The Calculus of Consent made it possible to incorporate the Wicksellian reform thrust toward qualified or super majorities into politics at the level of constitutional rules, while allowing for ordinary majority-voting rules within constitutional limits. In a sense, the whole analysis in our book could have been interpreted as a formalization of the structure that James Madison had in mind when he constructed the U.S. Constitution. Or, at the least, the analysis offered a substantive criticism of the then-dominant elevation of majority voting to sacrosanct status in political science. The Public Choice Society and Public Choice Our book was well-received by both economists and political scientists. And, through the decades since its publication, the book has achieved status as a seminal work in the research program. The initial interest in the book, and its arguments, prompted Tullock and me, who were then at the University of Virginia, to initiate and organize a small research conference in Charlottesville in April 1963. We brought together economists, political scientists, sociologists, and scholars from other disciplines, all of whom were engaged in research outside the boundaries of their disciplines. The discussion was sufficiently stimulating to motivate the formation of a continuing organization, which we first called the Committee on Non-Market Decision-Making, and to initiate plans for a journal initially called Papers on Non-Market Decision-Making, which Tullock agreed to edit. We were all unhappy with these awkward labels, but after several annual meetings there emerged the new name "public choice," for both the organization and the journal. In this way the Public Choice Society and the journal Public Choice came into being. Both have proved to be quite successful as institutional embodiments of the research program, and sister organizations and journals have since been set up in Europe and Asia. William Riker, who organized some of the early meetings, exerted a major influence on American political science through the establishment and operation of the graduate research program at the University of Rochester. Second- and even third-generation Riker students occupy major positions throughout the country and carry forward the research thrust in positive political analysis. In the late 1960s, Tullock and I shifted to Virginia Polytechnic and State University, and in Blacksburg we set up the Center for Study of Public Choice, which served as an institutional home, of sorts, for visiting research scholars throughout the world. This center, and its related programs, operated effectively until 1983, when it was shifted to George Mason University, where its operation continues. I shall not discuss in detail the institutional history of the society, the journal, the center, and related organizations. Suffice it to say here that these varying structures reflect the development and maturing of the whole research program. Subprograms and Rent Seeking I shall barely discuss the separate research subprograms that have emerged within public choice as the umbrella subdiscipline. Note may be made only of some, but by no means all, of these subprograms: Riker's early work on coalition formation in legislatures (Riker 1962) was the focus of early attention; the economic analysis of anarchy attracted much effort in the early 1970s (Tullock 1972, 1974a, 1974b; Buchanan 1975); agenda manipulation as a means of controlling political outcomes (Romer and Rosenthal 1978); Mancur Olson's logic of collective action (1965); James Coleman's exchange-based social action (1990); explanations for the growth of government; theories of bureaucracy; structure-induced equilibria in politics; expressive versus interest voting; and the role of ideology. These and other subprograms emerged from within public choice, quite apart from the more familiar subjects upon which analysis was brought to bear, such as unicameral versus bicameral legislatures, legislative committee structures, proportional versus plurality systems, direct democracy, size of legislatures, federalism, and many others.1 One subprogram that emerged from within public choice deserves specific, if necessarily, brief discussion here. I refer to rent seeking, a subprogram initiated in a seminal paper by Tullock in 1967, and christened with this title by Anne Krueger in 1974. At base, the central idea emerges from the natural mind-set of the economist, whose explanation of interaction depends critically on the predictable responses of persons to measurable incentives. If an opportunity that promises to yield value arises, persons will invest time and resources in efforts to capture such value for themselves. The market itself is a profit-and-loss system; resources tend to move to their most highly valued uses because persons can be predicted to respond positively to promised profit opportunities and negatively to threatened losses. The extension of this motivational postulate to the share of value allocated through politics or collective action seems elementary now, but until Tullock explicitly made the connection, no attention had been paid to the profound implications: If there is value to be gained through political action, persons will invest resources in efforts to capture this value. And if this value takes the form of any transfer from one group to others, the investment is wasteful in an aggregate value sense. Tullock's early treatment of rent seeking was concentrated on monopoly, tariffs, and theft, but the list could be almost indefinitely expanded. If the government is empowered to grant monopoly rights or tariff protection to one group, at the expense of the general public or to designated losers, then it follows that potential beneficiaries will compete for the prize, so to speak. And, since by construction, only one group can be rewarded, the 1For a comprehensive treatment that includes discussion of the subprograms in public choice, see Mueller (1989). resources invested by other groups is wasted. These resources could have been used to produce valued goods and services. Once this basic insight is incorporated into the mind-set of the observer, much of modern politics can only be interpreted as rent-seeking activity. The pork-barrel politics of the United States is only the most obvious example. Much of the growth of the transfer sector of government can best be explained by the behavior of political agents who compete in currying constituency support through promises of discriminatory transfers. The rent-seeking subprogram remains active along several dimensions. How much value, in the aggregate, is dissipated through efforts to use political agency for essentially private profit? How can the activity of rent seeking, as aimed to secure discriminatory private gains, be properly distinguished from the activity aimed to further genuinely shared "public" interests? I shall not go into detail here, but it should be clear that rent seeking, as a subprogram in public choice more generally, opens up many avenues for both analytical and empirical inquiry. Constitutional Political Economy I noted earlier that the primary contribution of the book The Calculus of Consent was to impose a two-level framework on analyses of collective action or to distinguish categorically what we may call ordinary, or day-to-day, politics from constitutional politics. Indeed the subtitle of that book was Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. In a sense, this separation marked a major two-part division in the inclusive research program in public choice, that is, between what we might call positive political analysis, or positive public choice, and what we now call "constitutional political economy." Clearly, political-collective action, as resultant from individual choices, takes place at two or more distinct stages or levels. There are, first, the choices made within the existing set of rules, inclusively described as the "constitution." And there are, second, the choices from which these rules themselves emerge. Rules have as their primary function the imposition of limits or constraints on actions that might be taken. And economic theory, traditionally, has analyzed choices made within constraints that are presumed to be exogenously imposed. Why should persons seek to impose limits on their own actions? Only recently have economists broken out of their natural mind-set-that of not allowing for choices of constraints themselves. But recent research has involved the choice of constraints, even on the behavior of persons in noncollective settings. Important contributions have been made in developing the theory of addiction, with drugs, tobacco, diet, and gambling as relevant examples. The issues become categorically different, however, as attention is shifted from the noncollective or individualistic setting to that involving collective rules.2 In this setting, persons desire to impose constraints on the behavior of agents who act on behalf of the political group, not from any fear of irrational behavior on their own part, but, instead, from the fear of the prospect that their own preferences will be overruled, that their own interests will be damaged. Constitutional rules have as their central purpose the imposition of limits on the potential exercise of political authority. 2For general discussion, see Brennan and Buchanan (1985). The "constitutional way of thinking" (Buchanan 2001) shifts attention to the framework rules of political order as the object that commands or secures consensus among members of the body politic. It is at this level that the individual conceptually computes or calculates his own terms of exchange with the state, or with his political authority. Persons may agree that they are made better off by membership in the inclusive structure described by the constitution, while, at the same time, they may assess the impact of particular political actions to be contrary to their own interests. A somewhat loose way of putting this point is to say that in a constitutional democracy, persons owe loyalty to the constitution rather than to the government, as such, no matter how "democratic" such decisions might be. I have long argued that on precisely this dimension American public attitudes are quite different from those in Europe. As research analysis, constitutional political economy involves comparative assessment of alternative sets of constitutional rules, both those in existence and those that might be introduced prospectively. This analysis clearly has close affinity to recent efforts to introduce the study of institutions, generally. There are, of course, both positive and normative elements in this major research program. Differing sets of rules are examined and predictions are advanced concerning their working properties. And from such analysis proposals for reform may be advanced-proposals that take the form of constitutional changes, as opposed to proposals for particularized policy thrusts that might emerge from analysis of ordinary or within-constitutional politics. Is Public Choice Ideologically Biased? To this point, I have outlined the public choice research program as it has developed and as it now exists in its two parts, that of positive political science and constitutional political economy. How does the politics that we observe work, given the existing constitutional structure? And how might this politics be different under differing sets of constitutional constraints? In its approach to answers to each of these questions, public choice theory, as such, remains strictly neutral in the scientific sense. What, then, is the source of the familiar criticism to the effect that public choice, in itself, is ideologically biased? Again, it is necessary to appreciate the prevailing mind-set of social scientists and philosophers at midcentury. The socialist ideology was pervasive, and this ideology was supported by the allegedly neutral research program called-"theoretical welfare economics," which concentrated on the identification of the failures of observed markets to meet idealized standards. In sum, this branch of inquiry offered theories of market failure. But failure by comparison with what? The implicit presumption was always that politicized corrections for market failures would work perfectly. In other words, market failures were set against an idealized politics. Public choice then came along and provided analyses of politics, of the behavior of persons in public choosing roles whether these be voters, politicians, or bureaucrats, that were on all fours with those applied to markets and to the behavior of persons as participants in markets. These analyses necessarily exposed the essentially false comparison that had described so much of both scientific and public attitudes. In a very real sense, public choice became a set of theories of governmental failures, as an offset to the theories of market failures that had previously emerged from theoretical welfare economics. Or, as I put it in the title of a lecture in Vienna in 1978, public choice may be summarized by the three-word description "politics without romance." The research program should have been interpreted as a correction more of the scientific record than as the introduction of some illegitimate anti-governmental ideology. Regardless of any prescientific ideological stance, exposure to public choice analyses necessarily brings a more critical attitude toward politicized nostrums to alleged socioeconomic problems and issues. Public choice almost literally forces the critic to be pragmatic in any comparison of proposed institutional structures. There can be no presumption that politicized corrections for market failures will accomplish the desired objectives. Is Public Choice Immoral? A more provocative criticism of the whole public choice research program centers on the claim that it is immoral, at least in its behavioral impact. The source of this charge lies in the transfer of the two hard-core elements, methodological individualism and rational choice, directly from economic theory to the analysis of politics. At one level of abstraction, these two elements are themselves relatively empty of empirical content. To model the behavior of persons, whether in markets or in politics, as maximizing utilities, and as behaving rationally in so doing, does not require specification of the arguments in utility functions. Economists go further than this initial step, however, when they identify and place arguments into the categories of "goods" and "bads." Persons are then modeled as acting so as to maximize some index of "goods" and to minimize some index of "bads." More specifically, economic models of behavior include net wealth, an externally measurable variable, as an important "good" that persons seek to maximize. The moral condemnation-criticism of public choice is centered on the presumed transference of this element of economic theory over to political analysis. Those who find themselves in roles as public choosers, whether as voters, as legislators, as political agents of any sort, do not, it is suggested, behave in accordance with norms that are appropriate to behavior in markets. Persons are differently motivated when they are choosing "for the public" rather than for themselves in private choice capacities. And it is both descriptively inaccurate and morally questionable to assign self-interest motives to political actors. Or so the criticism runs. At base, this criticism stems from a misunderstanding of what the whole explanatory exercise is all about-a misunderstanding that may have been fostered by the failure of economists to acknowledge the limits of their efforts. The economic model of behavior, even if restricted to market activity, should never be taken to provide the be-all and end-all of scientific explanation. Persons act from many motives, and the economic model concentrates attention only on one of the many possible forces behind actions. To employ the model for prediction does, of course, require the initial presumption that the identified "goods" that are maximized are relatively important in the mix. Hypotheses that imply that promised shifts in net wealth modify behavior in predictable ways have not been readily falsifiable empirically. At issue here is the degree to which net wealth, and promised shifts in net wealth, may be used as explanatory incentives for the behavior of persons in public choice roles. Public choice, as an inclusive research program, incorporates the presumption that persons do not readily become economic eunuchs as they shift from market to political participation. The person who responds predictably to ordinary incentives in the marketplace does not fail to respond at all when his role is shifted to collective choice. The public choice theorist should, of course, acknowledge that the strength, and predictive power, of the strict economic model of behavior is somewhat mitigated as the shift is made from private market to collective choice. Persons in political roles may, indeed, act to a degree in terms of what they consider to be the general interest. Such acknowledgment does not, however, in any way imply that the basic explanatory model loses all of its predictive potential or that ordinary incentives no longer matter. What is left of the charge of immorality, once this much is acknowledged? Critics are somehow left with the claim that persons placed in political or public choice roles will themselves be led to act as the economic model dictates if such models are used in the inclusive explanatory exercise. In this light, it becomes immoral to model political choice behavior as being responsive to ordinary incentives, even if such an exercise is admittedly partially explanatory.3 We should, therefore, proceed with analysis of politics under the illusion that persons do indeed become "saints" as they shift to collective choice roles. The positive value of hypocrisy may be recognized but without elevating hypocrisy to an instrumental status in preserving social stability. Democracy, or self-government generally, is surely strong enough to allow for honesty in analysis of its own workings. Balancing the Accounts As noted, public choice as a research program has developed and matured over the course of a full half century. It is useful to assess the impact and effects of this program, both on thinking in the scientific community and in the formation of public attitudes. By simple comparison with the climate of opinion at half century, both the punditry and the public are much more critical of politics and politicians, much more cynical about the motivations of political action, much less naive in thinking that political nostrums offer easy solutions to social problems. And this shift in attitudes extends well beyond the loss of belief of the efficacy in central planning, in socialism, a loss of belief grounded in both historical regime failures and collapse of intellectually idealized structures. The question to be examined is not whether attitudes toward politics and politicians have shifted, often dramatically, over the half century. The question is, instead, what contribution has the research program of public choice brought to this attitudinal change? As I noted earlier, when we look retrospectively at the scientific and public climates of discussion at midcentury, the failure of social scientists to make efforts to understand and explain decision making in the proportionately large collectivized sector of social interaction seems difficult to comprehend. The gap in scientific effort now seems so obvious that the development of public choice, and related programs, becomes a natural and indeed necessary step in our always incomplete knowledge about the world. Nonetheless, there were two obstacles to be overcome in the intellectual community-obstacles that were, strangely, both opposites and complements. Broadly considered, the prevailing mind-set was socialist in the underlying presupposition that politics offered the solution to social problems. But there was a confusing amalgam of Marxism and ideal political theory involved: Governments, as observed, were modeled by Marxists as furthering class interests, but governments that might be installed after the revolution, so to speak, would become both omniscient and benevolent. In some of their implicit modeling of political behavior aimed at furthering special group or class interests, the Marxists seemed to be closet associates in public choice, even as they rejected methodological individualism. But how was the basic Marxist critique of politics, as observed, to be transformed into the idealized politics of the benevolent and omniscient super state? This question was simply left glaringly unanswered. And the debates of the 1930s were considered by confused economists of the time to have been won by socialists rather than by 3See Kelman (1987) and Brennan and Buchanan (1988). their opponents, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both sides, to an extent, neglected the relevance of incentives in motivating human action, including action in the politicized sector. The structure of ideas that were adduced in support of the emerging Leviathan welfare state was logically flawed and could have been maintained only through long-continued illusion. But, interestingly, the failure, in whole or in part, of the socialist structure of ideas did not come from within the scientific academy. Mises and Hayek were not successful in their early efforts, and classical liberalism seemed to be at its nadir at midcentury. Failure came, not from a collapse of an intellectually defunct structure of ideas, but from the cumulative record of nonperformance in the implementation of extended collectivist schemes-nonperformance measured against promised claims, something that could be observed directly. In other words, governments everywhere, in both the socialist and the welfare states, overreached themselves, and tried to do more than the institutional framework would support. This record of failure came to be recognized widely, commencing in the 1960s and accelerating in the 1970s. Where was the influence of public choice in this history? Note specifically that I do not claim that public choice, as a coherent set of scientifically based theories of how politics works in practice, dislodged the prevailing socialist mind-set in the academies and that some subsequent recognition of the intellectual vulnerability exerted its feedback on political reality. In common parlance, public choice was not "ahead of the curve" in this respect. What I do claim is that public choice exerted its influence, which was major, in the provision of a coherent understanding and interpretation of that which could be everywhere observed. The public directly observed that collectivistic schemes were failing, that politicization did not offer the promised correctives for any and all social ills, that governmental intrusions often made things worse rather than better. How could these direct observations be fitted into a satisfactory understanding? Why did the nostrums promised fail to deliver? Public choice came along and offered a foundation for such an understanding. Armed with nothing more than the rudimentary insights from public choice, persons could understand why, once established, bureaucracies tend to grow apparently without limit and without connection to initially promised functions. They could understand why pork-barrel politics dominated the attention of legislators; why there seems to be a direct relationship between the overall size of government and the investment in efforts to secure special concessions from government (rent seeking); why the tax system is described by the increasing number of special credits, exemptions, and loopholes; why balanced budgets are so hard to secure; why strategically placed industries secure tariff protection. A version of the old fable about the king's nakedness may be helpful here. Public choice is like the small boy who said that the king really has no clothes. Once he said this, everyone recognized that the king's nakedness had been recognized but that no one had really called attention to this fact. Public choice has helped the public to take off their rose-colored glasses when they observe the behavior of politicians and the working of politics. Let us be careful not to claim too much, however. Public choice did not emerge from some profoundly new insight, some new discovery, some social science miracle. Public choice, in its basic insights into the workings of politics, incorporates a presupposition about human nature that differs little, if at all, from that which informed the thinking of James Madison at the American founding. The essential scientific wisdom of the 18th century, of Adam Smith and classical political economy and of the American Founders, was lost through two centuries of intellectual folly. Public choice does little more than incorporate a rediscovery of this wisdom and its implications into analyses and appraisal of modern politics. References Arrow, Kenneth. 1951. Social Choice and Individual Values. New York: Wiley. Black, Duncan. 1948. On the rationale of group decision making. Journal of Political Economy 56: 23-34. ---. 1958. The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowen, Howard. 1943. The interpretation of voting in the allocation of economic resources. Quarterly Journal of Economics 58 (November): 27-49. Brennan, Geoffrey, and James M. Buchanan. 1985. The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ---. 1988. Is public choice immoral? The case for the "Nobel" lie. Virginia Law Review 74 (March): 179- 89. Buchanan, James M. 1949. The pure theory of government finance: A suggested approach. Journal of Political Economy 57 (December): 496-505. ---. 1954a. Social choice, democracy, and free markets. Journal of Political Economy 62 (April): 114-23. ---. 1954b. Individual choice in voting and the market. Journal of Political Economy 62 (August): 334-43. ---. 1975. The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Chicago: University of Chicago. ---. 1979. Politics without romance: A sketch of positive public choice theory and its normative implications. Inaugural lecture, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, Austria. IHS Journal, Zeitschrift des Instituts f?r H?here Studien 3: B1-B11. ---. 2001. The constitutional way of thinking. Working paper. Fairfax, Va.: Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University. Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock. 1962. The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Coleman, James. 1990. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Krueger, Anne. 1974. The political economy of the rent-seeking society. American Economic Review 64 (June): 291-303. Kelman, Steven. 1987. "Public choice" and public spirit. Public Interest 87: 93-4. Mueller, Dennis. 1989. Public Choice II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Riker, William. 1962. The Theory of Political Coalitions. New Haven: Yale University Press. Robbins, Lionel. 1932. The Nature and the Significance of Economic Science. London: Macmillan. Romer and Rosenthal. 1978. Political resource allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo. Public Choice 33 (Winter): 27-43. Tullock, Gordon. 1959. Problems of majority voting. Journal of Political Economy 67 (December): 57l-79. ---. 1967. The welfare costs of tariffs, monopolies, and theft. Western Economic Journal 5 (June): 224-32. ---, ed. 1972. Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy. Blacksburg, Va.: Center for Study of Public Choice. ---. 1974a. The Social Dilemma: The Economics of War and Revolution. Blacksburg, Va.: Center for Study of Public Choice. ---, ed. 1974b. Further Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy. Blacksburg, Va.: Center for Study of Public Choice. Wicksell, Knut. 1896. Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen. Jena: Gustav Fisher; in Classics in the Theory of Public Finance.1958. R.A. Musgrave and A.T. Peacock, eds. New York: St. Martin's Press: 72-118. Center for Study of Public Choice 4400 University Drive, MS 1D3, Fairfax, Virginia 22030 Information: (703) 993-2330 Fax: (703) 993-2323 www.gmu.edu/jbc/ From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:34:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:34:59 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Unquenchable thirst Message-ID: Unquenchable thirst http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108094&window_type=print Harold Perkin 09 July 2004 BIRTH OF A SALESMAN. The transformation of selling in America. Walter A. Friedman. 334pp. Harvard University Press. $27.95. - 0 674 01298 4. A CENTURY OF AMERICAN ICONS. 100 products and slogans from the twentieth century consumer culture. Mary Cross, editor. 256pp. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. $49.95. - 0 313 31481 0. POP. Truth and power at the Coca-Cola company. Constance Hays. 399pp. Hutchinson. ?18.99. - 0 09 179968 6. David Ricardo believed that production was the engine of the economy and, with J. B. Say, that half the goods in the market bought the other half, so that producers did not have to worry about consumer demand. T. R. Malthus, on the other hand, believed that consumption was the mainspring and that demand, notably that of the idle rich, called forth production. Ever since, most economists have agreed with Ricardo, holding that the supply side would evoke sufficient demand to clear the market. Strangely enough, however, most big businessmen, while kowtowing to Ricardo's free market, have followed Malthus. By and large, they have distrusted the market to buy their goods without massive efforts to stimulate consumer demand. Hence the importance of salesmanship, public relations and advertising. The three books under review preach the significance of consumption in the rise of the American economy and its spread across the globe. In Birth of a Salesman Walter A. Friedman traces the evolution of the modern salesman from the peddlers, hawkers and canvassers of pre-industrial America. They bought their wares - tin utensils, scissors, clocks and watches, lace, sewing materials, even lightning conductors - from workshops and wholesalers at their own risk, unlike the modern commercial traveller, working for a large corporation and controlled by a marketing manager. The first pioneers, some of whom were women, included the sellers of devotional literature, bibles and prayer books. But for the most part, salesmen have been thoroughly masculine, a brotherhood who faced the travails of a peripatetic trade, and the comradeship of the saloon and cheap hotel. The early salesmen had a reputation for conmanship and chicanery. Henry Thoreau in 1854 thought them an unnatural, wasteful force, and Herman Melville, in The Confidence Man (1857), saw them as satanic sellers of false promises, fake medicines, useless stocks and shares, and nonexistent charities. Later in their evolution they were epitomized by Arthur Miller's womanizing, self-pitying, worn-out Willy Loman. Most of the travelling salesmen worked for wholesalers, but soon the modern giant corporations and public-relations firms set up their own marketing departments and turned them into well-respected heralds of free enterprise. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, large corporations with national or even worldwide ambitions, like Singer's sewing machines, Burroughs's typewriters, Candler's Coca-Cola, Heinz's fifty-seven varieties of canned foods, and Patterson's National Cash Register, began to treat marketing as a science, after the pattern of F. W. Taylor's scientific management. They raised the status of their agents, formulated guides to their conduct and approach to the shopkeeper or housewife, and backed them up with large-scale nationwide advertising. Magazines and books sprang up, like Printer's Ink (1888), The Science of Successful Salesmanship (1904) and Scientific Sales Management: A practical application of the principles of scientific sales management to selling (1913). They invented "salesology" with its own magazine in the 1910s and 20s. By 1920 there were 220 sales-management books in the Library of Congress catalogue. The salesmen, backed by mass advertising, helped to create the icons of American consumerism. The contributors to Mary Cross's symposium, A Century of American Icons, have produced 100 micro-histories of the logos, trade marks, slogans and jingles which have become part of the American psyche, many of them reaching out to most of the countries of the world. They include Coca-Cola, Heinz Baked Beans, Campbell's Soup, Kellogg's Cornflakes, Kodak cameras, Marlboro Man with his dangling cigarette, Cadillac luxury cars, Ronald McDonald, Gillette razors, Levi's Jeans, down to Absolut Vodka, Victoria's Secret lingerie, the AppleMac "Big Brother" television ad and the Yahoo internet search engine. They also cover icons that have swamped America but are rarely seen on the other side of the Atlantic: Morton's Salt, Burma-Shave, A&P (the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company), Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Uneeda Biscuit and RCA Radio have failed to emigrate. The collection is a potted history of consumerism in the most insatiable consuming nation in the world. It demonstrates not only how the demand for mass-produced goods and services has been stimulated, but also how mass consumption has created the biggest international corporations and largest fortunes for their top executives on the planet. What the book does not show is the way in which the corporations owning the icons have used their muscle to outcompete and marginalize their rivals, by stealthy marketing ploys such as exclusive deals with supermarkets and fast-food outlets, and mergers with or purchases of smaller competitors. This aspect of corporate business is best illustrated by the icon which dominates the cover of the collection, Coca Cola. Constance Hays's story of how Coca-Cola - "a beverage with no nutritional value sold variously as a remedy, a tonic and a refreshment" - reflects the history of American consumer society and the rise of the global economy. It begins with a veteran Civil War ex-cavalryman, John Pemberton, who began to sell home-brewed medicines and mixtures in Atlanta in 1869. He invented a "French Wine Cola" made from a secret syrup containing alcohol, the mildly narcotic coca leaf and cola nut - hence the name - which, when diluted with carbonated water, the locals took to as a refreshment in the yet to be air-conditioned South. Eventually he left out the alcohol and from 1886 developed the first Coca-Cola. He sold it direct to the customers of his growing chain of drugstores and then others from what he called a soda fountain. In 1888, he sold the recipe and rights of manufacture to a brilliant entrepreneur, Asa Candler, whose genius for selling it through soda fountains created a nation of Coca-Cola drinkers and made the logo, sketched in his own cursive handwriting, a household name. By 1899, he was selling over 200,000 gallons of syrup, each gallon making with added soda water nearly 400 Colas, and slaking the thirst of Americans over 80 million times a year. At this point, he had not thought of making the drink available outside his own and other retailers' soda fountains, where it was sold as in ice-cream parlours. No one had thought of bottling it, until a couple of entrepreneurs, Benjamin Thomas and Joseph Whitehead, approached and pestered him to give them a contract. Candler, who thought that bottling would be too expensive but welcomed a further outlet for his syrup, then made the biggest mistake of his career. He signed an unlimited contract to supply Thomas and Whitehead with the syrup at a fixed price, to be raised only with the price of sugar, the main ingredient. Very soon the Coca-Cola bottle, moulded like the hourglass-shaped lady of the period, took off and carried the logo to the ends of the earth. It also gave a name to all carbonated beverages: "Pop", giving the title of Hays's book, came from the characteristic noise when the wired ceramic cap was released. It took the Coca-Cola company many years, and a bit of chicanery by substituting corn syrup or artificial sweeteners (in Diet Coke) for sugar, to get control of the distribution system again. That involved setting up its own bottling subsidiary and buying out as many of the local bottlers as could be persuaded or bullied to sell. This policy exposed what happened when a powerful, by now international corporation, operating in over 200 countries, set out to compete in the free market. Coca-Cola consciously tried to outcompete its rivals, Pepsi Cola, Royal Crown, Dr Pepper, and so on, and to drive them into a shrinking share of the market. The unstated end of competition is monopoly. Coca-Cola used every device it could muster to marginalize its competitors - exclusive deals with supermarkets, fast-food chains, college campuses, hotels and the like - or to persuade stores to give the most prominent shelf space to their products. It was backed by massive advertising in all forms of media, costing millions of dollars, beyond the reach of all but the richest of rivals. The company, it argued, did not sell the actual drink - that was the role of the bottlers, including their own Coca-Cola Enterprises - but only the syrup. That meant it could control the price at both ends, the sum charged to the bottlers and, through the advertised price, to the customer. The price squeeze with its guaranteed profits led not only to conflict and lawsuits with the bottlers but eventually to greater conflict with the government over misleading tax reporting. The issue was the relation between the Coca-Cola company and its dominant bottling subsidiary. The lawsuit argued that the two corporations were interlocked - in 1998 the parent company subsidized the bottlers by $1.2 billion in marketing support and other transfers - and were essentially the same enterprise, thus misleading the shareholders and Federal Treasury. Nonetheless, the fizzy drink and its offshoots, 7-Up, Orangina, Fanta and Dasani (filtered tap water), had built a vast international enterprise which in 1997 employed 29,000 people and was worth billions of dollars, its sales more than the GDP of most countries in the world. It had also made vast fortunes for a series of brilliant executives: Asa Candler, Robert Woodruff, Donald Keough, Roberto Goizueta, Douglas Ivester, Doug Daft and Warren Buffet. Goizueta, the "little Cuban exile" who climbed the heights of corporate wealth and power by his financial genius - though he was also responsible for the fiasco of the unpopular "New Coke" which nearly ruined the brand in 1985 - left over $1 billion when he died in 1997. Since his death, Coca-Cola has suffered a slump in its sales and share price, but it will be a long time dying, if it ever does. His chosen jingle, "I'd like to buy the world a Coke . . .", still rings around the world as the greatest icon of American capitalism. Constance Hays's Pop is a paradigm of the rise and rise of American global dominion. Together, these three books demonstrate how American tastes and culture have come to dominate the world. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:35:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:35:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Natalie Wood) Splendour on the screen Message-ID: Splendour on the screen http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108030&window_type=print Philip French 02 July 2004 NATALIE WOOD. 352pp. Faber. ?17.99. By Gavin Lambert. US: New York: Knopf. $25.95. 0 375 41074 0. 0 571 22197 1 Child stardom, adult glamour, a mysterious accident: the troubled life and death of Natalie Wood Natalie Wood's colourful life began and ended in mystery. Her curious death at sea in 1981 brought a telegram of condolence from Queen Elizabeth to Wood's husband, the movie star Robert Wagner, and had the scandal sheets talking of murder and suicide. She was born in San Francisco in 1938, but there are considerable doubts over her paternity. Her story reaches back to the Russian Revolution and the eastward flight of Wood's mother with her family when the news of the Romanovs' demise reached their estate in southern Siberia. This could be the stuff of a Kitty Kelly showbiz biography or a Jerome Robbins roman-a-clef dishing the dirt on Hollywood. But though this book doesn't stint on sordid revelations about daily life in Tinseltown, Wood's life and career are safe in the hands of Gavin Lambert, who has a rare combination of talents. He is an outstanding film critic, a gifted biographer, the author of some of the shrewdest fiction written about Hollywood, and has been closely involved in moviemaking as a screenwriter. Moreover, they have something in common. Both had sex with the charismatic bisexual Nicholas Ray on the day they met him. Lambert's encounter was in London and he followed Ray to Los Angeles as his assistant. Shortly after his arrival he encountered Natalie Wood, who earlier that same year had lost her virginity at the age of sixteen to Ray while he was testing her for Rebel Without a Cause, a film that would change the course of her career. Lambert became one of her many gay friends, and a decade later, in 1965, she appeared in a film version of Lambert's novel Inside Daisy Clover as the eponymous troubled movie star. Wood's mother Maria was a manipulative monster, even worse than the stage mother Rosalind Russell played to Wood's Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy. A romantic fantasist obsessed with her lost Russian heritage, she had a brief marriage to an army officer in China (which produced a daughter), before crossing the Pacific to San Francisco. There she contracted a hypergamous relationship with a Russian emigre from a more humble background, a dockworker who also felt cut off from his roots and was violent when drunk. "What did your father die of?" someone was later to ask Natalie. "My mother", she replied. Natalie was born four months after the marriage, and though she was never to know it, her real father was almost certainly a brutish Russian-born captain in the American merchant navy with whom Maria conducted a lifelong affair. The mother was determined to turn one of her three daughters into a star, and in 1943 she ordered the five-year-old Natalie to go and sit on the knee of Irving Pichel, who was directing a movie in Santa Rosa, the little town north of San Francisco where they lived. She and her older sister Olga got walk-on roles in crowd scenes, and immediately Maria shifted the family down to Los Angeles and began grooming Natalie for the screen. After an impressive debut as Orson Welles's ward in the 1945 weepie, Tomorrow Is Forever (Welles recalled "something very sad and lonely about this compelling child"), she became an established child performer and the family's meal ticket. She played orphans, brat sisters, plucky victims of divorce; her characteristic role, Lambert observes, was "an emotionally displaced child whose problems are resolved by understanding adults (thanks, of course, to the understanding filmmakers who contrive a happy ending)". Over the next few years her film mothers were Gene Tierney, Margaret Sullivan, Joan Blondell, Maureen O'Hara and Bette Davis, her screen fathers James Stewart, Bing Crosby, Walter Brennan and Fred McMurray. In the greatest film of her early days she was unhappily cast as John Wayne's niece in John Ford's The Searchers. Maria pushed and pushed, became the keeper of her daughter's fan mail, and, using Natalie as a lever, got her husband a job as a carpenter at 20th-Century Fox. One day he came onto the set of a film she was appearing in, and (in something resembling a scene from a Joan Crawford tearjerker) she called out "Daddy". Everyone was shocked, and Maria told her she must never again acknowledge her father's presence at the studio. Natalie grew up in Hollywood at a time when the big studio system was reluctantly giving way to independent production. She found herself under contract to Warner Brothers, whose penny-pinching production boss, Jack Warner, supervised her career, making ten times her weekly contract payment by hiring her out to other studios. The House Un-American Activities Committee stalked the movie colony and everyone was in thrall to the suffocating conformity of the Eisenhower era. In this enclosed world Natalie had to play the game, kow-towing to the vindictive gossip columnists Loella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. She also had to cope with the near-insanity of Maria, whose account of a Russian Gypsy's curse induced a lifelong terror of "dark waters" in her daughter. Anticipating the horror movies of Wes Craven by some forty years, Maria told Natalie of a figure called "Jack the Jabber" who stabbed errant girls through the backs of cinema seats. She didn't, however, offer information about menstruation, and Natalie never recovered from the shock of her first period. Unlike most child stars, Natalie made the transition to adult performer: she became a piercingly brown-eyed, black-haired beauty and an actor of feeling and subtlety. Rebel without a Cause was the turning point that preceded key roles in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass opposite Warren Beatty and Robert Mulligan's Love with the Proper Stranger opposite Steve McQueen. Playing desperate victims of a repressive culture, she attained Hollywood star status, and was Oscar nominated for all three performances. In between the last two there was West Side Story, which made her bankable. She worked under constant pressure from family, studio and filmmakers, and it would seem that sex became her principal act of rebellion, recreation and self-assertion. Lambert uses that curious old-fashioned term "highly sexed" to describe her, and suggests that her sex drive was part of the Russian heritage she readily embraced. But her conduct didn't differ markedly from that of Sinatra, Beatty, McQueen and other male stars acclaimed for their arrogant concupiscence. They figure among several dozen famous lovers, including our own gently retiring Tom Courtenay, who happened to be in Hollywood making King Rat in 1965. Like Princess Diana, Natalie had an inner circle, which she called her "nucleus" (the equivalent of Diana's "rocks"), a larger group she called her friends, and within it a special section known as "friends you occasionally sleep with". This permissiveness was subject to limits. When her second husband, the British talent agent Richard Gregson, father of the first of her three children, was revealed as having had a fling with her secretary, Natalie called the police, who escorted him off her Beverly Hills mansion with his bags and baggage. She herself expected to be forgiven for her transgressions and flirtations during her first and third marriages to the same man, the charming Robert Wagner, who had broken away from his upper-middle-class background to become a movie actor. It was a turbulent relationship the second time around, their reputations shifting month by month through the successes and failures of their work in television, and not helped by alcohol and Natalie's increasing reliance on prescription drugs to calm her nerves and prepare her for social occasions. Neither had any serious professional training, and their shared insecurity appears to have been played on by the brilliant, demonic Christopher Walken, who starred with Natalie in the misconceived science-fiction melodrama Brainstorm in 1981, and was probably her lover. He seems, quite legitimately from his position as a committed New York stage actor, to have challenged them to address their professional careers with greater seriousness. During a holiday break from shooting, Walken joined the Wagners on their yacht. They cruised to the holiday island of Catalina; immoderate amounts of booze were consumed and dangerous words exchanged. The next day the ship's motorized dinghy was retrieved along the coast and Natalie's body (filled with alcohol and prescription drugs) was fished out of the sea. The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death: she had slipped on a greasy strip of teak while preventing the banging of the dinghy that was keeping her awake. As far as Tinseltown history is concerned, the jury is still out. The yacht was named Splendor after the movie that was Natalie's greatest triumph, and the dinghy was called Valiant, an ironic reference to the Arthurian comic-strip epic Prince Valiant which made Wagner a star in 1954. The celebrated golden couple were mocked and patronized in much the same way that the Beckhams are today, and glib judgements are unfair in both cases. Lambert rightly claims that Natalie was on the point of regaining control of her own career at the time of her death. She had always wanted to play Blanche Du Bois in A Streetcar Named Desire, and regularly interrogated Lambert about Vivien Leigh, whom he had come to know as a result of writing the screenplay for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. Natalie had performed creditably with Robert Wagner in a television version of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the weakest element of which was Laurence Olivier's Big Daddy. Natalie had acquired the rights to Nancy Milford's biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, and was preparing to make her stage debut (at the age of forty-three) in Anastasia with Wendy Hiller. This all suggests sanity and ambition. But she seems also to have seen her life as a split screen; towards the end, she took to leaving different messages on her agent's phone as, variously, "Natalie", "Natalie Wood" and "Mrs Wagner". Perhaps this was a joke, for she had become a mistress of irony. Living in Hollywood all her life, Natalie must have become aware that most childhood stars would, sooner or later, sink into painful obscurity. Robert and Natalie entertained to dinner an elderly, drunken Bette Davis. Talking of her performance in The Star, Davis said: "But of course, you're too young to remember it". "Bette," Natalie replied, "I played your daughter in that picture." Davis went on unheeded. The death of Natalie Wood had a predictably sordid aftermath in legal actions, family squabbles and old acquaintances spilling dubious beans to ensure their moment of fame and a few tarnished dollars. This Gavin Lambert scrupulously records. But he also takes away the sour taste in our mouths and the guilty feeling that we may have been engaged in a prurient exercise. His sensitive, sympathetic book ends with a coda that reviews Wood's movies and the development of her career over a period of thirty years. It guarantees her position in movie history. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:39:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:39:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Lysander Spooner: No Treason Message-ID: Lysander Spooner: No Treason http://www.chrononhotonthologos.com/lawnotes/notreasn.htm [This is one of the great libertarian classics of all time. Spooner ran a successful pony express. When the government outlawed competition for its own postal system, Spooner became an anarchist. He said he has examined the Constitution and could not find its signature on it. His argument has never been refuted, despite many efforts to ground political obligation on something other than unanimous consent.] Subject: Spooner's _No_Treason_, section 1 Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) was a Massachussetts lawyer noted for his vigorous and brilliant opposition to the encroachment of the State upon the liberty of the individual. His writings on the unconstitutionality of slavery influenced pre-Civil War thought. His challenge to the postal monopoly (he set up a thriving private post) resulted in an Act of Congress sharply reducing postage rates. Unfortunately, he was so successful that Congress finally outlawed his enterprise. The following is Spooner's _No_Treason: The Constitution of No Authority_, which _Playboy_ magazine described as "[possibly] the most subversive document ever penned in this nation." Due to the lack of italic characters in ASCII, italicized words are indicated with uppercase letters. NO TREASON The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner I. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing. It purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living eighty years ago. [This essay was written in 1869.] And it can be supposed to have been a contract then only between persons who had already come to years of discretion, so as to be competent to make reasonable and obligatory contracts. Furthermore, we know, historically, that only a small portion even of the people then existing were consulted on the subject, or asked, or permitted to express either their consent or dissent in any formal manner. Those persons, if any, who did give their consent formally, are all dead now. Most of them have been dead forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years. AND THE CONSTITUTION, SO FAR AS IT WAS THEIR CONTRACT, DIED WITH THEM. They had no natural power or right to make it obligatory upon their children. It is not only plainly impossible, in the nature of things, that they COULD bind their posterity, but they did not even attempt to bind them. That is to say, the instrument does not purport to be an agreement between any body but "the people" THEN existing; nor does it, either expressly or impliedly, assert any right, power, or disposition, on their part, to bind anybody but themselves. Let us see. Its language is: We, the people of the United States (that is, the people THEN EXISTING in the United States), in order to form a more perfect union, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves AND OUR POSTERITY, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. It is plain, in the first place, that this language, AS AN AGREEMENT, purports to be only what it at most really was, viz., a contract between the people then existing; and, of necessity, binding, as a contract, only upon those then existing. In the second place, the language neither expresses nor implies that they had any right or power, to bind their "posterity" to live under it. It does not say that their "posterity" will, shall, or must live under it. It only says, in effect, that their hopes and motives in adopting it were that it might prove useful to their posterity, as well as to themselves, by promoting their union, safety, tranquility, liberty, etc. Suppose an agreement were entered into, in this form: We, the people of Boston, agree to maintain a fort on Governor's Island, to protect ourselves and our posterity against invasion. This agreement, as an agreement, would clearly bind nobody but the people then existing. Secondly, it would assert no right, power, or disposition, on their part, to compel their "posterity" to maintain such a fort. It would only indicate that the supposed welfare of their posterity was one of the motives that induced the original parties to enter into the agreement. When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it. So far as they are concerned, he only means to be understood as saying that his hopes and motives, in building it, are that they, or at least some of them, may find it for their happiness to live in it. So when a man says he is planting a tree for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of compelling them, nor is it to be inferred that he is such a simpleton as to imagine that he has any right or power to compel them, to eat the fruit. So far as they are concerned, he only means to say that his hopes and motives, in planting the tree, are that its fruit may be agreeable to them. So it was with those who originally adopted the Constitution. Whatever may have been their personal intentions, the legal meaning of their language, so far as their "posterity" was concerned, simply was, that their hopes and motives, in entering into the agreement, were that it might prove useful and acceptable to their posterity; that it might promote their union, safety, tranquility, and welfare; and that it might tend "to secure to them the blessings of liberty." The language does not assert nor at all imply, any right, power, or disposition, on the part of the original parties to the agreement, to compel their "posterity" to live under it. If they had intended to bind their posterity to live under it, they should have said that their objective was, not "to secure to them the blessings of liberty," but to make slaves of them; for if their "posterity" are bound to live under it, they are nothing less than the slaves of their foolish, tyrannical, and dead grandfathers. It cannot be said that the Constitution formed "the people of the United States," for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of "the people" as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as "we," nor as "people," nor as "ourselves." Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any "posterity." It supposes itself to have, and speaks of itself as having, perpetual existence, as a single individuality. Moreover, no body of men, existing at any one time, have the power to create a perpetual corporation. A corporation can become practically perpetual only by the voluntary accession of new members, as the old ones die off. But for this voluntary accession of new members, the corporation necessarily dies with the death of those who originally composed it. Legally speaking, therefore, there is, in the Constitution, nothing that professes or attempts to bind the "posterity" of those who established it. If, then, those who established the Constitution, had no power to bind, and did not attempt to bind, their posterity, the question arises, whether their posterity have bound themselves. If they have done so, they can have done so in only one or both of these two ways, viz., by voting, and paying taxes. II. Let us consider these two matters, voting and tax paying, separately. And first of voting. All the voting that has ever taken place under the Constitution, has been of such a kind that it not only did not pledge the whole people to support the Constitution, but it did not even pledge any one of them to do so, as the following considerations show. 1. In the very nature of things, the act of voting could bind nobody but the actual voters. But owing to the property qualifications required, it is probable that, during the first twenty or thirty years under the Constitution, not more than one-tenth, fifteenth, or perhaps twentieth of the whole population (black and white, men, women, and minors) were permitted to vote. Consequently, so far as voting was concerned, not more than one-tenth, fifteenth, or twentieth of those then existing, could have incurred any obligation to support the Constitution. At the present time [1869], it is probable that not more than one-sixth of the whole population are permitted to vote. Consequently, so far as voting is concerned, the other five-sixths can have given no pledge that they will support the Constitution. 2. Of the one-sixth that are permitted to vote, probably not more than two-thirds (about one-ninth of the whole population) have usually voted. Many never vote at all. Many vote only once in two, three, five, or ten years, in periods of great excitement. No one, by voting, can be said to pledge himself for any longer period than that for which he votes. If, for example, I vote for an officer who is to hold his office for only a year, I cannot be said to have thereby pledged myself to support the government beyond that term. Therefore, on the ground of actual voting, it probably cannot be said that more than one-ninth or one-eighth, of the whole population are usually under any pledge to support the Constitution. [In recent years, since 1940, the number of voters in elections has usually fluctuated between one-third and two-fifths of the populace.] 3. It cannot be said that, by voting, a man pledges himself to support the Constitution, unless the act of voting be a perfectly voluntary one on his part. Yet the act of voting cannot properly be called a voluntary one on the part of any very large number of those who do vote. It is rather a measure of necessity imposed upon them by others, than one of their own choice. On this point I repeat what was said in a former number, viz.: "In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, EVEN FOR THE TIME BEING. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self- defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot -- which is a mere substitute for a bullet -- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him. "Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to. "Therefore, a man's voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, EVEN FOR THE TIME BEING. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, EVEN FOR THE TIME BEING. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others." As we can have no legal knowledge as to who votes from choice, and who from the necessity thus forced upon him, we can have no legal knowledge, as to any particular individual, that he voted from choice; or, consequently, that by voting, he consented, or pledged himself, to support the government. Legally speaking, therefore, the act of voting utterly fails to pledge ANY ONE to support the government. It utterly fails to prove that the government rests upon the voluntary support of anybody. On general principles of law and reason, it cannot be said that the government has any voluntary supporters at all, until it can be distinctly shown who its voluntary supporters are. 4. As taxation is made compulsory on all, whether they vote or not, a large proportion of those who vote, no doubt do so to prevent their own money being used against themselves; when, in fact, they would have gladly abstained from voting, if they could thereby have saved themselves from taxation alone, to say nothing of being saved from all the other usurpations and tyrannies of the government. To take a man's property without his consent, and then to infer his consent because he attempts, by voting, to prevent that property from being used to his injury, is a very insufficient proof of his consent to support the Constitution. It is, in fact, no proof at all. And as we can have no legal knowledge as to who the particular individuals are, if there are any, who are willing to be taxed for the sake of voting, we can have no legal knowledge that any particular individual consents to be taxed for the sake of voting; or, consequently, consents to support the Constitution. 5. At nearly all elections, votes are given for various candidates for the same office. Those who vote for the unsuccessful candidates cannot properly be said to have voted to sustain the Constitution. They may, with more reason, be supposed to have voted, not to support the Constitution, but specially to prevent the tyranny which they anticipate the successful candidate intends to practice upon them under color of the Constitution; and therefore may reasonably be supposed to have voted against the Constitution itself. This supposition is the more reasonable, inasmuch as such voting is the only mode allowed to them of expressing their dissent to the Constitution. 6. Many votes are usually given for candidates who have no prospect of success. Those who give such votes may reasonably be supposed to have voted as they did, with a special intention, not to support, but to obstruct the exection of, the Constitution; and, therefore, against the Constitution itself. 7. As all the different votes are given secretly (by secret ballot), there is no legal means of knowing, from the votes themselves, who votes for, and who votes against, the Constitution. Therefore, voting affords no legal evidence that any particular individual supports the Constitution. And where there can be no legal evidence that any particular individual supports the Constitution, it cannot legally be said that anybody supports it. It is clearly impossible to have any legal proof of the intentions of large numbers of men, where there can be no legal proof of the intentions of any particular one of them. 8. There being no legal proof of any man's intentions, in voting, we can only conjecture them. As a conjecture, it is probable, that a very large proportion of those who vote, do so on this principle, viz., that if, by voting, they could but get the government into their own hands (or that of their friends), and use its powers against their opponents, they would then willingly support the Constitution; but if their opponents are to have the power, and use it against them, then they would NOT willingly support the Constitution. In short, men's voluntary support of the Constitution is doubtless, in most cases, wholly contingent upon the question whether, by means of the Constitution, they can make themselves masters, or are to be made slaves. Such contingent consent as that is, in law and reason, no consent at all. 9. As everybody who supports the Constitution by voting (if there are any such) does so secretly (by secret ballot), and in a way to avoid all personal responsibility for the acts of his agents or representatives, it cannot legally or reasonably be said that anybody at all supports the Constitution by voting. No man can reasonably or legally be said to do such a thing as assent to, or support, the Constitution, UNLESS HE DOES IT OPENLY, AND IN A WAY TO MAKE HIMSELF PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTS OF HIS AGENTS, SO LONG AS THEY ACT WITHIN THE LIMITS OF THE POWER HE DELEGATES TO THEM. 10. As all voting is secret (by secret ballot), and as all secret governments are necessarily only secret bands of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, the general fact that our government is practically carried on by means of such voting, only proves that there is among us a secret band of robbers, tyrants, and murderers, whose purpose is to rob, enslave, and, so far as necessary to accomplish their purposes, murder, the rest of the people. The simple fact of the existence of such a vand does nothing towards proving that "the people of the United States," or any one of them, voluntarily supports the Constitution. For all the reasons that have now been given, voting furnishes no legal evidence as to who the particular individuals are (if there are any), who voluntarily support the Constitution. It therefore furnishes no legal evidence that anybody supports it voluntarily. So far, therefore, as voting is concerned, the Constitution, legally speaking, has no supporters at all. And, as a matter of fact, there is not the slightest probability that the Constitution has a single bona fide supporter in the country. That is to say, there is not the slightest probability that there is a single man in the country, who both understands what the Constitution really is, AND SINCERELY SUPPORTS IT FOR WHAT IT REALLY IS. The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes -- a large class, no doubt -- each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a "free man," a "sovereign"; that this is "a free government"; "a government of equal rights," "the best government on earth," [1] and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change. ----------- [1] Suppose it be "the best government on earth," does that prove its own goodness, or only the badness of all other governments? ----------- III. The payment of taxes, being compulsory, of course furnishes no evidence that any one voluntarily supports the Constitution. 1. It is true that the THEORY of our Constitution is, that all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the people with each other; that that each man makes a free and purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much protection, the same as he does with any other insurance company; and that he is just as free not to be protected, and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected. But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: "Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave. The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of these of the single highwayman. In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary, they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep themselves practically concealed. They say to the person thus designated: Go to A_____ B_____, and say to him that "the government" has need of money to meet the expenses of protecting him and his property. If he presumes to say that he has never contracted with us to protect him, and that he wants none of our protection, say to him that that is our business, and not his; that we CHOOSE to protect him, whether he desires us to do so or not; and that we demand pay, too, for protecting him. If he dares to inquire who the individuals are, who have thus taken upon themselves the title of "the government," and who assume to protect him, and demand payment of him, without his having ever made any contract with them, say to him that that, too, is our business, and not his; that we do not CHOOSE to make ourselves INDIVIDUALLY known to him; that we have secretly (by secret ballot) appointed you our agent to give him notice of our demands, and, if he complies with them, to give him, in our name, a receipt that will protect him against any similar demand for the present year. If he refuses to comply, seize and sell enough of his property to pay not only our demands, but all your own expenses and trouble beside. If he resists the seizure of his property, call upon the bystanders to help you (doubtless some of them will prove to be members of our band.) If, in defending his property, he should kill any of our band who are assisting you, capture him at all hazards; charge him (in one of our courts) with murder; convict him, and hang him. If he should call upon his neighbors, or any others who, like him, may be disposed to resist our demands, and they should come in large numbers to his assistance, cry out that they are all rebels and traitors; that "our country" is in danger; call upon the commander of our hired murderers; tell him to quell the rebellion and "save the country," cost what it may. Tell him to kill all who resist, though they should be hundreds of thousands; and thus strike terror into all others similarly disposed. See that the work of murder is thoroughly done; that we may have no further trouble of this kind hereafter. When these traitors shall have thus been taught our strength and our determination, they will be good loyal citizens for many years, and pay their taxes without a why or a wherefore. It is under such compulsion as this that taxes, so called, are paid. And how much proof the payment of taxes affords, that the people consent to "support the government," it needs no further argument to show. 2. Still another reason why the payment of taxes implies no consent, or pledge, to support the government, is that the taxpayer does not know, and has no means of knowing, who the particular individuals are who compose "the government." To him "the government" is a myth, an abstraction, an incorporeality, with which he can make no contract, and to which he can give no consent, and make no pledge. He knows it only through its pretended agents. "The government" itself he never sees. He knows indeed, by common report, that certain persons, of a certain age, are permitted to vote; and thus to make themselves parts of, or (if they choose) opponents of, the government, for the time being. But who of them do thus vote, and especially how each one votes (whether so as to aid or oppose the government), he does not know; the voting being all done secretly (by secret ballot). Who, therefore, practically compose "the government," for the time being, he has no means of knowing. Of course he can make no contract with them, give them no consent, and make them no pledge. Of necessity, therefore, his paying taxes to them implies, on his part, no contract, consent, or pledge to support them -- that is, to support "the government," or the Constitution. 3. Not knowing who the particular individuals are, who call themselves "the government," the taxpayer does not know whom he pays his taxes to. All he knows is that a man comes to him, representing himself to be the agent of "the government" -- that is, the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who have taken to themselves the title of "the government," and have determined to kill everybody who refuses to give them whatever money they demand. To save his life, he gives up his money to this agent. But as this agent does not make his principals individually known to the taxpayer, the latter, after he has given up his money, knows no more who are "the government" -- that is, who were the robbers -- than he did before. To say, therefore, that by giving up his money to their agent, he entered into a voluntary contract with them, that he pledges himself to obey them, to support them, and to give them whatever money they should demand of him in the future, is simply ridiculous. 4. All political power, so called, rests practically upon this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a "government"; because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will. It is with government, as Caesar said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually supported each other; that with money he could hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money. For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future. 3. That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so? To suppose that they would do so, is just as absurd as it would be to suppose that they would take his moeny without his consent, for the purpose of buying food or clothing for him, when he did not want it. 4. If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will. 5. That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury. 6. That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support. These facts are all so vital and so self-evident, that it cannot reasonably be supposed that any one will voluntarily pay money to a "government," for the purpose of securing its protection, unless he first make an explicit and purely voluntary contract with it for that purpose. It is perfectly evident, therefore, that neither such voting, nor such payment of taxes, as actually takes place, proves anybody's consent, or obligation, to support the Constitution. Consequently we have no evidence at all that the Constitution is binding upon anybody, or that anybody is under any contract or obligation whatever to support it. And nobody is under any obligation to support it. IV. THE CONSTITUTION NOT ONLY BINDS NOBODY NOW, BUT IT NEVER DID BIND ANYBODY. It never bound anybody, because it was never agreed to by anybody in such a manner as to make it, on general principles of law and reason, binding upon him. It is a general principle of law and reason, that a WRITTEN instrument binds no one until he has signed it. This principle is so inflexible a one, that even though a man is unable to write his name, he must still "make his mark," before he is bound by a written contract. This custom was established ages ago, when few men could write their names; when a clerk -- that is, a man who could write -- was so rare and valuable a person, that even if he were guilty of high crimes, he was entitled to pardon, on the ground that the public could not afford to lose his services. Even at that time, a written contract must be signed; and men who could not write, either "made their mark," or signed their contracts by stamping their seals upon wax affixed to the parchment on which their contracts were written. Hence the custom of affixing seals, that has continued to this time. The laws holds, and reason declares, that if a written instrument is not signed, the presumption must be that the party to be bound by it, did not choose to sign it, or to bind himself by it. And law and reason both give him until the last moment, in which to decide whether he will sign it, or not. Neither law nor reason requires or expects a man to agree to an instrument, UNTIL IT IS WRITTEN; for until it is written, he cannot know its precise legal meaning. And when it is written, and he has had the opportunity to satisfy himself of its precise legal meaning, he is then expected to decide, and not before, whether he will agree to it or not. And if he do not THEN sign it, his reason is supposed to be, that he does not choose to enter into such a contract. The fact that the instrument was written for him to sign, or with the hope that he would sign it, goes for nothing. Where would be the end of fraud and litigation, if one party could bring into court a written instrument, without any signature, and claim to have it enforced, upon the ground that it was written for another man to sign? that this other man had promised to sign it? that he ought to have signed it? that he had had the opportunity to sign it, if he would? but that he had refused or neglected to do so? Yet that is the most that could ever be said of the Constitution. [1] The very judges, who profess to derive all their authority from the Constitution -- from an instrument that nobody ever signed -- would spurn any other instrument, not signed, that should be brought before them for adjudication. [1] The very men who drafted it, never signed it in any way to bind themselves by it, AS A CONTRACT. And not one of them probably ever would have signed it in any way to bind himself by it, AS A CONTRACT. Moreover, a written instrument must, in law and reason, not only be signed, but must also be delivered to the party (or to some one for him), in whose favor it is made, before it can bind the party making it. The signing is of no effect, unless the instrument be also delivered. And a party is at perfect liberty to refuse to deliver a written instrument, after he has signed it. The Constitution was not only never signed by anybody, but it was never delivered by anybody, or to anybody's agent or attorney. It can therefore be of no more validity as a contract, then can any other instrument that was never signed or delivered. V. As further evidence of the general sense of mankind, as to the practical necessity there is that all men's IMPORTANT contracts, especially those of a permanent nature, should be both written and signed, the following facts are pertinent. For nearly two hundred years -- that is, since 1677 -- there has been on the statute book of England, and the same, in substance, if not precisely in letter, has been re-enacted, and is now in force, in nearly or quite all the States of this Union, a statute, the general object of which is to declare that no action shall be brought to enforce contracts of the more important class, UNLESS THEY ARE PUT IN WRITING, AND SIGNED BY THE PARTIES TO BE HELD CHARGEABLE UPON THEM. [At this point there is a footnote listing 34 states whose statute books Spooner had examined, all of which had variations of this English statute; the footnote also quotes part of the Massachussetts statute.] The principle of the statute, be it observed, is, not merely that written contracts shall be signed, but also that all contracts, except for those specially exempted -- generally those that are for small amounts, and are to remain in force for but a short time -- SHALL BE BOTH WRITTEN AND SIGNED. The reason of the statute, on this point, is, that it is now so easy a thing for men to put their contracts in writing, and sign them, and their failure to do so opens the door to so much doubt, fraud, and litigation, that men who neglect to have their contracts -- of any considerable importance -- written and signed, ought not to have the benefit of courts of justice to enforce them. And this reason is a wise one; and that experience has confirmed its wisdom and necessity, is demonstrated by the fact that it has been acted upon in England for nearly two hundred years, and has been so nearly universally adopted in this country, and that nobody thinks of repealing it. We all know, too, how careful most men are to have their contracts written and signed, even when this statute does not require it. For example, most men, if they have money due them, of no larger amount than five or ten dollars, are careful to take a note for it. If they buy even a small bill of goods, paying for it at the time of delivery, they take a receipted bill for it. If they pay a small balance of a book account, or any other small debt previously contracted, they take a written receipt for it. Furthermore, the law everywhere (probably) in our country, as well as in England, requires that a large class of contracts, such as wills, deeds, etc., shall not only be written and signed, but also sealed, witnessed, and acknowledged. And in the case of married women conveying their rights in real estate, the law, in many States, requires that the women shall be examined separate and apart from their husbands, and declare that they sign their contracts free of any fear or compulsion of their husbands. Such are some of the precautions which the laws require, and which individuals -- from motives of common prudence, even in cases not required by law -- take, to put their contracts in writing, and have them signed, and, to guard against all uncertainties and controversies in regard to their meaning and validity. And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract -- the Constitution -- made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind US, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see. And of those who ever have read it, or ever will read it, scarcely any two, perhaps no two, have ever agreed, or ever will agree, as to what it means. Moreover, this supposed contract, which would not be received in any court of justice sitting under its authority, if offered to prove a debt of five dollars, owing by one man to another, is one by which -- AS IT IS GENERALLY INTERPRETED BY THOSE WHO PRETEND TO ADMINISTER IT -- all men, women and children throughout the country, and through all time, surrender not only all their property, but also their liberties, and even lives, into the hands of men who by this supposed contract, are expressly made wholly irresponsible for their disposal of them. And we are so insane, or so wicked, as to destroy property and lives without limit, in fighting to compel men to fulfill a supposed contract, which, inasmuch as it has never been signed by anybody, is, on general princples of law and reason -- such principles as we are all governed by in regard to other contracts -- the merest waste of paper, binding upon nobody, fit only to be thrown into the fire; or, if preserved, preserved only to serve as a witness and a warning of the folly and wickedness of mankind. VI. It is no exaggeration, but a literal truth, to say that, by the Constitution -- NOT AS I INTERPRET IT, BUT AS IT IS INTERPRETED BY THOSE WHO PRETEND TO ADMINISTER IT -- the properties, liberties, and lives of the entire people of the United States are surrendered unreservedly into the hands of men who, it is provided by the Constitution itself, shall never be "questioned" as to any disposal they make of them. Thus the Constitution (Art. I, Sec. 6) provides that, "for any speech or debate (or vote), in either house, they (the senators and representatives) shall not be questioned in any other place." The whole law-making power is given to these senators and representatives (when acting by a two-thirds vote); [1] and this provision protects them from all responsibility for the laws they make. [1] And this two-thirds vote may be but two-thirds of a quorum -- that is two-thirds of a majority -- instead of two-thirds of the whole. The Constitution also enables them to secure the execution of all their laws, by giving them power to withhold the salaries of, and to impeach and remove, all judicial and executive officers, who refuse to execute them. Thus the whole power of the government is in their hands, and they are made utterly irresponsible for the use they make of it. What is this but absolute, irresponsible power? It is no answer to this view of the case to say that these men are under oath to use their power only within certain limits; for what care they, or what should they care, for oaths or limits, when it is expressly provided, by the Constitution itself, that they shall never be "questioned," or held to any resonsibility whatever, for violating their oaths, or transgressing those limits? Neither is it any answer to this view of the case to say that the men holding this absolute, irresponsible power, must be men chosen by the people (or portions of them) to hold it. A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years. Neither are a people any the less slaves because permitted periodically to choose new masters. What makes them slaves is the fact that they now are, and are always hereafter to be, in the hands of men whose power over them is, and always is to be, absolute and irresponsible. [2] [2] Of what appreciable value is it to any man, as an individual, that he is allowed a voice in choosing these public masters? His voice is only one of several millions. The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion. The two are identical; the one necessarily implies the other. Neither can exist without the other. If, therefore, Congress have that absolute and irresponsible law-making power, which the Constitution -- according to their interpretation of it -- gives them, it can only be because they own us as property. If they own us as property, they are our masters, and their will is our law. If they do not own us as property, they are not our masters, and their will, as such, is of no authority over us. But these men who claim and exercise this absolute and irresponsible dominion over us, dare not be consistent, and claim either to be our masters, or to own us as property. They say they are only our servants, agents, attorneys, and representatives. But this declaration involves an absurdity, a contradiction. No man can be my servant, agent, attorney, or representative, and be, at the same time, uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me for his acts. It is of no importance that I appointed him, and put all power in his hands. If I made him uncontrollable by me, and irresponsible to me, he is no longer my servant, agent, attorney, or representative. If I gave him absolute, irresponsible power over my property, I gave him the property. If I gave him absolute, irresponsible power over myself, I made him my master, and gave myself to him as a slave. And it is of no importance whether I called him master or servant, agent or owner. The only question is, what power did I put in his hands? Was it an absolute and irresponsible one? or a limited and responsible one? For still another reason they are neither our servants, agents, attorneys, nor representatives. And that reason is, that we do not make ourselves responsible for their acts. If a man is my servant, agent, or attorney, I necessarily make myself responsible for all his acts done within the limits of the power I have intrusted to him. If I have intrusted him, as my agent, with either absolute power, or any power at all, over the persons or properties of other men than myself, I thereby necessarily make myself responsible to those other persons for any injuries he may do them, so long as he acts within the limits of the power I have granted him. But no individual who may be injured in his person or property, by acts of Congress, can come to the individual electors, and hold them responsible for these acts of their so-called agents or representatives. This fact proves that these pretended agents of the people, of everybody, are really the agents of nobody. If, then, nobody is individually responsible for the acts of Congress, the members of Congress are nobody's agents. And if they are nobody's agents, they are themselves individually responsible for their own acts, and for the acts of all whom they employ. And the authority they are exercising is simply their own individual authority; and, by the law of nature -- the highest of all laws -- anybody injured by their acts, anybody who is deprived by them of his property or his liberty, has the same right to hold them individually responsible, that he has to hold any other trespasser individually responsible. He has the same right to resist them, and their agents, that he has to resist any other trespassers. VII. It is plain, then, that on general principles of law and reason -- such principles as we all act upon in courts of justice and in common life -- the Constitution is no contract; that it binds nobody, and never did bind anybody; and that all those who pretend to act by its authority, are really acting without any legitimate authority at all; that, on general principles of law and reason, they are mere usurpers, and that everybody not only has the right, but is morally bound, to treat them as such. If the people of this country wish to maintain such a government as the Constitution describes, there is no reason in the world why they should not sign the instrument itself, and thus make known their wishes in an open, authentic manner; in such manner as the common sense and experience of mankind have shown to be reasonable and necessary in such cases; AND IN SUCH MANNER AS TO MAKE THEMSELVES (AS THEY OUGHT TO DO) INDIVIDUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTS OF THE GOVERNMENT. But the people have never been asked to sign it. And the only reason why they have never been asked to sign it, has been that it has been known that they never would sign it; that they were neither such fools nor knaves as they must needs have been to be willing to sign it; that (at least as it has been practically interpreted) it is not what any sensible and honest man wants for himself; nor such as he has any right to impose upon others. It is, to all moral intents and purposes, as destitute of obligations as the compacts which robbers and thieves and pirates enter into with each other, but never sign. If any considerable number of the people believe the Constitution to be good, why do they not sign it themselves, and make laws for, and administer them upon, each other; leaving all other persons (who do not interfere with them) in peace? Until they have tried the experiment for themselves, how can they have the face to impose the Constitution upon, or even to recommend it to, others? Plainly the reason for absurd and inconsistent conduct is that they want the Constitution, not solely for any honest or legitimate use it can be of to themselves or others, but for the dishonest and illegitimate power it gives them over the persons and properties of others. But for this latter reason, all their eulogiums on the Constitution, all their exhortations, and all their expenditures of money and blood to sustain it, would be wanting. VIII. The Constitution itself, then, being of no authority, on what authority does our government practically rest? On what ground can those who pretend to administer it, claim the right to seize men's property, to restrain them of their natural liberty of action, industry, and trade, and to kill all who deny their authority to dispose of men's properties, liberties, and lives at their pleasure or discretion? The most they can say, in answer to this question, is, that some half, two-thirds, or three-fourths, of the male adults of the country have a TACIT UNDERSTANDING that they will maintain a government under the Constitution; that they will select, by ballot, the persons to administer it; and that those persons who may receive a majority, or a plurality, of their ballots, shall act as their representatives, and administer the Constitution in their name, and by their authority. But this tacit understanding (admitting it to exist) cannot at all justify the conclusion drawn from it. A tacit understanding between A, B, and C, that they will, by ballot, depute D as their agent, to deprive me of my property, liberty, or life, cannot at all authorize D to do so. He is none the less a robber, tyrant, and murderer, because he claims to act as their agent, than he would be if he avowedly acted on his own responsibility alone. Neither am I bound to recognize him as their agent, nor can he legitimately claim to be their agent, when he brings no WRITTEN authority from them accrediting him as such. I am under no obligation to take his word as to who his principals may be, or whether he has any. Bringing no credentials, I have a right to say he has no such authority even as he claims to have: and that he is therefore intending to rob, enslave, or murder me on his own account. This tacit understanding, therefore, among the voters of the country, amounts to nothing as an authority to their agents. Neither do the ballots by which they select their agents, avail any more than does their tacit understanding; for their ballots are given in secret, and therefore in such a way as to avoid any personal responsibility for the acts of their agents. No body of men can be said to authorize a man to act as their agent, to the injury of a third person, unless they do it in so open and authentic a manner as to make themselves personally responsible for his acts. None of the voters in this country appoint their political agents in any open, authentic manner, or in any manner to make themselves responsible for their acts. Therefore these pretended agents cannot legitimately claim to be really agents. Somebody must be responsible for the acts of these pretended agents; and if they cannot show any open and authentic credentials from their principals, they cannot, in law or reason, be said to have any principals. The maxim applies here, that what does not appear, does not exist. If they can show no principals, they have none. But even these pretended agents do not themselves know who their pretended principals are. These latter act in secret; for acting by secret ballot is acting in secret as much as if they were to meet in secret conclave in the darkness of the night. And they are personally as much unknown to the agents they select, as they are to others. No pretended agent therefore can ever know by whose ballots he is selected, or consequently who his real principles are. Not knowing who his principles are, he has no right to say that he has any. He can, at most, say only that he is the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who are bound by that faith which prevails among confederates in crime, to stand by him, if his acts, done in their name, shall be resisted. Men honestly engaged in attempting to establish justice in the world, have no occasion thus to act in secret; or to appoint agents to do acts for which they (the principals) are not willing to be responsible. The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers. Open despotism is better than this. The single despot stands out in the face of all men, and says: I am the State: My will is law: I am your master: I take the responsibility of my acts: The only arbiter I acknowledge is the sword: If anyone denies my right, let him try conclusions with me. But a secret government is little less than a government of assassins. Under it, a man knows not who his tyrants are, until they have struck, and perhaps not then. He may GUESS, beforehand, as to some of his immediate neighbors. But he really knows nothing. The man to whom he would most naturally fly for protection, may prove an enemy, when the time of trial comes. This is the kind of government we have; and it is the only one we are likely to have, until men are ready to say: We will consent to no Constitution, except such an one as we are neither ashamed nor afraid to sign; and we will authorize no government to do anything in our name which we are not willing to be personally responsible for. IX. What is the motive to the secret ballot? This, and only this: Like other confederates in crime, those who use it are not friends, but enemies; and they are afraid to be known, and to have their individual doings known, even to each other. They can contrive to bring about a sufficient understanding to enable them to act in concert against other persons; but beyond this they have no confidence, and no friendship, among themselves. In fact, they are engaged quite as much in schemes for plundering each other, as in plundering those who are not of them. And it is perfectly well understood among them that the strongest party among them will, in certain contingencies, murder each other by the hundreds of thousands (as they lately did do) to accomplish their purposes against each other. Hence they dare not be known, and have their individual doings known, even to each other. And this is avowedly the only reason for the ballot: for a secret government; a government by secret bands of robbers and murderers. And we are insane enough to call this liberty! To be a member of this secret band of robbers and murderers is esteemed a privilege and an honor! Without this privilege, a man is considered a slave; but with it a free man! With it he is considered a free man, because he has the same power to secretly (by secret ballot) procure the robbery, enslavement, and murder of another man, and that other man has to procure his robbery, enslavement, and murder. And this they call equal rights! If any number of men, many or few, claim the right to govern the people of this country, let them make and sign an open compact with each other to do so. Let them thus make themselves individually known to those whom they propose to govern. And let them thus openly take the legitimate responsibility of their acts. How many of those who now support the Constitution, will ever do this? How many will ever dare openly proclaim their right to govern? or take the legitimate responsibility of their acts? Not one! X. It is obvious that, on general principles of law and reason, there exists no such thing as a government created by, or resting upon, any consent, compact, or agreement of "the people of the United States" with each other; that the only visible, tangible, responsible government that exists, is that of a few individuals only, who act in concert, and call themselves by the several names of senators, representatives, presidents, judges, marshals, treasurers, collectors, generals, colonels, captains, etc., etc. On general principles of law and reason, it is of no importance whatever that these few individuals profess to be the agents and representatives of "the people of the United States"; since they can show no credentials from the people themselves; they were never appointed as agents or representatives in any open, authentic manner; they do not themselves know, and have no means of knowing, and cannot prove, who their principals (as they call them) are individually; and consequently cannot, in law or reason, be said to have any principals at all. It is obvious, too, that if these alleged principals ever did appoint these pretended agents, or representatives, they appointed them secretly (by secret ballot), and in a way to avoid all personal responsibility for their acts; that, at most, these alleged principals put these pretended agents forward for the most criminal purposes, viz.: to plunder the people of their property, and restrain them of their liberty; and that the only authority that these alleged principals have for so doing, is simply a TACIT UNDERSTANDING among themselves that they will imprison, shoot, or hang every man who resists the exactions and restraints which their agents or representatives may impose upon them. Thus it is obvious that the only visible, tangible government we have is made up of these professed agents or representatives of a secret band of robbers and murderers, who, to cover up, or gloss over, their robberies and murders, have taken to themselves the title of "the people of the United States"; and who, on the pretense of being "the people of the United States," assert their right to subject to their dominion, and to control and dispose of at their pleasure, all property and persons found in the United States. no.treason.11 [Note: I have split up some especially long paragraphs in the following section into sequences of shorter paragraphs connected by back-slashes ("\").] XI. On general principles of law and reason, the oaths which these pretended agents of the people take "to support the Constitution," are of no validity or obligation. And why? For this, if for no other reason, viz., THAT THEY ARE GIVEN TO NOBODY. There is no privity (as the lawyers say) -- that is, no mutual recognition, consent, and agreement -- between those who take these oaths, and any other persons. If I go upon Boston Common, and in the presence of a hundred thousand people, men, women and children, with whom I have no contract upon the subject, take an oath that I will enforce upon them the laws of Moses, of Lycurgus, of Solon, of Justinian, or of Alfred, that oath is, on general principles of law and reason, of no obligation. It is of no obligation, not merely because it is intrinsically a criminal one, BUT ALSO BECAUSE IT IS GIVEN TO NOBODY, and consequently pledges my faith to nobody. It is merely given to the winds. It would not alter the case at all to say that, among these hundred thousand persons, in whose presence the oath was taken, there were two, three, or five thousand male adults, who had SECRETLY -- by secret ballot, and in a way to avoid making themselves INDIVIDUALLY known to me, or to the remainder of the hundred thousand -- designated me as their agent to rule, control, plunder, and, if need be, murder, these hundred thousand people. The fact that they had designated me secretly, and in a manner to prevent my knowing them individually, prevents all privity between them and me; and consequently makes it impossible that there can be any contract, or pledge of faith, on my part towards them; for it is impossible that I can pledge my faith, in any legal sense, to a man whom I neither know, nor have any means of knowing, individually. So far as I am concerned, then, these two, three, or five thousand persons are a secret band of robbers and murderers, who have secretly, and in a way to save themselves from all responsibility for my acts, designated me as their agent; and have, through some other agent, or pretended agent, made their wishes known to me. But being, nevertheless, individually unknown to me, and having no open, authentic contract with me, my oath is, on general principles of law and reason, of no validity as a pledge of faith to them. And being no pledge of faith to them, it is no pledge of faith to anybody. It is mere idle wind. At most, it is only a pledge of faith to an unknown band of robbers and murderers, whose instrument for plundering and murdering other people, I thus publicly confess myself to be. And it has no other obligation than a similar oath given to any other unknown body of pirates, robbers, and murderers. For these reasons the oaths taken by members of Congress, "to support the Constitution," are, on general principles of law and reason, of no validity. They are not only criminal in themselves, and therefore void; but they are also void for the further reason THAT THEY ARE GIVEN TO NOBODY. It cannot be said that, in any legitimate or legal sense, they are given to "the people of the United States"; because neither the whole, nor any large proportion of the whole, people of the United States ever, either openly or secretly, appointed or designated these men as their agents to carry the Constitution into effect. The great body of the people -- that is, men, women, and children -- were never asked, or even permitted, to signify, in any FORMAL manner, either openly or secretly, their choice or wish on the subject. The most that these members of Congress can say, in favor of their appointment, is simply this: Each one can say for himself: I have evidence satisfactory to myself, that there exists, scattered throughout the country, a band of men, having a tacit understanding with each other, and calling themselves "the people of the United States," whose general purposes are to control and plunder each other, and all other persons in the country, and, so far as they can, even in neighboring countries; and to kill every man who shall attempt to defend his person and property against their schemes of plunder and dominion. Who these men are, INDIVIDUALLY, I have no certain means of knowing, for they sign no papers, and give no open, authentic evidence of their individual membership. They are not known individually even to each other. They are apparently as much afraid of being individually known to each other, as of being known to other persons. Hence they ordinarily have no mode either of exercising, or of making known, their individual membership, otherwise than by giving their votes secretly for certain agents to do their will. But although these men are individually unknown, both to each other and to other persons, it is generally understood in the country that none but male persons, of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, can be members. It is also generally understood that ALL male persons, born in the country, having certain complexions, and (in some localities) certain amounts of property, and (in certain cases) even persons of foreign birth, are PERMITTED to be members. But it appears that usually not more than one half, two-thirds, or in some cases, three-fourths, of all who are thus permitted to become members of the band, ever exercise, or consequently prove, their actual membership, in the only mode in which they ordinarily can exercise or prove it, viz., by giving their votes secretly for the officers or agents of the band. The number of these secret votes, so far as we have any account of them, varies greatly from year to year, thus tending to prove that the band, instead of being a permanent organization, is a merely PRO TEMPORE affair with those who choose to act with it for the time being. \ The gross number of these secret votes, or what purports to be their gross number, in different localities, is occasionally published. Whether these reports are accurate or not, we have no means of knowing. It is generally supposed that great frauds are often committed in depositing them. They are understood to be received and counted by certain men, who are themselves appointed for that purpose by the same secret process by which all other officers and agents of the band are selected. According to the reports of these receivers of votes (for whose accuracy or honesty, however, I cannot vouch), and according to my best knowledge of the whole number of male persons "in my district," who (it is supposed) were permitted to vote, it would appear that one-half, two-thirds or three-fourths actually did vote. Who the men were, individually, who cast these votes, I have no knowledge, for the whole thing was done secretly. But of the secret votes thus given for what they call a "member of Congress," the receivers reported that I had a majority, or at least a larger number than any other one person. And it is only by virtue of such a designation that I am now here to act in concert with other persons similarly selected in other parts of the country. \ It is understood among those who sent me here, that all persons so selected, will, on coming together at the City of Washington, take an oath in each other's presence "to support the Constitution of the United States." By this is meant a certain paper that was drawn up eighty years ago. It was never signed by anybody, and apparently has no obligation, and never had any obligation, as a contract. In fact, few persons ever read it, and doubtless much the largest number of those who voted for me and the others, never even saw it, or now pretend to know what it means. Nevertheless, it is often spoken of in the country as "the Constitution of the United States"; and for some reason or other, the men who sent me here, seem to expect that I, and all with whom I act, will swear to carry this Constitution into effect. I am therefore ready to take this oath, and to co-operate with all others, similarly selected, who are ready to take the same oath. This is the most that any member of Congress can say in proof that he has any constituency; that he represents anybody; that his oath "to support the Constitution," IS GIVEN TO ANYBODY, or pledges his faith to ANYBODY. He has no open, written, or other authentic evidence, such as is required in all other cases, that he was ever appointed the agent or representative of anybody. He has no written power of attorney from any single individual. He has no such legal knowledge as is required in all other cases, by which he can identify a single one of those who pretend to have appointed him to represent them. Of course his oath, professedly given to them, "to support the Constitution," is, on general principles of law and reason, an oath given to nobody. It pledges his faith to nobody. If he fails to fulfil his oath, not a single person can come forward, and say to him, you have betrayed me, or broken faith with me. No one can come forward and say to him: I appointed you my attorney to act for me. I required you to swear that, as my attorney, you would support the Constitution. You promised me that you would do so; and now you have forfeited the oath you gave to me. No single individual can say this. No open, avowed, or responsible association, or body of men, can come forward and say to him: We appointed you our attorney, to act forus. We required you to swear that, as our attorney, you would support the Constitution. You promised us that you would do so; and now you have forfeited the oath you gave to us. No open, avowed, or responsible association, or body of men, can say this to him; because there is no such association or body of men in existence. If any one should assert that there is such an association, let him prove, if he can, who compose it. Let him produce, if he can, any open, written, or other authentic contract, signed or agreed to by these men; forming themselves into an association; making themselves known as such to the world; appointing him as their agent; and making themselves individually, or as an association, responsible for his acts, done by their authority. Until all this can be shown, no one can say that, in any legitimate sense, there is any such association; or that he is their agent; or that he ever gave his oath to them; or ever pledged his faith to them. On general principles of law and reason, it would be a sufficient answer for him to say, to all individuals, and to all pretended associations of individuals, who should accuse him of a breach of faith to them: I never knew you. Where is your evidence that you, either individually or collectively, ever appointed me your attorney? that you ever required me to swear to you, that, as your attorney, I would support the Constitution? or that I have now broken any faith that I ever pledged to you? You may, or you may not, be members of that secret band of robbers and murderers, who act in secret; appoint their agents by a secret ballot; who keep themselves individually unknown even to the agents they thus appoint; and who, therefore, cannot claim that they have any agents; or that any of their pretended agents ever gave his oath, or pledged his faith to them. I repudiate you altogether. My oath was given to others, with whom you have nothing to do; or it was idle wind, given only to the idle winds. Begone! XII. For the same reasons, the oaths of all the other pretended agents of this secret band of robbers and murderers are, on general principles of law and reason, equally destitute of obligation. They are given to nobody; but only to the winds. The oaths of the tax-gatherers and treasurers of the band, are, on general principles of law and reason, of no validity. If any tax gatherer, for example, should put the money he receives into his own pocket, and refuse to part with it, the members of this band could not say to him: You collected that money as our agent, and for our uses; and you swore to pay it over to us, or to those we should appoint to receive it. You have betrayed us, and broken faith with us. It would be a sufficient answer for him to say to them: I never knew you. You never made yourselves individually known to me. I never game by oath to you, as individuals. You may, or you may not, be members of that secret band, who appoint agents to rob and murder other people; but who are cautious not to make themselves individually known, either to such agents, or to those whom their agents are commissioned to rob. If you are members of that band, you have given me no proof that you ever commissioned me to rob others for your benefit. I never knew you, as individuals, and of course never promised you that I would pay over to you the proceeds of my robberies. I committed my robberies on my own account, and for my own profit. If you thought I was fool enough to allow you to keep yourselves concealed, and use me as your tool for robbing other persons; or that I would take all the personal risk of the robberies, and pay over the proceeds to you, you were particularly simple. As I took all the risk of my robberies, I propose to take all the profits. Begone! You are fools, as well as villains. If I gave my oath to anybody, I gave it to other persons than you. But I really gave it to nobody. I only gave it to the winds. It answered my purposes at the time. It enabled me to get the money I was after, and now I propose to keep it. If you expected me to pay it over to you, you relied only upon that honor that is said to prevail among thieves. You now understand that that is a very poor reliance. I trust you may become wise enough to never rely upon it again. If I have any duty in the matter, it is to give back the money to those from whom I took it; not to pay it over to villains such as you. XIII. On general principles of law and reason, the oaths which foreigners take, on coming here, and being "naturalized" (as it is called), are of no validity. They are necessarily given to nobody; because there is no open, authentic association, to which they can join themselves; or to whom, as individuals, they can pledge their faith. No such association, or organization, as "the people of the United States," having ever been formed by any open, written, authentic, or voluntary contract, there is, on general principles of law and reason, no such association, or organization, in existence. And all oaths that purport to be given to such an association are necessarily given only to the winds. They cannot be said to be given to any man, or body of men, as individuals, because no man, or body of men, can come forward WITH ANY PROOF that the oaths were given to them, as individuals, or to any association of which they are members. To say that there is a tacit understanding among a portion of the male adults of the country, that they will call themselves "the people of the United States," and that they will act in concert in subjecting the remainder of the people of the United States to their dominion; but that they will keep themselves personally concealed by doing all their acts secretly, is wholly insufficient, on general principles of law and reason, to prove the existence of any such association, or organization, as "the people of the United States"; or consequently to prove that the oaths of foreigners were given to any such association. XIV. On general principles of law and reason, all the oaths which, since the war, have been given by Southern men, that they will obey the laws of Congress, support the Union, and the like, are of no validity. Such oaths are invalid, not only because they were extorted by military power, and threats of confiscation, and because they are in contravention of men's natural right to do as they please about supporting the government, BUT ALSO BECAUSE THEY WERE GIVEN TO NOBODY. They were nominally given to "the United States." But being nominally given to "the United States," they were necessarily given to nobody, because, on general principles of law and reason, there were no "United States," to whom the oaths could be given. That is to say, there was no open, authentic, avowed, legitimate association, corporation, or body of men, known as "the United States," or as "the people of the United States," to whom the oaths could have been given. If anybody says there was such a corporation, let him state who were the individuals that composed it, and how and when they became a corporation. Were Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C members of it? If so, where are their signatures? Where the evidence of their membership? Where the record? Where the open, authentic proof? There is none. Therefore, in law and reason, there was no such corporation. On general principles of law and reason, every corporation, association, or organized body of men, having a legitimate corporate existence, and legitimate corporate rights, must consist of certain known individuals, who can prove, by legitimate and reasonable evidence, their membership. But nothing of this kind can be proved in regard to the corporation, or body of men, who call themselves "the United States." Not a man of them, in all the Northern States, can prove by any legitimate evidence, such as is required to prove membership in other legal corporations, that he himself, or any other man whom he can name, is a member of any corporation or association called "the United States," or "the people of the United States," or, consequently, that there is any such corporation. And since no such corporation can be proved to exist, it cannot of course be proved that the oaths of Southern men were given to any such corporation. The most that can be claimed is that the oaths were given to a secret band of robbers and murderers, who called themselves "the United States," and extorted those oaths. But that is certainly not enough to prove that the oaths are of any obligation. XV. On general principles of law and reason, the oaths of soldiers, that they will serve a given number of years, that they will obey the the orders of their superior officers, that they will bear true allegiance to the government, and so forth, are of no obligation. Independently of the criminality of an oath, that, for a given number of years, he will kill all whom he may be commanded to kill, without exercising his own judgment or conscience as to the justice or necessity of such killing, there is this further reason why a soldier's oath is of no obligation, viz., that, like all the other oaths that have now been mentioned, IT IS GIVEN TO NOBODY. There being, in no legitimate sense, any such corporation, or nation, as "the United States," nor, consequently, in any legitimate sense, any such government as "the government of the United States," a soldier's oath given to, or contract made with, such a nation or government, is necessarily an oath given to, or contract made with, nobody. Consequently such an oath or contract can be of no obligation. XVI. On general principles of law and reason, the treaties, so called, which purport to be entered into with other nations, by persons calling themselves ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators of the United States, in the name, and in behalf, of "the people of the United States," are of no validity. These so-called ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators, who claim to be the agents of "the people of the United States" for making these treaties, can show no open, written, or other authentic evidence that either the whole "people of the United States," or any other open, avowed, responsible body of men, calling themselves by that name, ever authorized these pretended ambassadors and others to make treaties in the name of, or binding upon any one of, "the people of the United States," or any other open, avowed, responsible body of men, calling themselves by that name, ever authorized these pretended ambassadors, secretaries, and others, in their name and behalf, to recognize certain other persons, calling themselves emperors, kings, queens, and the like, as the rightful rulers, sovereigns, masters, or representatives of the different peoples whom they assume to govern, to represent, and to bind. The "nations," as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such "nations." That is to say, neither the whole people of England, for example, nor any open, avowed, responsible body of men, calling themselves by that name, ever, by any open, written, or other authentic contract with each other, formed themselves into any bona fide, legitimate association or organization, or authorized any king, queen, or other representative to make treaties in their name, or to bind them, either individually, or as an association, by such treaties. Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have instrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades. XVII. On general principles of law and reason, debts contracted in the name of "the United States," or of "the people of the United States," are of no validity. It is utterly absurd to pretend that debts to the amount of twenty-five hundred millions of dollars are binding upon thirty-five or forty millions of people [the approximate national debt and population in 1870], when there is not a particle of legitimate evidence -- such as would be required to prove a private debt -- that can be produced against any one of them, that either he, or his properly authorized attorney, ever contracted to pay one cent. Certainly, neither the whole people of the United States, nor any number of them, ever separately or individually contracted to pay a cent of these debts. Certainly, also, neither the whole people of the United States, nor any number of them, every, by any open, written, or other authentic and voluntary contract, united themselves as a firm, corporation, or association, by the name of "the United States," or "the people of the United States," and authorized their agents to contract debts in their name. Certainly, too, there is in existence no such firm, corporation, or association as "the United States," or "the people of the United States," formed by any open, written, or other authentic and voluntary contract, and having corporate property with which to pay these debts. How, then, is it possible, on any general principle of law or reason, that debts that are binding upon nobody individually, can be binding upon forty millions of people collectively, when, on general and legitimate principles of law and reason, these forty millions of people neither have, nor ever had, any corporate property? never made any corporate or individual contract? and neither have, nor ever had, any corporate existence? Who, then, created these debts, in the name of "the United States"? Why, at most, only a few persons, calling themselves "members of Congress," etc., who pretended to represent "the people of the United States," but who really represented only a secret band of robbers and murderers, who wanted money to carry on the robberies and murders in which they were then engaged; and who intended to extort from the future people of the United States, by robbery and threats of murder (and real murder, if that should prove necessary), the means to pay these debts. This band of robbers and murderers, who were the real principals in contracting these debts, is a secret one, because its members have never entered into any open, written, avowed, or authentic contract, by which they may be individually known to the world, or even to each other. Their real or pretended representatives, who contracted these debts in their name, were selected (if selected at all) for that purpose secretly (by secret ballot), and in a way to furnish evidence against none of the principals INDIVIDUALLY; and these principals were really known INDIVIDUALLY neither to their pretended representatives who contracted these debts in their behalf, nor to those who lent the money. The money, therefore, was all borrowed and lent in the dark; that is, by men who did not see each other's faces, or know each other's names; who could not then, and cannot now, identify each other as principals in the transactions; and who consequently can prove no contract with each other. Furthermore, the money was all lent and borrowed for criminal purposes; that is, for purposes of robbery and murder; and for this reason the contracts were all intrinsically void; and would have been so, even though the real parties, borrowers and lenders, had come face to face, and made their contracts openly, in their own proper names. Furthermore, this secret band of robbers and murderers, who were the real borrowers of this money, having no legitimate corporate existence, have no corporate property with which to pay these debts. They do indeed pretend to own large tracts of wild lands, lying between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and between the Gulf of Mexico and the North Pole. But, on general principles of law and reason, they might as well pretend to own the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans themselves; or the atmosphere and the sunlight; and to hold them, and dispose of them, for the payment of these debts. Having no corporate property with which to pay what purports to be their corporate debts, this secret band of robbers and murderers are really bankrupt. They have nothing to pay with. In fact, they do not propose to pay their debts otherwise than from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders. These are confessedly their sole reliance; and were known to be such by the lenders of the money, at the time the money was lent. And it was, therefore, virtually a part of the contract, that the money should be repaid only from the proceeds of these future robberies and murders. For this reason, if for no other, the contracts were void from the beginning. In fact, these apparently two classes, borrowers and lenders, were really one and the same class. They borrowed and lent money from and to themselves. They themselves were not only part and parcel, but the very life and soul, of this secret band of robbers and murderers, who borrowed and spent the money. Individually they furnished money for a common enterprise; taking, in return, what purported to be corporate promises for individual loans. The only excuse they had for taking these so-called corporate promises of, for individual loans by, the same parties, was that they might have some apparent excuse for the future robberies of the band (that is, to pay the debts of the corporation), and that they might also know what shares they were to be respectively entitled to out of the proceeds of their future robberies. Finally, if these debts had been created for the most innocent and honest purposes, and in the most open and honest manner, by the real parties to the contracts, these parties could thereby have bound nobody but themselves, and no property but their own. They could have bound nobody that should have come after them, and no property subsequently created by, or belonging to, other persons. XVIII. The Constitution having never been signed by anybody; and there being no other open, written, or authentic contract between any parties whatever, by virtue of which the United States government, so called, is maintained; and it being well known that none but male persons, of twenty-one years of age and upwards, are allowed any voice in the government; and it being also well known that a large number of these adult persons seldom or never vote at all; and that all those who do vote, do so secretly (by secret ballot), and in a way to prevent their individual votes being known, either to the world, or even to each other; and consequently in a way to make no one openly responsible for the acts of their agents, or representatives, -- all these things being known, the questions arise: WHO compose the real governing power in the country? Who are the men, THE RESPONSIBLE MEN, who rob us of our property? Restrain us of our liberty? Subject us to their arbitrary dominion? And devastate our hooms, and shoot us down by the hundreds of thousands, if we resist? How shall we find these men? How shall we know them from others? How shall we defend ourselves and our property against them? Who, of our neighbors, are members of this secret band of robbers and murderers? How can we know which are THEIR houses, that we may burn or demolish them? Which THEIR property, that we may destroy it? Which their persons, that we may kill them, and rid the world and ourselves of such tyrants and monsters? These are questions that must be answered, before men can be free; before they can protect themselves against this secret band of robbers and murderers, who now plunder, enslave, and destroy them. The answer to these questions is, that only those who have the will and power to shoot down their fellow men, are the real rulers in this, as in all other (so-called) civilized countries; for by no others will civilized men be robbed, or enslaved. Among savages, mere physical strength, on the part of one man, may enable him to rob, enslave, or kill another man. Among barbarians, mere physical strength, on the part of a body of men, disciplined, and acting in concert, though with very little money or other wealth, may, under some circumstances, enable them to rob, enslave, or kill another body of men, as numerous, or perhaps even more numerous, than themselves. And among both savages and barbarians, mere want may sometimes compel one man to sell himself as a slave to another. But with (so-called) civilized peoples, among whom knowledge, wealth, and the means of acting in concert, have becom diffusede; and who have invented such weapons and other means of defense as to render mere physical strength of less importance; and by whom soldiers in any requisite number, and other instrumentalities of war in any requisite amount, can always be had for money, the question of war, and consequently the question of power, is little else than a mere question of money. As a necessary consequence, those who stand ready to furnish this money, are the real rulers. It is so in Europe, and it is so in this country. In Europe, the nominal rulers, the emperors and kings and parliaments, are anything but the real rulers of their respective countries. They are little or nothing else than mere tools, employed by the wealthy to rob, enslave, and (if need be) murder those who have less wealth, or none at all. The Rosthchilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents -- men who never think of lending a shilling to their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest -- stand ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved. They lend their money in this manner, knowing that it is to be expended in murdering their fellow men, for simply seeking their liberty and their rights; knowing also that neither the interest nor the principal will ever be paid, except as it will be extorted under terror of the repetition of such murders as those for which the money lent is to be expended. These money-lenders, the Rosthchilds, for example, say to themselves: If we lend a hundred millions sterling to the queen and parliament of England, it will enable them to murder twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand people in England, Ireland, or India; and the terror inspired by such wholesale slaughter, will enable them to keep the whole people of those countries in subjection for twenty, or perhaps fifty, years to come; to control all their trade and industry; and to extort from them large amounts of money, under the name of taxes; and from the wealth thus extorted from them, they (the queen and parliament) can afford to pay us a higher rate of interest for our money than we can get in any other way. Or, if we lend this sum to the emperor of Austria, it will enable him to murder so many of his people as to strike terror into the rest, and thus enable him to keep them in subjection, and extort money from them, for twenty or fifty years to come. And they say the same in regard to the emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, the emperor of France, or any other ruler, so called, who, in their judgment, will be able, by murdering a reasonable portion of his people, to keep the rest in subjection, and extort money from them, for a long time to come, to pay the interest and the principal of the money lent him. And why are these men so ready to lend money for murdering their fellow men? Soley for this reason, viz., that such loans are considered better investments than loans for purposes of honest industry. They pay higher rates of interest; and it is less trouble to look after them. This is the whole matter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | "...no government, so called, can reasonably be | trusted for a moment, ... any longer than it | depends wholly upon voluntary support." | -- Lysander Spooner ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The question of making these loans is, with these lenders, a mere question of pecuniary profit. They lend money to be expended in robbing, enslaving, and murdering their fellow men, solely because, on the whole, such loans pay better than any others. They are no respecters of persons, no superstitious fools, that reverence monarchs. They care no more for a king, or an emperor, than they do for a beggar, except as he is a better customer, and can pay them better interest for their money. If they doubt his ability to make his murders successful for maintaining his power, and thus extorting money from his people in future, they dismiss him unceremoniously as they would dismiss any other hopeless bankrupt, who should want to borrow money to save himself >from open insolvency. When these great lenders of blood-money, like the Rothschilds, have loaned vast sums in this way, for purposes of murder, to an emperor or a king, they sell out the bonds taken by them, in small amounts, to anybody, and everybody, who are disposed to buy them at satisfactory prices, to hold as investments. They (the Rothschilds) thus soon get back their money, with great profits; and are now ready to lend money in the same way again to any other robber and murderer, called an emperor or king, who, they think, is likely to be successful in his robberies and murders, and able to pay a good price for the money necessary to carry them on. This business of lending blood-money is one of the most thoroughly sordid, cold-blooded, and criminal that was ever carried on, to any considerable extent, amongst human beings. It is like lending money to slave traders, or to common robbers and pirates, to be repaid out of their plunder. And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived. When these emperors and kings, so-called, have obtained their loans, they proceed to hire and train immense numbers of professional murderers, called soldiers, and employ them in shooting down all who resist their demands for money. In fact, most of them keep large bodies of these murderers constantly in their service, as their only means of enforcing their extortions. There are now [1870], I think, four or five millions of these professional murderers constantly employed by the so-called sovereigns of Europe. The enslaved people are, of course, forced to support and pay all these murderers, as well as to submit to all the other extortions which these murderers are employed to enforce. It is only in this way that most of the so-called governments of Europe are maintained. These so-called governments are in reality only great bands of robbers and murderers, organized, disciplined, and constantly on the alert. And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers. And these heads or chiefs are dependent upon the lenders of blood-money for the means to carry on their robberies and murders. They could not sustain themselves a moment but for the loans made to them by these blood-money loan-mongers. And their first care is to maintain their credit with them; for they know their end is come, the instant their credit with them fails. Consequently the first proceeds of their extortions are scrupulously applied to the payment of the interest on their loans. In addition to paying the interest on their bonds, they perhaps grant to the holders of them great monopolies in banking, like the Banks of England, of France, and of Vienna; with the agreement that these banks shall furnish money whenever, in sudden emergencies, it may be necessary to shoot down more of their people. Perhaps also, by means of tariffs on competing imports, they give great monopolies to certain branches of industry, in which these lenders of blood-money are engaged. They also, by unequal taxation, exempt wholly or partially the property of these loan-mongers, and throw corresponding burdens upon those who are too poor and weak to resist. Thus it is evident that all these men, who call themselves by the high-sounding names of Emperors, Kings, Sovereigns, Monarchs, Most Christian Majesties, Most Catholic Majesties, High Mightinesses, Most Serene and Potent Princes, and the like, and who claim to rule "by the grace of God," by "Divine Right" -- that is, by special authority from Heaven -- are intrinsically not only the merest miscreants and wretches, engaged solely in plundering, enslaving, and murdering their fellow men, but that they are also the merest hangers on, the servile, obsequious, fawning dependents and tools of these blood-money loan-mongers, on whom they rely for the means to carry on their crimes. These loan-mongers, like the Rothschilds, laugh in their sleeves, and say to themselves: These despicable creatures, who call themselves emperors, and kings, and majesties, and most serene and potent princes; who profess to wear crowns, and sit on thrones; who deck themselves with ribbons, and feathers, and jewels; and surround themselves with hired flatterers and lickspittles; and whom we suffer to strut around, and palm themselves off, upon fools and slaves, as sovereigns and lawgivers specially appointed by Almighty God; and to hold themselves out as the sole fountains of honors, and dignities, and wealth, and power -- all these miscreants and imposters know that we make them, and use them; that in us they live, move, and have their being; that we require them (as the price of their positions) to take upon themselves all the labor, all the danger, and all the odium of all the crimes they commit for our profit; and that we will unmake them, strip them of their gewgaws, and send them out into the world as beggars, or give them over to the vengeance of the people they have enslaved, the moment they refuse to commit any crime we require of them, or to pay over to us such share of the proceeds of their robberies as we see fit to demand. XIX. Now, what is true in Europe, is substantially true in this country. The difference is the immaterial one, that, in this country, there is no visible, permanent head, or chief, of these robbers and murderers who call themselves "the government." That is to say, there is no ONE MAN, who calls himself the state, or even emperor, king, or sovereign; no one who claims that he and his children rule "by the Grace of God," by "Divine Right," or by special appointment from Heaven. There are only certain men, who call themselves presidents, senators, and representatives, and claim to be the authorized agents, FOR THE TIME BEING, OR FOR CERTAIN SHORT PERIODS, OF ALL "the people of the United States"; but who can show no credentials, or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so; and who notoriously are not so; but are really only the agents of a secret band of robbers and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing, individually; but who, they trust, will openly or secretly, when the crisis comes, sustain them in all their usurpations and crimes. What is important to be noticed is, that these so-called presidents, senators, and representatives, these pretended agents of all "the people of the United States," the moment their exactions meet with any formidable resistance from any portion of "the people" themselves, are obliged, like their co-robbers and murderers in Europe, to fly at once to the lenders of blood money, for the means to sustain their power. And they borrow their money on the same principle, and for the same purpose, viz., to be expended in shooting down all those "people of the United States" -- their own constituents and principals, as they profess to call them -- who resist the robberies and enslavements which these borrowers of the money are practising upon them. And they expect to repay the loans, if at all, only from the proceeds of the future robberies, which they anticipate it will be easy for them and their successors to perpetrate through a long series of years, upon their pretended principals, if they can but shoot down now some hundreds of thousands of them, and thus strike terror into the rest. Perhaps the facts were never made more evident, in any country on the globe, than in our own, that these soulless blood-money loan-mongers are the real rulers; that they rule from the most sordid and mercenary motives; that the ostensible government, the presidents, senators, and representatives, so called, are merely their tools; and that no ideas of, or regard for, justice or liberty had anything to do in inducing them to lend their money for the war [i.e, the Civil War]. In proof of all this, look at the following facts. Nearly a hundred years ago we professed to have got rid of all that religious superstition, inculcated by a servile and corrupt priesthood in Europe, that rulers, so called, derived their authority directly from Heaven; and that it was consequently a religious duty on the part of the people to obey them. We professed long ago to have learned that governments could rightfully exist only by the free will, and on the voluntary support, of those who might choose to sustain them. We all professed to have known long ago, that the only legitimate objects of government were the maintenance of liberty and justice equally for all. All this we had professed for nearly a hundred years. And we professed to look with pity and contempt upon those ignorant, superstitious, and enslaved peoples of Europe, who were so easily kept in subjection by the frauds and force of priests and kings. Notwithstanding all this, that we had learned, and known, and professed, for nearly a century, these lenders of blood money had, for a long series of years previous to the war, been the willing accomplices of the slave-holders in perverting the government from the purposes of liberty and justice, to the greatest of crimes. They had been such accomplices FOR A PURELY PECUNIARY CONSIDERATION, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North (who afterwards furnished the money for the war). And these Northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood-money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary considerations. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future -- that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South -- that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These -- and not any love of liberty or justice -- were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may. On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of the war were accomplished. And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villanous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest -- enormous as the latter was -- are to be paid in full; but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further -- and perhaps doubly, triply, or quadruply paid -- by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war. This programme having been fully arranged and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war, [undoubtedly a reference to General Grant, who had just become president] and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says, "LET US HAVE PEACE." The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have "peace." But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you. These are the terms on which alone this government, or, with few exceptions, any other, ever gives "peace" to its people. The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the president are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them. And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have "Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the Country!" That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and that, in now paying the "National Debt," as they call it (as if the people themselves, ALL OF THEM WHO ARE TO BE TAXED FOR ITS PAYMENT, had really and voluntarily joined in contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining the National Honor!" By "maintaining the national honor," they mean simply that they themselves, open robbers and murderers, assume to be the nation, and will keep faith with those who lend them the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their feet; and will faithfully appropriate, from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest. The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general -- not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man -- although that was not the motive of the war -- as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle -- but only of degree -- between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ >from each other only in degree. If their object had really been to abolish slavery, or maintain liberty or justice generally, they had only to say: All, whether white or black, who want the protection of this government, shall have it; and all who do not want it, will be left in peace, so long as they leave us in peace. Had they said this, slavery would necessarily have been abolished at once; the war would have been saved; and a thousand times nobler union than we have ever had would have been the result. It would have been a voluntary union of free men; such a union as will one day exist among all men, the world over, if the several nations, so called, shall ever get rid of the usurpers, robbers, and murderers, called governments, that now plunder, enslave, and destroy them. Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, "a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this -- that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is called "peace." Their pretenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call "Saving the Country"; as if an enslaved and subjugated people -- or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) -- could be said to have any country. This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated. All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats -- so transparent that they ought to deceive no one -- when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has suceeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want. The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continue to pay "national debts," so-called -- that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered -- so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters. APPENDIX. Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain -- that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist. [The end] From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 1 20:42:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 15:42:22 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Kenneth Minogue: Journalism: Power without responsibility Message-ID: Kenneth Minogue: Journalism: Power without responsibility The New Criterion Vol. 23, No. 6, February 2005 http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/feb05/journalism.htm [This is worth reading entire. He is one of the few conservatives I find worth reading. The others are Roger Scruton and, if he really is a conservative, John Gray. All three are English!] Stanley Baldwin's bitter jibe that journalists enjoy "the privilege of the harlot down the ages--power without responsibility"--still resonates. One reason is certainly because we recognize that--alas!--we cannot live without journalism. We might sometimes imagine that it is merely the stuff we read in the newspapers every day, but actually journalism is a mode in which we think. It indelibly marks our first response to everything. It dominates television and surrounds us in the vast publishing industry of popularization. The scholar and the professional may escape it as they specialize, but the moment they step outside what they really know about, they enter the flow of popularized understanding like the rest of us. This means that journalism is a problem at two levels. Baldwin's jibe points to the profound idea that there is something essentially pathological about the whole activity that daily satisfies our often pointless curiosity about what is going on in the world. But there is a less extreme position that accords more with common sense: namely, that in our educated and democratic world, a great deal of information is indispensable, and journalism is the only way we can have it. Even here, however, large events such as the Iraq war of 2004 have caused many critics to judge that journalism has lost such integrity as it ever had and is being used to nudge us towards some version of right thinking. Journalism had slid, it has been suggested, into propaganda. We thus have two theses to consider. The first is that journalism in itself is a pathological distortion of our civilization, and the second is that the perfectly respectable and certainly necessary trade of informing us about the world has lost its integrity and become, in some degree, a parody of truth--in a word, pathological. It is not entirely possible to separate these ideas, but let us take each in turn. Journalism responds to the old Roman question: Quid novi?--What's new? The question only makes sense against a background of: What's old? The answer must be composed of things called "events," and, as the etymology of eventus suggests, an event is something understood as the outcome of some earlier situation. Event-making is an art that turns familiar routines and facts into patterns having a certain uniqueness. Some people are better at it than others, but once the art has been learned, most people can do it to some extent. It is all a matter of scale: the Bible tells some stories in a few sentences, while writers of fiction can spin someone's day into a long novel. Responding to stories is one way of conducting life, distinguishable from the times when we are responding to routines, sensations, classifications, or reflections. No life can avoid gossip, ritual, and response to overriding events such as war or famine, but most people, especially if they are illiterate, have hitherto been interested in little beyond what affects them directly. Journalism is the cultivation of concern for things that are for the most part remote from us. The basic contrast is with religion, which is concerned with rituals and sermons revolving around beliefs about our eternal situation. Kierkegaard mistrusted journalism because he thought it would feed our love of the ephemeral, and he was no doubt right about this. Hegel remarked that in his time, newspapers were replacing morning prayer. Perhaps the earliest writer to regard our involvement with daily events as a pathology distracting us from the realities of the human condition was Pascal. As journalism in the contemporary world has extended its range, it has certainly taken in churchly events and concerned itself with the beliefs of different religions, but the very context of such news robs it of the superior status it has for believers, and diminishes religion to the same level as the vast miscellany of other human activities that are also being reported. Religions are composed of archetypes that have a status above the constant flow of ideas and news stories. We respond (or do not respond) to such archetypes in a reflective manner that determines how we view the world, but where journalism dominates our thoughts, reflectiveness is diluted by the passion for novelty. We move from an article on religion to one on fashion, sport, or public affairs. Like democracy, journalism is a manic equalizer. Historically, journalism emerged from the specific interests of princes, merchants, and administrators. A prince needed to know something of foreign powers, and his ambassador sent him back reports, just as a merchant needed to know of profitable opportunities and conditions of trade. A universal institution such as the Papacy needed a constant flow of information. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese, etc. were great annalists, and Herodotus is credited, as the father of History, with creating prose literature out of an assemblage of contingencies, but the drive of most of these writers was precisely to get beyond contingency and find a broader explanatory structure. Printing, of course, transformed everything, leading to the movement of power away from grand patrons towards educated city-dwellers. Large political issues were argued out in books, pamphlets, and broadsheets. The writings of diplomats and merchants were soon being supplemented by correspondents writing for a wider audience. It was the beginning of the end for arcana imperii. By the eighteenth century, the flow of material was so reliable that publishers could be sure of filling an annual, a monthly, and ultimately a weekly or daily issue. This was the first and basic mechanical principle by which we became accustomed to a regular flow of news. Other mechanisms soon emerged to help the editor fill his space--the anniversary, for example, in which nothing related the writer and his subject but an interval of time. Deeper currents were at work. The modern Western world was based upon a close interest in and observation of the things going on around us. The marvels of science in important respects result from a simple propensity to measure things and discover laws relating these measurements. In the early modern period, the value of history, and also of reports of events, consisted in their being able to point a lesson or generate a moral or practical bit of wisdom. The meaning of an event was to be found in its outcome. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a painting by Tiepolo, dated 1745-1750, called (in a rather Heideggerian idiom) Time unveiling truth. The allegory is complex and the painting (to my eyes) not without grossness, but the broad idea captures something of how practical men came to understand wisdom. The contrast must be with the religious assumption that the essential truths of life have been revealed, but that the human world is dark and devious, and the connection between events is obscure. Here we have the view that time will tell whether we have been right or wrong to rely on someone. The interest of a contingency is precisely that it cannot be assimilated to a law. To follow the course of events over time is therefore to discover truth. And one possible implication of this view is that to come later is to know more truth. Journalism thus emerges from deep currents in our civilization. It has roots in Greek and Roman experience, and, from the Middle Ages onwards, a passion to follow the actual events of the world seems to have continually grown. Prose literature and the novel were part of that development, and whole new areas of event-making came to be opened up. The narratives relating to kings, aristocrats, and saints were broadened to include a more general concern with individual life. In a religious idiom of life, such diurnal events were mere froth on the surface of the infinite. But as Kierkegaard saw, the ephemeral was coming to dominate our interests. The steady diffusion of a journalistic interest in what is going on affects our consciousness of the world we live in. A nun has a different mind-set from a housewife, a philosopher from a man of affairs, but journalism equips them all with a generalized interest in the world. One dimension of how journalism affects the way we think is our propensity to become bored. Someone who is focussed on the novelty of events as they unfold in the newspapers is to that extent less reflective about the events to which he responds. The details of change crowd out the time and energy that would otherwise go into reflection. Religious people, philosophers, or scientists--people who are genuinely educated, we might say--will think about God, or Nature, or literature, and will find new things in quite exiguous materials, whereas the less educated become increasingly miserable without a continual flow of novelty, and since most of reality is repetition, the novelty is a function of triviality. People become, in a word, shallow. Here then is a new form of consciousness evolving under the spur of improving technology to the point where twenty-four-hour news and comment is available to us. Journalistic consciousness is imperialistic. It invades every sphere of life and takes it over. Consider the world of scholarship, in which men and women dedicate themselves to exploring some area of reality in terms of a particular mode of inquiry--as historians, scientists, or literary scholars, for example. Scholarship is hard, focussed work, continually retracing its steps to check on its validity as scholarly discussion proceeds. It knows nothing of the urgency of the deadline. The scholars who practice this art are often pedantic and stuffy, and certainly impatient with those who think they can master the subject in question without a lengthy apprenticeship. And for centuries scholars used to defend themselves against the contempt of practical men for what is "academic" with an entrenched disdain for journalism and popularization. The Cambridge English don F. R. Leavis detested nothing so passionately as Sunday newspaper reviewing. The Oxford historian A. J. P. Taylor never got the chair to which his abilities entitled him because (so it is plausibly said) he brought scholarship low by writing for newspapers. Might I perhaps focus the point a little more sharply with another British example? Early in 2004, Bernard Levin died. He had been a notable figure of London journalism, both witty and wide-ranging. Many friends remembered his often setting the table on a roar, but few could come up with examples adequate to exhibit his wit. And then Matthew Parris, himself perhaps the pre-eminent columnist of the day, wrote about this. The problem, he suggested, was something deep in the nature of journalism: its absolute dependence on the moment of writing. Good journalism gains some of its impact from responding to the mind of the moment, and that is precisely what cannot fully be captured at a later moment. And indeed, it is hard to read journalism critically without realizing the element of padding that goes into it. The self-protective disdain of the scholar for the popularizer has now gone, or largely gone, and with its disappearance, journalism has been sloshing about in the world of scholarship. Scholars can now become popularizing celebrities without losing face, a further spread of the journalistic imperium. Worse, journalism has begun, by a curious conjunction of cultural tendencies, to invade the world of education. It has long been felt by teachers of subjects in the social sciences that a pupil's reading of the newspaper is an important part of his or her education. And with the decline of discipline in schools, the teacher can no longer command that his charges must learn what he thinks is the next part of their education. He is forced to seduce them, by the guile of a popularizing involvement with their own interests. Journalism's empire thus lies behind the rise of the impulse to make relevance the test of what is worth teaching in schools. A similar development is happening in universities as they expand to take in students with less native wits than before. Instead of the focus on method and discipline basic to education, many university courses have become interdisciplinary, which consists in focusing on some subject of broad popular interest, such as the environment, and investigating its problems in terms of a bit of science, a bit of history, a bit of practical wisdom, etc. Journalistic consciousness, then, has spread into the wide field of the humanities and the social sciences. A journalist is the master of the gist of things, and gist is king of the world. The way it dominates contemporary politics might perhaps help to explain why in our time so much legislation has so frequently to be amended, corrected, and replaced. Journalism may thus be taken as a systematic defiance of the Socratic maxim that wisdom consists in understanding one's own ignorance. We who belong to the world of journalism know a great deal, and are proud of it, and sanctify such knowledgeability in quiz programs and a disdain for those who cannot tell in what century the Civil War happened, or how many states make up the U.S. Stanley Baldwin thought that journalists were prostitutes--but how can knowing a lot be thought to be the satisfaction of a kind of lust? The answer is that journalism satisfies curiosity, a distant relative of the "wonder" thought to be the source of philosophy and science. How then, one must repeat, can curiosity be a vice? The answer is that we are often curious about things that are none of our business. The malicious village gossip is the most curious creature on earth, and finds her successor in the "door-stopping" journalist and the paparazzo infesting the lives of famous people. Further, curiosity is one of those learned human responses that is dependent on what other people are interested in. In a shallow way, we can easily be influenced to take an interest in something merely because others are curious about it. The most evidently vicious kind of curiosity is morbid. Plato recognized this in arguing that the mind was an arena of conflict rather than a Pythagorean harmony. In the Republic, Socrates tells the story of Leontius, son of Aglaion: "On his way up from the Piraeus outside the north wall, he noticed the bodies of some criminals lying on the ground with the executioner standing by them. He wanted to go and look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted and tried to turn away. He struggled for some time and covered his eyes, but at last the desire was too much for him. Opening his eyes wide, he ran up to the bodies and cried, `There you are, curse you; feast yourselves on this lovely sight!'" Some modern press photography is remarkable, almost an art (that of sport for example), but much that we see in tabloid journalism would disgust us had our sensibilities not been corrupted by learning to enjoy the satisfaction of this particular version of lust--the lust to see and know things of no concern to us. As Pascal remarks: "More often than not, curiosity is merely vanity. We only want to know something in order to talk about it." Here then is another arena in which journalism has "colonized" our minds. The very availability of a rather illicit satisfaction has developed in us the very appetite itself. All of this is given some kind of ethical coloring in terms of the public's right to know, and indeed, it would be impossible in the modern world to draw a consistent line between genuinely appropriate objects of our curiosity and the bits of knowledge generously thrown our way. Indiscriminate absorption of information is the way we live. But there is another side to this richness of information available to us about the world we live in. It is that an endless preoccupation with ourselves as subsumed under social categories--as pensioners or teenagers, married or single, heterosexual or homosexual, and so on--dilutes our consciousness, and our identity spills out in all directions. We lose the focus that belongs to real individuality. We meld into others, becoming part of a strange kind of informational collectivity. Until the twentieth century, people did not much consider the category of journalism. Some of what we would now recognize as such was the writing of educated men in books and quarterlies, and some was popular report for the masses. Reporters and newspapermen had relatively little professional standing. One thinks of twentieth-century newspaperman, according to the image in The Front Page and other fictions, as hard-headed drunks working with green eyeshades as they subbed copy in large offices. These were men who thought that journalism reported and therefore reflected the world, and that (as C. P. Scott put it) "facts are sacred and comment is free." They were empiricists who took the description of "reporter" seriously; they purported to "tell it as it was." To use the old logical formulation, "twenty killed in earthquake" was true if, and only if, twenty people had been killed in the earthquake. But at some point in the twentieth century, a familiar type of social evolution occurred. Journalism became a "profession" (rather than just a trade), and succumbed to the culture of universities. The new sophisticated journalist had picked up a little learning and knew that a news story cannot be a mere "reflection" of events, because every event is infinitely complex, susceptible of many descriptions, and therefore that its meaning depends on the prior selection of the reporter. Journalism was something constructed. This view thus reflected the then popular vogue for mechanical images of "construction" and "invention" in the humanities and social sciences. Here was a theory that transformed the life of your humble journalist. He, or she, was no longer a mere agent of transmission, transferring facts to print. The journalist became an actual creator of news. Journalists were not, indeed, quite the same as novelists, but some element of creativity was thought necessary to report even the least significant bit of news. It was in part this cast of mind that led to the explosion of signed reports and photographs of the contributors to newspapers, and of the proliferation of columns. The result was an immense vogue among young people for becoming journalists. It was for the most part clean regular work, allowing plenty of self-expression without accountability, and it required no vast input of learning, or indeed remarkable talent of any kind. Up to a point, both the reflection and the construction views of journalism capture some of its real features. A little light epistemology might have been a pretty harmless addition to journalistic self-understanding had it not soon mutated into a kind of Salvationism. Quite how this mutation occurred is a very large question indeed, but it can best be understood in terms of a similar process happening in most of the professions in the second half of the twentieth century. Teachers came to think that, because they were custodians of the minds of the rising generation, they held the key to social progress. Spreading the right ideas in the classroom would diminish violence and prejudice in the next generation, so molding the attitudes of the young became at least as important as education itself. Similarly, lawyers sought to expand beyond the dry technicalities of the law in order to make society more just, and many a doctor embracing epidemiology was less concerned with curing his patients than with instructing them about a better lifestyle. The idea of social responsibility--that we are all the molders of our society--spread far and wide, even into the temples of profit. We may summarize this by saying that all of these professionals began to acquire the affectations of an elite possessed of saving knowledge. In the case of journalists, this encounter with epistemology turned into a form of political partisanship. The issue was often expounded in terms of the concept of "bias." In the game of bowls, a certain distortion (known as "bias") tests the skill of the player, and metaphorically, the subjective element in the interpretation of an event might be described as "bias." No one doubted that such subjectivity was a distortion, but it was generally held that truth could emerge from discussion and criticism. The new doctrine insisted--at its least sophisticated--that since no judgement was unbiased, any utterance was as good as any other. Any claim to neutrality was treated with particular scorn. Whereas a generation before, facts had been distinguished as the hard stuff of truth by contrast with values, which were merely the porous vehicles of feeling and preference, now facts themselves lost their claim to superiority. Cultural analysts dissolved truth into power, following the lead of Michel Foucault. It is a familiar feature of the history of philosophy that skepticism's partner is dogmatism. The dogmatism emerging from this particular bout of skepticism held that all cultures were equally valid, and that all utterances, as expressing opinion, were equal, at least in this fundamental respect. They could only be discriminated in terms of some sort of notional "correctness." The Salvationism in this doctrine consisted in the belief that in being skeptical of all universal claims, the journalist as critical thinker was revealing a sophistication superior to that of the average voter. The test of such critical sophistication was that the journalist held opinions liberated from the influence of his or her milieu, and the milieu was taken to include not merely class or nation, but European civilization itself. Journalists saw themselves as "free floating intellectuals" in a world of prejudice and superstition. This pleasing self-image was often complemented by the further opinion that the critical thinker had unmasked the hidden partisanship in our common belief that Western civilization was superior to other forms of life. This civilizational self-criticism commonly took a moral form, applying the higher moral abstractions (such as human rights, anti-imperialism, and racial equality) to European societies themselves, and projecting this criterion back down the ages in a massive indictment of our ancestors. Collective guilt was discovered to be the appropriate response to a great deal of Western conduct, ranging from the Crusades to Slavery and Apartheid. Some enthusiasts demanded official apologies, and some politicians (Tony Blair among them) gave them. Skeptical non-judgmentalism had strangely morphed into dogmatic condemnation, generating a strange kind of collective guilt, from which the critic could absolve himself by his very recognition of it. The history of this process, in the universities (especially the universities) and journalism schools of the Western world, is of course immensely complicated, but without referring to it, one cannot begin to understand why our addiction to journalism is virtually inseparable from our dislike of it. The crudest way of formulating our dislike would be to say that the picture of the world presented in newspapers and television programs jars with our political opinions. The discontent is greater among those on "the right" than those on "the left" but both share it. And here the discontent must seem odd, because journalists pride themselves on covering, or trying to cover, all points of view. "Points of view" is, of course, a vulgarizing simplicity that can recognize only those for, and those against, some all-too-familiar opinion. We have all, no doubt, been amused by the absurdities of the television interviewer swinging back and forth between two opposing personages, putting in a mechanically extreme way the opposed opinion (suitably made extreme) to its opponent. No one, I think, seriously believes that the academic sophistication that journalists have acquired helps them give a better account of the world. We are no better informed today than we were when reporters told us how it was. Indeed, all shades of opinion regard "the media" with deep suspicion as giving a biased account of reality. Some bold journalists embrace this universal unpopularity as proof of a perverse kind of integrity, but early in the twenty-first century, it is hard to resist the view that, indispensable as it is in modern democracies, journalism is an increasingly pathological influence on the way we live. For all their affectations of the critical spirit, journalists are putty in the hands of the latest intellectual fashion. What they have to say is dangerously linked to the posture they intend to reveal in saying it. Their basic moral stance must be an unrelenting concern with truth, and it is in this sense that journalism reveals itself as an essentially Western practice. For it has often been observed that ours is a "truth-obsessed" civilization. By "truth" here, we mean something rather beyond mere correspondence with facts; we must incorporate in the word an element, harder to define, of integrity. A really good journalist needs a sturdy ballast of good sense and an almost scholarly revulsion from the quick and the glib in order to transcend the corruptions that have surfaced over the last century. It would no doubt be perilous to think that all Victorian journalists were more serious than our contemporaries, but in writers like Bagehot and Leslie Stephen we have figures who worked on the frontiers of journalism and scholarship without losing their integrity. It may be merely that the temptations of cheap sensationalism were less at that period than they are now, or it may just be that they had more space. It was, however, in the nineteenth century that literary realism took the form in which it became the guiding star of modern journalism. Novelists such as Dickens and Zola were certainly not the first to explore "low life," but they extended the boundaries of social understanding in order to incorporate the experiences of socially insignificant people into the materials of drama, and also to reveal some of the realities--usually poverty, vice, and oppression--"behind" the facades of the time. The crucial ideas of this literary movement were those of journalists themselves--indeed both Dickens and Zola had been journalists in their time. The basic idea of literary realism is that life is a theater put on for show, and that reality is what you find when you go behind the scenes. Reality, in other words, is something concealed by those whose interest lies in concealment. The posture of the journalist is thus that of the investigator debunking institutions by exposing secrets. This general theory clearly domesticates scandal and conspiracy as instruments of revelation. The custodians of ritual and authority are, of course, particularly vulnerable to criticism of this form. Their outward aspect is their essential point, and what lies behind them may well be banal, or worse. We have here a view of reality that cannot distinguish between those things whose inwardness has no bearing on their force, and those things where hypocrisy or dissimulation may be usefully revealed. Journalism begins, then, in genuinely "sensational" events such as wars, earthquakes, and the rise and fall of governments, but it can multiply sensation by getting "behind" the events. Some social personages--royalty, politicians, actors, etc. --are worthy of note in themselves, but even better is to discover how they behave "behind the scenes." Spontaneous irritation is thought to be more revealing than measured dignity, a little light lust than a policy of self-control. Recent philosophy has been strongly influenced by the so-called "philosophers of suspicion"--Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud--but in journalism we find suspicion as the constitutive passion of an entire practice. The rational basis of modern journalism, its claim to our attention as bringing us knowledge of the world, thus turns out to be the practice of revealing what other people want to hide from us. This is, of course, particularly true of what authority wants to hide. The First World War was a watershed in the growth of cynicism about authority. People came to think that the official account of almost anything was generally wrong. Here then we find the beginnings of the journalistic posture of indignation as the reporter demands "full disclosure" of whatever the public might be thought to have a right to know. Such is the rational basis of journalism, but it is important never to ignore the passions it may be supposed to feed? Baldwin, as we have seen, thought it supplied the demand for a kind of lust almost as powerful as the sexual, and perhaps less linked to vigorous youth--the passion for scandal. What journalism most obviously supplies is "sensations" or small shocks of pleasurable surprise because something unexpected has happened, and the journalistic "story" itself may incorporate the contexts within which it was unexpected. But what if the small shock is the discovery of some change in the private life of someone celebrated? Here we would have a case of Pascal's idle and pointless curiosity, the malice of the village gossip in earlier times writ large. Perhaps the best comment on this is Goethe's "No man is a hero to his valet de chambre," to which Hegel added: "not because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet." It is in expressing this impulse towards psychological valetism, a lowering and demeaning passion, that journalism clearly loses any real contact with its immemorial mission to understand political realities, the mission of the ambassador writing to his prince. As it has evolved, journalism has bent to conform to that universal passion of our civilization: entertainment. So far as most people up until quite recent times were concerned, amusements and entertainments were rare treats. This seriousness of workaday practicality may well have made church services more tolerable, and it certainly conduced to a more reflective cast of mind, for, as Pope remarked, "amusement is the happiness of those that cannot think." In our time, however, radio, television, books, magazines, and a ubiquity of music have had the result that a quiet mind is a rare luxury for many people. Given that most of the information in our ever-expanding journalistic world is of no direct concern to us, it follows that the basic point of most journalism is to entertain. Just as freaks and bearded ladies amazed us in the past, so too do the remarkable private contortions of people we do not know arouse our wonder and astonishment today. This merger between journalism and entertainment is unmistakably evident in the way newspapers treat the news, and at a higher level it is replicated in the corporate expansion by which, for example, the same company may control film, television, and newspapers. And I am not, in saying this, hinting at corporate conspiracy. The corporate connections merely set the seal on a process that had long been bubbling up internally out of the developing dynamics of journalism itself. We are all familiar with many of the corrupting devices of modern journalism--the hopeless addiction to pointless puns in headlines, the treating of politics as if it were a sports contest, the turning of rivalries into "rows" by talking up competition into conflict and hatred. In its pursuit of revelations, journalism has corrupted the servants and employees of famous people and made the vilest of crimes a paying proposition. But evident corruption is the least danger we face from journalism. For how much "truth" can any human activity sustain? I am not here recommending a philosophy of Machiavellian deception, but merely pointing to the familiar fact that to act is to focus one's understanding on the pros and cons of a project, with an inescapable loss of perspective. To act and to philosophize action are two separate and incompatible activities. One cannot do both at once. But the journalist takes up a posture notionally above the battle, and therefore thinks he has little difficulty avoiding the obvious peaks of partisanship with which he is familiar, so long as he can recognize them. Is he then, a kind of philosopher? If he is a passably honest journalist, he will give "left" and "right" more or less equal time, at least so long as he gets the difference right. He understands that there are two sides to a war, and may well parade his neutrality by giving extra mileage to our opponents. Accused of distortion, he takes satisfaction in his own consistency: he is not reporting conflict as a partisan, but as a neutral observer, though he would today be edgy about the term "neutral." Here is indeed a kind of integrity, but it is integrity whose orientation depends on fluid and moving points. But I repeat: how much truth can any human activity sustain? In religious activities, the point is ritual and feeling, not truth, and an insistence upon truth (as empirically understood) is a category error, and often a destructive one. With too much truth, the glory in war gets lost in the details of blood and body bags. Universities depend on finding themselves in a dark and obscure corner of social life largely free from social pressures. Were they to be forced to explain themselves partially or prematurely, they would sound foolish and pretentious, and scholarship would be diverted into righteousness. The ceaseless glare of light from journalism illuminates the dark places in our civilization--and sterilizes many of them. No doubt a significant part of this illumination may prevent evils and expose things that ought to be exposed, but it also takes some immemorial human activities to the brink of extinction. Indeed, journalism exposes things that perhaps ought to be exposed, and prevents evils, but by that very token, it becomes a practical player in the world, and thus finds itself in contradiction with its own posture as a critic above the battles of partisans. In adopting a posture of oppositionality to everything powerful, established, pretentious, and superior, it embraces a kind of universal skepticism, perhaps indeed of nihilism. Some journalists can indeed sustain an opportunistic negativism about everything, but most cannot, and in fact a meta-moralistic addiction to tolerance, secularism, ecumenism, and anti-discrimination becomes evident as what one might initially call "the journalistic ideology." To hold an opinion is to mortgage a certain amount of pleasure and pain to the turn of events. What confirms one's opinion gives pleasure, what seems to refute it, pain. The journalist, living amidst opinions, knows by instinct the pains of being caught out holding a vulnerable opinion. The first move in his professionalization, as it were, must therefore be to evacuate any position that might be explained by others as arising from his own interest: anything having to do with class, nationality, or civilization: all such inherited baggage must be abandoned by the journalist. The problem is that whoever abandons interests--which have about them a certain discussable reality, where compromise is possible--finds that his stock of opinions consists of abstract ideas. These will usually take an ethical form, and that impels them towards righteousness. Any such package of opinions is likely to irritate patriots and partisans of all kinds. The holder of such a position is usually enormously self-satisfied, because, having arrived there by the process of identifying extremes as things to be challenged and questioned, he fancies himself as having all the rationality of an Aristotelian mean. In fact, he has arrived at a form of Whiggery-- "A levelling, rancorous, rational sort of mind That never looked out of the eye of a saint Or out of a drunkard's eye." But as the sage in Yeats's poem adds: "All's Whiggery now." For us, it's all journalism. It seems a vile thing to take so serious a view of the newspapers we read with pleasure every day, and the radio and television that entertain us endlessly, but it is no business of philosophers, any more than of journalists, to reinforce our lazy habits. All civilizations are built upon specific distortions of reality, and ours is particularly concerned with observing, measuring and responding to the discrete objects in terms of which we construe reality. Journalism is a development of this cast of mind, and may be contrasted with other possible worlds, in one version of which we might focus our attention upon what we conceive to be eternal things. Christian writers have been prominent in stigmatizing an interest in ephemera as a dissipation of spiritual energies. The very fact that the journalistic world can focus its attention on nothing for more than a few days at a time, forever seeking a new sensation, makes it clear that this judgment on journalism as one of the pathologies of our civilization should be taken seriously. Change the focus, and we may take journalism as an inescapable development of our Western adventures into literacy and education for all, so that it becomes the mode by which we take our bearings in a rich and exciting world. Journalism now becomes a category of its own, alongside science and history, as something to be valued in its own terms. But what are its own terms? We cannot avoid discovering that these terms constantly change, partly in response to ideas about truth, such as reflection and construction, and partly in response to the demands that the customers of journalism make upon it. We have suggested that the terms of journalism conceal self-contradiction. A pseudo-philosophical commitment to evade partisanship turns at this level into a partisanship of its own. And not the least of the paradoxes we find in examining journalism is that this most Western of all practices should embrace so anti-Western a stance. The logical problem journalists face parallels that of liberals who embrace all lawful forms of freedom, only to be told that this apparent openness is itself a form of concealed partisanship. Liberalism and journalism, we might say, are virtually Siamese twins among the commitments of our civilization, and their fates are bound up together. _________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Minogue's Concept of a University has just been republished by Transaction Publishers with a new introduction. 1. This essay is adapted from a lecture presented at "Power Without Responsibility: Was Kipling Right?," a conference sponsored by the Boston, Oxford, Melbourne Conversazione Society and held at Boston University on October 7-8, 2004. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 1 21:30:03 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 13:30:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Paleopsych] violence in quran and bible In-Reply-To: <200504011900.j31J0O223112@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>You will learn how Muhammad encouraged his handful of followers to attack the caravans, kill the men, rape the women and bring the booty (20% for himself) to please Allah<< --I'd like to see more people talk about violence in the Quran AND the Bible. The acts attributed to Mohammad are similar to descriptions in Numbers and Deuteronomy of God-sanctioned violence, slavery and rape. I've met far too many Christians who excused such behavior, saying "God ordered it, therefore it was moral". That Christians in the US have not engaged in organized violence is not reassuring, given death threats against abortion providers and Michael Schiavo and the more prominent judge who sided with him, and the militia movement which went underground after the Oklahoma bombing. If the US falls on hard times economically, I do not fully trust extreme right-wing Christians to stay peaceful. Hate speech is already very common. I'd also avoid attaching all Christians or all Muslims to violence in holy books. It's clear that people CAN behave better than their scriptural "founding fathers", and that moderate believers need all the help they can get promoting a non-literal and merciful version of their faith. If all Christians believed that Moses really did order the murder of infants and kidnapping of virgin girls in war, and that God was responsible for giving Moses the idea, I'd condemn Christianity in no uncertain terms. But I've met many Christians who did not agree with those passages (or who simply didn't know about them) but lived genuinely humble and Christlike lives. I've met as many Muslims, at least online, who were similar. They all claimed to believe in the Bible/Quran, yet they somehow managed to emphasize the nonviolent passages and avoid endorsing the violent ones. Unfortunately, many Christians condemn Islam based on violence in the Quran without acknowledging historical violence by Christians who used the Bible to justify war crimes and slavery. It is not possible to destroy Islam or Christianity, only to make a clear distinction between the behavior of violent and nonviolent believers. That so many people seem to want to destroy one religion or another strikes me as a bad sign. It pushes moderates to either side passively with extremists, or to withdraw from confrontation, which does the small percentage of us who are atheists no good at all. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates. http://personals.yahoo.com From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 2 01:31:53 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 17:31:53 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Human rDNA: evolutionary patterns within the genes and tandem arrays derived from multiple chromosomes. Message-ID: <01C536E0.B2C757F0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&lis t_uids=11350117&dopt=Abstract Google search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patterns+within+genes Gonzalez IL, Sylvester JE. A. I. DuPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, Delaware 19899, USA. igonzale at nemours.org Human rDNA forms arrays on five chromosome pairs and is homogenized by concerted evolution through recombination and gene conversion (loci RNR1, RNR2, RNR3, RNR4, RNR5, OMIM: 180450). Homogenization is not perfect, however, so that it becomes possible to study its efficiency within genes, within arrays, and between arrays by measuring and comparing DNA sequence variation. Previous studies with randomly cloned genomic DNA fragments showed that different parts of the gene evolve at different rates but did not allow comparison of rDNA sequences derived from specific chromosomes. We have now cloned and sequenced rDNA fragments from specific acrocentric chromosomes to (1) study homogenization along the rDNA and (2) compare homogenization within chromosomes and between homologous and nonhomologous chromosomes. Our results show high homogeneity among regulatory and coding regions of rDNA on all chromosomes, a surprising homogeneity among adjacent distal non-rDNA sequences, and the existence of one to three very divergent intergenic spacer classes within each array. Copyright 2001 Academic Press. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Greg Bear [SMTP:ursus at earthlink.net] Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 8:55 AM To: HowlBloom at aol.com; paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: [Paleopsych] RE: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism This fabulous bit of science is very evocative. My best guess is that such "pattern memory"-while some of it could be stored in cytosol elements, etc.,--is most likely stored in the vast unexplored territories of "junk" DNA-perhaps in fragments of genes, pseudogenes, etc., with non-gene RNA elements acting as controls, inhibitors, etc. Could be wrong, but this sort of reconstructive memory does seem essential to life. Best! Greg _____ From: HowlBloom at aol.com [mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:31 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; ursus at earthlink.net; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism re: The New York Times A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only in damaged form. Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it works: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47.) Where would such auto-associative circuits exist in a plant cell? Here are some wild guesses: * In the entire cell, including its membrane, its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes, and its genome; * * Or in the entire cell and its context within the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing roles. Howard re: _____ New York Times March 23, 2005 Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene By NICHOLAS WADE In a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net << File: ATT00004.html >> << File: image001.gif >> << File: image002.gif >> << File: image003.gif >> << File: ATT00005.txt >> From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sat Apr 2 01:44:11 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:44:11 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] violence in quran and bible In-Reply-To: <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <424DF8EB.3070504@solution-consulting.com> Michael, where do you get these quotes? I am not getting emails with them in, then I see a commentary from you. Lynn Michael Christopher wrote: >>>You will learn how Muhammad encouraged his handful >>> >>> >of >followers to attack the caravans, kill the men, rape >the women and bring the booty (20% for himself) to >please Allah<< > >--I'd like to see more people talk about violence in >the Quran AND the Bible. The acts attributed to >Mohammad are similar to descriptions in Numbers and >Deuteronomy of God-sanctioned violence, slavery and >rape. I've met far too many Christians who excused >such behavior, saying "God ordered it, therefore it >was moral". That Christians in the US have not engaged >in organized violence is not reassuring, given death >threats against abortion providers and Michael Schiavo >and the more prominent judge who sided with him, and >the militia movement which went underground after the >Oklahoma bombing. If the US falls on hard times >economically, I do not fully trust extreme right-wing >Christians to stay peaceful. Hate speech is already >very common. > >I'd also avoid attaching all Christians or all Muslims >to violence in holy books. It's clear that people CAN >behave better than their scriptural "founding >fathers", and that moderate believers need all the >help they can get promoting a non-literal and merciful >version of their faith. If all Christians believed >that Moses really did order the murder of infants and >kidnapping of virgin girls in war, and that God was >responsible for giving Moses the idea, I'd condemn >Christianity in no uncertain terms. But I've met many >Christians who did not agree with those passages (or >who simply didn't know about them) but lived genuinely >humble and Christlike lives. I've met as many Muslims, >at least online, who were similar. They all claimed to >believe in the Bible/Quran, yet they somehow managed >to emphasize the nonviolent passages and avoid >endorsing the violent ones. Unfortunately, many >Christians condemn Islam based on violence in the >Quran without acknowledging historical violence by >Christians who used the Bible to justify war crimes >and slavery. It is not possible to destroy Islam or >Christianity, only to make a clear distinction between >the behavior of violent and nonviolent believers. That >so many people seem to want to destroy one religion or >another strikes me as a bad sign. It pushes moderates >to either side passively with extremists, or to >withdraw from confrontation, which does the small >percentage of us who are atheists no good at all. > >Michael > > > > > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates. >http://personals.yahoo.com > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From waluk at earthlink.net Sat Apr 2 01:49:54 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 17:49:54 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] violence in quran and bible In-Reply-To: <424DF8EB.3070504@solution-consulting.com> References: <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <424DF8EB.3070504@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <424DFA42.1030507@earthlink.net> My question exactly. I think he gets them from another list or he makes them up. No problem though. Gerry Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > Michael, where do you get these quotes? I am not getting emails with > them in, then I see a commentary from you. > Lynn > > Michael Christopher wrote: > >>>>You will learn how Muhammad encouraged his handful >>>> >>>> >>of >>followers to attack the caravans, kill the men, rape >>the women and bring the booty (20% for himself) to >>please Allah<< >> >>--I'd like to see more people talk about violence in >>the Quran AND the Bible. The acts attributed to >>Mohammad are similar to descriptions in Numbers and >>Deuteronomy of God-sanctioned violence, slavery and >>rape. I've met far too many Christians who excused >>such behavior, saying "God ordered it, therefore it >>was moral". That Christians in the US have not engaged >>in organized violence is not reassuring, given death >>threats against abortion providers and Michael Schiavo >>and the more prominent judge who sided with him, and >>the militia movement which went underground after the >>Oklahoma bombing. If the US falls on hard times >>economically, I do not fully trust extreme right-wing >>Christians to stay peaceful. Hate speech is already >>very common. >> >>I'd also avoid attaching all Christians or all Muslims >>to violence in holy books. It's clear that people CAN >>behave better than their scriptural "founding >>fathers", and that moderate believers need all the >>help they can get promoting a non-literal and merciful >>version of their faith. If all Christians believed >>that Moses really did order the murder of infants and >>kidnapping of virgin girls in war, and that God was >>responsible for giving Moses the idea, I'd condemn >>Christianity in no uncertain terms. But I've met many >>Christians who did not agree with those passages (or >>who simply didn't know about them) but lived genuinely >>humble and Christlike lives. I've met as many Muslims, >>at least online, who were similar. They all claimed to >>believe in the Bible/Quran, yet they somehow managed >>to emphasize the nonviolent passages and avoid >>endorsing the violent ones. Unfortunately, many >>Christians condemn Islam based on violence in the >>Quran without acknowledging historical violence by >>Christians who used the Bible to justify war crimes >>and slavery. It is not possible to destroy Islam or >>Christianity, only to make a clear distinction between >>the behavior of violent and nonviolent believers. That >>so many people seem to want to destroy one religion or >>another strikes me as a bad sign. It pushes moderates >>to either side passively with extremists, or to >>withdraw from confrontation, which does the small >>percentage of us who are atheists no good at all. >> >>Michael >> >> >> >> >> >>__________________________________ >>Do you Yahoo!? >>Yahoo! Personals - Better first dates. More second dates. >>http://personals.yahoo.com >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From paul.werbos at verizon.net Sat Apr 2 02:14:07 2005 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Paul J. Werbos, Dr.) Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 21:14:07 -0500 Subject: [Paleopsych] violence in quran and bible In-Reply-To: <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <200504011900.j31J0O223112@tick.javien.com> <20050401213003.50009.qmail@web30803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.0.20050401210652.01d6de18@incoming.verizon.net> I do not believe that a true follower either of Jesus or of Mohammed would fall into violence in the way that the fundamentalist fanatics do. Re the Bible -- it is very odd to me how many people call themselves Christians, who work very hard to emulate the Pharisees he opposed. Yes, the Pharisees loved to quote certain parts of the Old Testament, but Jesus made it very clear that he wanted to explain or revise a few things... Mohammed is a bit harder for most of us in the US to track. It was a bit awkward for him, in Medina, trying to follow benevolent principles not so different from what Jesus taught, but threatened very hard by vicious military force from corrupt folks over the hill.... yes, he won some battles, but on the whole he took many affirmative steps to bend things towards the side of peace and trust as much as he could manage. Many of the evils of modern Christianity and Islam are traceable not to Jesus or Mohammed, but to corrupt people who tried to use their names while distorting their messages, so as to enslave people. Constantine and the Abbasid emperors are the most obvious villains. From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 2 03:21:25 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 19:21:25 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Biolaser Lights Up Stem Cells Message-ID: <01C536EF.FFE4DE40.shovland@mindspring.com> http://wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67089,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2 Scientists have developed a laser that could illuminate stem cells in greater detail than ever, revealing the important steps they take to become neuron, heart or other types of cells. Stem cells are unformed, and have the ability to become many cells in the human body, which is why scientists believe they could lead to powerful therapies. But the steps stem cells take to establish various identities are poorly understood. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico say their "biocavity laser " could elucidate those processes. By Kristen Philipkoski | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1 02:00 PM Mar. 31, 2005 PT From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:53:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:53:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Chinese Eugenics Message-ID: Today's theme is Chinese Eugenics. Several articles will follow, some of them alarming, others offensive. But the threat or promise of Chinese eugenics could well be the biggest transhumanist development in the next generation. Questions to ponder? 1. Are the Chinese creating a master race? 2. Will Chinese eugenics trigger off a eugenics arms race? 3. Will these arms races be directed by central governments? 4. Since it will take a generation for eugenics to have an effect, is there any government that can plan ahead that long? Autarchies are prone to being overthrown and politicians in democracies face the electorate several times a generation. Both of these militate against long-range planning. 5. Will autarchies select for conformity toward national objectives or will they realize that what is required for national goals to be achieved is a population that is creative, cantankerous, rebellious, as well as intelligent? These prospective populations put existing governments at a severe risk. 6. Will parents in nations that allow for individual eugenic choice risk having children that will be pointlessly rebellious for the sake of a very few that will be recognized as true pioneers only by posterity? How thick is the line between genius and madness? 7. How will a Chinese-dominated world differ from the world we know? 8. How far will one nation have to get ahead to dominate the world? 9. How can the world be made safe for pluralism? 10. Are these prospects so wicked that a preventive nuclear war be launched against RED China, as some neocons seem to wish? From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:54:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:54:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] AmJHumGenet: Xin Mao: Eugenics in China Message-ID: Mao, Eugenics in China http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html Am. J. Hum. Genet., 63:688-695, 1998 0002-9297/98/6303-0006$02.00 Chinese Geneticists' Views of Ethical Issues in Genetic Testing and Screening: Evidence for Eugenics in China Xin Mao Division of Genetics, Department of Psychiatry, West China University of Medical Sciences, Chengdu, China Received March 16, 1998; accepted for publication July 15, 1998; electronically published August 21, 1998. Summary To identify Chinese geneticists' views of ethical issues in genetic testing and screening, a national survey was conducted. Of 402 Chinese geneticists asked to participate, 255 (63%) returned by mail anonymous questionnaires. The majority of respondents thought that genetic testing should be offered in the workplace for a -antitrypsin deficiency (95%) and the predisposition of executives to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (94%); that genetic testing should be included in preemployment physical examinations (86%); that governments should require premarital carrier tests (86%), newborn screening for sickle cell (77%), and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (71%); and that children should be tested for genes for late-onset disorders such as Huntington disease (85%), susceptibility to cancers (85%), familial hypercholesterolemia (84%), alcoholism (69%), and Alzheimer disease (61%). Most believed that partners should know each other's genetic status before marriage (92%), that carriers of the same defective gene should not mate with each other (91%), and that women should have a prenatal diagnosis if medically indicated (91%). The majority said that in China decisions about family planning were shared by the couple (82%). More than half had views that, in China, there were no laws to prohibit disability discrimination (64%), particularly to protect people with adult polycystic kidney disease (57%), cystic fibrosis (56%), or genetic predisposition to other diseases (50%). To some extent, these results might provide a basis for a discussion of eugenics in China, particularly about China's [1]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994). _________________________________________________________________ Address for correspondence and reprints: Dr. Xin Mao, Section of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Haddow Laboratories, Institute of Cancer Research, 15 Cotswold Road, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5NG, United Kingdom. E-mail: [2]xin at icr.ac.uk _________________________________________________________________ Introduction Genetic testing and screening are hot topics that stimulate widespread discussion and debate, not only among genetics professionals, but among clinicians and scientists generally, and increasingly these topics involve the wider public in developed countries. Views are expressed in the scientific and general press, and through other media, about the likely benefits and dangers that may result from genetic testing and screening ([3]Harper and Clarke 1997). However, there is much less debate about genetic testing and screening in developing countries, where ?1 95% of the world's future children will be born. To some extent, this situation reflects the lack of genetics services in these countries. A majority (3,330) of the estimated 5,000 specialists in medical genetics worldwide work in developed countries, which have an overall geneticist/population ratio of ?1 1:222,000, compared with a ratio of ?1 1:700,000 for eastern European countries and ?1 1:3,700,000 for developing countries ([4]Wertz et al. 1995). Clinicians, scientists, and the public in developing countries are focused on the struggle to improve basic health care. Given the problems of poverty, illiteracy, low contraceptive use, and high infant mortality ([5]Galjaard 1997), they have relatively little interest in the development of genetics research and services. China, however, is an exception, having to some extent made genetics a priority. For example, in the 1960s cytogenetics technology was introduced to China, and in the 1970s chorionic villi sampling was performed in some hospitals ([6]Luo 1988). Since the 1980s, molecular-genetic techniques have been used in genetic research and counseling in several national genetic laboratories ([7]Luo 1988; [8]Fu et al. 1995). In 1988, in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer, and gamete intrafallopian transfer were available in several teaching hospitals ([9]Zhang et al. 1988). In 1992, the techniques of enrichment of fetal cells from maternal blood, for prenatal diagnosis and sex determination during the first trimester, were introduced to China. In 1994, China launched its Human Genome Project ([10]Li 1994). Gene therapy for patients with hemophilia B has also been used in clinical trials ([11]Fu et al. 1995). On the other hand, according to international standards, genetics services in China are underdeveloped because of a lack of funding and expertise, as well as the large number of people with genetic conditions ([12]Harper and Harris 1986; [13]Luo 1988). Chinese geneticists have expressed their views about ethical, legal,and social issues in genetics research and practice in China. Their concerns are, however, quite different from those of other countries, particularly developed nations (Mao [14]1996, [15]1997; [16]Mao and Wertz 1997). The term "eugenics" has many meanings. Eugenics can be voluntary or coerced, government sponsored or individual, a "science" or a social policy, based on the welfare of individuals oron the welfare of society or a nation ([17]Paul 1992; [18]Garver and Garver 1994; [19]Larson 1995; [20]"Brave New Now" 1997). Most people in developed countries today think of eugenics as a coercive social program enforced by the state for the good of society. Since China announced the [21]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994), it has provoked widespread concern in the international scientific community, because of some of its eugenic content ([22]"China's Misconception of Eugenics" 1994; [23]"Western Eyes on China's Eugenic Law" 1995; [24]O'Brien 1996; [25]"Brave New Now" 1997; [26]Harper and Clarke 1997; [27]Morton 1998). There has, however, been very little international discussion on what eugenics means for Chinese geneticists and why it is alive and well in China. In this article, I will present Chinese geneticists' views of ethical issues in genetic testing and screening and will discuss the likely basis of eugenics in China, particularly China's [28]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994). Subject and Methods An anonymous international questionnaire including 50 questions on ethical issues, which was used in an international study comparing attitudes of geneticists in 37 nations ([29]Wertz and Fletcher 1993), was distributed to 402 geneticists in 30 provinces and autonomous regions in mainland China. These geneticists were registered members of the Chinese Association of Medical Genetics, the Human and Medical Genetics Branch of the Chinese Society of Genetics, or the Chinese Society of Family Planning, all of which are headed by the Chinese Association for Science and Technology butare affiliated with different departments of state (the Ministry of Public Health, the Chinese Academy of Science, and the National Committee of Family Planning, respectively). In all, 255 geneticists (63%) responded. All of the respondents' comments were translated into English. The completed questionnaires were mailed to the Division of Social Science, Ethics and Law, at the Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, in the United States, for statistical analysis. Coded data were entered into the SPSSX program (from Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) on an IBM 3090 computer([30]Mao and Wertz 1997). Results The questionnaire asked whether genetic testing should be offered for job application - related situations; the majority of respondents thought that genetic testing should be offered to workers for a -antitrypsin deficiency in a very dirty workplace (95%) and for executives' predisposition to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (94%). The questionnaire listed several ethical issues designed to survey respondents' opinions. The majority of respondents agreed that partners should know each other's genetic status before marriage (92%), that carriers of the same defective gene should not mate with each other (91%), that women should have prenatal diagnosis if it is medically indicated (91%), that genetic testing should be included in preemployment physical examinations (86%), and that governments should require premarital carrier tests (86%) and newborn screening for sickle cell anemia (77%) and for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) (71%) ([31]table 1). Sixty-five percent agreed with the statement that "an important goal of newborn screening is to identify and counsel parental carriers before next pregnancy." [32][tb1.t.gif] Table 1 Views on Various Ethical Issues When Chinese geneticists were asked whether parents should be able to have their children tested for late-onset disorders or predisposition to such diseases, the majority said that, if parents request it, children should be tested for Huntington disease (85%), susceptibility to cancers (85%), familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) (84%), and predisposition to alcoholism (69%) or to Alzheimer disease (AD) (61%) ([33]table 2). [34][tb2.t.gif] Table 2 Views on the Testing of Children for Late-Onset Disorders When asked whether there was a prevailing pattern for decisionsabout family planning, most (82%) said that decisions about family planning were shared by the couple. The minority believed it to be determined by the husband's (10%), doctor's (3%), wife's (2%), husband's parents' (2%), or wife's parents' (1%) views ([35]table 3). [36][tb3.t.gif] Table 3 Views on Family Decision Making When asked whether there were any laws prohibiting disability discrimination, more than half of Chinese respondents said that there were no such laws in China (64%), particularly to protect people with adult polycystic kidney disease (57%), cystic fibrosis carriers (56%), and persons with genetic predisposition to other diseases (50%) ([37]table 4). Ninety-four percent agreed with the statement that "it is not fair for a child to be brought into the world with a serious genetic disorder if the birth could have been prevented;" 79% thought that some disabilities will never be overcome even with maximum social support, and the majority would not support disabled parents' decisions to have disabled children. Ninety percent thought that an ethical code or guidelines for genetics services are needed in China, and 50% said that public education in genetics should be the top priority of the government health budget. [38][tb4.t.gif] Table 4 Views on Laws Prohibiting Disability Discrimination Discussion Genetic testing, which is offered to individuals and families who are at high risk, is either the analysis of a specific gene -- and/or its product or function -- or other DNA and chromosome analysis, to detect or exclude an alteration likely to be associated with a genetic disorder. Genetic screening is applied to large population groups with unknown excess risk to individuals. Screening is frequently part of government-sponsored public-health programs and may be a preliminary procedure that identifies people at elevated risk of genetic disease, but it does not provide a definitive diagnosis ([39]Wertz et al. 1995; [40]Harper and Clarke 1997). In this survey, questions about newborn genetic screening were asked. This is because newborn screening for phenylketonuria (PKU) and hypothyroidism has saved many thousands of infants worldwide from these two severe disorders and therefore has created a large store of goodwill and ethical credit in favor of genetic screening programs ([41]Harper and Clarke 1997). This survey shows that 77% of Chinese respondents thought that the government should require newborn screening for sickle cell disease ([42]table 1). The figure is higher than those for the United Kingdom (13%) and the United States (11%) ([43]Wertz 1995). One explanation for this difference might be that Chinese geneticists believe that identification of parents and newborns who are heterozygous carriers is important, since sickle cell disease is very common in China. Although newborn screening for DMD fails to meet the established World Health Organization guidelines for the adoption of a screening program ([44]Wilson and Jungner 1968), it might be helpful to avoid diagnostic delays and to permit families to seek genetic counseling before they embark on another pregnancy. The mothers of infants in the United Kingdom appeared to have more enthusiasm for newborn screening for DMD, since 94% of them would accept such screening ([45]Smith et al. 1990). When geneticists around the world were asked whether the government should require newborn screening for DMD, 71% of Chinese respondents, 64% of respondents in the United States, and 49% of respondents in the United Kingdom thought that the governments should do so ([46]table 1) ([47]Wertz 1995). On this issue, the difference between geneticists in China and the United Kingdom may be that Chinese geneticists believe that newborn screening for DMD is a public-health issue, and that, because it is very expensive in China, it must be government sponsored. Geneticists in the United Kingdom are concerned about the state directing genetic decisions, rather than individuals making the choices ([48]Harper and Clarke 1997). In addition, the majority of European, North American, and Chinese geneticists would recommend newborn screening for cystic fibrosis, FH, fragile X, and thalassemia if automated DNA diagnostic techniques were available on newborn blood spots, even though there is no proof that the newborn benefit from such screening ([49]Wertz 1995). It may still be reasonable to offer such screening if the disease has its onset in childhood and if the child's family finds it helpful to have an early diagnosis ([50]Harper and Clarke 1997). The advent of DNA-based testing across a wide and increasing range of late-onset genetic disorders is a challenge to conventionalthinking about medical tests. This is because those individuals receiving an abnormal result are sometimes considered, by themselves and others, to "have the disease," even though they are still presymptomatic. Testing children for late-onset genetic disorders may have serious ethical and social implications. This survey shows that most Chinese geneticists thought that children should be tested for susceptibility to cancers and FH ([51]table 2). Most geneticists in Europe and North America expressed the same view, since they saw early diagnosis and early treatment of these disorders as being a potential benefit to the child ([52]Wertz 1995). However, most of them thought that testing for Huntington disease, alcoholism, and AD provided no medical benefit to the child ([53]Wertz 1995). They opposed the testing of children, on the grounds that testing was an affront to the autonomy of the child, who, on reaching adulthood, should be allowed to make his or her own decisions on whether to be tested. Most Chinese geneticists favored such testing ([54]table 2), on the grounds that parents should be able to decide for their children and should have the power to direct their children's lives. This cultural division reflects the extension of individual autonomy in developed countries, to include preservation of the autonomy of minors. In China, the child is often seen as part of a collectivity (the family), rather than as a potentially autonomous individual. Although, thus far, employers' requests for employment-related genetic testing have been few ([55]Harper and Clarke 1997), questions on whether such testing should be offered were included inthis survey because there is an ethical conflict between the individual's rights and the employer's interest. More and more Western geneticists have expressed their concerns on the likelihood of misuse of such testing, which would cause harm to those employeeswith genetic conditions (i.e., genetic discrimination; [56]Harper and Clarke 1997). This survey shows, however, that most Chinese geneticists agreed that such testing should be offered as a part of a routine physical examination. This result may demonstrate that Chinese geneticists hold strong social views on genetics services ([57]Mao and Wertz 1997). One purpose of genetics services is to provide accurate, full, and unbiased information that individuals and families may use in making decisions. Traditionally, China has been a paternalistic society and parents have had absolute power to make family decisions. To explore the current situation of family planning in China, questions on this issue were asked. This survey shows that, of 255 respondents, 51% were female ([58]Mao and Wertz 1997). Most of them thought that family planning was currently shared by the couple. This figure is quite similar to that in developed countries ([59]Wertz 1995) and, in part, may reflect socioeconomic changes that have occurred in China during the past 4 decades. In 1994, China's population reached 1.2 billion. Now China is pushing on with its goal of ensuring that the country's population is =< 1.3 billion by the end of the century and <1.4 billion by 2010. The basic means of reaching the goal are birth control and the "one couple, one child" policy, which stipulates that each Chinese couple is legally allowed to have only one child ([60]Wu 1994). Ironically, China has paid a huge socioeconomic price for ridiculing the theory and practice of birth control and family planning during the 1950s and 1960s. On the other hand, according toa national sampling survey in 1987, there were 51.64 million disabled people (4.9% of the total population) in China. Of these, 54.3% (i.e., 2.66% of the total population) were children. The majority of these disabilities (64.91%) are due to postnatal diseases and injuries, whereas 35.09% are due to birth defects and genetic diseases ([61]Chen and Simeonsson 1993; [62]Ming and Jixiang 1993). One aim of this survey is to investigate geneticists' attitudes toward the social and legal aspects of genetics. It would be necessary to ask whether there are laws or regulations in China that prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities. This survey shows that more than half of Chinese respondents thought that there were no such laws or regulations in China, particularly to protect people with genetic conditions. This may be because, although the rights of people with disabilities have been protected constitutionally in China, there are no Chinese laws specifying whether people with genetic conditions should be protected as disabled people. This survey also suggests that most Chinese still regard disabilities as a severe burden for both family and society. Population and disability issues are universal. As the history of the Western eugenics movement has shown, these issues are to some extent likely to produce a social "medium" or environment for the "birth and growth" of eugenics ([63]Paul 1995). Historically, cost effectiveness appears to be one of the major issues concerning Western eugenicists. A typical example of this wasseen in 1923, when the American Eugenics Society tried to justify the expense of building enough institutions to house and separate all the mentally retarded people by calculating that the $25,000(U.S.) spent on segregating the original mentally retarded persons for life would have saved the state >$2,000,000 in later costs. It also added that sterilizing the original mentally retarded people would have cost <$150 ([64]Larson 1995). Although it is questionable whether economic calculations would really work in genetics, some Western geneticists still regard cost effectiveness as an important factor in genetics services. This is because the clinical genetics services already available have been shown to be highly cost effective, mainly because of the high costs of medical and psychosocial care for the chronically handicapped in Western countries. For example, in the Netherlands seven regional clinical genetics centers involved in pre- and postnatal chromosome analysis, biochemical and DNA diagnosis, and genetic counseling supported by the national health insurers cost ?1 $50 million/year. As a result of their combined activities, the birth of 800 - 1600 severely handicapped children is avoided every year. The costs of their medical and psychosocial care would have been $500 million - $1 billion during an average life span of 10 years ([65]Galjaard 1997).Moreover, it even has been predicted that the most enforced codes of medical practice, particularly in genetics services, may bebased on cost-effectiveness analysis rather than on ethical considerations for the future ([66]Wertz 1997). The concept of cost effectiveness may have different meanings for Chinese geneticists. This is because, unlike Cuba, where a free health care system including genetic testing and screening covers the entire population ([67]Heredero 1992), genetics services in China are not free and are expensive for most Chinese people. For instance, in 1987 the average income of a Chinese worker in a factory or university was ?1 $30/mo, whereas the cost of cytogenetic testing was $6 - $20. On the basis of the population prevalence of chromosomal diseases in Sichuan province (31.5/100,000) ([68]Zhang et al. 1991), it is estimated that there would be 346,500 persons with chromosomal disorders in China at that time (in an overall population 1.1 billion). If all of these cases were diagnosed cytogenetically, it would cost $2,000,000 - $7,000,000, which is equivalent to 69,300 - 231,000 workers' monthly incomes. The costs of genetics services have increased very rapidly in recent years because of inflation and health-care reform, although such services in China are still underdeveloped and fall far short of the needs of people with genetic disorders. The prevalence of PKU in the Chinese population is ?1 6/100,000 people ([69]Liu and Zuo 1986). Thus, there would have been ?1 72,000 people with PKU in 1994, when the population was 1.2 billion. A Chinese study analyzed the cost benefit of newborn screening for PKU and estimated that the 10-year cost of screening, diagnosis, medical care, and dietary therapy for each PKU case identified would be $4,000. If PKU infants were not diagnosed and treated, the estimated cost of living for one untreated, mentally retarded individual with a mean life span of 40 years also would be $4,000. Income loss, special education costs, and inability to contribute tosociety would cause a total loss of >= $20,000. The long-term estimated benefits due to early screening, diagnosis, and treatment, minus the cost of screening and treatment, therefore is ?1 $20,000. Thus, the ratio of benefit:cost ratio would be ?1 5:1 ([70]Zhou 1995). It is a pity, however, that China is still unable to produce a low-phenylalanine diet in quantities large enough to provide adequate therapy for most affected babies ([71]Luo 1988), even though the PKU test is cheap and newborn screening for PKU seems to be cost effective in China. All of these actual situations most likely will lead Chinese thinking to consider the use of other radical means, such as abortion and sterilization, to reduce the incidence of PKU ([72]Mao and Wertz 1997). The word "eugenics," which currently is used more widely in China than in the West, when directly translated into Chinese, is "yousheng" and "youyu," which mean "well bear" and "well rear." The view most widely held by Chinese geneticists is that eugenics implies processes designed to ensure that children who are born are, as far as possible, "normal." How to achieve this, in the context of strict family limitation, has emerged as the most significant difference, in the approach to medical genetics, between China and the West ([73]Harper and Harris 1986). This survey was conducted in 1993, 1 year before China promulgated the [74]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994). In their comments, almost all respondents said that the goal of human genetics was "improvement of the population quality, decrease of the population quantity, and furtherance of eugenic principles" and agreed that "an important goal of genetic counseling is to reduce the number of deleterious genes in the population" ([75]Mao 1997, p. 20). Chinese geneticists also were extremely pessimistic about directive counseling after prenatal diagnosis for almost all genetic disorders ([76]Mao and Wertz 1997). The majority of them would advise voluntary surgical sterilization for a single blind woman on welfare who had a 50% risk of blindness in children (88%), for a woman with fragile X who was living in an institutional setting (73%), and for a cystic fibrosis carrier-carrier couple (52%) ([77]Mao and Wertz 1997). This survey reveals that most Chinese geneticists thought that partners should know their genetic status before marriage, that carriers of the same defective gene should not marry each other, and that women should have prenatal diagnosis if medically indicated. These views were expressed, to some extent, in the Chinese [78]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994). The contentious articles of the law are cited as follows ([79]Maternal and Infant Health Care Law 1994): Article 8. -- The premarital physical checkup shall include the examination of the following diseases: 1. Genetic diseases of a serious nature; 2. Target infectious diseases; 3. Relevant mental disease. Article 10. -- Physicians shall, after performing the premarital physical checkup, explain and give medical advice to both the male and the female who have been diagnosed with a certain genetic disease of a serious nature that is considered to be inappropriate for childbearing from a medical point of view; the two may be married only if both sides agree to take long-term contraceptive measures or to get the ligation operation for sterility. However, a marriage that is forbidden as stipulated by provisions of the Marriage Law of the People's Republic of China is not included herein. Article 16. -- If a physician detects or suspects that a married couple in their childbearing age suffers from genetic disease of a serious nature, the physician shall give medical advice to the couple, and the couple in their childbearing age shalltake measures in accordance with physician's medical advice. Article 18. -- The physician shall explain to the married couple and give them medical advice about termination of pregnancy if one of the following cases is detected in the prenatal diagnosis: 1. The fetus is suffering from genetic disease of a serious nature; 2. The fetus has a defect of a serious nature; 3. Continued pregnancy may threaten the life and safety of the pregnant woman or seriously impair her health because of the serious disease she suffers from. In these articles, "genetic diseases of a serious nature" refers to diseases that are caused congenitally by genetic factors, that may totally or partially deprive the victim of the ability to live independently, that are highly possible to recur in generations to come, and that are considered medically inappropriate for reproduction; "relevant mental diseases" refers to schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, and other mental diseases of a serious nature. The international opinions on the Chinese law vary. Some Western geneticists have fiercely criticized the law as an "abuse of genetics" and a "violation of human rights" ([80]Morton 1998). Others have said that "in a country where millions of female children vanish, and many children with developmental abnormalities are left to die, the law might represent an improvement" ([81]Beardsley 1997, pp. 33 - 34). Frankly speaking, in China too there is opposition to the law, from some geneticists who did their training in Western countries. For example, they oppose some radical measures such as "sterilization of people with IQ less than 60" and the use of term "eugenics" in the early draft of the law. Interestingly, voices of Chinese geneticists are heard defending the law. Some examples are "China now has a population of 50 million handicapped. Without effective action, China will have an even larger population with serious hereditary diseases and it will naturally impose a grave social problem as regards their livelihood, social and cultural development as a whole and even the quality of the whole population" ([82]"Opportunity for Depth in Chinese Eugenics Debate" 1998, p. 109); "the law was terribly misinterpreted"; "the law was needed to supplement the one-child policy and had no intention of enforcing eugenic aspects" ([83]Takebe 1997, p. 89); "the law only facilitates practices common for decades in Western countries, and there is no similarity between what is practiced in China and Hitler's concept of eugenics" ([84]Maddox and Swinbanks 1995, p. 549). The survey results do, however, suggest that social, economic, and cultural differences most likely will give rise to a disagreement between China and the West, on the issue of eugenics. Public education in genetics is thought to be an effective approach to reduce the incidence of genetic diseases, although it needs a huge and long-term investment from the government ([85]Harper and Clarke 1997). This survey suggests that at least half of Chinese geneticists appear to realize the importance of the issue. On the other hand, genetics education in China has not covered any ethical issues yet ([86]McCaffrey 1989). One ethicist who advised the drafting of the Chinese law admitted that bioethics has just started to be discussed and was not considered seriously when the law was drafted ([87]Takebe 1997). This survey, however, reveals that most Chinese geneticists think that ethical guidelines are necessary for the improvement of genetics services in China. Although the Ministry of Public Health of China published a brief ethical code for medical professionals in 1988 ([88]Qiu 1993), at the moment there are not any ethical guidelines for genetics services in China. A group of experts from both developed and developing countries, including China, sponsored by the World Health Organization, has drafted international guidelines on ethical issues in medical genetics and on the provision of genetics services. The guidelines not only provide ethical principles for genetics services and research but also emphasize respect for cultural, social, and religious diversity ([89]World Health Organization 1998). It therefore is expected that the guidelines will be introduced into China and will serve as a framework for Chinese geneticists in their practice and research. Perhaps in this practical way, such guidelines could bridge the social and cultural gap between Chinese geneticists and their Western counterparts, could help to clarify the nature of eugenics, and could allow a consensus on the ethical, legal, and social issues of genetics in the future. Acknowledgments I am deeply indebted to our Chinese colleagues who participatedin and supported this survey. I wish to thank Profs. Dorothy C. Wertz (Shriver Center for Mental Retardation) and John C. Fletcher (University of Virginia Medical Center), for their excellent organization of the international survey in 37 countries, and to Prof. Renzong Qiu (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), for providing eastern China data. I am grateful to Prof. Peter S. Harper and Dr. Angus J. Clarke (University of Wales College of Medicine, United Kingdom), for their face-to-face discussion of my work with me. I also want to thank Sir Walter Bodmer (Oxford University) and Profs. Martin Bobrow (Cambridge University) and Newton E. Morton (University of Southampton), for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. 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http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=3093157&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 114. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf14 115. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=3367351&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 116. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf15 117. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=8524378&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 118. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf16 119. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=8945458&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 120. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf18 121. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=9288092&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 122. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf19 123. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=9298745&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 124. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf100 125. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf20 126. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=2929603&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 127. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf6 128. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=8175232&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 129. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf21 130. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=9425893&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 131. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf25 132. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=8805683&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 133. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf23 134. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=9515943&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 135. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf27 136. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf28 137. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf29 138. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=2809438&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 139. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf30 140. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=2344537&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 141. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf31 142. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf32 143. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf33 144. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=9212521&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 145. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf34 146. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=8448899&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 147. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf35 148. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf10 149. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=7603222&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 150. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf36 151. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf37 152. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf38 153. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=7892742&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 154. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf39 155. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=3145827&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 156. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf40 157. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=2015698&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r 158. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG/journal/issues/v63n3/980223/980223.text.html#crf41 159. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/link_Medline?uid=7555244&form=6&db=m&Dopt=r From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:56:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:56:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Houston J. Int. Law: Yin and yang: the eugenic policies of the United States and China: is the analysis that black and white? Gail Rodgers Message-ID: Yin and yang: the eugenic policies of the United States and China: is the analysis that black and white? Gail Rodgers Houston Journal of International Law, Fall 1999 v22 i1, p129 If in the First Act you hang a gun upon the wall, by the Third Act you must use it. --Chekhov I. INTRODUCTION As technological and scientific advances proliferate, innumerable questions regarding legal, cultural, ethical, and human rights issues arise begging for answers. In the ever-broadening global climate of economics and human rights, politicians and world leaders are more frequently asking about the impact of these technologies on the policies of countries around the world. More specifically, as genetic and reproductive options are enlarged, their effects elicit questions related to procreative rights, discrimination, and population policy. The purpose of this comment is to analyze the eugenic practices and policies of the United States and China, and comment on their respective human rights implications. This Comment will outline the development of the eugenics movement and how eugenic practices have largely been abandoned in the United States. This will be contrasted with the continuing eugenic sterilization practices in China. This comment will also distinguish the social goals of sterilization policies in both countries. It will recognize as the primary distinction in policy the fundamental choice of whether to subordinate the well being of the individual to the well being of society. In addition, it will discuss the permissive genetic policies in the United States which may implicitly endorse eugenic practices. II. EUGENICS DEFINED For many, the term "eugenics" conjures up some image of a science fiction experiment gone amuck. The film industry has produced enough movies of aliens bred to have certain omnipotent or omniscient capabilities to somewhat justify that notion. However, the term "eugenics " comes by this connotation honestly, as it was first widely discredited in connection with atrocities of Nazi policies in Germany.(1) Surprisingly, the beginning of eugenics comes from a more palatable background. Plato was one of the earliest theorists to advocate the betterment of the human race by choosing the correct mate.(2) The term "eugenics " comes from the Greek word meaning "well born."(3) It was coined by Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, who defined it as "the science of improving stock."(4) Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher, described it as more of a social movement than a science in that it "attempt[s] to improve the biological character of a breed by deliberate methods adopted to that end."(5) There is some controversy over the definition of eugenics and how broadly the term sweeps. Much of the controversy focuses on whether eugenics should be defined in terms of the intent of the policies or their consequences.(6) However, all eugenicists share the common belief that "individual desires should be subordinated to a larger public purpose."(7) The definition of eugenics can be further delineated into "positive" and "negative" eugenics. Positive eugenics is similar to Plato's view which attempts to improve the race through selection and maximization of "socially desirable" genes.(8) In this instance, eugenicists try to manipulate genes or the mating of genes to increase the incidence of "positive" or "desirable traits."(9) This can be contrasted with the more controversial negative eugenics which seeks to eliminate those "bad" or "undesirable" genes or traits from the gene pool.(10) The most infamous example of negative eugenics was Hitler's attempt in the Lebensborn Project to produce "good babies."(11) Accounts vary as to the actual numbers, but historians agree that Hitler had as many as sixty to a hundred thousand "unfit" persons sterilized in an attempt to prohibit reproduction by defectives and eliminate their bad genes from the human race.(12) Eugenicists believed that through the use of both positive and negative eugenics they could eliminate many so-called hereditary defects such as mental retardation, criminality, and mental illness, and thereby eradicate many social problems.(13) Negative eugenics such as sterilization would discourage or prevent the socially undesirable from procreating, while positive eugenics would encourage the reproduction of those with socially and culturally desirable traits.(14) Modern discussions of eugenics include the discipline of genetics, and whether genetics is a new or camouflaged type of eugenics.(15) Scientists acknowledge the horrific past of eugenics, and are cautious to delineate the genetic discipline from that of eugenics.(16) One modern geneticist compared the definition of eugenics to the definition of the term "freedom," in the sense that "it's meaning `is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist.'"(17) A broader definition of eugenics includes almost any type of pre-natal genetic testing because this testing invariably includes the systematic selection of fetuses.(18) However, many geneticists define eugenics on much narrower terms that include a social aim and coercive means.(19) The various definitions used for eugenics depend on the author's political intention and desire to associate or dissociate it from past eugenic practices.(20) Another thorny issue in the definition of eugenics is that the aim of the policy is often considered in deciding whether or not the policy is eugenic.(21) III. HISTORY A. Eugenic Theory The roots of eugenics are planted in the 19th century experiments of Francis Galton's cousin, Charles Darwin.(22) Darwin's work on evolution lent itself to an application to social problems.(23) Social theorists began first in Europe, and then in the United States, to compare the improvement of society to the evolution of the species.(24) Galton elaborated on the social aspects of Darwin's theories, and began studying traits in family trees.(25) Galton concluded that many physical and psychological traits were inherited, and that as a result, manipulative breeding could produce persons with desired traits.(26) Many eugenicists of the time believed that "feeblemindedness" or mental disability was an inherited recessive trait.(27) Consequently, they felt sterilization of the mentally disabled would solve the problem and improve society.(28) Eugenicists further linked intelligence (or lack thereof) with social adequacy and virtue, and predicted the morality of certain people based on their intelligence.(29) It was not difficult for proponents of eugenics to gather support for their theories, as genetic diseases and mental disabilities impacted both the affected person's family and society.(30) The economic realities of caring for the mentally disabled, combined with the misunderstanding of mental illness and fear of the degeneracy of the human race, fueled a drive in the United States for the sterilization of the mentally disabled.(31) B. Historical Eugenics in the United States As eugenicists analyzed American societal problems in the late 1800s, they came to rely on the assumption that nearly all social ill resulted from heredity.(32) In addition, several researchers claimed a dramatic increase, in some reports as much as 200%, in the incidence of feeblemindedness.(33) The initial encroachment of eugenics into the arena of the feebleminded began with an 1890s Connecticut law that prohibited "epileptics, imbeciles, and feebleminded persons from marrying or having extramarital relations before age forty-five."(34) During this time period, although there were no laws expressly authorizing sterilization, human sterilization was practiced in many states on people in penal and mental institutions.(35) After Pennsylvania and Michigan unsuccessfully attempted to pass bills for sterilization of the feebleminded, Indiana became the first state to pass a statute permitting the sterilization of institutionalized criminals, rapists, imbeciles, and idiots.(36) Another of the initial sterilization statutes was legislated in California, partly in response to the influx of "racially inferior" Chinese and Mexicans.(37) In the early twentieth century, the rise of sterilization was very rapid, with twenty-three states having some form of sterilization statute by 1925.(38) Although many of the statutes had little or no legislative history and were passed for a variety of "defectives," virtually all were modeled to some degree after the Indiana statute which provided that if two physicians certified that there was no chance of "improvement" in the person, they could be sterilized without consent.(39) Many of these laws did little to protect individual rights.(40) Accordingly, some were declared unconstitutional on grounds of equal protection, due process, or cruel and unusual punishment.(41) Some courts, however, upheld the statutes on the basis of protecting the race.(42) The breakthrough for the eugenic campaign came in 1927 in the infamous Buck v. Bell case.(43) The Supreme Court upheld a Virginia statute requiring that patients in institutions who suffered from "hereditary" forms of mental illness be sterilized as a condition of their release.(44) In one of his most quoted decisions, Justice Holmes rejected the due process claim and the equal protection claim on the basis that sterilization was beneficial to both the patient and society.(45) Carrie Buck was a woman who, along with her mother before her, had been institutionalized for feeble-mindedness.(46) Carrie was an illegitimate child, and had mothered an illegitimate child who was also believed to be feeble-minded.(47) Justice Holmes upheld the statute authorizing sterilization to prevent the parenting of "socially inadequate offspring" on the grounds that "[t]hree generations of imbeciles are enough."(48) Justice Holmes' opinion is most notable for the fact that he accepted and endorsed the eugenic theories without reservation, gave no thought to procreation as a right, and never questioned whether feeblemindedness was actually hereditary.(49) The era following Buck v. Bell consisted of nearly thirty states either enforcing previously unused sterilization statutes, or passing compulsory sterilization statutes to correct what they saw as a serious social problem.(50) Although numerous statutes were passed and sterilization of the feebleminded occurred in most states, the prediction that Buck would dramatically increase the eugenic sterilization practice was largely overestimated.(51) The actual peak in sterilizations occurred about the time that Buck was decided, but the popularity of the eugenic campaign was already losing ground.(52) As advances were made in genetic research and other disciplines such as psychology and sociology became popular, the eugenic movement lost momentum as other explanations became available for mental disability.(53) Another contributor to the decline in popularity of eugenics was the discovery of the Nazi atrocities based on eugenic ideas, and American revulsion at this blatant racism.(54) The turning point in American sterilization law came in 1942 when the Supreme Court decided Skinner v. Oklahoma.(55) In this case, the Court held that procreation is a fundamental right; therefore, any statutes affecting this right to reproduction should be strictly scrutinized by the courts.(56) The court realized that "[t]he power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear."(57) In Griswold v. Connecticut,(58) the Supreme Court began expanding the rights to reproductive privacy, based on that fundamental right to procreate.(59) In contravention of the Buck decision which didn't consider procreation as a right, the watershed case of Roe v. Wade(60) held that the right to privacy to procreate included the right to an abortion.(61) As a result of scientific and social developments and the birth of the right to procreate, many states have questioned and repealed their eugenic sterilization statutes.(62) As the pendulum of eugenics and reproductive freedom swings the other way, some cases involve the sterilization of incompetents for non-eugenic, even habilitating reasons.(63) C. Historical Eugenics in China Chinese eugenic policies are unlike the U.S. policies, because they are rooted in a desire for population control.(64) The Chinese began aggressive population policies after the Communist takeover in 1949.(65) In that era, the government implemented very pro-natalist policies to encourage the growth of the population and to improve socioeconomic development.(66) By the mid 1960s, that campaign was largely reversed, as Chinese officials realized the impact of famine and economic hard times on their country.(67) Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping put a screeching halt to the population expansion with his plan of social modernization.(68) The government began urging family planning by limiting couples to two or three children and later promoting the one-child family as the norm.(69) This campaign did slow the population growth. However, Chinese officials continued to worry about the relative scarcity of arable land to support the burgeoning population.(70) "In 1979, the Chinese leadership, faced with demographic data supporting the contention that rapid population growth would slow economic growth, revised their strategy and launched the PRC's One Child Policy."(71) This policy, although not a national law, limited couples to one child per family, and was outlined in numerous Communist Party directives.(72) In 1980, The Marriage Law was enacted and mandated family planning and restricted couples from marrying before proscribed ages.(73) In addition, the 1982 Chinese Constitution mandated that the entire country should practice family planning.(74) Chinese population policy, while arguably innocuous on its face, has elicited international outrage because of the methods used to implement it.(75) Although Chinese officials vigorously deny human rights abuses, numerous reports support the fact that both coercion and force are used to ensure success of the One Child Policy.(76) Although the government has acknowledged that mass sterilization campaigns occur in rural areas, they blame these excesses on local officials.(77) Directives issued in both 1982 and 1991 urged the provinces to maintain strict enforcement of the policy.(78) There are numerous reports of forced abortions and sterilizations, late term aborted babies allowed to die, infanticide, and abandonment of female infants.(79) In addition to force, coercive means such as economic and job sanctions, threats, and community pressure are used on both potential parents.(80) Government officials view these practices as more favorable than allowing uncontrolled population growth which they fear would lead to poverty, high infant mortality rates, and malnutrition.(81) In addition to sterilization for population control, China has also implemented programs to sterilize the mentally retarded for eugenic reasons.(82) Included in the 1986 guidelines for the regulation of childbearing were provisions that prohibit people with histories of mental illness, retardation, or hereditary disease from having children.(83) In 1986, the Ministry of Health also released the Guiding Criteria for Classification of Abnormal Cases which listed four groups of people who are permitted to marry but not allowed to have children.(84) "These include couples in which both spouses are born deaf-mute due to a hereditary disease or disorder, or in which at least one spouse has hereditary schizophrenia, manic depression, or heart disease."(85) The government's apparent purpose in implementing these laws is to reallocate resources to more productive projects than spending the money on disabled individuals.(86) Many provinces passed similar laws in the late 1980s. For example, Shandong Province passed a law in 1989 stating "`[t]hose who have been found to have the possibility to give birth to severely defective babies or babies with severe hereditary diseases ... should be banned from having children; if pregnant, the pregnancy should be terminated.'"(87) Other provinces have similar laws providing that "`[i]f one spouse is insane (chi), an idiot (dai), or a fool (sha), or has any other hereditary disease likely to cause severe defects in descendants, that spouse should be sterilized.'"(88) The Gansu province in China, which has the most comprehensive eugenics measures, defines the term "idiot" as an individual whose IQ is below 49 and who has cognitive and behavioral difficulties.(89) Much of the scientific community has long rejected the assumption that individuals with mental disabilities will automatically reproduce children with the same defects.(90) Another instance of implicit eugenics in China is the widespread practice of prenatal sex selection in favor of male babies.(91) Reports of this discrimination against female babies are best illustrated by a shift in the birth ratio of boys to girls.(92) The state family planning figures from April of 1993 indicate that the ratio was 100 girls for every 111.3 boys born.(93) This figure is drastically different than the worldwide ratio of 100 girls for every 106 boys, which was the ratio in China prior to the One Child Policy.(94) The deputy head of the Family Planning Commission attributed this discrepancy in part to the ancient belief, especially common in rural areas, that only boys can carry on the family line.(95) Although doctors are legally barred from revealing the sex of a fetus, even small rural Chinese towns have ultrasound machines, and reports indicate that healthcare workers will accept bribes to reveal the baby's sex.(96) There are also reports of female babies that are hidden, abandoned, killed, or given away in the hopes that the couple can have a second male baby without the mandated fines and penalties.(97) Although the provinces have laws officially prohibiting violence against baby girls, the regulations prove ineffective because of their lack of specific penalties and enforcement procedures.(98) In addition, Chinese law rarely punishes crimes, unless the victim or the family presses charges which is unrealistic in the case of infanticide.(99) The Chinese government recently adopted the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law, previously known as the Eugenics Law.(100) This law represents an attempt by the Chinese government to not only decrease the quantity of the population, but also to increase the quality.(101) This provision will be discussed at length in section V following. IV. MODERN UNITED STATES EUGENICS POLICY A. Eugenic Theory Although the United States has generally rejected eugenics as a policy for social improvement, there are still some applicable uses for the old statutes permitting sterilization of the mentally disabled.(102) With current political themes of reproductive privacy, and a newfound desire to protect the mentally incapable, some sterilization statutes have been upheld and found beneficial based on a rationale of the disabled person's right to make procreative choices.(103) Three emerging themes are responsible for the transformation of sterilization law: "the discrediting of the eugenic theory, the development of the constitutional doctrine of reproductive privacy, and the changing conception of mental retardation."(104) Current laws reflect a societal distaste for the historical use of eugenics, and a fear of intrusion on individual liberties.(105) The reports of sterilization in Nazi Germany fueled the outcry against eugenic sterilization laws.(106) Subsequently, reproductive rights gained importance with the development of the constitutional doctrine of reproductive privacy.(107) In addition, theories regarding mental retardation have changed drastically from a medical model to a developmental model.(108) Approaches to care of the mentally disabled no longer focus on segregating them, but instead emphasize mainstreaming or integrating them to the extent possible.(109) Currently, mentally disabled people are seen to have the same rights to sexual privacy as other people.(110) The apparent goal of current sterilization law is to prevent erroneous sterilizations, and to protect the right of the mentally disabled individual (or a surrogate acting on her behalf) to make reproductive decisions in her best interests.(111) The argument that frequently supports statutes to sterilize the mentally handicapped is based on the best interests of the patient.(112) There also exists a counter argument to incorporate into the sterilization statutes an element of the best interests of society.(113) The competing values are the importance of reproductive autonomy and a paternalistic protection of the mentally disabled person's right to procreate.(114) One of the difficult issues is defining whether the disabled person's fundamental right to privacy includes both the right to procreate and the right to be sterilized.(115) When dealing with fundamental rights issues, courts have generally taken one of four stances.(116) One view is to ask if the individual's privacy rights would be unfairly restricted if sterilization were denied.(117) Another line of analysis is to only cursorily analyze the fundamental rights to privacy and procreative choice.(118) The third viewpoint is that state interests outweigh fundamental rights and override equal protection and substantive due process challenges.(119) A final view is that there is no state interest strong enough to outweigh the invasion of fundamental rights by involuntary sterilization.(120) This variety of approaches illustrates the controversy over fundamental privacy rights and the disabled individual. B. Statutes Today involuntary sterilization of the mentally disabled is supported by statute in some states, and by case law in others.(121) Presently, ten states have some form of involuntary sterilization statute.(122) The statutes vary widely in application.(123) For example, Idaho's sterilization law applies to persons "past his or her age of puberty,"(124) while Mississippi's law applies to both adults and minors, but only if they are institutionalized.(125) To add to the array of results, statutes use various language and definitions when referring to the mentally disabled.(126) Some states such as North Carolina require only a probability, rather than proof, that the handicapped person may be incapable of caring for their children before they can be ordered sterilized.(127) Other states such as Oregon have more substantive and procedural requirements in place to protect the rights of the mentally handicapped person.(128) The Oregon statute requires the following to establish best interest in the context of sterilization: a) The individual is physically capable of procreating; b) The individual is likely to engage in sexual activity at the present time or in the near future under circumstances likely to result in pregnancy; c) All less drastic contraceptive measures, including supervision, education and training, have proved unworkable or inapplicable, or are medically counter-indicated; d) The proposed method of sterilization conforms with standard medical practice, is the least intrusive method available and appropriate, and can be carried out without reasonable risk to the health and life of the individual; and e) The nature and extent of the individual disability, as determined by empirical evidence and not solely on the basis of standardized tests, renders the individual permanently incapable of caring for and raising a child, even with reasonable assistance.(129) The Oregon statute exemplifies the objective "best interest" inquiry,(130) while other statutes use "substituted judgment" in an attempt to determine what the individual would want if he were able to make an informed decision.(131) States place varying levels of importance on factors such as attempts at other forms of contraception and proof of fertility.(132) The Oregon statute can be contrasted with Mississippi law which is essentially the same as the one at issue in the Buck v. Bell case.(133) The Mississippi statute has been criticized by some as having explicit eugenic purposes, and infringing on disabled persons' liberty interests.(134) Depending on the statute, a parent, guardian, physician, spouse or other interested parties may petition for sterilization of the disabled person.(135) C. Case Law Currently most sterilization issues are raised by the parents of a mentally disabled daughter, who wish their child to be sterilized to prevent the psychological, physical and financial toll of pregnancy and parenthood on their child.(136) Judicial opinions tend to show deference to the parents of disabled children who request sterilization.(137) In the absence of statutory authorization, jurisdictions are split as to whether courts may grant petitions for sterilization.(138) Washington and Iowa courts have held that a state constitutional grant of general jurisdiction to the lower courts was adequate to authorize sterilization of mentally disabled persons.(139) Other courts have held that they lacked jurisdiction over sterilization petitions in the absence of specific statutory authorization.(140) However, after the landmark Supreme Court decision in Stump v. Sparkman(141) (holding that sterilizations may be authorized absent express statutory permission) courts have been more likely to grant jurisdiction.(142) Other courts have based their sterilization jurisdiction on the common law parens patriae doctrine which provides that courts have the authority to protect persons who cannot protect themselves due to a legal disability.(143) With or without statutory authorization, the courts rely on several balancing tests developed by sterilization case law.(144) Many courts follow the two-step process developed in In re Hayes(145) to determine the appropriateness of sterilization.(146) First, the court must determine whether the individual is competent to make an informed decision regarding sterilization.(147) If the court finds the individual incompetent, then it applies a best interests analysis to determine if sterilization is appropriate.(148) The Hayes rule is stringent; the court can order sterilization only if specific criteria are met.(149) A more flexible rule is the "discretionary best interest" rule which uses a similar test, but allows a court more discretion in making a decision.(150) Yet other jurisdictions use the "medically essential" standard which authorizes sterilization when it is proven that sterilization is necessary to preserve the life or health of the incompetent.(151) Courts relying on the "substituted judgment" standard "consider the Hayes criteria and any other relevant factors in order to make the decision that the disabled person would make for herself if she were competent."(152) In addition to these tests, some courts inquire further into the individual's preference, disability prognosis, likelihood of sexual activity, and understanding of reproduction.(153) The numerous tests and factors used to consider sterilization petitions create substantial hurdles for petitioners as they tend to create a presumption against sterilization.(154) Although the goal of some of the standards appears to be to protect the individual's right to procreate, others appear to protect the individual from parental or state interference in decision making.(155) Some commentators have criticized the current models as creating adversarial relationships between parent and child and disregarding family interests in the process.(156) Another criticism of sterilization law is that it purports to protect the individual's interest in procreation when it is difficult to determine if that individual even has such an interest.(157) The conflict surrounding sterilization law is best illustrated by the dichotomous view of sterilization itself. "On the one hand, sterilization is authorized as a means of facilitating reproductive choice. On the other hand, sterilization is characterized as a deprivation of a fundamental right."(158) V. MODERN CHINESE EUGENICS POLICY A. The Maternal and Infant Health Care Law China's current eugenic laws stem in part from the controversial Maternal and Infant Health Care Law of 1994 [MIHCL].(159) This law, formerly known as the Eugenics Law, was originally intended to promote the health of women and infants, but contains controversial sterilization provisions.(160) Among other provisions, the law provides that people with certain hereditary disorders must agree to prevent childbirth through sterilization or long term contraception, and those with infectious diseases must delay marriage.(161) In addition, genetic testing is compulsory during pregnancy, and fetuses with serious disorders may be aborted.(162) Although according to the law sterilization or abortion requires the woman's consent,(163) many report that consent is not required in practice.(164) Other concerns regarding the MIHCL are the openly admitted goals of population control and improvement by having fewer and healthier babies.(165) The draft of the law met with so much international criticism that the Chinese government revised some of the language, deleting terms such as "eugenics" and "inferior" births.(166) The law has been denounced by some as proposing Nazi-style eugenics, despite strong denials by Beijing.(167) The scientific community's primary concern with the MIHCL is that it is based on scientifically invalid assumptions.(168) Scientists no longer presume that mentally disabled people will sire children with like defects.(169) Numerous genetic defects arise spontaneously, and there are many birth defects for which there are no known causes or methods of prevention.(170) Genetic testing can predict the likelihood of only certain diseases in a fetus,(171) and the birth of one disabled child does not necessarily indicate the second child will have a disability.(172) Another disturbing premise on which the Eugenics Law is arguably based is that defects or disabilities occur at a greater frequency among minorities and the poor.(173) This belief has concerned human rights activists, who fear that the law will be used to discriminate against these groups.(174) These critics feel that this will lead to an "abuse of private genetic information and a violation of human rights."(175) The MIHCL also fails to specify what type of "serious genetic defect" warrants intervention.(176) The goal of the Eugenic Law is to prevent the perpetuation of diseases that may keep individuals from living and functioning independently.(177) Some officials have interpreted this to include such common defects as harelip and cleft palate.(178) Because the law will be implemented at local levels, the failure to explain what constitutes a "serious genetic condition" will most likely result in wide variations in the interpretation of restrictions.(179) In addition, some of the specified diseases are curable, or have been found to have no effect on pregnancy or the fetus.(180) In 1995, there were an estimated ten million "disabled" people cared for by the Chinese government, many of whom would never have been born had the law been enacted earlier.(181) In contrast to its more controversial provisions, the MIHCL's ban on pre-natal sex determination of fetuses has received widespread approval.(182) The use of technology to identify the gender of a fetus is strictly prohibited unless medically necessary.(183) However, despite its official illegality, the practice of ultrasound sex determination is rampant in areas where the technology is available.(184) Chinese culture traditionally views baby boys as more desirable than baby girls, leading to abortion of female fetuses and girl infanticide.(185) With the strict enforcement of the One Child Policy, many parents desperately wish for that one perfect child to be a son.(186) Numerous reports indicate that in spite of the law, pre-natal sex selection and abortion of female fetuses are common.(187) Despite its good intentions, given the extent of these practices, it is doubtful that the MIHCL will significantly impact pre-natal sex determination.(188) B. Reform of the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law After international criticism of provisions of the MIHCL, Chinese officials announced they were going to clarify the law.(189) This announcement followed the Eighteenth International Congress of Genetics convention in Beijing which included discussions of eugenics and the MIHCL.(190) Scientists at the convention repeatedly criticized the law, and debated whether it openly condoned forced sterilization, or was just vague enough to allow that practice.(191) Many were concerned about the ambiguity surrounding whether the doctor or the couple made the decision regarding sterilization once a defect was detected.(192) Qiu Renzong, a professor of bioethics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an advisor and critic of the law, stated that this decision was to be made by the couple.(193) He stated that the principle governing sterilization was informed consent (presumably similar to the Western world's idea of consent).(194) Officials claimed they issued an explanation of the law in August of 1998 that clarified the ambiguous provisions.(195) All cities and provinces in China were said to have received a copy of this explanation.(196) The explanation also announced that China was seeking information to determine which diseases were severe enough to qualify for sterilization.(197) In essence, this suspended the provision allowing sterilization, at least until a list of diseases has been compiled.(198) Additionally, the explanation stated that people with HIV (which had not developed into AIDS) did not require permission to marry.(199) According to health officials, it may take several years to formally revise the law, but the explanation issued "had the force of law."(200) C. Related Laws and Policies Despite this clarification of the MIHCL, many specialists feel that forced sterilizations will continue in practice.(201) Provinces and local governments often have regulations that authorize such sterilization.(202) Provinces such as Shandong, Shanxi, Jilin, and Gansu all have some type of regulation preventing people with the potential for producing defective babies from procreating.(203) Reports indicate that the Gansu law for sterilization of "Idiotic, Slow-witted, Stupid, and Deranged People" has resulted in about 5,000 people being sterilized in that region.(204) Other reports indicate that authorities have performed compulsory sterilizations to "improve their genetic pool" and enforce the China One Child policy.(205) One reason for the concern that sterilization will continue in spite of clarification of the law is the effect that Communist Party Directives have over codified law.(206) "In China, Communist Party directives are equivalent or superior to legislation and codified laws."(207) Therefore, party directives such as family planning policy can change or supersede existing law.(208) Another concern voiced by human rights activists is the reported incidence of force or coercion to implement the One Child Policy.(209) Although officials deny sanctioning force to implement sterilizations or abortions, reports indicate that the practice is widespread.(210) Numerous reports tell stories of women taken from their homes in the middle of the night for forced insertion of intrauterine devices or late term abortions.(211) Population officials are held to rigid birth quotas and doctors and nurses may be subject to disciplinary measures for allowing babies from induced abortions to live.(212) Reports indicate that local officials forcefully detain women for these procedures, and punish those who resist by inflicting physical injury, confiscating property, and destroying homes.(213) In addition, coercive measures to enforce population policy are clearly outlined in provincial family planning regulations.(214) Widespread penalties for violations of population policy include severe economic sanctions; disqualification for health care, housing, and child-care benefits; loss of employment; and public posting and monitoring of menstrual periods.(215) As a result of these policies, there is intense pressure by fellow villagers and officials who are charged with maintaining their quota of births.(216) Some commentators feel that with this troubled history of enforcement of the population policy, there is little doubt that similar practices will continue to be used to enforce the sterilization provisions of the MIHCL.(217) Another concern regarding China's eugenic practices was raised after "[a] survey of 255 geneticists throughout China showed that they overwhelmingly supported the use of eugenics to improve public heath."(218) Xin Mao of West China University of Medical Sciences in Chengdu conducted the survey which indicated that there exists widespread support of genetic testing for reasons unacceptable to much of the Western world.(219) Approximately eighty-six percent of those surveyed felt that the government should mandate premarital testing to identify hereditary disease,(220) and ninety-one percent thought that couples who were both carriers of a particular genetic disorder should be prohibited from having children.(221) In addition, nearly seventy percent of the scientists favored genetic testing for susceptibility to diseases such as alcoholism.(222) Although these beliefs may seem abhorrent in the Western world, they represent "cultural common sense" in China.(223) Chinese culture appears to support the idea of promotion of the common good, rather than individual good, even if it means endorsing eugenic practices.(224) Mao states that "[t]he core issue is to clean up the gene pool [and to] reduce the number of deleterious genes."(225) He admits that these policies promote discrimination among the disabled Chinese.(226) VI. UNITED STATES GENETIC POLICIES Genetic research is advancing rapidly in the United States, especially with the advent of the Human Genome Project.(227) A primary goal of genetic research and testing is to detect diseases and develop methods for prevention and treatment.(228) "The potential of genetic technology to alleviate the physical, emotional, and financial pain of disease makes this technology extremely attractive."(229) However, the wide use of genetic testing and gene therapy has been seen by some to be heading down a dangerous path to social control.(230) Commentators warn against the evils of widespread genetic testing which may lead to discrimination and eugenic practices.(231) Critics fear that genetic testing may be used to deny insurance, to enable employers to accept or reject certain workers based on their fitness, or to influence educational decisions.(232) Widespread testing and discrimination could even lead to the development of a "`genetic underclass' that society marginalizes based on factors beyond its control."(233) Other developing genetic technologies with human rights implications include germ line manipulation.(234) This technology entails inserting genes into an undeveloped embryo that is fertilized in vitro in an effort to cure genetic diseases.(235) Analysts fear that this technology may create a demand for manipulation of other characteristics such as hair color, intelligence, stature, sexual orientation, and personality.(236) This type of manipulation could result in "racial" discrimination by deselecting for certain cosmetic traits such as skin and eye color and bone structure which are identifiable with a certain race.(237) Currently, reports indicate that sex selection technology is available in the United States.(238) The advent of such technologies has prompted discussions of ethics, morality, and political responsibility.(239) Some scientists express concern about the eugenic possibilities of selecting children with cosmetic or performance traits, or lack of defective traits.(240) Others fear that techniques such as sex selection will lead to skewing of the sex ratio, and contribute to discrimination against women and girls.(241) In support of these fears are isolated reports of aborted fetuses of the "wrong" sex.(242) While efforts to detect and treat genetic diseases receive critical acclaim, other aspects of genetic testing and manipulation have more dubious rewards.(243) As one critic states, "being short, being of average intelligence, or being homosexual - is [not] a disease," and therefore needs no prevention.(244) Although none of these practices are widespread today, commentators stress the possibility that the newfound knowledge may be used to reintroduce eugenic policies rather than to benefit individuals.(245) VII. YIN AND YANG: UNITED STATES V. CHINA East and West, black and white, yin and yang.... do any of these analogies accurately describe the eugenic practices of China versus those of the United States? On their face, the policies and goals seem vastly different, but upon closer inspection, some startling similarities appear. Current U.S. policy regarding eugenic sterilization seems geared to protect the procreative rights of disabled individuals against outside interference.(246) There are numerous procedural and substantive protections to prevent unwarranted sterilizations.(247) In addition, sterilization law seems to be aimed at protecting the mentally disabled person's interests, instead of the interests of society.(248) In the United States when mentally handicapped persons are sterilized, it is usually at the request of their parents in an effort to protect them from the travail of procreation.(249) The statutes and case law primarily apply to incompetent persons, rather than to competent persons with genetic defects.(250) Although some courts consider whether the person's offspring will inherit a disability, this has not been a deciding factor in most cases.(251) Several courts have explicitly rejected any eugenic rationale for sterilization of the mentally disabled.(252) This approach can be contrasted with Chinese policy on sterilization which seems rooted in the true eugenic goal of eliminating defective genes from the population.(253) Unlike the United States policy, the Chinese policy contains no checks and balances to protect the rights of the disabled.(254) Although the government denies it, reports indicate that practices exist that force sterilization against the will of the subject.(255) The MIHCL purports to allow couples to make the decision about their sterilization and contraception, but most commentators believe couples have no choice.(256) Chinese policy is also more inclusive, because it targets individuals for sterilization who may be mentally competent but carry genetic disorders or infectious diseases.(257) In China, sterilization is generally requested by the physician or by government officials rather than by the potential parents.(258) The primary distinguishing feature between Chinese and American eugenic policy appears to be that China focuses on the interests of the whole population, while the United States emphasizes the interests of the individual.(259) While Chinese policy purports to protect the society from the ill of supporting the disabled individual,(260) American policy attempts to protect the individual from the ill of society violating their rights.(261) The United States prides itself in securing rights for its citizens, and some of these fundamental rights include the right to privacy and bodily integrity, including decisions relating to abortion, contraception and sterilization.(262) As this Comment demonstrates, these rights are neither accorded the same status nor guarded as vigorously in China as in the United States. These fundamental rights in the United States result in potential parents having the freedom to make numerous reproductive decisions. Additionally, the importance we attach to these freedoms creates a climate where potential parents may incorporate genetic technology into their reproductive decision making and family planning. Is there anything between Yin and Yang? From an initial analysis, it appears that Chinese eugenic policy is a much greater threat to human rights than the American policy. However, upon examining American genetic policy, one may draw the conclusion that America implicitly endorses eugenics. This conclusion may be drawn depending on how broadly eugenics is defined. Geneticists, in an attempt to disassociate their science from odious practices, may define eugenics as having "a social aim and often coercive means."(263) If this definition is used, many eugenicists who endorse voluntary or positive eugenics would be excluded from the definition.(264) Modern commentators believe that a resurgence of eugenics is occurring without the element of coercion, but rather as a result of voluntary choices.(265) Parents who select for certain cosmetic or performance traits in their children are practicing positive eugenics, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly, those who elect not to have children with certain disabilities may be implementing a form of negative eugenics. Although genetic testing and reproductive decisions in the United States are voluntary, the current permissive attitudes toward the use of genetics in reproductive decisions may lead toward the use of genetics for eugenic practices. Testing which discovers genetic defects and leads to negative eugenic decisions may be seen as discriminatory toward people with such defects. Similarly, the use of genetic testing to select for cosmetic traits may result in discrimination against certain races or ethnic groups. Although not intended to have a eugenic purpose, these types of voluntary decisions pose threats to the human rights that Americans value dearly. As Americans become more comfortable with the idea of determining characteristics such as sex, the implicit eugenic policy becomes more dangerous. While American policies seem safe because of their voluntary nature, they may actually pose an equal risk to human rights as genetic discrimination becomes socially acceptable. VIII. CONCLUSION The twentieth century has witnessed the rise and fall of the eugenic movement in both the East and the West. Currently eugenic policy is in disfavor in many countries, though still strong in China. The United States has numerous safeguards to protect the disabled from eugenic elimination. However, the United States also has policies that permit eugenic decisions on a voluntary basis. With genetic and reproductive technology rapidly outpacing ethical and legal developments, our society may be facing the rise of social eugenic policies once again. In order to combat this occurrence, it is vital for scientists, human rights activists, and scholars to engage in open dialogue about eugenic policies. Now is the time to address genetic and eugenic issues and formulate policies and laws to protect society. "If in the First Act you hang a gun upon the wall, by the Third Act you must use it." The gun is on the wall. Now is the time to determine when, how and against whom it will be used. (1.) See Diane B. Paul, Is Human Genetics Disguised Eugenics?, in GENES AND HUMAN SELF-KNOWLEDGE 67, 72 (Robert F. Weir et al. eds., 1994). (2.) See Richard A. Estacio, Comment, Sterilization of the Mentally Disabled in Pennsylvania: Three Generations Without Legislative Guidance Are Enough, 92 DICK. L. REV. 409, 411 (1988); PLATO, THE REPUBLIC, 149-53 (Richard W. Sterling & William C. Scott trans., W.W. Norton & Co. 1985). (3.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 411. (4.) FRANCIS GALTON, INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN FACULTY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT 17 n.1 (AMS Press 1973) (1907). (5.) Paul, supra note 1, at 68 (quoting Bertrand Russell). (6.) See id. (discussing the implications of using intent or effects to define eugenics). (7.) Id. at 69. (8.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 411. (9.) See Paul, supra note 1, at 70. (10.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 411. (11.) See TROY DUSTER, BACKDOOR TO EUGENICS 112 (1990). (12.) See Philip R. Reilly, Eugenic Sterilization in the United States, in GENETICS AND THE LAW III 227, 236 (Aubrey Milunsky & George J. Annas eds., 1985). (13.) See Eric M. Jaegers, Note, Modern Judicial Treatment of Procreative Rights of Developmentally Disabled Persons: Equal Rights to Procreation and Sterilization, 31 U. LOUISVILLE J. FAM. L. 947, 950 (1993) (tracing the development of sterilization laws). (14.) See id. (15.) See Paul, supra note 1, at 67. "Fear of a Eugenics Revival appears to be a principle anxiety aroused by the Human Genome Project." Id. (16.) See id. at 69-70 (citing the element of coercion as a major distinguishing factor between genetics and eugenics). (17.) ISAIAH BERLIN, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), reprinted in FOUR ESSAYS ON LIBERTY 118, 121 (1969); see also Paul, supra note 1, at 70 (quoting Berlin). (18.) See Paul, supra note 1, at 68. "Prenatal diagnosis presupposes that certain fetal conditions are extrinsically not bearable." Id. (19.) See id. (20.) See id. (21.) See id. at 69 (contemplating whether it is possible to know the motives behind any policy). (22.) See Robert J. Cynkar, Buck v. Bell: "Felt Necessities" v. Fundamental Values?, 81 COLUM. L. REV. 1418, 1420 (1981). (23.) See id. (24.) See id. at 1420 n.4 (citing several prominent social theorists of the time). (25.) See id. at 1420. Galton also performed statisitical analysis on eighty sets of twins. See id. (26.) See id. (explaining Galton's belief that society "could use his principles to produce `men of ability' through planned breeding"). (27.) See id. at 1422. (28.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 412. (29.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1422. One researcher of the time came to the following conclusion: [W]ithin one racial group, the correlations between the divergences of an individual from the average in different desirable traits are positive, that the man who is above the average of his race in intelligence is above rather than below it in decency, sanity, even in bodily health.... The child of good reasoning powers has better, not worse, memory than the average; the child superior in observation is superior in inference; scholarship is prophetic of success out of school; a good mind means a better than average character. Id. (30.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 951 (describing lobbying efforts of eugenicists). (31.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1423-25 (describing how the economic conditions in the United States in the late 19th century and the misunderstanding of mental illness during that time period combined to strengthen the eugenics movement in the United States). For an example of the prevailing climate, see the comments made by Dr. Walter E. Fernald before the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1912: The past few years have witnessed a striking awakening of professional and popular consciousness of the widespread prevalence of feeblemindedness.... and as a causative factor in the production of crime, prostitution, pauperism, illegitimacy, intemperance and other complex social diseases.... The feebleminded are a parasitic, predatory class, never capable of self-support or of managing their own affairs.... Feebleminded women are almost invariably immoral and if at large usually become carriers of venereal disease or give birth to children who are as defective as themselves.... Every feebleminded person, especially the high-grade imbecile, is a potential criminal.... STANLEY POWELL DAVIES, SOCIAL CONTROL OF THE MENTALLY DEFICIENT 92 (Gerald N. Grob et al. eds., 1976). (32.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1423 (describing the view that an "individual's social adequacy is soley a function of his mental endowment"). (33.) See id. at 1423-24; see also Reilly, supra note 12, at 228 (discussing "the Jukes"). The report on the Jukes was written by a prison inspector who described the traits of 709 descendents of a particular Dutch settler, many of whom were prisoners, and all of whom supposedly had a penchant for taverns, brothels, and other social ills. The story of the Jukes was widely accepted by the general public, and furthered the interest in calculating the cost of these defectives to society. Another "experiment" involved a Revolutionary War soldier who impregnated a girl who was thought to be low class. He later married a "respectable" Quaker woman and bred a line of eminent citizens, while the illegitimate side of the family were feebleminded paupers. See id. at 229. (34.) Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1432 (citing Act of July 4, 1895, 1895 Conn. Pub. Acts ch. 325). (35.) See id. at 1432-33 (discussing a systematic program of sterilization implemented at the Kansas State Home for the Feebleminded). (36.) See id. at 1433 (citing Act of March 9, 1907, 1907 Ind. Acts ch. 215) (noting that the campaign for sterilization of the feebleminded in Indiana was led by a physician who was experimenting with the newly developed vasectomy, and that prior to passage of the law, he had sterilized 176 inmates in a reformatory); see also Jaegers, supra note 13, at 950-51 (discussing the use of vasectomy, castration, and salpingectomy for eugenic purposes). Vasectomy is partial or complete removal of the vas deferens; castration is the removal of the ovaries or testicles; and a salpingectomy is the removal of the fallopian tube. See AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY 299, 1593, 1977 (3d ed. 1992). (37.) See Reilly, supra note 12, at 231. A similar situation to that of Indiana existed in California in 1909. A physician and lobbyist named F.W. Hatch helped to draft a sterilization law, helped to convince the legislature to adopt it, and after the law was enacted, was appointed General Superintendent of State Hospitals and was thus authorized to implement the new law. The California law focused on the insane and provided for consent by the insane person's family; however, as sterilization was a prerequisite for release from the institutions, few withheld consent. See id. at 231-32. (38.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1433. (39.) See Reilly, supra note 12, at 231. (40.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 952. (41.) See Haynes v. Lapeer, 166 N.W. 938 (Mich. 1918) (holding a Michigan law providing for sterilization of institutionalized `mentally defective' persons unconstitutional and void as class legislation). The court reasoned that the enactment selected out of a "natural class of defective and incompetent persons only those already under public restraint, leaving immune from its operation all others of like kind to whom the reason for the legislative remedy is normally and equally, at least, applicable, extending immunities and privileges to the latter which are denied to the former." Id. at 940. See also Smith v. Board of Examiners, 88 A. 963 (N.J. Sup. Ct. 1913) (holding a New Jersey law providing for sterilization of epileptics in public institutions unconstitutional because the statutory remedy denied institutionalized epileptics equal protection); Jaegers, supra note 13, at 952. (42.) See State ex Rel. v. Schaffer, 270 P. 604, 605 (Kan. 1928) (upholding a statute authorizing the sterilization of hospital inmates): "Procreation of defective and feeble-minded children with criminal tendencies does not advantage, but patently disadvantages, the race. The race may insure its own perpetuation and such progeny may be prevented in the interest of the higher general welfare." Id. (43.) 274 U.S. 200 (1927). (44.) See id. at 200; see also Jaegers, supra note 13, at 947. The Act declared: [T]he Commonwealth ... is supporting ... many defective persons who if now discharged or paroled would likely become by the propagation of their kind a menace to society but who if incapable of procreating might properly and safely be discharged or paroled and become self-supporting.... [H]uman experience has demonstrated that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, idiocy, imbecility, epilepsy and crime.... Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1436. The Virginia law contained much of the same language as the laws Hitler used to sterilize the defective in Germany, as both were based on the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law proposed by an American eugenicist. See Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: New Light on Buck v. Bell, 60 N.Y.U.L. REV. 30, 31 & n.6 (1985) (citing A. CHASE, THE LEGACY OF MALTHUS: THE SOCIAL COSTS OF THE NEW SCIENTIFIC RACISM 135, 351 n.15 (1977)). (45.) See Buck, 274 U.S. at 206; see also Jaegers, supra note 13, at 953. (46.) See Buck, 274 U.S. at 205. (47.) See id.; Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1437. (48.) Buck, 274 U.S. at 207. (49.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 953; see also Estacio, supra note 2, at 415-16 (commenting on how Justice Holmes quickly and erroneously assumed that heredity is the primary cause of mental retardation); ALBERT DEUTSCH, THE MENTALLY ILL IN AMERICA 365-67 (2d ed. 1949) (discussing the post-Buck research and developments, and indicating that many of the so-called hereditary mental defects provided for in the sterilization statutes were in fact not inherited). It is interesting to note that several historians and commentators offer proof that Buck was a test case specifically designed to bolster the sterilization campaign. See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1437; see also Lombardo, supra note 44, at 51-54 (offering evidence that none of the three Buck generations were actually "imbeciles," but rather were considered social defectives because they mothered illegitimate children and that Carrie became a mother as a result of rape). (50.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1454; Jaegers, supra note 13, at 953-54. The initial sterilization statutes were aimed at institutionalized persons, and prior to 1930, roughly half of those sterilized were men. In 1930, the number of women sterilized began to rise dramatically. See Reilly, supra note 12, at 235-36. (51.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1454 (noticing that despite the Buck decision, and the increased number of sterilizations in Virginia, the nationwide use of sterilization was declining). (52.) See id. (commenting that by the time of the Buck decision, eugenic scientists had become increasingly aware of the simplistic nature of their assumptions, and had begun to withdraw their support from the eugenics movement). (53.) See id. at 1456. Despite strong, support for eugenic sterilization in the medical community, only eighteen state medical associations officially supported the eugenic position. See Reilly, supra note 12, at 235. In 1937, the American Medical Association stated, "Present knowledge regarding human heredity is so limited that there appears to be very little scientific basis to justify limitation of conception for eugenic reasons.... There is conflicting evidence regarding the transmissibility of epilepsy and mental disorders." Charles P. Kindregan, Sixty Years of Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization: "Three Generations of Imbeciles" and the Constitution of the United States, 43 CHI. KENT L. REV. 123, 136-37 (1966) (internal quotations omitted). (54.) See Cynkar, supra note 22, at 1456. Although word of the German campaign horrified many Americans, nearly haft of the involuntary sterilizations in the United States occurred after Hitler's campaign was in full swing. See Reilly, supra note 12, at 935. (55.) 316 U.S. 535 (1942); see Jaegers, supra note 13, at 958 (arguing that Skinner established procreation as a fundamental right, and sparked a debate regarding sterilization of mentally disabled persons). (56.) See Skinner, 316 U.S. at 536-39 (invalidating an Oklahoma statute that provided for involuntary sterilization of individuals convicted of more than two felonies). The Supreme Court invalidated the statute in part on equal protection grounds. They reasoned that the crimes Skinner committed, stealing chickens and armed robbery, were essentially the same as embezzlement which was excluded from the statute. See id.; see also Jaegers, supra note 13, at 957-58 (commenting that states seeking to enforce compulsory sterilization statutes must show a compelling state interest and the unavailability of less intrusive means of accomplishing the same goal). (57.) Skinner, 316 U.S. at 541. (58.) 318 U.S. 479 (1965). (59.) See id. at 485-86 (holding that married couples had a right to privacy that included non-interference with contraception); see also Jaegers, supra note 13, at 958 (commenting that the Supreme Court began formulating the modern doctrine of reproductive privacy in Griswold). This right was later expanded to include unmarried couples. See Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 454-55 (1972) (holding that prohibiting only unmarried persons access to contraceptives violated Equal Protection). (60.) 410 U.S. 113 (1973). (61.) See id. at 154. (62.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 959. (63.) See In re Valerie N., 707 P.2d 760 (Cal. 1985). In this case, the California Supreme Court held that it was unable to permit the sterilization of a severely retarded woman, even at the request of her parents, because the statute didn't allow sterilization of non-consenting persons. See id. at 761-62. (64.) See Xiaorong Li, License to Coerce: Violence Against Women, State Responsibility, and Legal Failures in China's Family-Planning Program, 8 YALE J.L. & FEMINISM 145, 148-55 (outlining China's population policy and its ramifications). (65.) See Reed Boland, The Environment, Population, and Women's Human Rights, 27 ENVTL. L. 1137, 1143 (1997) [hereinafter Women's Rights] (commenting that after 1949, the new Communist regime aggressively pursued a policy of encouraging births). (66.) See id. (explaining that the Communist government implemented the policy to strengthen the country through increased socioeconomic development). The Communist Party Chairman, Mao Zedong, instituted a policy with the slogan "the more babies, the more glorious are their mothers." Li, supra note 64, at 148. (67.) See Li, supra note 64, at 148. The new slogan in the 1970s was "Later, farther apart, and fewer." Id. (68.) See id. His plan emphasized economic efficiency and the importance of halting the population explosion. See id. (69.) See id. (70.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1143. China has approximately a fifth of the world's people but less than a tenth of the world's farmable land. See Graciela Gomez, China's Eugenics Law as Grounds for Granting Asylum, 5 PAC. RIM L. & POL'Y J. 563, 565 (1996). (71.) Gomez, supra note 70, at 565. (72.) See id. (noting that the Chinese Constitution gives the individual states power to carry out family planning in order to achieve the goal of population control). "The Central Party Committee and the State Council announced that `controlling population growth is an important strategic issue facing our country's modern socialist construction.'" Li, supra note 64, at 149. (73.) See Li, supra note 65, at 149. (74.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 566. (75.) See Li, supra note 65, at 152-155 (discussing in detail the `one-birth' policy that generally requires couples to obtain birth permits prior to conception, punishes couples who have more than one child by forcing the woman to terminate the pregnancy, and forces couples to use contraceptives if they already have one child). (76.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1144. (77.) See id. (78.) See Li, supra note 654, at 149-50. (79.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 568-69; Reed Boland, Cairo Conference and Programme of Action: An Innovative Approach to Population Policy or Old Wine in a New Bottle?, 1995 ST. LOUIS-WARSAW TRANSATLANTIC L.J. 23, 31 (1995); Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1144 (discussing reports of mass sterilization campaigns in the provinces). (80.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1145-46. At times the whole community is involved in pressuring women into sterilization, abortion, or insertion of an IUD. In some areas officials actually monitor the women's use of contraceptives and whether they become pregnant. See id. at 1146. The government may also withhold medical, educational or housing benefits, or impose stiff fines for non-compliance. See Reed Boland, Civil & Political Rights and the Right to Nondiscrimination Population Policies, Human Rights, and Legal Change, 44 AM. U. L. REV. 1257, 1261 (1995). In contrast, those couples who comply with the one child policy may be rewarded with better benefits. See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1145. (81.) See Timothy John Fitzgibbon, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Are Children Really Protected? A Case Study of China's Implementation, 20 LOY. L.A. INT'L & COMP. L. J. 325, 344 (1998). (82.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1151 (noting that provinces have enacted laws requiring sterilization of individuals with hereditary diseases or mental or physical disabilities). (83.) See Li, supra note 64, at 160. (84.) See id. at 161. (85.) Id. (internal quotations omitted). (86.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1151. (87.) Li, supra note 64, at 161 (citing Shadong Family Planning Regulations art. 17 (adopted by the Standing Committee of the Seventh Shandong People's Congress, July 20, 1988)). (88.) Id. at 161 (citing Shanxi Family Planning Regulations art. 13 (adopted by the Standing Committee of the Seventh Shanxi People's Congress, Sept. 22, 1989)). (89.) See id. at 161 n.87. (90.) See id. at 162. (91.) See id. at 169 (discussing the common practice of aborting female fetuses). (92.) See id. at 166 & n.114 (citing Li Yongping, Infant Sex Ratio and Its Relationship With Socio-economic Variables: Results of Population Census and The Reflected Realities, 4 POPULATION & ECON. 3 1993); Mu Guangzong, A Theoretical Explanation of Recent Rise in Sex Ration at Birth in China, 1 POPULATION & ECON. 50 (1995) (describing China's sex ratio). (93.) See Uli Schmetzer, In Controlling China's Population, Girls `Disappear,' CHI. TRIB., Apr. 27, 1993, [sections] 1, at 1. [hereinafter Girls Disappear. Some sources claim the ratio is even more skewed, and that as many as 750,000 females born in China each year are missing. See id. Calculations from as far back as 1986 indicate over half a million female births unaccounted for each year. See Terence H. Hull, Recent Trends in Sex Ratios of Birth in China, 16 POPULATION & DEV. REV. 63, 67 (1990). (94.) See Girls Disappear, supra note 93 (comparing worldwide sex ratios to China's pre-One Child Policy sex ratio). (95.) See id. (discussing China's preference for male offspring); see also Nicholas D. Kristof, China's Crackdown on Births: A Stunning and Harsh Success, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 25, 1993, at A1 (describing the emphasis Chinese peasants place on bearing male offspring). (96.) See Li, supra note 64, at 169 (describing largely ineffective provincial regulations and legislation prohibiting sex identification); see also Kristof, supra note 95 (discussing the growing use of ultrasound technology for sex identification). Although the Chinese government denies fetal preference, in the 1980s, they created exceptions to the One Child Policy by allowing rural couples whose only child was female to have a second male child. See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1150. (97.) See Li, supra note 65, at 166-67 & n.117 (explaining various techniques for concealing the birth of female babies). (98.) See id. at 167 (discussing ineffectiveness of laws aimed at protecting female infants). (99.) See id. at 167 & n.121. (100.) See id. at 162 (citing Ruth Youngblood, China Law Defers Disabled Marriages, UPI, Oct. 27, 1994). (101.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 569. (102.) See James C. Dugan, The Conflict Between "Disabling" and "Enabling" Paradigms in Law: Sterilization, the Developmentally Disabled, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, 78 CORNELL L. REV. 507, 517-20 (discussing the shift from a predominantly disabling paradigm, permitting involuntary sterilization, to the current, less severe, enabling paradigm). (103.) See id. at 520-21 (comparing enabling sterilization statutes which maximize the disabled person's ability to choose, with disabling sterilization statutes which minimize the disabled person's ability to choose). (104.) Elizabeth S. Scott, Sterilization of Mentally Retarded Persons: Reproductive Rights and Family Privacy, 1986 DUKE L.J. 806, 809 (1986). (105.) See id. at 811-12 (describing reform law rejecting eugenics to protect individual liberties). (106.) See id. at 811. (107.) See, e.g., Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 485 (1965) (striking down as unconstitutional a law prohibiting married couples access to birth control on the grounds that it interfered with marital privacy). Several related decisions further broadened women's rights to contraception, abortion, and fertility. See, e.g., Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 772 (1986) (holding that women have a constitutionally protected right to an abortion); Carey v. Population Servs. Int'l, 431 U.S. 678, 694 (1977) (holding a law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to minors restricts their reproductive privacy); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 164 (1973) (holding that women have a privacy right to abortion during the first trimester); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 443 (1972) (holding that prohibiting single persons from using contraceptives violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment). See also Robert Randal Adler, Note, Estate of C. W.: A Pragmatic Approach to the Involuntary Sterilization of the Mentally Disabled, 20 NOVA L. REV. 1323, 1347-48 (discussing the development of the fundamental right to sexuality and privacy). (108.) See Scott, supra note 104, at 814 (elaborating on the changing conception of mental retardation). (109.) See id. at 815 (discussing current trend to integrate mentally retarded persons). (110.) See id. at 813. (111.) See id. at 807. (112.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 420. (113.) See id. This concern for the best interests of society is based on the presumption that some, if not all, mentally handicapped persons are unable to become fit parents. See id. at 421. Further arguments are put forward regarding the costs to society of supporting and raising the children, and any risks to the children from being in the custody of an incapable parent. See id. (114.) See Scott, supra note 104, at 807 (contrasting a purported emphasis on reproductive autonomy with a more apparent interest in paternalism with regard to the reproductive choices of the mentally disabled). (115.) See Roberta Cepko, Involuntary Sterilization of Mentally Disabled Women, 8 BERKELEY WOMEN'S L.J. 122, 131-33 (1993). See, e.g., In re Grady, 426 A.2d 467 at 474 (1981). "The right to be sterilized comes within the privacy rights protected from undue governmental interference." Id. (116.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 130-31. (117.) See id. See, e.g., In re Valerie N., 707 P.2d 760 (Cal. 1985); In re Moe, 432 N.E.2d 712, 717 (Mass. 1982). (118.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 130-31. See, e.g., In re Hayes, 608 P.2d 635, 639 (Wash. 1980); C.D.M. v. State, 627 P.2d 607, 612 (Alaska 1981). (119.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 130-31. See, e.g., In re Moore, 221 S.E.2d 307, 308-09 (N.C. 1976). (120.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 130-31. See, e.g., In re Eberhardy, 307 N.W.2d 881 (Wis. 1981). (121.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 146-58 (analyzing statutory and common law policies). (122.) See ARK. CODE ANN. [subsections] 20-49-205 to -304 (Michie 1997); DEL. CODE ANN. tit. 16, [subsections] 5701-16 (1995); GA. CODE ANN. [subsections] 31-20-2 to -3 (1996); IDAHO CODE [subsections] 39-3901 to -3909 (1999); MISS. CODE ANN. [subsections] 41-45-1 to -19 (1998); N.C. GEN. STAT. [subsections] 35-39 to -43 (1997); OR. REV. STAT. [subsections] 436.225 to .295 (1998); UTAH CODE ANN. [subsections] 62A-6-101 to -116 (1998); VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 18, [subsections] 8705-12 (1998); VA. CODE ANN. [subsections] 54.1-2975 to -2977 (Michie 1998). (123.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 146 (stating the various state approaches to statute applicability). (124.) IDAHO CODE [sections] 39-3901(a) (1999). (125.) See MISS. CODE ANN. [sections] 41-45-5 (1998). (126.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 146 (examining the various ways statutes define mental disability). In addition, some statutes require certain safeguards when an individual is incapable of giving informed consent. See OR. REV. STAT. [sections] 436.215 (1998). (127.) See Estacio, supra note 2, at 421. The North Carolina statute leaves the determination whether the handicapped person would be able to care for children solely to the petitioner, and has no guidelines regarding the handicapped person's best interests. See N.C. GEN. STAT. [sections] 35-39(3) (1997). It should be noted that North Carolina was one of the last and most vigorous enforcers of the previous compulsory eugenic sterilization laws, and performed these well into the 1960s after most of these laws had fallen into disfavor with the general American public. See Reilly, supra note 12, at 237. (128.) See OR. REV. STAT. [sections] 436.215 (1998); See also Estacio, supra note 2, at 422. (129.) OR. REV. STAT. [sections] 436.205(1) (1998). (130.) See OR. REV. STAT. [sections] 436.295 (1998). (131.) See UTAH CODE ANN. [sections] 62A-6-108(4) (1997) (setting forth the substituted judgment scheme); Cepko, supra note 115, at 154. (132.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 153. See also, e.g., UTAH CODE ANN. [sections] 62A-6-108(1)(c) (1997) (providing for a rebuttable presumption of fertility in physically normal individuals); VA. CODE ANN. [sections] 54.1-2977.2 (Michie 1998) (requiring proof that there is no reasonable alternative method of contraception). (133.) 274 U.S. 200 (1927); See Dugan, supra note 102, at 527 (discussing the language and the controlling interests in the Mississippi statute). The Mississippi statute allows involuntary sterilization of persons "afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, or feeblemindedness." MISS. CODE ANN. [sections] 41-45-1 (1998). (134.) See Dugan, supra note 102, at 527. (135.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 149; GA. CODE ANN. [sections] 31-20-3(c)(1) (Supp. I 1998) (1996) (guardian or next of kin); ARK. CODE ANN. [sections] 20-49-202(a) (Michie 1997) (parent or guardian); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. [sections] 5123.86(c) (Anderson 1998) (natural or court appointed guardian or two doctors if neither is available); Va. CODE ANN. [sections] 54.1-2975 (Michie 1998) (spouses); CONN. GEN. STAT. [sections] 45a-692 (West 1993) (interested parties). (136.) See e.g., In re S.C.E., 378 A.2d 144, 145 (Del. Ch. 1977) (denying parents' petition to sterilize severely mentally retarded girl who required nearly total physical care); Estate of C.W., 640 A.2d 427, 430-31 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1994) (granting guardian's petition to sterilize moderately severely mentally retarded daughter who had multiple medical problems, and was overly affectionate); In re Grady, 426 A.2d 467, 470 (N.J. 1981) (denying parents' petition to sterilize daughter with Down's Syndrome because they failed to meet a clear and convincing standard of proof); In re Valerie N., 219 Cal. Rptr. 387, 389-90 (Cal. 1985) (denying conservator's application to sterilize mentally retarded daughter who exhibited inappropriate sexual behavior towards men that was not corrected with behavior modification). (137.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 149. See In re Grady, 426 A.2d 467. "Parents decided not to place her in an institution but to care for her at home. Since that time they have provided her with love and emotional support, as well as the physical necessities of life." Id. at 469-70. See also In re Hayes, 608 P.2d 635. "Edith's parents are sensitive to her special needs and concerned about her physical and emotional health. During the year or so that Edith has been capable of becoming pregnant, [her parents] have become frustrated, depressed and emotionally drained by the stress of seeking an effective and safe method of contraception." Id. at 637. Although deferential to parents, courts have not entirely disregarded the interests of disabled children. "A court must take particular care to protect the rights of the mentally impaired when considering the prospect of sterilization." In re Grady, 426 A.2d at 472. See also In re Hayes, 608 P.2d at 640 (commenting on the "detrimental emotional effects" that mentally disabled persons may suffer as a result of sterilization, and recognizing that the interests of the retarded person are not always coterminous with the interests of the parent). (138.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 156. (139.) See In re Hayes, 608 P.2d 635, 638 (Wash. 1980); In re Matejski, 419 N.W.2d 576, 580 (Iowa 1988). (140.) See, e.g., Frazier v. Levi, 440 S.W.2d 393, 395 (Tex. Civ. App.--Houston [1st Dist.] 1969); In re M.K.R., 515 S.W.2d 467, 470-71 (Mo. 1974); In re D.D., 408 N.Y.S.2d 105 (N.Y. App. Div. 1978); In re S.C.E., 378 A.2d 144, 145-46 (Del. Ch. 1977); Hudson v. Hudson, 373 So. 2d 310, 312 (Ala. 1979). (141.) 435 U.S. 349 (1978). (142.) See Susan Stefan, Whose Egg Is It Anyway? Reproductive Rights of Incarcerated, Institutionalized and Incompetent Women, 13 NOVA L. REV. 405, 418-19 (1989) (comparing the treatment of sterilization petitions before and after the Stump decision). The specific issue in Stump was whether a judge had judicial immunity from granting sterilization absent the statutory authorization. See Stump, 435 U.S. at 358. Although the Court focused on the judicial immunity issue rather than the validity of court ordered sterilizations, this decision has been cited repeatedly as support for sterilization decisions. See Cepko, supra note 115, at 157-58. (143.) See, e.g., In re Terwilliger, 450 A.2d 1376, 1381-82 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1982); see also Estacio, supra note 2, at 425. (144.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 961-63 (discussing the procedural requirements imposed by various jurisdictions). (145.) 608 P.2d 635 (Wash. 1980). (146.) See id. at 961. (147.) See In re Hayes, 608 P.2d 635, 641 (Wash. 1980). "[T]he judge must first find by clear, cogent and convincing evidence that the individual is (1) incapable of making his or her own decision about sterilization, and (2) unlikely to develop sufficiently to make an informed judgment about sterilization in the foreseeable future." Id. (148.) See Scott, supra note 104, at 818. (149.) See Hayes, 608 P.2d at 641: The judge must find that the individual is (1) physically capable of procreation, and (2) likely to engage in sexual activity at the present or in the near future under circumstances likely to result in pregnancy, and must find in addition that (3) the nature and extent of the individual's disability, as determined by empirical evidence and not solely on the basis of standardized tests, renders him or her permanently incapable of caring for a child, even with reasonable assistance. Id. at 641 (emphasis added). (150.) See Scott, supra note 104, at 822. See, e.g,. In re Penny N., 414 A.2d 541, 543 (N.H. 1980); In re Terwilliger, 450 A.2d 1376, 1382 (Pa. Super. Ct.1982). (151.) See In re A.W., 637 P.2d 366, 375-76 (Colo. 1981) (holding that expert testimony must be used to prove medical necessity, and that the court must make this finding by using the clear and convincing evidentiary standard). (152.) Scott, supra note 104, at 823. (153.) See id. at 820-21. (154.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 965; Scott, supra note 104, at 824. (155.) See Scott, supra note 104, at 823-24. (156.) See id. at 825 (acknowledging the burden a severely disabled individual can put on their family and addressing the latter's interest in sterilization). (157.) See id. (158.) Id. at 824 n.58. (159.) Law on Maternal, Infant Health Care (Oct. 27, 1994), Beijing XINHUA Domestic Service, available in Foreign Broadcast Information Service-Daily Report-China-94-211, Nov. 1, 1994, at 29 [hereinafter MIHCL] (on file with the Houston Journal of International Law). See Li, supra note 64, at 160-61. (160.) See MIHCL, supra note 159. (161.) See MIHCL supra note 159, ch. II, arts. 9 & 10; Li supra note 64, at 161-62; Gomez, supra note 70, at 571. (162.) See MIHCL, supra note 159, ch. III; Gomez, supra note 70, at 571. (163.) See MIHCL, supra note 159, ch. III, art. 19. (164.) See Li, supra note 64, at 162. One interpretation says women will be `advised' to terminate pregnancies. China's Repellent Eugenics Policy, CHI. TRIB., Jan. 18, 1995, at 12. Doctors have the power to virtually veto the birth of a child based on genetics, and though parents may appeal, courts rarely overturn the doctor's decision. Uli Schmetzer, China Lays Down the Law Over Who Gives Birth, Who Doesn't, CHI. TRIB., Jan. 17, 1995, at 10. (165.) See MIHCL, supra note 159, ch. I; Gomez, supra note 70, at 569. The law seeks to improve the quality of the newborn population, and prevent any relaxation of the One Child Policy. See id. (166.) See Chinese Minister Defends New Eugenics Law, AGENCE FR. PRESSE, June 1, 1995, available in 1995 WL 7810735. (167.) See Retired Doctor Lands in Jail for Identifying Sex of Fetuses, AGENCE FR. PRESSE, Sept. 19, 1995, available in 1995 WL 7858358; David Wallen, UK Scientists See Defects in Genetics Law, S. CHINA MORNING POST, June 6, 1995, at 8, available in 1995 WL 7528908 (discussing British geneticist's claim that the law is an "undisguised embodiment of eugenic principles, the implementation of which has had such a disastrous history in the West"). Further support for claims that the law is eugenic may be found in the comments of Health Minister Chen Minzhang, who proposed the initial draft of the law as the "National Eugenics Programme" to combat the problem of "births of inferior quality." Anthony O'Brien, Editorial, China's Genetics Law, TIMES (London), June 13, 1995, at 17. Chen Minzhang also stated that this problem happened more frequently among "ethnic minorities, frontier peoples and economically poor areas." Id. (168.) See Li, supra note 64, at 162. (169.) See id. "This eugenics policy is not based on agreed scientific information about the transmission of parents' conditions to their offspring...." Caught Between Tradition and the State: Violations of the Human Rights of Chinese Women, 17 WOMEN'S RIGHTS L. REP. 285, 298 (1996) [hereinafter Tradition & State]. (170.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 572. (171.) See Li, supra note 64, at 162. (172.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 572. (173.) See id. (174.) See id. Chinese minority groups have been described by officials as "low in population quality," which includes characteristics such as mental retardation and short stature in addition to hereditary defects. O'Brien, supra note 167, at 17. O'Brien suggests that minorities such as Tibetans under Chinese control may fear this law as part of the "final solution." Id. (175.) Gomez, supra note 70, at 572. Alastair Kent of Britain's Genetic Interest Group stated, "The problem is that the state defines who may have children. In China, `serious genetic disability' could mean just being Tibetan." Birth Rights, NEW SCIENTIST, Sept. 9, 1995, at 13. (176.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 571. (177.) See Nigel Hawkes, Scientists Attack China Over Selective Breeding, TIMES (London), June 5, 1995, at 19. (178.) See id. (179.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1152. (180.) See Gomez , supra note 70, at 572; Chan Wai-Fong, Law Bans Pregnancy by "Unfit" Mothers, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Nov. 8, 1994, at 7, available in 1994 WL 8786467. (181.) See Schmetzer, supra note 165. (182.) See Clarification of Maternal, Infant Health-Care Law Planned, XINHUA ENGLISH NEWSWIRES, Aug. 13, 1998, available in 1998 WL 12177752. (183.) See MIHCL, supra note 159, art. 32. (184.) See Li, supra note 64, at 169. (185.) See Girls Disappear, supra note 93, at 14. Part of this belief lies in the tradition that only males are able to carry on the family lineage. See id. Additionally, girls are viewed as providing lower productivity to the family unit, because they leave the family when they marry, and require a sizable dowry for marriage. See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1149. (186.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1149-50. (187.) See Li, supra note 64, at 169. Sex-screening is so important to prospective parents that it has become a highly profitable business, and virtually anyone who can pay for the services can obtain them. See id. at 170. Furthermore, reports estimate that 97.5% of all fetuses aborted in China are female. See Tradition & State, supra note 169, at 298. (188.) See Li, supra note 64, at 170. In one of the first known cases of punishment for identifying the sex of fetuses, a physician was sentenced to four years in prison after eight women who used his services aborted female fetuses. See Retired Doctor Lands in Jail for Identifying Sex of Fetuses, supra note 167. (189.) See Government to Clarify "Ambiguity" on Rules Against Pregnancy, XINHUA NEWS AGENGY, Aug. 15, 1998, available in LEXIS, News Library, TBBCSW File. (190.) See Elisabeth Rosenthal, Chinese Law Sparks Scientific Debate Over Genetics, Sterilization, HOUS. CHRON., Aug. 16, 1998, at A28. Geneticists from several countries boycotted the prestigious meeting because they took offense to the Eugenics Law. See id; Carolyn Abraham, Don't Shun Conference in China: Canadians Scientists Divided over Genetics Meeting, GLOBE & MAIL, July 31, 1998, at A3. (191.) See Rosenthal, supra note 190. (192.) See id. (193.) See Elisabeth Tacey, Roots of a Controversy, S. CHINA MORNING POST, Aug. 16, 1998, available in 1998 WL 22025369. (194.) See id. However, a prominent Chinese geneticist explained to the press that that China has never practiced any type of informed consent. See id. (195.) See John Pomfret, China Clarifies Its Law on Sterilization, WASH. POST, Aug. 18, 1998, at 210 [hereinafter China Clarifies]. (196.) See id. (197.) See China Clarifies, supra note 195. (198.) See id. (199.) See id. (200.) Id. (201.) See John Pomfret, China Suspends Sterilization of People with Genetic Ills, INT'L HERALD TRIB., Aug. 18, 1998, at 5. (202.) See China Clarifies, supra note 195. (203.) See Li, supra note 64, at 184. (204.) China Clarifies, supra note 195. (205.) Id. (206.) See Li, supra note 64, at 150-51. (207.) Id. at 150. (208.) See id. at 151. (209.) See Tradition & State, supra note 169, at 295. (210.) See id.; Gomez, supra note 70, at 568; U.S. Dept. of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1995 [sections] 1f (Comm. Print 1996) (discussing the prevalence of the use of force, and how punishment rarely exceeds minimal disciplining and retraining). (211.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 568-69. Tradition & State, supra note 169, at 295 (discussing incidents of women who are seven, eight, and nine months pregnant being forced to submit to abortions by local population control officials). (212.) See Tradition & State, supra note 169, at 295. (213.) See id. (214.) See id. Central authorities deny responsibility for these measures, but this claim lacks credibility. See id. (215.) See Li, supra note 64, at 154. (216.) See id. at 154-55. Officials are judged on the achievement of their birth quotas, and failure to meet them may result in fines, penalties, anddemotions. See id. at 155. (217.) See China Clarifies, supra note 195. (218.) Andy Coghlan, Perfect People's Republic, NEW SCIENTIST, Oct. 24, 1998, at 18. (219.) See id. (220.) See id. (221.) See id. (222.) See id. (223.) Id. (expressing Xin Mao's view on why the Chinese accept eugenic practices). (224.) See id.; Dinah Ashman, Editorial, The Chinese Way, NEW SCIENTIST, Nov. 14, 1998, at 58. (225.) Coghlan, supra note 218. (226.) See id. (227.) See Maha Munayyer, Comment, Genetic Testing and Germ-Line Manipulation: Constructing a New Language for International Human Rights, 12 AM. U. J. INT'L, L. & POL'Y 687, 688 (1997). (228.) See id. (229.) Id. at 688-89. (230.) See id. at 689. (231.) See id. (232.) See id. at 695-96. (233.) Id. at 696 (quoting Robert N. Proctor, Genomics and Eugenics : How Fair is the Comparison?, in GENE MAPPING: USING LAW AND ETHICS AS GUIDES 60 (George J. Annas & Sherman Elias, eds., 1992)). See Vicki Norton, Comment, Unnatural Selection: Nontherapeutic Preimplantation Genetic Screening and Proposed Regulation, 41 UCLA L. REV., 1581, 1587 (1994) (discussing how African Americans who were carriers for sickle cell anemia were discriminated against in job opportunities, insurance costs, and admission to the Air Force Academy). (234.) See Munayyer, supra note 227, at 692-93 (discussing potential applications of germ line manipulation). (235.) See id. at 692-93. (236.) See id. at 693-95. (237.) See generally Norton, supra note 233. (238.) See Gina Kolata, Researchers Report Success in Method to Pick Baby's Sex, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 9, 1998, at A1. (239.) See Richard Nygaard, Genetics and the Law: The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Genetic Technology and Biomedical Ethics (Jan. 19, 1996), in 3 U. CHI. L. SCH. ROUNDTABLE 1996 at 417, 418. See also Jodi Danis, Sexism and "The Superfluous Female": Arguments for Regulating Pre-Implantation Sex Selection, 18 HARV. WOMEN'S L.J. 219, 220 (1995). (240.) See Norton, supra note 233, at 1583. (241.) See Danis, supra note 239, at 220. (242.) See Kimberly Mills, Editorial, Scientific Progress Again Outpaces Ethics, SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER, Sept. 13, 1998, at E2. See also Norton, supra note 233, at 1601 (citing Geoffrey Cowley et al., Made to Order Babies, NEWSWEEK, Winter/Spring 1990 (Special Issue) at 94) (discussing requests for prenatal gender diagnosis which led to sex-selective abortions and noting that the highest rate of sex-selective abortion occurred among doctors' families). (243.) See Norton, supra note 233, at 1601-02 (explaining how genetic testing is used for more controversial goals such as sex-selective abortions). (244.) Mills, supra note 242. (245.) See WILLIAM J. CURRAN ET AL., HEALTH CARE LAW AND ETHICS 794 (5th ed. 1998). (246.) see supra Part IV.A and accompanying notes 99-117, for a discussion of the goals of current sterilization law in the United States. (247.) See Jaegers, supra note 13, at 962--65. (248.) See Scott, supra, note 104, at 812. (249.) See supra note 136 (discussing petitions for sterilization by parents of the mentally handicapped). (250.) See generally Jaegers, supra note 13 (explaining that many laws require incompetence to be established before nonconsensual sterilization is considered). Most jurisdictions require a preliminary finding under Hayes that the person is incompetent before proceeding with the sterilization petition. See id. at 962 n.86, Wentzel v. Montgomery Gen. Hosp., Inc. 447 A.2d 1244, 1253 (Md. 1982); In re C.D.M., 627 P.2d 607, 612-13 (Alaska 1981); In re Grady, 426 A.2d 467, 482 (N.J. 1981). (251.) See Cepko, supra note 115, at 127. Some courts emphasize that the likelihood of hereditary disability has no impact on the sterilization decision. See id. (252.) See, e.g., In re A.W., 637 P.2d 366, 368 (Colo. 1981); In re Grady, 426 A.2d at 473 n.3. (253.) See China Clarifies, supra note 195; Li, supra note 64, at 151. (254.) See Li, supra note 64, at 151. Communist Party Directives supersede existing law and there are no limits on the Party's powers. See id. Furthermore, there are few opportunities to challenge these policies. See id. (255.) See Gomez, supra note 70, at 568-69. Reports describe sterilization by force and coercion, and at times without the woman's knowledge. See id. at 569. (256.) See supra Part V.A and accompanying notes for a discussion of the involuntary nature of sterilization and abortion practices based on controversial provisions of the MIHCL. While this law stipulates that ligation or the termination of a pregnancy has to be consented to by the pregnant woman (or, if she is legally incompetent, by her guardian), serious doubt remains that this gives the woman much protection in practice. See Li, supra note 64, at 161-62. (257.) See Li, supra note 64, at 161-62. In the "explanation" issued by the Chinese government, officials stated they would seek definition of which hereditary conditions are serious enough to warrant sterilization. See China Clarifies, supra note 195. (258.) See generally Gomez, supra note 70, at 571-72. (259.) Compare Li, supra note 64, at 148-55 (outlining the population policy and its results) with Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 599-600 (1977) (describing the individual's "interest in independence in making certain kinds of important decisions" as central to the right of privacy) and Scott, supra note 104, at 833-40 (noting that personal autonomy and the fundamental right to individual reproductive choices are recognized in the United States). (260.) See Women's Rights, supra note 65, at 1151. (261.) See In re Grady, 426 A.2d 467, 474 (1981) (holding that under some circumstances, an individual's personal right to control her own body and life overrides the state's general interest in preserving life); Scott, supra note 104, at 823-24. (262.) See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153-54 (1973) (holding that individuals have a right to privacy that includes a qualified right to an abortion); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 485-86 (1965) (holding that married couples have a right to privacy that includes non-interference in contraception); Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 454-55 (1972) (extending the right to the use of contraception to unmarried persons); In re Valerie N., 707 P.2d 760, 777 (Cal. 1985) (holding that individuals have a fundamental right to procreation that includes a right to consent to sterilization). (263.) Paul, supra note 1, at 68 (emphasis in original). (264.) See id. at 70. (265.) See id. Gail Rodgers, This Comment received the Gus A. Schill, Jr. Writing Award and was named the Best Candidate Paper of 1998-99 by the Houston Journal of International Law. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:56:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:56:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Eubios J. Asian & Intl. Bioethics: A call for a new definition of eugenics Message-ID: A call for a new definition of eugenics http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/EJ93/ej93e.html EJAIB 9(3) May 1999 - Yanguang Wang, Ph.D. The Center for Applied Ethics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Email: Ameliaw at ihw.com.cn Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 9 (1999), 73-74. _________________________________________________________________ As we will see, eugenics has always been a protean concept. Almost from the start of debate, eugenics has meant different things to different people. Eugenics comes from the Greek word eugenes meaning "good in birth". In 1883 Francis Galton started using the word" eugenics" defining it as the "science of improving stock-not only by judicious mating, but whatever tends to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had." Galton later experimented with a variety of different formulations such as "the study of agencies under social control which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations", and "the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race: also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage" In all of these definitions, eugenics sounds rather innocuous. Most medical genetics would fall within its domain (1). Nearly five decades ago, both the United States and Germany, a number of leading figures moved the right direction of the first eugenics definition. They combined eugenic interests with a focus on the "unfit". In the heyday of eugenics, sterilization, infanticide, murder, euthanasia, or a variety of "final solutions" were tools for the prevention or elimination of the "unfit". The eugenics is same as Nazism and a major weapon for discrimination against minorities. From those eugenic programs, eugenics is generally regarded as a pseudoscience in modern world. Also most contemporary definition of eugenics is labeled a country's policies that are coercive. The contemporary geneticists warned the above eugenics movement's amount to cautions over the Nazism and racism, the untenable claims in behavioral genetics, in particular the heritability of personality traits, and both genetic essentialism and determinism. Some has warned of eugenics as the unintended result of individual choices (2). However the social policy intervention, along with genetics measures exists in many countries. These policies do not aim to coerce or mandatory who will be conceived and born, they emphasise the elimination of hereditary disease and handicaps through the prevention of marriages or conception between persons likely to transmit to their progeny such diseases and handicaps. This eugenics thinking can be justified if it is not a science based on Nazism, racism, discrimination to minorities and genetic determinism, it is a science which inherent in the core eugenic doctrine of improving the stock of humankind by application of the science of human heredity. Such aa social policy intervention is based on the individual' informed consent. This science can be called "negative eugenics." There are some eugenics practices that can be justified in the modern world. The Chinese Encyclopedia of Medicine defines eugenics as: "a science for the improvement of human heredity, prevention of birth defects and raising the quality of the population by research and applying genetics theories and approaches." In fact, most of such eugenic practices pay attention to the prevention the defect of the births (3). The intention of the Chinese government in the "law of the people's Republic of China on maternal and infant health care" is merely that people in China should be warned of the risks of inheriting heritable genetic diseases, and helped to avoid them among their children. The Minister of Public Health, Chen Minzhang has said: "the cost of looking after those with hereditary handicaps was enormous, imposing a heavy burden both on the state and on millions of families. There was therefore wide popular support for the rapid enactment of a eugenics law containing effective measures to reduce inferior-quality births." The Chinese government is concerned with the avoidance of avoidable genetic handicap among future generations. They have no discrimination on the present handicap population (4). The law is not be very different in its effect from the services provided elsewhere, where public health services offer genetic counseling, on occasion, abortion if there is proof that the outcome of a pregnancy will be a seriously handicapped child. The chief beneficiaries of the law, which is of necessity voluntary, are parents and their children. To the extent that seriously handicapped children may be an expense on public finances, there may also be some benefit to nation. The eugenics thinking in the law belongs to negative eugenics and may be justified ethically (5). In this sense, the Chinese word "Yousheng" is same as the Greek word eugenics meaning "good in birth", also it is belong to the Galton's eugenics' core doctrine of improving the stock of humankind by application of the science of human heredity. In this sense, the Chinese word "Yousheng" can be translated as eugenic. But it is different from the US and the German "eugenics" in history. Some (e.g. Bajema, 1976) have said a new eugenics consists of genetic counseling, the examination before the birth and the selective abortion (6). There are the laws that prohibit the marriage between close relatives in many countries. This can also be called eugenics. Even though involuntary is included in such eugenics, almost no person objects to it, for the birth quality is quite low. There are so many definitions of eugenics and relative practices. We can also find differences in the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. In the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, someone defined eugenics as a major scientific and pseudoscientific weapon for discrimination against minorities, a political, economic, and social policy that espouses the reproduction of the "fit" over the "unfit" and discourages the birth of the "unfit". But others defined eugenics differently following the history developing steps in the same important book (7). All definitions show a close relationship between eugenics and medical genetics. Following the development of genetics and the growing amount of genetics technology applied in the genetics practice, we must justify how to use them, and what are the ethical reasons to use them. It is important to have a contemporary definition of eugenics for the genetics in debate. We need only one definition or a new one of it. It can make the concept of thinking clear and justify the practice involved in contemporary genetic medicine. What is right depends not just on the facts but on what is meant by eugenics. In my opinion, we should recover the core doctrine of eugenics - good in birth and prevention the defect of the birth voluntarily. We can focus our attention on negative eugenics. Genetic medicine which has found some defective genes or some certain proof of what causes inherited diseases can make it possible. We can do something for positive eugenics, but the eugenics programs could limit its focus to those human characters on whose desirability there is universal or widespread agreement (8). Anyway, few of us are entirely free of the eugenic thinking" good in birth" in some aspect of our daily lives. A parent's decision to delay having a child until he or she was financially and emotionally ready to be a good provider and parent. Most modern governments hope that their people will be energetic, ingenious and enterprising. But the eugenic thinking and practice should balance the interest of all sides. How to define eugenics remains to be seen. But it is true that the eugenics cannot and should not be understood without an analysis of the moral, political, and social implications of advances in science and technology at particular times and in particular places and for particular individuals or groups of individuals within a society. References 1. Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity-1865 to Present, Humanities Press, 1995, pp.3-9. 2. Martin S. Pernick, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp.25-29. 3. Encyclopedia of Chinese, v. Medicine, Press of Chinese Encyclopedia, 1994, pp.1727-1730. 4. Tim Beardsley, Scientific American: Analysis: China Syndrom: 03/97,p.3. 5. Opinion, China' misconception of eugenics, Nature, 367, 6 January 1994, p.1-3. 6. Renying Yen, Applied Eugenics, Ren Min Medicine Press, 1986, p.4. 7. Simon & Schuster Macmillan, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Revised Edition, Volume 2, Macmillan Library Reference Press, 1995 p.978. Pp. 955-959. Pp.970-972. 8. Daniel Wikler, Eugenic Values, December 1997. The Eubios Ethics Institute is on the world wide web of Internet: http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/index.html From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:58:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:58:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] A review of the book "Eugenics: A Reassessment by Richard Lynn, released 2002. Message-ID: A review of the book "Eugenics: A Reassessment by Richard Lynn, released 2002. http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/lynn.htm Eugenics: A Reassessment by Richard Lynn, 2001. Published by Praeger Press as part of the "Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence" series edited by Seymour W. Itzkoff. This book is a remarkable achievement because it brings back eugenics at a time when it has already arrived; but no one is admitting to its triumphant return. Richard Lynn has finally announced its arrival and has produced a remarkable work that is complete, a pleasure to read, and leaves no doubt that we are entering a new era: humans are about to go through the most rapid genetic transformation imaginable, and the outcome of this apocalypse cannot even be imagined. Is this just hype like the Y2K scare? Hardly: it is real and it is here to stay and Lynn's book shows just how profound it will be. New human species will be born, and a racial/species war will precede the ultimate victory for those who have the ego-strength to see what is coming. The Left, led by Marxists like Montagu, Boaz, Gould, Lewontin, Rose, Kamin et al., captured the reins of ideological propaganda and convinced the West that "race" did not exist and that eugenics was pseudoscience. They managed to do this through sheer force of character and the willing passiveness of the public to believe what they were told. Repetition and deception along with moral duplicity allowed these intellectual terrorists to neuter Western society into believing in an egalitarian and false human nature. We are just now freeing ourselves from those shackles that were placed upon us to keep us from challenging the very concept of racial differences and group evolutionary strategies. The book covers eugenics from top to bottom so I will discuss just some of the most interesting or informative aspects of the book. First, Lynn finally puts to rest the notion that equates Nazism with eugenics and eugenics with the Holocaust. Many scholars have corrected this misinformation, and Lynn summarizes it elegantly. In short, Nazi Germany did not have a sterilization program for the mentally retarded or insane that was any broader in scope than other countries at the time. Per capita, Sweden had sterilized far more people, as did many other Western countries. When it came to euthanasia, there was basically one purpose when beginning in 1939 they needed to free up resources and make room in the hospitals for the war effort. Euthanasia had nothing to do with eugenics. And with regards to the Holocaust, the Jews were killed because they were seen to be behind the spreading of communism and they were viewed as a highly intelligent and capable race of people who would compete with Germany's goal of world domination. So as it turns out, Germany's eugenics' program was never very developed or aggressive: they had war on their minds. Other countries were much more assertive as eugenics was supported by socialists as well as the general public. But to make a case for Marxism in the last few decades, it was very beneficial to link the defeated and hated Nazis with eugenics and racism. When this stuck in the public's mind, radical environmentalism was on its way to being largely unchallenged. Today, this mindset is still in place. In numerous articles and surveys, different racial groups are compared and typically the status of Blacks is compared to that of Whites, and the disparity is blamed always on racism or the government's failure to act strongly enough to make everyone equal. Never is the point made that different racial groups have incomes equivalent to their average IQs, with Blacks on the bottom and Jews and East Asians at the top. It is always taken for granted that different racial groups are on average equally intelligent, and yet only sociologists and cultural anthropologists still embrace this myth and perpetuate it through the media by routinely issuing new studies and surveys that ignore genetic differences. Lynn shatters the racial equality myth summarizing succinctly what is known today. He even includes a formula for estimating the expected intelligence of your children based on the parents IQ and the average IQ of the general population that the parents belong to. He also tackles the "if everyone is intelligent, who will mow my lawn?" argument. With numerous examples, explanations, and hypotheses about a future world of geniuses, he puts this conundrum to rest. In short, even geniuses are capable of doing the dishes and mowing the lawn. If highly intelligent Jews can share the manual workload on an Israeli Kibbutzim, then a eugenic state of geniuses can also. I would also venture a guess from the evidence that the only intelligent people who would resist doing their share of the more tedious tasks would be those with the behavioral trait of low conscientiousness. And as I will discuss later, this is the only behavioral trait that probably has no benefit to society and should be bred out of the general population anyway. Which brings us to psychopathy, conscientiousness and agreeableness. Once we all agree that a eugenics' program should reduce genetic disease and raise general intelligence, the only question left is should we tamper with human behavioral traits? Psychometricians, astonishingly, have settled on the use of the Big Five behavioral factors: conscientiousness, agreeableness, introversion-extroversion, open-mindedness, and neuroticism. Lynn puts to rest, as do many other psychometricians, any notion that the last three have any consequences in the workplace in general. That is, many different combinations of these three factors can be of benefit or a hindrance depending on the task. So Lynn concentrates on the first two that in combination results in a psychopathic personality. He demonstrates convincingly that from all the available research, psychopaths along with low intelligence are responsible for society's problems with crime, drug addiction, unwed mothers, drug abuse, rape, child abuse, unemployment, etc. These people are the underclass. And they result from the combination of two behavioral traits. They almost universally have low conscientiousness and agreeableness or altruism. (Lynn explains that altruism would be a better term than agreeableness but that term has now "stuck" as the common descriptor for this behavioral trait). That is, people who are both highly unconscientious and disagreeable are pathological, and both of these traits are highly heritable. From this observation, Lynn softly recommends that a eugenics' program should include a reduction of both unconscientiousness and disagreeableness. But I have to take issue with this recommendation. My interpretation is that only unconscientiousness has no value in modern society, and that its elimination will eliminate the psychopaths, especially in a nation state with an extremely high average intelligence. Such a society should be able to deal with the occasionally exceptionally disagreeable person. There is no need to get rid of disagreeableness because a highly altruistic state may be extremely vulnerable to indoctrination and subjugation. This seems to be why the West is now in a dysgenic spiral downward, the more Scandinavian races have a maladaptive level of altruism that allows others to become parasitical towards them. This is a dangerous combination and though the society may benefit internally from altruism it can also be overtaken by other racial groups who are far less altruistic and benevolent. Lynn then deals with the mechanisms for reducing genetic disease and increasing intelligence. First, he points out that detractors of eugenics are correct in their pessimism of completely eliminating recessive genetic diseases because as they are reduced they become ever more difficult to select against. But he notes that in ten generations, half of all recessive genetic disease alleles could be eliminated. This in combination with genetic testing of the fetus could make the complete elimination of the alleles unnecessary. The genetic disease itself would seldom be expressed in a child. With regards to increasing intelligence, he makes a good case for how relatively easy it is. Since the heritability of intelligence is so high at around 80% compared to say behavioral factors around 50% or a little less, intelligence is a no-brainer for eugenics. And with new technologies, remarkable jumps can be made in just one generation. He shows how if a normal couple would just genetically select the potentially most intelligent embryos for implantation, the intelligence of the children selected would increase by 15 IQ points. Yes, 15 IQ points in every generation up to the theoretical maximum of about 200 without any new mutations. All we need to do is identify the intelligence genes, and this should be possible in just a few shorts years (Plomin's prediction -- not Lynn's). Eugenic selection for intelligence via genetic testing of embryos followed by IVF is just a few years away. And even if it would cost a couple say $100,000 per child, it would be a bargain in terms of savings in education and increased earnings potential. And the advantages would be passed on to every generation that follows! Now that is one hell of a rate of return on your money. Spend it up front before the child is even born, and the returns are forever. Up until the last two chapters of the book, Lynn just provides us with what eugenics can do, the mechanics, and ethical foundations for its use. In these final chapters however he states what I also think is the obvious but he is much more sanguine about the outcome. Let me try to summarize his perspective and then I will embellish it. Basically the West is too weak morally (I can't think of any better term) to institute an effective eugenics' program. But the East is capable of making these tough-minded decisions, and especially China. They have already fully embraced a eugenics' policy and as the ruling totalitarian oligarchs shift from communism to nationalism, this lone nation with over a billion people will arise as the world power. They will use a combination of eugenics with a population that is already second to none in intelligence (aside from the Jews) and along with their size will grow in power and technology. But here is where Lynn and I differ. He thinks that once China has dominated the world, we will enter a period of peace even if it is without democracy. I see a different outcome, based on human nature. There is no point having power unless one can use it to dominate others. As the Chinese eugenic nation state expands, they will not make peace with other races but they will instead subjugate others for financial gain. In addition, they will use the females of other subjugated races to raise their children. That is, human slaves will be used as surrogate mothers. This new elite race of East Asians will not tolerate their own women having to suffer the pains of bearing children when there is a plentiful supply of breeders available. These slave breeders will be kept in perfectly controlled environments for this breeding purpose, to assure that the elite women do not have to suffer any inconveniences. And after birth, East Asian professional caretakers will raise the children so that again, the elite will not have to be bothered by the inconvenience of annoying children. Sound impossible? Read Lynn's book and see which scenario seems more plausible. But of course, the above plausibility is not really even relevant. What is important is that once eugenics becomes commonplace, and it is recognized that the most intelligent races will dominate the world, then the arms race in eugenics will commence. It may happen within one nation state, it may happen by way of secret cults, it may happen by the wealthiest only using the technology. But it will happen and it will not happen equally to all races or peoples. And this is what an evolutionary arms race is all about. The next 100 years will see a new human species arise --- or the destruction of all humans. But one thing is sure; it will not be peaceably negotiated away. Eugenics is happening now! And it will be accelerating at an exponential rate over the next few decades. Matt Nuenke, July 2001 -------------- "Important note: You can get 20% off Eugenics: A Reassessment (and all other books published by Praeger) by telling the operator the 'source code,' which is F238. You can order by phone by calling 800-225-5800." ------------------------------------------------- Richard Lynn along with Tatu Vanhanen have a new book coming out in 2002 entitled IQ and the wealth of Nations. In the Summer 2001 issue of Mankind Quarterly they have published some of the findings that will be presented in that book. Following I have provided the 81 nations where he has looked at the average IQ and the Gross Domestic Product, and it is clear that just like an individual's intelligence has an impact on how successful a person will become, nations also die or succeed depending on their average intelligence. But first a few notes of interest on the numbers. The "fitted GDP" is a perfect correlation with the average IQ. That is, compare the "fitted GDP" to the actual "GDP" and there will be some anomalies. For example, Qatar has a low average IQ but a high GDP---they are a small oil rich nation with foreigners extracting and exporting the oil for them. Another of course is the once Communist and still Communist countries. They were destroyed economically by an environmental determinist ideology. And it shows in the numbers. Then there is the low intelligence of Ireland and Israel that seems like a mistake. In the case of Ireland, selective migration has caused the more intelligent Irish to emigrate, leaving the poor and less intelligent farmers behind. In the case of Israel, the authors explain, that Jews from many areas are of low intelligence along with Palestinians. However, the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe who dominate the politics of Israel and are the dominant Jews in the United States have an average IQ of about 115. And one other observation with regards to the average intelligence of a nation and its GDP should be considered. Is it a homogeneous nation or is there a ruling elite? If there is a separate small racial group of highly intelligent people who can direct the nation, the GDP may be higher than one would expect. Anyway, we will need to wait for the book length analysis to get more information on this fascinating study. But it is just one more way that we can use to show that intelligence is important, and that some countries are just too backward to expect them to join in a common bond with the rest of humanity. The following table lists the country, then the average IQ, then the gross domestic product (GDP), and then the fitted GDP. The fitted GDP is just the theoretical straight line correlation between IQ and GDP. For example, China should have a GDP of 16,183 based on the average intelligence of the population, but because of Communism, they only have a GDP of 3,105. Country average IQ GDP fitted GDP Hong Kong 107 20,763 19,817 Korea, South 106 13,478 19,298 Japan 105 23,257 18,779 Taiwan 104 13,000 18,260 Singapore 103 24,210 17,740 Austria 102 23,166 17,221 Germany 102 22,169 17,221 Italy 102 20,585 17,221 Netherlands 102 22,176 17,221 Sweden 101 20,659 16,702 Switzerland 101 25,512 16,702 Belgium 100 23,223 16,183 China 100 3,105 16,183 NewZealand 100 17,288 16,183 U. Kingdom 100 20,336 16,183 Hungary 99 10,232 15,664 Poland 99 7,619 15,664 Australia 98 22,452 15,145 Denmark 98 24,218 15,145 France 98 21,175 15,145 Norway 98 26,342 15,145 United States 98 29,605 15,145 Canada 97 23,582 14,626 Czech Republic 97 12,362 14,626 Finland 97 20,847 14,626 Spain 97 16,212 14,626 Argentina 96 12,013 14,107 Russia 96 6,460 14,107 Slovakia 96 9,699 14,107 Uruguay 96 8,623 14,107 Portugal 95 14,701 13,589 Slovenia 95 14,293 13,588 Israel 94 17,301 13,069 Romania 94 5,648 13,069 Bulgaria 93 4,809 12,550 Ireland 93 21,482 12,550 Greece 92 13,943 12,031 Malaysia 92 8,137 12,031 Thailand 91 5,456 11,512 Croatia 90 6,749 10,993 Peru 90 4,282 10,993 Turkey 90 6,422 10,993 Colombia 89 6,006 10,474 Indonesia 89 2,651 10,474 Suriname 89 5,161 10,474 Brazil 87 6,625 9,436 Iraq 87 3,197 9,436 Mexico 87 7,704 9,436 Samoa (Western) 87 3,832 9,436 Tonga 87 3,000 9,436 Lebanon 86 4,326 8,917 Philippines 86 3,555 8,917 Cuba 85 3,967 8,398 Morocco 85 3,305 8,398 Fiji 84 4,231 7,879 Iran 84 5,121 7,879 Marshall Islands 84 3,000 7,879 Puerto Rico 84 8,000 7,879 Egypt 83 3,041 7,360 India 81 2,077 6,322 Ecuador 80 3,003 5,803 Guatemala 79 3,505 5,284 Barbados 78 12,001 4,765 Nepal 78 1,157 4,765 Qatar 78 20,987 4,765 Zambia 77 719 4,246 Congo (Brazz) 73 995 2,170 Uganda 73 1,074 2,170 Jamaica 72 3,389 1,651 Kenya 72 980 1,651 South Africa 72 8,488 1,651 Sudan 72 1,394 1,651 Tanzania 72 480 1,651 Ghana 71 1,735 1,132 Nigeria 67 795 -944 Guinea 66 1,782 -1,463 Zimbabwe 66 2,669 -1,463 Congo (Zaire) 65 822 -1,982 Sierra Leone 64 458 -2,501 Ethiopia 63 574 -3,020 Equatorial Guinea 59 1,817 -5,096 From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:59:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:59:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Magic City Morning Star: New Maine House Bill Would Protect Fetuses Carrying the 'Gay Gene' Message-ID: New Maine House Bill Would Protect Fetuses Carrying the 'Gay Gene' http://magic-city-news.com/article_3173.shtml By IPR Feb 22, 2005, 19:02 AUGUSTA -- Rep. Brian Duprey (R-Hampden) has submitted a bill to the State Legislature to shield potentially homosexual fetuses from discrimination. LD 908, "An Act to Protect Homosexuals from Discrimination," attempts to protect homosexuals from death because they might carry the gene that could lead to homosexuality. This bill as drafted would make it a crime to abort an unborn child if that child is determined to be carrying the "homosexual gene." Duprey said that no such genetic marker has yet been discovered. But considering rapid advancements in genetic mapping research, he wants legislation in place should such a breakthrough occur. "If the homosexual gene is ever determined to exist," he said, "I want to ensure that a woman could not abort an unborn child simply because that child is determined to be carrying this gene." Duprey received the idea for this bill when listening to the Rush Limbaugh radio show. "I heard Rush saying that the day the 'gay gene' is determined to be real, that overnight gays would become pro-life," Duprey said. "Most people would agree that to kill someone just because that person might be gay would constitute a hate crime," said Duprey. "I have heard from women who told me that if they found out that they were carrying a child with the gay gene, then they would abort. I think this is wrong. Those unborn children should be protected." Rep. Duprey is serving in his third term representing the towns of Hampden, Newburgh and Dixmont. He is the lead Republican on the Labor Committee. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 15:59:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:59:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Jonah Goldberg: Technology Changes Things: Chesterton and Terri Schiavo. Message-ID: Jonah Goldberg: Technology Changes Things: Chesterton and Terri Schiavo. http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/goldberg/goldberg200503251202.asp [This mentions the Maine politician who tried to pass a law limiting parental eugenic choice. I have not heard any further developments since James Hughes alerted us to it on February 24.] March 25, 2005, 12:02 p.m. "Progress," G.K. Chesterton proclaimed, "is the mother of problems." Whatever side you come down on regarding the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, this is an important observation to keep in mind. Not too long ago I wrote a column about how technology changes the ideological landscape. To illustrate the point, I mentioned the attempt by a Maine politician to pass a law that would bar aborting fetuses that tested positive for the "gay gene." The effort was a lark, of course. But I thought taking it seriously, in a hypothetical way, would illuminate some of the ways in which technology can transform our ideological categories. Many, many readers from across the country disagreed. "I don't know about you, Mr. Goldberg, but I try to be consistent in my principles, no matter how the circumstances change," was the general response from most of the dissenters. This kind of objection is well intended but fundamentally flawed, as the Schiavo case makes clear. It is now likely that Ms. Schiavo will starve to death. While I think there are major problems with Congress's intrusion into this case, I also think her death is certainly tragic, and the Florida courts probably got this one wrong. But we would not be having this debate if medical science had not advanced beyond where it was, say, 100 years ago. Ms. Schiavo would have died before the argument was born. Those who advocate keeping Schiavo alive like to draw an analogy between the feeding tube that sustains her and normal food. The analogy obviously has a lot of power. But analogies always leave out important differences. If Schiavo could eat normal food in a normal fashion, this debate wouldn't exist. The courts cannot deny a person the right to eat food or drink water on their own. And, of course, if Schiavo could do these things, it would be powerful evidence that her brain damage is not as extensive as some claim. In other words, it is only thanks -- for want of a better word -- to the very wonderful advances in medical technology that we are having this argument at all. Progress and its consequences also has some bearing on the great debate Americans were conducting before the Schiavo story crowded out all else: Social Security reform. Whatever you think about the merits of this proposal or that, few would disagree that Social Security faces funding problems essentially because society has changed. Few Americans lived to 65, let alone much past it, when the New Dealers created their Ponzi, er, pension scheme. Today the ratio of workers to oldsters is dropping like a stone because technology allows us to live so much longer. The most obvious credit goes to medical progress. But technology has also made jobs less life-threatening and food safer and more bountiful. Technology has also helped transform children from economic necessities to glorious luxuries. In agricultural societies, kids are the best source of cheap labor. Indeed, not long ago, having a lot of children was your smartest retirement plan. Today, by contrast, in advanced, industrialized societies kids are people you invest in with little anticipated material return. All of these developments bring new problems to the surface, most of them unanticipated. Even many of the pro-life protesters on the courthouse steps hold up signs saying, in effect, that if Terri Schiavo had a living will, they'd have nothing to protest. Well, the whole idea of a living will would have seemed batty before we came up with the technologies that can keep hearts beating long after it's certain that their brains work at all. None of this is to say that principled people change their principles when the wind changes. Rather, new events make us rethink how our principles should be applied. Everyone is for free speech and everyone is, eventually, pro-life. But new circumstances test where we will draw the lines for this or that principle. This is how ideological coalitions arise and, often, disappear. Whittaker Chambers, that great hero of modern conservatism, actually refused to call himself a "conservative" for largely these reasons (he preferred to call himself a "man of the right"). A former Communist (like so many of modern conservatism's founding fathers), he couldn't abandon a certain attachment to Marxist dialectical materialism. Without rummaging through the dustbin of history to explain what that means, suffice it to say that Chambers believed that the tides of change -- technological, economic, political -- were too powerful for mere individuals to stop. Rather, the best that self-described conservatives could do was work within those currents for the best possible outcome. He called his stance the Beaconsfield position, after the British prime minister credited with reconciling conservatism to modern realities. I don't agree entirely with Chambers, but he and Chesterton were obviously correct on the basic insight that modernity often crashes down on us faster than we can adapt. New events create new stresses on ideological pillars once considered adamantine while they render old conflicts irrelevant. The Schiavo case split many people along principled lines. Is it so unimaginable that tomorrow they may be reunited by some new and unforeseen crisis that progress brings? -- (c) 2005 Tribune Media Services [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] ______________________________________________________________________ [spacer.gif] [spacer.gif] http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200503251202.asp References 1. mailto:jonahnro at aol.com 2. http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg-archive.asp 3. http://www.nationalreview.com/email_friend/email-friend.asp 4. http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=<%=printurl%> From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:00:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:00:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Plausible Futures: God, Religion and Tribal Conflict Message-ID: http://plausible.custompublish.com/index.php?id=195061&cat=6698&printable=1 4.12.11 EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY PROMETHEUS BOUND There is now enough evidence that modern human society should be based on an understanding that as long as we are a tribalistic species, there will be more peace, more prosperity, and more happiness when nation-states can be formed by similar people. That is, the homogenous state is far more prone to be beneficial to human happiness than the discords found in multicultural and diverse states. This means a rejection of any political universals enforced by a world body except maybe the notion that to stop conflict, it is best to just separate the belligerents physically as much as possible. That is, promote non-aggressive, non-jingoistic nationalismwhere countries compete in the marketplace of commerce and ideas. Lately I have read several books on why humans have religion, why humans are basically irrational, why humans can't differentiate between what is instrumentally beneficial and what is emotionally destructive, etc. One thing that does jump out at me when I read these works dealing with our evolutionary past, is that books can vary in extremes from just-so stories to well documented hypotheses testing. Two recent books occupy these extremes: The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes by Dean Hamer (2004), and Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, Edited by Peter Hammerstein (2003). The God Gene is the just-so story, it has a lot of good information; however it jumps to some rather silly conclusions from the skimpy data. Hamer makes the case that religion is different from what he calls self-transcendence: religion is what is culturally transmitted, and one's leaning towards self-transcendence is primarily geneticno god or religion required; so even the title of the book is misleading. He does do a good job of showing that self-transcendence may be yet another behavioral trait that is independent of others that have been studied, but he does not show that it is independent of cooperation and/or ethnocentrism. More on this later. Hamer states that, "Self-transcendence provides a numerical measure of people's capacity to reach out beyond themselvesto see everything in the world as part of one great totality. If I were to describe it in a single word, it might be 'at-one-ness.'" That is, it includes losing oneself in a common good, feeling like part of something special, mysticism, etc. The problem with Hamer's perspective however is that he sees this as a universal goodpeople who are spiritual are somehow better than people that are more rational. In fact, this book could be, morally speaking, the flip side of Stanovich's The Robot's Rebellion, where he calls on people to be more rational and less mystical. He reiterates, "Self-transcendence is a term used to describe spiritual feelings that are independent of traditional religiousness. It is not based on belief in any particular God, frequency of prayer, or other orthodox religious doctrines or practices. Instead, it gets to the heart of spiritual belief: the nature of the universe and our place in it. Self-transcendent individuals tend to see everything, including themselves, as part of one great totality. They have a strong sense of 'at-one-ness'of the connections between people, places, and things. Non-self-transcendent people, on the other hand, tend to have a more self-centered viewpoint. They focus on differences and discrepancies between people, places, and things, rather than similarities and interrelationships." Hamer seems to be advocating, though I am not sure he is aware of it, for what I would merely call tribalism, ethnocentrism, cooperative human behavior, etc. versus the more independent behavioral types who are less tribal, more creative, more questioning, and perhaps more scientific and rational. There seems to be, in some way, a thread of connectedness between groupishness and independence, and it could be as easily argued that it is our human groupishness that gets us into trouble, not our more rational/scientific independence. I don't claim that there is a clear dichotomy between these two extremes, but research into altruism, mysticism, ethnocentrism, cooperation, etc.must be anchored in evolutionary adaptation (unless they are merely artifacts). In either case, they carry no intrinsic moral value either way. For example, Hamer states that: "These are some of the questions used to assess the second sub-scale of self-transcendence, known as transpersonal identification. The hallmark of this trait is a feeling of connectedness to the universe and everything in itanimate and inanimate, human and nonhuman, anything and everything that can be seen, heard, smelled, or otherwise sensed. People who score high for transpersonal identification can become deeply, emotionally attached to other people, animals, trees, flowers, streams, or mountains. Sometimes they feel that everything is part of one living organism. "Transpersonal identification can lead people to make personal sacrifices to help othersfor example, by fighting against war, poverty, or racism. It may inspire people to become environmentalists. Although there are no formal survey data, it is likely that members of the Sierra Club and Greenpeace score above average on this facet of self-transcendence. A drawback of transpersonal identification is that it can lead to fuzzy-headed idealism that actually hinders rather than helps the cause. "Individuals who score low on transpersonal identification feel less connected to the universe and therefore feel less responsible for what happens to the world and its inhabitants. They are more concerned about themselves than about others, more inclined to use nature than to appreciate it." Imbedded in the above remarks is an extreme bias for "fuzzy-headed" idealism as being more beneficial than rational discourse and action. He makes a wild leap that if a person does not feel connected to the universe, they are somehow not going to make rational choice decisions about what is good for themselves and other humans. Now if Hamer could link free-riders or psychopathic personalities with people who are low on self-transcendence, then he might have a case that one group may be more concerned about other people, but he does not do this. Islamic terrorists probably tend to be mystical rather than merely religious due to cultureit takes a whole lot of "connectedness" to blow oneself up over injustices perceived. And most progress when it comes to science, including all of the health improvements made possible by it, comes from the minds of the dedicated scientists, not the spiritual recluse chanting a prayer to reach nirvana. The Western mind, the mind that is responsible for most of what is science, is practical and less mystical, and it has reduced a great deal of suffering because of our scientific progress. I think Stanovich's prognosis of what ails humanity is far more grounded in facts than Hamer's moralizing. As Hamer states, people who score low on mysticism are, "more materialistic and objective. They see an unusual loaf of bread or an unexpected parking opportunity as nothing more than coincidence. They don't believe in things that can't be explained scientifically." That suites me just fine. The more rational humans can becomeeither through education, genetics, or boththe better we will be able to settle conflicts. Mysticism is a dead end to answering complex problems. Part of Hamer's interest in writing this book is to publicize his work in finding the so-called God-Gene, or VMAT2. This one gene has a significant impact on the degree of self-transcendence, but other genes are yet to be found. What interests me as a eugenicist is that we can now screen for this gene and eliminate it, whereas Hamer would most likely try to breed for it. In fact, he does go into a great deal of discussion with regards to assortative mating. Pointing out that while one's religion is cultural and self-transcendence is primarily genetic, he notes (as have many others) that people marry their own kind when it comes to personality types and chosen religion. In the past, humans typically married others with the same religion because humans up until recently have been very parochial. Now however, we are far more mobile and cosmopolitan, and it seems that rather than the human genome becoming a melting pot, we will increasingly be more selective in marrying those who are more like us in terms of intelligence and behavior. Increasingly, materialists will marry materialists, and spiritualists will marry spiritualists. Personally, that is one area where I would not suffer a mate who believed in magic, god, Gaia, or any other significant level of self-transcendenceit would just be too alien to me. Hamer also devotes a chapter to Jewish "cultural practices as genetic selective forces." I could not quite get a handle on where he was going with these examples of culturally defined breeding practices, but it does follow or parallels MacDonald's work on Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. This surprised me because he makes no reference to MacDonald, as if he is unaware of his work. (MacDonald 1994, 1998a, 1998b.) He also devotes a great deal of time to healing, health, religion and spiritualism. Nevertheless, ultimately, the only message seems to be that almost any correlation can be found between how people are treated and how well they do in terms of health. These stories are as numerous as they are meaningless in the totality of things. Yes, make people feel better, more optimistic, less afraid, and they will probably have a better outcome when it comes to health and happiness. Alternatively, just get a pet dog or shoot your oppressive boss and get away with it. Almost anything has an impact on our inner state of beingunfortunately, most of us can do little to create a personally blissful life for ourselves without knocking heads with others trying to do the same. Embracing new age mysticism is not the answer to real problems that require empirical approaches. Prayer vigils to my knowledge have never stopped an execution by the state, nor prevented war. Hamer then discusses temporal lobe epilepsy, and shows that this particular form of epilepsy can lead to profound religious experiences in afflicted people. From this, he and others have extrapolated that the temporal lobe must be the seat of all mystical experience (hallucinations) and that even normal people sometimes have temporal lobe misfirings that cause them to experience miraculous events. This is an extreme stretch of logic that needs far more research to connect self-transcendence with a singular area of the brain. (For an excellent book on Islam and its founder, and the connection with epilepsy and self-transcendence that leads to terrorism, read The Sword of the Prophet: IslamHistory, Theology, Impact on the World by Serge Trifkovic, 2002.) Hamer tries to support this brain malfunction for spirituality theory: "Based on this experiment and other lines of evidence, Persinger believes that the biological basis of all spiritual and mystical experiences is due to spontaneous firing of the temporoparietal regionhighly focal microseizures without any obvious motor effects. He calls such episodes transients and theorizes that they occur in everybody to some extent. Exactly how often and how strongly is determined by a mix of genes, environment, and experience. The main effect of such transients is to increase communication between the right and left temporoparietal areas, leading to a brief confusion between the sense of self and the sense of others. The outcome, he says, is a 'sense of a presence' that people interpret as a God, spirit, or other mystical being." He does tell us that 60,000 years ago, there is evidence that Neanderthal man had religion. He then states, "I believe our genetic predisposition for faith is no accident. It provides us with a sense of purpose beyond ourselves and keeps us from being incapacitated by our dread of mortality. Our faith gives us the optimism to press on regardless of the hardships we face." This seems to be the sum total of his explanation for human irrationality and embracing of false beliefs. He goes on to mention what decades of research by evolutionary psychologists now accept: that altruism, human cooperation, acceptance of group norms (like religion), disgust towards outsiders, blood lust, patriotism, ethnocentrism, and a host of other human tendencies are due to group evolutionary strategies. If the tribe were not united into a tight and cohesive unit, they would be killed or displaced by other tribes who were more aggressive and united, including a willingness to die for the group in intertribal warfare. Then he dismisses this research as impossible: "One popular concept is that religion helps societies organize and successfully compete against others. But if such group-level selection were the only selective force, God genes would probably die out or be limited to only certain parts of the world, since the necessary conditionshigh degree of kinship within the group and high degree of competition with outside groupsare limited to particular geographical areas and certain historical times. To be a universal facet of our evolution, there must be additional reasons to account for the persistence of God genes." The problem with this simplistic explanation is that there is massive amounts of data that group selection did take place over millions of years, and even if there were short periods where tribal conflict and/or tribal cooperation was absent or minimal, such periods were short in duration and were the exception. Evolution is slow, and such short respites from conflict and/or cooperation would not have altered human behavior (below I will discuss new research about tribal conflict leading to cooperative behaviors). Hamer finishes the book with a chapter on Jewish cultural practices, explains that Jews have maintained their racial separation, and today they continue to be closer genetically to Arabs. He claims that the racial separation between Jews and those they lived among was due to Jewish religious culture, which is what has been put forth by Kevin MacDonald and includes an analysis of Jewish genetic frequencies for xenophobia, high intelligence, as well as other behavioral traits (again gene-culture coevolution). However, he then claims that Jews were allowed to assimilate into the surrounding gentile cultures, but gentiles were not allowed into the Jewish faith, and this was due to Jews being discriminated against! Now that is a strange twist of logic, and a bit simplistic to say the least. Conflicts between Jews and gentiles have been a 3,000 year ordeal, it is complex, and it is ever changing. To dismiss assimilation because "people don't like us" seems rather sophomoric. Gene-Culture Coevolution In contrast to Hamer's book, Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation came out of the 90th Dahlem Workshop held in Berlin, Germany in 2002. I only stumbled upon two paragraphs that deviated from scientific objectivity. With contributions by numerous researchers in evolutionary psychology, had it been read by Hamer, his book would have been far more empirical with less utopian dreaming. For decades, group selection has been downplayed, primarily because humans were lumped in with other organisms, and the model just did not work out. Simply stated, after further review, since humans have an evolved language, we have also evolved oddities like altruism and or cooperation, as well as religion and irrationality. With language came a host of evolutionary artifacts that other organisms do not have to deal with. In fact, the only explanation for such extreme forms of human behavior such as universal altruism, feeling one-with-the-earth, suicide bombers, and serial killers is to look at how language and culture coevolved to insert a great deal of human emotion into what makes us do what we do, even to our own detriment. One of the fundamental principles of evolutionary psychology (EP) is the assumption that during the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA), humans everywhere faced similar ecologies and therefore we all evolved in roughly the same way. On the other hand, behavior or quantitative genetics looks at the differences between people and between races, with the understanding that humans in different parts of the world and under varying degrees of ecological change and cultural differences, adapted in differing ways. This book seems to be just barely breaking through the simplistic EP assumption of a single universal human mind, though the evidence for diversity in behavior has been evident to even pre-scientific man. Now for the problem: people often act in a way that is harmful to them in order to fulfill some inner need or emotion. We have evolved to do the irrational. The list here is endless but includes giving spare change to beggars and blowing oneself up for a nation or religion. Humans can span the extremes from indifference to extreme outrage at transgressors of norms and/or values adopted by the group. Likewise, the group is very malleable and changingthough this was not the case 10,000 years ago. The challenge is to try to fit together our irrational moral outrages of today with evolved human emotions from our commonand often racially uniquepasts. Daniel M.T. Fessler and Kevin J. Haley state that "We have suggested that guilt and righteousness facilitate the formation and preservation of cooperative relationships. However, not all cooperative relationships are worthwhile. In some cases, the benefits of defection exceed the benefits of cooperation. In a world without emotions that function to preserve cooperative relationships, steep time discounting alone would lead to high rates of defection. However, the existence of relationship-preserving emotions creates a situation in which it may be advantageous to mark explicitly individuals who have little of value to offer the actor. We suggest that contempt is the emotion accompanying exactly such an evaluation. By highlighting the low value of the other individual, contempt predisposes the actor to either (a) avoid establishing a relationship, (b) establish a relationship on highly unequal (i.e., exploitative) grounds, or (c) defect on an existing relationship. Consistent with the low valuation of the other, contempt seems to preclude the experience of prosocial emotions in the event that the actor is able to exploit the partner, apparently by framing the harm as merited." This is an interesting insight, and yet I doubt if the authors understand its universal implications. Just as individuals within groups may find others contemptible, it is even more prevalent in group conflicts. In diverse societies where different ethnic groups mingle, contempt for the other is rampant, even though most states take extraordinary measures reduce tensions. When groups react like individuals howeverinstituting avoidance, exploitation, or defectionit is seen as somehow immoral. In reality however, these are just emotions that any one individual can have from one extreme to the other. One person becomes an anti-racist (universal moralist) and attacks their own race in favor of another, while the race realist faces the certainty that benevolence towards others may not be reciprocated in kind. But I digress, as the point of this book is to explain the process of punishment coupled with cooperation. Ernst Fehr and Joseph Henrich state that, "Strong reciprocity means that people willingly repay gifts and punish the violation of cooperation and fairness norms even in anonymous one-shot encounters with genetically unrelated strangers. This chapter provides ethnographic and experimental evidence suggesting that ultimate theories of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, costly signaling, and indirect reciprocity do not provide satisfactory evolutionary explanations of strong reciprocity. The problem with these theories is that they can rationalize strong reciprocity only if it is viewed as maladaptive behavior, whereas the evidence suggests that it is an adaptive trait. Thus, alternative evolutionary approaches are needed to provide ultimate accounts of strong reciprocity." Strong reciprocators are the "do-gooders" or the "berserkers" both. That is whether I am a suicide bomber in Iraq, or a missionary healing the sick in Somalia, it is the same behavior that has to be explained. Why would anyone give up so much for so little in return, in terms of evolutionary fitness? That is, humans do very peculiar things when it comes to altruism, cooperation, taking revenge, etc. To really understand how this takes place and what it means, I think one has to play games with themselves on a rational level. I started slowly doing that years ago when I first came upon questions of rationality and behavior. It goes something like this: next time you eat at a diner where you will probably never return, how much of a tip will you leave? What organizations will you give to, any that you are really againstlike the United Way but the corporation pressures you to "participate?" If someone needs help, how do you react? I have found that by being rational I can modify some of my behavior but in other areas I prefer the feeling of "doing the right thing" or feeling "self righteous." I will over-tip the cabby; I will give large tips to movers who deliver my new stove; I will buy a ticket at an event from some pest at work just to keep the peace and my image in tact. At the same time, when asked by a Costco clerk if I would like to donate a dollar to a children's hospital I said no! He said "it was only a dollar and for a good cause," as I rebutted, "I do not like to be hustled by corporations trying to make themselves look good." To get inside of the extremes from self-serving behavior (bordering on psychopathy) to extreme kinship resource acquisition (families fighting over an uncle's inheritance), to universal moralism (missionaries and suicide bombers), to the passive individual that merely follows the rules but doesn't really take much notice of anything (I'd rather be fishing), we have to understand the complex emotions that evolved to drive us into behavioral niches. Virtually all humans are coalition builders, at least passively by getting along by going along with some groups while being antagonistic against others. But there are behavioral differences in the way that individuals react to group members. Some people are moral enforcers, and will take action to punish non-cooperators even at their own expense. Others will punish non-cooperators only when they need to, while yet others will shirk their duty to "act morally" within the group. As Ernst Fehr and Joseph Henrich put it, "Hence, within-group selection creates evolutionary pressures against strong reciprocity [moral enforcers] because strong reciprocators engage in individually costly behaviors that benefit the whole group. In contrast, between-group selection favors strong reciprocity because groups with disproportionately many strong reciprocators are better able to survive. The consequence of these two evolutionary forces is that in equilibrium, strong reciprocators and purely selfish humans coexist. This logic applies to genes, cultural traits, or both in an interactive process. Thus, this approach provides a logically rigorous argument as to why we observe heterogeneous responses in laboratory experiments." What is showing up over and over again in the behavioral sciences is the recognition that unlike most organisms, humans with their language ability can enforce group conforming behavior that sets up our in-group/out-group nature. We compete with each other within the group, but we also have a fiercely embraced sense of belonging to a group for protection from other groups as well as advancement for our group against other groups. Originally, this was only the tribal group, but humans have such a strong attachment to tribalistic affiliations that it can now be artificially created through indoctrination on almost any level, from patriotism to religious adherence, to terrorist cells. This may not seem like such an important observation, but only a few years ago group-level evolutionary selection was dismissed as impossible. As such, we could not come to grips with human behavior that was irrational in terms of selection pressures on only individuals and their genes. This meant that universals like racism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and social dominance were dismissed as social constructs that could just be adjudicated away by our wise leaders. (Our leaders still use the old paradigms that are rapidly being replaced in the behavioral sciences.) Peter J. Richerson, Robert T. Boyd, and Joseph Henrich state that "These successive rounds of coevolutionary change continued until eventually people were equipped with capacities for cooperation with distantly related people, emotional attachments to symbolically marked groups, and a willingness to punish others for transgression of group rules. Mechanisms by which cultural institutions might exert forces tugging in this direction are not far to seek. People are likely to discriminate against genotypes that are incapable of conforming to cultural norms. People who cannot control their self-serving aggression ended up exiled or executed in small-scale societies and imprisoned in contemporary ones. People whose social skills embarrass their families will have a hard time attracting mates. Of course, selfish and nepotistic impulses were never entirely suppressed; our genetically transmitted evolved psychology shapes human cultures, and as a result cultural adaptations often still serve the ancient imperatives of inclusive genetic fitness. However, cultural evolution also creates new selective environments that build cultural imperatives into our genes." It is also now observed that our new advanced technological culture will push genetic changes in our behavioral and cognitive repertoires. 50,000 years ago, humans lived in small tribes, only occasionally went to war with their neighbors, sometimes committing genocide while taking the women for mating. This fusion and fissuring of genotypes was slow compared to the options we have today for rapid changes in our genes. From preimplantation diagnostics to select against genetic disease, to mass extinction of whole nations from either conventional or nuclear weapons is now possible. From the turmoil of rapid social change will come rapid genetic change: "Contemporary human societies differ drastically from the societies in which our social instincts evolved. Pleistocene hunter-gatherer societies were comparatively small, egalitarian, and lacking in powerful institutionalized leadership. By contrast, modern societies are large, inegalitarian, and have coercive leadership institutions. If the social instincts hypothesis is correct, our innate social psychology furnishes the building blocks for the evolution of complex social systems, while simultaneously constraining the shape of these systems. To evolve large-scale, complex social systems, cultural evolutionary processes, driven by cultural group selection, take advantage of whatever support these instincts offer. For example, families willingly take on the essential roles of biological reproduction and primary socialization, reflecting the ancient and still powerful effects of selection at the individual and kin level. At the same time, cultural evolution must cope with a psychology evolved for life in quite different sorts of societies. Appropriate larger-scale institutions must regulate the constant pressure from smaller groups (coalitions, cabals, cliques) to subvert rules favoring large groups. To do this cultural evolution often makes use of 'work-arounds.' It mobilizes the tribal instincts for new purposes. For example, large national and international (e.g., great religions) institutions develop ideologies of symbolically marked inclusion that often fairly successfully engage the tribal instincts on a much larger scale." (Peter J. Richerson, Robert T. Boyd, and Joseph Henrich) There is now enough evidence that modern human society should be based on an understanding that as long as we are a tribalistic species, there will be more peace, more prosperity, and more happiness when nation-states can be formed by similar people. That is, the homogenous state is far more prone to be beneficial to human happiness than the discords found in multicultural and diverse states. This means a rejection of any political universals enforced by a world body except maybe the notion that to stop conflict, it is best to just separate the belligerents physically as much as possible. That is, promote non-aggressive, non-jingoistic nationalismwhere countries compete in the marketplace of commerce and ideas. --- Matt Nuenke, December 2004. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:01:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:01:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Gold Sea: Asian Faces Under the American Beauty Standard Message-ID: Asian Faces Under the American Beauty Standard http://goldsea.com/Features/Beauty/beauty.html [And here's the emergence of what, for want of a better term, Yellow Supremacy. A reply follows from another list follows.] Asian female faces rate high under universal beauty standards and are moving up under an increasingly Asianizing American beauty standard. by Dean Ching Beauty matters. Ask any Asian American who has spent hours in front of a mirror tormenting herself with the question ?Am I beautiful?? Beauty is one of those things that's easy to spot but hard to define. That's why lazy thinkers of the past have gotten themselves off the hook with the breezy "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Copout. That old saw begs the question, why does Ms Beholder think I'm a total hottie and my pal has a great personality. The whys and wherefores of beauty aren't any more difficult to understand than, say, organic chem or quantum mechanics. It's a matter of applying the same analytical tools with the same rigor. What's really going on when we perceive someone to be hot? How does Asian beauty rate against white beauty in American minds? Are our faces beautiful or merely exotic. These are the questions on our minds. All meaningful discussions begin with fundamentals. Let's not confuse personal attraction with a society's beauty standard. As an example, most guys at the office may fantasize about that certain marketing assistant but you may avoid her because she reminds you of a teacher who traumatized you in the third grade. That brings up a key concept: that beauty comprises both a physical base and a social overlay. For any given individual the social overlay plays a much bigger role than it does for society as a whole. In other words, even though a society's beauty standards do incorporate a large social component, it tends to average out endlessly variable individual biases into a collective social overlay. So how do Asian beauties like Vivian Lai, Song Hye-kyo or Sonohara Yukino compare on the beauty scale against the likes of Kate Hudson, Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon? (We're saving Asian male beauty for a later article.) A Universal Beauty Standard Evolutionary psychologists have concluded that humans have an innate attraction to beautiful people. Various studies have produced some obvious conclusions: that lateral symmetry and a healthy appearance rate high on universal concepts of beauty. Another universal seems to be the waist-to-hip ratio in women which converges around .7 (e.g. 36-25-36). One of the most important, however, is a study conducted by Judith Langlois of the University of Texas. It suggests that even 3- to 6-month old babies who haven't been media-conditioned show a distinct preference for faces that conform to a narrow range of facial proportions. Interestingly, these proportions vary little across racial lines. They are uniform enough to have allowed a company called MBA to derive blueprints showing the proportions and angles that make up ideal beauty. [Caption for picture: MBA has distilled blueprints for faces of ideal beauty in both straight and smiling configurations. The blueprints are good fits when superimposed over beautiful faces of every race.] To help ensure that our species survives and continues up the evolutionary ladder, we are genetically coded to be drawn to people who possess traits suggesting health and strong survival and reproductive abilities. These include wideset eyes, high cheekbones, large eyes, full lips, clear light skin, a short nose and a relatively small lower face. The majority happen to be traits that Asian women are more likely to possess than women of other races. Below is a chart showing each feature as embodied in an attractive Asian and caucasian face and a score reflecting how the typical features of that race would rate. Asian women can rest assured that their faces aren't at a disadvantage when judged against deeply held notions of feminine beauty. American Social Overlay Where Asian beauty encounters resistance is more often on the level of the associations that its features evoke in American minds. This social overlay comprises economic, cultural and political associations as viewed through the prism of individual biases. For example, a deeply tanned Asian woman might remind many older Americans of impoverished and wartorn Asian nations, causing them to assign a lower value to her brand of beauty. Another example is a young American male who may associate an Asian woman with media images, prompting him to impute more sexuality to Asian features. The chart below shows the most common biases that produce the American social overlay on Asian beauty. Asianization of American Beauty [Caption: The appeal of Asian female beauty is shown by the increasingly frequent selection of Asians as newscasters and beauty queens. Among them are 1997 Miss USA/Universe Brooke Lee (upper left), 2001 Miss America Angela Perez Baraquio (upper right) and ABC news anchor Liz Cho.] All three components of the social overlay are shifting in favor of Asian beauty. The prosperity and modernity of East Asia and the fast emergence of China from impoverished third-world status to having the world's fastest growing middle class have raised the value of Asians in American eyes. The vibrant hi-tech cultures of Japan, Corea, Taiwan, Singapore and major Chinese cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Guangzhou are associating Asians with the glamour of the future rather than the dubious romance of the past. At the same time, the remarkable success of Asians in the United States and Canada have shown that Asians can compete well even as a minority on American turf. In the sphere of geopolitics, unlike previous generations in which Asians were seen as military threats, today's focus on fighting Muslim terrorism has transformed Asian nations into friends and allies. Even on the economic front, U.S. industries have either conceded the segments in which Asian companies pose the most intense competition or made alliances and other accommodations. The combined effect has been to raise Asians closer to the status of friendly, upscale faces in global society. Consequently, America's beauty standard has shifted to embrace this side of the globe. [Caption: Recent years has seen a marked increase in the numbers of Non-Asian beauties bearing Asian facial features. They include Ren?e Zellweger (facial proportions, eyes, cheeks), Mandy Moore (eyes, nose, lips) Shalom Harlow (cheekbones, jawline).] The rise of Asians on the global socio-economic charts have had a visible impact in American popular media. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase not only in the number of popular actors of Asian or part-Asian ancestry, but a dramatic shift toward more Asian-looking facial types even among non-Asian celebrities. The biggest source of Asian-looking features in otherwise non-Asian Americans is the Native American contribution to the American gene pool. Upwards of an eighth of the American population claim at least fractional Native American ancestry. Genetically native Americans are indistinguishable from people from northeast Asia, and their genes tend to be dominant, giving a large number of Americans a uniquely Asian look not found, for example, in most people in European nations. Popular non-Asians beauties like Mandy Moore, Kate Hudson, Ren?e Zellweger, Shalom Harlow and Reese Witherspoon share facial features more commonly found in Asian women than in the average caucasian women. Most have relatively small eyes, short noses, full lips, pronounced cheekbones and broad jawlines. As for the eyes and the jawlines, popular American tastes seem to defy the supposedly universal beauty ideals isolated by researchers and are actually more in line with features prevailing among Asian women. This trend is reinforced by mainstream validation of straight-out Asian beauties. For example, Miss USA/Miss Universe 1997 Brooke Lee, Miss America 2001 Angela Perez Baraquio and Miss Canada International 2001 Christine Cho are recent winners before largely western panels. Perhaps an even more convincing validation are the countless Asian female newscasters on American TV. Major media companies are betting market share on the power of their Asian faces to beguile American news viewers for entire half-hour broadcasts. And these aren't new-born infants but adults whose beauty standards are heavily tinted with the social overlay of their biases. Economics The century-long suppression of Asian immigration produced an anomalous situation during the 1970s, 80s and 90s in which relatively recent immigrants made up the majority of Asians in America. This fostered the perceptions that Asians are largely poor and unacculturated, seriously discounting the value of Asian beauty. This has been compounded by the fact that until the past two decades, Asia itself has been markedly less affluent than the U.S. and western Europe. Economics has traditionally imposed the most negative overlay on Asian beauty. The large and rapidly growing numbers of Asian Americans who make up the best-educated and most affluent segment of the American population, combined with the rapid rise of Asian economies, is adding an upscale overlay to Asian beauty among younger Americans. Culture Asia's long history and exotic cultures have always added a rich and complex backdrop against which Asian beauty has been showcased. On the one hand, the perception that Asian women have historically been raised to be docile has added a super-feminine overlay (largely unwelcomed by Asian American women) that makes Asian beauty less threatening and more appealing to many Americans, both men and women. On the other, the misconception that Asian women were traditionally considered second-class tends to detract from their perceived value. The industrialization of East Asian nations, and their association with advanced consumer products, is adding a chic, fun overlay to Asian beauty. Politics Since the 19th century, laws have been enacted to restrict or stop Asian immigration for motives of racial purity, economic competition and military threat. The U.S. military occupations of Japan, Corea and Vietnam and the resulting association with prostitutes and bargirls, have added an unsavory cast to perceptions of Asian women, especially among those old enough to remember these wars. This long history continues to add a mixed emotional charge toward Asian beauty as being both sexually alluring and potentially treacherous. Steadily warming due to U.S. quest for friends and allies in war against terrorism. [Caption: "Popular non-Asians beauties like Mandy Moore, Kate Hudson, Ren?e Zellweger, Shalom Harlow and Reese Witherspoon share facial features more commonly found in Asian women than in the average caucasian women."] [Caption: "Where Asian beauty encounters resistance is more often on the level of the associations that their features evoke in American minds."] Facial Proportions A key feature of beautiful female faces is the quality known as neoteny, or youthfulness. The eyes of adolescent women appear wider set relative to the distance from the brow to the tip of the nose. High cheekbones are also an important factor, as cheeks and eyes tend to droop with age. Asian women are favored with rounder faces that are more likely to possess these features, though a significant minority have faces that would be deemed overly broad. On the other hand many white women possess neotenous features, especially those of nordic, slavic or germanic ancestry. Skin Asian women are generally blessed with fine skin with small pores. Many also have light skin when not tanned. While the majority of white women have light skin with the pinkish hue considered universally appealing in females, many are freckly, and hairier. Nose On average Asian women have shorter noses but some are broad and fleshy. White women generally have longer noses though a significant minority have the small delicate noses universally admired in women. Lips Asian women tend to have full lips while white women tend to have thin lips. On the extremes, some Asian women can have lips that are too thick and coarse while many white women have lips that are too thin, creating a prissy look. Eyes Asian women tend to have smallish eyes that are generally upslanted. White women have larger eyes that are often downslanted. White women are more likely to have the larger eyes considered generally desirable in women. Also, the broader color palette of caucasian eyes allow for attractive hues not found in Asian eyes. ----------------- And a reply on this from another list: The single biggest surprise associated with my becoming a father for the first time at the age of 50 was that the experience brought me up hard against the age old question: Q: Why is "beauty" only skin-deep? The answer is, as I learned: A: Because "beauty" simply does not *need* to be any deeper than that! Of course I was not surprised that my new son was beautiful to my eyes, but I really never expected to have complete strangers make a special trip across the street to introduce themselves and share that same opinion with me. The most extreme reaction to his "cherubic" appearance has always been from Asians. I have found this amazing since it is biologically impossible that anyone from *their* "extended family" (Steve Sailer's characterization of the concept of "race") could ever possibly look like him. But just the other day my just-turned-6-year-old son and I dropped in on the local Chinese buffet restaurant, and we were positively *besieged* by the elderly (perhaps 10 years older than myself, so mid-60s?) proprietor. The kindly Chinese gentleman ran to meet us when we entered his establishment, and immediately squatted down to pepper him with all sorts of unanswerable questions like, "Are you really a boy? You are so pretty that I think you must be a girl!" He then returned numerous times to our table as we ate to compliment my son on his appearance. I got this same reaction from a Korean lady who is a fellow venture capitalist. Every time we meet, the *first* thing she want is not my assessment of where the latest big opportunities might be in the enterprise systems management software space, but to see the latest pictures of my son. It's as if there is something universal to the blond-haired/blue-eyed image of a "cherub" as the ideal look for a small child, even among peoples whose children will never look like that. Go figure. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:02:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:02:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Walter Glannon: Genes, Embryos, and Future People Message-ID: Walter Glannon: Genes, Embryos, and Future People Bioethics, 02699702, Jul98, Vol. 12, Issue 3 ABSTRACT: Testing embryonic cells for genetic abnormalities gives us the capacity to predict whether and to what extent people will exist with disease and disability. Moreover, the freezing of embryos for long periods of time enables us to alter the length of a normal human lifespan. After highlighting the shortcomings of somatic-cell gene therapy and germ-line genetic alteration, I argue that the testing and selective termination of genetically defective embryos is the only medically and morally defensible way to prevent the existence of people with severe disability, pain and suffering that make their lives not worth living for them on the whole. In addition, I consider the possible harmful effects on children born from frozen embryos after the deaths of their biological parents, or when their parents are at an advanced age. I also explore whether embryos have moral status and whether the prospects for disease-preventing genetic alteration can justify long-term cryopreservation of embryos. INTRODUCTION Recent advances in reproductive biotechnology have given us the ability to intervene in the process of human biological development from embryos to people. One type of intervention is the testing of embryos for genetic defects that cause disease, which enables us to choose between allowing these embryos to result in disabled people or selectively terminating their further development. Alternatively, in the foreseeable future it may become possible to prevent disease by correcting a mutation in embryonic cells or by inserting a normal gene into these cells. It even may become possible to manipulate genes in such a way as to enhance people's normal cognitive and physical functioning. Still another form of intervention in the development of a human organism is the freezing of an embryo in liquid nitrogen to postpone the birth of a person who subsequently will come into existence from that embryo. All of these interventions give us considerable control over how many people will exist, when people will come into existence, and what sort of people there will be. I shall explore the moral implications of these technologies and argue that we are morally required to intervene in the process of biological development of human organisms by testing and selectively terminating embryos with genetic defects that cause people to exist with severe disease and disability. As a matter of beneficence, we have a duty to prevent avoidable pain and suffering in the people we bring into existence. As a matter of justice, we have a duty not to cause people to exist with cognitive and physical disabilities that will limit their opportunities for achieving a decent minimum level of lifetime well-being. Each of these claims is motivated by the following moral asymmetry thesis: we do not have a moral duty to bring people into existence with good lives; but we do have a moral duty to prevent the existence of people who would experience so much pain and suffering as to make their lives not worth living for them on the whole.(n1) Furthermore, in deciding whether to keep embryos frozen for long periods of time, we have to consider the psychological impact on children born from these embryos after the deaths of their biological parents, or when their parents are at an advanced age. In addition, we must consider whether we can justify keeping genetically defective embryos frozen until the time when inserting a missing gene or correcting a mutant gene become feasible practices. MORAL ASYMMETRY AND HARM The moral asymmetry thesis that I articulated above rests on three notions. The first is the person-affecting principle, which says that a person is benefited or harmed when her interests in what happens to her are satisfied or defeated.(n2) Once a person exists, she has an interest in not experiencing pain and suffering and thus can be harmed if she experiences these over the course of her lifetime. The second notion is the impersonal comparative principle, which says that, other things being equal, it is worse to cause a person to exist if it would be possible to cause a different, better-off, person to exist instead.(n3) It involves a comparison, not between the existence and non-existence of one person, but rather between two distinct lives of two distinct people. On the impersonal comparative principle, we evaluate two potential lives of two potential people who do not yet exist, while on the person-affecting principle we evaluate the life of one person who already exists. Yet we can appeal to both principles to support the claim that we are morally required to prevent the existence of people with lives that on balance are not worth living. That is, we prevent harm to the individuals we cause to exist by fulfilling their interest in not having to experience pain and suffering, and we avoid adding to the total amount of suffering in the world.(n4) The third notion on which the moral asymmetry thesis rests is the metaphysical relation between embryos and persons. 'Person' is a psychological concept, while 'human organism' is a biological concept. A human organism, in the form of a single-celled zygote, begins to exist at around the time of conception, when male and female gametes fuse.(n5) Thereafterr, the zygote develops into a multi-celled embryo, a presentient fetus, a sentient fetus, and then the body and brain of a person. The zygote, embryo, fetus, and person are distinct but biologically related stages in the development of a human organism. Up to about 14 days after fertilization there is the possibility of monozygotic twinning of the fused gametes. When it occurs, twinning causes two genetically identical but numerically distinct individual organisms to exist from the original zygote, and these subsequently develop into two distinct persons with distinct psychological properties. A person begins to exist when the fetal stage of the organism develops the structure and function of the brain necessary to generate and support consciousness and mental life. This is when the fetus becomes sentient, at around 23-24 weeks of gestation. Because the structure and function of the organism's brain which generate and support the psychological properties essential to personhood develop gradually, persons come into existence gradually. The zygotic, embryonic, and presentient fetal stages of the organism are related to the person who develops from them to the extent that they all have the same DNA in their cells and that the psychological properties of the person causally depend on the biological properties of the organism. But because a person's essential psychological properties are distinct from, and emerge later than, the biological properties that define these other stages in the development of an organism, a person is neither identical with any one of these stages nor with the organism itself.(n6) The embryo or presentient fetus is a potential person, not in the sense that it becomes a person, which implies numerical identity, but only in the sense that it has the potential to develop the biological structures and functions necessary to generate the consciousness and mental life constitutive of personhood.(n7) The metaphysical distinction between human organisms and persons has significant implications for the manipulation of genes in embryonic cells. The manipulation of one or more genes in these cells would not disrupt the identity of the organism, provided that its basic structure and function remained intact. Yet it would determine the identity of a different person. For, as Robert Elliot has pointed out, even slight changes to the biological properties of an organism at the zygotic or embryonic stage would cause different psychological properties to develop and thus select between which of a number of different people would come into existence.(n8) However, once an embryo has developed into a child with consciousness and mental life, genetic manipulation of its body's cells is more likely to be identity-preserving of personhood than identity-determining, since it already has developed a set of psychological properties. If this is correct, then the earlier genetic manipulation occurs in the development of a human organism, the more likely it is to determine that distinct people come into existence from it. On the plausible assumptions that only beings with interests can be harmed by the defeat of those interests, that having interests presupposes sentience, and that only late-stage fetuses and persons are sentient, it is morally permissible to terminate a human organism at an early stage of development. The termination affects no one who has interests. One might object that having interests does not presuppose sentience. For example, it may be said that future people, who do not yet exist and are not sentient, have an interest not to live in a polluted environment.(n9) But the core concept at issue here is harm, and harm consists in the defeat of particular interests of identifiable persons who already exist and can experience the defeat of these interests. Terminating the development of a human organism at the embryonic stage does not kill a person but only prevents a person from coming into existence. There is no one who could be harmed because there is no identifiable individual with particular interests who exists at that time. Similar reasoning underwrites the claims that we do not have a moral duty to bring people into existence, and that bringing someone into existence by itself does not benefit her, however good her life may be. We cannot say that being caused to exist is better for a person than she otherwise would have been, since otherwise she would not have existed. Put differently, there is no one who is caused to exist; rather, we make it the case that someone exists. Derek Parfit argues that the relation between existence and non-existence does not meet the 'Full Comparative Requirement', which says that we benefit someone only if we do what will be better for him.(n10) While causing someone to exist may be good for him, it cannot make him better off, since nonexistence is morally neutral and therefore neither good nor bad. We do not have a moral duty to benefit persons by bringing them into existence, because we benefit persons by satisfying their interests, and it is difficult to see how non-existing persons could have an interest in being caused to exist. However, while it is morally neutral to cause a person to exist with a life that on balance is good, it is morally wrong to bring a person into existence with a life that on balance is bad because of severe pain and suffering. For in this case there is someone who actually experiences pain and suffering and who is harmed by being caused to exist in such a condition. And since it is not morally neutral but wrong, we have a moral duty to prevent the existence of a person who would have such a life. Yet there is an air of paradox about the idea that, although we do not benefit people by bringing them into existence with lives that are good on the whole, we harm people by causing them to exist with restricted lives that are bad on the whole.(n11) Presumably, we harm someone by causing them to exist with a disability because we make them worse off than they otherwise would have been. But if they did not exist with the disability, then they would not have existed at all. Insofar as a person's life is worth living on the whole, being brought into existence with a cognitive or physical disability cannot be worse for her, because if we terminated the development of the embryo containing the gene that caused the disability, then she would not exist. This is a variant of what Parfit has called the 'Non-Identity Problem'.(n12) Jonathan Glover has devised a strategy to sidestep the Non-Identity Problem. Instead of trying to draw a comparison between the existence and non-existence of one identifiable individual, Glover maintains that the relevant comparison is between two distinct lives of two distinct people. It is 'impersonal' in the sense that 'harm can be done even though identifiable people are no worse off than they otherwise would have been'.(n13) Glover uses the following example to illustrate the impersonal comparative principle. Imagine that a factory emits a chemical that causes babies to be born blind. On the Non-Identity Problem, they are not made worse off than they otherwise would have been, since their lives are worth living and otherwise they would not have existed. But 'what we should say here is, not that the pollution made the blind children worse off than they would have been otherwise, but instead that their condition is worse than the condition of the other children who would have been born in the absence of the pollution.'(n14) The choice is between bringing different people into existence, while retaining the same number of people who will exist.(n15) Both person-affecting and impersonal harm principles give us reasons to bring a normal child into existence rather than a diseased or disabled one. We prevent actual people from experiencing pain and suffering and thereby avoid defeating their interest in having healthy lives, and we avoid adding to the total amount of suffering in the world. In some genetically caused diseases, severe cognitive and physical disability may make people's lives so restricted that they are not worth living. By definition, these lives fall outside the scope of the Non-Identity Problem. When we can predict that a disease would involve so much disability, pain, and suffering as to make life not worth living on the whole, we are morally required to prevent the existence of people who would have the disease. Or, if we do cause people to exist with such a disease, then we are morally required to either cure them or alleviate the severity of their symptoms, insofar as we are able. The first scenario that I described pertains to the impersonal sense of harm and potential persons, while the second pertains to the personal sense of harm and actual persons. One suggests genetic testing and selective termination of defective embryos as the appropriate strategy to prevent harm. The other suggests that the appropriate strategy to prevent or compensate for harm would be gene therapy or some other form of genetic alteration. A person is a further stage of development of the same human organism of which the embryo is an earlier stage. In this sense, embryos are potential persons, and failing to terminate a genetically defective embryo can cause harm by allowing it to develop into a diseased or disabled person.(n16) Because gene therapy is not yet feasible for most diseases, genetic testing and selective termination of genetically defective embryos appears to be the only medically effective and morally defensible way to prevent the sort of harm at issue. Before defending this claim, however, we should examine the different forms of genetic intervention and assess their medical and moral significance. GENETIC INTERVENTION There are three basic types of genetic alteration. (n17) Gene therapy consists in the correction or addition of genes in the somatic (body) cells of a person to treat a disease the person already has, where the aim of treatment is to cure the disease or alleviate its symptoms. By contrast, genetic alteration of germ cells (gametes; sperm and egg) at the zygotic or embryonic stage of the human organism prevents diseased persons from coming into existence. It is therefore mistaken to call this form of genetic manipulation 'therapy,' because when the gametes are altered, there are no existing persons who might benefit from this act.(n18) 'Therapy' implies that there is a disease to be treated or cured, and it is not zygotes or embryos but rather persons or late-term fetuses who are diseased. Defective genes in embryonic cells may be the causes of diseases, but the diseases do not manifest themselves until the organism has developed into a fetus or person. Unlike somatic-cell gene therapy, which preserves the identity of already existing persons who are treated, germ-line genetic alteration determines the identity of the person who would come into existence from the embryo in which a defective gene is corrected or replaced by a normal one. The intervention takes place before the process of cell differentiation and the development of tissues and bodily organs has begun, and thus determines that a biologically and psychologically distinct individual will come into existence from the one who would have come into existence from the same embryo had the defective gene not been corrected or replaced. Genetic enhancement involves non-therapeutic alteration of genes aimed at improving cognitive and physical functioning which already are at or above the normal level for persons. The three types of genetic alteration which I have mentioned are to be distinguished further from selective termination of embryos after genetic testing has revealed the presence of disease-causing genes, or markers for these genes, in the cells of embryos. (n19) Like germ-line genetic alteration, germ-line genetic testing and termination is not a therapeutic but a preventive strategy designed to avoid the existence of individuals who would be severely disabled and have restricted lives. Let us now further explore the four types of genetic intervention at the embryonic stage of development of a human organism. Somatic-cell gene therapy is not yet feasible for treating the majority of genetically caused diseases. This is because gene therapy is primarily relevant to single-gene disorders, and chromosomal disorders such as Down syndrome involve large segments of DNA which are not amenable to treatment. Moreover, the single-gene disorders that might be amenable to gene therapy are recessive rather than dominant disorders. Recessive disorders, where a single copy of the normal gene is sufficient for one to function within the normal cognitive and physical range for persons, may be treatable because inserting one copy of a normal gene into someone with a double dose of the defective gene may be enough to raise that individual's functioning or health up to the normal range. Dominant disorders, by contrast, result even when the affected person has only a single copy of the defective gene. These disorders might be prevented or cured by correcting the mutation within the gene. Presently, however, it is not possible to correct a mutation but only to insert an additional normal copy of a gene into cells, and therefore only recessive disorders can be treated through genetic intervention. In theory, a recessive disorder like cystic fibrosis (CF) could be treated by inserting a normal gene into the relevant cells so that the pancreas produced the necessary enzymes for food absorption, as well as to ensure proper function of the glands in the lining of the bronchial tubes. Similarly, in hemophiliacs, who are unable to produce normal amounts of a factor necessary for blood clotting, the missing gene could be delivered through injections. In practice, though, what has plagued the efforts of gene therapy to cure people of diseases, or at least effectively treat their symptoms, is the lack of suitable vectors to deliver therapeutic genes into human cells and maintain them in working order. Viral vectors have been the method used to date, specifically adenoviruses and retroviruses, which slice copies of their genes permanently into the chromosomes of the cells they enter. Yet this method has been largely unsuccessful because the stripped-down viruses that have been used do not provide a stable platform for the genes to operate efficiently. Some of these viruses are not large enough to carry a full human gene and its switches, while others may provoke an adverse response by the immune system. Work on hemophiliacs, children with severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID), and familial hypercholesterolemia has shown some promise. But for the majority of genetically based diseases, gene therapy is not yet an effective cure or treatment.(n20) Germ-line genetic alteration initially may seem more attractive than gene therapy. Manipulation or replacement of genetic abnormalities in germ cells at the zygotic or embryonic stage after in vitro fertilization (IVF) would correct a defect before it could manifest itself as a disease in an existing person. This type of alteration would affect the resulting cells in the process of differentiation and in turn the germ line of the person who develops from the embryo. The altered genes would then be passed on to future generations of the person's offspring. But it is questionable whether germ-line genetic manipulation would be desirable from an evolutionary perspective. Some degree of genetic mutation is necessary for species to adapt to changing environmental circumstances, and some genetic disorders confer benefits on certain populations. For example, the gene for sickle-cell anemia provides greater resistance to malaria. Altering a gene or genes at the germ line to correct one disorder may only lead to other disorders. This also raises the question of whether we have a duty to prevent passing on unforeseeable consequences of germ-line alteration to future generations, which is morally significant for two reasons. First, people existing in the future might be adversely affected by a policy to which they did not consent. Second, it would be extremely difficult to determine whether the benefits of such a policy would outweigh its harms, in which case it may be morally preferable to err on the side of caution and prevent such a policy from being implemented. In sum, there may be both medical and moral reasons against germ-line genetic alteration. Genetic enhancement is a non-therapeutic form of genetic intervention which aims to raise cognitive and physical capacities above the normal range of functioning for persons. But to the extent that people's actual cognitive and physical functioning enable them to achieve a decent minimum level of well-being, there are no compelling medical or moral reasons for genetic enhancement. Indeed, some would say that there are compelling reasons for prohibiting it. Insofar as genetic enhancement aimed at something over and above disease prevention and health promotion, it would threaten to introduce a program of positive eugenics which would unjustly discriminate against certain groups of people who are moderately disabled and whose lives, though somewhat restricted, are nonetheless worth living. I will return to the eugenics question in the last part of the next section. My analysis of the different forms of genetic alteration and the problem of their feasibility supports my earlier claim that genetic testing and selective termination of embryos with defective genes that cause people to exist with severe pain and suffering is the only medically effective and morally defensible way to prevent this state of affairs from obtaining. It will be instructive to cite some specific diseases that recommend such a preventive measure. WHICH LIVES SHOULD BE PREVENTED? Present biotechnology allows us to test embryonic cells for genetic abnormalities that lead directly to severe early-onset disorders, like Tay-Sachs disease, Hurler syndrome, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, and Canavan's disease, as well as late-onset disorders like Huntington's disease.(n21) We also can test embryos for genes that predispose people to chronic and ultimately fatal conditions like coronary heart disease and cancer. Genetic mutations play a causal role in many diseases by altering a crucial enzyme or other protein. The alteration may occur in differing degrees, depending on the extent of interaction between genes and the environment. In the specific diseases I mentioned above, though, environment plays little or no causal role in their occurrence. Either the defective gene necessarily causes the disease, or else it has a very high probability of causing it (95% with the Huntington's gene). In Tay-Sachs, for instance, babies appear quite normal at birth. But in the first year of life their nervous systems degenerate, and they usually die by the time they reach 3 or 4. This disease is caused by the presence of two copies of an abnormal gene, or mutant allele, at a particular site on one of the 23 chromosome pairs. Tay-Sachs is an autosomal recessive disorder, which effectively means that the child inherits one mutant allele from each parent. Through the fusion of the gametes in the zygote that develops into the embryo, fetus, and person, the parents transmit the disease to their child. Ideally, we would use gene therapy by inserting an additional normal copy of the defective gene into the relevant cells and thus cure the disease. But Tay-Sachs, like most recessive (and dominant) disorders, has not proven amenable to therapy. Alternatively, we can test and selectively terminate embryos with genes that cause this or other severely disabling diseases, preventing these diseases by preventing the existence of the people who would have them. This practice can be justified on two grounds. Beneficence requires that we not harm people by causing them to experience pain and suffering over the balance of their lives. In addition, justice requires that we not deny severely disabled people the same opportunities for achieving a good life as are open to others who are healthy or have only moderate cognitive or physical disabilities.(n22) Arguably, the justice requirement will apply to only a small number of people, since the idea of equal opportunity for a good life implies a certain number of years to undertake and complete projects for a decent minimum level of wellbeing, and most people with severe early-onset genetically caused diseases have relatively short lifespans. Perhaps this is not the case with a disease like CF, where people afflicted often live for 30 years or more. But I do not believe that this genetically caused disease is so severely disabling and painful that we can justifiably prevent the lives of the persons who would have it. Considerations of justice matter; but what matters more than ensuring equal opportunity for achieving a good life is preventing avoidable severe pain and suffering that people actually experience once they exist. These are what make lives not worth living on the whole. Indeed, it is often the severe pain and suffering associated with disabilities which preclude people from having the opportunities to achieve a decent minimum level of lifetime well-being. Testing of embryonic cells for genetic abnormalities may be done by extracting cells from preimplantation IVF embryos. To produce extracorporeal IVF embryos for this type of testing, fertility drugs such as Clomid or Pergonal can be given to a woman to induce superovulation and in turn produce a number of eggs that can be recovered for fertilization with sperm. One advantage of producing multiple embryos is that, if genetic abnormalities are detected in any one of the embryos, then it can be selectively terminated and another, normal, embryo can be implanted in the woman's uterus. This would enable parents to have a normal child instead of a disabled one and to avoid any burdens that such a child might have on them or, if they have other children, the rest of the family. Significantly, the capacity to produce multiple IVF embryos is largely what grounds the impersonal harm principle, since at least two embryos must be available for a parent or parents to choose to bring a normal child into existence instead of a disabled one. Another attractive feature of this method, as Robert Edwards explains, is that 'identifying embryos with genetic abnormalities would offer an alternative to amniocentesis during the second trimester of pregnancy, and the 'abortion' in vitro of a defective preimplantation embryo . . . would be infinitely preferable to abortion in vivo at twenty weeks of pregnancy or thereabouts as the results of amniocentesis are obtained'.(n23) Testing preimplantation IVF embryos for genetic abnormalities would be preferable to testing fetal cells for these abnormalities by amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling because, unlike these invasive procedures, it would not be painful to the pregnant woman and would avoid certain medical risks. Specifically, putting a needle into the uterus to extract cells from either the amniotic fluid or embryonic membrane triggers a miscarriage once in every 50 to 100 pregnancies. Moreover, villus sampling may cause limb deformities in the fetus. Terminating the development of one embryo and implanting a different embryo would mean that the life of one potential person was not allowed to become actual and that the life of a different potential person became actual instead. Thesame number of people would exist, but they would be different people. Yet whether one or a different potential person is allowed to exist does not matter morally. Rather, what matters morally is preventing avoidable pain and suffering that actual people will have to experience. And to the extent that an embryo containing a disease-causing gene will result in severe pain and suffering in the person who develops from it, we are morally required to prevent the disease, pain, and suffering by terminating the development of that embryo. What must be emphasized, however, is that the moral requirement to terminate embryos and thereby prevent certain people from coming into existence pertains only to those people who would have severe, not just moderately severe, diseases. Only severe diseases make people's lives not worth living on the whole. One consequence of not preventing genetically defective embryos from resulting in severely diseased or disabled persons is that a child caused to exist in such a condition could file a tort of wrongful life against his parents.(n24) Or, if the child is cognitively or physically unable to do so, a different person could file a tort on the child's behalf. Suppose that a boy has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a recessive disorder traceable to a genetic defect on the X chromosome which adversely affects the dystrophin protein. This defect causes muscles to begin weakening at age 3 and subsequent respiratory failure, which gives children afflicted with the disease an average life expectancy of 16-20 years. If the boy's mother knew that she was a carrier of the defect and that there was a 50% chance of transmitting it to her son, was able to abort the embryo containing the defect, yet allowed the child to be born from that embryo, then the boy could claim that his parents acted in reckless disregard of his welfare, wronged and harmed him, and accordingly owe him compensation for causing him to exist with a condition that defeats his right and interest in having a life that is not severely restricted. The person-affecting principle would ground the child's claim against his parents. There would not be grounds for a tort of wrongful life, however, if the child claimed that genetic intervention other than testing and termination at the embryonic stage of development, such as adding a normal copy of the dystrophin gene, would have made a significant difference between the quality of life he actually experiences and what he might have experienced otherwise. For at the time of the intervention, there would not have been any identifiable individual to be benefited or harmed. Genetic alteration at such an early stage of development of the organism would have resulted in a completely different set of biological and psychological properties that would have belonged to a different person. So the child only could claim that the wrong or harm was committed by not terminating the defective embryo from which he developed, not by failing to add a normal copy of the gene. Gene therapy involving somatic cells at an early age after birth also would entail different subsequent biological and psychological properties as the child's life unfolded. Arguably, however, these would not be so radically different from the properties possessed before the therapy that they would be of a different person, since presumably the child who receives the therapy already has a fairly developed biological and psychological life. Although some of his properties would have changed, intuitively there would be enough biological and psychological continuity before and after the therapy to say that the child cured of CF or SCID by gene therapy would remain the same individual. If such a child's parents had access to affordable gene therapy that could cure his disease or treat the symptoms associated with it, but failed to seek such treatment, then perhaps the child could claim that his parents harmed or wronged him by defeating his interest in being cured of or treated for a disease that was amenable to gene therapy. But to the extent that the child already exists with a condition for which his parents are not completely responsible, strictly speaking this case would involve something other than the standard notion of wrongful life. The cases that I have just discussed involve physical disability. More difficult to assess would be gene therapy to correct severe cognitive disability at a fairly early stage of a person's life. This could have a significant effect on subsequent psychological properties that arguably would be those of a different person from the one who underwent cognitive gene therapy for the affected brain cells at an earlier time, given that the brain generates and supports the consciousness and other psychological properties necessary for personhood and personal identity through time. The medical prospects for cognitive gene therapy are even less promising than they are for physical gene therapy, and the moral implications of such therapy are so complex that I cannot address them adequately here. Nevertheless, cognitive and physical disability may very well have different relative weights in determining personal identity through time, as well as in determining whether or to what extent people can be harmed. I have claimed that the diseases that morally require us to prevent the existence of people who would have them must be so severely disabling that they make their lives not worth living on the whole. This is not the case with moderately severe genetic disorders like Down syndrome, where, although there is some cognitive and physical impairment, the lives of people with this disorder can be fulfilling and thus very much worth living. So there would be no moral grounds for preventing the existence of people with Down syndrome. But there would be no moral requirement to bring them into existence either, given that existence is morally neutral and entails no requirement to cause people to exist with good lives. A further distinction must be drawn between early-onset genetic disorders of the sort I have been discussing, which affect people from birth or early childhood, and late-onset genetic disorders, like Huntington's disease, which do not affect people until the adult stage of their lives. The onset of symptoms in people afflicted with Huntington's may range anywhere from age 30 to 50, and these include progressive loss of muscle control and dementia. Generally, they die within 15 years after onset. Prior to this time, they usually have normal lives with comparatively high levels of cognitive and physical functioning for a considerable number of years. In trying to determine whether people's lives are worth living on the whole, we should do so by evaluating the quality of their lives in terms of all the stages of their lives. But the radical difference in cognitive and physical functioning before and after the onset of symptoms in diseases like Huntington's makes it difficult to assess overall quality of life for the people who have them. With severe adult-onset diseases, perhaps the most plausible way to measure lifetime quality is to weigh the level of normal functioning per year lived against the level of disability per year lived and arrive at an average level of well-being for the person's entire lifespan.(n25) On this view, the earlier the onset of symptoms in the person's life, the longer the period of time between onset and death, and the more severe the disability, pain, and suffering associated with the disease, the stronger the reason will be for saying that the person's life is not worth living on the whole. Correspondingly, there will be a stronger reason for preventing that life by terminating the embryo with the gene that causes the disease. Thus, for a person afflicted with the degenerative physical and cognitive symptoms of Huntington's disease at age 30, the severity of the pain and suffering he experiences in his last 15 years may be bad enough to outweigh the normal functioning he had in his first 30 years and average out to a level of lifetime well-being which falls below the decent minimum. This in turn may lead us to conclude that his life is not worth living on the whole for him and that, if we could have foreseen this through genetic testing of the embryo from which he developed, then we should have terminated the embryo and thereby prevented him from existing. Or consider a more controversial variant of the same case. Suppose that genetic testing could predict that symptoms would not manifest themselves until age 50. One might claim that the pain and suffering caused by the disease in the last 10 or 15 years of the person's life would be so severe as to outweigh the good 50 years and thus make the person's average lifetime well-being fall below the decent minimum. Although it would be difficult to sustain, here too there may be a principled reason for terminating an embryo with the Huntington's gene. It may weigh the decision in favor of preventing the existence of a person who would have the disease over causing him to exist with a life that has a wretched last stage. Alternatively, one could take the view that, with adult-onset diseases, it is the victim's responsibility to decide whether to go on living beyond a certain point. This is consistent with the conviction that the value of a life is determined subjectively by the person whose life it is. But whether this view were to figure in any way in public policy would depend, among other things, on the legal climate in which the afflicted person was living.(n26) Pain and suffering in the last stage or years of a person's life must be weighed against the achievements afforded by normal cognitive and physical functioning in earlier stages. Fifty years of normal functioning should be enough for a person to complete many of the projects in his life plan and make for a life that is worth living. If so, then the fact that a person loses his normal functioning at age 50 by itself is not enough to support the claim that on balance his life is not worth living and that he should not have been allowed to come into existence. Indeed, some people have lives of thirty years that are full of achievements. A shorter life can be very well worth living. But if the pain and suffering in one's last years are severe enough, and if the number of these years is large enough, then this may weigh the decision in favor of preventing the person from coming into existence. The experience of severe pain and suffering, more so than what it implies about limited opportunities for achievement, grounds the claims that a person's life on balance is not worth living for him and that it is morally wrong to cause a person to exist with such a life. Two objections might be raised against the claim that people with severe disease or disability should not be brought into existence. Disabilities rights advocates might argue that intervention in the form of testing and selectively terminating genetically defective embryos would reduce the number of people with disabilities. Consequently, public support for persons who already have disabilities would erode. It would lead to a devaluation of the lives of the disabled and to discrimination against them. To rebut this objection, we can appeal to Allen Buchanan's point that 'it is not the people with disabilities which we devalue, it is the disabilities'.(n27) Buchanan further says 'we devalue disabilities because we value the opportunities and welfare of the people who have them -- and it is because we value people, all people, that we care about limitations on their welfare and opportunities. We also know that disabilities, as such, diminish opportunities and welfare, even when they are not so severe that the lives of those who have them are not worth living'.(n28) The underlying rationale for this position is that it is a matter of justice, not only beneficence, that we remove or prevent limitations on an individual's opportunities for a decent life. But the second passage cited from Buchanan leaves open the possibility that it is morally permissible to terminate embryos with genetic defects that would lead to people having lives with limited opportunities that are nonetheless worth living. Against Buchanan, I believe that we should terminate only those embryos with genetic defects that manifest themselves in severe disabilities that make life on balance not worth living. Still, we have to weigh the relative importance of cognitive and physical functioning for different people in assessing quality of life. Suppose it were discovered that the adult-onset motor neuron disease amyelotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) had a genetic cause and that the disease could be prevented only by terminating embryos whose cells contained the defective gene. The case of the brilliant theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking illustrates that a person can suffer from a severe physical disability as a symptom of ALS for well over the balance of his life yet maintain a high level of cognitive functioning which makes life for him very much worth living. It would be difficult to adduce reasons for preventing such a life from coming into existence, despite the fact that ALS is a severely disabling disease. On the other hand, for people who value physical functioning very highly (e.g. athletes, dancers), severe physical disability may lead them to judge that on balance their lives are not worth living, even if their normal cognitive functioning remains intact. Granted, people can adapt their preferences and life plans to adult-onset disabilities and the limited opportunities they entail. But it is not so easy to do this if one has to endure constant pain and suffering over a considerable period of time. Furthermore, in the case of someone like Hawking, if the pain associated with the physical disability were so severe that it adversely affected his cognitive functioning, then we might consider whether he would believe that his well-being was at a level high enough for him to judge that his life was worth living. A second objection to my view is that any form of genetic intervention is motivated by the desire to improve the human species through selection. This amounts to a program of positive eugenics, which would lead to a repeat of the inhumane treatment of people and a violation of their intrinsic worth which have occurred in recent history.(n29) To this objection, we can respond by saying that the aim of any medically and morally defensible form of genetic intervention should not be to enhance people's genotype or phenotypic traits, but only to ensure that the people we do cause to exist have normal, or close to normal, cognitive and physical functioning over the balance of their lives. In preventing the existence of people with severe disability, we are not aiming to enhance or improve lives that already are, or would be, at a decent minimum level of well-being, but only to ensure that the people we do bring into existence will not fall well below this level. This accords with the moral asymmetry thesis. We have no moral duty to bring people into existence with good lives. But if we do bring people into existence, we have a moral duty to ensure that their lives do not contain so much pain and suffering as to be not worth living for them on the whole. The negative eugenics I am defending has affinities with what Philip Kitcher calls 'utopian eugenics'.(n30) This involves a policy guaranteeing that people have reproductive freedom in choosing which embryos they allow to develop and subsequently the people they bring into existence. Their choices must be free of any socially coercive pressure to prevent people from existing for economic reasons or perfectionist ideals. Provided that genetic testing and selective termination of defective embryos are practiced in order to prevent extreme pain and suffering in people, not to enhance their cognitive and physical capacities above the normal range, and that reproductive technologies like IVF and genetic testing are affordable and accessible to all, utopian eugenics is a morally justifiable policy. LONG-TERM CRYOPRESERVATION Another practice made possible by reproductive biotechnology is the storing of frozen embryos in 'embryo banks' of liquid nitrogen. One attractive feature of this type of cryopreservation is that a woman could decide to preserve an embryo produced by IVF from her egg and a man's sperm in such a bank in order to pursue a career and later have the embryo implanted in her uterus for pregnancy and birth. Assuming that long-term storage does not entail a risk of genetic mutation in embryonic cells, she could undertake a later pregnancy without fear of birth defects regardless of her age because the embryo fertilized at the earlier time would be biologically optimal. Moreover, if genetic testing determines that an embryo has a genetic abnormality that likely will result in a severely diseased or disabled person, then storing multiple IVF embryos gives parents the choice to terminate the defective embryo and implant a normal one instead. In addition, cryopreservation of embryos for an extended period of time may make any genetic mutations they contain correctable by the insertion of normal copies of the relevant genes, if such a technique becomes feasible in the near future. This would determine the identity of the person brought into existence free from disease, who would replace the diseased individual who would have existed instead from the same embryo without the altered or additional gene. But it is worth repeating that it is not whether genetic alteration or therapy is identity-determining or identity-preserving which is morally significant, but rather the sort of experience the persons who are brought into existence will have. There are reasons to be wary of freezing and storing embryos for long periods of time, however. It is unknown whether this process might entail genetic mutations in embryonic cells which might result in disease and premature death in the individuals who come into existence in this way. Also, IVF and cryopreservation of embryos make it possible for a person resulting from such an embryo to have three distinct mothers: (1) the genetic, or biological mother, whose gamete contributes 23 chromosomes to the embryo and determines many of the subsequent biological and psychological properties of the child who develops from the embryo; (2) the gestational mother, in whose uterus the embryo is implanted and who gives birth to the child; and (3) the social mother who raises and cares for the child. The social mother is perhaps the most important of the three with respect to the child's interests, since she is the one who cares for the child when it has the requisite psychological properties for interests, rights, and a biographical self. To the extent that only individuals with interests and rights can be harmed, and these interests and rights can be affected directly by the social mother, she can directly affect the welfare of the child. But the relationship between a child and its biological parents can have a significant psychological impact on the child as well. If an embryo is frozen and not implanted until many years after fertilization, then it is possible for a child to be born from that embryo and come into existence after the deaths of its biological parents. Even assuming that there are no known genetic abnormalities in the embryo, the prospect of being born after the deaths of its biological parents may have harmful effects on the child's psychological identity, its sense of self. A mature self ordinarily will have a relationship with its biological parents which involves more than mere knowledge of who they are. There may be an even greater sense of harm to a child resulting from an embryo stored for a considerable period of time. Earlier, I said that storing embryos could allow a woman to pursue a professional career before having a child. But suppose that a woman's egg, fertilized when she was 30, is frozen and not implanted in her still normally functioning uterus (or that of a surrogate mother) until she is 60.(n31) She becomes pregnant and decides to bring the pregnancy to term. The increasing likelihood of disease with age may mean that the child or adolescent born from this pregnancy would have the burden of caring for her mother or both parents before she was emotionally mature enough to do so. It also would be an obstacle to her own emotional development as a person and thus have a deleterious effect on her overall well-being. With these issues in mind, it will be instructive to consider a well-known legal case in the United States involving frozen embryos. In December 1988, seven embryos produced in vitro from the gametes of Mary Sue Davis and Junior Lewis Davis were placed in cryogenic storage for possible future implantation.(n32) In February 1989, the couple filed for divorce, at which time the question arose as to whether the right of Mrs. Davis (then remarried as Mrs. Stowe) to become a mother outweighed Mr. Davis' right not to become a father. Arguing in Mr. Davis' favor, John Robertson concluded that the right to avoid biological offspring should have priority over the right to reproduce using frozen embryos.(n33) While Robertson's argument is persuasive as far as it goes, it pays insufficient attention to the interests of the future children who may be produced from these embryos. More specifically, it does not adequately consider how long-term cryopreservation of embryos may adversely affect the well-being of children born from embryos implanted in surrogate mothers after the deaths of their biological parents, or if children are born when their biological parents are at an advanced age. These points underscore some of the disturbing implications of what amounts to altering the normal lifespan of a human organism and the normal reproductive cycle. In particular, it forces us to ask whether we have a moral obligation to impose some time limit after which frozen embryos should not be implanted. Indeed, the Human Fertilization and Embryo Act of 1991 in the United Kingdom stipulated a five-year limit on the storage of frozen embryos, after which time they were to be destroyed. Even if time limits on storage resolve the problems involving the length of a biological lifespan and the reproductive cycle, the question remains as to whether disposing of embryos is morally permissible. Bonnie Steinbock maintains that it matters whether we think that embryos should be preserved because of their symbolic value or because they have a right to life. The import of this question derives from a distinction she draws between moral status and moral value.(n34) Moral status is limited to beings with interests of their own, that is, sentient, aware, beings. Moral value concerns the symbolic value of entities, even if they lack moral status. The debate in the United Kingdom may be taken either from the point of view of moral status or from that of moral value. If, as the Church maintains, embryos have moral status and rights, then it is impermissible to deliberately destroy them. But if they lack moral status, then we still can discuss whether respecting them as symbols of human life is consistent with destroying them.(n35) By Steinbock's lights, destroying embryos is as respectful of human life as is keeping them frozen for long periods, and this understanding of moral value seems plausible. Nevertheless, the possibility that deletion of defective genes and insertion of normal genes in embryonic cells will become feasible in the near future may provide a reason for keeping embryos in frozen storage. This would be the case if parents wanted to have a normal child at some point not too late in their lives and were able to produce only one viable but genetically abnormal embryo from their gametes. Yet if they were able to produce multiple embryos and none of them was genetically abnormal, then, given that there is no moral obligation to bring people into existence, there would be no corresponding moral obligation to preserve any of these embryos on the basis of their presumed moral status. CONCLUSION I have examined two aspects of reproductive biotechnology -- genetic testing and selective termination of defective embryos, and long-term cryopreservation of embryos -- and have explored the ethical implications of each. In the first case, I have argued that we are morally required to terminate the development of embryos with genetic defects that cause severe disease or disability in people who develop from them. The moral justification for this view is that it is wrong to cause people to exist when the avoidable pain and suffering they experience make their lives not worth living on the whole. This claim is motivated by both the person-affecting and impersonal harm principles. If we cause these people to exist with severe disease and disability, then we defeat their interest in living without pain and suffering. Or, if we are considering whether to cause people to exist, then it is better, other things being equal, to prevent the existence of a person with severe cognitive and physical disability and instead bring into existence a person with normal cognitive and physical functioning. By doing so, we avoid gratuitously adding to the total amount of suffering in the world. In addition, considerations of justice support this position, because it means that people will not come into existence with a condition that will severely limit their opportunities for achieving a decent minimum level of lifetime well-being. Consistent with the idea of negative eugenics, we should prevent the existence of people who would have severe disease and disability, not in order to raise the average level of people's cognitive and physical functioning, but rather to prevent the pain and suffering that make people's lives not worth living on the whole. The aim of negative eugenics is disease prevention and health promotion, not enhancement of normal capacities. With respect to long-term cryopreservation of embryos, I have cited reasons for not preserving embryos for too long when it entails harmful psychological effects on a child born after the deaths of its biological parents, or when its parents are at an advanced age. However, if genetic technology develops in the near future to the point of making it feasible to correct genetic defects at the embryonic stage of development, then this may provide medical and moral grounds for preserving them. Such genetic alteration would mean that a biologically and psychologically different person would come into existence from the person who would have come into existence without genetic alteration to the embryo. Yet what matters morally is not who comes into existence, but that if we decide to bring a person into existence, we ensure, insofar as we can, that they not experience severe pain and suffering over the balance of their lives. In time, recessive genetic disorders may become amenable to somatic-cell gene therapy. Perhaps both recessive and dominant disorders will be prevented by germ-line genetic alteration at an early stage of a developing human organism. The latter would have profound medical and moral implications for the evolution of genetic mutation in the human species as well as for our obligations to generations in the distant future. But the genetic technology we presently have already gives us considerable power to determine which people will exist and the sorts of lives they will have in the near future.(n36) (n1) This thesis derives from Jan Narveson's claim that we do not have a moral duty to make happy people, but only to make people happy. He argues that the benefit of an act is the good it brings to already existing people and does not include the good of people who come into existence as a result of the act. See 'Utilitarianism and New Generations', Mind 76 (1967), pp. 62-72, and 'Moral Problems of Population', Monist 57 (1973), pp. 62-86. John Broome and Adam Morton discuss different aspects of the moral asymmetry thesis in 'The Value of A Person', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 68 (1994), pp. 167-98. (n2) Here I follow the definition of harm given by Joel Feinberg in Harm to Others (New York, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 102-4, and Allen Buchanan and Dan Brock in Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 162-9. Broome, ibid., Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984), Part IV, and John Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human Biotechnology (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 89, define personal harm in comparative terms. That is, a person is harmed when she is made worse off than she would have been otherwise. I avoid using the comparative sense of harm in considering whether being caused to exist with disabilities harms people, because these people would not exist without the disabilities they have, and a coherent comparison can be made only between two states of existence. The comparative sense of harm can be invoked only insofar as people exist and have interests. Otherwise, we should use an impersonal sense of harm, comparing two distinct potential lives of two distinct potential people. (n3) Parfit defends this principle in Reasons and Persons, Ch. 18, and 'Comments', Ethics 96 (1986), pp. 858 ff., as does Jonathan Glover, 'Future People, Disability, and Screening', in Peter Laslett and James Fishkin, eds. Justice Between Age Groups and Generations (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 127-43. (n4) This idea is discussed by Parfit, Reasons and Persons, and Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman, p. 90. (n5) See Michael Lockwood, 'When Does A Life Begin?', in Lockwood, ed., Moral Dilemmas in Modern Medicine (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 9-31, Norman M. Ford, When Did I Begin? (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 97 ff., Stephen Buckle, Karen Dawson, and Peter Singer, 'The Syngamy Debate: When Precisely Does A Human Life Begin?', in Singer et al., eds., Embryo Experimentation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), Ch. 19, Harris, pp. 61-5, and Jeff McMahan, 'The Metaphysics of Brain Death', Bioethics 9 (1995), pp. 91-126. (n6) McMahan draws a similar distinction between persons and human organisms in 'The Metaphysics of Brain Death', as does Robert Elliot in 'Identity and the Ethics of Gene Therapy', Bioethics 7 (1993), pp. 27-40, and 'Genetic Therapy, Person-Regarding Reasons and the Determination of Identity', Bioethics 11 (1997), pp. 151-60. Compare these accounts with that of Ingmar Persson, who draws a three-fold distinction between a conceptus, a human being, and a person in 'Genetic Therapy, Identity and the Person-Regarding Reasons', Bioethics 9 (1995), pp. 16-31. For a defense of the view that we are essentially human animals, see Eric Olson, The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996), and 'Was I Ever A Fetus?', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1997), pp. 43-59. (n7) In Causing Death and Saving Lives (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977), Glover says that a fetus is a potential person (p. 122), and Harris holds that embryos are potential persons, or 'pre-persons' (p. 58). Buckle subtly discusses the difference between the potential to become and the potential to produce in 'Arguing from Potential', Bioethics 2 (1988), pp. 227 ff. Reprinted in Singer et al., Ch. 9. (n8) Elliot, 'Identity and the Ethics of Gene therapy', and 'Genetic Therapy, Person-Regarding Reasons and the Determination of Identity'. McMahan explores the implications of the differences between genetic techniques that are identity-determining and those that are identity-preserving in 'Cognitive Disability, Misfortune, and Justice', Philosophy & Public Affairs 25 (1996), pp. 3-35. (n9) Tom Regan first argued for this position in 'Feinberg on What Sorts of Beings Can Have Rights', Southern Journal of Philosophy 14 (1976), pp. 485-98. (n10) Reasons and Persons, pp. 488-9. (n11) In 'The Paradox of Future Individuals', Philosophy &Public Affairs 11 (1982), pp. 93-112, Gregory Kavka defines a restricted life as 'one that is significantly deficient in one or more of the major respects that generally make human lives valuable and worth living' (p. 105). Yet Kavka says further that 'restricted lives typically will be worth living, on the whole, for those who live them' (p. 105). When I say that life is or is not worth living for a person, I mean it in the subjective rather than objective sense, or, what it is like for the person who lives it. McMahan offers insightful discussions of this and related issues in 'Cognitive Disability, Misfortune, and Justice', and 'Wrongful Life: Paradoxes in the Morality of Causing People to Exist', in Jules Coleman and Christopher Morris, eds., Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). (n12) Reasons and Persons, Ch. 16, and 'Comments', pp. 854-62. Others who address this problem include McMahan, 'Cognitive Disability' and 'Wrongful Life', Kavka, 'The Paradox of Future Individuals', James Woodward, 'The Non-Identity Problem', Ethics 96 (1986), pp. 804-31, Matthew Hanser, 'Harming Future People', Philosophy &Public Affairs 19 (Winter 1990), pp. 47-70, and David Heyd, Genethics: Moral Issues in the Creation of People (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992), Chs. 4, 6. Robert Adams first articulated the Non-Identity Problem in 'Existence, Self-Interest, and the Problem of Evil', Nous 13, (1979), pp. 65-76. (n13) 'Future People, Disability, and Screening', p. 141. (n14) Ibid., p. 142. (n15) I assume that the same number of people will exist in the different outcomes. This avoids complications involving different numbers of people and having to determine which group is better or worse off than others. See Parfit's discussion of 'Same People Choices', 'Same Number Choices', and 'Different Number Choices' in Reasons and Persons, pp. 356 ff. See also Hanser, 'Harming Future People', and Heyd, Genethics. (n16) Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer claim that 'we can, of course, damage the embryo in such a way as to cause harm to the sentient being it will become, if it lives, but if it never becomes a sentient being, the embryo has not been harmed'. See 'Individuals, Humans, and Persons: The Issue of Moral Status', in Embryo Experimentation, p. 82. Furthermore, Harris maintains that 'harm done at the pre-person (embryo) stage will be harm done to the actual person she becomes. It is a form of delayed-action wrongdoing'. Wonderwoman and Superman, p. 153. I believe that persons can be harmed or wronged by what we do or fail to do to embryos even if embryos do not strictly speaking become persons. (n17) Patricia Baird provides an excellent overview of these issues in 'Altering Human Genes: Social, Ethical, and Legal Implications', Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 37 (1994), pp. 566-75. See also Leroy Walters and Julie Gage Palmer, The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997). (n18) Elliot and Persson fail to recognize this in their respective uses of 'gene therapy'. (n19) The diseases I discuss involve genetic defects in the nuclei of cells. Genes in the mitochondria of cells can mutate in the same way that the more familiar nuclear genes do. And like nuclear genes, mutations in mitochondrial genes may lead to disease. There are indications that familial Alzheimer disease may be caused by a faulty mitochondrial gene, though the research has not yet yielded any definitive conclusions. Moreover, my concern is with genetic testing rather than genetic screening. 'Genetic testing denotes the use of specific assays to determine the genetic status of individuals already suspected to be at high risk for a particular inherited condition because of family history of clinical symptoms; genetic screening involves the use of various genetic tests to evaluate populations or groups of individuals independent of a family history of a disorder.' Arno Motulsky et al., Assessing Genetic Risks: Implications for Health and Social Policy (Washington, D. C., National Academy Press, 1994), p. 4. (n20) But see R. M. Blaese et al., 'Treatment of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) Due to Adenosine Deaminase Deficiency with CD34+ Selected Autologous Blood Cells Transduced with a Human ADA Gene', Human Gene Therapy 4 (1993), pp. 521-7, M. Grossman et al., 'Successful Ex Vivo Gene Therapy Directed to Liver in a Patient with Familial Hypercholesterolemia', Nature Genetics 6 (1994), pp. 335-41, R. C. Boucher et al., 'Gene Therapy for Cystic Fibrosis Using El Deleted Adenovirus: A Trial in the Nasal Cavity', Human Gene Therapy 5 (1994), pp. 615-39, and Melissa A. Rosenfeld, 'Human Artificial Chromosomes Get Real', Nature Genetics 15 (1997), pp. 333-5. (n21) Canavan's is a degenerative disease that strikes infants, leading to the decay of the nervous system and early death. Hurler syndrome involves disruption of cognitive development in early childhood and usually death by age 10. Lesch-Nyhan syndrome causes both mental retardation and compulsive self-mutilation in boys. Philip Kitcher offers an insightful discussion of the genetic causes of these and other diseases in The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996). (n22) See Glover, 'Future People, Disability, and Screening', McMahan, 'Cognitive Disability', and Allen Buchanan, 'Equal Opportunity and Genetic Intervention', Social Philosophy and Policy 12 (1995), pp. 105-35, and 'Choosing Who Will Be Disabled: Genetic Intervention and the Morality of Inclusion', Social Philosophy and Policy 13 (1996), pp. 18-46. (n23) R. G. Edwards and J. Purdy, Human Conception In Vitro (London, Academic Press, 1981), p. 373. (n24) See Feinberg, 'Wrongful Life and the Counterfactual Element in Harming', in Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 3-36, Heyd, Genethics, Ch. 1, Harris, Wonderwoman and Superman, Ch. 4, and McMahan, 'Cognitive Disability' and 'Wrongful Life'. (n25) Thomas Hurka presents a model that measures quality of life in terms of averaging achievements in earlier and later stages of life in Perfectionism (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 70 ff. See also Brock, 'Quality of Life Measures in Health Care and Medical Ethics', in Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 268-324. (n26) I thank a referee for Bioethics for raising this issue. (n27) 'Choosing Who Will Be Disabled', p. 32. Emphasis added. (n28) Ibid., p. 33. (n29) See, for example, Daniel Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), an examination of the history of eugenics in the United States. (n30) The Lives to Come, p. 202. See also Glover, What Sort of People Should There Be? (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984), John A. Wagner, 'Gene Therapy Is not Eugenics', Nature Genetics 15 (1997), p. 234, and Buchanan, Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler, In the Shadow of Eugenics: the Human Genome Project and the Limits of Ethical Theory (forthcoming). (n31) Eight years ago, in 'Contemporary and Future Possibilities for Human Embryonic Manipulation', Mark Ferguson wrote 'it is unclear how well the ageing human female reproductive system would cope with such good embryos'. In Anthony Dyson and John Harris, eds., Experiments on Embryos (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1990), p. 10. Yet recently a woman of 63 in Los Angeles gave birth to a healthy baby girl. See Gina Kolata, 'A Record and Big Questions as Woman Gives Birth at 63'. New York Times, April 24, 1997. (n32) Davis v. Davis 1989 WL 140495 (Tenn Cir 1984) rev'd 842 S. W. 2D 588, 597 (Tenn 1992). (n33) 'Resolving Disputes over Frozen Embryos', Hastings Center Report 19 (November-December 1989), p. 11. More recently, Robertson examines this and related issues in Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996). (n34) Life Before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses (New York, Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 5-41. (n35) I thank Bonnie Steinbock for pointing this out. (n36) I am grateful to Michael Burgess, David Donaldson, Chris McDonald, Bonnie Steinbock, and an anonymous referee for Bioethics for very helpful comments on an ancestor of this paper. Work on the paper was supported by a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, which also is gratefully acknowledged. ~~~~~~~~ By Walter Glannon, Department of Philosophy University of Calgary From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:03:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:03:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Mark Levene: Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide? Message-ID: Why Is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide? Mark Levene University of Warwick Journal of World History 11.2 (2000) 305-336 It has become almost a platitude, a statistical one at that: 187 million is the figure, the now more or less accepted wisdom for the number of human beings killed as a result of political violence--Zbigniew Brzezinski uses the unlovely term megadeaths--in this, our bloody century. 1 More killing than at any other time in history. And yet at the end of the twentieth century its relentlessness, as it passes across the television screens of those of us seemingly blessed with immunity from its catastrophic reality and consequences, continues to daze and bewilder. For the historian, him or herself inured to centuries if not millennia of mass atrocity, this picture of a special era of death and destruction invites, indeed demands further probing and analysis. Is "the Twentieth Century Book of the Dead" really so very different in scope or scale from previous ones? 2 It has been argued that the effects of the Taiping and other rebellions in China reduced its population from 410 million in 1850 to 350 million in 1873. 3 In southern Africa a couple of decades earlier, the emergence of Shaka's Zulu nation and the ensuing Mfecane or "great crushing" produced equally horrendous results relative to the population of the region. Go back a few centuries and [End Page 305] the devastation that the Mongol conqueror Timur wrought to Central Asia, the Near East, and Northern India impelled modern historian Arnold Toynbee to note that this exterminatory span of twenty-four years (between 1379 and 1403) was comparable to the one hundred and twenty of the last five Assyrian kings. 4 If this seems to be an argument, albeit a cynical one, for saying plus ?a change, plus c'est la m?me chose, the very use of the term genocide, as if we have in our current self-centered time suddenly stumbled upon a different order of things, is equally problematic. How do we find a separate niche for this exterminatory modus operandi when we are already familiar with the idea of massacre, civil war, revolution, man-made famine, total war, and indeed the potentiality for nuclear obliteration? The signposting of the scholars is, to say the least, contradictory. The international jurist Raphael Lemkin, who both coined the term "genocide" and was founding mover for its study, saw in it not so much modernity as a reversion or regression to past "barbarisms." If he perceived a difference in our century it was not in the destruction of peoples or nations per se but in the ability of international society, with international law as its right arm, to outlaw and ultimately prevent it. In spite of the catastrophe which overwhelmed his own family in the Holocaust, Lemkin was essentially optimistic about a modern global civilization founded on western enlightenment principles. The 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide is his great legacy. 5 Yet, Kosovo notwithstanding, the Genocide Convention has been more honored in the breach than in the practice. A considerable stream of current empirical thought, moreover, would challenge Lemkin's basic premise. Zygmunt Bauman, for instance, has not only forcefully rejected the notion that the Holocaust represented some "irrational outflow of the not-yet-fully eradicated residues of pre-modern barbarity" but on the contrary "arose out of a genuinely rational concern . . . generated by a bureaucracy true to it form and purpose." For Bauman, this quintessential genocide was a product of a planned, scientifically informed, expert, efficiently managed, coordinated, and technically resourced society like our own. Indeed, just in case anyone was in doubt as to his meaning, he not only reiterated that the Holocaust was a legitimate resident in the house of modernity and could not be "at [End Page 306] home in any other house" but that there was an "elective affinity" between it "and modern civilization." 6 If Bauman and Lemkin seem to offer very different perspectives on why this century might be considered the century of genocide, this article would submit that neither argument in itself offers a conclusive case. Implicitly, both have the added danger of being reduced to discussions about the form genocidal killing takes. The short hand for Bauman thus might read: "gas chambers": systematized, routinized, industrialized conveyer belt killings; albeit with a grand vision at its end "of a better, and radically different, society." 7 There is something compelling in this theme. If gas chambers suggest a 1940's state-of-the-art technology for the accomplishment of a particular type of mass murder, telegraphs and trains in the Ittihadist destruction of the Armenians or the provision of index registers of the Rwandese population as a basis for the selection of Tutsi and other victims in 1994 equally seem to point the finger at a type of social organization in which victims can be characterized as depersonalized freight or numbers and their perpetrators as pen pushers or technical operators who conveniently find themselves physically or psychologically "distanced" from the act of murder. All well and good. Except that recent studies, such as Goldhagen on the Holocaust, or Prunier on Rwanda, provocatively remind us that much of it is not like that; that genocide, whether perpetrated by a technologically advanced society like Germany or a relatively undeveloped one like Rwanda, still requires the active mobilization of hundreds of thousands of their "ordinary" citizens to pull triggers or wield machetes; that this involves not a spatial removal but a direct confrontation between perpetrators and victims; and that in consequence genocide in action can be every bit as passionate, vicious, and messy as the massacres of the Peloponnesian or Punic wars. 8 By a different route, we seem to be back with Lemkin's barbarism. Except that neither the Romans nor Greeks saw themselves as barbarians but rather as the most advanced and sophisticated societies of their time. If then, as Michael Freeman would assert, the argument cannot be about modernity per se but only about civilization and if we were to pursue this train of thought further by tracing in the classical and pre-modern [End Page 307] record the capability of societies--despite their usually politically diffused and decentralized nature--to deport or exterminate whole populations, where is our case for a particular relationship between genocide and the twentieth century? 9 This article would contend in response that form is not the primary issue whereas framework most definitely is. Or, to put it another way, we cannot begin to understand genocide without grappling with history, by which is implied not only the historical context of each individual genocide which necessarily must tell us a special and unique story but rather the macrohistorical record, the broad and moving canvas in which we might chart and hopefully analyze the emergence and development of the current international system. Indeed, its first proposition is that the origins of something which we specifically call genocide, followed by the persistence and prevalence of this phenomenon into the contemporary world, is intrinsically bound up with that emerging system and is indeed an intrinsic and crucial part of it. If this line of argument is correct then genocide cannot be simply cordoned off as an aberration which afflicts states which have become too ideological, totalitarian, prone to revolution, to war, or internal conflicts which are the result of ethnic division and stratification. These may be significant features and important determinants of genocide. And they may tell us also something about why certain countries--Germany, Russia, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Turkey, Rwanda, Burundi--have been particularly genocide prone. But none of these examples can be understood purely in domestic isolation. Nation states, notes Anthony Giddens, "only exist in systemic relations with other nation-states." 10 Yet the global system of nation states which we now take for granted has only come to full fruition in this last century. Genocide is thus not only a by-product of particular national trajectories as they attempt state building in order to operate within, circumvent, or possibly confront that system, but a guide to and indeed cipher for its own dysfunctional nature. But why should this be? The answer, on one level, is closely enmeshed with what Marxist or neo-Marxist analysis would call "the dynamics of uneven historical development." 11 Thus, the international [End Page 308] system was not created all of a piece but was primed and taken forward by a small coterie of western polities. Their economic and political ascendancy determined the system's ground rules and ensured that its expansion and development would be carried forward and regulated primarily in their own hegemonic interests. As a result, not only have "international relations been co-eval with the origins of the nation-state" but this process from its eighteenth-century origins was peculiarly dependent upon the fortunes of its leading players, most notably Britain, France, and the United States. 12 We do not ourselves have to be westernocentric to acknowledge this problematic reality or the essential thrust of Immanuel Wallerstein's developmental thesis in terms of a dominant western core surrounded by semi-peripheral and peripheral zones. 13 Yet Wallerstein himself would be the first to acknowledge that this development was not naturally preordained, nor did it have to lead to the permanent ascendancy of specific states. Rather, it was the outcome of a long series of inter-European power struggles fought increasingly in a global arena, in which some proto-modern states, such as Spain, fell by the wayside while others, notably Prussia and Russia, came into frame as serious contenders for primacy. If all this had and continues to have something of a social Darwinian quality about it, nevertheless, "the intersection of capitalism, industrialism and the nation-state," which were the primary ingredients enabling western state supremacy in the first place, remain the enduring features of the system as globalized, while also ensuring the continuing hegemony of a somewhat broader but still relatively small group of states (with a number of key western institutions and corporations also now involved), even though the relative position of these may be quite different from that of the late eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. 14 This relationship between genocide and an emerging international system demands further scrutiny. Was it, for instance, the avant-garde states who committed genocide in their drive for hegemony, or latter-day contenders? And whichever it was, where do we locate our first modern example? Aspects of the Iberian thrust to the Canaries, the Caribbean, and then the New World mainland are horribly suggestive, as are, in the Spanish and Portuguese domestic frames, the disgorging or forcible integration of Jews and Moriscos. Similar early modern trends are perhaps to be found in the destruction of Albigensians and [End Page 309] Anabaptists en route to the consolidation of French and German state-religious unities and later still in the English or Anglo-Scottish campaigns to "clear" Catholic Irish and Gaelic Highlanders from their frontier hinterlands. The process could be said to have been carried forward in a still wider global frame with the British onslaught on the native peoples of Australasia, the American expulsions, subjugations, and massacres of their remaining unsubdued Indian nations, closely replicated in Latin American countries, notably Argentina, not to say in the Russian anti-Circassian drive to consolidate the Caucasus firmly within the Czarist empire. Yet while the scale of these killings, particularly in the case of the sixteenth-century Americas, not only equals but arguably surpasses instances of twentieth-century mass murder, the specificity of "genocide" cannot be confirmed or denied from this litany. If the corelationship to the emerging system is the critical issue, a possibly more authentic first contender might be the 1793-94 revolutionary Jacobin onslaught on the Vend?e region. Here we can observe a premeditated, systematic, if albeit geographically limited attempt at people-destruction closely linked to rapid nation-state building within the context of a much broader crisis of interstate relations. But if the Vendee is an important signpost for a type of mass murder which has become particularly prevalent and persistent in the twentieth century, its inclusion as a case study has to contend with objections that Frenchmen killing other Frenchmen cannot be "genocide." 15 Interestingly, this contrasts with a contention from an entirely different quarter which protests at any attempt to pick and choose between which mass killings are genocides and which are not. 16 Even were we to put aside this perfectly understandable, ethically grounded restraint, the bewildering diversity of the situations that perpetrator and victim groups outlined so far confronts this writer, no less than others, with the obstinate question: what exactly is it that we are discussing? "At the most fundamental level," it has been asserted, "we presently lack even a coherent and viable description of the processes and circumstances implied by the term genocide." 17 And this despite enormous [End Page 310] and continuing efforts by sociologists and jurists to provide taxonomies and etiologies of the phenomenon not to say a legal framework for criminalizing it. Leo Kuper, doyen of its study, sounds almost despairing. There is, he says, "no single genocidal process" and, to boot, probably no basis for developing "a general theory of genocide." 18 Similarly, Helen Fein warns that "comparisons based on either the Holocaust or the Gulag Archipelago as a single archetype which assume there is one mechanically recurring script are bound to be misleading." 19 Fein is correct. Each genocide is different. The problem is knowing what falls within the rubric in the first place, her very reference to the Gulag being an interesting example of how potentially we might obscure rather than clarify our focus. Fein's example also highlights a general tendency to conflate the act of "genocide" with "genocidal process," of which there is a great deal more. The latter, involving all manner of draconian or coercive measures, ranging from the forcible assimilation of a group at one end of the spectrum through to physical murder at the other, does not have to culminate necessarily in a program of systematic people-annihilation, that is, "genocide." Even then it is rarely sustained to an attempted completion. This is perhaps one reason why the Holocaust remains so central to our vision of what constitutes genocide, as if in Weberian terms we had found our "ideal" type. Nevertheless, this argument contends, in contradistinction to Kuper, that with appropriate terms of reference it is possible not only to discern a pattern of genocide which in some way is relatable to the unfolding of contemporary history but which also, at least in terms of academic study, can be viewed as having a coherent identity. My approach revolves around the two obviously interlinked questions: "what is genocide" and "why does it occur"? The first might be answered in a preliminary sense by proposing that genocide is, as in Lemkin's formulation, a type of state-organized modern warfare. But this statement requires elucidation. Though not all warfare in history has been conducted by states, the ability of a state to wage war is both a prime indicator of its power vis-?-vis other states and of its relationship to its domestic populace. Additionally, a recourse to war tells us much about the self-perception of a state leadership and of its willingness, ideologically motivated or otherwise, to pursue what it views as state's interests or agendas by these means. Yet war, by definition, is a high-risk strategy, which, even where carefully prepared, can be comprehensively [End Page 311] demolished by contingent events. It also requires prodigious inputs of manpower, resources, and capital. If the war fails these may be lost in part or entirety to the great if not fatal detriment of the state. Alternatively, successful war may result in great material and psychological benefits. This may sound paradoxical with regard to genocide but is in fact as true for it as for the two other main types of state-organized modern war. Indeed, genocide often is conducted simultaneously or in parallel with them. Equally importantly, all three types have a common relationship to the nation state's place within the broader international system. Type One warfare is between recognized and usually powerful sovereign states within the system. In the twentieth century the "totalization" of these interstate struggles, particularly in the way that, for instance during the Second World War, adversaries have indiscriminately targeted and murdered millions of the noncombatants of the opposing side, has led some writers not only to describe this type of warfare as "genocidal" but to discern similar psychological, technological, and political processes at work as those which inform genocide. 20 This, however, is to confuse the issue of moral repugnance with the observation of means and ends. The bombing of Dresden and Hiroshima, or for that matter the creation and active mobilization of nuclear arsenals capable of producing global annihilation, are arguably, no less "crimes against humanity" than Auschwitz or Treblinka. They also suggest the obsolescence of either traditionally grounded or more recently formulated codes of military conduct which are supposed to act as brakes on unlimited warfare between combatants. Nevertheless, in this type of war there remains, however residually, and even where one side demands the unconditional surrender of the other, a Clausewitzian notion that the struggle is fought between "legitimate" adversaries and that at the end of the day negotiation rather than extermination will determine the position of both victor and vanquished within the postwar world order. The same is not true of the second type of warfare, however. This type is particularly characterized by circumstances in which a sovereign state, often a powerful one, acts against another state which it perceives to be "illegitimate." Usually the second state is much less powerful; one thinks of the British versus the Boer states at the turn of [End Page 312] the century, Austria against Serbia in August 1914, Nazi Germany in its onslaught on Poland a global war later, or two decades later still, the United States versus North Vietnam. The Japanese post-1937 invasion of China, or the Nazi post-1941 invasion of the Soviet Union might also, arguably, be included in this list, even though the perceived illegitimate states in question were relatively powerful ones, or, at the other end of the "power" spectrum, the Nigerians vis-?-vis a briefly secessionist Biafra. The diversity of these examples warns us that too much can be made of their common features. Nevertheless, the nature of the Type Two warfare is characterized by the supposedly "legitimate" side dispensing in entirety with Geneva Convention-informed restraints on the grounds that the opposition are little more than "terrorists," "saboteurs," or "bandits" incapable of fighting conventional, "civilized" war. Worse, they are succored by a native population whose cultural and social level is beneath contempt. Racism invariably confirms this judgmental verdict. In the circumstances, all "necessary" measures for the liquidation of resistance are allowable: mass aerial bombardment, scorched earth, counterinsurgency, mass deportation, environmental devastation, as well as repeated retributive or disciplinary massacre without regard to the age or gender of victims. These features of indiscriminate warfare inevitably bear close resemblance to warfare Type Three which often (though not always) involves genocide. Interestingly, Type Two is also much closer to Type Three in terms of its justification, the "enemy" in its resistance and obdurate unwillingness to submit being perceived to threaten the integrity of the agenda, or indeed existence, of the "legitimate" state. It is, therefore, "they," the adversary populace, by their misguided actions and belief systems, not to say their atrocities against "us," who are accused of culpability and responsibility for the perpetrator's "war of self-defense" which, as a result, has to be fought ? la outrance and without mercy. Type Two warfare becomes Type Three warfare when the enemy is no longer a perceived "illegitimate" state but a perceived "illegitimate" community within the territorial definition or imperial framework of the perpetrator state. Very unusually, as in the case of the Holocaust, this can be extended to embrace population groups within allied, vassal, or subject states. Strictly speaking, however, genocide is only a variant of Type Three, given that in many cases where a sovereign state assaults elements of its own subject population or citizenry it does so without resorting to total warfare against them. For instance, the British struggle against the Irish, while undoubtedly vicious and punctuated by atrocity at its crisis stage in 1919-21, never spilled over into mass people-killing. The French struggle against the Algerian independence [End Page 313] movement, in the 1950s and early '60s, teetered on its brink. The Nazi post-1939 occupation of Poland arguably went over it, not only in its extermination of the country's Jews and Roma, but in its response to Polish national resistance. At stake here is what Vahakn Dadrian has referred to as the issue of "preponderant access to overall resources of power." 21 Whitehall may never have contemplated genocide against the Irish not only because of inherent institutional restraints and humanitarian sensibilities but because it was ultimately unwilling to commit major resources to the struggle. Having assessed that the enemy could not be defeated, it opted to find another, diplomatic strategy which would involve a degree of compromise and the avoidance of catastrophe. In other instances where the state is weak but possibly resistant to recognizing it, the ability to deliver genocide may be limited by lack of military or manpower capabilities and/or by the strength of the communal "enemy." The struggles in the southern Sudan, Iraqi Kurdistan, the Karen and other hill tribe regions of Burma, or the northern Tamil part of Sri Lanka, where the recognized government's monopoly of violence has been for much of the period of conflict far from absolute, and where in practice its administrative hold has been limited to the major towns as opposed to countryside, all provide contemporary illustration of this point. Nevertheless, these examples are also highly relevant to the study of genocide inasmuch as they point to a sequence of events in which the states in question, increasingly frustrated by their inability to defeat these insurgencies, have lurched towards more radical all-embracing solutions culminating, as in some of these cases, in genocide. Thus I argue that "genocide occurs where a state, perceiving the integrity of its agenda to be threatened by an aggregate population--defined by the state in collective or communal terms--seeks to remedy the situation by the systematic, en masse physical elimination of that aggregate, in toto, or until it is no longer perceived to represent a threat." 22 Yet clearly there is something perplexing, not to say bewildering, in this proposed state-communal equation. Genocide research is predicated on the proposition that whatever genocide is, it cannot be considered warfare in the normally understood sense between two armed combatants--however unequally matched they may be--but an entirely one-sided affair in which a group of absolute perpetrators [End Page 314] apply instruments of terror, violence, and unremitting massacre against entirely defenseless, not to say innocent men, women, and children. 23 Thus, to ascribe threat from the people who are mass murdered appears not simply to define genocide as a two-sided dynamic relationship between a state and an element of its population but to potentially infer that the perpetrator's actions are both legitimate and justifiable. Indeed, where a state goes down this path it is invariably accompanied by the claim--as witness recent Serbian behavior with regard to Kosovo--that it is defending itself against an imminent danger to its national security, territorial integrity, or even sovereignty, while at the same time it is going to inordinate lengths not only to conceal the evidence for mass murder but to deny that it has killed anyone. This discrepancy between an actual threat--where it exists at all--and what the perpetrator claims to be a threat is at the very heart of what one might call the genocide conundrum. Yet, paradoxically, this is the very reason that the perpetrator's claims cannot simply be dismissed out of hand but requires very careful examination and evaluation not only in the forensic sense of proving whether mass killing did or did not occur but equally importantly in providing a necessary insight into the perpetrator's mindset. The repeated tendency by perpetrators to conjure up or imagine enemies, or to make of real ones something much more terrifying and dangerous than they actually are, represents a clearly cultural and/or psychological dimension to the genocide phenomenon and one to which I will return later. But cracking the conundrum cannot be achieved in isolation. Indeed it may be that it can only be found in the intersection between this dark--and essentially unquantifiable--side of the human condition and the level of state and interstate relations where leaderships are assumed to behave rationally in the best interests of their polities and societies. Yet there is already a second conundrum here. Those who do not commit genocide, or at least have not done so in a twentieth-century time scale, do not necessarily look askance or in horror on those who have. Take, for example, this statement by a British observer of the first authentic twentieth-century example committed--in 1904-05--by the Germans against the Herero and Nama people in South West Africa (Namibia): "There can be no doubt, I think, that the war has been of an almost unmixed benefit to the German colony. Two warlike races have been exterminated, wells have been sunk, new water-holes discovered, the country mapped and covered with telegraph [End Page 315] lines, and an enormous amount of capital has been laid out." 24 The unmistakably upbeat tenor of this comment stands in marked contrast to the language of the United Nations Convention in which genocide is reviled as an "odious scourge." In principle, of course, leading politicians stand shoulder to shoulder alongside human rights activists and religious leaders in their condemnation of what in the popular mind is considered the most heinous of crimes. In practice, however, they tend to be much more selective, not to say circumspect, before leveling the accusation. Nor is this simply a case of narrow state interest. At the highest, supposedly most moral level of international relations, Kuper asserts "that for all practical purposes" the United Nations defends the right of "the sovereign territorial state . . . as an integral part of its sovereignty . . . to commit genocide." 25 There is, thus, clearly something quite schizophrenic about the international community's response to genocide. On the one hand it treats it with repugnance and has a Convention, signed by a majority of its states, which seeks to outlaw it; pours opprobrium on those who commit it; is in the process of creating a permanent international tribunal to bring its perpetrators to book; and yet, at the same time, has powerful members who either look the other way, or condone or even actively support incidents of it. Time after time. Could it be then, that states that have not committed genocide within the last one hundred years nevertheless see in those that have too close a reflection of their former selves? Some scholars, notably R. J. Rummel and Irving Louis Horowitz, have posited the argument that the avoidance of genocide in western societies lies in the strength of their civic institutions, the separation of their executive and legislative branches, and above all, in their democratic, liberal traditions. 26 Thus, societies which are tolerant, open, and democratic do not commit genocide. Yet these assumptions involve a remarkable historical and more contemporary sleight of hand. True, polities that before 1900 had already experienced prolonged periods of nation and state building, that were well advanced in their industrializing and infrastructural development, and that consequently felt reasonably [End Page 316] secure of their position within a wider geo-strategic context have been much less likely candidates, since then, for committing it. But in order to arrive at this happy condition, the leading modernizing states certainly did commit, at the very least, proto-genocides as well as a number of other practices, which under today's international rule book--created largely out of western Enlightenment thought and practice--would be considered dubious if not downright illegal. These included repeated recourse to war, conquest, and above all slavery. These practices, however, were crucial in providing these states with shortcuts to capital accumulation, which in turn fueled their technological cutting edge and industrial revolutions and which, by the mid- to late-nineteenth century, had assured for them an entirely hegemonic position around the globe. Not only was this the beginning of a new world order, but a "new world pecking order," in which these states set the tune and everybody else was expected to dance to it. 27 This would suggest that the twentieth century practice of genocide has more in common with states which are new, or are heavily engaged in the process of state and nation building, or are redefining or reformulating themselves in order to operate more autonomously and effectively within an international system of nation states. Thus, polities which were latecomers to it, including potentially very powerful ones like Russia and Germany, finding themselves at a disadvantage vis-?-vis the frontrunners, had to consider how best they could make up lost ground. Willingly or unwillingly taking on board much of the leaders' administrative, military, and infrastructural aspects, superficially seemed the only way forward. The ensuing cultural, social, and institutional borrowings set in motion the most profound reformulation of economies and societies. One of the key dilemmas for such late nation states, however, was not simply the requirement to borrow from a culturally alien template but, once acknowledged as players within the system, how to keep up with it. Its regulators and supervisors--the leader states--demanded of new candidates an implicit undertaking that they would transform themselves into polities which would operate effectively and coherently according to its rules. But being fundamentally and dynamically fueled by capitalism--by its very nature a cutthroat business--no new state could afford to stand still and had, rather, to find ways and means of staying afloat within this dominant political economy. True, some states were able to do so by finding for [End Page 317] themselves a secondary position under the economic or geo-political aegis of the leading nations, while a few, sometimes by dint of their geographic position, found for themselves a relatively comfortable niche by acting as trading intermediaries or entrep?ts. Still other later arrivals, particularly postcolonial newcomers, were able to trade on their poverty and underdevelopment to become major recipients of Western aid. These, interestingly, included a number of states which were to commit genocide. This deterministic explanatory framework clearly has its limits and limitations. To restate a list of some of the main genocide perpetrators of this century--Germany, Russia (the USSR), the Ottoman empire (later Turkey), Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi--is hardly an invitation to obvious communality. The range of this group in terms of wealth and power, not to say political and cultural background, represents a major disincentive while any attempt to suggest ideological proclivities or totalitarian systems as the connecting thread would either be stretching the point to the ridiculous or demanding comparison with other ideologically hard-line or authoritarian prone regimes who have not been notable offenders. Moreover, where do we find the distinction between those modernizing states who have committed genocide and the generality of those who have not? To argue that all such polities have the potentiality is all well and good but would require us to offer explanation for specific instances essentially on the basis of circumstance. Undoubtedly, circumstance is a crucial factor. But is it sufficient? A final thrust of the deterministic approach might posit that what all our genocidal practitioner states share is a particularly acute anxiety about the wide and ever-increasing gap between themselves and the global leaders within the international system but in relationship to their special sense of a historic, or even mythic, tradition of premodern coherence, authority, or imperium, both in regard to their own societies and/or in a broader regional or continental arena. Thus, genocide states/societies have been the ones with the strongest and most persistent complexes about having been blocked off from a position within the international system which they believe, on past historic record, ought to be theirs; have been the ones most prone to support leaderships who articulated this anger and resentment; and, consequently, also have been the ones mostly likely to radicalize their domestic arrangements as well as foreign policies in ways that consciously contravened or challenged the system's "liberal," inclusivist ground rules. This state of mind is perhaps best encapsulated in the poem, "Esnaf Destani," written by the famous Turkish nationalist, Ziya Gok?lp soon [End Page 318] after a series of catastrophic Ottoman defeats in Tripolitania and the Balkan wars: We were defeated because we were so backward. To take revenge, we shall adopt the enemy's science. We shall learn his skill, steal his methods. On progress we will set our heart. We shall skip five hundred years And not stand still. Little time is left. 28 The genocidal mentality, in other words, is closely linked with agendas aimed at accelerated or force-paced social and economic change in the interests of "catching up" or alternatively avoiding, or circumventing, the rules of the system leaders. If this gets us a little closer to the wellsprings of the genocide phenomenon, it still falls somewhat short of explaining why and how state/societal frustrations are unleashed on specific domestic populations. After all, the enemy in Gok?lp's message appears to be the West. As a result, rapid infrastructural overhaul and military industrialization should logically have geared Ottoman Turkey only toward Type One warfare as the route to break out from the system's perceived straightjacket. And we might at this juncture also note that other states at various times have adopted this formula without obvious recourse to genocide. Wilhelmine Germany in its 1914 bid for "Weltmacht oder Niedergang"--world power or collapse--did not unleash its fury at this point against the Jews. Nor in my understanding of the term did Japan commit genocide a global war later when it attempted its own dramatic breakout, despite its repeated Type Two mass atrocities against the Chinese and other Asian peoples. Perhaps this is because since its early-seventeenth-century near-extirpation of its Christians, Japan contained no ethnic, religious, or social grouping who could fulfill an obvious role as inside "enemy." Indeed, notwithstanding its now tiny and isolated northern Ainu population--subdued in much earlier times--Japan's rather unusual national homogeneity makes its contemporary era perpetration of genocide unlikely. The same, however, cannot be said of Ottoman Turkey at the time of Gok?lp's writing. Thus, if the specificity of genocide over and above a drive to rapid nation building is also bound up with the social and ethnic composition of a state's population, at what point does this become toxic? The Ottoman Empire, for instance, was historically, on [End Page 319] the whole, a rather successful multi-ethnic entity. Even with the emergence of modernity and, thanks to the events of 1789, the explosion of the French nation-state model onto the wider world, there was no particular reason why the Sublime Porte should not have been able to refashion its diverse ethnographic and religious elements along these lines into good Ottoman citizens. After all, there were no given blueprint or guidelines as to what constituted the nation. Even Gok?lp's "imagined" Turkish community presumably did not exclude his half-Kurdish self. Indeed, the first eighteenth-century nation states, in France and the United States--to which Gok?lp and other nationalist theoreticians would have looked for inspiration--were in principle both universalist and highly assimilationist, embracing people of different religious and ethnic origins under the rubric of citizenship. By a somewhat different route, a hybrid British "nation" also followed these contours. Inclusive citizenship thus became the recognized code for all nineteenth-century aspirants to sovereignty, followed, for instance, by post-1871 Germany with regard to its Jews (and Catholics), and for that matter--at least on paper--by an Ottoman state desirous of international recognition of its territorial integrity. Another late-nineteenth-century entrant into the nation-state system, Japan, as we have seen, was fortunate in starting out from a base line of people-homogeneity, while the post-1917 (countersystem) Soviet state proposed to circumvent the national issue, at least in part, by founding itself on internationalist principles which supposedly provided for a genuinely color-blind and all-embracing citizenship. The major weakness with the early liberal universalist French and Anglo-Saxon models was that what they proclaimed and what they actually did in practice were quite at variance with one another, most blatantly when it came to their colonial black populations. When, thus, latter-day ideologues of the Gok?lp ilk sought to scrutinize the source of western state advantage and to adapt the recipe for their own societies' benefit, what they most readily latched onto was not the modernizing impulses or technological innovation per se but the ability to mobilize a supposedly distinct national people--the ethnos--into a coherent and powerful unity. In retrospect, what is most interesting--and alarming--in Gok?lp's poem is his emphasis on a thoroughly exclusive "we," that is, those "authentic" ethnic components of the Ottoman population which had supposedly in the past made the empire great and glorious and which consciously reassembled as a tool for national regeneration would return it to greatness once again. Gok?lp was hardly alone in his search for national ur-man. Across nineteenth-century Europe, leading scholars and academicians in the [End Page 320] new disciplines of history, archaeology, philology, and literature had already drawn the contours for the study of the remote "national" past, not only for its own sake but as an instrument by which to "mobilize change in the future." 29 Even that most forceful nineteenth-century counterblast to the national thesis, namely Marxism, claimed to be able to construct the genuinely universal modern man--the prototype for homo sovieticus--on the basis of a scientific examination of man's ascendance from his natural history. All these historical and prehistorical reinventions were not only highly selective but often utterly spurious. Nevertheless, this did not prevent them from becoming received wisdoms which, adopted and adapted by the elites or would-be elites of other "latecomer" states, would serve radical agendas. It is perhaps no coincidence, moreover, that the primary frontrunner and exemplar for these lines of enquiry should be that nineteenth-century latecomer state par excellence, Germany. Nor that it should be Germany again which would most strikingly appropriate new racial lines of thought in this national quest. The flip side to these national and indeed antinational constructions, however, was that they all implicitly assumed the existence of population groupings which not only would not fit the prescribed model but which, in some critical sense, threatened to contaminate it. Again the crystallization of this tendency can be located in European, scientifically informed wisdoms from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, medical science's "discovery" of death-dealing bacteria and bacilli not only coincided with mass epidemics in the new urban and metropolitan centers but also with new and obsessive Social Darwinian discourses about the "survival of the fittest." Fears of communal weakness and febrility thus became associated with anxieties that "foreign bodies" operating from within the body-politic might undermine or contaminate the physical and mental health of the nation, leading in turn to further medically informed but supposedly value-free prognostications on how to protect or improve the national stock by eugenics or other programs of social engineering. These fin-de-si?cle anxieties were a common feature of the western or western-orientated world at large. But they arguably played or were to play more prominent roles among political elites in latecomer states who perceived their national weakness keenly and who sought radical policies to overcome or transcend their limitations. One tendency we have already noted with regard to these elites is the extreme lengths to which they have gone in order to achieve these goals. Another we [End Page 321] should note is the tendency to blame supposedly corrupting internal "foreign bodies" whenever these strategies go wrong. The two aspects, indeed, are intimately connected in the sense that by their very effort to attain what is usually unattainable such state strategies are likely to come unstuck, leading not only to increased frustration but with it the further rationalization that this must be the result of the insider enemy or enemies' conscious sabotaging of the state's heroic not to say Herculean efforts. Thus, genocide scenarios regularly crystallize in crisis situations in which a regime's conscious effort at break out from its perceived fetters encounters obstacles which recall some previous failure, either of its own or that committed by a predecessor. The classic example, the Holocaust, whose full-scale implementation began during an early stage of the Nazis' life and death struggle with the Soviet Union in 1941, makes no sense without reference back to the previous major crisis of German state and society in 1918-19, in which by popular consent, Jews qua Jews were held to be responsible. By the same token, the Stalinist drive against the "kulaks," Ukrainian and other "ethnic" peasantries, from 1929 to 1933, has to be set against the crisis of revolution and civil war between 1917 and 1921; the Ittihadist extermination of the Armenians in 1915-16, against the repeated crises of Ottoman state from 1878 through the 1890s, culminating in the Balkan wars of 1912-13; the Indonesian military's extermination of the countrywide communist movement (the PKI) in 1965 against the attempted PKI challenge to nationalist rule in 1948; the Rwandese "Hutu Power" extermination of the Tutsi in 1994 against the backdrop of counterrevolutionary efforts to destabilize and destroy the new postcolonial regime in the period 1959-64. Indeed, the only major example of genocide being perpetrated without notable prequel is the Cambodian Khmer Rouge destruction of ethnic and political groupings from 1975 through 1979, an example which nevertheless points to a quite extraordinary sequence of immediately preceding catastrophes as the grist added to the Khmer Rouge mill. Even with this example, however, what is here termed the perpetrators' "Never Again" syndrome applies: the regime locating in some historic context a communal adversary, or adversaries, supposedly intent on the disruption or sabotage of its transformative-salvationist agenda. 30 An obvious conclusion one might wish to draw from this picture is that perpetrators of genocide are stridently ideological or authoritarian [End Page 322] regimes more often than not led by unhinged, psychopathic dictators. Popular portrayals of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or Pol Pot only reinforce the sense that their actions against "imagined" enemies are essentially symptoms of extreme paranoia, delusion, and projection. The very fact that in some instances, as for example in the case of the "kulaks," the construction of a coherent and identifiable adversary took place in the heads of the Stalinist leadership and bore no relationship to social realities, only adds to the view that our subject is one primarily for clinical psychological investigation. Indeed, Nazi ranting and raving about Jewish world conspiracy as just cause for their actions would suggest that worst cases of genocidal behavior are not simply deeply irrational but completely mad. The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is threefold. First, while the alleged "madness" of the above genocide instigators is not easily verifiable one way or the other, an extended list which might, for instance, include Atat?rk, Mao, and Milosevic would be hardpressed to support the generality of this assumption. Second, even where genocidal states are totalitarian and heavily policed, they are founded on a domestic support base--however limited or narrow that may be--which must itself at least in part be mobilized as accomplices in the perpetration of genocide. It must therefore follow that either this support base is itself suffering from similar delusions as its leaders, or alternatively believes that the leadership is acting rationally in the best interests of polity and people. In fact, the two positions are not necessarily irreconcilable. Norman Cohn provocatively demonstrated some thirty years ago the manner in which fantasies reminiscent of medieval times took strong hold of a significant proportion of post-1918 German society, including, indeed especially, amongst many highly educated and professional people, in the form of the notion that worldwide Jewry, despite its dispersal, minority status and history of persecution, was actually spearheading an international, even cosmic conspiracy to emasculate and ultimately wipe out not only the German people but all western civilization. 31 Fears of sexual, cultural, and mental contamination, of the spread of disease, and the consequent debilitation of a healthy, virile volk by races of Jewish or gypsy antimen, it could be argued, [End Page 323] did not so much have to be manufactured by the Nazis but simply echoed and then amplified as the visceral instincts of a vox populi. In this way, it could be further argued, state organized genocide is actually constructed not from the top down, but bottom-up from hate models provided by grass-roots societal phobias. This is, of course, the well-known Goldhagen position in which genocide is plausible because it is deeply embedded within the cultural archetypes of a society. But Goldhagen does not conclude from his study of ordinary German participants in the Holocaust that they were anything other than normal, simply that they were impelled toward often sadistic killing of Jews by an eliminationist anti-Semitism. Undoubtedly, Goldhagen's thesis is important for the issue of comparative research in its implicit demand for further consideration of the genocidal interconnections as well as stepping stones between popular culture and state-building agendas. What is missing from Goldhagen is the context. Traditional anti-Semitism within large sections of the German population crystallized into something utterly toxic only during 1918-19, in other words in quite extraordinary circumstances of mass trauma and disorientation. This provides a third reason why blaming "mad" or "evil" regimes alone for genocide will not suffice if this fails to take heed of the circumstances in which those regimes arise. It is surely no accident that the first great wave of contemporary genocides comes out of the actuality and aftermath of that great twentieth-century catastrophe and watershed, the First World War, in which particular states--the ones which collapsed, or were defeated, or were most obviously embittered by the war and postwar outcome--and not least by the post-1929 economic aftershock--were also the ones which increasingly discarded the received wisdoms of the liberal-capitalist system in favor of alternative "second" or "third" ways to progress and ultimate triumph. Ordinary people did not initiate the genocides which were sometimes consequent. But the manner of their response to these domestic convulsions, either in their enabling, or possibly in their inability to resist or put the brakes on new masters with their programs for a radical reshaping of society, were critical to these outcomes. What thus emerges from the period 1914 to 1945 is a pattern of genocide, which is closely linked to the supercession or overthrow of discredited or bankrupt traditional regimes and their replacement by at least in part popularly legitimized radical ones with maximalist agendas for social and/or national regeneration. All these regimes were "revisionist" in the sense that they sought to challenge, circumvent, or transcend the terms of either the pre- or post-Versailles world order. And all, in their efforts to socially engineer a streamlined people-coherence, both for its own sake and also for this wider purpose, were [End Page 324] to greater or lesser degrees ready to reject or abandon former policies aimed at integrating or assimilating ethnic, religious, or social groupings which did not easily or obviously "fit" into the state's organic conception of itself. Bauman sees in these strivings, and most particularly in Nazism and Stalinism, "the most consistent, uninhibited expressions of the spirit of modernity." 32 In other words, a highly rational project. Yet when we look at the Nazi onslaught on the Roma, or, again under Nazi aegis, Romania's extermination of its Bessarabian and Bukovinan Jewry, or Stalin's genocidal deportations of Tatar, Chechen, and other minority peoples, or lesser known examples such as the Iraqi "Assyrian affair" of 1933, or almost coincidentally, Mussolini's extirpation of the hill peoples of Cyrenaica, one cannot but be struck by their perpetrators' irrationality. Their victims did not ultimately suffer genocide simply because they did not "fit" a regime's perception of people-homogeneity. They suffered it because the finger was pointed at them as the group or groups accused of actively disrupting or polluting the state's drive to transcend its limitations. We are back with the massive or hyperinflated imaginings of the state, which another acute observer, Ron Aronson, has described as a "rupture with reality." 33 However, Aronson does not propose that this has no relationship to modernity. On the contrary, what he argues is that in situations where modernity is harnessed as an instrument for the realization of impossible goals what you end up with is a dialectical set of tensions between power and impotence, reason and madness. In a critical sense the gargantuan nature of a regime's agenda may indicate in advance the degree to which it has already lost touch with reality. But the actual attempt at implementation, "the realization of the unrealizable" as he calls it, is likely to result in a crisis in which, having boxed itself into a corner from which it is unable to retreat, the regime finds that its only recourse is in "reshaping what resists," that is, massive violence. 34 Interestingly, Aronson suggests that it is not only in instances of genocide that this extreme and seemingly irrational behavior can occur. The United States, for instance, in its attempts to obliterate first much of North Korea in the early 1950s, and then North Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, not to say the rest of Indochina, speaks volumes about the contradictions between an apparently all-powerful hegemon and the actuality of its inability to reorder the world in its own assured image. The discrepancy between [End Page 325] hubris and humiliation does not have to be the prerogative of a recognized genocide state, nor necessarily taken out on a communal scapegoat. Attempted crisis resolution could as easily be in the form of an aggressive Type One warfare; Germany's 1914 attempted breakout from perceived encirclement, for instance, or Iraq's Type Two 1990 invasion of Kuwait or, as a latter day extension of either of these trajectories, the unleashing of nuclear weapons, a scenario--bar the somewhat different culminating sequence of World War Two--narrowly avoided to date. What all these scenarios share in common is the state leaderships' conviction of the malevolence of forces "out there" that have conspired not only to frustrate the realization of their agenda but to harm and even possibly physically eradicate their own people. This does not rule out instances where these anxieties have some grain of truth in them. However, the most extraordinary examples of genocide are those notable for the complete absence of any concrete evidence to suggest that a communal group qua group has the intention, let alone ability, to carry through such a maleficence. The Nazi assertion that "the Jew is the German people's most dangerous enemy" perhaps represents the most thoroughgoing example confirming Aronson's rupture thesis. 35 But the statement made in the Serbian parliament in 1991 that "the truth is (my italics) that all non-Serb ethnic groups, especially the Croats, are at this very minute preparing the genocide of all Serbs" suggests that such projections are hardly exclusive to the era of Stalinism and fascism. 36 Indeed, the persistence and prevalence of genocide since the destruction of Nazism--running to an average of almost one case a year since 1945--must lead one to further ponder what motor continues to drive this seemingly irresistible lunacy? 37 The immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with its trials of German and Japanese war criminals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, the inauguration of the United Nations, and with it both its Charter on Human Rights and Genocide Convention, should have been crystal-clear signals from the international system leaders that its perpetration by newcomer states [End Page 326] would not be tolerated. Yet, paradoxically, it was the willingness of these very same leaders at this very same time to acquiesce or condone, or even officially sponsor, former wartime allies such as the Czechs or the Poles in their sub-genocidal ethnic cleansings of millions of Germans and other unwanted peoples from their territories, not to say of the Soviet Union's continuance of its prewar reordering of communal populations primarily by mass deportation, which seemed to offer a quite different and hardly subliminal countermessage. It was as if human rights were being put on a frozen pedestal of abstract principle for the foreseeable future in order to enable states created or recreated in a postwar context to get on with the creation of social conditions appropriate to their rapid modernization and consolidation. Indeed, the message seemed to be that it was expected that the practical achievement of these goals would involve ethnic standardization, the removal or dissipation of troublesome or difficult population groups, or those who, perhaps because of their "primitive" and "backward" cultures, were deemed obstacles in the path of progress. These imperatives would suggest, ? la Bauman, that genocide would be committed by new state leaderships for perfectly rational reasons, associated with their developmental blueprints to operate and compete within an increasingly integrated international political economy. The very fact that genocide, which in the interwar years was most associated with new or newly remodeled states in Europe and the Near East, became a global phenomenon in the post-1945 ebb of the European imperial or neo-imperial tide must give some credence to this line of thought. Superficially, for instance, the genocidal behavior of a number of South American and South Asian countries against tribal peoples, in their efforts to reach out, connect, and integrate rich forest and other extractive resources of geographically peripheral hinterlands for the benefit of their already advancing metropolitan economies, would suggest a wholly developmental logic. But even in these largely "off the map" instances of contemporary genocide, such logic has been rarely quite so one dimensional. The name of the game in these instances has been that of former Bangladeshi President Zia's "develop or perish," in other words, the pursuit of crash courses in rapid modernization, whatever the consequences. 38 The fear of being left behind in the global race for position, or much worse, being forced back into a perpetual dependency, thus [End Page 327] has always had in the contemporary era something of an air of desperation about it. That native peoples have particularly been the casualties in this process, however, has not been a case simply of their inhabiting territories designated for roads, mines, or hydroelectric dams. Rather, in the eyes of notably Brazilian, Indonesian, or Bangladeshi technocrats, it has been their failure to behave to some preconceived primitive, barbarous, and preferably passive type who, recognizing their allotted station in the great scheme of things, would consequently and conveniently fade away into oblivion as soon as the first bulldozers or transmigratory settlers appeared. On the contrary, the refusal of, for instance, the jumma in Bangladesh or Papuans in Irian Jaya (West Papua) to lie down and die quietly but instead organize and fashion themselves into modern "fourth world" identities in order to more effectively resist state encroachment, provides a potent clue both as to the intensification of the genocidal onslaughts upon them and the perpetrators' repeated justification that behind them must be some other more organized outside force directing their sabotage of the state developmental agenda. This notion that the targeted victim group are really the proxies, stooges, or agents of a much more malevolent but dissembled or hidden power intent on denying the state its own, self-directed mission towards unfettered independence and genuine integrity seemingly gravitates us back yet again toward an explanation for genocide in the much murkier waters of psychological mindsets where the perpetrator sees international conspiracies in everything. In the post-1945 world of Cold War-dominated international politics, such accusations have flown thick and fast with devastating results. Tagging whole populations as "communist" in the Indonesia of 1965, East Timor a decade later, or the Guatemala of the early 1980s provided state justification for genocide. But so too, in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia, did diverse branding as "cosmopolitan," "Soviet revisionist," or "stooge of US imperialism." In the most extreme of these examples, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, not only were specific ethnic minority populations of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Muslim Chams particularly vulnerable to such charges, but literally anyone who had the misfortune to have been living or seeking refuge in the US-backed government zone around Phnom Penh when it fell to the Khmer Rouge in April 1975. The ensuing division of society, into "true" Khmer who would enjoy the fruits of the country's projected "super great leap forward" and "new" people slated for perpetual hard labor and probable death, was founded on the assumption that the latter, however fleetingly, were tainted by their association with western [End Page 328] imperialism. Even then, as the regime's closed utopian experiment ground to a halt and began disintegrating under the weight of the impossible tasks it had set itself, the list of "enemies" shifted and expanded further still to embrace anyone that the regime deemed foreign or inauthentic. Here, however, we come face to face with anxieties which go much deeper than any set in motion simply by Cold War ideologies. The historic enemy perceived to have denied the Khmer their rightful greatness were the neighboring Vietnamese. Communist Vietnam in 1978, of course, was supposed to be a fraternal ally. Yet in that year the genocidal trajectory of the Khmer Rouge reached both its apogee and nemesis when practically the whole population of its Eastern Zone were provided with blue scarves for their deportation and then extermination on the collective indictment that their Khmer bodies were occupied by "Vietnamese minds." 39 The episode of the blue scarves ought to throw doubt on arguments which treat genocidal victim groups as fixed entities as in some Linnaean system of plant and animal classification, instead of as the products--often entirely imaginary ones--of the perpetrators' assemblage of social reality. Lemkin's formulation of genocide based on genos (race) in this sense is a disservice to our well-rounded comprehension of the phenomenon. Certainly, Lemkin's focus on the destruction of the "biological structure" of a communal group was correct and appropriate inasmuch as a distinctiveness of genocide lies in the mass murder of women of all ages equally and without discrimination from the men who are their blood relatives and with the purpose of denying or seeking to deny their biological as well as social reproduction. 40 But how this group of people identifies itself, or whether it does so at all, in ethnic, religious, or political terms is immaterial to either a "genocidal process" of human rights abuse and persecution or the actuality of systematic liquidation. When it came to legalizing discrimination against Jews the Nazis' conceptualization of them as a "race" proved to have no empirical or juridical foundation. By the same token, Himmler's engagement of academics and special institutes to isolate the authentic Roma achieved nothing but contradictory messages. In the end, state perpetrators exterminate groups of people because they perceive them as a threat and find racial, ethnic, or social tags for them as convenient for this purpose. [End Page 329] This, however, does not mean that a group need necessarily be a tabula rasa waiting to be victimized. What is important to know is what it is about "the group" that challenges or appears in the perpetrator state's mind to challenge its authority, legitimacy, or integrity. The jumma in Bangladesh, Karen in Burma, Dinka and Nuer in southern Sudan, Kurds in Iraq, or Tutsi in Rwanda may not have objectively represented mortal dangers to their respective states, but the fact that significant elites of each have sought a more pluralistic framework of state, or an autonomy within it against the grain of centralist-minded agendas, may have been enough for them to be viewed as such. Add to this a historic association of these groups with former imperial rulers and one can begin to itemize common ingredients which might provide for a genocidal recipe. Of the Kurds in Saddam's Iraq, Kanan Makiya specifically notes that they "suffered more than others not because they were Kurds, but because they resisted and fought back hard." 41 Not all Kurds, though. Some were considered "loyal" and fought on the Ba'athist side. In another significant case, that of the Tibetans in the Chinese onslaught of 1959, it was perhaps not only their bid to reassert their autonomy which represented a territorial challenge to the People's Republic but a cultural one to its hegemonic and monolithic wisdom. In other words, the threat of a bad example. One can note many similar cases where a people have become a thorn in the side of a regime not so much for their "ethnic" or "national" characteristics but for what they socially or even morally represented, the idea, for instance, that power and resources might be shared between different communal groups or political tendencies; that society need not be homogenous but diverse and multicultural; or perhaps simply that there are other ways of looking at the world. George Steiner has spoken of the Jews in the context of Christianity and European civilization as the incarnation, "albeit wayward and unaware--of its own best hopes." When Europe, in the shape of the Nazis, attempted to extirpate them, it was thus not only a form of "self-mutilation" but a "lunatic retribution" against the "inextinguishable carriers of the ideal." 42 All this surely brings us back less to the victim groups and more to the nature of the driven regimes which commit genocide, what it is that impels them and, as a necessary corollary to that, what most frightens or haunts them. Our argument has rested on the proposition [End Page 330] that the drive to genocide is a function of states with a particularly marked or latent tendency to dispute the discrepancy between the way the world is and the way they think that it ought to be. The era of Cold War and of bipolar, including potentially nuclear-armed, struggle undoubtedly gave an added edge and intensity to the toxic potential inherent in this condition. "Enemies within" or "enemies of the people" were regularly conjured up by both hard-pressed communist regimes and their most vehement or geographically sensitive opponents in the "free world" camp as justification for the extirpation of ethnic or other elements in the population perceived to stand as obstacles to their monodirectional paths to progress. Competition between the superpowers, in their support or opposition to given states, also directly affected some of these outcomes. Supporting ethnic insurgencies, for instance, as the United States covertly did with regard to the Mimang Tsogdu in Tibet in the 1950s, or the Kurdish pesh merga in the 1970s, not only seemed to make tangible Chinese or Iraqi state fears that there really were international plots aimed at undermining them, but in so doing vastly increased the vulnerability of ordinary Tibetans and Kurds to genocide. Likewise, US geo-strategic obsessions as to the imminence of South East Asia's collapse to communism, in the wake of Phnom Penh's fall in 1975, provided one of the most stark examples of a state--Indonesia--being given the green light the following year to extirpate the marxisant-led and newly liberated Portuguese colony of East Timor to the tune of one-third of its million-strong inhabitants. Western backing for Indonesia's advantage, of course, stands in marked contrast to the simultaneous, self-willed and utterly autarkic drive by the Khmer Rouge to overcome the limitations of Cambodia's perceived febrility. Of all twentieth-century genocidal scenarios, that of late-1970s Cambodia in many respects demonstrates its nature in extreme crystallization. By clearing away everything deemed to be non-Cambodian debris the Khmer Rouge aimed to begin again, as it were, from scratch. In so doing they assumed that this would provide the necessary springboard from which Cambodia's innate power would be dramatically unleashed, returning the country to its twelfth-century glory days in a matter of years. Yet if on one level this marks out the Khmer Rouge's agenda as both peculiarly salvationist, not to say utopian, as well as unusually dependent on a narrow and unwavering set of ideological assumptions in order to arrive at this transcendent destination, there is a danger in reading too much into this perspective. Ideological Pol Pot and his followers certainly were. And good communists--in their own eyes--too. But ultimately what so desperately [End Page 331] impelled them was an intense Khmer patriotism which demanded their revitalization of an ancient not to say mythic Khmer state against the grain of an unjust, hostile, and bloody world. One might go further and say that what mattered most to the Khmer Rouge was less the ideology which would get them there and more a simple, brazen reassertion of Wille zu Macht. We have seen something of the same functional pragmatism in more recent genocides. While Serbia's Milosevic and Croatia's Tudjman happily changed spots from communist to arch-nationalist on their roads to war and subgenocide in Bosnia and beyond, Rwandese Hutu leaders sought to defy regional pressure and international accords for power sharing with former Tutsi exiles by attempting to eliminate all perceived opponents. That this latter great end-of-the-century genocide came after the collapse of the Cold War and in an era in which, according to American guru Francis Fukuyama, the ideological alternatives to liberal capitalism had been comprehensively trashed on the slag heap of history, must surely give us pause. 43 Events in Kosovo surely confirm that contrary to Fukuyama there does remain one great ideological underpinning for genocide as strong now, at the onset of the twenty-first century as it was at the end of the nineteenth: nationalism. Indeed, one might posit that the emergence of new nation states out of multi-ethnic Yugoslavia in the wake of communist demise both there and more generally, represents the most marked reassertion of toxic tendencies in world historical development from the pre-1914 record. Kosovo should remind us that these tendencies never truly went away. Their continuity can perhaps be illustrated best by brief reference to a Serbian opinion-former and policymaker who had much to say on the Kosovo issue. Vaso Cubrilovic was one of the group of young terrorists, alongside Gavrilo Princip, who had planned the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Unlike Princip, however, Cubrilovic survived the Great War to become a respected historian at the University of Belgrade, where he wrote policy papers for the Yugoslav government advocating, in effect, state terrorism to get rid of the country's Muslims and in particular, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. He also regularly attended, in the 1930s, the Serbian Cultural Club in Belgrade, where quasi-scientific discussions, initiated by the government and the general staff office, reiterated this extirpatory theme. In one such paper for the Club, Cubrilovic regretted that there had not been a more systematic [End Page 332] removal of the "foreign element" as had been practiced in pre-1914 Serbian state building and concluded that the only solution to the Arnaut (Albanian) problem was to make them leave the country. "When it is possible for Germany to force tens of thousands of the Jews to emigrate, for Russia to transfer millions of people from one part of the continent to another, a world war will not break out just because of some hundreds of thousands of displaced Arnauts." 44 At the end of the Second World War Cubrilovic reappeared as adviser to the Yugoslav communist regime, advocating in essence the same "Albanian" policy. Of course one riposte to this illustration might be to argue that, in the light of the contemporary realities extolled by Fukuyama, today's Cubrilovices are actually yesterday's men peddling nationalisms that are a redundant irrelevance. Of the hundred most important economic units currently in the global political economy, only half of them are nation states; the others are transnational corporations (TNCs). Or to put it another way, of some 180 nation states in the world, 130 of them have smaller economies than the fifty largest TNCs. 45 Yet it is exactly in this rapid globalizing trajectory that we should be able to discern why the Cubrilovices and Milosevices of the world, rather than disappearing, will continue to have a following and why, consequently, genocide will in fact be more prevalent in the near future than it was fifty or a hundred years ago. Nation states will not readily give up their power or their promise to the forces which drive the global economy, however inexorable those forces may appear to be. One might add that this may well continue to be particularly true for state regimes which because they are economically faltering may attempt to compensate by amplifying the national self-esteem message and conversely, the malevolence of the international system towards them. We forget at our peril that Rwanda (and Burundi) had a political coherence and sense of cohesive identity which long preceded the colonial era, perpetuated since then, albeit in fiercely competing Tutsi and Hutu narratives. Or that Milosevic's bid to create a greater Serbia out of the carcass of Yugoslavia was predicated not only on a Serb self-perception of a special mission [End Page 333] dating back to the nineteenth century but even further back to some supposedly mythic Serb civilization from medieval times. In both Rwandan and Serbian instances, war and genocide represented the crisis-response of state regimes to their inability to achieve their national agendas by other accepted means. They tore up the apparent rules of the international system and instead gambled on radical, high-risk shortcuts to a solution. Yet the great irony is that until 24 March 1999--the day of the opening of the Kosovo air campaign --so long as such efforts were contained within the territorial confines of the state's own sovereignty or had no noticeable impact beyond it, international anxiety about human rights violations or even genocide hardly translated into international censure, let alone action. In this sense, Cubrilovic's 1930's assessment of international inertia has remained accurate until almost the present day. And there is a simple reason for this: the nation state has remained sacrosanct, which is hardly surprising given that it is the basic building block of the global system. 46 As a result, nobody censured Democratic Kampuchea for its genocides despite the fact that by the late 1970s these were already quite well known and documented. Instead, the Western-led international community became incandescent with anger when it was invaded by its Vietnamese neighbor. Nor, while followers of Pol Pot continued to hold the Cambodian seat at the United Nations long after they had been ousted, did the international community complain when another genocidal state, Saddam's Iraq, attempted in 1988 in increasingly full public view, to liquidate its most troublesome Kurds in the notorious Anfal campaigns. However, it did respond when Saddam made the mistake of invading oil-rich Kuwait. It could thus be argued that the New World Order, which the US-led military campaign against Iraq supposedly heralded, is very much like the old when it comes to genocide. True, the Western allies set up a "safe haven" in Northern Iraq for millions of fleeing Kurds but only primarily because they more greatly feared the consequences for their NATO ally Turkey--with its own "troublesome" Kurdish population--should it have had to admit [End Page 334] the refugees. Fears of the impact of millions of displaced persons also played some role in the very belated postgenocide decisions of the "powers" to act with regard to Rwanda and Bosnia. In the latter case, Bosnia's initially uncertain status as a sovereign state certainly did not help its plight anymore than the earlier case of East Timor, whose continued subjugation by Indonesia remained--until very recently--largely a subject of international acquiescence. The Kurdish safe haven withers on the vine; Tibet remains off the international agenda; the international community upholds Tudjman and Milosevic's ethnic carve-up of Bosnia through the Dayton Accords. The message, it might appear, is rather clear. Despite international tribunals on Rwanda and Bosnia and the prospect of a permanent court to try crimes against humanity, including genocide, the leading states who constructed the international system and continue to be its prime movers have demonstrated not only an ability to live with states who commit genocide but even to applaud its successful consequences. Is Western action over Kosovo, therefore, the herald of a new beginning? Or, even of a new era in which genocide will be finally expurgated from the human experience? Undoubtedly, the willingness of the international system leaders, through their military arm NATO, to respond specifically to gross human rights violations in another sovereign state does represent a remarkable and possibly quite unprecedented departure. But the fact that this happened under the auspices of today's Great Powers rather than at the behest of the UN also recalls a more familiar pattern of self-interested international action in the past which, very far from being universally benign, was actually highly selective. If this pattern reasserts itself, the Western system leaders may act in the future to prevent or halt genocidal threats where they are sure of being able to do so with minimal military, political, or economic consequence to themselves--in other words against very weak states --but not against, for instance, Russia, China, or Turkey--all states with significant potential for genocide--where Western self-interest would dictate a strictly hands-off policy. Thus with the UN and other genuinely international institutions marginal to the real conduct of international affairs, Western powers will be able to pick and choose where they wish to intervene against actual or would-be genocidal perpetrators. Yet even this sobering prediction in the light of post-Kosovo analysis and assessment may be too optimistic. Despite the euphoria in early June 1999, when Milosevic agreed to the new peace deal and removed his forces from Kosovo, the fact that this had been achieved less by [End Page 335] seventy-plus days of constant NATO bombing and more by a deal heavily reliant on the Russians suggests the strict limits upon Western willingness to pursue, let alone punish, those who commit genocide. A final, ominous historical example. Back in 1923, at the treaty of Lausanne, Turkey, having smashed its way to modern nation-statehood out of the imperial hulk of the Ottoman Empire, was duly recognized and welcomed into the concert of nations by the great Western powers. En route to this goal, the Ittihadist and subsequent Kemalist regimes deported, massacred, or ethnically cleansed many more than two million Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, and Assyrians. There had been much Western outrage in earlier years, particularly about the genocidal fate of the Armenians, and even plans to try the perpetrators before an international court. But as Richard Hovannisian has noted of the Lausanne protocol: "The absolute Turkish triumph was reflected in the fact that in the final version . . . neither the word Armenia, nor the word Armenian, was to be found. It was as if the Armenian Question or the Armenian people themselves had ceased to exist." 47 In other words, Turkey's blatant repudiation of the "official" rules of the game in favor of a series of accelerated shortcuts--including genocide--toward statehood were ultimately conveniently ignored and even condoned by the treatymakers of Lausanne. On the contrary, they reciprocated by entering into a series of long-term diplomatic, commercial, and ultimately military relations with Turkey. Talaat Pasha, prime mover in the 1915 destruction of the Armenians, said at the time: "I have the conviction that as long as a nation does the best for its own interests, and succeeds, the world admires it and thinks it moral." 48 Translated into the present the message might be to Saddam, Milosevic, and other would-be emulators: be bloody minded, batten down the hatches, and let Western self-interest do the rest. Notes 1. Eric Hobsbawn, Age of Extremes, The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 (London, 1994), p. 12. 2. The title of the path-breaking work by Gil Eliot, Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (London, 1972). 3. John King Fairbank, The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 (New York, 1986), p. 81. 4. Quoted in Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the 20th Century (New Haven, 1981), p. 12. 5. For more on Lemkin's seminal role, see Kuper's introductory chapter to Genocide; Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington, DC, 1944). For the text of the UN Convention, see Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide (New Haven and London, 1990), pp. 44-49. 6. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Oxford, 1989), pp. 17, 89, 88. 7. Ibid., p. 91. 8. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London, 1996); Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis, History of a Genocide 1959-1994 (London, 1995). 9. Michael Freeman, "Genocide, civilization and modernity," The British Journal of Sociology 46 (1995): 207-23. 10. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge, 1985), p. 4. 11. Ron Aronson, "Societal madness: Impotence, power and genocide," in Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide: Proceedings of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, ed. Israel W. Charny (Boulder and London, 1984), p. 136. 12. Giddens, Nation-State, p. 4. 13. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge, 1979) and The Modern World System, 3 vols. (New York, 1974-88). 14. Giddens, Nation-State, p. 5. 15. Reynauld Secher, Le genocide franco-fran?ais, La Vend?e-Venge (Paris, 1986) for the main source of this controversy. 16. See, for instance, Israel Charny's ultra-inclusivist definition of genocide: "Unless clear-cut self-defense can be reasonably proven, whenever a large number of people are put to death by other people, it constitutes genocide," in Israel W. Charny, ed., Genocide, A Critical Bibliographical Review (London, 1988), vol. 1, p. xiii. 17. Ward Churchill, "Genocide: Toward a functional definition," Alternatives 11 (1986): 403. 18. Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the 20th Century (New Haven, 1981). 19. Helen Fein, "Genocide, A Sociological Perspective," Current Sociology 38 (1990): 56. 20. See, for example, Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat (New York, 1990); Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing, Genocide and Total War in the 20th Century (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford 1995). 21 Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The structural-functional components of genocide" in Victimology: A New Focus, eds. Israel Drapkin and Emilio Viano (Lexington, MA, 1975), 4: 123. 22. Mark Levene, "Is the Holocaust simply another example of Genocide?" Patterns of Prejudice 28 (1994): 10. 23. See Chalk and Jonassohn's definition, in History, p. 23. 24 Quoted in Tilman Dedering, "A Certain Rigorous Treatment of all Parts of the Nation: The Annihilation of the Herero in German South West Africa, 1904," in The Massacre in History, eds. Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (Oxford, 1999), p. 217. 25. Kuper, Genocide, p. 161. 26. Irving Louis Horowitz, Taking Lives, Genocide and State Power (Brunswick, NJ, 1980); R. J. Rummel, "Democide in Totalitarian States: Mortacracies and Megamurders," in The Widening Circle of Genocide, ed. I. Charny, vol. 3 of Genocide, A Critical Bibliographical Review (New Brunswick and London, 1994), pp. 3-39. 27. The term is borrowed from Misha Glenny's BBC broadcast, "All Fall Down," Radio 4, 31 March 1995. 28. Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism, The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gok?lp (London, 1950), p. 79. 29. Giddens, Nation-State, p. 12. 30. For more on this argument, see Mark Levene, "Connecting Threads: Rwanda, The Holocaust and The Pattern of Contemporary Genocide," in Genocide: Essays Towards Understanding, Early Warning and Prevention, ed. Roger W. Smith (Williamsburg, 1999), pp. 27-64. 31. See Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide, The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (London, 1967); The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary milleniarians and mystical anarchists of the Middle Ages (London, 1970); Europe's Inner Demons: An Inquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt (New York, 1975). 32. Bauman, Modernity, p. 93. 33. Ronald Aronson, The Dialectics of Disaster, A Preface to Hope (London, 1983), p. 169. 34. Ibid. p. 136. 35. Quoted in Uriel Tal, "On the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide," Yad Vashem Studies 13 (1979): 7-52. 36. Quoted in Paul Parin, "Open Wounds, Ethnopsychoanalytical Reflections on the Wars in Former Yugoslavia," in Mass Rape, The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ed. Alexandra Stiglmayer (Lincoln and London, 1994), p. 50. 37. See Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr, "Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945," International Studies Quarterly 32 (1988): 359-71, and more recently their "Victims of the State: Genocides, Politicides and Group Repression from 1945 to 1995," in Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences, ed. Albert J. Jongman (The Hague, 1996), pp. 33-58. 38. The rallying cry of President Zia of Bangladesh, in the late 1970s, coinciding with the onset of the genocidal onslaught on the Chittagong Hill Tracts. See Veena Kukreja, Civil-Military Relations in South Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, (New Delhi and London, 1991), p. 164. 39. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, Race, Power and Genocide (New Haven and London, 1996), p. 408. 40. Lemkin, Axis Rule, p. 79. See Fein's definition in "Genocide, A Sociological Perspective," p. 24. 41. Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising and the Arab World (London, 1993), p. 219. 42. George Steiner, In Bluebird's Castle (London, 1971), pp. 41-42. 43. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London, 1992). 44. Quote from H. T. Norris, "Kosova and the Kosovans: Past, present and future as seen through Serb, Albanian and Muslim eyes," in The Changing Shape of the Balkans, eds. F. W. Carter and H. T. Norris (Boulder and London, 1996), p. 15. For more on Cubrilovic, see also Noel Malcolm, Kosovo, A Short History (London and Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 284-85, 322-23. 45. Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas (London, 1996), p. 158. 46. Thus, at the thirty-fourth session of the General Assembly of the UN, in September 1979, Western and ASEAN delegates were successful in pointing out "that the United Nations charter is based on the principle of non-interference and that UN membership has never been granted or withheld on the basis of respect for human rights. If it were, a large proportion of the governments presently there would have to leave." Quoted in William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy, Cambodia, Holocaust and Modern Conscience (London, 1984), p. 138. 47. Richard G. Hovannisian, "Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878-1923," in Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. R. G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, NJ and London, 1986), p. 37. 48. Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence and Oxford, 1995), p. 383. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:03:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:03:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Amazon.com: Books: Imperfect Conceptions Message-ID: Imperfect Conceptions http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0231113706/qid=1109119275/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0151741-8716631?v=glance&s=books Imperfect Conceptions by [37]Frank Dikotter "The People's Republic of China passed a law in 1995 aimed at restricting births deemed to be imperfect..." List Price: $35.50 Price: $35.50 & This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Editorial Reviews From Book News, Inc. In 1995, the People's Republic of China passed a controversial Eugenics Law, stressing prevention of "inferior births." Using this statute as a springboard, the author explores the contexts and history of eugenics in Communist and Republican China. He shows how Western eugenics was imported and combined with existing fears of cultural and biological degeneration in Chinese society, and demonstrates how Chinese assumptions about the relationship of the individual to society form the core of their attitudes to procreation. Product Description: In 1995 the People?s Republic of China passed a controversial Eugenics Law, which, after a torrent of international criticism, was euphemistically renamed the Maternal and Infant Health Law. Aimed at "the implementation of premarital medical checkups" to ensure that neither partner has any hereditary, venereal, reproductive, or mental disorders, the ordinance implies that those deemed "unsuitable for reproduction" should undergo sterilization or abortion or remain celibate in order to prevent "inferior births." Using this recent statute as a springboard, Frank Dik?tter explores the contexts and history of eugenics in both Communist China and Taiwan. Dik?tter shows how beginning in Late Imperial China, Western eugenics was imported and combined with existing fears of cultural, racial, or biological degeneration in Chinese society, leading to government regulation of sexual reproduction. is a revealing look at the cultural history of medical explanations of birth defects that demonstrates how Chinese assumptions about the relationship of the individual to society form the very core of their attitudes toward procreation. Dik?tter explains the patrilineal model of descent, where a person is viewed as the culmination of his or her ancestors and is held responsible for the health of all future generations. By this logic, a pregnant woman?s behavior and attitude directly influence the well-being of her baby, and a deformed or retarded child reflects a moral failing on the part of the parents. Dik?tter also shows how the holistic medicine practiced in China blurs any distinction between individual and environment so that people are held responsible for illness. Drawing on cultural, social, economic, and political approaches, Dik?tter goes beyond a simple authoritarian model to provide a more complex view of eugenic policy, showing how a variety of voices including those of popular journalists, social reformers, medical writers, sex educators, university professors, and politicians all disseminate information that supports rather than questions the state?s program. reveals how Chinese cultural currents -fear and fascination with the deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal -have combined with medical discourse to form a program of eugenics that is viewed with alarm by the rest of the world. _________________________________________________________________ Product Details * Hardcover: 226 pages * Publisher: Columbia University Press (November 15, 1998) * ISBN: 0231113706 * Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches * Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces. * Average Customer Review: based on 1 review. * Amazon.com Sales Rank in Books: #1,047,094 _________________________________________________________________ Citations This book cites 1 book: * [66]The Cambridge History of China: Volume 14, The People's Republic, Part 1, The Emergence of Revolutionary China, 1949-1965 (The Cambridge History of China) by Roderick MacFarquhar on [67]page 121 _________________________________________________________________ Customer Reviews 6 of 11 people found the following review helpful: [stars-4-0.gif] A look at China's eugenics., January 19, 2001 Reviewer: [69]Matt Nuenke http://eugenics.home.att.net (Chicago, Illinois United States) - [70]See all my reviews This short but fascinating book looks at eugenic programs in China, both past and present. China, with its one-child policy is in the perfect position to start a genetic war with other nations to breed a superior race. That is, the state has already taken control of all reproductive rights, and with the recent eugenics laws past in 1995 for the collective improvement of the quality of the 'yellow race', they could be destined to surpass other nations in the quality of their people --- that is the average intelligence in China will surpass all other races except the Jewish race (with and average IQ of 117 due to their own form of eugenics practiced over the last 2000 years as part of the Jewish religion). Few voices in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) question eugenic practices. Historically they have always understood the need for racial hygiene, and more so than in the West they shun deformations or inferior offspring. And with a centralized government, with its support of its eugenic programs, the few voices who believe in the sanctity of life over the betterment of the race can be suppressed, not unlike the reverse in the United States where concerns for dysgenic trends by the underclass are ignored or suppressed. In the United States, we propagandize and redistribute wealth to the underclass under the pseudoscientific claims of radical environmentalism as promoted by Gould et al. and now proclaimed by President Clinton. "Anyone can rise to be anything they want to be with enough will and determination!" Bunk! Nations rise and fall on their genetic quality, typically their average intelligence. The Chinese firmly believe that there will be biological competition between the 'white race' and the 'yellow race' and they are moving forward to win. They want to develop the 'model race' and in fact are in a unique position to win. They already control reproduction; all they have to do is continue to suppress the births of low intelligent/genetically defective couples while encouraging multiple births by 'gifted couples.' They can discourage some marriages, use forced sterilizations, while providing incentives to others. They have complete freedom to promote and national eugenics program without criticism from the press or independent voices if they so choose. Even minor defects like harelip are aborted. In a country with poor medical care, the costs to correct the condition are greater than the worth of the child. It is more cost effective to just have another child. Euthanasia and infanticide are openly discussed condoned from strong voices in the government for the benefit of the nation. The health of the race supercedes any moral questions with regards to 'zero worth' individuals. This book goes a long way in showing that eugenics as viewed in the West is radically different than in Asia. With a more collectivist perspective, individuals are willing to make sacrifices now for the benefit of the nation later -- that is an investment in the genetic capital of the people. We are getting a peak at the future eugenic wars that will be an integral part of competition between nations in the decades to come. Will the West join third world status as Asian nations actively embrace eugenic programs? References 37. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Frank%20Dikotter/103-0151741-8716631 66. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/052124336X/ref=sid_dp_dp/103-0151741-8716631?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance 67. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0231113706/ref=sib_ab_dp_pg/103-0151741-8716631?%5Fencoding=UTF8&p=S03R&checkSum=673buSbxE9CkqMkRT9B3%2FqGAWvwECxwfOgbgl2s9588%3D 70. http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3VW11SKSST2A7/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-0151741-8716631?%5Fencoding=UTF8 From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:04:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:04:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wilson Quarterly: Popular Eugenics: The Sperm-Bank Industry Message-ID: Popular Eugenics: The Sperm-Bank Industry http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.essay&essay_id=105210 2005 Winter "Procreative Compounds: Popular Eugenics, Artificial Insemination, and the Rise of the American Sperm Banking Industry" by Cynthia R. Daniels and Janet Golden, in Journal of Social History (Fall 2004), George Mason Univ., 4400 University Dr. MS 3A2, Fairfax, Va. 22030-4444. You have a better chance of getting into Harvard than of becoming a sperm donor. That's because sperm donation has evolved into a multimillion-dollar industry with an eagle eye for quality control. Sperm donors and their "donations" are subjected to stringent testing and screening. At most banks, men must be between 21 and 35 years old, between 5'8" and 6'2" tall, and meet weight targets. Adopted men or those with a family history of certain diseases (nearly 100 are listed) are disqualified. Would-be donors also are nixed if they've had sex with another man, with a woman who has had sex with a bisexual man, or with more than a specified number of partners. But donor recipients seek more than health safety assurances, write Daniels and Golden, professors of political science and history, respectively, at Rutgers University. Most U.S. sperm banks (there were 28 in 2001) produce glossy catalogs lush with virile-looking models and donor resum?s that provide SAT and GRE scores, educational attainment, musical ability, social characteristics (e.g., "quietly charismatic"), religion-even, in some cases, handwriting samples, hat size, and favorite pet. From the beginning, consumers and the medical establishment have seen artificial insemination as a way to build a better baby. The first known case in which a donor's sperm (as opposed to a spouse's) was used occurred in 1884, when a Philadelphia physician chloroformed a woman he was treating for infertility, under the pretext of performing minor surgery, and inseminated her with the sperm of his supposedly best-looking medical student. By the 1930s, however, artificial insemination had become a quasi-respectable practice widely reported in medical journals. With the introduction of cryopreservation, first employed in the cattle industry in the 1950s, sperm could be frozen and then thawed for use. Public acceptance came slowly, but when cases of HIV transmission were reported in the 1980s and '90s, cryopreservation became a necessity, as it allowed sperm to be kept "on ice" until it tested clean. Currently, tens of thousands of children are conceived in the United States each year with semen purchased from sperm banks. At companies such as California Cryobank, the samples are stored in numbered and color-coded vials: white caps for Caucasian, black for African American, yellow for Asian, and red for "all others." Donors who best match the ideal Euro-American standard are most desired. Yes, consumers are disproportionately white, but even within other racial and ethnic categories, the most marketable donors are fair, tall, and slender. With the birth of sperm banks, power to select donors shifted from the paternalistic physician to the consumer who paid for the product. What troubles Daniels and Golden is that the business has proven a breeding ground for "popular eugenics," and heritable traits are often lumped with those that aren't-such as religion or a Ph.D. Today, sperm banks dangle the prospect of a kid with the genetic right stuff to run fast, ace math, and go to Sunday school. When artificial insemination was still a dirty little family secret, doctors sought sperm that would produce a child who looked like the presumed proud papa, or at least like a relative. No more. Tall, blond donors produce dozens of children, but the 4'7" man need not even apply: Nobody wants the little guy to father Little Johnny. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:05:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:05:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] John Derbyshire: Eugenics Alive: Coming soon to a country near you. Message-ID: John Derbyshire: Eugenics Alive: Coming soon to a country near you. http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshireprint022701.html Mr. Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor February 27, 2001 9:10 a.m. The current (March 5th) print version of National Review carries an [1]exchange between Dinesh D'Souza, a frequent NR contributor, and Ronald Bailey of [2]Reason magazine, about the morality of "genetically enhancing" human beings, most especially by way of custom-designing our children. The exchange follows on from a long piece by Dinesh titled "Staying Human" in our January 22nd issue. It's a fascinating debate, on a topic we should all be thinking about. I'm not going to get into it here; I just want to make one point that didn't get covered in those pieces. Here is the point: Fretting about the ethics of these issues is a thing that only Western countries are going to do. Elsewhere, eugenics -- including "genetic enhancement" -- will not be fretted about or debated, it will just be done. To see what I mean, check out an article titled Popularizing the Knowledge of Eugenics and Advocating Optimal Births Vigorously" by Sun Dong-sheng of the Jinan Army Institute, People's Republic of China. "[3]An English translation of the article can be found on the web. The translators note, in their preface, that: "The taboo on this subject is not as strong in East Asia as in the West. One might hypothesize that Asians, and more particularly the populations of the Han cultural zone (Japan, North and South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and possibly Vietnam), take a more pragmatic, less structured and ideological, and more far-seeing approach (eugenics, after all, is, by definition, a long-run program) to the development of human capital, than do Westerners." Sun Dong-sheng takes a quick canter through of the history of eugenics, not omitting the disgrace which the whole subject fell into by association with Nazi "racial science." As the translators note, though, Dr. Sun shows no sign of feeling that he is dealing with a "hot" or taboo topic. He just goes right on into proposals for raising public awareness of eugenics (in China, that is -- the whole piece is intended for a Chinese audience) and reasons for including eugenic policies as a part of "socialist modernization." The progress of the argument is held up for a while by some ideological shucking and jiving the author feels obliged to perform. From the point of view of theoretical Marxist-Leninism and dialectical materialism, still a compulsory part of the curriculum in Chinese schools, the entire field of genetics is a bit suspect. In all nature-nurture debates, traditional Marxists are the purest of pure nurturists. What's the point of having a revolution if you can't change human nature? (Remember Lysenko?) Dr. Sun easily negotiates his way through this little patch of ideological white water, concluding that: With genetics as its basis, the field of eugenics is established on an objective, materialistic foundation. So that's all right then, and we can move right on with: As eugenic research becomes widespread and acquires depth, the legal code of China will include more regulations concerning the ways by which the idea of healthier offspring can be given reality. And: Socialist modernization urgently needs a reduction or elimination of genetic diseases and hereditary defects. Only by promoting the births of better offspring can we improve the genetic quality of our population I don't want to make too much of this document. I can't say that I found it particularly chilling or offensive in any way; and some of Dr. Sun's points cannot be disagreed with -- e.g. his call for an attack on China's appalling levels of pollution so that environmentally caused birth defects can be reduced. The significance of the article is that it is perfectly ethics-free. There is no discussion of the morality of eugenics and genetic engineering. It is just assumed that to "improve the genetic quality of our population" is a thing that everybody should support, and that the methods of doing it can safely be left in the hands of scientists and politicians. The mentality here is basically that of a cost accountant, arguing that a poor country like China simply does not need the extra burden of "useless mouths" -- the omniscient party, of course, getting to decide who is "useless." You do have to make an effort to remember, reading this piece, that communist China is a nation whose government has not scrupled to involve itself in its citizens' most intimate family affairs, that it has imposed a draconian policy of compulsory family planning -- including forced abortions -- and that when Dr. Sun talks about "more regulations concerning the ways by which the idea of healthier offspring can be given reality," he means yet more state intrusion into people's decisions about who to marry, and whether or not to have children. A rough kind of eugenics has, in fact, been practiced in China for a long time. Several years ago, when I was living in that country, I mentioned Down's Syndrome in conversation with a Chinese colleague. She did not know the English term and I did not know the Chinese, so we had to look it up in a dictionary. "Oh," she said when she got it. "That's not a problem in China. They don't get out of the delivery room." As I said: While we are agonizing over the rights and wrongs of it, elsewhere they will just be doing it. Apology. I owe NRO readers an apology. In my February 22nd column I said: "At 21, Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister of England." This was a gross error. Pitt got into Parliament at age 21; he didn't make prime minister until he was 24. I am sorry for the slip, and grateful to the two readers who pointed it out (and a bit depressed, on behalf of the educational system, that it was only two). This kind of thing would never have got by the phalanxes of factcheckers that guard the integrity of the print NR, but web journalism has up to now been a more down-and-dirty business, and while our stuff gets a speedy once-over from the editors before being posted, it is not factchecked in detail. We have recently begun some initiatives to improve things, to the degree that improvement is possible, given the speed and transience of web postings. Look for an ever more polished NRO, with fewer lapses like that one. References 1. http://www.nationalreview.com/05mar01/dsouza030501.shtml 2. http://www.reason.com/ 3. http://www.mankind.org/man22.htm From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:06:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:06:03 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Plausible Futures: Niche construction as a means to eugenic communities Message-ID: Niche construction as a means to eugenic communities http://plausible.custompublish.com/index.php?id=167091&cat=6698&printable=1 4.7.6 EUGENICS Floating around in the back of my mind has been that nagging question: How will eugenics come about; what do we need to do to make it happen? This is not a question that I think must be answered, because in the end, eugenics will come about on its own. However, it is asked by many who want to see something happening sooner rather than later. As the technology advances and the importance of genes becomes apparent to more people, the desire will drive the application. Whether it will be primarily applied at the family level, the tribal level, or the national level is unpredictable. Nevertheless, most assuredly once it is implemented by enough people, the threat of those practicing eugenics will become problematic to others. They will try either to emulate or to stop eugenics. Like nuclear proliferation, where there is a desire to obtain new technology, human genetic engineering will be impossible to stop. Unlike nuclear proliferation, eugenics can be undertaken without the complexities of hiding radioactive material, building large facilities for enrichment, and then hiding a quite useless weapons system because to use it means almost sure retaliation. Eugenics can be undertaken in secrecy or belligerently by simply ignoring any future global sanctions or prohibitions. Most of us who embrace eugenics would like to have our own nation-state based on eugenics. Unfortunately, we can speculate how to bring that about but there is no action I can see other than a slow change in people's attitudes. Like libertarianism, it takes a great deal of intelligence to understand and appreciate the underlying principles of a nation based on inegalitarianism towards outsiders. Even ethnocentrism is a problem for eugenicists who argue that kin or race should be the boundaries for inclusion in the breeding population. An indicator for how ethnocentric a race is may lie in the degree to which they allow or discourage intermarriage. However, how much this is based on culture is hard to factor out of the equation. I am also unaware of any valid tests for ethnocentrism. Nevertheless, by all observable measures (MacDonald, 2002a), Whites suffer from low ethnocentrism and high moral universalism, which has become highly dysgenic for us in a multicultural world. Our wealth and our culture are being systematically undermined by more ethnocentric races that have particularly targeted the West (that is Whites) for scapegoating their own failures, and demanding compensation, both nationally and globally. Even eugenics itself, while being attacked as pseudoscience by the Left, is simultaneously being included now in egalitarian proposals to make sure that eugenics is equally shared among all races and classes. That is, at the same time it is condemned, the left is taking no chances that when people finally do embrace it, it must be shared equally with all. It seems apparent to me that the very flurry of books and articles declaring that race is a social construct and that eugenics must never again be contemplated, is due to the fact that unraveling our genetic code and the new tools being developed for human genetic engineering has the Left in a state of panic. They are now so desperate that the only way to keep the lid on the genetic genie is to try to suppress freedom of speech, as has been done in most Western nations under hate speech laws. Mention racial differences and go to jail. The United States alone has the constitutional right to freedom of speech, but even here there are attempts to take away this basic right because with the Internet, discussions about eugenics and racial differences cannot be easily contained. After reading Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution by F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman, 2003, and rereading The Fratricidal Global Village: The Theory of Hypertrophic Group Formation, By Elliott White, 2001, I felt it was time to put together some thoughts on how a eugenic community could be formed, maintained, and prosper. But first, some basic assumptions: it is not a utopian project based on a goal of human perfection, but rather it is a process based on the member's desire to undertake it. That is, like any adventure, it does not promise anything but involvement and discovery. In addition, while the goal is not based on any moral or ethical precepts, its formulation is securely grounded in empirical data about human behavior. That is, my vision of a eugenic community is to make it rewarding to be a part of it. To do that, we must know how humans behave and try to anticipate the common problems that groups encounter repeatedly. Lastly, I do not intend to discuss the genetic boundaries of the group. That is, though I have my racial preferences on a sliding scale, it would be up to the group to decide who will be included or excluded. In the end, the winner will be based on just how well informed each group is with regards to eugenic principles and human behavior. The number of ways eugenics may be practiced is too indeterminate to argue for one way or another. The one thing I am sure of is that it will eventually lead to a eugenics' arms race. If you want to know how serious this is, just try discussing eugenics on Internet forums. People simultaneously will argue that it can't be done, shouldn't be done, etc. displaying moral panic. This could only happen if they really do believe that it is possible and that it is coming rapidly. Silly ideas are ignoreddangerous ones are condemned. In fact, with gender selection, in vitro fertilization, assortative mating, testing for genetic diseases; we are well on our way to personal eugenics driven by the desire for children who have the very best genes money can buy. GROUPISHNESS I am not at all convinced that humans have an innate commitment to their own kind, but rather a need to form coalitions for advantage and defense. Before civilization of course, kin was the fundamental building block for tribal defense and social control, but we have been adapted primarily to be easily led and indoctrinated. White calls the penchant for forming large groups hypertrophy: "Successful macro self-selection yields hypertrophic group formation. This process involves the following factors: (a) at least minimal opportunity; (b) self-selection, selective migration, upward mobility ; (c) clusters of like-minded group or network members; (d) a critical mass, especially likely to occur if the selective process occurs in a large population; (e) hypertrophy." He explains that we see hypertrophy in the media, where self-selection is so prevalent that the public sees a very biased presentation of the news, leading more people to turn to other sources like the Internet. Self-selection has also been noted in government, where like-minded people surround a president to the point where no dissenting voices are heard, and truth becomes grounded in absolutes. Hypertrophy is seen in the formation of international terrorist organizations to the formation of fanaticism among sports fans. Wherever humans are allowed to self-select, they will form groups. Today, under government political programs in most Western nations advancing multiculturalism and diversity, any self-selection based on race is condemned if it includes Whites, but is encouraged if it involves minorities. Whites are expected to capitulate to minority demands, or be vilified as racists. Interestingly, this could only happen because many Whites have been indoctrinated through guilt or possibly self-promotion, to self-select for inclusion in the academic left's reformulation of Marxism from class struggle to minority group identity politics. Marxism's march through the institutions never lost a step after the collapse of Communism. White explains: "Thus it should be clear that locals and cosmopolitans may draw different in/out group distinctions. For the local, anyone outside his more immediate area and not belonging to his religion and ethnic or racial group is likely to be part of the out-group. That will include any cosmopolitan who seems to threaten the traditional values and identifications of his community. For the cosmopolitan, on the other hand, it is the local who often constitutes the out-group." I am not sure of the terms, but cosmopolitan versus rural (local) attitudes is a theme that keeps reoccurring, and the rural is losing. Religious fundamentalists, conservatives, liberals, and multiculturalists are all relatively non-empirical when it comes to understanding human nature. They all tend to either reject evolution or they reject that it has any significance for humans. But it does seem that the rural faction is in retreat while the Left is winning the war against Western culture. For this reason, any eugenics movement must accept the fact that our politicians, athletic and media stars, the elite in academics and business, will for the most part self-select away from their own kind for the comfort of their own hypertrophic group based on occupation or class interest, rather than race. I personally assume that any politician will betray not only their own race but also their own country to serve the interests of the elite, as we see with regards to immigration. Open immigration hurts not only the poor, but also even the Hispanic citizen community when more illegal Hispanics keep flooding into our country. So to keep the cheap labor coming, the elite has merely redefined what America stands for: "We are a nation of immigrants" and the discussion ends. The people have been properly indoctrinated. As White explains it, cooperation in nature is abundant. Inclusive fitness or for humansgroup evolutionary strategiesfor promoting selfish genes is not the dominant factor in racial group formation. We had better not rely on anyone's innateness to stand by their own kind, it is too weak of a force. Cohesiveness needs to be established by creating a niche where members of the eugenic group can thrive, even while living amongst "the other." ACTIVISTS AS OUT-GROUPS It is important to understand the enemy, and I am going to try to summarize the motivation behind the radical Left. Many religious fundamentalists and conservatives will also oppose any notion of eugenics, but I believe they are motivated more from fear and ignorance. For this reason, they are less of an immediate threat to genetic engineering than the well disciplined Left. Reading numerous books on the battle between the Left and the Right, it has occurred to me that both groups are driven more by a need for power than any real ideological agenda or concern for other groups. In Niche Construction they write: "For instance, much human (and animal) social learning is characterized by a positive frequency dependence or conformity, in which individuals bias their adoption of cultural information toward that expressed by the majority. In fact, a theoretical analysis by Boyd and Richerson (1985) found that most of the conditions under which natural selection favors social learning also favor the evolution of conformity. This 'when in Rome do as the Romans' principle can result in conventions that only loosely track environmental change and, at least in the short term, may generate maladaptive traditions. In addition, members of a group may be particularly prone to adopting cultural variants exhibited by particularly authoritative or charismatic individuals, a process Boyd and Richerson (1985) describe as 'indirect bias.' Theoretical models have demonstrated that cultural processes can lead to the transmission of information that results in a fitness cost relative to alternatives, and strong cultural evolutionary processes will frequently be independent of genetic control. While socially learned smart behavioral variants will subsequently be tested by the individuals that adopt them, even nonreinforcing or maladaptive behavior may be expressed again if it is socially sanctioned, or if individuals are locked into conventions that penalize nonconformists. As a result, some cultural information may be propagated even when it is detrimental to individual fitness." Docile humans follow their leaders, however that is defined, and conform to norms that may not be to the best interest of the individual or to a particular group. Few people show the independence and/or the character to challenge beliefs that have been set up by the prevailing ethos at any one time. I came across this short response by Jay Feierman to a Yahoo discussion group: "The high status persons of each society create the list of the human rights [and values systems] that in the long term serve their own best interest. Governments, which are controlled by high status individuals, codify and then enforce the exercise of approved human rights and suppress the expression of the unapproved human rights [and values systems]." (See the complete article in appendix.) So who are these reoccurring radicals that crop up continuously, trying to overthrow the established order? Well, they are you, me, and all the other activists out there who do not like the status quo. And for a very simple reason as White explains: "Cosmopolitans, moreover, need not be tolerant in their teachings. Marx and Engels divided the world up between the exploiting and the exploited, and Lenin and Mao took this in/out group dichotomy quite seriously. Only the elimination of one social class by the other would bring the desired classless society. It would appear that when able people feel the denial of opportunity, they become susceptible to ideological formulations that involve hostility directed against the social order implicated in such denial." Quite simply, radicals take up causes because they feel left out, they need intellectual challenge and are motivated to act. Moreover, there is no race that is more motivated and intellectually capable than Jews, and I think that is the reason they are quite often, but not always, behind radical movements (MacDonald 2002b). It has little to do with the movement itself, but rather a means of gaining power and prestige in societies where they feel they have not achieved the status they deserve, as individuals. As a race, they are far wealthier and powerful than any other group, but some of the tribe's members want more than just the knowledge that the tribeas a groupis doing well. Power for many is an insatiable desire. Note that this is not a condemnation of Jewish behavior, but recognition as to why they seem to be such an integral part of radical movements. Whites on the other hand seem far more inclined to go along, get along, and are not usually as motivated to excel. We then become the victims of our own conformist weakness per Niche Construction: "Conformist transmission may potentially be exploited by powerful individuals, groups, or institutions, which dominate the dissemination of information through societies to promote their own interests. In preagricultural egalitarian societies this was probably not very important since in such societies inequalities of power and wealth are typically both temporary and minimal. However, in post-agricultural societies that display rankings, and in complex civilized states that display class stratifications, significant economic inequalities occur, and power networks develop. In these societies powerful and coercive cultural parents may stand to gain considerably from persuading other less powerful humans to conform, perhaps by recruiting extra assistance in modifying environments in ways that benefit them rather than the helpers. These processes can be amplified by tool use, for instance, by the technology of modern media, by weapons, by art, or by deceit. Religious, commercial, and political propaganda, for example, may all be used to persuade, trick, or coerce conformity from individuals against their personal interests in favor of the interests of a dominant class of cultural transmitters." The history over the last fifty years or more then has seen a reshaping of American value systems from a less socialistic, free market meritocracy, into one that is inherently anti-Western. When the intellectual elites universally promote without dissent, acceptance of multiculturalism, diversity, redistribution of wealth, racial quotas, and open immigration, then our culture has been high jacked by a core of ideological radicals that have used our own cooperative nature to accept their moral demands. "The niche-construction statement on conflict in section 7.3.1 should also extend to the human cultural level, with the qualification that at this level other processes may be operating as well. Group selectionists commonly focus on the positive repercussions of group selection (that is, within-group altruism) and neglect the negative repercussions (that is, between-group selfishness, hostility, and conflict). Group selection does not directly favor altruistic individuals so much as selfish groups. The group-level traits most effective in promoting group replication may also engender outgroup hostility, intergroup aggression and conflict, fear of strangers, slanderous propaganda concerning outsiders, and so on. The same processes that underlie the best of human motives may also favor the worst attributes of human societies." The above tactics have been evident in the science wars, where anyone who engages in research with regards to group differences in intelligence or raises concerns about dysgenic social policies, is labeled as a fascist, a racist, a Nazi, but probably all three and then some. With these tactics, the radicals have been able to transform our culture by recruiting others to follow them, in what appears to be a concern for human betterment everywhere. However, the singular hatred and vilification of only White Western society belies their true objectives. It is not the world they want to make right, but to replace the dominant, technological culture of the West with their own. It is warfare with the parasites from within. Christopher Boehm (Bloom & Dees, 2003) discusses another problem with regards to racial conflict in modern societies. The cultural elites, no matter what race or religion they belong to, take it upon themselves to settle disputes between rival groups. As the dominant power brokers, they have an interest in keeping disputes under control, and they are willing to do so even if it means giving preferences to other races or groups while disenfranchising their own. We see this with George Bush's pandering to Mexican illegals and Bill Clinton's pandering to Blacks. It is reproductively self-serving for the power elite to sacrifice their own kin in order to maintain order. In so doing, it means that when one race is more successful than another, peace between the groups must be won by giving preferences and transferring resources from one group to another. Again, it must always be assumed that except for a few rare exceptions, the power elite will go against their own race in favor of preserving their favored position of hierarchical dominance over all others. As Boehm points out, chimpanzees show this same pattern of alpha males settling disputes for the benefit of group. Beyond the level of the tribe however, this behavior is inimical to the interests of eugenicists. Political power brokering will mean an escalation of socialism and coercion against more successful groups. The reason for this short discussion of opposition from the Left (and from our own elite), is because if we are truly committed to implementing eugenics based on an unbiased understanding of human nature, then we cannot delude ourselves in thinking that we will convince others based on empirical arguments, and we must break off on our own, silently, and get on with our mission. Eventually, human genetic engineering will be ubiquitous, with the outcomes so beneficial, that opposition will cease on its own. As long as we can attract clusters of like-minded individuals, with "the capacity to transcend one's immediate space and time conceptually" for an improved human genome, our mission remains viable even in the face of extreme opposition from fundamentalists, self-serving revolutionaries, and the elite. EUGENIC NICHE CONSTRUCTION "I will arguethat hominid minds are not adapted to a Pleistocene average. Rather, they are adapted to the variability of hominid environments: to the spread of variation, rather than to its peak. Our evolutionary response to variation is phenotypic plasticity. Humans develop different phenotypes in different environments" (Sterelny, 2003). There is an increased recognition that humans create niches, and that niche construction can change human culture and/or human genetic frequencies. In Niche Construction they state, "In such cases, and to the extent that cultural processes cease to buffer culturally induced environmental changes, the latter are likely to give rise to culturally modified natural selection pressures. There may then be changes in allelic frequencies in human populations. For example, suppose there is no technology available to deal with a new challenge created in an environment by cultural niche construction, or suppose that the available technology is not exploited, possibly because it is too costly or because people are unaware of the impact that their own cultural activities are having on their environments. If such a situation persists for a long enough time, then genotypes that are better suited to the culturally modified environment could increase in frequency." While the above is true, it seems too simplistic in that as niche constructors, humans are constantly altering both their environments and their gene frequencies. The theory of evolution dictates that where the environment changes rapidly, there will be changes in gene frequencies. There is no condition that I am aware of where rapid and pronounced ecological changes have zero influence on the selection for genes. What is so fascinating then is not this simple truism, but the almost universal denial that humans are undergoing evolutionary change. It is recognized and discussed by evolutionary theorists, while denied or ignored by most of society: politicians, religionists, secular leftists, conservatives, liberals, Marxists, cultural constructivists, and even a lot of libertarians. Only within a small slice of educated humanity, is the reality of evolutionary change understood to be a present and ongoing process. On empirical evidence, it can't be any other way, and we are capable of detecting these changes from past evidence. Obvious to a few, it is only now getting more attention from neo-Darwinists. In Niche Construction they observe that "[there] is a third major consequence of niche construction. Where niche construction affects multiple generations, it introduces a second general inheritance system in evolution, one that works via environments. This second inheritance system has not yet been widely incorporated by evolutionary theory. We call this second general inheritance system ecological inheritance." MacDonald (2002b) discusses the consequences of creating niche construction, primarily around racial and/or religious groups. The contrast for example between the niche construction of the Gypsies, where average intelligence declined, versus Ashkenazi Jews, where average intelligence increased, over hundreds of years, is a vivid example of how niche construction can mold the genes of those who stay within the tribe. The common theme today however is to ignore evolution, and preach a new ethos: the peoples of the world will meld together and all differences will disappear. That is, we will breed, slowly over time, to become one brown skinned race, where any differences, if they did exist, will exist no more. White however sees another humanity: "We live increasingly within a global village, but it is one that remainsand threatens to remainstubbornly fragmented. It is split, of course, along ethnic, racial, and linguistic lines as well as by socioeconomic inequalities. But even within the same ethnic group or socioeconomic stratum, fissures appear, at times deep, that are not readily papered over." As some people will intermarry and become perhaps nondescript racially, this will not lead to a single racial genome. Hypertrophy as described by White, and increasingly others, describes humans as incapable of cooperation on a global scale. Those who hope for world peace based on global cooperation fail to understand human nature. This group evolutionary perspective has shifted over the last few decades, and it is safe to say confusion is still the norm. The story goes like this: evolution can only occur at the level of the organism because at the group level, the free rider problem arises. Free riders are those that dodge the draft, don't pay their fair share of the restaurant bill, etc. They are not altruistic cooperators, so they will be selected for and will overtake others that are more altruistic. The discussion of altruism, group selection, kin selection, reciprocal altruism has filled volumes over the last few decades. But one thing was missed with regards to humans: we have language, can form coalitions, and can take action against free riders. Thousands of years ago, the free rider was killed, harassed, or banished. Tribes were often engaged in warfare with neighboring tribes, and they could not afford to tolerate dissent. We see this today in stiff penalties for army deserters; the most dangerous situation for a state is to not have the young men willing to die for its defense. White describes intratribal conflict: "A second environmental basis for conflict among intimates arises when renegades emerge within otherwise homogeneous settings. Simmel remarks that the hatred directed against the dissenter originates 'not from personal motives, but because the member represents a danger to the preservation of the group.... Since this hatred is mutual and each accuses the other of responsibility for the threat to the whole, the antagonism sharpensprecisely because both parties to it belong to the same social unit.' Lewis Coser comments that 'the group must fight the renegade with all its might since he threatens symbolically, if not in fact, its existence as an ongoing concern.' As an example, Coser sees apostasy as striking 'at the very life of a church.'" Over the last ten years then, group evolutionary strategies are better understood, and it is realized that humans are uniquely positioned to solve the free rider problem. In fact, if global peace ever were obtained through international agreements along with totalitarian controls on human freedom, the free rider problem would begin to return under universal socialism. To my knowledge, this aspect of world cooperation has never been addressed, or dare I say even pondered, by most evolutionists, who remain mostly egalitarian. As long as groups can form then for cooperative benefit against other groups, hypertrophy will take place, coalitions will develop, and breeding will continue along lines of blood or common interestor both. The rich and powerful will continue to encourage their children to marry other offspring of other rich and powerful people; the underclass will breed with little regard for anything but immediate needs and desires, and others will fragment into groups between the top and the bottom feeders. Humans, given the failure to maintain racial boundaries via geographical boundaries, will divide along other salient group selection criteriaand new niches will be created and reinforced as others melt and merge. But group selection, in my opinion, with the help of eugenics will be accelerated. White notes: "As sociobiological theory would have it, quantitative genetic similarity should underlie ethnic group membership. On the other hand, qualitative genetic similarity should underlie Dobzhansky's 'aptitude aggregation.' In other words, insofar as an open class society becomes attained, class positions should be occupied by people sharing similar genetically influenced aptitudeseven though their ethnic and racial backgrounds may diverge greatly." However, this depends on the aptitude one is looking at. Perhaps it is true that sports fans may coalesce say around a athletic team because of locality, where race and or religious affiliation is muted for the sake of the school or city where the team is situated. Music likewise is often quite open racially, because music ability is not as concentrated in certain races, though it does seem to be more prevalent among Whites, Blacks and Jews. On the other hand, when it comes to say high intelligence, 'aptitude aggregation' may very well be concentrated among the intelligent racesi.e. East Asians, Whites and Jews. Likewise, Jews dominate fields that require verbal skills, and we may see more and more East Asians dominate fields that require visuospatial skills. From all available data then, aptitudes in fact do follow racial lines, making quantitative and qualitative aggregation not that different. In a cosmopolitan world, where different races come together and interact, and once the dogma of na?ve environmentalism begins to fade and race realism returns, people will build new cooperative communities. Since genes underlie aptitude, race will remain the primary determinate of which races will dominate which economic niche. In addition, since people still prefer to be with their cognitive equals, social niches will most likely follow economic niches. Niche Construction explains: "Moreover, this dual role for phenotypes in evolution does imply that a complete understanding of the relationship between human genes and cultural processes must not only acknowledge genetic inheritance and cultural inheritance, but also take account of the legacy of modified selection pressures in environments, or ecological inheritance. Again, it is readily apparent that contemporary humans are born into a massively constructed world, with an ecological inheritance that includes a legacy of houses, cities, cars, farms, nations, e-commerce, and global warming. Niche construction and ecological inheritance are thus likely to have been particularly consequential in human evolution. "Less familiar, but equally deserving of attention, are empirical data and theoretical arguments suggesting that human cultural activities have influenced human genetic evolution by modifying sources of natural selection and altering genotype frequencies in some human populations. Cultural information, expressed in the use of tools, weapons, fire, cooking, symbols, language, agriculture, and trade, may also have played an important role in driving hominid evolution in general, and the evolution of the human brain in particular. There is evidence that some cultural practices in contemporary human societies continue to affect ongoing human genetic evolutionary processes." We can expect evolutionary change to accelerate as we increasingly change our environments through technology, environmental pollution, warfare, changes in religious attitudes, and especially human genetic engineering. White explains: "[G]enetic diversity is of central significance in understanding the human condition. As I have pointed out elsewhere, it underlies both human evolution and history, for neither could take place without it. It is also responsible, directly or indirectly, for much of the cooperation, as well as the conflict, found within and between human societies. A society comprised of only one kind of person, no matter how gifted, could not function. A population composed of a million clones of a Mozart or an Einstein could not establish an effective division of labor. But genetic diversity also ensures conflict. First, it fosters individual competition. Sociobiologists argue that, insofar as each person has a unique set of genes, he or she has a uniquely individual set of interests linked to the perpetuation of those genes. And the defense of those intereststhat is, the desire for a suitable mate, home, and jobis bound to compete if not conflict with the interests of others. Humans are not alone here." It may be true that a civilization of clones would not be a happy place where a division of labor is required, but I would add that this does not mean, as some people argue, that a society of highly intelligent people, with different interests, could not adapt to specialization. When people are intelligent, they will find ways of automating the most tedious of tasks. In addition, even intelligent people often times prefer physicality to desk-bound mental pondering. Many highly intelligent people would, if they could for the same status and pay, prefer more physical work because one feels better, healthier and more alivedepending on one's personality. The important thing is that people differ in what they like to do, even if they do not necessarily differ in ability or potential. Even the brightest are asked to go to war and die for their country, a fate far more devastating than driving a garbage truck. What will be critical is that a new race of humans be so cohesive and singularly directed, that even if humans alter their environments in such a way as to make our very existence unsustainable under current conditions, that the eugenic few can survive while the rest of humanity will succumb to a deteriorated environment. Most humans are brought up in and inculcated by dogmas that make it difficult for them to change and adapt. In Niche Construction they note that, "In particular, components of the social environment, for example, traits related to family, kinship, and social stratification, may have been increasingly transmitted from one generation to the next by cultural inheritance to the extent that contemporary human populations may have become largely divorced from local ecological pressures. Support for this argument comes from Guglielmino et al.'s (1995) study of variation in cultural traits among 277 contemporary African societies, in which most of the traits they examined correlated with cultural (linguistic) history, rather than with ecological variables. If this study is representative, then socially transmitted cultural traditions are a lot more important than most evolution-minded researchers studying human behavior would admit." If culture can be so ingrained as to make people inflexible to their changing environments, any eugenics' program must ensure that as a group, we are not caught in the same cultural trap. We have to both indoctrinate our children and/or members to act cohesively for the good of the group, while maintaining cultural and intellectual flexibility to react to changes in society as they come along that will increase the group's resources. EUGENIC COMMUNITIES Recently, the Libertarian Party, after careful deliberation, selected New Hampshire as a state worth migrating to to establish a libertarian niche. How many libertarians will actually move there, and how it will increase the state's already libertarian leanings, only time will tell. However, it does show the increasing willingness of groups to advocate separation over accommodation, and eugenicists need to consider similar plans. Constructing our own niches of like-minded people allows eugenicists to live within alien and degenerate cultures, by isolating ourselves from the most corrosive forces like crime, race mixing, and being forced to pretend to be tolerant, while taking collective advantage of the rich resources available. That is, as long as the group does better financially and emotionally by living in urban areas, while resisting the debilitating aspects of the local ecology, we are better off forming small communities for advancing eugenics than hoping for a grander scheme of separation that may never come about. The most important principle in forming a eugenic community is compatibility. That is, by selecting participants that can work together, play together, and be with one another rather than interacting outside of the group, the group can protect itself from outsiders, while still tolerating as necessary diversity in the workforce and during commutes. Even during travel, attempts can be made to travel together for safety and separation from the many unwholesome types that infest urban areas. In no way am I a prude or do I shun the enjoyment of observing the many human types one comes across in large cities. I enjoy the challenge; I am probably a natural cosmopolitan. Always however, my main concern is with the value and safety of my property, along with the wellbeing of my family. These areas of concern should be easy to address as a collective, targeting specific areas for development, control and protection and therefore increasing the value of owned property. Establishing eugenic communities that can establish new value systems, especially for children, and reinforcing each other's desired goals and objectives, it becomes a lot easier to fight the impulse to conform to the status quo. As stated in Niche Construction: "Gene-culture coevolution is relevant here because it captures two central features of our evolutionary perspective. First, through their expression of socially learned information, humans are explicitly recognized as niche constructors, capable of modifying their own selection pressures. Second, the information underlying this niche construction is inherited from one generation to the next by an extragenetic inheritance system. Although cultural inheritance clearly differs in several important respects from ecological inheritance, the most notable being the informational content of the former, it may nevertheless generate modified natural selection pressures." Once the community starts to grow, it can naturally fission along differing lines of self-selection. Just like in tribal clans, once a certain size is reached, social control becomes more difficult. It is better to split apart, maintain social control, but keep contacts between groups to compare the success of differing adopted policies. It should be a competitive relationship between the differing groups, but one based on mutual interests in learning what works and what doesn'tfirmly grounded in empirical data on human behavior. Of course, as this process continues, there will always be those leaving the group and those joining. This is a natural process of selection for certain types of people, and should proceed along lines of common interests and common genes. There is a myth that hybrid vigor comes about from interracial marriage. In actuality, there is enough variability in human genes that inbreeding can be very beneficial for consolidating those genes sought afterfor intelligence and ethnocentrism for examplebringing in new genes with occasional outbreeding. The important thing is that "Cultural processes may bias human mating patterns, they may bias other human interactions, such as trade or warfare, or they may bias the choice of which infants are selected for infanticide." Tough minded eugenic communities can sublimate dysgenic attitudes into purposefully directed ones that benefit the group. With a value system driven by a culture that is focused on breeding the best, human weakness can be overcome. Children in a eugenic community must of course be the focus of any egalitarianism. That is, some people may not want to have their own children, but would like to promote the propagation of genes like those that they carry. Others may prefer the nurturing of children to the fast paced corporate life style. The community then should provide for the children, but should also not be obsessed with the children either. There is no eugenic benefit to coddling children (Krebs in Crawford & Salmon, 2004). We are learning that the human brain develops slowly after birth because it progresses along a fixed plan of learning, change and eventually pruning back unused neuronal connections. Na?ve environmentalists assume that children's learning can be accelerated, and junior will be more accomplished by force-feeding them every learning experience and every opportunity. But research has shown that an aggressive approach to teaching children too much does not make them smarter, but may just make them anxious. I propose that children be taught, not too aggressively, the value system of the eugenic community. That is, inegalitarianism for society in general, with a preference for their own kind. That is, prepare them defensively for immersion into a multicultural society, one that they will be able to negotiate within without drawing hostility from others. When it comes to pushing them into programs, sports, learning regimens, etc. however this should be resisted. Children should be socialized to interact with the group, and to be encouraged to find what they like best within the confines of the community. That is, with a highly intelligent community of children (and adults), there will be plenty of stimulation for their maturation and intellectual growth. As children get older, they will seek out their own areas of interest and pursue them efficiently, hopefully leading to a rewarding choice of interests that will carry them into successful careers. A good example of trying to make children too well rounded, as if they can master every area of culture and learning, is music. I love music, and as a kid I took up many instruments, joined the band, etc. However, I was not disciplined enough or dedicated enough to master any instrument well, and eventually left it all behind mewithout any regrets. I love music, but am more than happy to let others create it and perform it, while I just listen. My younger brother on the other hand taught himself how to be a rock-n-roll drummer when it suited him in his teens, and he mastered it magnificently. He started his own band, and was well on his way to a typical music career with lots of fun but eventual failure and a return to a more mundane existence decades later. My main point here is that music today is one vocation that can be very rewarding for a very small fraction of people, it can be enjoyed by many more for personal reasons, but for the vast majority it is usually just abandoned as the time constraints of pursuing different interests takes over. The point is, look for the few children who may really excel playing a musical instrument or singing, but don't assume they have to pursue one or the other or they will be somehow deprived of a needed talent or experience. There are simply too many areas of interest to explore for children to be exposed to all of them without taking away those areas of interest that they are genetically inclined to pursue. We live in an age of specialization, and we should allow everyone the chance to naturally make the best fit between their abilities, their interests, and what currently is of value. The other reason for not pampering children is simply that it can detract from enjoying life as an adult. For those who want to be around children, let them pursue that end. For those who prefer the company of adults, let the children be off by themselves as much as they like. That is, when children intrude on adults or vice versa, neither is benefited. In the end, some of the children will migrate out of the community, which is good because that is part of the selection process. The more committed will stay, and with each generation hypertrophy will accelerate the process of selection, niche construction, finer selection, the fissuring of large communities into smaller and more cohesive ones, etc. As White states, "Let us return to the aptitude aggregations. The successful formation of these in elite areas of talent and knowledge will, we recall, be characterized by hypertrophic tendencies that will enhance their level of performance. These tendencies will encompass the cooperative as well as the competitive. Like-minded individuals who share similar talent but not temperaments may be driven to outdo the others; those who share both the same talent and temperament may be more apt to cooperate in an effort to surpass others. Either way, higher levels of achievement are likely to be attained. And that is precisely the point, especially when the most successful in any endeavor are contrasted with the least successful. That is to say, the distance between the two groupings in Dobzhansky's world becomes greater than ever." Obviously, the eugenic community I am describing could become a highly competitive one, where internal friction could lead to conflict. The type of people attracted to such an adventure may be more independent, aggressive, and demanding of perfection than average. On the other hand, the community will be focused on understanding human behavior, and hopefully with a better understanding of what makes humans tick, the internal divisions can be kept in check and used to the advantage of the community. For example, research shows that the more complex a social system is, the more susceptible it is to exploitation by cheaters (Krebs in Crawford & Salmon, 2004). This is one reason that socialism is so terribly flawed. Efforts to help the needy are instead used by cheaters for personal gain, and the system slowly becomes more and more inefficient as more and more people take advantage of a free ride rather than producing their fair share. In addition, "Making people continually aware of their own and others' selfish motives by emphasizing these in an excessive system of rules intended to catch cheaters, may actually reduce levels of self-deception and thus cooperation. Cooperating in a sea of defectors is a maladaptive, costly strategy" (Surbey in Crawford & Salmon, 2004). It is important then to teach out-group selfishness but to minimize in-group criticism of selfish behavior, in order to reduce tensions and over zealous accounting of member's behaviors. A eugenic society could become too cynical, if fault-finding was overemphasized, and should be kept in balance. That is, we must not try to be perfect cooperators but just make sure that everyone is better off by being in the group than on their own. Very few rules then should be createdjust enough to keep the system together to meet eugenic goals. Also in Surbey and CrawfordTimothy Ketelaar discusses in detail the relationship between cooperators (who want to maximize group outcomes), individualists (who want to maximize their own outcomes), and competitors (who will reduce their own maximum outcome in order to gain an advantage over others). From a vast amount of research, it seems that there is a natural ratio of cooperators to individualists to competitors of 4:2:1. Ketelaar is not clear what social groups follow this evolutionary stable strategy, but I assume it is a typically Western one. Nonetheless, It does show that when a nation operates on egalitarian principles that assume that everyone is the same, the system will break down in several ways. First, the competitors are extremely destructive. Second, after a point even the individualists will reduce their own level of cooperation. Third, as things get even worse, there will remain a large number of too-nice do-gooders within the 57% of cooperators who will lobby for even more resource reallocation from the haves to the have-nots. (With a ratio of 4:2:1, 4/7=57% cooperators.) Therefore, a eugenic community would want to maintain a very low level of competitors, but also it would not want nice cooperatorsthat is people who would be tolerant or forgiving towards competitorsand also free-riders and/or destructive psychopaths. (Note that some psychopathy is linked with creativity and technological advancement. See Eysenck, 1999 and Lynn, 2001.) So what types of people would we ideally want in a eugenic's community? The above is just a rough stab at some of the criteria, but fundamentally, I would state categorically that we cannot tell for sure, but as niche builders, it will be our intention to find out. The communities should do one thing that is lacking in Western countries when it comes to policy decisionskeep records. That is, any community's progress, problems, failures or successes should be statistically tracked and verifiable to so changes can be made in the future. It needs to be fully flexible, ever changing, evolving system in order to win the genetics arms race. There is no room for anecdotal stories, that predominate in modern culture's narrative style of social enquiry. Matt Nuenke April 2004 See www.neoeugenics.com website for bibliography. Appendix The following was posted to the Yahoo site [evol-psyh] by Jay R. Feierman, March 4, 2004: Evolution and Human Rights Legislation Douglas Galbi says, "Human rights speak of rights flowing from the nature of every living being" and then asks, (1) "In what way are humans different from other living beings? and (2) In what ways are all human beings equal?" In terms of (1) we are different from other living species in that we are a brain-specialized species with a highly evolved neocortex, which has the ontogenetic capacity to creatively find novel solutions to thwarted goals and to ontogenetically create more time- and material-efficient ways of solving novel problems, which we then culturally pass within and across generations to our kin (and others) by imitation learning. In terms of (2) we all have similarities (equalities) as well as differences (inequalities) depending on which we are looking to delineate. Far from being a part of our nature, "human rights" are culturally concocted and transmitted, arbitrary creations of our highly evolved neo-cortices. They are not species-typical traits. What are human rights in one society are not so in another. The high status persons of each society create the list of the human rights that in the long term serve their own best interest. Governments, which are controlled by high status individuals, codify and then enforce the exercise of approved human rights and suppress the expression of the unapproved human rights. In one society freedom of speech and religion and the right to bear arms (own guns) are considered basic human rights, whereas in other societies there are no freedoms of speech or religion or the right to bear arms but wealth is redistributed so that everyone is given food, healthcare and a place to live as their basic human rights. Obviously, there is no other specie that has a list of basic rights for each member of the species. In some human societies equal opportunity is considered a basic human right, which is the so-called "level playing field" concept. In other societies, equal outcome is considered a basic human right and resources are redistributed by the government and some humans are given preferential treatment to make the outcomes more equal. The concept of human rights always requires a government to establish and enforce them, since they are arbitrary. So I would take issue with Douglas's Galbi's basic premise that "human rights . . . flow from the nature of every living being." Instead, it appears that what are called human rights are culturally arbitrary access, denial and redistribution rules that in the long run have to serve interest of the rule makers. In the United States we are told that it is our "God given right" for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So even these so called rights are considered "God given" and not part of our basic human nature. Oh Natural Selection, where did my idealism of youth go? From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:06:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:06:44 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: India special: The next knowledge superpower Message-ID: India special: The next knowledge superpower http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524876.800&print=true 5.2.19 THE first sign that something was up came about eight years back. Stories began to appear in the international media suggesting that India was "stealing" jobs from wealthy nations - not industrial jobs, like those that had migrated to south-east Asia, but the white-collar jobs of well-educated people. Today we know that the trickle of jobs turned into a flood. India is now the back office of many banks, a magnet for labour-intensive, often tedious programming, and the customer services voice of everything from British Airways to Microsoft. In reality, the changes in India have been more profound than this suggests. Over the past five years alone, more than 100 IT and science-based firms have located R&D labs in India. These are not drudge jobs: high-tech companies are coming to India to find innovators whose ideas will take the world by storm. Their recruits are young graduates, straight from India's universities and elite technology institutes, or expats who are streaming back because they see India as the place to be - better than Europe and the US. The knowledge revolution has begun. The impact of the IT industry on the economy has been enormous. In 1999 it contributed 1.3 per cent of India's GDP. Last year that figure had grown to 3 per cent. And what's good for one science-based industry should be good for others. India has a thriving pharmaceutical industry which is restructuring itself to take on the world. And biotech is taking off. The attitude is growing that science cannot be an exclusively intellectual pursuit, but must be relevant economically and socially. The hope among some senior scientists and officials is that India can short-cut the established path of industrial development and move straight to a knowledge economy. For the New Scientist reporters who have been in India for this special report, many features of the country stand out. First, its scale and diversity. With a population of more than a billion, the country presents some curious contrasts. It has the world's 11th largest economy, yet it is home to more than a quarter of the world's poorest people. It is the sixth largest emitter of carbon dioxide, yet hundreds of millions of its people have no steady electricity supply. It has more than 250 universities which catered last year for more than 3.2 million science students, yet 39 per cent of adult Indians cannot read or write. These contrasts take tangible form on the outskirts of cities from Chennai to Delhi, Mumbai to Bangalore. Here, often next to poor areas, great gleaming towers of glass are growing in which knowledge workers do their thinking. These images of modernity are a far cry from stereotypical India - a place bedevilled alternately by drought and flood, of poor farmers and slum-dwellers. Yet both sets of images are real - and many others besides. High-tech is not the sole preserve of the rich. Fishermen have begun using mobile phones to price their catch before they make port, and autorickshaw drivers carry a phone so that customers can call for a ride. Technology companies are extending internet connections to the remotest locations. Small, renewable electricity generators are appearing in villages, and the government is using home-grown space technology to improve literacy skills and education in far-flung areas. These efforts are often piecemeal, and progress is slow. "Illiteracy today is reducing only at the rate of 1.3 per cent per annum," says R. A. Mashelkar, director-general of the government's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. "At this rate, India will need 20 years to attain a literacy rate of 95 per cent." He is hopeful that technology can speed up this process. Science too has its role to play. Critics of India's investment priorities ask why the country spends large sums on moon rockets and giant telescopes while it is still struggling to find food and water for millions of its citizens? The answer is that without science, poverty will never be beaten. "You cannot be industrially and economically advanced unless you are technologically advanced, and you cannot be technologically advanced unless you are scientifically advanced," says C. N. R. Rao, the prime minister's science adviser. Rise of the middle class The knowledge revolution is already swelling the ranks of India's middle class - already estimated to number somewhere between 130 million and 286 million. And the gulf in spending power between the poor and the comfortably off has never been more apparent. Take cars. Sales are rising at more than 20 per cent a year. Before India opened up its economy in the early 1990s, only a few models were available, almost all home-built. Today, top-end imported cars have become real status symbols. Another consequence of the knowledge revolution is that the extreme wealth of a new breed of young, high-tech yuppies is challenging traditional gender roles and social values. Whether the new-found prosperity and excitement of present-day India can be sustained will depend crucially on how the government guides the country over the next few years. Cheap labour and the widespread use of English do not guarantee success, and there are major obstacles that the country will need to tackle to ensure continued growth. Take infrastructure. Where China has pumped billions into water, road and rail projects, India has let them drift. Likewise, companies complain that bureaucracy and corruption make doing business far more difficult than it ought to be. One of the critical issues facing India is the gulf between the academic world and industry. The notion that scientific ideas lead to technology and from there to wealth is not widespread. This stems in large measure from the attitudes prevalent before 1991. Before economic liberalisation, competition between Indian companies was tame, so they were under no pressure to come up with new ideas, nor did academics promote their ideas to industry. India's attitude to patents are a product of that mindset. The country has no tradition of patenting, and only recently have institutions and academics started spinning off companies and filing for patents in earnest. Most applications filed in India still come from foreign companies. Until this year, the country did not recognise international patent rules, a failure that hampered interactions with foreign companies. The suspicion remains that Indian companies are out to steal ideas, says Gita Sharma, chief scientific officer of Magene Life Sciences, a start-up company in Hyderabad. "We are not yet able to wipe away that image." And while India has now adopted those international rules on paper, there are still concerns about how strictly they will be enforced. "It will take a couple of years before the full implications play out," says Sankar Krishnan, a biotechnology analyst for McKinsey and Company in Mumbai. Bringing research round to a more commercial way of thinking is not the only issue that academia must face up to. Another cultural problem, according to some scientists, is that too often institutions have an ethos of playing safe. Researchers who devise and test daring theories are criticised if they fail, discouraging the kind of ground-breaking research that India needs. There is a widespread view that the entire university system needs an overhaul. India awards only 5000 science PhDs a year, says Mashelkar, yet it should be producing 25,000. There are funding problems and political interference in the running of some universities, particularly those run by state governments. In response, central government has decided to select 30 universities, give them extra money, and mentor and monitor them to create a series of elite institutions. But such changes will be for nothing if students choose not to study science. In recent years, increasing numbers have chosen to study IT and management because that's where money is to be made. "IT and outsourcing has improved the economy and quality of life of people, but has had a negative effect on science," Rao says. Mashelkar hopes that as science-based companies grow, and demand for fresh blood increases, salaries will rise and more students will opt for science. Chasing China These problems must be solved if India is to capitalise on its recent gains, and there are hopeful signs that Indian science is improving in the global scheme of things. Its share of the top, highly cited publications has increased, but it is starting from a very low base. The government spends only $6 billion a year on research and it still has fewer scientists per head of population than China or South Korea. India's greatest rival has always been its giant neighbour to the north. While IT and services are helping India log 6 per cent year-on-year increases in GDP, China's vast manufacturing base is raising its GDP by around 9 per cent a year. Even in India's strong suit of knowledge-based industries, China could still steal the march on it, not least because its Communist government can command change, while in India the democratic government can only guide national development. Nevertheless, the rewards for India of a thriving science-based economy could be huge. The investment bank Goldman Sachs estimates that if India gets everything right it will have the third largest economy in the world by 2050, after China and the US. India is not yet a knowledge superpower. But it stands on the threshold. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:07:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:07:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] David Goetze and Patrick James: Evolutionary Psychology and the Explanation of Ethnic Phenomena Message-ID: David Goetze and Patrick James: Evolutionary Psychology and the Explanation of Ethnic Phenomena http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html Evolutionary Psychology 2: 142-159 5.1.22 David B. Goetze, Department of Political Science, 0725 Old Main Hill, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-0725, USA. Patrick James, Political Science Department, 113 Professional Building, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Abstract: In a recent series of articles, Hislope (1998, 2000) and Harvey (2000a, 2000b) have raised questions about the usefulness of "evolutionary theory" especially for any purpose other than identifying "distal" causes of ethnic phenomena. This article responds to those views and argues that evolutionary psychology shows great promise in contributing to the explanation of contemporary ethnic identities and ethnic conflict. The authors argue that an evolutionary psychology approach embraces research conducted through conventional social science approaches, helps to complete explanations of the proximate causes of ethnic conflict, and can recast thought and encourage new areas of research about important issues in the ethnic conflict field. Illustrations are provided in support of each of these points. Some of these arguments have been heard before with respect to the general role of evolutionary theory in explaining social phenomena but they are arguments we think bear repeating and illustrating in the context of the study of ethnic phenomena. Before examining the ways that evolutionary psychology can contribute to social science explanation of ethnic phenomena, we summarize the general evolutionary psychology approach to the study of social behavior. Keywords : affective intelligence model, Balkans, Bosnia, ethnic conflict, fitness cliff, inclusive fitness, intolerance, kinship bonding, martyr, nationalism, proximate cause, Rwanda, social norms, threat. _________________________________________________________________ Evolutionary Psychology Approach An elaborate description and defense of the general evolutionary psychology approach to the study of social science phenomena is found in Tooby and Cosmides (1990, 1992), Cosmides and Tooby (1994) and Buss (1995). Because ethnic phenomena and ethnic conflict are human social phenomena there is no obvious reason why evolutionary psychology cannot be applied to their study and, indeed, ample reason why it makes sense to do so. Van den Berghe (1981), Johnson, (1986) and Salter (2000), for example, have strongly suggested that psychological mechanisms revolving around kinship bonding are pivotal in generating ethnic behaviors. More broadly, an evolutionary psychology approach posits that, through the process of natural selection, humans have acquired a diverse array of mental mechanisms. Each one is designed to respond to the demands of a specific environmental problem or task that is relevant to the survival and reproductive success of the individual and has been repeatedly encountered by humans in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Persistent exposure to a particular environmental problem over large numbers of generations results in the evolution of a well-defined adaptation in the form of a psychological mechanism. In general, evolved psychological mechanisms are thought to operate in an algorithmic fashion. Scanning and filtering functions of a mechanism identify environmental stimuli that constitute a particular environmental problem or task and elicit specific emotions and behaviors that address the problem or task in ways that contribute to its adaptive resolution. Evolved psychological mechanisms are thought to exist for addressing innumerable problems and tasks such as: mate choice, hunting, alliance formation, and reputation-building, to name only a few. Among the problems and tasks relevant to ethnic phenomena are: group bonding and cooperation for both benign and malevolent purposes, and responses to the menace of group threat and conflict. Embracing Conventional Research Research that adopts an evolutionary psychological approach can be quite complementary with traditional social science research that addresses these same ethnic phenomena. When developed insights of evolutionary psychology are brought into the analysis explanations can be expanded and given more meaning. To the point, an especially crucial aspect of the explanation of ethnic phenomena involves the description of human nature. The most common way of facilitating explanations among traditional researchers is to adopt ad hoc and implied assumptions about human nature and to investigate causal factors consistent only with those assumptions. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists do not take "nature" for granted and, instead, hypothesize about the relevant mechanisms of the human brain that come into play as humans engage in ethnic behaviors. They bring novel elements to an explanation by fleshing out hypotheses about the possible connections among environmental stimuli, mental activity, and actual behaviors that generations of adaptations have given us. Evolutionary psychology approaches synthesize traditional dichotomies between so-called nature and nurture by acknowledging the interaction between environment and culture on the one hand and the genetically-inspired mechanisms and molds of human social behaviors on the other. Ultimately, behaviors result from these interactions as environmental events trigger mental mechanisms, shape the paths of human development, and even co-evolve with the mechanisms themselves (Ridley, 2003; Marcus, 2003). The evolutionary concept of "inclusive fitness" (developed by Hamilton (1964, 1970, 1971) and West-Eberhard (1975) and popularized by Wilson (1975) and Dawkins (1979, 1982)) has provided a dramatic boost to the explanation of social behavior. Inclusive fitness refers to the idea that humans enhance the spread of genes like their own by acting beneficently towards close kin and that natural selection would have favored genes that expressed such beneficent behavior. While the basic concept is widely accepted in the evolutionary psychology field, the role of inclusive fitness in explaining the existence of altruism and bonding for groups larger than families and clans is still developing. Van den Berghe (1981) and Johnson (1986) have emphasized evolved mechanisms that activate kinship bonding whenever humans recognize appropriate "markers" in others (i.e., encounter specific initiating environmental stimuli) such as ethnic features, language, and mere association. These markers serve as indicators for whomever might qualify as remote or perceived family among the multitudes of contemporary societies. Rushton (1989) identifies phenotypic similarities as the stimuli that initiate kinship bonding mechanisms. Goetze (1998) argues that all of these psychological mechanisms likely evolved in hunter-gatherer society but their ability to generate bonding in large-scale groups derives, in part, from the mobility of modern humans and the difficulties in mobile societies of actually locating real kin. Hence, humans exhibit at least minimal bonding emotions and behaviors with large numbers of surrogate family. In traditional research, debate about the depth and durability of ethnic attachments has been carried on between the primordialists who see such bonding as strong, extremely durable and originating far into a sometimes mysterious past and circumstantialists who see group bonding as ephemeral and interest-driven (Scott, 1990). While not sealing the case for primordialism, inclusive fitness concerns provide at least some scientific footing for the position and reduces some of the mystery about group origins by demonstrating how strong, durable ethnic group attachments might have formed and persevered. An historian, Peter Mentzel (2000) utilizes the concept of a kinship bonding mechanism to explore variation in the origins of nationalist loyalties and viable nation-states in the Balkans, especially as they developed under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. To begin, he notes that nationalism, the politically active expression of ethnic identity, resulted in more effective and stable nation-states in Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria than in the territories largely populated by Albanians. The former can all point to politically autonomous units emerging as the cohesion and strength of the Ottoman Empire waned. By the 19th century, Serbia established a full-fledged nation-state that would endure through the Yugoslav period and maintain its cohesiveness despite disastrous attempts by Serbian political elites to establish a Serbian Empire all its own, despite the essential loss of the region of Kosovo, and despite the economic deprivations imposed by NATO bombing and a regime of economic sanctions. In contrast, an Albanian political entity did not develop until the Yugoslav era, failed to incorporate the lion's share of the adjacent Albanian population, and has continued in a status so fragile that a collapsing pyramid scheme nearly tore the fledgling Albanian state asunder. A traditional issue for scholars and for Mentzel is explaining the development of nations or nation-states and in the particular case, why the Croats, Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks, and even Bosnians have been successful at state-building and the Albanians were relatively unsuccessful. A traditional answer has been to assert that nationalisms are constructions of political elites designed to serve their political ends and that elite manipulations are the focal point for understanding the building of nation-states (See, for example, Rothschild, 1981; Mason, 1994). This approach begs the question, however, of why such constructions would have resonated with mass populations or why they would have failed to do so. Mentzel's analysis provides a persuasive connection between elite manipulations and the responses of the masses. Following the work on kinship bonding and especially that of Johnson (1986), he argues that kinship is the foundation stone for the often cooperative, emotional and fairly durable attachments that individuals make to larger social associations and, ultimately, to national groups. The evolved psychology of kinship is not perfectly refined and humans react in kin-like manner (forge strong attachments to nonkin) when the triggers of kinship attachment are invoked. Calls to protect the Motherland, for example, can stir the sacrificial behaviors of broad classes of unrelated peoples. This can work even when political leaders - and institutions more generally - lack a democratic base of public legitimacy. The archetypal case is Josef Stalin's appeal to fight for 'Mother Russia' against the German invaders. Not everyone listened, but the point is that even Stalin eschewed an ideological or personal appeal in this instance, understanding at a fundamental level that kinship had the best chance of working under the most dire of conditions. Mentzel's unique contribution here is in showing how a layered development of ever larger associations could produce national level associations and how the absence of this line of development serves as an obstacle to the leap from direct kin-based groups to the enormous and often demanding associations of nations and nation-states. He argues that clan-based associations needed to pass through intermediate associations that were constructed on evocation of kin sentiments before they could make the leap to national groups. In the Balkans, the intermediate associations that would perform those functions were the "autonomous confessional associations," more commonly thought of as religious associations. Except for Croatia, the growth of Balkan nationalisms could be traced to the religious "millets" organized in the Ottoman Empire. According to Mentzel, these formal, nonterritorial associations were coterminous with the less formal religious groups that had developed as large-scale, transcendent replacements for earlier clan associations. The evocation of kinship had enabled these religious associations to emerge and were given added impetus by Ottoman organizational schemes. These events had succeeded in pushing social organization into large-scale associations that were, nonetheless, cemented by deep-seated emotional attachments. The final step in the transition to nationalisms was to define territories and add political status to these large-scale associations. Nation-states in the Balkans can be seen as territorial and political extensions of religious associations or, as in the Bosnian case, as more or less tenuous alliances among these associations. Albania is the exception. Religious associations apparently never succeeded in forging clan associations into transcendent associations. Albanians adhere in significant numbers to Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam but those faiths did not serve to organize clans or to evoke extensively the triggers of kinship affiliation that an organization of clans would have enabled. Interclan relations and amalgamations were not coterminous with religious affiliation. Lacking religious grounds, elites attempted to build national identity out of a sense of common language, but this effort was limited by the obvious reality that Albanians spoke two distinct languages. In Mentzel's (2000, p. 251) own words: To restate all of this one could argue that Albanian nationalists faced such a difficult task precisely because they needed to confront (and attempt to co-opt) kinship relations such as the Albanian clans directly without being able to use confessional group attachments as an intermediary or disguised kinship association. Hence, Albanian nationalist intellectuals stressed linguistic nationalism in their attempts to build an Albanian national consciousness, an effort made difficult because of the Gheg/Tosk division. Efforts to develop national identities and states in most Balkan communities succeeded because of a progressive effort to expand the scale and depth of associations that elicit kin-based affiliations. Efforts to forge a national identity in Albania have not yet culminated in comparable success because the evocation of kinship affiliation was not or could not be used to forge a progression of supra-kin associations. In paralleling traditional scholarship and in studying the construction of national identity, Mentzel has rendered the variation in a truly important and widely studied political phenomenon more understandable by elaborating on a fundamental concept from the repertoire of evolutionary psychology. Hopefully, Mentzel's work will inform and enrich the continuing work of traditional scholars in this field. Completing Explanations The categories of research examined here are by no means exclusive. Mentzel's research was clearly directed at completing an explanation of national identities. Because it was so firmly embedded in traditional historical research, we chose to use it as an example of the first category, "embracing conventional research." The research reported on below could also be placed in the same category. We place it in the category of "completing explanations," however, because of its potential in making complete an explanation of ethnic conflict where the lack of completeness is especially salient. This research (Goetze and Smith, 2004) demonstrates how evolutionary psychology has the potential for playing an important role in constructing explanations of ethnic conflict that include the proximate causes of ethnic conflict. This suggestion actually runs counter to the positions of Hislope and Harvey who, in a previously noted series of articles (Hislope, 1998; 2000; Harvey, 2000a; 2000b), review the contributions of evolutionary theory to the study of ethnic conflict. These authors argue that evolutionary theory has the capacity to identify only the distal causes of ethnic conflict. While acknowledging that evolved traits are important in such distal explanations, Hislope (2000, pp. 161-162) prefers to focus on "culture" as the source of proximate explanations: A second reason for the inclusion of genetic factors when a dependent variable appears explained by culture revolves around the difference between proximate and distal explanations. While culture may stand in an unmediated and direct causal path to any given behavioral trait, what makes the cultural factor possible could be a certain biological predisposition, a gene, or a novel turn in the evolutionary history of the species. Hence, exploring distal causal factors helps to complete the chain of causation and provides an understanding of why things are the way they are. If sociobiologists were to frame their study in such exploratory "distal" terms, it is likely they could silence some of their more severe critics. Later, Hislope (2000, p. 174) offers his view on the extent of the reach of evolutionary theory - the longest reach being in the cultural evolutionary variant: The argument advanced herein is that the articulation of cultural evolutionary theory represents theoretical progress over sociobiology, but its explanatory payoff remains limited due to the role of contingency in human affairs and the significance of non-evolutionary, proximate causal factors. While evolutionary theory undoubtedly elucidates the development of all organic life, it would seem to operate best at macro-levels of analysis, "distal" points of explanation, and from the perspective of the long-term. Hence, it is bound to display shortcomings at micro-level events that are highly contingent in nature. Likewise, Harvey (2000b, p. 184) finds evolutionary theory wholly inadequate for even contributing to the explanation of micro events such as the outbreak of war and ethnic violence: Research on evolutionary theory, phenotype matching and kinship affiliations is extremely useful for understanding the root causes of patriotism, nationalism (both ethnic and non-ethnic), xenophobia, and even racism. But it cannot explain ethnic war - that particular subset of human social interaction that involves a high level of inter-group violence and hostility. Nor can it account for variations in the severity and timing of ethnic violence more generally. Stronger explanations for this variability focus on environmental forces, some of which underscore the prominent role played by ethnic elites in the mobilization process. We can easily share the observation that evolutionary theory has previously offered little in the way of adding to proximate explanation of ethnic conflict. That condition is, we believe, only temporary and Hislope and Harvey have underestimated the potential that evolutionary psychology offers in forming proximate explanations of social behavior including the outbreak of ethnic conflict. Again, we do not claim that evolved mechanisms are the only source for constructing explanations of social behaviors. We agree with Hislope that monocausal explanations of social phenomena are unlikely to be sustainable. We do argue, however, that evolved psychological mechanisms typically play large roles in accounting for most social behaviors including the outbreak of ethnic conflict. And, what often seem to be cultural events independent of and cut off from evolutionary processes may themselves have evolved as functional adaptations that complement or activate embedded psychological mechanisms. In a preliminary study of the triggers of ethnic conflict, Goetze and Smith (2004) report on a mechanism derived from evolutionary psychology premises that illustrate these interactions in the context of group mobilization for conflict. In particular, they posit an alarm mechanism that disposes individuals to organize in the defense and offense of their ethnic group when viable and deadly threats to the security of their group are experienced. The behavioral manifestations of this mechanism are precisely the organization of group defense and offense when threats are encountered and, as activating stimuli, the dissemination of threats (cultural phenomena) by political elites who wish to engender a conflict situation. Why would humans possess such a mechanism? Alexander (1979, section 4) has speculated that humans developed alarm mechanisms that might even be specific to human threats as a result of cumulative experiences in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Once humans had emerged as the dominant species able to defend against nonhuman predators, their most feared competitors were other humans and especially other humans who were organized as a group for the purpose of predatory mayhem. Behaviors that served as responses to threats from other humans may have been necessary for immediate survival and became adaptive as threat circumstances were repeated over the generations. One can imagine that an array of menacing stimuli provokes defensive reactions and that an array of behaviors could manifest those reactions. A plausible speculation is that murderous threats and actions directed at members of an ethnic group due to their ethnic identity are included among the array of menacing stimuli. Likewise, behavioral dispositions to organize group defense or offense in the face of those threats are included among the array of adaptive reactions. Empirical evidence that such connected stimuli and behaviors are universal across cultures and group conflict conditions would constitute considerable support for believing them to be part of an evolved psychological mechanism - their universality arguing for adaptations formulated early and effectively in the EEA. Goetze and Smith (2004) report on two such cases of intense, violent ethnic group conflict in Bosnia and Rwanda, respectively, and examined the circumstances that preceded the outbreak of organized hostilities in each case. In Bosnia in 1995, the contagion effect of group hostilities in neighboring regions was clearly in play. Croat and Serb (officially, Yugoslav) forces had recently engaged in a full-scale war and tensions in Bosnia about what Serbs in the region might do next were certainly high. Serbian elites within Bosnia who controlled television transmissions began disseminating reports of Muslim atrocities against Serbian villagers in which the latter were reportedly murdered by the former. No documentation that these events actually occurred has been put forward suggesting very strongly that the reports were concocted by Serbian elites in order to send off alarm bells in the minds of the Serbian masses. In many Serbian villages, the organization of militias soon followed and these militias were, in turn, often organized into more regular forces for carrying on systematic hostilities within Bosnia. These media messages about Muslim atrocities were, of course, available to Muslim elites and masses and one would expect that Muslims would organize militias in alarm over Serbian activities. Yet initially, Muslims did not commence organization of communal militias on a widespread basis. Perhaps the messages did not deliver the same provocative stimuli as they delivered to the Serbs. More likely, however, reactions are conditioned by the degree of vulnerability of the group to assaults by other groups. Groups that are most vulnerable and relatively defenseless against communal assaults, as the Muslims were at that time, have often tended to keep a low profile reminiscent of the "freeze" tactics that other small mammals assume when confronted with superior predators. A "rational" explanation of this behavior is that individuals in vulnerable groups assess that their own defense preparations could provoke other groups into preemptive assaults and that the balance of forces does not offer favorable outcomes to the vulnerable group. Humans surely make calculations of this sort but only evolutionary psychology offers an explanation as to why some manner of calculation clicks on in these types of situations - such situations have been repeatedly encountered in the environment of evolutionary adaptation and selection favored mental mechanisms that could generate behaviors that optimally responded to the threats to survival and reproduction. In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu elites disseminated messages over mass media that made reference to Tutsi atrocities committed against Hutu villagers, but Hutus required little convincing as the reality of recent Tutsi assaults on Hutus in neighboring Burundi was common knowledge. Again, the atmosphere was already tense and Hutu elites needed only to persuade Hutus that similar massacres could easily occur in their own country. In fact, the media campaign was geared primarily to spurring the organization of Hutus for the purpose of massacring Tutsis and eliminating the latter from the country. At least within Rwanda itself, Tutsis lacked resources to mount any kind of defense against what developed as genocidal killing. Hence, in most regions of the country, their reaction was predictably oriented toward the "freeze" alternative and little organization was observable among them to combat Hutu assaults. Only the regions bordering Uganda experienced a military response. Tutsis had held important positions within the Ugandan army and constituted an important proportion of its manpower. Out of that military diaspora, a Rwandan army (Rwandan Population Front or RPF) was forged that ultimately invaded Rwanda and drove out the Hutu militias as well as the regular Hutu army units. All of this happened despite the relatively small numbers of Tutsis in the Rwandan population (at any time no more than 20%) and despite the nearly successful attempt at massacring the entire Tutsi civilian population. Perhaps two-thirds of the Tutsi population would be slaughtered before the RPF would take control of the country. The massive acquiescence of the Rwandan Tutsis was notable for its uniformity of form -- almost no civilians attempted any resistance or attempted to organize a resistance - and its universality - all civilians appeared to react in the same fashion. An evolved psychological mechanism that generates uniform behaviors in response to similar and powerful stimuli offers as much explanation as any for the lack of variation in behaviors, a pattern that seems anomalous from a common sense point of view. At the same time, variation in response to murderous threats was clearly apparent across the Balkans and Rwandan cases and across the groups within the Balkans. Goetze and Smith posit that a complex of stimuli that include murderous threats and perceived military capabilities affect whether freeze or mobilization responses emerge. Another possibility is that perceived credibility of reports of murderous assaults shapes mobilization responses. Clearly, false reports of group assault will encounter different responses from one society to the next. Some societies will be disposed to accept these reports as true. Others will dismiss them rapidly as without substance. In the USA, reports from white supremacists groups that Jews and African Americans are murdering whites are generally not believed. The important issue then becomes: what are the environmental conditions that nurture disbelief in one society or, conversely, what are the environmental conditions that make such reports credible? Recasting Thought Evolutionary theory can recast thought, encourage new areas of research, and generate novel hypotheses about important issues in the ethnic conflict field and help to determine which areas of research are especially important. Threat Mechanism A unique question raised by an evolutionary psychology approach is exactly how does an evolved psychological mechanism function? How do specific behaviors connect algorithmically with specific environmental stimuli? Marcus, Wood, and Theiss-Morse (1998) attempt to isolate the workings of what they call a threat mechanism. In particular, they develop a model that connects specific environmental stimuli with a set of behaviors that they label intolerance. They are interested in intolerance directed at members of an out-group, typically some manner of ethnic or racial group. The primary problem, as they see it, is to identify the environmental stimuli that provoke intolerant behaviors. Identifying the right stimuli can be accomplished, however, only by gaining understanding of the process through which stimuli are translated into behaviors. They begin their model-building task by first reviewing features of two general models that have been used to explain threat behaviors - a rational actor model and a symbolic politics model. The salient features of a rational actor model include an assessment mechanism that initiates intolerance behaviors whenever threatening stimuli are perceived. More specifically, the mechanism surveys the environment and assesses the probability of a dangerous event occurring. Intolerance behaviors are seen as coping devices designed to ameliorate or nullify the danger. An individual might attempt to deprive a group of political rights, for example, if members of that group are engaging in behaviors that have a high probability of infringing on the status of one's own group. A symbolic politics model identifies provocative behavior as the mere presence of a member of a group that is associated with a threat earlier in one's life or the presence of some symbol of the group. People respond to these symbols in intolerant ways not because they pose real threats or even a probability of real threat in the contemporary environment but because the symbols acquired a negative valence (through cultural transmission or conditioning) at a distant time in the past. Environmental stimuli are not assessed through rational calculation that evaluates the degree of threat but almost subconsciously in a way that arouses emotional responses. By triggering affect and emotion, intolerant behaviors are set in motion. The type of stimuli that initiate this sequence are deviations from norms - an action, event, or person that represents a violation of the status quo and carries the associated negative valence. Marcus, Wood, and Theiss-Morse (1998) find fault with these models and propose a new model that corrects for deficiencies. They cite previous work (Kinder and Sears, 1981) that demonstrates that the degree of threat posed in a contemporary environment fails to elicit appropriately measured intolerance responses and other studies (Hamill, Wilson, and Nisbett, 1980; Jennings, Amabile, and Ross, 1982; Kahneman and Tversky, 1982; Nisben and Ross, 1982) that show that the human brain may not be adept at processing threats in a conscious calculated manner. They note that rational calculation of threat is unlikely to be the process invoked in threatening circumstances because rational calculation is a relatively time-intensive process and threats need rapid responses. Hence, the subconscious, affective system of processing is more likely to be invoked because this system processes stimuli at very rapid speeds. However, the notion that even the affective system is triggered to produce coping responses by high values on a differentiated threat dimension may by misguided. The degree of immediate danger is not likely to be the activating stimuli. Instead, the authors suggest that threat responses tend to be provoked when out-groups are perceived to be engaging in violations of accepted societal norms - in other words, alarm bells tend to go off when out-groups are disrupting the societal environment - an intriguing conclusion that suggests a new class of behaviors that ought to be examined in the search for proximate causes of ethnic conflict. In a clever experimental design, Marcus, et al (1995) tested the validity of the rational choice model, the symbolic politics model, and their own affective intelligence model. First, subjects were given the opportunity to rate a wide variety of different groups according to their likes and dislikes. This procedure enabled subjects to "rely on their previously secured affective disposition ..." Two weeks later the same subjects were confronted with alternative scenarios involving actions of groups that they had rated as "least-liked." The actions were distinguished by whether the disliked groups were moving into positions in society where they could pose danger to the subject or by whether the actions of the group violated accepted norms of social or political behavior. Thus, the scenarios created an opportunity to assess, on the one hand, the likelihood of threat and, on the other hand, the violation of social norms. In an initial study, the subjects were presented with written scenarios and in a subsequent study, subjects were presented with actual news broadcasts. The results were similar in both studies. They found that the degree of threat did not provoke differences in tolerance/intolerance evaluations as measured by a post-experiment questionnaire. However, violations of social norms did elicit more intolerant responses, thereby, supporting that aspect of the affective intelligence model that identifies norm violations as the environmental activators of the mechanism that generates intolerant behaviors. In a follow-up experiment; Marcus, Wood, and Theiss-Morse (1998) also measured the affective-anxiety levels of subjects as they were being exposed to news broadcasts that did or did not display violations of social norms. They found that anxiety levels were significantly higher when violations of social norms were present in the news broadcasts, again lending credence to the notion that processing of the threat was taking place on an emotional level rather than on the level of rational calculation. Many real-world cases of conflict offer at least casual support for the affective intelligence model. Recent developments in the Arab-Israel conflict comprise a case in point. During that summer of 2000, President Clinton attempted to broker an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that would settle longstanding, even ancient, land claims. The bargaining focused on what percentages of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be controlled by the Palestinian Authority, after further devolution of authority from Israel. While no meaningful agreement on the main issues emerged between representatives of the respective sides, both Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak seemed open to continuing negotiations, with either Clinton or (more likely) someone else as the intermediary. In other words, the "peace process," as it became known, seemed to be moving forward in an incremental fashion, subject to the usual short-term disappointments such as those experienced in the summer meetings. The likelihood of violence in the conflict, in at least an impressionistic sense, seemed at an all-time low. All of this changed dramatically and in a manner consistent with the framework of affective intelligence soon after negotiations lapsed. A visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in the early fall of 2000 ignited street violence from Palestinians at a level not seen since the Intifadah of the late 1980s. This simple act, by one person, brought the logic of affective intelligence into play. Through his visit to a site holy to both Jews and Arabs in the Old City of Jerusalem, Sharon violated what appeared to be a basic social norm within the peace process. As a living symbol of Israel's incursion into Lebanon in 1982, Sharon, within the context of the winding down of the Arab-Israel conflict, would not be expected to enter a high-profile point of dispute such as the Temple Mount. For Palestinians this constituted an extreme departure from what appeared to be a long-term commitment by Israel to self-restraint. Thus Sharon's visit became the stimulus for a Palestinian response that, in the language of Marcus, et al., consisted of intolerance behaviors. As would be expected by the logic of affective intelligence, the processing of threat appeared to be taking place on an emotional level and largely in the form of social norm violations rather than through rational calculation. Marcus and his colleagues presented us with a model of how an evolved psychological mechanism processes threat stimuli and converts these stimuli into intolerance behaviors. Their work exemplifies the fruitfulness of examining the actual workings of psychological mechanisms that come into play as ethnic group conflicts develop and argues strongly for a research program that examines the workings of a range of psychological mechanisms that may be involved in the elicitation of ethnic behaviors. The affective intelligence model describes a psychological mechanism that generates intolerance behaviors. Some of the details of that model may have relevance for developing more refined explanations of other ethnic phenomena including mobilization for violent group conflict. Reports of ethnic massacres signify an extreme degree of threat and it is hard to dismiss the influence of these reports in triggering group mobilization. However, massacres are also clear violations of social norms and these aspects of massacres may play a more prominent role in activating group responses than one might initially think. Suicide Bombing Behaviors surrounding suicide bombing are not exclusively ethnic phenomena, but are important and frequently overlap with ethnic phenomena, especially when a bombing targets a group that is of a distinctly different ethny. Atran and others [[9]1] have explored the genesis of suicide bombing and, in particular, why individuals become suicide bombers. These authors utilize several ideas from evolutionary psychology to generate novel hypotheses about the motives of suicide bombers and about the factors in their environments that could generate their terrorist behaviors. Initially, Atran (2003a) cites the work of Krueger and Maleckova (2002) and Krueger (2003) whose profiles of Palestinian suicide bombers reveal few traits that set them apart from other individuals in their societies. Suicide bombers are at least as educated and at least as economically well-off and employed as the general population. Moreover, they are not notably more religious than others at least prior to their recruitment into terrorist organizations. Importantly, they also exhibited no pattern of personality pathology that could have set them apart from others. Hence, the socio-economic and personality profiles of suicide bombers offer few obvious clues about why they choose this line of work and puts scholars at something of a loss in trying to explain these choices. Where can we look then to answer why individuals join terrorist organizations and engage in suicide bombings? Suicide bombers may not be very different from the general population in their societies. However, it does not follow that the societies themselves are profiles of normality. Acknowledging this environmental condition and drawing inspiration from evolutionary thought, Atran and his commentators derive at least three explanatory hypotheses. The first is a sociobiological one that focuses on individual motives. The second hypothesis points to macro-environmental conditions that create so-called "fitness cliffs." [[10]2] And, finally, a third hypothesis points to the fictive kinship of the small group environment of terrorist organizations as a determining factor in suicidal behaviors. These are interwoven hypotheses in the sense that the explanation embodied in the first hypothesis sets the stage for the second and third hypotheses. Among the few distinctive traits that stand out among suicide bombers are their maleness and unmarried status. Lacking children of their own and any immediate prospects of bearing any, unmarried males might be more inclined to sacrifice, up to forfeiture of their own lives, for the sake of the welfare of others who are born and nurtured by others but perceived to be kin. The resort to the sacrifice of one's own life for perceived kin may make sense, however, only in a society where conditions in the environment have resulted in diminished life prospects. The choice to engage in suicide bombing can be viewed then as a fundamental inclination to enhance one's inclusive fitness. However, single unmarried status hardly serves as the sole condition pushing young males into such drastic acts. In societies characterized by violent military occupation, inadequate medical care, and minimal economic opportunities life tends to be brutish and short. The prospects for fruitful and fecund family life are especially dim for unmarried males and the support of already existing kin might assume relatively higher adaptive value than marshalling resources for one's own future, i.e., where the cliff of fitness abruptly descends. Martyrdom can bring financial rewards to existing kin but more importantly, confers status on entire clans. Suicide bombings typically impose damage on society's enemies and are viewed by many as enhancing future outcomes for that society. Events with origins exogenous to the society may created the fitness cliff or render it dramatically steeper. The occupation of Palestine by Israeli troops is an often cited example of an event that has eroded the life prospects of Palestinians. In explaining why Palestinians take up suicide bombing, Jessica Stern (2003: 38) remarks in her book on religious terrorists: "Hopelessness, deprivation, envy, and humiliation make death, and paradise, seem more appealing." She goes on to cite an elderly resident of Jenin: "Look around and see how we live here... Then maybe you will understand why there are always volunteers for martyrdom Every good Muslim understands that it's better to die fighting than to live without hope." [[11]3] Life tends to be short in Palestine, employment opportunities few even for the well-educated, and the reproductive prospects for unmarried males relatively unfavorable. In these conditions, dying in the interests of altering the fitness cliff for the Palestinian community could, in theory, be a superior means of transferring one's genes into future generations in these conditions. Still, if unmarried male status and oppressive conditions were sufficient to generate suicide bombers then one could expect most unmarried males in such societies to engage in such extreme terrorism and it appears that they do not even though in some societies (e.g., Palestinian society) over 70% of the population supports "martyrdom" operations (Atran, 2003: 5). According to Atran (2003a: 4-6, 10-11), the final piece of the explanatory puzzle derives from the interactions within terrorist organizations. Atran proposes that the influence of the terrorist organization, in particular, the influence of the small, terrorist cell explains the final commitment to suicide. Arguably, the unit for which humans are most willing to sacrifice and the unit exercising the greatest influence on humans is the family. Natural selection provided humans with mechanisms that created tight, emotional bonds with immediate kin. As Goetze (1998) argues, however; mobility, modern society, and globalization have torn people away from their natural families. Modern humans, still operating with the mechanisms of kinship that evolved in hunter-gatherer society, now find themselves in search of substitutes. The small, terrorist cell serves as a meaningful substitute to family and it is not surprising that members end up forming strong emotional bonds with each other as well as the typical sacrificial inclinations of close family. Leaders of terrorist organizations cultivate and manipulate these emotional bonds and steer their expression toward political goals of the terrorist organization. Like any hypotheses, these three need to withstand evaluation through empirical comparisons. Indeed, some scattered evidence casts doubt on the accuracy of elements of the hypotheses. The "fitness cliff" hypothesis presumes that life opportunities for potential suicide bombers have recently plummeted. Yet, Atran reports that most bombers, while sometimes underemployed for their education levels, have relatively positive life opportunities - certainly no worse than that of comparable individuals in their societies. Even the sociobiological hypothesis is challenged by data indicating that over one-third of the suicide bombers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and over two-thirds of bombers of the Kurdish Workers Party in Iraq have been women (Schweitzer, 2000: 82-83 and reported in Stern, 2003: 53). Despite these disconfirming data, these hypotheses still provide some compelling and novel insight into some emerging and unexpected facts about the activities of suicide bombers. The disparity between these data and hypotheses raises new issues about how situational factors and environmental conditions may differ across these societies and may even be activating different mechanisms that, nonetheless, result in similar behaviors, that is, suicide bombing. As they are refined with empirical observations, these hypotheses seem likely to contribute in meaningful ways to explanation of these crucially important phenomena. All of these cases demonstrate that there need not be antagonism over the approach taken by traditional scholars and practitioners of evolutionary psychology. Traditional research provides valuable data and important elements of useful explanations. Clearly, an evolutionary psychology approach can contribute to these explanations in multiple ways. It can extend traditional research on ethnic phenomena, fill in proximate explanations of ethnic conflict, or open up new areas of research and thought. Most studies of ethnic phenomena using an evolutionary psychology approach fulfill more than one of these missions. Received 29 January, 2004, Revision received 30 August, 2004, Accepted 19 September, 2004. Notes [12]1. Interdisciplines, a website for interdisciplinary research in the humanities, organized an online conference on Understanding Suicide Terrorism in 2003. Featured were articles by Scott Atran (2003a) and Nilufer Gole (2003) as well as extended commentary by a host of other scholars. This discussion draws on the work of this conference, especially Atran's whose related work can be found in the pages of Science (Atran 2003b). [13]2. This discussion on "fitness cliffs" is drawn from Pitchford's (2003) commentary on Atran's work and also from Chisholm (1999: Chapter 6, The Cost of Continuing). [14]3. First cited in P. 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Jennings, D. L., Amabile, T. M. and Ross, L. (1982). Information Covariation Assessment" Data-Based versus Theory-Based Judgments. In Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., and Tversky, A. (eds.) Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, G. R. (1986). Kin Selection, Socialization, and Patriotism: An Integrating Theory [with commentaries and response]. Politics and the Life Sciences, 4:127-54. Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1982). The Psychology of Preferences. Science, 246: 136-42. Kinder, D. R. and Sears, D. O. (1981). Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism versus Racial Threat to the Good Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40: 414-31. Krueger, A. (2003) Poverty Doesn't Create Terrorists. New York Times, 29 May. Krueger, A. and Maleckova, J. (2002) NBER Working Paper no. w9074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, July. Available at [17]http://papers.nber.org/papers/W9074. Marcus, G. (2003) The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Create the Complexities of Human Thought. New York: Basic Books. Marcus, G. E., Sullivan, J. L., Theiss-Morse, E. and Wood, S. L. (1995). With Malice Toward Some: How People Make Civil Liberties Judgments. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, G. E., Wood, S. L. and Theiss-Morse, E. (1998). Linking Neuroscience to Political Intolerance and Political Judgement. Politics and Life Sciences, 17(2): 165-78. Mason, D. T. (1994). The Ethnic Dimension of Civil Violence in the Post-Cold War Era: Structural Configurations and Rational Choices. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York. Mentzel, P. (2000) National Identity in the Balkans: Confessionalism to Nationalism. In James, P. and Goetze, D. (Eds.) Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Pitchford, I. (2003) A Theoretical Context. Discussions: 9. Internet conference on Understanding Suicide Terrorism organized by Interdisciplines, www.interdisciplines.org. Ridley, M. (2003) Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human. New York: HarperCollins. Rothschild, J. (1981). Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework. New York: Columbia University Press. Rushton, J. P. (1989). Genetic similarity, human altruism, and group selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12: 503-559. Salter, F. (2000). A Defence and Extension of Pierre van den Berghe's Theory of Ethnic Nepotism. In James, P. and Goetze, D. (Eds.) Evolutionary Theory and Ethnic Conflict. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Scott, G. M., Jr. (1990). A Resynthesis of the Primordial and Circumstantial Approaches to Ethnic Group Solidarity: Towards an Explanatory Model. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13: 147-171. Schweitzer, Y (2000) Suicide Terrorism: Development and Main Characteristics in International Policy Institute of Counter-Terrorism Countering Suicide Terrorism: An International Conference . Herzliyya, Israel. Stern, J. (2003) Terror in the Name of God. New York: HarperCollins. Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1990). On the Universality of Human Nature and the Uniqueness of the Individual: The Role of Genetics and Adaptation. Journal of Personality, 58 (1): 17-67. Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. (1992). The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In Barkow, J. H., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (Eds.) The Adapted Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. van den Berghe, P. L. (1981). The Ethnic Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier North. West-Eberhard, M. J. (1975). The Evolution of Social Behavior by Kin Selection. Quarterly Review of Biology, 50: 1-33. Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. [18]David Goetze [19]Patrick James References 9. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#1. 10. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#2. 11. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#3. 12. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#1 13. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#2 14. http://human-nature.com/ep/articles/ep02142159.html#3 15. http://www.interdisciplines.org/ 16. http://www.interdisciplines.org/ 17. http://papers.nber.org/papers/W9074 18. mailto:dgoetze at hass.usu.edu 19. mailto:jamesp at missouri.edu From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:07:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:07:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] Betterhumans: From Third World to Brave New World Message-ID: Betterhumans > Features > Columns > Transitory Human > From Third World to Brave New World http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/article.aspx?articleID=2003-10-27-3 [Notice that, while Dvorsky would rather have Chinese eugenics proceed in a democratic fashion, he does not call for armed American intervention.] China's embrace of state-driven eugenics should be of concern to bioconservatives and bioliberals alike George Dvorsky Betterhumans Staff Monday, October 27, 2003, 9:20:24 AM CT China took a great leap forward on October 15 by becoming only the third nation in history to put a man in space. On top of a Long March rocket, China's first manned spacecraft, Shenzhou 5, soared into the heavens along with taikonaut Yang Liwei and a profound sense of inevitability. While the feat lagged the US and the former USSR by 40 years, anyone who doubted the inexorable nature of technological progress even among the developing nations had their doubts put to rest. The Chinese success story revealed that, given enough time and patience, high-tech makes its way into even the most unlikeliest of places--including former third world countries. While once the exclusive domain of the Cold War superpowers, space is now accessible by such countries as India, Japan and various nations of the European community. However, one unfortunate reality of the great catch-up game being played by the former have-not countries is that for many of them social modernization has not caught up with technological modernization. Yes, it's a positive sign that China is catching up technologically, but the [2]communist country currently resembles an infant who has stumbled upon his father's toolbox. Nowhere is this more so than with biotechnology. The authoritarian Chinese government is using advances in the health sciences to further entrench and realize its [3]eugenic agenda. Beyond the "one child, one family" policy, Chinese eugenics is startlingly reminiscent of 20th century social experiments--including the forced sterilization of citizens deemed unsuitable for procreation--conducted not just by the Nazis, but by many nations. This is exactly the kind of [4]Brave New World scenario that keeps bioconservatives up at night. But it's also the kind of state-driven eugenic imposition that even the techno-utopian and biolibertarian [5]transhumanists worry about. The vision of a centralized, ideological and hyper-bureaucratized politburo hammering out design schematics for its future citizens is abhorrent, representing everything to which ideals of democracy and self-actualization are opposed. Consequently, liberal democracies should continue to pressure China to embark upon a path of increasing democratization in hopes that its citizens will eventually demand procreative, cognitive and morphological freedoms. At the very least, the Chinese example should act as a continual reminder of where we do not wish to go. Primed for reproductive restrictions Historically, the Chinese have operated with the understanding that citizens are obligated with personal duties to the state, and it is partly due to this tendency that Western ideas of individual autonomy are lost. The [6]Confucian tradition, along with its early agnostic and humanist character, placed emphasis on the orderly arrangement of society and stressed appropriate personal relationships. In conjunction with ancient customs in medicine, Chinese tradition holds that every aspect of an expectant mother's life must be controlled. It was commonly held that maintaining a balance in cosmic forces, in essential bodily fluids and in lifestyle both before and after conception was paramount if you hoped to have a healthy baby. The Chinese also subscribed to the patrilineal model of descent, in which a person is viewed as the culmination of his or her ancestors and is held responsible for the health of all future generations. Thus, an expectant mother's behavior and attitude is believed to directly influence the well-being of her future baby, and a deformed or developmentally disabled child reflects a moral failing on the part of the parents. As historian [7]Frank Dik?tter has noted, "Herein lies the basic eugenic belief that human intervention--in the form of behavior and morality--can shape heredity." It was not until after World War I that modern science was introduced to China. It was during the Republican Era (1911 to 1948) that elites called for increased intervention of medical professionals and the state into the sexual lives of its citizens. It was also during this time that Western eugenics was imported and combined with existing fears of cultural, racial and biological degeneration in Chinese society, leading to government regulation of sexual reproduction. Compounding these impulses were the Chinese cultural currents that feared anything deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal. Moreover, it is this emphasis on the collective good that has driven modern eugenics in China since the late 19th Century, when, as Dik?tter explains, "Chinese intellectuals, the well-to-do gentry, and government officials explored how to improve the Chinese race after the arrival of the stronger Western imperialist nations." Indeed, as Dik?tter has aptly observed, [8]nationalism in its many forms remains an important force in eugenics today. And without question, the Confucian ethic, which emphasized the individual's responsibility to the collective, is still felt across China today, and has hybridized itself quite effortlessly with [9]Marxist notions of communalism and self-sacrifice. A dubious leap forward The introduction of communism in China did not do much to change these historical notions or tendencies. In fact, Marxist notions of the [10]blank slate and the creation of the "new man" have inspired Chinese thinkers to mesh Marxist ideals into their already eugenic-primed view of population management. While scientific and technological advancements were stunted during the [11]Maoist era, recent decades have witnessed the revitalization of health-based issues. [12]Deng Xiaoping's reforms of the late 1970s emphasized the rapid development of scientific knowledge and technological innovation, along with the acknowledgement that Western-style capitalism was necessary to both increase economic efficiency and state power. While these reforms have led many to conclude that China has finally embarked on the path towards democracy, the truth of the matter is that the [13]totalitarian infrastructure has remained intact; the Chinese political regime has shown no willingness to abandon Marxism anytime soon. This has been made painfully apparent by China's ongoing poor human rights track record, including 1989's [14]Tiananmen massacre, its suppression of religious and cultural freedoms, its stringent control of information (including its own [15]internal Internet) and, of course, its devotion to eugenics. As a result of Xiaoping's reforms, the standard of living has steadily improved, as has Chinese proficiency with technology, causing a number of thinkers to push for a renewed commitment for eugenic measures. In 1995, the [16]Law of the People's Republic of China on Maternal and Infant Health Care went into effect. The move was greeted with near unanimous international uproar. The law primarily seeks to ensure the "health of mothers and infants and [to improve] the quality of the newborn population" while reducing the burden of disabilities. Among the many provisions of the legislation was the requirement that all couples seeking to marry submit to a physical examination by a physician to "see whether they suffer from any disease that may have an adverse effect on marriage and child-bearing." The diseases include "genetic diseases of a serious nature.that may totally or partially deprive the victim of the ability to live independently, that are highly possible to recur in generations to come." Also covered by the law are infectious diseases, such as AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis and leprosy, and relevant mental diseases, including "schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis and other mental diseases of a serious nature." Physicians who perform these premarital checkups "explain and give medical advice to both the male and the female who have been diagnosed with certain genetic disease[s] of a serious nature which [are] considered to be inappropriate for child-bearing from a medical point of view." The couple can marry "only if both sides agree to take long-term contraceptive measures" or to undergo permanent sterilization. Couples not satisfied with the results of the check-up may apply for an appeal mechanism. When applying for marriage registration couples "shall produce their pre-marital physical check-up certificates or medical technical appraisement certificates." Diagnosis will be verified prenatally if an abnormality is "detected or suspected," such as by ultrasound or because of family history, after an antenatal examination. If a serious disease or defect is found, physicians will offer the couple "medical advice for a termination of pregnancy." Applications to terminate a pregnancy or to undergo sterilization must "be agreed [to] and signed by the person concerned." Couples that are identified by this process "shall take measures in accordance with the physician's medical advice." In other words, they will be compelled to do what their doctor tells them to do. Even though this law came into effect in 1995, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens have been sterilized against their will since 1986. Clinic-based and mobile birth control teams, dubiously known as the "womb police," have been known to travel across the countryside enforcing both the number of births and the "quality" of the newborn population, assessing such things as feeble-mindedness and mental illness. There is little doubt that the Maternal and Infant Health Care law is a throwback to 20th century style eugenics. During the first half of the previous century, it was fashionable for the politicians of many countries to implement sterilization schemes that targeted questionable deficiencies while greatly diminishing the reproductive freedoms of their citizens. Two primary factors that led to these policies--two factors that still exist in the Chinese worldview today--are nationally and racially fed conceptions of [17]social Darwinism and an immature understanding of medicine, genetics and science--not to mention unenlightened and socially primitive stances on democracy and the moral and practical efficacy of individual autonomy. And typically, the law went into effect in China without any real discussion by bioethicists proper. In fact, it is arguable as to whether China even has a [18]bioethics discipline by Western standards. China doesn't even have the same conception of eugenics; in Mandarin, "yousheng" is the closest word that corresponds to "eugenics," and it simply means "healthy birth." (This is interesting, because "eugenics" is a Greek term meaning "good origin," but has gone on to mean a centralized, preconceived and imposed vision of heredity.) Moreover, legislators in China don't have to face the political hurdles, scrutiny and heated discourse that tend to greet new biolegislation in other countries. Simply put, the communist Chinese government is not held to the same ethical standards as are governments in the more developed and socially mature nations of the world. Marching into the 21st century Of course, in my condemnation of Chinese eugenics I could be accused of both cultural and social relativism. As medical doctor [19]Patrick MacLeod has observed, China is struggling with issues of population health beyond our comprehension in the West. For example, the UK has five percent of the population of China but 20 times the number of medical geneticists and counselors to serve that population. Compounding the problem, China is largely rural, with health insurance programs that do not cover medical genetic assessments. Some estimates place the disabled population of China at more than 50 million. "It is from this perspective," says McLeod, "that one can understand why social planners might adopt eugenic solutions without any knowledge or understanding of the long-term consequences for the gene pool." And while the work of many health scientists in the West is stunted by debates about whether or not a microscopic clump of embryonic cells is a person or not, China marches on in terms of important medical research and development. Eric Brown, in his provocative but ultimately technophobic article "[20]Brave New China," notes, "China has made some brave leaps beyond the rest of the scientifically advanced nations in crucial areas of biogenetic research." Chinese researchers, for example, recently created 30 cloned human embryos and allowed them to develop to unprecedented stages. This work could eventually allow people to grow their own organs to replace failing ones. In Tianjin, a stem cell engineering institute is being constructed that will have its labs filled with half a million cloned embryonic cells. As Brown observes, "In the near future, China may well emerge as a major global dealer in human genomic expertise. Recognizing the opportunity China has to leap ahead of a comparatively reluctant West in the world biotechnology market, investors from both China and abroad may provide the capital necessary to drive China's genetic revolution to a much larger scale." Thus, over the next few decades, as the Chinese continue to develop innovative biotechnologies, and as they continue to impose their eugenic policies, they will have greater and greater control over how they actively re-engineer their citizens. A democratic transhumanist's nightmare From a democratic transhumanist perspective, these prospects are both exciting and troublesome. Transhumanists agree that stronger, smarter and healthier people are a good thing, as are reductions in suffering and various psychological and physical disabilities. But while progress in health sciences is a value unto itself, it shouldn't come without proper public debate or the proper bioethical infrastructure to gauge the impact of technologies on individuals, societies and the human condition as a whole. Worst of all, in China these technologies are being used as tools by the communist government to impose its idea of a healthy and evolving populace onto its "subjects." This idea, that of totalitarian transhumanism, is anathema to [21]democratic transhumanism, which insists that choices about whether and how to use these biotechnologies must be left to individuals. While some of the goals of transhumanists and Chinese politicians run in parallel, the manner and spirit in which they are applied makes all the difference, both from ethical and sociopolitical standpoints. It is understood by most transhumanists that parents, when empowered to make informed procreative decisions for themselves and their families, will make responsible choices that will result in the improved health of their offspring. How the human family evolves and develops as a result of these individual choices is anyone's guess, but it must be the role of future governments to help their citizens prosper along chosen paths, not to dictate preconceived and group-think notions of what it means to be normal or healthy, and certainly not to do so from a rigid ideological agenda. I can only hope that as China modernizes itself technologically, social and cultural modernization will quickly follow. The impact of the information revolution has only recently been felt in China, and has been greeted with great caution, resulting in the Great Firewall of China. Fortunately, technology often acts as the great equalizer, and as mobile phones, computers and other information technologies make their way into China, the Chinese will surely start to take advantage of these tools as they begin to democratize themselves at the grassroots level. The push for better science and technology, I can only hope, will be the ultimate undoing of the current communist regime, rather than further its state-driven eugenic goals. References 2. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism 3. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics 4. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_new_world 5. http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Philosophies/philosophy.aspx?articleID=2002-05-08-2 6. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucian 7. http://homepage.mac.com/dikotter/Menu4.html 8. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism 9. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism 10. http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/BlankslateCH.html 11. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong 12. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping 13. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism 14. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989 15. http://www.computeruser.com/news/02/09/16/news2.html 16. http://www.unescap.org/pop/database/law_china/ch_record006.htm 17. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism 18. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioethics 19. http://www.medgen.ubc.ca/faculty/macleod.htm 20. http://www.eppc.org/news/newsID.1380/news_detail.asp 21. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:08:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:08:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] spiked-liberties: Regulating reproductive technology - less is more Message-ID: Regulating reproductive technology - less is more http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA96E.htm 5.3.30 [Discusses sex selection in Britain, among other things.] A UK government committee has concluded that more trust should be put in parents, doctors and scientists. And this is an 'extreme libertarian' position? by Jennie Bristow Hurrah for the Science and Technology Committee. For once, a House of Commons select committee has reviewed the law surrounding a contentious area of science and social life - in this instance, the use of human reproductive technologies - and argued for less regulation, not more. No wonder it's controversial. The report, Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law, puts a powerful case for putting key decisions about IVF treatment and embryo researchers in the hands of the people best qualified to make them: scientists, doctors and patients (1). It calls for the abolition of the legal requirement, in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act 1990, that couples seeking IVF treatment should be officially assessed regarding the welfare of the child that could be born as a result. This requirement, states the committee, is 'impossible to implement and unjustifiably discriminates against the infertile and some other sections of the population'. On the question of selecting and screening embryos, the report states bluntly that 'the spectre of eugenics should not be used to obscure rational discussion'. So in the face of cod-ethical media panics about 'designer babies', the select committee cautiously argues, in relation to sex selection, that 'we have not heard compelling evidence to prohibit its use for family balancing at least'. In relation to decisions about preimplanation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and tissue typing, which can be used to create 'saviour siblings' whose birth gives the potential to treat an existing child suffering from a genetic disease, the committee says that it sees 'no role for a regulator' and 'this should be a matter for patients, in consultation with their doctors, as long as they operate within legislation, and within ethical practice'. The Science and Technology Committee attacks the change in the law surrounding anonymity for donors of eggs and sperm, claiming that 'the evidence that supported this decision by the Department of Health [is] inadequate and misleading'. Rather, it suggests retaining the option of anonymity alongside non-anonymous donation, which would enable 'donors and patients to make choices that reflect their circumstances'. And it even argues that a total prohibition on reproductive cloning - one of the most contentious aspects of embryo research - is not necessarily justified. This issue 'raises many serious safety and ethical issues', the committee claims; but 'several of the prohibitions within the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act 1990 reflect an unwillingness to tackle taboos rather than coherent argument'. Having robustly criticised so many aspects of the regulation of human reproductive technologies in the UK, it comes as little surprise that one of the committee's key recommendations is to get rid of the regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the government body that for the past decade has been charged with regulating fertility treatment and embryo research, has, according to the committee, tried its best under difficult circumstances but it has 'employed an excessive use of the precautionary principle'. So the Science and Technology Committee suggests that 'the current regulatory model, which provides the HFEA with a large amount of policymaking flexibility, should be replaced with a system which devolves clinical decision-making and technical standards down to patients and professionals while at the same time strengthening parliamentary and ethical oversight'. Another body should take over the other aspect of the HFEA's remit: the regulation of embryo reasearch. The committee has not shied away from the hard arguments, or adopted easy recommendations: which in this day and age generally call for greater precaution, and more regulation. But in refusing to take the easy route, it has not won many immediate friends. Indeed, the committee itself was split down the middle, and five members issued a statement publicly disagreeing with the report. 'We believe this report is unbalanced, light on ethics, goes too far in the direction of deregulation and is too dismissive of public opinion and much of the evidence', they said. 'This report was always going to be controversial but to adopt an extreme libertarian approach from the start, on the basis that there was never going to be unanimity, was wrong. As a result, we have a report which stressesthe importance of regulation. But then it goes on to recommend creation of hybrid animal-human embryos, unregulated creation of embryos for research and unregulated screening out of disorders in embryos for reproduction. Half the committee simply could not sign up to this.' (2) Geraldine Smith, Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, put it more succinctly. She termed it 'the Frankenstein report', and added: 'It seems like anything goes as long as it's science.' Many news headlines have predictably followed the Frankenstein line, with one claiming 'MPs call for sex selection'. And self-styled ethics groups are, also predictably, up in arms. 'The kind of ethics we see in this report, which is incapable of saying a clear no to anything, is no ethics at all', says David King, director of Human Genetics Alert (3). One wonders what the reaction would have been had the report recommended anything really outlandish. For really, what has this select committee concluded? That people should be trusted to make their own fertility decisions, that doctors should be trusted with decisions about clinical procedures, and that the course of scientific research is better determined by scientists than government committees. Furthermore, the way the Science and Technology Committee presents its recommendations is self-consciously responsible - the need for an 'evidence-driven' approach to regulation, and the emphasis on ethical decision-making, is a constant theme. In different times, this would hardly be a radical outlook. Indeed, in different times the very notion that the government should play an intimate role in deciding who should be allowed fertility treatment and precisely what sort of treatment doctors could give them, and in setting official limits on scientific enquiry, would cause an outcry. That a group of MPs should be pilloried as irresponsible mavericks (or 'libertarians', which today seems to amount to the same thing) by their colleagues simply for suggesting that reproductive decisions should be made by those best qualified to make them, indicates the strength of suspicion and risk-aversion that governs such discussions today. Suzi Leather, chair of the HFEA, has called the report 'radical', and said that it makes ' a number of bold and challenging recommendations' (4). But the spirit of these recommendations is shared by many of those directly involved with reproductive technologies - patients, who do feel unfairly discriminated against by the requirement to prove that they are suitable for parenthood while those who fall pregnant naturally do not have to justify themselves in this way; clinicians, who find their ability to treat patients in the best way they see fit compromised; and scientists, who find their work limited by over-cautious legislation. In a statement to BioNews, a news and comment service published by the UK charity Progress Educational Trust, Ian Gibson, chair of the Science and Technology Committee, said: 'Critics of our report have described it as ultra-libertarian, which sounds as if it should be an insult. Why belief in liberty should be seen as extreme is beyond me.' (5) Unfortunately, the climate that we live in does view ideas of liberty as dangerous and extreme - particularly in such areas of life as parenting, where it is assumed that people need greater official monitoring and support to make the right choices about how they raise their child, and particularly in areas of scientific progress, where the precautionary principle reigns supreme. The Science and Technology Committee's report is very welcome for putting these issues back on the political agenda. Whether it will hold any sway with a government hell-bent on more regulation of science, medicine and parenting remains to be seen. Read on: [2]Submission to the Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry, by Tony Gilland, science and society director at the Institute of Ideas (1) Informal Summary of House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Report, 24 March 2005 (2) [3]Ethics row as choosing baby's sex splits MPs, Guardian, 24 March 2005 (3) [4]Ethics row as choosing baby's sex splits MPs, Guardian, 24 March 2005 (4) [5]HFEA Statement following the House of Commons Science & Technology Select Committee report, 24 March 2005 (5) Exclusive response from Dr Ian Gibson MP to BioNews on the Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law report, BioNews, 29 March 2005 References 2. http://www.instituteofideas.com/transcripts/policywatch1.pdf 3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1444427,00.html 4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1444427,00.html 5. http://www.hfea.gov.uk/PressOffice/Archive/1111664473 From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 2 16:09:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:09:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: [Paleopsych] FuturePundit: Should We Fear Transhumanism And Identity Copying? Message-ID: Should We Fear Transhumanism And Identity Copying? http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002657.html March 11, 2005 On the [9]Marginal Revolution blog Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen are debating transhumanism. [10]Tyler discusses how much will people be willing to genetically engineer their children when doing so makes the children be less like their parents. Most people want their children to look like themselves, and to some extent to think like themselves. We invest many thousands of dollars and many months of our time to acculturate our children. Now let's say your children could be one percent happier throughout their lives, but this would mean they were totally unlike you, the parent. In fact your children would be turned into highly intelligent [11]velociraptors and flown to another planet to live among their own kind. How many of us would choose this option? I can think of a few responses: 1. Transhumanism will bring improvements of more than one percent; we should forget about identity and let everyone become healthier and happier. What's wrong with [12]uploads? 2. Governments should not restrict transhumanist innovation. [13]Let people and their children choose their degrees of identity continuity for themselves. (Isn't there a collective action problem here? Everyone wants a more competitive kid but at the end humanity is very different.) As for the idea of making kids 1% happier: It will become trivially easier to genetically engineer offspring to feel happier: give them genes that make their minds feel happy even in the face of adversity. I do not think that large physical changes in shape or in other non-cognitive body changes will be needed to make happier people. I do not even think that IQ boosting will be needed to do that. My guess is that genetic engineering for happiness will be aimed to directly enhance the feeling of happiness independent of other characteristics that might also be changed in offspring. Regarding uploads: the ability to copy one's mind into a synthetic brain will cause some severe problems. One can easily imagine a sort of arms race between different identities competing for influence. Some will try to acquire wealth in order to get the computing capacity needed to create many copies of their brains. Competition for resources will probably become much greater when copies of sentient entities can be made quickly. Uploads are also problematic because a person could be copied against their will and then the copy could be modified to be more compliant and willing to work for some cause that the original mind would reject as immoral. Imagine a great weapons scientist kidnapped and copied in order that some country or group could have many copies of an extremely talented scientist to work for their cause. The world could become a much more dangerous place. Even without uploads the potential exists to some day infect a person (or an entire population) with a virus that changes personality and motivation. This could ability would be attracttive to governments, business interests, and peoeple in relationships. Not sure if he loves you? Genetically reengineer him to make him more committed to long term relationships. [14]Alex Tabarrok expects the transhumanist change between generations be fairly small and unlikely to produce much opposition. Transhumanism will never make as large a difference between a single generation as does immigration. ... Fortunately, change across a single generation is likely to be small so parents will say yes even though 5 or 6 or 10 generations down the line the changes will be dramatic. It's because of this wedge effect that Fukuyama is so [15]worried about relatively small changes today and it's precisely for this reason that his opposition has no hope of success in a free society. I disagree with Alex regarding the potential rate of change across generations. The rate of biotechnological advance is going to accelerate by orders of magnitude because biotechnology will increasingly be driven by the same technologies that drive computer technology advances. For example, microfluidics devices will be fabricated using some of the same technologies used to create semiconductors and microfluidics devices in all likelihood will have lots of semiconductor gates and analog electronic circuits built into them. We will have all the existing genetic variations in humans to choose for offspring. But we will also have the genetic variations for similar proteins in thousands of other species to investigate to look for variations that yield some desired quality. Plus, as we come to understand the genetic signalling system regulating cell growth, differentiation, and other functions of the cell lots of obvious ways to modify genes to create desired effects will jump out at us. My guess is that in 30 or 40 years time a person planning to have an offspring will be able to choose from millions and perhaps even tens of millions of well understood and functionally significant genetic variations. Personality type, assorted behavioral tendencies, intelligence, and many physical characteristics that determine abilities and esthetic qualities will be selectable. Combinations of genetic alleles to code for physical appearances and cognitive characteristics that have yet to naturally occur in humans will be available to put in offspring. Download "Alligator Boy". The ability of people people to introduce huge number of genetic changes from one generation to the next is not the biggest reason to be worried about what sorts of semihumans or transhumans might be created (though that will be problematic). I think the real problem with big changes in sentient beings (either through genetic enhancement to create transhumans or human-machine interfaces that create cyborgs or uplifting other species - see David Brin's science fiction novel Startide Rising and the sequels) is the potential to create intelligent minds that do not have some of the emotional and ethical structures that cause human societies to function. For example, [16]the tendency to dole out altruistic punishment could some day be genetically engineered out of offspring. Think about people who report crimes they witnessed being perpetrated against others or who take the time as witnesses to step forward and volunteer to testify in a criminal trial. Imagine that the genetic variations that code for [17]the rewards brains deliver to themselves for doing acts of altruistic punishment were just edited out when some people designed the genomes for their offspring. Well, that'd lead to a decrease in the rate of criminals being caught and of non-criminal abuses of people being punished. [18]Tyler wonders whether the rate of change across generations should be slowed so that older generations do not lose the way of life they've had due to radical differences in their offspring. So work backwards to transhumanism. We cannot and should not ban it, but to what extent should we regulate/tax/patent/subsidize it? We don't know until we determine the value of identity at the margin. The Icelanders -- all 279,000 of them -- are not crazy to insist on some language skills for their immigrants; they would otherwise be overwhelmed and lose their way of life. The fact that their customs are changing each generation anyway -- and often quite radically -- is beside the point. Nor is it relevant that many Icelanders emigrate to the U.S. Imagine, for example, the first genetically engineered generation is made to be, on average, so averse to killiing animals that they all oppose fox hunts. This just happened in England without the use of genetic engineering to produce the inter-generational change in attitudes. With genetic engineering we can expect successive generations to have far greater changes in values than we are witnessing in the West due to effects of industrialization. [19]Alex discusses whether competition and fear will drive the spread of transhumanist changes to ourselves and our offpsring. When the demand for a change in personal identity is strong it can have important external effects. You may not want to be a velociraptor but if I change [20]what choice do you have? Or you may simply have a preference (atavistic and irrational perhaps but still a preference) for human beings as they are now. Tyler makes the mistake, however, of jumping from such and such preferences are important and real to such and such preferences justify regulation/taxation/subsidization etc. Certainly some day the awareness of some parents that other parents are starting to genetically enhance the intelligence or motivation of their offspring will cause many in the first group of parents to follow the lead of the second group simply in order to keep their own kids competitive. Transhumanism is going to present a problem to libertarians: On the one hand libertarians will tend to favor a laissez faire approach to regulation of offspring genetic engineering. On the other hand genetic engineering will easily be able to produce offspring that like to follow orders and that dislike those who are not like them in some way. If some fraction of society decides to use genetic engineering to produce offspring that are more communist or more totalitarian in attitude or extremely religious and hostile to non-believers or criminal then libertarians are going to have to decide whether highly coercive government intervention in the short run is worth tolerating in order to prevent far larger rights violations in the longer run. By Randall Parker at 2005 March 11 02:31 AM Comments Regarding uploads, yes, the introduction of new attractive investment opportunities will raise interest rates and the price of capital, as these new opportunities will "compete" better with old ones. This is what happens in economic booms, and is something widely sought after by policy makers. It seems odd to worry about such competition just becaus the new investment opportunities take the form of brain copies. Are you also worried that in good times parents might invest more in creating children? Posted by: [23]Robin Hanson on March 11, 2005 06:32 AM You worry about "the potential to create intelligent minds that do not have some of the emotional and ethical structures that cause human societies to function" such as "offspring that like to follow orders and that dislike those who are not like them in some way" or "that are more communist or more totalitarian in attitude or extremely religious and hostile to non-believers." The idea that society will collapse unless we actively mold preferences has long been popular among communists and socialists, and for very different reasons among conservatives and the very religious. This is used to justify requirements for "education"/indoctrination, and strong punishments against apparently private actions such as sodomy and recreational drugs. Libertarians should be especially suspicious of arguments of this sort, and should want to see a bit more detail about how society would collapse without the supposely essential emotional and ethical structures. Economists such as myself mostly understand how societies function in terms of institutions that channel self-interest, whatever that self-interest may be. Posted by: [24]Robin Hanson on March 11, 2005 06:57 AM ( Trackback seems to be having some problems for me, so I'll post my comments here directly. Also at http://www.morethanhuman.org/blog/2005/03/more-transhumanism-in-blogos phere.htm } A lot of this conversation hinges on how possible and likely it is that parents make radical personality changes to their offspring. I think it's important to keep three things in mind when thinking about that: 1 - Parents are typically conservative in choices they make for their children Parents have strong urges to help their children get ahead and to pass on their own belief system to them. But the one desire that's even stronger is the drive towards safety of their children. In situations where parents weigh potential advantage with risk, they seem to generally come out opting for the safest (or apparently safest) course for their kids. As I said in a previous post, this will slow the rate of inter-generational change as compared to the types of changes people (especially 20-somethings) will be willing to try out on themselves. 2 - Genetic personality alterations are hard to fine tune. While genes play a large role in many behavioral traits, what they really code for are predelictions in one direction or another, not an exact degree. That means that when genetically pushing behavior in one direction or another, it's easy to undershoot or overshoot. Parents trying to create children that are more confident and assertive increase their odds of producing overbearing brats. At the same time, it's possible to select genes highly associated with one end of a behavioral spectrum but still not have it manifest to the degree expected. An example I use in the boook is IQ. Imagine you found thousands of individuals with 160 IQs, cloned them (so that you had all of their IQ-affecting genes) and raised the children in average homes. What would the average IQ of the kids be? 160? Nope. If the genetic correlation with IQ is about 0.5, then the average IQ of the kids will be 130, because those individuals with 160 IQs typically had exceptional genes AND exceptional environments. The fraction of the clones that have a 160 IQ will be exactly the same as the fraction that have a 100 (totally average) IQ - with a mean right in the middle. On the other hand, a few of these children will have truly freakishly high IQs - not many in absolute numbers, but at a much higher rate than in the base population. Now apply this logic to a trait like religious intensity. Imagine an "RQ" - religiousity quotient. Even if RQ had a large genetic component (which does not seem to be the case), kids engineered for high RQ would still fall on a spectrum. Some of them would be no more religious than the norm, while others would be so religious they might even apall their parents... 3 - Any genetic alteration of behavior will have broad ripples and side effects In some ways, what Randall's arguing reminds me of an argument Bill McKibben makes in Enough. McKibben is a nature lover and wants his daughter to be too. He spends time with her in the woods around their home to try to pass this trait on. But he's frightened of the idea that parents might genetically engineer their kids to pass on values and preferences like this. Well, I don't think he has much to fear. There's no gene - or collection of genes - for loving nature. Now, there is a well documented genetic contribution to scores on the personality test axis that personality psychologists call Openness to Experience. So probably we could engineer children to be more open generally. But you can't guarantee that this will manifest as a love of the woods. It may very well nudge the child towards some other behavior - world travel, psychedelic use, role playing games, theatre - who knows? The point is that the behaviors we tend to think about are usually caused by the interplay of a large number of genes plus the environment. And every one of those genes affects a large number of other behavioral traits. So using genetic techniques to create super-obedient children, even if the motivation were there on the part of parents, seems to me unlikely. Posted by: [25]Ramez Naam on March 11, 2005 07:15 AM Stirling's Draka series of science fiction stories addresses some of these issues. Posted by: [26]Dennis on March 11, 2005 09:20 AM Robin Hanson, I am especially suspicious of arguments from libertarians because I view their ideology as suffering from the same kind of flaw that afflicts communism: It is built on top of a model of human nature that is incorrect. There is a great deal of difference between socially molded preferences and biologically molded ones. Communists thought they could mold New Soviet Man out of biological starting material that was obviously incompatible with the type of human they were trying to shape. Similarly, feminists have failed to turn girls into boys and boys into girls. They have managed to inflict a lot of damage on children as they try though. You speak of "supposely essential emotional and ethical structures". Are you serious? Are you a Blank Slater? For example, do you think that empathy does not exist? Or that empathy does not get coded to exist in the first place by genes? Or that empathy is not needed for a free society to exist? I want to see how libertarians explain the significance of psychopaths in their ideology. A psychopath who feels no empathy toward other humans can not be made to respect the rights of others. A psychopath is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. Similarly, the instinctive desire to dole out altruistic punishment is an essential element of a free society. Posted by: [27]Randall Parker on March 11, 2005 09:23 AM Ramez: I'm not sure that playing down the effect of "only" an average IQ of 130 is sensible. The consequences could be discretely discontinuous with altered population. What happens when all the kids in a city start with an expected mean IQ of 130. Might there be a significant amount of positive feedback in the acquisition of intellectual capabilities? At any rate, they would probably develop better social skills for dealing with people of their own intelligence, and would avoid wasting the first 10 years of their educations repeating the times tables. Also, traits relating to personality would probably be synergetic with traits boosting IQ. At any rate, it seems to me that a group of 100 such people who grew up together might develop collective competence far greater than any small groups we have encountered previously. Note though, that in your clone scenario, you are reducing variance by eliminating genetic variability. As a result, you don't necessarily get any freakishly intelligent people in this manner. I wish that I had some sense of how the collective competence of a group changed with differences in mean intelligence and variance. Randall: This seems to me to be a very sensible analysis, but its not clear to me that it relates sensibly to any particular timeframe. Posted by: [28]michael vassar on March 11, 2005 09:34 AM Ramez Naam, Aside: I am going to write a post about your book [29]More Than Human once I've finished it. As for inheritance of intelligence in identical twins: To quote from page 107 of [30]The Bell Curve: "The most modern study of identical twins reared in separate homes suggests a heritability of general intelligence between .75 and .80, a value near the top of the range found in the contemporary technical literature." I have argued that [31]in the future children will be more genetically determined than they are now. One reason for this is obvious enough: Some children now have a mix of alleles for a particular attribute (e.g. introversion/extroversion) that put them in a boundary region that allows environment to push them one way or the other. But parents who want a particular outcome will choose allele combinations that will yield a more certain outcome. So children will become less susceptible their social environments. It is a mistake to think that just because something is not caused by genes it will not become more determined by greater technological control. Look at homosexuality. While it is politically incorrect to say so the vast bulk of parents do not want homosexual children. This has implications for the future. Genetic factors may contribute to susceptibility to develop into a homosexual but the evidence to date argues that genes are not by themselves decisive. Eventually we will develop a deep understanding of how a brain develops down paths toward homosexual orientation. Regardless of what portion of the contribution to homosexuality is genetic we will find ways to tweak early embryonic development to nudge a brain down one pathway or another to produce a desired sexual orientation. So sexual orientation will become more determined and therefore homosexuality will become less common. Whether you approve, disapprove, or are indifferent to this future change it will happen because technology will enable parents to exert more control over events that happen during embryonic development. As for genetic alleles that influence the odds of developing attraction to nature: Of course such alleles exist. How can you imagine otherwise? Every preference humans have has some alleles that make the preference more or less likely to happen. Posted by: [32]Randall Parker on March 11, 2005 09:57 AM Randall, Three things: 1) Correlation between IQ and genetics. I think the Bell Curve overstates its case somewhat here. I've never seen two papers that compared the heritability of IQ that came up with the same answer, but the range of values seems to stretch down to about 0.3 and up to about 0.75. A good meta-study is in the Nuffield Council on Bioethics's report on genetics and human behavior, which finds the mode of other studies to be around 0.5. You can get the report from http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org 2) I think the observation that some things will become more heritable is astute. I agree with you. 3) But the crux of the issue is how precisely it's possible to control behavior. Of course, as you say, there will be genetic modifications that make it more likely that someone will develop a love of nature. My point is that those alleles will have other effects at the same time. And the exact nature of the effects will depend on environmental factors. There will be no allele that codes for ONLY a love of nature. Most likely to get this phenomenon will require a large number of subtle changes, each of which have their own ripple effects on behavior, and each of which are dependent on the environment in some way. If I try to engineer my children more religious, I may find that they're drawn to a more fundamentalist religion than my own. If I try to engineer more monagamous behavior, I may find that I've made them more jealous. If I try to engineer them to love nature, perhaps fewer of them will become computer scientists and engineers. I'm not denying that this stuff is powerful - I'm actually on your side regarding how quickly I expect to see advances in the field. I'm just saying that behavior is not a simple thing. It's not a zero sum pie where if genes account for N% then environment must account for (1 - N). Every genetic change is, in some way, multiplied by environmental factors. As Matt Ridley would say, Nature is expressed via Nurture. And with that sort of a complex relationship, we should expect that any genetic change meant to alter behavior is going to come with its share of surprises. Posted by: [33]Ramez Naam on March 11, 2005 11:57 AM Ramez, Aside: The Nuffield Council [34]opposes genetic engineering for higher IQ and I disagree with their opposition. Just as I expect behavior to become genetically more predetermined I also expect to see the development of means to more narrowly and selectively change behavior. Behavioral tendencies that are linked today may not stay linked in the future. Look at some of the more pathological human compulsions. People can have very specific compulsive behaviors. There are many different types of compulsions. If this can occur naturally then some day narrowly aimed compulsions will be introduceable with engineering. For artificial intelligences I certainly expect behavioral tendencies to be much more unlinked. Software can be programmed to be highly selective in what is responded to and what responses are used. However, just because a tendency toward religious fundamentalism could end up playing out with attachment to a fundamentalism that is different than what the parents believe does not mean the parents will refrain from choosing genes for fundamentalism. By making that choice the parents will still be increasing the chances that their offspring will end up believing the same religion as they believe. More generally, just because selecting some genetic variation does not guarantee a desired outcome parents will still make that choice for the same reason people make decisions like starting up a company that may or may not succeed. If you don't try at all your odds of success are even worse. Given that people will be selecting genetic variations that produce group average differences in outcomes it seems reasonable to expect group average behaviors to change over successive generations. BTW, I expect monogamy and jealousy to be fairly easily unlinkable. Posted by: [35]Randall Parker on March 11, 2005 12:24 PM When things really get interesting is when RUN TIME personality modifications can be made. This is especially an issue with uploading. Say we could choose to modify ourselves to be more/less altruistic, etc. As for the concern about sociopaths, I have an interesting data point for you. One of my friends was born with fairly severe Aspergers, and had real difficulty relating to other people, understanding their emotions, etc. Luckily, he also has absurdly high IQ, probably around 170. What's really remarkable is that he seems to have successfully "rewired" his personality, developing the various modules needed to relate effectively to people "from scratch." He has developed a well-thought out system of philosophy and ethics which guides his actions. In his current condition, he's a tremendous asset to the cause of liberty. If he had a merely "genius" IQ, he could very easily have become a serial killer, a weapons designer, or some other form of sociopath. If had normal IQ, he likely would have ended up institutionalized. My point is perhaps we'll get lucky and more IQ is the way out: just design whatever offspring/AI to have a high enough IQ, and trust that IQ to unscramble whatever stupid design flaws/unsustainable personality traits we've carelessly designed into them. Posted by: [36]T. J. Madison on March 11, 2005 01:12 PM If only the powers to be could see that everything is built like a house, starting from the foundation going up, ideally with a very decent and functional blueprint, and at least accept to give genetic engenieering a fair chance, safely one step at a time and I do support the use of stem cells and such for obvious reasons to myself. Trouble is, not that I have proof or knowledge of it, just judging from the stultyfying way history has of relentlessly repeating itself ad vomitum, there will allways be rogue factions researching and experimenting with any and all potential advantage over others this including scientific breakthroughs, regardless of international agreements and any other laws. This leaves everybody else in this climate of racing against the clock with not enough resources or become government or corporation property, even with the best of governments, that option means great chances of militarisation of the product, in the case of corporations well there are good ones and there are bad ones I guess there too, again a salesman will sell anything to anyone so one would want to be discriminating, easely said, hardly done when one has to feed a family, which is unfortunate considering in times like such for the researcher scientist, one is like a race driver who heavyly relies on the cohesion, integrity, knowledge and effectiveness of his crew and reliability of the parts constituting the whole of the machinery involved, penny wise and pound foolish, lack of safety precautions, cutting corners, premature production and such are all frivolities that cannot be indulged in when walking such a tight rope, and neither is self doubt for that matter. How many people are happy with their working conditions? the public hears very little one way or the other, when it comes to what goes on behind the research labs closed doors, I'll go by my father's saying " no news is good news "; on this I conclude and thank you for the above dialogues it's nicely written for the rest of us who haven't studied these fascinating new developpements, making it an enjoyable read, and the saga continues...sure could use more intelligent people in this world, intelligence does rise the probability of wisdom which I see as a mixture of phylosophy and simple Einsteinian relativity ( for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction...) so sadly needed these days, onwards and upwards, keep up the good work: Roxanne ( friend member WTA ) Posted by: [37]Roxanne on March 11, 2005 01:48 PM What do parents want for their children? They obviously want the best, that their kids do better than they did. This is becoming increasingly hard in present Western societies, but it's - to my mind anyway - still what parents want. Are parents inherently conservative for what they want for their kids? Well, maybe, but so what? Isn't it better to say that there exists such things as 1) growing up and ) personal responsability? It seems unpopular to claim either, but that's what I want for my kids. So what if he or she does something I disagree with? It's his life & his happiness. Does a child's message: mom, I'm gay - really stop the parent from loving their kid? I do hope this is a peculiar trait of American culture. But what if I could make my child better by genetic enhancement? I want to know first how much of intelligence is inherited? How much value should I attach to IQ-scores? I think I'm going to ask myself: can I really be sure that what I make of my child, will still be appreciated in twenty years time? Wouldn't it be better if I raised him / her the old way and let her make her own choices? * * * Suppose that I make my body anything I want. This will enable me to make a centaur, a robot and a mermaid, all in my lifetime. I think velociraptors are out, because people recognize the nature of humanity. Let's say that humans (and all other living creatures) are pure matter. Souls do not exist. Let's assume that 'mind' is a pattern, unique to each brain. It turns out that this pattern is actively shaped by the eyes and the hands. Humans think different once they had hands and eyes are not camera's, but computers. Information goes from brain to eye and vice versa. So what if my mind found it's body transforming to velociraptorhood? Best guess: if you transformed in the morning, you'd BE a velociraptor in the evening. Think: every way you experience the world is altered. That puts us back at philosophy 101: what's it like to be a bat? You certainly wouldn't be a human anymore. Maybe we'd be able to exchange messages with velociraptors, through braincircuitry, but that doesn't make understanding. So I don't think people will become velociraptor because everyone will treat such a being as what it is: a dangerous predator you can't understand. From communist to anarchist, everyone will accept that there are ways (laws) for dealing with predators. Animal predators, out in the city, are usually shot. Human predators are jailed or sentenced to death. (I expect folks to become much more armed when some people do become velociraptors. So what?) I think that if you can make your body anything, the people would like to be a mermaid, a centaur or anything similar, come out and do it. This will face opposition already, but it's much easier to swallow than a velociraptor. The latter simply isn't human anymore and will therefore be treated as such. Posted by: [38]Jamisia on March 11, 2005 03:46 PM "Regarding uploads: the ability to copy one's mind into a synthetic brain will cause some severe problems. One can easily imagine a sort of arms race between different identities competing for influence. Some will try to acquire wealth in order to get the computing capacity needed to create many copies of their brains. Competition for resources will probably become much greater when copies of sentient entities can be made quickly." Uploading simply ain't gonna satisfy us all. Some of us desire to increase capacity as far as possible, to scale-up if you will to the limits allowed by the laws of this world. The limitations in the end may not be there, it may only be a matter of energy/matter resources available, in which case one could accrue resources, and thus increase the capacity of the mind indefinitely(or at least for a very very long time). "Not sure if he loves you? Genetically reengineer him to make him more committed to long term relationships." What's the need? You can physically modify any other partner, I don't see the problem, you can also make yourself fall in love with whomever you desire. I don't see why one'd tolerate a partner that doesn't want to be modded as far as healthily possible for the enjoyment of both and consentually agreed by both, same goes for oneself. I see new lovers coming to an agreement, each making a few concessions and whatnot, into suitable modifications or lack of that they'd like each other to have. After all if a particular individual refutes you there's an infinity of others, that if you desire can be akin to that one physically/personality wise, or you can simply change what you seek/love. Posted by: [39]Divus Masterei on March 11, 2005 04:29 PM Fundamental limitations on 21st century biotechnology "All important substrate emergences, or phase transitions, appear to require both primarily bottom up, and secondarily top down control processes." " 'Genetically engineered humans,' redesigned for increased performance, now appear to be the 'atomic vacuum cleaners' of the 1950'sfantasies that will never come to pass, for a host of complex reasons." "We are stuck with our genetic legacy code, and we won't be able to significantly reengineer it until we move to an entirely new computational substrate." "It appears that the era of genetic exploration in human organisms is largely over." "In summary, biology, while it will still yield a host of socially valuable benefits in coming decades, is essentially a saturated substrate. We will gain a host of new knowledge from the biological sciences, but we won't use that information to redesign humans, in any significant biological sense. There won't be time or reason to do so. Infotech, not biotech, now appears to be the constrained developmental future for local intelligence." http://www.singularitywatch.com/biotech.html Posted by: [40]Dimitar Vesselinov on March 11, 2005 07:50 PM Randall, I agree with you on just about everything you said in your last response. I suspect groups will create hereditable traits that pull them farther out of the mainstream. And in many of those cases there'll be a self-reinforcing meme-gene complex - a set of beliefs that a tribe holds dear and uses technology to further inscribe into their offspring. (Interestingly, this make a good rebuttal to those who fear that human genetic engineering would lead to homogenization of the species.) I think what we're debating is just the relative likelihood or timeline of this scenario vs. others. My thesis is that while the scenario above is likely to play out eventually, that before we get to the that point we'll have adults trying out some of the same modifications on themselves. This will happen because both individuals and society have fewer qualms about individuals taking risks with themselves. And so there will be more such motivated individuals and they'll be more likely to find scientists and physicians who will help them. For instance, it's fairly likely that there are athletes who are currently investigating using gene therapy to permanently upregulate something like IGF-1 or EPO levels to get a boost in their athletic performance. Yet I doubt that many parents have seriously considered it. Same thing for anti-aging techniques. A large number of adults might be willing to sign up for parts of Aubrey de Grey's SENS program, but they'll probably want to see it tested in themselves before they wire it into their kids. There are also a couple other barriers here. Genetic engineering of the unborn is only technically easier than somatic cell therapy if performed at a very early stage. Realistically that means performing it as part of an in-vitro fertilization cycle. IVF is physically and emotionally painful, usually takes multiple cycles, and costs in the neighborhood of $20k in the US. IVF isn't a /technical/ hurdle to genetic engineering of the unborn. It's just a motivational hurdle. It means that parents have to either be already going through IVF for fertility reasons, or they need to have planned out the engineering they want to do ahead of time and be willing to go through the extra time and expense for it. (Of course that hurdle will drop over time too.) Of course this isn't black and white. Some minority of parents will be willing to put in the time, energy and money to have the child they want. They'll be willing to take somewhat larger risks with their kids. And technically that will be easier to accomplish. In that population, we could see genetic engineering of the unborn start happening any time now. Certainly we're already seeing PGD. But as far as mainstream adoption goes, I suspect more people are willing to take large risks with themselves, especially in their apparently-immortal 20s. As a result I suspect self modification - to improve appearance, to boost mental capacity, to stave off aging, and maybe even to alter personality - will move faster than embryo-modification. (Last analogy - illicit drugs. A lot of adults are willing to ingest various compounds to alter their own mental states. A large portion of the population seem to find these experiences rewarding. Only a very very small minority of these people would force them onto their infant children, though.) cheers, Ramez Posted by: [41]Ramez Naam on March 12, 2005 01:07 AM Randall, yes empathy exists and is encoded in part in genes, but no, empathy and altruistic punishment are not required for, and pychopaths are compatible with, a free society. Our basic mechanisms of social organization are general enough to deal with a very wide range of individual preferences. While our institutions are often tuned to take advantage of altruism and empathy where it exists, such as perhaps lowering the costs of formal law enforcement, variations on such institutions could also function in the absense of those features. Any standard textbook on law and economics, for example, gives many of the basic ideas. The compatibility with sociopaths is proven by the fact that we have always had such creatures and we still function. If there were a higher percentage of them, our institutions could adjust to deal with them more aggressively. Posted by: [42]Robin Hanson on March 12, 2005 07:08 AM Robin, If a larger fraction of the population becomes psychopaths then there will be more victims of psychopaths before each psychopath is caught. But the assumption that they'd all be caught eventually is unrealistic. There are [43]two kinds of psychopaths detectable as such by brain scans and one kind is extremely good at not getting caught. Adrian Raine at USC (see the previous link) has showed that unsuccessful psychopaths have an enlarged corpus callosum and an asymmetrical hippocampus. Whereas successful psychopaths (i.e. psychopaths who have never been jailed) have an enlarged corpus callosum but not an asymmetrical hippocampus. In my view this result points up the very real possibility of future vicious genetically engineered criminals who would be extremely skilled at not getting caught. This result also argues that there is already an element of society repeatedly victimizing others (whether legally or illegally) without getting caught. Posted by: [44]Randall Parker on March 12, 2005 11:03 AM Robin Hanson wrote: The compatibility with sociopaths is proven by the fact that we have always had such creatures and we still function. If there were a higher percentage of them, our institutions could adjust to deal with them more aggressively. Unless "our institutions" become infested with sociopathy themselves. What are the chances of a successful "The Boys From Brazil" scenario? Or what are the chances of a society becoming like the Ik tribe studied by Colin Turnbull, where mothers laugh if their infants crawl into a fireplace? I'm not contradicting your point, only pointing out that there are both fictional or gedanken alternative scenarios, as well as real and well documented alternative scenarios. Posted by: [45]nemo on March 12, 2005 11:10 AM In the comments above, whenever the writer wishes to suggest a trait to be instilled in the young that all readers would accept as being desirable, they seem to choose "a love of nature." I hope that I am not alone in seeing irony in the fact that this entire discussion is about the possibility of bizarrely subverting the very essence of nature. This strikes me as being an area where we should be careful what we wish for. Assume for a moment that a we had access to the technology to produce a child entirely according to predetermined specifications. Or that we could somehow arrange to produce a mate similarly determined. Would we love these predetermined creatures in the same way we love the products of chance with whom we currently mate and that we currently produce as children? Would we be satisfied, in turn, with the love of a creature that has been engineered to love us? The situation reminds me of Dostoyevsky's account of the temptation of Christ that appears in "The Grand Inquisitor" section of "The Brothers Karamazov," where Christ is offered and refuses the power to make all men to be as Christ wants them, much in the fashion being discussed here. Dostoyevsky seemed to impute wisdom to such a refusal. I wonder what he would think of all the above. Posted by: [46]toot on March 12, 2005 11:29 AM Ramez, I agree that people will start modifying themselves pretty quickly. As for when they start modifying embryos: I think it depends in large part on when it becomes safe to do. But the problem is how to prove that it is safe? That will be hard to do because it will take many years to follow some leading cases to see how they turn out. If genetic engineering that uses the intron technique for delivering gene modifications to precise destinations is shown to be safe in treating diseases then I could imagine it being used on sperm progenitor cells (there is a more precise name for that cell type that eludes me). Rather than risk toying with a fertilized embryo it will probably be safer to intervene at a far earlier stage. So I'm expecting to see that sort of genetic engineering in cases where particular sequences are known to be purely harmful and a person is tested and shown to have such a sequence. The other really big thing holding back offspring gene therapy is the current lack of knowledge on what most of the genetic variations actually do. The ability of a person to know all their deleterious genetic variations (and some theoretical estimates put the number of purely deleterious genetic variations per person at 500+) will much more strongly motivate prospective parents to seek out ways to do genetic engineering of their planned offspring. I just expect people to be shocked shocked shocked when they learn that they are going to give their baby 500 harmful genetic variations and can be told what each of those genetic variations do. (and the reason we all have so many harmful mutations is that natural selection can't select them out as fast as they are generated due to the size of the genome) The development of cheap DNA sequencing technology strikes me as a necessary precursor to mass genetic engineering of offspring. Though Hap Map research will help get us part of the way there. So maybe the knowledge that will motivate the desire to want embryo genetic engineering will come sooner. Posted by: [47]Randall Parker on March 12, 2005 12:24 PM Randall and nemo, Yes, more phychopaths would probably mean more uncaught phychopaths, which is bad for sure, but that is very different from a collapse of society, which is what was claimed. When phychopaths are rare, the chance that any particular unfortunate action was really caused by a phychopath is low enough that we usually ignore it. As the chance gets higher, such events become more suspicious, and we would investigate them with more energy. This is like the fact that people who live in a city trust those they pass on the street less than those who live in a small town. So law enforcement is more expensive in the city, and pychopaths succeed more there. But society still functions. That all said, there would certainly be a case for imposing a tax on the creation of creatures which are more likely to impose negative externalities on others. If the existence of creatures with less altruism makes various social processes more expensive, then it makes sense to tax the creation of those creatures to compensate. Posted by: [48]Robin Hanson on March 12, 2005 02:44 PM There is another reason why I expect adults to transform themselves before they start doing the same for their offspring and that is that parents tend to be more conservative with their kids than with themselves. This is especially true with regards to medical treatments. The RK and Lasex eye surgury is a good example. When RK first came out in the 80's, many eye doctors themselves underwent the treatment, but were much more reluctant to recommend it to their kids. Same goes for smoking (do as I say, not as I do). In high school, I had a friend whose father took up sky-diving, but would not allow his son (my friend) to participate. He was also very critical of the fact that we were into mountain climbing and rock climbing. It is natural for parents to be much more risk averse with their kids than with themselves. Also, altering one's self is much less politically controversial than the genetic design of one's kids. Adult gene therapies are on their way and so is the stem cell regenerative medicine. I do not expect the first "designer babies" to be born until 2030 or so. That gives us till 2050 until we have to worry about competing with them. Also, I think that gene therapy combined with stem cell regenerative medicine will allow for adults to modify themselves in any manner that might be applied to designer babies. Ramez, I just got your book. Posted by: [49]Kurt on March 12, 2005 02:47 PM Kurt, I'm liking Ramez's book [50]More Than Human so far. He writes very well and has done a lot of research to dig up suitable material. Posted by: [51]Randall Parker on March 12, 2005 03:32 PM Robin, My guess is that psychopaths produce high costs and that those costs are non-linear as a function of what percentage of the population they are. Go from a population of, say, 1% psychopaths to 10% psychopaths and society would become extremely worse. My guess is that society would break down long before reaching 50% psychopaths. As for your position about taxation of irresponsible and hazardous reproduction: That all said, there would certainly be a case for imposing a tax on the creation of creatures which are more likely to impose negative externalities on others. If the existence of creatures with less altruism makes various social processes more expensive, then it makes sense to tax the creation of those creatures to compensate. Okay, suppose some alleles contribute to the risk of having psychopathic children. Once DNA sequencing becomes cheap and all the alleles that contribute to violence, psychopathy, and other threats to the rest of us become known should a taxation scheme apply regardless of whether the person with the anti-social offspring used genetic engineering to produce their evil spawn? In other word, once the technology is developed to allow people to avoid having a number of types of pathological children should people have a legal obligation to avoid having children who are bad to the bone? Also, suppose a couple know they carry genes which, if combined randomly using natural mating, could produce psychopathic children. Suppose knowing this they have sex, out pops a kid 9 months later, and then 20 years later their psychopathic kid kills some people. Should the parents be charged with negligent homicide? Similarly, should people have an obligation to avoid producing retarded offspring? Robert Plomin (a researcher who searches for genetic variations that contribute to IQ differences) thinks he has findings that show most retardation is not the result of developmental accidents. He claims [52]most retardation is just the coming together of a lot of naturally occurring alleles that code for sub-normal intelligence. In other words, it is inherited. More generally, should greater knowledge lead to greater obligations (whether enforced by taxes or outright bans) to avoid foisting dangerous or retarded or otherwise burdensome offspring on society? Posted by: [53]Randall Parker on March 12, 2005 04:30 PM More generally, should greater knowledge lead to greater obligations (whether enforced by taxes or outright bans) to avoid foisting dangerous or retarded or otherwise burdensome offspring on society? Hmmm! Doesn't sound like a Libertarian crowd. Posted by: [54]toot on March 12, 2005 04:50 PM Ramez, Have you considered the possibility of 20 year old women taking treatments that alter the epigenetic environment in the womb? For instance, evidence suggests the gestational environment affects the onset of homosexuality. Would an adventurous young woman take a pill or vaginal suppository if she were told it would make her have healthier, smarter children? Robin, I do not believe Randall suggests that society would break down with an increase in sociopathy. I believe he suggests that western liberal democracy would and certainly any hope for a libertarian dream world would. He seems to suggest that a decrease in altruistic punishment would lead to an increase in criminality and victimization, which would also drastically alter the western liberal world many of us enjoy so much. A society of sociopaths is still a society. Not exactly a kinder gentler society, however. Posted by: [55]Bob Badour on March 12, 2005 05:14 PM Randall Parker wrote: [Excellent questions on limiting bad outcomes, concluding] More generally, should greater knowledge lead to greater obligations (whether enforced by taxes or outright bans) to avoid foisting dangerous or retarded or otherwise burdensome offspring on society? I think these address the visible psychopaths, those that be detected even though sometimes with difficulty. Recall that Ted Bundy murdered for years before he was caught. But consider the less spectacular case of what we ordinarily call sociopathy: no empathy for others, complete dedication to getting one's way, and respect for law only in the sense of avoiding consequences. Couple that with high intelligence, at least high enough to usually avoid high profile crimes like murder, and high enough to plan carefully, cleverly, and mercilessly. If some large enough number of such humans were produced, perhaps even by design of one or more such humans, what is to prevent them from infiltrating and compromising the very institutions that would be responsible for making and enforcing the laws to limit them? Recall that even harshly enforced laws rarely prevent any illegal activities entirely. Imagine a "Boys from Brazil" sort of scenario, in which a cohort of evil humans are produced and organized, possibly from birth, to take over social and government leadership, quietly and without drawing attention to their ultimate purpose. What good would laws be agains such an onslaught? Might not some strange beast slouch undetected toward Washington, London, Moscow, Beijing, etc., to create a world-wide dystopia within a generation? Posted by: [56]nemo on March 12, 2005 05:14 PM Randall: Regardless of what portion of the contribution to homosexuality is genetic we will find ways to tweak early embryonic development to nudge a brain down one pathway or another to produce a desired sexual orientation. This is a good point that I believe many who focus only on genetic engineering miss. Once we understand human development, we should be able to intervene and tweak the process. Add a little testosterone here, add a little choline there. Add a neural growth enhancer to accelerate language acquisition during the babbling stage. Baby formulae will take on new meaning. Ramez Naam: My thesis is that while the scenario above is likely to play out eventually, that before we get to the that point we'll have adults trying out some of the same modifications on themselves. This will happen because both individuals and society have fewer qualms about individuals taking risks with themselves. And so there will be more such motivated individuals and they'll be more likely to find scientists and physicians who will help them. I agree. Also the technology will continue to advance. The only way to keep up will be to modify adults. Robin Hanson: The compatibility with sociopaths is proven by the fact that we have always had such creatures and we still function. If there were a higher percentage of them, our institutions could adjust to deal with them more aggressively. Ever increasing technology empowers individuals to harm ever greater numbers of people. A sociopath could engineer a deadly virus and threaten to release it upon millions of people if his demands werent met. Our institutions might have to deal with them by making certain sociopaths arent born. I believe that is Randalls point. Society may have to enforce rules on what personality types will be allowed. Randall: But the problem is how to prove that it is safe? If the alternative is death or severe diminishment in quality of life then the choice is easy. The early adapters will those for whom the rewards significantly outweigh the risks. With rapidly advancing biotech the early mistakes may be easy to correct twenty years later. We need good models for predicting phenotype from genes. The models dont have to be perfect, only better than the natural system that results in many miscarriages and birth defects. Randall: natural selection can't select them out as fast as they are generated due to the size of the genome And the relatively small number of offspring per woman. With their large litter sizes rodents keep a cleaner genome. It isnt as bad as it might be. Many bad mutations are eliminated during the sperm competition phase. Posted by: [57]Fly on March 12, 2005 06:25 PM "With rapidly advancing biotech the early mistakes may be easy to correct twenty years later." So if biotechnology creates a Hannibal Lecter, it may be easy to correct the mistake twenty years later. Is that twenty years after discovering he is a Hannibal Lector or will we be able to recognize it in infancy? It is easy to say that every problem arising from technology has a technological fix, but it may not be so easy to develop the fix before the problem causes a good deal of trouble. The gist of this discussion seems to be that biotechnology will provide the means to change ourselves in any way that pleases us. The question might be asked, will whatever we become upon being so changed be pleased with what we have become? Or put another way, if we can contrive to make a being such that his or her neurons whose activity is perceived as happiness are always stimulated or firing, will that individual ever perceive happiness? It seems to me to be a variation on the question, can there be good without there being evil, or can there be mountains on a planet on which all places are equally high. Posted by: [58]toot on March 12, 2005 07:49 PM Ramez, I am half way through your book and it is an excellent read! It hits all of the relevant issues in a concise manner. Congradulations! I hope that it sells well. I had always wanted to write such a book and it appears that you have written the book that I was wanting to write. My book would have been more like in the "Megatrends" style and it would have focused on the economic benefits of post-mortality (I don't like the term immortality) and how it can solve the social security crises. I am now selling biotech instrumentation and I can tell you, biotech is definitely a "tool-driven" technology just like semiconductors. If it isn't already, it will follow a "Moore's law" progresssion just like electronics did. I will also tell you that medical tourism is already a big business. If neurological enhancement is banned in the U.S., millions of Americans will be flying to Asia every year for such enhancements. There is no way the U.S. government could stop this without turning ourselves into a fascist dictatorship. A dictatorship that I would do everything in my power to destroy. I'm sure that millions of others would back my sentiments. Toot, Your issues may or may not be relevant, but they are purely a matter of individual free choice. The relevant issue is not if they are real, but does a government have any business to impose them on free individuals. The obvious answer is absolutely NOT. One man's belief system is another man's gibberish. Posted by: [59]Kurt on March 12, 2005 11:43 PM Madison, Randall: Comments about "wouldn't waste ten years repeating multiplication tables", "IQ enabled him to compensate", or "compulsions can be treated" raises an interesting point. One problem of technology is that it can mask weaknesses which otherwise would have to be treated. Even without biotech advances, it's already a problem for our age. Mental problems, anxiety disorders, etc. seem to proliferate in societies where treatment options are most available (you could argue that it's genetic, as these people wouldn't be medicated for long enough to breed in other societies, but that's too simplistic IMO) When most kids don't need as much time to learn multiplication, what happens to the kids who still need the time? Or when most people can use IQ to mask schizophrenia, perhaps the genes for schizophrenia spread more widely, and the cases which are not masked are much worse. In short, I am arguing that genetic meddling will lead to even greater volatility than we see with normal medical advances. It's not at all clear that the greater volatility will lead to an upward trend. Posted by: [60]Joshua Allen on March 13, 2005 12:44 AM Joshua Allen, Certainly medical advances are allowing many more people with genetic defects and weaknesses to survive and reproduce. But I expect the ability to do genetic engineering on the germ line (i.e. eggs, sperm, and embryos) to allow the elimination of most genetic defects. So the genetic variations that contribute to schizophrenia will become rarer. Then there is the separate issue you raise about differences in intellectual ability. Will the worldwide standard deviation in IQ become larger? Certainly some populations will be able to avail themselves of germ line genetic engineering many years before other populations are able to do so. Some governments will place greater limits on IQ enhancement genetic engineering. In some countries the bulk of the population will be too poor to afford germ line genetic engineering or ignorant about it. I expect to see a gap between generations. Today I'm well above average in IQ. But I'll probably be well below the average IQ of the average American born in 2040. Posted by: [61]Randall Parker on March 13, 2005 01:13 AM nemo: One could argue that laws which depend on the goodness of heart of the citizens are no good at all. A possible outcome of a less remorseful, less empathic society is that the powers-that-be design laws to protect against people like themselves. Sociopath rulers likely would have no incentive to make your stuff easy to steal (although inequities are more likely to happen). Less sociopathic people are more likely to trust the intentions of others, and therefore build much weaker systems, IMO. OTOH, more paranoid leaders could mean more totalitarian government, and a need for higher IQ among the citizens just to be able to game the system enough to survive. However, on net balance, I have to agree with Randall. You want smart sociopaths probing the system to make it stronger (hopefully from a safe jail cell) and you want citizens with a genetic bias toward being social. Randall: I wonder about IQ in 2040 though. Stats showing that higher IQ negatively correlates with marriage in western women, for example. The breeding patterns of westerners do not show much section for IQ at all (the bottom half of IQ breed at much higher rate, smart people usually don't, and smart men marry stupid women). China, on the other hand, seems to be positively selecting. One child policy chops off the surge of low-IQ breeding, and shortage of women means that even the smart women get mates, and only the smartest men do -- and of course where there is no concept of politically correct, the system is rigged to select the brightest, and it's very difficult for stupid children to gain social status. I totally agree that biotech will quickly accelerate the differentials, but it will probably be sometime after 2040. And with the way economic, demographic, and technology transfer trends are going, it might not be a western revolution. Things get really interesting from a demographic perspective. Suppose hypothetically that Han Chinese are the most fervent adoptees of the early technology to boost children's IQ, have the most access, and get a 1 or 2 generation jump -- this would alter global culture and DNA permanently, since even as other cultures caught up in IQ, it's a numbers game after that (and depends on rates of intermarriage, for example). Posted by: [62]Joshua Allen on March 13, 2005 02:10 AM Joshua Allen: Suppose hypothetically that Han Chinese are the most fervent adoptees of the early technology to boost children's IQ, have the most access, and get a 1 or 2 generation jump -- this would alter global culture and DNA permanently, since even as other cultures caught up in IQ, it's a numbers game after that (and depends on rates of intermarriage, for example). In the long run, it may not matter which race or which society first boosts its populations IQ. A gene allele might be beneficial and contribute to an ethnic appearance, e.g., small nose. If so, all groups would tend to favor the small nose allele. (Either that or forego the advantage.) If a gene allele that contributes to an ethnic appearance has no special benefit, then it shouldnt matter which gene allele predominates. Genes would no longer be linked to parentage. So it shouldnt matter whether your parents were Chinese or American. The first culture to boost IQ might dominate the world for a short time. However, the culture for a population whos average IQ is 30 points higher is likely to be very different regardless of cultural heritage. Such a society might find pre-boost cultures equally unsuitable whether they are Chinese or American. (High IQ people already share a global culture that is largely independent of national origin and different from the common culture of their nation.) I am less concerned that a nation such as China or Japan would dominate than I am that a failed nation such as North Korea would aggressively use such technology. Advancing science and technology expands the available pool of economic resources. With boosted IQs, more people would be doing more research and engineering and that should lead to more resources for everyone. Fully utilizing the whole world populace should make every nation wealthier. (It would also lower the danger posed by failed states.) So there could be selfish reasons to make certain that all nations advanced. Posted by: [63]Fly on March 13, 2005 08:45 AM There is another economic argument in favor of genetic enhancement that is rarely mentioned yet deserves to be mentioned. That is the economic principle of comparative advantage. If some people enhance themselves (higher IQ, no aging) and others, for whatever reason do not, even the unenhanced will derive a net benefit from the enhanced because of the increase of total economic productivity of the system. This is because the enhanced will specialize in economic activities that places a great demand on their intellectual capabilites, leaving the other fields for everyone else. There is net increase in creation of wealth and the wealth does dessiminate throughout the system. An example of this is the enhanced guy who makes a killing from developing a new tchnology who then hires a contractor to build a new house. The concept of comparative advantage is one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and is taught in every economics and business school in the U.S. (and much of the world). Posted by: [64]Kurt on March 13, 2005 11:20 AM Kurt, As the economic value of the cognitively most able has soared the ability of the least able to hire the most able has plummeted. We see this in health care for example. How can middle aged poor people afford to spend $200 each month for medical insurance (and that with a $5000 yearly deductible)? How can they also afford to buy medical insurance for their kids? Comparative advantage? Yeah, I get Ricardo. But are you sure that always works? Look at graphs showing wage trends broken out by decile over the last 40 years. Sorry I do not have a URL for this but the bottom 10% have suffered declines in inflation-adjusted wages. What I see happening is that the smart people are developing machines that are cheaper to use than unskilled labor. There are still unskilled labor jobs but only because salaries have fallen. Are you aware that in inflation-adjusted terms the current US minimum wage is about half what it was in the late 1960s? I guess economists look at all this and see rising living standards in China and India and therefore the situation looks rosy to them. But speaking as a nationalist who is worried about trends within our own borders I'm increasingly concerned with the present and future ability of the dumber segments of our society to have anything of value to offer the labor market. Posted by: [65]Randall Parker on March 13, 2005 12:16 PM Randall, What you say is indeed true. The comparative advantage theory does not aways work. However, do you think that these people be better off if there were less smart people in the world? My point is that if people are able to increase their IQs (and EQ as well), there would be a net total increase in wealth production and this is never a bad thing. This wealth will trickle into the system one way or another, in the form of new jobs and new business opportunities. Growth begets growth. The bio-luddites (whether rightwing or leftwing) suggest that if some people are able to make themselves smarter, that this will somehow cause other people to become poorer in real terms. I see no reason to believe this at all. Indeed, this bio-luddite economic argument can be turned against them. Consider the possibility if neurological enhancement technology is banned in the U.S. It is doubtful that it would be banned in places like India and China and, if banned there, it is doubtful that such a ban could be enforced, considering the chaotic nature of these economies and societies. If Chinese and Indians can boost their IQs and EQs and Americans cannot, what do you think that will do to the American economy, particularly technology manufacturing? Posted by: [66]Kurt on March 13, 2005 01:34 PM Randall, You might want to consider the possibility that the reduced economic returns to low skill people (starting in the early 70's) does coincide with the explosive growth of government regulation and control over the economy (not to mention the inflation of the 70's and the unreported inflation we have now). It goes like this: increased regulation increases the cost of doing business. This increases the "hurtle rate" that businesses must clear in order to remain profitable so that they remain in business, which shifts the opportunities towards the high-skill, high value people. Hense, the people on the bottom get squeezed. I know many "blue-collar" people who have lost jobs because the plant closed or downsized due to new government regulation. The high cost of medical insurance and medical treatment itself in the U.S. is largely due to excessive regulation and the oligopolistic nature of doctor licensure. It is not a marketplace failure per se. Also, consider the posibility that high-skill labor is valued more than low-skill labor because it is rarer. Perhaps when we all have IQs in the 140-150 range, high-skill labor will be much more plentiful and, consequently, have less premium value associated with it. The recent bubble and decline in IT skills is indicative of this? Posted by: [67]Kurt on March 13, 2005 01:46 PM While particular modifications might produce pyschopaths, I see no particular reason to expect a much greater tendency in that direction. After all, the selection pressures that created the current mix of altruism, psychopathology, etc. are likely to remain relevant - I see no reason to think that the new equilibrium would have many orders of magnitude more psychopaths. Posted by: [68]Robin Hanson on March 13, 2005 02:38 PM Kurt, I agree that a greater supply of upper IQ people will have a wage depressing effect on their labor relative to the labor of the less intelligent. Though my guess is that an expansion of the ranks of the high IQ will not depress labor prices so much because the smarter people will spread out to engage in more kinds of innovating to develop more kinds of products and services. I see this all the time in software development. There are so many kinds of productivity enhancing software that could be developed but there is shortage of people smart enough to innovate. I also agree that a larger quantity of higher IQ people will accelerate the growth in productivity of the society as a whole both because the smart people will be more productive and also because they will invent more productivity enhancing devices and processes. Also, a larger economy will mean more money available to help the less fortunate. That is very important. Also, lots of people will be IQ-enhanced out of the ranks of the maladaptive poor. Greater smarts allow people to be more adaptive. However, if the productivity enhancing devices reduce the need for less skilled labor more than the devices decrease the need for more skilled labor then that will reduce the extent to which the higher productivity economy benefits the cognitively less able. As for which countries adopt IQ enhancement first: I see this as an incredibly important issue. One of the factions that will be arguing for early legalized and subsidized IQ enhancement in the United States will be the national security types. There are more smart brains in China. This puts us at an economic and military disadvantage. Posted by: [69]Randall Parker on March 13, 2005 02:58 PM Robin, Once genetic engineering of offspring becomes possible the selective pressures that produced the current ratio of "successfu" psychopaths to "unsuccessful" psychopaths to conventional criminals to "normal" people will no longer have much effect. The environmental selective forces (for lack of a better term) will become far less important than the conscious decisions of people who decide to reproduce. Here is what is key in my mind: Given the introduction of new and rapidly acting (by evolutionary standards) selective forces there will be big shifts in what gets selected for and against. It is difficult to predict in advance what will be selected for or against. But I think I can be on firm ground when I predict that conscious minds empowered to make a great many separate decisions about the genetic attributes of their offspring will produce very different results than standard old fashioned mating produced. To get an idea of the scale of what is coming look at the effects of the introduction of cheap ultrasound equipment into the environment in China and India. The changes in sex ratios have been dramatic, reaching as high as 150+ males to 100 males in some areas of India. That will produce follow-on effects in terms of which males manage to produce, likely selecting for higher IQ and more motivated males among other things. As for whether a higher incidence of psychopathy is in our future due to genetic engineering: Hopefully not. However, I find it more plausible that some people could want to reduce the altruistic punishment instinct or the empathy instinct or perhaps increase the aggressivity or assertiveness of their children. Extroversion is my prime candidate for trait that I expect people will consciously choose for their children at much higher rates than the parents are extroverts. An increased incidence of extroversion alone would increase the incidence of government corruption. The super-shy introverted Finnish have an incredibly low incidence of corruption in part because they are embarrassed at the thought of getting caught and partly because they do not form relationships easily with strangers to be able to plot bribery and other corruption schemes. Posted by: [70]Randall Parker on March 13, 2005 03:15 PM Robin, Regarding your comment, "After all, the selection pressures that created the current mix of altruism, psychopathology, etc. are likely to remain relevant." If all the genetic tampering I've seen advocated here were practiced, I see no reason for your optimism regarding selection. Unless you regard taking anyone who steps too far out of line and slamming them in prison to be "selection." Posted by: [71]toot on March 13, 2005 03:19 PM Kurt, the economists view of "a rising tide lifts all boats" is a rationalization. In pure economics terms, it may be almost true, but you can (for example) post a gain in the GDP of a third world nation by making just a few of its richest even richer and the rest poorer -- it frequently happens. And the big thing the economist ignore is demographic impact. Economists smugly point out that we had a "peaceful" end to the cold war, and one which led to greater economic liberty for the whole world. No atom bombs required. However, did you know that the population of Russia has declined 33% since 1987? The atom bomb killed 200,000 people -- the "peaceful" end of the cold war killed several million, and eliminated the births of several million more who certainly would have been born otherwise. In demographic terms -- in terms of spread of culture and DNA, it was a mass genocide. Some of this was due to emigration, but the bulk of population decline was caused by a 30-year drop in life expectancy, higher infant mortality, and lower birth rates. Now, some people might argue that "it's OK if my children never survive, and my whole race dies out, because race is obsolete and it's better for the greater good of the human race anyway". But such people are a slim minority, and destined to be wiped out by the demographic surges of people like the Han, who actually care greatly about the survival of their children, families, race, and culture. One imagines that most of the demographic changes will be just as "peaceful" as the end of the cold war. Is that really the kind of world we want for our children? I don't know... Posted by: [72]Joshua Allen on March 13, 2005 06:58 PM Joshua, I cannot believe your comment about the end of the cold war. I am one of those who rejoyce in the peaceful resolution of the cold war. Would you rather have us had a nuclear war to get rid of communism? I am looking forward to a peaceful solution to the issue of political Islam as well. The Russians spent the past century turning what could have been one of the wealthiest countries in the world into a junk heap, and they are now reaping what they sowed. Your arguments about demography and the Chinese can be interpeted as a call for massive genetic enhancement of the U.S. population in order to keep up with the han. I will assume that this is your intent. Posted by: [73]Kurt on March 13, 2005 08:38 PM Joshua; your point is sensible, but your facts are absurd. 33% Not even remotely close. 30 Years? So the USSR had a life expectancy in the high 80s? Not a chance? Randall; Comparative advantage is totally correct, but doesn't typically imply what it is commonly asserted to. Also, it only applies within certain constraints. If it was universally valid, natural selection would have created universal inter-organismal trade, and while symbiosis is an important part of the story, it is not the whole story. Posted by: [74]michael vassar on March 13, 2005 11:11 PM Isn't this the first draft of the Matrix and the Terminators? Saraha Conner is beginning to look around very nerviously. Posted by: [75]Scott G. F. on March 14, 2005 08:17 AM Scott, I think of it as being like kids in the biotechnology candy store. Very little concern for the stomach ache that might ensue. Posted by: [76]toot on March 14, 2005 09:30 AM Nah, there won't be any matrix or terminators. Both are based on SF extrapolations of artificial intelligence, which is not the subject of discussion here. Such AI is unlikely to be realized in the near future (50 years) for a variety of technical reasons too long to go into here. I think its going to be just us (enhanced) biological humans for a long time to come. I would not worry about this. The biotechnological "candy store" is necessary in that death by aging is a certainty if we don't get the biotechnological goodies, and some of us here may not have a lot of time to waste. If you look around, much of the work in human biotechnology is being driven by people who have a strong desire to stay alive (Michael West, Hazaltine, De grey, and Saul Kent). Staying alive is a very powerful motivator. When one's back is against the wall, one has a tendency to kick butt first, then ask questions later. Word has it that there is serious money looking into the SENS research plan. Posted by: [77]Kurt on March 14, 2005 03:10 PM michael, the facts are pretty clear. Life expectancy is now around 40. AIDS is rampant; Russia fudges the numbers, but it's getting worse every day. There is no reason to expect that Russia will not have worse rates than Zaire within 20 years. Russian culture is to assume that all of the heroin junkies and aids patients "deserve it" because they brought it on themselves; hardly a recipe for a turnaround in the spread of these scourges anytime soon. Conservative estimates show 25% population decline; 33% may be high end. However, even 25% represents millions dead. Russia economy is now comparable to Brazil; their entry to G8 is a charity case. You are burying your head in the sand and have no facts to back you up if you cannot see the mass genocide which was perpetrated. Kurt, saying that "they brought it on themselves" is how we rationalize all wars. We claimed that the Japanese "deserved" to be nuked, and we stopped nuking them after the gave up. On the other hand, the genocide of Russians is being visted on the childrens children of the generals who "sowed the seeds". I'm not making any value judgment whatsoever, just pointing out that the "peaceful" demographic shifts can be even more brutal than a nuclear war, and a brutal demographic shift is exactly what the secular and liberty-obsessed west has sown for itself. I see little opportunity to reverse these trends, and I'm not advocating any particular course of action. I'm just predicting that western values and phenotypes will not be very prevalent in 300 years, and it will be by erasing, not by "melting". Posted by: [78]Joshua Allen on March 15, 2005 01:12 PM http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/rs.html Josh, I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you were claiming life expectancy in the mid 50s, actual data seems to be 66. 40s? Where do you get your data. Mean age is 37! BTW, I've lived there post USSR. Brazil is not Zaire. Posted by: [79]michael vassar on March 15, 2005 01:42 PM Joshua, Did we start the war with Japan (hint: pearl harbor)? Until the attack on pearl harbor, fully 80% of the American public was furvently apposed to entry into another "European tribal" conflict. Did we start the cold war with the USSR? Was not communism an expansionist meme that needed to be countered? The fact that we successfully destroyed this meme without a war involving nuclear weapons is a credit to us all. With luck, we can do the same to Islam. Today, Japan and germany are prosperous societies. I have lived in one for nearly a decade and visited the other. You talk of a "brutal demographic shift" in the West. Is this something that tranhumanism cannot resolve? Is not the discussion of transhumanism the point of this thread? Is not one objective of transhumanism the elimination of the aging process? If successful, aging will be as rare in future society as polio is in today's. Why then, would the West or its value system disappear? Posted by: [80]Kurt on March 15, 2005 10:15 PM michael: The stats I was looking at were actually projections through 2025. Between 2000 and 2025, US Census predicts 19 million reduction, while UN predicts 22 million reduction. Both show a decline of at least 5 million already. I screwed up the mortality figure, though. Male life expectancy is 59 -- I had read "a 20 year-old man has only a 40% chance of reaching 65" and mixed it up in my memory. So I hope my laziness in fact-checking hasn't detracted from what I think is still an extremely important point -- Russia has been totally screwed by the collapse of communism, to a degree much greater than Japan or Germany in WWII. It is a demographic disaster that is unparalleled in modern times. Please don't dismiss the comparisons to Zaire. Look at mortality rates in children, HIV, distribution of most GDP is in hands of the few, homicide rates, cancer, etc -- Russia does not rank anywhere with the western nations, and ranks below many african nations on these measures. I didn't say Brazil and Zaire compare -- but it is quite possible that Russia's HIV rate will match Zaire and GDP will match Brazil. The point is that Russia is dying a slow death, and this is a fate that America and Europe so far have avoided only through indiscriminate immigration. It's a matter of time until the embers fade. Kurt: I agree. The winner writes history. If America gets wiped out, I'm sure the winner will be able to explain why we "deserved it". It is hopelessly naive to think that the world is going to let Americans thrive and spread as long as we play nice and don't provoke them. Most demographics can come up with plently of excuses to explain why Americans should lay down and die. And it doesn't matter, since Americans are willingly committing demographic suicide anyway. Americans do not have the will to have babies, let alone aggressively use biotech to breed superior babies. We are already in a demographic slide *without* biotech, and the instant a more aggressive demographic group adopts biotech, it's game over. Extending lifespan makes zero difference. Think about it. Would you rather have a population which increases 50 IQ points average and stays the same average age (same age distribution), or a population which has the same IQ distribution, but increases 50 years in age on average? Hmmm, a population which is dumb, old, and shrinking; or one that is smart, young, and growing -- which one will have greatest influence on the culture and DNA of the world? Posted by: [81]Joshua Allen on March 17, 2005 10:59 PM OK, in the case of Russia the problem is serious, but it's a complex pathology interlinked with communist history and a culture that has always been pathological. I would focus on the abysmal "self-reported happyness" numbers more than even on the deaths. I don't think there is much the US can do, but we could have softened the fall 15 years ago. I agree that transhumanism is potentially very valuable, but don't really think that the US has any competition other than China. It's not obvious that biotech need be applied only to babies rather than to adults. It's also not obvious that it's worth planning for the distant future. That said, I always encourage the capable to reproduce more. Annoying how Galton and the like bitch but don't reproduce themselves. Posted by: [82]michael vassar on March 18, 2005 12:35 AM There is no other competitor for the U.S. than China, and China has a falling birthrate as well. Unless we are talking about massive genetic engineering of populations, no one else has the combination of brains and population to really compete with the U.S. This is simply no other potential competitor. In the long run (50-100 years) aging will be cured anyways and this birth rate stuff won't matter any longer. Posted by: [83]Kurt on March 18, 2005 08:51 AM "Annoying how Galton and the like bitch but don't reproduce themselves." Annoying? How so? They've made their contributions. I fail recognize this need for clones. "In the long run (50-100 years) aging will be cured anyways and this birth rate stuff won't matter any longer." My-oh-my, love the declarations of certainty! I especially love the above use of the word "cured". What exactly does this "cured" imply? ... ... that we extend life by another fifty years(plausible) or nonsense like five-hundred, five-thousand or fifty-thousand years? Who knows; maybe you'll make it to see the year A.D. *22,005*. Good Luck!!! Posted by: [84]GENEarchy on March 18, 2005 08:16 PM References 7. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 8. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002659.html 9. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/ 10. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/03/transhumanism_a.html 11. http://www.digital-images.net/Images/Universal/Velociraptor_6001.jpg 12. http://hanson.gmu.edu/uploads.html 13. http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/dangerous.html 14. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/03/more_transhuman.html 15. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374236437/ref=ase_reasonmagazine/102-4397649-3226509?v=glance&s=books/marginalrevol-20 16. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001344.html 17. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002324.html 18. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/03/how_much_does_a.html 19. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/03/identity_and_tr.html 20. http://www.cosmopolis.ch/jurassic14.jpg 23. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ 24. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ 25. http://www.morethanhuman.org/ 26. mailto:dennis.heimbigner at colorado.edu 27. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 28. mailto:mev25 at drexel.edu 29. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767918436/parapunditcom-20/002-3858801-0417638?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 30. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0029146739/parapunditcom-20/002-3858801-0417638?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 31. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002141.html 32. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 33. http://www.morethanhuman.org/ 34. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/000218.html 35. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 36. mailto:yogsothoth875 at hotmail.com 37. mailto:moondust at uniserve.com 38. mailto:Jamisia at yahoo.com 39. mailto:divus_masterei at yahoo.com 40. http://divedi.blogspot.com/ 41. http://www.morethanhuman.org/ 42. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ 43. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001998.html 44. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 45. mailto:nobody at nowhere.com 46. mailto:rdewitt at umbc.edu 47. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 48. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ 49. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 50. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767918436/parapunditcom-20/002-3858801-0417638?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=2025&link%5Fcode=xm2 51. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 52. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001634.html 53. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 54. mailto:rdewitt at umbc.edu 55. mailto:bbadour at golden.net 56. mailto:nobody at nowhere.com 57. mailto:OnThe at wall.com 58. mailto:rdewitt1 at umbc.edu 59. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 60. http://www.netcrucible.com/blog 61. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 62. http://www.netcrucible.com/blog 63. mailto:OnThe at wall.com 64. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 65. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 66. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 67. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 68. http://hanson.gmu.edu/ 69. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 70. http://www.futurepundit.com/ 71. mailto:rdewitt1 at umbc.edu 72. http://www.netcrucible.com/blog 73. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 74. mailto:mev25 at drexel.edu 75. mailto:nycubbie at yahoo.com 76. mailto:rdewitt1 at umbc.edu 77. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 78. http://www.netcrucible.com/blog 79. mailto:mev25 at drexel.edu 80. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 81. http://www.netcrucible.com/blog 82. mailto:mev25 at drexel.edu 83. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 84. mailto:jbh at hal.net From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 3 00:30:07 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sat, 02 Apr 2005 16:30:07 -0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Chinese Eugenics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <424F390F.1000907@earthlink.net> Has anyone conferred with the Chinese to determine whether or not they are engaged in Eugenics? I'm assuming you are referencing the one-child per family policy for population control. If not could someone please clarify. Placing the shoe on another foot.....should United States be accused of engaging in Eugenics because it is attempting to maintain a very high health control for its citizens while promoting scientific advancements in geriatrics. Throughout history Eugenics in one form or another has always been a high governmental policy. Regards, Gerry Reinhart-Waller Premise Checker wrote: > Today's theme is Chinese Eugenics. Several articles will follow, some > of them alarming, others offensive. But the threat or promise of > Chinese eugenics could well be the biggest transhumanist development > in the next generation. Questions to ponder? > > 1. Are the Chinese creating a master race? > 2. Will Chinese eugenics trigger off a eugenics arms race? > 3. Will these arms races be directed by central governments? > 4. Since it will take a generation for eugenics to have an effect, is > there any government that can plan ahead that long? Autarchies are > prone to being overthrown and politicians in democracies face the > electorate several times a generation. Both of these militate against > long-range planning. > 5. Will autarchies select for conformity toward national objectives or > will they realize that what is required for national goals to be > achieved is a population that is creative, cantankerous, rebellious, > as well as intelligent? These prospective populations put existing > governments at a severe risk. > 6. Will parents in nations that allow for individual eugenic choice > risk having children that will be pointlessly rebellious for the sake > of a very few that will be recognized as true pioneers only by > posterity? How thick is the line between genius and madness? > 7. How will a Chinese-dominated world differ from the world we know? > 8. How far will one nation have to get ahead to dominate the world? > 9. How can the world be made safe for pluralism? > 10. Are these prospects so wicked that a preventive nuclear war be > launched against RED China, as some neocons seem to wish? > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Apr 3 03:39:12 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 22:39:12 EST Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: These are good guesses, Greg. Your suggestion that some of the missing pattern of the gene-that-never-was in the mustard plant with a double set of mutated genes could be in the cytosol is evocative. Bear with me while I run a string of thought that even I find difficult to believe. Eshel and Joel Isaacson feel there's validity to some strange research on water, research indicating that water is capable to carry "imprints" of influences as vague as thoughts and as the label on the bottle. Cytosol is the water and water-soluble components of the cell, the stuff that's left when you get rid of the cell membrane, the nucleus, the organelles and the cytoskeleton. If it's true that water bears layer after layer of memory, layer after layer of imprints from trace chemicals that have long since been removed and other such things, then, indeed, the water itself could play a part in the construction of a "proper", "whole" gene to replace the two mangled genes in the mutated arabidopsis. I suspect that the reconstruction of a gene the mutated aradidopsis never possessed isn't a serial process by any stretch of the imagination. I suspect it's a very orchestral process in which numerous influences inside of the cell and outside of the cell participate. A cell is constantly receiving information about what form it should take, what specialization it should adopt, and what it should be doing at this precise second from genes around it and, I supsect in a sense, from the entire plant it's a part of--not to mention the signals an individual plant receives from the plant community and from the eco-system that plant community has carved out. As Jeff Hawkins points out in On Intelligence, this multi-level process of signal transduction, this process of signal receiving and signal summing, isn't static. It moves continuously, like music. And like the music of a symphony, the message may be digested down to a simple sequence in each receiver. One of those receivers is the genome. Another is the segment of a genome called a gene. Like Hawkins' neurons, the input coming to the genome includes delayed feedback on its previous actions...and on the actions of previous generations of plants. So take the mysterious and possibly non-existent ability of water to hold a "memory". Add it to the smarts in roughly 300 million macromolecules of the cell and in the grander pattern they form. Add all that in to a hierarchy of contexts that extend shell by shell like an infinite onion, and you may have a partial explanation for the counter-Mendelian ability of a mustard plant to generate a gene it never possessed but one that its neighbors and its ancestors have had for a long, long time. You may get the ability of the plant to receive an almost infinite number of signals, sum them, and arrive at the right conclusion for each bit of space and time. In this case the mustard plant arrives at the right conclusion about what a corrected version of its damaged hothead gene should be like. By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation of the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum particle when it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at least Pavel suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been trying to smuggle into a paper he and I are working on that compares the decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees. Howard In a message dated 4/1/2005 8:55:19 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, ursus at earthlink.net writes: This fabulous bit of science is very evocative. My best guess is that such ?pattern memory??while some of it could be stored in cytosol elements, etc.,--is most likely stored in the vast unexplored territories of ?junk? DNA?perhaps in fragments of genes, pseudogenes, etc., with non-gene RNA elements acting as controls, inhibitors, etc. Could be wrong, but this sort of reconstructive memory does seem essential to life. Best! Greg ____________________________________ From: HowlBloom at aol.com [mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 7:31 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; ursus at earthlink.net; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism re: (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_million s.gif&goto=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html%20) (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/pri nter-friendly&pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&got o=http://www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html%20) (http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&page=www.nytimes.com/printer-friendly& pos=Position1&camp=foxsearch-emailtools09-nyt5&ad=pf_millions.gif&goto=http:// www.foxsearchlight.com/millions/index_nyt.html%20) A mechanism central to Jeff Hawkins' analysis of the way brains work in his On Intelligence may provide a clue to the manner in which plants with copies of a damaged gene from both their father and their mother manage to "recover" or reconstruct something they never had-- a flawless copy of the gene they've received only in damaged form. Hawkins brings up a neural network trick called auto-associative memory. Here's his description of how it works: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." (Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47.) Where would such auto-associative circuits exist in a plant cell? Here are some wild guesses: * In the entire cell, including its membrane, its cytoplasm, its organelles, its metabolic processes, and its genome; * * Or in the entire cell and its context within the plant, including the sort of input and output it gets from the cells around it, the signals that tell it where and want it is supposed to be in the plant's development and ongoing roles. Howard re: ____________________________________ New York Times March 23, 2005 Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene By _NICHOLAS WADE_ (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-pe r) n a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in T?bingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2614 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 1968 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 392 bytes Desc: not available URL: From tramont at iinet.net.au Sun Apr 3 05:26:44 2005 From: tramont at iinet.net.au (tramont at iinet.net.au) Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 13:26:44 +0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20050403122950.0381a7b0@mail.iinet.net.au> Are there any notes or references available on-line relating the decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees (or other mind-body entities)? My own interest is in the commonality that links the decision-making across different organisms/entities, and I wrap it up in the notion of bodies-as-tools. If you were a quantum particle, your particle-body predisposes you to making and habituating different types of choices to what you would otherwise make/habituate if had the mind-body of a bee, or, of course, a human - more interestingly, in my most recent work that I've submitted to a journal, the mind-body of a man or the mind-body of a woman. BTW - I agree with Pavel's concept of involving the whole cosmos, to incorporate quantum principles relating to non-locality. Are we on the same page? Outrageously improbable forms (eg., where intelligent design theory is invoked to explain the unexplainable) can be more realistically accounted for when your option-space is infinite. Stephen At 11:39 AM 4/3/05, HowlBloom at aol.com wrote: > >By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation >of the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum >particle when it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at >least Pavel suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been >trying to smuggle into a paper he and I are working on that compares the >decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees. _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html _______________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tramont at iinet.net.au Sun Apr 3 05:26:44 2005 From: tramont at iinet.net.au (tramont at iinet.net.au) Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 13:26:44 +0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20050403122950.0381a7b0@mail.iinet.net.au> Are there any notes or references available on-line relating the decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees (or other mind-body entities)? My own interest is in the commonality that links the decision-making across different organisms/entities, and I wrap it up in the notion of bodies-as-tools. If you were a quantum particle, your particle-body predisposes you to making and habituating different types of choices to what you would otherwise make/habituate if had the mind-body of a bee, or, of course, a human - more interestingly, in my most recent work that I've submitted to a journal, the mind-body of a man or the mind-body of a woman. BTW - I agree with Pavel's concept of involving the whole cosmos, to incorporate quantum principles relating to non-locality. Are we on the same page? Outrageously improbable forms (eg., where intelligent design theory is invoked to explain the unexplainable) can be more realistically accounted for when your option-space is infinite. Stephen At 11:39 AM 4/3/05, HowlBloom at aol.com wrote: > >By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation >of the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum >particle when it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at >least Pavel suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been >trying to smuggle into a paper he and I are working on that compares the >decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees. _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html _______________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 10:42:23 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 03:42:23 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <01C537FF.262EDA00.shovland@mindspring.com> Could quantum entanglement play a role in this? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 7:39 PM To: ursus at earthlink.net; paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism << File: ATT00002.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00003.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: image001.gif >> << File: image002.gif >> << File: image003.gif >> << File: ATT00004.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 11:05:40 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 04:05:40 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <01C53802.66C69EB0.shovland@mindspring.com> Perhaps genes are not the ultimate control unit of life. Perhaps there is something smaller or more etheric. Perhaps something more like thought controls genes. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: tramont at iinet.net.au [SMTP:tramont at iinet.net.au] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 9:27 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list; ursus at earthlink.net; paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Are there any notes or references available on-line relating the decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees (or other mind-body entities)? My own interest is in the commonality that links the decision-making across different organisms/entities, and I wrap it up in the notion of bodies-as-tools. If you were a quantum particle, your particle-body predisposes you to making and habituating different types of choices to what you would otherwise make/habituate if had the mind-body of a bee, or, of course, a human - more interestingly, in my most recent work that I've submitted to a journal, the mind-body of a man or the mind-body of a woman. BTW - I agree with Pavel's concept of involving the whole cosmos, to incorporate quantum principles relating to non-locality. Are we on the same page? Outrageously improbable forms (eg., where intelligent design theory is invoked to explain the unexplainable) can be more realistically accounted for when your option-space is infinite. Stephen At 11:39 AM 4/3/05, HowlBloom at aol.com wrote: > >By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation >of the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum >particle when it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at >least Pavel suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been >trying to smuggle into a paper he and I are working on that compares the >decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees. _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html _______________________________________________________ << File: ATT00005.html >> << File: ATT00006.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 16:12:48 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 09:12:48 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <01C5382D.4EF06BB0.shovland@mindspring.com> Here's something that may fit somewhere: So far the Human Genome Project has identified about 1.5 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms that account for our individual differences. If we think about how much we can do with computer programming languages with a few hundred reserved works, what possibilities arise from 1.5 million "words?" And what is the Master Control Program for all of this? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: tramont at iinet.net.au [SMTP:tramont at iinet.net.au] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 9:27 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list; ursus at earthlink.net; paleopsych at paleopsych.org; kurakin1970 at yandex.ru; paul.werbos at verizon.net Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Are there any notes or references available on-line relating the decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees (or other mind-body entities)? My own interest is in the commonality that links the decision-making across different organisms/entities, and I wrap it up in the notion of bodies-as-tools. If you were a quantum particle, your particle-body predisposes you to making and habituating different types of choices to what you would otherwise make/habituate if had the mind-body of a bee, or, of course, a human - more interestingly, in my most recent work that I've submitted to a journal, the mind-body of a man or the mind-body of a woman. BTW - I agree with Pavel's concept of involving the whole cosmos, to incorporate quantum principles relating to non-locality. Are we on the same page? Outrageously improbable forms (eg., where intelligent design theory is invoked to explain the unexplainable) can be more realistically accounted for when your option-space is infinite. Stephen At 11:39 AM 4/3/05, HowlBloom at aol.com wrote: > >By the way, Pavel Kurakin suggests that a similar hierarchical summation >of the entire cosmos gets fed into the "decision" of a single quantum >particle when it "picks" which receptor device it should move to. Or at >least Pavel suggests this in the interpretation of his work I've been >trying to smuggle into a paper he and I are working on that compares the >decision-making of quantum particles to the decision-making of bees. _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html _______________________________________________________ << File: ATT00005.html >> << File: ATT00006.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 16:45:37 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 09:45:37 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Introns: the "junk DNA" that controls gene expression Message-ID: <01C53831.E4A3A510.shovland@mindspring.com> http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/introns.htm In the 1960s non-bacterial (eukaryotic) ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs) were found to be synthesized as a long precursor RNA which was subsequently processed by the removal of apparently functionless internal "spacer" sequences. Since bacterial (prokaryotic) rRNAs were more compactly organized, it was reasonable to ask whether the first rRNAs to evolve had the spacer sequences, which subsequently decreased in prokaryotes, or whether the spacer sequences were later acquired in eukaryotes. In the 1960s a similar processing was found to apply to eukaryotic precursor messenger RNAs (pre-mRNAs; Scherrer et al. 1970). In the mid 1970s it was found that the some of the internal sequences interrupted the protein-encoding part of the corresponding mRNAs. The internal sequences which were removed were named "introns", and what remained in the processed mRNA constituted the "exons". Since the phenomenon had already been described for rRNA it should have been no big deal to find that it also applied to other RNAs, but many, including the author of these pages, were surprised that protein-encoding regions were interrupted. The same questions remained. Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=introns&btnG=Google+Search From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 16:58:32 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 09:58:32 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms for Biomedical Research Message-ID: <01C53833.B2692550.shovland@mindspring.com> http://snp.cshl.org/ Top of Form 1 Search: (advanced | help ) Bottom of Form 1 Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are common DNA sequence variations among individuals. They promise to significantly advance our ability to understand and treat human disease. The SNP Consortium (TSC) is a public/private collaboration that has to date discovered and characterized nearly 1.8 million SNPs (more ) google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=single-nucleotide+polymorphism&spell=1 From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:03:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:03:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'A Great Improvisation': Our Man in Paris Message-ID: Sunday Book Review > 'A Great Improvisation': Our Man in Paris http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/books/review/03ISAACSO.html 5.4.3 [Washington Post Book World review appended.] By WALTER ISAACSON A GREAT IMPROVISATION Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. By Stacy Schiff. Illustrated. 489 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $30. IN 1776, after he had helped edit Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence, the 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin was sent on a wartime Atlantic crossing deemed necessary to make that document a reality. America had to get France on its side in the Revolution, and, even back then, France was a bit of a handful. Franklin was an ideal choice for the mission, as Stacy Schiff shows in this meticulously researched and judicious account of his eight years as a diplomatic dazzler and charmer in Paris. ''He happened to do a fine imitation of a French courtier,'' she writes, showing her astute feel for both Franklin and 18th-century court life at Versailles. ''He knew better than to confuse straightforwardness with candor; he was honest, but not too honest, which qualifies in France as a failure of imagination.'' What made Franklin such a great diplomat was that he could quote Cervantes's maxim about honesty being the best policy without trying to apply it in the Hall of Mirrors, where a more oblique approach had its advantages. He had a ''majestic suppleness'' that was rare, especially in a man of his age. Today's stewards of America's foreign policy could learn much from the wily and seductive Franklin. He was as adroit as a Richelieu or Metternich at the practice of balance-of-power realism; he wrote memos to the French foreign minister Vergennes that showed a fine feel for the national interests of France and its Bourbon-pact allies; and he played the French off against the English envoys who came secretly suitoring for a back-channel truce. But he also wove in the idealism that was to make America's worldview exceptional both then and now; he realized that the appeal of the values of democracy and an attention to winning hearts and minds through public diplomacy would be sources of the new nation's global influence as much as its military might. After a year of playing both seductive and coy, Franklin was able to negotiate a set of treaties with France that would, so the signers declared, bond the countries in perpetuity. One French participant expressed the hope that the Americans ''would not inherit the pretensions and the greedy and bold character of their mother country, which had made itself detested.'' As a result of the arrangements made by Franklin, the French supplied most of America's guns and nearly all of its gunpowder, and had almost as many troops at the decisive battle of Yorktown as the Americans did. Schiff scrupulously researches the details of Franklin's mission and skillfully spices up the tale with the colorful spies, stock manipulators, war profiteers and double-dealers who swarmed around him. Most delightful are the British spy Paul Wentworth, so graceful even as he is outmaneuvered by Franklin, and the flamboyant playwright and secret agent Beaumarchais (''The Barber of Seville'' and ''The Marriage of Figaro''), so eager to capitalize on the news of the American victory at Saratoga that he was injured when his carriage overturned while speeding with a banker from Franklin's home to central Paris. Least delightful is the priggish and petulant John Adams, ''a man to whom virtue and unpopularity were synonymous'' and whom Schiff merrily tries to knock from the pedestal upon which he was placed by [1]David McCullough. Schiff is somewhat less successful at capturing the sweep and excitement of Franklin's diplomatic achievements. She never offers up much of a theory of how he enticed the French into an alliance, what role the military victory at Saratoga played, how he really felt about the British, what games he was playing when he juggled two rival British envoys vying to be his interlocutor in the final peace talks or why he agreed with his fellow commissioners to negotiate that treaty with Britain behind the backs of the French. Nor does Schiff convey the brilliance of his writing and the exuberance of his flirtations with his two mistresses. Franklin, oddly enough, sometimes comes across as rather distant and lifeless, which is a shame. In her two previous biographical studies -- [2]''V?ra: (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)'' and ''Saint-Exupery'' -- Schiff displayed her mastery as a literary stylist. This time, she occasionally lapses into clich?s (in one section Franklin ''dragged his feet'' and then ''led Vergennes down the primrose path'' from which position he ''backed them'' -- the Spaniards -- ''into a corner''), and some of her phrases read as if she wrote them first in period French (''Franklin paid a call of which he could not have overestimated the symbolic value''). Nevertheless, her research is so convincing and her feel for the subject so profound that ''A Great Improvisation'' becomes both an enjoyable narrative and the most important recent addition to original Franklin scholarship. When he embarked on his final voyage back home to America after his triumphant years in France, Franklin made a short stop in England, at Southampton, where he met with his illegitimate and prodigal son, William, who had remained loyal to the British crown. There William's own illegitimate son, Temple, who had sided with and worked for his grandfather Benjamin, tried to effect a reconciliation. Alas, the reunion was cold and bitter. It was a vivid reminder of how personality and character and emotion and diplomacy can become dramatically interwoven. That was one of the great themes of Franklin's life, one of the many that resonate today. Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, is the author of ''Benjamin Franklin: An American Life'' and ''Kissinger: A Biography.'' He is writing a biography of Albert Einstein. ------------- Charming Paris http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17329-2005Mar31?language=printer Reviewed by Isabelle de Courtivron Sunday, April 3, 2005; Page BW04 A GREAT IMPROVISATION: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America By Stacy Schiff. Henry Holt. 489 pp. $30 At the beginning of his February trip to Europe, President Bush quipped that he hoped for a reception similar to the one Benjamin Franklin received two centuries earlier, when he "arrived on this continent to great acclaim." (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told him he "should be a realist.") This was tongue in cheek, of course -- an attempt to smooth over the "Punish France!" pronouncements from the heated debate over Iraq and subsequent Francophobic actions such as renaming fries and dumping Beaujolais. But Bush probably did not realize what price Franklin had actually paid for retaining his extraordinary popularity in France and for surmounting political and personal obstacles on both sides of the Atlantic. The story of the eight and a half years he spent in Paris, persuading the French to support the fledgling American army in concrete as well as symbolic ways, is the subject of Stacy Schiff's engaging new book. A Great Improvisation has many levels. It is a factual, historical and meticulously detailed recounting of the travails, vexations, negotiations, complexities and setbacks of the political and diplomatic maneuvers that ultimately led France to support the young American cause. It is also an enlightening discussion of the vexed and complex beginnings of the transatlantic alliance. Finally, it is an entertaining story, bringing alive a cast of colorful characters, strange plot twists and bizarre anecdotes, which sometimes reads like a movie script replete with intrigues, ultimatums, cabals, swindles and vendettas. In 1776, the 70-year-old Franklin landed in France, sent by a Congress that had declared independence without the means to achieve it. The very idea of foreign help was unpalatable to some in Congress and considered suspect by many even after the court of young Louis XVI had come through. But these widely diverging opinions did not deter Franklin from his unwavering faith in the American Revolution and his steady conviction that every measure should be taken to sustain the new republic and win the war against the British. Franklin had the daunting task of advertising rebellion in an absolute monarchy; he did so doggedly, all the while underplaying what was often a desperate military situation. When he arrived in France, he was already well known and widely respected as a statesman, philosopher and scientist. But what allowed him to succeed when all other emissaries charged with the same task had fallen into the deep Franco-American political and cultural divide? Schiff attributes it in large part to his ability to marshal "a great improvisation." She points to Franklin's laissez-faire attitude, his ability to be logical without being encumbered by exaggerated honesty, his voluble, genial and ruthless approach, and his calculated innocence. He was also a hit with the French because he knew how to adapt to the codes of the European nobility -- not to mention possessing a heroic and seemingly unlimited patience for people's exasperating foibles, French, British and Americans alike. Indeed, as thorny as Franklin's encounters with various French characters may have been, they seem tame next to his relations with members of his own mission and with his compatriots -- from the early tension between the original U.S. emissaries to France, William Lee and Silas Deane (who fought not only over strategy but over the colors of the American army uniforms), all the way to the uncompromising John Adams (who considered every laurel bestowed upon Franklin a personal affront). Marshaling so much original information -- drawn from diplomatic archives, family papers, spy reports and the archives of the French foreign service -- could have made for a tedious read were it not for Schiff's storytelling skills. The author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Vera Nabokov, Schiff introduces us to a cast of unique characters, whom she captures in a few vivid and incisive traits. They range from Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the flamboyant, irrepressible, swashbuckling secret agent and playwright who became an important early arms dealer; to the recipient of those weapons, the dashing young marquis de Lafayette, who sailed to America against the king's order, wracked with violent seasickness, speaking not a word of English and leaving behind a pregnant wife; to the excitable, stubborn Viscount Stormont, the British ambassador to Versailles; and to the chevalier d'Eon, a cross-dressing dragoon officer who became a notable supporter of the young republic's cause. Schiff does not forget the ladies with whom Franklin flirted so copiously, in person and by correspondence: for instance, the thirtysomething, married Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, who had frail nerves, called him Papa and eventually promised to become his wife, but only in the afterlife, or Anne-Catherine Helv?tius, the philosopher's widow, a hostess with a powerful salon who was at the "center of Franklin's social life" in France. They figure prominently in Schiff's narrative, not simply because of Franklin's fraught infatuations with several of them but also because, in 18th-century French society, their salons were the places where important people could meet and network. Completing this tableau are members of the somewhat dysfunctional Franklin family: his illegitimate son William, a Loyalist leader in London with whom he was on terrible terms, and William's own illegitimate son, Temple, who worked for his grandfather in Paris and whose taste for Europe left him incapable of readapting to America. "For his service abroad," Schiff wryly notes, Franklin "wound up with an English son and a French grandson." Schiff's allusions to the French-American misunderstandings and mutual suspicion will regale readers. Some of these lead to hilarious anecdotes; for example, Bostonians welcomed the French squadron in 1778 with a dinner of cooked green Massachusetts frogs. The French militiamen found American coffee undrinkable, the food inedible, the people "overly familiar and bizarrely peripatetic" and the women graceless and unshapely; the Americans felt that the French talked too fast and all at the same time without really saying much, opined on subjects they knew nothing about and considered that business consisted primarily of ceremony and pleasure. Despite the undeniable impact on U.S.-French relations of two tumultuous centuries, A Great Improvisation reminds us that profound cultural differences between the two societies have not changed all that much -- and thus remain at the root of their conflicting visions of the world. Plus ?a change . . . o Isabelle de Courtivron is Friedlaender Professor of the Humanities at MIT and the editor of "Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:05:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:05:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Word for Word: He Said (1912), She Said (2005) Message-ID: Week in Review > Word for Word: He Said (1912), She Said (2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/weekinreview/03word.html 5.4.3 By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA IF ever a novel depicted college life in all its rah-rah, fraternity-laden, raccoon-coated glory, it was "Stover at Yale." Written by Owen Johnson (Yale class of 1901) and published in 1912, the book follows John Humperdink "Dink" Stover's journey up Old Eli's social ladder - mixing with the right crowd, makes a name as a football hero, rebelling just enough to emerge as the biggest man on campus. In 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald - a Princeton man himself - called it the "textbook" for his generation. But move over, Stover: Last month, a freshly minted Yale graduate published a college novel for a new generation. "Chloe Does Yale" (Hyperion), by Natalie Krinsky, relates the misadventures of one Chloe Carrington, the undergraduate author of a sex column in The Yale Daily News. Excerpts from the books suggest that priorities at George W. Bush's alma mater have shifted a bit in 93 years. As soon as Stover arrives as a freshman, a sophomore, Hugh Le Baron, offers advice: "Don't ticket yourself for drinking." "I won't." "Or get known for gambling - oh, I'm not preaching a moral lesson, only, what you do, do quietly." "I understand." "And another thing: no fooling around with women; that isn't done here." In contrast, by Page 10 of "Chloe Does Yale," our heroine is fooling around with a vengeance: Without a word, he leans in and kisses me. It's good. He's a goooood kisser. For just a moment I lose myself in it. Even my mind is giving a little sigh. But the moment of enjoyment is fleeting and my mind begins racing again. The good kiss is lost and now he's doing something very odd with his tongue. Stover, the bumbling neophyte, has little fashion sense, as his friend Dopey McNab tells him: "Fancy wearing a colored shirt - and such a color! You're gotten up for a boating party - not for a formal lunch. You're unspeakable, Dink, unspeakable! Look at me. I'm a delight - black and white, immaculate, impressive and absolutely correct." Chloe isn't hung up on sartorial niceties: Exotic Erotic is also the best party at Yale. Its motto: The less you wear, the lower the fare. Being only slightly more modest than cheap, I shelled out the requisite $3 at the door. I could have avoided the fee by showing the freshman manning the entrance my left breast. ... Once inside, it occurs to me, as it does every year, that being nearly naked in front of 4,000 other people who are nearly naked is quite an interesting, if not jarring, experience. Stover ignores Le Baron's advice about women and falls for the beautiful Jean Story. He courts her through the proper channels: The maid stood at the open door. There was nothing to do but to toil up the penal steps, heart in mouth. "Is Miss Story in?" he said in a lugubrious voice. "Will you present her with this card?" Chloe prefers the direct approach: We met. I was unimpressed. We hooked up. Despite Stover's gentlemanly overtures, Jean resists him: "Oh, please!" she said, with a sudden weakness, again trying to release her fingers. "I can't help it," he said, blurting out the words. "Jean, you know as well as I what it is. I love you." ... She remained motionless a moment, gathering her strength against the shock. "Please let go my hand," she said quietly. Believe it or not, Chloe resists, too: Hooking up with college guys is like playing a sordid game of cat and mouse. They are after the mouse, and you need to hold them off as best you can. I am fending Maxwell off like a warrior princess. Hand moves to the bikini bottoms. Whop! I smack it away. He tries the left hand - tricky. Whop! I got that one, too. At one point, Stover frets that he's wasted his time by sucking up to well-connected classmates: "Good Lord!" he said, almost aloud, "in one whole year what have I done? I haven't made one single friend, known what one real man was doing or thinking, done anything I wanted to do, talked out what I wanted to talk, read what I wanted to read or had time to make the friends I wanted to make. I've been nothing but material - varsity material - society material." When Chloe frets, it's about not getting connected at all: "I need to start some kind of program for myself. You're all leaving me in relationship dust!" I exclaim. "You're not dusty," Crystal says comfortingly. "Maybe just a little ... rusty?" "Rusty? What do you mean?" "Last major relationship: Josh. Last major hookup: hello, honey, six months ago - Maxwell. Wake up and smell the Gold Cup. Girl, you gotta get yourself some action." "Stover at Yale" ends with Dink as a junior, achieving his ambition of membership in the secretive social club Skull and Bones, with the entire student body congratulating him: He heard them cheering, then he saw hundreds of faces, wild-eyed, rushing past him; he stumbled and suddenly his eyes were blurred with tears, and he knew how much he cared, after the long months of rebellion, to be no longer an outsider, but back among his own with the stamp of approval on his record. "Chloe Does Yale" also ends with its title character as a junior. But she, alas, fails to attain her true educational goal: I couldn't wait for college because everyone told me I would meet the man I was going to marry. I was going to fall in love. It's been three years, and I'm still waiting. Thomas Vinciguerra is an editor at The Week magazine. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:06:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:06:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Boy Problems Message-ID: Magazine > The Way We Live Now: Boy Problems http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03WWLN.html 5.4.3 By ANN HULBERT "It's her future. Do the math,'' instructs a poster that is part of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.'s two-year-old ''Girls Go Tech'' campaign. Accompanying the message -- which belongs to a series of public service announcements also sponsored by the Ad Council -- is a photograph of an adorable little girl reading a book called ''Charlotte's Web Site.'' The cover of the E. B. White takeoff shows Fern and Wilbur looking intently at Charlotte on a computer screen. The text below warns that ''by sixth grade, an alarming number of girls lose interest in math, science and technology. Which means they won't qualify for most future jobs.'' But they don't lose interest in reading, this particular ad presumes -- nor do girls lose interest in school, certainly not at the rate boys do. The recent controversy over comments made by Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, about the gender gap in science and engineering has eclipsed a different educational disparity: boys perform consistently below girls on most tests of reading and verbal skills and lag in college enrollment and degree attainment. After dominating postsecondary education through the late 1970's, young American men now earn 25 percent fewer bachelor's degrees than young women do. Who knows what Summers would say about this phenomenon, which is the flip side of the underrepresentation of female scientists at the top that he was addressing. Male achievement, as he explained, tends toward the extremes when it comes to testing, while females' scores are more concentrated in the middle of the range. What Summers didn't spell out is that boys owe their edge in math to the unusually high performance of a relatively small number of boys in a pool that also has more than its share of low-scoring students. In assessments of verbal literacy, the clumping of boys toward the bottom is more pronounced. The gender disparity widens among low-income and minority students. And it is especially dramatic among African-Americans, a recent Urban Institute study shows. Black women now earn twice as many college degrees as black men do. They also receive double the number of master's degrees. But the female lead isn't just a black phenomenon; among whites, women earn 30 percent more bachelor's degrees than men and some 50 percent more master's degrees. It's his future. Do the math -- but, as the Boy Scouts warn, be prepared. This trend doesn't lend itself to clear-cut treatment. Ignore the male lag, some advocates of girls are inclined to argue, on the grounds that men on average still end up outearning women. Bring back old-fashioned competition and more hard-boiled reading matter, urge advocates for boys like Christina Hoff Sommers, who in ''The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men'' (2000) denounces a touchy-feely, cooperative, progressive ethos that she says undermines boys' performance and school engagement. Males come from Mars and thrive instead on no-nonsense authority, accountability, clarity and peer rivalry. What both of these views -- feminist and antifeminist alike -- fail to appreciate is how much patient attentiveness (in the Venus vein) it takes to boost stragglers rather than strivers. In the ''do the math'' mission under way with girls, the overarching goal has been surprisingly competitive: to maintain the momentum of female math students (who do just as well as boys early on in school) and to keep the top achievers in the academic pipeline for those ''future jobs'' in our technological world. The payoff for efforts that have been directed toward school performance has been gratifying. Girls are taking more math and science courses in high school and majoring with greater frequency in those fields in college. (Look at the 40 Intel finalists: this year 38 percent of them were girls.) The educational predicament of boys is fuzzier by comparison and likely to elude tidy empirical diagnosis and well-focused remedies. At the National Bureau of Economic Research (under whose auspices Summers delivered his remarks about women), analysts have been puzzling over the whys behind ''Where the Boys Aren't,'' the title of one working paper. There are some obvious explanations: men in the Army and in prison and more job options for males (in construction and manufacturing) that don't require a college education but pay relatively well. Yet there are also murkier social and behavioral -- and biological -- issues at stake that don't augur well for a quick-fix approach. On the front end, boys appear to be later verbal bloomers than girls, which sets them up for early encounters with academic failure -- and which makes early-intervention gambits like the Bush administration's push to emphasize more literacy skills in preschool look misdirected. Down the road, there is evidence that poorer ''noncognitive skills'' (not academic capacity but work habits and conduct) may be what hobble males most, and that growing up in single-parent families takes more of an educational toll on boys than girls. Those are challenges that beg for more than school-based strategies. To give her credit, Laura Bush hasn't shied away from them as she starts a boy-focused youth initiative, which runs the gamut from dealing with gangs to financing fatherhood programs to improving remedial English programs. Rewards for such efforts aren't likely to be prompt and aren't aimed at the top -- two reasons they deserve the spotlight. Females have yet more strides to make in the sciences, but they're building on success. A boost-the-boys educational endeavor faces the challenge of dealing with downward drift. Clearly the nation needs an impetus to tackle the larger problem of growing social inequality. Worries that it is boys who are being left behind could be the goad we need. Ann Hulbert is a contributing writer for the magazine. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:08:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:08:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tho. Friedman: It's a Flat World, After All Message-ID: Magazine > It's a Flat World, After All http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html 5.4.3 In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met ''Indians'' and came home and reported to his king and queen: ''The world is round.'' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: ''The world is flat.'' And therein lies a tale of technology and geoeconomics that is fundamentally reshaping our lives -- much, much more quickly than many people realize. It all happened while we were sleeping, or rather while we were focused on 9/11, the dot-com bust and Enron -- which even prompted some to wonder whether globalization was over. Actually, just the opposite was true, which is why it's time to wake up and prepare ourselves for this flat world, because others already are, and there is no time to waste. I wish I could say I saw it all coming. Alas, I encountered the flattening of the world quite by accident. It was in late February of last year, and I was visiting the Indian high-tech capital, Bangalore, working on a documentary for the Discovery Times channel about outsourcing. In short order, I interviewed Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to prepare my taxes from Bangalore, read my X-rays from Bangalore, trace my lost luggage from Bangalore and write my new software from Bangalore. The longer I was there, the more upset I became -- upset at the realization that while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, globalization had entered a whole new phase, and I had missed it. I guess the eureka moment came on a visit to the campus of Infosys Technologies, one of the crown jewels of the Indian outsourcing and software industry. Nandan Nilekani, the Infosys C.E.O., was showing me his global video-conference room, pointing with pride to a wall-size flat-screen TV, which he said was the biggest in Asia. Infosys, he explained, could hold a virtual meeting of the key players from its entire global supply chain for any project at any time on that supersize screen. So its American designers could be on the screen speaking with their Indian software writers and their Asian manufacturers all at once. That's what globalization is all about today, Nilekani said. Above the screen there were eight clocks that pretty well summed up the Infosys workday: 24/7/365. The clocks were labeled U.S. West, U.S. East, G.M.T., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia. ''Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world,'' Nilekani explained. ''What happened over the last years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things.'' At the same time, he added, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of e-mail software, search engines like Google and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore and one part to Beijing, making it easy for anyone to do remote development. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, Nilekani said, they ''created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again -- and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature. And what you are seeing in Bangalore today is really the culmination of all these things coming together.'' At one point, summing up the implications of all this, Nilekani uttered a phrase that rang in my ear. He said to me, ''Tom, the playing field is being leveled.'' He meant that countries like India were now able to compete equally for global knowledge work as never before -- and that America had better get ready for this. As I left the Infosys campus that evening and bounced along the potholed road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: ''The playing field is being leveled.'' ''What Nandan is saying,'' I thought, ''is that the playing field is being flattened. Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!'' Here I was in Bangalore -- more than 500 years after Columbus sailed over the horizon, looking for a shorter route to India using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned safely to prove definitively that the world was round -- and one of India's smartest engineers, trained at his country's top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was telling me that the world was flat, as flat as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even more interesting, he was citing this development as a new milestone in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world -- the fact that we had made our world flat! This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0 -- the thing that gives it its unique character -- is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally? But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse -- non-Western, nonwhite -- group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part. ''Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want,'' said Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and creator of the first commercial Internet browser. ''That is why I am sure the next Napster is going to come out of left field. As bioscience becomes more computational and less about wet labs and as all the genomic data becomes easily available on the Internet, at some point you will be able to design vaccines on your laptop.'' Andreessen is touching on the most exciting part of Globalization 3.0 and the flattening of the world: the fact that we are now in the process of connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together. We've tasted some of the downsides of that in the way that Osama bin Laden has connected terrorist knowledge pools together through his Qaeda network, not to mention the work of teenage hackers spinning off more and more lethal computer viruses that affect us all. But the upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Only 30 years ago, if you had a choice of being born a B student in Boston or a genius in Bangalore or Beijing, you probably would have chosen Boston, because a genius in Beijing or Bangalore could not really take advantage of his or her talent. They could not plug and play globally. Not anymore. Not when the world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray. When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids. H ow did the world get flattened, and how did it happen so fast? It was a result of 10 events and forces that all came together during the 1990's and converged right around the year 2000. Let me go through them briefly. The first event was 11/9. That's right -- not 9/11, but 11/9. Nov. 9, 1989, is the day the Berlin Wall came down, which was critically important because it allowed us to think of the world as a single space. ''The Berlin Wall was not only a symbol of keeping people inside Germany; it was a way of preventing a kind of global view of our future,'' the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said. And the wall went down just as the windows went up -- the breakthrough Microsoft Windows 3.0 operating system, which helped to flatten the playing field even more by creating a global computer interface, shipped six months after the wall fell. The second key date was 8/9. Aug. 9, 1995, is the day Netscape went public, which did two important things. First, it brought the Internet alive by giving us the browser to display images and data stored on Web sites. Second, the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight. In sum, what the Netscape revolution did was bring people-to-people connectivity to a whole new level. Suddenly more people could connect with more other people from more different places in more different ways than ever before. No country accidentally benefited more from the Netscape moment than India. ''India had no resources and no infrastructure,'' said Dinakar Singh, one of the most respected hedge-fund managers on Wall Street, whose parents earned doctoral degrees in biochemistry from the University of Delhi before emigrating to America. ''It produced people with quality and by quantity. But many of them rotted on the docks of India like vegetables. Only a relative few could get on ships and get out. Not anymore, because we built this ocean crosser, called fiber-optic cable. For decades you had to leave India to be a professional. Now you can plug into the world from India. You don't have to go to Yale and go to work for Goldman Sachs.'' India could never have afforded to pay for the bandwidth to connect brainy India with high-tech America, so American shareholders paid for it. Yes, crazy overinvestment can be good. The overinvestment in railroads turned out to be a great boon for the American economy. ''But the railroad overinvestment was confined to your own country and so, too, were the benefits,'' Singh said. In the case of the digital railroads, ''it was the foreigners who benefited.'' India got a free ride. The first time this became apparent was when thousands of Indian engineers were enlisted to fix the Y2K -- the year 2000 -- computer bugs for companies from all over the world. (Y2K should be a national holiday in India. Call it ''Indian Interdependence Day,'' says Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign-policy analyst at Johns Hopkins.) The fact that the Y2K work could be outsourced to Indians was made possible by the first two flatteners, along with a third, which I call ''workflow.'' Workflow is shorthand for all the software applications, standards and electronic transmission pipes, like middleware, that connected all those computers and fiber-optic cable. To put it another way, if the Netscape moment connected people to people like never before, what the workflow revolution did was connect applications to applications so that people all over the world could work together in manipulating and shaping words, data and images on computers like never before. Indeed, this breakthrough in people-to-people and application-to-application connectivity produced, in short order, six more flatteners -- six new ways in which individuals and companies could collaborate on work and share knowledge. One was ''outsourcing.'' When my software applications could connect seamlessly with all of your applications, it meant that all kinds of work -- from accounting to software-writing -- could be digitized, disaggregated and shifted to any place in the world where it could be done better and cheaper. The second was ''offshoring.'' I send my whole factory from Canton, Ohio, to Canton, China. The third was ''open-sourcing.'' I write the next operating system, Linux, using engineers collaborating together online and working for free. The fourth was ''insourcing.'' I let a company like UPS come inside my company and take over my whole logistics operation -- everything from filling my orders online to delivering my goods to repairing them for customers when they break. (People have no idea what UPS really does today. You'd be amazed!). The fifth was ''supply-chaining.'' This is Wal-Mart's specialty. I create a global supply chain down to the last atom of efficiency so that if I sell an item in Arkansas, another is immediately made in China. (If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner.) The last new form of collaboration I call ''informing'' -- this is Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, which now allow anyone to collaborate with, and mine, unlimited data all by themselves. So the first three flatteners created the new platform for collaboration, and the next six are the new forms of collaboration that flattened the world even more. The 10th flattener I call ''the steroids,'' and these are wireless access and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). What the steroids do is turbocharge all these new forms of collaboration, so you can now do any one of them, from anywhere, with any device. The world got flat when all 10 of these flatteners converged around the year 2000. This created a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration on research and work in real time, without regard to geography, distance or, in the near future, even language. ''It is the creation of this platform, with these unique attributes, that is the truly important sustainable breakthrough that made what you call the flattening of the world possible,'' said Craig Mundie, the chief technical officer of Microsoft. No, not everyone has access yet to this platform, but it is open now to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it in history. Wherever you look today -- whether it is the world of journalism, with bloggers bringing down Dan Rather; the world of software, with the Linux code writers working in online forums for free to challenge Microsoft; or the world of business, where Indian and Chinese innovators are competing against and working with some of the most advanced Western multinationals -- hierarchies are being flattened and value is being created less and less within vertical silos and more and more through horizontal collaboration within companies, between companies and among individuals. Do you recall ''the IT revolution'' that the business press has been pushing for the last 20 years? Sorry to tell you this, but that was just the prologue. The last 20 years were about forging, sharpening and distributing all the new tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real information revolution is about to begin as all the complementarities among these collaborative tools start to converge. One of those who first called this moment by its real name was Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O., who in 2004 began to declare in her public speeches that the dot-com boom and bust were just ''the end of the beginning.'' The last 25 years in technology, Fiorina said, have just been ''the warm-up act.'' Now we are going into the main event, she said, ''and by the main event, I mean an era in which technology will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, of life.'' A s if this flattening wasn't enough, another convergence coincidentally occurred during the 1990's that was equally important. Some three billion people who were out of the game walked, and often ran, onto the playing field. I am talking about the people of China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia. Their economies and political systems all opened up during the course of the 1990's so that their people were increasingly free to join the free market. And when did these three billion people converge with the new playing field and the new business processes? Right when it was being flattened, right when millions of them could compete and collaborate more equally, more horizontally and with cheaper and more readily available tools. Indeed, thanks to the flattening of the world, many of these new entrants didn't even have to leave home to participate. Thanks to the 10 flatteners, the playing field came to them! It is this convergence -- of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes for horizontal collaboration -- that I believe is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early 21st century. Sure, not all three billion can collaborate and compete. In fact, for most people the world is not yet flat at all. But even if we're talking about only 10 percent, that's 300 million people -- about twice the size of the American work force. And be advised: the Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. What China's leaders really want is that the next generation of underwear and airplane wings not just be ''made in China'' but also be ''designed in China.'' And that is where things are heading. So in 30 years we will have gone from ''sold in China'' to ''made in China'' to ''designed in China'' to ''dreamed up in China'' -- or from China as collaborator with the worldwide manufacturers on nothing to China as a low-cost, high-quality, hyperefficient collaborator with worldwide manufacturers on everything. Ditto India. Said Craig Barrett, the C.E.O. of Intel, ''You don't bring three billion people into the world economy overnight without huge consequences, especially from three societies'' -- like India, China and Russia -- ''with rich educational heritages.'' That is why there is nothing that guarantees that Americans or Western Europeans will continue leading the way. These new players are stepping onto the playing field legacy free, meaning that many of them were so far behind that they can leap right into the new technologies without having to worry about all the sunken costs of old systems. It means that they can move very fast to adopt new, state-of-the-art technologies, which is why there are already more cellphones in use in China today than there are people in America. If you want to appreciate the sort of challenge we are facing, let me share with you two conversations. One was with some of the Microsoft officials who were involved in setting up Microsoft's research center in Beijing, Microsoft Research Asia, which opened in 1998 -- after Microsoft sent teams to Chinese universities to administer I.Q. tests in order to recruit the best brains from China's 1.3 billion people. Out of the 2,000 top Chinese engineering and science students tested, Microsoft hired 20. They have a saying at Microsoft about their Asia center, which captures the intensity of competition it takes to win a job there and explains why it is already the most productive research team at Microsoft: ''Remember, in China, when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.'' The other is a conversation I had with Rajesh Rao, a young Indian entrepreneur who started an electronic-game company from Bangalore, which today owns the rights to Charlie Chaplin's image for mobile computer games. ''We can't relax,'' Rao said. ''I think in the case of the United States that is what happened a bit. Please look at me: I am from India. We have been at a very different level before in terms of technology and business. But once we saw we had an infrastructure that made the world a small place, we promptly tried to make the best use of it. We saw there were so many things we could do. We went ahead, and today what we are seeing is a result of that. There is no time to rest. That is gone. There are dozens of people who are doing the same thing you are doing, and they are trying to do it better. It is like water in a tray: you shake it, and it will find the path of least resistance. That is what is going to happen to so many jobs -- they will go to that corner of the world where there is the least resistance and the most opportunity. If there is a skilled person in Timbuktu, he will get work if he knows how to access the rest of the world, which is quite easy today. You can make a Web site and have an e-mail address and you are up and running. And if you are able to demonstrate your work, using the same infrastructure, and if people are comfortable giving work to you and if you are diligent and clean in your transactions, then you are in business.'' Instead of complaining about outsourcing, Rao said, Americans and Western Europeans would ''be better off thinking about how you can raise your bar and raise yourselves into doing something better. Americans have consistently led in innovation over the last century. Americans whining -- we have never seen that before.'' R ao is right. And it is time we got focused. As a person who grew up during the cold war, I'll always remember driving down the highway and listening to the radio, when suddenly the music would stop and a grim-voiced announcer would come on the air and say: ''This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.'' And then there would be a 20-second high-pitched siren sound. Fortunately, we never had to live through a moment in the cold war when the announcer came on and said, ''This is a not a test.'' That, however, is exactly what I want to say here: ''This is not a test.'' The long-term opportunities and challenges that the flattening of the world puts before the United States are profound. Therefore, our ability to get by doing things the way we've been doing them -- which is to say not always enriching our secret sauce -- will not suffice any more. ''For a country as wealthy we are, it is amazing how little we are doing to enhance our natural competitiveness,'' says Dinakar Singh, the Indian-American hedge-fund manager. ''We are in a world that has a system that now allows convergence among many billions of people, and we had better step back and figure out what it means. It would be a nice coincidence if all the things that were true before were still true now, but there are quite a few things you actually need to do differently. You need to have a much more thoughtful national discussion.'' If this moment has any parallel in recent American history, it is the height of the cold war, around 1957, when the Soviet Union leapt ahead of America in the space race by putting up the Sputnik satellite. The main challenge then came from those who wanted to put up walls; the main challenge to America today comes from the fact that all the walls are being taken down and many other people can now compete and collaborate with us much more directly. The main challenge in that world was from those practicing extreme Communism, namely Russia, China and North Korea. The main challenge to America today is from those practicing extreme capitalism, namely China, India and South Korea. The main objective in that era was building a strong state, and the main objective in this era is building strong individuals. Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism. It requires a president who can summon the nation to work harder, get smarter, attract more young women and men to science and engineering and build the broadband infrastructure, portable pensions and health care that will help every American become more employable in an age in which no one can guarantee you lifetime employment. We have been slow to rise to the challenge of flatism, in contrast to Communism, maybe because flatism doesn't involve ICBM missiles aimed at our cities. Indeed, the hot line, which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House, has been replaced by the help line, which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore. While the other end of the hot line might have had Leonid Brezhnev threatening nuclear war, the other end of the help line just has a soft voice eager to help you sort out your AOL bill or collaborate with you on a new piece of software. No, that voice has none of the menace of Nikita Khrushchev pounding a shoe on the table at the United Nations, and it has none of the sinister snarl of the bad guys in ''From Russia With Love.'' No, that voice on the help line just has a friendly Indian lilt that masks any sense of threat or challenge. It simply says: ''Hello, my name is Rajiv. Can I help you?'' No, Rajiv, actually you can't. When it comes to responding to the challenges of the flat world, there is no help line we can call. We have to dig into ourselves. We in America have all the basic economic and educational tools to do that. But we have not been improving those tools as much as we should. That is why we are in what Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, calls a ''quiet crisis'' -- one that is slowly eating away at America's scientific and engineering base. ''If left unchecked,'' said Jackson, the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T., ''this could challenge our pre-eminence and capacity to innovate.'' And it is our ability to constantly innovate new products, services and companies that has been the source of America's horn of plenty and steadily widening middle class for the last two centuries. This quiet crisis is a product of three gaps now plaguing American society. The first is an ''ambition gap.'' Compared with the young, energetic Indians and Chinese, too many Americans have gotten too lazy. As David Rothkopf, a former official in the Clinton Commerce Department, puts it, ''The real entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.'' Second, we have a serious numbers gap building. We are not producing enough engineers and scientists. We used to make up for that by importing them from India and China, but in a flat world, where people can now stay home and compete with us, and in a post-9/11 world, where we are insanely keeping out many of the first-round intellectual draft choices in the world for exaggerated security reasons, we can no longer cover the gap. That's a key reason companies are looking abroad. The numbers are not here. And finally we are developing an education gap. Here is the dirty little secret that no C.E.O. wants to tell you: they are not just outsourcing to save on salary. They are doing it because they can often get better-skilled and more productive people than their American workers. These are some of the reasons that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, warned the governors' conference in a Feb. 26 speech that American high-school education is ''obsolete.'' As Gates put it: ''When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. . . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.'' We need to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, because, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living. When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ''Tom, finish your dinner -- people in China are starving.'' But after sailing to the edges of the flat world for a year, I am now telling my own daughters, ''Girls, finish your homework -- people in China and India are starving for your jobs.'' I repeat, this is not a test. This is the beginning of a crisis that won't remain quiet for long. And as the Stanford economist Paul Romer so rightly says, ''A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.'' Thomas L. Friedman is the author of ''The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,'' to be published this week by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and from which this article is adapted. His column appears on the Op-Ed page of The Times, and his television documentary ''Does Europe Hate Us?'' will be shown on the Discovery Channel on April 7 at 8 p.m. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:09:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Book World: (Tho. Friedman) The Great Leveling Message-ID: The Great Leveling http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17314-2005Mar31? 5.4.3 Reviewed by Warren Bass THE WORLD IS FLAT A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century By Thomas L. Friedman. Farrar Straus Giroux. 488 pp. $27.50 On a modern-day passage to India, Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, found himself chatting in Bangalore with a young, slight, mustachioed videogame-company CEO named Rajesh Rao. "India is going to be a superpower," Rao said, gushing about a new economic era that makes the globe into one massive marketplace, "and we are going to rule." But rule whom? Friedman asked. Rao laughed. "It's not about ruling anybody," he admitted. "That's the point. There is nobody to rule anymore." Rao's enthusiasm about the changing rules of international commerce and politics today -- about whether there's anything left to rule in a brave new world of globalization -- underscores the virtues and vices of Friedman's captivating and sometimes frustrating new book. The World Is Flat continues the franchise Friedman has made for himself as a great explicator of and cheerleader for globalization, building upon his 1999 The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Like its predecessor, this book showcases Friedman's gift for lucid dissections of abstruse economic phenomena, his teacher's head, his preacher's heart, his genius for trend-spotting and his sometimes maddening inability to take himself out of the frame. It also shares some of the earlier volume's excitement (mirroring Rajesh Rao's) and hesitations about whether we're still living in an era dominated by old-fashioned states or in a postmodern, globalized era where states matter far less and the principal engine of change is a leveled playing field for international trade. What complicates this further is, of course, 9/11. If the idea of globalization filled a conceptual void in the formless 1990s -- the editors of Foreign Affairs magazine wrote in 1997 that "the overall theme of the 1990s is that there is no overall theme to the 1990s" -- the shock of al Qaeda's assault yanked early-21st-century geopolitics back to worries about security. In The World Is Flat, Friedman rejoins the debate over what's really driving world politics, but he does not come out where readers of his eloquent columns on the challenges of defeating bin Ladenism might expect; instead, he argues that "the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early twenty-first century" is not the admittedly important war on terrorism but a "triple convergence -- of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes and habits for horizontal collaboration." Friedman writes that the world is now entering the era of "Globalization 3.0," following Globalization 1.0, which ran from 1492 until 1800 and was driven by countries' sheer brawn, and Globalization 2.0, in which "the key agent of change, the dynamic force driving global integration, was multinational companies" driven to look abroad for markets and labor, spurred by industrial-age "breakthroughs in hardware" such as steamships, trains, phones and computers. That epoch ended around 2000, replaced by one in which individuals are the main agents doing the globalizing, pushed by "not horsepower, and not hardware, but software" and a "global fiber-optic network that has made us all next-door neighbors." If the first two eras were driven mostly by Europeans and Americans, the third is open to "every color of the human rainbow." In particular, Friedman is obsessed with one of the great economic phenomena of our day: the outsourcing of the U.S. economy's service and information-technology work to India, China and elsewhere. The reason that Indian accounting firms are expected to do about 400,000 American tax returns this year, that small U.S. hospitals have their CAT scans read in the wee hours by Indian or Australian radiologists known as the "Nighthawks," or that the Chinese port city of Dalian is taking outsourced work from its former imperial masters in Japan, Friedman argues, is that the world is undergoing "one of those fundamental changes -- like the rise of the nation-state or the Industrial Revolution" -- that transform the roles of individuals, governments and societies. The world was flattened, he writes, by 10 forces, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the discrediting of Soviet-style command economies; the 1995 Netscape IPO, which opened up the Internet for easy browsing; the dot-com era overinvestment in the fiber-optic cables that such globalizing hubs as Bangalore and Shenzhen, China, rely upon to cheaply transmit data around the planet; search engines like Google, most of whose queries are now no longer in English; and such flat-world "steroids" as PalmPilots, tiny laptops and the wireless technology that lets one of Friedman's colleagues merrily e-mail from aboard a Japanese bullet train. "The 'hot line,' which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House," Friedman writes, "has been replaced by the 'help line,' which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore." Even as these forces leveled the playing field, Friedman notes, some 3 billion people were rushing onto it -- from China, India, the former Soviet Union and other countries whose economies had thrown off socialism or self-defeating insularism. As American politicians were letting the country's scientific and engineering base erode and peddling protectionist myths, the global economy was being "shaped less by the ponderous deliberations of finance ministers and more by the spontaneous explosion of energy" from eager Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. Friedman offers an engrossing tour of Flat World, but he sometimes overestimates its novelty. For starters, the glee of Globalization 3.0's players at the prospect of a seemingly borderless world is hardly new. "Merchants have no country," Jefferson wrote in 1814. "The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." Similarly, Friedman is right that China might now be more leery about attacking high-tech Taiwan for fear of snarling international trade and manufacturing lines, giving the island its so-called silicon shield. But his puckishly named Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention -- "No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain" -- skates past the fact that potential belligerents have always weighed the economic costs of war, often with breathtaking inaccuracy. (Saddam Hussein thought gobbling up Kuwait in August 1990 would let him dominate the world oil market, not shatter his army and usher in a decade of crippling sanctions.) And the argument that trade inhibits belligerence dates back at least to Kant. Friedman also does not have a compelling rebuttal for Harvard's Michael Sandel, who calls Flat World's new horizontal collaboration "just a nice name for the ability to hire cheap labor in India." For instance, Indian techies had the manpower and ambition to do the "huge, tedious job" of fixing the West's Y2K computer bug, giving India a surge of IT business that Friedman calls "a second Indian Independence Day." But India's Y2K windfall could be read just as easily as a sign of dependence, of reliance on tasks that American workers no longer want. Friedman rightly notes that "low-wage, low-prestige jobs in America . . . become high-wage, high-prestige jobs" when outsourced to India. But in an era where, as Friedman puts it, both pride and humiliation get served up to you via fiber-optic cable, it's not at all clear we'll like the long-term geopolitical consequences of having emerging powers reliant on scraps from the American economic table. Friedman's evangelism never entirely allays the suspicion that "the single most important trend in the world today" is actually the empty half of the glass. In a sense, The World Is Flat serves as a sort of bookend to this spring's other blockbuster economics book, Jeffrey D. Sachs's The End of Poverty, which angrily notes that some 20,000 people die unnecessarily every day from starvation and diseases like malaria while the developed world fiddles. Much of the world is indeed flat -- flat broke. "You cannot drive economic growth," Friedman acknowledges, "in a place where 50 percent of the people are infected with malaria or half of the kids are malnourished or a third of the mothers are dying of AIDS." And then there's 9/11. "The flat world -- unfortunately -- is a friend of both Infosys and al-Qaeda," Friedman writes, since both rely on the imaginative use of the Internet and global supply chains and since both are super-empowered by a flatter playing field magnifying the importance of individuals and groups. Fair enough, but why does Rajesh Rao matter more than Osama bin Laden, the Lexus more than the olive tree, flat-world globalization more than the far-flung struggle with jihadism that Friedman himself has likened to World War III? He doesn't quite say. As one would expect from the author of the brilliant From Beirut to Jerusalem, his treatment of 9/11 and Middle Eastern issues is insightful and deeply informed, but it doesn't convincingly settle the question of whether global trade or global terror is our age's central organizing principle. If al Qaeda ever buys, builds or steals even a small nuclear bomb -- taking advantage of the Bush administration's leisurely belief that America can afford to wait until sometime after 2008 to secure poorly guarded Russian nuclear weapons and material -- the surging growth of the Indian and Chinese entrepreneurial classes may seem largely of academic interest. While The World Is Flat is not a classic like From Beirut to Jerusalem, it is still an enthralling read. To his great credit, Friedman embraces much of his flat world's complexity, and his reporting brings to vibrant life some beguiling characters and trends. If his book is marred by an exasperating reliance on the first person and a surplus of catch phrases (" 'Friedman,' I said to myself, looking at this scene, 'you are so twentieth-century. . . . You are so Globalization 2.0' "), it is also more lively, provocative and sophisticated than the overwhelming bulk of foreign policy commentary these days. We've no real idea how the 21st century's history will unfold, but this terrifically stimulating book will certainly inspire readers to start thinking it all through. o Warren Bass is a senior editor at Book World and a former member of the 9/11 Commission staff. He is the author of "Support Any Friend: Kennedy's Middle East and the Making of the U.S.-Israel Alliance," which was recently released in paperback. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:17:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:17:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] John Ralston Saul: The End of Globalism Message-ID: John Ralston Saul: The End of Globalism http://afr.com/articles/2004/02/19/1077072774981.html [This first appeared last year in Harper's. I read his _Voltaire's Bastards. It was about how knowledge, instead of becoming free, became something to be hldden, played close to the chest. I know many self-important people who act this way, no matter how useless their information is. The current Bush administration is notoriously secretive. I learned a lot about Canada and France, too, by reading his book.] Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place. The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over 30 years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic and global theories, stretched to 70 years in Russia and 45 in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force. Keynesianism, if you add its flexible, muscular form during the Depression to its more rigid postwar version, lasted 45 years. Our own Globalisation, with its technocratic and technological determinism and market idolatry, had 30 years. And now it, too, is dead. Of course, grand ideologies rarely disappear overnight. Fashions, whether in clothes or food or economics, tend to peter out. Thousands of people have done well out of their belief in Globalisation, and their professional survival is dependent on our continued shared devotion to the cause. So is their personal sense of self-worth. They will be in positions of power for a few more years, and so they will make their case for a little longer. But the signs of decline are clear, and since 1995 those signs have multiplied, building on one another, turning a confused situation into a collapse. We have scarcely noticed this collapse, however, because Globalisation has been asserted by its believers to be inevitable - an all-powerful god; a holy trinity of burgeoning markets, unsleeping technology and borderless managers. Opposition or criticism has been treated as little more than romantic paganism. It was powerless before this surprisingly angry god, who would simply strike down with thunderbolts those who faltered and reward his heroes and champions with golden wreaths. If Globalisation has seemed so seductive to societies built upon Greek and Judeo-Christian mythologies, perhaps the reason is this bizarre confusing of salvation, fatalism and punishment. Transferred to economics, in however jumbled a manner, these belief systems are almost irresistible to us. The British and French empires had vaunted and defended their power in similar ways from the late 19th century on; that is, just as they began to collapse. And as the various 19th-century nationalisms declined into ugliness, their supporters increasingly transformed them into a matter of race. Inevitability is the traditional final justification for failing ideologies. Less traditional - and a sign of inherent weakness - is the extent to which Globalisation was conceived as old-fashioned religiosity. Perhaps the economists and other believers who launched Globalisation were instinctively concerned that people would notice their new theories were oddly similar to the trade theories of the mid-19th century or the unregulated market models that had been discredited in 1929. And so treating the intervening 40 years as an accidental interval, they began where their predecessors left off: with religious certainty. Despite that initial certainty, a growing vagueness now surrounds the original promise of Globalisation; we seem to have lost track of what was repeatedly declared 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, to be inevitable: That the power of the nation state was on its way out, to be replaced by that of global markets. That in the future, economics, not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events. That freed markets would quickly establish natural international balances, impervious to the old boom-and-bust cycles. That the growth in international trade, as a result of lowering barriers, would unleash an economic-social tide that would raise all ships, whether of our Western poor or of the developing world in general. That prosperous markets would turn dictatorships into democracies. That all of this would discourage irresponsible nationalism, racism and political violence. That global economics would produce stability through the creation of ever larger corporations impervious to bankruptcy. That these transnational corporations would provide a new kind of international leadership, free of local political prejudices. That the rise of global marketplace leadership and the decline of national politics, with its tendency to deform healthy economic processes, would force the emergence of debt-free governments. By then wedding our governments to a permanent state of deficit-free public accounting, our societies would be stabilised. In summary, global economic forces, if left unfettered by wilful man, would protect us against the errors of local self-pride, while allowing individual self-interest to lead each individual to a better life. Together these forces and self-interest would produce prosperity and general happiness. In a society where Christian dogma had been so dominant until so recently, how could people of goodwill not be attracted by this good news - by these promises of personal redemption? And if you add to all of this a multitude of new, technocratic market methods - well, then, the cycles of history would be broken, setting us on a permanent, inevitable course. In the words of a particularly naive believer, history would die. History was already dead. Globalisation materialised in the 1970s from the sort of geopolitical vacuum or fog that appears whenever a civilisation begins to change direction, to grope its way around a corner from one era to another. In geopolitics, a vacuum is not an option. It is the period between options; an opportunity, providing you can recognise it for what it is; a brief interregnum during which individuals can maximise their influence on the direction of their civilisation. What caused that particular void? Perhaps a quarter century of social reform had left the liberal elites exhausted. The need to manage a multitude of enormous new social programs that had been put in place in a democratic manner - an ad hoc manner - made it difficult for political leaders to concentrate on the main line; that is, to concentrate on a broad sense of the public good. Instead, governments were caught up in the endless and directionless details of management. Or perhaps the cause of the vacuum was the resulting reliance of those political elites on technocrats, who understood little of the debate - in fact, distrusted it - and so drew the leaders into isolation. In either case, most Western leaders seemed confused about what to do next. They had come to the end of a chapter of social progress. And they could not have been less prepared for a religious counterattack upon their ethical motivations, particularly not one in which the classic Judeo-Christian ideas of the sacred had been converted into economic inevitabilities. These theoretically new economic ideas were now scarcely recognisable as the simplistic economic arguments of pre-1929. The religious fervour had been blended with sparkling waves of new technology and with masses of microeconomic data, all presented as fact. Relaunched in this way, as three in one, one in three, the old ideas seemed new. Caught up as the liberal elites were in the instrumental rationality of program management, they responded to this attack with superior, stolid and unimaginative rejection. Instead of speaking out for the public good, they defended administrative structures. The effect was to make tired and discredited market arguments seem young, agile and modern. One comic sign of the coming era was the creation, in 1971, in a Swiss mountain village called Davos, of a club for European corporate leaders. There they could examine civilisation through the prism of business. Soon businessmen were coming from around the world. Then government leaders and academics flooded in, looking for investors. Business leaders, politicians and academics alike seemed to accept without question the core tenet of Davos: that the public good should be treated as a secondary outcome of trade and competition and self-interest. Davos was just a weather vane, a superficial and self-important version of a royal court, but when the G6 - now the G8 - was created in 1975, its aim mimicked that of Davos: to bring the leaders of the biggest national economies together to examine the world through the prism of economics. Never before had the great nations so explicitly and single-mindedly organised their core relationship around naked, commercial self-interest, without the positive and negative counterweights of social standards, human rights, political systems, dynasties, formal religions and, at the negative extreme, supposed racial destinies. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French president who organised the first G6 meeting at his official country residence, Rambouillet, was the very model of the European technocratic economist. And his approach dominated. But what actually opened the door to Globalisation was the economic collapse of 1973 - the depression that never was. The reigning technocratic obsession with management and control meant that we all had to be reassured. So we were told that this was just another recession. Then there was another recession, then another, and on and on, always minimised, always about to be resolved. The social reformers, who dominated within almost all political parties and governments, denied themselves the right to stand back and deal with the situation as a whole. They had lost the intellectual breadth and the emotional balance to do this. And so they gradually lost the right to lead. As for the new force or ideology that came forward to fill the vacuum, it involved an all-inclusive strategy called Globalisation - an approach that contained the answer to every one of our problems. It was delightfully seductive. It contained simple, sweeping solutions and, as with all successful religions, lodged ultimate responsibility in invisible untouchable hands. Thus Globalisation required no one to take responsibility for anything. This transcendent vision quickly filled the vacuum. I first heard the variety of personal passivity produced by this belief system on French national television in a speech by Giscard d'Estaing. He had been elected as a new-style political leader - a brilliant economist. Modern. Almost postmodern. He was to lead society via the economy. But he came in just after the 1973 collapse, which included high inflation and unemployment. After a year or so of struggling with the collapse, Giscard went on television to tell people that great global, indeed inevitable, forces were at work. There was therefore little that he could do. Nation states were powerless. This was the beginning of the mania for public declarations of impotence by democratically elected leaders. Globalisation became their excuse for not dealing with difficult issues, for not using their levers of power and larger budgets to effect. They made the force of inevitability credible. Globalisation had brilliant proponents - Margaret Thatcher first among them, and economists like Milton Friedman, but also growing waves of new-style managers and consultants. These people had a multiplicity of roles. They briefed public and private sector leaders, organised the structures that implement policies, and ran these structures on a day-to-day basis. And their basic theory was - is - that modern methodology is universal. What's more, these methods are preferable to the untidy business of democratic argument and personal will, whether that is a matter of personal opinion or personal choice. In other words, they were engaged in the classic struggle to promote method over opinion; that is, form over content. And so, as always happens when form is dominant, a variety of experiments were undertaken. Around the world, civil services were shrunk, public and private sectors deregulated, markets released, taxes cut, public budgets balanced. Corporations began growing in size by merging and remerging. This gigantism was considered necessary for success in the new world market. Trade grew by an astonishing multiple of 20. European economic integration accelerated. New Zealand, the original social democratic model state, did a complete flip in the mid-1980s and attempted to become the perfect Globalised nation state. The economies of Canada and the US were rapidly integrated after the signing of a free trade agreement in 1988, to which the integration of the Mexican economy was added with the signing of NAFTA. Social reformers, for their part, restructured their own arguments until their basic assumptions were the same as those of their opponents. Social democrats and liberals almost everywhere became Globalists, but of a kindler, gentler sort. Government after government, as if in a fit of moralism, legislated away its right to take on debt or collect new taxes, even though both of these were fundamental governmental powers, central to the construction and maintenance of democracies. In fact, debt and taxes had played the same fundamental role in the pre-democratic period. At the same time, the private sector invented myriad new debts and privatised taxes for itself. Everything from junk bonds to credit cards was treated as an unregulated privatised currency. And corporations used the old default mechanism more than ever to clear their own decks whenever it was handy to do so. The sin of public debt was then broadened by attributing it to public utilities. Running well or not, they had to be privatised and deregulated into a global marketplace to cleanse them of public sector inefficiencies. This led in turn to the large utility-style private businesses, such as airlines, being freed of regulatory restraints to satisfy a moral version of individualism that promised, for example, the right to travel, cheaper fares, greater choice, more destinations. From the early 1970s to late in the century, multiple binding international economic treaties were put in place, while almost no counterbalancing binding treaties were negotiated for work conditions, taxation, the environment or legal obligations. For 250 years the painful job of building the modern nation state had depended on a continual rebalancing of binding rules for both the public good and self-interest. Now this balance was tipped violently one way by simply shifting much of our economic power out into the global marketplace. With economic power denationalised and transnationals using the new unregulated debt and currency systems to accumulate a financial worth greater than that of most nation states, the next logical step was to think of those transnationals as new nations unto themselves - virtual nations, freed of the limitations of geography and citizens, freed of local obligations, empowered with the mobility of money and goods. Better in every way. This quarter-century rise of Globalisation peaked in 1995 when the old system of international trade agreements - known collectively as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - was reconceived as a new powerful body, the World Trade Organisation. It was the last triumph. There was nothing remarkable about the creation of the WTO. It was just a centralised body to deal with commercial trade issues - not a bad thing in and of itself. The important point was the context. The reconceptualisation of civilisation through the prism of economics had reached a critical barrier. Beyond that barrier any international exchange that involved a commercial element would be treated as fundamentally commercial. Culture would be seen as a mere matter of industrial regulation; food, as a secondary outcome of agricultural industries. What particularly caught public attention around the world was the idea that national health and food rules would be treated not as the expression of a people concerned about what sorts of things it put in its collective stomach but rather as mere protectionism - unless backed by the hardest of hard scientific evidence. That sort of evidence was usually decades in coming. The precautionary principle and the citizen's opinion were thus to be thrown aside in favour of an absolutist theory of commercial exchange. This determinist approach towards agriculture as an industry rather than as a food source - towards the implications of everything from fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides to genetics, hormones, antibiotics, labelling and sourcing - became the flash point for a far broader concern among citizens. This was the context in which a growing percentage of people judged the handling of key issues as different as mad cow disease, the availability of pharmaceuticals in the developing world and global warming. They were beginning to feel that what was presented as an argument of Globalism versus protectionism was often just a confused opposition of personal choice and abstract corporate interests. So Globalisation, put forward as a metaphor for choice, was organising itself around not consumers but corporate structures, structures that sought profits by limiting personal choice. Soon people began to notice other contradictions in the Global orthodoxy. How could the same ideology promise a planetary growth in democracy and yet a decline in the power of the nation state? Democracy exists only inside countries. Weaken the nation state and you weaken democracy. Why did an unprecedented increase in money supply translate into a dearth of money for public services? And why did this growth in new moneys enrich mainly those who already had money? Why did it lead to a growth in the rich-versus-poor dichotomy and a squeezing of the middle class? Why did many privatisations of public utilities neither improve services nor lower costs for consumers but instead guarantee revenues to the new owners while leading to a collapse in infrastructure investment? People noticed that the financial value of the great breakthroughs in female employment had somehow been inflated away. Abruptly, a middle class family required two incomes. They noticed that in a mere 25 years CEO salaries in the US had gone from 39 times the pay of an average worker to more than 1000 times. Elsewhere the numbers were similar. And the savings from the cuts in civil servants were more than offset by the cost of new lobbyists and consultants. There were three particularly obvious signs that Globalisation would not deliver on its promises. First, the leadership of a movement devoted to "real competition" was made up largely of tenured professors, consultants, and technocrats - private-sector bureaucrats - managing large joint-stock companies. Most of the changes they sought were aimed at reducing competition. Second, the idea of transnationals as new virtual nation states missed the obvious. Natural resources are fixed in place, inside nation states. And consumers live on real land in real places. These are called countries. The managers and professors who waxed enthusiastic about the new virtual corporate nations were themselves resident citizens and consumers in old-fashioned nation states. It would be only a matter of time before elected leaders noticed that their governments were far stronger than the large corporations. Finally, the new approach to debt - public versus private, First World versus Third World - revealed a fatal confusion. Those who preached Globalisation couldn't tell the difference between ethics and morality. Ethics is the measurement of the public good. Morality is the weapon of religious and social righteousness. Political and economic ideologies often decline into religious-style morality towards the end. But Globalisation had shoved ethics to the side from the beginning and insisted upon a curious sort of moral righteousness that included maximum trade, unrestrained self-interest and governments alone respecting their debts. These notions were curiously paired with something often called family values, as well as an Old Testament view of good and evil. It somehow followed that if countries were in financial trouble, they were moral transgressors. They had to discipline themselves. Wear hair shirts. Embrace denial and fasting. This was the crucifixion theory of economics: you had to be killed economically and socially in order to be reborn clean and healthy. For a quarter century, under the severe hand of the IMF, this moralising and emotionally charged approach has been applied to the developing world with absolutely no success. Oddly enough, it had been presented as a form of cool, detached utilitarianism. Those who applied the theory seemed to fail the basic philosophical test of functioning intelligence and ethics - the ability to imagine the Other. They simply insisted, as developing-world debts continued to rise on a rollercoaster of instability, that those people must learn to act in a more predictable manner. Which brings to mind rather aged priests insisting that young men should take cold showers and exercise more. By the turn of the century, it had become clear that nationalism and the nation states were stronger than they had been when Globalisation began. Indeed, this was apparent as early as 1991, when the Yugoslavian army tried to stop Slovenia and Croatia from leaving their federation. The ensuing massacre was a test for almost every international organisation. All of them failed. As if in a black comedy, international elites chattered away about how global economic forces made nation states irrelevant, while thousands of real people were being murdered and cleansed to facilitate the creation of yet more nation states. The resulting horror shocked the Europeans into the realisation that their economic and administrative union was helpless in a political-military disaster. Eventually Washington brokered the Dayton peace accords. But Dayton accepted the model of the local nationalist war criminals. Jews in Bosnia don't exist as citizens unless they pretend to belong to one of the three official races. Neither do people of mixed blood. Dayton is all about racially based nations - the most appalling aspect of nationalism, but nationalism nonetheless. And so Globalisation's triumph, with the creation of the WTO in 1995, was paired with its humiliation at the Dayton signing in the same year. In a depressing game of leapfrog, the Yugoslavian settlement competed with a genocide in Rwanda, where half a million to a million people were murdered. This is a remarkable statistic. In a global world of economic and social measurement, we are bombarded daily by apparently exact statistics measuring growth, efficiency, production, reproduction, sales, currency fluctuations, comparative levels of obesity and orgasms, divorce, salaries and incomes. Yet we don't know, or don't care to know, whether it was a million or half a million Rwandans who were massacred. And the genocide was facilitated by Paris and Washington, using old-fashioned nation-state powers at the UN security council to block a serious international intervention. The Rwanda catastrophe then morphed into the Congo catastrophe, involving 4.7 million deaths between 1998 and 2003. Or was it 3 million? Or 5.5 million? The point is that the inevitability of global economic leadership has been irrelevant through all these crises. While the true believers speak of Globalisation, we are in fact in the middle of an accelerated political meltdown marked by astonishing levels of nationalist violence. Observant national leaders couldn't help but notice that the theories of Globalisation were failing them. The most public of these failures was the breakdown of international lending and debt mechanisms. For a short period it looked as if the IMF's punishing approach might actually work. For a dozen years most Latin American governments tried to follow instructions laid down by the IMF, Western governments and the private banks. They endured crucifixion economics, and in many cases this eventually produced apparently solid growth, even if the parallel result was a greater rich/poor gap. But in each case the recovery was followed, a few years later, by even greater collapse. It turned out that such prolonged austerity had weakened, not strengthened, the social-economic fabric. So after all of the liberalisations, privatisations and inflation-stabilisation programs, growth in Latin America in the late 1990s was a little over half what it had been before the reforms. True believers will tell you that it could have worked, if only there had been less nepotism, weaker unions or less corruption. But real economic policies in the real world don't require perfect conditions. Perfect conditions don't exist in the real world. Western growth over two centuries has come in spite of our own shifting flaws. Peru and Bolivia are on a precipice. Argentina is picking itself up yet again, while its educated youth emigrate en masse. Now, like Brazil, it is going to try something it believes more suitable to its circumstances. Only Chile seems solid, and that is because, since the departure of Pinochet, it has carefully designed its own solutions. In other words, Latin America no longer believes in Globalisation. Neither does Africa. Nor does a good part of Asia. Globalisation is no longer global. Indeed, most Western finance ministers have been quietly working for some time on partial reregulation of the markets. Why quietly? To avoid the ferocity of the true believers. In 1998 the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Ian Macfarlane, began calling for reregulation. "More people are asking whether the international financial system as it has operated for most of the nineties is basically unstable. By now, I think the majority of observers have come to the conclusion that it is, and that some changes have to be made." In the same year a combination of street demonstrators and distrustful ministers of finance from around the developed world killed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment negotiations, which had been aimed at a further Globalisation of finance and investment. They rejected the idea of yet more business-oriented binding treaties, with no binding political or social counterweights. At almost the same time, Malaysia responded to an economic meltdown in Asia by refusing to follow the Global rules. The government pulled its currency off the market, made it nonconvertible, pegged it just low enough to favour exports, blocked the export of foreign capital and raised tariffs. These measures were met by an explosion of Western moral fervour. Malaysia could not do this. Its economy would not survive. The leading international emerging-markets index expelled them. Then everyone averted their eyes from the inevitable collapse. In 1999, a short year later, that same index sheepishly readmitted Malaysia. Smarter merchant bankers began to praise the possible long-term investment advantages of pegging certain currencies in certain conditions. By then the World Bank, under new leadership, had begun to soften its monolithic Global view, even if the IMF has been extremely slow to accept reality and follow. Late in the year the WTO was humiliated in Seattle by unprecedented demonstrations. By the end of the century it was not only national leaders who were beginning to take a more nuanced view of Globalisation's capitalist credentials. A growing number of people, including the brighter business leaders, were focusing on where deregulation had worked and where it hadn't. The airline industry, for example, had been growing since World War II. The calls for deregulation in the mid-1970s came from a successful, profitable growth sector, which continued to grow until September 11, 2001. Even then, the drop was only 5.7 per cent, which, given 60 years of solid growth, should not have been a catastrophe. Yet it was. In any case, those corporations that had called for deregulation a quarter century before had pretty well all gone bankrupt, one by one over the intervening years. The whole industry is now dependent on cut-rate airlines. So a sector that provides essential services is being run on dubious margins and institutional instability. Why? Because of devotion to a simplistic, monolithic model of Global market forces. But a large aircraft is not a telephone or a pair of running shoes. Planes that cost hundreds of millions of dollars have to be paid for with $100 airfares - a daunting business model. The secret to the industry's pre-1973 success was its stability - produced by carefully maintained, long-term public regulations. As for the romance of gigantism - of corporate size as a criterion for industrial success - it was beginning to look pretty silly. Endless mergers had led to high levels of unserviceable debt and bankruptcy. It was as if size had replaced thought. As if it were a male thing. It was all beginning to resemble the 17th- and 18th-century speculation markets - the South Sea Bubble, John Law and the French regency, the Dutch tulip-bulb frenzy. The larger the corporations grew, the slower and more directionless they became - enormous management structures frightened of serious investment and risk. They resembled out-of-control bureaucracies. Yet the whole argument in favour of Globalisation had been the apparently desperate need to wrench power from the bureaucracies and place it firmly in the hands of real owners capable of taking real risks. More perhaps than the genocides, the disorder in the streets, or the debt crises, it was those simple recurring images of corporate ineptitude, combined with an absence of self-criticism, that first made clear the decline of Globalisation. How then could any of us seriously believe that our redemption lay in the reconceptualisation of civilisation so that we could all view it through the prism of business and economics? The larger the corporations became, the more deregulation released them to be themselves, the faster they slipped out of sync with their civilisation and even with their customers and shareholders. Of course most people in business were working away as best they could, more or less as they always had, whatever the ideology in place. The people who stumbled badly seemed to be the insistent stars of the new-world methodology. And so, in full public view, the value of the fabled merger of AOL and TimeWarner slipped rapidly from $US284 billion to $US61 billion. And GE's Jack Welch, a model new leader, began stumbling towards every last penny on the floor like a greedy little boy. Arthur Andersen demonstrated that accountants can act as badly as anyone else. Hollinger, whose newspapers on four continents had trumpeted Globalisation, fell under multiple financial and legal investigations, as did Parmalat, the great Italian success story. And so on. Ideology, like theatre, is dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief. At the core of every ideology lies the worship of a bright new future, with only failure in the immediate past. But once the suspension goes, willingness converts into suspicion - the suspicion of the betrayed. Our brilliant leaders abruptly appear naive, even ridiculous. And so, in the late 1990s, our disbelief came back, and with it our memory. The years between 1945 and 1973 no longer seemed such a failure. In fact, it had been one of the most successful eras in history for both social reform and economic growth. It was something to build on, to reform; not something to dismiss. The first clear hint of the end of the reigning ideology came with Malaysia's successful rejection of the Globalisation model. We, in our fervour, saw their crisis as one of economics, and therefore subject to the rules of inevitability. The Malaysians saw it as a national political crisis with economic implications. And so they acted politically and nationally, and were proved right. Abruptly it seemed possible that nation states were not dying. And that economic certainty was naive. Then, in late 1999, came the general election in New Zealand. Fifteen years earlier this small country had become the model for Globalisation. Now, overnight, its electors voted to change direction, endorsing a strong interventionist government devoted to a mix of national social policies, enforceable economic regulations and a stable private sector. Why? Its national industries had been sold off, its economy was in decline and its standard of living had been stagnant for all 15 years of its Globalisation experiment. Its young were emigrating at alarming rates. This, the citizens now said, was not inevitable. If a small country could flex its muscles, well, then, the nation state was truly alive. Then came the explosions of September 11, 2001. In the following days, the world economy began plummeting into a depression. Corporate leaders hunkered down to their businesses, forgot about world leadership and, with a classic desire to reduce risk, slashed their investment programs, thus accelerating society's economic plunge. As for the political leaders, ministers of finance, chairs of reserve and national banks - the constituted elites of the nation states - they rolled into action. They travelled and talked, printed money and spent vast amounts of it. And they managed to stabilise the situation. In other words, there was a brutal, highly public and existential reversal of roles. The governments of the nation states took back their full power both to act and to lead. The CEOs retreated back into their historic reactive role. Once belief is gone, the churches begin to empty. You could see this accelerating disbelief in bankruptcy court in December 2001, when, as if in the last scene of an old-fashioned bedroom farce, the "inevitability" of Global corporate leadership came face to face with Enron, filing for government protection from its private debts. You saw it again in the opening session of the frivolous court of Davos. This was where, 33 years before, the theology of Globalisation had been first put forward, all based on the assumption that civilisation must be approached through a single, monolithic economic prism. Yet here they were on their opening day in January 2003 feting Mahathir Mohamad, then prime minister of Malaysia, for his country's economic success. It was clear to everyone that this success had come from political leadership at the nation-state level and that it was based on the rejection of Globalist economics. A few days later, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the new president of Brazil, arrived in the Swiss village to lay out an independent, straightforward version of responsible nation-state populism. What all of this meant became perfectly clear when US secretary of state Colin Powell arrived to speak for the country that had achieved more national power than any other in history. Insofar as a possible war with Iraq was concerned, he declared, "we will act even if others are not prepared to join us". So the US would act unilaterally - that is, nationally. Thus, in a single week, inside the emotional and mythological home of Globalisation, three very different pivotal governments turned their backs on Globalisation and acted as if the nation state were the central international reality. The war that followed in Iraq quite intentionally put an effective end to the half-century-old Western alliance produced by World War II. Washington had chosen in January 2003 not to take the time to put together the traditional Western battlefield coalition. The effect was to free a cast of nations to rethink their relationships. This was as true for the old NATO players as it was for the smaller, newly free, central European states, which were able to flex their nation-state muscles by joining in. Some of them had never had such an opportunity. For others it was the first time since the 1930s. Throughout the world, nations began moving about like semi-free agents. Organisations such as NATO are still solid. There is no desire to storm out. But everyone is checking around to see if there are other ways they might like to act. And with whom. What this might mean remains painfully unclear. Here we are, rushing around one of those sharp corners with no idea of where we are going. Perhaps back to the worst of old-style negative nationalism. Or perhaps on towards a more complex and interesting form of positive nationalism, based on the public good. What is certain is that nationalism of the best and the worst sort has made a remarkable, unexpected recovery. We don't yet know whether it will become the new dominant ideology. What we do know is that there has been a return across Europe of 19th-century-style negative nationalism. Although usually the product of fear, it reappeared in countries that had nothing to fear: Jorg Haider in Austria speaking out against immigrants, while echoing race and monolithic national myths. Italy governed by three nationalists, one of them the leader of Mussolini's old party. Related phenomena in Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland. A sudden revival of sectarian nationalism in Northern Ireland. The defeat of a compromise in Corsica. Everywhere these nationalists are now in coalition governments or are leading oppositions. Many mainstream parties have trimmed their sails to capture some of this nationalist vote. Non-European immigrants, who rarely account for more than 5 per cent of a country's population, have become the focus for a sense of political and social impotence, produced in part by a quarter century of continental and Global inevitabilities. Today's growing fear of Muslims is parallelled by a return of anti-Semitism. The last Australian election was won by provoking a fear of immigrants. The new president of the Czech Republic is thought to be an old-fashioned nationalist, as is the governor of Tokyo. Because the US is so powerful, people say its actions are all about empire. But empires are mere extensions of nationalism. They are not a phenomenon of either Globalisation or internationalism. At the same time, positive forms of nationalism have surged forward, with countries like South Africa and Brazil taking on the pharmaceutical transnationals over the availability of drugs to fight epidemics such as AIDS. And these nations have been winning. A reasonable number of noneconomic and internationally binding treaties based on the primacy of ethics and the public good have begun to take form: the Ottawa treaty against land mines, the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto accord against global warming. They represent the beginnings of an attempt at an international balance in which the prism of civilisation is neither naive market economics nor national selfishness. The return of the idea of national power has also meant the return of the idea of choice - choice for citizens and choice for countries. But with choice comes uncertainty, which provokes fear. The moment we entered the post-Globalisation vacuum, you could feel that fear begin to rise. And curiously enough, the greater a nation's power, the more intense the fear becomes. Perhaps power produces an expectation of certainty. Perhaps smaller countries find a certain freedom in uncertainty - the freedom to choose without being bullied. Necessity, Pitt the Younger said, is the excuse of every tyranny. For most smaller countries, Globalisation has felt like an inevitability and, so, like a tyranny. History will eventually give all of these contradictory signals a shape. But history is neither for nor against. It just is. And there is no such thing as a prolonged vacuum in geopolitics. It is always filled. This is what happens every few decades. The world turns, shifts, takes a new tack, or retries an old one. Civilisation rushes around one of those blind corners filled with uncertainties. Then, abruptly, the opportunities present themselves to those who move with skill and commitment. John Ralston Saul is the author of Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Unconscious Civilisation and, most recently, On Equilibrium: The Six Qualities of the New Humanism. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:21:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:21:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Rolling Stone: The Long Emergency Message-ID: Subject: RollingStone.com: The Long Emergency : Politics http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7203633?has-player=unknown&version=0&show-guide=true [Whatever happened to the long boom? Entrepreneurs and businessmen will make adjustments, as long as they are free to do so. From a transhumanist perspective, it isn't energy that matters so much as the new technologies that will make us of it. The really cool stuff that's coming doesn't use much energy, anyhow.] What's going to happen as we start running out of cheap gas to guzzle? By JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth. Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory. It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency. Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it. The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion. The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted. The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen. The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004. Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place. Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production. It will change everything about how we live. To aggravate matters, American natural-gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite frenetic new drilling, and with the potential of much steeper declines ahead. Because of the oil crises of the 1970s, the nuclear-plant disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the acid-rain problem, the U.S. chose to make gas its first choice for electric-power generation. The result was that just about every power plant built after 1980 has to run on gas. Half the homes in America are heated with gas. To further complicate matters, gas isn't easy to import. Here in North America, it is distributed through a vast pipeline network. Gas imported from overseas would have to be compressed at minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit in pressurized tanker ships and unloaded (re-gasified) at special terminals, of which few exist in America. Moreover, the first attempts to site new terminals have met furious opposition because they are such ripe targets for terrorism. Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble. We will have to accommodate ourselves to fundamentally changed conditions. No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it. The wonders of steady technological progress achieved through the reign of cheap oil have lulled us into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome, leading many Americans to believe that anything we wish for hard enough will come true. These days, even people who ought to know better are wishing ardently for a seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements. The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax. We are not going to replace the U.S. automobile and truck fleet with vehicles run on fuel cells. For one thing, the current generation of fuel cells is largely designed to run on hydrogen obtained from natural gas. The other way to get hydrogen in the quantities wished for would be electrolysis of water using power from hundreds of nuclear plants. Apart from the dim prospect of our building that many nuclear plants soon enough, there are also numerous severe problems with hydrogen's nature as an element that present forbidding obstacles to its use as a replacement for oil and gas, especially in storage and transport. Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are also unrealistic. Solar-electric systems and wind turbines face not only the enormous problem of scale but the fact that the components require substantial amounts of energy to manufacture and the probability that they can't be manufactured at all without the underlying support platform of a fossil-fuel economy. We will surely use solar and wind technology to generate some electricity for a period ahead but probably at a very local and small scale. Virtually all "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels cannot be scaled up to even a fraction of the level at which things are currently run. What's more, these schemes are predicated on using oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers) to grow the biomass crops that would be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. This is a net energy loser -- you might as well just burn the inputs and not bother with the biomass products. Proposals to distill trash and waste into oil by means of thermal depolymerization depend on the huge waste stream produced by a cheap oil and gas economy in the first place. Coal is far less versatile than oil and gas, extant in less abundant supplies than many people assume and fraught with huge ecological drawbacks -- as a contributor to greenhouse "global warming" gases and many health and toxicity issues ranging from widespread mercury poisoning to acid rain. You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor. If we wish to keep the lights on in America after 2020, we may indeed have to resort to nuclear power, with all its practical problems and eco-conundrums. Under optimal conditions, it could take ten years to get a new generation of nuclear power plants into operation, and the price may be beyond our means. Uranium is also a resource in finite supply. We are no closer to the more difficult project of atomic fusion, by the way, than we were in the 1970s. The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship. Obviously, geopolitical maneuvering around the world's richest energy regions has already led to war and promises more international military conflict. Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world's remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq. The intent was not just to secure Iraq's oil but to modify and influence the behavior of neighboring states around the Persian Gulf, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. The results have been far from entirely positive, and our future prospects in that part of the world are not something we can feel altogether confident about. And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world's second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China's surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places -- the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia -- and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army? I doubt it. Nor can the U.S. military occupy regions of the Eastern Hemisphere indefinitely, or hope to secure either the terrain or the oil infrastructure of one distant, unfriendly country after another. A likely scenario is that the U.S. could exhaust and bankrupt itself trying to do this, and be forced to withdraw back into our own hemisphere, having lost access to most of the world's remaining oil in the process. We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary." Most of all, the Long Emergency will require us to make other arrangements for the way we live in the United States. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities rot away and to replace them with suburbia, which had the additional side effect of trashing a lot of the best farmland in America. Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny. The psychology of previous investment suggests that we will defend our drive-in utopia long after it has become a terrible liability. Before long, the suburbs will fail us in practical terms. We made the ongoing development of housing subdivisions, highway strips, fried-food shacks and shopping malls the basis of our economy, and when we have to stop making more of those things, the bottom will fall out. The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class. Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land. The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores' 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it. As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of the common products we enjoy today, from paints to pharmaceuticals, are made out of oil. They will become increasingly scarce or unavailable. The selling of things will have to be reorganized at the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy and far fewer choices. The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the "level of service" (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart. America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Neither of the two major presidential candidates in 2004 mentioned railroads, but if we don't refurbish our rail system, then there may be no long-range travel or transport of goods at all a few decades from now. The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish. The sheer cost of maintaining gigantic airports may not justify the operation of a much-reduced air-travel fleet. Railroads are far more energy efficient than cars, trucks or airplanes, and they can be run on anything from wood to electricity. The rail-bed infrastructure is also far more economical to maintain than our highway network. The successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies on an armature of civic cohesion. Small towns and smaller cities have better prospects than the big cities, which will probably have to contract substantially. The process will be painful and tumultuous. In many American cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, that process is already well advanced. Others have further to fall. New York and Chicago face extraordinary difficulties, being oversupplied with gigantic buildings out of scale with the reality of declining energy supplies. Their former agricultural hinterlands have long been paved over. They will be encysted in a surrounding fabric of necrotic suburbia that will only amplify and reinforce the cities' problems. Still, our cities occupy important sites. Some kind of urban entities will exist where they are in the future, but probably not the colossi of twentieth-century industrialism. Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning. I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion. The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level. These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts. Adapted from The Long Emergency, 2005, by James Howard Kunstler. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Apr 3 18:23:17 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 11:23:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] thought and genes In-Reply-To: <200504031800.j33I0S202929@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050403182317.77935.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Steve says: >>Perhaps genes are not the ultimate control unit of life. Perhaps there is something smaller or more etheric. Perhaps something more like thought controls genes.<< --Do you mean something LIKE thought, or thought in particular? I think we have many misconceptions about thought (for example, that it's a "master controller" rather than a tangle of nested subroutines and feedback) that we mistakenly apply to other domains. Nature seems to like synergy, emergent complexity, spirals, and cooperative assemblies in which no particular part controls everything. I don't think thought escapes those patterns, however much it may feel subjectively like there is one thing in control in our minds (sometimes I wish there were!) There seems to be a subjective or "mystical" sense in many people that thought and DNA are somehow related. Perhaps thought is analogical to genetic processes, another fractal manifestation of complexity in nature. Perhaps the mind's body-map interacts with thought in a way that feels like thought reaching into the cells (hypnotherapists and new age healers talk of "new mental patterns absorbing into your cells") or perhaps new metaphors from biology and math are being applied to thought simply because they are available as models. That's an interesting idea to explore, but I don't see any evidence that thought interacts with DNA or quantum mechanics in any direct way, any more than the content of a priest's sermon alters the molecular makeup of the bricks out of which the church was built. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:24:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:24:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: In New Book, Professor Sees a 'Mania' in U.S. for Possessions and Status Message-ID: Books > In New Book, Professor Sees a 'Mania' in U.S. for Possessions and Status http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/books/12happ.html March 12, 2005 [Movie review appended.] By IRENE LACHER LOS ANGELES - Aldous Huxley long ago warned of a future in which love was beside the point and happiness a simple matter of consuming mass-produced goods and plenty of soma, a drug engineered for pleasure. More than 70 years later, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has seen the future, and the society he describes isn't all that distant from Huxley's brave new world, although the soma, it seems, is in ourselves. In his new book, "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough" (W. W. Norton & Company), Dr. Whybrow argues that in the age of globalization, Americans are addictively driven by the brain's pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people. "In our compulsive drive for more," writes Dr. Whybrow, 64, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral science, "we are making ourselves sick." His book is part of a new critical genre that likens society to a mental patient. The prognosis is grim. In "American Mania," he argues that the country is on the downswing of a manic episode set off by the Internet bubble of the 1990's. "It's a metaphor that helps guide us," he said, perched on a chair in the study of his rambling high-rise apartment near U.C.L.A. "I think we've shot through happiness as one does in hypomania and come out the other end, and we're not quite sure where we are. "In fact, I think happiness lies somewhere behind us. This frenzy we've adopted in search of what we hope is happiness and perfection is in fact a distraction, like mania is a distraction." "American Mania" is his fourth book for the general public about meaty psychiatric matters. An expert in manic depression and the endocrinology of the central nervous system, he has dissected depression and its relatives ("A Mood Apart" and "Mood Disorders") as well as the winter blahs ("The Hibernation Response"). Educating the public has been an abiding concern in a long career that began with training in psychiatry and endocrinology in his native London and in North Carolina. In 1970, Dr. Whybrow became chairman of the psychiatry department at Dartmouth Medical School and at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to U.C.L.A. in 1997. While the Gordon Gekkos of the world have long had their critics, Dr. Whybrow sees the Enrons and the Worldcoms - the mess left by unfettered capitalism - not as a moral problem, but as a behavioral one. "The outbreak of greed we've seen, especially in business, is partly a function of the changing contingencies we've given businessmen," he said. "If I say to you, 'You can make yourself extremely rich by holding up the share price until such time that you cash out your shares, which are coming due in another six months,' it takes an incredibly unusual person who'll say: 'The share price is going down? I'm afraid I lost that one.' There is an offer of affluence there which the person cannot refuse. They don't need that extra money, but they want that extra money." People are biologically wired to want it, he contends. We seek more than we need because consumption activates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which rewards us with pleasure, traveling along the same brain pathways as do drugs like caffeine and cocaine. Historically, he says, built-in social brakes reined in our acquisitive instincts. In the capitalist utopia envisioned by Adam Smith in the 18th century, self-interest was tempered by the competing demands of the marketplace and community. But with globalization, the idea of doing business with neighbors one must face the next day is a quaint memory, and all bets are off. Other countries are prey to the same forces, Dr. Whybrow says, but the problem is worse here because we are a nation of immigrants, genetically self-selected to favor individualism and novelty. Americans are competitive, restless and driven to succeed. And we have succeeded. But the paradox of prosperity is that we are too busy to enjoy it. And the competitiveness that gooses the economy, coupled with the decline of social constraints, has conspired to make the rich much richer, he asserts, leaving most of the country behind while government safety nets get skimpier. Dr. Whybrow cites United States government statistics that are sobering. Thirty percent of the population is anxious, double the percentage of a decade ago. Depression is rising too, especially among people born after 1966, with 10 percent more reporting depression than did people born before that year. With the rise of the information age in the 1990's, when the global marketplace began staying open 24 hours a day, American mania reached full flower, Dr. Whybrow said. And now that the nation has retreated from that manic peak, we should stop and survey the damage. "Neurobiology teaches us that we're reward-driven creatures on the one side, which is great," he said. "It's a fun part of life. But we also love each other and we want to be tied together in a social context. So if you know that, why aren't we thinking about a civil society that looks at both sides of the balance rather than just fostering individualism? Because fostering individualism will be great for us and it will last a little bit longer, but I believe it's a powerful negative influence upon this country and it's not what was originally intended. Should we be thinking about whether this is the society we had in mind when we started this experiment 200 years ago or are we perhaps moving too fast for our own good?" Dr. Whybrow's analysis of the mania afflicting contemporary society has been praised as acute, but he has been faulted for failing to prescribe any political or economic action as an antidote. "Whybrow does offer an interesting version of the social and cultural contradictions of capitalism," Michael Roth, president of the California College of the Arts, wrote in a review last month in The San Francisco Chronicle, "but it is one that leaves us without much sense of how we might reconstruct the social and political system to create more meaningful work and a more equitable distribution of wealth and of hope." But for Dr. Whybrow, with globalization here to stay, the solution lies with the individual: It's up to each of us to ruminate on our lives and slow down enough so that we can limit our appetites and find a better balance between work and family. He suggested following the example of a man his friend saw running along the beach: "A high tide washed all the little fish onto the beach where they were all gasping for breath. So here's this fellow scooping up each fish and throwing them back into the sea, and my friend goes up to the fellow and says: 'This is a fruitless task. It's not going to make any difference.' And the fellow picks up a fish, throws it into the sea and says, 'To this one it does.' " ------------ Movies > Method and Madness: Making Crazy Look Real http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/movies/12craz.html March 12, 2005 By IRENE LACHER LOS ANGELES - [1]Jamie Foxx might have left the Kodak Theater with the best actor award on Oscar night, but in another part of Los Angeles, the kudos went to [2]Leonardo DiCaprio for his portrayal of the obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes in [3]"The Aviator." Psychiatrists associated with the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, were pulling for DiCaprio because they knew just how authentic his performance was, not least because the institute helped him shape it. "You didn't feel that he was acting the pathology," said Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, director of the institute. "You felt the pathology was part of him. You could look at him and think he was really suffering." Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, an expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder at the institute, said the actor's success in exposing Hughes's inner demons was an achievement worthy of a great writer. "You think of Shakespeare and Faulkner," said Dr. Schwartz, who was hired as a consultant on the film. "The audience is transported into the inner life of the person who is suffering, and at its best, that can happen in the cinema." To bring the script to life line by line, Dr. Schwartz worked closely with Mr. DiCaprio in a dozen meetings at the actor's home, as well as several more with the director [4]Martin Scorsese at the Hotel Bel-Air. After shooting began, one of Dr. Schwartz's patients advised Mr. DiCaprio on the Montreal set for 10 days. Delving into a mentally ill character's inner life with the help of a psychiatrist can be a method actor's dream. [5]Susan Sarandon, [6]Sam Waterston and [7]Jill Clayburgh are some of the actors who have passed through the institute's Imagination Workshop, where they not only hone their skills but also work with patients to create and stage original productions in a form of theater therapy. "Their acting is enhanced by understanding how the mind fragments," Dr. Whybrow said. "What they see in engaging someone whose mind has fragmented - they work with them in trying to put them back together again - is a lot about how the mind works, and they express that in their craft." Margaret Ladd, a stage and television actress who founded the Imagination Workshop in 1969 with her screenwriter husband, Lyle Kessler, said her work there helped her turn a five-episode role as the disturbed daughter of [8]Jane Wyman's character on the television soap "Falcon Crest" into a part that lasted from 1981 to 1989. "I blew everyone away because I knew what it looked like, and I knew the intrinsic dignity of it," Ms. Ladd said. "Instead of playing crazy, I realized what the inner depths of feelings were that were causing it to happen. I wasn't playing a symptom. I knew they were struggling to reintegrate themselves." It is a sore point for many psychiatrists that mental disorders are so often portrayed inaccurately in film. "They make them look like lunatics, but many patients who are mentally ill are not crazy at all, particularly if they have depression or mood disorders," said Dr. Laszlo Gyulai, director of the bipolar disorders program of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who worked with [9]Brad Pitt for the actor's role as a mental patient in the 1995 sci-fi thriller [10]"Twelve Monkeys." "Frequently, with people who aren't experts, that's difficult to grasp, and they may not grasp the human dimension of it either." Nonetheless, it is still fairly rare for psychiatrists to be brought in as consultants. Dr. Schwartz says he believes it is vital that actors' portrayals be accurate, because they help shape popular conceptions of what mental illness is about, especially for people who don't see it in their everyday lives. References 1. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=24604&inline=nyt-per 2. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=18926&inline=nyt-per 3. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=84175;3452;287834;162326&inline=nyt_ttl 4. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=110533&inline=nyt-per 5. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=63158&inline=nyt-per 6. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=74941&inline=nyt-per 7. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=13546&inline=nyt-per 8. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=77721&inline=nyt-per 9. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=56988&inline=nyt-per 10. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=135562&inline=nyt_ttl From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 18:25:40 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 11:25:40 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Post-transcription modification of DNA etc Message-ID: <01C5383F.DEAA6050.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.umdnj.edu/biochweb/education_SNA.htm Biochemistry of Nucleic Acids Class: BioC-507 Coordinators: Drs. Mukund Modak Instructors: Drs. M. Modak, F. Coffman, N. Kaushik, C. Suzuki, V. Pandey, R. Howells, C. Lutz, M. Rogers, S. Kotenko, J. Wilusz, H. Jakubowski, M. Goldman, S. Gunnery, and M. B. Mathews. Prerequisite: Completion of the 1st year of Core Course Time: Fall semester (September - February) Course Description: The objective of this course is to comprehend the biochemical mechanism by which protein and RNA factors regulate the structure and function of nucleic acids in diverse organism including viruses and higher eukaryotes. Main format of the course is to critically review the past and current literature on the 7 selected topics. They include (1) historical perspective, (2) DNA topology, (3) chromatin structure, (4) DNA replication (5) reverse transcription, (6) transcription, (7) post-transcription modification, (8) translation. Topics 1-3 will discuss the physical and chemical property of DNA and the higher order organization of DNA. Topics 4-5 will cover the molecular scheme of DNA and RNA replication and key enzymes such as DNA polymerases and reverse transcriptases. Topic 6 will review the enzymatic basis of transcription activation and repression, discussing RNA polymerases, activators, and repressors. Topic 7 will cover the mechanism of pre-mRNA splicing and polyadenylation, protein factors modifying mRNA such as capping, decapping, and editing enzyme, and dsRNA interference (RNAi). Finally, topic 8 will discuss the principle of translational control, major players in translation such as tRNA, ssRSs, and Se-Cys-tRNA, and the molecular basis of translation, comparatively reviewing scanning, IRES, and shunting mechanisms. google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=post-transcription+modification&bt nG=Google+Search From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:28:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:28:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Abby L. Ferber: Of Mongrels and Jews Message-ID: Of Mongrels and Jews: The deconstruction of racialized identities in White supremacist discourse by Ferber, Abby L., Social Identities, 13504630, Jun97, Vol. 3, Issue 2 [Lots of pomo jargon about social construction, which I can by now easily penetrate, but there was very little about defining the precise boundaries of who is White. Greeks? Turks? Armenians? Lebanese? Asian Indians? (Having grown up in Colorado, I still think of Indians as American Indians.)] ABSTRACT: This research explores the construction of race and mixed race identities in a wide variety of white supremacist newsletters and periodicals published between 1969 and 1993. While traditional accounts of the white supremacist movement treat it as a movement concerned with race relations, I read this discourse as a site of the construction of race. In white supremacist discourse, interracial sexuality is defined as the ultimate abomination, and mixed race people pose a particularly strong threat. This paper explores the ways in which mixed race people, and Jews in particular, threaten the construction of a supposedly pure white racial identity. Drawing upon the insights of poststructuralism, this analysis will explore the role of boundary maintenance and the threat of border crossings in the process of constructing racial identities. Traditional studies of the white supremacist movement approach it as a far right movement representing white, and specifically white male, interests. The movement is defined as both racist and anti-semitic, and viewed from a race relations approach. Journalists, historians and sociologists have attempted to explain who the members of this movement are, and what factors explain why they join, as well as documenting the activities of the movement and accounting for its increasing or decreasing power and popularity at various historical junctures and in various social contexts. It is usually taken for granted that the movement represents the interests of a segment of the white population, and espouses hatred and advocates violence against blacks, Jews, and other nonwhite racial groups. Racial identities are assumed and accepted as given. This research, in contrast, explores white supremacist discourse as actively constructing racial identities. This research is part of a larger project which explores the construction of racialised, gendered identities in contemporary white supremacist discourse. Producing the illusion of racially pure identities is at the heart of the white supremacist project. I have reviewed the publications of a wide variety of white supremacist organisations published between 1969 and 1993 (for a complete list of primary sources, see reference list). While white supremacist discourses are diverse and varied, and have changed over the past thirty years responding to changes throughout society, there are certain constants within the discourse. Because white supremacist discourse is primarily concerned with constructing white identity and maintaining white privilege, the variety of white supremacist publications share an obsession with interracial relationships, perceived as the ultimate threat to that identity. This obsession has remained pervasive throughout the history of the white supremacist movement in the US and Europe, and this paper will explore precisely why this issue presents such a constant threat. I read white supremacist discourse here as ideological narratives which produce racialised identities and subjects. Not simply about race, this discourse constructs race. Constructing Racial Essence While white supremacist discourse adamantly supports the notion that race is a biological and/or god-given essence, a review of the discourse reveals the social construction of that essence. As Diana Fuss points out, 'there is no essence to essentialism ... essence as irreducible has been constructed to be irreducible' (Fuss, 1989, p. 4). Throughout white supremacist discourse, whiteness is constructed in terms of visible, physical differences in appearance. According to one article, true whites are Nordics, 'the thin, fair and symmetric race originating in Northern Europe' (Instauration, February 1980, p. 13). In another article, Nordics are described as the only cleanly chiselled faces around. And there are other ways they stand out. The world's finest hair and finest skin texture are in Scandinavia. Some of the world's tallest statures, largest body size and most massive heads are also found in Northern European regions. (Instauration, January 1980, p. 15) Jews similarly are constructed as a race in this discourse, made identifiable by physical markers such as 'long kinky curls and typical hooked nose, thick fleshy lips, slant eyes and other typical Jew features' (Thunderbolt, no. 301, p. 6). According to Christian Identity theology, difference is destiny -- it is god-given. Non-whites, and especially blacks, are not simply different biologically or genetically from whites, they are also not considered God's children. They are defined as pre-Adamic mud people, not the offspring of Adam. As a Thunderbolt article claims, 'the coloured and mongrelised races do not have God's Spirit and cannot be accepted ... [we] cannot change God's laws' (Thunderbolt, January 1974, p. 10). Eschewing religion, other publications provide an evolutionary perspective. An article in Instauration entitled 'Evolution vs Integration' emphasises this, explaining, the Negro brain is only 10.6 per cent smaller than a white's. But in regard to the more recently attained capacity for abstract and rational thought, the gap is much larger ... There is no underlying unity upon which to build or maintain a functioning social matrix. Despite all attempts to integrate them, the five races of mankind are still following Coon's separate lines of biological and historical evolution. (Instauration, January 1980, p. 21) This article suggests that any attempt to integrate the races runs counter to the natural course of evolution, and is bound to fail. Genetic difference, and evolution as the path of increasing differentiation, are constructed as rooted in nature, thereby also reifying inequality as a natural, permanent fact of life. A great deal of effort is put into physically distinguishing races from one another. Both the book and film that go by the name Blood in the Face take their name from some white suprernacists' supposition that Jews cannot blush and only true whites show 'blood in the face' (Ridgeway, 1992). Rather than revealing race as a biological essence, this discourse reveals the continued effort required to construct racial differences. Judith Butler suggests that identities are constructed through 'the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names' (Butler, 1993, p. 2). The construction of identity is not a singular act or gesture, but rather, a process which must be continually repeated 'in order to establish the illusion of its own uniformity and identity' (Butler, 1991, p. 24). Ironically, this process of reiteration which constructs racial difference also reveals the construction of these identities, thereby putting this identity permanently at risk ... That there is a need for repetition at all is a sign that identity is not self-identical. It requires to be instituted again and again, which is to say that it runs the risk of becoming de-instituted at every interval. (Butler, 1991, p. 24) As we find in white supremacist discourse, even though racial identity is posited as a biological or god-given fact of nature, a tremendous amount of effort is put into defining them. While a great amount of written space is devoted to delineating physical racial differences, these physical differences are always interpreted as signifying deeper, underlying differences. Physical differences produce the illusion of an inner racial essence. This racial essence is represented as immutable. As an NSV Report article about Jews claims, We fight for things that they cannot understand because of their nature; and because of their nature, they can never understand because they are aliens. Even if they changed their religion, they will not be a part of our Folk. They can never be a part of our Folk for they are aliens. They might as well be from another planet because they are not of our world. (NSV Report October/December 1987, p. 1) Constructing the illusion of a racially pure white identity is central to the white supremacist project. It is not surprising, then, that mixed-race people serve as a powerful threat to the maintenance of racial purity. Interracial sexuality is referred to as the 'ultimate abomination' (Ridgeway, 1990, p. 90) and white supremacist discourse is obsessed with miscegenation. In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler contends that this threat is central to the construction of subjects. Butler suggests that the central point of deconstruction, often missed in social constructivist analyses, is that the construction of subjects simultaneously produces abjected identities. Hence, it is not enough to claim that human subjects are constructed, for the construction of the human is a differential operation that produces the more and the less 'human', the inhuman, the humanly unthinkable. These excluded sates come to bound the 'human' as its constitutive outside, and to haunt those boundaries as the persistent possibility of their disruption and rearticulation. (Butler, 1993, p. 8) Gender and race are not identities imposed upon bodies, but, rather, bodies only become culturally intelligible as they become gendered and racialised. The heterosexual imperative produces as subjects those who conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility. At the same time, this regulation produces a domain of abjection, a realm of the culturally unintelligible. As Butler points out, it is important to recognise that oppression works not merely through acts of overt prohibition, but covertly, through the constitution of viable subjects and through the corollary constitution of a domain of unviable (un)subjects -- abjects, we might call them ... Here oppression works through the production of a domain of unthinkability and unnameability. (Butler, 1991, p. 20) The assumption of properly gendered identities occurs in relation to this realm of the abject. The regulation of heterosexuality constructs gendered subjects, and identification always takes place against a corresponding threat of punishment, yet the production of subjects is frequently constrained not only by the regulation of heterosexuality, but by other regulatory regimes as well. Exploring white supremacist discourse, the regulation of interracial sexuality emerges as central. While Butler demonstrates the production of culturally intelligible gender identities, and the simultaneous production of a realm of abjection, Omi and Winant suggest that there is a similar process at work in the production of coherent racial identities. They point out that one of the first things we notice about people when we meet them ... is their race. We utilise race to provide clues about who a person is. This fact is made painfully obvious when we encounter someone whom we cannot conveniently racially categorise -- someone who is, for example, racially 'mixed' or of an ethnic/racial group with which we are not familiar. Such an encounter becomes a source of discomfort and momentarily a crisis of racial meaning. Without a racial identity, one is in danger of having no identity. (Omi and Winant, 1986, p. 62) Racialised identities govern our notions of culturally intelligible humans. As Omi and Winant here suggests, the production of coherent racial identities, like the production of coherent gender identities, requires the simultaneous production of 'unviable (un)subjects' (Butler, 1991, p. 20). Informed by this theory, my research explores the regulation of heterosexual and 'racially pure' sexuality in white supremacist discourse, where the production of culturally intelligible racialised identities at the same time relegates mongrels and Jews to the realm of the inhuman. Mongrels: Border Crossings The production of racialised subjects requires the corresponding threat of punishment, and throughout this discourse that threat plays a central role as it is reiterated over and over. The subject must repeatedly disassociate itself from the abject to construct itself as a subject. It is this repeated repudiation by which the subject installs its boundary and constructs the claim to its 'integrity' ... This is not a buried identification that is left behind in a forgotten past, but an identification that must be levelled and buried again and again, the compulsive repudiation by which the subject incessantly sustains his/her boundary ... subject-positions are produced in and through a logic of repudiation and abjection. (Butler, 1993, p. 114) The figures of abjection, then, are essential to the production of racialised subjects. The construction of stable racial identities can only occur in relation to the production and regulation of the 'impure'. It is through the construction and maintenance of racial boundaries and the demarcation of 'whiteness' as a racially pure identity that the white subject is constructed. For white suprernacists, the construction of racial purity requires a policing of the racial borders. The construction of distinct races requires border maintenance and interracial sexuality is the greatest threat to this maintenance. Poststructuralism has highlighted the importance of paying attention to boundaries and the role of borders in constructing coherent conceptual categories. The meaning of any identity is derived from its relationship with its binary opposite. However, binary oppositions conceal the interdependence of the two terms; the two terms depend upon each other for meaning. Additionally, as Jacques Derrida points out, this relationship is hierarchical, one side of the opposition is always constructed as more important, primary or originary than the other (Derrida, 1976; Scott, 1988). Blackness, for example, as long as it is carefully separated and subordinated to whiteness, poses no threat to the existence of a white identity; in fact, blackness is necessary to the definition of whiteness. While blacks are the focus of a tremendous amount of attention in white supremacist discourse, they are primarily constructed as a threat to white identity, privilege and safety. White supremacist discourse argues that blackness must be carefully bounded and controlled; the threat must be neutralised. The discourse presents the possibility of white and black co-existence as long as the races are geographically separated. Separation and the maintenance of racial boundaries are the key. It is precisely for this reason that mixed race people pose such a great threat. Those who are mixed race threaten the white/black binary; they signify the instability of that opposition. While those who are discovered to be mixed race are actually legally defined as black in the US, they nevertheless represent a particularly strong threat to the construction of racial identity based on the illusion of white racial purity. Mixed race people signal the instability and permeability of racial boundaries, and threaten the construction of racial identity as a natural, inherent essence. If subjects only become culturally intelligible in this discourse as they become racialised, mixed race people cannot be granted subject status; they symbolise the realm of the unlivable. It is in relation to this realm of the unlivable, and through the maintenance of racial boundaries, that white subjects are produced and their identity is secured. They become visible, racialised subjects through the abjection of the impure. The realm of the abject, however, haunts the subject 'as the spectre of its own impossibility, the very limit to intelligibility, its constitutive outside' (Butler, 1993, pp. xi-xii). Throughout this discourse, mixed race individuals serve as figures of racial punishment, figures of abjection. 'Mongrels' do not meet the racialised norms of cultural intelligibility 'which qualifies a body for life within the domain of cultural intelligibility' (Butler, 1993, p. 2). For example, in The Turner Diaries, a widely read white supremacist utopian novel which served as a model for the Oklahoma City bombing, readers are warned, The enemy we are fighting fully intends to destroy the racial basis of our existence. No excuse for our failure will have any meaning, for there will be only a swarming horde of indifferent, mulatto zombies to hear it. There will be no White men to remember us. (Macdonald, 1978, p. 2) Not only is race at stake then, but what it means to be human, as well. As Omi and Winant and Butler have suggested, the construction of human subjects occurs through the construction and regulation of intelligible racial and gender identifies. Macdonald suggests that there will be no humans left, only what are referred to as 'mulatto zombies'. Without a stable racial identity, one can have no human identity in this discourse. As Butler explains, the 'coherence' and 'continuity' of 'the person' are not logical or analytic features of personhood, but, rather, socially instituted and maintained norms of intelligibility ... the very notion of 'the person' is called into question by the cultural emergence of those 'incoherent' ... beings who appear to be persons but who fail to conform to the gendered [and racialised] norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined. (Butler, 1990, p. 17) An article in the New Order describes mixed race individuals as: Malformed pieces of humanity sporting a combination of woolly negroid hair, white complexion and slanted mongol eyes. They call themselves 'black people', but they are neither black, white or yellow, but all and none of these races. These are the children of integration. They have no culture, no common heritage, no identity and no pride. What would you call them? Half-castes? Hybrids? Monsters? (New Order, September 1979, p. 7) They are defined as defective, degenerate, monster-like; once again their humanity is put in question. Similarly, articles in White Power refer to them as 'mongrel monstrosities' (White Power, February 1973, p. 3). Interracial sexuality is constructed as a threat to both racial and human identity, producing instead incoherent beings, 'brown zombies'. As we saw earlier, racial identity not only is posited as determining physical characteristics, but personality, behaviour, culture and national identity. Mixed race people, then, are not only distinguished by physical characteristics, but are defined as 'negroidal mongrels who on their own could not build a pyramid or modem city' (Thunderbolt, August 1979, p. 9). Elsewhere we are told that 'a mulatto or mongrel race is a shiftless, lazy, mindless, leaderless and slave-like race which must have a racial superior 'boss-man' to tell them what to do' (Thunderbolt, no. 297, p. 3). In stark contrast to the repeated celebrations of the accomplishments of the white race, white supremacist discourse suggests that mixed race people are inhuman, incapable of surviving on their own, incapable of creating anything worthwhile. In order to exist as a culturally intelligible being, one must be racialised. To have no pure race makes living impossible -- 'mongrels' occupy the site of impossibility and unlivability. As New Order articles warn, interracial sexuality will result in a 'race-mixed and totally dead America' (New Order, March 1979, p. 8), 'a fate worse than death ... is what mongrelisation is all about. It is a living death' (New Order Spring, 1982, p. 2). Mixed race individuals are denied subject-status in this discourse, and they are perceived as a particularly strong threat to the racial identity of whites. The realm of the abject, to which mixed race people have been relegated, 'bound[s] the 'human' as its constitutive outside, and ... haunt[s] those boundaries as the persistent possibility of their disruption and rearticulation' (Butler, 1993, p. 8). If white identity is dependent upon racially pure reproduction, and its place on one side of the binary opposition of white/black, it is essential for white supremacists to be able to recognise who is white and who is not. Their own identity depends upon it. While race is constructed through the reiteration of physical differences which are visible and knowable, the existence of mixed race individuals is represented as a threat to this surety. In a National Vanguard article entitled 'Beware the Almost Whites!' readers are warned that interracial sexuality produces a continuous range of mongrels between the two racial extremes. Near the White end of the spectrum there will be some who ... will be almost indistinguishable from the true Aryans. Drawing the line between what is Aryan and what is not becomes more and more difficult. (National Vanguard, August 1979, p. 5) As a New Order article explains, 'The 'murder by miscegenation' device works all too well when 'almost Whites' can gain acceptance when a nigger cannot' (New Order, March 1979, p. 2). The existence of 'almost whites' poses a threat to the constructed surety of racial identity and symbolises the insecurity and permeability of racial boundaries, threatening the possibility of racially pure reproduction and racially pure identities. In white supremacist discourse, mongrelisation is depicted as leading to the genocide of the white race. A typical article describes it as 'the genocide of the White race by irreversible downbreeding with a hopelessly inferior race' (White Power, March 1972, p. 4). A National Socialist White People's Party recruitment flyer warns, 'race-mixing and integration mean White genocide'. Mongrelisation is equated with genocide, the extermination of a race of people, because it means the loss of the illusion of white racial purity. As an article in the Thunderbolt explains, Mongrelisation is the worst form of 'genocide'. If you kill 99 per cent of a race, but leave the other 1 per cent pureblooded, they will in time restore the race; but when you mongrelise them, you have destroyed that race eternally. Once mixed with the Black or Yellow Races, the White Race would be totally and forever destroyed. (Thunderbolt, 25 April 1975, p. 10) Another article asserts, any large scale intermarriage ... would mean the ... abolition of the White Race. We would simply cease to exist in the world of the future ... A race once polluted with the decadent genes of the lower, backward, and underdeveloped races of the world is lost forever. (Thunderbolt, 30 May 1975, p. 8). Intermarriage is considered even deadlier than outright war because even a global war in which the Jews were victorious, would leave a few Whites to breed back the race. Their final solution is MONGRELISATION. A mongrel can only breed more mongrels. (Thunderbolt, January 1974, p. 10) Similarly, a New Order article asserts, 'there is one sure way of killing a nation -- to destroy or to fatally dilute the blood of its creators' (New Order March 1979, p. 2). Mongrelisation becomes synonymous with genocide in this discourse. If subjects only become living, viable subjects as they become racialised, mongrelisation, then, is death -- the destruction of life. Interracial sexuality is depicted as threatening to erase racial differences and identity and the actual continued existence of the white race and humanity. Regulations prohibiting interracial sexuality actually serve to consolidate racial identities, and any transgression of the boundaries threatens to destroy this identity. The Jew: Boundary Mediator and Destroyer White supremacist discourse presents a range of racial enemies: blacks are constructed as a threat if not thoroughly separated from whites. Mixed race people, the product of racial intermixture between whites and non-whites, but blacks especially, are a threat because they symbolise the breakdown of the borders separating whites from non-whites. Jews, however, are constructed as the ultimate enemy, the very source of the breakdown of these racial borders. According to the New Order, The single serious enemy facing the White man is the Jew. The Jews are not a religion, they are an Asiatic race, locked in mortal conflict with Aryan man which has lasted for millennia, and which will continue until one of the two combat peoples is extinct. (The New Order, March 1979, p. 3) As the Thunderbolt proclaims, it is a 'WAR OF EXTERMINATION -- God's seed against Satan's seed. ONLY ONE WILL SURVIVE' (Thunderbolt, January 1974, p. 10). Jews are racialised in this discourse, and defined as a biologically distinct race. However, according to Christian Identity theology, subscribed to by a number of the publications reviewed here, Jews are not simply different genetically and biologically, but are depicted as the children of Satan rather than God. The Identity Church movement was first recognised as a strong presence within the white supremacist movement in the 1970s and early 1980s. The racist and anti-semitic Identity doctrine provides the theological underpinnings for a variety of white supremacist organisations, and links various groups together. Identity doctrine has its foundations in British Israelism, with origins in Great Britain in the mid-1800s (Zeskind, 1986). Based on an 'idiosyncratic reading' of the Bible, British Israelism holds that the people of Israel settled in Northern Europe before the Christian era. According to the Bible, ancient Israel was divided into two kingdoms: the Northern portion consisted of ten of the twelve tribes descended from Jacob, and when the area was conquered the ten tribes were lost. The Jews of today are supposedly descendants of the Southern kingdom, but according to Identity belief: characteristics of the racial type we recognise as that of the Jews today were the result of intermarriages in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah. At that time a mutation of the blood stream occurred ... (which was) ... a defection from God's will. (Zeskind, 1986, p. 196) This racialisation of biblical beliefs recasts the ancient Hebrews as a race, whose descendants today are the Aryans, and recasts Jews as the product of race-mixing. Theologians in the US have contributed to Identity doctrine, adding the 'two seed' theory (Ridgeway, 1990, p. 54). US Identity doctrine holds that there were two creations: the first was the male and female created in Genesis 1: 26-27, and the second was the creation of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2: 2-6. These two accounts supposedly produced two separate races. Adam is the ancestor of the Caucasian race today, and the other male and female produced the pre-Adamic 'mud people', people without souls, defined as today's blacks and other non-Jewish non-whites. According to Identity doctrine, Satan seduced Eve, and then Eve introduced sexual intercourse to Adam. So Eve was impregnated with two seeds, Satan's evil seed, producing Cain, and God's, producing Abel. When Cain, the evil one, was Cast out of Eden, he supposedly married a pre-Adamic woman, producing the Jewish race. According to this account, Jews are not only the children of Satan, but once again the product of racial intermixture (Aho, 1990; Anti-Defamation League, 1988b). As explained in an article in the Thunderbolt entitled 'Satan's Children vs God's Children', when Cain was cast out of Eden he married an Asiatic woman. His offspring continued mixing with Asiatics, many of whom had previously mongrelised with Negroes, and they continued this miscegenation down through the years. This Cainite line had Satan's spirit, not God's ... The genetic function of their existence is to do the works of their father (Satan) by destroying the White Adamic Race ... This Cainite race (if you can call mongrels a race) became the people, who today, are known as JEWS ... over 80 per cent of today's Jews are descendants of the Khazars, who were ... of Turk-Mongol blood mixed with White Europeans. (Thunderbolt, January 1974, p. 10) As these accounts demonstrate, Christian Identity theology defines Jews not merely as a separate race, but an impure race, the product of mongrelisation. Jews, then, occupy the abject site of mongrelisation and symbolise all that goes along with that designation. The position of Jews is ambiguous throughout this discourse because while Jews are defined as mongrels, they are also produced discursively as a distinctive race in a way that mongrels more generally are not. Mixed race people pose a threat because they symbolise racelessness and the breakdown of racial identity, and hence, humanity. Jews, however, are defined as mixed race, and so raceless. This state of racelessness becomes their racial essence. It is their essence to attack and destroy pure racial identities. Additionally, it is often emphasised that Jews today do not allow intermarriage for themselves. For example, a Thunderbolt article explains that they are advocating [interracial sexuality] for White Christians and members of the colored races but not for members of the Jew race ... They have long realised that the fusion of all the other races (while maintaining the purity of the Jew race) will produce a race of mongrels more subservient to their domination. (Thunderbolt, no. 297, p. 3) Curiously, then, Jews are defined as simultaneously mongrels and a pure race. Jews are produced as a race whose central racial identity is impurity, mongrelisation, mixture. The pure essence or racial core of the Jew represents all that is antithetical to the meaning of a healthy race. Racial identity is predicated upon an imagined purity, and the existence of Jews is a threat because their racial identity represents impurity, chaos, boundary transgressions. It is for this reason that geographical segregation is acceptable for all other races, but Jews must be exterminated. The existence of Jews is a threat, and so every last Jew must be exterminated to secure white existence. In Modernity and the Holocaust, Zygmunt Bauman suggests that Jews have traditionally been assigned the role of transgressors: The conceptual Jew was a semantically overloaded entity, comprising and blending meanings which ought to be kept apart, and for this reason a natural adversary of any force concerned with drawing borderlines and keeping them watertight. The conceptual Jew was visquex (in Sartrean terms), slimy (in Mary Douglas's terms) -- an image construed as compromising and defying the order of things, as the very epitome and embodiment of such defiance. (Bauman, 1989, p. 39) While the essence and core of the Jew is constructed as symbolising this site of impossibility and chaos, the behaviour of Jews is described as an extension of that position. Race-mixing and interracial sexuality, the severest threat to the existence of a white racial identity, is posited as a result of Jews. Almost every discussion of race-mixing, whether it is school bussing, or intermarriage, attributes it to Jews. A multitude of articles found throughout all of the various periodicals attempts to demonstrate that Jews are responsible for integration and race-mixing. For example, Thunderbolt has published articles with titles like 'Jewish Leaders Supporting Race-Mixing', 'Jews Finance Race-Mixing Case', 'Jewish Organisations Back Interracial Marriage', and 'Why Do Jews Support Race-Mixing?' (Thunderbolt, no. 297, pp. 1, 3). According to the NSV Report, Aryans are facing 'organised mutiny of biologically inferior people, led by the Jews against the White race' (NSV Report, April/June 1983, p. 5). Mongrels and Jews, then, are constructed differently as threats. While mongrels represent the possibility of racelessness and inhumanity, it is the Jews who are depicted as encouraging and speeding along the process of mongrelisation between whites and blacks. The essence of the Jew is produced as an inherent threat to racial purity. Separation of the races is the end goal for the wide range of white supremacist groups. Geographical apartheid is presented as the only way to guarantee racial purity and prevent the threat of racial mixing. For example, an Instauration article warns, It is not black power that we need to fear. We should fear black coexistence in the same living space ... once our race is gone because of integration with blacks, we are done. (Instauration, April 1980, pp. 13-14) Because Jews come to embody impurity and border crossings, throughout this discourse the presence of the Jew is defined as the roadblock to racial segregation. For example, a White Power article demonstrates the role attributed to Jews consistently throughout this discourse: Now that the busses are rolling on their genocidal journey of bringing White and Negro children forcibly together in the schools, our Jew-dominated government is moving relentlessly on to the next step: forced mixing of the races in housing ... to carry out the lunatic program of interbreeding. (White Power, March 1972, p. 3) While whites fear mixing with blacks, it is assumed that if Jews were out of the picture, separation of blacks and whites would be assured. Blacks are frequently depicted as stupid and animal-like, merely following the lead of the Jews, and without the Jews it is believed that blacks would no longer demand equality and integration. For example, a New Order article suggests that without the prodding of Jews and white liberals, what happens to the negro? [He] clumsily shuffles off, scratching his woolly head, to search for shoebrush and mop. In the final debate, an ape will always be an ape. (New Order, September 1979, p. 14) Instauration articles explain that the Jew serves as the mediator between non-Jewish groups. A book entitled The Mediator, by Richard Swartzbaugh, is published by the press which publishes Instauration, and Instauration articles frequently discuss this book, referred to as an 'underground classic'. Swartzbaugh shows how this mediating role becomes a necessity in cases where mutually antagonistic groups are to be found within the same living space and where some sort of accommodation is desired. That is why the Jews have always done their best artificially to create such situations (i.e., by breaking down American and British immigration bars). (Instauration April 1979, p. 28) This work suggests that Jews encourage, benefit from, and thrive on the breakdown of racial boundaries. Once again, this is seen as rooted in Jewish nature -- it is part of their racial essence. As an NSV Report article explains, It is the Jews who are the purveyors of death! Jews are a very negative people. They cannot help it. It is their racial personality. They will destroy your nation, race, culture, civilisation, family and whatever you value. (NSV Report, January/March 1989, p. 1) Jews are constructed as a race which by nature disrupts and destroys. This discourse suggests that racial boundaries and the separation of races are natural, but the Jew, who symbolises and embodies the unnatural, the chaotic, disrupts the natural order of separation and white superiority. As a Thunderbolt article explains, 'When misled liberals and Jews constantly tell negroes that they are equal to (or better) than Whites, hatred and violence erupts when they are unable to compete' (Thunderbolt, August 1979, p. 8). Jews are depicted as controlling many facets of US society, ranging from the media to the banking and finance industries, and they are depicted as using their position to increase interracial sexuality. For example, a White Power article entitled 'Race-Mixing in the Movies' asserts that Hollywood and the motion picture industry were created by, and are controlled by, Jews who have taken a leading position as a promoter of race-mixing and miscegenation ... This medium is now being systematically used to undermine our Aryan values and destroy our White identity. (White Power, June/July 1969, p. 3) Another article suggests that the 'Jew controlled media' are brainwashing children and teenagers into accepting interracial sexuality and homosexuality so that White kids see miscegenation and homosexuality portrayed as the 'in' thing, and anyone who opposes this sort of filth is castigated as a 'racist' or a 'prude'. (White Power, February 1973, p. 3) The feminist movement is also considered part of the Jewish plan to divide and mongrelise the white race. Jews are considered the driving force behind feminism, 'never less than a third of the leadership of feminist organisations' (National Vanguard, January 1983, p. 17). Similarly, a White Power article confirms that the 'Women's Movement' which evolved out of the social turmoil of the 1960s had a distinctly Jewish approach and leadership....they seem to be less interested in securing equal rights for women than in turning men and women into unnatural rivals, each struggling against the other for supremacy instead of working together. (White Power, no. 105, p. 4) Jews are assumed to be behind all equality movements, whether for racial or gender equality, because it is defined as inherent in Jewish nature to disrupt and threaten difference. The Jew represents the destruction of borders, threatening the very existence of racial identities. As Bauman suggests, the conceptual Jew performed a function of prime importance; he visualised the horrifying consequences of boundary-transgression ... The conceptual Jew carried a message; alternative to this order here and now is not another order, but chaos and devastation. (Bauman, 1989, p. 39) The breakdown of natural racial boundaries is depicted as leading inevitably to interracial sexuality, part of the Jewish plan to exterminate the white race. If interracial sexuality is depicted as a form of genocide, then it must be Jews who are behind it. According to the NSV Report, 'Jewish parasites ... race-mix our people into oblivion' (NSV Report, October/December 1988, p. 2). The end goal of what is constructed as the Jewish plan of promoting interracial sexuality is white genocide and world domination. A Thunderbolt article proclaims They hope that our seed will vanish into the Jewish contrived 'melting pot' with the negroes, Puerto Ricans, Asians and Mexicans in order to create a brown skinned non-White world of the future. The Jews are waging a fierce battle to stop intermarriage within their own race. If the Jews are the last race able to retain their own racial identity they will be able to use their money power to control any mentally dulled race of mongrelised zombies that might eventually be the majority. (Thunderbolt, January 1974, p. 7) According to a White Power article entitled 'Jews Planning White Genocide', 'world Jewry's chilling Final Solution [is] the physical and spiritual genocide of the White race they despise' (White Power, February 1973, p. 3). Conclusion The construction of white racial identity, and the maintenance of white privilege, is the central project of the contemporary white supremacist movement. The construction and maintenance of racial boundaries is essential to the production of white identity in white supremacist discourse. Purity is central to the definition of racial identity, and the construction of racially pure identities simultaneously produces the threat of miscegenation. Within this discourse, mongrels and Jews pose a threat to the construction of white racial identity because they symbolise the permeability of racial boundaries and the threat of boundary transgressions. Mongrels and Jews become the embodiment of this threat and serve as images of boundary confusion and chaos. The production of racialised subjects occurs through the maintenance of racial boundaries, and each of these figures in some way disrupts, threatens, or transgresses the boundaries which are essential to the production of the white subject. The production of intelligible racial subjects simultaneously produces a range of unintelligible un-subjects. Within contemporary white supremacist discourse, mongrels and Jews are defined as inhuman monsters. They form the constitutive outside against which the coherent subject is constructed. The regulation of interracial sexuality, then, is a continuous effort at boundary maintenance, producing racialised subjects as well as improper non-subjects: Mongrels and Jews serve as figures of racial punishment: the threat of impurity. They are accordingly denied subject status. As Butler has asserted, it is essential that we explore not only the construction of human subjects, but those simultaneously not constructed as human. The racialised subject is produced in white supremacist discourse over and against the improperly racialised, the inhuman, the culturally unintelligible. More than merely a discourse about race relations, this article demonstrates the active production of racial identity within the discourse. If, as contemporary theory asserts, race is a social construction, we cannot take racial classifications for granted in our analyses. Instead, we must explore the varied processes and sites of its ongoing construction. References Aho, J.A. (1990) The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism, Seattle: University of Washington Press. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (1988a) Extremism on the Right: a Handbook, New York. -- (1988b) Hate Groups in America: a Record of Bigotry and Violence, New York. Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York: Routledge. -- (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York: Routledge. Derrida, J. (1974) Of Grammatology, translated by G.C. Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. -- (1982) Margins of Philosophy, translated by A. Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ferber, A.L. (1995a) 'Exploring the Social Construction of Race: Social Science Research and the Study of Interracial Relationships', in N. Zack (ed.), American Mixed Race: Exploring 'Microdiversity', Rowman and Little field Press. -- (1995b) "Shame of White Men': Interracial Sexuality and the Construction of White Masculinity in Contemporary White Supremacist Discourse', Masculinities, Summer. Fuss, D. (1989) Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference, New York: Routledge. Macdonald, A. (1978) The Turner Diaries, Hillsboro, Virginia: National Vanguard Books. Morrison, T. (1992) Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, New York: Vintage Books. Omi, M. (1991) 'Shifting the Blame: Racial Ideology and Politics in the Post-Civil Rights Era', Critical Sociology 18 (3): 77- 98 Omi, M. and H. Winant (1986) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s, New York: Routledge. Ridgeway, J. (1990) Blood in the Face, New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. Scott, J. (1988) 'Deconstructing Equality-Versus-Difference: Or, the Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism', Feminist Studies, 14 (1,Spring): 33-50. Young, I.M. (1990) 'The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference', in L. J. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism, New York: Routledge. Zeskind, L. (1986) The 'Christian Identity' Movement, Atlanta: Center for Democratic Renewal Published by the Division of Church and Society of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Primary Sources The following periodicals were reviewed for the years listed: Instauration (1976-83): 'seemingly intellectual', racist and anti-semitic magazine published by Howard Allen Enterprises, Inc., in Cape Canaveral, FL. Instauration is edited by Wilmot Robertson but little is known about this corporation. John Tyndall, leader of Great Britain's neo-fascist National Front, has called Instauration 'a highly articulate and stimulating monthly ... enjoying growing popularity among ... the National Front' (Anti-Defamation League, 1988a: 152). The National Alliance Bulletin (1978-80), and National Vanguard (1978-84): both periodicals are published by the National Alliance, in Mill Point, WV, a Neo-Nazi group headed by William Pierce and founded in 1970. The National Alliance originated from the Youth for Wallace campaign in 1968, run by Willis A. Carto, but split from Carto in 1970 and became the National Alliance, run by former members of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. The New Order (1979-83): published by Gerhard Lauck, in Lincoln, NE. Lauck heads the neo-Nazi National Socialist German Workers Party (known overseas as NSDAP-AO). 'The NSDAP-AO's circulation is so widespread that it allegedly is recognised by the West German government as the primary source of propaganda materials to [their] underground' (Klanwatch Intelligence Report, 1993: 8). The New Order is widely read and distributed by various white supremacist groups because 'membership and distribution materials are easy to obtain' (Klanwatch Intelligence Report, 1993: 9). N S Bulletin (1974-83), and White Power (1969-78): both periodicals are published by the National Socialist White People's Party, which changed its name to the New Order in 1982. This organisation is headed by Matt Koehl, with headquarters in Arlington, VA, and later New Berlin, WI. This organisation is the direct descendant of the original neo-Nazi organisation in the US, the American Nazi Party. The NSV Report (1983-93): quarterly newsletter of the National Socialist Vanguard, started in 1983, and headed by neo-Nazi Rick Cooper and Dan Stewart, former National Socialist White People's Party member. This group has closely aligned itself with the Church of Jesus Christ Christian Aryan Nations, a Christian Identity church, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The Thunderbolt (1974-84): published by the National States Rights Party (NSRP), founded in 1958, and edited by J.B. Stoner and Edward Fields, 'among the most extreme anti-black, anti-semitic hatemongers in the US' (Anti-Defamation League, 1988a: 29). The ADL describes the NSRP as 'ideologically hybrid ... a bridge between the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi groups. The Thunderbolt had long been the most widely read publication among the Klans and other hate groups' (Anti-Defamation League, 1988a: 44). The Torch (1977-79): published by The White People's Committee to Restore God's Laws, a division of the Church of Jesus Christ, a Christian Identity church, and White Patriot (1979-84): Newsletter of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the second largest Klan group in the US, are both edited by Thomas Robb. Robb is national KKK 'chaplain' as well as minister of the Church of Jesus Christ, a Christian Identity church in Arkansas. Robb has close ties to David Duke's National Association for the Advancement of White People, as well as with neo-Nazis in the US and West Germany. The collection contained sporadic issues of the following periodicals which I chose to include in order to insure that I reviewed as wide a range of publications as possible: 11. Crusader (no dates): published by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, out of Metairie, LA. 12. The Fiery Cross (1979): published in Swartz, Louisiana, official organ of The United Klans of America, in Tuscaloosa, AL. 13. The National Socialist (1982-83): published by The World Union of National Socialists. 14. The Northlander (1978): no information available. 15. NS KAMPFRUF/NS Mobilizer (1974-83): published by the National Socialist League. 16. The Spotlight (1986): published by the Liberty Lobby. 17. Voice of German Americans (1977-80): no information available. 18. The Western Guardian (1980): Christian Identity periodical published by Western Guard America. ~~~~~~~~ By ABBY L. FERBER, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Abby L. Ferber may be contacted at the Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150, USA, telephone: work (719)593-3663, e-mail: aferber at mail.uccs.edu. This research has been supported by grants from the Center for the Study of Women in Society and the Humanities Center at the University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. I thank Linda Fuller, Miriam Johnson, Sandra Morgen, Forrest Pyle, Jori Pollack, David Theo Goldberg and the anonymous reviewers for their insights and encouragement. From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 18:42:09 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 11:42:09 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tho. Friedman: It's a Flat World, After All Message-ID: <01C53842.2C58EEF0.shovland@mindspring.com> It's not flattening. It's a race to the bottom. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 11:08 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tho. Friedman: It's a Flat World, After All Magazine > It's a Flat World, After All http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/magazine/03DOMINANCE.html 5.4.3 In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail for India, going west. He had the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. He never did find India, but he called the people he met ''Indians'' and came home and reported to his king and queen: ''The world is round.'' I set off for India 512 years later. I knew just which direction I was going. I went east. I had Lufthansa business class, and I came home and reported only to my wife and only in a whisper: ''The world is flat.'' And therein lies a tale of technology and geoeconomics that is fundamentally reshaping our lives -- much, much more quickly than many people realize. It all happened while we were sleeping, or rather while we were focused on 9/11, the dot-com bust and Enron -- which even prompted some to wonder whether globalization was over. Actually, just the opposite was true, which is why it's time to wake up and prepare ourselves for this flat world, because others already are, and there is no time to waste. I wish I could say I saw it all coming. Alas, I encountered the flattening of the world quite by accident. It was in late February of last year, and I was visiting the Indian high-tech capital, Bangalore, working on a documentary for the Discovery Times channel about outsourcing. In short order, I interviewed Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to prepare my taxes from Bangalore, read my X-rays from Bangalore, trace my lost luggage from Bangalore and write my new software from Bangalore. The longer I was there, the more upset I became -- upset at the realization that while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, globalization had entered a whole new phase, and I had missed it. I guess the eureka moment came on a visit to the campus of Infosys Technologies, one of the crown jewels of the Indian outsourcing and software industry. Nandan Nilekani, the Infosys C.E.O., was showing me his global video-conference room, pointing with pride to a wall-size flat-screen TV, which he said was the biggest in Asia. Infosys, he explained, could hold a virtual meeting of the key players from its entire global supply chain for any project at any time on that supersize screen. So its American designers could be on the screen speaking with their Indian software writers and their Asian manufacturers all at once. That's what globalization is all about today, Nilekani said. Above the screen there were eight clocks that pretty well summed up the Infosys workday: 24/7/365. The clocks were labeled U.S. West, U.S. East, G.M.T., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia. ''Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world,'' Nilekani explained. ''What happened over the last years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things.'' At the same time, he added, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of e-mail software, search engines like Google and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore and one part to Beijing, making it easy for anyone to do remote development. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, Nilekani said, they ''created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again -- and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature. And what you are seeing in Bangalore today is really the culmination of all these things coming together.'' At one point, summing up the implications of all this, Nilekani uttered a phrase that rang in my ear. He said to me, ''Tom, the playing field is being leveled.'' He meant that countries like India were now able to compete equally for global knowledge work as never before -- and that America had better get ready for this. As I left the Infosys campus that evening and bounced along the potholed road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: ''The playing field is being leveled.'' ''What Nandan is saying,'' I thought, ''is that the playing field is being flattened. Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!'' Here I was in Bangalore -- more than 500 years after Columbus sailed over the horizon, looking for a shorter route to India using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned safely to prove definitively that the world was round -- and one of India's smartest engineers, trained at his country's top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was telling me that the world was flat, as flat as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even more interesting, he was citing this development as a new milestone in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world -- the fact that we had made our world flat! This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0 -- the thing that gives it its unique character -- is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally? But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse -- non-Western, nonwhite -- group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part. ''Today, the most profound thing to me is the fact that a 14-year-old in Romania or Bangalore or the Soviet Union or Vietnam has all the information, all the tools, all the software easily available to apply knowledge however they want,'' said Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape and creator of the first commercial Internet browser. ''That is why I am sure the next Napster is going to come out of left field. As bioscience becomes more computational and less about wet labs and as all the genomic data becomes easily available on the Internet, at some point you will be able to design vaccines on your laptop.'' Andreessen is touching on the most exciting part of Globalization 3.0 and the flattening of the world: the fact that we are now in the process of connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together. We've tasted some of the downsides of that in the way that Osama bin Laden has connected terrorist knowledge pools together through his Qaeda network, not to mention the work of teenage hackers spinning off more and more lethal computer viruses that affect us all. But the upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Only 30 years ago, if you had a choice of being born a B student in Boston or a genius in Bangalore or Beijing, you probably would have chosen Boston, because a genius in Beijing or Bangalore could not really take advantage of his or her talent. They could not plug and play globally. Not anymore. Not when the world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray. When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids. H ow did the world get flattened, and how did it happen so fast? It was a result of 10 events and forces that all came together during the 1990's and converged right around the year 2000. Let me go through them briefly. The first event was 11/9. That's right -- not 9/11, but 11/9. Nov. 9, 1989, is the day the Berlin Wall came down, which was critically important because it allowed us to think of the world as a single space. ''The Berlin Wall was not only a symbol of keeping people inside Germany; it was a way of preventing a kind of global view of our future,'' the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said. And the wall went down just as the windows went up -- the breakthrough Microsoft Windows 3.0 operating system, which helped to flatten the playing field even more by creating a global computer interface, shipped six months after the wall fell. The second key date was 8/9. Aug. 9, 1995, is the day Netscape went public, which did two important things. First, it brought the Internet alive by giving us the browser to display images and data stored on Web sites. Second, the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight. In sum, what the Netscape revolution did was bring people-to-people connectivity to a whole new level. Suddenly more people could connect with more other people from more different places in more different ways than ever before. No country accidentally benefited more from the Netscape moment than India. ''India had no resources and no infrastructure,'' said Dinakar Singh, one of the most respected hedge-fund managers on Wall Street, whose parents earned doctoral degrees in biochemistry from the University of Delhi before emigrating to America. ''It produced people with quality and by quantity. But many of them rotted on the docks of India like vegetables. Only a relative few could get on ships and get out. Not anymore, because we built this ocean crosser, called fiber-optic cable. For decades you had to leave India to be a professional. Now you can plug into the world from India. You don't have to go to Yale and go to work for Goldman Sachs.'' India could never have afforded to pay for the bandwidth to connect brainy India with high-tech America, so American shareholders paid for it. Yes, crazy overinvestment can be good. The overinvestment in railroads turned out to be a great boon for the American economy. ''But the railroad overinvestment was confined to your own country and so, too, were the benefits,'' Singh said. In the case of the digital railroads, ''it was the foreigners who benefited.'' India got a free ride. The first time this became apparent was when thousands of Indian engineers were enlisted to fix the Y2K -- the year 2000 -- computer bugs for companies from all over the world. (Y2K should be a national holiday in India. Call it ''Indian Interdependence Day,'' says Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign-policy analyst at Johns Hopkins.) The fact that the Y2K work could be outsourced to Indians was made possible by the first two flatteners, along with a third, which I call ''workflow.'' Workflow is shorthand for all the software applications, standards and electronic transmission pipes, like middleware, that connected all those computers and fiber-optic cable. To put it another way, if the Netscape moment connected people to people like never before, what the workflow revolution did was connect applications to applications so that people all over the world could work together in manipulating and shaping words, data and images on computers like never before. Indeed, this breakthrough in people-to-people and application-to-application connectivity produced, in short order, six more flatteners -- six new ways in which individuals and companies could collaborate on work and share knowledge. One was ''outsourcing.'' When my software applications could connect seamlessly with all of your applications, it meant that all kinds of work -- from accounting to software-writing -- could be digitized, disaggregated and shifted to any place in the world where it could be done better and cheaper. The second was ''offshoring.'' I send my whole factory from Canton, Ohio, to Canton, China. The third was ''open-sourcing.'' I write the next operating system, Linux, using engineers collaborating together online and working for free. The fourth was ''insourcing.'' I let a company like UPS come inside my company and take over my whole logistics operation -- everything from filling my orders online to delivering my goods to repairing them for customers when they break. (People have no idea what UPS really does today. You'd be amazed!). The fifth was ''supply-chaining.'' This is Wal-Mart's specialty. I create a global supply chain down to the last atom of efficiency so that if I sell an item in Arkansas, another is immediately made in China. (If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner.) The last new form of collaboration I call ''informing'' -- this is Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, which now allow anyone to collaborate with, and mine, unlimited data all by themselves. So the first three flatteners created the new platform for collaboration, and the next six are the new forms of collaboration that flattened the world even more. The 10th flattener I call ''the steroids,'' and these are wireless access and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). What the steroids do is turbocharge all these new forms of collaboration, so you can now do any one of them, from anywhere, with any device. The world got flat when all 10 of these flatteners converged around the year 2000. This created a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration on research and work in real time, without regard to geography, distance or, in the near future, even language. ''It is the creation of this platform, with these unique attributes, that is the truly important sustainable breakthrough that made what you call the flattening of the world possible,'' said Craig Mundie, the chief technical officer of Microsoft. No, not everyone has access yet to this platform, but it is open now to more people in more places on more days in more ways than anything like it in history. Wherever you look today -- whether it is the world of journalism, with bloggers bringing down Dan Rather; the world of software, with the Linux code writers working in online forums for free to challenge Microsoft; or the world of business, where Indian and Chinese innovators are competing against and working with some of the most advanced Western multinationals -- hierarchies are being flattened and value is being created less and less within vertical silos and more and more through horizontal collaboration within companies, between companies and among individuals. Do you recall ''the IT revolution'' that the business press has been pushing for the last 20 years? Sorry to tell you this, but that was just the prologue. The last 20 years were about forging, sharpening and distributing all the new tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real information revolution is about to begin as all the complementarities among these collaborative tools start to converge. One of those who first called this moment by its real name was Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O., who in 2004 began to declare in her public speeches that the dot-com boom and bust were just ''the end of the beginning.'' The last 25 years in technology, Fiorina said, have just been ''the warm-up act.'' Now we are going into the main event, she said, ''and by the main event, I mean an era in which technology will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, of life.'' A s if this flattening wasn't enough, another convergence coincidentally occurred during the 1990's that was equally important. Some three billion people who were out of the game walked, and often ran, onto the playing field. I am talking about the people of China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia. Their economies and political systems all opened up during the course of the 1990's so that their people were increasingly free to join the free market. And when did these three billion people converge with the new playing field and the new business processes? Right when it was being flattened, right when millions of them could compete and collaborate more equally, more horizontally and with cheaper and more readily available tools. Indeed, thanks to the flattening of the world, many of these new entrants didn't even have to leave home to participate. Thanks to the 10 flatteners, the playing field came to them! It is this convergence -- of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes for horizontal collaboration -- that I believe is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early 21st century. Sure, not all three billion can collaborate and compete. In fact, for most people the world is not yet flat at all. But even if we're talking about only 10 percent, that's 300 million people -- about twice the size of the American work force. And be advised: the Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. What China's leaders really want is that the next generation of underwear and airplane wings not just be ''made in China'' but also be ''designed in China.'' And that is where things are heading. So in 30 years we will have gone from ''sold in China'' to ''made in China'' to ''designed in China'' to ''dreamed up in China'' -- or from China as collaborator with the worldwide manufacturers on nothing to China as a low-cost, high-quality, hyperefficient collaborator with worldwide manufacturers on everything. Ditto India. Said Craig Barrett, the C.E.O. of Intel, ''You don't bring three billion people into the world economy overnight without huge consequences, especially from three societies'' -- like India, China and Russia -- ''with rich educational heritages.'' That is why there is nothing that guarantees that Americans or Western Europeans will continue leading the way. These new players are stepping onto the playing field legacy free, meaning that many of them were so far behind that they can leap right into the new technologies without having to worry about all the sunken costs of old systems. It means that they can move very fast to adopt new, state-of-the-art technologies, which is why there are already more cellphones in use in China today than there are people in America. If you want to appreciate the sort of challenge we are facing, let me share with you two conversations. One was with some of the Microsoft officials who were involved in setting up Microsoft's research center in Beijing, Microsoft Research Asia, which opened in 1998 -- after Microsoft sent teams to Chinese universities to administer I.Q. tests in order to recruit the best brains from China's 1.3 billion people. Out of the 2,000 top Chinese engineering and science students tested, Microsoft hired 20. They have a saying at Microsoft about their Asia center, which captures the intensity of competition it takes to win a job there and explains why it is already the most productive research team at Microsoft: ''Remember, in China, when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.'' The other is a conversation I had with Rajesh Rao, a young Indian entrepreneur who started an electronic-game company from Bangalore, which today owns the rights to Charlie Chaplin's image for mobile computer games. ''We can't relax,'' Rao said. ''I think in the case of the United States that is what happened a bit. Please look at me: I am from India. We have been at a very different level before in terms of technology and business. But once we saw we had an infrastructure that made the world a small place, we promptly tried to make the best use of it. We saw there were so many things we could do. We went ahead, and today what we are seeing is a result of that. There is no time to rest. That is gone. There are dozens of people who are doing the same thing you are doing, and they are trying to do it better. It is like water in a tray: you shake it, and it will find the path of least resistance. That is what is going to happen to so many jobs -- they will go to that corner of the world where there is the least resistance and the most opportunity. If there is a skilled person in Timbuktu, he will get work if he knows how to access the rest of the world, which is quite easy today. You can make a Web site and have an e-mail address and you are up and running. And if you are able to demonstrate your work, using the same infrastructure, and if people are comfortable giving work to you and if you are diligent and clean in your transactions, then you are in business.'' Instead of complaining about outsourcing, Rao said, Americans and Western Europeans would ''be better off thinking about how you can raise your bar and raise yourselves into doing something better. Americans have consistently led in innovation over the last century. Americans whining -- we have never seen that before.'' R ao is right. And it is time we got focused. As a person who grew up during the cold war, I'll always remember driving down the highway and listening to the radio, when suddenly the music would stop and a grim-voiced announcer would come on the air and say: ''This is a test. This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.'' And then there would be a 20-second high-pitched siren sound. Fortunately, we never had to live through a moment in the cold war when the announcer came on and said, ''This is a not a test.'' That, however, is exactly what I want to say here: ''This is not a test.'' The long-term opportunities and challenges that the flattening of the world puts before the United States are profound. Therefore, our ability to get by doing things the way we've been doing them -- which is to say not always enriching our secret sauce -- will not suffice any more. ''For a country as wealthy we are, it is amazing how little we are doing to enhance our natural competitiveness,'' says Dinakar Singh, the Indian-American hedge-fund manager. ''We are in a world that has a system that now allows convergence among many billions of people, and we had better step back and figure out what it means. It would be a nice coincidence if all the things that were true before were still true now, but there are quite a few things you actually need to do differently. You need to have a much more thoughtful national discussion.'' If this moment has any parallel in recent American history, it is the height of the cold war, around 1957, when the Soviet Union leapt ahead of America in the space race by putting up the Sputnik satellite. The main challenge then came from those who wanted to put up walls; the main challenge to America today comes from the fact that all the walls are being taken down and many other people can now compete and collaborate with us much more directly. The main challenge in that world was from those practicing extreme Communism, namely Russia, China and North Korea. The main challenge to America today is from those practicing extreme capitalism, namely China, India and South Korea. The main objective in that era was building a strong state, and the main objective in this era is building strong individuals. Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism. It requires a president who can summon the nation to work harder, get smarter, attract more young women and men to science and engineering and build the broadband infrastructure, portable pensions and health care that will help every American become more employable in an age in which no one can guarantee you lifetime employment. We have been slow to rise to the challenge of flatism, in contrast to Communism, maybe because flatism doesn't involve ICBM missiles aimed at our cities. Indeed, the hot line, which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House, has been replaced by the help line, which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore. While the other end of the hot line might have had Leonid Brezhnev threatening nuclear war, the other end of the help line just has a soft voice eager to help you sort out your AOL bill or collaborate with you on a new piece of software. No, that voice has none of the menace of Nikita Khrushchev pounding a shoe on the table at the United Nations, and it has none of the sinister snarl of the bad guys in ''From Russia With Love.'' No, that voice on the help line just has a friendly Indian lilt that masks any sense of threat or challenge. It simply says: ''Hello, my name is Rajiv. Can I help you?'' No, Rajiv, actually you can't. When it comes to responding to the challenges of the flat world, there is no help line we can call. We have to dig into ourselves. We in America have all the basic economic and educational tools to do that. But we have not been improving those tools as much as we should. That is why we are in what Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, calls a ''quiet crisis'' -- one that is slowly eating away at America's scientific and engineering base. ''If left unchecked,'' said Jackson, the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T., ''this could challenge our pre-eminence and capacity to innovate.'' And it is our ability to constantly innovate new products, services and companies that has been the source of America's horn of plenty and steadily widening middle class for the last two centuries. This quiet crisis is a product of three gaps now plaguing American society. The first is an ''ambition gap.'' Compared with the young, energetic Indians and Chinese, too many Americans have gotten too lazy. As David Rothkopf, a former official in the Clinton Commerce Department, puts it, ''The real entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.'' Second, we have a serious numbers gap building. We are not producing enough engineers and scientists. We used to make up for that by importing them from India and China, but in a flat world, where people can now stay home and compete with us, and in a post-9/11 world, where we are insanely keeping out many of the first-round intellectual draft choices in the world for exaggerated security reasons, we can no longer cover the gap. That's a key reason companies are looking abroad. The numbers are not here. And finally we are developing an education gap. Here is the dirty little secret that no C.E.O. wants to tell you: they are not just outsourcing to save on salary. They are doing it because they can often get better-skilled and more productive people than their American workers. These are some of the reasons that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, warned the governors' conference in a Feb. 26 speech that American high-school education is ''obsolete.'' As Gates put it: ''When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. . . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.'' We need to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, because, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living. When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ''Tom, finish your dinner -- people in China are starving.'' But after sailing to the edges of the flat world for a year, I am now telling my own daughters, ''Girls, finish your homework -- people in China and India are starving for your jobs.'' I repeat, this is not a test. This is the beginning of a crisis that won't remain quiet for long. And as the Stanford economist Paul Romer so rightly says, ''A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.'' Thomas L. Friedman is the author of ''The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,'' to be published this week by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and from which this article is adapted. His column appears on the Op-Ed page of The Times, and his television documentary ''Does Europe Hate Us?'' will be shown on the Discovery Channel on April 7 at 8 p.m. _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 18:44:21 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 11:44:21 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] John Ralston Saul: The End of Globalism Message-ID: <01C53842.7AA7C720.shovland@mindspring.com> One of the biggest lies propagated by the globalists was that we had no choice but to go along with their vision. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 11:17 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] John Ralston Saul: The End of Globalism John Ralston Saul: The End of Globalism http://afr.com/articles/2004/02/19/1077072774981.html [This first appeared last year in Harper's. I read his _Voltaire's Bastards. It was about how knowledge, instead of becoming free, became something to be hldden, played close to the chest. I know many self-important people who act this way, no matter how useless their information is. The current Bush administration is notoriously secretive. I learned a lot about Canada and France, too, by reading his book.] Grand economic theories rarely last more than a few decades. Some, if they are particularly in tune with technological or political events, may make it to half a century. Beyond that, little short of military force can keep them in place. The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over 30 years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic and global theories, stretched to 70 years in Russia and 45 in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force. Keynesianism, if you add its flexible, muscular form during the Depression to its more rigid postwar version, lasted 45 years. Our own Globalisation, with its technocratic and technological determinism and market idolatry, had 30 years. And now it, too, is dead. Of course, grand ideologies rarely disappear overnight. Fashions, whether in clothes or food or economics, tend to peter out. Thousands of people have done well out of their belief in Globalisation, and their professional survival is dependent on our continued shared devotion to the cause. So is their personal sense of self-worth. They will be in positions of power for a few more years, and so they will make their case for a little longer. But the signs of decline are clear, and since 1995 those signs have multiplied, building on one another, turning a confused situation into a collapse. We have scarcely noticed this collapse, however, because Globalisation has been asserted by its believers to be inevitable - an all-powerful god; a holy trinity of burgeoning markets, unsleeping technology and borderless managers. Opposition or criticism has been treated as little more than romantic paganism. It was powerless before this surprisingly angry god, who would simply strike down with thunderbolts those who faltered and reward his heroes and champions with golden wreaths. If Globalisation has seemed so seductive to societies built upon Greek and Judeo-Christian mythologies, perhaps the reason is this bizarre confusing of salvation, fatalism and punishment. Transferred to economics, in however jumbled a manner, these belief systems are almost irresistible to us. The British and French empires had vaunted and defended their power in similar ways from the late 19th century on; that is, just as they began to collapse. And as the various 19th-century nationalisms declined into ugliness, their supporters increasingly transformed them into a matter of race. Inevitability is the traditional final justification for failing ideologies. Less traditional - and a sign of inherent weakness - is the extent to which Globalisation was conceived as old-fashioned religiosity. Perhaps the economists and other believers who launched Globalisation were instinctively concerned that people would notice their new theories were oddly similar to the trade theories of the mid-19th century or the unregulated market models that had been discredited in 1929. And so treating the intervening 40 years as an accidental interval, they began where their predecessors left off: with religious certainty. Despite that initial certainty, a growing vagueness now surrounds the original promise of Globalisation; we seem to have lost track of what was repeatedly declared 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, to be inevitable: That the power of the nation state was on its way out, to be replaced by that of global markets. That in the future, economics, not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events. That freed markets would quickly establish natural international balances, impervious to the old boom-and-bust cycles. That the growth in international trade, as a result of lowering barriers, would unleash an economic-social tide that would raise all ships, whether of our Western poor or of the developing world in general. That prosperous markets would turn dictatorships into democracies. That all of this would discourage irresponsible nationalism, racism and political violence. That global economics would produce stability through the creation of ever larger corporations impervious to bankruptcy. That these transnational corporations would provide a new kind of international leadership, free of local political prejudices. That the rise of global marketplace leadership and the decline of national politics, with its tendency to deform healthy economic processes, would force the emergence of debt-free governments. By then wedding our governments to a permanent state of deficit-free public accounting, our societies would be stabilised. In summary, global economic forces, if left unfettered by wilful man, would protect us against the errors of local self-pride, while allowing individual self-interest to lead each individual to a better life. Together these forces and self-interest would produce prosperity and general happiness. In a society where Christian dogma had been so dominant until so recently, how could people of goodwill not be attracted by this good news - by these promises of personal redemption? And if you add to all of this a multitude of new, technocratic market methods - well, then, the cycles of history would be broken, setting us on a permanent, inevitable course. In the words of a particularly naive believer, history would die. History was already dead. Globalisation materialised in the 1970s from the sort of geopolitical vacuum or fog that appears whenever a civilisation begins to change direction, to grope its way around a corner from one era to another. In geopolitics, a vacuum is not an option. It is the period between options; an opportunity, providing you can recognise it for what it is; a brief interregnum during which individuals can maximise their influence on the direction of their civilisation. What caused that particular void? Perhaps a quarter century of social reform had left the liberal elites exhausted. The need to manage a multitude of enormous new social programs that had been put in place in a democratic manner - an ad hoc manner - made it difficult for political leaders to concentrate on the main line; that is, to concentrate on a broad sense of the public good. Instead, governments were caught up in the endless and directionless details of management. Or perhaps the cause of the vacuum was the resulting reliance of those political elites on technocrats, who understood little of the debate - in fact, distrusted it - and so drew the leaders into isolation. In either case, most Western leaders seemed confused about what to do next. They had come to the end of a chapter of social progress. And they could not have been less prepared for a religious counterattack upon their ethical motivations, particularly not one in which the classic Judeo-Christian ideas of the sacred had been converted into economic inevitabilities. These theoretically new economic ideas were now scarcely recognisable as the simplistic economic arguments of pre-1929. The religious fervour had been blended with sparkling waves of new technology and with masses of microeconomic data, all presented as fact. Relaunched in this way, as three in one, one in three, the old ideas seemed new. Caught up as the liberal elites were in the instrumental rationality of program management, they responded to this attack with superior, stolid and unimaginative rejection. Instead of speaking out for the public good, they defended administrative structures. The effect was to make tired and discredited market arguments seem young, agile and modern. One comic sign of the coming era was the creation, in 1971, in a Swiss mountain village called Davos, of a club for European corporate leaders. There they could examine civilisation through the prism of business. Soon businessmen were coming from around the world. Then government leaders and academics flooded in, looking for investors. Business leaders, politicians and academics alike seemed to accept without question the core tenet of Davos: that the public good should be treated as a secondary outcome of trade and competition and self-interest. Davos was just a weather vane, a superficial and self-important version of a royal court, but when the G6 - now the G8 - was created in 1975, its aim mimicked that of Davos: to bring the leaders of the biggest national economies together to examine the world through the prism of economics. Never before had the great nations so explicitly and single-mindedly organised their core relationship around naked, commercial self-interest, without the positive and negative counterweights of social standards, human rights, political systems, dynasties, formal religions and, at the negative extreme, supposed racial destinies. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the French president who organised the first G6 meeting at his official country residence, Rambouillet, was the very model of the European technocratic economist. And his approach dominated. But what actually opened the door to Globalisation was the economic collapse of 1973 - the depression that never was. The reigning technocratic obsession with management and control meant that we all had to be reassured. So we were told that this was just another recession. Then there was another recession, then another, and on and on, always minimised, always about to be resolved. The social reformers, who dominated within almost all political parties and governments, denied themselves the right to stand back and deal with the situation as a whole. They had lost the intellectual breadth and the emotional balance to do this. And so they gradually lost the right to lead. As for the new force or ideology that came forward to fill the vacuum, it involved an all-inclusive strategy called Globalisation - an approach that contained the answer to every one of our problems. It was delightfully seductive. It contained simple, sweeping solutions and, as with all successful religions, lodged ultimate responsibility in invisible untouchable hands. Thus Globalisation required no one to take responsibility for anything. This transcendent vision quickly filled the vacuum. I first heard the variety of personal passivity produced by this belief system on French national television in a speech by Giscard d'Estaing. He had been elected as a new-style political leader - a brilliant economist. Modern. Almost postmodern. He was to lead society via the economy. But he came in just after the 1973 collapse, which included high inflation and unemployment. After a year or so of struggling with the collapse, Giscard went on television to tell people that great global, indeed inevitable, forces were at work. There was therefore little that he could do. Nation states were powerless. This was the beginning of the mania for public declarations of impotence by democratically elected leaders. Globalisation became their excuse for not dealing with difficult issues, for not using their levers of power and larger budgets to effect. They made the force of inevitability credible. Globalisation had brilliant proponents - Margaret Thatcher first among them, and economists like Milton Friedman, but also growing waves of new-style managers and consultants. These people had a multiplicity of roles. They briefed public and private sector leaders, organised the structures that implement policies, and ran these structures on a day-to-day basis. And their basic theory was - is - that modern methodology is universal. What's more, these methods are preferable to the untidy business of democratic argument and personal will, whether that is a matter of personal opinion or personal choice. In other words, they were engaged in the classic struggle to promote method over opinion; that is, form over content. And so, as always happens when form is dominant, a variety of experiments were undertaken. Around the world, civil services were shrunk, public and private sectors deregulated, markets released, taxes cut, public budgets balanced. Corporations began growing in size by merging and remerging. This gigantism was considered necessary for success in the new world market. Trade grew by an astonishing multiple of 20. European economic integration accelerated. New Zealand, the original social democratic model state, did a complete flip in the mid-1980s and attempted to become the perfect Globalised nation state. The economies of Canada and the US were rapidly integrated after the signing of a free trade agreement in 1988, to which the integration of the Mexican economy was added with the signing of NAFTA. Social reformers, for their part, restructured their own arguments until their basic assumptions were the same as those of their opponents. Social democrats and liberals almost everywhere became Globalists, but of a kindler, gentler sort. Government after government, as if in a fit of moralism, legislated away its right to take on debt or collect new taxes, even though both of these were fundamental governmental powers, central to the construction and maintenance of democracies. In fact, debt and taxes had played the same fundamental role in the pre-democratic period. At the same time, the private sector invented myriad new debts and privatised taxes for itself. Everything from junk bonds to credit cards was treated as an unregulated privatised currency. And corporations used the old default mechanism more than ever to clear their own decks whenever it was handy to do so. The sin of public debt was then broadened by attributing it to public utilities. Running well or not, they had to be privatised and deregulated into a global marketplace to cleanse them of public sector inefficiencies. This led in turn to the large utility-style private businesses, such as airlines, being freed of regulatory restraints to satisfy a moral version of individualism that promised, for example, the right to travel, cheaper fares, greater choice, more destinations. From the early 1970s to late in the century, multiple binding international economic treaties were put in place, while almost no counterbalancing binding treaties were negotiated for work conditions, taxation, the environment or legal obligations. For 250 years the painful job of building the modern nation state had depended on a continual rebalancing of binding rules for both the public good and self-interest. Now this balance was tipped violently one way by simply shifting much of our economic power out into the global marketplace. With economic power denationalised and transnationals using the new unregulated debt and currency systems to accumulate a financial worth greater than that of most nation states, the next logical step was to think of those transnationals as new nations unto themselves - virtual nations, freed of the limitations of geography and citizens, freed of local obligations, empowered with the mobility of money and goods. Better in every way. This quarter-century rise of Globalisation peaked in 1995 when the old system of international trade agreements - known collectively as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - was reconceived as a new powerful body, the World Trade Organisation. It was the last triumph. There was nothing remarkable about the creation of the WTO. It was just a centralised body to deal with commercial trade issues - not a bad thing in and of itself. The important point was the context. The reconceptualisation of civilisation through the prism of economics had reached a critical barrier. Beyond that barrier any international exchange that involved a commercial element would be treated as fundamentally commercial. Culture would be seen as a mere matter of industrial regulation; food, as a secondary outcome of agricultural industries. What particularly caught public attention around the world was the idea that national health and food rules would be treated not as the expression of a people concerned about what sorts of things it put in its collective stomach but rather as mere protectionism - unless backed by the hardest of hard scientific evidence. That sort of evidence was usually decades in coming. The precautionary principle and the citizen's opinion were thus to be thrown aside in favour of an absolutist theory of commercial exchange. This determinist approach towards agriculture as an industry rather than as a food source - towards the implications of everything from fertilisers, herbicides and insecticides to genetics, hormones, antibiotics, labelling and sourcing - became the flash point for a far broader concern among citizens. This was the context in which a growing percentage of people judged the handling of key issues as different as mad cow disease, the availability of pharmaceuticals in the developing world and global warming. They were beginning to feel that what was presented as an argument of Globalism versus protectionism was often just a confused opposition of personal choice and abstract corporate interests. So Globalisation, put forward as a metaphor for choice, was organising itself around not consumers but corporate structures, structures that sought profits by limiting personal choice. Soon people began to notice other contradictions in the Global orthodoxy. How could the same ideology promise a planetary growth in democracy and yet a decline in the power of the nation state? Democracy exists only inside countries. Weaken the nation state and you weaken democracy. Why did an unprecedented increase in money supply translate into a dearth of money for public services? And why did this growth in new moneys enrich mainly those who already had money? Why did it lead to a growth in the rich-versus-poor dichotomy and a squeezing of the middle class? Why did many privatisations of public utilities neither improve services nor lower costs for consumers but instead guarantee revenues to the new owners while leading to a collapse in infrastructure investment? People noticed that the financial value of the great breakthroughs in female employment had somehow been inflated away. Abruptly, a middle class family required two incomes. They noticed that in a mere 25 years CEO salaries in the US had gone from 39 times the pay of an average worker to more than 1000 times. Elsewhere the numbers were similar. And the savings from the cuts in civil servants were more than offset by the cost of new lobbyists and consultants. There were three particularly obvious signs that Globalisation would not deliver on its promises. First, the leadership of a movement devoted to "real competition" was made up largely of tenured professors, consultants, and technocrats - private-sector bureaucrats - managing large joint-stock companies. Most of the changes they sought were aimed at reducing competition. Second, the idea of transnationals as new virtual nation states missed the obvious. Natural resources are fixed in place, inside nation states. And consumers live on real land in real places. These are called countries. The managers and professors who waxed enthusiastic about the new virtual corporate nations were themselves resident citizens and consumers in old-fashioned nation states. It would be only a matter of time before elected leaders noticed that their governments were far stronger than the large corporations. Finally, the new approach to debt - public versus private, First World versus Third World - revealed a fatal confusion. Those who preached Globalisation couldn't tell the difference between ethics and morality. Ethics is the measurement of the public good. Morality is the weapon of religious and social righteousness. Political and economic ideologies often decline into religious-style morality towards the end. But Globalisation had shoved ethics to the side from the beginning and insisted upon a curious sort of moral righteousness that included maximum trade, unrestrained self-interest and governments alone respecting their debts. These notions were curiously paired with something often called family values, as well as an Old Testament view of good and evil. It somehow followed that if countries were in financial trouble, they were moral transgressors. They had to discipline themselves. Wear hair shirts. Embrace denial and fasting. This was the crucifixion theory of economics: you had to be killed economically and socially in order to be reborn clean and healthy. For a quarter century, under the severe hand of the IMF, this moralising and emotionally charged approach has been applied to the developing world with absolutely no success. Oddly enough, it had been presented as a form of cool, detached utilitarianism. Those who applied the theory seemed to fail the basic philosophical test of functioning intelligence and ethics - the ability to imagine the Other. They simply insisted, as developing-world debts continued to rise on a rollercoaster of instability, that those people must learn to act in a more predictable manner. Which brings to mind rather aged priests insisting that young men should take cold showers and exercise more. By the turn of the century, it had become clear that nationalism and the nation states were stronger than they had been when Globalisation began. Indeed, this was apparent as early as 1991, when the Yugoslavian army tried to stop Slovenia and Croatia from leaving their federation. The ensuing massacre was a test for almost every international organisation. All of them failed. As if in a black comedy, international elites chattered away about how global economic forces made nation states irrelevant, while thousands of real people were being murdered and cleansed to facilitate the creation of yet more nation states. The resulting horror shocked the Europeans into the realisation that their economic and administrative union was helpless in a political-military disaster. Eventually Washington brokered the Dayton peace accords. But Dayton accepted the model of the local nationalist war criminals. Jews in Bosnia don't exist as citizens unless they pretend to belong to one of the three official races. Neither do people of mixed blood. Dayton is all about racially based nations - the most appalling aspect of nationalism, but nationalism nonetheless. And so Globalisation's triumph, with the creation of the WTO in 1995, was paired with its humiliation at the Dayton signing in the same year. In a depressing game of leapfrog, the Yugoslavian settlement competed with a genocide in Rwanda, where half a million to a million people were murdered. This is a remarkable statistic. In a global world of economic and social measurement, we are bombarded daily by apparently exact statistics measuring growth, efficiency, production, reproduction, sales, currency fluctuations, comparative levels of obesity and orgasms, divorce, salaries and incomes. Yet we don't know, or don't care to know, whether it was a million or half a million Rwandans who were massacred. And the genocide was facilitated by Paris and Washington, using old-fashioned nation-state powers at the UN security council to block a serious international intervention. The Rwanda catastrophe then morphed into the Congo catastrophe, involving 4.7 million deaths between 1998 and 2003. Or was it 3 million? Or 5.5 million? The point is that the inevitability of global economic leadership has been irrelevant through all these crises. While the true believers speak of Globalisation, we are in fact in the middle of an accelerated political meltdown marked by astonishing levels of nationalist violence. Observant national leaders couldn't help but notice that the theories of Globalisation were failing them. The most public of these failures was the breakdown of international lending and debt mechanisms. For a short period it looked as if the IMF's punishing approach might actually work. For a dozen years most Latin American governments tried to follow instructions laid down by the IMF, Western governments and the private banks. They endured crucifixion economics, and in many cases this eventually produced apparently solid growth, even if the parallel result was a greater rich/poor gap. But in each case the recovery was followed, a few years later, by even greater collapse. It turned out that such prolonged austerity had weakened, not strengthened, the social-economic fabric. So after all of the liberalisations, privatisations and inflation-stabilisation programs, growth in Latin America in the late 1990s was a little over half what it had been before the reforms. True believers will tell you that it could have worked, if only there had been less nepotism, weaker unions or less corruption. But real economic policies in the real world don't require perfect conditions. Perfect conditions don't exist in the real world. Western growth over two centuries has come in spite of our own shifting flaws. Peru and Bolivia are on a precipice. Argentina is picking itself up yet again, while its educated youth emigrate en masse. Now, like Brazil, it is going to try something it believes more suitable to its circumstances. Only Chile seems solid, and that is because, since the departure of Pinochet, it has carefully designed its own solutions. In other words, Latin America no longer believes in Globalisation. Neither does Africa. Nor does a good part of Asia. Globalisation is no longer global. Indeed, most Western finance ministers have been quietly working for some time on partial reregulation of the markets. Why quietly? To avoid the ferocity of the true believers. In 1998 the governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Ian Macfarlane, began calling for reregulation. "More people are asking whether the international financial system as it has operated for most of the nineties is basically unstable. By now, I think the majority of observers have come to the conclusion that it is, and that some changes have to be made." In the same year a combination of street demonstrators and distrustful ministers of finance from around the developed world killed the Multilateral Agreement on Investment negotiations, which had been aimed at a further Globalisation of finance and investment. They rejected the idea of yet more business-oriented binding treaties, with no binding political or social counterweights. At almost the same time, Malaysia responded to an economic meltdown in Asia by refusing to follow the Global rules. The government pulled its currency off the market, made it nonconvertible, pegged it just low enough to favour exports, blocked the export of foreign capital and raised tariffs. These measures were met by an explosion of Western moral fervour. Malaysia could not do this. Its economy would not survive. The leading international emerging-markets index expelled them. Then everyone averted their eyes from the inevitable collapse. In 1999, a short year later, that same index sheepishly readmitted Malaysia. Smarter merchant bankers began to praise the possible long-term investment advantages of pegging certain currencies in certain conditions. By then the World Bank, under new leadership, had begun to soften its monolithic Global view, even if the IMF has been extremely slow to accept reality and follow. Late in the year the WTO was humiliated in Seattle by unprecedented demonstrations. By the end of the century it was not only national leaders who were beginning to take a more nuanced view of Globalisation's capitalist credentials. A growing number of people, including the brighter business leaders, were focusing on where deregulation had worked and where it hadn't. The airline industry, for example, had been growing since World War II. The calls for deregulation in the mid-1970s came from a successful, profitable growth sector, which continued to grow until September 11, 2001. Even then, the drop was only 5.7 per cent, which, given 60 years of solid growth, should not have been a catastrophe. Yet it was. In any case, those corporations that had called for deregulation a quarter century before had pretty well all gone bankrupt, one by one over the intervening years. The whole industry is now dependent on cut-rate airlines. So a sector that provides essential services is being run on dubious margins and institutional instability. Why? Because of devotion to a simplistic, monolithic model of Global market forces. But a large aircraft is not a telephone or a pair of running shoes. Planes that cost hundreds of millions of dollars have to be paid for with $100 airfares - a daunting business model. The secret to the industry's pre-1973 success was its stability - produced by carefully maintained, long-term public regulations. As for the romance of gigantism - of corporate size as a criterion for industrial success - it was beginning to look pretty silly. Endless mergers had led to high levels of unserviceable debt and bankruptcy. It was as if size had replaced thought. As if it were a male thing. It was all beginning to resemble the 17th- and 18th-century speculation markets - the South Sea Bubble, John Law and the French regency, the Dutch tulip-bulb frenzy. The larger the corporations grew, the slower and more directionless they became - enormous management structures frightened of serious investment and risk. They resembled out-of-control bureaucracies. Yet the whole argument in favour of Globalisation had been the apparently desperate need to wrench power from the bureaucracies and place it firmly in the hands of real owners capable of taking real risks. More perhaps than the genocides, the disorder in the streets, or the debt crises, it was those simple recurring images of corporate ineptitude, combined with an absence of self-criticism, that first made clear the decline of Globalisation. How then could any of us seriously believe that our redemption lay in the reconceptualisation of civilisation so that we could all view it through the prism of business and economics? The larger the corporations became, the more deregulation released them to be themselves, the faster they slipped out of sync with their civilisation and even with their customers and shareholders. Of course most people in business were working away as best they could, more or less as they always had, whatever the ideology in place. The people who stumbled badly seemed to be the insistent stars of the new-world methodology. And so, in full public view, the value of the fabled merger of AOL and TimeWarner slipped rapidly from $US284 billion to $US61 billion. And GE's Jack Welch, a model new leader, began stumbling towards every last penny on the floor like a greedy little boy. Arthur Andersen demonstrated that accountants can act as badly as anyone else. Hollinger, whose newspapers on four continents had trumpeted Globalisation, fell under multiple financial and legal investigations, as did Parmalat, the great Italian success story. And so on. Ideology, like theatre, is dependent on the willing suspension of disbelief. At the core of every ideology lies the worship of a bright new future, with only failure in the immediate past. But once the suspension goes, willingness converts into suspicion - the suspicion of the betrayed. Our brilliant leaders abruptly appear naive, even ridiculous. And so, in the late 1990s, our disbelief came back, and with it our memory. The years between 1945 and 1973 no longer seemed such a failure. In fact, it had been one of the most successful eras in history for both social reform and economic growth. It was something to build on, to reform; not something to dismiss. The first clear hint of the end of the reigning ideology came with Malaysia's successful rejection of the Globalisation model. We, in our fervour, saw their crisis as one of economics, and therefore subject to the rules of inevitability. The Malaysians saw it as a national political crisis with economic implications. And so they acted politically and nationally, and were proved right. Abruptly it seemed possible that nation states were not dying. And that economic certainty was naive. Then, in late 1999, came the general election in New Zealand. Fifteen years earlier this small country had become the model for Globalisation. Now, overnight, its electors voted to change direction, endorsing a strong interventionist government devoted to a mix of national social policies, enforceable economic regulations and a stable private sector. Why? Its national industries had been sold off, its economy was in decline and its standard of living had been stagnant for all 15 years of its Globalisation experiment. Its young were emigrating at alarming rates. This, the citizens now said, was not inevitable. If a small country could flex its muscles, well, then, the nation state was truly alive. Then came the explosions of September 11, 2001. In the following days, the world economy began plummeting into a depression. Corporate leaders hunkered down to their businesses, forgot about world leadership and, with a classic desire to reduce risk, slashed their investment programs, thus accelerating society's economic plunge. As for the political leaders, ministers of finance, chairs of reserve and national banks - the constituted elites of the nation states - they rolled into action. They travelled and talked, printed money and spent vast amounts of it. And they managed to stabilise the situation. In other words, there was a brutal, highly public and existential reversal of roles. The governments of the nation states took back their full power both to act and to lead. The CEOs retreated back into their historic reactive role. Once belief is gone, the churches begin to empty. You could see this accelerating disbelief in bankruptcy court in December 2001, when, as if in the last scene of an old-fashioned bedroom farce, the "inevitability" of Global corporate leadership came face to face with Enron, filing for government protection from its private debts. You saw it again in the opening session of the frivolous court of Davos. This was where, 33 years before, the theology of Globalisation had been first put forward, all based on the assumption that civilisation must be approached through a single, monolithic economic prism. Yet here they were on their opening day in January 2003 feting Mahathir Mohamad, then prime minister of Malaysia, for his country's economic success. It was clear to everyone that this success had come from political leadership at the nation-state level and that it was based on the rejection of Globalist economics. A few days later, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the new president of Brazil, arrived in the Swiss village to lay out an independent, straightforward version of responsible nation-state populism. What all of this meant became perfectly clear when US secretary of state Colin Powell arrived to speak for the country that had achieved more national power than any other in history. Insofar as a possible war with Iraq was concerned, he declared, "we will act even if others are not prepared to join us". So the US would act unilaterally - that is, nationally. Thus, in a single week, inside the emotional and mythological home of Globalisation, three very different pivotal governments turned their backs on Globalisation and acted as if the nation state were the central international reality. The war that followed in Iraq quite intentionally put an effective end to the half-century-old Western alliance produced by World War II. Washington had chosen in January 2003 not to take the time to put together the traditional Western battlefield coalition. The effect was to free a cast of nations to rethink their relationships. This was as true for the old NATO players as it was for the smaller, newly free, central European states, which were able to flex their nation-state muscles by joining in. Some of them had never had such an opportunity. For others it was the first time since the 1930s. Throughout the world, nations began moving about like semi-free agents. Organisations such as NATO are still solid. There is no desire to storm out. But everyone is checking around to see if there are other ways they might like to act. And with whom. What this might mean remains painfully unclear. Here we are, rushing around one of those sharp corners with no idea of where we are going. Perhaps back to the worst of old-style negative nationalism. Or perhaps on towards a more complex and interesting form of positive nationalism, based on the public good. What is certain is that nationalism of the best and the worst sort has made a remarkable, unexpected recovery. We don't yet know whether it will become the new dominant ideology. What we do know is that there has been a return across Europe of 19th-century-style negative nationalism. Although usually the product of fear, it reappeared in countries that had nothing to fear: Jorg Haider in Austria speaking out against immigrants, while echoing race and monolithic national myths. Italy governed by three nationalists, one of them the leader of Mussolini's old party. Related phenomena in Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland. A sudden revival of sectarian nationalism in Northern Ireland. The defeat of a compromise in Corsica. Everywhere these nationalists are now in coalition governments or are leading oppositions. Many mainstream parties have trimmed their sails to capture some of this nationalist vote. Non-European immigrants, who rarely account for more than 5 per cent of a country's population, have become the focus for a sense of political and social impotence, produced in part by a quarter century of continental and Global inevitabilities. Today's growing fear of Muslims is parallelled by a return of anti-Semitism. The last Australian election was won by provoking a fear of immigrants. The new president of the Czech Republic is thought to be an old-fashioned nationalist, as is the governor of Tokyo. Because the US is so powerful, people say its actions are all about empire. But empires are mere extensions of nationalism. They are not a phenomenon of either Globalisation or internationalism. At the same time, positive forms of nationalism have surged forward, with countries like South Africa and Brazil taking on the pharmaceutical transnationals over the availability of drugs to fight epidemics such as AIDS. And these nations have been winning. A reasonable number of noneconomic and internationally binding treaties based on the primacy of ethics and the public good have begun to take form: the Ottawa treaty against land mines, the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto accord against global warming. They represent the beginnings of an attempt at an international balance in which the prism of civilisation is neither naive market economics nor national selfishness. The return of the idea of national power has also meant the return of the idea of choice - choice for citizens and choice for countries. But with choice comes uncertainty, which provokes fear. The moment we entered the post-Globalisation vacuum, you could feel that fear begin to rise. And curiously enough, the greater a nation's power, the more intense the fear becomes. Perhaps power produces an expectation of certainty. Perhaps smaller countries find a certain freedom in uncertainty - the freedom to choose without being bullied. Necessity, Pitt the Younger said, is the excuse of every tyranny. For most smaller countries, Globalisation has felt like an inevitability and, so, like a tyranny. History will eventually give all of these contradictory signals a shape. But history is neither for nor against. It just is. And there is no such thing as a prolonged vacuum in geopolitics. It is always filled. This is what happens every few decades. The world turns, shifts, takes a new tack, or retries an old one. Civilisation rushes around one of those blind corners filled with uncertainties. Then, abruptly, the opportunities present themselves to those who move with skill and commitment. John Ralston Saul is the author of Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, Unconscious Civilisation and, most recently, On Equilibrium: The Six Qualities of the New Humanism. _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:48:31 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:48:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Crosswalk: (Wesley Smith) The Revolt Against Human Nature Message-ID: The Revolt Against Human Nature http://www.christianpost.com/php_functions/print_friendly.php?tbl_name=editorial&id=292 Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005 Posted: 8:10:29PM EST Are you ready for the posthuman future? That is the frightening question posed by Wesley J. Smith in his new book, Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World. Smith, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture, has written another book that demands the attention of every thoughtful Christian. We are living in an age of radical transformations in science, technology, and worldview. Standing at the center of the worldview now dominant in our society is an affirmation that human beings have the right, if not the responsibility, to "improve" themselves in every way. In a culture that celebrates youth, attractiveness, and achievement, the idea of personal improvement is now being stretched beyond what previous generations could have imagined. "It is a natural human desire to manipulate our bodies to look better, feel better, and age better," Smith explains. "We not only wish to be free of disease, but also deeply desire to remain youthful in appearance and physical vigor." With "Botox parties" and cosmetic surgery now becoming routine, many Americans simply assume that personal enhancement is a basic right. Now, some want to push beyond natural biological barriers in order to achieve even greater "enhancements" in the future. We now face the undeniable truth that at least some of our fellow citizens are ready to use genetic enhancements, cloning technologies, and germ line engineering to achieve what some now call a posthuman future. Genetic modifications and germ line therapies differ from previous technologies of personal enhancement, Smith explains. Plastic surgery--even something as radical as what are called sex change procedures--affect only one individual's body. Nothing from those surgeries impacts the genetic inheritance passed down to subsequent generations. All this changes when genetic modifications and germ line technologies enter the picture. "What if a father could insert a gene to transform his daughter into the concert pianist he always wanted to be, or an atheist do likewise to ensure that his children would be genetically predisposed (if it proves possible) to shun religious belief?" Smith asks, adding, "And what if these modifications passed down the generations?" Existing medical technologies would not yet allow these developments. Nevertheless, with the successful cloning of other mammals, the completion of the Human Genome Project, and the creation of transgenic human-animal hybrids, science fiction is likely soon to become science fact. Smith warns that all this could lead to what some now call a posthuman race. Others are now pushing for what they call transhumanism, which Smith warns is now "organizing with the intensity of a religious revival." Once confined to academic debate and the literary world of science fiction, these proposals are now taken seriously by scientists, medical doctors, and ethical observers. As Smith notes, "While transhumanism is relatively new, the idea that we should apply the full array of new technologies to remake the natural human order has been bubbling up in radical bioethics and academic philosophical discourse for decades." The late Joseph Fletcher, infamously known as the father of situational ethics, was, Smith reminds, "a devoted believer in an anything-goes approach to Brave New World innovations." Believing that no natural limits were sacred, Fletcher became a prophet for a new social revolution that would redefine humanity with the goal, Smith warns, of creating a race of "superior people." Taken alone, that one comment should be sufficient to prove that we are entering a new age of eugenics. Some of the greatest moral horrors experienced by humanity during the twentieth century came in the form of eugenic arguments, experiments, and procedures. Determined to create a new master race, the doctors of Nazi Germany invented new and diabolical forms of eugenic engineering and eventually participated in efforts to eliminate inferior races by genocide. Less well remembered is the fact that many Americans also supported eugenic movements. Following Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's dictum, "more children from the fit, less from the unfit," American eugenics advocates generally limited their proposals to the use of contraception for those considered unfit to reproduce and incentives for the "fit" to breed. Given the calamitous landscape of the twentieth century, one might think that the ideology of eugenics would have been thoroughly discredited and socially discarded. To the contrary, a new form of eugenic ideology has now emerged. As Wesley J. Smith explains, this new form of eugenic advocacy "can be summarized in that word that trumps all others: Choice." Smith cites Philip Kitcher, author of The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human Possibilities, as arguing for a "laissez-faire eugenics" which would allow persons to "create their own versions of optimal human life--a prospect that Kitcher naively assures us will work out just fine because there will be a 'universally shared respect for difference'." When the ideology of choice is translated into momentum for a new eugenics movement, we are in big trouble. Reckless confidence in new scientific technologies is often translated into a sense that every new technology shifts from what is possible to what is necessary. As Smith warns, some now argue that America should begin experimenting with new eugenic technologies simply to counter any similar move made by a foreign nation. Many of the proposals now taken seriously by the scientific establishment are simply breathtaking. Gregory E. Pence promotes human cloning as a means to allow parents to pass down a "wonderful genetic legacy" to future generations. Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the UCLA School of Medicine, argues that human beings should be free to redefine themselves and their offspring. As Smith explains, "This could include inserting animal DNA into human embryos, inserting or removing chromosomes, inserting artificial chromosomes into a genetically engineered embryo, or perhaps altering human capacities through nanotechnology." As Stock sees it, this may mean that the human species will branch off in different directions. Reproduction would take place in laboratories, since biological reproduction through human sex would lead to unpredictable outcomes. In this new posthuman age, parents would order their children like designer products and would, like all informed and demanding consumers, insist upon the latest chromosomal enhancements. Gregory Pence goes so far as to argue that children will one day be chosen as we now choose pets. "When it comes to non-human animals we think nothing of trying to match the breed to the needs of the owner," Pence asserts. "Could people be chosen the same way? Would it be so terrible to allow parents to at least aim for a certain type, in the same way that great breeders . . . try to match a breed of dog to the needs of a family?" Wouldn't all this lead to a deep unfairness in terms of competition among human beings? Some advocate a form of "egalitarian eugenics" that would require government support, Smith explains, "to ensure that all parents have an equal choice to participate in the coming genetic arms race." This is nothing less than an audacious attempt to redefine what it means to be human. As Smith understands, "The deeper one delves into the posthuman agenda, the clearer it becomes that dissatisfaction with natural humanity lies at its heart." Behind the eugenics movement stands a fundamental hatred of humanity. "These people and kindred would-be enhancers think that human life has no special meaning in itself," Smith explains, "but that the value of any life--animal, human, posthuman, machine, space alien--depends upon the individual's measurable capacities, particularly his or her level of cognition." Inescapably, vital worldview issues are at stake. "Transhumanists embrace extreme materialism and scientism," Smith understands. "Driven by an ethos of radical individualism that countenances no restraints and disdains moral limits on personal behavior, believing that they possess the wisdom to improve the human species, longing desperately for corporeal immortality, transhumanists expect to mount a rebellion against nature that will, in the movement's eschatology, result in the literal re-creation of human life." East of Eden, human beings have been frustrated with the limitations of our nature. The first sin was, after all, an attempt to defy God's authority by claiming for human beings what had been forbidden. That first sin has spawned a legacy of continuing and accelerating efforts to transcend the human condition. Dissatisfied with our bodies, we want to defy aging and turn ourselves into beautiful machines that will never age, fail, or die. Pushing the limits of cognitive ambition, some demand the right to enhance human consciousness--whatever the cost--in an effort to maximize human performance. In this age of radical and revolutionary technological advancements, many of our fellow citizens would gladly trade the long-term risks of germ line engineering for the immediate gratification of genetic enhancement. Wesley J. Smith is profoundly correct when he identifies the root problem as a basic hatred of humanity. The prophets of these new technologies point to a utopian vision of posthumanity. As advertised, their vision would include no one who is, in their eyes, genetically substandard, or even unenhanced. Some go far as to predict a new two-class structure for human society, with the genetically superior ruling over a genetically inferior class of workers and servants. All this represents a Promethean effort to transcend human nature, redefine humanity, and be as gods. We have heard all this before, of course. This is the ancient song of human moral disaster set to a new technological tune. ___________________________________________ R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail at albertmohler.com. Original Copy from Crosswalk.com. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. [1]Christian Post Columnist References 1. http://ChristianPostColumnist/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:50:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:50:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wash. Times: Human genetic changes nearer Message-ID: Human genetic changes nearer http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050223-103037-4510r By Fred Reed Published February 24, 2005 Sometimes the most important clouds on the technological horizon don't get much ink. One of these is the "genetic engineering" of people, usually suggested as a means of making the species more intelligent. This has been accurately described as "still science fiction, but barely." The necessary technologies are falling into place. "We are fast approaching arguably the most consequential technological threshold in all of human history: the ability to alter the genes we pass to our children," says the Center for Genetics and Society. Steve Sailer, founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, said, "The evolution of the human race is about to accelerate almost unimaginably. Thus, we can no longer afford the comforting illusion that evolution doesn't really apply to humanity." Cloning of animals is now commonplace. Many who work in genetics take for granted that design of people is possible in principle and getting close in practice. Some of this is already done. When prospective parents have themselves screened for genetic diseases, they are to an extent genetically designing their child. But what Mr. Sailer and others are talking about is genetic cutting and pasting to produce specific traits in offspring. When the desired traits are things like freedom from disease, there might be little argument. But what they invariably come to in discussion is an increase in intelligence. This could become possible in the next decade. What would be the consequences, politically and socially, of the ability to produce children with sharply higher intelligence? Once we begin fiddling with such things, will we be able to control the results? The results, remember, will be lots smarter than we are. The first effect might well be to split humanity into what would almost be different species. A group of children with an IQ of better than 200 would have little in common with the rest of us. A few people of such stratospheric intelligence exist today, usually isolating themselves in laboratories and universities. But what happens when you have large and growing numbers of people who are in another intellectual plane? A second effect might be that countries would compete to produce superbright citizens. Countries more authoritarian than the United States, like China, might see technological advantage in having superior engineers. Again, this could be tricky. You would have moderately bright politicians trying to manage people who would regard them as white mice. We do not know the limits of manipulation of human genetics. If smart people at the National Institutes of Health can figure out how to increase intelligence greatly, might not those who were greatly increased figure out to increase it even more? We can have no idea how the world would look to them. We aren't smart enough. A pretty good bet is that the superintelligent would quickly come to control just about everything. Bill Gates and Michael Dell didn't get where they are by being unable to balance their own checkbooks. Again, it may not happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe historians of science 50 years from now will look back and say, "Well, it seemed a cute idea at the time, but it just didn't work out." But, if genetic manipulation does prove to be possible, we will be playing with something we do not remotely understand and whose consequences will be unpredictable. We will be creating our replacements. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:52:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:52:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reason: Ronald Bailey: The Genetic Insurance Racket: Will genetic testing destroy the insurance market? Message-ID: Ronald Bailey: The Genetic Insurance Racket: Will genetic testing destroy the insurance market? http://www.reason.com/rb/rb022305.shtml February 23, 2005 The U.S. Senate passed the [2]Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2005 on February 17, 98 to 0. This proposed law, which now goes to the House for consideration, would prohibit health insurers from requiring or using information from genetic tests when issuing health insurance or setting premiums. Although advocacy groups like the [3]Coaliton for Genetic Fairness can point to a small set of [4]recycled horror stories (and they are truly horrible), there is little evidence that genetic discrimination is a pervasive problem requiring swift federal action. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the number of people who, without the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act, would be denied health insurance based on genetic tests is about [5]1,000 per year. Nevertheless, polls show that [6]nine out of 10 Americans favor legislation to prohibit genetic discrimination in health insurance and employment. And progress in genetic testing is happening very rapidly. In 2003, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimated that genetic tests had been developed for about [7]1,000 health conditions and that 600 of them were available for clinical use. Most of these tests look at single gene variations that contribute to disease risk. For example, physicians can now test for gene variations that predispose people to [8]breast cancer, [9]Alzheimers disease, [10]deep vein thrombosis, and [11]colon cancer. And in less than a decade, physicians are expected to be able to offer patients a full scan of all their genes for less than $1,000. However, most common diseases--diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimers--are not the result of single genes interacting with the environment. For example, a genetic test might show that you and a neighbor have two different versions of the same gene, differing only by single [12]base pair of DNA. These variations in base pairs are called "single nucleotide polymorphisms" (SNPs, pronounced "snips"). SNPs often travel in packs called haplotypes--sets of closely linked genes that tend to be inherited as a unit. Although more than [13]1 million SNPs have been identified so far, researchers have discovered that most human genetic variation is the result of a small number of SNPs, and that these genetic variants cluster into a limited number of haplotype combinations. Your haplotype version might make you less likely to suffer heart disease than does your neighbor's version. Therefore, future genetic tests will look for common haplotypes that predispose various people to heart disease or diabetes or different mental illnesses. Researchers believe that understanding these differences will lead to better medical outcomes. For example, the Connecticut biotech company [14]Genaissance has developed tests for response to the asthma drug albuterol. These tests check patients for genetic variations in a particular receptor on cell surfaces. Genaissance found that they could divide patients into four different haplotypes, two of which simply did not respond to albuterol. One day doctors will be able to test for these haplotypes and avoid prescribing albuterol to those who will not benefit from it. In December 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first diagnostic test allowing physicians to test patients for genetic differences in the way they metabolize various drugs for cardiac disease, psychiatric diseases, and cancer. The new AmpliChip Cytochrome P450 Genotyping Test is made by Roche Molecular Systems, Inc., of Pleasanton, California. That test analyzes one of the genes from a family called cytochrome P450 genes, which produce liver enzymes that break down certain drugs and other compounds. People are born with different forms of this gene, and some metabolize certain drugs more quickly or more slowly than average, or in some cases not at all. This difference in the rate of drug metabolism may explain why some people respond well to anti-depressants like Prozac, whereas others do not. With this test in hand, physicians will be able to tailor dosages for many drugs to fit each patients genetic profile. By 2015, pervasive genetic testing will also show that everyone is predisposed to some kind of disease or other--there is no perfect genome. "Since all of us have dozens of genetic glitches that put us at risk for disease, we all have a reason to be concerned about the possible misuse of genetic information, [15]warns Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Will increasingly extensive genetic testing produce some sort of insurance crisis? Will Americans protected by the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2005 have themselves tested and then rush out to buy gold-plated insurance if it turns out that they are particularly prone to some nasty disease? Will this adverse selection then drive relatively healthy people out of the health insurance market as premiums skyrocket to cover those who know that they are at greater risk of genetic disease? Perhaps. Proponents of [16]nationalized health care have already argued that the advent of genetic testing means that the United States will have to scrap private insurance and adopt some kind of government health care system. But that doesn't necessarily follow. If every person has genetic glitches, then it seems that insurance companies should be able to come up with general rates that apply to the majority of people. In other words, insurance rates will come to be set on a community basis rather than on an individual basis. Ultimately, it may well be that pervasive genetic testing will tend to push policymakers to adopt proposals for [17]mandatory health insurance, but theres no reason such insurance must be run by the government. ------------------------------------- Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in spring 2005. References 2. http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/L2GeneticNondisDBJS021605.pdf 3. http://www.geneticfairness.org/pages/1/index.htm 4. http://www.nationalpartnership.org/portals/p3/library/GeneticDiscrimination/FacesofGeneticDiscrimination.pdf 5. http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=6110&sequence=0 6. http://www.nationalpartnership.org/portals/p3/library/GeneticDiscrimination/FacesofGeneticDiscrimination.pdf 7. http://www.cdc.gov/genomics/activities/ogdp/2003/chap10.htm 8. http://cis.nci.nih.gov/fact/3_62.htm 9. http://www.alz-nca.org/aboutalz/genetics.asp 10. http://www.dnadirect.com/resource/conditions/thrombophilia/GH_Thr_What_Is_Venous.jsp 11. http://www.mdsdx.com/MDS_Diagnostic_Services/Patients/TestInfo/Special/COLARIS.asp 12. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&oi=defmore&q=define:Base+Pair 13. http://www.genome.gov/13014173 14. http://www.genaissance.com/ 15. http://www.genome.gov/13014311 16. http://www.pnhp.org/news/2001/august/the_doubleedged_heli.php 17. http://www.reason.com/0411/fe.rb.mandatory.shtml From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:53:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:53:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TCS: Bioethics Panel Illustrates Scientific Ethics' Complexity Message-ID: Bioethics Panel Illustrates Scientific Ethics' Complexity http://www.techcentralstation.com/031505C.html Iain Murray Senior Fellow, CEI [3]Email Author [4]Biographical 5.3.15 Recently, I wrote a [26]column here calling on Dr. Rajendra Pachauri to resign as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change because he was using his position to push a political agenda. Sadly, I now must bring the same argument against a scientist I otherwise very much admire, [27]Dr. Leon Kass, Chairman of The President's Council on Bioethics. His recent decision to draft a political strategy aimed at achieving certain policy goals renders his position as an honest broker on the issue untenable. Yet there is a lesson to be learned from these unfortunate incidents: Science and politics cannot be separated as neatly as scientists and policy makers think. According to The [28]Washington Post, Dr. Kass has teamed up with Eric Cohen, editor of the excellent journal of science, politics and philosophy [29]The New Atlantis, to devise "a bold and plausible 'offensive' bioethics agenda[aimed at] tak[ing] advantage of this rare opportunity to enact significant bans on some of the most egregious biotechnological practices." The merits of Dr. Kass's preferred policies are irrelevant here. The problem is that by hitching his star to a particular set of policies he has breached the trust set in him by the President, whose executive order creating the council asked it to "explore specific ethical and policy questions related to these developments; [and] to provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues." At the very least, by sheer virtue of his position, his favored policies are more likely to get a hearing than those of other well-qualified bioethicists who do not have the authority of such an office (a point well made by Roger Pielke Jr of the University of Colorado [30]here). Such a prospect would seriously undermine in the principle of "procedural justice" -- the right of all sides of a political argument to be heard without fear or favor Yet perhaps we can learn from incidents like this. Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-CA) certainly thinks so. He has proposed a new Bill, [31]HR 839, aimed at "ensuring independent advice and expertise" on federal scientific advisory panels, to wit: "Each agency shall make its best efforts to ensure that -- (A) no individual appointed to serve on a Federal scientific advisory committee has a conflict of interest that is relevant to the functions to be performed, unless such conflict is promptly and publicly disclosed and the agency determines that the conflict is unavoidable;" Rep. Waxman's Bill is fundamentally flawed, because it assumes "objectivity" as a necessary scientific value. As Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, said, "My guess is that should individual scientists ever become 'objective and rational' in the sense of 'impartial and detached,' then we should indeed find the revolutionary progress of science barred by an impenetrable obstacle" (The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions.) This is why the concept of procedural justice is crucial. "Procedural justice" is the formulation of eminent British philosopher Sir Stuart Hampshire, whose later work centered on the idea that conflict over ideas is an inevitable part of human life, but that reasoned debate is always possible. Successful resolution of these conflicts depends on "the overriding necessity that each side in the conflict should be heard putting its case ('audi alteram partem')" (Justice Is Conflict). If Hampshire is correct, then supposed conflicts of interest are not anathema to the policy-making process, but a vital part of it. For a scientific advisory panel to produce useful advice, it must include representatives of all sides in the policy debate, whether they have "conflicts of interest" or not. The only requirement should be that those conflicts are transparent. On the other hand, the chairman of any advisory panel should be scrupulously neutral, otherwise the policy conflict will not be resolved to all parties' satisfaction. As Hampshire says, "The skillful management of conflicts [is] among the highest of human skills." Again, procedural justice demands that once chairmen like Pachauri or Kass identify too closely with a particular side in the conflict, they must relinquish that role to somebody better skilled at the management task. If society is to derive any benefit from scientific advisory panels, lawmakers must recognize that full and frank debate of the views of all sides is necessary, that complete impartiality on the part of participants is neither necessary nor desirable, but also that those charged with resolving the conflict -- chairmen or working group leaders -- must act within strict parameters of neutrality. Neither the actions of Dr. Kass nor the Bill sponsored by Rep. Waxman are doing anything to improve the quality of scientific advice. References 26. http://www.techcentralstation.com/013105E.html 27. http://www.bioethics.gov/about/kass.html 28. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15569-2005Mar7?language=printer 29. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/ 30. http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/biotechnology/000373politics_and_bioethi.html 31. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.839: From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:54:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:54:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: UK Government Committee Endorses Sex Selection Message-ID: UK Government Committee Endorses Sex Selection http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-03-24-1 Also encourages regulation rather than prohibition of human-animal chimeras Betterhumans Staff 3/24/2005 11:22 AM A UK government committee has endorsed sex selection in a controversial new report. The report, by the [8]Commons Science and Technology Committee, says that doctors and patients should make more fertility treatment decisions. It says there are no strong reasons to prohibit couples undergoing IVF from choosing a child's sex for balancing gender in their family. The report also encourages regulation rather than prohibition of contentious research involving such things as implanting human cells into animals. Calling for disbandment of the UK's [9]Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates such things as human cloning research, the report says that patients and doctors should make reproductive decisions under the guidance of a local ethics committee. If the report's recommendations are followed, the HFEA would no longer make decisions over such things as checking embryos for genetic conditions. In place of the HFEA, the report calls for the creation of the Regulatory Agency for Fertility and Tissues that would ensure clinics and laboratories met standards. Five MPs on the Committee didn't back the report, calling in unbalanced. References 8. http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_and_technology_committee.cfm 9. http://www.hfea.gov.uk/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:57:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:57:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Tablet (UK): John Haldane: More Ethics, Less Emotion Message-ID: More Ethics, Less Emotion http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-00996 5.4.2 A national bioethics committee is the only way forward now that the vital moral issues of abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research and gender selection are taking centre stage on the public and political platforms Holy week in Britain is traditionally a time for setting aside the business of the world. Christians prepare to commemorate the final journey of Jesus to Calvary and then to celebrate his Resurrection; Parliament goes into recess; and the nation relaxes into a long holiday weekend. With a general election in prospect, this year was bound to be different. In anticipation of a vote being called for 5 May, politicians have been clearing their desks in preparation for contributing to a polling campaign that began some while ago. And because there is the possibility of a change of government, or at least a reconfiguration of forces, others with policies to pursue, or interests to protect, have also been active in seeking attention for their causes. The real peculiarity of this Easter, however, was the striking interweaving of religious reflection, policy debate, and political manoeuvring. On Maundy Thursday the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report on reproductive technologies, reviewing the operation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act and of the HFE Authority established to regulate and advise on policy. The report adopted a users perspective on the issues, and a libertarian approach to reproductive rights. For example, would-be-parents should be free to avail themselves of sex-selection and other genetic services. Presupposed to this was a view of human life that the report endorsed, namely, that in its earliest stages it is of limited value and may be used in experimentation and for purposes of reproductive enhancement. For the authors, taboo subjects must be tackled head on; as well as sex-selection these include reproductive cloning, and the blending of human and animal cells. The general view of the committee chairman, Ian Gibson, was captured in his remark: As long as people are doing it for the right reasons, what is wrong? But in place of the hoped-for answer, Nothing, the report was met with a hail of criticism. Indeed, the criticism began before the report was even issued, for half the committee took exception and refused to be associated with it. Dissenting members issued a statement of opposition expressing the view that the report is unbalanced, light on ethics, goes too far in the direction of deregulation and is too dismissive of public opinion. Maundy Thursday also saw the House of Lords ending its discussion of the Mental Capacity Bill, with the contested provisions for ending life. In the world beyond Westminster others were debating the withdrawal of food and water from Terri Schiavo; disputing whether it was a cessation of fruitless treatment or of essential care, and whether it was letting die or euthanasia. Multitudes seemed to be aligning themselves on various sides while in the Lords only a few managed to remain to the end of day. Not far away, however, Cardinal Murphy-OConnor of Westminster resumed his querying of public policy (begun some weeks before when he called for voters to consider the views of politicians upon abortion) by criticising the proposals of the Science and Technology Report and calling for the establishment of a UK national bioethics committee. Little reported, however, was the fact that on the same day the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, also issued a statement critical of the report, in which he said that the issues raised by pre-selection of embryos constitute a strong reason for establishing a national bioethics committee, including representation from Britains faith groups. Since then, the press has been focused on the question of whether ethical issues, promoted by religious believers, are likely to play a significant part in the forthcoming election. My own estimate is that, given the fires that will burn around the issues of taxation and public spending, they are unlikely to do so in the timeframe of the election itself. But something has changed. The decline of John Paul II and the demise of Terri Schiavo, the images of early foetuses in the womb and the horrors of late abortion, the suggestion of ever more radical experimentation and the strength of reaction to it, the advances of science and the complexity of moral philosophy; all contribute to a mood of dissatisfaction with the present manner of dealing with issues of life and death. There is a felt need for something better than confused and conflicted parliamentary discussions, in-group agenda advancing, extremist issue-grabbing, and uncooperative denunciation from those for whom nothing is better than something-less-than-everything. Members of the HFEA and similar groupings are unsure what to make of the call for a national bioethics committee. Such doubts are far from the mind of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which, on the very same day as the cardinals call for such a committee, issued a statement of opposition to it: SPUC strongly opposes [the cardinals] call to the government and parliament to set up a national bioethics commission [such a] commission will prove to be the graveyard of pro-life ethical concerns We need to ensure that the House of Commons reflects the publics concern that the sanctity of life be respected If lethal experiments were being carried out on Anglicans, Catholics and Jews, would it be appropriate for religious leaders to call for a commission to discuss the matter? This response is multiply confused. First, it overlooks the fact that the cardinal and others, including pro-life groups, have been effective in getting their concerns into public consciousness. Most successful in this regard is CORE (Comment on Reproductive Ethics) whose director, Josephine Quintavalle, who was among the first to call for a national bioethics committee. Second, why be so pessimistic about the possibility of progress at the level of a statutorily appointed committee answerable to Parliament, while being hopeful about the possibility of ensuring that the Commons be pro-life? Third, while Parliamentarians have much to distract their attention and to pull at their affiliations, a bioethics committee might be better able to see things in an impartial light and its membership might be more easily subject to Parliamentary scrutiny reflective of the publics general concerns. Fourth, the analogy is misconceived: efforts to see policy put on a better ethical foundation are not sectarian but universalist. The idea of a bioethics committee as I conceive it (and I am already on record as having called for the establishment of one) owes something to the example of other countries. In Europe and North America there are such bodies, bringing together scientific researchers, medical practitioners, philosophers, social scientists and others. Precisely because these reflect broad lines of division within society they struggle to arrive at agreed conclusions. That is not discreditable or fruitless, for it is better to register the difficulties than to ignore or deny them. The fact of the matter is that as things stand much thinking about moral questions in the public sphere is confused, confusing and increasingly devoid of deep content. We need first to recognise a number of distinctions, but also to avoid confusing them. There is the private and there is the public; then there is the procedural, the political, the cultural and the moral. Some issues can and should be treated as purely procedural matters, and others are properly private. But issues concerning the beginnings and endings of life its creation, maintenance and destruction belong to the sphere of public morality and cannot be resolved by fair procedures alone. We need to establish a public means of thinking seriously, openly, and respectfully of common opinion, about such matters. The HFEA and parliamentary committees have proved inadequate to the task, showing themselves to be at odds with public thinking. These failings have contributed to the current situation in which the defence of life has been taken up and responded to by others. It is time to establish a National Bioethics Committee whose membership would be required to reflect the true range and proportion of opinion in society. It would be apt and helpful to ask politicians ahead of the election whether they would support the creation of such a body. I expect the answers would be positive. [8]More by John Haldane [11]Heythrop College - London References 8. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/go/archive_index.cgi/tablet-author-John_Haldane 11. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/click.cgi?banner=003 From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 18:59:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:59:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Hans Jonas): Our hour, our war Message-ID: Our hour, our war The Times Literary Supplement, 4.7.2 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108042&window_type=print Steven E. Aschheim ERINNERUNGEN. By Hans Jonas. 503pp. Frankfurt am Main: Insel. 24.90euros. 3 458 17156 8 The philosopher Hans Jonas (1903-93) is best known in the English-speaking world for his pioneering studies of Gnostic Religion. Professional philosophers are likely to be familiar with his early (1969) ruminations on the ethics of experimenting on human subjects, but only initiates will be aware of his ongoing attempts to formulate a post- idealist ontology of nature able to account "for the broad organic basis on which the miracle of mind is perched", or his reflections on post-Auschwitz theology (he never recovered from the shock of his mother's murder there). His 1978 work The Imperative of Responsibility brought him great fame in Germany. But this impassioned plea for the creation of a collective ecological ethic which, through stringent governmental measures, would muster the necessary resources and control the runaway dangers of technology to save a threatened planet "for future generations", had little impact elsewhere. His influence on Anglo-American thought, it must be said, never approximated that of many of his mentors, colleagues and friends who figure prominently in Erinnerungen, his memoirs. Yet this does not detract from their interest and value. For, by the compelling way that Jonas recounts his life in Germany, Palestine/Israel and North America, this becomes an evocative portrait of an exceptionally productive and fascinating generation of Weimar intellectuals who made their way through a traumatic century and in diverse fashion helped to shape our understanding of it. In a recent work (2001), Richard Wolin portrayed Jonas as one of Heidegger's Children who, until 1933, "thought of themselves as assimilated Germans rather than as Jews" (the stark dichotomy itself is misleading). The degree to which Jonas's thought and person remained in thrall to his teacher Heidegger may be open to question, but not, as these memoirs graphically document, the lifelong centrality of his Jewishness. This well preceded the rise of Nazism. Jonas was raised in a home that effortlessly combined German Bildung with an untroubled affirmation of Jewishness. More-over, already in 1918, in an obviously declasse act - and much to the chagrin of his baffled father - Jonas became a committed Zionist. Remarkably, although it was a tiny minority movement, in the course of his Zionist meanderings Jonas came upon a host of distinguished dissenters whose thought would later leave its mark well beyond the boundaries of Weimar Germany or, for that matter, Zionist or Jewish circles - among them Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Gershom Scholem and Leo Strauss. Quite exceptionally, he spent 1923 at a Hachsharah, a training farm for future settlement in Palestine. Indeed, unlike most of his other German-Jewish Zionist friends, Jonas adopted a peculiarly militant posture, sensitive to anti-Semitic slurs and dreaming of Jewish armed valour and honour. These predilections, no doubt, partly account for his incisive intuitions as to the nature of Nazism. He left Germany a few months after the takeover of power and settled in Palestine in 1935. There he composed a remarkable document: an impassioned 1939 call to Jewish men to take up arms ("This is our hour, this is our war"). At a time of great bewilderment, he presciently identified the unimaginably radical nature of Hitler's aims. National Socialism, he wrote, had undertaken this war against the Jews as "a world-principle" and against the "naked possibility of our existence on Earth. We are its metaphysical enemy, its designated victim from the first day on and no peace will be granted us as long as that principle or we ourselves, either the one or the other, still live". No other nation, he declared, was threatened with the negation of its very humanity: "We are witnessing a war of extermination that has been declared against our entire being and which is proceeding un-checked". Because the Jews were threatened with destruction as a group, they had to fight back as a group or a Volk. To that end, Jonas fervently advocated the formation of a specifically Jewish Brigade, in which he fought when it was finally created in 1944. Earlier, he volunteered for the paramilitary Haganah, and in 1948 participated in the Israel War of Independence. Of course, this image of Jonas as Muskeljude and militant fighter distorts the larger picture. It obscures his warmth and compassion (hidden in a footnote is the story of how in 1938 he carried a fatally wounded Arab to hospital through the streets of Jerusalem) and, above all, his passionately pursued intellectual interests and friendships. Indeed, it was during his period of service in the Jewish Brigade that, in a series of letters to his wife, Lore, he first formulated his post existentialist philosophy positing the relationship of the organic to Being, the "phenomenon of life". His years in Jerusalem were spent in the presence of a stimulating and playful Mannerbund of German-speaking scholars, dubbed by Gershom Scholem as "Pilegesh" (formed from the initials of its various members and meaning "concubine" in Hebrew), who spent much time in intense philosophical discussion and writing affectionately ironic poems about each other. The formidable Scholem - always fascinated by the mystical, the demonic and antinomian - encouraged and gobbled up Jonas's work on Gnosticism which, with its subversive implications for established religion, was so congenial to his own project (almost all these German-Jewish Weimar intellectuals probed pre-or post-liberal Enlightenment worlds). Despite these friendships, in 1949, Jonas left for Canada to seek better academic prospects than he had hitherto been able to secure in Israel. The relationship with Scholem and his friends later became severely strained though not broken - when, in 1952, after Scholem exerted enormous efforts and successfully obtained for Jonas a formal position at the Hebrew University, he declined the offer and went on to various posts in Montreal, Ottawa and the New School for Social Research. The character sketches of Jonas's subsequently famous friends and acquaintances are among the joys of this volume. The contemporary lion of neoconservatism, Leo Strauss, emerges as an early sympathizer of Mussolini yet entirely unworldly and shy, guiltily torn between his Orthodox upbringing and the unshackled philosophical quest for truth; the great Marxist scholar George Lichtheim whose years in Palestine, and role as translator of Scholem's masterwork on Jewish mysticism, are now largely forgotten - as an over-bred, charming, deeply self-ironic personality, an "Edel-Marxist" who never set foot in a factory, an autodidact and eternal outsider, constitutionally unable to sustain relationships with women (for a while he was obsessed with Susan Sontag), and who in the end, tragically, committed suicide; and Jacob Taubes, as a mercurial, occasionally brilliant scholar of religion, whose serial plagiarism and charlatanism were visible to all except, perhaps, to himself. When Karl Lowith was asked about one of Taubes's works he commented that it was indeed excellent. "That's not surprising; one half of it is by him and the other by me." The Palestine years were important, but most of the abiding influences, relationships and disappointments in Jonas's life stemmed from his student and early teaching years in Weimar Germany between 1921 and 1933. At the centre stands the defining presence of Martin Heidegger (his other teacher, for whom he felt a lasting respect and affection, was the theologian Rudolf Bultmann). Upon first hearing Heidegger, Jonas reports, "something happened to me". Without really understanding, he realized that something electric, "secret" and immensely significant was being said. From then on, he knew that philosophy was the way and proceeded to shape his own thought along the lines of Heideggerian existentialism. He experienced Heidegger's turn to Nazism as an immense shock, "a world-historical shame", a blow to the very soul of the philosophical enterprise. The hurt went deep. It was hard, he later told a group of theologians, to celebrate Man as the "Shepherd of Being" when he had ceased so grievously to be his brother's keeper. Unlike Hannah Arendt, Jonas did not early on renew the relationship. Yet the pain, combined, perhaps, with the desire to meet and confront him, persisted. They did so, finally, in 1969 in Zurich, where, as always with Heidegger, the things that most needed to be said remained unspoken. Whether or not Jonas actually succeeded in conceptually freeing himself from the problematic aspects of this inheritance remains an open question. But as his account makes clear he explicitly attempted to formulate a post-Heideggerian and post-Holocaust world-view. His work is shot through with reflections on ethics (allegedly neglected by Heidegger); it is receptive to Judaeo-Christian theological perspectives (as opposed to what Jonas saw as Heidegger's neo-paganism); and his firmly grounded "organic" ontology sought to counter the nihilism he took to be implicit in Heidegger's work (Gnostic and Heideggerian thought, Jonas maintained, were mutually illuminating phenomena). Perhaps not surprisingly, the adoring circles around the radically innovative Heidegger, described by Jonas as a kind of Wunderrabbi, contained many young Jews (among them Lowith and Gunther Stern). The best-known of Jonas's fellow students was Hannah Arendt, with whom Jonas formed an admiring, lifelong, though stormy friendship (the turbulence was occasioned by his bitter dissent from her Eichmann book and her refusal to countenance any criticism of it). Both the philosophical and amorous aspects of the Arendt-Heidegger relationship have by now been thoroughly explored. But, as her closest confidant at the time (and perhaps as a way of subtly indicating to Jonas that he should desist in any thought of becoming her suitor), Arendt, swearing him to secrecy, made him uniquely privy to how the affair began. As the teacher and pupil talked during student hours and dusk descended, Heidegger neglected to turn on the light. When the interview ended and Arendt was about to leave the room, he suddenly fell to his knees and stretched out his arms. "I took his head in my hands", Arendt told Jonas, "and he kissed me, I kissed him." As with Jonas, the definitive verdict regarding Heidegger's long-term influence on Arendt's work is not yet in. But her early reconciliation with him, Jonas insists, was bound to the indissoluble tie of a first, passionate love. Jonas's memoirs (based on taped conversations with Rachel Salamander) are replete with similar observations in which the philosophical and the personal become thickly intertwined. They are peopled by personalities whose thought has become a familiar part of twentieth-century intellectual and cultural sensibility. Above all, they trace the ways in which these quintessentially Weimar intellectuals were formed and then, faced with crucial political and intellectual dilemmas, variously chose to make their lives. It is a testament to Hans Jonas's decency and honesty that in these matters he seems always to come out as a mensch. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 19:00:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 15:00:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Yorker: (Yourcenar) Becoming the Emperor by Joan Acocella Message-ID: Becoming the Emperor by Joan Acocella http://newyorker.com/critics/books/?050214crbo_books February 10, 2005 How Marguerite Yourcenar reinvented the past. Issue of 2005-02-14 and 21 Posted 2005-02-07 In 1981, six years before her death, Marguerite Yourcenar became the first woman ever inducted into the Acad?mie Fran?aise, and that weighty honor has been hanging around the neck of her reputation ever since. Every book jacket, every review, speaks of it. But that wasn't all that set her apart from other mid-century writers. She was an extremely isolated artist. A Frenchwoman, she spent most of her adult life in the United States, on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine, where, to isolate her further, she lived with a woman. Her background, too, made her seem different. She came from the minor nobility and didn't hide it. Most of the people who knew her, even friends, addressed her not as Marguerite but as Madame. Add to that the fact that she wrote not in English but in her native French, and in a style that was often magisterial, in an old-fashioned, classical way. (People compared her to Racine. This was at a time when we were getting Bellow and Roth.) Add, moreover, that though she was a novelist, she was not primarily a realist, that she never mastered dialogue, that her books were ruminative, philosophical. Add, finally, that her greatest novel, "Memoirs of Hadrian" (1951)--which Farrar, Straus & Giroux will reissue this spring as part of its new FSG Classics series--was a fictionalized autobiography of a Roman emperor, and it comes as no surprise that nearly every essay on Yourcenar speaks of her work as "marmoreal" or "lapidary." Actually, some of Yourcenar's prose is marmoreal, but not so that you can't get through it. Also, it is beautiful. What made her remarkable, however, was not so much her style as the quality of her mind. Loftiness served her well as an artist: she was able to dispense love and justice, heat and cold in equal parts. Above all, her high sense of herself gave her the strength to take on a great topic: time. Time was an obsession with her immediate predecessors in European fiction, but whereas those novelists showed us modern people altered--made thoughtful, made tragic--by time's erasures, she erased the erasures, took us back to Rome in the second century or, in her other famous novel, "The Abyss" (1968), to Flanders in the sixteenth century, and with an almost eerie accuracy. Yourcenar regarded the average historical novel as "merely a more or less successful costume ball." Truly to recapture an earlier time, she said, required years of research, together with a mystical act of identification. She performed both, and wrought a kind of trans-historical miracle. If you want to know what "ancient Roman" really means, in terms of war and religion and love and parties, read "Memoirs of Hadrian." This doesn't mean that Yourcenar, in her novels, conquered the problem of time. All she overcame was the idea that this was the special burden of the modern period. Human beings didn't become history-haunted after the First World War, Yourcenar says. They were always that way. The child of a Belgian mother, Fernande de Cartier de Marchienne, and a French father, Michel-Ren? Cleenewerck de Crayencour, Yourcenar was born in Brussels in June of 1903. Years later, she reconstructed the events of that morning. "The pretty room," she said, "looked like the scene of a crime." Michel was screaming at the doctor, calling him a butcher. The housemaids hurried about, gathering up the bloodied sheets and also the afterbirth, which they took down to the kitchen and stuffed into the coal fire. (Yourcenar has a kind of mania for anti-sentimentality. It is hard to imagine another writer describing the burning of her own afterbirth.) Ten days later, Fernande was dead. The new baby lay squalling in a silk-lined crib. Michel gathered up the child and returned to his family estate, near Lille, where Yourcenar lived until the age of nine, in what she later described as considerable happiness. She recalled the riot of poppies in spring. She remembered her pets: a lamb, a goat whose horns her father had painted gold. According to Josyane Savigneau, the excellent, hard-nosed biographer from whom I have taken much of this information, Yourcenar later scandalized some of her French readers by claiming that she never regretted not having a mother. She had a good substitute, a young nursemaid, Barbe, who adored her. But one day when Marguerite was seven it was discovered that Barbe, on a few occasions, had taken her to "houses of assignation," where she went now and then to supplement her income. Barbe was instantly dismissed; she wasn't even allowed to say goodbye to Marguerite. After that, the child grew up fast. When she was nine, Michel sold the ch?teau, and the two of them moved to Paris. A man of leisure, an occupation that he took seriously, Michel wasn't home much, but neither was Marguerite. She was out scouring the city: the museums, the streets, the bookstalls. Like most girls of her social class, she never went to school. She had a few tutors, but mostly she educated herself. She taught herself Latin, ancient Greek, English, and Italian; she read everything she could find. Soon she began writing, and she expected a great literary career. "O, winds!" she called out, in a poem she wrote in her teens. "Carry me away to the fiercest heights, / To the loftiest summits of triumph to come!" With such a future awaiting her, she embraced any new adventure. At the age of eleven, she had what seems to have been her first serious sexual encounter, with a young woman. Afterward, the woman said to her that she had heard it was bad to do these things. Yourcenar's biography of her family finishes the story: "`Really?' I replied. And . . . I stretched out on the edge of the bed and fell asleep." This was soon followed by an equally unfraught encounter with an older man, a cousin. Early initiation, she wrote, "can be a way to save some time." Always given to understatement, Yourcenar later played down the affection between herself and her father. ("No doubt there was a strong attachment, as there is when one is raising a puppy.") But Michel clearly loved her, the more, no doubt, since she was his only relative who had not loudly deplored the fact that he was gambling away the family fortune. They eventually moved to the South of France and, in 1920, settled in Monte Carlo, where Michel could be closer to the baccarat tables. There, in the words of the Yourcenar scholar Joan E. Howard, the two became "partners in crime." They read aloud together, passing the book back and forth: Homer (in Greek), Virgil (in Latin), Ibsen, Nietzsche, Saint-Simon, Tolstoy. In his early years, Michel had tried his hand at literature: some verse, the beginnings of a novel. Now, as he watched Marguerite doing the same--by her early twenties, she was writing all the time--he urged her on. One happy night, they worked out a nom de plume for her, an approximate anagram of Crayencour. Then he wrote to publishers, under her new name, to peddle her writings. He paid for the publication of her first two books (both poetry). He also gave her the first chapter of his abandoned novel and told her to rework it and publish it as her own, which she did. Entitled "The First Evening," it is the story of a joyless wedding night, and the couple in question may have been based on Michel and Fernande. This was a very intimate and unconventional collaboration. In 1929, shortly before Yourcenar's first novel was published, Michel died. She was twenty-five. She said she cried and then almost forgot him for thirty years. He left her next to nothing--he was bankrupt by 1925--but she had a small legacy from her mother that she figured would give her ten years of freedom if she spent it carefully. She passed those years partly in what she called "dissipation"--that is, a little drinking and a lot of sex, some with men, mostly with women.The rest of the time she wrote. In her old age, she said that everything she ever produced was already fixed in her mind by the time she was twenty. In any case, she now laid down her method. First, many of her narratives were set in the past. Second, they often involved towering passions compacted into tight, steel-band forms. That's the reason for the comparison to Racine, but a closer reference point is Gide, whose austere r?cits influenced almost every writer of her generation. She continued to embrace anti-sentimentality; indeed, she showed a fondness for brutality. And those traits, together with her highly controlled prose, encouraged reviewers to say--as they would say throughout her life--that she wrote like a man. As one critic put it, he could not find in her work "those often charming weaknesses . . . by which one identifies a feminine pen. The hand does not yield, it does not caress the paper; it is clasped by an iron gauntlet." This opinion was fortified by the fact that most of her protagonists were men. Curiously, however, they tended to be homosexual men. Yourcenar, it has been claimed, also had the habit of falling in love with homosexual men, the most serious case being her editor at ?ditions Grasset, Andr? Fraigneau, who had great interest in her artistically and none whatsoever sexually. This injustice drove her wild throughout her early thirties. She got two books out of it. Then, one afternoon in 1937, when she was thirty-three, she was sitting in a hotel bar in Paris talking with a friend about Coleridge when a woman from another table came over and told them they were all wrong about Coleridge. The woman was Grace Frick, an American English professor, almost exactly Yourcenar's age. The next morning, Frick invited Yourcenar to come up and see the pretty birds outside her hotel-room window. Later that year, Yourcenar sailed to the United States to spend the winter in New Haven with Frick, who was starting a dissertation at Yale. In the spring, she returned to France with a decision to make. She was still in love with Fraigneau; meanwhile, Frick was madly in love with her, and it was nice, finally, to be the loved one. She sat down and wrote a savage little novel, "Coup de Gr?ce," about a group of young people involved in the civil war in the Baltics after the Russian Revolution. At the center of the book is a love triangle. The narrator, Erick, an elegant Prussian fighting on the side of the White Russians--and a dead ringer for Fraigneau--is in love with his co-adjutant, Conrad; Conrad's sister, Sophie, is in love with Erick, and throws herself at him every chance she gets. (At one point, as Erick is prying Sophie off of himself, he compares her clinging limbs to the suctioned arms of a starfish.) Finally, Sophie abandons the White Russian cause and defects to the Red Army. Soon afterward, her division is captured by Erick and his men. In a military execution, he shoots her--in the face. This was Yourcenar's most autobiographical novel, which doesn't mean that it's easy to figure out, in real-life terms, who shot whom. Roughly, one can say that Fraigneau killed Yourcenar by not loving her, and now--as the title of the book, with its pun on Frick's name, tells us--she's going to kill him, or her passion for him. Soon after "Coup de Gr?ce" came out, in 1939, Yourcenar returned to the United States, where for the next forty years Frick would be her companion, her translator, her household manager, and her shield against the world--possibly the most complete literary wife in the annals of art. As Yourcenar explained it later, she had planned only to try out another winter with Grace, but the Second World War intervened, and by the time it was over she had decided to stay. (She became an American citizen in 1947.) When she was old, she said that her passion for Grace exhausted itself after two years. But Grace's passion lasted, and perhaps Yourcenar could not turn her back on that, or on the domestic comforts it provided. But there was another reason for not returning to her life in France. Its bottom, her literary career, had dropped out. Horribly, mysteriously, Yourcenar stopped writing when she arrived in the United States. For more than a decade, she published almost nothing. She and Grace lived mainly in Hartford, to be near Grace's work, first at Hartford Junior College, then at Connecticut College. Soon Yourcenar, too, began teaching, commuting to Sarah Lawrence, just outside New York City, where she gave courses in French and Italian. By all accounts, she was despondent. She had died to herself. Before she left Europe, Yourcenar had deposited a trunk in storage at a hotel in Lausanne. She had been trying for years to get it back, and one day in 1949 it arrived. Opening it, she looked first for some valuables, but they had vanished. All that was left was a bunch of old papers. She pulled her chair up to the fireplace and started pitching things in. Then she came upon the drafts of a novel about Hadrian that she had begun when she was twenty-one and had later put aside. At the sight of those pages, she said, her mind more or less exploded. It is hard to understand how she managed to produce "Memoirs of Hadrian" in two years. In a bibliographical note appended to the novel, it takes her seventeen pages to list the sources she consulted (mostly at Yale) in order to make her account factually correct: ancient texts by the score; histories in English, French, and German; treatises on archeology, on numismatics. Then, there was the matter of writing the book, but she said that she composed it in a state of "controlled delirium." She recalled a train trip she took at the time: Closed inside my compartment as if in a cubicle of some Egyptian tomb, I worked late into the night between New York and Chicago; then all the next day, in the restaurant of a Chicago station where I awaited a train blocked by storms and snow; then again until dawn, alone in the observation car of a Santa Fe limited, surrounded by black spurs of the Colorado mountains, and by the eternal pattern of the stars. Thus were written at a single impulsion the passages on food, love, sleep, and the knowledge of men. I can hardly recall a day spent with more ardor, or more lucid nights. Clearly, she was simply ready to write this novel, as she had not been at twenty-one. She herself said that the crux was time: "There are books which one should not attempt before having passed the age of forty." She was forty-five when she went back to Hadrian. As the book opens, Hadrian is sixty, and dying. His life, he says, seems to him "a shapeless mass," but in this memoir, written as a letter to his adopted grandson, Marcus Aurelius, he will try to make some sense of it. The son of a Roman official, he grows up on a dusty estate in his native Spain. At sixteen, he is sent to study in Athens, and there he falls permanently in love with Greece, "the only culture," he says, "which has once for all separated itself from the monstrous, the shapeless, and the inert." Time, he discovers, is not just the present; some matters are eternal. But he is young and wild. In the wars in Dacia (Romania), his bravery greatly impresses the emperor, Trajan, who is his cousin and guardian. He recalls with exhilaration the "Dacian footsoldiers whom I crushed under my horse's hoofs." Later, in Rome, he shows himself equally skilled as an administrator and as a courtier. He is careful to get as drunk as everyone else at Trajan's parties. He longs to succeed Trajan as emperor. There is a difficulty, however. Hadrian has come to hate Rome's policy of conquest. Instead of subduing other peoples, he thinks, why not make treaties with them and let them be, relying on the exchange of goods and ideas to spread Rome's laws? But he cannot voice these ideas. Trajan is an utterly convinced warmaker. Soon, this problem solves itself. Trajan dies, and Hadrian is made emperor, at the age of forty-one. His sense of time now changes. The future is everything. He enacts a thousand reforms. He builds a bureaucracy. He outlaws forced labor, adjusts taxes, forbids execution by torture. Most important, he ends Rome's wars on its neighboring peoples. He envisions an empire not of uniformity but of multiplicity. (Today, we call this multiculturalism.) "The tattooed black, the hairy German, the slender Greek, and the heavy Oriental"--he wants them all, and just as they are, in their peculiar clothes and with their strange gods, except that, in keeping with Roman rule, they will clean their streets, give good weight, enforce the law. The new Rome of Hadrian's imagining was thus not so much an empire as a world. When the Greeks declared him a god, he thought--arrogantly, touchingly--that perhaps this wasn't excessive. The gods ruled the world in the name of right. So did he. That was the high noon of his life. Then, at the age of forty-eight, he met a Greek boy, Antinous, aged thirteen or fourteen, and for the first time in his life he fell headlong in love. Antinous was tender and artless. After the hunt, Hadrian says, he "would cast off his dagger and belt of gold, scattering his arrows at random to roll with the dogs on the leather divans." Antinous, one suspects, was just the sort of blank little beauty (he only wanted to hunt; he never managed to learn Latin) that brilliance sometimes fastens on when it is tired of being brilliant. In any case, Hadrian, after seven years of midnight toil, found this patch of sunshine and was carried to mystic heights. He describes a "fire festival" his people staged in his honor: I watched Rome ablaze. Those festive bonfires were surely as brilliant as the disastrous conflagrations lighted by Nero; they were almost as terrifying, too. Rome the crucible, but also the furnace, the boiling metal, the hammer, and the anvil as well, visible proof of the changes and repetitions of history, one place in the world where man will have most passionately lived. . . . These millions of lives past, present, and future, these structures newly arisen from ancient edifices and followed themselves by structures yet to be born, seemed to me to succeed each other in time like waves; by chance it was at my feet that night that this great surf swept to shore. . . . The massive reef in the distance, perceptible in the dark, that gigantic base of my tomb so newly begun on the banks of the Tiber, suggested to me no regret at the moment, no terror nor vain meditation upon the brevity of life. He is ecstatic, prophetic--the master of time. Time soon reminds him who the master is. Hadrian was a great sensualist, and whereas, for a while, he was happy to spend his nights with Antinous alone, he eventually drew the boy into more complicated revels, including women. Antinous, by then nineteen, may have sensed what time would do to his position with Hadrian. One night in Alexandria, he came to Hadrian in a robe "sheer as the skin of a fruit." The next morning, he drowned himself in the Nile. Hadrian was shattered. One last catastrophe awaited him. His idea that all of Rome's peoples, while following their own customs, would nevertheless recognize Rome as an overarching authority was not endorsed by everyone, notably the Jews. Hadrian couldn't understand the Jews: their insistence that their god was the only god, their barbarous custom of circumcision. He finally banned circumcision, and this, probably with other factors, provoked an insurrection. It took Hadrian and his army three years to put down the revolt, which they did savagely. Jerusalem was destroyed; the rabbis were executed; the rebels were sold into slavery. "Judea was struck from the map," Hadrian writes. That was the beginning of his death. Though he was the one who did it, it broke his heart. His policy of peace lay in the dust. Of all Yourcenar's characters, Hadrian is the most admirable. He took everything in, liked everything: men, women, war, peace, Greece, Rome. He read endlessly. (Yourcenar reconstructed his library.) And he made combinations, compromises, with a goal of partial virtue, partial justice. He thought slavery was all right, but he outlawed the sale of slaves to gladiatorial schools. He accepted that women were inferior, but he gave them the right to inherit and bequeath property. He thought that men were no more prone to evil than to good, and that if he could induce them to try the good they might get in the habit. His mind was as large as his empire. What would become of that empire after his death? This is the question that torments his last years. Near the end, he finds a bitter peace: Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. . . . Some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality. One token of that immortality is "Memoirs of Hadrian." No other document takes us so deeply into the pre-Christian mind. This act of time-travel is part of what Yourcenar meant when she said one had to be forty in order to attempt certain books. Younger than that, this exemplary Judeo-Christian writer--who was a committed pacifist--could not have achieved the self-suppression required to describe her hero's joy as he trampled the Dacian foot soldiers. Age gave her more than objectivity, however. She says in an afterword to the novel that in order to appreciate Hadrian's struggle with time--the reversals, the accidents--she had to undergo the same struggles, among which her ten-year writing block no doubt figured heavily in her mind. "Hadrian" can be seen as her solution, the same one offered by Proust, whose work she loved. Art redeems us from time: in Hadrian's case, by shaping his life into a meaningful curve (ambition to mastery to exaltation to disaster to reconciliation); in Yourcenar's case, by enabling her to do that shaping, and in the process to write her first great novel, to save her own life. But the salvation is not limited to the superstructure. It goes down to the diction, the grammar. In "Hadrian," Yourcenar gathers not just the round-cheeked boys and the fire festivals but also the less glamorous materials--the tax abatements, the judicial reforms--into sentences that throb and glow like rising suns. This is more than beauty; it's morals. If, to Hadrian and to Yourcenar, their lives seemed crazy or dull or just plain obliterated, these magnificent Latinate constructions, with their main clauses and their subordinate clauses--that is, with distinctions, with judgment--say the opposite. "Hadrian" was Yourcenar's first big success--it made her famous--and the momentum she generated for it lasted close to twenty years. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, she wrote some superb critical essays, several of them spinoffs from "Hadrian," and gathered them in her collection "The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays" (1962). One striking feature of this book, and of her later critical writings, too, is the extent of her learning. Continuing the practice of her childhood, she read almost everything she could lay her hands on, and when she finished a book she liked, she would turn back to page 1 and read it over again. She went from Western literature to Asian literature. She taught herself new languages: a lot of Japanese, some German, Spanish, Portuguese, and modern Greek. This studiousness is reflected in her criticism. There seems to be almost nothing she doesn't feel she can write about: Cavafy, Mishima, Selma Lagerl?f, Michelangelo, the Venerable Bede, plus some people we haven't heard of but whom she is rescuing for us. Of the major novelists of the twentieth century, including Joyce, she was probably the most erudite. The point of her critical writings, though, is not their show of knowledge. As with "Hadrian," it is penetration--historical, moral--and the subject, again, is often time. In "The Dark Brain of Piranesi," the best of her essays--it is one of the most profound critical studies of our period--we learn what the great eighteenth-century draftsman, trailblazing for Yourcenar in his thousand-odd etchings of the ruins of Rome, thought about time's action on the supposedly eternal city. These were sidelines, though. Yourcenar's main project in the nineteen-sixties was her next novel, "The Abyss." The tone of this book is very different from that of "Hadrian." When an interviewer raised that point with her, she asked him to consider the events intervening between the two novels. When "Hadrian" was written, the war had just ended, and the United Nations had been established. There seemed to be some hope for the world. Then came a series of disasters. She listed them briefly: "Suez, Budapest, Algeria." (She might have added the Vietnam War, which sickened her. She went to sit-ins, carried placards.) If reading "Hadrian" is like gazing on white marble, reading "The Abyss" is like breaking open a clod of earth and finding strange, dark things: glints and bones and bugs, slimes and roots, sulfur and verdigris. Flanders in the sixteenth century was a pit of violence--secular wars, religious wars, peasant revolts. All this is in the book, together with the explosion of ideas that occurred at that time: the Reformation, the discovery of new worlds, the birth of modern science, the beginnings of industrialization. The hero of "The Abyss," and the representative of those new ideas, is Zeno, the illegitimate son of a rich banking family, who leaves home at the age of twenty to find truth. He becomes a priest, a physician, an alchemist, a philosopher. He writes books, and they are seized by the authorities. He travels to North Africa, to Sweden, to the courts of the East, and often has to leave quickly, with the police on his tail. Finally, he is captured, and condemned to be burned at the stake. On his last night, he cuts opens his veins and dies in his prison cell. "The Abyss" is not a warm book. For one thing, it sometimes imitates Renaissance literary forms--the love lyric, the picaresque novel--and, while this true-to-period writing worked well in "Hadrian," in "The Abyss" it has a distancing effect, in the postmodern way. Furthermore, the story has very few good people in it. Zeno himself is not altogether sympathetic. The novel's excitement lies in the vividness of the world Yourcenar calls up: the reeking taverns, the lecherous monks, the smell of honey cakes and eel pie, and of festering bodies, felled by plague. Then there are the visions that fill Zeno's expanding mind. Here is what he sees as he is dying. Night has fallen: But this darkness, different from what the eyes see, quivered with colors issuing, as it were, from the very absence of color: black turned to livid green, and then to pure white; that pure, pale white was transmuted into a red gold, although the original blackness remained, just as the fires of the stars and the northern lights pulsate in what is, notwithstanding, total night. For an instant which seemed to him eternal, a globe of scarlet palpitated within him, or perhaps outside him, bleeding on the sea. Like the summer sun in polar regions, that burning sphere seemed to hesitate, ready to descend one degree toward the nadir; but then, with an almost imperceptible bound upward, it began to ascend toward the zenith, to be finally absorbed in a blinding daylight which was, at the same time, night. Yourcenar often voiced the conviction that her characters actually existed, and lived with her, but there is no character she felt closer to than Zeno. He was a brother to her, as she put it. When she couldn't sleep, she would hold out a hand to him. Once, weirdly, she recalled going to a bakery and leaving Zeno there; she had to go back and get him, she said. In view of this attachment, the stern and furtive character that she gave to Zeno seems puzzling. Perhaps it was a defense against too great a love for him. Or, more simply, one might say that Zeno was Yourcenar's tribute to one part of herself, her love of knowledge, and that she made the tribute more pointed by cutting the other parts away. She said she expected "The Abyss" to be read by about ten people. Instead, like "Hadrian," it was a big success. In the nineteen-forties, Yourcenar and Frick discovered Mount Desert Island, a starkly gorgeous spot. In 1950, they bought an old frame house there, and soon they had quit their jobs and settled in. They called the house Petite Plaisance, little pleasure. Petite Plaisance is now a museum dedicated to Yourcenar. I visited it under the guidance of its director, Joan E. Howard, who, apart from being a Yourcenar scholar, was a friend of the writer's. The house is a bright, cozy place with eight small rooms jumbled together and filled with modest treasures--delft tiles, Chinese figurines, photographs of Yourcenar's and Frick's dogs. The most striking feature of the house is the library, which stretches from floor to ceiling and from room to room: Asian literature in the parlor, Greek and Roman in the study, seventeenth and eighteenth century in the foyer, early nineteenth century in Frick's bedroom, later nineteenth century in the guest rooms, twentieth century in Yourcenar's room. The place looks like the Biblioth?que Nationale crammed into a New England farmhouse. In the study, there is a large custom-made table with two typewriters opposite each other. As Yourcenar wrote her novels, and Frick translated them, they sat face to face, a few feet apart. This they did for almost thirty years. After "The Abyss," Yourcenar's most important project was a three-volume biography of her family--basically, it is another historical novel--with the over-all title "Le Labyrinthe du Monde." These three books have wonderful parts, but that's what they are: parts. Yourcenar, it seems, had finally tired of constructing her books. She also let herself rant. She was a longtime activist for environmentalism and animal protection, and in "The Labyrinth" we hear a lot about those causes. It was while Yourcenar was writing "The Labyrinth" that she was elected to the Acad?mie Fran?aise, an event that was heavily covered in the international press. (The society had existed for three hundred and forty-six years without including a female in its ranks, and many of the members--Claude L?vi-Strauss, for example--opposed any change in this policy.) At that point, Yourcenar had published almost a score of books (plus translations of other writers' work) in French, but only three of them, "Coup de Gr?ce," "Memoirs of Hadrian," and "The Abyss," had been brought out in English. Now her publishers got busy, and translations of her earlier work appeared in fast succession. Yourcenar wasn't troubled by the possibility that these volumes might not equal the products of her middle period. She had an odd view of her writing. Everything having come to her when she was young, she regarded it all, somehow, as one work, which she simply carried forward year by year. So she happily endorsed the translation and republication of her early books, many of which she now extensively revised. But no amount of revision could bring this material up to the level of "Hadrian" or "The Abyss," and that fact, together with the slackly composed "Labyrinth," left a number of reviewers with a problem. How could they say that this eminent, and also politically attractive, figure--this unbothered bisexual, this breacher of the walls of the Acad?mie--had written a book that was not of the first rank? Some couldn't, and found the phrases they needed to lay another bouquet at her feet. Others, scornful of such politesse and, in the case of some New Wave types, unimpressed by marmoreal prose, asked what the big deal was about Yourcenar. Her last years were strange. In 1958, Frick had been found to have cancer, and she fought it for twenty years. This put a terrible pressure on the household. Yourcenar had a mania for travel. If she didn't mind the isolation of Mount Desert Island, that was because, under normal circumstances, she was there only half the year. The rest of the time, she and Frick were in Europe or elsewhere. But as Frick got sicker they couldn't leave. For almost a decade, they were stuck year-round in that little house, as Grace, more and more slowly, translated "The Abyss" and Yourcenar went stir-crazy. Their relationship suffered. Frick died in 1979, and within three months Yourcenar had left Maine. In the lives of aging divas, it sometimes happens that a young man--often impecunious, often homosexual--walks through the door saying how wonderful Madame is, and how the people around her don't fully appreciate that. In 1978, a year before Frick's death, Petite Plaisance was visited by a French television crew that included a young American photographer, Jerry Wilson, who was the director's assistant. Yourcenar was seventy-four, Wilson was twenty-nine, and he became the last love of her life. Most of her friends disapproved; Wilson didn't like them, either. ("He hated me," Joan Howard said to me, "and I came to hate him, too.") Yourcenar didn't care. She travelled with Wilson to Europe, to Asia, to Africa. At times, she thought of herself as Hadrian and Wilson as Antinous. The relationship may even have been consummated, or so say some of Wilson's friends. Wilson drank heavily, and he sometimes hit her. Still, in her mind, it was worth it. Wilson died of aids in 1986. Yourcenar grieved horribly, and then, two months later, she was back on the road, this time with one of his friends. Like Hadrian, she had her burial plot prepared, next to Frick's, in a cemetery near Petite Plaisance. Indeed, the headstone was carved, lacking only the date of death. She must have known that her career was over; if not, she would have stayed home and worked on the last volume of "The Labyrinth," which she never finished. In 1987, having packed to leave for Europe again, she suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital, where she became delirious. Soon afterward, when her friend Yannick Guillou, who oversaw her work at ?ditions Gallimard, arrived and spoke to her in her native language--according to Savigneau, the only thing in the world that she loved without reservation--he said that "an expression as if of relief spread over her face, almost a look of happiness." That night, there was a date to inscribe on her tombstone. From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 3 19:03:12 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 12:03:12 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] thought and genes Message-ID: <01C53845.1CEFE5B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Nicholes Perricone (p 30 of Perricone Promise) notes that neuropeptides seem to be the "stuff of thought." Thought is materially expressed in these chemicals. There are receptors for these chemicals in many types of cells, and one might assume that when neuropeptides attach to cells they affect the expression of the genes. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 11:23 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] thought and genes Steve says: >>Perhaps genes are not the ultimate control unit of life. Perhaps there is something smaller or more etheric. Perhaps something more like thought controls genes.<< --Do you mean something LIKE thought, or thought in particular? I think we have many misconceptions about thought (for example, that it's a "master controller" rather than a tangle of nested subroutines and feedback) that we mistakenly apply to other domains. Nature seems to like synergy, emergent complexity, spirals, and cooperative assemblies in which no particular part controls everything. I don't think thought escapes those patterns, however much it may feel subjectively like there is one thing in control in our minds (sometimes I wish there were!) There seems to be a subjective or "mystical" sense in many people that thought and DNA are somehow related. Perhaps thought is analogical to genetic processes, another fractal manifestation of complexity in nature. Perhaps the mind's body-map interacts with thought in a way that feels like thought reaching into the cells (hypnotherapists and new age healers talk of "new mental patterns absorbing into your cells") or perhaps new metaphors from biology and math are being applied to thought simply because they are available as models. That's an interesting idea to explore, but I don't see any evidence that thought interacts with DNA or quantum mechanics in any direct way, any more than the content of a priest's sermon alters the molecular makeup of the bricks out of which the church was built. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 3 19:06:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 15:06:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Chronicles: Srdja Trifkovic: Susan Sontag and the Evil of Banality Message-ID: Srdja Trifkovic: Susan Sontag and the Evil of Banality http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST123004.html December 30, 2004 Susan Sontag died of leukaemia in New York on December 29 at the age of 71. The obituarists described her as "one of America's most influential intellectuals, internationally renowned for the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and her ardent activism in the cause of human rights." ([3]The Financial Times, Dec. 30) Her essays "expanded the universe of subjects it was 'all right' for intellectuals to take seriously," such as drugs, porn, and pop, ensuring that we'd "[4]get used to these as intellectual topics." All of which is one way of saying that Ms. Sontag has made a solid contribution to the degrading of our cultural and intellectual standards over the past four decades. But unlike some other purveyors of bad ideas, such as Voltaire, who could present them in eloquent prose, Sontag was unable to write a decent sentence. Take this gem for style and contents: "The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballet et al., don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history. It is the white race and it alone--its ideologies and inventions--which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself" (Partisan Review, winter 1967, p. 57). A week after the non-whites struck at the cancer's epicenter on September 11, 2001, Ms. Sontag asserted in [5]The New Yorker, that this "monstrous dose of reality" was squarely a consequence of specific American actions, and paid tribute to the courage of those willing to sacrifice their lives in order to kill others: "In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards." Courage means doing the right thing in the face of fear. Ms. Sontag's standard of "courage," based on an actor's readiness to die in pursuit of his objectives, makes sense only in the universe of an atheistic adorer of the self who cannot face the thought of self-annihilation. On that form she would have to admit that, "whatever may be said of their activities in Eastern Europe, the Waffen SS were not cowards." She was equally unaware that the word "coward" also designates a person who attacks defenseless victims, as in "Bringing the murderous coward to the stake" (Gloucester in King Lear, Act II, Scene 1). Ergo the terrorists were brave and therefore virtuous men, but Sontag's oxymoronic claim that courage is a "morally neutral virtue" was supposed to make that assertion less unpalatable. More seriously, in the immediate aftermath of 9-11 and thereafter Ms. Sontag was reluctant to address the phenomenon of Islam in general and, in particular, to note the difference between "secular" terrorism--which may be closely correlated to the intended target's "specific actions"--and the Islamic variety of the phenomenon. Her reluctance was understandable: a hater of Western Civilization could not but feel the corresponding urge to justify those attacking it, especially if the attackers can be depicted as victims of the victim. Hence her enthusiastic support for the Muslim side in the Bosnian war. Hence her attempt to remove moral authority from the terrorists' "courage" and at the same time to make their motives understandable strictly through the prism of the target's "specific actions." That Ms. Sontag felt no sympathy for the victims of 9-11, for those thousands of her fellow citizens on whose tax dollars, philanthropic largesse, and buying habits her own existence had depended for most of her life, or for the city of her birth which she called home, goes without saying. The gap between Ms. Sontag's heart and mind was total, reflecting the soul of a rootless purveyor of self-hate. The leading advocate of "human rights" was not only a hypocrite and a fraud to boot, she was also a moral degenerate terminally devoid of human compassion and common decency. Ms. Sontag's absence of sympathy for the "wrong" victims of any crime was on full display a generation earlier, two years after the fall of Saigon, when [6]she wrote that "one can only be glad about the victory of the DRV [i.e. the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam"] and the PRG [Viet Cong], but there seems little taste for rejoicing." Such melancholy note was not due to the Communist reign of terror unleashed on South Vietnam, exemplified in tens of thousands of ad-hoc executions, the unspeakable "re-education camps," or the plight of hundreds of thousands of perfectly innocent and ordinary "boat people." No, Ms. Sontag's sole reason for lamentation was the loss of vigor of the anti-war crowd here in the United States: "For while 'they' won, 'we' did not. The 'we' who wanted 'us' to lose had long since been disbanded. The domestic convulsion set off by the Vietnam War had subsided long before the peoples of Indochina were liberated from the American murder machine." Ms. Sontag's qualities were on full display during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. She supported the Muslim side and was a leading purveyor of the Muslim-fabricated myth of the Serbian "rape camps" where she asserted that "tens of thousands of women" were raped "by military order." Writing in the Nation on Christmas Day 1995 she likened her trips to Sarajevo--comfortable, safe, and well-publicized--to the struggle of the Lincoln Brigade in Spain. Ms. Sontag's a-priori assumptions, that the Serbs were Fascist monsters, the Muslims innocent victims of a brutal aggression, were beyond dispute. Her smug self-depiction as a brave voice of intellectual and moral integrity in a cynical world was laughable. Ms. Sontag was an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton's war against the Serbs in 1999. She ridiculed the objection that the war is ("wonderful word") illegal" with the usual reductio ad Hitlerum: "Imagine that Nazi Germany had had no expansionist ambitions but had simply made it a policy in the late 1930's and early 1940's to slaughter all the German Jews. Do we think a government has the right to do whatever it wants on its own territory? Maybe the governments of Europe would have said that 60 years ago. But would we approve now of their decision?" Writing in The New York Times in May 1999 she reasserted the lie of the Kosovo genocide, then repeated the already discredited claim that its prevention was the reason for Clinton's war, and [7]finally dehumanized the victims of that war: "it is grotesque to equate the casualties inflicted by the NATO bombing with the mayhem inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people in the last eight years by the Serb programs of ethnic cleansing. Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust . . . There is radical evil in the world, which is why there are just wars. And this is a just war . . . The Milosevic Government has finally brought on Serbia a small portion of the suffering it has inflicted on neighboring peoples." Sontag's view of the Balkans provides an apt summary of her opus. As The New York Times obituarist has noted, [8]she championed style over content: "She was concerned, in short, with sensation, in both meanings of the term." In short she was not concerned with the truth. She dabbled in ideas but she could not think. Her lies, dishonesty, absence of moral sense and self-deceptions amounted to a sustained exercise in counter-realism, which is the essence of post-modernism. In the post-modernist vein Susan Sontag was also a plagiarist who routinely stole words written by other people and presented them as her own. She inserted 12 segments totaling four pages written by others into her 387-page historical novel "In America," and did so without credit or attribution. The New York Times--a sympathetic source that has given Ms. Sontag thousands of column-inches over the years--[9]wrote that "in some passages the language itself is taken almost verbatim from other authors." But Ms. Sontag blithely responded that the historical novel is an evolving new genre that does not require the rigor of footnotes and attributions: "All of us who deal with real characters in history transcribe and adopt original sources in the original domain? I've used these sources and I've completely transformed them? There's a larger argument to be made that all of literature is a series of references and allusions." It defies belief that someone of Susan Sontag's talent, literacy, integrity, education, moral sense, and beliefs could be taken seriously by any segment of any country's educated public for any period of time. That this was so in America is as sad as the fact that Bernard-Henri L?vy is widely regarded as France's foremost contemporary philosopher. But "BHL" is Sontag's twin brother in almost every field imaginable: a media personality, an "intellectual," a hater of Western civilization, a Christophobe, an "essayist," an enthusiastic promoter of homosexuality, an admirer of Sartre, an outspoken advocate of the Muslim side in the Bosnian war and in Kosovo. In Sontag's and Levy's lunatic account of world affairs the Christians are always at fault and their enemies are always innocent of any wrongdoing. For both of them the "siege" of Sarajevo became a stage for countless self-serving media appearances, as well as the symbol of their decisive move beyond truth and reality and beyond the limits of the aesthetic. Thanks to Susan Sontag and Bernard-Henri L?vy and their ilk, New York and Paris--until not so long ago two intellectual capitals of the world--have succumbed to the culture of depravity, victimology and self-hate. Financed by George Soros, the MacArthur Foundation & Co., lionized by the likes of the New Yorker and Liberation, they have done the best to destroy the civilization they hate while feeding the minds of future suicide bombers with a political pap that nourishes their hate and legitimizes their rage. Susan Sontag's death at 71 was at least four decades overdue. References 3. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/03e587e8-5a08-11d9-ba09-00000e2511c8.html 4. http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/10527401.htm?1c 5. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?010924ta_talk_wtc 6. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9160 7. http://www.nbi.dk/%7epredrag/projects/SontagKosovo.html 8. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/books/28cnd-sont.html 9. http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/052700sontag-america.html From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Apr 3 23:50:17 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 19:50:17 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <1eb.384b52ac.2f81db39@aol.com> This is wonderful material, Val. Remember that I applied bacterial information and your concept of maintenance and dispersal phenotypes to history and came up with five social modes that reflected your phenotype model? Those were the fleeing, fasting, feeding, questing, and conquering modes. When a society was under severe stress and had no sense that its leaders or form of social organization provided hope for control over its persistently catastrophic conditions, it went into the fleeing mode. Its members scattered, ran, and become refugees in other cultures where they begged for admittance. We saw this in Bosnia a few years ago. When a society was hit with persistent disaster, but still had faith in its leaders, its beliefs, and its form of social organization--its way of life--it hunkered down in something like the population biologist's k mode--the fasting mode. It went into self-denial, making things like gluttony cardinal sins. We saw this in the dark ages, when any form of pleasure or consumption was a slap in the face of god. And it happened with the Pacific Northwest's Yurok Indians, who lived on a tiny swatch of land and made self-denial the primary stamp of virtue. Yurok babies, for example, weren't breast fed whenever they cried. Instead they were given tiny amounts of gruel on micro-spoons made of acorn shells. They were taught to endure a state of perpetual hunger. When a society hit a new strategy that turned an old pile of junk into a motherlode or when it ran into a motherlode of food or other resources that yielded easily to the existing way of doing things, it focused on using the fashionable means of the moment to mine the new resources for all they were worth. It became conservative and stressed conformity to the prosperity-producing mode of the day. This was the feeding period. It happened in America in the 1950s. It happened in Athens after the end of the wars with Persia in roughy 470 bc. But when the motherlode and its wealth was assured that it had lasted a genration or two and seemed like it would go on forever, some of the kids of the feeders became like Socrates. They challenged the old way of doing things. They rebelled and raised questions. They hunted down new meanings. They became questers. Then came the stage I found hard to define. When a society was riding high on an ascending pattern of prosperity whose acceleration seemed like it would never stop, it became convinced that its way of life was god-given, endorsed by history, deity, and the rain of riches as the one way of life that should be imposed on everyone in sight, including on societies near and far. This sort of conquering mode hit Athens in the generation of Socrates pupils. Pericles had turned the defensive Athenian League from a coalition into an Empire. Then on of Socrates' students, Alcibiades, went off to conquer Syracuse.The conquering mode hit England in the days when it grew rich from steam engine technologies and built the Victorian Empire. Late in the 19th Century it hit Germany and the United States, both of which experienced a rapid rise in wealth thanks to the railroad train, new electrical technologies (think Thomas Edison and Seimens), and the new chemical industries (think Bayer). Both nations caught a serious case of manifest destiny--the sense that they, their race, and their culture should rule the world. This is the conquering mode. Your description of the generation-by-generation alteration in body type helped trigger this entire conceptual framework. Your outline of it below adds to the concept. All thanks--Howard In a message dated 3/28/2005 10:40:27 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, kendulf at shaw.ca writes: Dear Howard, Eschel is right. This is exciting stuff, especially if the RNA hypothesis holds. However, there is something in mammals that relates to reverting to the grand-parental genetic expression, or great- great parental genetic expression , or great- great- great parental genetic expression - and not to the parental one! And we have no clue about the mysterious mechanism. The phenomenon was dubbed - not surprisingly - the "grand parent effect". It showed that he adaptive expression of genes in individuals was not that to their immediate environment, but to that of their grand or great-grand or great-great ..etc. parents. How is it possible that the ova and sperm retain the environmental memory of up to four generations past? Or is it something about the phenotype incubating in gestation its progeny that affect it? We do not know! The phenomenon was first discovered in the late 1930's by an exceedingly gifted amateur biologist, though chemist by training, when he was experimenting with red deer, trying to increase trophy size. Quite unexpectedly, the deer did not respond fully to the luxury food he offered, rather they responded with increases in body and antler size stepwise, each generation being larger in size than the preceding one - for five generations! About 30 years later it was re-discovered in mice and rats, showing that the nutrition experienced by grand parents and earlier generation still affected the phenotype of the now-generation. In short, genetic expression was based on phenotypic experiences and was stored for several generations, and this multi-generational gene-environment communication affected the offspring. Now, there is a wonderfully logical - adaptive - explanation for this. Remember the maintenance - dispersal phenotype axis? (or, if you prefer paedomorph - hypermorph, efficiency - luxury etc). The norm in populations is maintenance conditions that is of hunger, shortages, severe intra- and inter-specific competition for resources etc., to which the maintenance, paedomorph or efficiency phenotype is closely and effectively adapted. However, nature's ecological vagaries are such that now and a gain a year or two of abundance and luxury comes along. An individual conceived then - clearly - must not be a dispersal, hypermorph or luxury phenotype because it would be woefully maladaptive under the regular conditions of shortages and severe competition for resources. The adaptive thing to do is to wait and see and alter offspring towards dispersal, hypermorph or luxury phenotypes only if luxury conditions continue to prevail. That, however, is the signal for the very rare - excruciatingly rare, but supremely important - case of vacant habitat being available where the dispersal phenotype is highly adaptive to spread the parental genomes! That's all in Chapter six of my 1978 Lifestrategies .. book entitled "How Genes Communicate with the Environment - the Biology of Inequality". Coming back to humans: it is possible that the phenomenon of secular growth, in which the offspring generations over a long time span exceed the parent generation in size, is part and parcel of this gene-environment communication, with old environmental information stored for influencing the next generations ontogeny. Secular growth can be predicted to come to a halt when we have reached, on average, the body mass, size and development of our Upper Paleolithic Ice Age ancestors. That is, it will stop when men average a bit over six feet in height (and brain size exceeds our by about 20%) - and we are some time off from that! Five- eight, so I understand, is the height of men currently in North America. Secular growth has been going on since the middle of the 19th century, the nadir having been reached during the preceding industrial revolution. As stated befoer, there is no clue as to mechanism! Sincerely. Val Geist Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science ----- Original Message ----- From: _HowlBloom at aol.com_ (mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com) To: _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) ; _kurakin1970 at yandex.ru_ (mailto:kurakin1970 at yandex.ru) ; _ursus at earthlink.net_ (mailto:ursus at earthlink.net) ; _paul.werbos at verizon.net_ (mailto:paul.werbos at verizon.net) Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2005 10:48 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism _Deinococcus radiodurans_ (http://deinococcus.allbio.org/) is able to withstand the shattering and spattering force of radioactivity by keeping many apparently super-condensed backup copies of its genome, then rebuilding whatever genomic sequences that have been destroyed. If a genome is the most economical summation of a species past possible, how can it be condensed into a backup copy? Is there, as Joel Isaacson suggest, an Ur pattern, an implicit pattern from which a mashed gene can be re-extracted? Does the deciphering of an ancient pattern, an implicit pattern, an Ur-pattern, change as the context that extracts it changes? Is the context of the still-unfazed genome, of the cytoplasm, of the cell membrane, and of the signals coming from neighboring and distant cells an extractor capable of re-deducing the implicit healthy gene when a mutated gene has gone off-track? Can evolution take a step back to retrace its earlier moves? Is the radiodurans backup mechanism an after-the-fact condensation of the genome--a symbolic representation of the genome? Or is it a remnant of something that preceded the genome? Eshel, you speak of RNA as the possible backup mechanism. RNA is the evolutionary precursor of DNA if the RNA-world hypothesis is true. Do you think that what was once derived from RNA can be derived again? Is this pattern a sort of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny? And if the complexities and intricate forms and functions of the present have been pulled from the implications of the past, what even more elaborate futures will be extracted from the implications of today? Howard In a message dated 3/24/2005 10:07:42 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi, Interestiing news, Eshel I sent yesterday the message below to several people in the Weizmann following a paper in Nature that I think is a most important discovery. personaly I feel very good as it supports my long objection to the current Neo-darwinian paradigm. It also indicates that the community in biology is now finally open to revolutionary ideas related to evolution. These discoveries might also ilustrate one example of organisms learning not through the DNA sequence. {Attached is a new paper that appear in Nature. Being myself against the central paradigm I find the discoveries potentially a mark of a new era. I might be dramatizing but may be not. I am quite surprised and pleased that Nature let them publish the paper and if you note the dates within 6 weeks from receiving it. Note also the possible connection with microRNA . It will be interesting if the media will realise the revolutionary aspects or not. If they do, it will probably lead to a flood of serious and "vitalistic" reactions. In this regard I also attached a paper entitled "New biology for a new century" I apologize if I am carried away but felt like sharing with you my excitement about these discoveries. There are many open questions. The first one is if it is a special mechanism for plants only or shared by animals as well (it is known that smallRNA have different mechanisms in plant). Eshel Eshel Ben-Jacob. Home Page: _http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/_ (http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/) Professor of Physics The Maguy-Glass Professor in Physics of Complex Systems _eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il_ (mailto:eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il) _ebenjacob at ucsd.edu_ (mailto:ebenjacob at ucsd.edu) Former President of the Israel Physical Society (IPS) Head the scientific board of PhysicaPlus _http://physicaplus.org.il_ (http://physicaplus.org.il/) The IPS Online Bi-lingual Magazine School of Physics and Astronomy 10/2004 -10/2005 Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel Center for Theoretical Biological Physics Tel 972-3-640 7845/7604 (Fax) -6425787 University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0354 USA Tel (office) 1-858-534 0524 (Fax) -534 7697 ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ____________________________________ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ____________________________________ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.8.4 - Release Date: 3/27/2005 _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tramont at iinet.net.au Mon Apr 4 01:16:52 2005 From: tramont at iinet.net.au (tramont at iinet.net.au) Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 09:16:52 +0800 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism In-Reply-To: <01C5382D.4EF06BB0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5382D.4EF06BB0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20050404084616.0396bd60@mail.iinet.net.au> Steve - it's wrong to think in terms of a Master Control Program. It all has to be "inevitable" somehow. Each entity's being is accounted for in its own "motivations" - what I call "the desire to be" (analogous to Martin Heidegger's Dasein). There is no need for an external agent, Master Medler. Take away all entities in the universe as we know it, and "somethingness" will immediately spring back in to start through the whole cycle all over again. Life is an inevitability, an expression of fundamental principles of cognition. Intelligent Design? Each entity is "intelligently" making choices from the world it finds itself in. So, in one sense, the Intelligent Design advocates might be onto something. But that choice-making must comply with all physical laws, such as the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. Generally speaking, the notion of a Master Control Program breaches the laws of inevitability and the law of entropy. There is no need for a Master Medler. There IS a need to identify general principles. Stephen At 12:12 AM 4/4/05, Steve Hovland wrote: >And what is the Master Control Program for >all of this? _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html Stephen Jarosek (aka Springette - same name, different language - nemluvim Cesky - ale znam mnoha slovo!) _______________________________________________________ From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 4 02:56:20 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 19:56:20 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Message-ID: <01C53887.35733410.shovland@mindspring.com> I'm not necessarily thinking of an external agent. Where would "external" be in this case? I'm more thinking of deeper inside, possibly pervasive forces. In The Anti-Aging Solution the authors mention that gene repair is done by 3 sets of enzymes- one that recognizes the type of damage, another that cuts out the damaged part, and a 3rd that makes the correct replacement part. They also mention that genes are normally coiled around a histone protein which might be a "bus" that communicates along the gene. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: tramont at iinet.net.au [SMTP:tramont at iinet.net.au] Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 6:17 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Re: From Eshel--A Glitch in Genetic-centrism Steve - it's wrong to think in terms of a Master Control Program. It all has to be "inevitable" somehow. Each entity's being is accounted for in its own "motivations" - what I call "the desire to be" (analogous to Martin Heidegger's Dasein). There is no need for an external agent, Master Medler. Take away all entities in the universe as we know it, and "somethingness" will immediately spring back in to start through the whole cycle all over again. Life is an inevitability, an expression of fundamental principles of cognition. Intelligent Design? Each entity is "intelligently" making choices from the world it finds itself in. So, in one sense, the Intelligent Design advocates might be onto something. But that choice-making must comply with all physical laws, such as the laws of thermodynamics and entropy. Generally speaking, the notion of a Master Control Program breaches the laws of inevitability and the law of entropy. There is no need for a Master Medler. There IS a need to identify general principles. Stephen At 12:12 AM 4/4/05, Steve Hovland wrote: >And what is the Master Control Program for >all of this? _______________________________________________________ There can be no complexity without simplicity: http://members.iinet.net.au/~tramont/biosem.html Stephen Jarosek (aka Springette - same name, different language - nemluvim Cesky - ale znam mnoha slovo!) _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 14:56:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 10:56:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] J. Med. Ethics: John Harris: Scientific Research Is a Moral Duty Message-ID: John Harris: Scientific Research Is a Moral Duty [First the summary from CHE, 5.4.4: [A glance at the April issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics: Research participation as a moral duty Undertaking, supporting, and participating in scientific research, particularly biomedical research, is a moral duty, says John Harris, a professor of bioethics at the Institute of Medicine, Law, and Bioethics at the University of Manchester, in England. ["We all benefit from living in a society and, indeed, in a world in which serious scientific research is carried out and which utilizes the benefits of past research," he writes. [Basic fairness dictates support of research, he says, as does the "duty of beneficence, our basic moral obligation to help other people in need." [However, "research has almost universally been treated with suspicion and even hostility by the vast majority of all those concerned with the ethics and regulation of research," he writes. [The prevailing assumption is that no one who is not directly benefited by research should or would want to participate in it, he says. But Mr. Harris argues that, instead, the assumption should be "that a person would want to discharge his or her moral obligations." [The article, "Scientific Research Is a Moral Duty," is online for subscribers or for purchase at http://jme.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/31/4/242 --Kellie Bartlett] ------------------------------ Scientific research is a moral duty John Harris Correspondence to: John Harris john.m.harris at manchester.ac.uk _____ Biomedical research is so important that there is a positive moral obligation to pursue it and to participate in it _____ Keywords: scientific research; biomedical research; medical ethics Science is under attack. In Europe, America, and Australasia in particular, scientists are objects of suspicion and are on the defensive. "Frankenstein science" 5- is a phrase never far from the lips of those who take exception to some aspect of science or indeed some supposed abuse by scientists. We should not, however, forget the powerful obligation there is to undertake, support, and participate in scientific research, particularly biomedical research, and the powerful moral imperative that underpins these obligations. Now it is more imperative than ever to articulate and explain these obligations and to do so is the subject and the object of this paper. Let me present the question in its starkest form: is there a moral obligation to undertake, support and even to participate in serious scientific research? If there is, does that obligation require not only that beneficial research be undertaken but also that "we", as individuals and "we" as societies be willing to support and even participate in research where necessary? Thus far the overwhelming answer given to this question has been "no", and research has almost universally been treated with suspicion and even hostility by the vast majority of all those concerned with the ethics and regulation of research. The so called "precautionary approach" sums up this attitude, requiring dangers to be considered more likely and more serious than benefits, and assuming that no sane person would or should participate in research unless they had a pressing personal reason for so doing, or unless they were motivated by a totally impersonal altruism. International agreements and protocols-for example, the Declaration of Helsinki 10 and the CIOMS Guidelines 11 -have been directed principally at protecting individuals from the dangers of participation in research and ensuring that, where they participate, their full informed consent is assured. The overwhelming presumption has been and remains that participation in research is a supererogatory, and probably a reckless, act not an obligation. Suspicion of doctors and of medical research is well founded. In the modern era it stems from the aftermath of the Nazi atrocities and from the original Helsinki declaration prompted, although rather belatedly, by the Nazi doctors' trial at Nuremberg. 12, 13 More recently it has been fuelled by further examples of extreme medical arrogance and paternalism. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis 14 -for example, in which 412 poor African/American men were deliberately left untreated from 1932-1972 so that the natural history of syphilis could be determined. 15 Even when it became known that penicillin was effective against syphilis they were left untreated. More recently in the UK a major scandal caught the public imagination and reflected serious medical malpractice, it involved the unauthorised and deceitful post-mortem removal and retention of organs and tissue from children. 16 (For a commentary on some of the major issues concerning this case see my paper, Law and regulation of retained organs: the ethical issues. 17 ) These and many other cases seem to provide ample justification for the presumption of suspicion of, and even hostility to, medical research. Vigilance against wrongdoing is, however, one thing; the inability to identify wrongdoing with the result that the good is frustrated and harm caused is quite another. This paper challenges and seeks to reverse the presumption against medical research. When we ask whether there is a moral obligation to support and even to participate in serious scientific research we need first to be clear that we are talking of research directed toward preventing serious harm or providing significant benefits to humankind. In all cases the degree of harm or benefit must justify the degree of burden on research subjects, individuals, or society. This balance will be explored below. Of course the research must also be serious in the sense that the project is well designed and with reasonable prospect of leading to important knowledge that will benefit persons in the future. ii Two separate but complementary lines of argument underpin a powerful obligation to pursue, support, and participate in scientific research. DO NO HARM The first is one of the most powerful obligations that we have, the obligation not to harm others. Where our actions will, or may probably prevent serious harm then if we can reasonably (given the balance of risk and burden to ourselves and benefit to others) we clearly should act because to fail to do so is to accept responsibility for the harm that then occurs. (I set out arguments for and the basis of this duty in Violence and Responsibility. 18 ) This is the strong side of a somewhat weaker, but still powerful duty of beneficence, our basic moral obligation to help other people in need. This is sometimes called "the rule of rescue". 19 Most, if not all diseases create needs, in those who are affected, and in their relatives, friends, and carers and indeed in society. Because medical research is a necessary component of relieving that need in many circumstances, furthering medical research becomes a moral obligation. This obligation is not limited to actual physical participation in research projects, but also involves supporting research in other ways, for instance economically, at the personal, corporate, and societal levels and indeed politically. FAIRNESS Second, the obligation also flows from an appeal to basic fairness. This is sometimes expressed as an appeal to the unfairness of being a "free rider". We all benefit from the existence of the social practice of medical research. Many of us would not be here if infant mortality had not been brought under control, or antibiotics had not been invented. Most of us will continue to benefit from these and other medical advances (and indeed other advances such as clean drinking water and sanitation). Since we accept these benefits, we have an obligation in justice to contribute to the social practice which produces them. We may argue that since we could not opt out of advances that were made prior to our becoming capable of autonomous decision making we are not obliged to contribute. It may, however, still be unfair to accept their benefits and implies also that we will forgo the fruits of any future advances. 20 Few, however, are willing to do so, and even fewer are really willing to forgo benefits that have been created through the sacrifices of others when their own hour of need arises! It should be clear how what I am claiming relates to the principle which is sometimes called the "principle of fairness" developed by Herbert Hart and later used by John Rawls. 21, 22 That principle may be interpreted as saying "those who have submitted to...restrictions have a right to similar acquiescence on the part of those who have benefited from their submission". 23 Here I am not suggesting an enforceable obligation to participate based on fairness although such an enforceable obligation would, as we shall see, certainly in some circumstances be justified by the argument of this paper. Nor am I proposing any right possessed by those who participate, to similar acquiescence on the part of those who benefit. Being a free rider is, however, unfair and people always have a moral reason not to act unfairly. This moral reason is probably enough to justify an enforceable obligation but we do not have to use compulsion as a strategy of first resort. It is surely powerful enough, however, to rebut some of the presumptions against an obligation to support and participate in research. There may be specific facts about me and my circumstances that absolve me from the obligation to be a research subject in a given situation. This could be the case if I have just participated in other burdensome experiments and there are other potential research subjects who have not done so, or if participation would create excessive burdens for me that it would not create for other potential participants. This does not show that the general obligation we have identified does not exist, just that it, like most other or perhaps all moral obligations, can be overridden by other moral considerations in specific circumstances. iii THE MORAL IMPERATIVE FOR RESEARCH We all benefit from living in a society, and, indeed, in a world in which serious scientific research is carried out and which utilises the benefits of past research. It is both of benefit to patients and research subjects and in their interests to be in a society which pursues and actively accepts the benefits of research and where research and its fruits are given a high priority. We all also benefit from the knowledge that research is ongoing into diseases or conditions from which we do not currently suffer but to which we may succumb. It makes us feel more secure and gives us hope for the future, for ourselves and our descendants, and for others for whom we care. If this is right, then I have a strong general interest that there be research, and in all well founded research; not excluding but not exclusively, research on me and on my condition or on conditions which are likely to affect me and mine. All such research is also of clear benefit to me. A narrow interpretation of the requirement that research be of benefit to the subject of the research is therefore perverse. 24 Moreover, almost everyone now living, certainly everyone born in high income industrialised societies, has benefited from the fruits of past research. We all benefit-for example, either from having been vaccinated against diseases such as polio, smallpox, and others or because others have been vaccinated we benefit from the so called "herd" immunity; or we benefit (as in the case of smallpox) from the fact that the disease has actually been eradicated. To take another obvious example, almost at random, we all benefit from the knowledge of connections between diet, exercise, and heart disease. This knowledge enables us to adopt preventive strategies and gives us ways of calculating our level of personal risk. In view of these considerations there is a clear moral obligation to participate in medical research in certain specific circumstances. This moral obligation is, as we have seen, straightforwardly derivable from either of two of the most basic moral obligations we have as persons. This entails that there are circumstances where an adult, competent person ought to participate in research, even if participating is not in his or her best interests narrowly defined. If I am asked to give a blood sample for a worthwhile research project, or if I am asked if tissue removed during an operation may be retained for research or therapeutic use, I may have to think in the following way: in the case of giving the blood sample I may say to myself: "I hate needles and the sight of my own blood!". Equally with retained tissue or organs I may feel that since I understand little of the future uses for my tissue it would be safer to say "no". In each case we will suppose that the disease being investigated is not one that I or anyone I know is likely ever to get, so giving this blood sample or allowing the use of excised tissue is not in my best interests narrowly conceived. In this situation doing what is best, all things considered, therefore seems to entail not doing what is best for myself, not pursuing my own best interests. However, this is not really so. Some of my main interests have not been identified and taken into account in this hypothetical train of thought. One of these is my interest in taking myself seriously as a reflective moral agent, and my interest in being taken seriously by others. Identifying my moral obligations, and acting on them is not contrary to my interests, but is an integral part of what makes me a moral agent. iv More importantly, however, as we have seen, I do have a powerful interest in living in a society and indeed in a world in which scientific research is vigorously pursued and is given a high priority. DO UNIVERSAL MORAL PRINCIPLES DENY THIS CLAIM? A number of the most influential international protocols on science research seem to contradict the claims so far made and we must now examine these more closely. 25 One of the most widely cited principles is contained in a crucial paragraph of the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, adopted by the 52nd General Assembly, in Edinburgh, Scotland, in October 2000. In medical research on human subjects, considerations related to the wellbeing of the human subject should take precedence over the interests of science and society (WMA, 10 para 5). This paragraph is widely cited in support of restrictions on scientific research and is interpreted as requiring that all human subject research is in the narrowly conceived interests of the research subjects themselves. This article of faith has become almost unchallengeable. We need first to examine more closely the idea of what is or is not in someone's interests. (Here the argument echoes that of my paper, Ethical genetic research. ) In this paper I shall neither follow nor consider what other commentators have made of this idea but attempt a rigorous analysis of the meaning of the concepts involved. We should note at the outset that what is or is not in a particular individual's interests is an objective matter. While subjects have a special role to play in determining this, we know that human beings are apt to act against their own interests. Indeed the idea of respect for persons which underpins this guideline has two clear and sometimes incompatible elements, namely, concern for welfare and respect for autonomy. Because people often have self harming preferences (smoking, drug abuse, selfless altruism, etc) they are sometimes bad judges of their interests. The interests of the subject cannot be paramount nor can they automatically take precedence over other interests of comparable moral significance. Such a claim involves a straightforward mistake: being or becoming a research subject is not the sort of thing that could conceivably augment either someone's moral claims or, for that matter, her rights. All people are morally important and, with respect to one another, each has a claim to equal consideration. No one has a claim to overriding consideration. To say that the interests of the subject must take precedence over those of others, if it means anything, must be understood as a way of reasserting that a researcher's narrowly conceived professional interests must not have primacy over the human rights of research subjects. (The researcher may also have specific contractual duties to them.) As a general remark about the obligations of the research community, the health care system, society or indeed of the world community, it is not, however, sustainable. This is not of course to say that human rights are vulnerable to the interests of society whenever these can be demonstrated to be greater. On the contrary, it is to say that the rights and interests of research subjects are just the rights and interests of persons and must be balanced against comparable rights and interests of other persons. In the case of medical research the contrast is not between vulnerable individuals on the one hand and an abstract entity such as "society" on the other, but rather between two different groups of vulnerable individuals. The rights and interests of research subjects are surely not served by privileging them at the expense of the rights and interests of those who will benefit from research. Both these groups are potentially vulnerable, neither is obviously prima facie more vulnerable or deserving of special protection. It is important to emphasise that the point here is not that there is some general incoherence in the idea of sometimes privileging the rights and interests of particularly vulnerable groups in order to guarantee to them the equal protection that they need and to which they are entitled. Rather I am suggesting two things. The first is that all people have equal rights and entitlement to equal consideration of interests. The second is that any derogation from a principle as fundamental as that of equality must be justified by especially powerful considerations. Finally, although what is or is not in someone's interests is an objective matter about which the subject her (or him) self may be mistaken, it is usually the best policy to let people define and determine "their own interests". While it is if course possible that people will misunderstand their own interests and even act against them, it is surely more likely that people will understand their own interests best. It is also more respectful of research subjects for us to assume that this is the case unless there are powerful reasons for not so doing-for example, in cases of research on young children, mental patients, and others whom it is reasonable to assume may not be adequately competent. IS THERE AN ENFORCEABLE OBLIGATION TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH? It is widely recognised that there is clearly sometimes an obligation to make sacrifices for the community or an entitlement of the community to go so far as to deny autonomy and even violate bodily integrity in the public interest and this obligation is recognised in a number of ways. 26 There are a perhaps surprisingly large number of cases where we accept substantial degrees of compulsion or coercion in the interests of those coerced and in the public interest. Numerous examples can be given: limiting access to dangerous or addictive drugs or substances; control of road traffic, including compulsory wearing of car seat belts; vaccination as a requirement-for example, for school attendance or travel; screening or diagnostic tests for pregnant mothers or for newborns; genetic profiling for those suspected of crimes; quarantine for some serious communicable diseases; compulsory military service; detention under mental health acts; safety guidelines for certain professional activities of HIV positive people, and compulsory attendance for jury service at criminal trials. Some societies make voting compulsory, taxation is omnipresent, universal education for children, requiring as it does compulsory attendance in school, is another obvious example. All these involve some denial of autonomy, some imposition of public standards even where compliance is not based on the competent consent of individuals. These are, however, clearly exceptional cases where overriding moral considerations take precedence over autonomy. Might medical research be another such case? MANDATORY CONTRIBUTION TO PUBLIC GOODS The examples cited above demonstrate a wide range of what we might term "mandatory contribution to public goods". I will take one of these as a model for how we might think about participation in science research. (For use of this principle in a different context see my paper, Organ procurement-dead interests, living needs. 27 Taxation is of course the clearest and commonest example.) All British citizens between 18 and 70 vi are liable for jury service. They may be called, and unless excused by the court, must serve. This may involve a minimum of 10 days but sometimes months of daily confinement in a jury box or room, whether they consent or not. However, although all are liable for service only some are actually called. If someone is called and fails to appear they may be fined. Most people will never be called but some must be if the system of justice is not to break down. Participation in, or facilitation of, this public good is mandatory. There are many senses in which participation in vaccine or drug trials involve features relevantly analogous to jury service. Both involve inconvenience and the giving up of certain amounts of time. Both are important public goods. It is this latter feature that is particularly important. Although jury service (or compulsory attendance as a witness) is an integral part of "due process", helping to safeguard the liberty and rights of citizens, the same is also true of science research. Disease and infirmity have profound effects on liberty and while putting life threatening criminals out of circulation or protecting the innocent from wrongful imprisonment is a minor (numerically speaking) product of due process, life saving is a major product of science research. If compulsion is justifiable in the case of due process the same or indeed more powerful arguments would surely justify it in the case of science research. Of course "compulsion" covers a wide range of possible measures. Compulsion may simply mean that something is legally required, without there being any legal penalties for non-compliance. Such legal requirement may of course also be supported by various penalties or incentives, from public disapproval and criticism, fines or loss of tax breaks on the one hand, to imprisonment or forcible attendance or participation further along the spectrum. To say that it would be legitimate to make science research compulsory is not to say that any particular methods of compulsion are necessarily justified or justifiable. While it seems clear that mandatory participation in important public goods is not only justifiable but also widely accepted as justifiable in most societies, as the examples above demonstrate, my own view is that voluntary means are always best and that any form of compulsion should be a last resort to be used only when consensual means had failed or where the need for a particular research activity was urgent and of overwhelming importance. If the arguments of this paper are persuasive, compulsion should not be necessary and we may expect a climate more receptive to both the needs and the benefits of science. However, to point out that compulsion may be justifiable in some circumstances in the case of science research establishes that a fortiori less stringent means are justifiable in those circumstances. I hope it is clear that I am not here advocating mandatory participation in research, merely arguing that it is in principle justifiable, and may in certain circumstances become justified in fact. There is a difference between ethics and public policy. To say that something is ethical and therefore justifiable is not the same as either saying it is justified in any particular set of circumstances, nor is it to recommend it nor yet to propose it as a policy for either immediate nor yet for eventual implementation. I believe that consensual participation is always preferable and that persuasion by a combination of evidence and rational argument is always the most appropriate way of achieving social and moral goals. This paper is an attempt to do precisely this. I believe-for example, that conscription into the armed forces is justifiable, but I am not recommending, still less advocating its reintroduction into the UK at this time. The distinction between ethical argument and policy proposal is crucial but is almost always ignored, particularly by the press and news media that report on these matters. In this paper I am intending to do ethics; this is not a policy proposal although it contains one policy proposal, which we will come to in due course. If I am right in thinking that medical research is a public good, that may in extremis justify compulsory participation, then a number of things may be said to follow: * It should not simply be assumed that people would not wish to act in the public interest, at least where the costs and risks involved are minimal. In the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, if any assumptions are made, they should be that people are public spirited and would wish to participate. (I talk here of minimal risk in the sloppy fashion usual in such contexts. "Risk" is, however, ambiguous between "degree of danger" and "probability of occurrence of danger". Risk may of course be minimal in either or both of these senses.) * It may be reasonable to presume that people would not consent (unless misinformed or coerced) to do things contrary to their own and to the public interest. The reverse is true when (as with vaccine trials) participation is in both personal and public interest. * If it is right to claim that there is a general obligation to act in the public interest, then there is less reason to challenge consent and little reason to regard participation as actually or potentially exploitative. We do not usually say: "are you quite sure you want to" when people fulfil their moral and civic obligations. We do not usually insist on informed consent in such cases, we are usually content that they merely consent or simply acquiesce. When-for example, I am called for jury service no one says: "only attend if you fully understand the role of trial by jury, due process, etc in our constitution and the civil liberties that fair trials guarantee". If these suggestions are broadly acceptable and an obligation to participate in research is established, this may well become one of the ways in which research comes to be funded in the future. We must weigh carefully and compassionately what it is reasonable to put to potential participants in a trial for their free and unfettered consideration. Provided, however, potential research subjects are given full information, and are free to participate or not as they choose, then the only remaining question is whether it is reasonable to permit people freely to choose to participate, given the risks and the sorts of likely gains. Is it reasonable to ask people to run whatever degree of risk is involved, to put up with the inconvenience and intrusion of the study, and so on in all the circumstances of the case? These circumstances will include both the benefits to them personally of participating in the study and the benefits that will flow from the study to other persons, persons who are of course equally entitled to our concern, respect, and protection. (If they are.) Putting the question in this way makes it clear that the standards of care and levels of protection to be accorded to research subjects who have full information must be, to a certain extent, study relative. It is crucial that the powerful moral reasons for conducting science research are not drowned by the powerful reasons we have for protecting research subjects. There is a balance to be struck here, but it is not a balance that must always and inevitably be loaded in favour of the protection of research subjects. They are entitled to our concern, respect, and protection to be sure, but they are no more entitled to it than are, say, the people whom-for example, HIV/AIDS or other major diseases are threatening and killing on a daily basis. vii It is surely unethical to stand by and watch three million people die this year of AIDS viii alone and avoid taking steps to prevent this level of loss, steps, which will not put lives at risk and which are taken only with the fully informed consent of those who participate. Fully informed consent is the best guarantor of the interests of research subjects. While not foolproof, residual dangers must be balanced against the dangers of not conducting the trial or the research, which include the massive loss of life that possibly preventable diseases cause. These residual dangers include the difficulties of constructing suitable consent protocols and supervising their administration in rural and isolated communities and in populations which may have low levels of formal education. An interesting limiting case is that in which the risks to research subjects are significant and the burdens onerous but where the benefits to other people are equally significant and large. In such a case the research is both urgent and moral but conscription would almost certainly not be appropriate because of the unfairness of conscripting any particular individual to bear such burdens in the public interest. That is not of course to say that individuals should not be willing to bear such burdens nor is it to say that it is not their moral duty so to do. In fact the history of science research is full of examples of people willing to bear significant risks in such circumstances, very often these have been the researchers themselves. (For one prominent example, that of Barry Marshall's work, in which he swallowed Heliobacter pylori bacteria, thereby poisoning himself, to test a bacterial explanation for peptic ulcers, see his website. 29 ) BENEFIT SHARING I have so far said nothing about the public/private divide in research funding and about the fact that much of the research we have referred to has been carried out in the private sector for profit. This has inevitably led both to a concentration on what the comedian Tom Lehrer memorably called "diseases of the rich" and on diseases and conditions where, for whatever reason, a maximum return on investment is to be expected. In this paper there is room simply to note that the duty to participate in research is not a duty to enable industry to profit from moral commitment or basic decency, and that fairness and benefit sharing as well as the widest and fairest possible availability of the products of research is, as we have seen, an essential part of the moral force of the arguments for the obligation to pursue research. Benefit sharing must therefore be part of any mechanisms for implementing the arguments of this paper. A NEW PRINCIPLE OF RESEARCH ETHICS A new principle of research ethics suggests itself as an appropriate addition to the Declaration of Helsinki: Biomedical research involving human subjects cannot legitimately be neglected, and is therefore both permissible and mandatory, where the importance of the objective is great and the risks to and the possibility of exploitation of fully informed and consenting subjects is small. For an earlier version of this principle applied in the context of genetics see my paper, Ethical genetic research on human subjects. Thus while fully informed consent and the continuing provision to research subjects of relevant information does not eliminate all possibility of exploitation, 30 it does reduce it to the point at which it could no longer be ethical to neglect the claims and the interests of those who may benefit from the research. It should be noted that it is fully informed consent, and the concern and respect for the individual that it signals, which severs all connection with the Nazi experiments and the concerns of Nuremberg, and which rebuts spurious comparisons with the Tuskegee study. 30 It is this recognition of the obligation to show equal concern and respect for all persons, which is the defining characteristic of justice. 31 The recognition that the obligation to do justice applies not only to research subjects but also to those who will benefit from the research must constitute an advance in thinking about international standards of research ethics. ON WHOM DOES THE OBLIGATION TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH FALL? The Declaration of Helsinki (paragraph 19) states: Medical research is only justified if there is a reasonable likelihood that the populations in which the research is carried out stand to benefit from the results of the research (WMA, 10 para 19). ME AND MY KIND It is sometimes claimed that where consent is problematic or, as perhaps with genetic research on archival material, where the sources of the material are either dead or cannot be traced, that research may be legitimate if it is for the benefit of the health needs of the subjects or of people with similar or related disorders. See-for example, the CIOMS guidelines (CIOMS, 11 guideline 6: p 22). The suggestion that research which is not directly beneficial to the patient be confined to research that will benefit the category of patients to which the subject belongs seems not only untenable but also offensive. What arguments sustain the idea that the most appropriate reference group is that of fellow sufferers from a particular disease, Alzheimer's-for example? Surely any moral obligation I have to accept risk or harm for the benefit of others is not plausibly confined to those others who are narrowly like me. This is surely close to claiming that research should be confined to others who are "black like me" or "English like me" or "God fearing like me"? The most appropriate category is surely "a person like me". (I make a distinction between humans and persons which is not particularly pertinent in this context but which explains my choice of terminology. 32, 33 ) CHILDREN AND THE INCOMPETENT What, however, about children? Do they have an obligation to participate in research and if they have, is a parent justified in taking it into account in making decisions for the child? If children are moral agents, and most of them, except very young infants are, then they have both obligations and rights; and it will be difficult to find any obligations that are more basic than the obligation to help others in need. There is therefore little doubt that children share the obligation argued for in this paper, to participate in medical research. A parent or guardian is accordingly obliged to take this obligation into account when deciding on behalf of her child and is justified in assuming that the person they are making decisions for is or would wish to be, a moral person who wants to or is in any event obliged to discharge his or her moral duties. If anything is presumed about what children would have wished to do in such circumstances the presumption should surely be that they would have wished to behave decently and would not have wished to be free riders. If we simply consult their best interests, (absent the possibility of a valid consent) then again, as this paper has shown, participation in research is, other things being equal, in their best interests. Because of the primacy of autonomy in the structure of this argument we should, however, be cautious about enrolling those who cannot consent in research and should never force resisting incompetent individuals to participate. It also follows from principles of justice and fairness that those who are not competent to consent should not be exploited as prime candidates for research. We should always therefore prefer autonomous candidates and only use those who cannot consent when such individuals are essential for the particular research contemplated and where competent individuals cannot, because of the nature of the research, be used-for example, because the research is into an illness which only affects children or those with a particular condition which affects competence. In those extreme cases in which we might contemplate mandatory participation the same will hold. The incompetent should only be used where competent individuals cannot be research subjects because of the nature of the research itself. INDUCEMENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN RESEARCH Before concluding, a word needs to be said about inducements to research. Most research ethics protocols and guidelines are antipathetic to inducements. The CIOMS guidelines-for example, state that if inducements to subjects are offered "[t]he payments should not be so large, however, or the medical services so extensive as to induce prospective subjects to consent to participate in the research against their better judgment (undue inducement)" (CIOMS, 11 guideline 7). However, the gloss the CIOMS document offers on this guideline is perhaps confused. It states: "Someone without access to medical care may or may not be unduly influenced to participate in research simply to receive such care" (CIOMS, 11 pp 28ff). The nub of the problem is the question what is it that makes inducement undue? If inducement is undue when it undermines "better judgment", then it cannot simply be the level of the inducement nor the fact that it is the inducement that makes the difference between participation and non-participation that undermines better judgment. If this were so, all jobs with attractive remuneration packages would constitute "undue" interference with the liberties of subjects and anyone who used their better judgment to decide whether a total remuneration package plus job was attractive would have been unduly influenced. ix Surely, it is only if things are very different that influence becomes undue. If, for example, it were true that no sane person would participate in the study and only incentives would induce them to disregard "better judgment" or "rationality", or if the study were somehow immoral, or participation was grossly undignified and so on, would there be a legitimate presumption of undue influence. Grant a number of assumptions: that research is well founded scientifically; that it has important objectives which will advance knowledge; that the subjects are at minimal risk, and that the inconvenience and so on, of participation is not onerous. Then surely it is not only in everyone's best interests that some people participate but also in the interests of those who do. Better judgment surely will not indicate that any particular person should not participate. Of course someone consulting personal interest and convenience might not participate "it's too much trouble, not worth the effort, rather inconvenient" and so on. However, removing the force of these sorts of objections with incentives is not undermining better judgment any more than is making employment attractive. 34- 36 Of course inducements may be undue in a different sense. If, for example, a research subject were a drug addict and she were to be offered the drug of her choice to participate, or subjects were blackmailed into participating in research, then in such cases we might regard the inducements as undue. It is important, however, to note that here the influence or inducement is undue, not because it is improper to offer incentives to participate, nor because participation is against the best interests of the subject, nor because the inducements are coercive in the sense that they are irresistible, but rather because the type of incentive offered is illegitimate or against the public interest or immoral in itself. If I offer you a million dollars to do something involving minimal risk and inconvenience, something that is good in itself, is in your interests, and will benefit mankind, my offer may be irresistible but it will not be coercive. If, however, I threaten you with torture unless you do the same thing, my act will be coercive even if you were going to do it whether or not I threatened you. I should be punished for my threat or blackmail or criminal offer of illegal substances, but surely you should none the less do the deed and your freedom to do it should not be curtailed because of my wrongdoing in attempting to force your hand in a particular way. The wrong is not that I attempted to force your hand but resides rather in the wrongness of the methods that I chose. This is the distinction between undue inducement and inducements which are undue. "Undue inducement" is the improper offering of inducements, improper because no inducements should be offered. It is this that it referred to in the various international protocols we have been examining and which is almost always wrongly understood and applied. "Inducements which are undue", refer to the nature of the inducement, not to the fact of it being offered at all. This is an important but much neglected distinction. Here it is the nature of the inducement that is undue rather than the fact of inducements of some sorts (even irresistible sorts) being offered. We can see that offering incentives, perhaps in the form of direct payment or tax concessions to people to participate in research, or-for example, to make archive samples available for research would not be unethical. We tend to forget that law and morality are methods of encouraging and indeed enforcing morality. Approval and inducements are others. All are acceptable if the conduct they promote is ethical and worthwhile. Where science research is both of these, encouragement and, as we have seen, enforcement are justifiable. CONCLUSION There is then a moral obligation to participate in medical research in certain contexts. This will obviously include minimally invasive and minimally risky procedures such as participation in biobanks, provided safeguards against wrongful use are in place. The argument concerning the obligation to participate in research should be compelling for anyone who believes there is a moral obligation to help others, and/or a moral obligation to be just and do one's share. Little can be said to those whose morality is so impoverished that they do not accept either of these two obligations. Furthermore we are justified in assuming that a person would want to discharge his or her moral obligations in cases where we have no knowledge about their actual preferences. This is a way of recognising them as moral agents. To do otherwise would be to impute moral turpitude as a default. Parents making decisions for their children are therefore fully justified in assuming that their child will wish to do that which is right, and not do that which is wrong. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author acknowledges the stimulus and support of the European Project (EU-RECA) sponsored by the European Commission, in the preparation of this paper. (DG-Reseach as part of the Science and Society research programme-6th framework.) FOOTNOTES i In this paper I use arguments developed for a paper I wrote with my colleague S?ren Holm. See our paper, Should we presume moral turpitude in our children? ; my chapter, Research on human subjects, exploitation and global principles of ethics, and my paper, Ethical genetic research. Recently these themes have been taken up by Martyn Evans. See his paper, Should patients be allowed to veto their participation in clinical research. ii Here the argument is restricted to research projects that are not merely aimed at producing knowledge. Unless an increase in knowledge is a good in itself (a question I will not discuss here) some realistic hope of concrete benefits to persons in the future is necessary for the validity of our arguments. iii It is perhaps also worth pointing out that there is a separate question about whether this moral obligation should be enforced on those who do not discharge it voluntarily. This is not a question I will discuss here. iv I owe this formulation of the interest I have in being a moral agent to S?ren Holm. v I use this term in a non-technical sense. vi Those over 65 may be excused if they wish. vii Of course the historical explanation of the Declaration of Helsinki and its concerns lies in the Nuremberg trials and the legacy of Nazi atrocities. We are, however, I believe, in real danger of allowing fear of repeating one set of atrocities to lead us into committing other new atrocities. viii Figures are for 2003, with an estimated five million people newly acquiring HIV in that same year. 28 ix The CIOMS gloss on their own guidelines creates a kind of Catch 22 which is surely unreasonable and unwarranted. Wherever the best proven diagnostic and therapeutic methods are guaranteed by a study in a context or for a population who would not normally expect to receive them, this guideline would be broken. The CIOMS guideline four therefore surely contradicts and violates not only the Declaration of Helsinki but also its own later guideline 14. x This obligation has been partly endorsed by the Hugo Ethics Committee in its Statement on Human Genetic databases. 37 However, like so many statements by august ethics committees the Hugo statement contains not a single argument to sustain its proposals or conclusions. This paper and those referred to in references 1, 2, 3, and 4 above provide the missing arguments. For a critique of the operation of national and international ethics committees see the introduction to my book, Bioethics. 38 REFERENCES 1. Harris J , Holm S. Should we presume moral turpitude in our children? Small children and consent to medical research. Theor Med 2003;24:121-9. [CrossRef] 2. Harris J . Research on human subjects, exploitation and global principles of ethics. In: Lewis ADE, Freeman M, eds. Current legal issue 3: law and medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000:379-99. 3. Harris J . Ethical genetic research. Jurimetrics 1999;40:77-93. 4. Evans HM. Should patients be allowed to veto their participation in clinical research? J Med Ethics 2004;30:198-203. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 5. Williams C , Kitzinger J, Henderson L. Envisaging the embryo in stem cell research: rhetorical strategies and media reporting of the ethical debates. Sociol Health Illn 2003;5:783-814. 6. (accessed 1 Apr 2004). 7. (accessed 1 Apr 2004). 8. (accessed 2 Apr 2004). 9. Harris J , Holm S. Extended lifespan and the paradox of precaution. J Med Philos 2002;27:355-68. [CrossRef] [Medline] 10. World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki . Adopted by the 52nd General Assembly, Edinburgh, Scotland Oct 2000: note of clarification of para 29 added by the WMA General Assembly, Washington, 2002. 11. Council for International Organisations of Medical Sciences, (CIOMS). Guidelines. Geneva: CIOMS, 2002. 12. Caplan AL. ed. When medicine went mad. Totowa: Humana Press, 1992. 13. Glover J . Humanity: a moral history of the twentieth century. London: Jonathan Cape, 1999, part 6. 14. Angell M . The ethics of clinical research in the Third World. N Engl J Med 1997;337:847. [Free Full Text] 15. Anon. Twenty years after: the legacy of the Tuskegee syphilis study. Hastngs Cent Rep 1992;22:29-40. 16. The Royal Liverpool Children's Inquiry Report . London: The Stationery Office, London, 2001. 17. Harris J . Law and regulation of retained organs: the ethical issues. Legal Studies 2002;22:527-49. 18. Harris J . Violence & responsibility. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. 19. Barry B . Justice as impartiality. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995:228. 20. Jonas H . Philosophical reflections on experimenting with human subjects. In: Freund PA, ed. Experimentation with human subjects. London: Allen and Unwin, 1972. 21. Hart HLA. Are there any natural rights? Oxford Review No 4. 1967;Feb. 22. Rawls J . A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. 23. Nozick R . Anarchy, state and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974:90. 24. Harris J . The ethics of clinical research with cognitively impaired subjects. Ital J Neurol Sci 1997;18:9-15. [Medline] 25. Harris J , Holm S. Why should doctors take risks? Professional responsibility and the assumption of risk. J R Soc Med 1997;90:625-9. [Medline] 26. Harris J . Ethical issues in geriatric medicine. In: Tallis RC, Fillett HM, eds. Textbook of geriatric medicine and gerontology [6th ed]. London: Churchill Livingstone, 2002. 27. Harris J . Organ procurement-dead interests, living needs. J Med Ethics 2003;29:130-5. [Free Full Text] 28. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AI. (accessed 3 Apr 2004). 29. Marshall B . http://www.vianet.net.au/~bjmrshll/ (accessed 3 Apr 2004). 30. Marshall B . (accessed 3 Apr 2004). 31. Dworkin R . Taking rights seriously. London: Duckworth, 1977. 32. Harris J . The value of life. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, ch 1. 33. Harris J . The concept of the person and the value of life. Kennedy Inst Ethics J 1999;9:293-308. [Medline] 34. Wilkinson M , Moore A. Inducement in research. Bioethics 1997;11. 35. McNeill P . Paying people to participate in research: why not? Bioethics 1997;11:390-7. [CrossRef] [Medline] 36. Harris J . Wonderwoman and Superman: the ethics of human biotechnology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, ch 6. 37. Hugo Ethics Committee. Statement on human genetic databases. (accessed 3 Apr 2004). 38. Harris J . ed. Bioethics: Oxford readings in philosophy series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001:1-25. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 14:57:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 10:57:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] J. Med. Ethics: The paradox of promoting choice in a collectivist system Message-ID: The paradox of promoting choice in a collectivist system J Med Ethics 2005;31:187 2005.4 _____ EDITORIAL Choice in a collectivist system A Oliver1 and J G Evans2 1 LSE Health and Social Care, London School of Economics and Political Science 2 Green College, Oxford University Correspondence to: Dr A Oliver LSE Health and Social Care, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; a.j.oliver at lse.ac.uk Original version received 31 January 2005 Accepted for publication 8 February 2005 _____ The notion of choice and its individualistic underpinnings is fundamentally inconsistent with the collectivist NHS ethos _____ Abbreviations: GP, general practitioner; NHS, National Health Service Keywords: choice; collectivism; individualism In both the policy and academic literatures, the issue of extending patient choice in the UK National Health Service (NHS) is currently a much discussed issue. From December 2005-for example, general practitioners (GPs) will be required to offer patients needing elective surgery the choice of five providers at the point of referral. Choice is often thought of as an intrinsically good thing; that is, that people value choice in and of itself. A probable underlying reason for this belief is that choice is tied in with the notion of individual autonomy, or freedom, a concept that looms large in ethical theories of the good. Beauchamp and Childress-for example, classified respect for autonomy-along with beneficence, non-maleficence and justice-as one of the four prima facie moral principles that most serious moral thinkers can agree upon, regardless of moral, religious, philosophical, cultural, and social background. The Beauchamp and Childress classification is instructive, as it recognises implicitly that unrestricted autonomy imposes the potential for negative externalities. Hence their requirement of non-maleficence. That is, people's freedoms ought to be curtailed in those circumstances where they pose harm to others, a clause that if ignored may lead to the strong exploiting the weak. The discourse on choice in the NHS, in particular by those in favour of extending choice, tends to somewhat overlook the very real possibility that offering greater choice, which may prove costly to implement and administer, will ultimately serve to benefit some and harm others. Also, despite the proposal that offering greater choice could be targeted at those who have been disadvantaged historically, there seems to be little safeguard against the risk that those who are most advantaged in terms of education, income, and social position will benefit to the detriment of others from the choice proposals. Arguments for and against greater choice in the NHS can be related explicitly to the tension between collectivism and individualism. The principles underlying the NHS are collectivist, and are intended to secure access to health care services irrespective of the socioeconomic or demographic circumstances of the individual. The key to this system is that everybody be treated fairly given available resources. The system is unfortunately but inevitably resource constrained, since the government can only target a proportion of the nation's wealth toward these services. If there were unlimited NHS resources, everybody's preferences could be satisfied fully, and it would be possible to allow everyone free, extensive choice. In reality, it is necessary to accept that the NHS cannot provide everything that each individual patient may want. Although an individual patient may gain greater satisfaction from being offered more choice, the opportunity costs of extending choice to this patient, arising from the reductions in resources available to other patients, may be detrimental to the overall social good. The individual patient is a poor judge of the institutional resource constraints, and thus the notion of choice and its individualistic underpinnings is fundamentally inconsistent with the collectivist NHS ethos. Offering everybody a greater degree of control over what they receive will thus create winners and losers, which, in any universal health care system, may well be deemed unacceptable. Collectivism minimises the chance that there will be a large differential between the strong and the weak, but this requires social decision makers (rather than individual patients), in the form of a GP, a primary care trust (PCT), and/or the Department of Health, to determine a fair allocation of health care with reference to the system's resource constraints. If we conclude that the system's founding solidarity based principles remain relevant we might thus be better advised to place emphasis on protecting the decision making capabilities of those imbued with social responsibilities, rather than be guided increasingly by individual patient choice. REFERENCES 1. Department of Health. Choice of hospitals Guidance for PCTs, NHS trusts and SHAs on offering patients choice of where they are treated. London: Department of Health, 2003. 2. Le Grand J . Motivation, agency, and public policy. Of knights and knaves, pawns and queens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 3. Le Grand J . Choice, voice and the reform of public services. LSE Health and Social Care Annual Lecture, London School of Economics London, 9 Dec 2004. 4. Beauchamp TL, Childress JF. Principles of biomedical ethics. [5th ed] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 5. Stevens S . Equity and choice: can the NHS offer both? A policy perspective. In: Oliver A, ed. Equity in health and health care. London: Nuffield Trust, 2003. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 15:01:31 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:01:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] J. Med. Ethics: In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect? Message-ID: In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect? J Med Ethics 2005;31:215-220 C Cameron and R Williamson Murdoch Children's Research Institute, University of Melbourne Department of Paediatrics, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia Correspondence to: Professor R Williamson The Dean's Ganglion, Faculty of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3070, Australia; r.williamson at unimelb.edu.au Original version received 4 September 2003 Revised version received 16 October 2003 Accepted for publication 2 November 2003 ABSTRACT For most of the 20th century, it was possible to regard fertilisation as the identifiable point when life begins, because this moment could be defined unequivocally and was thought to be the single most essential biological step in the establishment of a new human entity. Since the successful reproductive cloning of Dolly and other mammals, it is clear that any human cell has the potential to supply the full genome of an embryo, and hence a person, without going through fertilisation. At what point in time do such embryos acquire the respect accorded to human beings? The authors argue that the time of implantation is the most useful point at which the potential and the intention to create a new person are translated into reality, because from that point a new life develops. Implantation differentiates a somatic cell in culture (which is not due respect) from a human entity that has acquired its own identity and developmental potential. The authors examine the value of quickening or viability as alternative developmental stages in the process of acquiring respect for the Dolly embryo. _____ Keywords: cloning; fetus; abortion; viability; Dolly the sheep Before 1827, when Von Baer discovered and described the female ovum and scientists began to understand fertilisation, little was known about the biological steps that occurred to create the human embryo. Aristotle, whose teachings formed much of our traditional philosophical understanding of the origin of the human individual, believed that a male's sperm reacted with the woman's blood in her womb causing it to develop into a living being. If the sperm (seed) remained in the womb for seven days from intercourse, conception would take place following the setting of the menstrual blood mixed with the semen, to form a single living being. Aristotle pressed the comparison of the embryo to a seed sown in the ground whose parts are undifferentiated and in a state of potency until the first principle of growth becomes distinct when a shoot is put forward to provide nourishment. In the early embryo Aristotle found no evidence of any activity other than nourishment. He believed a nutritive or vegetative soul was acquired to enable nourishment and growth to take place. At around the 40th day, this nutritive soul was replaced by a "sensitive" soul when the organs required for sensation begin to develop, enabling the fetus to begin to enjoy animal life. Subsequently the "rational" soul appears, at a time not specified by Aristotle, from an undefined outside place, which completes the human form. Aristotle saw the "soul in man as the form of the body, the life-principle that enables matter to become a man in actuality." Aristotle's view remained unchallenged for about two thousand years. Where there were differences, as with Thomas Aquinas, these were relatively minor. The fundamental theory was Aristotelian. The details of the theological debate on the timing of ensoulment are dealt with in Norman Ford's book When did I begin? Conception of the human individual in history, philosophy and science, and in the 2002 Annual Report of the President of the Royal Society, Lord May. After the discovery of the mechanism underlying embryogenesis in 1827, philosophers questioned Aristotle's theory of delayed rational animation. By the end of the 19th century, most Christian philosophers agreed that ensoulment (the religious counterpoint to the acquisition of respect as an individual) occurred at the time of fertilisation. Many contemporary philosophers still wish to uphold the tradition of immediate rational ensoulment from the time of conception. It has the great advantage of being simultaneously definitive and simple. Unfortunately, it no longer can be regarded as scientifically correct. RELIGION The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud do not actually say when life begins, although each has been the subject of various interpretations. Within each religion, there is a wide range of views varying from radical to conservative. The advent of IVF posed a challenge to views that relied on definite intervals between fertilisation, implantation, quickening, and birth, as conception could occur outside the womb and implantation could be delayed for months or years. This uncertainty actually caused a firm reinforcement of the view among many religious philosophers that fertilisation is the critical step in creating a new human individual. Let us begin by looking briefly at the views of a number of different religions, and a scientific (non-religious) and a modern philosophical view. Catholicism The traditional Catholic position is that life begins when the spiritual soul is infused into the human subject, which is at fertilisation. From that moment "every human life at every stage is equally worthy of protection" and its rights as a person should be recognised, including its right to life. In regard to embryos created by fertilisation in vitro, they are also "to be considered human creatures and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence". 1, Within the Catholic Church there are differing views on when life begins. "Many eminent Catholic moralists, both in previous centuries and today, particularly those relying on Aristotelian categories, have subscribed to theories of "delayed" or "mediate" animation-that is, that the soul is infused into the human subject at points later than fertilisation, with the corollary that individual human life and personhood do not begin until a later stage in the development of the human embryo." This less traditional view of delayed animation may enable recognition and respect for an embryo created other than by fertilisation. However it is difficult to envisage how traditional Catholics would view such an embryo/baby. Islamism Many Muslim scholars believe that ensoulment of the fetus does not occur until the fourth month of pregnancy (after 120 days), which is around the time quickening occurs. Such belief is based on passages from the Koran as well as narrations from the prophet Mohammed. The Prophet states "Each of you possesses his own formation within his mother's womb, first as a drop of matter for forty days, then as a blood clot for forty days, then as a blob for forty days, and then the angel is sent to breathe life into him." However other Muslims interpret the Koran differently, and believe the "hanging embryo stage" starts about six days after fertilisation when the embryo attaches to the inner lining of the uterus. A human being is created from this tiny hanging embryo, and such individuals are entitled to protection. Buddhism Buddha provided that three conditions are required to be present for human life to begin: (1) intercourse must take place; (2) it must take place in "due season", that is, at the appropriate time in the menstrual cycle, and (3) the spirit of the being seeking rebirth must be at hand. If all three conditions are present the descent of the intermediate being may occur and a person will be created. Such events usually occur at the latest at the time of syngamy. Based on this traditional view, Buddhists do not "object to the technique of IVF in itself, since it merely assists nature in achieving its normal ends." After a minor detour nature is once again back on course, and the chain of normal development will resume. However they do not approve of the methods used in IVF. From these views, it is hard to speculate on what the attitude of Buddhists would be to an embryo created other than by fertilisation. Judaism "Jewish law does not regard a fertilised egg as a person before it is implanted in the womb" and processes invisible to the human eye are not forbidden by Jewish law. Until the embryo is implanted the fertilised egg does not have the ethical status of a person. Many Jewish leaders make a fundamental distinction between the embryo in the earlier and later periods of pregnancy. Thus an embryo created other than by fertilisation would probably be recognised under Jewish law. As in Aristotelian philosophy, 40 days is postulated as a significant time in the development of the embryo. 10 It is interesting to note that this is the time of closure of the neural tube, a time that has been interpreted as the beginning of a capacity for sentience in the embryo. Scientific view Most scientists do not believe that a new human life can be defined as beginning at any particular moment, but see it as evolving gradually during embryonic development. This is particularly true if the Darwinist view of evolution is taken into account, because human development in utero encapsulates the processes of development for many other species. Many scientists see the appearance of the primitive streak in the embryo at 14 days as an important stage in development. "Before fourteen days the embryo, or pre-embryo as it was scientifically known, was a loose cluster of first two, then four, then sixteen cells, undifferentiated. An undifferentiated cell could develop into any of the types of cell that go to make up the human body, and some of them would not become part of the embryo at all, but would form the placenta." 11 After 14 days, the primitive streak appears, twinning is no longer a possibility, and the cells develop into particular lineages. >From this stage it is no longer legally possible to carry out research on human embryos, either in the UK or Australia. 12 Because the appearance of the primitive streak corresponds to the beginning of neural (brain) function, many scientists will not carry out experiments on embryos older than 14 days. Although scientists regard development as a continuum, many argue that there is an increment of respect due to a human embryo at 14 days, and progressively after that time. Philosophical view One school of modern philosophy does not give the embryo moral status or respect as a person until the embryo, fetus, or child reaches a stage in its development at which it attains some recognisable intellectual ability, capacity, or brain function. "The question must be, what should lead us to accept the embryo or the foetus or the neonate or the child or anything at all as having that range of qualities that makes them persons." 13 The answer given by Harris is "... a person will be any being capable of valuing its own existence." 13 Michael Tooley believes "An organism possesses a serious right to life only if it possesses the concept of a self as a continuing subject of experiences and other mental states, and believes that it is itself such a continuing entity." 14 Savulescu does not think we begin to exist as people or "morally relevant entities" until our brain begins to function (consciousness begins) which is at least at 20 weeks of fetal gestation. 15 Commentary Since discovering the scientific beginnings of human life, that embryos are created by fertilisation of an egg by a sperm, the Catholic Church has had a great interest in and written extensively about when human life begins, or at least when it deserves respect, particularly in the context of IVF embryos. It is perhaps ironic that of all the Churches, only the Catholics attempted, towards the end of the 19th century, to accommodate the new science of embryology in its doctrine, and because of this they now find themselves expressing conservative views. Other religions that have not stated their religious views as dogma have left themselves more flexibility in dealing with mammalian cloning, and an embryo created other than by fertilisation will be more readily accepted by members of such religions. Some of the more liberal Catholic theologians, such as Dr Norman Ford, have adopted a more contemporary view on when life begins based on science, philosophy, history, and theology. Dr Ford, focusing more on the scientific development of the embryo, believes a human individual is not formed until the appearance of the primitive streak, around 14 days; although he advocates that human life should be respected from conception due to its potential-regardless of whether a human individual or person has already been formed. 16 However, it is difficult to place this in the context of a doctrine that equates the time of fertilisation with the time of acquisition of personhood. The view outlined above from some philosophers also poses problems by disregarding the issue of potential. The problems that arise in overuse of potential are clear from study of the Catholic position. On the other hand, ignoring potential implies that only a fully sentient human being is deserving of rights and respect, and this does not accord with legal or ethical constructs in most societies, even from those without religious views. WHAT HAS DOLLY CHANGED? Dolly the cloned sheep was created by fusing the nucleus of a mammary gland cell from an adult sheep with another sheep's enucleated egg. Dolly was born on 5 July 1996. In theory, the same process can create a human embryo. As of 2003, there are no data that a human being has been successfully created by this method, but most scientists agree it is possible in principle. Cloning a mammalian embryo from a somatic cell (any cell of the body, other than a reproductive cell) ("Dolly cloning") does not use the genomes (genetic material) of either a sperm or an egg. At present, an enucleated egg cell is often used as a nurturing environment for the somatic cell nucleus that provides the genetic material for the new embryo, but the egg cell is a facilitative incubator and does not provide meaningful genetic input to the new individual. It is already possible to use a frog egg to nurture and activate the nucleus from an adult human cell and switch on genes that are characteristic of human embryonic stem cells. 17 It is likely that it will only be a few years, if that, before scientists create a human embryo from the nucleus of a somatic cell without any egg or sperm components at all. It has recently been shown that fusion of an adult cell with an embryonic stem cell also gives a potential embryo with a genome from the adult. This raises the question: for a "Dolly clone", because there is no fertilisation, when does "life begin"? When does the embryo/fetus/baby acquire respect? So what has changed? * Fertilisation is no longer required to create an embryo; * A sperm is no longer required to create an embryo; * An egg may not be required to create an embryo; * One or more embryos may be created that have the same DNA as another living individual; * As with IVF: 1. it is possible to create an embryo in a petri dish; and 2. the embryo in a petri dish may be: 3. implanted in the womb; 4. frozen; 5. used for scientific experimentation; 6. discarded; or 7. used in any other manner, whether or not legally and/or morally acceptable, such as for therapy, or for human cloning (which is illegal in the UK and Australia). At present scientists are only able to allow an embryo to develop in a Petri dish for approximately 14 days. Unless successfully implanted in the womb, the embryo will not develop and will die. However, let us consider the implications if, in the future, an embryo created other than by fertilisation can be developed and grown outside the womb past this stage. It is even possible to consider an artificial uterine environment that can sustain an embryo until the stage of "viability" (until it can survive independently). For such a human life, many important ethical issues will arise, including the issue of respect. Although many of the issues we discuss will apply in this context, we do not specifically address the issue of respect for such a life. We are discussing the events that are with us at present or likely to arise in the near future. Embryos can be used for purposes other than reproduction. Since the passing of Australian Commonwealth legislation in 2002, it is legally permissible to use embryos (created before 5 April 2002) which are surplus to needs for IVF, for approved research. 18 Before addressing the question of when an embryo created other than by fertilisation acquires respect, we will look at whether or not such an embryo falls within the definition of "an embryo". What is an "embryo"? An embryo is traditionally thought of as an unborn animal or human in the early stages of development which was created by fertilisation. It is now possible to create an embryo other than by fertilisation. Does such an embryo still fall within the definition of "an embryo" because it has been created differently? Traditional Catholics have difficulty viewing such "embryos" as human embryos as they are not formed by fertilisation, which since 1870 has been the definition of the timing of ensoulment. Indeed, until Dolly-cloning, most people would have assumed that every human embryo (including IVF embryos) would be created by fertilisation, as until that time a human being could not be created in any other way. An "embryo" is defined in the dictionary as "an animal in the early stages of growth before hatching; a developing unborn human during the first eight weeks after conception ... something as yet undeveloped". 19 This definition implies that an embryo is created by fertilisation, by reference to "eight weeks after conception". The New Oxford Dictionary of English includes in its definition of an embryo "an unborn human offspring especially in the first eight weeks from conception, after implantation but before all the organs are developed." 20 This definition also envisages the embryo as having been conceived and defines it as being "after implantation". If an embryo is defined as only being the product of fertilisation of an egg by a sperm, then the product of Dolly-cloning is not an embryo even though it might give rise to a fetus, a child, and an adult in time. This is clearly nonsense. A more modern definition is provided by Norman Ford who defines a human embryo as "a totipotent single-cell, group of contiguous cells, or a multicellular organism which has the inherent actual potential to continue species specific ie typical, human development, given a suitable environment". 16 An embryo created other than by fertilisation may develop into a human being given the right environment and would have all the characteristics of an embryo created by fertilisation. Such an embryo falls within Norman Ford's definition, which we adopt in this paper. A European Committee looking into the legality of human cloning was of the view "if illicitly a human clone were fathered [sic], he or she would be fully human and none of the arguments ... presented could be used to challenge his or her human dignity". 21 We suggest that should an embryo be created other than by fertilisation and be implanted in a womb with the potential to develop to a fetus and a child, it is an embryo, the only difference being the manner in which it was created. A. WHEN DOES AN EMBRYO CREATED OTHER THAN BY FERTILISATION BEGIN TO ACQUIRE RESPECT/PERSONHOOD? Respect "Respect" has both an objective and a subjective component, the relevance or importance of which may vary depending on how and in what context it is used. In medicine, living human beings are accorded a significant level of respect that is not accorded to dead human beings, but even this is tempered in terms of value judgments on quality of life. In biology, greater respect is accorded to individuals who reproduce at a higher rate and contribute disproportionately to the survival and fitness of the species. In law, respect is treated as if objective, depending upon the circumstances in each particular case and what is reasonable and acceptable; not as much importance is given to variation between individuals. Modern philosophers see people earning respect only when they matter morally. For a family member, respect may be subjective and accorded irrespective of personal values, on the basis of a relationship alone. While recognising these ambiguities, we are subsuming all of these views into a single word, "respect", in this analysis. Respect may be accorded to embryos on each or all of a variety of criteria, depending on their philosophical or religious views and their relationship to the embryo, including: 1. the development status of the embryo; 2. the embryo's potential; 3. the value of the embryo to other people or to themselves. When does a Dolly embryo acquire respect? Over the centuries a number of different positions have emerged as to when an embryo deserves respect as a human being. Since 1870, traditional Catholics have held the view that it acquires full respect at fertilisation. However, for embryos created by nuclear transfer in a laboratory, fertilisation does not occur and is not relevant. The Dolly embryo is no different genetically when in the laboratory from the somatic cell from which it is derived. It only acquires ethical value when both the intention and the capability for development into a person are simultaneously realised. The most important stage in the development of an embryo created outside the womb, such as a Dolly embryo, is implantation, as without successful implantation the embryo cannot develop into a human being. Its potential to develop is theoretical until it is implanted; on implantation, it becomes real. Upon the successful act of implantation the embryo will begin to acquire respect, because after implantation development takes place (at least in principle) which, if uninterrupted, leads to the birth of a human being. The embryo is also at the stage when the primitive streak appears, the cells begin to differentiate, there is no longer any chance of twinning, and the embryo thereafter develops into a recognisable fetus. As Ford says, this may be regarded as a biological correlate of the definitive stage of individuality. Until implantation with the Dolly embryo, there is no clarity as to what the future will be of the cells in culture that could become an embryo. After implantation, there are no reasons why any embryo, whatever its origin, should be treated any differently from an embryo at the same stage created by fertilisation. It may be that the Dolly embryo is at high risk of spontaneous abortion, or of birth handicap, but in principle any embryo faces these risks at some level or other. Does an embryo in culture deserve any respect if its future is unknown? This is a difficult question. On the one hand, embryos created by IVF of an egg by a sperm and allowed to develop to the eight cell stage before implantation, with the intention to create a pregnancy, have always been treated with respect by doctors and scientists. This respect extends to IVF embryos that are used for experimentation. This latter case is comparable to the respect accorded to human cadavers by medical students in anatomy lessons. 22 Most people would not accord this respect to sperm or egg cells before fertilisation. Somatic cells in culture are now comparable to IVF embryos in that they can also give rise to embryos if treated in a particular way and then implanted in a womb. However, somatic cells are constantly dividing, generating new cells, and dying, and it would be both unscientific and counterintuitive to accord respect to such cells. We conclude that IVF embryos are entitled to some respect, if only modest, "because they are alive and because they are regarded by others as morally valuable", 22 for example, by gamete donors. However, cells in culture from an individual are not due this respect even if they are being prepared for use with the intention of implantation so as to create an individual (something that is illegal in Australia and in many other countries). It is logical to regard implantation as marking the beginning of life for embryos created other than by fertilisation. Indeed, "some biologists suggest that we should regard implantation itself as conception." For embryos created other than by fertilisation, such a suggestion makes sense. B. ACQUISITION OF RESPECT AFTER IMPLANTATION As discussed above, after implantation there is little difference between the development in the womb of an embryo created by fertilisation and a Dolly embryo. The only difference may be the higher risk of abortion or birth handicap for the Dolly embryo. For embryos created by fertilisation, implantation is also a very important stage in their development as without successful implantation they will not develop further. Implantation is followed by numerous important stages, including development of the primitive streak (immediately after implantation at around 14 days), fetal movement in the womb (quickening, at approximately 15-20 weeks), brain life and the capacity for sentience, viability, birth, and self awareness (post birth). 23 Different religious and professional groups each have views as to which is the most important stage. Viability is the criterion favoured by many neonatologists and gynaecologists, particularly as a criterion for the time when abortion is no longer acceptable, 23 but even this view is not universal. We believe that it is no longer possible to identify a single time (such as fertilisation) at which an embryo acquires respect as a future person. In view of the new technologies, the process of development of the individual can be regarded as beginning at implantation. This would clearly state that cells in culture that are not used for implantation and have not been manipulated to form an embryo, do not deserve respect. This is important as it is clear that every cell in any adult can (in principle) give rise to an embryo if treated in a particular way and implanted. It has the additional advantage of distinguishing clearly between cells in culture in laboratories (which have the theoretical potential to become people but no opportunity to do so), and cells implanted in a womb that have acquired the potential to develop into an infant without further intervention. After implantation, when the process of acquiring respect begins, the embryo acquires more respect as the pregnancy progresses, with quickening being an important stage. Respect continues to increase until viability. From the time of viability (currently approximately 26 weeks in most first world countries) the embryo should be entitled to full respect as a human being. Quickening "Quickening" is the time when the pregnant woman can feel the fetus move inside her womb. This usually takes place 15-20 weeks in the first pregnancy and earlier in subsequent pregnancies. Not all pregnancies that follow implantation proceed to a successful outcome; as many as one in three abort spontaneously. Perhaps for this reason, it appears that the mother's respect for the embryo/fetus gradually increases over time, as she becomes more aware of the developing fetus and more confident that it will proceed to term and become a baby. Quickening occurs shortly after the end of the first trimester, at which time the risk of spontaneous abortion decreases significantly. The mother's increase in respect can be equated with the increase in value she gives to the life of the fetus. "For the question about moral significance, the question that is, when do embryos morally matter, is quite obviously one that must be answered by judgment and decision, according to a particular moral standpoint. It is not a question of fact but a question of value. How much should we value human life in its early stages?" 24 The value a mother places on the growing fetus increases as the pregnancy proceeds and the fetus develops. Modern ultrasound equipment and advances in modern science also enable doctors and thus parents to know a lot more about the developing fetus. "It is now possible to detect many lethal fetal abnormalities with certainty by about 16 weeks gestation". A woman's anxiety about the risk of having an abnormal fetus is reduced by prenatal screening. If the screening gives a normal result, this provides reassurance of a probable healthy outcome to the pregnancy. The significance of quickening is implicit in the views of the Muslim and Jewish religions. Historically, in England, "before the introduction of Lord Ellenborough's Act (1803) it was not a crime under English common law to carry out an abortion before quickening, which was described as "... the time when 'the infant is able to stir in the mother's womb', and which was generally around the fourteenth week of pregnancy". 25 Many doctors are reluctant to perform an abortion after first trimester, signalling an increase in respect for the developing fetus. In England, Scotland, and Wales abortion is permitted by law when two doctors decide "that the pregnancy has not exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk ..." 26 Despite this freedom, almost 90% of abortions are performed before 13 weeks and fewer than 2% take place after 19 weeks. 27 "A growing number of doctors who are comfortable with early abortion decline to provide, or even refer, for later procedures. Many NHS hospitals have established arbitrary time limits of 12 or 14 weeks ..." 28 beyond which they are unable or unwilling to carry out terminations of pregnancy. Although quickening is an important stage in the development of the fetus, with a significant increase in respect for the fetus both from the mother/parents and doctors, it is variable in timing between individuals. The fact that no easily defined scientific event takes place makes it difficult to give it a high degree of importance as a benchmark for the acquisition of respect. Viability Viability is "the stage of fetal development at which the fetus can survive independently of the pregnant woman, given suitable intensive care". 23 It is currently as early as 22 weeks in well equipped centres, depending upon the birth weight and developmental stage of the fetus. It should be noted that although a fetus can survive after intensive care from this age, the outcomes are not always good, and many neonatal units are reluctant to embark on resuscitation until 26 or 27 weeks of pregnancy. Although the fetus can survive outside the uterus, no longer dependent on its mother, its survival is totally dependent on technology. This is also the time when consciousness (in terms of responsiveness to environmental stimuli) begins. 15 "Viability is the criterion favoured by many who work in the field of neonatology, and also by some gynaecologists who accept abortion but who also believe that at some stage in their development fetuses acquire a right to life after which they should not be aborted." 23 John Wyatt, a neonatologist, believes the UK law that allows late abortions, "is morally and practically unsustainable". 29 He also notes that some parents are horrified when the option of late term abortion is explored. As gestation progresses past the earliest stage of viability, the unborn fetus is increasingly respected. As it moves from dependent to independent and acquires the ability to survive outside the uterus, it must be regarded, legally and ethically, as a legal person entitled to the full set of rights of any other individual. 23 If it is viable, it is arguable that it should have the same respect as a neonate. Some newborn full term babies are fully dependent on technology, requiring high maintenance and special care to survive. We do not believe that a fetus generated by cloning technology should be regarded differently to a fetus conceived by the union of an egg and sperm. In Australia, the law only recognises a baby having rights as a person at birth. A child in the womb is only recognised as a person when it is "completely delivered from the body of its mother and has a separate and independent existence ... and is living by virtue of the functioning of its own organs". 30 This would include a baby dependent on technology. It is difficult for an embryo or fetus to have any rights while it is in the womb. If it is born with a disability or deformity that is caused by an accident while in the womb, it may have a cause of action in negligence against the wrongdoer once it is born. 31 However it is debatable whether a child should have a claim for a prenatal injury against a parent. Otherwise the child may have a claim against its mother for indiscretions during pregnancy, such as heavy smoking, drinking, or taking drugs. Even worse would be claims for "wrongful life" against one's parents, or indeed against a doctor, or the manufacturer of a defective batch of contraceptives. 32 In some Australian states the offence of child destruction prohibits the intentional destruction of the life of a child capable of being born alive. "Capable of being born alive" is not defined, although there is "a presumption that a child is capable of being born alive at 28 weeks gestation, or it could be earlier". 33 To date very few, if any, prosecutions have been brought under this legislation. The burden of proving a child was capable of being born alive and the "intent" to "unlawfully" destroy the life of the child would be difficult. Despite the law, from an ethical point of view, many doctors feel that they owe some form of "professional duty of care to the (unborn) fetus". 29 If the fetus is viable and capable of surviving outside of the womb and having a "separate and independent existence" from its mother, it deserves the same respect as a child who is born, regardless of how it was created. CONCLUSION In Australia and most other western countries it is illegal for an embryo to be created by manipulating a somatic cell ("Dolly-cloning"), by fusing an adult cell with an embryonic stem cell, or by any process other than fertilisation, and allowing that embryo to develop. 34 However the successful cloning of Dolly and other mammals has shown that cloning of human beings is possible. Regardless of the law, it is only a matter of time before such human cloning occurs. Such a person, although cloned, has the same ethical status as any other person, and would be due all the rights and dignity of any person in our society-legally and ethically. Respect for a cloned embryo will only begin when the embryo is successfully implanted in the womb. Before then, somatic cells in culture would not be due respect (even though they have the theoretical potential to become a clone). It is the successful act of implantation that gives a group of cells the ability to progress to a living human without further scientific intervention. Respect will gradually increase throughout the pregnancy as the embryo grows and develops with nourishment and the right environment, and as its prospects of being born alive and healthy increase. Although quickening is an important time for both parents and doctors, as both become more confident and reassured about the health of the child to be born, it is essentially subjective. Viability is the time at which the embryo acquires the same respect as a newborn, its legal rights being realised upon birth. Once the child is born any time after viability, it is capable of surviving on its own-separately and independently of its mother-and in law it is recognised as a person. REFERENCES 1. Ford NM. When did I begin? Conception of the human individual in history, philosophy and science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 2. The Royal Society, Anniversary Address 2002 (issued December 2002) . 3. Tonti-Filippini N . The Catholic Church and reproductive technology. In Kuhse H, Singer P, eds. Bioethics: an anthology. Blackwell Philosophy Anthologies 1993. 4. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation-replies to certain questions of the day. Vatican City: Vatican Polyglot Press, 1987:18. 5. Uren WJ. How is it right to treat the human embryo? The embryo and stem cell research. PACIFICA, 2003;16No 2, :2. 6. Sahih al-Bukhari .(d 870), Sahih al-Muslim (875). The Book of Destiny [qadar]. In Testimony of Abdulaziz Sachedina, PhD on Islamic perspectives on research with human embryonic stem cells. Ethical issues in human stem cell research, religious perspectives. Rockville, MD: NBAC, 2000;III:G1-G6. 7. Khalifa AA, Strickland C. Islamic perspective on pro life issues. Available at (accessed 17 February 2005). 8. Keown D . Buddhism and bioethics. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. 9. Genetic engineering: genetic manipulation. . 10. Jakobovits I . Jewish medical ethics: a comparative and historical study of the Jewish religious attitude to medicine and its practice. New York: Bloch Publishing Company Inc, 274, 1962. 11. Warnock M . Making babies. Is there a right to have children?. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 35, 2002. 12. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, UK and Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, Commonwealth of Australia . 13. Harris J . The value of life: an introduction to medical ethics. London: Routledge, 1985. 14. Tooley M . Abortion and infanticide. In Singer P, ed. Philosophy and Public Affairs 2. Reprinted in Applied ethics: Oxford readings in philosophy, 1972;1:82. 15. Savulescu J . Abortion, embryo destruction and the future of value argument. J Med Ethics 2002;28:133-5. [Free Full Text] 16. Ford N . The prenatal person: ethics from conception to birth. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 17. Byrne JA, Simonsson S, Western PS, et al. Nuclei of adult mammalian somatic cells are directly reprogrammed to oct-4 stem cell gene expression by amphibian oocytes. Curr Biol 2003;13:1206-13. [CrossRef] [Medline] 18. Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002, s21(3)(b) . 19. The New Penguin English Dictionary . 20. The New Oxford Dictionary of English Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998. 21. Hansen B , Schotsmans P. Stem cell research: a moral theological and ethical interpretation. 8. In: Lectures in Medicine. Belgian Faculties of Medicine, Bruxelles, 2003. 22. Meyer MJ, Nelson LJ. Respecting what we destroy: reflections on human embryo research. Hastings Cent Rep 2001;31:16-23. [Medline] 23. Gillon R . Is there a 'new ethics of abortion'? J Med Ethics 2001;27 (Suppl II) :ii5-9. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 24. Warnock M . Do human cells have rights? Bioethics 1987;1:1-14. [Medline] 25. Parliament of Australia, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Abortion Law in Australia, Research Paper 1 1998-99:8. Available at . 26. Hewson B . Reproductive autonomy and the ethics of abortion. J Med Ethics 2001;27 (Suppl II) :ii10-14. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 27. Greenwood J . The new ethics of abortion. J Med Ethics 2001;27 (Suppl II) :ii2-4. [Free Full Text] 28. Furedi A . Issues for service providers: a response to points raised. J Med Ethics 2001;27 (Suppl II) :ii28-32. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 29. Wyatt J . Medical paternalism and the fetus. J Med Ethics 27 (Suppl II) :ii5-20. 30. Hutty Rv. [1953] VLR 338; [1953] ALR 689, Barry J; statutory definitions to the same effect have been provided by the Criminal Codes of Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia, and also by s20 of the Crimes Act (NSW). 31. Watt v Rama [1972] VR 353. 32. Savulescu J . Is there a "right not to be born"? Reproductive decision making, options and the right to information. J Med Ethics 2002;28:65-7. [Free Full Text] 33. Skene L . Law and medical practice: rights, duties, claims and defenses. Butterworths 1998:269. 34. Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 (Cth) s13 . From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 15:03:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:03:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] J. Med. Ethics: The moral status of the embryo post-Dolly Message-ID: The moral status of the embryo post-Dolly J Med Ethics 2005;31:221-225 GENETICS Catherine Stanton and John Harris School of Law, University of Manchester, UK Correspondence to: John Harris John.m.harris at man.ac.uk Original version received 24 March 2004 Accepted for publication 3 April 2004 ABSTRACT Cameron and Williamson have provided a provocative and timely review of the ethical questions prompted by the birth of Dolly. The question Cameron and Williamson seek to address is "In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect?". Their initial discussion sets the scene by providing a valuable overview of attitudes towards the embryo, summarising various religious, scientific, and philosophical viewpoints. They then ask, "What has Dolly changed?" and identify five changes, the first being that fertilisation is no longer required to create an embryo. Following this analysis they then ask when an embryo created other than by fertilisation begins to acquire respect. This paper explores the ethical and legal issues highlighted by Cameron and Williamson's paper. _____ Abbreviations: CNR, cell nuclear replacement; HFEA, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990; IVF, in vitro fertilisation Keywords: embryo; moral status; cell nucleus replacement; in vitro fertilisation; Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act Cloning has hit the headlines once again, with news that scientists in South Korea have used the techniques developed to clone Dolly the sheep to create what are almost certainly cloned human embryos. The post-Dolly era has created new ethical dilemmas, such as whether it is morally right for a parent to clone themselves to create a child. However, we will argue that the issues Cameron and Williamson raise are not novel, but are nevertheless important in the post-Dolly era. Their concern to establish the respect due to a cloned embryo raises familiar issues surrounding the moral status of the embryo. Similarly, their discussion of the fact that fertilisation can no longer be seen as the starting point of the development of a human being highlights the ongoing need to alter our terminology and understanding in the light of scientific developments. The question Cameron and Williamson seek to address is "In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect?". Their initial discussion sets the scene by providing a valuable overview of attitudes towards the embryo, summarising various religious, scientific, and philosophical viewpoints. They then ask, "What has Dolly changed?" and identify five changes, the first being that fertilisation is no longer required to create an embryo. Following this analysis they then ask when does an embryo created other than by fertilisation begins to acquire respect. A recurrent difficulty with Cameron and Williamson's discussion is their use of the term "respect". As they correctly state, respect is commonly accorded to embryos on various grounds, whether due to their value to others, their potential, or their developmental status. However, a moral analysis requires that we provide justifiable reasons for these grounds. In so doing, we understand the reasons for respect and thus the form that this respect will take. Those who, on religious grounds, consider life has moral significance from the first development of an embryo, will consider the embryo should be accorded the respect a person should receive. Others, who attribute moral status only to human beings able to value their own existence, may still accord an embryo respect, although perhaps neither the level, nor the form of respect they would accord a rational human being. However, the account the authors give has virtually no moral content. It is not clear why the authors believe that respect should be owed. What they attempt to do is to try to find stages in development, which, in cloning or other radical new technologies, are significantly analogous to the stages in normal sexual reproduction where people are disposed to accord respect. But there are huge problems with this approach. Since they have no account to give, at least not in this paper, of whatever it is in virtue of which respect is owed, the juggling with stages is in a sense meaningless. What matters ethically is not whether or not people do accord this sort of respect but whether or not they are justified in so doing. Initially, they suggest that intention is significant to determining when a cloned embryo should be afforded respect. They suggest that a cloned embryo, "only acquires ethical value when both the intention and capability for development into a person are simultaneously realised". However, it is not clear why intention is relevant to the moral status of the entity in question and hence to the respect that ought to be accorded to it. Imagine two in vitro embryos, one was created with the intention and the opportunity of implanting it into a uterus in the hope that it would result in a baby and eventually a normal adult human being. The other was destined to be a research embryo with no intention to implant and no planned opportunity of achieving its potential. Unfortunately, a negligent Australian lab assistant mixes the embryos up and, horror of horrors, the scientists come back to the bench and cannot remember or discover which was which. There is clearly a moral imperative to treat one of them with respect and not the other. The embryos are, in all other respects similar and since they are clones, we will assume that their genetic composition and stage of development is also exactly similar. The idea that one of them be owed respect and the other not, or that a simple decision as to which was going to be implanted would accord one of them respect that the other would by that decision lack, is bizarre if not incoherent. Consider that both these embryos are then implanted "to be on the safe side". What does the "intention" that accompanies one of them and not the other add to its moral status? In the next paragraph the authors change tack slightly and say : The most important stage in the development of an embryo created outside the womb, such as a Dolly embryo, is implantation, as without successful implantation the embryo cannot develop into a human being. Its potential to develop is theoretical until it is implanted; on implantation, it becomes real. Upon the successful act of implantation the embryo will begin to acquire respect as following implantation development takes place (at least in principle) which, if uninterrupted, leads to the birth of a human being. This is a different idea and one which has more mileage to it. However this too has problems. The first relates to technology. Imagine the perfection of ectogenesis, the artificial womb. In this era research embryos and embryos destined for personhood are all developed in artificial wombs and will never be "implanted". Which has the greater moral status and why? The authors' argument also embraces the potentiality argument. It is saying that once the entity is embarked upon a developmental path which could lead to the creation of a morally important embryo, it has moral importance because of that fact. There are many well known objections to this form of the potentiality argument. The main problem is, of course, that eggs are not omelettes, acorns are not oak trees and we all share one important piece of inexorable potential, we are all potentially dead meat, but that does not accord any of us a reason to treat us now as if we were already dead meat. So we need a different sort of argument, an argument that tries to say something about what the embryo is-rather than what it might become. There are of course sophisticated potentiality arguments that require different considerations for their rebuttal but since the authors do not mention them, they will not be addressed here. The authors then move on to consider the status of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) embryos. They conclude that they "are entitled to some respect if only modest 'because they are alive and because they are regarded by others as morally valuable'". They consider, however, that "cells in culture from an individual are not due this respect even if they are being prepared for use with the intention of implantation so as to create an individual". Their argument thus appears to grant IVF embryos respect but not embryos created by a process such as cell nuclear replacement (CNR). Yet the authors do not, as argued, provide any clear justification for this moral distinction. They accord IVF embryos respect on the grounds that they are regarded as morally valuable by others. Yet, could not the same principle apply to embryos created by CNR? The Catholic Church has condemned cloning. However, it has been suggested by a Catholic writer that a cloned human embryo would have the same moral status as an embryo created by IVF. As Ford has commented : It makes no moral difference whether the embryo is naturally conceived, produced through in vitro fertilization, or is a cloned human embryo. Once formed, a human embryo is ethically inviolable. After discussing implantation, the authors then assert that 14 : After implantation, when the process of acquiring respect begins, the embryo acquires more respect as the pregnancy progresses, with quickening being an important stage. Respect continues to increase until viability. In expanding their view that respect for the embryo increases during pregnancy, the authors refer to the growing value a mother may place on the fetus and, conversely, the reluctance of doctors to perform an abortion after the first trimester. However, while such matters may demonstrate the value accorded to the embryo, they do not articulate the underlying reasons for that value and hence provide justification for such judgements. Is it simply increased probability of survival as an adult? If so, that will vary between rich and poor, and will depend upon the genetic composition of parents, whether there is a war going on, and a whole range of other issues. If it is not an increase in probability, then what is it? In concluding their argument, the authors, as quoted above, consider that from the time of viability the embryo should be entitled to full respect as a human being. They state : As gestation progresses past the earliest stage of viability, the unborn fetus is increasingly respected. As it moves from dependent to independent and acquires the ability to survive outside the uterus, it must be regarded, legally and ethically, as a legal person entitled to the full set of rights of any other individual. This paragraph alone contains complex and problematic issues. The authors place importance on the idea of independence. However, there is a sense in which none of us are capable of that and certainly in complex modern societies, most people require assistance and are in some sense dependent. Is the person attached to a heart/lung machine or a dialysis machine independent or not? Why is independence of the mother so important? The authors also argue that from viability, the fetus should be regarded legally and ethically as a legal person entitled to the full set of rights of any other individual. They then point out that in Australia, as in England, the law only recognises the child in the womb as a legal person following birth. They then comment that it is "difficult for an embryo or fetus to have any rights while it is in the womb". However, this phrase needs to be qualified. It is of course impossible for the fetus itself to be able to exercise any rights while in the womb. However, it is perfectly possible to ascribe rights to an embryo, which must then be protected by others. It is the extent of these rights which the law seeks to set out. To date, as set out above, English law does not deem an embryo a legal person. One reason for this is that if embryos were afforded legal personhood, this would lead to the existence of competing legal interests. For example, English law respects the right of a competent adult to refuse treatment. Thus, a competent pregnant woman advised to undergo a caesarean section is lawfully entitled to refuse her consent to the operation. If the fetus were to be deemed a legal entity, this would lead to the mother's rights conflicting with the fetus' right to life. To date English law has not wanted to create such a conflict. As the authors comment, the law frequently does ascribe rights to the fetus in the womb, albeit that, where the fetus survives, these are not exercisable until birth. However, again, such rights are currently weighed against competing concerns. Hence, the child disabled in utero due to the actions of his parents may be able to sue his father, but not his mother under English law. 10 In 1976, when the applicable Act was passed, this position was justified on various grounds, one being that in practice a claim would only be brought against a mother where the father wanted to use this as a weapon in a dispute. However, it may be an issue which needs to be revisited. 11 The authors say that the unborn fetus "must be regarded, legally and ethically, as a legal person entitled to the full set of rights of any other individual", yet at the same time acknowledge the difficulties involved from a legal perspective. Even if the authors' ethical arguments are accepted, this is an area where ethical concerns may not necessarily translate into laws we would wish to adopt. 12 TERMINOLOGY The second issue Cameron and Williamson identify is that scientific developments may cause us to re-evaluate the terminology we use. As they point out, the traditional definition of an embryo as "a developing unborn human during the first 8 weeks after conception" would not include a "Dolly embryo", where "conception" is deemed to include the process of fertilisation. Yet, if we consider the group of cells formed following CNR to be an embryo, we need to adopt a broader definition, such as that suggested by Ford, which they cite. He defines an embryo as 13 : A totipotent single-cell, group of contiguous cells, or a multicellular organism which has the inherent actual potential to continue species specific ie typical, human development, given a suitable environment. The need for clarification of terms such as "embryo" is important, not solely in the ethical debate, but also to ensure clarity in areas of regulation. This was highlighted in a recent English case. 14 The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (HFEA) 15 established the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates the creation and use of embryos created outside the body. Parties wishing to create, keep, or use such embryos must be licensed under the terms of the Act and are subject to its restrictions. The Act states 16 : In this Act, except where otherwise stated-(a) embryo means a live human embryo where fertilisation is complete, and (b) references to an embryo include an egg in the process of fertilisation, and, for this purpose, fertilisation is not complete until the appearance of a two cell zygote. The question which came before the court was whether an embryo created using CNR fell within the terms of the Act, given that such embryos were not created by fertilisation. If they did not, by definition, their creation and use would be held to be unregulated. The government considered an embryo created by CNR did fall within the remit of the Act. However, Bruno Quintavalle, acting on behalf of the Pro-Life Alliance sought a declaration that this was not the case. If successful in their case, the Pro-Life Alliance hoped to force Parliament to consider the issue in full. In the High Court, the claimant (that is, the Pro-Life Alliance) was successful. 17 The judge declared that human embryos created by CNR were not "embryos" within the meaning of the Act and were thus not subject to the regulation set out in the Act. Parliament thus moved quickly to pass legislation to ensure that reproductive cloning, whereby an embryo could be created by CNR and placed in a woman, would be unlawful. 18 Subsequently, the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, a decision subsequently affirmed by the House of Lords. 19 An embryo created using CNR was to be subject to the requirements of the HFEA. This was held to be within the purpose set out by Parliament in the Act. Although this is not the place for a detailed legal analysis, some general principles can be drawn. Where developments take place, as in this case, which were not contemplated by Parliament, the courts may interpret legislation to give effect to the purpose intended by the legislature. Statutes are held to be "always speaking". Thus, for example, a tape recording was held to fall within the meaning of the word "document", since both function to transmit information. 20 However, the courts are not in theory the legislature and thus must be concerned to interpret existing legislation, rather than create new law. The decisions in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords have received both support 21 and criticism 22 and it is not proposed here to analyse whether the judiciary adhered to their role as interpreters of the law or moved into a legislative role. Whatever view is taken of the decisions, what emerges clearly is the difficulty of legislating in areas such as these, which are subject to technological advances. This is an issue discussed by Gogarty in this journal, after the Court of Appeal decision, but prior to that in the House of Lords. 23 As he sets out, the traditional approach to drafting legislation has been to set out "specific and succinct" legislation. The effect of such an approach is, he argues, as follows 23 : This promotes clarity in the law, allowing a clear demarcation between what is legal and illegal, and clearly delineating the extent of civil rights and obligations. Scientists and researchers should not be encumbered by uncertainty regarding what research they can validly undertake. Community concerns are assuaged by clear laws. These are concerns we must take seriously if the law is to be just. As Rawls set out 24 : This precept [that there is no offense without a law] demands that laws be known and expressly promulgated, that their meaning be clearly defined ... for if, say, statutes are not clear in what they enjoin and forbid, the citizen does not know how he is to behave. However, as Gogarty points out, on the other hand, "comprehensiveness and precision can lead to convoluted and confusing language, narrow the ambit of the law, and render it rigid and inflexible". 23 He sees this problem particularly in the area of advancing technology, such as cloning. Gogarty therefore suggests that, as a result, legislation in such areas should not follow the usual, prescriptive approach. Instead, it should seek to identify the type of practice to be outlawed. Instead of asking "What is the exact technique we wish to control?", legislators should ask, "Where do the differences lie between what we will allow to occur and what we will not?". 23 He refers with approval to the approach taken in the drafting of the Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001. This states: "A person who places in a woman a human embryo which has been created otherwise than by fertilisation is guilty of an offence". 18 The Act does not provide definitions of terms such as embryo or fertilisation, no doubt in an attempt to avoid the difficulties which emerged with the HFEA. Instead it sets out a "class of practice" 23 to be deemed unlawful. Whilst such an approach to drafting has attractions, it would be a mistake to think that it resolved the difficulties associated with changing technologies. First, while we may be able to anticipate where there may be changes in the future, the very fact that scientific developments are not always predictable makes it hard to determine when exactly a less prescriptive approach should be adopted. Secondly, the Human Reproductive Cloning Act itself demonstrates a further difficulty. In this particular instance, avoiding the use of definitions leaves uncertainty as to the attributes of a "human embryo". The HFEA prohibits the mixing of animal and human gametes without a licence. 16 However, the combination of human and animal cells through CNR would not be regulated by the HFEA unless the embryo were deemed a "human embryo". If such an embryo were created, would it be an offence to place this inside a woman? Does "human" in the context of the statute mean fully human or partially human? 25 It may be suggested that this is a poor example to use, since it is the fact that the word "human" is used in conjunction with the term embryo that creates the difficulty. This, it might be argued should not be allowed to restrict using terms such as "embryo" without further definition, in order to avoid the Quintavalle problem. However, although we may be able to reach agreement on the organism to which the term "embryo" should apply, other terms may not be so clear. At first sight, when referring to human tissue, the term "tissue" might appear clear. To each of us, it will convey a meaning. However, investigations into the retention of organs and body parts following postmortem, revealed different understandings of this apparently straightforward term. As the Interim Report of the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry commented, clinicians and pathologists understood it to cover a spectrum from samples on slides to whole organs. 26 This was in contrast to the understanding of the word "tissue" in "everyday language". Forms seeking consent for postmortems frequently referred to the word "tissue" without further explanation, as a result of which the report considered that the forms had failed to provide enough clarity. 26 Applying these concerns back to the context of legislation, we can see a paradox that both prescriptive and less prescriptive approaches may provide difficulties of interpretation. Following Quintavalle, it is right that we should seek ways to avoid the difficulties which emerged. However, it is suggested that drafting less prescriptive legislation in areas of technological development may not be the panacea it initially appears. Particularly in cases where the criminal law is at issue, legislation should err on the side of clarity, putting present-day certainty ahead of possible future uncertainty. 27 In summary as Cameron and Williamson suggest, the post-Dolly era raises important issues, such as the status of a human embryo created by CNR and the difficulties caused as a result of our changing understandings and the subsequent need to alter our terminology. As we have argued, we do not consider that these particular issues are new, though they are nevertheless important. The status of the CNR embryo invokes the familiar debate about the moral status of the human embryo. Similarly, the need to adapt our terminology raises familiar concerns, not solely in relation to the ethical debate, but also in terms of regulation. The fundamental question in relation to cloning remains 28 : namely whether, and if so for what purposes, it is morally right to create a human clone? ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of a project grant from the European Commission for EUROSTEM under its "Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources" programme 2002. We also thank our colleague Margaret Brazier for helpful comments. REFERENCES 1. Vogel G . Human cloning: scientists take step toward therapeutic cloning. Science 2004;303:937-8. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 2. Cameron C , Williamson R. In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect? J Med Ethics 2005;31:215-20. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 3. Note that in English law, the restrictions surrounding abortion apply after implantation: R (on the application of Smeaton) v Secretary of State for Health [2002] 2 FLR 146. 4. Harris J . The Value of Life. London: Routledge, 1985:11. 5. Marquis D . A defence of the potential future of value theory. J Med Ethics 2002;28:198-201. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 6. Ford N . We don't have to clone. The Tablet 9 December 2000, accessed on the web at (accessed 10 March 2004). 7. Paton v British Pregnancy Advisory Service Trustees [1979] QB 276; C v S [1987] 1 All ER 1230, CA; Kelly v Kelly 1997 SLT 896 (Scotland). 8. Re T [1992] 4 All ER 645, CA. 9. St George's NHS Trust v S [1999] Fam 26, CA; Re F (in utero) [1988] 2 All ER 193, CA. 10. Congenital Disabilities (Civil Liability) Act 1976, though note the exception relating to pregnant women when driving.. 11. See the recommendations of the Law Commission as discussed in Pace P. Civil Liability for Pre-Natal injuries MLR 1997;40:193; Scott R. Rights, duties and the body: law and ethics of the maternal-fetal conflict. Oxford: Hart, 2002. 12. Brazier M . Liberty, responsibility, maternity. Curr Leg Probl 1999;52:359-91. 13. Ford N . The Prenatal Person: Ethics from Conception to Birth. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 86, as cited in Cameron and Williamson, (see reference 2). 14. R (Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health [2003] 2 AC 687, HL. 15. The Department of Health has recently announced that it is going to carry out a review of the Act during 2004 in the light of developments in technology since 1990 and the need to ensure that the Act is effective. See Review of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act at (accessed 12 March 2004). 16. Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 s 1(1).. 17. R (on the application of Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health [2001] 4 All ER 1013. 18. Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001. 19. R (on the application of Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health [2002] 2 All ER 625, CA;[2003] 2 AC 687, HL. 20. Grant v Southwestern and County Properties Ltd [1975] Ch 185; Royal College of Nursing v Department of Health and Social Security [1981] AC 800, HL. 21. English R . Nuclear cell transfer of statutory language. New Law J 2002;152:7018, 161. 22. Plomer A . Beyond the HFE Act 1990: The Regulation of Stem Cell Research in the UK. Med Law Rev 2002;10:132-64 Liddell K, Purposive Interpretation and the March of Genetic Technology. Camb Law J 2003;62:563-6. [CrossRef] [Medline] 23. Gogarty B . What exactly is an exact copy? And why it matters when trying to ban human reproductive cloning in Australia. J Med Ethics 2003;29:84-9. [Abstract/Free Full Text] 24. Rawls J . A Theory of Justice [revised edition]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999:209. 25. See discussion of this issue: Grubb A. Reproductive Cloning in the UK: The Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001 Med Law Rev 2002;10:327-9, who considers this would fall outside the legislation. 26. The Inquiry into the management of care of children receiving complex heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary Interim Report: Removal and retention of human material (2002) available at (hereafter referred to as the Bristol Interim Report) para 45. 27. Herring J . Cloning in the House of Lords. Family Law 2003;33:663. 28. See Harris J . Goodbye Dolly: The ethics of human cloning. J Med Ethics 1997;23:353-60 Harris J. On Cloning London: Routledge 2004; Kass LR. Human Cloning and Human Dignity: The Report of the President's Council on Bioethics. Public Affairs, 2002; Pence GE. Who's Afraid of Human Cloning Lanham MD. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1998. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 15:04:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:04:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Alternet: The End of Reason Message-ID: The End of Reason By David Morris March 31, 2005 For Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, until 2003 the deputy head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's most powerful office, seeing The DaVinci Code in a Vatican bookstore was the last straw. In early March he lashed out at Catholic bookstores for carrying the book, and directed Catholics not to read it. Why? "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true." Fables? Dan Brown's phenomenal bestseller suggests that Jesus was an immensely popular and prophetic leader who married one of his closest associates and had a family. Archbishop Bertone and the Church maintain that Jesus was at the same time a man, the son of God, and God himself, that a virgin woman gave birth to him and remained a virgin, that a few days after he was killed he came back to life and shortly thereafter was taken up to heaven to spend an eternity directing the destinies of billions of people. In a rational world the burden of proof as to which is fable would fall on the Church. But there's the rub. For when it comes to organized religion, no burden of proof is required. On the contrary, by definition, religion requires faith and faith renounces evidence. Taking a proposition "on faith" means to consciously and willfully refuse to examine the facts. There is a word for this type of thinking: Superstition. Many dictionaries define superstition as "belief which is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge." The American Heritage Dictionary defines superstition as "a belief, practice or rite irrationally maintained by ignorance of the laws of nature" and "a fearful or abject state resulting from such ignorance or irrationality." Of course, we all have our superstitions. I may refrain from walking under a ladder, or throw salt over my shoulder after a salt spill to avoid bad things from happening to me. But organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level. It demands that we govern our lives with superstition, promises us eternal salvation and bliss if we do, and threatens us with eternal damnation and pain if we do not. It is long past time we stopped giving a free pass to organizations that refuse to be guided by reason and would force their unreason on the entire society. A first step would be to stop calling these "faith-based institutions" and start calling them by the synonymous and much more instructive term, "superstition-based institutions." No Other Superstition But This One Organized superstitions might be more socially supportable if their creed included a provision accepting the organized superstitions of others. Unfortunately, modern religions do not practice tolerance. For example Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore gained widespread fame and even adulation when he refused to obey court orders to remove from the Alabama Courthouse a huge stone tablet on which was inscribed the Ten Commandments. When he was asked how he would react to the suggestion that a monument to the Koran or the Torah also be placed in the Courthouse he brusquely declared he would prohibit such an installation. A few months later, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence explained why he knew he would win his battle against Muslims in Somalia. "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." The creationism vs. evolution debate also illuminates this intolerance. Christians insist that their creation myth represent the creationist side. But there are many creationist myths, many of which predated both Christianity and Judaism. If evidence is not needed, why exclude any superstitions? As Sam Harris notes in The End of Faith, "there is no more evidence to justify a belief in the literal existence of Yahweh and Satan than there was to keep Zeus perched upon his mountain throne or Poseidon churning the seas." The impact of moving towards "superstition-based institutions" would be highly controversial, quite educational, and on the whole exceedingly salutary. Consider the impact on the audience if we switched the interchangeable terms in President George W. Bush's following statement, posted on a federal web site: I believe in the power of superstition in people's lives. Our government should not fear programs that exist because a church or a synagogue or a mosque has decided to start one. We should not discriminate against programs based upon superstition in America. We should enable them to access federal money, because superstition-based programs can change people's lives, and America will be better off for it. Fanatics and Zealots Destroying the Liberty of Thought In her magnificent book, Freethinkers, Susan Jacoby describes the 230-year-old battle in the United States between reason and superstition. She discusses the post-Civil War period in which the battle may have been most evenly matched. Robert Green Ingersoll, possibly the best known American in the post Civil War era and the nation's foremost orator, traveled around the country arguing about the harm that comes from self-congratulatory, aggressive and assertive organized religions. He explained why the word God does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers "knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man." Ingersoll believed that reason, not faith, could and should be the basis for modern morality. "Our civilization is not Christian. It does not come from the skies. It is not a result of 'inspiration,'" he insisted. "It is the child of invention, of discovery, of applied knowledge -- that is to say, of science. When man becomes great and grand enough to admit that all have equal rights; when thought is untrammeled; when worship shall consist in doing useful things; when religion means the discharge of obligations to our fellow-men, then, and not until then, will the world be civilized." In 1885, Elizabeth Cady Stanton explained how organized and assertive religions around the world have restricted women's rights. "You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman ... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon a funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord', of course he can do it." Stanton's enduring motto was, "Seek Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth." During the era when Ingersoll and Stanton spread their own form of the gospel, the Church was making ever-more explicit its own hostility to reason as a guide to human behavior. In 1869, Pope Pius IX convinced the First Vatican Council to proclaim, "let him be anathema ... (w)ho shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions, even when opposed to revealed doctrine." His successor, Pope Leo XIII, in one of his best known encyclicals maintained, it "has even been contended that public authority with its dignity and power of ruling, originates not from God but from the mass of the people, which considering itself unfettered by all divine sanctions, refuses to submit to any laws that it has not passed of its own free will." Other churches agreed. In 1878, geologist Alexander Winchell was dismissed from the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville for publishing his opinion that human life had existed on earth long before the biblical time frame for the creation of Adam. Most Methodists supported the dismissal, arguing that Vanderbilt was founded by Methodists and dedicated to the goals of the church. Some 45 years later, the famous Scopes trial opened. Most of us know that William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution of Scopes, a biology teacher who in his classroom violated Tennessee law forbidding the mention of evolution. What we may not know is that William Jennings Bryan was a three-time democratic presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state. After the Wilson administration Bryan devoted himself to campaigning around the nation on behalf of state laws banning the teaching of evolution. For Bryan faith always trumped science. "(I)t is better to trust in the Rock of Ages than to know the ages of rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father than to know how far the stars in the heaven are apart." That was then. This is now. A few months ago, a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, refused to show Volcanoes, a science film funded in part by the National Science Foundation. The film was turned down because it very briefly raises the possibility that life on Earth may have originated at undersea steam vents. Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said that many people said the film was "blasphemous." Lisa Buzzelli, director of the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, told The New York Times, "We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public." Buzzelli's probably right. And that cannot bode well for America's future economic and technological leadership. A 1988 survey by researchers from the University of Texas found that one of four public school biology teachers thought that humans and dinosaurs might have inhabited the earth simultaneously. A recent survey by Gallup found that 35 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the literal and inerrant word of the Creator of the universe. Another 48 percent believe it is the "inspired" word of the same. Some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation; another 40 percent believe God has guided creation over the course of millions of years. The Politicizing of Religion I know most people who are reading this are asking, "Would you ban organized religion?" Of course not. Religion is an integral part of human existence. For tens of thousands of years humans have sought to explain the unknowable and have found comfort in believing that the death of a loved one may simply be the transition of that loved one to another, more sublime state. But today organized religion has declared its intention to use its influence far beyond its congregation. The politicization of religion and the rise of a superstition-driven state may be the most important development in this country in many, many decades. Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader and arguably the third most powerful person in Washington told an audience just a few weeks ago that the problems in America began when "they stopped churches from getting into politics ... Lyndon Johnson ... passed a law that said you couldn't get in politics or you're going to lose your tax-exempt status ... It forces Christians back into the church. That's what's going on in America ... That's not what Christ asked us to do." Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading candidate to become chief justice, has declared in oral hearings "the fact that government derives its authority from God." In January 2002, in a major speech revealingly titled "God's Justice and Ours," delivered to the University of Chicago Divinity School, Scalia favorably cited Paul's announcement, "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." And Scalia declared that the death penalty is God's will. "The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral," he observed. "I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal." One of President Bush's first acts in office was to create an Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Today 10 federal agencies have a Center for the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The White House web site gives churches Do's and Don'ts for applying for federal assistance. It has funded 30 organizations to provide training and technical assistance for religious organizations desiring federal grants. And it guarantees that any religious organization in need of help will find a ready and willing person on the other end of the phone. After failing to persuade Congress to change the law, President Bush, by Executive Order, rewrote the rules to allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other religious groups. In 2003 such groups received an astonishing $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies. "That's not enough," H. James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives recently told the Associated Press. He notes that another $40 billion in federal money is given out by state governments and "many states do not realize that federal rules now allow them to fund these organizations." In 2003, an independent study found little activity or interest by states in contracting with religious groups. But federal intervention has persuaded them that future funding depended on their having these groups provide services. By Towey's count, 21 governors have established their own faith-based offices. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives maintains, "There is no general federal law that prohibits faith-based organizations that receive federal funds from hiring on a religious basis." It further explains that "for a religious organization to define or carry out its mission, it is important that it be able to take religion into account in hiring staff. Just as a college or university can take the academic credentials of an applicant for a professorship into consideration in order to maintain high standards, or an environmental organization can consider the views of potential employees on conservation, so too should a faith-based organization be able to take into account an applicant's religious belief when making a hiring decision." One major program funded by the White House is Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. It runs the InnerChange Freedom Initiative in prisons in Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa and Texas. The Christ-centered program offers prisoners privileges that include access to a big TV, computers, and private bathrooms in return for a hefty dose of Bible study and Christian counseling. As a condition of being hired, the program's employees are required to sign a statement affirming their belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Superstition as a Lethal Force Organized superstition in this country has begun to drive and guide social policy. The clearest example of this is the recent enactment by several states of laws that allow pharmacists and doctors and hospitals to refuse to treat patients whose behavior conflicts with the their superstitions. The central problem with organized, assertive religion, of course, is that it endows superstition with a moral and messianic fervor. God-directed superstition can be a lethal force. Indeed, one might argue that this type of force is behind much of the violence around the world. The conflicts in Palestine (Jews v. Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians v. Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants v. Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims v. Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims v. Timorese Christians) and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians v. Chechen Muslims) constitute only a few of the places where religion has been the explicit cause of million of deaths in the last ten years. Sam Harris discusses "the burden of paradise." Why are there suicide bombers? "Because they actually believe what they say they believe. They believe in the literal truth of the Koran ...Why did 19 well-educated, middle class men trade their lives in this world for the privilege of killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so." To Harris, condoning the use of superstition as an important social force enables and encourages extremism. "The concessions we have made to religious faith," he maintains, "to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence -- have rendered us unable to name, much less address, one of the most pervasive causes of conflict in our world." In 1784, Patrick Henry introduced a bill in the Virginia General Assembly that would have assessed taxes on all citizens for the support of "teachers of the Christian religion." The bill's passage seemed certain. But then James Madison issued his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, eventually signed by some 2,000 Virginians. "What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society?" Madison asked. "In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of Civil authority; in many instances they have seen the upholding of the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberty of the people." The two-year debate over the assessment bill ended in its overwhelming defeat. Instead the Virginia legislature in 1786 passed an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom. The preamble to the original bill, written by Thomas Jefferson, declared, "Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their mind; that Almighty God hath created the mind free... ." The final law contained only the last few words of Jefferson's preamble, "Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free ... ." After the passage of the legislation, Jefferson wrote Madison to express his pride in Virginia's leadership on this crucial issue. "(I)t is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests and nobles, and it is honorable for us, to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare, that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions." In early February 2005, the Virginia House of Delegates easily approved (69-27) an amendment to the state's constitution that would allow the practice of religion in public schools and other public buildings. A few weeks later the amendment was killed in a Senate committee (10-5). It was a lonely victory for reason in this increasingly unreasonable time. The battle between rationality and superstition continues. http://www.alternet.org/story/21641/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 15:11:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:11:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Nero) Read his lips Message-ID: Read his lips The Times Literary Supplement, 4.6.25 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2107955&window_type=print Greg Woolf NERO. Edward Champli.n 346pp. Harvard University Press. ?19.95. (US $29.95). - 0 674 01192 9. Nero was just sixteen when he became Emperor. The bright hope of a generation that had suffered the tyrannies of vicious Claudius, mad Caligula and sullen Tiberius, he was meant to revive the fortunes and reputation of the Principate. At his side was the formidable Stoic philosopher Seneca, stern critic of luxury, and the sturdy but dependable soldier Burrus. Behind the throne was his beautiful mother, Agrippina, charming, brilliant and the daughter of the admired Germanicus, one of those many imperial princes who died young, leaving a sense of what might have been. Only Nero lived. At his accession he shone like a bright-eyed Blair or Zapatero, and in a speech ghost-written by Seneca promised reform, justice and good government. He was welcomed by Senate and people alike. All were to be disappointed. The murders of his mother and of his wife, and the forced suicides of his closest advisers, as well as those who plotted against him, were not his greatest crimes; few Emperors could avoid such purges, courtiers always fell from grace, and in Rome it was never safe to be the Emperor's relative. But Nero, it was claimed, had transgressed in other ways. There were rumours of incest with his mother; allegations that he had organized the burning of the city; unease at the splendour of his new palace, his Golden House, built amid the smouldering ruins of a bankrupt city. Most damaging, perhaps, were Nero's public performances, on the lyre, on the tragic stage, and as a charioteer. Nero's obsession with the stage began in private, then led him to perform to audiences, first in the Greek city of Naples and afterwards in Rome itself. Finally he crossed to Greece with his whole entourage and spent a year and a half there, competing in all the ancient pan-Hellenic festivals, which were synchronized for his benefit. His love for the Greeks led him to grant them immunity from taxation. "Other Emperors have freed cities, only Nero a province", he proclaimed to the crowds at the Isthmus of Corinth. Greek writers lined up to praise him. These gestures played less well in Rome. All Emperors were accused of unspeakable practices in the dark recesses of their palaces and remote villas. Only Nero put his on the stage. Edward Champlin in his Nero shows brilliantly how this deliberate theatricality extended beyond the stage into Nero's performance of the role of Emperor. Consider the stage-managed reception of the Armenian King Tiridates, compelled by Roman arms and diplomacy to receive his crown again from Nero. The ceremony took place on the spot in Armenia before a statue of Nero. (Nero himself visited no provinces except Greece and never saw a Roman army in his life.) Then Tiridates came to Rome, in a great procession, riding with his Queen through the Roman provinces of Asia, crossing the Bosporus and following the Via Egnatia through the northern Balkans to descend into Italy and meet Nero at Naples. The Neapolitan ceremony done, both went on to Rome. Tiridates received his crown again in the Forum before cheering crowds; then on to the Theatre of Pompey, gilded by Nero for the occasion. This last performance of the tour took place under a canopy depicting Nero as the charioteer of the sun god. The crowds screamed their approval. More controversial were Nero's performances in tragic costume. The roles he sought out were all too relevant to his own life: Orestes and Alcmaeon, matricides of myth; Oedipus, who slept with his mother. And no less controversial, his sex life. All Emperors were accused of sexual transgressions, if only adulteries and passions for low-born women. But Nero had been dressed as a bridesmaid and celebrated in public a marriage to a hunky freedman, and he went on to travel around accompanied by a boy who resembled his murdered wife, a boy whom he had had castrated and compelled to live in drag. Many Romans were horrified, especially the well-born and well-educated, those whom the moral order of Rome placed in the first rank. Many, as Champlin shows, privately shared some of Nero's histrionic and sexual tastes. But few dared to indulge them publicly, except when the Emperor's example gave them licence. Nero's reign brought no lasting liberation: it was just a Roman summer of love. The tragedy of Nero concluded in his clumsy suicide at the age of thirty; on the run from his own soldiers, the Senate, guard and the provincial armies all turned against him. It took a vicious civil war to find a new Emperor for Rome; then the work of un-Neroing Rome began in earnest. The new style was restrained and sober, with lots of Italian peasant virtue, and nothing too flashy. The mass of the Flavian Amphitheatre - our Colosseum - rose where Nero's palace had had its great ornamental lake, a monument to military victory and to less highbrow tastes in entertainment. Nero is an excellent read, an atmospheric retelling of the wonders and horrors of its fascinating subject. Champlin piles up contexts and material to fill out the shorter accounts offered by ancient authors in an attempt to find meaning in Nero's extraordinary actions. He draws on a mass of recent studies, of rituals like the Triumph and the Festival of Saturn, of the arena and the stage, most of all of the topography of the city of Rome, and the uses of Greek myth. Just as the Colosseum concealed beneath it a labyrinth of passages and cells, lifts and ramps, storerooms and concealed traps through which beasts, prisoners, gladiators and stagehands were deployed to engineer the pageants above, so Champlin conceals his scholarship in the endnotes. Exploring this underworld is a very different experience from watching the spectacles in the arena above. We are not exactly treated to darkness and cries of pain, to the stench and baying of caged animals and humans, to a world of shadows and fear. But some scholars will wince at Champlin's judgements on the quality of their translations, or at his sharp criticisms: ". . . an exceptionally imaginative scholar whose work was more often stimulating than convincing" or (targeting a particular article) "a rather haphazard selection of evidence". On two occasions he takes pains to note that a recently published idea had been anticipated by him or discovered independently. None of this detracts from the show above. Champlin's spectacle is founded solidly on the great encyclopedic endeavours of past and present classical scholars, on the arcane skills of Quellenforschung and prosopography, and on a wide reading in more than a century of Neroniana. For Nero has fascinated many. The weight of words is oppressive, and fine biographies have been written already. The archaeological investigation of Neronian Rome has made some rapid progress in recent years, but no account of Nero could rest on it alone. So spectators waiting for the show to begin are entitled to ask, What's new? What news of Nero? Nero has no introduction, but the blurb promises us "a brilliant reconception of a historical account that extends back to Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio" and invites readers to be engaged by its "effortless style and artful construction". It is difficult to believe the style took no effort. It is vivid and exciting. Nero's world appears in a series of brilliant tableaux and the central character entrances as he horrifies. But the construction of the book is certainly full of art. Indeed it ends with a sort of delayed introduction in the guise of an epilogue: "this is what the book was all about, dear reader, did you guess? were you right?". Here too are to be found the traditional apotropaic formulae employed to ward off demons and reviewers, the confession of what the book does not contain, the complimentary directions to books that include a chronologically ordered account of the reign, a full narrative with full bibliography, and so on. For Champlin offers instead a set of meditations on themes. One chapter ponders Nero's identification with the god Apollo, binding together music and chariot racing, the cult of the Sun, the colossal statue designed for the Golden House, coin images showing the Sun's rays coming from behind Nero's head, Christian women dressed as Danaids, and much else. Another chapter takes Triumph as its theme, making connections between military imagery, Tiridates' submission and Nero's return from Greece as victor in all the games of the traditional circuit. This presentational technique offers opportunities for intuitive leaps. Inevitably, some convince more than others. The chapter on myth makes sense of what seem at first sight suicidal efforts by Nero to advertise his matricide. Orestes never denied his matricide, and suffered for it, but it was justified and at last redeemed by divine command. The attempt to convict Nero of having started the Great Fire did not persuade me; but this is an old controversy that will never be settled. Exploring Nero theme by theme has its costs. Some anecdotes and quotations appear several times. Equally, some incidents that fall between themes do not figure. One recent discovery not discussed by Champlin is a great inscription from the port of Ephesus in modern Turkey detailing all the tariffs that might be legally charged on imports and exports. It is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, but especially for a connection with Tacitus' story that Nero proposed abolishing all indirect taxes, but was prevented from doing so by the Senate. Instead, it seems, a survey was made, listing legal taxes for the protection of merchants. Some have seen Nero's gesture as a populist stunt, a proposal designed only to show how the Senators were illegally implicated in tax-farming. But others find in it support for a rather more favourable story of Nero, that of the youth who sincerely meant to rule well but was frustrated by others, by disappointment at the failure of his first efforts, or by his own weaknesses. Finally, the thematic approach obscures chronological relationships, and impedes narrative. Champlin complains at one point of the complications caused by Nero's biographer Suetonius' "unchronological perspective". Yet his own method is Suetonian. Tacitus, by contrast, offered a gripping narrative of the collapse of Nero and the first Imperial dynasty. It is shaped, in fact, like a fugue, each variation marking another turn on the path to ruin. A series of forced suicides, unremarkable to begin with, progress through Seneca's Socratic death, through the cultivated frivolity with which Petronius - once Nero's "arbiter elegantiae" - ends his life, moving on to the (now lost) account of Nero's climactic self-destruction. Barthes called it "funerary baroque". It is exciting, compelling literature. Literature is what is lost when historians of antiquity set about their traditional labours of cutting and pasting from rival accounts, splicing narratives, reconciling what is not absolutely contradictory and, as a last resort, choosing between alternatives in their search for the truth. "The line between truth and slander is neither clear nor particularly important", proclaims Champlin, modishly. But he does not believe it. In a footnote he castigates a recent collection on Nero for having "little interest in historical reality". Edward Champlin wants to get to the real Nero, to find out who really did burn Rome, to work out what all these quasi- triumphs really meant. To do this he must butcher, cut and paste with the best of them. But, unlike Nero, he keeps his efforts offstage. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 16:44:46 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 12:44:46 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE Colloquy Invitation: Teach Impediment Message-ID: Teach Impediment: When the student can't understand the instructor, who is to blame? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i31/31a01001.htm Join a live, online discussion with Donald L. Rubin, a professor of speech communication at the U. of Georgia, about what should be done to deal with classroom language barriers, such as the accented English spoken by many foreign instructors, on Thursday, April 7, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/04/english/ By JOHN GRAVOIS On the phone from Fargo, N.D., State Rep. Bette Grande's voice rings with clarity. "Colleges are a business," she says in a starched Midwestern accent. "When we put research as our No. 1 focus, we forgot the student," she says. "We got ourselves all turned around." Ms. Grande could be talking about any of the ills plaguing a modern university -- drops in per-student spending, tuition increases, or maybe the lack of face time with professors. But she has something much more contentious in mind. She wants her state's university system to do something about the fact that its students can't understand what the heck their foreign-born instructors are saying. Late in January, Ms. Grande proposed a bill in the North Dakota legislature to prod public institutions of higher education in precisely that direction. Under her bill, if a student complained in writing that his or her instructor did not "speak English clearly and with good pronunciation," that student would then be entitled to withdraw from the class with no academic or financial penalty -- and would even get a refund. Further, if 10 percent of the students in a class came forward with such complaints, the university would be obliged to move the instructor into a "nonteaching position," thus losing that instructor's classroom labor. Almost as soon as the bill went public, Ms. Grande realized she had touched a nerve. Calls and e-mail messages poured in from all over North Dakota and from as far away as Florida and Arizona. In nearly a decade as a legislator, Ms. Grande had never attracted such a prodigious and impassioned response. That's probably because anyone who has studied mathematics, engineering, computer science, or economics at an American university in the past decade is likely to have harbored the frustrations Ms. Grande's bill aims to soothe. With rising international enrollments in graduate programs, classroom language barriers have become both a public hobbyhorse and a subject for scholarly study in their own right. In more than a dozen states, legislatures have passed laws to set English-language standards for international teaching assistants. But Ms. Grande's bill was designed to send a stronger message: If you can't speak the language clearly, get out of the classroom. Meanwhile, from the sidelines, linguists are sounding a cautionary note: The natives are restless, sure -- but maybe they should try listening harder. A Global Academy Ms. Grande took up her cause last fall, over the course of several visits to North Dakota State University's main campus to campaign for fellow Republicans running in the November elections. There she spoke with former students of hers (when the legislature is not in session, Ms. Grande is a middle- and high-school substitute teacher), friends of her college-age son (a student at North Dakota State), and various kids who had grown up in her neighborhood. When she asked how their classes were going, she was dismayed to discover how many said they were having trouble wading through a professor's accent. What was worse, the students suggested that the university did not seem interested in doing anything about it. Ms. Grande sensed a public failing. She approached administrators about the issue, but received responses she found to be tepid at best. "I found it as frustrating as any student had described," she says. "'This is something that the students should work through; it's a diversity issue,' they told me." "There were more excuses," Ms. Grande sizes up, "than there were avenues to remedy the situation." At that point she began paving an avenue of her own with the language of a deliberately unforgiving bill. ("If you don't push it to the envelope where they see that it's going to affect them financially," she says, "they're not going to come to the table.") R. Craig Schnell, North Dakota State's provost, defends the university's policy on foreign teaching assistants, which is built on a series of written and spoken language-proficiency tests and, for those who fail them, remedial classes in English as a second language. "We think we've had pretty good luck with it," he says. He also stresses the importance of exposing students to international influences, especially students from a place like Fargo. "I think North Dakota's fairly provincial," he says, "and if you sound in any way different, that's a point of contention." Those hang-ups are something students must grow past, he insists. He then cites one of the basic premises -- for Ms. Grande, a basic excuse -- of contemporary higher education: "We're going to live in a global society," Mr. Schnell says, "and we have to be prepared." Mr. Schnell is probably right about the way the world is heading: There are now many times more nonnative speakers of English in the world than there are native speakers of English, and the gap is likely to widen. But higher education is heading in that direction much faster than are most Midwestern towns. In 2003 just under 41,000 people earned new Ph.D.'s from American universities, according to the federal "Survey of Earned Doctorates." Of those, about 12,200 -- roughly 30 percent -- were citizens of other countries. In engineering, foreigners have outnumbered U.S. citizens among new Ph.D.'s for the past 20 years. In the physical sciences, meanwhile, 45 percent of the students are foreign. Among all those who earned doctorates from American universities between 1999 and 2003, the most common source of undergraduates was the University of California at Berkeley. But the second most common was Seoul National University, in Korea. For Nicholas P. Hacker, a 23-year-old resident of Grand Forks who is both a freshman member of the North Dakota Senate and a senior at the University of North Dakota, those trends have hit home with unhappy results. Mr. Hacker says he has taken several classes where the instructor's accented English was difficult to comprehend. "There were days when I would go home and have to study the material that they had taught, for the simple reason that I couldn't understand the things that came out of their mouth," he says. "It's one thing to go home and study a concept, another not to understand what the professor was saying." Those experiences are part of what led Mr. Hacker to co-sponsor Ms. Grande's bill. "Sometimes we forget who our real customer is in higher education," he says, "and that's what this bill is -- it's a consumer-protection bill." Evidence that instruction in accented English affects the learning process is not all anecdotal. George Borjas, an economist at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University who studies immigration, says he has found evidence that foreign-born instructors do indeed have a withering effect on undergraduates' academic performance. In 2000 Mr. Borjas, who is a Cuban immigrant, published a study of students enrolled in a two-term principles-of-economics course at a large, top-ranked public university. By focusing on the students who had one term of a discussion section taught by an American teaching assistant and the other term taught by a foreign-born teaching assistant, he was able to study the effects of exposure to the different types of teachers while controlling for differences among students. On balance, he found that undergraduates' final grades slid by 0.2 points (on a four-point scale) when they had a foreign-born instructor. The question is, do such academic breakdowns happen because universities aren't doing enough to prepare international teaching assistants for the classroom, or because American undergraduates, the beleaguered consumers themselves, simply tune out when faced with someone who is sufficiently different from them? Disorientation Late in the summer of 2002, Min Liu flew from Shanghai, China, to Fargo to begin a Ph.D. in communication at North Dakota State. Aside from a small battery of language-proficiency tests administered on her second day in the United States, she says she was treated no differently from any other incoming graduate student. Ten days after stepping onto American soil, she was teaching her first course. Ms. Liu says she felt woefully unprepared when she first stepped into that classroom. Though she did attend a weeklong departmental orientation for all new teaching assistants, she says there was no effort to socialize her as a foreigner into the mores of American higher education -- much less North Dakotan higher education. "Had I known the problems I was to get myself into," she says, "I wouldn't have come." Even today, three years after arriving in the United States, Ms. Liu says she still gets two or three complaints per course -- always on anonymous end-of-semester course evaluations and never from a student in person -- saying that she is difficult to understand and does not speak English well enough to teach. But she believes the hang-ups are more cultural than linguistic. "When I taught as a TA back in China," she says with an intonation that approaches newscaster's English, "I experienced a totally different classroom culture. I had total authority in the classroom. Here, it's almost like the opposite." While Ms. Liu feels that North Dakota State leaves its international teaching assistants largely to fend for themselves in their new linguistic and cultural landscape, a number of American universities have taken greater pains -- often at the prodding of state legislatures hounded by calls from unhappy parents and students -- to prepare their foreign-born teaching assistants for the classroom. At the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, foreign-born teaching assistants go through an intensive two-and-a-half-week program that meets for five to six hours a day in the summer. The program encompasses management strategies and teaching methodologies for American classrooms, campus dynamics, and the broader scope of American culture, in addition to focusing on simple language fluency. Meanwhile, at institutions like Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, foreign-born teaching assistants are paired with undergraduate tutors whose function is to expose the newcomers to both the rules and idiosyncrasies of students' behavior and speech. At the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, incoming international teaching assistants participate in role-playing exercises in which they play students and teachers, or in which a student theater group acts out a number of different classroom scenarios for them to discuss. These programs have their proud advocates, but are they effective? Do undergraduates still complain that they can't make heads or tails of what their foreign instructors are saying? "Yep," says Diane Larsen-Freeman, director of the English Language Institute at the University of Michigan, home to one of the most robust international orientation programs. "We do get undergraduates who will complain." Listen Up In 1988 Donald L. Rubin, a professor of education and speech communication at the University of Georgia, began toying with an experimental model that would occupy him for the next several years: He gathered American undergraduates inside a classroom and then played a taped lecture for them over high-fidelity speakers. The lecture -- an introduction to the Mahabharata, say, or a discourse on the growing scarcity of helium -- was delivered in the voice of a man from central Ohio. While the undergraduates sat and listened, they faced an image projected onto the classroom wall in front of them: Half the time, it was a photograph of an American man ("John Smith from Portland"), standing at a chalkboard and staring back at them. For the other half of the testing groups, the slide projected before them was that of an Asian man ("Li Wenshu from Beijing"), standing at the same chalkboard. The two figures were dressed, posed, and groomed as similarly as possible. Now for the interesting part: When the students were asked to fill in missing words from a printed transcript of the central Ohioan's taped speech, they made 20 percent more errors when staring at the Asian man's image than they did when staring at the picture of "John Smith." What did that mean? "Students who expect that nonnative instructors will be poor instructors and unintelligible speakers can listen to what we know to be the most standard English speech and the most well-formed lecture, and yet experience some difficulties in comprehension," Mr. Rubin says. "All the pronunciation improvement in the world," he says, "will not by itself halt the problem of students' dropping classes or complaining about their instructors' language." At the request of The Chronicle, Mr. Rubin conducted an interview with Ms. Liu to gauge her speaking proficiency. To do so, he used a modified version of the oral examination most widely used in American universities to test foreign-born instructors, the Speak test. When the test was done, he gave Ms. Liu the maximum score. "If one actively looks for evidence of native Chinese language interference in Ms. Liu's speech, it is detectable," he writes in an e-mail message describing their conversation. He notes that she does drop an article every now and then ("Although this phenomenon may irritate listeners who are native speakers of English," he writes, "it is unlikely to affect comprehensibility"); she occasionally blends "r" and "l" sounds ("also of minor communicative significance at the rate and degree she exhibits"); and she sometimes produces vowel sounds that are "a little more tense" than would be exhibited by a native speaker of English. "This marks Ms. Liu as not a native speaker of English," Mr. Rubin writes, "but does not interfere with her intelligibility." Moreover, the vocabulary that she has at her disposal in both speaking and listening, he goes on, is "sophisticated and probably more fluent than my own." Yet still, every time she teaches, undergraduates complain about her English. All of this brings Mr. Rubin to an idea that is just beginning to figure fully into the nationwide discussion of communication breakdowns in foreign-born teaching assistants' classrooms: "We must accompany support for international instructors' teaching skills with support for U.S. undergraduates' listening skills," he says, "in particular their ability to listen effectively -- and that means nonprejudicially -- to world Englishes." Representative Grande's bill, however, rose in the public eye precisely because it was designed to give students the power to oust accented instructors -- a menacing prospect for foreign-born teaching assistants. "It's too harsh," says Syed Rahman, a Bangladeshi graduate teaching assistant in North Dakota State's computer-science department -- one of the most international corners of the university. For Ms. Liu, the entire issue brings on a certain amount of despair. 'A Convenient Excuse' International teaching assistants are "set up for failure," Ms. Liu says. "No matter how hard they try, their foreignness will always work against them and provide a convenient excuse for the students who want to resign from a class without taking the responsibility as a student." After several weeks of discussions with higher-education experts, amendments, and deliberations, Ms. Grande has begun to think differently about the issue of language barriers in the classroom. Her bill, too, has changed drastically: In both the North Dakota House and the Senate, after several rounds of amendments, it turned into a relatively vague order for the State Board of Higher Education to create a new policy on teaching assistants' communication skills, along with a formalized process for responding to student complaints. By the end of March, that order had been approved by legislators. "What I'm hoping for is a solution that offers something to our foreign-born teachers," Ms. Grande says, having been convinced that there is much more North Dakota could be doing to prepare international teaching assistants for the classroom. But she is cool to the thought of culpability on the student's side of the linguistic equation. "I can understand when they say the students just need to listen harder," she says, acknowledging that that is the "neighborly" thing to do. But she says there are limits to such strained good will. "What if it was bearing on whether or not I was going to be able to grasp materials I was going to need for my profession?" she asks. When it comes down to it, Ms. Grande still believes that universities are businesses, and students are consumers: If a student cannot understand her professor, then she is being served a faulty product. Mr. Rubin, however, prefers to think of the issue in terms of prerequisites -- worldly listening skills as a requirement for graduation. "I consider the ability to listen to and comprehend world Englishes a prerequisite to success in a wide variety of enterprises," he says. At this notion, Ms. Grande balks. She thinks of all the countries she has visited -- Israel, Egypt, Honduras. "In every place, what was the main thing they wanted to do?" Ms. Grande asks. "To communicate with the American. They knew that, throughout their lives, if they wanted advancement they would have to do everything they could to communicate with us." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:14:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:14:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'The Confederate Battle Flag': Clashing Symbols Message-ID: Sunday Book Review > 'The Confederate Battle Flag': Clashing Symbols http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/books/review/03MCWHORT.html 5.4.3 [I have a newspaper photo of some dissedents in Moscow in the early 1990s, with a Confederate Flag waving in the background. It is a symbol of rebellion the world over.] By DIANE MCWHORTER THE CONFEDERATE BATTLE FLAG America's Most Embattled Emblem. By John M. Coski. Illustrated. 401 pp. The Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press. $29.95. T HROUGHOUT its history of controversy, one thing the Confederate battle flag has consistently stood for is the tendency of human beings to muddle their best instincts and their worst. As the banner of Southern nationalism, the star-spangled cross is an emblem of heroic self-determination, of the Confederacy's rebellion against federal ''oppression.'' But the ideal that urged the secessionists on to their blood-drenched sacrifice was the freedom to subject a race of people to enslavement. Nearly a century and a half after the Civil War ended, the battle flag remains a standard in the eternal struggle between tradition and change, a conflict that is looking increasingly like a culture war. The most protracted ''flag flaps'' have been sparked by the campaigns of African-Americans, along with sympathetic whites, to compel Southern states to purge from their official insignia an icon widely seen as the badge of white supremacy. The subject is so inflammatory that Howard Dean's overture to voters with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks during his presidential campaign set off a cross-fire of recrimination and bad faith. John M. Coski's history, ''The Confederate Battle Flag,'' brings some needed rationality to a debate driven by the raw emotion of soul injury. But reason, it turns out, is unequal to ''the duality of the Southern thing'' -- as the dialectics of Southern identity is called by Drive-By Truckers, contemporary rock's interpreters of Dixie. It takes more magic than is attempted by this academic study to conjure a region that balances so many polar extremes -- generous hospitality and casual violence, rebellious individualism and docile conformity, scrappy sectionalism and hyperpatriotism, military discipline and warrior impulsivity, redneck pride and genteel modesty -- all under a flag claimed equally by the Ku Klux Klan and the liberators of Soviet-bloc Europe. The battle flag exemplified this duality from the beginning. It was embraced as a belligerent alternative to the original official flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars, which blood-lusty rebels condemned as a ''servile imitation'' of the North's Stars and Stripes. Yet its signature cross was positioned diagonally in order not to alienate the South's Jewish citizens through overt Christian symbolism. In the post-bellum decades of segregation, when black voices were excluded from civic discourse, the two competing camps of flag protocol were the ''correct use'' purists, dedicated to the sacred honor of the Confederate dead, and the admen, frat boys and politicians who believed the image belonged to the popular culture. It was not until 1948 that the flag resurfaced in connection with a white-supremacist political movement, the Dixiecrats, those Southern Democrats who bolted their party in protest against its civil rights program. As useful as it is to have the record set straight on, say, the fact that the Klan did not take up the Confederate colors until the 1940's, too much of this book is a catalog of flag moments, with an elusive organizing principle and scant sociopolitical context. When Coski, the historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., does sally forth from the thicket of Southern-crossed Klan rallies, segregation fests, football games, Old South balls, stock car races and military operations (he informs us that some marines signaled the American victory on Okinawa during World War II by raising the Confederate flag), the analysis is refreshingly direct and nonpolemical, especially on the merits of the various controversies. Coski points out that the ''Heritage, Not Hate'' flag advocates are engaged in a futile exercise when they try ''to divorce the defense of Confederate symbols and the honor of Confederate soldiers from the cause for which the soldiers fought.'' But he likewise tweaks the opponents for their excesses of historical revisionism: ''Elected officials, community leaders and intellectuals must cease encouraging the untenable belief that there is an inherent American right not to be offended.'' Coski's unsentimental approach is admirable, but by slighting the emotional essence of the ''Southern thing'' he sidesteps the basic, tragic question: Why are so many white people so irrationally invested in their regional mythology? However inept the flag's defenders are at articulating it, the reason does in fact transcend race. The South's ferocious sectional pride is the flip side of an inferiority complex, a chip-on-the-shoulder legacy of its savage defeat by a civilization it rejected long before the Civil War. Consider the South's antebellum obsession with the ''lost cause'' of Scotland's struggle for independence against cold, mercantile England. In his fascinating study of vanquished nations, ''The Culture of Defeat,'' Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes how this romance of the underdog reflected the agrarian Southern cavaliers' doomed sense of obsolescence when confronted with the inexorable moneymaking machines of the North. (The Confederacy's Southern cross was actually the cross of St. Andrew, Scotland's patron saint.) The North's scorched-earth war strategy was indeed designed to annihilate not just the South's army but its entire civilization. As the Union general Philip Henry Sheridan declared, ''The people must be left nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war.'' The South has long expressed its grief through unconstructive displays of resentment. According to Drive-By Truckers: ''We ain't never gonna change. / We ain't doin' nothin' wrong.'' In 2001 white Mississippians voted overwhelmingly to preserve the Southern cross on their state flag (just as, in a grosser act of nobody-can-tell-us-what-to-do defiance nearly 50 years earlier, local jurors acquitted the coldblooded murderers of the black teenager Emmett Till). The perversely empowering allure of victimhood calls out even to the South's most critical daughters. Some years ago, I was looking into a potential elementary school for my younger child. It was a highly recommended prospect, located on the politically correct Upper West Side of Manhattan and named after one of General Sheridan's colleagues. Halfway through the school's guided tour, I decided ''no way,'' explaining to a fellow Southern mom who was there, ''Do you really think you could tell the folks back home that you're sending your child to the William Tecumseh Sherman School?'' Such are the dwindling stakes of the continuing North-South conflict, a clash of values nowadays defined in terms of blue states and red states. As with most of the issues in the culture wars, the battle over the Confederate flag may bring moral satisfaction to the victors, but little in the way of improvement to their daily lives. Fighting over the spoils of a tattered cloth is another example of ordinary people taking passionate political stands that distract them from the likelier source of their distress, the widening division not between whites and blacks but between have-mores and have-lesses. Diane McWhorter is the author of ''Carry Me Home. Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution,'' and a young adult history of the civil rights movement, ''A Dream of Freedom.'' From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:16:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:16:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Dating: What's Love Got to Do With It? Message-ID: Sunday Book Review > Chronicle: Dating: What's Love Got to Do With It? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/books/review/03SWIFTL.html 5.4.3 By DANIEL SWIFT THE HOOKUP HANDBOOK A Single Girl's Guide to Living It Up. By Andrea Lavinthal and Jessica Rozler. Simon Spotlight Entertainment, paper, $14.95. BE HONEST -- YOU'RE NOT THAT INTO HIM EITHER Raise Your Standards and Reach for the Love You Deserve. By Ian Kerner. ReganBooks/HarperCollins, $19.95. HOW TO LIVE WITH A MAN . . . AND LOVE IT! By Jennifer Worick. Perigee, $14.95. CLOSING THE DEAL Two Married Guys Take You From Single Miss to Wedded Bliss. By Richard Kirshenbaum and Daniel Rosenberg. William Morrow, $19.95. LOVE SICK Love as a Mental Illness. By Frank Tallis. Thunder's Mouth, paper, $15.95. We live in a culture of counsel and comfort, and the great source of all our confusions is love. The literary canon teaches us that our true loves are reserved for things we know are bad for us, for Vronsky or for Heathcliff. But neither one is Mr. Right, and neither will do today, since we love, more than ever now, with purpose: relationships are a means to an end, and when there are breakdowns along the way we have manuals to put us right again. From one-night stands to holy matrimony, the many zones of love have been charted in brightly colored how-to guides. While the rules of engagement vary, most are addressed to women, all see human relationships as a zero-sum battle, and all insist that happiness is no more than a few well-directed steps away. The first thing to know about casual sex is that it is no longer particularly casual. The Hookup Handbook instructs that ''ambiguity is key to hooking up,'' but then proceeds by dizzying litanies of typography and vocabulary. There are seven rival definitions of what exactly a hookup is, and then 14 varieties: it involves not-necessarily sex behind probably closed doors, and it comes in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. After you've memorized the difference between ''booty disparity'' and ''Schick-blocked,'' renovated your apartment into a ''Hookup-Friendly Bachelorette Pad'' and worried over the many quizzes, you're through boot camp and on your way to war. At the risk of sounding like Ken Starr, I'd like to know what precisely the hookup involves, but Andrea Lavinthal, a beauty editor, and Jessica Rozler, who works in book publishing (both are in New York City), skirt all events between drunken rendezvous and next morning's walk of shame. Behind the flurry of pep talk and gossip that makes up a relationship manual is a certain coyness. Be Honest -- You're Just Not That Into Him Either is a reply to last fall's hit ''He's Just Not That Into You,'' and while its philosophy of love is given away by its title, its overall lesson hinges on a warning against sex. ''Think,'' Ian Kerner counsels, ''what the costs are of sleeping with guys you might not be that into'': ''Sex is more than just an accessory in your wardrobe'' and ''having it casually devalues a core component of the courtship process.'' While Kerner, a sex expert who has a weekly column on eDiets.com, appears to advocate higher standards, he could also be seen as encouraging women to lower them strategically. He holds as sacred the pursuit of a compatible mate, and as part of the quest, you may have to accept occasional solitude and be realistic: ''Make sure you're casting a wide enough net.'' Men, put simply, aren't that great. For Kerner, men are sex-obsessed rats, ''the main purveyors of porn and prostitutes,'' and their sexual psychologies are radically different from women's; ''for them,'' he writes, ''the orgasm and the sex are virtually one and the same.'' At the paradoxical heart of these manuals -- which instruct how to foster a relationship between the sexes -- is an insistence that men and women are different species. Women may be needy, emotional and insecure, but men are childlike little animals best kept on a leash at all times. According to How to Live With a Man . . . and Love It!, men like pot roast, lasagna and sports; women like reading and baking; and in order to foster a workable domestic truce, they must understand, but never try to breach, this divide. ''Have shiny, touchable hair,'' Jennifer Worick recommends: ''Tuck a fresh flower behind an ear.'' Men can be manipulated with such carrots and sticks. ''Keep a laundry hamper in the corner so you're not distracted during lovemaking by an unsightly heap of dirty clothes on the floor,'' Worick, the author of ''The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook'' and ''The Action Heroine's Handbook,'' advises: ''Make it easy for your man to keep things tidy.'' Beyond the simple assumption that men are dirty lies a fear of a sexual intimacy so fragile that dirty laundry would disrupt it. Intimacy isn't in the air these manuals breathe, for intimacy opens a window onto risk. Bolstered by checklists and swaddled in strategies, these manuals trade passion for programs and love for war. The patron saint of modern love is not Cupid but Sun Tzu. Closing the Deal is the only one of these guidebooks to quote ''The Art of War,'' but Sun Tzu presides over their spirit like an omniscient deity. ''Closing the Deal'' is built on the same lists and questionnaires that dominate the other manuals, but here the purpose is more nakedly apparent, and its vocabulary is unforgivingly bare. ''Marketing is war,'' declare Richard Kirshenbaum, co-chairman of the advertising agency Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, and Daniel Rosenberg, a film-studio executive and producer. Women must market themselves: by learning their ''Target Audience,'' several ''Marriage Motivators'' -- like showing off expensive property -- and their ''Dating Inflection Point.'' If all else fails, pretend to leave him to force him to give you that ring. This love story is as cold and sharp as its spiritual mentor, the Power Point presentation. The authors of most of these manuals repeatedly proclaim their happy marriages, which makes sense: you wouldn't trust a dentist whose teeth were bad. But love is not dentistry. Much of the advice offered is common sense -- trust is a central element in a relationship, as is a willingness to compromise -- but our need to see it written down makes it alien. The forms of happiness offered by these books are precisely that: formal, whether the structure they sketch is a single sexual encounter, domestic cohabitation or marriage. What is missing is the emotional drive that we all hope to find in our relationships. The variety of passion denies rigid categorization, and must therefore be left out. For love is, Frank Tallis writes in his short psychiatric study, ''a necessary madness.'' As Tallis, a psychologist, describes it in Love Sick, we are ''afflicted rather than affected by love.'' Poets have been describing love as a kind of mental illness for thousands of years: Tallis lightly surveys the literary record and finds in it telling correspondences with psychological and biological descriptions of this extreme emotional attachment. Our genes are wired to follow slavishly the dictates of natural selection, but our societies and our bodies would become exhausted if we followed them into ceaseless childbearing and raising. ''However, the very fact that we can self-reflect, and rebel, has perhaps necessitated the evolution of a safety mechanism,'' Tallis writes in his elegantly restrained prose. ''We call this safety mechanism 'love.' '' The great fear that dating and relationship manuals seek to soothe with their reassuring strategies is the fear of abandonment and of humiliation: of being stood up at a bar or at the altar. This is a fear it is wrongheaded to assuage. As Tallis acknowledges, ''to be romantically involved is an admission that carries a host of implications: passion, folly, obsession, anguish, recklessness, intrigue and adventure.'' Love -- the passion whose name dating manuals dare not speak -- enters at the same door as fear, necessarily. Daniel Swift writes for The Nation and The Times Literary Supplement. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:17:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:17:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: A Trail of DNA and Data Message-ID: A Trail of DNA and Data http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20454-2005Apr2? 5.4.3 By Paul Saffo If you're worried about privacy and identity theft, imagine this: The scene: Somewhere in Washington. The date: April 3, 2020. You sit steaming while the officer hops off his electric cycle and walks up to the car window. "You realize that you ran that red light again, don't you, Mr. Witherspoon?" It's no surprise that he knows your name; the intersection camera scanned your license plate and your guilty face, and matched both in the DMV database. The cop had the full scoop before you rolled to a stop. "I know, I know, but the sun was in my eyes," you plead as you fumble for your driver's license. "Oh, don't bother with that," the officer replies, waving off the license while squinting at his hand-held scanner. Of course. Even though the old state licensing system had been revamped back in 2014 into a "secure" national program, the new licenses had been so compromised that the street price of a phony card in Tijuana had plummeted to five euros. In frustration, law enforcement was turning to pure biometrics. "Could you lick this please?" the officer asks, passing you a nanofiber blotter. You comply and then slide the blotter into the palm-sized gizmo he is holding, which reads your DNA and runs a match against a national genomic database maintained by a consortium of drug companies and credit agencies. It also checks half a dozen metabolic fractions looking for everything from drugs and alcohol to lack of sleep. The officer looks at the screen, and frowns, "Okay, I'll let you off with a warning, but you really need more sleep. I also see that your retinal implants are past warranty, and your car tells me that you are six months overdue on its navigation firmware upgrade. You really need to take care of both or next time it's a ticket." This creepy scenario is all too plausible. The technologies described are already being developed for industrial and medical applications, and the steadily dropping cost and size of such systems will make them affordable and practical police tools well before 2020. The resulting intrusiveness would make today's system of search warrants and wiretaps quaint anachronisms. Some people find this future alluring and believe that it holds out the promise of using sophisticated ID techniques to catch everyone from careless drivers to bomb-toting terrorists in a biometric dragnet. We have already seen places such as Truro, Mass., Baton Rouge, La. and Miami ask hundreds or thousands of citizens to submit to DNA mass-testing to catch killers. Biometric devices sensing for SARS symptoms are omnipresent in Asian airports. And the first prototypes of systems that test in real time for SARS, HIV and bird flu have been deployed abroad. The ubiquitous collection and use of biometric information may be inevitable, but the notion that it can deliver reliable, theft-proof evidence of identity is pure science fiction. Consider that oldest of biometric identifiers -- fingerprints. Long the exclusive domain of government databases and FBI agents who dust for prints at crime scenes, fingerprints are now being used by electronic print readers on everything from ATMs to laptops. Sticking your finger on a sensor beats having to remember a password or toting an easily lost smart card. But be careful what you touch, because you are leaving your identity behind every time you take a drink. A Japanese cryptographer has demonstrated how, with a bit of gummi bear gelatin, some cyanoacrylic glue, a digital camera and a bit of digital fiddling, he can easily capture a print off a glass and confect an artificial finger that foils fingerprint readers with an 80 percent success rate. Frightening as this is, at least the stunt is far less grisly than the tale, perhaps aprocryphal, of some South African crooks who snipped the finger off an elderly retiree, rushed her still-warm digit down to a government ATM, stuck it on the print reader and collected the victim's pension payment. (Scanners there now gauge a finger's temperature, too.) Today's biometric advances are the stuff of tomorrow's hackers and clever crooks, and anything that can be detected eventually will be counterfeited. Iris scanners are gaining in popularity in the corporate world, exploiting the fact that human iris patterns are apparently as unique as fingerprints. And unlike prints, iris images aren't left behind every time someone gets a latte at Starbucks. But hide something valuable enough behind a door protected by an iris scanner, and I guarantee that someone will figure out how to capture an iris image and transfer it to a contact lens good enough to fool the readers. And capturing your iris may not even require sticking a digital camera in your face -- after all, verification requires that the representation of your iris exist as a cloud of binary bits of data somewhere in cyberspace, open to being hacked, copied, stolen and downloaded. The more complex the system, the greater the likelihood that there are flaws that crooks can exploit. DNA is the gold standard of biometrics, but even DNA starts to look like fool's gold under close inspection. With a bit of discipline, one can keep a card safe or a PIN secret, but if your DNA becomes your identity, you are sharing your secret with the world every time you sneeze or touch something. The novelist Scott Turow has already written about a hapless sap framed for a murder by an angry spouse who spreads his DNA at the scene of a killing. The potential for DNA identity theft is enough to make us all wear a gauze mask and keep our hands in our pockets. DNA can of course be easily copied -- after all, its architecture is designed for duplication -- but that is the least of its problems. Unlike a credit card number, DNA can't be retired and swapped for a new sequence if it falls into the hands of crooks or snoops. Once your DNA identity is stolen, you live with the consequences forever. This hasn't stopped innovators from using DNA as an indicator of authenticity. The artist Thomas Kinkade signs his most valuable paintings with an ink containing a bit of his DNA. (He calls it a "forgery-proof DNA Matrix signature.") We don't know how much of Tom is really in his paintings, but perhaps it's enough for forgers to duplicate the ink, as well as the distinctive brush strokes. The biggest problem with DNA is that it says so much more about us than an arbitrary serial number does. Give up your Social Security number and a stranger can inspect your credit rating. But surrender your DNA and a snoop can discover your innermost genetic secrets -- your ancestry, genetic defects and predispositions to certain diseases. Of course we will have strong genetic privacy laws, but those laws will allow consumers to "voluntarily" surrender their information in the course of applying for work or pleading for health care. A genetic marketplace not unlike today's consumer information business will emerge, swarming with health insurers attempting to prune out risky individuals, drug companies seeking customers and employers managing potential worker injury liability. Faced with this prospect, any sensible privacy maven would conclude that DNA is too dangerous to collect, much less use for a task as unimportant as turning on a laptop or working a cash machine. But society will not be able to resist its use. The pharmaceutical industry will need our DNA to concoct customized wonder drugs that will fix everything from high cholesterol to halitosis. And crime fighters will make giving DNA information part of our civic duty and national security. Once they start collecting, the temptation to use it for other purposes will be too great. Moreover, snoops won't even need a bit of actual DNA to invade our privacy because it will be so much easier to access its digital representation on any number of databanks off in cyberspace. Our Mr. Witherspoon will get junk mail about obscure medical conditions that he's never heard of because some direct marketing firm "bot" will inspect his digital DNA and discover that he has a latent disease or condition that his doctor didn't notice at his annual checkup. It is tempting to conclude that Americans will rise up in revolt, but experience suggests otherwise. Americans profess a concern for privacy, but they happily reveal their deepest financial and personal secrets for a free magazine subscription or cheesy electronic trinket. So they probably will eagerly surrender their biometric identities as well, trading fingerprint IDs for frequent shopper privileges at the local supermarket and genetic data to find out how to have the cholesterol count of a teenager. Biometric identity systems are inevitable, but they are no silver bullet when it comes to identity protection. The solution to identity protection lies in the hard work of implementing system-wide and nationwide technical and policy changes. Without those changes, the deployment of biometric sensors will merely increase the opportunities for snoops and thieves -- and escalate the cost to ordinary citizens. It's time to fix the problems in our current systems and try to anticipate the unique challenges that will accompany the expanded use of biometrics. It's the only way to keep tomorrow's crooks from stealing your fingers and face and, with them, your entire identity. Paul Saffo is a director of the Institute for the Future, a forecasting organization based in Silicon Valley. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:22:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:22:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: We All Have a Life. Must We All Write About It? Message-ID: The New York Times > Books > Critic's Notebook: We All Have a Life. Must We All Write About It? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/books/25memo.html 5.3.25 March 25, 2005 By WILLIAM GRIMES In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant, desperate for money and terminally ill with cancer, did what countless statesmen and military leaders had done before him: he sat down to write his memoirs. Racing against the clock, he turned out two substantial volumes on his early life and his military experiences in the Mexican and Civil Wars. By any measure, he had a lot to write about and a lot to tell. He produced a classic memoir, as the genre was then understood: important events related by a great man who shaped them. But that was then. Today, Grant's memoirs fall into the same sprawling category as "Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure," "Bat Boy: My True Life Adventures Coming of Age With the New York Yankees" and "Rolling Away: My Agony With Ecstasy," to pluck just three titles from the memoir mountain looming in the next month or two. Actually, it's more a plain than a mountain, a level playing field crowded with absolutely equal voices, each asserting its democratic claim on the reader's attention. Everyone has a life, and therefore a story that should be told and, if possible, published. The memoir has been on the march for more than a decade now. Readers have long since gotten used to the idea that you do not have to be a statesman or a military commander - or, like Saint-Simon or Chateaubriand, a witness to great events - to commit your life to print. But the genre has become so inclusive that it's almost impossible to imagine which life experiences do not qualify as memoir material. Canvassing the publishers' catalogs, I was intrigued to see "All in My Head," by Paula Kamen. It's about a headache the author has been carrying around for more than a decade. It will do battle on the bookstore shelves with, among many others, "Fat Girl," by Judith Moore, a memoir of growing up fat and female, which in turn will compete with another fat-girl memoir, "I'm Not the New Me," by Wendy McClure, which will square off against "Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex, and Salvation," by Samantha Dunn, who found a new way of life, and a book topic, when she signed up for dance lessons. Then there's "House," by Michael Ruhlman. It's about a house. Is there not something to be said for the unexamined life? In self-defense, I have tried to construct a memoir taxonomy, just to impose some sort of order on this sprawling genre. Important categories include the retired-statesman (or more likely, bureaucrat) memoir, the traumatic-childhood memoir, the substance-abuse memoir, the spiritual-journey memoir, the showbiz memoir, the spirit-of-place or vanished-era memoir, the illness memoir and the sexual-exploit memoir. To name just one recent example of each, in order: "Taking Heat," by Ari Fleischer; "The Glass Castle," by Jeannette Walls; "Smashed," by Koren Zailckas; "Leaving the Saints," by Martha Beck; "Kiss Me Like a Stranger," by Gene Wilder; "When All the World Was Young," by Barbara Holland; "Stranger in the Village of the Sick," by Paul Stoller; and "The Surrender," by Toni Bentley, which sounds as though it might be a military memoir but is not. Obviously, categories overlap. Sexual-excess memoirs often have a spiritual-discovery aspect to them, as do illness memoirs. Spirit-of-place memoirs often shade into the ethnic-identity memoir, which can, in certain instances, merge with the food memoir, as in "The Language of Baklava," Diana Abu-Jaber's memoir, with recipes, of growing up as the child of an American mother and a Jordanian father. (It should not be confused with "Lipstick Jihad" by Azadeh Moaveni, which is about growing up as an Iranian-American and does not have recipes.) Some memoirs defy categorization. Where do you place John Falk's "Hello to All That," subtitled "A Memoir of War, Zoloft, and Peace"? The author, suffering from chronic depression, heads off to cover the war in Sarajevo carrying a year's supply of the antidepressant drug Zoloft stuffed into a tube sock. The book has a little bit of everything: military combat, a spiritual awakening and lots of prescription drugs. If Grant had been born a century later, and had a smarter agent, he would have mined his eventful life for several titles: one on the alcohol abuse, a second on the illness and perhaps a third filled with wistful recollections of his hometown in Ohio. It would have made a strong entry in the "nostalgia for vanishing small-town America" memoir. Neither the category, the premise nor the title can predict artistic success or failure. It's all in the writing. "When All the World Was Young," about growing up in the 1940's and 50's in Washington, does not sound especially promising. But Ms. Holland, a shrewd, witty writer, casts a sharp backward glance at America the day before yesterday, when fathers ruled with an iron fist, children memorized lots of poetry and a girl could take pride knowing that her hometown would be bombed first when the Russians let fly with the H-bomb. I look forward to "The Guinness Book of Me," by Steven Church, an implausible-sounding memoir about the author's lifelong obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records. One particularly fecund minor category is the bad-job memoir, which has brought out the bitter best in writers ever since George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London." (Modern-style memoirs often turn out to have lengthy pedigrees, even the druggy ones, anticipated by Thomas De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," which was published in 1822.) Two brilliant examples are "A Working Stiff's Manifesto," by Iain Levison, and "Job Hopper," by Ayun Halliday. Ms. Halliday, the author of an anti-travel memoir called "No Touch Monkey!," evokes the low-grade horrors of telephone solicitation, waitressing and minding the stuffed polar bears at a children's museum. Her misery resonates on that dismal frequency all too familiar to the overeducated, underemployed and undercompensated. The Levison book, whose paperback edition carries the subtitle "A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember," makes Orwell's Paris period look like graduate school. Toiling in the kitchen of a bad bistro, Orwell may have experienced some discomfort, but he never found himself neck-deep in cold fish, shoveling for dear life, as Mr. Levison did on an Alaskan trawler. I see no end in sight. The memoir infrastructure, at this point, rests on a broad, solid foundation. For some time, scholars have devoted serious attention to memoir and autobiography (sometimes conflated into "life writing"), some of them attached to think tanks like the Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe University in Australia and the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawaii. A host of enablers has arisen, urging everyone who has not yet written a memoir to do so as soon as possible. "Your Life as Story," by Tristine Rainer, the director of the Center for Autobiographic Studies in Pasadena, Calif., is but one of many advice books for aspiring memoirists. Others include "Living to Tell the Tale," by Jane Taylor McDonnell; "Writing the Memoir," by Judith Barrington; and "Writing About Your Life," by William Zinsser. Those who cannot write can always hire those who can. In a recent Forbes column, Daniel Seligman commented on the growing trend among big-shot executives to hire ghostwriters and pricey consultants to turn out vanity memoirs. There's absolutely no need to wait, either. The average age of the memoir writer has been trending downward, quite sharply. Ms. Zailckas, the author of "Smashed," is in her early 20's, and Melissa P., the semi-disguised author of the erotic memoir "One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed," was a mere teenager when she wrote the book. A reader of this newspaper, responding to an opinion column on the proliferation of memoirs, wrote a letter to the editor announcing that she had created a memoir-writing workshop for her second graders. When they get a little older, they may want to join one of the many memoir groups that have sprouted across the country, small collectives of aspiring memoirists who gather to talk about their lives and read their memoirs-in-progress to each other. Their efforts may be as fundamental as breathing. John Eakin, an emeritus professor of English at Indiana University, has argued that human beings continuously engage in a process of self-creation and self-discovery by constructing autobiographical narratives. In a sense, we are the stories - multiple, shifting and constantly evolving - that we weave about ourselves, and this storytelling urge may even be hard-wired. In a recent essay in the journal Narrative, Mr. Eakin cites the case of a patient of Oliver Sacks's who suffered from severe memory loss. Most of his waking moments were spent reinventing himself, constructing one story after another, as the previous one faded from memory, setting off existential panic. No story, no identity. Everyone is writing a memoir, all the time. Almost a decade ago, James Atlas, in The New York Times Magazine, proclaimed the age of the memoir. Then he posed a question. Can it last? "Will memoir prove as evanescent as other cultural phenomena?" he asked. Apparently not, since he just published his own memoir, "My Life in the Middle Ages." It's about being middle-aged. That leaves plenty of time for at least one sequel. When Me Is the I's Favorite Subject The current memoirs in the Critic's Notebook article, in the order mentioned. 'CALLGIRL: CONFESSIONS OF AN IVY LEAGUE LADY OF PLEASURE,' by Jeannette Angell. Perennial Currents/HarperCollins. $26. 'BAT BOY: MY TRUE LIFE ADVENTURES COMING OF AGE WITH THE NEW YORK YANKEES,' by Matthew McGough. Doubleday. $22.95. 'ROLLING AWAY: MY AGONY WITH ECSTASY,' by Lynn Marie Smith. Atria/Simon & Schuster. $24. 'ALL IN MY HEAD: AN EPIC QUEST TO CURE AN UNRELENTING, TOTALLY UNREASONABLE, AND ONLY SLIGHTLY ENLIGHTENING HEADACHE,' by Paula Kamen. Da Capo. $24.95. 'FAT GIRL: A TRUE STORY,' by Judith Moore. Hudson Street Press. $21.95. 'I'M NOT THE NEW ME: A MEMOIR,' by Wendy McClure. Riverhead Books. $14. 'FAITH IN CARLOS GOMEZ: A MEMOIR OF SALSA, SEX, AND SALVATION,' by Samantha Dunn. Holt. $23. 'HOUSE: A MEMOIR,' by Michael Ruhlman. Viking. $24.95. [2]'TAKING HEAT: THE PRESIDENT, THE PRESS AND MY YEARS AT THE WHITE HOUSE,' by Ari Fleischer. William Morrow. $26.95. [3]'THE GLASS CASTLE,' by Jeannette Walls. Scribner. $25. [4]'SMASHED: STORY OF A DRUNKEN GIRLHOOD,' by Koren Zailckas. Viking. $21.95. [5]'LEAVING THE SAINTS: HOW I LOST THE MORMONS AND FOUND MY FAITH,' by Martha Beck. Crown. $24.95. [6]'KISS ME LIKE A STRANGER: MY SEARCH FOR LOVE AND ART,' by Gene Wilder. St. Martin's. $23.95. [7]'WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG: A MEMOIR,' by Barbara Holland. Bloomsbury. $24.95. 'STRANGER IN THE VILLAGE OF THE SICK: A MEMOIR OF CANCER, SORCERY, AND HEALING,' by Paul Stoller. Beacon. $23. [8]'THE SURRENDER: AN EROTIC MEMOIR,' by Toni Bentley. ReganBooks/HarperCollins. $24.95. 'THE LANGUAGE OF BAKLAVA: A MEMOIR,' by Diana Abu-Jaber. Pantheon. $23. [9]'LIPSTICK JIHAD: A MEMOIR OF GROWING UP IRANIAN IN AMERICA AND AMERICAN IN IRAN,' by Azadeh Moaveni. PublicAffairs. $25. [10]'HELLO TO ALL THAT: A MEMOIR OF WAR, ZOLOFT, AND PEACE,' by John Falk. Holt. $25. 'THE GUINNESS BOOK OF ME: A MEMOIR OF RECORD,' by Steven Church. Simon & Schuster. $23. [11]'A WORKING STIFF'S MANIFESTO: A MEMOIR OF THIRTY JOBS I QUIT, NINE THAT FIRED ME, AND THREE I CAN'T REMEMBER,' by Iain Levison. Random House. $11.95. 'JOB HOPPER: THE CHECKERED CAREER OF A DOWN-MARKET DILETTANTE,' by Ayun Halliday. Seal Press. $14.95. 'YOUR LIFE AS STORY: DISCOVERING THE "NEW AUTOBIOGRAPHY" AND WRITING MEMOIR AS LITERATURE,' by Tristine Rainer. Tarcher/Penguin. $14.95. 'LIVING TO TELL THE TALE: A GUIDE TO WRITING MEMOIR,' by Jane Taylor McDonnell. Penguin. $14. 'WRITING THE MEMOIR: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE CRAFT, THE PERSONAL CHALLENGES, AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS OF WRITING YOUR TRUE STORIES,' by Judith Barrington. Eighth Mountain Press. $14.95. 'WRITING ABOUT YOUR LIFE: A JOURNEY INTO THE PAST,' by William Zinsser. Marlowe & Company. $23.95. 'ONE HUNDRED STROKES OF THE BRUSH BEFORE BED,' by Melissa P. Grove. $12. 'MY LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A SURVIVOR'S TALE,' by James Atlas. HarperCollins. $25.95. References 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/books/01kaku.html 3. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013COVERPROSE.html 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/books/07masl.html 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/books/24morm.html 6. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/books/07masl.html 7. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/books/review/006COHENL.html 8. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/books/review/03HELLERL.html 9. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013STARRL.html 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/books/14book.html From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:24:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:24:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sailer: myRobot--Our Easter Bunny Message-ID: myRobot--Our Easter Bunny http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050327_robot.htm [14]Steve Sailer Archive March 27, 2005 myRobot--Our Easter Bunny By [17]Steve Sailer To get a rabbit, my family first got a robot. My older son had long wanted a bunny. But my younger boy is allergic to furry animals, which give him asthma attacks. My wife determined that he would be all right with a rabbit in the house if we vacuumed the carpets constantly. However, the chances that our family would persist with the needed devotion to cleanliness seemed nil. And, as a pixel-stained wretch of a writer, I could hardly afford a [18]cleaning lady--[19]legal or [20]illegal. Fortunately, my wife had been tracking the evolution of [21]Roomba, the robot vacuum cleaner from [22]iRobot. She deemed the new model worthy of a try as her $200 birthday present. Soon, a box arrived on our doorstep containing a disk about 13" in diameter and 3" thick. My wife put it in the middle of the floor and pushed its button. A whooshing noise emerged, but it was significantly quieter than a [23]manually operated vacuum. Roomba started to roll in a tight spiral, slowly circling outward, brushing and sucking up dirt as it went. When it softly bumped into a wall, it changed directions, seemingly at random. Its trial-and-error approach meant it was obviously going to take [24]Roomba an hour or two to finish the entire living room. But to complain about Roomba's [25]random walk style of vacuuming seemed churlish--literally like the [26]ungrateful man in Gary Larson's Far Side cartoon who looks out at his front lawn, where his panting dog has been pushing a [27]lawn mower in effortful but erratic patterns, and [28]scolds, "Call that mowin' the lawn? ... Bad dog... No biscuit! Bad dog!" After all, the dirt was definitely disappearing into the little robot as well as a normal vacuum cleaner could manage. And we were just sitting on the couch watching Roomba roll. Indeed, at first the robot consumed more of our time than doing the vacuuming ourselves would have done. He was hypnotic to watch. Because his behavior was purposeful yet unpredictable, Roomba seemed to have a personality. It was easy to think of him as a dutiful family retainer, rather like a [29]sheep who keeps the lawn cropped on a Scottish estate, although his low center of gravity made him seem more like a groundhog or horseshoe crab. (As you may have noticed, we soon started referring to Roomba as "him" rather than as "it.") After a week of increasing delight in our robot, especially with how he cleans under beds where we can't reach with a normal vacuum, we felt confident enough to acquire Frank the Rabbit. Although less productive than Roomba the Robot, Frank is more fun to pet. After my wife told a lady on her bowling team, she bought a Roomba too. She now says "Roomba is my new best friend." VDARE.com doesn't exist to review appliances, so if you are interested in buying one, please read the [30]reviews carefully on [31]Amazon.com and other [32]sources. There are situations Roomba can't handle well, and durability may still be a problem. Nonetheless, it's safe to say that Roomba is a revolutionary product. On a moral level, I take some pride in that I'm paying the whole cost of Roomba, unlike so many Americans with more money than me who nevertheless offload much of the expense of their illegal immigrant cleaning ladies on the rest of the country. Recall that a [33]1997 National Academy of Sciences study found that an immigrant with [34]less than a high school education will on average cost the taxpayers $100,000 more in [35]government spending over her lifetime than she will pay in taxes. One lesson of history since the start of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago is that countries don't advance economically by importing unskilled workers to "do the jobs that natives won't do," but by [36]substituting machines for human labor. For example, because the [37]Roman Empire exploited[38] countless slaves conquered in [39]foreign wars, it lacked incentives to increase labor efficiency through mechanization. Productivity never took off, and eventually the civilization collapsed into poverty. In contrast, Britain, which, until the [40]second half of the 20th Century, had far more [41]emigrants than [42]immigrants, had the right incentives for an Industrial Revolution. As I pointed out here a year ago [[43]Japanese Substitute Inventiveness for Immigration], the Japanese have become obsessed with the promise of robots. As Anthony Faiola recently reported in the Washington Post: "Though perhaps years away in the United States, this long-awaited, as-seen-on-TV world--think "[44]The Jetsons" or "[45]Blade Runner"--is already unfolding in Japan, with robots now used as receptionists, night watchmen, [46]hospital workers, guides, [47]pets and more... Officials compiled a report in January predicting that every household in Japan will own at least one robot by 2015, perhaps sooner." [[48]Robot swarms invade Japan!, March 12, 2005] In part, this is because the Japanese [49]think their mountainous islands are quite crowded enough, thank you, without admitting millions of immigrants. In contrast, the U.S., although once famous for its commitment to higher productivity, has shown less interest in labor saving in recent years. It has focused instead on sending manufacturing jobs to China and white collar jobs to India, while importing millions of uneducated workers to perform rudimentary service jobs here. For example, although previous generations of Americans had vastly increased the productivity of workers on Midwestern grain farms, efforts to [50]mechanize California fruit and vegetable farms were largely abandoned, as VDARE.COM [51]reported five (!) years ago, because immigrants were cheaper ... to the corporate farmer, although not to the country. Admittedly, [52]robotics has proven slower to develop than science fiction writers had imagined. In [53]Robert A. Heinlein's 1957 novel [54]The Door into Summer, the narrator invents a robot vacuum cleaner he calls [55]Hired Girl that's quite similar to Roomba ... but he builds it in 1970, not 2005. Of course, despite all his prescience, Heinlein didn't anticipate the 1965 Immigration Act, which would make unskilled labor often cheaper than automation. (In Heinlein's defense, I must point out that in his [56]Future History stories written from 1939 through 1942, he correctly prophesied that the 1960s would be "[57]The Crazy Years.") Back in 1957, Heinlein had simply assumed that cheap servants were a thing of the past due to immigration restrictions, which [58]Congress had legislated in 1924. The inventor in [59]The Door into Summer explained the economic logic and marketing psychology behind his Hired Girl robot: "Housewives were still complaining about the [60]Servant Problem long after servants had gone the way of the mastodon. I had rarely met a housewife who did not have a touch of slaveholder in her; they seemed to think there really ought to be [61]strapping peasant girls grateful for a chance to scrub floors for fourteen hours per day and eat table scraps at wages a plumber's helper would scorn. That's why we called the monster Hired Girl--it brought back thoughts of the [62]semi-slave immigrant girl whom [63]Grandma used to bully." Heinlein, who embodied the can-do spirit of mid-century America, loved dreaming up "gadgets to replace the extinct domestic servant." I don't believe he would have been pleased to see his country instead resurrect the [64]"semi-slave immigrant girl." Particularly when Roomba the Robot is available. [Steve Sailer [[65]email him], is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and [66]movie critic for [67]The American Conservative. His website [68]www.iSteve.com features site-exclusive commentaries.] References 14. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/index.htm 17. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/index.htm 18. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/mexico_part2.htm 19. http://www.legallynanny.com/AdvantagesToHiringLegally.html 20. http://www.vdare.com/mcconnell/linda_chavez.htm 21. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00022HYIW/vdare 22. http://www.irobot.com/home.cfm 23. http://www.brimbank.vic.gov.au/page/page.asp?page_Id=995 24. http://www.time.com/time/roomba/ 25. http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/WOP/RandomWalk.html 26. http://robots.tonkaland.com/list-archive/msg06935.html 27. http://www.vdare.com/fulford/mowing_alone.htm 28. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0836220625/ref=sib_vae_pg_168/002-1186477-1031249?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=bad%20dog&p=S04V&twc=1&checkSum=9YFBMwmRQF2P6fHmDd30pMuen3SDj6D+QBN3VZOW9Ms=#reader-page 29. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9910/ReadingRm/factoids/index.html?http&&&www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9910/ReadingRm/factoids/sheep.html 30. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1622584,00.asp 31. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00022HYJ6/103-4704658-8351003?v=glance/vdare 32. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1649760,00.asp 33. http://www.nap.edu/books/0309063566/html/407.html 34. http://www.vdare.com/guzzardi/drop_outs.htm 35. http://www.vdare.com/pb/economist.htm 36. http://vdare.com/francis/economic_logic.htm 37. http://www.vdare.com/williamson/city_of_pilgrims.htm 38. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/slavery-romrep1.html 39. http://www.vdare.com/blog/011105_blog.htm#b2 40. http://www.vdare.com/pb/enoch_day.htm 41. http://www.vdare.com/pb/schooled_in_adversity.htm 42. http://www.vdare.com/misc/powell_speech.htm 43. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/japanese_robots.htm 44. http://www.cybercomm.nl/~ivo/ 45. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/quotes 46. http://www.globalaging.org/elderrights/world/2004/japaninvention.htm 47. http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/video.html 48. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2002205138_japanrobot12.html 49. http://www.vdare.com/taylor/japan.htm 50. http://www.vdare.com/blog/100504_blog.htm 51. http://www.vdare.com/misc/archive00/mechanization.htm 52. http://www.roombacommunity.com/ 53. http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/rahfaq.html 54. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345330129/vdare 55. http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/books/dis_hc.htm#hiredgirl 56. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0740738054/ref=sib_vae_pg_79/002-1186477-1031249?_encoding=UTF8&keywords=date&p=S028&twc=1&checkSum=DrVM8j/VW+4AaiUH5QlUbKjtRf/aOlvMhTcn1q5//6g=#reader-pagehttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425027384/vdare 57. http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Heinlein/Future-History.html 58. http://www.vdare.com/fulford/1894_1924.htm 59. http://www.heinleinsociety.org/concordance/books/dis_hc.htm 60. http://web.archive.org/web/20021214150502/www.iwf.org/pubs/twq/wi97a.shtml 61. http://www.crma.org/collection/wood/wood-12.htm 62. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5323/ 63. http://www.soton.ac.uk/~pg2/HottenSomersEI01.htm 64. http://www.vdare.com/sailer/bush_kerry_debate.htm 65. mailto:steveslr at aol.com 66. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iSteve-movies/ 67. http://www.amconmag.com/ 68. http://www.isteve.com/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:29:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:29:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Prospect of Third World Pope Excites Some Message-ID: Prospect of Third World Pope Excites Some http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Third-World-Pope.html 5.4.4 Filed at 8:06 a.m. ET MEXICO CITY (AP) -- As cardinals rushed to the Vatican on Sunday to begin the process of selecting a new pope, many back home were asking a pointed question: If most of the world's Roman Catholics live in the developing world, why has every pope been European? The possibility that the next pope could come from Latin America, Africa or Asia is creating a buzz from Mexico City to Manila, from Tegucigalpa to Kinshasa. Many Latin American Catholics said the only way to improve on a papacy they overwhelmingly supported would be to select someone from their own ranks. Their hopes were fueled by the last papal conclave, in which a Polish archbishop became the first non-Italian pope in 455 years, as well as by the global outreach John Paul II made the cornerstone of his papacy. They also have been boosted by sheer numbers: Half the world's 1 billion Roman Catholics live in Latin America alone, and the church is seeing explosive growth in Africa and Asia. Even outside Roman Catholicism, leaders from the developing world saw a chance for change. ``We hope that perhaps the cardinals when they meet will follow the first non-Italian pope by electing the first African pope,'' Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said Sunday from Cape Town, South Africa. Many Catholics in poor countries said a pope from their own regions would better understand the challenges they face, and would make the church more relevant in the lives of its increasingly diverse followers. ``It will further help the church, whose membership is growing fastest in Asia, Africa and Latin America, if a new pope emerges from one of those areas,'' said Isidore Chukwuemeka, a Catholic in Lagos, Nigeria. ``That will help build loyalty in the universal church and reassure people that the rich countries are not calling the shots.'' While several names from developing countries have been mentioned as candidates, it is unclear what kind of chance Third World religious leaders stand. Only 21 of the cardinals eligible to vote on the new pontiff are from Latin America and the Caribbean, and only 11 from Africa, compared with 58 from Europe alone. The Dominican Republic's Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, who will participate in the conclave, said the next pope should be oriented toward Latin America, but he stopped short of saying the pontiff should be a native of the region. ``The majority of Catholics in the world are in Latin America, so whoever is elected should focus on this continent,'' Lopez Rodriguez told reporters after celebrating a Mass at Santo Domingo Cathedral. Hundreds of Dominicans cheered and wished the 68-year-old cardinal well after the Mass, with many chanting ``we hope they pick you.'' Vatican observers disagree over the amount of pressure there will be to return the papacy to an Italian -- Italy still has 20 voting-age cardinals, by far the largest group -- or whether the conclave could expand the message of universality by selecting a candidate from a developing country. Church leaders insist the cardinals' decision will not be based on a geographical calculation. The candidates, they say, will be judged by their faith and their ability to lead. ``It won't matter where he comes from, from which continent,'' Sao Paulo, Brazil Archbishop Claudio Hummes, who is often mentioned as a candidate, said Friday after Mass. ``It will matter that the cardinals will be in front of God, under oath, and they will have to choose the one they think is the man for this moment in the history of the church and the world.'' But across the globe, many of the faithful suggested that kind of talk was merely diplomacy. ``We hope that his successor will be a black person from the African continent,'' said Patrique Ngoma, a 20-year-old student attending Mass in Kinshasa, Congo. ``It would be better to have a Latin American pope, someone on our side,'' said Anjelica Navarro, 30, as she cooked up blue-corn tortillas stuffed with fragrant meat and onions at a stand in downtown Mexico City. Andres Nunez, 67, who co-owns a nearby hardware store, was more blunt: ``It's about time we got something!'' But beyond the national rivalries, many said a Latin American pope would help the church counter Protestant evangelism, and a Third World pope with roots among the poor would be better able to respond to the most pressing needs of his flock. ``As an African, he would be able to better engage himself in the battle against poverty, which he himself would know and have conquered,'' Ngoma said. Jorge Rouillon, who writes on religious issues for the Argentine daily La Nacion, said choosing a Third World candidate for the papacy would make the church appear more in tune with the modern world. ``He could be the image of a universal church that we have seen more of in recent years,'' he said. Some Catholics in developing countries, despite their faith in the church, were pessimistic about the chances of seeing a non-European pope. They accused the church of racism. ``I doubt that the white man will allow a black man to become pope,'' said Chinyere Osigwe, 40, at Our Lady of Fatima Church in Lagos. Others, while wishing for a pope from their own ranks, simply lowered their expectations. Andrea Villaruel, 36, begged for pocket change for her 11 children on the steps of the San Isidro Cathedral in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and praised the last pope for speaking so many languages. ``John Paul II has been one of the greatest,'' she said. ``Well, I hope the next one also speaks Spanish.'' ------ Associated Press writers Tales Azzoni in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Bill Cormier in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Eddy Isango in Kinshasa, Congo; Dulue Mbachu in Lagos, Nigeria; Peter Muello in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Will Weissert in Mexico City; and David Koop in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this story. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:34:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:34:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Age (au): Why the pro-life lobby lost a do-or-die battle Message-ID: Why the pro-life lobby lost a do-or-die battle The Age (Melbourne) http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Why-the-prolife-lobby-lost-a-doordie-battle/2005/03/30/1111862458543.html?oneclick=true 5.3.31 The legal case to keep Terri Schiavo alive failed because of ineptitude, writes Michael Cook. With the impending death of Terri Schiavo, US euthanasia advocates have scored a public relations hat-trick. Within a single month Clint Eastwood won an Oscar for Million Dollar Baby and The Sea Inside, about a quadriplegic who commits suicide, was feted as the best foreign film. Now, after more than a decade of litigation, a 41-year-old brain-damaged Florida woman is slowly dying at her husband's request. What's more, recent polls show that most Americans are so confused about end-of-life treatment that they think that this is a good thing. Who is to blame for this fear of extreme disability? Pro-lifers might plausibly blame "left-leaning media" for the Oscars. But the fate of Terri Schiavo is an own goal. Their lawyers were outsmarted at every turn by George Felos, the lawyer for Schiavo's husband. Felos was the heavy artillery of the right-to-die movement, a cunning strategist who had won Florida's most influential right-to-die case in 1989, and who is a media-savvy talk-show guest. Schiavo's death warrant was effectively signed in 2000, with a decision by Florida judge George Greer that she would have chosen to have her tube removed. It is this judgement that was upheld time and time again by superior courts. Pro-life bloggers have demonised Greer. But they ought to read some of the evidence. First of all, the Schindler family were tricked. They are loving and compassionate people, but they were manoeuvred into giving a incredibly distorted picture of what the Catholic Church teaches about patients in a persistent vegetative state. Her brother said that it would be a joy for him to see Schiavo alive - in a respirator or with limbs amputated. Her mother stated that discomfort or pain was not a factor in discontinuing life support. The mother and the brother and sister all agreed that if they were in Schiavo's situation and had gangrenous limbs that had to be amputated, they would choose that rather than die. But Catholics are not masochists. Their church has always taught, in the words of a 1980 Vatican document, that patients can "refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted". To compound the confusion, Felos wheeled out a hospital chaplain, Father Gerard Murphy, as "an expert in the area of the Catholic Church's position on end of life care". Father Murphy said that removing Schiavo's feeding tube was consistent with his church's teaching. This is nonsense, of course. The Pope, also an expert on the Catholic Church's position, recently stated that "a sick person in a vegetative state . . . still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc)." But given the uncertainty about Schiavo's religious beliefs and the apparent insensitivity of her family, Greer found Murphy's testimony sympathetic and "completely candid". Still worse were the medical experts. Felos easily found two "clear and convincing" neurologists who testified that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. With all of the American medical profession a phone call away, the Schindlers' team wheeled out two duds. One was a Dr William Maxfield, who was not even a neurologist, but an expert in hyperbaric medicine - breathing pressurised oxygen. The other was a Dr William Hammesfahr, a neurologist whose garish website touts him as a "Nobel Prize nominee". Nobel Prize winners normally publish papers in major journals, unlike Dr Hammesfahr, whose publications are few and obscure. However, he was a 1992 keynote speaker for the Alabama Academy of Osteopathic Physicians. You get the picture: one random and one shonk. To break the tie, Greer engaged a fifth neurologist, Dr Ronald Cranford. He is well spoken and highly convincing. He is also a spokesman for the right-to-die movement. His testimony tilted the scales. The fundamental problem with the case mounted by the Schindler family is that they depicted Schiavo's plight as a religious issue. In fact, it is a human rights issue. Schiavo is not in pain and is not dying. She is not on life support. Her care is not expensive. Why does her disability deserve a death sentence? The American disability lawyer and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson put it clearly: "This belief that withdrawing a feeding tube is different than other killing - why is that a reasonable distinction? I haven't heard anybody say it would be OK to kill Terri Schiavo if she weren't on a feeding tube." Given that US law favours living wills, even though studies have shown that they often don't work, the fight to save Schiavo's life was bound to be difficult. But it could have been won if it had been fought by professionals. It wasn't. Michael Cook is the editor of BioEdge, an email newsletter on bioethics. mcook at australasianbioethics.org Related * Michael Gawenda: [23]Schiavo: playing God and politics References 23. http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Schiavo-playing-God-and-politics/2005/03/30/1111862458552.html From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 4 17:38:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:38:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: (Bronte) Reader, I shagged him Message-ID: Reader, I shagged him http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5156145-99931,00.html Since her death 150 years ago, Charlotte Bront? has been sanitised as a dull, Gothic drudge. Far from it, says Tanya Gold; the author was a filthy, frustrated, sex-obsessed genius Tanya Gold Friday March 25, 2005 Elizabeth Gaskell is a literary criminal, who, in 1857, perpetrated a heinous act of grave-robbing. Gaskell took Charlotte Bront?, the author of Jane Eyre, the dirtiest, darkest, most depraved fantasy of all time, and, like an angel murdering a succubus, trod on her. In a "biography" called The Life of Charlotte Bront?, published just two years after the author's death, Gaskell stripped Charlotte of her genius and transformed her into a sexless, death-stalked saint. As the 150th anniversary of her death on March 31 1855 approaches, it is time to rescue Charlotte Bront?. She has been chained, weeping, to a radiator in the Haworth Parsonage, Yorkshire, for too long. Enough of Gaskell's fake miserabilia. Enough of the Bront? industry's veneration of coffins, bonnets and tuberculosis. It is time to exhume the real Charlotte - filthy bitch, grandmother of chick-lit, and friend. When I first read her at the age of 13, I thought she was another boring Gothic drudge who got lucky. When I returned to her 10 years later, I recognised her. Charlotte was an obscure, ugly parson's daughter, a sometime governess and schoolmistress. Her father Patrick had fought his way from Ireland into Cambridge University and the church. She was toothless, almost penniless and - to Victorian society - worthless. But she dared to transcend her background and her situation. In her novel Jane Eyre, a dark Cinderella tale of a plain, orphaned governess, she dared, baldly, to state her lust. After I had reread Jane Eyre, I wanted to know what dark genius created this world. I turned to Elizabeth Gaskell's Life, but I could not recognise the sanitised Charlotte she conjured up. Gaskell befriended Charlotte when the novelist was 34 and already a star. Contemporary critics had been appalled by Jane Eyre's "coarseness", but the public was thrilled and Charlotte was a celebrity. Gaskell waspishly described her first sight of Charlotte in a letter: "She is underdeveloped, thin and more than half a head shorter than I ... [with] a reddish face, large mouth and many teeth gone; altogether plain." Gaskell described her encounters with Charlotte to friends in long, gossipy, gawking letters. "I have so much to say I don't know where to begin ..." And Charlotte noticed Gaskell's need to weaken and infantilise her, writing to her publisher, George Smith, "she seems determined that I shall be a sort of invalid. Why may I not be well like other people?" Gaskell was already hungrily plotting the biography, which she convinced herself was an act of charity. She wanted to rescue her friend from the accusations of "coarseness" and she did not have to wait long: Charlotte died in 1855, nine months after her wedding to Arthur Bell Nicholls. Gaskell portrays Charlotte as Victim Supreme. She begins to sew her shroud from her first chapter, when she copies out the Bront? grave tablet in Haworth church, voluptuously listing those who died of consumption: Charlotte's mother, Maria, her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, Anne and Emily, and her brother Branwell. Charlotte, Anne and Emily were "shy of meeting even familiar faces". They "never faced their kind voluntarily". The Bront?s are shown, with understated relish, as lonely, half-mad spinsters, surrounded by insufferable yokels and the unmentionable stench of death. Under Gaskell's pen, they become the three witches of Haworth and she hurls on the Gothic gloom, ravaging the moorlands and the town for appropriate props. She has a particular fondness for the graveyard outside their front door: "It is," she notes, "terribly full of upright tombstones." She is bewildered by the Bront?s. She could never accept they were, quite simply, talented. There had to be a magical mystery at work on those moors ... Gaskell carefully fillets the letters to match her agenda. Any hint of Charlotte as a sexual being is tossed on to the historical furnace. Charlotte's correspondence with the (married) love of her life, Monsieur Heger of Brussels, is ignored, as is her thwarted romance with George Smith. Gaskell could hardly leave out Charlotte's marriage to Arthur Nicholls - but no doubt she would have liked to. Her biography is the ultimate piece of feminine passive-aggression, a mediocre writer's attempt to reduce the brilliant Miss Bront? to poor, pitiful Miss Bront?. Gaskell wrote the Life as a tragedy, not a triumph. But if Charlotte Bront?'s life is a tragedy, what hope is there for the rest of us? Let me introduce you to the real Charlotte Bront?. She was not a wallflower in mourning. She always wanted to be famous; she pined to be "forever known". Aged 20, she wrote boldly to the Poet Laureate Robert Southey, asking for his opinion of her talents. He replied: "You evidently possess and in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls 'the faculty of verse'." Then he chides her: "There is a danger of which I would ... warn you. The daydreams in which you habitually indulge are likely to induce a distempered state of mind. Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life and it ought not to be." Charlotte ignored Southey but Gaskell couldn't believe it. She concluded the correspondence "made her put aside, for a time, all idea of literary enterprise". Charlotte continued in her position as a schoolteacher, which she had already held for a year. But she hated her profession and heartily despised the aggravating brats she was forced to teach. As the children at Roe Head School did their lessons, she wrote in her journal: "I had been toiling for nearly an hour. I sat sinking from irritation and weariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy and the hyperbolic and most asinine stupidity of these fat headed oafs and on compulsion assuming an air of kindness, patience and assiduity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair prisoned within these four bare walls, while the glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is revolving in its richest glow and declaring at the close of every summer day the time I am losing will never come again? Just then a dolt came up with a lesson. I thought I should have vomited." Note to Mrs Gaskell: Charlotte didn't want to kiss those children; she wanted to vomit on them. Charlotte did not only feel passionate hatred for small children; she felt passionate love for men. Unlike the female eunuch created by Gaskell, she was obsessed with her sensuality. She wrote to a friend: "If you knew my thoughts; the dreams that absorb me; and the fiery imagination that at times eats me up ... you would pity and I daresay despise me." The thwarted lust of a parson's daughter? Gaskell dismisses it as "traces of despondency". In Brussels, studying to become a governess at Heger's school, the virgin became ever more lustful. She wrote obsessive letters to him, begging for his attention. "I would write a book and dedicate it to my literature master - to the only master I have ever had - to you Monsieur." Later she writes: "Day or night I find neither rest nor peace. If I sleep I have tortured dreams in which I see you always severe, always gloomy and annoyed with me. I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to every kind of reproach - all that I know - is that I cannot - that I will not resign myself to losing the friendship of my master completely - I would rather undergo the greatest physical sufferings. If my master withdraws his friendship entirely from me I will be completely without hope ... I cling on to preserving that little interest - I cling on to it as I cling on to life." When Gaskell heard of these letters she panicked. "I cannot tell you how I should deprecate anything leading to the publication of these letters," she clucked to her publisher. Charlotte's "master" did not return her love, but Jane Eyre's did. Charlotte's fixation with sex could not be realised in truth - so she realised it in fiction. Jane Eyre has spawned a thousand luscious anti-heroes, and a million Pills & Swoon paperbacks. Her prose is dribbling, watchful and erotic. It's much better than The Story of O, or Naked Plumbers Fix Your Tap. In Jane Eyre she created the men she could not have in the sack: rude, rich, besotted Edward Rochester and beautiful, sadistic St-John Rivers. Both, naturally, beg to marry Jane and Charlotte draws every sigh and blush and wince exquisitely. She writes long, detailed scenarios for her paper lovers. Jane loves to argue with them and she always comes out on top. In the throbbing, climactic scene, after Rochester has teased her (lovingly, of course), she pouts: "Do you think, because I am poor, plain, obscure and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God have gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh - it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed though the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal - as we are." Rochester melts. "'As we are!' repeated Mr Rochester - 'so,' he added, enclosing me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: 'so, Jane!'" The St-John fantasies are filthier yet, as Charlotte's masochism oozes on to the page. "Know me to be what I am," he tells Jane. "A cold, hard man." Jane watches St-John admire a painting of a beautiful woman and the voyeurism excites her; "he breathed low and fast; I stood silent". I know Charlotte had an orgasm as she wiped the ink from her fingers and went to take her father his spectacles. Charlotte was not only randy; she was rude. She was sent a copy of Jane Austen's Emma and spouted bile all over it. "[Austen] ruffles her reader with nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound," she bitches. "The passions are perfectly unknown to her ... the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - this Miss Austen ignores." Later she smacks her more firmly over the bonnet. "Miss Austen is not a poetess. Can there ever be a great artist without poetry?" If Charlotte slagged off Austen - her only real rival in the canon of superb, sex-starved writers - what would she have made of Gaskell's blackwash? I suspect she would have seen it for what it was - the one parasitic shot at immortality of a second-rate writer. I decide to visit Saint Central - the parsonage museum at Haworth - to see if anything of the real Charlotte remains. Might a leg, or an arm or a finger be sticking out from under Gaskell's smiling tombstone? It doesn't look good for Charlotte. Just nine months after the 150th anniversary of her wedding (there was a mock ceremony, with a shop manager as Mr Nicholls and the villagers as the villagers) the Bront? groupies are excitedly preparing the "celebrations" for the 150th anniversary of her death. A "light installation" is projecting a shadowy grim reaper. Yes - it is Death. It crawls across Patrick's pillows, returns and crawls again. Pictures of the "Bront? waterfall" are gushing noisily over the front of the parsonage. Inside the house are the relics, pristine and pornographic. Charlotte's clothing is imprisoned behind glass: her ghastly wedding bonnet, covered with lace; her gloves; her bag; her spectacles. I can see from the dress that she was a dwarf. A genius indeed, but a dwarf. In the shop, Gaskell, again, has won. There is every Bront?-branded item the mother of the cult could wish, except, perhaps, enormous golden Bs. I choose a gold fridge magnet, a tea-towel that says "Bront? genius - love, life and literature" and a toy sheep stamped with the word "Bront?". There is a Jane Eyre mouse mat that says, "I am no bird and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will." This souvenir disgusts me, but no doubt Mrs Gaskell would love it. In Jane Eyre, Charlotte wrote "independent human being". She did not write "independent mouse mat". I can find no remnant of the breathing, brilliant novelist in Haworth; it is merely the site of a death cult that weirdly resents its god. I wander up the road to the moors and am surprised they haven't packaged the mud - "Real Bront? Mud!" As the taxi bumps down the famous cobbled street, past the Bront? tea-rooms, the Villette coffee shop, Thornfield sheltered housing (imagine 50 creaking Mr Rochesters) and the Bront? Balti (Bront? special - Chicken Tikka; it's true), I yearn to rip the road signs down and torch the parsonage. This shrine needs desecrating, and I want to watch it burn. I want to see the fridge magnets melt, the tea-towels explode and the wedding bonnet wither. Somewhere, glistening in the ashes, there might remain a copy of Jane Eyre. That is all of Charlotte Bront? that need loiter here. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Mon Apr 4 23:19:46 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 16:19:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] article repostings vs. discussion format In-Reply-To: <200504041800.j34I0p211716@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050404231946.1285.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Question: how many paleopsych readers read all the articles posted, and is there any way to get more discussion and limit article repostings to links with an explanatory paragraph? It's a lot easier to read an article on a website than in email form which is much more difficult on the eyes. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Apr 5 02:43:10 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 19:43:10 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] article repostings vs. discussion format In-Reply-To: <20050404231946.1285.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050404231946.1285.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4251FB3E.9090203@earthlink.net> Answer: I would very much appreciate an explanatory paragraph on paleopsych so that I could better understand the intent of the poster who offers a particular article. I'm becoming overwhelmed with all the stuff that is being sent. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Michael Christopher wrote: >Question: how many paleopsych readers read all the >articles posted, and is there any way to get more >discussion and limit article repostings to links with >an explanatory paragraph? It's a lot easier to read an >article on a website than in email form which is much >more difficult on the eyes. > >Michael > > > >__________________________________ >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search. >http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 5 12:57:45 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 05:57:45 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 'Gene-editing' technique cuts out diseased DNA Message-ID: <01C539A4.644D8970.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7224 A gene-editing process that corrects mutations without weaving foreign genetic material into the chromosome has been demonstrated in diseased human cells for the first time. It could provide a less risky and more efficient alternative to gene therapy, which has resulted in leukaemia in some patients. A team led by scientists at Sangamo Biosciences in Richmond, California, US, say they have corrected the single gene mutation that causes the fatal X-chromosome-linked severe combined immune deficiency (X-SCID) - or "bubble boy" disease - in human T-cells. They treated the cells in test tubes with the company's proprietary type of "zinc finger nucleases" (ZFNs) and have published their results in Nature. From wtroytucker at yahoo.com Tue Apr 5 14:01:36 2005 From: wtroytucker at yahoo.com (W. Troy Tucker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 07:01:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] article repostings vs. discussion format In-Reply-To: 6667 Message-ID: <20050405140136.75569.qmail@web40628.mail.yahoo.com> I need no explanatory paragraph. I find the subject line sufficient for deciding whether to open or delete an article. I do read most of the articles and have for more than six years. I find them continuously useful for my work and forward them widely to colleagues. The volume and breadth of the postings are assets, not burdens. I hope that the posting policy of this remarkable list will remain unchanged so that we all may continue to benefit from the voluntary and substantial effort of our fellow subscribers. Troy. Applied Biomathematics --- "G. Reinhart-Waller" wrote: > Answer: I would very much appreciate an explanatory > paragraph on > paleopsych so that I could better understand the > intent of the poster > who offers a particular article. I'm becoming > overwhelmed with all the > stuff that is being sent. > > Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > Michael Christopher wrote: > > >Question: how many paleopsych readers read all the > >articles posted, and is there any way to get more > >discussion and limit article repostings to links > with > >an explanatory paragraph? It's a lot easier to read > an > >article on a website than in email form which is > much > >more difficult on the eyes. > > > >Michael > > > > > > > >__________________________________ > >Do you Yahoo!? > >Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced > search. > >http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 > >_______________________________________________ > >paleopsych mailing list > >paleopsych at paleopsych.org > >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:35:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:35:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Third World Represents a New Factor in Pope's Succession Message-ID: The New York Times > International > International Special > Third World Represents a New Factor in Pope's Succession http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/international/worldspecial2/05outpost.html 5.4.5 By [1]LYDIA POLGREEN and [2]LARRY ROHTER LAGOS, Nigeria, April 3 - In the modest sanctuary of the Church of the Assumption here, there is no glint of stained glass, just cheap frosted louvers to let the breeze in. The Stations of the Cross are not painted by the hand of a Renaissance master. They are rendered in simple wood carvings hung on the wall. Yet it is here, not in the sumptuous cathedrals of Europe, that the future of the Roman Catholic faith lies, said the Rev. Francis Anyanwu, pastor at the church. "Here in Africa the church is growing, vibrant, alive," Father Anyanwu said as he waited to deliver the benediction after two hours of prayer on Friday night for Pope John Paul II as he lay on his deathbed. "By the grace of God our flock is strong." As the conclave of cardinals assembles to choose a successor to the pope, the strength of the Roman Catholic Church in Africa, Latin America and other developing lands, where two-thirds of Catholics now live, is sure to be a factor in those deliberations. Though only a third of the cardinal electors are from developing countries, representatives from Latin America will outnumber those from Italy. Several Latin American cardinals have been mentioned as possible successors to John Paul II, and a Nigerian cardinal, Francis Arinze, is frequently cited as a papal candidate. "Why not an African pope?" the Rev. Julius Olaitan, administrator of Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos, said after a dawn Mass on Saturday. "We have played second fiddle for so long, but now the church has found its roots in Africa." The feeling for a pope from the developing world may be even more pronounced in Latin America, which has the highest concentration of Roman Catholics in the world. Some feel that a leader like Cardinal Cl?udio Hummes of S?o Paulo, Brazil, also mentioned as a possible successor, could revitalize a church that has been steadily losing ground to Pentecostalism and other evangelical sects that particularly since the 1990's have taken the developing world by storm. "Aside from being a great honor, it would really be advantageous to have someone who truly speaks our language and comes out of a Latin American experience," Marcelo Lisboa, a 65-year-old retiree, said Sunday morning after Mass in Rio de Janiero. "I think it would draw people back into the church," he said, "because even though Latin America has so many Catholics, most people don't go to Mass, and it would certainly help brake the advance of all these evangelical sects." Pentecostalism has made great gains in Africa, too, but the competition here is frequently for millions of souls who are up for grabs and arrive at Christianity from animist and other traditional faiths, though it bumps up against Islam, too. The Catholic Church in Africa has in fact enjoyed its fair share of the religious fervor that has swept Africa in the last century, a spiritual frenzy that saw the percentage of Africans practicing Christianity soar to nearly half of the continent's 900 million inhabitants, from just 9 percent. Today the Catholic Church in Africa claims nearly 150 million adherents, 20 million in Nigeria alone, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Yet in Africa and Latin America alike, the Catholic Church also faces steep challenges, primarily from the Pentecostal wave that has drawn millions with its energetic, all-night-revival style of worship and its promises of material as well as spiritual riches, especially among the deeply impoverished. Once an active force in the lives of many poor people in Latin America when the liberation theology movement dominated in the 1970's and 1980's, the church under Pope John Paul II became an increasingly conservative force and, in the view of some, less involved in the everyday concerns of the poor. In Africa the church occasionally found itself compromised in the continent's complicated and bloody wars. In Rwanda, priests and nuns were accused and in some cases convicted of aiding the Hutu perpetuators of the genocide against the minority Tutsi in 1994. But those challenges pale in comparison with the decades of stagnation and declining church attendance in Europe and the United States, and many see the future of the church as lying in the developing world. In many developed nations, including deeply Catholic ones like Ireland, the pope's firm stands against divorce, abortion, homosexuality and birth control have to some extent alienated populations whose views on such issues have loosened. But particularly in Africa, where the church is looking to grow and families have been devastated by AIDS, it is precisely those conservative doctrines that endeared the pope to a new generation of Catholics. "The Holy Father has stood up for traditional values, and those are the same as African values," said Marie Fatayi-Williams, who came to pray for the pope at the Church of the Assumption on Friday night. "We believe in family, in life, in the sanctity of marriage. There is no controversy about such things here." Indeed, if his conservative message grated on the ears of the European and American faithful, the pope also preached eloquently about the dignity of suffering and the value of each human life, a message that seemed to answer Africa's needs in a tumultuous quarter-century of unceasing war, cycles of famine and death and the devastation of AIDS. In upholding conservative values, his teachings fit neatly into the deeply held traditional mores that dominate most African societies. He visited Africa again and again, drawing huge, adoring crowds. Even among non-Catholics he was beloved. "On a continent where suffering is a fact of daily life, he is an inspiration and a guide," said Henry Akinwunmiho, 50, an elementary school teacher who arrived at the Holy Cross Cathedral in Lagos on Saturday before dawn to pray for the pope. At the parish, Father Olaitan said that just as a Polish pope was the right man to meet the great political shift of the last generation, the end of the cold war, an African or Latin American pope could be just what the church needed to secure its future in the new millennium. "Pope John Paul II knew what an evil Communism was, and he helped stamp it out in this world," Father Olaitan said. "It could be that a pope from Africa or Latin America could stamp out our generation's evils - extreme poverty, ethnic strife and disease - and transform Africa just as the Holy Father transformed the rest of the world." John Paul's conservative message also transformed the church in Latin America, even as its position eroded with the growth of boisterous new Protestant churches whose unmediated style of worship - employing healings, speaking in tongues and casting out demons - and use of television drew millions of believers. No country has a larger Catholic population than Brazil, for instance, and at the start of John Paul II's papacy more than 90 percent of Brazilians considered themselves Catholic. By the time of the last census in 2000, just under three-quarters of Brazil's 180 million people declared themselves so, while Brazil's Protestant population quadrupled. More than 25 million Brazilians now belong to evangelical and Pentecostal churches, leading some Protestant pastors to predict that the country will have a Protestant majority within 25 years. "I don't know if Brazil can continue to be as Catholic a country as it has traditionally been," said Waldo C?sar, a Brazilian sociologist of religion who is a Lutheran. "There is still a lot of room for Protestantism to grow. Poverty and internal migration are not slowing, and they feed this phenomenon." Across the rest of Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, much the same thing is happening. Even fervent Catholics acknowledge that the church has been slow to respond to the challenge, something that leaders in Rome may now seek more aggressively to reverse. It will not be easy. The Roman Catholic Church today finds itself hamstrung by a shortage of clergy that seems to be grow each year. Vocations among young Brazilians are not enough to make up the gap. Fewer Europeans and Americans, a big source of priests in the past, are available, with the result that many communities in the arid backlands and the Amazon see a priest only every couple of months or so. Belatedly, after years in which John Paul centralized authority in Rome, the Catholic Church in Latin America has responded with a movement known as charismatic renewal, which has used rock-style hymns and borrowed Pentecostal thunder by incorporating Bible readings and even speaking in tongues. "Our liturgy is expansive and creative, foreseeing a high degree of popular participation," said the Rev. Pedro F?lix Bassini, director of pastoral outreach for Brazil's National Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. "There are certain norms and basic principles, but we are not saying that you have to be this or that. We're leaving it up to each bishop to provide an orientation." In other dioceses, bishops have sought ways to reach an accommodation with Candombl? and Macumba, Afro-Brazilian cults that are similar to voodoo and Santer?a and have millions of followers. At the start of John Paul II's papacy, the church had similarly been trying to adjust to changing social and political conditions in Latin America with liberation theology. Drawing freely on Marxism for its "preferential option for the poor," the movement aimed at involving priests more in the daily concerns of parishioners and transforming what were seen as unjust structures that perpetuated inequality and poverty. But with his experience living under a Marxist-Leninist government, John Paul II quickly showed himself to be skeptical of the approach and doubtful of its doctrinal foundations. In an emblematic moment during a Central America trip in the 1980's, he wagged his finger in admonition at priests in Nicaragua who had aligned themselves with the Sandinista revolution. All over Latin America, when bishops sympathetic to liberation theology retired they were replaced by priests who were not. Today the cardinal of Lima, Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, 61, is a member of the ultraconservative Opus Dei movement who believes that the church needs to confine itself to a more narrow, traditional role. He was appointed to his post by John Paul II in 2001 with an eye on what kind of legacy the pope would leave. Lydia Polgreen reported from Lagos for this article, and Larry Rohter from Rio de Janeiro. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=LYDIA%20POLGREEN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=LYDIA%20POLGREEN&inline=nyt-per 2. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=LARRY%20ROHTER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=LARRY%20ROHTER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:36:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:36:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Employers Relying On Personality Tests To Screen Applicants Message-ID: Employers Relying On Personality Tests To Screen Applicants http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4010-2005Mar26?language=printer [How do the effects of IQ on job performance compare to those the measure (other!) aspects of personality? Please forward to Charles.] By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 27, 2005; Page A01 UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- The 10 young men and women were there to impress. Decked out in their best suits, they were vying for hourly work as sales associates, ride operators, drivers and cooks at Universal Studios Hollywood theme park and its adjoining retail unit. When asked their favorite movie, they mentioned ones they knew were produced by Universal. When asked what they detested most about their previous jobs, they said not much. And when asked what single word would describe them best, several quickly offered "happy." On the surface, they all seemed promising. But recruiter Nathan Giles knew better. Even before the candidates had stepped through the door for the group interview, their fate had been largely determined by a computer. They had taken a 50-minute online test that asked them to rate to what degree they agreed or disagreed with statements such as, "It's maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free," "You don't worry about making a good impression" and "You could describe yourself as 'tidy'." A score in the "green" range for customer service gave an applicant an 83 percent chance of getting hired, "yellow" a 16 percent chance and "red" a 1 percent chance. Over the past few years, personality assessment tests have moved from the realm of experiment to standard practice at many of the nation's largest companies, including the Albertson's grocery chain and retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Target. A recent survey found that about 30 percent of all companies use personality tests in hiring. To many companies, the tests are as important, if not more important, than an applicant's education, experience and recommendations. Some firms give the computer the power to conduct the first screening of candidates and do not bother interviewing applicants unless they score above a certain level. Universal, however, prefers to put everyone through an interview on the chance that assessments are wrong. Usually they aren't. "In almost every case, the results of the test are what we see in their interviews," said Giles, who has been at his job for two years, Universal said the online exams have made a measurable difference in the quality of its workforce. Employee retention and customer satisfaction levels are up, while absenteeism and theft are down. But the growing use of employment exams worries some, who say many aptitude tests lack rigorous review by professionals in the field and are crafted too narrowly to accurately judge one's eventual performance. "You are really doing a disservice to the complexity of human individuality," said Dan P. McAdams, a professor of psychology and human development at Northwestern University. Psychologists have long debated whether personality can be reduced to a set of numbers, like a person's weight, shoe size or eyeglasses prescription. But that has not stopped people from trying. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which measures four qualities of a person -- introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving -- is often used to help match people up with careers. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, which attempts to measure propensity for substance abuse or other pathologies, is regularly used to assess candidates for sensitive positions in police departments, banks, nuclear plants and the like. The Neuroticism, Extroversion and Openness Personality Inventory breaks personality down into five characteristics that some companies use to assess traits such as management potential. Today, an estimated 2,500 U.S. firms offer assessments that are mostly variations on these main tests and are geared toward hiring. "A well-developed test is probably the cheapest and most valuable selection tool an employer can have," said Gary G. Kaufman, owner of Human Resources Consulting near Nashville, who has worked in hiring at J.C. Penney Co. and the Internal Revenue Service. The problem, he said, is that "personality testing in general is a largely unregulated business, which means that anyone can make up a test and put it on the Internet and make any claims they choose about the test." Some companies, many of which employ teams of PhDs, say they follow rigorous scientific methodology. But some reviews by independent assessors have raised questions. A survey by the Aberdeen Group Inc., a Boston-based technology research firm, found that 49 percent of companies using computerized hiring systems saw no impact on turnover. An American Psychological Association study found little evidence that tests purporting to measure honesty are accurate. The World Privacy Forum and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, privacy advocacy groups, allege that more than a few violate the spirit of privacy laws by asking sensitive questions. Annie Murphy Paul, author of "The Cult of Personality," which is about the testing industry, said there is a real danger of stigmatizing people who fail certain components of tests. "If we are labeling people liars and thieves even before they have seen any propensity for them to do these things, it is a real injustice," she said. The company that developed Universal's test, Unicru Inc., is among the giants in the employment-testing industry. Last year, the Beaverton, Ore., company assessed 11 million applicants, which resulted in 550,000 hires by retailers, grocers, trucking companies and others. Christopher Reed, director of marketing for Unicru, compares the firm's mission to that of a dating site. "Just like they are trying to match up potential mates, we are basically making a prediction of whether someone is a good fit or not for a job," he said. The firm said its tests have been validated time and again by their success at companies. Michael L. Marchetti, executive vice president for store operations for the Indianapolis-based Finish Line Inc. chain of sporting-goods stores, said company policy prohibits managers from hiring any candidate who received a "red" rating. "When you see 70 to 80 percent coming back 'green,' why take somebody that's a risk?" he said. Universal is among those that will consider hiring someone with a low score. Kay Straky, vice president for human relations for Universal Studios Hollywood, said tests are specific to each job. For example, those applying for a sales might also get questions about basic math skills and honesty, while those seeking positions as drivers might be asked about safety. All, however, measure customer service and dependability "We need people to be able to smile at work and show up to work. . . . When people come into the park, we want it to be a really positive experience," Straky said. The company's recruiting office, where the TV sets play Universal movies like "Shrek 2" nonstop throughout the day, is filled with computers. Each day, dozens of job hopefuls line up to take the online test. They know the odds are against them: Out of more than 20,000 applicants last year, the company hired 1,900, which represents an admissions rate lower than that for Harvard University. Travis Beavers, 25, who had recently graduated from City College of San Francisco, was applying for a line-cook job. He said he found the online test fun but long and "kind of confusing" because it was often difficult for him to decide how to differentiate between "strongly agree" and "agree" or "disagree" and "strongly disagree." Veronica Garcia, a film major who was hoping to work as a sales associate, said she thought part of the reason for the test was to gauge an applicant's patience. The test took her more than an hour to complete, she said, because her "computer was acting up." As the candidates sat in the waiting room, a recruiter began to review printouts of their assessment results. Some who came in that day looked like they might work out -- others less so. One candidate who wanted to be a dishwasher rated 35 for customer service and 47 for dependability. A rating of "yellow." This person was less likely "to maintain a good mood," the computer cautioned. Another was applying to be a theater attendant and had strong previous experience but scored 10 for customer service, 13 for dependability. A "red" rating. This person might "be quiet or even unfriendly" and might tend to "waste time." Straky agreed that the person probably was not a good match for Universal. "People come to us because they think it's a fun job, and it is, but it's also a hard job. They have to be very dedicated. In the summer it's 100 degrees and the beach is beckoning just a few miles away." Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:36:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:36:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Krugman: An Academic Question Message-ID: An Academic Question Opinion column by Paul Krugman, New York Times, 5.4.5 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/05krugman.html It's a fact, documented by two recent studies, that registered Republicans and self-proclaimed conservatives make up only a small minority of professors at elite universities. But what should we conclude from that? Conservatives see it as compelling evidence of liberal bias in university hiring and promotion. And they say that new "academic freedom" laws will simply mitigate the effects of that bias, promoting a diversity of views. But a closer look both at the universities and at the motives of those who would police them suggests a quite different story. Claims that liberal bias keeps conservatives off college faculties almost always focus on the humanities and social sciences, where judgments about what constitutes good scholarship can seem subjective to an outsider. But studies that find registered Republicans in the minority at elite universities show that Republicans are almost as rare in hard sciences like physics and in engineering departments as in softer fields. Why? One answer is self-selection - the same sort of self-selection that leads Republicans to outnumber Democrats four to one in the military. The sort of person who prefers an academic career to the private sector is likely to be somewhat more liberal than average, even in engineering. But there's also, crucially, a values issue. In the 1970's, even Democrats like Daniel Patrick Moynihan conceded that the Republican Party was the "party of ideas." Today, even Republicans like Representative Chris Shays concede that it has become the "party of theocracy." Consider the statements of Dennis Baxley, a Florida legislator who has sponsored a bill that - like similar bills introduced in almost a dozen states - would give students who think that their conservative views aren't respected the right to sue their professors. Mr. Baxley says that he is taking on "leftists" struggling against "mainstream society," professors who act as "dictators" and turn the classroom into a "totalitarian niche." His prime example of academic totalitarianism? When professors say that evolution is a fact. In its April Fools' Day issue, Scientific American published a spoof editorial in which it apologized for endorsing the theory of evolution just because it's "the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time," saying that "as editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence." And it conceded that it had succumbed "to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do." The editorial was titled "O.K., We Give Up." But it could just as well have been called "Why So Few Scientists Are Republicans These Days." Thirty years ago, attacks on science came mostly from the left; these days, they come overwhelmingly from the right, and have the backing of leading Republicans. Scientific American may think that evolution is supported by mountains of evidence, but President Bush declares that "the jury is still out." Senator James Inhofe dismisses the vast body of research supporting the scientific consensus on climate change as a "gigantic hoax." And conservative pundits like George Will write approvingly about Michael Crichton's anti-environmentalist fantasies. Think of the message this sends: today's Republican Party - increasingly dominated by people who believe truth should be determined by revelation, not research - doesn't respect science, or scholarship in general. It shouldn't be surprising that scholars have returned the favor by losing respect for the Republican Party. Conservatives should be worried by the alienation of the universities; they should at least wonder if some of the fault lies not in the professors, but in themselves. Instead, they're seeking a Lysenkoist solution that would have politics determine courses' content. And it wouldn't just be a matter of demanding that historians play down the role of slavery in early America, or that economists give the macroeconomic theories of Friedrich Hayek as much respect as those of John Maynard Keynes. Soon, biology professors who don't give creationism equal time with evolution and geology professors who dismiss the view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old might face lawsuits. If it got that far, universities would probably find ways to cope - by, say, requiring that all entering students sign waivers. But political pressure will nonetheless have a chilling effect on scholarship. And that, of course, is its purpose. E-mail: krugman at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:41:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:41:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The cranky user: Performance anxiety Message-ID: The cranky user: Performance anxiety http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky49.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01Cranky Where does all the processing speed go? Level: Introductory [32]Peter Seebach ([33]crankyuser at seebs.plethora.net) Freelance writer 02 Feb 2005 Column icon Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. Peter looks at where all the processor time and memory are going. About 10 years ago I remember people complaining that Microsoft Word was too slow on the Mac. You could type faster than the processor handled input on such a large application. Imagine my disappointment when I recently discovered that the same thing still holds true. Similarly, my first computer with a hard drive loaded a small command-line utility in under a second and a large graphics program in perhaps half a minute. Those are good specs, but isn't it kind of sad that they haven't changed much in the past 15 years? So the question is, where is all the CPU power going? How is it possible that a machine with a full gigabyte of memory can run out of room to run applications just as quickly as a machine with six megabytes of memory did 15 years ago? In this month's The cranky user, I'll get to the bottom of this big mystery. But first, I want to revisit an old adage and see where it stands today. Moore's Law revisited Moore's Law is easily one of the top five misquoted claims ever. The simplified version preferred by most pundits is that computers will become twice as fast every 18 months. In fact, Intel founder Gordon Moore observed in 1965 that the complexity of chips with the lowest cost per component was roughly doubling every year, and predicted that this trend would continue for about 10 years. So Moore's Law doesn't necessarily mean that performance will double; merely that the number of components in the most cost-effective designs will. Moore's prediction was borne out reasonably well by the data, and In 1975 he revised his estimate to about 18 months, which is the number most people cite today. Interestingly, Moore's Law doesn't necessarily tell as much about clock speeds as it does the complexity of system designs. Modern CPUs do a lot of things differently from older CPUs: for instance, they can execute multiple instructions simultaneously. I also bears noting that whether processing speed is doubling at any predictable rate, it has certainly increased quite a bit. What's fascinating is that, for most users, performance isn't noticeably any better today than it was 15 years ago. What's the computer doing with all this processing time? One Usenet poster, commenting on OS X's animated rainbow beachball cursor, hypothesized that the processor, like the user, is busy watching the hypnotic spinning beachball. Jokes aside, computers are, in fact, doing more than they used to. A lot of the things computers do are fairly subtle, happening beneath the radar of a user's perception. Many functions are automatic and, as discussed in [34]last month's column, you could probably do without some of them. But still, a lot is going on. Take a look at some of the primary uses of computer processing power today. Graphical displays Many modern systems use antialiasing to render text. This makes text easier to read and can substantially improve the usability of low-resolution monitors and LCD displays. On the downside, antialiasing sucks up a lot of processing power. Visual effects like drop shadows behind windows and menus, transparent menus and effects, and real-time effects also consume a lot of processing power. The catch for computer makers is that most users expect them. For example, older systems used bitmap fonts, which rendered quickly at the provided size but looked ugly at any other size. Most modern systems render outline fonts in real time, which users are now used to. Even with some caching involved, font rendering adds one more layer of processor overhead -- but no vendor would dare release an interface with bitmap fonts today. The current Mac operating system gets around some graphical overhead by having the rendering hardware of video cards do additional work. The video card essentially becomes a second processor, which cuts down on the graphics processing time. Of course, knowing this makes it even more disturbing when your computer interface turns sluggish. Word processing As I previously mentioned, most users feel a little put out when they can type faster than a word processor can process words. The worst days of this trend seems to be behind us now: most word processing programs started to keep up with even good typists somewhere around the 1-Ghz clock-speed mark. These days, it's the automatic features on these programs that can slow down your system. Automatic checking is a default behavior on most word processing applications. Some simply underline misspelled words and questionable grammar while others automatically correct as you type. Not only are these corrections occasionally inaccurate (many writers turn this feature off), but the behavior also requires a lot of additional processing. Other automatic features in the "do I really need this?" category include one company's famous Office Assistant, as well as many varieties of formatting and workflow automation. Safety and security A certain amount of your system's processing power goes to improved safety and security features for your applications. Many of these features come in the form of critical security patches, since the original code was written without enough attention to sanity checking. The problem with patches is that they add up over time, meaning that individual ones only marginally affect performance, but taken together they can amount to a decent time sink. Virus scanners are a more serious power hog than patches. As viruses become a more significant component of the daily user experience, developers are spending more energy (and processing power) trying to fight them. Most virus scanners update themselves regularly, which makes for a small, but noticeable, amount of background activity. They also scan a lot more files than they once did. The existence of macro viruses for word processors means that virus scanners have to scan data files, not just executables. As a result, a single file might be scanned several times before you access it. Any file you download is scanned first and, since it's an archive, so are its contents. You open the archive in your archive utility, which scans everything in the archive. You extract the file to disk, which causes it to be scanned. Then you open it, and it's scanned again. All this scanning chews up a lot of processing time, which affects every program running on a system. For instance, a video game that uses a lot of graphical files and loads them on the fly could require the same 20 MB file to be scanned a dozen times during an hour's play. All that said, security is a worthy and necessary use of processing power, and the alternatives are worse: spyware and viruses can consume incredible amounts of time. Another common cause of slow computers, at least for Windows users, is an accumulation of any number of programs that snoop on traffic, pop up advertisements, or otherwise make themselves indispensable to a marketer somewhere. Program complexity Program complexity is probably the biggest culprit when your supposedly speedy processor still runs slow. As applications become more complex, a certain amount of their code (and thus your processing power) goes into making them more manageable. This code, which I'll call support code, actually makes programs easier for developers to write. A very large program might incorporate nested layers of support code. For instance, a Linux build of Mozilla might link to 30 or so different pieces of support code -- including support code for the support code that Mozilla uses directly. The code itself is typically very efficient for its task, and it does make the job of developing large-scale applications much easier. But the code that enables all these small pieces of code to interact in a predictable manner adds a small runtime cost. Once again, a small cost repeated many times adds up to a significant performance hit. A few of the programs I use on Windows run special programs at system startup. Each of these programs pre-loads its own shared libraries, which in turn allows the program to launch more quickly later. At one point, the delay from the initial appearance of my desktop to my system being responsive enough for me to start using it was up to about five minutes. Why? Because it was running a dozen or so programs to make programs load faster. The irony didn't seem funny at the time, but it does now. In conclusion A certain amount of code bloat is inherent in all this modern complexity, and I've talked about some of the worst offenders this month: applications that require processors to do extra work that isn't really useful to the user; support code that no one really understands (and that the system may not require), but if you leave it alone it works; over-patched code resulting from too much emphasis on rapid development and not enough on sanity checking. Whatever the problem, overemphasis on time to market is probably a contributing factor. Another factor is the so-called second-system effect, first discussed by Frederick Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month: when developers do a second project, they want so badly to make it better that they often include ill-considered features that render the resulting system bloated and unusable. Unfortunately, a lot of the systems in widespread use today are second systems. Worse yet, the bloat introduced by a second-system design is often preserved in future revisions to preserve compatibility. Luckily, the worst is probably over. Around the time when 800-Mhz processors came out, users stopped the driving need to upgrade constantly. Most users today can complete their work without waiting hours for the computer to perform its tasks. This week's action item: Launch a few applications simultaneously and time their start-ups. Try it again in five years to see whether the time has improved. Resources * Read about the phenomenon of the overactive user interface in Peter's column from last month, [35]Everything's automated! (developerWorks, January 2005). * Focus on macro viruses -- the central topic of Peter's column on [36]Usability vs. security (developerWorks, August 2002). * Catch the predictions of developerWorks readers on the evolution of Moore's Law in [37]A peek through the veil at 2005 (developerWorks, January 2005). * Learn about the contributions of IBM to Mooresian complexity and modern day processing with Nora Mikes' [38]History of chipmaking at IBM (developerWorks, March 2004). * In [39]Reducing the user interface by Mark Molander, discover some practical ways to cut the data bloat on your UIs as Mark notes that many applications have far more data and functions than users ever need (developerWorks, June 2001). * Bet you didn't know that Wikipedia maintains a page about [40]Moore's Law. * Visit The Jargon File for a good description of the [41]second-system effect. * Find out how the IBM [42]Global Services Usability Engineering team can help you improve your products and make them easier to use. * Also, avail yourself of these valuable resources on developerWorks: + The [43]Web Architecture zone specializes in articles covering various Web-based solutions. + The [44]Developer Bookstore presents a comprehensive listing of technical books, including hundreds of Web-related titles. About the author Photo of Peter Seebach Peter Seebach has been using computers for years and is gradually becoming acclimated. He still doesn't know why mice need to be cleaned so often, though. You can contact Peter at [45]crankyuser at seebs.plethora.net. References 32. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky49.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01Cranky#author1 33. mailto:crankyuser at seebs.plethora.net?subject=Performance%20anxiety&cc=htc at us.ibm.com 34. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky48.html 35. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-cranky48.html 36. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/us-cranky18.html 37. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/pa-chipschall4.html 38. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-powhist/ 39. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/us-reduce/index.html 40. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law 41. http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/second-system-effect.html 42. http://www.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/publish/24 43. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/ 44. http://devworks.krcinfo.com/WebForms/ProductList.aspx?Search=Category&id=1600&p=WebArchitecture 45. mailto:crankyuser at seebs.plethora.net?subject=The%20cranky%20user:%20Performance%20anxiety&cc=htc at us.ibm.com From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:41:31 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:41:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: 'John Kenneth Galbraith': An Economist Who Didn't Just Play by the Numbers Message-ID: 'John Kenneth Galbraith': An Economist Who Didn't Just Play by the Numbers http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/books/16norr.html [The Sunday review follows.] February 16, 2005 By FLOYD NORRIS JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH: His Life, His Politics, His Economics By Richard Parker Illustrated. 820 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $35. There was a time when John Kenneth Galbraith was the most famous economist in America, a man whose books regularly became best sellers. But today he is little honored in the economics profession, where, as Richard Parker remarks in his engaging and exhaustive biography, Mr. Galbraith is regarded as something of an outsider, a fine writer who never became comfortable with the detailed mathematical formulas that came to dominate economics. When a Galbraith book, "The Affluent Society," spent months on the best-seller list in 1958, George J. Stigler, the University of Chicago economist who would eventually win the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on the economic effects of government regulation, was outraged. He called it "shocking that more Americans have read 'The Affluent Society' than 'The Wealth of Nations,' " the classic work by Adam Smith. Mr. Galbraith's response was typical, witty and anything but self-deprecating. "Professor Stigler's sorrow," he suggested, "may be not that so many read Galbraith and so few read Smith but that hardly anyone reads Stigler at all." A man who grew up on a Canadian farm and who spent formative years trying to control wages and prices during the New Deal, and then did pioneering work assessing the effectiveness of strategic bombing at the end of World War II, Mr. Galbraith was acutely aware of the role of power in society at a time when many economists preferred to step around that issue. How does his work stand up now? Mr. Parker - like Mr. Galbraith, a man who was trained in economics and who taught at Harvard while active in both journalism and Democratic politics - is generally supportive. He praises Mr. Galbraith's ability to analyze how the economy really worked, as opposed to how models said it should work, and sees in his writing a precursor to behavioral economics, which has become a major force in the profession by moving away from assumptions that investors and consumers can be expected to act rationally. His early work showed that large companies in mid-20th-century America were run more for the benefit of their managers, who seldom owned much stock, than for the benefit of their shareholders, and were not as interested in maximizing profits as conventional economists assumed. But he did not see the renewal that was coming, as the threat of takeovers and new technologies revolutionized American business. Mr. Galbraith, 96, leaves no Galbraithian school of economists, although Mr. Parker quotes Amartya Sen, the Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner, as saying his work will endure. Reading "The Affluent Society" now, Mr. Sen said, is "like reading 'Hamlet' and deciding it is full of quotations." "You realize," he continued, "where they came from." Mr. Galbraith's early days did not signal great academic success. After repeating 12th grade at a high school in rural Ontario, he graduated from Ontario Agricultural College, an institution whose entrance requirements did not include a high school diploma. Years later the college gave him an honorary degree, then considered taking it back after Mr. Galbraith described it as "not only the cheapest but probably the worst college in the English-speaking world." Such a comment bespoke a haughtiness that would characterize his career as he earned a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley and then arrived at Harvard as an agricultural economist, a field that has largely died out but one that clearly influenced the critiques of the larger economy that made him famous. Mr. Galbraith had a way of getting under conservatives' skins. In 1954, on the 25th anniversary of the 1929 crash, he testified before Congress on the dangers of excessive speculation, and the stock market promptly stumbled - a move for which some blamed him. Homer E. Capehart, a Republican senator from Indiana, saw evidence of Communism in the idea, and then another of Mr. Galbraith's opponents, Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks, demanded that J. Edgar Hoover conduct an F.B.I. investigation. In due course, the report came back to Mr. Hoover, and was forwarded to Mr. Weeks: "Investigation favorable except conceited, egotistical and snobbish." Republican enmity toward Mr. Galbraith - which was richly reciprocated - endured for decades. In 1971 he testified before Congress that the government should consider wage and price controls. President Richard M. Nixon told his treasury secretary that the testimony had "unmasked" the real aim of "all these bright New Dealers" and could be used to destroy Mr. Galbraith. "Make the Democratic candidates and spokesmen repudiate him," he said. Less than three weeks later, Nixon announced his New Economic Policy, which featured wage and price controls. Mr. Galbraith told a reporter he felt "like the streetwalker who had just learned that the profession was not only legal but the highest form of municipal service." His own service to the government came as President John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India. Mr. Parker credits him with doing excellent work to defuse a war that broke out between China and India in 1962, just as the Cuban missile crisis was preoccupying Washington. He was also an early critic of the Vietnam War inside - and later outside - the government. It was characteristic of Mr. Galbraith that his nomination to the Indian post was threatened by his willingness to speak what he saw as common sense but that others saw as "virtual treason," as Mr. Parker puts it. At his confirmation hearing in 1961, he suggested that the United States might consider offering diplomatic recognition to the Chinese government in Beijing if that government would accept the right of Taiwan to exist independently. When the United States finally did recognize China, it made no such demand, and today China threatens war if Taiwan formally proclaims an independence that has in fact lasted more than half a century. This book may tell some readers more than they want to know about the details of politics, economics and public policy in the mid-20th century. But it also shows how good Mr. Galbraith was at both assessing problems and dealing with them. It was 52 years ago, after Adlai E. Stevenson lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower despite witty speeches written by Mr. Galbraith, that this economist summed up the problem in words that sound as if they could have been written last year. "American liberals have made scarcely a new proposal for reform in 20 years," he wrote. "It is not evident that they have had any important new ideas." In the following years, Mr. Galbraith helped to provide the ideas that shaped the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Liberals could use a new Galbraith now. -------------- The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'John Kenneth Galbraith': The Presidents' Man http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/review/27FRANKL.html February 27, 2005 By THOMAS FRANK Correction Appended OPTIMISTIC superstition with regard to all things economic is a typically American folly, as vigorous and unrepentant today as it was in 1929. We shower high honors on any author who can repackage the comforting idea that the free market is a democratic expression of the popular will; we pay an army of lecturers to persuade us that each new corporate cost-cutting initiative is an unprecedented victory for the little guy; and we support an entire cable news channel that limns the wonders of the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. Wherever this superstitious mind is at work, there you will also find John Kenneth Galbraith deplored and reviled. I ran across his name repeatedly while researching a book on the origins of the new economy, that fevered epilogue to the last century. Tom Peters, to take just one example, assailed Galbraith as the patron saint of the large, vertically integrated corporation, a form of organization that Peters characterized as a ''hubristic exercise'' in defying market forces. Peters wasn't alone. Galbraith infuriated the faithful for a large part of the 20th century. The conclusions he drew when working on the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in the closing days of World War II -- specifically, that the massive aerial bombardment of Germany was without significant military effect -- caused terrific problems for officials who wanted the study to prove that bombing had won the war. Testifying before a Senate committee in 1955 on the nature of stock market bubbles, Galbraith incurred the wrath of investors everywhere; they'd noticed that the market fell while he spoke and naturally concluded cause and effect. None of this was a matter of chance. Galbraith's formal subject may have been economics, but his work can just as well be read as a long meditation on business's genius for self-deception, its consistent preference for flattering theory over troublesome reality. Galbraith is, after all, the originator of the familiar term ''conventional wisdom'' and his book on the bull market of the 1920's, ''The Great Crash, 1929,'' emphasized the role of ''incantation'' and ''mass escape into make-believe'' in that great orgy of speculation. The tension between theory and reality runs throughout Richard Parker's ''John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics.'' It defines as well Galbraith's relationship to his profession, which like so many other academic fields spent much of the 20th century insulating itself behind an impenetrable language -- in the case of economics, a language of equations and models and perfectly rational actors. Galbraith went in the opposite direction, becoming a public intellectual who spent his life advising politicians, honing his famously aphoristic style, even working as a journalist. His economics, as Parker, a senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, explains, ''integrated politics, power, ideology and historical circumstance to explain the actually lived economic world.'' Reality is messy. Or, as Galbraith himself put it with his typical pithiness: ''Specialization is the parent not only of boredom but also of irrelevance and error.'' Thus Parker's book is both a biography and a treatise on the misinterpretations and disastrous mistakes -- the mystery of stagflation, the bubble of the 90's, Vietnam -- that theoretical rigidity and deference to experts have brought over the last hundred years. It is also, thanks to Galbraith's longevity, his work in so many administrations and his battles with so many other economic thinkers, a fine one-volume history of economic thought in the 20th century. First came the smashup of classical economic theory during the Depression, when steadily worsening conditions exposed the free-market faith in naturally occurring equilibrium for the superstition that it was. (The leading lights of the Harvard economics department, where Galbraith was then a lowly instructor, were slow to catch on. ''These orthodox men believed in markets with a faith bordering on religion,'' Parker writes, in 1934 opposing the early recovery efforts of the Roosevelt administration, ''not on 'political' but on 'scientific' grounds.'' Free-market orthodoxy was soon brushed aside by the theories of John Maynard Keynes, whose American disciples -- Galbraith prominent among them -- saw a central role for government in managing the economy, thus furnishing theoretical justification to remedies long advocated by liberal reformers. Keynesianism conquered the corporate mind as well, and the nation heeded the advice of a new set of experts who promised to deliver growth and prosperity, mainly through military spending. So complete was its triumph that even Milton Friedman, still the standard-bearer of economic conservatism today, was moved to say in 1965, ''We're all Keynesians now.'' In the 70's, though, free-market orthodoxy returned, this time as an insurgent out of the University of Chicago, armed with an idea called rational expectations, whose ''sheer theoretical beauty and rigorous internal consistency'' had soon captured economics departments nationwide. Committed partisan though he was, Galbraith retained his critical edge, pointing out even during the Keynesian heyday that our affluence concealed a certain absurdity as well as a dangerous militarism. To this story of clashing ideas Parker adds farmer uprisings and student revolts, along with the minutiae of World War II price controls. I will confess that I was initially skeptical about the book's 820 pages of dense type, but every detail is justified and every digression fascinating. If the book has a failing, it is that Galbraith's dry, Anglified wit and his big Keynesian ideas seem to shrink when placed alongside his amazing doings. After all, John Kenneth Galbraith was not merely another Harvard professor. He was born in a remote corner of Ontario in 1908, when it was often the farmers who were the radicals and the Harvard professors who were the guardians of the status quo. Galbraith's father, in fact, was active in one of the left-wing rebellions that used periodically to sweep North American farm country. The son commenced the career that would eventually make him famous for his urbanity by studying animal husbandry at a little-known ag college in his home province. From there it was on to Berkeley, where he acquired a Ph.D. in agricultural economics -- an exciting and important subject at the time, given the agrarian reforms on which the New Deal had embarked -- and Harvard, where he landed an instructorship in 1934. He knew presidents from Roosevelt to Clinton. With John F. Kennedy he was particularly close, advising him again and again to avoid entanglement in Vietnam. Through it all he served as the urbane face of liberalism, commenting constantly on television and producing a long, admirable list of books and articles. What astonishes the contemporary reader is, first of all, that a genuine, independent intellectual like Galbraith was permitted to serve in government, let alone become the confidant of presidents. Facile anti-intellectualism is the order of the day now, as even Democrats race to embrace the free-market logic of the Chicagoans. The ''New Industrial State'' that the great liberal economist described in 1967 is now Public Enemy No. 1 of financiers and rebel C.E.O.'s determined to, as Tom Peters put it in 1992, blast ''the violent winds of the marketplace into every nook and cranny in the firm.'' Yet reading Parker's comprehensive account of the 20th century's economic battles, I can't help thinking that this ought to be Galbraith's moment. An old-school scoffer like Galbraith would remind us that all our elected officials have done with their heady incantations of the virtues of privatizing Social Security and the glories of deregulation is resurrect the superstitions of our orthodox ancestors, and trade in our affluent society for a faith-based 19th-century model in which the affluence accrues only to the top. Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of ''What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.'' Correction: February 27, 2005, Sunday: A picture caption on Page 18 of the Book Review today, with a review of "John Kenneth Galbraith" by Richard Parker, gives an erroneous title from the book for the post held by Robert F. Kennedy in 1962. He was attorney general, not a senator. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:41:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:41:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: 'Pol Pot': Cambodia's Murderous Mystery Man Message-ID: The New York Times > Books > Books of The Times | 'Pol Pot': Cambodia's Murderous Mystery Man http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/books/18book.html February 18, 2005 [Followed by the Sunday Book Review, the first chapter, and the obituary.] Cambodia's Murderous Mystery Man By WILLIAM GRIMES POL POT: Anatomy of a Nightmare By Philip Short Illustrated. 537 pages. Henry Holt. $30. Even among the most accomplished mass murderers of the last century, Pol Pot deserves a special place. In raw numbers, his achievements cannot match Hitler's or Stalin's, but statistics can be deceiving. In three years under the Khmer Rouge an estimated one and a half million Cambodians died, out of a total population of only seven million. Many were executed. Many more died of overwork, disease or starvation laboring quite literally as slaves to realize the political fantasies of their gently smiling, almost Buddha-like leader. For lethal speed and destructiveness, the Cambodian experiment stands alone and apart. "Money, law courts, newspapers, the postal system and foreign telecommunications - even the concept of the city - were all simply abolished," Philip Short writes in his superb, authoritative account of the man and the madness that transformed Cambodia, almost overnight, into hell on earth. "Individual rights were not curtailed in favor of the collective, but extinguished altogether. Individual creativity, initiative, originality were condemned per se. Individual consciousness was systematically demolished." This was utopia as envisioned by Saloth Sar, better known by his party alias, Pol Pot, and Mr. Short goes a long way toward explaining how and why Cambodia got there. Drawing on interviews with former members of the Khmer Rouge movement and archival material in France, Russia, China, Cambodia and Vietnam, he carries the reader along in a remarkably lucid exposition of the political events that brought Pol Pot to power, kept him there briefly and then brought him down. Pol Pot, the man, remains an illusive, shadowy figure. But the forces that shaped him, and his thinking, come into focus, and Mr. Short chronicles the stages of the Cambodian revolution with admirable clarity. For the biographer, Pol Pot is a steep, uphill climb. Intensely secretive, he baffled even his closest associates, who never managed to penetrate beneath his opaque smile and smooth demeanor. "Even when he was very angry, you could never tell," said Ieng Sary, a Khmer Rouge leader who had known Pol Pot ever since their student days in Paris. "You could not tell from his face what he was feeling. Many people misunderstood that - he would smile his unruffled smile, and then they would be taken away and executed." For years no one knew that Pol Pot headed the Communist Party of Cambodia or, after it took over, that he was the one running Cambodia. In his youth, the smile simply seemed friendly. It helped Sar, an indifferent student who showed no interest in politics until his 20's, gain influence in the Marxist group formed by fellow Cambodian college students in Paris in the early 1950's. Mr. Short ingeniously teases out the various strands of revolutionary thought that influenced the young Sar, who, he argues, was unusually receptive to the most extreme versions of political radicalism. In part, this was a matter of personal history. As a young child, Sar had been sent for a year to a Buddhist school whose emphasis on strict discipline, rote learning and suppression of individuality became, the author argues, "key elements of his political credo." But Sar's attraction to the most inflexible, utopian strains in Stalin, Mao and, above all, the Russian anarchist Kropotkin reflected a deep-seated tendency in Khmer culture, according to Mr. Short. He contrasts the tempering influence of Confucianism on Vietnamese and Chinese political thinking with the nihilistic precepts of Theravada Buddhism and the dark shadows of Khmer superstition, still very much alive in the late 20th century. In the waning days of the Lon Nol regime, generals were instructed in ancient Khmer practices of warfare, and a line of colored sand was drawn around Phom Penh to give the city magical protection. "Whereas Mao was the product of an intensely rational, literate society, with highly developed traditions of philosophical debate, Sar's cultural heritage was irrational, oral, guided by Theravada transcendentalism and by k'ruu, spirit masters, whose truths sprang not from analysis but from illumination," Mr. Short writes. Years spent in the countryside building a revolutionary organization deepened Pol Pot's conviction that true Communism could be built only by the poorest, "purest" strata of the peasantry, on fire with revolutionary consciousness. In truth, he was a poor theoretician, his Marxism an ill-digested blend of anti-colonialism, xenophobia and millenarianism. Sar and his fellow revolutionaries never bothered to examine the social conditions in which their lofty ideas would be put into practice. The absence of an industrial proletariat, for example, bothered them not in the least. In May 1975, less than a month after seizing power, they simply decided to make the "extremely marvelous, extremely wonderful, prodigious leap" to full Communism. Mr. Short dismisses the argument that the American bombing of Cambodia in 1970 brutalized and radicalized the Khmer Rouge. Many more were dropped on Vietnam, and in any case, the Khmer Rouge leadership did not experience the bombing firsthand. "The bombing may have helped create a climate conducive to extremism," he writes. "But the ground war would have done that anyway." But the bombing did have profound effects and led, indirectly, to a harsher regime, Mr. Short argues. It sent tens of thousands of new recruits to the Khmer Rouge, flooded the cities with refugees and accelerated Pol Pot's policy of collectivization in Communist-controlled areas. "The outcome was a harsher, more repressive regime under which the suffering of individuals became unimportant because there was so much of it," the author writes. Mr. Short is judicious in describing the atrocities and myriad insanities of Pol Pot's regime. He does not catalog. A few chilling details, expertly deployed, do the necessary work. After the first year of Khmer Rouge rule, to take just one example, foraging for food was denounced as a manifestation of individualism. Some might wind up with more than others. Better that all should starve equally. In the countryside, peasant soldiers would make "smoke children," or magic talismans, by slicing open the stomachs of pregnant women, removing the fetuses and hanging them up in the eaves of huts to shrivel and blacken. Suffering was not distributed equally in Cambodia. Mr. Short paints a complicated picture of Khmer rule, which was arbitrary and highly disorganized. Because Pol Pot failed to organize a truly unified, disciplined party, his revolutionary directives were applied almost haphazardly from region to region and even village to village. "The prevailing image of the Khmers Rouges as uniformly mindless automatons, bent on destruction, was fundamentally wrong," he argues. "What the deportees themselves experienced was a mosaic of idealism and butchery, exaltation and horror, compassion and brutality, that defies easy generalization." Mass starvation and economic failure led Pol Pot to a simple conclusion: internal enemies were to blame. In short order, he embarked on a series of purges that bled the Khmer Rouge white, while carrying out military operations and civilian massacres against Vietnam, Cambodia's ancient enemy, thereby ensuring his downfall. Three years, eight months and 20 days after winning power, the regime of Pol Pot collapsed as the Vietnamese overran the capital. Mr. Short finds a fitting epitaph in the words of an aristocrat whose sons served the regime. "Didn't they win a glorious victory?" she said to a friend. "But they wouldn't treat people properly, so now they've lost everything. Band of cretins!" To the end of his life, Pol Pot, who died in 1998, denied responsibility for the suffering under his rule. At times, he would seem to recognize a shortcoming here and there. "The line was too far to the left," he might say. More often, he expressed regret at too much trust in those around him, "the real traitors." Up to his final moments, he was still ordering executions from his encampment along the Thai border. As for Cambodia's extremely marvelous leap, he remained unapologetic. Just days before his death, he told a visitor, "My conscience is clear." ----------- The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'Pol Pot': The Killer's Smile http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/review/27VOLLMAN.html February 27, 2005 'Pol Pot': The Killer's Smile By WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN POL POT: Anatomy of a Nightmare. By Philip Short. Illustrated. 537 pp. A John Macrae Book/ Henry Holt & Company. $30. I remember the first time I saw the killing fields at Choeung Ek: pits with rainwater in them, scraps of cloth and concretions of bone in the exposed earth. In one mass grave swam fat, unwholesome frogs. A child was catching them; his family was going to eat them. When I try to conceptualize Cambodia's suffering, that sight -- repulsive to me, presumably ordinary to the boy -- reminds me equally of the presence of the murdered and the sad expedients of the living. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge had been expelled by the Vietnamese a dozen years before, but their influence remained everywhere. During that first visit of mine, in 1991, one could stand in the middle of the widest boulevard in Phnom Penh at night and count stars. Electricity was the loud, weak and temporary product of generators. In place of the vehicle fumes of a couple of years later, one smelled sandalwood. Everything seemed as broken as the bones at Choeung Ek. Wasn't all this of a piece? Obviously it was the Khmer Rouge's fault that children were catching dinner in mass graves. Philip Short's new biography of Pol Pot proves me wrong. It quotes an old member of the Khmer Rouge who remembers being a child and finding decapitated heads in fishing ponds. ''It didn't bother us. . . . We'd yank them out by the hair, and throw them aside.'' That was in 1949, before there was a Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was then an undistinguished student en route to accept a radio technology scholarship in Paris. There are two ways to distort the enduring presence of atrocity in Cambodia. One is to dwell, as I tend to do, on victims. Short, a British journalist who previously wrote a well-regarded biography of Mao, tends to dwell on perpetrators. In place of the boy at Choeung Ek, he brings to our notice a woman named Khoun Sophal, whose husband, a government minister, had taken a 16-year-old mistress. Her countermeasure: three liters of nitric acid. ''Scores of teenage Cambodian girls are disfigured and in many cases blinded in acid attacks by rich men's wives,'' Short writes. ''The parallel with Khmer Rouge atrocities is striking. One way to try to understand why the Cambodian Communists acted as they did is to enter into the mind of a well-educated, intelligent woman'' like Khoun Sophal. This 1999 incident evidently haunts Short as much as the sight of the frog-fishing boy does me. In his afterword, which bluntly states, ''The present Cambodian government is rotten,'' he brings up the Khoun Sophal sisterhood as exemplars of ''a culture of impunity. . . . In such circumstances, trying the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders for past crimes offers an alibi for doing nothing about present ones.'' In other words, he seems to say, what Pol Pot did was hardly beyond the Cambodian ordinary. ''Every atrocity the Khmers Rouges ever committed, and many they did not, can be found depicted on the stone friezes of Angkor . . . or, in more recent times, in the conduct of the Issaraks,'' the anti-French insurgents who threw those heads into the ponds back in 1949. Obviously, whether or not one accepts this interpretation of Cambodian history affects how one sees Pol Pot. And who was Pol Pot? In 1996 I asked a Khmer Rouge defector and, through a translator, got this answer: ''He don't know. Pol Pot is just another word for Khmer Rouge. Maybe not a person. But if a person, Pol Pot always have a black uniform, and wear red fabric on head and wear shoes from rubber. But he never see.'' Nobody had seen him; everybody had heard his name. ''In the Pol Pot time,'' people would say, and the story that followed was always horrendous. A woman I loved told me how she'd had to watch her family's heads smashed in one by one; if she had wept, she would have been next. She blamed Pol Pot. A number of Cambodian slum dwellers and Thai dealers in illegally logged hardwood admired him; most abhorred him. His brother, Loth Suong, told me that Pol Pot had been a kindly child. He didn't consider himself Pol Pot's relative anymore. Until recently, nobody even agreed about whether he was still alive. (He died once and for all in 1998, at 73.) One might call him the Osama bin Laden of his epoch; but he was more invisible to our knowledge than that other bugbear. In David P. Chandler's excellent biography, ''Brother Number One'' (1992), there is an eerie photograph of Pol Pot applauding and smiling in a crowd. What do we know about him, except that he smiles? Oh, that smile of his! Short quotes his henchman, Ieng Sary: ''His face was always smooth. . . . Many people misunderstood that -- he would smile his unruffled smile, and then they would be taken away and executed.'' Short's book is ampler than Chandler's, and his footnotes contain evidence of an impressive diversity of sources, not to mention any number of thoughtful qualifications and interesting anecdotes. His text sparkles with shrewdly plausible inferences mortared into a compelling narrative. For instance, about the odd, yet in retrospect perfectly natural spectacle of the young Saloth Sar, who was not yet Pol Pot, lauding the Buddha as the first champion of democracy, Short comments: ''Like his choice of the pseudonym Khmer Daeum, it suggested a conscious desire to identify himself with an authentically Cambodian viewpoint rather than imported, Western ideas.'' If we fail to understand that desire, Pol Pot's anti-Vietnamese xenophobia and his expulsion of the urban populations will never make sense. Were this biography a novel, I would apply the word ''verisimilitude'' to much of it, for Short's Pol Pot possesses a detailed reality whenever he appears. And why shouldn't he? We know more about him than we did when ''Brother Number One'' appeared. Short got the benefit of Nate Thayer's groundbreaking interview with the old murderer, not to mention eyewitness accounts of his remarriage, death and cremation. His account of Pol Pot's final two decades is of exceptional interest. But my qualification that Pol Pot is vividly drawn whenever he appears remains unfortunately necessary. I wouldn't have wanted Short to cut any of his multipage summations of royalist Cambodia's domestic and foreign policies, Nixonian realpolitik during the Vietnam War or the politics of postwar Cambodia. But one may wish for more than the all-too-occasional paragraph or two in which Pol Pot takes a direct role. ''In September 1994,'' Short writes, ''the gentle old man who doted on his small daughter ordered the execution of three young backpackers''; such details do acquaint us with the monster, but there are not many of them. Our protagonist does get his biographical due in youth and old age, and fleetingly during his three years as the ruling despot of Democratic Kampuchea. But during the crucial two decades between the mid-1950's and his secret entry into a subjugated Phnom Penh, he remains ''just another word for Khmer Rouge. Maybe not a person.'' Could it be that because Pol Pot identified himself so thoroughly with his revolution, there was no him for us to know? Isaac Deutscher's biography of Stalin, and Alan Bullock's of Hitler, manage to ''bring alive'' tyrants whose personal lives were banal. Perhaps the problem is that Pol Pot was mediocre in almost every sphere: a failed technical student, an uninspired military leader who wasted the lives of his troops in badly planned offensives and ignored emergencies, a misguided ruler. In sum, Pol Pot would exert little claim on our attention were it not for the fact that millions died through his cruelty and incompetence. In ''Brother Number One,'' Chandler admits defeat at the outset: ''I was able to build up a consistent, but rather two-dimensional picture. . . . As a person, he defies analysis.'' When Short doesn't give us Pol Pot, what do we get? First and foremost, a highly readable summary of a half-century of Cambodian history. His characterization of Prince Sihanouk, the man for whom the word ''mercurial'' was invented, is vivid and at times based on personal observation. He is excellent at coining pithy summations of political motives that ring humanly true. For instance, shortly after World War II ''the Cambodians embraced Marxism not for theoretical insights, but to learn how to get rid of the French and to transform a feudal society which colonialism had left largely intact.'' Indeed, in my own interviews with Khmer Rouge I have been struck by how few of them knew anything about Marx. Short is correct: more than we would like to think, theirs was an indigenous movement. Most of us would like to believe the worst of the Khmer Rouge, but Short doesn't always let us. He takes pains to show that between 1970, when Sihanouk was overthrown by the American puppet Lon Nol, and 1972, when Pol Pot demanded that the revolution be sped up, the Khmer Rouge not only respected the autonomy of most peasants in their control, but performed such active kindnesses as sending help to bring in the harvest. He is especially good at conveying the incremental buildup of harshness in the revolution. Here it differed from its Russian analogue, where, as Trotsky famously put it, ''something snapped in the heart of the revolution'' after the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918. In Cambodia there does not seem to have been a triggering event. One of the Khmer Rouge's first roundups, which occurred the year before they conquered Phnom Penh, netted their own Communist compatriots who'd sojourned in Vietnam. A detention camp was built for these victims ''with Khmer bodies and Vietnamese minds,'' most of whom were then liquidated over a period of years. Meanwhile, strangers in the ''liberated zone'' had begun being treated as spies, and peasants were killing the educated, although this was not yet Pol Pot's stipulated policy. These events, to which Chandler's biography lacked the space to do justice, Short narrates with clarity and detachment, coincidentally underscoring his thesis of the normality of Cambodian atrocities as footnotes to the stone friezes of Angkor. Meanwhile he renders Pol Pot's crimes less aberrant, less simply sadistic, by explicating their rational basis. For instance, here is Brother Number One's directive concerning the Cham insurgents (they disliked being ordered to abandon their cultural distinctions): ''The leaders must be tortured fiercely in order that we may obtain a complete understanding of their organization.'' Short has much of value to say about the organization of rural life in Cambodia and how that sometimes informed, and sometimes defeated, Pol Pot's expectations. He is equally adept at explicating the Khmer Rouge grand strategy, which seesawed between Vietnam and China, all the while retaining Prince Sihanouk as an improbable figurehead. He gives reasonable due to the progressive destabilization of Cambodia caused by the Americans and the North Vietnamese in the 70's, a tale told first and best in William Shawcross's ''Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia.'' Short discounts Shawcross's opinion that the Khmer Rouge's radicalization into cruelty had much to do with the carnage and terror caused by America's secret bombing campaign. He prefers to believe that Pol Pot and his ilk would have been atrocious anyway. So do I. At times, Short's summations of motives decay into snap judgments. At one point, he claims that the Khmer Rouge killed captured government troops without mercy because ''in the Confucian cultures of China and Vietnam, men are . . . always capable of being reformed,'' for instance into good Communists; ''in Khmer culture they are not.'' But 40 pages earlier, while laying out what made the Cambodian style of Communist revolution different from all others, Short invokes Theravada Buddhism to obtain the following result: ''The idea that 'proletarian consciousness' could be forged, independent of a person's class origins or economic status, became the central pillar of Khmer communism.'' If it was really a ''central pillar,'' surely royalist prisoners could have been indoctrinated instead of exterminated. There are many such preconceived moments, as when Short informs us of the parallel lives Cambodians supposedly live, one grounded in reason and the other ''mired in superstition,'' or glibly declares that ''Cambodians assert their identity by means of dichotomies: they are in opposition to what they are not.'' There is a whiff of hubris in these categorizations. They may be correct for all I know, but where's the proof? And when he comes to the three hellish years of Pol Pot's rule, he offers as one of the reasons for creating ''a slave state, the first in modern times,'' the following unpleasant assertion: ''Pol . . . faced a genuine and all but insurmountable problem, which had defeated the French, defeated Sihanouk, and has defeated every Cambodian government since. The problem was: how to make Khmers work. Putting it in those terms will raise hackles. But the issue is too important to be brushed aside with comforting platitudes.'' Short does not quite say that laziness is a national Cambodian characteristic, but he comes close. I do grant that Cambodians frequently work more slowly, and with smaller material ambition, than do many Americans, Germans and Japanese -- but I would never characterize that as an exclusively Cambodian phenomenon; and I would hold climate, malaria and intestinal parasites responsible. When I go to, say, Burma, I eat less and less; my strength declines; lassitude decreases my resolve while increasing my patience; then the fever or the diarrhea starts. Short himself mentions Pol Pot's incapacitating bouts of malaria. The book's rationalization of the Khmer Rouge program of forced labor, no matter how it's hedged, makes me uneasy. More specifically, it makes me look apprehensively back upon Short's near equation of Khmer Rouge atrocities with acid attacks carried out by jealous middle-aged wives. I don't entirely disagree, but I worry that Pol Pot's crimes might thereby be trivialized. Most likely Short's opinionated peculiarities are well-meaning attempts to add nuance to our indictment of Pol Pot. Did he commit genocide? Short argues persuasively that he did not. His crimes against humanity were for the purposes of enslavement, not extermination. So what? As Short writes: ''The U.S. Army's conduct in Iraq (as earlier in Vietnam) merely lengthens the catalog of inhumanities perpetrated in the service of democratic ideals. The United States, whose allergy to supranational justice is so highly developed that it rejects it out of hand for American citizens,'' asserts that ''international tribunals should be limited to exceptional crimes such as genocide and not allowed to spill over into areas where the actions of 'normal' governments might come under scrutiny.'' In the wake of My Lai and Abu Ghraib, this point is sadly well taken. Short is no apologist for the Khmer Rouge, but an honest researcher who tries, if occasionally too zealously, to keep everything in perspective. No doubt some people will be offended by this book, not only for its indiscretions, but also for its restraint. Wasn't Pol Pot a monster pure and simple? How dare Short imply otherwise! This attitude, understandable though it is, hinders our apprehension of reality. The truth is that even now you can find poor people in Cambodia who -- no matter that they lost relatives in the Pol Pot time -- wish for the return of the Khmer Rouge. William T. Vollmann's recent books include ''Rising Up and Rising Down.'' His new book of fiction, ''Europe Central,'' will be published in April. ------------- The New York Times > Books > First Chapters > First Chapter: 'Pol Pot' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/chapters/0227-1st-short.html By PHILIP SHORT The village of Prek Sbauv extends along the east bank of the River S?n, which flows southward from the town of Kompong Thom to the Great Lake, the Tonle Sap. Wooden stilt-houses stand half-hidden amid orange and purple bougainvillea, morning glory, yellow-flowering anh kang trees, cactus hedges and palms. Fishermen row flat-bottomed canoes, with a lazy sweeping motion, standing with a single oar at the stern, to string out nets on stakes in the shallows. The water gleams yellowish-brown. Buffalo with small, erect pink ears peer out suspiciously from the mud. It is a gentle, idyllic place. Nhep's home is set back about thirty yards from the river, separated from it by a cart-track which leads to the provincial capital, three miles distant. The stilts are a protection against flooding, although severe floods have come only once in Nhep's lifetime, a few years back, the result of uncontrolled logging along the Mekong river, which Cambodians know as the 'Mother of Waters'. As in all traditional Cambodian dwellings, everyone lives in one large room, occupying the whole of the first floor, which is reached by a flight of steep wooden steps leading up from the garden outside. The house where he and S?r were born stood on the same spot, Nhep says, and was built in exactly the same way. It was destroyed in a bombing raid during the civil war. The family was well-off, indeed, by local standards, wealthy. Their father, Loth, owned 50 acres of rice-paddy - ten times the average, comparable to the living of a junior mandarin - and their home was one of the biggest among the twenty or so houses in the village. At transplanting and harvest time, Loth hired his poorer neighbours to provide extra labour. Nhep, the youngest child, was born in the summer of 1927, the Year of the Hare; S?r, eighteen months older, in March 1925, the Year of the Ox; and their brother, Chhay, in the Dog Year, 1922. There were three elder siblings - two boys and a girl - who had also been born within a year or two of each other, but more than a decade earlier. Three others had died young. Because they were so close in age, the three youngest were inseparable, particularly S?r and Nhep. They played and swam in the river together, and in the evenings, by the light of a rush-lamp, listened to the old people of the village recounting stories and legends from the days before the French established the protectorate in the 1860s. Their grandfather, Phem, was a link with that time. The children never knew him, but Loth used to tell them of his exploits. Phem had grown up during what were afterwards called the 'Years of Calamity', when Vietnamese and Thai invaders vied for suzerainty over what remained of the old Khmer kingdom, and court poets voiced the nation's fears that soon 'Cambodia would no longer exist'. The Royal Palace at Oudong was razed and Phnom Penh was destroyed. Among the populace, those who escaped the corv?es imposed by the rival armies 'fled to the forest to live on leaves and roots'. The Vietnamese were in the habit of gouging out their captives' eyes, salting their wounds and burying them alive. A French missionary who witnessed the devastation left by the Thais reported that they were little better: The Siamese method of warfare is to steal everything they can lay hands on; to burn and destroy wherever they pass; to enslave those men that they do not kill, and to carry off the women and children. They show no humanity towards their captives. If they cannot keep up with the march, they are beaten, maltreated or killed. Unmoved by tears and wailing, they slaughter small children in front of their mothers. They have no more scruple in killing a person than a fly, perhaps less, for their religion forbids them to kill animals. Eventually a compromise was reached between the Thai court and the Vietnamese Emperor at Hue, peace was restored and Phem prospered. He became a notable - 'Elder Phem', the villagers called him - and, during the great rebellion against the French in 1885-6, he organised food supplies for loyalist troops, fighting to preserve the prerogatives of the monarchy against the inroads of colonial rule. But one day, Loth told the children, Phem and two friends walked into an ambush in a village on the other side of the river and were killed. From that time on, the family received the favour of the provincial governor, a staunch royalist named Dekchoa Y, which gave them a place in the patronage network percolating down from the Throne. Loth's sister, Cheng, obtained a post in the household of King Norodom, and around the year of S?r's birth, her daughter, Meak, was chosen as a royal concubine for the heir apparent, Monivong. The Lady Meak, as she was now known, bore him a son, Prince Kossarak, and after Monivong became king, was appointed Head of the Royal Bedchamber with overall responsibility for all the palace women. With her help, in 1930, Loth's eldest son, Suong, secured a grace-and-favour appointment as a palace officer. Soon afterwards Meak summoned his sister, Roeung, then sixteen years old, to join her in Phnom Penh, where she, too, became one of Monivong's favourites, remaining at the King's side until his death in 1941. This was not such an unusual story in Cambodia in the early part of the twentieth century. The mother of S?r's contemporary Keng Vannsak was another of Monivong's concubines. The King handed her on to his brother, but she then fell in love with Vannsak's father and persuaded her royal master, who had a surfeit of women already, to restore her liberty. Monivong had more than thirty wives. King Norodom, who died in 1904, had 360 - as Sihanouk, his grandson and spiritual heir, was forever pointing out to justify his own philandering. Even a lesser figure, like the Lord Governor of Battambang, had more than a hundred consorts and insisted, to the dismay of the Buddhist clergy who visited him, that all the women in his household, from the lowest serving girl to his principal wife, should go about the official mansion nude from the waist up. Polygyny was a sign of virility, guaranteeing the fruitfulness of the realm. Cambodian life has an earthy, elemental quality. Nature teems and fructifies. The sun beats like an iron hammer, the jungle steams, the land pulsates with the heat and colour of the tropics. In late spring the countryside is blotted out by dense, palpitating clouds of orange butterflies, several miles wide, which float across plains of lotus blossom and bright green paddy-fields. Girls flower into women as soon as they enter their teens, and fade when they reach twenty. Small boys run about naked; girl children stagger under the weight of their brothers, almost as big as themselves. In the days when S?r and Nhep were young, herds of elephant used to pass by Prek Sbauv, heading for the water-meadows beside the Great Lake. At flood time, the villagers organised hunts on buffalo-back, using javelins to spear wild boar. When Loth's eldest son, Suong, travelled for the first time to Phnom Penh, a hundred miles to the south, the choice was between an eighteen-hour journey in a Chinese merchant's steam launch or three days in an ox-cart - but only during the dry season. During the rains, the roads disappeared. The landscape, and the lifestyle, were, and are still, closer to Africa than China. Substitute baobabs for bamboo, and papyrus for lotus, and you could be in Kenya or Tanzania. Dark-skinned Cambodian peasants proudly call themselves 'black Khmer'. At the country's eastern border, the subtle, sinicised world of the Vietnamese scholar-official - sustained by a meritocracy based on Confucian notions of propriety and virtue - butts up against the sensual harshness of Brahminism, against Buddhism and the mind-set of the Indian states. Cambodia, even more than the other nations of the region that the French named Indo-China, lies on the fault-line between Asia's two great founding civilisations. Loth's family, like many Cambodians, including the Royal House, was of Sino-Khmer extraction. S?r derived his name from his right 'Chinese' complexion - the word s?r means 'white' or 'pale' - a characteristic shared by his brother Nhep. But race in Cambodia is determined by behaviour rather than blood line. Loth - or Phem Saloth as he later called himself, to satisfy the colonial authorities' insistence that everyone must have a family as well as a given name - did not practise the Chinese rites. He and his wife did not sweep their ancestors' graves at the Qingming festival, or celebrate the Chinese New Year. Nor did they speak Chinese. They lived as Khmers and therefore, racially, they were Khmer, in their own minds as well as those of their neighbours. Their culture was Indianised, like that of the Burmese and the Indonesians, and all the other serendipitous nations which inhabit the water margin of Asia, from Sri Lanka to the Timor Sea. It was, in Nhep's words, a normal, happy family. Loth was a reserved man, who kept his own counsel. 'He never joked with us, or with anyone else. If he was angry, he didn't show his feelings or become violent. He always remained calm. Our mother was the same, and I think that's why they got on so well.' The younger children closely resembled him, and S?r inherited some of his character. He was a disciplinarian, like most Cambodian fathers, but by the standards of the time the chastisement he meted out was mild. For those were the days when a village schoolmaster would make a recalcitrant pupil lie down on a red ants' nest to help him mend his ways. Keng Vannsak endured that once, and never misbehaved again: I didn't like arithmetic, and I hadn't learnt my multiplication tables. So every time we were going to have a lesson, I said that I had a stomach ache and wanted to go home. The third time I did that, the teacher said: 'All right, you may go. But first recite the seven times table.' Of course, I didn't know it. Ai-ya! How he beat me! Kicks and punches ... he was brutal! Then he took me outside, and put me under a grapefruit tree - full of red ants! After that, I knew my times tables. I knew them so well that I did all the other children's questions, and in return they gave me things from their lunchboxes, because their parents were richer than mine and they had nicer things to eat. Yet punishments like this were so much the norm for Cambodian youngsters that Vannsak remembered that same teacher as 'an adorable, saintly man' who first instilled in him a love of learning. Certainly he was no worse than his own father, who used to tie his arms together, throw him on to a bed and beat him with a cane until he fainted. S?r and his brothers were more fortunate. Or, as the people in the village would have put it, it was not their fate to suffer that way: a genie protected them. Cambodians, at that time even more than today, lived parallel sets of lives: one in the natural world, among the laws of reason; the other, mired in superstition, peopled by monsters and ghosts, a prey to witches and the fear of sorcery. In this sense Cambodia was, and to some extent is still, a medieval country, where even the King takes no important decision without first consulting the court astrologer. The resemblance to Africa is again overwhelming. Every village has its witch, or ap, and its k'ruu, or healer; each rural community its neak ta, the ancestor figure or tutelary genie who inhabits a stone or an ancient tree and must be propitiated by offerings of incense and perfumed water. In the countryside, more murders are attributed to sorcery than to any other single cause. Cambodian officials, university-educated men, still sometimes justify the beating to death of a suspected witch by a mob by saying: 'The powers of those persons are too terrible. What else can the peasants do?' S?r's earliest memories were coloured by the lore of this nether world. One story that he would retell as an old man was about a dhmap', or wizard, whose mouth, as a punishment for his blasphemy, had been shrunk until it was no bigger than a straw. To feed himself, so the story went, he rolled dough into fine strips, which was how the Cambodian people came to eat noodles. He recalled tales about glutton spirits, which, like the ancient Chinese taotie, had only a head and intestines, and fed on foul things that lived in the mud; and there were gruesome stories of corpse wax, extracted from the newly dead to make potions, and of foetuses ripped by husbands from their wives' bellies and mummified as kun krak, 'smoke-children', familiar spirits with magical powers of protection. Not all Cambodian folk-tales were so grim. The common lore of childhood in S?r's day revolved around the exploits of Judge Hare and the human and animal companions he constantly outwitted. Yet here, too, was an undertow of menace and of the injustice and unpredictability of life. Unlike children's stories in most lands, in which virtue is rewarded and evildoing punished, the imagined world from which S?r and his contemporaries derived their first insights into the ways of Cambodian society had no such clear-cut rules. In Khmer legend, thieves go unpunished and live happily to the end of their days. Men are executed for deeds of which they are wholly blameless. Villainy is praised so long as it succeeds. Trickery is admired; honest conduct decried; and goodness regarded as stupidity. There is little place for compassion. Judges are portrayed as fools; true justice can come only from the King, whose rulings brook no appeal. Through these stories, S?r and his brothers were introduced to the moral tenets of Theravada Buddhism, which teaches that retribution or merit, in the endless cycle of self-perfection, will be apportioned not in this life but in a future existence, just as man's present fate is the fruit of actions in previous lives. Prek Sbauv was too small to have a Buddhist temple of its own. But on Buddhist holy days, four times a month, Loth and his wife travelled by oxcart to the great wat, or monastery, of Kompong Thom, where their two eldest sons, Suong and Seng, had learnt to read and write. Loth himself had been taught his letters there, and though the boys' mother, Nem, was illiterate, there was enough Chinese ancestry in Loth's make-up for him to understand that education was important. In the early 1930s, rice prices rose. The family prospered and he decided that the time had come to send the younger children to school in Phnom Penh, where Suong, now well-established in his job at the palace, had recently married a young woman from the Royal Ballet corps. Chhay went first, followed, in 1934, by S?r. They travelled, not by oxcart, but in one of the new-fangled steam buses the French had just introduced, powered by an engine burning charcoal. Cambodians were being dragged willy-nilly into the modern age. Continues... ------------ The New York Times > Books > Pol Pot, Brutal Dictator Who Forced Cambodians to Killing Fields, Dies at 73 http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/books/pol-pot-obit.html April 17, 1998 Pol Pot, Brutal Dictator Who Forced Cambodians to Killing Fields, Dies at 73 By SETH MYDANS Pol Pot, who created in Cambodia one of the 20th century's most brutal and radical regimes, died on Wednesday of heart failure, according to his Cambodian jailers. He was 73 years old. Already enfeebled from malaria, Pol Pot had become seriously ill in recent months while under house arrest by some of his former allies. In the last two weeks he was encircled by the Cambodian Government Army and had retreated farther into the jungle. His wife said he died in his sleep. Pol Pot conducted a rule of terror that led to the deaths of nearly a quarter of Cambodia's seven million people, by the most widely accepted estimates, through execution, torture, starvation and disease. His smiling face and quiet manner belied his brutality. He and his inner circle of revolutionaries adopted a Communism based on Maoism and Stalinism, then carried it to extremes: They and their Khmer Rouge movement tore apart Cambodia in an attempt to ''purify'' the country's agrarian society and turn people into revolutionary worker-peasants. Beginning on the day in 1975 when his guerrilla army marched silently into the capital, Phnom Penh, Pol Pot emptied the cities, pulled families apart,abolished religion and closed schools. Everyone was ordered to work, even children. The Khmer Rouge outlawed money and closed all markets. Doctors were killed, as were most people with skills and education that threatened the regime. The Khmer Rouge especially persecuted members of minority ethnic groups -- the Chinese, Muslim Chams, Vietnamese and Thais who had lived for generations in the country, and any other foreigners -- in an attempt to make one ''pure'' Cambodia. Non-Cambodians were forbidden to speak their native languages or to exhibit any ''foreign'' traits. The pogrom against the Cham minority was the most devastating, killing more than half of that community. Assassination He Ordered Becomes His Undoing Though Pol Pot was responsible for an untold number of deaths, he never faced charges until July 1997, when some of his former Khmer Rouge followers turned on him, denounced him for crimes against humanity in a carefully scripted show trial and put him under house arrest for life. Pol Pot had incurred the wrath of his former allies by ordering the assassination of a political associate. In a pattern he established when he was in power, Pol Pot blamed Son Sen for his fading grip on the movement. He not only ordered Son Sen killed, but also told followers to execute more than a dozen of his relatives, including grandchildren. In a magazine interview in October 1997, the sickly ex-dictator expressed regrets about the deaths of his rival's family: ''You know, for the other people, the babies, the young ones, I did not order them to be killed.'' The interview, with Nate Thayer for the Far Eastern Economic Review, portrayed a man succumbing to age, bored and preoccupied with his aches and pains, but free of remorse. ''I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,'' he told his questioner. ''Even now, and you can look at me: am I a savage person?'' Many experts on Southeast Asia as well as the Cambodians who endured his rule would answer him with a resounding ''Yes.'' But Pol Pot, while acknowledging that ''our movement made mistakes,'' insisted that he had ordered killings in self-defense, to save Cambodia from its Vietnamese enemies, and that the numbers of dead were wildly exaggerated. Yet even today his legacy fractures the country with continuing violence, political feuds, corruption and social fragility. Pol Pol's army captured the capital on April 17, 1975, after a devastating five-year civil war. During it, the United States dropped more bombs on Cambodia in its campaign against Pol Pot than it had unleashed on Japan during World War II. After it, with breathtaking speed, Pol Pot and his black-clad followers immediately ordered weary Cambodians to leave their homes for the countryside and begin life at ''Year Zero.'' After three years of terror, he was driven from power in 1979 by an invasion from neighboring Vietnam. From then on, Pol Pot used the geopolitics of the cold war to his advantage, convincing most of Asia and the non-Communist world that his Khmer Rouge Government was unlawfully thrown out by Vietnam. His exiled government retained the political recognition of the United States and much of the world throughout the 1980's while Vietnamese-occupied Cambodia was placed under severe international sanctions. Until the approach of internationally supervised elections in 1992, the Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia's seat at the United Nations and took the leading role in agencies like Unesco. Pol Pot was one of the most secretive of national leaders. His bland face and unthreatening manner, his self-effacement, his rare and turgid public statements and his life in hiding -- even during his years of absolute power -- were some of his chief tactics in keeping his rivals off balance and his hold over his followers. There was little evident in Pol Pot's background to suggest any personal drama. Since his childhood, the phrases used to describe him were uninspiring: polite, mediocre, soft-spoken, patient, even shy. Still, people who knew him described him as warm and reassuring, especially in small groups. An Interviewer Describes His Personal Appeal One of the few Western journalists to interview him, Elizabeth Becker, now an editor at The New York Times, described his personal appeal in her book ''When the War Was Over'' (Simon & Schuster, 1986). ''He was actually elegant, with a pleasing face, not handsome but attractive,'' she wrote. ''His features were delicate and alert and his smile nearly endearing. There was no question of his appeal. Physically, he had a strong, comfortable appearance. His gestures and manner were polished, not crude.'' In an hourlong interview she had with Pol Pot just weeks before his fall, he railed against Vietnam but never raised his voice, Ms. Becker wrote. ''At most he nodded his head slightly or flicked his dainty wrist for emphasis,'' she added. Pol Pot was less comfortable and revealing in a larger arena, making few public appearances even when in power, obscuring his identity, changing residences and warning of treachery from every quarter. When he had a stomach ailment, he said his cooks were trying to poison him. When the power at his residence failed, he had the maintenance workers killed. This fear of treachery -- by foreign nations or by poisonous ''microbes'' within his own organization -- motivated much of his behavior, from his secretiveness to the bloody purges that began to consume his revolution beginning in 1977. Speaking to a party cadre in 1976, he said: ''We search for the microbes within the party without success; they are buried. As our socialist revolution advances, however, seeping into every corner of the party, the army and among the people, we can locate the ugly microbes.'' Pol Pot surrounded himself with men from his early years, those who originally joined the Vietnamese-dominated Communists or others with closer roots to Thai Communists, including Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan and Son Sen. But he held the kind of absolute power that Stalin had in the Soviet Union. As a revolutionary, he took the name Pol Pot, which has no particular meaning. He was born Saloth Sar in 1925, in a village near Kompong Thom, 90 miles north of Phnom Penh, the eighth of nine children of a land-owning farmer named Pen Saloth and his wife, Nok Sem. A Student in Paris Turns Rabid Communist At the age of 6 he was sent, like many Cambodian children, to live with more prosperous relatives -- in his case a brother who worked in Phnom Penh as a clerk at the royal palace and a cousin who was a dancer there in the Royal Ballet. Soon after his arrival he spent several months in a Buddhist monastery, a much briefer exposure to Buddhist teaching than was common in Cambodia, where most schooling was conducted by monks. He completed primary school but failed his exams to enter high school and studied carpentry at a trade school. In his 20's, he received a Government scholarship to study radio technology in France, where he spent three years and became involved in Communist activities at a time when the French party was dominated by Stalinists. It was there that he began his long association with Mr. Son Sen, Ieng Sary and others who became members of his inner circle. It was also there that he met his future wife, Khieu Ponnary, a schoolteacher several years his senior whose sister was married to Mr. Ieng Sary. Pol Pot claimed to have been a good student when he first arrived in Paris. ''Later I joined the progressive student movement,'' he told the Vietnam News Agency in 1976. ''As I spent more of my time in radical activities, I did not attend many classes.'' Others said he passed much of his time reading French poetry, and in 1950 he spent a month working on a highway project in Yugoslavia. While in Paris he published his first tract, an attack on the Cambodian royalty. It was the King, Norodom Sihanouk, who dubbed this movement the Khmer Rouge, or Red Cambodians. Eventually the conservative Government of the young King, which was under French colonial rule, canceled his scholarship and he returned home, where he dedicated himself to the underground Communist movement. In 1954 at the Geneva Convention, Vietnam was split into the Communist north and non-Communist south, and Cambodia became independent. Hoping to remain in power, King Sihanouk demoted himself to Prince and led his own political party to victory in the first elections. He was promptly made head of state. In 1956, while continuing his underground activities, Pol Pot married Khieu Ponnary and became a teacher of French, history, geography and civics at a private high school. Rising to the Top Of the Party He Founded In 1960, in an out-of-the-way corner of the Phnom Penh railway yard, Pol Pot met secretly with other Cambodian Communists and helped create Cambodia's own Communist party, the Khmer Workers Party, separate from the old Vietnamese-dominated Indochinese Communist Party. Within two years, he rose to be its leader. Fearing arrest, he fled in 1963 to Vietnam, along with Mr. Ieng Sary and Mr. Son Sen, and for the next decade lived in hiding, a pattern that held for most of his life. Visiting China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot observed many of the patterns he later instituted in his own country, from revolutionary theory to the soft Chinese-style hats adopted by the Khmer Rouge. The widening war in Vietnam fueled the Communist movement in Cambodia, and after a peasant uprising in Battambang Province in 1967, Pol Pot began his move into armed rebellion. By 1970 he had 3,000 fighters under arms. For years the Vietnamese Communists used Cambodia to buy rice, to transport weapons and to channel soldiers from North Vietnam to the South along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Prince Sihanouk and his Government -- intent on getting along with the Vietnamese Communists, who the Prince believed were likely to win the war -- never protested the intrusions. Nor did he protest when the Americans began bombing suspected Vietnamese positions in eastern Cambodia. The bombing forced the Vietnamese to move deeper into Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge spread with them. Prince Sihanouk found himself criticized, particularly by the Cambodian Army, for playing both sides of the Vietnam War. In March 1970 the National Assembly deposed him while he was abroad, replacing him with pro-American officials led by his previously loyal Prime Minister, Gen. Lon Nol. Furious, the Prince joined sides with the Khmer Rouge and soon Cambodia was plunged into the Vietnam War. Within months the Vietnamese Communists and their Khmer Rouge allies controlled vast areas of the country. In 1973, after the United States signed the Paris Peace Accords with the Vietnamese Communists, American B-52's dropped huge quantities of bombs on suspected Khmer Rouge positions in Cambodia to try to prevent a Communist victory there. Phnom Penh became a swollen refugee center, and many displaced or angry villagers flocked to join the Khmer Rouge army. By the time of its victory in 1975, the army had grown to a force of 70,000, a growth aided by the prestige of Prince Sihanouk, who in one of his many political hairpin turns became titular president of the movement. Tougher, more disciplined and more brutal than the American-backed forces of Gen. Lon Nol, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh two weeks before the Communists took Saigon, with Pol Pot as a leading commander and political strategist. By the time Pol Pot himself entered the city, on April 23, 1975, 12 years after he had fled into the jungles, the capital was silent and deserted. From the very start, his troops pushed radical plans to turn the nation upside down. Everyone -- the elderly, the blind, the sick, even infants -- was ordered right away to ''return to the villages.'' The Angkar, or organization, ruled in resettlements called rural cooperatives that resembled the Soviet Gulag. Some 20,000 hospital patients were forced to move out, some on wheeled beds. Tens of thousands of people died of starvation and disease in the first weeks of the revolution's victory. Many others were killed outright: soldiers from the defeated army, bureaucrats, merchants, ''parasites,'' ''intellectuals.'' In his victory speech, Pol Pot claimed that his Communists would build a revolutionary society, becoming ''a prosperous country with an advanced agriculture and industry'' so that ''our people's standard of living will be rapidly improved.'' To that end, Pot Pot made Cambodia one of the most isolated countries in the world, shutting its borders, restricting all but a very few foreign diplomats to their chanceries in an eerily quiet Phnom Penh. Prince Sihanouk, the first President, was confined to his palace and then to a guest house. Meanwhile, the radical experiment was destroying the country. The slave labor gangs were not producing the food required. With no outside contacts, the country's stocks were becoming depleted. The huge public works projects, especially in irrigation, were shoddily made and fell apart. Numbering the Dead In the Millions But Pol Pot refused to believe that his revolution was to blame. He looked for scapegoats: first the Cambodians loyal to the old regime, then Communist leaders of select regions of the country, then key Communist leaders close to him. These suspected ''enemies'' were arrested and taken to security centers, including Tuol Sleng in Phnom Penh, where they were tortured to confess to imagined crimes and then killed. Pol Pot was ordering the deaths of his closest comrades as the Vietnamese invaded the country. Because of the closed nature of the country, it remained unclear to outsiders what was happening, and reports by refugees of the horrors of Democratic Kampuchea were often met with disbelief. The full picture emerged only in 1979, when the Vietnamese conquerors of Cambodia allowed in foreigners, and hundreds of thousands of sick and starving refugees poured into Thailand. In the name of a radical utopia, the Khmer Rouge regime had turned most of the people into slaves. Husbands were separated from wives, parents from children. Holidays, music, romance and entertainment were banned. Dictatorial village leaders and soldiers told the people whom to marry and how to live, and those who disobeyed were killed. Children informed on their parents; many other youngsters who did not bend to the political mania were buried alive, or tossed into the air and speared on bayonets. Some were fed to crocodiles. Religion and prayer were outlawed. Buddhist monks were murdered and temples were razed. Communal work brigades were formed to farm, clear forests and dig canals. Almost all the work was done by hand, without machinery, and people were forced to labor from dawn until late night. Thousands died from malnutrition, thousands from overwork. Thousands were jailed, to be tortured and die. The meticulous records kept by the Khmer Rouge of the people they tortured to death proved to be among the most valuable documents establishing their crimes. Above all, though, were the mass graves and killing fields uncovered after the Khmer Rouge defeat. Vietnam Puts an End To the Awfulness Instead of utopia, the Khmer Rouge had brought ruin. The regime's downfall came after Pol Pot attacked Vietnam and tried to seize territory along the frontier. On Dec. 25, 1978, Vietnamese troops crossed the border in strength and soon there were 200,000 Vietnamese inside Cambodia. Within two weeks they occupied Phnom Penh and much of the rest of Cambodia, overthrowing Pol Pot. In the years that followed, the struggle for control of Cambodia continued, with China and Thailand giving Pol Pot and his circle refuge, medical care and military support in a game of anti-Vietnamese and anti-Soviet geopolitics. In an evident effort to improve their image and retain their seat at the United Nations, the Khmer Rouge announced in 1980 that they were no longer Communist and now favored democracy, religious tolerance and free enterprise. Over the years further announcements were made that Pol Pot had resigned from various posts, culminating in 1985 with one that said he had stepped down as military commander. Few believed those declarations. After a comprehensive peace settlement providing for Cambodian elections was signed in Paris in 1991, Thailand ceased to recognize Democratic Kampuchea or to give refuge to Pol Pot and his entourage. He is believed to have gone back then to living in a jungle headquarters in Cambodia before his recent overthrow by his former followers. Earlier, Pol Pot's wife was hospitalized in Beijing with a nervous breakdown, and with her permission he remarried in 1987 and had a daughter with his second wife. His hardened army, still in their black clothes and sandals, dwindled after the United Nations peace plan, with thousands of soldiers and their families abandoning the mountain stronghold for offers of amnesty from the Government and a chance to lead normal lives. At the time of Pol Pot's death, the Khmer Rouge ranks numbered only in the hundreds. Though by all accounts Pol Pot remained unremorseful throughout his years in power and in exile, Steve Heder, an American scholar on Cambodia, reported a curious account from a supporter who visited him in 1981. ''He said that he knows that many people in the country hate him and think he's responsible for the killings,'' the supporter said of Pol Pot. ''He said that he knows many people died. When he said this he nearly broke down and cried. There were people to whom he felt very close, and he trusted them completely. Then in the end they made a mess of everything.'' In the interview last fall, Pol Pot was asked if he thought his young daughter would be proud later to call herself his daughter. ''I don't know about that,'' he said. ''It's up to history to judge.'' From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:42:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:42:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President Message-ID: The New York Times > Washington > In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20talk.html February 20, 2005 [Bush in private is very much like he is in public. I ordinarily don't send things like this, but it's quite revelatory to know that not every politician is a conscious deceiver. Followup article appended. Both came out during my annual Lenten break, but they are still worth reading.] By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 - As George W. Bush was first moving onto the national political stage, he often turned for advice to an old friend who secretly taped some of their private conversations, creating a rare record of the future president as a politician and a personality. In the last several weeks, that friend, Doug Wead, an author and former aide to Mr. Bush's father, disclosed the tapes' existence to a reporter and played about a dozen of them. Variously earnest, confident or prickly in those conversations, Mr. Bush weighs the political risks and benefits of his religious faith, discusses campaign strategy and comments on rivals. John McCain "will wear thin," he predicted. John Ashcroft, he confided, would be a "very good Supreme Court pick" or a "fabulous" vice president. And in exchanges about his handling of questions from the news media about his past, Mr. Bush appears to have acknowledged trying marijuana. Mr. Wead said he recorded the conversations because he viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal. As the author of a new book about presidential childhoods, Mr. Wead could benefit from any publicity, but he said that was not a motive in disclosing the tapes. The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the tapes or respond to their contents. Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said, "The governor was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend." Asked about drug use, Mr. Duffy said, "That has been asked and answered so many times there is nothing more to add." The conversations Mr. Wead played offer insights into Mr. Bush's thinking from the time he was weighing a run for president in 1998 to shortly before he accepted the Republican nomination in 2000. Mr. Wead had been a liaison to evangelical Protestants for the president's father, and the intersection of religion and politics is a recurring theme in the talks. Preparing to meet Christian leaders in September 1998, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, "As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things, and some improper ways." He added, "I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement." But Mr. Bush also repeatedly worried that prominent evangelical Christians would not like his refusal "to kick gays." At the same time, he was wary of unnerving secular voters by meeting publicly with evangelical leaders. When he thought his aides had agreed to such a meeting, Mr. Bush complained to Karl Rove, his political strategist, "What the hell is this about?" Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild behavior." He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. "If nobody shows up, there's no story," he told Mr. Wead, "and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything." He refused to answer reporters' questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried." He mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use. "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don't do them," he said. Mr. Bush threatened that if his rival Steve Forbes attacked him too hard during the campaign and won, both Mr. Bush, then the Texas governor, and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, would withhold their support. "He can forget Texas. And he can forget Florida. And I will sit on my hands," Mr. Bush said. The private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush. Many of the taped comments foreshadow aspects of his presidency, including his opposition to both anti-gay language and recognizing same-sex marriage, his skepticism about the United Nations, his sense of moral purpose and his focus on cultivating conservative Christian voters. Mr. Wead said he withheld many tapes of conversations that were repetitive or of a purely personal nature. The dozen conversations he agreed to play ranged in length from five minutes to nearly half an hour. In them, the future president affectionately addresses Mr. Wead as "Weadie" or "Weadnik," asks if his children still believe in Santa Claus, and chides him for skipping a doctor's appointment. Mr. Bush also regularly gripes about the barbs of the press and his rivals. And he is cocky at times. "It's me versus the world," he told Mr. Wead. "The good news is, the world is on my side. Or more than half of it." Other presidents, such as Richard M. Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, secretly recorded conversations from the White House. Some former associates of President Bill Clinton taped personal conversations in apparent efforts to embarrass or entrap him. But Mr. Wead's recordings are a rare example of a future president taped at length without his knowledge talking about matters of public interest like his political strategy and priorities. Mr. Wead first acknowledged the tapes to a reporter in December to defend the accuracy of a passage about Mr. Bush in his new book, "The Raising of a President." He did not mention the tapes in the book or footnotes, saying he drew on them for only one page of the book. He said he never sought to sell or profit from them. He said he made the tapes in states where it was legal to do so with only one party's knowledge. Mr. Wead eventually agreed to play a dozen tapes on the condition that the names of any private citizens be withheld. The New York Times hired Tom Owen, an expert on audio authentication, to examine samples from the tapes. He concluded the voice was that of the president. A White House adviser to the first President Bush, Mr. Wead said in an interview in The Washington Post in 1990 that Andrew H. Card Jr., then deputy chief of staff, told him to leave the administration "sooner rather than later" after he sent conservatives a letter faulting the White House for inviting gay activists to an event. But Mr. Wead said he left on good terms. He never had a formal role in the current president's campaign, though the tapes suggest he had angled for one. Mr. Wead said he admired George W. Bush and stayed in touch with some members of his family. While he said he has not communicated with the president since early in his first term, he attributed that to Mr. Bush's busy schedule. Mr. Wead said he recorded his conversations with the president in part because he thought he might be asked to write a book for the campaign. He also wanted a clear account of any requests Mr. Bush made of him. But he said his main motivation in making the tapes, which he originally intended to be released only after his own death, was to leave the nation a unique record of Mr. Bush. "I believe that, like him or not, he is going to be a huge historical figure," Mr. Wead said. "If I was on the telephone with Churchill or Gandhi, I would tape record them too." Summer of 1998 The first of the taped conversations Mr. Wead disclosed took place in the summer of 1998, when Mr. Bush was running for his second term as Texas governor. At the time, Mr. Bush was considered a political moderate who worked well with Democrats and was widely admired by Texans of both parties. His family name made him a strong presidential contender, but he had not yet committed to run. Still, in a conversation that November on the eve of Mr. Bush's re-election, his confidence was soaring. "I believe tomorrow is going to change Texas politics forever," he told Mr. Wead. "The top three offices right below me will be the first time there has been a Republican in that slot since the Civil War. Isn't that amazing? And I hate to be a braggart, but they are going to win for one reason: me." Talking to Mr. Wead, a former Assemblies of God minister who was well connected in conservative evangelical circles, Mr. Bush's biggest concern about the Republican presidential primary was shoring up his right flank. Mr. Forbes was working hard to win the support of conservative Christians by emphasizing his opposition to abortion. "I view him as a problem, don't you?" Mr. Bush asked. Mr. Bush knew that his own religious faith could be an asset with conservative Christian voters, and his personal devotion was often evident in the taped conversations. When Mr. Wead warned him that "power corrupts," for example, Mr. Bush told him not to worry: "I have got a great wife. And I read the Bible daily. The Bible is pretty good about keeping your ego in check." In November 1999, he told his friend that he had been deeply moved by a memorial service for students who died in an accident when constructing a Thanksgiving weekend bonfire at Texas A & M University, especially by the prayers by friends of the students. In another conversation, he described a "powerful moment" visiting the site of the Sermon on the Mount in Israel with a group of state governors, where he read "Amazing Grace" aloud. "I look forward to sharing this at some point in time," he told Mr. Wead about the event. Preparing to meet with influential Christian conservatives, Mr. Bush tested his lines with Mr. Wead. "I'm going to tell them the five turning points in my life," he said. "Accepting Christ. Marrying my wife. Having children. Running for governor. And listening to my mother." In September 1998, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead that he was getting ready for his first meeting with James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, an evangelical self-help group. Dr. Dobson, probably the most influential evangelical conservative, wanted to examine the candidate's Christian credentials. "He said he would like to meet me, you know, he had heard some nice things, you know, well, 'I don't know if he is a true believer' kind of attitude," Mr. Bush said. Mr. Bush said he intended to reassure Dr. Dobson of his opposition to abortion. Mr. Bush said he was concerned about rumors that Dr. Dobson had been telling others that the "Bushes weren't going to be involved in abortion," meaning that the Bush family preferred to avoid the issue rather than fight over it. "I just don't believe I said that. Why would I have said that?" Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead with annoyance. By the end of the primary, Mr. Bush alluded to Dr. Dobson's strong views on abortion again, apparently ruling out potential vice presidents including Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Gen. Colin L. Powell, who favored abortion rights. Picking any of them could turn conservative Christians away from the ticket, Mr. Bush said. "They are not going to like it anyway, boy," Mr. Bush said. "Dobson made it clear." Signs of Concern Early on, though, Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas. But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?" Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however." "This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays." Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays." As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention. Mr. Bush took stock of conservative Christian views of foreign policy as well. Reading more of the report from the Christian Coalition meeting, Mr. Bush said to Mr. Wead: "Sovereignty. The issue is huge. The mere mention of Kofi Annan in the U.N. caused the crowd to go into a veritable fit. The coalition wants America strong and wants the American flag flying overseas, not the pale blue of the U.N." As eager as Mr. Bush was to cultivate the support of Christian conservatives, he did not want to do it too publicly for fear of driving away more secular voters. When Mr. Wead warned Mr. Bush to avoid big meetings with evangelical leaders, Mr. Bush said, "I'm just going to have one," and, "This is not meant to be public." Past Behavior Many of the taped conversations revolve around Mr. Bush's handling of questions about his past behavior. In August 1998, he worried that the scandals of the Clinton administration had sharpened journalists' determination to investigate the private lives of candidates. He even expressed a hint of sympathy for his Democratic predecessor. "I don't like it either," Mr. Bush said of the Clinton investigations. "But on the other hand, I think he has disgraced the nation." When Mr. Wead warned that he had heard reporters talking about Mr. Bush's "immature" past, Mr. Bush said, "That's part of my schtick, which is, look, we have all made mistakes." He said he learned "a couple of really good lines" from Mr. Robison, the Texas pastor: "What you need to say time and time again is not talk about the details of your transgressions but talk about what I have learned. I've sinned and I've learned." "I said, 'James' - he stopped - I said, 'I did some things when I was young that were immature,' " Mr. Bush said. "He said, 'But have you learned?' I said, 'James, that's the difference between me and the president. I've learned. I am prepared to accept the responsibility of this office.' "By the summer of 1999, Mr. Bush was telling Mr. Wead his approach to such prying questions had evolved. "I think it is time for somebody to just draw the line and look people in the eye and say, I am not going to participate in ugly rumors about me, and blame my opponents, and hold the line, and stand up for a system that will not allow this kind of crap to go on." Later, however, Mr. Bush worried that his refusal to answer questions about whether he had used illegal drugs in the past could prove costly, but he held out nonetheless. "I am just not going to answer those questions. And it might cost me the election," he told Mr. Wead. He complained repeatedly about the press scrutiny, accusing the news media of a "campaign" against him. While he talked of certain reporters as "pro-Bush" and commented favorably on some publications (U.S. News & World Report is "halfway decent," but Time magazine is "awful"), he vented frequently to Mr. Wead about what he considered the liberal bias and invasiveness of the news media in general. "It's unbelievable," Mr. Bush said, reciting various rumors about his past that his aides had picked up from reporters. "They just float sewer out there." Mr. Bush bristled at even an implicit aspersion on his past behavior from Dan Quayle, the former vice president and a rival candidate. "He's gone ugly on me, man," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead. Mr. Bush quoted Mr. Quayle as saying, "I'm proud of what I did before 40." "As if I am not!" Mr. Bush said. Sizing Up Opponents During the primary contest, Mr. Bush often sized up his dozen Republican rivals, assessing their appeal to conservative Christian voters, their treatment of him and their prospects of serving in a future Bush administration. He paid particular attention to Senator John Ashcroft. "I like Ashcroft a lot," he told Mr. Wead in November 1998. "He is a competent man. He would be a good Supreme Court pick. He would be a good attorney general. He would be a good vice president." When Mr. Wead predicted an uproar if Mr. Ashcroft were appointed to the court because of his conservative religious views, Mr. Bush replied, "Well, tough." While Mr. Bush thought the conservative Christian candidates Gary L. Bauer and Alan Keyes would probably scare away moderates, he saw Mr. Ashcroft as an ally because he would draw evangelical voters into the race. "I want Ashcroft to stay in there, and I want him to be very strong," Mr. Bush said. " I would love it to be a Bush-Ashcroft race. Only because I respect him. He wouldn't say ugly things about me. And I damn sure wouldn't say ugly things about him." But Mr. Bush was sharply critical of Mr. Forbes, another son of privilege with a famous last name. Evangelicals were not going to like him, Mr. Bush said. "He's too preppy," Mr. Bush said, calling Mr. Forbes "mean spirited." Recalling the bruising primary fight Mr. Forbes waged against Bob Dole in 1996, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, "Steve Forbes is going to hear this message from me. I will do nothing for him if he does to me what he did to Dole. Period. There is going to be a consequence. He is not dealing with the average, you know, 'Oh gosh, let's all get together after it's over.' I will promise you, I will not help him. I don't care." Another time, Mr. Bush discussed offering Mr. Forbes a job as economic adviser or even secretary of commerce, if Mr. Forbes would approach him first. Mr. Bush's political predictions were not always on the mark. Before the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Bush all but dismissed Senator John McCain, who turned out to be his strongest challenger. "He's going to wear very thin when it is all said and done," he said. When Mr. Wead suggested in June 2000 that Mr. McCain's popularity with Democrats and moderate voters might make him a strong vice presidential candidate, Mr. Bush almost laughed. "Oh, come on!" He added, "I don't know if he helps us win." Mr. Bush could hardly contain his disdain for Mr. Gore, his Democratic opponent, at one point calling him "pathologically a liar." His confidence in the moral purpose of his campaign to usher in "a responsibility era" never wavered, but he acknowledged that winning might require hard jabs. "I may have to get a little rough for a while," he told Mr. Wead, "but that is what the old man had to do with Dukakis, remember?" For his part, Mr. Wead said what was most resonant about the conversations with Mr. Bush was his concern that his past behavior might come back to haunt him. Mr. Wead said he used the tapes for his book because Mr. Bush's life so clearly fit his thesis: that presidents often grow up overshadowed by another sibling. "What I saw in George W. Bush is that he purposefully put himself in the shadows by his irresponsible behavior as a young person," Mr. Wead said. That enabled him to come into his own outside the glare of his parents' expectations, Mr. Wead said. Why disclose the tapes? "I just felt that the historical point I was making trumped a personal relationship," Mr. Wead said. Asked about consequences, Mr. Wead said, "I'll always be friendly toward him." ------------ The New York Times > Washington > From Psst to Oops: Secret Taper of Bush Says History Can Wait http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/politics/24wead.html February 24, 2005 By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 - All week, Doug Wead has said the reason he secretly recorded some of his phone calls with President Bush was for history's sake. But Wednesday, after a blast of criticism, Mr. Wead abruptly decided he had spoken too soon. "History can wait," he said, promising to turn over the tapes to Mr. Bush. The disclosure that he had such tapes, recordings that spanned two years before the 2000 presidential election when he was an evangelical adviser to Mr. Bush, was published in The New York Times on Sunday. Since then, Mr. Wead has appeared on several television news and talk shows to defend his actions, insisting several times that he had never sought to profit from the tapes and had decided to release some of them only after the president's re-election. "My thanks to those who have let me share my heart and regrets about recent events," Mr. Wead wrote in the statement, posted on his Web site Wednesday. "Contrary to a statement that I made to The New York Times, I know very well that personal relationships are more important than history." Mr. Wead, an author who drew on the tapes obliquely for one page in his recently published book, "The Raising of a President: The Mothers and Fathers of Our Nation's Leaders," said, "I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them back to the president to whom they belong." The White House declined to add to its previous statements that Mr. Bush "was having casual conversations with someone he believed was his friend." But even Laura Bush was drawn into the controversy during her trip in Europe with Mr. Bush. "I think it's very odd and awkward, to be perfectly frank, to tape someone while you're talking to them on the phone, and they don't know it, and then come out with the tapes later," Mrs. Bush said in an interview on the NBC morning show "Today." "I don't know if I'd use the word 'betrayed,' but I think it's a little bit awkward for sure." Mr. Wead's decision may be the coda to an unlikely 15-year-friendship, begun when Mr. Bush was the born-again son of a well-known political family and Mr. Wead was a former evangelist who made his living turning out quickly written books and speaking at Amway conventions. Among the disclosures Mr. Wead made about the tapes was that he was keeping some additional undisclosed ones - coyness that prompted furious speculation this week about what else or who else they might contain since Mr. Bush and Karl Rove, his top political adviser, both had many conversations with Mr. Wead over the phone during that time. One of the tapes he played for The Times included what he said was a brief conversation with Mr. Rove. In the eyes of the Bush family and its loyalists, Mr. Wead violated a cherished code of silence about their private affairs. White House displeasure could put a dent in Mr. Wead's other careers. As news of the conversations was about to be published last weekend, the White House warned some of its evangelical allies who might be mentioned on the tapes. Mr. Wead had augmented his book royalties with fees as an evangelical motivational speaker and an expert on the Bush family, and his actions could hurt his popularity with evangelical supporters of Mr. Bush. He also has close ties to Rich DeVos, the wealthy evangelical Christian co-founder the network-marketing giant Amway who is also a major supporter of Mr. Bush. Representatives of Mr. DeVos did not return calls for comment Wednesday. "I know Doug Wead," said Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family who acknowledged receiving a "heads up" before the report appeared. "I am shocked by his breach of trust and his relationship with then Governor Bush, who had welcomed him into his confidence." Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention said, "I would say it wasn't all that great a career move if he wants to speak at evangelical events." Mr. Wead declined to comment on any contact with the White House about the tapes, but said the White House had not pressured him. In a telephone interview Wednesday, Mr. Wead, sounding noticeably fatigued, said he decided to change course because of "the perception that I have tried to exploit the tapes and make money off of it and hurt the president and had all kinds of agendas." "This seems like the best thing to show that isn't the case," he said. "Nobody believes my story that I saw him as a figure of history," Mr. Wead said with exasperation. "I guess I have got a story that is unbelievable to people." Mr. Wead said he had not yet worked out to whom he would give his future royalties. He noted that his advance for his current book was based only on the success of his previous book about presidential families, which became a best seller, not on his access to the tapes. Mr. Wead declined to comment on how he planned to turn over the tapes to the president. "That will be proceeding," he said. About the book he is planning next, another history of presidential families, and his career as a paid speaker, Mr. Wead said he did not yet know what the consequences might be. "What is next is for me to make this right," he said. "To give any future proceeds away and to give the tapes back to the president since he didn't know he was being recorded." Because the tapes were made before Mr. Bush became president, they would not be subject to the regulations governing presidential papers, which require them to be declassified after 25 years, said Barbara Elias, freedom of information coordinator for the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group. Other lawyers suggested that the White House may seek to convey the tapes to an outside lawyer representing Mr. Bush, thus further shielding them under attorney-client privilege. Mr. Wead, a former minister of the Assemblies of God, first met President Bush's father before his 1988 presidential campaign. At the time, Mr. Wead was already a speaker at Amway events and had also written a handful of books, and he approached Mr. Bush, who was then the vice president, about a biography. Mr. Wead became an adviser to the first President Bush on relations with evangelical Christians. The younger Mr. Bush, who had become more deeply religious than his father, worked closely with Mr. Wead in reaching out to conservative Christians in his father's campaigns; the two often traveled the country together. After the 1988 election, Mr. Wead worked as a White House aide. He left in 1990 after he sent a letter criticizing the invitation of some gay activists to the White House, although Mr. Wead says he did not object to their inclusion. In 1992, however, when Mr. Wead was considering running for Congress in Arizona, Mr. Bush stood by his friend, telling The Arizona Republic: "Sometimes in White House circles, people have the knives out for you. I think Doug got caught up in that. But I don't believe he was fired. There was no reason for it." On the tapes Mr. Wead played for The Times, he often appears to be angling for a position on Mr. Bush's campaign, pointing out that he might be able to help Mr. Bush with conservative Christians. Mr. Bush politely rebuffs him, explaining that he was ruling out any of his father's former advisers. Still, Mr. Bush called repeatedly to seek Mr. Wead's advice and never failed to ask Mr. Wead friendly questions about his welfare. Tuesday evening, Mr. Wead sent a copy of his statement to Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC television program "Hardball," explaining that he was canceling a planned appearance on the show. "It seems the better part of wisdom for me to forgo television for a time," he wrote, according to a copy of the note released by MSNBC. "It would only add to the distraction I have caused to the president's important and historic work." In an interview yesterday, Mr. Matthews, who once worked as a speechwriter to President Jimmy Carter, said he was sympathetic and that the note seemed heartfelt. "This is a live debate among people who have served high-level people like presidents at close range, whether your duty is to your personal relationship or to history," Mr. Matthews said. "It is a question of loyalty versus truth." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:42:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:42:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Los Angeles Times: U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings Message-ID: Los Angeles Times: U.S. Scientists Say They Are Told to Alter Findings http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scientists10feb10,0,3644039,print.story?coll=la-home-nation [This is quite alarming and unprecendented in science, but rather the norm in other areas. Any followups on this finding, which came out during my annual Lenten break?] More than 200 Fish and Wildlife researchers cite cases where conclusions were reversed to weaken protections and favor business, a survey finds. By Julie Cart Times Staff Writer February 10, 2005 More than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen protections for plants and animals, a survey released Wednesday says. The survey of the agency's scientific staff of 1,400 had a 30% response rate and was conducted jointly by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. A division of the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service is charged with determining which animals and plants should be placed on the endangered species list and designating areas where such species need to be protected. More than half of the biologists and other researchers who responded to the survey said they knew of cases in which commercial interests, including timber, grazing, development and energy companies, had applied political pressure to reverse scientific conclusions deemed harmful to their business. Bush administration officials, including Craig Manson, an assistant secretary of the Interior who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, have been critical of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, contending that its implementation has imposed hardships on developers and others while failing to restore healthy populations of wildlife. Along with Republican leaders in Congress, the administration is pushing to revamp the act. The president's proposed budget calls for a $3-million reduction in funding of Fish and Wildlife's endangered species programs. "The pressure to alter scientific reports for political reasons has become pervasive at Fish and Wildlife offices around the country," said Lexi Shultz of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Mitch Snow, a spokesman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency had no comment on the survey, except to say "some of the basic premises just aren't so." The two groups that circulated the survey also made available memos from Fish and Wildlife officials that instructed employees not to respond to the survey, even if they did so on their own time. Snow said that agency employees could not use work time to respond to outside surveys. Fish and Wildlife scientists in 90 national offices were asked 42 questions and given space to respond in essay form in the mail-in survey sent in November. One scientist working in the Pacific region, which includes California, wrote: "I have been through the reversal of two listing decisions due to political pressure. Science was ignored -- and worse, manipulated, to build a bogus rationale for reversal of these listing decisions." More than 20% of survey responders reported they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information." However, 69% said they had never been given such a directive. And, although more than half of the respondents said they had been ordered to alter findings to lessen protection of species, nearly 40% said they had never been required to do so. Sally Stefferud, a biologist who retired in 2002 after 20 years with the agency, said Wednesday she was not surprised by the survey results, saying she had been ordered to change a finding on a biological opinion. "Political pressures influence the outcome of almost all the cases," she said. "As a scientist, I would probably say you really can't trust the science coming out of the agency." A biologist in Alaska wrote in response to the survey: "It is one thing for the department to dismiss our recommendations, it is quite another to be forced (under veiled threat of removal) to say something that is counter to our best professional judgment." Don Lindburg, head of the office of giant panda conservation at the Zoological Society of San Diego, said it was unrealistic to expect federal scientists to be exempt from politics or pressure. "I've not stood in the shoes of any of those scientists," he said. "But it is not difficult for me to believe that there are pressures from those who are not happy with conservation objectives, and here I am referring to development interest and others. "But when it comes to altering data, that is a serious matter. I am really sorry to hear that scientists working for the service feel they have to do that. Changing facts to fit the politics -- that is a very unhealthy thing. If I were a scientist in that position I would just refuse to do it." The Union of Concerned Scientists and the public employee group provided copies of the survey and excerpts from essay-style responses. One biologist based in California, who responded to the survey, said in an interview with The Times that the Fish and Wildlife Service was not interested in adding any species to the endangered species list. "For biologists who do endangered species analysis, my experience is that the majority of them are ordered to reverse their conclusions [if they favor listing]. There are other biologists who will do it if you won't," said the biologist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:49:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:49:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Alcor) Please Don't Call the Customers Dead Message-ID: The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Please Don't Call the Customers Dead http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/business/yourmoney/13freeze.html?ei=5070&en=801207b39b9ce237&ex=1108962000&pagewanted=print&position= February 13, 2005 By RICHARD SANDOMIR SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. THE live-in customers at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation here reside in eight 10-foot-high steel tanks filled with liquid nitrogen. They are incapable of breathing, thinking, walking, riding a bike or scratching an itch. But don't refer to them as deceased. They may be frozen at minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit and identified by prisonlike numbers. But to Alcor, the 67 bodies - in many cases, just severed heads - are patients who may live again if science can just figure out how to reanimate them. "They're no different than a flat-lining patient who gets a defibrillator to bring them back to life," said Joseph A. Waynick, Alcor's president and chief executive. "With our patients, the only difference is length of time." Alcor is a small nonprofit company built on the spectacular wager that it can rescue its patients from natural post-mortem deterioration until a distant time when cellular regeneration, nanotechnology, cloning or some other science can restart their lives, as if the diseases, heart attacks, old age, murders or accidents that concluded their first go-rounds had never happened. So far, nobody has been revived. And there is little evidence that anybody ever will be. The first intentionally frozen man, James Bedford, is still here - 38 years after his official death and 20 years after he was moved from a storage facility where his family kept him frozen in liquid nitrogen. No one has been thawed out, except for a woman whose sister successfully sued to get the body out of deep freeze. Alcor's most renowned frozen parts - the head and trunk of the once-mighty Ted Williams, the Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer - are in one of the gigantic tanks. He is there despite a protracted family feud that balanced the slugger's will, which stated his desire to be cremated, against a note he signed from a sickbed, which said he preferred to be frozen. The note won. What Alcor sells is hope - if only, so far, to a small sliver of the potentially dead. But like its customers, the company is optimistic: it sees itself primarily as a research facility that looks beyond the old-fashioned post-death options of burial and cremation. Alcor executives are convinced that cryonics will catch on someday, and they have recently stepped up the company's marketing - inviting the public for tours of its facility, for example - to make sure that it happens sooner rather than later. Still, with just one site, built in an industrial area of Scottsdale, Ariz., Alcor is not yet a threat to the $15-billion-a-year business of burying or cremating the dead. The same goes for the rest of the cryonics industry. In fact, the company has only one full-service rival, the Cryonics Institute, outside Detroit, which has preserved 68 bodies, including the mother and two wives of its founder, Robert C. W. Ettinger, who is 86. The service offered by these fledgling companies is not cheap. If you hand your head - or "neuro" - to Alcor, it costs $80,000; if you freeze your body, the price rises to $150,000. The Cryonics Institute charges much less: $28,000 for a full body.. In any case, many people who are willing to believe that their severed head can be reanimated and attached to a new body at some unknown time in the distant future are not ones to fret about costs. At Alcor, Mr. Waynick said that nearly all the future frozen buy life insurance policies to cover their fees, and designate the company as the beneficiary. One such customer is Charlie Matthau, 39, a film director who signed up with Alcor in his late teens after reading about it in a magazine. His insurance premium, he said, "is cheaper than what I pay for parking." Mr. Matthau, son of the actor Walter Matthau, who died in 2000 and had a traditional burial, says he recognizes that cryonics is on the fringe. He said he asked his rabbi for religious guidance in his decision. "People believe in the most bizarre stuff," Mr. Matthau said. "It's a long shot that probably won't work, but it beats the alternative." Mr. Matthau said he tried to persuade his father to join him in the liquid nitrogen but did not succeed. According to Mr. Matthau, his father said, "I don't want to do it because it might work and I don't want to come back as a carnival act." The carnival did not have to wait for a reanimation. It arrived in Scottsdale with Mr. Williams's body in mid-2002, hyped by the subsequent revelation by a former Alcor employee that the ballplayer's head had been separated from his body. The resulting publicity astonished the company, even though Mr. Waynick's predecessor, Jerry Lemler, hoped at least a year in advance to capitalize on the fact that Mr. Williams would be its slugger-in-residence. In 2001, a year before Mr. Williams died, Dr. Lemler wrote to John Henry Williams, the son of the slugger, about the "huge" impact of a "postmortem disclosure of your dad's becoming an Alcor member." Dr. Lemler, a psychiatrist, ended his letter by saying: "We've never had a .400 hitter as a member. It's a genuine first for us." But by the time John Henry Williams died in 2004, he had never let Alcor acknowledge that his father was in the tanks. (Nor will Alcor say if John Henry Williams is there, but he produced for the Florida probate court a signed, unnotarized, oil-stained note saying he, his father and his sister, Claudia, all wanted to be frozen post-mortem.) Mr. Waynick said in a recent interview that any attempt to use Ted Williams's presence to attract other customers was a "miscalculation." Besides, he noted, Alcor's membership did not swell from the notoriety that his head and body were in its tanks of liquid nitrogen. Perhaps cryonics needed a sitcom, not a dead ballplayer, to bolster its profile with a skeptical public. The quirky HBO series "Six Feet Under" created a "comfortability for customers to speak more openly," said Robert J. Biggins, the president-elect of the National Funeral Directors Association. "As dysfunctional as they were, the fact that factual information took place in a funeral home raised the comfort level." To raise the comfort level with its services, Alcor offers tours of its facility to anyone wanting to take one. The tours include a visit to the operating room, though not when a medical team prepares lifeless bodies for freezing by pumping them full of chemicals to protect their insides from ice formation or by taking 15 minutes or so to saw off a head - technically a "cephalic isolation." The tours, however, do include a walk through the "patient bay," the banks of tanks full of bodies and heads. Tanya Jones, Alcor's chief operating officer, has the ready smile and willing demeanor of a hotel concierge. She wants to please, if not proselytize, you. Her head - and perhaps her whole body - will one day be preserved inside one of the tanks that dwarf her as she gives a tour. "The people who do this are very optimistic about technology and believe life is worth living," she said calmly, but with subtle excitement in her voice. "If we can prove this works, everybody will know about us." Proving that it will work, of course, will take time. Perhaps that proof is what is needed to build a larger customer base. So far, after 33 years in business, the nonguaranteed promise of a second life has yielded only 52 frozen heads, 15 gelid bodies and 721 warm-blooded, still-breathing, dues-paying members. "Our market is so vast, but our business is small," Mr. Waynick said. Alcor is financially dependent on when its members expire. All will die, of course, but they don't do so by an accounts-receivable schedule. Of its $2.3 million in revenue in 2002, one-quarter came from freezing fees from eight patients, but far more, 62 percent, from donors like the estate of one Alcor "patient," Richard C. Jones, whose annual royalties from the situation comedy "Mama's Family" go to Alcor. The rest comes from members, who pay dues of up to $398 a year to support the foundation. In 2003, with fewer donations and about four or five new freezees, Mr. Waynick said, revenue dropped to $1.2 million. Financial documents were unavailable for 2004, but Mr. Waynick said there were eight new patients, or "cryosuspensions." Most people who join Alcor were previously convinced of cryonics' promise and are not frightened by the absence of a guarantee of awakening in the distant future or by the grisliness of removing their heads, Mr. Waynick said. "They've pretty much made up their mind about doing this," he said. "For those who know cryonics, there's no problem with us" - or the suggestion that life insurance be deployed to prepare for a second life. These are the word-of-mouthers, life-extension advocates and the curious, who, like Mr. Matthau, want a little zing in their afterlife. Alcor knows that the rest of its potential market - that is, almost everyone else - needs an education. The company tries to do much of that on its Web site, [1]www.alcor.org, a comprehensive archive of newsletters, scientific papers, patient case studies (with minute-by-minute, play-by-play of their surgeries), operating-room photographs and membership documents. But what of grabbing more of the burial-cremation market? Whose bodies and heads will reside in the tanks - with a capacity of 300 whole bodies or 900 heads - that will fill the new patient bay currently being built? Is waiting only for true believers a valid marketing strategy? "In a sense it should be easy to market," said Mary Roach, author of "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" (Norton, 2003). "You're marketing immortality." But, she said, "I find the head-freezing business a little, not strange, but overhopeful, a little too self-absorbed." ALCOR says it is not sitting still while its potential customers are buried or turned to ashes, nor is it waiting to react to another tabloid frenzy like the Williams case. It recently completed a 30-minute documentary, which it wants to broadcast as a cable-television infomercial and sell on DVD. It has opened its doors to local community college students who are studying mortuary science. It also hopes to expand its annual scientific conference to a wider audience. "It's been easy to sell the true story that this is a scientific endeavor," said Deborah Johnson, Alcor's public relations consultant and producer of the documentary. "We think there are a tremendous number of people who might be interested in becoming members if they knew we existed." For Mr. Waynick, the ultimate goal of Alcor's cautiously aggressive campaign is to lure enough people away from burial and cremation to build a bigger business and prove to skeptics that medical research, not some kind of voodoo, is being performed inside the company's pale blue stucco exterior walls. After all, with the new patient bay, and the ability to work on two patients at a time in a new operating room that is being built, there is plenty of room to capitalize on Alcor's peculiar brand of patient care. "We want to save lives," said Mr. Waynick, one of the few who have signed up to be a future head and a trunk in one of the tanks. "And if the result of that is fewer people will go to funeral homes, I will feel bad for the funeral homes. But I will feel better for the people." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:49:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:49:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (George Carey) The lay way from Lambeth Message-ID: The lay way from Lambeth The Times Literary Supplement, 4.7.2 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108018&window_type=print John Whale 02 July 2004 KNOW THE TRUTH. A memoir. By George Carey. 468pp. HarperCollins. ?25. 0 00 712030 3 It was a good try, and it will probably be the last. As Archbishop of Canterbury between 1991 and 2002, George Carey tried to re-evangelize England, to call or recall the mass of English people to Christian belief and practice. His memoir, Know the Truth, is mainly a record of that enterprise. The memoir shows him to have been well equipped to lead the attempt. It also shows why the attempt failed. The Church of England corporately may well grow more modest as a result. On the evidence of the book, not least the account in its first hundred pages of his swift rise, Carey commanded several necessary gifts. He had the tenacity: once seized of an idea, he held to it. Drawn into Christian belief in his teens by an Evangelical vicar at Dagenham in East London, he nursed it through National Service in the RAF, and decided for ordination. He had the intellect: though he had left school at fifteen, he now, financed at an Evangelical crammer, collected six O levels and three A levels in eighteen months. He had the industry: to the London University first degree he took at theological college he added two advanced degrees while he pursued his career, first as an Islington curate and then on the staff of two successive theological colleges in London and Nottingham. He had the human support: Eileen Hood, the Dagenham girl he married while he was still a student, went with him every step thereafter. He had the persuasiveness: he greatly increased his congregation after he became a vicar in Durham, and his student body when he headed a theological college in Bristol. He had the self-belief as a speaker: in his brief time as Bishop of Bath and Wells his speciality was to descend on individual parishes for what he called teaching missions. He was by then "comfortable with a leadership role", he writes, "and the speaking and teaching that went with it". The speaking and teaching were notable for conviction rather than flair. Carey's memoir confirms that among his gifts has never been freshness of phrase. Commitments are burning, jobs done are splendid. The book is studded with judgements of the form "A nicer and more caring person would be difficult to find" (of a senior American bishop). For the work in hand, though, freshness of phrase was not required; indeed, it might have been a distraction. Missioners deal in abiding certainties that have their own abiding formulation. The memoir's title, Know the Truth, taken from a reported saying of Jesus (John 8:32), catches Carey's urge to persuade hearers and readers of his own chief certainty: that God exists, "is at work in the world, and uses people of all faiths and none to further His purposes". For Carey it was a matter of experience. When he was still a teacher of theology in his late thirties, he had for a while detected the iron of unbelief in his own soul. Alone in his room on a preaching visit to Toronto, and in an effort to recover his former assurance, he fell to his knees. After a long time, "something happened. There was no answering voice, no blinding light or angelic appearance - only a deepening conviction that God was meeting me now". He seems never to have doubted again. And from Bath and Wells he was posted to Canterbury through the influence of that other dealer in certainties, Margaret Thatcher. The Crown Appointments Commission, the Church of England committee of shifting membership which offers the prime minister two names for each vacant bishopric, is chaired by the prime minister's nominee (for the Canterbury selection Mrs Thatcher chose Lord Caldecote, a retired engineering don and industrialist); it always has the prime minister's appointments secretary among its members, and it can hardly help knowing the prime minister's mind. The committee members on this occasion understood that they were to find a youngish figure with, in Carey's phrase, "a yearning to put mission at the very top of his agenda". This was in 1990; Carey was fifty four. At this point in his memoir, Carey discloses an official secret; and he sets a useful precedent in so doing, because the present system of choosing bishops and archbishops is opaque, and its opacity gives the prime minister real power where all that is appropriate is formal power. Ever since the Crown Appointments Commission was established by James Callaghan in 1976, its members have been remarkably tight-lipped: the identity of the two men named in each case, and whether the prime minister forwarded the first or the second name to the Queen, has never been definitely known. Humphrey Carpenter, reporting, in his 1996 book Robert Runcie: The reluctant archbishop, Runcie's astonishment at the choice of Carey to succeed him, gives currency to the rumour that the Commission had placed Carey second to John Habgood, then Archbishop of York. Know the Truth now records that when the appointments secretary, Robin Catford, travelled from Downing Street to a hotel room near Bath station to hand over the official letter, Carey wanted to know whether his had been the first or the second name. He put the question in terms to Catford. "He replied in a level voice, looking at me steadily, 'I can confirm that you are the Commission's choice. You are the first name'." Carey explained that he could not otherwise have taken the job: "I was so inexperienced as a Bishop that the call had to be clear". Once enthroned, he set himself to become what he considered the first missionary archbishop since Augustine of Canterbury in 597. He took advantage of a scandal over the Church Commissioners' investment practices to gather the making of all church policy, which would include the formulation of doctrine, more nearly into his own hands. He began his teaching missions again in Canterbury diocese. He commissioned, and secured funds for, two permanently touring evangelists. He led a thousand young people, assembled with some difficulty by the English dioceses, on a week's visit to the religious community at Taize in France. He mounted a festival weekend for young Londoners. He arranged ("a thrilling millennium moment for me") that a booklet of his called Jesus 2000 should be distributed with the News of the World. He showed a prodigious appetite for, and belief in, meetings, each one spawning more. ("From that historic encounter the World Faiths Development Dialogue emerged . . . .") And this was not just head-down, bull-at- a-gate, see-it-my-way-or-face-the-fires-of-hell evangelism. He showed a measure of tact. He saw virtue in the Anglo-Catholic tradition that tugs against Evangelicalism within the Church of England, and in the Book of Common Prayer as a flag of unity if only Evangelicals still flew it. He withdrew the patronage of his office from a body with a history of trying to convert Jews. He learnt "to treat Islam not as a faith hostile to Christianity, but as a religion with many virtues and many similarities to our own". Despite this energy and this discretion, at the end of eleven years the Church of England was still by most indicators in steady decline. Part of the problem was that, obeying the missionary instinct, Carey spent a lot of time out of England. In his encounters with politicians overseas he showed courage: in Kenya he spoke against corruption, in Nigeria and Pakistan against unfairness to Christians. Yet not merely was this without effect, and an expense of time; it also drew attention to the awkwardness of his belief that "God is working His purposes out". In Rwanda the Careys visited a Roman Catholic church compound where Hutus had murdered 5,000 Tutsis, mostly women and children. Human remains were everywhere. "But where was God when this happened?" Carey unwisely asks; and replies within a few lines that "the awfulness of the scene should not be trivialized by superficial answers". A greater obstacle was Carey's eclectic biblicism. He declares himself "absolutely convinced of the role of the Bible as the ultimate authority in matters of faith and morals". A test issue for him was, and remains, homosexual sex. He is against it because St Paul was (Romans 1:27); and Carey is unshaken by the contention that homosexuality is inborn and therefore God-made. "It would be foolish for the Church to change its approach while scientific knowledge about the condition we describe as homosexual is still incomplete." The cruel absurdity of this opinion is underlined by the fact that St Paul was also (1 Corinthians 14:34-5) against women opening their mouths in church, and Carey accepts both women priests and women bishops; and by the reported declaration of Jesus (Matthew 5:32) that marriage with a divorced woman is adulterous, and Carey is happy to approve it for the Prince of Wales. The tangle Carey has got himself into about that affair seems to stem only from his having been much taken with the royal family in general and the Prince of Wales in particular ("a more caring and compassionate man would be hard to find"), and his wanting to spread a little happiness in the Prince's direction. Even among Christians or potential Christians friendly to biblicism, these inconsistencies were dismaying. For believers or half-believers who rely not so much on the word as on the symbol, and whose preferences may well prove the more durable as the ambiguities of the word are more and more debated, the appeal to Scripture was still less conclusive. Yet beyond these two groups, and beyond the dwindling band of latitudinarians that stands between them, Carey's problem was the number of his fellow citizens who are simply unresponsive to religion. It is a matter of common observation that most people in England now find it possible to pursue happiness and usefulness without anything more than sporadic and limited recourse to religious institutions and religious ideas. Near the end of his story, Carey declares that "Britain is still a predominantly Christian country". Even with his fief extended by this addition of Wales and especially Scotland, where religion obtrudes more into ordinary life than it does in England, the claim is hard to make sense of. It would be easier to defend if he had said "a country where a residual Christianity is ineradicable". The grounds for optimism he advances are that the numbers of men and women ready to join the Church of England's professional ministry have increased of late years, and so have the sums of money subscribed by Church of England congregations. But these figures relate to activists. Certainly there will always be activists: people whose natural disposition is to ponder the transcendent, and whose effort to lead a principled life is buttressed by the idea of a God who approves a certain kind of conduct and nevertheless forgives lapses from it. Yet the survival of this irreducible remnant by no means imports the survival of the Church that Carey has known. Funds are failing: the givers will soon not be able to pay for the ministers. Lay ministry, already on the increase, will become the rule rather than the exception. Lay ministers, people who keep hold of the weekday job, are not bound to a common line by professional loyalties or anxieties. Doctrinal discipline will go on fraying: the assertive will give way to the exploratory, the tentative. Salaried administrative staff, lay as well as clerical, in expensive office buildings in London and the cathedral cities will be unreplaced as they retire. These changes will not free the Church of England from internal strife; they will deliver it instead from the notion that it has the duty, because the capacity, to organize a single voice and use it to keep addressing the nation. Lord Carey's experience, as laid out in his memoir, will have demonstrated that there is no other course except to embrace this new humility. To that extent his evangelistic foray will have done his Church a service. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:49:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:49:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CSM: Only the ethical need apply Message-ID: Only the ethical need apply http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0330/p15s02-wmgn.html 5.3.30 SCOTT WALLACE - STAFF In the heavily automated workplace of the future, a keen sense of right and wrong will become a highly valued job skill. By Susan Llewelyn Leach | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor The "great global brain drain" is how futurist Richard Samson describes it. As the century progresses, he predicts, more and more jobs will be sucked up by technology and sophisticated computers, forcing humans to hone skills machines can't duplicate - at least not yet. Qualities such as ethical judgment, compassion, intuition, responsibility, and creativity will be what stand out in an automated world. With ethics issues spiking into the news almost weekly, the idea of a work world in which individual ethical acumen is viewed as an essential job skill is far from outlandish. The signs are already here. Wall Street is toying with the idea of creating an ethical code of conduct. CEOs are getting fired for unethical behavior, even when it doesn't damage the company's bottom line. At Boeing, former CEO Harry Stonecipher was hired with a specific mandate to strengthen company ethics - and then was fired when his personal ethical code fell short. What Mr. Samson suggests is that this focus on ethics will intensify as technology takes up more of the routine work tasks. Signs of "off-peopling" - his shorthand for human workers being replaced by computers - are widespread. Software systems help you do your own check-out at the supermarket and your own check-in at the airline counter. Virtual attendants answer many customer-service phones. Internet sales require no human interaction. And you don't need a travel agent to book your holiday anymore. But while artificial intelligence can perform numerous job functions, it brings no ethical considerations to bear on the tasks performed - a skill that Samson predicts will actually become more crucial as the world increases its reliance on technology. It's still a big leap from where we are today to a world in which white-collar, know-how jobs are largely being performed by computers. But Samson proposes that this will happen by century's end and points out that history offers interesting precedent. In 1900, 40 percent of the American workforce had been laboring in agriculture. A hundred years later, that number shrank to 2 percent. Manufacturing took up a lot of the slack until mid-century, when its numbers started to decline, too. Now service-sector jobs offer the bulk of employment in the United States and run the gamut from a Starbucks barista to a haircutter to a corporate attorney. "As computers take over more and more routine cognitive tasks, that will leave humans doing things that can't be automated," says Thomas Malone, author of "The Future of Work" and a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management. "These new technologies will give us chances to make ethical and other choices in new ways." But the technological progression doesn't necessarily mean we'll become more ethical, he adds. "Humans are capable of using automated information technology for unethical purposes." The ripple effect of wrongdoing What is apparent, however, is that the ripple effect of unethical behavior will become more acute. "As computer systems make our work increasingly interconnected, so the chance for one unethical or incompetent person to do tremendous damage will increase," says David De Long, author of "Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce." He cites the collapse in 1995 of Barings Bank brought about by a single rogue trader in Singapore. Even the cascading power blackouts in the US and Canada in August 2003, while not caused by unethical behavior, came down to split-second decisions by a handful of individuals. That technological interconnectivity is already increasing the importance of human cooperation. "Individual discretion mattered very little" in manufacturing companies with huge bureaucracies and elaborate hierarchies, says Joseph Grenny, author of "Crucial Confrontations." Today, "the need for greater integration and cooperation in the workplace means human values become more important because they're the glue of a community." Shrinking tolerance for lapses Trust is one of those values. Many of the business scandals in the past 10 years - such as Enron, Worldcom, ImClone, and Parmalat - would have been met with a yawn 50 or 100 years ago, Mr. Grenny says. Today, they're more alarming because trust is at a greater premium. "We feel so much more vulnerable because we are so much more interdependent," says Grenny. If someone manipulates the markets in Asia, it will have an effect in London, he adds as an example. The amount of social capital or trust required in the world today for things to continue to function is far greater. As a result, tolerance for ethical lapses is shrinking. Ethical culture lives or dies every day when someone chooses either to speak up or to remain silent, Grenny asserts. The consequences of not speaking up, however, are now more significant. "The glue of trust in any society is people's capacity to confront mistrust," says Grenny, whose company VitalSmarts teaches employees the art of the uncomfortable conversation. You can measure the health of a society by how openly people are able to confront problems with each other, he says. To the degree that we can't and the problems remain suppressed, he says, trust erodes and we start to lose all the benefits of community. The whole human system gets pressured significantly by technology, Grenny says. It exposes the weaknesses of a social system and demands that we either resolve them or suffer more acutely. He offers e-mail as an example: In the old days, one person's grievance may have affected only the immediate team. Today, it can be telegraphed across an entire organization. One individual can wreck havoc by sharing a complaint with all the names in his or her entire address book. "Until people learn to ethically, maturely, and directly deal with their crucial conversations, technology will amplify rather than mitigate our dysfunctions," says Grenny. Dr. De Long offers another side of that argument. Relational knowledge, the "know-who" rather than the know-how, as he puts it, will become more critical as organizations increasingly depend on technology systems and computers. How quickly technology makes the leap is any futurist's guess. Artificial intelligence researchers have repeatedly been overly optimistic about the pace at which machines would take over "intelligent" tasks, Prof. Malone says. But while past projections have been off, Malone agrees that technology has already had a dramatic impact on communication. By reducing the cost of communications exponentially, it is changing the fundamental structure of business, he says. Organizations will become more fluid and decentralized as huge numbers of people have enough information to make intelligent decisions and choices for themselves. "We're in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in business that may in the long run be as important a change for business as the change to democracies was for governments," he says. One inevitable consequence of this shift, he says, will be more transparency. Access and openness make it harder to get away with unethical behavior. Job descriptions in the future, says William Rothwell, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, will likely focus on the three-dimensional view - the type of person rather than simply the tasks. It won't be "just what they can do," he says, "but the kind of person they are, ethically, morally." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:50:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:50:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: 13 things that do not make sense Message-ID: 13 things that do not make sense http://www.newscientist.com/channel/space/mg18524911.600 5.3.19 [On the first item, there was an article in Science a few years back that gave evidence that the placebo effect correlates with the actual medicinal effect, while one would think the two would be random. I never found out about any followups. And keep your eyes on the astounding homeopathy results. Are we entering a new spiritual age, after all?] 1 The placebo effect DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away. This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared. So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know. Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something. We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know. 2 The horizon problem OUR universe appears to be unfathomably uniform. Look across space from one edge of the visible universe to the other, and you'll see that the microwave background radiation filling the cosmos is at the same temperature everywhere. That may not seem surprising until you consider that the two edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart and our universe is only 14 billion years old. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now. This "horizon problem" is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. "Inflation", for example. You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time, just after the big bang, blowing up by a factor of 10^50 in 10^-33 seconds. But is that just wishful thinking? "Inflation would be an explanation if it occurred," says University of Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees. The trouble is that no one knows what could have made that happen. So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another. A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem - but this too is impotent in the face of the question "why?" In scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation remains an anomaly. "A variation in the speed of light could solve the problem, but this too is impotent in the face of the question 'why?'" 3 Ultra-energetic cosmic rays FOR more than a decade, physicists in Japan have been seeing cosmic rays that should not exist. Cosmic rays are particles - mostly protons but sometimes heavy atomic nuclei - that travel through the universe at close to the speed of light. Some cosmic rays detected on Earth are produced in violent events such as supernovae, but we still don't know the origins of the highest-energy particles, which are the most energetic particles ever seen in nature. But that's not the real mystery. As cosmic-ray particles travel through space, they lose energy in collisions with the low-energy photons that pervade the universe, such as those of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Einstein's special theory of relativity dictates that any cosmic rays reaching Earth from a source outside our galaxy will have suffered so many energy-shedding collisions that their maximum possible energy is 5 ? 10^19 electronvolts. This is known as the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit. Over the past decade, however, the University of Tokyo's Akeno Giant Air Shower Array - 111 particle detectors spread out over 100 square kilometres - has detected several cosmic rays above the GZK limit. In theory, they can only have come from within our galaxy, avoiding an energy-sapping journey across the cosmos. However, astronomers can find no source for these cosmic rays in our galaxy. So what is going on? One possibility is that there is something wrong with the Akeno results. Another is that Einstein was wrong. His special theory of relativity says that space is the same in all directions, but what if particles found it easier to move in certain directions? Then the cosmic rays could retain more of their energy, allowing them to beat the GZK limit. Physicists at the Pierre Auger experiment in Mendoza, Argentina, are now working on this problem. Using 1600 detectors spread over 3000 square kilometres, Auger should be able to determine the energies of incoming cosmic rays and shed more light on the Akeno results. Alan Watson, an astronomer at the University of Leeds, UK, and spokesman for the Pierre Auger project, is already convinced there is something worth following up here. "I have no doubts that events above 10^20 electronvolts exist. There are sufficient examples to convince me," he says. The question now is, what are they? How many of these particles are coming in, and what direction are they coming from? Until we get that information, there's no telling how exotic the true explanation could be. "One possibility is that there is something wrong with the Akeno results. Another is that Einstein was wrong" 4 Belfast homeopathy results MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum. In her most recent paper, Ennis describes how her team looked at the effects of ultra-dilute solutions of histamine on human white blood cells involved in inflammation. These "basophils" release histamine when the cells are under attack. Once released, the histamine stops them releasing any more. The study, replicated in four different labs, found that homeopathic solutions - so dilute that they probably didn't contain a single histamine molecule - worked just like histamine. Ennis might not be happy with the homeopaths' claims, but she admits that an effect cannot be ruled out. So how could it happen? Homeopaths prepare their remedies by dissolving things like charcoal, deadly nightshade or spider venom in ethanol, and then diluting this "mother tincture" in water again and again. No matter what the level of dilution, homeopaths claim, the original remedy leaves some kind of imprint on the water molecules. Thus, however dilute the solution becomes, it is still imbued with the properties of the remedy. You can understand why Ennis remains sceptical. And it remains true that no homeopathic remedy has ever been shown to work in a large randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial. But the Belfast study (Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181) suggests that something is going on. "We are," Ennis says in her paper, "unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon." If the results turn out to be real, she says, the implications are profound: we may have to rewrite physics and chemistry. 5 Dark matter TAKE our best understanding of gravity, apply it to the way galaxies spin, and you'll quickly see the problem: the galaxies should be falling apart. Galactic matter orbits around a central point because its mutual gravitational attraction creates centripetal forces. But there is not enough mass in the galaxies to produce the observed spin. Vera Rubin, an astronomer working at the Carnegie Institution's department of terrestrial magnetism in Washington DC, spotted this anomaly in the late 1970s. The best response from physicists was to suggest there is more stuff out there than we can see. The trouble was, nobody could explain what this "dark matter" was. And they still can't. Although researchers have made many suggestions about what kind of particles might make up dark matter, there is no consensus. It's an embarrassing hole in our understanding. Astronomical observations suggest that dark matter must make up about 90 per cent of the mass in the universe, yet we are astonishingly ignorant what that 90 per cent is. Maybe we can't work out what dark matter is because it doesn't actually exist. That's certainly the way Rubin would like it to turn out. "If I could have my pick, I would like to learn that Newton's laws must be modified in order to correctly describe gravitational interactions at large distances," she says. "That's more appealing than a universe filled with a new kind of sub-nuclear particle." "If the results turn out to be real, the implications are profound. We may have to rewrite physics and chemistry" 6 Viking's methane JULY 20, 1976. Gilbert Levin is on the edge of his seat. Millions of kilometres away on Mars, the Viking landers have scooped up some soil and mixed it with carbon-14-labelled nutrients. The mission's scientists have all agreed that if Levin's instruments on board the landers detect emissions of carbon-14-containing methane from the soil, then there must be life on Mars. Viking reports a positive result. Something is ingesting the nutrients, metabolising them, and then belching out gas laced with carbon-14. So why no party? Because another instrument, designed to identify organic molecules considered essential signs of life, found nothing. Almost all the mission scientists erred on the side of caution and declared Viking's discovery a false positive. But was it? The arguments continue to rage, but results from NASA's latest rovers show that the surface of Mars was almost certainly wet in the past and therefore hospitable to life. And there is plenty more evidence where that came from, Levin says. "Every mission to Mars has produced evidence supporting my conclusion. None has contradicted it." Levin stands by his claim, and he is no longer alone. Joe Miller, a cell biologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, has re-analysed the data and he thinks that the emissions show evidence of a circadian cycle. That is highly suggestive of life. Levin is petitioning ESA and NASA to fly a modified version of his mission to look for "chiral" molecules. These come in left or right-handed versions: they are mirror images of each other. While biological processes tend to produce molecules that favour one chirality over the other, non-living processes create left and right-handed versions in equal numbers. If a future mission to Mars were to find that Martian "metabolism" also prefers one chiral form of a molecule to the other, that would be the best indication yet of life on Mars. "Something on Mars is ingesting nutrients, metabolising them and then belching out radioactive methane" 7 Tetraneutrons FOUR years ago, a particle accelerator in France detected six particles that should not exist. They are called tetraneutrons: four neutrons that are bound together in a way that defies the laws of physics. Francisco Miguel Marqu?s and colleagues at the Ganil accelerator in Caen are now gearing up to do it again. If they succeed, these clusters may oblige us to rethink the forces that hold atomic nuclei together. The team fired beryllium nuclei at a small carbon target and analysed the debris that shot into surrounding particle detectors. They expected to see evidence for four separate neutrons hitting their detectors. Instead the Ganil team found just one flash of light in one detector. And the energy of this flash suggested that four neutrons were arriving together at the detector. Of course, their finding could have been an accident: four neutrons might just have arrived in the same place at the same time by coincidence. But that's ridiculously improbable. Not as improbable as tetraneutrons, some might say, because in the standard model of particle physics tetraneutrons simply can't exist. According to the Pauli exclusion principle, not even two protons or neutrons in the same system can have identical quantum properties. In fact, the strong nuclear force that would hold them together is tuned in such a way that it can't even hold two lone neutrons together, let alone four. Marqu?s and his team were so bemused by their result that they buried the data in a research paper that was ostensibly about the possibility of finding tetraneutrons in the future (Physical Review C, vol 65, p 44006). And there are still more compelling reasons to doubt the existence of tetraneutrons. If you tweak the laws of physics to allow four neutrons to bind together, all kinds of chaos ensues (Journal of Physics G, vol 29, L9). It would mean that the mix of elements formed after the big bang was inconsistent with what we now observe and, even worse, the elements formed would have quickly become far too heavy for the cosmos to cope. "Maybe the universe would have collapsed before it had any chance to expand," says Natalia Timofeyuk, a theorist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. There are, however, a couple of holes in this reasoning. Established theory does allow the tetraneutron to exist - though only as a ridiculously short-lived particle. "This could be a reason for four neutrons hitting the Ganil detectors simultaneously," Timofeyuk says. And there is other evidence that supports the idea of matter composed of multiple neutrons: neutron stars. These bodies, which contain an enormous number of bound neutrons, suggest that as yet unexplained forces come into play when neutrons gather en masse. 8 The Pioneer anomaly THIS is a tale of two spacecraft. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972; Pioneer 11 a year later. By now both craft should be drifting off into deep space with no one watching. However, their trajectories have proved far too fascinating to ignore. That's because something has been pulling - or pushing - on them, causing them to speed up. The resulting acceleration is tiny, less than a nanometre per second per second. That's equivalent to just one ten-billionth of the gravity at Earth's surface, but it is enough to have shifted Pioneer 10 some 400,000 kilometres off track. NASA lost touch with Pioneer 11 in 1995, but up to that point it was experiencing exactly the same deviation as its sister probe. So what is causing it? Nobody knows. Some possible explanations have already been ruled out, including software errors, the solar wind or a fuel leak. If the cause is some gravitational effect, it is not one we know anything about. In fact, physicists are so completely at a loss that some have resorted to linking this mystery with other inexplicable phenomena. Bruce Bassett of the University of Portsmouth, UK, has suggested that the Pioneer conundrum might have something to do with variations in alpha, the fine structure constant (see "Not so constant constants", page 37). Others have talked about it as arising from dark matter - but since we don't know what dark matter is, that doesn't help much either. "This is all so maddeningly intriguing," says Michael Martin Nieto of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. "We only have proposals, none of which has been demonstrated." Nieto has called for a new analysis of the early trajectory data from the craft, which he says might yield fresh clues. But to get to the bottom of the problem what scientists really need is a mission designed specifically to test unusual gravitational effects in the outer reaches of the solar system. Such a probe would cost between $300 million and $500 million and could piggyback on a future mission to the outer reaches of the solar system ([64]www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0411077). "An explanation will be found eventually," Nieto says. "Of course I hope it is due to new physics - how stupendous that would be. But once a physicist starts working on the basis of hope he is heading for a fall." Disappointing as it may seem, Nieto thinks the explanation for the Pioneer anomaly will eventually be found in some mundane effect, such as an unnoticed source of heat on board the craft. 9 Dark energy IT IS one of the most famous, and most embarrassing, problems in physics. In 1998, astronomers discovered that the universe is expanding at ever faster speeds. It's an effect still searching for a cause - until then, everyone thought the universe's expansion was slowing down after the big bang. "Theorists are still floundering around, looking for a sensible explanation," says cosmologist Katherine Freese of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "We're all hoping that upcoming observations of supernovae, of clusters of galaxies and so on will give us more clues." One suggestion is that some property of empty space is responsible - cosmologists call it dark energy. But all attempts to pin it down have fallen woefully short. It's also possible that Einstein's theory of general relativity may need to be tweaked when applied to the very largest scales of the universe. "The field is still wide open," Freese says. 10 The Kuiper cliff IF YOU travel out to the far edge of the solar system, into the frigid wastes beyond Pluto, you'll see something strange. Suddenly, after passing through the Kuiper belt, a region of space teeming with icy rocks, there's nothing. Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because the density of space rocks drops off so steeply. What caused it? The only answer seems to be a 10th planet. We're not talking about Quaoar or Sedna: this is a massive object, as big as Earth or Mars, that has swept the area clean of debris. The evidence for the existence of "Planet X" is compelling, says Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. But although calculations show that such a body could account for the Kuiper cliff (Icarus, vol 160, p 32), no one has ever seen this fabled 10th planet. There's a good reason for that. The Kuiper belt is just too far away for us to get a decent view. We need to get out there and have a look before we can say anything about the region. And that won't be possible for another decade, at least. NASA's New Horizons probe, which will head out to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, is scheduled for launch in January 2006. It won't reach Pluto until 2015, so if you are looking for an explanation of the vast, empty gulf of the Kuiper cliff, watch this space. 11 The Wow signal IT WAS 37 seconds long and came from outer space. On 15 August 1977 it caused astronomer Jerry Ehman, then of Ohio State University in Columbus, to scrawl "Wow!" on the printout from Big Ear, Ohio State's radio telescope in Delaware. And 28 years later no one knows what created the signal. "I am still waiting for a definitive explanation that makes sense," Ehman says. Coming from the direction of Sagittarius, the pulse of radiation was confined to a narrow range of radio frequencies around 1420 megahertz. This frequency is in a part of the radio spectrum in which all transmissions are prohibited by international agreement. Natural sources of radiation, such as the thermal emissions from planets, usually cover a much broader sweep of frequencies. So what caused it? The nearest star in that direction is 220 light years away. If that is where is came from, it would have had to be a pretty powerful astronomical event - or an advanced alien civilisation using an astonishingly large and powerful transmitter. The fact that hundreds of sweeps over the same patch of sky have found nothing like the Wow signal doesn't mean it's not aliens. When you consider the fact that the Big Ear telescope covers only one-millionth of the sky at any time, and an alien transmitter would also likely beam out over the same fraction of sky, the chances of spotting the signal again are remote, to say the least. Others think there must be a mundane explanation. Dan Wertheimer, chief scientist for the SETI at home project, says the Wow signal was almost certainly pollution: radio-frequency interference from Earth-based transmissions. "We've seen many signals like this, and these sorts of signals have always turned out to be interference," he says. The debate continues. "It was either a powerful astronomical event - or an advanced alien civilisation beaming out a signal" 12 Not-so-constant constants IN 1997 astronomer John Webb and his team at the University of New South Wales in Sydney analysed the light reaching Earth from distant quasars. On its 12-billion-year journey, the light had passed through interstellar clouds of metals such as iron, nickel and chromium, and the researchers found these atoms had absorbed some of the photons of quasar light - but not the ones they were expecting. If the observations are correct, the only vaguely reasonable explanation is that a constant of physics called the fine structure constant, or alpha, had a different value at the time the light passed through the clouds. But that's heresy. Alpha is an extremely important constant that determines how light interacts with matter - and it shouldn't be able to change. Its value depends on, among other things, the charge on the electron, the speed of light and Planck's constant. Could one of these really have changed? No one in physics wanted to believe the measurements. Webb and his team have been trying for years to find an error in their results. But so far they have failed. Webb's are not the only results that suggest something is missing from our understanding of alpha. A recent analysis of the only known natural nuclear reactor, which was active nearly 2 billion years ago at what is now Oklo in Gabon, also suggests something about light's interaction with matter has changed. The ratio of certain radioactive isotopes produced within such a reactor depends on alpha, and so looking at the fission products left behind in the ground at Oklo provides a way to work out the value of the constant at the time of their formation. Using this method, Steve Lamoreaux and his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggest that alpha may have decreased by more than 4 per cent since Oklo started up (Physical Review D, vol 69, p 121701). There are gainsayers who still dispute any change in alpha. Patrick Petitjean, an astronomer at the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris, led a team that analysed quasar light picked up by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and found no evidence that alpha has changed. But Webb, who is now looking at the VLT measurements, says that they require a more complex analysis than Petitjean's team has carried out. Webb's group is working on that now, and may be in a position to declare the anomaly resolved - or not - later this year. "It's difficult to say how long it's going to take," says team member Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "The more we look at these new data, the more difficulties we see." But whatever the answer, the work will still be valuable. An analysis of the way light passes through distant molecular clouds will reveal more about how the elements were produced early in the universe's history. 13 Cold fusion AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers. With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In December, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments. That's quite a turnaround. The DoE's first report on the subject, published 15 years ago, concluded that the original cold fusion results, produced by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and unveiled at a press conference in 1989, were impossible to reproduce, and thus probably false. The basic claim of cold fusion is that dunking palladium electrodes into heavy water - in which oxygen is combined with the hydrogen isotope deuterium - can release a large amount of energy. Placing a voltage across the electrodes supposedly allows deuterium nuclei to move into palladium's molecular lattice, enabling them to overcome their natural repulsion and fuse together, releasing a blast of energy. The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory. "Cold fusion would make the world's energy problems melt away. No wonder the Department of Energy is interested" That doesn't matter, according to David Nagel, an engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Superconductors took 40 years to explain, he points out, so there's no reason to dismiss cold fusion. "The experimental case is bulletproof," he says. "You can't make it go away." References 64. http://www.arxiv.org/gr-qc/0411077 From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:59:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:59:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Bitsakis: Space and Time: The Ongoing Quest Message-ID: Space and Time: The Ongoing Quest Eftichios Bitsakis1,2 1Department of Philosophy, University of Ioannina. 2Department of Physics, University of Athens. Received October 27, 2004 Foundations of Physics 35(1) (2005.1): 57-83 In this paper, I try to refute the Kantian a priorism. At the same time, I try to explain the existence of an a priori concerning space and time on the basis of contemporary neuro-physiology. This a priori is the opposite of the a-historical a priori of Kant. Concerning space and time, I argue that relativity concords with the philosophical thesis that space and time are forms of existence of matter. On the basis of this ontological principle, I support that by accepting the existence of local absolute systems of reference, it is possible to explain some paradoxes of special relativity and at the same time to refute the relativism related to the theory of Einstein. KEY WORDS: a priori; a posteriori; determinism; ether; innate ideas; local absolute systems of reference; space; time. The debate about space, time and matter, as old as philosophy, took a new impetus with the creation of Newtonian physics; a second, with the development of relativity, microphysics and modern cosmology. The question of the nature of space and time, of the existence of the void, of the in.nity or not of the Universe, has been-as is well known-the object of vivid debates between Greek philosophers. For atomists, the space is void; it is the in.nite scene of the movements of the atoms, of the creation and the destruction of the worlds. The Universe was also considered in.nite in the cosmologies of Anaximander, Anaximenes and Democritus. For Aristotle, on the contrary, the void is impossible, and the Universe is .nite with the Earth in its center. Ptolemy, after Aristotle, came forth to elaborate a geometric-mathematical model of a geocentric Universe, capable of giving correct predictions, that is to say, "s..e.. ta fa.. o??e.a". This model has been imposed as the only true during the Middle Ages. With Descartes, Galileo, Newton and Laplace, the questions of the space, the time and the Universe, became one of the central problems of the emerging science. The main answers given today to the problem of space and time are: 1. The realist, according to which space and time are forms of existence of matter. 2. The positivist: space and time are concepts convenient for the description of phenomena. For Poincar?e, to take a notorious case, "the characteristic property of space, that of having three dimensions, is a property of our distribution board, a property residing, so to speak, in the human intelligence. The destruction of some of these connections, that is to say, of these associations of ideas, would be suf.cient to give us a different distribution board, and that might be enough to endow space with a fourth dimension".(1) Similarly for E. Borel, "it is convenient to use intervals, just as it is convenient to assume that the earth is rotating and the sun is standing still (to a .rst approximation). Moreover we must not forget that for Poincar?e convenience is identical to scienti.c truth".(2) Hume, Mach, Poincar?e, Wittgenstein, the multiform schools of classical and modern empiricism, deprived the concepts of space and time of their ontic counterpart. 3. Kant, on the contrary, was, from a certain point of view, a realist. He accepted the existence of the things in themselves, independent of the subject. For him, however, space and time are not forms of matter. They are the a priori forms of intuition. I will not try to refute the conception of positivism.(3) The case of Kant is more delicate and intriguing. In fact Kant continues to pose problems to contemporary epistemology. So I will try to present his conceptions and to confront them with the ideas of Einstein. I will also try to outline a conception which goes beyond the Kantian a priori and at the same time beyond empiricism. For realism (and materialism) the realist Einstein is right. Not Kant. However, the problem is not so simple, and contemporary physics and cosmology provided the debate with new materials and new arguments. But before passing to Kant, we must make a brief exposition of the conception of Newton. 1. NEWTON: THE ABSOLUTE SPACE AND TIME Newton also was a realist. The Universe for him is an objective reality, independent of the knowing subject. The same holds for space and time. Matter, on the other hand, is constituted from corpuscles, moving in space, the in.nite scene of phenomena. Forces, propagated with in.nite velocity are the cause of phenomena (causality) and the same causes provoke the same effects (determinism). Consequently, the foundations of the Newtonian physics were realism, determinism and non-locality. However, for Newton space is independent of matter: it is a form independent of its content. Space, therefore, is de.ned independently of the existence of matter as an absolute existence. Let us recall his de.nition: "Absolute space, in its own, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space, is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute space; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is commonly taken for immovable space".(4) The same holds for time: "Absolute time, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, .ows equably, without relation to anything external and by another name is called duration".(5) Absolute motion, consequently, "is the translation of a body from one absolute place to another, and relative motion, the translation from one relative place to another".(6) Newton was one of the great proponents of the mechanistic point of view. Now arises the question: Is it possible to .nd a system of reference immobile in absolute space, in order to verify the laws of mechanics? In fact, according to the principle of relativity, the laws of physics are the same for all inertial systems, that is to say, for systems in uniform relative movement. However, do we know a system in absolute rest, in order to de.ne the class of the privileged inertial systems related to the absolute Euclidean-Newtonian space? Instead of absolute places and motions- writes Newton-we use relative ones. However "it is possible, that in the remote regions of the .xed stars, of perhaps beyond them there may be some body absolutely at rest; but since it is impossible to know, from the position of bodies to one another in our regions, whether any of them do keep the same position to that remote body, it follows that absolute rest cannot be determined from the positions of bodies in our region".(7) It follows that since it is impossible to .nd a body at rest in absolute space, it is also impossible to ascertain the existence of the class of privileged inertial systems. Consequently, we simply accept their existence. The question of the existence of an absolute system of reference has been examined-as well known-from another point of view, with the formulation of the laws of electromagnetism. According to the mechanistic interpretation of these laws, a medium is necessary for the transmission of the electromagnetic waves. This medium, the ether, has been identi.ed with absolute space; consequently, with the absolute system of reference. The con.rmation of the absolute motion through the ocean of the ether would be a con.rmation of the existence of the absolute space, of the absolute motion, and of the existence of privileged inertial systems. It is common knowledge that all experiments aiming to prove absolute motion through the ether gave negative answer. However, it is evident that ether was super.uous for the Newtonian, corpuscular conception of light. In fact, according to Newton: "And for rejecting such a Medium, we have the Authority of those the oldest and most celebrated Philosophers of Greece and Phoenicia, who made a Vacuum and Atoms and the Gravity of Atoms, the .rst Principles of their Philosophy".(8) The Newtonian particles are moving through the vacuum and they are attracted by massive bodies when passing in their vicinity. This conjecture of Newton is an anticipation of one of the predictions of general relativity, deduced from different ontological postulates. The Newtonian universe is mechanistic: "All bodies", writes Newton, "seem to be composed of hard particles and the impenetrability of matter is a universal principle". The Galilean-Newtonian particle has no other attribute than inertia. However "vis inertia is a passive Principle by which Bodies persist in their Motion or Rest". Forces provoke motion. Consequently, some active principles ought to be the causes of movement. Concerning the nature of gravity, Newton was content to say: "hypotheses non .ngo". Concerning material particles: "These particles have not only Vis-Inertia, accompanied with such passive laws of Motion as naturally result from that Force, but also that they are moved by certain active principles, such as Gravity, and that which causes the fermentation and the Cohesion of Bodies. And these active principles are not occult qualities. They are manifest qualities; their causes only are occult". Newton tried to overcome the rigid mechanical character of his model, and to consider motion as an internal attribute of matter.(9) But it was too early. These intuitions coexist with the metaphysical-theological foundations of the Newtonian universe: Matter is composed of particles, but matter, is not causa sui. Particles were created by God, space is an objective reality, and at the same time, "Sensorium Dei". Absolute time in its turn, and forces propagated with in.nite velocity, correspond to the omnipresence of God. The atoms of Democretian cosmology were uncreated and eternal. The particles (atoms) of Newton were created by "God himself in the .rst creation".(10) The worldview of the Newtonian physics entails a radical reductionism. The explanation of motion is problematic. Composite bodies, on the other hand, are considered as the sum of their constituents. The existence of the new is inconceivable in the frame of the Newtonian universe and the reductionism was the logical outcome of the principles of Mechanics. The linearity of its laws was another presupposition of the mechanistic reductionism. Laplace was the most illustrious representative of this radical reductionism: "Nous devons envisager l'?esent de l'univers comme l'effet etat pr`de son etat ant??erieur et comme la cause de celui qui va suivre. Une intelligence qui, pour un instant donn?e, conna^itrait toutes les forces dont la ee et la situation respective des ^nature est anim?etres qui la composent; ?ees a l'analyse, si d'ailleurs elle etait assez vaste pour soumettre ces donn?`embrasserait dans la m^eme formule les mouvements des plus grands corps de l'univers et ceux du plus l?eger atome; rien ne serait incertain pour elle e seraient pr?`et l'avenir comme le pass?esents a ses yeux".(11) Or, how the Demon of Laplace would be able to .nd an Archimedean point, in order to grasp the Universe as a whole? The existence of an absolute system of reference and-consequently-of the absolute space has never been con.rmed. On the other hand, Descartes (1596-1650) contemporary of Galileo (1564-1641) has formulated an interesting conception for the relations between space, time and matter. Descartes was also a realist. For him also God had created matter and gave it the necessary quantity of motion. But for Descartes, contrary to Democritus and to Newton, it is impossible to conceive corporeal substance without its extension. More than that: it is not gravity, neither duration, nor color that constitute the nature of the body, but son extension. Descartes identi.ed matter with space and, consequently, rejected the existence of the void.(12) From a certain point of view, Descartes joints the Aristotelian tradition and foreshadowed certain ideas of Einstein and the .eld conception of matter. (This conception speci.es the unity of space and matter, not their identity, as professed Ren?e Descartes). The Newtonian conception of space and time has been accepted at that time, because it was conform to intuition and also, with the Christian conception of the Universe and, above all, because it constituted a presupposition for the formulation of the prerelativistic physics. However, this conception has been challenged by a philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), long before the formulation of the laws of electromagnetism by James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). 2. SPACE AND TIME: THE A PRIORI FORMS OF INTUITION Kant was not only a great philosopher. He was also a man of science. The .rst to elaborate in modern times a dynamic model of the Universe.(13) It was natural that Kant has been in.uenced by Newtonian physics and the mechanistic conceptions of Newton (1643-1727). In particular, it was natural that he would consider the only available at that time Euclidean geometry as the only possible one. However, the objective of the philosopher Kant was the refutation of classical metaphysics. Consequently, although he accepted as valid the Euclidean geometry and, tacitly, the mechanistic-Newtonian worldview, Kant deprived space and time of their status of objectivity. Kant also was a realist. For him also, knowledge begins with experience. >From this fact, however, does not follow that all arises out of experience. Beyond the sphere of experience, Kant accepted the existence of a "transcendental or supersensible sphere", where experience affords neither instruction nor guidance. In this sphere lies the investigation of Reason. Knowledge for Kant is the knowledge of phenomena. Not of the things in themselves. Our knowledge relates to objects. However, it relates to them by means of intuitions. The undetermined object of the empirical intuition is called by Kant, phenomenon. "That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term it matter". That, which entails that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, is called by Kant, form . The form must be ready a priori for them in mind. Consequently, form can be regarded separately from sensation: we .nd in the mind the a priori forms of intuition. Correspondingly, a pure representation contains nothing belonging to sensation. The pure forms of intuition, are space and time. Space, Kant maintains, is a pure, a priori form of intuition. It contains principles of the relations of objects prior to experience. Consequently, space is not a form which belongs to a property of things. It is not a conception derived from outward experiences. It is a necessary, a priori representation, which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions. Space, consequently, does not represent any property of objects as things in themselves. It contains all which can appear to us externally, but not all things, considered as things in themselves. Thus, properties belonging to objects as things in themselves never can be presented to us through the medium of senses. Correspondingly, time is not an empirical conception. It is given a priori and constitutes the universal condition of phenomena. Different times are parts of one and the same time. This form of inward intuition can be represented before the objects and, consequently, a priori. Time is the subjective condition of our intuition. All phenomena are in time. However, independently of the mind, time is nothing. Space and time do not belong to the things. They are the a priori forms of sensory perception, in the sense that every phenomenon is posited in space and time. This is a fact. But this fact raises two questions: (1) Space and time are forms of matter? The response of Kant is clear and negative. Spatial and temporal relations are laid by the reasoning subject in sensory perception. They do not exist in the object. (2) Why we see, etc., in a three-dimensional space? Kant has not posed this question. Finally, accepting that space and time are the a priori forms of intuition entails that the only possible geometry is the Euclidean. This a-historical conception has been refuted-as we shall see-by modern science. Space and time have a certain absolute character for Kant. This fact recalls the absolute space and time of the Newtonian Physics. However, as we have noted, space and time for Newton are objective "realities". The .rst is "Sensorium Dei". The second corresponds to the omnipresence of the Creator. For Kant, on the contrary, they are "simply" the a priori forms of intuition. Space and time are, according to Kant, two sources of knowledge, from which various a priori synthetic propositions can be drawn. It follows that "geometry is a science which determines the properties of space synthetically and yet, a priori". Our representation of space, Kant maintains, must be an intuition, not a mere conception; an intuition found in the mind a priori. It is a pure, non-empirical intuition. Geometrical principles are always apodictic, that is, united with the consciousness of their necessity, as: "Space has only three dimensions". Propositions of this kind cannot be empirical judgments, or conclusions from them. Yet, the existence of a priori knowledge is not self-evident. Thus, Kant puts the question: "How can an external intuition anterior to objects themselves, and in which our conception of objects can be determined a priori, exist in human mind?" His answer is as follows: "Obviously not otherwise than in so far as, it has its seat in the subject only, as the formal capacity of the subjects being affected by objects, and thereby of obtaining immediate representation, that is, intuition: Consequently, as the form of the external sense in general". Evidently, this is not an answer. Geometry, Kant af.rms, is based on a priori principles. In a similar way, the science of Natural Philosophy (Physics) contains synthetic judgments a priori as principles. These propositions are characterized by universality and necessity. However, the a priori concerns the form. The content is a posteriori: it is given by experience. Let us take the case of two concrete propositions. According to Kant, the proposition: "In all changes of the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged", as well as the proposition: "in all communication of motion, action and reaction must be always equal", are a priori, synthetic propositions. However, the two above propositions are not a priori synthetic. They are principles, formulated as the generalization and the transcendence of the experience. Moreover, their status is not identical: the .rst one is an ontological principle, while the second is a law of physics derived from the generalization of the experience. Consequently, it is a posteriori and not a priori synthetic. Finally, the status of the above propositions is different, contrary to the af.rmation of Kant. But before passing to the criticism of Kant's conception by Einstein, we must make some preliminary remarks. All knowledge, Kant accepts, begins with experience. Reason without experience is void. Yet, at the same time Kant maintains that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, that is to say, knowledge independent and prior to experience. However, in what way we acquire such knowledge? And how is it possible to justify the assertion that space and time are a priori pure forms of intuition? Kant considered these assertions as eternal truths. Yet, as I will try to show, the alleged a priori knowledge is historically and socially acquired. Its incontestable verity gives the impression that it is independent of experience and history. In reality, as knowledge socially and historically acquired and transmitted, it is prior and independent of the individual experience and is imposed to individuals as absolute and a-historical truth. Space and time, in their turn, are forms of intuition genetically-historically determined. Consequently, it would be in principle possible to explain our possibility to see, to hear, etc., in a three-dimensional space and to arrange phenomena in a unique temporal succession. There is a certain a priori in our intuition. Yet this is "simply" a possibility for a certain form of representation, not a knowledge. Mathematics, on the other side, does not represent pure a priori knowledge. Their propositions are a posteriori, not a priori synthetic. They are acquired through experience, abstraction, generalization and transcendence of the experience. The geometrical triangle, for example, has its prototype in the real and imperfect triangles, not in the ideal triangle of the platonic world of ideas. The equation: a + b + c = 180 is necessarily true in the frame of Euclidean geometry. In this sense, it is a priori. But it is not an a priori synthetic proposition and is falsi.ed by non-Euclidean geometries. This non-universal proposition was formulated after a long historical period of practical experience through generalization and abstraction of the real properties of the real triangles. In this sense, it is an a posteriori synthetic. The ideal, mathematical property has its counterpart in the physical reality, contrary to the Pythagorean, Platonic and Kantian epistemology. In an analogous way, the laws of theoretical physics are a posteriori; not a priori synthetic. Necessity and universality are not a suf.cient reason and proof of an a priori status. The necessity and the universality of the laws of physics is due to the fact that they are not formulated by induction, but via a process of abstraction, generalization and transcendence of their experimental or observational basis. By this way they express the ideal limit of relations existing in nature itself, and they acquire thereby their phenomenal independence from experience. Their alleged absolute and necessary character, on the other hand, has been proved relative and not necessary by new observations and the theoretical generalization of the experience (not to speak of the ideological presuppositions of the "paradigms" of the theoretical physics). But I will discuss these problems in the last part of this paper. One more question: The meaning of the term a priori is not self-evident. For Kant, a priori means that the truth of a proposition is necessary and universal. This may appear trivial (Example: 2 + 2 = 4). However, Kant accepted the existence of knowledge independent of experience. Knowledge of this kind, he says, is called a priori, contrary to the empirical, which has its source a posteriori, that is, in experience. What is the meaning of the expression "knowledge independent of experience?". This expression recalls the famous problem of innate ideas. Or, what means innate? A clear response is impossible. Leibniz, for example, accepted the knowledge of principles independent of experience. Innate also means the possibility to know a number of ideas as true. However, it seems that innate for Leibniz means not actual knowledge, but rather predispositions, inclinations, potentialities. Similarly, for Descartes, every idea of which we have a clear and distinct apperception is innate. At the same time Descartes supported that the child has ideas as potentialities. Finally, the problem of the existence of innate ideas is not clear and the debate continues even today without a clear solution.(14) For Kant, space and time are a priori forms of intuition. However, Kant was against psychologism and against skepticism. Concerning the category of causality, that he considers also as a priori, he writes: "The concept of a cause, which expresses the necessity of an event under a presupposed condition, would be false if it rested only an arbitrary necessity, implanted in us, of connecting certain empirical representations according to the rule of the causal relation. I would not then be able to say that the affect is connected with the cause in the object, that is to say, necessarily, but only that I am so constituted that I cannot think this representation otherwise than as thus connected. This is exactly what the sceptic most desires".(15) It seems that Kant strives to attribute an objective to the a priori. Causality for him is not innate. It is not an arbitrary subjective necessity inscribed in our intellect. The effect is connected with the cause, inside the object, that is to say, necessarily. Or this "objective" relation concerns phenomena. Not things in themselves. 3. RELATIVITY: EINSTEIN AGAINST KANT We must dispense justice to Kant. In his time only Euclidean geometry existed. Euclidean space on the other hand, was the indisputable frame of physics. Newton professed the existence of a space, "absolute in its nature, without relation to anything external, always similar and immovable". Kant transformed this objective, three-dimensional space with its absolute, positive metric, to a subjective a priori pure form of the intuition. In the same spirit, Newton had admitted the existence of an absolute mathematical time, which "from its own nature .ows equably, without relation to anything external". In accord with Newton, Kant considered the different, local times, as part of one and the same, universal time. However, and contrary to Newton, he conceived time as a subjective, a priori form of the inward intuition. Consequently, Kant transformed the categories of the mechanistic-realist ontology of Newton, into the incomprehensible a priori forms of the so-called pure intuition. It is well known that the conceptual nucleus of classical mechanics is that of the action-at-a-distance, and that its ontological premises are expressed by the Galilean group of transformations.(16) Therefore, the incompatibility of this group with the Maxwellian electromagnetism was inevitable. Einstein and Minkowski demonstrated that the natural spatio-temporal frame of electromagnetism was a quadri-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean space. The Lorentz group ensured the invariance of the equations of Maxwell in the frame of this spatio-temporal form, which, contrary to Kant, presupposes the unity of space and time. The special theory of relativity brought to light the relativity of space and time. At the same time it revealed their intrinsic unity. The absolute character of the four-dimensional space-time interval and the equally absolute character of the new relativistic physical quantities (velocity, force, acceleration, current, etc.) expressed in a tensorial form, are incompatible with the formal conception of Kant, as well as with the modern epistemological relativism and concord with the realist, causal and local interpretation of relativity. General theory of relativity in its turn, whose physical content is the theory of gravitation of Einstein, expresses the law of gravitation in a form invariant for all systems of references, Galilean or accelerated. This fact expresses a generalized, stronger objectivity. At the same time general relativity revealed the intrinsic unity of space, time, matter and motion, "since the ten functions representing the gravitational .eld, at the same time de.ne the metrical properties of space".(17) Special and general relativity are incompatible with the Kantian dogma, which presupposes the exclusive character of the Euclidean space. Historicity of the concepts of space and time? In fact, from the Euclidean-Newtonian absolute space and time, we passed to the pseudo-Euclidean space of Minkowski and further to the Riemannian space of general relativity. However, the historicity of the mathematical spaces does not constitute an argument in favor of the epistemological relativism, because their epistemic difference does not exclude their dialectical compatibility, in opposition to the alleged incommensurability which is professed by contemporary formalistic epistemologies. In fact, as is well known, we pass from the space of Riemann to that of Minkowski, if we consider a space practically void of matter. And we can dissociate the space of Minkowski into two subspaces, if we consider very slow velocities. As A. Papapetrou puts is, "the Minkowski space is the simplest form of a Riemannian space - it is a .at space".(18) Historicity and commensurability are incompatible with the gnoseological relativism related to the theory of relativity. Till now we have to do with mathematical spaces. Consequently, the historicity of the concepts of space and time concerns the epistemological aspect of our problem. Yet, what is the ontic status of space and time? Is there a relation between mathematical spaces and physical space? Is there a kind of correspondence, of morphism, between them? And if yes, then how and when mathematics can represent physical reality? I will try an answer to these questions in the last part of this paper. For the moment, let us note the objections of Einstein to the Kantian a priorism. From a certain point of view Einstein was an empirist. As he admits in his Autobiographical Notes: "It was Ernst Mach who, in his Science of Mechanics, shook this dogmatic faith. This book exercised a profound in.uence upon me in this regard, while I was a student. I see Mach's greatness in his incorruptible skepticism and independence". However the philosophy of Mach appeared later to Einstein, "essentially unten-able".(19) Why? Because Einstein was a realist. Bodily objects for him are independent of the sense impressions they generate. They have "a real, objective existence". Subjective time, Einstein writes, leads through the concept of bodily object and space, to objective time. "Ahead the notions of objective time there is, however, the concept of space, and ahead the latter we .nd the concept of bodily objects".(20) Einstein founded his realist conception of space to the existence of bodies, independently of being perceived. "In my opinion", he writes, "the fact that every bodily object situated in any arbitrary manner can be put into contact with the Bo (body of relation) this fact is the empirical basis of our conception of space".(21) Space and time have an empirical basis. And in spite of this, Einstein notes, one may led into the error of believing that the concepts of space and time are a priori. "This fatal error arose from the fact that the empirical basis on which the axiomatic construction of Euclidean geometry rests has fallen into oblivion".(22) Einstein insisted on the need that the axiomatic form of the Euclidean geometry must not conceal its empirical origin. The three dimensions of space, in particular, and its Euclidean character are, for him, of empirical origin.(23) In a higher level of abstraction, the general theory of relativity demonstrated the intrinsic unity of physics and geometry. As Paul Langevin puts it, "our physics became a geometry of the universe".(24) And this, because of the fact that the curvature of space, that is to say, its form, is determined, according to general relativity, by the potentials of gravitation, that is to say, by the distribution of the matter in space-time. In an inverse sense, one could say that our geometry became a branch of Physics. >From practical experience, to Euclidean absolute space and time. The laws of electromagnetism postulated the intrinsic unity of space and time. The relativistic theory of gravitation is formulated in the frame of a Riemannian geometry, and postulated the intrinsic unity of space, time, movement and matter. These abstract geometries contradict the Kantian dogma. At the same time they are not abstract forms. They are forms corresponding to concrete physical content. Our intellect transcended the limits of the immediate intuition, and created forms having no counterpart in our representation. Minkowski and Riemann demonstrated that Euclidian geometry was not the only possible one. Relativity postulated the intrinsic unity of form and content. All these are incompatible with the Kantian "pure forms of the intuition". Einstein opposed his realist conception to that of Kant. One cannot take seriously, according to him, the tentative of Kant to deny the objectivity of space.(25) Einstein maintained that the non-Euclidean geometries constituted a fatal blow to the conception of Kant. For him the physical notion of space, as originally used by Physics, is tied to the existence of rigid bodies. However, as we have noted, according to Einstein, one may easily led to the error that the notions of space and time, the origin of which has been forgotten, are necessary and unalterable accompaniments to our thinking. "This error may constitute a serious danger for science".(26) Kant, Einstein notes, was misled by the erroneous opinion- dif.cult to avoid in his time-that Euclidean geometry is necessary to thinking and offers assured (i.e. not dependent upon sensory experience) knowledge, concerning the objects of the "external perception". From this error, Einstein notes, Kant concluded "the existence of synthetic judgments a priori, which are produced by the reason alone, and which, consequently, can lay claim to absolute validity".(27) Finally, Einstein remarked that his attitude is distinct from that of Kant, by the fact that he does not conceive the categories "as unalterable (conditioned by the nature of understanding) but as (in the logical sense) free contentions".(28) 4. EINSTEIN: IN SEARCH OF A REALIST INTERPRETATION Einstein against Kant. At the same time (but not always) against conventionalism. Nevertheless, Einstein changed many times his conceptions about space and ether. As is well known, Maxwell considered that the electromagnetic waves were propagated through ether. Lorentz also, in his theory of electron, accepted the existence of the ether. From another point of view, .nally, Mach considered as necessary the concept of ether in order to explain the action-at-a-distance. Einstein, on the contrary, in a letter to Mileva Maric six years before the formulation of relativity, considered that it was "impossible to attribute any sense" to the concept of ether.(29) Ether has been identi.ed with the absolute frame of reference. But the experience demonstrated the impossibility to detect the movement of the earth through this "medium". Einstein rejected this notion, together with the concept of the absolute, Newtonian space. In fact, Einstein writes in his paper of 1905: "Maxwell electrodynamics, when applied to moving bodies leads to asymmetries, which do not appear to be inherent in the phenomena. The unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the "light medium" suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. [ ...].The introduction of the "luminiferous ether" will prove to be super.uous inasmuch as the view here to be developed will not require an absolutely stationary space, provided with special properties".(30) At this moment, Einstein did not rejected the existence of space, although his relative character has been a consequence of special relativity. Three years later (1908), H. Minkowski formulated the geometric frame of relativity. In his paper Minkowski writes: "The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself are doomed to fade into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality".(31) Space and time intervals are relative. They depend on the velocity of the system. But this fact does not necessarily imply that space by itself and time by itself are mere shadows. It is reasonable to af.rm that space and time are forms of existence of matter, objective forms determined, as general relativity has shown, by the distribution of the matter. The objectivity of the space and the time is also ascertained from the formal point of view. In fact it is possible to dissociate the space-time into two subspaces: the three-dimensional space and the unidimensional time. The theory of Einstein demonstrated the relativity of these notions. At the same time the concept of the absolute quadri-dimensional space-time interval, is the dialectical unity of different realities. This unity represents a new absolute, preserving "an independent reality". However, some years later, Einstein rejected space and time not only as a privileged frame of reference but as objective forms of matter: In a letter to E. Mach (1913) he writes: "For me it is absurd to attribute physical properties to space". Three years later he maintained that "the requirement of general covariance, takes away form space and time the last remnant of physical objectivity." According to L. Kostro, "it can be proved that in the period from 1913 to 1916, Einstein did not believe in the existence of physical space endowed with real physical properties. However, Einstein was not satis.ed with the denial of the absolute space in special relativity".(32) But the objectivity of space and time does not necessarily presuppose that they are endowed with physical properties. As Aristotle af.rmed space is not an object. According to general relativity (1916), space and time constitute a four-dimensional manifold, whose form is determined by the gravitational potentials, that is to say, by the distribution of the matter. The postulated unity of space, time and matter, is a strong argument in favor of their objective existence. In particular, of the objective existence of space. For pre relativistic physics, ether was a medium .lling the Newtonian space. Relativity contradicts this hypothesis. However, Einstein considered later that one cannot simply reject ether. He wrote at that time (1920): "More careful re.ection teaches us that the special theory of relativity does not compel us to deny ether [ ...].But on the other hand, there is weighty argument to be adduced in favor of the ether hypothesis. To deny ether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. Space is endowed with physical qualities. Therefore, there exists an ether".(33) According to Einstein (1919): Once again "empty" space appears endowed with physical properties, i.e. no longer as physical empty, as seems to be the case according to special relativity. As L. Kostro notes, in a sense, one can maintain that the ether is resurrected in the general theory of relativity though in a more sublimated form.(34) However, one can object: Why an ether? According to general relativity, we have to do with material .elds not simply .lling the vacuum, but intrinsically related to space. More than that. The electromagnetic waves (or photons) are moving through space as independent realities. In consequence, they do not need any medium-any king of ether-for their transmission. From this point of view also, it is more correct to speak of space endowed with physical properties, than of ether. And instead of speaking of an ocean of ether, it is more realistic to speak of material .elds intrinsically related to space. This ocean constitutes a sub-quantum level from which material particles emerge, passing from potentiality to actuality. There is today empirical evidence in favor of this hypothesis. In a discussion with Lorentz (1916), Einstein identi.ed the gravitational potential with the ether: "I agree with you that the general theory of relativity is closer to the ether hypothesis than the special theory. This new ether hypothesis, however, would not violate the principle of relativity, because the state of this g?. = ether, would not be that of a rigid body in an independent state of motion, but every state of the motion would be a function of position, determined through material processes".(35) That which determines the form of the space-time continuum and the state of motion is matter, in all its forms: the totality of massif particles, electromagnetic and gravitational .elds. Consequently: why to use the word ether? Electromagnetism considered .eld as something .lling the space. In general relativity, on the contrary, .elds determine the structure of the space-time manifold and, in consequence, constitute a unity of differents (of space and matter). However, Einstein identi.ed the ether with the physical .elds. It is true, as Kostro notes, that he never considered ether as something in space. He always identi.ed it with physical space. In this way he wrote to Lorentz (1919) that with the word ether he meant nothing else than that space has to be viewed as a carrier of physical properties. In another case (1934) he maintained that physical space and ether are only different terms of the same thing. That .elds are physical states of the space. But if .elds are physical states of the space, then, why an ether? Also four years later, Einstein supported that we may use the word ether, but only to express the physical properties of the space. However, the material .elds determine the physical properties of the space. Consequently, ether becomes once more super.uous. It is reasonable to af.rm, once more, that what exists is matter and its forms of existence: space and time. Yet, Einstein says essentially the same thing, by using always the concept of ether. As L. Kostro notes, the ether constitutes a material medium but in another sense. It is material in the sense in which we attribute materiality to a .eld. Material .elds determine the form of the space. However, Einstein arrived to af.rm (1930) that space is the primary and matter the secondary element, opinion which contradicts his, in general realistic, epis-temology.(36) 5. THE RELATIVE, THE OBJECTIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE: IN SEARCH OF LOCAL ABSOLUTE SYSTEMS OF REFERENCE Galilean transformations presuppose and at the same time imply the absolute character of the Newtonian space and time. Vacuum is an in.nite "recipient", scene of the existence and the movement of matter. The quadri dimensional space-time of special relativity is also absolute, from a certain point of view: his pseudo-Euclidean metric is independent of matter. The unity of space and time, as is expressed by the space-time interval, is a unity of different and is absolute. But the new absolute is intrinsically related with the electromagnetic .eld, which does not simply .lls the space. Electromagnetic .eld (or photons) has a real existence, independent of its sources. Consequently, as I have argued, no "medium" is necessary for its transmission. Yet, some writers assert the opposite. Harr?e, for example, writes, that "if as Einstein symmetry argument suggests, there is no ether, then, there is no material mechanism for the propagation of light".(37) A. Martin and C. Roy Keys, also support that by eliminating the physical basis for the transmission of wave phenomena (the ether) special relativity created an impossible situation: physics needs anew the action-at-a-distance.(38) However, photons do not need any medium to be transmitted. The intrinsic unity of space and matter is not evident in the frame of the special relativity. In general relativity, on the contrary, the form of the space-time is determined by matter, in all its forms: massive particles and .elds (electromagnetic and gravitational). This fact determines the status of objectivity of the theory of general relativity. According to Vl. Fock, this theory is a chrono-geometrical theory of gravitation, and at the same time a theory of space and time. The physical relativity, Fock notes, is not general, and the general relativity is not physical.(39) Movement, according to general relativity, is determined by the curvature of the space-time, that is to say, by the distribution of the matter. Massive particles and .elds create their own gravitational .elds. Consequently, in general relativity becomes manifest the unity of differents: of space, time and matter. The material .elds are transmitted as relatively autonomous entities through space. Once more ether becomes super.uous. According to certain authors, on the other hand, the ether is equated with space, a space which acts as a medium for physical processes.(40) However, one can maintain that space is not identi.ed neither with ether, nor with matter. It is their form of existence. Particles of quantum level, as well as particles emerging from a subquantum level, are moving through space as relatively autonomous entities.(41) The general covariance of the laws of physics under the Lorentz transformations, that is to say, the fact that these laws are independent of the frame of reference, inertial or not, is an expression of their objectivity and, in consequence, of the objectivity of the totality which is the unity of different: of the space, the time and the matter in all its forms: massive particles plus .elds. In spite of this "stronger objectivity" relativity and its special version in particular, nourished a current of gnoseological relativism. To take an example: The prevailing point of view is that, contrary to the hope of Newton, it is impossible to distinguish which of two uniformly moving systems is at rest. As J. S. Bell notes, since it is experimentally impossible to say which of two uniformly moving systems is really at rest, Einstein declared that "the notions "really resting" and "really moving" are meaningless"(42). Yet, this symmetry, from the kinematic point of view, excludes the possibility to determine a locally "absolute" frame of reference, relative to which is moving the particle? Is it impossible to destroy the relativistic symmetry by taking into consideration the dynamical aspect of the phenomena? Let us quote the point of view of Paul Langevin, concerning the production and the transmission of electromagnetic waves: "Every change of velocity, every acceleration has an absolute sense. In electromagnetic theory, in particular, it is a fundamental point that every change of velocity, every acceleration of an electrical centre, is accompanied by the emission of a wave which is propagated with the velocity of light and the existence of this wave has an absolute sense".(43) The emission of an electromagnetic wave is an objective phenomenon, due to the fact that the electric charge is accelerated in a certain region of the space, relatively to a certain system of reference which is locally absolute. In fact, from the simply kinematical point of view, we can consider the Earth as immovable, or just the contrary. From the dynamical point of view, on the contrary, it is evident that the electric charge is accelerated and that the electromagnetic wave is moving towards the immobile frame of reference: the Earth. In that case it is possible to consider the Earth as a locally absolute system of reference. Let us take also the case of our planetary system. According to Reichenbach, e.g., it is a matter of convention to consider the sun fixed and the earth turning around it, or, to accept the inverse. However, the center of gravity of our planetary system is the center of the Sun. From the dynamical point of view, consequently, the cinematic symmetry is broken: The Sun constitutes a locally absolute system of reference, for the planets moving around it. Another interesting case is that of the paradox of the twins (Paul Langevin). The traveller rests younger than his brother on Earth. This is an objective phenomenon. However, the paradox arises from the moment that we accept a symmetry between the two reference systems: the Earth and the space craft. In that case the brother on Earth will .nd, in his turn, that he is younger than his brother on the spacecraft. The paradox disappears from the moment we accept an asymmetry between the two frames of reference: the space-craft is moving and the earth constitutes a local absolute system of reference. The kinematic symmetry is broken, in favor of the real factual asymmetry of the two reference systems.(44) A different resolution of the paradox is cited by M.A. Tonnelat: the acceleration of the space-craft at the beginning and the end of the journey permits the non-reciprocal character of the phenomenon.(45) Yet, it is possible to realize practically instantaneous accelerations, and to have a long journey, in order to be possible to apply in good approximation the laws of special relativity. The above resolution of the paradox of twins is valid also for the case of clocks. Finally, let us take now the well known case of muons, which enter in the atmosphere with a velocity similar to that of light. With a lifetime of the order of 2.2 ? 10-6 s they must make a trajectory of the order of 600 m. However, the observed trajectory is of the order of some kilometers.(46) It is possible to explain this phenomenon by the fact that muons are travelling through the space towards the earth, which constitutes a local absolute frame of reference. The kinematic symmetry is once more broken. Muons are travelling through the objective space, in a locally approximately immobile frame of reference, and the increase of their lifetime is a real, objective phenomenon.(47) To conclude: We have accepted the violation of the kinematic symmetry of the special relativity, and the existence of local absolute frames of reference. The existence of local absolute systems of reference, contradicts the ontological relativism based on the kinematic symmetry of the two Galilean systems. At the same time it demonstrates the objectivity of the related phenomena. Finally, it concords with the philosophical postulate that space is the form of existence of matter-form intrinsically related with its content.(48) 6. BEYOND EMPIRICISM AND NAIVE REALISM Science works with abstractions: From the singular and the speci.c, to the general and the abstract. With an opposite movement, from the abstract-general, to the concrete and the speci.c. The special theory of relativity makes abstraction of the unity of space and matter. The relativity of the space and time intervals has been sometimes conceived as the negation of their existence. In this spirit, Einstein in a letter to M. Schlick (1915) asserted that space and time loose the last remnant of physical reality. I have noticed that Einstein changed many times his ideas about space. And it is a curious and interesting fact that the positivist Schlick helped the realist Einstein to recognize the real existence of space and time, endowed with physical properties, which are expressed by the components g?. of the material tensor g, that is to say by its material "content", source of gravitational potentials.(49) In the same period, Paul Langevin emphasized the unity of space and matter, of physics and geometry: "In the natural geometry of Einstein, which governs the spatial properties of matter, the laws of the geometry are dependent of the totality of the matter present in the Universe [ . . .]. Our physics became a geometry of the universe [ . . .]. What Riemann had already sensed, it is that one cannot consider geometry as independent of physics".(50) The unity of space and matter, and consequently, the objectivity of space, is today more manifest in the cosmological, as well as in the microphysical level. Today many phenomena suggest the existence of a subquantum level, an ocean of unobservable matter. From this ocean are emerging particles passing from potentiality to actuality. Let us recall the prediction of the existence of the e+ by Dirac, the phenomenon Lamb- Retherford, the participation of the vacuum in certain microphysical phenomena, etc. It seems that the formal antithesis between the void and plenum, the antithesis between Democritus and Newton from one side, and Aristotle and Descartes from the other, became today obsolete. The concept of .eld constitutes the overstepping of the opposition: the particle is now considered as an excitation or a singularity of the .eld.(51) Cosmology, on the other hand, has demonstrated the historical character of the forms of matter. Cosmogenesis is a process of creation and destruction of forms. More than that: The steady state universe presupposes, as is well known, the creation of new matter. The quasi-stationary model of Burbidge, Narlikar, and Hoyle permits the creation of matter and the variation of the baryonic number. According to Arp, also, the more general solutions of the general theory of relativity permit the creation of matter in every region of the universe. It seems that the emergence of forms of matter from a deeper level of existence has already strong theoretical and observational support. According to Halton Arp: "The creation of matter is no longer some kind of obscure miracle but we can actually measure the state of the matter from its radiation properties at various stages of evolution [???]. The general connection between age and redshift becomes natural and we can hope to trace the materialization of matter from the quantum mechanical .eld (or natural vacuum)".(52) The above facts and conjectures are arguments in favor of the realist epistemology which postulates the intrinsic unity of space and matter. 7. BEYOND KANTIAN A PRIORISM AND BEYOND EMPIRICISM Now concerning space and time. Kant makes a clear distinction between a priori and a posteriori synthetic judgments. From generalization of experience, he says, there can be derived synthetic judgments a posteriori. These judgments are neither necessary, nor universal. But the propositions of theoretical sciences, i.e. mathematics and theoretical physics, do not stem from experience: they are not a posteriori synthetic. They are pre-empirical, grounded in the pre-empirical forms of the intuitions and the pre-empirical categories of the understanding. The revolutions of physics and the creation of non-Euclidean geometries are the concrete refutation of the Kantian dogma. In particular, the existence of a priori synthetic propositions. Now concerning space and time. Einstein rejected the a priori character of the space, the time and the categories. Yet, was Kant completely wrong? And if not, how to explain that our intuition is limited to the three-dimensional Euclidean space and that we conceive time as universal? Empiricism rejects the existence of the a priori synthetic knowledge. However, the problem is not to reject Kant. It is to go beyond his philosophy and at the same time beyond empiricism. Let us recall the question of Kant: "How can an external intuition, anterior to objects themselves, and in which our capacities of objects can be determined a priori, exist in human mind? Obviously not otherwise than in so far as it has its seat in the subject only, as the formal capacity of the subjects being affected by objects, and thereby of obtaining immediate representation, that is, intuition".(53) It is evident that Kant does not give an answer to his question. However, his question can constitute the starting point for an explanation of the a priori character on our intuition. Kant admits "the formal capacity of the subject's being affected by objects". How this is possible? And why we see objects in a three-dimen-sional Euclidean space? And this possibility is compatible with the a-his-torical and incomprehensible a priori of Kant? According to Kant, space and time are pure forms ready a priori in mind. I will argue that it is possible to reject this unjusti.ed a priori and at the same time to understand our possibility to see, to hear, etc, in a three-dimensional Euclidean frame. In fact, Biology and Physics give us the necessary elements in order to try to give an answer. Let us take the case of the eye-of-vision. In the inferior animals, the cells sensible to light were distributed on the surface of the organism. The photosensibility of these animals was therefore diffused. The .rst animals having photosensitive cells concentrated in the cephalic extremity were the worms. With the evolution of the species, these cells took the form of a plate. This permitted already the orientation of the animal to the light. In a more developed phase, these plates constituted an internal photosensitive cavity of spherical form, permitting the perception of the movement of the objects.(54) More generally, our sense organs were developed during the long period of phylogenesis, via the interaction of the organisms with their environment and, in particular, via the reception of physical signals: light, sons, chemical molecules. During this period were constituted structures and forms of interaction, that made possible the perception, the representation and the orientation of the organism-its survivance. However, why we see and locate objects in a three-dimensional Euclidean space? Electromagnetic waves are propagated in space. Then, if we accept the relativistic conception, according to which out space is locally Euclidean, then it is in principle possible to understand why we see objects as existing in a three-dimensional Euclidean space: Kant postulates the a priori character of space and time. To date it is possible to explain this fact and at the same time to refuse the Kantian dogma concerning the uniqueness of the Euclidean space as well as his thesis that space and time are not forms of existence of matter. The structure and the function of our sense organs and of our brain were developed in an a locally Euclidean space in interaction with our environment. The evolution of our brain was determined later by the practical relations with nature, the work and the whole of the social life. From the simple excitation, the stimulus, the sensory-motor activity and the representation, and by generalization of the empirical knowledge, we acquired the possibility to use rudimentary symbolic languages (gestures, cries, etc). Finally, the use of concepts and the emergence of conceptual thinking. Our scienti.c concepts have an empirical origin. At the same time they transcend the immediate intuition. Consequently there is an a priori concerning our intuition. This a priori, however, is radically different from the a-historic and incomprehensible a priori of the Kantian theory of knowledge. This a priori does not presuppose the existence of knowledge anterior to experience. It simply means that we have an a priori possibility to see, to hear, etc, in a three-dimensional space. Consequently, space and time are not the subjective, a priori forms of intuition. Intuition, on the contrary, presupposes the existence of space and time. On this ontological premise it is possible to explain our a priori possibility, presupposition of the intuition. This conception is incompatible with the Kantian one and with the conventionalism of Mach, Poincar?e, etc. Accordingly, Euclidean geometry is not based simply on a priori principles. It is a science of empirical origin and its axioms are the outcome of a long process of abstraction and generalization. Euclidean geometry has its origin in the everyday practice of the farmers and artisans. The straight line of the Euclidean geometry, for example, is the ideal limit of the approximately straight lines of the everyday practice. The same is true for the planes, the cubes or the triangles. Consequently, the three-dimen-sional Euclidean geometry presupposes an abstraction from the real physical space, considered as void of matter. The evident truth of the axioms of the geometry and their universality and necessity, are not the proof of an abstract a priori. More than that. These axioms are necessary and universal only in the frame of this geometry. They are not compatible with other, non-Euclidean geometries. Finally the distinction between pure geometry and the geometry of physical space is not absolute. The so called pure geometry is an abstraction from the real properties of the bodily objects. We see objects in a three-dimensional space. Let us try now to imagine the four-dimensional space of Minkowski. This is impossible. Why? Because intuition cannot go beyond this a priori restriction. From this point of view, it seems that Kant is right. This conception of the a priori, however, is radically different from the Kantian one. Our intuition has this restraint possibility. However, we can think about things in the absence of things. Our reason is liberated from the restrictions of the senses, and can create abstract theories having not a visual counterpart; non-Euclidean geometries in particular. Let us recall once more the arguments of Kant. The laws of Physics are, according to the German philosopher, a priori synthetic propositions. "The Science of Natural Philosophy (Physics)", he writes, "contains in itself synthetical judgments a priori, as principles. I shall adduce two propositions. For instance, the proposition: "In all changes of natural world the quantity of matter remains unchanged" or that "in all communications of motion, action and reaction must always be equal". In both of these, not only the necessity, and therefore their origin a priori is clear, but also that are synthetic propositions(55)". Three remarks on this subject: 1. The principle of the conservation of matter is not a law of Physics. It is an ontological postulate. Because matter is not a concept. It is an ontological category and for that reason there exists not a measure of matter. Consequently, its alleged conservation is impossible to be proved or refuted.(56) This, .nally, is not a synthetic proposition. It is an ontological postulate and its logical status is to be discussed. 2. The necessary character of a proposition, as that of the equality of action and reaction, is not a proof of its a priori synthetic character. This proposition is a posteriori synthetic, formulated via the generalization of empirical data. 3. Consequently, Kant confuses an ontological postulate with a law of physics. 4. More generally, the laws of theoretical physics are not a priori synthetic propositions. They are theoretical propositions a posteriori synthetic, generalizing and transcending their empirical basis and, because of that, formulated axiomatically and not by induction. The historicity of these laws, on the other hand, is an argument against the a-historical necessity and universality attributed to them by Kant. Space and time are, according to Kant, the a priori forms of intuition. In an analogous way, the categories (causality, etc) are conditions of the possibility of experience, and are therefore valid a priori, for all objects of experience.(57) They are conceptions which prescribe laws a priori to phenomena, consequently to nature itself as the complex of all phenomena. The Kantian conception of causality as an a priori category of reason, on the other hand, contradicts the agnostic argument of Hume. In fact, it is impossible to establish the validity of a causal law by induction. >From this point of view, Hume is right. However, the problem is not a problem of induction. The validity of a causal law presupposes the knowledge of the internal and necessary processes determining the creation of the new. Consequently, the category of causality is a priori, in the sense that it is a necessary and universal law of nature. Not an a priori, category of reason. Reason, in that case, formulates a category, corresponding to physical reality, and the causal laws of physics, as not a priori synthetic. Causality etc. are, Kant maintains, the a priori categories of Reason. However, categories are also historical from the gnoseological point of view, because they represent the generalization and transcendence of human experience. The idea of causality, for example, was for the .rst time formulated in the frame of the animistic conception of nature. It was embodied later in the religious conception of the world. And after Galileo and Newton we know at least four forms of causal determination: the mechanistic, the dynamic, the classical statistical and the quantum-statis-tical form.(58) This social-politicismic category was transformed by Kant into an a-historical and unexplained a priori attribute of Reason. Finally, concerning space and time. These concepts are also historical. As Paul Langevin puts it, there is neither space nor time a priori.At every phase of our theories corresponds a different conception of space and time. Mechanics implied the ancient conception. Electromagnetism requires a new one, and nothing permits to maintain that this new conception will be the .nal one.(59) The argument of Langevin concerns the concepts of space and time, that is to say, the gnoseological aspect of the problem. These concepts are related to different mathematical spaces and their historicity and a posteriori character is evident. However, Kant is a philosopher and he speaks about categories. The status of the categories is different from that of concepts. How then is it possible to pass from the level of concepts to that of categories? Let us accept that between the concepts of space and time and the physical space and time there is a certain correspondence, a certain kind of morphism. The concepts tell us something about the real properties of space and time. How then is it possible to pass from the domain of the scienti.c knowledge to the level of the categories? Scientists use the words of space and time as well de.ned scienti.c concepts. At the same time they refer to them as the general frame of their experience and theories. The same words are used by philosophers, as categories. One could say that in the general case, space and time are used by scientists as quasi-philo-sophical concepts. Because of that they assure a kind of junction between the scienti.c and the ontological level.(60) The historical character of the concepts of space and time and the deepening of our knowledge concerning these concepts, determine the historical character of the categories of space and time from the gnoseological point of view. Matter also has a history in space and time. In fact, we know today that different forms of matter correspond to the different phases and regions of the Universe. If, therefore, we accept a realist epistemology, namely that space and time are forms of existence of matter, then it would be reasonable to maintain that space and time are historical categories from the ontological point of view also, because of the fact that their ontic counterpart changes, as a consequence of the evolution of the Universe. It is possible to maintain that the Universe is in.nite in space and time. In.nite, however, is always different and different (Aristotle). In that case matter and its forms do not correspond to an eternal and immovable being, but to a changing totality. Any attempt to construct a metaphysical ontology would be, therefore obsolete. Final question: How to explain the ef.cacy of natural sciences, if we can know only phenomena? Not things in themselves? How phenomena are in a certain correspondence with the inaccessible things in themselves? How a certain kind of morphism between the laws of nature and nature itself is possible? The objectivity of the laws of science seems paradoxical in the light of the Kantian epistemology, because the so-called unity of consciousness, even if exists, is not able to secure the correspondence between the laws of science and the real laws of nature. To say that it is possible for things in themselves to obey laws independent of our intellect, but that phenomena are mere representations subject to no other laws than those imposed by our reason, poses a fundamental problem for the epistemology of Kant.(61) Kant poses the question in the following term: "Categories are conceptions which prescribe laws a priori to phenomena, consequently, to nature as the complex of all phenomena. And now the question arises-in as much as the categories do not derive from nature and do not regulate themselves according to her as their model (for in that case they would be empirical)- how is it conceivable that nature must regulate herself according to them in other words, how the categories can determine a priori the synthesis of the manifold of nature and yet not derive their origin from her". The laws of phenomena, Kant maintains, must harmonize with the understanding and with its a priori form. However, the laws do not exist in phenomena any more than the phenomena exist in things in themselves.(62) The agnostic position is evident. At the same time Kant tries to establish a certain correspondence, a certain morphism between phenomena and their mental association. "The objective ground of all association of appearances", he writes, "I entitle their af.nity.Itisnowhereto be found save in the principle of unity of apperception, in respect of all knowledge which is to belong to me. According to the principle all appearances, without exception, must so enter in mind or be apprehended, that then conform to the unity of apperception".(63) However, it is not the unity of consciousness which determines the unity of apperception. It is exactly the opposite. The unity of consciousness has an objective foundation, an objective counterpart, in nature itself. The unity of nature is expressed in the unity of knowledge. In particular, these exists a certain morphism between the spatial and temporal relations established by science, and the objective relation existing in nature. Phenomena, Kant maintains, are only representations of things which are utterly unknown in respect to what they are in themselves. Empiricism con.nes itself to phenomena that it detaches from their 'fond' and raises to the status of unique reality. Kant separates phenomena from things in themselves pronouncing the existence of a certain substratum of what we call physical reality, to be inaccessible to reason. However, the history of natural sciences is, from a certain point of view, the historical movement from phenomena to the knowledge of their internal, genetic processes, from description to explanation. Science does not accept the dichotomy between phenomenon and essence. A phenomenon both brings to light and at the same time conceals deeper structures and relations, that is to say, it manifest and conceals 'essence'. As Heraclitus said, "hidden harmony is better than the manifest one" and Democritus professed that phenomena are the visible of the unknown. Spatial and temporal relations, Kant maintains, are laid by the reasoning subject in sensory perception. They do not exist in the object. This is an agnostic thesis, and constitutes an epistemological obstacle for science. The thesis that space and time are forms of existence of matter, on the contrary, functions as an epistemological catalyst for a more profound understanding the relations between matter and its spatio-temporal attributes. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Professor Franco Selleri is not only an eminent physicist. He is, at the same time, one of the protagonists in the debate concerning the foundations of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. My modest contribution is the expression of great esteem and friendship. It is also a pleasure to thank Professor C. Antonopoulos for fruitful discussions and valuable comments on the manuscript. REFERENCES 1. H. Poincar?e, Science and Method (Dover, New York, 1982), pp. 112-113. 2. E. Borel, Space and Time (Dover, New York, 1960), p. 163. 3. See, for ex., E. Bitsakis, Physique et Mat?erialisme (Editions Sociales, Paris, 1983). 4. Newton, Principia (Univ. of California Press, Los Angeles, 1947), p. 6. 5. Newton, Ibid, p. 6. 6. Newton, Ibid, p. 7. 7. Newton, Ibid, p. 68. 8. Newton, Opticks (Dover, New York, 1952), p. 369. 9. Newton, Ibid, pp. 369-401. 10. Newton, Ibid, op. passim. 11. P. S. Laplace, in OEuvres, vol. 7, (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1921), p. 6. 12. R. Descartes, Principes, passim (Vrin, Paris, 1971). 13. E. Kant, in Kant's Cosmogony, transl. W. Hastic (Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York, 1970). 14. See, for example, the debate between N. Chomsky, H. Putnam and N. Goodman, in A portrait of Twenty-.ve years, R.S. Cohen and W. Wartofsky, eds. (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1985). 15. The above are r?esum?efromthe Critique of Pure Reason, transl. Meiklejohn (J.M.D., London, 1855). 16. E. Bitsakis, Le nouveau R?ealisme Scienti.que (L' Harmattan, Paris, 1997). 17. A. Einstein, in The Principle of Relativity (Dover, New York, 1923), pp. 117-120. Also E. Bitsakis, Physique et Mat?erialisme, op. cit. 18. A. Papapetrou, Lectures in General Relativity (Reidel, Dordrecht, 1974). 19. A. Einstein, in Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, P.A. Schilpp, ed. (The Library of Living Philosophers, Evaston, Illinois, 1949). 20. A. Einstein, J. Franklin Inst. 221, 349 (1936). 21. A. Einstein, Ibid. 22. A. Einstein, Ibid. 23. A. Einstein, La Relativite?Restreinte et la Relativit?en?eG?erale (Gauthier-Villars, Paris, 1978), p. 157. 24. P. Langevin, La Relativite?(Hermann, Paris, 1932), p. 86. e Restreinte et la Relativit?en? 25. A. Einstein, La Relativit?eG?erale, op. cit. 26. A. Einstein, J. Franklin Inst., op. cit. 27. A. Einstein, in Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, op. cit., p. 679. 28. A. Einstein, Ibid, p. 674. 29. See, M. Barone, in Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, F. Selleri, ed. (Apeiron, Montreal, 1998). 30. A. Einstein, in The Principle of Relativity, op. cit. p. 37. 31. H. Minkowski, Ibid. p. 75. 32. L. Kostro, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, M. Barone and F. Selleri, eds. (Plenum, New York 1994). 33. L. Kostro, Ibid. 34. Cited by L. Kostro, in Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, op. cit. p. 137. 35. Cited by L. Kostro, Ibid. p. 135. For a general discussion, see: L. Kostro, Einstein and the Ether (Apeiron, Montreal, 2000). 36. For these problems see also the papers published in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, op. cit., and in Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, op. cit. 37. R. Harr?e, in Issues and Images in the Philosophy of Science. D. Ginev, R. S. Cohen (eds.), p. 104 (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1997). 38. A. Martin and C. Roy Keys, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, op. cit, p. 210. 39. Vl. Fock, The Theory of Space, Time and Gravitation (Pergamon, New York, 1964). 40. A. Martin and C. Roy Keys, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, op. cit, p. 210. 41. For this problem, see also, F. E. Alzofon, Phys. Essays 14, 2 (2001). 42. J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994), p. 72. 43. P. Langevin, La physique depuis vingt ans (Doin, Paris, 1923). 44. For a similar interpretation, cf, Tr. Morris, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics,op. cit., pp. 205-206. 45. M. A. Tonnelat, Les Principes de la th?eorie electromagn?etique et de la gravitation (Masson, Paris, 1959). 46. For the numerical data, see M. A. Tonnelat, op cit, and M. Barone, in Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, op. cit. 47. See also: E. Bitsakis, La Nature dans la Pens?ee Dialectique (L'Harmattan, Paris, 2001) pp. 307-310; M. Born, Physics and Politics, p. 45; F. Selleri, Phys. Essays 8, 342 (1995). 48. For the problem of space-time, synchronization, dilatation, equivalent versions to special relativity, see, J. Chezniewki, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, M. Barone and F. Selleri, eds. (Plenum, New York, 1994), p. 217; F. Selleri, Ibid, p. 181; H. E. Wilhelm, Ibid, p. 171; J. Levy, Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, F. Selleri ed. (Apeiron, Montreal, 1998), p. 39; F. Selleri, Ibid, p. 69; R. Risco-Delgado. Ibid, p. 65; F. Selleri, Nuovo Cimento B.; See also: F. Selleri, "Theories, equivalent to Special Relativity", I, II, Presented in the First Cracow-Clausthal Workshop, 1999; Id, "Space and time should be preferred to spacetime", I, II, presented in the Workshop, "Physics for the 21st Century", 2000. 49. Cited by L. Kostro, in Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, op. cit. pp. 137-138. 50. P. Langevin, La Relativit?e, pp. 14-15 (Hermann, Paris, 1932). 51. See: E. Bitsakis, Physique et Mat?erialisme, op. cit. passim. 52. See: H. Arp, in Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, op. cit.; Id. In Open Questions in Relativistic Physics, op. cit.; Id., Phys. Essays 8, 350 (1995); H. Bondy, Cosmology (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1960); F. Hoyle, in Science et Vie, 189, 1984. 53. E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit. p. 25. 54. A. Leontiev, Le d?eveloppement du psychisme,p.18(Editions Sociales, Paris, 1976). 55. E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., p. 11. 56. E. Bitsakis, Physique et Mat?erialisme, op. cit. chap. 4. 57. E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., pp. 98-99. 58. E. Bitsakis, Le Nouveau R?ealisme Scienti.que, op. cit.; Id. Sci. Soc., 66, 228 (2002); Id. Found. Phys., 18, 331 (1988). ? 59. P. Langevin, La Pens?ee et l'Action (Editions Sociales, Paris, 1964), p. 70. 60. E. Bitsakis, La Nature dans la pens?ee dialectique, Introduction, op. cit. 61. E. Bitsakis, Sci. Soc., 51, 389 (1987). 62. E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, op. cit., pp. 99-100. 63. E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, (MacMillan, London, 1928), A122. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:59:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:59:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Report Tallies Hidden Costs of Human Assault on Nature Message-ID: The New York Times > Science > Environment > Report Tallies Hidden Costs of Human Assault on Nature http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/science/earth/05mill.html 5.4.5 By ANDREW C. REVKIN For decades, scientists have been warning that human activities were extinguishing species, altering the climate and degrading landscapes. Now a group of experts has reframed the issue, releasing a sweeping report that measures damage not to nature itself, but to the things nature does for people. In the report, part of a continuing project called the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, more than 1,300 ecologists and other researchers from 95 countries focus on the capacity of ecosystems to perform valuable functions like filtering water, providing food and pollinating crops. Their conclusion is bleak: over all, 60 percent of those functions are being degraded by human activities, both through direct actions like overfishing and through indirect ones, like the tendency of deforestation to raise the risk of floods. The report - which was released last week and online at [2]www.millenniumassessment.org - lists some instances in which destructive practices have changed and damage has been prevented, but says far more action is needed in the next several decades. "We must learn to recognize the true value of nature - both in an economic sense and in the richness it provides to our lives," said an accompanying statement by the board of scientists who led the project. "Above all," it continued, "protection of these assets can no longer be seen as an optional extra, to be considered once more pressing concerns such as wealth creation or national security have been dealt with." Under the current method of measuring progress, the report said, "a country could cut its forests and deplete its fisheries and this would show only as a positive gain." And in too many instances, it said, that is exactly what is occurring. The study considered various kinds of "ecosystem services": simple provisioning, like supplying water and protein; regulatory functions, including a forest's ability to store and filter water and to cool and humidify the air; cultural services, like providing a place for recreation; and life-support services, including photosynthesis and soil formation. Many of the regions where such natural assets are being most rapidly degraded are also the world's poorest, the scientists said. And as a result, deteriorating environments are likely to hamper efforts to stem poverty, disease and hunger in developing countries. But the study also said wealthy countries were contributing greatly to some problems - for example, in soaring increases in agricultural runoff containing nitrogen, a fertilizer that can create oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters. The assessment, which cost $24 million, was commissioned five years ago by the United Nations and by countries adhering to global environmental treaties on preserving wetlands and migratory species, preventing the spread of deserts and conserving the diversity of species on earth. Some ecologists not involved with the project credited the authors for avoiding old arguments that tended to set people against nature. "We have to start thinking about nature as a design issue," said Dr. Daniel B. Botkin, an ecologist and author of several books charting ways to mesh human activities and life on earth. "For too long we've been seeing everything people do as a negative. This is a break from that. They're trying to bring people and nature together." The study said the degradation of potentially renewable natural resources was being fueled in part by destructive subsidies, uncoordinated policies of government agencies dealing with overlapping activities like forestry, farming and land tenure, lawlessness in frontier regions and the persistent treatment of nature's bounty as free for the taking. Subsidies and other artificial incentives to overharvest resources are especially vexing problems, said Dr. Harold A. Mooney, a biologist at Stanford and a lead author of the report. "A third of the global value of farm production in 2000 was the result of subsidies," he went on. "In many places we spend more catching fish than we make selling fish," Dr. Mooney said. Unlike many earlier environmental assessments that have compiled trends for losses of forests, reefs and other wild places, this one focused on how such losses directly affected human welfare, using as its yardstick trends in "ecosystem services" rather than simply lost species or acreage. Besides identifying losses in familiar trouble spots like rain forests and reefs, it focuses on less known danger zones, like dry-land ecosystems, where human populations are growing fastest and depend most heavily on fragile natural systems. A prime example is the parched band of Africa below the Sahara Desert, where drought, combined with ever-growing demands for water, has contributed to recent social upheavals and bloodshed in Sudan. Around the world, Dr. Mooney said, "the dry-land problem really jumps out at you." "You have two billion people there and huge limits on water," he continued. "Some of the world's highest population growth rates are in these dry regions and in mountain systems that are the least productive. That creates conditions for conflict." He added that global warming, which is expected to disrupt weather patterns in the same dry regions, will make matters only worse. Dr. Botkin said an unavoidable weakness in this kind of assessment was that the complexity of global ecology and economic activity made it hard to specify causes and effects. The authors of the report acknowledged huge gaps in data, but pointed to small successes that helped crystallize the idea that nature is more than pretty pictures. Dr. Mooney cited several recent studies that put a monetary value on natural services. In one study in Costa Rica, Dr. Gretchen C. Daily of Stanford and other researchers measured the increase in coffee yields to a plantation from the pollinating efforts of bees living in two nearby fragments of forest. From 2000 to 2003, they calculated, the presence of the forest bees lifted the plantation's income $60,000 a year. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ANDREW%20C.%20REVKIN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ANDREW%20C.%20REVKIN&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.millenniumassessment.org/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 17:59:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:59:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness Message-ID: Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/health/05coma.html 5.4.5 By BENEDICT CAREY The debate over Terri Schiavo's fate comes at a time when researchers are deepening their understanding of the unconscious brain. Neuroscientists now understand at least some of the physiology behind a wide range of unconscious states, from deep sleep to coma, from partially conscious conditions to a persistent vegetative state, the condition diagnosed in Ms. Schiavo. New research, by laboratories in New York and Europe, has allowed for much clearer distinctions to be made between the uncounted number of people who at some time become comatose, the 10,000 to 15,000 Americans who subsist in vegetative states and the estimated 100,000 or more who exist in states of partial consciousness. This emerging picture should make it easier for doctors to judge which brain-damaged patients have some hope of recovering awareness, experts say, and already it is providing clues to the specific brain processes that sustain conscious awareness. "Understanding what these processes are will give us a better sense of how to help the whole range of people living with brain injuries," said Dr. Nicholas Schiff, an assistant professor of neurology and neuroscience at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. "That is where this field is ultimately headed: toward a better understanding of what consciousness is." The most familiar unconscious state is sleep, which in its deepest phases is characterized by little electrical activity in the brain and almost complete unresponsiveness. Coma, the most widely known state of impaired unconsciousness, is in fact a continuum. Doctors rate the extent to which a comatose person shows pain responses and reactions to verbal sounds on a scale from 3, for no response, to 13, for consistent responses. As in sleep, people in comas may move or make sounds and typically have no memory of either. But they almost always emerge from this state in two to three weeks, doctors say, when the eyes open spontaneously. What follows is critical for the person's recovery. Those who are lucky, or who have less severe injuries, gradually awaken. "The first thing I remember was telling my ex-boyfriend, who was at the foot of the bed, to shut up," said Trisha Meili, who fell into a coma after being beaten and raped in 1990, and wrote about the experience in the book, "I Am the Central Park Jogger." In the days after this memory, Ms. Meili said, she slipped in and out of conscious awareness, "as if my body was taking care of the most important things first, and leaving my moment to moment awareness for last." In fact, researchers say, this is precisely what happens. The primitive brain stem, which controls sleep-wake cycles as well as reflexes, asserts itself first, as the eyes open. Ideally, areas of the cerebral cortex, the seat of conscious thought, soon follow, like lights flicking on in the upper rooms of a darkened house. But in some cases - Ms. Schiavo's was one of them - the cortical areas fail to engage, and the patient's prognosis becomes dire. Neurologists were all but unanimous in diagnosing the condition of Ms. Schiavo, whose heart stopped temporarily in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain cells and neural connections wither and die without oxygen, like marine life in a drained lake, leaving virtually nothing unharmed. People with these kinds of injuries - Nancy Cruzan, whose case reached the Supreme Court in 1990 is an example - almost always remain unresponsive if they have not regained awareness in the first months after the injury. In medical terms, they become persistently vegetative, a diagnosis first described in 1972 by Dr. Fred Plum of Cornell University and Dr. Bryan Jennett, a neurosurgeon at Glasgow University in Scotland. In a sense, the description of the diagnosis began the modern study of disorders of consciousness. "Before 1972 people talked about permanent comas, or irrecoverable comas, but we defined a different state altogether, with the eyes open, some reflex activity, but no sign of meaningful psychological responsiveness," Dr. Jennett, now a professor emeritus, said in an interview. In an exhaustive review of the medical histories of more than 700 persistently vegetative patients, a team of doctors in 1994 reported that about 15 percent of those who suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation, like Ms. Schiavo, recovered some awareness within three months. After that, however, very few recovered and none did so after two years. About 52 percent of people with traumatic wounds to the head, often from car accidents, recovered some awareness in the first year after the injury, the study found; very few recovered after that. "It's the difference between taking a blow to the brain, which affects a local area - and taking this global, whole-brain hit," said Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the medical ethics division of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Yet these statistics cannot explain the stories of remarkable recovery that surfaced during the debate over Ms. Schiavo's fate. There was Terry Wallis, a mechanic in Arkansas who regained awareness in 2003, more than 18 years after he fell into unconsciousness from a car accident; Sarah Scantlin, a Kansas woman who, also a victim of a car accident, emerged from a similar state after 19 years; and several others, whose collective human spirit seemed to defy the experts, and trump science. Researchers say these cases can be accounted for by recent studies that indicate the existence of yet another state of subdued responsiveness, one that represents a clear break from the vegetative. For years, doctors who specialize in rehabilitation have known that some of their severely brain-damaged patients were responsive, at least once in a while. In their good moments, these patients could track objects with their eyes. They could follow commands, like reaching for a glass, or grabbing someone's hand. They were - intermittently, unpredictably, but unequivocally - responsive. In 2002, a panel of experts established a new diagnosis on the basis of exactly these reactions: the minimally conscious state. "It took years to get some agreement on the definition, and it's only now getting some acceptance," said Dr. Nancy Childs, at Texas NeuroRehab Center in Austin, "but we've known for years that there was this other group." In a landmark study published in February, a team of neuroscientists in New York, New Jersey and Washington, led by Dr. Schiff, used imaging technology to compare the brain activity in two young men who were deemed to be minimally conscious with the brain activity of seven healthy men and women. The researchers recorded an audiotape for each of the nine subjects in which a relative or loved one reminisced, telling familiar stories or recalling shared experiences. In each of the brain-damaged patients, the sound of the voice prompted a pattern of brain activity similar to that of the healthy participants. The team has since replicated the results in other minimally conscious patients. Like an interlocking set of old Christmas lights, blinking on and then off, the neural connections in minimally conscious patients seem to be in place, the research suggests. In persistently vegetative brains, by contrast, the crucial connections are apparently shot: maybe one light blinks here, another over there, but the full network is dark. One case, of a 26-year-old English woman named Kate who emerged from a subdued unconscious state after six months, suggests such patients may be at times acutely aware of what is happening around them. During rehabilitation, though unable to communicate, this woman had a visit from a college friend. "I have just met an old friend from Uni and it really upset me," the woman recalled thinking, doctors reported. "I can now see how much I am missing. She has been married for five years and she has a house and a life. I just scream as I can't cry, which I would do if I could." Recovery from severe brain damage is viewed in this new understanding as a step-wise progression: people who regain conscious awareness pass from a coma to a vegetative state to minimal consciousness - and almost always do so quickly, usually within a month or so of shaking the coma. Those who regain awareness within hours of emerging from a coma probably also pass through the same progression, but so swiftly the changes go unnoticed, some experts say. "If you look at these cases of recovery closely, you will find that many of these patients were showing signs of consciousness much earlier" than is sometimes portrayed in news media accounts, Dr. Fins of NewYork-Presbyterian said. Researchers know little about how to draw a person out of a minimally conscious state, which itself can last a lifetime. In one study of 124 brain-damaged patients, doctors in Philadelphia and New Jersey reported in March that amantadine, a drug for Parkinson's disease, appeared to speed recovery in some people. But the evidence was not definitive and will require confirmation, the authors wrote. Rehabilitation, such as it is, typically includes life support, if needed, and regular visits from medical staff, typically to change the patient's position in bed and to stimulate the senses with bright lights, noises, sharp smells and tastes, including lemon and chocolate. "I always tell families that it's time and nature and God taking care of things, that what we do mostly is monitor the patients," said Dr. Childs. Dr. Joseph Giacino, a neuropsychologist at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., has been following a group of brain-damaged patients with both oxygen-deprivation and traumatic injuries, and finds that the group with traumatic injuries - if they become minimally conscious - are far more likely to show signs of recovery than the others. "There is a real separation between these patients and the others in terms of improvement in the first year," Dr. Giacino said. Ms. Schiavo showed no evidence of having ever entered a minimally conscious state, either in the early 90's or later, neurologists say. An EEG of her cerebral cortex showed almost no electrical activity, said a neurologist who examined her, and a dozen experts interviewed about her case agreed that an M.R.I. scan would have added no information. In Dr. Schiff's study comparing M.R.I. activity of minimally conscious with normal subjects, the researchers also found a striking difference. The overall rate of energy consumption was significantly higher in the normal brains than in the minimally conscious ones. This difference in idling speed may be crucial to maintaining conscious awareness, Dr. Schiff and others suggested. Because signaling between brain cells requires one cell to overwhelm the other, Dr. Schiff said, a lower idling speed may make the signaling threshold harder to overcome - effectively damping activity throughout the brain. "The idea is that maybe if you were to activate that substrate, you may cross the threshold and generate enough activity" to produce more awareness, he said. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 5 18:00:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 14:00:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Brooks: A House Divided, and Strong Message-ID: A House Divided, and Strong Opinion column by David Brooks, The New York Times, 5.4.5 We're living in the age of the liberal copycat. Al Franken tries to create a liberal version of Rush. Al Gore announced his TV network yesterday. Many Democrats have tried to create a liberal Heritage Foundation. The theory is that liberals must create their own version of the conservative pyramid. Conservatives have formed their foundations, think tanks and media outlets into a ruthlessly efficient message machine. Liberals, on the other hand, have been losing because they are too fractious, too nuanced and, well, too freethinking. Much as I admire my friends on the left for ingeniously explaining their recent defeats without really considering the possibility that maybe the substance of their ideas is the problem, I have to say that this explanation for conservative success and liberal failure is at odds with reality. Conservatives have not triumphed because they have built a disciplined and efficient message machine. Conservatives have thrived because they are split into feuding factions that squabble incessantly. As these factions have multiplied, more people have come to call themselves conservatives because they've found one faction to agree with. In the early days of National Review, many of the senior editors didn't even speak to one another. Whittaker Chambers declared that the writings of Ayn Rand, a hero of the more libertarian right, reeked of fascism and the gas chambers. Rand called National Review "the worst and most dangerous magazine in America." It's been like that ever since - neocons arguing with theocons, the old right with the new right, internationalists versus isolationists, supply siders versus fiscal conservatives. The major conservative magazines - The Weekly Standard, National Review, Reason, The American Conservative, The National Interest, Commentary - agree on almost nothing. This feuding has meant that the meaning of conservatism is always shifting. Once, Republicans were isolationists. Now most Republicans, according to a New York Times poll, believe the U.S. should try to change dictatorships into democracies when it can. Meanwhile, 78 percent of Democrats believe the U.S. should not try to democratize authoritarian regimes. Moreover, it's not only feuding that has been the key to conservative success - it's also what the feuding's about. When modern conservatism became aware of itself, conservatives were so far out of power it wasn't even worth thinking about policy prescriptions. They argued about the order of the universe, and how the social order should reflect the moral order. Different factions looked back to different philosophers - Burke, Aquinas, Hayek, Hamilton, Jefferson - to define what a just society should look like. Conservatives fell into the habit of being acutely conscious of their intellectual forebears and had big debates about public philosophy. That turned out to be important: nobody joins a movement because of admiration for its entitlement reform plan. People join up because they think that movement's views about human nature and society are true. Liberals have not had a comparable public philosophy debate. A year ago I called the head of a prominent liberal think tank to ask him who his favorite philosopher was. If I'd asked about health care, he could have given me four hours of brilliant conversation, but on this subject he stumbled and said he'd call me back. He never did. Liberals are less conscious of public philosophy because modern liberalism was formed in government, not away from it. In addition, liberal theorists are more influenced by post-modernism, multiculturalism, relativism, value pluralism and all the other influences that dissuade one from relying heavily on dead white guys. As a result, liberals are good at talking about rights, but not as good at talking about a universal order. If I were a liberal, which I used to be, I wouldn't want message discipline. I'd take this opportunity to have a big debate about the things Thomas Paine, Herbert Croly, Isaiah Berlin, R. H. Tawney and John Dewey were writing about. I'd argue about human nature and the American character. In disunity there is strength. In my last column, I mangled the contents of Sulmaan Wasif Khan's paper. It's true that Donald Zagoria was one of the independent writers whose perceptions about China were far more accurate than the C.I.A.'s. But it was Allen Whiting who correctly predicted China's willingness to improve relations with the United States in the early 70's. E-mail: dabrooks at nytimes.com From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 5 22:04:52 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 15:04:52 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Risking a Global Financial Meltdown Message-ID: <01C539F0.D22BB060.shovland@mindspring.com> In comparing the Social Security Trust Fund to a cabinet full of worthless paper, the President has implied that all US Treasury obligations are worthless. Perhaps we should use our Social Security Taxes to buy Eurobonds. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 5 22:09:36 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 15:09:36 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] article repostings vs. discussion format Message-ID: <01C539F1.7B727F50.shovland@mindspring.com> The trend in my article postings is mainly based on the fact that I am now working in biotech and am very excited about what I see. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: W. Troy Tucker [SMTP:wtroytucker at yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 7:02 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] article repostings vs. discussion format I need no explanatory paragraph. I find the subject line sufficient for deciding whether to open or delete an article. I do read most of the articles and have for more than six years. I find them continuously useful for my work and forward them widely to colleagues. The volume and breadth of the postings are assets, not burdens. I hope that the posting policy of this remarkable list will remain unchanged so that we all may continue to benefit from the voluntary and substantial effort of our fellow subscribers. Troy. Applied Biomathematics --- "G. Reinhart-Waller" wrote: > Answer: I would very much appreciate an explanatory > paragraph on > paleopsych so that I could better understand the > intent of the poster > who offers a particular article. I'm becoming > overwhelmed with all the > stuff that is being sent. > > Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > Michael Christopher wrote: > > >Question: how many paleopsych readers read all the > >articles posted, and is there any way to get more > >discussion and limit article repostings to links > with > >an explanatory paragraph? It's a lot easier to read > an > >article on a website than in email form which is > much > >more difficult on the eyes. > > > >Michael > > > > > > > >__________________________________ > >Do you Yahoo!? > >Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced > search. > >http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 > >_______________________________________________ > >paleopsych mailing list > >paleopsych at paleopsych.org > >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250 _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:53:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:53:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89 Message-ID: Saul Bellow, Who Breathed Life Into American Novel, Dies at 89 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/books/06bellow.html 5.4.6 [I have read no novels by Saul Bellow, or Philip Roth or Bernard Malamud or any of the Jewish-American greats in the novel, since until I abandoned reality I rarely read novels. Where might I begin?] By MEL GUSSOW and CHARLES McGRATH Saul Bellow, the Nobel laureate and self-proclaimed historian of society whose fictional heroes - and whose scathing, unrelenting and darkly comic examination of their struggle for meaning - gave new immediacy to the American novel in the second half of the 20th century, died yesterday at his home in Brookline, Mass. He was 89. His death was announced by Walter Pozen, Mr. Bellow's lawyer and a longtime friend. "I cannot exceed what I see," Mr. Bellow said. "I am bound, in other words, as the historian is bound by the period he writes about, by the situation I live in." But his was a history of a particular and idiosyncratic sort. The center of his fictional universe was Chicago, where he grew up and spent most of his life, and which he made into the first city of American letters. Many of his works are set there, and almost all of them have a Midwestern earthiness and brashness. Like their creator, Mr. Bellow's heroes were all head and all body both. They tended to be dreamers, questers or bookish intellectuals, but they lived in a lovingly depicted world of cranks, con men, fast-talking salesmen and wheeler-dealers. In novels like "The Adventures of Augie March," his breakthrough novel in 1953, "Henderson the Rain King" and "Herzog," Mr. Bellow laid a path for old-fashioned, supersized characters and equally big themes and ideas. As the English novelist Malcolm Bradbury said, "His fame, literary, intellectual, moral, lay with his big books," which were "filled with their big, clever, flowing prose, and their big, more-than-lifesize heroes - Augie Marches, Hendersons, Herzogs, Humboldts - who fought the battle for courage, intelligence, selfhood and a sense of human grandeur in the postwar age of expansive, materialist, high-towered Chicago-style American capitalism." Mr. Bellow said that of all his characters Eugene Henderson, of "Henderson the Rain King," a quixotic violinist and pig farmer who vainly sought a higher truth and a moral purpose in life, was the one most like himself, but there were also elements of the author in the put-upon, twice-divorced but ever-hopeful Moses Herzog and in wise but embattled older figures like Artur Sammler, of "Mr. Sammler's Planet" and Albert Corde, the dean in "The Dean's December." They were all men trying to come to grips with what Corde called "the big-scale insanities of the 20th century." At the same time, some of his novellas and stories were regarded as more finely wrought. V. S. Pritchett said, "I enjoy Saul Bellow in his spreading carnivals and wonder at his energy, but I still think he is finer in his shorter works." Pritchett considered Mr. Bellow's 1947 book "The Victim" "the best novel to come out of America - or England - for a decade" and thought that "Seize the Day," another shorter book, was "a small gray masterpiece." All his work, long and short, was written in a distinctive, immediately recognizable style that blended high and low, colloquial and mandarin, wisecrack and aphorism, as in the introduction of the poet Humboldt at the beginning of "Humboldt's Gift": "He was a wonderful talker, a hectic nonstop monologuist and improvisator, a champion detractor. To be loused up by Humboldt was really a kind of privilege. It was like being the subject of a two-nosed portrait by Picasso, or an eviscerated chicken by Soutine." Mr. Bellow stuck to an individualistic path, and steered clear of cliques, fads and schools of writing. He was frequently lumped together with Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud as a Jewish-American writer, but he rejected the label, saying he had no wish to be part of the "Hart, Schaffner & Marx" of American letters. In his younger days, he was loosely allied with the liberal and arty Partisan Review crowd, led by Philip Rahv and William Phillips, but he eventually broke with them saying, "They want to cook their meals over Pater's hard gemlike flame and light their cigarettes at it." He spoke his own mind, without regard for political correctness or fashion, and was often involved, at least at a literary distance, in fierce debates with feminists, black writers, postmodernists. On multiculturalism, he was once quoted as asking: "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" The remark caused a furor and was taken as proof, he said, "that I was at best insensitive and at worst an elitist, a chauvinist, a reactionary and a racist - in a word, a monster." He later said the controversy was "the result of a misunderstanding that occurred (they always do occur) during an interview." In his life as in his work, he was unpredictable. He was the most urban of writers and yet he spent much of his time at a farm in Vermont. He admired and befriended the Chicago machers - the deal-makers and real-estate men - and he dressed like one of them, in bespoke suits, Turnbull & Asser shirts and a Borsalino hat. He was a devoted, self-taught cook, as well as a gardener, a violinist and a sports fan. He was a great admirer of, among others, John Cheever, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison (a close friend), Cormac McCarthy, Denis Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates and James Dickey. Mr. Bellow grew up reading the Old Testament, Shakespeare and the great 19th-century Russian novelists and always looked with respect to the masters, even as he tried to recast himself in the American idiom. A scholar as well as teacher, he read deeply and quoted widely, often referring to Henry James, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. But at the same time he was apt to tell a joke coined by Henny Youngman. While others were ready to proclaim the death of the novel, he continued to think of it as a vital form. "I never tire of reading the master novelists," he said. "Can anything as vivid as the characters in their books be dead?" Once, with reference to Flaubert, he wrote, "I think novelists who take the bitterest view of our modern condition make the most of the art of the novel," and added, "The writer's art appears to seek a compensation for the hopelessness or meanness of existence. "Saul Bellow was a kind of intellectual boulevardier, wearing a jaunty hat and a smile as he marched into literary battle. In spite of - or perhaps, because of - his lofty position, he was criticized more than many of his peers. In reviews his books were habitually weighed against one another. Was this one as full-bodied as "Augie March"? Where was the Bellow of old? Norman Mailer said that "Augie March," Mr. Bellow's grand bildungsroman, was unconvincing and overcooked; Elizabeth Hardwick thought that in "Henderson," he was trying too hard to be an important novelist. He was prickly but also philosophical: "Every time you're praised, there's a boot waiting for you. If you've been publishing books for 50 years or so, you're inured to misunderstanding and even abuse." Years ago, at the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Vermont, he spent a great deal of time with Robert Frost. "I thought when I was his age," he said, "people would let me get away with murder, too. But I'm not allowed to get away with a thing." Smiling, he vowed, "My turn will come." Taking His Success in Stride In a long and unusually productive career, Mr. Bellow dodged many of the snares that typically entangle American writers. He didn't drink much, and though he was analyzed four times, and even spent some time in an orgone box, his mental health was as robust as his physical health. His success came neither too early nor too late, and he took it more or less in stride. He never ran out of ideas and he never stopped writing. The Nobel Prize, which he won in 1976, was the cornerstone of a career that also included a Pulitzer Prize, three National Book Awards, a Presidential Medal and more honors than any other American writer. In contrast with some other winners, who were wary of the albatross of the Nobel, Mr. Bellow accepted it matter-of-factly. "The child in me is delighted," he said. "The adult in me is skeptical." He took the award, he said, "on an even keel," aware of "the secret humiliation" that "some of the very great writers of the century didn't get it." This most American of writers was born in Lachine, Quebec, a poor immigrant suburb of Montreal, and named Solomon Bellow, his birthdate is listed as either June or July 10, 1915, though his lawyer, Mr. Pozen, said yesterday that Mr. Bellow customarily celebrated in June. (Immigrant Jews at that time tended to be careless about the Christian calendar, and the records are inconclusive.) He was the last of four children, but as he was always quick to point out, the first to be born in the New World. His parents had emigrated from Russia two years before, though in Canada their luck wasn't much better. Solomon's father, Abram, failed at one enterprise after another. His mother, Liza, was deeply religious and wanted her youngest child, her favorite, to become either a rabbi or a concert violinist. But Mr. Bellow's fate was sealed, or so he later claimed, when at the age of 8 he spent six months in Ward H of the Royal Victoria Hospital, suffering from a respiratory infection and reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the funny papers. It was there, he said, that he discovered his sense of destiny - his certainty that he was meant for great things. In 1924, when their son was 9, the Bellows moved to Chicago, where the family began to prosper a little as Abram picked up work in a bakery, delivering coal, and even bootlegging. The family continued its old ways in the United States, and during his childhood, Saul was steeped in Jewish tradition. Eventually he rebelled against what he considered to be a "suffocating orthodoxy" and found in Chicago not just a physical home but a spiritual one. Recalling his sense of discovery and of belonging, he later wrote, "The children of Chicago bakers, tailors, peddlers, insurance agents, pressers, cutters, grocers, the sons of families on relief, were reading buckram-bound books from the public library and were in a state of enthusiasm, having found themselves on the shore of a novelistic land to which they really belonged, discovering their birthright ... talking to one another about the mind, society, art, religion, epistemology and doing all this in Chicago, of all places." Eventually Chicago became for him what London was for Dickens and Dublin was for Joyce - the center of both his life and his work, and not just a place or a background but almost a character in its own right. He began writing in grammar school, alongside his childhood friend Sydney J. Harris, later a Chicago newspaper columnist: "We would sit at the Harrises' dining room table and write things to each other - any old thing." His father was disapproving, and remained so for decades. "You write and then you erase," he said when Mr. Bellow was in his 20's. "You call that a profession?" His mother was more supportive, but when Saul was 17, she died, a loss that he found difficult to overcome. With her death and his father's remarriage, he said, "I was turned loose - freed, in a sense: free but also stunned, like someone who survives an explosion but hasn't yet grasped what has happened." He added, "It was disabling for me for a couple of years." In 1933 he began college at the University of Chicago, but two years later transferred to Northwestern, because it was cheaper. He had hoped to study literature but was put off by what he saw as the tweedy anti-Semitism of the English department, and graduated in 1937 with honors in anthropology and sociology, subjects that were later to instill his novels. Bu he was still obsessed by fiction. While doing graduate work in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, he found that "every time I worked on my thesis, it turned out to be a story." He added: "I sometimes think the Depression was a great help. It was no use studying for any other profession." Quitting his graduate studies at Wisconsin after several months, he participated in the W.P.A. Federal Writers' Project in Chicago, preparing biographies of Midwestern novelists, and later joined the editorial department of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, where he worked on Mortimer Adler's "Great Books" series. He came to New York "toward the end of the 30's, muddled in the head but keen to educate myself." While living in Greenwich Village and writing fiction, aimlessly and with little success at first, he also reviewed books. When World War II began he was rejected by the Army because of a hernia; he later joined the merchant marine and was in training when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. During his service, he finished writing "Dangling Man," about the alienation of a young Chicagoan waiting to be drafted. It was published in 1944, before the author was 30, and was followed by "The Victim," a novel about anti-Semitism that was written, he said, under the influence of Dostoyevsky. Mr. Bellow later called these novels his "M.A. and Ph.D." They were apprentice work, he believed, finely written but weak in plot and too much in thrall to European models. Epiphany in Paris In 1948, financed by a Guggenheim fellowship, Mr. Bellow went to Paris, where, walking the streets of Paris and thinking about his future, he had a kind of epiphany. He remembered a friend from his childhood named Chucky, "a wild talker who was always announcing cheerfully that he had a super scheme," and he began to wonder what a novel in Chucky's voice would sound like. "The book just came to me," he said later. "All I had to do was be there with buckets to catch it." The resulting novel, "The Adventures of Augie March," was published in 1953, and it became Mr. Bellow's breakthrough, his first best seller and the book that firmly established him as a writer of consequence. The beginning of the novel was as striking and as unforgettable as the beginning of "Huckleberry Finn," and it announced a brand-new voice in American fiction, jazzy, brash, exuberant, with accents that were both Yiddish and Whitmanian: "I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent." "Fiction is the higher autobiography," Mr. Bellow once said, and in his subsequent novels, he often adapted facts from his own life and the lives of people he knew. Humboldt was a version of the poet Delmore Schwartz; Henderson was based on Chandler Chapman, a son of the writer John Jay Chapman; Gersbach, the cuckolder in "Herzog," was a Bard professor named Jack Ludwig, who did indeed seduce Mr. Bellow's wife at the time; and in one guise or another most of Mr. Bellow's many girlfriends all turned up. "What a woman-filled life I always led," says Charlie Citrine, the protagonist of "Humboldt's Gift." Those are words that could have been echoed by the author who had almost innumerable affairs and was married five times. His wives were Anita Goshkin, Alexandra Tsachacbasov, Susan Glassman, Alexandra Ionescu Tulcea and Janis Freedman. All of Mr. Bellow's marriages but his last ended in divorce. In addition to his wife Janis, he is survived by three sons, Gregory, Adam and Daniel; a daughter, Naomi Rose; and six grandchildren. A Turning Point With "Henderson the Rain King" in 1959, Mr. Bellow envisioned an even more ambitious canvas than that of "Augie March," with the story of an American millionaire who travels in Africa in search of regeneration. Mr. Bellow, who had never been to Africa, regarded that novel as a turning point. "Augie March," he said later, was a little unruly and out of control; with "Henderson" he had full command of his creative powers. "Henderson" was followed in 1964 by "Herzog," with the title character a Jewish Everyman who is cuckolded by his wife and his best friend. "He is taken by an epistolary fit," said the author, "and writes grieving, biting, ironic and rambunctious letters not only to his friends and acquaintances, but also to the great men, the giants of thought, who formed his mind." Looking back on the writing of that book, he said: " 'Herzog' was just a brainstorm. One day I found myself writing letters - all over the place. Then it occurred to me that it was a very good idea for writing a book about the mental condition of the country and of its educated class." The novel won a National Book Award. In contrast, that same year "The Last Analysis" (one of several plays by Mr. Bellow) opened on Broadway and was a quick failure. "It started as a lark," he said, "but it ended as an ostrich." With "Mr. Sammler's Planet" in 1969, a novel about a survivor of the Holocaust living and ruminating in New York, Mr. Bellow won his third National Book Award. "Humboldt's Gift," in 1975, proved to be one of his greatest successes. In it, Charlie Citrine, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, has to come to terms with the death of his mentor, the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer. Life imitated art in this case, and "Humboldt" won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Nobel Prize in Literature soon followed, with the Royal Swedish Academy citing his "exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion," and Mr. Bellow was now placed in a class with his American predecessors Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. "After I won the Nobel Prize," he said, "I found myself thrust in the position of a public servant in the world of culture. I was supposed to seem benevolent and to pontificate and bless with my presence - elder statesman whether I liked it or not. The price you have to pay." His first book following the Nobel was "To Jerusalem and Back," a nonfiction memoir about his trip to Israel. That was followed by "The Dean's December," a novel about the decay of the American city; the short-story collection "Him With His Foot in His Mouth" and, in 1987, the novel "More Die of Heartbreak." From then on, through "The Bellarosa Connection" and "The Actual," his books became shorter and shorter, a case of Mr. Bellow sending out what he called "a briefer signal." With "Ravelstein" (2000), he returned to longer fiction. Inspired by the life of his close friend Allan Bloom, the author of "The Closing of the American Mind," the book dealt with a celebrated professor dying of AIDS. In his review in The New York Times Book Review, Jonathan Wilson said it was "a great novel of that much-maligned item, American male friendship." Leaving Chicago In 1993, after many years of living in Chicago and teaching at the University of Chicago, he left his adopted city. The reasons for his departure were complex. Several of his close Chicago friends had died, among them Allan Bloom, and Mr. Bellow said he "got tired of passing the houses of my dead friends." He was also upset by the ugly racial climate in Chicago at the time. A few people in the radical black community tried to spread a story that Jewish doctors were deliberately infecting black children with H.I.V., and Mr. Bellow objected to this "blood libel" in an article printed in The Chicago Tribune. He moved to Boston and, at the invitation of the chancellor, John Silber, began teaching at Boston University. Explaining why he continued to teach, even though he was one of the most financially successful of serious American novelists, he said: "You're all alone when you're a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that. But it's much more interesting to talk about books. After all, that's what life used to be for writers: they talk books, politics, history, America. Nothing has replaced that." In 1994, while on a Caribbean vacation with his wife in St. Martin, Mr. Bellow became sick after eating a toxic fish, and almost died - an incident that is also recounted in "Ravelstein." After a long recovery process, he returned to his writing, with "By the St. Lawrence," a story evoking a traumatic memory of his childhood. Throughout Mr. Bellow's life, his approach to his art was that of an alien newly arrived on earth: "I've never seen the world before. Now I was seeing it, and it's a beautiful, marvelous gift. Enchanting reality! And when the end came, I was told by the cleverest people I knew that it would all vanish. I'm not absolutely convinced of that. If you asked me if I believed in life after death, I would say I was an agnostic. There are more things between heaven and earth, Horatio, etc." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:53:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:53:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Mathematics: Proof and beauty Message-ID: Mathematics: Proof and beauty http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3809661 5.3.31 Just what does it mean to prove something? QUOD erat demonstrandum. These three words of Latin, meaning, "which was to be shown", traditionally mark the end of a mathematical proof. And, for centuries, a proof was exactly that: showing something by breaking it down into readily agreed-upon steps. Proving something was a matter of convincing one's peers that it has indeed been shown--no more, and no less. The rhetorical flourish of a Latin epigram also has served to indicate that the notion of proof is well understood, and commonly agreed. But that notion is now in flux. The use of computers to prove mathematical theorems is forcing mathematicians to re-examine the foundations of their discipline. Through much of the 20th century, questions of mathematical rigour were passed off to logicians and philosophers--working mathematicians have been, for the most part, content to work with an intuitive definition of proof. This notion works when each step of a proof is transparent, and can be examined by all. Proof is then just a process of reducing one big, non-obvious step, to a bunch of small, obvious ones. However, if a computer is used to make this reduction, then the number of small, obvious steps can be in the hundreds of thousands--impractical even for the most diligent mathematician to check by hand. Critics of computer-aided proof claim that this impracticability means that such proofs are inherently flawed. However, its defenders point out that some theorems that many mathematicians consider to have been proved in the classical manner also have proofs which are so long as to be uncheckable. The most famous case of this is something called the classification of finite simple groups. These are abstract objects with certain mathematical properties; the claim is that, over a 30-year span in a series of papers totalling some 15,000 pages, all possible such objects were enumerated. Though the mathematical consensus is that the classification (nicknamed the "enormous theorem") is complete, there are sceptics who point out that the dispersed proof is essentially unverifiable. What, then, does constitute a proof in the modern age? Two recent examples of how computers have been used to prove important mathematical results illustrate how the field is changing. A colouring problem The first is the "four colour theorem", which is perhaps the mathematical theorem most likely to bedevil a toddler. It states that any planar map (that is to say, a flat one) can be coloured with at most four colours in a way that no two regions with the same colour share a border. It was first proposed in 1852 but, despite efforts by a century's worth of mathematicians, went unproven until 1976, when Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Harken, then of the University of Illinois, announced that they had proved the result. However, Dr Appel and Dr Harken used a computer to help them prove the result by examining about 10,000 cases. (Their proof also relied on a lot of old-fashioned gruntwork.) A new proof, in a paper just written by Georges Gonthier, of Microsoft Research, in Cambridge, England, also uses a computer. Dr Gonthier used similar techniques to those of Dr Appel and Dr Harken in his proof. However, rather than have part of the proof done by hand, and part by computer, he has automated the entire proof, and done so in such a manner that it is a formal proof. Formal proof is a notion developed in the early part of the 20th century by logicians such as Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, along with mathematicians such as David Hilbert (who can fairly be described as the father of modern mathematics) and Nicolas Bourbaki, the pseudonym of a group of French mathematicians who sought to place all of mathematics on a rigorous footing. This effort was subtle, but its upshot can be described simply. It is to replace, in proofs, standard mathematical reasoning which, in essence, relies on hand-waving arguments (it should be obvious to everyone that B follows from A) with formal logic. The benefit of formal logic is that it is pure syntax. At no point does proceeding from one step to the next require understanding, let alone mathematical intuition. It is merely a matter of applying an agreed-upon set of rules (for instance, that any thing is equal to itself, or that if something is true for all members of a set of objects, it is true for any one specific object) to a set of agreed-upon structures, such as sets of objects. Formal proofs, however, never gained a foothold in the mainstream mathematical community because they are tedious--they take many steps to prove something in cases in which a mathematician might just take one. To those who would use a computer, however, they have two virtues. The first is that computers, with their tolerance for tedium, are particularly suited to writing the steps of a formal proof down. The second is that, by writing those steps down in what is called a "proof witness" instead of just announcing that a program had arrived at a true result, outsiders might gain greater confidence in a result derived from a computer. As Dr Gonthier, and other supporters of the use of computers, point out, there is no reason to think that humans are less fallible than computers when doing long computations or proofs. Indeed, the opposite might be true. The idea behind both proofs of the four colour theorem is to suppose that the theorem is violated--to assume, in other words, that there is some sort of map that requires five colours to fill in. The next step is to find the mathematically simplest versions of such maps. (What is meant by simplicity in this case is actually quite involved.) Dr Gonthier then showed that all these maps can, in fact, be re-coloured with only four colours, establishing the theorem by contradiction. The catch is that there are many such regions, which must be examined on a case-by-case basis; part of the mathematical difficulty lies in proving that the cases considered suffice to cover all possible maps, and part stems from proving that each individual case is indeed colourable with just four colours. Dr Gonthier says he is going to submit his paper to a scientific journal in the next few weeks. But he would do well not to get his hopes up about getting his paper published anytime soon. A 1998 paper which proved another long-standing conjecture using a computer, by Thomas Hales, of the University of Pittsburgh, has only recently been accepted by the Annals of Mathematics, perhaps the field's most prestigious journal, and is scheduled to be published later this year. The music of the spheres Dr Hales proved Kepler's conjecture, which is that the most efficient way to pack spheres in a box is the way grocers usually pack oranges--in a so-called "face-centred cubic lattice"--the arrangement whereby each layer of oranges is shifted so that an orange touches four oranges in the layer below. Kepler posited the conjecture in 1611, and it had long resisted efforts at proof. Indeed, Hilbert made it one of his list of the 23 most difficult and fundamental questions in mathematics, in 1900. Dr Hales proved the conjecture by using a trick different in nature to Dr Gonthier's. Rather than argue by contradiction, he reduced what was a problem about an infinite number of things (the Kepler conjecture considers an infinite number of spheres in an infinitely large space) to a statement about a finite, but very large, number of mathematical objects. He then used the computer to prove bounds about these objects, some of which, he says, can be thought of as sculptures made of cables and struts. Loosely speaking, he reduced the Kepler conjecture to a problem of considering whether, given a set of cables, which have no minimum length, but can only be stretched to a certain extent, and struts, which have a limit on how much they can be compressed, one can build a sculpture of a certain type. Dr Hales used a computer, as there were roughly 100,000 such structures that had to be considered in order to prove the Kepler conjecture. Although the Annals will publish Dr Hales's paper, Peter Sarnak, an editor of the Annals, whose own work does not involve the use of computers, says that the paper will be accompanied by an unusual disclaimer, stating that the computer programs accompanying the paper have not undergone peer review. There is a simple reason for that, Dr Sarnak says--it is impossible to find peers who are willing to review the computer code. However, there is a flip-side to the disclaimer as well--Dr Sarnak says that the editors of the Annals expect to receive, and publish, more papers of this type--for things, he believes, will change over the next 20-50 years. Dr Sarnak points out that maths may become "a bit like experimental physics" where certain results are taken on trust, and independent duplication of experiments replaces examination of a colleague's paper. Some of the movement towards that direction may be forestalled by efforts of Dr Gonthier's type to use computers to provide formal proofs and proof witnesses. It is possible that mathematicians will trust computer-based results more if they are backed up by transparent logical steps, rather than the arcane workings of computer code, which could more easily contain bugs that go undetected. Indeed, it is for this exact reason that Dr Hales is currently leading a collaborative project to provide a formal proof of the Kepler conjecture. In perhaps a more prosaic example of mathematics embracing technology, he is co-ordinating that effort using a blog called [5]Flyspeck (the word, Dr Hales explains, means to examine closely). Why should the non-mathematician care about things of this nature? The foremost reason is that mathematics is beautiful, even if it is, sadly, more inaccessible than other forms of art. The second is that it is useful, and that its utility depends in part on its certainty, and that that certainty cannot come without a notion of proof. Dr Gonthier, for instance, and his sponsors at Microsoft, hope that the techniques he and his colleagues have developed to formally prove mathematical theorems can be used to "prove" that a computer program is free of bugs--and that would certainly be a useful proposition in today's software society if it does, indeed, turn out to be true. References 3. http://www.xerox.com/ 4. http://www.economist.com/about/sponsor.cfm 5. http://www.flyspeck-blog.blogspot.com/ From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:54:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:54:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Longevity: All you can't eat Message-ID: Economist: Longevity: All you can't eat http://www.economist.com/science/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=3809652 5.3.31 [Reply from Steve Harris appended.] Even a slight decrease in calories may lead to longer lifespans MOST people would not object to living a few years longer than normal, as long as it meant they could live those years in good health. Sadly, the only proven way to extend the lifespan of an animal in this way is to reduce its calorie intake. Studies going back to the 1930s have shown that a considerable reduction in consumption (about 50%) can extend the lifespan of everything from dogs to nematode worms by between 30% and 70%. Although humans are neither dogs nor worms, a few people are willing to give the calorie-restricted diet a try in the hope that it might work for them, too. But not many-as the old joke has it, give up the things you enjoy and you may not live longer, but it will sure seem as if you did. Now, though, work done by Marc Hellerstein and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that it may be possible to have, as it were, your cake and eat it too. Or, at least, to eat 95% of it. Their study, to be published in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, suggests that significant gains in longevity might be made by a mere 5% reduction in calorie intake. The study was done on mice rather than people. But the ubiquity of previous calorie-restriction results suggests the same outcome might well occur in other species, possibly including humans. However, you would have to fast on alternate days. Why caloric restriction extends the lifespan of any animal is unclear, but much of the smart money backs the idea that it slows down cell division by denying cells the resources they need to grow and proliferate. One consequence of that slow-down would be to stymie the development of cancerous tumours. Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells. For a cancer to develop efficiently, it needs multiple mutations to accumulate in the DNA of the cell that becomes the tumour's ancestor. To stop this happening, cells have DNA-repair mechanisms. But if a cell divides before the damage is repaired, the chance of a successful repair is significantly reduced. A slower rate of cell division thus results in a slower accumulation of cancer-causing mutations. At least, that is the theory. Until now, though, no one has tested whether reduced calorie intake actually does result in slower cell division. Dr Hellerstein and his team were able to do so using heavy water as a chemical "marker" of the process. Heavy water is heavy because the hydrogen in it weighs twice as much as ordinary hydrogen (it has a proton and a neutron in its nucleus, instead of just a proton). Chemically, however, it behaves like its lighter relative. This means, among other things, that it gets incorporated into DNA as that molecule doubles in quantity during cell division. So, by putting heavy water in the diets of their mice, the researchers were able to measure how much DNA in the tissues of those animals had been made since the start of the experiment (and by inference how much cell division had taken place), by the simple expedient of extracting the DNA and weighing it. Dr Hellerstein first established how much mice eat if allowed to feed as much as they want. Then he set up a group of mice that were allowed to eat only 95% of that amount. In both cases, he used the heavy-water method to monitor cell division. The upshot was that the rate of division in the calorie-restricted mice was 37% lower than that in those mice that could eat as much as they wanted-which could have a significant effect on the accumulation of cancer-causing mutations. But calorie-reduction is not all the mice had to endure. They were, in addition, fed only on alternate days: bingeing one day and starving the next. There were two reasons for this. First, bingeing and starving is how many animals tend to feed in the wild. The uncertain food supply means they regularly go through cycles of too much and too little food (it also means that they are often restricted to eating less than they could manage if food were omnipresent). The reasoning here is that metabolic processes evolved in a particular context and might be expected to work best in that context. Replicate the evolutionary context and you might get a better outcome. The second reason, according to Elaine Hsieh, one of Dr Hellerstein's colleagues, is that cutting just a few calories overall, but feeding intermittently, may be a more feasible eating pattern for some people to maintain than making small reductions each and every day. Whether modern man and woman, constantly surrounded by food and advertisements for food, would really be able to forgo eating every other day is debatable. But even if it does work (and Dr Hellerstein has yet to prove that reduced cell division translates into longer life) the temptations of life may prove just too much for wannabe Methuselahs. _______________________________________________ From: "Steve Harris" Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 16:32:31 -0700 To: "Gerontology Research Group" Argghh. I saw this and just knew it would be misinterpreted. 1) These scientists screwed up, and forgot to have a control group which was fed every other day but the 100% caloric intake, not 95% of it. So they have *two* independent experimental effects, and since they have no control, they have no idea which effect is the predominant one on the dependent effect they measured, which is (remember) cell division (not cancer development or life span). 2) They are measuring a cell division, which is a *proxy* for cancer causation and life extension. It probably isn't a perfect one, because previous studies have shown that the cancer-reducing effects of calorie restriction are NOT dependent on interval of feeding, but ONLY on total calories consumed. So if these guys see a big effect of interval fasting on their proxy cell-division variable, it only serves to heighten suspicion that it's not a good proxy-variable all the time, not make us think that this diet regime will do the same job as a lot of calorie restriction. The anticancer effect of any dietary regime must be proven *directly*, and there's no getting around it. 3) Finally, due to the difference in specific metabolic rates, feeding a mouse every other day is like feeding a human every other WEEK. If there are any fasting effects that drastically slow down cell division, they're not going to work in humans as they do in mice without increasing the duration of the human fast by a factor of SEVEN, anyway. So it's probably just as well that all this isn't going to turn out to be as good a cancer preventive as the researchers think it will. Steve Harris From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:54:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:54:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Exploring the Life of an Author Who Wrote His Own Identity Message-ID: Exploring the Life of an Author Who Wrote His Own Identity http://query.nytimes.com/search/article-printpage.html?res=9403E1DE163DF930A15751C0A9639C8B63 February 23, 2005 By WILLIAM GRIMES 'The Orientalist' 'Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life' By Tom Reiss Illustrated. 433 pages. Random House. $25.95. In the cultural hothouse of Weimar Germany, few flowers bloomed quite as extravagantly as Essad Bey. His enormously popular books and articles opened a window on the Islamic world, the exotic tribes of the Caucasus and the political upheavals convulsing Russia. ''Ali and Nino,'' written under the pen name Kurban Said, enchanted readers with its depiction of Azerbaijan on the eve of the Russian revolution and its romantic story of a Muslim prince's love for a Christian girl. For cultivated Germans, Essad Bey was the man of the East, the cosmopolitan Muslim who, in his writings, brought back treasure from the fabled lands of the caliphate. In fact, Essad Bey, the Orientalist of Tom Reiss's title, was a fictional creation. Although fond of posing for photographs in Caucasian tribal gear, or wearing a fez or turban, Germany's most beloved Muslim was actually a Jew named Lev Nussimbaum. Thereby hangs a wondrous tale, beautifully told, that took the author five years and patient detective work in 10 countries to reconstruct. Nussimbaum did not make things easy. A relentless fantasizer and self-inventor, he treated the facts of his life as dramatic material. In one of many improbable strokes of luck, Mr. Reiss tracked down his subject's last editor, who surrendered six leather notebooks containing autobiographical ruminations that Nussimbaum wrote as he lay dying in Positano, Italy. They proved to be problematic. Like everything that Nussimbaum wrote, fact and fancy were intertwined. It was Mr. Reiss's task to disentangle one from the other, a job he undertook with great enthusiasm and imagination. No wonder. The unvarnished truth rivals anything that Essad Bey ever conjured from the remote mountaintops of the Caucasus. The Nussimbaums came from Slutzk, a village in the Pale of Settlement. Abraham, Lev's father, headed for Baku to seek his fortune in the oil business, and there, in the waning years of the Russian monarchy, his son grew up, surrounded by mosques, minarets and enormous wealth. From early childhood, Lev feasted on tales of the Orient and wandered the Muslim quarter of the city, dominated by the palace of the Khans. The palace, and the desert outside the city, he later wrote, ''became for me the epitome of peaceful, ancient, silent grandeur.'' Revolution broke the spell. Fleeing the Bolsheviks, the Nussimbaums embarked on a terrifying journey across Turkestan and Persia, territory that supplied Lev with rich literary material and the seeds of a new identity. The glories of Constantinople, which Lev reached in 1921, put the finishing gloss on the resplendent creation soon to be presented to the world as Essad Bey. ''The new identity that was taking shape in his mind had the pedigree of a Caucasian warrior, half Persian, half who knows what,'' Mr. Reiss writes. ''He would not arrive in Europe as a stateless Jew from the East, he would come dressed in an Ottoman fez or, when he felt like it, as a Cossack.'' In Berlin, Nussimbaum quickly found his place. At the prestigious Literarische Welt, the Weimar equivalent of The New York Review of Books, he became the resident expert on the East, writing on topics as various as King Amanullah of Afghanistan and a professional congress organized by former eunuchs, thrown out of work by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He wooed and won the chic, thoroughly modern Erika Loewendahl, a poet and, like Nussimbaum, a fixture in cafe society. A facile, stylish writer, Nussimbaum turned out books at a furious rate, all of them best sellers. He wrote biographies of Muhammad, Nicholas II, Lenin and Stalin, and a history of the secret police under the Bolsheviks. (''Who is this Essad Bey?'' Trotsky wrote to his son in 1931.) He chronicled his early life and the Bolshevik takeover of Baku in ''Blood and Oil in the Orient,'' and took his wide-eyed German readers along a fantastic tour in ''Twelve Secrets of the Caucasus,'' where, he claimed, one could find a strange, secluded land called Khevsuria, ''the political Switzerland of the Caucasus,'' reached by a long rope hanging from a cliff. There, anyone fleeing the police could find sanctuary. By the late 1930's, when the Nazis uncovered his Jewish identity, Nussimbaum needed that rope. When he could no longer publish in Germany, he left for Vienna and wrote two novels under the name Kurban Said. But time was running out. In 1938, Vienna fell to the Nazis, and Nussimbaum, who was pursued by revolution and chaos all his life, escaped to Positano on the Amalfi coast. He survived on charity but eventually succumbed, at 36, to Raynaud's syndrome, a rare gangrenelike disorder, leaving a trail of mystery and romance behind him. Mr. Reiss's efforts to pick up the trail become a parallel narrative to Nussimbaum's life. His inquiries lead him to a strange gallery of characters, most in their 80's or even older, and all of them extremely odd, like the Austrian baroness, isolated in a remote castle, who spends her nights writing the French text for an Israeli-German rock musical. Unfortunately, she has never actually seen a musical, so Mr. Reiss, at her request, finds himself performing bits from ''On the Town'' and ''Camelot.'' At moments like these, Mr. Reiss's quest takes him right through the looking glass. ''The Orientalist'' is too long by a third. Mr. Reiss, reluctant to throw away any research, stops the narrative repeatedly to deliver a lengthy historical set piece as Nussimbaum moves from city to city, and he drags the reader a little too often into far-flung libraries and dusty offices as he follows up one lead after another. He is, to put it mildly, in no hurry to unfold his tale, but what a tale it is -- mesmerizing, poignant and almost incredible. Mr. Reiss, caught up in the spell of Essad Bey, has turned around and worked some magic of his own. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:54:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:54:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: (Guiliano) French Women Do Too Get Fat - What the best seller neglects to mention. By Kate Taylor (fwd) Message-ID: French Women Do Too Get Fat - What the best seller neglects to mention. By Kate Taylor http://slate.msn.com/id/2113911/ Posted Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 3:23 PM PT [Three NYT articles about Guiliano appended.] Mireille Guiliano, the French-born CEO of Clicquot Inc., Veuve Clicquot's American subsidiary, has many things to toast these days. Besides being 58 and still weighing what she did in her 20s, she is now a best-selling author, too. Her recently published memoir-cum-diet book, [22]French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure is currently at No. 3 on the New York Times list for hardcover advice books. Since the book's publication, she says, she has been inundated with offers to write a sequel, host a cooking show, and wear various designers' dresses to the Oscars. There has even been discussion of a movie. While it's still too soon to tell, it is possible that Guiliano has helped launch one of the periodic turnovers in American dietary mythology. Out with carbophobia; in with Francomania. Guiliano's book centers on the well-worn idea often called the "French Paradox": French people, who love their cheese and foie gras and croissants, are nonetheless thinner and have lower rates of heart disease than we diet-obsessed Americans. Scientists used to attribute it to red wine; the current theory is that the French "secret" lies in no one food or ingredient, but in their traditional culture of eating. As Guiliano tells us, the French have elaborate food rituals. They go to the market several times a week and eat only what's in season. Unlike Americans, who buy processed, flavorless food and therefore need to eat a lot of it to feel gratified, the French, by eating better-tasting food and savoring it more consciously, "fool themselves" into being satisfied with less. That is, French women do, since, in Guiliano's book, it is specifically the women who must master "the useful art of self-deception"--mentally balancing the pleasures of food against the competing desires to fit into the latest fashions and to be attractive to French men, who she says like their wives to be "very elegant, very thin." Before we come under assault by the rest of the French Women empire (the TV show, the movie) we should take this mythology--Americans, hopelessly schizophrenic about food; French, universally blessed with natural moderation--with a grain of Breton sea salt. The first problem with this picture is that it may already be out of date. Guiliano grew up and learned her eating rituals in the '50s and '60s. Today, thanks to globalization, the French are starting to eat, and look, more like us: According to a recent article in the Times of London, the traditional French meal is eaten by only 20 percent of the population. Instead, they increasingly favor the abbreviated, on-the-go meals of Americans. The national rate of obesity is rising fast. While only 6 percent of the population was obese in 1990, today the proportion is 11.3 percent. That is still well behind the same figure for the United States (22 percent) but on track to match our levels by 2020. The French are not happy about it. In a parliamentary report last spring highlighting the dramatic increase in obesity, legislators proposed launching a new government agency to fight weight gain, to be funded by a tax on high-calorie or high-fat foods. Which brings us to the second way in which the American/French divide is more complicated than Guiliano acknowledges. The French accept a level of government paternalism that would not go over easily here. The way that French families eat, or until recently ate, is actually a product of state intervention, as Greg Critser pointed out in a 2003 piece in the New York Times. At the beginning of the 20^th century, concern over France's high infant mortality rate led to a largely state-sponsored movement called puericulture. The movement's initial focus was on getting mothers to breastfeed; clinics were set up across the country, and the government required factories to have areas for nursing. But puericulture advocates also stressed that overfeeding infants was worse than underfeeding them. For older children, they advised regular mealtimes, modest portions, no seconds, and no snacks. Children's own appetites and preferences were to be ignored. This is the tradition in which Guiliano was raised, and which she proposes to those of her readers who are parents. It is another interesting paradox: The French ability to take pleasure in food, and to choose food based on taste rather than dietary dogma, begins with a child's lack of choice, and a degree of parental and state authoritarianism. The third problem is that, while they may be admirably successful at staying thin, French women are not necessarily more balanced in their attitudes about food. While many people think of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia as an American problem, they are, as far as can be measured (and these statistics should always be taken with some degree of skepticism), equally prevalent in France. In the United States, somewhere between 0.5 percent and 3.7 percent of women will be anorexic in their lifetimes, while 1.1. percent to 4.2 percent will suffer from bulimia. Between 2 percent and 5 percent of Americans binge eat. Among young French women, an estimated 1 percent to 3 percent are anorexic; 5 percent are bulimic; and 11 percent have compulsive eating behaviors. Certainly, young French women today are as interested in eating disorders as their American counterparts. While Guiliano enjoys her publishing success here, a quite different book is in the spotlight in France: a memoir of bulimia called Thornytorinx. (The title is an anatomical name for the digestive tract.) The book has been favorably covered by the French press, and its author, a 25-year-old actress named Camille de Peretti, appeared last weekend on [25]one of France's most popular talk shows. That the incidence of eating disorders in France roughly equals that here suggests that anorexia and bulimia do not require a widespread, openly discussed culture of calorie- or carb-counting and devotion to the gym. They may take slightly different forms, depending on the prevailing national habits, but eating disorders arise wherever thinness is deeply valued and admired. French women do not care less than American women about being thin; if anything, they may care more. And while much of Guiliano's advice seems sensible, there is also an opening for extremism in her suggestions[26]* that we savor our food and refuse to eat anything that isn't of the highest quality and taste. When she met the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino for coffee in Paris, Guiliano took one bite of her croissant, declared it "disgusting," and left the rest on her plate, thereby demonstrating a lesson from her book: "Life is too short to drink bad wine and to eat bad food." Sounds nice enough, but sticking to this philosophy in all circumstances would be remarkably neurotic. What if you're hungry? The scene calls to mind a certain type of weight-obsessed woman, the kind who uses the excuse of a refined palate to mask her suspicion of food (and to justify how little she eats). The essence of Guiliano's book is the claim that women can trick themselves into experiencing what is actually self-denial as a kind of pleasure. She never questions that most women, if they wish to be attractively thin, will have to play some mental games. But such games are, as Guiliano acknowledges, something that the French generally value. They think of themselves as an old culture, skilled in the arts of irony, hypocrisy, and nuance. We Americans may be innocent, artless, and nuance-allergic, but we are sharp enough to recognize that French women's advantage over us is simply that they are thinner--not that they have better, saner, less complicated attitudes about food. "The useful art of self-deception"? Let 'em have it. Correction, Feb. 25, 2005: This piece originally used the word "imprecations" incorrectly, to mean "suggestions." An imprecation is a curse. Slate regrets the error. ([27]Return to corrected sentence.) Kate Taylor is an assistant at The New Yorker. References 22. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400042127/qid=1109200926/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-5839781-3372030?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 23. http://slate.msn.com/id/2113911/#ContinueArticle 26. http://slate.msn.com/id/2113911/#Correction 27. http://slate.msn.com/id/2113911/#Return ----------------- The New York Times > Magazine > Domains: A Gourmet's Minimalist Flat http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/magazine/13DOMAINS.html March 13, 2005 Interview by EDWARD LEWINE Mireille Guiliano, 58, author of "French Women Don't Get Fat" and C.E.O. and president of Clicquot Inc., and her husband, Edward, 54, have lived in a 2,500-square-foot apartment in the West Village for 15 years. Morning routine: I awake about 6:30 a.m., and the first thing I do is have a glass of water. Then I go for a walk, or do some yoga, stretching and meditation. My husband makes me breakfast, something different every day because I hate boredom. It could be scrambled eggs, oatmeal, cereal or half a grapefruit and a piece of cheese. I walk out the door anytime between 7:30 and 9 a.m. Evening routine: Most nights I entertain. I used to go straight from work, but after I reached 50 I decided that I should take better care of myself. So I come home, and stretch or go out on the terrace and look at the sunset or listen to music. Then I go to dinner. These are long meals with clients, and they end about 11:30. I never go straight to bed after that. I am a night person. How she divides her time: I often think of the line from Woody Allen. He said, ''When I am in New York, I want to be in Europe, and when I am in Europe, I want to be in New York.'' I'm blessed to have an apartment in Paris and New York, although I only spend a week every two months in France. Item a woman most needs in Paris: A tiny umbrella to put in her bag. It can rain any time there. Item a woman most needs in New York: A bag big enough to hold a lot of stuff. You are always multitasking. You need your glasses and lenses; you go to a cocktail party and need business cards. In Paris people don't exchange cards; they just say, ''Call me tomorrow.'' At age 5, what she wanted to be: An actress. I would always be in the school plays. I was a mother, a rabbit, a flower. To this day I could go to a movie or play every night. Historical person she'd like to meet: Frederic Chopin. He was a Romantic. And he hung out with George Sand. Not bad. Best recent gift she received: A beautiful Valentine's Day card with a love poem by my husband in it. I don't want jewelry. I want flowers or a book or a poem. I'd like to have a poem every time, but inspiration doesn't always strike. Favorite spot in house: I love my kitchen. For Manhattan, I have a rather decent-size kitchen, and it has an opening that gives out to the dining room, which has a window with a view of the city and in the distance the Statue of Liberty. Greatest misconception about French women: That they are perfect. We are all frail and have our weaknesses. We are all supposed to be stylish and elegant, and I know plenty of French women who are neither, and for those that do try to live up to the myth, it isn't easy. Aspect of house that most reflects her taste: I cannot live without flowers everywhere. I grew up having a big garden, the size of a city block, in Rombas. Item she can't toss: None. When you live in an apartment, you learn to part with things. I give them to the Salvation Army. Always in the fridge: Yogurt, bread, veggies, cheese, fruit. I keep Champagne in the fridge for people who pop in. Does she allow smoking in house? No. We have a huge terrace, so if people want to smoke, they go there. Must-have gadget: My yogurt maker. In the U.S., too many yogurts are filled with corn syrup, preservatives, artificial this and that. To me, this is poison. Her sanctuary: We have a little room we call the orchid room. It is a pleasant, Zen room. The only thing hanging in it is an American painting called ''Adirondack Chairs,'' by an artist named Paul Jacobsen. It reminds me of what I love about America and of my student years in New England: sitting beside a lake in a good chair. Hobby: My husband and I are bookworms. In the living room there are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that are doubled. You can roll back one set of shelves to reveal another. Most of the books there are American and English literature. In the kitchen, cookbooks; in my office, European-language books. Collections: We have four photographs made by Lewis Carroll. My husband found them some 25 years ago. Walking shoes for a lady: I find it so unattractive when women wear sneakers with their business suits. I wear a nice pair of loafers or low-heeled pumps, and that's that. Family photos hanging in home: No. No. That is something that is so American, and I don't understand. I have a few pictures of friends, and I keep them in my agenda. That is the French way. We are more private. Also my husband and I have no children. Television shows: I love cooking shows to relax, not to make the recipes. Travel routine: I eat a few hours before takeoff, because I do not eat plane food. I rarely bring food on the plane either. Topic she won't bring up at party: Real estate is the most boring subject. There is more to life than real estate, sorry. What is always with her: A little bottle of water. Best book she read recently: It is called ''True Pleasures: A Memoir of Women in Paris.'' Actually it was written by an Australian named Lucinda Holdforth. I connect to it because she talks about great women in Paris like Colette, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, but also because she visits the neighborhood where I live there. What she drives: We have a BMW, but I don't like cars, or boats, or planes, or anything with an engine. We had a bike, but it was stolen. A real New York story. Next big purchase: None. We are minimalists. Item of clothing she can't live without: This is very French, but my scarves. They are great to have when you travel. I can make four different outfits out of a pair of black pants with different scarves. I like Hermes, but my favorites are from a tiny store in Paris. Household chore she should do and does: My mother always said, ''When you leave the house make sure your bed is done and the place doesn't look like Hiroshima, because you never know what can happen.'' My mother was a working woman, but she always taught us to take care of our rooms, as opposed to so many American kids who throw things on the floor. Why don't French women get fat? Because they eat with their heads and all five senses. And they have learned to manage and gratify their appetites. ------------- The New York Times > Readers' Opinions > 10 Questions for . . .: Mireille Guiliano http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/readersopinions/questions-guiliano.html February 15, 2005 10 QUESTIONS FOR . . . Mireille Guiliano The author of the best seller [1]"French Women Don't Get Fat" answered questions from readers. Q. 1. I am a thin French woman despite the fact that I have been living for many years in this Bible Belt small city, where most women are indeed extremely overweight. But my slenderness is not due to a conscious choice. I simply don't like food, particularly French food, which makes me nauseous: too creamy, oily, sauce-oriented, etc. My question: what would you suggest for me to do in order to actually LOVE food? I do eat some because I need it to survive. I tend to find Mediterranean ways of cooking in the Midi of France, as well as simple Chinese or Japanese fare, less objectionable, somewhat tastier and less fatty. But I do not take any real pleasure in it, neither in preparing food nor in eating it. What would you suggest, particularly in terms of FOOD PREPARATION pleasure? - Cleo, College Station, Tex. A. I like to believe, Cleo, that everyone has latent gastronomic pleasures just waiting to be awakened and when they are, life only gets better. While my whole book is really the answer to your question, I will share a few big and related thoughts. You are obviously very sensitive; that can be made into a plus rather than a minus. Begin by slowly discovering some taste preferences and then cultivating pleasure in those. For instance, some people adore basil as a seasoning, others find it overwhelming. Try sniffing several alternatives: rosemary, sage, thyme. If rosemary, say, is appealing, at the level of fragrance, chances are you will like it in food (since much of taste is smell). If so, try the simplest preparation you can with a sprig of rosemary on a piece of fish or chicken, whatever seems more appealing, brushed with a bit of oil (grape-seed oil for instance is very nutritious and without flavor of its own) and seasoned with a bit of salt, perhaps a little squeeze of (fresh!) lemon. When you eat, concentrate on the new flavor, as well as the texture and the appearance of your menu portion. Even if you're not big on cooking, preparing food with our own hands prevents our being joyless alienation from what we are eating. Chop everything by hand (no machines). One of the great things about cooking is the relatively instant gratification you get from completing a task then enjoying it by eating. Don't you feel good about checking off little or not-so-little projects? Cleaning a closet. Getting past those income tax returns? Buying clothes for a special event? If you can learn to take pride in shopping and cooking, there are inner rewards there as well ... at least that's how I look at it and feel. Finally, I invite you to be bold and open minded in your approach to new foods. Some are acquired tastes. Think about sushi. Who would have thought raw fish would become a passion for people around the globe? You appear to like it. Some people still can't quite get up the courage to try. And no one says you have to like French food or any other cuisine. Certainly there are some that I like a lot less than others. As far as French fare goes, it is a lot different today than the stereotypical rich, creamy sauces of a generation ago. Since the 1970's it has evolved to be lighter and leaner and more Asian influenced, but that doesn't mean some of the bistro classic comfort foods don't have a delicious place now and again. And you don't have to go to Paris to experience the best (but, hey, go for it if you can); there are a host of wonderful French-American restaurants in the U.S., notably in New York and a few other major cities. Treat yourself to the best and see if you like it. At home, another tip would be to start tasting things you have never tasted before: a new vegetable or perhaps a cheese. Anyway, I'm glad you want to discover your gastronomic pleasures. Who knows? Good luck and bon appetit. Q. 2. I lived in Chalons sur Marne from August 1958 to the beginning of 1961. We could take the time to cook things slowly and enjoy them. How do you find the time to make the meals you write about? After working, commuting home, shopping and getting home I'm just too tired to think of cooking. Please, I want to change but don't see how. - Thilde Peterson, Henderson, Nev. A. I certainly understand this time dilemma: the belief or reality of too much to do in this life and too little time. And life's exigencies seemingly take away all discretionary moments. Still, it is really all a question of prioritizing and planning. In order to find the time, you have to commit yourself to finding it, convincing yourself that nothing is more basic to a happy and civilized life than a civilized relation to food. You owe this to yourself and your loved ones. You gotta eat, after all, why not make the best of it. Certainly in my professional life, I have to prioritize constantly and am amazed by the time-consuming demands that just are not important. They are the first to go to free up time for what's important for business or me personally. Can you find 30 minutes a night for cooking? 60 minutes? That's all you need. Shopping is another task, but that can be managed efficiently with a little planning. Most people in this country are extremely busy - or at least have convinced themselves they are by filling up the hours with all sorts of things - but quality of life revolves around the things we enjoy doing, not the things we have to do. And what's the point of getting everything on your list done without quality of life? Of course the workweek limits those of us who work outside the home. During the week, my preparations are much less elaborate than they are during the weekend. But there are many simple and delicious things one can make if one lets go the notion that cooking is a big job, with a big clean up afterwards. (My book has lots of no fuss recipes. I made that a priority. ) And home cooking makes excellent leftovers, so why not commit to cooking three or four nights a week and spend seven civilized nights. Life improvement guaranteed. Q. 3. Do you think there is societal pressure or other inherent stress that causes some American women to binge eat? Or that perhaps looking around they feel safety in numbers? - bobbean, upstate New York A. Important topic and practice. I wouldn't say there is a societal pressure to binge. Nobody admires a glutton or takes refuge in group solidarity from the pain of feeling fat. But stress in our lifestyle definitely drives bingeing. It's almost as if we displace our anxiety by trying to devour it. Food becomes a substitute for emotional comfort. But bingeing is not a pleasure, it's a release, just as drinking too much is a release, and both are unhealthy. Like any other good thing, food can be abused, and certainly it's the most readily available thing to abuse. I know first hand, that a piece of chocolate can be a great pacifier, but can lead to a second and a third and then the box or bar is gone. That's bingeing, and you don't feel good about it afterwards, either. Again, know your own demon offenders and, as I explain in the book, learn to trick your mind into compensating in other healthy ways. Q. 4. Do you believe [the argument in your book] represents all French women or French women from certain types of areas, i.e. suburban vs. rural French women? - Sara Hinderer, Cleveland A. Perhaps people have been taking my title far too literally. It's meant as a provocation and a broadly true observation. There are obviously some fat French women, though admittedly fewer in urban areas. My argument is that, on the whole, French women, regardless of geography, don't get fat as long as they possess a traditional French relationship to eating. And the statistics overwhelmingly support that claim. I can't speak for the ones drawn to McDonald's, or to the growing number of immigrants who have perhaps not yet had the opportunity to absorb the gift of French gastronomy. Also, France is still an agrarian country with regional cuisine consumed in relation to fresh, local produce, so there's not a standard formula for what all French women eat. That's a point I embrace: eat what you need and enjoy but find your own equilibrium. And so long as we are talking about adult French women - say 21 or better 25 years old and up, there's no getting away from the significant cultural difference in my view between their relationship with food and eating for pleasure with women in other countries. Q. 5. It is my impression that the French smoke more than Americans. I have even heard it said that the decline in smoking in America is partly to blame for the rise in obesity. How does smoking play a role in French women's ability to stay thin? - Liz, Longmeadow, Mass. A. No, Liz, but I'm so glad you asked that question. This is a very popular myth about French women. And I am startled that people who have not read my book are writing to me and posting notes saying that French women don't get fat because they smoke a lot. Nonsense. It's as if they want a simple reason to avoid embracing a new approach to eating for pleasure and to dismiss the vast majority of French women who are simply not nearly as overweight as our American counterparts. French men do smoke more than American men (33 percent vs. 24 percent), but with women it's about the same (21 percent France; 20 percent U.S.). And a lot of those French female smokers are young women in their teens and twenties who have not found their equilibrium in relation to a lot of things, just like in America. Is obesity in America related to less smoking? Hardly. One might argue if one substitutes a cigarette for a snack, you might not get fat. But it doesn't appear smoking or non-smoking women in America are skipping their snacks or full plates, and women in France don't snack. So, I don't see the connection. I'm not a scientist, but while it's plausible that one oral gratification might be substituted for another if you don't have a properly cultivated relation to food, the transference isn't all that simple and smoking isn't the proven vehicle by any means. But as I tell in the book, I have known women who ate badly because they were smokers: smoking deadens the taste buds, and one eats more to get the same taste pleasure, often with a greater taste for fats. Q. 6. Are the recipes in your book what you would term easy or time consuming, with common ingredients or specialty items? - John Wilson, Omak, Wash. A. Most are easy and cheap - a lot of bang for your buck. I made sure of that, and many reviews have commented on the simple, delicious recipes. Simple fresh ingredients are easy to whip into something delicious. The point is not to buy second-rate. Sure, in towns and cities in France there are more open markets (the food is fresher and cheaper) and green markets are less common in America, but there are amazing things to be found in all sorts of specialty stores and nowadays in good supermarkets. If you embrace what I say in the book, you'll appreciate that you are your own master and substitutions are welcomed. The book is currently scheduled for 22 foreign language editions, and I just read some queries from a translator asking for substitutions or at least alternatives to some of the fish and vegetables I recommend that just are not common in that part of the world. No problem. Go for what's available and good. I do have a few luxury items. In that category there are fingerling potatoes with caviar. They make brilliant hors d'oeuvres, but are not in everyone's budget, of course, though they could be for a very special occasion since you don't need much. So I always include a more affordable alternative (e.g., chopped chives instead of caviar or fish roe that's increasingly available and good across America). I do have a few recipes that take time - a lot of time, and that's entirely on purpose, like baking bread or making your own croissants. Obviously these are weekend projects, and more serious commitments, but they unlock certain experiences you just can't enjoy any other way. (If you've never baked your own bread, you don't know what you're missing!) Q. 7. How do French women and men deal with sweets, pastries, desserts? How often do they eat them and in what quantities? - Steve Baima, Warren, Mass. A. As in every culture, sweet tooths vary a lot. I've always had a big one, and as I tell it was my downfall during my adolescence. A well-trained French palate has a measured appreciation of sweets. A rich dessert rarely follows a rich meal, after which a sorbet or a wonderful ripe piece of fruit would be more pleasantly satisfying. (Those "napoleons," that the French call millefeuilles, are more for occasional indulgence, such as an afternoon tea.) When a more desserty dessert is served, a French woman usually contents herself with three fork-fulls, since taste satisfaction is generally to be found in the first few bites. (At that point in the meal, you can't say you're eating out of hunger! Practice a little restraint, and you don't need to deprive yourself of anything.) Two more things I note about desserts in America versus France. In America, the desserts are sweeter with much more sugar generally added. If you bake at home, trying cutting back the sugar in the recipes in half. I regularly do that and find the desserts more to my taste and certainly less cloying. And, of course, American desserts win the gold medal for size ... jumbo size. My husband and I don't skip the pleasure of a good dessert but generally pick one for two when we dine out. Q. 8. How do you adapt your eating habits to accommodate a changing metabolic rate as you age? - Diana Buck, Pittsburgh, Pa. A. You are talking to the right person, Diana. I certainly can't handle the wine or desserts that I could in my twenties. In the book I describe the various life phases when one should stop and take stock, make small adjustments and compensations. But regardless of age, the basic principle is always the same: small changes, taking from Peter to pay Paul. It's easy to do slight portion reductions as we age because older stomachs tend to be more delicate. You don't need to cut out entirely anything you enjoy as long as you remain open to cutting back slightly (this is the essence of my "fool yourself" advice - small changes add up but don't have to put a dent in our enjoyment). Also, one shouldn't accept metabolic decline as inevitable if we can remain active. Try increasing your walk time, and if you are past 40 you must do some strength training with dumbbells. (Unless we resist we naturally lose muscle mass as we age, and the less muscle mass you have the lower your metabolism). Q. 9. An etiquette question: why do the French never place their bread directly on the dinner plate? Is there some historical reason for this? - Brooks Doherty, Minneapolis, Minn. A. It seems to me more gastronomic aesthetics than etiquette. As a rule, the plate is the frame, so to speak, for the course one is eating - a space surrounding a moderate portion arranged as attractively as possible in the center. A French plate is never laden with food on the edge, which is where some non-Frenchwoman would likely place bread. We don't find anything gauche about laying one's bread on the tablecloth. Indeed, bread is such a tactile part of French lives that people are always carrying baguettes and breaking off pieces by hand. It's French finger food. Only in the most formal settings would a bread plate be de rigueur. So, at a bistro you'd get a bread basket and no bread plate and at a fancy haute-cuisine restaurant, you'd get a plate that a waiter comes around and places bread on during the meal, often different breads with different courses. Q. 10. How to win a French woman's heart? - Wil, New York A. I love your question. It seems to me you have to start by finding a French woman. France isn't a bad place to start. They have a lot of single French women, and the food isn't bad, either. Of course, you can frequent places in the U.S. that attract French women (forget gyms) - and there are many around the country. You write from New York, which certainly has the greatest number, but I'll leave it to you to figure this all out. But assuming you have found the woman of your dreams, then there's the inner her you must win. Speaking now as a French woman, let me say that since we cultivate joie de vivre showing an appreciation for that is the key. Respect and enhance the enjoyment she derives using her senses in tiny thoughtful ways - some flowers for no reason, a divine piece of chocolate left for her to find with a sweet note. Champagne is great. All the old clich?sthey became clich?s because they work and are used again and again. And be sure to be open to the pleasure of the senses yourself. American men can be so joylessly pragmatic sometimes and short of spontaneity, delight in the moment. Above all make her laugh, and that applies to all women the world over. References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/books/review/06REEDL.html ----------------- Like Champagne for Chocolate http://query.nytimes.com/search/article-printpage.html?res=9C0CE4DC173BF935A35751C0A9639C8B63 February 6, 2005 By Julia Reed FRENCH WOMEN DON'T GET FAT By Mireille Guiliano. 263 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $22. When I was 15, I studied in France, at the University of Strasbourg, for six weeks. On weekdays, my fellow American students and I ate lunch in the school cafeteria and discovered the wonders of braised rabbit and coq au vin, followed always by an apricot tart or napoleon (my first ever!) at the nearby patisserie. On weekends we toured the country by train, fortified by bread and (real!) cheese, along with copious amounts of cheap red wine. Already weight-obsessed, I was sure I'd put on at least 10 pounds. But when I stepped off the plane, the jaws of my waiting parents and my best friend literally dropped. It turns out I'd lost 10 pounds -- I'm not sure I've looked as good since. Mireille Guiliano had quite a different teenage experience abroad. As an 18-year-old from a small town in eastern France, she spent a year as an exchange student in the well-to-do Boston suburb of Weston, Mass., where she discovered the distinctly American joys of bagels, brownies and chocolate chip cookies and gained 20 pounds. When her own parents met her ocean liner in Le Havre, they were as stunned as mine were, but for a different reason -- her father told her she looked like a sack of potatoes. ''I could not have imagined anything more hurtful,'' she writes. ''And to this day the sting has not been topped.'' Never fear -- Guiliano's story has a happy ending. After a few miserable months during which she gains more weight, cries herself to sleep and hurries past mirrors clothed in shapeless flannel shifts, her mother brings in the family doctor, a k a ''Dr. Miracle.'' He detoxes her with leek broth for a weekend, teaches her to become a master of both her ''willpower'' and her ''pleasures,'' and supplies her with recipes, including one for apple tart without the dough. She learns to love walking, finds her ''equilibrium'' and goes on to become C.E.O. of Clicquot Inc. and a director of Champagne Veuve Clicquot. Most remarkably, despite the fact that she dines out 300 times a year and enjoys two- and three-course meals for lunch and dinner every day -- always accompanied by a glass of Champagne -- she has remained thin. Guiliano recommends Dr. Miracle's plan as the French way, but it is not unlike the advice that American nutritionists on Web sites and at spas and clinics across the country dispense every day. It is exactly the advice I got last year at Dallas's Cooper Clinic during my annual physical: if you want a glass of wine with dinner, don't eat the bread or skip the baked potato. Do some aerobic exercise; if you're over 40, lift weights. Keep a food diary and cut out the processed junk. Slowly changing your eating habits is far more effective than any crash diet. You don't have to deprive yourself if you learn to make trade-offs. And on and on. Somehow, though, these sensible stratagems are more palatable coming from Guiliano, who was once fat herself, and who now happily lives in America, where she first fell victim to our bad habits. She knows we eat too fast in front of the TV or with newspaper in hand, while French women make a ritual out of every meal. She knows we eat portions that are too big and food that is too bland. French women, on the other hand, stress flavor and variety over quantity and, therefore, are more satisfied with less. (Bland food and too much of one kind, a big bowl of pasta for example, breeds boredom, which leads you to alleviate it by eating more.) She knows our tendency to gorge ourselves on Snickers bars rather than savoring a single piece of fine dark chocolate. French women eat slowly and ''with all five senses.'' Indeed, much is made of the superiority of French women in all things, from chewing to ''using the same scarf to create a different effect'' to ''preserving spark and mystery'' in long-term relationships. Apparently, they're even better at being happy -- ''the French woman understands intuitively that one does not laugh because one is happy; one is happy because one laughs.'' This gets a tad tiresome, but I forgive Guiliano her patriotic fervor and her endless aphorisms because she is on to something. After all, I lost 10 pounds by walking off my daily pastry and eating small portions of once exotic dishes (at the university cafeteria they never filled your plate). Also, who can blame her for branding? If a lot of what she dispenses is universally sound advice with a French label, she's smart to apply it. We may profess to despise her compatriots in all their arrogance, but secretly we still find Paris far sexier than South Beach. I think our problem with the French has always been jealousy. We have an inferiority complex, at least stylewise. French women can do more with a scarf. We wish we had their innate chic, their effortless discipline, their easy appreciation of all things sensual -- their impossible thinness. When I begged my parents to send me abroad, it was not to, say, Germany that I wished to go. Desperate to be sophisticated, it was French that I wanted to learn, France that I wanted to know. (Now of course, I wish I'd studied the far more useful Spanish.) Despite all our achievements in what used to be the exclusively French provinces of fashion, food and wine, the real milestones for many of us remain our first Chanel suit, our first sip of P?trus or Ch?teau d'Yquem, our first time at La Grenouille or La Tour d'Argent. And then there is the fact that while close to two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight, French women really don't get fat. The reason behind that most enviable difference, says Guiliano, is that ''French women take pleasure in staying thin by eating well, while American women see it as a conflict and obsess over it.'' Put another way, ''French women typically think about good things to eat. American women typically worry about bad things to eat.'' She says she is constantly appalled that American cocktail parties are filled with chatter about diets, a subject that shouldn't be deemed proper conversation. She says eating in America has become ''controversial behavior'' and that our obsession with weight is growing into nothing less than a ''psychosis'' that she believes adds stress ''to our already stressful way of life,'' which is ''fast erasing the simple values of pleasure.'' She urges us to relax. Walk to the market, breathe in the fresh herbs, cook a good dinner, have a glass of wine or champagne (preferably Veuve Clicquot). Just sip it slowly (she makes hers last through a meal). She rejects the ''American rule'' of ''no pain, no gain'' and describes exercise machines as a ''vestige of Puritanism: instruments of public self-flagellation to make up for private sins of couch riding and overeating.'' By all means go to the gym if you really love it, she says. Otherwise take the stairs and pick up some weights in the privacy of your own home. She finds walking an indulgence that allows time for ''freedom of thought,'' and says French women walk an average of three times as much as American women do. She proudly reports that during the 2003 blackout she easily made it past the younger people in her building who were huffing and puffing on the stairs. Sometimes these ''simple values'' seem perhaps too simple. Many of us need the discipline of the gym and don't have time to stroll to the open-air market (which probably doesn't exist where we live) or set a proper table twice a day. My own early lessons in the civilized life sadly didn't take. The summer I returned from France, a McDonald's opened in our town and a Big Mac suddenly seemed as exotic as a ni?oise salad. I failed miserably at what Guiliano calls ''recasting,'' emphasizing quality over quantity in both meals and exercise. But, armed with her book, I am willing to try again. There is no scientific ''food plan,'' just suggestions and seemingly indulgent recipes, including one for fingerling potatoes and caviar. Guiliano reminds us that a half-dozen oysters contain only 60 or 70 calories, that soups fill you up and supply much-needed water to your body (''The theory goes that the French, who eat soup up to five times a week for dinner, eat better and less.'') Her mother's ''soupe aux l?gumes'' is worth the price of the book alone, but I am less sure about her own ''Chicken au Champagne,'' which requires you to pour a cup of champagne over some chicken breasts and then broil them. After tasting one, I can say with certainty that I'd rather have the Champagne in the glass and that I would definitely not serve the chicken to company along with, as she suggests, brown rice and mushrooms. I'm also not entirely sure about Dr. Miracle's apple ''tart'' with its cabbage leaf ''pastry'' (not for eating, necessarily, but ''for presentation''). Still, sans cabbage leaf, it's a good idea, and her snapper with almonds is good full stop, as is the delicious tagliatelle with lemon. Guiliano ends the book with a list of more observations about French women. They don't weigh themselves, they don't snack all the time, they eat more fruit but would never give up their bread or other carbs. They dress to take out the garbage, they understand the importance of a good haircut and expensive perfume, they know love is slimming. Part of me wanted to throw the book across the room, while the other part was memorizing the list. I actually found myself resolving to learn to eat with all five senses -- or at least to try to turn off ''All My Children'' during lunch breaks. I did not even throw up when I got to the line that encouraged me to savor ''all the little things that make each day a miracle,'' so that I may not need a shot of Scotch (French women don't drink hard liquor) or a quart of Haagen-Dazs to get me over the top. At the very least, we would all do ourselves a favor to make like Colette, for whom the table was ''a date with love and friendship '' instead of the root of all evil. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:56:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:56:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Michael Kinsley: (Dowd) He Wrote, She Wrote Message-ID: He Wrote, She Wrote http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50365-2005Mar19 By Michael Kinsley Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page B07 When the New York Times anointed Maureen Dowd as a columnist nine years ago, I gave her some terrible advice. I said, "You've got to write boy stuff. The future of NATO, campaign spending reform. Throw weights. Otherwise, they won't take you seriously." The term "throw weights" had been made famous by a Reagan-era official who said that women can't understand them -- whatever they are, or were. Dowd wisely ignored me and proceeded to reinvent the political column as a comedy of manners and a running commentary on the psychopathologies of power. It is the first real innovation in this tired literary form since Walter Lippmann. Eighty years ago, Lippmann developed the self-important style in which lunch with a VIP produces a judicious expression of concern by the columnist the next day about developments in danger of being overlooked. Most of today's columns are still variations and corruptions of this formula. But Dowd is different, and she is the most influential columnist of our time. So the question is: Did it have to be a girl? Or could a boy have built an op-ed career out of feelings and motives and all that ick? The question is pressing because of the current controversy over the number of women's bylines on newspaper opinion pages. (Only one in five or so at the Los Angeles Times and even fewer at the Other Times and The Washington Post.) As the guy in charge of opinion at the L.A. Times, I have endured some horrendous insults, such as being compared to the president of Harvard University. Harvard President Lawrence Summers is in trouble for suggesting that inherent differences between men and women may be part of the reason so few women are at the scholarly peaks of fields such as math and science. To be a university president, you are supposed to reject any such notion out of hand. In the op-ed controversy, by contrast, talk of innate differences between men and women is not merely permissible, it is the very justification offered by some women (and deeply resented by others) for demanding more women's bylines. Dowd declares a girlish reluctance to be mean, which she says she overcame, but she urges her sisters to play the boys' game with the boys. The linguist Deborah Tannen pretty much shares Dowd's analysis, but says women shouldn't have to adapt to the peacocky political culture created by men; the culture should learn from and adapt to women. Meanwhile Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate, observes that this discussion has been all-girls so far, and she demands that the boys jump right in. This is a terrifying invitation. Even the most testosteronic male commentator might be excused for deciding that developments in Uzbekistan really require his insights this week. In such circumstances, I always ask myself, "What would the president of Harvard do?" So I proceed. It is hard to think of a hiring decision in which sex or race ought to matter less than in choosing a professor of mathematics. That makes it a good focus for a discussion of meritocracy, reverse discrimination, innate abilities, cultural prejudice and so on. It's too bad that Harvard seems incapable of having -- or at least allowing its president to participate in -- such a discussion. By contrast, there cannot be many places where "diversity" is less a euphemism for reverse discrimination and more a common-sense business requirement than on a newspaper op-ed page. Diversity of voices, experiences and sensibilities is not about fairness to writers. It is about serving up a good meal for readers. Sure, it's possible that a man might have come up with the Maureen Dowd formula that has so enriched the New York Times op-ed page. But in this busy world, diversity in the traditional categories of ethnicity and gender is a sensible, efficient shortcut. Everyone involved should be trying harder, including me. Newspaper opinion sections also want diversity of political views. In recent years, that, frankly, has led to reverse discrimination in favor of conservatives. And an unpleasant reality is that each type of diversity is at war with the others. If pressure for more women succeeds -- as it will -- there will be fewer black voices, fewer Latinos and so on. Why should this be so? Aren't there black women and conservative Latinos? Of course there are. There may even be a wonderfully articulate disabled Latino gay conservative who is undiscovered because she is outside the comfortable old-boy network. But there probably aren't two. It's not a question of effort, it's mathematics. Each variable added to the equation subverts efforts to maximize all the other variables. You can seek out the best Japanese restaurant in town, or the best steakhouse. But if you want a Japanese steakhouse, you will have to settle for Benihana's of Tokyo. Or something like that. Where is that Harvard math professor when you need her? The writer is editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:56:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:56:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LAT: Michael Shermer: Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science Message-ID: Michael Shermer: Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer30mar30,0,7924556,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions Michael Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of "Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown" (Times Books, 2005). March 30, 2005 According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force -- an intelligent designer. ID theorists argue that because such design can be inferred through the methods of science, IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that. The evolution-creation legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes "monkey" trial, over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy caused textbook publishers and state boards of education to cease teaching evolution -- until the Soviets launched Sputnik in the late 1950s and the United States realized it was falling behind in the sciences. Creationists responded by passing equal-time laws that required the teaching of both creationism and evolution, a strategy defeated in a 1968 Arkansas trial that found that such a law attempted to "establish religion" in a public school and was therefore unconstitutional. This led to new equal-time laws covering "creation science" and "evolution science." In 1987, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 7 to 2, said teaching creation science "impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind." This history explains why proponents of intelligent design are careful to never specify the true, religious nature of their theory and to insist that what they are doing is science. For example, leading ID scholar William Dembski wrote in his 2003 book, "The Design Revolution": "Intelligent design is a strictly scientific theory devoid of religious commitments. Whereas the creator underlying scientific creationism conforms to a strict, literalist interpretation of the Bible, the designer underlying intelligent design need not even be a deity." But let's be clear: Intelligent-design theory is not science. The proof is in the pudding. Scientists, including scientists who are Christians, do not use IDT when they do science because it offers nothing in the way of testable hypotheses. Lee Anne Chaney, professor of biology at Whitworth College, a Christian institution, wrote in a 1995 article: "As a Christian, part of my belief system is that God is ultimately responsible. But as a biologist, I need to look at the evidence.... I don't think intelligent design is very helpful because it does not provide things that are refutable -- there is no way in the world you can show it's not true. Drawing inferences about the deity does not seem to me to be the function of science because it's very subjective." Intelligent-design theory lacks, for instance, a hypothesis of the mechanics of the design, something akin to natural selection in evolution. Natural selection can and has been observed and tested, and Charles Darwin's theory has been refined. Intelligent-design theorists admit the difference, at least among themselves. Here is ID proponent Paul Nelson, writing last year in Touchstone, a Christian magazine: "Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity' -- but, as yet, no general theory of biological design." If intelligent design is not science, then what is it? One of its originators, Phillip Johnson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article: "The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of God versus the nonexistence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.' " On March 9, I debated ID scholar Stephen Meyer at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. After two hours of debate over the scientific merits (or lack thereof) of IDT, Meyer admitted in the question-and-answer period that he thinks that the intelligent designer is the Judeo-Christian God and that suboptimal designs and deadly diseases are not examples of an unintelligent or malevolent designer, but instead were caused by "the fall" in the Garden of Eden. Dembski has also told me privately that he believes the intelligent designer is the God of Abraham. The term "intelligent design" is nothing more than a linguistic place-filler for something unexplained by science. It is saying, in essence, that if there is no natural explanation for X, then the explanation must be a supernatural one. Proponents of intelligent design cannot imagine, for example, how the bacterial flagellum (such as the little tail that propels sperm cells) could have evolved; ergo, they conclude, it was intelligently designed. But saying "intelligent design did it" does not explain anything. Scientists would want to know how and when ID did it, and what forces ID used. In fact, invoking intelligent design as God's place-filler can only result in the naturalization of the deity. God becomes just another part of the natural world, and thereby loses the transcendent mystery and divinity that define the boundary between religion and science. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:56:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:56:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Polish Seminary Student and the Jewish Girl He Saved Message-ID: The New York Times > International > International Special > The Polish Seminary Student and the Jewish Girl He Saved http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/international/worldspecial2/06krakow.html By [1]ROGER COHEN International Herald Tribune Here is a family story of Pope John Paul II, an intimate tale of his humanity. During the summer of 1942, two women in Krakow, Poland, were denounced as Jews, taken to the city's prison, held there for a few months and then sent to the Belzec death camp, where in October they were killed in primitive Nazi gas chambers by carbon monoxide from diesel engines. Their names were Frimeta Gelband and Salomea Zierer; they were sisters. As it happens, Frimeta was my wife's grandmother. Salomea - known as Salla - had two daughters, one of whom survived the war and one of whom did not. The elder of these daughters was Edith Zierer. In January 1945, at age 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death. Separated from her family, unaware that her mother had been killed by the Germans, she could scarcely walk. But walk she did, to a train station, where she climbed onto a coal wagon. The train moved slowly, the wind cut through her. When the cold became too much to bear, she got down at a village called Jedrzejow. In a corner of the station, she sat. Nobody looked at her, a girl in the striped and numbered uniform of a prisoner, late in a terrible war. Unable to move, Edith waited. Death was approaching, but a young man approached first, "very good looking," as she recalled, and vigorous. He wore a long robe and appeared to be a priest. "Why are you here?" he asked. "What are you doing?" Edith said she was trying to get to Krakow to find her parents. The man disappeared. He came back with a cup of tea. Edith drank. He said he could help her get to Krakow. Again the mysterious benefactor went away, returning with bread and cheese. They talked about the advancing Soviet Army. Edith said she believed that her parents and younger sister, Judith, were alive. "Try to stand," the man said. Edith tried and failed. He carried her to another village, where he put her in the cattle car of a train bound for Krakow. Another family was there. The man got in beside Edith, covered her with his cloak and made a small fire. His name, he told Edith, was Karol Wojtyla. Although she took him for a priest, he was still a seminarian who would not be ordained until the next year. Thirty-three more years would pass before he became Pope John Paul II and embarked on a papacy that would help break the Communist hold on Central Europe and so transform the world. What moved this young seminarian to save the life of a lost Jewish girl cannot be known. But it is clear that his was an act of humanity made as the two great mass movements of the 20th century, the twin totalitarianisms of Fascism and Communism, bore down on his nation, Poland. Here were two people in a ravaged land, a 24-year-old Catholic and a 13-year-old Jew. The future pope had already lost his mother, father and brother. Edith, although she did not know it yet, had already lost her mother at Belzec, her father at Maidanek and her little sister at Auschwitz. They could not have been more alone. Pope John Paul II is widely viewed as having been a man of unshakable convictions that some found old-fashioned or rigid. But perhaps he offered his truth with the same simplicity and directness he showed in proffering tea and bread and shelter from cold to an abandoned Jewish girl in 1945, when nobody was watching. It was based in the belief that, as he once put it, "a degradation, indeed a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human being" was at the root of the mass movements of the 20th century, Communism and Fascism. Stalin once contemptuously asked, "How many divisions has the pope?" Starting with his 1979 visit to Poland, John Paul gave an answer. Perhaps the strength that enabled him to play a central role in ending Communism and the strength that led him to save Edith Zierer did not differ fundamentally. Like his healing ecumenism, those acts required the courage born of a core certitude. Edith fled from Karol Wojtyla when they arrived at Krakow in 1945. The family on the train, also Jews, had warned her that he might take her off to "the cloisters." She recalls him calling out, "Edyta, Edyta!" - the Polish form of her name - as she hid behind large containers of milk. But hiding was not forgetting. She wrote his name in a diary, her savior, and in 1978, when she read in a copy of Paris-Match that he had become pope, she broke into tears. By then Edith Zierer was in Haifa, Israel, where she now lives. Letters to him went unanswered. But at last, in 1997, she received a letter from the Vatican in which the pope recalled their meeting. A year later they met again at the Vatican. Edith thanked the pope for saving her. He put one hand on her head, another hand in hers, and blessed her. As she parted, he said, "Come back, my child." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ROGER%20COHEN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ROGER%20COHEN&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 21:57:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:57:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Business Week: (Neuroeconomics) Why Logic Often Takes A Backseat Message-ID: Why Logic Often Takes A Backseat http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_13/b3926099_mz057.htm The study of neuroeconomics may topple the notion of rational decision-making The National Hockey League and its players wrangle over a salary cap. The impasse causes the season to be canceled. Everybody loses. What went wrong? According to the new science of neuroeconomics, the explanation might lie inside the brains of the negotiators. Not in the prefrontal cortex, where people rationally weigh pros and cons, but deep inside, where powerful emotions arise. Brain scans show that when people feel they're being treated unfairly, a small area called the anterior insula lights up, engendering the same disgust that people get from, say, smelling a skunk. That overwhelms the deliberations of the prefrontal cortex. With primitive brain functions so powerful, it's no wonder that economic transactions often go awry. "In some ways, modern economic life for humans is like a monkey driving a car," says Colin F. Camerer, an economist at California Institute of Technology. Until recently, economists contented themselves with observing people from the outside. Now, Camerer and others, teaming up with psychologists and neuroscientists, are using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to look inside the skull. It's like watching Congress debate instead of inferring what's going on by reading the laws that get passed. Neuroeconomics, while still regarded skeptically by mainstream economists, could be the next big thing in the field. It promises to put economics on a firmer footing by describing people as they really are, not as some oversimplified mathematical model would have them be. Eventually it could help economists design incentives that gently guide people toward making decisions that are in their long-term best interests in everything from labor negotiations to diets to 401(k) plans. Says Harvard University economist David I. Laibson, another leading researcher: "To understand the real foundations of our behavior and our choices, we need to get inside the black box." A GRAB BAG OF ANOMALIES? Neuroeconomics could also give economics an alternative theoretical framework. Since the early 1900s, economists have mainly assumed that people have a stable and consistent set of preferences that they try to satisfy. When faced with an apparently illogical outcome -- such as the cancellation of the hockey season -- they try to explain it as the result of a reasoned decision process. Such top economists as Gary S. Becker, Milton Friedman, and Robert E. Lucas Jr., all Nobel prize winners, have argued that discrimination, unemployment, and stock market gyrations can have rational origins. In recent years, the assumption of rationality has taken some hard shots as economists have shown that people often lack self-control, are shortsighted, and overreact to the fear of losses. But to date, these attacks on rationality -- under the broad heading of "behavioral economics" -- have seemed more like a grab bag of anomalies than a consistent alternative theory. So the assumption of rationality survives. By linking economic behavior to brain activity, however, neuroeconomics may finally supply the model that knocks mainstream economics off its throne. The new theory should fit better with reality, but it won't be as mathematically clean -- because the brain is a confusing place, with different parts handling different jobs. Says Camerer: "You are forced to think about a brain which has many somewhat modular circuits." One of the most fruitful avenues of neuro research is "time inconsistency." When people decide about the distant future, they're roughly as rational as economic textbooks assume. But when faced with a choice of whether to consume something now or delay gratification, they can be as impulsive as chimps. Harvard's Laibson coined "quasi-hyperbolic discounting" to describe the behavior, but that was just a label, not an explanation. So Laibson and others scanned people inside MRI machines and discovered two parts of the brain operating in radically different ways. For decisions about the far-off future, the prefrontal cortex takes a long-term perspective. But for decisions such as whether to buy another chocolate bar right now, the limbic system takes over and demands immediate gratification. Last year the journal Science published the research by Laibson, Princeton University neuroscientists Samuel M. McClure and Jonathan D. Cohen, and Carnegie-Mellon University economist George Loewenstein. How does it help to know that you're literally "of two minds"? You could arrange your affairs to make sure that your rational brain stays in control -- for example, by committing now to saving a certain percentage of your paycheck each month in the future. Many people already do that. Trouble is, long-term commitments can be too rigid if circumstances change. Ideally, you'd like to wait to commit to a savings plan until you see whether you can afford it -- but not wait so long that your animal brain takes over and you lose the will to save. The new research could help get that balance right. A key tenet of standard economics is that making people happy is a simple matter of giving them more of what they like. But neuroscience shows that's not true. The brain's striatum quickly gets used to new stimuli and expects them to continue. People are on a treadmill in which only unexpected pleasures can make them happier. That explains why happiness of people in rich countries hasn't increased despite higher living standards. Neuroeconomics also challenges the notion that emotions can only corrupt economic decision-making. Indeed, emotions grab people's attention and motivate them to focus their rational brains on the issue at hand, says Antonio R. Damasio, a University of Iowa College of Medicine neurologist who studies brain-damaged patients. In his writings, he says that people who feel no emotions are bad at making decisions. The most controversial aspect of neuroeconomics is what to do with its findings. Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank favors taxation of conspicuous consumption, arguing that flashy spending simply raises expectations, making the rich no happier and squeezing the middle class. Laibson, in contrast, isn't willing to go much further than using neuroeconomics to, say, improve the default choices in 401(k)s. Neuroeconomics has its skeptics. Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, a leading behavioral economist, argues that it has yet to produce a major, surprising finding. He says he prefers to leave brain research to the neuroscientists. But he adds: "I am a big believer in letting all flowers bloom." Even believers in neuroeconomics aren't sure just how far to take it. Should economic policy satisfy the farsighted prefrontal cortex? Or should it sometimes indulge the impulsive limbic system? By peering into the brain, economists are making discoveries that will keep them arguing for years to come. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:35:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:35:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Victor Davis Hanson: Countryside character Message-ID: The Times Literary Supplement, 4.6.25 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2107950&window_type=print RURAL ATHENS UNDER THE DEMOCRACY. Nicholas F. Jones. 330pp. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. $59.95; distributed in the UK by Plymbridge. ?42. - 0 8122 3774 9. A fellow graduate student in 1979 once warned me that it seemed silly to have something as mundane as "agriculture" in the title of a doctoral dissertation connected with a field as elevated as Ancient Greek history. Intrigued by this observation, I almost immediately discovered that, indeed, at that time there was not a single book in English with a title having anything to do with Ancient Greek agriculture - at least not since the appearance sixty years earlier, in 1921, of W. E. Heitland's fascinating Agricola: A study of agriculture and rustic life in the Graeco-Roman world from the point of view of labour. That neglect is hardly the case now. Since 1980, dozens of books in Classics have appeared on Ancient Greek rural life, agricultural productivity, the sociology of peasants, farmers and rustics, and the technology and science of grain, olive and vine production. The novel archaeological surveys of the Greek countryside - inaugurated and promoted by William MacDonald, Michael Jameson, Anthony Snodgrass, Robin Osborne and others - have helped to swell this interest. From published examinations of the chora of ancient Messenia, the Argolid, Boeotia and many of the Aegean Islands, rural carrying capacity, demography and ecology began to receive the attention and resources once reserved for temple construction, fifth-century Athenian inscriptions and red-figure vase painting. Comparative anthropology, the widespread use of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, which allowed complete and almost instantaneous word retrieval of rare Greek vocabulary, and the interest of comparative agriculturalists and sociologists perhaps also explained this renaissance in rural studies. There was also something to the voguish idea of "otherness" in the 1990s made popular by literary theory and the new social history. Perhaps rural people - just as slaves, women, foreigners and the poor - had not received ample attention from philologically rooted old fogies who had privileged the rich culture of the elite citizen male over the less prominent people in the shadows of polis life. But mostly the belated attention to the countryside was based on long-overdue common sense: if around 80-90 per cent of the Ancient Greek population were either rural dwellers, or at least directly engaged in the production of food, then to grasp the essence of the classical city-state it was logical to learn who they were and what they actually did. In any case, Nicholas F. Jones's welcome new study of rural life in classical Athens, Rural Athens under the Democracy, draws heavily on such scholarship to advance what he says is a mostly new thesis, "the distinctiveness of rural Athens". By that rather vague phrase, Jones means the "detection and analysis of the marginalized Other or, more abstractly put, alterity". And he elaborates further: "Differences of status or order, class, gender, occupation, and so on may all give rise to the perception of Otherness by the dominant center, but not until very recently has the study of alterity approached what I will argue was still another major divide (and one all the more consequential because it will have sundered the citizen body) - that between town and country". Accordingly, our Ancient Greek rustics have been neither given proper attention nor appreciated on their own merits - a striking scholarly omission. Most of Jones's literary evidence about rural folk is not new, but rather a collation of earlier scholars' citations from less well-known Greek authors the fourth-century orators, the natural histories of Theophrastus, fragments from the comic poets, and later compilers of the Roman era writing in Greek. But to that corpus of now often sifted quotations, Jones, to his credit, adds a number of neglected contemporary Attic inscriptions - critical documents on stone dealing with honorific decrees, sacred calendars, inventories and sacrificial rites to emphasize how much Athenian life was shaped by rural people and how little we have heretofore noticed. In a nutshell, Jones attempts to confirm that the majority of Athenian citizens lived out in the countryside and participated in the civic life of rural satellite communities rather than travelling much to Athens itself. For example, the most popular Athenian religious festival, the Dionysia consisting of animal sacrifices, processions, announcements, dramatic productions, games, judgements and awards - not only originated as a rural fertility celebration, but remained so in most demes, despite our own sense that by the fifth century it was largely an urban showcase for the genius of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. Whereas most of Greek society elsewhere is usually characterized as conservative, by the fifth century Athens had developed into such a large urban community that its emerging dominant culture was beginning to seem antithetical both to its rural roots and to the contemporary world of Attic farmers, the now near-mythical georgoi of Athenian comedy. The latter's values grew increasingly at odds with the new sophistication and urbanity inside the walls. Indeed, the agrarian way of life was often romanticized by conservatives ("The farmers do all the work, no one else", we learn in Aristophanes' Peace), and thus used in a reactionary way by those who actually knew very little of Attica to critique the current direction of imperial Athens. The utopian philosophers - a Hippodamos, Plato, or Aristotle - embraced the idealism of traditional life and saw its morality now at odds with urban reality. But, as rarefied thinkers, they were also not quite sure how the citizenry could retain agrarian virtue as a counterweight to urban softness without giving up the often valuable sophistication of the city and risking a return to rustic boorishness. Sometimes, as Jones emphasizes, their solutions were simplistic, perhaps even nonsensical - each citizen should have both a rural and urban residence; cultural activities should be concentrated in a single urban centre; and special servile classes should take over the drudgery of farm work to allow the landowner the ease and time to lend his own pragmatism, one rooted to the soil, to the often adrift urban politics of the city. Throughout his argument Jones touches on some of the key social and economic controversies of the last twenty years of Hellenic rural studies. He rightly reaffirms that rural Greeks often resided on their farms, or at least in clusters of small homesteads, rather than commuting from nucleated centres to distant plots. This is an important distinction if one believes in a uniquely rural culture as the basis of the city-state. Agrarians probably owned average-size plots, lived on them, and acquired a slave or two to help with the intensive regimen of homestead agriculture. Thus classical Greeks were not exploited peasants, but could be better characterized as a chauvinistic and proud middle class that defined much of the original military, political and economic thinking of the polis - even as the urbanization of the fifth century continued to alter the demography and landscape of the Athenian State. Most rural Athenians, according to Jones, looked to their deme village rather than Athens per se to participate in civic life, suggesting that many urbanites may have known very little about their rural counterparts until the great evacuations of the Peloponnesian War between 431 and 425. Then, for the first time, hostile Spartans in the Attic countryside forced agrarians into the midst of city folk - a jarring development often reflected in contemporary Athenian wartime comedies. What Jones has written is sensible, well grounded in both literary and epigraphical evidence, and cognizant of a now vast secondary literature. Yet there are problems, both structural and thematic, with his presentation that will unfortunately deny the book both the readership and influence it might otherwise deserve. At the most basic, Rural Athens under the Democracy is haphazardly organized. Some chapters end with formal conclusions; others cease abruptly in media re. There is really no formal summation, but rather a final brief chapter, "Paradigms", that ends suddenly by discussing the trend of glorification of the country by denigrating the town. At times the prose is impenetrable, often as an unfortunate result of attempting to tap into the style and jargon of contemporary theory. Consider the last sentence of the book, which leaves us not invigorated, but exhausted - wanting less, not more, promised ancillary studies still to come: "So, in this case only implicitly, the rural is subject to a latently negative appraisal but rehabilitated by juxtaposing with it an even less acceptable sole alternative option". That final expression is unfortunately typical of the book as a whole. Often Jones conflates Athens with Greece. Thus we get subsections on Hesiod's very early Boeotian world on Mount Helicon, or the town planning of Hippodamos of Miletos, without enough careful warning about the degree to which such Panhellenic evidence reflects, is tangential to, or is at odds with, the peculiar situation of classical Athens. Indeed, since Athenian singularity is the entire point of the book, the problem and theme of Athenian exceptionalism should be discussed repeatedly. The result of that omission is that the reader does not quite appreciate the implications of Jones's own findings. After all, Athens was the most powerful, most democratic, and most culturally influential of all the some 1,500-2,000 city-states of classical Greece. For 200 years classical scholars have argued over why this was so. Was that exceptionalism a result of the historical fluke of great leaders like Cleisthenes, Themistocles and Pericles, an artefact from the amazing defence of Greece at Salamis, testament to the extremely large rural Attic hinterland (about 1,000 square miles), the cargo of incremental radicalization of the democracy throughout the fifth century that made Athens on the eve of the Peloponnesian War the most inclusive of any polis in the Greek world, the dividend of the rich silver mines in southern Attica, or a reflection of a vast overseas empire that encompassed well over 150 tribute-paying states? So we need to know the degree to which Jones's conclusions that Athens was a society in turmoil, not quite able to reconcile its urban future with its rural past, made it not only unique, but great - or, on the other hand, was unstable and headed for an inevitable late fourth-century breakdown. Or was its country/city paradox simply representative of almost all the other Hellenic fifth-century states, which remained mostly agricultural in nature? If what little we know about this vast shadow population in Attica was constructed by elite urbanites and thus is seen by us now only through the prism of a sophisticated and sometimes patronizing literature, can Jones at least speculate on the ramifications of his own theories and what they entail for our present understanding of both Greece and its most magnificent representation in fifth-century Athens? When we speak of "rural Athens", are we talking about a high culture's alternating romance and hostility to rural Athens as evidenced in literature, or - as I believe - a concrete and unique economic, cultural and political foundation of private property, consensual government, a sense of open markets, and rugged individualism forged by thousands of country folk. Many of these larger implications strangely seem to be of little interest to Jones. Consequently we are left with a radical, though aborted, thesis that many of the standard things we associate with an Athens of theatre and marble are somehow not the whole story. Quite simply, I wish Nicholas Jones had taught us how beneath the veneer of the Parthenon, Sophocles and the intellectual life of the symposium was the real hardwood of now invisible farmers and ordinary rural folk who in one way or another made possible "the glory that was Greece". From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:36:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:36:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Cracking the Secret Orchestral Codes Message-ID: Cracking the Secret Orchestral Codes http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/arts/music/13waki.html February 13, 2005 By DANIEL J. WAKIN THE curtain had fallen on opening night at the Metropolitan Opera's revival of its lavish production of "Turandot," and the cast was basking in applause. Some of that applause was coming from the musicians in the pit, who stood clapping or tapping their bows on music stands. But something was different here. Usually, the players are out of the door before the audience members, even beating them to the bus stop. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like a spontaneous show of appreciation for the cast; or maybe the conductor, Bertrand de Billy; or maybe Andrea Gruber, the Turandot, who recently made a comeback from an addiction to painkillers. "The orchestra was very fond of the conductor, and they were rallying around Gruber," said Ronald Arron, a violist in the orchestra that night last month. Appreciation, maybe, but spontaneous, no. As it turns out, it is tradition at the Met for the orchestra to stand and applaud the first performance of an opera during the season. "The deal is," Mr. Arron added, "for the first show of a run, the orchestra stays in the pit for the bows." It is partly to show appreciation of the singers but also for the benefit of the audience and the critics. From dress to choreographed movements and the courtly interplay between conductor and musicians, the classical music stage is rich in etiquette and sometimes hijinks that are not always obvious to the audience. Chronicling this tradition goes back to Hector Berlioz and his classic "Evenings With an Orchestra," a collection of essays dissecting the world of 19th-century orchestras and musical culture. As a lifelong concertgoer - even a sometime orchestra member - I had been aware of many of these practices. But in five months on the classical music beat, I have come to be amazed at their breadth and intricacy. Such traditions figure in the argument by some that classical music's popularity suffers from stuffiness, although plenty of musicians and fans welcome their sense of timelessness and refinement. "It's true, we do strange things," said Eric Wyrick, the concertmaster of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and a wry commentator on the subject. "Who knows why?" As concertmaster, Mr. Wyrick is in the thick of these rituals. With the orchestra seated, he comes out for a solo bow before the conductor. "I don't know why I have one," he said, "but there it is." The tradition may have its roots in the days before the invention of the modern conductor, when the first violinist or a keyboard player would lead the group. Before the concertmaster emerges, many American orchestra musicians are likely to straggle out, tune up and even practice that evening's parts. European orchestras tend to tune backstage and come out all together, as the London Symphony Orchestra did recently at Carnegie Hall. For some, the difference is striking. "We in Europe think the American habit of sitting onstage for half an hour is abominable," said Harold Clarkson, a former cellist who represents orchestras on tour. "In Europe it always causes comment." Onstage, the American concertmaster's nod to the principal oboist produces an A for the winds to tune to concert pitch, and another A for the strings. As Mr. Wyrick tells it, the conductor enters and shakes his hand. Sometimes they exchange half bows. "It's a very antique way of greeting," Mr. Wyrick said. "It's theatrical, except that musicians are not very theatrical-minded, so it comes off as stiff." Often a conductor signals for the orchestra to stand. Once, an imperious Russian conductor told Mr. Wyrick that the orchestra should rise on his entrance, a command that could rub proud musicians the wrong way. Mr. Wyrick said he defused the situation by saying, "Maestro, we will stand up when you ask us to stand, because we want to follow you right away." During performances, orchestra musicians have their own internal rules, too. Never turn around if someone makes a mistake. (New York Philharmonic musicians speak of one colleague who got into hot water for doing so.) Never turn a page if someone nearby has a solo. Signal praise with a slight shuffling of the feet. For a nearby string player who has a solo, a slight rubbing of the music with the edge of the bow does the trick. "Musicians have incredible peripheral vision," said Carl Schiebler, the personnel manager of the Philharmonic. "They're looking at their music and watching every nuance of the conductor. Any kind of unusual motion on the stage is noticed immediately by everybody." At the end of the concert, the orchestra takes its cue from the concertmaster about whether to rise again. Occasionally, when the orchestra feels particular warmth toward a conductor, it will show appreciation by declining to rise (again, at the concertmaster's cue). "There's nothing that will make the conductor any happier," said Mr. Arron, the Met violist. He paused and added, "Other than a good review." Mr. Wyrick said he has seen conductors steal bows by not asking the orchestra to rise and pretending to bask in their glow. Tradition also dictates that in certain pieces with major solos, the conductor will acknowledge individual players or sections by having them rise separately. "Some conductors will actually go into the orchestra and individually shake hands," said John Hagstrom, the second trumpeter of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. "Rostropovich is famous for kissing people," he said of the bearlike Russian cellist-turned-conductor Mstislav Rostropovich. "It's fun because he's Rostropovich. If some young conductor did that, you'd think he's nuts." In German and Austrian orchestras, the two players who share a music stand may shake hands at the end of a performance. "It's a very nice thing," Mr. Clarkson said. "You thank your stand partner for the evening." Japanese musicians, he added, will sometimes bow to each other. It is usually up to the concertmaster to decide when the applause has died down enough for the orchestra to leave the stage. Mr. Clarkson, who represents the Vienna Philharmonic on its American tours, pointed out other quirks about that orchestra, one of the world's most venerable. It hangs a spare instrument from a music stand in each violin section and in the viola section as a backup in case a string breaks. (Most string players keep an extra set of strings in their pockets, though occasionally you will see a hobbled player simply sitting and taking in the performance.) The Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera, for which the players do double duty, have their own collection of instruments, Mr. Clarkson explained. So the musicians often play instruments that are not their own and would have no problem switching to a spare. The Vienna Philharmonic even takes its own violin repairman on tour. Mr. Clarkson also points to a particularly endearing tradition that comes into play in Strauss's opera "Der Rosenkavalier." At the beginning of Act III, Baron Ochs asks the waiters at an inn - "beetles," he calls them - what they are doing. When they reply, "Serving, Your Grace," the orchestra sings along. Backstage traditions at some orchestras include decades-old poker games. At the Metropolitan Opera, the game extends back at least to 1940, said Craig Mumm, a violist in the orchestra. Hands are played during tour travel, breaks in rehearsal and, most famously, intermissions. "We really play fast," Mr. Mumm said. "Of course, we don't have time with intermission to be changing chips, so everything is done in cash." The games of choice are stud, draw, Omaha and the increasingly popular Texas hold'em. Stakes range from $2 to $8 a bet, he said. Some operas are better than others. The current "Turandot" production, for instance, has 38-minute and 29-minute intermissions. "That's a great poker opera," Mr. Mumm said. More genteelly, the Met players have a tradition of wishing one another a good season before the year's first performance. Another realm of tradition is dress. The New York Philharmonic's manual for musicians lays out the requirements in meticulous, carefully calibrated detail, lending support to the stuffiness argument. For main subscription concerts in the evening, men must wear formal black tails, formal black trousers, long-sleeved white shirts, white bow ties, white vests and black shoes. Black, floor-length, long-sleeved gowns or black skirts with long-sleeved black blouses are prescribed for women. No pants allowed. During matinees, men substitute black or midnight blue suits and long dark ties for the tails. Dresses for women can rise to midcalf; wide-leg "palazzo-style" pants are permitted. The formality diminishes for summer concerts. The code is white jacket and white short-sleeved shirt for men, black bow tie and black pants. When it is too hot for jackets, white long-sleeved shirts are allowed. Women must stay with the floor-length black skirt and long-sleeved white blouse. Still no pants. The dress code is the same for the men for the parks concerts, although women may wear short-sleeved white blouses, midcalf black skirts - and, finally, pants if they want. Some traditions are even musical. Different orchestras may play the "Air on the G String" from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3, the Allegretto from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony or the Barber Adagio to honor a dead colleague. Mr. Hagstrom spoke of another honor, usually for an orchestra member, that occurs at least at the Chicago Symphony. It is a spontaneous, improvised fanfare, often in the key of E flat, played by the brass section. The last time the Chicago brasses played the fanfare was during an evening last year honoring Adolph Herseth, the orchestra's legendary principal trumpeter, who had previously retired after a half-century in the orchestra, Mr. Hagstrom said. It is one of the rarest traditions, he said, and one of the most precious. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:37:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:37:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Course Correction: Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea Message-ID: The New York Times > Week in Review > Course Correction: Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/weekinreview/13numb.html February 13, 2005 COURSE CORRECTION Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea By GEOFFREY NUNBERG INFORMATION literacy seems to be a phrase whose time has come. Last month, the Educational Testing Service announced that it had developed a test to measure students' ability to evaluate online material. That suggested an official recognition that the millions spent to wire schools and universities is of little use unless students know how to retrieve useful information from the oceans of sludge on the Web. Clearly, "computer skills" are not enough. A teacher of Scandinavian literature at Berkeley recently described how students used the Web to research a paper on the Vikings: "They're Berkeley students, so, of course, they have the sense to restrict their searches to 'vikings NOT minnesota.' But they're perfectly willing to believe a Web site that describes early Viking settlements in Oklahoma." That trusting nature is partly a legacy of the print age. If we tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the things we read in library books, it is because they have been screened twice: first by a publisher, who decided they were worth printing, and then by the librarian who acquired them or the professor who requested their purchase. The Web imposes no such filters, even as it allows users to examine subjects people would never have gone to a traditional library to research, like buying a printer or a cheap airline ticket. Many adolescents use the Internet to get information about issues they are reluctant to discuss with parents or teachers, like sexual behavior, sexual identity, drug use or depression and suicide. But there is a paradox in the way people think of the Web. Everyone is aware that it teems with rotten information, but most people feel confident that they can sort out the dross. In a survey released last month by the Pew Project on the Internet and American Life, 87 percent of search-engine users said they found what they were looking for all or most of the time. That level of confidence may not be justified, particularly when a search for information requires judging a Web site's credibility. According to the Pew survey, only 38 percent of search-engine users were aware of the difference between unpaid and sponsored search results, and only 18 percent could tell which was which. A 2002 study directed by BJ Fogg, a Stanford psychologist, found that people tend to judge the credibility of a Web site by its appearance, rather than by checking who put it up and why. But it is much easier to produce a professional-looking Web site than a credible-looking book. The BBC was recently duped by a fake Dow Chemical site into broadcasting an interview with an environmentalist posing as a company spokesman. Then, too, search engines make it all too easy to filter information in ways that reinforce pre-existing biases. A Google search on "voting machine fraud," for example, will turn up popular Web pages that feature those words prominently, most of which will support the view that voting machines make election fraud easier; opposing sites won't tend to feature that language, so will be missed in the search. A researcher exploring the same topic in a library would be more likely to encounter diverse points of view. Up to now, librarians have taken the lead in developing information literacy standards and curriculums. There's a certain paradox in that, because a lot of people assumed that the digital age would require neither libraries nor librarians. But today, students have only limited contact with librarians, particularly because they do most of their online information-seeking at home or in the dorm. More important, leaving information literacy to librarians alone suggests a failure to understand the scope of the problem. Part of it lies in the word "literacy" itself. No other language has a word that covers such a broad swath of territory, from reading and writing skills, to a familiarity with culture, to elementary competence in subjects like math or geography. To many, "information literacy" suggests a set of basic ABC's that can be consigned to Information 101. One can list some basic principles of information literacy, like "Recognize an information need"; "Evaluate sources critically"; and "Check to see if the site sponsor is reputable." But those precepts are only of limited help with all that people now use online resources to do. Last fall, for example, I co-taught a graduate course on "Information Quality" at Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. The students were highly sophisticated about search engines and knew their way around the Web. But even they had difficulty with exercises that involved evaluating information in unfamiliar areas, like using the Web to decide which online degree program to recommend to a friend. Still, given more time, those students would have known where to go for more accurate maps of the territory they were exploring. Unlike most students, they knew that "what's out there" doesn't end with what comes up on Google. University librarians complain that students tend to confine their online research to Web searches, ignoring other resources that the libraries have access to, like old newspaper archives, map collections and census data. No less important, the students in our course would have known to use an even more basic technique: asking the right person. E-mail turns the Web into a vast digital help desk; user groups are teeming with people who will gladly explain the finer points of espresso machines or the history of English slang. But most people rarely think to make use of them. In the end, then, instruction in information literacy will have to pervade every level of education and every course in the curriculum, from university historians' use of collections of online slave narratives to middle-school home economics teachers showing their students where to find reliable nutrition information on the Web. Even then, it is true, most people will fall back on perfunctory techniques for finding and evaluating information online. As Professor Fogg observes, people tend to be "cognitive misers," relying on superficial cues whenever they can get away with it. Only when confronting a question that is personally important - a health problem, a major purchase - are most people motivated to dig deeper. But that is reason enough to make sure that people have the skills they will need. Geoffrey Nunberg, a Stanford linguist, is heard on NPR's "Fresh Air" and is the author of "Going Nucular" (PublicAffairs, 2004). From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:37:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:37:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Public Mission of State Colleges Is Endangered by Increasing Competition and Privatization, Report Says Message-ID: Public Mission of State Colleges Is Endangered by Increasing Competition and Privatization, Report Says News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.2.16 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005021603n.htm [45]By MICHELLE DIAMENT Increased competition among universities and trends toward privatization are threatening the public mission of state universities and colleges, according to a report scheduled for release today. The report, "Correcting Course: How We Can Restore the Ideals of Public Higher Education in a Market-Driven Era," was produced by the Futures Project, a five-year effort to examine the impact of market forces in higher education, and is derived in part from the project's final report. The new report identifies four areas of weakness in public higher education: rising costs and unaffordable tuition, limited need-based financial aid, the lack of a sufficient way to measure success, and an increase in the proportion of research funds coming from corporate rather than government sources. Lara Couturier, one of the authors of the report, said in an interview that several trends -- including increasing competiton from for-profit and online institutions -- have led to increasing autonomy for state universities and a market-based education system. The changes mean that universities are competing for two types of students: those who will increase an institution's ranking in U.S. News & World Report and those who can pay the full cost of their education. In the process, Ms. Couturier said, state universities are sacrificing their public purposes, like providing need-based aid and conducting research free from corporate influence. "We need to help states stop and have this conversation about what we want from higher education," she said. To get that dialogue started, the report includes recommendations for state lawmakers, colleges and universities, and the public. Lawmakers, for example, should define the benefits of higher education and focus on accountability, it says, while colleges and universities should focus on learning. The public, it says, must play an active role by staying informed and requesting information about institutions' performance. Kevin P. Reilly, president of the University of Wisconsin System, said administrators are ready to have a conversation like that. Moreover, he said, organizations like the American Council on Education, whose annual conference Mr. Reilly just attended, are actively working on the issue. "It always seems really easy to turn to higher education and cut because we have tuition," he said, referring to a budgeting approach taken by state lawmakers. "But what has happened as a result is this pricing out of lower-income students, and that's not something we can do long-term. I think we need to realize that education is good for the public good." The full text of the report is available on the Futures Project's [60]Web site (requires [61]Adobe Reader, available free). _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [62]Berkeley Law Dean Calls for Partial Privatization of His School (1/14/2005) * [63]Paying the Price for Tuition Increases (9/10/2004) * [64]U. of Virginia Unexpectedly Opens $3-Billion Campaign to Become a 'Private' Public University (6/25/2004) * [65]Led by Colorado, States Weigh New Approaches to Financing Colleges (3/26/2004) * [66]Accept More State Control or Go Private (12/19/2003) * [67]Study Notes Tensions Facing Public Colleges (10/18/2002) Opinion: * [68]Higher Education Isn't Meeting the Public's Needs (10/15/2004) * [69]Balancing State Control With Society's Needs (6/27/2003) * [70]Have We Lost the 'Public' in Higher Education? (5/30/2003) * [71]Tough Times for Colleges Demand Structural Changes ... (10/18/2002) * [72]... and a New Compact With Their States (10/18/2002) References 45. mailto:michelle.diament at chronicle.com 60. http://www.futuresproject.org/publications/Correcting_Course.pdf 61. http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html 62. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i19/19a02501.htm 63. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i03/03a02001.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i42/42a03302.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i29/29a02601.htm 66. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i17/17a02401.htm 67. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i08/08a02802.htm 68. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i08/08b00601.htm 69. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i42/42b02001.htm 70. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i38/38b00701.htm 71. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i08/08b01201.htm 72. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i08/08b01301.htm From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:39:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:39:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Philadelphia Hopes for a Lead in the Wireless Race Message-ID: Philadelphia Hopes for a Lead in the Wireless Race http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/technology/17wired.html February 17, 2005 By JAMES DAO PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 11 - If Mayor John F. Street has his way, by next year this 135-square-mile metropolis will become one gigantic wireless hot spot, offering every neighborhood high-speed access to the Web at below-market prices in what would be the largest experiment in municipal Internet service in the country. City officials envision a seamless mesh of broadband signals that will enable the police to download mug shots as they race to crime scenes in their patrol cars, allow truck drivers to maintain Internet access to inventories as they roam the city, and perhaps most important, let students and low-income residents get on the net. Experts say the Philadelphia model, if successful, could provide the tipping point for a nationwide movement to make broadband affordable and accessible in every municipality. From tiny St. Francis, Kan., to tech-savvy San Francisco, more than 50 local governments have already installed or are on the verge of creating municipal broadband systems for the public. But Philadelphia's plan has prompted a debate over who should provide the service, and whether government should compete with private industry, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas or low-income urban communities. Telecommunications and cable companies say that municipal Internet networks will not only inhibit private enterprise, but also result in poor service and wasted tax dollars. They have mounted major lobbying campaigns in several states to restrict or prohibit municipalities from establishing their own networks. "This is a growing trend, but an ominous and disturbing one," said Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and the author of a soon-to-be-released study criticizing the Philadelphia plan. "The last thing I'd want to see is broadband turned into a lazy public utility." Philadelphia officials say that will not happen here. Mr. Street has said he will try to raise corporate and foundation financing so the strapped city does not have to pay the network's $10 million startup costs. He also says the city will recruit private companies to help operate the system, asserting it will earn enough revenue to be self-sustaining. Though details of Mr. Street's plan are still being developed, the city expects to install 4,000 wireless antennas along lampposts across the city in the next 18 months, creating a network of broadband signals. City officials also hope to extend service into homes and businesses in poor neighborhoods, using nonprofit organizations to provide low-cost equipment, training and service. "Just as highways were a critical infrastructure component of the last century, wireless Internet access must be a part of our infrastructure for the 21st century," Mr. Street said last month in a speech before the United States Conference of Mayors. Most municipally run Internet systems are in small rural towns, many of which provide service at below-market rates. Philadelphia is proposing to charge $15 to $25 a month for its service, half of what private servers now charge, and even less for low-income users. Industry officials say that if the program takes off, it will inevitably take customers from providers like the [1]Comcast Corporation or [2]Verizon Communications. "Is it fair that the industry pay tax dollars to the city that are then used to launch a network that would compete with our own?" asked David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, which is based in Philadelphia. "I don't think so." Officials in Philadelphia and other municipalities contend they never intended to compete with private companies. Many say they want to provide Internet service only because students, small businesses and low-income residents cannot afford or obtain high-speed Internet access. Philadelphia officials say a recent survey found that nearly 40 percent of residents did not have Internet service. But industry officials say that virtually every neighborhood in the city is wired for broadband and that many people are choosing not to buy it. Industry officials and advocates of limited government also say providing Internet access is far more risky, complicated and expensive than government officials realize. Equipment will quickly become obsolete, and slow-moving governments will not keep pace, they say. "Government doesn't do service well," said Eric Rabe, vice president for public relations for Verizon. "And communications is complicated. The technology changes constantly. Verizon has 3.5 million D.S.L. subscribers," Mr. Rabe said, referring to digital subscriber lines, "and we're still trying to figure out how to make money at $30 per month." Pushed by industry lobbyists, lawmakers in Kansas, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, Iowa, Oregon and other states have proposed legislation to restrict or prohibit local governments from offering telecommunications services. Nearly a dozen states have already enacted some restrictions. Verizon won a victory in Pennsylvania late last year when Gov. Edward G. Rendell signed a measure requiring that cities first give the main local phone company the right to build a high-speed Internet network. If the phone company proceeds within 14 months, the city must drop its plans . Philadelphia was exempted from the law. In Kansas, the town of St. Francis, population 1,495, began offering Internet service nearly three years ago and now has 200 subscribers. "We could not get anybody to provide us high-speed Internet," said J. R. Landenberger, city manager. "When that didn't work, we decided to do it ourselves." In Scottsburg, Ind., a city of 6,000 near the Kentucky border, officials say a survey conducted in 2002 found that three local companies were considering moving or expanding elsewhere because they could not get broadband service. The officials say they urged several providers to extend a network into town, but were told it was too small or remote to justify the cost. Consultants recommended that the town build a fiber network, at a cost of $5 million. Then city officials discovered wireless. For an initial investment of $385,000, the town's municipally owned electric utility created a wireless broadband network for the entire county. Businesses now can buy high-speed service for $200 per month, about half the cost in nearby Louisville, Ky. The service has about 600 subscribers, more than enough to cover its costs, town officials say. "We're just as pleased as we can be," Mayor Bill Graham said. "It's the same system they put into the Pentagon after Sept. 11. It is very secure, very fast and very reliable." In Philadelphia, the skeptics argue that running a broadband network for a small town is far different from running one for a city of 1.5 million. Though installing a network of antennas might be straightforward, creating a system for billing, marketing and fielding service complaints will be far more difficult than the city imagines, they say. The city estimates the cost of maintaining the system will be $1.5 million a year. "The real cost will be very different than what they think," Mr. Cohen of Comcast said. Philadelphia officials say skeptics will come around when they see the power of broadband to attract business and improve the lives of poor people. The Philadelphia plan will allow Internet users to roam anywhere in the city and remain connected, as long as they are outdoors, said Dianah Neff, the city's chief information officer. But bringing the signal indoors will require extra equipment. To help low-income residents acquire such equipment, the city plans to recruit a network of community organizations that can provide training, inexpensive computers and wireless equipment to eligible residents. In West Philadelphia, the People's Emergency Center, a nonprofit group, is already providing such services, including after-school computer programs, wireless access at $5 a month, Web site development for small businesses and a program that helps welfare recipients communicate with caseworkers through the Internet. The group also sells refurbished computers to eligible residents for $125. "Acquiring low-cost computers is the smallest problem," said Tan B. Vu, manager of the center's digital inclusion program. "The bigger problem is that people don't have Internet access. And that is where the city comes in." One of the center's clients, Denise Stoner, 32, embodies both the promise and pitfalls of the city's plans. A recently homeless mother who has a learning disabled son and a deaf daughter, both of whom have heart problems, Ms. Stoner has a refurbished desktop computer with broadband wireless service provided by the People's Emergency Center. But her aging computer is slow and often hampered by viruses, which she depends on the center's technicians to eradicate. And while her 9-year-old son has improved his reading and spelling skills by using the Internet, he spends most of his time online playing games. Still, Ms. Stoner has found both information and comfort from the Internet. She has learned sign language online to converse with her 2-year-old daughter. And she has discovered chat rooms for parents of children who have the same heart problems as her children. "I ask them how they get by," she said of her e-mail conversations with people as far away as Africa. "They say they take it one day at a time." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:41:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:41:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Memory Hole > The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile Message-ID: The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile http://thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm [This kind of reasoning is a bit too functionalist for me. But surely, automatons are not what is needed in the work force in the future.] It's no secret that the US educational system doesn't do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America's schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can't find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don't know who Abraham Lincoln was. Fingers are pointed at various aspects of the schooling system--overcrowded classrooms, lack of funding, teachers who can't pass competency exams in their fields, etc. But these are just secondary problems. Even if they were cleared up, schools would still suck. Why? Because they were designed to. How can I make such a bold statement? How do I know why America's public school system was designed the way it was (age-segregated, six to eight 50-minute classes in a row announced by Pavlovian bells, emphasis on rote memorization, lorded over by unquestionable authority figures, etc.)? Because the men who designed, funded, and implemented America's formal educational system in the late 1800s and early 1900s wrote about what they were doing. Almost all of these books, articles, and reports are out of print and hard to obtain. Luckily for us, John Taylor Gatto tracked them down. Gatto was voted the New York City Teacher of the Year three times and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. But he became disillusioned with schools--the way they enforce conformity, the way they kill the natural creativity, inquisitiveness, and love of learning that every little child has at the beginning. So he began to dig into terra incognita, the roots of America's educational system. In 1888, the Senate Committee on Education was getting jittery about the localized, non-standardized, non-mandatory form of education that was actually teaching children to read at advanced levels, to comprehend history, and, egads, to think for themselves. The committee's report stated, "We believe that education is one of the principal causes of discontent of late years manifesting itself among the laboring classes." By the turn of the century, America's new educrats were pushing a new form of schooling with a new mission (and it wasn't to teach). The famous philosopher and educator John Dewey wrote in 1897: Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In his 1905 dissertation for Columbia Teachers College, Elwood Cubberly--the future Dean of Education at Stanford--wrote that schools should be factories "in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry." The next year, the Rockefeller Education Board--which funded the creation of numerous public schools--issued a statement which read in part: In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. At the same time, William Torrey Harris, US Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, wrote: Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual. In that same book, The Philosophy of Education, Harris also revealed: The great purpose of school can be realized better in dark, airless, ugly places.... It is to master the physical self, to transcend the beauty of nature. School should develop the power to withdraw from the external world. Several years later, President Woodrow Wilson would echo these sentiments in a speech to businessmen: We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. Writes Gatto: "Another major architect of standardized testing, H.H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about 'the perfect organization of the hive.'" While President of Harvard from 1933 to 1953, James Bryant Conant wrote that the change to a forced, rigid, potential-destroying educational system had been demanded by "certain industrialists and the innovative who were altering the nature of the industrial process." In other words, the captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population--mainly the children of the captains of industry and government--to rise to the level where they could continue running things. This was the openly admitted blueprint for the public schooling system, a blueprint which remains unchanged to this day. Although the true reasons behind it aren't often publicly expressed, they're apparently still known within education circles. Clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine wrote in 2001: I once consulted with a teacher of an extremely bright eight-year-old boy labeled with oppositional defiant disorder. I suggested that perhaps the boy didn't have a disease, but was just bored. His teacher, a pleasant woman, agreed with me. However, she added, "They told us at the state conference that our job is to get them ready for the work world...that the children have to get used to not being stimulated all the time or they will lose their jobs in the real world." John Taylor Gatto's book, The Underground History of American Education: An Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2001), is the source for all of the above historical quotes. It is a profoundly important, unnerving book, which I recommend most highly. You can order it from [2]Gatto's Website, which also contains the first half of the book online for free. The final quote above is from page 74 of Bruce E. Levine's excellent book Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society (New York: Continuum Publishing Group, 2001). posted 17 July 2003 References 2. http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/ From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:43:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:43:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Yorker: (Einstein and Godel) Jim Holt: Time Bandits Message-ID: Jim Holt: Time Bandits The New Yorker: The Critics: A Critic At Large http://newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050228crat_atlarge February 25, 2005 What were Einstein and G?del talking about? Issue of 2005-02-28 Posted 2005-02-21 In 1933, with his great scientific discoveries behind him, Albert Einstein came to America. He spent the last twenty-two years of his life in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had been recruited as the star member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Einstein was reasonably content with his new milieu, taking its pretensions in stride. "Princeton is a wonderful piece of earth, and at the same time an exceedingly amusing ceremonial backwater of tiny spindle-shanked demigods," he observed. His daily routine began with a leisurely walk from his house, at 115 Mercer Street, to his office at the institute. He was by then one of the most famous and, with his distinctive appearance--the whirl of pillow-combed hair, the baggy pants held up by suspenders--most recognizable people in the world. A decade after arriving in Princeton, Einstein acquired a walking companion, a much younger man who, next to the rumpled Einstein, cut a dapper figure in a white linen suit and matching fedora. The two would talk animatedly in German on their morning amble to the institute and again, later in the day, on their way homeward. The man in the suit may not have been recognized by many townspeople, but Einstein addressed him as a peer, someone who, like him, had single-handedly launched a conceptual revolution. If Einstein had upended our everyday notions about the physical world with his theory of relativity, the younger man, Kurt G?del, had had a similarly subversive effect on our understanding of the abstract world of mathematics. G?del, who has often been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, was a strange and ultimately tragic man. Whereas Einstein was gregarious and full of laughter, G?del was solemn, solitary, and pessimistic. Einstein, a passionate amateur violinist, loved Beethoven and Mozart. G?del's taste ran in another direction: his favorite movie was Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and when his wife put a pink flamingo in their front yard he pronounced it furchtbar herzig--"awfully charming." Einstein freely indulged his appetite for heavy German cooking; G?del subsisted on a valetudinarian's diet of butter, baby food, and laxatives. Although Einstein's private life was not without its complications, outwardly he was jolly and at home in the world. G?del, by contrast, had a tendency toward paranoia. He believed in ghosts; he had a morbid dread of being poisoned by refrigerator gases; he refused to go out when certain distinguished mathematicians were in town, apparently out of concern that they might try to kill him. "Every chaos is a wrong appearance," he insisted--the paranoiac's first axiom. Although other members of the institute found the gloomy logician baffling and unapproachable, Einstein told people that he went to his office "just to have the privilege of walking home with Kurt G?del." Part of the reason, it seems, was that G?del was undaunted by Einstein's reputation and did not hesitate to challenge his ideas. As another member of the institute, the physicist Freeman Dyson, observed, "G?del was . . . the only one of our colleagues who walked and talked on equal terms with Einstein." But if Einstein and G?del seemed to exist on a higher plane than the rest of humanity, it was also true that they had become, in Einstein's words, "museum pieces." Einstein never accepted the quantum theory of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. G?del believed that mathematical abstractions were every bit as real as tables and chairs, a view that philosophers had come to regard as laughably na?ve. Both G?del and Einstein insisted that the world is independent of our minds, yet rationally organized and open to human understanding. United by a shared sense of intellectual isolation, they found solace in their companionship. "They didn't want to speak to anybody else," another member of the institute said. "They only wanted to speak to each other." People wondered what they spoke about. Politics was presumably one theme. (Einstein, who supported Adlai Stevenson, was exasperated when G?del chose to vote for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.) Physics was no doubt another. G?del was well versed in the subject; he shared Einstein's mistrust of the quantum theory, but he was also skeptical of the older physicist's ambition to supersede it with a "unified field theory" that would encompass all known forces in a deterministic framework. Both were attracted to problems that were, in Einstein's words, of "genuine importance," problems pertaining to the most basic elements of reality. G?del was especially preoccupied by the nature of time, which, he told a friend, was the philosophical question. How could such a "mysterious and seemingly self-contradictory" thing, he wondered, "form the basis of the world's and our own existence"? That was a matter in which Einstein had shown some expertise. A century ago, in 1905, Einstein proved that time, as it had been understood by scientist and layman alike, was a fiction. And this was scarcely his only achievement that year, which John S. Rigden skillfully chronicles, month by month, in "Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness" (Harvard; $21.95). As it began, Einstein, twenty-five years old, was employed as an inspector in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland. Having earlier failed to get his doctorate in physics, he had temporarily given up on the idea of an academic career, telling a friend that "the whole comedy has become boring." He had recently read a book by Henri Poincar?, a French mathematician of enormous reputation, which identified three fundamental unsolved problems in science. The first concerned the "photoelectric effect": how did ultraviolet light knock electrons off the surface of a piece of metal? The second concerned "Brownian motion": why did pollen particles suspended in water move about in a random zigzag pattern? The third concerned the "luminiferous ether" that was supposed to fill all of space and serve as the medium through which light waves moved, the way sound waves move through air, or ocean waves through water: why had experiments failed to detect the earth's motion through this ether? Each of these problems had the potential to reveal what Einstein held to be the underlying simplicity of nature. Working alone, apart from the scientific community, the unknown junior clerk rapidly managed to dispatch all three. His solutions were presented in four papers, written in the months of March, April, May, and June of 1905. In his March paper, on the photoelectric effect, he deduced that light came in discrete particles, which were later dubbed "photons." In his April and May papers, he established once and for all the reality of atoms, giving a theoretical estimate of their size and showing how their bumping around caused Brownian motion. In his June paper, on the ether problem, he unveiled his theory of relativity. Then, as a sort of encore, he published a three-page note in September containing the most famous equation of all time: E = mc2. All of these papers had a touch of magic about them, and upset deeply held convictions in the physics community. Yet, for scope and audacity, Einstein's June paper stood out. In thirty succinct pages, he completely rewrote the laws of physics, beginning with two stark principles. First, the laws of physics are absolute: the same laws must be valid for all observers. Second, the speed of light is absolute; it, too, is the same for all observers. The second principle, though less obvious, had the same sort of logic to recommend it. Since light is an electromagnetic wave (this had been known since the nineteenth century), its speed is fixed by the laws of electromagnetism; those laws ought to be the same for all observers; and therefore everyone should see light moving at the same speed, regardless of the frame of reference. Still, it was bold of Einstein to embrace the light principle, for its consequences seemed downright absurd. Suppose--to make things vivid--that the speed of light is a hundred miles an hour. Now suppose I am standing by the side of the road and I see a light beam pass by at this speed. Then I see you chasing after it in a car at sixty miles an hour. To me, it appears that the light beam is outpacing you by forty miles an hour. But you, from inside your car, must see the beam escaping you at a hundred miles an hour, just as you would if you were standing still: that is what the light principle demands. What if you gun your engine and speed up to ninety-nine miles an hour? Now I see the beam of light outpacing you by just one mile an hour. Yet to you, inside the car, the beam is still racing ahead at a hundred miles an hour, despite your increased speed. How can this be? Speed, of course, equals distance divided by time. Evidently, the faster you go in your car, the shorter your ruler must become and the slower your clock must tick relative to mine; that is the only way we can continue to agree on the speed of light. (If I were to pull out a pair of binoculars and look at your speeding car, I would actually see its length contracted and you moving in slow motion inside.) So Einstein set about recasting the laws of physics accordingly. To make these laws absolute, he made distance and time relative. It was the sacrifice of absolute time that was most stunning. Isaac Newton believed that time was regulated by a sort of cosmic grandfather clock. "Absolute, true, mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external," he declared at the beginning of his "Principia." Einstein, however, realized that our idea of time is something we abstract from our experience with rhythmic phenomena: heartbeats, planetary rotations and revolutions, the ticking of clocks. Time judgments always come down to judgments of simultaneity. "If, for instance, I say, `That train arrives here at 7 o'clock,' I mean something like this: `The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events,'" Einstein wrote in the June paper. If the events in question are at some distance from one another, judgments of simultaneity can be made only by sending light signals back and forth. Working from his two basic principles, Einstein proved that whether an observer deems two events to be happening "at the same time" depends on his state of motion. In other words, there is no universal now. With different observers slicing up the timescape into "past," "present," and "future" in different ways, it seems to follow that all moments coexist with equal reality. Einstein's conclusions were the product of pure thought, proceeding from the most austere assumptions about nature. In the century since he derived them, they have been precisely confirmed by experiment after experiment. Yet his June, 1905, paper on relativity was rejected when he submitted it as a dissertation. (He then submitted his April paper, on the size of atoms, which he thought would be less likely to startle the examiners; they accepted it only after he added one sentence to meet the length threshold.) When Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, it was for his work on the photoelectric effect. The Swedish Academy forbade him to make any mention of relativity in his acceptance speech. As it happened, Einstein was unable to attend the ceremony in Stockholm. He gave his Nobel lecture in Gothenburg, with King Gustav V seated in the front row. The King wanted to learn about relativity, and Einstein obliged him. In 1906, the year after Einstein's annus mirabilis, Kurt G?del was born in the city of Brno (now in the Czech Republic). As Rebecca Goldstein recounts in her enthralling intellectual biography "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt G?del" (Atlas/Norton; $22.95), Kurt was both an inquisitive child--his parents and brother gave him the nickname der Herr Warum, "Mr. Why?"--and a nervous one. At the age of five, he seems to have suffered a mild anxiety neurosis. At eight, he had a terrifying bout of rheumatic fever, which left him with the lifelong conviction that his heart had been fatally damaged. G?del entered the University of Vienna in 1924. He had intended to study physics, but he was soon seduced by the beauties of mathematics, and especially by the notion that abstractions like numbers and circles had a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. This doctrine, which is called Platonism, because it descends from Plato's theory of ideas, has always been popular among mathematicians. In the philosophical world of nineteen-twenties Vienna, however, it was considered distinctly old-fashioned. Among the many intellectual movements that flourished in the city's rich caf? culture, one of the most prominent was the Vienna Circle, a group of thinkers united in their belief that philosophy must be cleansed of metaphysics and made over in the image of science. Under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, their reluctant guru, the members of the Vienna Circle regarded mathematics as a game played with symbols, a more intricate version of chess. What made a proposition like "2 + 2 = 4" true, they held, was not that it correctly described some abstract world of numbers but that it could be derived in a logical system according to certain rules. G?del was introduced into the Vienna Circle by one of his professors, but he kept quiet about his Platonist views. Being both rigorous and averse to controversy, he did not like to argue his convictions unless he had an airtight way of demonstrating that they were valid. But how could one demonstrate that mathematics could not be reduced to the artifices of logic? G?del's strategy--one of "heart-stopping beauty," as Goldstein justly observes--was to use logic against itself. Beginning with a logical system for mathematics, one presumed to be free of contradictions, he invented an ingenious scheme that allowed the formulas in it to engage in a sort of double speak. A formula that said something about numbers could also, in this scheme, be interpreted as saying something about other formulas and how they were logically related to one another. In fact, as G?del showed, a numerical formula could even be made to say something about itself. (Goldstein compares this to a play in which the characters are also actors in a play within the play; if the playwright is sufficiently clever, the lines the actors speak in the play within the play can be interpreted as having a "real life" meaning in the play proper.) Having painstakingly built this apparatus of mathematical self-reference, G?del came up with an astonishing twist: he produced a formula that, while ostensibly saying something about numbers, also says, "I am not provable." At first, this looks like a paradox, recalling as it does the proverbial Cretan who announces, "All Cretans are liars." But G?del's self-referential formula comments on its provability, not on its truthfulness. Could it be lying? No, because if it were, that would mean it could be proved, which would make it true. So, in asserting that it cannot be proved, it has to be telling the truth. But the truth of this proposition can be seen only from outside the logical system. Inside the system, it is neither provable nor disprovable. The system, then, is incomplete. The conclusion--that no logical system can capture all the truths of mathematics--is known as the first incompleteness theorem. G?del also proved that no logical system for mathematics could, by its own devices, be shown to be free from inconsistency, a result known as the second incompleteness theorem. Wittgenstein once averred that "there can never be surprises in logic." But G?del's incompleteness theorems did come as a surprise. In fact, when the fledgling logician presented them at a conference in the German city of K?nigsberg in 1930, almost no one was able to make any sense of them. What could it mean to say that a mathematical proposition was true if there was no possibility of proving it? The very idea seemed absurd. Even the once great logician Bertrand Russell was baffled; he seems to have been under the misapprehension that G?del had detected an inconsistency in mathematics. "Are we to think that 2 + 2 is not 4, but 4.001?" Russell asked decades later in dismay, adding that he was "glad [he] was no longer working at mathematical logic." As the significance of G?del's theorems began to sink in, words like "debacle," "catastrophe," and "nightmare" were bandied about. It had been an article of faith that, armed with logic, mathematicians could in principle resolve any conundrum at all--that in mathematics, as it had been famously declared, there was no ignorabimus. G?del's theorems seemed to have shattered this ideal of complete knowledge. That was not the way G?del saw it. He believed he had shown that mathematics has a robust reality that transcends any system of logic. But logic, he was convinced, is not the only route to knowledge of this reality; we also have something like an extrasensory perception of it, which he called "mathematical intuition." It is this faculty of intuition that allows us to see, for example, that the formula saying "I am not provable" must be true, even though it defies proof within the system where it lives. Some thinkers (like the physicist Roger Penrose) have taken this theme further, maintaining that G?del's incompleteness theorems have profound implications for the nature of the human mind. Our mental powers, it is argued, must outstrip those of any computer, since a computer is just a logical system running on hardware, and our minds can arrive at truths that are beyond the reach of a logical system. G?del was twenty-four when he proved his incompleteness theorems (a bit younger than Einstein was when he created relativity theory). At the time, much to the disapproval of his strict Lutheran parents, he was courting an older Catholic divorc?e by the name of Adele, who, to top things off, was employed as a dancer in a Viennese night club called Der Nachtfalter (the Moth). The political situation in Austria was becoming ever more chaotic with Hitler's rise to power in Germany, although G?del seems scarcely to have noticed. In 1936, the Vienna Circle dissolved, after its founder was assassinated by a deranged student. Two years later came the Anschluss. The perilousness of the times was finally borne in upon G?del when a band of Nazi youths roughed him up and knocked off his glasses, before retreating under the umbrella blows of Adele. He resolved to leave for Princeton, where he had been offered a position by the Institute for Advanced Study. But, the war having broken out, he judged it too risky to cross the Atlantic. So the now married couple took the long way around, traversing Russia, the Pacific, and the United States, and finally arriving in Princeton in early 1940. At the institute, G?del was given an office almost directly above Einstein's. For the rest of his life he rarely left Princeton, which he came to find "ten times more congenial" than his once beloved Vienna. "There it was, inconceivably, K. Goedel, listed just like any other name in the bright orange Princeton community phonebook," writes Goldstein, who came to Princeton University as a graduate student of philosophy in the early nineteen-seventies. (It's the setting of her novel "The Mind-Body Problem.") "It was like opening up the local phonebook and finding B. Spinoza or I. Newton." Although G?del was still little known in the world at large, he had a godlike status among the cognoscenti. "I once found the philosopher Richard Rorty standing in a bit of a daze in Davidson's food market," Goldstein writes. "He told me in hushed tones that he'd just seen G?del in the frozen food aisle." So na?ve and otherworldly was the great logician that Einstein felt obliged to help look after the practical aspects of his life. One much retailed story concerns G?del's decision after the war to become an American citizen. The character witnesses at his hearing were to be Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern, one of the founders of game theory. G?del took the matter of citizenship with great solemnity, preparing for the exam by making a close study of the United States Constitution. On the eve of the hearing, he called Morgenstern in an agitated state, saying he had found an "inconsistency" in the Constitution, one that could allow a dictatorship to arise. Morgenstern was amused, but he realized that G?del was serious and urged him not to mention it to the judge, fearing that it would jeopardize G?del's citizenship bid. On the short drive to Trenton the next day, with Morgenstern serving as chauffeur, Einstein tried to distract G?del with jokes. When they arrived at the courthouse, the judge was impressed by G?del's eminent witnesses, and he invited the trio into his chambers. After some small talk, he said to G?del, "Up to now you have held German citizenship." No, G?del corrected, Austrian. "In any case, it was under an evil dictatorship," the judge continued. "Fortunately that's not possible in America." "On the contrary, I can prove it is possible!" G?del exclaimed, and he began describing the constitutional loophole he had descried. But the judge told the examinee that "he needn't go into that," and Einstein and Morgenstern succeeded in quieting him down. A few months later, G?del took his oath of citizenship. Around the same time that G?del was studying the Constitution, he was also taking a close look at Einstein's relativity theory. The key principle of relativity is that the laws of physics should be the same for all observers. When Einstein first formulated the principle in his revolutionary 1905 paper, he restricted "all observers" to those who were moving uniformly relative to one another--that is, in a straight line and at a constant speed. But he soon realized that this restriction was arbitrary. If the laws of physics were to provide a truly objective description of nature, they ought to be valid for observers moving in any way relative to one another--spinning, accelerating, spiralling, whatever. It was thus that Einstein made the transition from his "special" theory of relativity of 1905 to his "general" theory, whose equations he worked out over the next decade and published in 1916. What made those equations so powerful was that they explained gravity, the force that governs the over-all shape of the cosmos. Decades later, G?del, walking with Einstein, had the privilege of picking up the subtleties of relativity theory from the master himself. Einstein had shown that the flow of time depended on motion and gravity, and that the division of events into "past" and "future" was relative. G?del took a more radical view: he believed that time, as it was intuitively understood, did not exist at all. As usual, he was not content with a mere verbal argument. Philosophers ranging from Parmenides, in ancient times, to Immanuel Kant, in the eighteenth century, and on to J. M. E. McTaggart, at the beginning of the twentieth century, had produced such arguments, inconclusively. G?del wanted a proof that had the rigor and certainty of mathematics. And he saw just what he wanted lurking within relativity theory. He presented his argument to Einstein for his seventieth birthday, in 1949, along with an etching. (G?del's wife had knitted Einstein a sweater, but she decided not to send it.) What G?del found was the possibility of a hitherto unimaginable kind of universe. The equations of general relativity can be solved in a variety of ways. Each solution is, in effect, a model of how the universe might be. Einstein, who believed on philosophical grounds that the universe was eternal and unchanging, had tinkered with his equations so that they would yield such a model--a move he later called "my greatest blunder." Another physicist (a Jesuit priest, as it happens) found a solution corresponding to an expanding universe born at some moment in the finite past. Since this solution, which has come to be known as the Big Bang model, was consistent with what astronomers observed, it seemed to be the one that described the actual cosmos. But G?del came up with a third kind of solution to Einstein's equations, one in which the universe was not expanding but rotating. (The centrifugal force arising from the rotation was what kept everything from collapsing under the force of gravity.) An observer in this universe would see all the galaxies slowly spinning around him; he would know it was the universe doing the spinning, and not himself, because he would feel no dizziness. What makes this rotating universe truly weird, G?del showed, is the way its geometry mixes up space and time. By completing a sufficiently long round trip in a rocket ship, a resident of G?del's universe could travel back to any point in his own past. Einstein was not entirely pleased with the news that his equations permitted something as Alice in Wonderland-like as spatial paths that looped backward in time; in fact, he confessed to being "disturbed" by G?del's universe. Other physicists marvelled that time travel, previously the stuff of science fiction, was apparently consistent with the laws of physics. (Then they started worrying about what would happen if you went back to a time before you were born and killed your own grandfather.) G?del himself drew a different moral. If time travel is possible, he submitted, then time itself is impossible. A past that can be revisited has not really passed. And the fact that the actual universe is expanding, rather than rotating, is irrelevant. Time, like God, is either necessary or nothing; if it disappears in one possible universe, it is undermined in every possible universe, including our own. G?del's conclusion went almost entirely unnoticed at the time, but it has since found a passionate champion in Palle Yourgrau, a professor of philosophy at Brandeis. In "A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of G?del and Einstein" (Perseus; $24), Yourgrau does his best to redress his fellow-philosophers' neglect of the case that G?del made against time. The "deafening silence," he submits, can be blamed on the philosophical prejudices of the era. Behind all the esoteric mathematics, G?del's reasoning looked suspiciously metaphysical. To this day, Yourgrau complains, G?del is treated with condescension by philosophers, who regard him, in the words of one, as "a logician par excellence but a philosophical fool." After ably tracing G?del's life, his logical achievements, and his friendship with Einstein, Yourgrau elaborately defends his importance as a philosopher of time. "In a deep sense," he concludes, "we all do live in G?del's universe." G?del's strange cosmological gift was received by Einstein at a bleak time in his life. His quest for a unified theory of physics was proving fruitless, and his opposition to quantum theory alienated him from the mainstream of physics. Family life provided little consolation. His two marriages had been failures; a daughter born out of wedlock seems to have disappeared from history; of his two sons one was schizophrenic, the other estranged. Einstein's circle of friends had shrunk to G?del and a few others. One of them was Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, to whom he confided, in March, 1955, that "the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler." He died a month later, at the age of seventy-six. When G?del and another colleague went to his office at the institute to deal with his papers, they found the blackboard covered with dead-end equations. After Einstein's death, G?del became ever more withdrawn. He preferred to conduct all conversations by telephone, even if his interlocutor was a few feet distant. When he especially wanted to avoid someone, he would schedule a rendezvous at a precise time and place, and then make sure he was somewhere far away. The honors the world wished to bestow upon him made him chary. He did show up to collect an honorary doctorate in 1953 from Harvard, where his incompleteness theorems were hailed as the most important mathematical discovery of the previous hundred years; but he later complained of being "thrust quite undeservedly into the most highly bellicose company" of John Foster Dulles, a co-honoree. When he was awarded the National Medal of Science, in 1975, he refused to go to Washington to meet Gerald Ford at the White House, despite the offer of a chauffeur for him and his wife. He had hallucinatory episodes and talked darkly of certain forces at work in the world "directly submerging the good." Fearing that there was a plot to poison him, he persistently refused to eat. Finally, looking like (in the words of a friend) "a living corpse," he was taken to the Princeton Hospital. There, two weeks later, on January 14, 1978, he succumbed to self-starvation. According to his death certificate, the cause of death was "malnutrition and inanition" brought on by "personality disturbance." A certain futility marked the last years of both G?del and Einstein. What may have been most futile, however, was their willed belief in the unreality of time. The temptation was understandable. If time is merely in our minds, perhaps we can hope to escape it into a timeless eternity. Then we could say, like William Blake, "I see the Past, Present and Future, existing all at once / Before me." In G?del's case, Rebecca Goldstein speculates, it may have been his childhood terror of a fatally damaged heart that attracted him to the idea of a timeless universe. Toward the end of his life, he told one confidant that he had long awaited an epiphany that would enable him to see the world in a new light, but that it never came. Einstein, too, was unable to make a clean break with time. "To those of us who believe in physics," he wrote to the widow of a friend who had recently died, "this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, if a stubborn one." When his own turn came, a couple of weeks later, he said, "It is time to go." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:43:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:43:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] =?iso-8859-1?q?New_Yorker=3A_=28more_Einstein_and_G?= =?iso-8859-1?q?odel=29_The_Great_Foreigner_by_Niccol=F2_Tucci?= Message-ID: The Great Foreigner by Niccol? Tucci The New Yorker: From the Archives http://newyorker.com/archive/content/index.ssf?050228fr_archive01 This week in the magazine and here online, Jim Holt writes about the intriguing friendship between Albert Einstein and the logician Kurt G?del. In this piece from 1947, Niccol? Tucci describes an afternoon visit with Albert Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey. There is such a thing as being a foreigner, but not in the sense implied by passports. Foreigners exist, to be sure, but they may be found only in places where it would be impossible to discover a single policeman or a single immigration official--in the field of the intellect. A man who achieves anything great in any province of the mind is, inevitably, a foreigner, and cannot admit others to his province. If you are one of his own people, you will, of course, find him, because you yourself are there, but if you are not, your knowledge of him will be mostly confined to the petty intelligence of the gossip columns. Now, we all know from experience what it means, in this sense, to be refused entry, even as a temporary visitor, into this or that foreigner's domain. We meet a great man and cannot talk to him, because, alas, we happen not to be able to get interested in the thing in which he excels. Silly though it seems, this is humiliating, for it makes us aware of our limitations. Yet that feeling is soon forgotten. There are people today, however, whose foreignness can't be forgotten, and these are the physicists, who have done things to us that keep us wondering, to say the least. They have lessened--in fact, almost destroyed--our hopes of a quiet and happy future. It is true that they have also increased our hopes of surviving discomfort and disease, but, oh, how far away that seems, and how near seems the possibility of extermination! That is why, when my mother-in-law, who flew over from Europe a couple of weeks ago, said that she wanted me to accompany her on a visit to the home of her friend Albert Einstein, in Princeton, I was very reluctant to go. I had seen Einstein several times in the past eight or nine years, and on the last occasion--in 1942, I believe--I had been bold enough to invite him to come out of his inaccessible territory and into that of all the unscientific people, like myself. Would he, I asked, explain, in words rather than in mathematical symbols, what he and his colleagues actually meant by the fourth dimension? And he did, so simply and so clearly that I left his house with an uncontrollable feeling of pride. Here, I, the living negation of anything even slightly numerical, had been able to understand what Einstein had said--had really said, for he had said it not only in his conversation with me but years before in his theories. Obviously, he had explained to me merely what a child would be able to grasp, but it impressed me as much more because my schoolteachers and my father, all of them less great than Einstein, had never forgone a chance to make me feel a perfect fool (and to tell me, lest I should have missed drawing the inference), even when they spoke to me about fractions or equations of the first degree. I consequently realized that Einstein belonged to the extremely rare type of foreigner who can come out of his seclusion and meet aliens on alien ground. Yet, much as I cherished the recollection of that pleasant experience, I did not think it altogether advisable to try my luck again. "This time," I said to my mother-in-law, who is called Bice in the family, "he may easily make me feel like a fool. Besides, in 1942 Einstein's achievements did not keep me awake at night, as they do now. If I saw him now, I would not be moved by the slightest scientific curiosity about his work. I would much rather ask him what he thinks of the responsibility of modern scientists, and so forth. It might be quite unfair to him and unpleasant for me." Well, mothers-in-law must have secret ways of persuasion, because a few days later I gave in, not only on seeing Einstein but also on taking along Bimba, my six-year-old daughter. "All right," I said resignedly, "but you, Bimba, will be sorry for this. You don't know who Einstein is. He has all the numbers; they belong to him. He will ask you how old you are." And I must say here that Bimba, even more than myself, is the mathematical scandal of our family. She tries to count her six years on her fingers, but she forgets how high she has counted and must try again. Upon a guarantee from me that Einstein would not interview her on that delicate subject, we made peace and departed. On our way out of the apartment, we met my eight-year-old son, Vieri, who was playing ball on the sidewalk. "Vieri," I said, "want to come and see Einstein?" "Einstein the great mathematician?" he asked. "Yes," I said. "Naw," he said. "I have enough arithmetic in school." On the train that morning, my mother-in-law and I talked a great deal about Maja, Einstein's younger sister, one of two links Bice has with higher mathematics. But I must say that she is a weak link, because Maja is the opposite of all abstraction. She looks exactly like her brother (one would almost say that she, too, needs a haircut), but she is a Tuscan peasant, like the people who work in the fields near her small estate of Colonnata, just outside Florence. Even her frame of mind is, in spite of her cosmopolitan culture, Tuscan. Whatever in conversation does not make sense to her in plain, human terms she will quickly dismiss with a witty remark. But before becoming a Tuscan peasant, Maja was a brilliant young German student of philosophy in Paris. She interrupted her studies to take a job as governess in charge of young Bice, whose mother had just died, leaving her the only female of the family, surrounded by a number of older brothers and her father. All this happened forty years ago. Soon after her arrival in the family, Maja became Bice's second mother and dearest friend. Even after Maja resumed her studies and got married, they remained very close, and did not lose touch with each other until shortly before the outbreak of the recent war, when Maja left Italy to join her brother in Princeton. And today Bice, accompanied by a somewhat impatient son-in-law and by a pestiferous young angel of a granddaughter, was rushing to Princeton for the great reunion. On the way, we also talked pleasantly about America (like all Europeans who come here for the first time, Bice was eager to know about everything in the first week), we discussed the fate of the world and the wisdom of those who run it, we quarrelled over theology (Bice is fond of theologies, with a marked preference for her own, the Roman Catholic), and finally I noticed that she wasn't listening to me any more. She frowned, she shook her head, then she smiled and nodded, staring in front of her, but not at me and not at Bimba. I knew that she was making an inventory of her sentimental luggage. All the news of the troubled years, from the death of her eldest son in the war to the latest item of family gossip, from the bombings of towns to the latest method of making a pound of sugar last a year, were being called to mind, so that everything would surely be ready for Maja. I made a sign to Bimba not to interrupt her grandmother, and Bimba sat there and stared, somewhat frightened by this woman who was looking so intently at her own life. When we arrived in Princeton, it was quite misty, and there was a threat of rain in the Indian summer air. At the station, we took a cab and soon learned that the driver, a young student, was the son of a friend of ours in Florence. He was trying to make enough money driving a cab to finance a trip to South America. Our conversation with him was so interesting that only the sight of open country around us made us realize that we had driven all the way out of town. We drove back and stopped in front of a house on Mercer Street. I had forgotten the exact address, but this house looked like the right one. In her eagerness, Bice ran ahead of me toward the door, but the reunion could not take place, because, as we discovered when we rang the bell, it was the wrong house. Luckily for us, the cab was still there, so we drove along a little, and finally, after ringing the bells of two other families that refused, not without sorrow, to be the Einsteins, we decided upon one more house, which happened to be the right one. Miss Dukas, Einstein's secretary, greeted us at the door; then came Margot, his delicate and silent stepdaughter, who looks so much like a Flemish painting; and Chico, the dog, who tried to snatch Bimba's red ribbons from her pigtails. "Bimba," I said, "don't get the dog excited. Remember how he ate your doll five years ago. Now, if you are not very quiet today, I am going to ask you in front of Einstein how much makes three and two--understand?" She nodded, and whispered, "Four?" We were asked to wait for a moment in the small anteroom that leads to the dining room. Maja was upstairs; she was being helped out of bed and into the chair in which she spends most of her day. She is recovering from a long illness, which has delayed her return to Italy, so it was only natural that this reunion should be delayed until she was ready and comfortable. And yet this addition of even a few minutes to years of separation created an effect of absurdity. One always imagines that the crossing of the last span of a trip bridging years will be something impulsive: when all the real impediments, such as continents, oceans, and passports, have been overcome, friends should run into each other's arms as fast as they can. Still, it is never quite that way. We become so used to living at a distance that we slowly begin to live with it, too; we lean on it, we share it, in equal parts, with our faraway friends, and when it's gone and we are again there, corporeally present, we feel lost, as if a faithful servant had abandoned us. To fill in those extra minutes, we began to look at the furniture in the anteroom and dining room, and I noticed again what I had noticed five years ago in those same rooms: everything suggested the house of a faculty member of a German university. I could not trace this impression to any particular object. The large dining-room table in the center, with the white tablecloth on it, was not particularly German, nor was the furniture in the anteroom, but there was the same quiet atmosphere of culture that had impressed me so deeply in the houses of university professors, in Freiburg, Leipzig, and Berlin, to which my parents had taken me when I was a boy and spent my summers travelling over Europe. It is something that remains suspended in the air almost as stubbornly as the smell of tobacco; one might say that the furniture had been seasoned with serious conversation. Curiously, it is an atmosphere that can never be found in the apartment of a diplomat, even if he is the son of a professor and has inherited his father's furniture. We were finally called upstairs by Margot, who then disappeared into her study. Bice's impatience was such that, not finding Maja in the first room we entered, she said disappointedly, "Not here," and ran toward a closed door to open it, like a child playing hide-and-go-seek. This search lasted only a matter of seconds, because the house isn't large enough for a long search. But by the time we reached Maja, Bice seemed almost to have lost hope that she would ever get there. Maja was standing near her chair waiting, quiet, dignified, almost ironical, under a cloud of white hair. She never shows any emotion, never speaks louder than a whisper, and never more than a few appropriate words--just like the Tuscan peasants, with the difference that when they whisper, they might as well be addressing a crowd across a five-acre field. The "How well you look!" and "How unchanged you are!" were soon over, and then the Great Foreigner arrived, pipe in hand and smiling gently. He complimented Bice on looking just the same as ever, and received the same compliment with grace, then inquired about Michele, Bice's eldest brother and her second link with higher mathematics. Uncle Michele is a gentle little man who sits in Bern, Switzerland, and looks out into the world, leaning on a white beard that descends from almost under his blue eyes to the end of his necktie. Every night for twenty years, in the company of a friend, he has looked into "The Divine Comedy," taking time off to look into his soul with a fierce, puritanical spirit tempered by a great deal of natural goodness; he has also looked into the field of economics, trying to find mathematical formulae to solve the crisis of the world; and for a long time, in the company of Einstein, he looked into the mysteries of higher mathematics. We had just finished hearing all about Uncle Michele's health and his many grandchildren when Bice seemed suddenly to recall an extremely urgent matter--as if, indeed, it were the very reason she had flown all the way over here from Europe. "Herr Professor," she asked, in German (the whole conversation, in fact, was in German), "this I really meant to ask you for a long time--why hasn't Michele made some important discovery in mathematics?" "Aber, Frau Bice," said Einstein, laughing, "this is a very good sign. Michele is a humanist, a universal spirit, too interested in too many things to become a monomaniac. Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as results." And he giggled happily to himself. Then we spoke about dreams. Bice told us two symbolic dreams she had had years ago; I told the dream that the grandfather of a friend of mine had had the day before he died; Einstein told an absurd dream of his. He seemed the only one to find the conversation interesting, which it was not. Bice was now sleepy (the emotion had been too great for her); Maja sat silent and ate her lunch, which a nurse had brought in on a tray; and I nodded to Einstein's words, searching impatiently for a way out of dreams to the subject of the responsibility of modern scientists. But the atmosphere somehow weighed on me. The mist was getting thicker, and it had begun to rain, with that quick, fingertip drumming on the leaves, on the roof, on some pail outside, that makes you go to sleep. It was dark in the room now. The only points of light were the white of the bed, the white of the nurse's uniform, and the white of Maja's hair and of Einstein's head against the window--and his laughing eyes, his voice, and the joy that sprang from him. "Damn the responsibility of modern scientists on a damp day like this," I thought. It made me both envious and angry to see this man in front of me who laughed so heartily at the most trivial things, who listened with such concentration to our nonsense, who was so full of life while I could see no reason even for breathing in that damp, misty air. "Why is he so young," I asked myself, "and what makes him laugh so? Is he making fun of us, or what is this?" Then I began to understand. He had just come from the other room; he was stretching his mind; he was "abroad." All these words were only formally addressed to us; actually they were references to some demonstration he must have received, in the heart of his own secret country, that something was exactly as he had suspected it would be. Yes, it could be nothing but this: he had done fruitful work that morning. I saw it now because I recognized myself in him--not as a scientist, alas, but as a child of seven, at which age it was my hobby to make locomotives with tin cans and old shaving brushes (the smokestack with the smoke). The situation was the same. When the joy of toymaking became too great, I had to interrupt my work and run to the living room, where the grownups were boring themselves to death. And I laughed at their words without bothering to inquire what they meant; I found them interesting, new, exciting; I was praised for being such good company while in actuality I was still playing with my locomotive--I was deciding in my mind what colors I would paint it, what I would use for wheels and lanterns--and it was good to know that no one shared my secret. "You and your toys," I thought, looking at Einstein with the envy that an ailing old man has for a young athlete. Lunch was announced, and we went downstairs, leaving Maja alone. The smell of food consoled me for my humiliation. I began to eat. Einstein asked Bice for her impression of America, and she expressed her disappointment at the bad manners of children in this country. This led to a family argument, in which Einstein was asked to act as arbiter. Bice claimed that American children (she meant mine, of course) have no respect for the authority of their parents, or for that of such people as park attendants. To prove her point, she said that, on the day before, Vieri and his friend Herbert had laughed in the face of a park attendant when he told them not to play ball. Yes, they had obeyed him in the end, but not without making strange noises in his honor. (She didn't know the name for this Bronx ceremony.) I conceded that this was frightful, but I reminded her that a park attendant in Europe was a sort of Commander-in-Chief of Leaves and Flowers and First Admiral of Public Fountains and of the paper boats in them. Even a smile addressed to him without proper authorization was considered daring. "When I was a boy in Italy, we never questioned anyone's authority," I said, "and thus we passed, with the most perfect manners, from the hands of our nurses to those of our tyrants." As moderator, Einstein asked me how I had managed to lose authority over my children. "I didn't have to work much," I replied. "It was rather simple. I just told them, `Look at the kind of world in which we live. See what we, the grownups, are able to invent, from passports to radioactive clouds.'" Bice contended that nothing is gained by embittering the lives of children with remarks of that nature, but Einstein was in full agreement with me when I answered that less than nothing is gained--in other words, that much is lost--by lulling them into the illusion that all is as it should be in the world. "You, as a scientist," I said to Einstein, "know that the world is round and not divided naturally by cow fences into holy, restricted fatherlands. When you were young, there was still a semblance of good in governments and institutions, but today--see where we are today." He became very serious, as if he were seeing where we are today, but suddenly a smile lit up in his eyes, and it quickly spread all over his face and beyond it. He laughed happily, then said, "Let me tell you what happened to me years ago, before the other war, when there were no passports. The only two countries that required them were Russia and Rumania. Now, I was in Hungary and had to go to Rumania. I didn't know where and how to apply for a passport, but I was told that it wasn't necessary. There was a man who had a passport of his own, and he was kind enough to let anybody use it to cross the border. I accepted the offer, but when they asked me at the frontier what my name was, I said, `Wait a moment,' took out the passport from my pocket, and had a great deal of trouble trying to find out who I was. Now, to go back to your point, I agree with you that those who exercise any kind of authority, be it the authority of a father or that of a government, have a definite obligation to show that they deserve respect, but the trouble with grownups in our day is that they have lost the habit of disobedience, and they should quickly learn it again, especially when it comes to the infringement of their individual rights." He laughed again, this time like a bad boy, then, shaking his head, said, "These grownups. Isn't it terrible how readily they will obey?" "Take the loyalty test for federal employees, against which so few have protested," I said. "That is a case in point," he answered. "People are asked to be loyal to their jobs. But who wouldn't be loyal to his job? Too many people, indeed. Also in Italy and in Germany they used to test people's loyalty to their jobs, and they found a far greater loyalty to jobs than to democracy. But now tell me another thing. What do you give to your children in the way of good news about the world?" "Plenty," I said. "For example, I tell them about Socrates, who was killed by the greatest democracy on earth for standing at the corner drugstore and asking questions that made the politicians feel uncomfortable." "That's not a cheerful story, either," he said, "but if they were able to absorb some of the spirit of the Greeks, that would serve them a great deal later on in life. The more I read the Greeks, the more I realize that nothing like them has ever appeared in the world since." "You read the Greeks?" I said. "But of course," he replied, slightly surprised at my amazement. And so I heard, partly from him and partly from Miss Dukas, that he reads the Greeks to Maja every night for an hour or so, even if he has had a very tiring day. Empedocles, Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Thucydides receive the tribute of the most advanced and abstract modern science every night, in the calm voice of this affectionate brother who keeps his sister company. "You know," I said, "that is great news. Young Americans, who have an idea of the pure scientist worthy of the comics, should be told that Einstein reads the Greeks. All those who relish the idiotic and dangerous myth of the scientist as a kind of Superman, free from all bonds of responsibility, should know this and draw their conclusions from it. Many people in our day go back to the Greeks out of sheer despair. So you too, Herr Professor, have gone back to the Greeks." He seemed a little hurt. "But I have never gone away from them," he said. "How can an educated person stay away from the Greeks? I have always been far more interested in them than in science." Lunch was over, and Einstein announced that he was going to go upstairs for his nap. Bice was assigned, for hers, a couch under a red-nosed portrait of Schopenhauer in the library-and-music room. The sun was shining again, so Bimba was told that she could go out to the garden to play, and I went for a walk around the town. When, after an hour or so, I came back to the house, I found Bimba still in the garden. I was quite disappointed to hear that I had missed an extraordinary event. Just after I had left and just as Einstein started to go upstairs, Bimba had asked him to play the violin for her. He had not touched his instrument for almost a year, but he took it out and played Bimba a few bars from a Mozart minuet. I saw Einstein on the porch, waving to me. I joined him there and sat down next to him while he stretched his legs on a deck chair and leaned back, one hand behind his head, the other holding his pipe in mid-air. I had a volume of the German translation of Plato by Preisendanz in my briefcase and asked his permission to read aloud a passage from "Gorgias." He listened patiently and was very amused by Socrates' wit. When I was through, he said, "Beautiful. But your friend Plato"--and he extended his pipe in such a way that it became Plato--"is too much of an aristocrat for my taste." "But you would agree," I said, "that all the qualities that make for a democratic attitude are noble qualities?" "I would never deny that," he said. "Only a noble soul can attain true independence of judgment and exercise respect for other people's rights, while any so-called nobleman prefers to conceal his vulgarity behind such cheap shields as an illustrious name and a coat of arms. But, you see, in Plato's time and even later, in Jefferson's time, it was still possible to reconcile democracy with a moral and intellectual aristocracy, while today democracy is based on a different principle--namely, that the other fellow is no better than I am. You will admit that this attitude doesn't altogether facilitate emulation." There was a silence, and he interrupted it, almost talking to himself. "I lived for a while in Italy," he said, "and I think that the Italians are among the most humane people in the world. When I want to find an example of a naturally noble creature, I must think of the Italian peasants, the artisans, the very simple people, while the higher you go in Italian society . . ." and as he lifted his pipe a little, it became a contemptible specimen of a class of Italians he does not admire. A small airplane was appearing and disappearing between treetops, and gargling noisily right into our conversation. "In the past," said Einstein, "when man travelled by horse, he was never alone, never away from the measure of man, because"--he laughed--"well, the horse, you might say, is a human being; it belongs to man. And you could never take a horse apart, see how it works, then put it together again, while you can do this with automobiles, trains, airplanes, bicycles. Modern man is besieged by mechanics. And even more ominous than this invasion of our lives is the rise of a class of people born of the machine, so to speak--people to whom certain powers must be delegated without the moral screening of a democratic process. I mean the technicians. You can't elect them, you can't control them from below; their work is not of the type that may be improved by public criticism." "Yes," I said, "and they are born Fascists. What can you do against them?" "Only one thing," he said. "Try to prevent them from becoming a closed society, as they have become in Russia." "This is why," I said, "now that we have lost the company of the horse, we may get something out of the company of men such as the Greeks were." "It may be an antidote to conformism," he said. "Don't you think that American youth is becoming more and more conformist?" I asked. "Modern conformism," he said, "is alarming everywhere, and naturally here it is growing worse every day, but, you see, American conformism has always existed to some extent, because American society, being based on the community itself and not on the authority of a strong central state, needs the co?peration of every individual to function well. Therefore, the individual has always considered it his duty to act as a kind of spiritual policeman for himself and his neighbor. The lack of tolerance is also connected with this, but much more with the fact that American communities were religious in their origin, and religion is by its very nature intolerant. This will also help you understand another seemingly strange contradiction. For example, you will find a far greater amount of tolerance in England than over here, where to be `different' is almost a disgrace, for everyone, starting with schoolboys and up to the inhabitants of small towns. But you will find far more democracy over here than in England. That, also, is a fact." "Tell me, Herr Professor," I said. "This has nothing to do with what we were discussing, but what are the chances that a chain reaction may destroy the planet?" He looked at me with sincere sympathy, took his pipe slowly out of his mouth, stretched out his arm in my direction, and explained why his pipe (now the planet) was not likely to be blown to bits by a chain reaction. And I was so pleased by his answer that I didn't bother to understand the reasons. "Tell me," I now asked, "why is it that most scientists are so cynical with regard to the issues of war and peace today? I know many physicists who worked on nuclear reactions, and I am struck by their complete indifference to what goes on outside their field. Some of them are as conspicuous for their silence as they are for their scientific achievements." "So much more credit for those who talk," said he. "But, believe me, my friend, it's not only the scientists who are cynical. Everyone is. Some people sit in heated offices and talk for years and write reports and draw their livelihood from the fact that there exist displaced persons who cannot afford to wait. Wouldn't you call this cynicism? I know that you were going to ask me about the responsibility of the scientists. Well, it is exactly the same as that of any other man. If you think that they are more responsible because in the course of their research they found things that are dangerous, such as the atomic bomb, then also Newton is responsible, because he discovered the law of gravitation. Or the philologists who contributed to the development of languages should be considered responsible for Hitler's speeches. And for his actions. If scientists were to refrain from investigation for fear of what bad people might do with the results, then all of us might as well refrain from living altogether." "In other words," I said, "it would amount to a form of censorship on all our actions and thoughts." "A rather useless censorship," he said, "for you can trust man to find other channels of evil." Then he laughed heartily and added, "You may underestimate man's ability to do evil." It was time to go. I ran upstairs to say goodbye to Maja and call Bice. "We heard you laugh a good deal," said Maja. "You must have had a good time downstairs." "Indeed," I said. "And it was a great honor to have Professor Einstein spend such a long time chatting with me." "Macch? onore d'Egitto," said Maja, which means, in colloquial Italian "Honor, hell." Einstein went slowly back into his study. I caught a glimpse of his face; he was miles away from everybody, back in his foreign land. As Bice, Bimba, and I were walking to the station, Bimba began to cry because she had lost the hat of a paper doll Miss Dukas had given her. She wanted to run back to look for it, but there was no time for that. To console her, Bice said, "Think, Bimba, when you grow up, you will be able to say that Einstein played the violin for you." "Oh, come," said Bimba, "it isn't true." "Why?" I asked. "Didn't he play for you?" "Call that play?" she said, making a sour face. "He had to use a stick to play it." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:47:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:47:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Tom Wolfe in Fox Special Report with Brit Hume Message-ID: Fox Special Report with Brit Hume 4.12.31 Writer Tom Wolfe, Chronicler Of American Politics And Culture For Four Decades In Books Such As "The Right Stuff" And "Bonfire Of The Vanities," Speaks About The Past And Some Current Events Brit Hume, James Rosen ???BRIT HUME, HOST: Up next, a FOX News Special, an interview with the writer Tom Wolfe who has for four decades satirized America's politicians and celebrities; all for obscuring the short sightedness of liberals and their causes. He has immortalized our astronaut heroes in "The Right Stuff," and detailed the greed and racism in New York City in "Bonfire of the Vanities." And his latest book, about the decline in sexual morals on college campuses is another bestseller. ???Up next, FOX News' James Rosen spends an hour with Tom Wolf. ???But first, the latest headlines. ???(NEWSBREAK) ???(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ???JAMES ROSEN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tom Wolfe left from the ranks of police and feature reporters in the mid 1960s to become one of America 's most respected and successful authors. Fusing shoe leather reporting and a zippy prose style with the techniques of novel writing, Wolfe helped create the so-called new journalism. ???Dressed in his trademark white suits, he coined unforgettable phrases, while heaping wicked satire on establishment figures and trends, often liberal in nature, from the late '60s radical chic to the '70s self- absorption. Wolfe's nonfiction books and novels have become bestsellers and Hollywood films, including "The Right Stuff" and "Bonfire of the Vanities." His latest novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons" was published in November. ???Seated in his apartment on New York's Upper East Side, Tom Wolfe spoke with FOX News about all of those things and some current events. ???ROSEN (on camera): You were quoted recently as saying you have a certain amount of sympathy for what President Bush is trying to do. ???TOM WOLFE, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Yes. I've attracted a lot of European press coverage since I let this be known. They've been looking -- they've been trying to find just one American writer who would support George Bush. I mean it's like discovering a unicorn. ???Only George Bush would have invaded Afghanistan. Al Gore or John Kerry or Bill Clinton, as we sit here today, would be making imaginary snowballs. Well, on the one hand, we do know that the Afghanistans are -- Afghans are harboring these terrorists. But on the other hand, it's a sovereign nation and if we are going to respect our own sovereignty, we have to respect the sovereignty of others. And I call upon the U.N. to unite in this crusade to stop. ???I mean you needed a Christian soldier as in the hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers Marching As To War," to do the job. And that they had in George Bush. ???ROSEN (voice-over): While Wolfe applauds President Bush for taking the country to war at the right time, he rates the president as a poor commander-in-chief. ???WOLFE: What's happened, has all the trappings so far of a blunder. And the trappings of a terrible morass from which there is no -- there is no exit. ???ROSEN: You're speaking of Iraq right now? ???WOLFE: Yes, of no honorable exit. But that doesn't make the enterprise wrong, even though I honestly can't see how you pull out of this thing. ???ROSEN: What are your thoughts about the Vietnam War? Obviously it still haunts us. And yet, it was a factor in this election yet again. Was that a worthwhile enterprise? ???WOLFE: In my opinion, it was the most idealistic war in American history. Well, the Civil War was idealistic too. What was there for the U.S. to gain there except stop communist? Nothing. Did we want the rubber plantations of South Vietnam? I don't think so. It's not worth 57,000 deaths, certainly. So, it was a very worthwhile enterprise. ???I think it was fought; it's easy in hindsight, fought exactly the wrong way. We didn't go up and attack North Vietnam. We could have bombed Hanoi and Haiphong off the face of the earth. We didn't do that. I think we probably were afraid of China coming to -- coming into the battle. But it was waged in a terrible way. And you can't have a foreign war that lasts that long. In my opinion, that was the only thing wrong with the war in Vietnam. ???ROSEN: Another seismic event, in that period in which you emerged as one of the bright lights was Watergate. And to my knowledge, you've only written very briefly about that. I wonder what you think about Watergate as a scandal, as a turning point for this country, Nixon as a figure. ???WOLFE: I think one reason there really wasn't a national furor about Nixon; there was a Washington furor, there wasn't a national furor because everyone felt -- I mean not everyone, obviously not everybody. A great many people felt, as I did, that I would have probably done the same thing, protected my men. ???RICHARD NIXON (R-CA), LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have never obstructed justice. ???WOLFE: Most people have no idea what Nixon did wrong today. Obviously he committed a felony, or he wouldn't have quit. But it was covering up for your men. It's not a moral big deal when you get right down to it. So, I didn't -- I didn't look upon it as some earth-shaking event. ???NIXON: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. ???ROSEN: And so why was he driven from office? ???WOLFE: He committed a felony. After all, if I'm not mistaken, Bill Clinton can't practice law. I think he's been disbarred. Still, there are penalties for what you do. ???ROSEN (voice over): Richard Nixon escaped impeachment when he resigned the presidency. Bill Clinton was impeached, but survived. And Wolfe thinks Clinton will be remembered fondly, but more as a larger than life character rather than as a giant among presidents. ???WOLFE: He will be that lovable scoundrel that will be in folk songs. That's all over. There will be the ballad of Bill Clinton. You know, that will be Bubba 's legacy. What charm, what moral scallywag. He'll be remembered like Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York, times were good. Things were fun. ???ROSEN: The bare outlines of Clinton's fall from grace, his affair with White House intern, subsequent lies and the exposure of those lies, Wolfe says any dime store novelist could have dreamt up. ???WOLFE: The details! The details! The details of the affair. The washbasin. Oh, the dress. ???ROSEN (on camera): The thongs. ???WOLFE: The thong. I mean you'd have to be a genius to think that stuff up. And that's the problem fiction has these days. Fiction has to be plausible. Nothing in that whole thing was plausible. But it happened. ???ROSEN (voice-over): One achievement Wolfe credits to Clinton was the way he made minorities feel a part of his administration. ???WOLFE: My daughter was working for the "New York Observer" when Clinton arrived at his office headquarters in Harlem. And she said you had to be among the crowd to sense the fervor that people in Harlem had for this man. She said it was almost like a gospel revival. There was gospel singing. There were bands, speeches that you'd never heard, and just enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm. Now, that is a great thing for a white American president to have done. ???ROSEN (on camera): Will Clinton be remembered as the mere interregnum between the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the age of terrorism for the United States? ???WOLFE: Probably. I think so. In terms of just overall politics, not much. Not much happened. There was the, oddly, the precedent was set for Iraq by bombing Kosovo. Now what is this bombing Kosovo, for God's sakes, anyway? But it was just a symbolic gesture I think on his part. You know, what -- what earthly difference do the Balkans make to United States security? Zero. Zero. I mean if you keep them secure, we get better basketball players. ???ROSEN: (voice-over): Coming up -- America's premier social observer offers his take on Hillary Clinton, the digital age and the attacks of September 11. ???WOLFE: Not even New York changed, our name changed for very long. ???UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To the troop, just keep up the good work. We miss you and come back home soon. ???UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for all you're doing for everyone else. ???UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Without them, we couldn't have what we all have here today. ???UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Come back safe. Everybody loves you and may God bless you always. ???ROSEN (voice-over): If Tom Wolfe sees Bill Clinton as a lovable rogue, his presidency, a kind of comedic coda to the Cold War, the author is also keenly aware the Clinton era is not over yet. Especially with Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior senator from Wolfe's home state, now a potential presidential candidate in her own right. ???(on camera): Do you think she's got a shot? ???WOLFE: I think she has a -- yes. I think she does. I think she is a smart enough politician. She handled herself very well in this election. Very well. I think she can make sure that people simply don't remember the things they didn't like about her. No. She's real good. She can pull it off. ???ROSEN (voice-over): Even if Mrs. Clinton reclaimed the White House, Wolfe argues, the effect of the direction of the federal government would be limited. ???WOLFE: In this country, everything is driven to the center, which is fine by me. I love it. Our government is like a train on a track. Reagan can come in and say I'm getting rid of the Department of Education. When I get through this government, it's going to be like the Delta Command. It's bigger than ever. Education Department has got a bigger budget than ever. ???And Clinton can come in and his wife will say everybody in this country is going to be in a single HMO and there's no buying your way around it. It's going to be fair from now on. It never happened. ???ROSEN: With the same gusto he once brought to lampooning the Black Panthers, modern art and modern architecture, great historical movements that were supposed to sweep traditional values away under the tide of their inevitable force, but never did. Wolfe now disputes the notion of the internet reshaping the human race, a theme he took up in his last book, "Hooking Up." ???(on camera): In "Hooking Up," you wrote that despite all the grand claims of how the internet was going to create a digital revolution that totally changed all manner of human interaction, it hasn't happened, folks. ???WOLFE: McLuhan's ideas about the changes in media, particularly television changes the human mind, were interesting, but totally wrong in my opinion. And he was followed by very intelligent people, like Danny Hollis, he was a computer genius who said that evolution would now take place in nanoseconds. He said we are right now caterpillars who have no idea that we're going to soon be butterflies. This was all believed. ???All that the computer, and for that matter the internet has done, is bring you information faster, I mean much faster in many cases. And you can get much more of it. And enables you to disseminate it faster. And that is all -- that's a lot. But that's all it does. I mean anybody who thinks that it's going to have some magic effect on human life, it's -- really has room to let upstairs. ???ROSEN (voice-over): One thing the internet has done says Wolfe, a former reporter for "The Springfield Union" and "Washington Post," is hasten the death of newspapers. ???WOLFE: The newspapers know they're in trouble. They know that it's a dying industry. And they've tried all sorts of things to counter that influence. "The New York Times" probably does it best, in that one thing that's very hard for television news, radio news, any news source that's time-driven, image-driven, is to explain it and print is still the dominate policy for explanation. ???Essentially newspapers have had it, as early as 1927 with the technology to print newspapers in the home. But it was so cumbersome who is going to wait for all those pages to come out of a machine. The internet nearly gets around it. The big problem with the internet and with computers is also technological. They scroll. It's like a monk's scroll. It drives me nuts. ???ROSEN: The great subject of our time, he says, is neuroscience, the study of nervous system and the brain. ???WOLFE: The presence of neuroscience is that we are, after all, we're machines. There is no eye. We can put "eye" in quotes. There's no self in your brain. There is no me. It's an illusion. That's their premise. It's their premise. And that's created by the now guess, six different systems working in coordination and giving you the sense that it's just you. ???The current theory is that your mind is really like a lobby. And anybody can walk into the lobby and all sorts of climate can get into the lobby. And that becomes you. you don't know it. But you are, as the great Jose Delgado, a Spanish brain physiologist put it, he said we are merely transient composites of items from the environment. ???ROSEN: Still to come, Tom Wolfe tackles 9/11 and the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. ???WOLFE: At least Stalin didn't have gang members. But the end result was pretty much the same. ???(SIRENS) ???ROSEN (voice-over): When the attacks of September 11 hit New York and Washington, Tom Wolfe was busy roaming college campuses, collecting research for his new novel. But he found reaction among students to the horror of that day was muted. ???(on camera): Did we turn a page on 9/11, this country, or is it pretty much the same country as it was? Is there an era to be defined that started on 9/11? ???WOLFE: The effect on non-New York, maybe a few eastern New Jersey families, zero. It was something happening on television and it -- it was more concern over the possibility of racial profiling against Arabs, than over the death of 3,000 people. And that's just a minority of activists who were worried about the profiling. ???The rest of the students, it was just something that happened on television, just as the fall of Nixon was just something that happened on television. Oh, look at him. He's leaving. Look at him; he waves his hands like that? Gosh. ???And I don't think after the initial shock, not even New York changed, remained changed for very long. ???Netanyahu, former Israeli prime minister, has said that all it would take is one suicide bomber killing one person in New York or Kansas City, for that matter, and everything would change. Fortunately that hasn't -- that hasn't happened. It is a very frightening thing. ???But I think most Americans have really, at this point, settled down. Look at real estate prices in New York. And the banks who lend the mortgages for these purchases, obviously they believe in a secure future. ???(APPLAUSE) ???ROSEN (voice-over): In the aftermath of 9/11, particularly after the passage of sweeping counter terrorism laws, like the Patriot Act, liberals and civil liberties advocates cast Attorney General John Ashcroft as a symbol of repression, a depiction Wolfe found unfair. ???WOLFE: I do not see what is fascistic about John Ashcroft. I mean that is a common accusation by people in my particular world. Most of them are made up of journalists. They always worry about fascism. There hasn't one person who has speech on anything about this war or anything else, that's been inhibited by like John Ashcroft. Where is this guy that's treated as if Goebbels running the show? I haven't found that guy yet. It hasn't happened. ???ROSEN: Joseph Goebbels achieved infamy as Adolph Hitler's propaganda minister. Though Wolfe has written about many of the 20-Century's seismic events, he has written next to nothing about the Second World War or the Holocaust in particular. ???(on camera): In recent year, we've seen a debate as to whether or not the origins of the Holocaust were uniquely German or not. What are your thoughts about that? ???WOLFE: Well, if I may, I'd like to go back to Nietzsche. He predicted wars beyond all imagining in the 20-Century. I mean didn't say a decade from there or some day. He said the 20-Century. And he said the reason these wars would occur is that the faith that educated people, leaders, knowledgeable citizens once put into God would now go into this -- and this is his exact phraseology, "barbaric, nationalistic brotherhoods." ???And the Nazis were as if he sketched them. Communists, who after all were really Russian nationalists no matter what part of the world they lived, it was another example. And both took slaves. At least Stalin didn't have gas chambers, but the end result was pretty much the same. It's the barbaric nationalistic brotherhood, which seizes its opponent's lives, just to have them. You know? It 's just sheer -- it's sheer barbarism. ???ROSEN (voice-over): Though Nietzsche, like Hitler, was German, Wolfe argues The Fuhrer hijacked the philosopher's notion of the Ubermench, or super man. ???WOLFE: When he talked about the Ubermench, he was not talking about the master race. He was talking about himself, really. There would be people like him who are just above all other men and they would change the world. Well, the Nazis conscripted his words and made the Ubermench be them. ???ROSEN (on camera): Though set on a modern American college campus, Wolfe's latest novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," actually covers similar ground. It chronicles the disillusionment of a smart, but sheltered co-ed from Allegheny County, North Carolina, who finds on her arrival at fictional Dupont University a kind of Duke-Harvard hybrid, that her fellow students are less interested in the life of the mind, than they are in hard-core partying, sex and status. ???If our modern college campuses are so debased, so sex and status obsessed, so vulgar, how did we get here? ???WOLFE: It's what Nietzsche predicted actually in 1880 when he talked about the death of God. He said this is the greatest event in modern history. Educated people no longer believing in God. No longer believe in a God that is in their lives every moment. And for us today, certainly people here in the accursed media elite, that's a hard concept to believe. ???ROSEN: It took "Time" magazine until 1966 to get around to putting it on the cover, for example. Right? ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: That's right. That was not a bad cover idea, actually. ???And he predicted that if educated people no longer believed in God, there would be absolutely no standard by which to judge morality. Unless you think there really is a powerful force that has a long alabaster forefinger that says thou shalt and thou shalt not. What's somebody else's word against yours? You feel like, well, that was the way it was in my day, but I guess things have changed. ???Now there are people, and they were heard from in this recent election who still believe that there is an alabaster finger. ???The old purpose of undergraduate education is to give young people two things. One is a broad knowledge of subjects from the arts to the sciences. The other was to build character, a word that's almost as rare now as cohabitation. Whoever talks about cohabitation? ???ROSEN: It just is. ???WOLFE: When I went to graduate school at Yale, the American Studies program, which I was in had just begun. And the mission statement of American Studies was very patriotic. It said we have come of age. We are a strong, rich, vital country. We have our own culture, which is many parts of which are totally separate from European culture. The world must know how great we are. Can you imagine anybody proposing such a manifesto today? ???ROSEN: Anybody besides Dick Cheney? Right? ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: Right. ???ROSEN (voice-over): When we return, the author of "The Electric Kool- Aid Acid Test" takes a trip back in time to the days of Beatles, the Stones, the Grateful Dead and Britney Spears? ???WOLFE: She baffles me. ???(NEWSBREAK) ???(CHEERING) ???ROSEN (voice over): For millions of Americans, the Beatles' arrival in America four decades ago marked personal and cultural watershed. A moment when it seemed as though youth itself, in the form of four longhaired kids from Liverpool, began to at long last asserts itself. And Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand. ???WOLFE: I was at Kennedy Airport the day the Beatles in 1964, it was like, it must have been March. It was kind of a blustery day. And I, without realizing really what I was looking at, I saw the transformation that they brought. Perhaps 10,000 New York high school students played hooky to be there when they arrived. And these children were -- maybe the word "children," had their noses pressed up against the class. And here they came to see the Beatles; the first time they'd seen them. They were on the radio all the time. And only fleetingly were they ever on television. ???And I remember this wave of young boys running down the hallway trying to get closer to where they would actually be coming in, combing their hair forward. At that time, there were still a kind of duck-tailed hair-dos. The boys had long hair, but they comb it straight back, and they slick it back, a lot of pomade. And now they were combing it forward over their -- that symbolized what was about to happen, which was music was taking off the ballroom floor. ???There was some great swing music as it was called, when I was growing up in the 1940s, even the early 1950s. Glenn Miller was the archetypes, his band. And it could be very jazzy, but it was still ballroom music. Meaning that it had been meant to be danced to by proper people. The Beatles ended all of that. And when they did so, they -- like a big permission slip for a whole generation of young people, say you know, the hell with your symbols of propriety. We're going to do it the way we want to. ???ROSEN: Other British bands like the Rolling Stones followed in the Beatles' wake, soon to be joined by San Francisco-based groups like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was a convergence of music and drug cultures that Wolfe chronicled in his 1968 bestseller "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." ???WOLFE: One of the things that young people like about a group like the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead is that they were not very good music. And it made you feel that there was not this great distance between you and them. ???On stage, the Rolling Stones were always looking from one to the other and people thought it was a sign of bonding or something. It was because they couldn 't keep time. And they were wondering, you know, what's the other guy -- and they couldn't play those damn instruments. It was a kind of a -- a spirited, youthful rebellion. You think of the song "I Don't Get No Satisfaction." ???MICK JAGGER, LEADER SINGER, THE ROLLING STONES: I don't get no. No. No. No. No. Hey, hey, hey ???WOLFE: That's about the extent of the lyrics. You know, music goes right -- bypasses the mind. I mean that's just a great power. And it just went right into the heart of just, God, tens of millions, perhaps billions of people around the earth. We're free of the adults. ???(LAUGHTER) ???ROSEN: Today's teenagers, of course, are far more likely to scream for Britney Spears than for Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger. And the not so innocent one reappears throughout "I Am Charlotte Simmons." ???(on camera): You mentioned Britney Spears maybe a dozen times in this book. What do you think of Britney Spears? ???WOLFE: To tell you the truth, she baffles me. She is the ultimate example today of Daniel Borstein's definition of a celebrity, somebody who's well known for being well known. When is the last time she sang a song? I don't know. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: Maybe I just wasn't listening. It doesn't matter anymore. ???ROSEN (on camera): Sizing of Charlotte Simmons in "The New York Times," reviewer Michiko Kakutani faulted Wolfe for relying on, quote, "peculiarly dated, cultural touchstones" in his portrait of campus life, and she cited Britney Spears among them. A dig Wolfe responded to in our interview. ???WOLFE: A couple of reviews said that it showed how backwards I was that I referred to Britney Spears in that she's over. She's finished. Well, I want those people to look at "Us Weekly" this week! ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: There she is on the cover. Is she pregnant or not? They don't put it quite that crudely. I mean they don't put it quite that bluntly. It's something like is there a baby inside? ???ROSEN: Another criticism of the novel has been that no brilliant and beautiful American girl, like Wolfe's protagonist, Charlotte Simmons, would be so shocked as Charlotte is to find today's college students absolutely obsessed with sex and partying. ???Charlotte Simmons, as you mentioned, comes from the Hill Country, Allegheny County in North Carolina. In order to find a very bright and very attractive young woman, as she is in the novel, who would be truly shocked the see all this, did you have to choose a really remote region, like the Hill Country of North Carolina? ???WOLFE: My sister, Helen, lives in North Carolina, had told me about Sparta. And Sparta really does have an air of remoteness, a very nice air of remoteness. You know, there's not even a movie house. There is no stockbrokers, there are no businessmen in drab suits and interesting neckties. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: And it's a very different community. Just Sparta itself, maybe 900 people the whole county, it's the only town in the entire county. So symbolically, if nothing else, I felt this was a good place for her, for an innocent to come from. ???ROSEN: Even Charlotte Simmons is aware of who Britney Spears is. You make that clear in the book, because a young man comes to hit on her. And he says do you get tired of hearing that you look just like Britney Spears? And she knew that was a line because she knows she doesn't look like Britney Spears, therefore, she knows who she is. Wouldn't anyone who knows who Britney Spears is kind of know about the extent of the vulgarity of our culture? ???WOLFE: Well, at the very outset, I make a point of her feeling separate from the cool crowd in her high school. And some of the cool boys even break up her commencement party at her own home, coming in chewing tobacco, spitting on the lawn. And in her thoughts while she gives her commencement address, she is thinking about them and their in-crowd, and the fact that they -- that crowd wants a girl to give it up, talking obviously about virginity. ???And so she's not unaware of a coarser side of life. You make a good point. There's probably no place so remote today that, thanks to television, if nothing else, that they don't know that there is a seamy life out there. ???ROSEN (voice over): Still ahead, the master at work. Out in the field and at home in the laboratory. ???WOLFE: I tried the computer I worked with two years, and this book on the computer. ???ROSEN (voice over): Ideas germinate in Tom Wolfe's mind and stay there, sometimes for decades. For example, the origins of "The Painted Word," Wolfe's 1975 assault on modern art and "from Bauhaus to Our House," his 1981 attack on modern architecture, both date back to a 1968 article in "New York" magazine; in which Wolfe declared, "The hell with art history and the New York status sphere. The hell with Bauhaus, it is really hard to figure out how the old Bauhaus ideals have hung on so long." ???"The Right Stuff," Wolfe's 1979 account of America's first astronauts, began six years earlier as a lengthy essay for "Rolling Stone." And "The Bonfire of the Vanities," the title of Wolfe's blockbuster 1987 novel, had been rattling around inside his brain since 1972. ???In "I Am Charlotte Simmons," Wolfe pokes fun at the upscale denizens of the Big Apple, who talk with what he calls the New York "Honk," a concept he debuted in the debut issue of "New York"36 years ago. ???(On camera): What is your favorite part of the process of doing a book from the conception of the ideas in your mind straight through to the seemingly endless parade of interviewers like me, the promoting of it? At all points along the way, what is your favorite part about this? ???WOLFE: I don't really like you, Jim. ???(LAUGHTER) ???ROSEN: I knew this. I knew this. ???WOLFE: My favorites part is reporting and coming up with something I had absolutely no idea existed that might interest the outside world. And I think reporting is much more difficult than people think, if only because you were a beggar. I'm always a beggar with a tin cup asking questions of people that I have no right to ask, asking for answers I have no right to have. ???ROSEN: I'll do that later. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: And you know, a lot of people just are not willing to do that. I think that's why there are so many Great British reporters past the age of 30; it's just too undignified. But I frankly love it. ???ROSEN: You like that more than the writing? ???WOLFE: Oh, God, yes. I think writing is one of the most difficult things you can take upon yourself because nobody can help you. People can spot what's really wrong, and my wife does that with regularity. She sends me no Valentines. But nobody can really make it work for yourself. And even though you've written a number of books, I find this true, anyway, the next one is a totally different problem. ???The only thing having written does for you is makes you feel yes, I can do this. If I stick with it, it can be done. ???ROSEN: Do you laugh out loud at some things that you've written? ???WOLFE: No. I really don't. Sometimes I -- if it's all in print and I read it over. I'll say to myself gee, that's not bad. That's a chuckle. ???ROSEN: I saw in an interview where you said that you were motivated to write this book, because you had found that there hadn't been any full- scale attempts to chronicle college life in America today in novel form. How did you arrive at that determination? ???WOLFE: Well, obviously I don't work for the Library of Congress and I don't see everything that's written. I was certainly not aware of everything that was looking at college life from the student's point of view, so that you might feel like you were looking at it the way that the student looks. There have been sociological studies really, in which previously 74 percent of women leaving college were virgins. And currently it's -- the number is down to 42 percent, and this kind of thing. ???And not allowing for the fact that almost anybody can lie on that subject, according to which way they think they should go. ???ROSEN: As our exit polls recently showed. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: I love to see polls wrong. I swear I love it. I love it. It just brings me back to the idea that God has a few jokes up his sleeve still. ???UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. ???WOLFE: And as far as I know, there is nothing except a lot -- there are a lot of wonderful faculty novels. But I found that today what the attitudes of faculty and the attitude of students, I'm not just talking politically and obvious things like that. But just towards life and towards -- and also the knowledge that one has of the other; it's day and night. So, a faculty novel is not going to give you very much about the students. ???ROSEN: And someone like yourself at your stage of your career, where you could really write about anything you wanted to, why did you choose collegiate life? ???WOLFE: Well, I'm such a journalist at heart, even when I do a novel. I'd love to write about things that I receive through the air, conversation. Just hear people talking rather than pick up a subject from out of the newspapers. And I began hearing, this is back in the '90s, stories of wilds times in colleges. I'm talking about sex. I'm talking about drinking, to a certain extend. Drugs, although that's not a big deal, I don't think, on the campuses. ???Political correctness, of course, that term was probably invented about 1990. And at the same time, colleges had replaced the church as the places where new ethical outlooks, new moral outlooks are created. And so, it was the lurid side and the important side. Both intrigued me. ???And in fact, I was at one point, in this novel, "A Man In Full," it took me so long that I was tempted to just drop it and then go do a quick novel on colleges. And something inside of me said you don't do anything quick anymore. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: And so I stuck it out with the "A Man In Full," and I immediately knew what I wanted to do next. ???ROSEN (voice-over): "A Man In Full," published six years ago, focused on an Atlanta-based real estate developer who goes broke. While Wolfe's first novel, "Bonfire of the Vanities," followed a white, Wall Street wizard who accidentally runs over a young black student. ???(on camera): "I Am Charlotte Simmons" seems to represent a real departure for you in the types of people you're used to inhabiting and chronicling. Is that true? Is that fair to say? ???WOLFE: Oh, it certainly is. I suppose I was so wrapped up in the romance of business that this was a departure to turn -- turn to colleges. And turn to people who are, in almost every case, more than 50 years older than -- younger than I. ???ROSEN (voice over): When "I Am Tom Wolfe," a FOX News special concludes, we go inside the Wolfe home and find out how many white suits a man in full really needs. ???WOLFE: I do drive people crazy. ???ROSEN (on camera): What are you working on now? ???WOLFE: I'm waiting to tell you the truth for some idea to come through the air and hit me. Unlike this book on college life, which I knew as soon as I finished the last book, I knew what I was going to do next. I don't feel that way now. ???I'm itemed to do, if the subject somehow comes up, to do another nonfiction book. Because I really do believe that nonfiction prose was the great literary push forward in America in the 20-Century. Novels are dying. Novels are a dead duck, unless people write like me. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't write the way I write. ???ROSEN: I was going to ask you what you find so alluring about the novel as a form, that it has been your form for the last three trips out to the mound. ???WOLFE: Well, you know, I didn't really mean for it to go on this long. For the first time, when I fed "The Right Stuff," the book about the astronauts, which sold pretty well, I had a financial cushion. I swear to God, I never had a financial cushion before. I mean Financial cushion is something that enables you to go for a year without outside income. ???Later on, I decided well, wait a minute. I really don't want to end my career. By this time, you know, I was 50-odd-years old. I don't want to end my career looking back and saying, gee, I wonder what would have happened if I tried a novel? And also there are lots of people who say this new, nonfiction, this new journalism is the most elaborative form of writer's block we've ever seen. ???You invent a whole theory to avoid facing the challenge of the novel. I said OK, I'll do it. I'll do a novel. Well, that was "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and it seemed to come off pretty well. And it went straight to my ego and I said well, I'll do one more and see how that goes. Well, that took an awful long time, but it really fed my family well when it came out. And then I succumbed to the succubae or the incubi one more time. But I do recognize the superiority of nonfiction. ???It is nice, though, in fiction, to be able to bring together psychological motivation, events, different types of people with whom you can connect in a novel, in a way that you can't find them connected by just going out and looking for it. For example, Charlotte Simmons' life intersects with the intellectuals on campus, the big time athletes on campus, the fraternity boys on campus. A rich life in one sense. ???That's intimidating, I found, the freedom the novel gives you. Because after all, you are God, you can do whatever you want. ???ROSEN (voice over): Throughout his career, Tom Wolfe has zeroed in on status details a telltale clues a person gives in his clothing, furniture and mannerisms, that signify how much a person is worth and where he thinks he is in the great human pecking order. ???(on camera): You are so obsessed with status and with clothes and architecture, and that sort of thing. and I wonder if it's caused friction when your friends or your wife's friends come over. Do they think my God, what can I wear to this man's house? ???(LAUGHTER) ???ROSEN: He's going to be observing every little aspect. Are my shoes expensive enough, et cetera? I mean has that actually come up? Do people really... ???WOLFE: No, they think I'm -- they believe I'm wrong, so that it doesn't matter. I have -- my original interest in brain science, brain physiology as known back then, was that my convictions there must be somewhere in the brain that makes us conscience moment by moment of our status. At Yale, were taught to stay "stay-tus." Saying stay-tus had much more status than status. Most say status, that's what most people call it. ???In every single moment I think we are judging how we're doing? What are the other people thinking about me? And it can go into -- as I try to show in this book, it goes into sex, certainly among young people. Am I doing it right? Should I be doing it? If I've gone this far, do I have to go all the way or they 'll think I'm a prude? I mean in the midst of these so-called passionate moments, I'm convinced that these thoughts are just rolling and it's all that status. ???ROSEN: But your friends don't come over, you know, or refuse to get together with you because my God, he will be evaluating me and harshly if I don't betray all the proper status accoutrement. Or... ???WOLFE: Well, I do drive people crazy in Long Island, where we move for the summer. Because the fashions today in the upper orders, is no necktie, casual look, loafers and no socks, and all that stuff. They do wonders. They come here to my house. The bastards better have on a necktie and we're going to look bad. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: And I've seen people who didn't really want to wear neckties. But being a bad host, I wear mine anyway. ???ROSEN: And he's lampooning your signature here? Do you think? ???(voice over): And here is the place where Wolfe gives voice to his inner voice, a cluttered study, housing dozens of artists renderings of himself, almost all of them depicting Wolfe in his trademark suit. Indeed, neither he nor his detractors have ever been sheepish about the Wolfe's clothing. And as our time together came to an end, FOX News wasn't either. ???ROSEN (on camera): If you're gamed for it, Tom, I would like to show -- I would like -- and I know it's invasive. I know the chutzpah it requires for me to ask it, but I'm going to anyway. I would like to show the public your closet. And I want to see all white suits, one after the other, after the other. Come on; think what a hoot that would be. ???WOLFE: I -- I have always drawn the line there. ???(LAUGHTER) ???WOLFE: And the real reason is to have as many white suits, as that reputation would call for, would mean I'd have to have 50 to 60. And I... ???ROSEN: And you don't want to give away the game here? ???WOLFE: I mean I used to -- I really did used to have a lot. I have got about 18 now. I think that's sufficient for... ???ROSEN: And normal. ???WOLFE: For this year, anyway. ???(LAUGHTER) From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 6 22:48:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 18:48:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNBC: Tom Wolfe interviewed by Tina Brown Message-ID: CNBC: Tom Wolfe interviewed by Tina Brown 4.12.26 Tom Wolfe discusses his new book and the sexual pressures on college students ANCHORS: TINA BROWN ???TINA BROWN, host: ???Four facts about Tom Wolfe, author of the new novel, "I am Charlotte Simmons. " ???Roots: Raised in Richmond, Virginia; unexpectedly found his calling as a newspaper reporter at The Springfield Union making 55 bucks a week. ???Claim to Fame: Pioneered the `New Journalism' with his 1965 book, "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby." ???Embedded Reporter: While researching his new book, set at fictional DuPont University, he spent time in dorms, classrooms and frat parties at a variety of American universities. ???Quote: On coed dorms, "How can you put these downy, nubile young things and young men in the season of the rising sap together in testosterone valley and not expect some unpleasant outcome?" ???Tom Wolfe's third novel, "I am Charlotte Simmons," about loose college life at an elite, imaginary Ivy League college, just out this week. ???Welcome, Tom. ???Mr. TOM WOLFE (Author): Well, thank you, Tina. ???BROWN: Good to have you. ???So how did a 74-year-old New York writer brilliantly get into the brain, you know, of this young 18-year-old girl from the Blue Ridge Mountains? This book is written in the first person, and you had to inhabit Charlotte Simmons. How did you make the transition from you to her? ???Mr. WOLFE: To me, it was like any other reporting assignment. I have been so unlike most of the people I've written about that I don't even try any longer to fit in. Fortunately, this was a novel, and so students would open up to me--I wasn't going to name their names. I wasn't going to identify them in any way--to the point where girls would show me their Filofax diaries. Well, they keep them as diaries. They're really, you know, date books. And a number showed me their entries. And girls will record every hook-up--I started to say amours; that's a word that nobody knows the... ???BROWN: That would already date you. Yeah. ???Mr. WOLFE: And they're very scrupulous about that, strangely enough, even when they have no idea what the guy's name was, which is a new thing. So anyway, they were very forthright, as were the basketball players that I interviewed and got to know to some extent. You know, college students love to talk about their lives, as we all do. ???BROWN: What was the single most fascinating thing that you learned, though, in this tour of these campuses? ???Mr. WOLFE: That the sexual pressure that exists on campuses today has many unfortunate effects. It's so great and it's so easy, in other words, to have sex practically any time you want it, because if you've got coed dorms, and there's 5,500 students, let's say, that means there are 5,500 beds in buildings that anybody, male, female, whatever, can walk in any hour of the day or night, and a lot of students really don't want that. And... ???BROWN: And did they talk to you about the fact that they don't want that? ???Mr. WOLFE: Yes, some did. I mean, there is a--one of my characters is a senior male virgin. Well, like males of any era, he desperately does not want anybody to know that he's a virgin. But now this to me is a big change: Neither does a girl. When I was growing up, the worst, if I may say, `slut' in school would maintain a facade of innocence, would never admit that she's had sexual experience. Today the female virgins will cover up their virginity, because they 'll be branded a VC, that is, a member of the `virgins' club.' And that to me is a complete change. Also the language, both boys and girls, surprised me. But the girls now talk like American Army soldiers from the '30s. You know, there's just one word that's used participially, adverbially, as a noun, as an interjection. That just--their speech is full of it. ???BROWN: So do you think--I mean, you once said that coed dorms were a terrible idea. I mean, do you think that this has come from coed dorms, and do you think that sex, in a way, has become a tyranny on these kids, or is this really the perspective of an older-generation guy? ???Mr. WOLFE: It may well be the perspective of an older--but I found that the girls, particularly, were under such pressure on this front, such pressure to--if--you know, to give the guy dessert first, and then get to know him. That turns everything upside down. And there's also very few ways of--through the rules, to avoid sexual pressure. And now a girl can't plead, `Well, gee, I have to be back in the dorm by 12:30, and this is--you know, I'm going to get into a lot of trouble.' ???BROWN: So I mean... ???Mr. WOLFE: Today they're not getting into any trouble. ???BROWN: Now did a lot--did some of these perceptions come about by your own daughter when she went to Duke? I mean, did that really sort of start you fascinating on this? ???Mr. WOLFE: I tell you. This is Daddy talking, but I consider my two children--my daughter, who graduated from Duke two years ago; my son Tommy is a sophomore at Trinity College. I think so much of them. I really think they have such strong characters. I never worried at all. And I would never ask either one of them about their private lives, particularly since Daddy--he may be blind--really feels that they're just people of sterling character. But Alexandra and Tommy, too, were very good at spotting false notes. And they were wonderful at that after I gave them the manuscript. ???BROWN: But you know, the genie's now out of the bottle, so it's not going to change, you know. None of this is going to get reversed. I mean, you've got such a keen sense of trends and where things are going. I mean, where do you see this, you know, high pressure of instant intimacy and all this kind of heavy drinking and so on, where do you see this going in terms of a trend in this country? Is it going to be pushed back, for instance, in this new, so-called moral values climate? ???Mr. WOLFE: It's entirely possible. You know, I always think about regency England, which was a licentious--that's another word you never hear anymore. It was a licentious era. ???BROWN: Go right ahead. ???Mr. WOLFE: Women with see-through dresses. They were taking--really highfalutin people were taking nitrous oxide as an hallucinatory drug. Things were loose, followed by the Victorian era. And I've never really been able to figure out why that happened. I don't think there was any great evangelist who went running through England, saying `Repent, repent.' But it did happen. I could see that happening on the campuses. I'm not going to predict that it will, but it could easily happen, because there's so much uncertainty now. ???You know, Nietzsche warned many, many--well, in the 1880s when he said God is dead. He then predicted the World Wars over there--he really did. In the 1880s, he said the 20th century--he called it by name--there will be wars beyond all imagining, catastrophic wars, such as the world has never seen. That's a pretty good prediction, World War I and II. Then he said these will occur because the place that used to be filled by God will be now be filled by barbaric, nationalistic brotherhoods. He was predicting the Nazis and the communists. But he went on to say the 21st century will be worse because there will be a total eclipse of all values. ???BROWN: OK. Well, I think that "I Am Charlotte Simmons" introduces an extremely lovable red-state girl to the liberal elite, and she's going to live with us forever, so thanks so much, Tom, for joining us. ???Mr. WOLFE: Oh, thank you. I hope you're right. ???BROWN: Thank you. From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 7 13:00:02 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 06:00:02 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Controlling Brain Wiring With the Flick of a Chemical Switch Message-ID: <01C53B37.0ADBBC60.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id %3D4390 KurzweilAI.net, April 7, 2005 Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have developed a way to control neuronal growth more precisely by employing nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain -derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). These neurotrophins regulate neuronal growth by activating specific tyrosine kinase (Trk) receptors on the surface of neurons. The Trk receptors translate the neurotrophin signals to regulate neuronal growth and survival machine ry. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 15:00:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:00:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: New Tactics, Tools and Goals Are Emerging for White Power Organizations Message-ID: New Tactics, Tools and Goals Are Emerging for White Power Organizations http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/national/06white.html 5.4.6 [Appended below: 1. The NYT reporting that Hale got 40 years, but with no mention that the penality was increased on the grounds that Hale is a terrorist; 2. A protest from the left; 3. The Chicago Tribune article about the sentencing, which says this is the first time in Chicago that a penalty was increased because of terrorism (and perhaps the third time in the country as a whole.)] By KIRK JOHNSON ST. LOUIS, April 5 - Frank Weltner's cluttered living room is one of the unlikely new hot spots in America's old and ongoing preoccupation with race. Mr. Weltner, a 63-year-old former local radio talk show host, began what white power groups say is the first round-the-clock racial Webcast this year. He can run many Web sites, including what he calls his most popular one, [2]Jewwatch.com, with a laptop computer and a microphone from the comfort of his couch. Technically savvy and politically in tune with their communities, Mr. Weltner and people like him are the new figures to watch in the white power world, say people who track extremist groups. Many of the national organizations - like the Aryan Nation, Creativity and the National Alliance, Mr. Weltner's group - have fragmented in the last few years. Some leaders, including Matthew Hale, the former head of Creativity, who is to be sentenced on Wednesday for soliciting the murder of a federal judge, have been removed; others have died. "The hate groups are in disarray; the leaders have died or been jailed," said Karen Aroesty, the St. Louis-based regional director for Missouri and Southern Illinois for the Anti-Defamation League. "But what we've seen, particularly here, is a more sophisticated use of mainstream media tools in order to sell the product." The breakdown in national leadership has coincided, outside experts and group members say, with a transformation of tools and goals. Some corners of the Internet are openly racist, but local groups have broadened their message to include immigration and adopted more subtle appeals to attract new followers. Mr. Weltner said he preached love for the white race - not hatred for any other - and grass-roots action to protect the European gene pool in the United States, which he said was being diluted by immigration. "Think racially, act locally," he said. The Internet, with its anonymity and lack of physical geography, does not lend itself to bossy leaders or compounds in the woods. Locally autonomous groups can also better refine their message to fit the markets, which further fuels the fragmentation. Here in St. Louis, which has long been one of the nation's most segregated cities, separatism - not supremacy - is the racial term of art. Jeff Weise, the 16-year-old who killed nine people and himself last month on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota, was touched by the arguments of separatism and genetic purity, which he wrote about often in postings on the Internet. Brian H. Levin, a professor of criminal justice and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said cruising the Internet for extremist racial views had become like shopping for books or airfares - an endless consumer choice. "On the Internet, you can craft your own buffet of hate," Professor Levin said. He cautioned, however, that the growth of racialist content on the Web did not necessarily mean a rise in racism in the country. The Internet's expansion into every niche of society, Professor Levin said, could merely be giving voice to impulses already there. Some parts of the white power movement are clearly more underground than ever, diffused and dispersed into the virtual cyberspace of Web sites that claim more members than the estimated size of the Ku Klux Klan. [3]Whiterevolution.com solicits donations via credit card. Other elements are reaching out more than ever for a public role and a piece of the nation's debate on subjects like immigration and the growing gap between rich and poor. Adherents to the movement say the two pieces fit perfectly. Mr. Weltner's group, the National Alliance, spent $1,500 in February, for example, to put advertisements on the local transit trains in St. Louis, and has distributed tens of thousands of leaflets just about every weekend in recent months urging residents to "love your race." The Council of Concerned Citizens, which is based here and has worked to protect use of the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina and Mississippi, is talking more and more about immigration, especially nonwhite illegal immigrants. The group's chief executive, Gordon Lee Baum, said in an interview that immigrants were taking American jobs and pushing the nation toward what he called "third-world status." "As communities suffer the results of massive illegal immigration, it's become a growing concern all over the U.S.," Mr. Baum said. He said big companies bringing in cheap foreign labor were as much to blame as anyone. "In southwest Missouri," he said, "there's a county down there now that is almost a majority Hispanic because of a big meat-processing plant." Some local civic leaders here say the debate itself is frightening - either because the mainstream society might come to accept a race-based perspective as part of legitimate public discourse or because people in economically battered cities like St. Louis might actually be listening. "Groups that used to meet in secrecy are now coming out into the light," said Esther L. Wright, vice president and general manager at WGNU, an AM talk-radio station here that once employed both Mr. Weltner and Mr. Baum as hosts. "That they're becoming more acceptable is just another example of the moral decay of the society." (Mr. Weltner's and Mr. Baum's programs were canceled last fall. Ms. Wright said that there were violations of station policy but that she could not elaborate; Mr. Weltner and Mr. Baum said changes in political taste at the station forced them out.) Some of the results of the racialist public outreach here come close to comedy. In February, for example, the owner of the Bevo Mill restaurant here, David Hanon, got what he thought was a routine booking for a private party. The European Cultural Society wanted to use his restaurant to bring in an Irish dancing school for the day and have a party to celebrate, as the group's name suggested, European culture. Then a reporter from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch called and asked whether Mr. Hanon knew that the European Cultural Society was a front for the National Alliance, a group classified as a neo-Nazi organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups. Mr. Hanon immediately canceled the event. "A lot of people were duped," he said. The National Alliance's transit train advertisements, meanwhile, were so vague and innocuous that few people, including the transit system's administrators, knew what was being advertised until the one-month contract had all but run out. The posters simply said, "The future belongs to us!" with a National Alliance contact number. Some experts say the atomization of the white organizations like the National Alliance and the Aryan Nation and the simultaneous rise of white power on the Internet make the groups less relevant. Mr. Hale, for example, had largely been marginalized in the movement, the experts say, since his conviction last year for soliciting the murder of a federal judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who presided over a trademark infringement case involving the name of Mr. Hale's group. Chat rooms have buzzed in recent weeks, and Mr. Hale's star has risen again if only as a symbol, after the murder of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother. The police say the crime was unrelated to Mr. Hale or white power groups, though cheers for those deaths were posted on some racial Web sites. "The movement as a whole is in the process of sorting itself out, finding its next set of directions, but that doesn't make it less dangerous," said Leonard Zeskind, a writer who has been monitoring white supremacist activity for 25 years. "People don't need to be followers of groups," Mr. Zeskind added. "They just need to be angry." References 2. http://Jewwatch.com/ 3. http://Whiterevolution.com/ ------------- The New York Times > National > 40-Year Term for Supremacist in Plot on Judge http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/national/07hale.html 5.4.7 40-Year Term for Supremacist in Plot on Judge By JODI WILGOREN CHICAGO, April 6 - Matthew Hale, the white supremacist convicted last year of plotting to assassinate a federal judge, was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison for what the sentencing judge described as an "egregious act against the rule of law in the United States." "I consider Mr. Hale to be extremely dangerous," the judge, James T. Moody of Federal District Court, said in imposing the maximum sentence. The crime, Judge Moody said, "undermines the judiciary's central role in our society and strikes at the very core of our government." Mr. Hale, 33, leader of a white power movement now called Creativity, was found guilty of soliciting his security chief, an F.B.I. informant, to kill Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, who was presiding over a trademark case involving his group's use of the name World Church of the Creator. The police focused on Mr. Hale's followers after Judge Lefkow's husband and mother were murdered in their home Feb. 28, but 10 days later a litigant unconnected to the movement, Bart A. Ross, confessed to the killings and committed suicide. Acting as his own lawyer in a courtroom under extraordinary security, Mr. Hale made an anguished, rambling plea Wednesday for a shorter sentence, repeatedly declaring his innocence, asserting that he and Judge Lefkow were "on the same side" and suggesting that his high-profile prosecution might be partly responsible for Mr. Ross's "horrible crime against her family." "What if these people are dead today because of these liars?" Mr. Hale asked, turning to face the prosecutors and F.B.I. agents seated behind him. "What if this guy thought to himself, 'I'm not the only one who wants her dead'?" In a two-hour speech, Mr. Hale, who graduated from law school but was denied admission to the bar because of his racial views, quoted Thomas Jefferson, invoked Latin legal phrases, recited a couplet from "The Star-Spangled Banner" and stopped several times to swallow a sob. He attributed his conviction to his lawyer's shortcomings, insisted that he had refused the informant's overtures toward violence, compared the F.B.I. to the Gestapo and said he would rather be sent to a Siberian work camp than return to solitary confinement and "die in a hole." "If she's here, if somebody could please tell her, tell this poor woman it's a lie," Mr. Hale said of Judge Lefkow, who did not attend the hearing. "What punishment is appropriate for the innocent?" he asked. "I should be home by now. I should be apologized to." Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, denounced Mr. Hale as a domestic terrorist, and took particular offense at the suggestion that his office was in any way responsible for Mr. Ross's criminal acts. "He shows he's not man enough to take responsibility for what he did," Mr. Fitzgerald said at a news conference after the hearing. "I put no stock in his claims, now crocodile tears, that he didn't do anything wrong." Judge Lefkow, who has not yet returned to work, said in a telephone interview that she had skipped the sentencing so as not to distract attention from the proceedings, and that she spent the afternoon at the Chicago Police Department, thanking the officers who investigated the murders. She declined to respond to Mr. Hale's comments, saying only: "I respect the judge's decision. I'm sure that he took all the factors into account and made a fair decision." Asked how she was doing, Judge Lefkow replied: "Carrying on day by day. I stay busy during the day; I have a lot to do. Sometimes nighttimes are harder." Mr. Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, cried several times during her son's statement, declaring after the hearing, "Matt is the only one in that damn room who told the truth." In addition to the metal detectors in the courthouse lobby, a second metal detector and a bomb-sniffing dog were outside Courtroom 1903, where Judge Moody, of the Northern District of Indiana, was sitting so as to avoid the conflict of a colleague of Judge Lefkow. At least four extra armed guards were inside.. Mr. Hale spoke passionately about growing up as the son of an East Peoria, Ill., police officer who never let him touch his badge lest he tarnish it. He said his graduation from the Southern Illinois University law school and Judge Lefkow's granting of the motion he wrote urging dismissal of the trademark case were the best days of his life. Judge Lefkow's decision was overturned on appeal, but Mr. Hale emphasized that she had originally supported his side, saying he had hardly wanted to kill her but had instead been looking forward to arguing a new motion before her. He went over and over details of e-mail messages and taped conversations between himself and his security chief, arguing that in discussing the "Jew rat" he was referring to prosecutors, not Judge Lefkow, who is Episcopalian, and quoting himself as saying, "I cannot be a party to such a thing." Prosecutors contend that these protestations were intended to provide Mr. Hale deniability and that he nonetheless encouraged the security chief to act on his own. "Mr. Hale is not concerned with actually taking someone's life, but how to do it and not get caught," Judge Moody said in handing down the sentence. He called Mr. Hale "manipulative," "calculating" and "a highly educated, intelligent individual who surrounds himself with troubled individuals who feed his enormous ego." While ignoring Mr. Hale's pleas for a shorter sentence, Judge Moody did grant him two other requests: keeping him in Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he has an electric typewriter, for six months so he can work on his appeal, and recommending that the rest of his term be served in Pekin, Ill., near his parents' homes in East Peoria. ---------------- Matthew Hale--American Martyr? by Andy Martin http://www.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=328 AMERICA'S DAILY BRIEFING FOR APRIL 7, 2005 CONTRARIAN COMMENTARY BY ANDY MARTIN MATTHEW HALE: AMERICAN MARTYR. JUSTICE WEEPS; WE SHOULD WEEP (Chicago)(April 7) This is a difficult commentary to write. Matthew Hale is a thoroughly despicable human being. The self-styled "white supremacist" stands for everything I have lived my life against. As a University of Illinois student I went to Springfield to support "open housing" (Freedom of Residence). I worked for civil rights causes in college and through law school, and every year since then. I belong to a completely integrated, multicultural, multiethnic church. I condemn racial or ethnic hatred of any kind. But as a lawyer I know the law often makes grave mistakes. I personally have been abused by corrupt judges and lawyers. Injustice happens every day, to the innocent and the guilty alike. With each passing day America is moving further and further away from the democratic traditions which we espouse and broadcast to the world. We are adopting the totalitarian methods of our vilest adversaries. America is becoming a dictatorship where any person can be falsely accused, prosecuted into penury, and jailed for a "crime" he or she did not commit. Even the guilty are entitled to due process. As Justice Stewart on the U.S. Supreme Court once wrote, "Even a thief is entitled to deny he is a burglar." Justice is served not only in protecting the innocent but also in meting out measured punishment to the guilty. Matthew Hale's sentencing was a kangaroo court, a travesty of justice, a joke and a disgrace to America. But rather than fighting anti-Semitism and racism, the US. Government is in the process of creating yet another martyr--to racism and anti-Semitism. I admire and respect U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. He is as decent and honorable man as ever occupied his office for the Northern District of Illinois. But sometimes even decent human beings, honest and honorable people, can be blinded by their own sense of rectitude and revenge. That's where Contrarian Columnists come in. Hale was accused of "soliciting the murder" of U. S. District Judge Joan Lefkow. We saw only a few weeks ago how mistaken society could be. Hale was suspected of being the orchestrator of the murder of Lefkow's husband and mother. Hale protested his innocence. He was innocent. The punishment of Hale's parents, denying them visits with their son for a year because he protested his innocence of the Lefkow murders through them, is a disgrace to justice, worthy of the Soviet state during its worse abuses. Worthy of China today. A few weeks ago, a lawyer in New York was convicted of representing a vile client, who was also held incommunicado. Now America stoops to punish parents because they protested their son's innocence. Hale protested his innocence again yesterday. But before we get to guilt or innocence, before we ask what a just punishment would be for Hale, we have to ask how any judge worthy of the name could allow someone who has been incarcerated as a caged rat for a year, could allow someone in that state of mind to rise and speak on his own behalf. Even if the court was constrained to permit Hale to speak, the court failed to hear argument from an impartial attorney represented as amicus curiae to speak on behalf of justice itself. No one who has been caged and abused can reasonably be expected to be rational in a proceeding where his life is at stake. That's why we have lawyers. The legal profession and the law failed us today. There was no basis to hold Hale incommunicado. He is a loathsome individual, a thoroughly devilish human being. But as the Seventh Circuit once wrote in a decision, "[A]lhough [he] might not win a popularity contest in this circuit...he still retains the same constitutional rights as every other defendant brought before this bar." In like fashion, Hale has been crucified, in all probability for a crime he did not commit. Injustice never extinguishes the flames; it only fans the fires. That will likely be the outcome with Hale. His followers know Hale was framed, railroaded, set up by an FBI "informant." How many people have said, in the throes of angry divorce, "I wish I could kill my spouse?" People say "I'm going to kill you" every day. They are not being sent to jail for forty years. We don't imprison actual murderers that long. We were told antiterrorism laws were being passed to combat foreign enemies, terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden; now they are being turned on us. Who's next? Patriot Act, anybody? Whatever Hale is, and he is not very much, he is not a terrorist. Judge Moody, who sentenced Hale, wrote an epitaph for our judicial system. He said he said Hale's conduct "strikes at the very core of our system of government." No, sir, Judge Moody. Manufacturing crimes and prosecuting people for manufactured crimes strikes at our democracy. No, Judge Moody, your unprincipled sentencing of a bad man is what really strikes at the very core of our system of government, your imposing "antiterrorism" laws on a neighborhood lout is what strikes at the heart of our Constitution. Sadly, Hale may be a victim when he should have been the vanquished. But in being made a victim by the divine majesty of the U. S. Department of Justice, Hale has become the ultimate victor. He has shown that what he claimed--though for the wrong reasons--was a corrupt society, is indeed a corrupt society, where the FBI can manufacture a crime, use a government-paid employee to orchestrate that crime, and then jail someone with a life sentence for a "crime" that the person never committed. America today is in the business of making the innocent guilty. We are creating gulags all around the world, where we exterminate helpless prisoners, branding them as our perceived enemies, as though the mere act of branding was a sufficient basis to extinguish a life, or torture someone into oblivion. We absolve our perpetrators of these crimes, obstruct investigations, and kill a little bit of every American every time we tolerate such subhuman behavior by a nation that should a light unto all nations. As someone who has devoted a major part of his life to justice and the judicial system, to fighting crooked judges, a corrupt legal system and the wholesale imposition of injustice on the innocent, I can attest that when we fail to protect the guilty, we endanger the innocent. Hale is a bad person, but in protecting his rights we protect our own. We are all guilty of being complicitors as our heritage of Due Process is slowly eroded by the pious platitudes of the Bush administration. America is being diminished. We are too blind to see this happening, too timid to admit and face reality. Today, Osama Bin Laden was also a big winner. He is a hater too. He won because our adversaries are not stupid; they can see what we do, how we preach justice and democracy and yet allow our courts to be controlled by political considerations. Our enemies know we have confined the innocent, abused the innocent, and even murdered the innocent, while frustrated that we cannot easily separate the guilty from the innocent. So we kill them all, abuse them all, disgrace us all. Now, even China and Russia are emboldened to mock our history of civil rights and civility. And they're right. We do not have a monopoly on virtue. Make no mistake, if Hale was guilty of the crime of which he was accused, I would be the first to send him away. If someone is a terrorist, I would be the first to seek harsh punishment, death if necessary. But Hale is not alone. Since 9/11 we have tortured and abused and falsely prosecuted or imprisoned thousands of people who were not guilty of the crimes with which they were charged, or who were not charged with any crime at all. My experience has been that the judicial system is often capable of sorting out excessive punishments. I am hopeful that when cooler heads prevail, as they usually do on the 27th floor of the United States Courthouse, the American people will obtain justice. Hale may be worthy of some punishment, but not forty years in a gulag, not being held incommunicado, not for terrorism, not for a crime he probably did not commit. And not with his parents being harassed and abused by the Attorney General of the United States. I am ashamed. Not because Hale is innocent. But because the process of justice has once again proven itself guilty. ---------------- Andy Martin is the nationally syndicated independent Contrarian Columnist for Out2.com and also serves as chief national and foreign correspondent for Out2.com. [Go to Out2.com, register a city, click on Govt & Politics.] He is a civil libertarian who has formed an exploratory committee to consider seeking the 2006 Illinois Republican Party gubernatorial nomination. He has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law. Media contact (866) 706-2639 Comments? Suggestions? E-mail Andy at: [41]AndyforIllinois at aol.com -------------- Chicago Tribune: Hale gets 40 years for plot to kill judge http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0504070253apr07,1,6144440,print.story 5.4.7 By Matt O'Connor Tribune staff reporter White supremacist Matthew Hale was sentenced to 40 years in prison Wednesday by a federal judge who called him "extremely dangerous" and said his solicitation to murder U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow was "an extreme, egregious attack against the rule of law." Hale, his voice often cracking with emotion, maintained his innocence during a rambling, two-hour speech, accusing the government of manufacturing evidence, his former lawyer of incompetence and the news media of defaming him. At times almost theatrical in his long monologue, Hale quoted from Thomas Jefferson, recalled how his father, a retired police officer, instilled in him a respect for the law, and ended his remarks by reciting a few lines from "The Star-Spangled Banner." "I hope the day will come when Judge Lefkow knows this is a lie," said Hale, acting as his own attorney, in a court ringed with security. "This is a horrible miscarriage of justice." But U.S. District Judge James T. Moody was unswayed and found--for the first time in Chicago's federal court--that Hale's solicitation to murder Lefkow was a crime of terrorism under federal sentencing guidelines. Moody then imposed the maximum 40-year term, saying Hale's wrongdoing "undermines the judiciary's central role in our society and strikes at the very core of our system of government." A federal jury convicted Hale last April of soliciting his security chief, secretly working undercover for the FBI, to kill Lefkow because she ordered his supremacist group to change its name after losing a trademark-infringement lawsuit. Moody said Hale surrounded himself with troubled individuals to "feed his enormous ego" and manipulated them "to do his dirty work." "Mr. Hale had absolutely no qualms about taking the life of Judge Lefkow and others as long as he could appear to not be involved and had credible deniability," said Moody, a Hammond jurist who presided over the trial because of the inherent conflicts of interest among Lefkow's colleagues in Chicago. Hale, 33, of Downstate East Peoria, faces at least 34 years in prison before he would be eligible for release. Lonnie Nasatir, Midwest regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said the long sentence for the "charismatic" Hale likely represents a crushing blow for his group, now called the Creativity Movement. The sentence devastated Hale's parents. Outside the courtroom, his mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, challenged a reporter to "actually tell what Matt said in there because Matt is the only one in that damn [court] room that spoke the truth." "It's a very sad day for me," she said later. At Hale's request, Moody recommended that he remain at the Metropolitan Correctional Center for six months to assist in his appeal, then be transferred to the federal prison in Pekin to be close to family. But attorney Thomas A. Gibbons, who is assisting Hale, said he believes it's likely Hale will end up in a maximum-security prison, perhaps in Florence, Colo., because of the length of the sentence, the nature of his conviction and the fact he is incarcerated under special administrative measures usually reserved for terrorist suspects. Gibbons said he expects a major issue in the appeal would be Moody's decision to allow some testimony at trial about the shooting spree of Hale follower Benjamin Smith in 1999. Smith targeted minorities, killing two, including former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, and injuring nine others. In his remarks, Hale claimed that on a key undercover tape in which the informant, Tony Evola, asked if he wanted to "exterminate the rat," the two were discussing a male Jewish lawyer involved in the trademark lawsuit, not Lefkow. Hale maintained that authorities realized the problem, because four days later, Evola sent him an e-mail discussing going after the "female rat." "The only person in my church who ever talked about violence was Tony Evola," said Hale, the self-proclaimed Pontifex Maximus of the former World Church of the Creator. "He did it so many times I got used to it." Hale went so far as to suggest that the government's fabricated case against him may have inspired Bart Ross to kill Lefkow's husband and mother in late February. The judge had thrown out Ross' medical malpractice lawsuit last fall. Lefkow didn't attend Wednesday's sentencing, but U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald later called Hale's accusation "offensive" and "stupid" and derided his claims of innocence, referring to his "crocodile tears" during his courtroom remarks. Fitzgerald said he believes the special administrative measures should remain imposed on Hale, saying he remains a danger to solicit others to do harm. "I think anyone who seeks to kill by using their words to encourage others poses a threat," Fitzgerald told reporters. Hale declared--and authorities later confirmed--that the Metropolitan Correctional Center banned his parents from visiting him for one year. The ban is believed to be connected to his mother delivering a message to the media from Hale during the investigation into the murders of Lefkow's family. Hale and his followers were the focus of investigators until Ross confessed to the murders in a suicide note. Hale sought leniency from Moody in part because of the restricted contact he has with family and other inmates as a result of the special administrative measures. "I'd rather be in Siberia," Hale said. He spoke of the "hell" of solitary confinement, locked up in a small cell 23 hours a day, unable to hear "a bird chirp or see the sun shine or to behold the stars or to hear voices you care about." "They want me to die in a hole," said Hale, referring to the jailhouse nickname for solitary confinement. "How on Earth could a 40-year sentence be appropriate for this offense? Nobody was hurt." "I should be going home today," said Hale, incarcerated since early 2003. "I should have gone home a long time ago." Hale would have faced a maximum of 14 years in prison without Moody's finding that Hale's crime amounted to an act of terrorism, said Gibbons, Hale's standby counsel. Authorities said Moody's ruling may be only the third time in the country that a judge boosted a sentence because of alleged terrorism ties. In comments in court, Assistant U.S. Atty. M. David Weisman, who prosecuted Hale, said Hale qualifies as a domestic terrorist. "He is a terrorist because he speaks of violence and applauds violence against racial and religious minorities in this country," Weisman said. "More fundamentally, Matthew Hale is a terrorist because he would have retaliated against an official of our government for her conduct." As Hale delivered his monologue, three deputy U.S. marshals stood close by and as many as a dozen others were posted elsewhere in the courtroom. Hale denied he hated Lefkow, noting she had originally ruled in his favor in the trademark lawsuit brought by an Oregon church with a similar name. An appeals court overturned her decision. Hale, a law school graduage who was denied a license largely because of his racist views, said he wrote the court papers that swayed Lefkow to rule in his favor. "That was one of the best days of my life," he said. Hale contended he sent an e-mail to followers seeking Lefkow's home address only because he planned to organize a demonstration outside her home if she held him in contempt for violating the court order to change his group's name. "There's a heck of a difference between a street demonstration and a murder," Hale said. But in his ruling, Moody said that days earlier, Hale had issued another e-mail to followers that called Lefkow's ruling "a sick, draconian order that in effect places our church in a state of war with this federal judge." If the church's constitutional rights were violated, "we can then treat them like the criminal dogs they are and take the law into our own hands," Hale wrote. "It will be open war on the Jews." - - - U.S. District Judge James T. Moody in sentencing Matthew Hale to 40 years in prison: "Mr. Hale is a highly educated, intelligent individual who surrounds himself with troubled individuals who feed his enormous ego. He is also very calculating and highly skilled in controlling and manipulating others . . . . Mr. Hale's irrational belief that Judge Lefkow's ruling represented the use of force and that he could then declare her a criminal and ask others to murder her is not only frightening and troubling, but it undermines the judiciary's central role in our society and strikes at the very core of our system of government. It is imperative that judges be able to perform their duties without fear of reprisal from people like Mr. Hale attempting to take their lives. I consider Mr. Hale to be extremely dangerous and the offenses for which he stands convicted to be an extreme, egregious attack against the rule of law in the United States. Mr. Hale's conduct impacts the very fabric of our judicial system and the ability of judges to function in a safe environment." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 15:03:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:03:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Half-Century Later, a New Look at Argentine-Nazi Ties Message-ID: Half-Century Later, a New Look at Argentine-Nazi Ties http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/international/americas/04argent.html 5.4.4 By LARRY ROHTER BUENOS AIRES - That scores of fugitive Nazis found their way to Argentina after World War II, aided and abetted by Gen. Juan D. Per?n, is no secret. But according to a book just published here that draws extensively on archival material only now being made available to researchers, his government also offered a haven for the profits of German companies that had been part of the Nazi war machine and whose assets the victorious Allies would otherwise have seized. In "The German Connection: The Laundering of Nazi Money in Argentina," Gaby Weber, a German journalist, argues that the Per?n dictatorship sponsored an operation to move illicitly obtained wealth to Argentina and then back to Germany. For nearly a decade, her book asserts, German-made cars, trucks, buses and even the machinery for entire factories flowed into Argentina, paid for with dollars that were then used to help finance the "German economic miracle." To the chagrin of Argentines who still revere him and his wife, Evita, the evidence she presents indicates that Per?n and a few favorites around him also took a cut. But Ms. Weber, who has lived and worked in South America since the mid-1980's, said she was mainly interested in what she described as two parallel but complementary money streams to and from Germany, which were involved in and benefited from the arrangement. "One must make a distinction between the Nazi Party organization and the companies, which had no interest in financing a Nazi resurgence," she said in a recent interview here. "My focus is on the official Argentine government operation to help those companies launder their money, but a lot of Nazis also did it on their own, hoping to reconstruct the party" from their hiding places here. Ms. Weber's book, published in German and Spanish, is based in part on research in the corporate archives of Mercedes-Benz and on interviews with Argentines and Germans who took part in the scheme. But she also consulted government records of Germany, the United States and, particularly, Argentina, where she found transcripts of interrogations of participants after Per?n's ouster in September 1955, and other official documents that until now were generally off-limits to researchers. According to the documents Ms. Weber cites, the laundering operation involved both the consistent overcharging for goods exported from Germany to Argentina and billing for nonexistent transactions. But the Argentine Central Bank also cooperated by permitting transactions to be conducted at an exchange rate unusually favorable to German companies. "The German Connection" focuses largely on Mercedes-Benz, the automobile, bus and truck manufacturer that is today a unit of Daimler-Chrysler. But others offered by Ms. Weber as beneficiaries of the plan include German makers of electrical and railway equipment and other capital goods, as well as producers of items as varied as tractors and television sets. "It is impossible to calculate the exact amount of money laundered in Argentina between 1950 and 1955," Ms. Weber said. "But it probably corresponds to well over a billion dollars." According to Argentine documents seized after the overthrow of Per?n, about half of one large shipment of Mercedes sedans to Argentina went directly to the president's office. Per?n appears to have kept four cars himself, but sent the others to judges and prosecutors, politicians, journalists and others whose support he was seeking. Ms. Weber also found documentary evidence that in at least a couple of cases, entire factories were shipped to Argentina for reassembly here. Per?n envisioned Argentina as an industrial power and apparently saw the importing of German equipment and experts as the best way to jump-start aircraft, chemical and other industries. "Most of the machinery came from Rotterdam, though we don't know how it got there," Ms. Weber said. She added that most of the equipment appeared to be German in origin, though some was probably looted from Czechoslovakia or other conquered East European nations. At one point, Ms. Weber also maintains, the Nazi Adolf Eichmann was hired, initially under his own name but later under an alias, at the Mercedes-Benz plant in the suburbs of the capital. In the interview, she suggested that Mr. Eichmann, abducted by Israel in 1960 and then tried and executed, might have functioned as a sort of paymaster, "financing the movement and flight to Argentina" of other fugitive Nazis. Reached by telephone, a spokesman for Mercedes-Benz, Ursula Mertzig, acknowledged that Ms. Weber had been "given free entrance to our archives in Stuttgart and that we checked the names she gave us in our personnel data." But she described the book as "a very strange story" that lacked substantiation. "She has no proof of money laundering and there is no proof," Ms. Mertzig said. "We could find nothing that gives nourishment to her reproach. This is her idea of what history was, but it is not supported by other historians in Germany." The publication of Ms. Weber's book follows the release here late last year of a documentary film that caused debate on the same subject. The film, "Nazi Gold in Argentina," contends that Swiss banks, the Roman Catholic Church and Argentine politicians conspired to loot hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and other valuable assets held by the Third Reich. The film includes scenes of Nazi submarines filled with gold bars unloading their treasure on the deserted beaches of Patagonia, events that most experts dismiss as fanciful. But it also sheds light on the activities of shadowy figures like Hermann D?rge, a German banker who worked in Argentina's Central Bank during the 1940's and was officially declared to have committed suicide after destroying evidence of Nazi money transfers. In his book "The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Per?n's Argentina," the Argentine writer Uki Goni documented how Croatian fascists allied with the Nazis shipped over 500 pounds of gold bars to Argentina after World War II. But he said that "regarding German or Austrian Nazi money after the war, the trail is more diffuse." During the war itself, "there is quite a lot of American documentation about how the Nazis laundered money, seized from the banks of conquered countries, in Argentina so they could buy raw supplies," Mr. Goni said in an interview. He added that he found it "fishy" that many Argentine Central Bank records from then and the postwar period were either incomplete or said to be destroyed. "I'm sure something happened, but the documents are still hidden," Mr. Goni said. "A tremendous amount of research still needs to be done, and the Argentine government needs to open up more records, especially those of state intelligence." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 15:08:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:08:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Bruce Bartless: Feed the Beast Message-ID: Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Feed the Beast http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/06/opinion/05bartlett.html 5.4.6 [If I were wearing my incrementalist, establismentarian hat, I would agree that a value added tax makes sense. It does seem that voters will demand more and more for health care. Health care, as a percentage of GDP, is a rising function of GDP/capita, irregardless of the extent to which it is publicly provided. This means that public monies displace private monies. Also, there's no correlation between health care spending and health. These are two of many counter-intuitive results economists come up with. See Charles Phelps's standard textbook, Health Care Economics_.] By BRUCE BARTLETT Great Falls, Va. -- GROWING numbers of policy analysts and politicians are saying that it may finally be time to consider a value-added tax as part of our federal revenue system. In years past, I would have been in the forefront of those denouncing the idea. But now, reluctantly, I have joined the pro-V.A.T. side. Here's why. There are many arguments against a value-added tax, which is essentially a sales tax that applies at each stage of production. It is costly to put into effect, and it hits the poor and the elderly hardest because they spend a higher percentage of their income. When the idea of a value-added tax for the United States first arose during the Nixon administration, there was no question that it would have fueled the growth of government, just as it did in Europe. As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial pointed out, in the countries that established a V.A.T. in the 1960's and early 1970's, taxes as a share of the gross domestic product have risen significantly. But the main reason for this is that it was too easy to raise V.A.T. rates amid the double-digit price increases of the inflationary 1970's. In those days, there were many economists who still believed that budget deficits caused inflation, making it easier to delude people into thinking that higher taxes were necessary to get inflation under control. Those countries that adopted the value-added tax since the end of the great inflation, however, have been very restrained in raising rates. Of those countries that had a V.A.T. before 1974, all have raised their rates by an average of seven percentage points. But of those countries that established a V.A.T. since 1974, the average increase is just one percentage point, and a majority have not increased their rates at all. In the 1980's and 1990's, I thought it was possible to restrain the growth of government by cutting taxes. This would "starve the beast," as Ronald Reagan used to say, and force government to live on its allowance. And after Republicans got control of Congress in 1994, I thought the means had finally come to make a frontal assault on the welfare state. I have been sadly disappointed. After an initial effort at restraining Medicare spending - squelched by President Bill Clinton's veto pen - Republicans in Congress have become almost indistinguishable from Democrats on spending. They have been aided and abetted by President Bush, who not only refuses to veto anything, but also aggressively worked to ram a $23.5 trillion (of which $18.2 trillion must be covered by the general revenue) expansion of Medicare down the throats of the few small government conservatives left in the House. This behavior has led me and other conservatives to conclude that starving the beast simply doesn't work anymore. Deficits are no longer a barrier to greater government spending. And with the baby-boom generation aging, spending is set to explode in coming years even if no new government programs are enacted. As Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, told the House Budget Committee on March 2, "The combination of an aging population and the soaring costs of its medical care is certain to place enormous demands on our nation's resources and to exert pressure on the budget that economic growth alone is unlikely to eliminate." Yet many conservatives continue to delude themselves that all we have to do is cut foreign aid and get rid of pork barrel projects to rein in the budget. But unless health spending is confronted head on, even the most draconian cuts in discretionary spending won't be enough to restore fiscal balance. I am no deficit hawk. For decades I have argued that the negative effects of deficits are generally exaggerated. But unless spending is checked or revenue raised, we are facing deficits of historic proportions. It is simply unrealistic to think we can finance a 50 percent increase in spending as a share of gross domestic product - which is what is in the pipeline - just by running ever-larger deficits. Sooner or later, that bubble is going to burst and there will be overwhelming political support for deficit reduction, as there was in the 1980's and early 1990's. When that day comes, huge tax increases are inevitable because no one has the guts to seriously cut health spending. Therefore, the only question is how will the revenue be raised: in a smart way that preserves incentives and reduces growth as little as possible, or stupidly by raising marginal tax rates and making everything bad in our tax code worse? If the first route is chosen, the value-added tax is by far the best option available to deal with an unpalatable situation. Absent any evidence that the White House and Congress are prepared to restrain out-of-control health spending, I see no alternative. Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 15:10:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:10:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Atlantic: The Coming Death Shortage Message-ID: The Coming Death Shortage 5.5 Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive by Charles C. Mann http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200505/mann Anna Nicole Smith's role as a harbinger of the future is not widely acknowledged. Born Vickie Lynn Hogan, Smith first came to the attention of the American public in 1993, when she earned the title Playmate of the Year. In 1994 she married J. Howard Marshall, a Houston oil magnate said to be worth more than half a billion dollars. He was eighty-nine and wheelchairbound; she was twenty-six and quiveringly mobile. Fourteen months later Marshall died. At his funeral the widow appeared in a white dress with a vertical neckline. She also claimed that Marshall had promised half his fortune to her. The inevitable litigation sprawled from Texas to California and occupied batteries of lawyers, consultants, and public-relations specialists for more than seven years. Even before Smith appeared, Marshall had disinherited his older son. And he had infuriated his younger son by lavishing millions on a mistress, an exotic dancer, who then died in a bizarre face-lift accident. To block Marshall senior from squandering on Smith money that Marshall junior regarded as rightfully his, the son seized control of his father's assets by means that the trial judge later said were so "egregious," "malicious," and "fraudulent" that he regretted being unable to fine the younger Marshall more than $44 million in punitive damages. In its epic tawdriness the Marshall affair was natural fodder for the tabloid media. Yet one aspect of it may soon seem less a freak show than a clich?. If an increasingly influential group of researchers is correct, the lurid spectacle of intergenerational warfare will become a typical social malady. The scientists' argument is circuitous but not complex. In the past century U.S. life expectancy has climbed from forty-seven to seventy-seven, increasing by nearly two thirds. Similar rises happened in almost every country. And this process shows no sign of stopping: according to the United Nations, by 2050 global life expectancy will have increased by another ten years. Note, however, that this tremendous increase has been in average life expectancy?that is, the number of years that most people live. There has been next to no increase in the maximum lifespan, the number of years that one can possibly walk the earth?now thought to be about 120. In the scientists' projections, the ongoing increase in average lifespan is about to be joined by something never before seen in human history: a rise in the maximum possible age at death. Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy?the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward "engineered negligible senescence"?a rough-and-ready version of immortality?would have "a good chance of success in mice within ten years." The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. "In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. "And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born." Critics regard such claims as wildly premature. In March ten respected researchers predicted in the New England Journal of Medicine that "the steady rise in life expectancy during the past two centuries may soon come to an end," because rising levels of obesity are making people sicker. The research team leader, S. Jay Olshansky, of the University of Illinois School of Public Health, also worries about the "potential impact of infectious disease." Believing that medicine can and will overcome these problems, his "cautious and I think defensibly optimistic estimate" is that the average lifespan will reach eighty-five or ninety?in 2100. Even this relatively slow rate of increase, he says, will radically alter the underpinnings of human existence. "Pushing the outer limits of lifespan" will force the world to confront a situation no society has ever faced before: an acute shortage of dead people. The twentieth-century jump in life expectancy transformed society. Fifty years ago senior citizens were not a force in electoral politics. Now the AARP is widely said to be the most powerful organization in Washington. Medicare, Social Security, retirement, Alzheimer's, snowbird economies, the population boom, the golfing boom, the cosmetic-surgery boom, the nostalgia boom, the recreational-vehicle boom, Viagra?increasing longevity is entangled in every one. Momentous as these changes have been, though, they will pale before what is coming next. >From religion to real estate, from pensions to parent-child dynamics, almost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations. Every quarter century or so children take over from their parents?a transition as fundamental to human existence as the rotation of the planet about its axis. In tomorrow's world, if the optimists are correct, grandparents will have living grandparents; children born decades from now will ignore advice from people who watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. Intergenerational warfare?the Anna Nicole Smith syndrome?will be but one consequence. Trying to envision such a world, sober social scientists find themselves discussing pregnant seventy-year-olds, offshore organ farms, protracted adolescence, and lifestyles policed by insurance companies. Indeed, if the biologists are right, the coming army of centenarians will be marching into a future so unutterably different that they may well feel nostalgia for the long-ago days of three score and ten. he oldest in vitro fertilization clinic in China is located on the sixth floor of a no-star hotel in Changsha, a gritty fly-over city in the south-central portion of the country. It is here that the clinic's founder and director, Lu Guangxiu, pursues her research into embryonic stem cells. Most cells don't divide, whatever elementary school students learn?they just get old and die. The body subcontracts out the job of replacing them to a special class of cells called stem cells. Embryonic stem cells?those in an early-stage embryo?can grow into any kind of cell: spleen, nerve, bone, whatever. Rather than having to wait for a heart transplant, medical researchers believe, a patient could use stem cells to grow a new heart: organ transplant without an organ donor. The process of extracting stem cells destroys an early-stage embryo, which has led the Bush administration to place so many strictures on stem-cell research that scientists complain it has been effectively banned in this country. A visit to Lu's clinic not long ago suggested that ultimately Bush's rules won't stop anything. Capitalism won't let them. During a conversation Lu accidentally brushed some papers to the floor. They were faxes from venture capitalists in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Stuttgart. "I get those all the time," she said. Her operation was short of money?a chronic problem for scientists in poor countries. But it had something of value: thousands of frozen embryos, an inevitable by-product of in vitro fertilizations. After obtaining permission from patients, Lu uses the embryos in her work. It is possible that she has access to more embryonic stem cells than all U.S. researchers combined. Sooner or later, in one nation or another, someone like Lu will cut a deal: frozen embryos for financial backing. Few are the stem-cell researchers who believe that their work will not lead to tissue-and-organ farms, and that these will not have a dramatic impact on the human lifespan. If Organs '?' Us is banned in the United States, Americans will fly to longevity centers elsewhere. As Steve Hall wrote in Merchants of Immortality, biotechnology increasingly resembles the software industry. Dependence on venture capital, loathing of regulation, pathological secretiveness, penchant for hype, willingness to work overseas?they're all there. Already the U.S. Patent Office has issued 400 patents concerning human stem cells. Longevity treatments will almost certainly drive up medical costs, says Dana Goldman, the director of health economics at the RAND Corporation, and some might drive them up significantly. Implanted defibrillators, for example, could constantly monitor people's hearts for signs of trouble, electrically regulating the organs when they miss a beat. Researchers believe that the devices would reduce heart-disease deaths significantly. At the same time, Goldman says, they would by themselves drive up the nation's health-care costs by "many billions of dollars" (Goldman and his colleagues are working on nailing down how much), and they would be only one of many new medical interventions. In developed nations anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS typically cost about $15,000 a year. According to James Lubitz, the acting chief of the aging and chronic-disease statistics branch of the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, there is no a priori reason to suppose that lifespan extension will be cheaper, that the treatments will have to be administered less frequently, or that their inventors will agree to be less well compensated. To be sure, as Ramez Naam points out in More Than Human, which surveys the prospects for "biological enhancement," drugs inevitably fall in price as their patents expire. But the same does not necessarily hold true for medical procedures: heart bypass operations are still costly, decades after their invention. And in any case there will invariably be newer, more effective, and more costly drugs. Simple arithmetic shows that if 80 million U.S. senior citizens were to receive $15,000 worth of treatment every year, the annual cost to the nation would be $1.2 trillion?"the kind of number," Lubitz says, "that gets people's attention." The potential costs are enormous, but the United States is a rich nation. As a share of gross domestic product the cost of U.S. health care roughly doubled from 1980 to the present, explains David M. Cutler, a health-care economist at Harvard. Yet unlike many cost increases, this one signifies that people are better off. "Would you rather have a heart attack with 1980 medicine at the 1980 price?" Cutler asks. "We get more and better treatments now, and we pay more for the additional services. I don't look at that and see an obvious disaster." The critical issue, in Goldman's view, will be not the costs per se but determining who will pay them. "We're going to have a very public debate about whether this will be covered by insurance," he says. "My sense is that it won't. It'll be like cosmetic surgery?you pay out of pocket." Necessarily, a pay-as-you-go policy would limit access to longevity treatments. If high-level anti-aging therapy were expensive enough, it could become a perk for movie stars, politicians, and CEOs. One can envision Michael Moore fifty years from now, still denouncing the rich in political tracts delivered through the next generation's version of the Internet? neural implants, perhaps. Donald Trump, a 108-year-old multibillionaire in 2054, will be firing the children of the apprentices he fired in 2004. Meanwhile, the maids, chauffeurs, and gofers of the rich will stare mortality in the face. Short of overtly confiscating rich people's assets, it would be hard to avoid this divide. Yet as Goldman says, there will be "furious" political pressure to avert the worst inequities. For instance, government might mandate that insurance cover longevity treatments. In fact, it is hard to imagine any democratic government foolhardy enough not to guarantee access to those treatments, especially when the old are increasing in number and political clout. But forcing insurers to cover longevity treatments would only change the shape of the social problem. "Most everyone will want to take [the treatment]," Goldman says. "So that jacks up the price of insurance, which leads to more people uninsured. Either way, we may be bifurcating society." Ultimately, Goldman suggests, the government would probably end up paying outright for longevity treatments: an enormous new entitlement program. How could it be otherwise? Older voters would want it because it is in their interest; younger ones would want it because they, too, will age. "At the same time," he says, "nobody likes paying taxes, so there would be constant pressure to contain costs." To control spending, the program might give priority to people with healthy habits; no point in retooling the genomes of smokers, risk takers, and addicts of all kinds. A kind of reverse eugenics might occur, in which governments would freely allow the birth of people with "bad" genes but would let nature take its course on them as they aged. Having shed the baggage of depression, addiction, mental retardation, and chemical-sensitivity syndrome, tomorrow's legions of perduring old would be healthier than the young. In this scenario moralists and reformers would have a field day. Meanwhile, the gerontocratic elite will have a supreme weapon against the young: compound interest. According to a 2004 study by three researchers at the London Business School, historically the average rate of real return on stock markets worldwide has been about five percent. Thus a twenty-year-old who puts $10,000 in the market in 2010 should expect by 2030 to have about $27,000 in real terms?a tidy increase. But that happy forty-year-old will be in the same world as septuagenarians and octogenarians who began investing their money during the Carter administration. If someone who turned seventy in 2010 had invested $10,000 when he was twenty, he would have about $115,000. In the same twenty-year period during which the young person's account grew from $10,000 to $27,000, the old person's account would grow from $115,000 to $305,000. Inexorably, the gap between them will widen. The result would be a tripartite society: the very old and very rich on top, beta-testing each new treatment on themselves; a mass of the ordinary old, forced by insurance into supremely healthy habits, kept alive by medical entitlement; and the diminishingly influential young. In his novel Holy Fire (1996) the science-fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling conjured up a version of this dictatorship-by-actuary: a society in which the cautious, careful centenarian rulers, supremely fit and disproportionately affluent if a little frail, look down with ennui and mild contempt on their juniors. Marxist class warfare, upgraded to the biotech era! In the past, twenty- and thirty-year-olds had the chance of sudden windfalls in the form of inheritances. Some economists believe that bequests from previous generations have provided as much as a quarter of the start-up capital for each new one?money for college tuitions, new houses, new businesses. But the image of an ing?nue's getting a leg up through a sudden bequest from Aunt Tilly will soon be a relic of late-millennium romances. Instead of helping their juniors begin careers and families, tomorrow's rich oldsters will be expending their disposable income to enhance their memories, senses, and immune systems. Refashioning their flesh to ever higher levels of performance, they will adjust their metabolisms on computers, install artificial organs that synthesize smart drugs, and swallow genetically tailored bacteria and viruses that clean out arteries, fine-tune neurons, and repair broken genes. Should one be reminded of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, in which humankind is divided into two species, the ethereal Eloi and the brutish, underground-dwelling Morlocks? "As I recall," Goldman told me recently, "in that book it didn't work out very well for the Eloi." hen lifespans extend indefinitely, the effects are felt throughout the life cycle, but the biggest social impact may be on the young. According to Joshua Goldstein, a demographer at Princeton, adolescence will in the future evolve into a period of experimentation and education that will last from the teenage years into the mid-thirties. In a kind of wanderjahr prolonged for decades, young people will try out jobs on a temporary basis, float in and out of their parents' homes, hit the Europass-and-hostel circuit, pick up extra courses and degrees, and live with different people in different places. In the past the transition from youth to adulthood usually followed an orderly sequence: education, entry into the labor force, marriage, and parenthood. For tomorrow's thirtysomethings, suspended in what Goldstein calls "quasi-adulthood," these steps may occur in any order. >From our short-life-expectancy point of view, quasi-adulthood may seem like a period of socially mandated fecklessness?what Leon Kass, the chair of the President's Council on Bioethics, has decried as the coming culture of "protracted youthfulness, hedonism, and sexual license." In Japan, ever in the demographic forefront, as many as one out of three young adults is either unemployed or working part-time, and many are living rent-free with their parents. Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist at Tokyo Gakugei University, has sarcastically dubbed them parasaito shinguru, or "parasite singles." Adult offspring who live with their parents are common in aging Europe, too. In 2003 a report from the British Prudential financial-services group awarded the 6.8 million British in this category the mocking name of "kippers"?"kids in parents' pockets eroding retirement savings." To Kass, the main cause of this stasis is "the successful pursuit of longer life and better health." Kass's fulminations easily lend themselves to ridicule. Nonetheless, he is in many ways correct. According to Yuji Genda, an economist at Tokyo University, the drifty lives of parasite singles are indeed a by-product of increased longevity, mainly because longer-lived seniors are holding on to their jobs. Japan, with the world's oldest population, has the highest percentage of working senior citizens of any developed nation: one out of three men over sixty-five is still on the job. Everyone in the nation, Genda says, is "tacitly aware" that the old are "blocking the door." In a world of 200-year-olds "the rate of rise in income and status perhaps for the first hundred years of life will be almost negligible," the crusty maverick economist Kenneth Boulding argued in a prescient article from 1965. "It is the propensity of the old, rich, and powerful to die that gives the young, poor, and powerless hope." (Boulding died in 1993, opening up a position for another crusty maverick economist.) Kass believes that "human beings, once they have attained the burdensome knowledge of good and bad, should not have access to the tree of life." Accordingly, he has proposed a straightforward way to prevent the problems of youth in a society dominated by the old: "resist the siren song of the conquest of aging and death." Senior citizens, in other words, should let nature take its course once humankind's biblical seventy-year lifespan is up. Unfortunately, this solution is self-canceling, since everyone who agrees with it is eventually eliminated. Opponents, meanwhile, live on and on. Kass, who is sixty-six, has another four years to make his case. Increased longevity may add to marital strains. The historian Lawrence Stone was among the first to note that divorce was rare in previous centuries partly because people died so young that bad unions were often dissolved by early funerals. As people lived longer, Stone argued, divorce became "a functional substitute for death." Indeed, marriages dissolved at about the same rate in 1860 as in 1960, except that in the nineteenth century the dissolution was more often due to the death of a partner, and in the twentieth century to divorce. The corollary that children were as likely to live in households without both biological parents in 1860 as in 1960 is also true. Longer lifespans are far from the only reason for today's higher divorce rates, but the evidence seems clear that they play a role. The prospect of spending another twenty years sitting across the breakfast table from a spouse whose charm has faded must have already driven millions to divorce lawyers. Adding an extra decade or two can only exacerbate the strain. Worse, child-rearing, a primary marital activity, will be even more difficult than it is now. For the past three decades, according to Ben J. Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, birth rates around the world have fallen sharply as women have taken advantage of increased opportunities for education and work outside the home. "More education, more work, lower fertility," he says. The title of Wattenberg's latest book, published in October, sums up his view of tomorrow's demographic prospects: Fewer. In his analysis, women's continuing movement outside the home will lead to a devastating population crash?the mirror image of the population boom that shaped so much of the past century. Increased longevity will only add to the downward pressure on birth rates, by making childbearing even more difficult. During their twenties, as Goldstein's quasi-adults, men and women will be unmarried and relatively poor. In their thirties and forties they will finally grow old enough to begin meaningful careers?the worst time to have children. Waiting still longer will mean entering the maelstrom of reproductive technology, which seems likely to remain expensive, alienating, and prone to complications. Thus the parental paradox: increased longevity means less time for pregnancy and child-rearing, not more. Even when women manage to fit pregnancy into their careers, they will spend a smaller fraction of their lives raising children than ever before. In the mid nineteenth century white women in the United States had a life expectancy of about forty years and typically bore five or six children. (I specify Caucasians because records were not kept for African-Americans.) These women literally spent more than half their lives caring for offspring. Today U.S. white women have a life expectancy of nearly eighty and bear an average of 1.9 children?below replacement level. If a woman spaces two births close together, she may spend only a quarter of her days in the company of offspring under the age of eighteen. Children will become ever briefer parentheses in long, crowded adult existences. It seems inevitable that the bonds between generations will fray. urely from a financial standpoint, parenthood has always been a terrible deal. Mom and Dad fed, clothed, housed, and educated the kids, but received little in the way of tangible return. Ever since humankind began acquiring property, wealth has flowed from older generations to younger ones. Even in those societies where children herded cattle and tilled the land for their aged progenitors, the older generation consumed so little and died off so quickly that the net movement of assets and services was always downward. "Of all the misconceptions that should be banished from discussions of aging," F. Landis MacKellar, an economist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, in Austria, wrote in the journal Population and Development Review in 2001, "the most persistent and egregious is that in some simpler and more virtuous age children supported their parents." This ancient pattern changed at the beginning of the twentieth century, when government pension and social-security schemes spread across Europe and into the Americas. Within the family parents still gave much more than they received, according to MacKellar, but under the new state plans the children in effect banded together outside the family and collectively reimbursed the parents. In the United States workers pay less to Social Security than they eventually receive; retirees are subsidized by the contributions of younger workers. But on the broadest level financial support from the young is still offset by the movement of assets within families?a point rarely noted by critics of "greedy geezers." Increased longevity will break up this relatively equitable arrangement. Here concerns focus less on the super-rich than on middle-class senior citizens, those who aren't surfing the crest of compound interest. These people will face a Hobson's choice. On the one hand, they will be unable to retire at sixty-five, because the young would end up bankrupting themselves to support them?a reason why many would-be reformers propose raising the retirement age. On the other hand, it will not be feasible for most of tomorrow's nonagenarians and centenarians to stay at their desks, no matter how fit and healthy they are. The case against early retirement is well known. In economic jargon the ratio of retirees to workers is known as the "dependency ratio," because through pension and Social Security payments people who are now in the work force funnel money to people who have left it. A widely cited analysis by three economists at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated that in 2000 the overall dependency ratio in the United States was 21.7 retirees for every 100 workers, meaning (roughly speaking) that everyone older than sixty-five had five younger workers contributing to his pension. By 2050 the dependency ratio will have almost doubled, to 38 per 100; that is, each retiree will be supported by slightly more than two current workers. If old-age benefits stay the same, in other words, the burden on younger workers, usually in the form of taxes, will more than double. This may be an underestimate. The OECD analysis did not assume any dramatic increase in longevity, or the creation of any entitlement program to pay for longevity care. If both occur, as gerontological optimists predict, the number of old will skyrocket, as will the cost of maintaining them. To adjust to these "very bad fiscal effects," says the OECD economist Pablo Antolin, one of the report's co-authors, societies have only two choices: "raising the retirement age or cutting the benefits." He continues, "This is arithmetic?it can't be avoided." The recent passage of a huge new prescription-drug program by an administration and Congress dominated by the "party of small government" suggests that benefits will not be cut. Raising the age of retirement might be more feasible politically, but it would lead to a host of new problems?see today's Japan. In the classic job pattern, salaries rise steadily with seniority. Companies underpay younger workers and overpay older workers as a means of rewarding employees who stay at their jobs. But as people have become more likely to shift firms and careers, the pay increases have become powerful disincentives for companies to retain employees in their fifties and sixties. Employers already worried about the affordability of older workers are not likely to welcome calls to raise the retirement age; the last thing they need is to keep middle managers around for another twenty or thirty years. "There will presumably be an elite group of super-rich who would be immune to all these pressures," Ronald Lee, an economic demographer at the University of California at Berkeley, says. "Nobody will kick Bill Gates out of Microsoft as long as he owns it. But there will be a lot of pressure on the average old person to get out." In Lee's view, the financial downsizing need not be inhumane. One model is the university, which shifted older professors to emeritus status, reducing their workload in exchange for reduced pay. Or, rather, the university could be a model: age-discrimination litigation and professors' unwillingness to give up their perks, Lee says, have largely torpedoed the system. "It's hard to reduce someone's salary when they are older," he says. "For the person, it's viewed as a kind of disgrace. As a culture we need to get rid of that idea." he Pentagon has released few statistics about the hundreds or thousands of insurgents captured in Afghanistan and Iraq, but one can be almost certain that they are disproportionately young. Young people have ever been in the forefront of political movements of all stripes. University students protested Vietnam, took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran, filled Tiananmen Square, served as the political vanguard for the Taliban. "When we are forty," the young writer Filippo Marinetti promised in the 1909 Futurist Manifesto, "other younger and stronger men will probably throw us in the wastebasket like useless manuscripts?we want it to happen!" The same holds true in business and science. Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak founded Apple in their twenties; Albert Einstein dreamed up special relativity at about the same age. For better and worse, young people in developed nations will have less chance to shake things up in tomorrow's world. Poorer countries, where the old have less access to longevity treatments, will provide more opportunity, political and financial. As a result, according to Fred C. Ikl?, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "it is not fanciful to imagine a new cleavage opening up in the world order." On one side would be the "'bioengineered' nations," societies dominated by the "becalmed temperament" of old people. On the other side would be the legions of youth?"the protagonists," as the political theorist Samuel Huntington has described them, "of protest, instability, reform, and revolution." Because poorer countries would be less likely to be dominated by a gerontocracy, tomorrow's divide between old and young would mirror the contemporary division between rich northern nations and their poorer southern neighbors. But the consequences might be different?unpredictably so. One assumes, for instance, that the dictators who hold sway in Africa and the Middle East would not hesitate to avail themselves of longevity treatments, even if few others in their societies could afford them. Autocratic figures like Arafat, Franco, Per?n, and Stalin often leave the scene only when they die. If the human lifespan lengthens greatly, the dictator in Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, who is "an indefinite age somewhere between 107 and 232 years," may no longer be regarded as a product of magical realism. Bioengineered nations, top-heavy with the old, will need to replenish their labor forces. Here immigration is the economist's traditional solution. In abstract terms, the idea of importing young workers from poor regions of the world seems like a win-win solution: the young get jobs, the old get cheap service. In practice, though, host nations have found that the foreigners in their midst are stubbornly ? foreign. European nations are wondering whether they really should have let in so many Muslims. In the United States, traditionally hospitable to migrants, bilingual education is under attack and the southern border is increasingly locked down. Japan, preoccupied by Nihonjinron (theories of "Japaneseness"), has always viewed immigrants with suspicion if not hostility. Facing potential demographic calamity, the Japanese government has spent millions trying to develop a novel substitute for immigrants: robots smart and deft enough to take care of the aged. According to Ronald Lee, the Berkeley demographer, rises in life expectancy have in the past stimulated economic growth. Because they arose mainly from reductions in infant and child mortality, these rises produced more healthy young workers, which in turn led to more-productive societies. Believing they would live a long time, those young workers saved more for retirement than their forebears, increasing society's stock of capital?another engine of growth. But these positive effects are offset when increases in longevity come from old people's neglecting to die. Older workers are usually less productive than younger ones, earning less and consuming more. Worse, the soaring expenses of entitlement programs for the old are likely, Lee believes, "to squeeze out government expenditures on the next generation," such as education and childhood public-health programs. "I think there's evidence that something like this is already happening among the industrial countries," he says. The combination will force a slowdown in economic growth: the economic pie won't grow as fast. But there's a bright side, at least potentially. If the fall in birth rates is sufficiently vertiginous, the number of people sharing that relatively smaller pie may shrink fast enough to let everyone have a bigger piece. One effect of the longevity-induced "birth dearth" that Wattenburg fears, in other words, may be higher per capita incomes. For the past thirty years the United States has financed its budget deficits by persuading foreigners to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. In the nature of things, most of these foreigners have lived in other wealthy nations, especially Japan and China. Unfortunately for the United States, those other countries are marching toward longevity crises of their own. They, too, will have fewer young, productive workers. They, too, will be paying for longevity treatments for the old. They, too, will be facing a grinding economic slowdown. For all these reasons they may be less willing to finance our government. If so, Uncle Sam will have to raise interest rates to attract investors, which will further depress growth?a vicious circle. Longevity-induced slowdowns could make young nations more attractive as investment targets, especially for the cash-strapped pension-and-insurance plans in aging countries. The youthful and ambitious may well follow the money to where the action is. If Mexicans and Guatemalans have fewer rich old people blocking their paths, the river of migration may begin to flow in the other direction. In a reverse brain drain, the Chinese coast guard might discover half-starved American postgraduates stuffed into the holds of smugglers' ships. Highways out of Tijuana or Nogales might bear road signs telling drivers to watch out for norteamericano families running across the blacktop, the children's Hello Kitty backpacks silhouetted against a yellow warning background. Given that today nobody knows precisely how to engineer major increases in the human lifespan, contemplating these issues may seem premature. Yet so many scientists believe that some of the new research will pay off, and that lifespans will stretch like taffy, that it would be shortsighted not to consider the consequences. And the potential changes are so enormous and hard to grasp that they can't be understood and planned for at the last minute. "By definition," says Aubrey de Grey, the Cambridge geneticist, "you live with longevity for a very long time." ---- Charles C. Mann is an Atlantic correspondent. His book 1491, which grew out of his March 2002 Atlantic cover story, will be published in August. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 15:12:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 11:12:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Gallic invasion Message-ID: Gallic invasion The Times Literary Supplement, 4.5.28 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2107667&window_type=print Peter Brooks 28 May 2004 FRENCH THEORY. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis. By Francois Cusset. 372pp. La Decouverte. 23.50euros. 2 7071 3744 8 The coming of "French theory" to the United States is a story worth telling. The debarkation on American shores of such as Derrida and Foucault, Deleuze and Baudrillard, was not quite predictable. Here was a country that traditionally had no use for metaphysics - a country better known for producing pragmatism and legal realism as philosophical stances - suddenly succumbing to a Francophiliac mania for abstruse thought largely issuing from a tradition of European phenomenology little known in the US and expressed in a taxingly opaque idiom. To the cultural Right, it was clearly an invasion of body-snatchers, and the result was an American intelligentsia whose brains were rotted by the ideological equivalent of absinthe. In the culture wars of the 1980s and 90s, deconstruction became a political target, a "spectre haunting American academia", according to a fundraising letter I received from one far-right cultural lobby. The very nature of teaching and scholarship, especially in the humanities, appeared to be threatened by these imports. A kind of cultural protectionism was called for, and a return to what William Bennett, when he was Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, called "intellectual authority". How deep did the invasion penetrate? On the one hand, we are assured on many sides that we reached "the end of theory" over a decade ago, and now are "post theory". The dominant academic modes confirm that the heady days of theory construction are over - in France as much as in the US. On the other hand, you can find on campus bookshelves, in the famous Norton series of textbook anthologies, a stout volume devoted to "Theory and Criticism" - a volume that begins with Plato and Aristotle and runs through other classics, then in the 1960s becomes mainly French theorists and their American acolytes (though it devolves towards other thinkers when we reach New Historicism, Post-Colonialism, and such like). It's not easy to judge how much French theory - or Theory tout court as it now generally is known, embracing an occasional German, Slovenian and Brit as well -has become a permanent acquisition of American academic intellectual life. If originally the port of entry for French theory was the Department of French or Comparative Literature, now nearly every English Department in the US has its Theory course. But it is not clear just how this domestication may have altered and possibly muted the original theory-effect. Francois Cusset's lively history of the American reception of French theory invites reflection on these points. Cusset, a sociologist of communication who worked for a time in the French Cultural Services in New York, has marched intrepidly into a particularly nettlesome terrain. French Theory is full of insights and far-reaching interpretations. It is written both with a kind of French intellectual snobbism (possibly an ineradicable part of one's birthright as a French intellectual) and much sympathy for the bizarre forms of American cultural life. Although he probably exaggerates the impact of French theory in America, he seems to me largely right in his understanding of the kinds of difference it has made. He makes many a mistake of detail, in dates and names and such, but this doesn't alter the value of the whole. Above all, he writes from a deep and distressed appreciation of how thoroughly French intellectual life has abandoned the generous and exciting reach towards theory of the 1960s and 70s - how it has fallen back into the anti-"May '68" patterns prescribed by such as Jean-Luc Ferry and Bernard-Henri Levy, into a "new humanism" which is often moralistic rather than thoughtful. Notably, literary study in the university has returned to old models that could have thrived in the nineteenth-century Sorbonne - for instance, "genetic criticism", which spends its time rummaging in archives for earlier versions of texts, then publishing a plethora of variant versions (as in the 1986 four-volume Pleiade Proust). It is a boon to doctoral students and to publishing houses, but a far cry from the challenges issued by Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva. Cusset's starting point is the conference on "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man" held at Johns Hopkins University in October 1966, which announced the arrival of the movement. The Johns Hopkins conference included many of the reigning and also the emergent French maitres a penser: Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Jean Hyppolite, Lucien Goldmann, Georges Poulet, Charles Moraze, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Tzvetan Todorov. But it was most of all the paper presented by the young philosopher Jacques Derrida - who the following year would publish De la Grammatologie and L'Ecriture et la difference - that captivated the professors and graduate students in attendance. The paper "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" remains a major text of reference in the movement from structuralism to post-structuralism. And here is one of the keys to the peculiar implantation and development of French theory in American soil: the coming of post-structuralism virtually without there having been a structuralism preceding it. As Cusset well understands, the American context of reception for French theory was philosophically unsophisticated. Few American readers had much sense of the roots of French theorizing in the German phenomenological tradition. Heidegger was not considered philosophy in most American Departments of Philosophy. And it was not through Departments of Philosophy that Derrida, and then other poststructuralist masters, such as Deleuze, Lyotard and Baudrillard entered the university - it was through the Literature Departments. Not only was the philosophical context thin or absent, the kind of analysis associated with linguistic, anthropological and literary structuralism had scarcely arrived. The year 1966 also saw the publication of the pioneering "Structuralism" issue of Yale French Studies, edited by Jacques Ehrmann (whose name Cusset unfortunately gives as "Herman"), containing essays by Lacan, Levi-Strauss, Todorov and others. It could be argued that literary structuralism of the semiotic variety never put down deep roots in American soil, although the example of Barthes, Todorov and Gerard Genette did nourish the development of a distinctively American "narratology", which continues to flourish to this day. Still, Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play" essay was all about the decentring of structures that most Americans hadn't heard of in the first place. Literary post-structuralism thus entered a context most powerfully defined - as Cusset well understands - by New Criticism, a kind of formalism not entirely unlike structuralism (and especially the proto-structuralism of the Russian Formalists and the Prague Linguistic Circle) but largely innocent of theory. "Close reading" at its most insistent and probing eschewed anything not provided by the text under study, and it promoted a kind of sceptical literalism of interpretation - of metaphors and other "figural language", for instance - that could at times be subversive of received interpretations and conventional understandings of what authors "meant". Though its tone and manner were wholly different from Parisian discourse, "close reading" could teach some of the same attitudes and critical stances advanced by Barthes's "Death of the Author" or Michel Foucault's Les Mots et les choses. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that deconstructive reading of the type practised by Derrida - and already in the US by Paul de Man - could be grafted to New Critical close reading almost seamlessly. The aims of the two kinds of reading are very different: the New Critical wishes to demonstrate the wholeness of the poem as a complex structure and texture, as a difficult but triumphant balancing act of affirmation and irony; whereas the Deconstructive takes us to the aporias of the text, the radically figural nature of language, its incapacity ever to coincide with the world it wishes to name. But if you are adept at the New Critical kind of reading, it is not hard to learn the Deconstructive variety - as indeed many American university students quickly did. The result was a plethora of essays offering persuasive deconstructions of texts of all sorts where all that was lacking was any sense of the point of the enterprise. The stakes to Derrida were enormous: the metaphysical tradition of Western thought was up for radical critique. For de Man, too, the issues were of great moment, concerning essentially the nature of literature and its language. In the work of many of the disciples, on the other hand, one felt that deconstruction had become one more academic exercise. Undoubtedly this sense of shrinkage and trivialization of the enterprise in its American incarnation had to do with its exclusively literary definition within the academy. Deconstruction, and French theory in general, took up their abode in the field where little seems to be at stake, at least in the view of the extra-academic public. And yet it was also because of this literary habitat that French theory could continue to flourish in the native interpretations chronicled by Cusset. Departments of literary study - first, Comparative Literature and French, and interdisciplinary Humanities Centers; a bit later English - became the laboratories of the new during the 1970s and 80s. Other fields began to look to the Literature Departments for new methods and paradigms. Historians, art historians, interpretive sociologists, musicologists, even law professors began to feel that something was going on in literary study that was worth attending to. Students - often the cross-fertilizing agents of academic change - brought from one field to another barbarous new ideas. In a larger social context, the result was the culture wars of the 1980s and beyond (they still resonate today). When Bennett, ex his cathedra of the National Endowment for the Humanities, issued his manifesto To Reclaim a Legacy, in 1984, he preached a restoration of "intellectual authority". If the culture wars were not exclusively about theory, French or otherwise, theory nonetheless was at storm centre since it appeared to have subverted the claim that the humanities were the place of unchanging verities, a kind of high table of the best that could be thought and said in the world. The humanities, and particularly literary studies, had no need of theory, which was distracting students from the text. Shakespeare had been supplanted in the curriculum by Derrida. The National Association of Scholars was founded to "save" literature from the theorists. I would argue to the contrary that the coming of theory actually rescued the study of literature at a time when it was threatened with sclerosis and irrelevance. In particular, it brought students back to literary studies with a sense that there was something exciting going on. It was a something that might in the long run turn out to be unsubstantiable, and perhaps unusable - but then most literary undergraduates aren't planning to build a career on how they have read either Milton or Foucault. In Cusset's perceptive term, theory in the United States is largely "intransitive": it is about theory, about the conditions of its own possibility, and hence at a second stage about the university itself, and the possibility of a transdisciplinary kind of knowing. At the same time, Cusset says - again rightly, I believe - that the naivety of the American student reception of theory has given its texts a kind of "existential function": they are models of a way of being, of a stance towards knowledge. Cusset tracks down some of the consequences of French theory in avant-garde artistic practices, which again can appear somewhat naively literal - as in deconstructive architecture, for instance. If, in academic teaching and learning, theory has been most productive in a practice of reading - a more self conscious and suspicious reading - another version of theory has been translated into steel and concrete, with results that must at times appear to the authors of the concepts they claim to evoke as strange progeny. But Cusset's story of cultural transplantation is all about "heureuses trahisons, glissements productifs", as he puts it - translation as treason and as productive slippage of meaning. French Theory is notable among other qualities for its sympathy with its subject - a sympathy motivated in part by Cusset's contempt for what has happened in France since the heyday of theory. His final chapter, "Et pendant ce temps-la en France", is a precise and needed polemic on the subsidence of French thought, following 1968 and then the collapse of Communist Eastern Europe, into a "moralisme humanitaire" in public discourse and, in the university, kinds of literary study that resolutely turn back from theory to a warm and fuzzy positivism. Francois Cusset's book is a kind of genial cornucopia of things that needed to be said. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:45:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:45:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] spiked-health: Our unhealthy obsession with sickness Message-ID: Our unhealthy obsession with sickness http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA958.htm 5.3.23 [Foucault was indeed prescient.] Why is being ill now embraced as a positive part of the human experience? by Frank Furedi We live in a world where illnesses are on the increase. The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public life. It has become a highly politicised issue, too, and an increasingly important site of government intervention and policymaking. With every year that passes, we seem to spend more and more time and resources thinking about health and sickness. I think there are four possible reasons for this. First, there is the imperative of medicalisation. When the concept of medicalisation was first formulated, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it referred to a far narrower range of phenomena than is the case today - and it was linked to the actions of a small number of professionals rather than having the all-pervasive character that it does now. Essentially, the term medicalisation means that problems we encounter in everyday life are reinterpreted as medical ones. So problems that might traditionally have been defined as existential - that is, the problems of existence - have a medical label attached to them. Today, it is difficult to think of any kind of human experience that doesn't come with a health warning or some kind of medical explanation. It is not only the experience of pain or distress or disappointment or engagement with adversity that is medicalised and seen as potentially traumatic and stress-inducing; even human characteristics are medicalised now. Consider shyness. It is quite normal to be shy; there are many circumstances where many of us feel shy and awkward. Yet shyness is now referred to as 'social phobia'. And, of course, when a medical label is attached to shyness, it is only a matter of time before a pharmaceutical company comes up with a 'shyness pill'. Pop these pills, and you too can become the life and soul of the party! One of my hobbies is to read press releases informing us of the existence of a new illness, the 'illness of the week', if you like. Recently I received one that said: 'Psychologists say that love sickness is a genuine disease and needs more awareness and diagnoses. Those little actions that are normally seen as the symptoms of the first flush of love - buying presents, waiting by the phone, or making an effort before a date - may actually be signs of a deep-rooted problem to come. Many people who suffer from love sickness cannot cope with the intensity of love and have been destabilised by falling in love or suffer on account of their love being unrequited.' Of course, an intense passion can and does have an impact upon our bodies. But when even love can be seen as the harbinger of illness, what aspect of our lives can be said to be illness-free? What can we possibly do that will not apparently induce some sickness or syndrome? Medicalisation no longer knows any limits. It is so intrusive that it can impact on virtually any of our experiences, creating a situation where illness is increasingly perceived as normal. This leads to my second point - there is now a presupposition that illness is as normal as health. Earlier theories of medicalisation still considered illness to be the exception; now, being ill is seen as a normal state, possibly even more normal than being healthy. We are all now seen as being potentially ill; that is the default state we live in today. This can be glimpsed in the increasing use of the term 'wellness', with well men's clinics and well women's clinics. 'Wellness', another relatively recent concept, is a peculiar term. It presupposes that being well is not a natural or normal state. After all, there are no such things as 'sunshine clinics' or 'evening clincs'; such normal things do not normally need an institution attached to them. And why would you have to visit a wellness clinic if you were well, anyway? It makes little sense. Wellness has become something you have to work on, something to aspire to and achieve. This reinforces the presupposition that not being well - or being ill - is the normal state. That is what our culture says to us now: you are not okay, you are not fine; you are potentially ill. The message seems to be that if you do not subscribe to this project of keeping well, you will revert to being ill. In supermarkets, especially in middle-class neighbourhoods, buying food has become like conducting a scientific experiment. Individuals spend hours looking at how many carbohydrates there are, whether it's organic, natural, holistic. Spending time reading labels is one way of doing your bit to keep well. Being potentially ill is now so prevalent that we have reached a situation where illness becomes a part of our identity, part of the human condition. Some of us might not flaunt it, walking around saying, 'I've got a gum disease' or 'I've got a bad case of athlete's foot'. That doesn't sound very sexy, and is unlikely to go down well at the dinner table. But it has become acceptable to talk openly about other illnesses - to declare that you are a cancer survivor, or to flaunt a disability. As we normalise illness, our identity becomes inextricably linked to illness. So it is normal to be ill, and to be ill is normal. The nature of illness changes when it becomes part of our identity. When we invest so much emotion in an illness, when it becomes such a large aspect of our lives through the illness metaphor, we start to embrace it - and it can be very difficult to let go of that part of our identity. This is why illness tends to become more durable and last longer. Sickness is no longer a temporary episode: it is something that, increasingly, afflicts one for life. You are scarred for life, with an indelible stamp on your personality. This can be seen in the idea of being a cancer survivor or some other kind of survivor; we are always, it seems, in remission. The illness remains part of us, and shapes our personality. As this happens, illnesses start to acquire features that are no longer negative. In the past, illness was seen as a bad thing. Today you can read illness diaries in the Guardian and other newspapers and magazines. We often hear the phrase: 'I've learned so much about myself through my illness.' It becomes a pedagogic experience: 'I may have lost a leg and half my brain cells, but I'm learning so much from this extremely unique experience.' It's almost like going to university, something positive, to be embraced, with hundreds of books telling us how to make the most of the experience of sickness. We are not simply making a virtue out of a necessity; rather we are consciously valuing illness. From a theoretical standpoint, we might view illness as the first order concept, and wellness as the second order concept. Wellness is subordinate, methodologically, to the state of being ill. The third influence is today's cultural script, the cultural narrative that impacts on our lives, which increasingly uses health to make sense of the human experience. The more uncertainty we face, the more difficult we find it to make statements of moral purpose, the more ambiguous we feel about what is right and wrong, then the more comfortable we feel using the language of health to make sense of our lives. At a time of moral and existential uncertainty, health has become an important idiom through which to provide guidance to individuals. This is now so prevalent that we no longer even notice when we are doing it. For example, we no longer tell teenagers that pre-marital sex is good or bad or sinful. Instead we say that pre-marital sex is a health risk. Sex education programmes teach that you will be emotionally traumatised if pressured into having sex and will be generally healthier if you stay at home and watch TV instead. There are few clear moral guidelines that can direct our behaviour today; but we have become very good at using health to regulate people's lives in an intrusive and systematic fashion. Even medicine and food have acquired moral connotations. So some drugs are said to be bad for the environment, while others, especially those made with a natural herb, are seen as being morally superior. Organic food is seen as 'good', not only in nutritional terms, but in moral terms. Junk food, on the other hand, is seen as evil. If you look at the language that is used to discuss health and medicine, or obese people and their body shapes, it isn't just about health: we are making moral statements. A fat person is considered to have a serious moral problem, rather than simply a health one. As we become morally illiterate, we turn to health to save us from circumstances where we face a degree of moral or spiritual disorientation. The fourth influence is the politicisation of health. Health has become a focus of incessant political activity. Politicians who have little by way of beliefs or passions, and don't know what to say to the public, are guaranteed a response if they say something health-related. Some also make a lot of money from the health issue, from pharmaceutical companies to alternative health shops to individual quacks selling their wares - all are in the business, essentially, of living of today's health-obsessed cultural sentiment. Governments today do two things that I object to in particular. First they encourage introspection, telling us that unless men examine their testicles, unless we keep a check on our cholesterol level, then we are not being responsible citizens. You are letting down yourself, your wife, your kids, everybody. We are encouraged continually to worry about our health. As a consequence, public health initiatives have become, as far as I can tell, a threat to public health. Secondly, governments promote the value of health seeking. We are meant always to be seeking health for this or that condition. The primary effect of this, I believe, is to make us all feel more ill. Here's a prediction - Western societies are not going to overcome the crisis of healthcare; it is beyond the realms of possibility. No matter what policies government pursue, or how much money they throw at the problem, even if they increase health expenditure fourfold, the problem will not go away. As long as the normalisation of illness remains culturally affirmed, more and more of us are likely to identify ourselves as sick, and will identify ourselves as sick for a growing period of time. The solution to this problem lies not in the area of policymaking, or even medicine, but in the cultural sphere. Frank Furedi is professor of sociology at the University of Kent, and author of Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone?: Confronting Twenty-First Century Philistinism (buy this book from [2]Amazon (UK) or [3]Amazon (USA)). This is an edited version of a speech he gave at Health: An Unhealthy Obsession, a conference hosted by the Institute of Ideas in London on 12 February 2005. Visit his website [4]here. References 1. http://www.spiked-online.com/sections/health/index.htm 2. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826467695/spiked 3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0826467695/spiked-20 4. http://www.frankfuredi.com/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:46:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:46:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Telegraph: Bard of the boulevards Message-ID: Bard of the boulevards http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/03/20/bopem20.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/03/20/botop.html (Filed: 20/03/2005) Our most English playwright doesn't always travel well. Jonathan Bate reviews Shakespeare Goes to Paris, a "marvellously learned, witty and wide-ranging survey" of attitudes to Shakespeare in France. The French have always cared more for the authority of tradition than have the empirical English. That is one reason why they undergo revolutions - political and cultural - while we muddle happily through with evolution, surprising ourselves with our social mobility and cultural fluidity. There is no better case in point than the drama. It may be argued with perfect seriousness that one of the reasons France had revolutions in 1789 and 1848 and Britain did not, is that they had Racine and we had Shakespeare. In London popular theatre provided a safety valve for popular opinion, whereas in Paris the drama of class confrontation was acted out on the streets with real blood. Racine wrote for the court of the Sun King according to the prescriptions of neo-classical dramatic theory. The authority of tradition was as absolute as that of the monarch. The ancient Greeks had kept comedy out of their tragedies, restricting tragic matter to elevated characters and themes, so the French did the same. Their poetic drama used a limited vocabulary, bounded by decorum, and was aimed at a limited audience, bounded by the court. The wider populace was excluded from the realm of high art. From the French point of view, nothing could be more vulgar than the counter-example of Shakespeare: he wrote for a public theatre, mingled verse and prose, high emotion and rude puns, kings and clowns, funerals and drunkenness. Most shockingly of all, he allowed trivial domestic objects - things that a classical French author would never dream of mentioning - to play a significant role in his plots. Othello turns on a misplaced handkerchief. A humble mouchoir: quelle horreur! Voltaire, a great Anglophile, visited London in the early 18th century and was deeply impressed by the social mix he encountered in the theatre. He learned English by sitting nightly in the auditorium at Drury Lane, and came to wonder at the sublimity of Shakespeare's tragedies while simultaneously professing himself disturbed by the presence of drunken, quipping grave-diggers in Hamlet. In this marvellously learned, witty and wide-ranging survey of attitudes to Shakespeare in France from the 18th century to the present, John Pemble tells of how in later life Voltaire came to regret his praise of Shakespeare. The growth of a new French taste for the "provincial clown" from across the Channel marked "the end of the age of reason". By the early 19th century, Shakespeare was inextricably linked with the new generation of Romantics. "What is classicism?" asked Stendhal in his manifesto Racine et Shakespeare. Classicism (ie Racine) is "the art that appealed to our great-grandfathers". What is Romanticism? It is "the art that appeals to youth and to the present". That art was Shakespeare's. When a company of English actors played Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet at the Od?on, all the young Romantics - Delacroix, de Vigny, Victor Hugo - were there to cheer them on. Hector Berlioz saw the play and his world was turned upside down: he fell so deeply in love with Shakespeare that he promptly married Harriet Smithson, the actress who played Juliet and Ophelia. Victor Hugo, meanwhile, wrote an epic book that praised Shakespeare as a force of nature and proposed that the Bard of Avon should become Poet Laureate of the United States of Europe. His son translated the complete works, furnishing them with formidably learned footnotes. Pemble also introduces us to some splendidly Bardolatrous eccentrics, including Gaston Baty, who argued, completely against the grain of the opinion of his time, that the only truly authentic text of Hamlet is the one traditionally known as the "bad quarto" (ironically enough, today's avant-garde textual scholars are coming close to endorsing this position). The story continues through the 20th century, with cameo appearances from an array of leading French intellectuals, including Andr? Gide, whose plan to translate Hamlet led Lytton Strachey's sister to offer her assistance: "Couldn't we go somewhere for two or three days - anywhere - to work on it together?" Translation comes to the heart of the matter. Shakespeare's favoured medium of expression was the five-beat unrhymed iambic line, whereas French classical poetry was built of rigorous hexameter (six-stress) rhyming couplets. The twain could never meet. As for poetic vocabulary, the French insistence on decorum meant that translators always struggled with the sheer promiscuity of Shakespeare's imagery. The first complete translation was undertaken by Pierre Le Tourneur in the 18th century. He struggled not only with Desdemona's handkerchief, but also with Shakespeare's menagerie of metaphors. "How now, a rat?" asks Hamlet as Polonius stirs behind the arras. Rats were not allowed in French poetry, so Le Tourneur translates "Comment, un voleur?" ("What, a thief?"). It is sometimes hard to work out why one term is allowed and not another. The sentry in the opening scene of Hamlet whispers that not a mouse is stirring. Mice were unmentionable, but it was acceptable for Le Tourneur to say that not an "insect" is moving. Even in the 20th century problems of this sort persisted in more moderate form. "Distilled/Almost to a jelly with the act of fear" says Horatio in response to the ghost of old Hamlet. "Jelly is a French word (gel?e) and it has the same sense in both languages," notes Pemble, but for the distinguished poet and translator Yves Bonnefoy "it seemed inappropriate for a French text because it had been lifted straight from life - as a Frenchman, he required language that was called 'noble' or 'literary'." Shakespeare is a mirror in which every culture sees itself with astonishing clarity. This is a book not just for Shakespeareans but for anyone interested in la diff?rence between us and the French. Let us hope that its enterprising publisher will commission similar titles along the lines of "Shakespeare goes to Berlin" and "Shakespeare goes to Moscow". The material would prove equally fascinating. Jonathan Bate is Professor of Literature at Warwick University. BOOK INFORMATION Title Shakespeare Goes to Paris: How the Bard Conquered France Author John Pemble Publisher Hambledon & London, ?19.99, 256 pp From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:48:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:48:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SciAm: Michael Shermer: The Feynman-Tufte Principle Message-ID: Michael Shermer: The Feynman-Tufte Principle http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00033494-443B-1237-81CB83414B7FFE9F March 28, 2005 The Feynman-Tufte Principle A visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van By Michael Shermer I had long wanted to meet Edward R. Tufte--the man the New York Times called "the da Vinci of data" because of his concisely written and artfully illustrated books on the visual display of data--and invite him to speak at the Skeptics Society science lecture series that I host at the California Institute of Technology. Tufte is one of the world's leading experts on a core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation. But how could we afford someone of his stature? "My honorarium," he told me, "is to see Feynman's van." Richard Feynman, the late Caltech physicist, is famous for working on the atomic bomb, winning a Nobel Prize in Physics, cracking safes, playing drums and driving a 1975 Dodge Maxivan adorned with squiggly lines on the side panels. Most people who saw it gazed in puzzlement, but once in a while someone would ask the driver why he had Feynman diagrams all over his van, only to be told, "Because I'm Richard Feynman!" Feynman diagrams are simplified visual representations of the very complex world of quantum electrodynamics (QED), in which particles of light called photons are depicted by wavy lines, negatively charged electrons are depicted by straight or curved nonwavy lines, and line junctions show electrons emitting or absorbing a photon. In the diagram on the back door of the van, seen in the photograph above with Tufte, time flows from bottom to top. The pair of electrons (the straight lines) are moving toward each other. When the left-hand electron emits a photon (wavy-line junction), that negatively charged particle is deflected outward left; the right-hand electron reabsorbs the photon, causing it to deflect outward right. Feynman diagrams are the embodiment of what Tufte teaches about analytical design: "Good displays of data help to reveal knowledge relevant to understanding mechanism, process and dynamics, cause and effect." We see the unthinkable and think the unseeable. "Visual representations of evidence should be governed by principles of reasoning about quantitative evidence. Clear and precise seeing becomes as one with clear and precise thinking." The master of clear and precise thinking meets the master of clear and precise seeing in what I call the Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van. As Tufte poignantly demonstrated in his analysis of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, despite the 13 charts prepared for NASA by Thiokol (the makers of the solid-rocket booster that blew up), they failed to communicate the link between cool temperature and O-ring damage on earlier flights. The loss of the Columbia, Tufte believes, was directly related to "a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyperrationalism" in which a single slide contained six different levels of hierarchy (chapters and subheads), thereby obfuscating the conclusion that damage to the left wing might have been significant. In his 1970 classic work The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Feynman covered all of physics--from celestial mechanics to quantum electrodynamics--with only two levels of hierarchy. Tufte codified the design process into six principles: "(1) documenting the sources and characteristics of the data, (2) insistently enforcing appropriate comparisons, (3) demonstrating mechanisms of cause and effect, (4) expressing those mechanisms quantitatively, (5) recognizing the inherently multivariate nature of analytic problems, (6) inspecting and evaluating alternative explanations." In brief, "information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, skeptical." Skeptical. How fitting for this column, opus 50 for me, because when I asked Tufte to summarize the goal of his work, he said, "Simple design, intense content." Because we all need a mark at which to aim (one meaning of "skeptic"), "simple design, intense content" is a sound objective for this series. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:49:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:49:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: The Considerable Satisfaction of 2 Pages a Day Message-ID: The Considerable Satisfaction of 2 Pages a Day The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31b00501.htm OBSERVER The Considerable Satisfaction of 2 Pages a Day By JAY PARINI I don't care what they say: It is possible to write and teach at the same time. In fact, I have a hard time writing without teaching (sabbaticals are always disastrous interludes for me, a time when I tend to sink into depression, writing more slowly, thinking a lot less clearly). Teaching organizes my life, gives a structure to my week, puts before me certain goals: classes to conduct, books to reread, papers to grade, meetings to attend. I move from event to event, having a clear picture in my head of what I must do next. Without the academic calendar in front of me, I feel lost. I've been teaching for several decades, and in that time I've written and edited a lot of stuff, including novels and volumes of poetry, biographies, essays, and reviews. I'm not saying that to brag. I'm too old for that. I simply want to make the point that I like being productive, enjoy writing, and have never found myself without the time to write, even when large numbers of students have required my attention. I should add that where I work -- Middlebury College -- no graduate students are waiting in the wings to grade papers for me or conduct discussion sessions. To be sure, I've been fascinated by people like Harold Bloom, who can turn out large and complicated books year after year, for many decades, without seeming to tire. Versions of an old joke, doubtless apocryphal, circulate throughout the academic and literary world. It runs something like this: A student calls at the front door of Bloom's house, in New Haven. He asks to see Professor Bloom. "I'm sorry," says Mrs. Bloom, "but Harold is writing a book." "That's all right," replies the student, "I can wait." But I'm not Bloom. For me, at least, quantity and quality are not the same. (I often point out to students that Chidiok Tichborne wrote only one poem that anybody knows, "Tichborne's Elegy," composed for himself as he awaited execution for treason against Queen Elizabeth I. It is worth a shelf of books by most other poets.) I look on writers like Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Gore Vidal with amazement. Their books arrive in stores neatly packaged, copy-edited and blurbed, with the predictability of the seasons themselves. One does view such prolific writers and scholars with incredulity. How do they do it? Do they have an army of research assistants helping them? Should they sign their names, "School of So-and-So," as supervisors of a production line? As a graduate student, I watched a few of my more prolific mentors carefully. One of them, an extremely productive and original scholar of Greek literature, culture, and language, was Sir Kenneth Dover. His books on Aristophanic comedy, Greek homosexuality, and Greek syntax have proved seminal works. His writing was meticulously researched, thoughtful, and conveyed with clarity and argumentative force. When I was at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, in the late 1960s and early 70s, he not only ran the Greek department but also had large responsibilities around the university. I once asked him the secret of his productivity, and he said, without hesitation: "I've learned how to use the odd gaps of 20 minutes or so that occur at various points in the day." Most of us -- myself included -- waste vast amounts of time. I don't actually mind that. Like Robert Frost, I believe that laziness is essential to creativity; I get a lot done because I have time to burn. I tell myself over and over that there is so much time, so little to do. That means that I feel free, unconstrained, and eager to work when I feel like working. I have learned, like Sir Kenneth, to make use of little pockets of time: the half-hour before dinner, for example. That stretch can be very productive. Weekends are full of time, even when a lot of chores have to be accomplished. I suspect that most of us fail to use the hours of the day properly. We imagine, foolishly, that huge quantities of time are needed to settle into a project, to reactivate the engines of thought. It isn't really possible to concentrate for more than half an hour without a solid break. That is my experience, in any case. Even when I have the whole day to work, I stop every 20 minutes to make a cup of tea, eat a cookie, call a friend, do a little yoga or a few stomach crunches, shower, or take a short walk. At a certain point in my life I realized that I should not feel guilty about those breaks. (I try not to feel guilty about anything, even when I am guilty.) Of course it helps to have writing time you can count on. I have gone to a village diner for breakfast at roughly 8:10 almost every morning for several decades. Over coffee and English muffins (with peanut butter), I write poems. Rough drafts, mostly. I have grown used to the chatter in the background, the easy flow of coffee, the local crowd coming in and out. I know most of the people. Many of them wave, nod, or speak to me briefly. A few will sit down for a short time. But they all know I'm working. My notebook is open. I have a pen in my hand. I've made it known in these parts that I write poetry at this diner in the morning, and my friends (and acquaintances) respect that. A little work every day adds up. That was a concept I got from Updike, whom I heard say (many years ago, in some public forum) that he writes only two pages a day. Two pages a day adds up to a long book every year, even counting revisions. When I'm working on a large prose book, such as a novel or biography, I try to write two pages or so every day. I'm not neurotic about itsometimes I don't feel like writing at all. But I aim for two, and I usually get two. The system works. (And, like Hemingway, I always stop at a point where I know what comes next; that makes getting into the material easier the next day.) Updike apparently compartmentalizes his writing life. Living in a big house on the North Shore (of Massachusetts), he is lucky enough to have several studies: one for fiction, one for reviews and nonfiction, one for letters and business. He can move along the hall, stopping in for a certain amount of time with a novel, working on a review for a time, an essay for a time, perhaps a poem or short story for another chunk of time. He doesn't teach, of course. It sounds nice. I would get bored, however, without my teaching. I need contact with students and colleagues, the sense of community. I like the demands of preparation for a class: reading a favorite poet or novelist, skimming a recent critical article. I am afraid that, left to my own devices, I might not reread Stevens, Frost, Eliot, Yeats, and other poets in a systematic fashion, year after year. And they have sustained me, provided spiritual refreshment, furnished the rooms of my mind with decent stuff. I find it very useful to put my thinking about their poetry into words in front of a class. Sir Kenneth told me that teaching would serve me well. He once suggested that a class and a critical essay are very similar in that each requires powers of formulation; each draws on analytical intelligence. It was T.S. Eliot who said criticism is as natural as breathing, and I believe that. When I read something, I want to talk about it. I want to compare it with other texts. I want to match my own voice with the voice of the text. That is what it means to be a thinking person. I keep at least two or three projects on the boil at a time. That means I am never at a loss for something urgent to accomplish. I can always turn from a poem to a novel, a book review, an essay. Each genre has its own demands, and I have come to relish the differences. I've taken the same notion and tried to embody it as a poem, then as a story, then as an essay. One can, of course, adapt a notion from one form to another; but I do believe that an idea has a perfect form, and I try to find it. Teaching, too, calls upon us to move in many directions. There is always a class to prepare, a book to read or read again, a paper to grade, a meeting to attend. I have never in 30 years not had a letter of recommendation urgently waiting to be written. Moving among those tasks, I try to make haste slowly, stopping wherever I am to focus, to give whatever I have to give at that moment. I think I've actually learned how to do that by writing, by having to stare at the page in front of me, the line of poetry breaking at the moment, spilling over onto the next line, the essay in need of a final twist. It is always better to work in small bursts, to focus on the twist or turn ahead. Having a grand idea, and setting up to accomplish something in a grand way, has always been, for me, a hopeless notion. I once had a good friend, a poetry editor and teacher, who always hoped to write a novel. One day the first sentence of the novel swam into his head: "All of Malaysia was agog." He didn't know why Malaysians were agog, or even where on earth Malaysia was. But he applied for a grant, got it, and set himself up in a foreign country with a huge sheaf of paper and a typewriter. He typed with reverence the great first sentence. He waited. He waited for much of a year, but nothing ever came. In those circumstances, of course, it never would. Jay Parini is a poet, a novelist, and a professor of English at Middlebury College. His latest book, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner, has just been published by HarperCollins. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:50:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:50:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: The Thoughtful Distinction Between Embryo and Human Message-ID: The Thoughtful Distinction Between Embryo and Human The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31b01001.htm By MICHAEL S. GAZZANIGA Central to many of the bioethical issues of our time is the question, When should society confer moral status on an embryo? When should we call an embryo or a fetus one of us? The fertilized egg represents the starting point for the soon-to-be dividing entity that will grow into a fetus and finally into a baby. It is a given that a fertilized egg is the beginning of the life of an individual. It is also a given that it is not the beginning of life, since both the egg and the sperm, prior to uniting, represent life just as any living plant or creature represents life. Yet is it right to attribute the same moral status to that human embryo that one attributes to a newborn baby or, for that matter, to any living human? Bioethicists continue to wrestle with the question. The implications of determining the beginning of moral status are far-reaching, affecting abortion, in vitro fertilization, biomedical cloning, and stem-cell research. The rational world is waiting for resolution of this debate. This issue shows us how the field of neuroethics goes beyond that of classic bioethics. When ethical dilemmas involve the nervous system, either directly or indirectly, those trained in the field of neuroscience have something to say. They can peek under the lid, as it were, and help all of us to understand what the actual biological state is and is not. Is a brain present? Is it functioning in any meaningful way? Neuroscientists study the organ that makes us uniquely human -- the brain, that which enables a conscious life. They are constantly seeking knowledge about what areas of the brain sustain mental thought, parts of mental thought, or no thought. So at first glance, it might seem that neuroethicists could determine the moral status of an embryo or fetus based on the presence of the sort of biological material that can support mental life and the sort that cannot -- in other words, whether the embryo has a brain that functions at a level that supports mental activity. Modern brain science is prepared to answer this question, but while the neurobiology may be clear, neuroethics runs into problems when it tries to impose rational, scientific facts on moral and ethical issues. The fertilized egg is a clump of cells with no brain; the processes that begin to generate a nervous system do not begin until after the 14th day. No sustainable or complex nervous system is in place until approximately six months of gestation. The fact that it is clear that a human brain isn't viable until Week 23, and only then with the aid of modern medical support, seems to have no impact on the debate. This is where neuro "logic" loses out. Moral arguments get mixed in with biology, and the result is a stew of passions, beliefs, and stubborn, illogical opinion. Based on the specific question being asked, I myself have different answers about when moral status should be conferred on a fetus. For instance, regarding the use of embryos for biomedical research, I find the 14-day cutoff employed by researchers to be a completely acceptable practice. However, in judging a fetus "one of us," and granting it the moral and legal rights of a human being, I put the age much later, at 23 weeks, when life is sustainable and the fetus could, with a little help from a neonatal unit, survive and develop into a thinking human being with a normal brain. This is the same age at which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the fetus becomes protected from abortion. Obviously there is a point of view that life begins at conception. The continuity argument is that a fertilized egg will go on to become a person and therefore deserves the rights of an individual because it is unquestionably where a particular individual's life begins. If one is not willing to parse the subsequent events of development, then this becomes one of those arguments you can't argue with. Either you believe it or you don't. While those who argue this point try to suggest that anyone who values the sanctity of human life must see things this way, the fact is that this just isn't so. This view comes, to a large extent, from the Roman Catholic Church, the American religious right, and even many atheists and agnostics. On the other side, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, many Christians, and other atheists and agnostics do not believe it. Certain Jews and Muslims believe that the embryo deserves to be assigned the moral status of a "human" after 40 days of development. Many Catholics believe the same, and many have written to me expressing those views based on their own reading of church history. When we examine the issue of brain death -- that is, when life ends -- it also begins to become clear that something else is at work here: our own brain's need to form beliefs. If we examine how a common set of accepted rational, scientific facts can lead to different moral judgments, we see the need to consider what factors influence these varying conclusions, and we can begin to extricate certain neuroethical issues from the arbitrary contexts in which they may initially have been considered. Different cultures view brain death differently. Brain death is declared medically when a patient is in an irreversible coma as a result of brain injury -- from a stroke, for example -- and has no brain-stem response, leading to a flat EEG (that is, no sign of brain activity on an electroencephalography recording), and no ability to breathe independently. A survey published in the journal Neurology in 2000 compared worldwide standards and regulations for declaring brain death. The concept of brain death is accepted worldwide: Even in the most religious societies, no one argues that human life continues to exist when the brain is irreversibly unable to function. What differs is the procedure for determining brain death. And these societal differences reveal how bioethical practices and laws can vary so wildly, for reasons that have nothing to do with science but instead are based on politics, religion, or, in most cases, the differing personal beliefs of a task force. For instance, China has no standards, while Hong Kong has well-defined criteria -- left over, no doubt, from its having been under British rule. The Republic of Georgia requires that a doctor with five years of neuroscience practice determine brain death; this is not so in Russia. Iran requires the greatest number of observations -- at 12, 24, and 36 hours -- with three physicians; and in the United States, several states have adapted the Uniform Definition of Death Act, including New York and New Jersey, both of which have a religious-objections loophole. The example of brain death illustrates how rules and regulations on bioethical issues can be formed and influenced by beliefs that have nothing to do with the accepted scientific facts. No one debates that a line has been crossed when the loss of brain function is such that life ceases. What we differ on isn't even where that line should be drawn -- most countries have similar definitions of brain death. What differs is largely who makes the call and what tests are used -- differences, basically, in how you know when you get there, not where "there" is. So, too, we all seem to be in agreement that there must be a point at which moral status should be conferred on an embryo or fetus. However, we seem to have a harder time defining that point, regardless of the facts. Why? As Sir Bertrand Russell said, "In an instant of time, nothing exists." In other words, everything is the product of the interaction of atoms and molecules, so by definition, everything is a dynamic process. This raises the potentiality argument, the view that since an embryo or fetus could become an adult, it must always be granted equivalent moral status to a postnatal human being. During a discussion of stem-cell research that took place while I was serving on President Bush's bioethics council, I made an analogy comparing embryos created for stem-cell research to a Home Depot. You don't walk into a Home Depot and see 30 houses. You see materials that need architects, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to create a house. An egg and a sperm are not a human. A fertilized embryo is not a human -- it needs a uterus, and at least six months of gestation and development, growth and neuron formation, and cell duplication to become a human. To give an embryo created for biomedical research the same status even as one created for in vitro fertilization, let alone one created naturally, is patently absurd. When a Home Depot burns down, the headline in the paper is not "30 Houses Burn Down." It is "Home Depot Burned Down." Many other compelling arguments about the course of the natural reproductive process should cause one to doubt that something magical happens at conception. It turns out that twinning commonly occurs in the first 14 days. One person becomes two persons. Even more bizarre, chimeras are formed. This happens when an egg that has split to form twins fuses back into one egg again. In such circumstances, it is hard to ascribe the sense of what is happening to the uniqueness of the "individual" or "soul" that is supposedly being formed at the instant of conception. The debate over the ethics of stem-cell research involves arguments that weigh the relative importance of relieving human suffering, freely conducting research, and protecting human embryos. The logic and thinking are complicated and often confused. For example, from my point of view, there is no conflict or weighing of goods between the embryo and stem-cell research. I assign no moral status to the 14-day-old embryo. If I did, the weighing of goods would begin, and moral judgments would follow. One is quickly placed in the middle of well-known dilemmas posed by philosophers and ethicists alike. It comes down to the question, Is it a moral good to sacrifice one life if more lives will thereby be spared? Does the mother of five hiding from the Gestapo have the moral duty or right to smother the crying baby so the whole family will not be caught and shot? Current policy on stem-cell research is based on the attempt to weigh the value of a potential human life (in the case of biomedical cloning, an embryo created for biological research) against the value of the potential of research to save lives. This is a wrongheaded equation. For research on spare IVF embryos, as well as for embryos made for biomedical cloning, the need to harvest stem cells at 14 days raises the question of the moral status of the embryo. Both these cases raise another ethical factor to weigh, that of intention. Two kinds of embryos are used for human biomedical research: spare embryos from IVF procedures, and embryos created by "somatic cell nuclear transfer." In SCNT an egg is removed from a female, the DNA is removed from it, and a cell from another individual is placed into the egg and allowed to grow. The South Koreans have shown that this can work in humans. They let such an entity develop to 14 days and then harvested stem cells from it. If the entity had been reimplanted in a woman's uterus, it is possible a fully formed baby might have developed. This process was used to produce the cloned sheep Dolly. In biomedical research using SCNT, a cloned embryo is created in a petri dish for the purpose of harvesting stem cells for studies and, ultimately -- if research that has recently been thwarted is successful -- for use in the treatment of such diseases as Parkinson's. There is never an intention to create a human being. Does this clump of cells deserve the protections of a human being? Stem-cell researchers adhere to a cutoff of 14 days, before which they do not consider life to have begun. The embryo has not begun to develop a nervous system, the biological structure that sustains and interprets the world in order to generate, maintain, and modify the very concept of human dignity. An intention argument can also be made for spare embryos created from IVF. Parents undergoing fertility treatment may create many embryos, so as to ensure that one viable embryo takes hold when implanted. It is not the intention of the parents that every embryo created be a child. After natural sexual intercourse, an estimated 60 to 80 percent of all embryos generated through the union of egg and sperm spontaneously abort -- many without our knowledge. So if we use IVF to create embryos and then implant only a select few, aren't we doing what nature does? We have simply replaced nature's techniques with modern scientific techniques for selecting the strongest embryos. Do extrauterine embryos deserve the moral status of a human being? Do they even deserve to be considered the same as implanted embryos? I say not. It seems to me that the intentions of parents or donors to either create a human baby or not create a human baby must have some role in the potentiality argument. In other words, if we create cells for research purposes, and never intend to create a human, or if a parent creates embryos so that one can "take," do we have a moral responsibility to grow those other embryos into human beings? Of course not. Intention is an interesting ethical concept that we seem to understand intrinsically. We see it everywhere; save for cases of recklessness and negligence, intention is a clear marker of guilt in our legal system. Crimes are weighed, guilt is determined, and punishment is meted out based on intention: Charges of manslaughter and murder in the third, second, and first degrees are all determined by the level of intention of the killer. The same goes for determining whether crimes are misdemeanors or felonies. Is intention, which appears to be a guiding principle of ethics, hard-wired into our brains? Research on the "theory of mind" suggests that it is. In fact, intention may be one of the defining characteristics of the human species. A crucial part of being human is to have a theory about the intentions of others in relation to oneself. If I have a theory about how I relate to you and you to me, a huge part of it is based on what I view our intentions toward each other to be. Knowing this -- that our brains are wired to form intentions -- should become the context, then, for looking at any intention argument. While I happen to agree with the logic of the intention argument vis-?-vis stem-cell research, intention arguments are inherently nonsensical. When you think about the neuroscience, it is important to understand we are wired to form these personal beliefs -- these "theories of mind." When one has an intention about another person, or thing, or animal, it is a state of personal belief. The person or thing or animal sits separate and apart from that belief. Does a clump of cells take on a different character if I have no intention ever to let it develop? Does it take on a different character if I do intend to have it develop, say by reimplanting it into a woman's uterus? I think not. It is the same clump of cells no matter what my personal intentions are for it. The cells are what they are and should be evaluated on their own terms, not mine. This, ultimately, is why we should set aside our personal beliefs and accept that a clump of cells is decidedly not a human being. Your parents may have intended for you to become a doctor. Should you feel lessened by the fact that you became a professor instead? Clearly, I believe that a fertilized egg, a clump of cells with no brain, is hardly deserving of the same moral status we confer on the newborn child or the functioning adult. Mere possession of the genetic material for a future human being does not make a human being. The developing embryo that becomes a fetus that becomes a baby is the product of a dynamic interaction with its environment in the womb, its postnatal experiences, and a host of other factors. A purely genetic description of the human species does not describe a human being. A human being represents a whole other level of organization, as distinct from a simple embryo as an embryo is distinct from an egg and sperm. It is the dynamics between genes and environment that make a human being. Indeed, most of us are willing to grant this special status to a developing entity long before it is born, but surely not before the entity even has a brain. Fixing the beginning of life is a tricky issue that, like most, if not all, neuroethical issues, should depend on the context. There is not a single answer. My life and your life began at conception. But when my life began and when life begins are different questions. A 14-day-old embryo created for research is not, and should not be granted the moral status of, a human being. Embryos are not individuals. As a father, I may react to a sonogram image of a nine-week-old embryo and see a future child; as a neuroscientist, I know that that creature cannot survive outside the womb for another 14 weeks. In neuroethics, context is everything. And it is our brains that allow us to analyze, reason, form theories, and adapt to all contexts. Michael S. Gazzaniga is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College. This essay is adapted from his book The Ethical Brain, to be published this month by Dana Press. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:51:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:51:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: A Health-Law Expert Looks at the Terry Schiavo Case Message-ID: A Health-Law Expert Looks at the Terry Schiavo Case The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31a01402.htm By PETER MONAGHAN George J. Annas, professor of health law at Boston University's School of Public Health The right of competent patients or their designees to refuse unwanted medical treatment was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990, but Florida lawmakers nevertheless passed a bill ordering the continuation of Terri Schiavo's life support when her husband tried to remove it. Florida's Supreme Court found that unconstitutional, but last month the U.S. Congress passed legislation, signed by President Bush, that gave the parents of Ms. Schiavo, who had been in a "persistent vegetative state" for 15 years, the right to seek a new court review. Several federal judges subsequently ruled that Ms. Schiavo's parents did not have the right to reinsert her feeding tube. Mr. Annas's article, "'Culture of Life' Politics at the Bedside -- The Case of Terri Schiavo," will be published in the April 22 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine and is now available online. Q. Is the medical community troubled, frustrated, angered by what has happened? A. All of those things. It's unprecedented meddling in medical decision making by Congress. And the only hope is that Congress will learn from this never to do it again. Q. Will it? A. Only if the public react as they seem to be reacting. The overwhelming majority in the polls have said that they don't believe that Congress should be involved in this kind of decision. ... Congress misread the public. ... An overwhelming majority believe that the Supreme Court did the right thing to say that individuals should have the right to make these decisions themselves. Q. There's nothing to stop politicians from grandstanding, is there? A. That must have been the thinking going in. ... Either the feeding tubes will be put in, and then they can take credit for "saving Terri Schiavo's life"; or the feeding tubes won't be put in, and they can argue that the judges are out of touch with the new culture of life and should be replaced. Q. These issues may become very expensive, mightn't they? A. That's definitely true. The law right now is that patients have a right to refuse any medical treatment, but don't have a right to demand mistreatment. Put differently, patients would have a right to choose among reasonable medical alternatives. If there is an alternative that has no medical benefits for the patient, then certainly medical-insurance providers -- Medicare, Medicaid -- would be perfectly justified in saying, "We're not paying for that, we're only paying for reasonable medical treatments. ..." Is there some basic medical care that every American should be entitled to? Congress doesn't want to talk about that, but it's high time they did. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:51:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:51:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: The Value and Responsibilities of Academic Freedom Message-ID: The Value and Responsibilities of Academic Freedom The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31b02001.htm By LEE C. BOLLINGER We are in a time of enormous stress for colleges and universities across the country. Today, a notion we hold dear -- academic freedom -- is at the center of contentious debates on our campuses. Academic freedom goes to the heart of the university, to the rights and responsibilities of faculty members and students, to the nature of teaching and scholarship. It is a freedom we share in the classroom -- it encompasses a student's right to learn and a professor's right to teach. Some of the current debates over academic freedom concern matters of national or global importance. Many are joined -- even incited -- by outside forces, from political pressure groups to the mainstream media to increasingly strident voices on the World Wide Web. Times like these call for a renewed understanding of the principles that support academic freedom, and the purposes they serve. I believe that there are four principles that should guide us forward. First, the health and vigor of universities depend upon our fidelity to the unique responsibilities of our profession. x Many people say that the primary purpose of a university is to preserve and advance our understanding of life, the world, and the universe. They say that it is to discover truth, to transmit as much of human understanding as we can from one generation to the next and add as much new knowledge as we can to the existing store of human knowledge -- a function that has unquestionably brought enormous benefits, practical and otherwise, to our society and to our world. I certainly do not want to challenge that primary function, but I do believe it incomplete. Universities are also charged with nurturing a distinctive intellectual character -- what I would call the scholarly temperament. I have now spent more than three decades of my professional life in the university, and of all the qualities of mind valued in the academic community, I would say the most valued is that of having the imaginative range and the mental courage to explore the full complexity of the subject. To set aside one's pre-existing beliefs, to hold simultaneously in one's mind multiple angles of seeing things, to allow yourself to believe another view as you consider it -- those are the kind of intellectual qualities that characterize the very best faculty members and students I have known and that suffuse the academic atmosphere at its best. The stress is on seeing the difficulty of things, of being prepared to live closer than we are emotionally inclined to the harsh reality that we live steeped in ignorance and mystery, of being willing to undermine even our common sense for the possibility of seeing something hidden. To be sure, that kind of extreme openness of intellect is exceedingly difficult to master and, in a profound sense, we never do. Because it runs counter to many of our natural impulses, it requires both daily exercise and a community of people dedicated to keeping it alive (which is why, I believe, universities as physical places will continue to thrive in a world of electronic communication). But we all know what I just described from personal experience: the extraordinary, unique thrill of thinking about a subject one way until you feel there cannot possibly be another valid perspective, and then beginning with another line of thought and feeling the same certainty settle into our minds, all the while watching in amazement as it happens. Sometimes, of course, this yields new "truths," but that is not the only purpose for developing this mental capacity. Public life poses constant pressures and temptations for the university. Within the academy, we always face the impulse to jettison the scholarly ethos and adopt a partisan mentality, which can easily become infectious, especially in times of great controversy. Every faculty member I have known is aware of that impulse and tries to live by the scholarly temperament. In the classroom, especially, where we perhaps meet our highest calling, the professor knows the need to resist the allure of certitude, the temptation to use the podium as an ideological platform, to indoctrinate a captive audience, to play favorites with the like-minded and to silence the others. To act otherwise is to be intellectually self-indulgent. That responsibility to resist belongs to every member of every faculty, but it poses special challenges for those of us who teach subjects of great political controversy. Given the deep emotions that people -- students and professors -- bring to highly charged discussions, faculty members must show extraordinary sensitivity to unlocking the fears and the emotional barriers that can cause a discussion to turn needlessly painful and substantively partial. Second, given the expectations of a scholarly profession, we must determine how to deal with lapses, for surely we must expect them. In doing so, we must uphold certain values. We should not elevate our autonomy as individual faculty members above every other value. We should not accept the argument that our professional norms cannot be defined, and that transgressions thus must be accepted without consequences. We, as faculty members, properly have enormous autonomy in our teaching and our scholarship. Yet it will not do simply to say that professional standards are too vague for any enforcement. Life is filled with drawing lines about highly elusive and difficult-to-define difference, and yet we do so because to shirk the task is to invite worse consequences. We should not accept the argument that professors are foreclosed from expressing their opinions on the subject under discussion in the classroom. Nor should we accept the notion that there are no boundaries involved whenever viewpoints are expressed. The question is not whether a professor advocates a view but whether the overall design of the class, and the course, is to explore the full range of the complexity of the subject. We should not accept the argument that we as teachers can do what we want because students are of sufficient good sense to know bias and indoctrination when they see it. That ignores the enormous differential in power between the professor and the student in a classroom setting. We should not accept the idea that the remedy for lapses is to add more professors with different political points of view, as some would have us do. The notion of a "balanced curriculum," in which students can, in effect, select and compensate for bias, sacrifices the essential norm of what we are supposed to be about in a university. It also risks polarization, with "liberal" students taking courses from "liberal" professors and "conservatives" taking classes from "conservative" professors. We should not say that academic freedom means that there is no review within the university, no accountability for the content of our classes or our scholarship. There is review, it does have consequences, and it does consider content. And this happens every day, every year, and it is properly lodged in the hands of the faculty of the departments and schools of our institutions. In appointment, promotion, and tenure discussions, as well as annual reviews, we make professional judgments about the scholarly temperament, the originality of ideas, the ability to develop students' understanding and capacities, the respect shown for students, the tolerance displayed, the mastery of the subject, and many other qualities of mind. Our third guiding principle should be to respect what I would call the separation of university and state. Universities do not penalize faculty members or students for comments they make as citizens in public debate. A corollary is that, while faculty members and students are free to take whatever positions they wish on public matters, universities are not. We do not, as institutions, generally speaking, take positions on public issues. The risk in joining the public sphere is that we jeopardize the scholarly ethos. We therefore need to maintain the line between the differing roles -- that of the scholar professional and that of the citizen. The last thing we want to do is to turn the campus into a political convention. Fourth and finally: All of us, but universities in particular, must stand firm in insisting that, when there are lines to be drawn in the academy, we must and will be the ones to do it. Not outside actors. Not politicians, not pressure groups, not the media. Ours is and must remain a system of self-government. To be sure, as we have witnessed throughout recent history, the outside world will sometimes find the academy so dangerous and threatening that efforts will naturally arise to make decisions for us about whom we engage and what we teach. That must not be allowed to happen. We must understand, just as we have come to understand with freedom of speech generally, that the qualities of mind we need in a democracy are precisely what the extraordinary openness of the academy is designed to help achieve. As I said at the outset, this is a time of high vulnerability and anxiety at our universities. Yet I am confident that what I have called the scholarly temperament is alive and well in our institutions of higher education. I know it is at Columbia University. We do not need a new set of principles, tailored to the times. We need only to reaffirm the principles that have guided us for the past 100 years, that have seen our profession through times of great challenge, and that have led us toward ever-expanding horizons of human insight and the building of democratic societies. Lee C. Bollinger is president of Columbia University. This essay is adapted from a speech he gave in March to the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:53:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:53:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Class Notes Message-ID: Class Notes The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31c00301.htm More than ever, faculty members are being recruited to raise money for their departments By PETER S. CAHN When graduates of my department publish a book or scale Mount Everest, they have their choice of three places to brag. The university's alumni magazine, a glossy quarterly, features class notes in every issue. The College of Arts and Sciences produces its own annual broadsheet with space for class notes. And for the past two years, I have been editing a newsletter for the anthropology department that includes notes from alumni. The abundant interest in the activities of our former students goes beyond mere curiosity. It reflects the intensified campaign by public universities to cultivate a pool of potential donors. More than ever, faculty members are being recruited for the tasks of development, an endless process of wheedling that has come to consume every sector of the university. At the University of Oklahoma, my employer, the proportion of the operating budget contributed by the state has declined from 35 percent 10 years ago to about 20 percent this year. During that same time, student tuition has increased dramatically, but not enough to cover the loss in public revenue. Increasingly, the way to compensate for falling state appropriations has been through private giving. It is not new for the university president to be viewed as fund raiser in chief; what has changed is the creep of development duties across the campus. A few years ago, the College of Arts and Sciences, my department's administrative home, hired its own development officer to supplement the universitywide efforts. One of his first suggestions to department heads was to improve communication with alumni so that they would remain connected to the university and become familiar with the ways in which their donations would be put to use. The easiest way to do that is through a newsletter. Interested in establishing contact with our alumni, my department chairwoman asked me to compile the anthropology newsletter. As service activities go, that job is not too onerous and even affords an outlet for my frustrated journalistic desires. Moreover, I receive the satisfaction of hearing back from former students about how their anthropological training has been useful in the professional world. Then the first check arrived. Every month the foundation that administers departmental donations sends an account statement to our chairwoman. Usually that statement reflects no activity. But this year, the statement recorded several deposits from alumni who were motivated to donate after reading the newsletter. Suddenly, the newsletter was not a once-a-semester commitment, but the cornerstone of a larger strategy to raise money for student scholarships in the department. My energized chairwoman and I made an appointment with the college's development officer to discuss what steps we could take to build on our early success. We started with the idea of a reception for an emeritus professor who had recently published a book. Under the guidance of the development officer, the plan became a $50-a-head, sit-down dinner with tours of the natural-history museum collections. Next, we discussed the establishment of a board of visitors. Those prominent alumni would meet annually to plan outreach activities and encourage classmates to give to the department. In exchange for endowing a scholarship, a donor would get naming rights and a chance to meet with the recipient. The development officer talked excitedly about establishing ties with local businesses and Indian tribes. As we left the meeting, I looked around the newly renovated building that houses the office of the dean and his staff. Engraved plates recognizing distinguished alumni decorated the walls. One wing, for academic advising, had been named for an alumnus who became a state senator. Even the elevator carried a plaque with the name of a donor to the college. It's encouraging that so many alumni and friends of the university have given generously to support our academic mission. Yet in that moment, it seemed to me that the relentless massaging of donor relations could easily eclipse my scholarly activities. There was no longer comfort in knowing that I could rely on a professional fund-raising staff in tailored suits to hold cocktail parties and plan reunions to coax dollars from alumni. I would have to dust off my blazer and join my fellow faculty members in organizing and attending such events. Tightening budget constraints have created a vicious cycle in which development activities lead to more of the same; the newsletter builds on the Web site, the annual banquet follows from the department holiday party. At first, we envisioned a pot of money to pay for graduate-student travel to conferences and to award outstanding undergraduates at commencement. Next we're aiming for an endowed professorship. This is not to disparage the worthy goals of cultivating philanthropy. One lesson I've learned is that donors must be trained to give. That is why many colleges organize a senior-class gift (and sometimes junior, sophomore, and freshman gifts). Once inculcated, the habit of donating not only enriches the university, but also strengthens connections between alumni and the institution. Yet, as development strategies become more sophisticated, alumni become potential customers to be solicited ever more aggressively. Coaches have long been a part of that campaign, but now regular faculty members have been called to participate in the raising of private dollars that has become so essential to the health of public universities. State-supported universities like mine are in a bind. While a smaller and smaller proportion of our expenditures are financed by public money, we are simultaneously prohibited from raising tuition beyond certain thresholds set by legislators. To support disciplines where large government grants for research are uncommon, we must rely increasingly on the generosity of alumni donors. So twice a year I assemble notes about the events of the semester and the accomplishments of our alumni into a departmental newsletter. Before I send it out to our list of graduates, I make sure to put all the names in bold. Peter S. Cahn is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. For an archive of his previous columns, see [3]http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/firstperson/cahn.htm From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:54:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:54:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Policy Review: Man and God in France by Timothy Lehmann Message-ID: Man and God in France by Timothy Lehmann - Policy Review, No. 130 http://www.policyreview.org/apr05/lehmann_print.html By [3]Timothy Lehmann Timothy Lehmann is Assistant Director of the Project for the New American Century. Nicolas Sarkozy. La R?publique, les religions, l'esp?rance. Editions du Cerf. 172 pages. EUR17. In this last American election cycle, political observers noted a significant gap between the ways in which George W. Bush and John Kerry approached the delicate matter of politics and religion. Bush was comfortable proclaiming his faith as an integral, if not the most essential, aspect of his life. Kerry, on the other hand, was considerably more reticent. Much of his rhetoric seemed to suggest that American politics is simply a secular affair, in which all political claims derived from religious teaching are prima facie illegitimate, because values cannot or should not be imposed on others who do not share them. These two Americans are poles apart regarding the manner in which they discuss religion and politics, and their disparity highlights the increasing differences with which American conservatives and American liberals and most Europeans view the role of religion in public life. On the other side of the Atlantic, Nicolas Sarkozy, formerly France's interior minister and minister of finance, who was recently overwhelmingly elected as leader of France's major center-right political party, is causing a stir with his singular understanding of this question. His new book, La R?publique, les religions, l'esp?rance (The Republic, religions, and hope), is being touted as a quasi-revolutionary document that seeks to redefine relations between religion and politics in France. In it he unveils his "personal sentiments," the result of his experience in political life, condensed and revealed in a series of interviews. Most Americans, plagued either by a Francophilia that wants to enlist France's muscular military forces and diplomatic finesse in the war against terrorism, or a Francophobia that condemns France, its history, and all it has ever produced as a spineless and subversive menace beyond any hope of rapprochement, don't seem to be noticing. Few Americans even attempt to steer a via media toward a more measured (one hesitates to say "nuanced") understanding of the proper relationship between America and France, or to appreciate potential friends among the allegedly homogeneously oppositional French. A prot?g? of Jacques Chirac in the 1970s, Nicolas Sarkozy is an unabashedly ambitious politician who is currently Chirac's most feared rival, and is positioning himself to capture the French presidency in 2007. A deal was struck in early September 2004 between Chirac and Sarkozy that would allow Sarkozy to run for head of the Union for a Popular Movement (ump), Chirac's moderate conservative party, if he promised to resign as minister of finance in November. Now Sarkozy is head of the ump, a potential springboard to the presidency. t might seem strange that a former finance minister who managed the important though relatively prosaic job of trying to spur France's perennially flagging economy would now be in the national spotlight for raising the question of religion and politics in France. But as minister of the interior, Sarkozy has increased police presence in Muslim neighborhoods and worked energetically and optimistically with the recently formed French Council on the Muslim Religion (cfcm) and its Union of Islamic Organizations of France (uoif) in the hope of dissuading Muslim leaders from embracing extremist politics and integrating them into democratic processes. By appealing to, and indeed clearly appreciating, religious believers in national life, "Sarko" seems to be breathing new life into demons long thought dead and fanning the flames of spirits that haven't yet been killed. France's elites are not taking kindly to his ideas: In an interview in L'Express, he was told that his book was "disturbing," and he was derided for his "offensive manner." France's religious demons were supposed to have been exorcized with the enactment in 1905 of a law forbidding state funding of religion. This was the culmination of a hundred-year religious war of sorts that began when -- after the often strange and violent events following the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 -- la?cit? triumphed, and religion was banished from the public square, hopefully to die a slow and quiet death in the hearts of the last few believers. But with the influx of Muslim immigrants from the Maghreb, of whom there are now at least 5 million and counting -- including a burgeoning number of youth -- the challenge and political necessity of integrating them into France's increasingly secular society has fallen to its political leaders. Sarkozy has thus far been the most visible and articulate interpreter of the question of religion and politics and his views have come into daylight with the publication of this book. La Republic vigorously challenges France's existing laws and status quo, reinvigorates questions about the soul, and throws into doubt widely accepted and encrusted beliefs about the temporal and the eternal. While Sarkozy's practical concern is how to improve French society and promote tolerance among Muslims, Jews, Christians, and nonbelievers in France, his overall approach to the question of religion and society has much in common with the views of many American conservatives. Although it is unwise to try to make windows into men's souls to know their true beliefs, what is incontrovertibly true is that Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian emigrant father and a French Jewish mother, and he is also a member of the Roman Catholic Church. As he puts it, "I am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic faith. Even if my religious practice is episodic, I acknowledge myself as a member of the Catholic Church." Furthermore, he believes that "spiritual need and hope are not satisfied by the republican ideal. . . . [The republic] is the best way to live together, but it is not the finality of man." Sarkozy acknowledges the importance of religion in France and of the religious sphere in life generally. He follows America's friendly critic, Alexis de Tocqueville, who advised Americans to avoid the tragedies of Europe's past by not integrating politics and religion too closely, but also cautioned us not to remove either from human life altogether. His views stand in stark contrast to those of most contemporary secular French politicians, who see no place for this outmoded, superstitious, dangerous, and apparently superfluous aspect of human life. Sarkozy's book appeared on the heels of a summer in which Christianity's meaning and impact on Europe's traditions and contemporary life had been hotly debated, with scant success achieved by religious leaders. It is important to make a distinction regarding political secularism that is often forgotten. Sarkozy recoils from any "sectarian" understanding of la?cit? and is unequivocally committed to secular democracy. Good secular government also ensures that religious leaders do not manage the untidy business of political power, in spite of all temptation. Spiritual and temporal powers must remain separate, and Sarkozy opposes writing God into the European constitution. But he is an opponent of the absolute secularization of society that attempts to remove any and all religious influence from human life. hile the 1905 law's explicit intention was to deny any state-sanctioned religion, its effectual end was the crippling of the Catholic religion in public life by denying it, or any other religion, government funding. In contradistinction to this stark division between the secular and the sacred, Sarkozy favors a "la?cit? positive," one that guarantees the right to live one's religion as a fundamental right. To his mind, this includes providing public funding for religions. If soccer fields, libraries, and theaters all benefit from public funding, Sarkozy wonders, why shouldn't religious communities, which also promote cultural flourishing, also receive funds? While he doesn't favor earmarking funds to build mosques per se, he favors funding for parking lots for them, as well as for Muslim "cultural centers." Sarkozy recognizes that the 1905 law was the result of a delicate "equilibrium," reached after divisions that tore the nation, and thus "it is necessary to reflect carefully" before breaking with the spirit of the law. Without modifying its basic structure, he favors public financing of the "great religions" of France. To that end, he advocates funding "national republican" education for religious leaders, reasoning that it is preferable to have imams educated in French universities and speaking French than to have imams educated abroad who are hostile to the existing republic. It also discourages the clandestine extremism that plagues many banlieues, the often decrepit Muslim-dominated neighborhoods of France's largest cities, and promotes transparency of religious education. Sarkozy is not about to fling France back into the Dark Ages: He's wary of "those who call for a return to the past . . . . The search for solutions by looking backwards is at the antipodes of my reflexes." But he makes an adroit observation about life: "My long-held conviction is that the need for hope is consubstantial to human existence; and that what makes religious liberty so important is that it is in reality a matter of the liberty to hope." More potential dangers seem to attend believing ages (without forgetting the militant atheism of the twentieth century). For this reason it might seem sensible (or at least useful, if not politically necessary) to advocate removing that threat by tempering and eventually eliminating it altogether through the process of secularizing all aspects of life. But the long-term prospects of a universalized secularism are dubious at best, for some of the deepest sources of decent political life may be obscured or effaced in the process of hyper-secularization. Regarding the question of forbidding young Muslim females from wearing the veil at school, Sarkozy defended the ban without being as viscerally supportive of it as some of France's more secular politicians. He viewed the fact that many young Muslims ignored the prohibition as a reflex of cultural identity in a secular society that they perceive as hostile. Moreover, he sees the veil question as a matter of freedom of expression, though one which can only be protected within the framework of la?cit?. A persuasive argument could be made that the welcome approval of religion in France could lead to increased levels of anti-Semitism and a reduction of tolerance among sects and factions. France's historical and contemporary anti-Semitism is a stain and a poison. It compelled Theodor Herzl to declare that if the French Jew Alfred Dreyfus could be unjustly convicted of treason in 1894 in a country whose fundamental principles proclaimed the universal libert?, ?galit?, and fraternit? of all men, then there could be no completely satisfying settlement on the Jewish question between Jews and any modern liberal democracy. However, Sarkozy is himself of Jewish descent and therefore particularly sensitive to such threats, and in any case France's periodic spates of anti-Semitic animus seem to have deeper roots that haven't been eradicated with the advent of secular political institutions, liberal or otherwise. The existence and continued influence of Jean-Marie Le Pen is a case in point. Sarkozy reserves the possibility "for the state to expel by military force any imam who exhorts hatred toward Jews, the West, or modern societies." As the cfcm gains in credibility and stature, "responsible" Jews, Muslims, and Christians must, through dialogue, "act hand in hand" to combat racism and xenophobia. In continuing to affirm the pluralism of the French Republic, Sarkozy allows for competition among religions, which has long been a useful means to block the takeover of politics by a single dominant religion. This is unquestionably a difficult balancing act, as it has been in times past, but can it really be asserted that with Europe's current lack of fervor in faith there is any serious impending danger to the rights of its citizens? Both the American and the French systems of government lay claim to being dedicated to political freedom. Surely both countries can be counted on to continue to affirm the superiority of their political organizations over the undemocratic and corrupt governments of the world. In Sarkozy's mind, religion answers an important need in any healthy society. A stable balance between religion and good politics can be achieved without sanctioning a state religion and forced proselytism, and without favoring one religion over another. Sarkozy doesn't fail to point out that the religion which he has worked hardest to incorporate into French society, Islam, is not his own. He has labored for it not in the name of his own faith but in the name of the republic. While he is a proud defender of the established French Republic (and its intransigent division between the autonomy of the political, governed by free human beings, and religious authority), he realizes equally the need and importance of religion in any society, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or otherwise. "The spiritual question," he says, "is one of hope, of hope to have, after death, a perspective of accomplishment in eternity." ne of the ultimate questions is whether a rational and enlightened (or irrationally enlightened) Europe has really figured things out, once and for all. Can people live contentedly in a post-historical paradise of material pursuit? Or is there something not completely satisfying about those circumstances? The debate over religion in Europe is whether it was a noxious (and now discredited) fairy tale that caused needless bloodshed and suffering in the Middle Ages, or an important part of society, the absence of which caused needless bloodshed and suffering in the century just past. Clearly, both alternatives in their extremes sought to establish unnatural utopias on earth. The attempt to satisfy religious longings was horrifyingly damaging to decent political and social life in the Middle Ages. But the attempted extirpation by force of the unsatisfied religious longing from Nazi Germany and Communist Russia was equally, if not more horrifyingly, damaging to Europe. Its unforced extirpation in some of the liberal democracies of the West is damaging in its own way. In Sarkozy's eyes, "religions must exist elsewhere besides in the museums, and the churches must not become nostalgic conservatories of a glorious past. . . .We're not in the ussr where the churches became markets and gymnasiums." He sees in religious structures "a factor of integration, of meetings, of exchanges, whichever religion is concerned." Although Sarkozy must know that there are considerable risks involved in melding democracy and Islam, he refuses to countenance the possibility of their ultimate incompatibility, dismissing such suggestions as "irresponsible." This may well be rhetoric intended to appeal to potential Muslim democrats, but it may indeed be irresponsible not to consider, or to underemphasize, the ways in which Islam has manifested itself in the past, and its tolerance (or lack) of political freedom. The French must therefore confront the terrible possibility that Islam as it has existed in the past and their secular democracy may not be able to unite over the long term. Sarkozy isn't so na?ve as not to realize that religion can be used to justify violence and intolerance. A real clash of civilizations could occur if he and his allies fail to guide French politics successfully, as Tocqueville warned at the beginning of the democratic era. To be sure, Tocqueville's isn't the last word on the matter, and many faithful Muslims, like Dalil Boubakeur, the head of the Paris mosque, are more sanguine than he was about establishing a democratic Islam. Muslim citizens enjoy the same rights as others, as Sarkozy makes clear, and they should not be deprived of their right to believe. Time and time again, Sarkozy insists that there must be an Islam of France, not an Islam in France. The cfcm is intended to organize and represent Muslim believers by allowing them to associate publicly, to encourage dialogue with others and thus promote democratic compromise, and to deprive the extremists of their main arguments. Regional councils have also been created, encouraging local representation. In addition, Sarkozy favors educating more young Muslims in public administration, which has so far been a successful experiment at the prestigious Sciences-Po. Sarkozy's strong support of religion in public life may shock people who believe that taking religion seriously is symptomatic of nostalgia for the dark ages. However, he knows there can be absolutely no thought of going back to pre-democratic times. Secular democratic politics and some degree of materialism are acceptable if tempered by a pre-democratic religious inheritance outside the contours of secular modernity. Sarkozy is said to "love" American culture, and even met with Tom Cruise (whom he regards as a "great actor") during the American's recent trip to Paris. In the absence -- or nonarrival -- of a new age of German-inspired gods disclosing themselves to men to light up our horizon for the better, we might be witnessing the revitalization of a moderate religious influence on modern democratic life. Europe's current leaders and many of its citizens will hardly be keen on such a prospect: Hollywood films on Saturday night and mass on Sunday -- quelle horreur! The coexistence of mosque-goers and shameless Euro Disney tourists with sophisticated Gauloise-smoking grande ?cole graduates will be trying at the very least. But Sarkozy's ambitious plans may be steering French democracy in that direction. If he is unsuccessful the alternatives may be far uglier. None of his critics has proposed a feasible alternative strategy. References 3. http://www.policyreview.org/authorindex.html#tlehmann From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:55:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:55:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LAT: Our Founding Mothers Message-ID: Our Founding Mothers http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-rosen27mar27,1,1281268,print.story?coll=la-headlines-bookreview Revolutionary Mothers Women in the Struggle for America's Independence Carol Berkin Alfred A. Knopf: 202 pp., $24 By Ruth Rosen Ruth Rosen, a former professor of history at UC Davis, is a senior fellow at the Rockridge Institute and author of "The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America." March 27, 2005 Why do Americans have such a seemingly insatiable appetite for biographies about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison and other Founding Fathers? One reason, perhaps, is that many of us seek to understand which religious values and secular principles united us in the first place. The nastier our cultural wars, the more we try to recover the political ideals that shaped our young republic. The more imperial our foreign policy, the more we ponder our first president's warning to avoid foreign entanglements. The more secretive our government becomes, the more we strive to comprehend the Founding Fathers' commitment to freedom and civil liberties. But what about the Founding Mothers? Do they have anything to teach us about the dreams of those who fought for independence and, by extension, about our political era? Absolutely, but women were not in a position to write the documents that gave birth to a new nation. Still, their participation in the American Revolution and the founding of the nation was critical to the creation of a democratic republic. Carol Berkin, who has written distinguished scholarly studies of the Revolutionary War era, is the ideal historian to offer the general reader a concise and accessible story with "Revolutionary Mothers." Using a novelist's eye for detail, plot and character, Berkin vividly recounts Colonial women's struggles for independence -- for their nation and, sometimes, for themselves. Berkin largely focuses on ordinary women who endured what was a home-front war, a civil war and a military occupation. Every choice women made had political consequences. By boycotting British goods and spinning their own cloth, they helped the Colonies survive an eight-year war. With their men away in combat, they kept their families alive by managing the farms and businesses. They also helped to finance a fledgling government, wrote propaganda broadsides, sewed shirts for soldiers, infiltrated enemy lines as spies, joined the army dressed as men and suffered deprivation when British troops seized all their livestock and looted their household possessions. Countless women also were the victims of gang rapes, but most hid their shameful secret from public view. Like so many soldiers throughout history, British troops viewed Colonial women as the spoils of war. "The fair nymphs of this isle are in wonderful tribulation," wrote Lord Rawdon, a British officer stationed on Staten Island, "as the fresh meat our men have got here has made them as riotous as satyrs. A girl cannot step into the bushes without running the most imminent risk of being ravished, and they are so little accustomed to these vigorous methods that they don't bear them with proper resignation." He then praised one woman for her sophistication "in not complaining after 7 men raped her." The American Revolution, as Berkin reminds us, left in its wake "widows and mourning mothers, disabled veterans, African Americans separated from their families, Indians in danger of losing their lands, a colossal war debt, pockets of economic depression, and a host of political problems that would not be addressed until the constitution convention of 1787." That was not its only legacy. Most revolutions or civil wars have inspired a small group of educated women to scrutinize their former lives with new eyes and, as part of creating a new society, to enhance the status and lives of women. The American Revolution was no exception. In a letter to her husband on March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams famously wrote, "I desire you would remember the ladies.... Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.... We are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." Adams was not alone, Berkin shows, as she resurrects the dreams of other female writers, pamphleteers and poets who rejected "the traditional notion that women were both morally and mentally inferior to men." Who would educate young boys in republican virtue if women remained ignorant and lacked education? A representative government required "informed citizens, able to resist the siren call of the tyrant and temptations of corruption." Berkin's lively book reclaims a vital part of our political legacy. Although these women lacked formal political power, they claimed the ideals of the Founding Fathers as their own. The result? They set in motion a movement for women's full political participation as citizens and ignited a debate about the proper place of women that still polarizes our society more than 200 years later. o From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 16:57:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 12:57:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Owen Allred, 91, Leader of Polygamous Sect, Dies Message-ID: Owen Allred, 91, Leader of Polygamous Sect, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/national/17allred.html February 17, 2005 By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT Owen Allred, head of the Apostolic United Brethren, one of Utah's largest polygamous denominations, died on Monday at his home in Bluffdale, a suburb of Salt Lake City. He was 91. His death was announced by his son Carl. Mr. Allred's group, thought to have about 6,000 members, is based in Bluffdale. They live collectively and say they adhere to the original revelations of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Polygamy was renounced by the Mormons in 1890, when Wilford Woodruff, the president of the church, said he had received a revelation from God saying that the time for polygamy was past. From then on, the church excommunicated members who supported the practice, including Mr. Allred, who was excommunicated more than 60 years ago. Although Mr. Allred accused the church of giving up polygamy to achieve statehood for Utah, in 2000 he said he was in favor of the ban. Yet over his lifetime he had eight wives, raised 23 children and 25 stepchildren, and was estimated to have more than 200 grandchildren. He kept his wives in four houses next to one another in Bluffdale. "People have the wrong idea that we're old-time kooks who prey on young girls," Mr. Allred said in a New York Times interview in 2002. "I suppose I'm guilty of that. My youngest wife is 64. My oldest girl is 93." "It takes twice as good a man to have two wives as it does to have one," he added. "We require that the man show ability to support his family and the woman be of consenting age." Carl Allred said his father's successor would be Lamoine Jensen, the second oldest of the church's Council of Twelve. He explained that the oldest member felt himself too frail to take on such duties. After Owen Allred was excommunicated, he and his brothers established a community to sustain their families. He was designated a living prophet by his group when his brother Rulon was shot to death by Ervil LeBaron, the head of a rival group of polygamists. When accusations of improprieties were leveled against his group in 1998, Mr. Allred cooperated with the authorities and pointed out that the Apostolic United Brethren opposed arranged marriages or marriage between relatives. In March 2003, a judge ruled in a civil suit that members of the Brethren had swindled a woman out of $1.54 million in a 1989 real-estate transaction. The woman was awarded more than $3 million in compensation and interest. The same judge held that Mr. Allred had laundered thousands of dollars. In the interview in 2002, Mr. Allred defended himself in light of these cases. "I'm not a wicked man at all," he said. His Mormon lineage was strong. His great-grandmother Orissa Bates started out on the cross-country journey with Joseph Smith in upstate New York, the birthplace of Mormonism. In 1846, she married William M. Allred, in Nauvoo, Ill., where Smith was attacked by a mob and killed. His grandfather Byron H. Allred was born on the passage from Illinois to Utah. Mr. Allred's father, Byron H. Allred Jr., was a prominent church elder, the speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives and a missionary. About raising his family, Mr. Allred said in the 2002 interview: "It wasn't easy, I'll tell you. Never have more than eight kids in the house." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 17:00:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 13:00:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Benefits of Looking on the Dark Side Message-ID: Health > Side Effects: The Benefits of Looking on the Dark Side http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/health/08side.html 5.2.8 By JAMES GORMAN Just when I had started to relax it happened again. In the past I worried a lot about being pessimistic because a variety of research suggested that optimists had better health odds. I didn't see much of a chance for change. I hadn't been able to stick to exercise or eating lots of vegetables or keeping my desk neat and organized, so I was pretty pessimistic about becoming optimistic. On one score, however, I figured I had an edge. Other research hinted that an active mind could help fend off Alzheimer's disease. I have an active mind - distracted perhaps, hard to corral, kind of sour, but certainly active. I tend to hop back and forth from one interest to another - chess, boat building, guitar, the intricacies of miso soup. Each interest has a literature to master, problems to solve, a new way of thinking to explore. I thought all this thinking would help keep my mind sharp. Well, maybe not. Dr. Robert S. Wilson of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and several colleagues reported in the January issue of Neurology that there was a clear correlation between a proneness to distress and the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's. He didn't propose any causal relationship. But when a scientist says it's just a correlation, I always imagine George Costanza saying to Jerry Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." George's character, by the way, is a nice example of pessimism, and worry. Larry David, the star of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," helped invent George, based on his own personality. Both George and Mr. David illustrated that there was at least one benefit to looking on the dark side. Expecting the worst can make for a lot of laughs. What Dr. Wilson studied was not pessimism but distress proneness, which is not exactly worry, but something like it. The study involved about 1,000 people studied over six years. Even correcting for other factors like genes known to increase susceptibility to Alzheimer's, it turned out that those likely to be distressed were more likely to develop the disease than the others. The effect was less strong in African-Americans than in whites. Dr. Wilson noted that "African-Americans have been disproportionately exposed to social conditions considered to be stressful" but said this did not explain the differences. Nor did he find any significant racial differences in general emotional states or proneness to distress. After reading the report, I had to admit that the numbers were sound. And even though I had stopped worrying about being pessimistic, I knew which group I would be in if I were part of the study. So now I was distressed about my proneness to distress, worried about being worried, which made me worried about being worried about being - you get the idea. When I encounter research like this I wonder, Why are they doing this to me again? I know, of course, that the actual goal of Dr. Wilson is to understand a really awful disease. And in the long run, the more that is known about Alzheimer's the better, for both prevention and treatment. But what about the distressed among us? Should we relax, calm down, take it easy? Probably, but what are the odds? Science may offer some hope. The reign of the gene continues to become stronger and stronger. Many observers find this development unfortunate. If genetic determinism takes over our view of life, people may be tempted to forgo policies for social improvement. They may be tempted to ignore the fact that genes always interact with environment. For me, however, and other pessimists and worriers, there is, I have to say, a bright side. If I am predestined, by the precepts of a new genetic Calvinism, to worry, then I don't need to worry because there's nothing I can do. My genes have done a few good things for me. My cholesterol stays within tolerable limits. I don't gain weight easily. Despite lack of exercise and regular consumption of potato chips, I am in generally good health. On the downside, I've never been a fast runner and I tend to see the glass as half empty. But, then, if personality is as heavily influenced by genes as body type, there's nothing I can do about it. This doesn't mean I'll stop worrying. It just means I can stop worrying about worrying. I don't know whether this is Calvinism or Zen, but what it suggests is that I may be able to relax after all, to just sit back and enjoy my sense of impending doom. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 17:01:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 13:01:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Europe's Jews Seek Solace on the Right Message-ID: Week in Review > Europe's Jews Seek Solace on the Right http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/weekinreview/20smit.html By CRAIG S. SMITH PARIS A curious thing is happening in Belgium these days: a small but vocal number of Jews are supporting a far-right party whose founders were Nazi collaborators. The xenophobic party, Vlaams Belang, plays on fears of Arab immigrants and, unlike the prewar parties from which it is descended, courts Jewish votes. Perhaps 5 percent of the city of Antwerp's Jews gave it their votes in the last election. The Belgian example is extreme, but it represents the sharpest edge of a much broader political shift by European Jews - away from the left, particularly the far left, and toward the center and right, in the face of rising displays of anti-Semitism and the European left's embrace of the Palestinian cause. This drift from the left has "been going on steadily for the last 20 or 30 years," said Tony Lerman, who runs London's Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, which supports Jewish life in Europe. Of course, the shift is not monolithic and some of it is also associated with a rise in Jews' social and economic status. In the vast majority of cases it represents a move toward tolerant parties of the center or center-right rather than a leap to the far end of the spectrum - where many xenophobic parties remain unfriendly to Jews as well as to Arabs. So the number of Jews on the far right remains a very slim minority. But the fact that there are any at all is a measure of the degree to which many of Europe's 2.4 million Jews feel abandoned by the left and are still searching for a comfortable place in European politics. Meanwhile, they are becoming increasingly active in the mainstream right. In Britain in the last 60 years, the number of left-of-center Jewish members of Parliament has dropped from more than two dozen to about a dozen, primarily older, members while the number in parties of the center and right has climbed from none to about half a dozen. The Tories' would-be finance minister, Oliver Letwin, is Jewish, as is the party's new leader, Michael Howard. Mr. Lerman says Jews in Britain are now identified in public opinion more with the Conservative Party than the Labor Party. Much of European Jewry considered the left its natural home in the 19th century and the early 20th century. The left supported Jewish emancipation and more liberal immigration policies in Western Europe, and Social Democrats and Communists opposed Russia's czars, who sponsored anti-Semitic pogroms, and Hitler. But after World War II, Stalin, too, attacked Jews, and in the 1950's the Soviet Union identified itself with Arab nationalism. From the 1960's onward, the left in Europe increasingly portrayed Israel not as a land of collective farmers making the desert bloom but as an occupying power. So the disenchantment accelerated, especially in the last few years. "Arafat became the leftist pinup boy following Che Guevara," said Barry Kosmin, head of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research in London. Jews say the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism has often become difficult to see. Swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans have marked pro-Palestinian marches in some Communist-run municipalities in France. In Britain, many Jews who opposed the war in Iraq stayed away from antiwar rallies because of the strong anti-Israeli element. "Because of the negative stuff coming from the left, many Jews felt that their fates were tied to Israel, so they have to go along with those who support Israel regardless of the past," Mr. Lerman said. There is particular anxiety among the many European Jews who fled their North African homes after the creation of Israel in 1948 and again after the 1967 Middle East war. "They fear that their destiny is threatened by Islam on both sides of the Mediterranean," said Dominique Moisi, a senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations. Those fears shape some of the most extreme voices on the new Jewish right. Giselle Littman, who was expelled from Egypt in 1957 and now publishes under the pseudonym Bat Yeor, argues in her latest book, "Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis," that Europe has consciously allied itself with the Arab world at the expense of Jews and the trans-Atlantic alliance. Not all of what Jews see as a resurgence of European anti-Semitism is coming from Muslims. There is also a virulent neo-Nazi strain. But an essential difference between the anti-Semitism of today and that of the 1930's is that center-right parties tolerated - or encouraged - it then and denounce it today. Even some elements of Europe's far right have reached out to Jews: Gianfranco Fini, Italy's foreign minister and a former admirer of Mussolini, has become a champion of Israel since apologizing to Jews three years ago for Italy's wartime race laws and deportations. Filip Dewinter, head of Belgium's Vlaams Belang, meets regularly with Jewish leaders and has been photographed with prominent rabbis. Denmark's far-right People's Party had an Israeli theme at a recent convention and served wine from the Golan Heights. "We have a common enemy, a common struggle," said Mr. Dewinter. He called Israel "the forward post of the free West fighting radical Islam" and said Jewish culture is "one of the main cultures of European civilization, but we can't say the same of Islam." But Elie Wiesel, the American author, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor, warns that while the center-right has become a more comfortable place for European Jews, Jews have no place in the xenophobic parties. "Whatever crisis we're enduring, no Jew should go to the extreme right," he said. "A Jew should never be an ally of racism because we know what it is." In Antwerp, according to one study, at least 65 percent of those who were registered as Jews during World War II died during the Holocaust. According to another study, based on exit polls, at least 5 percent of the Jewish population there voted for Vlaams Belang last June, in the most recent elections. Henri Rosenberg, an Orthodox Jew whose Polish parents survived Hitler's camps, is unapologetic about his support. "Orthodox Jews are thinking in the same ways that non-Jews are thinking, that Vlaams Belang can protect them," he said. "Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews had to compromise with the societies in which they lived and this made it much easier for Orthodox Jews to go with the standard, 'Is it good for Jews or bad for Jews?' " he said. "Today, it seems it is good for Jews." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 7 17:04:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 13:04:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Psychiatric News: Familial Psychiatric Risk May Extend to Third Generation Message-ID: Familial Psychiatric Risk May Extend to Third Generation -- Arehart-Treichel 40 (3): 38 -- Psychiatric News http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/40/3/38 Psychiatric News February 4, 2005 Volume 40 Number 3 Clinical & Research News Familial Psychiatric Risk May Extend to Third Generation Joan Arehart-Treichel Having both a grandparent and a parent with major depression seems to raise a child's chance of developing a psychiatric disorder. The first signs of illness, however, may be anxiety, not depression. Depression can run in the family, numerous studies have shown. None of these studies, however, has gone beyond two generations, and only a few have had a longitudinal design. Now a three-generation longitudinal investigation also implies that depression can run in the family. The investigation was headed by Myrna Weissman, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology in psychiatry at Columbia University. Study results are reported in the January Archives of General Psychiatry. In 1982 Weissman and her colleagues selected 47 persons--some of whom had experienced a major depression and others who had not--for a study, then followed the psychiatric fates of those subjects' 86 offspring as they grew older. Then, as the offspring grew up and had 161 children of their own, Weissman and her team tracked their psychiatric outcomes as well. By 2002, the 161 grandchildren were, on average, 12 years of age. The researchers then divided these 161 youngsters into four groups--those with at least one grandparent and at least one parent who had experienced a major depression (71); those with at least one grandparent who had experienced a major depression but with no parent who had (30); those with no grandparent who had experienced a major depression, but with at least one parent who had experienced one (25); and those who had neither a grandparent nor a parent who had experienced a major depression (35). Grandchildren with at least one grandparent and at least one parent who had experienced a major depression had the highest rate of psychopathology, with 59 percent having at least one psychiatric disorder. In contrast, grandchildren with at least one grandparent--but no parent--who had experienced a major depression had the lowest rate of psychopathology, with 13 percent having at least one psychiatric disorder. The other two groups fell between those two. Psychiatric disorders were identified in 20 percent of grandchildren who had no grandparent who had experienced a major depression, but at least one parent who had. And 29 percent of grandchildren with neither a grandparent nor a parent who had experienced a major depression had at least one psychiatric disorder. Moreover, when the scientists compared grandchildren who had a grandparent with a history of major depression and a parent with a history of severe major depression with grandchildren who had a grandparent with a history of major depression and a parent with less-debilitating major depression, 68 percent of the former had at least one psychiatric disorder, whereas only 31 percent of the latter did, a highly significant difference. These results have clinical implications, the researchers said in their study report: "Obtaining family history of depression and its severity and impairment in previous generations should help to identify persons at high risk for psychopathology at a young age." Another noteworthy finding from the study was that anxiety disorders, not depressive disorders, were the principal psychiatric disturbance experienced by grandchildren who had at least one grandparent and parent with a history of depression. Other studies have shown that anxiety disorders in childhood often precede depression in adolescence and young adulthood. Thus anxiety in these grandchildren may herald later risk for depression, Weissman and her colleagues wrote, and treatment of such anxiety might protect them from the later development of depression. In fact, as Weissman told Psychiatric News, they are considering conducting a study to see whether treating anxiety in children from families at high risk of depression might prevent the onset of major depression later. "Nothing in these findings was surprising," Neal Ryan, M.D., a professor of child psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, said in an interview. "I think they extend what we have seen so far...[But] this is a uniquely valuable study because of the very long period of follow-up of these families, which now extends into the third generation.... [Also] the earlier findings of this series of studies has very well withstood the test of time." The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. An abstract of "Families at High and Low Risk for Depression" is posted online at http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/62/1/29 Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005 62 29[17] From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 8 13:29:01 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 06:29:01 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Programmed DNA forms fractal Message-ID: <01C53C04.4157B550.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id %3D4396 Technology Research News, April 6/13, 2005 Erik Winfree, an assistant professor of computer science at The California Institute of Technology , has showed that it is possible to coax short strands of artificial DNA to spontaneously assemble into a Sierpinski triangle. The ability is a step toward embedding program ming instructions in chemical processes and shows that there is no theoretical barrier to using molecular self-assembly to carry out any kind of computing and nanoscale fabrication, according to Winfree. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 15:06:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:06:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Text of Pope's Last Will and Testament Message-ID: Text of Pope's Last Will and Testament http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Will.html 5.4.7 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:59 p.m. ET The following is the Vatican information service's English translation of the official Italian translation of the text of Pope John Paul II's last will and testament, which was originally written in Polish, dated March 6, 1979, with successive additions (The editor's notes are the AP's. The parentheses are in the pope's text, except for Vatican notations): The testament of 6.3.1979 (Eds: March 6, 1979) (and successive additions) ``Totus Tuus ego sum'' (Eds: Latin for ``I am completely in Your hands'') In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity. Amen. ``Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming'' (cf. Matthew 24, 42) -- these words remind me of the last call, which will happen at the moment the Lord wishes. I desire to follow Him, and I desire that everything making up part of my earthly life should prepare me for this moment. I do not know when the moment will come, but like everything else, I place it too in the hands of the Mother of my Master: Totus Tuus. In the same maternal Hands I leave everything and everyone with whom my life and vocation have linked me. In these Hands I leave, above all, the Church, as well as my Nation and all humanity. I thank everyone. Of everyone I ask forgiveness. I also ask for prayer, that the Mercy of God may appear greater than my weakness and unworthiness. During the spiritual exercises I reread the testament of the Holy Father Paul VI. That reading prompted me to write this testament. I leave no property behind me of which it is necessary to dispose. As for the everyday objects that were of use to me, I ask they be distributed as seems appropriate. My personal notes are to be burned. I ask that this be attended to by Father Stanislaw (Eds: his personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz), whom I thank for his collaboration and help, so prolonged over the years and so understanding. As for all other thanks, I leave them in my heart before God Himself, because it is difficult to express them. As for the funeral, I repeat the same dispositions as were given by the Holy Father Paul VI. (Here is a note in the margin: burial in the bare earth, not in a sarcophagus, 13.3.92) (Eds: March 13, 1992). ``Apud Dominum misericordia et copiosa apud Eum redemptio.'' (Eds: Latin for ``With the Lord there is mercy, and with Him plentiful redemption.'') John Paul pp. II Rome, 6.III.1979 (Eds: March 6, 1979) After my death I ask for Masses and prayers. 5.III.1990 (Eds: March 5, 1990) ------ (Eds: Undated sheet of paper) I express my profound trust that, despite all my weakness, the Lord will grant me all the grace necessary to face according to His will any task, trial or suffering that He will ask of His servant, in the course of his life. I also trust that He will never allow me -- through some attitude of mine: words, deeds or omissions -- to betray my obligations in this holy Petrine See. 24.II-1.III.1980 (Eds: Feb. 24-March 1, 1980) Also during these spiritual exercises, I have reflected on the truth of the Priesthood of Christ in the perspective of that Transit that for each of us is the moment of our own death. For us the Resurrection of Christ is an eloquent (Vatican notation: added above, decisive) sign of departing from this world -- to be born in the next, in the future world. I have read, then, the copy of my testament from last year, also written during the spiritual exercises -- I compared it with the testament of my great predecessor and Father, Paul VI, with that sublime witness to death of a Christian and a Pope -- and I have renewed within me an awareness of the questions to which the copy of 6.III.1979 (Eds: March 6, 1979) refers, prepared by me (in a somewhat provisional way). Today I wish to add only this: that each of us must bear in mind the prospect of death. And must be ready to present himself before the Lord and Judge -- Who is at the same time Redeemer and Father. I too continually take this into consideration, entrusting that decisive moment to the Mother of Christ and of the Church - to the Mother of my hope. The times in which we live are unutterably difficult and disturbed. The path of the Church has also become difficult and tense, a characteristic trial of these times -- both for the Faithful and for Pastors. In some Countries (as, for example, in those about which I read during the spiritual exercises), the Church is undergoing a period of such persecution as to be in no way lesser than that of early centuries, indeed it surpasses them in its degree of cruelty and hatred. ``Sanguis martyrum -- semen christianorum'' (Eds: Latin for ``Blood of the martyrs -- seeds of Christians''). And apart from this -- many people die innocently even in this Country in which we are living. Once again, I wish to entrust myself totally to the Lord's grace. He Himself will decide when and how I must end my earthly life and pastoral ministry. In life and in death, Totus Tuus in Mary Immaculate. Accepting that death, even now, I hope that Christ will give me the grace for the final passage, in other words (Vatican notation: ``my'') Easter. I also hope that He makes (Vatican notation: ``that death'') useful for this more important cause that I seek to serve: the salvation of men and women, the safeguarding of the human family and, in that, of all nations and all peoples (among them, I particularly address my earthly Homeland), and useful for the people with whom He particularly entrusted me, for the question of the Church, for the glory of God Himself. I do not wish to add anything to what I wrote a year ago - only to express this readiness and, at the same time, this trust, to which the current spiritual exercises have again disposed me. John Paul II ------ Totus Tuus ego sum 5.III.1982 (Ed: March 5, 1982) In the course of this year's spiritual exercises I have read (a number of times) the text of the testament of 6.III.1979 (Eds: March 6, 1979). Although I still consider it provisional (not definitive), I leave it in the form in which it exists. I change nothing (for now), and neither do I add anything, as concerns the dispositions contained therein. The attempt upon my life on 13.V.1981 (Eds: May 13, 1981) in some way confirmed the accuracy of the words written during the period of the spiritual exercises of 1980 (24.II-1.III) (Eds: Feb. 24-March 1). All the more deeply I now feel that I am totally in the Hands of God -- and I remain continually at the disposal of my Lord, entrusting myself to Him in His Immaculate Mother (Totus Tuus) John Paul pp.II ------ 5.III.82 (March 5, 1982) In connection with the last sentence in my testament of 6.III.1979 (March 6, 1979) (``concerning the site / that is, the site of the funeral / let the College of Cardinals and Compatriots decide'') -- I will make it clear that I have in mind: the metropolitan of Krakow or the General Council of the Episcopate of Poland. In the meantime I ask the College of Cardinals to satisfy, as far as possible, any demands of the above-mentioned. ------ 2. 1.III.1985 (Eds: March 1, 1985) (during the spiritual exercises) Again -- as regards the expression ``College of Cardinals and Compatriots'': the ``College of Cardinals'' has no obligation to consult ``Compatriots'' on this subject, however it can do so, if for some reason it feels it is right to do so. JPII ------ Spiritual exercise of the Jubilee Year 2000 (12-18.III) (Eds: March 12-18). (Vatican notation: ``for my testament'') 1. When, on Oct. 16, 1978, the conclave of cardinals chose John Paul II, the primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski told me: ``The duty of the new Pope will be to introduce the Church into the Third Millennium.'' I don't know if I am repeating this sentence exactly, but at least this was the sense of what I heard at the time. This was said by the Man who entered history as the primate of the Millennium. A great primate. I was a witness to his mission, to his total entrustment. To his battles. To his victory. ``Victory, when it comes, will be a victory through Mary'' -- The primate of the Millennium used to repeat these words of his predecessor, Cardinal August Hlond. In this way I was prepared in some manner for the duty that presented itself to me on Oct. 16, 1978. As I write these words, the Jubilee Year 2000 is already a reality. The night of Dec. 24, 1999, the symbolic Door of the Great Jubilee in the Basilica of St. Peter's was opened, then that of St. John Lateran, then St. Mary Major -- on New Year's, and on Jan. 19, the Door of the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls. This last event, given its ecumenical character, has remained impressed in my memory in a special way. 2. As the Jubilee Year progressed, day by day the 20th century closes behind us and the 21st century opens. According to the plans of Divine Providence, I was allowed to live in the difficult century that is retreating into the past, and now, in the year in which my life reaches 80 years (``octogesima adveniens''), it is time to ask oneself if it is not the time to repeat with the biblical Simeone 'nunc dimittis' (Ed: Latin for ``Now Master you may let your servant go.'') On May 13, 1981, the day of the attack on the Pope during the general audience in St. Peter's Square, Divine Providence saved me in a miraculous way from death. The One Who is the Only Lord of life and death Himself prolonged my life, in a certain way He gave it to me again. From that moment it belonged to Him even more. I hope He will help me to recognize up to what point I must continue this service to which I was called on Oct. 16, 1978. I ask him to call me back when He Himself wishes. ``In life and in death we belong to the Lord ... we are the Lord's.'' (cf. Romans 14,8). I also hope that, as long as I am called to fulfill the Petrine service in the Church, the Mercy of God will give me the necessary strength for this service. 3. As I do every year during spiritual exercises, I read my testament from 6-III-1979 (Eds: March 6, 1979). I continue to maintain the dispositions contained in this text. What then, and even during successive spiritual exercises, has been added constitutes a reflection of the difficult and tense general situation which marked the '80s. From autumn of the year 1989, this situation changed. The last decade of the century was free of the previous tensions; that does not mean that it did not bring with it new problems and difficulties. In a special way may Divine Providence be praised for this, that the period of the so-called ``cold war'' ended without violent nuclear conflict, the danger of which weighed on the world in the preceding period. 4. Being on the threshold of the third millennium ``in medio Ecclesiae'' (Eds: Latin for `inside the Church'') I wish once again to express gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of Vatican Council II, to which, together with the entire Church -- and above all the entire episcopacy -- I feel indebted. I am convinced that for a long time to come the new generations will draw upon the riches that this Council of the 20th century gave us. As a bishop who participated in this conciliar event from the first to the last day, I wish to entrust this great patrimony to all those who are and who will be called in the future to realize it. For my part I thank the eternal Pastor Who allowed me to serve this very great cause during the course of all the years of my pontificate. ``In medio Ecclesiae'' ... from the first years of my service as a bishop -- precisely thanks to the Council -- I was able to experience the fraternal communion of the Episcopacy. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Krakow, I experienced the fraternal communion among priests -- and the Council opened a new dimension to this experience. 5. How many people should I list! Probably the Lord God has called to Himself the majority of them -- as to those who are still on this side, may the words of this testament recall them, everyone and everywhere, wherever they are. During the more than 20 years that I am fulfilling the Petrine service ``in medio Ecclesiae'' I have experienced the benevolence and even more the fecund collaboration of so many cardinals, archbishops and bishops, so many priests, so many consecrated persons -- brothers and sisters -- and, lastly, so very, very many lay persons, within the Curia, in the vicariate of the diocese of Rome, as well as outside these milieux. How can I not embrace with grateful memory all the bishops of the world whom I have met in ``ad limina Apostolorum'' (Eds: a reference to required, periodic visits)! How can I not recall so many non-Catholic Christian brothers! And the rabbi of Rome and so many representatives of non -Christian religions! And how many representatives of the world of culture, science, politics, and of the means of social communication! 6. As the end of my life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my parents, to my brother, to the sister (I never knew because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice, where I was baptized, to that city I love, to my peers, friends from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was a worker, and then in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, to the milieu of ... to all milieux ... to Krakow and to Rome ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord. To all I want to say just one thing: ``May God reward you.'' ``In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.'' (Eds: Latin for ``In your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.'') A.D. 17.III.2000 (Eds: March 17, 2000) END TEXT From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 15:32:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 11:32:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: A Lovely Day for a Stroll: Bill Clinton in His Element Message-ID: A Lovely Day for a Stroll: Bill Clinton in His Element http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/international/worldspecial2/08clinton.html 5.4.8 [Prince Charles, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams of the UK were there, but not Camilla or the Queen. Also in attendance were the UN Sec. Gen. Annan, Cuban President Richard Alarcon (but not Fidel Castro, who mourns the Pope's passing), and Free China's President Chen Shui-bian (but no one from Red China, angry at the Vatican's diplomatic recognition of Free China). The Presidents of Iran, Syria, France, Israel, and Algeria were there, as were the Kings of Spain, Sweden, and Jordan. Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned over the Boston sex abuse scandal, is one of nine prelates who presided over a funeral mass. Lech Walesa was among many Poles in attendance, as was the Prime Minister of Italy. Condi and G.H.W. Bush were there. I do not have a complete list of the dignitaries. [I protest Prince Charles's attending. He dishonors Henry VIII, who bravely succeeded from the Church of Rome. There's a personal family connection here: [Sir William Forman, Knt., my 13-great grandfather, was Lord Mayor of London under Henry VIII. He mustered a citizen's army of 15,000, the largest to that time in English history, parading up and down the streets of London, warning the Germans and French of the dangers of invasion, which they were contemplating at the instigation of the Pope, to bring the heretic Henry to heel (but of course really a land grab). The invasion never took place. [Henry VIII has had a bad press, but his secession must not be dishonored. We must never forget the Norman Invasion or the Whiskey Rebellion, either.] By DAVID E. SANGER ROME, April 7 - Flying into Rome as a guest passenger on what used to be his airplane, Air Force One, Bill Clinton had this to say about Pope John Paul II, even in death, "The man knows how to build a crowd." At lunchtime on Thursday, at the foot of the famed Spanish steps about two miles from St. Peter's Basilica, Mr. Clinton proved that he still knows a bit about that art, too. Clearly unwilling to spend a beautiful day in Rome cooped up in his hotel, he went for a midday stroll, stopping in at a few of the luxury shops on the narrow, cobblestone streets off the square, known for its fountain and familiar to film buffs as the backdrop for a scene in "Roman Holiday." While Romans were unlikely to catch a glimpse of President Bush - he moved only in motorcades and appeared only at a few official events - Mr. Clinton was clearly reveling in the fact that shoppers, tourists having lunch at outdoor cafes and Italian business people walking to meetings all stopped to greet him. "Isn't this a great city?" he said. Along the streets, people starting yelling "Bill, Bill, Bill," and a few shouted "U.S.A.!" One shopkeeper raced out with a photograph of Mr. Clinton on a past visit. Between handshakes and waves, the former president, looking thin, said that he was feeling good after two operations on his heart, but that he tired easily and planned to go back to his hotel for a rest - a change from the way he used to tour cities. He reminisced about his long walking tours of the backstreets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, during the last long foreign trip of his presidency. "You go around the world and you see a lot of affection for Americans," he said. There was certainly a lot of affection for Mr. Clinton, who consistently got better press here during his presidency than Mr. Bush does. But Mr. Clinton has gone out of his way to demonstrate a new closeness to Mr. Bush, who invited him to come on the official delegation to the pope's funeral and asked him to sit in on the morning intelligence briefing on Wednesday. Mr. Clinton said he thought Mr. Bush seemed more relaxed now that he had won re-election. Mr. Clinton has appeared greatly relaxed, too, sharing with reporters aboard Air Force One his view of the pope as a politician. The report from journalists on the plane said he recalled John Paul's visit to Newark and how "he came into the back of the cathedral and shook hands all the way down the aisles and had nuns standing on the pews, screaming." He said he told Catholic leaders at the time that he would have hated to run against the pope. "You have no ideas how good a politician he is," he said. During the war in Bosnia, he said, the pope called him one day to ask what it would take to put forces in to stop the conflict. "He said, 'The 20th century began with a war in Sarajevo, and you can't let it end with a war in Sarajevo,' " Mr. Clinton recalled. On Thursday, by the time Mr. Clinton made it out of the back streets and into the open square, a mob of hundreds developed. Mr. Clinton's nervous Italian bodyguards put him in a Mercedes and sped him away. But Thursday night he was back in his old form. After the dinner with the Italian leader, he went out to a second dinner with President Viktor A. Yuschenko of Ukraine and stayed at an Italian restaurant with him until after midnight. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 18:01:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 14:01:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Facing State Protests, U.S. Offers More Flexibility on School Rules Message-ID: Facing State Protests, U.S. Offers More Flexibility on School Rules http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/education/08child.html 5.4.8 [I suppose that if I bought into the rhetoric of uplifting the underclass as an urgent and feasible matter, I might well favor something like the No Child Left Behind Act as a way of countering nation-wide lobbying of teachers' unions and the failure of State governments to reign them in (Similarly, tort reform and medical malpractice reform at the Federal level aims at countering nation-wide lobbying of trial lawyers and, again, State government failure.) These failures should be seen as State *constitutional* defects, as defects of *process* and not as failures of someone's arbitrary notion of a defect of *product*, usually meaning that some liberal wants always MORE redistribution, arbitrary for failure to ever specify how a *just* distribution of the product could be recognized. [I'd buy into NCLB even more when putting on an establishment hat and recognizing that schooling is just not going to be privatized in the near future. Bruce Bartlett, from what I know about his hanging around libertarian groups, would also favor privatization, but when he came out in favor of a value-added tax two days ago in an NYT Op-Ed article I sent, he recognized that voters are not going to stop hounding politicians to spend more on health care and other "free" goodies. [The problem is that Republicans have bought into the end-product notion of justice as the main aim of government, since they have been educated largely self-interested educators, who frame all issues in these terms and, moreover, hold that more schooling can actually solve the problem. The difference is that Republicans think they should be given control, since their programs can achieve end-product justice, while the Democrats have failed. [If you haven't been socialized into displaying emotions of caring about the downtrodden, the despised, and the dispossessed, you can still favor NCLB if it promises to bring about improvements in educating those you do care about. But NCLB requires each State to adopt uniform State-wide curriculum standards. These standards, instead of continuing to evolve toward skills that will be needed for the world of 2025, will devolve to what can be easily measured and shown progress on. This means drill, drill, drill, discipline, discipline. Federal politicians will be able to claim that NCLB is a success, that students are better able than ever before to enter the world of ... [1955! [Different ages can evoke different emotions, or at least displays of different emotions: piety during certain periods of Christianity, productiveness in the age of Franklin, patriotism during wars, end-product social justice at the end of the last century, and perhaps entrepreneurial creativity as global competition continues to heat up. The emotions we individually feel are a product of our genes, our socialization, and our own life choices. I don't think I got especially socialized along affective dimensions, and so I value truth and beauty far more than end-product social justice. For this reason, I am alarmed at the unintended consequences of NCLB for the gifted.] By SAM DILLON MOUNT VERNON, Va., April 7 - Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings offered greater flexibility to states on Thursday in meeting the requirements of the Bush administration's education reform law, calling the changes a major policy shift. In her first national response to growing resistance among state officials to the law, known as No Child Left Behind, Ms. Spellings sought to set a new, more cooperative tone. She compared the law's tempestuous first years to those of an infant's experiencing "the terrible 2's." "This is a new day," she said. "States that show results and follow the principles of No Child Left Behind will be eligible for new tools to help you meet the law's goals." Although President Bush promoted the law during his re-election campaign as one of his major accomplishments, more than 30 states - including many Republican strongholds - have raised objections to it. Some argue that the federal government is not adequately financing its requirements, which include a broad expansion of standardized testing. Others object to federal intrusion into an area long considered the domain of the states. It was unclear whether Ms. Spellings's proposals went far enough to assuage state officials' concerns, though several state superintendents expressed approval, as did both national teachers unions and several members of Congress. But Connecticut officials, who announced earlier this week that they would sue the federal government for forcing the state to conduct more testing without providing the money to pay for it, were not impressed. "This supposed initiative offers less than meets the eye," said Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general. "Nothing in all of today's verbiage corrects the key legal lapse: by the law's clear terms, no mandate means no mandate, if it's unfunded. Our determination to sue continues." Ms. Spellings announced specific concessions in only one area, concerning how learning-disabled students must be tested. Until now, the administration has allowed only 1 percent of all students, those most severely handicapped, to be given special tests; all other disabled students have been required to take the test administered to regular students. Dozens of state officials have called that policy unfair and unrealistic. On Thursday, Ms. Spellings said states would be allowed to administer alternative tests to an additional 2 percent of students. Ms. Spellings also said the Department of Education could give some states additional flexibility, but she said they must first prove that they deserve it. The states that may be eligible, she said, must have generally sound educational policies in place, demonstrate that student achievement is rising and follow the "basic principles of the law," which she listed as administering standardized tests every year in Grades 3 through 8, reporting test results by ethnic groups and others to make sure that all students are advancing, and working to improve teacher training and parent participation. For states that meet those criteria, Ms. Spellings said, "it is the results that truly matter, not the bureaucratic way you get there." That and several other of her statements brought applause from the education officials gathered here in an auditorium at George Washington's plantation. Ms. Spellings invited all 50 state education superintendents to appear. About 15 did, as did 10 deputy superintendents, said G. Thomas Houlihan, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, an association of state superintendents that gets significant financing from the Department of Education. "We have some members who do not like this law," Mr. Houlihan said after the speech. "It's meant a lot of heavy lifting," he said, "but this speech has left me cautiously optimistic" about chances for improving federal-state relations. Trent Blankenship, Wyoming's superintendent of public instruction, said: "I thought she nailed it. I'm delighted that we'll be having more flexibility if we stick to the law's principles." Terry Bergeson, the superintendent in Washington State, said she had met repeatedly with federal officials in recent months to request changes in the testing policies for disabled students. "We've been doing a disservice to those kids under the No Child Left Behind testing rules," Ms. Bergeson said. "So I was very excited to hear the changes." Some education advocates worried that Secretary Spellings's offer of new flexibility to some states but not others would lead to favoritism. "That could make the law even more subject to political manipulation than it already is," said Monty Neill, co-executive director of FairTest, a group that opposes heavy reliance on standardized testing. Patti Harrington, the superintendent of public instruction in Utah, said she welcomed the new rules for testing disabled students. The state's Legislature passed a resolution last month protesting the federal law and is poised to vote on a bill at a special session later this month that would require Utah officials to follow state educational priorities rather than federal ones. As for the broader promise of further flexibility, Ms. Harrington said, "I hope it's more than a speech." "I receive these letters from the department that say, 'You must do this and this and this,' " she added. "They've got to let us do our work." Betty J. Sternberg, the education commissioner in Connecticut, did not attend the speech. In January, she sent Secretary Spellings a letter noting that Connecticut had tested elementary students effectively in alternate years for two decades and did not want to expand to every year, preferring to use the money to expand reading and other programs proven to raise achievement. Ms. Spellings denied that request and repeatedly rebuffed Dr. Sternberg's requests for a meeting. Dr. Sternberg said by phone from Connecticut on Thursday that she had considered attending the secretary's speech. "I would have gone," she said, "had I thought that I would be able to sit down with her, because I'd like to work out our differences in a conference room, not in a courtroom." Ms. Spellings left the auditorium immediately after her speech without taking questions. Dr. Sternberg, who downloaded the speech from the Internet, pointed to one of the secretary's statements: "No Child Left Behind was designed not to dictate processes, but to promote innovation and improve results for kids." Dr. Sternberg said, "Taking the secretary at her word about flexibility, then we would ask that the feds not dictate to us the process of giving standardized tests in every grade, and instead consider our proposal as an innovation." "And I still would like to meet with her personally," she added. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:03:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:03:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ed Week: The `No Child' Law's Biggest Victims? An Answer That May Surprise Message-ID: The `No Child' Law's Biggest Victims? An Answer That May Surprise http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/06/23/41delacy.h23.html?querystring=biggest%20victims&print=1&print=1 Published: June 23, 2004 Commentary [This article mostly argues that NCLB funds are displacing programs for the gifted. My charge is that, by requiring State-wide curriculum standards, NCLB is distorting the curriculum itself away from the requirements for the gifted. How serious these displacements and distortions are, I wish I knew. [Partisan passions are very large, with Republicans showing a "stand firm" attitude on NCLB and on just about everything else. This has, of course, its attractions, but there can be too much of it. One sign of a change in culture is that, from time to time, I'd share the elevator with Secretaries of Education. I'm thinking of Lamar Alexander, a Republican (and my favorite candidate among those with a reasonable "electibility" as being one who would quietly usher in a return of power to the States), and Richard Riley, a Democrat. Both loved random talks with employees. The next Secretary, Rod Paige, was generally invisible. But the current Secretary, Margaret Spellings, may think that all employees are liberals, obstructionists, and rent-seekers, which is in fact largely correct. [Yesterday, the security guard pushed me off the elevator as I was trying to enter it when Secretary Spellings was inside waiting to be whisked to her office on the top floor. (Her eyes were downcast when it was taking place.) Of course, she has no idea who I am, one of about ten employees I have counted who are not dyed-in-the-wool liberals. (I have lots of ideas that could further her agenda, but she had no way of knowing that.) But it sure represents a change in attitudes, a polarization, from previous Secretaries of Education.] The `No Child' Law's Biggest Victims? An Answer That May Surprise There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students simply do not succeed on their own. By Margaret DeLacy Since education is high on the national agenda, here's a pop quiz that every American should take. There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students simply do not succeed on their own. Question: What group of students makes the lowest achievement gains in school? Answer: The brightest students. In a pioneering study of the effects of teachers and schools on student learning, William Sanders and his staff at the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System put in this way: "Student achievement level was the second most important predictor of student learning. The higher the achievement level, the less growth a student was likely to have." Mr. Sanders found this problem in schools throughout the state, and with different levels of poverty and of minority enrollments. He speculated that the problem was due to a "lack of opportunity for high-scoring students to proceed at their own pace, lack of challenging materials, lack of accelerated course offerings, and concentration of instruction on the average or below-average student." While less effective teachers produced gains for lower-achieving students, Mr. Sanders found, only the top one-fifth of teachers were effective with high-achieving students. These problems have been confirmed in other states. There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students simply do not succeed on their own. Question: What group of students has been harmed most by the No Child Left Behind Act? Answer: Our brightest students. The federal law seeks to ensure that all students meet minimum standards. Most districts, in their desperate rush to improve the performance of struggling students, have forgotten or ignored their obligations to students who exceed standards. These students spend their days reviewing material for proficiency tests they mastered years before, instead of learning something new. This is a profoundly alienating experience. Question: How well is the United States preparing able students to compete in the world economy? Answer: Very poorly. Of all students obtaining doctorates in engineering in American universities, just 39 percent are Americans. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, "The performance of U.S. physics and advanced math students was among the lowest of the 16 countries that administered the ... assessments." Question: What group of special-needs students receives the least funding? Answer: Our brightest students. And it's getting worse. For example, Illinois, New York, and Oregon recently cut all state funding for gifted programs. _________________________________________________________________ Given these facts, why has a board commissioned by the National Research Council proposed to make things much worse? The board's report, ironically entitled "Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn," contains recommendations that amount to a recipe for completely alienating our most capable children. Based on old, discredited, and sloppy research, the committee, which did not include any experts on gifted education, recommended the elimination of all "formal or informal" tracking--even if participation was voluntary--in favor of mixed-ability classrooms. Does tracking really harm students? Jeannie Oakes claimed that it did in a popular but, to my mind, poorly researched book called Keeping Track published nearly 20 years ago. However, a 1998 review of the evidence on tracking over the past two decades, done by Tom Loveless, the director of the Brookings Institution's Brown Center on Education Policy, found no consensus that tracking is harmful or creates unequal opportunities for academic achievement. This review was ignored in the NRC panel's 40 pages of research citations. Also missing was any reference to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, "National Excellence," in which then-Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley noted a "quiet crisis" in the education of top students, pointing out that "these students have special needs that are seldom met," and warning that "our neglect of these students makes it impossible for Americans to compete in a global economy demanding their skills." Although research on schoolwide tracking cuts both ways, research pointing to the importance of advanced classes and grouping for gifted students is overwhelming. A research review by Karen B. Rogers found that grouping gifted students produces big gains--sometimes exceeding half a year's additional achievement per year in school when curriculum is modified appropriately. On the other hand, she found that cooperative learning within mixed-ability groups produces no gains. In her 2002 book Re-Forming Gifted Education (also ignored by the NRC panel), Ms. Rogers noted that under the mixed-ability-group instruction recommended by the NRC, "few students, except those with exceptionally low ability, will benefit." Gifted students are truly our forgotten children. Neglected in our schools and ignored by our policymakers, they spend their days dozing through classes in which they aren't learning. A statistical analysis published in 1992 by James A. Kulik demonstrated that the benefits from advanced classes for talented students were "positive, large, and important" and said that [de-tracking] could greatly damage American education." Student achievement would suffer, Mr. Kulik maintained, and the damage would be greatest if schools "eliminated enriched and accelerated classes for their brightest learners. The achievement level of such students falls dramatically." He also found that students of all ability levels benefit from grouping that adjusts the curriculum to their aptitude levels. A study of intermediate students' math achievement published in 2002 by Carol Tieso also found that differentiated instruction combined with flexible grouping improved academic achievement. Ms. Tieso concluded that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds made gains, and that students enjoyed working in differentiated groups and were more motivated than peers in a comparison group. Even the National Research Council board acknowledged that teachers would require a lot of specialized training to carry out its recommendations in "Engaging Minds." Differentiation is hard to do well. Teachers must know how to assess students who are years above grade level and then be able to rewrite the whole curriculum to address their assessed learning needs. Although the board members must know that this training has not been provided and is not going to happen, they went ahead and recklessly recommended a policy that will harm many capable, hard-working students in the hope that it might help some struggling students. They seem to be unaware of the daily realities affecting American schools. Studies by the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented have repeatedly found that teachers do not make significant modifications to their instruction to accommodate gifted students. This past November, Seattle teachers issued a resolution protesting a directive requiring advanced instruction for highly capable students in their classrooms because they had neither the time, training, and class size, nor the resources necessary to carry it out. Ability grouping is significantly more cost-effective, requires less training, and is more effective in this regard than heterogeneous classes. Do we have education dollars to waste? Gifted students are truly our forgotten children. Neglected in our schools and ignored by our policymakers, they spend their days dozing through classes in which they aren't learning. Many suffer from depression. It is time to take them out of their holding pens and give them a chance to stretch and to grow. Margaret DeLacy is a board member of the Oregon Association for Talented and Gifted students and a past president of the Portland, Ore., school district's talented-and-gifted advisory committee. She is the mother of three. Margaret DeLacy is a board member of the Oregon Association for Talented and Gifted students and a past president of the Portland, Ore., school district's talented-and-gifted advisory committee. She is the mother of three. Vol. 23, Issue 41, Page 40 From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:06:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:06:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: One Hundred Years of Uncertainty Message-ID: One Hundred Years of Uncertainty http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/opinion/08greene.html 5.4.8 By BRIAN GREENE JUST about a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein began writing a paper that secured his place in the pantheon of humankind's greatest thinkers. With his discovery of special relativity, Einstein upended the familiar, thousands-year-old conception of space and time. To be sure, even a century later, not everyone has fully embraced Einstein's discovery. Nevertheless, say "Einstein" and most everyone thinks "relativity." What is less widely appreciated, however, is that physicists call 1905 Einstein's "miracle year" not because of the discovery of relativity alone, but because in that year Einstein achieved the unimaginable, writing four papers that each resulted in deep and formative changes to our understanding of the universe. One of these papers - not on relativity - garnered him the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. It also began a transformation in physics that Einstein found so disquieting that he spent the last 30 years of his life in a determined effort to repudiate it. Two of the four 1905 papers were indeed on relativity. The first, completed in June, laid out the foundations of his new view of space and time, showing that distances and durations are not absolute, as everyone since Newton had thought, but instead are affected by one's motion. Clocks moving relative to one another tick off time at different rates; yardsticks moving relative to one another measure different lengths. You don't perceive this because the speeds of everyday life are too slow for the effects to be noticeable. If you could move near the speed of light, the effects would be obvious. The second relativity paper, completed in September, is a three-page addendum to the first, which derived his most famous result, E = mc2, an equation as short as it is powerful. It told the world that matter can be converted into energy - and a lot of it - since the speed of light squared (c2) is a huge number. We've witnessed this equation's consequences in the devastating might of nuclear weapons and the tantalizing promise of nuclear energy. The third paper, completed in May, conclusively established the existence of atoms - an idea discussed in various forms for millenniums - by showing that the numerous microscopic collisions they'd generate would account for the observed, though previously unexplained, jittery motion of impurities suspended in liquids. With these three papers, our view of space, time and matter was permanently changed. Yet, it is the remaining 1905 paper, written in March, whose legacy is arguably the most profound. In this work, Einstein went against the grain of conventional wisdom and argued that light, at its most elementary level, is not a wave, as everyone had thought, but actually a stream of tiny packets or bundles of energy that have since come to be known as photons. This might sound like a largely technical advance, updating one description of light to another. But through subsequent research that amplified and extended Einstein's argument [1](see Figures 1 through 3), scientists revealed a mathematically precise and thoroughly startling picture of reality called quantum mechanics. Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later. You tell me the velocity of a baseball as it leaves Derek Jeter's bat, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate where it will land a handful of seconds later. You tell me the height of a building from which a flowerpot has fallen, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate the speed of impact when it hits the ground. You tell me the positions of the Earth and the Moon, and I can use the laws of physics to calculate the date of the first solar eclipse in the 25th century. What's important is that in these and all other examples, the accuracy of my predictions depends solely on the accuracy of the information you give me. Even laws that differ substantially in detail - from the classical laws of Newton to the relativistic laws of Einstein - fit squarely within this framework. Quantum mechanics does not merely challenge the previous laws of physics. Quantum mechanics challenges this centuries-old framework of physics itself. According to quantum mechanics, physics cannot make definite predictions. Instead, even if you give me the most precise description possible of how things are now, we learn from quantum mechanics that the most physics can do is predict the probability that things will turn out one way, or another, or another way still. The reason we have for so long been unaware that the universe evolves probabilistically is that for the relatively large, everyday objects we typically encounter - baseballs, flowerpots, the Moon - quantum mechanics shows that the probabilities become highly skewed, hugely favoring one outcome and effectively suppressing all others. A typical quantum calculation reveals that if you tell me the velocity of something as large as a baseball, there is more than a 99.99999999999999 (or so) percent likelihood that it will land at the location I can figure out using the laws of Newton or, for even better accuracy, the laws of Einstein. With such a skewed probability, the quantum reasoning goes, we have long overlooked the tiny chance that the baseball can (and, on extraordinarily rare occasions, will) land somewhere completely different. When it comes to small objects like molecules, atoms and subatomic particles, though, the quantum probabilities are typically not skewed. For the motion of an electron zipping around the nucleus of an atom, for example, a quantum calculation lays out odds that are all roughly comparable that the electron will be in a variety of different locations - a 13 percent chance, say, that the electron will be here, a 19 percent chance that it will be there, an 11 percent chance that it will be in a third place, and so on. Crucially, these predictions can be tested. Take an enormous sample of identically prepared atoms, measure the electron's position in each, and tally up the number of times you find the electron at one location or another. According to the pre-quantum framework, identical starting conditions should yield identical outcomes; we should find the electron to be at the same place in each measurement. But if quantum mechanics is right, in 13 percent of our measurements we should find the electron here, in 19 percent we should find it there, in 11 percent we should find it in that third place. And, to fantastic precision, we do. Faced with a mountain of supporting data, Einstein couldn't argue with the success of quantum mechanics. But to him, even though his own Nobel Prize-winning work was a catalyst for the quantum revolution, the theory was anathema. Commentators over the decades have focused on Einstein's refusal to accept the probabilistic framework of quantum mechanics, a position summarized in his frequent comment that "God does not play dice with the universe." Einstein, radical thinker that he was, still believed in the sanctity of a universe that evolved in a fully definite, fully predictable manner. If, as quantum mechanics asserted, the best you can ever do is predict probabilities, Einstein countered that he'd "rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist." This emphasis, however, partly obscures a larger point. It wasn't the mere reliance on probabilistic predictions that so troubled Einstein. Unlike many of his colleagues, Einstein believed that a fundamental physical theory was much more than the sum total of its predictions - it was a mathematical reflection of an underlying reality. And the reality entailed by quantum mechanics was a reality Einstein couldn't accept. An example: Imagine you shoot an electron from here and a few seconds later it's detected by your equipment over there. What path did the electron follow during the passage from you to the detector? The answer according to quantum mechanics? There is no answer. The very idea that an electron, or a photon, or any other particle, travels along a single, definite trajectory from here to there is a quaint version of reality that quantum mechanics declares outmoded. Instead, the proponents of quantum theory claimed, reality consists of a haze of all possibilities - all trajectories - mutually commingling and simultaneously unfolding. And why don't we see this? According to the quantum doctrine, when we make a measurement or perform an observation, we force the myriad possibilities to ante up, snap out of the haze and settle on a single outcome. But between observations - when we are not looking - reality consists entirely of jostling possibilities. Quantum reality, in other words, remains ambiguous until measured. The reality of common perception is thus merely a definitive-looking veneer obscuring the internal workings of a highly uncertain cosmos. Which is where Einstein drew a line in the sand. A universe of this sort offended him; he could not accept, as he put it, that "the Old One" would so profoundly incorporate a hidden element of happenstance in the nature of reality. Einstein quipped to his quantum colleagues, "Do you really think the Moon is not there when you're not looking?" and set himself the Herculean task of reworking the laws of physics to resurrect conventional reality. Einstein waged a two-front assault on the problem. He sought an internal chink in the quantum framework that would establish it as a mere steppingstone on the path to a deeper and more complete description of the universe. At the same time, he sought a grander synthesis of nature's laws - what he called a "unified theory" - that he believed would reveal the probabilities of quantum mechanics to be no more profound than the probabilities offered in weather forecasts, probabilities that simply reflect an incomplete knowledge of an underlying, definite reality. In 1935, through a disarmingly simple mathematical analysis, Einstein (with two colleagues) established a beachhead on the first front. He proved that quantum mechanics is either an incomplete theory or, if it is complete, the universe is - in Einstein's words - "spooky." Why "spooky?" Because the theory would allow certain widely separated particles to correlate their behaviors perfectly (somewhat as if a pair of widely separated dice would always come up the same number when tossed at distant casinos). Since such "spooky" behavior would border on nuttiness, Einstein thought he'd made clear that quantum theory couldn't yet be considered a complete description of reality. The nimble quantum proponents, however, would have nothing of it. They insisted that quantum theory made predictions - albeit statistical predictions - that were consistently born out by experiment. By the precepts of the scientific method, they argued, the theory was established. They maintained that searching beyond the theory's predictions for a glimpse of a reality behind the quantum equations betrayed a foolhardy intellectual greediness. Nevertheless, for the remaining decades of his life, Einstein could not give up the quest, exclaiming at one point, "I have thought a hundred times more about quantum problems than I have about relativity." He turned exclusively to his second line of attack and became absorbed with the prospect of finding the unified theory, a preoccupation that resulted in his losing touch with mainstream physics. By the 1940's, the once dapper young iconoclast had grown into a wizened old man of science who was widely viewed as a revolutionary thinker of a bygone era. By the early 1950's, Einstein realized he was losing the battle. But the memories of his earlier success with relativity - "the years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light" - urged him onward. Maybe the intense light of discovery that had so brilliantly illuminated his path as a young man would shine once again. While lying in a bed in Princeton Hospital in mid-April 1955, Einstein asked for the pad of paper on which he had been scribbling equations in the desperate hope that in his final hours the truth would come to him. It didn't. Was Einstein misguided? Must we accept that there is a fuzzy, probabilistic quantum arena lying just beneath the definitive experiences of everyday reality? As of today, we still don't have a final answer. Fifty years after Einstein's death, however, the scales have certainly tipped farther in this direction. Decades of painstaking experimentation have confirmed quantum theory's predictions beyond the slightest doubt. Moreover, in a shocking scientific twist, some of the more recent of these experiments have shown that Einstein's "spooky" processes do in fact take place (particles many miles apart have been shown capable of correlating their behavior). It's a stunning finding, and one that reaffirms Einstein's uncanny ability to unearth features of nature so mind-boggling that even he couldn't accept what he'd found. Finally, there has been tremendous progress over the last 20 years toward a unified theory with the discovery and development of superstring theory. So far, though, superstring theory embraces quantum theory without change, and has thus not revealed the definitive reality Einstein so passionately sought. With the passage of time and quantum mechanics' unassailable successes, debate about the theory's meaning has quieted. The majority of physicists have simply stopped worrying about quantum mechanics' meaning, even as they employ its mathematics to make the most precise predictions in the history of science. Others prefer reformulations of quantum mechanics that claim to restore some features of conventional reality at the expense of additional - and, some have argued, more troubling - deviations (like the notion that there are parallel universes). Yet others investigate hypothesized modifications to the theory's equations that don't spoil its successful predictions but try to bring it closer to common experience. Over the 25 years since I first learned quantum mechanics, I've at various times subscribed to each of these perspectives. My shifting attitude, however, reflects that I'm still unsettled. Were Einstein to interrogate me today about quantum reality, I'd have to admit that deep inside I harbor many of the doubts that gnawed at him for decades. Can it really be that the solid world of experience and perception, in which a single, definite reality appears to unfold with dependable certainty, rests on the shifting sands of quantum probabilities? Well, yes. Probably. The evidence is compelling and tangible. Although we have yet to fully lay bare quantum mechanics' grand lesson for the underlying nature of the universe, I like to think even Einstein would be impressed that in the 50 years since his death our facility with quantum mechanics has matured from a mathematical understanding of the subatomic realm to precision control. Today's technological wizardry (computers, M.R.I.'s, smart bombs) exists only because research in applied quantum physics has resulted in techniques for manipulating the motion of electrons - probabilities and all - through mazes of ultramicroscopic circuitry. Advances hovering on the horizon, like nanoscience and quantum computers, offer the promise of even more spectacular transformations. So the next time you use your cellphone or laptop, pause for a moment. Recognize that even these commonplace devices rely on our greatest, yet most puzzling, scientific achievement and - as things now stand - tap into humankind's most supreme assault on the idea that reality is what we think it is. Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, is the author of The Elegant Universe, and, most recently, The Fabric of the Cosmos. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:09:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:09:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Book Forum: Houellebecq Message-ID: Houellebecq 5.4-5 http://www.bookforum.com/banville.html No sooner does it seem that the traditional novel is, at last, safely dead than someone comes along and flogs the poor old horse into life again. The French writer Michel Houellebecq wields a vigorous whip. In form, his novels are entirely straightforward and very readable; they would have done a brisk turnover in a Victorian lending library, after a few editorial suppressions. They tell of "ordinary" people going about their "ordinary" lives. True, they are lives of noisy desperation, hindered by psychoses, prey to boredom and acedia, and permeated from top to bottom with sex--but what could be more ordinary than that? Houellebecq's tone varies between jaded bitterness and disgusted denunciation; the narrative voice in all his work, as in the work of Samuel Beckett, seems furious at itself for having begun to speak at all and, having begun, for being compelled to go on to the end. Yet Houellebecq is darker even than Beckett, and would never allow himself, or us, those lyric transports that flickeringly illuminate the Beckettian night. As Houellebecq says of his hero, the fantasist H. P. Lovecraft, "There is something not really literary about [his] work." The reception accorded Houellebecq's books in some influential quarters is both disturbing and puzzling. The French literary world, still dominated by the surviving would-be Jacobins of May 1968, has largely dismissed them. A number of Anglophone reviewers have been no more kind--the New York Times found The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq's masterpiece so far, "a deeply repugnant read"; the London Sunday Times described it as "pretentious, banal, badly written and boring"; and the London Times said that Houellebecq was no more a novelist of ideas than the British comedian Benny Hill. Such passionate vituperation is hard to understand. Have these people not read de Sade, or C?line, or Bataille--have they not read Swift? Although Houellebecq insists, as any artist will, that it is not he but his work that is of consequence, a little biographical background is necessary in his case, given its highly public and controversial nature. Houellebecq was born Michel Thomas, on the French-ruled island of R?union, in the Indian Ocean, in 1958. His father was a mountain guide, his mother an anesthesiologist. They seem to have been less than ideal parents. When Michel was still a young child, his mother left his father for a Muslim man and converted to Islam (of course, many critics see here the seeds of the adult Houellebecq's animosity toward the religion). Then, at the age of six, Michel was abandoned to the care of his grandmother, whose name, Houellebecq, he adopted when he first began to publish. Granny Houellebecq was a Stalinist, and the same critics cited above detect in this a cause for Houellebecq's animosity toward ideologues of the Left. (How simple and determined it must be, the life of the critic!) Having moved to France, Houellebecq trained as an agricultural engineer, but he eventually found a job as an administrator in the computer department of the French National Assembly. He suffered from depression and spent some time in psychiatric clinics. He was married, divorced, and married again. In 1999, he moved with his new wife to Ireland and settled down on Bere Island in Bantry Bay. His writings include a manifesto-cum-biography of the fantasist H. P. Lovecraft--titled, suggestively, Against the World, Against Life (Contre le monde, contre la vie, 1991)--and several volumes of poetry. His novels to date are Whatever (Extension du domaine de la lutte, 1994), translated by Paul Hammond; The Elementary Particles (Les Particules ?l?mentaires, 1998), titled Atomised in the United Kingdom; Lanzarote (Lanzarote, 2000); and Platform (Plateforme, 2001), the last three all translated by Frank Wynne. In recent times, few writers have made so loud a noise in the world as Houellebecq. The inevitable comparison is with Salman Rushdie, for Houellebecq too has provoked the wrath of the Muslim world. In 2002 he was brought to court in France by a group of powerful Muslim institutions, including the National Federation of French Muslims and the World Islamic League, who accused him, under an obscure protocol of French law, of racial insults and incitement to religious hatred, after an interview was published in the magazine Lire in which Houellebecq declared Islam to be a dangerous and "stupid" religion. Houellebecq's court appearance provoked shock, outrage, and laughter, in equal proportions. He dismissed the charges brought against him by pointing out that he had not criticized Muslims, only their religion, which he had a right to do in a free society. Asked if he realized that his remarks could have contravened the French penal code, he replied that he did not, since he had never read the code. "It is excessively long," he remarked, "and I suspect that there are many boring passages." All this would seem mere comedy, another lively entry in the annals of France's excitable literary life, if we had not the example of Rushdie and the fatwa, and if the French media and many French intellectuals had not at best kept silent and at worst sided with Houellebecq's accusers. The French, as we know, have peculiar tastes. One is thinking not only of frogs' legs and andouillettes; these people also consider Poe a great writer, Hitchcock a major artist. Can they be serious, or is it just a Gallic joke at the expense of the rest of us? Houellebecq seems entirely sincere in his deep admiration for the work of Lovecraft, but his enthusiasm is a little hard to credit. Still, his long essay on "HPL," as he calls his hero, was the first substantial work he published, and in his preface to the American edition, he describes Against the World, Against Life as "a sort of first novel." More to the point, it is the lightly disguised manifesto of a wildly ambitious, wildly iconoclastic, and just plain wild young writer, for whom the traditional novel "may be usefully compared to an old air chamber deflating after being placed in an ocean. A generalized and rather weak flow of air, like a trickle of pus, ends in arbitrary and indistinct nothingness." This, it should be noted, is a relatively mild statement of Houellebecq's position. Who is Howard Phillips Lovecraft--whom Stephen King, in a lively introduction to Houellebecq's essay, describes as the "Dark Prince of Providence" (Providence, Rhode Island, that is; not the Lord who rules over us all)--and what has he to tell us about the work of Houellebecq? Lovecraft was born in Providence in 1890 into the WASP middle class. In 1893 his father had a nervous breakdown and was admitted to an asylum; five years later he died there, from a very un-Waspish case of tertiary syphilis. The young Lovecraft and his mother moved in with his maternal grandfather; he in turn died in 1904, leaving his daughter and her son in genteel penury. Lovecraft lived all his life under the care of women: First there was his mother; after her death, when he was thirty-one, he was taken over by a pair of aunts (shades of Arsenic and Old Lace), and then, disastrously, by Sonia Greene, a divorc?e seven years his senior, whom he married in 1924. Immediately after their marriage, Lovecraft and Greene moved to New York. Lovecraft, who up to this point had hardly ventured beyond his native territory, found the city a great and, despite an initial period of uncharacteristic cheeriness, terrible shock; the baroque metropolises of his fiction, infested with monstrous beings, are his response to the spectacle of New York in the early years of the Roaring Twenties. Houellebecq quotes with relish passages from Lovecraft's stories that display their author's revulsion and ingrained racism. Here is a typical example, from the short story "He" (1939): "Garish daylight shewed [sic] only squalor and alienage [sic] and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone . . . the throngs of people that seethed through the flume-like streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes." After two years, Lovecraft and his venerable bride parted company (three years later they were divorced), and he scuttled back to the safety of Providence, where he moved in with his one surviving aunt. On his return to Providence, Lovecraft settled down to produce what Houellebecq calls the "great texts," a wealth of stories and novellas, including "Call of Cthulhu" (1928), "The Dunwich Horror" (1928), "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1929)--for which the magazine Weird Tales paid Lovecraft $350, probably the largest single fee he ever received--and The Colour Out of Space (1927), Lovecraft's own personal favorite. He was markedly unassuming in regard to his work--"I have concluded that Literature is no proper pursuit for a gentleman"--and submitted it for publication to magazines such as Weird Tales and Amazing Stories with an almost maidenly reluctance. How surprised he would be to find himself monumentalized in the recent Library of America edition of his Tales, edited by Peter Straub. The imagination that produced these fictions--"ritual literature," Houellebecq calls them--is at once diseased and fastidious, puritanical and malign, dandyish and uncouth. Houellebecq defines Lovecraft's general attitude with approving succinctness: "Absolute hatred of the world in general, aggravated by an aversion for the modern world in particular." The same definition might be applied to Houellebecq's own literary, or antiliterary, stance. In describing Lovecraft, the young Houellebecq draws a strikingly prescient portrait of the writer he was himself to become: Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles [particules ?l?mentaires]. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. All human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movement of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure "Victorian fictions." All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact and radiant. There are areas in which Houellebecq's and Lovecraft's writing are utterly dissimilar: "In [Lovecraft's] entire body of work," Houellebecq writes, "there is not a single allusion to two of the realities to which we generally ascribe great importance: sex and money." Sex in particular--"the only game left to adults"--is a commodity (one chooses the word deliberately) in which all but the first of Houellebecq's novels are soaked. In The Elementary Particles, Bruno, the main character, devotes his life to the pursuit of women, or at least of what women can provide (in fact, Houellebecq and Benny Hill would probably see eye to ogling eye in this matter); while at the heart of Platform is a detailed and, it must be said, numbingly tedious account of the setting up and running of a sex-tourism venture in Thailand. Lanzarote, a brief, fictionalized account of a package holiday on the isle of the book's title, interspersed with gnomic photographs of the island's rock formations taken by Houellebecq himself, is little more than the tale of a young man getting lucky with two lesbians on a beach ("Barbara's excitement continued to mount . . . I myself found myself close to coming in Pam's mouth"). It is hard to know how seriously Houellebecq intends us to take all this. Certainly he expends a great deal of writerly energy on his erotic scenes, yet for all the unblinking explicitness of the descriptions, the sex itself is curiously old-fashioned. Women are treasured, but mainly as receptacles for men and their desires. Rivers of semen gush through these pages ("small clouds floated like spatters of sperm between the pines"), a great deal of it disappearing down the throats of women. Houellebecq's females seem never to menstruate, or go to the lavatory, and they are ready at all times, day or night, in private or in public, to perform such acts as may be required of them by men; nor do they evince any fear of or interest in getting pregnant--of which, in any case, in Houellebecq's world, there is not the faintest danger. True, the women enjoy the sex as much as the men do, but in a free, undemanding, and uncomplicated way that few women, or men, would recognize from their own experience. Sometimes Michel, Platform's protagonist, has a thought for aids, but his partners merrily brush aside any such qualms. And yet all these couplings, all these threesomes and foursomes, take place in a curiously innocent, almost Edenic glow. In a horrible world, these melancholy concumbences are the only reliable source of authenticity and affectless delight: Our genitals exist as a source of permanent, accessible pleasure. The god who created all our unhappinesses, who made us short-lived, vain, and cruel, has also provided this form of meager compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? * * * It would be interesting to know how Houellebecq's first novel, Whatever, gained its English title. Irresistibly, one imagines a telephone exchange between English publisher and French author as to how the rather grand and revolutionary-sounding Extension du domaine de la lutte might be translated, terminating in an electronic shrug and a murmured "Whatever." For all the iconoclastic belligerence of his persona, Houellebecq presents himself as firmly within the tradition of Gallic d?senchantement (if one may speak of disenchantment in someone who shows so little sign of having been enchanted in the first place), with baleful Sartrean stare and negligently dangling Camusian cigarette permanently in place. Yet Houellebecq possesses one quality in which the Left Bank existentialists of the '40s and '50s were notably lacking, namely, humor. Houellebecq's fiction is horribly funny. Often the joke is achieved by a po-faced conjunction of the grandiloquent and the thumpingly mundane. The first page of Whatever is headed by a tag from Romans 13--"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light"--the radiant promise of which is immediately extinguished by the opening paragraph: Friday evening I was invited to a party at a colleague from work's house. There were thirty-odd of us, all middle management aged between twenty-five and forty. At a certain moment some stupid bitch started removing her clothes. She took off her T-shirt, then her bra, then her skirt, and as she did she pulled the most incredible faces. She twirled around in her skimpy panties for a few seconds more and then, not knowing what else to do, began getting dressed again. She's a girl, what's more, who doesn't sleep with anyone. Which only underlines the absurdity of her behaviour. This is a remarkably representative statement of Houellebecq's themes and effects, culled from the drab world of office drudges, with its weary salaciousness, its misogyny, its surly awareness of the futility of all its stratagems of transcendence and escape. Indeed, Whatever is Houellebecq in nuce. It states repeatedly, in baldest terms, the essentials of his dour aesthetic: There are some authors who employ their talent in the delicate description of varying states of soul, character traits, etc. I shall not be counted among these. All that accumulation of realistic detail, with clearly differentiated characters hogging the limelight, has always seemed pure bullshit to me, I'm sorry to say. The pages that follow constitute a novel; I mean, a succession of anecdotes in which I am the hero. This autobiographical choice isn't one, really: in any case I have no other way out. If I don't write about what I've seen I will suffer just the same--and perhaps a bit more so. But only a bit, I insist on this. Writing brings scant relief. It retraces, it delimits. It lends a touch of coherence, the idea of a kind of realism. One stumbles around in a cruel fog, but there is the odd pointer. Chaos is no more than a few feet away. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse and dreary discourse would need to be invented. But I don't understand, basically, how people manage to go on living. I get the impression everybody must be unhappy; we live in such a simple world, you understand. There's a system based on domination, money and fear--a somewhat masculine system, let's call it Mars; there's a feminine system based on seduction and sex, Venus let's say. And that's it. Is it really possible to live and to believe that there's nothing else? Despite the disclaimers as to the deliberate absence of "realistic detail" and "clearly differentiated characters," the novel's protagonist--hero is really too large a word--is a convincing and compelling, even appealing, creation, in all his shambling incompetence and emotional disarray. The unnamed narrator is a Meursault without the energy or interest to commit a murder, even a pointless one--"It's not that I feel tremendously low; it's rather that the world around me appears high." He is a computer technician who in his spare time writes peculiar little stories about animals, such as Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly, "a meditation on ethics, you might say," a couple of paragraphs of which are quoted. "The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God." Whatever pays its sly and sardonic tributes to the great French tradition. In the opening pages, the nameless protagonist has forgotten where he parked his car and finds himself wandering in search of it through the Rue Marcel-Sembat, then the Rue Marcel-Dassault ("there were a lot of Marcels about"); while in the book's central section he falls seriously ill in Rouen, Flaubert's detested birthplace. Indeed, though it could hardly be described as Proustian, the book, all dreamy drift and sour recollection, does have something of the minutely observed inconsequentiality of Flaubert's masterpiece, Sentimental Education. The writer Houellebecq most resembles, however, is not Proust or Flaubert, or even Lovecraft, but Georges Simenon--not the Maigret Simenon, but the Simenon of the romans durs, as he called them, such as Dirty Snow or Monsieur Monde Vanishes, masterpieces of tight-lipped existential desperation. * * * The central premise of Elementary Particles is best expressed in a passage from the book that followed it, Platform: It is wrong to pretend that human beings are unique, that they carry within them an irreplaceable individuality. As far as I was concerned, at any rate, I could not distinguish any trace of such an individuality. As often as not, it is futile to wear yourself out trying to distinguish individual destinies and personalities. When all's said and done, the idea of the uniqueness of the individual is nothing more than pompous absurdity. We remember our own lives, Schopenhauer wrote somewhere, a little better than we do a novel we once read. That's about right: a little, no more. The hero of Elementary Particles--in this case the word is not too large--is Michel Djerzinski, a molecular biologist who, at the end of the book, having given up his position at the Galway Center for Genetic Research in Ireland, retires to a cottage on the Sky Road near Clifden--"There's something very special about this country"--to complete, between the years 2000 and 2009, his magnum opus, an eighty-page distillation of a life's work devoted to the proposition "that mankind must disappear and give way to a new species which was asexual and immortal, a species which had outgrown individuality, separation and evolution." After Djerzinski has gone "into the sea," his successor, Hubczejak (a private play, one suspects, on another hard-to-pronounce name beginning with h), makes a synthesis of his work and presents it to an at first disbelieving world. Djerzinski's conviction is that any genetic code, however complex, can be noted in a standard, structurally stable form, isolated from disturbances or mutations. This meant that every cell contained within it the possibility of being infinitely copied. Every animal species, however highly evolved, could be transformed into a similar species, reproduced by cloning, and immortal. At the close of the book, the twenty-first century is half-done and humanity as we know it has all but disappeared, its place taken by a new species of Djerzinskian immortals. "There remain some humans of the old species, particularly in areas long dominated by religious doctrine. Their reproductive levels fall year by year, however, and at present their extinction seems inevitable." It is a strangely compelling, strangely moving conceit, this peaceful making way by the old order for a new. The book's reigning spirit is Auguste Comte (1798-1857), follower of Saint-Simon and founder of the movement of positivism, the rules of which Comte laid down in his Syst?me de politique positive. Supremely silly as Comte's philosophy of altruism was--the positivist religionist was obliged, among other duties, to pray three times a day to his mother, wife, and daughter, and to wear a waistcoat buttoned down the back so that it could be put on and taken off only with the help of others--it had influence worldwide, and especially in France. What are we to make of the Comtean aspects of Houellebecq's work? For all the darkness of his vision, gleams of light now and then break through--"In the absence of love, nothing can be sanctified"--but what a peculiar light it is, seeking to illuminate those arid landscapes where the only solace for us dying humans is the sad game of sex. Djerzinski's "great leap," according to Hubczejak, is "the fact that he was able . . . to restore the conditions which make love possible," while Djerzinski himself--in one of his final works, Meditations on Interweaving (inspired, not incidentally, by the medieval Celtic masterpiece the Book of Kells)--ponders the central motive force of our lives in rhapsodic tones worthy of D. H. Lawrence at his most ecstatic, or, indeed, of The Sound of Music at its most saccharine: The lover hears his beloved's voice over mountains and oceans; over mountains and oceans a mother hears the cry of her child. Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds, while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. All that exists is a magnificent interweaving, vast and reciprocal. Yet Elementary Particles is genuinely affecting in its vision of the end of the "brave and unfortunate species" that we as human beings have been, and of our replacement by the brave-new-worlders, made possible by Djerzinski's "risky interpretations of the postulates of quantum mechanics." For all the ferocity of his vision, Houellebecq does have a heart, and although he would probably not care to be told so, it is the palpable beating of that organ which lifts his work to heights that the dementedly fastidious Lovecraft could not have scaled in his wildest and weirdest dreams. Houellebecq, if we are to take him at his word and not think ourselves mocked by his fanciful flights, achieves a profound insight into the nature of our collective death wish, as well as our wistful hope for something to survive, even if that something is not ourselves. The omniscient narrator of The Elementary Particles, dedicating his book "to mankind," meditates on what is past and passing and to come: History exists; it is elemental, it dominates, its rule is inexorable. Yet outside the strict confines of history, the ultimate ambition of this book is to salute the brave and unfortunate species which created us. This vile, unhappy race, barely different from the apes, which nevertheless carried within it such noble aspirations. Tortured, contradictory, individualistic, quarrelsome . . . it was sometimes capable of extraordinary explosions of violence, but never quite abandoned its belief in love. This species which, for the first time in history, was able to envision the possibility of its succession and, some years later, proved capable of bringing it about. As the last members of this race are extinguished, we think it just to render this last tribute to humanity, an homage which itself will one day disappear, buried beneath the sands of time. John Banville's new novel, The Sea, will be published next year by Knopf. A portion of this article appeared in different form in the Dublin Review (Winter 2004-2005) TALES BY H. P. LOVECRAFT, EDITED BY PETER STRAUB. NEW YORK: LIBRARY OF AMERICA. 845 PAGES. $35. H. P. LOVECRAFT: AGAINST THE WORLD, AGAINST LIFE BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, TRANSLATED BY DORNA KHAZENI, INTRODUCTION BY STEPHEN KING. BROOKLYN, NY: MCSWEENEY'S. 150 PAGES. $18. THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, TRANSLATED BY FRANK WYNNE. NEW YORK: VINTAGE. 272 PAGES. $14. PLATFORM BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, TRANSLATED BY FRANK WYNNE. NEW YORK: VINTAGE. 272 PAGES. $14. WHATEVER BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, TRANSLATED BY PAUL HAMMOND. LONDON: SERPENT'S TAIL. 155 PAGES. $15. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:12:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:12:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Newsweek: Blogging Beyond the Men's Club Message-ID: Blogging Beyond the Men's Club http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7160264/site/newsweek/ Since anyone can write a Weblog, why is the blogosphere dominated by white males? By Steven Levy Senior Editor Newsweek March 21 issue - At a recent Harvard conference on bloggers and the media, the most pungent statement came from cyberspace. Rebecca MacKinnon, writing about the conference as it happened, got a response on the "comments" space of her blog from someone concerned that if the voices of bloggers overwhelm those of traditional media, "we will throw out some of the best ... journalism of the 21st century." The comment was from Keith Jenkins, an African-American blogger who is also an editor at The Washington Post Magazine [a sister publication of NEWSWEEK]. "It has taken 'mainstream media' a very long time to get to [the] point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote. "My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere ... will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one." After the comment was posted, a couple of the women at the conference--bloggers MacKinnon and Halley Suitt--looked around and saw that there weren't many other women in attendance. Nor were the faces yapping about the failings of Big Media representative of the human quiltwork one would see in the streets of Cambridge or New York City, let alone overseas. They were, however, representative of the top 100 blogs according to the Web site Technorati--a list dominated by bigmouths of the white-male variety. Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem? Viewed one way, the issue seems a bit absurd. These self-generated personal Web sites are supposed to be the ultimate grass-roots phenomenon. The perks of alpha bloggers--voluminous traffic, links from other bigfeet, conference invitations, White House press passes--are, in theory, bequeathed by a market-driven merit system. The idea is that the smartest, the wittiest and the most industrious in finding good stuff will simply rise to the top, by virtue of a self-organizing selection process. So why, when millions of blogs are written by all sorts of people, does the top rung look so homogeneous? It appears that some clubbiness is involved. Suitt puts it more bluntly: "It's white people linking to other white people!" (A link from a popular blog is this medium's equivalent to a Super Bowl ad.) Suitt attributes her own high status in the blogging world to her conscious decision to "promote myself among those on the A list." Coincidentally, this issue arises just as a related controversy is raising eyebrows in mainstream media. Law professor Susan Estrich has been hammering Michael Kinsley, the editorial-page editor of the Los Angeles Times, for not running a sufficient number of op-ed pieces by women and minorities. Though the e-mail exchange between the two deteriorated into a spitting match, both agreed that extra care is required to make sure public discussion reflects the actual population. The top-down mainstream media have to some degree found the will and the means to administer such care. But is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine--except inaction. "You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking--and link to them. "Don't you think," she says, "that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?" Definitely. Now let's see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:13:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:13:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] National Review: Heather Mac Donald on Diversity & Blogosphere Message-ID: Heather Mac Donald on Diversity & Blogosphere http://nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/comment/mac_donald200503300758.asp March 30, 2005, 7:58 a.m. Diversity Mongers Target the Web Can quotas rule the ultimate meritocracy? By Heather Mac Donald Bad move, guys. The "diversity" mongers have just brought up the one thing that they should have stayed far far away from: the web. Newsweek's technology columnist Steven Levy has [4]declared that the lack of "diversity" among the web's most popular blogs requires corrective action. The goal? A blogosphere whose elite tier "reflects the actual population" -- i.e., where female- and minority-written blogs are found among the top 100 blogs in the same proportion as females and minorities are found in the general population. Levy's complaint comes on the heels of Susan Estrich's [5]campaign against the Los Angeles Times for allegedly refusing to publish female op-ed writers, a campaign that has caused widespread wringing of editorial hands about male-dominated op-ed pages. For Levy to have mentioned the web at this moment is about as smart as inviting Stephen Hawking to an astrologers' convention: The web demolishes the assumptions behind any possible quota crusade. A Harvard [6]conference on bloggers and the media triggered Levy's concerns. Keith Jenkins, a Washington Post photo editor, had [7]warned during the conference, via e-mail, that the growth of blogging threatened minority gains in journalism. Whereas the mainstream media have gotten to "the point of inclusion," Jenkins wrote, the "overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere [might] return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one." Who would've guessed it? The mainstream media, Jenkins admits, has gotten to "the point of inclusion." You'd never know it from the ongoing agitation for more race- and gender-conscious hiring and publishing. Just this December, the National Association of Black Journalists [8]wrung from the president of NBC News a promise to hire more black journalists at the highest levels of the newsroom. At an NABJ conference last April, a Denver Post editor [9]accused newspapers and broadcast outlets of refusing to hire blacks and called on NABJ members to denounce such alleged discriminators. The Association tallies and publicizes black representation in newsrooms to the minutest detail, including the [10]ratio of black supervisors to black reporters. Susan Estrich, meanwhile, has had her female law students at USC logging daily ratios of female- to male-penned op-eds in the Los Angeles Times for the last three years -- numbers that she has used to try to bludgeon editor Michael Kinsley into instituting female quotas. The [11]Media Report to Women, cited by the New York Times's Joyce Purnick, pumps out statistics on the percentage of female interviewees on network-news shows and of female news directors in radio, among other crucial discoveries. Female book reviewers in The New York Times Book Review are weekly stacked up against male reviewers at Edward Champions "[12]Return of the Reluctant." These diversity grievances follow the usual logic: Victim-group X is not proportionally represented in some field; therefore the field's gatekeepers are discriminating against X's members. The argument presumes that there are large numbers of qualified Xs out there who, absent discrimination, would be proportionally represented in the challenged field. If the quota mongers really believed these claims, they should welcome the web enthusiastically, since it is a world without gatekeepers and with no other significant barriers to entry. Imagine someone coping with real discrimination -- a black tanner, say, in 1897 Alabama. To expand his business, he needs capital and access to markets beyond the black business corridors in the south. Every white lender has turned him down, however, and no white merchant will carry his leather goods, even though they are superior to what is currently on the market. Tell that leather maker that an alternative universe exists, where he can obtain credit based solely on his financial history and sell his product based solely on its quality -- a universe where race is so irrelevant that no one will even know his own -- and he would think he had died and gone to heaven. For allegedly discriminated-against minority and female writers, the web is just that heaven. They can get their product directly out to readers with no bigoted editors to turn them away. As Steven Levy himself conceded in a column last December, there are virtually no start-up costs to launching a weblog: "All you need," he explained, "is some cheap software tools and something to say." In case reader prejudice is a problem, web writers can conceal their identity and simply present their ideas. And there is no established hierarchy to placate on the way to the top. As Levy wrote: "Out of the inchoate chatter of the Web, the sharpest voices simply emerge." So here is the perfect medium for liberating all those qualified minority and female "voices" that are being silenced by the mainstream media's gatekeepers. According to diversity theory, they should be far more heavily represented in the blogosphere's upper reaches than they are in traditional journalism. In fact, the opposite is the case, as the Washington Post's Keith Jenkins pointed out. The elite blogging world is far less "diverse" than the mainstream media. Why? Could it be that the premise of the "diversity" crusade is wrong -- that there are not in fact hordes of unknown, competitively talented non-white-male journalists held back by prejudice? Don't even entertain the thought. Steven Levy certainly doesn't. After fleetingly rehearsing his own previous analysis of the web as a pure meritocracy, he dismisses the argument without explanation and trots out the hoariest trope in the "diversity" lexicon: "the old boy's club." Why is the top rung of the blogosphere so homogeneous? Levy asks. He answers: "It appears that some clubbiness is involved" -- that is, that white male bloggers only link to other white male bloggers. (Susan Estrich likewise accused the Los Angeles Times's Michael Kinsley of favoring writers in his old boy's club.) Appears to whom? Where does this alleged club meet? In fact, the web is the antithesis of a closed, exclusive society. Levy offers no evidence for a white male bloggers club beyond the phenomenon he is trying to explain: the popularity of certain blogs. If the top blogs link to other top blogs, Levy assumes that they are doing so out of race and gender solidarity. Levy is suggesting that if an Alpha blogger comes across a dazzling blog, he will link to it once he confirms that a white male writes it but pass it up if he discovers, for instance, that a Latino woman is behind its sharp and clever observations on current events. The charge is preposterous. Moreover, as [13]Buzz Machine notes, bloggers don't know the race and gender of many of their colleagues. Here's a different explanation for why the blogosphere is dominated by white males: because they're the ones producing the best product. Sorry, ladies, but there aren't as many of us engaged in aggressive, competitive opinionizing and nonstop consumption of politics as our male tormentors. In 2001, the Hartford Courant, desperate to promote women on its pages, analyzed its letters to the editor, expecting to find bias in letter selection. It turned out that women write only one third of the letters that the paper receives, exactly the percentage published, incidentally. Even Gail Collins, editor of the New York Times's editorial page, admitted through clenched teeth to the Washington Post in the wake of the Estrich blitz: "There are probably fewer women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who feel comfortable writing very straight opinion stuff." As for minorities, the skills gap in reading and writing means that, at the moment, a lower percentage of blacks and Hispanics possess the verbal acumen to produce a cutting-edge blog. For decades, blacks and Hispanics have scored 200 points below whites on the SATs' verbal section. Black high-school seniors on average read less competently than white 8th graders; Hispanic 12th graders read only slightly better than white 8th graders. And those are just the ones who are graduating. In the [14]Los Angeles school system, which is typical of other large urban districts, 53 percent of black students and 61 percent of Hispanic students drop out before graduating from high school; most of the dropouts exit in the 9th grade. Assuming, generously, that those dropouts have 5th-grade skills, they are unlikely candidates for power blogging. Here's Steven Levy's minimum prescription for joining the ranks of Alpha blogging: "You have to post frequently . . . link prodigiously," and, like one technology guru he describes, spend two hours daily writing your weblog and "three more hours reading hundreds of other blogs." If you have difficulty reading, you're probably not going to find that regime attractive. Obviously, many individual blacks and Hispanics possess more than the necessary skills to power their way into the top 100 blogs. But diversity zealots don't look at individuals, they look at aggregates. And in the aggregate, blacks and Hispanics lag so far behind whites in literacy skills that it is absurd to blame racial exclusion for the absence of racial proportionality on the web. Junking progressive pedagogy, with its absurd hostility to drilling and memorization, is the only solution to the education lag; diversity bean-counting is window-dressing. No one has succeeded in closing the skills gap yet, but over the years we've developed numerous bureaucratic devices to paper it over. These devices will undoubtedly prove highly useful in addressing what Levy calls the web's "diversity problem." Levy proposes, as an initial matter, that the power-bloggers voluntarily link to some as yet unspecified number of non-male, non-white writers. The history of 'voluntary' affirmative action efforts need not be rehearsed here; suffice it to say, once 'voluntary' race- and gender-conscious policies are proposed, mandates are not far behind. But even Levy's "voluntary" regime calls out for regulation. How will the diversity-minded linker know the "identity" of a potential linkee? To be workable, a diversity-linkage program needs some sort of gatekeeper -- precisely what the web has heretofore lacked. One can imagine something like a federal Digital Diversity Agency that would assign a diversity tattoo to each blog: a lavender pig, for example, signifying a white male blogger with an alternative sexual orientation. A mismatch between the diversity tattoo on a site and its content could trigger a federal audit to track down identity fraud. Let's say an allegedly black female site (tattooed with a black halo) canvassed technologies for sending humans to Mars. Regulators might find such content highly suspicious, since everyone knows that black females are supposed to write about black females. As absurd as such a regulatory regime would have to be, it still would not be enough to make a properly "diverse" blogosphere, for the web's real diversity flaw is the role of readers. It is readers who determine which blogs zoom up to Alpha orbit, and until now they have been frustratingly outside any sort of regulatory reach. Only when Internet users are required to open up a representative sample of sites can we be confident that the web's "diversity problem" will be solved. The diversity blogging debate has just begun, and it has already descended into [15]self-parody. Still, it has produced one invaluable admission: The gatekeepers in the mainstream media -- supposedly bigots who deny opportunity to members of various groups unless shamed or bullied into overcoming their prejudice -- are not the problem, they are the solution! Far from being bigots, they are, in fact, obsessed with diversity. As Levy puts it, they have "found the will and the means to administer [the] extra care . . . required to make sure public discussion reflects the actual population." Diversity utopias, it turns out, require top-down management; open-ended democracies like the web are less certain propositions. The next time someone charges a gatekeeper with racism or sexism -- the next time, say, Jesse Jackson pickets a corporation -- remember Levy's admission. It could save a lot of hot air. -- [16]Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the [17]Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. References 4. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7160264/site/newsweek/ 5. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/16//OPINION/OP-ED/01aaaafestrichoped.txt 6. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/webcred/ 7. http://keithwj.typepad.com/commentary/2005/03/blogging_the_ne.html 8. http://www.nabj.org/newsroom/news_releases/story/920p-1445c.html 9. http://www.nabj.org/newsroom/news_releases/2004/story/507p-25c.html 10. http://www.nabj.org/newsroom/news_releases/2004/story/981p-1539c.html 11. http://www.mediareporttowomen.com/statistics.htm 12. http://www.edrants.com/ 13. http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2005_03_15.html 14. http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu/news/pressreleases/dropout05.php 15. http://civilities.net/Webcred-Inclusiveness 16. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/mac_donald.htm From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:15:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:15:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Toronto Star: Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester: Intellectual Marijuana Message-ID: Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester: Intellectual Marijuana http://www.jeetheer.com/comics/intellectualmarijuana.htm Intellectual Marijuana: comics and their critics By Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester Toronto Star Ideas section (March 27, 2005) In 1943, when she was working in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker was one of the pre-eminent figures in the American intelligentsia. Her poems and critical writing in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair had made her a force to be reckoned with in highbrow circles; even if she wasnt revered in academic circles at that time, she was still a shining example of the liberal, educated mind. So a confession she made that year about the uneasy relationship that has always existed between intellectuals and the popular art form known as the comics was both startling and revelatory. For a bulky segment of a century, I have been an avid follower of comic strips all comic strips, Parker wrote. This is a statement made with approximately the same amount of pride with which one would say, Ive been shooting cocaine into my arm for the past 25 years. Tracing the literatis views on comics over the past century repeatedly reveals the same divisions that Parker located within her own soul: an avaricious appetite for them combined with a feeling that theyre wicked. Comics first came to prominence in newspapers in the late 1890s when two great press barons, William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, engaged in a fierce competition over big-city markets, especially New York. In order to win reader loyalty, Hearst and Pulitzer gave prominence to comics, most notably the rambunctious brats in The Yellow Kid and the Katzenjammer Kids, and particularly in colour Sunday supplements. Genteel critics writing in high-toned literary journals denounced these early comics as lowbrow and demeaning. In 1906, Atlantic Monthly described comics as a thing of national shame and degradation. Three years later, the Ladies Home Journal labeled comics a crime against American children. For those early critics, comics were a symptom of everything that was going wrong with the world: the new-found preference for visual stimulation rather than time-honoured literary traditions; the growing strength of disorderly immigrant cultures in the United States and Canada, which they thought would overturn Anglo-Saxon supremacy; and the increasing acceptance of slang, which endangered norms of proper grammar and refined diction. By the 1920s, however, the adherence to Victorian ideals of decorum and decency had started to fade, as a younger generation rebelled against their intellectual elders by celebrating popular art forms such as jazz and movies, as well as comics. One book in particular, Gilbert Seldes 1924 work, The Seven Lively Arts, proved to be a major turning point. In this extended celebration of popular culture, he placed cartoonist George Herriman, who created the character of Krazy Kat, in a modern pantheon that included Charlie Chaplin and the early ragtime musicians. Krazy Kat, Seldes proclaimed, is the most amusing and fantastic and satisfactory work of art produced in America today. Seldes words carried great weight. As managing editor of the influential literary magazine The Dial, as well as in his own writing, he had established a reputation as a serious and demanding critic. A man of impeccable highbrow credentials, he was also close friends with distinguished writers such as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and E.E. Cummings, many of whom shared his passion for popular culture. (Cummings would pen a paean to Krazy Kat as a living ideal superior to mere reality.) Seldes enthusiasm was echoed by painters such as Joan Miro and Willem de Kooning, filmmakers Frank Capra and John Grierson, and writers Jack Kerouac and Gertrude Stein. (A strip of durable popularity, Krazy Kat is currently being reprinted in a multi-volume series by Fantagraphics Books.) Seldes cleverly inverted the existing value system by showing that qualities that had been denounced as vices were, in fact, virtues. While the genteel tradition claimed that text was intrinsically superior to visual art forms, Seldes stressed that each should be judged by its own internal criteria. So, rather than decrying the slang of comic strip dialogue as evidence of bad grammar and diction, he praised cartoonists for their vernacular vigour. While genteel critics gave priority to tradition, Seldes responded by stressing the modernist value of novelty. The first wave of pro-comics sentiment peaked in the jazz era of the 1920s, when modern culture was becoming more open. But in the 1930s and 40s, in the grim shadow of the Depression and the Second World War, the cultural mood turned sour. In this pessimistic era, many writers began to fear that mass culture was contributing to the ills of the world. Many intellectuals came to see the general population as dupes, easily manipulated by the mass media, especially after witnessing the success of Joseph Goebbels as propaganda minister for the Nazi regime. Two famous science fiction novels of the era, Brave New World (1932) and 1984 (1948), gave vivid expression to those fears. Thus it was not surprising to see fresh denunciations of both newspaper comic strips and the comic books sold at news counters. For literary critic Irving Howe, the famous creations of Walt Disney conjured up the spectre of the hated Nazi storm troopers. On the surface, the Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons seem merely pleasant little fictions, but they are actually over-laden with the most competitive, aggressive and sadistic themes, he wrote in Politics magazine in 1948. Often on the verge of hysteria, Donald Duck is a frustrated little monster who has something of the SS man in him and who we, also having something of the SS man in us, naturally find quite charming... Writing in The New Republic in 1948, Marya Mannes referred to the form as intellectual marijuana. Every hour spent in reading comics, she asserted, is an hour in which all inner growth has stopped. By the early 1950s, comics were under siege on numerous fronts. Parents groups organized comic-book burnings; comic-book publishers were called before the U.S. Senate to answer charges they were contributing to juvenile delinquency; and child psychologists such as Fredric Wertham published articles and books arguing that comics were throttling the tender sensibilities of the young. In terms of their reputation within respectable society, comics hit their nadir in the early 1950s. Slowly, however, the pendulum started to swing the other way. The careers of two Catholic intellectuals, Marshall McLuhan and Father Walter Ong, illustrate how comics re-won respect in the post-war era. In the 1940s, long before his fame as a media guru, McLuhan was exciting the imagination of bright, young students by confidently linking together disparate phenomena, from modernist art to medieval theology, into a single worldview. He gathered around him a circle of fledging scholars, including a young priest named Walter Ong, who were eager to join in his quest to make sense of the modern techno-communication landscape what we now call, thanks in part to McLuhan, the media. In their early work, the McLuhan circle tended to be critical of mass culture. Ong, for example, attacked Mickey Mouse in 1941 as Mr. Disneys West-Coast rodent, while McLuhan in 1951 suggested that Superman was a potential dictator. Yet as they immersed themselves in the subject, they quickly became more appreciative of popular culture, finding possibilities for creativity and even liturgical beauty in art aimed at a broad audience. In 1951, Ong was openly praising Walt Kelleys Pogo for displaying a linguistic playfulness reminiscent of James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. McLuhan, meanwhile, came to cherish Lil Abner and Mad magazine as evidence that sophisticated satire could be appreciated by both young and old. And he was critical of societys kneejerk reaction to comics in general. The elders of the tribe, who had never noticed that the ordinary newspaper was as frantic as a surrealist art exhibition, could hardly be expected to notice that the comic books were as exotic as eighth-century illuminations, he wrote in Understanding Media. So, having noticed nothing about the form, they could discern nothing of the contents, either. The mayhem and violence were all they noted. Therefore, with na?ve literary logic, they waited for violence to flood the world. Or, alternatively, they attributed existing violence to the comics. In their shifting attitude toward popular culture, the McLuhan circle was a harbinger of change. The mid-20th century was a particularly exciting time to be a Catholic intellectual: Vatican II was gestating and there was an increasing openness in the church to the modern world, including popular culture. By the 1960s, the groundwork for a new and ongoing appreciation of comics had been laid by McLuhan and other intellectuals, notably the literary critic Leslie Fiedler and the soon-to-be-famous novelist Umberto Eco. Drawing on theories from psychology and sociology, Fiedler and Eco studied comics as an example of social myth popular stories that illustrated the dream life of the common person. For Fiedler, the superhero was an example of urban folklore, in which the dark forest of the fairytales became the urban jungle of Batman. Meanwhile, Eco believed that the serialized nature of comics where the adventure is always continued tomorrow or next week reflected the anxious, provisional rhythm of modern life. Since then, weve seen an ever-deepening appreciation of the form. Comics are now studied in the academy, archived in research libraries and lavishly reprinted in expensive collector volumes. In one Toronto high school, they have been used for the past three years as part of a successful program to boost literacy. And the recent rise of the graphic novel and manga (Japanese comic books), not to mention the recent massive success of Hollywood films based on comics (Spiderman, Spiderman 2, Hulk, Ghost World), has only strengthened the forms cultural importance. Yet surveying the long history of intellectuals and comics, we shouldnt assume that this current resurgence of praise will be permanent. As weve seen, intellectuals are fundamentally divided about the worth of comics, and there is always the possibility of a backlash. Perhaps a backlash wouldnt be such a bad thing. There is value in an art form being perceived as dangerous. After all, being compared to marijuana and cocaine has done comics no long-term harm. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester are the editors of Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (University of Mississippi Press), from which this article is partially adapted. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:16:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:16:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Code Warriors Message-ID: Code Warriors The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31a03101.htm Young computer programmers battle for fame, money, and the love of algorithms By JENNIFER JACOBSON Santa Clara, Calif. The nerds have taken over the Marriott. On a Thursday morning in March, eight college students stand shoulder to shoulder in a brightly lit conference room, readying their brains for battle. Seconds from now, they will sit down at computers and fill their screens with lines of code that few other mortals could comprehend. So begins the fifth annual TopCoder Collegiate Challenge, a computer-programming tournament in which contestants write algorithms to solve complicated problems while racing the clock. To survive, contestants need to master geometry, number theory, and formal proofs. For academe's cyber set, this is March Madness. Run by TopCoder Inc., a Connecticut-based software company, and sponsored by Yahoo, the contest and its $20,000 prize for first place bring together some of the world's top young programmers. The two-day event, one of several programming contests held each year, also attracts recruiters from leading technology companies, who come to dangle lucrative offers for jobs and internships before young computer jocks. After all, it is not easy to find students who can write a super-fast computer program to solve a problem like this: "Determine how many different character strings of a given length can be created using the letters A, B, or C." Nearly 1,300 students entered the competition, the first two rounds of which took place online in January. Only 24 finalists earned a trip here to Silicon Valley. Some have come from the nearby California Institute of Technology, others from as far away as Poland. As the first group of eight contestants prepares for combat this morning, a computer-generated voice introduces each of them to a small crowd of spectators. One by one the students step forward, smile at the applause, then walk to the stage, where desktop computers await. "The semifinal competition is about to begin," says the voice, programmed to sound like a British woman. "Good luck." The challengers here will need plenty of luck to beat Tomasz Czajka, the tournament's reigning champion and No. 1 seed. A 23-year-old doctoral candidate in Purdue University's computer-science program, he won three major tournaments last year, two of which were open to professional programmers. He has earned nearly $100,000 on the contest circuit and feels as mighty as a mainframe. Mr. Czajka (pronounced chee-ka) believes that his ability to relax during the contest gives him an edge over more stressed out competitors. "This is really like a holiday to me," he says. Still, the during the competition he seems a bit hyper. He walks fast and talks faster. As the contest begins, his rivals show little, if any, emotion, but Mr. Czajka tries to psych them out by flashing a big grin and pumping his right fist into the air. In his native Poland, Mr. Czajka is a superstar. He has swigged coffee with Aleksander Kwasniewski, the Polish president, and garnered plenty of attention from the nation's press. In his homeland, he says, people treat him like a star athlete. Tall and thin, Mr. Czajka liked to play volleyball in high school, but he admits he was not very good. In coding contests, however, "he is scarily good," says James McKeown, TopCoder's director of communications. "He is the man." Programmed for Victory The son of two computer programmers, Mr. Czajka grew up in Stalowa Wola, a town east of Krakow. After his parents bought him a computer for his 10th birthday, he and his father would sit and write programs together. At 13 he started entering math competitions and attending science camps, where he learned the mathematical roots of computer science, like algorithms and beta structures. At 14 Mr. Czajka entered his first high-school computing contest, in which students had to solve three problems in five hours. He did not win, but the competition thrilled him. He knew then that he was hard-wired for cerebral combat. "It's like sports," he says. "You either run fast or you don't." He won several computing contests and TopCoder events before graduating from Warsaw University last year with a bachelor's degree in computer science. Upon earning a Ph.D. from Purdue, he might seek a job at a research laboratory. Perhaps he will return to Poland. Who knows? For now, his passion is cranking out code at warp speed. On the first day of competition, Mr. Czajka -- better known by his nickname, Tomek -- sits at his computer, alternately chewing on his pencil, scribbling calculations, and typing furiously. He and the seven other contestants have been given three problems to answer in 85 minutes. Points are awarded for the accuracy of their code as well as for speed. The remaining 16 contestants, who will compete later today, huddle at the edge of the stage, watching a computer monitor that displays what Mr. Czajka has typed. The room is silent, save for the click-clacking of keyboards. One of today's problems asks contestants to write an algorithm with which to calculate how much water would spill out of an x-sized container if a y-sized object (that may or may not float) were dropped into it. To get started, students must work out some basic geometry. Mr. Czajka types, s=waterH++objW+11(wid*len). The waiting contestants are so transfixed that they do not dig into the dishes of candy and potato chips scattered throughout the room. They have no time to ogle Nalu, a curvaceous, green-eyed mermaid who swims on a computer screen in a corner of the room, courtesy of Nvidia, a Santa Clara-based computer-graphics company. Nobody plops down on the big, comfy purple couch that Yahoo provided. Among the contestants watching Mr. Czajka's code unfold is Ralph Furmaniak, a mathematics major at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario. Mr. Furmaniak, the 39th seed in the tournament, jots down his own calculations to the problems on a pad of paper, for practice. He concludes that he could write the proper programs for each of the problems, but plans to return to his hotel room and code them on his computer, just to be sure. He hopes that such geeky diligence will pay off -- and that Mr. Czajka is beatable. "No one can deny that he is consistent," Mr. Furmaniak says. Only halfway through the round, the champion needs a bathroom break. A "minder" escorts Mr. Czajka to and from the men's room. A few minutes later he hurries back to the stage. After a sweat-inducing hour, it is time to see whether Mr. Czajka's codes work. The disembodied voice of the MC announces that the coding phase has ended. Now comes the challenge phase, in which the eight contestants can win points by finding flaws in each other's solutions. The catch: If their challenge is wrong, they lose points. Mr. Czajka submits one challenge that fails, then a second. The crowd gasps. "He's in trouble," says a spectator. The challenge phase drops Mr. Czajka to second place, at least momentarily. The champion looks frazzled. His alarm clock did not go off this morning, he says. He paces as he waits for the results of a computerized "systems test," the final analysis of the competing codes. A few minutes later, a TopCoder employee announces that all three of Mr. Czajka's codes were successful, giving him enough points to win the round. He grins and punches the air. He is going to the finals. Moments later, a petite blonde woman named Laura Bohland strolls over to chat with him. She is a recruiter from Yahoo who knows how to flatter. "You are one of the greatest engineers," she tells him, and "you have a great personality on top of that." For several minutes she describes the joys of interning at Yahoo. Working for the company, she tells him, would be like extending his college years. She mentions that Sugar Ray, the pop-music group, played at the company's 10th-anniversary party. Before she leaves, Ms. Bohland asks him, "You have my contact information, right?" Mr. Czajka nods. "They've been trying to hire me for a long time," he says later. "They always hit on me." Yahoo representatives, he says, have told him that if he worked there this summer, he could do whatever he wanted while earning about $7,000 a month. But Mr. Czajka is not sure about the offer. For one thing, he has never heard of Sugar Ray. For another, he is waiting on an internship offer from his first choice, Yahoo's chief rival, Google. 'You Have Fast Heads' That night Yahoo recruiters take the contestants on a tour of the company's headquarters, a few miles away in Sunnyvale, where they hobnob with senior vice presidents over plates of roast beef and ice-cream sundaes. The next morning, few contestants are up early enough to watch the wild-card round; the winner will compete in this afternoon's finals. After lunch all of the students get a pep talk from Steven S. Skiena, a professor of computer science at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and one of the authors of Programming Challenges: The Programming Contest Training Manual (Springer-Verlag, 2003). Mr. Skiena believes that programming contests are valuable learning experiences, even for contestants who do not reach the finals. "Programmers have to learn skills as opposed to facts," he says. "Thinking algorithmically is very, very hard. You learn it by doing and practicing." In his talk, he tells the contestants how "awesome" they are, cracking them up when he says: "You have fast heads. You have fast hands. You have balls." It is a reference to the fact that these students thrive under pressure -- and that every last one of them is male. A half-hour later, the laughing has stopped and the lights have dimmed. The four finalists are battling for the coding crown. Some students not in the finals gather around the monitor displaying Mr. Czajka's progress. One of them snaps a photograph of it. The onlookers see that the champion has not attempted the most difficult of the three problems. There is talk of an upset. "My money is on the Dutchman," says Mr. Skiena, referring to Mathijs Vogelzang, a student from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, who has taken the lead. "He is not afraid of Tomek." When the round ends, Mr. Czajka realizes that his only hope for victory is to find bugs in his competitors' codes. He dashes off three challenges. As they wait for the results, Mr. Czajka and Mr. Vogelzang stand next to each other, all nerves. "Maybe mine is wrong," Mr. Vogelzang says. "Yeah, that would be great," Mr. Czajka replies. They both laugh. A few minutes later, a TopCoder employee proclaims Mr. Vogelzang the winner. Mr. Czajka's challenges have failed. He looks surprised. Still, he smiles and congratulates his rival. The new champion walks to the front of the room, where he receives a game-show-size check, nearly as long as he is tall, for $20,000. Contests like this, Mr. Vogelzang says, make him doubt his plan to become a doctor. Mr. Czajka says he is satisfied with second place. He has just won $10,000, after all. But he vows to return to the next tournament, in the fall. "To win," he says. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:17:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:17:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: On-Time Graduates to Get Cash Rewards Message-ID: On-Time Graduates to Get Cash Rewards The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31a03302.htm By PETER SCHMIDT In an attempt to cut costs and improve its graduation rate, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale plans to give $500 cash rewards to students who graduate within four years. Freshmen who enter the university this fall will be the first group of students eligible for the reward program, which the chancellor, Walter V. Wendler, announced in late March. Noting that only one in four students who enroll at his institution as freshmen graduates on time, he said, "We think that if this population was granted financial incentive, more students would complete in four years." The new program at Southern Illinois is one of many efforts by states and public colleges to prod students to complete their education in a timely manner, mainly as a way of dealing with space crunches and tight state budgets. Texas now pays off the college loans of some students who graduate on time. The California State University System has stiffened the requirements for students seeking to transfer to one of its campuses, to cut down on the number of credits that they will need to take after enrolling. The University of Florida, one of the first institutions to develop policies intended to encourage on-time graduation, has since 1996 guaranteed students a slot in any course required for their majors. Mr. Wendler said the reward program would help students save money in addition to helping the bottom line at Southern Illinois, which covers a larger share of students' college costs than it draws in tuition. The university receives less state support for undergraduate education than it did three years ago, and is under pressure to cut costs, campus officials said. Mr. Wendler said the new program, called the Finish in Four Scholarships, will provide students who are on track to graduate on time with $500 during their last semester, to spend as they wish. In a speech last month, he also announced the creation of incentive programs that will offer students who earn their bachelor's degrees on time $2,000 scholarships to the university's law or medical schools and $1,000 scholarships to its other graduate programs, provided they enroll full time the year after they complete their undergraduate studies. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:18:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:18:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: The Parallels of Islam and Judaism in Diaspora Message-ID: The Parallels of Islam and Judaism in Diaspora The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31b01501.htm By SANDER L. GILMAN Two moments in modern history: A religious community is banned from wearing distinctive clothing in public schools as doing so is seen as a violation of the rules of secular society, while another religious community is forbidden from ritually slaughtering animals as such slaughter is seen as a cruel and unnatural act. These prohibitions take place more than 100 years apart, the former recently in France, the latter more than a century ago in Switzerland. What are the religious communities in question? In France the order banning ostentatious religious clothing and ornaments in schools and other public institutions affects the evident target group, Muslim women, as well as religious Jewish men and women who cover their heads. In Switzerland the prohibition against kosher Jewish slaughter (which still stands today) also covers the slaughter of animals by Muslims who follow the ritual to make halal meat. These different prohibitions have affected Jews and Muslims in oddly similar ways, yet each group has responded in different ways to its confrontation with the secular modern world. Those responses can tell us much about the flexibility and intransigence of both religious communities and the worlds in which they live. Scratch secular Europe today, and you will find long-held Christian presuppositions and attitudes toward Jews and Muslims present in subliminal or overt forms. Recently German, Italian, Polish, and Slovakian delegates demanded that the "Christian heritage" of the new Europe be writ large in the European constitution. It was only the post-September 11 anxiety of most states that enabled Val?ry Giscard d'Estaing, as president of the convention writing the constitution, to persuade the group that such a reference would be "inappropriate." The demand was transformed into a reference in the preamble to the "cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe." No one missed what was meant. What continues to trouble Europeans about Judaism and Islam is their all-too-close relationship to Christianity. It is the seeming similarity of the three "Abrahamic" (the new buzzword including Islam in the Judeo-Christian fold) religions that draws attention to the real or imagined differences among them -- what Sigmund Freud called the "narcissism of minor differences." Those differences are heightened in a secular society that is rooted in the mind-set (and often the attitudes, beliefs, social mores, and civic practices) of the majority religious community -- that is to say, Christianity. Minority religions in a secular society that still has religious overtones are promised a wide range of civil rights -- including those of freedom of religion -- if only its members adhere to the standards of civilized behavior as defined by the secular society (and rooted in the desire to make sure that society, with its masked religious assumptions, redefines the minority's religious practice). Thus Muslims and Jews have the same rights to public schooling as Christians, if only they don't insist on wearing head scarves or coverings. Any differences between majority and minority religions seem threatening because the majority religion has already ceded so much ground to overt secularization. Over and over, the integration of Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries was decried as a force of "modernization," rather than as the result of modernization. Today Islam is accused of being a threat to the modernization Europe wants, but it also highlights the loss of religious identity that Europeans know comes with modernization. The West needs to understand these dynamics of change. If we assume that transformation occurs (or does not occur) only within communities that are seen as different, we miss the dynamic change that occurs in society as a whole. Religious experience is an aspect of all societies -- even those that label themselves as anti-religion. In tracking how religious ritual and practice shift and rebound, how they are transmuted and become a place for resistance, we can say as much about the culture in which religion is found as about religions themselves. A new project I am beginning will look at the experiences among Jews from the late-18th century (which marked the beginning of civil emancipation) to the beginning of the 20th century -- and will ask how those experiences parallel the experiences now confronting diaspora Islam in secular Western Europe. The similarities are striking: A religious minority enters a self-described secular (or secularizing) society that is Christian in its rhetoric and presuppositions and that perceives a "special relationship" with that minority. (That special relationship is marked for Jews by the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament and the Messianic prophecy; for Muslims, by the appropriation of the Old Testament and the New as part of Muslims' claims of a final prophetic revelation.) The minority speaks a different secular language (for Jews, it was Western and Eastern Yiddish as well as Ladino; for Muslims, it is Turkish, Bengali, and colloquial Arabic as well as others) but also has a different religious language (Hebrew and classical Arabic). Religious schools that teach in the languages associated with a religious group are seen as sources of corruption and illness. Indeed some authorities in Germany and the Netherlands have recently advocated that only native languages be spoken in mosques to make the message of the sermon transparent to the greater society. That is not far from the desire that was expressed in the 18th century that Jews learn German in order to become members of civil society. Religious rites are practiced by minority religions that seem an abomination to the majority culture. Unlike the secular majority, the minority religions practice the mutilation of children's bodies (infant male circumcision, and, for some Muslims, infant female genital cutting); the suppression of women's rights (lack of women's traditional education, a secondary role in religious practice, arranged marriages); barbaric torture of animals (the cutting of the throats of unstunned animals, allowing them to bleed to death); and ostentatious clothing that signals religious affiliation and has ritual significance, among a number of other practices. Centrally relating all of those practices for both groups is a belief in the divine "chosenness" of the group in contrast to all others. The demonization of certain aspects of religious practice has its roots in what civil society will tolerate and what it will not. Why it will not tolerate something is, of course, central to the story. Thus Alan Dundes argued decades ago that the anxiety about the implications of cannibalism associated with the consumption of the body and blood of Christ in the Christian Mass shaped the fantasy that Jews were slaughtering Christian children for their blood. It was the often unacknowledged discomfort with its own practices that influenced how Christian society responded to the Jews. Such anxiety is also present in the anger secular Europe directed at other Jewish rituals associated with bloodletting, such as the ritual slaughter of animals. The way that a minority religion's practices, which differ from those of the majority religion, highlight the very things that seem confusing or uncomfortable about that majority religion in a secular society is part of the story. Thus Muslim women who wear head scarves evoke not just the repression of Muslim women in Western society but also Western insecurities about the role of all women in the public sphere. One of the most striking similarities of the process of Jewish and Muslim integration into Western secular society is the gradual elision of the national differences among various groups, both in terms of how they are perceived and how they see themselves. Muslims in Western Europe represent multiple national traditions (South Asian in Britain, North African in France and Spain, Turkish in Germany). But so did the Jews in Western Europe who came out of ghettos in France and the Rhineland or the rural reaches of Bavaria and Hungary, or who moved from those parts of Eastern Europe -- Poland, the eastern marches of the Austro-Hungarian empire -- that became part of the West. To those one can add the Sephardi Jews from the Iberian Peninsula who settled in areas from Britain (introducing fish and chips) to the fringes of the Austrian empire. The standard image of the Jews in 18th-century British caricature was the Maltese Jew in his oriental turban. By the 19th century it was that of Lord Rothschild in formal wear at his daughter's wedding, receiving the Prince of Wales in a London synagogue. In the intervening years the religious identity of Jews in European eyes had become more important than national identity -- few (except the anti-Semites) remembered that the Rothschilds were a Frankfurt family that had escaped the Yiddish-speaking ghetto. The Jews are everywhere and all alike; Muslims today seem to be everywhere and are becoming "all alike." How does such a shift in identity affect religious practice and belief? Is there a decrease in conflicts felt among religious groups, or is there a substitution of national identity for such conflicts? I am also going to be looking at how Jews and Muslims adapted to Western society, and what the comparison of the two groups might tell us. For Jews the stories of integration took different forms across Western Europe because there were different forms of Christianity, different levels of tolerance, and different expectations as to the meaning of citizenship. Different notions of secularization all present variations on the theme, What do you have to give up to become a true citizen? Do you merely have to give up your secular language? Do you have to abandon the most evident and egregious practices? I hope to understand what Jews thought possible to change in their religious practice in the 18th and 19th century, what they accomplished within various national states, and what they did not accomplish. That is, what was gained and what was lost, both in terms of the ability of living religions to transform themselves, and in the understanding that all such transformations call forth other forms of religious practice in response. The history of the Jews in the European diaspora during the late-18th century called forth three great reformers who took different approaches to those issues: Moses Mendelssohn and the followers of the Jewish Enlightenment in Germany who, together with their predecessors in Holland, argued for accommodation with civil society in a secularizing world; Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon of Vilnius, known as the Vilna Gaon, who desired to reform traditional Orthodox Judaism to make it able to function in a Jewish world that kept itself separate from secular society; and the first modern Jewish mystics, the Hasidim, typified by Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov in imperial Russia, who fought, like their contemporaries in Berlin and Vilnius, against what they saw as the stultifying practices and worldview of contemporary Judaism. All lived roughly simultaneously. In their wake came radical changes in what it meant to be a Jew in belief and practice. Today we stand at the beginning of a mass integration of Muslims into Western European culture. That culture prizes its secular nature, but the very forms of the secular state range from Britain (where the queen remains head of the church) to Germany, which is still divided between Protestant and Catholic versions of secularism (and along the dividing lines of the cold war). There were islands of Muslim integration in Europe, such as in Bosnia, that have been transformed over the past decade because of persecution and external pressure. There are also Muslim communities, such as in the large urban areas of France, that seem to be devolving into a permanent underclass. But how the local pressure for rights, on one hand, and integration, on the other, will play out in the future is unknown. The very forms of religious practice and belief are at stake. Perhaps some variants have already been tried with or without success among European Jews? Now I know that there are also vast differences between Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries and Muslims today. There are simply many more Muslims today in Western Europe than there were Jews in the earlier period. The Jews historically never formed more than 1 percent of the population of any Western European nation; Muslim populations form a considerable minority today. While there is no Western European city with a Muslim majority, many recent news stories predict that Marseilles or Rotterdam will be the first European city to have one. In France today there are 600,000 Jews, while there are between 5 million and 6 million Muslims, who make up about 10 percent of the population. In Germany, with a tiny Jewish population of under 100,000, almost 4 percent of the population is Muslim (totaling more than 3 million people). In Britain about 2.5 percent of the total population (1.48 million people) is Muslim. Demographics (and birthrates) aside, there are salient differences in the experiences of the Jews in the past and Muslims today. The Jews had no national "homeland" -- indeed were defined as nomads or a pariah people. They lived only in the diaspora and seemed inherently different from any other people in Western Europe. Most Muslims in the West come out of a national tradition in which their homelands had long histories disturbed but not destroyed by colonial rule. And last but not least, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the past century, as well as the Holocaust, which set the Jews apart from all other religious groups as essential victims, seem to place the two groups -- at least in the consciousness of the West -- in two antagonistic camps. Still there are key similarities. Notably religion for the Jews of pre-Enlightenment Europe, and for much of contemporary Islam, was and is a "heritage" to be maintained in the secular world of diaspora. What can or must such memory of ritual and practice abandon? What must it preserve to maintain its coherence for the group? One of the continuing questions in regard to religious practices has to do with ritual slaughter of animals, a practice that still links Jews and Muslims in contemporary thought. For Muslims an alternative to the tradition of sacrificing a ram on Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) has been created on a Web site where one can sacrifice virtual rams. That is a direct response to charges of "inhumanness" lodged against Islamic religious practices both within and without the Muslim community. Can that be a further sign of alternative practices developing within Islam? I want to examine what the solutions were to similar problems raised by modern Western secular society in regard to Jewish religious practice; how the Jews responded; how these responses were accepted or rejected based on local contexts; and how the Jews became or did not become citizens in the eyes of their non-Jewish contemporaries. Such questions are echoed in the debates within Islamic groups today concerning everything from the meaning of jihad to the ritual preparation of food. Can common experiences provide a natural alliance between Jews and Muslims? The central cultural problem of Europe today is not how different national cultures will be integrated into a European Union, but how secular society will interact with European Muslims. Anyone interested in contemporary Europe before September 11, 2001, knew that the 800-pound gorilla confronting France, Germany, and Britain, and to a lesser extent Spain and Italy, was the huge presence of an "unassimilatable" minority. Much attention has been given recently to the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, and his pronouncements about the dangers of Hispanic immigrants rejecting American values. Such fears are already being voiced in Europe about Muslims. But exactly the same things were said about the Jews for 200 years. What does that tell us? I am only beginning to seek answers to that question, but I hope they will help us understand the debates that Western Europe is increasingly facing and that eventually the United States may face, too. Sander L. Gilman will become a professor of liberal arts and sciences at Emory University in the fall. He is the editor, with Zhou Xun, of Smoke: A Global History of Smoking, published last year by Reaktion Books. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:20:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:20:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Who Owns Islamic Law? Message-ID: Who Owns Islamic Law? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.2.25 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i25/25a01401.htm Some liberal scholars want to open the explication of sacred texts to all. Others say the path to democracy lies elsewhere. By DAVID GLENN If all goes according to plan, Iraqi political leaders will gather this year to forge a new national constitution. It is easy to imagine many things that might shipwreck the process. Near the top of that list: Will Iraq's political forces manage to find a consensus about what role, exactly, Islam should play in the public sphere? That question has created deep tensions within Islamic reform movements for more than a century. Certain persistent strains of Muslim thought insist that an authentically Islamic nation must enforce Shariah -- traditional religious law -- in all spheres of life, from banking to inheritance to the performing arts. Muhammad Kamaruzzaman, the assistant secretary general of an Islamist party in Bangladesh, recently wrote an essay celebrating democracy, but adding that "Islam does not accept the idea of separation of state from religion." Other Muslim activists, citing the recent unhappy history of Afghanistan and Iran, insist that lines must be drawn between mosque and state -- even if those lines do not look exactly like Western secular pluralism. For outsiders, it is tempting to caricature this debate as a contest between Taliban-style radicals and Western-style liberals. (And there are indeed authentic representatives of both those camps in Iraq today.) But the terrain is actually far more complex than that. There are dozens of strains of traditionalist and liberal thought in the Muslim world, each looking toward different conceptions of Shariah and drawing on different elements of Islamic history and jurisprudence. Now a few prominent liberal scholars are aggressively promoting a concept that they believe can nurture democracy and allow an authentic Islam to thrive in the modern world. Islam can regenerate itself, these scholars say, if it returns to the principle of ijtihad. The Arabic term -- which literally means "strenuous effort" -- has historically referred to the practice of systematically interpreting Islamic religious texts in order to resolve difficult points of law. (In an oft-cited example, early Muslim jurists strove to interpret an ambiguously phrased Koranic verse about how long a divorced woman must wait before remarrying.) In the early centuries of Islam, ijtihad was confined to an elite set of scholars and jurists (mujtahidin) with rigorous training in the religion's texts and laws. Beginning around the 12th century, most Muslim communities restricted the practice even further: Some juridical schools declared outright that "the gates of ijtihad have been closed," while other regions limited the practice of ijtihad to questions of the family and everyday life. Today's proponents of ijtihad take a far more expansive view. "There will be no Islamic democracy unless jurists permit the democratization of interpretation," wrote M.A. Muqtedar Khan, a professor of political science at Adrian College, in a 2003 essay. In Mr. Khan's view, political elites in the Muslim world have for centuries restricted the development of democracy and political accountability by hiding behind religious principles that they proclaim to be fixed in stone. Mr. Khan argues, in effect, for an end run around the entire traditional apparatus of Muslim jurisprudence. Believers should instead, he suggests, look directly to the Koran and to the practices of Muhammad and his companions, and use their own efforts at interpretation to build ethical communities. Mr. Khan is not alone in this general approach. He and four other scholars gathered at a 2004 conference on ijtihad, sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace. "Is ijtihad part of the expanding democratic culture of the Muslim world?" asks Muneer Fareed, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Wayne State University, who also spoke at the conference. "Or will it remain the forte of an exclusive group of intellectuals? These are some of the fundamental questions that people are asking today." But other prominent scholars -- including some who share Mr. Khan and Mr. Fareed's urgent interest in pluralism and democracy -- have deep doubts about the ongoing conversations about ijtihad. Certain formulations of the ijtihad model, these skeptics say, are ahistorical and counterproductive. "Part of what hobbles their argument is that they're nonjurists," says R. Michael Feener, an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside. "They're nonlaw people talking about law." Instead, Mr. Feener suggests that Muslim reformers should embrace, not discard, the heritage of Islam's traditional schools of jurisprudence. Other skeptics point to a striking irony: The ultratraditional Salafist movements associated with Al Qaeda -- who are in some sense the polar opposite of the liberal enthusiasts of ijtihad -- use very similar language about scrapping the vast corpus of Islamic legal commentaries and returning to the original texts. Worlds Away From Wittenberg The reformist interest in ijtihad is not new. For more than a century, Muslim scholars and activists have cited the concept as they have tried to respond to the trauma of colonialism and its aftermath. In his 1934 book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Muhammad Iqbal, the poet known as the spiritual father of Pakistan, argued for transferring "the power of ijtihad from individual representatives of [legal] schools to a Muslim legislative assembly," which would build toward "spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam." The latest proponents celebrate a much more inclusive model of ijtihad. No jurist can single-handedly interpret Islam, Mr. Khan says. "My argument is that Shariah should be by shura," or consultation, he says. "We should all consult among ourselves and conclude what God is telling us. ... Interpretation of God's message is the quintessential quality of humanity. To take away from me my right to interpret Islam, you have to deprive me of my humanity." Even non-Muslims, Mr. Kahn says, should be permitted to participate in the process of ijtihad. "Islam belongs to all of us," he says. "It's not that Muslims own Islam, or that Muslim men own Islam, or that Muslim jurists own Islam." Mr. Fareed cautions against making any glib historical analogies between ijtihad and Protestantism. "It certainly doesn't help to look for a Luther in Islam," he says. While Christian debates have historically centered on questions of doctrine and faith, he points out, Islam (like Judaism) tends to be consumed with debates about practice and ritual. Among Muslim immigrants in the West, Mr. Fareed continues, debates about everyday practice -- such as whether it is permissible to pay interest -- have become very open and wide-ranging, thanks in part to the Internet. And as Western Muslims use ijtihad to debate such relatively quotidian questions, he says, they are also moving toward consideration of more fundamental questions about political structures and economic justice. Mr. Fareed hopes that these Western debates, couched within an Islamic vocabulary, will eventually provoke new kinds of conversations about democracy and political legitimacy in the heart of the Muslim world. (Last April Mr. Khan attended a scholarly conference in Saudi Arabia; when he returned, he wrote that he was, for the first time, cautiously optimistic that Saudi society was opening itself to "self-critical and reflective voices.") Not all Muslim liberals, however, find the ijtihad model attractive. A very different strategy for working toward democracy and pluralism is put forward by Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles. In Mr. Abou El Fadl's view, liberal Muslim scholars should revive, not dismiss, some of the longstanding threads of Islamic jurisprudence, looking carefully at historical cases in which Muslims have successfully built pluralist and relatively democratic societies. Although Mr. Abou El Fadl's methodology is more elitist than Mr. Khan's vision of ijtihad for all, he also maintains that it will ultimately be more liberal. He wrote in a 2003 essay that basing government around consultation and shura, as Mr. Khan and his allies suggest, could lead to majoritarian tyranny. "Even if shura is transformed into an instrument of participatory representation," he wrote, "it must itself be limited by a scheme of private and individual rights that serve an overriding moral goal such as justice." Mr. Abou El Fadl adds in an interview that he finds Mr. Khan's framework extremely ill-disciplined. "Instead of making the effort to study Arabic and study the texts," he says, "Muqtedar Khan is simply throwing around terms like ijtihad and mufti and fatwa. ... This kind of thing is why there's such a vacuum of authority. This is why we have people like bin Laden going around claiming to be Islamic." If, as Mr. Khan suggests, ijtihad is truly open to all -- even to non-Muslims -- then what criteria, Mr. Abou El Fadl asks, can be used to distinguish sound doctrine? "If everyone's ijtihad is as good as anyone else's," he says, "then bin Laden's ijtihad is as good as Muqtedar Khan's." "In its pristine form, shura was consultation on a patriarchal or tribal basis," says Emran Qureshi, a fellow at Harvard University's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, who is sympathetic to Mr. Abou El Fadl's position. "It's difficult to tie a notion of modern democratic practice to that notion." Mr. Khan, for his part, finds this position impossibly elitist. In a 2004 article, he charged that Mr. Abou El Fadl's model of liberal jurisprudence "allows the intellectual colonialism of Islamic legalism -- its tendency to engulf and marginalize other fields of study -- to subvert his quest for an Islamic democracy." A middle ground of sorts is offered by Ingrid Mattson, a professor of Islamic studies at the Hartford Seminary. Ms. Mattson argues that there should be a wide scope for popular ijtihad, but adds that the process should be watched over by well-trained Islamic legal scholars. "The proper role of scholars and religious and legal specialists," she says, "is simply to point out when certain boundaries are being crossed. Not to dictate the process of ijtihad, but to monitor it in a way that is helpful and supportive of the development of society." Political Convergence All parties in this debate over ijtihad emphasize that their ultimate political visions are similar: They would like to see majority-Muslim countries develop democratic and accountable institutions, and to combine authentically Muslim cultural values with ample protection for individual rights and religious minorities. Yet the devil emerges in the details. If even scholars with such harmonious visions find themselves tangled in argument, how much more difficult will it be for Iraqi political leaders trying to forge a new constitution? Part of the difficulty, says Mr. Qureshi, is that "secularism" has been so thoroughly discredited in the Muslim world by Kemal Atat?rk's ruthlessly anticlerical regime in Turkey and by the later secular-authoritarian governments in Algeria, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Only in Iran, which has suffered under a clerical tyranny for decades, do reformers now commonly talk about secular pluralism. The fundamental challenge for would-be democracy-builders in Iraq and elsewhere is the contested relationship between Islam and the public sphere, Ms. Mattson says. Where religious authorities and institutions once had breathing room from the state and their own spheres of influence, she says, colonial regimes brought everything under the heel of the government. (And their postcolonial successors have been happy to do likewise.) The opposite dilemma sometimes arose in the early centuries of Islam, Ms. Mattson suggests. In certain communities at that time, she says, Muslim jurists were in a sense too detached from the state. They protected their independent spheres by "trying to stay out, to some extent, of what they considered to be the proper jurisdiction of the government or the ruler. And they also really did believe that politics was corrupting. ... So the jurists were sometimes very good at looking at the rights of individual slaves, yet they never really addressed the issue of the slave trade and its overall political and economic considerations." This, then, is the dilemma for reformers today. Centrist Islamists and liberal reformers would like to develop a model in which Muslim institutions are independent from the government and vigorously inform public governance, but do not swallow all of society in a totalitarian project like the Taliban's. "A postcolonial context requires new institutions," says Mr. Fareed, of Wayne State. "So a debate has been stirred. Will we simply remake classical institutions, or will we take into consideration the changes that modernity and colonialism have wrought on Muslim society, and engage in a new form of ijtihad to establish new institutions based on these changes?" Eastern Winds Mr. Feener, of Riverside, believes that there are exciting and productive debates occurring along just those lines -- but they aren't happening in the Westernized context that is touted by the ijtihad enthusiasts. Instead, he says, the most intellectually exciting place in the Muslim world today is Indonesia, where students are reading translations of "works translated from Egyptian and Moroccan thinkers. You find works from Iranian thinkers. You find translations of people working in the States, like Khaled Abou El Fadl. I would argue that Indonesians are discussing these writers more than anyone else in the Muslim world. ... They're also reading Frankfurt School types, like Habermas. People know them. People know these debates about civil society." In Mr. Feener's eyes, however, there are important differences between these rich Indonesian debates and the ijtihad model put forward by Mr. Khan and his allies. In Indonesia, he says, "the basic approach that many of these folks take to Islamic law is by diving very, very deep into the historical tradition of Muslim interpretations. That is, they look at the debates that scholars have held among themselves over the last 1,200 years. The idea is to find places within the tradition -- variant opinions within the tradition -- that can be further developed, because their day has come. Islamic literature preserves this diversity of tradition." The push toward ijtihad, by contrast, neglects the richness of Islamic legal history, in Mr. Feener's view. "This has been signaled by many in Indonesia as a kind of arrogance," he says. "The notion that you can see clearly the will of God in the seventh century in a way that all of these distinguished jurists who came before you couldn't. ... Imagining that you and you alone can see what was going on in the time of the Prophet has historically lent itself to a kind of authoritarianism in Islamic speech." Mr. Khan, meanwhile, insists that the most urgent danger of authoritarianism lies in entrusting Islamic thought and interpretation to an elite corps of scholars and jurists. "There are some serious issues that Muslims have to deal with," he says. "One of them is that they have to reach a conclusion that shura is binding. Right now many scholars say, 'You have to consult,' but they don't really mean it. Shura has to be binding, otherwise the governance is not legitimately Islamic." Mr. Khan acknowledges that his is very much a minority view. He is nonetheless excited about the current intellectual climate. "Two weeks ago I was at the Stanley Foundation and one-third of my audience was Muslims," he says. "Afterward we spent the whole night having a Muslim-Muslim dialogue. We disagreed about everything. But we did come to consensus on one point -- and that is that the discussions are getting more sophisticated. There is no doubt about it." From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:21:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:21:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE Letters: The Role of Islamic Law Message-ID: CHE Letters: The Role of Islamic Law The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.8 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i31/31a04706.htm LETTERS TO THE EDITOR The Role of Islamic Law To the Editor: In [3]"Who Owns Islamic Law?" (The Chronicle, February 25), David Glenn writes: "For outsiders, it is tempting to caricature this debate as a contest between Taliban-style radicals and Western-style liberals. ... But the terrain is actually far more complex than that. There are dozens of strains of traditionalist and liberal thought in the Muslim world, each looking toward different conceptions of Shariah and drawing on different elements of Islamic history and jurisprudence." Entirely missing from this account is the point that many insiders in the so-called "Muslim world" regard Islamic law as a pointless, archaic, and oppressive irrelevance. From this perspective, the debate between competing schools of Islamic jurisprudence is a disingenuous exercise that evades fundamental issues. Why, exactly, are we obliged to take orders from a coercive ultimatum giver in the heavens? And why are we obliged to take seriously those who insist that we must do so? Neither question comes up in Mr. Glenn's article, even by implication. The assumption is simply that Muslims must be governed by some variant of Islamic law; the question is which one. In compliance with this axiom, Mr. Glenn's interlocutors reserve criticism not for their preposterous metaphysical constructions, but for secularism: The "difficulty," we are airily told, is that "secularism" has been "thoroughly discredited in the Muslim world." A curious claim. ... The question is not "who owns Islamic law?" The question is whether Islamic law owns us. ... Irfan Khawaja Adjunct Professor of Philosophy College of New Jersey Ewing, N.J. Executive Director Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society New York From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:22:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:22:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stanley Fish: On Balance Message-ID: Stanley Fish: On Balance The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.1 http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/04/2005040101c.htm All in the Game An inside look at the politics of academic careers Recently, the Supreme Court once again took up the question of whether it is permissible under the establishment clause of the First Amendment to display representations of the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other public spaces. At issue is the relationship between those displays and the "Lemon test" -- the legacy of Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 ruling that, in at least one interpretation, bars the state from engaging in activities that endorse or promote religion. In the course of a long legal journey that included suits, injunctions, petitions, decisions, and appeals, those in favor of the displays argue that their purpose is secular not religious. The Ten Commandments, they say, are one (although not the only) source of the values and traditions upon which this country was founded. Therefore to display them in a public place is merely to recognize that history, and to provide a moment of education (not proselytizing) for passers-by. In response to the findings of a district court that the Commandments and some accompanying documents were chosen only because of their obvious "religious references," officials of the two Kentucky counties involved in the latest case modified the display, adding to it political texts, patriotic texts, song lyrics, and pictures. The idea was to surround the religiously charged materials with materials obviously secular, on the theory that, so surrounded, the religiosity of the suspect documents would be muted and even negated. That strategy (which may or may not prove successful; we'll have to wait and see) is taken from the landmark cases County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (l989) and Lynch v. Donnelly (1984). In Allegheny, the court ruled that a stand-alone cr?che placed in the county courthouse in Pittsburgh "has the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message." But in the same decision the court said that a menorah, placed outside a government building and flanked by a Christmas tree and a sign saluting liberty, "does not have an effect of endorsing religious faith." In Lynch, Justice O'Connor wrote that a cr?che displayed in Pawtucket, R.I., along with teddy bears, candy-striped poles, and an (ungrammatical) sign reading "Seasons Greetings," "does not communicate a message that the government intends to endorse the Christian beliefs represented by the cr?che." The reason, she adds, is that "the overall holiday setting changes what viewers may fairly understand to be the purpose of the display -- as a typical museum setting . . . [which] negates any message of endorsement." I leave the issues raised by those cases to the court's deliberation. My interest is in the mechanism by which materials bearing substantive content (as in "Jesus Christ died for your sins") are turned into museum pieces, that is, into texts whose messages have been aestheticized or commercialized, in the case of the holiday setting (and did O'Connor forget the etymology of the word "holiday"?) -- with the result that they are no longer taken seriously as texts by spectators or readers. It is not simply that the "museum setting" negates the message of endorsement; it negates any message, and that is its purpose. The name for this transmogrification is balance: If you want to take the edge off or pull the sting from a message that may prove provocative and controversial, balance it with other messages that are either bland or differently provocative. In that way no one can accuse you of endorsing or saying or meaning anything. Doing the dance of balance indemnifies you from any criticism, except the criticism that you stand for nothing in particular, which will hardly be received as criticism given that standing for something particular, or being perceived to stand for something particular, is what you are trying to avoid. Of course you could always say that what you are standing for and indeed standing up for is the First Amendment. That really sounds good, but more often than not it is just a fancy way of running away from the real issues that might be debated if balance had not become your new theology. That is why balance is such an attractive option for administrators when someone like Ward Churchill comes to town, or threatens to. An administrator in that situation can take his or her cue from Bill Maher who invited Churchill to appear on his program Real Time but then paired him with the brother of someone who had been killed in the assault on the World Trade Center. That is genius and a balancer's dream. Maher gets to defend free inquiry and to display his compassion for the victims of an atrocity at the same time. He comes off looking reasonable, fair, and, yes, balanced, while both Churchill and the victim's brother look a bit extreme. What administrator could wish for more? Obviously, balance can be very useful and I have employed it myself, when making up search committees or appointing members of a task force. But useful as it might prove, balance is not a real value. It is a strategy and as such is always political in nature. That is, balance is not the answer to an intellectual question; it is the attempt to evade or blunt an intellectual question. You resort to it not in response to the imperative of determining truth, but in response to pressures that originate more often than not from nonacademic constituencies. That is surely the case with respect to the demand that a college or university faculty should display balance, in its hiring practices or in its tenure decisions or in its course offerings or in the materials assigned by individual instructors. In none of those instances is balance a legitimate educational goal. Take the insistence that faculties be balanced so that there is a proportionate number of conservatives and liberals. That is the least defensible form of balance -- called "intellectual diversity" by its proponents, but is really affirmative action for conservatives -- because it assumes a relationship and even an exact correlation between one's performance in the ballot box and one's performance in the classroom. There is no such correlation: The politics relevant to academic matters are the politics of academic disciplines, and the fault lines of those politics -- disputes between quantitative and qualitative social scientists, for example -- do not track the fault lines of the national divide between Republicans and Democrats. Thus it is not a coherent argument to say that students will benefit from having conservative as well as liberal professors; for with respect to the different approaches to a topic or a subject, party affiliation is not a predictor of which approach a professor will favor. One might respond by pointing out that our nonacademic commitments and affiliations -- to religions, political agendas, ethnic origins, regional loyalties, sports teams -- will have, to a great extent, formed the person who enters the classroom, but that is an argument of determinism that is belied by every "tenured radical" (and there are many) who is on the "conservative" side in the battles of his or her discipline. It is always possible to draw a line backward from the views you currently hold to the life events that preceded them; but preceding does not mean producing, and the line cannot be drawn in the reverse direction in a way that suggests that if you attended such and such a school, or read such and such a book, or underwent such and such a conversion, you would inevitably come out on this or that side of an academic debate. Neither the dire consequences that supposedly come along with a predominantly liberal faculty nor the good consequences that would come along with a "redress" of the "imbalance" exist. The only thing you would get were you to enforce a political balance of persons hired or promoted would be a politicized university. The same holds for the requirement that a curriculum be balanced between traditional and avant-garde courses. The courses a department ends up teaching will be a function of many things -- the kind of college or university it inhabits, the composition of the student body, the direction the discipline is taking. All of those are academic considerations, and in response to them a department might well have a balance of traditional and avant-garde courses; not, however, as a goal and by design, but as an unintended consequence of legitimate educational decisions. And, finally, balance is not something an instructor should aim for when assigning texts or making up a syllabus. An instructor should first figure out what he or she thinks important and central and then make his or her choices accordingly. There is absolutely no obligation to include materials from every corner of the disciplinary landscape; there is an obligation -- and it is the only one -- to include materials that are, according to your intellectual judgment, relevant. I teach Milton as a poet whose aesthetic is inseparable from his theology, and that conviction about Milton dictates the materials I assign and the questions I introduce and entertain. I am aware, of course, that there are other approaches to Milton -- psychoanalytic, Marxist, historicist, feminist -- and while representatives of those approaches make occasional cameo appearances in my class, they are, at best, supporting actors and, more likely, negative examples -- examples, that is, of interpretive directions I consider wrong. I see no reason to include what I take to be wrong interpretations simply because they are there; no reason, that is, except for one imposed on me from the outside and with political, not educational, motives. To be sure, educational motives might in some instances lead me to choose balance as an organizing principle; perhaps I am teaching a survey of critical approaches. But while balance might be the answer to the question of what's the best way of accomplishing what I'm after in the classroom, balance can never, in and of itself, be what I am after; unless, that is, I want to trade in the academic life for a frankly political one. Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, writes a monthly column on campus politics and academic careers. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:23:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:23:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: (Mafia): Great mobility Message-ID: Great mobility The Times Literary Supplement, 5.1.30 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108012&window_type=print Federico Varese MAFIA WIFE. My story of love, murder, and madness. By Lynda Milito and Reg Potterton. 306pp. HarperCollins. ?18.99. 0 0662 1261 8 AMERICAN MAFIA. A history of its rise to power. By Thomas Reppetto. 318pp. John MacRae. ?14.99. 0 805 07210 1 TAKEDOWN. The fall of the last Mafia empire. By Rick Cowan and Douglas Century. 384pp. Berkeley Publishing Group. Paperback, ?4.99. 0 425 19299 7 In 1953, Daniel Bell, the Columbia University sociologist, wrote a sentence that resonates to this day in the field of mafiology. "Unfortunately for a good story - and the existence of the Mafia would be a whale of a story - neither the (1951 Kefauver) Senate Crime Committee, nor Kefauver in his book, presented any real evidence that the Mafia exists as a functioning organization." What the Committee revealed, Bell argued, is that gambling is a basic American institution. When and where gambling is legal, legitimate entrepreneurs rather than gangsters run it. Unsavoury characters do exist, he conceded, but what Senator Kefauver and his moral majority failed to see was that the "entire gangdom" was seeking to become quasi-respectable and establish a place for itself in American life. For mobsters, who by and large had immigrant roots, organized crime was nothing but a "queer ladder for social mobility". Bell concluded that the Mafia was a "legend" invented by the media, the main culprits at his time of writing being two pulp journalists, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, who penned a now largely forgotten 1950 book, Chicago Confidential. Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, possibly the most influential depiction of the American Mafia, candidly admits in his memoirs that he never met a real honest-to-god gangster in his life. Though he knew the gambling world pretty well, he wrote The Godfather entirely from research, which included the likes of Lait and Mortimer. Though he never tried to fool anybody, Puzo managed to dupe the real thing: After the book became "famous", I was introduced to a few gentlemen who related to the material. They were flattering. They refused to believe that I had never been in the rackets. They refused to believe that I had never had the confidence of a Don. But all of them loved the book. The Godfather movies started appearing in 1972. Two years later, when VCRs were just beginning to enter American households, Louie Milito, husband of Lynda, the author of Mafia Wife, got a copy and watched it like six thousand times . . . . He could not pull himself away from the TV, he could not stop watching that stupid movie. A dozen times he told me "This movie is fantastic!" The guys who came to the house were all acting like Godfather actors, kissing and hugging . . . . There is additional proof that the Godfather trilogy influenced hoodlums: Robert Delaney, a detective who went undercover for two and a half years in Jersey City to collect evidence on the Bruno and Genovese families, testified to a 1981 Senate Committee that the mobsters he met saw the original movie as many as ten times. While dining at a restaurant, the son of Joe Adonis gave the waiter a pocketful of quarters and asked him to play continuously the theme music from the Godfather on the jukebox. "All through the dinner we listened to the same song, over and over." Startled, Senator Nunn wanted to make sure he understood: "Are you saying sometimes they go to the movie to see how they themselves are supposed to behave?". After answering in the affirmative, Officer Delaney added, "they had a lot of things taught to them through the movie. They try to live up to it. The movie was telling them how". (In The Sicilian Mafia, Diego Gambetta has first explained why mobsters take their cues from movies.) The most recent Mafia fiction, The Sopranos, is a self-consciously referential TV show which depicts the lives of a fictional group of New Jersey mafiosi running, among other things, a rubbish removal company. Allusions to classic Mafia movies abound in The Sopranos: in one episode a character mutters the line, "just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in", while in another someone knows his destiny is "to sleep with the fishes". Mafia Wife is advertised by the publisher as "a true Sopranos-like portrait of a life most of us cannot imagine". Lynda Milito and Reg Potterton suggest that Milito's family provided a model for the fictional Sopranos and offer as proof the fact that Louie Milito, a member of the Gambino family, and his wife were portrayed by the Sopranos actors Michael Imperioli and Katherine Narducci in the best-forgotten Witness to the Mob (1988). In this postmodern whirlwind, Daniel Bell's claim about the fictive nature of the Mafia is arresting. Might it not be possible that the Mafia is an invention and that some lowlifes exploit our fascination with the mob by doubling as movie consultants and street-level entrepreneurs servicing the American consumer industry? One answer to this suggestion comes from Thomas Reppetto. His American Mafia starts and ends with the hearings of the Kefauver Committee, the first Senate hearings ever to be televised. In between, Reppetto presents a chronicle of the Mafia from the 1880s to the 1950s. He dispels the notion that the American Mafia is the product of a conspiracy originating in Sicily, an idea that was entertained by some members of the Senate Committee (and by nobody else since), and argues instead that it arose primarily out of socioeconomic conditions to be found in the US. Why have Italian gangsters been more successful than their Irish and Jewish counterparts? For Reppetto, their "business-like approach" - which he understands to be a feature of the culture of southern Italy - equipped Italian Americans for success in organized crime. Despite their reputation for violence, they eschewed mayhem in favour of "rational methods", discipline and cooperation. "They parcelled out territories and adopted rules to provide for arbitration disputes, they established national associations to promote common interests and when they passed from the scene, their organizations remained, lasting to the present." The empire-builders and the peacemakers who used violence sparingly, including John Torrio, Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano, are applauded - the only feature setting them apart from John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan being the illegal nature of their business. On the other hand, Reppetto has a disparaging assessment of Al Capone, the mastermind of the 1929 St Valentine's Day massacre of seven men in a Chicago garage and allegedly of some 500 other murders. American Mafia, mostly based on secondary material, contains some inaccuracies and does not fulfil the promise of revealing significant new facts. Reppetto is at his best when he explains the intricacies of US law enforcement - local, state and federal - and the impact of legal and police reforms on the fight against organized crime. Yet he fails to tell us whether there is something distinctive about the American Mafia. Although his general premiss is that Italians are good organizers (against character, I would add), he never spells out what they actually do in the markets that they organize. After fifteen chapters, we are still not clear whether there is a difference between the gambler, the bootlegger, the drug dealer and the mobster, or whether the Mafia has ever existed as a functioning organization. The first look at the inner workings of the American Mafia was provided in 1963 by Joe Valachi, a disgruntled soldier in the Genovese crime family. For the first time, the police, scholars and the public alike heard the words "Cosa Nostra" and were told that an internal hierarchy and specific rules of behaviour governed the lives of members of a distinctive secret organization. Soldier, capo-decina, captain, underboss, consigliere and boss became permanent additions to the technical vocabulary of mafiology. Most significantly, Valachi revealed the existence of an entry ritual that is shared by Mafia families across the country and strongly resembles the ritual of the Sicilian Mafia. By failing to appreciate Valachi's testimony, Reppetto's book reads like a long and unfocused catalogue of murders, mayhem and the occasional restraint observed by individuals with surnames ending in vowels. There is more to the Mafia than a secret organization. Takedown: The fall of the last Mafia empire is the captivating and enlightening story of Rick Cowan, a young NYPD policeman who penetrated the Mafia-run wastedisposal cartel in New York in the mid-1990s. He assumed the identity of "Danny Benedetto" and began passing as a manager of a legitimate company, Chamber Paper Fibres, owned for almost a century by the Benedetto family. His three-year penetration of the industry eventually led to a sweeping 114-count indictment. Seventeen individuals, four trade associations and twenty-three companies were charged with a list of crimes ranging from attempted murder to bribery, arson and anti-trust violations. Assets worth around $268 million were seized and all defendants either pleaded guilty or were found guilty after trial. Italian carters had been picking up the rubbish of New York since the nineteenth century. By the middle of the twentieth century, waste disposal had turned into a multi-million dollar business (in 1995 it was estimated at $1.5 billion per year). Garbage had become the Italians' ladder for social mobility, as Daniel Bell had argued in the case of gambling. One executive who features in the Cowan investigation owns more than forty buildings in lower Manhattan while another runs a fashionable restaurant in TriBeCa and has been honoured by the Catholic Church with the title of Knight of Malta. Behind such multimillionaires and their garbage empires stands the Mafia. In 1956, the City of New York closed a loophole that allowed commercial establishments in residential areas to have their garbage collected for free by the Department of Sanitation. Overnight, the rubbish collection of more than 50,000 businesses was up for grabs. The Mafia made an offer to existing carters to scare off new companies wishing to enter this lucrative market by the use of brute violence. From the point of view of industry insiders, this was a valuable service: it amounted to protection against "harmful" outside competition. But the Mafia did more - it developed a complex system of informal "property rights" over lucrative addresses in the five boroughs. In this twisted economy, a firm's value was not based on the trucks it owned and its reputation for good service but on the number of addresses that had been assigned to it by the cartel. Addresses could be bought and sold from cartel members. Behind the facade of respectable trade associations, a Mafia-run tribunal settled the manifold disputes, or "beefs". The Mafia cartel has allowed removal companies to amass a fortune. According to industry estimates, the presence of the mob has meant on average a 40 per cent increase in prices. It also gave the Mafia considerable political clout: by controlling the unions, Cosa Nostra could halt rubbish collection and bring the city to a standstill, as happened in 1981. During the seventeen-day strike, Mayor Ed Koch had to declare a city-wide health emergency. Through economic upturns and downturns, forty police investigations and at least two murders, this extensive cartel operated until 1991, when a new city regulation led to a turbulent reorganization. For almost a century, the paper recycling industry had been separate from the waste removal industry. From 1991, however, every business in New York had to separate paper, glass and plastic from putrescible waste. Carters who controlled the commercial garbage pickups realized that it made sense to pick up valuable paper and cardboard too, and turf wars broke out all over town. The Benedetto firm had operated undisturbed in the recycling industry for generations but began feeling the full heat of cartel members who wanted to take over its collection addresses. In retaliation, the Benedettos started "stealing" commercial waste addresses by offering a 40 per cent discount to establishments such as the New York Times, the Bank of New York and the United Nations. Contrary to what Milito claims in her book ("people like Louie did a lot of damage, no question, but mostly they did it to themselves, not to ordinary Americans"), workers for the Benedetto firms - including CEO Sal Benedetto - were threatened and assaulted, their trucks burned and stolen. One of the Benedetto drivers, a Puerto Rican immigrant who had taken his eight-year-old daughter to work with him in the Bronx that day, was left bleeding and in a coma, his skull cracked open and his spleen ruptured. To this day, he is unable to work. In an act of courage that Cowan and Douglas Century rightly underscore, Sal Benedetto, a jovial, overweight Lou Costello type in his mid-fifties, agreed to let Cowan pose as his cousin and negotiate entry of the Benedettos into the cartel. Because of his cooperation with authorities, "Sal Benedetto knows he's got a target on his head for the rest of his life". Cowan and Century take the reader into the world of New York carters, with their language, rituals, clubs, Christmas parties, Association meetings, as well as their duplicity, callousness and lack of moral scruples. The authors describe the sophisticated system used to resolve "beefs" and show how Danny's Mob protector deflected the more absurd claims of cartel members against the Benedettos. For instance, some carters wanted the Benedettos to compensate them for contracts obtained over a century. In a convergence of reality and fiction, one section of the book details the dispute "Danny" had with the firm who used to "own" the rubbish collection for the television company HBO, which produces The Sopranos. What Bell labelled a legend, Takedown portrays in full: made members of Mafia families, who call themselves "administrators", oversee the sharing of territories and the rudimentary yet effective system to settle disputes, try to minimize the recourse to violence but use it ruthlessly when they deem it necessary. Pace Reppetto, in this world, vicious violence goes hand-in-hand with "rational methods" and "business-like approach", and mafiosi are successful largely because they belong to the organization. Contrary to the Weberian vision of a rigid bureaucracy, the Mafia is a virtual organization with no single address and its rules can sometimes be broken with impunity by those who command more violent resources. It is far from perfect, but it is functioning. As the famous line in Goodfellas goes, "the organization offers protection for the kinds of guys who can't go to the cops. They're like the police department for wiseguys". At the height of a dispute with cartel members, "Dan Benedetto" was invited for a tuna fishing weekend off Long Island by a man who was in line for membership in the Genovese family. When he declined, the Mafioso mused: "Too bad. We put you at the front of the boat and have you sayin' the Hail Mary" - a not so subtle reference to Fredo's unfortunate end in The Godfather II. Although they take their cues from fiction, the gangdom is real enough. It might not be a whale of a story, but it is a story worth telling. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:24:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:24:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Editorial: Our Unnecessary Insecurity Message-ID: Our Unnecessary Insecurity The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Our Unnecessary Insecurity http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/opinion/20sun1.html "Sept. 11 changed everything," the saying goes. It is striking, however, how much has not changed in the three and a half years since nearly 3,000 people were killed on American soil. The nation's chemical plants are still a horrific accident waiting to happen. Nuclear material that could be made into a "dirty bomb," or even a nuclear device, and set off in an American city remains too accessible to terrorists. Critical tasks, from inspecting shipping containers to upgrading defenses against biological weapons, are being done poorly or not at all. Costly as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were in lives, the death toll from a chemical, biological or nuclear attack could be far, far greater. A nation as open and complex as ours can never be totally safe from such dangers. But there is a great deal that can be done, without compromising our basic liberties, to eliminate obvious openings for terrorist attacks. The biggest obstacles to making the nation safer have been lack of political will and failure to carry out the most effective policies. The Bush administration and Congress have been reluctant to provide the necessary money - even while they are furiously reducing revenue with tax cuts. The funds that are available are often misdirected. And Washington has caved to pressure from interest groups, like the chemical industry, that have fought increased security measures. Most of all, the government has failed to lay out a broad strategy for making the nation more secure. Among the most troubling vulnerabilities that have yet to be seriously addressed: Chemical Plants After Sept. 11, the Environmental Protection Agency identified 123 chemical plants that could, in a worst-case attack, endanger one million or more people. There is an urgent need for greater action to protect them. But the chemical industry, a major Bush-Cheney campaign contributor, has bitterly fought needed safeguards. In her recent book "It's My Party Too," the former administrator of the E.P.A., Christie Whitman, said that chemical industry lobbyists thwarted the reasonable safety rules that she and the Department of Homeland Security tried to impose. Nuclear Materials A nuclear attack in an American city is the ultimate nightmare. The desire, on the part of the terrorists, is there: Osama bin Laden has declared acquisition of nuclear weapons to be a religious duty. Fortunately, there are considerable logistical and technological hurdles to terrorists' setting off a nuclear device. But it is far from impossible, and a so-called dirty bomb, which disperses radioactive material without a nuclear explosion, could be less of a challenge to make. The key to prevention is identifying and securing nuclear weapons and materials, especially in the former Soviet Union. Nuclear Power Plants There are more than 100 nuclear reactors producing energy in the United States. Many of them are in heavily populated areas. Some may be vulnerable to a suicide attack from the air, particularly if a plane managed to crack the wall around the pool of spent fuel, causing a fire that would send clouds of toxic gas into the atmosphere. Setting off a truck bomb could also have a devastating effect. While the plants are protected by armed guards, not all of those teams are of the highest quality. If the government can federalize airport luggage checkers, it should be able to provide the same consistency to security around nuclear power plants. Port Security One of the greatest threats to national security is the possibility that a weapon of mass destruction could be smuggled in on one of the millions of shipping containers that arrive from overseas every year. The government is doing more than it once did to inspect these containers, but there is still far too little money and manpower devoted to this crucial task. Hazardous Waste Transport Millions of tons of highly toxic chemicals and nuclear waste are shipped by railroad and truck, much of it through or near densely populated areas. The District of Columbia Council recently adopted a temporary ban on such shipments after a Naval Research Laboratory scientist warned that if a 90-ton tanker car carrying chlorine crashed during a Fourth of July celebration at the National Mall, it could kill 100,000 people in 30 minutes. But it makes no sense that one municipality is protecting itself against a worst-case situation while in other parts of the country, regulation of the transport of hazardous materials remains woefully inadequate. Bioterrorism The anthrax attacks of the fall of 2001 only began to suggest the devastating power of biological weapons. While officials are all too aware of the mortality rate that would follow an attack with weapons-grade anthrax, smallpox or plague, controls are still spotty. Lethal pathogens are too often stored in insecure laboratories. Given these serious gaps, it is disturbing to see limited resources used as inefficiently as they have been. Fighting the last war, the Bush administration is devoting far too great a proportion of domestic security spending to preventing the hijacking of commercial aircraft. For a long time, it engaged in a draconian crackdown on academic visas, while the nation's borders - the likeliest entry points for future terrorists - remained as porous as ever. And with the stakes literally life or death, the pork-barrel politics that have controlled domestic security funds - giving Wyoming more per capita than New Jersey - are simply unconscionable. While the administration does too little on one hand, it overreacts on the other, and seems oblivious to how its excesses are actually making America less safe. The abuse of prisoners at Guant?namo Bay and the refusal to abide by either international law or basic constitutional principles do little to protect the nation, but make it harder for us to enlist much-needed allies, and provide powerful talking points for terrorist recruiting drives. Many Americans have a false sense of security because there has not been a terrorist assault in the United States since the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were attacked. But that may have less to do with terrorists' intents than their timeline. Eight years went by between the 1993 attack that failed to bring down the World Trade Center and the one that finally did. Looking back, we feel a natural frustration at all the warning signs that were ignored before Sept. 11. There is now a wide array of government reports, private studies and even best-selling books alerting us to remaining vulnerabilities. If the United States is hit by another attack at one of those points, we will have only ourselves to blame. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:25:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:25:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here Message-ID: The New York Times > Technology > Tired of TiVo? Beyond Blogs? Podcasts Are Here http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/technology/19podcasting.html February 19, 2005 ["Are you ready to listen to a podcast?" is appended.] GRAND FORKS, N.D., Feb. 16 - From a chenille-slipcovered sofa in the basement of their friend Dave's mom's house at the edge of a snow-covered field, Brad and Other Brad, sock-footed pioneers in the latest technology revolution, are recording "Why Fish," their weekly show. Clutching a microphone and leaning over a laptop on the coffee table, they praise the beauty of the Red River, now frozen on the edge of town, and plug an upcoming interview with a top-ranked professional walleye fisherman. Then they sign off. "I'm Brad" says Brad, in real life, Brad Durick, a 29-year-old television advertising salesman. "And I'm Brad," says Other Brad, a 44-year-old newspaper writer, Brad Dokken. "Until next week, keep your hook in the water, keep your line tight and keep it fun." Their show, mostly ad-libbed, is a podcast, a kind of recording that, thanks to a technology barely six months old, anyone can make on a computer and then post to a Web site, where it can be downloaded to an [1]iPod or any MP3 player to be played at the listener's leisure. On an average day, about 100 people download "Why Fish" from its Web site. That is not a huge audience, but two fishermen can dream. Some popular podcasters say they get thousands of downloads a day. Since August, when Adam Curry, a former MTV video jockey, and David Winer, an early Web log writer, developed the podcasting technology, 3,075 podcasts have sprung up around the world, according to a Web site, [2]Ipodder.org, that offers downloads of podcasting software. From "Say Yum," a California couple's musings about food and music, to "Lifespring," a Christian show whose creator said he had a vision to podcast, to "Dutch Cheese and American Pie," by a Dutch citizen planning to move to the United States, these shows cover a broad variety of topics. Podcasts are a little like reality television, a little like "Wayne's World," and are often likened to [3]TiVo, which allows television watchers to download only the programs they want to watch and to skip advertising, for radio or blogs but spoken. And as bloggers have influenced journalism, podcasters have the potential to transform radio. Already many radio stations, including National Public Radio and Air America, the liberal-oriented radio network, have put shows into a podcast format. And companies are seeing the possibilities for advertising; [4]Heineken, for example, has produced a music podcast. Inevitably, politicians are taking note, too. Donnie Fowler Jr. put out "FireWire Chats" by podcast in his bid to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saying Democrats had to embrace new technology if they wanted to reach a grass-roots audience. Still, most podcasts are made by people like the two Brads, who record from basements, bedrooms or bathrooms, and devote their shows to personal passions. In Southern California, three men have hit the Top 50 on [5]Podcastalley.com, a podcast tracker, with "Grape Radio," a "Sideways"-like program about wine. Their expertise? They drink wine and like to talk about it. There are music podcasts - cover songs, punk and "The Worst Music You've Ever Heard." There are many religious podcasts, nicknamed Godcasts. Then there is "Five Hundy by Midnight," a Midwest gambler's musings on Las Vegas. There are podcasts on sports and on bicycling, on agriculture and on politics. There are poetry podcasts and technology podcasts. In Northern California, Devan and Kris Johnson, young newlyweds, offer "Say Yum," recording themselves making dinner and playing music after work. (A snippet: "I hope everybody gets to eat avocados.") But they are not even the first of their genre; one of the first and most popular podcasts is recorded by a young married couple, talking about their lives, and sex lives, from their farmhouse in Wayne, Wis. There are even podcasts about podcasting and several Web sites, like Podcastalley.com and [6]Podcastbunker.com, that review and rank podcasts and provide links to them. People who study consumer behavior say the rapid growth of podcasts reflects people's desire for a personalized experience, whether creating a stuffed animal at a Build-a-Bear store or creating playlists for their iPods. "It's about control," said Robbie Blinkoff, an anthropologist at Context-Based Research, a consulting firm in Baltimore that has done several studies on how technology changes human behavior. "Making something of their own, feeling like they've put it together, there's lots of self-confidence in that," Mr. Blinkoff said. The potential audience for podcasting is huge; Apple alone has sold 10 million iPods in the last three years, about half of those in the last few months of last year. And already, several podcasts have found sponsors. Dave Whitesock, who under the show name Dave Miller records the "Miller Report," a daily podcast from Grand Forks, got a limousine company to help pay for his report in exchange for a daily mention: "For when you need a stretch limo in Grand Forks." While some podcasters take hours to edit their shows, many simply embrace dead air and the "ums" that come with what Mr. Whitesock called "Live to Hard Drive." Brian Race, a radio station manager in Georgia who runs [7]Christianpodcasting.com on the side, picked up his cellphone in the middle of a recent podcast to discover his mother on the line. He kept on recording. The rawness is part of the appeal. "Everyone says, 'They're amateurs, they're amateurs, they're amateurs,' but sometimes, frankly, it's more interesting to listen to someone who's not a professional but who has something genuine or interesting to say," said Michael W. Geoghegan, an insurance marketer in California and the host of "Reel Reviews," a movie review podcast intended for people heading to the video store. Mr. Geoghegan said he had "multiple thousands" of downloads a day. He does no editing. "People stumble when they speak," he said. "I think the listener appreciates when it's not superpolished as it is on a commercial station." Podcasting has tended to be contagious; after Mr. Geoghegan stumbled on a Web site about podcasting in September and started his show, he persuaded three friends who like wine to start "Grape Radio." Mr. Whitesock, too, stumbled on a Web site about podcasting, and persuaded the two Brads to do a fishing show, and then another friend to do a movie review show. This month, they added a music show in which a radio disc jockey for a local [8]Clear Channel station plays local music he would not get to play on the air, and persuaded the part-time mayor of Grand Forks, Dr. Michael Brown, an obstetrician, to do a monthly show, and put his State of the City address on podcast, too. "We can reach people in the rest of the world who might say, 'Hey, Grand Forks is a great place to move to,' " said Dr. Brown, who said his shows had been downloaded by about 100 people, including some who wrote in with complaints. "And technologically advanced young people say, 'I can stay in Grand Forks.' There is a place for them here." In California, the Johnsons of "Say Yum" added clip-on microphones to their usual after-work routine to create their show. "I'm usually cooking, and Devan's usually playing music, so we just chat over the music," Ms. Johnson said. Brian Ibbott had always loved making mixed tapes and CD's. His podcast, "Coverville," has become one of Podcastalley's most popular, and in many ways it is like a real radio show, without the advertising. Sunday is all-request day, and listeners can call in their requests. Mr. Ibbott, 35, plays back their recorded requests before the songs. "I don't know that I'm doing it so much as a protest against radio as I am to develop the radio show I always wanted to hear," said Mr. Ibbott, who lives in Colorado. The last great radio station nearby, he said, was bought out by Clear Channel. "And they got the same playlist everyone else did." He pays a few hundred dollars to Ascap and BMI to allow him to play copyrighted music, he said, and is negotiating with the Recording Industry Association of America, which has filed lawsuits to prevent unauthorized music downloading. Mr. Ibbott, like the Johnsons and most podcasters, work in technology jobs. But then there are some like Steve Webb, who fits his Christian show "Lifespring" in between his regular job as a windshield repairman. He was on a Cub Scout trip with his son, he said, when he woke with a vision that he was to do a podcast. "I felt it was leading in the Lord," said Mr. Webb, 50. "I felt he wanted to have a voice in this new media. After all, the Gutenberg Bible was the first thing printed on the printing press." Technology watchers say that like blogs, some podcasts will be widely heard and influential, while others may end up with no more reach than local access cable programs. But many podcasters, like the two Brads, say they are simply happy to have an outlet for their passion. As Mr. Durick said, "You love to talk fish if you're a fisherman." References 1. http://tech2.nytimes.com/gst/technology/techsearch.html?st=p&cat=&query=ipod&inline=nyt-classifier 2. http://Ipodder.org/ 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=TIVO 4. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=HINKY 5. http://Podcastalley.com/ 6. http://Podcastbunker.com/ 7. http://Christianpodcasting.com/ 8. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=CCU -------------------- The New York Times > Technology > Are You Ready to Listen to a Podcast? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/technology/19podbox.html [1]P odcastalley.com and [2]Ipodder.org offer good overviews of podcasting and links to podcasting software. They, and most podcast sites, also give instructions on how to listen to and download podcasts. [3]Podcastbunker.com culls out the best of the podcasts and allows you to listen to 30-second snippets. Here is a sample of podcasts: [4]Graperadio.com - talk about wine [5]Sayyum.blogspot.com - cooking and music from a young newlyweds in Northern California [6]Grandforkscity.com - five podcasts from Grand Forks, N.D., including "Why Fish," the "Miller Report" and "The Mayor's Podcast" [7]ChristianPodcasting.com - Christian music and programming [8]Curry.com - the "[9]Daily Source Code," podcasting and other news, and musings, from Adam Curry, the podcasting developer and former MTV video jockey [10]Godcast.org - links to several Christian podcasts, including "Lifespring" [11]Mwgblog.com - "Reel Reviews," reviews of movies on DVD [12]Coverville.com - cover songs References 1. http://Podcastalley.com/ 2. http://Ipodder.org/ 3. http://Podcastbunker.com/ 4. http://Graperadio.com/ 5. http://Sayyum.blogspot.com/ 6. http://Grandforkscity.com/ 7. http://ChristianPodcasting.com/ 8. http://www.curry.com/ 9. http://dailysourcecode.com/ 10. http://Godcast.org/ 11. http://Mwgblog.com/ 12. http://Coverville.com/ From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:26:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:26:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Robert Frank: The Theory That Self-Interest Is the Sole Motivator Is Self-Fulfilling Message-ID: The New York Times > Business > Economic Scene: The Theory That Self-Interest Is the Sole Motivator Is Self-Fulfilling http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/business/17scene.html By ROBERT H. FRANK A NEW YORKER cartoon depicts a well-heeled, elderly gentleman taking his grandson for a walk in the woods. "It's good to know about trees," he tells the boy, before adding, "Just remember, nobody ever made big money knowing about trees." If the man's advice was not inspired directly by the economist's rational-actor model, it could have been. This model assumes that people are selfish in the narrow sense. It may be nice to know about trees, it acknowledges, but it goes on to caution that the world out there is bitterly competitive, and that those who do not pursue their own interests ruthlessly are likely to be swept aside by others who do. To be sure, self-interest is an important human motive, and the self-interest model has well-established explanatory power. When energy prices rise, for example, people are more likely to buy hybrid vehicles and add extra insulation in their attics. But some economists go so far as to say that self-interest explains virtually all behavior. As Gordon Tullock of the University of Arizona has written, for example, "the average human being is about 95 percent selfish in the narrow sense of the term." Is he right? Or do we often heed social and cultural norms that urge us to set aside self-interest in the name of some greater good? If the search is for examples that contradict the predictions of standard economic models, a good rule of thumb is to start in France. During my recent sabbatical in Paris, I encountered many such examples, but one in particular stands out. One mid-November afternoon, I asked my neighborhood wine merchant if he could recommend a good Champagne. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and my wife and I had invited a few American friends to our apartment for a turkey dinner. He just happened to have an excellent one on sale for only 18 euros. (Normal price, 24 euros.) Fine, I said, and then asked if he could also recommend a bottle of cassis, since I knew some of our guests would want a kir royale - a cocktail of cassis and Champagne. In that case, he said, I would have no need for the high-quality Champagne, because no one would be able to tell the difference once it was mixed with cassis. Well, then, what should I buy? He brought back a bottle that he said would be just right for the purpose. That particular Champagne, however, was not on sale. When he told me it was 20 euros per bottle - 2 euros more than the better one - an awkward pause ensued. Though I thought I knew the answer, I felt I had to ask whether a kir royale would taste worse if made with the better Champagne. He assured me it would not. And because I knew that some of us would be drinking our Champagne straight, I bought several bottles of the better one. He did not protest, but I could feel him reclassify me as yet another American barbarian. For many French, the logic of the self-interest model is trumped by an aesthetic principle about what Champagnes are right for specific applications. This particular principle leads to a better outcome over all, because it directs the best Champagne to the uses in which quality matters most. So even though I personally was better off for having ignored the merchant's advice (because I got to drink a better Champagne and spent less), at least some of the better Champagne I bought was wasted. France is, of course, not the only place in which the self-interest model's predictions fall short. Most Americans, for example, leave tips even after dining in restaurants they will never visit again. We take the trouble to vote in presidential elections, even though no single individual's vote has ever changed the outcome in any state. We make anonymous donations to charity. From society's perspective, our willingness to forgo self-interest in such instances leads to better outcomes than when we all act in a purely selfish manner. Does what we believe about human motivation matter? In an experimental study of private contributions to a common project, two sociologists from the University of Wisconsin, Gerald Marwell and Ruth Ames, found that first-year graduate students in economics contributed an average of less than half the amount contributed by students from other disciplines. Other studies have found that repeated exposure to the self-interest model makes selfish behavior more likely. In one experiment, for example, the cooperation rates of economics majors fell short of those of nonmajors, and the difference grew the longer the students had been in their respective majors. My point is not that my fellow economists are wrong to stress the importance of self-interest. But those who insist that it is the only important human motive are missing something important. Even more troubling, the narrow self-interest model, which encourages us to expect the worst in others, often brings out the worst in us as well. Perhaps the theories of human behavior embraced by other disciplines influence their practitioners in similar ways. A core principle of behavioral biology, for example, is that males are far more likely than females to engage in "extra-pair copulations." Does teaching this model year after year make male biologists more likely to stray? Several years ago, I attended a dinner with a group of biologists that included a married couple. After describing the research about how economics training appears to inhibit cooperation, I asked whether anyone had ever done a study of whether males in biology were more likely than scholars from other disciplines to be unfaithful to their partners. The uncomfortable silence that greeted my question made me wonder whether I had stumbled onto a data point relevant for such a study. But if biologists are like economists in being influenced by their own theories, they are different from us in another respect: Their most cherished hypothesis is much less likely than ours to be contradicted by the French. Robert H. Frank is an economist at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University and the author, most recently, of "What Price the Moral High Ground?" From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 8 19:28:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:28:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Chronicle Colloquy: (Summers) The Unsolvable Gender Equation in Mathematics Message-ID: The Unsolvable Gender Equation in Mathematics The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/03/math/ Wednesday, March 2, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time The topic Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, said at an economics conference in January that "intrinsic" differences in aptitude between the sexes may be an important reason that men dominate the science-and-engineering work force. The remarks sparked widespread protests, in and out of academe, and Mr. Summers quickly apologized. But a growing body of research suggests that there is some truth in his comments: That something in the brains of boys may predispose them to perform better on certain standardized tests of mathematical abilities. Hormones in women -- and in men -- apparently alter how well they can do particular cognitive tasks. And there may be biological differences that lead mathematically gifted men toward careers in science and engineering while pointing mathematically gifted women in other directions. The research, conducted by psychologists and education experts, bothers academics who brook no discussion of innate cognitive differences between the sexes, but many scientists consider it persuasive. One psychologist says that a blind devotion to the concept of equal abilities "gets in the way of figuring out what makes us tick." Other researchers, however, say that whatever biological factors exist, they pale in comparison to the pervasive social forces that push young women away from math courses and, later, from math careers. One female mathematician, who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, says, "I no longer ask why there are so few women in mathematics; I ask why there are so many. I can think of few male mathematicians who would have stayed in the field if they had faced the prejudice and discrimination female mathematicians deal with." What should we make of these conflicting views? What should colleges seeking to hire more women in math, the sciences, and engineering do differently? What role should academic departments play? Does Mr. Summers's experience suggest that research in this area is so highly charged as to be a risky career move? And do Mr. Summers's critics owe him an apology? ? [43]Primed for Numbers (3/4/2005) ? [44]Where's Larry? (3/4/2005) The guest David C. Geary, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, is the author of Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences (American Psychological Association, 1998). He suggests that evolution has led to innate differences in the abilities and interests of men and women, but he also says social forces play an important role in shaping how people develop. _________________________________________________________________ A transcript of the chat follows. _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): Welcome to The Chronicle's live chat regarding the gender gap in the math and science workforce in the United States. My name is Richard Monastersky and I wrote the article "Primed for Numbers," which ran in this week's issue of The Chronicle. The article explored some of the potential environmental and biological factors that might explain the gender gap. Our guest today is David C. Geary, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia and author of "Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences." This is a controversial topic and I've heard various reactions to the story, from people who appreciate it to others who are offended by it. Whatever your viewpoint, I encourage you to send in a question to Dr. Geary. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Frank Forman, U.S. Department of Education: What is the exact data-driven *positive* evidence FOR innate equality between the sexes regarding math and science ability? I am not asking this on behalf of the U.S. Dept. of Education, but it is a precise one. David C. Geary: This is an important question and brings up an essential point. There is no mathematics or science as we define it today in our evolutionary history. The academic fields of mathematics and the sciences emerged over the past 2,000 years and would not exist today without extensive social and cultural supports. For simple quantitative abilities that may have an inherent basis, there are no sex differences. However, spatial abilities and an intuitive understanding of tools and simple mechanics are likely to have an evolutionary history and these very basic abilities combined with enough training and basic intelligence contribute to the development of some competencies in mathematics and the sciences. Sex differences in these spatial and mechanical areas are related in part to prenatal exposure to male hormones. In this sense, any inherent sex differences are "remotely" related to mathematics and science. As for innate equality. Achievement in any area of mathematics and the sciences requires focus and intelligence, and there do not appear to be sex differences in average IQ, or intelligence. Of course, it is important to remember that all of these statements refer to group means and not individuals. Women who achieve in the mathematics and the sciences are very similar to their male peers in the same fields, in terms of mathematical ability, intelligence, and interest patterns. These groups are equal in many respects, but there are fewer women than men. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Patricia Schwarz: Why do so many men in science seem to believe that being completely empty of human feeling is the same thing as being completely filled with logic? David C. Geary: Many men in science, and this is also true but perhaps to a lesser extent of women in science, have a bias toward thinking about the world in terms of abstractions, and often focus more on mechanical rather than social things in the world. The brain and cognitive systems that allow for sensitivity to social (e.g., facial expressions) and emotional cues in others are almost certainly different than those brain and cognitive systems that allow sensitivity to mechanical aspects of the world. All of these are different than the systems that underlie logic and intelligence. In other words, in many cases they really don't understand people in the same way others do. This has social costs for them and those around them but focuses them on solving other types of problems that can ultimately benefit many people. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Marc Mayerson, UCLA: While there may be some indication that genetics may have a negative factor on accumulating an equivalent pool of potential female scientists and mathematicians, nevertheless a critical mass of female scientists and mathematicians DO obtain doctorates and apply for ladder positions, critical enough to equalize the staffing of even the most highly respected research universities. Can you agree that, at such point, genetics could not possibly affect the hiring and promotion process, and if so, how would you account for the dearth of female professors in science and mathematics departments? David C. Geary: I'd rather not say genetics, because it is a long way from gene products to a PhD in science. Still there do appear to be biological influences on some sex differences that contribute to this attainment. To your question: In absolute numbers, yes there are many talented women with PhDs in mathematics and the sciences that could staff many of these positions. But, if you have two male applicants for every female applicant and assumed that choices were not based on gender but on other factors such as content of research area, then the result would be more men than women in these positions. I would not like to see any type of quota on the numbers of men and women hired in these important positions. Rather, if the goal is to increase the number of women on mathematics and science faculties, then one potential solution is to create positions in subareas in which their are as many women as men, or more women than men. In the biological sciences, there are as many women (maybe more) primatologists as men. One way then - without any bias one way or the other to hire a man or woman - to increase the number of women on the biological faculty is to hire more primatologists. To get two women, you may have to make three hires (assuming an open search based solely on merit), but wealthy universities can afford to do this. These would be new faculty lines that do not take away from existing positions and thus would not create tension in the hiring department. I told know about mathematics, but there may be more women in number theory than in geometric areas. If so, create more positions in number theory. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Joseph B. Powell, UC Santa Barbara: Given that "rising" in any discipline is a thoroughly social process, e.g. in-group recognition, wouldn't any demonstrable differences in male and female achievement (presumably we are talking about a specific social-cultural group and not universal Male and Female)have more to do with the social history of female exclusion from math, science, and many other socially organized disciplines? David C. Geary: I don't believe that anyone who studies biologically-based sex differences believes that social influences are not enormously important, especially when it comes to long-term occupational choices and achievements. They clearly are. If your suggestion is correct, then we would not have seen significant increases in the number of women entering medical school, a clearly science-based occupation. Many of these women who choose to become physicians and many others who choose other, once male dominated fields, such as business could enter academic fields in mathematics and the sciences. And, more of them are than in past decades, but the gap in absolute numbers remains. Research on these choices suggest that mathematically- and scientifically capable women have broader and more socially-oriented interests than their more narrowly focused male peers. These interest patterns influence which in-groups are important to you and which are not, and appear to be influenced in part by hormones. In other words, many of the women who could enter the lab believe that other work settings, such as a hospital providing direct care, would be more satisfying. Long-term studies suggest that these women are just as happy with their choices as women who enter the academic world. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Ph. D student, College of William and Mary: No doubt there are intrinsic differences between men and women, but is that the primary reason that there are so few women in math and science. I believe that this is an easy excuse to avoid looking more closely at society and the educational system itself. Are we teaching and testing students in a manner that is fair and understandable to a variety of learning styles? Or do we just expect students to adapt to the dominant teaching methodology in a field? To whom does the dominant teaching methodologies and practices in science and math appeal to? Could science and math be taught more humanistically? Could students be encouraged to use and develop their minds in a more holistic way? Would that make a difference in our world? David C. Geary: It is not yet known the relative influences of biology and society on career choices. If we look at education rates, numbers of boys and girls in special education, and other indicators of not adapting well to the school environment, then one would have to conclude that schools are better serving girls than boys. Why more girls than boys in undergraduate programs, for instance? It is not a question of what students, boys or girls, find appealing. It is a question of what the most effective methods of instruction are, and whether these differ for boys and girls. I suspect that as you increase appeal you decrease effectiveness, or at least there is some type of trade off. The educational system in this country is undeserving both girls and boys, that is, resulting in much wasted potential in the name of catering to student-centered and often untested assumptions about learning styles. In any case, once we more fully understand how girls and boys think about and solve math and science problems and differences in these strategies as related to long-term outcomes, then we can begin to devise different ways to teach boys and girls. I suspect that for the most part, what is good for girls is good for boys, and vice versa. _________________________________________________________________ Question from carol Moore Lyndon state college: What is the growing body of information? David C. Geary: One of the most interesting and on going studies in this area is that of David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They continue to add to the empirical data base on similarities and differences in the career trajectories of gifted men and women who have the potential to succeed in mathematics and the sciences. As for sex differences in general, new research is published monthly in many different scientific journals. A literature search on PsychInfo to Biological Abstracts will reveal many, many studies. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Female professor, small university: Do we have sufficient data to provide answers to these important questions? Should we be investing time and energy in obtaining the biopsychological (including genetic and physiological) data required to answer these and related questions? David C. Geary: We have a lot of information and clues to many likely influences, biological and social. Yes, we should study long-term occupational outcomes of men and women, and if there are sex differences we should find out why. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Mary Anne Holmes, U-Nebraska-Lincoln: The old chestnut "mentally rotating three-dimensional objects" surfaces repeatedly when discussing whether there are innate differences between male and female cognitive abilities. How exactly do we measure the ability to "mentally rotate 3-dimensional objects"? Are we still measuring this in a darkened room with the subject and an examiner? Have the results been repeated? What do the results actually mean in terms of how humans learn and what humans can or cannot learn? Much is made of this difference, and I am not convinced that the method of measurement gives us any information that is useful. What, exactly, is being measured, and what, if anything, does it signify? David C. Geary: These are measured many ways. An often used test is a paper and pencil version of the procedure you mention. The results are VERY consistent across age ranges, cultures, and historical periods. New methods of testing navigation in a virtual or real, large scale 3-D maze reveal larger sex differences than this standard 3-D mental rotation test. _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): We're a little over halfway through the chat, so don't delay if you want to ask a question. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Tom, southern medical center: While I won't completely disregard the "genetic" factors that govern how men and women can think differently, I am interested in your comments on any reasons why some women seem to be successful in certain subdisciplines of the sciences (specifically biological and medical research) and not others (physical sciences). Even within the subdiscipline of medicine, there are certain areas where women (pediatrics) tend to excel better than men (surgery). David C. Geary: Great question. I suspect that much of the difference can be related to where women and men lie on a broad dimension of interests ranging from highly social to mechanical/theoretical. This maps onto a a broader interest in living things at one end and non-living things at the other. Women tend more toward the social/living things end, on average, and men toward the mechanical/non-living things men. I suspect that these differences any an evolutionary history, but won't elaborate here (see articles on my web page, which I'll post later). But, biologically and medicine map onto the living things end of the spectrum and physical sciences to the non-living spectrum. Both are very important! Pediatrics, I suspect, relates to women's greater interest in children and "whole organisms" and surgery toward the "parts" that is the "machinery" _________________________________________________________________ Question from Carol B. Muller, MentorNet & Stanford University: "A growing body of research suggests that genetic factors predispose women to avoid those fields..." Here's my question: Who is pushing this agenda? The reason I ask it is that this kind of statement represents a real misreading of the research findings and their limitations. The research cited in your background material has to do with test performance. Research over the last couple of decades has clearly shown that test performance can readily be influenced by environmental factors (see research on "stereotype threat," for example); a close reading of much of this kind of research shows fallacious inferences that children's test performance as 12-year-olds reflects "genetic" differences -- in 12 years of life, a huge amount of socialization has occurred, and social expectations influencing performance established. Furthermore, no study has shown any correlation between the extreme upper end of the distribution on mathematics test scores and professional success in mathematics and science fields. If we look at sex differences in the brain from birth, we find a number of hormonal differences. If what is meant is that testosterone has become the predominant factor in the social construction of fields like math, science, and engineering, with hyper-competition and bullying aggressive behavior the predominant norms in educational and work settings, then one could agree that "genetic factors predispose women to avoid these fields." But one might want to question, whether such behavioral norms are needed for scientific discovery and technology development, or perhaps a remnant of a society which historically severely limited women's opportunities to pursue education and employment despite their considerable talents and brainpower. Rich Monastersky (Moderator): As the person responsible for that sentence, I should probably explain it. The story discusses data that suggest there are biologically based gender differences in interests, which of course get modified heavily by cultural forces. But at one day old, boys show a preference for looking at mechanical mobiles over looking a human face, whereas girls show the opposite. Later in the story, I discuss some research results showing that mathematically gifted young women also tend to be more gifted (than their mathematically gifted male peers) in verbal skills. Not surprisingly, these exceptional young women have broad interests matching their broad abilities. They enter the math-and-science educational pipeline in lower numbers than mathematically gifted young men, who on average have narrower abilities and interests. Also, the data on students suggests that girls in high-school are more interested in careers that help people than are high-school boys. Has the prevailing culture influenced these choices? Obviously, the answer is yes. But there also seems to be some innate component to the differences in interest, which would account for the data from 1-day-old infants, and may also account for the higher verbal skills in mathematically gifted young women (although environment could also play a big role there, too). My story also discusses ways to attract more women--and men--with broad interests to enter the science track. _________________________________________________________________ David C. Geary: I agree with Rich's response. I might also note that test performance in high school and earlier does in fact predict long term success in many fields, including mathematics and sciences. And, so do some dimensions of personality and social background. Stereotype threat seems to be important but does not explain the gap, especially at the high end of the math distribution. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Andrew Mytelka, Chronicle of Higher Ed: Underlying some of the criticism of Lawrence Summers's comments seemed to be the sense that there are some subjects that are so sensitive -- so potentially hurtful, to individuals and to society -- that they should not be studied. If research could verify that "intrinsic" differences explain the gender disparity in math, and if such a finding could hobble the progress of women in the field, the thinking goes, then maybe the research should not be attempted. Similar things were said a decade ago, when The Bell Curve posited that black people were less intelligent than white people. But in the aftermath of 9/11, biological scientists have agreed that they should not conduct research that would create dangerous viruses or that would make existing microbes more lethal. Could the same policy be developed for research on race or gender? Do you think that would be wise -- or just an evasion of the truth? David C. Geary: Good question. Any "intrinsic" influences on sex differences will emerge whether we discuss their causes or not, and whether or not we understand these causes. Intrinsic does not mean unchangeable. If we understand biological influences on the expression of sex differences and how these influences interact with experience, social context, etc, then we may be in a better position to make change. Creating a culture in which researchers will be socially or otherwise (e.g., loss grant funding) punished for studying these differences will ensure that any intrinsic biases will be expressed in future generations. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Rich Monastersky: I've heard from a female mathematician who objects to this whole line of research. Her point is that 20 years ago, she had to battle prejudices based on incorrect "proof" of innate differences. For example, in the early 1980s, there were 13 boys to every girl who scored 700 on the math section of the SAT at age 13. At the time, that finding was used to show that there are genetic differences in math abilities between boys and girls. Now, that ratio is 2.8 to 1, a drop that reveals how important cultural factors are in influencing abilities. So should researchers who look at innate differences face an exceptional responsibility and burden of proof before they publish results? David C. Geary: Researchers should look at all potential influences on any phenomenon that is of importance. There is no doubt that schooling influences math and science achievement and that girls and women have made great strides in recent decades and will likely continue to do so. I don't have the raw data, but I wonder whether any of the change in the 13:1 to 2.8:1 ratio is related to change in test items or the recent recentering of the SAT (to adjust the mean back up to 500). As I understand recent changes, the number of correct items that produce a score of 700 is now lower, which will reduce the ratio without change at the high end. To know what is fully going on, we need to see raw test scores for the exact same items for the SAT in the 1980s and now. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Mike Fulford, Georgia Tech: Do colleges such as Harvard truly understand the power of the social constructs they have created throughout history in relation to gender, race, etc.? David C. Geary: You mean do people in high-profile institutions such as Harvard understand the potential social power they have with their statements and claims? Well, they certainly do now. What is unclear is whether these claims have real long-term effects on the career choices of gifted men and women. My bet is these budding stars have better things to do and aren't paying much attention to the debate. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Dianne, southern HBCU: What accounts for the increase in males from other countries in the math and sciences, even as students, and the drop in white males? David C. Geary: This one is easy. A very poor educational system in mathematics and the sciences in the US, especially in later grades and for gifted students. The relative proportion of US educated students, including white males, that can fill high-paying math/science jobs is decreasing as the number of these jobs is increasing. This creates an opportunity for well educated students, male or female, from other countries. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Don Williams, Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences: I am curious as to why this creates a firestorm when males score lower on other scales on standardized tests and in light of the downward trends in male participation and success in higher education? David C. Geary: Great question, I wonder the same thing. The magnitude of the advantage than boys and men have in some areas of math and in some areas of the sciences is about the same magnitude as the advantage that girls and women have on tests of writing ability. Girls and women also have an advantage on reading tests, but the gap is a bit smaller. As stated, there are now more women than men in undergraduate programs. If there are sex biases, they are working against boys and men too. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Emil Chuck, Duke University: Do any of these surveys take differences in international culture or education into account? David C. Geary: Yes. The magnitude of the sex difference in math varies across content areas and women in some countries outperform men in others. Within countries there is a small advantage for males, but this too varies. But, there does appear to be a consistent male advantage in math areas that require visualization and spatial abilities, especially as related to the solving of novel problems. _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): That's all our time for today. Thank you all for participating in The Chronicle's live chat. And I also want to thank David Geary for taking the time to answer our questions. _________________________________________________________________ David C. Geary: I have a number of articles on the development of mathematical competencies, including sex differences, as well as articles on sex differences in general available on my web page. [45]http://web.missouri.edu/~psycorie/ References 43. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i26/26a00102.htm 44. http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i26/26a00101.htm 45. http://web.missouri.edu/~psycorie/ From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 8 20:56:18 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2005 13:56:18 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Globalism is bullshit Message-ID: <01C53C42.BE182A50.shovland@mindspring.com> Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From waluk at earthlink.net Fri Apr 8 21:24:46 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:24:46 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Globalism is bullshit In-Reply-To: <01C53C42.BE182A50.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C53C42.BE182A50.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4256F69E.7000506@earthlink.net> Agree. But so is Peace. Gerry Reinhart-Waller http://home.earthlink.net/~waluk Steve Hovland wrote: > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 9 15:50:16 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 08:50:16 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The real point Message-ID: <01C53CE1.27AF1160.shovland@mindspring.com> The real point of Social Security "reform" is to find some way to avoid redeeming the bonds in the trust fund. In other words, to steal the money. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sat Apr 9 16:29:44 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 10:29:44 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] The real point In-Reply-To: <01C53CE1.27AF1160.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C53CE1.27AF1160.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <425802F8.5070108@solution-consulting.com> Actually, the real point of SS reform is to make it sustainable when the outgo vastly exceeds the income. A secondary point is to reduce the Democratic base by making poor people wealthy. Ironic, isn't it? Wealthy people vote Republican, in spite of the fact that Republicans have also horribly mismanaged government spending. The positive cash flow will run out. The point at which that happens keeps moving, maybe as soon as 2014, nine years hence. There on, it gets more and more grim, until finally all the bonds are redeemed and there aren't enough productive workers to cover social security. The bonds can only be redeemed by either: - reducing other government expenses and transfering the money - raising taxes - both None of these involve theft, except to the extent that so-called entitlement programs are reduced. That constitutes theft if you assume it is government's job to provide money for people who don't earn it. Arguably raising taxes involves theft, since it is a forced confiscation. But I doubt you mean that. Steve Hovland wrote: >The real point of Social Security "reform" is >to find some way to avoid redeeming the bonds >in the trust fund. > >In other words, to steal the money. > > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:08:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:08:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Goodbye to Privacy Message-ID: Goodbye to Privacy New York Times Book Review, 5.4.10 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/review/10COVERSAFIRE.html By WILLIAM SAFIRE NO PLACE TO HIDE By Robert O'Harrow Jr. 348 pp. The Free Press. $26. CHATTER: Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. By Patrick Radden Keefe. 300 pp. Random House. $24.95. YOUR mother's maiden name is not the secret you think it is. That sort of ''personal identifier'' being used by banks, credit agencies, doctors, insurers and retailers -- supposedly to protect you against the theft of your identity -- can be found out in a flash from a member of the new security-industrial complex. There goes the ''personal identifier'' that you presume a stranger would not know, along with your Social Security number and soon your face and DNA. In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as ''nobody's business'' has become the big business of everybody's business. Perhaps you are one of the 30 million Americans who pay for what you think is an unlisted telephone number to protect your privacy. But when you order an item using an 800 number, your own number may become fair game for any retailer who subscribes to one of the booming corporate data-collection services. In turn, those services may be -- and some have been -- penetrated by identity thieves. The computer's ability to collect an infinity of data about individuals -- tracking every movement and purchase, assembling facts and traits in a personal dossier, forgetting nothing -- was in place before 9/11. But among the unremarked casualties of that day was a value that Americans once treasured: personal privacy. The first civil-liberty fire wall to fall was the one within government that separated the domestic security powers of the F.B.I. from the more intrusive foreign surveillance powers of the C.I.A. The 9/11 commission successfully mobilized public opinion to put dot-connection first and privacy protection last. But the second fire wall crumbled with far less public notice or approval: that was the separation between law enforcement recordkeeping and commercial market research. Almost overnight, the law's suspect list married the corporations' prospect list. The hasty, troubling merger of these two increasingly powerful forces capable of encroaching on the personal freedom of American citizens is the subject of two new books. Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s ''No Place to Hide'' might just do for privacy protection what Rachel Carson's ''Silent Spring'' did for environmental protection nearly a half-century ago. The author, a reporter for The Washington Post, does not write in anger. Sputtering outrage, which characterizes the writing of many of us in the anti-snooping minority, is not O'Harrow's style. His is the work of a careful, thorough, enterprising reporter, possibly the only one assigned to the privacy beat by a major American newspaper. He has interviewed many of the major, and largely unknown, players in the world of surveillance and dossier assembly, and provides extensive source notes in the back of his book. He not only reports their professions of patriotism and plausible arguments about the necessity of screening to security, but explains the profitability to modern business of ''consumer relationship management.'' ''No Place to Hide'' -- its title taken from George W. Bush's post-9/11 warning to terrorists -- is all the more damning because of its fair-mindedness. O'Harrow notes that many consumers find it convenient to be in a marketing dossier that knows their personal preferences, habits, income, professional and sexual activity, entertainment and travel interests and foibles. These intimately profiled people are untroubled by the device placed in the car they rent that records their speed and location, the keystroke logger that reads the characters they type, the plastic hotel key that transmits the frequency and time of entries and exits or the hidden camera that takes their picture at a Super Bowl or tourist attraction. They fill out cards revealing personal data to get a warranty, unaware that the warranties are already provided by law. ''Even as people fret about corporate intrusiveness,'' O'Harrow writes about a searching survey of subscribers taken by Conde Nast Publications, ''they often willingly, even eagerly, part with intimate details about their lives.'' Such acquiescence ends -- for a while -- when snoopers get caught spilling their data to thieves or exposing the extent of their operations. The industry took some heat when a young New Hampshire woman was murdered by a stalker who bought her Social Security number and address from an online information service. But its lobbyists managed to extract the teeth from Senator Judd Gregg's proposed legislation, and the intercorporate trading of supposedly confidential Social Security numbers has mushroomed. When [1]an article in The New York Times by John Markoff, followed by another in The Washington Post by O'Harrow, revealed the Pentagon's intensely invasive Total Information Awareness program headed by Vice Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra infamy, [2]a conservative scandalmonger took umbrage. (''Safire's column was like a blowtorch on dry tinder,'' O'Harrow writes in the book's only colorful simile.) The Poindexter program's slogan, ''Knowledge Is Power,'' struck many as Orwellian. Senators Ron Wyden and Russell D. Feingold were able to limit funding for the government-sponsored data mining, and [3]Poindexter soon resigned. A Pentagon group later found that ''T.I.A. was a flawed effort to achieve worthwhile ends'' and called for ''clear rules and policy guidance, adopted through an open and credible political process.'' But O'Harrow reports in ''No Place to Hide'' that a former Poindexter colleague at T.I.A. ''said government interest in the program's research actually broadened after it was apparently killed by Congress.'' The author devotes chapters to the techniques of commercial data gatherers and sellers like Acxiom, Seisint and the British-owned LexisNexis, not household names themselves, but boasting computers stuffed with the names and pictures of each member of the nation's households as well as hundreds of millions of their credit cards. He quotes Ole Poulsen, chief technology officer of Seisint, on its digital identity system: ''We have created a unique identifier on everybody in the United States. Data that belongs together is already linked together.'' Soon after 9/11, having seen the system that was to become the public-private surveillance engine called Matrix (in computer naming, life follows film art), Michael Mullaney, a counterterrorism official at the Justice Department, told O'Harrow: ''I sat down and said, 'These guys have the computer that every American is afraid of.' '' Of all the companies in the security-industrial complex, none is more dominant or acquisitive than ChoicePoint of Alpharetta, Ga. This data giant collects, stores, analyzes and sells literally billions of demographic, marketing and criminal records to police departments and government agencies that might otherwise be criticized (or de-funded) for building a national identity base to make American citizens prove they are who they say they are. With its employee-screening, shoplifter-blacklisting and credit-reporting arms, ChoicePoint is also, in the author's words, ''a National Nanny that for a fee could watch or assess the background of virtually anybody.'' From sales brochures that ChoicePoint distributed to its corporate and government customers -- as well as from interviews with its C.E.O., Derek V. Smith, the doyen of dossiers, who claims ''this incredible passion to make a safer world'' -- The Post's privacy reporter has assembled a coherent narrative that provides a profile of a profiler. As if to lend a news peg to the book, ChoicePoint has just thrust itself into the nation's consciousness as a conglomerate hoist by its own petard. The outfit that sells the ability to anticipate suspicious activity; that provides security to the nation's security services; that claims it protects people from identity theft -- [4]has been easily penetrated by a gang that stole its dossiers on at least 145,000 people across the country. ON top of that revelation, the company had to admit it first became suspicious last September that phony companies were downloading its supposedly confidential electronic records on individual citizens. Not only is the Federal Trade Commission inquiring into the company's compliance with consumer-information security laws, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating prearranged sales of ChoicePoint stock by Smith and another top official that netted a profit of $17 million before the penetration was publicly disclosed and the stock price plunged. ''ChoicePoint Data Cache Became a Powder Keg'' was The Washington Post headline, with the subhead ''Identity Thief's Ability to Get Information Puts Heat on Firm.'' This was followed by the account a week later of another breach of faith at a competing data mine: ''ID Thieves Breach LexisNexis, Obtain Information on 32,000.'' Now that a flat rock has been flipped over, much more scurrying about will be observed. This will cause embarrassment to lobbyists for, and advisers to, the major players in the security-industrial complex. ''No Place to Hide'' names famous names, revealing associations with Howard Safir, former New York City police commissioner; Gen. Wesley Clark, former NATO commander; and former Senator Dale Bumpers of Arkansas. (If you hear, ''This is not about the money'' -- it's about the money.) More of the press has been showing interest, especially since Congressional hearings have begun and data is being disseminated about the data collectors. A second book -- not as eye-opening as O'Harrow's original reporting but a short course in what little we know of international government surveillance -- is ''Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping,'' by Patrick Radden Keefe. This third-year student at Yale Law School dares to make his first book an examination of what he calls the liberty-security matrix. Chatter, he notes, is a once innocuous word meaning ''gossip . . . the babble of a child'' that in the world of electronic intelligence has gained the sinister sense of ''telltale metabolic rhythm: chatter; silence; attack.'' The flurry of ''sigint'' -- signals intelligence, picked up by the secret listening devices of our National Security Agency -- sometimes precedes a terrorist attack, and almost always precedes an elevation of our color-coded security alerts. Keefe does what a brilliant, persevering law student with no inside sources or a prestigious press pass should do: he surveys much of what has been written about sigint and pores over the public hearing transcripts. He visits worried scientists and some former spooks who have written critical books, and poses questions to which he would like to get answers. He doesn't get them, but his account of unclimbable walls and unanswered calls invites further attempts from media bigfeet to do better. Keefe is a researcher adept at compiling intriguing bits and pieces dug out or leaked in the past; the most useful part of the book is the notes at the end about written, public sources that point to some breaks in the fog. ''Chatter'' focuses on government, not commercial, surveillance, and thereby misses the danger inherent in the sinister synergism of the two. Moreover, the book lacks a point of view: at 28, Keefe has formulated neither a feel for individual privacy nor a zeal for government security. It may be, as Roman solons said, Inter arma silent leges -- in wartime, the laws fall silent -- but the privacy-security debate needs to be both informed and joined. This is no time for agnostics. For example, what to do about Echelon? That is supposedly an ultrasecret surveillance network, conducted by the United States and four other English-speaking nations, to overhear and oversee signals. ''We don't know whether Echelon exists,'' Keefe writes, ''and, if it does exist, how the shadowy network operates. It all remains an enigma.'' Though he cannot light a candle, he at least calls attention to, without cursing, the darkness. Keefe's useful research primer on today's surveillance society, and especially O'Harrow's breakthrough reporting on the noxious nexus of government and commercial snooping, open the way for the creation of privacy beats for journalism's coming generation of search engineers. A small furor is growing about the abuse of security that leads to identity theft. We'll see how long the furor lasts before the commercial-public security combine again slams privacy against the wall of secrecy, but at least Poindexter's slogan is being made clear: knowledge is indeed power, and more than a little power in unknowable hands is a dangerous thing. William Safire writes the On Language column for The Times Magazine. ------------- First Chapter: 'Chatter' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/chapters/0410-1st-keefe.html By PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE Radomes in the Desert, Radomes on the Moor The Invisible Architecture of Echelon You cannot help but note the juxtaposition. Here, away from the world, amid rolling pastures, on a tract of land where the air is redolent of cow dung, lies the most sophisticated eavesdropping station on the planet. England's North Yorkshire moors are, after all, cow country. Leaving the elegant Victorian spa town of Harrogate, my taxi winds west through eight miles of verdant countryside. Just outside the city, the traffic thins, and what cars we pass seem to go much slower than they need to-a deliberate, agrarian pace. Fields are set off by a network of hedges beneath a panoramic, cloudless sky. Sheep congregate here and there, and dozens of cows lounge by crumbling stone walls, some gazing as we whiz by, others chewing their cuds, oblivious. I have been warned, seen photos-I know what to expect. But as the first dome hovers into sight, I catch my breath. The bucolic road winds and rises and falls, and as we dip and rise again and crest a hill the tip of a great white sphere, shimmering in the summer heat, becomes visible in the distance. One giant dimpled dome, a great Kevlar golf ball. Then suddenly four domes, and then eight, as others float into view above the hill. A dip in the road and they're obscured again and then again in sight. As the taxi rounds the perimeter fence, the base becomes visible in flashes through a row of trees. The white globes are called radomes, and each houses a satellite dish antenna, protecting it from the elements and masking its orientation-the dome itself is just a kind of skin. I count twenty-eight of these domes in all, ghostly white against the green of the countryside. They look otherworldly. And in a sense, they are. The dishes are hidden inside the radomes because their supersensitive antennae are trained on a corresponding set of satellites hovering more than twenty thousand miles above. Some of those are communications satellites that transmit secure messages to other intelligence installations around the world. Some are spy satellites, which take photographs, intercept communications, and use Global Positioning Systems to pinpoint the locations of various individuals or vehicles around the planet. And some of the satellites are regular commercial communications satellites, the kind that transmit your telephone calls and Internet traffic across the oceans. The first two varieties of satellite were built specifically to correspond with the base. This third kind, however, was not. These satellites are managed by a company called Intelsat, and the signals they relay are private, civilian communications. But the base collects these signals, too, soundlessly and ceaselessly intercepting great flows of private communications every minute of every hour. The sign at the gate reads: RAF Menwith Hill. I approach the sandbagged entrance, smile at the grave British military policemen who stand guard, and peer inside. RAF stands for Royal Air Force, but the name is a deliberate misnomer. The base was built in the 1950s on land purchased by the British Crown, but in 1966 the site was taken over by the American National Security Agency. Thus while the station is nominally an RAF base, it is actually home to more than twelve hundred Americans. These people live in housing within the perimeter of the fence, send their children to primary and secondary school within the fence, use their own grocery store, post office, sports center, pub, and bowling alley, all within the fence. The bowling alley, in a questionable piece of nomenclature for a base that is instrumental to America's nuclear program, is called the Strike Zone. There are houses and a chapel and a playground and a full-sized track and baseball diamond. The whole base covers 560 acres. Beneath a curling ribbon of razor wire, armed men with dogs patrol the fence. While we are accustomed, in this age of American power projection, to the idea of full-time military personnel living in this type of enclave abroad, I was surprised to learn that the majority of the employees at Menwith Hill are in fact civilians: engineers, technicians, mathematicians, linguists, and analysts. The NSA has always employed large numbers of civilian contractors: professionals, generally with technical expertise, who satisfy the rigorous background tests and security clearances to work at the forefront of the most secret field in American intelligence. These people come from aerospace and technology firms that do regular contract work for the government. They move their belongings and their families to the base, drawn by the allowances made for them: free housing, free shipping of their furniture and cars, and most of all, a tax-free salary. They work in three eight-hour shifts, so that the great interception machine does not shut down. They work Christmas and New Year's Day, and through the routine protests outside the gates of the base on the Fourth of July. There are linguists trained in Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew, and the gamut of European languages. With another four hundred or so personnel from the British Ministry of Defence, this single quietly humming spy station, which the vast majority of British and American civilians have never heard of, has a staff as large as all of Britain's storied domestic-intelligence service, MI5. At the Black Bull Inn, a local pub, the night before my visit to the base, a couple of teenagers drinking pints of bitter and eating chicken curry-flavored potato chips at the bar joked about the carloads of beautiful young American women, "the Menwith Hill girls," whom they occasionally see. The women drive American cars with the steering wheel on the left and head out to pubs in surrounding villages or into Harrogate or York on the weekends, before returning to disappear behind the fence. If the social life of these women has the quality of an apparition to the locals, their professional life is even more obscure. One of the boys at the bar, reed thin with dark hair and an eyebrow ring, said he had worked at "the Hill" for a while, in the cafeteria, but that the base was segregated into the Upper Hill and the Lower Hill, that there was a strict division between the living areas and the working areas, and that his security clearance, which in and of itself had required a battery of forms, questions, checks, and tests, was inadequate to let him get anywhere near the real activity on the base. He said that as far as he could tell, much of the work happens in the untold stretches of the Hill that are underground. "But from what I hear," he said, raising a conspiratorial brow and eyeing my notebook to make sure I was getting this, "it's an alien-testing zone." His mates cackled at this, and all the louder when they saw me dutifully scribbling it down. I stand at the entrance and, craning my neck, gaze through the fence. The guards are toting machine guns and look at me with idle curiosity. A digital screen by a cluster of low buildings flashes messages to cars driving into the base. Raike and Massage Tuesday Night ... Geico Insurance Every Thursday ... Karaoke Thursday Night ... Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives. "Pardon me, sir," one of the guards clears his throat. He nods to indicate something behind me. A blue sedan is idling, waiting to get past. I move aside. The driver is a young woman in a sweatshirt, her hair pulled back. We make eye contact for a second. She's about my age-a Menwith Hill girl! The guards wave her through, and she's gone. Inside the fence, in one-story, windowless buildings and in high-tech underground basements, the Menwith Hill girls join their colleagues in the clandestine interception of billions of communications per day. It has been claimed that all telecommunications traffic in and out of Europe that passes through Britain is intercepted by the base. This is the inscrutable face of American intelligence in the twenty-first century. When the Iron Curtain fell, it ruptured the fixed geography of Europe and the world, unleashing a slow tectonic shift that continues to alter the geopolitical landscape to this day. The end of the cold war also changed the nature of intelligence activities for the United States and its allies. The decentralization of the threat that had been posed by the Soviets, combined with a reduced defense budget, a new sense of optimism, and a diminished American tolerance for military casualties, led to a pronounced reduction in the number of human spies on the ground. Gone are the trench-coated cold warriors of John le Carr? novels, the CIA spies who were at the vanguard of cold war intelligence, sent to infiltrate the opposition or work out of embassies, recruit moles and double agents, and risk their lives in the process. Human intelligence, or Humint, was already in a steady decline by the end of the cold war, and it continued to dwindle as an American priority through the 1990s. In 1998, Porter Goss, the Florida congressman and former CIA case officer who was the chairman of the House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee and in September 2004 was appointed director of the CIA, declared simply, "It is fair to say that the cupboard is nearly bare in the area of human intelligence." But while American politicians were unwilling to sacrifice the lives of spies in countries that no longer played a decisive role against the Soviets or those of soldiers in places such as Mogadishu or Sarajevo, they were more than willing to invest in new technologies to fight wars and gather intelligence, as it were, by remote control. In a succession of conflicts, the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations made it clear that the United States, wherever possible, would prefer to use gadgets instead of humans. In the words of former CIA operative Robert Baer, "The theory was that satellites, the Internet, electronic intercepts, even academic publications would tell us all we needed to know about what went on beyond our borders." Arguably, this trend was nothing new. Since the 1970s there had been a growing sense that as technology advanced, it might displace the agent on the ground. Stansfield Turner, President Jimmy Carter's director of central intelligence, met with Carter twice per week to give him tutorials on the various kinds of intelligence collection the United States was engaged in. Turner felt that he and the president shared a "technical bent" and observed that they both had come to regard the "traditional human spy" as basically outmoded. But what was an inkling for these men became a conviction for subsequent administrations, as a combination of gadgetry and money appeared to provide a way around sending agents on risky assignments. In the July/August 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, just weeks before the terrorist attacks of September 11, a former CIA officer named Reuel Marc Gerecht published an article deploring a total absence of effective on-the-ground human intelligence in the Middle East. He concluded, "Unless one of Bin Laden's foot soldiers walks through the door of a U.S. consulate or embassy, the odds that a CIA counterterrorist officer will ever see one are extremely poor." Since the founding, more than a half century ago, of the NSA, there has been a prevailing understanding that while the world of intelligence matters was very secret and not something that should be discussed with anyone not in the know, the world of signals intelligence was the most secret of all. You can detect this hierarchy of secrecy even in prevalent jokes about the agencies. The old saw about the NSA, which was created not by Congress but by President Harry Truman in a secret executive order on October 24, 1952, was that NSA stood for "No such agency" or "Never say anything." This mantra must have been enthusiastically adopted from the start, because for the first two decades of its existence the NSA was not acknowledged by the federal government and did not appear in any annual federal intelligence budgets, its allocations buried in other, inconspicuous-looking items. This despite the fact that at the time the agency employed more than ten thousand people. By contrast, the joke about the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, which does human intelligence, was that OSS stood for, "Oh so social." This may explain why most Americans can tell you quite a bit about the CIA today, while a surprising number have never heard of the NSA. Few could tell you what it does or where it is located. It is rarely discussed in newspapers, and despite all the talk of chatter on the nightly news, the acronym NSA rarely impinges on the consciousness of the average American. The NSA operates out of a massive edifice of reflective black glass, its headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. Even the architecture of the "Puzzle Palace," as it is sometimes known, repels efforts to figure out what is going on inside. It is literally a black box. We do know that the agency employs more mathematicians than any other organization in the world and that the campus at Fort Meade is the densest concentration of computer power on the planet. Just one of the agency's Cray supercomputers can handle sixty-four billion individual instructions per second. The NSA's work is divided into two functions: communications security and signals intelligence. The former involves creating secure communications and cryptography for America's political leaders and military. The latter responsibility involves listening in. Part of the reason it is hard to gather information on the NSA is that the agency is not a user of its own intelligence. There are no gun-toting NSA agents who go out into the field and act on the intelligence the agency has gathered. The Puzzle Palace only provides intelligence to other agencies and to politicians and generals. In that sense, it is passive. It just sits and listens. The reason for all of this secrecy is obvious: eavesdropping works only if the person you are monitoring does not know he or she is being monitored. When the press reported in 1998 that American intelligence was intercepting the satellite-telephone conversations of Osama Bin Laden, he promptly stopped using that phone. The lesson is clear: when your quarry knows you can break his code, he will devise a new one. Worse yet is the whole string of possibilities for deliberate deception. After spikes in terrorist chatter set off a series of alarms about impending terrorist strikes in various places around the world in 2003, some observers of the intelligence community speculated that Al Qaeda was deliberately throwing out red herrings on frequencies they knew were being monitored by the NSA.... (Continues...) ______________________________________________________________ First Chapter: 'No Place to Hide' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/chapters/0410-1st-oharrow.html By ROBERT O'HARROW JR. Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh took his seat in La Colline restaurant on Capitol Hill and signaled for a cup of coffee. It was one of those standard Washington breakfasts, where politicos mix schmoozing and big ideas to start their days. An intense foot soldier for Attorney General Ashcroft, Dinh had been in his job for only a few months. He wanted to make a good impression on others at the session and craved the caffeine to keep his edge. As he sipped his fourth cup and listened to the patter of White House and Hill staffers, a young man darted up to the table. "A plane has crashed," he said. "It hit the World Trade Center." Dinh and the rest of the voluble group went silent. Then their beepers began chirping in unison. At another time, it might have seemed funny, a Type-A Washington moment. Now they looked at one another and rushed out of the restaurant. It was about 9:30 A.M. on September 11, 2001. Dinh hurried back to the Justice Department, where the building was being evacuated. Like countless other Americans, he was already consumed with a desire to strike back. Unlike most, however, he had an inkling of how: by doing whatever was necessary to strengthen the government's legal hand against terrorists. Jim Dempsey was sifting through emails at his office at the Center for Democracy and Technology on Farragut Square when his boss, Jerry Berman, rushed in. "Turn on the TV," Berman said. Dempsey reached for the remote, and images came rushing at him. Crisp sunshine. Lower Manhattan glinting in the brilliance. A jetliner cutting through the scene. Dempsey was a lanky and slow-speaking former Hill staffer who combined a meticulous attention to detail with an aw-shucks demeanor. Since the early 1990s, he has been one of the leading watchdogs of FBI surveillance initiatives, a reasoned and respected civil liberties advocate routinely summoned to the Hill by both political parties to advise lawmakers about technology and privacy issues. As he watched the smoke and flames engulf the World Trade Center, he knew it was the work of terrorists, and the FBI was foremost in his mind. "They have screwed up so bad," he said to himself. "With all the powers and resources that they have, they should have caught these guys." At the same moment, it dawned on him that his work - and the work of many civil liberties activists over the years to check the increasingly aggressive use of technology by law enforcement officials - was about to be undone. The car arrived at Senator Patrick Leahy's house in northern Virginia shortly after 9 am. The Vermont Democrat took his place in the front seat and, as the car coursed toward the Potomac, he read through some notes about the pending nomination of a new drug czar and thought about a meeting that morning at the Supreme Court. Half-listening to the radio, Leahy heard something about an explosion and the World Trade Center. He asked the driver to turn it up, then called some friends in New York. They told him what they were seeing on television. It sounded ominous. The car continued toward the Supreme Court and the conference he was to attend with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and circuit court judges from around the country. Leahy headed to the Court's conference room, with its thickly carpeted floors and oak-paneled walls lined with portraits of the first eight chief justices. When Rehnquist arrived, Leahy leaned toward him and whispered, "Bill, before we start, I believe we have a terrorist attack." As if on cue, a muffled boom echoed through the room. Smoke began rising across the Potomac from the Pentagon. Leahy chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, putting him at the center of an inevitable debate about how to fight back. Leahy was one of Congress's most liberal members, a longtime proponent of civil liberties who had always worked to keep the government from trampling individual rights. But Leahy was also a former prosecutor, a pragmatist who understood what investigators were up against in trying to identify and bring down terrorists. He knew that conservatives were going to press him for more police powers while civil libertarians would look to him as their standard-bearer. Leahy wanted to strike the right balance. But after watching an F-16 roar over the Mall that afternoon, he resolved to do whatever he could, as a patriot and a Democrat, to give law enforcement officials more tools to stop future attacks. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon didn't just set off a national wave of mourning and ire. They reignited and reshaped a smoldering debate over the proper use of government power to peer into the lives of ordinary people. The argument boiled down to this: In an age of high-tech terror, what is the proper balance between national security and the privacy of millions of Americans, whose personal information is already more widely available than ever before? Telephone records, emails, oceans of detail about individuals' lives - the government wanted access to all of it to hunt down terrorists before they struck. For six weeks that fall, behind a veneer of national solidarity and bipartisanship, Washington leaders engaged in pitched, closed-door arguments over how much new power the government should have in the name of national security. They were grappling not only with the specter of more terrorist attacks but also with the chilling memories of Cold War Red-baiting, J. Edgar Hoover's smear campaigns, and Watergate-era wiretaps. At the core of the dispute was a body of little known laws and rules that, over the last half century, defined and limited the government's ability to snoop: Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act governed electronic eavesdropping. The "pen register, trap and trace" rules covered the use of devices to track the origin and destination of telephone calls. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, regulated the power to spy domestically when seeking foreign intelligence information. The White House, the Justice Department, and their allies in Congress now wanted to ease those restraints, and they wanted to do it as quickly as possible. Though put into place to protect individuals and political groups from past abuses by the FBI, CIA, and others, the restrictions were partly to blame for the intelligence gaps on September 11, the government said. Implicit in that wish list was the desire to tap into the data revolution. In the previous decade, the world had watched the power of computers increase at an extraordinary pace. At the same time, the price of data storage plummeted, while new software tools enabled analysts to tap into giant reservoirs of names, addresses, purchases, and other details, and make sense of it all. It was a kind of surveillance that didn't rely only on cameras and eavesdropping. This was the age of behavioral profiling and at the front were the marketers who wanted you to open your wallet. Now the government wanted their help. The administration also wanted new authority to secretly detain individuals suspected of terrorism and to enlist banks and other financial services companies in the search for terrorist financing. Law enforcement sought broad access to business databases filled with information about the lives of ordinary citizens. All this detail could help investigators search for links among plotters. Jim Dempsey and other civil libertarians agreed that the existing laws were outdated, but for precisely the opposite reason - because they already gave the government access to immense amounts of information unavailable a decade ago. Handing investigators even more power, they warned, would lead to privacy invasions and abuses. They stared at a television in the bright sunroom of Dinh's Chevy Chase home, a handful of policy specialists from the Justice Department who wondered what to do next. Only hours before, they had fled their offices, cringing as fighter jets patrolled Washington's skies. Now, as news programs replayed the destruction, they talked about their friend Barbara Olson, conservative commentator and wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson. She was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Dinh couldn't believe Barbara was gone. He'd just had dinner at the Olsons' house two nights before, and she had been in rare form. Her humor was irrepressible. Dinh passed around a book of photography she had signed and given to him and the other dinner guests, Washington, D.C.: Then and Now. It was hard to process so much death amid so much sunshine. Dinh and his colleagues tried to focus on the work ahead. They agreed they faced a monumental, even historic task: a long-overdue reworking of anti-terrorism laws to prevent something like this from happening again on American soil. Their marching orders came the next morning, as they reconvened in a conference room in Dinh's suite of offices on the fourth floor of Justice. Ashcroft wasn't there - he was in hiding along with other senior government officials. Just before the meeting, Dinh had spoken to Adam Ciongoli, Ashcroft's counselor, who conveyed the attorney general's desires. "Beginning immediately," Dinh told the half dozen policy advisers and lawyers, "we will work on a package of authorities" - sweeping, dramatic, and based on practical recommendations from FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers in the field. "The charge [from Ashcroft] was very, very clear: 'all that is necessary for law enforcement, within the bounds of the Constitution, to discharge the obligation to fight this war against terror,'" he said. Dinh's enthusiasm for the task was evident. At thirty-four, he seemed perpetually jazzed up, smiled often and spoke quickly, as though his words, inflected with the accent of his native Vietnam, couldn't keep up with his ideas. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he had learned his way around Washington as an associate special counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee, and as a special counsel to Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) during the Clinton impeachment trial. "What are the problems?" Dinh asked the group around the table. For the next several hours - indeed, over the next several days - Dinh's colleagues catalogued gripes about the legal restraints on detective and intelligence work. Some of the complaints had been bouncing around the FBI and Justice Department for years. Because of the law's peculiarities, it was unclear if investigators were allowed to track the destination and origin of email the same way they could phone calls. They could obtain search warrants more easily for a telephone tape machine than for commercial voice-mail services. And the amount of information that intelligence agents and criminal investigators were permitted to share was limited, making it much harder to target and jail terrorists. All of this, the lawyers agreed, had to change. Now. Jim Dempsey was swamped. Reporters, other activists, congressional staffers - everyone wanted his take on how far the Justice Department and Congress would go in reaction to the attacks. "We were getting fifty calls a day," he recalled. Dempsey knew Congress would not have the will to resist granting dramatic new powers to law enforcement. It was a classic dynamic: Something terrible happens. Legislators rush to respond. They don't have time to investigate the policy implications thoroughly, so they reach for what's available and push it through. That was a nightmare for Dempsey. Looking for signs of hope that the legislative process could be slowed, even if it could not be stopped, he made his own calls around town. "A crisis mentality emerges, and there was clearly a crisis.... The push for action, the appearance of action, becomes so great." Within days of the attack, a handful of lawmakers took to the Senate floor with legislation that had been proposed and shot down in recent years because of civil liberties concerns. Many of the proposals had originally had nothing to do with terrorism. One bill, called the Combating Terrorism Act, proposed expanding the government's authority to trace telephone calls to include email. It was a legacy of FBI efforts to expand surveillance powers during the Clinton administration, which had supported a variety of technology-oriented proposals opposed by civil libertarians. Now it was hauled out and approved in minutes. One of the few voices advocating calm deliberation was Patrick Leahy. It was not clear what he would be able to do in such a highly charged atmosphere. Across the city and across the country, other civil libertarians braced themselves for the fallout from the attacks. Among them was Morton Halperin, former head of the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union and a former national security official in three administrations. Halperin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was personally familiar with government surveillance. While working as a National Security Council staffer in the Nixon administration, Halperin was suspected of leaking information about the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia. His house was wiretapped by the FBI, and the taps continued for months after he left the government. Now, twenty-four hours after the attacks, he read an email from a member of an online group that had been formed to fight a Clinton administration plan to make publishing classified materials a crime. The writer warned the plan would be reprised. Halperin had been anticipating this moment for years. More than a decade ago, he wrote an essay predicting that terrorism would replace communism as the main justification for domestic surveillance. "I sat and stared at that email for a few minutes and decided that I could not do my regular job, that I had to deal with this," he would say later. Halperin banged out a call to arms on his computer. "There can be no doubt that we will hear calls in the next few days for congress to enact sweeping legislation to deal with terrorism," he wrote in the email to more than two dozen civil libertarians on September 12. "This will include not only the secrecy provision, but also broad authority to conduct electronic and other surveillance and to investigate political groups.... We should not wait." Within hours, Jim Dempsey, Marc Rotenberg from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and others had offered their support. Their plan: To build on Halperin's call for legislative restraint while striking a sympathetic note about the victims of the attacks. They started putting together a meeting to sign off on a civil liberties manifesto: "In Defense of Freedom at a Time of Crisis." Underlying the discussion about how to respond to the terror attacks was the mid-1970s investigation, led by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), into the government's sordid history of domestic spying. .... From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:08:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:08:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Lessig) Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn Message-ID: Arts > Music > Exploring the Right to Share, Mix and Burn http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/arts/music/09nypl.html 5.4.9 By DAVID CARR The tickets for the event Thursday sold out in five minutes on the Internet, and on the evening itself the lines stretched down the block. The reverent young fans might as well have been holding cellphones aloft as totems of their fealty. Then again, this was the New York Public Library, a place of very high ceilings and even higher cultural aspirations, so the rock concert vibe created some dissonance. Inside, things became clearer as two high priests of very different tribes came together to address the question of "Who Owns Culture?" - a discussion of digital file-sharing sponsored by Wired magazine, part of a library series called "Live From the NYPL." Both Jeff Tweedy, the leader of the fervently followed rock band Wilco, and Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor who has opposed criminalizing file sharing, seemed to agree that just about anybody who owns a modem also owns - or at least has every right to download - culture products. "I don't think anybody should make any money on music," Mr. Tweedy said at one point, only half joking. "Maybe we would pay audiences." It is a curious sight when a rock star appears before his flock and suggests they take his work without paying for it, and even encourages them to. Mr. Tweedy, who has never been much for rock convention, became a convert to Internet peer-to-peer sharing of music files in 2001, after his band was dropped from its label on the cusp of a tour. Initially, the news left Wilco at the sum end of the standard rock equation: no record/no tour, no tour/no money, no money/no band. But Mr. Tweedy released "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" for streaming on the band's Web site, and fans responded in droves. Wilco then took on the expenses of its tour as a band. The resulting concerts were a huge success: Mr. Tweedy remembered watching in wonder as fans sang along with music that did not exist in CD form. Then something really funny happened. Nonesuch Records decided to release the actual plastic artifact in 2002. And where the band's previous album, "Summerteeth," sold 20,000 in its first week according to SoundScan, "Yankee" sold 57,000 copies in its first week and went on to sell more than 500,000. Downloading, at least for Wilco, created rather than diminished the appetite for the corporeal version of the work. Both Mr. Tweedy and Mr. Lessig used their talk to say that the Web, in an age where conglomerated FM radio has squeezed out virtually all possibility of hearing anything worthy and new, is where fans are best exposed to music they might want to buy. And during the presentation (which was streamed live on Wilco's Web site), Mr. Lessig added that the decision to outlaw downloading would have a profoundly inhibiting effect on the creation of culture. He said that in every instance, from the player piano to radio to VCR's to cable, the law had landed on the side of the alleged "pirates," allowing for the copying or broadcasting of cultural works for private consumption. Thus far, both the music industry and the film industry has succeeded in making it illegal for consumers to download their products . Mr. Lessig said that "the freedom to remix, not just words, but culture" was critical in the development of unforeseen works of art. He pointed to "The Grey Album," produced by the D.J. Danger Mouse, a remix of the Beatles' "White Album" and Jay-Z's "Black Album" that resulted in a wholly new and unexpected piece of music. "What does it say about our democracy when ordinary behavior is deemed criminal?" he asked. Mr. Lessig and the moderator, Steven Johnson, a contributing editor at Wired, made much of the fact that the discussion was taking place in a library, where much of the Western cultural canon is available free. Mr. Tweedy has little sympathy for artists who complain about downloading. "To me, the only people who are complaining are people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again," he said. Mr. Lessig, one of the philosopher kings of Internet law, and Mr. Tweedy, the crown prince of indie music, traded places more than a few times during the presentation, with Mr. Lessig, who has argued copyright cases before the United States Supreme Court, enthusiastic about the artistic possibilities the Web engenders, and Mr. Tweedy making sapient pronouncements on the theoretical underpinnings of ownership. "Once you create something, it doesn't exist in the consciousness of the creator," Mr. Tweedy said, telling the audience that they had an investment in a song just by the act of listening. Later, at a dinner at Lever House, Mr. Tweedy suggested that downloading was an act of rightful "civil disobedience." All of it - high and low culture, Supreme Court rulings and mashed-up video clips ridiculing the president - was eagerly lapped up by the audience, which included musicians like David Byrne and D.J. Spooky, along with a throng of fans who would show up to hear Mr. Tweedy read from a digital phone directory. Afterward, Alex Sherwin, a 36-year-old graphic designer, said, "It would have been better with a guitar, but I still enjoyed hearing what he had to say." Mr. Sherwin said his favorite CD was a live Jeff Tweedy performance in Chicago, one that had been recorded and distributed with the artist's happy assent. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:10:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:10:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Richard J. Jensen: "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization Message-ID: Richard J. Jensen - "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization - http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429 Professor of History Emeritus, University of Illinois, Chicago _________________________________________________________________ write the author at [2]RJensen at uic.edu slightly revised version 12-22-2004 _________________________________________________________________ Abstract Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory. Introduction The Irish American community harbors a deeply held belief that it was the victim of systematic job discrimination in America, and that the discrimination was done publicly in highly humiliating fashion through signs that announced "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply." This "NINA" slogan could have been a metaphor for their troubles--akin to tales that America was a "golden mountain" or had "streets paved with gold." But the Irish insist that the signs really existed and prove the existence of widespread discrimination and prejudice. ^[3]1 The fact that Irish vividly "remember" NINA signs is a curious historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, ^[4]2 archivist, or museum curator has ever located one ^[5]3 ; no photograph or drawing exists. ^[6]4 No other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics have reported seeing the sign in America--no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish Catholic has reported seeing one. This is especially strange since signs were primarily directed toward these others: the signs said that employment was available here and invited Yankees, French-Canadians, Italians and any other non-Irish to come inside and apply. The business literature, both published and unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy remotely like it. The newspapers and magazines are silent. The courts are silent. There is no record of an angry youth tossing a brick through the window that held such a sign. Have we not discovered all of the signs of an urban legend? The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant. For example the Anglican bishop of London used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish Anglican ministers iin his diocese. By the 1820s it was a clich? in upper and upper middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish and had even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that handwritten NINA signs regarding maids did appear in a few American windows, though no one ever reported one. We DO have actual newspaper want ads for women workers that specifies Irish are not wanted; they will be discussed below. In the entire file of the New York Times from 1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for men, one of which is for a teenager. Computer searches of classified help wanted ads in the daily editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as the Booklyn Eagle, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune show that NINA ads for men were extremely rare--fewer than two per decade. The complete absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA signs and newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the United States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA signs which deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. The overwhelming evidence is that such signs never existed. Irish Americans all have heard about them--and remember elderly relatives insisting they existed. The myth had "legs": people still believe it, even scholars. The late Tip O'Neill remembered the signs from his youth in Boston in 1920s; Senator Ted Kennedy reported the most recent sighting, telling the Senate during a civil rights debate that he saw them when growing up ^[7]5 Historically, [End Page 405] physical NINA signs could have flourished only in intensely anti-Catholic or anti-Irish eras, especially the 1830--1870 period. Thus reports of sightings in the 1920s or 1930s suggest the myth had become so deeply rooted in Irish-American folk mythology that it was impervious to evidence. Perhaps the Irish had constructed an Evil Other out of stereotypes of outsiders--a demon that could frighten children like the young Ted Kennedy and adults as well. The challenge for the historian is to explain the origins and especially the durability of the myth. Did the demon exist outside the Irish imagination--and if not how did it get there? This paper will explain how the myth originated and will explore its long-lasting value to the Irish community as a protective device. It was an enhancement of political solidarity against a hostile Other; and a way to insulate a preindustrial non-individualistic group-oriented work culture from the individualism rampant in American culture. We must first ask if the 19th century American environment contained enough fear or hatred of the Irish community to support the existence of the NINA sentiment? Did the Irish-American community constitute an "Other" that was reviled and discriminated against? Did more modern Americans recoil in disgust at the premodern Irish immigrants? The evidence suggests that all the criticism of the Irish was connected to one of three factors, their "premodern" behavior, their Catholicism, and their political relationship to the ideals of republicanism. If the Irish had enemies they never tried to restrict the flow of Irish immigration. ^[8]6 Much louder was the complaint that the Irish were responsible for public disorder and poverty, and above all the fears that the Irish were undermining republicanism. These fears indeed stimulated efforts to insert long delays into the citizenship process, as attempted by the Federalists in 1798 and the Know Nothings in the 1850s. Those efforts failed. As proof of their citizenship the Irish largely supported the Civil War in its critical first year. ^[9]7 Furthermore they took the lead in the 1860s in bringing into citizenship thousands of new immigrants even before the technicalities of residence requirements had been met. ^[10]8 The Irish claimed to be better republicans than the Yankees because they had fled into exile from aristocratic oppression and because they hated the British so much. ^[11]9 The use of systematic violence to achieve Irish communal goals might be considered a "premodern" trait; it angered many people and three bloody episodes proved it would not work in conflict with American republicanism. In 1863 the Irish rioted against the draft in New York City; Lincoln moved in combat troops who used cannon to regain control of the streets and resume the draft. In 1871 the Irish Catholics demanded the Protestant Irish not be allowed an Orange parade in New York City, but the Democratic governor sent five armed regiments of state militia to support the 700 city police protecting the one hundred marchers. The Catholics attacked anyway, and were shot down by the hundreds. In the 1860s and 1870s the Molly Maguires used midnight assassination squads to terrorize the anthracite mining camps in Pennsylvania. The railroad brought in Pinkertons to infiltrate the Mollys, twenty of whom were hung. In every instance Irish Catholics law enforcement officials played a major role in upholding the modern forms of republicanism that emphasized constitutional political processes rather than clandestine courts or mob action. In each instance the Irish leaders of the Catholic Church supported modern republicanism. ^[12]10 After the [End Page 406] 1870s the Irish achieved a modern voice through legitimate means, especially through politics and law enforcement. Further enhancing their status as full citizens making a valuable contribution to the community, the Catholics built monumental churches (which were immediately and widely praised), as well as a massive network of schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. ^[13]11 Regardless of their growing status, something intensely real was stimulating the Irish Catholics and only them. The NINA myth fostered among the Irish a misperception or gross exaggeration that other Americans were prejudiced against them, and were deliberately holding back their economic progress. Hence the "chip on the shoulder" mentality that many observers and historians have noted. ^[14]12 As for the question of anti-Irish prejudice: it existed but it was basically anti-Catholic or anti-anti-republican. There have been no documented instances of job discrimination against Irish men. ^[15]13 Was there any systematic job discrimination against the Catholic Irish in the US: possibly, but direct evidence is very hard to come by. On the other hand Protestant businessmen vigorously raised money for mills, factories and construction projects they knew would mostly employ Irishmen, ^[16]14 while the great majority of middle class Protestant households in the major cities employed Irish maids. The earliest unquestioned usage found comes from the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, using the phrase in Pendennis, a novel of growing up in London in the 1820s. The context suggests that the NINA slogan was a slightly ridiculous and old-fashioned bit of prejudice ^[17]15 Other ethnic groups also had a strong recollection of discrimination but never reported such signs. The Protestant (Orange) Irish do not recall "NINA signs. ^[18]16 Were the signs used only against Irish targets? An electronic search of all the text of the several hundred thousand pages of magazines and books online at Library of Congress, Cornell University Library and the University of Michigan Library, and complete runs of The New York Times and The Nation, turned up about a dozen uses of NINA. ^[19]17 The complete text of New York Times is searchable from 1851 through 1923. Although the optical character recognition is not perfect (some microfilmed pages are blurry), it captures most of the text. A search of seventy years of the daily paper revealed only two classified ads with NINA--one posted by a Brooklyn harness shop that wanted a boy who could write, and a request for a couple to take charge of a cottage upstate. ^[20]18 Unlike the employment market for men, the market for female servants included a small submarket in which religion or ethnicity was specified. Thus newspaper ads for nannies, cooks, maids, nurses and companions sometimes specified "Protestant Only." "I can't imagine, Carrie, why you object so strongly to a Roman Catholic," protests the husband in an 1854 short story. "Why, Edward, they are so ignorant, filthy, and superstitious. It would never do to trust the children alone with one, for there is no telling what they might learn." ^[21]19 Intimate household relationships were delicate matters for some families, but the great majority of maids in large cities were Irish women, so the submarket that refused to hire them could not have been more than ten percent. ^[22]20 The first American usage was a printed song-sheet, dated Philadelphia, 1862. It is a reprint of a British song sheet. The narrator is a maid looking for a job in London who reads an ad in London Times and sings about Irish pride. The last verse was clearly added in America. ^[23]21 [End Page 407] NO IRISH NEED APPLY. Written and sung by Miss KATHLEEN O'NEIL. WANTED.--A smart active girl to do the general housework of a large family, one who can cook, clean plates, and get up fine linen, preferred. N. B.--No Irish need apply --London Times Newspaper, Feb. 1862. I'm a simple Irish girl, and I'm looking for a place, I've felt the grip of poverty, but sure that's no disgrace, 'Twill be long before I get one, tho' indeed it's hard I try, For I read in each advertisement, "No Irish need apply." Alas! for my poor country, which I never will deny, How they insult us when they write, "No Irish need apply." Now I wonder what's the reason that the fortune-favored few, Should throw on us that dirty slur, and treat us as they do, Sure they all know Paddy's heart is warm, and willing is his hand, They rule us, yet we may not earn a living in their land, . . . . Ah! but now I'm in the land of the "Glorious and Free," And proud I am to own it, a country dear to me, I can see by your kind faces, that you will not deny, A place in your hearts for Kathleen, where "All Irish may apply." Then long may the Union flourish, and ever may it be, A pattern to the world, and the "Home of Liberty!" In 1862 or 1863 at the latest John Poole wrote the basic NINA song that became immensely popular within a matter of months. ^[24]22 [poole.gif] NO IRISH NEED APPLY. Written by JOHN F. POOLE, and sung, with immense success, by the great Comic-Vocalist of the age, TONY PASTOR. I'm a dacint boy, just landed from the town of Ballyfad; I want a situation: yis, I want it mighty bad. I saw a place advartised. It's the thing for me, says I; But the dirty spalpeen ended with: No Irish need apply. Whoo! says I; but that's an insult--though to get the place I'll try. So, I wint to see the blaggar with: No Irish need apply. I started off to find the house, I got it mighty soon; There I found the ould chap saited: he was reading the TRIBUNE. I tould him what I came for, whin he in a rage did fly: No! says he, you are a Paddy, and no Irish need apply! Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black his eye-- To tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish need apply! I couldn't stand it longer: so, a hoult of him I took, And I gave him such a welting as he'd get at Donnybrook. He hollered: Millia murther! and to get away did try, And swore he'd never write again: No Irish need apply. He made a big apology; I bid him thin good-bye, Saying: Whin next you want a bating, add: No Irish need apply! [End Page 408] Sure, I've heard that in America it always is the plan That an Irishman is just as good as any other man; A home and hospitality they never will deny The stranger here, or ever say: No Irish need apply. But some black sheep are in the flock: a dirty lot, say I; A dacint man will never write: No Irish need apply! Sure, Paddy's heart is in his hand, as all the world does know, His praties and his whiskey he will share with friend or foe; His door is always open to the stranger passing by; He never thinks of saying: None but Irish may apply. And, in Columbia's history, his name is ranking high; Thin, the Divil take the knaves that write: No Irish need apply! Ould Ireland on the battle-field a lasting fame has made; We all have heard of Meagher's men, and Corcoran's brigade. ^[25]23 Though fools may flout and bigots rave, and fanatics may cry, Yet when they want good fighting-men, the Irish may apply, And when for freedom and the right they raise the battle-cry, Then the Rebel ranks begin to think: No Irish need apply After a few rounds of singing and drinking, you could easily read the sign. Note that in the New York City version, Poole changed the London maid to a newly arrived country boy; the maid lamented, but the lad fights back vigorously. This is a song to encourage bullies. The lad starts his job search by scanning the want ads in the city's leading Republican newspaper, the New York Tribune, which seems an unlikely resource for a new arrival from a remote village. In the draft riots of 1863 the Tribune was a special target of Irish mobs. ^[26]24 Did the Irish feel discriminated against before the NINA slogan became current? First note the last stanza of the 1862 London song shown above. If the NINA slogan had been current in America surely the songwriter would not have included the line "you will not deny, A place in your hearts for Kathleen, where 'All Irish may apply."' The second evidence comes from the Confederacy in 1863. The Rebels hailed and incited Irish unrest in the North. A major editorial in the Richmond Enquirer May 29, 1863 enumerated multiple reasons for the Irish to hate the Yankees, such as convent attacks and church burnings. The catalog of grievances focused on anti-Catholicism and did not mention job discrimination or NINA--probably because the Poole song had not yet reached Richmond. ^[27]25 We can now summarize our explanation of where the NINA myth comes from. There probably were occasional handwritten signs in London homes in the 1820s seeking non-Irish maids. The slogan became a clich? in Britain for hostility to the Irish. Tens of thousands of middle-class English migrated to America, and it is possible a few used the same sort of handwritten sign in the 1830--1850 period; the old British clich? was probably known in America. There is no evidence for any printed NINA signs in America or for their display at places of employment other than private homes. Poole's song of 1862 popularized the phrase. The key change that made the second version such a hit was gender reversal--the London song lamented the maid's troubles, the New York City version called for Irishmen to assert their manhood in defiance of a cowardly [End Page 409] enemy. By 1863 every Irishman knew and resented the slogan--and it perhaps helped foment the draft riots that year. The stimulus was not visual but rather aural--a song about NINA sung only by the Irish. There was indeed such a song, and it became quite popular during the 1863 crisis of the draft riots of the Civil War; it still circulates. The song was a war cry that encouraged Irish gangs to beat up suspicious strangers and it warned Irish jobseekers against breaking with the group and going to work for The Enemy. Recollection is a group phenomenon--especially in a community so well known for its conviviality and story telling. Congressman Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts grew up hearing horror stories of how the terrible Protestants burned down a nearby convent school run by the Catholic Ursuline nuns. When O'Neill went to college he was astonished to read in a history book that it happened a century earlier in 1834--he had assumed it was a recent event. ^[28]26 It is most unlikely that businesses in Boston routinely displayed NINA signs in the 20th century and yet left no trace whatever in the records. People who "remember" the signs in the 20th century only remember the urban legend. ^[29]27 Political mobilization against the Irish was never successful. The most important effort was the Know Nothing movement, which swept the Northeast and South in 1854--56. It was a poorly led grass roots movement that generated no significant or permanent anti-Catholic or anti-Irish legislation. There was no known employment discrimination. Know-Nothing employers, for example, were never accused of firing their Irish employees. The Know-Nothings were primarily a purification movement. They believed that all politicians were corrupt, that the Democrats were the worst, and that Irish support for Democrats, plus their growing numbers, made them highly suspect. The party lasted longer in the South where it was the anti-Democratic party but only slightly anti-Catholic. Ray Billington concludes "The almost complete failure of the Know-Nothings to carry into effect the doctrines of anti-Catholic and anti-foreign propagandists contributed to the rapid decline of this nativistic party." ^[30]28 Likewise there were few visible effects of the APA movement of the 1890s, or the KKK in the 1920s. The conclusion is that, despite occasional temptations, Americans considered their "equal rights" republicanism to be incompatible with systematic economic or political discrimination against the Irish. Given the overlap of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice how can historians tell the difference? In both cases, the anti's would attack on political grounds--elections, candidates, appointments, bosses, machines, election frauds, registration laws, civil service reform. ^[31]29 Anti-Catholics would focus on certain issues, especially saints and Mariolatry, parochial schools, sacramentalism, convents, missions to the Indians, and Bible-reading in schools. ^[32]30 They also were intensely alert to activities of the Papacy, and the political power of priests and bishops. The Vatican certainly controlled ecclesiastical affairs, but it carefully avoided American political issues. ^[33]31 By 1865 politicians realized that bishops and priests largely avoided even informal electoral endorsements of any kind--they were far less active than pietistic Protestants, as the annals of temperance and anti-slavery demonstrate. ^[34]32 Were Irish men the victims of job discrimination in reality? That was possible without any signs of course. The evidence is exceedingly thin--the Irish started poor and worked their way up slowly, all along believing that the Protestant world [End Page 410] hated them and blocked their every move. Contemporary observers commented that the Protestant Irish were doing well in America, but that preindustrial work habits were blocking progress for the Catholics. As Thernstrom has shown, Irish had one of the lowest rates of upward mobility. ^[35]33 A likely explanation is the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away. (The slogan tells them that trying to make it in the Yankee world is impossible anyway.) No other European Catholic group seems to have shared that chip on the shoulder (not the Germans or Italians--not even anti-Irish groups such as the French Canadians). Historians agree the political hostility against the Irish Democrats in the Civil War Era was real enough. Critics complained that the Irish had poor morals and a weak work ethic (and hence low status). Much more serious was the allegation that they were politically corrupt and priest-controlled, and therefore violated true republican values. The Irish could shoot back that The Enemy did not practice equal rights. The Irish community used the allegation of job discrimination on the part of the Other to reinforce political solidarity among (male) voters, which in any case was very high indeed--probably he highest for any political group in American history before the 1960s. It is easy to identify job discrimination in the 19th century against blacks and Chinese (the latter indeed led by the Irish in California). Discrimination against the Irish was invisible to the non-Irish. ^[36]34 That is perhaps why this urban legend did not die out naturally. Benign Protestant factory owners could not soften the tensions by removing signs that never existed. When Protestants denied NINA that perhaps just reinforced the Irish sense of conspiracy against them (even today people who deny NINA are suspected of prejudice.) The slogan served both to explain their poverty ^[37]35 and to identify a villain against whom it was all right retaliate on sight--a donnybrook for the foes of St. Patrick. ^[38]36 The myth justified bullying strangers and helped sour relations between Irish and everyone else. ^[39]37 The sense of victimhood perhaps blinded some Irish to the discrimination suffered by other groups. ^[40]38 Perhaps the slogan has reemerged in recent years as the Irish feel the political need to be bona-fide victims. The Potato Famine of course had all the ingredients to make them victims, ^[41]39 but it will not do to have the villains overseas: there must be American villains. ^[42]40 If we conclude the Irish were systematically deluding themselves over a period of a century or more about their primary symbol of job discrimination, the next question to ask is, was it all imaginary or was there a real basis for the grievances about the economic hostility of Protestants to Irish aspirations? Historians need to be critical. Because a group truly believes it was a victim, does not make it so. On the other hand, the Irish chip-on-the-shoulder attitude may have generated a high level of group solidarity in both politics and the job market, which could have had a significant impact on the on the occupational experience of the Irish. How successful were the Irish in the job market? Observers noticed that the Irish tended to work in equalitarian collective situations, such as labor gangs, longshoremen crews, construction crews, or with strong labor unions, usually in units dominated numerically and politically by Irishmen. Wage rates were often heavily influenced by collective activity, such as boycotts, strikes and [End Page 411] union contracts, or by the political pressures that could be exerted on behalf of employees in government jobs, or working for contractors holding city contracts, or for regulated utilities such as street railways and subways. The first arrivals formed all-Irish work crews for construction companies in the building of railroads in the 1830s. ^[43]41 Sometimes the Irish managed to monopolize a specific labor market sector--they comprised 95% of the canal workers by 1840, and 95% of the New York City longshoremen by 1900. ^[44]42 The monopoly of course facilitated group action, and once a crossing point was reached it was possible to exclude virtually all Others. Solidarity (with or without formal union organization) made for excellent bargaining power, augmented as needed by the use of intimidation, strikes, arson, terrorism and destructive violence to settle any grievances they may have had with their employers, not to mention internal feuds linked to historic feuds back in Ireland. Direct evidence that employers did not want Irish workers is absent. By the early 20th century major corporations had personnel offices and written procedures. If the Irish had a reputation for being unsatisfactory, the personnel managers never commented upon it. Job discrimination against blacks and Asians continued, and was quite visible in the corporate records and the media. Discrimination against newer immigrant groups can be identified as late as 1941 (when it was banned for government contract holders). No trace of anti-Irish hostility has turned up in the corporate records of the literature of personnel management. Can we prove there was no job discrimination against the Irish? Zero is too hard to "prove"--though no historian has found any evidence of any actual discrimination by any business or factory. ^[45]43 The main "evidence" referenced in the historical literature is three fold: First, the NINA myth was so convincing that the Irish saw no need to investigate further, or to document the discrimination, or to set up a protective organization. (They of course organized extensively, in both Ireland and America, to protest maltreatment back in Ireland.) ^[46]44 Second, historians point to contemporaries who commented unfavorably on the Irish, generalizing from a handful of cases to create a stereotype of the dominant views of all of American society. Now indeed the 19th century literature is filled with eyewitness and statistical descriptions of Irish drunkenness, crime, violence, poverty, extortion, insanity, ignorance, political corruption and lawless behavior. The reports come from many cities, from Catholics and non-Catholics, social scientists and journalists, Irish and non-Irish. ^[47]45 The question is not whether the Irish were admired. (They were not.) The argument that the dominant popular stereotypes of the Irish were especially nasty does not hold up under careful examination. There is no evidence that more than one in a thousand Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior, non-white or ape-like. ^[48]46 Third, as noted, historians point to statistical evidence that the Irish had lower rates of upward social mobility than average, in the 1850--1880 period. The Irish must have been held back by something: but was it internal or external, or just random historical luck? Given the 20th century success story of the Irish--they are among the wealthiest groups today--the disability or discrimination ended somewhere along the line. [End Page 412] Many different models can explain the Irish condition: First there was lack of financial and human capital. The Irish who arrived in the 1840s and 1850s came with few useful industrial or agricultural skills, while the British and Germans who came at the same time brought cash and much more human capital. Thus the distribution of human capital can be said to have allocated Irish to unskilled jobs, and other immigrants to more skilled opportunities. After 1890 the Irish had acquired some schooling and skills, while the current newcomers were primarily unskilled peasants from southern and eastern Europe. The latter groups moved into the unskilled jobs while the Irish moved up. In the coal fields, with very few job opportunities above the level of unskilled miner, the arrival of new competitors led to significant tensions and violence. In some cases the new competitors were more skilled than the Irish; thus the Swedes who came to Worcester in the late 19th century displaced the less skilled Irish in the metals factories. The Irish did invest heavily in human capital, through their system of parochial schools and colleges. The impact of such investment was necessarily long-term, and seems to have become visible by 1900. To a considerable extent the goal was preservation and protection of traditional religious values, and the creation of a social system that would discourage intermarriage. However the schools did follow a standardized curriculum that inculcated literacy and learning skills. Negative investment in human capital involved internal self-defeating factors, such as heavy alcoholism, weak motivation, poor work habits, and disorganized family life. This was widely commented on regarding 19th century Irish, but not much reported in 20th century. ^[49]47 Rather few Irish became entrepreneurs; the community did not generate pools of financial capital. Perhaps more important was a low communal value on the individualistic businessman. Construction contracting seems to have been the only business in which they had any significant ownership role, and that depended on control of labor and access to government contracts rather than financial capital. The Irish did operate many saloons, but they were financed by the German brewers and generated little new capital for the community. ^[50]48 Comparing rates of social mobility assumes that the Irish were seeking that goal to the same extent as the Yankees. Perhaps their ambitions looked more toward non-individualistic goals (such as building impressive churches), or non-career family advancement strategies focused on political leadership or home ownership, or (in the case of nuns and priests) honorific careers that involved a vow of poverty. A strikingly high proportion of talented Irish youth went into very low paying, very high prestige religious careers. The community more often honored priests and bishops than business entrepreneurs. Social mobility depends upon strong family structures. Weak ties in a group would indicate fathers and uncles did not assist their kin. The Irish had a reputation for the opposite traits (clannishness and nepotism), but also had reportedly high rates of internal family discord. ^[51]49 On the other hand kinship ties could be too strong and impede upward mobility. Parents might demand more child labor, valuing family collective goals over the child's individualistic career potential. Did the Irish tend to remove their children from schools to put them to work early? This would produce ready funds for home ownership, but less long-run human capital. Census data indicate high rates of school attendance, at least to [End Page 413] age 14. ^[52]50 Special family needs, especially sending funds to Ireland for subsistence and bringing over more relatives, might have drained the capital needed for upward mobility through small business. This indeed was a major factor among the Irish down to the 1880s. Perhaps the Irish ethic placed more stress on equality and communal sharing of wealth. Different customs can have this effect--for example extensive charity (tithing), or heavy gambling that redistributes earned income in random fashion. Irish levels of charity were moderately high (especially donations to the church); observers did not comment on heavy gambling. In some cultures, when a man gets money he must share it widely with relatives, thus diffusing it and slowing accumulation in entrepreneurial hands. Observers did not report this trait as especially characteristic of the Irish community. In the context of social mobility, "clannishness" can refer to a collective ethic whereby the goal is for the group as a whole moves ahead, with individual initiative discouraged. ^[53]51 Bad historical luck could lock a group into the wrong skills or geography, causing retarded growth and structural unemployment. A group could cling too long to old-fashioned skills that were dead-end or slow growth, or be attached to businesses or geographical areas that grew very slowly. This may have happened to the Germans, and certainly did happen in the 20th century to coal miners. The Irish however, were noted for their willingness to change jobs, move to new neighborhoods or cities, and abandon trades. However, the quest for political patronage probably locked Irish men into overpaid but dead-end blue-collar jobs, and channeled talent into public administration rather than private entrepreneurship. ^[54]52 Perhaps businessmen figured Irish were unacceptable and decided not to hire any? There is little evidence for, and vast evidence against, this hypothesis. Beginning with Samuel Slater, New England entrepreneurs built hundreds of textile mills in the ante-bellum period. Although the Yankee owners were at first eager to use Yankee workers like themselves (the famous "Lowell Girls") they soon switched to Irish and French Canadian Catholics. Pleased with this new labor supply, they built more mills, often in small towns that had previously been entirely Yankee. They counted on a steady inflow of Catholic workers, borrowing millions of dollars to create these jobs. Once the Irish did have mill jobs they were four times more likely to put their children to work in the same mill than Yankees--rather odd behavior if they were mistreated so badly. ^[55]53 Perhaps foremen and superintendents hired Irish for low level jobs but deliberately held them back or promote them very slowly? Major research projects by Tamara Hareven (dealing with Amoskeag, the largest textile mill in the world), and Walter Licht, dealing with internal promotion system in railroads, finds no evidence of this. Business historians and biographers have turned up no instances of systematic anti-Irish discrimination by any employer in the US, at any time. ^[56]54 NINA originated with women domestic servants, and we need to rethink their position. No one has suggested the Irish women used violence, boycotts or threats to achieve dominance in this industry. "Bridget" had a reputation for mediocre quality work, but this liability was offset by communal assets that made them attractive employees. They spoke English. Along with African Americans and Swedes, they had a strong commitment to service jobs and were available in large numbers. Because of late marriages and spinsterhood, they spent years in service, accumulating experience and maturity that made them more attractive [End Page 414] than inexperienced teenagers. Off the job the Irish had a well-developed support network that provided friendship, entertainment, advice, and connections to find new employers. These support networks established informal job standards regarding working hours, housing, food, perquisites and pay scales. The standards were enforced by the maid immediately quitting if the employer violated the standards, with knowledge her friends would be supportive and would help her find a new position. Despite scare stories in the anti-Catholic pamphlets, the Irish servants did not proselytize or interfere with household religious activity. Given the dominance of Irish women among maids in the large cities, and the constant turnover of servants, we can estimate that the large majority (perhaps 80 or 90 percent) of middle class families, regardless of their own ethnic or religious affiliations, routinely hired Irish women. ^[57]55 The economic theory of discrimination focuses on the tastes of the employers, coworkers and customers, and the costs to each (in terms of profits, wages and prices) of having a distaste for a category of workers. If there is underemployment of a target group in a competitive market, then some entrepreneur can make a bigger profit by seeking out and hiring that group. Coworkers who have a strong distaste for working alongside the target can react by boycotting that employer, forcing up his other costs. By looking at wage rates in workplaces with different mixes of groups, economists hope to estimate the "distaste" factor: that is, workers will have to be paid more to work alongside a target group (and will accept lower pay if there are no coworkers from that group.) Estimates of the distaste factor come from a historical study dealing with Michigan furniture workers in the 1890s. It found that in general all groups have a preference for their own kind as coworkers (and were willing to take a 5--10% wage cut for the privilege of working alongside their own kind.) People who were willing to work with outsiders were paid more. "Distaste" for Irish measured out about the same as for other groups. Overall discrimination was small--combined with language skills and the myriad of other unmeasured factors it was less than 5% of the average wage. Doubtless there was a tendency for owners of small shops to hire only their own ethnicity. While this would have the effect of excluding Irish from certain jobs, it cannot be called "anti-Irish" in motivation. Probably the Irish practiced closed hiring as much as or more than any group. ^[58]56 We know from the experience of African Americans and Chinese that the most powerful form of job discrimination came from workers who vowed to boycott or shut down any employer who hired the excluded class. Employers who were personally willing to hire Chinese or blacks were forced to submit to the threats. ^[59]57 There were no reports of mobs attacking Irish employment, even during sporadic episodes of attacks on Catholic church facilities in 1830s and 1840s. No one has reported claims that co-workers refused to work alongside Irish; this powerful form of discrimination probably did not affect the Irish in significant ways. On the other hand the Irish repeatedly attacked employers who hired African Americans or Chinese. If a group is systematically discriminated against in a major way by most employers, it will be segregated into a small niche. This segregation should be visible in the census statistics of occupation, when comparing it to other groups, especially to British Protestant immigrants who were not reputedly subject to discrimination. The most useful analysis of any large city for the 19th century is the "Philadelphia Social History Project" [End Page 415] which computerized hundreds of thousands of census entries. The Irish comprised 15--30% of the labor force there. How segregated were they, and how did the segregation decline over time? [60]Table 1 shows an index of how different the Irish and others were from native Americans. (Philadelphia was one of the few cities with a large native American working class.) The data show the Irish were about in the same position as German immigrants, and much less liable to being boxed into a job niche than blacks, Italians, Poles or Jews. The Irish had about the same score in 1930 as the British, which is consistent with very little discrimination by employers. The index is about the same for Irish of the first and second generation (1880) and later Irish (1930) indicating that the level of anti-Irish discrimination did not change much over time; it can be seen as equally low in both 1880 and 1930. [End Page 416] Assuming the Irish relied somewhat less on individual skills or market forces, and more on collective action and political prowess for their job security and pay rates, we must ask how successful were they? By the early twentieth century their pay scales were probably at least average. Peter Baskerville has discovered the Irish Catholics in urban Canada in 1901 were about average in terms of both family incomes and standards of living. Table 1: 1880 Index of Job Segregation , Philadelphia (100=max)^[61]^58 Old Stock 0 Black 53 Irish Immigrants 35 Sons of Irish immigrants 34 German Immigrants 37 Sons of German immigrants 31 1930 Index of Job Segregation, Philadelphia White, US born parents 0 Black 62 Italian 60 Jewish 57 Polish 55 German 33 Irish 29 British 25 My analysis of Iowa data in 1915 in Table 2 shows the Irish Catholics had slightly above average incomes, but that additional years of schooling helped them less than other groups. This suggests that group solidarity was a powerful force for uplift, but it improved the status of the group as a unit rather than as an average of separate individuals. Autobiographies of overly ambitious youth relate how they were harassed by their classmates and warned against the sin of pride by the priest and nuns. ^[62]60 Table 2: Lifetime Earnings and return to additional schooling Iowa Non-Farm Men, 1915 Group N $Lifetime Return ALL 909 100 10.6% OLD STOCK 499 97 9.7% No Religion 243 93 9.1% Methodist 164 95 9.7% ETHNICS 410 100 10.6% German 147 109 12.2% Lutheran 34 95 9.5% Catholic 46 106 13.9% Scandinavian 87 103 12.2% British 58 114 14.7% Irish Catholic 57 104 8.4% Pete Hamill explained how the collective spirit affected him, growing up in Brooklyn in 1940s: ^[63]61 This was part of the most sickening aspect of Irish-American life in those days: the assumption that if you rose above an acceptable level of mediocrity, you were guilty of the sin of pride. You were to accept your place and stay in it for the rest of your life; the true rewards would be given to you in heaven, after you were dead. There was ferocious pressure to conform, to avoid breaking out of the pack; self-denial was the supreme virtue...it was arrogant, a sin of pride, to conceive of a life beyond the certainties, rhythms, and traditions of the Neighborhood. Sometimes the attitude was expressed directlyMore often, it was implied. But the Neighborhood view of the world had fierce power. Who did I think I was? When the Irish grumbled about "No Irish Need Apply," they perhaps were really warning each other against taking jobs which were controlled by the Other and immune from the political pressures that group solidarity could exert. There was method to the myth, which is why it persisted so long. Individual upward mobility was a priority for individualistic strivers imbued with the "Protestant Ethic." There is no reason to assume it motivated the Irish. Their individual upward mobility rates were modest. ^[64]62 If the Irish turned both politics and the job market into a group struggle, then we might expect different outcomes when comparing the three situations where the Irish were too weak to make much difference, where they had the "right amount" of leverage, and where they were too numerous. Statistical studies of social mobility in the 1850--1920 era suggest that the Irish did best in the Midwest (where they had just the right amount of strength), and not nearly as well in the Northeast, where they were too numerous to be advantaged by zero-sum power maneuvering. ^[65]63 Why the difference? Both Midwest and Northeast regions were doing very well, industrializing rapidly at that time. Let's examine the model of collective solidarity of the Irish in the labor market. It was a technique to facilitate the group as a whole moving rather than individuals. It had zero-sum properties (what one group gained, other groups lost). Their technique would work much better when the Irish were 10--30% of the population, and not nearly as well when they were in a majority. (If their numbers went above 50%, then it was dysfunctional, for most gains would come at the expense of other Irish.) The Irish did have a numerical dominance in Boston and other northeastern [End Page 417] cities, such as Troy. There were fewer rivals to elbow out of the way, and their technique was therefore much less successful there. The Irish approach discouraged entrepreneurship (which is positive-sum). It encouraged government work, and jobs (such as canal or railroad construction, longshoremen, transit) where government contacts or franchises were involved (thus allowing them to use their political muscle). In order to expand their preferred job base the Irish supported expansion of government spending and government regulation--what John Buenker has called "urban liberalism." Successors to the Al Smith tradition of urban liberalism, such as Speakers John McCormack and Tip O'Neill and Senator Ted Kennedy could well boast of their achievements in expanding government (or preventing its contraction) during and after the New Deal era. ^[66]64 After 1860 fears that the Irish were a threat to republicanism rapidly disappeared. The most decisive event came in spring 1861; when the War broke out the Irish rallied to the American flag, and joined the army. Although they strenuously opposed the draft and emancipation, they never supported the Confederacy (unlike some old-line Democratic leaders who took Confederate money.) Irish veterans were welcomed into the GAR, whose camaraderie validated their republicanism. The worst forms of poverty and destitution eventually disappeared, and a solid class of property owners and civil servants emerged to anchor the Irish in their communities. The Catholic Church, controlled by the Irish, vigorously supported law and order, and effectively suppressed the premodern urge to use violence for political goals. The Pope never dictated politics, and the bishops and priests never became active in domestic politics. They focused on building schools, colleges, hospitals, asylums and the stunningly beautiful churches. Many critics--throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries--were alarmed that parochial schools threatened the public school system, which they insisted was the only guarantee of republican values. The Catholics vehemently rejected this allegation, and over the years gained surprising allies, as other denominations started their own parochial schools, including the German Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, Orthodox Jews, and evangelicals. Lingering anti-Catholicism reappeared in debates over prohibition, and especially over the nomination of Catholics to the presidency, but it is notable that politicians were never attacked for their Irish heritage. ^[67]65 Irish collective solidarity seems to have broken down after World War Two, as New Deal work relief ended, the big city machines collapsed, unions entered an era of slow, steady decline, and the Catholic school system generated high school and college graduates well-equipped to make their way in the white collar world entirely as individuals, with minimal need for group support. By the 1960s the Irish had moved from the bottom to near the top of the ladder, with an economic status that surpassed their old Yankee antagonists. With the election of John Kennedy in 1960, Irish political solidarity climaxed. The Last Hurrah came in 1964, when Irish Catholics voted 78 percent for Lyndon Johnson. They abandoned Humphrey in 1968; since then they have split evenly between the parties and no longer comprise a bloc vote. ^[68]66 Did the Irish come to America in the face of intense hostility, symbolized by the omnipresent sign, "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply"? The hard evidence suggests that on the whole Irish immigrants as employees were welcomed by employers; their entry was never restricted; and no one proposed they be excluded [End Page 418] like the Chinese, let alone sent back. Instead of firing Catholics to make way for Protestant workers, most employers did exactly the opposite. That is, the dominant culture actively moved to create new jobs specifically for the unskilled Irish workers. As soon as the Irish acquired education and skills they moved up the social status ladder, reaching near the top by the 1960s. For a while political questions were raised about the devotion of the Irish to America's republican ideals, but these doubts largely faded away during the 1860s. The Irish rarely if ever had to confront an avowedly "anti-Irish" politician of national or statewide reputation--itself powerful evidence for the absence of deep-rooted anti-Irish sentiment. By the late 19th century the Irish were fully accepted politically and economically. However, reality and perception diverged. After the song appeared in 1862 the Irish themselves "saw" the NINA signs everywhere, seeing in them ugly discrimination that was forcing them downward into the worst jobs. It was deliberate humiliation by arrogant Protestant Yankees. The myth was undeniable--anyone inside the group would be called a traitor for suggesting that internal weaknesses inside the Irish community caused its problems; anyone outside would be called a prejudiced bigot. ^[69]67 But what if there were no such signs? The NINA slogan was in the mind's eye, conjured by an enormously popular song from 1862. Job discrimination by the Other was too well known to the Irish to need evidence beyond NINA, or the "recent" burning of the Ursuline convent. Historians engaging in cultural studies must beware the trap that privileges evidence derived from the protests of self-proclaimed victims. Practically every ethnoreligious group in America cherishes its martyrs and warns its members that outsiders "discriminate" against them, or would if they had the opportunity. The NINA slogan had the effect of reinforcing political, social and religious solidarity. It had a major economic role as well, strengthening the politicized work-gang outlook of Irish workers who had to stick together at all times. It warned the Irish against looking for jobs outside their community, and it explained away their low individual rates of upward social mobility. The slogan identified an enemy to blame, and justified bully behavior on the city streets. NINA signs never faded away, even as the Irish prospered and discrimination vanished--they remained a myth about origins that could not be abandoned. _________________________________________________________________ Bow, NH 03304 Endnotes This essay grew out of discussions on several email lists, including H-ETHNIC, H-HIGH-S, Irish-Diaspora, and Wild Geese. Special thanks to all the participants; I appreciate the advice from John Allswang, Tyler Anbinder, Peter Baskerville, Colin B. Burke, Leo Casey, Robert Cherny, Terry Clark, Heather Cronrath, Maura Doherty, Jay Dolan, Elizabeth Ellis and the staff at the Museum of the City of New York, Joe Gannon, Larry Giantomas, Victor Greene, Susan Ikenberry, Rob Kennedy, Kevin Kenny, Lawrence Kohl, Bill Leckie, Dale Light, Sean Lyons, Dennis J. McCann, Martha Mayo, Brad McKay, Lawrence J. McCaffrey, John McClymer, John Morello, Gerald A. Regan, Joel Schwartz, Patrick O'Sullivan, Gene Sessions, and Stephan Thernstrom. [End Page 419] [70]1. Even historians have believed the myth; for example, the leading scholar of the Irish migration claims, "Unskilled workers and servants, especially, encountered the ubiquitous 'No Irish Need Apply' notices when they searched for jobs in Boston, New York, and other major cities." Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (1985), 323. Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History (2000) demonstrates how central the sense of discrimination was. [71]2. Stephan Thernstrom (email of March 27, 2001 to author) notes he saw no discriminatory ads, or complaints of job discrimination, in the four decades of issues of Newburyport Daily Herald that he examined. Martha Mayo (email of June 24, 2001 to author) likewise has found no references in her exhaustive search of Lowell newspapers. Oscar Handlin did not report seeing a NINA, but he did reference a handful of editorials in Irish Catholic newspapers that vigorously condemned NINA in want ads for household workers. Handlin, Boston's Immigrants, 1790--1880 (1959), p. 62. [72]3. A major exhibit, Gaelic Gotham, from the Museum of the City of New York, see [73]http://www.mcny.org/Exhibitions/Irish/irish.htm did not have any NINA signs, but did reprint the text of a newspaper ad for maids. [74]4. Of course Ebay.com sells these signs. But they are all modern fakes, made by novelty sign makers for the Irish market. See for example [75]http://www.bookguy.com/Irish/Books/irishem.htm Scholars can get fooled too, as shown by [76]http://www.therblig.com/GLCSSRA/archive/901.htm [~irish.gif] [77]5. Kennedy said, "I remember 'Help Wanted' signs in stores when I was growing up saying 'No Irish Need Apply ."' Congressional Record Senate Sept 9, 1996 page S10054. He was born to a rich family in 1932, about the same time as the Lindbergh baby, and grew up in very well protected upper class circumstances that seldom brought him to the factory districts. No other Irishman hius age reports seeing a sign. [78]6. Immigration restriction movements originated in the 1890s, at a time when Irish immigration had declined to a trickle, and did not target the Irish. Indeed, the most powerful force behind restriction was the American Federation of Labor--half of whose leaders were Irish Catholic. [79]7. On motivation see Randall M. Miller, "Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity, and the Civil War," in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. Religion and the American Civil War (1998), 261--96. Edward K. Spann, "Union Green: The Irish Community and the Civil War," in Ron Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds. The New York Irish (1996), 193--209. There were no allegations of Irishmen going South to join the Confederacy. In the war with Mexico, however, a hundred Irish Americans deserted from the US army, organized two San Patricio battalions, and fought alongside the Mexicans. Many were captured and hung by General Winfield Scott. Pam Nordstrom, "San Patricio Battalion," Handbook of Texas (1996) [80]http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/qis1.h tml [81]8. Steven P. Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840--1985 (1988), ch 2. After the war the leading veteran's organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, welcomed Irish Catholic members. Since it was the mainstay of the Republican party in many small towns, the GAR provided an opportunity for Democratic Irishmen to mingle on friendly and equal terms with Protestants of the same age, and softened the tensions created by the temperance movement. See Michel J. Martin, "'A Class of Persons Whose Presence is a Constant Danger': Progress, Prohibition, and 'Public Disorderliness' in Burlington, 1860--1880," Vermont History (1994) 62: 148--165; and Gene Sessions, "'Years of Struggle': The Irish in the Village of Northfield, 1845--1900," Vermont History (1987) 55: 69--95. [End Page 420] [82]9. John Belchem "Nationalism, Republicanism and Exile: Irish Emigrants and the Revolutions of 1848," Past & Present (Feb 1995) 146: 103--35. They also considered themselves superior Christians in vivid contrast to the heretical Protestants, who were most likely damned to hell. [83]10. One might add the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866, which failed totally; the Pope excommunicated the Fenians. [84]11. Generally see Michael Glazier, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America (1999); for details, Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (1990); Michael A. Gordon, The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871 (1993); Edward B. Freeland, "The Great Riot," Continental Monthly (Sept 1863) v4#2 pp. 302--312 online at [85]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABR1802 -0004-62. On the Molly Maguires, see Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., The Molly Maguires (1964) and Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998); see also online sources at [86]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/molly.htm and Joel Tyler, Headley, The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873, including a full and complete account of the Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863 (1873), online at [87]http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa.new/ [88]12. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Diaspora in America (1976), p. 66, suggests ghetto life exaggerated stereotypes and nurtured Irish failure "by cultivating the paranoia, defeatism, and feelings of inferiority planted by the past." See also Thomas H. O'Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History (1995), 94. [89]13. The Irish tended to equate themselves with Catholicism, interpreting anti- Catholicism as anti-Irish prejudice. Other Catholics groups, especially the Germans, French Canadians, and Poles, resented this proprietary attitude. [90]14. Brian C. Mitchell, The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821--61 (1988), shows how the mill owners replaced the Yankee "Lowell Girls" with Irish and French Catholics. Wealthy Protestants who summered in Maine brought their servants along and asked the bishop to help arrange for Catholic services for them. James O'Toole, Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, 1859--1944 (1992), 42. On the decline of anti-Catholicism at the local level, see Luisa Spencer Finberg, "The Press and the Pulpit: Nativist Voices in Burlington and Middlebury, 1853--1860," Vermont History (1993) 61: 156--175. [91]15. The history of Pendennis. His fortunes and misfortunes, his friends and his greatest enemy (1848) p. 102. The character was referring to Protestant Irish. [92]16. On relations between the two Irish groups, see David Montgomery, "The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the Kensington Riots of 1844." Journal of Social History (1972) 5: 411--446. In addition to religion, Irish regionalism led to internecine fighting over jobs, which further gave the Irish community a "fighting" reputation. [93]17. It is now easy to search through hundreds of thousands of pages of 19th century magazines and books, using the Making of America online software at Cornell ([94]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/ or Michigan. (see [95]http://moa.umdl.umich.edu For the Times, see [96]http://newspaperarchive.com/ and for The Nation, [97]http://www.archive.thenation.com/ [98]18. See the ad in The New York Times of March 25, 1854 shown below--this is the only NINA ad for men anyone has ever found; also see Sept. 21, 1859. The Times of Jan 9, 1854, had an ad for servants from a "Protestant Employment Society." A houseworker ad on February 10, 1858 specified, "Only Scotch need apply." For comparison, the search engine turned up 25 instances of the phrase "respectable young girl" in 1861 alone, plus 34 entreaties for a "first rate cook" that year. It turned up a solitary ad that specified "only Americans need apply"--for a governess position in Kentucky. New York [nina.jpg] [End Page 421] Times July 18, 1855. The New York Irish-American (May 28, 1853) vowed that "we shall kill this anti-Irish-servant-maid crusade." It claimed to have hired a lawyer to sue the advertisers and the papers involved. On May 16, 1857, it proudly noted that there had not been a "no Irish need apply" ad in a while. On maids see David M. Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (1978). [99]19. Aunt Abbie, The O'Brian Family, or The Fruits of Bible Reading (Philadelphia, 1855). They hired an Irish servant anyway, to keep the story moving. [100]20. The privacy zone around household employment still operates in federal civil rights law. Stephen J. Pollak, "1968 and the Beginnings of Federal Enforcement of Fair Housing," (2000), online at [101]http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/documents/pollak.htm has explained the exemption from the 1968 Civil Rights law for "Mrs. Murphy's boarding house." That is, for houses with no more than four units, one of them occupied by the owner. The choice of an Irish boarding house was doubtless a humorous touch by Senator Everett Dirksen, who loved witty wordplay. [102]21. Online at [103]http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/cw1/cw104040/001q.gif Library of Con- gress. See William H. A. Williams, "Irish Song in America," in Glazier, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish, 475--6. [104]22. Online at [105]http://memory.loc.gov/ Library of Congress, digital ID 09730 [106]http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/as1/as109730/001q.gif [107]23. Meagher's men (see [108]www.mindesign.net/Ninth_Corps/meagher/meagher2.html and Corcoran's brigade were Irish Catholic combat units raised in New York City in 1861--62. (see [109]http://members.tripod.com/~Shaung/164thny.html After Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept 22, 1862, support from Irish Catholics fell off drastically, suggesting that the lyrics were written before then. At the battle of Fredericksburg in December, 1862, Meagher's brigade, comprising six all-Irish regiments from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, suffered 45% casualties and the Irish enthusiasm for fighting drastically declined. Craig A. Warren, "'Oh, God, What a Pity!': The Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg and the Creation of Myth," Civil War History (2001) 47:193--221. For the Irish mood see Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots; Frank L. Klement, "Catholics as Copperheads during the Civil War," The Catholic Historical Review (1994) 80:36--57. For songs celebrating their patriotism, see David Kincaid, "The Irish Volunteer: Songs of the Irish Union Soldier, 1861--1865," online at [110]http://www.hauntedfieldmusic.com/Lyrics.html [111]24. The narrator is male but he selects an ad for a maid, which gives the house address. The annual Donnybrook fair had a long reputation for brawling. "Spalpeen" meant rascal and was current only in Ireland; "Millia murther" ("million murders") was the standard oath when one was getting beaten up. On more typical job searches by new arrivals, see Joseph Dinneen, Ward Eight (1936), 1--3. For Tony Pastor, see [112]http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/pastor.html and Susan Kattwinkel, Tony Pastor Presents: Afterpieces from the Vaudeville Stage (1998). The modern version by Brendan Nolan (see [113]http://brendannolan.com/) is a variant of the Poole version. For music listen to [114]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/song.htm [115]25. The unsigned editorial was probably authored by John Mitchel, the famous "Young Ireland" leader who was on staff at the time. William Dillon, The Life of John Mitchel (1883). For text see [116]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/noirish3.htm [117]26. John Aloysius Farrell, Tip O' Neill and the Democratic Century: A Biography (2001) p 55; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 324. The convent was run by Catholic nuns from French Quebec and primarily served rich Unitarian girls. See Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Fire and Roses : The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (2000). [End Page 422] [118]27. There are a few other references to NINA in the periodical literature: The Nation Jan 14, 1869, p. 27; March 23, 1871, p. 192; 1873 short story used to show prejudice of a crooked politician p 447; (see [119]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293 4-0032-78); an amusing 1876 usage by novelist Henry James, Jr. in The American, showing tolerance p 669 (see [120]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293 4-0037-136); 1876 account on why Chinese make better houseworkers in San Francisco p 736 (see [121]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABP766 4-0012-116); There is an explicit reference by an Irish priest in a Catholic magazine of 1881, referring to an era 40 years before: Rev. F. P. Ryan, "Ireland and the Irish," Catholic World (Sept 1881) 33: 849, online at [122]http://www.hti.umich.edu/ [123]28. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800--1860 (1938), 407, and geographical maps 405--6. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's (1992). [124]29. Critics said Irish bosses made a mockery of republicanism; for an example (with no anti-Catholic component), see "Irish Power" a cartoon in Puck, April 3, 1889, online at [125]http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=RE&Minor=D&S lideNum=23.00 [126]30. Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (1993); Billington, Protestant Crusade ; Ward M. McAfee, Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s (1998). American scholars are laggard compared to the excellent work done in Britain and Canada: D. G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (1992); John D. Brewer and Gareth I. Higgins, "Understanding Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland," Sociology, (1999) 33:235--261; J. R. Miller, "Anti-Catholic Thought in Victorian Canada," Canadian Historical Review, (1985), 66:474--494; Mark McGowan, The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish and Identity in Toronto, 1887--1922 (1999); Terence Punch, "Anti-Irish Prejudice in Nineteenth century Nova Scotia: The Literary and Statistical Evidence," in Thomas P. Power, ed., The Irish in Atlantic Canada, 1780--1900 (1991). For an anti-Catholic compendium see Samuel W. Barnum, Romanism as It Is (1872), online at [127]http://www.hti.umich.edu/ [128]31. The bishops strongly opposed the Fenians and the Molly Maguires; the Pope condemned the boycotts in the Irish Land War. Violence simply was an unacceptable technique. The one American exception that proves the rule was Rev. Edward McGlynn, who was repeatedly warned and finally excommunicated. Many priests and nuns were arrested in Missouri during Reconstruction; the Irish were known to have supported the Confederacy and the Radicals wanted to exclude them from politics. The indictments were thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. See Harold C. Bradley, "In Defense of John Cummings," Missouri Historical Review (1962) 57: 1--15; William T. Johnson, "Missouri Test Oath" The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) v 14, online at [129]http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14538a.htm [130]32. In Ireland the political role of priests was well established; John Newsinger, "The Catholic Church In Nineteenth-Century Ireland," European History Quarterly (1995) 25: 247--267. Rev. L. W. Bacon, "The Literature of the Coming Controversy," Putnam's Monthly Magazine (Jan 1869) p. 72, praises rapid maturation of RC church; online at [131]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK928 3-0013-10 [132]33. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles 268--70, 273--4; 314--23; Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880--1970 (1973); Joseph P. Ferrie, "The Entry into The U.S. Labor Market of Antebellum European Immigrants, 1840--1860," Explorations in Economic History (1997) 34:295--330; Ferrie, "Up and out or [End Page 423] Down and Out? Immigrant Mobility in the Antebellum United States," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1995) 27:33--55. [133]34. The Irish image in the popular media has been a topic of interest for historians. As Lewis P. Curtis showed in Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (1997) Punch magazine in London commissioned many cartoons and jokes denigrating the Irish in every way possible, and making them look like monkeys. For example see the crude humor of its Dec 21, 1861 issue, pp 250--51, online at [134]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABR010 2-0072-6 American writers in the MOA corpus never referred to the Irish as monkeys or apes (though one did refer to Yale undergraduates as monkeys.) However the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast picked up the device. Nast was famous for his use of animals--including the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey--but does not seem to have depicted the Irish or any ethnic group as animals. Nevertheless rival cartoonist Frank Beard ridiculed Nast by drawing him as a monkey, in Judge July 12, 1884. Otherwise there were no references to the Irish as "Simian" or subhuman in the American literature. Anthony Wohl reviews the British hostility towards the Irish (see [135]http://65.107.211.206/history/race/Racism.html). [136]35. The most visible--and ghastly--conditions were in New York City; see Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (2001). [137]36. In Ireland the Land Wars of 1879--82 involved a demonization of landlords, contrasted with their sacralization of the exploited tenant farmer, reflecting a premodern rural ethic, coupled with a duty sense of fighting back against the oppressor. See Donald Jordan, "The Irish National League and the 'unwritten law': rural protest and nation-building in Ireland, 1882--1890," Past & Present (1998) 158:146--70. A dynamic interaction between agitators inside Ireland and America existed from the mid 1850s, resulting in the formation of the Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, as well as fund-raising in the States. The Fenians turned violent in 1863, aiming to invade Canada. This cross-Atlantic interplay perhaps heightened Irish suspicions that they were abused by Yankees as much as by Englishmen. Oliver Rafferty, "Fenianism in North America in the 1860s: The Problems for Church and State," History (1999) 84: 257--277; Victor A. Walsh, "Irish Nationalism and Land Reform: The Role of the Irish in America," Irish Studies (1985) 4: 253--269. [138]37. William Cardinal O'Connell of Boston reveled in the memories of his boyhood, when he and his chums would refuse to endure "Puritan Yankee jeers and taunts," and often would mete out a few retaliatory "cuffing(s), blows, and bloody noses." William Henry O'Connell, Recollections of Seventy Years (1934), pp. 35--39. Chicago's first mayor Daley built his political reputation as a gang leader circa 1919, with perhaps some involvement in the Chicago race riot that year, as revealed by chapter 1 from Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation (2000). [139]38. As the biographers of Mayor Richard Daley observe: Daley's childhood catechism of Irish deprivations left him convinced that no group had suffered as his kinsmen had suffered. In the 1960s, when Daley was turning a deaf ear to the civil rights movement, one liberal critic opined: "I think one of the real problems {\lbracket}Daley{\rbracket} has with Negroes is understanding that the Irish are no longer the out-ethnic group." Cohen and Taylor, American Pharaoh, p. 21. [140]39. The Irish have worked to include the Potato Famine in the school curriculum; see [141]http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html [End Page 424] [142]40. The sense of victimhood among American ethnic groups varied greatly. It was highest for groups who lived in high-tension local situations with neighbors they feared, such as Irish, African Americans, Jews, Japanese Americans, and white Southerners (after Reconstruction). However, it seems to be lower among Mormons and German Americans, who were targets primarily of federal wrath. The Chinese Americans seem to have surprisingly low levels of perceived victimhood, perhaps because they systematically walled themselves off from very hostile neighbors after 1880. The question is open on what the correlation was between perceived and actual discrimination. [143]41. Matthew E. Mason, "'The Hands Here Are Disposed to Be Turbulent': Unrest among the Irish Trackmen of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 1829--1851," Labor History (1998) 39: 253--72. Peter Way, "Shovel and Shamrock: Irish Workers and Labor Violence in the Digging of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal," Labor History (1989) 30: 489--517. [144]42. The first chapter Divided We Stand (2001), by Bruce Nelson, provides an excellent discussion of the collective work culture of longshoremen, 95% of whom were Irish in New York. It is online at [145]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/069101 7328/excerpt/ref=pm_dp_ln_b_3/103-2862524-8067847 [146]43. Thomas N. Maloney, "Personnel Policy and Racial Inequality in the Pre-World War II North," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999) 30:235--57; Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory System in the United States 1880--1920 (1975); Sanford Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the Transformation of Work in American Industry, 1900--1945 (1985); Richard W. Steele, "'No Racials': Discrimination Against Ethnics in American Defense Industry, 1940--42," Labor History (1991) 32: 66--90. When job discrimination ends--as it largely did against Catholics in Northern Ireland after 1972, the statistics show a rapid equalization of social status. Richard Breen, "Class Inequality and Social Mobility in Northern Ireland, 1973 to 1996," American Sociological Review (2000) 65:392--406. The Irish were not privy to the private letters of management--but historians are, They never mention the desirability of not hiring Irish--though they were often keen about blackballing strikebreakers. See Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders 1845--1890 (1953); James R. Barrett, "Unity and Fragmentation: Class, Race and Ethnicity on Chicago's South Side, 1900--1922," Journal of Social History (1984) 18:37--55; Licht, Working for the Railroad. Railroad policy, as one president explained to a priest, was zero tolerance for discrimination. "If there are any just grounds even of suspicion that there is any movement among our Superintendents to discriminate in any manner against Irishmen or against Catholics, we will see that the proper steps are taken to prevent it." Franklin B. Gowen to Fr. Daniel O'Connor, March 15, 1880, quoted in Marvin W. Schlegel, Ruler of the Reading, The Life of Franklin B. Gowen (1947), p. 176. [147]44. See Bayor and Meagher, eds. New York Irish, especially Hasia Diner, "'The Most Irish City in the Union': The Era of Great Migration, 1844--1877" pp 87--106. For conditions in Ireland and the mind-set of the immigrants, see Miller, Emigrants and Exiles. Miller shows that the Catholics felt exiled from their native land, driven out by malevolent Protestants. At the same time the Orange Protestants became much more hostile to the Catholics; they were a strong factor in Canada, and weak in the USA. See Donald MacRaild, "The Orange Order, Militant Protestantism and Anti-Catholicism: A Bibliographical Essay," (1999) online at [148]http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/guides/orange.shtml [149]45. Carl Siracusa, A Mechanical People: Perceptions of the Industrial Order in Massachusetts, 1815--1880 (1979). For a Catholic view see "The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City," Catholic World (August, 1869) 9:553--566, online at [150]http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1021.htm [151]46. Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America (1986) grossly exaggerates the ridicule toward the Irish--even to the point of reprinting cartoons that had nothing to do with the Irish, after removing the captions. Knobel [End Page 425] haphazardly selected a couple hundred publications (he never says exactly how many); he selected newspaper stories, for example, that dealt with riots and other episodes of intergroup violence which have little relevance to employment or social status. He found 1592 references to the Irish over the years 1820--1860. However sources, such as melodramas with numerous Irish characters, had numerous references, and each was counted as a separate "unit-perception." In all he found 392 different descriptive adjectives, and coded them according to a scheme developed by a psychologist for the language in use a century later. Knobel found a small (statistically insignificant) increase in emphasis on physical characteristics in the depiction of Irish in melodrama and popular fiction in the 1850s (p. 194). He then rebuilt his thesis around this tiny effect; he failed to follow proper research design by not taking a larger sample to see if the effect was caused by sampling error. (He only looked at 33 melodramas, and then split them three ways, so his N is around 12.) Likewise he divided his 30 school texts into three groups. On the whole, Knobel's statistical research design is much too weak to support his conclusions. For more on the problem of content analysis, see Charles Dollar and Richard Jensen, Historian's Guide to Statistics (1971). Knobel's own data reveal that physical references to the Irish were declining in three of the seven categories of writing, including newspapers and popular nonfiction. He mentions adjectives that he found only once--such as "Simian," "bestial," "savage," "brutish" and "low-browed", and many readers have assumed these were "typical" descriptions of the Irish. In contrast to his few sources this project examined 14,000 books and magazine articles, with 48,000 references to the Irish. We used the amazing searchable indexes at the Making of America project, the New York Times, and The Nation, which of course were not available when Knobel wrote. Searches indicate that Americans rarely or never referred to Blacks as "smoked Irish"; they did not call the Irish "white Negroes" nor characterize them as "Simian," "bestial," "savage," or "low-browed." We found exactly one reference to "low browed" (p. 267 in an 1857 humorous essay full of vast exaggerations), (see Thomas Butler Gunn, The Physiology of New York Boarding Houses (1857), 267, online at [152]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ANY638 4) and one to "Simian" (by William Dean Howells, (see [153]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK401 4-0083-25) p. 191, in 1891, commenting on the British cartoonists.) Knobel's misreading of the evidence was perpetuated by David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991) and Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (1995) who uncritically used page 88 of Knobel (which, however, is highly ambiguous and misleading in the first place.) No American in the 19^th century is known to have considered Irish as black. The Confederacy for example, welcomed Irish Catholics as citizens and soldiers--even as governors and generals. See Glazer, Encyclopedia, 155--56, 868, 929--30; Jason H. Silverman, "Stars, Bars and Foreigners: The Immigrants and the Making of the Confederacy," Journal of Confederate History (1988) 1:265--88. [154]47. Hasia R. Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (1983); Richard Stivers, Hair of the Dog: Irish Drinking and Its American Stereotype. (2nd ed. 2000). [155]48. Dennis Clark, "Ethnic Enterprise and Urban Development," Ethnicity (1978) 5:108--118; Perry R. Duis, The Saloon: Public Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880--1920 (1983); Walter Licht, Getting Work in Philadelphia, 1840--1950 (1992); Timothy J. Meagher, Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880--1928 (2000). Kevin Blackburn, "The Protestant Work Ethic and the Australian Mercantile Elite, 1880--1914," Journal of Religious History, (1997) 21:193--208, demonstrates the Irish did not share the individualistic work ethic of their Protestant neighbors in Australia. The best coverage of the rise of the Irish middle class is Paula M. Kane, Separatism and Subculture. Boston Catholicism, 1900--1920 (1994). [156]49. Diner, Erin's Daughters. [157]50. David W. Galenson, "Ethnic Differences in Neighborhood Effects on the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago," History of Education Quarterly (1998) 38:17--35; [End Page 426] Galenson, "Neighborhood, and the School Attendance of Boys in Antebellum Boston," Journal of Urban History (1998) 24:603--26; Joel Perlmann, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880--1935 (1988), re Providence; Steven Herscovici, "Ethnic Differences in School Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newburyport, 1850--1860," Social Science History (1994) 18:471--96. [158]51. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles argues this "peasant" outlook was strong among the Irish; Lloyd I. Rudolph, "The Modernity of Tradition: The Democratic Incarnation of Caste in India," American Political Science Review (1965) 59:5--89, shows that an entire caste can indeed move upward by sticking together. [159]52. Erie, Rainbow's End, 61. [160]53. Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810--1860 (1983) demonstrates good relations between the mill owners and the Irish. Also see Siracusa, A Mechanical People; Mitchell, Paddy Camps, and Bernstein Draft Riots. [161]54. Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad (1983), pp. 222--23; Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (1982). The nearest example is an 1886 newspaper report that a Worcester, Massachusetts, factory was deliberately replacing Irish with cheaper Swedish workers. There was considerable tension between the groups, expressed in street violence and politics. The Swedes, however, seem to have been rather more skilled and better paid. The French also complained about being replaced by Swedes. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870--1920 (1983), pp. 88--89. [162]55. Diner, Erin's Daughters, 80--94; Diane M. Hotten-Somers, "Relinquishing and Reclaiming Independence: Irish Domestic Servants, American Middle-class Mistresses, and Assimilation, 1850--1920," Eire-lreland: a Journal of Irish Studies, (Spring--Summer 2001) 185--203; Janet A. Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from Ireland. 1885--1920 (1989), 73--90; Katzman, Seven Days a Week, 271--73; Diner, "Women, Nineteenth Century" in Glazer, ed. Encyclopedia of Irish 964; Faye E. Dudden, Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-Century America (1983), 62--5; Aife Murray, "Miss Margaret's Emily Dickinson," Signs (1999) 24: 697--732. For a negative view see Kenny, American Irish, 153--54. Note that in aristocratic Britain the butlers controlled the servants' quarters, not the housewives; an informal Irish network would be a threat to them, so perhaps they were the ones who decided, "No Irish Need Apply." See Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants. 1815--1914 (1994). On the workings of informal networks among domestics, see Dorothea Schneider, "The Work That Never Ends: New Literature on Paid Domestic Work and Women of Color," Journal of American Ethnic History (1998) 17: 61--66. For contemporary views see Grace A. Ellis, "Household Servants," The Galaxy (Sept 1872) 14:349--55 online at [163]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ACB872 7-0014-43; Robert Tomes, "Your Humble Servant," Harper's New Monthly Magazine. (June 1864) 29: 53--60, online at [164]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK401 4-0029-10; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "House and Home Papers," Atlantic Monthly (June 1864) 13:759 online at [165]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293 4-0013-105 For a revealing cartoon see [166]"Bridget...Our Self-Made Cooks - From Paupers to Potentates..." [167]56. David Buffum and Robert Whaples, "Fear and Lathing in the Michigan Furniture Industry: Employee-based Discrimination a Century Ago," Economic Inquiry (1995) 33:234--52 finds the Irish were overpaid by 7%; Paul McGouldrick and Michael Tannen, "Did American Manufacturers Discriminate against Immigrants Before 1914?" Journal of Economic History (1977): 723--46 finds virtually no discrimination. For theory see Kenneth Arrow, "The Theory of Discrimination," in Discrimination in Labor Markets, edited by Orley Ashenfelter and Albert Rees, (1973), pp. 3--33; Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination, 2nd. ed. (1971); Glen G. Cain, "The Economic Analysis of Labor Market Discrimination: A Survey" in Orley C. Ashenfelter and Richard Layard, eds. Handbook [End Page 427] of Labor Economics (1986) v1 ch 13 . On ethnic in-hiring, see Odd S. Lovoll, A Century of Urban Life: The Norwegians in Chicago before 1930 (1988), pp. 153, 159, 165. [168]57. Harper's Weekly reported on the anti-Chinese movement in California; their reports are online at [169]http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States (1920) 8:186 explained how real job discrimination worked: "There were a large number of unemployed in San Francisco, estimated when the winter came on at 15,000, a large number for a city of about 200,000; these were willing converts of Dennis Kearney, the leader of the Sandlotters. Kearney was a drayman of some education who had lost money through speculation in mining stocks and who swayed the crowd by his inflammatory speech. "The Chinese must go," was a favorite declaration and, from attacking the Chinese, Kearney naturally arrived at a denunciation of their employers. "A little judicious hanging right here and now," he said, "will be the best course to pursue with the capitalists and stock sharps who are all the time robbing us." A notable event was a meeting on October 29 (1877) on Nob Hill in front of the railroad kings' wooden palaces. In his speech Kearney demanded that the Central Pacific Railroad discharge all Chinese within three months. "Recollect Judge Lynch," he said, "and that is the judge that the working-men will want in California if the condition of things is not ameliorated." Kearney was arrested for incendiary language and when released reiterated his refrain, "The Chinese must go," and exhibiting to the Sand Lot meeting four feet of rope with a noose declared that that was their platform." [170]58. From Stephanie W. Greenberg, "Industrial Location and Ethnic Residential Patterns in an Industrializing City: Philadelphia, 1880," in Theodore Hershberg, ed., Philadelphia (1981), p. 215. [171]59. Jensen, unpublished data, using sample of 1915 Iowa State Census. The "lifetime income" is an index involving time discounts, and should be considered the present value of the future income of the group, holding age constant. "Return" is how much one additional year of high school improved annual earnings over a lifetime. [172]60. Peter Baskerville, "Did Religion Matter?: Religion and Wealth in Urban Canada at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," (unpublished paper); Joel Perlmann and Waldinger, Roger, "Second Generation Decline? Children of Immigrants, Past and Present: A Reconsideration," International Migration Review (1997) 31:893--922. [173]61. Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life: A Memoir (1994), pp. 110--11. [174]62. Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964); see also Howard Gitelman, "No Irish Need Apply: Patterns of and Responses to Ethnic Discrimination in the Labor Market," Labor History (1973) 14(1): 56--68. Looking at Waltham, Massachusetts, 1850--90 he finds Irish avoided on-the-job training or formal education; they stayed in the lowest-paying, unskilled jobs. [175]63. See Andrew Greeley, The Irish Americans: The Rise to Money and Power (1981), pp. 110--20; Thernstrom, Other Bostonians; JoEllen Vinyard, "The Irish on the Urban Frontier: Detroit, 1850--1880." (PhD Michigan, 1972); David Noel Doyle, Irish-Americans, Native Rights and National Empires; The Structure, Divisions and Attitudes of the Catholic Minority In the Decade of Expansion, 1890--1901 (Doctoral Thesis, University of Iowa, 1976; published by Arno); Grace McDonald, History Of The Irish In Wisconsin In The Nineteenth Century (1954); and Steven P. Erie, "Politics, the Public Sector and Irish Social Mobility: San Francisco, 1870--1900," Western Political Quarterly (1978) 31: 274--289. For good essays comparing cities across the country see Timothy J. Meagher, From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880 to 1920 (1986). For comparative wealth data, see Timothy G. Conley and David W. Galenson, "Nativity and Wealth in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cities," The Journal of Economic History, (1998) 58:468--93. [End Page 428] [176]64. Terry N. Clark, "The Irish Ethnic Identity and the Spirit of Patronage" Ethnicity (1978) 2: 305--359, found municipal spending much higher in Irish strongholds; compare Erie, Rainbow's End, 46. See also John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (1973). Patrick D. Kennedy, "Chicago's Irish Americans and the Candidacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932--1944," Illinois Historical Journal (1995) 88: 263--278. [177]65. German was another matter, especially in World War I, and as late as 1940 Wendell Willkie was attacked for his German (Protestant) heritage. [178]66. Andrew Greeley That Most Distrustful Nation: the Taming of the American Irish (1972) and many other reports using national survey data. [179]67. Identification of a minority's dysfunctional and pathological internal problems make an investigator vulnerable to attacks for "blaming the victim" or "racism." A firestorm of criticism engulfed sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965, when he reported on the condition of the Negro family. Daryl Michael Scott, "The Politics of Pathology: The Ideological Origins of the Moynihan Controversy," Journal of Policy History (1996) 8: 81--105. _________________________________________________________________ References 2. mailto:RJensen at uic.edu 3. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT1 4. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT2 5. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT3 6. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT4 7. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT5 8. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT6 9. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT7 10. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT8 11. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT9 12. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT10 13. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT11 14. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT12 15. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT13 16. 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http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF57 169. http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ 170. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/36.2jensen_tables.html#REF58 171. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF59 172. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF60 173. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF61 174. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF62 175. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF63 176. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF64 177. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF65 178. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF66 179. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#REF67 From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:10:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:10:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Eureka: Emory scientist finds different paths lead to similar cognitive abilities Message-ID: Emory scientist finds different paths lead to similar cognitive abilities http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/euhs-esf040505.php Despite the divergent evolutionary paths of dolphins and primates -- and their vastly different brains -- both have developed similar high-level cognitive abilities, says Emory University neuroscientist and behavioral biologist Lori Marino. She presented her latest findings on the evolution of and differences in brain structure between cetaceans (ocean mammals like whales and dolphins) and primates April 5 during the 14th annual Experimental Biology 2005 meeting in San Diego. Marino's presentation examined the diverse evolutionary patterns through which dolphins and primates acquired their large brains, how those brains differ, and how sensory information can be processed in different ways and still result in the same cognitive abilities. "Eventually, a better understanding of how other species process information might be useful in helping people impaired in "human" ways of processing information. Perhaps there are alternative ways to sort out information in our own brains," says Marino, whose talk was part of the scientific sessions of the American Association of Anatomists. Recent research by Marino and her colleagues has traced the changing encephalization, or relative brain size, of cetaceans during the past 47 million years by using magnetic resonance imaging and histological studies of the fossil record. While modern humans have brains that are seven times bigger than would be expected for our body size, giving us an encephalization level of seven, some modern dolphins and whales have an encephalization level close to five -- not a huge difference, says Marino. For example, Homo sapiens' closest relatives, the great apes, have encephalization levels of only two to two-and-a-half. "While humans are the most encephalized -- the brainiest -- creatures on earth, we are relative newcomers to that status," says Marino. "The cetaceans enjoyed a tremendous increase in brain size and organization about 35 million years ago, whereas humans got their big brains much more recently during the past one to two million years." Marino's earlier research has shown how dolphins have the capacity for mirror self-recognition, a feat of intelligence previously thought to be reserved only for Homo sapiens and their closest primate cousins. Marino is a professor of neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory and a research associate at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, The SETI Institute, The Smithsonian Institution, and Emory University. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:15:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:15:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Kristof: Where Faith Thrives Message-ID: Where Faith Thrives New York Times opinion column by Nicholas D. Kristof, 5.3.26 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/opinion/26kristof.html DETE CROSSING, Zimbabwe So with Easter approaching, here I am in the heart of Christendom. That's right - Africa. One of the most important trends reshaping the world is the decline of Christianity in Europe and its rise in Africa and other parts of the developing world, including Asia and Latin America. I stopped at a village last Sunday morning here in Zimbabwe - and found not a single person to interview, for everyone had hiked off to church a dozen miles away. And then I dropped by a grocery store with a grim selection of the cheapest daily necessities - and huge multicolored chocolate Easter eggs. On Easter, more Anglicans will attend church in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda - each - than Anglicans and Episcopalians together will attend services in Britain, Canada and the U.S. combined. More Roman Catholics will celebrate Easter Mass in the Philippines than in any European country. The largest church in the world is in South Korea. And more Christians will probably attend Easter services in China than in all of Europe together. In short, for the first time since it began two millenniums ago, Christianity is no longer "Western" in any very meaningful sense. "If on a Sunday you want to attend a lively, jammed full, fervent and life-changing service of Christian worship, you want to be in Nairobi, not in Stockholm," notes Mark Noll, a professor at Wheaton College. He adds, "But if you want to walk home safely late at night, you want to be in Stockholm, not Nairobi." This shift could be just beginning. David Lyle Jeffrey of Baylor University sees some parallels between China today and the early Roman empire. He wonders aloud whether a Chinese Constantine will come along and convert to Christianity. Chairman Mao largely destroyed traditional Chinese religions, yet Communism has died as a replacement faith and left a vacuum. "Among those disappointed true-believer Marxists, it may well be that Marxism has served as a kind of John the Baptist to the rapid emergence of Christianity among Chinese intellectuals," Professor Jeffrey said. Indeed, it seems possible to me that in a few decades, China could be a largely Christian nation. Whether in China or Africa, the commitment of new converts is extraordinary. While I was interviewing villagers along the Zambezi River last Sunday, I met a young man who was setting out for his Pentecostal church at 8:30 a.m. "The service begins at 2 p.m.," he explained - but the journey is a five-hour hike each way. So where faith is easy, it is fading; where it's a challenge, it thrives. "When people are in difficulties, they want to cling to something," said the Rev. Johnson Makoti, a Pentecostal minister in Zimbabwe who drives a car plastered with Jesus bumper stickers. "The only solution people here can believe in is Jesus Christ." People in this New Christendom are so zealous about their faith that I worry about the risk of new religious wars. In Africa, Christianity and Islam are competing furiously for converts, and in Nigeria, Ivory Coast and especially Sudan, the competition has sometimes led to violent clashes. "Islam is a threat that is coming," the Rev. William Dennis McDonald, a Pentecostal minister in Zambia, warned me. He is organizing "operation checkmate" to boost Christianity and contain Islam in eastern Zambia. The denominations gaining ground tend to be evangelical and especially Pentecostal; it's the churches with the strictest demands, like giving up drinking, that are flourishing. All this is changing the character of global Christianity, making it more socially conservative. For example, African churches are often more hostile to gays than mainline American churches. The rise of the Christian right in the U.S. is finding some echoes in other parts of the world. Yet conservative Christians in the U.S. should take heed. Christianity is thriving where it faces obstacles, like repression in China or suspicion of evangelicals in parts of Latin America and Africa. In those countries where religion enjoys privileges - Britain, Italy, Ireland, Spain or Iran - that establishment support seems to have stifled faith. That's worth remembering in the debates about school prayers or public displays of the Ten Commandments: faith doesn't need any special leg up. Look at where religion is most vibrant today, talk to those who walk five hours to services, and the obvious conclusion is that what nurtures faith is not special privileges but rather adversity. E-mail: nicholas at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:15:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:15:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Wrong, Wrong and Wrong: Math Guides Are Recalled Message-ID: The New York Times > New York Region > Wrong, Wrong and Wrong: Math Guides Are Recalled http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/nyregion/25math.html March 25, 2005 [It looks like the NYC school system is reaching DC levels of incompetence.] By SUSAN SAULNY City education officials were forced to recall test preparation materials for math exams late Wednesday after discovering that they were rife with errors, including basic arithmetic mistakes. The materials were intended for math students in grades 3 through 7, but the faulty information - at least 18 errors - was found before it reached classrooms. The testing guides were e-mailed late Wednesday to regional instructional specialists, math coaches and local instructional superintendents and recalled a few hours later. Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word "fourth" was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual. According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job. "We have a clear protocol for review of all materials," said Carmen Fari?a, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning. "In this case, a member of my staff inexcusably failed to follow our protocol, and I have written a letter of reprimand to the person's file. We recalled the materials within hours, corrections to the guide will be made, and it again will be distributed digitally." That explanation did not pacify parents and teachers. "They should not be allowed to make all kinds of excuses," said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of a parents' organization called Time Out From Testing. "The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation." Several math coaches and teachers who had seen the test preparation manuals yesterday notified Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers. Ms. Weingarten seemed outraged. "Tweed has no problem with excessively criticizing teachers for failing to meet its picayune mandates," Ms. Weingarten said, referring to the Department of Education by the name for its headquarters, the Tweed Courthouse. "But then it produces a test prep manual riddled with errors and misspellings. The hypocrisy is stunning. They could avoid embarrassing things like this if they were more collegial and shared these documents with us, instead of running things in a top-down management style that does not welcome or want input." Dr. Alfred Posamentier, the dean of the City College School of Education and a professor of mathematics, said his staff would have been happy to help review the materials. "Official documents sent out by the Department of Education carrying their imprimatur have a great deal of influence on teachers and students and must be perfect," he said. "And in particular, in mathematics where you have such an exact science, there is no room for error." From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:17:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:17:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Mary Beard: Olympics, keep out Message-ID: Mary Beard: Olympics, keep out The Times Literary Supplement, 4.7.9 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108084&window_type=print How sportsmen failed with money, women and drugs - but kept poetry at bay ATHENS TO ATHENS. The official history of the Olympic Games and the IOC, 1896-2004. David Miller. 576pp. Mainstream. ?35 (US $65). 1 84018 587 2. THE ANCIENT OLYMPICS. Nigel Spivey. 273pp. Oxford University Press. Pounds 12.99 (US $28). - 0 19 280433 2. ANCIENT GREEK ATHLETICS. Stephen G. Miller. 280pp. Yale University Press. ?25 (US $35). - 0 300 10083 3. OLYMPICS IN ATHENS 1896. Michael Llewellyn Smith. 256pp. Profile. ?16.99. - 1 86197 342 X. In the Stockholm Olympics of 1912, the American athlete Jim Thorpe pulled off an astonishing double: he romped home, a record-breaking first (in one case 598 points ahead of his nearest rival) in both the decathlon and the pentathlon. The King of Sweden presented him with a bronze bust to celebrate this feat, remarking as he handed it over, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world". Disarmingly (or subversively) informal, Thorpe is said to have replied, "Thanks, king". This story of cheeky American heroism - later turned into a movie starring Burt Lancaster as Thorpe - has a bitter sequel. As David Miller explains in Athens to Athens: The official history of the Olympic Games and the IOC, 1896-2004, a few months later Thorpe was revealed to have accepted payment, little more than pocket money, for playing minor league baseball in North Carolina. Despite his apologies and ingenuous pleas of ignorance, the American Amateur Athletic Union reclassified him as a professional and the International Olympic Committee deleted his records from their books, stripped him of his medals and demanded the return of the bronze bust and of a precious chalice that had been given to him by an equally admiring Tsar Nicholas. It was not until 1982, thirty years after Thorpe's death ("penniless in a caravan park in California") that the IOC repented and sent his descendants some replica medals. There was more to this, Miller suggests, than intransigence. Racism played its part in the IOC's unbending line (Thorpe was of mixed race, more than half Native American). So also did the personal animosity of Avery Brundage, the "despotic, moralistic bulldozer" (nicknamed "Slavery Bondage") who was IOC President between 1952 and 1972. Brundage himself had competed in the decathlon and pentathlon in 1912; in the pentathlon he had come in sixth, in the decathlon "a dilatory fifteenth". Miller tells a fascinating tale of more than a century of modern Olympic Games, from Athens 1896 to Athens 2004, backed up by 150 pages of statistics on participating countries, records, medal winners and IOC members. These are less dry than they sound, particularly in the glimpse they offer of what Miller politely calls "discontinued sports": cricket, croquet and the equestrian high jump, for example, all played once only, in the Paris Games of 1900; as well as the slightly better established rugby union, running deer shooting and tug of war, which lasted respectively from 1900 to 1924, 1908 to 1924 (plus a brief revival in the 50s) and 1900 to 1920. It is hard, reflecting on this graveyard of Olympic events, not to wonder which will be the next to go: dressage and trap-shooting look like plausible candidates, making their way for more curling, synchronized swimming and beach volleyball, all of which are newcomers of the past twenty years. For an "official history", Athens to Athens is remarkably frank. There are, of course, plenty of disasters to dwell on (most tragically the assassination of Israeli competitors by Black September at Munich in 1972). But in general Miller's detailed narrative is a powerful antidote to the modern nostalgia which likes to imagine that - Hitler's 1936 Games apart - political infighting, bad sportsmanship and corruption are anything new in Olympic history. There has never been an Olympic Games that has gone "smoothly" in that sense. In Paris in 1900, for example, the final of the long jump sparked religious controversy when it was scheduled for a Sunday and the winner was the only one who was willing to compete on the Lord's Day (his arch rival, though Jewish, had refused to go ahead on grounds of religious solidarity - and a punch-up nearly ensued when the victor refused to replay on the Monday). In London eight years later, it was the turn of the tug of war to provoke an international incident: the Americans called foul and lodged high-level complaints about the unfair footwear worn by the British teams - regulation policemen's boots with steel toecaps. This, combined with nationalistic disputes about the absence of the Stars and Stripes from the flags flying in the main stadium, forced the British to publish a pamphlet in defence of their administration, Replies to Criticisms of the Olympic Games. If we stand back from these individual conflicts and squabbles, the history of Olympic organization comes across in Miller's account as a history of the IOC's attempts to hold the line against a series of more or less unwelcome intrusions into the Olympic world and Olympic ideology. One of the first of these intrusions was women. There were no women competitors in Athens in 1896, but in 1900 there were official women's events for the "ladylike" sports of golf and tennis with figure skating added in 1908, swimming and gymnastics in 1912. This gradual encroachment was quite against the will of the founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who insisted in 1912 that women "did not constitute a proper spectacle for the audience", while trailing the horrific possibility of women runners or football players. In fact, female Olympic runners were less than two decades away, thanks largely to a tough campaign by a woman rower, Alice Milliat. She launched a rival series of women's Olympics, which forced the hand of the IOC, who then reluctantly conceded a place for women in a wide range of track and field events. By 2000, only boxing and wrestling were closed to them, though Athens 2004 promises female wrestling. It is not now women who are the threat: the IOC's current bogey is "performance-enhancing substances". If their past record on "keeping the enemy out" is anything to go by, we can confidently predict a performance-enhanced Games by 2020. In 1912, when Thorpe was stripped of his titles, the chief Olympic enemy was the professional sportsman, the vulgar money-making creature who threatened the purity of the high-minded amateur competitor who was simply playing the game (or, to put it another way, the enemy was the working-class lad who needed the cash to continue training, and who threatened the upper middle-class, Oxbridge/Ivy League club that dominated the Olympic community in almost every competing nation). Professionalism continued to be top of the IOC's hit list through the Presidency of Brundage and into the 1980s, when the amateur status of competitors was still obsessively policed despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact - that in many sports the distinction between amateur and professional was increasingly hard to determine (were, for example, the full-time gymnasts of the Eastern bloc "amateur" in any recognizable sense?). In the end, as Miller makes clear, it was tennis that let the professionals in, for the simple reason that high-level tennis (which the IOC was keen to bring back into the Olympic fold after a sixty-year absence) was irremediably professional. But this was not before several other athletes had had the Thorpe treatment, wherever there was a whiff of advertising revenues or commercial sponsorship. Even more than the exclusion of women, the ban on professionals was justified by appeal to the tradition of the original, ancient Greek, Olympics. Commenting on the Thorpe case, Coubertin himself turned to ancient precedent ("It is enough to remember the careful way antiquity allowed participation in the Olympics only to those athletes who were irreproachable") and Brundage, too, repeatedly harped on the shining example of pure Greek amateurism. In fact, quite how "amateur" (in our sense) the ancient Olympics were is a matter of some dispute. To be sure, the ancients themselves had a myth - not entirely dissimilar from our own myth of decline in the modern Games - that in the good old days the Olympic Games, like all sporting competition, had been the preserve of high minded aristocrats, but that eventually (and particularly under Roman influence) professionalism, commercialization and other forms of corruption had crept in and come to dominate. But Nigel Spivey, in his timely account, The Ancient Olympics, shows why we should question that simple model. There is, of course, as Spivey points out, conclusive evidence for the elite participating in Olympic events in the supposed classical heyday of the competition, between the sixth and fourth centuries bc; indeed the best poets of the time were hired to celebrate aristocratic successes. Then, as now, it was equestrian sports that tended to attract the rich and snobbish. The infamous and well-connected Alcibiades, for example, is supposed to have "opted for chariot-racing because he did not care to mix with the ruffians in the wrestling ring". (It was a safe option too, since in the ancient Olympics it was owning the team of horses in the chariot race, not driving them - a task often left to a slave or hired driver - that brought the honour of an Olympic victory.) But there is no reason to suppose that the elite ever deserted the competition, still less that chariot racing was ever, even in the depths of Roman rule, significantly democratized. Equally, there are strong reasons to suspect a wider and more "professional" involvement in Olympic competition from an early period. Nigel Spivey cites the example of the almost mythical athletic superstar of the late sixth century bc, Milon of Kroton, a Greek city in South Italy. Milon won six successive Olympic wrestling victories and he is written up in ancient accounts as an early professional strongman - and none too bright, at that (stories of his "diminutive brain" soon threatened to outnumber those of his athletic prowess). But it is not just a question of Milon's own professionalism. Stephen G. Miller, in his excellently documented and marvellously illustrated Ancient Greek Athletics, adds an intriguing twist to the Milon story. He points out that of the twenty-six Olympic victors in the "stadion race" (roughly the 200-metres sprint) between 588 and 488 bc, eleven came from Kroton, its nearest rival city scoring just two wins. Over the same period, of the seventy-one gymnastic victors whose names we know, twenty were also from Kroton. As Miller observes, it is extremely odd that a single, and not particularly distinguished, South Italian town should produce almost 30 per cent of these victors. The figures alone suggest that there is more to this than meets the eye. Either the Krotoniates were even more fanatically keen on athletic training than the average Greek city (and about as "amateur" as the old Soviet bloc gymnasts). Or they were buying in professional talent from outside to boost their successes; for Kroton, read Arsenal or Chelsea. However we choose to explain the pre- eminence of Kroton in the classical Olympics, it is clear that Coubertin and Brundage's faith in the irreproachable Greek "amateur" did not entirely match up to the ancient evidence. The same is true of many other romantic visions that we project back, even now, onto the ancient Games. They were not a precursor of League-of-Nations-style internationalism, but rigidly nationalist and exclusively Greek; in the early fifth century bc, even a Macedonian King, Alexander I, did not qualify, and was thrown out by his fellow competitors as a "barbarian" (ironically, as Spivey suggests, it was not until the Roman Empire that the Games gained a truly cosmopolitan character). Even the famous Olympic Truce (which involved the cessation of all warfare around the time of the Games) was honoured in the breach as well as in the observance; in fact, during the Games of 364 bc, there was a full-scale battle at Olympia itself, when the local people of Elis, who traditionally controlled the site, marched in during the pentathlon to reclaim it from a rival city which had temporarily taken over. But the most famous piece of spurious antiquity associated with the modern Games must be the invention of the Marathon - the twenty-six-and-a-bit-mile race, often thought to commemorate a messenger who, in 490 bc, ran back from Marathon on the Athenian coast to the city itself, to announce the Athenian victory over the Persians. The best account of the invention of the Marathon is given in Michael Llewellyn Smith's sharp and elegant history of the first international modern Olympics, Olympics in Athens 1896. Without too much rancour, he exposes the self-seeking ambition of Baron de Coubertin, who proclaimed the reinvention of the ancient Games as his own - so riding roughshod over the rather better claims of Dr William Penny Brookes, who had hosted Olympics on a vaguely ancient model in Much Wenlock in Shropshire since the 1850s, and started a tradition of Shropshire Olympiads that continue, largely unnoticed, to this day. (I write as a native of Much Wenlock, who last competed in their Olympics in 1965.) Llewellyn Smith also captures brilliantly the atmosphere of Athens in the late nineteenth century, and offers one of the few accessible accounts of the wheeling and dealing by which the Great Powers filled the throne of Greece between the War of Independence and the end of the nineteenth century. More relevant to strictly Olympic history, he shows how, both in ancient and modern literature, a famous - and much longer, better-documented and more impressive -run between Athens and Sparta was twisted into the twenty-something-mile dash between the coast and Athens; and then how in the 1890s "another romantic Frenchman", Michel Breal, presented a silver cup for the winner of this new "Marathon", which has become such a prominent part of modern athletics. Its early days were less auspicious than we would now imagine. The first Marathon victor in 1896 was (to the delight of Athens) a Greek, Louis Spyridon, who beat off an international field of sixteen. The myth-making started almost instantly (the comfortably middle-class Spyridon was portrayed as, and made to act the part of, a Greek peasant, while being offered lucrative presents sponsorship deals in modern terminology - from leading manufacturers). So did the controversy. In that first Marathon race, the Greek competitor who came third was later judged to have hitched a lift in a carriage for part of the route (there were even rumours that Spyridon himself had been helped by a horse; his time in the race proper was, after all, suspiciously better than in the practice round). Later races only intensified the bad feeling. In Paris in 1900, the route was so circuitous that the eventual winner was believed to have taken a not quite so circuitous short cut. In 1904 in St Louis, it was so badly policed that (according to David Miller) several contestants were chased into adjacent fields by stray dogs. In 1908 in London, the Italian celebrity Dorando Pietri was helped to the finishing line by his supporters - though not including, as an erroneous rumour had it, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - and so disqualified, only to be given a special silver cup as a consolation prize by Queen Alexandra the next day. It was, in fact, the Queen who inadvertently fixed the precise distance over which the Marathon is still run. In the earlier Olympics, the length of the race had varied. By insisting that it start underneath the windows of the royal nursery at Windsor, finishing in the Olympic Stadium, she gave us the 26 miles, 385 yards of today's race. There is a vast wealth of detail in all these accounts of the modern (and ancient) athletic contests; there is, however, a disappointing reticence about one aspect of the modern Games - the artistic Olympics which once ran alongside the sporting competition. It is true that cultural events still accompany the athletic events; and in Athens it is the refurbishment of the archaeological museums that is likely to be the most lasting legacy of the 2004 Olympics. But this is different from the situation between 1912 and 1948, when actual Olympic medals were offered for various - now forgotten - cultural competitions (architectural design, town planning, sculpture, painting, poetry, drama, epic), for work on themes associated with the Olympic ideal. Konstantinos Dimitriadis, for example, won a gold medal for sculpture in 1924 for an image of a "Finnish discus thrower"; Ferenc Mezs a gold for epic in 1928 with a "History of the Olympic Games". One of the first gold-medal winners in 1912 was Baron de Coubertin himself (entering under a pseudonym) for an "Ode to Sport", which concluded: ". . . Sport thou art Boldness! / Sport thou art Honour! / Sport thou art Fertility! / Sport thou art Progress! / Sport thou art Peace!". (It reads no better in the original French.) This was exactly the same year in which Jim Thorpe was denied his two medals for having played some pocket-money baseball. It says a lot about the Olympic ideal of the early twentieth century that Coubertin could get away with this, while voting to disqualify "the greatest athlete in the world". From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:18:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:18:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: Nature, nurture and family problems Message-ID: Nature, nurture and family problems http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-1478276,00.html February 11, 2005 by Dr Thomas Stuttaford Repeating the mistakes of our parents CATHERINE O'BRIEN'S interview with Lisa St Aubin de Ter?n in T2 on Wednesday was a fascinating example of the repetitive nature of familial patterns of behaviour. Her mother had four marriages, all of them, according to her daughter, failures. Another failure in her mother's life was her botched attempt at committing suicide. Fortunately for Lisa, her mother failed, but once she had recovered she became totally dependent on her daughter. Lisa, too, has had a tumultuous marital and emotional life. Probably her own upbringing had not only left her, as she says, "precocious, obnoxious and spoilt" but with a penchant for the unusual and exotic. She married a schizophrenic, violent South American bank robber who had picked her up at a bus stop in Clapham, London, when she was only 16 and followed her relentlessly while he tried to persuade her to marry him. She also survived suicidal intentions, but in her case it was a pact proposed by her husband while they were in Italy, rather than a determined attempt, as her mother's had been. But Lisa fled with her daughter back to the UK, where she could opt out of the marriage. Lisa's second marriage was to George MacBeth, a poet, who was living in Norfolk. Later she wed an artist and now lives with Mees Ven Deth, a cameraman in Amsterdam. Mother and daughter have scored nearly equally in the marital stakes. It is not at all uncommon for marriage patterns to repeat themselves, but the question that Lisa St Aubin de Ter?n has not ventured to answer is whether this is the result of nature or nurture. Thirty years ago it would have been almost unthinkable for any decent, liberal doctor to suggest that heredity determined character just as it determines eye colour, the shape of the ears, bodily strength and even, to a great extent, the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease or many cancers. Though doctors used to favour nurture over nature as the chief determinant of character, farmers and vets had no doubts about this and reversed the importance of the two factors. They would be as unlikely to breed from a dog that bit, or even a cow so irritable that it was nearly impossible to milk, as they would from a dog with a congenitally dislocating hip or a cow with a low milk yield. It is one of the arrogances of humankind that we think we obey a different set of rules to the rest of the animal kingdom. The accepted current opinion -- and experience suggests it is true -- is that although our characters, even more than those of animals, are influenced by environment, they are also heavily determined by our genes. Fresh evidence for this appears in Archives of General Psychiatry and is reproduced in the magazine GP. Research workers have investigated the heredity of children who suffer from severe anxiety. A study of families over three generations found that 60 per cent of children who had a depressed parent and grandparent had a psychiatric disorder by the time they were 12. This study also showed that in these 47 families, who had been followed since 1982, a child of a depressed parent was 14 times more likely to develop depression if one grandparent was also depressed. Forty-five per cent of these children were also excessively anxious and more than a quarter were disruptive. Overall, if either parent as well as any one of the grandparents had a psychiatric problem, there was a 59 per cent chance that the child would have a difficult psychiatric history. It is too simple to suggest that this is entirely a genetic response, as any genetic disability inherited by a child is frequently compounded by the upbringing that child receives. A patient with a psychiatric problem may be an excellent father or mother, but the chances are that their particular emotional and psychological difficulties will be reflected in both physical and emotional difficulties experienced in the bringing up of their children. Dr Myrna Weissman, who was the lead worker on this project, emphasised in an interview with GP that although depression in two consecutive generations of a family led to children having enormously high rates of psychiatric problems at a young age, this did not mean that medical intervention to treat the parents could not still benefit their children. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:24:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:24:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Inside Higher Ed: Narcissus With an iPod Message-ID: Intellectual Affairs: Narcissus With an iPod http://insidehighered.com/views/intellectual_affairs__2 February 8, 2005 [This is a new publication, which is online only and free. It was formed by former staff at the Chronicle of Higher Education.] By [10]Scott McLemee With [11]"The Age of Egocasting," appearing in the latest issue of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society, Christine Rosen (a senior editor of that publication and a resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center) coins a neologism to describe something that has, until now, gone without a name. We are now well into the era of tailor-made media feeds. TiVo, the iPod, and RSS provide the tools with which an individual can regulate and customize the flow of news, information, and entertainment. We can create very comfortable and diverting pockets of cultural influx -- "egocasting," as Rosen calls it, "the thoroughly personalized and extremely narrow pursuit of one's own taste." The author does not just identify this emergent fact of life; she also traces its secret history through a fascinating account of how the TV remote control was invented and marketed. And like any good cultural critic, she worries in an incisive manner. "By giving us the illusion of perfect control," as Rosen puts it, egocasting technologies "encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish.... In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality." That is forcefully put. Yet ultimately it is just a variation on the theme of the late Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism (1979). That Rosen does not cite Lasch's book is hardly surprising. It is more often denounced than read. Few people now realize that it was not a jeremiad against self-indulgence. Rather, Lasch took a hard-eyed look at how consumerism -- including nonstop media consumption -- tends to empty out the personality, leaving an insatiable appetite for more of the same. "Narcissism," wrote Lasch, "signals a loss of the ego, an invasion of the ego by social forces that have made it more and more difficult for people to grow up." And that complaint was lodged, remember, long before the rise of the [12]Webcam or the 24-7 media cycle (let alone "egocasting" technologies). For an unusually insightful take on Lasch, check out Robert Boyers's essay "The Culture of Narcissism after Twenty-Five Years," in the fall issue of Raritan. Boyers makes short work of those who would treat Lasch as a neoconservative: such critics "didn't know what they were talking about." But the essay does offer a patient and exacting account of how Lasch yearned for some kind of stable, authoritative cultural order -- while never quite offering a plausible account of what one would look like, or how it might come into being. Boyers's essay is not available online. (It is mildly appealing to find that Raritan's [13]Web site is not just primitive but at least one year out of date.) Copies of the fall issue should still be available at some newsstands. Or you could avoid the lures of cyberspace and consumerism altogether by reading it in the periodicals section of a good library -- that perfect institutional antithesis of cultural egocasting. And now a favor to ask of you. Please copy this [14]contact information into your address book. Consider this an open invitation to drop me a line. For a columnist, there is some danger of falling into a trance from the pursuit of one's own fascinations. My interests are not exactly narrow. The towering piles of academic books and JSTOR print-outs in my study present a certain risk to our housecats. It is pleasant to have a license to pontificate on whatever lies at hand, but there's just no way around it: This column will be of much greater substance if readers occasionally write in with suggestions, hints, remonstrations, and reading lists. Now, to be perfectly explicit, this is not a request for tips on what is "hot, hip, and happening" in academe. The rise and fall of intellectual hemlines is a fascinating topic, to be sure. But the tendency of cultural journalism to become a form of fashion reporting brings out the worst features of everyone involved. There is a cultural studies volume from the mid 1990s in which the authors solemnly proclaim that wearing a leather jacket and an unorthodox haircut may be a scholar's way of subverting the dominant codes of academic life. (Uh, OK. But that didn't work, now, did it?) When you hear that a trend is "hot," the healthiest impulse is to throw cold water on it. Remember, the leisure suit was once fashionable. But if some discussion or development strikes you as important -- if it has consequences, good or bad, that people outside your field should know about -- then please drop me a line. Likewise, please let me know if you've recently read a book or article that left you blinking with astonishment for days afterwards. There are moments of intellectual excitement that remind us why we ever got into this line of work. Conversely, there might be a conference paper that leaves you thinking, "Well, that was a masterpiece of incoherence and bad faith. Professor X has just summed up everything that is wrong with the discipline." (Irritation, too, can generate the tingle of insight.) So please consider this a standing invitation to share your moments of illumination, whether euphoric or dyspeptic. Don't worry about being too outspoken or indiscreet. Just say what's on your mind. I won't print your message here, as such -- at least, not without permission. And not without doing my own reading, interviewing, and cogitation first. (There is, after all, a world of difference between unmediated opinionating and the protocols of journalism, no matter what you've heard to the contrary.) The address, again, is intellectual.affairs at insidehighered.com. Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. References 10. mailto:scott.mclemee at insidehighered.com 11. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/7/rosen.htm 12. http://www.mclemee.com/id36.html 13. http://raritanquarterly.rutgers.edu/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:25:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:25:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Inside Higher Ed: The Enemy Is Us: Cost Reduction in College Sports Message-ID: Reality Check: The Enemy Is Us: Cost Reduction in College Sports http://insidehighered.com/views/reality_check January 31, 2005 By [10]John V. Lombardi You have to love university people.Their leaders meet, wring their hands over the high cost of big-time football, and form a committee of themselves to consider how to deal with this problem; as if there were new as yet undiscovered solutions. Their trade organization for sports, the NCAA, issues ringing statements about the high cost of superstar coaches and endorses a committee composed of those who hire superstar coaches to address the issue. It is a spectacle worthy of admiration. We who watch all this as participants or observers recognize the activity as a spectator sport itself; designed to entertain, amuse and confuse. Here is our mini-FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions on big money college sports (based on our experience and the analysis of the research university sports enterprise in [11]The Sports Imperative (TheCenter, 2003). Q: How did coaches' salaries get so high? A: About a dozen or maybe a few more big-time basketball and football coaches have exceptionally high salaries in the range of $1 million a year. The rest of them work for about half as much or less in Division I-A, have long hours, and enjoy relatively little job security. For all of these coaches, if they don't win, they get fired. Q: Who is responsible for the super coach salaries in basketball and football? A: The run-up of superstar salaries began with basketball coaches who were the first to hit the $1 million mark. The superstar football coaches wanted be paid as much as their basketball colleagues, so the race was on. Q: Why don't universities pay superstar coaches less and put the money into teaching? A: Most big-money coaches have a base salary in the $200K to $300K range, and the additional $900K to $1M comes from income earned through shoe contracts, television shows, endorsements and booster contributions, all funds generated outside the university based on the coach's fame and success. The companies and boosters who pay for these salaries have no interest in supporting teaching. Q: Are these Division I-A football programs making lots of money? A: Maybe five in the country make money (if you could get them to report their income and expenses honestly and fully). The other 112 or so lose money; some lose a great deal of money. Q: What can the universities do to reduce the cost of football? A: Reduce the number of football scholarships awarded for each team from 85 to 65. Q: Why don't university presidents do that? A: There are not enough high talent football players to fill 85 spots on the 119 teams struggling to compete in Division I-A. The schools with the most money to spend on coaches, stadiums, and amenities can attract 85 super players with the scholarships, leaving the poor schools unable to recruit as many superb players. Talent is what matters in sports, and with 85 scholarships, the top schools can monopolize much of the talent leaving less for their competitors. This is good news for the top schools. If the top schools only had 65 scholarships, 20 superb players who might have gone to each of the top schools would have to go to a lesser Division I-A university. Some of these lesser Division I-A institutions, with the help of the 20 talented players, would then field competitive football teams, threatening the dominance of the institutions currently at the top. The presidents of the top schools, whose football programs please their alumni and trustees, do not vote to save money by reducing the number of scholarships from 85 to 65. A further benefit of this scholarship reduction would be an improvement in the opportunities for men's sports previously eliminated to meet gender equity requirements. If there are 20 fewer scholarships in football, men's wrestling and gymnastics could now have scholarships without any need to eliminate women's sports. Q. Who is responsible for the high cost, high visibility nature of intercollegiate sports? A: You are. Every time you or your family or friends watch a college game on television, buy college apparel with logos, purchase a ticket to the game, or otherwise participate in a college sports activity, you vote for the current system because the current system reflects the active and engaged enthusiasm of Americans for their college sports. Q: Why don't trustees bring this expensive waste of money in big-time football and basketball into line? A: Trustees generally like sports, know people who like sports, talk to alumni and students who like sports, and believe it is their duty to insist that their institutions have strong sports programs. Q: Why don't university presidents speak out against the superstar coaching salaries? A: They often speak out, but only after they are no longer president. Then they join commissions and speak against the behaviors they supported and endorsed as president. Private university presidential total compensation now approaches that of superstar coaches. If the president is closing in on this salary level, it becomes difficult to object to well-paid coaches. Presidents of many universities with two or three expensive coaches also endorse the payment of faculty physicians in their medical schools whose total compensation exceeds $800,000 to $1 million per year. Like the coaches, these physicians have to earn most of the revenue that supports their high compensation. Q: Should we worry about this? A: Most of the time, no. College sports are a mirror into our own expectations and wishes. College sports are very popular among parents, students, alumni, legislators, television watchers, to name but a few. The very best of America's colleges and universities have a tremendous investment in college sports, some of it highly visible in big-time football and basketball, some less visible in a broad range of expensive sports that generate no revenue at all. Most people support this activity at record levels of enthusiasm. Q: When should we worry about it? A: We should worry when a university or college loses so much money on its sports program that it cannot support its academic program, when a university competes in Division I-A and does so poorly it must subsidize football at great expense from its general funds, and when universities and colleges cannot manage their sports programs without cheating and scandal. Otherwise, enjoy the game. John V. Lombardi, whose column, Reality Check, debuts today, is chancellor and a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Comments There currently are no comments on this item. References 10. mailto:lombardi at umass.edu 11. http://thecenter.ufl.edu/TheSportsImperative.pdf From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:29:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:29:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Inside Higher Ed: Academic Freedom, Then and Now Message-ID: Academic Freedom, Then and Now 2005 Feb. 17 By [18]Scott McLemee This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States by Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, published by Columbia University Press. It has long been out of print. But circumstances have had the unfortunate effect of making it timely again. Locating a copy is worth the trouble, and once you do, the book proves just about impossible to put down. Intellectual Affairs For one thing, reading it is a relief from the mingled stridencies of l'affaire Ward Churchill and of David Horowitz's latest stunt, the so-called "Academic Bill of Rights." (By the way, is it just me, or don't their media performances suggest that Churchill and Horowitz are identical twins whom ideology has separated at birth? Both have glint-eyed zealotry down pat.) At the same time, the book is a reminder of how incredibly prolonged, complicated, and perilous the emergence of academic freedom has been. The book was commissioned in 1951 by the American Academic Freedom Project, which had a panel of advisers from numerous distinguished universities and seminaries (plus one from the Detroit Public Library), and it was published alongside a companion volume, Academic Freedom in Our Time, by the director of the project, R. M. MacIver, an emeritus professor of political philosophy and sociology at Columbia University. It was, in brief, the closest thing to an official scholarly response to the danger of McCarthyism from the university world. The authors must have finished correcting proofs for the book around the time Joseph McCarthy lost his committee chairmanship and was censured by his colleagues in the Senate. The darkness of the time is particularly evident in MacIver's volume, with its conclusion that "the weight of authority in the United States is now adverse to the principle of intellectual freedom." Hofstadter and Metzger, by contrast, make only a few direct references to the then-recent challenges to academic freedom. Senator McCarthy's name never appears in the book. Hofstadter traces the history of American academic life up to the Civil War, and Metzger continues it through the early 20th century -- a panoramic survey recounting scores of controversies, firings, and pamphlets wars. But recording only "the outstanding violations of freedom" would mean reducing history to "nothing but the story of academic suppression." Condensing 500 pages into five paragraphs is a fool's errand, but here goes anyway. The belief that only the community of scholars has the final authority to determine what counts as valid research or permissible speech has deep roots in the history of the university, going all the way back to its origins in medieval Europe. But it was extremely slow to develop in colonial and antebellum America, which had few institutions of higher learning that were anything but outgrowths of religious denominations. In 1856, George Templeton Strong suggested to his fellow trustees of what was then Columbia College that the only way to create a great university was "to employ professors of great repute and ability to teach" and "confiding everything, at the outset, to the control of the teachers." It was an anomalous idea -- one that rested, Hofstadter indicates, on the idea that scholarship might confer social prestige to those who practice it. As the later chapters by Walter Metzger argue, it was only with the rapid increase in endowments (and the growing economic role of scientific research and advanced training) that academics began to have the social status necessary to make strong claims for their own autonomy as professionals. At least some of what followed sounds curiously familiar. "Between 1890 and 1900," writes Metzger, "the number of college and university teachers in the United States increased by fully 90 percent. Though the academic market continually expanded, a point of saturation, at least in the more attractive university positions, was close to being reached.... Under these competitive conditions, the demand for academic tenure became urgent, and those who urged it became vociferous." It was the academic equivalent of the demand for civil-service examinations in government employment and for rules of seniority in other jobs. Academic freedom was not so much the goal for the creation of tenure as one of its desirable side effects. The establishment of the American Association of University Professors in 1915 "was the culmination of tendencies toward professorial self-consciousness that had been operating for many decades." And it was the beginning of the codification of rules ensuring at least some degree of security (however often honored only in the breach) for those with unpopular opinions. Speaking of unpopular opinions, I must admit to feeling some uneasiness in recommending The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States to you. It is a commonplace today that Richard Hofstadter was a Cold War liberal -- and a certain smug knowingness about the limitations and failures of Cold War liberalism is the birthright of every contemporary academic, of whatever ideological coloration. Furthermore, Hofstadter stands accused of indulging in "the consensus view of history," which sees the American political tradition as endorsing (as one scholar puts it) "the rights of property, the philosophies of economic individualism, [and] the value of competition." I don't know anything about Walter Metzger, but he seems to share much of Hofstadter's outlook. So it is safe to dismiss their book as a mere happy pill designed to induce the unthinking celebration of the American way of life. No one will think the worse of you for this. Besides, we're all so busy nowadays. But if you do venture to read The Development of Academic Freedom, you might find its analysis considerably more combative than it might at first appear. Its claim is not that academic freedom is a deeply rooted part of our glorious American heritage of nearly perfect liberty. The whole logic of its argument runs very much to the contrary. Someone once said that the most impressive thing about Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) was that he managed to keep it to just one volume. The deepest implication of his work is that academic freedom does not, in fact, have very deep roots even in the history of American higher education -- let alone in the wider culture. On the final page of The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States, his collaborator writes, "One cannot but be but be appalled at the slender thread by which it hangs.... one cannot but be disheartened by the cowardice and self-deception that frail men use who want to be both safe and free." It is a book worth re-reading now -- not as a celebration, but as a warning. Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Comments On academci freedom Interesting that this article appears in the same issue with an article about the flap over Summer of Harvard. He expressed an opinion -- in a very liberal way, I might add -- and his professors, like so many others today, went for his throat. No one seems to care whether or not his opinion is correct -- it is assumed incorrect, without any research, because it is not "politically correct". Whether correct or not, it is obvious that he does not have the freedom to make such a comment on his campus. I am currently writing a biography of George R. Stewart, who wrote The Year of the Oath. At the end of his life, Stewart was very concerned about the new threats to academic freedom that were coming from the politically-correct and "diversity" parts of the nation. The situation at Harvard seems to prove his concern. I mean, readers, what if women DON'T have the aptitude for science and math? Is this not a question of evidence and fact? And what ARE the effects on academic quality of hiring and promoting the less-well-qualified in the sacred name of diversity or equity? Did I not just push some buttons with that question? And are not some of you ready to go for my throat? But if you take away my freedom to discuss such questions, you take away the underpinnings of higher education. DM Scott Donald M. Scott, Independent Scholar, at 1:24 pm EST on February 18, 2005 Freedom and the Community of Scholars Since Summers himself has now admitted that he spoke without having expertise on the question of women in science, it is best to admit that the scientific data on the question does not support his speculations. His critics, far from being obstreperous or "politically correct," were providing a necessary corrective of error. In any event, the responsibility of institutional leadership lend a special character to comments by presidents like Summers. At stake is not merely an individual's speech rights but the ability of the individual to lead a whole institution forward. Summers's comments cast doubt on his ability to ensure that Harvard would remain an inviting place for women, particularly in the sciences. It is true that academic freedom is in doubt in our own time, but the threat is the thunder on the political right calling for increased state oversight of universites. Encouraged by the rabid commentaries of Ann Coulter and the unfair and imbalanced Fox News, this trend includes Ohio's dreadful Senate Bill 24 (cribbed from David Horowitz) and the present campaign to have the state of Colorado to fire Ward Churchill for making irresponsible and asinine remarks about the victims of 9/11 (along with some more perceptive ones about U.S. foreign policy). Academic freedom depends upon a community of scholars who by the process of tenure have proven themselves professionally competent and who after tenure are willing to subject themselves to ruthless criticism from other scholars in the pursuit of truth, a process that must remain free from intrusive external interference by state and society. This is why the Summers case is an example of universities at their self-corrective best, while the Churchill case is a portent of the ongoing precariousness of academic freedom in our times. Christopher Phelps, Associate Professor at The Ohio State University, at 5:29 am EST on February 19, 2005 Revisiting Hofstadter The time is ripe to abandon our smug dismissal of Hofstadter and look at the real significance of his work on intellectual life, culture and history in this country. I'm glad his work is being revisited and that I am not alone in doing so. I don't think that criticizing Larry Summers amounts to censoring him in the name of the mythic powers of "political correctness." There is in fact a new "political correctness" and it has to do with kissing the buts of those in power. Those who genuflect before the Republican agenda are outraged that not all of us choose to do so. Catherine Liu, Visiting Associate Professor at Fulbright in Taiwan, at 8:50 am EST on February 20, 2005 Phelps's comment Having read Summer's remarks at the "diversity" conference, in full, it is apparent that Christopher Phelps has not. Not only did Summers qualify his remarks with several caveats and qualifiers, to wit: he was trying to be provocative; he may be wrong; he thought more studies were called for; he was suggesting the possibility of alternative reasons for absence of women at highest levels of science than those offered by groupthink; and he was all for finding ways to level the playing field for minorities, but he congratulated the organizers of the conference for their efforts in making this dialogue possible. Now I ask all scholars, tenured or not, what more can a leader do than raise questions for inquiry and stimulate interest by offering a few hypothesis? For this effort he is pilloried by the politically correct crowd, the feminist in particular, and the 250 faculty members of Harvard who don't like Summers because he has been questioning their work ethic and other aspects of their comfy, cushy and isolated club. tom sargent, at 3:14 pm EST on February 20, 2005 McCarthy was a bit of a demagogue, but on the fundamental political question -- was communism dangerous, had it infiltrated the Roosevelt administration and certain other sectors, including universities -- McCarthy was right and his critics were wrong. Hofstadter's book was overrated then, and is overrated now, not because he was a "Cold War liberal" (i.e., a liberal who understood something about the dangers of communism, but because of his smug self-assurance about the superiority of "intellectualism." He was a sort of premature blue-stater. Is there an "academic" freedom different from "freedom." I question that. Is it a pretty phrase to cover privilege for those who don't necessarily deserve it, while others (TA's, the mobile part-time, temporary proletariat) do the important work? Possibly? Are American universities today free, or are they captives of the Diversity Industry and the left? There is a lot of truth in the dimmer view. [19]Grumpy Old Man, at 4:34 am EST on February 21, 2005 I not only read the transcription of Summers's comments, I read his attached expression of regret for having shot from the hip--in effect a retraction. Did Sargent read that? Christopher Phelps, Department of History at The Ohio State University, at 4:34 am EST on February 21, 2005 Censorship's swing, left and right As a professor of college English for nearly forty years, now censored (I have been suspended seven times in the past six years for alleged speech and thought crimes), I am forced to acknowledge how fragile "academic freedom" is. The federal judges who ruled in my case decided that college students are a "captive" audience whose need never to be offended -- even when the "offense" is inadvertent and wholly subjective -- trumps any teacher's "right" to speak: "While a professor's rights to academic freedom and freedom of expession are paramount in the academic setting, they are not absolute to the point of compromising a student's right to learn in a hostile-free environment." BONNELL V LORENZO, 2001, 6TH CIRCUIT; U.S. Sup. Crt, cert. denied. Such a conclusion, arrived at via contorted "logic," misapplication of irrelevant law, and thinly disguised dishonesty, had its path prepared by the "lefteous" who believe the new civil right to censor must overwhelm the older civil liberty to speak. But now the "righteous" will seize the initiative and perfect instruments of repression that will not only silence the PC lefties but leave them dazzled by a viciousness they could only dream of. John Bonnell, Professor at Macomb Comm. College, at 4:25 pm EST on February 21, 2005 Separated at birth By the way, is it just me, or don't their media performances suggest that Churchill and Horowitz are identical twins whom ideology has separated at birth? Not quite at birth; they were brothers of the same mind until about the mid 1970s, when Horowitz suddenly realised that being a hardline Maoist and wannabe-in-chief to the late-era Black Panthers wasn't the way to a secure retirement. [20]dsquared, at 8:00 am EST on February 23, 2005 fun with history Thanks, but the structure of my comment on Horowitz and Churchill was more a product of wanting to use that expression "separated at birth" than of ignorance of Horowitz's ideological career. In this case, at least, "career" is a matter of using the precise word. Back in the late 1940s, Max Shachtman (himself a man of the anti-totalitarian left) said of certain feverishly ex-Communist breast-beaters that their writings boiled down to saying "once I was so stupid, now I am so smart." But they were otherwise just as arrogant, malevolent, and intellectually dishonest as ever. For some reason, that historical footnote has been coming to mind a lot lately. [21]Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed, at 1:23 pm EST on February 27, 2005 References 18. mailto:scott.mclemee at insidehighered.com 19. http://www.globaloctopus.blogspot.com/ 20. http://www.crookedtimber.org/ 21. http://mclemee.com/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:30:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:30:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Inside Higher Ed: The New Repression of the Postmodern Right Message-ID: The New Repression of the Postmodern Right 2005 Feb. 11 By [18]David Steigerwald Last week, Ohio became the latest state where legislators introduced an "Academic Bill of Rights for Higher Education." The [19]bill seeks to impose on all private and public colleges and universities an administrative code allegedly designed to prohibit political and religious discrimination. It calls on the institutions to guarantee student access "to a broad range of serious scholarly opinion" and expose them to "a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives." It insists that students "be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers" and prohibits discrimination on the basis of "political, ideological, or religious beliefs." Faculty members would be forbidden from using their classrooms "for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination"; and they would be barred from "persistently introducing controversial matter into the classroom ... that has no relation to their subject of study and that serves no legitimate pedagogical purpose." The bill extends its dubious protections to all student organizations, to the hiring and promotion process, and even to "professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research." I have to guess that the vast majority of college faculty and administrators find this legislation baffling. Surely most honor the ideals of impartiality in dealing with students as part of the air we breath; it goes without saying that these principles are the foundation of the university. So, at least here in Ohio, we're scratching our heads and wondering why the State Senate should be wasting its time considering legislation to fix something that isn't broken and correct a problem that doesn't exist. But, of course, the oh-so-neutral language of the bill only hides its profoundly ideological purpose. The Ohio bill is just a knock off from David Horowitz's war against higher education. Here, at least, there is no doubting the motives behind the bill. One of its main sponsors, his quotes crying out for placement in a Sinclair Lewis novel, told the Columbus Dispatch that the bill was necessary because "80% or so of [college faculty] are Democrats, liberals, or socialists or card-carrying Communists." When asked for evidence that these radicals were corrupting "young minds that haven't had a chance to form their own opinions," as he described college students, the senator contended that, after months of investigation, he heard of a student who claimed to have been discriminated against because she supported Bush. One second-hand rumor is all he had after three months? His standards of evidence wouldn't get him through one of my introductory American Civ classes. Given the intellectual dishonesty behind the bill, it is only reasonable to wonder what political forces are lurking behind it and whose agenda it is fulfilling. Horowitz long has found his calling in attacking the academic left, and he was prodded to obsession several years ago when some of his attempts to place ads opposing slavery reparations in various college newspapers were rebuffed. These incidents led to the establishment of the Students for Academic Freedom, a remake of the '60s-era Young Americans for Freedom that now claims 135 chapters. Spurred on through the heated atmosphere of the presidential election, Horowitz's now-organized obsession is finding sympathetic support among right-wing radicals in the various state wings of the Republican Party. Apparently, now that they can't attack John Kerry or gay marriage, the right-wing media machine and its followers in state governments have trained their sights on a next-most favored whipping boy, the university professor. As parts of a larger ideological war, the Ohio bill is the political equivalent of a frat boy prank. It can do no good. It can do considerable harm, but only in the unlikely possibility that responsible people take it seriously. Any amateur can look at the bill as it stands and see what a sloppy piece of work it is. Nowhere does it define what constitutes "a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies," how "indoctrination" is to be measured, or how discrimination is to be detected. When a Dispatch reporter asked the bill's sponsor what constituted "controversial matter" to be barred from the classroom, he didn't exactly narrow things down: "Religion and politics, those are the main things." There goes any discussion of Thomas Jefferson in my history classes, or Martin Luther King or -- well, pretty much any discussion of anything. The bill discriminates because it applies only to "humanities, the social sciences, and the arts," and leaves, thereby, those card-carrying Communists in business departments free to continue denouncing the evils of compound interest. And yet it is simultaneously so broad that the state's Bible colleges would have to shut down entirely. If this bill passed, we would either have to ignore it completely or stop teaching. The sloppiness may well be intentional, since the goal isn't good law but political intimidation. The most plausible outcome is that the bill will die a quick but noisy death: After hearings in which radical right-wingers get headlines by blasting academics, college presidents pledge to promote fairness and the bill dies. Meanwhile, red-baiting students will get the not-surprising impression that they can level charges against any professor who makes the slightest polemical point, or, more important, who utters a disconcerting truth. Students who aren't satisfied with an administrative response are likely to sue. The university will waste precious money in either administrative or legal costs, and any atmosphere of robust and critical thought that now exists will dissipate as many instructors take the line of least resistance. Not the least curiosity here is that the very same people who, 10 years ago, ridiculed the campus speech codes as "political correctness" now want to impose the most extreme sorts of speech codes through force of law and outrageous intimidation. The very people who howled about the debunking of the great Western traditions of free speech and critical reason are now engaged in a frontal action that can only squelch free speech and establish a radical subjectivity as the rule of the day. After all, anything any student wishes to find discriminatory, under the law, could indeed be removed from the classroom; education would devolve into whatever pandered to the individual bias of every student. Truth, that noble thing conservatives always say they seek, will become the same degraded thing that it has become with the likes of Limbaugh, Fox News, and Horowitz: mere "spin." The radical right, it seems, has learned well from the postmodern left. David Steigerwald is associate professor of history at Ohio State University and director of the history program at Ohio State's Marion campus. His latest book, Culture's Vanities ( [20]Rowman & Littlefield ), is, incidentally, a critique of much that passes for academic leftwing thought today. Comments Legislating Professional Ethics The legislation proposed by Iowa is wrongheaded, but not for the reasons given by Professor Steigerwald. It is an attempt to write the principles of a profession into law. The problem is that observance of professional ethics and compliance with statutes are different categories. But Professor Steigerwald is wrong when he says that the proposed legislation addresses a problem that doesn't exist. I have spoken to or corresponded with a number of people who have experienced university courses which were not about the topic in the syllabus, but about social advocacy, and which took a familiar sort of broad-brush criticism of modernity as a foregone conclusion. Gertrude Himmelfarb, in "Academic Advocates," [21]http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/himmelfarb-advocacy cites specific examples: "I let my students know," one professor declared, "where I'm coming from, and also that they're free to write papers which disagree with positions I've taken in class. But those papers had better be very, very good because I'll read them with a more critical eye than the ones I agree with." "Neutrality," said the head of a women's-studies department, "is not something I want to encourage in my students" -- or in the classroom, where she declines to present the views of anti-feminists. "This notion of advocacy," Himmelfarb writes, "is as intolerant of others' opinions as it is indulgent of one's own." As I understand it, courses taught with this attitude are unfortunately not unusual, and in them students who present a well-supported and reasoned argument in support of a warranted viewpoint may find themselves graded down if that viewpoint does not accord with the instructor's own. Such courses reward conformity rather than intellectual integrity. Norm, at 11:45 am EST on February 12, 2005 Academic Bill of Rights The question here is not whether or not professors hold political or ideological biases--of course they do. And the question isn't whether or not those biases are reflected in their courses and teaching styles--of course they are. The question is whether or not it's the job of a legislature, administrator, or student body to limit or restrict what we do in the classroom (or worse, to litigate against it). Academic freedom is a fundamental principle of higher education, and a "bill of rights" can't be used to justify a campaign of discontent that arbitrarily narrows the definition of "free inquiry." As an educator, I maintain the right to introduce any subject matter, theory, or discourse that informs my principle subject (in my case, literature). Politics, religion, sexuality, race & gender, economics, biology, etc., all find a place in my discussion of Herman Melville. I do agree that my job is to open up the dialogue and entertain diverse ideological views on the subject--but it isn't my job to pander to or insulate students from views that they (or their parents or their congressmen) find offensive. As with many conservative causes these days, there seems to be some confusion over the fundamental purpose of a "bill of rights": to expand freedoms and civil liberties, not to restrict them. John Martin, Instructor at Wake Forest University, at 1:27 pm EST on February 13, 2005 The legislation is certainly a mess and calls for the creation of some sort of review board and other bureaucratic mechanisms to maintain "ideological balance." What's really interesting, however, is the impact such a law could have on the curriculum. Most universities are much more conservative than the Right imagines. I will watch with fascination as progressive and labor groups sue to alter the curricula in MBA programs. How will medical schools cope with demands for the broader teaching of alternative healing methods? Economics departments will have to rethink their offerings in order to present much more "balanced" analyses of market economies. What a mess. Joel Wolfe, Assoc. Prof. at Rice University, at 10:01 am EST on February 14, 2005 I assume that this article relates to the editorial letter that appeared in The Chronicle in the November 18 (?) issue relating to the takeover of universities by the left-wing. Our campus is so concerned that Faculty Senate has initiated a campus-wide "dialogue" on the subject of lack of diversity--I see a course in Creationism in our future, and no School of Chiropracty! The sky, it would seem, is falling, and we, the latter-day progeny of Abbie Hoffman and Company, have adopted Jacques Derrida as our lexicographer! My own view is that with conservatives running business, politics, and co-opting Christianity, "liberals" need somewhere to "be." Why is anyone concerned about The Academy--is the Right afraid that their children may be infected by "radical" ideas? Plus ca change, etc. James V. Carmichael, Jr., Professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, at 12:51 pm EST on February 14, 2005 Two quick points: First, the instructors most affected by this law will be untenured faculty. Second, culture war issues can have a lot of indirect impact. In Ohio, if the balanced content law passes, balanced content might become a factor in state higher education funding. Aaron Lercher, St. Andrews Presbyterian College, at 5:33 pm EST on February 15, 2005 I find the comments that equate conservative beliefs with chiropractic, creationism, etc... to be part of the reason that state legislatures are open to the wrong-headed ideas of the Academic Bill of Rights. People should be concerned with the monolithic Leftism that controls academia. More than a few of my students have remarked about the pervailing belief among their professors that conservative politics is a symptom of `backward' or `Neanderthal' thinking. (Lord knows that they aren't going to argue with the person that controls their grade!) Most have no problems with the fact that academics are liberals, but they do complain that caffeinated screeds regarding the evils of Bush, et al are part of their non-related lectures on French poetry and the like. If colleges are going to expend their resources on diversity, diversity of the intellectual sort should be their first concern. T. H. A. Edwards, Lecturer at SUNY, at 7:37 pm EST on February 18, 2005 References 18. mailto:info at insidehighered.com 19. http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=126_SB_24 20. http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0742511960 21. http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/himmelfarb-advocacy From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:47:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:47:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ales Perry: There Was No Need For World War II Message-ID: There Was No Need For World War II http://www.rense.com/general63/ride.htm By Alex S. Perry, Jr, 5.2.23 [But look for the next item about Germany possibly coming close to having the bomb. I try to present all sides. We never seem to hear [1. The Japanese version of the Rape of Nanking (it was exaggerated; the Japanese had business interest to protect; Chiang, Mao, and other warlord masking behind idelogies rendered property rights unstable); [2. The White conquest of North America (the Indians generally had little concept of property rights in land; when they did and even otherwise, Whites purchased the land) [3. European colonialism (that one we do hear about: Europeans had the interests of the natives in mind and brought them civilization and prosperity. Ditto for bringing African slaves to America, though the Whites usually purchased those already enslaved). [4. The English conquest of Ireland (it was to be used as a staging ground for armed intervention by Papists bringing Henry VIII to heel, a thin disguise for a land grab by the French and, to a lesser extent, the Germans). [Corrections and additions welcome! I strive to represent all views, the more reprhensible the better, but Establishment views as well.] There was no need for World War II. Adolf Hitler was doing everything he could to come to peace terms with Britain, but Winston Churchill would not have it. Churchill knew of the many peace offers coming from the German government. He knew that neither Hitler nor any other Nazi leaders wanted to fight Britain. Winston Churchill wrote to Josef Stalin on January 24, 1944, to tell him that Britain was going to continue the fight to the complete destruction of Germany no matter what. He should have been more exact and said that Britain was going to stay in the war as long as the United States was willing to do most of the fighting and all of the financing. Churchill's letter read, in part: We never thought of peace, not even in that year when we were completely isolated and could have made peace without serious detriment to the British empire, and extensively at your cost. Why should we think of it now when victory approaches for the three of us?1 What Churchill meant by "when we were completely isolated" was the time before Russia and the United States became involved. Churchill kept the war going for a purpose. Britain at this time was so weak that Germany could have smashed her within a few weeks. Had Hitler been the kind of man history says he was and had he captured the British army at Dunkirk, which he could easily have done and should have done, he could have written the peace ticket without invading Britain. Churchill's worried son Randolph asked Churchill a few days after he became the prime minister how could he expect to win this war. Churchill replied, "I shall drag the United States in."2 And so he did, and he knew he could. And how did he do it? He could not have dragged the United States in had Franklin Roosevelt not wanted to be dragged in, in the first place. He did it by not giving up-that is, by not accepting the peace terms Germany was offering. Roosevelt's great fear was that the war would be over before America could get in. FDR wanted to go down in history as a wartime president. Roosevelt and Churchill were in secret communication before Churchill became prime minister. This is the reason why Tyler Kent, who worked in the code room in the American Embassy in London beginning in 1939, was thrown in prison as soon as Churchill took office. Kent was sentenced not for anything criminal, but because of what he knew. Roosevelt would not rescue this American citizen from Churchill's clutches because Kent had proof that FDR was promising the British leader that he would eventually come into the war. Churchill records a conversation he and Harry Hopkins had on January 10, 1941: The president is determined that we shall win the war together. Make no mistake about it. He has sent me here to tell you that at all costs and by all means he will carry you through, no matter what happens to him. There is nothing that he will not do, so far as he has human power.3 Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1941. When the Germans captured Poland, they found in the Polish archives the evidence about the part FDR played in getting the fuse of World War II lit. These Polish records were transported to Berlin for safekeeping, and when Germany fell to the Allies, they were shipped to Washington, where they were kept under lock and key for about 20 years so that no one could see them. David Irving reports in Hitler's War what these documents say: A different aspect of Roosevelt's policy was revealed by the Polish documents ransacked by the Nazis from the archives of the ruined foreign ministry buildings in Warsaw. The dispatches of the Polish ambassadors in Washington and Paris laid bare Roosevelt's efforts to goad France and Britain into war with Germany while he rearmed the United States and psychologically prepared the American public for war. . . . n spring of 1939, [Ambassador William C.] Bullitt quoted Roosevelt as being determined "not to participate in the war from the start, but to be in at the finish." . . . The Warsaw document left little doubt as to what had stiffened Polish resistance during the August 1939 crisis. Irving quotes Baron von Weizaecker as saying that Hitler "had set his heart on peace" and Hitler as saying "The survival of the British empire is in Germany's interest too." Hitler "felt he had repeatedly extended the hand of peace and friendship to the British, and each time they had blackened his eye in reply."4 Prof. G.C. Tansill's Back Door to War, Chap. XXIII, states that it was Roosevelt, above all others, who was working unceasingly for war. Tansill cites evidence to show that Roosevelt was using every channel at his disposal to encourage Chamberlain to go to war with Germany. Roosevelt was telling Britain and France that he would come to their aid at once should they go to war against the Germans. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy was repeatedly telling Chamberlain that America would rush to the assistance of Britain and France in the event of unprovoked aggression, and Bullitt was encouraging France to believe the same thing.5 Likewise Eleanor Roosevelt reveals that her husband was not surprised nor upset, although he allowed the public to draw the impression that he was, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. The disaster at Pearl "was a great fulfillment" as far as Roosevelt's worry over the matter was involved, and Mrs. Roosevelt "tells us that he was more 'serene' than he had been for a long time."6 Hitler's mistake in not capturing Britain right away was based on his belief that he was in contact with a strong peace movement in England. The peace movement was controlled by Churchill, but Hitler did not know this. All the German letters and messages sent to the peace movement were intercepted by the British government. Rudolf Hess was invited to come to Britain by this fake peace movement to discuss and make plans for peace. The sole purpose for this deception of the Germans was to delay the end of the war with Germany until the United States could involve itself. The peace offer Hitler had in mind, if Britain would assume a neutral position, was such an astounding offer that Herbert Hoover, when he was told of Hitler's terms from Ambassador Kennedy, gasped: "Why didn't the British accept?" "Nothing but Churchill's bullheadedness," replied Kennedy.7 Kennedy's statement was enough to condemn Churchill as a war criminal. At the height of Hitler's power, the German chancellor offered to withdraw from France, Denmark and Norway.8 He proposed to roll back his army without a shot being fired. He would make peace with England even if England would not agree to return the German colonies, which Britain had taken from Germany at the end of World War I.9 Hitler did not want war. He was so against war that he said it would not do Germany any good, even if Germany won the war, as war would put an end to all his plans. "Hitler was not thinking of war," Albert Forster, 36-year-old district leader of Danzig, told Churchill, as "the F?hrer's immense social and cultural plans would take years to fulfill."10 Hitler expressed this opinion: "A European war would be the end of all our efforts even if we should win, because the disappearance of the British empire would be a misfortune which could not be made up again."11 He told the Dutch fascist leader Anton Mussert: "We have not the slightest reason to fight Britain. Even if we win, we gain nothing."12 Hitler was such an admirer of the British empire that he offered to defend the empire anywhere in the world with German troops should Britain ever need them.13 Hitler did not want to take over the world. This idea is British propaganda. Churchill and Roosevelt wanted war, and they forced it on Germany. Hitler did all he could to be friendly with Britain and France. The duke of Windsor thought, in July 1940, that the war was allowed to go on only because certain British politicians and statesmen-if they can be called anything that sounds so dignified-had to have a reason to save their faces, even if this meant that the British empire would be bankrupted and shattered.14 Churchill and Roosevelt knew what was going on. Churchill bragged that "War is a game that has to be played with a smiling face."15 Surely, they must have thought the tricks they were playing on their own countries and the world as something funny. But at the same time, millions of British and American soldiers and civilians were persuaded to look upon this war as something serious. They had no choice. Misleading the public is truly the mark of a cynical politician and the dishonest news media, in time of war as well as at other times. These two men, Roosevelt and Churchill, instead of saving the world from some great evil, as Tom Brokaw maintains, multiplied the evils the world had to face. One of the meanest tricks Churchill played on the Ger mans was the trick he played on Hess. On May 10, 1941, Hitler's right-hand man flew alone to the duke of Hamilton's estate in Scotland. He expected to land at an airfield nearby. But when he got there, he could not find the airfield and had to bail out. Not knowing how to do this, he had great trouble getting out of the plane. Finally, he turned the plane over and fell out. It was Hess's first time to use a parachute. Hess was expecting to be received with dignity. Instead, he was seized, thrown into prison and held incommunicado the rest of his life. He was charged with "crimes against peace" at Nuremberg and sentenced to life imprisonment. The last 20 years of his life, he was held in solitary confinement and not allowed to see his wife or son. Hess was given the heaviest sentence possible-a sentence worse than death. Hess's flight to Britain was done in the hope that he could convince the British government to make peace with Germany. Because of Hess's efforts to bring peace to Europe, he became truly a "prisoner of peace." The old saw, "All's fair in war," can never be applied to Hess. The treatment he received from the Allies from May 10, 1941, until the day he died was a crime.16 Hess would not have made his flight to Britain had not he and Hitler, in their anxiousness for peace, been fooled into believing that they were in contact with a strong peace party in Britain. There had been a strong peace party in Britain at one time, but most of its members had been thrown in jail by Churchill's administration, and the rest could not express themselves. Churchill had, so he told his secretary in a discussion about British aid to Russia, "only one purpose: the destruction of Hitler. And my life is much simplified thereby."17 It would have been much easier and less costly in lives and materials, not only for the British but also for the Germans and Americans, to have encouraged the Germans to eliminate Hitler instead of trying to eliminate both the Germans and Hitler. "Unconditional surrender" sounds melodic, inspiring and dramatic. But this is all the value it had. It led the people in the Allied nations to think the Germans would never give up until they were totally demolished. It prolonged the war and made it even more bitter. There is a hint that Hitler would have volunteered to retire had his retirement meant that Britain would have assumed a friendly attitude toward Germany. "Days before the beer hall bomb [Munich, November 8, 1939] there was a hint that [Hitler] was prepared to go very far, indeed. Ger man Prince Max Hohenlohe had spoken in Switzerland with representatives of Vansittart, secretary of the British Foreign Office, returning to Germany to report to G?ring that peace with England was possible, but only with Hitler and Ribbentrop removed from power. One observer recorded in his diary that G?ring replied that Hitler would agree to this."18 Mary Ball Martinez's Pope Pius XII During the Second World War states: To their astonishment, the four Jesuit historians came upon records documenting the personal involvement of Pius XII in a plot to overthrow Hitler. In January 1940, he was approached by the agent of a certain clique of German generals, who asked him to tell the British government that they would undertake to "remove" Hitler if they were given assurances that the British would come to terms with a moderate German regime. Pius XII promptly passed along this message to Sir D'Arcy Osborne, Britain's envoy to the Holy See. The offer was turned down.19 However, on a number of occasions the Germans had offered to remove Hitler from power if they were given reasonable peace terms for doing so. Joseph E. Davies, at a town hall meeting in Los Angeles, January 20, 1943, disclosed that the Germans had offered to retire Hitler in 1940 if the British would make peace with Germany.20 If the Germans could get rid of Hitler anytime they desired, then Hitler's "total dictatorial control" over Germany was not so total and not so dictatorial as believers in the war propaganda think, and the Germans were not his robotic slaves. Hans Kohn reviewed John Scott's Duel for Europe in the December 14, 1942 New Republic (799). He stated, "If Britain had wished to make peace with Ger many, she could have done it easily in 1939, in the summer of 1940, and again in the spring of 1941." It was not Hitler and Germany who could be described accurately as the war maniacs. The war maniacs were Roosevelt and Churchill and their backers, such as Bernard Baruch and Samuel Untermeyer. One of the reasons used to justify the destruction of the Nazi system was that Hitler was a dictator. It was assumed that the Germans could not get rid of him. But why should the happiest people in the world, as David Lloyd George spoke of the Germans after Hitler came to power, want to dispose of their leader? The "unconditional surrender" declaration should dispel all thought about Hitler being in absolute command of everything in Germany. It was not the Germans who were forcing Hitler upon themselves. Roosevelt and Churchill were doing it for them, and for the sole purpose of keeping the war going as long as possible. How did Hitler become the German leader? British history professor A.J.P. Taylor gives the answer in The Origins of the Second World War: Hitler was appointed chancellor by President Hindenburg in a strictly constitutional way and for solidly democratic reasons.21 Conservative politicians led by Papen . . . recommended him to Hindenburg [and] kept the key posts for themselves.22 He did not "seize" power. He waited for it to be thrust upon him by the men who had previously tried to keep him out. In January 1933, Papen and Hindenburg were imploring him to become chancellor, and he graciously consented.23 Germany never threatened Britain. Hitler had always wanted to be a good neighbor and a good friend to the British. As late as January 29, 1942, after Britain had been at war with Germany for two years and five months, Hitler expressed a desire to help the British by sending them 20 divisions to aid them in throwing the Japanese invaders out of Singapore.24 He bent over backwards in showing his earnestness and generosity. He never would have gone to war against the British if the British had not attacked Ger many, or, as Churchill blazoned, "We entered the war of our free will, without ourselves being directly assaulted."25 Churchill was not elected-as Hitler was in Germany-to be the prime minister by the British people. Churchill was put in power by the "powers behind the scenes" for the sole purpose of keeping the war going. Churchill's job was not to make peace but to make war. In August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill hypocritically said in the third point of the Atlantic Charter that they respected "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." Unless the words "all peoples" do not mean what they say, then this article clearly applies as much to the Germans as to anyone else. As soon as the tide of battle began to favor the British empire, Churchill threw off the pretended cloak of righteousness and became openly arrogant. He said in Parliament on September 2, 1943: The twin roots of all our evils, Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism, must be extirpated. Until this is achieved, there are no sacrifices we will not make and no lengths in violence to which we will not go.26 Of this Nazi tyranny and Churchill's eager desire to get rid of it, it should be pointed out that the Germans were not oppressing the British people and if the Germans wanted to live under their "tyrannical" form of government, it was none of Britain's business. The Atlantic Charter gave the Germans this right. Churchill did not object to Soviet tyranny, for he hailed Russia as a welcome ally when she came into the war. So it turns out the democracies were at war with Ger many to force Germany to set up a democratic form of government, even though Hitler had been democratically elected and Churchill had not. The sixth point in the Atlantic Charter called for the "destruction of Nazi tyranny" only and no other tyranny. There fore, according to the charter, other tyrannies could live, thrive and be supported. It may be noted that the sixth point contradicts the third point. The sixth point was the same as a "secret" declaration of war against Germany. There fore, the United States was really in the war against Germany long before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler's declaration of war against the United States was made to keep his promise to Japan and to set things straight in the world as they really were. This declaration made it legal for the German navy to shoot back at the American ships in the Atlantic. Roosevelt ordered, in April 1941, American warships to seek out and follow German ships and to radio their locations every four hours so British warships could come and open an attack. Roosevelt commanded American warships to "shoot on sight" at German submarines on September 11, 1941.27 Adm. Stark, chief of naval operations, wrote Adm. Hart on November 7, 1941: "The Navy is already in the War of the Atlantic, but the country doesn't seem to realize it. Apathy, to the opposition, is evident in a considerable section of the press. Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war."28 All this was in flagrant defiance of Roosevelt's promise to Americans that we would not enter any war unless we were attacked. These orders made America an aggressor nation. American leaders, with their pretended righteousness, failed in their efforts to be the first "victims," but this did not prevent them from pretending to be, and the nation from believing they were. American leaders were the victimizers, in many ways. The war in the Pacific was also kept going much longer than necessary. Before the Germans were allowed to "surrender" and before the atom bombs were dropped, the Japanese were asking for peace. Gen. Douglas McArthur recommended negotiations on the basis of the Japanese overtures. But FDR brushed off this suggestion with the remark: "McArthur is our greatest general and our poorest politician."29 This is the answer in a nutshell to why the war was allowed to go on and on, when it could have been over any day from 1943 on. It did not even have to have started in the first place, except that FDR wanted it to start. Clare Booth Luce said at the Republican Party Convention in 1944 that Roosevelt "lied us into the war." To get America into the war, FDR provoked the Japanese to attack. At the same time, American boys were battling to end World War II, leading American politicians were doing all they could for political reasons to continue the conflict. President Harry Truman, in early May 1945, informed Herbert Hoover "of the extensive Japanese peace offers and admitted then that further fighting with the Japanese was really unnecessary. But Truman also disclosed to Hoover that he did not feel strong enough to challenge Secretary Stimson and the Pentagon." FOOTNOTES: 1 Walendy, Udo, The Methods of Reeducation, 3. 2 Kilzer, Louis C., Churchill's Deception, 20. 3 Churchill, Winston, The Grand Alliance, 23. 4 Irving, David, Hitler's War, 35. 5 Tansill, G.C., Back Door to War, 450-51. 6 Crocker, George Crocker, Roosevelt's Road to Russia, 81. 7 Irving, ibid., 418. 8 Kilzer, ibid., 69-70. 9 Kilzer, ibid., 221. 10 Irving, ibid., 121. 11 McLaughlin, Michael, For Those Who Cannot Speak, 10. 12 Irving, ibid., 511. 13 Barnes, Harry Elmer, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 162; and Irving, ibid., 371. 14 Irving, ibid., xvi. 15 Walendy, ibid., 3. 16 The Barnes Review, July/August 2001. 17 Churchill, ibid., 370. 18 Kilzer, ibid., 183. 19 Journal of Historical Review, Sept./Oct. 1993, 27. 20 Leese, Arnold, The Jewish War of Survival, 20. 21 Ibid., 97. 22 Ibid., 79. 23 Ibid., 101 24 Irving, ibid., 371. 25 Martin, James J., The Saga of Hog Island, 42. 26 Grenfell, Capt. Russell, Unconditional Hatred, 92. 27 Barnes, ibid., 487. 28 Tansill, ibid., 645. 29 Chamberlin, William Henry, America's Second Crusade, 219. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:48:31 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:48:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Der Spiegel: The Third Reich: How Close Was Hitler to the A-Bomb? Message-ID: The Third Reich: How Close Was Hitler to the A-Bomb? http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-346293,00.html March 14, 2005 How Close Was Hitler to the A-Bomb? By Klaus Wiegrefe Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch claims that the Nazis conducted three nuclear weapons tests in 1944 and 1945. But he has no proof to back up his theories. How close was Hitler to an atomic bomb? A German historian claims he was much closer than previously believed. The United States needed 125,000 people, including six future Nobel Prize winners, to develop the atomic bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The uranium enrichment facility alone, including its security zone, was the size of the western German city of Frankfurt. Dubbed the Manhattan project, the quest ultimately cost the equivalent of about $30 billion. In his new book, "Hitler's Bomb," Berlin historian Rainer Karlsch claims Nazi Germany almost achieved similar results with only a handful of physicists and a fraction of the budget. The author writes that German physicists and members of the military conducted three nuclear weapons tests shortly before the end of World War II, one on the German island of Ruegen in the fall of 1944 and two in the eastern German state of Thuringia in March 1945. The tests, writes Karlsch, claimed up to 700 lives. If these theories were accurate, history would have to be rewritten. Ever since the Allies occupied the Third Reich's laboratories and interrogated Germany's top physicists working with wunderkind physicist Werner Heisenberg and his colleague Carl Friedrich von Weizs?cker, it's been considered certain that Hitler's scientists were a long way from completing a nuclear weapon. Karlsch's publisher, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, is already issuing brazen claims about the "sensational results of the latest historic research." The Third Reich, says the publishing house, was "on the verge of winning the race to acquire the first functioning nuclear weapon." Even before the book was published, the generally reserved publishing house sent press kits to the media, in which it claimed that the author had solved "one of the great mysteries of the Third Reich." The book is being presented Monday at an elaborately staged press conference. Karlsch, an unaffiliated academic, plans an extensive author's tour. The only problem with all the hype is that the historian has no real proof to back up his spectacular theories. His witnesses either lack credibility or have no first-hand knowledge of the events described in the book. What Karlsch insists are key documents can, in truth, be interpreted in various ways, some of which contradict his theory. Finally, the soil sample readings taken thus far at the detonation sites provide "no indication of the explosion of an atomic bomb," says Gerald Kirchner of Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection. Karlsch spent several years in archives researching his subject, discovering many unknown documents on the history of science in the Third Reich. That includes a manuscript of one of Heisenberg's speeches which historians had previoulsy assumed had been lost. The manuscript alone would have been a significant find, but it wasn't enough to satisfy Karlsch or fully support his offbeat theory. As a result, in order to give his theory wings, he had to make some speculative leaps. The bazooka effect Did the Nazis conduct three nuclear weapons tests in 1944 and 1945? For one thing, he focuses on Erich Schumann, who served as chief of research for Germany's weapons division until 1944. At Schumann's estate, Karlsch discovered records from the post-war period. Schumann was a former physics professor and wrote that in 1944 he discovered a method of generating the high temperatures (several million degrees Celsius) and extreme pressure necessary to trigger nuclear fusion using conventional explosives. The hydrogen bomb is based on this principle. During World War II, explosives experts experimented with hollow charges -- essentially hollowed-out explosive devices -- which possess extremely high penetration force. The success of the bazooka is based on this effect and Schumann believed he could apply it to a nuclear weapon. He assumed that enough energy for nuclear fusion would be released if two hollow charges were aimed at each other. It's a theory that deserves serious consideration. However, Schumann never claimed to have tested his theory in practice. Karlsch, however, believes it was applied. He claims Schumann presented his ideas at a conference in the fall of 1944. He then speculates that, under instruction from the SS, a team of physicists working with Kurt Diebner, a rival of Heisenberg, made use of the discovery. Karlsch bases his theory in part on statements made by Gerhard Rundnagel, a plumber, to the East German state security service, the Stasi. In the 1960s, the Stasi became aware of rumors circulating in the former East German state of Thuringia that there had been a nuclear detonation in 1945. Rundnagel told the security service that he had been in contact with the research team working with Diebner. He said one of the physicists in the group had told him that there were "two atomic bombs in a safe." Rundnagel later said the two bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Despite that inconsistency, Karlsch believes the man should be taken seriously. An argument full of holes The island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea is a popular summer vacation spot. Was it also the site of secret nuclear testing by the Nazis? The biggest hole in Karlsch's argument stems from his inablility to prove how the Diebner group managed to implement Schumann's ideas. According to Karlsch, Diebner and his colleagues used a special device that combined nuclear fission and fusion to initiate a chain reaction. With the help of physicists, Karlsch came up with a design for such a weapon and presents it in his book. Joachim Schulze, a nuclear weapons expert at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute, took a look at Karlsch's model and said it would be "incapable of functioning." Another theory Karlsch presents in his book -- that the Germany navy tested a nuclear weapon on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen -- is nothing short of fantastic. His key witness is Luigi Romersa, a former war reporter for a Milan newspaper, Corriere della Sera. For years Romersa, a Roman who is now 87, has been telling the story of how he visited Hitler in October 1944 and then was flown to an island in the Baltic Sea. Romersa says that he was taken to a dugout where he witnessed an explosion that produced a bright light, and that men wearing protective suits then drove him away from the site, telling him that what he had witnessed was a "fission bomb." Unfortunately, Romersa doesn't recall the name of the island he claims to have visited or who was in charge of the bizarre event. Karlsch believes it was Ruegen. He dismisses the fact that soil analysis shows no evidence of a nuclear explosion by pointing to erosion. A more credible witness is the recently deceased Thuringian resident Clare Werner. On March 4, 1945, Werner, who was standing on a nearby hillside, witnessed an explosion in a military training area near the town of Ohrdruf. "It was about 9:30 when I suddenly saw something ... it was as bright as hundreds of bolts of lightning, red on the inside and yellow on the outside, so bright you could've read the newspaper. It all happened so quickly, and then we couldn't see anything at all. We just noticed there was a powerful wind..." The woman complained of "nose bleeds, headaches and pressure in the ears." The next day Heinz Wachsmut, a man who worked for a local excavating company, was ordered to help the SS build wooden platforms on which the corpses of prisoners were cremated. The bodies, according to Wachsmut, were covered with horrific burn wounds. Like Werner, Wachsmut reports that local residents complained of headaches, some even spitting up blood. In Wachsmut's account, higher-ranking SS officers told people that something new had been tested, something the entire world would soon be talking about. Of course, there was no mention of nuclear weapons. Did Stalin hear reports about the weapon? And what about the 700 victims, supposedly concentration camp inmates, Karlsch claims died in the tests? This impressive figure is nothing but an estimate based on the number of cremation sites Wachsmut recalls. However, on the reputed detonation date, the Ohrdruf concentration camp, part of the larger Buchenwald complex, recorded ony 35 dead. Another piece of evidence Karlsch cites is a March 1945 Soviet military espionage report. According to the report, which cites a "reliable source," the Germans "detonated two large explosions in Thuringia." The bombs, the Soviet spies wrote, presumably contained uranium 235, a material used in nuclear weapons, and produced a "highly radioactive effect." Prisoners of war housed at the center of the detonation were killed, "and in many cases their bodies were completely destroyed." The Red Army's spies noted with concern that the Germany army could "slow down our offensive" with its new weapon. The fact that dictator Josef Stalin received one of the four copies of the report shows just how seriously the Kremlin took the news. Unfortunately, the document Karlsch presents is of such poor quality that it cannot be clearly determined whether the report describing the explosions was written before or after the detonation Clare Werner claims to have witnessed. More importantly, however, what Clare Werner claims to have seen could not have a detonation of the type of bomb the German informer sketched for the Red Army. That type of device would have required several kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which all experts, including Karlsch, believe Nazi Germany did not possess. There is one expert who the author, and his boastful publisher, hopes will support his theories. Uwe Keyser, a nuclear physicist who works for Germany's Federal Institute of Physics and Technology in Braunschweig, is currently testing soil samples from Ohrdruf. Keyser believes that the readings for radioactive substances he has obtained so far are sufficiently abnormal so as not to rule out the explosion of a simple nuclear device. Of course, Keyser's readings could also be caused by naturally occurring processes, material left behind by Soviet forces stationed in Ohrdruf until 1994 or fallout from the Chernobyl disaster or nuclear weapons tests conducted by the superpowers. Keyser says he needs "about a year" to conduct a more precise analysis. He also needs someone to continue footing the bill. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:54:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:54:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Justin Raimondo: A Fascist America: How Close Are We? Message-ID: Justin Raimondo: A Fascist America: How Close Are We? http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=5070 5.3.5 [The problem with this article is that it could have been written any time since FDR was elected.] Quotable Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total...because it may well involve the whole world. - Jean-Paul Sartre The idea that America is turning [23]fascist has been [24]popular on [25]the Left for as long as I can remember: in [26]the 1960s, when antiwar radicals [27]raged against the Machine, this kind of hyperbole dominated [28]campus political discourse and even made its way into [29]the mainstream. When the radical [30]Symbionese Liberation Army went into ultra-Left meltdown and began issuing incoherent "[31]communiqu?s" to an indifferent American public, they invariably signed off [32]by declaring: "Death to the fascist insect pig that preys on the life of the people!" Such rhetoric, too overheated for American tastes, was quite obviously an exaggeration: America in the 1960s was no more "fascistic" than [33]miniskirts, [34]Hula Hoops, and the rhyming [35]demagoguery of Spiro T. Agnew. Furthermore, we weren't even close to fascism, as the downfall of Richard M. Nixon made all too clear to whatever [36]incipient authoritarians were nurtured at the breast of the GOP. Back in those halcyon days, America was, in effect, practically immune from the fascist virus that had wreaked such havoc in Europe and Asia in previous decades: there was a kind of innocence, back then, that acted as a vaccine against this dreaded affliction. Fascism [37]the demonic offspring of war was practically a stranger to American soil. After all, it had been a century since America had been a battleground, and the sense of invulnerability that is the hallmark of youth permeated our politics and culture. Nothing could hurt us: we were forever young. But as we moved into the new millennium, Americans [38]acquired a sense of their own mortality: an acute awareness that we could be hurt, and badly. That is the legacy of 9/11. Blessed with a [39]double bulwark against foreign invasion the Atlantic and Pacific oceans America hasn't experienced the atomizing effects of large-scale military conflict on its soil since [40]the Civil War. On that occasion, you'll remember, Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator," nearly emancipated the U.S. government from [41]the chains of the Constitution by [42]shutting down newspapers, [43]jailing his political opponents, and cutting a [44]swathe of destruction through the South, which was occupied and treated like a conquered province [45]years after Lee surrendered. He was the [46]closest to a dictator that any American president has come but George W. Bush may well surpass him, given [47]the possibilities that now present themselves. From the moment the twin towers were hit, the fascist seed began to germinate, to [48]take root and [49]grow. As the first shots of what the neocons call "[50]World War IV" rang out, piercing the post-Cold War calm like a [51]shriek straight out of Hell, the political and cultural climate underwent a huge shift: the country became, for the first time in the modern era, a hothouse conducive to the growth of a genuinely [52]totalitarian tendency in American politics. The events of 9/11 were an enormous defeat for the U.S., and it is precisely in these circumstances the traumatic humbling of a power once considered mighty that the [53]fascist impulse begins to find its first expression. That, at any rate, is the historical experience of Germany, for example, where a defeated military machine regenerated itself on the strength of German resentment and [54]lashed out at Europe once again. The terrible defeat of World War I, and the injustice of the peace, created in Weimar Germany the cradle of [55]National Socialism: but in our own age, where everything is speeded up by the Internet and the sheer momentum of the knowledge explosion a single battle, and a single defeat, can have the same Weimarizing effect. The Republican Party's response to 9/11 was to push through the most repressive series of laws since the [56]Alien and Sedition Acts, starting with the "[57]PATRIOT Act" and [58]its successors [59]making it possible for American citizens to be held without charges, without public evidence, without trial, and giving the federal government unprecedented powers to conduct surveillance of its own citizens. Secondly, Republicans began to typify all opposition to their warmaking and anti-civil liberties agenda as practically [60]tantamount to treason. Congress, thoroughly intimidated, was silent: they supinely voted to give the president [61]a blank check, and he is [62]still filling in the amount The intellectual voices of American fascism began to be heard in the land before the first smoke had cleared from the stricken isle of Manhattan, as even some alleged "libertarians" began to advocate giving up traditional civil liberties all Americans once took for granted. "It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes," [63]wrote "libertarian" columnist and Reason magazine contributing editor Cathy Young, "perhaps there are no true libertarians in times of terrorist attacks," she noted, as she defended government spying on Americans and denounced computer encryption technology as "scary." As much as Young's self-conception as a libertarian is the result of a misunderstanding, that infamous "anti-government" sentiment that used to permeate the GOP evaporated overnight. [64]Lew Rockwell trenchantly labeled this phenomenon "red-state fascism," writing: "The most significant socio-political shift in our time has gone almost completely unremarked, and even unnoticed. It is the dramatic shift of the red-state bourgeoisie from leave-us-alone libertarianism, manifested in the Congressional elections of 1994, to almost totalitarian statist nationalism. Whereas the conservative middle class once cheered the circumscribing of the federal government, it now celebrates power and adores the central state, particularly its military wing." This worrisome shift in the ideology and tone of the conservative movement has also been noted by the economist and writer [65]Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury, who points to the "brownshirting" of the American Right as a harbinger of the fascist mentality. I raised the same point in [66]a column, and the discussion was [67]taken up by Scott McConnell, editor of The American Conservative, in a thoughtful essay that appeared in the Feb. 14 issue of that magazine. My good friend Scott sounds a skeptical note: "It is difficult to imagine any scenario, after 9/11, that would not lead to some expansion of federal power. The United States was suddenly at war, mobilizing to strike at a Taliban government on the other side of the world. The emergence of terrorism as the central security issue had to lead, at the very least, to increased domestic surveillance of Muslim immigrants especially. War is the health of the state, as the libertarians helpfully remind us, but it doesn't mean that war leads to fascism." All this is certainly true, as far as it goes: but what if the war takes place, not in distant Afghanistan, but on American soil? That, I contend, is the crucial circumstance that makes the present situation unique. [68]Yes, war is the health of the State but a war fought down the block, instead of on the other side of the world, means the total victory of State power over individual liberty as an imminent possibility. To paraphrase McConnell, it is difficult to imagine any scenario, after another 9/11, that would not lead to what we might call fascism. [69]William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation and a prominent writer on military strategy, argues that what he calls "cultural Marxism" is a much greater and more immediate danger than militaristic fascism, and that, in any case, the real problem is "abstract nationalism," the concept of "the state as an ideal." This ideal, however, died amid the destruction wrought by World War I, and is not about to be resurrected. And yet Lind raises the possibility, at the end of his piece, that his argument is highly conditional: "There is one not unlikely event that could bring, if not fascism, then a nationalist statism that would destroy American liberty: a terrorist event that caused mass casualties, not the 3,000 dead of 9/11, but 30,000 dead or 300,000 dead. We will devote some thought to that possibility in a future column." I was going to wait for Mr. Lind to come up with that promised column, but felt that the matter might be pressing enough to broach the subject anyway. Especially in view of [70]this, not to mention [71]this. If "everything changed" on the foreign policy front in the wake of 9/11, then the domestic consequences of 9/11 II are bound to have a similarly transformative effect. If our response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was to launch a [72]decades-long war to [73]implant democracy throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, [74]what will we do when the battlefield shifts back to the continental U.S.? I shudder to think about it. The [75]legal, [76]ideological, and [77]political elements that go into the making of a genuinely fascist regime in America are already in place: all that is required is [78]some catalytic event, one that needn't even be on the scale of 9/11, but still dramatic enough to give real impetus to the creation of a police state in this country. The legal foundation is already to be found in the arguments made by the president's lawyers in asserting their "right" to [79]commit torture and other war crimes, under the "constitutional" aegis of the chief executive's [80]wartime powers. In time of war, [81]the president's lawyers argue, our commander-in-chief has the power to immunize himself and his underlings against legal prosecution: they transcend the law, and are put beyond the judgement of the people's representatives by presidential edict. Theoretically, according to the militarist interpretation of [82]the Constitution, there is no power the president may not assume in wartime, because his decisions are "[83]unreviewable." On account of military necessity, according to this doctrine, we have to admit the possibility that the Constitution [84]might itself be suspended and [85]martial law declared the minute war touches American soil. It wouldn't take much. There already exists, in the [86]neoconized Republican Party, a mass-based movement that [87]fervently believes in a [88]strong central State and a [89]foreign policy of [90]perpetual war. The brownshirting of the American conservative movement, as Paul Craig Roberts [91]stingingly characterized the ugly transformation of the American Right, is so far along that the president can propose the [92]biggest expansion of federal power and spending since the [93]Great Society with nary a peep from the [94]former enthusiasts of "smaller government." While the Newt Gingrich Republicans of the early 1990s were never really libertarians in any but a rhetorical sense [95]Newt himself has always been a hopelessly statist neocon the great difference today is that the neocons are coming out with an openly authoritarian program. David Frum and Richard Perle, in their book [96]An End to Evil, advocate establishing an [97]Orwellian government database and comprehensive electronic surveillance system that not only keeps constant track of the whereabouts of everyone in the country, but also stores a dossier, complete with their religious and political affiliations. If anyone had brought such a proposal to the table in the pre-9/11 era, they would have been laughed out of town and mercilessly ridiculed for the rest of their lives. But today, the neocon tag-team of Frum and Perle not only gets away with it, but these strutting martinets are lauded by [98]the same "conservatives" who used to rail against "Big Government." The label "[99]neoconservative" has always been unsatisfactory, in part because the neocon ideology of rampant militarism, super-centralism, and unrestrained statism is necessarily at war with the libertarian aspects of authentic conservatism (the sort of conservatism that, say, [100]Frank S. Meyer or [101]Russell Kirk would find recognizable). Let's start calling things by their right names: these aren't neoconservatives. What we are witnessing is the rebirth of fascism in 21st century America, a movement motivated by the three principles of classical fascist ideology: 1) The idealization of the State as the embodiment of an all-powerful national will or spirit; 2) The leader principle, which personifies the national will in the holder of a political office (whether democratically elected or otherwise is largely a matter of style), and 3) The doctrine of [102]militarism, which bases an entire legal and economic system on war and preparations for war. Of these three, militarism really is the fountainhead, the first principle and necessary precondition that gives rise to the others. The militarist [103]openly declares that life is conflict, and that the doctrine of [104]economic and political liberalism which holds that there is no necessary conflict of interests among men is wrong. Peace is cowardice, and the values of prosperity, pleasure, and living life for its own sake are evidence of mindless hedonism and even decadence. Life is not to be lived for its own sake: it must be risked to have meaning, and, if necessary, [105]sacrificed in the name of a "higher" (i.e., abstract) value. That "higher" value is not only defined by the State, it is the State: in war, the [106]soldier's life is risked on behalf of government interests, by government personnel, on behalf of expanding government power. These beliefs are at the core of the fascist mentality, but there are other aspects of this question too many to go into here. Since fascism is a form of extreme nationalism, every country has its own unique variety, with idiosyncrasies that could only have arisen in a particular locality. In one country, [107]religion will play a prominent role, in others a more secular strategy is pursued: but the question of imminent danger, and the seizure of power as an "[108]emergency" measure to prevent some larger catastrophe, is a common theme of fascist coups everywhere, and in America it is playing out no differently. While [109]Pinochet pointed to the imminent danger of a Communist revolution as did Hitler the neo-fascists of our time and place cite the [110]omnipresent threat of a terrorist attack in the U.S. This is a permanent rationale for an ever escalating series of draconian measures fated to go far beyond the "PATRIOT Act" or anything yet imagined. Already the intellectual and political ground [111]is being prepared for censorship. The conservative campaign to discredit the "mainstream" media, and challenge its status as a watchdog over government actions, could easily go in an unfortunate direction if Bin Laden succeeds in his vow to take the fight to American shores. Well, since they're lying, anyway, why not shut them down? After all, this is a "national emergency," and "[112]they're not antiwar, they're on the other side." The neoconservative movement represents the quintessence of fascism, as expressed by some of its intellectual spokesmen, such as [113]Christopher Hitchens, who infamously hailed the Afghan war as having succeeded in "bombing a country back out of the Stone Age." This belief in [114]the purifying power of violence its magical, transformative quality is the real emotional axis of evil that motivates the War Party. This is especially true when it comes to those thuggish ex-leftists of [115]Hitchens' ilk who found shelter in the neoconservatives' many mansions when the roof fell in on their old Marxist digs. Neocon ideologue [116]Stephen Schwartz defends a regime notorious for torturing dissidents, shutting out all political opposition, and arresting thousands on account of their political and religious convictions [117]in Uzbekistan. How far are such people from rationalizing the same sort of regime in the U.S.? At least one prominent neocon has made [118]the case for censorship, in the name of maintaining "morality" but now, it seems to me, the "national security" rationalization will do just as well, if not better. McConnell is right that we are not yet in the grip of a fully developed fascist system, and the conservative movement is far from thoroughly neoconized. But we are a single terrorist incident away from all that: a bomb placed in a mall or on the Golden Gate Bridge, or a biological attack of some kind, could sweep away the Constitution, [119]the Bill of Rights, and two centuries of legal, political, and cultural traditions all of it wiped out in a single instant, by means of a single act that would tip the balance and push us into the abyss of post-Constitutional history. The trap is readied, baited, and waiting to be sprung. Whether the American people will fall into it when the time comes: that is the nightmare that haunts the dreams of patriots. Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of [192]An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000). He is also the author of [193]Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is a contributing editor for [194]The American Conservativ[195]e, a Senior Fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an Adjunct Scholar with the [196]Ludwig von Mises Institute, and writes frequently for [197]Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. 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http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.418: 98. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/today.guest.html 99. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040223&c=1&s=lind 100. http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard48.html 101. http://www.townhall.com/hall_of_fame/kirk/kirk425.html 102. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militarism 103. http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/hege.htm 104. http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm 105. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/11/bush.veterans.day.ap/ 106. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7043921/ 107. http://www.bushislord.com/index.php 108. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire 109. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet 110. http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29 111. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-30-students-press_x.htm 112. http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:uY-JJSJEHywJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4585579/++%22on+the+other+side%22+glenn+reynolds+&hl=en 113. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011217&s=hitchens 114. http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/ledeen092001.shtml 115. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j082602.html 116. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3134 117. http://justinlogan.typepad.com/justinlogancom/2004/12/our_man_in_uzbe.html 118. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wbutler/kristol.html 119. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html 192. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573928097/antiwarbookstore/ 193. http://antiwar.com/raimondo/book1.html 194. http://www.amconmag.com/ 195. http://www.amconmag.com/ 196. http://www.mises.org/ 197. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 9 17:56:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:56:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] FuturePundit: Video Cameras Spreading In Nursing Homes To Prevent Abuse Message-ID: Video Cameras Spreading In Nursing Homes To Prevent Abuse http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002263.html#002263 July 29, 2004 [The surveillance society servies (link 11) are very worthwhile.] Called "granny-cams", the use of video cameras placed in the rooms of elderly nursing home residences is being funded in many cases by families so that [9]families can verify that their elderly are not being abused or neglected by nursing home workers. About a dozen state legislatures have granny-cam legislation under consideration. Earlier this year, New Mexico joined Texas in allowing nursing home residents or their representatives to install monitoring cameras in their rooms. Under the laws, a resident must let nursing-home operators know ahead of time of the placement of the camera. If the operator is not notified or if the equipment is not open and obvious in the room, the camera is considered covert surveillance and illegal. Use of such cameras is a positive step in reducing the potential for elderly abuse, Cottle, an editor at the journal, concluded. In particular, Web cameras hold the greatest potential for restoring public confidence in nursing homes by giving family members access to "real time" or to recently stored footage. Commercial outlets now sell Web-camera systems to the elderly at prices from $629 to $1,584, depending on the specifications of each camera, plus a $20 monthly fee to access the server and $10 a month for a data-only line to upload images. "Certainly some families have the financial means to provide this quality of technological protection, however the majority of Americans do not," Cottle wrote. To be effective and properly regulated, granny-cam technology should therefore be mandated for all nursing facilities. In some cases family members are able to monitor their parents and grandparents by watching camera video streams remotely over the internet. Cameras also could monitor many of the basics of resident care, such as drug administration and diaper changing. By linking the camera feed to the Internet, nursing homes could handle routine assignments more efficiently. But because of understandable concerns over privacy, Cottle advocates placing the surveillance systems in the hands of independent companies, which would then monitor the equipment and be responsible for making the data available online. "In this way, families can check on their loved ones and nursing homes can check on their residents, and everyone will sleep a little better at night knowing that the independent source is regulating and reviewing the tapes should any problems arise," Cottle wrote. Many people are willing to give up privacy in exchange for security. Effectively the cameras provide a way for more trusted people to monitor the actions of less trusted people. The monitoring capability provided by electronic technology allows the role of trusted agent to be separated from the role of service provider. The cameras are monitored either by family members or by third party organizations. These organizations effectively serve to audit and monitor performance of nursing homes on behalf of family members or even on behalf of the elderly themselves. Another way to think about video cameras used in security is that they allow a trusted agent to leverage their trust to enforce and monitor more transactions and facilities. This ability to separate out the role of trusted agent from the roles of providing various other services is a big underappreciated long term trend that is changing how societies are organized. It is going to affect the structure of governments in part by allowing outsourcing of various components of governance. For example, one can imagine how this could lead to situations where particularly corrupt governments agree to remote monitoring of a large range of transactions and faciltiies in exchange for international aid. A country like [10]Finland with an incredibly low level of corruption could literally provide remote trust services for institutions in countries with high levels of corruption such as Moldova or Paraguay. By Randall Parker at 2004 July 29 02:50 PM [11]Surveillance Society | [12]TrackBack Comments I am the Executive Director of a not for profit nursing home in Washington State. We installed cameras in all common areas of the facility several years ago. Then, the State surveyor forced us to turn them off and issued us a level D citation. We have legislative support to run a bill to help us. Any suggestions? Any legislation in other areas we should look at? Posted by: [13]Mike Hoon on February 11, 2005 04:14 PM References 9. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-07/uoia-uoc072704.php 10. http://www.transparency.org/pressreleases_archive/2002/2002.08.28.cpi.en.html 11. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_surveillance_society.html 12. http://www.futurepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?__mode=view&entry_id=2263 13. mailto:mike.hoon at earthlink.net From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sat Apr 9 18:43:45 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 11:43:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] liberal academia In-Reply-To: <200504091800.j39I0O212573@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050409184345.65296.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Apparently, now that they can't attack John Kerry or gay marriage, the right-wing media machine and its followers in state governments have trained their sights on a next-most favored whipping boy, the university professor.<< --It seems like the conservative platform has moved so far to the right that anything mainstream seems "liberal". If a professor teaches evolution, that's hardly extreme, yet it is portrayed as one-sided, as if creationism were mainstream science. A professor who teaches the history of the US in a balanced way will seem "ultra-liberal" to someone who thinks balance means covering up everything embarrassing or painful about one's own country. Sociology and psychology may be avoided by conservatives who view them as "fuzzy" fields. How many professors start out conservative and become more liberal as they learn more about their field? I've met quite a few conservative Christians who gradually became more liberal and secular as they grew out of their childhood beliefs. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sat Apr 9 18:55:19 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 11:55:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] displaying emotion In-Reply-To: <200504091730.j39HUA209291@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050409185519.76953.qmail@web30804.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>If you haven't been socialized into displaying emotions of caring about the downtrodden, the despised, and the dispossessed, you can still favor NCLB if it promises to bring about improvements in educating those you do care about.<< --A side note here: I've noticed that a lot of people seem to feel pressured to display concern for the downtrodden, and react by displaying a kind of overly dramatic UNCONCERN. Making a display of being concerned without having genuine feelings (a shallow response associated with middle class liberalism) is not terribly different from displaying how little concern one feels (knee-jerk reaction attributed to middle class conservatives). Neither is as valuable as having a genuine human connection to real people. I worry that in debates about public policy for the poor, we've become so detached from the reality that we argue about whether liberals or conservatives have the more genuine emotional response, instead of basing our decisions on the experiences of the human beings affected by political decisions. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 9 20:27:37 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 13:27:37 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The real point Message-ID: <01C53D07.E6392FA0.shovland@mindspring.com> The latest official projections by the trustees say that the fund will be exhausted by about 2040. By that time most of the Boomers, for whom the trust was established, will be dead. The system will return to "pay as you go," and there will not be a huge number of old people burdening the system. I think a lot of the information about the proportion of workers to beneficiaries is false. Take a look at this chart of "people under 18." I don't see either a huge bubble or a huge falloff. AMERICANS UNDER AGE EIGHTEEN Year Millions Percent of Population 1950 47.3 31.1% 1960 64.5 35.7% 1970 69.8 34.0% 1980 63.7 28.0% 1990 64.2 25.7% 1998 69.8 25.9% Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 9:30 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The real point Actually, the real point of SS reform is to make it sustainable when the outgo vastly exceeds the income. A secondary point is to reduce the Democratic base by making poor people wealthy. Ironic, isn't it? Wealthy people vote Republican, in spite of the fact that Republicans have also horribly mismanaged government spending. The positive cash flow will run out. The point at which that happens keeps moving, maybe as soon as 2014, nine years hence. There on, it gets more and more grim, until finally all the bonds are redeemed and there aren't enough productive workers to cover social security. The bonds can only be redeemed by either: - reducing other government expenses and transfering the money - raising taxes - both None of these involve theft, except to the extent that so-called entitlement programs are reduced. That constitutes theft if you assume it is government's job to provide money for people who don't earn it. Arguably raising taxes involves theft, since it is a forced confiscation. But I doubt you mean that. Steve Hovland wrote: >The real point of Social Security "reform" is >to find some way to avoid redeeming the bonds >in the trust fund. > >In other words, to steal the money. > > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From HowlBloom at aol.com Sat Apr 9 23:35:19 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 19:35:19 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] why does disaster cripple our two brains? Message-ID: re: the old posting I?ve appended below: Why would misfortune and lack of control turn down the body?s two leading learning machines?the cognitive brain and the immune system? Here?s a guess. When I left the music business, I needed to get away from music completely. Music, something I?d loved all my life, repelled me. So I went utterly music-less for ten years. Then, when my thirst for music kicked up again, a strange thing happened. I?d driven the old music out of my system and was eager for the new. A kid of five or twelve imprints on the first music he hears and loves, the music that gives flesh to his sense of identity. Here I was, fresh as a kid, imprinting on music as if I were twelve years old again, but imprinting not on the music of my youth, but on the music of the 21st century. My musical death had prepared me to be born again. It had prepared me to become a Maroon 5 fan. So here?s the hypothesis and the question. Does woe and misery turn down your two key learning machines to prepare you to grab hold of something new? Does it flush your learning system so you can stitch yourself into a pattern you previously didn?t see, a team that?s getting the things you got wrong right? Does it prepare you to follow new leaders, new ideas, and even new beliefs? Does it prep you to join a segment of the neural net of society that?s contributing more than the old weave you were ejected from when you lost your job, broke up with your girlfriend, were rejected by the grad schools you were going for, or went through a messy divorce? Is the disability the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune impose on you a two-sided device used by the neural net, the collective learning machine of which you are a part? Does it tune down your influence and your access to resources so that you don?t get in the way of the mass mind when you are a failed component, a component that?s chosen the wrong approach to the problems of the moment? The evidence I?ve marshalled in The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and in Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century says yes. But does it also prep you to become a useful module in a more promising part of the neural net? Hb 4-09-05 We?ve known for several years now that the immune system and the brain are joined. The brain can turn the immune system up on high or down to underdrive depending on the way it perceives external reality. A brain that senses social isolation will shift the immune system into low gear. So will a brain whose perceptual powers tell it it no longer can control its circumstances or predict what?s coming next. (Yes, future projectors that fail are hacked away by apoptotic processes?they self destruct. By keeping only future projectors that work, evolution compacts past knowledge into a memory that then has future-predicting powers. But I digress.) The following press release hints that the brain and the immune system are part of a common learning loop. John McCrone, in material I posted last night, pointed out the value of a hierarchical learning system. A hierarchical system may have a processing mechanism that operates at superspeed on problems that need an instant solution. It may have other processors working on the micro-level with a clock tailored to nano-speed. It may also have slower processors that work on the big picture, the macro view. All can crank input into the others?or even reset the others? controls. This multi-layered approach gives a neural network system flexibility. The immune system is a learning machine par excellence, but one that works by rewarding lymphocytes that are doing useful work. It showers them with resources and with the ability to multiply. Like evolution itself, the immune system ruthlessly strips assets and the right to reproduce from lymphocytes that just don?t fit the system?s needs. The brain also works on the Matthew Principle: ?To he who hath it shall be given. From he who hath not even what he hath shall be taken away.? It rewards neurons that are helping it cope and strips those that aren?t of such privileges as attention and influence--the right to connect to others, the right to feed on information, the right to spoon its output to others, and even, in the cerebral neurons of babies, the right to live. Yet the vast system of swiftly changing networks in the brain gives it many levels of capability, many simultaneous processing powers, all of them different than those of the immune system. Combine the two ?the immune system?s methods of processing and the brain?s many separate ways of sifting input, mulling it, stewing it around, and making sense of it? and you may have a more intricate and able team than we imagined?one doing things throughout the body and turning literally every limb and circulatory alleyway into an extension of the mind. Howard Ps Note that the system described below works on attraction and repulsion signals, just like electrons, protons, animal voices, and bacterial or human pheromones. Reprinted from ScienceDaily Magazine ... Source: Washington University School Of Medicine Date Posted: Friday, April 20, 2001 Web Address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/010419072152.htm Molecule That Guides Nerve Cells Also Directs Immune Cells St. Louis, April 19, 2001 ? Researchers have the first evidence that cues that guide migrating nerve cells also direct white blood cells called leukocytes, which have to find their way to inflamed, infected or damaged areas of the body. The study is reported in the April 19 issue of Nature. "This similarity between the immune system and nervous system might suggest new therapeutic approaches to immune system disorders such as inflammation and autoimmune diseases," says Yi Rao, Ph.D., an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This study was a collaboration between the School of Medicine and Baylor College of Medicine. Rao and Jane Y. Wu, Ph.D., an associate professor of pediatrics and of molecular biology and pharmacology, led the Washington University teams. Lili Feng, Ph.D., led the Baylor team. After a cell is born, it navigates to its destination, guided by signals from other molecules already in place. Researchers have found that the nervous system uses molecules that attract migrating cells, molecules that stop cell migration and molecules that push cells away. But so far, only attractive molecules have been identified in the immune system. Neurons take minutes or hours to migrate to their destinations, whereas leukocytes migrate within seconds. Even so, Rao and colleagues wanted to determine whether migrating leukocytes and neurons use similar mechanisms for finding their ways. "These experiments were carried out to address the question whether there is mechanistic conservation between the two systems," Rao says. His group studied a protein called Slit, a known repellent in neuronal migration. Two of the three known Slit proteins also have been found in organs other than the brain. The researchers simulated leukocyte migration in a dish, using a molecule known to attract immune cells. When they added human Slit protein (hSlit2) to the dish as well, fewer cells migrated. They repeated the procedure in the presence of a bacterial product also known to attract leukocytes. Again, hSlit2 inhibited cell migration. However, it did not inhibit other functions of the bacterial product. The team then determined whether Robo?a receptor that enables Slit to act on nerve cells?plays a similar role in the immune system. They had previously made a fragment of Robo which blocks the normally full-length Robo protein. When this blocker was added to the dish, Slit no longer inhibited leukocyte migration. So Robo and a receptor on the cells appeared to be competing for Slit. "These results suggest that Slit also is likely to act through a Robo-like receptor on leukocytes to inhibit their migration," Rao says. He and his colleagues also are trying to find out whether Slit can actively repel leukocytes and whether other neuronal guidance cues influence immune cell migration. This study bridges the gap between two previously independent fields?immunology and neurology?and highlights the need for collaboration. "This kind of research could have been done several years ago," Rao says. "But we all get used to addressing questions in our own fields. This study shows what happens if we venture out and collaborate with scientists in other fields." Reference: Wu JY, Feng L, Park H-T, Havlioglu N, Wen L, Tang H, Bacon KB, Jiang Z, Zhang X, Rao Y. The neuronal repellent Slit inhibits leukocyte chemotaxis induced by chemotactic factors. Nature, April 19, 2001. Funding from the National Institutes of Health supported this research. Copyright ? 1995-2001 ScienceDaily Magazine | Email: editor at sciencedaily.com ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 10 02:19:31 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sat, 09 Apr 2005 19:19:31 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why does disaster cripple our two brains? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42588D33.3010709@earthlink.net> Thank you immensely for writing and posting this. I'm blown away by the comparisons between the article you wrote today and the appended old posting. The former engaged me immediately....I understood why music, of all things, repelled you so that you went music-less for a decade. The exact same thing has happened to me. I loved music, grew up with it and spend a great deal of time in both my high school years, college, and teaching English engaged in recordings of all types. It was how I communicated with the younger generation. Now I'm in a vacuum without music or friends....a hermitress on an island in Palo Alto. I keep asking myself how this happened and the usual answers flow forth....I never wanted to live in Cali, my partner is of German descent and they don't pay much attention to music, I no longer have contact with the younger generation....and so forth. So where do I go from here? I have my eyes focused on a Bose radio which just might do the trick. I've narrowed down a color and a spot on a shelf close to an electrical outlet so that very little in our tiny apartment needs to be displaced. I've located an outlet for Bose in the nearby shopping center and tomorrow after an early movie I will purchase the radio. I certainly hope that this instrument will reawaken my love for music...and I'm looking forward to an entirely new circle of friends so I too can become some group's fan. Best regards, Gerry Reinhart-Waller HowlBloom at aol.com wrote: > re: the old posting I?ve appended below: Why would misfortune and lack > of control turn down the body?s two leading learning machines?the > cognitive brain and the immune system? Here?s a guess. When I left > the music business, I needed to get away from music completely. > Music, something I?d loved all my life, repelled me. So I went > utterly music-less for ten years. Then, when my thirst for music > kicked up again, a strange thing happened. I?d driven the old music > out of my system and was eager for the new. A kid of five or twelve > imprints on the first music he hears and loves, the music that gives > flesh to his sense of identity. Here I was, fresh as a kid, > imprinting on music as if I were twelve years old again, but > imprinting not on the music of my youth, but on the music of the 21^st > century. My musical death had prepared me to be born again. It had > prepared me to become a Maroon 5 fan. > > > > So here?s the hypothesis and the question. Does woe and misery turn > down your two key learning machines to prepare you to grab hold of > something new? Does it flush your learning system so you can stitch > yourself into a pattern you previously didn?t see, a team that?s > getting the things you got wrong right? Does it prepare you to follow > new leaders, new ideas, and even new beliefs? Does it prep you to join > a segment of the neural net of society that?s contributing more than > the old weave you were ejected from when you lost your job, broke up > with your girlfriend, were rejected by the grad schools you were going > for, or went through a messy divorce? > > > > Is the disability the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune impose > on you a two-sided device used by the neural net, the collective > learning machine of which you are a part? Does it tune down your > influence and your access to resources so that you don?t get in the > way of the mass mind when you are a failed component, a component > that?s chosen the wrong approach to the problems of the moment? The > evidence I?ve marshalled in The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific > Expedition Into the Forces of History and in /Global Brain: The > Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21^st Century/ says > yes. But does it also prep you to become a useful module in a more > promising part of the neural net? Hb 4-09-05 > > > > > > We?ve known for several years now that the immune system and the brain > are joined. The brain can turn the immune system up on high or down > to underdrive depending on the way it perceives external reality. A > brain that senses social isolation will shift the immune system into > low gear. So will a brain whose perceptual powers tell it it no > longer can control its circumstances or predict what?s coming next. > (Yes, future projectors that fail are hacked away by apoptotic > processes?they self destruct. By keeping only future projectors that > work, evolution compacts past knowledge into a memory that then has > future-predicting powers. But I digress.) The following press release > hints that the brain and the immune system are part of a common > learning loop. John McCrone, in material I posted last night, pointed > out the value of a hierarchical learning system. A hierarchical > system may have a processing mechanism that operates at superspeed on > problems that need an instant solution. It may have other processors > working on the micro-level with a clock tailored to nano-speed. It > may also have slower processors that work on the big picture, the > macro view. All can crank input into the others?or even reset the > others? controls. This multi-layered approach gives a neural network > system flexibility. The immune system is a learning machine par > excellence, but one that works by rewarding lymphocytes that are doing > useful work. It showers them with resources and with the ability to > multiply. Like evolution itself, the immune system ruthlessly strips > assets and the right to reproduce from lymphocytes that just don?t fit > the system?s needs. The brain also works on the Matthew Principle: > ?To he who hath it shall be given. From he who hath not even what he > hath shall be taken away.? It rewards neurons that are helping it > cope and strips those that aren?t of such privileges as attention and > influence--the right to connect to others, the right to feed on > information, the right to spoon its output to others, and even, in the > cerebral neurons of babies, the right to live. Yet the vast system > of swiftly changing networks in the brain gives it many levels of > capability, many simultaneous processing powers, all of them different > than those of the immune system. Combine the two?the immune system?s > methods of processing and the brain?s many separate ways of sifting > input, mulling it, stewing it around, and making sense of it?and you > may have a more intricate and able team than we imagined?one doing > things throughout the body and turning literally every limb and > circulatory alleyway into an extension of the mind. Howard Ps Note > that the system described below works on attraction and repulsion > signals, just like electrons, protons, animal voices, and bacterial or > human pheromones. Reprinted from ScienceDaily Magazine ... Source: > Washington University School Of Medicine Date Posted: Friday, April > 20, 2001 Web Address: > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/04/010419072152.htm > Molecule That Guides Nerve Cells Also Directs Immune Cells St. Louis, > April 19, 2001 ? Researchers have the first evidence that *cues that > guide migrating nerve cells also direct white blood cells called > leukocytes, which have to find their way to inflamed, infected or > damaged areas of the body*. The study is reported in the April 19 > issue of Nature. "This similarity between the immune system and > nervous system might suggest new therapeutic approaches to immune > system disorders such as inflammation and autoimmune diseases," says > Yi Rao, Ph.D., an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology at > Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This study was > a collaboration between the School of Medicine and Baylor College of > Medicine. Rao and Jane Y. Wu, Ph.D., an associate professor of > pediatrics and of molecular biology and pharmacology, led the > Washington University teams. Lili Feng, Ph.D., led the Baylor team. > *After a cell is born, it navigates to its destination, guided by > signals from other molecules already in place. Researchers have found > that the nervous system uses molecules that attract migrating cells, > molecules that stop cell migration and molecules that push cells away. > But so far, only attractive molecules have been identified in the > immune system. *Neurons take minutes or hours to migrate to their > destinations, whereas leukocytes migrate within seconds. Even so, Rao > and colleagues wanted to determine whether migrating leukocytes and > neurons use similar mechanisms for finding their ways. "These > experiments were carried out to address the question whether there is > mechanistic conservation between the two systems," Rao says. His group > studied a protein called Slit, a known repellent in neuronal > migration. Two of the three known Slit proteins also have been found > in organs other than the brain. The researchers simulated leukocyte > migration in a dish, using a molecule known to attract immune cells. > When they added human Slit protein (hSlit2) to the dish as well, fewer > cells migrated. They repeated the procedure in the presence of a > bacterial product also known to attract leukocytes. Again, hSlit2 > inhibited cell migration. However, it did not inhibit other functions > of the bacterial product. The team then determined whether Robo?a > receptor that enables Slit to act on nerve cells?plays a similar role > in the immune system. They had previously made a fragment of Robo > which blocks the normally full-length Robo protein. When this blocker > was added to the dish, Slit no longer inhibited leukocyte migration. > So Robo and a receptor on the cells appeared to be competing for Slit. > "These results suggest that Slit also is likely to act through a > Robo-like receptor on leukocytes to inhibit their migration," Rao > says. He and his colleagues also are trying to find out whether Slit > can actively repel leukocytes and whether other neuronal guidance cues > influence immune cell migration. This study bridges the gap between > two previously independent fields?immunology and neurology?and > highlights the need for collaboration. "This kind of research could > have been done several years ago," Rao says. "But we all get used to > addressing questions in our own fields. This study shows what happens > if we venture out and collaborate with scientists in other fields." > Reference: Wu JY, Feng L, Park H-T, Havlioglu N, Wen L, Tang H, Bacon > KB, Jiang Z, Zhang X, Rao Y. The neuronal repellent Slit inhibits > leukocyte chemotaxis induced by chemotactic factors. Nature, April 19, > 2001. Funding from the National Institutes of Health supported this > research. Copyright ? 1995-2001 ScienceDaily Magazine | Email: > editor at sciencedaily.com > > ---------- > Howard Bloom > Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the > Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From > The Big Bang to the 21st Century > Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; > Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute > www.howardbloom.net > www.bigbangtango.net > Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: > Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; > founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of > Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, > American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human > Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human > Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor > -- New Paradigm book series. > For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: > www.paleopsych.org > for two chapters from > The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of > History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer > For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the > Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 10 03:56:52 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 20:56:52 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] why does disaster cripple our two brains? Message-ID: <01C53D46.A86DA450.shovland@mindspring.com> Presently it would seem that every part of the body talks to every other part of the body. There are almost 4000 enzymes in the human body system and many special protein fragments. It may be that part of the process of repairing DNA involves commmunicating with nearby cells with good DNA and "getting advice" enzymatically about what to do to make the repair. If many cells are damaged then the wrong messages may be sent or received, increasing the damage. Disaster stresses every part of the system, which may increase the likelihood of death. Maintaining the system in the face of disaster may provide the basis for recovery. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 4:35 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] why does disaster cripple our two brains? << File: ATT00000.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00001.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00002.txt >> From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 10 16:09:06 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 09:09:06 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] liberal academia In-Reply-To: <20050409184345.65296.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050409184345.65296.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42594FA2.3010702@earthlink.net> >>If a professor teaches evolution, that's hardly extreme, yet it is portrayed as one-sided, as if creationism were mainstream science. << You only have the above statement 50% correct. Most school districts that have become very outspoken about their science curriculum are requiring that evolution be taught as a theory along side others that explain the origins of life. The former Soviet Union is an example of a country under Communist ideology that demanded full discussion of Darwinian evolution without any reference to "relgion". If a full blown political movement could not maintain the teaching of Darwinism, then I doubt the time is ripe for eliminating creationism from the curriculum in a country which abides by a Democratic philosophy. Best regards, Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 16:58:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:58:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: The World Bids Farewell Message-ID: The World Bids Farewell http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1561601_4,00.html et seq. 5.4.10 Bryan Appleyard watched in awe as the funeral of Pope John Paul II turned into the greatest show on earth A dead man, an old Pole, lies before an altar, his corpse tilted at an awkward angle that makes one slightly too aware of his shoes. People come to see him, millions of people. Many have travelled thousands of miles and all have waited long hours in the too warm Roman spring days and the too cold spring nights. When they reach his body, they are not allowed to stop moving but they each perform quick rituals. Typically, they cross themselves, raise a phone to take a picture, genuflect and blow a kiss at the body. It is all over in seconds. And then they are outside again, dazed but certain - certain they have been granted a glimpse of the truth. Certain that they have had a part in the greatest show on earth. Karol Wojtyla was always a theatrical type. As a young man he wrote plays and worked in the theatre. He never lost his touch. As John Paul II, Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, holder of the keys to the Kingdom, he still knew how to make them gasp in the stalls. He knelt and kissed the ground, he held up babies and, in 1979, he told the Poles not to be afraid and to be "strong with love which is stronger than death". It was, in retrospect, one of the most dramatic moments of the 20th century. Ten years later communism collapsed, its rotten foundations exposed by a showman priest. Last week he did it again. Nothing became this star in life like the leaving of it. Every agonising moment of his decline was chronicled and photographed. Who can forget the dove that would not fly away or his hopeless attempts to bless the crowd? And then, just by being dead, he made the world watch. His funeral on Friday was theatre of an other-worldly grandeur and perfection. The austere cypress coffin, massed scarlet ranks of cardinals, the black suits of the powerful and the flags and banners of the powerless were all arranged by a master director before the mighty masonry of St Peter's. John Paul made the world look, as it always has done, at Rome, still the city where it all happens. The first thing I notice as I turn into the Via della Consiliazione very early on Wednesday morning is the staggering, unreal facade of the Basilica, all pale creams in the weak sun. The second thing I notice is the door through which the pilgrims are entering. It is hung with red velvet curtains that could have come straight from the Palladium. Make 'em laugh, John Paul, make 'em cry. And the third thing I notice is that, yet again, the world has come to Rome, the street is choked with an extraordinarily compacted river of pilgrims. No, let me modify that. The world has come to the Vatican. On the other side of the Tiber, they're just doing what Romans do - abusing drivers, arguing, shouting, sounding their horns, drinking poisonously strong coffee and buying Eurotrash clothes. On the Spanish Steps the backpackers sun themselves and stare blankly back down the Via Condotti. Tourists trudge dutifully towards the Colosseum. The cats in the ruins stretch and yawn. It's another day in the Roman life. Here and there, however, are posters with pictures of the old showman, most just with the caption "Grazie", but some saying Rome weeps. One shows him being blessed by Christ. Finally, in the window of the Prada shop in Via Condotti, a tasteful card is displayed amid the costly bags and clothes. "Via Condotti Association," it says, "mourns the death of Pope John Paul II." He didn't like the consumer society any more than he liked communism, but the Italians can live with this. They have always worn the cloak of Catholicism lightly, allowing it to blow sexily open and expose the Mediterranean paganism beneath. So the multinational millions - more in total than the entire population of the city - are being funnelled into the Vatican. The scale of this operation becomes clear when you reach the roadblock at the end of the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele. The bridge beyond is full of people and police and, as the day wears on, the queue extends down the river. People here will have to wait between 12 and 20 hours to see John Paul. But they are quiet and, on television, I note this gives the impression of a certain serenity. On the ground it feels more like quiet desperation. One American woman with a toddler on her shoulders says she gave up queueing, angry with the behaviour of the police who move the crowd forward in blocks of several hundred and forcibly stop people leaving these blocks. The best way to get out is to fake a medical emergency - fainting is okay, but most people advise exhibiting stroke or heart attack symptoms. This will get you into the Red Cross tents and a sympathetic policeman should preserve your place in the queue. The blocks are led by solemn ranks of stewards holding hands. As they are released from their imprisonment, they cheer and try to run, crying "Avanti! Avanti! Avanti!" The nuns seem to handle it best, especially the older ones. With a fierce "Permesso!" they shove their way past any obstacle and who's going to argue? But the really weird thing is the catastrophic lack of lavatories combined, perversely, with the huge supply of bottled water. There are said to be 3,500 temporary toilet blocks. Well, there aren't. There are also said to be 500,000 litres of water handed out daily to the pilgrims. Well, it was much more than that. Boxes of bottles are everywhere and more are constantly being brought in by lorries and then shifted about by forklift trucks. But, if they drink the water they'll want to go to the loo, but they can't, so they don't. As a result, bottle mountains are piling up with people using them as chairs, tables and even beds. Men and women in vivid uniforms - some are called Protezione Civile; others, happily, Maltesers - are waving bottles at the crowd. Some water, of course, does get drunk, but this makes things worse. The narrow lanes which officials and journalists are allowed to patrol become clogged with empties. At one point, I spin round at what sounds like machinegun fire. But it turns out to be a forklift exploding hundreds of empties as it trundles in with yet more crates of fulls. One elderly man in a Protezione Civile jacket is handing out little packets. I stare in disbelief. They appear to be condoms. Surely not here, not now. I ask him what it is. "Zucchero," he says - sugar. He smiles and gives me some. The crowd is an electromagnetic swamp. Mobiles are cutting out because of "congestion" as everybody phones home for lack of anything better to do in the queue. At one end of the street, staring back at St Peter's, is a gypsy camp of television satellite dishes and platforms for anchors to strut their stuff. Six big screens relay scenes from inside the Basilica, and sermons and readings are issuing from huge loudspeaker stacks. Occasionally one is in English. Saul Bellow and Prince Rainier, I learn, are dead. Weird, these fatal clusters. I remember the night before Princess Diana's funeral telling people in the crowd of the death of Mother Teresa. They didn't believe me. This crowd is vast and, as the day wears on, it is getting much bigger. Adding to the general level of anxiety, everybody is talking about the trains bringing in 2m Poles overnight. The number is too big to be true and the night trains have the threatening air of an uneasy dream - trains and Poland are a bad mix, historically speaking. In addition, of course, the Poles think he's their Pope, not the Italians'. A turf war is in the offing. The people-river comes to a full stop at the edge of the great piazza. The area enclosed by Bernini's sensational colonnade - the arms of the church embracing the world - is kept startlingly empty. When the police are ready, a block is released to move across the empty space to the steps. Even here, they are still three hours away. It's all overwhelming and yet, for me so far, oddly unmoving, like seeing the crowds of the hajj at Mecca. I feel impressed but uninvolved. But then something very strange happens. I try to contact an old acquaintance, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, via his Birmingham diocese. And the moment I do, he appears in front of me. He seems unsurprised by the coincidence. Indeed, he seems to have been expecting it. Over lunch, he talks of "institutional longing" as the theme of the week. "Forty years ago a royal wedding would never have given way to a papal funeral. Okay, it's a slightly odd royal wedding. People want lodestars, a framework. And all John Paul said was that human affairs fall to pieces in the absence of God." Nichols is fierce and enthusiastic. He speaks of the way John Paul II put culture and ways of life before politics. The people saw that he was talking to them, not to his position. I begin to see the tiring immensity of the crowd not as dutiful observance but as a spontaneous expression of folk religion. Indeed, I then start to notice little wayside shrines everywhere. They consist of candles, flowers, cuddly toys, children's drawings and messages to John Paul. At the feet of some of the Bernini columns wax has flowed down, forming brilliant lines against the old stones. Even the base of the obelisk at the very centre of the piazza is covered in these crude offerings. Nichols is right. There was some personal connection between the people and this man. "I'd never been interested in popes before," says pilgrim Mary Stewart from Port Glasgow, "but he had the most beautiful hands. And he travelled to meet people, he came out of the Vatican." There is talk, that night, of closing the line, preventing more people joining. The next morning the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele is almost empty, the rear of the queue is on the far side. Crunching their way along, the people look like survivors of some mighty plastic bottle battle. And the Poles have definitely arrived. Red-and-white flags are everywhere, as are flamboyant varieties of national dress. One group of old soldiers stands solemnly amid the crowd in white feathered hats, bearing regimental standards. The Poles have changed the mood. The day before, the crowd had been predominantly Italian. And, true to their pagan ways, they had treated it like a carnival. They didn't wave flags. But the Poles do. This is nationalism for them, not just religion. The turf war is already over. The Poles have won. This has caused some resentment. About four hours from the body is a party from Atherley School, Southampton. It's not a Catholic school and their Rome trip had been fixed months ago. But, since they were here, 30 of them had decided to queue with their teacher. It was now 8am, they'd started at 10pm the night before. They had just been about to advance one block when thousands of Poles were let in ahead of them. "It wasn't fair!" chorus the girls. But they had to come, they all agree. "It's a historical moment. If we hadn't, we'd have regretted it." Up ahead, I notice two Solidarity flags from the Gdansk shipyard where the revolt against the Soviet empire began and I am, at last, lost in the occasion. We can talk about John Paul's legacy until hell freezes over but, if history has a right side, he was on it in Poland in 1979. Being great is being where and when you are supposed to be. Solidarity indeed. Dodging through the Bernini columns, I make my way to where the pilgrims are emerging from the Basilica. I ask a group of Irish people what they felt when they saw the body. "A certain calm acceptance," says Stephen Byrne. "Overwhelmed and sad, he was a great man," says Mary Nagle. "A great sense of reverence, a really religious sense," says Declan Ivory. A massive exhaustion is settling over the whole area. There is a huge pile of brown blankets, which I take to be discarded until I see four pairs of trainers protruding. People are improbably asleep on vertiginous staircases or almost under the feet of the crowd. They have just got out of the Basilica and keeled over. "Serving the Lord with all humility of mind," booms out of the loudspeakers. And, the speaker might have added, exhaustion of body. I am beginning to see what is going on here. It is a matter of identity. In ordinary life, we are used to people making efforts to blend in. But here everybody wants you to know who they are, where they are from and what they believe. There are the Poles, of course. But there are also a bewildering, hallucinatory mass of religious orders, monks, nuns and priests in an astonishing range of clothes. Then there are the other nations. I see hands holding up crude cardboard signs. One just says "Fatima", another is held up by an old hand and reads "Des Moines, Iowa, USA". This is Erazm Rokipinicki, a 62-year-old Pole who lives in America. When the Pope went to Poland, his daughter, Dorata, was chosen to give him flowers. Erazm felt he had to come and queue. He also felt he had to hold up his sign of belonging. Most directly, there is the act of self-location in the faith itself. Therese Ivers, a 24-year-old from Los Angeles, wants to be a "consecrated virgin" and defends fiercely John Paul's conservatism. "We know that Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. It's the same with abortion, contraception and euthanasia. That's what it's like to be a Catholic, that's what it means." And then the second truly strange event occurs. I see John Paul II in the crowd, wearing a back-to-front baseball cap. "You do know you look just like him," I say. "I wish," says Billy Mulhall, a 68-year-old landscape gardener from Donegal. "I prayed all last week for the Blessed Mother to take my life instead of his. He's the only Pope I've taken to - so outspoken. I love the Pope." That night, the "dignitaries" - odd word for this motley crew - hit town. Absurdly large fleets of police motorcycles, Lancia Themas and S-Class Mercedes go screaming through the streets. The Roman authorities have been advertising their security measures. The place, we are assured, is as tight as a drum. Well, frankly, it isn't. With a Vatican press pass that could have been used by anybody - it had no photograph - I could go more or less where I liked. There were no checks on the crowd. The only effective anti-terrorist device I could see was confusion and that, I have to admit, was pretty good. And so, Friday. The Roman roads aren't empty, as we were promised. The sky is empty but for two helicopters. Police cars block approach roads to the Vatican. Press pass flying, I stride confidently over the Ponte and am immediately buried by most of Warsaw. Police have randomly closed off the old pathways. Panic-stricken, I finally find a cop in yet another baroque variation of Italian police uniform who lets me out. After a truly hallucinatory passage across the piazza, in which I seem to be whirled about in a kaleidoscope of priests, bishops, cops and Swiss Guards, I find myself at the top of the colonnade looking down and across the facade. It is hard to describe the spectacle. To the left it looks medieval, to the right renaissance. The VIPs - 2,500 of them with five queens, four kings and 70 presidents or prime ministers; and the churchmen - bishops in purple, cardinals in red, eastern church in black, priests in white - form a geometric pattern in between the straight arms of the colonnade. There is a patterned, Persian-style rug on which the coffin will rest, an altar draped in white and a large crucifix. Swiss Guards in their beautiful Michelangelo uniforms frame the hard, geometric image. But to the left, encircled by Bernini's arms, are the people - ragged, chaotic, flag-draped, stricken with sanctity and passion. Flags bearing shields and insignia give a heraldic air to the image. A vast painting has been brought to life. And there is tension. The people want something from these robed hierarchs. They want the Pope, of course, but they also want him placed in heaven. A huge banner and a chant proclaim "Santo subito" - make him a saint at once. The coffin appears and they all applaud wildly, even some of the priests, even some of the hacks. I've never seen a coffin clapped before. The cardinals kiss the altar, their robes fluttering wildly in the wind, a brilliant dramatic touch. And then old, clever, hardline Cardinal Ratzinger slips into the liturgy, his voice frail but piercing even in all that immensity. The people fall quiet. Walking through them later in the service, the weight of their piety presses heavily down upon me. I feel ashamed with my stupid press pass and my silly, purposeful striding through all this sanctity. There are 3,500 hacks like me. What are we reporting, what could we possibly aspire to report of these people's feelings? Well, we can report the facts. It was probably the biggest funeral ever. Two million pilgrims had filed past the body. Two million or perhaps many more had been in Rome on the day of the service. About 300,000 had crammed into the Vatican. Another 800,000 watched it on a giant screen in a field near Krakow. Two billion people watched it on television. The last time a Pope died, the world barely noticed. This time, even slimeballs such as Robert Mugabe were gagging to get in on the act. Or we can report the truth. John Paul II, Karol the old theatrical, was, as everybody agreed, different. He defied the two greatest evils of the 20th century, communism and Nazism, and prevailed. He then defied modernity by insisting on the hard intellectual, physical and imaginative labour required by true religion and by telling the people they were nothing without God. He understood, with T S Eliot, that the Christian revelation could be "hard and bitter agony". He insisted on deep thought and on the value of suffering. He represented everything the therapeutic, self-seeking society is not. He defied all our vanities. He was, in short, a giant and there he was in a box on a rug. It is hard to imagine what we have done to deserve such a death. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 16:59:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:59:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Gary North: What I Learned From John Paul II Message-ID: From: Gary North & The Daily Reckoning Gary North's REALITY CHECK Issue 435, 5.4.5 WHAT I LEARNED FROM JOHN PAUL II I shall leave it to other columnists to comment on the profound impact of John Paul II on our times. I am content to confine myself to comments on what I learned from his ministry. THE INESCAPABLE INFLUENCE OF THE UNPREDICTABLE Robert Burns's phrase about the best-laid plans of mice and men often going awry is illustrated better by John Paul II's career than anyone in my era. Only one other figure comes close: Deng Xiao Ping. The best-laid plans can come to naught in an amazingly short period of time. The year 1978 was a year of expected caretakers. In March, Deng Xiao Ping had become the undisputed leader of Communist China. At age 74, he seemed old: probably a caretaker. The National People's Congress decided to go with a safe bet: age. Pope Paul VI died in early August. He had overseen the transformation of the Roman Catholic Church. The death of John XXIII in 1963, after Vatican II had begun, left to Paul VI the task of overseeing the sessions and implementing them. This he did. The Church changed more under his administration in 15 years than had taken place in the previous 500 years -- maybe 1,000. It moved decisively in a liberal/modernist direction. The election of John Paul I took place in one day of the Conclave in late August, 1978. There is no doubt in my mind that a Conclave that brief indicates pre-Conclave agreement regarding a short list of candidates before the cardinals were locked in their room (which is what "conclave" means). John Paul I was to be a caretaker Pope. He immediately took the names of his two predecessors, indicating his commitment to extend Vatican II. Thirty- three days later, he died. There are lots of really choice conspiracy theories about his death. My favorite has to do with the secret Masonic brotherhood, P2, and its connection to the unfolding Bank Ambrosia scandal. Do I actually believe he was murdered? There is insufficient evidence to persuade me. (The standard book on this non-standard theory is David Yallop's "In God's Name." The fictional account is the novel by Malachi Martin, "Vatican.") Whatever the cause of his death, no conspiracy theory has come close to explaining the outcome: the election of a Polish Pope and what followed next. The Conclave that elected John Paul II took three days. There are no notes published after a Conclave. There are no leaks during it. Silence prevails. So, theories about what went on are without verifiable support. The duration indicates that there had been a short list. Wojtyla was probably on the previous short list. I say this because there had been little time for pre-Conclave politicking. The cardinals had barely arrived home by the time John Paul I died. Wojtyla took the name John Paul II. This was the equivalent of calling Wilt Chamberlain "Wilt the Shrimp." Consider the next 14 months after John Paul II's election in October. In December, Deng announced the agricultural reform that transferred land ownership to farmers. That marked the beginning of the capitalist revolution in Red China. He lived long enough to implement his economic reforms. He died in 1997. We see the results of that revolution in every Wal-Mart and in every report on the U.S. trade deficit. January, 1979: the Shah of Iran abdicated and fled Iran. Khomeini took over. On May 3, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. She was to serve longer than any Prime Minister in 150 years: 11 years. Under her administration, much of the system of government-owned monopolies was privatized. On June 2, John Paul II arrived in Poland and began a series of public meetings that drew millions of visitors. This was the beginning of the end of Communism in Poland. The Solidarity movement began within a year. Poland's ex- Communist tyrant, Gen. Jaruzelski, later said that this was the central event in the toppling of Communism in Central Europe. Gorbachev, when out of power, agreed. Late June: OPEC announced a 50% hike in the price of oil. Jimmy Carter went into defensive mode economically. November 4: Iranian mobs captured the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Jimmy Carter went into defensive mode militarily. In December, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This marked the beginning of a decade of bloodletting that culminated in 1989 with the withdrawal of Soviet troops and, within two years, the disintegration of the USSR. None of this was remotely visible in October, 1978. So far, I haven't mentioned Ronald Reagan. We know the phrase, "seize the moment." Pope John Paul II not only seized the moment, he seized the next quarter century. For someone officially in charge or an organization that large, seizing a quarter century is no small accomplishment. NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was the other figure of the twentieth century who rivaled Pope John Paul II in undermining Soviet authority by the power of his words. He, even more than the Pope, made painful and embarrassing any support of the Soviets by Western intellectuals, too many of whom had become early admirers of Stalin and then his successors until "The Gulag Archipelago" finally undermined them in the mid-1970s. He wrote of his decade in the Soviet concentration camps that this experience saved him. The camps took everything material away from him. He had nothing left to lose. Outside the camps, victims of Communist oppression clung to a few possessions and conformed in order to keep what little they owned. By being stripped of everything, Solzhenitsyn said, he avoided this fate. By the time Wojtyla was 21, every member of his immediate family had died. The Nazis had invaded Poland when he was 19. He began as a student for the priesthood in a clandestine seminary. He was ordained in 1946, to begin life under the Communists. He was in opposition from the beginning. He was trained by a consummate anti-totalitarian, Stefan Wyszynsky (pronounced, ironically, "Vishinski" -- just like the Soviet foreign minister), the primate of Poland, who became a cardinal in 1953 and was immediately put under house arrest for over three years. Wyszynsky served as president of Vatican II in 1962. Wojtyla learned how to survive under a rival bureaucracy that also claimed universal authority, eschatological inevitability, and the infallibility of its supreme council. He had no family to terrorize, no possessions to confiscate. "What's a tyranny to do?" He went into opposition and remained in opposition until there was nothing left of worldwide Communism to oppose. The nothing-left strategy is not open to most men most of the time. But it is what is required of a dedicated few in times of moral confrontation. Mentally, you have to surrender it in advance in order to preserve any of it in a time of life-and-death confrontation. Jesus said: "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10:39). Of all Catholic nations that had been in opposition to totalitarianism longest, Poland was it in 1978. So, when the Conclave chose Wojtyla, it chose the man most suited for a long-term confrontation. The Western media have identified his strategy of resistance with respect to Communism. This strategy was also visible in his open confrontations in Latin America in the 1980s. His opponents were priests who had joined the liberation theology movement. That movement sank on the Good Ship Marx after 1991, to the dismay of seminary professors, Protestant and Catholic, around the world. We do not yet know the outcome of his strategy of opposition with respect to his steady, quiet, non-headline- grabbing undermining of the social liberals in the Church's hierarchy. STICK TO YOUR KNITTING John Paul II was the second-longest reigning Pope after Pius IX (1846-1878), the Pope of Vatican I (1870). Under his reign, he appointed well over 100 cardinals. Of the 117 eligible to vote (those under age 80), he appointed all but three. In his 1987 book, "The Jesuits," former Jesuit Malachi Martin discussed Romanita. Romanita is the ability to outlast your competition. There are always factions in any bureaucracy, and there is no bureaucracy with a longer tradition or more factions in the West than the Roman Catholic Church. The faction that provides the longest- lasting survivors in any battle wins the next phase of the war. Pius IX was a conservative. Until John XXIII reversed this tradition, it held firm. Yet it was visibly on the defensive within a decade of the death of Pius XII in 1958. I have little sense of the details of John Paul II's philosophy. As for his theology, it is clear that he upheld traditional Catholic views regarding the virgin Mary. This outlook was the product of his years in Poland and also the assassination attempt. He had moved unpredictably just before he was shot, looking more closely at a Sacred Heart emblem worn by a little girl. (This is reported in Martin's book, "The Keys of This Blood.") Everyone knows his social views: no female priests, no abortion, no contraception devices, no homosexuality. Also, it should be added, no war. On abortion, he voiced his opposition to the policy of Clinton. On war, he voiced his opposition to the policies of Clinton and both Bushes. Year after year, appointment after appointment, he wove a tapestry of traditionalism. It will take a concerted effort on the part of liberals to reweave this tapestry. In the seminaries, they have more than a foothold. They have control. The Pope did not excommunicate entire seminary faculties. To get a sense of what I am talking about, click here: http://tinyurl.com/4jw7h He did not resign, although the American media kept running interviews with liberal Catholics who thought he should. He grew old and infirm before our eyes. He did not hide what was happening to his body. He was reduced at the end to silence, unable to speak in any of the eight languages he spoke. But he did not hide from the cameras. If ever there was a man whose career said "No retirement," it was his. He stayed on the job until the end. It was not a bitter end, but it was painful. WHEN YOU'VE GOT IT, USE IT Has any man worked the mass media better, longer? He got in front of the cameras, and there he stayed for 26 years. One interviewee revealed that when the Pope first met with members of the press, when the interview was over, he stood up and walked around the room full of reporters to shake hands. This was unheard of. They had expected to be allowed to file past him, one by one. He had a unique skill. He exercised his ability as Pope to go directly to the people -- the first Pope in history to do this internationally. He made 103 trips outside of Italy to some 120 countries. No other figure has ever toured a reported 120 countries in front of TV cameras. No one has ever drawn the crowds that he did. So, the media had to show up. So, the crowds kept getting larger. By 1995, an estimated seven million showed up to see him in Manila -- the largest crowd in man's recorded history. He had a unique ability to capture attention. He used it for all it was worth. The media reported that he had been an amateur actor early in his career. This was not said in derision. Another former actor, also known for his ability to handle the media, received more criticism for his similar background. In both cases, the public responded favorably. CONCLUSION Deng, an old man in 1978, was not expected to do much. The twenty-first century already looks back at what he did and marvels. Brezhnev, a doddering old man in 1979, launched a war in Afghanistan that brought down the USSR a decade later. This caretaker failed to take care. John Paul I, another expected caretaker, did not remain on the job long enough to fulfill his expected role. The Shah of Iran, a caretaker of Western oil, did not stay on the job. Pope John Paul II knew that a resistance strategy was suitable in 1978. He publicly issued traditional encyclicals, while maintaining absolute mastery of the media -- a skill also possessed by Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. What blindsided liberals after 1978 was the ability of conservatives to commandeer the media to extend their agendas. Liberals had long assumed that their control over the media was unbreakable. They believed that they could set the agenda. The best-laid plans. . . . In each case, what had been expected by the various establishments did not come to pass. I am reminded of the words of my teacher, Robert Nisbet, in the closing words of a June, 1968 essay in "Commentary." What the future-predictors, the change-analysts, and trend-tenders say in effect is that with the aid of institute resources, computers, linear programming, etc. they will deal with the kinds of change that are not the consequence of the Random Event, the Genius, the Maniac, and the Prophet. To which I can only say: there really aren't any; not any worth looking at anyhow. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 16:59:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:59:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Frank Rich: A Culture of Death, Not Life Message-ID: Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Culture of Death, Not Life http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/opinion/10rich.html April 10, 2005 By FRANK RICH IT takes planning to produce a classic chapter in television history. "We've rehearsed," Thom Bird, a Fox News producer, bragged to Variety before Pope John Paul II died. "We will pull out all the stops on this story." He wasn't kidding. On the same day that boast saw print, a Fox anchor, Shepard Smith, solemnly told the world that "facts are facts" and "it is now our understanding the pope has died." Unfortunately, this understanding was reached 26 hours before the pope actually did die, but as Mr. Smith would explain, he had been misled by "Italian reports." (Namely from a producer for Sky Italia, another fair-and-balanced fief of Rupert Murdoch.) Fox's false bulletin - soon apotheosized by Jon Stewart, now immortalized on the Internet - followed the proud tradition of its sister news organization, The New York Post, which last year had the scoop on John Kerry's anointment of Dick Gephardt as his running mate. Yet you could also argue that Fox's howler was in its way the most honest barometer of this entire cultural moment. The network was pulling out all the stops to give the audience what it craved: a fresh, heaping serving of death. Mr. Smith had a point when he later noted that "the exact time of death, I think, is not something that matters so much at this moment." Certainly not to a public clamoring for him to bring it on. Mortality - the more graphic, the merrier - is the biggest thing going in America. Between Terri Schiavo and the pope, we've feasted on decomposing bodies for almost a solid month now. The carefully edited, three-year-old video loops of Ms. Schiavo may have been worthless as medical evidence but as necro-porn their ubiquity rivaled that of TV's top entertainment franchise, the all-forensics-all-the-time "CSI." To help us visualize the dying John Paul, another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, brought on Dr. Michael Baden, the go-to cadaver expert from the JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy and Laci Peterson mediathons, to contrast His Holiness's cortex with Ms. Schiavo's. As sponsors line up to buy time on "CSI," so celebrity deaths have become a marvelous opportunity for beatific self-promotion by news and political stars alike. Tim Russert showed a video of his papal encounter on a "Meet the Press" where one of the guests, unchallenged, gave John Paul an A-plus for his handling of the church's sex abuse scandal. Jesse Jackson, staking out a new career as the angel of deathotainment, hit the trifecta: in rapid succession he appeared with the Schindlers at their daughter's hospice in Florida, eulogized Johnnie Cochran on "Larry King Live" and reminisced about his own papal audience with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. What's disturbing about this spectacle is not so much its tastelessness; America will always have a fatal attraction to sideshows. What's unsettling is the nastier agenda that lies far less than six feet under the surface. Once the culture of death at its most virulent intersects with politicians in power, it starts to inflict damage on the living. When those leaders, led by the Bush brothers, wallow in this culture, they do a bait-and-switch and claim to be upholding John Paul's vision of a "culture of life." This has to be one of the biggest shams of all time. Yes, these politicians oppose abortion, but the number of abortions has in fact been going down steadily in America under both Republican and Democratic presidents since 1990 - some 40 percent in all. The same cannot be said of American infant fatalities, AIDS cases and war casualties - all up in the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, potentially lifesaving phenomena like condom-conscious sex education and federally run stem-cell research are in shackles. This agenda is synergistic with the entertainment culture of Mr. Bush's base: No one does the culture of death with more of a vengeance - literally so - than the doomsday right. The "Left Behind" novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins all but pant for the bloody demise of nonbelievers at Armageddon. And now, as Eric J. Greenberg has reported in The Forward, there's even a children's auxiliary: a 40-title series, "Left Behind: The Kids," that warns Jewish children of the hell that awaits them if they don't convert before it's too late. Eleven million copies have been sold on top of the original series' 60 million. These fables are of a piece with the violent take on Christianity popularized by "The Passion of the Christ." Though Mel Gibson brought a less gory version, with the unfortunate title "The Passion Recut," to some 1,000 theaters for Easter in response to supposed popular demand, there was no demand. (Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that at many screens the film sold fewer than 50 tickets the entire opening weekend.) "Passion" fans want the full scourging, and at the height of the protests outside the Schiavo hospice, a TV was hooked up so the assembled could get revved up by watching the grisly original on DVD. As they did so, Mr. Gibson interjected himself into the case by giving an interview to Sean Hannity asserting that "big guys" could "whip a judge" if they really wanted to stop the "state-sanctioned murder" of Ms. Schiavo. He was evoking his punishment of choice in "The Passion," figuratively, no doubt. It was only a day later that one such big guy, Tom DeLay, gave Mr. Gibson's notion his official imprimatur by vowing retribution against any judges who don't practice the faith-based jurisprudence of which he approves. This Wednesday the far right's cutting-edge culture of death gets its biggest foothold to date in the mainstream, when NBC broadcasts its "Left Behind" simulation, "Revelations," an extremely slick prime-time mini-series that was made before our most recent death watches but could have been ripped from their headlines. In the pilot a heretofore nonobservant Christian teenage girl in a "persistent vegetative state" - and in Florida, yet - starts babbling Latin texts from the show's New Testament namesake just as dastardly scientists ("devil's advocates," as they're referred to) and organ-seekers conspire to pull the plug. "All the signs and symbols set forth in the Bible are currently in place for the end of days," says the show's adult heroine, an Oxford-educated nun who has been denounced by the Vatican for her views and whose mission is underwritten by a wealthy "religious fundamentalist." Her Julie Andrews affect notwithstanding, she is an extremist as far removed from the mainstream as Mel Gibson, whose own splinter Traditionalist Catholic sect split from Rome and disowned the reforms of Vatican II, not the least of which was the absolution of Jews for collective guilt in the death of Jesus. It's all too fitting that "Revelations," which downsizes lay government in favor of the clerical, is hijacking the regular time slot of "The West Wing." Perhaps only God knows whether it will prove as big a hit as "The Passion." What is clear is that the public eventually tires of most death watches and demands new meat. The tsunami disaster, dramatized by a large supply of vivid tourist videos that the genocide in Darfur cannot muster, was so completely forgotten after three months that even a subsequent Asian earthquake barely penetrated the nation's Schiavo fixation. But the media plug was pulled on Ms. Schiavo, too, once the pope took center stage; the funeral Mass her parents conducted on Tuesday was all but shunned by the press pack that had moved on to Rome. By the night of his death days later, even John Paul had worn out his welcome. The audience that tuned in to the N.C.A.A. semifinals on CBS was roughly twice as large as that for the NBC and ABC papal specials combined. The time was drawing near for the networks to reappraise the Nielsen prospects of Prince Rainier. If there's one lesson to take away from the saturation coverage of the pope, it is how relatively enlightened he was compared with the men in business suits ruling Washington. Our leaders are not only to the right of most Americans (at least three-quarters of whom opposed Congressional intervention in the Schiavo case) but even to the right of most American evangelical Christians (most of whom favored the removal of Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, according to Time magazine). They are also, like Mel Gibson and the fiery nun of "Revelations," to the right of the largely conservative pontiff they say they revere. This is true not only on such issues as the war in Iraq and the death penalty but also on the core belief of how life began. Though the president of the United States believes that the jury is still out on evolution, John Paul in 1996 officially declared that "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory of evolution as more than just a hypothesis." We don't know the identity of the corpse that will follow the pope in riveting the nation's attention. What we do know is that the reality show we've made of death has jumped the shark, turning from a soporific television diversion into the cultural embodiment of the apocalyptic right's growing theocratic crusade. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 16:59:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:59:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Sports Enhancement's Biggest Fan Message-ID: Sports Enhancement's Biggest Fan http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-04-04-1 Andy Miah promotes genetic modification of athletes not only to improve competition, but also to improve humanity By Simon Smith Betterhumans Staff 4/4/2005 1:36 PM Baseball's drug scandal is so 20th century. While former slugger [8]Mark McGwire pleads the fifth over steroids, today's athletes plead with researchers for genetic tweaks. It's widely assumed they'll have them by the 2008 Olympics--[9]if not sooner. Anti-doping agencies have reacted predictably, with the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) banning "gene doping" in 2003. But the advent of genetic enhancement has also provided a crowbar for prying open debate over enhancement-prohibition, genetic and otherwise. At the forefront of this debate is ethicist [10]Andy Miah, author of the book [11]Genetically Modified Athletes. Against the backdrop of baseball's steroid brouhaha, Miah recently landed in Toronto where he made the case to a cramped room in the University of Toronto's Athletic Centre. To Miah, there's far more than medals at stake. How we handle genetic enhancement in sports, he argues, will affect how we handle genetic enhancements in general. "The gene doping debate is about what kinds of humans count," he says. "Sports offer a way for enhancements to become embedded in society." Athletic hypocrisy At just over five feet with spiky black hair and goatee, the baby-faced Miah could easily be mistaken for a student at the Starbuck's where we met a day before his talk. (Confession: at about the same height and baby-facedness, the same could be said of me--and I can't even grow a goatee.) As a professor at the University of Paisley in Scotland, however, Miah teaches such courses as "Becoming Posthuman" and writes regularly on cyberculture, bioethics, sports and genetic enhancement. His writing has gained urgency and notoriety as genetic enhancement moves from science fiction to fact. Scientific journals now regularly report genetic advances for which it takes little imagination to see athletic application. Perhaps most famously, geneticist [12]Lee Sweeney at the University of Pennsylvania discovered that injecting the gene for a growth factor called IGF-1 doubles muscle strength in rats. Since the discovery, Sweeney says he's been swamped by requests from athletes seeking to participate in human trials. And why shouldn't they? asks Miah. The idea of the "natural athlete," he says, is a hypocrisy, as sport--from the latest greatest running shoes to stamina-boosting altitude chambers--is inherently technological. Furthermore, he says, anti-doping actions only provide an illusion of fairness "Those athletes we pin gold medals on are the ones who avoid the drug tests," he says. "We can't test for everything." With genetic enhancement, testing will be even more difficult, as athletes will have their DNA altered to improve performance rather than use detectable drugs. Encouraging public acceptance This--the practical impossibility of enforcing gene doping bans--is just one strike against prohibition. Miah raises many more issues. For example: Would people born with genetic modifications be allowed to play sports? Should gene therapy be used to equalize genetic constitutions so that competition is based more on skill and training than the genetic lottery? Would gene therapies that help athletes hasten healing also be banned under blanket prohibition? Such questioning puts Miah is in good company. U of T Faculty of Physical Education and Health Dean Bruce Kidd, for example, agrees with Miah that the ethical foundation of anti-doping is in need of review. Miah says this hasn't happened in about 40 years. "I would say ever," says Kidd, although he supports anti-doping initiatives. Moreover, Kidd supports equality in sports. The question for people on both sides of the anti-doping debate is how best to achieve this. Miah argues that genetic enhancement is one way. He believes that genetic enhancement could generally make people more capable, and he worries that sporting bodies will exert too strong an influence over its future. Ultimately, he hopes that athletics can make genetic enhancement more acceptable to the public, while baseball's current predicament shows this hasn't happened with drugs. "Drug-using athletes are represented as monsters, mutants," says Miah. "To me this is about enhancing humanity." References 8. http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireStory?id=592366 9. http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Reports/report.aspx?articleID=2004-08-09-1 10. http://www.andymiah.net/ 11. http://www.gmathletes.net/ 12. http://www.med.upenn.edu/physiol/fac/sweeney.shtml From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:00:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:00:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Pamela Anderson) Why Johnny Can't Read Message-ID: Arts > Television > Why Johnny Can't Read http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/arts/television/10jaco.html By ALEXANDRA JACOBS 'STACKED' Fox Series premiere, Wednesday at 8:30 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 7:30, Central time THE atmosphere was zoolike at a recent Los Angeles taping of "Stacked," the Pamela Anderson sitcom scheduled to begin Wednesday on Fox, in a coveted slot right before "American Idol." "Ah-ooh!" came the hollers from the peanut gallery, as Ms. Anderson emerged from backstage, clad in a low-cut black cocktail dress, flanked by the rest of the cast. There followed a series of wolf whistles. "Oh, my God," murmured a smitten man in the audience as Ms. Anderson, in character as a novice independent-bookstore employee, removed a diaphanous peach-colored garment from her purse. Then, losing his grip on the English language altogether: "Whoa!" You merely have to utter the name "Pamela Anderson" for devoted middle-aged husbands to be rendered smirking, hormonally addled teenage boys. Yet their wives don't seem to mind, perhaps because Ms. Anderson, the flaxen-haired favorite of Playboy magazine and Howard Stern, passed long ago into the realm of the cartoonish, thanks to her remarkable cleavage (she has never been coy about her use of silicone implants); her stormy and very public love life (she married and divorced the M?tley Cr?e drummer Tommy Lee and dated the rapper Kid Rock); and her superhuman celebrity endurance, a bionic gallop through long-running but lowbrow fare like the lifeguard drama "Baywatch" and the bodyguard drama "V.I.P." As her persona has acquired a lacquered, synthetic patina, it has been easy to forget that Ms. Anderson got her start in television as Lisa, the "Tool Time Girl" on Tim Allen's wholesome sitcom "Home Improvement," and that she is the mother of two young boys, both with Mr. Lee. After "V.I.P.'s" run ended, Ms. Anderson took a break to care for her children. But, she said in a telephone interview, "I kind of got antsy." It took the promise of a sitcom's regular, soccer-mom-friendly hours to lure her back to television. "We sort of felt like she is someone who has this kind of wild past but is showing herself to be a good mom, which America would embrace," said Gary Newman, a president of 20th Century Fox Television, which is producing "Stacked." But first audiences will have to buy Ms. Anderson as someone who could plausibly sell a John Dos Passos novel, or at least as the star of a family-friendly sitcom. "You might think it's silly - that she's going to be Chrissy from 'Three's Company,' " said Steven Levitan, the creator and executive producer of "Stacked" and a veteran producer of the NBC hits "Just Shoot Me" and "Frasier." "I'm hoping that people are very surprised that it's actually an intelligent show that deals with real issues, that is not just a chance for Pam Anderson to wear small outfits and grab ratings." Ms. Anderson plays Skyler, an irresponsible but good-hearted gadabout with a history of failed relationships and a closetful of revealing frocks: "a sort of unfamous version" of Ms. Anderson, as Mr. Levitan put it. But at a moment when tabloid stars are choosing to play versions of themselves in unconventional reality-based shows (see Paris Hilton, Kirstie Alley and the sisters Simpson), "Stacked" is hewing closely to a classical sitcom format. "I hate reality shows," said Ms. Anderson, who has, unsurprisingly, been offered many over the years. "I hope they're on the way out. I don't watch a lot of TV, and when I do, I don't want to see people you know. I want to escape and see funny things." Mr. Levitan concurred, plotting the new project as a kind of "Cheers" in reverse. "I felt like doing a throwback," he said. "Instead of the smart intellectual coming to the everyman place, it's the everyman coming to the smart intellectual place." The show's bookstore - supplied exclusively with volumes from HarperCollins, which, like Fox, is owned by the News Corporation - is the place "where everyone knows your name," with a back office reminiscent of the one where Sam and Diane once tussled and eventually smooched on "Cheers." There is a wisecracking, blonde-hating barista named Katrina, played by Marissa Jaret Winokur of "Hairspray," in the mold of Rhea Perlman's bartender Carla on "Cheers" (by coincidence, Ms. Perlman's sister Heide is a writer on "Stacked"). There is a crotchety regular like Norm and Cliff from "Cheers," here condensed into the form of Christopher Lloyd, who plays Harold March, a somewhat senile rocket scientist sweetly befuddled by Sklyer's charms. The bookstore is owned by the DeWitt brothers, schlumpy and wistful Stuart (Brian Scolaro), and slim and neurotic Gavin (Elon Gold). A stand-up comic with a sarcastic delivery and a receding hairline, Mr. Gold is an eleventh-hour replacement for Tom Everett Scott , a soulful-eyed, floppy-haired heartthrob type who was fired over Easter weekend, to the surprise of the rest of the cast. "We were all like O.K., this is devastating to us," Ms. Winokur said. "And then you go into that survival mode." "It was a very difficult decision for everyone," Mr. Levitan said of Mr. Scott's firing. "But at the end of the day, Tom is a relaxed, easygoing, wonderful, nice guy, and that's everything Gavin isn't." Mr. Levitan scoffed at the idea that this late cast change might spell trouble for "Stacked." He said it was normal to tinker with the ensemble of new sitcoms, and suggested that the show was under extra scrutiny because Fox had committed to six episodes before reading a completed script, bypassing a customary pilot-vetting period. It's too soon to tell if a Sam-and-Diane-style romance is in the cards for the characters played by Ms. Anderson and Mr. Gold but it seems likely, if the show survives long enough. "I thought a lot about the Marilyn Monroe-Arthur Miller dynamic when I was writing this," Mr. Levitan said. "Here was this blond bombshell who surprised a lot of people by being with this New York intellectual and vice versa. That's always been a fascinating relationship to a lot of people." Certainly it is smart of Ms. Anderson, who turns 38 this year, to embrace humor before she falls definitively over the precipice of female middle age. Mr. Levitan said: "I keep telling Pamela, 'You're so beautiful when you walk around Malibu, and when you come to rehearsal in sweats - let people see that side of you.' She just delivers sex appeal no matter what she does, so don't clobber the world over the head with it." He seems to think his heroine has some kind of special, otherworldly powers. "We really want to honor the tradition of good multicamera television comedy," he said. "People are concerned that it's a dying breed. Maybe, just maybe, somebody like Pam Anderson can save it." Alexandra Jacobs is an editor at The New York Observer. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:03:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:03:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Lust Across the Color Line and the Rise of the Black Elite Message-ID: Opinion > Editorial Observer: Lust Across the Color Line and the Rise of the Black Elite http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/opinion/10sun2.html By BRENT STAPLES The 1998 DNA study that linked Thomas Jefferson to the final child of his lover Sally Hemings has settled one argument and fired up another. Most historians who had argued that Jefferson was too pure of heart to bed a slave have re-evaluated 200 years of evidence and embraced the emerging consensus: that Jefferson had a long relationship with Hemings and probably fathered most, if not all of her children. Having acknowledged the relationship, these historians are now trying to explain it. This has sent them scrambling back to the 19th-century accounts of life at Monticello by two former slaves: Jefferson's former servant, Israel Jefferson, and the founder's son, Madison Hemings. This represents the rehabilitation of Madison, who was being vilified as a liar even 10 years ago. Madison's memoir, based partly on family history conveyed to him by his mother, is as close to the voice of Sally Hemings as we will ever come. But neither of these brief accounts, published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, reveals anything about the intimate texture of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. They tell us a great deal, however, about the circumstances that created the black intelligentsia that sprang to life during Reconstruction and that dominated African-American cultural, intellectual and political life through the first half of the 20th century. This black intelligentsia did not spring fully formed from the cotton fields. It had its roots in the families of mixed-race slaves like the Hemingses, who served as house servants for generations, often in the homes of white families to whom they were related. Employed in "the big house," these slaves often learned to read, at a time when few slaves were literate. They also absorbed patterns of speech, dress and deportment that served them well after emancipation. Many of them were set free by their guilt-ridden slave owner fathers long before the official end of slavery. The Hemings children were all free by 1829 - or more than a third of a century before slavery was finally abolished. Not surprisingly, mixed-race offspring who were well educated became teachers, writers, newspaper editors. They formed the bedrock of an emerging black elite and were disproportionately represented in the African-American leadership during Reconstruction and well into the 20th century. Not all of these mixed-race children fared so well, however. Many were sold or passed on as chattel to relatives in their fathers' wills. This was in fact the case with Sally Hemings, one of several children born to a mixed-race slave named Betty Hemings and a white lawyer and businessman named John Wayles - the father of Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha. When Wayles died, Martha inherited some of her enslaved half siblings, including Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings was just a child when she accompanied Jefferson and his daughter to France for more than two years. Madison tells us in his memoir that his mother became pregnant by Jefferson in France, where she was considered free. She refused to return to America, he said, until Jefferson agreed to free all of the children born of their relationship. Madison recalls that he and his siblings were favored at Monticello, and allowed to spend their time in the "great house," where they could be close to their mother. Madison further asserts that they knew of Jefferson's plans to emancipate them. "We were free from the dread of having to be slaves all our lives long, and were measurably happy," he says. Jefferson's favoritism, however, did not include affection. Jefferson's black children, who seem never to have received so much as an embrace or a peck on the cheek, watched in what must have been painful silence as the great man doted on his white grandchildren. Madison says, "We were the only children of his by a slave woman." The "great house" at Monticello offered abundant opportunities for encounters with the great minds of the day. Israel Jefferson, for example, recalls being present when Jefferson and Lafayette debated the question of slavery. Raised in such a context, the Hemings children - and others like them - were probably better prepared for middle-class life than most people, either black or white. Indeed, historians who have followed the Hemings descendants through time have found that the cultural capital acquired by Hemings children at Monticello translated into upward mobility. Historians who are now searching for ways to understand the Jefferson-Hemings relationship have several models from which to choose. Some masters developed caring, de facto marriages with enslaved women and tried to leave their children money and property in their wills. Other masters were serial rapists or plantation potentates who made harems in their slave quarters and were profoundly indifferent to their offspring. For the time being, however, the last word on this issue should go to Madison Hemings, who flatly and dispassionately describes the relationship as a bargain, in which his mother consented to share Jefferson's bed in exchange for the emancipation of her children. That she had the courage to articulate this deal - and stand firm on its terms - makes her more than a mere concubine. It makes her the architect of her family's freedom. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:03:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:03:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Trailer Trash? Not a Scent of It Message-ID: Fashion & Style > Trailer Trash? Not a Scent of It http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/fashion/10mobile.html April 10, 2005 By MIREYA NAVARRO MALIBU, Calif. AFTER making a fortune with his skateboard company, World Industries, Steve Rocco could have lived anywhere he wanted. He chose Paradise Cove, a woodsy neighborhood on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, where he bought a home for nearly half a million dollars and then spent more than $1 million replacing it with a Craftsman-style cottage. But Mr. Rocco's place is not exactly on millionaire's row. Paradise Cove is a mobile home park. "It's probably the best spot in the Southern California coast," he said. Trailer parks may conjure images of retirees and low-income families in most of the country, but in Malibu parks that once drew the elderly, working class and bohemian are now being transformed into the new playground for the rich. Here new owners with the means to decorate with marble floors, recessed lighting and Sub-Zero refrigerators are replacing 1970's flat-roof aluminum metal-sided trailers with mobile homes in Craftsman, Cape Cod, Tuscan or Spanish villa styles that come with two-car garages. In California, the most expensive housing market in the nation, the listings say it all. "Stunning, drop-dead gorgeous, bluff top, custom architectural home, built in '05," read one recent ad for a 2,100-square-foot home with panoramic views of the ocean and the Santa Monica mountains. The residence is not the detached single-family kind; that could go for more than $10 million around these parts, real estate agents said. The location is Malibu's Point Dume Club mobile home park, and the asking price is a mere $1.69 million. "The world has changed," said Janet Levine, the developer selling this property and beautifying two others for resale at Point Dume. "Spaghetti is now pasta. Religion is now spiritual. It's no longer a mobile home park. It's a fab park." For mobile home buyers like Mr. Rocco, 45, a former professional skateboarder who is more into surfing these days, the main draw to Paradise Cove was the beach and a cozier style of living, he said. The lots are still slivers of land where homes sit a few feet from one another under a canopy of eucalyptus trees, pine and palms, and neighbors run into one another at the children's playground or laundry room. Among the eclectic mix of surfers, older residents, celebrities like Minnie Driver and affluent professionals and businessmen like himself, he said, many know one another. "I know my neighbors' names, and I'm not the friendliest guy in the world," he said. But just like other newcomers in recent years, Mr. Rocco, who bought a trailer for $430,000 in 2003 in an oceanfront spot, discarded the old structure to build a new one with all the accouterments he and his wife needed to make it livable: walls, countertops and beams of mahogany and maple with veneer dyed in blues, greens, oranges and yellows; shiplike nooks and crannies that hold bathrooms, bedroom lofts and a workout room; a Yosemite stone fireplace; a grand piano in the living room; upstairs and downstairs decks. All in all it is 2,100 square feet, on a triple-wide lot where the only evidence of the home's humble origins are the raised foundation, a requirement for mobile homes, and the original trailer hitch, where Mr. Rocco plans to plant his mailbox. His home now sticks out amid the more traditional mobile homes in the park, but "it's just a nice house," Mr. Rocco insisted. "I don't have gold fixtures." But he was somewhat self-conscious; he did not allow pictures of himself or his place. If Paradise Cove is a throwback to more congenial times, the more upscale neighbors now welcome newcomers with a bottle of Champagne rather than pie. That is what Will Conrad, 37, an emergency room doctor from Santa Monica, said his neighbors did when a truck brought his new manufactured home up the hill to install in his lot last summer. It was the replacement, he said, for the $450,000 1,000-square-foot "decrepit" 1971 rollaway he had bought in 2003 as a second home. Dr. Conrad said he grew up in Malibu and remembers coming to the mobile home parks as a child for classmates' birthday parties. "The homes were considered a notch below everybody else's," he said. But in adulthood Dr. Conrad has other priorities. A recreational surfer, he wanted the waves without the crowds, and Paradise Cove, with a guard booth at the entrance, restricts nonresidents' beach access. "If I went to Palos Verdes, I'd get killed," he said, referring to a popular surfing area south of here. "People getting into fistfights, damaging cars." Old-time residents like John Tindall, 70, a retiree who bought in Paradise Cove 18 years ago and still lives there with his wife in his 1970 model, are reacting to the influx of new affluence with amusement. "No matter how much they pay, the people seem very friendly," he said. "But the more they pay, the less they're here." Mobile homes account for less than 10 percent of the overall housing stock nationwide. Bruce Savage, a spokesman for the Manufactured Housing Institute, said that buyers pay an average of about $50,000 for the mobile home and another $45,000 for the land. But he and others in the industry say all bets are off in resortlike communities where prices reflect high demand. Robert Kleinhenz, the deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors, said that in a state where median price for the traditional house is $471,000, it is not surprising it is leading the trend toward the upscale trailer park. David M. Carter, an agent with Pritchett-Rapf & Associates here who specializes in mobile homes, said he sold his first million-dollar one last year but "there's plenty now in the parks that would sell for over $1 million if they came on the market." Craig Fleming, the vice president of sales for a manufacturer of upscale mobile homes, Silvercrest Western Homes Corporation, said that beginning three years ago, mobile homes on private property have sold for $1 million or more in prime areas of San Francisco, San Diego and Orange County. But mobile homes come with some drawbacks. Financing is hard to come by. and when people do get it, the loan amounts are smaller and the interest rates higher, real estate agents note. This is because buyers in mobile home parks lease their land space rather than own it (lease fees here in Malibu can range from $800 to $2,500 a month), a set-up that many of them overlook because of trade-offs like no property taxes and rent-controlled lease fees. But there is perhaps a bigger hump to overcome, agents say: the trailer trash stereotype. "You still get the stigma, especially on the telephone," said Mr. Carter, the real estate agent. "When you say it's a mobile home or manufactured home, they don't even want to listen to you." "But when they come out and try to price other things in Malibu, it's an easy sale," he said. Among the skeptical was Bobi Leonard, 54, an interior designer who had a lot of movie star clients as well as businesses who said that when she realized that the address for a date six years ago was in a mobile home park she almost made a U-turn to go back home. "I said, 'Oh my God, I can't date a guy who lives in a mobile home park,' " said Ms. Leonard, whose previous homes were in the seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom range. But the man (Greg Mooers, a life coach and spiritual guide who was once a monk) and the park won. In 1999 the couple married and bought a corner space in Tahitian Terrace, a mobile home park off the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades. Since then she has spent close to $400,000 turning her home into a tropical oasis of bird of paradise palm trees, animal prints and burning candles and has helped others redesign their mobile homes too. "I realized this is a treasure," she said, pointing at 180-degree ocean views, quiet environment and 10-mile-per-hour speed limits just minutes away from the freeway and city life. "No gardeners. No pool men. I began to realize it was a simpler way of life." (Although she does have an electronic garage gate and motorized awnings that react to wind and rain.) Dr. Conrad's wife, Deborah Conrad, 37, a Los Angeles lawyer, admits she had to warm up to the concept of having a mobile home as the couple's second home and still is "not nearly as enthusiastic as he is." She likes Paradise Cove, she said, but even there the homes are still movable and too close together, many still look boxy from the outside and the public perception still comes from bad news about them. "Most of the time, when you hear about mobile homes, you hear about a hurricane that's hit them," she said. But it is the residents who bought their trailers at bargain prices as recently as a few years ago who are having the last laugh, real estate agents noted. "In the last five years prices have been doubling each year," said Shen Schulz, an agent with Coldwell Banker here who last year moved his wife and 6-year-old twin sons to a mobile home at Point Dume Club. Now the new buyers who are transforming ugly ducklings into swans say they may never sell. Dr. Conrad, who drives a 2004 Jaguar but has rented a Ford pickup truck for his jaunts to his mobile home, said he hoped his wife becomes comfortable enough to some day retire there. And Mr. Rocco and his wife are expecting their first child, whom they plan to raise in Paradise Cove. "I'm going to raise my kid in a trailer park," he deadpanned. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:04:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:04:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Beast That Feeds on Boxes: Bureaucracy Message-ID: Week in Review > The Beast That Feeds on Boxes: Bureaucracy http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/weekinreview/10shane.html April 10, 2005 By SCOTT SHANE IN the long and dispiriting history of American intelligence failure, from Pearl Harbor to the 2001 attacks to Iraqi weapons, one chronic culprit is that "giant power wielded by pygmies," as Balzac put it: bureaucracy. Critical discoveries by code breakers, F.B.I. agents and the C.I.A. were lost on the way up the long ladder that separates rank-and-file spies from top decision makers. But who has ever resisted the impulse to add rungs to the ladder, always with the sturdiest intentions? "I've been studying bureaucracy for 40 years," said James Q. Wilson, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, "and I can't remember a single commission that proposed cutting back." Little surprise, then, that after two independent commissions and multiple Congressional committees studied the shortcomings of the 15 intelligence agencies, they proposed more bureaucracy. Much, much more bureaucracy. This paradoxical result worries Richard A. Posner, a federal appeals court judge and the author of a coming book on intelligence reform. "Every time you add a layer of bureaucracy, you delay the movement of information up the chain to the policy maker," Judge Posner said. "And you dilute the information, because at each step some details are taken out." Yet adding layers appears to be in the DNA of bureaucracy; it is what bureaucracy does, according to Paul C. Light, who has spent years studying the phenomenon he calls the "thickening" of government. Through Republican and Democratic administrations, in response to any kind of crisis or failure, in every field from education to national security, and often in the face of stark evidence that it will be counterproductive, the federal government has grown layers, said Dr. Light, a professor of public service at New York University and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The layering can scramble communication and accountability, he said, and it lies at the heart of many government failures. In the Columbia disaster, NASA engineers' worries never reached top officials. Commanders in Iraq have said that word of abuses at Abu Ghraib did not reach them. One of the first great students of bureaucracy, the early-20th-century German sociologist Max Weber, saw a lot to like in this form of organization, particularly as a replacement for clan-based or patronage systems. Bureaucracies were made up of people with expertise, operating under consistent rules and keeping precise records. But Weber may not have imagined the scale of bureaucracy at the top of a 21st-century superpower, or its relentless growth. In 1960, according to Dr. Light's study of federal phone directories, there were 17 different executive titles in the 15 cabinet departments he tracks. By 2004, that had ballooned to 64 titles, as new positions were wedged between existing jobs, creating such choice appellations as "chief of staff to the associate deputy assistant secretary" and "principal deputy deputy assistant secretary" (the repetition is not a typo). High-level career posts have proliferated as fast as political appointments. "It's a stalactite-stalagmite problem," Dr. Light said. "The politicals drip down, and the career people drip up." Sometimes growth is a matter of prestige. "Today, you're no one in this town if you don't have a chief of staff, and not much of a chief of staff if you don't have a deputy chief of staff," Dr. Light said. Sometimes pay freezes lead to the manufacture of new titles to allow bosses to give deserving subordinates raises. But the real driver for layering is the effort to reform, Dr. Light said, as leaders frustrated by failing bureaucracies add layers to impose discipline on those below. The response to the 9/11 attacks is a clear example. The government first created the Department of Homeland Security, building a florid new superstructure above 22 agencies employing 180,000 people. Now comes the intelligence agencies' turn. Atop the layers of the Central Intelligence Agency and its 14 siblings, Congress followed the advice of the 9/11 commission and decided to place a new director of national intelligence, assisted by a staff of more than 500. President Bush's nominee for the post, John D. Negroponte, is set for a Senate confirmation hearing this week. Then the presidential commission on Iraqi weapons intelligence weighed in on March 31 with a list of proposed additions: the C.I.A.'s directorate of operations would be swallowed up by a new human intelligence directorate; the F.B.I.'s security operations would be consolidated into a National Security Service; "mission managers" under a deputy director of national intelligence for integrated intelligence strategies would coordinate reporting on a single target. And so on, for 74 recommendations. Each comes with a common-sense rationale. But nearly all would add bulk to the bureaucracy, potentially tangling lines of authority and communication for intelligence, with its dependence on speed and precision, say experts on spying and government. "It's going to slow down decision-making and make things even more confusing," said Loch K. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia who was on the staffs of Congressional intelligence reform panels in the 1970's and the 1990's. The hazards of the bureaucratic imperative were not lost on the latest intelligence commission, led by Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal judge, and Charles S. Robb, the former Virginia senator and governor. "We were worried about it, and we are worried about it," the judge said in an interview. The report frets repeatedly about the danger of bureaucracy and says specifically, "We have tried to eschew the 'boxology' that often dominates discussions of government reform." But in the end, the commission could not stop itself. On its organizational chart for Mr. Negroponte's operation, there are 34 boxes. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:04:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:04:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: The Spying Game Message-ID: Sunday Book Review > Chronicle: The Spying Game http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/books/review/10WEINERL.html April 10, 2005 By TIM WEINER SPYMASTER: My Life in the CIA. By Ted Shackley with Richard A. Finney. Potomac, $27.95. THE AMERICAN AGENT: My Life in the CIA. By Richard L. Holm. St. Ermin's /Trafalgar Square, paper, $18. A SPY'S JOURNEY: A CIA Memoir. By Floyd L. Paseman. Zenith, $24.95. DENIAL AND DECEPTION: An Insider's View of the CIA From Iran-Contra to 9/11. By Melissa Boyle Mahle. Nation Books, $26. Walter Pforzheimer was a wonderful old political fixer for the Central Intelligence Agency who lived alone in two apartments at the Watergate -- one for himself and one for his library, among the world's greatest privately held collections of works on intelligence. Were Walter still alive, bless his bibliophilic heart, he would be clearing a five-foot shelf for the stacks of new books by C.I.A. veterans. At retired spooks' conventions, the card tables in the lobbies must be creaking under the weight of them all. They will be groaning boards by the time George Tenet, the recently departed director of central intelligence, finishes his own opus, for which he has received an advance roughly the size of the C.I.A.'s secret budget. What a country! Only in America could the intelligence memoir become a literary genre. But these works are crucial, and here's why. The C.I.A.'s files are ''the nation's unconscious,'' writes Thomas Powers, a longtime chronicler of intelligence. ''There you may find the evidence, like the gouges on rock where a glacier has passed, about what American leaders really thought, really wanted and really did -- important clues to who we are as a people.'' The C.I.A.'s attitude toward declassification has at times approached civil disobedience, yet important clues trickle out from official documents. The memoirs of C.I.A. officers, though subject to scissoring by guardians of imaginary secrets, as well as real ones, provide more clues. Over time, a picture takes shape out of the miasma of secrecy. Overlaid with the findings of diplomatic and military scholars, intelligence history is beginning to approach something like the truth about the last 60 years of American power abroad. Without it, we live in a state of vincible ignorance -- choosing not to know what we know we should know, which in some circles is a sin against God. Speaking of sins, Ted Shackley left a great deal out of his posthumous Spymaster (which will be published in May). Shackley was one of the C.I.A.'s colder warriors, carrying out some of the bloodiest tasks of American foreign policy. But it wasn't he who chose to try to overthrow Fidel Castro or Salvador Allende. Presidents made those calls. Sadly, his book stops abruptly, near the start of his three top jobs running covert operations in the 1970's. Save for an astonishing coda (more on that later), it's like a projector breaking down at the start of a thriller's last reel. Shackley is best on Berlin, freewheeling capital of the cold war. Fluent in Polish, he took his post in 1953, at the moment the C.I.A's operations in Poland collapsed. The agency had spent years dropping millions of dollars in guns and money to a fictitious Polish underground known by its attractive initials, WIN. It was a Commie trick: ''The Poles had taken the money that the C.I.A. had sent to WIN and used it to fund the Communist Party of Italy,'' Shackley writes. For the next two years he smuggled foreign agents into Poland, getting many of them killed. ''These operations' costs in terms of human loss might have been acceptable if the intelligence product had not been so marginal,'' he says. He then tried recruiting spies within Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia: ''It was harder than selling refrigerators to Eskimos. It was selling treason.'' After five years, a Polish intelligence officer finally defected. Unfortunately, he had come to believe he was the last of the Romanovs. Yet he helped uncover a Moscow spy who was a senior West German intelligence officer, and unmasked a British turncoat who had sabotaged Shackley's efforts to bug the Poles. Every success had its consequences in the cold war. Both Shackley and Richard L. Holm -- whose excellent book, The American Agent, first published in Britain in 2003, is a far more honest and thorough work -- were part of the C.I.A.'s operations in Laos in the 1960's. They persuaded Hmong tribesmen to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hanoi's route through Laos into South Vietnam. The Hmong fought nobly and died. ''And then we left,'' Holm writes. ''This was a sin of commission for which the Hmong, our staunch allies for more than a decade, are still suffering.'' The C.I.A. almost destroyed the Hmong to save them -- one more hill tribe crushed by history. Holm next went to the Congo, where he nearly died when his plane crashed in the dark heart of the forest, a harrowing tale well told. He survived, horribly scarred, as a cold-war hero. The C.I.A.'s success in the Congo led directly to the three-decade dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, staunch ally and murderous kleptocrat. Thirty years later, Holm was station chief in Paris when he was forced to leave France, along with a handful of his spies, after the exposure of an operation designed to steal French trade secrets. Some old hands wondered why the C.I.A. was now in the business of making the world safer for Disney, and after 35 years in the clandestine service, Holm, a cold-war hero, became a post-cold-war pariah at headquarters. It calls to mind the plaint of the long-ago station chief in Laos, Henry Hecksher, who cabled Washington asking: ''Is headquarters still in friendly hands?'' Holm's portrait of an agency in decline is sobering. Floyd L. Paseman was the chief of the East Asia covert operations division from 1992 to 1994, after 25 years spent mostly in Asia. It was a post Shackley had held two decades before. Shackley was all about statistics. Paseman is all about people, which is why he was able to recruit a Chinese spy, an exceedingly rare find in the 1970's. He believes covert action -- trying to change the course of history, as opposed to stealing secrets through espionage -- should always be the last choice for the C.I.A. That was a hard-won lesson. A Spy's Journey is a pleasure to read, the most personable memoir by a senior spy since David Atlee Phillips's 1977 classic, ''The Night Watch.'' If you wonder what it's like to breakfast on moose lips and vodka in Mongolia, this is your book. Paseman had fun -- until suddenly, in 2001, he decided it wasn't fun anymore. The C.I.A. was created to prevent a second Pearl Harbor. Melissa Boyle Mahle's Denial and Deception helps explain how it failed. A fair-minded reconstruction of high and low points in the last 15 years of C.I.A. history, with particular emphasis on the Arab world, where the author served as a covert-operations officer, it weaves a careful reading of the public record with Mahle's personal experience. After years in the field, she had a falling-out with the agency, which dismissed her in 2002 for ''an operational mistake'' -- something to do with her handling of a foreign agent. The agency's censors have taken their inexhaustible black felt-tip pens to her book, but Mahle concludes that after seven years' hard labor, Tenet has left the outfit in a terrible mess. A superpower needs an intelligence service. The British had one, the Russians had one and, after fits and starts, we started one in 1947. But many who served, past and present, have come to the reluctant conclusion that the Central Intelligence Agency as presently constituted may be at the end of the line. Ted Shackley, of all people, was among them. In Spymaster, he forecast that a director of national intelligence would take over all but the core functions of the C.I.A., as may well happen under John Negroponte, the newly named czar of American intelligence. He thought that moment ''would be a good time to get rid of a set of initials that are carrying a heavy load of opprobrium and suspicion, however unjustified.'' Something smaller and smarter would take its place, but on that day, the old spy wrote, ''the C.I.A. would in effect disappear.'' Tim Weiner, a reporter for The Times, is writing a history of the C.I.A. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:07:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:07:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP Outlook: The Battle Between Tinseltown and Techville Message-ID: The Battle Between Tinseltown and Techville http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39168-2005Apr9 By Drew Clark Sunday, April 10, 2005; Page B04 Creativity and innovation aren't qualities you'd ordinarily expect to be at war with one another. Both involve a type of inventiveness, a vision of something new, a stepping outside of mental boundaries. Yet in America's courts, the companies that rely most on creativity and innovation are at each other's throats. It's a battle of culture as much as law. It's Tinseltown vs. Techville, the glamour people vs. the geeks, those who admire their finished products and those who never finish tinkering. And for each one, an important principle is at stake. The latest round of this fight features two small software firms, Grokster and Streamcast, vs. the entertainment giants, led by MGM and other studios, recording labels and artists' groups. In a case just argued before the Supreme Court, the entertainment firms say that Grokster and Streamcast, which help individuals copy movie as well as music files, must be shut down. The future of creativity is in jeopardy, they say. How will artists live if they don't receive copyright royalties? The technology industry, some of which holds its nose at Grokster and Streamcast's failure to obtain licenses for copying recorded materials, has united to defend their principal arguments in court. The high-tech industry says the future of innovation is at stake. How can engineers prosper if they're constantly looking over their shoulders for approval from Hollywood? Both sides in this clash have legitimate concerns. As with the original Napster, the music file-sharing service that taught the world to love free downloads, Grokster and its ilk don't pay licensing fees on the vast majority of songs and movies traded by their users. The musicians and recording labels are essentially being ripped off. But by whom? That's the essence of the question currently before the Supreme Court. And the overarching issue is: How far can the scope for digital copyright expand without threatening innovation? This isn't the first time that Hollywood and tech titans have duked it out. Napster awakened the motion picture studios to the danger posed by piracy on the Internet. The recording industry then vanquished Napster in court -- and Napster now sells music under license agreements with major recording labels. But Walt Disney and Fox Entertainment strong-armed their fellow motion picture studios into taking on even bigger adversaries: Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. These computer and software companies were just as guilty as Napster because they refused to cooperate in the studios' efforts to lock down personal computers, according to the argument made at the time by motion picture lobbyist Jack Valenti. He and Disney CEO Michael Eisner enlisted the support of the then-chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.), who introduced legislation in March 2002 to force Silicon Valley to cooperate. If high-tech didn't come up with some anti-copying "policeware" within one year, the draft bill said, federal government would require that every digital device include technology to stop the copying of digital movies and music. Such a mandate would be absurd and impractical, the high-tech companies countered. They lined up congressional supporters of their own, and the Hollings bill died without even a committee vote. The entertainment executives are no longer fingering Apple or Microsoft. Instead, entertainment companies are suing Grokster for releasing "peer-to-peer" software that enables someone on the Internet to search millions of other computers for the digital songs and movies "shared" by other users. Grokster doesn't copy anything itself, but the entertainment lawyers say it is guilty because its users abuse copyrights. By contrast, legitimate online services, like Apple's iTunes and Real Network's Rhapsody, negotiate royalties and licensing fees so that artists get their cuts. Hollywood and the recording industry are essentially saying to Grokster: It's our creative property and you need to shut down your brand of thievery. Not so fast, reply Grokster and the electronics industry. The original Napster was nabbed for contributing to copyright infringement because it listed the names and whereabouts of unlicensed digital music files. Grokster doesn't do that. It just releases software for individuals to use at their discretion. Echoing the "guns don't kill people" argument of those who oppose gun control, Grokster is effectively saying "peer-to-peer software doesn't steal music, people do." Hollywood calls that willful blindness. To the average teenage music fan, Napster and Grokster may be a legal distinction without a practical difference. The recording studios estimate that about 90 percent of the files shared using Grokster are being shared illegally. Searching for a handle in the case after losing the first two rounds in lower courts, both the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America have resorted to filing lawsuits against the individual computer users, too. The tech titans aren't worried about the teenagers and grandmothers being hauled into court. But with studios suing Grokster, the tech firms want to protect the Supreme Court's 1984 decision in Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios. That decision legalized Sony's analog videocassette recorder, the Betamax. At the time, the motion picture studios said that 91 percent of all the videotapes made by consumers were copied without permission. The 5-4 decision was unusual because Justice Sandra Day O'Connor switched sides late in the session, forcing the case to be reargued the following term. She eventually joined the opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens, who took vendors off the hook as long as their technology was "merely capable of substantial non-infringing uses." It was a pro-innovation decision, and one very much on the mind of the current Supreme Court. Justice Stephen Breyer asked whether the Xerox machine, the VCR, the iPod or even the printing press could have moved forward with a more restrictive standard. He suggested "the monks had a fit when Gutenberg" invented his printing press. "A very important part of the Sony analysis is that new information technology that benefits consumers is a presumptively good thing," says American University copyright law professor Peter Jaszi. That's one reason the chief of the Consumer Electronics Association calls the decision "the Magna Carta for everyone who enjoys their iPods, TiVos, personal computers and electronic products." These companies see themselves as agents of capitalism's "creative destruction," vs. the status quo of Hollywood's existing means of distribution. Back in the 1970s, Hollywood feared that the Japanese videocassette invasion would destroy theater and broadcast syndication revenues. But Valenti's rhetoric -- he said the VCR "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone" -- proved hyperbolic. Instead, studios adapted by creating new revenue streams like cable television and VCR rentals. Home video rentals now provide the studios with more money than box office sales. A similar pattern happened earlier in the 20th century. The player piano, the phonograph, radio and television each forced changes in distribution. Often, Congress revised copyright laws to protect artists' royalties, but copyright holders also adapted successfully to innovations. Digital technology, however, poses a unique challenge to copyright. The law gives creators exclusive rights to exploit their works' economic value. Authors sell manuscript rights to book publishers, for example, and publishers use copyright law to stop pirate editions that pay no royalties to publishers or authors. Before the computer revolution, copyright worked because it was relatively easy to find pirate printing presses or factories forging bootleg records or films. The inconvenience of making photocopies, or audio or video cassettes, kept copyright violations in check. But the explosion of digital technology and the Internet has changed that equation. Digital copies are frequently higher quality than analog, and they don't degrade with each reproduction. And the Internet in all of its forms -- e-mail, the Web, peer-to-peer -- has slashed the cost of distribution. That erases one of the biggest advantages of the entertainment companies. Can innovation be used to protect creativity? The recording industry made an attempt to control copying by designing a "serial copy management system" in conjunction with Digital Audio Tape. Under a 1992 law, audio recorders using DAT had to include this copy-protection system. These technological controls blocked individuals from using a taped copy of a song to make another copy. That angered consumers, however, and the medium never took off. Computers were exempted from the 1992 law, later enabling millions of people to "rip" compact discs into compressed digital MP3 music files on their hard drives. They loved that convenience, and they loved sharing those unprotected MP3 files. This brings us back to the current conflict between creativity and innovation. Single-purpose devices can be retrofitted to stop copying relatively easily. Audio compact disc recorders, VCRs and cable television set-top boxes are all built with anti-copying controls designed to limit users to none or one copy of a song, movie or television program. But when Hollings proposed the same thing for general purpose computers, techies decried the constraint on their ability to program and build digital devices. It went against the tide of innovation, which was merging technologies not separating and limiting them. This freedom to tinker is exactly what the techies fear they could lose if the Supreme Court sides with Hollywood and against Grokster. Why? Because every engineering decision and product design would be subject to legal review by entertainment industry lawyers. Technology companies from Microsoft to Apple to Grokster say they have a better way to protect copyrighted content. It involves digitally scrambling songs, movies and video games with encryption software, like the technology used to create digital versatile discs. DVD encryption leaves much to be desired, however; it has been cracked by a Norwegian teenager who spent three years defending himself against Hollywood's lawyers. Nonetheless, the approach has promise because it uses innovation to protect creativity, rather than using the courts to suppress innovation. It doesn't hurt that user-friendly software like Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Media Player stand to profit if they, too, can keep adapting to innovations and become intermediaries in a more orderly digital media marketplace. Meanwhile, however, the entertainment industry will press forward, striving to extend the scope of copyright further into the digital world. No matter how the Supreme Court rules, we can expect the dispute to be back before Congress. When it is, Congress shouldn't forget that acting in the name of creativity could have dire consequences for innovation. Author's e-mail: [3]drew at drewclark.com Drew Clark is the senior writer for the National Journal's Technology Daily, an online Web site, and covers the politics of telecommunications, media and technology at www.drewclark.com. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:07:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:07:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: DNA Key to Decoding Human Factor Message-ID: DNA Key to Decoding Human Factor http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6098-2005Mar28?language=printer Secret Service's Distributed Computing Project Aimed at Decoding Encrypted Evidence By Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, March 28, 2005; 6:48 AM For law enforcement officials charged with busting sophisticated financial crime and hacker rings, making arrests and seizing computers used in the criminal activity is often the easy part. More difficult can be making the case in court, where getting a conviction often hinges on whether investigators can glean evidence off of the seized computer equipment and connect that information to specific crimes. The wide availability of powerful encryption software has made evidence gathering a significant challenge for investigators. Criminals can use the software to scramble evidence of their activities so thoroughly that even the most powerful supercomputers in the world would never be able to break into their codes. But the U.S. Secret Service believes that combining computing power with gumshoe detective skills can help crack criminals' encrypted data caches. Taking a cue from scientists searching for signs of extraterrestrial life and mathematicians trying to identify very large prime numbers, the agency best known for protecting presidents and other high officials is tying together its employees' desktop computers in a network designed to crack passwords that alleged criminals have used to scramble evidence of their crimes -- everything from lists of stolen credit card numbers and Social Security numbers to records of bank transfers and e-mail communications with victims and accomplices. To date, the Secret Service has linked 4,000 of its employees' computers into the "Distributed Networking Attack" program. The effort started nearly three years ago to battle a surge in the number of cases in which savvy computer criminals have used commercial or free encryption software to safeguard stolen financial information, according to DNA program manager Al Lewis. "We're seeing more and more cases coming in where we have to break encryption," Lewis said. "What we're finding is that criminals who use encryption usually are higher profile and higher value targets for us because it means from an evidentiary standpoint they have more to hide." Each computer in the DNA network contributes a sliver of its processing power to the effort, allowing the entire system to continuously hammer away at numerous encryption keys at a rate of more than a million password combinations per second. The strength of any encryption scheme is based largely on the complexity of its algorithm -- the mathematical formula used to scramble the data -- and the length of the "key" required to encode and unscramble the information. Keys consist of long strings of binary numbers or "bits," and generally the greater number of bits in a key, the more secure the encryption. Many of the encryption programs used widely by corporations and individuals provide up to 128- or 256-bit keys. Breaking a 256-bit key would likely take eons using today's conventional "dictionary" and "brute force" decryption methods -- that is, trying word-based, random or sequential combinations of letters and numbers -- even on a distributed network many times the size of the Secret Service's DNA. "In most cases, there's a greater probability that the sun will burn out before all the computers in the world could factor in all of the information needed to brute force a 256-bit key," said Jon Hansen, vice president of marketing for AccessData Corp, the Lindon, Utah, company that built the software that powers DNA. Yet, like most security systems, encryption has an Achilles' heel -- the user. That's because some of today's most common encryption applications protect keys using a password supplied by the user. Most encryption programs urge users to pick strong, alphanumeric passwords, but far too often people ignore that critical piece of advice, said Bruce Schneier, an encryption expert and chief technology officer at Counterpane Internet Security Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. "Most people don't pick a random password even though they should, and that's why projects like this work against a lot of keys," Schneier said. "Lots of people -- even the bad guys -- are really sloppy about choosing good passwords." Armed with the computing power provided by DNA and a treasure trove of data about a suspect's personal life and interests collected by field agents, Secret Service computer forensics experts often can discover encryption key passwords. In each case in which DNA is used, the Secret Service has plenty of "plaintext" or unencrypted data resident on the suspect's computer hard drive that can provide important clues to that person's password. When that data is fed into DNA, the system can create lists of words and phrases specific to the individual who owned the computer, lists that are used to try to crack the suspect's password. DNA can glean word lists from documents and e-mails on the suspect's PC, and can scour the suspect's Web browser cache and extract words from Web sites that the individual may have frequented. "If we've got a suspect and we know from looking at his computer that he likes motorcycle Web sites, for example, we can pull words down off of those sites and create a unique dictionary of passwords of motorcycle terms," the Secret Service's Lewis said. DNA was developed under a program funded by the Technical Support Working Group -- a federal office that coordinates research on technologies to combat terrorism. AccessData's various offerings are currently used by nearly every federal agency that does computer forensics work, according to Hansen and executives at Pasadena, Calif.-based Guidance Software, another major player in the government market for forensics technology. Hansen said AccessData has learned through feedback with its customers in law enforcement that between 40 and 50 percent of the time investigators can crack an encryption key by creating word lists from content at sites listed in the suspect's Internet browser log or Web site bookmarks. "Most of the time this happens the password is some quirky word related to the suspect's area of interests or hobbies," Hansen said. Hansen recalled one case several years ago in which police in the United Kingdom used AccessData's technology to crack the encryption key of a suspect who frequently worked with horses. Using custom lists of words associated with all things equine, investigators quickly zeroed in on his password, which Hansen says was some obscure word used to describe one component of a stirrup. Having the ability to craft custom dictionaries for each suspect's computer makes it exponentially more likely that investigators can crack a given encryption code within a timeframe that would be useful in prosecuting a case, said David McNett, president of Distributed.net, created in 1997 as the world's first general-purpose distributed computing project. "If you have a whole hard drive of materials that could be related to the encryption key you're trying to crack, that is extremely beneficial," McNett said. "In the world of encrypted [Microsoft Windows] drives and encrypted zip files, four thousand machines is a sizable force to bring to bear." It took DNA just under three hours to crack one file encrypted with WinZip -- a popular file compression and encryption utility that offers 128-bit and 256-bit key encryption. That attack was successful mainly because investigators were able to build highly targeted word lists about the suspect who owned the seized hard drive. Other encrypted files, however, are proving far more stubborn. In a high-profile investigation last fall, code-named "Operation Firewall," Secret Service agents infiltrated an Internet crime ring used to buy and sell stolen credit cards, a case that yielded more than 30 arrests but also huge amounts of encrypted data. DNA is still toiling to crack most of those codes, many of which were created with a formidable grade of 256-bit encryption. Relying on a word-list approach to crack keys becomes far more complex when dealing with suspects who communicate using a mix of languages and alphabets. In Operation Firewall, for example, several of the suspects routinely communicated online in English, Russian and Ukrainian, as well as a mishmash of the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets. The Secret Service also is working on adapting DNA to cope with emergent data secrecy threats, such as an increased criminal use of "steganography," which involves hiding information by embedding messages inside other, seemingly innocuous messages, music files or images. The Secret Service has deployed DNA to 40 percent of its internal computers at a rate of a few PCs per week and plans to expand the program to all 10,000 of its systems by the end of this summer. Ultimately, the agency hopes to build the network out across all 22 federal agencies that comprise the Department of Homeland Security: It currently holds a license to deploy the network out to 100,000 systems. Unlike other distributed networking programs, such as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project -- which graphically display their number-crunching progress when a host computer's screen saver is activated -- DNA works silently in the background, completely hidden from the user. Lewis said the Secret Service chose not to call attention to the program, concerned that employees might remove it. "Computer users often experience system lockups that are often inexplicable, and many users will uninstall programs they don't understand," Lewis said. "As the user base becomes more educated with the program and how it functions, we certainly retain the ability to make it more visible." In the meantime, the agency is looking to partner with companies in the private sector that may have computer-processing power to spare, though Lewis declined to say which companies the Secret Service was approaching. Such a partnership would not endanger the secrecy of their operations, Lewis said, because any one partner would be given only tiny snippets of an entire encrypted message or file. Distributed.net's McNett said he understands all too well the agency's desire for additional computing power. "There will be such a thing as 'too much computing power' as soon as you can crack a key 'too quickly,' which is to say 'never' in the Secret Service's case." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:08:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:08:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Government Executive: Bush and the bureaucracy: a crusade for control Message-ID: Bush and the bureaucracy: a crusade for control (3/25/05) http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=30861&printerfriendlyVers=1& DAILY BRIEFING March 25, 2005 By Paul Singer, [2]National Journal [3]psinger at nationaljournal.com Two weeks before George W. Bush's 2001 inauguration, the Heritage Foundation issued a paper offering the new president advice on "taking charge of federal personnel." The authors -- two former officials at the Office of Personnel Management and a former congressional staffer who is now at OPM -- laid out an ambitious agenda to overhaul civil service rules and "reassert managerial control of government." The paper emphasized the importance of appointing strong leaders to key government positions and holding bureaucrats "personally accountable for achievement of the president's election-endorsed and value-defined program." Reminded of this paper recently, co-author Robert Moffit, who has moved on to other issues at Heritage, dusted off a copy and called a reporter back with a hint of rejoicing in his voice. "They apparently are really doing this stuff," he said. To Moffit and other proponents of strong management, the Bush White House has indeed initiated a dramatic transformation of the federal bureaucracy, trying to create a leaner, more results-oriented government that can better account for taxpayer dollars. Reshaping the agenda of government to match the president's priorities is the purpose of democratic elections, Moffit said. But critics charge that the White House is embarking on a crusade to replace expert judgment in federal agencies with political calculation, to marginalize or eliminate longtime civil servants, to change laws without going through Congress, to silence dissenting views within the government, and to centralize decision-making in the White House. "A president cannot wave a wand and wipe prior policy, as implemented by duly enacted statutes, off the books," said Rena Steinzor, a founder and board member of the Center for Progressive Regulation, a think tank of liberal academics. "We have made a judgment as a nation, for decades, that an independent bureaucracy is very important." The Bush administration, she said, is "politicizing and terrorizing the bureaucracy, and turning it 180 degrees." Critics point to a long list of manifestations of greater White House control. Among them: * Reorganizations in various federal agencies, such as major staff cuts anticipated at NASA, that eliminate career civil service staff, or replace managers with political appointees; * New management systems to grade federal agencies on the results they achieve, with the White House in charge of defining "success"; * Increased White House oversight of regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Labor, and other departments and agencies; * The president's proposal to replace the civil service employment system with new, government-wide "pay-for-performance" rules that make it easier for managers to promote, reward, or fire employees; * "Competitive sourcing" requirements that force thousands of federal workers to compete against private contractors to keep their jobs; * A series of steps that may weaken traditional watchdogs and the office that protects whistle-blowers; * New restrictions on the public release of government information, including a huge jump in the number of documents labeled "classified"; * A growing cadre of government employees who are going public with charges that their recommendations were ignored, their reports edited, or their conclusions reversed by their political-appointee managers, at the behest of the White House. Many presidents have tried to reshape the federal bureaucracy to their liking. President Nixon had his "Management by Objective" program that attempted to rein in anti-poverty programs; President Clinton had his "Reinventing Government" initiative that aimed to improve government services and streamline rules. But under Bush, White House control of the federal agencies is "more coordinated and centralized than it has ever been," said New York University professor of public service Paul Light, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It is a sea change from what it was under the Clinton administration." Clay Johnson, who as deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget is the point man for Bush's "management agenda," denied any "Republican conspiracy" to control the bureaucracy or silence civil servants. "It's about things working better; it's not about controlling," Johnson said. "The thing that we can impose more of than anything else is clarity -- clarity of purpose. We want to have a real clear definition of what success is," he said. "The overall goal of all that we are doing," Johnson added, "is, we want to get to the point in three or four years where we can say to the American taxpayer that every program is getting better every year." The federal bureaucracy is a notoriously unwieldy beast. It includes about 1.9 million civilian employees, many of whom have agendas that differ from the president's. Each administration, Republican or Democratic, struggles with its relationship with an army of workers who were on the job before the new political team arrived, and who expect to be there after the team leaves. "You have this bizarre cycle, where the leader comes into the room and says, 'We are going to march north,' and the bureaucracy all applaud," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. "Then the leader leaves the room, and the bureaucracy says, 'Yeah, well, this "march north" thing is terrific, but this year, to be practical, we have to keep marching south. But what we'll do is, we'll hire a consultant to study marching north, so that next year we can begin to think about whether or not we can do it.' " The White House is proud of its management initiatives and Bush's reputation as "the M.B.A. president." The administration regularly issues press releases to announce progress on the President's Management Agenda -- a list of priorities that includes competitive sourcing and development of "e-government." And Bush's fiscal 2006 budget includes cuts based on performance assessments for hundreds of individual federal programs. But critics fear that the management agenda, combined with an array of other administration initiatives, has established a framework that makes it easier for political appointees to overrule, marginalize, or even fire career employees who question the president's agenda. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule earlier this month to regulate emissions of mercury from power plants. In unveiling the rule, the EPA asserted that it represents the most stringent controls on mercury ever issued. According to the agency, the requirements are cost-effective, will achieve significant health benefits, and will create an economic incentive for companies to continually improve their environmental performance. But the rule is driven by the Bush administration's novel -- some say, illegal -- interpretation of the Clean Air Act that allows the EPA to avoid imposing mandatory emissions controls on each facility. Environmentalists, and some EPA staff, contend that the mercury rule is far weaker than one the Clinton administration proposed, and that political appointees at the agency ignored the scientific and legal judgment of career staff to push the rule through the regulatory process. The battle over the mercury rule has been bitter and public. Many other efforts to tighten central control are buried deep within the bowels of the bureaucracy. Structures The Natural Resources Conservation Service is not generally a political hotbed. A division of the Agriculture Department, the NRCS -- working through "conservationist" offices in each state -- is responsible for helping farmers implement soil and water conservation measures, such as restoring wetlands, building dams, and designing systems to prevent animal waste from running off into waterways. In a major reorganization over the past two years, NRCS chief Bruce Knight eliminated the service's six regional offices, which were headed by career managers and oversaw the state offices. He replaced the six regional managers with three political appointees in Washington and shuffled 200 career staffers from the regional offices into other offices throughout the agency. Knight said the reorganization is "really just a strong business case." It created a "flatter, leaner structure" that relies much more heavily on the expertise of the state conservationists and makes better use of employees, he said. "I had about 200 highly valuable [employees] scattered around the country, and I needed to put them at the mission of the agency." But in so doing, Knight has also raised concerns about the independence of the technical staffers who oversee conservation measures across the country. Under the new structure, career NRCS scientists might worry that their technical decisions about where to spend money and how to implement programs will be overruled for political purposes, said Rich Duesterhaus, a former NRCS staffer and now director of government affairs for the National Association of Conservation Districts. "They clearly now have a direct line from the politically appointed chief, through these three politically appointed regional assistant chiefs, to the line officers who supervise and carry out these programs," Duesterhaus said. And why should political control over a soil and water conservation agency matter? Because the 2002 farm bill doubled the NRCS's budget for assistance to farmers, from about $1.5 billion in 2001 to $2.8 billion in 2006, with a total increase of $18 billion slated through 2012. "In the old days, the money wasn't big enough to matter," Duesterhaus said, but the influx of cash in 2002 has made the NRCS "a contender in terms of spoils, and where those spoils go becomes an issue." With direct political oversight of the state conservationists, Duesterhaus said, "it becomes a little easier to say, 'Well, we need Ohio, so make sure we put a little extra money in Ohio.' " Earlier this month, Charles Adams, one of the six career regional conservationists who were unseated in the reorganization, filed a discrimination complaint against Knight and other agency officials, arguing that the reorganization derailed his 37-year career in favor of three political appointees with far less expertise. "I allege that ... a calculated, arbitrary, and capricious decision was made to preclude me from the line and leadership of this agency," Adams wrote in his complaint to the Agriculture Department's Office of Civil Rights. Knight rejects any suggestion that he has politicized the work of a technical agency. "The real power is in the state conservationist, the career individual in the state who manages the budget and the people," he said. "Most people will agree that we are more scientifically and technologically based now" than before the reorganization. The agency has about 12,500 staff members and only a dozen political appointees, Knight said. But employees in other federal agencies have also asserted that reorganization plans have bumped career managers from senior positions, or diluted their authority. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is instituting a major overhaul that will create a new layer of "coordinating centers" -- including a strategic center responsible for developing long-term goals for the agency -- between CDC Director Julie Gerberding and the health and science centers that formerly reported directly to her. Gerberding said, "I don't think our goal is to have control over the organization -- our goal is to have an impact on health." But some career staffers say they are being pushed aside and losing the ability to manage their programs. The Washington Post earlier this month reported a memo from a top CDC official warning that CDC employees are suffering a "crisis of confidence" and that they feel "cowed into silence." CDC aides -- who are unwilling to have their names published for fear of reprisals -- say they are losing the ability to make independent professional judgments on topics ranging from sexual abstinence, to drug use, to influenza. Gerberding replied, "I think that is a very inaccurate assessment of what is going on at CDC." Nevertheless, throughout the federal government, complaints can be heard from disgruntled civil servants who feel they are being elbowed aside by the political leadership -- though it is hard to assess whether the invariably anonymous sources have been targeted for elimination or are simply frightened of the change. Some of the administration's efforts have attracted congressional scrutiny. On March 16, the House Science panel's Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee held a hearing on the administration's plan to slash funding for aeronautics research at NASA and to eliminate 2,000 jobs in order to focus the agency on the president's "Vision for Space Exploration," which includes the goal of manned missions to Mars. But the administration is not backing down. In fact, it wants more authority to carry out these reorganizations. The White House has said it is drafting legislative proposals to create a "sunset" process requiring federal programs to rejustify their existence every 10 years and to set up "reform" commissions giving the president authority to initiate major restructuring of programs. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis , R-Va., said in an interview this month that he believes that Congress should restore the president's unilateral authority to reorganize executive branch agencies -- authority that presidents held from the late 1930s until 1984, and that Nixon used when he created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. Procedures Beyond its tinkering with organizational structures, the White House is pursuing a sweeping overhaul of personnel rules that is aimed at giving managers across the federal government more flexibility to promote, punish, or fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants. While a proposed transformation of the pay systems at the Defense and Homeland Security departments has spurred vigorous debate -- fueled by the administration's announcement in January that it wants to extend these systems to the rest of the federal government -- less fanfare attended last year's rollout of a new pay-for-performance plan for the roughly 6,000 veteran federal government managers who constitute the Senior Executive Service. Together, the two new approaches give political appointees in federal agencies greater authority to reward or discipline senior career managers, and give managers the same authority over the civil servants below them. The White House calls this a "modern" personnel system, where everyone is judged on results. Critics call it a process for weeding out recalcitrant civil servants or political opponents. The new pay-for-performance plan for the Senior Executive Service eliminates annual raises for top career managers and replaces them with a system of merit ratings. Some career executives fear that the system will allow the White House to simply push aside managers who are unenthusiastic about the president's agenda. "We all know that performance is in the eyes of the beholder, no matter what you say about wanting to have many numerical indicators and so forth," said Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, which represents members of the SES. "The concern is that if you know that your boss has the total authority to not give you a pay raise, are you going to be more inclined to skirt an ethics requirement for them? Are you going to be more inclined to do what is perhaps not really right?" And the layers of performance ratings based on the president's goals serve to reinforce the agenda throughout the bureaucracy, Bonosaro said. "You kick the general, and the general comes back and kicks the soldiers, and it goes down the line." In another move, which could affect thousands of civil servants, Bush has made "competitive sourcing" one of his primary management goals for federal agencies, requiring government workers to compete for their jobs against private contractors. In January, OMB reported that government employees had won about 90 percent of the 30,000 jobs awarded in 2003 and 2004, with decisions still to be made on about 15,000 jobs offered for competition in those years. But in February, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that Lockheed Martin had won the government's largest-ever job competition, covering about 2,300 flight-service jobs. FAA workers slated to be displaced under the contract filed an appeal this month, complaining that the agency's bidding process was flawed. "Everything they do is sending the signal [to employees] that they can be replaced easily by contractors, if the work they do isn't done by whatever standards the president is going to put out in his new measurement system," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. "It's all about putting more power in the hands of the appointees and making it easier to downgrade, get rid of, use the rules as a weapon against employees who are not in lockstep with you," said Mark Roth, general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees. OMB's Johnson denies any intent to enforce political orthodoxy on the civil service. "Rewarding people for their political views is against the law. It's like incest: verboten. Not allowed. Doesn't happen," Johnson said. "You are being encouraged, and evaluated, and mentored, and managed, and held accountable for doing things that the administration considers to be important," he said. "That does not mean vote Republican versus Democrat; that doesn't mean be pro-life or pro-choice, or be for strict-constructionist judges, or be against strict-constructionist judges," Johnson contended. "We are controlling what the definition of success is, but shame on us if that's a bad idea. I think it's a really good idea," Johnson said. "It is a mind-set and an approach, and it is a focus on results that [the president] is imposing. It's not 'I want everyone to be like me and have the same political beliefs as me.' " Checks and Balances But what if "incest" does happen? Where would a civil servant go to report "verboten" behavior? Critics of the administration charge that the White House is tampering with the independent structures that protect against waste, fraud, abuse, and political retribution -- the federal inspectors general and the Office of General Counsel. The White House vehemently denies the charge. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, issued a report last October -- and updated it in January -- declaring that the Bush administration was appointing inspectors general with political connections to the White House much more frequently than the Clinton administration did. Working with a very small sample -- 11 IGs appointed by Bush, 32 appointed by Clinton -- Waxman's report concludes that 64 percent of the Bush appointees had political experience on their resumes, and only 18 percent had audit experience. For the Clinton appointees, the ratios were reversed: 22 percent had political backgrounds, 66 percent had audit experience. Gaston Gianni, who until his retirement in December was the Clinton-appointed inspector general at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and vice chairman of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency -- an IG professional group -- said, "I've read the Waxman report. Factually, it's correct. The conclusions, I don't think flow from the facts." Gianni said it is true that the Bush administration is favoring political background rather than investigative experience in appointing IGs, but he said there is no evidence that the people Bush has appointed have any less independence or zeal for their work. Nevertheless, Gianni said, the practice worries him. "The environment is such, as we go forward, that the perception will be that, rather than 'small-p' political appointees, they are going to become 'capital-P' Political appointees. Even though nothing else has changed, that is what the perception will be." Steinzor and NYU's Light agree that the White House has generally sent the message to inspectors that an excess of independence may be bad for their careers. Last July, Johnson and Gianni signed a memo to inspectors general and agency heads, spelling out the "working relationship principles" for both positions and emphasizing the need for mutual respect, objectivity, and communication between an IG and his or her agency head. Johnson serves as the chairman of the president's council on integrity, and the memo was his idea. Some critics read it as a warning to IGs not to be too aggressive, but Johnson denies any such message. "The IGs should not be, by definition, adversarial agents," Johnson said. "They are there to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. The heads of agency are there to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. The IGs, by definition, are for positive change.... Where you get into disagreements is when somebody tries to constantly play 'gotcha,' or where the IG gets a little too enamored of their independent status and tries to do things in a negative fashion, tries to uproot things, or identify things that will hurt the agency," he said. "The IG is there to help the agency." Johnson said that he had recommended the "relationship principles" to the professional group, but that IGs and agency officials drafted the principles. Light said there is nothing untoward about principles extolling the virtues of communication and common decency, but he argued that the memo -- together with the pattern noted in the Waxman report and some high-profile firings of IGs early in the Bush administration -- sets a tone that may have a chilling effect on inspectors. Johnson dismisses this concern. "I don't think there is any information that suggests that the IGs are less critical than they have been. I don't think there is anything that says they are finding less waste, fraud, and abuse, that they are being less effective IGs as a result of this 'Republican conspiracy.' " The Office of Special Counsel is a bigger concern for administration critics. Established as an independent agency charged with protecting whistle-blowers and civil servants who are mistreated for political or other reasons unconnected with their performance, the office is in a bitter feud with several of its employees who argue that they are being punished for resisting attempts by Bush's appointee to dismantle the operation. Among other things, current and former employees charge that Special Counsel Scott Bloch has summarily dismissed hundreds of whistle-blower complaints, instigated a reorganization of the office that will significantly increase political control of investigations, and forced senior staff members critical of his work to choose between relocating to regional offices or being fired. Several anonymous employees, joined by four public-interest groups, filed formal charges against Bloch on March 3, and at least half a dozen staff members have resigned or been fired for refusing to relocate. Bloch characterizes the complaints against his office as the work of a few disgruntled employees, reinforced by groups that are on a mission to embarrass the White House. Together, these critics are "going out and making reckless allegations that have no truth. They don't like the success Bush officials are having in dealing with the bureaucracy," Bloch said. "They don't want a Bush appointee like myself to get credit" for reducing a large backlog of old cases that were languishing when Bloch took office in 2004. "We have doubled our enforcement over prior years in all areas," Bloch said. His critics "hurl accusations at the office and basically say insulting things about their fellow employees, and they are false." Levers of Government An Interior Department official who has worked in the federal government for 30 years denied that the White House is trying to marginalize the civil service, arguing that what people are seeing is simply better executive management from the White House. "This administration runs a more effective management of the government than did the previous administration, which was a lot more loosey-goosey," this person said, requesting anonymity to speak freely about his bosses. "They bring more of a business mind-set, but I don't think that's a particularly bad thing. They are more organized, and they are smart about it." The sharper management focus extends into the minutiae of government, giving the White House oversight and control of the executive branch at several levels. In some cases, the Bush administration is creating new approaches, but in most cases, officials are simply using authorities created under prior administrations and applying them more aggressively. For example, Clinton issued a regulatory-review executive order in 1993, charging OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs with ensuring that regulations "are consistent with applicable law [and] the president's priorities." The order emphasized use of the best available science and the most cost-effective approach to regulations. The Bush administration has built on this executive order, setting new requirements for reviewing the costs and benefits of regulatory proposals, establishing a higher threshold for reaching scientific certainty in regulatory decisions, and creating new opportunities for outside experts to challenge the government's conclusions about the dangers that a rule is designed to mitigate. A regulatory agency career official who demanded anonymity said that OIRA, under the Bush administration, is "much more active" in the regulatory process. "They get involved much earlier in the process on large rules," the official said. "They are reviewing drafts of preambles as they are being written for some rules, or sections of rules." The executive order gives OMB 90 days to review agency rules, but OIRA Administrator John Graham said in an e-mail response to a reporter's query: "During an important rule-making, OIRA may work informally with agencies at the early stages of the rule-making. This early OIRA participation is designed to make sure that our benefit-cost perspective receives a fair hearing, before key decisions are made and final documents are drafted." Graham added, "A key benefit of early OIRA involvement is that the pace of rule-making is accelerated by building consensus early in the process and avoiding contentious delays beyond the 90-day review period." He said that the majority of OMB staffers are career civil servants with significant expertise in their issue areas and that, contrary to the assumptions of many critics, OMB involvement does not always result in an outcome that is more favorable to industry. For example, he said, OMB initiated a Food and Drug Administration rule-making to require that producers add the trans-fat content of foods to nutritional labels. Sally Katzen, who held both John Graham's job and Clay Johnson's job during her years in the Clinton administration, said, "There is nothing wrong with more-centralized review, guidance, and oversight. It is, after all, a president -- singular -- who is the head of the executive branch." But, she cautioned, "the problems we face are often highly technical or otherwise highly complicated, and those who serve in the White House or OMB do not have all the answers. And they certainly don't have the manpower, the expertise, or the intimate familiarity with the underlying detail. They cannot -- and, in my mind, should not -- replace the agency expertise, the agency knowledge, and the agency experience." While OIRA serves as the central regulatory-review office for the White House, OMB has also positioned itself as the central performance-accountability office, with the establishment of the "President's Management Agenda" and the Program Assessment Rating Tool, or PART, under which the White House grades every agency and program on the basis of its management activities and real-world results. After several years of conducting the assessments without imposing any real consequences for failure, the administration, in the first budget proposal of Bush's second term, used the results assessments to justify eliminating or significantly reducing funding for about 150 federal programs. John Kamensky, who was deputy director of the National Performance Review (the "reinventing government" initiative) in the Clinton administration, said that Bush's White House is, in many ways, simply expanding on efforts begun in the previous administration. "We had proposed, in the Clinton administration, tying performance to budget, but there wasn't enough performance information to do that. The Bush administration has that information, finally, so it's sort of a natural progression," Kamensky said. But critics worry that the review process gives the administration the opportunity to establish its own measures of success for programs, without taking into account the requirements established by Congress. For example, OMB's review declared the Housing and Urban Development Department's Community Development Block Grant program "ineffective," charging that its mission is unclear, it has few measures of success, and it "does not effectively target funds to the most-needy communities." But a study by a National Academy of Public Administration panel in February disputed OMB's assessment. The program's "statutory mission or purpose seems clear," the panel said. As a block grant, CDBG is able to fund a broad range of community-development functions, and "if the CDBG program lacks clarity, it is likely because the statute intended it so," according to the report. The breadth of the program's activities makes it difficult to provide specific measures of success, the panel concluded, and the White House suggestion that funding be geographically targeted "seems to contradict the statute's intent." Donald Plusquellic, mayor of Akron, Ohio, and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, defends the CDBG program. "I can evaluate anything as a failure if I get to set up the standards," he said. Johnson acknowledges that CDBG fails the test in part because the administration is applying a new definition of success. "We believe the goal of housing programs is not just to build houses, but the economic development that comes with them. So those are the results we want to focus on," Johnson said. "You can say we are imposing our political views on people, or our favored views of the housing world or the CDBG world on people. Well, guilty as charged. It's important to focus on outcomes, not outputs." The president has proposed to eliminate the $4 billion block-grant program and shift its functions into a new community and economic development initiative in the Commerce Department. The Senate voted 66-32 last week for a budget amendment designed to block the administration plan. NYU's Light says the administration has instituted a host of other procedures that centralize power in the White House, ranging from a vetting process for political appointees that allows little independent decision-making for Cabinet officials, to regular conference calls between the White House and the agency chiefs of staff that help to "focus [the staffers'] attention up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, and away from down in your department." But is that a bad thing? The Heritage Foundation's Moffit doesn't think so. "Why would that be anything other than 100 percent American?" Moffit asks. "I elected a president, and I expect the president to run the executive branch of the government. And there is an issue about whether he is? That's absurd." The role of the civil service is "to make the car run," Moffit said. "And if they have been driving the car east for the past 25 years of their professional life, but the president says, 'Fine, I know you've been going east, but now we're going to go west; you're going to do a 180-degree turn and go in exactly the opposite direction,' their job is to make sure the car goes exactly in the opposite direction. Nobody elected them to do anything else." Roth of the American Federation of Government Employees disagrees. "You do not entirely change your entire focus every time a president is elected, because it is not the job of the president to pass the laws. It is the job of the president to execute the laws," Roth said. "These laws are on the books, these programs are in regulations." An administration "can't just say, 'We don't like it, so don't do it.' " References 2. http://nationaljournal.com/ 3. mailto:psinger at nationaljournal.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:07:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:07:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian (UK): Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' Message-ID: Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' Guardian, 5.3.30 >From another list: The article from the Guardian, below, is about carrying capacity. One of the authors of the Report, David Pimentel, is a longtime member of the Board of Carrying Capacity Network [CCN] www.carryingcapacity.org Dr. Pimentel estimates that the carrying capacity of the United States -- at a standard of living slightly lower than presently enjoyed -- is about 150 to 200 million people. Compare that with the 300 million, and counting, that we now have. CCN advocates an immigration moratorium of 100,000 annually, which would let the U.S. population begin to stabilize. .................................................................. [And from me: the problem with these articles, as always, is that it's assumed that there is no critical mass of people smart enough and free enough to find substitutes. It makes no difference whether I, or any combination of eggsperts, has a "Master Plan." What counts are individual planners risking their own money on thousands of micro-plans.] Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' Tim Radford, science editor Wednesday March 30, 2005 Guardian The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure. The study contains what its authors call "a stark warning" for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself. "Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted," it says. The report, prepared in Washington under the supervision of a board chaired by Robert Watson, the British-born chief scientist at the World Bank and a former scientific adviser to the White House, will be launched today at the Royal Society in London. It warns that: * Because of human demand for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel, more land has been claimed for agriculture in the last 60 years than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. * An estimated 24% of the Earth's land surface is now cultivated. * Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers has doubled in the last 40 years. Humans now use between 40% and 50% of all available freshwater running off the land. * At least a quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested. In some areas, the catch is now less than a hundredth of that before industrial fishing. * Since 1980, about 35% of mangroves have been lost, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed and another 20% badly degraded. * Deforestation and other changes could increase the risks of malaria and cholera, and open the way for new and so far unknown disease to emerge. In 1997, a team of biologists and economists tried to put a value on the "business services" provided by nature - the free pollination of crops, the air conditioning provided by wild plants, the recycling of nutrients by the oceans. They came up with an estimate of $33 trillion, almost twice the global gross national product for that year. But after what today's report, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, calls "an unprecedented period of spending Earth's natural bounty" it was time to check the accounts. "That is what this assessment has done, and it is a sobering statement with much more red than black on the balance sheet," the scientists warn. "In many cases, it is literally a matter of living on borrowed time. By using up supplies of fresh groundwater faster than they can be recharged, for example, we are depleting assets at the expense of our children." Flow from rivers has been reduced dramatically. For parts of the year, the Yellow River in China, the Nile in Africa and the Colorado in North America dry up before they reach the ocean. An estimated 90% of the total weight of the ocean's large predators - tuna, swordfish and sharks - has disappeared in recent years. An estimated 12% of bird species, 25% of mammals and more than 30% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction within the next century. Some of them are threatened by invaders. The Baltic Sea is now home to 100 creatures from other parts of the world, a third of them native to the Great Lakes of America. Conversely, a third of the 170 alien species in the Great Lakes are originally from the Baltic. Invaders can make dramatic changes: the arrival of the American comb jellyfish in the Black Sea led to the destruction of 26 commercially important stocks of fish. Global warming and climate change, could make it increasingly difficult for surviving species to adapt. A growing proportion of the world lives in cities, exploiting advanced technology. But nature, the scientists warn, is not something to be enjoyed at the weekend. Conservation of natural spaces is not just a luxury. "These are dangerous illusions that ignore the vast benefits of nature to the lives of 6 billion people on the planet. We may have distanced ourselves from nature, but we rely completely on the services it delivers." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:08:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:08:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNET: Forty years of Moore's Law Message-ID: Forty years of Moore's Law http://news.com.com/2102-1006_3-5647824.html?tag=st.util.print By Michael Kanellos Forty years ago, Electronics Magazine asked Intel co-founder Gordon Moore to write an article summarizing the state of the electronics industry. The article outlined what became known as [7]Moore's Law, the observation that the number of transistors--tiny on/off switches that churn out electrical signals that get represented as 1s and 0s--on a chip can be doubled in a short period of time. Adopted as a yardstick by the tech industry, the concept is one of the reasons the industry evolved into a high-growth, but high-risk, affair. This FAQ explains the impact and consequences of the principles set down in the April 19, 1965, article. What is Moore's Law? When writing the article, Moore noted that the number of devices (which then included transistors and resistors) inside chips was doubling every year, largely because engineers could shrink the size of transistors. That meant that the performance and capabilities of semiconductors was growing exponentially and would continue to. In 1975, Moore amended the law to state that the number of transistors doubled about every 24 months. When the paper first came out, chips sported about 60 distinct devices. By contrast, Intel's latest Itanium chip comes with 1.7 billion silicon transistors. As monumental as the article has become, it wasn't a big deal then. It started on page 114 of the magazine. "It wasn't something you expected to join the archives," [8]Moore said in a recent gathering with reporters. "I didn't think it would be especially accurate." Why is it possible? It's the miracle of industrial chemistry. Silicon is a good semiconductor (which means it can conduct electricity, but in a manner that can be controlled), and the crystalline structure remains intact despite shrinkage. Is the law now dead? No, though various analysts and executives have [9]incorrectly predicted its demise. It will, however, likely begin to slow down to a three-year cycle in the next decade and require companies to adopt alternative technologies. Some people, such as [10]Stan Williams and Phil Kuekes of HP Labs, say the ability to shrink transistors will start to become problematic by around 2010. That should prompt manufacturers to adopt alternatives, such as HP's crossbar switches, to control electrical signals. It wasn't something you expected to join the archives. --Gordon Moore, co-founder, Intel Others, such as Intel's director of technology strategy, [11]Paolo Gargini, paint a more gradual picture. Around 2015, they say, manufacturers will start to move toward hybrid chips, which combine elements of traditional transistors with newfangled technology such as nanowires. A full conversion to new types of chips may not occur until the 2020s. From a theoretical point of view, silicon transistors could continue to be shrunk until about the 4-nanometer manufacturing generation, which could appear about 2023. At that point, the source and the drain, which are separated by the transistor gate and gate oxide, will be so close that electrons will drift over on their own. When that happens, transistors will lose their reliability, because it will be impossible to control the flow of electrons and hence the creation of 1s and 0s. (The nanometer measurement refers to the average feature size on a chip. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Current chips are made on a 90-nanometer process, while experimental devices about 6 nanometers long have been produced.) What happens then? Hard to say. If alternatives to silicon transistors never materialize, Moore's Law stops. If alternatives emerge, progress could accelerate under similar principles. What's the best alternative? Who knows? Carbon [12]nanotube transistors, silicon nanowire transistors, molecular crossbars, [13]phase change materials and [14]spintronics are mostly now lab experiments. Silicon, though, won't go easy. Manufacturers and designers love it. Chances are, silicon will continue to be incorporated into these new devices in some fashion. "I view (silicon) technology as a fundamental way for bringing out complex microstructures and materials," Moore said. Who said what? California Institute of Technology Professor Carver Mead was the one who dubbed it Moore's Law, a lofty title Moore said he was too embarrassed to utter himself for about 20 years. David House, a former Intel executive, extrapolated that the doubling of transistors doubles performance every 18 months. Actually, performance doubles more like every 20 months. Moore emphatically says he never said 18 months for anything. The rule also doesn't apply to hard-drive densities or to the growth of other devices. "Moore's Law has come to be applied to anything that changes exponentially, and I am happy to take credit for it," Moore joked. What does doubling do? The impact can be summed up as follows: faster, smaller, cheaper. Under Moore's Law, chip designers essentially shrink the size of transistors--which are now measured in [15]nanometers--and then fill up the resulting empty space on the chip with more transistors. More transistors let designers add features, such as 3D graphics, that used to exist on separate chips--thereby cutting costs. The designers can also choose to dedicate more transistors to speeding up how the chip performs its usual functions. Despite the extra transistors, these enhanced chips cost about the same as the old ones, because they take up the same surface area of silicon. As an added bonus, smaller transistors mean electrons don't have to travel as far, boosting performance. Though chip designs vary widely, manufacturers try to get some or all of these advantages. How does that affect products? Put into practice, Moore's Law spells out a way for companies to enhance their products at a rapid clip. Eighteen years ago, Michael Douglas, in the movie "Wall Street," spoke on a cell phone that was about the size and shape of a brick. Shrinkage and integration has lead to phones with television tuners, [16]7-megapixel cameras and MP3 players. Declining costs have also put them in the hands of billions of people. More-powerful, cheaper chips have in turn allowed software makers to develop applications such as instant messaging, 3D games and Web browsers that would have been cumbersome only a few years before they were invented. Consumers and analysts regularly complain that progress outstrips their needs, but rarely does anyone revert. What are the technical problems? Getting electricity to transistors is difficult, and dissipating the [17]heat generated by these transistors is just as challenging. Some transistor structures, such as the [18]gate oxide, are only a few atoms thick, so they leak electricity. Where does it go next? The trend now is to put silicon where it isn't. In the coming years, various start-ups hope to [19]embed sensors in walls, household appliances and even wild animals. [20]Microfluidics chips will let doctors quickly harvest large amounts of patient data with less lab equipment. What's the economic impact? Very few industries are this lucky. Car manufacturers have to entice customers with new cup holders or different body types, because engine performance doesn't change that rapidly. Moore noted that if car manufacturers had something like this, cars would get 100,000 miles to the gallon and it would be cheaper to buy a Rolls Royce than park it. (Cars would also be only a half an inch long.) The fear now is that the treadmill will slow. "Replacement has always been predicated on our industry's ability to come up with neat new things to buy. That in turn has been predicated on greater integration, allowing richer features due to the progress of Moore's Law," wrote Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research in his newsletter "The Chip Insider." "Slow it down, and end users are likely to slow their replacement rate. Slow this, and the market slows with it." Are the economics healthy? Yes and no. One of the unsavory consequences of tracking Moore's Law is called [21]Rock's Law, named after venture capitalist Arthur Rock. It states that the cost of fabrication facilities doubles every four years. Now fabs cost billions of dollars and the cafeterias in them generally cost more than the old fabs, noted Craig Barrett, Intel's CEO. Most chip companies now do not own their own factories because of the costs. Wall Street analysts, conference futurists and even some chip executives have regularly declared that the outrageous expenses will lead to the end [22]or a slowing of Moore's Law. Most companies, though, never take the advice: Falling off the pace would just ensure extermination by faster-moving competitors anyway. The chip industry remains a multibillion-dollar industry. What else did Moore predict? Re-reading the paper after 40 years, Moore noticed that he also predicted the home computer and electronic wristwatches. In the early '70s, in another article for Electronics Magazine, Moore also forecast the growth of Ovonics Unified Memory, a type of memory made from a similar material as CD disks. In February, Intel said it [23]may come out with Ovonics memory in a few years. Not everything he's said, however, has come true. He once predicted that wafers, the round disks out of which chips are harvested, would measure 56 inches in diameter about now. They measure [24]300 millimeters, or 12 inches. References 6. http://news.com.com/Photos+Moores+Law+turns+40/2009-1041_3-5649019.html 7. http://news.com.com/Myths+of+Moores+Law/2010-1071_3-1014887.html?tag=nl 8. http://news.com.com/Moore+says+nanoelectronics+face+tough+challenges/2100-1006_3-5607422.html?tag=nl 9. http://news.com.com/Barrett+No+end+in+sight+for+Moores+Law/2100-1006_3-5594779.html?tag=nl 10. http://news.com.com/HP+For+circuits%2C+swap+silicon+for+molecules/2100-1006_3-5557954.html?tag=nl 11. http://news.com.com/Intel+scientists+find+wall+for+Moores+Law/2100-7337_3-5112061.html?tag=nl 12. http://news.com.com/The+stuff+of+dreams/2009-7337_3-5091267.html?tag=nl 13. http://news.com.com/Intel+sketches+out+nanotechnology+road+map/2100-1006_3-5424766.html?tag=nl 14. http://news.com.com/IBM%2C+Stanford+put+new+spin+on+chip+research/2100-7337_3-5199501.html?tag=nl 15. http://news.com.com/New+microscope+could+focus+nanotech+dream/2100-7337_3-5471939.html?tag=nl 16. http://news.com.com/CeBit+picks+up+the+buzz+on+new+phones/2100-1041_3-5609276.html?tag=nl 17. http://news.com.com/Big+changes+ahead+for+microprocessors/2009-1001_3-275823.html?tag=nl 18. http://news.com.com/AMD+overhauls+transistors%2C+chips/2100-1006_3-1015965.html?tag=nl 19. http://news.com.com/Sensors+drafted+to+turn+off+lights+nationwide/2100-1008_3-5563775.html?tag=nl 20. http://news.com.com/ST+builds+chips+for+gene+detection/2100-1001_3-964616.html?tag=nl 21. http://news.com.com/Semi+survival/2009-1001_3-981418.html?tag=nl 22. http://news.com.com/Chipmaker+TSMC+adds+design+services+in+up+market/2100-1006_3-5191498.html?tag=nl 23. http://news.com.com/A+30-year+memory+problem+solved/2100-1004_3-5620720.html?tag=nl 24. http://news.com.com/Japan+fires+up+its+semiconductor+industry/2100-1006_3-5321036.html?tag=nl From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:45:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:45:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Hunter S. Thompson Package Message-ID: Hunter S. Thompson Package [He died when I was on my annual Lenten break, so I'm posting these articles only now.] Subject: /net/u/6/c/checker/mail/hunter The New York Times > Books > Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, Is Dead at 67 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/books/22thompson.html February 22, 2005 By MICHAEL SLACKMAN Hunter S. Thompson, the anger-driven, drug-fueled writer for Rolling Stone magazine whose obscenity-laced prose broke down the wall between reader and writer, writer and subject, shot and killed himself on Sunday at his home in Woody Creek, Colo. He was 67. His death was reported by the Pitkin County sheriff's office. At his peak Mr. Thomson reached out in his writing to a generation made cynical by the Vietnam War and the Watergate political scandal and that was prepared to respond to Mr. Thompson's visceral honesty, his creative blend of fact and fantasy, his rage at convention and power. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," published by Random House in 1972, cemented Mr. Thompson's place as a singular presence in American journalism or, as he once called himself, "a connoisseur of edge work." In that semi-fictional work, Mr. Thompson's alter ego, Raoul Duke, and his lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, ride from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in a convertible loaded up with drugs, in what the book's subtitle describes as "a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream." But it was his writing as a national political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine that brought Mr. Thompson's rule-breaking style to a broader audience, where his outrageous voice helped refocus the nation's customarily straitlaced political dialogue. It was while covering the primary race and the presidential campaign between George McGovern and the incumbent Richard M. Nixon in 1972 that Mr. Thompson forced mainstream news organizations to take notice. That year, some of his most acerbic lines were quoted in publications like Newsweek and The New York Times. (A Times writer quoted Mr. Thompson saying Hubert Humphrey was campaigning like "a rat in heat.") For Mr. Thompson the goal was to tell the truth - at least his version of the truth - and it did not much matter how he got there. "Fiction," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2003, "is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it." In more recent years Mr. Thompson seemed a man cornered by his own self-image, marginalized for having stayed put while the generation he once courted - the generation that brandished the slogan "drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll" - turned its attention to issues like property taxes and social security. Mr. Thompson found that the image he built during his adult life, that of the heavy-drinking, drug-using, gun- toting, sharp-tongued social critic with aviator glasses and a cigarette between his lips, had become a cartoon character - literally. Uncle Duke, a character in "Doonesbury," the Garry Trudeau comic strip, was modeled after Mr. Thompson, and the real Mr. Thompson wasn't too thrilled. "You don't really think of making it in America as being a cartoon character," Mr. Thompson said in an interview with The Associated Press in the early 1980's. "It's hard to try and run around and be normal when you're confronted constantly with movies and comic strips." Yet his early work presaged some of the fundamental changes that have rocked journalism today. Mr. Thompson's approach in many ways mirrors the style of modern-day bloggers, those self-styled social commentators who blend news, opinion and personal experience on Internet postings. Like bloggers, Mr. Thompson built his case for the state of America around the framework of his personal views and opinions. Hunter Stockton Thompson was born on July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky. He was educated in public schools and joined the United States Air Force after high school. There he was introduced to journalism, covering sports for an Air Force newspaper in Florida. He was honorably discharged in 1958 and then worked a series of jobs writing for small-town newspapers. Even before he burst onto the national scene, Mr. Thompson had built a reputation as an eccentric, hard-driving reporter in upstate New York. Mr. Thompson's biography has traditional contours. But in a Playboy interview given years ago, the magazine filled in some of the profile with Thompsonesque details. In the introduction to his interview, the magazine said he lied to get the job at a base newspaper; was fired when his superiors found out he was writing for another publication under a pen name; and was fired from a newspaper job for destroying his editor's car. In that interview, Mr. Thompson said that he found his literary voice - a highly personal controlled rant that became known, somewhat inexplicably, as gonzo journalism - while writing a story about the Kentucky Derby for Scanlan's magazine. "I'd blown my mind, couldn't work," he told Playboy, explaining how he could not get the story done for deadline. "So finally I just started jerking pages out of my notebook and numbering them and sending them to the printer. I was sure it was the last article I was ever going to do for anybody." The article was a success, and Mr. Thompson said "if I can write like this and get away with it, why should I keep trying to write like The New York Times?" Mr. Thompson had some early success as a foreign correspondent writing from South America for The National Observer. But it was his first book - "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga" (Modern Library, 1967) - that quickly established his reputation for producing what Eliot Fremont-Smith, in The Times, called an "angry, knowledgeable and excitedly written book." Mr. Thompson, who spent more than a year traveling with the Hell's Angels, gave the nation a tongue lashing for creating mythic villains, like the motorcycle gang, which he revealed to be more pathetic than fearsome. Mr. Thompson wrote about a dozen books, including "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail," the culmination of his work on the 1972 campaign. In his political coverage Mr. Thompson made no secret of his hatred of Nixon, once calling him "that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character." He was generous with invective, once referring to Humphrey, the former vice president, as a "hopelessly dishonest old hack." In his later years, before his death, as attitudes toward drugs and alcohol stiffened, Mr. Thompson seemed to have trouble adjusting to the new reality around him, to neighbors who no longer tolerated gunshots going off on his property. As early as the 1990's, he began to display his disgust with what he said was "the feeling today you can't fight City Hall. But sure you can - and win." Mr. Thompson, who had suffered pain from back surgery and other ailments in recent years, spent his final days in his compound in Woody Creek, not far from Aspen. The sheriff's department said he was found by his son, Juan, who survives him, as does his second wife, Anita Beymuk. His first marriage, to Sandra Dawn, Juan's mother, ended in divorce. During his career, there were moments, usually in interviews or in his own personal correspondence, when Mr. Thompson let the public in on the point. It was, he seemed to suggest, not really about guns and drugs, and tearing up the pavement and planting grass, but about grabbing public attention to focus on the failures of leadership, the hypocrisy in society. In 1970 Mr. Thompson ran for sheriff in Pitkin County, Colo., on the "freak power" platform, calling himself "a foulmouthed outlaw journalist." It seemed a joke, another outlandish act, until the votes were counted and he came close to winning. In a letter he wrote to Senator Walter Mondale in 1971, Mr. Thompson said his campaign came down "very simply to the notion of running a completely honest political campaign - saying exactly what we thought and what we planned to do." He added, "The real issue was Power ... and Who was going to have it." ------------ The New York Times > Books > An Appreciation: The Thompson Style: A Sense of Self, and Outrage http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/books/22appr.html February 22, 2005 By DAVID CARR Hunter S. Thompson died on Sunday, alone with a gun in his kitchen in Woody Creek, Colo. In doing so, he added heft to a legend that came to obscure his gifts as one of journalism's most influential practitioners. Somewhere beneath the cartoon - he was Uncle Duke in the Doonesbury strip, of course, but Bill Murray inked him well in the 1980 film "Where the Buffalo Roam" - and a lifestyle dominated by a long and sophisticated romance with drugs, Mr. Thompson managed to change the course of American journalism. Of all of the so-called practitioners of New Journalism, Mr. Thompson was the one who was willing to insert himself and his capacious reserve of outrage into the middle of every story. In his articles for Rolling Stone and his seminal 1973 book, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" Mr. Thompson threw himself at the conventions of political reporting. Not only was he not neutral, he was angry, an avenging proxy for the American polity. Brick by brick, he tore away a wall - since rebuilt - that made politics seem like a low-stakes minstrel show. "He spent his life in search of an honest man, and he seldom found any," said James Silberman, his longtime editor and publisher at Random House and Summit Books. As a writer though, Mr. Thompson met plenty of honest digressions, and engaged them all to their fullest. He would begin with a premise - Richard Nixon was doing Satan's handiwork, for instance - and then in writing about it, tumble through the Tet Offensive, the drugs from the previous night he was trying to fight through, Hubert Humphrey's alleged spinelessness, Nixon's surprising knowledge of the N.F.L., and the fecklessness of his editors, before landing the entire rococo mix in one tidy package, like a gift. His assignments always became quests. It was not enough for him to journey south to Cozumel off the Yucat?n Peninsula to write about rich white men hunting sharks; he also had to retrieve 50 doses of MDA, a drug he was fond of, that he had stashed in the shark pool of the aquarium the last time he was on the island. Mr. Thompson managed to live and write his own version of the Heisenberg principle: That the observer not only changes events by his presence, but his presence also frequently surpasses the event in terms of importance. Like many contemporary American writers, Mr. Thompson lived the bell curve of a writer's life. Long after the "Fear and Loathing" rubric had been arrayed over everything from shark fishing, the Hell's Angels and Las Vegas, he was hounded by the fact that his moment - a white hot one where in which he found himself face to face with a shark or George McGovern - had passed. His friends would continue to drop by Woody Creek, his remote, mountainous salon near Aspen for smart, engaging talk accompanied by the explosives, narcotics and weaponry Mr. Thompson counted as enduring hobbies. Ed Bradley of "60 Minutes" was one of them, and said yesterday that Thompson's menace was overestimated, that it was frequently overwhelmed by courtliness. George Plimpton was a frequent visitor, as was Walter Isaacson. Even the town sheriff was welcome, as long as he called ahead so Mr. Thompson could tidy the premises. For a generation of American students, Mr. Thompson made journalism seem like a dangerous, fantastic occupation, in the process transforming an avocation that was mostly populated by doughy white men in short-sleeve white button-downs and bad ties into something fit for those who smoked Dunhills at the end of cigarette holders and wore sunglasses regardless of the time of day. It is to his credit or blame that many aspiring journalists showed up to cover their first, second, and sometimes third local city council meetings in bowling shirts and bad sunglasses (no names need be mentioned here), along with their notebooks. For all of the pharmacological foundations of his stories, Mr. Thompson was a reporter, taking to the task of finding out what other people knew with an avidity that earned the respect of even those who found his personal hobbies reprehensible. Hunter S. Thompson knew stuff and wrote about it in a way that could leave his colleagues breathless and vowing to do better. He had a gift for sentence writing, and he tended to write a lot of them. But his loquaciousness was not restricted to articles and books. In "Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist," his memoir published in 2000 which was composed of correspondence, it became clear how in his hands even the lowly expense report, usually a relentlessly banal document, could be a thing of beauty. To Mr. Thompson, it was all true, every word of it. Maybe not literally, you-can-look-it-up true, but true in a way that the bean counters would never understand. Friends say that he appeared to be relatively happy of late, and was fully engaged in the writing projects he had before him. But a chronic series of physical infirmities - he had to use a wheelchair at times - left him feeling that he was finally being maneuvered by forces he could not medicate or write into obscurity. And his suicide had its own terrible logic. A man who was so intent on generating a remarkable voice that he retyped Hemingway's novels just to understand how it was done, gave a final bit of dramatic tribute in turning a gun on himself. -------------- The New York Times > Books > 'Generation of Swine' http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/11/books/thompson-1988-swine.html Reviewed by HERBERT MITGANG Published: August 11, 1988 GENERATION OF SWINE Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80's. By Hunter S. Thompson. Hunter S. Thompson, who gained a fan club with such hand-stitched books as ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' and ''Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72,'' is back with a collection of his pieces that appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in the last few years. They combine name-calling, bomb-throwing and sardonic humor. He's a little more strident this time out, but if you happen to share his public enemies, Mr. Thompson's your man. Nearly everything he writes makes yellow journalism pale. With his targets the high rollers, from Sunset Strip to the White House, the former political writer for Rolling Stone elevates insult to an art form. He's dead serious and we blink, wondering how he can get away with it. Gonzo, his own brand of journalism, has even found its way into the new Random House dictionary, which uses such words as bizarre, crazy and eccentric to define it. No one else gets credit for gonzo journalism in the dictionary; but then not many journalists would want it. Timothy Crouse - in his own perceptive book, ''The Boys on the Bus,'' about the behavior of reporters during the 1972 Presidential campaign -recalled when Mr. Thompson first earned his stripes as a political storm trooper by reporting that he had told Richard M. Nixon, ''Go get 'em, Dick, throw the bomb! Fifty years more of the Thousand-Year Reich!'' A reporter for a local television station in Los Angeles quoted in Mr. Crouse's book says ''After the revolution, we'll all write like Thompson.'' Not quite yet. His train of thought often seems stuck at the Finland Station. Nevertheless, he can be challenging. Mr. Thompson finds Watergate more in the American grain of political corruption than the Iran-contra affair. He writes: ''The criminals in Watergate knew they were guilty and so did everybody else; and when the dust cleared the crooked President was gone and so were the others.'' By contrast, he calls those involved in Iran-contra affair ''cheap punks'' who have been ''strutting every day for the past two months of truly disgraceful testimony.'' (That column was written July 20, 1987; all the columns have dates at the end but have not been updated by the author.) He finds that the Iran-contra investigation was ''a farce and a scam that benefited nobody except Washington lawyers who charge $1,000 an hour for courtroom time.'' Swinging for the fences, Mr. Thompson sometimes strikes out in his judgments. Disagreement depends on a reader's own set of assumptions and prejudices. Many of the names in these columns are obscure and require a knowledge of Mr. Thompson's friends and previous books. But he continues to speak up about political candidates for whom he holds more loathing than fear. Writing about Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts a little over a year ago, Mr. Thompson was half prescient and half wrong. He described Governor Dukakis as ''feisty'' and possessing impressive credentials and ''the style of a mean counterpuncher.'' Mr. Thompson says of Mr. Dukakis: ''He was not in the mood, that night, to be poked and goaded by host/moderator William Buckley, who tried to make Dukakis the butt of his neo-Nazi jokes and left Houston with a rash of fresh teeth marks . . . Buckley has lost speed, in his dotage, but Dukakis is faster and meaner than a bull mongoose . . . But his chances of getting anything except a purple heart out of the 11 Southern States that will vote on 'Super Tuesday' next March are not ripe. The good ole boys will beat him like a gong, and after that he will be little more than a stalking horse for New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, who still insists he's not running.'' And assessing Vice President Bush last March, Thompson first quotes a political friend of his about the Republican candidate's intellectual brilliance - ''He is smarter than Thomas Jefferson'' - and then gonzofies him: ''He had no friends and nobody in Washington wanted to be seen with him on the streets at night.'' Mr. Thompson doesn't think the Vice President has a touch of the poet. He writes: ''It was impossible that he could be roaming around Washington or New Orleans at night, jabbering about Dylan Thomas and picking up dead cats .'' Mr. Thompson calls the present generation a ''Generation of Swine.'' With that phrase as his title and premise, he takes no prisoners. A reader can go through the 300-plus pages of the book and look in vain for qualifying journalistic words. Mr. Thompson doesn't write measured prose. It's - well, gonzo. ------------- The New York Times > Books > 'The Great Shark Hunt' http://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/10/books/thompson-1979-shark.html Reviewed by JOHN LEONARD Published: August 10, 1979 THE GREAT SHARK HUNT Strange Tales from a Strange Time. By Hunter S. Thompson. In 1973, Hunter S. Thompson--self-styled doctor of divinity, chemotherapy and "gonzo" journalism--had a dream or nightmare or vision or hallucination or the bends. Here is what he imagined: "Our Barbie Doll President, with his Barbie Doll wife and his boxful of Barbie Doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string- warts, on nights when the moon comes too close. . . at the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and the head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the south wing of the White House and leaps 50 feet down to the lawn. . . paused briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness. . . towards the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue, and trying desperately to remember which one of those 400 identical balconies is the one outside Martha Mitchell's apartment. . ." Is this fair to Richard Milhous Nixon? The Columbia Journalism Review certainly wouldn't think so. But Dr. Thompson is seldom, if ever, fair. And he is always hallucinating. At Super Bowl VIII in Houston, for instance, he attends a party at John B. Connally's house; Allen Ginsberg is there, and 13 thoroughbred horses are slaughtered, "by drug-crazed guests with magnesium butcher knives." At the Senate Watergate hearings, he slips an "ostrich lasso" over the head of Herbert W. Kalmbach and jerks him into the bleachers. In Aspen, Colo., where he is running for sheriff, he confronts his natural constituency, the freaks, who insist on voting two weeks before the election and who then gobble up their own candidates. Craving Our Credulity We are asked in this collection of Dr. Thompson's magazine articles and snippets from his books to imagine the forced urinalysis of Representative Harley O. Staggers of West Virginia; Jean- Claude Killy ordering from room service a cattle prod and two female iguanas; Senator Edmund S. Muskie strung out on Ibogaine, and Dr. Thompson himself up in a crow's nest, splitting "a cap of black acid with John Chancellor." When Mr. Nixon's lawyer J. Fred Buzhardt Jr. first hears the June 23, 1972, "smoking gun" tape and has a heart attack, Dr. Thompson assures us that we will never see him alive again because H. R. Haldeman will sneak into the hospital "and stick a hatpin up his nose while he's wasted on Demerol, jam it straight into his brain. . ." Enough. Along with his hallucinations, Dr. Thompson relies on pills, joints, beer, Wild Turkey Bourbon and buzz words. Many of these buzz words are unprintable. His favorite printable verbs are "lashed" and "addled." The modifiers are usually "terminal" and "atavistic." The nouns include thug, drone, swine, gunsel, landraper, greedhead, waterhead, leech, hyena, banshee, wolverine, dingbat, fascist and, again and again, geek. A geek, you'll remember, is the guy in the circus sideshow who bites off the heads of live chickens. In a number of ways on various occasions--at the Super Bowl, the Kentucky Derby and the America's Cup yacht race--Dr. Thompson has behaved like a journalistic geek. But a book reviewer, unlike a doctor of gonzo journalism, is supposed to be fair. There are some chickens that need their heads bitten off. And there are some sections of "The Great Shark Hunt," reprinted from such unlikely periodicals as The Reporter, The National Observer and The New York Times magazine, that are surprisingly straight, ungeeky and often quite moving. We are reminded that Dr. Thompson, who considers himself an outlaw, was from the beginning attracted to those who were outside the protection of the law or who were oppressed by that law. He took his chances, of course, with the Hell's Angels, and he should have left Las Vegas alone, but he also went where establishment reporters were reluctant to go--to East Los Angeles to talk to the Chicanos; to Olympia, Wash., to listen to the Amerindians; to Louisville, Ky., to report on the blacks; to Brazil and Colombia and Bolivia and Ecuador and Peru. The fear and loathing that he found in these places was not a hallucination. The rage he acquired seems inexhaustible. He became, in the late 1960's, our point guard, our official crazy, patrolling the edge. He reported back that the paranoids were right, and they were. The cool inwardness of a Joan Didion, the hugging of the self as if to keep from cracking up, is not for him. He inhabits his nerve endings; they are on the outside, like the skin of a baby; he seeks thumbprints. The failure of the counterculture--"which values the Instant Reward. . . over anything involving a time lag between the Effort and the End"--to develop a coherent politics infuriates him. "It is," he says, "the flip side of the 'Good German' syndrome." He is also, as if this needs to be said, hilarious. It is nice to think of him naked on his porch in Colorado, drinking Wild Turkey and shooting at rocks. Somewhere, beyond John Denver, he smells injustice. Scales grow on his torso; wings sprout on his feet. Up, up and away. . . it's Captain Paranoid! The Duke of Gonzo! Super Geek! ---------------- The New York Times > Books > 'Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72' http://www.nytimes.com/1973/07/15/books/thompson-1973-trail.html Reviewed by TOM SELIGSON Published: July 15, 1973 FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL '72 By Hunter S. Thompson. As the National Correspondent for Rolling Stone magazine, Hunter S. Thompson--author of the celebrated sixties' drug-scene book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"--covered the entire 1972 Presidential campaign. He has now enlarged his articles into a book that is the best account yet published of what it feels like to be out there in the middle of the American political process. "Fear and Loathing" runs month by month from December, 1971, when Thompson began campaign coverage in Washington, through the Democratic primaries, both conventions and on past the election. His book is a mixture of personal narrative, diary entries, tape-recorded interviews and telephone conversations with the candidates and their managers, occasionally irrelevant fantasies and--towards the end when he was running past his deadline--an extended interview with himself. Thompson writes on two levels. On one, he is the journalist observing the candidates in action from any accessible perspective. His comments in this regard are revealing both about the problems of campaign coverage and the differences among the candidates. His first encounter with McGovern was in the men's room at the Exeter Inn in New Hampshire. "People have been asking me about it ever since--as if it were some kind of weird journalistic coup, a rare and unnatural accomplishment pulled off by what had to have been a super-inventive or at least super-aggressive pervert. . . . The point is that anybody could have walked up to that urinal next to McGovern at that moment, and asked him anything they wanted--and he would have answered, the same way he answered me." Such coverage was virtually impossible with Nixon, who Thompson and the other campaign reporters hardly ever saw except on closed-circuit television. On another level, Thompson is defiantly subjective. Unlike his more conventional colleagues, he feels free to denounce hypocritical political maneuvering when he spots it. He saw Humphrey in Florida struggling to co-opt Wallace's position on busing and then later in Wisconsin trying to "nail down the Black Vote by denouncing Wallace as a racist demagogue, and Nixon as a cynical opportunist for saying the same thing about busing that Humphrey himself had been saying in Florida." Thompson's reaction: "There is no way to grasp what a shallow, contemptible and hopelessly dishonest old hack Hubert Humphrey is until you've followed him around for a while on the campaign trail. The double-standard realities of campaign journalism, however, make it difficult for even the best of the 'straight/objective' reporters to write what they actually think and feel about a candidate." There are no such restrictions on Thompson. He withholds no judgment, not even of McGovern, whom he supported. Impressed at the outset by what he considered McGovern's feel for the "New Politics"--a power base comprising the newly enfranchised young, blacks and other minorities--Thompson became disillusioned with the candidate's apparent change into an "old politician" as soon as he won the nomination. He saw old politics in McGovern's choice of Eagleton as a running mate--an offering to the "old guard" within the Democratic party--and in his endorsement of Chicago's Edward Hanrahan and Boston's Louise Day Hicks. Thompson concludes that the McGovern campaign failed because of this obvious shift in direction, and because of McGovern's own indecisiveness, poor leadership within his organization and the inherent political problem of McGovern's "good guy" personality. Lacking a feel for "dirty politics," McGovern suffered the liability of being "what Robert Kennedy once called, 'the most decent man in the Senate.' Which is not quite the same thing as being the best candidate for President of the United States. For that, McGovern would need at least one dark kinky streak of Mick Jagger in his soul." Unlike Theodore White's regular reports, which have become as much a part of the electoral institution as the inauguration, "Fear and Loathing" is obviously not an exercise in objective, analytic contemporary history. But neither is it like Norman Mailer's accounts of the conventions, which are, by contrast, less involved with the factual immediacy of politics and more concerned with its symbolic implications. Mailer is essentially always a novelist, even when he ventures into personal journalism. Mailer's imagination takes us as far as we want to go intellectually, but on a gut level we are kept at a distance because Mailer's personality intrudes between us and the experience. Genet, Burroughs and Arthur Miller have also attempted to run the campaigns through their literary arteries; but none has successfully captured the vulnerability, lust and desperation that are released each time we elect "the best man." Thompson's book, with its mixed, frenetic construction, irreverent spirit and, above all, unrelenting sensitivity to the writer's own feelings while on the political road, most effectively conveys the adrenaline-soaked quest that is the American campaign. Crisscrossing the country often two times a day, stopping in hotels, shopping marts and factories in obscure Midwestern towns, Thompson might have been running for office himself. By monitoring his own instincts and observations in the process, he shows us what it must be like for the candidates. Referring to himself as a "political junkie" who needed the best speed on the market to keep going (the "Zoo plane" on which the journalists covering McGovern traveled was evidently loaded with cocaine, marijuana and hashish), Thompson uses drug imagery throughout the book to describe the effects of campaigning. "There is a fantastic adrenalin high that comes with total involvement in almost any kind of fast-moving political campaign--especially when you're running against big odds and starting to feel like a winner." Citing stories of Humphrey's connections to mob money and of McGovern's placement of spies in Humphrey's campaign, Thompson shows just how compulsive is the trip to win the Presidency of America, and how overwhelming the temptation for the candidates to go outside the law to win. Must the men who aspire to lead us be put through such an ordeal, living constantly on what Thompson refers to as "the edge"? Perhaps whistlestop and jet-plane campaigning should be abandoned and the candidates should compete solely through the electronic media. I don't know, and neither does Thompson. What Thompson does know, however, is that whatever the campaign procedures, the White House will continue to loom in the imagination of power- addicted men as the glassine-bagged white powder does in the imagination of the junkie. Watergate was the attempted rip-off of a fellow addict. "Fear and Loathing" lets us understand why the men we elect to the Presidency may have needle tracks on their integrity. -------------- The New York Times > Books > 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' http://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/23/books/thompson-1972-vegar.html Reviewed by CRAWFORD WOODS Published: July 23, 1972 FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. By Hunter S. Thompson. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." The hold deepens for two days, and the language keeps pace for 200 pages, in what is by far the best book yet written on the decade of dope gone by. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is a number of things, most of them elusive on first reading and illusory thereafter. A solid second act by the author of "Hell's Angels," it is an apposite gloss on the more history-laden rock lyrics ("to live outside the law you must be honest") and-- Don Quixote in a Chevy--a trendy English teacher's dream, a text for the type who teaches Emily Dickinson and Paul Simon from the same mimeograph sheet. It is, as well, a custom-crafted study of paranoia, a spew from the 1960's and--in all its hysteria, insolence, insult, and rot--a desperate and important book, a wired nightmare, the funniest piece of American prose since "Naked Lunch." Its author comes complete with more than fair credentials for the venture. His previous book, "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs," was a running history of that evil club (whose members first accepted him and ended by stomping him) and a hard-breathing assault on "media rape," which is what Thompson calls the methodical misrepresentation of the Angels--and just about everything else--by the traditional press. A hatred of journalists and journalism burns deep in the new book as well, though it must be self- hatred to a considerable degree: Thompson has worked as a sportswriter in Florida, as South American correspondent for The National Observer, and is now covering the Presidential race for Rolling Stone. (He brings to this assignment, with considerable success, the hellish methods of "Gonzo journalism" developed in "Fear and Loathing.") After the elections, he will no doubt be found at his home in Woody Creek, Colo., raising unpleasant dogs and cleaning his handguns--the same recovery act he did after "Hell's Angels," at which time he also ran for sheriff of Aspen under the flag of Freak Power, drawing national attention and upsetting local novelist Leon Uris no end. Not to mention the Democrats, who, Thompson later claimed, owed him the governorship of American Samoa. What a lot of madness! These are the tracks of a man who might be dismissed as just another savage-sixties kook, were it not for the fact that he has already written himself into the history of American literature, in what I suspect will be a permanent way. Because, regardless of individual reader-reactions, his new book is a highballing heavyweight, whose ripples spread from Huckleberry Finn to F. Scott's Rockville grave. The bones of the story are no more than spareribs. Thompson ("Raoul Duke" in the book), under contract to Sports Illustrated, travels with his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, to Las Vegas. They have been summoned to cover a dirt-track motorcycle race, the Mint 400, by a mysterious phone call. "But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum it up on our own. Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism." Down the desert. The trunk of their car looks like a "mobile police narcotics lab"; a towel soaked in ether washes vapors over them from the floorboards. But their reception in the city is none too friendly, even when they represent themselves as the factory crew of the Vincent Black Shadow, the world's most frightening motorcycle--perhaps because they are stoned into a state of sustained paranoia that turns everyone they deal with into some sort of reptilian foe. A flurry of picaresque disasters alters their plans as the dope alters their minds. Drug and dream, event and recollection become inseparable. (Thompson now says that when he rereads his book he can't remember what he made up and what really happened. Pure Gonzo journalism. Pure Gonzo fiction.) But the sporting life collapses in any case when a wire comes from Rolling Stone, keeping the crew in Las Vegas to report on a national district attorneys' conference on dangerous drugs. Coverage of the conference is the book's centerpiece. It includes an imbecilic meeting of narcotics agents, where the officers are solemnly assured that a marijuana butt is called a roach "because it resembles a cockroach"; and a macabre, incredibly funny conversation with a Georgia cop, who is warned of a smackhead migration to his state because they like warm weather. Vegas, Duke decides, "is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted." The book is about that twisting. Like Mailer's, Thompson's American dream is a fanfare of baroque fantasy. It should not, despite its preemptive title, be mistaken for a synopsis of the American experience (even though the narrator comes to think of himself as a "monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger"). But its limits are no narrower than the limits of lunacy, and its method is as adventurous as any to be found in all the free-fire-zone writing of the past dozen years. "Writing" is as exact a label as the book will carry. Neither novel nor nonfiction, it arrives with fashion's special sanction. Its roots are in the particular sense of the nineteen-sixties that a new voice was demanded--by the way people's public and private lives were coming together in a sensual panic stew, with murder its meat and potatoes, grass and acid its spice. How to tell the story of a time when all fiction was science fiction, all facts lies? The New Journalism was born. But who taps fashion for wisdom gets poison in the sap, and "Fear and Loathing" is the quick assassin of the form it follows. Not the least of Thompson's accomplishments is to suggest that, by now, the New Journalism is to the world what the New Criticism was to the word: seductive, commanding--and, finally, inadequate. The form that reached apotheosis in "Armies of the Night" reaches the end of its rope in "Fear and Loathing," a chronicle of addiction and dismemberment so vicious that it requires a lot of resilience to sense that the author's purpose is more moralizing than sadistic. He is moving in a country where only a few cranky survivors-- Jonathan Swift for one--have gone before. And he moves with the cool integrity of an artist indifferent to his reception. For the things the book mocks--hippies, Leary, Lennon, journalism, drugs themselves--are calculated to throw Thompson to the wolves of his own subculture. And the language in which it mocks them is designed to look celebratory to the stolid reader, and debased to established critics. This book is such a mind storm that we may need a little time to know that it is also, ting! literature. Much the same thing happened with Henry Miller--with whom Thompson has perhaps even more kinship than with Burroughs. Hero of all his books, drowning in sex and drink, Miller makes holy what Thompson makes fundamental: appetite. In both writers, the world is celebrated/excoriated through the senses. But the taste of the one is for rebellion, of the other for apocalypse writ small. Apart from the artistry, it is a modestly eschatological vision that lifts "Fear and Loathing" from the category of mere funky reminiscence. It unfolds a parable of the nineteen-sixties palatable to those of us who lived them in a mood--perhaps more melodramatic than astute--of social strife, surreal politics and the chemical feast. And it does so in language that retires neither into the watery sociology of the news weeklies nor the zoo-Zen of the more verbally hip. Far out. Thompson trusts the authority of his senses, and the clarity of a brain poised between brilliance and burnout. "We are all wired into a survival trip now," he notes, "No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. . . a generation of permanent cripples who never understood the essential fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody. . . is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel." The book's highest art is to be the drug it is about, whether chemical or political. To read it is to swim through the highs and lows of the smokes and fluids that shatter the mind, to survive again the terror of the politics of unreason. Since plot has been scrapped, the whole thing must be done in the details, in cameo sketches and weird encounters that flare and fade into the backdrop of the reader's imagination. These details are technically accurate, which is a contemporary form of literary precision, with all ambiguity intact. The same accuracy is preserved in the use of drugs as metaphor. The suggestion is that to drop acid in 1966 was to seek the flower at the heart of the cosmos, but to shoot heroin in 1972 is to hide from the pain of the President's face. ("It is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon. . .") Dope--once mystic, private and ecstatic--has become just another way to kiss goodbye. ---------- The New York Times > Books > 'Fear and Loathing in America' http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/10/books/thompson-2000-inamerica.html December 10, 2000 Reviewed by CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY "It's been a weird night,'' Hunter S. Thompson wrote the CBS News correspondent Hughes Rudd one morning in 1973 as dawn broke over Owl Farm, his ''fortified compound'' in Woody Creek, Colo., ''and I've been dealing with a head full of something rumored to be LSD-25 for the past six hours, but on the evidence I suspect it was mainly that PCP animal tranq, laced with enough speed to KEEP the arms & legs moving. The brain is another question, I think, but I keep hoping we'll have it under control before long.'' A great many of the letters in this, the second volume of a projected trilogy of the letters of the monstre sacr? of American journalism, appear to have been written under various chemical influences in the wee small hours: ''Cazart! It's 5:57 a.m. now & the Aspen FM station is howling 'White Rabbit' -- a good omen, eh?''; ''It's 6:37 now''; ''Christ, it's 5:40 a.m.'' Sometimes the sun is halfway to the meridian before he reaches for the off button on his I.B.M. Selectric: ''It's 10:33 in the morning & this is the longest letter I've ever written. It began as a quick note to wrap up loose ends.'' This makes for some pretty electric reading, and for some not-so-electric reading. During the period covered in this collection, Thompson was a vital, deliriously erratic force in journalism, covering the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the 1968 election of Richard M. Nixon, the 1972 campaign, Watergate, the falls of Nixon and Saigon. There are letters here to Tom Wolfe; Senator Eugene McCarthy; the Chicano lawyer Oscar Acosta (the inspiration for the ''300-pound Samoan attorney'' character in ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''); Charles Kuralt; Thompson's Random House editor, Jim Silberman; Warren Hinckle (then the editor of Ramparts magazine); the soon-to-be-elected Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein; Paul Krassner; Jann Wenner; the illustrator Ralph Steadman; Joe Eszterhas (then a reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer); Senator George McGovern; Gary Hart (then McGovern's campaign manager); Anthony Burgess; Patrick J. Buchanan (then a Nixon speechwriter); Robert Kennedy's former campaign press secretary Frank Mankiewicz; Garry Wills; Jimmy Carter (then a presidential candidate); Thompson's then-lawyer Sandy Berger, who is now the national security adviser; the movie director Bob Rafelson; the political prankster Dick Tuck; and the Merry Prankster Ken Kesey. That's a pretty good sampling of the folks who brought you the 60's and 70's. This being an omnium-gatherum of the Thompsonian ''gonzo'' archive, there are also memorandums, drafts of book-jacket copy and movie treatment outlines. It's not surprising that so many of these letters are about what one of Thompson's early boosters, Tom Wolfe, once declared the great subject of American writers: money -- in this case the general lack of it and the desperate need for more. Thompson is always one step ahead of the Internal Revenue Service, the Diner's Club or a hornet-mad collection agency. Yet again, one is sadly reminded that writing an American classic -- in this case, ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' -- is no guarantee of financial security. That book, which began as a series of articles in Rolling Stone, sold only about 18,000 copies in hardcover when it was published in 1972. ''I find myself,'' Thompson wrote to his mother, ''getting 'famous,' but no richer than I was before people started recognizing & harassing me almost everywhere I go.'' On the brighter side, a quarter-century later finds Thompson still alive, despite a lifestyle that, if these letters are accurate, would surely have long ago brought down a milder constitution. One of the things that made Thompson an ''outlaw'' hero to this reviewer's generation was the demonic zest of his invective and contumely. The DNA of Thompson's adjectival lexicon is made up of the following, often in sequence: ''vicious,'' ''rancid,'' ''savage,'' ''fiendish,'' ''filthy,'' ''rotten,'' ''demented,'' ''treacherous,'' ''heinous,'' ''scurvy,'' ''devious,'' ''grisly,'' ''hamwit,'' ''filthy,'' ''foetid,'' ''cheapjack'' and ''hellish.'' Favorite gerunds and other verb forms of abuse include ''festering,'' ''stinking,'' ''crazed,'' ''deranged,'' ''soul-ripping,'' ''drooling,'' ''rabbit-punching'' and ''knee-crawling,'' to say nothing of even more piquant expressions. ''You worthless . . . bastard,'' begins a mock-malevolent letter to his good friend Tom Wolfe, in response to a letter Wolfe wrote him while on a lecture tour in Italy, ''I just got your letter of Feb 25 from Le Grande Hotel in Roma, you swine! Here you are running around . . . Italy in that filthy white suit at a thousand bucks a day . . . while I'm out here in the middle of these . . . frozen mountains in a death-battle with the taxman & nursing cheap wine while my dogs go hungry & my cars explode and a legion of nazi lawyers makes my life a . . . Wobbly nightmare. . . . You decadent pig . . . you thieving pile of albino warts. . . . The hammer of justice looms, and your filthy white suit will become a flaming shroud!'' Reading Hunter Thompson is like using gasoline for after-shave -- bracing. ''His voice is sui generis,'' writes David Halberstam in the foreword. ''It is not to be imitated, and I can't think of anything worse than for any young journalist to try to imitate Hunter.'' True enough. Thompson's maniac style -- and pharmacology -- made him a folk hero on college campuses about the time these letters were written. Garry Trudeau made him into the character Duke in ''Doonesbury.'' (Trudeau is referred to here in a letter to Thompson's lawyer as ''that dope-addled nazi cartoonist.'') Reading these letters does make one consider how relatively pallid our own times are, compared with the stomping mad epoch in which he wrote them. Assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon. Today's big issues are prescription drugs for the elderly and whither-the-Middle-East-peace-process. An amphetamine-crazed, Wild Turkey-swilling Hunter Thompson on the press bus in the year 2000 would probably be put off at the first stop, as the British writer Will Self was a few years ago when he was discovered taking heroin aboard Prime Minister John Major's press plane. It's doubtful that Thompson's antics -- like setting fire to the door of the Jimmy Carter aide Hamilton Jordan's New York hotel room in 1976 -- would be looked on as scampish by today's PC commissars. This isn't to suggest his antics didn't eventually wear thin -- as anyone who ever sat through one of his college-lecture-circuit performances would admit -- but it sure was fun to watch at the time. The question that lingers is, how much of it was true? How much of it was journalism, as opposed to something between ''new journalism'' and out-and-out fiction? The historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited these letters and has written a fine introduction, concludes, ''It would be a mistake to claim that 'Fear and Loathing in America' answers the question of whether Thompson writes fiction or nonfiction.'' Really? We find Thompson writing frantic letters to his lawyer Sandy Berger, threatening the Washington writer Sally Quinn and Esquire magazine with legal action, because the magazine has published an excerpt from her book in which she quotes him saying that ''at least 45 percent of what I write is true.'' Naturally, he's a bit concerned about what effect this might have on his employers. A few pages later, in a letter to Quinn, he writes that he usually tells people that ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' was ''60 percent-80 percent'' true, ''for reasons that should be perfectly obvious.'' Earlier on, in a letter to Bill Cardoso of The Boston Globe, who had coined the term ''gonzo journalism,'' he calls one of his own articles for Scanlan's Monthly ''a classic of irresponsible journalism.'' The clincher comes in a letter to his Random House editor, in which he admits that the book ''was a very conscious attempt to simulate drug freakout. . . . I didn't really make up anything -- but I did, at times, bring situations & feelings I remember from other scenes to the reality at hand.'' He later wrote to the same editor, ''I have never had much respect or affection for journalism.'' One feels Brinkley's pain, but the reasonable reader concludes that Thompson's reportage has an impressionistic side -- for which his fans, including this one, are profoundly grateful. These untidy letters are welcome, showing us as they do a great American original in his lair. Just one word of advice: if one of his peacocks or Dobermans comes at you, be very, very afraid. ------------ The New York Times > Books > 'The Rum Diary' http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/29/books/thompson-1998-rum.html November 29, 1998 Reviewed by DAVID KELLY Drugs must have done wonders for Hunter S. Thompson, if we can go by his first novel, ''The Rum Diary.'' There are no narcotics in this early work, and there is also none of the maniacal wit and deranged exuberance that roared through the ''Fear and Loathing'' books. The publisher says the novel, which is set mainly in Puerto Rico in the late 1950's, was begun in 1959, when the future Dr. Duke was only 22 years old, but doesn't say when Thompson put the finishing touches on this piece of juvenilia (perhaps last month?). His narrator, Paul Kemp, leaves New York and the White Horse Tavern behind for a job with The San Juan Daily News, an English-language publication modeled on one that Thompson himself worked for. The fictional paper is known for its colorful journalists, who ''ran the whole gamut from genuine talents and honest men to degenerates and hopeless losers who could barely write a postcard.'' The editor is an ex-Communist from Florida named Lotterman, who says things like ''You're damn tootin' '' and at other times sounds as if he were auditioning for ''The McLaughlin Group'': '' 'We have a responsibility! A free press is vital! If a pack of deadbeats get hold of this newspaper it's the beginning of the end. First they'll get this one, then they'll get a few more, and one day they'll get The Times -- can you imagine it?' ''I said I couldn't. '' 'They'll get us all!' '' For someone who gets to drink rum all day and have sex on the beach (the real thing, not the cocktail) all night, Kemp is pretty morose. At 30, he finds himself caught between ''a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other.'' Part of his problem is San Juan itself, which yanqui carpetbaggers have now discovered and which Thompson evokes with some flair: ''There was a strange and unreal air about the whole world I'd come into. It was amusing and vaguely depressing at the same time. Here I was, living in a luxury hotel, racing around a half-Latin city in a toy car that looked like a cockroach and sounded like a jet fighter, sneaking down alleys and . . . scavenging for food in shark-infested waters, hounded by mobs yelling in a foreign tongue -- and the whole thing was taking place in quaint old Spanish Puerto Rico, where everybody spent American dollars and drove American cars and sat around roulette wheels pretending they were in Casablanca. One part of the city looked like Tampa and the other part looked like a medieval asylum.'' For a while, not a lot happens in the novel. But trouble looms. First, Kemp and two colleagues, Yeamon and Sala, are beaten up by the cops. Then real disaster strikes on St. Thomas, where a carnival has lured Kemp, Yeamon and Yeamon's sexy blond girlfriend, Chenault, whom our hero has lusted after since Chapter 1. On the island, the signs are ominous: people are looting a liquor store and chanting ''Busha boomba, balla wa! Busha boomba, balla wa!'' Before long, Chenault is dancing suggestively for the locals; nothing good can come of that. She disappears, or is disappeared. Will the hard-bitten reporters leave her behind? Will she find her way back to Puerto Rico? Will she and Kemp finally play house? You're damn tootin'. ''A week in Vegas,'' Hunter Thompson once wrote, ''is like stumbling into a Time Warp, a regression to the late 50's.'' The same goes for ''The Rum Diary.'' If you're looking for the birthplace of gonzo, you won't find it here. ------------ The New York Times > Books > 'The Proud Highway' http://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/25/books/thompson-1997-proud.html July 25, 1997 Reviewed by RICHARD BERNSTEIN One thing that this collection of letters makes clear at the outset is that Hunter S. Thompson, he of the ''Fear and Loathing'' books, for whom the phrase ''gonzo journalist'' was invented, has always burned to carve his initials onto the collective awareness. What other kind of person would, beginning in his teen years, make carbon copies of every letter he wrote -- to his mother, his Army friends and commanding officers, his girlfriends, his various agents and editors -- specifically in the hope that they would be published? Mr. Thompson, by dint of hard work and enormous talent, has gotten his wish. Edited by Douglas Brinkley and adorned with a sparkling essay by the novelist William J. Kennedy, ''The Proud Highway'' takes Mr. Thompson's caustic, furious, funny, look-at-me correspondence through 1967, when the author, having arrived on the scene with his book ''Hell's Angels,'' was 30. It is noteworthy that although just one in seven of the relevant cache of letters was included, this book, labeled ''The Fear and Loathing Letters, Volume I,'' weighs in at just under 700 pages -- and there are still 30 more years to go. Even some of the photographs of Mr. Thompson were taken by the author himself, self-portraits of the writer at work and at play. Manifestly, this is a man who, while anti-snobbish to a fault, abusively contemptuous of self-promotion and pretension, had a powerful need to make a record of himself and to make that record public. Fortunately, the maverick vibrancy and originality of the record's creator fully redeems what might otherwise have been an act of egomaniacal temerity. The Hunter S. Thompson that emerges in this collection of his letters, complemented by fragments of his other writings, is very much the unrestrained, strenuously nonconformist, Lone Ranger journalist who achieved cult status long ago. One thinks of Mr. Thompson a bit as one thinks of the hero of George Macdonald Fraser's fictional Flashman books, Flashman rampaging like Don Quixote through the major events of the 19th century, making them his own. Mr. Hunter rampaged through the 60's and 70's of this century, not reporting on them in any conventional sense but using them as raw material for the text that was his own life. Taken together, as Mr. Brinkley correctly points out in his editor's note, the Thompson correspondence is ''an informal and offbeat history of two decades in American life,'' the two decades in question having produced the counterculture that Mr. Thompson both chronicled and helped produce. The overriding sensibility, inherited from H. L. Mencken, consists of an eloquent, hyperbolic impatience with the supposed mediocrity of American life, its Rotarian culture, its complacency and its pieties. ''Young people of America, awake from your slumber of indolence and harken the call of the future!'' the 18-year-old Mr. Thompson wrote in the first piece reproduced in this book, taken from the yearbook of the Louisville Male High School in Kentucky. ''I'm beginning to think you're a phony, Graham,'' Mr. Hunter writes eight years later in 1963, the Graham in question being Philip L. Graham, president of the Washington Post Company. Mr. Hunter, a freelancer writing articles from South America, was moved to a rage by an article in Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post, that was critical of The National Observer, which was publishing his work. This, evidently, was a guy who took no guff, whose Ayn Rand-influenced determination to do things his way required not only that he make no compromises but that he be seen as making none. Graham invited Mr. Hunter to ''write me a somewhat less breathless letter, in which you tell me about yourself,'' and Mr. Thompson did so. He compliments his correspondent on the ''cavalier tone that in some circles would pass for a very high kind of elan'' but warns him against interpreting his letter as ''a devious means of applying for a job on the assembly line at Newsweek, or covering speeches for The Washington Post. I sign what I write, and I mean to keep on signing it.'' By 1967, Mr. Thompson, who has risen in the world, is blasting others for nincompoopery and knavishness. ''I have every honest and serious intention of wreaking a thoroughly personal and honest vengeance on Scott Meredith himself, in the form of cracking his teeth with a knotty stick and rupturing every other bone and organ I can make contact with in the short time I expect will be allotted to me,'' he writes in a letter to his editor at Random House, speaking of the literary agent whom he has just, in any case, dismissed. ''I am probably worse than you think, as a person, but what the hell?'' he wrote to Meredith. ''When I get hungry for personal judgment on myself, I'll call for a priest.'' Mr. Thompson is not always making symbolic threats. This volume shows him as a loyal and clever friend devoted to sporting, high-spirited repartee. It shows him also as a stingingly good stylist as well as a hard-drinking, gun-toting adventurer who never loses his sense of humor even when he is being bitten by South American beetles or stomped on by members of an American motorcycle gang. The letters and other fragments in this collection are invested with the same rugged, outspoken individualism as his more public writings, which make them just as difficult to put down. What makes them ever more irresistible is that they lend substance to the legend of his life as an ultimate countercultural romance. If books like ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' conveyed the image of a handsome young man riding his motorcycle at 100 miles an hour on the defiant highway of the untrammeled life, this collection of his private statements will show that the image was true. ''The most important thing a writer can have,'' he wrote to a friend when he was 21, is ''the ability to live with constant loneliness and a strong sense of revulsion for the banalities of everyday socializing.'' Evidently, he meant what he said. ------------- The New York Times > Books > 'Songs of the Doomed' http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/25/books/thompson-1990-doomed.html November 25, 1990 Reviewed by RON ROSENBAUM SAIGON, May 1975. The city is about to fall to the National Liberation Front. The last American reporters left in the besieged capital are calculating when to fly out before the honorable desire to stay to the bloody end becomes merely suicidal. Meanwhile, Hunter S. Thompson has just flown in to the encircled city with $30,000 in cash taped to his body (don't ask). Only to learn he has been fired by Rolling Stone (some bitter dispute with its publisher, Jann Wenner, over a book advance) and both his medical insurance and his Telex card link to the outside world have been canceled by the magazine. No problem. He's got a plan. He's going to convince the enemy that he's their one true friend in American journalism, that he should be the one to cover the final assault on the capital -- from behind enemy lines. And so up in his room in Saigon's Hotel Continental Plaza he bangs out a "Confidential Memo to Colonel Giang Vo Don Giang," one of a number of memos, cables, fragments of memoirs and novels, and eviction notices collected in "Songs of the Doomed," along with some of Mr. Thompson's best work of the past three decades. In his memo to the Vietcong colonel Mr. Thompson tries heroically to communicate just what kind of writer he is, why he's different from other journalists. It's not an easy job. "I trust you understand that, as a professional para-journalist, I am in the same position today that you were as a para-military professional about three years ago," he tells the colonel, and he offers to send him one of his classic works, "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." He tells the colonel that he knows Jane Fonda. And he informs him, "I am one of the best writers currently using the English language as both a musical instrument and a political weapon." While self-effacement has never been one of Mr. Thompson's strengths, I think he was absolutely right about how good a writer he was then. Fans across the political spectrum from Norman Mailer to Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley Jr. have said as much in the past. Is it still true now? Those of us who lack access to the biweekly column he wrote for The San Francisco Examiner until earlier this year (Mr. Thompson's chief outlet since his split with Rolling Stone) have had to await periodic appearances of these volumes of "The Gonzo Papers." The last one, Volume Two, cheerfully titled "Generation of Swine," chiefly concerned itself with Mr. Thompson's jeremiads against the 80's. This new volume, it should be noted, arrives under something of a cloud, if internal evidence is to be believed. A peculiar editor's note before the final section informs us, "Our contract allowed us to go to press with whatever sections of the book we already had our hands on -- despite the author's objections and bizarre motions filed by his attorneys in courts all over the country." Reading between the lines one gathers that Mr. Thompson is planning on coming out with an entirely separate book on his recent legal ordeal and vindication -- this summer a judge in Aspen, Colo., threw out charges of sexual harassment and drug and weapons possession against Mr. Thompson, which grew out of a dispute that involved a former pornographic film maker and a Jacuzzi. Mr. Thompson is now suing authorities for "malicious prosecution" and general revenge. Evidently, Mr. Thompson did not want to skim the cream off the forthcoming book (working title: "99 Days: The Trial of Hunter S. Thompson"), but the editors wanted something from him about the celebrated case in this volume. So they have apparently chosen the dubious tactic of appending various clippings, reports and public domain documents on the case to the book, seemingly against the author's wishes. Of course, this whole business of Mr. Thompson making "bizarre" threats against his own book -- indeed the editor's note itself -- could be a device concocted by the author. He is often at his best when he deploys the apparently extraneous detritus of the journalism process as his most expressive vehicle. One of the high points of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," arguably his best book, is a section introduced by an editor's note declaring that, "in the interests of journalistic purity," the editor is presenting a "verbatim transcript" of a cassette found among Mr. Thompson's effects after he disappeared to escape Vegas debt collectors. Of course that is the heart of the book -- that ostensibly artless but suspiciously artful transcript of a conversation with a waitress in a coffee shop on Paradise Road about the precise location of the American dream. Indeed, one of the high points of "Songs of the Doomed" is another alleged document, Mr. Thompson's "Secret Cable to Willie Hearst." Subject: his expenses. According to Mr. Thompson, Mr. Hearst's Examiner hasn't been paying them. "I now list my Examiner expense bills on my 1040 form as 'uncollectible debts,' " Mr. Thompson writes. "And we now have a column that will never be written from anywhere more than 2.1 miles from the Post Office in Woody Creek," Mr. Thompson's Colorado home. Mr. Thompson characteristically extracts a profound truth about journalism here from what might seem on the surface to be the standard expense-account memo whine. "The Old Man [ William Randolph Hearst Sr. ] was a monster," he writes, "but nobody ever accused him of skimming nickels and dimes off his best writers' expense accounts -- and it wasn't his cheapjack accountants who made him a legend in American journalism and the highest roller of his time." The classic Thompson pieces in "Songs of the Doomed," the kind of stories that have made him a high-rolling legend in journalism, are the ones in which he is out there on the highway running up expenses in search of emblematic weirdness, "Whooping It Up With The War Junkies" in Saigon" or pursuing "Bad Craziness in Palm Beach." But even more interesting than such successes in the book are the self-acknowledged failures: fragments of novels begun in the late 50's and early 60's, before Mr. Thompson burst onto the scene with "Hell's Angels" and his two "Fear and Loathing" books. While not a formal autobiography, the early novels, "Prince Jellyfish" and "The Rum Diary," do give us glimpses of the man behind the maniacal mask, the struggling writer before he attained sacred-monster status. In the novel fragments we see the young former serviceman, an idealistic good ol' boy from Kentucky who reads Fitzgerald, comes to New York full of wonder hoping to make his mark in journalism by telling The Truth, finds himself rejected and scorned by cynical big-city editors, gets beaten up and disillusioned, and ends up in a kind of self-created hell as a reporter for a bowling magazine in San Juan (don't ask). There he almost self-destructs, stewing in his own bitterness before he catches on with The National Observer, the short-lived Dow Jones weekly, and his work starts getting noticed. One thing you take away from these fragments is a sense of Hunter Thompson as far more complex and, well, sensitive than the cynical Uncle Duke caricature of him in "Doonesbury." All that rage in his work, all that fear and loathing, is the product, it seems, not of the sneering cynic but of a bitterly disillusioned idealist. Reading "Songs of the Doomed" reminds us how good he was at his best, and how good he still can be when he's given the freedom -- and expenses -- to hit the road, rather than stewing in his own bitterness in Woody Creek. Memo to Willie Hearst: Give this man back his expense account. Ron Rosenbaum is a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and the author of the forthcoming "Travels With Dr. Death: And Other Unusual Investigations." THE MONSTER OF WOODY CREEK Now that he knows he's not going to jail, Hunter S. Thompson can concentrate on his favorite activity: writing. With drug and other charges against him dismissed, and with "Songs of the Doomed" (originally subtitled "33 Years of No Sleep") published, he has resumed work on a novel and may resume his column in The San Francisco Examiner. He is also planning a book about his recent legal troubles. "I can do a column and a novel at the same time," Mr. Thompson said in a telephone interview from his home in Woody Creek, Colo., "but I can't do a column and go on trial and edit my 30-year-old writing at the same time." Mr. Thompson's forthcoming novel, "Polo Is My Life," is touted on the jacket of "Songs of the Doomed" as his "long-awaited sex book" -- a delayed response, he said, to a comment made by William F. Buckley Jr. in a review of his book "The Great Shark Hunt." "He said something like 'Thompson never mentions sex; apparently he doesn't believe in it.' I said, 'O.K., if you want a sex book, I'll give you one.' And when the Monster of Gonzo says he's going to write a sex book, I guess it's not going to be anything normal." The inventor of the term "gonzo journalism" ("Nobody really knows what it means, but it sounds like an epithet") said that, for him, journalism "can be an effective political tool." "When I started writing the column, there were three people I wanted to get: Evan Mecham, who was then Governor of Arizona; Ed Meese, who was then Attorney General; and George Bush. I did get two out of three, but the big one got away." -- PETER KEEPNEWS ------------- The New York Times > Books > 'Hell's Angels' http://www.nytimes.com/1967/01/29/books/thompson-1967-angels.html January 29, 1967 Reviewed by LEO E. LITWAK In 1965 the Attorney General of the State of California distributed a report on the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club to law enforcement agencies throughout the state, urging that all measures be taken to contain the menace of this elite outlaw organization. According to the Lynch report, the 450 members of the club had a record of 874 felony arrests, 300 felony convictions, more than 1,000 misdemeanor convictions. The report held that there would have been an even more extensive record, but for the Angels' practice of intimidating witnesses. The criminal actions listed by the Lynch report ranged from the terrorization of rural communities to the theft of motorcycle parts. Included were detailed charges of attempted murder, assault and battery, malicious destruction of property, narcotics violations and sexual aberrations. Investigating officers further reported that "both club members and female associates seem badly in need of a bath." It was a picture of alarming menace. Depraved hoodlums--unmanageable, incorrigible, vindictive and organized--roamed the California highways in stripped down Harley-Davidson motorcycles. They were dressed like pirates, with full beards, a ring in one ear, shoulder-length hair, an embroidered winged skull on the backs of their sleeveless denim jackets, Iron Crosses on their chests, swastikas on their helmets. These weren't the teen-agers of the usual urban gang, but adults, ranging in age from the early 20's to the mid-40's. They could strike anywhere in the state, and they didn't fear the police. The underground in which they were lords seemed dark, rancid, impenetrable. Hunter Thompson entered this terra incognita to become its cartographer. For almost a year, he accompanied the Hell's Angels on their rallies. He drank at their bars, exchanged home visits, recorded their brutalities, viewed their sexual caprices, became converted to their motorcycle mystique, and was so intrigued, as he puts it, that "I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hell's Angels or being slowly absorbed by them." At the conclusion of his year's tenure the ambiguity of his position was ended when a group of Angels knocked him to the ground and stomped him. Without denying that the Angels are violent, unpredictable and dangerous, Thompson regards the Lynch report as vastly exaggerating their menace and misrepresenting their life in crime. "There was a certain pleasure," he writes, "in sharing the Angels' amusement at the stir they created." According to Thompson, the membership is in the neighborhood of 100, not 450 as the report claimed. The failure to get convictions had less to do with the intimidation of witnesses than with the baselessness of the complaints. Police harassment was responsible for the large number of misdemeanor convictions. Thompson, noting the relatively insignificant part the Angels play in California crime statistics, is amused at the disproportionate publicity they have secured. He argues that publicity saved the club from extinction. Prior to the Lynch report, club fortunes were on the wane. The Lynch report called the Angels to the attention of national media and with the "publicity breakthrough" they again flourished. Thompson, in a tone of exuberant irony reminiscent of Mencken, comments, "In a nation of frightened dullards there is a shortage of outlaws." The underworld Thompson reveals to us is a more familiar terrain than the shadowy nightmare world of the Lynch report. He doesn't find an effective criminal conspiracy, nor does he see an organization ground in Nazi ideology. He draws a picture of desperate men, without status and-- despite their motorcycles--without mobility. He traces their origins to the Okies and Arkies and hillbillies who migrated to California during the Depression. He finds the literary prototype of their ancestor in the protagonist of Nelson Algren's "A Walk on the Wild Side," Dove Linkhorn. Most Angels are uneducated. Only one Angel in 10 has steady work; "Motorcycle outlaws are not much in demand on the labor market." The world demands skills they have no chance of acquiring; "They are out of the ball game and they know it." They have no future; "In a world increasingly geared to specialists, technicians, and fantastically complicated machinery, the Hell's Angels are obvious losers, and it bugs them." They survive in various ways. According to Thompson, a few have steady work, some pander, some steal, some live off their ladies. Some are married and faithful to their wives. Others have a predilection for gang love. What they share is a guiding concern to be "righteous Angels" and a love for motorcycles. An Angel is quoted as saying, "We don't lie to each other. Of course that don't go for outsiders because we have to fight fire with fire." Thompson describes the attitude of a Hell's Angel to outsiders as follows: "To him they are all the same--the running dogs of whatever fiendish conspiracy has plagued him all these years. He knows that somewhere behind the moat, the Main Cop has scrawled his name on a blackboard in the Big Briefing Room with a notation beside it: 'Get this boy, give him no peace, he's incorrigible, like an egg-sucking dog.'" Mounted on his bike, he assumes a dignity he often lacks on foot. The high-speed trip described by Thompson is akin to the psychedelic trip made on LSD. The Angel has small chance of assuming the role of hero save in a fantasy trip. "Most Angels. . . are well enough grounded in the eternal verities to know that very few of the toads in this world are Charming Princes in disguise. The others are simply toads, and no matter how many magic maidens they kiss or rape, they are going to stay that way." Vindictive at being toads, they invert the ethic of Prince Charming. The initiation ceremony of an Angel centers on the defiling of his new uniform and emblem. "A bucket of dung and urine will be collected during the meeting, then poured on the newcomer's head in a solemn baptismal." They never wash their soiled colors. They mock the courtly love of Prince Charming with gang love. Instead of the gentlemanly duel they subscribe to the principle of All on One. They don't seek justice in dispensing punishment. Rather, the response is always one of total retaliation. "If a man gets wise, mash his face. If a woman snubs you, rape her. This is the thinking, if not the reality, behind the whole Angel's act." The Angel rejects precautions, whether riding a motorcycle or entering a brawl. "They inhabit a world in which violence is as common as spilled beer." The Angel has been injured so often that he is indifferent to pain. "This casual acceptance of bloodletting is a key to the terror they inspire in the squares. . . . It is a simple matter of having been hit or stomped often enough to forget the ugly panic that nice people associate with a serious fight." The "reality behind the Angel's whole act" is that most of the damage is inflicted on themselves. An average of four die violently each year. The easy acceptance of violence lends to Thompson's account a cartoon quality. We observe Angels brutalizing themselves and others and somehow we expect them to recover as quickly as the cartoon cat and mouse. It's not that Thompson doesn't give us a vivid picture of brawls and orgies. His language is brilliant, his eye is remarkable, and his point of view is reminiscent of Huck Finn's. He'll look at anything; he won't compromise his integrity. Somehow his exuberance and innocence are unaffected by what he sees. Dirty Ed is laid flat by a two-foot lead pipe, but he gets up and drives away on his motorcycle. Terry the Tramp is stomped by the Diablos, a rival gang, but he still manages to make the Labor Day run. We see a mass assault on a compliant lady during a party; the dancing continues. A 7- foot Negro invades the Angel clubroom. He is overwhelmed, cast down, kicked in the face and belly, dumped in the parking lot. He gets up and walks to the ambulance. During Thompson's last interview with a group of Angels, he is suddenly struck from behind, then from all sides. He is knocked down and stomped. He is almost done in by a "vicious swine trying to get at me with the stone held in a two-handed Godzilla grip." He gets to a hospital unaided. Because the Hell's Angels have lacked a focus for their hostility, their violence has been undirected. However, those who observe the trappings--the swastikas and Iron Crosses--have wondered if there might not be in them the raw material out of which Brown Shirts are made. This suspicion seemed confirmed when, in the fall of 1965, a group of Hell's Angels attacked an anti-war rally at the Oakland-Berkeley boundary, an assault which put them into direct conflict with the radical left in neighboring Berkeley. "The attack was an awful shock to those who had seen the Hell's Angels as pioneers of the human spirit, but to anyone who knew them it was entirely logical. The Angels' collective viewpoint has always been fascistic. They insist and seem to believe that their swastika fetish is no more than an anti-social joke, a guaranteed gimmick to bug the squares, the taxpayers--all those they spitefully refer to as 'citizens.' . . . If they wanted to be artful about bugging the squares they would drop the swastika and decorate their bikes with the hammer and sickle. That would really raise hell on the freeways. . . hundreds of Communist thugs roaming the countryside on big motorcycles, looking for trouble." However, the threat to disrupt all future anti-war demonstrations didn't materialize. A visit from poet Allen Ginsberg and novelist Ken Kesey served to pacify the Angels and there has been no recent sign of political direction. Hunter Thompson has presented us with a close view of a world most of us would never dare encounter, yet one with which we should be familiar. He has brought on stage men who have lost all options and are not reconciled to the loss. They have great resources for violence which doesn't as yet have any effective focus. Thompson suggests that these few Angels are but the vanguard of a growing army of disappropriated, disaffiliated and desperate men. There's always the risk that somehow they may force the wrong options into being. ----------------- The New York Times > Books > First Chapter: 'The Rum Diary' http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/28/books/thompson-1st-rum.html By HUNTER S. THOMPSON Published: November 28, 1998 My apartment in New York was on Perry Street, a five minute walk from the White Horse. I often drank there, but I was never accepted because I wore a tie. The real people wanted no part of me. I did some drinking there on the night I left for San Juan. Phil Rollins, who'd worked with me, was paying for the ale, and I was swilling it down, trying to get drunk enough to sleep on the plane. Art Millick, the most vicious cab driver in New York, was there. So was Duke Peterson, who had just come back from the Virgin Islands. I recall Peterson giving me a list of people to look up when I got to St. Thomas, but I lost the list and never met any of them. It was a rotten night in the middle of January, but I wore a light cord coat. Everyone else had on heavy jackets and flannel suits. The last thing I remember is standing on the dirty bricks of Hudson Street, shaking hands with Rollins and cursing the freezing wind that blew in off the river. Then I got in Millick's cab and slept all the way to the airport. I was late and there was a line at the reservations desk. I fell in behind fifteen or so Puerto Ricans and one small blonde girl a few places ahead of me. I pegged her for a tourist, a wild young secretary going down to the Caribbean for a two week romp. She had a fine little body and an impatient way of standing that indicated a mass of stored-up energy. I watched her intently, smiling, feeling the ale in my veins, waiting for her to turn around for a swift contact with the eyes. She got her ticket and walked away toward the plane. There were still three Puerto Ricans in front of me. Two of them did their business and passed on, but the third was stymied by the clerk's refusal to let him carry a huge cardboard box on the plane as hand baggage. I gritted my teeth as they argued. Finally I broke in. "Hey!" I shouted. "What the hell is this? I have to get on that plane!" The clerk looked up, disregarding the shouts of the little man in front of me. "What's your name?" I told him, got my ticket, and bolted for the gate. When I got to the plane I had to shove past five or six people waiting to board. I showed my ticket to the grumbling stewardess and stepped inside to scan the seats on both sides of the aisle. Not a blonde head anywhere. I hurried up to the front, thinking that she might be so small that her head wouldn't show over the back seat. But she wasn't on the plane and by this time there were only two double seats left. I fell into one on the aisle and put my typewriter on the one next to the window. They were starting the engines when I looked out and saw her coming across the runway, waving at the stewardess who was about to close the door. "Wait a minute!" I shouted. "Another passenger!" I watched until she reached the bottom of the steps. Then I turned around to smile as she came on. I was reaching for my typewriter, thinking to put it on the floor, when an old man shoved in front of me and sat down in the seat I was saving. "This seat's taken," I said quickly, grabbing him by the arm. He jerked away and snarled something in Spanish, turning his head toward the window. I grabbed him again. "Get up," I said angrily. He started to yell just as the girl went by and stopped a few feet up the aisle, looking around for a seat. "Here's one," I said, giving the old man a savage jerk. Before she could turn around the stewardess was on me, pulling at my arm. "He sat on my typewriter," I explained, helplessly watching the girl find a seat far up at the front of the plane. The stewardess patted the old man's shoulder and eased him back to the seat. "What kind of a bully are you?" she asked me. "I should put you off." I grumbled and slumped back in the seat. The old man stared straight ahead until we got off the ground. "You rotten old bastard," I mumbled at him. He didn't even blink, and finally I shut my eyes and tried to sleep. Now and then I would glance up at the blonde head at the front of the plane. Then they turned out the lights and I couldn't see anything. It was dawn when I woke up. The old man was still asleep and I leaned across him to look out the window. Several thousand feet below us the ocean was dark blue and calm as a lake. Up ahead I saw an island, bright green in the early morning sun. There were beaches along the edge of it, and brown swamps further inland. The plane started down and the stewardess announced that we should all buckle our safety belts. Moments later we swept in over acres of palm trees and taxied to a halt in front of the big terminal. I decided to stay in my seat until the girl came past, then get up and walk with her across the runway. Since we were the only white people on the plane, it would seem quite natural. The others were standing now, laughing and jabbering as they waited for the stewardess to open the door. Suddenly the old man jumped up and tried to scramble over me like a dog. Without thinking, I slammed him back against the window, causing a thump that silenced the crowd. The man appeared to be sick and tried to scramble past me again, shouting hysterically in Spanish. "You crazy old bastard!" I yelled, shoving him back with one hand and reaching for my typewriter with the other. The door was open now and they were filing out. The girl came past me and I tried to smile at her, keeping the old man pinned against the window until I could back into the aisle. He was raising so much hell, shouting and waving his arms, that I was tempted to belt him in the throat to calm him down. Then the stewardess arrived, followed by the co-pilot, who demanded to know what I thought I was doing. "He's been beating that old man ever since we left New York," said the stewardess. "He must be a sadist." They kept me there for ten minutes and at first I thought they meant to have me arrested. I tried to explain, but I was so tired and confused that I couldn't think what I was saying. When they finally let me go I slunk off the plane like a criminal, squinting and sweating in the sun as I crossed the runway to the baggage room. It was crowded with Puerto Ricans and the girl was nowhere in sight. There was not much hope of finding her now and I was not optimistic about what might happen if I did. Few girls look with favor on a man of my stripe, a brutalizer of old people. I remembered the expression on her face when she saw me with the old man pinned against the window. It was almost too much to overcome. I decided to get some breakfast and pick up my baggage later on. The airport in San Juan is a fine, modern thing, full of bright colors and suntanned people and Latin rhythms blaring from speakers hung on naked girders above the lobby. I walked up a long ramp, carrying my topcoat and my typewriter in one hand, and a small leather bag in the other. The signs led me up another ramp and finally to the coffee shop. As I went in I saw myself in a mirror, looking dirty and disreputable, a pale vagrant with red eyes. On top of my slovenly appearance, I stank of ale. It hung in my stomach like a lump of rancid milk. I tried not to breathe on anyone as I sat down at the counter and ordered sliced pineapple. Outside, the runway glistened in the early sun. Beyond it a thick palm jungle stood between me and the ocean. Several miles out at sea a sailboat moved slowly across the horizon. I stared for several moments and fell into a trance. It looked peaceful out there, peaceful and hot. I wanted to go into the palms and sleep, take a few chunks of pineapple and wander into the jungle to pass out. Instead, I ordered more coffee and looked again at the cable that had come with my plane ticket. It said I had reservations at the Condado Beach Hotel. It was not yet seven o'clock, but the coffee shop was crowded. Groups of men sat at tables beside the long window, sipping a milky brew and talking energetically. A few wore suits, but most of them had on what appeared to be the uniform of the day--thick-rimmed sunglasses, shiny dark pants and white shirts with short sleeves and ties. I caught snatches of conversation here and there: "... no such thing as cheap beach-front anymore ... yeah, but this ain't Montego, gentlemen ... don't worry, he has plenty, and all we need is ... sewed up, but we gotta move quick before Castro and that crowd jumps in with ..." After ten minutes of half-hearted listening I suspected I was in a den of hustlers. Most of them seemed to be waiting for the seven-thirty flight from Miami, which--from what I gathered of the conversations--would be bulging at the seams with architects, strip-men, consultants and Sicilians fleeing Cuba. Their voices set my teeth on edge. I have no valid complaint against hustlers, no rational bitch, but the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes. Once I was conscious of the talk I couldn't hear anything else. It shattered my feeling of laziness and finally annoyed me so much that I sucked down the rest of my coffee and hurried out of the place. The baggage room was empty. I found my two duffel bags and had a porter carry them out to the cab. All the way through the lobby he favored me with a steady grin and kept saying: "Si, Puerto Rico esta bueno ... ah, si, muy bueno ... mucho ha-ha, si ..." In the cab I leaned back and lit a small cigar I'd bought in the coffee shop. I was feeling better now, warm and sleepy and absolutely free. With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn't fell since my first months in Europe--a mixture of ignorance and a loose, "what the hell" kind of confidence that comes on a man when the wind picks up and he begins to move in a hard straight line toward an unknown horizon. We were speeding along a four-lane highway. Stretching off on both sides was a vast complex of yellow housing developments, laced with tall cyclone fences. Moments later we passed what looked like a new subdivision, full of identical pink and blue houses. There was a billboard at the entrance, announcing to all travelers that they were passing the El Jippo Urbanizacion. A few yards from the billboard was a tiny shack made of palm fronds and tin scraps, and beside it was a hand-painted sign saying "Coco Frio." Inside, a boy of about thirteen leaned on his counter and stared out at the passing cars. Arriving half-drunk in a foreign place is hard on the nerves. You have a feeling that something is wrong, that you can't get a grip. I had this feeling, and when I got to the hotel I went straight to bed. It was four-thirty when I woke up, hungry and dirty and not at all sure where I was. I walked out on my balcony and stared down at the beach. Below me, a crowd of women, children and potbellied men were splashing around in the surf. To my right was another hotel, and then another, each with its own crowded beach. I took a shower, then went downstairs to the open-air lobby. The restaurant was closed, so I tried the bar. It showed every sign of having been flown down intact from a Catskill mountain resort. I sat there for two hours, drinking, eating peanuts and staring out at the ocean. There were roughly a dozen people in the place. The men looked like sick Mexicans, with thin little mustaches and silk suits that glistened like plastic. Most of the women were Americans, a brittle-looking lot, none of them young, all wearing sleeveless cocktail dresses that fit like rubber sacks. I felt like something that had washed up on the beach. My wrinkled cord coat was five years old and frayed at the neck, my pants had no creases and, although it had never occurred to me to wear a tie, I was obviously out of place without one. Rather than seem like a pretender, I gave up on rum and ordered a beer. The bartender eyed me sullenly and I knew the reason why--I was wearing nothing that glistened. No doubt it was the mark of a bad apple. In order to make a go of it here, I would have to get some dazzling clothes. At six-thirty I left the bar and walked outside. It was getting dark and the big Avenida looked cool and graceful. On the other side were homes that once looked out on the beach. Now they looked out on hotels and most of them had retreated behind tall hedges and walls that cut them off from the street. Here and there I could see a patio or a screen porch where people sat beneath fans and drank rum. Somewhere up the street I heard bells, the sleepy tinkling of Brahms' Lullaby. I walked a block or so, trying to get the feel of the place, and the bells kept coming closer. Soon an ice-cream truck appeared, moving slowly down the middle of the street. On its roof was a giant popsicle, flashing on and off with red neon explosions that lit up the whole area. From somewhere in its bowels came the clanging of Mr. Brahms' tune. As it passed me, the driver grinned happily and blew his horn. I immediately hailed a cab, telling the man to take me to the middle of town. Old San Juan is an island, connected to the mainland by several causeways. We crossed on the one that comes in from Condado. Dozens of Puerto Ricans stood along the rails, fishing in the shallow lagoon, and off to my right was a huge white shape beneath a neon sign that said Caribe Hilton. This, I knew, was the cornerstone of The Boom. Conrad had come in like Jesus and all the fish had followed. Before Hilton there was nothing; now the sky was the limit. We passed a deserted stadium and soon we were on a boulevard that ran along a cliff. On one side was the dark Atlantic, and, on the other, across the narrow city, were thousands of colored lights on cruise ships tied up at the waterfront. We turned off the boulevard and stopped at a place the driver said was Plaza Colon. The fare was a dollar-thirty and I gave him two bills. He looked at the money and shook his head. "What's wrong?" I said. He shrugged. "No change, senor." I felt in my pocket--nothing but a nickel. I knew he was lying, but I didn't feel like taking the trouble to get a dollar changed. "You goddamn thief," I said, tossing the bills in his lap. He shrugged again and drove off. The Plaza Colon was a hub for several narrow streets. The buildings were jammed together, two and three stories high, with balconies that hung out over the street. The air was hot, and a smell of sweat and garbage rode on the faint breeze. A chatter of music and voices came from open windows. The sidewalks were so narrow that it was an effort to stay out of the gutter, and fruit vendors blocked the streets with wooden carts, selling peeled oranges for a nickel each. I walked for thirty minutes, looking into windows of stores that sold "Ivy Liga" clothes, peering into foul bars full of whores and sailors, dodging people on the sidewalks, thinking I would collapse at any moment if I didn't find a restaurant. Finally I gave up. There seemed to be no restaurants in the Old City. The only thing I saw was called the New York Diner, and it was closed. In desperation, I hailed a cab and told him to take me to the Daily News. He stared at me. "The newspaper!" I shouted, slamming the door as I got in. "Ah, si," he murmured. "El Diario, si." "No, goddamnit," I said. The Daily News--the American newspaper--El News." He had never heard of it, so we drove back to Plaza Colon, where I leaned out the window and asked a cop. He didn't know either, but finally a man came over from the bus stop and told us where it was. We drove down a cobblestone hill toward the waterfront. There was no sign of a newspaper, and I suspected he was bringing me down here to get rid of me. We turned a corner and he suddenly hit his brakes. Just ahead of us was some kind of a gang-fight, a shouting mob, trying to enter an old greenish building that looked like a warehouse. "Go on," I said to the driver. "We can get by." He mumbled and shook his head. I banged my list on the back of the seat. "Get going! No move--no pay." He mumbled again, but shifted into first and angled toward the far side of the street, putting as much distance as possible between us and the fight. He stopped as we came abreast of the building and I saw that it was a gang of about twenty Puerto Ricans, attacking a tall American in a tan suit. He was standing on the steps, swinging a big wooden sign like a baseball bat. "You rotten little punks!" he yelled. There was a flurry of movement and I heard the sound of thumping and shouting. One of the attackers fell down in the street with blood on his face. The large fellow backed toward the door, waving the sign in front of him. Two men tried to grab it and he whacked one of them in the chest, knocking him down the steps. The others stood away, yelling and shaking their fists. He snarled back at them: "Here it is, punks--come get it!" Nobody moved. He waited a moment, then lifted the sign over his shoulder and threw it into their midst. It hit one man in the stomach, driving him back on the others. I heard a burst of laughter, then he disappeared into the building. "Okay," I said, turning back to the driver. "That's it--let's go." He shook his head and pointed at the building, then at me. "Si, esta News." He nodded, then pointed again at the building. "Si," he said gravely. It dawned on me that we were sitting in front of the Daily News--my new home. I took one look at the dirty mob between me and the door, and decided to go back to the hotel. Just then I heard another commotion. A Volkswagen pulled up behind us and three cops got out, waving long billyclubs and yelling in Spanish. Some of the mob ran, but others stayed to argue. I watched for a moment, then gave the driver a dollar and ran into the building. A sign said the News editorial office was on the second floor. I took an elevator, half expecting to find myself lifted into the midst of more violence. But the door opened on a dark hall, and a little to my left I heard the noise of the city room. The moment I got inside I felt better. There was a friendly messiness about the place, a steady clatter of typewriters and wire machines, even the smell was familiar. The room was so big that it looked empty, although I could see at least ten people. The only one not working was a small, black-haired man at a desk beside the door. He was tilted back in a chair, staring at the ceiling. ---------------- The New York Times > Books > On the Trail Again http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/02/books/thompson-1992--art-notes.html By ESTHER B. FEIN Published: December 2, 1992 It may sound hard to believe, but Hunter S. Thompson, the cynical, drug-infused, strange, gonzo guru and expert on self-medication, actually sounded giddy, like a pee-wee football player whose team had won its first game. "You can beat City Hall," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Woody Creek, Colo., where he is still obviously high (emotionally) over Bill Clinton's defeat of George Bush in the Presidential election. "It was fun, real fun," he said of the campaign and the victory, about which he is writing in his next book, "Better Than Sex: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1992," due in the spring from Random House. "When I covered the campaign trail in '72, that was fun. I did it again in '76 with Jimmy Carter, but that was not fun. I tried to stay out of it this time, avoid it. Stay away. Made a conscious decision not to get involved. But it crept into my life like kudzu vine. Just took over." Original 'Fear' Still Popular Mr. Thompson (who prefers the honorific Dr., although no one is sure what he is doctor of) gave a wild and generational spin to the traditional campaign book with his classic "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" (Warner Books, 1974), his psychedelic and psychotropic record of George S. McGovern's failed run against Richard M. Nixon for the Presidency. That book continues to be very popular, and since 1985, when Random House Inc. began keeping computerized records, it has sold more than 700,000 copies in its Ballantine paperback edition, said David Rosenthal, Mr. Thompson's editor at the Random House adult trade division. The book has sold more than 1.5 million copies overall in paperback and hard cover. Random House has scheduled a 100,000-copy first printing for the new book (for which the company paid in the mid-six figures, people involved in the negotiations said). His new book will not be so much a chronicle as the original, Mr. Thompson said. He admits having become intensely involved with the Clinton staff. "I was down there for election night, day week, taking care of business," he said, his voice a raspy trail. "I'm a junkie -- for campaigns. Even as I tried to stay away to write my novel -- it's about sex; I'm halfway through it -- I knew it would happen." There's Always Paraguay He describes the book as a collection of documents, memos, communications, and notes between himself and members of the Clinton staff. And he is completely open about the book's partisan nature. He said he was planning to move to Paraguay if Mr. Bush had been re-elected. "It's a weird little place," said Mr. Thompson, who is 54 years old. "It's about as far away from anything as you can imagine. Old Nazis go there. It's 50, maybe 100 years behind everything." Four more years of a Bush Administration, he said, "would have pretty much closed down this generation, my generation, in politics." He said he felt "vaguely responsible" for Mr. Clinton's victory. "I made a very strong statement urging people to aggressively vote for him, and then I got deeply involved with him and his staff people," Mr. Thompson said. "It would have been humiliating to lose against that creature again." 3 on Thompson Mr. Thompson has apparently become an official totem of his generation: three biographies of him are planned for early next year. And in case there was any doubt what kind of impression Mr. Thompson has left on the American psyche, one need only observe the subtitles of the three impending books. "Fear and Loathing: The Strange and Terrible Saga of Hunter S. Thompson," by Paul Perry, is to be published by Thunder's Mouth Press in January. A month later, E. P. Dutton is to release "Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson," by E. Jean Carroll. For April, Hyperion has planned "When the Going Gets Weird: The Twisted Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson," by Peter Whitmer. When Mr. Thompson learned that three biographies about him were in the works, he responded, "Man, even Faulkner didn't have that many books written about him before he died." Ready for Expansion Poets and Writers Inc., the only national nonprofit literary organization that both acts as a clearinghouse for information and offers financial support for fiction writers and poets, has a lot to celebrate at its annual fund-raising dinner-dance, tomorrow night at the University Club in Manhattan. The group, founded in 1970, recently announced that it received a $1 million grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to expand its readings and workshops program to nine Midwestern states beginning next year. The program, which has been active in New York State for 22 years and in California since 1989, supports poets, fiction writers and literary performance artists by matching the usually modest fees they receive for readings and workshops sponsored by a variety of organizations. The grant will allow Poets and Writers to finance similar programs in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, in addition to maintaining its activities in New York and California. Among the writers helped by Poets and Writers in the early days of their careers are Erica Jong, Terry McMillan and Tama Janowitz. Poets and Writers sponsors other programs to help fledgling fiction writers and poets. They include the publications program, which publishes "A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers," "Literary Agents: A Writer's Guide" and a bimonthly magazine, Poets & Writers; the information center, which answers queries by telephone and letter from authors about literary and financial subjects, and the writers' exchange, which brings four promising poets and fiction writers to New York each year to introduce them to publishers, editors, agents and new audiences. ----------------------- Washington Post: Hunter S. Thompson Dies at 67 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40737-2005Feb20?language=printer 'Fear and Loathing' Writer Apparently Committed Suicide By Martin Weil and Allan Lengel Washington Post Staff Writers Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A04 Hunter S. Thompson, whose life and writing, vivid and quirky reflections of each other, made him one of the principal symbols of the American counterculture, shot and killed himself yesterday at his home near Aspen. Thompson, 67, was celebrated as a practitioner of an outraged form of personal journalism, offering off-beat ideas and observations in a style that was wildly and vividly his own and that brought him cult-like status and widespread recognition. His books on politics and society were regarded as groundbreaking among journalists and other students of current affairs in their irreverence and often angry insights. Among those for which he was famed are "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail." He rode for almost a year with the Hell's Angels motorcycle outfit for research on another book. In all he wrote at least a dozen. Jonathan Yardley, writing last year in The Washington Post, called him "a genuinely unique figure in American journalism," citing his comic writing and social criticism. Thompson, often seen wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap and with a cigarette dangling from his lips, showed up frequently as Uncle Duke in "Doonesbury," the Garry Trudeau comic strip. Part of what created his image of outlaw independence and defiance of norms and conventions was his claim to intimate familiarity with a variety of drugs and mind altering chemicals. "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone . . . but they've always worked for me," he once wrote. Pitkin County, Colo., Sheriff Bob Braudis said in a brief telephone interview that Thompson was alone in his kitchen of his Woody Creek home when he shot himself with a handgun. His wife was at a gym, Braudis said. The sheriff said Thompson had seemed "still on top of his game." But Braudis's wife, Louisa Davidson, said "he was not going to age gracefully, he was going to go out with a bang. He was tormented." Thompson was known for a style that he described as "gonzo journalism," a form of "new journalism." It was based on the idea that fidelity to fact did not always blaze the way to truth. Instead, "gonzo journalism" and its practitioners suggested that a deeper truth could be found in the ambiguous zones between fact and fiction. "Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long," Thompson told interviewers in a characteristic pronouncement on both institutions. "You can't be objective about Nixon," he said. "How can you be objective about Clinton?" Among the writers and works he cited as major influences were most of the classic American authors, including Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway, many or most read early in life. He also named the Biblical book of Revelation. He was born in Louisville, and after a wild youth entered the Air Force, according to one account, as part of a parole agreement. His writing career is traced to the 1950s, when he contributed to a base newspaper while in the Air Force. He later wrote unpublished fiction, reported for the mainstream media from Latin America, and made his name with his Hell's Angels article in Harper's magazine. His star rose while he worked for Rolling Stone magazine, where the "Fear and Loathing" books first appeared. His beat, he once said was "the death of the American dream." Interviewers later suggested to him that he in a way embodied that dream. They said he exploded in profanity, but conceded that perhaps he did. ---------------- A radical journalist reflects on the legacy of Hunter Thompson http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/02/20/state/n224707S72.DTL [4]A radical journalist reflects on the legacy of Hunter Thompson - By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer Monday, February 21, 2005 (02-21) 00:01 PST Los Angeles (AP) -- Paul Krassner recalls warmly his talking to Hunter S. Thompson about the gonzo journalist's plans to run for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colo., on the Freak Power ticket in 1970. The co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party wasn't so much interested in seeing Thompson elected as he was in having him send back dispatches from the campaign trail for Krassner's seminal new-left magazine, The Realist. "He was really broke and I gave him a $200 advance," Krassner recalled. "He never did write about the election for The Realist, but then Rolling Stone magazine asked him to do an article and he accepted." Thirty-five years later, Krassner is certain Thompson made the right decision. He lost that election, but went on to become one of the most famous writers of his time. "I think that was the big turning point for him, that article in Rolling Stone," Krassner told The Associated Press from his Southern California home on Sunday night. "And he was very honorable, too. He even returned the $200." Thompson, who shot himself to death Sunday at his Colorado home, wasn't always that responsible, according to Krassner. The author of such books as "Hells Angels" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is credited with pioneering New Journalism -- or, as he dubbed it, "gonzo journalism" -- in which the writer makes himself an essential part of the story. In Thompson's case, the writer often portrayed himself as wildly intoxicated on drugs or alcohol (or both) as he reported on such historic figures as Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. "It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," Krassner quipped. "But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story -- demanding that we send him to Hawaii with three beautiful maidens he could dictate his stories to, for example. They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers." Thompson was 67. "He may have died relatively young, but he made up for it in quality, if not quantity, of years," Krassner said. ---------------- Los Angeles Times: 'Gonzo' Journalist Thompson Kills Self http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-na-thompson21feb21,0,4169435,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines Counterculture writer who chronicled the Nixon years dies of a gunshot wound at 67. By David Kelly Times Staff Writer February 21, 2005 DENVER -- Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture literary figure who rode with the Hells Angels, famously chronicled the Nixon-McGovern presidential race and coined the term "gonzo journalism," committed suicide Sunday night at his secluded home outside Aspen, Colo., his son said. Thompson was 67. "Hunter Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek," Juan Thompson said in a statement. "Hunter prized his privacy and we ask his friends and admirers to respect that privacy as well as that of his family." Pitkin County sheriff's officials confirmed Sunday that Thompson died of a gunshot wound, saying they received a call from his home about 6 p.m. Friends and neighbors said late Sunday that they were shocked by Thompson's suicide, but knew he had his demons. "We don't know anything about the circumstances surrounding his death, but he was a volatile person," said Troy Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News and a longtime friend of the writer. "I was at his house last week and there was nothing in his behavior that was different. He was no more distraught than usual; he was often either up or down." Hooper said Thompson had been in pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. And he had broken his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii. "He said he was executing a hairpin turn at the minibar when he broke it," said Hooper, who said he was acting as the family's spokesman. "Hunter was one of the literary giants of the 20th century. We are all just shocked." Thompson, whose works included "Hell's Angels," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," which chronicled the race between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, was a well-known firearms aficionado who took frequent target practice in his backyard. In 2000, he slightly wounded an assistant while trying to shoot a bear on his property. Woody Creek, a small town about eight miles northwest of Aspen, is home to a number of celebrities including the TV actor Don Johnson and John Oates of the singing duo Hall and Oates. Thompson spent much of his time socializing at the Woody Creek Tavern. "We're letting it rest for tonight," said a woman who answered the phone Sunday at the tavern, where Thompson ate lunch most days. Buddy Ortega, 62, a real estate broker and ski instructor, met Thompson in the 1960s at a party. The pair socialized over the years, and Ortega supported Thompson's quixotic run for sheriff -- though he figured it was a longshot when he saw campaign posters with pictures of hallucinogenic peyote buds. In recent years, Ortega said, the hard-living journalist had become more reclusive, hanging out at the home he called his "compound" and taking advantage of open space to fire his automatic weapons. But Ortega hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary recently. He said he last saw Thompson two days ago at Woody Creek's post office, and everything seemed fine. "We all have demons," Ortega said. "Who knows, man? You sit down, have a few cocktails or maybe nothing -- maybe you have a cup of green tea -- and maybe nothing seems right. He was a little more complex than most of us, so maybe some of those demons surfaced and he didn't like what he saw." Hunter Stockton Thompson was born July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Ky. His father, Jack, was an insurance agent. In 1963, he married Sandra Dawn, the mother of his son Juan. He served two years in the Air Force in Florida, where he was a newspaper sports editor. He was the Caribbean correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in 1959, and worked as a South American correspondent for the New York-based National Observer from 1961 to 1963. But he earned his outsized reputation for his work in Rolling Stone magazine. Thompson was the flip side of American novelist Tom Wolfe. Both established themselves as brand names in the literary journalism movement that sought to capture the strife and youthful boldness of the 1960s. Thompson was the wild man who embraced the chaos, while Wolfe was often portrayed as the buttoned-down neutral observer. Thompson called what he did "gonzo journalism," differentiating it from mainstream reporting by aggressively injecting himself into the story and giving up any pretense of objectivity. Thompson's style of journalism -- well-armed, well-drugged and wildly iconoclastic -- made him a counterculture figure of rare longevity. "I hate to advocate weird chemicals, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone ... but they've always worked for me," Thompson said. His irascible and volatile persona seemed to outsize the books and essays he wrote. Twice his life was brought to the screen -- once by Bill Murray in 1980's "Where the Buffalo Roam," and again in the 1998 Terry Gilliam film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," in which Johnny Depp took his turn as Thompson. Both actors remained friends with Thompson. Thompson also triumphed on the comics page -- ensuring that the most maverick journalist of his generation could get a spot in the mainstream newspapers that would never dare print his profanity-laced essays. The character of "Uncle" Duke in the "Doonesbury" strip has for decades been a thinly disguised and always mercenary caricature of Thompson. William McKeen, a University of Florida professor who wrote the 1991 critical biography "Hunter S. Thompson," kept in touch with the journalist. "He had clearly been amid a great renaissance in recent years where the public had rediscovered his value and their interest in him," McKeen said Sunday night. "The news is stunning." ______________ Times staff writers Samantha Bonar, Geoff Boucher, Megan Garvey, Ashley Powers and Richard Fausset contributed to this report. ------------------ "Gonzo" writing had solid foundation http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2723724,00.html Article Published: Monday, February 21, 2005 By [80]Tom Walker Denver Post Staff writer Never the shrinking violet, Hunter S. Thompson had a long and storied career in writing. He began with a sportswriting gig while in the Air Force in the 1950s, worked for Rolling Stone and other magazines and published several books and many articles. He is credited with creating his own brand of writing, called gonzo, which many say is an extension of the so-called New Journalism practiced by the likes of Lester Bangs, Tom Wolfe and George Plimpton. There are many definitions of just what gonzo journalism is, but most agree that objectivity is frowned upon and that the gonzo writer usually is under the influence of vast amounts of drugs and alcohol. But Thompson's early work, particularly in a compilation of his works called "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time" published in 1979, showed a writer in command of his craft without the excesses of his later gonzo work. Advertisement Thompson's first published book was "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga," which he wrote after spending a year undercover with the bikers. Written in something of a creative nonfiction style, the book detailed the gang's violent and drug-laden road trips through Northern California towns. By the time he released "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" in 1971, the die was cast. Thompson had become the irreverent, insightful observer of life in America. In 1972, Rolling Stone sent Thompson on the campaign trail with President Nixon and his opponent, Sen. George McGovern. The result was "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72." Thompson, who was a self-professed political junkie, told his readers of the lies and truths he learned on the campaigns, all in his gonzo style. From the late 1970s into the early 1990s, Thompson wrote a series of articles, essays and fiction that he called the "Gonzo Papers." They are collected in four volumes: "The Great Shark Hunt" (1979); "Generation of Swine: Tales of Decadence and Degradation in the Eighties" (1988); "Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream" (1990); and "Better Than Sex: Trapped Like a Rat in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" (1994). Thompson released an autobiography, "Kingdom of Fear," in 2003. -------------------- Tom Wolfe on Hunter S. Thompson http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006325 As Gonzo in Life as in His Work Hunter S. Thompson died as he lived. BY TOM WOLFE Tuesday, February 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST Hunter S. Thompson was one of those rare writers who come as advertised. The Addams-family eyebrows in Stephen King's book jacket photos combined with the heeby-jeeby horrors of his stories always made me think of Dracula. When I finally met Mr. King, he was in Miami playing, along with Amy Tan, in a jook-house band called the Remainders. He was Sunshine itself, a laugh and a half, the very picture of innocent fun, a Count Dracula who in real life was Peter Pan. Carl Hiaasen, the genius who has written such zany antic novels as "Striptease," "Sick Puppy," and "Skinny Dip" is in person as intelligent, thoughtful, sober, courteous, even courtly, a Southern gentleman as you could ask for (and I ask for them all the time and never find them). But the gonzo--Hunter's coinage--madness of Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1971) and his Rolling Stone classics such as "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved" (1970) was what you got in the flesh too. You didn't have lunch or dinner with Hunter Thompson. You attended an event at mealtime. I had never met Hunter when the book that established him as a literary figure, "The Hell's Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga," was published in 1967. It was brilliant investigative journalism of the hazardous sort, written in a style and a voice no one had ever seen or heard before. The book revealed that he had been present at a party for the Hell's Angels given by Ken Kesey and his hippie--at the time the term was not "hippie' but "acid-head"--commune, the Merry Pranksters. The party would be a key scene in a book I was writing, (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test). I cold-called Hunter in California, and he generously gave me not only his recollections but also the audiotapes he had recorded at that first famous alliance of the hippies and "outlaw" motorcycle gangs, a strange and terrible saga in itself, culminating in the Rolling Stones band hiring the Angels as security guards for a concert in Altamont, Calif., and the "security guards" beating a spectator to death with pool cues. By way of a thank you for his help, I invited Hunter to lunch the next time he was in New York. It was one bright spring day in 1969. He proved to be one of those tall, rawboned, rangy young men with alarmingly bright eyes, who more than any other sort of human, in my experience, are prone to manic explosions. Hunter didn't so much have a conversation with you as speak in explosive salvos of words on a related subject. We were walking along West 46th Street toward a restaurant, The Brazilian Coffee House, when we passed Goldberg Marine Supply. Hunter stopped, ducked into the store and emerged holding a tiny brown paper bag. A sixth sense, probably activated by the alarming eyes and the six-inch rise and fall of his Adam's apple, told me not to ask what was inside. In the restaurant he kept it on top of the table as we ate. Finally, the fool in me became so curious, he had to go and ask, "What's in the bag, Hunter?" "I've got something in there that would clear out this restaurant in 20 seconds," said Hunter. He began opening the bag. His eyes had rheostated up to 300 watts. "No, never mind," I said. "I believe you! Show me later!" From the bag he produced what looked like a small travel-size can of shaving foam, uncapped the top and pressed down on it. There ensued the most violently brain-piercing sound I had ever heard. It didn't clear out The Brazilian Coffee House. It froze it. The place became so quiet, you could hear an old-fashioned timer clock ticking in the kitchen. Chunks of churasco gaucho remained impaled on forks in mid-air. A bartender mixing a sidecar became a statue holding a shaker with both hands just below his chin. Hunter was slipping the little can back into the paper bag. It was a marine distress signaling device, audible for 20 miles over water. The next time I saw Hunter was in June of 1976 at the Aspen Design Conference in Aspen, Colo. By now Hunter had bought a large farm near Aspen where he seemed to raise mainly vicious dogs and deadly weapons, such as the .357 magnum. He publicized them constantly as a warning to those, Hell's Angels presumably, who had been sending him death threats. I invited him to dinner at a swell restaurant in Aspen and a performance at the Big Tent, where the conference was held. My soon-to-be wife, Sheila, and I gave the waitress our dinner orders. Hunter ordered two banana daiquiris and two banana splits. Once he had finished them off, he summoned the waitress, looped his forefinger in the air and said, "Do it again." Without a moment's hesitation he downed his third and fourth banana daiquiris and his third and fourth banana splits, and departed with a glass of Wild Turkey bourbon in his hand. When we reached the tent, the flap-keepers refused to let him enter with the whiskey. A loud argument broke out. I whispered to Hunter. "Just give me the glass and I'll hold under my jacket and give it back to you inside." That didn't interest him in the slightest. What I failed to realize was that it was not about getting into the tent or drinking whiskey. It was the grand finale of an event, a happening aimed at turning the conventional order of things upside down. By and by we were all ejected from the premises, and Hunter couldn't have been happier. The curtain came down for the evening. [wolfe2-22-05.jpg] In Hunter's scheme of things, there were curtains .. . and there were curtains. In the summer of 1988 I happened to be at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland one afternoon when an agitated but otherwise dignified, silver-haired old Scotsman came up to me and said, "I understand you're a friend of the American writer Hunter Thompson." I said yes. "By God--your Mr. Thompson is supposed to deliver a lecture at the Festival this evening--and I've just received a telephone call from him saying he's in Kennedy Airport and has run into an old friend. What's wrong with this man? He's run into an old friend? There's no possible way he can get here by this evening!" "Sir," I said, "when you book Hunter Thompson for a lecture, you have to realize it's not actually going to be a lecture. It's an event--and I'm afraid you've just had yours." Hunter's life, like his work, was one long barbaric yawp, to use Whitman's term, of the drug-fueled freedom from and mockery of all conventional proprieties that began in the 1960s. In that enterprise Hunter was something entirely new, something unique in our literary history. When I included an excerpt from "The Hell's Angels" in a 1973 anthology called "The New Journalism," he said he wasn't part of anybody's group. He wrote "gonzo." He was sui generis. And that he was. Yet he was also part of a century-old tradition in American letters, the tradition of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, comic writers who mined the human comedy of a new chapter in the history of the West, namely, the American story, and wrote in a form that was part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention, and wilder rhetoric inspired by the bizarre exuberance of a young civilization. No one categorization covers this new form unless it is Hunter Thompson's own word, gonzo. If so, in the 19th century Mark Twain was king of all the gonzo-writers. In the 20th century it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century's greatest comic writer in the English language. Mr. Wolfe's latest book is "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). ----------------- Hunter Thompson dead: Seminal gonzo journalist kills himself Aspen Times News for Aspen Colorado - News http://www.aspentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050221/NEWS/102210014&template=printart By Eben Harrell and Chad Abraham February 21, 2005 Hunter S. Thompson, legendary author, political commentator and "gonzo" journalist, died Sunday night after shooting himself in the head with a handgun at his home in Woody Creek. He was 67. Thompson's son, Juan, found his father's body in the kitchen around 6 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., Thompson's home at 1278 Woody Creek Road was sealed off by a sheriff's van. Shortly thereafter, a grief counselor called in by the sheriff's department arrived at the residence, asking to see Thompson's 6-year-old grandson, William. Later, an unidentified man leaving the property said, "There are a lot of hurt family members up [at the house]." Heavy snow fell on the property all evening as four or five sheriff's department vehicles quietly guarded the driveway. The silence was broken by a woman's shriek from within the house: "Why are there so many people here? I just can't deal with this. No. No. No." ______________________________________________________________________ The scene last night at Owl Farm, Thompson's compound. Aspen Times photo/Paul Conrad. [7]Click to Enlarge ______________________________________________________________________ Hunter Stockton Thompson was an icon of the 1960s counter-culture and was best known for his savage, first-person style of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Hell's Angels." His style came to influence an entire generation of writers and reporters. Thompson had been a resident of Pitkin County since the late 1960s. In a 1970 Rolling Stone article titled "Freak Power in the Rockies" (also later published in the Thompson collection "The Great Shark Hunt"), he documented the rise of a new political generation of hippy activists in Aspen. In 1970, Thompson himself ran unsuccessfully for Pitkin County sheriff. Thompson's political legacy in Aspen and the surrounding area is far-reaching, even though his involvement dropped off in recent years. His bid for the sheriff's post was a direct attack on the traditional, conservative style of policing in place at the time, and set the stage for the more tolerant, community-minded law enforcement that took root in the 1970s under Sheriff Dick Kienast. Thompson's activism also extended into the nuts and bolts of county government, and he helped pioneer the anti-development streak in local politics that survives to this day. He backed strict land-use controls and the candidates who were willing to impose them. Many of the land-use regulations still in place in Aspen and Pitkin County can be traced back to Thompson's work as a growth-control activist. "The guy used to call me at 3 a.m. and talk about land use," said Pitkin County Commissioner Mick Ireland. He had many friends in his neighborhood of Woody Creek and was for years a regular at the Woody Creek Tavern, the local restaurant and watering hole. At 9 p.m. last night, however, the tavern was packed with tourists and late eaters unaware of the death. Thompson's compound in Woody Creek was almost as legendary as the author. He prized peacocks and weapons; in 2000, he accidentally shot and slightly wounded his assistant, Deborah Fuller, trying to chase a bear off his property. News of his death hit Aspen's community hard. Many of Thompson's friends in the sheriff's department, including Sheriff Bob Braudis, were at a Sunday afternoon memorial service for Ross Griffin, a jailer who died unexpectedly this winter, when they heard the news. "I was totally floored," Braudis said. "I was at the memorial and Bob was there. He called me aside and said that he just heard Hunter shot himself," friend and Aspen-based artist Thomas Benton said. In tears, Benton, who designed campaign posters for Thompson's 1970 campaign, said that Thompson "was an old friend for a long time." Thompson had been in poor health in the last few years, suffering from several injuries and ailments, including a broken femur and recurring back problems. His physical therapist, BJ Williams, said Thompson had recovered well, however. "Hunter had a lot of things thrown at him physically. He had a fractured leg and back surgery but he took it all in stride and fought back. He never gave up. I am just shocked by this," Williams said. Fellow leftist journalist Paul Krassner, who once edited Thompson, told The Associated Press that the gonzo journalist was always unpredictable as a writer and a person. "It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," Krassner said. "We were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with readers." Eben Harrell's e-mail address is [8]eharrell at aspentimes.com Chad Abraham's e-mail address is [9]chad at aspentimes.com Allyn Harvey and The Associated Press contributed to this report. ---------------- HUNTER S. THOMPSON: 1937-2005 / Original gonzo journalist kills self at age 67 / 'Fear and Loathing' author, ex-columnist for S.F. Examiner dies of gunshot wound San Francisco Chronicle http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&type=printable [4]HUNTER S. THOMPSON: 1937-2005 Original gonzo journalist kills self at age 67 'Fear and Loathing' author, ex-columnist for S.F. Examiner dies of gunshot wound - [5]Tanya Schevitz, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, February 21, 2005 Hunter S. Thompson, the counterculture writer credited with creating a new form of journalism in books like "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," was found dead Sunday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in his Aspen- area home, authorities said. Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, a friend of Thompson, and Thompson's son, Juan, who reportedly found his father's body, confirmed the death of the 67-year-old writer to the Aspen Daily News. "Hunter prized his privacy and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family," Juan Thompson said in a statement to the newspaper, according to the Associated Press. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home at the time of his death. San Francisco writer Ben Fong-Torres, a former colleague of Thompson's at Rolling Stone magazine, said he was surprised and saddened to hear about Thompson's apparent suicide. "He was one of the great pioneers of new journalism and his own invention: gonzo journalism, in which he immersed himself in the story," Fong-Torres said. "He presented it in a way that nobody else, as hard as they tried, could imitate. He was singular and will not be matched anytime soon." Fong-Torres said Thompson leaves a legacy in the field of journalism. "It doesn't matter that he was a guy who was capable of doing anything and known to live on-and-beyond the edge," he said in a phone interview Sunday night. "It's a tremendous loss, no matter where he was, at what stage he was, how ill he had gotten -- he was still capable of humorous insights." Chronicle Executive Vice President and Editor Phil Bronstein spent a few nights last summer with Thompson and his wife in Colorado. He said that Thompson was recovering from spinal surgery and a broken leg from a fall but that there were no signs that the eccentric Thompson was depressed. They watched the Republican Convention and hours of footage for a documentary that was being made about Thompson. He showed off a new neon shooting target he had, and he held court at the local Woody Creek Tavern, Bronstein said. "He was exercised about what was going on in the world as he always was," Bronstein said. "He seemed, as always, bizarre and interesting and fascinating and was a remarkably charming and friendly host." Thompson, who wrote for the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner in the mid-to-late 1980s, lived the legend he created with his writing. David McCumber, a former editor at the Examiner and now managing editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, edited Thompson's columns at the Examiner in the mid-1980s. "Everything was legitimate about the man's reputation," he said. "The surprise was as I got to know him ... everything was real ... and that could be scary sometimes." He said that one day he was on a three-way call with Thompson and Gary Hart's campaign manager when the campaign manager learned that the Miami Herald had the story about Hart's relationship with Donna Rice. Thompson was at his home in Woody Creek outside Aspen and remembered that his neighbor singer/songwriter Don Henley knew Rice. He went to Henley's house, rifled his drawers, and found a picture for the Examiner, making it the first news organization to have a picture of Rice. "We always had a very active time. It was never dull," McCumber said. "One of the joys of editing Hunter was you never knew if you were going to get hallucinatory prose or trenchant analysis," he said. Jeanette Etheredge, another close friend of Thompson and owner of the North Beach fixture, Tosca, said he knew where every ice machine was at every motel in San Francisco. One night when they were out driving around, he stopped abruptly in front of the Seal Rock Inn and jumped out. "When he came back, he had a bucket of ice for his bottle," she said. Chronicle Executive News Editor Jay Johnson, who also edited Thompson's columns when he wrote for the Examiner, said Thompson could not dictate over the phone, so he filed his stories page by page over the fax, sending multiple revisions as the two spent many hours throughout the night and into the morning "wrestling the column to the ground." "Nobody was as much his editor as his sounding board. He needed to talk it out and get reaction to it. It was not the average creative process," Johnson said. One morning as deadline neared and they were still working it out, Thompson, who was known to have an affinity for controlled substances, told Johnson, "Our real drug of choice is adrenaline." Johnson said Thompson was easiest to work with when he was covering a presidential campaign. But he was often just "riffing," Johnson said. He fondly recalled one night when Thompson told him how he had tried to cheer up a friend who was scheduled to go in for back surgery. He took a bunch of explosives out to the backyard and stuffed them into his Jeep. As the hood flew into the air and the Jeep exploded into pieces, the two friends realized what they had projected into the sky would soon come back down. "They are like dancing around with this shrapnel coming down," Johnson said. Johnson told him to write it down and that became Thompson's next column. Johnson said it seemed that part of the reason Thompson enjoyed writing his column for the Examiner was that he had a burning desire to be plugged in. In the days before the Internet, Thompson turned to Johnson to give him the latest news. "By calling in, he could ask what was on the wires. He would ask me to read him stuff. That way he could be involved in the business," Johnson said. When he was in San Francisco, Thompson was a regular at Tosca, even running the bar once when owner Etheredge was out getting a root canal. He broke his ankle once doing a pirouette off the bar, she said, and then refused medical help, instead taping his broken ankle with electrical tape. She said he was always a gentleman. One time after hanging out at his hotel all night and into the morning, she told him that she had to go home. It was about 5 a.m. and he insisted on escorting her in a taxi. But when they were walking through the hotel lobby to get into a cab, she noticed he was wearing just underwear. And when they reached her house, she had to give him money to get back to the hotel. Sunday night, she was shocked by the death of someone who was so vibrant. "I spoke to him a few weeks ago and he sounded good," she said. "The one person I would never think would do something like that goes and does it." Thompson was born in Louisville, Ky., on July 18, 1937, His father, Jack, was an insurance agent. Thompson got his start in newspaper writing while he was serving in the Air Force in the late 1950s. An acute observer of the decadence and depravity in American life, Thompson wrote such books as "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" in 1973 and the collections "Generation of Swine" and "Songs of the Doomed." His first- ever novel, "The Rum Diary," written in 1959, was first published in 1998. "The Rum Diary" came out of Thompson's experiences in Puerto Rico. Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy, who had been friends with Thompson since he rejected the then-young writer for a job at the San Juan Star in Puerto Rico, described Thompson as a trailblazer. "Hunter found a way to be new in the world. His attitude, his language, his subject matter, his take on history, his plunge into booze and drugs -- all these were singular," Kennedy said. "Maybe other people behaved this way, but nobody ever wrote about it with such spectacular originality. He was all by himself." Thompson's other books include "Hell's Angels" and "The Proud Highway." His most recent effort was "Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and The Downward Spiral of Dumbness." "Hunter was a gifted writer, political observer and sportsman with a huge appetite for life in every dimension," said William R. Hearst III, a director of the Hearst Corp. "Like Mark Twain before him he occasionally wrote for this newspaper and neither of them tolerated fools gleefully. We will miss his words and collect his letters." Chronicle news services and staff writers Suzanne Herel and Bob Miller contributed to this report.E-mail Tanya Schevitz at [10]tschevitz at sfchronicle.com. References 3. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&type=printable 4. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL 5. mailto:tschevitz at sfchronicle.com 6. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&o=0&type=printable 7. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&o=1&type=printable 8. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&o=2&type=printable 9. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2005/02/21/MNGHUBERJ31.DTL&o=3&type=printable 10. mailto:tschevitz at sfchronicle.com ------------------ achenblog (washingtonpost.com) http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/02/an_appreciation.html An Appreciation of Hunter S. Thompson "Hunter, I know you're there. Pick up." Walter Isaacson, head of the Aspen Institute, had put in a call to Hunter S. Thompson, the iconic gonzo journalist who died Sunday at the age of 67. Michael Lewis and I were sitting in Walter's office in Aspen last summer when Walter suggested that we visit Thompson, who lived down the valley in Woody Creek. For many of us in the reporting business, Thompson was larger than life and weirder than life. He had invented a style of journalism that required him to take on a mythological persona, that of a drug-gobbling anti-Establishment provocateur, always on the road at some Vegas prizefight or Super Bowl or political convention, whacked to the gills as he tries to get the story. Walter knew that Thompson had a makeshift office in his kitchen, really just a countertop with a typewriter, the cigarettes and liquor in easy reach, along with Thompson's books, his magazine articles, all the detritus of a long, crazy, brain-hammering career. Thompson apparently rarely budged, screening his calls, typing, fidgeting, smoking, and tending to one of the all-time most successful cults of personality. Sure enough, Thompson picked up the phone, and invited us to come out to his place later in the evening do to some shooting (he had quite the arsenal of firearms). We reached Woody Creek at about 9 p.m. and soon were in Thompson's kitchen. I sat on the floor beneath the sink, gazing up at the great man. The next two hours were not so much a conversation as a tribute. Thompson looked fragile: He had a noticeable limp on the few occasions that he left his station. When his wife, Anita, showed up with a fancy bottle of spirits [I am thinking it was tequila and would normally just say so, but these details matter when it comes to HST lore], he took a swig, then pumped his fist and stamped one foot, like a coach whose team has just scored a touchdown. Later he lit up a bowl of something, and took a deep lungful. This transpired without commentary from him or anyone else in the room. He didn't make any overt attempt to pass the pipe around, but he did palm the pipe at his waist, and wiggled it in my direction, a kind of "here, doggy" gesture, as though he were going to feed me a biscuit. Somehow we never got around to firing any guns, and instead performed dramatic readings of Thompson's classic material. He was an appreciative audience. I asked if he had an original copy of the issue of Rolling Stone with his classic gonzo narrative "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," and he did, on a shelf by his right knee, protected in plastic. I nearly wept at the sight of this journalistic treasure -- you know, with that opening riff of we were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold -- and in a spasm of reverence I momentarily fumbled it directly into the stack of dishes in the sink. No harm, no foul. For all of Thompson's theatrics and self-abuse, he could write like a demon. His prose accelerated across the page like a sportscar with the top down. He kept himself squarely in the picture, to great comic effect. We understood that he needed drugs the way other people needed oxygen, that he had an odd fondness for guns and violence, and that he loathed Richard Nixon and most authoritarian institutions. Otherwise, he wasn't very complicated. He didn't gum up his narrative with soul-searching. He really served as a big eyeball, if perhaps a rather glazed one. James Fenton once complained that many journalists can't tell a story correctly because to do so would imply that they had personally witnessed the events at hand. Thompson never had that problem. His best work centered around his almost Mr. Magoo-like stumbling and lurching into places that a chemically addled person didn't belong. In his kitchen I read aloud his account of Richard Nixon's departure from the White House in August 1974: "....I eased through the crowd of photographers and walked out, looking back at the White House, where Nixon was giving his final address to a shocked crowd of White House staffers. I examined the aircraft very closely, and I was just about to climb into it when I heard a loud rumbling behind me; I turned around just in time to see Richard and Pat coming toward me, trailing their daughters and followed closely by Gerald Ford and Betty. Their faces were grim and they were walking very slowly; Nixon had a glazed smile on his face, not looking at anybody around him, and walked like a wooden Indian full of Thorazine. His face was a greasy death mask. I stepped back out of the way and nodded hello but he didn't seem to recognize me..." That's vintage Thompson, not only on the scene but on the verge of getting into Nixon's helicopter! Any suspicion that Thompson just knocked this stuff out in a first draft should be dispelled by the last few graphs of the article, where he shows his craft: "I was so close that the noise hurt my ears. The rotor blades were invisible now, but the wind was getting heavier; I could feel it pressing my eyeballs back into their sockets. For an instant I thought I could see Richard Nixon's face pressed up to the window. Was he smiling? Was it Nixon? I couldn't be sure. And now it made no difference.... "I was still very close to the helicopter, watching the tires. As the beast began rising, the tires became suddenly fat; there was no more weight on them....The helicopter went straight up and hovered for a moment, then swooped down toward the Washington Monument and then angled up into the fog. Richard Nixon was gone." Thompson nodded and laughed and smiled as we read these things. He knew it was good. He had been at the peak of his powers. And these nice folks had come to his house to pay homage and remind him of his glory days. Michael Lewis picked up on an interesting detail in his home: There were all these sayings, slogans, scrawled fragments of ideas, and so on, tacked or taped to various surfaces in the house, and they seemed to be reminding Thompson of his identity. It was like: This is your character. These are your thoughts. These are the wacky and nutty and bizarre things you have said. This is who you must always be. Remember your role. When you invent a great character for yourself you may be trapped by it the rest of your days. To be an icon is a brutal job. The early reports say Thompson ended his own life with a gun. That's not a gonzo conclusion to his story, that's just a tragedy. It's hard to believe: Hunter S. Thompson is gone. February 21, 2005 ----------------- More on Hunter S. Thompson Everyone should read the [26]masterful appreciation of Thompson by the incomparable Henry Allen, who has a better bead than anyone on the crazy decades of the Sixties and Seventies (as you probably know he wrote a book on "the decades." Henry also knocked out a terrific [27]appreciation recently of Susan Sontag . I read a number of the tributes to Thompson yesterday (after filing my own) but eagerly anticipated the Henry Allen offering, because he plays at a different level from everyone else. Maybe in my journalism class we should spend the rest of the semester just reading Henry's stuff. He captures the manic energy and hilarious paranoia of Thompson, and there's this unexpected flourish near the end of the piece: readers worshiped him as a man of profound experience, to the point of playing what you might call "the Hunter Thompson game." The point of the game is to create mortal fear out of nothing more than, say, the sun flashing in a window. First man: You see that glint? Second man: Like binoculars? First man: Try 12-power Unertl glass on a Remington .308. Second man: Your first wife's boyfriend? First man: But he's a cop. Second man: Exactly. Our heads? In four seconds? Vapor, baby. This is the sort of conversation that boys have in treehouses, to scare themselves for the fun of it. Thompson's writing had the venerable American quality of boys' literature, in the manner of Hemingway, Jack London and Mark Twain. Boys' literature: Exactly. A lot of emails have come in about Thompson, and I'll rack 'em up here quickly. In most cases I don't know anything about the emailers, and I wonder if in the future people would tell me where they live. (These are mostly excerpts, fyi.): Michael Joy writes: I am worried that too many journalists are writing off Thompson's death as suicide. To begin with it is well known that drugs, alcohol and firearms are in dangerous proximity in Thompson's house. Until the forensics are complete there is more circumstantial evidence that the death was accidental. Thompson was known to have discharged firearms in the house while under the influence. I would be more inclined to think ricochet than self inflicted. It as also a question that a man who wrote down so many thoughts and observations of his environment would not have left a note documenting his intentions to end his life. To call this a suicide before the evidence is in represents irresponsible journalism. I believe that law enforcement at the scene concluded that it was a suicide and made that announcement. It would be irresponsible journalism to refuse to report the police statement. Galen White of Louisville, Kentucky, writes: I knew Hunter when he was in the ninth grade, and I was a senior at Louisville Male High School. I belonged to the Athenaeum Literary Association. We met Saturday nights. Hunter, not old enough to join at that time, hung around our meeting place, just checking things out. As part of our meetings, we offered book reports. At the age of about 13 in 1951 Hunter had already read most of the books I was just finding. He was the best read high schooler I have ever known. I rediscovered him in the early 60's when he wrote for Max Ascoli's "Reporter" magazine. He produced a very serious article about Louisville.... Hunter once said he loved Kentucky, but that he had to leave to find what he wanted to do. We will miss him. Jo Coster of South Carolina writes: I discovered HST about the same time you did, in the early 70s when he was covering politics and society for Rolling Stone. In the passionless age of Eric Sevareid, he was such a different voice--a journalist who CARED, who used words like throwing knives, who could talk football with Nixon and then turn around and ask "Jesus! How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?" He was the tutelary spirit of blogging journalism. Mahalo to his ghost and prayers to his family. We will miss the Sheriff. John Hargrave of the Ozarks, writes: I began reading him back in his straight journalist days when he was covering Central America for a Dow Jones weekly called -- if memory serves -- The National Observer. This would have been in the mid-Sixties. The work was astoundingly good and so much better than the stuff sitting next to it that it must have been embarrassing for the reporters so placed. Kristin St. John writes: I stumbled across Thompson when I first graduated from J-school and moved down here -- unemployed and, after working at a professional newspaper throughout college, pretty much jaded. His brand of journalism, coupled with his fearless lifestyle, inspired me face the facts -- life is insane -- and we need to jump on for the rough ride. I honestly don't think that Thompson really knew the effect he had on those of us under the radar. Yeah, he probably got tons of fan mail -- but, that's what it was...fan mail. It doesn't represent the "disciples" who are being introduced to his writing and who are embracing the school of thought that all establishment needs to be questioned and taken to task -- and aspect as important today that it was back in the 1960s. I'll try to post more emails down the road. I'll also try to figure out how to make the font sizes look better. And before I forget, here's the link to [28]Sunday's Rough Draft column. References 23. http://www.typepad.com/ 25. http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/ 26. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42719-2005Feb21.html 27. http://washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32435-2004Dec28 28. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27099-2005Feb15.html 29. http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/02/more_on_hunter_.html -------------------- Weekly Standard: The End of the Counter-Culture http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5274&R=C42E2B82 The End of the Counter-Culture Hunter S. Thompson, 1939 - 2005. by Stephen Schwartz 02/22/2005 12:00:00 AM THE SUICIDE of Hunter S. Thompson, aged 65, according to the New York Times, or 67, according to the Washington Post, at his home in Aspen, may definitively mark the conclusion of the chaotic "baby-boomer" rebellion that began in the 1950s and crested in the 1960s, and which was dignified with the title of "the counter-culture." "Counter" it was, as an expression of defiance toward everything normal and reliable in society. "Culture" it was not, any more than Thompson's incoherent scribblings constituted, as they were so often indulgently described, a form of journalism. When a major representative of any dramatic period in history dies, it is tempting to proclaim the end of an epoch, but the lonely death of Thompson--he shot himself in his kitchen--seems more emblematic than any other associated with the '60s. The incident might even have been accidental, brought on by one of Thompson's self-storied flings into the ingestion of garbage drugs. Who knows? But Louisa Davidson, wife of the sheriff of Pitkin County, the jurisdiction wherein the death occurred, probably had it right: "he was not going to age gracefully. He was going to go out with a bang. He was tormented." Whatever the actual circumstances, it is difficult to imagine a still-living personage, or even one who preceded him into eternal silence and collective forgetfulness, more representative of his time. William S. Burroughs, the prosewriter once hailed for allegedly reinventing the American novel, died at 83 in 1997. Allen Ginsberg, the versifier who had supposedly changed American poetry forever, expired the same year at 70. Ken Kesey, another overrated writer, joined them in 2001. The comedian Lenny Bruce and the author Jack Kerouac left the scene long, long before, in the '60s themselves. Who is left? No one but minor figures. Thompson had much in common with Burroughs and Ginsberg. First, their products were mainly noise. Their books were reissued but now sit inertly on bookstore shelves, incapable of inspiring younger readers, or even nostalgic baby boomers, to purchase them. Thompson claimed credit for the invention of "gonzo journalism," epitomized by his great success, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published in 1972. He will inevitably be hailed by newswriters as the creator of a genre. But if his work is taught to the young, it is as an exemplar of the madness of the '60s, not as literature or journalism. Aside from his own later works, including such trivia, bearing his signature, as The Great Shark Hunt, Generation of Swine, and Songs of the Doomed, of what did "gonzo" journalism consist? Thompson left no authorial legacy. It has long been argued that lasting literature is an impossibility without imitation and emulation, and that although young authors often produce works ridiculously imitative of their idols, real writers grow out of such mimesis to gain recognition for their own, individual abilities. But who can imagine a youthful talent beginning with an exercise in the gonzo style? Thompson produced no others like him, for the same reason Burroughs and Ginsberg generated no schools of novel-writing or verse. One may go further and say they had nothing to teach the young, except to emit a cacophony. Indeed, it would be one thing to say that Thompson and the others like him, such as Burroughs and Ginsberg, are dated. Even embarrassingly old-fashioned artistic works, bereft of immediacy for those who are not part of the environment from which they emerged, have the capacity for revival. But Thompson produced a clamor without content. Doubtlessly, the most pathetic aspect of the '60s phenomenon was the absolute conviction of Thompson and those who encouraged him that "living in the moment" really did count more than anything else in the world, that history never existed and that the future was their property. His enablers included lefty journalist Warren Hinckle III, who first published Thompson's experiments in incoherent "reportage" in a forgotten magazine called Scanlan's, and pop huckster Jann S. Wenner, the grand ayatollah of Rolling Stone, a tabloid which began as a pop music paper, then tried to make itself over as a serious journal, and is now read by . . . who? For some commentators, the greatest compliment paid to Thompson was the incorporation of a dishonest, heartless figure modeled on him, and named Uncle Duke (after Raoul Duke, the narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) into Doonesbury. But that strip is generally known for its tone of dishonesty and heartlessness, and, like the writings of Thompson, seems extremely dated, increasingly unread, and finally irrelevant in its mean-spiritedness. Thompson, as I can say from personal witness, was not flattered by the Doonesbury valentine. "I don't steal from his stuff, do I?" Thompson grunted in a bar one afternoon in San Francisco. For him, imitation, or caricature, was the least sincere form of flattery, and in his bilious reaction there might have resided a microscopic element of self-awareness. He may well have understood that the drugs, gunfire, motorcycle mishaps, public rantings, and widespread adulation in which he was immersed were evanescent, and that his books were too thin to keep his memory alive for very long. One must imagine that in his own middle '60s Hunter Thompson looked into the mirror and saw that nobody needed a gonzo interpretation of the world after September 11, that nobody was amused by his capacity to survive fatal doses of sinister concoctions, and that, increasingly, nobody knew or cared who he was. He was flattered to be described as chronicler of "the death of the American dream." In reality, he described a nightmare from which America awoke years ago. Stephen Schwartz is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard. ---------------- The New York Times > National > With an Icon's Death, Aspen Checks Its Inner Gonzo http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/national/23aspen.html?pagewanted=print&position= February 23, 2005 With an Icon's Death, Aspen Checks Its Inner Gonzo By KIRK JOHNSON ASPEN, Colo., Feb. 22 - Over the decades that Hunter S. Thompson lived and wrote here in the high Rocky Mountains of central Colorado, Aspen became an aerie for the rich and the beautiful - the very sort of place, right under his nose, that he was famous for fulminating against in his books. "Freak power in the Rockies," as Mr. Thompson once dubbed the spirit of his adopted home, gave way to Louis Vuitton. Mr. Thompson, meanwhile, remained exuberantly unreconstructed - his rages and inebriated excesses apparently undiminished, his fondness for firing shotguns at night still strong and true well into his 60's. That gradually made him into the sort of person that the new, polished Aspen no longer wanted to quite encourage or celebrate. Yet somehow the two sides - the man and the town - found accommodation, people here say. Like former comrades in war who have gone their separate ways, they each still saw in the other something worth trying to redeem, or perhaps to politely overlook. Some said that Mr. Thompson's suicide on Sunday night marked the stilling of a voice that kept some of Aspen's old counterculture alive. Others said the roots that he helped establish here ran too deep and would live on without him. A few said he was a spent force in Aspen society long before his death, tolerated by those with the real power to shape the community but otherwise treated as a nostalgia act whose time would soon enough be gone. "He was like the wild soul of the town, and the fact that he was still here, albeit with all the changes, meant a lot to a lot of people," said Mark Billingsley, a clerk at Explore Booksellers, a Main Street store that displayed Mr. Thompson's books by the front door on Tuesday. What Mr. Thompson's presence conveyed, Mr. Billingsley said, was affirmation and endorsement that Aspen - appearances, costs and demographics aside - was still Aspen after all. "He still felt it was worthwhile to be here," Mr. Billingsley said. Some people, despite the aura of loss and misty-eyed remembrance that has settled over Aspen since Mr. Thompson's death, said they never quite got it, never figured out the source of the legend, never fully understood why so many people so revered a man who mostly seemed to be simply out of control. "I heard him speak once, and he was totally incomprehensible, to be honest," said Larry B. Thoreson, the sales tax administrator for the city government. Mr. Thompson, who lived a few miles from here in a town called Woody Creek, ran for sheriff of Pitkin County in 1970 on a platform promising to change Aspen's name to Fat City and to decriminalize drugs. He almost won. In the 1980's he raged about the pallid surrender of the counterculture spirit in his book "Generation of Swine," in which he condemned the baby boomers of the 1960's - the same boomers who in many cases now inhabit the $20 million mansions on Red Mountain overlooking Aspen. And he celebrated anarchy whenever he could, residents say, with games like Shotgun Golf, which combined traditional putting and chipping with the Thompsonesque filigree of shooting at the ball if it seemed appropriate. Aspen, meanwhile, changed around him. Money was pouring in, and the people who wielded it were changing too. As recently as the 1980's, people say, the rich made an effort to blend in, wear jeans at the bar, become part of the community. Now, they hire townspeople to run their homes or to maintain them, and they keep mostly to themselves. Last year, the average real-estate transaction in the town surpassed $3.4 million, according to town figures. "Anything organized probably didn't sit well with Hunter - virtually anything with money and organization would be attacked, or parodied," said Aspen's city manager, Steve Barwick. "He was one of the symbols of the no-growth argument." But Mr. Thompson's presence also straddled a great arc of the town's fortunes that was directly tied to the waves of cultural migration filling the town with new voices and visions. Aspen did not become wealthy and successful despite people like Mr. Thompson, many residents said, but directly because of the rejuvenation and ferment that the counterculture created. "Aspen is a lot more settled now, and he offered a flavor of the town that has maybe disappeared a little bit," said Ron Morehead, the manager of Aspen Sports, who came here in the 1970's. The truth, Mr. Morehead and others said, is that the power of money in transforming the community could not be stopped by anybody, even Mr. Thompson. "I hate to say it, but I think to them he was just a minor annoyance," Mr. Morehead said, referring to the developers and second-home buyers, who routinely knock down $2 million to $3 million homes to build larger, more opulent ones in their place. Sterling Greenwood, the publisher of The Aspen Free Press - a single-page broadsheet that proudly proclaims itself to be "Aspen's Worst Newspaper" - said the fights over growth and values that have characterized Aspen's internal dialogue for decades will go on. Mr. Greenwood and his wife, Karen Day, said they came here partly because of the aura that Mr. Thompson helped create. "He was the father of our generation here because we are all like him in some way or another," Ms. Day said. "You just have to talk about what it was like in the 70's and 80's when we all first got here - it was totally influenced by him." Mr. Greenwood jumped in: "I think it still is." In recent years, he said, residents had risen up and forced issues that still hark, at least a little, back to the glory days of Mr. Thompson's wild-eyed vision. The town does not use snow-melting chemicals on its streets in winter, he said, because residents opposed it. A town proposal several years ago to straighten a hairpin curve and allow bigger trucks into town similarly went down to overwhelming defeat. "Call it old Aspen or whatever you want, the people came out," he said. Mr. Greenwood said that as a journalist, he carried a torch as well for the personalized journalism that Mr. Thompson helped popularize. In the 1980's, a town committee citing the "Best of Aspen" gave him the "Hunter S. Thompson Junior Achievement Award." It still hangs on his wall. "Sometimes I'll be writing and I'll think of a word, and I'll say, 'No, that's Hunter's word,' and I won't use it," Mr. Greenwood said. "Twisted," for example, Mr. Greenwood said, is a classic Hunter word - combining elements of fatigue, inebriation and a hint of the bizarre - that should be retired like a slugger's old number. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:47:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:47:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Heinz von Lichberg: Lolita Message-ID: Heinz von Lichberg: Lolita The Times Literary Supplement, 4.7.23 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108237&window_type=print translated by Carolyn Kunin Earlier this year, admirers of Vladimir Nabokov and scholars of modern literature were startled by the revelation that the Lolita of Nabokov's great novel was not the first fictional nymphet of that name to have enchanted an older lover: her namesake had appeared in an eighteen-page tale, also called "Lolita", by the obscure German author Heinz von Lichberg, published in 1916. (See the TLS, April 2, and correspondence that followed.) We now publish, for the first time in English, von Lichberg's story, translated by Carolyn Kunin. During the course of conversation someone mentioned the name of E. T. A. Hoffmann and those musical tales of his. The Countess Beata, our young hostess, put down the orange she was about to peel and said to the young poet "Would you believe it - his stories - and I don't read them often - can keep me awake all night? My rational mind tells me they are just fantasy, and yet . . . ." "Perhaps they are not mere fantasy, my dear countess." The diplomat gave a good-natured chuckle. "You don't think such outlandish things actually happened to Hoffmann, do you?" "But that is exactly what I do think," countered the poet. "They did happen to him. Of course I don't mean that he saw them with his own eyes. But because he was a poet, he experienced everything that he wrote - psychically, spiritually. Perhaps I should say that he only wrote of things that he had encountered in his soul. In fact I would say that this is what differentiates the poet from the prose writer. The poet experiences the fantastic as reality." Silence fell over the beautiful countess's little Empire-style room. "You are absolutely right," said the professor, a sensitive man of youthful appearance. "Will you allow me to tell you a story that I have carried with me for many years? To this day I am not certain if it actually happened to me or if I dreamed it. It won't take long." "Please do tell us," said our hostess. The professor began his tale: "Towards the end of the last century, more than twenty years ago, I was studying in a very old town in southern Germany. I lived where it pleased me to, in a narrow street full of ancient houses. Not far from my rooms was a tavern - one of the oddest I have ever seen. I often went there in the evenings in late autumn when I could take a break from my work, just before nightfall. "There was only one room, rather rickety with rafters sunk in gloom. Near the window facing the street stood two well-scoured tables and a few rough-hewn chairs. Back in a dark corner where the tile stove stood there was a third little table and two remarkably colourful chintz armchairs. Over one of them was draped a black silk mantilla, the kind women wear in Spain on holy days. I never saw any other customers there besides myself and I still sometimes wonder if it really was a commercial establishment. "Sometimes on the stroke of seven the door would be locked and the shutters closed. I never asked about this, but my curiosity had already been aroused by the proprietors of this odd establishment. Their names were Aloys and Anton Walzer and they gave an impression of great age. They were unusually tall and lanky. Both were bald but sported full, scraggly, reddish-grey beards. I never saw them wear anything but yellow breeches and black jackets that hung loosely on them. They must have been twins, for it was impossible to tell them apart, and it took quite a while before I was able to distinguish Anton's slightly deeper voice. "As soon as I came in, without needing to be asked they would place a glass of marvellous sweet Spanish wine on the table near the stove for me with a friendly grin. "Aloys would take the armchair next to mine while Anton always stood leaning with his back to the window. They puffed away on their pipes full of aromatic tobacco, the kind of pipes you see in old Flemish pictures. Somehow I got the feeling that they were waiting for something. "I would almost say that the impression they made on me was grotesque, but that wouldn't be quite the right word because the grotesque always has something of the comic about it. But there was something inexpressibly sad and troubled about the Walzer brothers - almost tragic. There was no trace of a female presence in the place and I certainly never saw a woman there. "As winter came on with its early dusks and long nights, I found my visits to the smoky tavern becoming almost a daily necessity. As the proprietors came to know me better, now and then they would talk a little with me. But they always spoke of things that had happened in times long past and their voices made the same dry, rattling sound. "I told them of my travels and whenever I mentioned southern climes, a frightening, leery look would come into their eyes, along with the usual melancholy expectation. They seemed almost to be living in a particular memory of the past. I could never leave without feeling that something dreadful was about to happen, yet at the same time I had to smile at such thoughts. "One evening I was passing by the place rather late and from behind the shuttered windows came the strains of such a lovely tune played on the violin that I stood there in the street, entranced. The next day when I asked the brothers about it, they only smiled and shook their heads. "Several weeks passed, and again I was passing by the tavern late at night, even later than the previous occasion. From behind the shutters I heard a desolate cry and then such an extremity of quarrelling and cursing that I was frightened out of my wits. There could be no doubt, the shouts came from within the tavern, but it was not those two weak old men quarrelling - these voices were deep, young and bellowing with rage. It sounded like two strong young men having a dreadful row. The shouts became even louder until they reached a pitch of frenzy punctuated by the blows of a fist crashing on a table. "Then I heard the silvery bright laugh of a woman's voice, and immediately the enraged voices swelled into an insane bawling. I stood frozen in my tracks. It never occurred to me to open the door and see what was going on. "The woman's voice screamed, just a single cry, but in such fearful anguish that I have never been able to forget it. Then everything was still. "The next day when I went into the tavern, Anton placed my glass of wine on the table with his usual friendly grin, and everything was so unchanged that I began to wonder if I had dreamt the whole episode, but I was too ashamed to ask. "One afternoon towards the end of Winter I told the brothers that I wouldn't be coming any more, as I was setting out for Spain the following day. "This news had a strange effect on Anton and Aloys, for their hard, weathered faces paled for a moment and their eyes fell to the floor. They left the room and I could hear them whispering outside. After a while Anton returned and asked me in a state of some excitement if by chance I would be going to Alicante, and when I said I would, he turned and almost skipped back to his brother. Later they both came back in, behaving as if nothing had happened. "While I was packing I forgot about the brothers, but that night I had a confused and complicated dream, something about a crooked little salmon-coloured house in a derelict street in the harbour of Alicante. "On my way to the railway station the next day, I was surprised to see that Anton and Aloys had their shutters closed tight, although it was broad daylight. "During the trip I soon forgot all about my studies and little adventures in southern Germany. One so easily forgets everything while travelling. "I spent several days in Paris to visit a few friends and see the Louvre. One evening, tired out by going round the museum, I dropped into a cabaret in the Latin Quarter to see a poet whom one of my friends had recommended. He turned out to be an ancient blind bard who sang beautifully in a simple, sorrowful voice. He had a lovely daughter who accompanied him skillfully on the violin. Later she played a solo piece, and I immediately recognized the melody as the one I had heard coming from the Walzer brothers' house. (I found out it was a gavotte by Lully, from the time of Louis XIV.) "Some days later I travelled on towards Lisbon and, in early February, passed through Madrid on my way to Alicante. "I have always had a soft spot for the South in general, and for Spain first and foremost. You feel like a god there, and every experience seems heightened. In the sun you can live an unfettered life. The people, like their wine, are strong, fiery and sweet, but excitable, and dangerous when aroused. Then, too, I believed that the Southerners had a little of Don Quixote in their blood. "Actually, I didn't have anything in particular to do in Alicante, but I spent several inexpressibly sweet nights there - those nights when the moon rises over the castle of Santa Barbara and suffuses the harbour in a mysterious chiaroscuro. A bit of lyrical romanticism stirs in the German breast on such nights. "My first sight of the town brought memories of the Walzer brothers and their strange establishment flooding back. I know it might be hindsight or imagination, but it does seem to me that my mule turned very unwillingly at the Algorfe Palace as I drove him down towards the harbour. There, in one of the old streets inhabited mostly by sailors I found the place I was looking for. "The boarding house run by Severo Ancosta was a crooked little building with large balconies, wedged in between others just like it. The landlord, friendly and chatty, gave me a room with a wonderful view of the sea, and I looked forward to enjoying a week of undisturbed beauty. That is until the next day, when I saw Severo's daughter, Lolita. "By our Northern standards she was terribly young, with heavy-lidded southern eyes and hair of an unusual reddish gold. Her body was boyishly slim and supple and her voice full and dark. But it was not her beauty alone that attracted me -there was a strange mystery about her that troubled me often on those moonlit nights. "Sometimes when she came into my room to tidy up, she would pause in her work, her red, normally smiling lips compressed into a narrow line, and she would stare with fear into the sunlight. Her bearing at such times was that of a great tragedienne's Iphigenia. I would take the child in my arms and feel an imperative need to protect her from some unknown danger. "There were days when Lolita's big eyes looked at me shyly, with an unspoken question, and there were evenings when I saw her break into sudden convulsive sobs. "I had ceased to think of moving on. I was bewitched by the South - and by Lolita. "Golden, hot days and silvery, melancholy nights. "And then came that evening, dream-like yet unforgettably real, when Lolita sat on my balcony and softly sang to me, as she often did. But suddenly she let the guitar slide to the floor and came towards me with faltering steps. And while her eyes sought out the shimmering moonlight on the water, she flung her trembling little arms around my neck like a pleading child, leaned her head on my chest, and began to cry. There were tears in her eyes, but her sweet mouth was laughing. "Then the miracle happened. 'You are so strong,' she whispered. "The days and nights that followed were suspended in a song of imperturbable serenity and beauty. "Days turned into weeks and I realized that it was time to continue my travels. Not that any duty called me, but Lolita's immense and dangerous love had begun to frighten me. When I told her this she gave me an indescribable look and nodded silently. Suddenly she seized my hand and bit me as hard as she could. Twenty-five years have not erased the marks of love she left on my hand. By the time I was able to speak Lolita had disappeared into the house. I only saw her once more. "That evening I spoke seriously with Severo about his daughter. 'Come, sir', he said, 'I have something to show you that will explain everything.' He led me into a room that was separated from my own by a door. I stood in amazement. "In that narrow room were only a small table and three armchairs. But they were the same, or nearly the same, as the chairs in the Walzer brothers' tavern. And I realized instantly that it had been Severo Ancosta's house that I had dreamed of on the eve of my departure. "There was a drawing of Lolita on the wall, which was so perfect that I went up to examine it more closely. 'You think that's a picture of Lolita,' laughed Severo, 'but that is Lola, the grandmother of Lolita's great-grandmother. It's a hundred years since she was strangled during a quarrel between her two lovers.' "We sat down and Severo in his genial manner told the story. He told me of Lola, who in her time had been the most beautiful woman in the town, so beautiful that men died for love of her. Shortly after giving birth to a daughter, she was murdered by two of her lovers, whom she had driven to madness. 'Ever since that time a curse has lain on the family. The women all give birth to just one child, a daughter, and within weeks of giving birth, they go mad and die. But they are all beautiful - as beautiful as Lolita! . . . My wife died that way,' he whispered, serious now, 'and my daughter will die the same way.' "I was at a loss for words to comfort him, overcome as I was with fear for my little Lolita. "That evening when I went to my room I found a small red flower, unknown to me, on my pillow. Lolita's farewell gift, I thought, and picked it up. Only then did I see that the flower was actually white, but had turned red with Lolita's blood. Such was her love. "That night I couldn't sleep. A thousand dreams pursued me. Then suddenly, it must have been close to midnight, I saw something frightful. The door to the next room was open, and sitting at the table were three people. To the right and left were two strong young fair-haired fellows, and between them sat Lolita. No, probably not Lolita but Lola - or was it really Lolita? "On the table were glasses of dark red wine. The girl laughed out loud, uninhibitedly, but something hard and insolent played around her mouth. The two men picked up violins and began to play. I felt the blood in my veins pulse faster - I recognized the melody: the gavotte from the days of the Sun King. As the tune ended, the woman wantonly threw her glass to the floor and let out another bright, silvery laugh. "At that moment one of the two fellows who sat facing me laid his violin down on the table. 'Now,' he cried, 'tell us, which of us will you choose?' "She laughed. 'The handsomest - but you are both so handsome. You have a cold, foreign beauty that we are not used to here.' "Then the other one shouted even louder, 'Him or me, tell us, woman, or by God . . . .' "'So you love me . . . ? she asked slyly, looking from one to the other, 'yes, you both love me. Well, if your love is so great then you shall fight for me with all your might and I will call on the Blessed Virgin to send me a sign, to show me which of you loves me most. Do you agree?' "'Yes', the men agreed, glaring at each other. "'I will love the one who is stronger'. So their muscles swelled so much their jackets split. But they realized they were equally strong. "'I will love whoever is taller.' Her eyes flashed. "And honestly, the men seemed to grow taller and taller, their necks lengthened and grew thinner, and their sleeves shot up to the elbows. Their faces became so ugly and distorted, that I thought I would hear their bones crack. But not by so much as a hair was one taller than the other. "Their fists came crashing down on the table, the violins fell to the floor and they began a profane cursing and swearing. "'I will love the elder' she screamed. "The hair fell from their heads, deep furrows spread across their faces, their hands trembled and their knees shook as they struggled painfully to raise themselves to their full height. Their poisonous glances became watery and their roaring cries of rage turned to a feeble croaking. "'By God, woman,' growled one of them, 'speak once more or you will go to hell, you and your thrice-accursed beauty.' "She was laughing so much she fell forward onto the table, and cried with streaming eyes, 'I will love, yes, I will love the one who has the longer and uglier beard!' "Long red hairs shot out of the men's faces, and they emitted insane animal cries of rage and despair. With upraised fists they faced each other. The woman tried to run away. But in the blink of an eye the two of them fell on her and strangled her with their long, bony fingers. "I was unable to move a muscle, my spine turned to ice and I had to close my eyes tight shut. When I opened them again I saw that the two men in the next room, who stood staring down at the result of their vengeful rage, were Anton and Aloys Walzer. I must have fainted dead away. "When I came to, the sun was already streaming into my room, and the door to the next room was shut. I rushed to open it and found everything just as it had been the night before. But I remember thinking that the fine layer of dust I had seen on the furniture was gone. And I could smell the faintest hint of wine in the air. "An hour later I went outside into the street and found Severo, pale and in obvious distress, coming towards me. There were tears in his eyes. "'Lolita died last night,' he said softly. "I cannot describe what those words did to me, but even if I could it would be sacrilege to speak of it. My beloved little Lolita lay in her narrow bed, her eyes wide open. Her teeth were clenched convulsively on her lower lip and her fragrant blonde hair was tangled. "I don't know the manner of her death. In my fathomless dismay I forgot to ask. There was a little cut on her brown left arm - but that surely had not killed her. She had done that to turn a white flower red - for me. I shut her tender eyes and remained on my knees, hiding my face in her cool hand - I don't know for how long. "Eventually Severo came in and reminded me that the steamship that was to take me to Marseille would be leaving in an hour. So I left. "When the ship was far from shore I recognized the outline of Santa Barbara, and it occurred to me that this angular castle would now be looking down on a small beloved body being laid in the earth. My heart had never felt such a yearning and I beseeched the towers: 'Send her my love, send her my love now before she is gone - and forever, forever.' But I took Lolita's soul with me. "It was some years before I returned to the old south German town. In the Walzers' little tavern, there now lived an ugly woman who dealt in seed. I asked after the brothers and learned that they were both found dead in their armchairs by the stove on the morning after Lolita's death. They were smiling." The professor, whose gaze strayed blindly over his dish as he spoke, looked up. After a while, the Countess Beata opened her eyes. "You are a poet," she said, and the bracelet on her delicate wrist clinked as she gave him her hand. The editors are grateful for the assistance of Michael Maar. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:50:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:50:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: St. John's Wort Matches Common Antidepressant Message-ID: St. John's Wort Matches Common Antidepressant http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-02-10-5 At least as effective for moderate to severe depression as drug from Prozac family Betterhumans Staff 2/10/2005 5:41 PM Flower power: St. John's wort has been found as effective for moderate to severe depression as a common antidepressant A special extract of St. John's wort has been found at least as effective for some forms of depression as a common antidepressant in the same family as Prozac. The herbal treatment, [8]hypericum extract WS 5570, was pitted head-to-head against the [9]selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) [10]paroxetine, sold under the trade name [11]Paxil. German researcher [12]Armin Szegedi and colleagues tested both treatments on 301 people aged 18 to 70 with moderate or severe depression at German mental health centers. Participants took the drugs in a randomized, controlled, double-blind study over a six week period during 2000 to 2003. At the trial's conclusion, half the participants (61 of 122) who took [13]St. John's wort found their symptoms in decline while just one-third (43 out of 122) of those taking paroxetine saw remission. Fewer side-effects People taking paroxetine also reported more side-effects, 269 compared to 172 for St. John's wort. The most common for both treatments was stomach disorders. The findings are considered important because while St. John's wort has been found more effective than placebo in treating mild to moderate depression, and as effective as several antidepressants, its efficacy for more severe depression has been disputed. "The results thus indicate that in a group of patients in whom the appropriateness of hypericum extract was previously disputed, the antidepressant efficacy of the herbal drug is at least comparable with the effect of one of the leading synthetic antidepressants," the researchers conclude. The research is reported in the [14]British Medical Journal. References 8. http://www.google.ca/search?q=hypericum+extract+WS+5570 9. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor 10. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine 11. http://www.paxil.com/ 12. http://www.medizin.fu-berlin.de/psyche/english/about/cv/szegedi_e.html 13. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John's_Wort 14. http://www.bmj.com/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 10 17:52:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:52:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Quack Watch: St. John's Wort Message-ID: St. John's Wort http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/stjohn.html [Following the Better Humans article, here's one from a professional debunking group. I wonder who finances them.] Stephen Barrett, M.D. St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) has been widely claimed to be effective as an antidepressant. The mechanism of action is unknown; and the active ingredient, if any, has not been ascertained [1]. Studies of extracts standardized for hypericin (one of the herb's constituents) have found it to be about twice as effective as a placebo. A few studies have found it somewhat more effective than a standard antidepressant. However, none of these studies lasted more than six weeks, which is not long enough to determine how long the herb would be effective or to detect any long-term adverse effects [2]. In addition, some of the studies were not well-designed [3,4]. In most of these studies, the diagnosis was not well established, the placebo response rate was lower than usually seen in such studies, the dosage of standard antidepressants was low, and the dosage of hypericin varied more than six-fold. [1]. No serious side effects were reported, but minor side effects include gastrointestinal discomfort, fatigue, dry mouth, dizziness, skin rash, and hypersensitivity to sunlight. However, in February 2000, British journal Lancet carried reports that St. John's wort could interfere with the effectiveness of an AIDS remedy (indinavir) [5]; an immunosuppressive drug (cyclosporin) used to protect patients after heart transplantation [6]; and an anticoagulant (warfarin) [7]. Based on this study and other reports in the medical literature, the FDA issued a Public Health Advisory stating: St. John's wort appears to be an inducer of an important metabolic pathway, cytochrome P450. As many prescription drugs used to treat conditions such as heart disease, depression, seizures, certain cancers or to prevent conditions such as transplant rejection or pregnancy (oral contraceptives) are metabolized via this pathway, health care providers should alert patients about these potential drug interactions to prevent loss of therapeutic effect of any drug metabolized via the cytochrome P450 pathway [8]. St. John's wort should not be used by women who are pregnant or are breastfeeding. Nor should it be used together with standard antidepressants. The potency and purity of the preparations sold in the United States are unknown [1]. There is no published evidence that St. John's wort is effective against severe depression, which, in any case, should receive professional help. For mild depression, psychotherapy directed at resolving the cause of the depression might be more prudent. The NIH Office of Alternative Medicine has funded a 3-year, $4.3-million [3]clinical trial that will compare the effects of hypericum, a placebo, and a standard antidepressive drug on patients who are followed for up to six months [9]. The results are expected in the year 2002. Regardless of the outcome, however, another problem must be overcome before consumers could use St. John's wort effectively. A Good Housekeeping Institute analysis of six widely available St. John's wort supplement capsules and four liquid extracts revealed a lack of consistency of the suspected active ingredients, hypericin and pseudohypericin. The study found: * A 17-fold difference between the capsules containing the smallest amount of hypericin and those containing the largest amount, based on manufacturer's maximum recommended dosage. * A 13-fold difference in pseudohypericin in the capsules. * A 7-to-8-fold differential from the highest to the lowest levels of liquid extracts [10]. A sinilar investigation by the Los Angeles Times found that 7 of10 products contained between 75% and 135% of the labeled hypericin level, and three contained no more than about half the labeled potency [11]. References 1. St. John's Wort. The Medical Letter 39:107-108, 1997. 2. Linde K and others. [4]St. John's wort for depression -- an overview and meta-analysis of randomised clinical trials. British Medical Journal 313:253-258, 1996. 3. De Smet PAGM, Nolen WA. [5]St. John's wort as an antidepressant: Longer term studies are needed before it can be recommended in major depression. British Medical Journal 313:241-242, 1996. 4. Gaster B, Holroyd J. [6]St. John's wort in depression. Archives of Internal Medicine 160:152-156, 2000. 5. Piscitelli SC and others. [7]Indinavir concentrations and St John's wort. Lancet 355:547, 2000. 6. Ruschitzka F and others. [8]Acute heart transplant rejection due to Saint John's wort. Lancet 355:548, 2000. 7. Jobst KA and others. Safety of St John's wort. Lancet 355:576, 2000. 8. Lumpkin MM, Alpert S. [9]Risk of drug interactions with St. John's wort and indinavir and other drugs. FDA Health Advisory, Feb 10, 2000. 9. St. John's wort study launched. Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NIH 4(4):5, October 1997. 10. Good Housekeeping Institute. New Good Housekeeping Institute study finds drastic discrepancy in potencies of popular herbal supplement. News release, Consumer Safety Symposium on Dietary Supplements and Herbs, New York City, March 3, 1998. 11. Monmaney T. Labels' potency claims often inaccurate, analysis finds. Spot check of products finds widely varying levels of key ingredient. But some firms object to testing method and defend their brands' quality. Los Angeles Times, Aug 31, 1998. This article was revised on April 16, 2000. References 1. http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/qa.html 2. http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html 3. http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1999/feb/bunk_p10_990201.html 4. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7052/253?view=full&pmid=8704532 5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?http://www.bmj.com/cgi/pmidlookup?view=full&pmid=8704522 6. http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v160n2/full/ira81029.html 7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10683007&dopt=Abstract 8. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10683008&dopt=Abstract 9. http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/advisory/stjwort.htm 10. http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/qa.html 11. http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 11 12:59:17 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 05:59:17 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Cells That Go Back in Time Message-ID: <01C53E5B.9935C0B0.shovland@mindspring.com> By Kristen Philipkoski | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1 02:00 AM Apr. 08, 2005 PT Lop off a newt's leg or tail, and it will grow a new one. The creature's cells can regenerate thanks to built-in time machines that revert cells to early versions of themselves in a process called dedifferentiation. Researchers who study this mechanism hope one day to learn how to induce the same "cell time travel" in humans. If the cells go back far enough, they become stem cells, which researchers believe hold promise for treating many diseases. Stem cells, which are often taken from embryos, are unformed and have the ability to become many different types of cells. If researchers succeed in inducing this cell time travel, they will also eliminate the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem-cell research, because no embryos would be destroyed to obtain the cells. The research is in its infancy, but a 2001 discovery jump-started the field of study. Mark Keating , Christopher McGann and Shannon Odelberg applied a protein extract derived from newts to mouse muscle cells. To their surprise, the protein extract transformed those muscle cells into stem cells in just 48 hours, which means the mouse cells would have the ability to regenerate. No one expected the experiment to work. Previously, scientists believed that once mammalian cells became muscle, bone or any other type of cells, that was their fate for life -- and if those cells were injured, they didn't regenerate, but grew scar tissue. But Keating's experiment introduced the possibility that, under the right circumstances, humans -- who are 99 percent genetically similar to mice -- might one day be able to regenerate their own cells. Those regenerated cells could be used to treat disease. "For those of us who want to understand what happens in dedifferentiation, our ultimate goal is to be able to form a pool of stem-cell-like cells that would be able to repopulate the organ or tissue you're trying to repair," said Catherine Tsilfidis , a scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute who has reproduced Keating's findings, which she describes as "beautiful." In newts and some other animals with the ability to regenerate, cells at the site of an injury can revert to their embryonic stem-cell stage and can become another type of cell in that creature's body. In other words, a skin cell can dedifferentiate into a stem cell, then regenerate into a muscle cell or another completely different type of cell. Tsilfidis and her colleagues are now trying to pinpoint which genes are responsible for kick-starting newt dedifferentiation. They published findings in the March 23 issue of Developmental Dynamics identifying 59 DNA fragments that seem to play a role in newt forelimb regeneration, and Tsilfidis believes many of those gene fragments have counterparts in humans. "Whether (those genes) can actually induce dedifferentiation is yet to be determined," Tsilfidis said. While the genes were active during maximum dedifferentiation activity, she said, so much is going on in cells after a newt's forelimb is cut off that it's difficult to pick out specific dedifferentiation genes. While some cells are dedifferentiating, others have already begun regenerating and differentiating, or becoming specialized cells. They're performing activities like healing wounds or growing blood vessels, so it's difficult to pin certain genes to specific activities. Researchers are trying to learn similar lessons from other creatures that have the ability to regenerate, including starfish , zebrafish , earthworms and lobsters. Adult human bodies do contain some stem cells, but they are rare. "Maybe only one in a million cells in a particular region might have that regenerative capacity you're interested in," said Robert Naviaux , who studies cancer and stem-cell differentiation, and is co-director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at the University of California at San Diego. "Stem cells are more concentrated in certain locations like human umbilical cords, blood and bone marrow, and certain areas of the brain around the ventricles." People who believe it's unethical to destroy any embryos, even those abandoned and destined for destruction at in vitro fertilization clinics, have touted adult stem cells as an ethical choice. The field has seen some success, but many researchers believe adult stem cells have less "plasticity," or ability to become different types of cells. Others have promoted various schemes for getting around the embryo conundrum, but none has received a unanimous stamp of approval from scientists and religious groups or others who oppose the destruction of embryos. But at least one religious leader believes the ability to use dedifferentiation to create human stem cells would eliminate the controversy. "I believe that dedifferentiation -- the direct conversion of a somatic cell into an embryonic stem cell -- is the holy grail for those seeking morally acceptable alternatives to the destructive embryo research now required to obtain (embryonic stem) cells," said Father Nicanor Austriaco , a molecular biologist and Catholic priest in Washington, D.C. "You would also be able to get immunocompatible (embryonic stem) cells from every patient by simply dedifferentiating his or her cells. This would be an amazing discovery." From btillier at shaw.ca Mon Apr 11 20:06:17 2005 From: btillier at shaw.ca (Bill Tillier) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 14:06:17 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Re: why does disaster cripple our two brains? Message-ID: In follow-up to Howard's post: I saw an exchange of letters on Human Resilience in the April 2005 American Psychologist (about the following article). I have presented the text of the article (no diagrams). Bill Tillier. 20 January 2004 American Psychologist Vol. 59, No. 1, 20?28. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to George A. Bonanno, Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 218, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: gab38 at columbia.edu Loss, Trauma, and Human Resilience: Have We Underestimated the Human Capacity to Thrive After Extremely Aversive Events? George A. Bonanno Teachers College, Columbia University Many people are exposed to loss or potentially traumatic events at some point in their lives, and yet they continue to have positive emotional experiences and show only minor and transient disruptions in their ability to function. Unfortunately, because much of psychology?s knowledge about how adults cope with loss or trauma has come from individuals who sought treatment or exhibited great distress, loss and trauma theorists have often viewed this type of resilience as either rare or pathological. The author challenges these assumptions by reviewing evidence that resilience represents a distinct trajectory from the process of recovery, that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma is more common than is often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. Most people are exposed to at least one violent or life-threatening situation during the course of their lives (Ozer, Best, Lipsey, & Weiss, 2003). As people progress through the life cycle, they are also increasingly confronted with the deaths of close friends and relatives. Not everyone copes with these potentially disturbing events in the same way. Some people experience acute distress from which they are unable to recover. Others suffer less intensely and for a much shorter period of time. Some people seem to recover quickly but then begin to experience unexpected health problems or difficulties concentrating or enjoying life the way they used to. However, large numbers of people manage to endure the temporary upheaval of loss or potentially traumatic events remarkably well, with no apparent disruption in their ability to function at work or in close relationships, and seem to move on to new challenges with apparent ease. This article is devoted to the latter group and to the question of resilience in the face of loss or potentially traumatic events. The importance of protective psychological factors in the prevention of illness is now well established (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000). Moreover, developmental psychologists have shown that resilience is common among children growing up in disadvantaged conditions (e.g., Masten, 2001). Unfortunately, because most of the psychological knowledge base regarding the ways adults cope with loss or potential trauma has been derived from individuals who have experienced significant psychological problems or sought treatment, theorists working in this area have often underestimated and misunderstood resilience, viewing it either as a pathological state or as something seen only in rare and exceptionally healthy individuals. In this article, I challenge this view by reviewing evidence that resilience in the face of loss or potential trauma represents a distinct trajectory from that of recovery, that resilience is more common than often believed, and that there are multiple and sometimes unexpected pathways to resilience. Point 1: Resilience Is Different From Recovery A key feature of the concept of adult resilience to loss and trauma, to be discussed in the next two sections, is its distinction from the process of recovery. The term recovery connotes a trajectory in which normal functioning temporarily gives way to threshold or subthreshold psychopathology (e.g., symptoms of depression or posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD]), usually for a period of at least several months, and then gradually returns to pre-event levels. Full recovery may be relatively rapid or may take as long as one or two years. By contrast, resilience reflects the ability to maintain a stable equilibrium. In the developmental literature, resilience is typically discussed in terms of protective factors that foster the development of positive outcomes and healthy personality characteristics among children exposed to unfavorable or aversive life circumstances (e.g., Garmezy, 1991; Luthar, Cicchetti, & Becker, 2000; Masten, 2001; Rutter, 1999; Werner, 1995). Resilience to loss and trauma, as conceived in this article, pertains to the ability of adults in otherwise normal circumstances who are exposed to an isolated and potentially highly disruptive event, such as the death of a close relation or a violent or life-threatening situation, to maintain relatively stable, healthy levels of psychological and physical functioning. A further distinction is that resilience is more than the simple absence of psychopathology. Recovering individuals often experience subthreshold symptom levels. Resilient individuals, by contrast, may experience transient perturbations in normal functioning (e.g., several weeks of sporadic preoccupation or restless sleep) but generally exhibit a stable trajectory of healthy functioning across time, as well as the capacity for generative experiences and positive emotions (Bonanno, Papa, & O?Neill, 2001). The prototypical resilience and recovery trajectories, as well as chronic and delayed disruptions in functioning, are illustrated in Figure 1. In the loss and trauma literatures, researchers have tended to assume a unidimensional response with little variability in possible outcome trajectory among adults exposed to potentially traumatic events. Bereavement theorists have tended to assume that coping with the death of a close friend or relative is necessarily an active process that can and in most cases should be facilitated by clinical intervention. Trauma theorists have focused their attentions primarily on interventions for PTSD. Nonetheless, trauma theorists and practitioners have at times assumed that virtually all individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events could benefit from active coping and professional intervention. In this section, I discuss how the failure of the loss and trauma literatures to adequately distinguish resilience from recovery relates to current controversies about when and for whom clinical intervention might be most appropriate. This failure also helps explain why in some cases clinical interventions with exposed individuals are sometimes ineffective or even harmful. The Grief Work Assumption Traditionally, mental health professionals in the industrialized West have understood grief and bereavement from a single dominant perspective characterized by the need for grief work (Stroebe & Stroebe, 1991). The conception of grieving as work originated in Freud?s (1917/1957) metaphoric use of the term to describe the idea that virtually every bereaved individual needs to review ?each single one of the memories and hopes which bound the libido . . . to the non-existent object? (p. 154). Theorists following Freud emphasized even more strongly the critical importance to all bereaved individuals of working through the negative thoughts, memories, and emotions about a loss (see Bonanno & Field, 2001). As researchers began to devote more attention to the bereavement process, however, it became apparent that, despite the near unanimity with which mental health professionals endorsed the grief work perspective, there was a surprising lack of empirical support for such a view (Wortman & Silver, 1989). What?s more, recent studies that have directly examined the legitimacy of the grief work approach have not only failed to support this approach but actually suggest that it may be harmful for many bereaved individuals to engage in such practices (see Bonanno & Kaltman, 1999). A more plausible alternative would be that grief work processes are appropriate for only a subset of bereaved individuals (Stroebe & Stroebe, 1991), most likely those actively struggling with the most severe levels of grief and distress (Bonanno et al., 2001). The idea that grief work may characterize only the more highly distressed bereaved individuals (i.e., those exhibiting either the recovery or chronic symptom trajectories) is further supported by data indicating that the practice of engaging a wide array of bereaved individuals in grief counseling has proved remarkably ineffective. Grief-focused interventions typically target both acute or prolonged grief reactions as well as the absence of a grief reaction (e.g., Rando, 1992). Two recent meta-analyses Figure 1 Prototypical Patterns of Disruption in Normal Functioning Across Time Following Interpersonal Loss or Potentially Traumatic Events independently reached the conclusion that grief-specific therapies tend to be relatively inefficacious (Kato & Mann, 1999; Neimeyer, 2000). A third meta-analytic study reported that grief therapies can be effective but generally to a lesser degree than usually observed for other forms of psychotherapy (Allumbaugh & Hoyt, 1999). In one of these analyses, an alarming 38% of the individuals receiving grief treatments actually got worse relative to no-treatment controls, whereas the most clear benefits were evidenced primarily with bereaved individuals experiencing chronic grief (Neimeyer, 2000). In summarizing these findings, Neimeyer (2000) concluded that ?such interventions are typically ineffective, and perhaps even deleterious, at least for persons experiencing a normal bereavement? (p. 541). Trauma Interventions and Critical Incident Debriefing Although for centuries practitioners have linked violent or life-threatening events with psychological and physiological dysfunction, historically there also has been confusion and controversy over the nature of traumatic events and over whether to consider psychological reactions as malingering, weakness, or genuine dysfunction (Lamprecht & Sack, 2002). The inclusion of the PTSD category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. [DSM?III]; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) resulted in a surge of research and theory about clinically significant trauma reactions. There is now considerable support for the usefulness of interventions with individuals meeting PTSD criteria. Cognitive?behavioral treatments that aim to help traumatized individuals understand and manage the anxiety and fear associated with trauma-related stimuli have proved the most effective (Resick, 2001). Although outcome studies generally show few differences between treatments, there is some evidence for superior results with prolonged exposure therapy (e.g., Foa et al., 1999). The essential components of exposure treatment usually involve repeated confrontations with memories of the traumatic stressor (imaginal exposure) and with situations that evoke unrealistic fears (in vivo exposure; Zoellner, Fitzgibbons, & Foa, 2001). Ironically, the effectiveness of reliving traumatic experiences for individuals with PTSD may have helped blur the distinction between recovery and resilience. Researchers have made remarkably few attempts to distinguish subgroups within the broad category of individuals not showing PTSD. Resilient and recovering individuals are often lumped into a single category (e.g., King, King, Foy, Keane, & Fairbank, 1999; McFarlane & Yehuda, 1996). As with bereavement, however, when researchers do not address this distinction, they risk making the faulty assumption that resilient people must engage in the same coping processes as do exposed individuals who struggle with but eventually recover from more intense trauma symptoms. The possible untoward nature of this assumption is evidenced keenly in the often contentious debate about the appropriateness of psychological debriefing. Whereas genuinely traumatized individuals were once doubted as malingerers, the pendulum has recently swung so far in the opposite direction that many practitioners believe that virtually all individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events should be offered and would benefit from at least some form of brief intervention. Critical incident stress debriefing was originally developed for relatively limited use as a brief group intervention to help mitigate psychological distress among emergency response personnel (Mitchell, 1983). Over time, however, debriefing has been applied individually and broadly (Mitchell & Everly, 2000) and sometimes, as after the recent September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (Miller, 2002), as a blanket intervention for virtually all exposed individuals. Critics of psychological debriefing argue, however, that such a broad application may pathologize normal reactions to adversity and thus may undermine natural resilience processes. Indeed, growing evidence shows that global applications of psychological debriefing are ineffective (Rose, Brewin, Andrews, & Kirk, 1999) and can impede natural recovery processes (Bisson, Jenkins, Alexander, & Bannister, 1997; Mayou, Ehlers, & Hobbs, 2000). An alternative form of early trauma intervention, recently proposed by Litz, Gray, Bryant, and Adler (2002), resonates with the distinction proposed here between resilience and recovery. Litz et al. argued that, while offering debriefing to all individuals exposed to a potentially traumatic event is misguided, some individuals would indeed benefit from early intervention. They proposed the development of initial screening practices for intervention with individuals who show possible risk factors (e.g., prior trauma, low social support, hyperarousal) for developing chronic PTSD. Implicit in this approach is the idea, central to the current article, that many individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events will show a genuine resilience that should not be interfered with or undermined by clinical intervention. Point 2: Resilience Is Common Because research on acute and chronic grief and PTSD historically has dominated the literature on how adults cope with aversive life events, such reactions have generally come to be viewed as the norm. As I discuss below, bereavement theorists have been highly skeptical about individuals who do not show pronounced distress reactions or who display positive emotions following loss, assuming that such individuals are rare and suffer from pathological or dysfunctional forms of absent grief. Trauma theorists have been less suspicious about the absence of PTSD but have often ignored and underestimated resilience. A review of the available research on loss and violent or life-threatening events clearly indicates that the vast majority of individuals exposed to such events do not exhibit chronic symptom profiles and that many and, in some cases, the majority show the type of healthy functioning suggestive of the resilience trajectory. Resilience to Loss Bereavement theorists have typically viewed the absence of prolonged distress or depression following the death of an important friend or relative, often termed absent grief, as a rare and pathological response that results from denial or avoidance of the emotional realities of the loss. Bowlby (1980), for example, described the ?prolonged absence of conscious grieving? (p. 138) as a type of disordered mourning and viewed the experience or expression of positive emotions during the early stages of bereavement as a form of defensive denial. Summarizing the first wave of bereavement research, Osterweis, Solomon, and Green (1984) concluded ?that the absence of grieving phenomena following bereavement represents some form of personality pathology? (p. 18). More recently, in a survey of self-identified bereavement experts, the majority (65%) endorsed beliefs that absent grief exists, that it usually stems from denial or inhibition, and that it is generally maladaptive in the long run (Middleton, Moylan, Raphael, Burnett, & Martinek, 1993). These same bereavement experts (76%) also endorsed the compatible assumption that absent grief eventually surfaces in the form of delayed grief reactions. The available empirical literature, however, suggests a very different story: Resilience to the unsettling effects of interpersonal loss is not rare but relatively common, does not appear to indicate pathology but rather healthy adjustment, and does not lead to delayed grief reactions. Over a decade ago, Wortman and Silver (1989) first drew attention to the somewhat startling fact that there was no empirical basis for either the assumption that the absence of distress during bereavement is pathological or that it is always followed by delayed manifestations of grief. Unfortunately, at the time their article was published, there were relatively few longitudinal bereavement studies from which to fully evaluate their claim. More recent prospective studies have now begun to shed greater light on individual differences in grief reactions (for a review, see Bonanno & Kaltman, 2001). Although the DSM has not specified a unique category for acute or complicated grief reactions, the available research generally shows that chronic depression and distress tend to occur in 10% to 15% of bereaved individuals. Considerable numbers of bereaved individuals also tend to show more time-limited disruptions in functioning (e.g., cognitive disorganization, dysphoria, health deficits, disrupted social and occupational functioning) lasting at least several months to one or two years. Most important, in studies that report aggregate data, bereaved individuals who exhibited relatively low levels of depression or distress have consistently approached or exceeded 50% of the sample. For example, in a recent study that examined various levels of depression among conjugally bereaved adults, approximately half of a sample did not show even mild depression (these individuals endorsed fewer than two items from the DSM?IV symptom list) following the loss (Zisook, Paulus, Shuchter, & Judd, 1997). In addition, there is now solid prospective evidence that associates resilience to loss with the experience and expression of positive emotion (e.g., Bonanno & Keltner, 1997). How many of the bereaved individuals who do not exhibit overt grief reactions will eventually develop delayed grief reactions? The evidence is unequivocal on this point: No empirical study has ever clearly demonstrated the existence of delayed grief. For example, Middleton, Burnett, Raphael, and Martinek (1996) used cluster analyses to examine longitudinal outcome patterns among groups of bereaved spouses, adult children, and parents. Despite their conviction that delayed grief would emerge, Middleton et al. concluded that ?no evidence was found for the pattern of response which might be expected for delayed grief? (Middleton et al., 1996, p. 169). Data from a recent fiveyear longitudinal study indicated a similar conclusion (Bonanno & Field, 2001). This study contrasted the common assumption that delayed grief is a robust phenomenon with an alternative assumption that a few participants might show delayed elevations but only on isolated measures because of random measurement error. The results were consistent with the measurement-error explanation. In fact, when a psychometrically more reliable, weighted composite measure was used, not a single participant evidenced delayed grief. The idea that the absence of grief is pathological is rooted in the assumptions that bereaved individuals showing this pattern must have had a superficial attachment to the deceased or that they are cold and emotionally distant people (Bowlby, 1980). Such explanations are notoriously difficult to rule out because, for obvious reasons, most bereavement studies take place after the death already has occurred. When measured during bereavement, factors such as the quality of the lost relationship or the situational context of the loss are confounded with current functioning and the possible influence of memory biases (e.g., Safer, Bonanno, & Field, 2001). However, a recent prospective study provided a rare opportunity to address this issue using data gathered on average three years prior to the death of a spouse (Bonanno, Wortman, et al., 2002). This study provided strong evidence in support of the idea that many bereaved individuals will exhibit little or no grief and that these individuals are not cold and unfeeling or lacking in attachment but, rather, are capable of genuine resilience in the face of loss. Almost half of the participants in this study (46% of the sample) had low levels of depression, both prior to the loss and through 18 months of bereavement, and had relatively few grief symptoms (e.g., intense yearning for the spouse) during bereavement. An examination of the prebereavement functioning of this group revealed no signs of maladjustment; these participants were not rated as emotionally cold or distant by the interviewers, did not report difficulties in their marriages, and did not show dismissive attachment. They did, however, have relatively high scores on several prebereavement measures suggestive of the ability to adapt well to loss (e.g., acceptance of death, belief in a just world, instrumental support). As in previous studies, no unequivocal evidence for delayed grief was found. Finally, it is important to note that even among these resilient individuals, the majority reported experiencing at least some yearning and emotional pangs, and virtually all participants reported intrusive cognition and rumination at some point early after the loss (Bonanno, Wortman, & Nesse, in press). The difference between the resilient individuals and the other participants, however, was that these experiences were transient rather than enduring and did not interfere with their ability to continue to function in other areas of their lives, including the capacity for positive affect. Resilience to Violent and Life-Threatening Events Epidemiological studies estimate that the majority of the U.S. population has been exposed to at least one traumatic event, defined using the DSM?III criteria of an event outside the range of normal human experience, during the course of their lives. Although grief and trauma symptoms are qualitatively different, the basic outcome trajectories following trauma tend to form patterns similar to those observed following bereavement (see Figure 1). Summarizing this research, Ozer et al. (2003) recently noted that ?roughly 50%?60% of the U.S. population is exposed to traumatic stress but only 5%?10% develop PTSD? (p. 54). However, because there is greater variability in the types and levels of exposure to stressor events, there also tends to be greater variability in PTSD rates over time. Estimates of chronic PTSD have ranged, for example, from 6.6% and 9.9% for individuals experiencing personally threatening and violent events, respectively, during the 1992 Los Angeles riots (Hanson, Kilpatrick, Freedy, & Saunders, 1995), to 12.5% for Gulf War veterans (Sutker, Davis, Uddo, & Ditta, 1995), to 16.5% for hospitalized survivors of motor vehicle accidents (Ehlers, Mayou, & Bryant, 1998), to 17.8% for victims of physical assault (Resnick, Kilpatrick, Dansky, Saunders, & Best, 1993). Although chronic PTSD certainly warrants great concern, the fact that the vast majority of individuals exposed to violent or life-threatening events do not go on to develop the disorder has not received adequate attention. It is well established that many exposed individuals will evidence short-lived PTSD or subclinical stress reactions that abate over the course of several months or longer (i.e., the recovery pattern). For example, a population-based survey conducted one month after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City estimated that 7.5% of Manhattan residents would meet criteria for PTSD and that another 17.4% would meet the criteria for subsyndromal PTSD (high symptom levels that do not meet full diagnostic criteria; Galea, Ahern, et al., 2002). As in other studies, a subset eventually developed chronic PTSD, and this was more likely if exposure was high. However, most respondents evidenced a rapid decline in symptoms over time: PTSD prevalence related to 9/11 dropped to only 1.7% at four months and 0.6% at six months, whereas subsyndromal PTSD dropped to 4.0% and 4.7%, respectively, at these times (Galea et al., 2003). What about exposed individuals who exhibit relatively little distress? Trauma theorists are sometimes surprised when exposed individuals do not show more than a few PTSD symptoms. For example, body handlers in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing have been described as showing ?unexpected resilience? (Tucker et al., 2002). Indeed, whereas those who cope well with bereavement are sometimes viewed as cold and unfeeling, those who cope well with violent or life-threatening events are often viewed in terms of extreme heroism. However justi- fied, this practice tends to reinforce the misperception that only rare individuals with ?exceptional emotional strength? (e.g., Casella & Motta, 1990) are capable of resilience. The available evidence suggests that resilience to violent and life-threatening events is far more common. The vast majority of individuals (78.2%) exposed to the 1992 Los Angeles riots reported three or fewer PTSD symptoms (Hanson et al., 1995). Similarly, among hospitalized survivors of motor vehicle accidents (Bryant, Harvey, Guthrie, & Moulds, 2000), the majority (79%) did not meet criteria for PTSD and averaged only 3.3 PTSD symptoms, indicating that many participants must have shown little or no PTSD. In a study of PTSD among Gulf War veterans (Sutker et al., 1995), the majority (62.5%) had no psychological distress when examined within one year of their return to the United States. In their post-9/11 survey, Galea, Resnick, et al. (2002) reported that over 40% of Manhattan residents did not report a single PTSD symptom. Carden?a et al. (1994) examined data on a wide range of cognitive, affective, and somatic symptoms (e.g., exaggerated startle, recurrent distressing dreams, fatigue) measured among survivors of five different disaster events within one to four weeks of each event. Although they did not assess the type of specific symptom trajectories that would allow direct inferences about resilient individuals, Carden?a et al. did report that ?even with such a diverse series of events and forms of data collection . . . the percentages we obtained for immediate reactions to disaster were very similar? (Carden?a et al., 1994, p. 387). And their data were consistent with the idea that resilience is common: The vast majority of symptoms they measured were apparent in only a minority of respondents. Finally, although relatively little research has been done on the experience or expression of positive emotion following potentially traumatic events, two recent studies have provided important preliminary data linking positive emotions in the context of trauma with resilient functioning (Colak et al., 2003; Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, & Larkin, 2003). Positive emotion is revisited in the final section of this article. How many exposed individuals eventually show delayed trauma reactions? In contrast to the absence of evidence for delayed grief during bereavement, delayed PTSD does appear to be a genuine, empirically verifiable phenomenon. Nonetheless, delayed PTSD is still relatively infrequent, occurring in approximately 5% to 10% of exposed individuals (Buckley, Blanchard, & Hickling, 1996), and thus applies at best only to a subset of the many individuals who do not show initial PTSD reactions. It is noteworthy, however, that exposed individuals who eventually manifest delayed PTSD tend to have had relatively high levels of symptoms in the immediate aftermath of the stressor event (e.g., Buckley et al., 1996). Thus, these individuals appear to be immediately distinguishable from more truly resilient individuals (see Figure 1). Perhaps trauma reactions might manifest indirectly through behavioral or health problems? Although PTSD is frequently comorbid with health and behavior problems, individuals exposed to putative traumatic events sometimes do evidence these problems in the absence of PTSD. As was the case with delayed PTSD, however, even when health and behavior problems are accounted for, many survivors do not show such problems. This was evidenced, for example, in a longitudinal study of survivors of the North Sea oil rig disaster?by all accounts a horrific and disturbing event (Holen, 1990). In the first year following the disaster, 13.7% of the survivors were assigned psychiatric diagnoses (at the time of the study, PTSD was not a well-established diagnosis), compared with only 1.1% of a matched comparison sample. In contrast, medical diagnoses were assigned to 31% of the survivors. Although these rates were markedly higher than those found in the comparison sample (4.5%), they nonetheless underscore the fact that most if not the majority of survivors exhibited neither extreme distress nor unusual health problems. Point 3: There Are Multiple and Sometimes Unexpected Pathways to Resilience If resilience and recovery represent distinct trajectories that are informed by different coping habits, then what factors promote resilience? Meta-analytic studies have consistently revealed several clear predictors of PTSD reactions, including lack of social support, low intelligence and lack of education, family background, prior psychiatric history, and aspects of the trauma response itself, such as dissociative reactions (Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000; Ozer et al., 2003). It seems likely that at least some of these factors, if inverted, would predict resilient functioning. However, relatively little research has attempted to address this question. What?s more, because so little attention has been devoted to resilience, when loss and trauma theorists have looked for resilience, they have tended to look in the wrong places. Indeed, the assumption that all adults exposed to loss or to potentially traumatic events experience prolonged distress and disruptions in functioning goes hand in hand with the belief that resilience must be rare and found only in exceptionally healthy people (e.g., Casella & Motta, 1990). Recent studies suggest a far more complex picture; as developmental psychologists have long asserted, there is no single means of maintaining equilibrium following highly aversive events, but rather there are multiple pathways to resilience (e.g., Luthar, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993; Rutter, 1987). This evidence further suggests that, contrary to myths about unusually healthy beings, adults resilient to loss or trauma often appear to cope effectively in ways that, under normal circumstances, may not always be advantageous. For example, recall the bereavement study by Bonanno, Wortman, et al. (2002), discussed earlier, that identified a large resilient group with a relatively healthy profile prior to the loss. This study also revealed a second, smaller group of resilient individuals who had improved following the death of their spouse. At prebereavement, members of the improved group had spouses who were ill; were highly depressed, neurotic, and introspective; had more conflicted, ambivalent marriages; and believed that they were treated less fairly in life than other people. A recent follow-up study of these individuals (Bonanno et al., in press) indicated that they showed no adverse reactions through 18 months of bereavement, gave little indication of denial or avoidance, perceived greater benefits to widowhood, gained increasing comfort from positive memories of their spouses over time, and reported that they too were somewhat surprised by their own coping efficacy. Thus, although dramatically different from the larger resilient group at prebereavement, the improved respondents also appeared to exhibit genuine resilience during bereavement. In this section, a number of distinct dimensions suggestive of different types or pathways of resilience to loss and trauma are considered. Hardiness A growing body of evidence suggests that the personality trait of hardiness (Kobasa, Maddi, & Kahn, 1982) helps to buffer exposure to extreme stress. Hardiness consists of three dimensions: being committed to finding meaningful purpose in life, the belief that one can influence one?s surroundings and the outcome of events, and the belief that one can learn and grow from both positive and negative life experiences. Armed with this set of beliefs, hardy individuals have been found to appraise potentially stressful situations as less threatening, thus minimizing the experience of distress. Hardy individuals are also more confident and better able to use active coping and social support, thus helping them deal with the distress they do experience (e.g., Florian, Mikulincer, & Taubman, 1995). Self-Enhancement Another dimension linked to resilience is self-enhancement. Somewhat ironically, around the time PTSD was formalized as a diagnostic category, social psychologists had begun to challenge the traditional assumption that mental health requires realistic acceptance of personal limitations and negative characteristics (Greenwald, 1980; Taylor & Brown, 1988). These scholars argued instead that unrealistic or overly positive biases in favor of the self, such as self-enhancement, can be adaptive and promote well-being. Although most people engage in self-enhancing biases at least some of the time, measurable individual differences are also found. Trait self-enhancement has been associated with benefits, such as high self-esteem, but also with costs: Self-enhancers score high on measures of narcissism and tend to evoke negative impressions in others (Paulhus, 1998). This trade-off may be less problematic, however, in the context of highly aversive events, when threats to the self are most salient (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Support for this idea comes from a recent study of individual differences in self-enhancing biases among bereaved individuals in the United States and among Bosnian civilians living in Sarajevo in the immediate aftermath of the Balkan civil war (Bonanno, Field, Kovacevic, & Kaltman, 2002). In both samples, self-enhancers were rated by mental health professionals as better adjusted. What?s more, self-enhancement proved to be particularly adaptive for bereaved individuals suffering from more severe losses. In a similar study of individuals who were in or near the World Trade Center towers at the time of the September 11th attacks (Bonanno, Rennicke, Dekel, & Rosen, 2003), self-enhancers reported better adjustment and more active social networks and were rated more positively and as better adjusted by their close friends. Further, selfenhancers? salivary cortisol levels exhibited a profile suggestive of minimal stress responding. Repressive Coping Resilience to loss and trauma has also been found among another perhaps less likely group: repressive copers (Weinberger, Schwartz, & Davidson, 1979). A considerable body of literature documents that individuals identified by either questionnaire or behavioral measures as repressors tend to avoid unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and memories (Weinberger, 1990). In contrast to hardiness and selfenhancement, which appear to operate primarily on the level of cognitive processes, repressive coping appears to operate primarily through emotion-focused mechanisms, such as emotional dissociation. For instance, repressors typically report relatively little distress in stressful situations but exhibit elevated distress on indirect measures, such as autonomic arousal (Weinberger et al., 1979). Emotional dissociation is generally viewed as maladaptive and may be associated with long-term health costs (Bonanno & Singer, 1990). However, these same tendencies also appear to foster adaptation to extreme adversity. For example, repressors have been found to show relatively little grief or distress at any point across five years of bereavement (Bonanno & Field, 2001; Bonanno, Keltner, Holen, & Horowitz, 1995). Further, although they initially reported increased somatic complaints, over time repressors did not show greater somatic or health problems than other participants. Recently, among a sample of young women with documented histories of childhood sexual abuse, repressors were less likely to voluntarily disclose their abuse when provided the opportunity to do so, but they also showed better adjustment than other survivors (Bonanno, Noll, Putnam, O?Neill, & Trickett, 2003). Positive Emotion and Laughter One of the ways repressors and others showing resilience appear to cope well with adversity is through the use of positive emotion and laughter (Bonanno, Noll, et al., 2003; Keltner & Bonanno, 1997). Historically, the possible usefulness of positive emotion in the context of extremely aversive events was either ignored or dismissed as a form of unhealthy denial (e.g., Bowlby, 1980). Recently, however, research has shown that positive emotions can help reduce levels of distress following aversive events both by quieting or undoing negative emotion (Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998; Keltner & Bonanno, 1997) and by ?increasing continued contact with and support from important people in the . . . person?s social environment? (Bonanno & Keltner, 1997, p. 134). Several recent studies have supported these ideas in the specific contexts of loss or trauma. Bereaved individuals who exhibited genuine laughs and smiles when speaking about a recent loss had better adjustment over several years of bereavement (Bonanno & Keltner, 1997) and also evoked more favorable responses in observers (Keltner & Bonanno, 1997). Recently, Fredrickson et al. (2003) demonstrated that the links between personality measures of resilience and adjustment following the September 11th attacks were mediated by the experience of positive emotions (e.g., gratitude, interest, love). Finally, the expression of positive emotion among young adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse predicted better adjustment and better social relations over time (Colak et al., 2003). The latter study also suggested, however, that although laughter in the context of a socially stigmatized event like childhood sexual abuse predicts better adjustment, it may also carry social costs (e.g., decreased social competence). Clearly, this is an important area for further research. Toward a Broader Conceptualization of Stress Responding The evidence reviewed above presents an important challenge to the view that adults who do not show distress following a loss or violent or life-threatening event are either pathological or rare and exceptionally healthy. Rather, this evidence suggests that resilience is common, is distinct from the process of recovery, and can potentially be reached by a variety of different pathways. What lessons might these points offer for future understanding of human stress responding? Within a broader context, psychologists might try to understand why resilience in the face of loss or trauma has so often been misunderstood by considering the myriad errors and biases in judgment that occur under conditions of uncertainty (e.g., the availability heuristic; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Others already have probed the limitations of clinical inference from this perspective (e.g., Dawes, 1994). However, what might be particularly interesting to explore is the frequent failure not only to grasp the prevalence of resilience to loss and trauma but also to comprehend its many forms. Clearly, researchers and theorists need to move beyond overly simplistic conceptions of health and pathology to embrace the broader costs and benefits of various dispositions and adaptive mechanisms. Trade-offs of this sort can be found everywhere in nature. Cheetahs, for example, possess breathtaking speed but have poor stamina and must catch their prey quickly or starve. In a similar vein, people prone to the use of self-enhancing biases enjoy high self-esteem but tend to annoy those who do not know them well (Paulhus, 1998). Overly simplistic conceptions of self-enhancers as dysfunctional obfuscate the coping advantage these individuals show when confronted with truly aversive situations (Bonanno, Field, et al., 2002). It is imperative that future investigations of loss and trauma include more detailed study of the full range of possible outcomes; simply put, dysfunction cannot be fully understood without a deeper understanding of health and resilience. By viewing resilient functioning through the same empirical lens as chronic forms of dysfunction and more time-limited recovery patterns, researchers will be able to examine and contrast each of these patterns. Many questions await investigation. A crucial issue pertains to the commonalities and differences in resilient functioning across the life span. Developmental theorists have argued that resilience to aversive childhood contexts results from a cumulative and interactive mix of genetic (e.g., disposition), personal (e.g., family interaction), and environmental (e.g., community support systems) risk and protective factors (Rutter, 1999; Werner, 1995). Although in some ways adult resilience to loss and trauma presents a simpler problem (e.g., the aversive context is centered on a single event, and the developmental issues unfold at a more gradual pace), it is nonetheless crucial to determine how resilience to loss or trauma may vary across the life span, how adult resilience relates to developmental experiences, and whether the various factors that inform adult resilience might also function in a cumulative and interactive manner (McFarlane & Yehuda, 1996). 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New York: Guilford Press. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.6 - Release Date: 4/11/2005 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.6 - Release Date: 4/11/2005 From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:55:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:55:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Keith DeRose: Universalism and the Bible Message-ID: Universalism and the Bible http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/univ.htm [Mr. Mencken often stated that he was going to Hell. But this proves that we are all going to go to Heaven, whether we want to or not.] The Really Good News [1]Keith DeRose _________________________________________________________________ 1. What is Universalism? 2. Some Universalist Passages 3. "All" 4. "Interpreting Scripture by Scripture" 5. Universalism and Exclusivism 6. Universalism and Strong Exclusivism 7. Two More Passages and a Dangerous Line of Thought 8. Universalism, Judgment and Punishment 9. Universalism and Eternal Punishment: A Collision? 10. "Eternal" in the New Testament 11. Conclusion Appendices: A. The Danger of False Belief on this Matter B. Free Will and Universalism <-- Updated 6/12/03 _________________________________________________________________ 1. What is Universalism? I should be clear at the outset about what I'll mean -- and won't mean -- by "universalism." As I'll use it, "universalism" refers to the position that eventually all human beings will be saved and will enjoy everlasting life with Christ. This is compatible with the view that God will punish many people after death, and many universalists accept that there will be divine retribution, although some may not. What universalism does commit one to is that such punishment won't last forever. Universalism is also incompatible with various views according to which some will be annihilated (after or without first receiving punishment). These views can agree with universalism in that, according to them, punishment isn't everlasting, but they diverge from universalism in that they believe some will be denied everlasting life. Some universalists intend their position to apply animals, and some to fallen angels or even to Satan himself, but in my hands, it will be intended to apply only to human beings. In short, then, it's the position that every human being will, eventually at least, make it to the party. _________________________________________________________________ 2. Some Universalist Passages Contrary to what many would suppose, universalism, understood as above, receives strong scriptural support in the New Testament. Indeed, I judge the support strong enough that if I had to choose between universalism and anti-universalism as the "position of Scripture," I'd pick universalism as the fairly clear winner. But more on that later. For now, here's three passages which support universalism. I Corinthians 15:22. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Comments. Note the "all." I guess there can be some question about what it means to be made alive in Christ. A cynic might suggest that some might be made alive in order to stand judgment and be tortured forever. But that's very strained, especially after one's read the surrounding context of this passage and has also discovered what's usually meant by such phrases. It's very clear, I think, that those who are "made alive" in Christ are, as it's often put, "saved." The question is, To whom will this happen? This passage's answer: All! A point of grammar, which holds for the Greek as well as our English translations: The grammatical function of "in Christ" here is not to modify or limit the "all." The passage doesn't say, "...so also shall all who are in Christ be made alive." If it said that, I wouldn't be so cheered by the passage. Rather, "in Christ" is an adverbial phrase that modifies the verb "shall be made" or perhaps the whole clause, "shall all be made alive." Thus, this passage says that all shall be made alive. How? In Christ. This last point -- that it's through Christ that all will be saved -- will be important in section 6, below. Colossians 1:20.^19For in him [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ^20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Comments. Note again the "all." Show me someone burning in hell, and I'll show you someone who's not yet been reconciled to God. So, show me someone who's under divine punishment forever, or who is simply annihilated, and I'll show you someone who's never reconciled to God through Christ, and thus someone who gives the lie to this passage. Romans 5:18: ^18Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. ^19For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. Comments. It's verse 18 that I'm mainly appealing to. For whom will Christ's act of righteousness lead to acquittal and life? Answer: "all men." (So at least we guys will be OK!) Show me someone who never enjoys acquittal and life, and I'll show someone for whom Christ's act of righteousness didn't lead to acquittal and life, and thus someone who gives the lie to this verse. Though I'm appealing mainly to v. 18, I've included v. 19 here as well partly because some may think it casts doubt on the universalist implications of 18, since in 19, it's only said that "many," (rather than "all") will be made righteous. But 19 doesn't really take away the pro-universalism power of 18. First, a point of logic: That many will be made righteous is perfectly compatible with all being made righteous. All dogs are mammals. True or false: Many dogs are mammals? True, of course. It may sound strange to say that many dogs are mammals, but it's true for all that: It's even stranger to deny that many dogs are mammals. "Many" and "all" don't logically exclude each other. But this point of logic is pretty barren. To say that many dogs are mammals, while it doesn't strictly imply that fewer than all dogs are mammals, it does suggest that fewer than all are -- which probably explains why saying that many dogs are mammals sounds so strange. ("Why did he say 'many' rather than 'all'? Wouldn't he have said 'all' if he thought they were all mammals?") Likewise, one could plausibly claim that while v. 19 doesn't strictly imply that fewer than all will be made righteous, it does strongly suggest this. Reply: But even the suggestion of fewer than all disappears when we look at the NIV's translation of v. 19. (Above is the RSV translation.) The NIV translates as follows: 19For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The key difference, for our present purposes, between the translations is between the RSV's "many" and the NIV's "the many." To say that the many will be made righteous, while it doesn't imply that all will be made righteous, neither does it imply, nor even suggest, that fewer than all will be. In fact, v. 19, translated the NIV's way, especially following on the heels of 18, seems to suggest, if anything, a positive answer to the question of whether all are covered, turning v. 19 from something that counts a bit against a universalist reading of v. 18 to a verse which, if anything, reinforces the universalist implications of v. 18. My experts have informed me that the original Greek here is like the NIV, and unlike the RSV, in that there is not even a suggestion carried by 19 that fewer than all will be made righteous. It's no doubt in response to such considerations that the revision of the RSV, the NRSV, follows the NIV in using "the many" rather than "many." (But it was worth first presenting the RSV translation because many use English translations of the Bible, which, like the RSV, employ the inferior translation of this phrase.) _________________________________________________________________ 3. "All" A key word in the above passages is "all". Here's one more universalist passage featuring that wonderful word: Romans 11:32: For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. For various reasons I won't go into here, though I think this is a good universalist passage, I don't think this passage is quite as strong as some of the passages we looked at in section 2. I bring it up because it's in response to this verse that I've found a commentator making a move I've heard many times in conversation. About this verse, the end of which he renders, "that he may have mercy upon all", F.F. Bruce writes: "That is, on all without distinction rather than all without exception" (The Letter of Paul to the Romans: An Introduction and Commentary, Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985; p. 211). Several people I've spoken with about our universalist passages had apparently been taught that "all" can mean "all without distinction" rather than "all without exception". What exactly is "all" supposed to mean when it carries the former ("without distinction") sense? Some seem to hold that it then means "some from each group", and where it's people that are involved, each group seems to mean each nation. For others, it means something a bit more: That every person, regardless of which group she's in, has a chance. But it's clear that "all", at least when used properly, never means anything like that. Suppose some slippery character is being investigated, and hands over to investigators several files relating to the case under consideration. The slippery character then says that he's handed over all the files about the case. It later turns out that, as the slippery character knew full well at the time of his statement, he's held on to over half of the files. Suppose his reaction to this revelation is: "Well, I handed over several files from each of the 10 major categories into which they fell. And I didn't just pick the least damaging files to hand over. Rather, I picked in a random fashion the files I would hand over from each category, so that each file, regardless of its category, and regardless of how damaging it was to my case, had a chance to be handed over. So, you see, I really did hand over all the files -- all without distinction, that is; not, of course, all without exception." This won't fly, precisely because "all" just can't mean anything like what the "all without distinction" crowd says it sometimes means. My reaction, at least, is not that this fellow was being deceitful merely in using one sense of "all" while it has another good sense. He's worse than that: There's no good sense of "all" that would make true his miserable lie. No, "all", when it's used properly, always means all without exception. Quite simply, "all" means all. But wait! When I say, quite properly, "All the beer is warm", I don't mean that all the beer in the whole universe is warm, but rather something like that all the beer in this room is warm, as is seen by the fact that I can continue the sentence by saying something that implies that there is cold beer elsewhere: "All the beer's warm, so let's go to the kitchen and get some cold beer." So how can it be suggested that "all" always means all? (But how can it be that "all" could fail to mean all?) What's going on here is that the quantifier phrases of natural language ("all", "most", "some", etc.) are to be understood, on an occasion of use, relative to a contextually determined domain. Thus, when I say, "All the beer is warm", the contextually determined domain is the things in this room, so "All the beer", in context, means all the beer in this room. So there is some sense in which "all" doesn't always mean all: On some occasions of use, "all", or "all the F's" means all (or all the F's) within a limited domain. But, relative to that domain, "all" really does mean all (without exception): My sentence "All the beer is warm" turns out to be false if there is some cold beer that I failed to notice in the room. But when the domain is limited, there has to be some fairly clear clue as to what the limited domain is. When "all" is used in the New Testament, as in "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and similar passages, the "all", I take it, refers to all people. It could possibly refer to some restricted class of people, but that suggestion is to be rejected, b/c (a) there is no such restricted class that clearly presents itself (all the people in this room?), (b) it's incumbent on a speaker to make clear what the class is if he means for it to be specially restricted and no specially restricted class clearly presents itself given current conversational intents and purposes, and (c) the NT doesn't specify any such specially restricted class. So, "All have sinned" means that all people have sinned, as almost all would agree. But similarly for the "all"s of the universalist passages. No restricted class of people clearly presents itself, and the Biblical writers aren't so incompetent as to mean some specially restricted class of people that doesn't clearly present itself without specifying or somehow making it clear which class they mean. Indeed, in I Corinthians 15:22 and Romans 5:18, each of the relevant "all"s occur in the very same sentence (and a fairly short sentence, to boot) as an occurrence of "all" that seems to refer to the whole human race (given that it's the whole human race that died/was condemned in Adam), so it would have been especially misleading or even incompetent for Paul to mean something less than the whole human race there, since that would involve switching the domains relative to which his claims should be interpreted without warning in the middle of a single sentence -- and a sentence that seems to be stressing the parallelism between its two clauses, for that matter. So I see no reasonable alternative but to conclude that these "all"s refer to all people. Could they mean even more than that? Could they be including angels, including fallen angels, and maybe even Satan himself? My reason for not going out on that limb -- besides passages like Rev 20:10, which reports that the devil is "thrown into the lake of burning sulpher", where the beast and the false prophet (who's not clearly human) were previously thrown, and where "they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever" -- is that most of the universalist passages don't go that far. Some, like I Corinthians 15:22, write simply of "all", and, as I said, I think the most natural way to understand the scope of the "all" is as referring to all people. Indeed, it's difficult to construe that particular passage more broadly so as to include Satan, for there seems to be no good sense in which Satan died in Adam, and the passage reads: "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." And some of the universalist passages explicitly limit themselves to humans, like Romans 5:18, which says that Christ's act "leads to acquittal and life for all men." The only universalist passages that we've looked at in section 2 which seems to carry any suggestion of a broader scope is Colossians 1:20, the "reconciling all things" passage. (There are other passages in the Bible carrying similar suggestions -- see, for instance, Ephesians 1:10.) How to square that with Rev 20:10, I don't know, though I am in general far more cautious about my understanding of Revelation than of any other book in the Bible. In general, I find it unwise to take much of Revelation literally, and so, in questions of what will actually happen, tend to take fairly minimalist interpretations of the events John relates from his vision -- or at least not to be confident of anything beyond a minimalist reading. So, for instance, though John reports in 6:13 that "the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree" in the vision Christ gave him, I'd be disinclined to think that stars will literally fall to earth. That this is not to be taken literally is now confirmed by our current knowledge of the relative size of the earth and the stars (together with the fact that, in John's story, this event does not completely obliterate the earth; the story goes on), but even without such knowledge, based merely on the genre of that part of Revelation -- John's reporting a vision he was given -- I would be disinclined to take such a passage as a literally correct description of what will actually happen in the future. How exactly to interpret such a passage as to what will really happen is a controversial matter. But I tend toward this minimalist reading: All that's meant about what will really happen -- or, at the very least, all that we can be reasonably certain is meant -- by this report of stars falling to earth is that very, very bad things will happen. Given the abundance of events reported in John's vision that must, I think, be read in such a minimalist way, I'm very cautious about taking very literally the report of Satan's doom in Revelation 20:7-10. Shall we now suddenly start taking these events as literal reports of what will actually happen? The minimalist reading here is that evil and deception will be decisively defeated. And, though I don't want to dogmatically declare that no more than this is meant to be a prediction of what will actually happen, I certainly don't see any grounds for being at all confident of anything beyond such a minimalist reading. So, I don't think a strong reading of the "reconciling all things" in Colossians 1:20 must in any obvious or automatic way be shot out of the water by what's to be found in Revelation. In fact, given the nature of the two books, if anything, it's our understanding of Revelation that should be guided by the teachings of the likes of Colossians, rather than the other way around. Our understanding of the straight teaching of doctrine in an epistle certainly should not automatically give way to an interpretation of what in John's report of his vision is to be taken as a literally accurate description of what will actually happen. On top of all that, even if you do take Revelation 20:10 to be a literal description of what will actually happen, the phrase that gets translated here in popular English translations as "for ever and ever", needn't be translated as implying endless duration; in fact, if you insist on literalness, more literal translations render this phrase "unto the ages of the ages" or "for the eons of the eons." Literally, while this perhaps can, it certainly needn't, mean forever, though it does seem to indicate at least a very long time. Thus, though I don't find nearly as much scriptural support for a more thorough-going universalism that includes even Satan (Origen, one of the early universalists, held to such a more thorough-going universalism) as I do for the more modest form of universalism I'm here defending, and though I don't find enough support to advocate such a more thorough-going position here, at the same time, I certainly do think the more robust universalism is worthy of serious consideration. _________________________________________________________________ 4. "Interpreting Scripture by Scripture" I believe the above pro-universalist passages, and, as you've seen, take them quite literally. (I should note here that there are several other universalist passages I didn't utilize above. The above, though, I think, give you a good idea of the type of passages that can be marshaled in favor of universalism.) I wouldn't say that they constitute an overwhelmingly strong case for universalism (see sections 5-6 below, for a view -- exclusivism -- the support for which I am willing to call overwhelming), but it is pretty strong, and stronger than any case I've seen for anti-universalism. But some would urge me to interpret these passages in the light of other scripture. (Many of these people seem never to even recognize the possibility of interpreting the other scripture in light of these universalist passages.) I must admit I have some difficulty in construing myself as "interpreting" these passages. I do place interpretations on some passages in the Bible: When I glean a particular message for us from one of Jesus' parables, for instance, that's an interpretation. But am I "interpreting" these passages in a pro-universalist way? Calling this "interpretation" seems strained to me. I often quote the above passages, not just to support, but actually to express my universalism, and such quoting seems only in a strained sense a case of interpreting. (Once, when someone asked me whether I thought anyone would be denied everlasting life, I replied, "I believe that as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." My questioner, not realizing I was quoting Scripture, accused me of taking an unbiblical position!) Still, if there are passages which teach that universalism is false with anything close to the force that the above passages carry in favor of universalism, we're going to have to consider re-adjusting our understanding of the above passages. Maybe they really don't mean what they seem to. And, indeed, most who write against universalism, when they urge an understanding of the above passages which strips them of their universalist implications, do so largely on the grounds that other passages of the New Testament teach even more clearly that universalism is false. Indeed, many write as if the Biblical case against universalism is overwhelming. But this confidence is badly misplaced. As we'll see in sections 5, 6 and 8, below, it's mainly due to a confusion of universalism itself with certain unbiblical versions of universalism. _________________________________________________________________ 5. Universalism and Exclusivism Many of the passages that are typically utilized to attack universalism teach exclusivism -- which here refers to the doctrine that it's only (exclusively) through the saving work of Christ that any can be saved. I agree that exclusivism is clearly taught in the New Testament, so I won't bother to cite the supporting passages. But the universalist needn't deny exclusivism. The biblical universalist will accept exclusivism; she'll just disagree with the non-universalist about the scope of who will be saved by Christ's saving work -- the universalist exclusivist holding that, eventually at least, through Christ, all shall be made alive. And now that I've echoed I Corinthians 15:22, it's worth noting how this verse, as well as the other passages discussed in section 2, highlights the compatibility of universalism with exclusivism, since this universalist passage insists that is in Christ that all shall be made alive. _________________________________________________________________ 6. Universalism and Strong Exclusivism But perhaps we should distinguish between two types of exclusivism. Let's label as strong exclusivism the position that adds to exclusivism the further claim that, in order to be a recipient of the salvation Christ makes possible, one must in some way explicitly accept Christ and/or the salvation he offers. (Different versions of strong exclusivism with differ as to the exact nature of this requirement of explicit acceptance.) Weak exclusivism, then, will be the position that combines the exclusivist thesis that Christ's saving work is necessary for the salvation of any person -- so that were it not for Christ, none could be saved -- with the position that one needn't explicitly accept or acknowledge Christ in order to receive the salvation his saving work makes possible. The scriptural basis for exclusivism is overwhelming, I believe; the support for strong exclusivism is not nearly so conclusive. It's not that there's any strong basis for weak exclusivism. It's rather that the scriptural basis for deciding between the two versions of exclusivism is not nearly so great as that supporting exclusivism itself. Still, the suggestions of strong exclusivism found in the New Testament are strong enough that, for complicated reasons I won't here go into, though I'm far from certain about the matter, I tend to lean toward strong exclusivism. And some might think that strong exclusivism is incompatible with universalism, so that whatever evidence there is for strong exclusivism will also be evidence against universalism. For strong exclusivism, combined with the observation that some resist Christ all the way to their dying moment, can seem to spell the doom of the universalist position. But only if death is the end of one's chances to be saved by explicitly accepting Christ. And I haven't seen anything close to a strong Biblical case for the position that death is the end of one's chances for salvation. (We'll look at the typical argument mounted for the doctrine of no further chances a few paragraphs below). Many, in fact, content themselves with arguing that the scriptures typically used to support the position that some will get further chances after death are far from conclusive. What passages are these? Well, many friends of the doctrine of further chances cite I Peter 3:19-20 and I Peter 4:6 as supporting their position. (Note: The NIV scandalously translates the beginning of I Peter 4:6 as "For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead," confessing in a study note to the NIV Study Bible -- users of NIV's other than the NIV Study Bible don't get this warning -- that "the word 'now' does not occur in the Greek," and explaining that the reason they've added it is that, for reasons coming from another part of the Bible, not even in the book of I Peter, they believe that there are no further chances after death. Now, the case they give in that note for the doctrine of no further chances is hopelessly weak. (We'll encounter it below.) But put that aside for the moment. The more pressing point here is that this practice of doctoring a translation to protect the theological positions that the translators happen to hold on controversial issues is deplorable. The much more responsible NRSV, true to its general character, more reliably translates this passage as, "For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead." This better translation leaves the matter of whether "the dead" refers to people who were dead when they were preached to or rather to those who were dead at the time of the writing of I Peter about as open as it is in the original Greek. The NIV translators, on the other hand, for no respectable reason, add a word to close down the reading, left open in the Greek, that doesn't best serve their own theological purposes, though it seems the more natural of the two readings.) Now, the issue of how to understand these passages from I Peter is as difficult as it is controversial. I won't get into it here, except to register my opinion that it isn't wise to lean on these passages; they're far too inconclusive to inspire any reasonable confidence in the doctrine of further chances after death. But the case typically mounted in favor of the opposing doctrine of no further chances after death is at least as inconclusive. The only passage cited in favor of this dubious doctrine of no further chances in the notorious NIV Study Bible note to I Peter 4:6 is Hebrews 9:27, which reads: "Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment," with the sentence being completed in v. 28. But the universalist who believes in further chances needn't deny that people die once. I'm such a universalist, and I don't deny that, nor do I see any reason why I should have to. And, as I noted in section 1 and as we'll see in section 8, the universalist, including the universalist who believes in further chances, needn't deny that after that death one will face judgment. So there isn't anything in Hebrews 9:27 that should even begin to produce any discomfort in the universalist who believes in further chances. The other passage that's commonly cited in favor of the doctrine of no further chances is Luke 16:26. This is a bit stronger than the Hebrews passage. But that's not saying much, and there's very little, if any, ammunition to be found here for the doctrine of no further chances. This passage occurs in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and, as such, appeals to it suffer from all the limitations inherent in attempts to extract theological doctrines from the details of parables, especially when the doctrines in question are not the main point of the parable. In this parable, the rich man, now dead and suffering in hell, asks Father Abraham to "send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue" (v. 24). v. 26 is the second part of Abraham's explanation for why this request won't be granted; it reads, "And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us." But again, the universalist needn't deny that there will be punishment, only that such punishment will last forever. And there's no reason at all for her to have to hold that, while the punishment is still going on, those suffering from it can end it at will any time they want, and cross freely from hell to heaven, nor that those in heaven (in this parable, Lazarus is "at Abraham's side") will be allowed to visit hell. So even if we made the mistake of trying to extract from the details of this parable a position on the issue of whether there will be further chances, there still wouldn't be much cause for taking this passage as supporting the doctrine of no further chances with any force at all. For as long as the universalist who believes in further chances sensibly allows for the possibility that, while punishment is occurring, those suffering from it can't just end it any time they want, she can make perfectly good sense of the words this parable puts into the mouth of Father Abraham. After all, if a road has been covered with deep enough snow drifts, we'll tell someone who must drive on that stretch of road to get to where we are, "You cannot cross over from there to us." We'll say this quite properly and truthfully, even if we know full well that the road will be cleared in a few days, or that, in a great enough emergency, a helicopter could be used to get across to us even today, if, say, we're at a hospital. [But doesn't that show that there is a sense, then, in which they can cross over to us? Yes, there's a perfectly good sense in which they can, and a perfectly good sense in which they cannot. For enlightening and accessible explanations of the meaning of "can" and related words, I recommend Angelica Kratzer's "What 'Must' and 'Can' Must and Can Mean" (Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1977): pp. 337-355) and example 6 ("Relative Modality") of David Lewis's "Scorekeeping in a Language Game" (Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979): pp. 339-359.] So to hold that this passage establishes, not only that those suffering from punishment can't just end it any time they want, but that it can never, not even by the saving power of Christ, happen that they're released from this punishment, is surely a very desperate stretch. In fact, I think no other doctrine can even compete with "no further chances" in terms of the following three factors. No doctrine even comes close to a) being so strongly believed by so many evangelicals despite b) being so utterly disastrous in its consequences and c) having so little by way of Scriptural support. Still, as I admitted earlier, the case for the opposing doctrine of further chances, based on the I Peter passages, is also inconclusive. But I never intended to use the I Peter passages as part of my positive support for universalism. My universalism is founded on passages like the ones we looked at in section 2. I find them far more forceful in their support for universalism than anything I've ever seen adduced in support of anti-universalism. But some will disagree, and claim that a powerful case for anti-universalism can be mounted from strong exclusivism, together with the very plausible observation that some never accept Christ in this life. I have merely been pointing out that that line of thought supports anti-universalism only insofar as the doctrine of no further chances can be established. And, as we've seen, that's not very far at all. Certainly nothing even approaching the power of the universalist passages. If, on top of all that, there actually were -- against my own best judgment about the matter -- some significant positive support for the doctrine of further chances to be gleaned from the I Peter passages, that would be argumentative over-kill. Do I, then, believe in further chances after death? Yes, but not because of anything to be found in I Peter. My belief in further chances is rather grounded in my beliefs that (a) there are fairly strong grounds for universalism provided by the likes of the passages in section 2, (b) there are fairly strong grounds for strong exclusivism in passages we haven't looked at here, (c) the only way (at least the only way that I can see) to reconcile universalism with strong exclusivism is if there are further chances, and (d) there's next to nothing in the way of good reasons for denying that there are further chances. Thus, though there's perhaps not much of a direct case that can be made for further chances from the likes of the I Peter passages, in light of (d), the indirect case for further chances provided by (a)-(c) proves decisive. I stress, then, that my belief in universalism is not based on my belief in further chances; rather, it's the other way around. _________________________________________________________________ 7. Two More Passages and a Dangerous Line of Thought Since we're on the topic of further chances, let me here, in a brief digression from the main line of argument, introduce two more passages which together have some universalist tendencies in a way that involves the doctrine of further chances. I present them not primarily because of the added support they might provide for universalism, but because they'll help to illustrate a dangerous line of thought which explains much of the resistance I had to the doctrine of further chances. Insofar as others resist the doctrine of further chances for the same reason I used to, they may wish to check this dangerous line of thought. Consider, then: Romans 10:9. If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. This raises the question: Who will so confess and so believe? This is one of those questions, at least with respect to the confession part, that gets answered in the Bible, for, as we read in Philippians 2:11 and elsewhere, every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord. Maybe some of these confessors will fail to believe in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and thereby fail to be saved. But I always imagined this confession taking place at a time when it had become painfully obvious that the whole Jesus story was true -- perhaps at judgment -- so I've never really thought that these confessors weren't believing. To be honest, the real reason I never thought of the Philippians passage as having universalist implications in conjunction with the Romans passage is that I thought that such a confession would be "too late" and so wouldn't count. Why did I think that? Romans 10:9 includes no fine print to the effect that the confession must take place prior to death to be effective, and, as we've seen, there's next to no good Scriptural reason to deny further chances. Well, there are many reasons one might think this confession is too late, but, unfortunately, in my case, the line of thought was roughly as follows: Of course they'll confess then. It'll be so obvious that Jesus is Lord at that point. There's no merit to confessing at that point. Yikes! I had always been taught, and had always thought I believed, that salvation came through God's grace alone, and not at all through the merit of the one being saved. One just had to accept this grace, by confessing, etc. But the above line of thought shows that the tendency to understand rewards in term of merit was so strong in me that I had taken the confession and acceptance part of the above story and turned them into matters of merit -- to the point that I wouldn't let them count if they didn't strike me as sufficiently meritorious. This is surely a dangerous line of thought. Three reactions: First, we don't know enough about the circumstances under which such confessions will take place to judge their merit. But, second, should that matter? And, third, just how wonderfully meritorious was my confession and acceptance? Insofar as any others find themselves engaging in the dangerous line of thought I was subject to, they may wish to re-think the role of merit in salvation, and how that relates to the doctrine of further chances. But perhaps I was unique in thinking along those lines, and this whole, thankfully short, digression was for nothing. _________________________________________________________________ 8. Universalism, Judgment and Punishment Many of the passages that are typically utilized in attacks on universalism teach that, after death, God will judge people and punish many of them. Indeed, many who write as if the case against universalism is overwhelming list scores of such passages -- which looks very impressive -- in their long lists of what they claim are anti-universalist scriptures. Many of the passages typically cited in this connection are the endings of parables in which the unprepared or otherwise naughty are cast off to weep and wail and gnash their teeth. (It's usually in Matthew's presentation of parables that such an ending is included.) To get eternal punishment from such a parable is quite a leap. Some read many of these passages as Jesus predicting the suffering incurred during the destruction of Jerusalem. It was apparently a big issue in the Jewish community around the time of the writing of the book of Matthew whether this truly horrible and gruesome event was due to the Christians following a false Messiah (as some non-Christians claimed) or rather because the non-Christian Jews had failed to recognize the hour of their visitation (as some Christians held). Parables in which those not prepared for the coming of the Christ-figure are thrown out to weep and wail, etc., can easily be read as coming down on the Christian side of this debate. But even if one dismisses such an interpretation (though it's difficult to see the grounds for such a dismissal), one should begin to appreciate the tenuousness of drawing a particular theological conclusion from such a parable. But the above is a secondary point, especially since many of the passages which teach that there will be punishment are not from parables. The main point to be made is that, as I pointed out already in section 1, universalism as I understand it -- and, more importantly, as it's supported by the universalist passages like those in section 2 -- is perfectly consistent with the belief that there will be judgment for all and punishment for some. So, unless the universalist goes overboard and claims that there will be no punishment at all -- an extension of universalism not licensed by the passages of section 2 -- these passages teaching that there will be punishment won't even begin to hurt her position. So, like the anti-universalist argument from exclusivism and the argument from strong exclusivism, this anti-universalist argument, now from punishment, has no force against the universalism that's supported by the universalist passages, but only against the unwarranted extensions of universalism that some unwise universalists might make. _________________________________________________________________ 9. Universalism and Eternal Punishment: A Collision? But among the many passages that teach that there will be punishment, a few (a very few, it turns out, but see also Matthew 25:46) specify (or seem to specify) that the punishment will be "eternal." By far, the strongest of these passages is: II Thessalonians 1:9. They shall suffer punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. Here, finally, we have something which really has the potential to cut against universalism. (Matthew 25:46 is weakened by the fact that it's part of a parable. In fact, many who cite this parable as a good source as to the duration of punishment don't take seriously its teaching as to the grounds of the distinction between those who are rewarded and those who are punished. It's quite clearly said that those who are rewarded are rewarded for their good actions and those who are punished are punished for a lack of such good actions (see verses 34-36 and 41-43, paying careful attention to the word "for" or "because" (depending on your translation) in each). But most who cite this parable as a good source on the duration of the punishment don't accept salvation by works -- perhaps because it's taught in a parable, all the details of which needn't be taken to reflect the actual world? At any rate, if you are inclined nevertheless to give this feature of the parable great weight as an indication of the duration of actual punishment, the below discussion of the meaning of "eternal" will apply to this Matthew passage as well.) Now, as I've noted, there are only a few passages that specify that punishment will be (at least for some) eternal. And the universalist passages are quite strong, tempting one to "interpret" these eternal punishment passages away. But this II Thessalonians passage looks very clear; I used to call it the "killer text". It looks like it collides with the universalist passages. For a long time, I feared that just such a collision occurs here in Scripture. I tried to "interpret" the universalist passages away, and then to do the same to this eternal punishment passage. But all such "interpretations" seemed very strained -- they seemed more like denials, or at least revisions, of what was said in the relevant passages being "interpreted." _________________________________________________________________ 10. "Eternal" in the New Testament This is not the only issue on which I feared the various parts of the Bible collide with one another. Fortunately, here, as I'm finding is generally the case, this is only an apparent collision. In this case, the appearance of a collision is produced by a problem arising with our English Bibles' translation of "eternal". The Greek adjective (and its cognates) that our English Bibles translate as "eternal" or "everlasting" (and their cognates), literally means "age-enduring" or "pertaining to an age", and can be used in such a way that it does not imply endless duration. This opens up a way around our collision: If the "eternal" in the "eternal" punishment passages is understood as not implying an endless duration, there's no conflict between these passages and the universalist passages. What makes this a very comfortable, and not a strained or desperate, way around the collision is that, not only can the Greek word mean something that doesn't imply endless duration, but it often does get used with such a meaning -- often in the Bible itself, and even in the Pauline corpus. Consider Romans 16:25-26, which, as our translations have it, speaks of "the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed." Here, the Greek that gets translated as "for long ages" includes the very Greek work that is translated as "eternal" or "everlasting" elsewhere, including the "eternal" punishment passages. But in this Romans passage, Paul seems not to mean "eternal" by this word, for he immediately goes on to say the secret "is now disclosed", so of course it wasn't kept secret eternally. That's why our translations don't translate it as "eternally" here. [For more on this Greek term, as well as on the Greek term used here for "punishment," which, apparently, was usually used for remedial punishment(!), see the final section ("Punishment in the Coming Age," pp. 89-92) of Thomas Talbott's "Three Pictures of God in Western Theology," Faith and Philosophy 12 (1995): pp. 79-94). More extensive commentary on this matter of translation, which is also more convenient for those with access to the internet, because the good folks at the Tentmaker site have made it available on line, is Rev. John Wesley's Hanson's treatise on [16]THE GREEK WORD AI?N -- AI?NIOS. Talbott now has a book, The Inescapable Love of God, which incorporates much of his earlier prouniversalism work; for information and for some parts that are available on-line, click [17]here.] Incidentally, I've heard it argued by some who emphasize the parallelism in Matthew 25:46 between the fate of the damned and of the saved -- "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life" -- that if you deny that punishment lasts forever, then you must also deny that the "eternal" life of the saved is unending. But, of course, that doesn't follow. Where the Greek word that gets translated as "eternal" doesn't imply endless duration, it also doesn't mean anything that implies less than endless duration. It can mean "in the age to come," or "for long ages," or, perhaps, if another of Talbott's suggestions is right, it can mean something like "having its source in the eternal God"; at any rate, all of these are neutral with respect to the question of whether what's called "eternal" will last forever. So taking such a reading of "eternal" here does not imply that the "eternal" life of the saved will come to end; the most that can be gotten out of the parallelism of Matthew 25:46 is that we can't confidently base our belief that the "eternal" life of the saved will last forever on that passage. Hopefully, though, we have bases for that belief other than that detail of this parable! (For much more on this passage in Matthew, see the section entitled "THE PRINCIPAL PROOF-TEXT" (which contains several numbered subsections) of the Hanson treatise, to which there's a link above. For Greek words which do teach endless duration and which do get applied to the blessed life of the saved, but which are not applied to punishment, see the section of Hanson entitled "WORDS TEACHING ENDLESS DURATION.") That Paul himself uses the relevant Greek term in such a way that it doesn't imply endless duration makes the possibility that he's using it the same way in the "eternal punishment" passages a very live possibility. By comparison, all the attempts to get around the universalist implications of the likes of the passages we saw in section 2 that I've encountered seem very strained, even desperate. (Example: "Here where it says that God through Christ will reconcile all things to himself, it really means (not what is says but rather?), at least as it's applied to people, that God, through Christ, will give all an opportunity to be reconciled to him, and where it says that in Christ all shall be made alive, what it really means (is not what it says but rather?) that in Christ all will be given an opportunity to be made alive, or that all will be made alive to the possibility of salvation.") At the very least, those who think it's clear that the strongest scriptural case on the question of universalism goes against the view, and that it's therefore clear that it's the apparently universalist passages which must be interpreted away, have a lot of explaining to do. _________________________________________________________________ 11. Conclusion. If I'm right that Romans 11:32 is a universalist passage, it's the thought of universalism that inspires what directly follows that verse -- Paul's wonderful doxology of Romans 11:33-36, the penultimate line of which takes on added significance in a universalist context: O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him to receive a gift in return? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Universalism is far from a mere doctrine of barren theology; many, like Paul, find great joy in the belief. Part of the joy some find is in the thought that not only they, but their fellow humans, will, eventually at least, experience everlasting life with Christ. But, like Paul, you may find the joy is focused rather on God, and on how wondrous and complete a victory will be won by the God "who desires everyone to be saved" (I Timothy 2:4). And, on the other side, the non-universalist picture may come to look strangely dim, not exclusively because of the awful fate that awaits some of your fellows on this picture, but because God is deprived of such a complete victory, and, in winning only a partial victory, his desire that everyone be saved will ultimately be frustrated. For myself, it's hard to even imagine going back to my earlier way of thinking about God, according to which it's only the case that: God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he might have mercy on some of them For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall some be made alive For in Christ, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself some things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross Then, as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for some men. [the-end-366-bw.JPG] [18]About the image Last modified 24 January 1999 [19]Keith DeRose ______________________________________________________________________ Please note: This web page has generated a tremendous amount of e-correspondence. I'm very pleased that it has caused some to consider the important issues addressed, and am especially gratified that it has caused some to think so carefully about the issues that they have crafted very thoughtful responses. You are welcome to write me about these ideas, but please understand that I simply cannot respond to all the communications -- even all the thoughtful communications -- that I receive, and please don't take it personally if I do not respond. Often, it will just be that you contacted me at a particularly busy time. And even in the best of times, I can respond only to a very small percentage of the messages I receive. --KDR ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Appendices All of the above remains basically unchanged in content since I wrote it for an adult Bible study in early 1998. (The only changes, I believe, are a couple of references and links to other web sites that I added to section 10 later.) Since I posted the above on the internet in the Winter of 98-99, I have received a lot of feedback on it. Some of the e-mail I have received has raised substantive points. Below I briefly address two of the areas that I have been very frequently asked about. The first area concerns the danger of believing and promoting universalism, and the second concerns philosophical issues that arise in reconciling universalism with free will. So in neither case do the concerns very directly involve the Biblical case for or against universalism. Thus, addressing them moves us beyond the topic of my original post. Nevertheless, since these are two of the areas of concern that have been most often raised about the above, it is worth addressing them here. ______________________________________________________________________ A. The Danger of False Belief on this Matter Many have e-mailed to warn me of the dangers of believing and promoting universalism. Two closely related dangers have been stressed. Some focus on how important Christians will think it is to spread the gospel if they accept universalism, and warn that belief in universalism would undercut evangelism. Others focus on the potential detrimental effect of promoting universalism on potential Christians themselves, supposing many will think something along the lines of, "Well, I'll be OK anyway, so why bother to accept Christ?" I do not think that belief in universalism should have the above effects. Here it is important to note that universalism -- at least the position I've been referring to by the term -- does not imply that it is unimportant whether one accepts Christ in this life, or sooner rather than later. All that universalism per se rules out here is the "infinitely big stick": that one will be eternally barred from heaven (and perhaps consigned to hell) if one fails to accept Christ in this life. As I've stressed, universalism itself does not rule out that there will be punishment for some after death. Indeed, it does not rule out that there will be a lot of punishment for some. So it's not only consistent with the existence of sticks, but with very big -- indeed, immensely huge -- sticks, though of course universalists will disagree amongst themselves about the nature and size of whatever sticks there are. Universalism does rule out the infinitely big stick. But it would indeed be very sad if Christians believed that there is strong reason or motivation for accepting Christ in this life only if one faces an infinitely big stick if one fails to do so. Universalism also guarantees that all humans will eventually attain the tremendous carrot. But does the fact that things will eventually be OK for someone remove the motivation -- for herself and for others -- to improve her lot in the meantime? Those who believe they are going to heaven, whether they're universalists or not, believe everything will eventually be OK for them, but few lose all interest in their well-being in the meantime. And those who believe that certain other people (say, loved ones) are destined for heaven don't lose interest in promoting their well-being in the meantime. Why, then, should accepting that everyone will eventually be OK sap all motivation for promoting their well-being in the meantime -- especially since it's at least consistent with universalism that that "meantime" can be a very long time? It's also worth pointing out that though the universalist believes all will attain heaven, it's consistent with universalism that what one's heavenly existence is like may depend on one's earthly life. Thus the universalist may hold (though perhaps some will not) that how one lives one's earthly life -- perhaps crucially including whether one accepts Christ in this life -- will have eternal significance, even if it doesn't determine whether one (eventually at least) attains heaven. But even if I'm right that belief in universalism should not have the bad effects described above, I don't doubt that belief in universalism will have such bad effects, at least on some. After all, some people claim that belief in universalism would have such a bad effect on themselves, and I'd be a fool to suppose I can judge better than them what the effect of the belief would be on them. But those who press the potential dangers of belief in universalism seem to neglect the corresponding potential dangers of their own position. Indeed, many who press the concern about the detrimental effects of accepting universalism go on to explicitly state that there is no danger on the other side as part of their case for resisting the promotion of universalism. But they are wrong. There are dangers on the other side. I have received many e-mails from those who have related that the doctrine of eternal hell was the biggest stumbling block to their accepting Christianity, and many others said that believing that doctrine interfered greatly with their ability to love God. Now, one doesn't have to accept universalism to avoid the doctrine of eternal hell -- one can accept some view on which those who don't make it to heaven are (eventually or right away) annihilated. But, for many, universalism is the view that rings most true, and the version of Christianity they'd be most likely to accept. Suppose for a minute that universalism is correct, and suppose that these people are right to think that there is no way that God would allow some people to be forever excluded. In that case, promoting the false view that God will allow such exclusion is doing great harm. Indeed, many universalists, myself included, believe that non-universalism is one of the most harmful falsehoods ever promoted in the Christian church. There is danger on both sides. Either way, if one is wrong, one may be doing harm to people by advocating one's false view. Indeed, either way, even if one is right, one can do some harm to others by advocating the truth one believes. (Even if universalism is true, my promoting that truth may cause some to lose their faith, and may thereby harm them. Likewise, if universalism is false, those who declare it false may thereby harm some people.) One possible response to these dangers, whichever side one is on, would be to remain silent on the issue. Another response is to present one's thinking on the issue for others' consideration. That is the path I have chosen -- as have those who write to oppose me. If I have caused you think about the issue, to study the Bible (especially important here is reading not just the passages for and against universalism that have been presented, but also the material that surrounds them and gives them their context), and to prayerfully consider the issue, then I am happy, even if I haven't convinced you of my position. ______________________________________________________________________ B. Free Will and Universalism Many who have e-mailed me have been concerned about free will. Doesn't one have to freely accept Christ in order to be saved? This is an extension of strong exclusivism. Strong exclusivism, as I have used it above, says that in order to be saved, one must somehow explicitly accept Christ. Now, we're adding to this that the accepting must be free. Let's call this new position fervent exclusivism. If we accept fervent exclusivism, how can we say that universalism is true? I don't know of any serious scriptural support for fervent exclusivism itself. Still, it's worth taking seriously and thinking about, because it is, for those who think human freedom is very important, the natural extension of strong exclusivism, for which there is in my view significant scriptural support. If you think that one must accept Christ to be saved, and if you think that human freedom is important, you're likely to think that the free acceptance of Christ is very valuable and important -- perhaps important enough that one's ultimate destiny might ride on it. So, for those who are attracted to this fervent variety of exclusivism: First note that even fervent exclusivism is compatible with universalism. The first of these says that to be saved one must freely accept Christ. The second says that, eventually at least, all will be saved. It's easy to see how these can both be true: If all will eventually freely accept Christ. But even if it is possible for both positions to be true, is it all plausible to suppose they will be? Supposing there is nothing barring further chances -- that the free accepting may take place after death (see sections 6 and 7 above) -- I don't see why not. After all, there is an omnipotent and infinitely resourceful God, whom we know "desires everyone to be saved" (I Timothy 2:4), and has as much time as He needs to bring everyone around. I certainly wouldn't want to bet against Him! We know that some in this life have been only been moving further and further away from accepting Christ. And some people can be very obstinate. And some have become incredibly evil in this life. But, on the other hand, even in this short life, we all know of instances in which people having all three of these problems to a great degree who were brought around and were saved. So, again, I see no grounds for pessimism that an infinitely resourceful God, who is able to take as much time as He needs, will be able to win over everyone eventually. (If you think that the most dramatic turn-arounds in this life have involved an infringement on the freedom of the people involved, but agree that they were saved nonetheless, then you you are not a fervent exclusivist, and you should have no objections to such non-free savings taking place after death. I am here addressing only fervent exclusivists.) But some seem to have a different worry -- not that fervent exclusivism is incompatible with universalism, but that, if fervent exclusivism is true, then nobody, not even God, can know (or at least know for certain) that all will be saved, since nobody can know what people will freely do. So, even if universalism will turn to be true, we cannot know that now, and God would not have revealed that to us already. According to this worry, fervent exclusivism doesn't show that universalism won't be true, but it does undermine the position that universalism is revealed in the scriptures. This new worry, then, is based on the assumption that free will is incompatible with foreknowledge: that it is impossible, even for God, to know (or at least to know for certain) ahead of time what someone will freely do. Note that God can still be omniscient despite not knowing what we will freely do. Omniscience is a matter of knowing all truths. And if you deny that God knows what creatures will freely do, you're likely to also believe that there aren't now any truths to be known about what creatures will freely do in the future. God's "failure" to know what you will freely do then would count against his omniscience no more than does his "failure" to know that 2+2 = 796: In neither case is the proposition in question (now) true and so in neither case is it the kind of proposition that can (now) be known. But while the assumption that freedom is incompatible with foreknowledge doesn't undermine God's omniscience, it is highly debatable. In fact, my sense is that most theists reject this assumption. Indeed, traditionally, many theists have supposed that free action is not only compatible with foreknowledge, but also with divine determinism: That one can be free even if God's decrees causally determine you do the action in question. How can one be free if divine decrees, issued long before one is born, causally determine what one does? I don't know. That position -- compatibilism about freedom and determinism -- has always seemed very implausible to me. But even among those who join me in rejecting compatibilism about freedom and determinism, many (and I think most) accept the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge. If you believe that God knows ahead of time who will freely accept him in this life, then you must not really be an incompatibilist about freedom and foreknowledge, and you should have no objection to supposing that God can know ahead of time who will freely accept Him in the life to come. Thus, this objection will have carry no weight with you. If, on the other hand, you hold that foreknowledge is incompatible with freedom, and thus hold that God does not know what people will freely do even in this life, then you should be aware that you are holding a minority opinion (at least among Christians, but I think also among philosophers, both Christian or non-Christian), and if you use this incompatibilism -- let's call incompatibilism regarding freedom and foreknowledge zealous incompatibilism, to distinguish it from the milder view that freedom is incompatible with pre-determination --, together with fervent exclusivism, in objecting to the universalist stance, then you should be aware that your argument is resting on an assumption that is highly debatable, to put it rather mildly. So it certainly isn't anything of a "killer" objection to the universalist stance. As far as assessing the strength of the objection to universalism that can be obtained by these worries about freedom goes, that's the important point: There is no strong objection here, since the objection is based on such a controversial position -- indeed, on two highly debatable positions: fervent exclusivism and zealous incompatibilism. Nevertheless, I myself am somewhat attracted toward these controversial views. For those of you who join me in finding these positions appealing, despite their zealous/fervent nature, here are a couple of options for how to put zealous incompatibilism together with fervent exclusivism (or at least something close to it), and universalism (or at least something close to it) into a coherent package of views. A way to think about these two options is that one (perhaps) compromises a bit on universalism, the other on fervent exclusivism. 1. Holding very firmly to both zealous incompatibilism (freedom is incompatible with foreknowledge) and fervent exclusivism (in order to be saved, one must freely accept Christ), one can hold that, while it may not be absolutely certain, it is OVERWHELMINGLY probable that all will eventually accept Christ and be saved, and the probability that any will resist forever is VANISHINGLY small. After all, God will be on the case, and will have as much time as He needs. While it is true that some are heading in the completely wrong direction, and give no sign that, left to their own devices, they will do anything but accelerate their progress in that wrong direction, they will not be left to their own devices. There are actual instances in this life of breathtakingly dramatic turn-arounds, and God does intervene to bring people around in this life (without violating their freedom, according to the fervent exclusivist). So once we jettison that disastrous and quite unsupported view that death is the end of one's chances, there's no reason to doubt that such divine activities will continue in the life to come, nor that they will (eventually, at least) be successful in yielding free acceptance. If one takes this option, I think one can still be counted as a universalist. After all, you believe it is overwhelmingly probable that all will be saved, and in contested theological matters, we can't expect to reach beyond that level of certainty anyway. (Indeed, due to the usual causes -- human fallibility on such tough questions -- we're not even going to get up to that level of certainty, nor even close to it, on this or any other tough matter, anyway.) But this does seem to compromise on universalism a bit, because one is not only admitting that one could (of course!) be wrong about the matter in question, but also that according to the position one holds (however firmly or tentatively), there is some (VANISHINGLY small, but still existent) objective chance that not all will be saved. Not even God knows absolutely for certain that all will be saved. And this gives rise to a sticky question about whether God would have revealed that all will be saved if He was not absolutely certain that this would be so. It's easy to feel uncomfortable about saying that's what God did -- even if He was amazingly close to being absolutely certain that what we was revealing to us is true. 2. So, here's another possibility. God could pick some time in the distant future -- a time far enough off that it is overwhelmingly probable that all will have freely accepted salvation by then, given the (non-freedom-violating) means of persuasion God intends to employ -- and resolve to at that time compel acceptance of any hold-outs that are then left. These would then be saved by their acceptance, though their acceptance might not be as valuable, given that it was not free. Thus, God can be absolutely certain, and can therefore responsibly reveal to us, that all will be saved. (There are many variations of this story that you might think up and think about for yourself. For instance: God could pick different times for different individuals, etc. Of course, any such story will be highly speculative, and so one probably shouldn't invest any confidence in any such tale. Still, these can be helpful stories in that they show various ways that certain combinations of views can be made true, and thus can show the views themselves to be compatible, even if one can't be certain of the details of just how it will be worked out. In this case, these stories illustrate ways that zealous incompatibilism and universalism -- and even foreknown universalism -- can both be true even while the value and importance of human freedom is respected to a great degree.) Now, this position does give up on fervent exclusivism (though not on strong exclusivism or exclusivism simpliciter), since it holds that one can be saved even if one does not freely accept Christ. Nevertheless, it does go a fair way toward accommodating the motivation behind fervent exclusivism -- the importance of human freedom -- in that it has God adopting a plan by which He goes to tremendous lengths to attain free acceptance from every person. And those who hold this view can still maintain that it is far better and more valuable for a person to freely accept than for this acceptance to be coerced in a freedom-negating way. But it does deny that one must freely accept in order to be saved, and thus it does deny fervent exclusivism. Still, it's worth considering, for it gives those who might otherwise insist on fervent exclusivism a compromise position which doesn't simply write free acceptance off as unimportant. This potential compromise position is especially valuable if I'm right about how one would likely come to be a fervent exclusivist in the first place: That there's no substantial scriptural support for fervent exclusivism itself, but that fervent exclusivism is the likely result of combining strong exclusivism (for which there is significant support) with a belief one might have that human freedom is important. Since the compromise position respects the importance of human freedom, it is likely to be an attractive compromise. [Some fine print about a very tricky matter I just skated over above: It is worth noting that this view does depend on God's being able to foreknow with complete certainty what He Himself will do. Many who hold that God cannot foreknow what we will freely do seem to suppose that He can know what He Himself will do. This gets too complicated for me to go into in detail here. But whatever else you believe, if you think that God cannot know with complete certainty what He Himself will do, then, so long as you think that God will always have the power to make us miserable (which His omnipotence seems to assure), then you will be stuck with thinking that God cannot know with certainty that we won't be miserable at some later time. Thus, even those who hold that God cannot foreknow with complete certainty what we will freely do are very strongly motivated to hold that He can foreknow what He Himself will do. This can be because God's freedom is in important ways different from ours. In any case, when I speak of "zealous incompatibilism," I mean the position that God's certain foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom.] The above options are sketched out as potentially helpful guides for those who are attracted to certain combinations of views involving freedom, foreknowledge, and salvation. It's important to reemphasize in closing the important point reached several paragraphs above: that there is no strong objection to universalism that can be squeezed out of these thoughts -- at least not in any way that I can see. 6-13-2003 ______________________________________________________________________ Recommended Books on Universalism: [20]The Inescapable Love of God, by Thomas Talbott [21]If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person, by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. Though I found this book quite valuable, I do disagree strongly with parts of it. Most of my strong disagreement is with the material in Chapter 5. Most relevant to the concerns of this web page, Gulley & Mulholland seem to reject the position I've been calling "exclusivism" -- the view that it is only through Christ that people are saved. They seem to think that the denial of exclusivism follows directly from universalism [see pp. 124-5] and in any case give no other reason I can see for their denial. As I've been at great pains to stress here, universalism can co-exist with what I'm here calling exclusivism, and even with strong exclusivism -- and perhaps even with fervent exclusivism. Perhaps G&M would agree that universalism is compatible with exclusivism. Perhaps their claim would be that while universalism is compatible both with exclusivism and with non-exclusivism, it fits in better with non-exclusivism. They write [they adopted the literary device of writing in the first person singular, though there are two of them]: "When I became convinced God would save every person, I tried to hold on to traditional Christian formulas -- the trinity, the incarnation, and atonement theology. I wanted to pour this new wine into old wineskins. I quickly learned why Jesus recommended against this: the old wineskins always burst. Just as fermenting wine causes old leather to rend and tear, my expanding view of God strained the credibility of my childhood theology" (pp. 125-6). Perhaps exclusivism, too, is part of that old wineskin that G&M now find not to fit in well with the new wine of universalism -- maybe they even intended to include exclusivism in the quoted passage, as part of the "atonement theology" of their childhood. If so, my experience has been completely different. The Christian theology I grew up with seems quite similar to what G&M were taught. But I had always found it puzzling, given the relevant elements of this theology, why some would not be saved. If salvation is won through Christ's sacrifice, and is then God's free gift to us, why would this gift be given only to some? Of course, there were answers that were typically given to this question, but with one exception they struck me as implausible. (The one reason that seemed plausible was that only some accept the gift, but that raised the question, at least in many cases, some of which made the question quite urgent, of why the offer wouldn't be made under more favorable circumstances.) When I accepted universalim, I found it to fit in better with the relevant elements of the theology of my childhood than did the denial of universalism. So far from being new wine that strained and burst an old wineskin, universalism seemed to me like something that made a lot of previously puzzling elements of my childhood theology finally come together and make sense. References 1. http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Ekd47 16. http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Aion_lim.html 17. http://tomtalbott.freeyellow.com/./index.html 18. http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Ekd47/about-the-end.htm 19. http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Ekd47 20. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1581128312/qid=1058409463/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/102-1631670-6917757?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 21. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006251704X/qid%3D1058409593/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/102-1631670-6917757 From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:55:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:55:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tunes for the Freewheelin' George Bush Message-ID: The New York Times > Washington > White House Letter: Tunes for the Freewheelin' George Bush http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11letter.html April 11, 2005 [Play list appended. I wonder when he listens to classical music.] By ELISABETH BUMILLER WASHINGTON Between his return on Friday from Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome and his meeting today with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, President Bush spent an hour and a half on Saturday on an 18-mile mountain bike ride at his Texas ranch. With him, as usual, was his indispensable new exercise toy: an iPod music player loaded with country and popular rock tunes aimed at getting the presidential heart rate up to a chest-pounding 170 beats per minute. Which brings up the inevitable question. What, exactly, is on the First iPod? In an era of celebrity playlists - Tom Brady, the New England Patriots quarterback, recently posted his on the iTunes online music store - what does the presidential selection of downloaded songs tell us about Mr. Bush? First, Mr. Bush's iPod is heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney. He has selections by Van Morrison, whose "Brown Eyed Girl" is a Bush favorite, and by John Fogerty, most predictably "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Mr. Bush was an owner and is still played at ballparks all over America. ("Oh, put me in coach, I'm ready to play today.") The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist during the 2004 campaign. Among them are "Circle Back" by John Hiatt, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" by Joni Mitchell and "My Sharona," the 1979 song by the Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor at Rolling Stone in charge of music coverage, cheerfully branded "suggestive if not outright filthy" in an interview last week. Mr. Bush has had his Apple iPod since July, when he received it from his twin daughters as a birthday gift. He has some 250 songs on it, a paltry number compared to the 10,000 selections it can hold. Mr. Bush, as leader of the free world, does not take the time to download the music himself; that task falls to his personal aide, Blake Gottesman, who buys individual songs and albums, including Mr. Jones's and Mr. Jackson's greatest hits, from the iTunes music store. Mr. Bush uses his iPod chiefly during bike workouts to help him pump up his heartbeat, which he monitors with a wrist strap. The strap also keeps track of calories expended for the intensely weight-focused president, who has recently lost eight pounds after eating a lot of doughnuts during the 2004 campaign. Mr. Bush burned 1,300 calories on his bike ride on Saturday, Mr. McKinnon reported. As for an analysis of Mr. Bush's playlist, Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone started out with this: "One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him." Mr. Levy was referring to Mr. Fogerty, who was part of the anti-Bush "Vote for Change" concert tour across the United States last fall. Mr. McKinnon, who once wrote songs for Kris Kristofferson's music publishing company, responded in an e-mail message that "if any president limited his music selection to pro-establishment musicians, it would be a pretty slim collection." Nonetheless, Mr. McKinnon said that Mr. Bush had not gone so far as to include on his playlist "Fortunate Son," the angry anti-Vietnam war song about who has to go to war that Mr. Fogerty sang when he was with Creedence Clearwater Revival. ("I ain't no senator's son ... Some folks are born silver spoon in hand.") As the son of a two-term congressman and a United States Senate candidate, Mr. Bush won a coveted spot with the Texas Air National Guard to avoid combat in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Mr. Levy sized up the rest of the playlist of the 58-year-old president. "What we're talking about is a lot of great artists from the 60's and 70's and more modern artists who sound like great artists from the 60's and 70's," he said. "This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it's not." Mr. Jones, Mr. Levy said, was nonetheless an interesting choice. "George Jones is the greatest living singer in country music and a recovering alcoholic who often sings about heartbreak and drinking," he said. "It tells you that the president knows a thing or two about country music and is serious about his love of country music." The songs by Mr. Jackson indicate that the president "has a little bit of a taste for hard core and honky-tonk," Mr. Levy said, adding that both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Jones "are not about cute and pop, and they're not getting by on their looks." And while Mr. Chesney "is about cute and pop and gets by on his looks," Mr. Levy said, "he's also all about serious country music." Mr. McKinnon, who has downloaded "Castanets" by Alejandro Escovedo and "Alive 'N' Kickin' " by Kenny Loggins into Mr. Bush's iPod, said that sometimes a presidential playlist is just a playlist, nothing more. "No one should psychoanalyze the song selection," Mr. McKinnon said. "It's music to get over the next hill." -------------- The New York Times > Washington > Bush's Playlist http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11letterbox.html April 11, 2005 A sampling from President Bush's iPod; some songs were selected by Mark McKinnon, the chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign: John Fogerty, "Centerfield" Van Morrison, "New Biography," "Brown Eyed Girl" John Hiatt, "Circle Back" Alan Jackson George Jones Alejandro Escovedo, "Castanets" Joni Mitchell, "(You're So Square) Baby, I Don't Care" The Gourds, "El Paso" Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, "Swinging From the Chains of Love" Stevie Ray Vaughan, "The House is Rockin' " James McMurtry, "Valley Road" The Thrills, "Say It Ain't So" The Knack, "My Sharona" From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:56:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:56:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: Lynn Margulis: Ernst Mayr, Biologist Extraordinaire Message-ID: Lynn Margulis: Ernst Mayr, Biologist Extraordinaire http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/42365 May-June 2005 MACROSCOPE An appreciation of Harvard's visionary of modern evolutionary synthesis [24]Lynn Margulis Ernst Mayr, Harvard University professor emeritus and biologist extraordinaire, died peacefully in Bedford, Massachusetts, on February 3. He was 100 years old and had been associated with the biology department at Harvard since he joined its faculty in 1953. An era in evolutionary thought, called variously the New Synthesis, neo-Darwinism or the Modern Synthesis, came to an end with his passing. The death of the last of the great evolutionary biologists of the 20th century concluded an intellectual movement in the study of evolution--a point of view whose most striking aspect was the extent to which all of the evolutionary history of life on Earth was perceived as a subdiscipline of biology. Whereas Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, might have called it a paradigm, Ludwik Fleck (author of Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, 1935) would have recognized the correlated demise of neo-Darwinism and the death of Professor Mayr as a paradigm lost. An accomplished naturalist, Ernst Mayr began his work in 1923 at the age of 19. The last of his 25 books, a collection of essays called What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline, was published by Cambridge University Press in the summer of 2004, one month after his 100th birthday! This fact attests to Mayr's intellectual talents and unwavering interest in science, its history and philosophy. And last May, shortly before Mayr's centenary birthday in July, an open celebration of his work and life was held in the auditorium of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum at Harvard. The place was crowded with admirers, spectators, students from universities and colleges from all over the Boston area and beyond. Several famous evolutionary biologists, colleagues, many of whom were among his former students and are now professional leaders, came to pay tribute. What struck me at this well-attended, enthusiastic gathering was that, among the marvelous lecturers in an all-day session about the evolutionary panorama of life on Earth, the most moving and informative of the talks, in my opinion, was the final statement by Ernst Mayr himself! Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany (Bavaria), to an educated family, many of whom were physicians. His father, Otto Mayr, was a judge and a bird-watching enthusiast. During his school holidays Ernst worked at the Berlin Zoological Museum at the invitation of Erwin Stresemann, the best ornithologist in the country at that time. Following his two years of study at the University of Greifswald, oriented toward medicine as urged by his family, he completed his doctoral program in 16 months at the University of Berlin. Why did he opt to study at Greifswald? Why did he go north to a relatively unknown academic institution? Because his real interests were in the study of natural history, especially watching birds. Nature Not Books Like Darwin, Mayr was always fascinated by live animals in nature. He was particularly compelled by the question: How do species originate? Some three years before he died, he told me about his delight when the University of Berlin called him back to celebrate the 75th anniversary of receipt of his doctorate degree. I asked him if I might accompany him to attend the scientific program. "Oh, you don't want to do that," he remarked. "There will be no science, just endless and boring talks by administrators." We had been discussing modes of speciation, and I had shown him our 10-minute film on Mixotricha paradoxa, an Australian termite protist, in his daughter Susanne Harrison's kitchen in Bedford. I had explained "symbiogenesis" as a mode of speciation. "I get it, I get it," he said, first pensively, then excitedly as he watched the five or more integrated microbial symbionts that comprise a single Mixotricha protist swim away as a single individual. I tried to distinguish "symbiosis" from "symbiogenesis" for him. "Oh, you don't have to tell me what 'symbiosis' is!" he exclaimed, a little impatiently. "I studied symbiosis with Paul Buchner in Greifswald, who was a young instructor there" for a very short time before he moved on, eventually to Italy. Buchner, author of the seminal work Endosymbiose der Tiere mit pflanzlichen Mikroorganismen (1953), was the founder of modern symbiosis research. Mayr took seriously Louis Agassiz's admonition. He studied "Nature not Books" between 1928 and 1930 when he collected more than 3,000 birds in the South Pacific, mainly the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. He learned to live off the land. After removal of the skin and feathers in the preparation of "study skins" and taxidermic samples for species identification, morphological analysis and shipment to museum collections, nothing would be wasted: The innards went to pot for dinner. That Ernst Mayr ate more birds of paradise than any other modern ornithologist is a well-known anecdote. Mayr's work in the field, especially with avian diversity, led him to his most familiar contribution to science, documented in his two dozen single-authored or edited books and more than 600 scientific publications. He framed the animal species concept. Members of the same species can mate and breed to produce fertile offspring. Even plants and animals that greatly resemble each other are not to be assigned to the same species if they are not interfertile. On the other hand, animals that look very different from each other (such as Great Danes and Yorkshire terriers) if they produce fertile offspring do belong to the same species. He told me about the wood duck and the green-headed mallards illustrated on his conservation-society shower curtain--that they were perfectly fertile, and a mating between these birds resulted in normal numbers of healthy chicks. He said that nevertheless he agreed that the two very different-looking ducks must be assigned, as they are, to two different species. Why? Because, he insisted, even when they live on the same pond, such as the duck pond here in Amherst, they only mate with their own kind. His definition of species, he insisted, is "organisms are members of the same species that, in nature, mate to produce fertile offspring." He always emphasized the importance of the environment. Speciation could almost always be associated with geographical isolation. When members of the same species are separated for long times by environmental barriers (such as newly formed volcanic mountains, islands, rivers or climatic change), the barriers lead to impeded mating. It is these isolated populations that tend to form new species. The importance of geographical details in the origin and evolution of species was always emphasized. "I don't need to measure the pH and see that it is lower than six in that soil," he would say. "When sphagnum and cranberries grow in the bog there, we know what the pH must be." A proud naturalist, Mayr was a superb writer who communicated primarily by handwritten notes. He was the last of the neo-Darwinians to revere nature, work inside her and with her. His life always extended beyond the computer and mathematical models. What Evolution Is We celebrated the publication of our books, both brought out by Basic Books, in the summer of 2002. At his lovely retirement village, with the help of many friends as well as family (including Mayr's daughters Susanne and biologist Christa Menzel of Simsbury, Connecticut), we had a wonderful bibliophilic party. For our book (Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species), Mayr had written the fascinating, not uncritical, foreword. But Mayr's book was what we all came to celebrate. For readers unfamiliar with his comprehensive opus spanning more than 75 years of scientific productivity on a panoply of evolutionary themes, I recommend that you begin with this one, his 24th: What Evolution Is. Designed for the curious, nonspecialist reader, it is a fine read for those interested in the achievements of importance in 20th-century evolutionary biology. Not immodestly, Mayr considered his 2002 trade book to be the single best summary of uncontested, documented evolutionary thought. "Evolution" refers to the results of experimental, observational and theoretical science that support the common ancestry of all life on Earth. Yes, of course, people are primates directly related to other great apes such as gorillas, chimps and bonobos. Yes, of course, humans were not made by an all-seeing, all-knowing white-man deity. Indeed, evidence points to the possibility that several species of nonhumans became extinct because of our aggressive, even murderous, greedy ancestors. These early Homo sapiens, related to us, displayed traits that still abound! The questions and answers, at the end of the book especially, help any reader, even one naive with respect to science, to understand the basic concepts of this most important area of study. Mayr's reasonableness is especially pertinent today in the face of ignorance, prejudice and religious fundamentalism. For those who try to deny the validity of science that uses carefully collected evidence from investigators worldwide, this book is a responsible antidote. Some three weeks before his death, I called him at home in Bedford and asked, "Ernst, how are you? How do you feel?" He responded cheerily, "I feel fine. That is, I feel exceptionally well given the diagnosis." "What diagnosis?" I asked. "Didn't I tell you? The doctors tell me I have cancer. It has already metastasized, but I don't feel sick at all." "Oh, Ernst, I'm so sorry," I responded. "Well, Lynn," he said cheerfully, "I will have to die of something." Of Possible Interest Book Review: [28]A More Modern Synthesis Column: [29]1798: Darwin and Malthus Book Review: [30]Triumphalism in Science Book Review: [31]Demythologizing McClintock Book Review: [32]Planters vs. Weeders References 24. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AuthorDetail/authorid/1488;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af 28. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/12756;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af 29. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/28472;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af 30. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14648;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af 31. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14443;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af 32. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14310;jsessionid=aaa5qldRqnl3Af From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:55:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:55:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Amazon Expands Into Book Printing Message-ID: Amazon Expands Into Book Printing http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/technology/11ecom.html April 11, 2005 By BOB TEDESCHI SURE, [1]Amazon.com can sell books. But can it make them? The company itself raised that question, among others, last week when it purchased BookSurge, a book printing business based in Charleston, S.C., that specializes in so-called on-demand printing. BookSurge, which was privately held, is among a handful of companies spawned during the dot-com boom that rely on Internet technology to print a few books at a time, or even one at a time. The services have been most popular with writers who are unable or unwilling to strike deals with publishing houses, and who do not want to spend thousands of dollars to complete a print run of, say, 2,000 books on a traditional offset press. Publishers, too, have used digital printing companies to satisfy small orders of obscure titles. Amazon.com declined to share specific details about the acquisition - its second in five years. "We feel we can do great things together. We're just not saying what that might be," said Patty Smith, a company spokeswoman. Nonetheless, Amazon appears a good match for BookSurge's would-be authors, because it attracts perhaps more literary types than any other electronic commerce site. The BookSurge deal, for which terms were not announced, may also help Amazon protect what remains a crucial part of its business, said Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with the investment firm American Technology Research. "Anything to boost book sales is a good thing for Amazon's business, and for the stock," Mr. Mahaney said. "This could help." Sales of books and movies, Mr. Mahaney said, made up the bulk of Amazon's $2.6 billion in North American media sales last year - revenues that also included music. In the fourth quarter of 2004, in particular, he said, Amazon's North America media sales jumped nearly 18 percent from the year-earlier period. "That's remarkably robust, given that it's Amazon's oldest, most mature business," Mr. Mahaney said. That growth is particularly important, he added, because book sales garner profit margins of between 20 percent and 30 percent, compared to consumer electronics, which generate profits of 10 percent to 15 percent. Profit margins have been Amazon's Achilles' heel in recent months. In early February, the company said that its 2004 sales had climbed 31 percent, compared with 2003, but it said that its operating margins had dropped to 7 percent - well off the company's stated long-term goal of 10 percent. At the same time, Amazon.com's share price slipped from nearly $42 to about $36. The stock fell 30 cents to $34.60 a share on the Nasdaq on Friday. According to Robert Holt, BookSurge's managing director, the company has created proprietary software programs that automate the printing process to the point where even single-copy print orders are profitable, even though the book's final price is comparable to that of books produced through traditional means. "For a print run of 10,000 or 50,000 books, the manual costs can be spread out," Mr. Holt said. But for smaller print runs, he said, labor costs kill the economics of the operation. While lean manufacturing technology has existed for years at companies like BookSurge and Lightning Source, a division of the book distributor Ingram Industries, other elements have helped bring these services more squarely into the cross hairs of publishers and authors. Print quality has improved considerably, said Lorraine Shanley, a principal at Market Partners International, a publishing industry consulting firm. "You can now use color in a book, and produce hardcovers as easily as paperbacks," she said. And perceptions about on-demand publishing have also changed. Previously, many writers rejected the notion of so-called vanity publishing - the province of aspiring authors who spend tens of thousands of dollars to see their name on books collecting dust in the basement. With costs down and quality up, though, self-publishing has become more acceptable. And thanks to the Internet, authors have a greater chance of actually distributing their books. Susan Driscoll, chief executive of iUniverse, a service for self-published authors that is based in Lincoln, Neb., said one of her company's authors, Robert T. Dirgo, has found a steady market of about 800 copies a year for his book, "How I Reversed My Hashimoto's Thyroiditis Hypothyroidism." "With the Internet, these kinds of authors can find and reach their readers," Ms. Driscoll said. According to Bryan Smith, chief executive of AuthorHouse, another self-publishing business that is based in Bloomington, Ind., writers have also been emboldened by success stories like that of Joe Vitale, an AuthorHouse writer who reached No. 3 on Amazon.com's best-seller list in 2003 with "Spiritual Marketing: A Proven 5-Step Formula for Easily Creating Wealth From the Inside Out." Other AuthorHouse writers, he added, have moved from self-publishing to traditional publishing houses. Of course, for every writer who achieves financial or literary success through self-publishing, there are many more who have little, financially speaking at least, to show for the roughly $700 they pay to have their manuscript designed and bound, or the additional money they pay for marketing or editorial advice. Jill Scharff and Jaedene Levy, co-authors of "The Facelift Diaries," which BookSurge published in October, have appeared on "Good Morning America" and the Fox News Channel, and have been mentioned in an article in The [2]Washington Post, among other publications. Yet the authors said they have yet to turn a profit on their initial print run of 500 books, for which they paid an undisclosed amount. "There is no money in this," said Ms. Scharff. "There are some authors that seem to make money, but they probably have to put a lot more work into it - although we have put a lot of work into it." Still, Amazon appears well suited to sell its services even to those who more vaguely believe they may have a book in them, as do more than 80 percent of Americans, according to Ms. Driscoll, of iUniverse. Since many of those prospective writers are presumably readers, the Web's dominant bookseller could easily reach them. The Web site is already well-trodden ground for many experienced and would-be authors, analysts said, since it ranks the popularity of millions of book titles and provides a reliable database for those researching available books on a given topic. And Amazon.com's new BookSurge clients could help increase advertising revenues, which now represent a small fraction of the company's overall sales. Amazon charges authors and publishers about $750 monthly to promote their books on the site's item description pages for various best-selling titles. These ads, which have been a fairly well-kept secret in the industry, could attract new authors who are experiencing slow sales. After all, as any author knows, if a book does not sell well, it is clearly a marketing problem. References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=AMZN 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=WPO From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:59:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:59:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] spiked-central: Panic, Don't panic Message-ID: Panic, Don't panic http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Panic/Index.htm 5.4.5 Programmed to bully Panic: New research claims that 'Four-year-old children who watch more television than average are more likely to become bullies'. Researchers in Seattle found that children who went on to bully between the ages of six and 11 watched five hours of TV per day, almost two hours more than those who did not. Writing in the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the team led by Dr Frederick Zimmerman said: 'Our results have some important implications. We have provided some empirical support to theories that suggest that bullying might arise out of cognitive deficits as well as emotional ones. We have added bullying to the list of potential negative consequences of excessive television viewing along with obesity, inattention and other types of aggression.' Don't panic: What the news reports have failed to mention, in their rush to blame TV for yet another social problem, is that the effect found was so small as to be barely significant. The journal abstract notes: 'Each hour of television viewed per day at age 4 years was associated with a significant odds ratio of 1.06 for subsequent bullying.' In other words, children who watched TV for one hour a day more had a six per cent increased risk of being 'a bully'. But there are plenty of other problems with this research. All the reporting is done by mothers, so what one mother considers to be bullying behaviour might be another mother's friendly horseplay. In fact, it must be extremely difficult to define what 'a bully' is for such a report. Does it mean violent behaviour? Would organising classmates to exclude a particular individual constitute bullying? Would someone who exhibits this behaviour at the age of six, but not at the age of eleven, fall into the category of a 'bully' for the purposes of this research? Moreover, if there is a real correlation here, it has little to do with television as such. For example, watching television is a very passive activity. While not harmful in itself, it's a poor substitute for the social and intellectual engagement involved in play. Opportunities for free play are becoming increasingly restricted by parental fears. If some children then take longer to learn what is appropriate behaviour and what is not, that is hardly the fault of television but of the wider environment in which they grow up today. That said, this particular paper also suggests a complete lack of historical perspective. Children have been picking on other children since time immemorial - and certainly a long time before the gogglebox was invented. Whether the amount of bullying going on is on the increase is surely impossible to know. However, we live in an age where the feeling of being a lonely, picked-upon individual is the very zeitgeist. No wonder there's money to research bullying. Nor is television alone in being blamed - the finger has been pointed at everything from mouthy footballers to food additives. Television may be the source of innumberable bad programmes, but the evidence that it is responsible for society's ills is thin. Maybe it's time to pull the plug on this kind of research. Read: [39]Early Cognitive Stimulation, Emotional Support, and Television Watching as Predictors of Subsequent Bullying Among Grade-School Children, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, April 2005 [40]TV 'could create child bullies', BBC News, 4 April 2005 5.3.25 Overcooked claims Panic: 'Based on current trends, children could be three times more likely than their grandparents to develop malignant melanoma', says BBC News, reporting the launch of a new campaign by Cancer Research UK. The concern is that climate change in the UK and greater numbers of foreign holidays mean that rates of melanoma will continue to rise in the future. Men and women born in 1970, now in their mid-30s, are being diagnosed with melanoma at the same rate as people who were born in 1930 and didn't develop melanoma until their 50s. The campaign contains advice on ways to reduce sun exposure. Professor Brian Diffey of Newcastle University told the BBC that public awareness campaigns would help lower the toll, but he emphasised that early detection was the key to bringing down mortality rates. Don't panic: Barely two weeks after the last blizzards, the annual skin cancer campaign has begun. But does this campaign do any good? It would be surprising if skin cancer rates in the UK did not rise to some extent. After all, people born in 1930 in the UK would rarely see strong sunshine. A year spent with British weather and smoggy skies would be relieved by a week or two in Blackpool or Margate. No danger of serious sunburn there. The mere fact of jetting abroad at all was always bound to have some effect on the pale British skin. However, the relationship between sunbathing and melanomas is far from clear-cut. The most common forms of skin cancer (basal-cell or squamous-cell carcinomas) are definitely related to sun exposure. But they are also highly treatable and rarely serious. The relationship between malignant melanomas, which are much more serious, and sunlight is less clear. For example, melanomas tend to appear on areas of the body that are less likely to be exposed to the sun. Rates for melanoma in Japan are comparable to those in the UK, even though there is no tradition of sunbathing in Japan. The explanation offered for this apparent contradiction is that cancers can be caused by one-off incidents of sunburn on holiday. But can the occasional bit of sunburn really cause cancer, or is this a case of trying to fit the facts to a shaky theory? While the British obsession with turning lobster-pink in Mediterranean resorts may lead to nasty sunburn (and the bafflement of the locals), it seems unlikely to cause cancer. Professor Jonathan Rees, head of the dermatology department at Edinburgh University, believes 'there is little hard evidence to support these public health campaigns in the UK' - a point that even Professor Diffey seems to have some sympathy with. Moreover, there is some evidence now suggesting that vitamin D may have a protective effect against some cancers. Our bodies produce most of their own vitamin D through skin exposed to sunlight. In northern Europe during the winter, people get very little exposure to the sun, so a quick trip to the Costa del Suntan might be beneficial. While getting sunburnt regularly probably won't do you much good, the opposite reaction of avoiding the sun altogether is unlikely to be helpful either. The current campaign is based on an Australian model, but now the Cancer Council of Australia has said: 'A balance is required between avoiding an increase in the risk of skin cancer and achieving enough ultraviolet radiation exposure to achieve adequate vitamin D levels.' We should remind ourselves that skin cancer is a relatively minor cause of death in the UK. Even if rates did treble, the chances of any individual developing a melanoma would still be quite small. The benefits of two weeks away are well worth such a tiny risk. Read: [41]Too little sun causes harm, cancer specialists say, Independent, 22 March 2005 [42]Experts fear soaring cancer rate, BBC News, 23 March 2005 [43]Enjoy your moment in the sun, The Times (London), 28 July 2003 5.3.15 Eruption of fear Panic: 'A true story that hasn't happened yet', intones the trailer for the BBC drama Supervolcano. In the mini-series, a volcano in Yellowstone erupts, covering North America in ash and inducing global cooling. On the back of the series, scientists have warned that we need to be prepared for this kind of disaster. A report by a Geological Society working group notes: 'An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years following the eruption. They could result in the devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies, and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to threaten the fabric of civilization.' Professor Stephen Self of the Open University says: 'We don't want to be sensationalist about this, but it's going to happen. We just can't say exactly when. But we have just had a natural disaster affecting hundreds of thousands of people. Now is the time to be thinking about this.' Don't panic: This is an example of a Really Bad Thing that could happen in our lifetimes but is highly unlikely to. While major volcanic eruptions occur somewhere in the world every few years, these are much smaller than the kind of event described in Supervolcano, which appears to occur on average about every 50,000 years. But what programmes like this do produce are some really bad pieces of logic. For example, the accompanying documentary, part of the Horizon series, tells us: 'Scientists have revealed that [Yellowstone] has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago...so the next is overdue.' Perhaps that eruption cycle isn't so regular after all.... One thing is clear: there's nothing we could do to stop such an explosion occurring, so there is simply no point in worrying about it. It might keep a working party or two gainfully employed fretting about how we might cope, but that's about it. Moreover, it is wrong to assume that society could not survive such an event. Unlike the dinosaurs, we can control our environment - produce our own sources of power, find alternatives methods of producing food, and so on. We are not helpless victims of nature. In the meantime, there are lots of very real problems that are within our means to control, such as malaria, access to clean water and general poverty. The more society develops, the better able we are to cope with the occasional shock. Classic Hollywood disaster movies were about putting yourself in the place of the hero and wondering how you'd cope with being in a sinking cruise liner, burning skyscraper, failing airplane, or even a town struck by a volcanic eruption. The crisis was purely a device to create a dramatic situation. But no disaster movie these days is complete without the 'real science' behind it. Supervolcano, like The Day After Tomorrow, hitches its plot to real ecological concerns in order to grab our attention. But 'a true story that hasn't happened yet' is not a true story. It's a wind-up. The suggestion that there is a real and pressing problem behind the fiction feeds off and reinforces a more generalised fear of the future. It also encourages scientists to over-egg their research to grab the media limelight. It's time to untangle science and fiction: the only thing disaster movie fans should be fretting about in real life is the price of popcorn. Read: [44]Experts weigh supervolcano risks, BBC News, 9 March 2005 [45]Supervolcano, BBC [46]Super-eruptions: global effects and future threats, Geological Society of London 5.3.5 Smoke alarm Panic: '11,000 killed every year by passive smoking', said the UK Mirror, in response to a report published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Various estimates of increased risk associated with passive smoking were combined with figures for known deaths, overall populations, and populations working in specific industries. The results suggest passive smoking in workplaces is responsible for 617 deaths per year, with one death per week in the hospitality industry. The study also concluded that 2,700 deaths of people between 20 and 64 years of age occur due to passive smoking at home, with a further 8,000 deaths in those aged 65 or over. Professor Konrad Jamrozik of Queensland University, who wrote the report, said: 'Adoption of smoke-free policies in all workplaces and reductions in the general prevalence of active smoking would lead to substantial reductions in these avoidable deaths.' Don't panic: This report doesn't provide us with any new information on the risks of passive smoking. It merely takes existing research and calculates all the number of people who would die if all the suggested risks proved to be accurate. This is an extremely dubious practice, taking uncertain but probably small risks and then multiplying them by very large numbers to produce startling headlines. The true risks of passive smoking remain as controversial as ever. For example, in 2003 the BMJ published a study of 120,000 adults in California over a 40-year period, which concluded that 'the results do not support a causal association between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality, though they do not rule out a small effect'. As a BMJ editorial concluded at the time, 'the considerable problems with measurement imprecision, confounding, and the small predicted excess risks limit the degree to which conventional observational epidemiology can address the effects of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke'. For the record, it's worth noting that even if Jamrozik's figures are correct, restricting public smoking will have little impact, as most of the deaths are due to passive smoking in the home. The vast majority of these are people over the age of 65, people who would have lived through much smokier environments than exist today. Clearly, their lives will not have been shortened by much even if Jamrozik's numbers add up. As for the supposed risks to bar and restaurant workers, the most prominent justification for smoking bans these days, we should note that it amounts to 54 deaths per year out of a workforce of well over a million - a risk factor of 21,000-to-one. What you probably won't read in the papers is Jamrozik's acknowledgement of assistance from Deborah Arnott of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the UK's main anti-smoking campaign. Nor will you read his note that 'the calculations in this paper were commissioned by SmokeFree London, a collaboration of 33 local borough councils in London concerned with extension of smoke-free policies in that city'. Jamrozik's report is a piece of advocacy dressed up as science and should be treated with considerable scepticism. Read: [47]Estimate of deaths attributable to passive smoking among UK adults:database analysis, British Medical Journal, 2 March 2005 [48]We have ways of making you stop smoking, by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick [49]spiked-issue: No smoking, 5.2.21 The dangers of dye Panic: The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) hit the headlines last week by demanding the removal from supermarket shelves of 350 processed foods which may contain traces of the banned dye Sudan-I. The dye appears to have been used to colour chilli powder imported from India, but it is illegal to use it in food sold in the EU. The chilli powder was added to worcester sauce, which in turn was added to processed foods, including canned soups and ready meals. 'At the levels present the risk is likely to be very small but it is sensible to avoid eating any more', said Dr Jon Bell of the FSA. Don't panic: Sudan-I is not, as frequently stated, a 'known carcinogen' in humans. In large quantities, it does increase the frequency of liver tumours in rats, but not in mice. It is classified as a 'category 3' carcinogen - that is, something for which not enough information in relation to humans is available to make a firm judgement but which has carcinogenic potential. The old adage 'the dose makes the poison' also suggests there is little risk here. The quantities contained in these ready meals must have been tiny. The chilli powder must only have contained a small fraction of Sudan-I. In turn this was added to the sauce, which therefore only contained a small fraction of the chilli powder. Finally, the finished products will have contained only a small fraction of worcester sauce. The quantities of Sudan-I in the end products must be measured in micrograms. Nor is Sudan-I peculiarly harmful. When it is consumed, it breaks down into a number of by-products called amines. As the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment notes, 'the carcinogenic action in animal experiments are attributed to the release of amines and their ensuing metabolic activation.' Their report goes on to note that the same amines are found in significant quantities in cabbages and carrots. For example, a day's worth of Sudan-I contaminated chilli powder will, at most, contain the same amount of the amine alinine as 20 grammes of raw carrots. This exposure is in turn thousands of times lower than the levels which produced cancers in rats. The FSA seems to have self-consciously made a media splash on this issue, in an attempt to reassure the public that it is watching over us. But such tactics tend to have the opposite effect to that intended. These alarms make us more fearful about what we eat, and lend credence to the bogus arguments of those who believe that supermarkets and food processors are reckless about safety in the pursuit of profits. Sudan-I is unnecessary in food preparation, and banning it may be a sensible precaution. But the actions of the FSA in relation to this particular incident have been excessive and counterproductive. Read: [50]Action taken to remove illegal dye found in wide range of foods on sale in UK, UK Food Standards Agency, 18 February 2005 [51]Dyes Sudan I to IV in food, Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, 19 November 2003 [pdf format] [52]Food Scares Agency, by Jan Bowman What is spiked? spiked is an online publication with the modest ambition of making history as well as reporting it. spiked stands for liberty, enlightenment, experimentation and excellence. Signet House, 49-51 Farringdon Road, London, EC1M 3JP Email: [57]info at spiked-online.com References 39. http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/159/4/384 40. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4408709.stm 41. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=622467 42. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4371131.stm 43. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,170-758744,00.html 44. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4326987.stm 45. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/supervolcano/ 46. http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=super2 47. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/rapidpdf/bmj.38370.496632.8Fv3.pdf 48. http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CA7A4.htm 49. http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Liberties/NoSmoking/Index.htm 50. http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2005/feb/worcester 51. http://www.bgvv.de/cm/245/dyes_sudan_I_IV.pdf 52. http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D1B6.htm 53. http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/central/About/Index.htm 54. http://www.spiked-online.com/Forms/SpikedByEmail.asp 55. http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/About/Corrections%20policy.htm 56. http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/About/Terms%20and%20Conditions.htm 57. http://www.spiked-online.com/forms/genEmail.asp?sendto=9§ion=central From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:59:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:59:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Statesman: Review of Actresses and Whores: on stage and in society Message-ID: Actresses and Whores: on stage and in society http://www.newstatesman.com/Bookshop/300000096330 5.4.11 by Kirsten Pullen Cambridge University Press, 215pp, ?16.99 ISBN 0521541026 Reviewed by Fiona Shaw As a member of the younger of the two professions that are the focus of this book, I am not naive enough to be ignorant of the connection between them. The casting lots of Hollywood studios, full of actresses flaunting themselves in their Sunday best, are a sharp reminder of our fleshpit expendability. And one of my colleagues recently told me of a "meeting" with a producer that began with him stepping out of the shower with a towel hanging loosely around his groin. (Oddly enough, she never did tell me what happened next.) Women first climbed on to the stage in Britain following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The profession offered women a means of escaping marriage or domestic drudgery without having to sell their bodies to fend off financial ruin. (Economic independence is still one of the joys of what can be an angst-ridden vocation.) And yet actresses were commonly seen as whores. In her riveting study of the interplay between the two professions, Kirsten Pullen places actresses and whores firmly on the ever-present stage of society - and reminds us that it is not only prostitutes we remain ambivalent about, but theatre and film workers, too. Pullen sets the whore-like qualities of actresses - the eroticism of cross-dressing on stage, their undressed "availability" backstage - against the real life of an 18th-century prostitute, Margaret Leeson. In her memoir, Leeson described and justified her fall from grace, painting a vivid picture of a decadent Dublin. In one section, she described how she once offered a client a proportion of her ten-guinea fee for every orgasm she enjoyed. By dawn, she had returned only one guinea. As ever more women took to the stage in the 18th century, they found themselves playing vulnerable heroines or repen- tant dolts - versions of "female" that may have pleased male audiences and warned women against transgression, but which had little to do with their lives. It wasn't long, however, before women took on more transgressive parts. Although at first women in "trouser roles" - that is, playing male characters - were little more than an excuse for men to admire the female physique, actresses were soon competing with men for serious parts. Pullen tells the story of Charlotte Charke, who rebelliously played Macheath in The Beggar's Opera, and of the American Charlotte Cushman, who is shown cross-legged and comfortable in her daggered belt as Romeo. Putting on trousers was a way of reaching for freedom. On occasions when I have had cross-dressing roles in Shakespeare, I have felt myself to be part of a tradition of boundary-pushing, of theatre's forward movement. It was not until the 20th century and the rise of Stanislavsky's school of "realism" that acting finally became respectable. Art began to be drawn from life, and the theatre - in America at least - was upgraded to a "moral instrument". No longer were actresses assumed to be whores. Pullen, though, has a good stab at demonstrating the reverse: that a whore is also an actress. There are undoubtedly elements of performance in prostitution - it is, by its very nature, an improvisatory event; a prostitute has to adapt to a client's imagination; and her behaviour and dress are likely to be at odds with her normal self. Pullen points out that, just as an actress might not feel up to playing Lady Macbeth six nights a week, a whore isn't always in the mood. She quotes one sex worker who complains of having to shower before seeing a client, of having sex with him in the shower, and of returning home to wash - whereupon she has to explain to her room-mates why she always has wet hair. However, it seems to me that acting and prostitution, despite sharing a territory of dressing up and performing, are profoundly different. For the prostitute, the purpose of the "lie" is to fool the client. The point of acting, on the other hand, is not to disguise truth but to discover it. Over the centuries, the reasons for acting have changed, and this has been to our benefit. I fear that the reasons for whoring have stayed the same. Fiona Shaw will be performing in Julius Caesar at the Barbican, London EC2, from 14 April (see page 40) From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:59:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:59:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sunday Times (UK): Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings Message-ID: Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-1538074,00.html 5.3.27 Dr Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings REVIEWED BY JOHN CAREY DR JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World by Henry Hitchings J Murray ?14.99 pp288 SAMUEL JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY: Selections from the 1755 Work that Defined the English Language edited by Jack Lynch Atlantic ?19.99 pp654 Samuel Johnson is the only famous writer who is better known for what he said than for what he wrote. Essays, poems, biographies, drama and fiction flowed from his pen, and they are all forgotten. Most people would be hard put to it to name even their titles. On the other hand, we all know who said that no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, or that when a man knows he is going to be hanged it concentrates his mind wonderfully, or that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs. Like most other Johnsonisms, these were published by Boswell after Johnson's death, and we can never be sure how far Boswell's Johnson was Boswell's invention. Henry Hitchings's ingenious and fascinating book shifts the focus back to the indisputably real Johnson by combing through the 42,773 entries in his Dictionary for evidence of his beliefs, prejudices, hang-ups, cultural context and occasional ignorance. Jack Lynch's beautifully produced volume of selections from the Dictionary, including its moving preface, perfectly complements Hitchings, and both celebrate the 250th anniversary of Johnson's mighty achievement. The Dictionary was published on April 15, 1755, and had taken eight years to compile. Johnson worked almost single-handedly, employing only half a dozen raggle-taggle copyists chosen, with typical kindness, because they were poor and starving. By contrast the French Dictionnaire had, as Johnson enjoyed noting, taken 40 scholars 55 years. His was not the first English dictionary, but it instantly eclipsed its rivals and held the fort for a century and a half. It was Johnson's dictionary that Robert Browning read through in order to "qualify" as a poet, and that Becky Sharp, in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, flung into Miss Pinkerton's garden (actually it must have been one of the many abridgments, because even Becky could not have launched Johnson's two-volume, 20lb monster into the air). To illustrate the meanings of words, Johnson supplied 114,000 quotations from books covering every branch of learning and going back to the 16th century. Nothing remotely comparable had been done before, and it made his dictionary into a superior prototype of the internet -- a bulging lucky-dip of wisdom, anecdote, humour, legend and fact. Nobody but Johnson could have done it, because nobody had read so much. A bookseller's son, he had been ravenously turning pages since childhood. Sickly, half-blind and racked by strange tics and spasms that attracted ridicule, he read to escape the pain of life. He "tore the heart out of books", it was said, often returning them to their owners badly mauled. To compile the dictionary, he waded through acres of print, marking passages that clarified a word's meaning, then handing them to his little band of paupers who copied them out onto thousands of slips. Thanks to these labours, his dictionary was the first to record not some lexicographer's ideal of what words ought to mean, but how they had actually been used. He seems, when he started out, to have entertained hopes that his dictionary would "fix" the English language and banish errors. But he quickly came to realise that languages live by changing, and he was the first to formulate the modern concept of lexicography as an endlessly evolving record of usage. For someone of Johnson's politics this must have been a difficult adjustment. A diehard Tory monarchist, he disliked change and hated busybody reformers. The devil, he told Boswell, was the first Whig. But throwing out dictatorial ideas of lexicography fitted in with his British love of freedom. Other countries, he observed, had set up academies to regulate usage, but "to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride". Slavery repelled him. He took a freed slave, Francis Barber, into his house, and bequeathed him the bulk of his estate. His opinion of Americans ("I am willing to love all mankind," he confessed, "except an American") stemmed partly from the colonists' doublethink about freedom and slavery: "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" Like his recognition of "general agreement" as the shaping force behind language, his inclusion of "low" words in the dictionary was a democratic gesture. Hitchings thinks his copyists may have done their bit by introducing their employer to the cant of crooks and cardsharps. "Giglet: A wanton", "Fopdoodle: A fool", "Dandiprat: An urchin", "Jobbernowl: A blockhead", and many more, flaunt their garish charms in Lynch's selection. Hitchings shows, too, how Johnson's definitions display aspects of his personality -- the poet ("Puppet: A wooden tragedian"); the scientist, ("Network: Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections"); the religious melancholic ("Obsession: The first attack of Satan, antecedent to possession"); the moralist ("Suicide: The horrid crime of destroying oneself"); the intellectual ("Stockjobber: A low wretch who gets money by buying and selling shares"). His limitations are also exposed. "Sonata" is defined merely as "A tune", reflecting his indifference to music. He once remarked, at a performance by a celebrated violinist, "Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible." He was not good at predicting which words would survive. "To dumbfound", "ignoramus", "shabby" and "simpleton" struck him as substandard and probably ephemeral, whereas he commended "ultimity" (meaning "the last stage") and "to warray" (to make war) as useful additions to the language. National self-respect obliged him to draw the line at French words, so "bourgeois" and "champagne" are omitted, although current at the time. Popular accounts of Johnson turn him into a lovable eccentric, which is a way of avoiding his brainpower. Hitchings will have none of this. He keeps drawing attention to the unremitting intelligence that Johnson's lexicographical labours demanded, not least in separating out the ramifying senses of common words. The dictionary's entry for the verb "take" distinguishes 133 meanings and has 363 illustrative quotations. Johnson's psychological observations reflect similar acuteness. True, he had his soft side, as his fondness for his cat Hodge testifies. But he would not have seen that as a weakness. Want of tenderness, he told Boswell, was a sure sign of stupidity. His insight into people, including himself, was sharp and hard, and schooled by poverty. He had to leave Oxford after a year because funds ran out, and when, later in life, he heard he had a reputation for being "frolicsome" there, he curtly demurred: "I was rude and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic." He knew that poverty poisons the closest relationships. "Poor people's children never respect them," he told Boswell, adducing, as evidence, his disrespect for his own mother. Both remarks are worth pondering today. Our tendency to criticise the poor for their unhealthy lifestyles and dysfunctional families would elicit sharp retorts from Johnson. His morality is a corrective to our destructively unequal society, and it matters, in the end, far more than any dictionary. Hitchings's book, among its other excellences, never loses sight of that. Available at Books First prices of ?11.99 (Hitchings) and ?15.99 plus ?2.25 p&p on 0870 165 8585 READ ON... websites: [77]http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Johnson/Guide Solid Johnson guide From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 21:59:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:59:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Christianity Today: Who Invented the 1980s? Message-ID: Who Invented the 1980s? http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/002/9.18.html Who Invented the 1980s? The Carter decade. by Philip Jenkins Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s by Gil Troy Princeton University Press 400 pp., $29.95 When Ronald Reagan died last year, Senator John Kerry neatly captured the public mood when he declared that Reagan "was our oldest president, but he made America young again." Millions of Americans remembered Reagan not just as an elder statesman but as a kind of secular savior, the man who saved the country from a long period of national traumas and disasters. While "the Seventies" are commonly remembered as a time of weakness and malaise, "the Eighties"--the Reagan years--are associated with vigorous growth, with a confident assurance epitomized by the president himself. The transition between eras is perfectly symbolized by the cumulative disasters of 1980, the year of the Iran hostage crisis. The message, in short, is that Jimmy Carter led the nation to the verge of ruin, but Ronald Reagan pulled us out of the mess. It can scarcely be denied that Reagan was a great national leader, arguably the greatest U.S. president of the 20th century (and given greater length, I'd be happy to explain why I would rank him above FDR). Yet having said this, the conventional contrast between the Carter and Reagan years, between decades and presidencies, is much too stark, and overemphasizes the role of individuals. Even if "the Eighties" designates a meaningful historical era, Reagan deserves only limited credit for defining the decade. In Morning in America, Gil Troy makes an excellent case for Reagan's capacity as a leader, and for the real achievements of his administration. We live in a "Reaganized America." Fortunately, the more of Reagan's notes and speeches that have appeared in print, the less time a historian need waste in confronting the canard about the president as an amiable dunce. Reagan had a sharp mind and a clearly defined sense of historical mission, grounded in fundamental moral and political principles. He was also blessed with the ability to convey his confidence, his evident belief both in himself and in American values. Troy rightly identifies the turning point in the presidency in 1983-84, when the Grenada invasion and the Los Angeles Olympics provided dual foci for renewed patriotism, ably exploited by the White House. In retrospect, even Reagan's cockiest and most implausible visions have been vindicated by history. In all honesty, how many informed analysts in the early 1980s believed that Soviet Communism would evaporate within a decade, or that Reagan's confrontational nuclear policies would really lead to a massive reduction of global tensions? Yet Reagan believed these ridiculous things, and on both points, he was ridiculously right. Troy's readable book is impressive in its integration of political and social history, while he rightly recognizes that popular culture can provide an effective gauge of the public mood. Thus, he effectively uses the television series Hill Street Blues to illustrate attitudes towards crime and race, and throughout, he uses television, film, and popular music. Troy is anything but a Reagan cheerleader, and he stresses the still contentious nature of the Reagan record. Apart from the obvious liberal critics, fiercely defensive "Reagan zealots" will challenge Troy's balanced approach. As he dryly remarks, "Studying Ronald Reagan is not for the faint-hearted--or the untenured." To the extent that he is being shot at from both sides, Troy thus emerges as impeccably fair-minded. But I would still argue that his sharp focus on Reagan and the 1980s leads him to over-estimate the presidential achievement. To take an obvious issue, just how different was Reagan from his predecessor? In terms of popular memory, the contrast seems absurd: the Gipper versus the Wimp. But Carter and Reagan had much in common. Carter was more conservative than is often recalled, and Reagan more liberal. On issues of gender and morality, Reagan had a distinctly moderate record, having endorsed the ERA and opposed California's anti-gay Briggs initiative. His two terms as governor included liberal measures on abortion rights and no-fault divorce, not to mention a fairly progressive tax policy and a respectable environmental record. At times, he looked like the kind of politician the Reaganites were warning about. The two men also shared much in their idealistic moral vision and their religious sense of national purpose. Both saw national problems in moral terms, as issues of the human heart. Neither was reluctant to invoke moral justifications for policy or to see a divine hand in political destiny, and both were attacked for religious sentiments that the secular-minded regarded as na?ve or hypocritical. While any reconstruction of alternative realities must be speculative, we might reasonably ask just how different the America of the Eighties would have been if Jimmy Carter had won the 1980 election--and that could have happened quite easily. Any number of events might have transformed the political landscape of that year. Carter's Tehran hostage rescue might have succeeded in April 1980, while through the summer, Reagan supporters worried that Carter might arrange an October Surprise, a last-minute diplomatic breakthrough that would bring the hostages home in time for the election. And in that case, how different would the 1980s have been? After all, the New Cold War was already in progress following the Afghanistan crisis of 1980. Other areas of crisis in the early 1980s would certainly include Poland and Central America, while the United States would have to respond to recent Soviet missile deployments in Europe. It would have been natural for any U.S. administration to try and weaken the Soviet bloc through proxy forces, who would receive clandestine support or training from the United States. Well before the 1980 election, Carter began U.S. support for Afghan mujaheddin guerrillas. In the last days of his presidency, Carter was sufficiently alarmed by the imminent collapse of the Salvadoran regime to restore U.S. military aid. In December 1980, he warned the Soviet government against military intervention in Poland. Throughout 1980, we can discern the stark anti-Communist mood of the Reagan years, the renewed patriotic upsurge, and the quest for decisive leadership. When comparing the 1970s with the Reagan 1980s, we often forget how many of the characteristic trends and symbols of the Eighties originated in the Carter era, a point rarely made or pursued by Troy. Usually regardless of federal attitudes or policies, America was simply becoming more socially conservative in these years. The drug war, most famously directed against cocaine and crack cocaine under Reagan, originated in the anti-PCP ("angel dust") panic of 1977-78, and was in full flood by the early 1980s. Already under Carter, American society was becoming much more penally oriented, with the dramatic upsurge of incarceration rates, and the restoration of capital punishment. Fears of rape and child sexual abuse, which so reshaped attitudes towards gender and sexuality, again originated in the late 1970s. Increasingly, the roots of domestic Reaganism seem rooted in the debates and conflicts of 1977, in that year's attacks on feminism and electoral attempts to reverse gay rights. Even the AIDS scare, so often cited as the symbolic end of the sexual revolution, was closely prefigured by the herpes panic of 1980-82. Of course herpes was nothing like so lethal in its effects as AIDS, but looking back at the herpes literature now, we must be struck by how precisely it pioneers the rhetoric of the AIDS years, with the language of epidemic, plague, and scarlet letters. Reagan succeeded so thoroughly because he inherited a country alarmed by the extent of recent social revolutions, a country seeking an opportunity to be "scared straight." In economics too, the Carter/Reagan divide seems much more permeable than Troy implies. It was in late 1979 that the financial policies of Fed chairman Paul Volcker imposed the credit crunch that created the ghastly economic downturn of 1980-82. Reagan was dreadfully unpopular in 1981-82, when the Left enjoyed a significant revival, and Washington and New York witnessed some of the largest demonstrations in their history, especially in the name of the nuclear freeze movement. Reagan's approval ratings approached Carterian levels. But the Fed policy worked, so that the economy returned to boom conditions from late 1982, beginning an eight-year run of splendid success. Often forgotten in this picture is the role of oil prices, which conveniently crashed in mid-decade, reinforcing the U.S. recovery while further crippling the Soviet Union. If Jimmy Carter was still president in 1983-84, he too would have enjoyed a sunny national mood, as the United States basked in historic prosperity. Under whichever party, a confident and wealthy nation would have been far more willing to confront its overseas enemies while suppressing criminals and social deviants at home. Had he weathered the storms of 1980, perhaps Carter would today be enjoying the credit for national salvation that actually adhered to Reagan. Of course, that assumes that Carter would not have exercised his uncanny talent to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, which he might well have done. In awarding Reagan the palm as "inventor" of the 1980s, Troy exaggerates the ability of any president to overcome underlying circumstances and trends. In support of this argument, we might point to the more general success of "Reaganite" policies and movements around the world, in nations not subject to that particular administration--not least in Thatcher's Britain. Such parallels surely suggest that more widespread global trends were in progress, whether economic, cultural, or demographic. In short, Gil Troy has written a valuable and enjoyable book; but I reject his subtitle. Philip Jenkins is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University. His new book, Darkening Vision: How America Retreated from the 1960's, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:06:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:06:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reason: Are We Just Really Smart Robots? Message-ID: Are We Just Really Smart Robots?: Two books on the mind put the human back into human beings. http://www.reason.com/0504/cr.ks.are.shtml 5.4 by [6]Kenneth Silber [7]On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee, New York: Times Books, 261 pages, $25 [8]Mind: A Brief Introduction, by John R. Searle, New York: Oxford University Press, 326 pages, $26 Neurobiologys advances generate anxiety as well as joy and hope. On the joyful and hopeful side, there are the prospect and reality of improved treatments for brain diseases and debilities. But anxiety arises over what the science tells us, or will tell us, about ourselves. Thoughts and feelings may be reduced to brain structures and processes. Consciousness and free will may be proven unimportant or illusory. Much of what we value about ourselves, in short, may be explainedor, worse, explained away. The prevailing trends in the philosophy of mind reinforce such concerns. The field is dominated by schools of materialism that describe mental phenomena as types or side products of physical phenomena. Mind-body dualism, which posits a separate existence for the mind, has been effectively eclipsed (although it seems to receive continued implicit acceptance from many nonexperts). Some forms of materialism argue that the mental phenomena in question do not even exist. This turn toward the mechanistic could have baleful cultural and political consequences. It threatens to undermine peoples sense of responsibility and self-worth. There is the danger of what philosopher Daniel Dennett calls creeping exculpation, as more and more human behavior is attributed to material causes. Criminal violence, for example, might be excused as a consequence of low levels of serotonin or monoamine oxidase in the brain. Many philosophers, including Dennett, argue that humans should be regarded as responsible agents even if human behavior is fully determined. But the very fact that such arguments need to be made shows how the deterministic premise has altered the terms of debate. If humans are mechanistic beings, it becomes harder to understand why they should not be used as means to an end or why there should be much concern with what they are thinking or feeling. At a political level, such quandaries pose a threat to liberal democracy, which relies heavily on the assumption that we are autonomous beings with the capacity to make meaningful decisions. Mechanistic theories have enjoyed an authoritarian cachet in the past. Stalins regime embraced the work of Ivan Pavlov, famous for conditioning dogs to salivate at the ringing of a bell. In Walden Two (1948), the American psychologist B.F. Skinner described a society whose managers use operant conditioning to suppress competitiveness and other undesired behaviors. Alongside the conception of human beings as biological machines looms another specter: that human mental capacities will be equaled or exceeded by machines of our own creation. An influential doctrine in the philosophy of mind, congruent not only with neurobiology but with cognitive psychology and computer science, is computer functionalism. This view holds that the mind is fundamentally a computer program implemented in the brains hardware one which could be replicated in a different physical substrate. Notwithstanding the limited progress of artificial intelligence (A.I.), many experts expect it to achieve vast advances in coming decades. More important, the general public expects this too. The prospect arouses considerable anxiety, as reflected in the Terminators and Matrixes that populate science fiction. The scientific and philosophical quest to understand human beings as part of the natural world thus seems to come with a hefty price. It forces us to regard ourselves as mere machinesindeed, as potentially obsolescent machines, given advances in computing. Or does it? Technologist Jeff Hawkins and philosopher John Searle both approach matters of mind and brain from a naturalistic perspective, but their arguments veer sharply from the grim picture sketched above. Both provide valuable analysis and speculation about mental phenomena while taking issue with much current scientific and philosophical thinking about the subject. In On Intelligence, Hawkins portrays human intelligence as more subtle and flexible than anything computers do. His model suggests that while future artificial systems may possess remarkable intelligence, they will be neither human-like nor the malevolent superhuman entities of science fiction. In Mind: A Brief Introduction, Searle provides an iconoclastic overview of the philosophy of mind, arguing for a position that accepts that the mind is materially based without dismissing or downplaying mental phenomena. Searles discussion ranges across such topics as the limitations of computers, the nature of the unconscious, and free will as a possible feature of the brain. Hawkins, who wrote On Intelligence with science journalist Sandra Blakeslee, is a computer entrepreneur with a longstanding interest in how the brain works. He is the inventor of the original Palm Pilot and the founder of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. In 1980, as an Intel employee, he proposed a project to develop memory chips that operate on brain-like principles. Intels chief scientist turned him down, reasoning (correctly, Hawkins now believes) that such an effort was premature. Hawkins then sought to do graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to study brains as a means toward developing intelligent machines. MIT, suffused with the idea that A.I. had little need for brain research, rejected his application. In the late 1980s, Hawkins viewed with interest but growing skepticism the rise of neural networks, programs that bore a resemblancebut only a very loose oneto brain operations. He found no use for neural networks in developing the handwriting recognition system later used in Palm Pilots. Such experiences fed Hawkins convictions that intelligent machines must be more genuinely brain-like, and that making them so requires a new theory of how the brain operates. Neurobiology, he argues, has amassed an impressive array of detail but lacks a compelling framework for understanding intelligence and brain function. On Intelligence is an attempt to provide such a framework. Hawkins focuses mainly on the cortex, the most evolutionarily recent part of the brain. The cortex, in his view, uses memory rather than computation to solve problems. Consider the problem of catching a ball. A robotic arm might be programmed for this task, but achieving it is extremely difficult and involves reams of calculations. The brain, by contrast, draws upon stored memories of how to catch a ball, modifying those memories to suit the particular conditions each time a ball is thrown. The cortex also uses memories to make predictions. It is engaged in constant, mostly unconscious prediction about everything we observe. When something happens that varies from predictionif you detect an unusual motion, say, or an odd textureit is passed up to a higher level in the cortexs hierarchy of neurons. The new memories are then parlayed into further predictions. Prediction, in Hawkins telling, is the sine qua non of intelligence. To understand something is to be able to make predictions about it. A key concept in this memory-prediction model is that of invariant representations. The cortex is presented with a flux of sensory data but manages to perceive objects as stable. The magazine youre now holding, or the computer screen youre looking at, sends constantly changing inputs to your eye and optic nerve, but the subsequent pattern of neurons firing in your visual cortex displays an underlying stability. This capacity to pick out unchanging relationships gives humans considerable cognitive flexibility. Imagine looking at a picture of a face formed by dots (like those drawings in The Wall Street Journal). Now imagine each dot is moved a few pixels to the left. A human, unlike a conventional A.I. program or neural net, easily will see it as the same face. Hawkins buttresses his memory-prediction model with a fair amount of neurobiological detail. Much of the model is speculative. There is, for instance, considerable evidence of invariant representations in the workings of the visual cortex, but it is not yet clear whether the concept applies broadly to other sensory areas and to motor regions of the cortex. Hawkins presents a list of neurobiological predictions to test his models validity. He posits, for example, that certain layers of the cortex contain neurons that become activated in anticipation of a sensory input. Such anticipatory activity is in keeping with the idea that perception involves prediction, as well as receipt, of sensory inputs. When you glance around your living room, your brain fills in some details based on what it has seen before. As Hawkins notes, invariant representations can be viewed as a bug, as well as a feature, in human cognition; negative stereotyping and bigotry might have roots in such invariance. The strong element of prediction involved in perception also has a downside: It could underlie peoples tendency to see what they want to see. Overall, though, Hawkins model underscores the considerable capabilities of human intelligence. It provides a plausible explanation of how the speed and agility of human thought can exceed the capacities of computers, even though the latter have components that operate far faster than neurons. The model may also offer insight into creativity, which arguably arises from the brains propensity to make predictions. In Hawkins view, there is a continuum between everyday actions and perceptions and the production of great novels or symphonies. The cortex during normal waking moments combines its invariant memories with the details of what is happening now; it is constantly predicting things that are similar to, but at least slightly different from, what it has experienced in the past. Our brains are geared to come up with something new. Hawkins ventures that memory and prediction will be crucial to an understanding of consciousness, but he acknowledges that his model does not probe deeply into how and why consciousness exists. He draws a link between consciousness and memory through a thought experiment: If your memories of yesterdays activities were erased, so would be your sense that your behavior had been conscious. He speculates as to why vision, hearing, and other senses are (normally) experienced as qualitatively distinct, even though their inputs are all converted into patterns in the cortex. The answer, he suggests, might involve the diverse connections between the cortex and other parts of the brain. In his final chapter, Hawkins writes enthusiastically about the prospects for intelligent machines. He expects rapid progress in the development of brain-like systems in the next several decades, citing speech recognition, vision, and smart cars as promising near-term applications. He imagines super-intelligent systems that will predict the weather, foresee political unrest, and understand higher-dimensional spaces. Yet he emphasizes that intelligent machines will not be similar to us. They will have something like a cortex and senses, but not human-like bodies, emotions, or experiencesthings it would be very difficult, and generally pointless, to give them. They will not strive for power, wealth, status, or pleasure. They will not be angry at being enslaved. To illustrate the error of likening machines to human beings (and vice versa), Hawkins draws on a well-known thought experiment: A man who understands no Chinese is placed in a room with a wall slot through which he receives questions written in Chinese. Following a rule book, he replies to the questions with other Chinese symbols. To an outside observer, he seems to understand Chinese. But in fact, he has no idea what the questions or answers are about. For Hawkins, the story of the Chinese Room points to limitations of conventional A.I. and of the Turing Test, the standard that a computer is intelligent if a human inquirer cannot distinguish its replies from a persons. Hawkins adds, however, that the Chinese Room would display intelligence if it contained a memory system that could make predictions about the content of the Chinese messages passed through the slot. This is an interesting wrinkle but a debatable point. One can imagine the man in the room adeptly foreseeing which symbols will follow which others but still not knowing what they mean. The man who first asked us to imagine the Chinese Room was John Searle, a Berkeley philosopher who has written influentially about mind, language, and other subjects. His point was that a computer manipulates symbols but attaches no meaning to them; it understands nothing. Searle revisits the Chinese Room in Mind: A Brief Introduction. He rebuts the common counterargument that it is the overall systemman, room, rule bookthat understands Chinese. The point is the same, he contends, even if the man is in an open field and has memorized the rule book. Indeed, Searle believes his original argument did not go far enough in debunking computer intelligence; something is a computer, he elaborates, only if an intelligent observer interprets it as such. At the core of Mind: A Brief Introduction is Searles effort to situate mental activity in the physical world. Consciousness, he argues, is a biological phenomenon; it is a process of the brain, much as digestion is a process of the stomach. He emphasizes, however, that consciousness cannot be dismissed as an illusion or defined in terms of lower-level neurobiological processes. Conscious states exist insofar as someone experiences themthey have a first-person ontologyand in this regard they are distinct from physical phenomena that have a third-person ontology. The pain of banging into a coffee table (unlike the table itself) is real only because you feel it. Searle terms his position biological naturalism and contrasts it with the conventional categories of materialism and dualism. Searles picture leaves open the possibility of free will, defined here in contradistinction to determinism. In this view, quantum mechanical indeterminism at the micro-level may produce free will as a higher-level feature of the brain. In making decisions, the brain would draw upon the unpredictable behavior of its constituent particles. But wouldnt such freedom consist of mere randomness? Searle argues that this objection involves a fallacy of composition, confusing the properties of a system with those of its parts. Our pervasive experience of free will, he acknowledges, may be an illusion. But if so, it is a strange illusion, one that requires vast biological resources to maintain yet somehow survived evolutions travails. Searle ranges broadly across the subject of mental phenomena, poking holes in much received philosophical and scientific wisdom. A key feature of conscious experience, he notes, is its unified structure; one normally encounters sights, sounds, and so on as part of ones overall environment. Neurobiology, he ventures, will ultimately benefit more from a unified-field approach to consciousness than from the currently favored building-block emphasis. Searle also takes issue with philosophical arguments that humans perceive not the real world but merely sense data. Such claims, he contends, rely on slippery language and dubious assumptions. The concept of the unconscious, Searle argues, is indispensable for explaining some forms of human behavior, but it is sometimes pushed beyond its applicability. Unconscious mental states, in his telling, are states that could in principle become conscious. It is possible, for instance, to believe that George W. Bush is president even when you are sound asleep. In Searles view, however, cognitive scientists are incorrect to say, for example, that people see by performing unconscious computations on visual stimuli. The brain processes involved, much like the workings of the liver, are not the sort of thing that could be conscious; hence they are nonconscious rather than unconscious. Searle closes with a discussion of the elusive concept of the self. A longstanding philosophical tradition, initiated by David Hume, regards the self as a bundle of perceptions; we have a series of experiences but not an inner essence. Searle argues, to the contrary, that consciousness, a capacity to initiate action, and an ability to act on the basis of reasons do amount to a selfa non-Humean self that is more than just a set of experiences. Having such a self provides continuity between ones past, present, and future; it is what enables a person to take responsibility and make plans. Mind: A Brief Introduction and On Intelligence are thought-provoking and, no less important, anxiety-reducing. By dispelling overstated mechanistic claims arising from recent trends in neurobiology and philosophy, these books serve to combat public fears and forestall a possible backlash against science and technology. Humans can be part of the natural world without being mere machines, and without being outdone by our own machines. These books cast light on how it is possible to have a rich mental life while living in a physical universe. In so doing, they throw up roadblocks against any push for political authoritarianism or social engineering that might arise from increased knowledge of how brains work. Far from advancing tyranny, neurobiology may be starting to provide a deeper understanding of what human freedom is all about. ------------------------------------- Kenneth Silber writes about science, technology, and economics for Mental Floss and Tech Central Station, among other publications. References 6. mailto:kensilber at yahoo.com 7. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0805074562/ref=nosim/reasonmagazineA/ 8. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0195157338/ref=nosim/reasonmagazineA/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:06:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:06:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Policy Review: Jennifer Roback Morse: Marriage and the Limits of Contract Message-ID: Policy Review, No. 130: Jennifer Roback Morse: Marriage and the Limits of Contract http://www.policyreview.org/apr05/morse_print.html [She used to teach in the economics department at George Mason University. An example of a woman who had a big dog when she needed a baby, she was more transformed by having one than anyone I know. And she looked much lovelier. She has returned to her Roman Catholicism. I have not actually read the article yet, but if it's like her book, I am almost entirely in agreement. Moses and Solomon were early sociobiologists.] Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the author of Smart Sex: Finding Lifelong Love in a Hook-up World, and Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work, both from Spence Publishing. Marriage is a naturally occurring, pre-political institution that emerges spontaneously from society. Western society is drifting toward a redefinition of marriage as a bundle of legally defined benefits bestowed by the state. As a libertarian, I find this trend regrettable. The organic view of marriage is more consistent with the libertarian vision of a society of free and responsible individuals, governed by a constitutionally limited state. The drive toward a legalistic view of marriage is part of the relentless march toward politicizing every aspect of society. Although gay marriage is the current hot-button topic, it is a parenthetical issue. The more basic question is the meaning of love, marriage, sexuality, and family in a free society. I define marriage as a society's normative institution for both sexual activity and the rearing of children. The modern alternative idea is that society does not need such an institution: No particular arrangement should be legally or culturally privileged as the ideal context for sex or childbearing. The current drive for creating gay unions that are the legal equivalent of marriage is part of this ongoing process of dethroning marriage from its pride of place. Only a few self-styled conservative advocates of gay marriage, such as Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch, seem to understand and respect the social function of marriage. Marriage as an institution necessarily excludes some kinds of behavior and endorses other kinds of behavior. This is why the conservative case for gay marriage is so remarkable: It flies in the face of the cultural stampede toward social acceptance of any and all sexual and childbearing arrangements, the very stampede that has fueled so much of the movement for gay marriage. This article is not primarily about gay marriage. It isn't even about why some forms of straight marriage are superior to others. Rather, the purpose of this article is to explain why a society, especially a free society, needs the social institution of marriage in the first place. I want to argue that society can and must discriminate among various arrangements for childbearing and sexual activity. The contrary idea has a libertarian justification in the background: Marriage is a contract among mutually consenting adults. For instance, libertarian law professor Richard Epstein penned an article last year called "Live and Let Live" in the Wall Street Journal (July 13, 2004). In it, he treated marriage as a combination of a free association of consenting individuals and an institution licensed by the state. But the influence of the libertarian rationale goes far beyond the membership of the Libertarian Party or the donor list of the Cato Institute. The editors of the Nation, for instance, support gay marriage but do not usually defend the sanctity of contracts. This apparent paradox evaporates when we realize that the dissolution of marriage breaks the family into successively smaller units that are less able to sustain themselves without state assistance. Marriage deserves the same respect and attention from libertarians that they routinely give the market. Although I believe life-long monogamy can be defended against alternatives such as polygamy, it is beyond the scope of a single article to do so. My central argument is that a society will be able to govern itself with a smaller, less intrusive government if that society supports organic marriage rather than the legalistic understanding of marriage. A natural institution Libertarians have every reason to respect marriage as a social institution. Marriage is an organic institution that emerges spontaneously from society. People of the opposite sex are naturally attracted to one another, couple with each other, co-create children, and raise those children. The little society of the family replenishes and sustains itself. Humanity's natural sociability expresses itself most vibrantly within the family. A minimum-government libertarian can view this self-sustaining system with unadulterated awe. Government does not create marriage any more than government creates jobs. Just as people have a natural "propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another," in Adam Smith's famous words from the second chapter of The Wealth of Nations, we likewise have a natural propensity to couple, procreate, and rear children. People instinctively create marriage, both as couples and as a culture, without any support from the government whatsoever. The sexual urge is an engine of human sociability. Our desire for sexual satisfaction draws us out of our natural self-centeredness and into connection with other people. Just as the desire to make money induces business owners to try to please their customers, so too, the desire to copulate induces men to try to please women, and women to try to attract men. The attachment of mothers to their babies and women to their sex partners tends to keep this little society together. The man's possessiveness of his sexual turf and of his offspring offsets his natural tendency toward promiscuity. These desires and attachments emerge naturally from the very biology of sexual complementarity with no assistance from the state. But this is not the only sense in which the institution of marriage arises spontaneously. In every known society, communities around the couple develop customs and norms that define the parameters of socially acceptable sexual, spousal and parental behavior. This culture around marriage may have some governmental elements. But that cultural machinery is more informal than legal by far and is based more on kinship than on law. We do things this way because our parents did things this way. Our friends and neighbors look at us funny if we go too far outside the norm. The new idea about marriage claims that no structure should be privileged over any other. The supposedly libertarian subtext of this idea is that people should be as free as possible to make their personal choices. But the very nonlibertarian consequence of this new idea is that it creates a culture that obliterates the informal methods of enforcement. Parents can't raise their eyebrows and expect children to conform to the socially accepted norms of behavior, because there are no socially accepted norms of behavior. Raised eyebrows and dirty looks no longer operate as sanctions on behavior slightly or even grossly outside the norm. The modern culture of sexual and parental tolerance ruthlessly enforces a code of silence, banishing anything remotely critical of personal choice. A parent, or even a peer, who tries to tell a young person that he or she is about to do something incredibly stupid runs into the brick wall of the non-judgmental social norm. State impartiality in a free society The spontaneous emergence of marriage does not imply that any laws the state happens to pass will work out just fine. And it certainly does not follow that any cultural institutions surrounding sexual behavior, permanence of relationships, and the rearing of children will work out just fine. The state may still need to protect, encourage or support permanence in procreational couplings just as the state may need to protect the sanctity of contracts. No libertarian would claim that the presumption of economic laissez-faire means that the government can ignore people who violate the norms of property rights, contracts, and fair exchange. Apart from the occasional anarcho-capitalist, all libertarians agree that enforcing these rules is one of the most basic functions of government. With these standards for economic behavior in place, individuals can create wealth and pursue their own interests with little or no additional assistance from the state. Likewise, formal and informal standards and sanctions create the context in which couples can create marriage with minimal assistance from the state. Nor would a libertarian claim that people should be indifferent about whether they are living in a centrally planned economy or a market-ordered economy. No one disputes the free speech rights of socialists to distribute the Daily Worker. It does not follow that impartiality requires the economy to reflect socialism and capitalism equally. It simply can't be done. An economy built on the ideas in The Communist Manifesto will necessarily look quite different from an economy built on the ideas in The Wealth of Nations. The debate between socialism and capitalism is not a debate over how to accommodate different opinions, but over how the economy actually works. Everything from the law of contracts to antitrust law to commercial law will be a reflection of some basic understanding of how the economy works in fact. Somebody in this debate is correct, and somebody is mistaken. We can figure out which view is more nearly correct by comparing the prosperity of societies that have implemented capitalist principles with the prosperity of those that have implemented socialist principles. There are analogous truths about human sexuality. I claim the sexual urge is a natural engine of sociability, which solidifies the relationship between spouses and brings children into being. Others claim that human sexuality is a private recreational good, with neither moral nor social significance. I claim that the hormone oxytocin floods a woman's body during sex and tends to attach her to her sex partner, quite apart from her wishes or our cultural norms. Others claim that women and men alike can engage in uncommitted sex with no ill effects. I claim that children have the best life chances when they are raised by married, biological parents. Others believe children are so adaptable that having unmarried parents presents no significant problems. Some libertarians seem to believe that marriage is a special case of free association of individuals. I say the details of this particular form of free association are so distinctive as to make marriage a unique social institution that deserves to be defended on its own terms and not as a special case of something else. One side in this dispute is mistaken. There is enormous room for debate, but there ultimately is no room for compromise. The legal institutions, social expectations and cultural norms will all reflect some view or other about the meaning of human sexuality. We will be happier if we try to discover the truth and accommodate ourselves to it, rather than try to recreate the world according to our wishes. Which freedom? Distinguishing between competing understandings of "natural freedom" will clear up one source of confusion in this debate. Jean-Jacques Rousseau presents a view of natural freedom quite different from the modern economic libertarian understanding. In Part I of A Discourse on Inequality Rousseau describes sexual pairing in the state of nature: As males and females united fortuitously according to encounters, opportunities and desires, they required no speech to express the things they had to say to each other, and they separated with the same ease. The mother nursed her children at first to satisfy her own needs, then when habit had made them dear to her, she fed them to satisfy their needs; as soon as they had the strength to find their own food, they did not hesitate to leave their mother herself; and as there was virtually no way of finding one another again once they had lost sight of each other, they were soon at the stage of not even recognizing one another. Rousseau could be describing the modern hook-up culture, down to and including the reluctance of hook-up partners to even talk to each other. He seems to define "natural" as acting on impulse and "freedom" as being unencumbered by law, social convention or even attachment to other people. Libertarians cannot accept these definitions. Being free does not demand that everyone act impulsively rather than deliberately. Libertarian freedom is the modest demand to be left alone by the coercive apparatus of the government. Economic liberty, and libertarian freedom more broadly, is certainly consistent with living with a great many informal social and cultural constraints. Rousseau specifically depicted a state of nature that is not only pre-political, but nonsocial. Whether he intended this as a description of some long-lost, pre-social time, or as a goal to which the good society should aspire, his version of the state of nature is surely unnatural in this sense: A widespread nonsystem of impersonal sexual couplings has never occurred in any known society. In no known society have the ruling authorities, whether governmental or informal, been completely indifferent to the forms sexual couplings take, or the context in which sexual activity takes place. Nor has any belief system, whether religious or philosophical, ever claimed that sexual activity is intrinsically meaningless, having only the meaning individuals privately assign to it. Until now. We now live in an intellectual, social, and legal environment in which the laissez-faire idea has been mechanically applied to sexual conduct and married life. But Rousseau-style state-of-nature couplings are inconsistent with a libertarian society of minimal government. In real, actually occurring societies, noncommittal sexual activity results in mothers and children who require massive expenditures and interventions by a powerful government. Let me construct a hypothetical family to illustrate what I mean. In contrast to Rousseau's mythical state of nature, my hypothetical family occurs all too frequently in real-life modern Western democracies. man and woman have a child. The mother and father have no permanent relationship to each other and no desire to form one. When the relationship ceases to function to their satisfaction, it dissolves. The mother sues the father for child support. The couple argues through the court system over how much he should pay. The woman wants him to pay more than he wants to pay. The court ultimately orders him to pay a particular amount. He insists on continuing visitation rights with his child. She resists. They argue in court and finally settle on a periodic visitation schedule to which he is entitled. The agreement works smoothly at first. Then the parents quarrel. At visitation time, the mother is not home. He calls and leaves a nasty message on the answering machine. They quarrel some more. She says his behavior is not appropriate. He smokes too much and overindulges the child in sweets. She says the child, who is now a toddler, is impossible to deal with after visits. He quits paying child support. The court garnishes his wages to force him to pay. He goes to court to try to get his visitation agreement honored. The court appoints a mediator to help the couple work out a solution. The mother announces that she plans to move out of state. He goes to court and gets a temporary order to restrain her from moving. She invents a charge of child abuse and gets a restraining order forbidding him from seeing the child. Say what you like about this sort of case. You may think this is the best mere mortals can do. You may think this contentiousness is the necessary price people pay for their adult independence. You may blame the mother or the father or both. Or perhaps you think this is a nightmare for both adults as well as for children. But on one point we can all agree: This is not a libertarian society. Some libertarians might focus on the specific activities of the family court, regarding them as grotesque infringements of both parties' privacy. Agents of the government actively inquire into, pass judgments upon and intervene in the most intimate details of this couple's life. Or we might view the entire existence of the court system as an outrageous subsidy to this couple, paid by the rest of society. When the woman asks for the state's help in collecting child support, the state provides this service at no charge to her. When she makes a charge of child abuse, the state keeps the man away from her and her child. If the charge is proven to be unfounded or frivolous, the state does not require her to pay compensation for its expenses or the man for his losses. This is not the posture of a night watchman state. The state solicitude for the mother and her child is a direct result of father absence. Without a father's assistance, this woman and her child are more likely to become dependents of the state. The state believes, quite reasonably, that it is more cost-effective to help the mother extract assistance from the father than to provide taxpayer-funded financial assistance. Aggressive programs for tracking down "dead-beat dads" become a substitute for providing direct payments through the welfare system as conventionally understood. A radical individualist might argue that the state should allow this couple to sink or swim on its own. If the man abandons her, tough luck for her and her child. If she kicks the man out, for good reason or no reason, tough luck for him. The social order simply cannot afford to indulge people who can't get along with their closest and most intimate family members. If the state would get out of the family business or charge people the full cost for the use of its services, fewer people would get into these contentious situations. People would be more careful in forming their intimate childbearing unions. But our current ideological environment makes this position impossible, however much it might appeal to the radical individualist. The political pressures for the state to intervene on behalf of the unmarried mother are simply overwhelming. The welfare state is so entrenched that singling out unmarried mothers at this late date is not plausible. Given that reality, it is not realistic to expect the state to cease and desist from all the activities of the family court, no matter how intrusive or highly subsidized they may be. Nor does the sense of financial entitlement exhaust the entitlement mentality. Unlimited sexual activity is now considered an entitlement. Marriage is no longer the only socially acceptable outlet for sexual activity or for the rearing of children. It is now considered an unacceptable infringement on the modern person's liberty to insist that the necessary context of sexual activity is marriage with rights and responsibilities, both implicit and explicit. It is equally unacceptable to argue that having children outside of marriage is irresponsible. Women are entitled to have as many children as they choose in any context they choose. In this sense, children have become a kind of consumer good. Choosing to have a child is a necessary and sufficient condition for being entitled to have one. Given this social and cultural environment, it is completely unrealistic to think that we can muster the political will to deprive unmarried parents of the use of the courts to prosecute their claims against one another. Contrast this scenario with intact married couples. Not deliriously happy married couples with stars in their eyes at all times. Just ordinary, everyday, run-of-the mill married couples. No one from the state forces them to pool their incomes, if they both work. If they have the traditional gender-based division of household labor, no one forces the husband to hand over his paycheck to his wife to run the household. No one makes the wife allow him to take the kids out for the afternoon. No one has to come and supervise their negotiations over how to discipline the children. When he's too tough, she might chew him out privately or kick him under the table. When she lets them off the hook too easily, he might have some private signal for her to leave so he can do what needs to be done. The typical married couple has regular disagreements over money, child-rearing, the allocation of household chores, how to spend leisure time and a hundred other things. Every once in a while, even a stable married couple will have a knock-down, drag-out, (usually) private quarrel. But they resolve their disagreements, large and small, perhaps a dozen a day, completely on their own with neither supervision nor subsidy from any court. What's natural A skeptic might respond to my example of the dysfunctional noncouple by saying that their actions arise naturally from the society. Their spontaneous actions are entitled to the same libertarian endorsement as those of a married couple. A sophisticated analogy with the market must go beyond a ritual incantation of "leave us alone." Adam Smith recognized in the tenth chapter of The Wealth of Nations that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." Smith understood that the "natural" tendency to cheat the public must be checked by legal and social norms. The law must prohibit some economic behavior. Equally important, the culture as a whole must socialize people into accepting self-imposed limits on their self-interested behavior. The need for laws and socialization did not lead Adam Smith to conclude that the market is a mere social construct that can be carelessly discarded. Likewise, the observation that men and women alike sometimes fail to live up to the ideal of lifelong married love does not prove that marriage is unnatural. We must ask ourselves the question about the family that Adam Smith taught us to ask about business: How can we direct natural human motivations into socially constructive channels? The answer is to create a cultural and legal order that supports and sustains lifelong married love as the normative institution in which to beget, bear, and rear children. Random sexual encounters, dissolved at will, are not socially responsible when children are involved. When Adam Smith's modern follower Friedrich Hayek championed the concept of spontaneous order, he helped people see that explicitly planned orders do not exhaust the types of social orders that emerge from purposeful human behavior. The opposite of a centrally planned economy is not completely unplanned chaos, but rather a spontaneous order that emerges from thousands of private plans interacting with each according to a set of reasonably transparent legal rules and social norms. Likewise, the opposite of government controlling every detail of every single family's life is not a world in which everyone acts according to emotional impulses. The opposite is an order made up of thousands of people controlling themselves for the greater good of the little society of their family and the wider society at large. Social costs of private conflicts Whether a couple loses the ability to negotiate, or whether they never had it in the first place, the dissolution of their union has significant spillover effects. The instability in their relationship is likely to be detrimental to their children. The children of unmarried or divorced parents are more likely than other children to have emotional, behavioral and health problems. As these children become old enough to go to school, they absorb more educational resources than other children because the school has to deal with lowered school achievement, poor school attendance, and discipline problems. As these children mature, they are more likely to get into trouble with the law, commit crimes, abuse drugs, and end up in jail. These costs are more than purely private costs to the mother and father. The costs of health care, schooling, and mental health care are not entirely private in this society, no matter how much libertarians might wish they were. In modern America, a child who cannot behave in school is a cost to the local school district as well as to all the other children in the classroom. A seriously depressed person or a drug-addicted person is likely to make demands on the public health sector. If the child ends up in the criminal justice system, as the children of unmarried parents are significantly more likely to do, he or she will be a significant cost to the state. The demand that the government be neutral among family forms is unreasonable. The reality is that married-couple families and childless people are providing subsidies to those parents who dissolve their marriages or who never form marriages. Libertarians recognize that a free market needs a culture of law-abidingness, promise-keeping, and respect for contracts. Similarly, a free society needs a culture that supports and sustains marriage as the normative institution for the begetting, bearing, and rearing of children. A culture full of people who violate their contracts at every possible opportunity cannot be held together by legal institutions, as the experience of post-communist Russia plainly shows. Likewise, a society full of people who treat sex as a purely recreational activity, a child as a consumer good and marriage as a glorified roommate relationship will not be able to resist the pressures for a vast social assistance state. The state will irresistibly be drawn into parental quarrels and into providing a variety of services for the well-being of the children. The naked individual The alternative to my view that marriage is a naturally occurring pre-political institution is that marriage is strictly a creation of the state. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts notoriously asserted this position. If this is true, then the state can recreate marriage in any form it chooses. Implicit in this view is the decidedly non-libertarian view that the state is the ultimate source of social order. Listen to this self-described progressive bring the implicit connection between the expansive state and the deconstruction of marriage out of the shadows. Writing in the Nation in March 2004, New York University Queer Studies professor Lisa Duggan addressed the marriage promotion portion of welfare reform: Women and children . . . (according to the welfare reform model) should depend on men for basic economic support, while women care for dependents -- children, elderly parents, disabled family members, etc. Under such a model, married-couple households might "relieve" the state of the expense of helping to support single-parent households, and of the cost of a wide range of social services, from childcare and disability services to home nursing. Marriage thus becomes a privatization scheme: Individual married-couple households give women and children access to higher men's wages, and also "privately" provide many services once offered through social welfare agencies. More specifically, the unpaid labor of married women fills the gap created by government service cuts. This statement brings the statist worldview front and center. Under this vision, the most basic relationships are not between husband and wife, parent and child, but between citizens and state. The family is not the natural unit of society. The most basic unit of society is not even the libertarian individual, embedded within a complex web of family, business and social relationships. Rather, the natural unit of society is the naked individual, the isolated individual, standing alone before the state, beholden to the state, dependent upon the state. The libertarian approach to caring for the dependent is usually described in terse form as "let families and private charity take care of it, and get the government out of the way." This position is sometimes ridiculed as unrealistic or attacked as harsh. But the libertarian position, once fully fleshed out, is both humane and realistic. The libertarian preference for nongovernmental provision of care for dependents is based upon the realization that people take better care of those they know and love than of complete strangers. It is no secret that people take better care of their own stuff than of other people's. Economists conclude that private property will produce better results than collectivization schemes. But a libertarian preference for stable married-couple families is built upon more than a simple analogy with private property. The ordinary rhythm of the family creates a cycle of dependence and independence that any sensible social order ought to harness rather than resist. We are all born as helpless infants, in need of constant care. But we are not born alone. If we are lucky enough to be born into a family that includes an adult married couple, they sustain us through our years of dependence. They do not get paid for the work they do: They do it because they love us. Their love for us keeps them motivated to carry on even when we are undeserving, ungrateful, snot-nosed brats. Their love for each other keeps them working together as a team with whatever division of labor works for them. As we become old enough to be independent, we become attracted to other people. Our bodies practically scream at us to reproduce and do for our children what our parents did for us. In the meantime, our parents are growing older. When we are at the peak of our strength, stamina, and earning power, we make provision to help those who helped us in our youth. But for this minimal government approach to work, there has to be a family in the first place. The family must sustain itself over the course of the life cycle of its members. If too many members spin off into complete isolation, if too many members are unwilling to cooperate with others, the family will not be able to support itself. A woman trying to raise children without their father is unlikely to contribute much to the care of her parents. In fact, unmarried parents are more likely to need help from their parents than to provide it. In contrast to the libertarian approach, "progressives" view government provision of social services as the first resort, not the last. Describing marriage as a "privatization scheme" implies that the most desirable way to care for the dependent is for the state to provide care. An appreciation of voluntary cooperation between men and women, young and old, weak and strong, so natural to libertarians and economists, is completely absent from this statist worldview. This is why it is no accident that the advocates of sexual laissez-faire are the most vociferous opponents of economic laissez-faire. Advocates of gay marriage are fond of pointing out that civil marriage confers more than 1,049 automatic federal and additional state protections, benefits and responsibilities, according to the federal government's General Accounting Office. If these governmentally bestowed benefits and responsibilities are indeed the core of marriage, then this package should be equally available to all citizens. It follows that these benefits of marriage should be available to any grouping of individuals, of any size or combination of genders, of any degree of permanence. But why should libertarians, of all people, accept the opening premise at face value? Marriage is the socially preferred institution for sexual activity and childrearing in every known human society. The modern claim that there need not be and should not be any social or legal preference among sexual or childrearing contexts is, by definition, the abolition of marriage as an institution. This will be a disaster for the cause of limited government. Disputes that could be settled by custom will have to be settled in court. Support that could be provided by a stable family must be provided by taxpayers. Standards of good conduct that could be enforced informally must be enforced by law. Libertarians do not believe that what the government chooses to bestow or withhold is the essence of any social institution. When we hear students from Third World countries naively ask, "If the government doesn't create jobs, how we will ever have any jobs?" we know how to respond. Just because the government employs people and gives away tax money does not mean it "created" those jobs. Likewise, the fact that the government gives away bundles of goodies to married couples does not prove that the government created marriage. A free society needs marriage The advocates of the deconstruction of marriage into a series of temporary couplings with unspecified numbers and genders of people have used the language of choice and individual rights to advance their cause. This rhetoric has a powerful hold over the American mind. It is doubtful that the deconstruction of the family could have proceeded as far as it has without the use of this language of personal freedom. But this rhetoric is deceptive. It is simply not possible to have a minimum government in a society with no social or legal norms about family structure, sexual behavior, and childrearing. The state will have to provide support for people with loose or nonexistent ties to their families. The state will have to sanction truly destructive behavior, as always. But destructive behavior will be more common because the culture of impartiality destroys the informal system of enforcing social norms. It is high time libertarians object when their rhetoric is hijacked by the advocates of big government. Fairness and freedom do not demand sexual and parental license. Minimum-government libertarianism needs a robust set of social institutions. If marriage isn't a necessary social institution, then nothing is. And if there are no necessary social institutions, then the individual truly will be left to face the state alone. A free society needs marriage. Feedback? Email [4]polrev at hoover.stanford.edu. Or send us a [5]Letter to the Editor. References 3. http://www.policyreview.org/authorindex.html#jmorse 4. mailto:polrev at hoover.stanford.edu 5. http://www.policyreview.org/contact.html From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:06:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:06:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Ordinary founders Message-ID: Ordinary founders The Times Literary Supplement, 4.5.28 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2107676&window_type=print Ordinary founders T. H. Breen Forgotten men and women of the American Revolution The American Revolution has undergone a remarkably unrevolutionary transformation. An event central to the history of the United States seems suddenly to have become populated almost exclusively by Founding Fathers. To be sure, Americans have a long tradition of filiopiety. No sooner had George Washington died in 1799, for example, than the enterprising "Parson" Mason Weems - a businessman who was in fact not a minister - related how a young Washington had confessed to having chopped down his father's beloved cherry tree and later, as general of the army, thrown a silver dollar across the Delaware River. Weems's fabulous inventions more than fulfilled his commercial dreams. In recent years, the marketplace for Founding Fathers has become more and more crowded. Bestseller lists compiled by the New York Times attest to the extraordinary success of Revolutionary biographies. David McCullough's readable life of John Adams enjoyed an impressive run at the top. In an article detailing "America's infatuation" (April 12, 2004) with the Founding Fathers, the Wall Street Journal reported that about 1.6 million copies of McCullough's book had sold in hardback alone. Other leaders of the Revolutionary period have fared almost as well. Benjamin Franklin remains a figure of almost irresistible charm. A recent biographer, Walter Isaacson, assures modern readers that, "Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us". Edmund S. Morgan and H. W. Brands have also written full-length studies of Franklin; other works devoted to Franklin's life are scheduled to appear soon. Washington and Thomas Jefferson remain solid performers; Alexander Hamilton's stock has done well. Not surprisingly, popular curiosity has spread to other members of a growing patriot family, which now includes "Founding Brothers" and "Founding Mothers". The sudden resurgence of interest in these eighteenth-century figures begs explanation. In their post-September 11 uncertainty, Americans took solace in the belief that the nation's first leaders possessed integrity, intelligence, and a willingness to sacrifice their own personal interests for the common good. That the Founding Fathers had feet of clay - sustaining, for example, African American slavery - did not much matter. They appeared to possess the very strengths of character that seemed so little in evidence during recent crises. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, may have had Revolutionary leaders like Washington in mind when he described the years after 1783 as a time of "looting, crime, mobs storming buildings, breakdown of government structures and institutions that maintained civil order, rampant inflation caused by the lack of a stable currency, (and when) supporters of the former regime roamed the streets". In a piece in the New York Times (July 19, 2003), the historian Mary Beth Norton exposed Rumsfeld's tenuous grasp of the country's Revolutionary past. But accuracy was not the point of the exercise. The Secretary reminded anxious Americans that the Founding Fathers had once saved the country by bold leadership, and had they not done so, a young republic plagued by crime, looting and mobs might perhaps have gone the way of Baghdad. Missing from the tales of the Founding Fathers are the ordinary men and women who made a revolution possible. They appear as little more than bit players in narratives organized around the lives of the great men. One result of this shift of focus is that the lexicon of revolution has changed. We hear of courageous leadership, hard decisions and bold vision, but little about popular mobilization, widespread sacrifice for a shared political goal, or popular resistance to the abuse of power. The strange disappearance of ordinary people from the history of the nation's founding reflects a profound disagreement over the definition of the American Revolution. For some commentators, the drafting and ratification of the Constitution represent the fulfilment of the Revolutionary experience. From this perspective the run-up to independence - a violent colonial rebellion against a powerful military Empire - becomes merely an introductory chapter in a preordained story concluding with the establishment of a strong federal government. The story recounts the inexorable march of abstract principles about the nature of political authority, many of them borrowed from Renaissance Italy or the time of the English Civil Wars. In various forums between 1763 and 1788, the Founding Fathers applied this complex intellectual heritage to the practical challenge of nation building. They educated the people about the fundamentals of stable government. As they are currently portrayed, the Founding Fathers were rational, inventive figures. They deserve modern admiration, not as revolutionaries, but as Framers of the Constitution of the United States. As Gordon S. Wood explained in a recent history of the American Revolution, in the middle of the twentieth century, "a new generation of historians rediscovered the constitutional and conservative character of the Revolution and carried the intellectual interpretation of the Revolution to new heights of sophistication". Within this intellectual framework, the "people" seem uncomfortably out of place. The narrative options open to them are certainly not very appealing. In some accounts of the Revolution, they appear at key moments as members of the mob. Certainly, such groups tore down the houses of hated royal officials and terrorized neighbours who refused to support independence. No one has quite decided whether the mob was simply out for a good time or intended only to administer a kind of street justice against corrupt imperial appointees. In either case, within the current interpretative climate, their actions are seen largely as helping the Founding Fathers to appreciate the dangers of anarchy and the vulnerability of private property. Historians have also depicted the people as the voice of lower-class aspirations. Although they seldom violently attacked their social betters, urban workers demanded a fuller measure of equality and democracy than the Founding Fathers were willing to concede. But however exploited these protesters may have been, they did not reflect the views of the great mass of ordinary men and women, most of whom lived in tiny agrarian communities. It is precisely those people -the great majority of the American population - who have been most patronized in the story of revolution. In so far as they are allowed to speak at all, they do so as followers, as hapless souls who often do not quite comprehend what the Founding Fathers have in mind for the republic, but nevertheless show proper deference for those charged with writing constitutions. An oft-repeated anecdote recounted how in September 1774 a leading Virginia planter addressed a group of "plain people" when he returned from the Continental Congress. According to a French witness, they waited on this man "and said, 'You assert there is a fixed intention to invade our rights and privileges; we own that we do not see this clearly, but since you assure it is so, we believe the fact.' They expressed their confidence that he would do what was right, and returned to their homes to abide the issue". If these individuals really reflected the mind of the American people on the eve of independence, then we can assume that the intellectual historians had it right all along and that revolutionary ideas and principles must have trickled down to an appreciative public. But the ordinary people did not quietly return to their homes in 1774. An accelerating crisis persuaded them that revolt against the Empire required their full participation. For indeed, if they had not volunteered for the newly formed Committees of Safety, for local militia units, or for action at places such as Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill, the gentry leaders would be remembered today principally as talented provincials who discussed among themselves the more advanced political theories of the day. The people were able to make sense of events on their own. As Charles Royster explained in A Revolutionary People at War (1979), the proposition that ordinary people did not thoughtfully reflect on the country's political future leads to the conclusion that "the only people capable of serving ideals or making sacrifices were those who had substantial property". Edward Countryman put the point more forcefully in The American Revolution (1985). "Leaders are nothing", he observed, " . . . without followers. Neither the colonial elite nor the Sons of Liberty could have done anything serious against British policy without enormous popular support." The defining moment for many ordinary people arrived between 1774 and 1776, years in which they had to make major sacrifices for a common cause. Revolution initially entered the lives of scattered farm families as an unwelcome guest. It demanded that they do without much needed imported consumer goods; it persuaded them to send their sons into harm's way. It forced many of them for the first time to attend public meetings. It asked them to shun Tory sympathizers. It invited them to reimagine political identity - in other words, to question the tightly woven fabric of traditional community relations. Many Americans, of course, shirked the challenge. They found the prospect of popular political mobilization frightening. But enough men and boys showed up on the battlefields to make good on the claim of independence. No one knows for certain what persuaded ordinary Americans to break their long- standing political allegiance to Great Britain. The dynamics in each family were probably different. Matthew Patten provides a clue to how the process must have worked on the local level. A solidly middle-class farmer living in southern New Hampshire, Patten distinguished himself from his neighbours primarily by keeping a detailed diary. He recorded the slaughter of cattle, the gathering of apples, and the ploughing of the fields in spring. Matthew's sons helped. His wife and daughters ran the household. Revolution entered their lives unobtrusively, almost unnoticed at first. Matthew reported on July 14, 1774, that a fast "Was Generally observed . . . through this and the Bay province (Massachusetts) at the desire of the Committees of Correspondence". The Pattens kept the fast, although Matthew noted that a certain "Mr. Houston" refused to do so. The days passed. One imagines that this family discussed the rising tensions within the empire, but the diary was silent about such matters. Then, suddenly, the world of the Pattens changed dramatically. On April 20, 1775, Matthew wrote: "I Recd the Melancholy news in the morning that General Gages troops had fired on our Countrymen at Concord yesterday and had killed a large number of them. Our town was notified last night. We Generay (generally?) met at the meeting house about 9 of the Clock and the Number of twenty or more went Directly off from the Meeting house to assist them". Among the New Hampshire men and boys who rushed to Massachusetts was Matthew's son John and his friend John Dobbin. "Our Girls", the father observed, "sit up all night bakeing bread and fitting things for him (John) and John Dobbin." The boys returned safely, but life did not return to normal. Matthew was drawn into a Revolutionary network. On the 26th he scribbled, "I went at the desire of the town to Col Goffes and Merrils and MacGregores and Cautioned them to take Special care of Strangers and persons Suspected of being Torys Crossing the River (and) to Examin and Search if they judge it needful". During the closing months of 1775 agricultural chores competed for attention in the diary with the collapse of an American empire. Matthew attended more meetings; he tried to keep informed about what was happening in other parts of New England. His son John volunteered to serve in the newly formed American army and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The countryside now contained people defined as enemies. No one threatened them with physical violence, but the pressure to take sides in a national conflict increased with each passing day. John left the farm once again, this time to march to Canada with the American forces under the command of General Richard Montgomery. On May 21, 1776, Matthew learned that his son had died. In his diary he tried to give meaning to the loss. His words spoke of anguish translating itself into a renewed commitment to the political cause for which John had given his life. A letter had informed the Pattens that their John had become ill with smallpox, and although the American troops tried to save him, he "died on the 20th day of June". "The Reason of moveing him", Matthew wrote, was the Retreat of the army which was very preceipitate and he must either be moved or be left behind. Whether the moveing him hurt him, (the letter) does not inform us but it seems probable to me that it did. He was shot through his left arm at Bunker Hill fight and now was lead after suffering much fategue to the place where he now lyes in defending the just Rights of America to whose end he came in prime of life by means of that wicked Tyranical Brute (Nea worse than Brute) of Great Britain. He was twenty-four years and thirty-one days old. A few days later, Matthew attended a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, a gathering where he encountered "the Prinsable Gentlemen of the County . . . but not any who have been suspected of being unfriendly to the country". In little over two years, loyal subjects of the Crown had become fighters for colonial independence. Matthew may have taken political advice from the local gentry, but one suspects after reading his diary that he and his family came to a full understanding of the "just Rights of America" on their own. Other ordinary Americans explained to themselves and their loved ones the meaning of the fight for independence without assistance from the Founding Fathers. In a letter sent to his wife in June 1776 - in other words, at least a month before the formal Declaration of Independence - Israel Shreve of New Jersey reflected on the risks of war. "I soon shall Experience the feeling of Battle", Shreve wrote, " (and) God only knows whose fate it will be fall." He missed the comforts of home. "I have a great Desire once more to Return, But knowing I owe my service to my Country am Determined to Defend our Rights and privileges . . . with all my (p)owers." No doubt, John Patten and Israel Shreve admired how well the leading gentry articulated theories of republican government. At the moment when they made the most difficult decisions of their lives, however, they spoke the plain language of rights. When the members of the newly independent state legislatures presented constitutions to the ordinary voters, the leaders sometimes discovered that the followers had minds of their own. Participants at town meetings throughout Massachusetts, for example, repeatedly rejected plans of republican government which did not meet their own demands for political equality. They occasionally raised hard questions about African Americans and Native Americans. In 1778 the town of Hardwick turned down a constitution by a tally of 140-16. One reason for their decision was "that whereas a Number of Negroes that are Now slaves have from time to time Humbly Petitioned to the General Court for their Liberties and Freedom and as yet have Not obtained it, But are still Held in Slavery, which is very Contrary to the Law of God and Liberty that we profess". The small farm community of Sutton came to the same conclusion. The voters objected to the proposed Massachusetts constitution because it "appears to us to wear a very gross complextion of slavery; and is diametrically repugnant to the grand and Fundamental maxim of Humane Rights". But that was not the only problem. The Sutton voters added, "it must be thought more insulting tho not so cruel, to deprive the original Natives of the Land the Privileges of Men". The village of Boothbay spoke up for the poor, noting that they ought "to have a voice herein as well as their rich neighbours". After thoughtful debate, Boothbay concluded that "we know of no reason in nature, or in revelation, to justify our depriving the Africans and their descendants (whose long continued Shameful and unchristian Slavery reflects dishonour and Endangers the curse of heaven on our public Struggles for our own rights) of a natural privilege of all men". Spencer and Westminster reminded the state's legislature that "we Conceive that the Depriving of any men or Set of men for the Sole Cause of Colour from giving there (sic) votes for Representative, to be an Infringement upon the Rights of Mankind". These returns suggest that at least some revolutionaries took quite seriously the notion that all men are created equal. The Founding Fathers were seldom willing to push their own rhetoric in such a radical direction. Their modern defenders argue that criticizing these leaders for their failure to implement a modern civil rights agenda ignores the political realities of the late eighteenth century. Even Thomas Jefferson, who invited all Americans to think in terms of human equality, could not imagine awarding black people the same rights assumed by whites. In communities like Boothbay and Hardwick, however, ordinary New Englanders put forth radical ideas. To the objection that these were not typical American towns or that ordinary citizens in the South would not have accepted such boldly radical thinking, one can only observe that a small group of Founding Fathers has yielded most of the current generalizations about the character of the American Revolution, and they were not in step with forgotten voters of Sutton and Westminster. Many African Americans also understood the compelling logic of revolutionary equality. They listened to the white protest against political slavery; they took up the popular arguments for natural rights. When Caesar Sarter, a black man living in Essex County, north of Boston, petitioned for the liberation of the slaves in August 1774, for example, he spoke the language of rights: "This is a time of great anxiety and distress among you (the whites), on account of the infringement, not only of your Charter rights, but of the natural rights and privileges of freeborn men". In words that Israel Shreve and John Patten would have understood, Sarter asked those who were rebelling against an Empire, "why will you not pity and relieve the poor distressed, enslaved Africans? -Who, though they are entitled to the same natural rights of mankind, that you are, nevertheless are groaning in bondage". Earlier that year, a number of Boston slaves reminded General Thomas Gage, then the commander of the British army in America, that they "have in common with all other men a naturel right to our freedoms without being deprived of them by our fellow men(,) as we are a freeborn Pepel and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever". Some accounts of the American Revolution ask what the Founding Fathers did for the slaves. Whatever the answer to the question may be, it tends to obscure what the slaves - at least, many living in New England - were doing for themselves. For them the Revolution meant freedom. Their failure ultimately to gain their rights in no way diminishes their contribution to the common cause. With rare exceptions the Founding Fathers showed little enthusiasm for the people. They saw popular demands for fuller participation in politics as threatening, as potentially inviting anarchy. From the perspective of the Framers, the danger to the rights of property holders seemed genuine, and they did their best in the name of order and security to contain more radical demands for equality and democracy. For designing an enduring republican government, they deserve much praise. But the narrative of revolution must also include ordinary men and women who spoke up - often in awkwardly blunt language - for equality, rights and freedom. As the people of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, announced in a petition written in May 1776, "We beg leave . . . to represent that we have always been persuaded that the people are the fountain of power". A few years earlier the Boston Gazette had observed "however meanly some people may think about the populace or mob of a country, it is certain that the power or strength of every FREE country depends entirely upon the populace". The heritage of the American Revolution encourages the people to participate in political debates on their own terms. In a time of crisis they need not assume that their leaders will do what is right or that they should return "to their homes to abide the issue". They are not obliged to wait for the Founding Fathers. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:06:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:06:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dissent: Michael Walzer: All God's Children Got Values Message-ID: Michael Walzer: All God's Children Got Values Dissent Magazine - Spring 2005 http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/sp05/walzer.htm The experts have apparently agreed that it wasn't values that lost us the last election. It was passion, and above all, it was the passion of fear. But maybe frightened people look for strong leaders, whose strength is revealed in their firm commitment to a set of values. Fear politics and value politics may turn out to be closely related. So what is wrong with the liberal-left? Do we really look weak, uncommitted, value-free-tacking to the wind, whichever way it blows? And is this just a matter of appearance, a failure of public relations; so that what we need is a little rhetorical uplift, cosmetic surgery, some improvement in our posture? Stand straighter! Talk tough! Well, no. We had better tell ourselves a more interesting story than that. Something big has happened in American politics over the last several decades, a basic shift in perspective, a strange crossover of left and right traits that we need to understand. Consider the role of ideology on the right today. We on the left tell ourselves that the politics of the Bush administration is driven by old-fashioned class interest and corporate greed. But that's only partly true. If the old Marxist ruling class were actually ruling right now, its policies would be considerably more moderate than those of this administration-at home and, even more clearly, abroad. What we face in Washington is an ideologically driven politics, in which class interest is certainly well represented but also exaggerated and distorted. In fact, ideology rules everywhere on the right, across the spectrum of issues in which right-wing intellectuals and activists take an interest (note the combination: it used to be only the left that had intellectuals and activists). Everywhere, we see radically coherent, single-causal analyses of social problems and radical proposals to deal with the problems once and for all: lower and lower taxes, privatized Social Security, tests and more tests in the public schools, torture for terrorists, war for Saddam, democracy for the Arabs. And everything will be wonderful, after the revolution. This is the first crossover: ideological certainty and zeal have migrated to the right. Of course, there are still people on the left who are absolutely sure about their political position and zealous in its defense. But they don't set the tone; they are off on the margins, a frequent annoyance, but not a political force. Most of us on the near-left live in a complex world, which we are not sure we understand, and we move around in that world pragmatically, practicing a politics of trial and error. We defend policies like Social Security, which have worked pretty well, and try to make them work a little better. We want more redistributive tax and welfare systems, but we are not Bolshevik egalitarians-even if our opponents are Bolshevik inegalitarians. We opposed the Iraq War but are painfully unsure about how to get out and when. National health insurance is the most radical proposal that I've heard from American liberals in recent years, and it's a European commonplace. I was struck by the pragmatism of the near-left when I read a review-essay by Richard Rothstein, one of our best public intellectuals, in the New York Review of Books (December 2, 2004). Rothstein's essay is mostly a critique of Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, but it also discusses six other books about education and inequality. I am interested here not in the immediate issues (though they are important), but in the most general argument of the essay. "Today's education debates are poisoned," Rothstein writes, "by the insistence of partisans on finding a single cause . . . for racial inequality and then [on denouncing] remedies that address others." The Thernstroms are the chief targets here, and Rothstein's essay is a liberal-left response: our educational problems, he says, are very complex; racial inequality has many causes; and it has to be addressed from different angles. "Modest improvement" in our schools is "a more appropriate aspiration" than radical change. "If we fail to accept gradual progress, educational reform will remain a hopeless enterprise." Rothstein is certainly persuasive; I read him and agree. But he does sound very much like the early neoconservatives, writing in the Public Interest thirty or forty years ago, before the right was seized by ideology. Wasn't the liberal "war on poverty" criticized with words and phrases similar to Rothstein's? Beware of ambitious projects predicated on the certainty that we know what causes what. Beware of the unanticipated consequences of theory-based politics. That old neocon wariness is ours now. But can it inspire left intellectuals and activists? So this is the second crossover: ideological uncertainty and skepticism about all-out solutions to social problems have migrated to the left. This must have something to do with 1989 and the collapse of communism-though I don't think that the left, near or far, has even begun to come to grips with the disaster that was communism. Perhaps the second crossover is also the product of the (very incomplete) success of social democracy in Europe and New Deal liberalism here, of civil rights and feminism, even of multiculturalism. Successes of this sort don't leave us without an agenda, but they may leave us without the kind of agenda that makes for passionate conviction and zealous endeavor. A lot of near-left energy over the last fifteen years has been spent defending past victories, whose problematic features we know only too well. The non-zealous near-left might still win elections. Bill Clinton won twice, after all, and Al Gore really won (even though he didn't). Surely there have been occasions in the past when cautious reformers defeated ideological reactionaries. But the crossover of ideology and caution has come at a very bad time for us. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world looks a lot more dangerous than it did before, and hesitant, pragmatic reformers don't inspire confidence. John Kerry spoke truthfully when he said in one of the presidential debates that a politician can be very certain and very wrong. But large numbers of Americans seem to believe, though they might not put it this way, that certainty will prevail in the end, even over its own wrongness. Intellectuals on the left certainly lack certainty: we no longer have a general theory, such as Marxism once was, that tells us how things are going and what ought to be done. Does that mean that we are no longer "general intellectuals" but only locally and particularly engaged-"specialists," as Michel Foucault argued? This left intellectual writes about education, this one about city planning, this one about health care, this one about the labor market, this one about civil liberties-and all of them are policy wonks. Is that our world? Well, maybe it is ours, but it isn't theirs. Here is the crossover again: there are definitely general intellectuals on the right. The theory of the free market isn't a world-historical theory exactly; one might say that it is a world-ahistorical theory. But it does have extraordinary reach; it allows its believers to have an opinion about pretty much everything. In this sense, it is an imperial doctrine, like Marxism. And combined with a theory of American-led democratization (and, for many people on the right today, with a conviction of divine support), it is also an imperialist doctrine: it allows believers to have an opinion about pretty much everywhere. Now here is the strangest part of my story: deprived of a theory, we (on the left) try to get by with principles and values. Despite the claims made in the last presidential campaign, the truth is that it's the left whose politics is value-driven. There is a distinctly moralizing tone in the work of liberal-left intellectuals and activists today. The old, Marxist left didn't need morality because it had history. Its intellectuals and activists had only to affirm the forward movement of the historical engine and join forces with the designated driver, the working class. Questions about just and unjust, right and wrong, goodness and evil, would all be taken care of after the revolution. For the right today, the market takes care of such matters, or God takes care of them; the common good arises out of the competition for private goods-in obedience, amazingly, to God's word. On the left, however, we have to take care of moral matters by ourselves, without the help of history, the invisible hand, or divine revelation. Hence the arguments we make are almost always moral arguments: in defense of human rights; against commodification, for communal values; against corporate corruption and greed, for "equal respect and concern"; against unjust wars, in favor of humanitarian interventions; against environmental degradation, in defense of future generations; and so on. We can't claim that any of these arguments are in the service of economic growth, or modernization, or revolutionary transformation, or religious redemption. They aren't world-historical arguments. Marxists would be contemptuous of people arguing like that, without a theory of social change, without an analysis of social forces. Nonetheless, these aren't the arguments of specialists; some of us make all of them, all the time, without any expert connection to any of the things we are talking about. Aren't we still general intellectuals? That last question is connected to a more urgent one: Why isn't the moral character and the value-driven politics of the near-left more widely recognized? For right-wing intellectuals and activists, values seem to be about sex and almost nothing else; vast areas of social life are left to the radically amoral play of market forces. And yet they "have" values, and we don't. They can be relied on to defend "our values," and our way of life, and even our lives, and we can't. This is, of course, an exaggeration; fifty-nine million Americans voted for John Kerry and so for the American liberal-left in its party-political form. Still, my account of who is taken to have and not to have values is, I think, an accurate reading of the dominant political culture. Why is this so? The answer has to do with the ideological crossover. Liberals and leftists are engaged on many fronts, but we are not coherently engaged. No one on the left has succeeded in telling a story that brings together the different values to which we are committed and connects them to some general picture of what the modern world is like and what our country should be like. The right, by contrast, has a general picture. I don't think that its parts actually fit together in a coherent way, but they appear to do so. And in politics, despite the common view that all politicians pander to their constituencies, saying one thing here and its opposite there, the appearance of coherence is the name of the game. Scattershot doesn't work, not in arguments and not in campaigns; you need a coordinated barrage. And somehow, right-wing intellectuals and activists have managed to convince themselves and a lot of other people that the free market, individual self-reliance, the crusade for democracy, the war against terrorism, heterosexual marriage, conventional sex and gender roles, religious faith, and patriotic sentimentality all hang together. They are a coherent set, and together they constitute the American Way. And then the defense of "values," even if it's narrowly and weirdly focused-say, on sexual license in Hollywood movies-calls to mind everything else. Well, I guess it's not entirely weird; there is a recognizable picture of America here, even if it's a nostalgic picture, and even if a lot of Americans (maybe, today, most Americans) are left out of it. In the aftermath of the last election, some liberal Democrats, most notably Peter Beinart in the New Republic, argued that we once had a similarly recognizable picture and that we had better recapture it. They evoke the "fighting liberalism" and the militant anticommunism of the early cold war. The founding of Americans for Democratic Action in 1947 is Beinart's moment of truth, and he hopes for a similar founding today-of a new liberal-left defined by its militant opposition to Islamic radicalism. ADA was indeed an admirable organization (though the editors of Dissent in the 1950s criticized many of its political positions), and its founders were a memorable group: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Walter Reuther were among them. Beinart doesn't mention that all these people were defenders of the "containment" of communism over against the "liberation" of Eastern Europe. It would be interesting to play out an analogous contrast in today's politics. But let's accept Beinart's description of "fighting liberalism." Then the crucial point to make is that this politics was not a great success. Harry S Truman won the 1948 election on domestic issues, with a populist attack on "special interests" that looked back to the New Deal, not forward to the anticommunist struggle-even though we would soon be involved in the Korean War. And then in 1952, the American people trusted the Republicans, not the fighting liberals, to see us through the war and to sign the necessary compromise peace. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the presidency, claiming that Eisenhower had failed to push up military spending and that we were vulnerable, or soon would be, to Russian missiles. This was the biggest victory of cold war liberalism; for once, Democrats succeeded in looking tough. But that need to look tough and then, once they were in power, to act tough led the United States step by step into the awfulness of Vietnam. In 1968, Americans once again trusted the Republicans to see us through the war-to negotiate the necessary withdrawal and accept the inevitable defeat. This isn't a record that invites imitation today. The major achievement of the ADA took place at home, not in the larger world, not in Washington, but in the camp of the liberal-left: the defeat of the old popular front, the end of "fellow traveling." Schlesinger, Reuther, and the others understood what communism was and why liberals and leftists had to sustain a militant opposition to it. We can indeed learn from their experience. Since 9/11, a number of Dissent writers have stressed the political danger and the moral awfulness of religious zeal and terror and have insisted, in the face of considerable reluctance among many leftists, on the necessity of militant opposition to both. This is an intra-left argument, and we need to have it out. I agree with Beinart that strong support for democratic forces around the world has to be a central feature of our opposition to zeal and terror. But I don't share his "fighting faith." Above all, I don't share his ambition to make this fighting faith "the road back" to state power. Militancy is for movements, not governments. It rightly characterizes the ideology of intellectuals and activists, of labor unions and human rights organizations, of feminists and environmentalists in international civil society. All these people, all these groups, should be working with democratic activists around the world: committed democrats are our comrades, wherever they are found. But the idea of a state with a fighting faith is much less appealing, and an army with a fighting faith is positively alarming. Here the ideological crossover seems eminently defensible: leftists can legitimately be wary of faith-based politics. Certainly, the state should be guided by moral and political principles, but these have to be tempered by caution and pragmatically interpreted. Leftist intellectuals and activists support democracy because it is the form of government that best accords with individual freedom, equality, and collective self-determination. But the United States should support democracy because democratic states are our most reliable allies, with whom we are most likely to share not only principles but also strategies. "Fighting liberalism" was at least partly responsible for getting us into Vietnam, just as "fighting neoconservatism" was at least partly responsible for getting us into Iraq. So we need to be careful about "fighting." Since the time of Machiavelli, military metaphors have been common in political life, and they work well enough: we have election campaigns, debates about strategy and tactics, ideological militancy, and "wars" on crime, drugs, poverty, and terrorism. But metaphors are dangerous if people take them literally. The liberal-left today should reject politics-as-war in favor of a political politics that recognizes that militancy means knocking on doors and talking at meetings, that the war on terrorism is mostly police work, and that persuasion and negotiation should always be our preferred strategies. Maybe the struggle against Islamic radicalism and religious zeal is a world-historical struggle, as the struggle against communist totalitarianism was. I doubt that Islamic radicalism has the expansionist potential that communism had, but . . . maybe. Let the historians of the future worry about that. We should be looking for a version of ideological coherence and militancy that doesn't lead us into actual crusading warfare-that enables us to "fight" this "war" one "battle" at a time. "Fighting faith" as a state ideology belongs to the right today, and liberals and leftists have to oppose it, not only because it merits opposition on its own but also because opposing it is the best way to "fight" effectively against zealots and terrorists. So, how do we bring coherence to a pragmatic, cautious, and highly moralistic left? We might begin by noticing that the succession of fighting liberals-Truman, Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy-shows a steady decline in commitment to the critical moral value of equality (that was one reason for Dissent's criticism). Anticommunism was a necessary politics, but it did tend, in the United States during the cold war, as in Eastern Europe afterward, to promote individual liberty and market freedom at the expense of social justice. In the sixties, the civil rights and feminist movements produced a radically egalitarian politics alongside the Democratic Party's liberalism and sometimes, uneasily, within the party. Today, however, the Democrats are a party of justice only relative to the Republicans. Egalitarianism is the distinctive mark of liberal-left politics, but in 2005 the distinctiveness is barely visible. This should worry us because any coherent leftist response to zeal and terror, to world disorder and global poverty, to tyranny and fear, has to have this distinctive mark. If there is a historical analogy that might help our political thinking today, it is with 1930s antifascism rather than with cold war anticommunism. All the books and articles identifying the new enemy as "Islamic fascism" are no doubt inexact, but the description is politically useful so long as it is treated with crossover caution. Fascism is a secular politics; the Baathist regime in Iraq (as described, say, in Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear) came very close to the real thing; any religious politics is sure to be more distant. Still, the mobilization of zeal and hatred, the authoritarianism and brutality of a regime like the Taliban, the cult of death among the militants, the radical hierarchy of believers and infidels-all this bears at least a family resemblance to what we might think of as classical fascism. And it invites a liberal, democratic, and egalitarian response. Engagement in the cold war did not make for a strong commitment to social justice at home. By contrast, antifascism did make for a left politics at home-compromised by the opportunism and kitschiness of the popular front, but productive nonetheless. The growth of the labor movement and the transformation of the factory floor were its greatest achievements. But there were others. Opposing fascism meant supporting people in trouble-all sorts of people: unemployed workers, the elderly, the rural poor, Jewish and (eventually) black Americans. The links were sentimental but they were also programmatic. Can similar connections be made today between the fight against zeal and terror, on the one hand, and some kind of left domestic agenda, on the other? I am unsure of the answer to this question, but let's consider the possibilities, raising more questions along the way. Fear has to be our starting point, even though it is a passion most easily exploited by the right. Religious zeal and terrorism produce real insecurity; if ordinary Americans are fearful today, they have good reason. Some leftists argue that the fear of terrorism is contrived, one more example of false consciousness, a diversion from the things we really need to worry about. There are probably people in the Bush administration who have exactly the same view; the only difference is that they admire the contrivance. But that view is wrong, and it would be politically disastrous for the left to act upon it. The first task of the state, as Hobbes argued, is to protect people from the fear of violent death and from actual violent deaths-and that is a legitimate and necessary task. But while the state is doing that, it can do many other things. Hyping the threat of terror is indeed a way of making Americans forget the other things. But acknowledging the threat can open up a wider politics of collective security. After all, the defense of vulnerable men and women is classic leftism. And if we want to protect the American people against environmental degradation, or nuclear accidents, or pandemic disease, or the vagaries of the market, or long-term unemployment, or destitution in old age, then we need to make the case that we can also protect them against terrorist attack. Collective security was the battle cry of intelligent leftists in the 1930s, confronting European fascism. And security for ordinary Americans was a battle cry at home, confronting the structural crises and the human predators of a capitalist economy. Can we bring these two together again? Is it possible to talk about the millions of Americans without health insurance, about profit-gouging in the drug industry, and global warming, and the protection of future generations-all that, and suicide bombers and dirty bombs too? Kerry tried to hit all these notes, but they didn't add up to a tune that anyone could sing. Yet the issues do hang together. It isn't mere rhetoric to say that "freedom from fear" is a central leftist goal, and it isn't an accident that this goal was first enunciated in the course of an antifascist war by democratic politicians responding to the hopes of their people. American citizens, Franklin Roosevelt had already said in 1937, have a right to expect that democracy will provide "continuously greater opportunity and continuously greater security." We should still be committed to that democratic expectation. The Bush administration exploits our fears, but it is not interested in a collective effort to cope with them-that is, to provide the necessary forms of protection and to stimulate the necessary forms of mutual assistance. That is the project of the near-left. The ideological right aims deliberately at undermining security, in the name of self-reliance, but with a deeper purpose: to discipline the workforce and stabilize the new forms of inequality. By contrast, the left project is egalitarian because we are committed to distribute the costs of security fairly and to make sure that the most vulnerable people are the first to be protected-or to be helped to protect themselves. It seems to me that most of our values can be connected to this project. We can tell a plausible story about "freedom from fear" that addresses the actual vulnerabilities of ordinary people and advances the cause of democratic equality. We may not be able to match the excitement of real war: the Red Army marching on Warsaw in 1919, say, or the U.S. Army marching on Baghdad in 2003 (these two provide another example of the great crossover). I am not advocating a crusade for security-just a "battle." I doubt that faith will figure in our story; we won't be able to claim divine support, and in parts of the United States today, that is a serious and for us an unavoidable liability. But the American people will figure in the story, and their democratic values, and the anxieties they share, and the old liberal-left commitment to humane reform. If we can connect the values, the anxieties, and the commitment, we will have begun a "fight" that we might be able to win. Michael Walzer's most recent book is Politics and Passion (Yale University Press, 2004). He is a co-editor of Dissent. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:06:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:06:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Look: How The Jews Changed Catholic Thinking (1966) Message-ID: How The Jews Changed Catholic Thinking http://www.deicidedeniers.com/how_jews_changed_catholic_thinking.htm By Joseph Roddy, Look Senior Editor from LOOK Magazine, January 25, 1966, Volume 30, No. 2 For the simple tenets of their faith, most Roman Catholics rely on the catechism's hard questions and imprimatured answers. Children in Church schools memorize its passages, which they rarely forget the rest of their lives. In the catechism, they learn that Catholic dogma does not change and, far more vividly, that Jews killed Jesus Christ. Because of that Christian concept, for the past 20 centuries anti-Semitism spread as a kind of social disease on the body of mankind. Its incidence rose and fell, but anti-Semites were never quite out of style. The ill-minded who argued all other matters could still join in contempt for Jews. It was a gentlemen's agreement that carried into Auschwitz. Few Catholics were ever directly taught to hate Jews. Yet Catholic teaching could not get around the New Testament account that Jews provoked the Crucifixion. The gas chambers were only the latest proof that they had not yet been pardoned. The best hope that the Church of Rome will not again seem an accomplice to genocide is the fourth chapter of its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, which Pope Paul VI declared Church law near the end of Vatican Council II. At no place in his address from the Chair of Peter did the Pope talk of Jules Isaac. But perhaps the archbishop of Aix, Charles de Provench?res, had made Isaac's role perfectly clear some few years earlier. "It is a sign of the times," the Archbishop said, " that a layman, and a Jewish layman at that, has become the originator of a Council decree." Jules Isaac was a history scholar, a Legion of Honor member, and the inspector of schools in France. In 1943, he was 66, a despairing man living near Vichy, when the Germans picked up his daughter and wife. From then on, Isaac could think of little but the apathy of the Christian world before the fate of incinerated Jews. His book Jesus and Israel was published in 1948, and after reading it, Father Paul D?mann in Paris searched schoolbooks and verified Isaac's sad claim that inadvertently, if not by intent, Catholics taught contempt for Jews. Gregory Baum, an Augustinian priest born an Orthodox Jews, called it "a moving account of the love which Jesus had for his people, the Jews, and of the contempt which the Christians, later, harbored for them." Isaac's book was noticed. In 1949, Pope Pius XII received its author briefly. But 11 years went by before Isaac saw real hope. In Rome, in mid-June, 1960, the French Embassy pressed Isaac on to the Holy See. Isaac wanted to see John XXIII. He was passed from the old Cardinal Eugene Tisserant to the archconservative Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani. Ottaviani sent him on to the 83-year-old Cardinal Andrea Jullien, who stared without seeing and stayed motionless as stone while Isaac told how Catholic teaching led to anti-Semitism. When he had finished, he waited for a reaction, but Jullien stayed in stone. Isaac, who was hard of hearing, stared intently at the prelate's lips. Time passed, neither spoke. Isaac thought of just leaving, then decided to intrude. "But whom should I see about this terrible thing?" he asked, finally, and after another long pause, the old Cardinal said," Tisserant." The silence settled in again. The next word was, "Ottaviani." Isaac shook that off too. When it was time for another, the word was, "Bea." With that, Jules Isaac went to Augustin Bea, the one German Jesuit in the College of Cardinals. "In him, I found powerful support," Isaac said. The next day, the support was even stronger. John XXIII, standing in the doorway of the fourth-floor papal apartment, reached for Jules Isaac's hand, then sat beside him. "I introduced myself as a non-Christian, the promoter of l'Amiti?s Jud?o-Chr?tiennes, and a very deaf old man," Isaac said. John talked for a while of his devotion to the Old Testament, told of his days as a Vatican diplomat in France, then asked where his caller was born. Here, Isaac felt a rambling chat with the Supreme Pontiff coming on and started worrying about how he would ever bring the conversation around to his subject. He told John that his actions had kindled great hopes in the people of the Old Testament, and added: "Is not the Pope himself, in his great kindness, responsible for it if we now expect more?" John laughed, and Isaac had a listener. The non-Christian beside the Pope said the Vatican should study anti-Semitism. John said he had been thinking about that from the beginning of their talk. "I asked if I might take away some sparks of hope," Isaac recalled. John said he had a right to more than hope and then went on about the limits of sovereignty. "I am the head, but I must consult others too....This is not monarchie absolue!" To much of the world, it seemed to be monarchy benevolent. Because of John, a lot was happening fast in Catholicism and Jewry. A few months before Isaac spelled out his case against the Gentiles, a Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity was set up by Pope John under Cardinal Bea. It was to press toward reunion with the churches Rome lost at the Reformation. After Isaac left, John made it clear to the administrators in the Vatican's Curia that a firm condemnation of Catholic anti-Semitism was to come from the council he had called. To John, the German Cardinal seemed the right legislative whip for the job, even if his Christian Unity secretariat seemed a vexing address to work from. By then, there was a fair amount of talk passing between the Vatican Council offices and Jewish groups, and both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith were heard loud and clear in Rome. Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel of New York's Jewish Theological Seminary, who first knew of Bea in Berlin 30 years ago, met with the Cardinal in Rome. Bea had already read the American Jewish Committee's The Image of the Jews in Catholic Teaching. It was followed by another AJC paper, the 23-page study, Anti-Jewish Elements in Catholic Liturgy. Speaking for the AJC, Heschel said he hoped the Vatican Council would purge Catholic teaching of all suggestions that the Jews were a cursed race. And in doing that, Heschel felt, the Council should in no way exhort Jews to become Christians. About the same time, Israel's Dr. Nahum Goldmann, head of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations, whose members ranged in creed from the most orthodox to liberal, pressed its aspirations on the Pope. B'nai B'rith wanted the Catholics to delete all language from the Church services that could even seem anti-Semitic. Not then, nor in any time to come, would that be a simple thing to do. The Catholic liturgy, where it was drawn from writings of the early Church Fathers, could easily be edited. But not the Gospels. Even if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were better at evangelism than history, their writings were divinely inspired, according to Catholic dogma, and about as easy to alter as the center of the sun. That difficulty put both Catholics with the very best intentions and Jews with the deepest understanding of Catholicism in a theological fix. It also brought out the conservative opposition in the Church and, to some extent, Arab anxieties in the Mideast. The conservative charge against the Jews was that they were deicides, guilty of killing God in the human-divine person of Christ. And to say now that they were not deicides was to say by indirection that Christ was not God, for the fact of the execution on Calvary stood unquestioned in Catholic theology. Yet the execution and the religion of those demanding it were the reasons Jews were "God-killers" and "Christ-killers" in the taunts of anti-Semites. Clearly, then, Catholic Scripture would be at issue if the council spoke about deicides and Jews. Wise and long-mitred heads around the Curia warned that the bishops in council should not touch this issue with ten-foot staffs. But still there was John XXIII, who said they must. If the inviolability of Holy Writ was most of the problem in Rome, the rest was the Arab-Israeli war. Ben-Gurion's Israel, in the Arab League's view, like Mao's China in the world out of Taiwan, really does not exist. Or, it only exists as a bone in the throat of Nasser. If the Council were to speak out for the Jews, then the spiritual order would seem political to Arab bishops. Next, there would be envoys passing in the night between the Vatican and Tel Aviv. This was a crisis the Arab League thought it might handle by diplomacy. Unlike Israel, its states already had some ambassadors to the papal court. They would bear the politest of reminders to the Holy See that some 2,756,000 Roman Catholics lived in Arab lands and mention the 420,000 Orthodox Catholics separated from Rome, whom the Papacy hoped to reclaim. Bishops of both cuts of Catholicism could be counted on to convey their interests to the Holy See. It was too soon for the threats. Instead, the Arabs importuned Rome to see that they were neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Jewish. Arabs, too, are Semites, they said, and among them lived thousands of Jewish refugees. Patriotic Arabs were just anti-Zionist because to them, Zionism was a plot to set a Judaic state in the center of Islam. In Rome, the word from the Mideast and the conservatives was that a Jewish declaration would be inopportune. From the West, where 225,500 more Jews live in New York than in Israel, the word was that dropping the declaration would be a calamity. And into this impasse came the ingenuous bulk of John XXIII - not to settle the dispute but to enlarge it. Quite on his own, the Pope was toying with an idea, which the Roman Curia found grotesque, that non-Catholic faiths should send observers to the Council. The prospect of being invited caused no crisis among Protestants, but it plainly nonplussed the Jews. To attend suggested to some Jews that Christian theology concerned them. But to stay away when invited might suggest that the Jews did not really care whether Catholics came to grips with anti-Semitism. When it was learned that Bea's declaration, set for voting at the first Council session, carried a clear refutation of the decide charge, the World Jewish Congress let it be known around Rome that Dr. Haim Y. Vardi, an Israeli, would be an unofficial observer at the Council. The two reports may not have been related, but still they seemed to be. Because of them, other reports-louder ones-were heard. The Arabs complained to the Holy See. The Holy See said no Israeli had been invited. The Israelis denied then that an observer had been named. The Jews in New York thought an American should observe. In Rome, it all ended up with a jiggering of the agenda to make sure that the declaration would not come to the Council floor that session. Still, for the bishops, there was quite a bit of supplementary reading on Jews. Some agency close enough to the Vatican to have the addresses in Rome of the Council's 2,200 visiting cardinals and bishops, supplied each with a 900-page book, Il Complotto contro la Chiesa (The Plot Against the Church) In it, among reams of scurrility, was a kind of fetching shred of truth. Its claim that the Church was being infiltrated by Jews would intrigue anti-Semites. For, in fact, ordained Jews around Rome working on the Jewish declaration included Father Baum, as well as Msgr. John Oesterreicher, on Bea's staff at the Secretariat. Bea, himself, according to the Cairo daily, Al Gomhuria, was a Jew named Behar. Neither Baum nor Oesterreicher was with Bea in the late afternoon on March 31, 1963, when a limousine was waiting for him outside the Hotel Plaza in New York. The ride ended about six blocks away, outside the offices of the American Jewish Committee. There, a latter-day Sanhedrin was waiting to greet the head of the Secretariat for Christian Unity. The gathering was kept secret from the press. Bea wanted neither the Holy See nor the Arab League to know he was there to take questions the Jews wanted to hear answered. "I am not authorized to speak officially," he told them. "I can, therefore, speak only of what, in my opinion, could be effected, indeed, should be effected, by the Council." Then, he spelled out the problem. "In round terms" he said, "the Jews are accused of being guilty of deicide, and on them is supposed to lie a curse." He countered both charges. Because even in the accounts of the Evangelists, only the leaders of the Jews then in Jerusalem and a very small group of followers shouted for the death sentence on Jesus, all those absent and the generations of Jews unborn were not implicated in deicide in any way, Bea said. As to the curse, it could not condemn the crucifiers anyway, the Cardinal reasoned, because Christ's dying words were a prayer for their pardon. The Rabbis in the room wanted to know then if the declaration would specify deicide, the curse and the rejection of the Jewish people by God as errors in Christian teaching. Implicit in their question was the most touchy problem of the New Testament. Bea's answer was oblique. He cautioned his listeners that an unwieldy assemblage of bishops could not possibly get down to details, could only set guidelines, and hope not to make the complex seem simple. "Actually," he went on, "it is wrong to seek the chief cause of anti-Semitism in purely religious sources - in the Gospel accounts, for example. These religious causes, in so far as they are adduced (often they are not), are often merely an excuse and a veil to cover over other more operative reasons for enmity." Cardinal and rabbis joined in a toast with sherry after the talk, and one asked the prelate about Monsignor Oesterreicher, whom many Jews regard as too missionary with them. "You know, Eminence," a Jewish reporter once told Bea, "Jews do not regard Jewish converts as their best friends." Bea answered gravely, "Not our Jews." Not long after that, the Rolf Hochhuth play The Deputy opened, to depict Pius XII as the Vicar of Christ who fell silent while Hitler went to The Final Solution. From the pages of the Jesuit magazine America, Oesterreicher talked straight at the AJC and B'nai B'rith. "Jewish human-relations agencies," he wrote, "will have to speak out against The Deputy in unmistakable terms. Otherwise they will defeat their own purpose." In the Table of London, Giovanni Battista Montini, the archbishop of Milan, wrote an attack on the play as a defense of the Pope, whose secretary he had been. A few months later, Pope John XXIII was dead, and Montini became Pope Paul VI. At the second session of the Council, in the fall of 1963, the Jewish declaration came to the bishops as Chapter 4 of the larger declaration On Ecumenism. The Chapter 5 behind it was the equally troublesome declaration on religious liberty. Like riders to bills in congress, each of the disputed chapters was a wayward caboose hooked to the new ecumenical train. Near the end of the session, when On Ecumenism came up for a vote, the Council moderators decided the voting should cover only the first three chapters. That switched the cabooses to a siding and averted a lot of clatter in a council trying hard to be ecumenical. Voting on the Jews and religious liberty would follow soon, the bishops were promised. And while waiting around, they could read The Jews and the Council in the Light of Scripture and Tradition which was shorter, but more scurrilous than Il Complotto. But the second session ended without the vote on the Jews or religious liberty, and on a distinctly sour note, despite the Pope's announced visit to the Holy Land. That pilgrimage would take up a lot of newsprint, but still leave room for questions about votes that vanished. "Something had happened behind the scenes," the voice of the National Catholic Welfare Conference wrote." [It is] one of the mysteries of the second session." Two very concerned Jewish gentlemen who had to reflect hard on such mysteries were 59-year-old Joseph Lichten of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League in New York, and Zachariah Shuster, 63, of the American Jewish Committee. Lichten, who lost his parents, wife and daughter in Buchenwald, and Shuster, who also lost come of his closest relatives, had been talking with bishops and their staff men in Rome. The two lobbyists were not, however, seeing a lot of one another over vin rosso around St. Peter's. The strongest possible Jewish declaration was their common cause, but each wanted his home office to have credit for it. That is, of course, if the declaration was really strong. But until then, each would offer himself to the American hierarchs as the best barometer in Rome of Jewish sentiment back home. To find out how the Council was going, many U.S. bishops in Rome depended on what they read in the New York Times. And so did the AJC and B'nai B'rith. That paper was the place to make points. Lichten thought Shuster was a genius at getting space in it, but less than deeply instructed in theology. Which is just about the way Shuster saw Lichten. Neither had much time for Frith Becker. Becker was in Rome for the World Jewish Congress, as its spokesman who sought no publicity and got little. The WJC, according to Becker, was interested in the Council, but not in trying to shape it. "We don't have the American outlook," he said, "on the importance of getting into print." Getting into print was even beginning to look good to the Vatican. Yet an expert at the public relations craft would say the Holy See showed inexperience in the Holy Land. When Paul prayed with the bearded Orthodox Patriarch Athenagora in the Jordanian sector, the visit looked very good. Yet when he crossed over to Israel, he had cutting words about the author of The Deputy and a conversionest sermon for the Jews. His stay was so short that he never publicly uttered the name of the young country he was visiting in. Vaticanlogists studying his moves thought they saw lessened hope for the declaration on the Jews. Things looked better at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. There, at a Beth Israel Hospital anniversary, guests learned that, years earlier, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver had told Cardinal Francis Spellman of Israel's efforts to get a seat in the United Nations. To help, Spellman said he would call on South American governments and share with them his fond wish that Israel be admitted. About the same time, il Papa americana told an AJC meeting it was "absurd to maintain that there is some kind of continuing guilt." In Pittsburgh, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the AJC spoke to the Catholic Press Association about the deicide charge, and the editorial response was abundant. In Rome, six AJC members had an audience with the Pope, and one of them, Mrs. Leonard M. Sperry, had just endowed the Sperry Center for Intergroup Cooperation at Pro Deo University in the Holy City. The Pope told his callers he agreed with all Cardinal Spellman had said about Jewish guilt. Vaticanologists could not help but reverse their reading and see a roseate future for the declaration. Then came the New York Times. On June 12, 1964, it reported that the denial of deicide had been cut from the latest draft of the declaration. At the Secretariat for Christian Unity, a spokesman said only that the text had been made stronger. But that is not the way most Jews read it, nor a great many Catholics. Before the Council met and while the text was still sub secreto, whole sections of it turned up one morning in the New York Herald Tribune. No mention of the deicide charge was to be found. Instead, there was a clear call for the ecumenical spirit to extend itself because " the union of the Jewish people with the Church is a part of the Christian hope." Among the few Jews who did not mind reading that were Lichten and Shuster. They could look at it professionally. It read, say , much better over coffee in a morning paper than it would if the Pope were promulgating it as Catholic teaching. On other Jews, its effect was galvanic. Their disappointment set off indignation among some American bishops, and Lichten and Shuster appreciated their concern. Chances that a deicideless declaration, with a built-in conversion clause, would ever get by the American bishops and cardinals at the Council were what a couple of good lobbyists might call slim. About two weeks before that, Msgr. George Higgins of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in Washington, D.C., helped arrange a papal audience for UN Ambassador Arthur J. Goldberg, who was a Supreme Court Justice at the time. Rabbi Heschel briefed Goldberg before the Justice and the Pope discussed the declaration. Cardinal Richard Cushing, in Boston, wanted to help too. Through his aide in Rome, the Cardinal set up an audience with the Pope for Heschel, whose apprehensions had reason to exceed Cushing's. With the AJC's Shuster beside him, Heschel talked hard about deicide and guilt, and asked the Pontiff to press for a declaration in which Catholics would be forbidden to proselytize Jews. Paul, somewhat affronted, would in no way agree. Shuster, somewhat chagrined, disassociated himself gingerly from Heschel by switching to French, which the Pope speaks but the Rabbi does not. All agree that the audience did not end as cordially as it began. Only Heschel and a few others think it did good. He invited notice in an Israeli paper that the declaration's next text had emerged free of conversionary tone. To the AJC, that interview was one more irritant. The Rabbi's audience with Paul in the Vatican, like Bea's meeting with the AJC in New York, was granted on the condition that it would be kept secret. It was undercover summit conferences of that sort that led conservatives to claim that American Jews were the new powers behind the Church. But on the floor of the Council, things looked even worse to the conservatives. There, it seemed to them as if Catholic bishops were working for the Jews. At issue was the weakened text. The cardinals from St. Louis and Chicago, Joseph Ritter and the late Albert Meyer, demanded a return to the strong one. Cushing said the deicide denial would have to be put back. Bishop Steven Leven of San Antonio called for clearing the text of conversionary pleas and , unknowingly, uttered a prophetic view about deicide. "We must tear this word out of the Christian vocabulary," he said, "so that it may never again be used against the Jews." All that talk brought out the Arab bishops. They argued that a declaration favoring Jews would expose Catholics to persecution as long as Arabs fought Israelis. Deicide, inherited guilt and conversionary locutions seemed like so many debating points to most Arabs. They wanted no declaration at all, they kept saying, because it would be put to political use against them. Their allies in this holy war were conservative Italians, Spaniards and South Americans. They saw the structure of the faith being shaken by theological liberals who thought Church teaching could change. To the conservatives, this was near-heresy, and to the liberals, it was pure faith. Beyond faith, the liberals had the votes, and sent the declaration back to its Secretariat for more strength. While it was out for redrafting again, the conservatives wanted it flattened into one paragraph in the Constitution of the Church. But when the declaration reappeared at the third session's end, it was in a wholly new document called The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions. In that setting, the bishops approved it with a 1,770 to 185 vote. There was considerable joy among Jews in the United States because their declaration had finally come out. In fact, it had not. The vote had been an endorsement only for the general substance of the text. But because votes with qualifications were accepted (placet iuxta modum is the Latin term for "yes, but with this modification"), the time between the third session and the fourth - just finished - would be spent fitting in the modifying modi, or those most of the 31 voting members of the Secretariat thought acceptable. By Council rules, modi could qualify or nuance the language, but they could not change the substance of the text. But then, what substance is or is not had always kept philosophers on edge. And theologians have had trouble with it too. But first there were less recondite troubles to face. In Segni, near Rome, Bishop Luigi Carli wrote in the February, 1965 issue of his diocesan magazine that the Jews of Christ's time and their descendants down to the present were collectively guilty of Christ's death. A few weeks later, on Passion Sunday, at an outdoor Mass in Rome, Pope Paul talked of the Crucifixion and the Jews' heavy part in it. Rome's chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, said in saddened reply that in "even the most qualified Catholic personalities, the imminence of Easter causes prejudices to reemerge." On April 25, 1965, the New York Times correspondent in Rome, Robert C. Doty, upset just about everybody. The Jewish declaration was in trouble was the gist of his story reporting that the Pope had turned it over to four consultants to clear it of its contradictions to Scripture and make it less objectionable to Arabs. It was about as refuted as a Times story ever gets. When Cardinal Bea arrived in New York three days later, he had his priest-secretary deny Doty's story by saying that his Secretariat for Christian Unity still had full control of the Jewish declaration. Then came an apologia for Paul's sermon. "Keep in mind that the Pope was speaking to ordinary and simple faithful people - not before a learned body," the priest said. As to the anti-Semitic Bishop of Segni, the Cardinal's man said that Carli's views were definitely not those of the Secretariat. Morris B. Abram of the AJC was at the airport to greet Bea and found his secretary's views on that reassuring. In Rome a few days later, some fraction of the Secretariat met to vote on the bishops' suggested modi. Among them were a few borne down from the fourth floor of the Vatican over the signature of the Bishop of Rome. It is not known for certain whether that special bishop urged that the "guilty of deicide" denial be cut. But the alternate possibility that the phrase would have been cut, if he had wanted it kept, is not pondered on much any more. Accounts of the Secretariat's struggles over deicide agree that it was a very close vote after a long day's debate. After deicide went out, there remained the Bishop of Rome's suggestion that the clause beginning "deplores, indeed condemns, hatred and persecution of Jews" might read better with "indeed condemns" left out. That would leave hatred and persecution of Jews still "deplored." The suggestion stirred no debate and was quickly accepted by vote. It was late, and nobody cared to fuss any more about little things. That meeting was from May 9 to 15, and during that week, the New York Times had a story every other day from the Vatican. On May 8, the Secretariat denied again that outsiders were taking a hand in the Jewish declaration. On the 11th, President Charles Helou of Lebanon, an Arab Maronite Catholic, had an audience with the Pope. On the 12th, the Vatican Press Office announced that the Jewish declaration remained unchanged. If that was to reassure Jews, it came across as a Press Office protesting too much. On the 15th, the Secretariat closed its meeting, and the bishops went their separate ways, some sad, some satisfied, all with lips sealed. A few may have wondered if something out of order had happened and if, despite Council rules, a Council document had been substantially changed between sessions. The Times persisted in making trouble. On June 20, under Doty's by-line, was the report that the declaration was "under study" and might be dropped altogether. On June 22, Doty filed a story amounting to a self-directed punch in the nose. Commenting to Doty on his own earlier report, a source close to Bea said it was "so deprived of any basis that it doesn't even deserve a denial." For those who have raised refutations to a fine art, that was a denial to be proud of, because it was precisely true while completely misleading. Doty had written that the declaration was under study when in fact, the study was finished, the damage was done, and there existed what many regard as a substantially new declaration on the Jews. In Geneva, Dr. Willem Visser 'tHooft, head of the World Council of Churches, told two American priests that, if the reports were true, the ecumenical movement would be slowed. His sentiments were not kept secret from the U.S. hierarchy. Nor was the AJC saddened into inactivity. Rabbi Tanenbaum plied Monsignor Higgins with press clippings from appalled Jewish editors. Higgins conveyed his fears to Cardinal Cushing, and the Boston prelate made polite inquiry to the Bishop of Rome. In Germany, a group for Jewish-Christian amity sent a letter to the bishops claiming, "There is now prevailing a crisis of confidence vis-?-vis the Catholic Church." At the Times, there had never been a crisis of confidence vis-?-vis its reporting from Rome, but if there had been one, it would have passed on September 10. In his story under the headline VATICAN DRAFT EXONERATING JEWS REVISED TO OMIT WORD "DEICIDE," Doty allowed no Times reader to think he had pried into Vatican secrets. He was pleased to credit as his source, "an authorized leak by the Vatican." Similar stories in the Times foretold Council failings before they happened. Most of these were substantiated in magazine pieces and books published later, though some had traces of special pleading. The American Jewish Committee's intellectual monthly, Commentary, had offered a most bleak report on the Council and the Jews by the pseudonymous F. E. Cartus. In a footnote, the author referred the reader to a confirming account in The Pilgrim, a 281-page book by the pseudonymous Michael Serafian. Later, in Harper's magazine, Cartus, even more dour, added to the doubts on the Jewish text. To buttress his case, he recast Pilgrim passages and cited Council accounts in Time, whose Rome correspondent had surfaced for by-line status as author of a notably good book on the Council. At the time, both Time and the New York Times were glad to have an inside tipster. Just for the journalistic fun of it, the inside man's revelations were signed "Pushkin," when slipped under some correspondents' doors. But readers were served no rewritten Pushkin on the Council's last sessions. The cassock had come off the double agent who could never turn down work. Pushkin, it turned out, was Michael Serafian in book length, F.E. Cartus for the magazines, and a translator in the Secretariat for Christian Unity, while keeping up a warm friendship with the AJC. At the time, Pushkin-Serafian-Cartus was living in the Biblical Institute, where he had been known well since his ordination in 1954, though he will be known here as Timothy Fitzharris O'Boyle, S.J. For the journalists, the young priest's inside tips and tactical leaks checked out so well that he could not resist gilding them every now and then with a flourish of creative writing. And an imprecision or two could even be charged off to exhaustion in his case. He was known to be working on a book at a young married couple's flat. The book finally got finished, but so did half of the friendship. Father Fitzharris-O'Boyle knew it was time for a forced march before his religious superior could inquire too closely into the reasons for that crisis in camaraderie. He left Rome then, sure that he could be of no more use locally. Apart from his taste for pseudonyms, fair ladies, reports on the nonexistent and perhaps a real jester's genius for footnotes, Fitzharris-O'Boyle was good at his job in the Secretariat, valuable to the AJC and is still thought of by many around Rome as a kind of genuine savior in the diaspora. Without him, the Jewish declaration might well have gone under early, for it was Fitzharris-O'Boyle who best helped the press harass the Romans wanting to scuttle it. The man has a lot of priests' prayers. Other years, Fitzharris-O'Boyle was around Rome when the declaration needed help. At Vatican II's fourth and last session, there was no help in sight. And things were happening very fast. The text came out weakened, as the Times said it would. Then, the Pope took off for the UN, where his jamais plus la guerre speech was a triumph. After that, he greeted the president of the AJC in an East Side church. That looked good for the cause. Then, at the Yankee Stadium Mass, the Pope's lector intoned a text beginning "for fear of the Jews." And on TV that sounded quite astonishing. Everywhere, there were speeches on the rises and falls of the Jewish declaration, many of them preparing for a final letdown. Lichten's executive vice-president, Rabbi Jay Kaufman, had told audiences of his own puzzlement "as the fate of the section on Jews is shuttled between momentary declaration and certain confutation, like a sparrow caught in a clerical badminton game." Shuster could hear about the same from the AJC. He could also hear the opposition. Not content with a weakened declaration, it again wanted the total victory of no declaration at all. For that, the Arabs' last words were "respectfully submitted" in a 28-page memorandum calling on the he bishops to save the faith from "communism and atheism and the Jewish-Communist alliance." In Rome, the bishops' vote was set for October 14, and to Lichten and Shuster, the prospects of anything better looked almost hopeless. Priests had slipped each a copy of the Secretariat's secret replies to the modifications the bishops wanted. The modi made disconsolate reading. In the old text, the Jewish origin of Catholicism was noted in a paragraph, beginning, "In truth, with a grateful heart, the Church of Christ acknowledges..." In the modi sent to the Secretariat, two bishops (but which two?) suggested that "with a grateful heart" be deleted. It could, they feared, be understood to mean that Catholics were required to give thanks to the Jews of today. "The suggestion is accepted," the Secretariat decided. The replies went that way for most of 16 pages. Through all of them, few reasons were advanced for taking the warmth out of the old text and making the new one more legal than humane. When Shuster and Lichten had finished reading, there were telephone calls to be made to the AJC and B'nai B'rith in New York. But these were not much help at either end. It was Higgins who first tried convincing two disheartened lobbyists to settle for what they would get. Yet for a day or two, Bishop Leven of San Antonio gave them hope. He thought the new statement was so weakened that the American bishops should vote en bloc against it. If followed, the tactic would have added a few hundred negative votes to the Arab-conservative side and marked the Council as so split that the Pope might not promulgate anything. The protest-vote tactic was soon abandoned. Lichten's remorse lasted longer. He sent telegrams to about 25 bishops he thought could still help retrieve the strong text. But again, it was Higgins who quietly told him to give up. "Look, Joe," the priest with the labor-lawyer manner told Lichten, "I understand your disappointment. I'm disappointed too." Then, he went off to console Shuster. In his own room, where Higgins thinks he had Lichten and Shuster together for their first joint appearance in Rome, the priest could sound as if he were putting it straight to company men looking for a square shake from the union. "If you two give New York the impression you can get a better text, you are crazy," he told them. "Lay all your cards on the table. It's just insane to think by some pressures here or newspaper articles back in New York, you can work a miracle in the Council. You are not going to work it, and they will think you fell down on the job." Lichten remembers more. "Higgins said, 'Think how much harm can be done, Joe, if we allow these changes to erect barriers in the path we have taken for such a long time. And this may happen if your people, and mine, don't respond to the positive aspects.' That was the psychological turning point for me," Lichten said. Shuster was still unreconciled, and he can remember the day well. "I had to break my head and heart," he said, "to think what should be done. I went through a crisis, but I was convinced by Higgins. The loss of deicide, frankly, I did not consider a catastrophe. But 'deplore' for 'condemn' is another thing. When I step on your toes, you deplore what I do. But massacre? Do you deplore massacre?" A differing view was taken by Abb? Ren? Laurentin, a Council staff man who wrote to all the bishops with a last-minute appeal to conscience. Of itself, the loss of the deicide denial would not have mattered to Laurentin either, if there would never be anti-Semitism in the world again. But since history invites pessimism in this, Laurentin asked the bishops to suppose that genocide might recur. "Then, the Council and the Church will be accused," he contended, "of having left dormant the emotional root of anti-Semitism which is the theme of deicide." Bishop Leven had wanted the word deicide torn out of the Christian vocabulary when he argued a year earlier for the stronger text. Now, the Secretariat had even torn it out of the declaration, and proscribed it from the Christian vocabulary so abruptly that even the proscription itself was suppressed. "With difficulty, one escapes the impression,' Laurentin wrote, "that these arguments owe something to artifice." Before the vote in St. Peter's, Cardinal Bea spoke to the assembled bishops. He said his Secretariat had received their modi "with grateful heart" - and the words just happened to be the very first ones deleted by his Secretariat's vote from the new version. A year earlier, Bea had argued for getting the deicide denial into the text, and now he was defending its removal. He spoke without zeal, as if he, too, knew he was asking the bishops for less than Jules Isaac and John XXIII might have wanted. Exactly 250 bishops voted against the declaration, while 1,763 supported it. Through much of the U.S. and Europe, the press minutes later made the complex simple with headlines reading VATICAN PARDONS JEWS, JEWS NOT GUILTY or JEWS EXONERATED IN ROME. Glowing statements came from spokesmen of the AJC and B'nai B'rith, but each had a note of disappointment that the strong declaration had been diluted. Bea's friend Heschel was the harshest and called the Council's failure to deal with deicide "an act of paying homage to Satan." Later on, when calm, he was just saddened. "my old friend, the Jesuit priest Gus Weigel, spent one of the last nights of his life in this room," Heschel said. "I asked him whether he thought it would really be ad majorem Dei gloriam if there were no more synagogues, no more Seder dinners and no more prayers said in Hebrew?" The question was rhetorical, and Weigel has since gone to his grave. Other comments ranged from the elated to the satiric. Dr. William Wexler of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations tried for precision. "The true significance of the Ecumenical Council's statement will be determined by the practical effects it has on those to whom it is addressed," he said. Harry Golden of the Carolina Israelite called for a Jewish Ecumenical council in Jerusalem to issue a Jewish declaration on Christians. With his needling retort, the columnist was reflecting a view popular in the U.S. that some kind of forgiveness had been granted the Jews. The notion was both started and sustained by the press, but there was no basis for it in the declaration. What led quite understandably to it, however, was the open wrangling around the Council that had made the Jews seem on trial for four years. If the accused did not quite feel cleared when the verdict was in, it was because the jury was out far too long. It was out for reasons politicians understand but few thought relevant to religion. The present head of the Holy See, like the top man in the White House, believed deeply in pressing for a consensus when any touchy issue was put to a Council vote. By the principle of collegiality, in which all bishops help govern the whole Church, any real issue divided the college of bishops into progressives and conservatives. Reconciling them was the Pope's job. For this rub in the collegial process, the papal remedy, whether persuaded or imposed, played some hob with the law of contradiction. When one faction said Scripture alone was the source of Church teaching, the other held for the two sources of Scripture and Tradition. To bridge that break, the declaration was rewritten with Pauline touches to reaffirm the two-source teaching while allowing that the other merited study. When opponents of religious liberty said it would fly against the teaching that Catholicism is the One True Church, a similar solution trickled down from the Vatican's fourth floor. Religious liberty now starts with the One True Church teaching, which, according to some satisfied conservatives, contradicts the text that follows. The Jewish issue was an even more troublesome one for a consensus-maker. Those who saw a dichotomy in the declaration could find it in the New Testament, too, where all are agreed it will stay. But to what extent was that issue complicated by the politics of the Arabs? In Israel, there is the feeling since the vote, and in Mideast journals there is considerable evidence for it, that the masses of Arab Christians were more indifferent to dispute then the Scriptural conservatives would like known. By the Newtonian laws of political motion, pressure begets counterpressure more often than lobbyists like to admit. And one of the hypotheses that B'nai B'rith and the AJC must ponder is that much Arab resistance and some theological intransigence were creatures of Jewish lobbying. There was anxiety all along about that, and Nahum Goldmann cautioned Jews early to "not raise the issue with too much intensity." Some did not. After the vote, when Fritz Becker, the WJC's silent man, admitted he once called on Bea at home, he said the declaration was not mentioned. "We just talked, the Cardinal and I," Becker said, "about the advantages of not talking." There are Catholics close to what went on in Rome who think that Jewish energy did harm. Higgins, the social-action priest from Washington, D.C., is not one of them. If it had not been for the lobbying, he felt, the declaration would have been tabled. But in his usual gruff way, Cardinal Cushing said that the only people who could beat the Jewish declaration were the Jewish lobbyists. Father Tome Stransky, the touchy, young Paulist who rides a Lambretta to work at the Secretariat, thought that once the press got on to the Council there was no way to stop such pressure groups. If the Council could have deliberated in secret with no strainings from the outside, he thinks the declaration would have been stronger. As it stands, Stransky fears that some Catholics may gleefully pass it off as if it were written to and for Jews. "This, you have got to remember, is addressed to Catholics. This is Catholic Church business. I don't mind telling you I'd be insulted, too, if I were a Jew and I thought this document was speaking to Jews." For the Catholics, he thinks it is now written for its best effect. It was Stransky's superior in the Secretariat, Cardinal Bea, who came around most to the claims of the conservatives. Bea apparently realized fairly late that there were some Catholics, more pious than instructed, whose contempt for Jews was inseparable from their love for Christ. To be told by the Council that Jews were not Christ-killers would be too abrupt a turnabout for their faith. These were Catholicism's simple dogmatics. But there were many bishops at the Council who, if far less simple, were no less dogmatic. They felt Jewish pressure in Rome and resented it. They thought Bea's enemies were proved right when Council secrets turned up in American papers. "He wants to turn the Church over to the Jews," the hatemongers said of the old Cardinal, and some dogmatics in the Council thought the charge about right. "Don't say the Jews had any part in this," one priest said, "or the whole fight with the dogmatics will start over." Another, Father Felix Morlion at the Pro Deo University, who heads the study group working closely with the AJC, thought the promulgated text the best. "The one before had more regard for the sensitiveness of the Jewish people, but it did not produce the necessary clearness in the minds of Christians," he said. "In this sense, it was less effective even to the very cause of the Jewish people." Morlion knew just what the Jews did to get the declaration and why the Catholics had settled its compromise. "We could have beaten the dogmatics," he insisted. They could, indeed, but the cost would have been a split in the Church. END References 1. http://www.stthomasaquinas.net/index.htm From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:09:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:09:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Martin Van Buren': The Original Party Boss Message-ID: The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'Martin Van Buren': The Original Party Boss http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/books/review/27KAZINL.html February 27, 2005 By MICHAEL KAZIN [Here are two campaign songs from 1840: Let Van from his coolers drink wine And lounge on his cushioned settee. Our man on his buckeye couch can recline, Content with hard cider is he. The iron-armed soldier, the true-hearted soldier, The gallant old soldier of Tippecanoe! Or, more briefly: Farewell, dear Van, You're not our man; To guide the ship We'll try old Tip. [I got these from my favorite book on American history, whose title is exact, Herbert Agar, The Price of Union (Boston; Houghton Mifflin, 1950). MARTIN VAN BUREN By Ted Widmer. 189 pp. Times Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $20. POOR Martin Van Buren. A short, bushy-sideburned New Yorker, he was the chief architect of the Democratic Party, the first mass body of its type in the world. But as president of the United States, he had to succeed Andrew Jackson, a handsome warrior with more popular appeal than anyone since George Washington. Then, just weeks into his tenure, a bank panic struck the nation; the effects bedeviled Van Buren, an apostle of laissez-faire, throughout his administration. In 1840, he was defeated for re-election by another military hero, William Henry Harrison. Van Buren spent the remainder of his long life vainly attempting to hold the Union together. He also struggled to complete a memoir so dreary it found no publisher until almost six decades after his death. In 1997, Little Van surfaced in Steven Spielberg's ''Amistad'' -- as the scoundrel who yearned to send African rebels back to their cruel owners. Fortunately, this Rodney Dangerfield of presidents has landed a splendid biographer. In remarkably few pages, Ted Widmer, director of a research center at Washington College in Maryland, rescues Van Buren from what E. P. Thompson once termed ''the enormous condescension of posterity,'' by subsuming a failed presidency within a more momentous career. Widmer deftly explains how the pioneering party boss built a formidable machine, using the trick bag of personal contacts and legislative reforms perfected by Lyndon Johnson over a century later. Van Buren grasped that the political future lay more with leaders from booming New York -- the wealthiest, most populous, most ethnically diverse state in the nation -- than with the grandees of Virginia and Massachusetts who had been in charge since the days of the Continental Congress. Widmer points out that ''the Little Magician'' from Kinderhook was as much a social upstart as the brawling Jackson himself. Van Buren came from a family of Dutch-speaking small farmers; he remains the only president raised in any tongue but English. He had to leave school at 13 and supported himself as a gofer to a local attorney until he could qualify for the bar. Widmer suggests that this background helped inspire Van Buren to topple the deferential network of power left over from colonial days. With the rise of mass parties, ''there would be no more uncles arranging favors for nephews with nosebleeds.'' The Democrat's respect for fellow outsiders was such that he retained on his ticket a vice president, Richard M. Johnson, who was living quite openly with a black mistress and his two children from an earlier affair with a slave woman he'd inherited from his father. Now there's the germ of a screenplay. Within the ascetic span of a short-biography series, Widmer keenly evokes the environment that enabled Van Buren to thrive. A commercial revolution swept through antebellum America, forcing both politicians and businessmen to dance to the same ferociously competitive tune. One entrepreneur, Widmer notes, turned Independence Hall into a clothing store, vowing that since ''all men are created equal,'' they ought to be able to purchase garments ''as rich, as cheap and as durable as at any other establishment in the nation.'' Widmer also lends a certain dignity to Van Buren's post-presidential attempts to resolve the sectional crisis. While no racial egalitarian, he sternly opposed the South's plans to expand the empire of slavery. In 1848, he ran for president again as the nominee of the Free Soil Party. In that insurgent campaign began gathering the coalition of working- and middle-class Northerners that would elect Lincoln president and then fight and win the Civil War. Van Buren, as Widmer wisely concludes, was one of those ''not-quite-heroic'' figures without whom no democracy would operate for long. He didn't achieve greatness, but he set a great insight in spin: without vibrant opposition parties, self-government becomes a mockery of its ideals. For that alone, Little Van deserves to be remembered as a big man indeed. Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University. His biography of William Jennings Bryan will be published early next year. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:09:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:09:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The DaVinci Institute: Ten Key Trends for Women in 2005 and Beyond Message-ID: Ten Key Trends for Women in 2005 and Beyond https://www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=80 Ten Key Trends for Women in 2005 and Beyond By Thomas Frey, Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute January 23, 2005 As people move through life, they search for signposts along the way. They search for those rare pieces of intelligence that give them a gut-level feeling of confidence about what to do next. Todays women are particularly adept at reading these signposts, which range from magazine articles, to movies, to conversations with a people they trust. They trust their instincts and arent afraid to make critical decisions. Women today are bold and confident, unapologetic for who they are and the things they like, and vast in their ability to influence nearly every aspect of modern life. In spite of the heavy load that most women shoulder, and the torrid pace of living, the bad years are now past, and a resurgence of hope seems to be building. With guarded smiles reacting to each new piece of positive news, they listen intently for the rhythm of hope that beats continuously in their lives. Women create our culture. They give birth to each new generation and heavily influence nearly every major decision being made today. Its critically important that we pay close attention to the drivers that are influencing the emerging new thinking class of bright articulate women wanting to make a difference in todays world. 1. The Emerging New Value Set Unlike the past generation of baby boom women with their idealistic dreams, the torch has been passed to a younger generation who views the world quite differently. While they still dream of finding the perfect relationship, nearly three-quarters think marriage should be for life, they are quick to take action when change is needed. Upwards of 75% of all divorces are initiated by women. They know the safety nets if things go wrong. Buoyed by strong female role models like Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Uma Thurman in movies like Erin Brockovich, Cold Mountain, and Kill Bill has spawned a generation of powerful ambitious women, noble in their purpose, driven to succeed. They need to feel real, genuine and authentic, while at the same time, a new class of elegance is returning to the workplace with classier styles and appearance signaling the end of the survival years. This new woman is a member of 3-5 book clubs, is more fiscally conservative, enjoys going to martini bars, and is looking for their next date on Match.com. 2. Virtual Families - The new reality is that more people today are part of second marriages than first marriages. With a growing number of people living in transitional relationships, multiple divorces, and children from multiple parent combinations, the social fabric has evolved into a culture of mixed parenting, confusing lines of authority, distributed and often shifting responsibilities resulting in an often-confused sense of ethics and morality. By default, mothers are working more and more as arbiter of the truth, sorting through competing value sets to make the final call. People are buying houses sized for "peak demand" times when all of their virtual family members are home. With the relentless pace of work, family, and school, kids often find themselves in a constant state of movement, shifting from parent one, to parent two, to grand parents, to friends, to sitters. This lack of permanence manifests itself in a number of ways with kids carrying the "need to move on" attitude with them throughout the rest of their lives, but also has prepared them for living in the virtual world stemming from their virtual childhood. 3. Our Gender-Confused Nation - Traditional distinctions between men and women are becoming blurred. While some are blaming the "gender-bender" effect of natural and synthetic hormones being found in increasing levels in our water supplies, men today are far less likely to exude the rugged demeanor of John Wayne. Men are becoming more feminized as they take an active role in parenting, become more fashion-oriented and develop beauty regimes, including opting for plastic surgery. Women continue to make inroads into many traditionally "male" areas of employment and are earning more. There are also more women entering tertiary education, and are marrying later or staying single. Womens drinking habits have radically changed too. In England, their consumption of alcohol had increased by almost 27% between 1998 and 2003. 4. Women Viewed through the Cyberporn Lens Nothing triggers the inner Jekyll and Hyde personalities in men like pornography, and the Internets cyberporn culture is stoking the testosterone fires. Its become the "crack cocaine" of sexual addiction. Men become lost in this artificial world that feeds them with delusional fantasies that women serve no greater purpose than to feed their every desire. New forms of sexual compulsiveness are creating chaos with 15% developing dysfunctional sexual behaviors that will eventually cause a train wreck in their lives. The mystery of female sexuality has long disappeared and the innocence of first love has been replaced with a drive to satisfy Neanderthal-like urges, with little sensitivity expressed for the female partner. This distorted view of womens desire is causing a degradation of partner relationships and the disassociation of sex with intimacy. Training classes for coping with the emerging cyberporn males will be needed to help women develop techniques for uncloaking the true deviants and separating them from their lives. 5. Quiet Demand for the Gritty Truth Nobody likes a phony and in the process of uncovering phony aspects of society, women are quietly peeling away the onion layers to uncover all the gritty truth about the world. Shows like MTV Road Rules and Survivor are good at revealing the raw side of human nature, giving people realistic views of how the world works. The blogger world is also giving rise to people who are genuine and authentic, speaking from the heart rather than in the sanitized conversational tones of media past. The marketing world has picked up on this trend with companies like Apple Computers and Levi using real customers to strip away the gloss and connect with their customers on a personal level. 6. The Social Obligation to "Live the Life" and "Do Your Part" The Baby Boom generation believed in the big dreams, grandiose and idealistic, shoot for the stars and become one in the process. Todays generation believes in living the life, often volunteering and making donations to "things that matter". In short, women are very invested in "doing their part". Women are very concerned about the world around us and are taking it upon themselves to make some changes. A full 30% of the people working on Habitat for Humanities projects are women. They comprise 60% of the hybrid car market, tend to stay away from luxury brands like Gucci and Rolex, are more likely to "turn off the lights", and in most families women are responsible for philanthropic giving. 7. Transition from a Product-Based Economy to an Experience Based Economy - Research among luxury consumers (top 25% of U.S. households with incomes $75,000 and above) has shown that experiential luxuries provide the ultimate luxury satisfaction, more so than home luxuries or personal luxuries like clothes, cars or jewelry. People no longer want to be known by the things that they own, but by who they are and the things that they have experienced. The experience economy is comprised of three types of products: freedom products, experience products, and memory products. Freedom is our most prized possession. Every device that gives us control also gives us freedom. Experience products allow us to "touch and feel" the world through our mind. And memory products are those things that we spend a fortune on each year trying to create good memories. 8. The Age of Cross-Functional Foods With attempts being made to address complex lifestyle needs, food product designers are looking to add a second and sometimes third dimension to the products being developed. Not only do the foods have to be tasty and nutritious, but also entertaining and healthy, or anti-aging and educational, or just fun. A multitasking gazing snack that keep the brain functional, while at the same time feeding some natural craving, packaged in way that fits in a cars cupholder and alternately dispensed from a vending machine, branded to give some experiential feeling of being part of the "in" crowd is the type of complex product development efforts happening inside our food labs today. And with women being the primary purchasers of food products, everything from food fashions to styling is being closely scrutinized. 9. 24-7 is Back People love to complain about their busy lives, yet most are going even further by multiplexing something akin to putting the brain in constant channel surfing mode living with simultaneous streams of consciousness through dual and often triple activities. Watching television while responding to an email and cooking dinner is all too common. But its still not enough. Everything has to be available 24/7. The past four years saw shortening store hours, reduced availability, and darkened streets at midnight. People sleep on average 2 hours less per night than 100 years ago (8.9 hrs vs. todays 6.9 hrs), and working with a new drive and positive energy both women and men are determined once again to live unrestrained lives. And they are demanding support from the business community to help feed this lifestyle. 10. Get the Geek Out - The Internet was primarily developed by 20 and 30 something nerd-guys who had a tough time relating to women. Perhaps it was less about their inability to relate to women and more about their inability to relate to first time users. Irregardless, early Internet users had to know how to speak geek. The closer they were to having a programmer mindset, the closer they became to functional proficiency on the Net. However, the lingering charm of being able to talk the language of nerds is now gone, and women are demanding a simpler interface. They need to "get it" on the first try or they will move on, and companies that have mastered the female interface are now finding that they are being rewarded with increased sales by both men and women. ABOUT: Thomas Frey is the Senior Futurist and Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute, a non-profit futurist think tank based in the innovation corridor of Colorado. The Institute has developed original research studies, on unusual topics, translating trends into unique opportunities. He can be reached at dr2tom at davinciinstitute.com or 303-666-4133. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:09:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:09:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Memory Declines Faster in Male Primates Message-ID: Memory Declines Faster in Male Primates http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-02-10-2 Findings have implications for developing sex-specific treatments for age-related cognitive decline Betterhumans Staff 2/10/2005 1:38 PM Men may be more susceptible to age-related memory decline than women, suggests a new study in nonhuman primates. Research conducted at the [8]Yerkes National Primate Research Center of [9]Emory University in Atlanta has found that [10]spatial memory, responsible for recording environmental and spatial-orientation information, declines at a greater rate in male nonhuman primates than female. Research leaders Agnes Lacreuse and [11]James Herndon conclude that sex may influence age-related cognitive decline, which has implications for developing human treatments to prevent age-related memory loss. In tasks measuring spatial memory, the researchers saw young male nonhuman primates outperform females, similar to what's been found in humans. In older subjects, however, sex differences no longer existed among aged male and female nonhuman primates, suggesting that spatial abilities declined at a greater rate in males. The researchers next aim to determine what contributes to the differential decline and to conduct imaging studies to examine any reductions in brain regions involved in spatial memory. The research is reported in the journal [12]Behavioral Neuroscience. References 8. http://www.yerkes.emory.edu/ 9. http://www.emory.edu/ 10. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/spatial_memory 11. http://www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/Herndon.html 12. http://www.apa.org/journals/bne/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:10:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:10:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Boston Globe: The theological robot Message-ID: The theological robot http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/02/06/the_theological_robot?mode=PF Are we made in the image of God? Are robots too? A theologian wants to konw. THE EXAMINED LIFE The theological robot By Joshua Glenn | February 6, 2005 WHILE VISITING MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab in the fall of 1995, esteemed Harvard Divinity School professor Harvey Cox noticed that the motor--driven eyes of Cog, a 7--foot--tall humanoid robot, were tracking his every movement. So he reached out and shook the creature's hand. ''There was a collective gasp from the Harvard theologians and MIT scientists present,'' self--described robotics theologian Anne Foerst recounts in her new book, ''God in the Machine'' (Dutton). In her book, Foerst seeks to bridge the divide between religion and AI research--by arguing that robots have much to teach us about ourselves and our relationship with God. Foerst spoke with me from St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, where she teaches theology and computer science. IDEAS: You engineered the Cox--Cog meetup while working as a theologian at MIT's AI Lab. Why would a robotics group invite you to join their team? FOERST: Back in 1993, when I met Rodney Brooks, the AI Lab's associate director at the time, he'd broken with the traditional assumption within AI that intelligence is merely a kind of software that can be programmed into a machine. Rod's group had recently built Cog, a machine that learned through physical embodiment and social interaction, just like we humans do.... I wanted to ask [his team], ''What does it mean to be human? Are we made in the image of God? Can a robot be human?'' He decided that my questions might prove helpful to their work, and invited me aboard. IDEAS: So did you decide whether or not robots can, in fact, be human? FOERST: What I learned from the AI Lab's robots, which were designed to trigger emotional and social responses, is that we can bond with them. So although they can't be human--to be human, I think, means needing to participate in the mutual process of telling stories that make sense of the world and who we are--humanoid robots can still be considered persons. Personhood simply means playing a role, if only a passive one, in that mutual narrative process. Like babies, or Alzheimer's patients, humanoid robots don't tell their own stories, but they play a role in our lives so we include them in our narrative structures. This suggests that perhaps we ought to think about treating robots right. IDEAS: And what does this have to do with God? FOERST: We too often use narratives of exclusivity--based on skin color, religion, language--to define the personhood of others. Yet the author of Psalm 139 writes of God that ''You created me as a golem in my mother's womb..../My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made.'' God built us, according to this ancient biblical tradition, in much the same way that we now build emotional and social robots. Yet despite knowing each of us so intimately, in all our imperfection, God loves all of us. Thinking about humanoid robots can possibly help us learn to tell inclusive stories, narratives that are unprejudiced. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 11 22:10:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 18:10:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield Message-ID: A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/technology/16robots.html February 16, 2005 By TIM WEINER The American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has. "They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes." The robot soldier is coming. The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history. The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion. Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy. The robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years. And some involved in the work say it may take at least 30 more years to realize in full. Well before then, they say, the military will have to answer tough questions if it intends to trust robots with the responsibility of distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from bystander. Even the strongest advocates of automatons say war will always be a human endeavor, with death and disaster. And supporters like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Md., are telling the Pentagon it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's "goal is there," he said, "but the path is not totally clear." Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may become swarms of "smart dust." The Pentagon intends for robots to haul munitions, gather intelligence, search buildings or blow them up. All these are in the works, but not yet in battle. Already, however, several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots. By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Though controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies. "The real world is not Hollywood," said Rodney A. Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T. and a co-founder of the iRobot Corporation. "Right now we have the first few robots that are actually useful to the military." Despite the obstacles, Congress ordered in 2000 that a third of the ground vehicles and a third of deep-strike aircraft in the military must become robotic within a decade. If that mandate is to be met, the United States will spend many billions of dollars on military robots by 2010. As the first lethal robots head for Iraq, the role of the robot soldier as a killing machine has barely been debated. The history of warfare suggests that every new technological leap - the longbow, the tank, the atomic bomb - outraces the strategy and doctrine to control it. "The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said Mr. Johnson, who leads robotics efforts at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, Va. "I have been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather than a tank parked nearby. We will not entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it." Trusting robots with potentially lethal decision-making may require a leap of faith in technology not everyone is ready to make. Bill Joy, a co-founder of [1]Sun Microsystems, has worried aloud that 21st-century robotics and nanotechnology may become "so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses." "As machines become more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them," Mr. Joy wrote recently in Wired magazine. "Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control." Pentagon officials and military contractors say the ultimate ideal of unmanned warfare is combat without casualties. Failing that, their goal is to give as many difficult, dull or dangerous missions as possible to the robots, conserving American minds and protecting American bodies in battle. "Anyone who's a decision maker doesn't want American lives at risk," Mr. Brooks said. "It's the same question as, Should soldiers be given body armor? It's a moral issue. And cost comes in." Money, in fact, may matter more than morals. The Pentagon today owes its soldiers $653 billion in future retirement benefits that it cannot presently pay. Robots, unlike old soldiers, do not fade away. The median lifetime cost of a soldier is about $4 million today and growing, according to a Pentagon study. Robot soldiers could cost a tenth of that or less. "It's more than just a dream now," Mr. Johnson said. "Today we have an infantry soldier" as the prototype of a military robot, he added. "We give him a set of instructions: if you find the enemy, this is what you do. We give the infantry soldier enough information to recognize the enemy when he's fired upon. He is autonomous, but he has to operate under certain controls. It's supervised autonomy. By 2015, we think we can do many infantry missions. "The American military will have these kinds of robots. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when." Meanwhile, the demand for armed bomb-disposal robots is growing daily among soldiers in Iraq. "This is the first time they've said, 'I want a robot,' because they're going to get killed without it," said Bart Everett, technical director for robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. Mr. Everett and his colleagues are inventing military robots for future battles. The hardest thing of all, robot designers say, is to build a soldier that looks and acts human, like the "I, Robot" model imagined by Isaac Asimov and featured in the recent movie of the same name. Still, Mr. Everett's personal goal is to create "an android-like robot that can go out with a solider to do a lot of human-like tasks that soldiers are doing now." A prototype, about four feet high, with a Cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm, stood in a workshop at the center recently. It readied, aimed and fired at a Pepsi can, performing the basic tasks of hunting and killing. "It's the first robot that I know of that can find targets and shoot them," Mr. Everett said. His colleague, Jeff Grossman, spoke of the evolving intelligence of robot soldiers. "Now, maybe, we're a mammal," he says. "We're trying to get to the level of a primate, where we are making sensible decisions." The hunter-killer at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center is one of five broad categories of military robots under development. Another scouts buildings, tunnels and caves. A third hauls tons of weapons and gear and performs searches and reconnaissance. A fourth is a drone in flight; last April, an unmanned aircraft made military history by hitting a ground target with a small smart bomb in a test from 35,000 feet. A fifth, originally designed as a security guard, will soon be able to launch drones to conduct surveillance, psychological warfare and other missions. For all five, the ability to perceive is paramount. "We've seen pretty dramatic progress in the area of robot perception," said Charles M. Shoemaker, chief of the Army Research Laboratory's robotics program office at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. That progress may soon allow the Army to eliminate the driver of many military vehicles in favor of a robot. "There's been almost a universal clamor for the automation of the driving task," he said. "We have developed the ability for the robot to see the world, to see a road map of the surrounding environment," and to drive from point to point without human intervention. Within 10 years, he said, convoys of robots should be able to wend their way through deep woods or dense cities. But the results of a road test for robot vehicles last March were vexing: 15 prototypes took off across the Mojave Desert in a 142-mile race, competing for a $1 million prize in a Pentagon-sponsored contest to see if they could navigate the rough terrain. Four hours later, every vehicle had crashed or had failed. All this raises questions about how realistic the Army's timetable is for the Future Combat Systems, currently in the first stages of development. These elaborate networks of weapons, robots, drone aircraft and computers are still evolving in fits and starts; a typical unit is intended to include, say, 2,245 soldiers and 151 military robots. The technology still runs ahead of robot rules of engagement. "There is a lag between technology and doctrine," said Mr. Finkelstein of Robotic Technology, who has been in the military robotics field for 28 years. "If you could invade other countries bloodlessly, would this lead to a greater temptation to invade?" Colin M. Angle, 37, is the chief executive and another co-founder of iRobot, a private company he helped start in his living room 14 years ago. Last year, it had sales of more than $70 million, with Roomba, a robot vacuum cleaner, one of its leading products. He says the calculus of money, morals and military logic will result in battalions of robots in combat. "The cost of the soldier in the field is so high, both in cash and in a political sense," Mr. Angle said, that "robots will be doing wildly dangerous tasks" in battle in the very near future. Decades ago, Isaac Asimov posited three rules for robots: Do not hurt humans; obey humans unless that violates Rule 1; defend yourself unless that violates Rules 1 and 2. Mr. Angle was asked whether the Asimov rules still apply in the dawning age of robot soldiers. "We are a long ways," he said, "from creating a robot that knows what that means." From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 12 00:18:30 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 17:18:30 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Another fake terror incident Message-ID: <01C53EBA.7BC1BA20.shovland@mindspring.com> It looked real enough. A Chinese guy suspiciously hanging around for 45 minutes with two suitcases. Swat teams charging him with TV cameras looking on. A small explosion that tipped over the suitcases. They have a problem: no major attacks since 911 and a need to have us believe we are in danger. But if there is a real attack, then they failed to protect us. But why wait until the cameras were in place? Looks good on national TV? Why SWAT, not the Bomb Squad? If there was real danger, why not follow normal procedure and take the items someplace safe for disposal? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 12 10:58:43 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 03:58:43 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The 25-Year Wait for Immortality Message-ID: <01C53F13.EBCB60B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality By Ker Than Special to LiveScience posted: 11 April 2005 06:32 am ET "I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely." -- Aubrey de Grey Time may indeed be on your side. If you can just last another quarter century. By then, people will start lives that could last 1,000 years or more. Our human genomes will be modified to include the genetic material of microorganisms that live in the soil, enabling us to break down the junk proteins that our cells amass over time and which they can't digest on their own. People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for near-immortality. This may sound like science fiction, but Aubrey de Grey thinks this could be our reality in as little as 25 years. Other scientists caution that it is far from clear whether and for how long science can stall the inevitable. De Grey, a Cambridge University researcher, heads the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) project, in which he has defined seven causes of aging, all of which he thinks can be dealt with. (Senescence is scientific jargon for aging.) De Grey also runs the Methuselah Mouse prize for breakthroughs in extended aging in mice. The purse of the M Prize, as it is called, recently grew beyond $1 million. LiveScience recently spoke with de Gray about his idea of living longer, and perhaps forever. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- LiveScience: What is your definition of aging? Life Expectancy in America Hits Record High Infusion of Young Blood Revives Old Muscles Roots of Graying Hair Discovered Ray Kurzweil Aims to Live Forever Aubrey de Grey: The definition that I like is not very good if you want to cover all species, but it's pretty good if you want to do something about it. I define aging as the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us. Is your goal to just extend the human lifespan substantially or to enable us to live forever? I don't see any inherent limit to how long it would be desirable to live. If life is fun at the moment, because one is healthy and youthful, both mentally and physically, then one is not likely to want to die in the next year or two. And if a year or two down the road, life is still fun because one is still youthful and so on, then the same will apply, and I can't see a time when that would cease to be true. When did you first come up with idea for your SENS project? Well, I've always considered aging to be undesirable, but I didn't begin to consider that I could make a contribution until about ten years ago. I suppose the major breakthrough was when I came up with the scheme that I now describe as SENS, and that happened about four years ago. 7 Deadly SENS Nuclear Mutations/Epimutations These are changes to the DNA, the molecule that contains our genetic information, or to proteins which bind to the DNA. Certain mutations can lead to cancer. Mitochondrial Mutations Mitochondria are components in our cells that are important for energy production. They contain their own genetic material, and mutations to their DNA can affect a cell's ability to function properly. Intracellular Junk Our cells are constantly breaking down proteins that are no longer useful or which can be harmful. Those proteins which can't be digested simply accumulate as junk inside our cells. Extracellular Junk Harmful junk protein can also accumulate outside of our cells. The amyloid plaque seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients is one example. Cell Loss Some of the cells in our bodies cannot be replaced, or can only be replaced very slowly. Cell Senescence This is a phenomenon where the cells are no longer able to divide. They may also do other things that they're not supposed to, like secreting proteins that could be harmful. Extracellular Crosslinks: Cells are held together by special linking proteins. When too many cross-links form between cells in a tissue, the tissue can lose its elasticity and cause problems. What happened was that I was gradually learning a lot of biology because my wife is a biologist. I was originally trained as a computer scientist, and I regarded aging as obviously undesirable but not my problem, that someone else would be working on it. But the more biology I learned, the more I also learned about biologist and about the attitudes toward working on the biology of aging that biologists tended to have, and basically, I wasn't very impressed. I found that rather few biologists were interested in the problem at all, and I thought, "Well, that isn't very good,", so I thought I'd see what I could do. Your background is in computer science. How does that qualify you to spearhead a project on aging? My background is enormously beneficial. There are really very important differences between the type of creativity involved in being a basic scientist and being an engineer. It means that I'm able to think in very different ways and come up with approaches to things that are different from the way a basic scientist might think. Could you give me an example of when your background has proven useful? Well, I suppose that the whole SENS project is one big example. What I've done there is I've identified a set of things to fix, a set of aspects of aging that we have some respectable chance to repair, and I've realized that if we can do all of these things reasonably well, then we're done. Basically, we'll have made the age related problems that we suffer from these days no longer an inevitable consequence of being alive. What I've done is basically factored out all the complicated details of how metabolism causes these things in the first place. It will be many decades before we understand the way cells and organs work well enough to be able to describe in detail the mechanism of how these problems actually occur. But my way of thinking is that we don't need to know the details of how they happen. So long as we know what these things are that do happen, we can figure out ways to fix them. This is counter to the ways that scientists think, because scientists are interested in knowledge for its own sake, whereas I'm interested in knowledge as a means to an end. Could you give me a timeline for how you envision your project succeeding? The first part of the project is to get really impressive results in mice. The reason that's important is because mice are sufficiently furry and people can identify with them. If we get really impressive results in mice, then people will believe that it's possible to do it in humans, whereas if you double the lifespan of a fruit fly, people aren't going to be terribly interested. Now, what I want to do in mice is not only develop interventions which extend their healthy lifespan by a substantial amount, but moreover, to do so when the mouse is already in middle age. This is very important, because if you do things to the mouse's genes before the mouse is even conceived, then people who are alive can't really identify with that. I reckon it will be about 10 years before we can achieve the degree of life extension with late onset interventions that will be necessary to prove to society's satisfaction that this is feasible. It could be longer, but I think that so long as the funding is there, then it should be about 10 years. Step two will involve translating that technology to humans. And because that's further in the future, it's much more speculative about how long that's going to take. But I think we have a fifty-fifty chance of doing it within about 15 years from the point where we get results with the mice. So 25 years from now. What do you think about the idea that with so much life at stake, people would be less willing to take risks? The journal of the SENS institute. I used to be more pessimistic about this than I am now. Five or six years ago I wrote a book in which I predicted that driving would be outlawed because it would be too dangerous to other people, but now I think that what's actually going to happen is that we'll just throw money at the problem. Rather than simply avoiding activities that are risky, we'll make them less risky through technology. For example, it's perfectly possible already to build cars that are much safer than those which most people currently drive, and it's also possible to build cars that are safer for pedestrians-with auto sensors and auto braking to stop from hitting a kid running out in the road and things like that. It's just a matter of priorities. When there isn't that many years of life to lose, the priority isn't there to spend the money. It's all a matter of weighing out the probabilities. Once the technology is available, nearly everyone is going to want it. Of course, there's going to be a minority of people who think it's better to live more naturally in some way or other. We have parallels like that in society today, like the Amish for example. Some would say that death is a part of life. What would be your response to those people? Death will still be a part of life when we haven't got aging anymore. If you mean that some people would say that aging is a part of life-well, that's certainly true, but a couple hundred years ago tuberculosis was a part of life, and we didn't have much hesitation in making that no longer a part of life when we found out how. What do you say to critics who think that this money could be better spent towards curing diseases like cancer? This is a very important point. Because we're going be in a situation where we can extend lifespans indefinitely, this argument doesn't work. If it were a case of simply having a prospect of extending our healthy lives by 20 or 30 years, then one could legitimately argue that this would be money more ethically spent on extending the lifespan of people who have a below average lifespan. But when we're talking about extending lifespans indefinitely, I don't think that really works. The other thing to bear in mind, is that it's not an either or thing. The reasons why people in Africa for example, have a low life expectancy is not just because of medical care, but also because of political problems. What kind of life will the immortal or nearly-immortal lead? Will they have to be on a special diet, or have constant organ transplants? Like any technology, when it first starts off, it will be a bit shaky, a bit risky, it will be very laborious and expensive and so on, but there will be enormous market pressures that will result in progressive refinement and improvement to the technology so that it not only becomes more effective, it becomes more convenient and so on. This will be an example of that. In a very general sort of sense, one could probably think in terms of having to go in for a refresh every 10 years or so. Exactly what would be involved in that will change over the years. It might start off as lets say a month in the hospital, and 10 years down the road, that will turn into a day in the hospital. A good parallel is vaccines. For example, when we take a holiday in Africa or Southeast Asia or whatever, we get a shot to make sure that we don't get malaria. And that's all we have to do, and when we get there we can eat Mc Donald's as much as one likes. Aubrey de Grey So you think it'll one day be as easy as getting a vaccine? Yes, that's right. A lot of these things, even in the early stages will amount to vaccines and drugs. Though of course, there will also be a lot of gene therapy and stem cell therapy and much more high tech stuff. Why did you establish both an institute and a prize? I think it's very important to have this two-prong approach. The idea here is that we don't really know what's going to work, but we have a fair idea of approaches that have a good probability of working. If you look at past technological achievements, some of them succeeded by just throwing serious effort and serious resources at the problem, and people were pretty sure of what they had to do to make the thing work. The Manhattan Project is a fine example of that. Everyone basically knew how to build the atomic bomb, it was just a question of working out the kinks. Then we've got things where there were loads of different possibilities about how the thing might be done, and it was important to motivate people and give incentives. For example, when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, that won a prize. And when someone invented a chronometer that worked properly at sea, that won a prize. Things like that. That was where you wanted to give incentives for people to follow their hunches, because it wasn't very clear which approach was going to work. I think that when we're talking about life extension, we're sort of halfway between these two situations. We have a bunch of ideas which one can make a good case that it's going to work, but we also want to hedge our bets, and let people follow their hunches as well. Of your seven SENS targets, which do you consider to be the most important? It's not possible to say. I don't think we will be able to achieve more than a relatively modest amount of life extension, if any, until we can get at least five or so of these things working, and we might need to do all seven before we get more than a decade of life extension. Why do you personally want to live forever? It's not really a matter of living forever, it's just a matter of not wanting to die. One doesn't live forever all in one go, one lives forever one year at a time. It's just a case of "Well, life seems to be fun, and I don't see any prospect of it ceasing to be fun unless I get frail and miserable and start declining." So if I can avoid declining, I'll stay with it really. What would you do if you could live substantially longer? They say variety is the spice of life, so I don't think I would do the same things every day. I'd like to be able to spend more time reading, and listen to music, and all that sort of thing, things that I never get to do at all at the moment. You think this project is going to succeed in your lifetime? I think it's got a respectable chance. I'm definitely not relying on it. My main motivation comes from the thought of how many lives will be saved. Your strategy would involve not only preventing aging, but reversing it as well. Does that mean people will get to choose what age they want to remain? Absolutely. So the idea is that we wouldn't be eliminating aging from the body. It'll be a case of going in periodically and having the accumulated damage repaired. So exactly what biological age you actually have at any point is really just a question of how often you go in for rejuvenations and how thorough they are. So the more treatments you undergo, the younger you can be? That's right. I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 14:37:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 10:37:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Andrea Dworkin, Writer and Crusading Feminist, Dies Message-ID: Andrea Dworkin, Writer and Crusading Feminist, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/arts/12dworkin.html April 12, 2005 By MARGALIT FOX Andrea Dworkin, the feminist writer and antipornography campaigner whose work was a lightning rod for the debate on pornography and censorship that raged through the United States in the 1980's, died on Saturday at her home in Washington. She was 58. Ms. Dworkin died in her sleep, said her husband, John Stoltenberg. The cause of death had not been determined last night, but Mr. Stoltenberg said that Ms. Dworkin had suffered from several chronic illnesses in recent years. With her unruly dark curls and denim overalls, Ms. Dworkin was for decades a visible presence on the lecture circuit, at antipornography rallies and "take back the night" marches. In speeches and in her many books, she returned vocally, passionately and seldom without controversy to the subjects of sex, sexuality and violence against women, themes that to her were inextricably and painfully linked. Among her best-known books are "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" (Putnam/Perigee, 1981), "Intercourse" (Free Press, 1987) and "Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant" (Basic Books, 2002). Reviewing "Heartbreak" in The New York Times Book Review, Laura Miller wrote: "Dworkin is one of the few remaining specimens of pure countercultural Romanticism: fierce, melodramatic and utterly convinced that all truth can be found in her own roiling, untempered emotions." With her first book, "Woman Hating" (Dutton, 1974), Ms. Dworkin drew the lines in what she saw as a pitched battle against men's historical domination of women. She opposed all forms of pornography, which she believed incited violence against women. She was also critical of consensual sex between women and men, which she saw as an act of everyday subjugation in which women were accomplices. "One of the differences between marriage and prostitution is that in marriage you only have to make a deal with one man," Ms. Dworkin wrote in "Letters From a War Zone" (Dutton, 1989). Marriage, she added, "is a legal license to rape." Andrea Rita Dworkin was born on Sept. 26, 1946, in Camden, N.J., and earned a bachelor's degree in literature from Bennington College in 1968. She later moved to Europe, where she married a Dutch political radical. The marriage was abusive, Ms. Dworkin said later, and she was divorced after three years. "I was a battered wife," she told The New York Times in 1985, "and pornography entered into it. Both of us read it, and it helped give me the wrong idea of what a woman was supposed to be for a man." To Ms. Dworkin, it did not matter that some critics condemned her sweeping antipornography stance as a form of censorship. With the feminist lawyer Catharine A. MacKinnon, she wrote a municipal ordinance, briefly adopted by several cities in the 1980's, that defined pornography as a form of sex discrimination. (In 1986, the United States Supreme Court affirmed a lower court's ruling overturning the ordinance in Indianapolis.) If Ms. Dworkin's work was unabashedly polemical, her life was full of nuanced contradictions. She publicly identified herself as a lesbian, speaking movingly about "this love of women" as "the soil in which my life is rooted," and her work was a touchstone for many gay men and women. But in 1998, she married Mr. Stoltenberg, her companion of many years. A writer, editor and a founder of Men Against Pornography who also identifies himself as gay, Mr. Stoltenberg is her only immediate survivor. Ms. Dworkin's other books include "Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation" (Free Press, 2000), "Right-Wing Women" (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1983) and, with Ms. MacKinnon, "Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality" (Organizing Against Pornography, 1988). Ms. Dworkin also wrote two novels, "Mercy" (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991), about serial rape, and "Ice and Fire" (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), about prostitution. Though some critics dismissed her work as unreasoned diatribe, Ms. Dworkin remained an outspoken champion of the causes in which she believed. "I am not afraid of confrontation or risk," she wrote in "Letters From a War Zone," "also not of arrogance or error." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:29:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:29:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In Restructuring, Sony BMG Introduces Classical Label Message-ID: Arts > Music > In Restructuring, Sony BMG Introduces Classical Label http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/arts/music/12sony.html April 12, 2005 [Too much good stuff from the New York Times! In the future, I'll keep to twenty forwardings a day in addition to those from the NYT.] By ALLAN KOZINN Sony BMG Music Entertainment said yesterday that it would restructure its classical music division with the introduction today of Sony BMG Masterworks. The division will encompass the former Sony Classical and BMG Classics lines. The individual labels, including subsidiary imprints, will retain their names, logos and artist rosters. So, as examples, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the pianists Emanuel Ax and Murray Perahia, and the violinists Midori and Joshua Bell will continue to be marketed as Sony Classical artists; the pianist Evgeny Kissin and the tenor Ram?n Vargas will still record for RCA Red Seal; and the conductors Nikolaus Harnoncourt and David Zinman will record for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Arte Nova, respectively. But Gilbert Hetherwick, who became president of the division in January, said yesterday that the new name was meant to suggest a change of philosophy. It is intended not only to evoke past glories - Masterworks was CBS's flagship classical line long before Sony bought the company from CBS in 1989 - but also to signal what Mr. Hetherwick described as a renewed commitment to the core classical repertory. Mr. Hetherwick reports to Michael Smellie, the chief operating officer of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and both men repudiated the notion, standard at classical labels since the mid-80's, that pop-classical crossover projects were necessary to keep a classics line afloat. Peter Gelb, who ran Sony Classical until Mr. Hetherwick's appointment and who is to become general manager of the Metropolitan Opera in 2006, was a strong proponent of crossovers. "This is a dream job for me and an amazing opportunity to get it right," said Mr. Hetherwick, 52, who joined BMG Classics in 2003 after running EMI's American classical operations and holding positions at Polygram, Telarc and Sony Classical. "The people above me totally buy and support what I'm trying to do, which is to put the focus on classical music. We will do some Broadway and soundtrack recording, as we've always done. But it has to start with classical artistry." Mr. Hetherwick pointed out that in the 15 months he ran BMG Classics, before the merger, he was able to turn a profit with a line devoted fully to classical repertory. At BMG, the theater and film departments, originally part of Red Seal, had been spun off, and there were no crossover projects: just straightforward standard repertory recordings by the likes of Mr. Kissin and Mr. Harnoncourt. Mr. Hetherwick added that during his years at EMI, when crossover projects by Sarah Brightman accounted for 30 percent of the label's sales, he ran the numbers for the classical projects alone and found them to be profitable as well. (He declined to provide numbers.) Mr. Smellie, who professed to know nothing about classical music, said he found Mr. Hetherwick's approach persuasive. "I don't buy the reports that the classical record market is collapsing," Mr. Smellie said. "It's just a question of recording the right repertory, marketing it convincingly and applying the right discipline. And in my view, getting rid of crossover allows people to be focused. "Crossover distorts people's values. You have a record that sells a million copies, and the universe shifts towards finding the next one. That's not what we want to do." Central to Mr. Hetherwick's plans is exploring the back catalog of the combined label. That trove reaches back to the 1890's, when Sony's original predecessor, the Columbia Phonograph Company, and BMG's ancestor, the American Gramophone Company, were rivals in the nascent record market. In the heyday of classical recording, from the late 20's through the late 70's, each label amassed a huge library of recordings that are now considered classic. Mr. Hetherwick said that he had no idea how many master tapes the company's combined archives now hold, but that a computer catalog is being created. In any case, the trove is extraordinary, with legendary recordings by the conductors Fritz Reiner, Arturo Toscanini, Charles Munch, Pierre Monteux, Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy and Pierre Boulez; the violinists Jascha Heifetz and Isaac Stern; the pianists Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Rudolf Serkin and Glenn Gould; and a vast array of vocal stars, from Enrico Caruso to Pl?cido Domingo, many of them appearing in complete recordings of operas. Before the merger, Mr. Hetherwick restored some of RCA's legendary recordings, reissuing them as hybrid conventional and Super Audio CD's. He said he would do the same for Sony's Masterworks Heritage series, an archival project that was shelved after several well-regarded releases in the late 90's. Reissues may, in fact, become the engine that drives Sony BMG Masterworks. Mr. Hetherwick said he would probably release more than 100 (but probably fewer than 200) reissues a year, a number that dwarfs the 20 to 25 new recordings. He said, too, that he hoped to use the Internet to revive even more of the back catalog. "For the collector, you could have the complete Toscanini always available online," he said. The Internet, he added, "would be ideal for some of the contemporary-music recordings that Sony has: avant-garde productions from the 1960's that are important but that we couldn't afford to remaster, put into a plastic box and sell in stores." The Internet is crucial for marketing, too, he said, pointing out that Yo-Yo Ma's latest disc, "Silk Road Journeys: Beyond the Horizon," has sold extremely well through iTunes, where it was the No. 4 seller for a time. "What the Internet offers," he said, "is a place where nonspecialists can go and listen to samples to see what they like in the privacy of their homes, without being embarrassed." More broadly, the label's plans are still vague. Mr. Hetherwick did not hold out great hope for a revival of operatic or symphonic recording, at least in the United States, although he is interested in opera DVD's. As for expanding the currently small rosters of his labels, Mr. Hetherwick said he would do so cautiously. "There are two kinds of artists," he said. "Those who look at a recording as a work of art and those who see it as a snapshot of what they were doing that day. I like the ones who see recordings as art, who are passionate about making statements with their work in the studio." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:29:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:29:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Child Who Would Not Speak a Word Message-ID: The Child Who Would Not Speak a Word http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/health/psychology/12mute.html April 12, 2005 By HARRIET BROWN Christine Stanley will never forget the call. Two weeks after her daughter Emily started kindergarten, the teacher phoned in a panic. Emily would not color, sing or participate in any classroom activities; in fact, she would not say a word to anyone. It was not the first time Christine had received such a call. Emily had not talked at preschool, either. She did not make eye contact with store clerks or talk to nurses at the pediatrician's office. She ran off the playground if another child approached. Mrs. Stanley asked her sister, a special education teacher, what she thought. Mrs. Stanley had to explain the problem because at home and with family Emily's behavior was perfectly normal. Her sister mentioned something called selective mutism, but quickly said that couldn't apply to Emily. "She told me, 'Those children are emotionally disturbed and have been abused,' " Mrs. Stanley recalled. But once she started reading about the condition, she said, "I knew it really was selective mutism." Experts say that Emily's story is typical of children with selective mutism. At home, they behave like typical children, but in social situations, especially at school, they are silent and withdrawn. They might talk to grandparents but not to other relatives; they might whisper to one other child, or talk to no one. Some do not point, nod or communicate in any other way. Fifteen years ago, these children were known as elective mutes, and their silence was seen as willful and manipulative. "If you look at psychiatry textbooks from around 1994," said Dr. Bruce Black, a psychiatrist in Wellesley, Mass., and an early researcher on selective mutism, "you'll see stated as a fact that these were stubborn, oppositional kids, and their refusal to speak was a manifestation of that." Another popular belief was that selective mutism was a form of post-traumatic stress disorder - what Dr. E. Steven Dummit, a staff psychiatrist at the Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., calls the "Tommy rock opera" theory of the disorder. "It's an appealing story, that these kids are keeping some secret about something terrible that's happened," he says. "None of the children I've seen became silent as a result of trauma. But I can't tell you how many families have told me they were suspected of abuse because their child was not talking in school." The diagnosis was changed to selective mutism in the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual. The semantic change reveals a fundamental shift in how these children are perceived and treated. Most researchers now agree that selective mutism is more a result of temperament than of environmental influences. In the early 1990's two studies, one by Dr. Dummit and one by Dr. Black, showed that children with the disorder were not just shy; they were actively anxious. "We ended up concluding that the kids had social anxiety disorder, and the selective mutism was a manifestation of that," Dr. Black said. Everyone has some level of social anxiety, he noted. "I'm quite comfortable in front of a group," Dr. Black said. "But if I went into a party full of famous older psychiatrists, I might stare at my feet for five minutes before I started talking. It might look like I had selective mutism." Until recently, the disorder was thought to be extremely rare, affecting about 1 child in 1,000. But a 2002 study in The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry put the incidence of selective mutism closer to 7 children in 1,000, making it almost twice as common as autism. Selective mutism, experts say, probably represents one end of a spectrum of social anxieties that includes everything from a fear of eating in public to stage fright and agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces. Despite its prevalence, selective mutism is still widely misunderstood and often ignored. Even after realizing that Emily had the disorder, Mrs. Stanley was not able to get her daughter help. Before Emily started kindergarten, she asked the principal what to do, and was told, "A lot of kids are shy; she'll grow out of it." Mrs. Stanley recalled, "We figured, O.K., maybe it's not as bad as we think." But two weeks into the year, Emily's kindergarten teacher phoned. "She said, 'Emily can't color or do anything; she just sits there and reads a book,' " Mrs. Stanley said. "She had no clue what to do. And neither did we." One of the most puzzling aspects of selective mutism is the fact that children stay silent even when the consequences of their silence include shame, social ostracism or even punishment. This paradox may be explained by the fact that at the heart of the disorder is the instinct for self-preservation, the natural urge to avoid frightening situations. "They become very avoidant of social interactions," said Dr. Elisa Shipon-Blum of Philadelphia, a physician who has treated hundreds of children with the disorder. "They don't know how to engage. They learn to avoid eye contact; they learn to turn their heads. They learn not to communicate." Experts say that may be because the children in a state of physiological defensiveness brought on by the perception - real or imagined - that they are in danger. "These children pick up cues in the environment that trigger an adaptive response, which puts them either into a fight-or-flight situation or leads to a shutdown," said Dr. Stephen Porges, director of the Brain-Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Their bodies have said, 'This is not the place you should be in.' Their behavior is not defective, just adaptive in the wrong setting." Few doctors are willing to treat selective mutism, and fewer still achieve results. When Emily Stanley's school insisted on an official diagnosis, the family wound up traveling from their home in Atlanta to a doctor in Connecticut. "Every local psychologist I called said either they'd never worked with a child like this before, or they had and hadn't been successful," Mrs. Stanley said. When the school pressured the Stanleys to do more, the Connecticut doctor recommended antidepressants. In the early 90's, Dr. Black did one of the first studies of Prozac for selective mutism, when he was a researcher at the National Institutes of Mental Health. It was a success. One subject was a seventh-grade girl who had never said a word in school. "The principal had known her for eight years and had never heard her voice," Dr. Black said. "After three weeks on Prozac, she started talking in school." (Dr. Black said that he had been a paid consultant for Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac, and for SmithKline Beecham, but that the pharmaceutical industry had not financed any of his research.) Many clinicians now prescribe fluoxetine, the generic version of Prozac, for selective mutism, usually combined with cognitive or behavioral therapies. Fluoxetine and other antidepressants in the class known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.'s, can loosen inhibitions - a factor in explaining their usefulness for social anxiety. This also means that they are not for everyone. After starting on antidepressants at the end of kindergarten, Emily Stanley began talking in school. But she also began exhibiting inappropriate behaviors, which ended when the medication was withdrawn. Behavioral and cognitive therapies that rely on classic desensitization techniques - gradual exposure to frightening situations, with a lot of positive reinforcement - can also be successful, either on their own or combined with antidepressants. "Everybody says to these kids, 'Say goodbye to your teacher,' " said Dr. R. Lindsey Bergman, associate director of the University of California, Los Angeles, Child O.C.D., Anxiety and Tic Disorders Program. "That's way too hard to be the first step," Dr. Bergman said. "They might start with something nonverbal, or with making a sound, and work up to face-to-face communication. I have one child who's working on saying 'mmm-hmm' instead of nodding." Most of these therapies require heavy involvement on the part of parents. Mary Egan-Long, a financial analyst in Bergen County, N.J., took a year off from her job to work with her 6-year-old daughter. "I have Jackie exposed to every extracurricular activity I can find," she said. "We go to school early two mornings a week to feed the animals so she can bond with the science teacher. Every place she goes, I need to smooth the way." Pediatricians often tell parents not to worry, their children will outgrow the problem. That reassurance is well-meaning but misguided. "If a child still has this at age 7, and it's moderately severe, chances are it's going to be a lifelong struggle," said Sue Newman-Mercado of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who also has twin daughters, 23 years old, with selective mutism. In 1991, Ms. Newman-Mercado and Carolyn Miller of Charleston, W.Va., founded the nonprofit Selective Mutism Foundation. They remain the foundation's co-directors. In fact, most experts say, the earlier the intervention, the better the outcome. The family of Robbie Fishman, now 4, learned that he had selective mutism just before his third birthday. The pediatrician wanted to refer Robbie to a developmental psychiatrist, but his mother, Anne Fishman, a special education language teacher in Yardley, Pa., refused. "I had a feeling they would diagnose him with something on the autistic spectrum, and I knew he was not," Ms. Fishman said. Robbie began weekly visits to Dr. Shipon-Blum of Philadelphia, who put him on a low dose of antidepressants. "She told me to set up a consistent play date for Robbie," Ms. Fishman said. "She told me he needed a classroom aide. We learned to have the teachers and preschool director not force him to talk, or force eye contact. We were all doing the wrong thing. I was always forcing him, and I was making his anxiety worse." A year later, Robbie is off the drug and functioning well at school. "He's not Mr. Social Butterfly," Ms. Fishman said. "But at least he can make eye contact and respond to the teacher. Before, people assumed he was autistic. Now they just think he's a little shy." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:30:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:30:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: (Papal Futures) The Smart Money Message-ID: The Smart Money http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/opinion/12tierney.html April 12, 2005 By JOHN TIERNEY Do not be fooled by the talking heads in Rome. The journalists handicapping the papal election may sound as confident as ever, authoritatively quoting anonymous cardinals and exclusive sources deep in Opus Dei. But our profession is in trouble. A specter is haunting the punditocracy - the specter of [2]Intrade. That's an online futures market, based in Dublin and used by more than 50,000 speculators worldwide who put their money where our mouths are. They're expected to spend at least $1 million on futures contracts tied to the election of the pope. And if recent history is any guide, their collective wisdom could be a lot more valuable than ours. If you listened to journalists during last year's presidential campaign, you heard about a tight race with oscillating polls and shifting momentum. The weekend before the election, we painstakingly analyzed the battleground states and bravely proclaimed them too close to call. But if you watched the Intrade market throughout the campaign, you saw the traders serenely betting on a Bush victory. Most remarkably, the weekend before the election, the traders correctly called the winner in every one of the 50 states. Of course, it's much easier to call Ohio than a conclave of cardinals who have never been polled and would be excommunicated for joining an MSNBC focus group. But given the news media's track record, any system more scientific than scrutinizing the entrails of a sacrificial chicken could be an improvement. For now, the Intrade speculators are expecting the white smoke to signal an Italian pope. The futures contract that pays off in the event any Italian wins was trading at one point yesterday at 41.9, which means the traders gave Italy a 41.9 percent chance, followed by Nigeria at 13. The individual favorite was Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, at 23, followed by Francis Arinze of Nigeria, at 14. Many of the traders probably know little about Vatican politics and are basically recreational gamblers, perhaps sentimentally betting on their local contender. But these amateurs serve a purpose in the ruthless ecosystem of the market. They are the sheep who attract the wolves. The amateurs' money entices serious investors to spend time scouring cardinals' past statements and other sources. The sheep's money also offers a temptation for those with inside knowledge to cash in, even though that's against the rules of Intrade - not to mention a 1591 papal bull forbidding Catholics from betting on a conclave. The bull was prompted by rampant betting during previous conclaves. In 1549, the Venetian ambassador tracked the odds with Roman bookies and reported that "the cardinals' attendants in Conclave" were going partners with local merchants "in wagers which thus causes many tens of thousands of scudi to change hands." The church's ethical standards have improved a bit since the Renaissance, when one pope had eight illegitimate children and another got the post by giving electors written promises of promotions. I don't expect today's cardinals to be smuggling BlackBerries into the Sistine Chapel and placing trades between votes. But suppose a venal Vatican bureaucrat, or a secular friend of some official, hears a piece of useful gossip before or even during the conclave. Is he going to give it free of charge to a journalist, knowing this risks compromising himself as well as his source? Or is he is going to sit down, in the secure privacy of his home, and make a few profitable clicks on his computer? Maybe that's improbable. But is it any less fantastic than his calling up one of the reporters who have been babbling for weeks into a microphone at St. Peter's Square? The journalist in me hopes he leaks it to us, or at least stays away from Intrade, thereby keeping everyone in the dark and allowing us to pontificate unencumbered by actual information. We can theorize that the Italian delegation is following Karl Rove's strategy of "solidifying the base." We can ruminate on a third world cardinal following the Bob Shrum strategy of building a coalition of "the people against the powerful." Columnists have built careers on less. So I'm praying, for purely selfish reasons, that Intrade gets this election wrong. When I consider those thousands of traders working around the clock, without salaries or health benefits, I hate to think I'm starting a column just as the job is being outsourced. E-mail: [3]tierney at nytimes.com References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JOHN%20TIERNEY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JOHN%20TIERNEY&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.intrade.com/ 3. mailto:tierney at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:31:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:31:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: True Love: Finding a Second Act on the Internet Message-ID: Business > Retirement > True Love: Finding a Second Act on the Internet http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/retirement/12wilk.html April 12, 2005 By [1]DONNA WILKINSON LIFE, it seems, has come full circle for Hani Lipp, 63, of Boynton Beach, Fla. Divorced with grown children, she joined [2]JDate.com, a dating site for Jewish singles, where she met "some nice people, but no one who clicked for me," said Ms. Lipp, a retired social worker who grew up in Brooklyn. Last June, she saw a familiar face: David Schoenfeld, a fellow graduate of the class of 1959 from Lafayette High School. She sent him an e-mail message: "David, is that you?" Indeed, it was. They began a correspondence. In July, Mr. Schoenfeld, also 63, a widower and retired teacher who lives in New York, went to Florida to see Ms. Lipp, and they have been flying back and forth ever since. Finding romance on the Internet is hardly new - younger singles have been doing it for more than 10 years - but it is on the upswing among people 55 and over. According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, the number of online dating site users 55 or older rose 19.4 percent in the last year. "As older folks and baby boomers become increasingly Internet-savvy, a lot of them are turning to online dating to find both romance and companionship," said Kristin Kelly, senior director of public relations at Match.com, whose 50-plus membership has tripled since 2000. "It's one of our fastest-growing segments," said Andrew B. Conru, chief executive of [3]FriendFinder.com, which operates [4]SeniorFriendFinder.com, a site for older singles that began in 1999 with "a trickle," he said, and now has 400,000 members. For older people, who may be widowed or divorced and long out of the dating scene, these sites offer a pressure-free way to ease back in. "Sociologically, online dating is kind of strange for someone over a certain age, but it's also perfect because of the etiquette," said Alison Leslie Gold, the author of "Love in the Second Act," to be published next year. "Whether it's e-mailing or calling, if you've had enough, you just stop. Everyone can go at their own pace." Jim Sheard, 62, a retired executive in Owatonna, Minn., was divorced three years ago after 35 years of marriage. He joined Match.com, [5]eHarmony.com and [6]SingleChristianNetwork.com. So far, he has dated about four women and is currently seeing someone he met online. He said dating sites expose you to like-minded people. "You don't have to ask 'Are you single?' 'Do you date'? People are ready to meet for coffee or lunch; they know the process." The Internet can be especially helpful to older women, who as they age may not have the same dating opportunities as men, said Alice Solomon, the author of "Find the Love of Your Life After 50!" and founder of [7]Gorgeousgrandmas.com, a support site for women. "Some of these guys, their wife dies or they're divorced, and 10 minutes later they have the names and phone numbers of 20 women in their pockets, because friends fix them up," she said. "But does anyone rush out to fix up single women? Forget it." Nobody was fixing up Maggie Simons, 60, after her divorce two years ago. She joined SeniorFriendFinder.com. "I lived in rural Alaska and there wasn't a lot of opportunity to meet people," said Ms. Simons, a retiree who ran a home care agency. At the time, she was considering a move to Florida. One day she heard from a man who lived 200 miles away in Seward, Alaska. They chatted; last February they met. "He touched my hand and that was it," she said. In July, she moved in with him and his children. Online dating does have its drawbacks. The most common complaint: what you see online may not be what you get offline. Photos may be old. Men say some women lie about age and weight; women say some men lie about height and marital status. And safety is a consideration. The beauty of online dating is that you can screen other members. But older singles should take precautions: don't reveal personal information until you know a person, and never post it in a profile; and if you decide to date someone, always meet in a public place. Still, online dating can be rewarding, Mr. Sheard said. "I am in the process of making friendships, and out of those friendships might come a person who is a soul mate." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DONNA%20WILKINSON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DONNA%20WILKINSON&inline=nyt-per 2. http://JDate.com/ 3. http://FriendFinder.com/ 4. http://SeniorFriendFinder.com/ 5. http://eHarmony.com/ 6. http://SingleChristianNetwork.com/ 7. http://Gorgeousgrandmas.com/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:31:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:31:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Evelyn Fox Keller: Theorist Drawn Into Debate 'That Will Not Go Away' Message-ID: Science > Scientist at Work | Evelyn Fox Keller: Theorist Drawn Into Debate 'That Will Not Go Away' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/science/12prof.html April 12, 2005 SCIENTIST AT WORK | EVELYN FOX KELLER Theorist Drawn Into Debate 'That Will Not Go Away' By [1]CORNELIA DEAN CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 7 - Dr. Evelyn Fox Keller is a physicist, a mathematical biologist and a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This semester, as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, she is continuing her work on neurological and psychological development. She wishes people would keep some of that in mind. They're losing sight of it, though, because Dr. Keller has also been a theorist of gender and science - and nowadays, especially at Harvard, that is a hot topic. When she gave a talk Thursday titled "Innate Confusion: Nature, Nurture and All That," organizers who originally expected a merely respectable turnout found themselves with hundreds of listeners filling every seat and much of the aisle space in a large auditorium. "Two claims are made about the debate," Dr. Keller told her audience. "One, it is over. Two, it does not go away." Neither she nor her questioners spoke about Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, at least not at a microphone, but he might as well have been in the room. Dr. Summers, the president of Harvard, made news in January when, at a conference on women in science, he suggested the possibility that the relative dearth of women at the upper reaches of science might result from deficiencies in mathematics talent. His remarks ignited a fire that has yet to burn out. For Dr. Keller, the idea of women's lack of ability was old news. She encountered it personally as a physics graduate student at Harvard in the late 50's and early 60's, an experience she recalled in an essay as a time of "almost unmitigated provocation, insult and denial." The essay, at once an anguished cry from the heart and a withering indictment of sexism and bad manners, appears in the 1977 collection "Working It Out." Its shock waves still reverberate in her old department, she said. In 1985 - after marriage, divorce, the struggle of raising two children as a single mother and the professional isolation she experienced as a result - she addressed the issue of women in science in a much larger framework, in "Reflections on Gender and Science." Today, though, Dr. Keller said in interviews, it frustrates her to be drawn back into the debate over the place of women in science. First, her professional focus as a researcher has changed in the last 20 years. Second, in drawing her into the argument, people often miss a distinction she was and is careful to make between garden variety discrimination and what she sees as the larger underlying issue: the way society constructs ideas of masculinity, femininity and science, and how these ideas overlap - or don't. "Let me make clear from the outset," she wrote in "Reflections," "that the issue that requires discussion is not, or at least not simply, the relative absence of women in science." Women are relatively absent in almost all important intellectual and creative endeavors, she said. But few of these endeavors, she went on, "bear so unmistakably the connotation of masculine in the very nature of the activity." "To both scientists and their public, scientific thought is male thought," she continued. "Hard" objectivity itself is identified with masculinity, she wrote, and "soft" subjectivity is identified with femininity. "What would it mean for science if it were otherwise?" One answer might be that women in graduate school might feel more welcome in physics. But many readers thought Dr. Keller provided another answer in her highly acclaimed biography of the geneticist Barbara McClintock, published in 1983, shortly before Dr. McClintock won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her elucidation of the genetics of corn. As the book recounted, Dr. McClintock did not simply study her plants bit by microscopic bit, in the prevailing reductionist mode. Instead, she came to know her maize plants, embracing them almost as collaborators to the point that she acknowledged them when she received the prize. She had developed "A Feeling for the Organism," the title Dr. Keller chose for the book. Many people read it as a description of a kind of "feminist" science, a view that obviously annoys Dr. Keller. "My argument was that feeling and reason are both human traits," she said. "Why parse them according to the genders? Why exclude feelings from science and reason from women's domain? My whole effort was to erase those dichotomies." Dr. Keller, whose honors and fellowships include a MacArthur award in 1992 (she used the money to buy a house on Cape Cod), was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1936, the daughter of Russian immigrants. She grew up in Woodside, graduated with a degree in physics from Brandeis and went on to Harvard. Over the years, she taught at New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere before winning her appointment at M.I.T. in 1992. Her most recent work, including her book "Making Sense of Life" in 2002, argues that what science regards as "known" depends largely "on the kinds of data we are able to acquire, on the way in which those data are gathered, and on the forms in which they are represented." Not everyone accepts these ideas. "When I saw her book, I was negatively impressed by it," said Dr. Mark Ptashne, a microbiologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "It sort of gave the impression that you don't really understand anything, that you don't know what a gene is." But when he saw how Dr. Keller responded to attacks on her ideas, "that made me realize what she was saying was quite reasonable," he said. One way she responds is to point out that the concept of the gene as commonly understood can cause intellectual confusion. In her talk at Harvard last week she said it was wrong to view genes as acting on their own to produce certain characteristics because their expression in the body depends on the actions of other genes, chemicals in the cell and other factors. Although no geneticist suggests that genes act independent of their context, the relative importance of different influences is always in dispute. And many people have found it necessary recently to repeat the truism that genes do not act alone to counter the idea that women may be genetically doomed as scientific also-rans. So it is not surprising that Dr. Keller was drawn into the fray. At her talk Thursday, for example, several questioners asked, in various ways, whether science might one day "tease out" the influences of nature and nurture so people would know which characteristics were theirs because they were born male or female, say, and which were products of upbringing and environment. In response, Dr. Keller said she wondered "why there should be so much enthusiasm" for the idea that people are born, not made. For one thing, she said, there is "nothing special" about birth as a line of demarcation in development, since even in the womb environment affects how genes are expressed. "When we talk about innate and acquired it is rarely clear where to draw the line," she said, "and where to draw the line is rarely stable. What a mess! What a mess all our efforts to sort nature from nurture get us into." Still, she said, that is not to suggest that delving into the problem is a waste of time. "I remain an unreconstructed modernist," she said. "I retain the hope and even the belief that at least some forms of confusion can actually be cleared up." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CORNELIA%20DEAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CORNELIA%20DEAN&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:31:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:31:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: (Paglia) 'Break, Blow, Burn': Well Versed Message-ID: 'Break, Blow, Burn': Well Versed New York Times Book Review, 5.3.27 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/027JAMESL.html By CLIVE JAMES BREAK, BLOW, BURN By Camille Paglia. 247 pp. Pantheon Books. $20. CLEARLY designed as a come-on for bright students who don't yet know very much about poetry, Camille Paglia's new book anthologizes 43 short works in verse from Shakespeare through to Joni Mitchell, with an essay about each. The essays do quite a lot of elementary explaining. Readers who think they already know something of the subject, however, would be rash if they gave her low marks just for spelling things out. Even they, if they were honest enough to admit it, might need help with the occasional Latin phrase, and they will find her analysis of individual poems quite taxing enough in its upper reaches. ''Having had his epiphany,'' she says of the sonnet ''Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,'' ''Wordsworth moves on, preserving his solitude and estrangement by shutting down his expanded perception.'' Nothing elementary about that. She flies as high as you can go, in fact, without getting into the airless space of literary theory and cultural studies. Not that she has ever regarded those activities as elevated. She has always regarded them, with good reason, as examples of humanism's perverse gift for attacking itself, and for providing the academic world with a haven for tenured mediocrity. This book is the latest shot in her campaign to save culture from theory. It thus squares well with another of her aims, to rescue feminism from its unwise ideological allegiances. So in the first instance ''Break, Blow, Burn'' is about poetry, and in the second it is about Camille Paglia. One measure of her quality as a commentator is that those two subjects are not in the reverse order. In view of her wide knowledge, her expressive gifts, her crackling personality and the inherent credibility problems posed by looking too much at her ease on top of a pair of Jimmy Choos, it is remarkable how good Paglia can be at not putting herself first. From this book you could doubt several aspects of her taste in poetry. But you couldn't doubt her love of it. She is humble enough to be enthralled by it; enthralled enough to be inspired; and inspired enough to write the sinuous and finely shaded prose that proves how a single poem can get the whole of her attention. From a woman who sometimes gives the impression that she finds reticence a big ask, this is a sure index of her subject's importance to her, and one quite likely to be infectious. My own prescription for making poetry popular in the schools would be to ban it -- with possession treated as a serious misdemeanor, and dealing as a felony -- but failing that, a book like this is probably the next best thing. If she doesn't make a poem sound like something dangerous, at least she makes it sound like something complicated. Students grown wary of pabulum might relish the nitty-gritty. The term ''a poem'' is one we have to use, because our author is strong on the point that a poet should be measured by individual poems, and not by a ''body of . . . work.'' To a reader from outside America, she sounds tremendously right about this, but inside America her view is likely to go on smacking of subversion for some time to come. One can only hope that the subversion does its stuff. Good poems are written one at a time: written that way and read that way. Even ''The Divine Comedy'' is a poem in the first instance, not part of a body of work; and even in Shakespeare's plays there are passages that lift themselves out of context. (''Shakespeare the poet,'' she says, ''often burns through Shakespeare the dramatist, not simply in the great soliloquies that have become actors' set pieces but in passages throughout his plays that can stand alone as poems.'') The penalty for talking about poets in universal terms before, or instead of, talking about their particular achievements is to devalue what they do while fetishizing what they are. This insidious process is far advanced in America, to the point where it corrupts not just the academics but the creators themselves. John Ashbery would have given us dozens more poems as thrilling as his jeu d'esprit about Daffy Duck if he had never been raised to the combined status of totem pole and wind tunnel, in which configuration he produces one interminable outpouring that deals with everything in general, with nothing in particular, can be cut off at any length from six inches to a mile, and will be printed by editors who feel that the presence in their publication of an isotropic rigmarole signed with Ashbery's name is a guarantee of seriousness precisely because they don't enjoy a line of it. Paglia, commendably, refuses such cargo-cult status even to Shakespeare. Working chronologically from then to now, the book starts with him: Sonnet 73, Sonnet 29 and the Ghost's speech from ''Hamlet,'' each individually explicated. The Ghost's speech counts as a poem because we not only experience it as an especially intense and coherent episode, we remember it that way. A poem's demand to be held in the memory counts for a lot with Paglia. Notably sensitive to language, rhythm and technique as devices for getting meaning into your mind and making it stick, she persuades you, throughout the book, that she has her poems by heart, even if she doesn't favor the idea of memorizing them deliberately like a trainee spy scanning a room. Her readings of Shakespeare are close, fully informed by the scholarship and -- a harder trick -- fundamentally sane, thus auguring well for her approach to Donne, whose Holy Sonnet XIV supplies the book's title. But her sensitivity to George Herbert is the best early sign of her range of sympathy. With Shakespeare, Donne and Marvell she has merely to convince her students, fresh from their gender studies, that a poet could call a woman his mistress without belittling her. With Herbert she has to convince them that a poet could feel the same passion about God. (''We follow the path of the all-too-human quester as he advances toward God, then retreats in confusion.'' That ''we'' could be a bit optimistic, but she might get lucky.) One of her best attributes is well brought out: her refusal to modernize the past. Her thorough background in cultural history -- the Italians, who should be proud of her parentage, would call her preparatissima -- is always in play. Her entertaining wealth of up-to-date pop-culture allusion is merely the top dressing, and she is usually careful not to strain after a faddish point. In her exemplary analysis of Shelley's ''Ozymandias,'' for example, she could easily have referred to the last scene of ''Planet of the Apes,'' when Charlton Heston looks up at the Statue of Liberty's head just as Shelley's ''traveler from an antique land'' looked up at the truncated legs of stone. I was rather expecting her to. Perhaps she has realized, however, that the pace of forgetfulness is always accelerating, and that we have moved from an era of people who have never heard of Shelley to an era of people who have never heard of Charlton Heston. When she calls Yeats's ''Leda and the Swan'' ''the greatest poem of the 20th century,'' she makes one of her few sweeping statements. It isn't a bad one, but it doesn't do enough to offset an equally sweeping question from us. When the book moves toward modern times, it moves toward America. Whatever happened to the Old World it left behind? After Coleridge (a bold and convincing interpretation of ''Kubla Khan''), Yeats is the last European, living or dead, to get an entry. There are probably copyright reasons for choosing nothing by, say, Auden, and meanwhile there is the compensation of the way she can treat great American poets as accomplished artists without merely abetting the worship of icons. This coolly enthusiastic emphasis shows up clearly in her detailed admiration for Emily Dickinson. Paglia can see the epic in the miniature, an especially important critical gift when it comes to a poet who could enamel the inside of a raindrop. One would be glad to have a complete Dickinson annotated by Paglia. An utter contrast of destinies, it would be a meeting of true minds. Paglia, too, has a kind of solitude, though it might not sound that way. The media attention she attracts does little to modify her opinions. That might be partly why she attracts so much of it. The proud motto of every suckerfish is: we swim with sharks. But the most threatening thing about her, from the American viewpoint, is that she refuses to treat the arts as an instrument of civil rights. Without talent, no entitlement. She has the powers of discrimination to show what talent is -- powers that add up to a talent in themselves. A critical scope that can trace the intensity uniting different artistic fields is not unprecedented in America, but she is an unusually well-equipped exponent of it. Making a solid attempt to pin down the sliding meanings of Wallace Stevens's little poem ''Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock,'' she brings in exactly the right comparison: a piano piece by Erik Satie. She compares the poem's ''red weather'' with a Gauguin seascape: right again. These comparisons help to define the Post-Impressionist impulse from which all the verbal music of Stevens's ''Man With the Blue Guitar'' emerged, while incidentally reminding us that Paglia, before she made this bid on behalf of poetry, did the same for painting, and with the same treasury of knowledge to back up her endeavor. But above all, her range of allusion helps to show what was in Stevens's head: the concentration of multiple sensitivities that propelled his seeming facility. ''Under enchantment by imagination, space and time expand, melt and cease to exist.'' Nobody has a right to a creative mind like his. It's a gift. Students expecting a poem by Maya Angelou will find that this book is less inclusive than the average lineup for Inauguration Day. But there is a poem by Langston Hughes; and, even better, there is ''Georgia Dusk,'' by Jean Toomer. A featured player in the Harlem Renaissance of the early 1920's, Toomer transmuted the heritage of Southern slavery into music. So did the blues, but Toomer's music was all verbal. He was a meticulous technician, which is probably the main reason his name has faded. Paglia does a lot to bring it back, but she might have done even more. She concedes too much by saying his ''courtly, flowery diction'' was more Victorian than modernist. The same might have been said of John Crowe Ransom, and with equal inaccuracy. Toomer sounds to me like a bridge through time from Elinor Wylie, whom Paglia doesn't mention, to Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht, neither of whom she mentions either. If she has a deaf spot, it lies on that wing. Favoring, with good reason, the American vernacular, she tends to set it up as something that supersedes European formality, as if it were possible for a poem to be overconstructed. But it can't. It can only be underpowered. If she had paid the same pinpoint attention to the complex interplay within Toomer's four-square quatrains as she pays to William Carlos Williams's free verse in ''The Red Wheelbarrow,'' she would have been able to show how a superficially mechanical form can intensify conversational rhythms by the tightness with which it contains them. It would have been a useful generosity. Hecht's reputation was injured when Helen Vendler found his forms limiting. On the contrary, they were limitless. As for Wilbur, his fastidiously carpentered postwar poems were part of the American liberation of Europe. Whether that liberation was a new stage in American cultural imperialism's road to conquest remains a nice question. One would like to have heard her answer. Such a discussion would lie well within her scope. But our disappointment that she stops short is a sign of her achievement. If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement. Occasionally there is cause for worry that her young students might listen too well. Three short poems by Theodore Roethke are praised without any warning that most of his longer poems, if the reader goes in search of them, will prove to be helpless echoes of bigger names. Ambition undid him, as it has undone many another American poet infected by the national delusion that the arts can have a major league. The short poem by Frank O'Hara should have been marked with a caveat: anything longer by the same poet will be found to have a lot less in it, because the urge to find a verbal equivalent for the apparent freedom of New York Abstract Expressionist painting led him to believe that he could mean everything by saying anything. Nor are we told that Robert Lowell would spend the later and incoherently copious part of his career making sure that he would never again attain the rhetorical magnificence of the opening lines of ''Man and Wife.'' But Paglia knows why, and how, those lines are magnificent: and in Lowell's case, among her specific remarks, there is a general one that typifies her knack of extending an aesthetic question into the moral sphere. Lowell's ''confessional'' streak insulted his loved ones. The same question is posed again by Sylvia Plath's ''Daddy,'' an agonized masterpiece by which Paglia is driven to a stretch of critical writing that stands out for its richness even in a rich book. Applying her particularized admiration to rescue the poem from those who cite it as a mantra, Paglia points out an awkward truth about Plath as a feminist Winged Victory: her poetry was in ''erudite engagement with canonical male writers.'' A still more awkward truth is that the manner of Plath's suicide helped to set up her husband, Ted Hughes, as an abuser of women. Paglia defends Hughes against Plath, a defense that few feminists have dared to undertake. She also defends Plath's father against Plath, which might seem a quixotic move in view of the poem's subject matter, but does help to make the point that Plath, by calling her father a Nazi and identifying herself with millions of helpless victims, was personalizing the Holocaust in a way that only her psychic disturbance could excuse. Leaving out the possibility that Plath might have been saying she was nuts, Paglia does Plath the honor of taking her at her word. But you can't do her that honor without bringing her down off her pedestal. The poet used her unquestionable talent to say some very questionable things, and there's no way out of it. Paglia is tough enough to accept that conclusion: tough enough, that is, not to complain when she winds up all alone. She seems to enjoy being alone. It's a handy trait for the sort of thinker who can't see an orthodoxy form without wanting not to be part of it. Google her for half an hour and you will find her fighting battles with other feminists all over cyberspace. Recording how she became, at the age of 4, ''a lifelong idolater of pagan goddesses'' after seeing Ava Gardner in ''Show Boat,'' she tells us why she is less than thrilled with Madonna. It's a view I share, but at least Madonna manufactured herself. Ava Gardner from North Carolina was manufactured in a Hollywood studio, as she was the first to admit. And what is Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has ''the mental depth of a pancake''? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in ''Wag the Dog''? And what about her performance in ''One Kill''? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Paglia by now should be famous enough to start throttling back on some of the stuff she is famous for. She might make a start with bitchery, for which she has a taste but no touch. The media want snide remarks from her the same way that the Sahara wants rain. But writers capable of developing a nuanced position over the length of an essay should not be tempted into believing that they can sum it up in a sound bite. Liberal orthodoxy will always need opposing, but not on the basis that all its points are self-evidently absurd. According to Paglia, gun abuse is a quirk of the sexually dysfunctional. That might be right, but people aren't necessarily deluded when they want a ban on the sort of gun that can kill a dozen people in half a minute. Waiting until everybody is sexually functional would be a long time to hold your breath. NOR does Paglia's useful conviction that feminism, as an ideology, is as debilitating for individual responsibility as any other ideology make it true that women are now out of the woods. Only the misapprehension that she can be wise like lightning could explain her brief appearance, in ''Inside Deep Throat,'' to tell us that the cultural artifact in question was ''an epochal moment in the history of modern sexuality.'' On the contrary, it was a moronic moment in the history of exploitation movies made by people so untalented that they can't be convincing even when they masturbate. But all these posturings by the madly glamorous Paglia happen only because, in the electrified frenzy of the epochal moment, she forgets that the lightstorm of publicity makes her part of the world of images. In her mind, if not yet in her more excitable membranes, she knows better than to mistake that world for the real one. This book on poetry is aimed at a generation of young people who, knowing nothing except images, are cut off from the ''mother ship'' of culture. The mother ship was first mentioned in her 2002 lecture called ''The Magic of Images.'' In the same lecture, she put down the marker that led to this book: ''The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words.'' She can say that again, and let's hope she does, in a longer edition of a book that shows her at her true worth. When you have proved that you can cut the mustard, it's time to cut the malarkey. Clive James's most recent book is ''As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002.'' From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 16:31:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 12:31:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In a Judgmental World, She Was Ashamed of Getting Sick Message-ID: The New York Times > Health > Mental Health & Behavior > Cases: In a Judgmental World, She Was Ashamed of Getting Sick http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/health/psychology/12case.html April 12, 2005 By GRETCHEN COOK My mother died of emphysema a couple of years ago. I was there when she died and the image of her gasping for breath will not go away. But what clings to me even more is the grief I feel about what she felt about her death, which was shame. She had been a heavy smoker, and I believe she suffered as much from that knowledge as she did from her painful physical condition. I tried once to alleviate her torment by telling her that I sensed her shame, and wished she wouldn't pile it onto her other sufferings. She acknowledged what I said in some small way, and I can only hope that it helped her absolve herself. But I am my mother's daughter, and I know too well that shame is a lonely affliction that only self-forgiveness can cure. I do not think she ever had that kind of compassion for herself. One small comfort is that near the end my mother, ever the political activist, was able to rail against the tobacco companies that got her addicted. But when the symptoms of her illness first appeared, her shame sent her into such deep denial that she insisted her respiratory problems were from breathing in dust mites or from some childhood disease. That denial lasted years. I've always felt I have not grieved sufficiently for my mother, perhaps because I focused my sorrow on her shame rather than on my loss. Today we know that lung and heart diseases, diabetes, hepatitis C and organ damage from eating disorders and addictions can be prevented or controlled by changes in the way people live. You can quit smoking, exercise more, eat better, adopt rigorous medication regimes or enroll in 12-step programs. Does this mean that, in a world that seems increasingly obsessed with assigning blame, those who have these illnesses will be judged harshly by others - and by themselves? There are no hard statistics on how widespread such blaming is, but Dr. Aly Rifai, a psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health, told me that about a third of his patients suffered a good deal of shame about their illnesses. Dr. Rifai believes that there is a link between the shame a patient feels and the course of an illness. People with H.I.V. or hepatitis C, he said, may fare worse if they are depressed when they begin treatment. Dr. Rifai has also found that shame leads to such deep denial that some patients initially refuse treatment and thus lose valuable time. My mother once said that she did not want to do her respiratory exercises because it would make her emphysema "too real." Sadder still, Dr. Rifai says, "There's a percentage of people who just don't want treatment and see their diseases as just punishment for the bad deeds they did in their lives." Public attitudes only fuel this self-condemnation. The way someone contracts a disease can influence how much other people sympathize. One study, for example, found that there was a widespread belief that people with drinking-related liver damage should not receive liver transplants. Last week, I had to admit that it mattered to me, too. When Peter Jennings announced last Tuesday that he had lung cancer, I immediately scanned the news stories to see if he had been a smoker. He had. This should not come as a surprise. Like my mother, Mr. Jennings was raised on the notion that smoking was harmless, even glamorous. My mother loved smoking like no one I have ever known. She once described to me the wonderful tingling sensation of her first drag on a cigarette and how she loved it just as much decades later. Smoking seemed to be her greatest pleasure, one of the few things she could control in her life. She was so addicted that, like many others, she even smoked for a while after her illness was diagnosed. Dr. Rifai said that at the National Institutes of Health, doctors did not always try to determine how patients with diseases like hepatitis C - which is spread through blood transfusions, intravenous drug use and sexual contact - became infected. Sometimes, he says, "there's no gainful purpose" in knowing. "It will just serve to make it worse and increase those thoughts that this is something they did to themselves and they should just succumb to the illness," Dr. Rifai said. Obviously, educating the public about how infection occurs is essential in preventing disease. And people need to know that smoking causes lung disease. Neither Dr. Rifai nor I would dispute this. But I have to admit that I wish my mother could have hung on to her dust mite theory to the end. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:39:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:39:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.03: The Book Stops Here Message-ID: Wired 13.03: The Book Stops Here http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.03/wiki_pr.html [I knew Jimbo from Objectivist lists. A rather short-tempered fellow, at least with me. He also has given up on discussing Ayn Rand. Wikipedia is a great resource. The current headmaster of my prep school (visit http://fvs.edu) told me that the single most important skill for the world of 2025 will be how to distinguish good from bogus information on the Net. I agree completely, but the folks at the U.S. Department of Education are only interested in what can be measured.] Jimmy Wales wanted to build a free encyclopedia on the Internet. So he raised an army of amateurs and created the self-organizing, self-repairing, hyperaddictive library of the future called Wikipedia. By Daniel H. Pink Dixon, New Mexico, is a rural town with a few hundred residents and no traffic lights. At the end of a dirt road, in the shadow of a small mountain sits a gray trailer. It is the home of Einar Kvaran. To understand the most audacious experiment of the postboom Internet, this is a good place to begin. Kvaran is a tall and hale 56-year-old with a ruddy face, blue eyes, and blond hair that's turning white. He calls himself an "art historian without portfolio" but has no formal credentials in his area of proclaimed expertise. He's never published a scholarly article or taught a college course. Over three decades, he's been a Peace Corps volunteer, an autoworker, a union steward, a homeschooling mentor, and the drummer in a Michigan band called Kodai Road. Right now, he's unemployed. Which isn't to say he doesn't work. For about six hours each day, Kvaran reads and writes about American sculpture and public art and publishes his articles for an audience of millions around the world. Hundreds of books on sculptors, regional architecture, and art history are stacked floor to ceiling inside his trailer - along with 68 thick albums containing 20 years of photos he's taken on the American road. The outlet for his knowledge is at the other end of his dialup Internet connection: the daring but controversial Web site known as Wikipedia. Four years ago, a wealthy options trader named Jimmy Wales set out to build a massive online encyclopedia ambitious in purpose and unique in design. This encyclopedia would be freely available to anyone. And it would be created not by paid experts and editors, but by whoever wanted to contribute. With software called Wiki - which allows anybody with Web access to go to a site and edit, delete, or add to what's there - Wales and his volunteer crew would construct a repository of knowledge to rival the ancient library of Alexandria. In 2001, the idea seemed preposterous. In 2005, the nonprofit venture is the largest encyclopedia on the planet. Wikipedia offers 500,000 articles in English - compared with Britannica's 80,000 and Encarta's 4,500 - fashioned by more than 16,000 contributors. Tack on the editions in 75 other languages, including Esperanto and Kurdish, and the total Wikipedia article count tops 1.3 million. Wikipedia's explosive growth is due to the contributions of Kvaran and others like him. Self-taught and self-motivated, Kvaran wrote his first article last summer - a short piece on American sculptor Corrado Parducci. Since then, Kvaran has written or contributed to two dozen other entries on American art, using his library and photographs as sources. He's added words and images to 30 other topics, too - the Lincoln Memorial, baseball player Carl Yastrzemski, photographer Tina Modotti, and Iceland's first prime minister, Hannes Hafstein, who happens to be Kvaran's great-grandfather. "I think of myself as a teacher," Kvaran says over tea at his kitchen table. To many guardians of the knowledge cathedral - librarians, lexicographers, academics - that's precisely the problem. Who died and made this guy professor? No pedigreed scholars scrutinize his work. No research assistants check his facts. Should we trust an encyclopedia that allows anyone with a pulse and a mousepad to opine about Jackson Pollock's place in postmodernism? What's more, the software that made Wikipedia so easy to build also makes it easy to manipulate and deface. A former editor at the venerable Encyclop?dia Britannica recently likened the site to a public rest room: You never know who used it last. So the modest trailer at the end of a dirt road in this pinprick of a town holds some cosmic questions. Is Wikipedia a heartening effort in digital humanitarianism - or a not-so-smart mob unleashing misinformation on the masses? Are well-intentioned amateurs any replacement for professionals? And is charging nothing for knowledge too high a price? Recovery may take 12 steps, but becoming a junkie requires only four. First comes chance - an unexpected encounter. Chance stirs curiosity. Curiosity leads to experimentation. And experimentation cascades into addiction. For Danny Wool, chance arrived on a winter afternoon in 2002, after an argument about - of all things - Kryptonite. Googling the term from his Brooklyn home to settle the debate, he came upon the Wikipedia entry. He looked up a few more subjects and noticed that each one contained a mysterious hyperlink that said Edit. Curious but too nervous to do anything, he returned to Wikipedia a few more times. Then one night he corrected an error in an article about Jewish holidays. You can do that?! It was his first inhalation of Wiki crack. He became one of Wikipedia's earliest registered users and wrote his first article - on Muckleshoot, a Washington state Indian tribe. Since then, he has made more than 16,000 contributions. Bryan Derksen wrote the original Kryptonite article that Wool discovered. While surfing from his home in Edmonton, Derksen also stumbled upon Wikipedia and quickly traveled the path to addiction. He read a few entries on Greek mythology and found them inadequate. The Edit link beckoned him like a street pusher. He clicked it and typed in a few changes. You can do that?! "I just got hooked," he tells me. He's now made more edits than all but three Wikipedians - some 40,000 additions and revisions. Number one on the list of contributors is Derek Ramsey, who has automated his addiction. A software engineer in Pennsylvania, Ramsey wrote a Java program called rambot that automatically updates Wikipedia articles on cities and counties. So far, the man and machine combination has contributed more than 100,000 edits. String enough of these addicts together, add a few thousand casual users, and pretty soon you have a new way to do an old thing. Humankind has long sought to tame the jungle of knowledge and display it in a zoo of friendly facts. But while the urge to create encyclopedias has endured, the production model has evolved. Wikipedia is the latest stage. In the beginning, encyclopedias relied on the One Smart Guy model. In ancient Greece, Aristotle put pen to papyrus and single-handedly tried to record all the knowledge of his time. Four hundred years later, the Roman nobleman Pliny the Elder cranked out a 37-volume set of the day's knowledge. The Chinese scholar Tu Yu wrote an encyclopedia in the ninth century. And in the 1700s, Diderot and a few pals (including Voltaire and Rousseau) took 29 years to create the Encyclop?die, ou Dictionnaire Raisonn? des Sciences, des Arts et des M?tiers. With the Industrial Revolution, the One Smart Guy approach gradually gave way to the One Best Way model, which borrowed the principles of scientific management and the lessons of assembly lines. Encyclop?dia Britannica pioneered this approach in Scotland and honed it to perfection. Large groups of experts, each performing a task on a detailed work chart under the direction of a manager, produced encyclopedias of enormous breadth. Late in the 20th century, computers changed encyclopedias - and the Internet changed them more. Today, Britannica and World Book still sell some 130-pound, $1,100, multivolume sets, but they earn most of their money from Internet subscriptions. Yet while the medium has shifted from atoms to bits, the production model - and therefore the product itself - has remained the same. Now Wales has brought forth a third model - call it One for All. Instead of one really smart guy, Wikipedia draws on thousands of fairly smart guys and gals - because in the metamathematics of encyclopedias, 500 Kvarans equals one Pliny the Elder. Instead of clearly delineated lines of authority, Wikipedia depends on radical decentralization and self-organization - open source in its purest form. Most encyclopedias start to fossilize the moment they're printed on a page. But add Wiki software and some helping hands and you get something self-repairing and almost alive. A different production model creates a product that's fluid, fast, fixable, and free. The One for All model has delivered solid results in a remarkably short time. Look up any topic you know something about - from the Battle of Fredericksburg to Madame Bovary to Planck's law of black body radiation - and you'll probably find that the Wikipedia entry is, if not perfect, not bad. Sure, the Leonard Nimoy entry is longer than the one on Toni Morrison. But the Morrison article covers the basics of her life and literary works about as well as the World Book entry. And among the nearly half-million articles are tens of thousands whose quality easily rivals that of Britannica or Encarta. What makes the model work is not only the collective knowledge and effort of a far-flung labor force, but also the willingness to abide by two core principles. The first: neutrality. All articles should be written without bias. Wikipedians are directed not to take a stand on controversial subjects like abortion or global warming but to fairly represent all sides. The second principle is good faith. All work should be approached with the assumption that the author is trying to help the project, not harm it. Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and the goodness of others. In the Wikipedia ideal, people of goodwill sometimes disagree. But from the respectful clash of opposing viewpoints and the combined wisdom of the many, something resembling the truth will emerge. Most of the time. If you looked up Jimmy Carter on Wikipedia one morning this winter, you would have discovered something you couldn't learn from Britannica. According to the photo that accompanied Carter's entry, America's 39th president was a scruffy, random unshaven man with his left index finger shoved firmly up his nose. Lurking in the underbrush of Wikipedia's idyllic forest of reason and good intentions are contributors less noble in purpose, whose numbers are multiplying. Wiki devotees have names for many of them. First, there are the trolls, minor troublemakers who breach the principle of good faith with inane edits designed to rile serious users. More insidious are vandals, who try to wreck the site - inserting profanity and ethnic slurs, unleashing bots that put ads into entries, and pasting pictures of penises and other junior-high laugh-getters. Con- sidering how easy it is to make changes on Wikipedia, you'd imagine these ne'er-do-wells could potentially overwhelm the site. But they haven't - at least not yet - because defenses against them are built into the structure. Anybody who is logged in can place an article on a "watch list." Whenever somebody amends the entry, the watch list records the change. So when that anonymous vandal replaced a Jimmy Carter photo with a nose-picker, all the Wikipedians with Jimmy Carter on their watch list knew about it. One of them merely reverted to the original portrait. At the same time, the user who rescued the former president from Boogerville noticed that the vandal had also posted the nose-pick photo on the "Rapping" entry - and he got rid of that image just four minutes after the photo appeared. On controversial topics, the response can be especially swift. Wikipedia's article on Islam has been a persistent target of vandalism, but Wikipedia's defenders of Islam have always proved nimbler than the vandals. Take one fairly typical instance. At 11:20 one morning not too long ago, an anonymous user replaced the entire Islam entry with a single scatological word. At 11:22, a user named Solitude reverted the entry. At 11:25, the anonymous user struck again, this time replacing the article with the phrase "u stink!" By 11:26, another user, Ahoerstemeir, reverted that change - and the vandal disappeared. When MIT's Fernanda Vi?gas and IBM's Martin Wattenberg and Kushal Dave studied Wikipedia, they found that cases of mass deletions, a common form of vandalism, were corrected in a median time of 2.8 minutes. When an obscenity accompanied the mass deletion, the median time dropped to 1.7 minutes. It turns out that Wikipedia has an innate capacity to heal itself. As a result, woefully outnumbered vandals often give up and leave. (To paraphrase Linus Torvalds, given enough eyeballs, all thugs are callow.) What's more, making changes is so simple that who prevails often comes down to who cares more. And hardcore Wikipedians care. A lot. Wool logs on to Wikipedia at 6 each morning and works two hours before leaving for his day job developing education programs for a museum. When he gets back home around 6:30 pm, he hops back on Wikipedia for a few more hours. Derksen checks his watch list each morning before leaving for work at a small company that sells medical equipment on eBay. When he returns home, he'll spend a few hours just clicking on the Random Page link to see what needs to get done. It's tempting to urge people like Wool and Derksen to get a life. But imagine if they instead spent their free time walking through public parks, picking up garbage. We'd call them good citizens. Still, even committed citizens sometimes aren't muscular enough to fend off determined bad guys. As Wikipedia has grown, Wales has been forced to impose some more centralized, policelike measures - to guard against "edit warriors," "point-of-view warriors," "revert warriors," and all those who have difficulty playing well with others. "We try to be as open as we can," Wales says, "but some of these people are just impossible." During last year's presidential election, Wikipedia had to lock both the George W. Bush and the John Kerry pages because of incessant vandalism and bickering. The Wikipedia front page, another target of attacks, is also protected. If that suggests an emerging hierarchy in this bastion of egalitarian knowledge-gathering, so be it. The Wikipedia power pyramid looks like this: At the bottom are anonymous contributors, people who make a few edits and are identified only by their IP addresses. On the next level stand Wikipedia's myriad registered users around the globe, people such as Kvaran in New Mexico, who have chosen a screen name (he's Carptrash) and make edits under that byline. Some of the most dedicated users try to reach the next level - administrator. Wikipedia's 400 administrators, Derksen and Wool among them, can delete articles, protect pages, and block IP addresses. Above this group are bureaucrats, who can crown administrators. The most privileged bureaucrats are stewards. And above stewards are developers, 57 superelites who can make direct changes to the Wikipedia software and database. There's also an arbitration committee that hears disputes and can ban bad users. At the very top, with powers that range far beyond those of any mere Wikipedian mortal, is Wales, known to everyone in Wiki-world as Jimbo. He can do pretty much anything he wants - from locking pages to banning people to getting rid of developers. So vast are his powers that some began calling him "the benevolent dictator." But Wales bristled at that tag. So his minions assigned him a different, though no less imposing, label. "Jimbo," says Wikipedia administrator Mark Pellegrini, "is the God-King." The God-King drives a Hyundai. On a sunny Florida Monday, Wales is piloting his red Accent from his St. Petersburg home across the bay to downtown Tampa, where on the 11th floor of a shabby office building a company called Neutelligent manages a vast server farm. In one of the back rows, stacked on two racks, are the guts of Wikipedia - 42 servers connected by a hair ball of orange and blue cables. For the next two hours, Wales scoots to and fro, plugging and unplugging cables while trading messages with a Wikipedia developer on Internet Relay Chat via a nearby keyboard. Back in St. Pete, Wales oversees his empire from a pair of monitors in Wikipedia's headquarters - two cramped, windowless rooms that look like the offices of a failed tech startup. Computer equipment is strewn everywhere. An open copy of Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache is splayed on the floor. It may be good to be God-King, but it's not glamorous. Wales began his journey in Huntsville, Alabama. His father worked in a grocery store. His mother and grandmother operated a tiny private school called the House of Learning, which Wales and his three siblings attended. He graduated from Auburn University in 1989 with a degree in finance and ended up studying options pricing in an economics PhD program at Indiana University. Bored with academic life, he left school in 1994 and went to Chicago, where he took to betting on interest rate and foreign-currency fluctuations. In six years, he earned enough to support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives. They moved to San Diego in 1998. The times being what they were, Wales started an Internet company called Bomis, a search engine and Web directory. He began hearing about the fledgling open source movement and wondered whether volunteers could create something besides software. So he recruited Larry Sanger, then an Ohio State University doctoral student in philosophy, whom he'd encountered on some listservs. He put Sanger on the Bomis payroll, and together they launched a free online encyclopedia called Nupedia. Why an encyclopedia? Wales says he simply wanted to see if it could be done. With Sanger as editor in chief, Nupedia essentially replicated the One Best Way model. He assembled a roster of academics to write articles. (Participants even had to fax in their degrees as proof of their expertise.) And he established a seven-stage process of editing, fact-checking, and peer review. "After 18 months and $250,000," Wales says, "we had 12 articles." Then an employee told Wales about Wiki software. On January 15, 2001, they launched a Wiki-fied version and within a month, they had 200 articles. In a year, they had 18,000. And on September 20, 2004, when the Hebrew edition added an article on Kazakhstan's flag, Wikipedia had its 1 millionth article. Total investment: about $500,000, most of it from Wales himself. Sanger left the project in 2002. "In the Nupedia model, there was room for an editor in chief," Wales says. "The Wiki model is too distributed for that." Sanger, a scholar at heart, returned to academic life. His co-founder, meanwhile, became a minor geek rock star. Wales has been asked to advise the BBC, Nokia, and other large enterprises curious about Wikis. Technology conferences in the US and Europe clamor for him. And while he's committed to keeping his creation a "charitable project," as he constantly calls it (wikipedia.com became wikipedia.org almost three years ago), the temptations are mounting. Late last year, Wales and Angela Beesley, an astonishingly dedicated Wikipedian, launched a for-profit venture called WikiCities. The company will provide free hosting for "community-based" sites - RVers, poodle owners, genealogy buffs, and so on. The sites will operate on the same software that powers Wikipedia, and the content will be available under a free license. But WikiCities intends to make money by selling advertising. After all, if several thousand people can create an encyclopedia, a few hundred Usher devotees should be able to put together the ultimate fan site. And if legions of Usher fans are hanging out in one place, some advertiser will pay to try to sell them concert tickets or music downloads. It may feel like we've been down this road before - remember GeoCities and theglobe.com? But Wales says this is different because those earlier sites lacked any mechanism for true community. "It was just free homepages," he says. WikiCities, he believes, will let people who share a passion also share a project. They'll be able to design and build projects together. So the founder of the Web's grand experiment in the democratic dissemination of information is also trying to resurrect GeoCities. While some may find the notion silly, many others just want a piece of Jimbo magic. During our conversation over lunch, Wales' cell phone rings. It's a partner at Accel, the venture capital firm, calling to talk about WikiCities and any other Wiki-related investment ideas Wales might have. Wales says he's busy and asks the caller to phone back later. Then he smiles at me. "I'll let him cool his heels awhile." Wikipedia's articles on the British peerage system - clearheaded explanations of dukes, viscounts, and other titles of nobility - are largely the work of a user known as Lord Emsworth. A few of Emsworth's pieces on kings and queens of England have been honored as Wikipedia's Featured Article of the Day. It turns out that Lord Emsworth claims to be a 16-year-old living in South Brunswick, New Jersey. On Wikipedia, nobody has to know you're a sophomore. And that has some distressed. Larry Sanger gave voice to these criticisms in a recent essay posted on kuro5hin.org titled "Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism." Although he acknowledges that "Wikipedia is very cool," he argues that the site's production model suffers from two big problems. The first is that "regardless of whether Wikipedia actually is more or less reliable than the average encyclopedia," librarians, teachers, and academics don't perceive it as credible, because it has no formal review process. The second problem, according to Sanger, is that the site in general and Wales in particular are too "anti-elitist." Established scholars might be willing to contribute to Wikipedia - but not if they have to deal with trolls and especially not if they're considered no different from any schmo with an iMac. Speaking from his home in Columbus, Ohio, where he teaches at Ohio State, Sanger stresses that Wikipedia is a fine and worthy endeavor. But he says that academics don't take it seriously. "A lot of the articles look like they're written by undergraduates." He believes that "people who make knowing things their life's work should be accorded a special place in the project." But since Wikipedia's resolute anti-elitism makes that unlikely, Sanger argues, something else will happen: Wikipedia will fork - that is, a group of academics will take Wikipedia's content, which is available under a free license, and produce their own peer-reviewed reference work. "I wanted to send a wake-up call to the Wikipedia community to tell them that this fork is probably going to happen." Wales' response essentially boils down to this: Fork you. "You want to organize that?" he sniffs. "Here are the servers." Yet Wales acknowledges that in the next year, partly in response to these concerns, Wikipedia will likely offer a stable - that is, unchangeable - version alongside its One for All edition. But both Sanger's critique and Wales' reaction miss a larger point: You can't evaluate Wikipedia by traditional encyclopedia standards. A forked Wikipedia run by academics would be Nupedia 2.0. It would use the One Best Way production model, which inevitably would produce a One Best Way product. That's not a better or worse Wikipedia any more than Instapundit.com is a better or worse Washington Post. They are different animals. Encyclopedias aspire to be infallible. But Wikipedia requires that the perfect never be the enemy of the good. Citizen editors don't need to make an entry flawless. They just need to make it better. As a result, even many Wikipedians believe the site is not as good as traditional encyclopedias. "On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give Wikipedia a 7.8 in reliability," Kvaran told me in New Mexico. "I'd give Britannica an 8.8." But how much does that matter? Britannica has been around since before the American Revolution; Wikipedia just celebrated its fifth birthday. More important, Britannica costs $70 a year; Wikipedia is free. The better criterion on which to measure Wikipedia is whether this very young, pretty good, ever improving, totally free site serves a need - just as the way to measure Britannica is whether the additional surety that comes from its production model is worth the cost. There's another equally important difference between the two offerings. The One Best Way approach creates something finished. The One for All model creates something alive. When the Indian Ocean tsunami erupted late last year, Wikipedians produced several entries on the topic within hours. By contrast, World Book, whose CD-ROM allows owners to download regular updates, hadn't updated its tsunami or Indian Ocean entries a full month after the devastation occurred. That's the likely fate of Wikipedia's proposed stable, or snapshot, version. Fixing its contents in a book or on a CD or DVD is tantamount to embalming a living thing. The body may look great, but it's no longer breathing. "You can create life in there," says Wikipedian Oliver Brown, a high school teacher in Aptos, California. "If you don't know about something, you can start an article, and other people can come and feed it, nurture it." For example, two years ago, Danny Wool was curious about the American architectural sculptor Lee Lawrie, whose statue of Atlas sits nearby Rockefeller Center. Wool posted a stub - a few sentences on a topic - in the hopes that someone would add to it. That someone turned out to be Kvaran, who owned several books on Lawrie and who'd photographed his work not only at Rockefeller Center but also at the Capitol Building in Lincoln, Nebraska. Today, the Lawrie entry has grown from two sentences to several thorough paragraphs, a dozen photos, and a list of references. Brown himself posted a stub when he was wondering how many people were considered the father or mother of something. Today Wikipedia lists more than 230 people known as the father or mother of an idea, a movement, or an invention. And that number will likely be higher tomorrow. As the father of this new kind of encyclopedia puts it, "Wikipedia will never be finished." In 1962, Charles Van Doren - who would go on to become a senior editor of Britannica but is more famous for his role in the 1950s quiz show scandal - wrote a think piece for the journal The American Behavioral Scientist. His essay, "The Idea of an Encyclopedia," is similar in spirit to the one Sanger wrote late last year: a warning to his community. Van Doren warned not that encyclopedias of his day lacked credibility, but that they lacked vitality. "The tone of American encyclopedias is often fiercely inhuman," he wrote. "It appears to be the wish of some contributors to write about living institutions as if they were pickled frogs, outstretched upon a dissecting board." An encyclopedia ought to be a "revolutionary document," he argued. And while Van Doren didn't call for a new production model, he did say that "the ideal encyclopedia should be radical. It should stop being safe." What stood in the way of this new approach was precisely what encyclopedias prided themselves on. "Respectability seems safe," he wrote. "But what will be respectable in 30 years seems avant-garde now. If an encyclopedia hopes to be respectable in 2000, it must appear daring in the year 1963." Jimbo and his minions - from Einar Kvaran in his New Mexico trailer to Lord Emsworth in his New Jersey bedroom - may seem daring today. But they're about to become respectable. Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dhpink at mac.com) is author of A Whole New Mind: Moving From the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:39:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:39:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Society: Family Life: Sold on Work Message-ID: Society: Family Life: Sold on Work [First, the summary from CHE. Sorry about the formatting, but it's an important article.] [A glance at the March/April issue of "Society": Social expectations of women and their work [American women are spending more time at work and having fewer children, both of which are fine, says Neil Gilbert, as long as that is what they really want. But some women may have been sold a bill of goods, warns the professor of social welfare at the University of California at Berkeley. [For many women, working outside the home is not an economic necessity, so they may be motivated by the perception that employment is freeing and personally fulfilling, he says. [Paid work "is widely associated with the virtues of personal empowerment, achievement, and self-realization, particularly by public-opinion makers -- professors, journalists, authors, artists, and pundits -- whose jobs tend to provide these benefits," he writes. "But the joys of work are not evenly distributed." [The elite few for whom paid work does impart joy and independence, he says, perpetuate the myth that such is the case for everyone. But "for most wage labor, the independence that comes with a paycheck is accompanied by obedience to the daily authority of supervisors, submission to the schedule and discipline of the work environment, deference to the demands of customers, and susceptibility to the vagaries of the marketplace," he writes. [While the expansion of employment opportunities for women is one of the "major social accomplishments of recent times," he says, and many women prefer a work-oriented lifestyle to a child-oriented one, others would rather have more children and spend more time at home with them. [Those women should not be overly influenced, he says, by the current social expectation that women and men will both work full time while sharing child-rearing duties equally -- an expectation that has been "more influential in the socialization of women than men." [The article, "Family Life: Sold on Work," is online for subscribers. Information about the journal is available at http://www.transactionpub.com/ ] Symposium: Women and Conservative Politics FAMILY LIFE: SOLD ON WORK Neil Gilbert The women's movement for equal opportunity in the 1960s spawned tremendous gains in education and labor force participation. Women's share of college enrollments increased from 37 percent in 1960 to 57 percent in 2002. Since the mid-1980s more bachelors and masters degrees have been awarded annually to women than men. And women are increasingly going on to careers in high status occupations, such as medicine, law, business, and higher education. Overall the female labor force participation rate climbed from 37 percent in 1960 to 60 percent in 2002. These developments have been accompanied by the expansion of family-friendly social policies designed to harmonize the competing demands of family life and work. The core family-friendly policies include day care, parental leave benefits, preschool programs, and other publicly subsidized measures to reduce the friction between raising young children and holding a job. In the United States, federal and state expenditures on childcare programs for low-income families amounted to $14.1 billion in 1999 and another $2 billion was distributed to the middle classes through the childcare tax credit. The Family Medical Leave Act provides 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave for workers in companies of 50 or more employees. Western European countries have a more extensive system of family-friendly policies with more generous parental leaves and publicly financed child care covering, for example, 70 percent of children from three years to school age in France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark and other countries. The problem with family-friendly policies is that for many, if not most, two-earner couples with regular jobs and two children under six years of age there are not enough hours in the day to harmonize work and family life. Caring for young children is relentless and labor intensive work; they must be washed, fed, dressed, read to, driven to day care, taken to doctors, dentists, barbers, and shoe stores, not to mention extra-curricular activities. And for most of their waking hours children crave attention from their caretakers. According to estimates from the Urban Institute 52 percent of children under five years of age with mothers employed full-time are in daycare for 35 hours a week or more. A brief period of parental leave followed by 4-to-5 years of full-time day care services certainly makes work possible for two-earner families. Whether these arrangements lubricate the tensions of combining work and family or anaesthetize what is left of family life is an open question. But childcare and other family-friendly policies are not the only approach to reducing the frictions of work and family life. There is another approach to reducing the tension between work and family life, which many women have decided to take. Throughout the advanced industrialized nations, the steep rise in female labor force participation since 1960 has been accompanied by a decline in fertility. In the Unites States fertility rates dropped by 46 percent from 3.4 in 1960 to 1.84 in 1985 as female labor force participation climbed by 45 percent (from 37.7 percent to 54.5 percent). (Labor force participa-tion rates have increased slightly since 1985 along with fertility rates.) Correlation does not necessarily establish causality. But one need not rely on correlations to conclude that the daily life of two-earner families is a lot more manageable without children or with one child than with two or more children. And indeed the data reveal that in 2002 labor force participation among mothers with one child was proportionately 15 percent higher than that of mothers with two or more children. Although it is possible that in the absence of family-friendly policies the decline in fertility would have been even greater, the negative trend remains. In Western European countries, with their more powerful arsenals of family-friendly policy, the birth rates have fallen even lower than in the U.S.-to well below replacement rates The decline in fertility rates has been accompanied by a major shift in the distribution of the number of children among women. As shown in Figure 1,between 1976 and 2002 the proportion of women over 40 years of age that had either no children or one child increased by 80 percent. There are many reasons why family life has been abondoned in favor of work. One explanation is that women have different predispositions toward childrearing, which mitigate or override the influences of biology and patriarchal socialization. According to 12 Figure 1 Percent Distribution of Women 40 to 44 Years By Number of Children Number of Children Year 0 1 2 3 or more 1976 10.2 9.6 21.7 58.6 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998 2000 2002 17.9 17.4 35.4 29.3 Source of Data: Barbara Downs, "Fertility Rate of American Women: June 2002," Current Population Reports (Oct.2003) U.S. Census Bureau, Table 2 this view, the changing rates of fertility and family size reflect the fact that most women have only recently gained the opportunity to exercise their preferences due to advances in contraceptive technology and women's rights. Freed from biological determinism and traditional social expectations the shift away from motherhood and toward a work-oriented lifestyle represents what Catherine Hakim argues is "the 'normal' distribution of women's responses to the conflict between family and employment." Another explanation suggests that although some women's choices may reflect clearly different predispositions for work and family life, the choices of many others are influenced by the societal context-what may look like a "normal" distribution varies in response to policy incentives and social expectations. From this perspective it is the pattern of female socialization that has changed in response to modern expectations about the good life for women, which elevate the satisfactions of material comfort, occupational achievements, and independence over childrearing and domestic accomplishments. One reason often given for the rise of two-earner families and the decline in family size is that it costs too much for a family to live on a single average income and raise two or more children. Economic necessity is real. Certainly there are some women who would prefer not to work and have more children but are compelled to work outside the home and have fewer children than they desire for reasons of physical survival. However, for most people in the advanced industrial nations what is often considered economic "necessity" is not a matter of survival but of an increasingly comfortable material lifestyle-home ownership, automobiles, color television, air conditioners, and the like. As illustrated in the following table, in 1994 households below the poverty line had access to more material conveniences than the general population had in 1971. Yet the U.S. fertility rate in 1971 was 2.26 compared to 2.01 in 1994. Poor All households* households Percent of households with 1994 1971 Washing machine 71.7 71.3 Clothes dryer 50.2 44.5 Dishwasher 19.6 18.8 Refrigerator 97.9 83.3 Freezer 28.6 32.2 Stove 97.7 87.0 Microwave 60.0 <1.0 Color television 92.5 43.3 VCR 59.7 0 Personal computer 7.4 0 Telephone 76.7 93.0 Air conditioner 49.6 31.8 One or more cars 71.8 79.5 W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm "By Our Own Bootstraps: Economic Opportunity and the Dynamics of Income Distribution" Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Annual Report, 1995, p.22. Taking another example, data on thirteen European Union countries (shown in Figure 2) reveal that between 1987 and 1996 their average fertility rates declined from 1.64 to 1.59 while the average consumption on entertainment, recreational and cultural activities climbed from less than 2.5 to over 2.8 percent of their total consumption. As people had fewer children, discretionary spending on pleasurable activities increased. Figure 2 Average fertility rates and average consumption of entertainment as % of total consumption in 13 European Union countries (1987-1996)* Fertility Consumption 3 1.66 1.64 Fertility 2.8 1.62 2.6 1.6 1.58 2.4 Consuption Year Source of data: Eurostat, Eurostat Yearbook : A Statistical Eye on Europe (1987-1997) (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Community, 1999) Although it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from these examples, they do not argue that lower fertility rates are strictly associated with economic necessity. It appears that as far as economic considerations go, assuming a family is not impoverished to start with, the choice to have few or no children is an expression of preference for the tangible pleasures of material consumption over the transcendental satisfactions of creating and nurturing a young life. Claims about the economic necessity for two-earner families frequently ignore two salient points. First, having children and staying at home to raise them is not necessarily a lifetime occupation. The economic value of parental care and household management is substantial during the early years of childhood and declines as children enter school. A home-care commitment of 5 to 10 years leaves most mothers 30 years or more to participate in the paid labor force. The basic choice is not between a one-earner and two-earner family, but how parental labor is divided over the family's life cycle. The real issue is whether in creating a balance between motherhood and employment women follow the male model of starting a lifetime pattern of work immediately after school, which involves the concurrent performance of child-rearing responsibilities and labor force participation or whether they initiate a sequential pattern in which they fully invest their efforts in childrearing and paid employment at different periods over the life cycle. Obviously, certain career options are foreclosed on women who might opt for the sequential pattern of child rearing and labor force participation rather than follow the male model. Starting in their mid-thirties, it is difficult to become a mathematician, media personality, physicist, doctor, fashion model, professional athlete, politician, and multi-national CEO. Also, there is a higher probability that those who start later in life will not, so to speak, win the race to the top of their career lines. The costs of a following a sequential pattern of full-time motherhood and paid employment involve lower probabilities of reaching the pinnacles of occupational success, at which few people arrive in any case. Room at the top is quite limited-the vast majority of people spend their lives laboring in the middle grounds of their occupations. The second consideration concerns the actual benefit derived from two-earner families with children. Although a second income may lift the heads of an 14 SOCIETY? * MARCH/APRIL 2005 impoverished family above the water line, the added value of the second income in working-and-middle-class two-earner families is often marginal, particularly for those in jobs at the bottom three-quarters of the pay scale. There is considerable shrinkage in the real consumption value of the second income once the tab for the loss of the "hidden" production of traditional household work is taken into account, along with the costs of work-related expenses, and increased taxes. According to Stein Ringen, the loss of family production reduces the income measure of economic growth in Britain by one-third to one-quarter. He notes that when the heightened stress of two-earner families is factored into the equation, the additional income does not necessarily translate into a higher quality of life. In the United States, Clair Vickery calculates that 34 percent of the wife's income in a two-earner family is consumed by work-related expenses and taxes. And Kristin Smith estimates that childcare costs alone account for 20 percent of the income of the poor working mothers who paid for these services. The average costs of high quality care for a young child are probably much higher. According to the experts, current standards for quality daycare include staff with at least two years of college, a background in early childhood development and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training. The recommended ratio for high quality care for children up to three years old is one caregiver for four children. Simple arithmetic suggests that it would cost $7,500-9,250 per child to fund a modest eight-child center in which the two staff were each paid $20-25,000 a year including benefits and the combined costs of insurance, rent, utilities, equipment, and food amounted to another $20-25,000. This comes to 30-37 percent of the income of women earning $25,000-an amount that represents the earnings of more than 70 percent of all women with income in 1998 and 50 percent of the women who worked year-round full-time. After subtracting childcare, taxes, and work-related costs, what remains of a mother's income would not substantially enhance the lifestyles of many of the two-earner families in which the woman earned less than $25,000. In comparison, the loss of a second income for the two-earner families that included the 2 percent of women who earned more than $75,000 in 1998 would generally impose a palpable sense of lifestyle-deprivation. The normative expectation that women should devote their adult life to participation in the labor force is firmly rooted in the Nordic countries. As Lane Kenworthy explains, the advantage of the Nordic approach is that it "promotes greater gender equality because it better facilitates mothers' employment in terms of both joining the labor workforce and limiting the interruption that results from the birth of a child." Although the view of childbirth as an interruption in labor force participation has not yet gained such complete acceptance in the United States, modern socialization of women incorporates a mounting expectation for a lifetime of paid employment. This expectation involves more than the need for money to enhance materialistic lifestyles. The idea that two-earner families are required to meet the economic necessities of life is powerfully reinforced by the contemporary view of paid work which is widely associated with the virtues of personal empowerment, achievement and self-realization, particularly by public-opinion makers- professors, journalists, authors, artists, and pundits- whose jobs tend to provide these benefits. But the joys of work are not evenly distributed. Tolstoy may have had it right that happy families resemble one another, while unhappy families are all miserable in their own fashion. Whether they are happy or unhappy at home, however, there is considerably less variance in the demands of child-rearing and home management than in the demands of labor force participation. To say that there is less variance within home-centered work is not to say that it is less formidable or strenuous than labor force participation, just that the range of roles among the latter is more diverse-say from coal mining in the depths of the earth to flying airplanes at 30,000 feet or from sitting on a stool in a factory to a seat on the Board of Directors. The world of paid work encompasses a vast array of activities ranging from those that are low status, boring, physically demanding, poorly rewarded and dangerous to those that are high status, exciting, physically easy, well-re-warded, and safe-the latter being in relatively short supply. The privileged few with high status, stimulating, and well-rewarded jobs tend to experience the virtues of empowerment, achievement and self-realization attributed to labor force participation. They have the kind of jobs in which doing lunch is considered work. But what about the many workers for whom lunch is a one-hour break from labor to refuel their bodies for the next shift? Or a mid-day meal they have to forfeit in order to run household errands? The evidence here is telling. Women seeking to emulate the pleasures of work supposedly enjoyed by men, might ask why the average male worker scurries to enter retirement as quickly as possible. Voting with their feet over the last two decades an increasing proportion of men in the advanced industrialized nations have been exiting employment well before the standard age of retirement. Thus, the average employment /population ratio for men ages 55 FAMILY LIFE: SOLD ON WORK 15 to 59 in nine major OECD countries declined from 72.2 percent in 1987 to 69.2 percent. in 1999; for men ages 60 to 64 the ratio declined more steeply from 45.1 percent in 1987 to 40.6 percent in 1999. In 1999, on the average 50 percent of the men in these countries withdrew from the labour force at the age of 62.3 years or younger (the age for women was 61.1 years) and 25 percent of the men withdrew from the labour force at 58 years of age (57.4 for women) or less. The attitudes expressed in international surveys convey sober evidence about people's preferences for work. Findings from the International Social Survey of over 10,000 respondents in eight OECD countries reveal that given the choice only 8.8 percent of those in retirement "wanted to spend more time in a paid job." In Europe the phrase "social exclusion," although used to describe various disadvantages, is most commonly applied to people who are unemployed. The results of the International Social Survey, however, suggest that a large proportion of the unemployed do not feel all that left out of things. Remarkably, only 55.8 percent of the unemployed workers surveyed indicated wanting to spend more time in a paid job. Similarly for those with part-time jobs only 28 percent wanted to spend more time working. Finally, family life has been sold on work because women are expected to be economically independent and socially autonomous. A wife's financial dependence on her husband is no doubt diminished through labor force participation. But the personal autonomy gained through employment is in a larger sense paradoxical. The wife's economic independence is acquired at the cost of increased dependence on the market economy to meet many family needs previously satisfied within the privacy of the home for reasons of mutual obligation and personal affection. Outsourcing caring and nurturing functions to day care centers, fast food chains and pizza delivery services depletes the bonds that are forged by the daily interactions and interdependence of family life. More to the point, for most wage labor the independence that comes with a paycheck is accompanied by obedience to the daily authority of supervisors, submission to the schedule and discipline of the work environment, deference to the demands of customers, and susceptibility to the vagaries of the marketplace. There are exceptions to the heightened vulnerability to daily oppression from strangers that attends wage labor, which include successful artists and writers, tenured professors, media personalities, and those generally at the top of the pyramid in the business world. These are the relatively small elite group of people for whom work represents a felicitous convergence of joy, independence, and meeting the felt necessities of highly affluent lifestyles. The expansion of employment opportunities and equal rights for women must be ranked among the major social accomplishments of recent times. Considerable credit for these achievements rests with the feminist movement and its various strands of-equity, gender, libertarian, and religious feminists. Certainly, women's freedom of choice has been well-served to the extent that the rise of female labor force participation and the decline in fertility and full-time commitment to the role of motherhood are an expression of inherent predispositions that clearly favor work-oriented over child-oriented lifestyles. This is no doubt the case for some women. But as noted earlier, other developments may also have influenced the declining commitments to motherhood and family life. For some women it is indeed a matter of economic survival, particularly as divorce rates have increased and in-home govern-ment-subsidized supports for single mothers have declined. The work-family choices of other women may be influenced by policy incentives, such as day care and other benefits that subsidize a shift in labor from hearth to market. And others may be responding to the modern pattern of female socialization, which incorporates changing expectations about the necessary contributions of occupational achievement and individual independence to the good life. We do not know precisely how the weight of these alternative influences bears on the declining commitment to motherhood. In light of expanding employment opportunities and rights, much of the change might be attributed to the distribution of women's inherent predisposition toward a work-oriented lifestyle. However, according to a 2003 Gallup poll, the desire to have children does not seem to have changed much over the years. Respondents' perceptions of 2.5 children as the average ideal family size were the same in 1980 as in 2003. Among the childless adults over 40 years of age sampled in 2003 over 70 percent indicated that they would have at least one child if they had it to do all over again. Of the entire sample only 4 percent of the respondents did not have or did not want to have children. When faced with life's many choices, the desire for children may be real and strong, but not as strong as other desires. One might want to have three children, a large house, a high status well-rewarded career and a yacht to sail around on when not working, minding children, or taking care of the house. Desire does not necessarily reflect preference. Preferences are desires ordered according to the degree to which they are favored at the time choices have to be made. Faced with the choice between work and raising two or more children, many women in their 20s and 30s have increasingly expressed a preference for work-which has 16 SOCIETY? * MARCH/APRIL 2005 profoundly altered the role of motherhood and the character of modern family life. It is difficult to distinguish the degree to which women's preferences about work and family life express inherent predispositions (with which they are born) or their socialization about what constitutes the good life. It is the familiar case of nature versus nurture. To the extent that the latter is shaping women's choices about how to combine work and family life, the modern pattern of female socialization bears critical examination. This pattern of socialization raises expectations about the necessity of paid employment, and extols the virtues of labor force participation, while it devalues childrearing and the domestic arts. It embraces the conventional male model of a continuous line of employment that begins by entering the labor force early in life-and endorses the market as the only realm in which serious people experience personal accomplishment and self-determination. As many early retirees will attest, the pleasures of work are greatly overrated. If for many if not most people the idea that labor force participation imparts joy and independence (particularly in contrast to family life) is a myth, how did it gain such a grip on modern women? This myth has been perpetuated by an elite few in the professional classes for whom it is a real-ity-people who make their livings writing, thinking, and talking. One of the things that they write, talk and think about is how to improve the human condition. "Gender feminists," as described by Christina Hoff Sommers, have been among the most influential opinion makers concerned with improving the condition of women. The modern pattern of socialization draws heavily on their doctrine, which asserts that all the traditional differences between behaviors of men and women in work and family life are socially constructed. In the absence of expectations cultivated by traditional patriarchal society they claim that the particulars of a satisfying life would be entirely the same for men and women. Thus, gender feminists promote expectations that women should participate equally with men at all levels in the labor force and that men should participate equally with women in every facet of domestic and childrearing activity. To date, their efforts have been more influential in the socialization of women than men. Although the social expectations promoted by gender feminists confirm the ambitions and inclinations of some women, they do not serve the interests of all women, particularly those in the middle-and-working-classes. Even some high-powered professional women have had second thoughts about modern expectations for the good life as noted in 2003 by the media attention directed toward successful female lawyers, MBAs, and the like who were leaving glamorous well-paid jobs to stay home with their children. Dubbed members of an "opt-out revolution," these women seemed to be rejecting the work-oriented expectations that drove them through college and into graduate educations in Ivy League schools. But the revolution has not yet drawn as many new female recruits as have graduate schools of law, business, and medicine. To observe that in the choice between work and motherhood, many women have been oversold on the gratifications of labor force participation, is not to argue for a return to the traditional view that women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Rather it is to suggest that public discourse on work-family choices would benefit from an evenhanded approach, which gives due consideration to diverse interests and the values of family life. Such an approach would balance the esteem expressed for occupational achievement with appropriate respect and admiration for the joys of mothering and the accomplishments of the domestic arts-and convey equal regard for women engaged on the "fast track" of professional life and those who opt for a sequential pattern of motherhood and employment over the life course. Neil Gilbert is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent books include Transformation of the Welfare State: The Silent Surrender of Public Responsibility and two co-edited volumes Changing Patterns of Social Protection (with Rebecca A.Van Voorhis) and Welfare Reform: a Comparative Assessment of the French and U.S. Experiences (with Antoine Parent) both published by Transaction. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:39:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:39:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Q & A with Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science Message-ID: Q & A with Stephen Wolfram: A New Kind of Science http://www.stephenwolfram.com/qanda/nks.html Q: What is the story behind A New Kind of Science? A: A New Kind of Science is about a series of rather dramatic discoveries that I've made over the past 20 years. It started around 1981 when some computer experiments I was doing gave results that were utterly different from anything I had ever seen before. For a few years I tried to fit what I had found into the framework of existing mathematics and science. But eventually I realized that to understand what I had seen I would have to develop a whole new kind of science. And that's how I came to build A New Kind of Science. In the early 1980s I published some of the results from my early computer experiments, particularly ones on some systems called cellular automata. They created quite a stir, and over the last 15 years they have led to many books and thousands of scientific papers. But I was never satisfied, for I had always thought that what I had discovered was just the beginning of something much bigger. By the mid-1980s, however, I had decided that to make more progress I needed better tools. So I set about building Mathematica. And as I'd planned, Mathematica has ended up being a tool that is useful not only to me and my science but also to a few million other people doing technical work of all kinds. I spent about five years just building Mathematica and the company around it, but in 1991 I was able to go back to spending a large part of my time on basic science. I had thought that it would take only a couple of years to do what I wanted to do, but it turned out that I discovered vastly more than I had ever expected. I had never intended to tell the world so little about what I was doing for so long, but I have been building what turns out to be a very large and very novel intellectual structure, and I realized early on that the only feasible way to present it was in one coherent book. So after 10 and a half years of writing, that's what A New Kind of Science is. Q: What is the basic idea of A New Kind of Science? A: Almost all the science that's been done for the past three hundred or so years has been based in the end on the idea that things in our universe somehow follow rules that can be represented by traditional mathematical equations. The basic idea that underlies A New Kind of Science is that that's much too restrictive, and that in fact one should consider the vastly more general kinds of rules that can be embodied, for example, in computer programs. What started my work on A New Kind of Science are the discoveries I made about what simple computer programs can do. One might have thought that if a program was simple it should only do simple things. But amazingly enough, that isn't even close to correct. And in fact what I've discovered is that some of the very simplest imaginable computer programs can do things as complex as anything in our whole universe. It's this point that seems to be the secret that's used all over nature to produce the complex and intricate things we see. And understanding this point seems to be the key to a whole new way of thinking about a lot of very fundamental questions in science and elsewhere. And that's what I develop in A New Kind of Science. Q: Who should read A New Kind of Science? A: A New Kind of Science is about big new ideas and discoveries. So anyone who is interested in those kinds of things should find it interesting. It's very much a book about new things. And in the past century or so, most new things that relate to science have been described first in a rather technical way. But I've written A New Kind of Science to be completely accessible to a general audience. It's full of pictures (more than a thousand), and using these I've managed (with great effort, I might add) to explain pretty much the whole story of my new science in just plain ordinary language. (There are extensive notes at the back of the book that are somewhat more technical.) The results in A New Kind of Science have many big implications for existing sciences--physical, biological, mathematical, computational, and other. So people concerned with those sciences--both professionally and out of interest--should find A New Kind of Science important. Part of what I've done in A New Kind of Science is to develop a new basic way of thinking about scientific questions, and I think that'll be important not only for people who do science in practice but also for people interested in general theory and philosophy. A New Kind of Science is very fundamentally based on the idea of studying simple computer programs and what they do. I've made all sorts of discoveries that really change one's intuition about such things--which is important for anyone who spends time with computer programs. There are aspects of A New Kind of Science that'll be interesting to various other kinds of people. For example, it's full of facts and ideas relevant to recreational mathematics. (Programs for doing one's own experiments are in the notes at the back of the book, as well being available [23]online.) It's also full of intricate computer-generated pictures of kinds that haven't been seen before, and that should be pretty interesting to people concerned with all sorts of types of design. I'm particularly hoping that a lot of people early in their careers will read A New Kind of Science and get involved with the ideas it describes. Q: Why a book? Why not a website? A: There's going to be an increasingly large website about A New Kind of Science. But what's still important about a physical book is that it delimits its contents in a much more definite way than one can in a more fluid medium like the web. In A New Kind of Science I've written down in a complete and coherent way what I think people need to read to understand my ideas and discoveries. The web can give more details, and more interactivity. But it's hard to know if you've read everything on a big website. And a website can change every day. In A New Kind of Science I want to present what I've been thinking about for the past 20 years in a single definite package that it's possible for people to study in detail, and refer to unchanged for years to come. There's also a practical issue: the graphics for A New Kind of Science involve a huge amount of data--a total of about a gigabyte of PostScript. And it's not realistic for most people to download that over the web right now. But in a printed book one can handle that kind of data. We're actually using the latest printing technology (together with special paper) to be able to render images at very high resolution. And the results are quite spectacular. In fact, in lots and lots of cases they let one see what's going on in the systems I study much better than one could possibly manage on any present-day computer screen. Q: How does A New Kind of Science relate to Mathematica? A: Mathematica is what made A New Kind of Science possible. First, at a very practical level: it provided the tools I needed to make the discoveries that underlie A New Kind of Science. Second, at a more abstract level: it showed me that one could really start from scratch and build very big things from very simple elements. Of course, you don't need to know anything about Mathematica to understand A New Kind of Science--just like you don't need to know how computers work inside to use one. But for me, Mathematica was a crucial step in being able to create A New Kind of Science. Q: Will you distribute software for people to do their own experiments? A: A New Kind of Science is based on discoveries that I've made from studying extremely simple computer programs. Mostly the programs are so simple that--at least in Mathematica--they are just a line or two long. So I've actually been able to include the complete programs for a lot of my experiments in the notes at the back of A New Kind of Science. This website has computer-readable versions of these [27]programs. And we have made a Mathematica application package, [28]A NEW KIND OF SCIENCE Explorer, that is a complete collection of tools for doing experiments like the ones in A New Kind of Science. Q: What is the picture on the cover of A New Kind of Science? A: The yellow image is an example of one of the main discoveries of the book. It's an extremely simple computer program--something called the rule 110 cellular automaton--that turns out to produce behavior that seems as complicated as anything in our universe. The cover design was done by John Bonadies, who worked at our company for more than a decade, edited our [30]Graphica books, and has been responsible for many of the graphic design awards Wolfram Research has won over the years. Q: How can I get a copy of A New Kind of Science? A: Order it [32]online! Or get it from almost any major bookstore. We don't know exactly how many copies will be in which stores. But we do know that the major bookstore chains, particularly in the U.S., have ordered enough copies to stock their stores fairly well. The book trade can be a little disorganized, especially for books published the way mine is. If a bookstore seems to have trouble finding the book, try telling them that the book is available through both Ingram and Baker & Taylor, the two major book distributors in the U.S. If they still can't find the book for you, you should probably order it yourself online. Q: Why is there another copy of the cover picture under the dust jacket? A: We wanted the book to work both as a "trade book" with a dust jacket and as a long-term book without a dust jacket. We ended up finding a process for making the hard inner cover (case binding) that produces a very nice surface. References 23. http://www.wolframscience.com/nks/programs/ 27. http://www.wolframscience.com/nks/programs/ 28. http://www.wolframscience.com/nksx/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:39:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:39:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: 'Open Courseware' Idea Spreads Message-ID: Courseware' Idea Spreads The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.4 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a03201.htm. [The problem is that the best teachers I had did not teach the course but taught themselves. Rutledge Vining, in the economics dept., taught his students the same three things, regardless whether the course was in the concept of economic legislation or the spatial distribution of an economic system. He was perpetually unsatisfied with all his students, including me. BUT, those three ideas stuck in my mind and I can hardly consider any problem without running them through the three ideas. I've forgotten nearly everything in all other courses, but those ideas stuck. [The three are: 1. Find out exactly what the problem is, 2. Distinguish between the rules of the game and the playing of the game, 3. Distinguish the between probability process and probability outcome, remembering that Time and chance happeneth to them all (Ecclesiastes 9:11). [I add that Buchanan and Tullock were great teachers. They did not teach the subject either but drew us mere graduate students into their latest research. None of this could be duplicated in Open Courseware.] MIT's plan to give away course materials online gains a few adherents By JEFFREY R. YOUNG When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced an ambitious plan to give away online materials for every course, officials wondered whether other colleges and universities would follow suit. The answer? Sort of. Nearly four years after the start of MIT's OpenCourseWare project, several colleges met to unveil their own plans to publish extensive sets of course materials -- such as syllabi, lecture notes, and quizzes -- and encourage anyone to use them freely. There is one major difference: No one other than MIT is pledging to give away every course. And most of the newcomers expect to convert only a handful of courses per year to an open format. The main reason is money. MIT officials are spending $6-million per year on the project, much of which is coming from grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project, which has already published more than 900 of MIT's 1,800 courses, is being touted as a success, as it has drawn downloaders from around the world who are using the materials as models for their own teaching or to learn on their own. Proponents say the main beneficiaries are in the developing world, where students cannot afford textbooks and universities are looking for help setting up courses. MIT officials say that the materials are also inspiring more people to apply to the institute, as well as helping students at MIT decide which courses to sign up for. Though many professors at other colleges already create course Web sites, the majority do so haphazardly, or in a way that is designed to be used only by their students. Open courseware seeks to make sure each course's materials are far more complete, and are presented in a way that makes them easy for others to use. The growth of these giveaways marks a major philosophical shift from the mid-1990s, when many colleges and professors thought they could rake in profits selling course materials online. Colleges that have bought into the open-courseware concept say they would like to give away everything, but that they cannot afford to put all that material online and keep it up to date. Besides, one set of free materials may be enough, so other colleges and universities are focusing on making available only their signature programs or courses that are not taught by MIT. Many of the new projects also have grant support. "I'm not surprised right away that it's a little slow to take off," says Frank Mayadas, program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Regardless of the motivation and desire, it just isn't going to take off like wildfire" because of the cost. But Anne H. Margulies, executive director of MIT's OpenCourseWare project, says that while MIT always hoped other colleges would follow its lead, it did not expect many to give everything away. "What we aspire to," she says, "is to work with other schools so we can create a collective body of high-quality course materials." Trading Tips Representatives from MIT and six other U.S. universities that are starting open-courseware projects met at MIT in February to trade tips on how to manage their projects. Representatives from Chinese universities attended as well, as did officials from Universia.net, a coalition of universities in Portugal, Spain, and several South American countries that is working to translate MIT's course materials into Spanish and Portuguese. The U.S. institutions represented were the Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, Tufts University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor's School of Information, the University of Notre Dame, and Utah State University. Ms. Margulies stressed that the meeting was informal, and that no consortium had been created, though one may form in the future. Several of the colleges unveiled their first open courses at the meeting. Among them was the Johns Hopkins University, which has two courses online so far, and hopes to have eight more by April. Sukon Kanchanaraksa, director of the public-health school's center for teaching and learning with technology, says that many of the school's alumni living in other countries already use the materials from Hopkins's courses when they start teaching. "We're just going to make it one more step easier for them to use our content in their teaching," he says. Officials hope to make available 50 to 75 courses over the next several years. James D. Yager, senior associate dean for academic affairs at the school and professor of toxicology in the department of environmental health sciences, says he thinks alumni and professors will support the project. "People who come to public health are committed to really making a difference in the lives of people," he says. "By and large academics, especially in public health, realize that the availability of the content is going to have a beneficial effect." One focus of the meeting at MIT was developing strategies to keep the costs of creating such course Web sites as low as possible. Utah State talked about software it is building to automatically grab material from existing university course Web sites and turn it into a form that is more user-friendly to users outside the university. The university has made the software open source, meaning it is free for anyone to download and use for noncommercial purposes. Utah State won a $915,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation to support the software, and to assist other universities that want to use the software. "The idea is to make it as cheap and easy as possible" for universities to start open-courseware projects, says David A. Wiley, assistant professor of instructional technology at the university, which has six courses in an open format. "We're trying to find a way to do this that can be sustained over time without tens of millions of dollars of external funding." Mr. Wiley's team has also built free chat-room software for open-courseware sites that MIT now uses in some of its course sites. The software is designed to highlight the most useful comments in an online discussion without the use of a human moderator -- since universities do not actively teach or support those who want to use the free materials. The software lets anyone make a comment, and then allows users to rate how helpful each comments is. The software then displays the most highly rated comments first. "It's a way for the community to reward good behavior and positive contributions made by the group," says Mr. Wiley. "But that rewarding is done by the group." Getting Permission Copyright is another challenge in running open-courseware projects, the meeting's participants say. Many professors regularly use charts, graphs, or other illustrations they've culled from textbooks or other copyrighted works in slide presentations or handouts. Although using those illustrations in a classroom is allowed under fair-use provisions of copyright law, universities must get permission before putting the same materials online where anyone can see them. That can take time and money because officials must track down who owns the copyright and often must pay a fee to post the materials. One college decided not to convert a popular course to an open format because it included so many copyrighted items that it would have been unmanageable. Another issue discussed at the meeting was how to make it easy for professors to participate in open-courseware projects. "If a faculty member perceives that he's going to have to be hitched to a wagon that's going to run for a long time, he's not going to do it," says Alexander J. Hahn, a professor of mathematics at Notre Dame and director of the university's John A. Kaneb Center for Teaching and Learning. "You have to lower the threshold of time and energy required of faculty." Representatives from the Hewlett Foundation have worked to get a diverse group of institutions to participate in open-courseware efforts. Last year foundation officials approached Vivian Sinou, dean of distance and mediated learning at Foothill College, to encourage the district to join in. So the district proposed creating an open-courseware project that any community college in California could participate in, and it won a $124,000 grant from the foundation for the effort. After months of development, the college unveiled its first eight courses in January. Ms. Sinou says her staff tried to pick the best examples in the college district's most popular subject areas -- "the ones that the majority of community-college students go through." Barbara S. Illowsky, a professor of mathematics and statistics at De Anza College, teaches one of the courses, Elementary Statistics. She says she has already received positive feedback, both from students who want to brush up on concepts, and from professors who want to adopt some of the materials for their own teaching. "I've had two faculty from different community colleges ask me about it," she says. Did she consider trying to sell the materials to a publisher or company instead of working with the free-courseware project? No, she says, in part because she says she was only able to create the online materials with help from technical-support staff at the college. "I really felt that this course was a really combined effort of a lot of different people from our district." And, she says, "why not educate people everywhere?" Eric C. Carson, a geology professor at San Jacinto College North, has already made use of one of Foothill College's open-courseware sites in his teaching. He says he prefers material on open-courseware sites over that found on professors' Web sites. "There's some level of quality control and general oversight associated" with open courseware, he says. "If I'm just strolling around on the Internet and come across some random professor's Web site," he adds, "it just kind of dilutes my confidence in it, and it makes me spend a lot more time really sitting down and looking for what I like." Many of the proponents of open courseware argue that making materials free online is an important way to fulfill their institutions' public-service or outreach missions. Mary Y. Lee, an associate provost at Tufts University and dean of educational affairs at the university's medical school, says the university has a tradition of being involved in free-software efforts. Tufts is working to put 11 courses, mainly from the medical school, online. "It's a natural extension of work we've already been doing," Ms. Lee says. Though officials hope the materials will have educational benefit, they stress that they are not a substitute for taking courses at the institutions. "We're not offering a correspondence course to become a doctor, no," says Ms. Lee. She likened the materials to textbooks, noting that there is more to an education than simply reading textbooks. "Most of the training in medicine is actually experience with patients and small-group learning." Still, some students who have found Foothill's courses have sent e-mail messages asking how they can receive college credit for reading through the materials. Ms. Sinou directs them to the admissions office. 8 COLLEGES THAT OFFER COURSE MATERIALS ONLINE Several U.S. colleges have started "open courseware" projects, in which they publish extensive sets of course materials -- such as syllabi, lecture notes, and quizzes -- online and encourage anyone to use them freely. Carnegie Mellon University: The university has seven courses online in what it calls the Open Learning Initiative ([3]http://www.cmu.edu/oli). The project has received $3.4-million in grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Foothill-DeAnza Community College District: In February the district posted material for eight courses in a project it calls Sofia, Sharing of Free Intellectual Assets ([4]http://sofia.fhda.edu). The district is working with other California community colleges to convert selected courses to an open format and hopes to add about 25 more courses per year for the next several years. The project is supported by grants from the Hewlett Foundation. Harvard University: Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society is beginning an open-courseware project, and its leaders say they are interested in developing new ideas for how to design and maintain such efforts. Johns Hopkins University: The Bloomberg School of Public Health last week unveiled a draft version of an open-courseware project ([5]http://ocw.jhsph.edu). Two courses -- "Understanding Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Health Care," and "Statistical Reasoning I" -- are up so far, with eight more expected to be ready by April. The project is supported by a $200,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Since 2001 the university has been rapidly working to put materials for all of its 1,800 courses online. The OpenCourseWare project ([6]http://ocw.mit.edu), which has support from the Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is expected to take about seven years to complete. Tufts University: Officials are working to convert 11 professional courses to an open-courseware format. Two are from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the rest are from the university's four health-science graduate schools -- the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Nutrition Science and Policy, the School of Medicine, and the School of Veterinary Medicine. The university is using internal resources to pay for the project, but is seeking outside grants to expand it. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor: The university's School of Information is working to convert about a dozen courses to open courseware. It is also working to build free software to help professors turn their existing Web resources into open-courseware sites. Utah State University: The university recently unveiled the first eight courses in an open-courseware pilot project ([7]http://ocw.usu.edu). The courses were chosen to highlight the university's most unique or well-known offerings. Programmers have also developed free software, called EduCommons, to help produce the Web sites. The project is supported by a $915,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation. References 3. http://www.cmu.edu/oli 4. http://sofia.fhda.edu/ 5. http://ocw.jhsph.edu/ 6. http://ocw.mit.edu/ 7. http://ocw.usu.edu/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:41:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:41:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Utne: The Next Digital Divide Message-ID: The Next Digital Divide http://www.utne.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=utne_web_specials&story.id=11539 January 2005 By Alyssa Ford, Utne.com How biopolitics could reshape our understanding of left and right Didn't think it was possible for the left to be anymore splintered? Welcome to the world of biopolitics, a fledgling political movement that promises to make mortal enemies out of one-time allies -- such as back-to-nature environmentalists and technophile lefties -- and close friends of traditional foes, such as anti-GMO activists and evangelicals. Biopolitics, a term coined by Trinity College professor James Hughes, places pro-technology transhumanists on one pole and people who are suspicious of technology on the other. [1]According to Hughes, transhumanists are members of "an emergent philosophical movement which says that humans can and should become more than human through technological enhancements." The term transhuman is shorthand for transitional human -- people who are in the process of becoming "posthuman" or "cyborgs." It may sound like a movement founded by people who argue over Star Trek minutia on the Internet, but transhumanists are far more complex and organized than one might imagine. They got their start in the early 1980s as a small band of libertarian technophiles who advocated for any advancement that could extend human life indefinitely or eliminate disease and disability. Their members were some of the first to sign up to be cryogenically frozen, for example. As biotech and bioethics issues such as cloning and stem cell research gained importance on the international agenda, the transhumanist philosophy grew in popularity and became more diverse. For instance, several neo-nazi groups who saw technological advancement as the way to achieve eugenics embraced the transhumanist label. Transhumanism pierced the popular culture when the Coalition of Artists and Life Forms (CALF) formed in the 1990s. This small band of artists and writers has a shared excitement for technology and a distrust of the corporations that mishandle it. In 1997, a group of American and European leftist-transhumanists (including Dr. Hughes) formed the [2]World Transhumanist Association to advocate for technology not only as a means to improve the human race and increase longevity, but as a tool for social justice. Unlike their [3]libertarian forebearers, these "democratic transhumanists" advocate for moderate safeguards on new technology, such as drug trials. In an exhaustive [4]article about various factions under the transhuman label, Hughes identifies 11 subgroups, including "disability transhumanists" who argue for their right to technology and "gay transhumanists" who want children conceived outside of the opposite-sex paradigm (i.e., cloning). By definition, social conservatives oppose the transhumanists, but the new movement also has many enemies on the new age, environmental, anti-GMO, and anti-biotech left. These progressive opponents have even aligned with right wing factions in opposition to transhumanist goals. In 2002, Jeremy Rifkin and other environmentalists joined with anti-abortion groups to float an anti-cloning petition. Abortion opponents again found themselves working with the left when a [5]group of feminists and civil libertarians began pressuring the Indian government to restrict women's access to ultrasounds and abortions for fear of female infanticide. The transhumanists, in turn, call these anti-technology liberals "left luddites," "bioconservatives," and "technophobes" -- a not-so-subtle linguistic clue that the new biopolitical axis has the potential to completely reconfigure traditional politics. Related Links: * [6]In Defense of Posthuman Dignity * [7]Cyborg Liberation Front * Three-part interview with Dr. James Hughes: * [8]Part One * [9]Part Two * [10]Part Three References 1. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm 2. http://transhumanism.org/index.php/th/ 3. http://www.extropy.com/ 4. http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/TranshumPolitics.htm 5. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/grhf/SAsia/suchana/0500/h003.html 6. http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/dignity.html 7. http://villagevoice.com/news/0331,baard,45866,1.html 8. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001659.html 9. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001664.html 10. http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001670.html 11. http://www.genetics-and-society.org/index.asp From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:42:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:42:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Testing Darwin: Digital Life Message-ID: Testing Darwin: Digital Life ----- Forwarded message from Giu1i0 Pri5c0 ----- From: Giu1i0 Pri5c0 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 16:38:19 +0100 Subject: [>Htech] TESTING DARWIN - Digital Life If you want to find alien life-forms, hold off on booking that trip to the moons of Saturn. You may only need to catch a plane to East Lansing, Michigan. The aliens of East Lansing are not made of carbon and water. They have no DNA. Billions of them are quietly colonizing a cluster of 200 computers in the basement of the Plant and Soil Sciences building at Michigan State University. To peer into their world, however, you have to walk a few blocks west on Wilson Road to the engineering department and visit the Digital Evolution Laboratory. Here you'll find a crew of computer scientists, biologists, and even a philosopher or two gazing at computer monitors, watching the evolution of bizarre new life-forms. These are digital organisms-strings of commands-akin to computer viruses. Each organism can produce tens of thousands of copies of itself within a matter of minutes. Unlike computer viruses, however, they are made up of digital bits that can mutate in much the same way DNA mutates. A software program called Avida allows researchers to track the birth, life, and death of generation after generation of the digital organisms by scanning columns of numbers that pour down a computer screen like waterfalls. http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2005/articles_2005_Avida.html If you want to find alien life-forms, hold off on booking that trip to the moons of Saturn. You may only need to catch a plane to East Lansing, Michigan. The aliens of East Lansing are not made of carbon and water. They have no DNA. Billions of them are quietly colonizing a cluster of 200computers in the basement of the Plant and Soil Sciences building at Michigan State University. To peer into their world, however, you have to walk a few blocks west on Wilson Road to the engineering department and visit the Digital Evolution Laboratory. Here you'll find a crew of computer scientists, biologists, and even a philosopher or two gazing at computer monitors, watching the evolution of bizarre new life-forms. These are digital organisms-strings of commands-akin to computer viruses. Each organism can produce tens of thousands of copies of itself within a matter of minutes. Unlike computer viruses, however, they are made up of digital bits that can mutate in much the same way DNA mutates. A software program called Avida allows researchers to track the birth, life, and death of generation after generation of the digital organisms by scanning columns of numbers that pour down a computer screen like waterfalls. After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life. .More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off,. says Robert Pennock, a philosopher at Michigan State and a member of the Avida team. .Does this, does that, does this. Metabolism? Maybe not quite yet, but getting pretty close.. One thing the digital organisms do particularly well is evolve.. Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it,. Pennock says. .All the core parts of the Darwinian process are there. These things replicate, they mutate, they are competing with one another. The very process of natural selection is happening there. If that's central to the definition of life, then these things count.. It may seem strange to talk about a chunk of computer code in the same way you talk about a cherry tree or a dolphin. But the more biologists think about life, the more compelling the equation becomes. Computer programs and DNA are both sets of instructions. Computer programs tell a computer how to process information, while DNA instructs a cell how to assemble proteins. The ultimate goal of the instructions in DNA is to make new organisms that contain the same genetic instructions. .You could consider a living organism as nothing more than an information channel, where it's transmitting its genome to its offspring,. says Charles Ofria, director of the Digital Evolution Laboratory. .And the information stored in the channel is how to build a new channel.. So a computer program that contains instructions for making new copies of itself has taken a significant step toward life. A cherry tree absorbs raw materials and turns them into useful things. In goes carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients. Out comes wood, cherries, and toxins to ward off insects. A computer program works the same way. Consider a program that adds two numbers. The numbers go in like carbon dioxide and water, and the sum comes out like a cherry tree. In the late 1990s Ofria's former adviser, physicist Chris Adami of Caltech, set out to create the conditions in which a computer program could evolve the ability to do addition. He created some primitive digital organisms and at regular intervals presented numbers to them. At first they could do nothing. But each time a digital organism replicated, there was a small chance that one of its command lines might mutate. On a rare occasion, these mutations allowed an organism to process one of the numbers in a simple way. An organism might acquire the ability simply to read a number, for example, and then produce an identical output. Adami rewarded the digital organisms by speeding up the time it took them to reproduce. If an organism could read two numbers at once, he would speed up its reproduction even more. And if they could add the numbers, he would give them an even bigger reward. Within six months, Adami's organisms were addition whizzes. .We were able to get them to evolve without fail,. he says. But when he stopped to look at exactly how the organisms were adding numbers, he was more surprised. .Some of the ways were obvious, but with others I'd say, 'What the hell is happening?' It seemed completely insane.. On a trip to Michigan State, Adami met microbiologist Richard Lenski, who studies the evolution of bacteria. Adami later sent Lenski a copy of the Avida software so he could try it out for himself. On a Friday, Lenski loaded the program into his computer and began to create digital worlds. By Monday he was tempted to shut down his lab and dedicate himself to Avida. .It just had the smell of life,. says Lenski. It also mirrored Lenski's own research. Since 1988 he has been running the longest continuous experiment in evolution. He began with a single bacterium-Escherichia coli-and used its offspring to found 12separate colonies of bacteria that he nurtured on a meager diet of glucose, which creates a strong incentive for the evolution of new ways to survive. Over the past 17years, the colonies have passed through35,000 generations. In the process, they've become one of the clearest demonstrations that natural selection is real. All 12 colonies have evolved to the point at which the bacteria can replicate almost twice as fast as their ancestors. At the same time, the bacterial cells have gotten twice as big. Surprisingly, these changes didn't unfold in a smooth, linear process. Instead, each colony evolved in sudden jerks, followed by hundreds of generations of little change, followed by more jerks. Similar patterns occur in the evolution of digital organisms in Avida. So Lenski set up digital versions of his bacterial colonies and has been studying them ever since. He still marvels at the flexibility and speed of Avida, which not only allow him to alter experimental conditions with a few keystrokes but also to automatically record every mutation in every organism. .In an hour I can gather more information than we had been able to gather in years of working on bacteria,. Lenski say.. Avida just spits data at you.. With this newfound power, the Avida team is putting Darwin to the test in a way that was previously unimaginable. Modernevolutionary biologists have a wealth of fossils to study, and they can compare the biochemistry and genes of living species. But they can't look at every single generation and every single gene that separates a bird, for example, from its two-legged dinosaur ancestors. By contrast, Avida makes it possible to watch the random mutation and natural selection of digital organisms unfold over millions of generations. In the process, it is beginning to shed light on some of the biggest questions of evolution. QUESTION #1:WHAT GOOD IS HALF AN EYE? If life today is the result of evolution by natural selection, Darwin realized, then even the most complex systems in biology must have emerged gradually from simple precursors, like someone crossing a river using stepping-stones. But consider the human eye, which is made of many different parts-lens, iris, jelly, retina, optic nerve-and will not work if even one part is missing. If the eye evolved in a piecemeal fashion, how was it of any use to our ancestors? Darwin argued that even a simpler version of today's eyes could have helped animals survive. Early eyes might have been nothing more than a patch of photosensitive cells that could tell an animal if it was in light or shadow. If that patch then evolved into a pit, it might also have been able to detect the direction of the light. Gradually, the eye could have taken on new functions, until at last it could produce full-blown images. Even today, you can find these sorts of proto-eyes in flatworms and other animals. Darwin declared that the belief that natural selection cannot produce a complex organ .can hardly be considered real.. Digital organisms don't have complex organs such as eyes, but they can process information in complex ways. In order to add two numbers together, for example, a digital organism needs to carry out a lot of simpler operations, such as reading the numbers and holding pieces of those numbers in its memory. Knock out the commands that let a digital organism do one of these simple operations and it may not be able to add. The Avida team realized that by watching a complex organism evolve, they might learn some lessons about how complexity evolves in general. The researchers set up an experiment to document how one particularly complex operation evolved. The operation, known as equals, consists of comparing pairs of binary numbers, bit by bit, and recording whether each pair of digits is the same. It's a standard operation found in software, but it's not a simple one. The shortest equals program Ofria could write is 19 lines long. The chances that random mutations alone could produce it are about one in a thousand trillion trillion. To test Darwin's idea that complex systems evolve from simpler precursors, the Avida team set up rewards for simpler operations and bigger rewards for more complex ones. The researchers set up an experiment in which organisms replicate for 16,000generations. They then repeated the experiment 50 times. Avida beat the odds. In 23 of the 50 trials, evolution produced organisms that could carry out the equals operation. And when the researchers took away rewards for simpler operations, the organisms never evolved an equals program. .When we looked at the 23 tests, they were all done in completely different ways,. adds Ofria. He was reminded of how Darwin pointed out that many evolutionary paths can produce the same complex organ. A fly and an octopus can both produce an image with their eyes, but their eyes are dramatically different from ours. .Darwin was right on that-there are many different ways of evolving the same function,. says Ofria. The Avida team then traced the genealogy leading from the first organism to each one that had evolved the equals routine. .The beauty of digital life is that you can watch it happen step by step,. says Adami. .In every step you would ordinarily never see there is a goal you're going toward.. Indeed, the ancestors of the successful organisms sometimes suffered harmful mutations that made them reproduce at a slower rate. But mutations a few generations later sped them up again. When the Avida team published their first results on the evolution of complexity in 2003, they were inundated with e-mails from creationists. Their work hit a nerve in the antievolution movement and hit it hard. A popular claim of creationists is that life shows signs of intelligent design, especially in its complexity. They argue that complex things could never have evolved, because they don't work unless all their parts are in place. But as Adami points out, if creationists were right, then Avida wouldn't be able to produce complex digital organisms. A digital organism may use 19 or more simple routines in order to carry out the equals operation. If you delete any of the routines, it can't do the job. .What we show is that there are irreducibly complex things and they can evolve,. says Adami. The Avida team makes their software freely available on the Internet, and creationists have downloaded it over and over again in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. While they've uncovered a few minor glitches, Ofria says they have yet to find anything serious. .We literally have an army of thousands of unpaid bug testers,. he says. .What more could you want?. QUESTION #2: WHY DOES AFOREST HAVE MORE THANONE KIND OF PLANT? When you walk into a forest, the first thing you see is diversity. Trees tower high overhead, ferns lurk down below, vines wander here and there like tangled snakes. Yet these trees, ferns, and vines are all plants, and as such, they all make a living in the same way, by catching sunlight. If one species was better than all the rest at catching sunlight, then you might expect it to outcompete the other plants and take over the forest. But it's clear that evolution has taken a different course. Figuring out why is a full-time job for a small army of biologists. A number of them seek enlightenment by comparing places that are rich and poor in species and trying to figure out the other things that make them different. One intriguing pattern has to do with food. Ecologists have found that the more energy a habitat can provide organisms, the more species it can support. But a habitat can get too productive. Then it supports fewer species. This pattern has emerged time and again in studies on ecosystems ranging from grasslands to Arctic tundra. Until recently, a typical Avida experiment would end up with a single dominant organism. The Avida researchers suspected that was the result of providing an endless supply of food-in this case, numbers. Perhaps, they reasoned, if they put their digital organisms on a diet, they might evolve into different forms-just as it happens in nature. So the Avida team retooled their software to limit the supply of numbers flowing into their digital worlds. Then they made the numbers even more scarce by splitting them up into smaller supplies, each of which could be used only for a particular operation, such as adding two numbers. As the organisms used the numbers at a faster rate, they got a smaller benefit. And if too many organisms gorged themselves on one supply of numbers, they would stop replicating altogether. The Avida team subsequently flooded some digital worlds with numbers and limited others to a scant supply, and the same pattern of diversity found in global ecosystems emerged. When the number supply was low, only one type of organism could survive. At intermediate levels, three or four different types emerged and coexisted. Each type evolved into a specialist atone or a few kinds of operations. But when the number supply got too abundant, diversity dropped to a single species again. Bringing diversity into Avida has brought more bad news for those who think complexity cannot evolve. Ofria decided to run the complexity experiment over again, this time with a limit on the supply of numbers. .It just floored me,. he says. .I went back and checked this so many ways.. In the original experiment, the organisms evolved the equals routine in 23 out of 50 trials. But when the experiment was run with a limited supply of numbers, all the trials produced organisms that could carry out the equals routine. What's more, they needed only a fifth of the time to do it. Ofria suspects that the difference comes from the fact that several species are now evolving in the experiment rather than just one. More species mean more opportunities for success. QUESTION #3: WHY BE NICE? Human society depends on countless acts of cooperation and personal sacrifice. But that doesn't make us unique. Consider Myxococcus xanthus, a species of bacteria that Lenski and his colleagues study. Myxococcus travels in giant swarms 100,000strong, hunting down E. coli and other bacteria like wolves chasing moose. They kill their prey by spitting out antibiotics, then spit out digestive enzymes that make the E. coli burst open. The swarm then feasts together on the remains. If the Myxococcus swarm senses that they've run out of prey to hunt, they gather together to form a stalk. The bacteria at the very top of the stalk turn into spores, which can be carried away by wind or water to another spot where they can start a new pack. Meanwhile, the individuals that formed the stalk die. This sort of cooperation poses a major puzzle because it could be undermined by the evolution of cheaters. Some bacteria might feast on the prey killed by their swarm mates and avoid wasting their own energy making antibiotics or enzymes. Others might evolve ways of ensuring that they always end up becoming spores and never get left behind in the dead stalk. Such cheaters are not theoretical: Lenski and his colleagues have evolved them in their lab. The Avida team is now trying to address the mystery of cooperation by creating new commands that will let organisms exchange packages of information. .Once we get them to communicate, can we get them to work together to solve a problem?. asks Ofria. .You can set up an information economy, where one organism can pay another one to do a computation for it.. If digital organisms cooperate, Ofria thinks it may be possible to get them working together to solve real-world computing problems in the same way Myxococcus swarms attack their prey. .I think we'll be able to solve much more complex problems, because we won't have to know how to break them down. The organisms will have to figure it out for themselves,. says Ofria. .We could really change the face of a lot of computing.. QUESTION #4: WHY SEX? Birds do it, bees do it, and even fleas do it-but why they all do it is another matter. Reproduction is possible without sex. Bacteria and protozoa simply split in two. Some trees send shoots into the ground that sprout up as new trees. There are even lizard species that are all female. Their eggs don't need sperm to start developing into healthy baby female lizards. .One of the biggest questions in evolution is, why aren't all organisms asexual?. says Adami. Given the obvious inefficiency of sex, evolutionary biologists suspect that it must confer some powerful advantage that makes it so common. But they have yet to come to a consensus about what that advantage is. So Dusan Misevic, a biologist at Michigan State, has spent the past couple of years introducing sex into Avida. While digital sex may lack romance, it features the most important element from an evolutionary point of view: the genetic material from two parents gets mixed together in a child. When a digital organism makes a copy of itself, the copy doesn't immediately take its own place in Avida and start reproducing. Instead, chunks of its code are swapped with the copy of another new organism. Only after this exchange do the two creatures start to reproduce. In 1964 the German biologist H. J. Muller proposed that sex allows organisms to mix their genomes together in combinations that can overcome the effects of harmful mutations. Asexual organisms, on the other hand, are stuck with all the mutations their ancestors pass down to them. Over time, Muller argued, they can't reproduce as quickly as their sexual competitors. Misevic designed an experiment to put Muller's hypothesis to the test.. It's a classic explanation, so it seemed like a good place to start,. he says. Misevic created two kinds of worlds: one full of sexual digital organisms and the other full of asexuals. After they had evolved for tens of thousands of generations, he measured how fast they could replicate. .The overall conclusion we got was that, yes, there are some situations where sex is beneficial,. says Misevic. But there were surprises. Sex is good mainly as a way to escape annihilation from lethal mutations. But in Avida, sexual organisms had to pay a price for that insurance-they carried more nonlethal yet harmful mutations than the asexual organisms. .We must look to other explanations to help explain sex in general,. says Misevic. QUESTION #5:WHAT DOES LIFE ONOTHER PLANETS LOOK LIKE? Life on Earth is based on DNA. But we can't exclude the possibility that life could evolve from a completely different system of molecules. And that raises some worrying questions about the work going on these days to find signs of extraterrestrial life. NASA is funding a wide range of life-detecting instruments, from rovers that prowl across Mars to telescopes that will gaze at distant solar systems. They are looking for the signs of life that are produced on Earth. Some are looking for high levels of oxygen in the atmospheres of other planets. Others are looking for bits of DNA or fragments of cell walls. But if there's non-DNA-based life out there, we might overlook it because it doesn't fit our preconceptions. .We can look at how known life-forms leave marks on their environment,. says Evan Dorn, a member of Chris Adami's lab at Caltech, .but we can never make universal statements about them because we have only one example.. Dorn says Avida is example number two. By finding patterns that are shared by life on Earth and life in Avida, he thinks he will be able to offer some ideas about how to look for life that the universe might be harboring. Some researchers have suggested the best way to look for signs of life is to look for weird chemistry. Take the building blocks of proteins-amino acids-which are found on meteorites and can also be created in the lab simply by running an electric current through ammonia and other compounds. In a lifeless setting, the most common amino acid that results is the simplest: glycine. Some slightly less simple amino acids are also common, but all the larger ones make up only a trace or are missing altogether. That's because it takes a lot of energy to make those big amino acids. .There's a limited repertoire of chemistry in the absence of life,. says Dorn. If you analyze a scoop of soil or pond water, however, you'll find a completely different profile of amino acids. Life has evolved ways of building certain big amino acids, and when organisms die, those big amino acids float around in the environment. What if life on another planet made compounds that were radically different from amino acids? Would it alter its planet's chemistry in some similar way? To test this idea, Dorn created a world devoid of life. Instead of containing a self-replicating program, each cell contained random assortment of commands. All of the commands in the Avida language were present at equal levels. Here was the signature of a lifeless planet. Then Dorn began dropping organisms into this world, like spores falling to Earth. At the beginning of the experiment, he set the mutation rate so high that no spore could replicate very long on the planet. (Think of Mars, where ultraviolet rays pelt the surface.) Gradually, he lowered the mutation rate until life could survive. .As soon as the environment was habitable, the organism took over and dominated the environment,. Dorn says. As the digital organisms evolved to adapt to the world, Dorn found that some commands became rare and others became far more common. This distinctive signature stayed stable as long as life could survive on the planet. And no matter how many times Dorn repeated the experiment, the same signature of life appeared. Whether manipulating amino acids or computer commands, life does seem to leave the same mark. .It gives us a pretty strong indication that this process is universal,. says Dorn. If Dorn is right, discovery of non-DNA life would become a little less spectacular because it would mean that we have already stumbled across it here on Earth-in East Lansing, Michigan. QUESTION #6:WHAT WILL LIFE ON EARTHLOOK LIKE IN THE FUTURE? One of the hallmarks of life is its ability to evolve around our best efforts to control it. Antibiotics, for example, were once considered a magic bullet that would eradicate infectious diseases. In just a few decades, bacteria have evolved an arsenal of defenses that make many antibiotics useless. Ofria has been finding that digital organisms have a way of outwitting him as well. Not long ago, he decided to see what would happen if he stopped digital organisms from adapting. Whenever an organism mutated, he would run it through a special test to see whether the mutation was beneficial. If it was, he killed the organism off. .You'd think that would turn off any further adaptation,. he says. Instead, the digital organisms kept evolving. They learned to process information in new ways and were able to replicate faster. It took a while for Ofria to realize that they had tricked him. They had evolved a way to tell when Ofria was testing them by looking at the numbers he fed them. As soon as they recognized they were being tested, they stopped processing numbers. .If it was a test environment, they said, 'Let's play dead,' . says Ofria. .There's this thing coming to kill them, and so they avoid it and go on with their lives.. When Ofria describes these evolutionary surprises, admiration and ruefulness mix in is voice. .Here I am touting Avida as a wonderful system where you have full knowledge of everything and can control anything you want-except I can't get them to stop adapting. Life will always find a way.. Thinking about such adaptable creatures lurking on the Michigan State campus, furiously feeding on data, can be unsettling. Should the Avida team be working in quarantine? Lenski argues that Avida itself acts as a quarantine, because its organisms can exist only in its computer language. .They're living in an alien world,. Lenski says. .They may be nasty predators from Mars, but they'd drop dead here.. Still, Ofria acknowledges that harmful computer viruses may eventually evolve like his caged digital organisms. .Some day it's going to happen, and it's going to be scary,. Ofria says. .Better to study them now so we know how to deal with them.. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:46:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:46:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Computers Can Boost Kids' Test Scores Message-ID: Computers Can Boost Kids' Test Scores http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-01-31-4 But different uses have different effects, and not all are positive Betterhumans Staff 1/31/2005 2:52 PM Using computers can boost kids' test scores, but it all depends on what they're using the computers to do. Analyzing test performance and computer uses of 986 fourth grade students from 55 classrooms in nine Massachusetts school districts, researchers from [8]Boston College and the [9]University of Massachusetts at Lowell found that the more students regularly used computers to write papers for school, the better they performed on the [10]Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) English/Language Arts exam. (Students weren't allowed to use computers for the test, which could have complicated the findings.) Recreational use of computers to do such things as play video games and surf the Internet, however, was negatively associated with MCAS writing scores, as was creating PowerPoint presentations, showing that how kids use computers is just as important as how often. "Specifically, this study finds that students' use of computers throughout the writing process had a statistically significant positive effect on MCAS writing scores," says the study's director, Michael Russell of Boston College. "Using computers simply to type in final drafts of essays, however, had no effect on students' test performance. These findings are consistent with past research and demonstrate the importance of allowing students to use computers to produce rough drafts, edit their papers, and to produce final drafts." Recreational use of computers may negatively affect scores because it distracts from reading, the researchers suggest. Creating PowerPoint presentations may negatively affect scores because students spend more time on multimedia aspects of presentations than on writing aspects. The researchers say that the study provides evidence that students' computer use impacts their achievement as measured by tests such as MCAS, which is important as standardized testing is becoming increasingly important in the education system. The research is reported in the [11]Journal of Technology, Learning and Assessment ([12]read abstract). References 8. http://www.bc.edu/ 9. http://www.uml.edu/ 10. http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/ 11. http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/jtla.html 12. http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/jtla/journal/v3n3.shtml From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:46:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:46:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] RedNova News: Can This Black Box See Into the Future? Message-ID: Can This Black Box See Into the Future? http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649 Posted on: Friday, 11 February 2005, 00:00 CST [This would be completely fabulous if true. Actually, there are a number of results like this that would change very basic science. When should I join the bandwagon? I'm reminded of the saying, "Those who quit the Party before I did were traitors; those who quit after were fools." DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream. At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators. But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events. The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy. Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with apparently inexplicable powers. 'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon. 'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can all tap into without realising. And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of predicting the future. Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal. 'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most up-to-date technology available. One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper. The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of chance dictate that the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph. Any deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve. During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails. It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained. Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or 'tails'. According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have happened - but it did. And it kept on happening. Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results were eyepopping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic shifts in the patterns of numbers. From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked. Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked more or less like a flat line. But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for another reason, too. For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at Westminster Abbey. Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some way. Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the output of his REGs. If so, how? Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it. So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global Consciousness Project was born. Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project. And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure. For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's hung election of 2000. The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New Year's Eve. But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001. As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the Eggs. Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers. They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly enormous. 'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr Nelson. What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps? Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the machines went wild once more. Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people. So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the future? Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their raw data? The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible to exclude any such random connections. 'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has anyone else. Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against. That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical. Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility of foreseeing the future. It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future. 'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof Bierman at the University of Amsterdam. 'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence to support this theory. Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns. He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings. When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This was to be expected. Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the pictures were even flashed up. It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown next. It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable. But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie detectors. Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. And he kept getting the same results. 'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public. 'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release their results at the same time. That would at least spread the ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then the experiments are no laughing matter. They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that we have all experienced from time to time. They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box in Edinburgh. Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden psychic abilities? Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says. 'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the CIA.' But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human race. For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God. 'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right. We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.' ----- On the Net: [42]Global Consciousness Project [43]Princeton University Source: Daily Mail; London (UK) References 42. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ 43. http://www.princeton.edu/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:47:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:47:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] IEEE-USA white paper: US prosperity at risk; Gigabit networks should be national priority Message-ID: US prosperity at risk; Gigabit networks should be national priority http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/ioea-iwp040805.php The United States should deploy widespread wired and wireless gigabit networks as a national priority, according to a white paper from the IEEE-USA Committee on Communications and Information Policy (CCIP). "Providing Ubiquitous Gigabit Networks in the United States," issued 14 March, says that our nation must act promptly to ensure that a new generation of broadband networks of gigabit per second speed is ubiquitous and available to all. Failure to act will "relegate the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure to an inferior competitive position" and undermine the future of the U.S. economy. "Priority deployment of gigabit networks is essential for the United States to maintain its world leadership in the knowledge economy," IEEE Life Fellow and IEEE-USA CCIP member Dr. John Richardson said. "Information drives our lives and our prosperity. The problem is that current networks aren't fast enough to distribute that information properly." Digital data rates, or speeds, are typically expressed as megabits per second (Mb/s) or gigabits per second (Gb/s). A megabit is one million bits; a gigabit is one billion bits. Current broadband networks, such as DSL or cable modems, have an asymmetric speed of about 2 Mb/s. Gigabit networks are capable of digital rates 50 to 5,000 times as fast, with equal upstream and downstream speed. Symmetric speed means information can be downloaded and uploaded at the same rate. With asymmetric systems, upstream speeds lag behind downstream delivery rates. Omnipresent U.S. gigabit networks, readily achievable by deploying optical fiber and high-speed wireless, would carry numerous benefits. These include providing the U.S. economy with superior ability to compete globally; stimulating economic activity in digital home entertainment; enhancing online education and training; and facilitating health care remote diagnosis and consultation (telemedicine). Congress, the Executive Branch and private-sector initiatives could secure these benefits for our nation's global competitiveness and quality of life by adopting "principles leading to ubiquitous, symmetric gigabit availability as a national priority," according to the CCIP white paper ([5]http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/committees/ccip/docs/Gigabit-WP. pdf). Such principles include regulatory flexibility and encouragement of user-owned networks. "The key fact of modern telecommunications is the convergence of voice, data, image and video into digital bit streams," said Richardson, a former chief scientist at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "We need faster networks to carry these bit streams to users. Broadband speed and penetration in the United States are pitiful compared to levels in Japan and South Korea. This means that U.S. prosperity is at risk because it depends, in large part, on fast and easy exchange of information." IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE. It was created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public policy interests of the more than 220,000 technology professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to [6]http://www.ieeeusa.org. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:52:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:52:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Cory Doctorow: Humanist transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg Message-ID: Cory Doctorow: Humanist transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg http://www.boingboing.net/2005/04/11/humanist_transhumani.html Monday, April 11, 2005 I've just finished a review copy of James Hughes's "Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future." I was skeptical when this one arrived, since I've read any number of utopian wanks on the future of humanity and the inevitable withering away of the state into utopian anarchism fueled by the triumph of superior technology over inferior laws. But Hughes's work is much subtler and more nuanced than that, and was genuinely surprising, engaging and engrossing. A couple years ago, my friend John Gilmore -- who advocates for marijuana law reform -- introduced me to the idea of "cognitive liberty," the freedom to choose your state of mind. The cognitive liberty cause encompasses the movements to legalize "recreational" drugs and to limit the power of the state to subject "mentally ill" people to involuntary pharmaceutical therapy (and, when it is still practiced, involuntary physical therapies such as lobotomies and electroshock). Cognitive liberty resonates strongly for me. Like other forms of personal liberty, it is not without its perils -- when friends of mine were involuntarily medicated during acute incidents of schizophrenia, mania or depression, the interventions seemed like a good trade-off at the time (rampaging, irrational, out of control friends who are treated with meds that make them capable of reasoning with those around them are good poster children for "cognitive coercion"), and friends who've fallen down the well of addiction and ended up with ruined lives or even lives cut short are a strong warning against unbridled cognitive liberty. But then there are friends whose touch of madness sends them on flights of brilliance, friends whose casual glass of wine, joint or hallucinogen use have made them happier, better adjusted, and more creative and fulfilled. What's more, my friends who've ODed, been committed, or who live with addiction haven't been helped by prohibition -- far from it. Some are in jail, some are medicated insensible, some are living lives of dangerous poverty. The idea of cognitive liberty is very tempting, but I have an instinct that there's an approach to it that is grounded not in libertarianism, but in Canadian/European-style social democracy. "Citizen Cyborg" takes the social democratic approach not just to cognitive liberty, but to the parcel of questions that follow on from it as technology allows us to charge our minds and bodies. When we can choose our children's' sex, modify our genomes to eliminate some forms of mental and physical disability, when we can modify our bodies and minds to improve them beyond the normal human baseline , when we can even use technology to make dolphins and great apes as smart as precocious children, what then? Surely the ability to determine your own genome, the ability to choose to modify your physical self and to make the choices for your children are as fundamental civil liberties as the right to speak and assemble and otherwise author your own destiny. But the traditional "transhumanist" movement has come out of the libertarian right, advocates of an unbridled market without government intervention. And much of the opposition to transhumanism hasn't just come from the religious right, but from the left, too -- lefties who see transhumanism as likely to produce a troubling, divisive caste system, or to make us all beholden to corporate interests like Monsanto who bind us to subscribing to patented GM lifeforms that we require to sustain our lifestyles. Hughes's remarkable achievement in "Citizen Cyborg" is the fusion of social democratic ideals of tempered, reasoned state intervention to promote equality of opportunity with the ideal of self-determination inherent in transhumanism. Transhumanism, Hughes convincingly argues, is the sequel to humanism, and to feminism, to the movements for racial and gender equality, for the fight for queer and transgender rights -- if you support the right to determine what consenting adults can do with their bodies in the bedroom, why not in the operating theatre? Much of this book is taken up with scathing rebuttal to the enemies of transhumanism -- Christian lifestyle conservatives who've fought against abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage; as well as deep ecologist/secular lefty intelligentsia who fear the commodification of human life. He dismisses the former as superstitious religious thugs who, a few generations back, would happily decry the "unnatural" sin of miscegenation; to the latter, he says, "You are willing to solve the problems of labor-automation with laws that ensure a fair shake for working people -- why not afford the same chance to life-improving techno-medicine?" The humanist transhuman is a political stance I'd never imagined, but having read "Citizen Cyborg," it seems obvious and natural. Like a lot of basically lefty geeks, I've often felt like many of my ideals were at odds with both the traditional left and the largely right-wing libertarians. "Citizen Cyborg" squares the circle, suggest a middle-path between them that stands foursquare for the improvement of the human condition through technology but is likewise not squeamish about advocating for rules, laws and systems that extend a fair opportunity to those less fortunate (say, by offering special patent rules to the developing world allowing poor nations' scientists to freely reuse the patented pharmaceutical inventions of the rich north to solve local needs.) Hughes is a Buddhist whose children struggle with genetically-influenced disorders like ADD and Tourette's, and his life seems much taken-up with the cause of transhumanist humanism. He is the executive director of the World Transumanist Association, and he teaches health policy at Hartford, CT's Trinity College. The work is sprinkled with references to science fiction and is very concerned with the way that transhumanist ideas were prefigured in the genre and have leaked back into modern sf. I don't know that he's convinced me to become a transhumanist activist -- I feel like the work I do with EFF works to safeguard a lot of rights dear to the transhumanist heart anyway -- but the analytical tools this book has provided me with have made me re-examine my own political identity. Book Link, References Link posted by Cory Doctorow at 09:23:22 AM permalink | Other blogs commenting on this post From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:52:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:52:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Annual Barna Group Survey Describes Changes in America's Religious Beliefs and Practices Message-ID: Annual Barna Group Survey Describes Changes in America's Religious Beliefs and Practices http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdateNarrow&BarnaUpdateID=186 April 11, 2005 (Ventura, CA) - More than nine out of ten American adults engage in some type of faith-related practice during a typical week. This is one of the numerous findings revealed in a new report by researcher and author George Barna, drawn from the national survey of religious beliefs and practices that his company has been conducting every January since 1991. The report provides information concerning 45 different faith-related beliefs, behaviors and perspectives. The data for 2005 were generated from a study in January by The Barna Group based on a nationwide survey of a random sample of 1003 adults. That survey asked the same questions about religious practices and perspectives that his company has been tracking in national surveys each January for the last fifteen years. With the release of the report, entitled The State of the Church: 2005, Barna revealed several of the outcomes described in greater detail in the research. Bible Reading Increases One outcome described is the small but noteworthy increase in Bible reading. Currently, 45% of adults read the Bible during a typical week, not including when they are at church. That figure represents a minimal increase over the past few years, but a significant rise from the 31% measured in 1995, the lowest level of Bible reading recorded by Barna in the past 15 years. The current statistic is still below the levels achieved in 1980s and early 1990s, but the report shows that the trend is upward. The rise in Bible reading is largely attributable to increases in this behavior among Baby Busters and residents of the western states. In the early Nineties, about three out of ten Busters read the Bible in a given week; today that ratio stands at four out ten. Meanwhile, just one-third of people in the West read the Bible in the early and mid-Nineties, whereas close to half of them do so these days (47%). Not surprisingly, born again adults have led the return to God's Word since 1990. After hitting a low of just 54% in 1997, the percentage of born again individuals who have read from the Bible in the past seven days has returned to a full two-thirds of that group (67%). The group whose people are most likely to read the Bible during the week are evangelicals. Nearly nine out of ten (88%) explore God's Word during a typical week. Evangelical and Born Again Christians Despite the media frenzy surrounding the influence of evangelical Christians during the 2004 presidential election, the new study indicates that evangelicals remain just 7% of the adult population. That number has not changed since the Barna Group began measuring the size of the evangelical public in 1994. Barna surveys do not ask people to define themselves as "evangelical" but instead categorize people as such based on their beliefs. In this approach, evangelicals a subset of born again Christians. In addition to meeting the born again criteria (described below) evangelicals also meet seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; stating that Satan exists; maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not by being good or doing good deeds; asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. In this framework, being classified as "evangelical" is not dependent upon any kind of church or denominational affiliation or involvement. Several segments of the population are more likely than average to be found within evangelical circles. The vast majority of evangelicals are Protestant; less than 1% of Catholics fit the description. Similarly, adults who describe themselves as conservative on social and political matters are much more likely to fit the definition than are those who say they are liberal in their thinking on such matters (17% versus 1%, respectively). The largest concentration of evangelicals lives within the South; the most limited number resides in the Northeast. Even though all evangelicals are born again Christians, less than one out of five born again adults (18%) meet the evangelical criteria. The report also illustrates the comparatively enormous size of the born again constituency. As with the term "evangelical", the phrase "born again Christian" is not assigned to those people who call themselves by that name. Barna's surveys categorize people as born again if they say they "have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in my life today" and also contend that after they die they will "go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior." Four out of ten adults fit this definition. When all of the atheists, agnostics and adults associated with non-Christian faith groups are combined, they are only half as numerous as the born again segment (21% compared to 40% respectively). The remaining body of people - 39% of the nation's adult population - is what Barna categorizes as "notional Christians" - people who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again. For more than a decade, the sizes of the born again and notional segments have been roughly equivalent. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:51:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:51:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Nature: Black holes 'do not exist' Message-ID: Black holes 'do not exist': These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims. http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050328/full/050328-8.html Published online: 31 March 2005 [52]Philip Ball These mysterious objects are dark-energy stars, physicist claims. Black holes are staples of science fiction and many think astronomers have observed them indirectly. But according to a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, these awesome breaches in space-time do not and indeed cannot exist. Over the past few years, observations of the motions of galaxies have shown that some 70% the Universe seems to be composed of a strange 'dark energy' that is driving the Universe's accelerating expansion. George Chapline thinks that the collapse of the massive stars, which was long believed to generate black holes, actually leads to the formation of stars that contain dark energy. "It's a near certainty that black holes don't exist," he claims. Black holes are one of the most celebrated predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity, which explains gravity as the warping of space-time caused by massive objects. The theory suggests that a sufficiently massive star, when it dies, will collapse under its own gravity to a single point. But Einstein didn't believe in black holes, Chapline argues. "Unfortunately", he adds, "he couldn't articulate why." At the root of the problem is the other revolutionary theory of twentieth-century physics, which Einstein also helped to formulate: quantum mechanics. In general relativity, there is no such thing as a 'universal time' that makes clocks tick at the same rate everywhere. Instead, gravity makes clocks run at different rates in different places. But quantum mechanics, which describes physical phenomena at infinitesimally small scales, is meaningful only if time is universal; if not, its equations make no sense. This problem is particularly pressing at the boundary, or event horizon, of a black hole. To a far-off observer, time seems to stand still here. A spacecraft falling into a black hole would seem, to someone watching it from afar, to be stuck forever at the event horizon, although the astronauts in the spacecraft would feel as if they were continuing to fall. "General relativity predicts that nothing happens at the event horizon," says Chapline. Quantum transitions However, as long ago as 1975 quantum physicists argued that strange things do happen at an event horizon: matter governed by quantum laws becomes hypersensitive to slight disturbances. "The result was quickly forgotten," says Chapline, "because it didn't agree with the prediction of general relativity. But actually, it was absolutely correct." This strange behaviour, he says, is the signature of a 'quantum phase transition' of space-time. Chapline argues that a star doesn't simply collapse to form a black hole; instead, the space-time inside it becomes filled with dark energy and this has some intriguing gravitational effects. Outside the 'surface' of a dark-energy star, it behaves much like a black hole, producing a strong gravitational tug. But inside, the 'negative' gravity of dark energy may cause matter to bounce back out again. If the dark-energy star is big enough, Chapline predicts, any electrons bounced out will have been converted to positrons, which then annihilate other electrons in a burst of high-energy radiation. Chapline says that this could explain the radiation observed from the centre of our galaxy, previously interpreted as the signature of a huge black hole. He also thinks that the Universe could be filled with 'primordial' dark-energy stars. These are formed not by stellar collapse but by fluctuations of space-time itself, like blobs of liquid condensing spontaneously out of a cooling gas. These, he suggests, could be stuff that has the same gravitational effect as normal matter, but cannot be seen: the elusive substance known as dark matter. References 1. Chapline G. Arxiv, [55]http://xxx.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0503200 (2005). References 52. http://www.nature.com/news/about/aboutus.html#Ball From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:52:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:52:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] GRG: EvolutionaryTheories of Aging and Mortality Deceleration Message-ID: From: Leonid Gavrilov Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:33:14 -0500 To: Gerontology Research Group Subject: [GRG] EvolutionaryTheories of Aging and Mortality Deceleration X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Reply-To: Gerontology Research Group Greetings, Here are our comments to the following recent publication: "How is the evolutionary biological theory of aging holding up against mounting attacks?" American Aging Association Newsletter, March 2005 Dr. George M. Martin, Department of Pathology, University of Washington http://www.americanaging.org/news/mar05.html#Martin_Discussion Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------- Comments on discussion piece "How is the evolutionary biological theory of aging holding up against mounting attacks?" Leonid A. Gavrilov, Ph.D., and Natalia S. Gavrilova, Ph.D. Center on Aging, NORC/University of Chicago An interesting discussion piece "How is the evolutionary biological theory of aging holding up against mounting attacks?" by Dr. George Martin is an inspiration for many possible comments. Here we focus on one particular topic raised by Dr. George Martin -- the departures of mortality trajectories from the Gompertz curve -- a paradoxical phenomenon known in scientific literature as late-life mortality deceleration, mortality levelling-off, and late-life mortality plateaus. In many biological species, including Drosophila and humans, death rates increase exponentially with age for much of the life span (the famous Gompertz curve). However, at extreme old ages a "mortality deceleration" occurs -- the pace of mortality growth decelerates from an expected exponential curve. Sometimes this mortality deceleration progresses to the extent that mortality "levelling off" is observed, leading eventually to a "mortality plateau." Thus at extreme old ages a paradoxical situation is observed when one of the major manifestations of aging -- increasing death rate -- apparently fades away or even disappears. This phenomenon represents a challenge for many theories of aging, including the evolutionary theories (as correctly mentioned by Dr. George Martin). It is important, however, to put the discussion of "mortality deceleration" phenomenon in a historical context. Contrary to some recent outrageous claims, the phenomenon of mortality deceleration is not a new scientific discovery, but rather an old and well documented observation, which has been known for a long time. For an excellent historical review of studies on mortality deceleration at extreme old ages, we would strongly recommend an article by S. Jay Olshansky, "On the biodemography of aging: a review essay." Population and Development Review 24, pp. 381-393, 1998. The first person who noticed that the Gompertz curve is not applicable to extreme old ages was Benjamin Gompertz himself (see Gompertz B., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 115: 513-585,1825; reviewed by Olshansky, 1998). In 1867, another British actuary William Makeham noted that for humans "the rapidity of the increase in the death rate decelerated beyond age 75" (see page 346 in Makeham, W.M. 1867. On the law of mortality. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries 13, 325-358.). In 1919, a British statistician J. Brownlee wondered whether it is "possible that a kind of Indian summer occurs after the age of 85 years is passed, and that conditions improve as regards length of life" (cited from page 385 in Brownlee, J. 1919. Notes on the biology of a life-table. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 82, 34-77). Later in 1932, the British actuary W. Perks observed that "the graduated curve [of mortality] starts to decline in the neighborhood of age 84", and suggested to substitute the Gompertz law of mortality with a logistic formula (see page 15 at Perks, W. 1932. On some experiments in the graduation of mortality statistics. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries 63, 12-57). In 1939, the British researchers Greenwood and Irwin published a research article, "Biostatistics of Senility," with the intriguing finding that mortality force stops increasing with age at extreme old ages and becomes constant (see Greenwood, M., Irwin, J.O. 1939. "The biostatistics of senility." Human Biology, vol. 11, 1-23). Their study and findings were considered to be so important that they were featured on the front page of the academic journal "Human Biology" where their study was published. This study, accomplished by the famous British statistician and epidemiologist Major Greenwood, is directly related to the topic of this discussion. The first important finding was formulated by Greenwood and Irwin in the following way: " the increase of mortality rate with age advances at a slackening rate, that nearly all, perhaps all, methods of graduation of the type of Gompertz?s formula overstate senile mortality" (Greenwood, Irwin, 1939, p. 14). This observation was confirmed later by many authors (see review in Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. 1991. The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach, NY: Harwood Academic Publishers), and it is known as the ?late-life mortality deceleration.? The authors also suggested "the possibility that with advancing age the rate of mortality asymptotes to a finite value" (Greenwood, Irwin, 1939, p. 14). Their conclusion that mortality at exceptionally high ages follows a first-order kinetics (also known as the law of radioactive decay with exponential decline in survival probabilities) was confirmed later by other researchers, including A.C. Economos ("Kinetics of metazoan mortality," J. Social Biol. Struct. 1980, 3: 317-329). Economos demonstrated the correctness of this law for humans and laboratory animals (linear decrease for the logarithm of the numbers of survivors). This observation is known now as the "mortality leveling-off" at advanced ages, and as the "late-life mortality plateau." Moreover, Greenwood and Irwin made the first estimates for the asymptotic value of human mortality (one-year probability of death, qx) at extreme ages using data from the life insurance company. According to their estimates, " the limiting values of qx are 0.439 for women and 0.544 for men" (Greenwood and Irwin, 1939, p. 21). It is interesting that these first estimates are very close to estimates obtained later using more numerous and accurate human data, including recent data on supercentenarians. Interestingly, Greenwood and Irwin suggested the same explanation for mortality levelling off, as it was offered by Dr. George Martin in his "cocoon" hypothesis: "With advancing years the disabilities, forcefully described by a large number of poets whom it is needless to quote, restrict activities. Even the juvenile of 60, if ordinarily intelligent, eschews the violent exercises of the child of 40. Centenarians rarely appear in public. A statistical rate of mortality might show no increase with age, if the demands made on the vital forces diminished pari passu with the decay of vigor." (cited from page 14 in Greenwood, M., Irwin, J.O. 1939. "The biostatistics of senility." Human Biology, vol. 11, 1-23). In 1960, journal Science published an article on a "General theory of mortality and aging" that listed some "... essential observations which must be taken into account in any general theory of mortality." (Strehler & Mildvan, 1960, p.14). The first of these essential observations was the Gompertz law of mortality, while the second essential observation stated that "the Gomperzian period is followed by a gradual reduction in their rate of increase of the mortality" (see page 14 in Strehler, B. L., & Mildvan, A. S. 1960. General theory of mortality and aging. Science, 132, 14-21). Biologists and biogerontologists became well aware of mortality levelling-off since the 1960s. For example a biologist P.J. Lindop (1961) applied the Perks (logistic) formula in order to account for mortality deceleration at older ages in mice (Lindop P.J. Growth rate, lifespan and causes of death in SAS/4 mice. Gerontologia, 5: 193-208, 1961). George Sacher (1966) believed that the observed mortality deceleration in mice and rats can be explained by population heterogeneity: "one effect of such residual heterogeneity is to bring about a decreased slope of the Gompertzian at advanced ages. This occurs because sub-populations with the higher injury levels die out more rapidly, resulting in progressive selection for vigour in the surviving populations" (see page 435 in Sacher G.A. The Gompertz transformation in the study of the injury-mortality relationship: Application to late radiation effects and aging. In: P.J. Lindop and G.A. Sacher (eds.) Radiation and ageing, 1966, pp. 411-441, Taylor and Francis, London). This observation of mortality deceleration was confirmed in 1979 for several other biological species including Drosophila and nematode C. elegans (Economos, A.C. 1979. A non-Gompertzian paradigm for mortality kinetics of metazoan animals and failure kinetics of manufactured products. AGE, 2, 74-76). The author concluded "...that after a certain species-characteristic age, force of mortality and probability of death cease to increase exponentially with age ... and remain constant at a high level on the average for the remainder of the life span." (page 74). The author called these findings "a non-Gompertzian paradigm for mortality kinetics" (Economos, 1979, p. 74). A year later the same author analyzed data for thoroughbred horses (mares), Dall mountain sheep, houseflies and some other species, and came to a conclusion that "Gompertz's law is only an approximation, not valid over a certain terminal part of the lifespan, during which force of mortality levels off." (see page 317 in Economos, A.C. 1980. Kinetics of metazoan mortality. Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 3, 317-329). Prior to 1990 the most popular explanation of mortality plateaus was based on the idea of initial population heterogeneity, suggested by British actuary Robert Eric Beard (1911-1983). Beard developed a mathematical model in which individuals were assumed to have exponential increase in their risk of death as they age (Gompertz law), but their initial risks differed from individual to individual and followed a gamma distribution (Beard, R. E. 1959. Note on some mathematical mortality models, In: The Lifespan of Animals, G. E. W. Wolstenholme and M. O?Connor, eds. Little, Brown, Boston). This model produces a logistic function for mortality kinetics that is very close to the exponential function at younger ages, but then mortality rates decelerate and reach a plateau in old age. This compositional interpretation of mortality plateaus explained them as an artifact of mixture, perhaps reducing their intrinsic interest to biologists. The situation changed in 1991, when it was found that the general theory of systems failure (known as reliability theory) predicts an inevitable mortality levelling-off as a result of redundancy exhaustion, even for initially identical individuals (Gavrilov L.A., Gavrilova N.S. The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach, NY: Harwood Academic Publisher, 1991, 385p.). Thus, a testable prediction from this theory was that mortality deceleration should be observed even for genetically identical individuals kept in strictly controlled laboratory conditions. This prediction was confirmed later for inbred strains of Drosophila melanogaster (Curtsinger, J.W., et. al., 1992. Demography of genotypes: Failure of the limited life-span paradigm in Drosophila melanogaster. Science, 258, 461-463). In conclusion, we agree with Dr. George Martin that the evolutionary theory of aging needs to be reconciled with many empirical observations, including the late-life mortality deceleration. In 2002, we reviewed the evolutionary theories of aging, and came to the following conclusion: "Evolutionary theories of aging are useful when they open new opportunities for research by suggesting testable predictions, but they should never be used to impose limitations on aging studies. This is because the evolutionary ?theories? of aging are not in fact completed theories, but rather a set of ideas that themselves require further elaboration and validation." (see page 353 in Gavrilov, L.A., Gavrilova, N.S. Evolutionary theories of aging and longevity. The Scientific World JOURNAL, 2002, 2: 339-356. Available: http://longevity-science.org/Evolution.htm ). Leonid A. Gavrilov, Ph.D., and Natalia S. Gavrilova, Ph.D. Center on Aging, NORC/University of Chicago 1155 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637-2745 USA Fax: (773) 256-6313, Phone: (773) 256-6359 Website: http://longevity-science.org/ Blog: http://longevity.scienceboard.net/ Resumes: http://myprofile.cos.com/gavrilov http://longevity-science.org/CV-gavrilov.htm _______________________________________________ GRG mailing list GRG at lists.ucla.edu http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grg From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:52:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:52:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stephen Wright: Witticisms Message-ID: 1- I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2- Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back. 3- Half the people you know are below average. 4- 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. 5- 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 6- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 7- If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. 8- All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand. 9- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 10- I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met. 11- OK, so what's the speed of dark? 12- How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? 13- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. 14- Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 15- When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 16- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy. 17- Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now. 18- I intend to live forever -- so far, so good. 19- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? 20- Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. 21- What happens if you get scared half to death twice? 22- My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder." 23- Why do psychics have to ask you for your name? 24- If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. 25- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. 26- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 27- The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. 28- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. 29- The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. 30- The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. 31- The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it. 32- Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film! From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:56:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Sex selection for human embryos backed by report Message-ID: Sex selection for human embryos backed by report http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg18624933.700 * 02 April 2005 LET them choose boys! Or girls! That's what parents in the UK should be free to do, according to a parliamentary committee. Its controversial report calls for a relaxation of the rules on the use of reproductive technologies and human embryo research. The report recommends that parents on IVF programmes be allowed to use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select the sex of a second or later child for "family-balancing" reasons. It is also unfair for IVF clinics to screen would-be parents to try to exclude child abusers, it says. If accepted, the report's recommendations would bring the UK more in line with the US, where decisions on the use of reproductive technology are largely left to individuals. And although human embryo research is a major political issue in the US, there are few restrictions on it there, other than a block on federal funding. The committee chairman, MP Ian Gibson, admits that the recommendations will not please everyone. "I'm sure George Bush would burn the report," he says. Even some members of the committee may feel the same. Only half signed the report, and the dissenters made it clear that they think it too libertarian. From issue 2493 of New Scientist magazine, 02 April 2005, page 6 From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:56:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:56:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: What Matters Most Depends On Where You Are Message-ID: What Matters Most Depends On Where You Are http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/04/issue/feature_gp.asp?p=0 Herb Brody (edit) April 2005 "Global village" was always an idealistic oxymoron. Politically, culturally, and economically, the differences among nations loom far larger than any differences that might exist among neighborhoods made up of small clutches of homes and shops. In the following collection of stories, Technology Review brings you the view from seven countries. They are a sampling of the world: Northern Hemisphere and Southern, nations developed and developing, with traditions democratic, autocratic, and Communist. In four cases (China, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States), the writers are editors of Technology Review or of one of its foreign-language editions. For reports on technology in the other three countries (South Africa, Chile, and Brazil), we turned to journalists who cover those countries. We asked these writers to report on which emerging technologies are the most important for their nations' societies and economies, and to explain what makes these technologies uniquely characteristic of their countries. Each country reveals its own preoccupations, usually born out of its peculiar history and current circumstances. Leave it to the Dutch, for example, to pour computer modeling resources into the management of water and soil--endeavors without which the Netherlands' very existence would be imperiled. The United States has measured the value of R&D projects largely by their potential for adding to the nervous nation's power to fight wars and defend against terrorist attack. In Germany, home of the world's first superhighways and some of its most storied carmakers, it's no surprise to see projects aimed at making driving safer and smarter. In all, our reporters identified more than two dozen emerging technologies or ideas about innovation as vital to the futures of these seven countries. But even those innovations that most directly address urgent regional needs prove to have application for the entire planet. Measuring Global Technology Economically advanced European and North American countries may leap to mind as global technology leaders. By and large, that's the case. These countries tend to fare particularly well on such measures as Internet usage, technology spending per person, and cost of Internet access. Economically developing countries are relatively well represented when it comes to significant mobile-phone and Internet use as well as, increasingly, the production of genetically modified crops. Data is for 2004 unless otherwise noted. Cost per 20 hours of Internet use: data is for 2003; high is >$50, mid is $30-$50, low is <$30. R&D spending as a percentage of GDP: data is for 2000-2002; high is >2 percent, mid is 1-2 percent, low is <1 percent. Information and Communication Technology spending per capita: data is for 2002, except for Iceland, which is for 2001; high is >$1,000, mid is $200-$1,000, low is <$200. Mobile-phone use per 1,000 people: data is for 2000-2002; High is >500, mid is 100-500, low is <100. Internet use per 1,000 people: data is for 2000-2002; high is >150, mid is 15-150, low is <15 Sources: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development *If construed as a separate entity, hong kong would rank third on this list. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:57:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:57:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: A Dose of the New Medical Reality Message-ID: A Dose of the New Medical Reality http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-04-01-1 The debate over Terri Schiavo highlights emerging dilemmas of morphological freedom as medicine changes our lives and limits By Dale Carrico 4/1/2005 2:47 PM On Thursday morning, March 31, 2005, [8]Terri Schiavo died quietly in a Florida hospice. The person who Terri Schiavo had been ceased to exist 15 years before, according to the testimony of her husband and many who knew her, as well as the [9]best determination of credible doctors and scientists. The memory of Schiavo will make its home in the lives of the people who actually knew her in profoundly meaningful ways for many years to come. And no doubt the public figure of Schiavo will likewise continue to resonate into the future, condensing into a few flashes of ineradicable imagery what are in fact the endlessly complex and emotionally fraught quandaries of bodies and lives rendered newly questionable in their limits, capacities and social intelligibility by ongoing and emerging technological developments. So long as medicine remained primarily remedial, its recommendations were driven most conspicuously by the instrumental rationality of causes and effects, and our best assessments of just what these were and how best to influence them. What health consisted of in the first place and what was desirable about the achievement of that state were to an important extent simply treated as "givens." But as our prosthetic practices proliferate the ways in which people can live "livable " lives, we look less and less to medicine to remedy the ways in which our bodies deviate into pathological difference and more to deliver us into differences we desire. Of course, the goal of producing and maintaining a "healthy body" through medical and hygienic practice has never in fact been a value-neutral ideal, and our diagnoses of disease, infirmity and illness have always been freighted with cultural and moral significance. But the scope and force of medical intervention is deranging our sense of the standards against which we would measure the distance of the variety of actually living human bodies from the "normative" body we would traditionally impose and maintain through recourse to that medicine. Already, we cannot be quite sure what we are capable of or what we can rightly expect or demand of our newly queer and prostheticized bodily selves. Medicine is taking humanity on an unprecedented path from remedy to self-creation. But our assumptions and our language have not yet managed to keep up. Meanwhile, our hopes and desires and sometimes our demands range hyperbolically forward past our present capacities. The heartbreaking and hysterical public spectacle of the dead but surreally lively prostheticized body of Schiavo attests to our perplexity and our present distress. There are many such spectacles to come. What is a life? In a [10]recent editorial inspired by the Schiavo case, David Brooks claimed to discern as the main difference between conservative and progressive bioethical discourse that only conservative bioethics is properly moral in its concerns while progressives are somewhat blind to the "values" dimension of policy. This is, of course, the dismissive or oblivious attitude we have come to expect public conservative figures to take whenever they encounter values with which they disagree. Remember, for example, the discussion just a few months back of the so-called "Values-Voter," which seemed to describe as "moral" only that segment of the American population that hated gay people enough to be mobilized by homophobia to vote palpably against their own stated interests. But Brooks' discussion of the differences in the ways in which many conservatives and progressives talk about the dilemmas of a case such as Schiavo's does highlight important moral, cultural, temperamental distinctions that likewise illuminate the emerging terrain of [11]bioconservative and technoprogressive positions as well. Brooks claims that "[t]he core belief that social conservatives [have]... is that the value of each individual life is intrinsic. The value of a life doesn't depend upon what a person can physically do, experience or achieve. The life of a comatose person or a fetus has the same dignity and worth as the life of a fully functioning adult." And against the social conservatives, he suggests that progressives hold as their own "core belief that. quality of life is a fundamental human value." Progressives don't, Brooks accuses, "emphasize the bright line between life and death; they describe a continuum between a fully lived life and a life that, by the sort of incapacity Terri Schiavo has suffered, is mere existence." In this formulation, Brooks manages rather incredibly to paint progressives simultaneously as bureaucratic bean-counters altogether dead to the luminous ethical distinctions that drive the more epic moralism of their righteous conservative counterparts, while at the same time accusing them of flinging moralizing assessments about just whose lives get to count as lives "fully lived" as opposed to "mere existence" in a rampage of apparently arbitrary judgment. Of course, hiding behind the anemic notion of "quality of life" in Brooks' accounting here is in fact a progressive moral value quite as luminous as anything he would attribute to conservative moralists, a value widely and passionately affirmed and on which the recent track record of conservatives is troubling indeed, whatever their occasional lip-service to the contrary: Consent. Denying lives by denigrating consent One has to wonder just why it is that conservatives proud to "err on the side of life" seem so regularly impelled in so doing to denigrate consciousness and violate consent. For progressives, there is indeed a texture in personal life beyond the "mere existence" we share with shrimp and snails, and which demands broad affirmation on its own terms. Personal lives are uniquely lived in the webs of meaning and thought and conversation woven by public beings, lives that reverberate with choices, with desires, with injuries, with deeds. All the while the armies of the conservative so-called "culture of life" seem to defend life only in some more vegetable or mineral mode always best exemplified by organisms that have not yet arrived among the community of poets and peers, or of those who have already departed from the scene. Brooks proposes that "[t]he central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin. Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own lines separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste." But to denigrate the morality of consent as "the relativism of mere taste" is to confess a complete moral blindness to the way in which we actually want to do morality here in democratic civilization these days. And it follows as night does day that those who denigrate consent will go on then to denigrate the dignity of actual democratic citizens with whom they happen to disagree. Notice how often "erring on the side of life" seems to conservatives to require a violation of the terms in which citizens with whom they disagree actually choose to live their own lives. I think it is in fact safe to say with Brooks that in Bush's America "[t]he life of a comatose person or a fetus has the same dignity and worth as the life of a fully functioning adult." That is to say, not very much. Conservatives really seem to adore claiming to speak for nonpersons (especially fetal not-quite-yet persons, and stubbornly vegetative no-longer-quite persons) who cannot speak for themselves. How dearly they seem to love to put words into the mouths of those who are in no position to protest the imposition. What better way, after all, of multiplying their own voices in a world where sprawling majorities of actual people simply disagree with them, then to claim that their voice stands for countless voiceless voices as well as their own? Conservatives pretend to extend the dignity and status of citizens to nonpersons, and in so doing inevitably evacuate actual citizenship of that status. In ascribing "dignity" so uncritically it is the social conservatives who stretch morality as thin as the skin of a soap bubble. And it matters little to conservatives that their own morality is finally so thin since ultimately they seem to prefer to turn for their moral guidance to the dictates of authorities, claiming to speak for God, or Tradition, or Homeland when all is said and done, than to the more contingent contentious verdicts of their own best worldly and reasonable deliberation. From disability to diversity Technoprogressives maintain that technological development is becoming not just a disruptive but a genuinely revolutionary force. Technological change undercuts the normative weight of claims made in the name of the "natural" in ways that, conjoined to deepening democracy, technoprogressives insist can be made to be ultimately emancipatory for all. For technoprogressives, the ongoing revolution in reproductive medicine and emerging genetic and neuroceutical medicine opens up consensual prosthetic practices of self-creation that will be this generation's historical contribution to the ongoing conversation of humankind. I use the term "morphological freedom" to describe the ways in which consensual prosthetic practices are enlarging the scope of personal freedom, even while they derange our expectations, demand new responsibilities, and introduce unprecedented possibilities for injustice, violation and harm against which we must struggle interminably. Along with many other progressives I felt disgust at the public figures who so loudly and cynically attached themselves to the distress of the family of Schiavo in bids for personal attention. I worried together with technoprogressives about the widespread American anti-scientific benightedness that blistered yet again to the surface of public discourse in the midst of the media circus, connecting up in the most ominous imaginable ways with conservative hostility to evolutionary science via the rhetoric of "intelligent design," hostility to environmental science via the rhetoric of climate-change denial, hostility to social science via the rhetoric of "abstinence-only education" and hostility to economic science via the rhetoric of market fundamentalism. And of course I shared the concerns of other liberals about legislative efforts to bypass the courts, insinuations of martial law, and all the rest. But I also share the concerns of many "disability" advocates who found themselves [12]at odds with some of the progressive and most of the technoprogressive consensus in this cultural moment and who worry that there is something quite pernicious in the conventional liberal discourse that claims that if only Schiavo had a real "chance at recovery" then liberals, too, along with social conservatives, would be demanding her "life" be protected and preserved. These advocates for the differently enabled are rightly suspicious that the idea of "recovery" in such arguments mobilizes what amounts in fact to a highly restrictive normative concept of the sort of lives that are ultimately "lives worth living." Too often the notion of a properly "livable life" is a concept that denigrates many differently enabled people who, whatever their struggles or sorrows, live lives suffused with dignity, joy and value worth affirming and supporting the same as anyone else's. Now, I strongly agree with the clinicians and experts whose thorough and repeated examination of the evidence located Schiavo's body in particular decisively with the dead rather than with the disabled. And in any case, I would insist like most progressives do on the absolute moral necessity to respect her own decisions and attitudes in a case like this, however these have been best ascertained by a number of courts, where matters of the care of her own body are concerned. But it is clear nevertheless that the figure of disability is circulating here in ways that would have to matter to advocates for the differently enabled as well as to advocates and scholars of morphological freedom. There are many "disabled" people who will seem superficially similar to Schiavo to an untrained eye, after all, and whose lives are routinely dismissed as "not worth living" in consequence. Advocates for the differently enabled fight fraught heartbreaking battles to champion the rights and standing of such people every single day. What it must mean to respect the differently enabled as the actually fully real people they are is to respect them and support them in their differences whenever they affirm the value of these differences on their own terms, just as it must likewise require the best provision of prosthetic avenues for rewriting their bodies and lives in the image of their own desires, also on their own terms, to the extent that this is possible and wanted by them. Consensual prosthetic practices The process of "life" in medical technocultures is one of ongoing practices of genetic, prosthetic and cognitive modification in pursuit of personal meanings, responsibilities and pleasures that are bound to strain against the imposition of normative conceptions of "wellness," however construed. From the perspective of morphological freedom it seems to me the standard of "recovery" is always therefore worrisomely conservative, naturalizing some contingent standard of proper health as more desirable than indefinitely many alternate possibilities. Morphological freedom is precisely never a matter of any coercive imposition of a normative body in the name of a moral standard of "health," but is an embrace of genetic, prosthetic and cognitive modification practices in the name of a proliferation of ways of being properly and meaningfully in the world. To the extent that the rhetoric of "recovery" impels us to misrecognize some manifestations of diversity as "disability," technoprogressives seem to me well rid of it. And to the extent that technoprogressives will sometimes affirm the desirability of "better than well" healthcare provision this would seem to encourage a repudiation of the discourse of "recovery" as well. It is especially interesting for me to note the extent to which so many of the differently enabled depend on ongoing cyborgization and prosthetic practices to find their ways to more enriching lives on their own terms: communicating through computer interfaces, locomoting in motorized conveyances, and engaged in sometimes lifelong medical procedures of extraordinary intimacy and profundity. Now, these considerations do not nudge us into any kind of blanket morphological relativism, since we will still prefer our own personal paths of self-determination on the basis of reasons at least intelligible enough to satisfy the conditions of informed and competent consent. And in any case the proper public provision of the resources that enable prosthetic practices of self-creation also demands the maintenance of intelligible standards to ensure democratic accountability, fairness, security and meaningful deliberation in that provision. Morphological freedom prevails to the extent to which discernible differences among peers arise from consensual prosthetic practices of self-determination or self-creation, rather than being imposed or unduly duressed by conditions of exploitation, violence or ignorance (any of which might broadly mobilize responsible intervention). What will be key for a properly technoprogressive bioethics that affirms morphological freedom will be a shift in focus from a moral(istic) concern with parochial standards of health, beauty or custom into an ethical concern with the meaningful consent of peers with whom one may or may not identify morally in the slightest. References 3. http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2005-04-01-3 4. http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2005-04-01-2 5. http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2005-03-31-2 6. http://www.betterhumans.com/News/index.aspx 7. http://www.betterhumans.com/About_Us/Products/Syndication/index.aspx 8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo 9. http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050318/NEWS01/503180350/1006 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/26/opinion/26brooks.html? 11. http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Progressive_Futures/column.aspx?articleID=2004-12-22-1 12. http://www.alternet.org/story/21624/ From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:57:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:57:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SciAm: Okay, We Give Up Message-ID: Okay, We Give Up Editorial Page of Scientific American, issue dated 4-1-05 There?s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don?t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there?s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong. In retrospect, this magazine?s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence. Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that?s a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That?s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn?t get bogged down in details. Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody?s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions. Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can?t work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers? dollars and imperil national security, you won?t hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration?s antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that?s not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either?so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. Okay, We Give Up MATT COLLINS THE EDITORS editors at sciam.com From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:57:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:57:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ronald Bailey: Hurray for Frankenstein! Message-ID: Ronald Bailey: Hurray for Frankenstein! http://www.reason.com/rb/rb033005.shtml 4.3.30 (note year) British parliamentarians welcome the biotech future The "Frankenstein Report," is what [25]outraged critics are calling a [26]new report, Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law, that signals welcome sanity on the cloning front in Western world politics. The report was issued on March 24 by the cross-party Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons. What's got the critics' knickers in a twist? First, the U.K. Members of Parliament (MPs) dare to suggest that a wide range of current and potential interventions in human reproduction can, in fact, be done ethically. For example, the MPs find "no adequate justification for prohibiting the use of sex selection for family balancing." Family balancing means using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select and implant embryos of a specific sex to ensure the desired proportion of girls and boys among your children. The report also says it's OK to create cloned human embryos for research aimed at producing immune-compatible transplant tissues and cells. British regulatory authorities have already [27]approved human cloning research proposals. The Brits even go as far as suggesting that cloning for human reproduction might be ethically acceptable. For example, what would be wrong with this scenario? An embryo with a defective gene is created by normal in vitro fertilization. Stem cells are taken from the embryo and the faulty gene is replaced with a healthy one. A nucleus from the corrected embryonic stem cells is then installed in an enucleated egg, which matures into an embryo that is then implanted into his mother's womb. An instant healthy child, thanks to cloning technology. The MPs' report notes, sensibly, "If there is to be a total prohibition of any form of reproductive cloning, it is important that it is supported by principled arguments why such a technique should be banned even if it were shown to be safe, effective, and reliable." [28]In contrast, here on the other side of the pond, the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics--dominated by bioconservatives--wants a flat ban on all human reproductive cloning. And in further contrast to these British parliamentarians, our own U.S. Congress saw bills reintroduced on March 17 to [29]criminalize research on both therapeutic (to produce transplant tissues) and reproductive (to produce babies) cloning. And while the Brit MPs conclude that "embryos can be created specifically for research," the Republican leadership in our Congress is doubtful, although it has just promised to let our representatives vote on the [30]Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005 which would at least allow federal funding for research on embryos left over from infertility treatments. The report does take note of the concerns of biotech critics, including the eugenics fears expressed by anti-biotech activist groups like [31]Human Genetics Alert: "With the ability to select the characteristics of and even genetically engineer children according to consumers' desires comes the concern that human beings are becoming just another designed object/commodity within the industrial market system." The MPs tartly reply, "If ensuring that your child is less likely to face a debilitating disease in the course of their [sic] life can be termed eugenics, we have no problem with its use." Finally, and most importantly, the U.K. report rejects the pernicious [32]precautionary principle, which is slowly gaining a foothold in bioethical thinking. The precautionary principle basically argues that nothing should be done until it can be proven absolutely safe. "We do not see why the area of human reproductive technologies should do anything other than proceed under the precautionary principle currently prevalent in scientific, research and clinical practice. This means...that alleged harms to society or to patients need to be demonstrated before forward progress is unduly impeded," write the MPs. In other words, highly speculative fears that sex selection will lead to sexism, or genetic engineering will socially marginalize the disabled, or clones will suffer psychological maladjustments, should not trump the known and sought-after benefits of biotechnological progress. The good news is that even if the United States does succumb to bioconservatism, you might still be able to seek cutting-edge biotech treatments abroad in Britain. Of course, when you come back, you might be sent to prison for up to 10 years for "importing" illegal biotech treatments, such as a new liver created from stem cells derived from cloned embryos. ------------------------------------- Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in June by Prometheus Books. References 24. mailto:rbailey at reason.com 25. http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,8363,1444926,00.html 26. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmsctech/7/702.htm 27. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5670247/ 28. http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/cloningreport/ 29. http://mlis.state.md.us/2005rs/bills/hb/hb0885f.pdf 30. http://mlis.state.md.us/2005rs/bills/hb/hb0885f.pdfhttp://www.theorator.com/bills109/s471.html 31. http://www.hgalert.org/ 32. http://www.biotech-info.net/PP_stifles.html From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:52:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:52:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stephen Wright: Witticisms Message-ID: 1- I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2- Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back. 3- Half the people you know are below average. 4- 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. 5- 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. 6- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. 7- If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. 8- All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand. 9- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. 10- I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met. 11- OK, so what's the speed of dark? 12- How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink? 13- If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. 14- Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm. 15- When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane. 16- Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy. 17- Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now. 18- I intend to live forever -- so far, so good. 19- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? 20- Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines. 21- What happens if you get scared half to death twice? 22- My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder." 23- Why do psychics have to ask you for your name? 24- If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. 25- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. 26- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. 27- The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread. 28- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. 29- The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. 30- The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. 31- The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it. 32- Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film! From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 12 19:56:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 15:56:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Sex selection for human embryos backed by report Message-ID: Sex selection for human embryos backed by report http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg18624933.700 * 02 April 2005 LET them choose boys! Or girls! That's what parents in the UK should be free to do, according to a parliamentary committee. Its controversial report calls for a relaxation of the rules on the use of reproductive technologies and human embryo research. The report recommends that parents on IVF programmes be allowed to use pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to select the sex of a second or later child for "family-balancing" reasons. It is also unfair for IVF clinics to screen would-be parents to try to exclude child abusers, it says. If accepted, the report's recommendations would bring the UK more in line with the US, where decisions on the use of reproductive technology are largely left to individuals. And although human embryo research is a major political issue in the US, there are few restrictions on it there, other than a block on federal funding. The committee chairman, MP Ian Gibson, admits that the recommendations will not please everyone. "I'm sure George Bush would burn the report," he says. Even some members of the committee may feel the same. Only half signed the report, and the dissenters made it clear that they think it too libertarian. From issue 2493 of New Scientist magazine, 02 April 2005, page 6 From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 13 13:53:32 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 06:53:32 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Scientists identify protein that controls cancer cells Message-ID: <01C53FF5.824981C0.shovland@mindspring.com> WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine have identified a protein that seems to control the malignant features of brain tumor cells, suggesting a new treatment target for anti-cancer drugs. The research is reported in the current issue of Molecular Cancer Research. "This protein seems to be important in how cells acquire malignant characteristics and how they spread to healthy tissue," said Waldemar Debinski, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Brain Tumor Center of Excellence at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "It is very powerful and may be an attractive target for anti-cancer therapy." The protein is also involved in late-stage breast, skin, colon and thyroid cancers, suggesting that a new treatment could apply to multiple cancers. Debinski and colleagues identified the protein while studying glioblastomas, the most common form of brain tumor. Glioblastomas are considered the least curable of all human cancers. Like other tumors, gl ioblastomas require their own blood supply in order to grow and spread. The researchers' initial goal was to learn what controls this process. But, when they measured levels of a protein that they thought might be involved, they found only very low levels. Instead, they discovered that a little-known protein - called Fra-1 - is present at large amounts in the tumor cells. "We were very surprised when we saw it for the first time," said Debinski. "We had to learn more about Fra-1 because it is not a widely-studied biological factor." What they learned got them interested in doing further research with Fra-1. For example, the protein is able to regulate a set of different genes. Fra-1 is what is known as a transcription factor. It is one of many proteins that "reads" the genetic material in cells. If effect, transcription factors help control whether the instructions of genes are carried out by the cells. Debinski and colleagues conducted several experiments to learn more about Fra-1's role in glioblastomas. They found that it makes the cancer cells more elongated, which might make it easier for them to infiltrate normal tissue. It also enables tumors to grow a blood supply. In addition, when non-tumor forming cells were supplied with Fra-1, they began producing tumors. On the other hand, when Fra-1 was eliminated from cells that were already tumor-producing, they stopped forming tumors. "It is a powerful biological factor," said Debinski. In their studies, the researchers found that more than 50 different genes seem to be affected by Fra-1, suggesting that its effects may be even broader than this initial study showed. "We believe it may be good target for anti-cancer therapy, but we need to explore more," said Debinski. The researchers suspect that Fra-1 works by partnering with other molecules. If they find that it's difficult to control the actions of Fra-1 with drug therapy, one of these other molecules might be more susceptible to treatment. "Even if Fra-1 it not the ideal treatment target, I believe we're on the right track to identify one," said Debinski. The research was funded in part by the Brain Tumor Center of Excellence. Debinski's research associate is Denise M. Gibo with Wake Forest Baptist, who contributed in a major way to the work on Fra-1 in brain tumors. "She was the first to spot that Fra-1 is elevated in glioblastomas ," said Debinski. The goal of the Brain Tumor Center of Excellence, which was formed in 2003, is to find better treatments - and one day a cure - for malignant brain tumors. In addition to its focus on research, the center provides a comprehensive program for patient care, and is the first center in the state to offer Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery, a knifeless approach to brain surgery and radiation therapy. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:17:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:17:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Study Finds Shortcoming in New Law on Education Message-ID: Study Finds Shortcoming in New Law on Education http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/national/13child.html April 13, 2005 By GREG WINTER The academic growth that students experience in a given school year has apparently slowed since the passage of No Child Left Behind, the education law that was intended to achieve just the opposite, a new study has found. In both reading and math, the study determined, test scores have gone up somewhat, as each class of students outdoes its predecessors. But within grades, students have made less academic progress during the school year than they did before No Child Left Behind went into effect in 2002, the researchers said. That finding casts doubt on whether schools can meet the law's mandate that all students be academically proficient by 2014. In fact, to realize the goal of universal proficiency, the study said, students will have to make as much as three times the progress they are currently making. The study was conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association, which develops tests for about 1,500 school districts in 43 states. To complete it, the group drew upon its test data for more than 320,000 students in 23 states, a sample that it calls "broad but not nationally representative," in part because the biggest cities, not being Northwest clients, were not included. One of the more ominous findings, the researchers said, is that the achievement gap between white and nonwhite students could soon widen. Closing the gap is one of the driving principles of the law, and so far states say they have made strides toward shrinking it. But minority students with the same test scores as their white counterparts at the beginning of the school year ended up falling behind by the end of it, the study found. Both groups made academic progress, but the minority students did not make as much, it concluded, an outcome suggesting that the gaps in achievement will worsen. "Right now it's kind of a hidden effect that we would expect to see expressed in the next couple of years," said Gage Kingsbury, Northwest's director of research. "At that point, I think people will be disappointed with what N.C.L.B. has done." The findings diverge from those of other recent studies, including a survey last month by the Center on Education Policy, a research group. It found that a significant majority of state education officials reported widespread academic progress and a narrowing of the achievement gap. "This new study should give everybody pause before they run off and say, 'We're marching to victory,' " said Jack Jennings, the center's president. "Maybe we're not." Kerri Briggs, a senior policy analyst at the Education Department, said the Northwest study had both encouraging and worrisome aspects, but added that she would have to examine it more closely before passing judgment. Some critics speculated that because the study lacked data from big cities, which have large populations of minority students and have posted significant gains on test scores in recent years, it might have overstated or mischaracterized what was happening with the achievement gap. "It's hard to know how much you can extrapolate from this study," said Ross Wiener, policy director for the Education Trust, which released its own report in January showing mixed results on student performance and achievement gaps. "I don't think you want to make generalizations about what's going on nationwide." Still, the Northwest study tracked student performance at a level that others did not, a factor that may help explain why some of its findings appear unorthodox. Rather than relying on test scores at just one point in the year, the Northwest study looked at how students fared in the fall and then again in the spring, in an effort to see how much they had learned during the year. With this approach, Northwest found that test scores on its exams did, in fact, go up from one year to the next under No Child Left Behind, typically by less than a point. The reason successive classes appear to do a little better than those before them may stem from the fact that younger students have grown up during a time of more regular testing than their immediate predecessors, the researchers said, and are therefore higher achievers. But rising test scores tend to mask how much progress individual students make as they travel through school, the researchers found. Since No Child Left Behind, that individual growth has slowed, possibly because teachers feel compelled to spend the bulk of their time making sure students who are near proficiency make it over the hurdle. The practice may leave teachers with less time to focus on students who are either far below or far above the proficiency mark, the researchers said, making it less likely for the whole class to move forward as rapidly as before No Child Left Behind set the agenda. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:17:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:17:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children Message-ID: Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/national/24childless.html March 24, 2005 By TIMOTHY EGAN PORTLAND, Ore. - The Pearl District in the heart of this perpetually self-improving city seems to have everything in new urban design and comfort, from the Whole Foods store where fresh-buffed bell peppers are displayed like runway models to the converted lofts that face sidewalk gardens. Everything except children. Crime is down. New homes and businesses are sprouting everywhere. But in what may be Portland's trendiest and fastest-growing neighborhood, the number of school-age children grew by only three between the census counts in 1990 and 2000, according to demographers at Portland State University. "The neighborhood would love to have more kids, that's probably the top of our wish list," said Joan Pendergast of the Pearl Neighborhood Association. "We don't want to be a one-dimensional place." It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation's top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices. San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind. The problem is not just that American women are having fewer children, reflected in the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the country. Officials say that the very things that attract people who revitalize a city - dense vertical housing, fashionable restaurants and shops and mass transit that makes a car unnecessary - are driving out children by making the neighborhoods too expensive for young families. Other cities have tried and failed to curb family flight. In Portland, the new mayor, Tom Potter, says demography does not have to be destiny. He has dedicated his term to trying to keep children in the city. Every child a city loses, on average, can mean a loss of about $5,000 for the school district, officials say. Children also create a constituency for parks, trails and public safety improvements, Mr. Potter said, and their parents tend to favor upgrading those amenities through higher taxes. He has been bringing children in to speak to the City Council and has pushed for incentives for affordable housing with enough bedrooms to accommodate bigger families. A former police chief who helped pioneer community patrolling, Mayor Potter has 14 grandchildren and says a city's health should be measured by its youngest citizens. "We can't let Portland become a retirement city or a city without neighborhood schools," he said. New York and Los Angeles, because of their large immigrant populations, have maintained their base of children, but demographers, pointing to falling birth rates among Latinos and other ethnic groups, say the nation's biggest cities may soon follow the others. In Portland, the trends are not in Mayor Potter's favor. From 1990 to 2003 the city added more than 90,000 people, growing to an estimated 529,121 residents, but Portland is now educating the fewest students in more than 80 years. The problem is not that children are leaving for private schools, officials said. It is that new people attracted to the city tend to have higher incomes, having already raised a family; are retiring; or are single and unlikely to have children. After interviewing 300 parents who had left the city, researchers at Portland State found that high housing costs and a desire for space were the top reasons. Tina Ray lived in Portland for 12 years before moving to Gresham, where her 9-year-old daughter attends school. Her family left for a bigger house and more space, she said. "It's kid friendly, with a great sense of community, and lots of sports leagues," she said. Many Portland families are relocating to the newest edge suburbs, where housing prices are cheapest, including Clark County across the Columbia River in Washington, Portland State demographers say. After a drop of 10,000 students in the last decade, Portland officials called in March for the closing of six schools, prompting cries of grief from three generations of adults who say that nothing takes the heart out of a neighborhood like a shuttered school. The pool of school-age children is shrinking so fast that Portland will have to close the equivalent of three or four elementary schools a year over the next decade, according to school district projections. "I don't think we're going to become a nearly childless city like San Francisco, but the age structure is really changing," said Barry Edmonston, an urban studies professor at Portland State, who does demographic projections for the school district. "People are not turning over the houses like they used to. They're aging in place, at the same time that prices are really going up, making it hard for young families to move into the city." Nationally, the birthrate has been dropping while the overall population is aging as life expectancy increases. The problem is not just in cities. New figures released this month showed North Dakota losing more children than any other state. Scottsdale, Ariz., a fast-growing Phoenix suburb, lost 571 students last year. San Jose closed three schools last year and expects to close three more soon. Between 2003 and 2004, only six states had an increase in their elementary school population, the census bureau reported in March. In that sense, the United States is following Europe and the rest of the industrial world, where birthrates now rarely exceed the rate needed to replace the population. "If you took immigrants out of the equation, the United States would be like the rest of Europe," said Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a public policy research organization in Washington. He is the author of "The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birth Rates Threaten World Prosperity and What To Do About It." Mr. Longman said a decline in children not only takes away "human capital" needed to sustain an aging population, but "having fewer children really diminishes the quality of life in a city." Most city leaders seem to agree. Even in San Francisco, where officials are preparing for another round of school closings amid a projected decline of 4,000 students in the next five years, city officials are aggressively marketing the city and its schools to young families. But what they cannot do, especially after the failure last year of a ballot measure sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce to encourage affordable housing, is bring housing prices down. "It's a real challenge trying to raise a kid in San Francisco," said Jim Armstrong, a father of two who is active in Little League in the city and rents a home. "It takes a degree of fortitude for a parent to stay with the city." Other cities that have tried to reverse the family outflow have had mixed success. As mayor of Seattle for 12 years, until 1990, Charles Royer started an initiative called KidsPlace, which has been widely copied by other cities. It included marketing the city's neighborhoods to young families, building a small mix of affordable housing, and zoning and policing changes to make urban parks more child-friendly. Mr. Royer said he was ridiculed for signs placed around town proclaiming "Seattle is a KidsPlace" and took criticism from social service agencies who thought bringing in more families would only place more demands on the limited money they had. Mr. Royer said he was bucking historic changes, and Seattle now has some of the nation's highest-priced real estate and its lowest percentage of children. "I said things like, 'We don't want to be like San Francisco,' but in the end, I don't think we were terribly effective at stemming that tide," Mr. Royer said. "It's not so much a social problem as it is a demographic and financial problem." Here in Portland, the city is bemoaning the demographic cycle as it unfolds before their eyes. On the day of the announcement to close Kenton Elementary School, which has anchored a north Portland neighborhood for 91 years, some parents and residents reacted as if there had been a death in the family. "I feel heartbroken," said Mary Krogh, who had planned to enroll her 4-year-old son, Chase, in the school. "It's just a terrible loss." The school and a tightknit community were among the things that attracted Ms. Krogh and her husband to the neighborhood seven years ago, she said. But now the school will be shuttered, and improvements from Portland's beloved light rail line have contributed to rising real estate prices, defeating the broad goals of the mayor's effort to bring and keep young families in the city. "Portland is a great city that attracts a lot of educated people," she said. "But the real estate is becoming outrageously expensive. And then you get wealthy singles and wealthy retirees. What's missing are kids. And that feels really sterile to me." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:32:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:32:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: 'Revelations': End Is Expected, but There's Still Time to Debate Morality Message-ID: Arts > Television > TV Review | 'Revelations': End Is Expected, but There's Still Time to Debate Morality http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/arts/television/13stan.html April 13, 2005 By [1]ALESSANDRA STANLEY "Revelations," NBC's six-hour mini-series about a nun and a scientist's search for signs that Armageddon is at hand, may not persuade skeptics to believe in God. But the timing alone suggests that a higher being favors the show: on the heels of the Terri Schiavo debate and the death of Pope John Paul II, the premiere includes a right-to-life battle over a coma patient and nuns in schism with the Vatican. Well made, spooky and suspenseful, "Revelations" has been marketed by NBC as a breakthrough faith-based thriller, a latter-day "Da Vinci Code" and a spiritual "X-Files." But its real appeal is something that is actually more common on television dramas these days: politics are part of the scenery, and ethical and moral dilemmas are woven into the plot. And oddly enough, this mini-series about Satanists and truth-seekers fits into a broader paradox: as television news moves further and further away from covering hard news, political issues are increasingly debated on television dramas. The finale of this season's "West Wing" paid more prime-time attention to its fictional Democratic National Convention than the network news divisions did to the real one in the 2004 election. (In it heyday "The West Wing" could tease high drama out of even the most prosaic Washington issues; one episode in the first season revolved around an amendment to a trade bill.) "Law & Order: SVU" is a weekly tinderbox of difficult issues, from stem-cell research and euthanasia to the sale of human kidneys. "Boston Legal" recently had a subplot that dramatized the United States government's failure to prevent genocide in Sudan. Even "Deadwood," an HBO western set in the 1870's, delivers a weekly civics lesson on property claims, corruption and nation building. Long before the play "Doubt" opened on Broadway and long before the pedophilia scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church in 2002, television shows like "Nothing Sacred," a 1997 series on ABC, or NBC's "Law & Order" examined the problem of pedophile priests and their protectors in the church. In contrast, morning talk shows and evening newscasts race through the events of the day to dwell on the kind of personal melodramas that were once relegated to tabloids or crime shows like "Columbo." Yesterday the "Today" show host Katie Couric interviewed a brother and sister who are accusing the husband of their sister of poisoning her five years ago and passing her death off as a heart attack. Ms. Couric referred to their tale as a "cold case," part of the title of a hit CBS crime show, but it could also be that NBC is trying to fill the vacuum left by the end of the Scott Peterson murder trial. The evening news shows are just as soft-edged, full of features about retirement, pain medication and other news you can use. "The Early Show" on CBS is taking it a step further by offering viewers newscasters they can use: yesterday on a feature titled "Anchors to the Rescue," the co-host Julie Chen was dispatched to Macon, Ga., to baby-sit a 2-year-old so that the overstressed parents could play golf together. Ms. Chen taught little Torree some yoga moves. There is nothing soft about "Revelations," which opens with a montage of violent images from civil wars in Africa to a person jumping 40 stories off the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The hero of the mini-series, Dr. Richard Massey (Bill Pullman), a Harvard astrophysicist, is first shown on a small plane returning from Chile with the body of his 12-year-old daughter, who was kidnapped and murdered by a Satan worshipper who is also on the plane, in handcuffs, on his way to a prison in the United States. In Mexico, meanwhile, Sister Josepha Montafiore (Natascha McElhone, from the 1998 thriller "Ronin") joins throngs of believers huddled at the base of a mountain to gaze at a huge crucifix-shaped shadow. She was hired by a foundation to record and study supernatural phenomena that correspond to portents of the end of the world as described in the biblical Book of Revelation. Their paths cross because of a girl who was left in a vegetative state by a lightning bolt (one of the better scenes) and who suddenly begins muttering bits of Scripture in Latin. Doctors think these are involuntary utterances and plan to pull the plug and harvest her organs. Dr. Massey, originally skeptical of Sister Josepha's convictions that the muttering is more than that, begins to believe otherwise when he thinks he feels the girl squeeze his hand. Written by David Seltzer ("The Omen"), "Revelations" is steeped in creepy amber light and a scary religiosity, but the first episode at least allows viewers to entertain doubt. Sister Josepha is poised and Oxford-educated, but she sometimes shows a maniacal edge that suggests she might well be nuts. And Dr. Massey, who points out to Sister Josepha that she is being paid to find religious phenomena and is therefore hardly an objective scholar, has mitigating motives of his own. Inconsolable over his daughter's death, he wants to see traces of her ghost in these religious signs. NBC prays that "Revelations" will be successful enough to warrant turning it into a series. (The season finale could be good: the world comes to an end.) Fox, however, diabolically extended "American Idol" for an additional half hour so that it would conflict with the premiere and draw viewers away. The battle of good and evil on television never ends. 'Revelations' NBC, tonight at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time. David Seltzer, writer and creator; Gavin Polone, executive producer; pilot directed by David Semel; series directed by Lili Fini Zanuck and Leslie Linka Glatter. Produced by Pariah. WITH: Bill Pullman (Dr. Richard Massey) and Natascha McElhone (Sister Josepha Montafiore). References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ALESSANDRA%20STANLEY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ALESSANDRA%20STANLEY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:41:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:41:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dowd: Recline Yourself, Resign Yourself, You're Through Message-ID: Recline Yourself, Resign Yourself, You're Through Liberties column by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 5.4.13 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/opinion/13dowd.html Baby boomers' almost comic fear of aging reminds me of that silent movie scene in which Harold Lloyd hangs precariously from the hand of a giant clock, literally pulling time from its moorings. Despite the boomers' zealous attempts to stop time - with fitness and anti-aging products, with cosmetic enhancements by needle, laser and knife - time has caught up. The deaths of iconic figures and the noisy debate over assisted suicide have brought boomers face to face with their nemesis. "Suddenly," The New Republic observed, "we are all speculating about the feeding tubes in our future." Boomers want to control mortality so they're looking at living wills, and legal and medical options. I've visited the future, and it isn't pretty. My mom fell and fractured her neck one night a couple of winters ago. She was sent to a nursing home to recuperate. It was the third circle of gloom. Residents sat around, zombie-like, or slowly maneuvered in wheelchairs or with walkers. I suddenly understood why all of my mom's friends who had gone into nursing homes had become listless and died soon after. The facility was depressing, with bad food and impersonal attendants who seemed inured to their surroundings. It seemed like the sort of place people checked into but not out of. My mom's hazel eyes were filled with dread, so I bought a sleeping bag at the nearest R.E.I. and slept on the floor beside her bed for four weeks. There were blizzards outside and lethargy inside. All through the night, Alzheimer's patients would moan: "Help me! Why doesn't anyone come to help me?" They were unable to remember the last time an attendant stopped by. After a while, there didn't seem much point in getting dressed. I put on one of my mom's extra-large flannel robes and some slippers and started shuffling around the nursing home. I felt like one of those cursed women in Grimm's fairy tales who turn into crones in a blink. Soon the residents began acting as if I were one of them, just one with better mobility. They would call out for me to fix them tea in the microwave - "Just Sweet 'N Low," one woman ordered briskly. One night an elderly woman asked if I would come into her room and dial her daughter's number for her. "I haven't heard from her in so long," she fretted. I called the number and left a message on the answering machine: "Your mother misses you." As I hung up, the old woman looked up at me with big suspicious eyes. "What are you doing in my room?" she demanded in a hostile voice. She had forgotten me already. Most nights, I watched two sweet-looking old ladies sneak down the hall to purloin supplies at the nurses' station - cat burglars heisting Depends. In my old life, I read glossy catalogs from Bliss Spa and Bergdorf's. Now I sat in the drab community room reading Dr. Leonard's "America's Leading Discount Healthcare Catalogue," which promotes the notion of senior superheroes with vision-enhancing Eagle Eyes sunglasses; Sonic Earz, to amplify sounds up to 60 feet away; and Frankie Avalon's Zero Pain roll-on pain reliever. It was upsetting to see how many body parts could go wrong. For $12.99, you could get "heel wraps," little slings to keep the cream on your heel cracks; for $4.99, a straightener for overlapping toes; for $12.99, a "control panty" to banish unflattering tummy bulge. I told my mom about the control panty. She looked intrigued. "Who does it control?" she wanted to know. Why was I fighting aging so hard? It would be so easy to succumb. I could stock up on everything I'd eventually need: extra-long easy-grip scissors to clip toenails; the "button helper," a wire loop to help reach buttons; Toppik, the "amazing 30-second hair transplant," which sprays the scalp with color-matched hair fibers; a "Remember Me" poem and photo mat for departed relatives, friends and pets; and the best seller "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About." Dr. Leonard's assumes seniors have a healthy interest in sex. It offers a device called an Eroscillator for women, with a guide from Dr. Ruth. And for men, there's an aerobics video featuring "totally nude" young women: "Because you can see the naked, well-toned bodies of the female instructors, you can follow each exercise and see exactly how to achieve the precise muscle extension and position." Right. Once Mom was sprung, I quickly went back to fending off mortality, ordering the latest age-delaying moisture complexes from the Bliss catalog. But I know Dr. Leonard's is out there, waiting patiently for me. Not an Appointment in Samarra, but an Appointment with the Eroscillator. E-mail: liberties at nytimes.com References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:41:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:41:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: For McNamara and Wolfowitz, a War and Then the World Bank Message-ID: Business > World Business > For McNamara and Wolfowitz, a War and Then the World Bank http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/business/worldbusiness/22bank.html March 22, 2005 By [1]ELIZABETH BECKER WASHINGTON, March 21 - As defense secretary in the 1960's, Robert S. McNamara never showed any emotion in public about the war in Vietnam that he directed for seven years. But after he took over as the president of the World Bank in 1968, Mr. McNamara openly wept when he gave his annual reports about the dispossessed. "I cried because I felt so involved in what we were doing," he said in an interview. Now, a generation later, Mr. McNamara has a rare appreciation for the predicament facing President Bush's nominee to head the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense who is best known as an architect of the war in Iraq. Both men made their national reputations directing divisive wars. Both were rewarded with nominations to head the World Bank and both are adamant that their qualifications rest on their interest in development and the world's poor; in Mr. Wolfowitz's case, it includes his work in the 1980's as the American ambassador to Indonesia. But when the European members of the World Bank hold a private meeting on Tuesday to discuss Mr. Wolfowitz's qualifications, the Iraq war and Mr. Wolfowitz's advocacy of using American influence to spread democracy around the world will be at the top of the agenda. Since it appears that their governments are willing to approve of Mr. Wolfowitz, much of the discussion is expected to turn on how Mr. Wolfowitz's record will translate into development policy, especially on the question of whether he will seek to make democracy-building paramount over basic aid issues like education, health and economics, according to diplomats involved in the decisions. "There is a sense of discomfort over Iraq, but the fact that he is a heavyweight political figure with good intellectual qualities makes us think that it could be worse," said one of the officials who insisted on not being identified because of the sensitivity of the nomination. European business journals that watch development issues, like The Financial Times and The Economist have been critical of Mr. Wolfowitz's appointment. In an editorial, "Wolf at the Door," The Economist compared him to Mr. McNamara, who had ambitious ideas about eliminating poverty but, the magazine argued, ended up weakening the institution. "His appointment tells the world that Mr. Bush wants to capture the World Bank and make it an arm of American foreign policy," the editorial stated. Of special concern at the bank, an organization within the United Nations system, is how Mr. Wolfowitz handled Iraq after the Saddam Hussein regime fell. These include his public rejection of the recommendation by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, to send more troops to stabilize the country, the subsequent breakdown in security needed to rebuild the country and the mistaken premise that the country could be rebuilt largely from Iraqi oil revenue. "I support Paul Wolfowitz but with the big caveat that he shares responsibility for the failures of postwar Iraq," said Sebastian Mallaby, author of a contemporary history of the World Bank, "The World's Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations" (Council on Foreign Relations/Penguin Press, 2004). "That is a piece of his record that he has got to live down." John Cavanagh, director of the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, said that Mr. Wolfowitz's record in Iraq suggested that he had a difficult time admitting mistakes and should not be given a second chance at the World Bank. "He ignored or belittled anyone who disagreed with him before the war in Iraq," Mr. Cavanagh said, "and when it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, shut out the Europeans from most reconstruction contracts." Mr. Wolfowitz frames his move as continuing to work for peace "on a different line of action." He points to his work as the American ambassador to Indonesia in Ronald Reagan's administration. According to two career diplomats who carried out his policies in Indonesia, Mr. Wolfowitz did break new ground promoting human rights in East Timor, giving financial aidto local labor unions and Islamic groups and documenting official corruption. David Merrill, a retired foreign service officer who directed the United States aid program under Mr. Wolfowitz, said that his former boss had supported economic development for its own sake as well as being a necessary means for building a middle class, the civil society and a democracy. To that end, he approved aid for environmental activists, labor rights groups and private Islamic groups, which was a rarity 20 years ago. "He listened to our ideas and we listened to his and it was the perfect relationship," Mr. Merrill said. Fighting corruption was one of his big causes, Mr. Merrill said. At one point, Mr. Wolfowitz told him to end a food aid program because the wife of President Suharto was profiting hugely from the program through her partial ownership of the flour mill where the American wheat was milled. Timothy Carney, the political counselor at the embassy under Mr. Wolfowitz, said he had to make a long, extensively documented report on corruption. "We weighed in against corruption and its bad effects, essentially arguing back to Washington that the Suharto administration had exceeded the norms," Mr. Carney said. Mr. Wolfowitz also encouraged him to publicize human rights abuses in East Timor and in Indonesia as a whole. Mr. Wolfowitz resists the idea that his work at the Pentagon played a role in his nomination to head the World Bank. Likewise, Mr. McNamara rejects the notion that he asked to run the World Bank to atone for the destruction in the Vietnam War. "No, it was not redemption for Vietnam," he said. "Frankly, I don't think Vietnam had anything to do with me going to the bank." Mr. McNamara said he thought that Mr. Wolfowitz's war experience would be of little help at the World Bank. "I know there is a theory out there that giving economic aid to failed states will help combat terrorism, but there are so many of those, you're not going to be able to deal with them all," Mr. McNamara said. It is really a question of political will, not of terrorism or democracy, Mr. McNamara said, and whether the richest countries in the world will give the resources needed to help poor countries improve. "In the Defense Department I learned that identifying the problem is always more difficult than finding an answer," he said. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:52:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:52:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Geographic Society Is Seeking a Genealogy of Humankind Message-ID: Geographic Society Is Seeking a Genealogy of Humankind http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/national/13gene.html April 13, 2005 By [1]NICHOLAS WADE A five-year project to reconstruct a genealogy of the world's populations and the migration paths of early humans from their ancestral homeland in Africa will be started today by the National Geographic Society and I.B.M., the society said in a statement. The goal of the program is to collect 100,000 blood samples from indigenous populations around the world and analyze them genetically. Researchers at 10 local centers and at the National Geographic Society in Washington will then assign the people who give blood to lineages that trace the routes traveled by their early ancestors. The program is an effort to accomplish the goals of the Human Genome Diversity Project, an initiative that was proposed by population geneticists in 1991. That project ran into a political furor that prevented it from receiving substantial government support. It was denounced by some cultural anthropologists, who said that looking for genetic differences among populations was tantamount to racism. And advocates for indigenous peoples portrayed it as a "vampire project" for extracting valuable medical information from the blood of endangered tribes while giving nothing in return. The proponents viewed their plan as complementing the Human Genome Project, then getting under way, because it would show how the sequence of DNA units in the human genome varied from one population to another. The project did proceed on a more modest basis, eventually collecting blood samples from 52 populations that were converted into 1,000 cell lines. The first major analysis, published in 2002, showed that the subjects' genomes fell into five major clusters corresponding to their continent of origin and, in effect, to their race. This and many other studies have established that the branches of the human family tree on different continents coalesce to a single root, the ancestral human population that began to migrate from northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago. The routes of this migration are known in general outline but many details remain to be filled in. The National Geographic's program, if it succeeds, will create a collection of blood samples 100 times larger than the Human Genome Diversity Project did. Dr. Spencer Wells, a population geneticist at the society who is leading the program, said he hoped to head off charges of exploitation by offering money to the tribes for education and cultural preservation. Many indigenous peoples believe their ancestors have always lived in their home territory, a credo that will not be supported by genetic analysis of their blood samples. Dr. Wells said that he would "tell people up front" that some of the results may contradict what they believe. "The idea that we have all come on a journey from a common origin is intriguing to people," he said. The program will cost at least $40 million over five years, a National Geographic Society spokeswoman said. Sources of support include the Waitt Family Foundation of San Diego and the income expected from members of the public, who will be encouraged to send in cheek swabs and learn for $99.95 which male or female lineage they belong to. Male lineages, based on the Y chromosome, and female lineages, based on mitochondrial DNA, are mostly confined to specific continents, reflecting the fact that until recently people mostly lived and procreated in the place they were born. Dr. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the Stanford University population geneticist who was a leading proponent of the Human Genome Diversity Project, said the National Geographic effort would "be a major addition to our knowledge." Dr. Cavalli-Sforza, a pioneer of population genetics, is an adviser to the program. But Dr. Kenneth Kidd, a population geneticist at Yale University, expressed reservations about the plan to preserve the blood samples as raw DNA. Because the DNA is finite, it cannot be shared with every scientist who may ask for some. In the Human Genome Diversity Project, by contrast, white blood cells from a sample were made essentially immortal before storage. Though it would cost an additional $200 to $300 to immortalize each sample, the cells last forever and the supply is inexhaustible. The National Geographic program will develop a lot of useful information "but to me it is not a properly and fully developed kind of study" because the samples cannot be made available to everyone in the scientific community, Dr. Kidd said. Dr. Wells said a large amount of DNA would be available from the 5 to 10 milliliters of blood drawn in each sample. He cited the extra cost of making permanent cell lines and also said that some indigenous peoples opposed the notion of having their cells live on after their deaths. Besides tracing the routes of early human migrations, the National Geographic program will study other questions of population history like the origin of the Han Chinese, the lost homeland of the Indo-European languages and whether a genetic trail was left by the armies of Alexander the Great. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:53:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:53:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: At Harvard, an Unseemly Display of Wealth or Merely a Clean Room? Message-ID: At Harvard, an Unseemly Display of Wealth or Merely a Clean Room? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/national/22clean.html March 22, 2005 By [1]PAM BELLUCK CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 21 - The cleaning implements in Leonard Novy's apartment at Harvard consist of two sponges so calcified they could be from the Mesozoic Era and a broom betraying few hints of much actual sweeping. The other day, there was a grimy handprint on the wall, a blizzard of dust on the television, and a carpet so littered with lint that it was hard to tell whether it was gray or had turned that color under a film of filth. "I think we've set a record," said Mr. Novy, 27, a graduate student whose isosceles-triangle-shaped apartment is accessorized with a deck of cards and a corkscrew. "I've lived here since September, and we haven't vacuumed once." So he was delighted when his roommate, Gregor Schmitz, 29, hired a new cleaning service called DormAid, run by Harvard students. "It really just struck me as a great idea, given the state of our apartment and given how expensive it is to buy all these tools," Mr. Novy said, watching two women from a professional cleaning service contracted by DormAid scrub and scour. For $85.57, they not only cleaned but also placed a Lindt chocolate truffle on the pillow of Mr. Novy's lumpy futon. But DormAid, the brainchild of some entrepreneurial sophomores who are offering the service at Boston University, Princeton and elsewhere, is not universally welcomed at Harvard. A recent editorial in The Crimson, the student newspaper, blasted it, calling for a boycott. "Hiring someone to clean dorm rooms is a convenience, but it is also an obvious display of wealth that would establish a perceived, if unspoken, barrier between students of different economic means," the editorial said. "It's up to each one of us to ensure that our peers feel comfortable on campus, and if that means plugging in a vacuum every two weeks, then so be it." Alex Slack, a junior who is an associate editorial chairman at The Crimson and who wrote a separate column critical of DormAid in November, said: "Frankly, I wouldn't really respect anyone who got this DormAid thing. Suck it up and pick up your own room, I guess." Besides, said Mr. Slack, whose own room was strewn with clothes and beer cans on a recent visit, "I kind of revel in being able to live sort of slovenly." Such arguments irk DormAid's progenitors, Michael Kopko and Dave Eisenberg, whose agility with business models and marketing strategies would impress any Sam Walton. "There's so many ways in which on our campus you're able to display wealth in so much more obvious a fashion than having someone quietly clean your room," said Mr. Eisenberg, 20, a psychology major from Westfield, N.J.. He said class differences were evident in clothes, cars and entertainment, even in a campus laundry service that would wash, fold and place students' clothes in a "very noticeable" yellow bag. "A minimum cleaning is $17.99 per roommate," said Mr. Kopko, 20, an economics major from Nyack, N.Y., adding that to avoid stratifying people, if one roommate does not want the service, DormAid will clean only the rooms of those who do. "How much does it cost to go to a movie with popcorn, buy a CD, buy a DVD?" Mr. Kopko said that the business might draw revenues of $200,000 at Harvard, but that most of it would go toward relatively high wages, making Harvard a sort of "Saks Fifth Avenue" for DormAid, a showcase to generate interest on other campuses. Mr. Kopko said that he was "not, like, a neat freak," but that as a freshman he had hired professional cleaners for his room and eventually "had half the building getting cleaned." Last summer, after he and his brother Matt, 18, a freshman at Princeton, conceived DormAid, Mr. Kopko advertised it by writing a letter to parents of sophomores and by wearing a sandwich board the first few days of school. Then Harvard officials stopped him, vetoing DormAid because of concerns about insurance, security, the Fair Labor Standards Act and elitism, said Judith H. Kidd, an associate dean. Mr. Kopko and Mr. Eisenberg, who have invested about $7,000 in the business, appealed with a sheaf of counterarguments and fixes. (Princeton and Boston University, they said, put up no such fuss.) They proposed that a cleaning service would do the mopping, dusting and fumigating, but that a student would supervise each crew and earn about $10 an hour. They agreed to change the company's name from DorMaid to DormAid because, Mr. Kopko said, some Harvard officials said "maid" was "sexist and demeaning." And they conducted a campus survey, finding that 74 percent of respondents supported the idea and that 26 percent would use the service. Of those who would not use it, only 25 percent said the reason was its cost. That convinced Harvard officials that a class clash was not a big issue, Ms. Kidd said. But one of those telephoned randomly for the survey was Mr. Slack, who was woken from a nap induced by his Arabic homework. He wrote a column titled "Really Conspicuous Consumption," saying "wealth probably shouldn't correlate with dust bunny size." And in case readers failed to get a vivid picture, Mr. Slack, 20, a history major from Winnetka, Ill., added, "Being clean is not something to be proud about here. My roommates and I sometimes measure our self-worths by comparing consecutive underwear-wearing days." Some people share Mr. Slack's view. "There is no reason to highlight the socioeconomic differences among the students here," said Ofole Mgbako, a freshman. But Elena Castaneda, another freshman, who requested a vacuum for Christmas, said that with Harvard's demanding schedules, "the need for clean dorms is much greater than the silly idea that it would be another way to demarcate classes within Harvard." Joseph Cianflone, 21, a sophomore who is DormAid's "general counsel," said that as a student on full financial aid, "I'm one of those who are supposed to be up in arms. But I work two or three jobs now. I never have time to clean my room." Besides, the DormAid leaders said, no one objects to Dorm Crew, a university-run service that pays students to clean bathrooms on campus. Still, Mr. Novy, a visiting student from Germany, said he could understand the class warfare argument. "I definitely wouldn't tell my parents about it," Mr. Novy said. "They were students in the 60's, and they wouldn't have ordered such a service for political reasons. They would have probably done a sit-in in front of the apartments." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=PAM%20BELLUCK&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=PAM%20BELLUCK&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:54:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:54:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Sierra Club Revisits Issue of Immigration Message-ID: Sierra Club Revisits Issue of Immigration http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/politics/13sierra.html April 13, 2005 By [1]FELICITY BARRINGER WASHINGTON, April 12 - A year after a bitter election for the board of the Sierra Club that focused on candidates' stands on immigration, the issue is now before the membership, this time as a ballot initiative. Most people involved with the voting say the new campaign, which ends on April 25, is far more low-key. Neither side said it expected a victory for the proposal, which would commit the club to support "lower limits on migration to the United States to address our nation's rapid population growth and its harmful effects on the domestic and global environment." Five new directors are also being elected to three-year terms on the 15-member board. Some candidates oppose the established leadership and support immigration restrictions. But unlike the opposition slate last year, which included former Gov. Richard Lamm of Colorado, none of the dissidents have national profiles. Last year, the debate was tainted with allusions to racism and character assassination, and although a taste of that vitriol was evident in interviews with the chief combatants, the comments and the contest this year have a pro-forma feel. The two most visible camps are Groundswell Sierra, which opposes any stand on immigration limits, and a group once called Sierrans United for Population Stability, now known as Susps, which argues for them. "We are fighting what we consider to be a hostile takeover," said J. Robert Cox, a former club president and a professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina, who founded Groundswell Sierra and echoes his group's old rallying cry against the anti-immigration insurgents. Professor Cox supports the current board majority. Susps once again supports several candidates, though they are widely considered unlikely to break into the current board lineup, which includes a large majority in favor of the direction followed by the club's executive director, Carl Pope. Dick Schneider, an environmental policy consultant in Oakland, Calif., and a Susps member, said Tuesday that the issue was being revisited, in part to fulfill an agreement by the two groups in 2003 to defer the ballot question on immigration until a nonpresidential election year. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=FELICITY%20BARRINGER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=FELICITY%20BARRINGER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:54:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:54:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene Message-ID: Startling Scientists, Plant Fixes Its Flawed Gene http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/23/science/23gene.html March 23, 2005 By [1]NICHOLAS WADE In a startling discovery, geneticists at Purdue University say they have found plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier. The finding implies that some organisms may contain a cryptic backup copy of their genome that bypasses the usual mechanisms of heredity. If confirmed, it would represent an unprecedented exception to the laws of inheritance discovered by Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. Equally surprising, the cryptic genome appears not to be made of DNA, the standard hereditary material. The discovery also raises interesting biological questions - including whether it gets in the way of evolution, which depends on mutations changing an organism rather than being put right by a backup system. "It looks like a marvelous discovery," said Dr. Elliott Meyerowitz, a plant geneticist at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. David Haig, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, described the finding as "a really strange and unexpected result," which would be important if the observation holds up and applies widely in nature. The result, reported online yesterday in the journal Nature by Dr. Robert E. Pruitt, Dr. Susan J. Lolle and colleagues at Purdue, has been found in a single species, the mustardlike plant called arabidopsis that is the standard laboratory organism of plant geneticists. But there are hints that the same mechanism may occur in people, according to a commentary by Dr. Detlef Weigel of the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in T?bingen, Germany. Dr. Weigel describes the Purdue work as "a spectacular discovery." The finding grew out of a research project started three years ago in which Dr. Pruitt and Dr. Lolle were trying to understand the genes that control the plant's outer skin, or cuticle. As part of the project, they were studying plants with a mutated gene that made the plant's petals and other floral organs clump together. Because each of the plant's two copies of the gene were in mutated form, they had virtually no chance of having normal offspring. But up to 10 percent of the plants' offspring kept reverting to normal. Various rare events can make this happen, but none involve altering the actual sequence of DNA units in the gene. Yet when the researchers analyzed the mutated gene, known as hothead, they found it had changed, with the mutated DNA units being changed back to normal form. "That was the moment when it was a complete shock," Dr. Pruitt said. A mutated gene can be put right by various mechanisms that are already known, but all require a correct copy of the gene to be available to serve as the template. The Purdue team scanned the DNA of the entire arabidopsis genome for a second, cryptic copy of the hothead gene but could find none. Dr. Pruitt and his colleagues argue that a correct template must exist, but because it is not in the form of DNA, it probably exists as RNA, DNA's close chemical cousin. RNA performs many important roles in the cell, and is the hereditary material of some viruses. But it is less stable than DNA, and so has been regarded as unsuitable for preserving the genetic information of higher organisms. Dr. Pruitt said he favored the idea that there is an RNA backup copy for the entire genome, not just the hothead gene, and that it might be set in motion when the plant was under stress, as is the case with those having mutated hothead genes. He and other experts said it was possible that an entire RNA backup copy of the genome could exist without being detected, especially since there has been no reason until now to look for it. Scientific journals often take months or years to get comfortable with articles presenting novel ideas. But Nature accepted the paper within six weeks of receiving it. Dr. Christopher Surridge, a biology editor at Nature, said the finding had been discussed at scientific conferences for quite a while, with people saying it was impossible and proposing alternative explanations. But the authors had checked all these out and disposed of them, Dr. Surridge said. As for their proposal of a backup RNA genome, "that is very much a hypothesis, and basically the least mad hypothesis for how this might be working," Dr. Surridge said. Dr. Haig, the evolutionary biologist, said that the finding was fascinating but that it was too early to try to interpret it. He noted that if there was a cryptic template, it ought to be more resistant to mutation than the DNA it helps correct. Yet it is hard to make this case for RNA, which accumulates many more errors than DNA when it is copied by the cell. He said that the mechanism, if confirmed, would be an unprecedented exception to Mendel's laws of inheritance, since the DNA sequence itself is changed. Imprinting, an odd feature of inheritance of which Dr. Haig is a leading student, involves inherited changes to the way certain genes are activated, not to the genes themselves. The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said. The finding could undercut a leading theory of why sex is necessary. Some biologists say sex is needed to discard the mutations, almost all of them bad, that steadily accumulate on the genome. People inherit half of their genes from each parent, which allows the half left on the cutting room floor to carry away many bad mutations. Dr. Pruitt said the backup genome could be particularly useful for self-fertilizing plants, as arabidopsis is, since it could help avoid the adverse effects of inbreeding. It might also operate in the curious organisms known as bdelloid rotifers that are renowned for not having had sex for millions of years, an abstinence that would be expected to seriously threaten their Darwinian fitness. Dr. Pruitt said it was not yet known if other organisms besides arabidopsis could possess the backup system. Colleagues had been quite receptive to the idea because "biologists have gotten used to the unexpected," he said, referring to a spate of novel mechanisms that have recently come to light, several involving RNA. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 14:59:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:59:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Neusner) Scholar of Judaism, Professional Provocateur Message-ID: Scholar of Judaism, Professional Provocateur http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/books/13neus.html April 13, 2005 By [1]DINITIA SMITH Jacob Neusner, a mild-seeming, grandfatherly man relaxing in his easy chair, might have published more books than anyone alive. "As of this morning, 905," he said recently. It was 4 p.m. The count was still good. Hold it! Mr. Neusner, 72, a professor of theology at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., has just called to say there are 924. This year alone there have been 22 books, most in his field, ancient Judaism. And no, he doesn't count revisions or translations. Mr. Neusner studies rabbinical writings of the first 600 years A.D., when rabbinic Judaism evolved. He has translated both the Palestinian Talmud (35 volumes) and the Babylonian, twice (second translation, 46 volumes). In fact, he has translated most of the ancient rabbinic literature. The Chronicle of Higher Education has called him probably the most prolific scholar in the nation. The majority of Mr. Neusner's books are published by academic presses, including Brill, the University of Chicago Press and the University Press of America. Most are bought by libraries and scholarly institutions, though some, like "Judaism: an Introduction," published by Penguin in 2002, are trade books. Mr. Neusner said it was impossible to know the total sales figures for all 924 books, though he does receive annual royalties for them ranging "between the high four and low five figures." For instance, he said, reading from a recent royalty statement, his 1988 book "The Mishnah: A New Translation," published by Yale University Press, sold 698 copies last year. "Comparing Religious Traditions," published in 2000 by Wadsworth, a textbook company, sold 535 volumes in 2004. In his early work, Mr. Neusner challenged the traditional belief that the Talmud - the Jewish laws and the commentaries on them by ancient rabbis - incorporated the stories and deeds of specific men. Rather, he said, they were texts designed to teach Judaism. "It's like reading the Iliad," said William Scott Green, who has written and edited books with Mr. Neusner. "Do you think the characters actually said everything that was written?" "He was saying, 'Maybe that's not the point,' " added Mr. Green, a professor of religion and Judaic studies at the University of Rochester and dean of the college there. Mr. Neusner is not strictly speaking an Orthodox Jew, though he said he was "most taken with the intellectual depth of orthodoxy." He doesn't wear a yarmulke or attend temple regularly, but keeps kosher. His parsing of the Talmud, he said, has led him to believe that "there was more than one Judaism." Recently, though, he has been searching for similarities between texts in an effort to develop a coherent view of the religion. Just as Mr. Neusner has been prolific, he has been criticized for sloppiness, especially in his translations. One critic was Saul Lieberman, who was head of the Rabbinical School at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York, until his death in 1983. Mr. Lieberman wrote that one of Mr. Neusner's translations "belonged in the wastebasket," Mr. Neusner recalled. Mr. Neusner's sharp tongue has also made him enemies among his colleagues. He has been known to sign letters to opponents, "Drop Dead." Did he really do that? "Not very often," he said dryly. Can he explain? "I'm too old to remember what the occasion was." In 1996, Mr. Neusner published a devastating critique of a doctoral thesis by a young scholar, Christine Hayes. There, for all to see, was "Are the Talmuds Interchangeable? Christine Hayes's Blunder." Ms. Hayes is now a professor at Yale. "I have no comment about Professor Neusner," she said in an e-mail message. Prominent scholars in his field declined to discuss him for this article. Two called his early work "brilliant," but said they were afraid of retaliation for any critical comments. Politically, Mr. Neusner is conservative. He has attacked affirmative action and feminism. While serving on the council of the National Endowment for the Arts, he defended Senator Jesse Helms. "It gets worse," he said, noting that he was also on the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. "I was a bigger supporter of William Bennett," its conservative chairman, he added. In 1981, while a professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I., Mr. Neusner wrote "A Commencement Address You'll Never Hear" for the student newspaper, blasting colleagues for lax standards. "We created an altogether forgiving world, in which whatever slight effort you gave was all that was demanded," he wrote to the students. "When you were boring," he said, dripping with venom, "we acted as if you were saying something important." Mr. Neusner left Brown in 1989. He had a residency at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where he is still a member, and then went to the University of South Florida. In 2000 he joined Bard full time. Meanwhile, he has also written that Christians must inevitably embrace Judaism. "If Christians take the Hebrew Scriptures to their height," he said, "they will find that Judaism embodies those imperatives, the commandments of the Old Testament, in a way Christianity does not." Still, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican prelate in charge of church doctrine, gave him a blurb for his 1993 book "A Rabbi Talks With Jesus," praising "the union of respect for the other party with carefully grounded loyalty to his own position." All this from a benign-appearing figure who spends his days poring over ancient Hebrew, Syriac and Aramaic tracts. "You can do more than one thing at a time," he pointed out. Still, he added: "I rewrite incessantly. I can work on a preface for 10 days." When the material is difficult, he works only in the mornings. If it's easy, he continues into the afternoon. Mr. Green attributes Mr. Neusner's productivity to his powers of concentration and his "intellectual discipline." Another explanation for his prodigious output is that some books are similar. "First there is a scholarly version, then a popular version," said David Kraemer, librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary and a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics. "If 300 of them are independent works, it's still amazing." Mr. Neusner might have learned his practical approach to writing from his father, Samuel, the founder and publisher of The Jewish Ledger in West Hartford, Conn., where Mr. Neusner grew up. At 13, he published his first article in the paper. He graduated from Harvard, and in 1953, on a fellowship to Oxford, read Gerald Reitlinger's "Final Solution" and discovered the enormity of the Holocaust. "The question of my career became, 'What do we do now?' " Mr. Neusner said. He returned to New York, to the Jewish Theological Seminary, then to Columbia University. "I was not intellectually challenged until I met the Talmud, in October 1954," he said. Today Mr. Neusner lives on a suburban street in Rhinebeck, N.Y. He and his wife, Suzanne, an artist, have four children. One, Noam, a former speechwriter for President Bush, is the White House liaison to Jewish groups and an associate director of the Office of Management and Budget. At the moment, Mr. Neusner is writing a rabbinical bestiary. "I'm a dog person," he said. "I've had 32 years of dogs. When the last child left, I let the last dog die." But he's already looking ahead to the next project. Maybe it will be an intellectual history of ancient Judaism. "I'm daydreaming," he said. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DINITIA%20SMITH&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DINITIA%20SMITH&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 15:01:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:01:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Really?: The Claim: Babies Tend to Look Like Their Fathers Message-ID: Really?: The Claim: Babies Tend to Look Like Their Fathers http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/health/22real.html March 22, 2005 By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS It's one of the first questions to cross a new parent's mind. Does the baby look like me? Studies suggest that, for fathers, the answer is usually yes. In 1995, a study in Nature put the question to the test by having 122 people try to match pictures of children they didn't know - at one year, 10 years and 20 years- with photos of their mothers and fathers. The group members correctly paired about half of the infants with their fathers, but their success rate was much lower matching infants and mothers. And matching the 20-year-olds with either parent proved to be just as hard. The authors offered an evolutionary explanation for their findings: the phenomenon is a natural paternity test. A father, unlike a mother, cannot always be sure a baby is his. If he spots a resemblance, the authors argued, he will know the child is his and will be more likely to protect and care for it, benefiting both mother and baby. Another study, published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior in 2003, seems to support this. The researchers took head shots of a group of people and morphed them with photos of baby faces without the subjects' knowledge. When they presented the subjects with the faces, the men were more likely to indicate they would adopt or spend time with the babies, male and female, who had more of their facial characteristics. The women in the study, however, showed no preference for children with their features. THE BOTTOM LINE Infants are more likely to resemble their dads. [2]scitimes at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 15:05:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:05:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Services: Their Specialty? Anything Gray Message-ID: Business > Retirement > Services: Their Specialty? Anything Gray http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/retirement/12pope.html April 12, 2005 By ELIZABETH POPE THE graying of America is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to provide new services to older people. These businesses, a relatively recent phenomenon, are helping clients create their ideal retirements, manage their daily finances and sell their homes or find smaller ones, among other services. Statistics on these specialized businesses are hard to find. Many of them were started by people who dropped (or were kicked) out of corporate culture, or who decided to change careers in midlife, said Sandra Timmermann, director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute. "These entrepreneurs saw a need, started small and went after a niche, then discovered it's bigger than they imagined," Ms. Timmermann said. Here are some of the new specialties: Transition Coach Transition coaches, the latest incarnation of personal or life coaches, have emerged to help people retire. "A lot of my clients in their 50's and 60's either have to leave work or want to," said Constance Adkins, 61, of Newton, Mass., a social worker who counsels people about retirement issues. "They feel restless, anxious and a bit at loose ends." Ms. Adkins and others like her use a variety of methods, including written exercises, readings and close questioning, to help clients clarify their goals and develop strategies to meet them. Ms. Adkins's clients report to her weekly, which, she says, adds accountability to the collaborative process. "Coaches don't nag," Ms. Adkins said. "We work with the client to lay out options and have them make conscious choices rather than falling into something without giving it attention." Like many transition coaches, Ms. Adkins offers an initial free telephone consultation, then charges $300 to $400 monthly for her services, which include a weekly 30-minute phone call and unlimited e-mail exchanges. Relationships with clients usually last six months to a year, she said. Coaching is a vague specialty that is neither licensed nor regulated, and training varies widely, so it is recommended that clients shop carefully and enter any arrangement with their eyes open. It is increasingly popular, though. "Retirement is one of the fastest-growing segments of the coaching industry," said Daniel Martinage, executive director of the International Coach Federation, an organization in Washington ([1]coachfederation.org). He recommends that potential clients check coaches' credentials, training and background. Most offer free introductory sessions so clients can get an idea of coaching style.It is typical for clients to create a patchwork of part-time work, volunteering, hobbies, late-life learning and travel, Ms. Adkins said. She recalled a former client who abruptly quit a demanding job. Working with Ms. Adkins, the woman spent several months examining her life and discovering long-forgotten pleasures. Within six months, she had moved out of state, built a new house, found a new partner, began a consulting business and taken up lots of other activities. "She was like a kid - cooking, biking and knitting - all the things she never had time for," Ms. Adkins said. "That's when I saw the potential in this time of life." Aging-in-Place Specialist As a remodeling contractor, Bill Bell, 45, of Millsboro, Del., worked on many houses that were being prepared for sale because the owners were moving into an assisted-living facility or nursing home. "I kept thinking if we just made a few changes, they could stay in the house, and wouldn't have to move," Mr. Bell said. One thing led to another, and Mr. Bell is now known as a certified aging-in-place specialist after taking a three-day workshop held by the National Association of Home Builders. The course teaches universal design and building techniques for making a home accessible to everyone, regardless of age or disability. "People think universal design is just ramps and grab bars, but good universal design is seamless and invisible," Mr. Bell said. Modifications include widening hallways and doors; adapting kitchens by adding multilevel countertops and easy-to-reach sinks and appliances; redesigning entryways to eliminate stairs and situating the master bedroom on the first floor, with a curbless shower and grab bars in the bathroom. There are more than 600 certified aging-in-place specialists in the United States, said Therese Ford Crahan, executive director of the National Association of Home Builders Remodelors Council ([2]nahb.org /remodelors). They come from various backgrounds and include architects, interior designers, builders and people who work in health care, Ms. Crahan said. The three-day course focuses primarily on design and building techniques, but also covers sensitivity training. Mr. Bell, for example, was required to wear earplugs and sunglasses smeared with petroleum jelly to simulate hearing and vision loss. He was then asked to write down verbal directions. "It did put some things in perspective," he said. Real Estate Specialist Around the time when Mr. Bell became an aging-in-place specialist, his wife, Kathy Sperl-Bell, a real estate agent, decided to specialize in helping older adults relocate, refinance or sell their homes. Ms. Sperl-Bell took a short course offered by the Senior Real Estate Council to become a senior real estate specialist. "Real estate transactions in general are fast-paced and very stressful, but the process can be emotionally draining for older people," said Ms. Sperl-Bell, 57. "My clients often have health problems or just lost a spouse. I've learned to slow down, be patient and listen." Murky family dynamics often complicate matters and call for a combination of hand-holding, a diplomatic touch and "a little bit of social services work," Ms. Sperl-Bell said. Sometimes, one spouse wants to sell the house and the other is adamantly opposed. Some adult children urge selling the family homestead, while others want to keep it. In the two-day online course she took to become a senior real estate specialist, Ms. Sperl-Bell studied the demographics and characteristics of the over-50 population, learning about financial options like reverse mortgages. When helping clients make decisions, she said she discussed the alternatives with them. "If the right answer is to remodel the house and stay put, that's fine," Ms. Sperl-Bell said. "But if the house really isn't going to age well with them, then we'll talk about selling." Currently there are more than 10,000 senior real estate specialists in all 50 states, according to Nathan Booth, a spokesman for the Senior Advantage Real Estate Council ([3]seniorsrealestate.com). "We discourage a lot of our top producers from pursuing this market - they want to be in and out in 20 minutes," he said. "For the older client, it's more counseling than hard sales. You have to slow down and win their trust." Senior Move Manager Moving is stressful for anyone, but older adults may be overwhelmed when leaving a beloved family home, unable to cope with the task of sorting and disposing of decades' worth of belongings. The specialists known as senior move managers help clients sort through their things, get them packed and settled in their new setting. Often, clients are moving from a house to a smaller dwelling in a retirement community, or between levels in a retirement community. Relocation specialists handle the sale, donation or shipping of household items to family members. On moving day, they coordinate and supervise movers, but do not physically move boxes and furniture. When the client walks in the door, the pictures are hung, the beds are made and the boxes are gone. "My best guess is that there are 400 such companies in the country," said Margit Novack, a founder of the National Association of Senior Move Managers ([4]nasmm.org). Fees range from $30 to $75 hourly, depending on the part of the country and the move manager. The average cost of moving a one-bedroom apartment is $1,500; for a large, well-stocked house, the cost averages $5,000 or more, Ms. Novack said. Daily Money Manager Older adults want to retain their independence, but physical and mental health problems or the stress of caring for a partner can make daily financial tasks difficult. Or people may be too busy with travel or activities to spend time on bill paying, checkbook balancing and record keeping. Daily money managers are a new breed of specialists who help older people - and many time-pressed younger people - manage their financial affairs. "I'm the missing link between your accountant, financial planner, broker, lawyer and insurance agent, "said Katherine DeWitt, 56, a daily money manager from Reston, Va. A former bank president, Ms. DeWitt meets clients once a month in their homes. She does an initial assessment of their needs, then tackles mundane matters like decluttering files. She will also give advice on long-range financial issues, and refer clients to professionals for legal, investment or tax advice. About 600 daily money managers can be found nationwide, charging hourly fees from $30 to $100, said Pat Manalio, a past president of the American Association of Daily Money Managers ([5]aadmm.com). Ms. DeWitt, who is licensed and insured, studied to become a registered financial gerontologist to better understand the needs of her older clients. Because money is often an emotional subject, it requires a sensitive approach. "You inch your way in to sense a client's receptivity to discussing money," she said. "Do you take baby steps or plunge right in?" Ms. DeWitt said her goal was to help her clients remain independent. "It's kind of a mission," she said. "I have one client, a widow who never balanced a checkbook in her life. When I leave, I feel so good because I know I've helped her feel a little more confident, a little less stressed and more stable." References 1. http://coachfederation.org/ 2. http://nahb.org/ 3. http://seniorsrealestate.com/ 4. http://nasmm.org/ 5. http://aadmm.com/ From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 15:08:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:08:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Active Lives: A Hunger to Learn Through College Classes Message-ID: Business > Retirement > Active Lives: A Hunger to Learn Through College Classes http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/retirement/12marino.html April 12, 2005 By [1]VIVIAN MARINO ELIZABETH SWANN was never one to lounge around the house or spend her leisure time hitting golf and tennis balls, even after retiring from her job as a social worker three years ago. While she has nothing against physical exercise, mental exercise is what she craves. Fortunately, there is plenty of that at the University of South Florida, which is near her Tampa home. At least once a week, Mrs. Swann heads for the campus, where many choices await her, from sitting in on anthropology lectures to engaging in class discussions about ethics or religion with students who are a fraction of her age. Walking to classes helps keep her fit and the courses she audits "keep my brain from atrophying," said Mrs. Swann, 77, who has a master's degree in gerontology. There is a boom in retired adults participating in college auditing programs, which exist at many colleges and universities. One reason for the influx is the increase of retirement communities in college towns or near campuses. More colleges and universities are also offering auditing programs. The trend is expected to accelerate as more of the baby boom generation, the oldest of whom turn 60 next year, enter retirement. "This is a generation that is already pretty well educated, and they will want to take advantage of these opportunities," said Clara M. Lovett, president of the American Association for Higher Education. According to a 2002 Harris Poll, 81 percent of people ages 55 to 64 want to continue to learn after retirement and 70 percent are eager to try new things. "There are older people who have taken courses and parlayed them into a second career," said Rebecca Alssid, director of lifelong learning at Boston University. Ms. Alssid said that some of the popular classes for auditors were computer technology, foreign languages, history and art. The price is often right for retirees. Most colleges that offer auditing programs for retirees charge only a nominal fee or a small percentage of the regular tuition. For example, the Evergreen Program at Boston University, for people 58 and older, charges $50 a class. At Pennsylvania State University, the Go-60 Program, for those 60 and older, requires only a technology fee for computer access and a student activity fee. The University of Washington's program for people 60 and older waives tuition but charges registration and technology fees. Auditors are not required to take tests or hand in assignments, and no grades or credits are given. Permission to enroll in a class is usually at the discretion of the instructor, and so is the extent of the auditor's participation. Everyone is welcome to pick up a syllabus and textbooks. The noncompetitive aspect of auditing appeals to many people, including Irving Ross, 82, a former retail executive from Edison, N.J., who has audited history classes at Rutgers University in New Brunswick for the last six years. Mr. Ross, who has an M.B.A., attends classes with two friends, also retired, who share his interest in history. He said that he was reluctant to participate too much in class discussions because that might intrude on the matriculating students' time. The real discussion, he said, occurs after class with his friends. "We all have lunch together right afterwards and we discuss what we learned," Mr. Ross said. "It's a lot of fun." Steven F. Lawson teaches Famous Trials: Civil Liberties in Modern America, one of two courses that Mr. Ross and his friends are auditing this semester. He said that he did not mind occasional participation from the older students and sometimes solicits it. "A lot of these folks have experienced the history that we are teaching," Dr. Lawson said. "They can go back and see the interpretation of these events." He is not the only instructor who values the older students. Michael V. Angrosino, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida and one of Mrs. Swann's teachers, said of his retired auditors, "Their life experiences add a dimension to the discussion that simply cannot be duplicated by the younger students." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=VIVIAN%20MARINO&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=VIVIAN%20MARINO&inline=nyt-per From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Wed Apr 13 16:26:01 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:26:01 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] RedNova News: Can This Black Box See Into the Future? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <425D4819.2030600@solution-consulting.com> This was a fascinating report, and one reason that I appreciate Frank's postings. Where would I have learned of such a result? I cannot stay up all night to listen to Art Bell, and anyway, I think he retired. Frank, so is the "party" you are going to quit the Materialism party? Careful, my friend! Next you will be reading about NDEs and such! Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Can This Black Box See Into the Future? > http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649 > Posted on: Friday, 11 February 2005, 00:00 CST > > [This would be completely fabulous if true. Actually, there are a > number of results like this that would change very basic science. When > should I join the bandwagon? I'm reminded of the saying, "Those who > quit the Party before I did were traitors; those who quit after were > fools." > > DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a > small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by > side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream. > > At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in > metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the > ones found in modern pocket calculators. > > But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite > extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that > appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world > events. > > The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World > Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood > of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked > back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of > the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that > precipitated the epic tragedy. > > Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with > apparently inexplicable powers. > > 'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus > researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is > heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon. > > 'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's > going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's > investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were > originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of > the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect > whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can > all tap into without realising. > > And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising > possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of > predicting the future. > > Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than > fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected > scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - > where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists > from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and > Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running > investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal. > > 'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long > enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. > 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The > effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project > has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of > Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first > modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by > such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to > move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory > perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most > up-to-date technology available. > > One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was > a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to > generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random > sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper. > > The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - > could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of chance dictate that > the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - > which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph. Any > deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve. > > During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the > power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the > machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked > them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he > was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails. > > It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were > stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained. > > Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds > could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on > the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or > 'tails'. > > According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have > happened - but it did. And it kept on happening. > > Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof > Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, > which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results > were eyepopping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic > shifts in the patterns of numbers. > > From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked. > > Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from > all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran > constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of > data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked > more or less like a flat line. > > But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: > the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the > number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting > huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for > another reason, too. > > For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around > the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at > Westminster Abbey. > > Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some > way. > > Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated > emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the > output of his REGs. If so, how? > > Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it. > > So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world > to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to > extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global > Consciousness Project was born. > > Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as > the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been > recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project. > > And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure. > > For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a > whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the > Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's > hung election of 2000. > > The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New > Year's Eve. > > But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001. > > As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist > attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the > Eggs. > > Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, > but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four > hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers. > > They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance > was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their > fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security > services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly > enormous. > > 'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr > Nelson. > > What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps? > > Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the > machines went wild once more. > > Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean > triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed > the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people. > > So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the > future? > > Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global > event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines > behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters > and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. > Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their > raw data? > > The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using > rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible > to exclude any such random connections. > > 'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says > Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has > anyone else. > > Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by > fluke are one million to one against. > > That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical. > > Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths > College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has > generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily > dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same > results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early > experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, > there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility > of foreseeing the future. > > It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but > backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, > it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in > effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future. > > 'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof > Bierman at the University of Amsterdam. > > 'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen > in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are > all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the > hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence > to support this theory. > > Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the > Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense > the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning > machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns. > > He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings. > > When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's > brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This > was to be expected. > > Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these > dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the > pictures were even flashed up. > > It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into > the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown > next. > > It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable. > > But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr > Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in > America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's > resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with > our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie > detectors. > > Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while > measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds > before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly > impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. > And he kept getting the same results. > > 'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated > the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After > this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make > matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream > labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public. > > 'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their > findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release > their results at the same time. That would at least spread the > ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then > the experiments are no laughing matter. > > They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange > phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that > we have all experienced from time to time. > > They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one > day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can > 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box > in Edinburgh. > > Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, > could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden > psychic abilities? > > Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able > to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't > know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says. > > 'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the > CIA.' > > But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential > to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less > importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human > race. > > For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may > all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far > greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God. > > 'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven > by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right. > > We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.' > > ----- > > On the Net: > > [42]Global Consciousness Project > [43]Princeton University > Source: Daily Mail; London (UK) > > References > > 42. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ > 43. http://www.princeton.edu/ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 15:05:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 11:05:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Services: Their Specialty? Anything Gray Message-ID: Business > Retirement > Services: Their Specialty? Anything Gray http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/business/retirement/12pope.html April 12, 2005 By ELIZABETH POPE THE graying of America is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to provide new services to older people. These businesses, a relatively recent phenomenon, are helping clients create their ideal retirements, manage their daily finances and sell their homes or find smaller ones, among other services. Statistics on these specialized businesses are hard to find. Many of them were started by people who dropped (or were kicked) out of corporate culture, or who decided to change careers in midlife, said Sandra Timmermann, director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute. "These entrepreneurs saw a need, started small and went after a niche, then discovered it's bigger than they imagined," Ms. Timmermann said. Here are some of the new specialties: Transition Coach Transition coaches, the latest incarnation of personal or life coaches, have emerged to help people retire. "A lot of my clients in their 50's and 60's either have to leave work or want to," said Constance Adkins, 61, of Newton, Mass., a social worker who counsels people about retirement issues. "They feel restless, anxious and a bit at loose ends." Ms. Adkins and others like her use a variety of methods, including written exercises, readings and close questioning, to help clients clarify their goals and develop strategies to meet them. Ms. Adkins's clients report to her weekly, which, she says, adds accountability to the collaborative process. "Coaches don't nag," Ms. Adkins said. "We work with the client to lay out options and have them make conscious choices rather than falling into something without giving it attention." Like many transition coaches, Ms. Adkins offers an initial free telephone consultation, then charges $300 to $400 monthly for her services, which include a weekly 30-minute phone call and unlimited e-mail exchanges. Relationships with clients usually last six months to a year, she said. Coaching is a vague specialty that is neither licensed nor regulated, and training varies widely, so it is recommended that clients shop carefully and enter any arrangement with their eyes open. It is increasingly popular, though. "Retirement is one of the fastest-growing segments of the coaching industry," said Daniel Martinage, executive director of the International Coach Federation, an organization in Washington ([1]coachfederation.org). He recommends that potential clients check coaches' credentials, training and background. Most offer free introductory sessions so clients can get an idea of coaching style.It is typical for clients to create a patchwork of part-time work, volunteering, hobbies, late-life learning and travel, Ms. Adkins said. She recalled a former client who abruptly quit a demanding job. Working with Ms. Adkins, the woman spent several months examining her life and discovering long-forgotten pleasures. Within six months, she had moved out of state, built a new house, found a new partner, began a consulting business and taken up lots of other activities. "She was like a kid - cooking, biking and knitting - all the things she never had time for," Ms. Adkins said. "That's when I saw the potential in this time of life." Aging-in-Place Specialist As a remodeling contractor, Bill Bell, 45, of Millsboro, Del., worked on many houses that were being prepared for sale because the owners were moving into an assisted-living facility or nursing home. "I kept thinking if we just made a few changes, they could stay in the house, and wouldn't have to move," Mr. Bell said. One thing led to another, and Mr. Bell is now known as a certified aging-in-place specialist after taking a three-day workshop held by the National Association of Home Builders. The course teaches universal design and building techniques for making a home accessible to everyone, regardless of age or disability. "People think universal design is just ramps and grab bars, but good universal design is seamless and invisible," Mr. Bell said. Modifications include widening hallways and doors; adapting kitchens by adding multilevel countertops and easy-to-reach sinks and appliances; redesigning entryways to eliminate stairs and situating the master bedroom on the first floor, with a curbless shower and grab bars in the bathroom. There are more than 600 certified aging-in-place specialists in the United States, said Therese Ford Crahan, executive director of the National Association of Home Builders Remodelors Council ([2]nahb.org /remodelors). They come from various backgrounds and include architects, interior designers, builders and people who work in health care, Ms. Crahan said. The three-day course focuses primarily on design and building techniques, but also covers sensitivity training. Mr. Bell, for example, was required to wear earplugs and sunglasses smeared with petroleum jelly to simulate hearing and vision loss. He was then asked to write down verbal directions. "It did put some things in perspective," he said. Real Estate Specialist Around the time when Mr. Bell became an aging-in-place specialist, his wife, Kathy Sperl-Bell, a real estate agent, decided to specialize in helping older adults relocate, refinance or sell their homes. Ms. Sperl-Bell took a short course offered by the Senior Real Estate Council to become a senior real estate specialist. "Real estate transactions in general are fast-paced and very stressful, but the process can be emotionally draining for older people," said Ms. Sperl-Bell, 57. "My clients often have health problems or just lost a spouse. I've learned to slow down, be patient and listen." Murky family dynamics often complicate matters and call for a combination of hand-holding, a diplomatic touch and "a little bit of social services work," Ms. Sperl-Bell said. Sometimes, one spouse wants to sell the house and the other is adamantly opposed. Some adult children urge selling the family homestead, while others want to keep it. In the two-day online course she took to become a senior real estate specialist, Ms. Sperl-Bell studied the demographics and characteristics of the over-50 population, learning about financial options like reverse mortgages. When helping clients make decisions, she said she discussed the alternatives with them. "If the right answer is to remodel the house and stay put, that's fine," Ms. Sperl-Bell said. "But if the house really isn't going to age well with them, then we'll talk about selling." Currently there are more than 10,000 senior real estate specialists in all 50 states, according to Nathan Booth, a spokesman for the Senior Advantage Real Estate Council ([3]seniorsrealestate.com). "We discourage a lot of our top producers from pursuing this market - they want to be in and out in 20 minutes," he said. "For the older client, it's more counseling than hard sales. You have to slow down and win their trust." Senior Move Manager Moving is stressful for anyone, but older adults may be overwhelmed when leaving a beloved family home, unable to cope with the task of sorting and disposing of decades' worth of belongings. The specialists known as senior move managers help clients sort through their things, get them packed and settled in their new setting. Often, clients are moving from a house to a smaller dwelling in a retirement community, or between levels in a retirement community. Relocation specialists handle the sale, donation or shipping of household items to family members. On moving day, they coordinate and supervise movers, but do not physically move boxes and furniture. When the client walks in the door, the pictures are hung, the beds are made and the boxes are gone. "My best guess is that there are 400 such companies in the country," said Margit Novack, a founder of the National Association of Senior Move Managers ([4]nasmm.org). Fees range from $30 to $75 hourly, depending on the part of the country and the move manager. The average cost of moving a one-bedroom apartment is $1,500; for a large, well-stocked house, the cost averages $5,000 or more, Ms. Novack said. Daily Money Manager Older adults want to retain their independence, but physical and mental health problems or the stress of caring for a partner can make daily financial tasks difficult. Or people may be too busy with travel or activities to spend time on bill paying, checkbook balancing and record keeping. Daily money managers are a new breed of specialists who help older people - and many time-pressed younger people - manage their financial affairs. "I'm the missing link between your accountant, financial planner, broker, lawyer and insurance agent, "said Katherine DeWitt, 56, a daily money manager from Reston, Va. A former bank president, Ms. DeWitt meets clients once a month in their homes. She does an initial assessment of their needs, then tackles mundane matters like decluttering files. She will also give advice on long-range financial issues, and refer clients to professionals for legal, investment or tax advice. About 600 daily money managers can be found nationwide, charging hourly fees from $30 to $100, said Pat Manalio, a past president of the American Association of Daily Money Managers ([5]aadmm.com). Ms. DeWitt, who is licensed and insured, studied to become a registered financial gerontologist to better understand the needs of her older clients. Because money is often an emotional subject, it requires a sensitive approach. "You inch your way in to sense a client's receptivity to discussing money," she said. "Do you take baby steps or plunge right in?" Ms. DeWitt said her goal was to help her clients remain independent. "It's kind of a mission," she said. "I have one client, a widow who never balanced a checkbook in her life. When I leave, I feel so good because I know I've helped her feel a little more confident, a little less stressed and more stable." References 1. http://coachfederation.org/ 2. http://nahb.org/ 3. http://seniorsrealestate.com/ 4. http://nasmm.org/ 5. http://aadmm.com/ From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 16:54:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 12:54:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] RedNova News: Can This Black Box See Into the Future? In-Reply-To: <425D4819.2030600@solution-consulting.com> References: <425D4819.2030600@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: It was the clandestine Communist Party. Lots of American intellectuals were secret members and fair number bailed out. An early book on this is _The God that Failed_. Those that remained called them traitors to the Cause. But eventually those that remained got called fools that refused to believe that communisim was no worker's paradise after all. Who or what is an Art Bell? Frank On 2005-04-13, Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 10:26:01 -0600 > From: "Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D." > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: The new improved paleopsych list > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] RedNova News: Can This Black Box See Into the > Future? > > This was a fascinating report, and one reason that I appreciate Frank's > postings. Where would I have learned of such a result? I cannot stay up all > night to listen to Art Bell, and anyway, I think he retired. > > Frank, so is the "party" you are going to quit the Materialism party? > Careful, my friend! Next you will be reading about NDEs and such! > Lynn > > Premise Checker wrote: > >> Can This Black Box See Into the Future? >> http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=126649 >> Posted on: Friday, 11 February 2005, 00:00 CST >> >> [This would be completely fabulous if true. Actually, there are a number of >> results like this that would change very basic science. When should I join >> the bandwagon? I'm reminded of the saying, "Those who quit the Party before >> I did were traitors; those who quit after were fools." >> >> DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a >> small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by >> side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream. >> >> At first glance it is an unremarkable piece of equipment. Encased in >> metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the >> ones found in modern pocket calculators. >> >> But, according to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite >> extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the 'eye' of a machine that >> appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world >> events. >> >> The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World >> Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood >> of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked >> back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of >> the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that >> precipitated the epic tragedy. >> >> Now, even the doubters are acknowledging that here is a small box with >> apparently inexplicable powers. >> >> 'It's Earth-shattering stuff,' says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus >> researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is >> heading the research project behind the 'black box' phenomenon. >> >> 'We're very early on in the process of trying to figure out what's >> going on here. At the moment we're stabbing in the dark.' Dr Nelson's >> investigations, called the Global Consciousness Project, were >> originally hosted by Princeton University and are centred on one of >> the most extraordinary experiments of all time. Its aim is to detect >> whether all of humanity shares a single subconscious mind that we can >> all tap into without realising. >> >> And machines like the Edinburgh black box have thrown up a tantalising >> possibility: that scientists may have unwittingly discovered a way of >> predicting the future. >> >> Although many would consider the project's aims to be little more than >> fools' gold, it has still attracted a roster of 75 respected >> scientists from 41 different nations. Researchers from Princeton - >> where Einstein spent much of his career - work alongside scientists >> from universities in Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and >> Germany. The project is also the most rigorous and longest-running >> investigation ever into the potential powers of the paranormal. >> >> 'Very often paranormal phenomena evaporate if you study them for long >> enough,' says physicist Dick Bierman of the University of Amsterdam. >> 'But this is not happening with the Global Consciousness Project. The >> effect is real. The only dispute is about what it means.' The project >> has its roots in the extraordinary work of Professor Robert Jahn of >> Princeton University during the late 1970s. He was one of the first >> modern scientists to take paranormal phenomena seriously. Intrigued by >> such things as telepathy, telekinesis - the supposed psychic power to >> move objects without the use of physical force - and extrasensory >> perception, he was determined to study the phenomena using the most >> up-to-date technology available. >> >> One of these new technologies was a humble-looking black box known was >> a Random Event Generator (REG). This used computer technology to >> generate two numbers - a one and a zero - in a totally random >> sequence, rather like an electronic coin-flipper. >> >> The pattern of ones and noughts - 'heads' and 'tails' as it were - >> could then be printed out as a graph. The laws of chance dictate that >> the generators should churn out equal numbers of ones and zeros - >> which would be represented by a nearly flat line on the graph. Any >> deviation from this equal number shows up as a gently rising curve. >> >> During the late 1970s, Prof Jahn decided to investigate whether the >> power of human thought alone could interfere in some way with the >> machine's usual readings. He hauled strangers off the street and asked >> them to concentrate their minds on his number generator. In effect, he >> was asking them to try to make it flip more heads than tails. >> >> It was a preposterous idea at the time. The results, however, were >> stunning and have never been satisfactorily explained. >> >> Again and again, entirely ordinary people proved that their minds >> could influence the machine and produce significant fluctuations on >> the graph, 'forcing it' to produce unequal numbers of 'heads' or >> 'tails'. >> >> According to all of the known laws of science, this should not have >> happened - but it did. And it kept on happening. >> >> Dr Nelson, also working at Princeton University, then extended Prof >> Jahn's work by taking random number machines to group meditations, >> which were very popular in America at the time. Again, the results >> were eyepopping. The groups were collectively able to cause dramatic >> shifts in the patterns of numbers. >> >> From then on, Dr Nelson was hooked. >> >> Using the internet, he connected up 40 random event generators from >> all over the world to his laboratory computer in Princeton. These ran >> constantly, day in day out, generating millions of different pieces of >> data. Most of the time, the resulting graph on his computer looked >> more or less like a flat line. >> >> But then on September 6, 1997, something quite extraordinary happened: >> the graph shot upwards, recording a sudden and massive shift in the >> number sequence as his machines around the world started reporting >> huge deviations from the norm. The day was of historic importance for >> another reason, too. >> >> For it was the same day that an estimated one billion people around >> the world watched the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales at >> Westminster Abbey. >> >> Dr Nelson was convinced that the two events must be related in some >> way. >> >> Could he have detected a totally new phenomena? Could the concentrated >> emotional outpouring of millions of people be able to influence the >> output of his REGs. If so, how? >> >> Dr Nelson was at a loss to explain it. >> >> So, in 1998, he gathered together scientists from all over the world >> to analyse his findings. They, too, were stumped and resolved to >> extend and deepen the work of Prof Jahn and Dr Nelson. The Global >> Consciousness Project was born. >> >> Since then, the project has expanded massively. A total of 65 Eggs (as >> the generators have been named) in 41 countries have now been >> recruited to act as the 'eyes' of the project. >> >> And the results have been startling and inexplicable in equal measure. >> >> For during the course of the experiment, the Eggs have 'sensed' a >> whole series of major world events as they were happening, from the >> Nato bombing of Yugoslavia to the Kursk submarine tragedy to America's >> hung election of 2000. >> >> The Eggs also regularly detect huge global celebrations, such as New >> Year's Eve. >> >> But the project threw up its greatest enigma on September 11, 2001. >> >> As the world stood still and watched the horror of the terrorist >> attacks unfold across New York, something strange was happening to the >> Eggs. >> >> Not only had they registered the attacks as they actually happened, >> but the characteristic shift in the pattern of numbers had begun four >> hours before the two planes even hit the Twin Towers. >> >> They had, it appeared, detected that an event of historic importance >> was about to take place before the terrorists had even boarded their >> fateful flights. The implications, not least for the West's security >> services who constantly monitor electronic 'chatter', are clearly >> enormous. >> >> 'I knew then that we had a great deal of work ahead of us,' says Dr >> Nelson. >> >> What could be happening? Was it a freak occurrence, perhaps? >> >> Apparently not. For in the closing weeks of December last year, the >> machines went wild once more. >> >> Twenty-four hours later, an earthquake deep beneath the Indian Ocean >> triggered the tsunami which devastated South-East Asia, and claimed >> the lives of an estimated quarter of a million people. >> >> So could the Global Consciousness Project really be forecasting the >> future? >> >> Cynics will quite rightly point out that there is always some global >> event that could be used to 'explain' the times when the Egg machines >> behaved erratically. After all, our world is full of wars, disasters >> and terrorist outrages, as well as the occasional global celebration. >> Are the scientists simply trying too hard to detect patterns in their >> raw data? >> >> The team behind the project insist not. They claim that by using >> rigorous scientific techniques and powerful mathematics it is possible >> to exclude any such random connections. >> >> 'We're perfectly willing to discover that we've made mistakes,' says >> Dr Nelson. 'But we haven't been able to find any, and neither has >> anyone else. >> >> Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by >> fluke are one million to one against. >> >> That's hugely significant.' But many remain sceptical. >> >> Professor Chris French, a psychologist and noted sceptic at Goldsmiths >> College in London, says: 'The Global Consciousness Project has >> generated some very intriguing results that cannot be readily >> dismissed. I'm involved in similar work to see if we get the same >> results. We haven't managed to do so yet but it's only an early >> experiment. The jury's still out.' Strange as it may seem, though, >> there's nothing in the laws of physics that precludes the possibility >> of foreseeing the future. >> >> It is possible - in theory - that time may not just move forwards but >> backwards, too. And if time ebbs and flows like the tides in the sea, >> it might just be possible to foretell major world events. We would, in >> effect, be 'remembering' things that had taken place in our future. >> >> 'There's plenty of evidence that time may run backwards,' says Prof >> Bierman at the University of Amsterdam. >> >> 'And if it's possible for it to happen in physics, then it can happen >> in our minds, too.' In other words, Prof Bierman believes that we are >> all capable of looking into the future, if only we could tap into the >> hidden power of our minds. And there is a tantalising body of evidence >> to support this theory. >> >> Dr John Hartwell, working at the University of Utrecht in the >> Netherlands, was the first to uncover evidence that people could sense >> the future. In the mid-1970s he hooked people up to hospital scanning >> machines so that he could study their brainwave patterns. >> >> He began by showing them a sequence of provocative cartoon drawings. >> >> When the pictures were shown, the machines registered the subject's >> brainwaves as they reacted strongly to the images before them. This >> was to be expected. >> >> Far less easy to explain was the fact that in many cases, these >> dramatic patterns began to register a few seconds before each of the >> pictures were even flashed up. >> >> It was as though Dr Hartwell's case studies were somehow seeing into >> the future, and detecting when the next shocking image would be shown >> next. >> >> It was extraordinary - and seemingly inexplicable. >> >> But it was to be another 15 years before anyone else took Dr >> Hartwell's work further when Dean Radin, a researcher working in >> America, connected people up to a machine that measured their skin's >> resistance to electricity. This is known to fluctuate in tandem with >> our moods - indeed, it's this principle that underlies many lie >> detectors. >> >> Radin repeated Dr Hartwell's 'image response' experiments while >> measuring skin resistance. Again, people began reacting a few seconds >> before they were shown the provocative pictures. This was clearly >> impossible, or so he thought, so he kept on repeating the experiments. >> And he kept getting the same results. >> >> 'I didn't believe it either,' says Prof Bierman. 'So I also repeated >> the experiment myself and got the same results. I was shocked. After >> this I started to think more deeply about the nature of time.' To make >> matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream >> labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public. >> >> 'They don't want to be ridiculed so they won't release their >> findings,' he says. 'So I'm trying to persuade all of them to release >> their results at the same time. That would at least spread the >> ridicule a little more thinly!' If Prof Bierman is right, though, then >> the experiments are no laughing matter. >> >> They might help provide a solid scientific grounding for such strange >> phenomena as 'deja vu', intuition and a host of other curiosities that >> we have all experienced from time to time. >> >> They may also open up a far more interesting possibility - that one >> day we might be able to enhance psychic powers using machines that can >> 'tune in' to our subconscious mind, machines like the little black box >> in Edinburgh. >> >> Just as we have built mechanical engines to replace muscle power, >> could we one day build a device to enhance and interpret our hidden >> psychic abilities? >> >> Dr Nelson is optimistic - but not for the short term. 'We may be able >> to predict that a major world event is going to happen. But we won't >> know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen,' he says. >> >> 'Put it this way - we haven't yet got a machine we could sell to the >> CIA.' >> >> But for Dr Nelson, talk of such psychic machines - with the potential >> to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less >> importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human >> race. >> >> For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may >> all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far >> greater - a global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God. >> >> 'We're taught to be individualistic monsters,' he says. 'We're driven >> by society to separate ourselves from each other. That's not right. >> >> We may be connected together far more intimately than we realise.' >> >> ----- >> >> On the Net: >> >> [42]Global Consciousness Project >> [43]Princeton University >> Source: Daily Mail; London (UK) >> >> References >> >> 42. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/ >> 43. http://www.princeton.edu/ >> _______________________________________________ >> paleopsych mailing list >> paleopsych at paleopsych.org >> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:17:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:17:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Touring an America Tocqueville Could Fathom Message-ID: Books > Connections: Touring an America Tocqueville Could Fathom http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/books/11conn.html April 11, 2005 By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN "This entire book was written in the grip of a kind of religious terror," Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his introduction to "Democracy in America." It is difficult to believe. Religious terror? Tocqueville, an aristocratic French lawyer, wrote his classic text after a nine-month visit to the United States in 1831. And far from being saturated with terror, it is a refined, detached series of reflections on the effects of American democracy on character, commerce, culture and belief: why the arts in America are more concerned with utility than beauty, why Americans tend to be restless, why democracy encourages a passionate spirituality. But what occasioned the terror, Tocqueville informs us, was his conviction that American democracy grew out of an "irresistible revolution" that had been unfolding for centuries, leaving behind ruins of the old world while erecting a strange new one in which equality is the guiding principle. That revolution had touched and terrorized France; in varying degrees it was coursing through Europe. But it was in America that it had taken on its purest form. Tocqueville sensed the inevitability of its influence and the trauma of its coming transformations: in democracy much is lost even as much is gained. Yet despite the passage of more than 170 years, and the triumph of democratic ideals throughout the West, sentiments of religious terror in the face of democratic revolution are still in the air, though often felt with far less sympathy than Tocqueville expressed. That "irresistible revolution" has now even become an explicit aspect of American policy, inspiring accusations - not least in France - of both utopianism and imperialism. And while some of the energy behind contemporary anti-Americanism is spurred by objections to particular policies, its passion is also driven by the same terror that Tocqueville felt as he watched early democratic institutions displace older orders. Given that passion, it was a stroke of genius for The Atlantic Monthly to renew the Tocquevillian project by commissioning the distinguished French philosopher, journalist and gadfly Bernard-Henri L?vy to repeat Tocqueville's journey through America and chronicle his observations over the next several months in the magazine before they appear in book form early next year. The first installment of his account, in the May issue of The Atlantic, highlights some of the threads that will be woven through the travelogue. It seems that Mr. L?vy, like Tocqueville, is often uneasy about America but always entranced by it. And at least so far, he can claim, like Tocqueville, that his account "is not precisely tailored to anyone's point of view." While Tocqueville deduces American character from abstract principles, Mr. L?vy wants to discover the abstract principles through observation of the American character. So the elegant logic that Tocqueville uses to outline democracy's effects is replaced in Mr. L?vy's first installment by the accumulation of anecdote and carefully observed description. Visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., Mr. L?vy ponders the willful deceptions of an invented American past. In the stubborn autonomy of the Amish, he sees something of American exceptionalism. He watches with ironic dismay as Tom Daschle, then a senator, and his family dance with a Lakota Indian tribe in South Dakota, and sees a sad masquerade. And stopping by the side of Interstate 94 in Michigan to relieve himself in a field, he is accosted by a policeman who insists that he "keep moving," an American commandment, Mr. L?vy notes. But when Mr. L?vy tells him that he is a Frenchman following the path of Tocqueville, the discussion with the officer turns affable - an encounter, Mr. L?vy says, that poses a "magnificent challenge" to those who inflate American Francophobia, which he never once encountered in his travels. What is almost wholly missing in his account, in fact, are the kinds of condescending references to American kitsch and materialism that can become reflexive in such travelogues. There are times, in this first installment, when there is a reliance on received sentiment or when Mr. L?vy seems to misread an event: a car race in Knoxville hardly seems a prime example of the bloodthirsty "hellish side of American society." There is much, too, that is less than flattering: the grim edginess of the prison at Rikers Island, the anti-Semitic outbursts of an American Indian activist. And as he is taken over the Grand Canyon by a young guide in a helicopter, he is dismayed to be told that there are two scientific theories about its origins: it was created either by erosion over millions of years or by the effects of the biblical flood, 6,000 ago. There is much, too, in which his own surprise is as revealing as what he sees. The prevalence of American flags is a shock; France, Mr. L?vy says, almost shuns its tricolor flag. When visiting members of the Arab community in Dearborn, Mich., he is impressed with how the American "we" has taken root: "on the topic of immigration, Europe should take lessons from America," he said in a talk at the New York Public Library on Wednesday night. And in the deserted factories and office buildings of Cleveland and Detroit and Lackawanna, N.Y., he sees an enigma about America, something missing that is taken for granted in Europe: "a love of cities." He worries, too, about what he sees as a growing taste for rivalrous political ideologies; he has seen the dangers of such sweeping convictions in his own country's past. The strands are still too miscellaneous and varied to discern all the themes that will emerge. But Mr. L?vy expects his observations to be far more controversial in France than they will be here: few of the standard villains, he suggests, will appear. As for the religious terror that Tocqueville felt, and others now feel, in the face of democratic change, alleviating that may be beyond any writer's powers. Connections, a critic's perspective on arts and ideas, appears every other Monday. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:19:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:19:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Scientists Scramble to Destroy Flu Strain Message-ID: Scientists Scramble to Destroy Flu Strain http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050412/ap_on_he_me/pandemic_flu_labs By Emma Ross AP Medical Writer [Thanks to Marge for this.] LONDON - Thousands of scientists were scrambling Tuesday at the urging of global health authorities to destroy vials of a pandemic flu strain sent to labs in 18 countries as part of routine testing. The rush, urged by the World Health Organization, was sparked by a slim, but real, risk that the samples, could spark a global flu epidemic. The vials of virus sent by a U.S. company went to nearly 5,000 labs, mostly in the United States, officials said. "The risk is relatively low that a lab worker will get sick, but a large number of labs got it and if someone does get infected, the risk of severe illness is high and this virus has shown to be fully transmissible," WHO's influenza chief, Klaus Stohr, told The Associated Press. It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people ? was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs. It was a decision that Stohr described as "unwise," and "unfortunate." That particular bug was "an epidemic virus for many years," Stohr said from the U.N. health agency's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. "The risk is low but things can go wrong as long as these samples are out there and there are some still out there." The 1957 strain has not been included in the flu vaccine since 1968, and anyone born after that date has no immunity to it. Dr. Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza branch at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said her agency was notified of the situation Friday morning. She also said officials strongly doubt someone deliberately planted the dangerous germ or that this was an act of bioterrorism. "It wouldn't be a smart way to start a pandemic to send it to laboratories because we have people well trained in biocontainment," she said. The concern over the shipment of pandemic flu virus to thousands labs renews questions about the safe handling of deadly germs ? an issue that led to toughened U.S. rules after anthrax was sent in the mail in 2001, killing five Americans. Most of the flu samples ? 3,747 ? were sent starting last year at the request of the College of American Pathologists, which helps labs do proficiency testing. The last shipments were sent out in February. Dr. Jared Schwartz, an official with the pathology college, said a private company, Meridian Bioscience Inc. of Cincinnati, Ohio, is paid to prepare the samples. The firm was told to pick an influenza A sample and chose from its stockpile the deadly 1957 H2N2 strain. Stohr said U.S. health officials also reported to WHO that some other test kit providers besides the college used the 1957 pandemic strain in samples sent to labs in the United States. Schwartz identified them as Medical Lab Evaluators, the American Association of Bioanalysts and the American Association of Family Practitioners. Almost 99 percent of the labs that got the test kits are in the United States, Stohr said. Fourteen were in Canada and 61 samples went to labs in 16 other countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America, according to the WHO. Some of the labs outside the United States have already destroyed their samples, he said, and WHO is hoping that the rest of the vials will be destroyed by Friday. The health agency wouldn't name the other countries whose labs received the samples. The test kits are used for internal quality control checks to demonstrate that a lab is able to correctly identify viruses or as a way for labs to get certified by the College of American Pathologists. The kits involve blind samples. The lab then has to correctly identify the pathogen in the vial in order to pass the test. Usually, the influenza virus included in these kits is one that is currently circulating, or at least one that has recently been in circulation. On March 26, National Microbial Laboratory Canada detected the 1957 pandemic strain in a sample not connected with the test kit. After informing WHO and the CDC of the strange finding, the lab investigated. It informed the U.N. health agency on Friday that it had traced the virus to the test kit. The WHO then notified the health authorities in all countries that received the kits and recommended that all the samples be destroyed immediately. That same day, the College of American Pathologists faxed the labs asking them to immediately incinerate the samples and to confirm in writing that the operation had been completed. Stohr said the test kits are not the only supplies of the 1957 pandemic strain sitting in laboratories around the world. "The world really has to think what routine labs should be doing with these samples they have kept in the back of their fridges," Storh said. Viruses are classed according to the level of lab safety precautions that must be taken when handling them. Routine viruses can be handled in labs with a basic level of biosafety protection. However, very dangerous viruses, such as Ebola, can only be handled at labs with top-level safety measures. Those labs have a biosafety level of 4. The 1957 flu virus has for years been a level 2 virus, but many countries have upgraded it to a biosafety level of 3 because so many people have no immunity to it. Stohr said U.S. officials reviewing the classification and are expected to increase it to a level 3 later this summer. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:30:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:30:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge:The Assortive Mating Theory: A Talk with Simon Baron-Cohen Message-ID: The Assortive Mating Theory: A Talk with Simon Baron-Cohen http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge158.html [The sidelining of 20th century egalitarian dinosaurs continues.] _________________________________________________________________ Edge 158-- April 6, 2005 (6,900 words) _________________________________________________________________ My thesis with regard to sex differences is quite moderate, in that I do not discount environmental factors; I'm just saying, don't forget about biology. To me that sounds very moderate. But for some people in the field of gender studies, even that is too extreme. They want it to be all environment and no biology. You can understand that politically that was an important position in the 1960s, in an effort to try to change society. But is it a true description, scientifically, of what goes on? It's time to distinguish politics and science, and just look at the evidence. _________________________________________________________________ THE REALITY CLUB: Marc D. Hauser, Steven Pinker, Armand Leroi, Carole Hooven, Elizabeth Spelke respond to Simon Baron-Cohen [below} _________________________________________________________________ Introduction Simon Baron-Cohen is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. In this Edge feature, he presents his new Assortative Mating Theory which connects his two fields of research: the characteristics of autism in terms of understanding what's going on in the brain and the causes of the condition; and understanding the differences between males and females. "My new theory is that it's not just a genetic condition," he says, "but it might be the result of two particular types of parents, who are both contributing genes. This might be controversially received. This is because there are a number of different theories out there -- one of which is an environmental theory, such as autism being caused by vaccine damage -- the MMR vaccine (the measles, mumps, and rubella combination vaccine). Another environmental theory is that autism is due to toxic levels of mercury building up in the child's brain. But the genetic theory has a lot of evidence, and what we are now testing is that if two "systemizers" have a child, this will increase the risk of the child having autism. That's it in a nutshell. Baron-Cohen realizes that his theory might raise anxieties. "Just because it's potentially controversial," he says, "doesn't mean that we shouldn't investigate it. And there are ways that you can investigate it empirically." He also expects controversy. Given the continuing public discussing in the US about innate sex differences, he will, no doubt, be challenged when he says "It was interesting for me to discover that there's been a sleight of hand, mostly in the States, such that the word 'sex' has been replaced by the word 'gender'. Baron-Cohen believes that it's time "to distinguish politics and science, and just look at the evidence". Others will feel differently. [13]--JB SIMON BARON-COHEN is Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His books include Mindblindness; and The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain. [14]SIMON BARON-COHEN's Edge Bio Page _________________________________________________________________ THE ASSORTATIVE MATING THEORY (SIMON BARON-COHEN:) I've been working on the question of autism, trying to understand what characterizes autism from a psychological perspective and ultimately aiming to understand what's going on in the brain and the causes of the condition. My new theory is that it's not just a genetic condition, but it might be the result of two particular types of parents, who are both contributing genes. This might be controversially received. This is because there are a number of different theories out there -- one of which is an environmental theory, such as autism being caused by vaccine damage -- the MMR vaccine (the measles, mumps, and rubella combination vaccine). Another environmental theory is that autism is due to toxic levels of mercury building up in the child's brain. But the genetic theory has a lot of evidence, and what we are now testing is that if two "systemizers" have a child, this will increase the risk of the child having autism. That's it in a nutshell. A systemizer is somebody whose style of thinking is predominantly in terms of understanding things according to rules or laws. You can think of lots of different kinds of systems: mathematical systems (algebra, computer programs), or mechanical systems (computers or cars); natural systems (weather, or rocks, geology); and social systems (businesses, or the military). In each case, when you systemize what you do, you try to understand the system in terms of the laws that govern the system. Economics would be an example of a system, where people are trying to predict a crash, or predict what's going to happen in terms of stock markets. They are trying to understand things according to laws or rules. The theory we are testing is that if you have a mother and a father who are both systemizers, the risk of the child having autism increases. Systemizing is expressed in behavior, so, for example, if your hobby is playing with computers, that's the behavior that you see. But obviously such activity reflects your interests, which is what's going on in your mind, not just in your behavior. The mind of a systemizer is drawn to understand systems. Steven Pinker has a nice phrase about spiders, that spiders are just programmed to spin webs. He uses that as an analogy for the way in which a typically developing child is programmed to learn language. These programs are not a hundred percent deterministic; you can intervene, you can change. There's obviously plasticity in the system. In the same way, systemizing isn't going to turn out to be a hundred percent genetic. There are few if any behavioral characteristics in humans that are one hundred percent genetic . There are five steps for testing this theory. First, we need to establish whether or not systemizing runs in families. Secondly, we need to find out if there are there any genes associated with systemizing. Thirdly, are the parents of children with autism systemizers, defined according to their cognition? Fourthly, do they both carry the genes for systemizing? Finally, when these gene combine, does this raise the risk of their child having autism? This theory will be controversial, and it might raise anxieties. But just because it's potentially controversial doesn't mean that we shouldn't investigate it. And there are ways that you can investigate it empirically. How would you investigate it? Well first thing is to look at families where there's already an autistic child, and look at the parent directly. We've already conducted some of those studies, and found that whereas in the general population systemizing is more common among males, in the case of parents of a child with autism, the mother of such a child is also very likely to be a systemizer, with male-typical interests. One example of how we test this is to give them a task where you have to analyze a visual pattern as quickly as you can to find a component part. In the general population males are quicker at this kind of analytic task, but in the case of parents of children with autism, the mothers are just as fast as typical males. The mothers are showing a typical male profile, and that's counter-intuitive since you would expect them to be showing a more typical female profile. That's just one clue that this theory is worth exploring. A second clue is that we've looked at the rates of engineering in both fathers and the grandfathers of children with autism. Engineering is an occupation where you have to be a good systemizer, for example, understanding mechanical systems. We found that fathers of children with autism are over-represented in the field of engineering. And what was interesting was that we found exactly that same pattern in the grandparents too. You start with the child with autism; he or she is the end result of this experiment of nature. And you work backwards to see if there were there clues in the previous generation -- or previous two generations. This new theory is called "the assortative mating theory", The clue that both sides of the family are contributing similar genes is that in our study of occupations, grandfathers on the maternal and the paternal sides were both more likely to be working in the field of engineering. So the strong systemizing wasn't coming down just one side of the family. It's called assortative mating because it describes the idea that two individuals might end up in a union because of having similar characteristics. They're selecting each other on the basis of having similar characteristics. The assortative mating theory connects with the field of sex differences -- my other big area of interest . I've been trying to understand the differences between males and females. It was interesting for me to discover that there's been a sleight of hand, mostly in the States, such that the word 'sex' has been replaced by the word 'gender'. This has happened in a very subtle way over the last century, so that in the States, nobody talks about sex differences; they talk about gender differences. Whenever you want to refer to somebody's sex you refer to their gender. I call it a sleight of hand, because actually 'sex' is the older word. Your sex is either male or female, and in biology your sex is defined by whether you have 2 X chromosomes or an X and Y chromosome. There's been a subtle shift into talking about gender, to whitewash the word sex. Why has this happened? Presumably, because your sex is determined by your chromosomes. And in the States the ideology is that we shouldn't be determined by anything; we should be able to be anything we choose. The blank slate. Gender refers to how you think of yourself: as masculine, or feminine, It's much more subjective, and is commonly believed to be culturally constructed. Italian male gender behavior is expressed differently from English male gender behavior. This gives the impression that people's gender behaviour can change as they change culture, even if their biological sex is fixed. Talking about gender is therefore much more optimistic than talking about sex. It's the rags to riches idea -- you can become anything. But I've been very interested to go back to the original notion of sex, as a biological characteristic, and to ask if there are there any essential differences between males and females in the mind. And to understand that if there are psychological differences, what are the biological mechanisms that give rise to these? Are they genes, are they hormones? In our own work, we have been focused very much on fetal testosterone -- the hormone that the fetus is producing in the womb, to see whether that has any effect on later behavior.We had a perfectly good word, which was sex. But it's become almost a profane word in the U.S. I recently wrote a journal article on sex differences in the mind. Everywhere I'd written the word sex, the copy editor changed it to the word gender. A systematic change had been introduced, and I asked that the original word be used. The editors asked me to give them a good reason, because they explained in the States the preferred word is gender. I had to explain, a person's gender is different to their sex. It's a distinction that seems to have got lost. It's hard to know whether it was deliberate, or whether it just happened without anybody noticing. Back to hormones. We've been conducting laboratory studies on the amniotic fluid in the womb -- the fetus is effectively swimming in this amniotic fluid. We analyze how much testosterone, the so-called male hormone, is in the amniotic fluid. It's not actually a male hormone, because both sexes produce it, it's just that males produce a lot more than females. That's because it comes from the testes. Females also produce it in the adrenal glands. And even within the boys, or within the girls, you see individual differences in how much is produced. The question is, does this translate into anything psychological if you follow up those children? We measured the amniotic fluid testosterone, then waited until the baby was born, and then looked at the baby's at 12 months old, 18 months old, two years old. It's a longitudinal prospective study. What we found is that the higher the baby's level of fetal testosterone, the less eye contact the child makes at 12 months old. And also the slower they are to develop language at 18 months old. To me these are really fascinating results, because we're looking at something biological, in this case a hormone which presumably is influencing brain development to produce these quite marked differences in behavior. We always knew that girls talked earlier than boys -- that there is sex difference in language development -- and we also knew that there's huge variability at 18 months: some kids have no words at all, and other kids have huge vocabularies, about 600 words. No one's really been able to explain this variability. Why should one kid be almost mute and another kid be very verbal? People have identified some factors, such as that first-born children talk earlier than later-born children. Obviously there are environmental factors that are relevant. Presumably that's because first-born children get much more attention from their parents. But over and above your birth order, it looks like hormones also explain some of the variability. We've now followed up these kids into school, they're four years old, and we're still finding that the prenatal hormone production levels are influencing behavior in middle childhood. This is just one example of why we shouldn't ignore biology in explaining differences in how the mind works. I don't argue it's all biology. But for a long time social behavior and language development were seen as purely environmental or learned experience. These hormone studies suggest hormones are also part of the explanation. We also know from medical conditions that if, for example, for genetic reasons you have an overproduction of testosterone, this condition can change your behavior. So if you look at girls with a condition called Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), where they are producing too much testosterone for genetic reasons, they look like tomboys. Their interests are very male-typical interests; they like playing with little toy cars, they like building tree houses, and they perform very quickly on spatial tests, unlike typical girls. The evidence for my assertions comes from experiments. And in all of these areas I'm not interested in beliefs without evidence. One experiment we conducted here in Cambridge was at the local maternity hospital. Essentially we wanted to find out whether sex differences that you observe later in life could be traced back to birth, to see if such differences are present at birth. In this experiment we looked at just over one hundred newborn babies, 24 hours old, which was the youngest we could see them, and we presented each baby with a human face to look at, and then a mechanical mobile suspended above the crib. Each baby got to see both objects. Obviously these objects are different in interesting ways, because the human face is alive, and it can express emotion, it's a natural object. The mechanical mobile is man-made, it's not alive, and obviously it doesn't have emotions. We tried to make the two objects equivalent in some important ways. One is that they were both the same size; another was that they were a similar colour, in order to try and control features that might be grabbing the child's attention. But effectively what we did was film how long each baby looked at each of these two objects. We asked the mothers not to tell us the sex of their babies, so that we could remain blind to whether this was a boy or a girl. And for the most part that was possible. Sometimes it was possible to guess that this was a boy or a girl, because there would be cards around the bed saying, "Congratulations, it's a boy." That potentially could have undermined the experiment, although we then gave the videotapes to a panel of judges to simply measure how long the baby looked at the face or the mobile. By the time the judges were looking at these videotapes they didn't have any of these potential clues to the sex of the baby, because all you could see was the eyes of the baby. The results of the experiment were that we found more boys than girls looked longer at the mechanical mobile. And more girls than boys looked longer at the human face. Given that it was a sex difference that emerged at birth, it means that you can't attribute the difference to experience or culture. Twenty-four hours old. Now you might say, well, they're not exactly new-born, it would have been better to get them at 24 minutes old -- or even younger. But obviously we had to respect the wishes of the parents and the doctors to let the baby relax after the trauma of being born. And let the parents get to know their baby. So strictly speaking, it might have been one day of social experience. But nonetheless, this difference is emerging so early that suggests it's at least partly biological. The results were published in 2001 in a scientific journal and the experiment hasn't yet been replicated, and obviously in science what is needed is independent replication. I'll be interested in other labs to attempt to do this. As far as I know there hasn't been any attempt. This may be because it's quite hard work. To test a hundred babies, you have to hang around hospitals waiting for babies to be born. That sounds pretty straight-forward, because babies are being born every day. In a city like Cambridge there are about five new babies born a day. For some reason babies tend to be born in the middle of the night, about two or three o'clock in the morning. You have to have a very dedicated research team who are willing to wait. In Cambridge, mothers only stay in hospital for one day. Maybe one night. Then they are sent home, in order to vacate the bed for another expectant mother. In terms of your window of opportunity for testing babies, you therefore have to be there at the right time. We had two very hard-working master's students who approached mothers to ask for parental consent -- maybe that was easier in a city like Cambridge, because parents know that in a university town, research is going on. The test is not invasive -- the baby just has to lie on their back and look up. They were presented with each object for only one minute, because babies tend to get very restless very quickly. It's a difficult experiment to conduct, because babies spend most of their time sleeping, or feeding, or crying. You have to wait until they're not doing any of those three things. When they're awake and calm, you have a couple of minutes to present the stimuli. The camera is well-hidden off to one side. Babies can't see very far -- the depth of vision of a newborn baby is only between 15 and 20 centimeters. So it is unlikely that the presence of the camera itself affected how the baby responded. I was expecting the experiment to be received more controversially, because as far as I know it is one of the first demonstrations of a sex difference in the mind at birth. In fact it was published without any fuss. It may be simply that the climate has now changed, and that people are much willing to accept that there are sex differences in the mind, and that these might even be partly biological. If that's true, then this is good news for scientists who are interested in how the mind works. My thesis with regard to sex differences is quite moderate, in that I do not discount environmental factors; I'm just saying, don't forget about biology. To me that sounds very moderate. But for some people in the field of gender studies, even that is too extreme. They want it to be all environment and no biology. You can understand that politically that was an important position in the 1960s, in an effort to try to change society. But is it a true description, scientifically, of what goes on? It's time to distinguish politics and science, and just look at the evidence. _________________________________________________________________ The responses: _________________________________________________________________ [20]MARC D. HAUSER Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, Wild Minds. It is hard to imagine anyone living today disagreeing with Baron-Cohen's starting premise that there are biological differences between the sexes. Even the staunchest cultural relativists have to acknowledge that there are differences in the sex chromosomes and hormonal titers that lead directly to differences in our anatomy. Recent work on imprinted genes a class that fails to follow the classic Mendelian patterns of inheritance shows that maternal contributions are often in complete conflict with paternal contributions. For example, with some imprinted genes, the maternal copy is quiet and the paternal copy is expressed, causing the fetus to extract more from its mother than she would like; these genes often cause pregnancy complications such as gestational diabetes. Studies of the brain using neuroimaging reveal sex differences in structure and function, and work with patient populations reveal differences in vulnerability to mental disorder. And closer to home, there are massive sex differences in the incidence of autism, with studies reporting an 8:1 bias in favor of males. Where the debate gets interesting is when one attempts to explain how tightly the biology constrains our thoughts, preferences and actions. Baron-Cohen's assortative mating hypothesis is an attempt to grapple with this issue. Much of the evidence hinges on the early appearance of sex-specific signatures of mental function. Early signatures are a tell-tale sign of an innate capacity peaking through, but they are not definitive. One needs to rule out that the experience obtained is insufficient for a learning mechanism to create the capacity. And here is where Baron-Cohen's observation that newborn boys like to look at mobiles and little girls at faces is fantastic, and just the right kind of start into a serious research program on the biology of sex differences; these results fit nicely with other data showing that for spontaneously generated paintings by young children, little girls almost always draw one or more people into the scene, whereas little boys rarely do, using their canvas as a vehicle for vehicles, from rocket ships to more mundane cars and bicycles. But now comes the hard work. What is it about the male genome that sets up a preference for the mechanical or physical whereas the girl genome leans toward faces and the social? How quickly, and with what kind of experience, can these initial biases be exaggerated? Why did these differences evolve? In the language of Darwin, what selected for this kind of preference? Was it our division of labor, with males focused on hunting and therefore technology, while females focused on gathering and the schmoozing that goes on during this kind of activity? One clue that these are evolved sex differences comes from recent work looking at the incidence of innovation among primates. Across all the primates, including our closest relatives the chimpanzees, males are far more likely than females to take the lead in innovation, and much of the creativity lands in the domain of tool technology. In contrast, for most primate societies, females are for more engaged in the intricacies of social life than are males, largely because females tend to stay in their natal groups for life whereas males emigrate out. If there is a bias toward male folk physics and female folk psychology, there may be traces way back to our primate ancestors. How are data like Baron-Cohen's reconciled with the fact that for imprinted genes, maternally active copies appear to be largely expressed in the rational frontal lobes whereas the paternally active copies appear to be largely expressed in the emotional limbic lobes? Are there in utero battles that arise over the concentration of testosterone circulating during development, with paternally active genes pushing hard for increased testosterone to push growth and toughness? Are maternal copies pushing in a different direction, attempting to regulate the physiology in such a way that their offspring are social specialists? What makes work like this so very difficult, especially in terms of selling it to the public, is that more often than we would like to admit, reported sex differences either crumble in the face of follow up work, or for those differences that have been reported and replicated, claims regarding biological underpinnings have fallen prey to more experientially-based accounts. One only need think back to gay genes and gay brains, and the sad fate of those results. Thus, although I am sympathetic to Baron-Cohen's research project and find it odd that anyone would consider this work controversial, there is an obligation to get the story right here that far exceeds the demands in other areas. _________________________________________________________________ [21]STEVEN PINKER Psychologist, Harvard University; Author, The Blank Slate. I find Simon Baron-Cohen's work admirable in several ways. The systematizer-empathizer dimension is an interesting new way to capture some of the variation between male-typical and female-typical cognitive styles. It cuts across motivation and aptitude (which are often difficult to distinguish) and might subsume some of the long-noted sex differences that have been stated in cruder form, such as orientation to objects versus people. I also am intrigued by the studies of the effects of fetal testosterone, a valuable new way to learn about which psychological sex differences might be consequences of the biological programs that build our brains. Baron-Cohen wonders why sex is so often referred to these days as "gender." Part of it is a new prissiness -- many people today are as squeamish about sexual dimorphism as the Victorians were about sex. But part of it is a limitation of the English language. The word "sex" refers ambiguously to copulation and to sexual dimorphism, and it's often important not to confuse them! The linguistic term "gender" literally means "kind," as in the cognates "genus," "generic," and "genre." Languages often subdivide their nouns into kinds for purposes of inflection, such as human/nonhuman, animate/inanimate, long/flat/round, vowel-final/consonant-final, and male/female. Many Indo-European languages have a gender distinction in their nouns that aligns with a masculine/feminine distinction in their pronouns, and so "gender" was pressed into service as a way to refer to the difference between men and women. Some academics want "gender" to refer specifically to socially defined rather than biologically determined patterns of sex-typical behavior, but this guideline, like most top-down prescriptions about lexical semantics, is rarely obeyed. The basic problem is that we have three concepts to convey -- intercourse, dimorphism, and social roles -- and at best two words with which to convey them. I was amused to read that "It may be simply that the climate has now changed, and that people are much willing to accept that there are sex differences in the mind, and that these might even be partly biological." Was this interview conducted before the event that is coming to be known as "1/14"? [ED. NOTE: The interview took place at Trinity College on 3/12.] _________________________________________________________________ [22]ARMAND LEROI Biologist, Imperial College; Author, Mutants. I take the premise of Simon Baron-Cohen's project -- that there are innate sexual differences in behaviour and aptitudes -- for granted. As Olivia Judson recently pointed out in a New York Times piece about "1/14", it "s hard for a zoologist to suppose otherwise. I am not, however, wholly convinced by his argument that autistic children -- nearly always boys -- are, in effect, hypermales. Baron-Cohen has shown that, relative to girls, boys are good at systematising and poor at empathising, and that autistic boys are exceptionally so. This fascinating result then raises a question, namely, why should these two, seemingly unrelated, attributes should trade-off with each other? Baron-Cohen's answer seems to be: foetal testosterone. Perhaps autistic boys were exposed to unusually high levels of testosterone in the womb, so developing the systematising part of their brains, and repressing the empathising part. It's an exaggeration of a normal process. This strikes me as perfectly plausible, but it also entails a number of peculiar, if testable, consequences. Testosterone is a hormone and, as such, affects the entire brain and body of the foetus. This means that one should expect autistic boys to be hypermales not just with respect to systematising and empathising -- but in all possible ways. Are autistic boys, then, exceptionally aggressive at play? When they grow up, are they invariably heterosexual? Do they look exceptionally masculine -- that is, are they morphometrically hypermale? And what of those rare autistic girls? If they, too, are hypermale due to heavy doses of foetal testosterone, should this not be reflected in their behaviours, their sexual orientations, their bodies? The motivation for these questions is that we do know something about the consequences of high foetal testosterone -- witness the Spotted hyena. In all mammals, the placenta produces a lot of testosterone. This testosterone is, however, broken down into oestrogen by an enzyme called Aromatase. Spotted hyenas foetuses have naturally low levels of Aromatase, and so are exposed to extraordinarily high levels of placental testosterone. The result of this is that females are born with large penis-like clitorises that they can jaunt erect in dominance displays, fused vaginas and very nasty tempers. Now, clearly we can't ask Spotted hyenas to systematise and empathise. But we can ask their human equivalents. Loss-of-function Aromatase mutations are occasionally found in humans. Like the hyenas, girls homozygous for such mutations are born with masculinised genitalia. Nothing, I think, is known about their temperaments or talents. Are they autistic? Better yet, are their brothers homozygous for the same mutations, autistic as well? If Baron-Cohen is right, they should be. Of course, even if the hypermale theory of autism is wrong, Baron-Cohen's proposed mechanism of assortative mating among systematisers could still be right. But let us hope not. Surveying my colleagues it seems to me that the reproductive success of gifted female scientists is poor enough as it is. _________________________________________________________________ [23]CAROLE HOOVEN Lecturer in Anthropology, Harvard University. Simon Baron-Cohen's Assortative Mating Theory of Autism is ambitious, and demonstrates the usefulness of innovative, "big picture" thinking in getting a handle on seemingly intractable problems. The ideas seem to fit together nicely to present a clear picture of the etiology of autism. The flip-side of big-picture thinking, however, is that the authenticity of the full picture relies on the validity of each sub-theory; and in this case, the big-picture is painted with a series of appealing, yet tentative strokes. Baron-Cohen acknowledges that the underlying theories need to be tested, and he presents five sub-theories, in the form of testable hypotheses, which focus primarily on the relationship between genetics and systemizing. His main idea is as follows: people process the world using a cognitive style that falls somewhere along the spectrum of systemizing (more masculine) to empathizing (more feminine). In systemizing, information is processed with attention to rules and laws, and in empathizing, processing is biased toward social cues. As autism can be characterized by the combination of two extremes -- a lack of attention to social cues and a focus on laws and rules -- then it follows that, should there be genes for systematizing, two systemizers have a higher chance of producing an autistic child. It further follows that, should systemizing be a predominantly masculine trait, the agent that masculinizes the brain, prenatal testosterone, may be also play a central role in both systemizing and autism. A wealth of evidence, including Baron-Cohen's own research, links the effects of early testosterone to later masculine behavior in humans and non-human animals. Some of the most robust research has examined the effects of Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), in which too much testosterone is produced by the adrenal gland prenatally. Females with this condition (whose hormonal levels are normalized at birth) are somewhat masculinized--e.g., they engage in relatively high levels of rough and tumble play and perform in the male-typical range on spatial tests (higher than normal females). If early testosterone increases systematic processing and masculine behavior, then it follows that CAH boys should also show increased performance on tests of spatial ability; but among males, the relationship between perinatal testosterone and later spatial performance is equivocal at best. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that excess testosterone in utero actually hampers male spatial ability. A big-picture, evolutionary analysis of the Assortative Mating theory reveals somewhat of a paradox between conventional notions of masculinity, and the newer notions of "cognitive masculinity." Testosterone can be thought of as promoting behaviors that are traditionally masculine, preparing males physically and psychologically to bias energetic investment toward mating effort. In adult males, high testosterone levels are associated with status-seeking behaviors and the pursuit of mating opportunities. In men, confidence and social dominance (which would require a relatively high social facility) are predicted by high testosterone. The case of the classic nerdy scientist conjures up images of the stereotype of the low testosterone, but in the current context "cognitively masculine," man -- a scrawny male who, although he may be successful in the world of technology, is a miserable failure socially and romantically. The paradox of the two notions of masculinity raises questions about the role of testosterone in shaping psychological traits, such as status-seeking behavior and spatial ability, in utero and in adulthood. With my colleagues Chris Chabris, Peter Ellison and Steve Kosslyn, I've investigated the role of testosterone in solving spatial problems. We have found that although high testosterone males outperformed low-testosterone males on mental rotation tests, the high performers gained their advantage not because they were better at internally transforming objects, but, as the evidence suggested, because they were more confident in their decisions about the similarity of objects. Perhaps the paradox can be at least partially resolved by furthering our understanding of testosterone's role in affecting performance on cognitive tests. These findings on individual differences in mental rotation performance, along with a relative lack of robust findings on the effects of perinatal testosterone, remind us that picture of how testosterone affects cognition is still far from complete. While evidence strongly suggests that early and late sex differences in testosterone levels play a central role in shaping traits that are clearly related to mating effort, such as dominance, sexual, and competitive behaviors, we should not take for granted that testosterone affects cognitive ability directly. More research should examine the extent to which the relationship between testosterone and cognitive performance is actually modulated by a third variable, having to do with dispositional factors such as confidence and competitiveness, that are more closely associated with mating effort. _________________________________________________________________ [24]ELIZABETH SPELKE Psychologist, Harvard University. We humans seem to have an abiding need to reduce the richness, variety, and complexity of our mental lives to categories. In past times, we divided ourselves into the introverts and the extroverts, the field-dependent and the field-independent, the visualizers and the verbalizers. With the advent of neuroscience came the chance to divide our brains into categories as well. That supremely intricate and elusive organ became the left brain and the right brain, the grey matter and the white matter, the male brain and the female brain. Simon Baron-Cohen builds on the last distinction and offers us a new pair of categories by which to sort ourselves: we are systematizers or empathizers. The categories of the past have a quaint look about them, because none of them has proved very satisfying. Binary categories don't buy us much, because humans are both more and less variable than they suggest. Two categories are far too few to pigeonhole a species whose members can grow from newborn infants to seal-hunters, cathedral builders, or capoeira dancers. Yet two categories are also one too many. In the right circumstances, all of us become introverted or extroverted, swayed by others or steadfast to our principles, visually imaginative or verbose. Global categories tend to obscure the commonalities in human experience and the common capacities, hopes, and failings that define us as a species. Is there a male brain, and is systematizing its job description? Baron-Cohen asks us to distinguish politics from science and consider the evidence. The evidence for an inborn, male predisposition for systematizing comes from a single experiment on newborn infants, tested with a single person and object. The person was the report's first author, who surely knew the experimental hypotheses and who, we now learn, may have known the sex of the infants whose attention she elicited. The experiment provides no evidence that the basis of infants' preference, if real, had anything to do with the categorical distinction between the displays. Would infants show the same preferences for other face/object pairs? Would they maintain this preference if low-level properties of the two displays, such as their speed of motion, were equated? One need not object to Baron-Cohen's politics to be less than persuaded by his data. More important, Baron-Cohen fails to consider the extensive evidence that has accumulated, over the last thirty years, on infants' developing understanding of object mechanics. Hundreds of well-controlled experiments reveal no male advantage for perceiving objects or learning about mechanical systems. In most studies, male and female infants are found to discover the same things at the same times. Both males and females come to see the complete shapes of partly hidden objects under the same conditions and at the same ages. They figure out how objects support one another, through the same series of steps. They reach for objects by extrapolating their motions, with equal accuracy. They make the same errors when they search for hidden objects, and they get over those errors at the same time. Sometimes female infants have an edge: In experiments by Laura Kotovsky and Renee Baillargeon, for example, females start to learn about the relation between force and acceleration (the harder a stationary object is hit, the further it goes) a month earlier than males do. Males catch up, however: by 6 1/2 months, you can't tell them apart. Whatever the newborn infants in Baron-Cohen's experiment were doing, the male and female participants in three decades of infant research have followed a common path, engaging with objects and people. Infants don't choose whether to systematize or empathize; they do both, and so do we all. Baron-Cohen's categories may seem as quaint as left and right brains by the time his newborn subjects are old enough to read about them. References 13. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/brockman.html 14. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/baroncohen.html 20. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/hauser.html 21. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/pinker.html 22. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/leroi.html 23. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/hooven.html 24. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/spelke.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:37:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:37:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Dangers of Thinking Message-ID: The Dangers of Thinking This was written by a person who just finished his PHD dissertation in the U.S.... It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then...just to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and working don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?" Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's. I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..." "I know you've been thinking," She snapped "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," She added, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I drove off, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with NPR on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors ... they didn't open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" Most of you no doubt recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is how I became what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video. Last week, it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed ... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. Soon, I'll be able to vote for the Republicans. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:38:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:38:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Christian Church Bulletin Bloopers Message-ID: The Fasting and Prayer Conference includes meals. The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water." The sermon to night: "Searching for Jesus." Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King. Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands. The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been canceled due to a conflict. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community. Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say "Hell" to someone who doesn't care much about you. Don't let worry kill you off - let the Church help. Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again," giving obvious pleasure to the congregation. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs. Next Thursday there will be tryouts for the choir. They need all the help they can get. Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons. The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing: "Break Forth Into Joy." Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice. Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones. Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children. Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered. The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment and gracious hostility. Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow. The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon. This evening at 7 PM there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin. Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning at 10 AM. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done. The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday. Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door. The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy. The Associate Minister unveiled the church's new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: "I Upped My Pledge - Up Yours Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:39:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:39:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: My Favorite Building Message-ID: My Favorite Building The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.25 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i29/29b02001.htm [Yes, the Rotunda is there. In fact, the Lawn as a whole. It's at the end.] Some of the most distinctive and influential features of any college are its buildings. In fact, many people carry with them lasting images of a specific campus building, one that resonates with personal meaning. We asked people in a variety of fields to name their favorite building on any campus. Witold Rybczynski, a professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania: My favorite campus building is Moyse Hall, at McGill University, in Montreal. It was built between 1839 and 1843 by the architect John Ostell, although it has been much added onto and expanded over the years. I like it partly because it is the center, quite literally, of the campus where I spent six formative years as a student, and many more years as a teacher. It's an old friend. But I also like the architecture. It's a solid-looking Palladian block with a severe Doric porch, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the 18th-century English architect William Kent. The porch is in the center, as it should be, and the axiality is emphasized by an elegant cupola. However, on each side, wings of different design form an asymmetrical composition, reminding us that this disciplined building has adapted to changing circumstances. I love its seriousness. The rational, terse, vocabulary of British Classicism has always seemed to me more suited to an institution of higher learning than the medieval, fantastic imagery of Collegiate Gothic. Eduardo J. Padr?n, president of Miami Dade College: The Wolfson campus of Miami Dade College, located in downtown Miami, has served as the focal point for a civic and cultural renaissance at the city's center. The campus began in a storefront location in 1970, but its success soon demanded a permanent facility. I hold a special affection for the original building at the Wolfson campus, designed by Hilario Candela, an architect from the firm of Spillis Candela. It remains one of the most welcoming and energetic environments in all of downtown Miami. Each day students stream into an open-air, six-story atrium that serves as the great lobby of the campus. And if you gaze up, you find outdoor walkways on each floor spiraling up to the skylit ceiling. People can see each other across the balconies and from the escalator that winds its way to the top floor. The building invites the air and sun of Miami, but, most important, it invites countless connections and conversations. Building One, from Day 1, has kept us all in touch. Dick Enberg, a CBS sportscaster and former assistant professor of health education at California State University at Northridge: Central Michigan University's dominant building for more than 70 years has been Warriner Hall, designed by the Detroit architectural firm of Malcolmson and Higginbotham. Constructed in 1928, it is a Gothic, three-story, brick, ivy-covered structure named after a former president of the university. While the campus has grown around this architectural centerpiece, it remains the institution's signature structure. When I was a student in the 1950s, Warriner Hall represented the primary home of my daily education, providing the library, classrooms, auditorium, administration offices, and university mailroom. It was from the second-story parapet in early June of my senior year that Charles Anspach, the president at the time, spoke personally to my class in an inspiring pregraduation address that "dared us to be great." For me, Warriner Hall's strength of structure symbolizes the power and richness of my education, allowing full opportunity for a nobody to become a somebody. Whitney Gould, urban-landscape writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: It was the building we loved to hate -- a redbrick colossus, its turrets and battlements evoking a Norman castle. As a student in the 1960s, when I ventured into the Old Red Gym at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, it was mostly to wait in endless lines to register for classes that were usually full by the time I could sign up. The wood floors creaked and sagged; the dark interior, with its closed-off rooms and painted-over windows, reeked of obsolescence. Today this Romanesque Revival fortress, built in 1894 as a combination gymnasium and armory, is enjoying a phoenixlike rebirth. Having survived several brushes with the wrecking ball, decades of neglect, and even a 1970 firebombing, it was transformed in 1998 into the campus visitor center and home to a dizzying array of student services. The exterior, once so forbidding, is now a symbol of continuity. The interior has been cleaned and polished to a fare-thee-well, showing off its beautiful bowstring trusses and wide-open spaces. I love this building. I love it for all the history it has seen: artillery drills and basketball; speeches by the likes of William Jennings Bryan, Eugene V. Debs, and Upton Sinclair; the shuffling feet of God knows how many students. I love it for its ungainliness and quirkiness. I love it for reminding us that if you can hold the bulldozers at bay long enough, one generation's eyesore may become another's treasure, fusing past with present, warts and all. Nathan Glazer, a professor emeritus of education and sociology at Harvard University: It is not simply an act of undergraduate patriotism that leads me to select Shepard Hall, the 1906 main building of the City College of New York, designed by George Browne Post in English Collegiate Gothic style as part of a four-block campus in upper Manhattan. What sets Shepard Hall apart is not the richness of its exterior design -- although the exterior is certainly impressive, with its black Manhattan schist, trimmed with white terra-cotta decoration -- but how well it is suited both to its unique site and to the function for which it was designed, to serve as the central building of a small college. City College, which I attended in the 1940s, is located on Hamilton Heights overlooking the Hudson River. Shepard Hall is designed in the shape of a crossbow or an anchor, with the bowed portion crowning the heights and matching its arc, while the arrow or stem of the anchor faces into the rest of the campus. Its floor plan is that of the "e" in the euro (C), and I can think of no other building with that plan. The bow contains the classrooms; at its corners are larger pavilions that contain larger lecture rooms. The second floor of the arrow is a wide corridor holding the administrative offices, with grander ones for the president where the arrow meets the bow. Above that is the Great Hall, an astonishing space for ceremonies. At the end of the arrow is a double-storied semicircular library, a wonderful space in my day into which to disappear among books. It is still a library, now for music. The building, almost 100 years old, has been infinitely adaptable. It is to the credit of the practical architectural intelligence of Post that, whatever the external dress -- he was perfectly willing to design it in Beaux-Arts Renaissance style, if that was what the client wanted -- he had an excellent sense of what kind of spaces a small college needed, and how they should be deployed. Shepard Hall, built at a time when each major building had to appear in an architecturally correct historicist exterior, has proved far more adaptable than the college's large postwar buildings that have been built under the Modernist mandate for flexibility and efficient accommodation of function. E. Gordon Gee, chancellor of Vanderbilt University: In my 25 years as a university president at five different institutions -- Brown University, Ohio State University, the University of Colorado, West Virginia University, and now Vanderbilt -- I have been responsible for either building, renovating, or maintaining just about every architectural style under the sun. I have seen spectacularly successful buildings that literally changed the look and personality of a campus. And I have seen equally spectacular disappointments that raise the question, "What were we thinking?" Perhaps more than any other institution, universities create a continuum from past to future. That is why my favorite building is Management Hall, home to Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management. Designed by Gyo Obata, Management Hall actually consists of two separate buildings connected by a three-story stairwell filled with natural light. The original building, constructed in 1888, housed Vanderbilt's engineering program -- the first at a private university in the South. The 1982 addition, a brick and glass structure, and its accompanying courtyard, offered the school of management a residence that is striking for both its modern appearance and its Victorian-era architectural flourishes. In addition to the actual building, its location near the geographic center of the campus makes it a favorite of mine. Within 100 feet of Management Hall stand the Law School, the Divinity School, and the College of Arts and Science, and then that area is ringed by magnolia trees -- some planted nearly a century ago. On any given day, hundreds of faculty members, administrators, and students from every discipline pass through this area, making it the perfect spot in which a chancellor can be reminded of everyone he serves. Janet L. Holmgren, president of Mills College: Mills Hall, designed by S.C. Bugbee and Sons and now a historic landmark, is the centerpiece of Mills College's 135-acre urban campus in Oakland, Calif. When the building was constructed in 1871 -- 19 years after Mills was founded -- it was the entire college. By the time I became president in 1991, Mills Hall remained beloved by alumnae and students but was in need of major restoration following the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Thanks to $10-million in Federal Emergency Management Agency support and contributions from Mills supporters, including a major gift from the great-great-granddaughter of the original donor, the Victorian-era masterpiece, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, was completely renovated in 1994 and is now a showcase with approximately 45,000 square feet and more than 120 rooms for offices, classrooms, lounges, and guest quarters. Like another favorite building of mine, Nassau Hall at Princeton University, where I served as provost before coming to Mills, Mills Hall echoes with the voices of the past and stands as a monument to the permanence and vitality of American higher education. These buildings are more than bricks and mortar; they are living history and represent both the security of generations past and a solid foundation for the future. Andrew Holleran, a novelist and short-story writer, and a writer in residence at American University: Northeastern Florida is not noted for its architecture. This is why St. Augustine is such a joy. It still looks like a subtropical version of a little English town in Sussex, with steeples and a fort and narrow old streets lined with small shops, and the old Hotel Ponce de Leon designed by John Carrere and Thomas Hastings -- now Ponce de Leon Hall, the main building of Flagler College. I take my visitors to Flagler to show them a remnant of fin de si?cle America, when north, not south, Florida was the national resort. (The railroad only went as far as St. Augustine.) Step inside the hall, and you enter the world of Edith Wharton and Henry James: a time when women used parasols, not sunblock, to shield them from the sun, and carriages took people on drives, since the beach was and still is far away. The foyer's polished wooden caryatids; the mosaics, tiles, and ceramic frogs; the plashing fountain; the domed dining room bespeak a time when men made things by hand. It's torture that most of the building is off limits to you (because you're not enrolled) and that the dining hall, with its Tiffany windows and sublime ceiling, is the preserve of students -- and not, say, your bedroom (ultimate fantasy). But let us be grateful for what is: Had Flagler College not taken over this hotel, it would probably be McMansions and strip malls. Instead, the pleasure dome that Rockefeller's partner, Henry M. Flagler, decreed, like Kubla Khan, in 1887, remains -- even if it has ended up more like Ozymandias surrounded (once you leave St. Augustine) by the desert of our car culture. That's one reason Ponce de Leon Hall is my favorite university building: It repudiates all the schlock we've built since. Michael J. Lewis, a professor of art history at Williams College: There are so many counterfeits of Pembroke, the superb and stately dormitory that defines the Bryn Mawr College campus, that it is not easy to see with fresh eyes. But one should try. It is the best of its kind: those turreted whimsies that make up the Collegiate Gothic movement. Its countless replicas always have an air of amiable preposterousness about them -- crenelated and castellated against the pillagers who never come -- but Pembroke is flawless. Like a great piece of music, it has an ineffable fitness and rightness to its parts that defies all analysis. Pembroke is the work of Walter Cope and John Stewardson, America's finest college architects, who drew its plans in 1892. They later reprised its theme at the University of Pennsylvania, at Princeton, and at Washington University in St. Louis -- but never so successfully or so simply. Perhaps the reason is light. The typical college dormitory is a barrack, camouflaged with a few sprigs of ivy: bedrooms and bathrooms wrapped around a stingy and badly lighted corridor. But Pembroke is as bright as a greenhouse. The wings that seem from the outside to meander aimlessly are in fact purposefully broken, and turn at right angles so that each run of corridor terminates in a bay window and a generous view. These wings stiffen and become more formal as they converge at the centerpiece of the building: a massive arched gateway that serves as the base for the lofty dining hall above, its corners marked by four octagonal towers. In the evening, the high mullioned windows of this dining hall catch the sunset, and for half an hour it is a shimmering cage of stone and light. Alas, the building has suffered at the hands of its unkind renovators, but Pembroke is exquisite even with its scars. And like every great building, it has a mystery at its heart: How is it that a style that emerged in the monastery -- marked by introverted quadrangles and sheltered cloisters -- should serve so aptly and so splendidly as an image for the modern woman of the progressive era? Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami: All great universities have at their heart great libraries, and the Otto G. Richter Library, designed by Watson, Deutschman & Kruse, is no exception. Our library is predominantly a glass structure, allowing for year-round Florida sunlight, and overlooks the campus green. A recent renovation added an illuminated glass clock tower and a pavilion that houses the university's Cuban Heritage Collection reading room. The library is always crowded -- days, nights, and weekends. A new Starbucks in the library provides an outdoor reading room and helps fuel late-night hours. When students are cramming just before finals, our library remains open 24/7, and so, too, does our Starbucks. Students call our library "Club Richter." We all know that traditional study methods have changed, and more of our students are studying in groups, so we have created specific areas in the library for discussion purposes. The university is raising money to support a $33-million addition to the Richter Library, creating more study and collection space. Rufus Glasper, chancellor of Maricopa Community Colleges: My favorite buildings at the Maricopa Community Colleges first and most important satisfy the functional and programmatic requirements for the users, and, second, integrate a high level of architectural design. The design for the Life Sciences Building at Mesa Community College, by DWL Architects + Planners Inc., started with the science faculty members analyzing various configurations of the tables needed to serve the many different courses taught in a single lab, including botany, general biology, human anatomy, microbiology, physiology, and zoology. Each course had different presentation and student-grouping requirements. The solution was to provide a custom-shaped, movable table that would enable the instructors and students to quickly reconfigure the lab to meet their needs. The final product was the result of significant input and dedicated teamwork among faculty and staff members, architect Jeremy A. Jones, and consultants from Research Facilities Design of California. The shape of the lab tables then dictated the size of the individual laboratories, which in turn, drove the dimensions for the entire building. Open areas with comfortable groupings of seating and extra-wide corridors encourage informal learning outside of the classrooms. In addition, teaching and learning combine with beauty through the large aquarium in the hallway, where students can study fish and plant life. Outdoors, the xeriscaping, or low-water landscaping, provides a real-life lab in desert plant life. This is just one of the many innovative buildings at our 10 colleges that satisfy the needs of our faculty members, students, and community, while at the same time meeting high aesthetic objectives. Sarah Williams Goldhagen, a lecturer in architectural history at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design: I have a long list of "favorites" -- and those are only on the East Coast campuses I know best. They include Max Abramovitz's Hilles Library at Radcliffe College; Henry Hobson Richardson's Austin Hall at Harvard; Kevin Roche's Fine Arts Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; Paul Rudolph's Jewett Arts Center at Wellesley College; Robert Venturi's Wu Hall at Princeton; and the Fisher Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania, by Frank Heyling Furness. None of these is a perfect building. But each is provocative to look at and wonderful to be in. Each solves complex programmatic and site issues with originality and grace. Most important, each is a teaching building, offering lessons about the many facets that make a successful work of architecture: design that is in tune with current trends but transcends them, that acknowledges a building's social role; that accommodates practical needs with an eye to a changing future. If I had to choose, my current favorite building is the one in which I work: John Andrews's Gund Hal,l the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. A large building of exposed reinforced concrete and large plate-glass windows, stepping down from five stories to one, the school of design would hardly be the favorite of many people. (It even leaks a little in the rain.) But it uses its site at the east edge of the Harvard campus beautifully, opening onto a courtyard in back, while in front faculty and administrative offices look onto America's greatest Ruskinian building, William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt's Memorial Hall. And in my 10 years of teaching in Gund Hall, I am impressed again and again by how the "trays" -- the spaces in which Harvard's students work on their projects, which are hung one atop another under a gigantic stepped skylight -- create a sense of community and common purpose. Here architecture itself promotes the notion that architecture is an art of collaboration and mutual exchange. To me, Gund Hall's urbanity, and its successful shaping of the social life of the institution it houses, is worth circumnavigating a few buckets when it rains. Graham B. Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University: My favorite building is the new Information Sciences and Technology Building on the University Park campus of Penn State. It was designed by the noted architect Rafael Vi?oly, in partnership with Perfido Weiskopf Architects, and dedicated in 2004. This $70-million, 200,000-square-foot signature building is remarkable in that it solved a major logistical problem for the university. It connects our main campus to an evolving east campus by spanning a busy road. In effect, the building is a bridge, conceived much like the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, with a "street" actually running through the building, and with academic attractions running along the street. This architectural wonder is an S-shaped building with three levels, spectacular views, and an attractive mix of red brick, glass, and metal. Its lines create a look that is modern while building on traditional campus architectural features. This building is also a favorite of mine because of the way it evolved from a creative exchange between architect and client. Mr. Vi?oly, colleagues around the table, and I had spirited discussions about the building's concept, its footprint, and its lines. He was masterful at leading us to choose the options that I suspect he had in mind from the beginning, even while being open to his client's concepts. We once debated the color of the brick with vigor until the moment that he determined that it was the mortar's color that was the problem. He sent for a brush, painted a section of mortar on the spot, and voil?, we were all happy. William McDonough, an architect and former dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia: My favorite academic facility is actually a complex of buildings and a landscape: Thomas Jefferson's "Academical Village," the original campus of the University of Virginia. Living in Pavilion IX on the famous "Lawn" for five years, I saw firsthand why Jefferson's buildings and grounds hold such a revered and hallowed place in the history of academic architecture. Two centuries after their design, the much-imitated rotunda, colonnades, pavilions, and lawn still continue to symbolize the essential academic experience Americans have come to know as "college." The entire composition exquisitely represents educational ideals: the Platonic poetics of the academy and the Aristotelian rationality of the lyceum. The great Rotunda, based on the Pantheon of Rome, with its perfect Platonic orb set into a porticoed temple, encases on each of its lower floors two oval, ovarylike rooms: the feminine, the center, the source. The dome, with its oculus, houses the library, where book stacks and reading niches circle the room and illumination enters the world of the reader from above and from the orientation of the reader's choosing. The Aristotelian order is represented by the buildings and colonnades that cascade from the rotunda along the edge of the central lawn. The colonnades' Doric columns, framing a protected passageway for all the student rooms, connect the 10 pavilions, each of which houses classrooms and faculty quarters -- a fully rationalized and realized community of learning. When one looks toward the Rotunda, the pavilions are intimately drawn together; one feels a concentration of space, body, and intellect. Looking from the Rotunda, toward what Jefferson intended to be an open view of the Blue Ridge, the pavilions draw apart as one gazes out to the expansive world of nature beyond. Between his design and the landscape, Jefferson connects the roots of his civilization to the hopes of a new world. His architecture celebrates and embodies enlightenment, the aspiration of education itself. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:41:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:41:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Review of Malise Ruthven, Fundamentalism Message-ID: The Times Literary Supplement, 4.7.9 http://the-tls.co.uk/archive/story.aspx?story_id=2108135&window_type=print Religion Bernice Martin FUNDAMENTALISM. The search for meaning. Malise Ruthven. 246pp. Oxford University Press. ?12.99 (US $21). - 0 19 284091 6. Malise Ruthven's new book offers a popular overview of the debate about fundamentalism as "the major threat to world peace today". The author acknowledges the incoherence of the concept but conjures Wittgenstein's "family resemblances" to justify a disparate ragbag of "examples". He notes the origin of the term in rural and small-town American Protestantism's rejection of biblical criticism and Darwinian science in the 1920s and cites its recent (often politicized) use to label so-called revival movements in Islam and Judaism and, by ever more strained extension, in Buddhism, Hinduism and even the post-1960s new religious movements. Substantive chapters cover the effect of globalism in relativizing world views; the difficulty of reconciling literal readings with the principle of inerrancy in interpreting sacred texts; the fundamentalist desire to control women; and the relations between fundamentalism and nationalism. The author uses a narrow selection of sources and veers uncertainly between texts and social-scientific approaches. Certain hypotheses emerge. Fundamentalism is a doomed attempt to reinstate conditions in which faith is a "given", not undermined by "the scandal of difference". Fundamentalism collapses myth into history through a quasiscientific tendency to factualize and even enact eschatology. Fundamentalism's urge to control women is the rearguard action of a patriarchal order undermined by modernity. Paradoxes also abound. Women frequently welcome and benefit from fundamentalist movements. Equally serious scholars regard fundamentalism and nationalism both as incompatible and inseparable. Fundamentalism rejects modern values but welcomes modern technology. With the partial exception of the gender issue, these paradoxes fail to stir the author to deeper exploration. The real problem is the book's implicit premiss that all fundamentalisms are equally dangerous. Ruthven does not distinguish between movements on any systematic criteria or isolate the factors particularly associated with violence. The key is Ruthven's keenness to put the American religious Right in the dock alongside al-Qaeda and to represent Third World Pentecostalism and the "reactionary" wing of Catholicism as inherently "fascist", despite acknowledging that Christian fundamentalists have no ambition to impose a legal code comparable to sharia on democratic politics or proselytize by global terror. An author who truly wanted to know what turns faith murderous would have been more critical of his governing concept and methods of inquiry. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:48:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:48:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Larry Summers: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce Message-ID: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html [The 1/14 referred to in the Edge 158 on assortive mating theory I sent a moment ago was evidently this conference where Summers undertook his wicked hypothesizing that caused at least one audience member to leave lest she vomit.] Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce Lawrence H. Summers Cambridge, Mass. January 14, 2005 I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard's policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn't feel like doing the first. And so we have agreed that I am speaking unofficially and not using this as an occasion to lay out the many things we're doing at Harvard to promote the crucial objective of diversity. There are many aspects of the problems you're discussing and it seems to me they're all very important from a national point of view. I'm going to confine myself to addressing one portion of the problem, or of the challenge we're discussing, which is the issue of women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions, not because that's necessarily the most important problem or the most interesting problem, but because it's the only one of these problems that I've made an effort to think in a very serious way about. The other prefatory comment that I would make is that I am going to, until most of the way through, attempt to adopt an entirely positive, rather than normative approach, and just try to think about and offer some hypotheses as to why we observe what we observe without seeing this through the kind of judgmental tendency that inevitably is connected with all our common goals of equality. It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group. To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it's important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation. There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I'll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described. Maybe it would be helpful to just, for a moment, broaden the problem, or the issue, beyond science and engineering. I've had the opportunity to discuss questions like this with chief executive officers at major corporations, the managing partners of large law firms, the directors of prominent teaching hospitals, and with the leaders of other prominent professional service organizations, as well as with colleagues in higher education. In all of those groups, the story is fundamentally the same. Twenty or twenty-five years ago, we started to see very substantial increases in the number of women who were in graduate school in this field. Now the people who went to graduate school when that started are forty, forty-five, fifty years old. If you look at the top cohort in our activity, it is not only nothing like fifty-fifty, it is nothing like what we thought it was when we started having a third of the women, a third of the law school class being female, twenty or twenty-five years ago. And the relatively few women who are in the highest ranking places are disproportionately either unmarried or without children, with the emphasis differing depending on just who you talk to. And that is a reality that is present and that one has exactly the same conversation in almost any high-powered profession. What does one make of that? I think it is hard-and again, I am speaking completely descriptively and non-normatively-to say that there are many professions and many activities, and the most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise to leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours in the office, they expect a flexibility of schedules to respond to contingency, they expect a continuity of effort through the life cycle, and they expect-and this is harder to measure-but they expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place. And it is a fact about our society that that is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make than of married women. That's not a judgment about how it should be, not a judgment about what they should expect. But it seems to me that it is very hard to look at the data and escape the conclusion that that expectation is meeting with the choices that people make and is contributing substantially to the outcomes that we observe. One can put it differently. Of a class, and the work that Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz are doing will, I'm sure, over time, contribute greatly to our understanding of these issues and for all I know may prove my conjectures completely wrong. Another way to put the point is to say, what fraction of young women in their mid-twenties make a decision that they don't want to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week. What fraction of young men make a decision that they're unwilling to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week, and to observe what the difference is. And that has got to be a large part of what is observed. Now that begs entirely the normative questions-which I'll get to a little later-of, is our society right to expect that level of effort from people who hold the most prominent jobs? Is our society right to have familial arrangements in which women are asked to make that choice and asked more to make that choice than men? Is our society right to ask of anybody to have a prominent job at this level of intensity, and I think those are all questions that I want to come back to. But it seems to me that it is impossible to look at this pattern and look at its pervasiveness and not conclude that something of the sort that I am describing has to be of significant importance. To buttress conviction and theory with anecdote, a young woman who worked very closely with me at the Treasury and who has subsequently gone on to work at Google highly successfully, is a 1994 graduate of Harvard Business School. She reports that of her first year section, there were twenty-two women, of whom three are working full time at this point. That may, the dean of the Business School reports to me, that that is not an implausible observation given their experience with their alumnae. So I think in terms of positive understanding, the first very important reality is just what I would call the, who wants to do high-powered intense work? The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I'm focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined. If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they're all over the map, depends on which test, whether it's math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn't be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end. Now, it's pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people's ability to do that. And that's absolutely right. But I don't think that resolves the issue at all. Because if my reading of the data is right-it's something people can argue about-that there are some systematic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well. So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem. There may also be elements, by the way, of differing, there is some, particularly in some attributes, that bear on engineering, there is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization. I just returned from Israel, where we had the opportunity to visit a kibbutz, and to spend some time talking about the history of the kibbutz movement, and it is really very striking to hear how the movement started with an absolute commitment, of a kind one doesn't encounter in other places, that everybody was going to do the same jobs. Sometimes the women were going to fix the tractors, and the men were going to work in the nurseries, sometimes the men were going to fix the tractors and the women were going to work in the nurseries, and just under the pressure of what everyone wanted, in a hundred different kibbutzes, each one of which evolved, it all moved in the same direction. So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize. There are two other hypotheses that are all over. One is socialization. Somehow little girls are all socialized towards nursing and little boys are socialized towards building bridges. No doubt there is some truth in that. I would be hesitant about assigning too much weight to that hypothesis for two reasons. First, most of what we've learned from empirical psychology in the last fifteen years has been that people naturally attribute things to socialization that are in fact not attributable to socialization. We've been astounded by the results of separated twins studies. The confident assertions that autism was a reflection of parental characteristics that were absolutely supported and that people knew from years of observational evidence have now been proven to be wrong. And so, the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it, and it often turns out not to be true. The second empirical problem is that girls are persisting longer and longer. When there were no girls majoring in chemistry, when there were no girls majoring in biology, it was much easier to blame parental socialization. Then, as we are increasingly finding today, the problem is what's happening when people are twenty, or when people are twenty-five, in terms of their patterns, with which they drop out. Again, to the extent it can be addressed, it's a terrific thing to address. The most controversial in a way, question, and the most difficult question to judge, is what is the role of discrimination? To what extent is there overt discrimination? Surely there is some. Much more tellingly, to what extent are there pervasive patterns of passive discrimination and stereotyping in which people like to choose people like themselves, and the people in the previous group are disproportionately white male, and so they choose people who are like themselves, who are disproportionately white male. No one who's been in a university department or who has been involved in personnel processes can deny that this kind of taste does go on, and it is something that happens, and it is something that absolutely, vigorously needs to be combated. On the other hand, I think before regarding it as pervasive, and as the dominant explanation of the patterns we observe, there are two points that should make one hesitate. The first is the fallacy of composition. No doubt it is true that if any one institution makes a major effort to focus on reducing stereotyping, on achieving diversity, on hiring more people, no doubt it can succeed in hiring more. But each person it hires will come from a different institution, and so everyone observes that when an institution works very hard at this, to some extent they are able to produce better results. If I stand up at a football game and everybody else is sitting down, I can see much better, but if everybody stands up, the views may get a little better, but they don't get a lot better. And there's a real question as to how plausible it is to believe that there is anything like half as many people who are qualified to be scientists at top ten schools and who are now not at top ten schools, and that's the argument that one has to make in thinking about this as a national problem rather than an individual institutional problem. The second problem is the one that Gary Becker very powerfully pointed out in addressing racial discrimination many years ago. If it was really the case that everybody was discriminating, there would be very substantial opportunities for a limited number of people who were not prepared to discriminate to assemble remarkable departments of high quality people at relatively limited cost simply by the act of their not discriminating, because of what it would mean for the pool that was available. And there are certainly examples of institutions that have focused on increasing their diversity to their substantial benefit, but if there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind, one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap. And I think one sees relatively little evidence of that. So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them. What's to be done? And what further questions should one know the answers to? Let me take a second, first to just remark on a few questions that it seems to me are ripe for research, and for all I know, some of them have been researched. First, it would be very useful to know, with hard data, what the quality of marginal hires are when major diversity efforts are mounted. When major diversity efforts are mounted, and consciousness is raised, and special efforts are made, and you look five years later at the quality of the people who have been hired during that period, how many are there who have turned out to be much better than the institutional norm who wouldn't have been found without a greater search. And how many of them are plausible compromises that aren't unreasonable, and how many of them are what the right-wing critics of all of this suppose represent clear abandonments of quality standards. I don't know the answer, but I think if people want to move the world on this question, they have to be willing to ask the question in ways that could face any possible answer that came out. Second, and by the way, I think a more systematic effort to look at citation records of male and female scholars in disciplines where citations are relatively well-correlated with academic rank and with people's judgments of quality would be very valuable. Of course, most of the critiques of citations go to reasons why they should not be useful in judging an individual scholar. Most of them are not reasons why they would not be useful in comparing two large groups of scholars and so there is significant potential, it seems to me, for citation analysis in this regard. Second, what about objective versus subjective factors in hiring? I've been exposed, by those who want to see the university hiring practices changed to favor women more and to assure more diversity, to two very different views. One group has urged that we make the processes consistently more clear-cut and objective, based on papers, numbers of papers published, numbers of articles cited, objectivity, measurement of performance, no judgments of potential, no reference to other things, because if it's made more objective, the subjectivity that is associated with discrimination and which invariably works to the disadvantage of minority groups will not be present. I've also been exposed to exactly the opposite view, that those criteria and those objective criteria systematically bias the comparisons away from many attributes that those who contribute to the diversity have: a greater sense of collegiality, a greater sense of institutional responsibility. Somebody ought to be able to figure out the answer to the question of, if you did it more objectively versus less objectively, what would happen. Then you can debate whether you should or whether you shouldn't, if objective or subjective is better. But that question ought to be a question that has an answer, that people can find. Third, the third kind of question is, what do we know about search procedures in universities? Is it the case that more systematic comprehensive search processes lead to minority group members who otherwise would have not been noticed being noticed? Or does fetishizing the search procedure make it very difficult to pursue the targets of opportunity that are often available arising out of particular family situations or particular moments, and does fetishizing and formalizing search procedures further actually work to the disadvantage of minority group members. Again, everybody's got an opinion; I don't think anybody actually has a clue as to what the answer is. Fourth, what do we actually know about the incidence of financial incentives and other support for child care in terms of what happens to people's career patterns. I've been struck at Harvard that there's something unfortunate and ironic about the fact that if you're a faculty member and you have a kid who's 18 who goes to college, we in effect, through an interest-free loan, give you about $9,000. If you have a six-year-old, we give you nothing. And I don't think we're very different from most other universities in this regard, but there is something odd about that strategic choice, if the goal is to recruit people to come to the university. But I don't think we know much about the child care issue. The fifth question-which it seems to me would be useful to study and to actually learn the answer to-is what do we know, or what can we learn, about the costs of career interruptions. There is something we would like to believe. We would like to believe that you can take a year off, or two years off, or three years off, or be half-time for five years, and it affects your productivity during the time, but that it really doesn't have any fundamental effect on the career path. And a whole set of conclusions would follow from that in terms of flexible work arrangements and so forth. And the question is, in what areas of academic life and in what ways is it actually true. Somebody reported to me on a study that they found, I don't remember who had told me about this-maybe it was you, Richard-that there was a very clear correlation between the average length of time, from the time a paper was cited. That is, in fields where the average papers cited had been written nine months ago, women had a much harder time than in fields where the average thing cited had been written ten years ago. And that is suggestive in this regard. On the discouraging side of it, someone remarked once that no economist who had gone to work at the President's Council of Economic Advisors for two years had done highly important academic work after they returned. Now, I'm sure there are counterexamples to that, and I'm sure people are kind of processing that Tobin's Q is the best-known counterexample to that proposition, and there are obviously different kinds of effects that happen from working in Washington for two years. But it would be useful to explore a variety of kinds of natural interruption experiments, to see what actual difference it makes, and to see whether it's actually true, and to see in what ways interruptions can be managed, and in what fields it makes a difference. I think it's an area in which there's conviction but where it doesn't seem to me there's an enormous amount of evidence. What should we all do? I think the case is overwhelming for employers trying to be the [unintelligible] employer who responds to everybody else's discrimination by competing effectively to locate people who others are discriminating against, or to provide different compensation packages that will attract the people who would otherwise have enormous difficulty with child care. I think a lot of discussion of issues around child care, issues around extending tenure clocks, issues around providing family benefits, are enormously important. I think there's a strong case for monitoring and making sure that searches are done very carefully and that there are enough people looking and watching that that pattern of choosing people like yourself is not allowed to take insidious effect. But I think it's something that has to be done with very great care because it slides easily into pressure to achieve given fractions in given years, which runs the enormous risk of people who were hired because they were terrific being made to feel, or even if not made to feel, being seen by others as having been hired for some other reason. And I think that's something we all need to be enormously careful of as we approach these issues, and it's something we need to do, but I think it's something that we need to do with great care. Let me just conclude by saying that I've given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said. But I think we all need to be thinking very hard about how to do better on these issues and that they are too important to sentimentalize rather than to think about in as rigorous and careful ways as we can. That's why I think conferences like this are very, very valuable. Thank you. Questions and Answers Q: Well, I don't want to take up much time because I know other people have questions, so, first of all I'd like to say thank you for your input. It's very interesting-I noticed it's being recorded so I hope that we'll be able to have a copy of it. That would be nice. LHS: We'll see. (LAUGHTER) Q: Secondly, you make a point, which I very much agree with, that this is a wonderful opportunity for other universities to hire women and minorities, and you said you didn't have an example of an instance in which that is being done. The chemistry department at Rutgers is doing that, and they are bragging about it and they are saying, "Any woman who is having problems in her home department, send me your resume." They are now at twenty-five percent women, which is double the national average-among the top fifty universities-so I agree with you on that. I think it is a wonderful opportunity and I hope others follow that example. One thing that I do sort of disagree with is the use of identical twins that have been separated and their environment followed. I think that the environments that a lot of women and minorities experience would not be something that would be-that a twin would be subjected to if the person knows that their environment is being watched. Because a lot of the things that are done to women and minorities are simply illegal, and so they'll never experience that. LHS: I don't think that. I don't actually think that's the point at all. My point was a very different one. My point was simply that the field of behavioral genetics had a revolution in the last fifteen years, and the principal thrust of that revolution was the discovery that a large number of things that people thought were due to socialization weren't, and were in fact due to more intrinsic human nature, and that set of discoveries, it seemed to me, ought to influence the way one thought about other areas where there was a perception of the importance of socialization. I wasn't at all trying to connect those studies to the particular experiences of women and minorities who were thinking about academic careers. Q: Raising that particular issue, as a biologist, I neither believe in all genetic or all environment, that in fact behavior in any other country actually develops [unintelligible] interaction of those aspects. And I agree with you, in fact, that it is wrong-headed to just dismiss the biology. But to put too much weight to it is also incredibly wrong-headed, given the fact that had people actually had different kinds of opportunities, and different opportunities for socialization, there is good evidence to indicate in fact that it would have had different outcomes. I cite by way of research the [unintelligible] project in North Carolina, which essentially shows that, where every indicator with regard to mother's education, socioeconomic status, et cetera, would have left a kid in a particular place educationally, that, essentially, they are seeing totally different outcomes with regard to performance, being referred to special education, et cetera, so I think that there is some evidence on that particular side. The other issue is this whole question about objective versus subjective. I think that it is very difficult to have anything that is basically objective, and the work of [unintelligible] I think point out that in a case where you are actually trying to-this case from the Swedish Medical Council, where they were trying to identify very high-powered research opportunities for, I guess it was post-docs by that point, that indicated that essentially that it ended up with larger numbers of men than women. Two of the women who were basically in the affected group were able to utilize the transparency rules that were in place in Sweden, get access to the data, get access to the issues, and in fact, discovered that it was not as objective as everyone claimed, and that in fact, different standards were actually being used for the women as well as for the men, including the men's presence in sort of a central network, the kinds of journals that they had to publish in to be considered at the same level, so I think that there are pieces of research that begin to actually relate to this-yes, there is the need to look more carefully at a lot of these areas. I would-in addition looking at this whole question of the quality of marginal hires-I would also like to look at the quality of class one hires, in terms of seeing who disappoints, and what it was that they happened to be looking at and making judgments on, and then what the people could not deliver. So I think that there is a real great need on both sides to begin to talk about whether or not we can predict. I hate to use a sports metaphor, but I will. This is drawn basically from an example from Claude Steele, where he says, he starts by using free throws as a way of actually determining, who should-you've got to field a basketball team, and you clearly want the people who make ten out of ten, and you say, "Well, I may not want the people who make zero out of ten," but what about the people who make four out of ten. If you use that as the measure, Shaq will be left on the sidelines. LHS: I understand. I think you're obviously right that there's no absolute objectivity, and you're-there's no question about that. My own instincts actually are that you could go wrong in a number of respects fetishizing objectivity for exactly the reasons that you suggest. There is a very simple and straightforward methodology that was used many years ago in the case of baseball. Somebody wrote a very powerful article about baseball, probably in the seventies, in which they basically said, "Look, it is true that if you look at people's salaries, and you control for their batting averages and their fielding averages and whatnot, whites and blacks are in the same salary once you control. It is also true that there are no black .240 hitters in the major leagues, that the only blacks who are in the major leagues are people who bat over .300-I'm exaggerating-and that is exactly what you'd predict on a model of discrimination, that because there's a natural bias against. And there's an absolute and clear prediction. The prediction is that if there's a discriminated-against group, that if you measure subsequent performance, their subsequent performance will be stronger than that of the non-discriminated-against group. And that's a simple prediction of a theory of discrimination. And it's a testable prediction of a theory of discrimination, and it would be a revolution, and it would be an enormously powerful finding in this field, to demonstrate, and I suspect there are contexts in which that can be demonstrated, but there's a straightforward methodology, it seems to me, for testing exactly that idea. I'm going to run out of time. But, let me take-if people ask very short questions, I will give very short answers. Q: What about the rest of the world. Are we keeping up? Physics, France, very high powered women in science in top positions. Same nature, same hormones, same ambitions we have to assume. Different cultural, given. LHS: Good question. Good question. I don't know much about it. My guess is that you'll find that in most of those places, the pressure to be high powered, to work eighty hours a week, is not the same as it is in the United States. And therefore it is easier to balance on both sides. But I thought about that, and I think that you'll find that's probably at least part of the explanation. Q: [unintelligible] because his book was referred to. LHS: Right. Q: I would like to make an on observation and then make a suggestion. The observation is that of the three. There is a contradiction in your three major observations that is the high-powered intensive need of scientific work-that's the first-and then the ability, and then the socialization, the social process. Would it be possible the first two result from the last one and that math ability could be a result of education, parenting, a lot of things. We only observe what happens, we don't know the reason for why there's a variance. I'll give you another thing, a suggestion. The suggestion is that one way to read your remarks is to say maybe those are not the things we can solve immediately. Especially as leaders of higher education because they are just so wide, so deep, and involves all aspects of society, institution, education, a lot of things, parenting, marriages are institutions, for example. We could have changed the institution of those things a lot of things we cannot change. Rather, it's not nature and nurture, it is really pre-college versus post-college. From your college point of view maybe those are things too late and too little you can do but a lot of things which are determined by sources outside the college you're in. Is that... LHS: I think... Q: That's a different read on your set of remarks. LHS: I think your observation goes much more to my second point about the abilities and the variances than it does to the first point about what married woman.... Q: [unintelligible] LHS: Yeah, look anything could be social, ultimately in all of that. I think that if you look at the literature on behavioral genetics and you look at the impact, the changed view as to what difference parenting makes, the evidence is really quite striking and amazing. I mean, just read Judith Rich Harris's book. It is just very striking that people's-and her book is probably wrong and its probably more than she says it is, and I know there are thirteen critiques and you can argue about it and I am not certainly a leading expert on that-but there is a lot there. And I think what it surely establishes is that human intuition tends to substantially overestimate the role-just like teachers overestimate their impact on their students relative to fellow students on other students-I think we all have a tendency with our intuitions to do it. So, you may be right, but my guess is that there are some very deep forces here that are going to be with us for a long time. Q: You know, in the spirit of speaking truth to power, I'm not an expert in this area but a lot of people in the room are, and they've written a lot of papers in here that address .... LHS: I've read a lot of them. Q: And, you know, a lot of us would disagree with your hypotheses and your premises... LHS: Fair enough. Q: So it's not so clear. LHS: It's not clear at all. I think I said it wasn't clear. I was giving you my best guess but I hope we could argue on the basis of as much evidence as we can marshal. Q: It's here. LHS: No, no, no. Let me say. I have actually read that and I'm not saying there aren't rooms to debate this in, but if somebody, but with the greatest respect-I think there's an enormous amount one can learn from the papers in this conference and from those two books-but if somebody thinks that there is proof in these two books, that these phenomenon are caused by something else, I guess I would very respectfully have to disagree very very strongly with that. I don't presume to have proved any view that I expressed here, but if you think there is proof for an alternative theory, I'd want you to be hesitant about that. Q: Just one quick question in terms of the data. We saw this morning lots of data showing the drop in white males entering science and engineering, and I'm having trouble squaring that with your model of who wants to work eighty hours a week. It's mostly people coming from other countries that have filled that gap in terms of men versus women. LHS: I think there are two different things, frankly, actually, is my guess-I'm not an expert. Somebody reported to me that-someone who is knowledgeable-said that it is surprisingly hard to get Americans rather than immigrants or the children of immigrants to be cardiac surgeons. Cardiac surgeon is about prestigious, certain kind of prestige as you can be, fact is that people want control of their lifestyles, people want flexibility, they don't want to do it, and it's disproportionately immigrants that want to do some of the careers that are most demanding in terms of time and most interfering with your lifestyle. So I think that's exactly right and I think it's precisely the package of number of hours' work what it is, that's leading more Americans to choose to have careers of one kind or another in business that are less demanding of passionate thought all the time and that includes white males as well. Q: That's my point, that social-psychological in nature [unintelligible]. LHS: I would actually much rather stay-yes, and then I'm on my way out. Q: I have no idea how you would evaluate the productivity of the marginal hire if this person is coming into an environment where [unintelligible] is marginal and there's [unintelligible]. LHS: You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I used the term-I realized I had not spoken carefully-I used the term marginal in the economic sense to mean, only additional, to only mean... Q: [unintelligible]. LHS: No, to mean only the additional [unintelligible]. Yeah, obviously [unintelligible] going to identify X is the additional hire, is the marginal hire, the question you can ask is, you know, here is a time when, as a consequence of an effort, there was a very substantial increase in the number of people who were hired in a given group, what was the observed ex post quality? And what was the observed ex post performance? It's hard to believe that that's not a useful thing to try to know. It may well be that one will produce powerful evidence that the people are much better than the people who were there and that the institutions went up in quality and that made things much better. All I'm saying is one needs to ask the question. And as for the groping in the kitchen, and whatnot, look, it's absolutely important that in every university in America there be norms of civility and proper treatment of colleagues that be absolutely established and that that be true universally, and that's a hugely important part of this, and that's why at Harvard we're doing a whole set of things that are making junior faculty positions much more real faculty positions with real mentoring, real feedback, serious searches before the people are hired, and much greater prospects for tenure than there ever have been before because exactly that kind of collegiality is absolutely central to the academic enterprise. Thank you. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 17:51:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 13:51:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Scientists Reveal Map of Human Genetic Variation and Warn That It Does Not Reflect Racial Differences Message-ID: Scientists Reveal Map of Human Genetic Variation and Warn That It Does Not Reflect Racial Differences News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.2.18 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/02/2005021805n.htm [We should watch for cutbacks in these warnings.] [45]By LILA GUTERMAN Washington Scientists from a company in California revealed on Thursday a map of genetic variation across populations. Hailed as possibly a significant step toward an era of personalized medicine, the map also raised concerns that it would be publicly misunderstood as proving a genetic basis for race. The scientists, from the genetics company Perlegen Sciences, announced their findings at the annual meeting here of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Their results will also be published in today's issue of the journal Science. The map's importance derives from the fact that many diseases and medicines affect people differently, at least in part because of variation in genes. But single genetic differences often do not explain the differences in responses to diseases or drugs. David R. Cox, Perlegen's chief scientific officer, said on Thursday that looking simultaneously at multiple genetic differences among people could produce a sort of "bar code" to predict the susceptibility of a given person to cancer, for instance, or whether a drug would lower an individual's blood pressure. He and his colleagues looked at 1.6 million sites in the human genome where differences in DNA are common among people. At those sites, people have one of two chemical letters. The scientists analyzed which letter occurred at each of the 1.6 million sites in the DNA of 71 Americans -- 23 of African ancestry, 24 of Asian ancestry, and 24 of European ancestry. They found that, for most of the sites, all three groups bore both chemical spellings, but often in differing frequencies. The scientists plan to use their results to look for different genetic spellings associated with susceptibility to various diseases or responses to drugs. Scientists would do that by checking for differences between smokers with cancer and those without, for instance, or between people whose blood pressure goes down after taking a drug and those whose blood pressure stays the same. The company has made its data publicly available on its [62]Web site. The data are also available on the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology's [63]Web site. In an essay that will be published with the Perlegen paper, two scholars -- David Altshuler, of the Broad Institute of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Andrew G. Clark, of Cornell University -- write that the company's data are "of exceptionally high accuracy." For about 18 percent of the sites, however, only one of the ethnic groups bore two spellings; the other groups had only one spelling. But Dr. Cox emphasized that such a pattern does not mean the genetic variations underlie race. "Trying to use DNA to define race is like putting a square peg in a round hole," he said. In an interview, Troy Duster, a professor of sociology at New York University, agreed. He said he was concerned that studies like Perlegen's could "give a kind of imprimatur of scientific authority" to the notion that race is biologically determined. He pointed out that the 71 individuals do not represent all of the genetic diversity of their races, and that genetic differences would exist between any two small groups of people. "If you took a group of people from the East Coast and the West Coast ... you'd find differences," he told The Chronicle. "You wouldn't conclude there were genetic differences between the two coasts. But with race or ethnicity, people are preprogrammed at a cognitive level to think in terms of these genetic categories." Mr. Duster writes, in another essay in Science, that studies like Perlegen's "should always attach a caveat or warning label like this: '[Genetic] frequencies vary between any selected human groups -- to assume that those variations reflect 'racial categories' is unwarranted.'" More studies are sure to appear shortly. An international group of government-backed scientists is working on a similar project, called the International Haplotype Map Project ([64]The Chronicle, October 30, 2002), and in recent months, the Perlegen scientists have joined forces with them. _________________________________________________________________ Background article from The Chronicle: * [65]International Team Begins New Map of Human Genome, Seeking Variations Within Large Blocks of DNA (10/30/2002) References 45. mailto:lila.guterman at chronicle.com 62. http://genome.perlegen.com/ 63. http://research.calit2.net/hap/wgha/ 64. http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/10/2002103001n.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/daily/2002/10/2002103001n.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:02:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:02:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Science-Spirit: Falling on Deaf Ears Message-ID: Falling on Deaf Ears http://www.science-spirit.org/articles/printerfriendly.cfm?article_id=467 [There are major transhumanist issues here. I'm not so sure there will be very many deaf parents who will want to stick deaf genes in the children and even fewer that would move across state lines or to another country to do so. What are your thoughts about "wrongful life" suits? Is living in a community of like-minded people (or just like-eared people) better than being stuck in the larger world. What would J?rgen Habermas have to say about this? But more generally, what are the social consequences of an ever widening proliferation of genetically distinct communities? Will genetic engineering take place so rapidly that these communities will not have time to form in the first place? Maybe not. I read that there are no buildings in Singapore more than 18 years old (20 by now), but most Europeans would be willing to go to war if the cathedrals were razed to make way for shopping malls. [I open this up for discussion and will cross-post your replies with your name unless you ask me to omit your name or not cross-post at all.] To most people, cochlear implants sound like a medical miraclea device the size of a candy corn that can correct the inability to hear. But many in the Deaf community see the technology as a cultural threat, yet another example of the hearing worlds inability to really listen. by Jenny Desai When Angie Mucci's daughter Allie was born nearly three years ago, she knew her little girl was special. What she didn't know--and wouldn't discover until a year later, when it was clear Allie wasn't responding to even the loudest noises--was that her daughter is deaf. Just a few decades ago, children with hearing loss as profound as Allie's had two choices if they wanted to learn to communicate: lip-reading or sign language. But Allie and her mom were given a third option: surgical implantation of a "bionic ear," or cochlear implant, that would help Allie hear. "I am all for giving my daughter every opportunity she has out of life," says Mucci, a twenty-nine-year-old Las Vegas resident who, like an estimated ninety percent of parents with deaf children, can hear. For Mucci, that meant enrolling her daughter in an implant study in San Antonio, Texas, where Allie underwent surgery on her right ear at the age of thirteen months. Before the operation, Allie could hear only sounds that measured at 110 decibels or louder, a sound volume that compares with what you might hear when seated in the front row of a rock concert. With her cochlear implant, and no visual cues, Allie can now detect sounds that clock in at a mere twenty decibels. Mucci is currently scheduling a second surgery, this time on Allie's left ear, with the doctors who performed the first operation. In a predominantly hearing culture in which the notion of correcting vision with eyeglasses or even LASIK surgery is met with nary a blink, and Miracle-Ear hearing aids for hardof- hearing adults are advertised on national television, Allie's surgery might seem like a no-brainer. But by opting for surgery, Allie and her mother found themselves in the middle of a controversy that has divided virtually everyone it touches into separate camps: hearing and deaf, pro-implant and anti-implant, medical and "civilian." At stake are the complicated questions surrounding what it means to be deaf--not the least of which is whether surgical intervention is a method of correcting a medical condition or whether it's a process that exacerbates an imbalance between a hearing majority and a capital-D Deaf minority, a subculture that fights for the preservation of deafness and the right to define itself on its own terms. For many hearing parents like Angie Mucci, cochlear implants are a technological aid, a tool to correct the body's inability to hear--and often an obvious option. But what happens when a deaf parent is faced with the choice? Consider the case of Michigan resident Lee Larsen, the deaf mother of two deaf sons whose custody dispute became an internationally publicized Deaf rights case in 2002. Larsen landed in court after school officials claimed she was neglecting her children, and a year later, court-appointed advocate Joseph Tevlin petitioned the Michigan court system to order implants for her two sons, asking, "Is it neglect not to have a cochlear implant when the bulk of the research shows everyone benefits?" To Tevlin, the question was rhetorical. To the Deaf community, it was heresy--and yet another example of how the hearing world fails to understand what it means to be deaf. Part of the outcry concerned the parental right to refuse elective surgery for a child. At an initial custody hearing at Kent County Circuit Court in Grand Rapids, amid throngs of Deaf advocates and interpreters furiously signing along with the oral arguments, Larsen told Assistant Prosecutor Kevin Bramble, "I should decide. They are my flesh and blood. I am deaf. God made them deaf. I do not want them to have implants." Beyond that basic issue--something of a nonstarter legally, since Michigan law affords parents the right to refuse elective surgery for their children unless they have permanently lost custody rights--lay the thornier, uncharted issue of what deafness means when it can be circumvented by technology. Lois L. Van Broekhoven, an interpreter-referral specialist, told Theresa D. Mcclellan of The Grand Rapids Press at the time, "The cochlear implant is, to a large degree, a denial of deafness." Claudia Lee of Deaf Community Advocacy Network expanded on the sentiment in a release posted on the Web site of iCan!, an online community for people with disabilities: "Tevlin is suggesting that without implants, the kids won't be able to work up to their maximum potential, which is an insult to the Deaf community. It perpetuates the biases of society, suggesting you're not as good as us, if you're not like us." The presiding judge, Kathleen Feeney, received more than 300 e-mails and amicus curiae briefs from several Deaf-rights and disability-rights advocacy groups. In the words of Deaf activist Jeannette Johnson, who organized a protest rally near the courthouse and set up a Yahoo! newsgroup that remains active, the controversy was both personal and political: "Contrary to what the medical and educational establishments desire for the judicial system and society as [a] whole to believe, being deaf is not a tragedy. What truly is a tragedy is the continuation of judgment and oppression of a minority group in a culture that claims to cherish multiculturalism." About the size of a quarter, the cochlear implant seems an unlikely lightning rod for so much controversy. But, like many technologies that make us question who we are and what "normal" physical function is, whether you see it as a bridge between worlds or a barrier separating them depends on where you are with respect to the mainstream. Being born deaf may not be a choice, but many Deaf advocates say it's not a disability either--and it's certainly not a deficit that the state, or even a well-meaning parent, should step in to repair. Located in the inner ear, the cochlea is a spiraling, fluid-filled tunnel that, except for the tiny hairs that line it, looks much like its Latin namesake: a snail. Signals travel through the fluid and hair cells to the auditory nerve and then to the brain, where they are interpreted as information. Tiny as the hairs are, their role is crucial: If they are damaged or absent, impulses cannot reach the nerves, a condition called "sensorineural hearing loss." Cochlear implants are clusters of electrodes that fill in for the damaged or missing hair cells by stimulating the nerve fibers within the ear. The history of the cochlear implant dates back to the late eighteenth century, when the Italian physicist Alessandro Volta experimented with applying electric current to his own ears. Describing the experience as a massive blow to the head followed by the sound of boiling liquid, Volta discontinued the experiment. But by 1957, the first successful implantation of an electrode on the auditory nerve was reported in France; in 1965, Dr. Blair Simmons submitted a paper to the American Otological Society, describing the first multiple electrode implant in a human. In 1990, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved cochlear implants for children over the age of two. (They are now approved for children aged twelve months and older.) Ever since, doctors, educators, and members of both the hearing and the deaf communities have been debating the implications of that decision. A position paper of the National Association of the Deaf's Cochlear Implant Task Force called the FDA approval "unsound scientifically, procedurally, and ethically" as early as 1991. Reporting on that decision in 1992, psychologist and linguist Harlan Lane declared, "Medical intervention is inappropriate, even if a perfect `bionic ear' were available, because invasive surgery on healthy children is morally wrong. "The interests of the deaf child and his parents may be best served by accepting that he is a deaf person, with an elaborate cultural and linguistic heritage that can enrich his parents' lives as it will his own. We should heed the advice of the deaf teenager who, when reprimanded by her mother for not wearing the processor of her cochlear prosthesis, hurled back bitterly: `I'm deaf. Let me be deaf.'" Since the FDA's approval of implants in the very young, this kind of opposition has become manifest in a variety of arguments. There are the medical concerns--for one, that the quality and quantity of benefits received by undergoing surgery do not outweigh the risks involved, including possible exposure to meningitis due to inner ear fluid leaks or other complications that can result in further surgeries. In addition, there is a wide variation in individual experience of augmented hearing among people who undergo surgery, even those who receive the same device. And because the surgery destroys any residual hearing the subject may possess, the very act of augmenting existing hearing can, ironically, leave the patient more profoundly deaf if the surgery fails or the implant otherwise has to be removed. There are also economic concerns. While cochlear implant surgery is commonly performed on an outpatient basis in the United States, the device, surgery, and follow-up care currently cost about $40,000--a prohibitive price tag for some eligible patients given that not everyone carries insurance and not all insurance carriers will pick up the tab. Some patients can afford to pay out of pocket when insurance refuses to cover the cost, but many others cannot. Should something as basic as the ability to hear be determined purely by economics? The most vehement opposition to cochlear implants, however, has been on humanitarian and cultural grounds. Opponents argue that because very young children cannot choose implants for themselves, they are, in effect, being ushered into a hearing world by the choice of their parents--parents who are overwhelmingly hearing people. These children, the argument goes, are left straddling the deaf and hearing worlds, convinced that there is something wrong with them because they were born unable to hear. "It is common for parents to be introduced to a number of audiologists and speech therapists when their child is first diagnosed with a hearing loss but to never be taken to meet a deaf adult so that they may receive the other perspective," write Shelli DeLost and Sarah Lashley, researchers at MacMurray College in Jacksonville, Illinois. "To the parents, [the cochlear implant] is seen as the instrument of success. They may not understand that it is possible for a deaf child to function and thrive in a hearing world without the ability to hear or speak." Lane, a professor at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and the author of The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community, concedes that cochlear implants can help adults who have become deaf after learning to speak. But for children who are born deaf, Lane objects to the medicalization of what he considers to be a cultural attribute. By creating an implant to counteract deafness, he believes scientists, audiologists, and technicians have missed the point: Deafness is not a disability to be repaired, but a cultural attribute all deaf persons hold in common, and around which the Deaf have built a community. Cochlear implants, then, are a "massive intervention in the life of a child in an attempt to impose the majority's language, culture, and values." Once asked whether he would have his own hearing restored if he could, I. King Jordan, the first deaf president of Gallaudet University, told interviewers, "That's almost like asking a black person if he would rather be white ... I don't think of myself as missing something or as incomplete ... It's a common fallacy if you don't know deaf people or deaf issues. You think it's a limitation." Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., is named for Thomas Gallaudet, who became interested in deaf education in the early 1800s and journeyed to France to learn Laurent Clerc's method of teaching sign language to deaf children. Back in America, Gallaudet and Clerc helped found the first permanent school for deaf children in the United States, the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, which would eventually become the American School for the Deaf. In some ways, the current schism in approaches to deafness and deaf education reflects an older, historical quarrel between Gallaudet and those like Alexander Graham Bell who campaigned against signing, deaf teachers, even marriage between deaf persons. The deaf, they felt, should learn to lip-read and vocalize. Today, the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing continues to promote the use of spoken language and technology, including implants, while many students and faculty members at Gallaudet, the world's only university with all programs and services designed specifically for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, have historically been skeptical at best about the practice of implantation. For those of us who can hear--including parents who consent to cochlear implants because their children cannot--it's difficult to see being deaf as anything but a disability. But for the Deaf community, whose cultural glue is a shared minority history and whose common argot is sign language, deafness is an endangered cultural attribute. And cochlear implants are what's threatening it. In the opinion of Beverly Biderman, an adaptive technology consultant at the University of Toronto who was fitted with a cochlear implant after thirty years of profound deafness, "To understand this often emotional, vehement opposition to cochlear implants, one needs to understand the long history of discrimination against deaf persons. "In Europe, until the middle of the eighteenth century, deaf mutes were not even recognized as persons by the law. They were unable to marry or inherit property or receive an education ... In North America, even in recent years, there have been cases where deaf persons have been improperly diagnosed as retarded or mentally ill, and placed in institutions. It is no wonder, then, that following the example of Black pride and Gay pride, there is now a Deaf pride movement, for which opposition to cochlear implants has become a rallying point." Underlying the objection to cochlear implants on cultural grounds is the assumption that "curing" deafness devalues sign language, or threatens its primacy among the minority population that uses it. Hence the claim by many Deaf advocates that cochlear implants are tantamount to cultural genocide. Under the Third Reich, Yiddish was almost eradicated; in Ireland, speaking Gaelic was prohibited; in Native American and Aboriginal boarding schools established by Anglo settlers, the mother tongue was forbidden, literally unspeakable. Language, like certain foods, religious practices, and customs, is a tie that holds community identity--and among minority populations that often feel disenfranchised, it's understandably binding. The use of cochlear implants, then, looks a lot like another tool to promote vocal speech over the "natural language" of the deaf. To some extent, history--and a growing trend toward mainstreaming deaf children into classes with hearing children, or relying on aural-oral approaches at the expense of American Sign Language--has borne out those concerns. Before the legal battle over her two sons began, Larsen used ASL as the primary mode of communication with her boys, Kyron, then about three years old, and Christian, who was nearly two. But as she was trying to regain custody of her children, they were transferred to a new school, Shawnee Park Elementary, which offered an aural-oral program that ignored ASL. Administrators at the school claimed the boys were falling behind their peers, most of whom already had cochlear implants or were scheduled to get them. When Joseph Tevlin, the court appointed advocate, petitioned the court to order implant surgery for the boys despite Larsen's long-standing objections, he claimed that the benefits the children would receive from the implants overrode Larsen's parental rights, and, indeed, that denying the boys that benefit constituted another kind of neglect. The boys, Tevlin argued, "are losing; they are not gaining language." The Michigan Deaf Association countered that speech is not the only form of language--and the dozens of Deaf interpreters, advocates, and supporters "whispering" in ASL furiously enough to elicit a stern reprimand from Judge Feeney didn't exactly help Tevlin's case. "Education is essential, but I believe ASL would be the tool to use," says JennyLynn Dietrich, a thirty-year-old student at Gallaudet who describes herself as hard of hearing. "Any other resources such as fingerspelling, speech, hearing aids, or whatever would be fine, but ASL should be primary. Cochlear implants would only take my child's sense of self. I want my children to be what they want to be by choice, not by what I choose." Yet there are signs that opposition to cochlear implants may be waning among some members of the Deaf community. In the May 2004 issue of The Archives of Otolaryngology--Head & Neck Surgery, researchers John B. Christiansen and Irene W. Leigh, both of Gallaudet, suggest that perceptions of cochlear implants are changing, partially due to new research. "Clearly, many people in the deaf community, including faculty, staff, students, and alumni at Gallaudet University, are much more openminded about cochlear implants today than they were five or ten years ago, although some still question pediatric implants," the authors write. Their studies also suggest that parents increasingly look to implants as tools for integrating their children into hearing environments, with one proviso: "To ensure optimal use of the cochlear implant, parents need to remain involved in their child's social and educational development," they caution. The researchers combined data from two studies. The first, by the Gallaudet University Research Institute, was conducted in the spring of 1999 and included the results of 439 questionnaires filled out by parents of children with cochlear implants. The second study, which consisted of more than fifty interviews with parents of sixty-two children with implants (and one without), represented a range of children who were between fifteen months and seventeen years old when they received implants, and between the ages of two and twenty at the time of the study. According to the Gallaudet study, sixty percent of parents said they would have liked their child to receive an implant earlier because they believe it would have better facilitated the development of spoken language. A year after their children's surgeries, fifty-four percent of these parents reported that they were very satisfied with their child's progress. Given that the technology of cochlear implants is significantly older than reliable studies on their repercussions, it would appear, on balance, that detecting sounds with the aid of implants is an improvement over being unable to detect them at all--at least if you're looking at things from the hearing side of the debate. It is estimated that there are more than 50,000 people in the world who now hear with the aid of a cochlear implant--significantly more people than have been studied, but only a fraction of those who are likely to undergo implantation in the near future. According to Stephen Joseph Hardy II, past president of the Florida Association of the Deaf, there are more than 28 million people with significant hearing loss in the United States alone, and about 70 million worldwide. How likely is it, then, that cochlear implants can "cure" deafness, and when can we expect cochlear implants to render sign language obsolete? For now, the answers to those questions, respectively, seem to be not likely and never. If we believe psychologist Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct, it seems human beings are preprogrammed for learning language, and virtually all of the most important absorption of language occurs in the first four years of life. Early studies tracking the impact of cochlear implants on young deaf children suggest early intervention for children with profound hearing loss definitely helps the acquisition of spoken language. But as they are currently introduced in young deaf children's lives and supported by therapy, cochlear implants are by no means a cure-all. Even the most ardent advocates of cochlear implants seem to view them as an aid, not an end in themselves. Richard Dowell, who helped develop the Nucleus Multichannel Cochlear Implant at Australia's Bionic Ear Institute, writes, "The lack of hearing in early life can have a serious effect on the development of language. However, spoken language is not the only way to communicate. For over 200 years, Deaf (capital D) people have maintained their own unique culture using visual language based around hand gestures ... Despite the success of cochlear implants so far, the hearing provided is a long way from normal hearing, and we need to continue the research and development in a number of areas to narrow this gap. The use of sign language needs to be seen as compatible with the use of cochlear implants and hearing aids, and not an either/or choice." So where does that leave Allie, Kyron, and Christian? According to her mom, Allie's implants have given her more tools to explore the world. "She hears airplanes fly over our house when we are inside. She hears the fridge kick on in a low hum. Her speech is beautiful. Frankly, she doesn't sound like a deaf child." But whether or not she chooses to embrace a place in the Deaf community, Allie is deaf. "I do recognize she is deaf," her mom agrees. "She will always be deaf. Which is why I wanted her to learn ASL. But she answers me orally. That is her choice, and it is all about choices. I am not here to say what is best; I could never presume that. I do know what has worked for my daughter." Mucci pauses, then reconsiders. "Tonight I started signing with her again in the bath. Her eyes lit up. She remembered it. She didn't sign much back to me, but understood what I was telling her completely. I am going to make an effort to sign to her more. I am not sure what this means for her therapy, but right now, hearing her speak is a beautiful thing." For children like Kyron and Christian, kids who are born deaf to a deaf parent, the future might look a little different. As a deaf parent, their mother already knew she could function in a hearing world--and could communicate that confidence to her children. "I want them to grow up with a strong selfesteem, not trying to be something they're not. I want them part of the Deaf culture," she testified. "Look at me. I am deaf. I am in the hearing world and the deaf world ... I'm deaf and I get along." When the courtroom finally cleared, and the Grand Rapids case that drew such impassioned responses from both sides of the cochlear implant controversy was settled, Larsen had proven her point. Even while questions about the benefits of cochlear implants and how society judges deaf people who want to be deaf remained unsettled, she'd fought for her parental right to choose for her children. She eventually regained custody of her kids. And she knew that when the time came for Kyron and Christian to make their own choices, a technology that could help them hear would be available, even if their grasp of spoken language might be hindered somewhat by the delay. Meanwhile, they are learning, with the support of their mother and the Deaf community, to speak using ASL and to navigate the world in their own way. Asked if she would feel differently about her children if they underwent court-ordered surgery and training to speak in words she would be unable to hear, Larsen told the court, "I would never shun them. They are mine. I teach them." At three, Allie Mucci can now speak for herself, but she can't yet speak to the significance of the implant in her right ear. Neither can the researchers who are tracking her progress. But as those researchers learn new ways of understanding language and the brain, more kids like Allie, Kyron, and Christian will be in a position to test what being deaf really means. [3]Tuning In: The Science of Cochlear Implants Site and magazine supported by a generous grant from the [11]John Templeton Foundation. References 3. http://www.science-spirit.org/tuning.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:09:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:09:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Skeptical Inquirer: Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die Message-ID: Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die Skeptical Inquirer November 2000 http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/beliefs.html Because beliefs are designed to enhance our ability to survive, they are biologically designed to be strongly resistant to change. To change beliefs, skeptics must address the brain's "survival" issues of meanings and implications in addition to discussing their data. [42]Gregory W. Lester _________________________________________________________________ Belief Because a basic tenet of both skeptical thinking and scientific inquiry is that beliefs can be wrong, it is often confusing and irritating to scientists and skeptics that so many people's beliefs do not change in the face of disconfirming evidence. How, we wonder, are people able to hold beliefs that contradict the data? This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don't change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics' failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don't die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions. Biology and Survival Our brain's primary purpose is to keep us alive. It certainly does more than that, but survival is always its fundamental purpose and always comes first. If we are injured to the point where our bodies only have enough energy to support consciousness or a heartbeat but not both, the brain has no problem choosing-it puts us into a coma (survival before consciousness), rather than an alert death-spiral (consciousness before survival). Because every brain activity serves a fundamental survival purpose, the only way to accurately understand any brain function is to examine its value as a tool for survival. Even the difficulty of successfully treating such behavioral disorders as obesity and addiction can only be understood by examining their relationship to survival. Any reduction in caloric intake or in the availability of a substance to which an individual is addicted is always perceived by the brain as a threat to survival. As a result the brain powerfully defends the overeating or the substance abuse, producing the familiar lying, sneaking, denying, rationalizing, and justifying commonly exhibited by individuals suffering from such disorders. Senses and Beliefs One of the brain's primary tools for ensuring survival is our senses. Obviously, we must be able to accurately perceive danger in order to take action designed to keep us safe. In order to survive we need to be able to see the lion charging us as we emerge from our cave or hear the intruder breaking into our house in the middle of the night. Senses alone, however, are inadequate as effective detectors of danger because they are severely limited in both range and scope. We can have direct sensory contact with only a small portion of the world at any one time. The brain considers this to be a significant problem because even normal, everyday living requires that we constantly move in and out of the range of our perceptions of the world as it is right now. Entering into territory we have not previously seen or heard puts us in the dangerous position of having no advance warning of potential dangers. If I walk into an unfamiliar building in a dangerous part of town my survival probabilities diminish because I have no way of knowing whether the roof is ready to collapse or a gunman is standing inside the doorway. Enter beliefs. "Belief" is the name we give to the survival tool of the brain that is designed to augment and enhance the danger-identification function of our senses. Beliefs extend the range of our senses so that we can better detect danger and thus improve our chances of survival as we move into and out of unfamiliar territory. Beliefs, in essence, serve as our brain's "long-range danger detectors." Functionally, our brains treat beliefs as internal "maps" of those parts of the world with which we do not have immediate sensory contact. As I sit in my living room I cannot see my car. Although I parked it in my driveway some time ago, using only immediate sensory data I do not know if it is still there. As a result, at this moment sensory data is of very little use to me regarding my car. In order to find my car with any degree of efficiency my brain must ignore the current sensory data (which, if relied on in a strictly literal sense, not only fails to help me in locating my car but actually indicates that it no longer exists) and turn instead to its internal map of the location of my car. This is my belief that my car is still in my driveway where I left it. By referring to my belief rather than to sensory data, my brain can "know" something about the world with which I have no immediate sensory contact. This "extends" my brain's knowledge of and contact with the world. The ability of belief to extend contact with the world beyond the range of our immediate senses substantially improves our ability to survive. A caveman has a much greater ability to stay alive if he is able to maintain a belief that dangers exist in the jungle even when his sensory data indicate no immediate threat. A police officer will be substantially more safe if he or she can continue to believe that someone stopped for a traffic violation could be an armed psychopath with an impulse to kill even though they present a seemingly innocuous appearance. Beyond the Sensory Because beliefs do not require immediate sensory data to be able to feed valuable survival information to the brain, they have the additional survival function of providing information about the realm of life that does not deal directly with sensory entities. This is the area of abstractions and principles that involves such things as "reasons," "causes," and "meanings." I cannot hear or see the "reason" called a "low pressure zone" that makes a thunderstorm rain on my parade, so my ability to believe that low pressure is the reason assists me. If I were to rely strictly on my senses to determine the cause of the storm I could not tell why it occurred. For all I know it was dragged in by invisible flying gremlins that I need to shoot with my shotgun if I want to clear away the clouds. Therefore my brain's reliance on my "belief" in the reason called "low pressure," rather than on sensory data (or, as in the case of my car, my lack of it) assists in my survival: I avoid an experience of incarceration with myriad dangerous characters following my arrest for shooting into the air at those pesky little gremlins. The Resilience of Beliefs Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information. The loss of either one endangers us. Without our senses we could not know about the world within our perceptual realm. Without our beliefs we could not know about the world outside our senses or about meanings, reasons, or causes. This means that beliefs are designed to operate independent of sensory data. In fact, the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs are not supposed to change easily or simply in response to disconfirming evidence. If they did, they would be virtually useless as tools for survival. Our caveman would not last long if his belief in potential dangers in the jungle evaporated every time his sensory information told him there was no immediate threat. A police officer unable to believe in the possibility of a killer lurking behind a harmless appearance could easily get hurt or killed. As far as our brain is concerned, there is absolutely no need for data and belief to agree. They have each evolved to augment and supplement one another by contacting different sections of the world. They are designed to be able to disagree. This is why scientists can believe in God and people who are generally quite reasonable and rational can believe in things for which there is no credible data such as flying saucers, telepathy, and psychokinesis. When data and belief come into conflict, the brain does not automatically give preference to data. This is why beliefs-even bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, silly beliefs, or crazy beliefs-often don't die in the face of contradictory evidence. The brain doesn't care whether or not the belief matches the data. It cares whether the belief is helpful for survival. Period. So while the scientific, rational part of our brains may think that data should supercede contradictory beliefs, on a more fundamental level of importance our brain has no such bias. It is extremely reticent to jettison its beliefs. Like an old soldier with an old gun who does not quite trust that the war is really over, the brain often refuses to surrender its weapon even though the data say it should. "Inconsequential" Beliefs Even beliefs that do not seem clearly or directly connected to survival (such as our caveman's ability to believe in potential dangers) are still closely connected to survival. This is because beliefs do not occur individually or in a vacuum. They are related to one another in a tightly interlocking system that creates the brain's fundamental view of the nature of the world. It is this system that the brain relies on in order to experience consistency, control, cohesion, and safety in the world. It must maintain this system intact in order to feel that survival is being successfully accomplished. This means that even seemingly small, inconsequential beliefs can be as integral to the brain's experience of survival as are beliefs that are "obviously" connected to survival. Thus, trying to change any belief, no matter how small or silly it may seem, can produce ripple effects through the entire system and ultimately threaten the brain's experience of survival. This is why people are so often driven to defend even seemingly small or tangential beliefs. A creationist cannot tolerate believing in the accuracy of data indicating the reality of evolution not because of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the data itself, but because changing even one belief related to matters of the Bible and the nature of creation will crack an entire system of belief, a fundamental worldview and, ultimately, their brain's experience of survival. Implications for Skeptics Skeptical thinkers must realize that because of the survival value of beliefs, disconfirming evidence will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to change beliefs, even in "otherwise intelligent" people. In order to effectively change beliefs skeptics must attend to their survival value, not just their data-accuracy value. This involves several elements. First, skeptics must not expect beliefs to change simply as the result of data or assuming that people are stupid because their beliefs don't change. They must avoid becoming critical or demeaning in response to the resilience of beliefs. People are not necessarily idiots just because their beliefs don't yield to new information. Data is always necessary, but it is rarely sufficient. Second, skeptics must learn to always discuss not just the specific topic addressed by the data, but also the implications that changing the related beliefs will have for the fundamental worldview and belief system of the affected individuals. Unfortunately, addressing belief systems is a much more complicated and daunting task than simply presenting contradictory evidence. Skeptics must discuss the meaning of their data in the face of the brain's need to maintain its belief system in order to maintain a sense of wholeness, consistency, and control in life. Skeptics must become adept at discussing issues of fundamental philosophies and the existential anxiety that is stirred up any time beliefs are challenged. The task is every bit as much philosophical and psychological as it is scientific and data-based. Third, and perhaps most important, skeptics must always appreciate how hard it is for people to have their beliefs challenged. It is, quite literally, a threat to their brain's sense of survival. It is entirely normal for people to be defensive in such situations. The brain feels it is fighting for its life. It is unfortunate that this can produce behavior that is provocative, hostile, and even vicious, but it is understandable as well. The lesson for skeptics is to understand that people are generally not intending to be mean, contrary, harsh, or stupid when they are challenged. It's a fight for survival. The only effective way to deal with this type of defensiveness is to de-escalate the fighting rather than inflame it. Becoming sarcastic or demeaning simply gives the other person's defenses a foothold to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange that justifies their feelings of being threatened ("Of course we fight the skeptics-look what uncaring, hostile jerks they are!") rather than a continued focus on the truth. Skeptics will only win the war for rational beliefs by continuing, even in the face of defensive responses from others, to use behavior that is unfailingly dignified and tactful and that communicates respect and wisdom. For the data to speak loudly, skeptics must always refrain from screaming. Finally, it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone's beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics' ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a "higher brain function" in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges. Skeptics must appreciate the power and, truly, the dangerousness that this ability bestows upon them. They have in their possession a skill that can be frightening, life-changing, and capable of inducing pain. In turning this ability on others it should be used carefully and wisely. Challenging beliefs must always be done with care and compassion. Skeptics must remember to always keep their eye on the goal. They must see the long view. They must attempt to win the war for rational beliefs, not to engage in a fight to the death over any one particular battle with any one particular individual or any one particular belief. Not only must skeptics' methods and data be clean, direct, and unbiased, their demeanor and behavior must be as well. Related Information [43]belief* About the Author Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D. is a psychologist on the graduate faculty of the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and in private practice in Houston and in Denver, Colorado. Address correspondence to: Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D., 111 Harrison St., Suite 1, Denver, Colorado 80206. References 42. http://www.csicop.org/si/2000-11/beliefs.html#author 43. http://www.csicop.org/q/csicop/belief* From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:10:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:10:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stuff (NZ): Babies are not conscious in the womb Message-ID: Babies are not conscious in the womb http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3194905a7144,00.html 22 February 2005 By KENT ATKINSON Babies - both human and animal - react to touch, sound, and other external stimuli in the womb, but do not consciously experience them, says a group researching animal welfare. Professor David Mellor, of Massey University, said yesterday that the embryo and foetus are apparently never conscious, and actually spend much of their time anaethetised. "Consciousness first appears only after birth, associated with first exposure to air, gravity, hard surfaces, unlimited space and, usually, to cold ambient conditions," he said. Prof Mellor, director of the university's animal welfare science and bioethics centre, said he had made a fresh evaluation of consciousness in the womb - particularly in terms of sheep - after meatworkers at a slaughter plant expressed concern that foetuses of slaughtered animals might be drowning in their amniotic fluid. He said the study used extensive research into sheep which had been originally intended not for animal welfare purposes, but because sheep were an excellent large-animal "model" for humans. A collaboration with Auckland University's foetal physiology and neuroscience group had produced insights relevant to human foetuses. Prof Mellor will present a major paper to a two-day London conference on animal sentience, starting on March 17, which will examine the ability of a foetus and newborn to receive sensory information and to "feel" sensations that cause suffering. His paper will argue that the embryo and foetus cannot suffer before or during birth, and that suffering can only occur in the newborn when the onset of breathing sufficiently oxygenates its tissues sufficiently. Prof Mellor said that many paediatricians were convinced that a foetus in the womb could feel pain, because they based their judgement on comparable premature infants born as early as 24 week to 28 weeks. Those infants did experience pain, and paediatricians had assumed that so did an age-equivalent foetus. "But the chemical environment in the brain is very different after the baby is born," he said. Breathing oxygen was a key difference, in addition to loss of the chemicals produced by the placenta. When a baby was born, breathing oxygen caused a critical chemical messenger, adenosine, to be cleared from the bloodstream in seconds, allowing it to start experiencing consciousness. This indicated that stillborn babies that did not breath did not suffer pain or distress - they simply went from being asleep in the womb to profound unconsciousness and death. Prof Mellor said future areas of research would look at differences between foetuses that went through a normal birth and those that were delivered by caesarian section. Early indications were that providing the foetus could breath sufficiently well to oxygenate its blood, the loss of placental adenosine, the stimulation of cold air, loss of buoyancy, and "mechanical" touch would mean a baby from a caesarian birth would not be different to one which had gone through a normal delivery. Prof Mellor said he expected the work with Auckland University to spur significant discussion. In terms of humans, there was no doubt that doubt that babies before birth reacted to a range of stimuli because the sense organs of foetuses in the uterus began to work well before birth, he said. Touch, sound and other stimuli affected the foetus, and could cause it to move in the womb. "But the evidence, accumulated over the last 25-35 years, is that this does not occur at the conscious level," he said. Babies born with no cerebral cortex - the part of the brain essential for consciousness - could also respond with movements and hormone release and heart rate changes. But Prof Mellor said that though effects from stimulation of touch, sight, sound, and taste were not at a conscious level," it is possible - and some evidence suggests that it is in fact likely - that such effects persist well beyond birth". "Some might very well be at least benign, and perhaps even positively advantageous, depending on what they are," he said. "Playing music and speaking softly could well have beneficial effects". From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:12:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:12:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Good advice re protecting your credit Message-ID: Thanks to George for this. He notes: "The advice below is mostly correct. See the following link [particularly near the end of the commentary] for more specific info: http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/credit.htm ." ATTORNEY'S ADVICE --- NO CHARGE Please read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday.? A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company. 1. The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name? put on them. If someone takes your checkbook, they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name, but your bank should know how you sign your checks. 2. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put "PHOTO? ID REQUIRED". 3. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won't have access to it. 4. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have? your SS# printed on your checks. You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have it printed, anyone can get it. 5. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in? your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call? and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a? photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We've? all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed on us in stealing a name, address, Social Security number, credit cards. Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have firsthand? knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week,? the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know: 1. We have been told we should cancel our credit? cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and? your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those? where you can find them. 2. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This? proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). But here's what is perhaps most important of all : (I never even thought to do this.) 3. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and Social Security number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the? time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit? checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I? knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage? has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away This weekend? (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks. Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, etc., has been stolen: 1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285 2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742 3.) Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289 4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271 We pass along jokes on the Internet; we pass along? just about everything.? But if you are willing to pass this information along, it could really help someone that you care about. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:14:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:14:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: New Federal Policy Favors Randomized Trials in Education Research Message-ID: New Federal Policy Favors Randomized Trials in Education Research The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.11 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i27/27a01602.htm By DAVID GLENN The U.S. Education Department's controversial efforts to foster what it describes as "scientifically based research" in education reached a small milestone in late February, when new regulatory language took effect. The new policy will permit -- but not require -- all of the department's units to give preference to grant applicants who promise to use randomized controlled trials or similar quasi-experimental methods. Known in the jargon of federal regulation as a grant-making "priority," the new rule will initially be applied to a small number of the department's discretionary grant programs, officials said. The department hopes to build a body of experimental data, "so that three years from now, we can look across our portfolio and know which programs are actually worth replicating and disseminating," said Michael J. Petrilli, an associate assistant deputy secretary in the department's Office of Innovation and Improvement. The growing federal emphasis on randomized trials represents a victory for certain critics of education research. The critics have charged that most such research is watery and narrowly descriptive, and does little to inform the public about what types of classroom practices improve student performance. It is much better, the critics say, to use medical-style trials, in which, for example, certain classrooms are randomly assigned to use a standard mathematics curriculum while other classrooms use an experimental technique. The department's new National Board for Education Sciences includes many of the most prominent critics, including Eric A. Hanushek, of Stanford University, and Caroline Minter Hoxby, of Harvard University. The board held its inaugural meeting earlier this month. Complaints From Researchers Other researchers, however, have strenuously opposed the new emphasis on experiments. After the Education Department solicited comments on a draft of the new regulation in late 2003, nearly 200 scholars sent in objections. They argued that randomized trials were expensive and difficult to conduct on a meaningful scale, that experiments involving children posed ethical problems, and that the draft failed to appreciate the value of descriptive, qualitative classroom studies. "We had some major concerns," noted Gerald E. Sroufe, director of government relations at the American Educational Research Association. Some scholars, he said, "are almost giddy about randomization." Mr. Sroufe did concede that some degree of emphasis on clinical trials was important -- "I know that we've been negligent as a field" -- but he added that he believed the department was neglecting many of the traditional tools of evaluation. Other scholars agreed that the new emphasis could hurt some areas of research. "People I work with in evaluation are asking questions that truly cannot be answered through randomized trials," said Sharon F. Rallis, president of the American Evaluation Association. For example, she said, some state departments of education are studying the effects of moving cognitively disabled students into mainstream classrooms. "You can't use randomized trials to study that because, first, you just don't have the numbers there" to generate statistically valid results, said Ms. Rallis, who is also a professor of education at the University of Connecticut. Ms. Rallis said she was disappointed that the language contained in the regulation was not significantly revised from the initial draft, which her organization criticized in a widely distributed statement in 2003. The department's Mr. Petrilli agreed that the new rule would be appropriate only in limited areas. "It was never our intention to use this for every program," he said. "It's going to be a tiny minority of programs for which we use this priority." Mr. Sroufe, of the education-research association, said that he was skeptical about that. "There are ways of writing regulations to suggest that you're only going to use something on occasion," he said. "And I just can't see that in this language." He added that he was disappointed that the new regulation did not insist that third-party evaluators be independent from the grant applicants. (It says only that such evaluators are "preferably independent.") "Most people would say that that's the sine qua non," he said. "I don't know why they didn't just demand that." Frederick M. Hess, director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank, said he had mixed feelings about the new language. The turn toward randomized trials, he said, is "entirely appropriate and sorely overdue" in certain areas, such as studies of reading curricula and other classroom practices. Mr. Hess said that he worried, however, that certain education researchers might have embraced a "gold-rush mentality" that led them to propose randomized trials for what he regards as inappropriate topics, such as incentive-pay plans for teachers. Mr. Hess sits on review panels for the department, and in certain recent grant applications he has perceived that "some people are moving forward almost too enthusiastically," he said. A small randomized study of incentive-pay plans, he said, would be unlikely to produce generalizable results or to be persuasive to people on either side of the incentive-pay debate. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 18:16:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:16:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Foreign Policy: Gang World Message-ID: Foreign Policy: Gang World http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2798 Page 1 of 4 [The rest follow.] [A very informative article, but the author seems to think it is wicked for the U.S. to deport gang members.] Gang World By Andrew V. Papachristos [21]March/April 2005 Street gangs are proliferating around the world. The United States has unwittingly spurred this phenomenon by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records each year. But that only partly explains how gangs went global. Credit also goes to the Internet, where gangs are staking out turf and spreading their culture online. Gang members may have never heard of globalization, but it is making them stronger. It's a cold winter day in Chicago, and Hector is doing what he does almost every day, standing on his drug spot "serving" customers. Hector, a 19-year-old member of the Latin Kings street gang, is the son of Mexican immigrants. He speaks Spanglish skillfully, mixed with urban slang, and wears a uniform typical of the youth in his neighborhood--puffy coat, baggy jeans, and meticulously clean, white athletic shoes (in a city where snow salt decimates entire wardrobes). Hector has never traveled outside of Chicago and only rarely ventures beyond a three-mile radius of his apartment. Hector stands at the end of a long and familiar global commodity chain. The little plastic bags in his palm contain $10 chunks of crack cocaine that look like jagged, disfigured sugar cubes. By the time the crack hits the streets of Chicago, it has been touched by more than a dozen people in three countries. Hector has no interest in its global supply chain. His daily concerns and activities center on a few city blocks, his aspirations reaching just as far. The majority of Hector's day is spent doing what other 19-year-olds do--sleeping, hanging out with friends, trying to talk to teenage girls, playing video games, and standing on the street corner laughing. He sells drugs for only a few hours a day, going home with around $50 profit, little more than he'd make working at McDonald's. Hector's image--that of a young, minority, "inner-city," male gang member--is transmitted, exploited, and glamorized across the world. The increasing mobility of information via cyberspace, films, and music makes it easy for gangs, gang members, and gang wannabes to get information, adapt personalities, and distort gang behaviors. Most often, these images of gang life are not simply exaggerated; they're flat-out wrong. Flashy cars, diamond rings (real ones, at least), and wads of cash are not the gang world norm. Hustling to make ends meet, trying to put food on the table while staying out of jail, wearing the same T-shirt and blue jeans until they have holes in them, and dealing with the humdrum of school, unemployment, and child support are more typical. Nonetheless, two images of street gangs dominate the popular consciousness--gangs as posses of drug-dealing thugs and, more recently, gangs as terrorist organizations. Although the media like to link gangs and drugs, only a small portion of all gangs actually deal in them. Fewer do so in an organized fashion. The National Youth Gang Center (NYGC) estimates that 34 percent of all U.S. gangs are actively involved in organized drug dealing. Gangs that do sell drugs essentially fill a void in the postindustrial urban economy, replacing the manufacturing and unskilled labor jobs that traditionally served as a means for social mobility. Similarly, the name Jose Padilla is inevitably followed by two epithets--al Qaeda terror suspect and street gang member. The link between the two is extremely misleading. Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in June 2002, reportedly en route to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city. But, as with drug dealing, most gangs lack the organizational wherewithal to operate transnational clandestine networks. Instead, most gangs engage in what one criminologist calls "cafeteria-style" crime--a little bit of drug use, a smattering of larceny, a dab of truancy, a dollop of fighting, and so on. Padilla's attempted terrorist act had little to do with his gang affiliation. That said, there have been a handful of extreme examples that suggest that some gangs do in fact have the global reach necessary to commit terrorist acts. In 1986, the Chicago-based El Rukns conspired to commit terrorist acts on U.S. soil on behalf of the Libyan government, in exchange for $2.5 million. [[25]click here for the sidebar.] In the 1990s, the Latin Kings funneled money to the FALN, a militant group based in Puerto Rico, through ties that were cultivated inside the U.S. prison system. And, most recently, leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang, which operates in at least 31 states and three countries, met in Honduras with Adnan el-Shukrijumah, a key al Qaeda leader, to discuss smuggling immigrants into the United States via Mexico. One of the most urgent challenges for policymakers is distinguishing between the average street gang and groups that operate as criminal networks. Until recently, gang membership was a common part of city boyhood and not terribly detrimental. Members left as they got married, got a job, enlisted in the military, or simply grew out of gang behaviors. But, as cities have changed, so have gangs. The globalization of the world economy, and the resulting exodus of manufacturing jobs from developed urban centers to the developing world, has left poor neighborhoods geographically and socially isolated. Not surprisingly, street gangs and gang violence have increased dramatically with globalization. Today, gangs serve as de facto protectors, families, and employers. Members are staying in gangs longer, young women are increasingly involved, and gangs are now reported in all 50 U.S. states and in countless countries. References 21. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=220 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2798&page=1 Page 2 of 4 Globalization and street gangs exist in a paradox: Gangs are a global phenomenon not because the groups themselves have become transnational organizations (although a few have), but because of the recent hypermobility of gang members and their culture. At the same time that globalization isolates neighborhoods heavily populated by gangs, it also helps spread gang activity and culture. Gangs have, in a sense, gone global. GANGSTERS WITHOUT BORDERS Gangs exist in 3,300 cities across the United States--essentially, any municipality with a population of more than 250,000 people--and in a growing number of small towns and rural areas. This figure is about a 433 percent increase from estimates in the 1970s, when gangs were reported in roughly 200 cities. The NYGC estimates that today there are more than 731,500 gang members in 21,500 different gangs in the United States. Such proliferation is not confined geographically. Gangs and other violent "youth groups" have been reported in France, Greece, South Africa, Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Jamaica, Mexico, Canada, Japan, China, Australia, and elsewhere. A common myth used to explain such proliferation is that gangs "migrate" in search of new members, turf, or criminal opportunities. Although that is true in the rare cases of groups like the Latin Kings and MS-13, very little evidence suggests that gang proliferation is associated with calculated entrepreneurial ambitions. A more plausible explanation is that when people move, they take their culture with them. For example, Trey, a member of Chicago's massive Gangster Disciples, moved to a small town in Arkansas where his brother, who is not a gang member, had found a job. Although Trey tried to "go legit," he soon found that his status as a Gangster Disciple from the housing projects of Chicago gave him a formidable reputation in small-town Arkansas. Within nine months, he started a new Gangster Disciples "chapter" with 15 members. But this new gang had no formal connection with the group in Chicago. The same trend is occurring internationally, particularly in Latin America and Asia. In a recent survey of more than 1,000 gang members, the National Gang Crime Research Center found that about 50 percent of gang members believed that their gang had international connections. Analysis conducted by this author suggests the rate is considerably higher for Hispanic (66 percent) and Asian (58 percent) gang members, who are more likely to be immigrants. The movement of gang members overseas not only spreads gang culture but also helps to establish links between gang members in different countries. When Lito, a member of Hector's Latin Kings gang, ran into trouble with the law in Chicago, his family sent him to live with an aunt in Mexico. There, he quickly became a go-between for gang members in the United States looking to avoid detection and for Mexican immigrants searching for jobs in the United States. The Latin Kings, in fact, turned these connections into a lucrative business by manufacturing fake ID cards. A 1999 investigation of several Latin Kings recovered 31,000 fraudulent IDs and travel documents. Of course, gang members do not always travel overseas as a matter of free will. Since the mid-1990s, U.S. immigration policy has dramatically boosted the proliferation of gangs throughout Latin America and Asia by deporting tens of thousands of immigrants with criminal records back to their home countries each year, including a growing number of gang members. In 1996, around 38,000 immigrants were deported after committing a crime; by 2003, the number had jumped to almost 80,000. Often, gang members have spent nearly their entire lives in the United States. But once they run afoul of the law, their immigrant status leaves them vulnerable to deportation. The countries that receive the flood of deportees are usually ill-equipped to deal with so many returning gang members. Although estimates vary, experts believe that there are now nearly 100,000 gang members spread across Central America and Mexico. In 2003, the United States deported more than 2,100 immigrants with criminal records to the Dominican Republic. The same year, nearly 2,000 were deported to El Salvador. The U.S. government does not keep track of how many of these criminal deportees are gang members, but many Latin American states see a connection and say gangs are now one of their biggest threats to national security. In 2003, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, and Mexico agreed to work together to find new ways to beat the challenges gangs pose. It's not as though many gang members wish to remain in the countries of their birth. With little or no connection to their new homes, deported gang members typically face a simple choice: either find a way to return to the United States or seek protection from local gang members. In the case of MS-13, the U.S. government has deported hundreds of members, many of whom continue to illegally migrate back and forth, often carrying goods or people with them. Those that remain in their home countries are almost sure to connect with other deported gang members, and authorities in these countries say they are responsible for a large upswing in crime and violence. In a sense, U.S. immigration policy has amounted to unintentional state-sponsored gang migration. Rather than solving the gang problem, the United States may have only spread it. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2798&page=2 Page 3 of 4 THE VIRTUAL STREET CORNER A search for particular gang slogans or phrases on any major search engine uncovers Web sites with gang manifestos, bylaws, pictures, symbols, and, yes, even turf. The Internet provides a new platform for gang warfare, and cyberspace is serving as an outlet for activities that could lead to violence if attempted on the street, such as "disrespecting" rival gangs, making claims of superiority, or disclosing gang secrets. Reputations are developed through verbal combat with vague, often anonymous, rivals. Individual gangs flaunt their Internet savvy by posting complex Web sites, including some with password protection. Entire Web sites are dedicated to celebrating the history and cultural icons of individual gangs, including internal documents, prayers, and photos. But, unlike exchanges in the real world, virtual spats rarely lead to actual violence. Still, few gang members ever discuss or mention the Internet. Many don't possess the hardware, software, or technical skills (not to mention the necessary telephone lines) to manage the Web. Most gang-related Web activity appears to come from gang members who have moved beyond their neighborhood, perhaps to attend college, or gang members and wannabes in suburbs or smaller towns. On the Internet, it's easy to co-opt the identity of well-known, mythic gangs. A now defunct Web site of a gang calling itself "The Black Gangster Disciples," after the notorious Chicago gang, contained several pages of gang prayers, oaths, and other sensitive organizational materials. The Web page's guest book was a virtual street corner where surfers gave shout-outs (salutations or greetings) or disses (slanderous remarks) toward the group. Ironically, the site also contained a picture of the gang--a group of white, adolescent males flashing gang signs (the wrong ones, I might add), in someone's well-furnished basement. Such digital proliferation has unlimited global potential. Police in the Netherlands have identified groups using the names of California-based gangs, such as the "Eight Tray Crips." But these exported gangs miss the hyperlocal point of their namesakes--the "Black" in the Black Gangster Disciples was added during the 1960s as the gang identified with civil rights activity on Chicago's South Side; "Eight Tray" refers to specific streets in California. Neither of these copycat gangs is able to, geographically or historically, live the local meaning found in the names of their gangs. This proliferation of gangs on the Net might give the false impression that they are now soliciting members across the globe. The anonymity of cyberspace might build up the egos or reputations of people pretending to be something they are not, giving psychological reasons to seek other gang outlets or create them where none exist. Of course, it is possible that some of the more sophisticated gangs may already be exploiting cyberspace for illicit purposes, such as arranging drug deals or transferring illegal funds. Although it is impossible to stop gangs and gang members from posting Web pages, differentiating between the banal and the potentially dangerous virtual gang activity will be an important task in the years ahead. Gangs will no doubt take advantage of technological advances. The difficult part is figuring out what is real and what is not. IS GLOBALIZATION JUST A WORD? Street gangs are proliferating. What comes next depends in part on how globalization continues to affect our cities and how we deal with its consequences. As the global economy creates a growing number of disenfranchised groups, some will inevitably meet their needs in a gang. Criminal organizations such as the Gangster Disciples, Crips, Bloods, MS-13, and Latin Kings are dangerous entities. But these groups are an anomaly in the gang world; they represent the worst of what gangs can become, not what most gangs are. Treating all gang members like mafia kingpins or terrorist masterminds is overestimating people who, more often than not, are petty delinquents. At their core, gangs are not just a criminal justice problem; they are a social problem. One of the biggest challenges is reintroducing an offender into a community. Labels such as "ex-offender" and "gang member" follow people throughout their lives, making it next to impossible for someone to make a fresh start. Scores of gang members go through the revolving criminal justice door and return to communities that offer no viable employment opportunities. In some prisons, gang members are trained for jobs that are not available when they are released. No amount of law enforcement will rid the world of gangs. Strategies at all levels must move beyond simple arrest and incarceration to consider the economic structures of the cities and neighborhoods that breed street gangs. Otherwise, there will be nothing there to greet them but the waiting and supportive arms of the gang. For Hector, globalization is just a word. It means nothing to him. It's possible that he has never even heard it. And it's certain he never sees globalization's benefits or associates its forces with his everyday life. On this cold winter day, I ask Hector where he thinks the drugs he sells come from. He laughs. "Man, what do I care? All I care is that the shit gets here," he says, stomping his feet to stay warm. A block away, I hear another gang member shouting, "Rocks and blow." The Latin Kings are open for business. Andrew V. Papachristos, a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Chicago, has worked with gangs for more than 12 years. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2798&page=3 Page 4 of 4 The El Rukns represent the worst of what gangs can become. Originally known as the Blackstone Rangers, the gang emerged in the late 1950s on Chicago's South Side. Their leader, Jeff Fort, eventually consolidated the Blackstone Rangers with 21 smaller gangs, creating a powerful organization. In 1968, Fort was convicted in federal court of embezzling $1.4 million dollars in anti-poverty grants from churches and community organizations. Rather than create jobs, as the grants were intended, Fort used the funds to purchase guns, cars, and drugs. Released from Leavenworth prison in 1976, Fort joined the Moorish Science Temple of America and converted to Islam. The Blackstone Rangers then assumed the new identity of the El Rukns (Arabic for "the foundation of knowledge"). Three high-ranking members of the El Rukns traveled to Libya in March 1986 to broker a deal with military officials in which the gang would commit "terrorist acts on U.S. soil" in exchange for $2.5 million. Again, the gang was apparently motivated by a desire for cash and notoriety. In May, a second meeting between the El Rukns and Libyan officials occurred in Panama. But upon their return, customs officials searched the luggage of two of the gang members and turned up documents that contained the vague outlines to several terrorist plots. Their plans, concocted in Chicago, included destroying federal buildings, blowing up an airplane, assassinating a Milwaukee alderman, and simply committing a "killing here or there." Two months later, the El Rukns purchased a light anti-tank weapon for $1,800--from an undercover FBI agent. The purchase, as well as the testimony of informants and conversations recorded on wiretaps, convinced a federal judge to issue search warrants. Authorities ultimately uncovered the anti-tank weapon, as well as 32 firearms, including a MAC-10 machine gun, a fully automatic .45-caliber pistol, and several rounds of armor-piercing bullets. Five senior members of the gang, including Jeff Fort, were convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and remain in prison today. Still, their story shows how a small, seemingly ordinary street gang can turn into something far more dangerous. -AVP http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2798&page=4 Want to Know More? For discussion of the cause-and-effect relationship between globalization and gangs, the proliferation of gang culture via the media and cyberspace, and the impact of gangs in various nations around the world, see Gangs in the Global City (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming), edited by John Hagedorn. Useful overviews of gang activity include Irving A. Spergel's The Youth Gang Problem: A Community Approach (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) and The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), by Malcolm W. Klein. Some of the best resources on gangs are found online. The Web site of the National Gang Crime Research Center offers a wide variety of information, including profiles of all U.S.-based gangs discussed in this article. Hagedorn's GangResearch.net contains numerous articles exploring the relationship between gangs and globalization. The National Youth Gang Center Web site features surveys of gang activity in the United States. The U.S. Southern Command monitors the proliferation of gangs in Latin America. Recent studies include Latin American Gangs: Their Center of Gravity (Open Source Report 005, Dec. 13, 2004). Ginger Thompson chronicles the bloody results of recent street gang activity in Honduras in "Tattooed Warriors: The Next Generation; Shuttling Between Nations, Latino Gangs Confound the Law" (New York Times, Sept. 26, 2004). In "`Getting High and Getting By': Dimensions of Drug Selling Behaviors Among American Mexican Gang Members in South Texas" (The Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, February 2004), Avelardo Valdez and Stephen J. Sifaneck explore the complex intersection of gangs and drugs. FOREIGN POLICY`s award-winning coverage of other forms of cultural globalization include Kym Anderson's "Wine's New World" (May/June 2003), Theodore Bestor's "How Sushi Went Global" (November/December 2000), and Douglas McGray's "Japan's Gross National Cool" (May/June 2002). From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 19:43:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:43:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Seeking Out Lives of Faith, in All Their Awesome Absurdity Message-ID: Seeking Out Lives of Faith, in All Their Awesome Absurdity The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32b00601.htm [This is a very excellent article!] By TIMOTHY K. BEAL Our 29-foot rented motor home rested precariously on the shoulder of a county road in the low rolling hills of southern Alabama, just outside the town of Prattville. It was midday in June, and the sun was beating down through a cloudless sky. The view from the motor home's "family room" window: thousands of makeshift wooden crosses leaning this way and that. Some were only a couple feet high, hastily slapped together from scrap wood. Others, towering from a crumbling bluff above the road, were taller than telephone poles. Most of them bore messages, brushed on in red or black or white capital letters: YOU WILL DIE HELL IS HOT HOT HOT Among the crosses were scrap wood and rusty metal boxes bearing similar proclamations and warnings: GOD SAID THE WORLD COMING TO A END RICH MAN IN HELL REPENT A few yards farther up the road, a makeshift row of old metal housings from air-conditioning window units lined a dirt driveway like junkyard luminarias, each cleverly conveying a message with a refrigeration theme: NO ICE WATER IN HELL! FIRE HOT! TOO LATE IN HELL FIRE WATER These AC luminarias led the way to the tiny ranch-style home of Bill and Marzell Rice, creators and proprietors of this 11-acre collage of shouting crosses and junked appliances that they call Cross Garden. My wife, Clover, and our two kids, Sophie, 11, and Seth, 7, had decided to wait in the motor home while I talked with Bill and Marzell about their unusual horticulture. Although we'd been on the road for less than two weeks at that point, our voyage into the strange and sometimes wonderful religious worlds of roadside America had really begun several months earlier, on another road trip. We were driving from Washington to Cleveland through the Appalachian highlands of northwestern Maryland on Interstate 68. As we crested a rolling hill just outside the quaint old town of Frostburg, we saw what initially looked like a steel-girder framework for a four-floor parking garage standing alone in a grassy field about 50 yards from the highway. In front of it was a large blue sign: NOAH'S ARK BEING REBUILT HERE! A multilevel parking garage in such a place as this would have been unusual enough. But Noah's Ark? We whizzed past the ark-in-progress that day, but I knew I'd be back to learn more about this project and its Noah. I started keeping a list of roadside religious attractions throughout the country. Soon that list had become an itinerary for a new research project, a roadside approach to discovering religion in America. Six months later, in the summer of 2002, I loaded my family into a rented motor home and hit the rural highways of the Bible Belt on an initial voyage that included visits to places like Golgotha Fun Park, the World's Largest Ten Commandments, Paradise Gardens, Ave Maria Grotto, Holy Land USA, and, yes, Cross Garden. Over the next year, I made pilgrimages to many other roadside religious attractions throughout the United States, from the World's Largest Rosary Collection, in Skamania County, Wash., to Precious Moments Inspiration Park, in Carthage, Mo., to the Holy Land Experience, in Orlando, Fla. I took notes, took pictures, took video, talked with the creators, talked with visitors, talked with Clover and the kids. In the course of these travels in the novel, often strange, sometimes disturbing worlds of roadside religion, I discovered not only new dimensions of the American religious landscape, but also new religious dimensions of my family and myself. In the course of these travels, what began as a research agenda, albeit a novel one, has become a much more personal, dare I say religious, project, as much about my own complex, often ambivalent, relationship to the life of faith as it is about the places and people we visited. If you've logged more than 100 miles of rural American highway in your life, you've probably seen the signs for religious attractions, beckoning you to get off at the next exit and experience whatever it is for yourself: the world's tallest Jesus or teariest Blessed Virgin Mary, replicas of the Wilderness Tabernacle or empty tomb, re-creations of Jerusalem, Rome, paradise, hell. When you drive by such outrageous religious spectacles, your first reaction is likely to be "What?!?," blurted out in a burst of laughter. But if you let the place linger in your mind a little longer than it takes to disappear in your rearview mirror, other more interesting questions arise. Questions like: Who did this? Who has the chutzpah in this day and age to do something like that on the side of a road? And why? What drives such a person? What desires? What visions? What spirits or demons, entrepreneurial and otherwise? In other words, you want to understand. I take these places seriously as unique expressions of religious imagination and unique testimonials to the varieties of religious experience in America. Granted, this is not the usual approach to studying religion. The usual approach involves delving into a religious tradition's normative scriptures and doctrines, or focusing on established religious institutions and ritual practices. That's not what I'm doing in my research. On the contrary, I'm focusing on places that most people -- religious people and religion scholars alike -- would consider aberrant forms of religious expression. Although many of these places draw inspiration from the Bible, for example, their uses of it are far from normative or illustrative of the ways biblical interpretation functions within any religious mainstream. Few would consider writing the Ten Commandments in five-foot-tall concrete letters on the side of a mountain, or using miniature golf to tell the story of creation, or fabricating Noah's Ark from steel girders, to be exemplary biblical interpretation. And yet, aside from the sheer novelty of such excursions beyond the mainstreams of religious life, I find that these places reveal much about the American religious landscape. Indeed, I believe that religion is often most fascinating, and most revealing, where it's least expected. In the art world, "outsider art" generally refers to the work of artists without formal training who stand outside the cultural norms of "fine art" schools, museums, and galleries. Bearing little or no relation to trends and developments in contemporary artistic techniques and subjects, outsider art continues to be appreciated above all as a form of creativity that finds expression on the social and conceptual fringes of experience. In a similar sense, I suggest we think of roadside religious spectacles as works of "outsider religion." Just as the highly individual works of outsider art can often powerfully reveal the breadth and depth of human creativity and imagination in very local, particular forms, so these religious places can reveal the breadth and depth of human religious experience and expression. Paradoxically, it is precisely in their marginality that they open avenues for exploring themes and issues that are central to American religious life, such as pilgrimage, the nostalgia for lost origins, the desire to re-create sacred time and space, creativity as religious devotion, apocalypticism, spectacle, exile, and the relation between religious vision and social marginality. So "outsider religion" becomes a way of illuminating "insider religion." Roadside religious spectacles are in some respects not so different from the more mainstream spaces of temples, churches, mosques, synagogues, memorials, and monasteries. They too work to create an experience of being set apart, in another world. They too are usually founded on, inspired by, and organized around some revelation or similar original religious experience -- a miracle, a vision, or the giving of a new law, for example. And they too are created to host the religious experiences of those who enter, individually and collectively. The differences come into play with regard to the symbolic meanings of the elements themselves. In insider religious spaces, such meanings are held in common, taken for granted as part of a shared communal repertoire of words and images and spatial boundaries. In outsider religious spaces, on the other hand, such meanings are more personal, located in the particular and peculiar experiences and beliefs and practices of the individual responsible for each place. Although we are welcomed into that space, hosted by it, and although we are aware that the space is in some sense a form of expression and communication, its content, its meaning, remain in very profound ways ultimately inaccessible, strange, foreign. Indeed, these places reflect deep tensions between, on the one hand, the highly personal, even private experiences and meanings of their creators, and, on the other hand, the desire to share those experiences in a very public way. Each is a very outward, public expression of a very inward, private religious life. Each is a creative public response to a profoundly life-changing personal experience. There's something about that experience that won't let go, that insists on being communicated, translated to others in spectacular form. In some cases, the process of "going public" that results in such roadside religious attractions can be very painful. As such, they are difficult to make sense of. On the one hand, they are highly individual and particular. They are expressions of personality and, in some sense, untranslatable experience. On the other hand, they are highly social. They are gestures of invitation and forms of communication to others. In some cases, such as Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens, in Summerville, Ga., they beget new forms of religious community. These places are as deeply personal as they are public. At the creative heart and soul of each is a religious imagination trying to give outward form to inner experience. It's no coincidence that most of these roadside religious spectacles are also private homes. In one sense, this is simply a practical matter: One starts where one is, and most of these people aren't rich or fund-raising-savvy enough even to consider other locations. But I think there's more to it than that. What is home, after all? An extension of myself, a shelter from the storm, a piece of private property, a locus of intimacy and secrets. But also a public expression of myself, reflecting on me and my family, a place of hospitality, of welcoming strangers, an address where people can find me. Home is both private and public, individual and social. So, too, the roadside religious attractions. It is above all this outrageous gesture of self-exposure, this desire to communicate a very personal, perhaps incommunicable religious experience in such a public, even spectacular way that I find so disarming. It's an invitation to relationship, with me and anyone else who visits. That I didn't anticipate, and it has made all the difference. I tell my students that the study of religion is fundamentally about making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. It's about encountering religious ideas, practices, traditions, and institutions that initially appear to us as "other," disturbingly foreign, and coming to a point where we understand how they can make sense given a certain set of circumstances. Such work requires not only critical rigor and tenacity in order to elaborate those circumstances; it also requires imagination in order to put oneself in another's situation. Indeed, understanding is always in some sense about coming to see how something could make sense, could be true and meaningful, within a certain context, according to certain conditions, according to a certain story. We might think of understanding as an act of narrative imagination. It's about trying to bridge otherness by finding my way into the other's story. But I can never understand completely. I can never become the other I wish to understand. To presume that I can is dangerous, because then I risk reducing the other, incommensurably rich in particularity, complexity, and wonderful strangeness, to myself. And that is a form of violence. It kills the face of the other. Yet in my effort to imagine otherness, to let the other into myself, to understand, I end up becoming other to myself. I become less comfortable in my own skin. My own familiar begins to seem strange. I become a stranger to myself. Which is why I say that the study of religion is about making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. In the effort to make the strange familiar, the familiar becomes less familiar. I experienced this dynamic of religious understanding on many occasions in the course of my travels. Our family visit to Cross Garden is a good example. As I wandered around those 11 acres of fire-and-brimstone-preaching crosses and apocalyptic appliances, my initial experience was an irreducible mix of amusement and monumental horror. On the one hand, focusing on the crudely made individual pieces with their often ironic messages, I wanted to laugh out loud. On the other hand, enveloped in the total world that these individual pieces come together to create, I felt an overwhelming desire to climb into the motor home's captain chair and get the hell out of there. In both senses, in relation to the individual objects and to the total experience of the place, Cross Garden was other, foreign, profoundly strange. But as I talked with Bill and Marzell Rice and got to know their story, my feeling about the place, and them, began to change. I began to feel at home in their world. I came to recognize this place as an expression of profound religious experience. Not that I identified with their experience completely, but I could hear the story, get into it, see how it could be true, and from within that story, see Cross Garden as a genuine expression of it. For them it's not a scary place but a safe place, a nest, an ark in the storm. So as Bill and Marzell welcomed me into their family room and their family story, the strangeness of Cross Garden became less strange. By the end of our conversation, Bill was asking me about my own family and our story. He loved children, and when he learned that Clover and the kids were waiting for me in the motor home across the road, he begged me to invite them over. I trotted across the cross-strewn yard and over to the motor home to fetch them. "Bill wants to meet you," I said as I peeked in through the screen door. "What do you say?" The kids glanced anxiously at each other, then at me and Clover, then out the window, then back at each other, red-faced and sweaty from being holed up in the motor home for hours. "Really? Do we have to?" As we walked across the road, past the high bluff of crosses and into the front yard, Bill rolled out in his electric scooter chair to greet us, Marzell close behind. Smiles beamed from their faces. As Clover and the kids warmly but (I could see) anxiously approached to shake Bill's hand, I began to realize that in the process of making the Rice family's strangeness more familiar to me, I had become a little strange in relation to my own familiars. I found myself somewhere between Bill and Marzell and my own family. And I found myself in the role of mediator, but with no idea how to mediate other than to tell the whole story as the Rices had told it to me. I did so later, but at that moment it was impossible. This, then, is a story about the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. And what more remarkable combinations of the strange and the familiar could there be than such roadside religious attractions? Surely there's nothing more familiar to the American landscape than highways and religion. And nothing could be stranger than a roadside attraction like Cross Garden or a life-size Noah's Ark in progress. What better places to discover the familiar in the strange, and vice versa? Every road trip carries with it the possibility of renewal. As you break from the familiar commute and journey into terra incognita, that "unknown territory" where be monsters, and angels, and where it's sometimes hard to tell which is which, you open yourself to receiving an unexpected blessing, a moment of revelation that might bring new life. Perhaps you take to the road with the explicit aim of wresting such a blessing by discovering the world beyond your world. But what you end up discovering may be something more profoundly transformative and re-creative: yourself beyond yourself; in other words, self-transcendence. What desire for renewal or transcendence, what resurrection hope, what spirit has driven me into the religious terra incognita of roadside America? I don't think I could have answered that question when I began this project. But as I look back now, I can see that I've been motivated by something more than my admitted fascination with religious kitsch, and something more than my intellectual interest in making sense of these places as expressions of lived religion worth our attention. On a personal level, I've been driven by a desire to venture beyond the secure borders of my own self-assured cynicism in order to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity. Faith, as the New Testament's letter to the Hebrews puts it, is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It is the religious antithesis of cynicism, which, for all its clever love of irony and detached social commentary, is also a form of self-protection against risking belief in anything uncertain. Faith is about devoting oneself, body and mind, to that which is not evidently there, visible, verifiable, but in which one hopes and believes without the possibility of certainty. It's a divine madness whose hope comes, as the philosopher S?ren Kierkegaard famously put it, "by virtue of the absurd." Kierkegaard was endlessly fascinated by the madness of Abraham, absurdly faithful to God's commands even to the point of sacrificing his beloved son. There's something likewise endlessly fascinating to me about the madness of someone who is compelled to spend a lifetime giving form to his vision of a life-size Noah's Ark on a mountaintop, or re-creating the Holy Land in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the eyes of the world, these are indeed works of faith whose only virtue is absurdity. But by the same token I find them utterly, disarmingly sincere, without the slightest hint of irony. No knowing winks, no tongues in cheeks. And so I find myself compelled to peek over the fences of cynicism and ironic detachment, fences that too often enclose my daily commute through this world, in hopes of catching a glimpse of something of the substance of faith. Not that I'm entirely removed from the life of faith. I'm no pure cynic when it comes to religion. But my relationship to my own religious tradition is as tentative and complicated as it is abiding and deep. I was raised in two worlds that appear to most to be mutually exclusive. The first is that white suburban American world of Generation X, baptized in a shared popular-media culture and characterized above all by a general skepticism regarding the value of working within established systems, political and religious alike, as well as by a general feeling of powerlessness to find other ways of working for change in the world. But I also grew up with a clear religious identity within a particular religious culture, namely conservative evangelicalism. And that has made all the difference. While steeped in the Gen X pop culture -- Sex Pistols and Talking Heads, Watergate and the cold war, Gilligan's Island and The Love Boat, Pop Rocks and Maui wowie -- my childhood and teen years were also pervaded by family prayers before meals (even in restaurants, much to my sister's and my embarrassment), vacation Bible school (at age 6 I won a prize for being the first in my VBS class to memorize the names of all the books of the Old Testament), Friday-night hymn sings around the piano, high-school youth groups (my parents were Young Life leaders), mission trips, the Four Spiritual Laws, and that brown spiral songbook with the fish on the cover (you either know what I mean or you don't). Yet there is considerable distance between me and that particular form of Christianity now. I no longer would call myself a conservative evangelical -- nor would anyone else call me either or both of those terms. I'm sure many conservative evangelicals would hesitate to call me a Christian at all. Following a well-worn and well-documented path of spiritual development among my peers, I grew alienated from that culture and its theology during college. That's not to say that I have rejected Christianity or the church altogether. Although I can atheist anyone under the table on some days, I remain a Christian, and I remain committed to the church, albeit a far more progressive, socially and politically radical vision of the church than the one I grew up with -- a church that sees the work of the Gospel as the very this-worldly work of liberation and reconciliation, of sanctifying life, of letting suffering speak, and of letting justice roll down like waters. I am a member of a local church, and I go with my family nearly every Sunday. Clover is one of the ministers (which I suppose makes me a minister's wife), and I sincerely believe in her calling to that ministry. Moreover, I myself teach Sunday school there. But the way I teach it is a far cry from the way it was taught when I was a kid. My aim above all is to create a space for us to ask questions, ultimate questions, the kind that survive all the answers given them. Preferring Cicero's alternative etymology of religion -- not religare, "rebind," but relegere, "reread" -- I see it less as a binding system of beliefs or set of doctrines than as a process of rereading, re-examining, reinterpreting inherited traditions. For me the religious life is a communal practice of reading again, of opening the book and cracking its binding, of raising new questions and creating new meanings in new contexts. My favorite biblical books are the ones that do just that -- reread and question inherited tradition -- within the canon of Scripture: Job, in which the model of faith is a man whose abject suffering makes him desperate and disoriented enough to challenge God and the moral order of God's creation as attested in the Torah; Ecclesiastes, in which a sage wonders whether all that passes as wisdom is nothing but vapor; and Esther, which imagines a world much like ours, in which politics are driven by insecurity and in which God appears to be altogether absent. Above all I want to attend to those places in biblical literature, in Christian tradition, and in the life of faith in which our established discourse -- our theological answering machine -- breaks down, cracks open, and points beyond itself to a wholly other mystery that cannot be captured or represented. Yet another level of complexity in my religious life grows out of my work as a professor and researcher in the academic study of religion -- a profession, by the way, in which you'll find a great many ex-evangelicals, along with countless other lapsed or disaffected religious types. Studying various beliefs, practices, and institutions of religions (including my own) from historical and cross-cultural perspectives, as social and psychological phenomena, creates within me a certain distance from my own religious life. I often find myself treating my own religious practices and beliefs as data along with those drawn from other sources. Doing so creates an experience of self-objectification, something like a lucid dream. And dreaming when you know you're dreaming is something very different from just dreaming. No doubt rereading Christian tradition, as I try to do in the church, and studying it from academic perspectives, as I try to do in the university, are my ways of negotiating and making sense of my own inheritance from conservative evangelical Christianity without abandoning the religious life altogether. No doubt. Some would say that religion is like a raft. For a religion to be worth its salt, it has to be seaworthy enough to carry you across life's deepest, stormiest, most chaotic waters. And a raft of questions, riddled with theological leaks and tears, won't carry you very far. Perhaps that's my religion, and I won't realize it until I'm in over my head. Or perhaps I feel so securely buoyed by the faith of my childhood, the faith of my fathers, the faith of my minister wife, that I'm not afraid to peek over the sides of the raft into the abyss. And perhaps that's a kind of faith, albeit a borrowed one. But it's not the kind of faith that Kierkegaard is talking about. It's not the kind of faith that hears God talking. It's not the kind of faith that leads you to take your son on a walk up Mount Moriah, or build an ark on a mountaintop in Maryland, or plant a garden of crosses on a country road in Alabama. Not that I want that kind of faith. I don't think I do. But I find it strangely compelling in its exuberance, its willingness to risk all, its divine madness. Timothy K. Beal is a professor of religion and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University. This essay is excerpted from Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith, to be published next month by Beacon Press. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 19:45:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:45:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Roadside America: Golgotha Biblical Mini-Golf Message-ID: Golgotha Biblical Mini-Golf http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/KYCAVgolgotha.html [Click on the URL for images. And if you can get a print copy of CHE for Timothy Beal's article, it too has some excellent photographs.] [13]Field review by the editors. Cave City, [14]Kentucky In today's franchised brand character-choked mini-golf industry, it's refreshing to see someone attempt a relatively unique theme. And what better brand recognition than God's own time-tested characters and stories, available for not a dime of trademark licensing? Jonah and the Whale hole. Golgotha Fun Park is ideally situated -- an offbeat diversion near Mammoth Cave National Park, with appeal to both Christian family vacationers and the unconverted. According to an entrance sign, it is [15]America's #1 Shaded Biblical Mini-Golf. Other bible-themed courses have been reported in Lexington, KY; Myrtle Beach, SC; and Nashville, TN. But Golgotha is alive and well since it opened in 1992, perched atop a shady, pebbled Calvary hill on Highway 70, part of the Cave City tourism Mecca (hey...how come no one ever builds an Islamic Jihad Mini-Golf?). Three white crosses loom near the parking lot and mark the final hole; to get there, determined players putt their way through the hazards and miracles of the Good Book. After renting a club and ball in the gift shop, eager Golgotha fans line up at hole #1, The Book of Genesis. The first nine holes are inspired by the Old Testament: Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Moses parting the Red Sea, Daniel and the Lion. A sign at each hole helpfully spells out the relevant Biblical passage. [16]Noah's Ark preview. Obstacles are standard mini-golf course tunnels, twists, and chutes. We're amused that the scenes are comprised of repurposed lawn ornaments and cement statuettes -- no [17]priest-folk artist spent his life carving here. Jonah sits in the Whale's mouth, comfortable in shorts; a statue of St. Francis monitors porcelain animal pairs boarding the Ark. Old Testament stories make for better hazards, so the first nine holes are easy to identify without reading the signs. End Game for J? The New Testament holes are sparsely decorated, looser, at least one featuring elves and men in lederhosen where an Apostle or leper might have done the trick. As the holes cut back and forth across the hill, the game accelerates. The end is in sight -- Golgotha, "The Place of Skulls," where Jesus was crucified. An uphill challenge past the crosses finishes at the Lord's ascension up to Heaven. While in the gift shop returning your club and ball, look for the Bible Mini-golf T-shirt with a pair of skulls on the back. And there is life after Resurrection: Golgotha features a Go-Cart course and paintball skirmish zone. (Golgotha Fun Park: I-65 to Cave City/Hwy. 70 west, 1.5 miles on the right. Seasonal hours, like most outdoor attractions in Cave City.) [latesticon.gif] September 2002:Reported closed and in a state of gradual deterioration. July 2001: Reports from visitors suggest Golgotha is up for sale. It has "inconsistent" hours for now, so don't plan your whole vacation around this place. References 14. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/map/ky.html 15. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ky/KYCAVgolgotha2_thompson.jpg 16. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/images/ky/KYCAVgol_noahlg.jpg 17. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/ALCULave.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 19:50:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:50:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Microsoft Word Grammar Checker Are No Good, Scholar Conclude Message-ID: Microsoft Word Grammar Checker Are No Good, Scholar Conclude The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32a02902.htm By BROCK READ If you've ever used Microsoft Word, chances are you've seen that jagged green line appear beneath something you've written -- scolding you for drafting a fragmented sentence, maybe, or for slipping into the passive voice. That's Microsoft's grammar-checking technology at work. But how much good does the grammar checker actually do? Precious little, according to Sandeep Krishnamurthy, an associate professor of marketing and e-commerce at the University of Washington. After experimenting with the tool, Mr. Krishnamurthy concluded that it cannot identify many basic grammatical faux pas -- like errors in capitalization, punctuation, and verb tense. Now he has dedicated himself to chronicling the grammar checker's blind spots, and to persuading Microsoft to improve the tool. On his Web site ([3]http://faculty.washington.edu/sandeep/check), Mr. Krishnamurthy has posted evidence that he considers damning: a series of examples of poor grammar the software considers passable. One reads: "Marketing are bad for brand big and small. You Know What I am Saying? It is no wondering that advertisings are bad for company in America, Chicago and Germany." Microsoft officials did not respond to calls for comment. But in a statement released in response to Mr. Krishnamurthy's Web site, the company argued that its grammar checker is a writing aid, not a catchall. "The Word grammar checker is designed to catch the kinds of errors that ordinary users make in normal writing situations," the statement said. For above-average writers, the software might pick up a grammatical misstep or two, according to Mr. Krishnamurthy, but for subpar writers, the tool is useless. Mr. Krishnamurthy says many of his students are not native English speakers and often struggle with the written word. The grammar checker, he argues, impedes their efforts to improve their writing -- by telling them that misconjugated verbs and poorly structured sentences are perfectly fine. The tool is so pernicious, he says, that Microsoft should either improve it or ditch it. Mr. Krishnamurthy recommends that the software more easily let users choose whether they want only basic guidance or significant editing help. The current software allows users to pick which types of grammatical errors they want identified, but Mr. Krishnamurthy says that system is too complicated for many beginning writers. Some technical experts say that creating a better grammar checker would be a tall order, but Mr. Krishnamurthy says the program just needs to do a better job of telling writers how to use it. "I've heard some techies say, You're holding us to too high a standard," he says, "but I don't completely buy that." Editor's note: The headline on this article cleared Microsoft's grammar checker. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 19:52:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:52:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: An American U. Rises in Afghanistan Message-ID: An American U. Rises in Afghanistan The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32a03902.htm By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTAN The groundbreaking ceremony for the American University of Afghanistan, the country's first private, American-style university, took place in Kabul last month. The university, which plans to open in 2006, is patterning itself after other American-style institutions abroad, such as the American University of Beirut. It will provide courses in management, communications, and the liberal arts for 1,100 undergraduates. All courses will be taught in English and will be open to students from Afghanistan and the region. The university will aggressively reach out to young Afghan women, Afghan higher-education officials said. It plans to build appropriate facilities and housing for women, award scholarships to poor women, and hire female professors. The U.S. government is supporting the university with a multiyear commitment of more than $15-million, Laura Bush, the first lady, said in a speech in Kabul last month. She visited a teacher-training institute, where she spoke of the importance of educating women. Those pushing for the new university believe there is sufficient interest among Afghans and Afghan-Americans to sustain a private institution. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan attended the groundbreaking ceremony, along with Sharif Fayez, Afghanistan's former higher-education minister, who is interim president of the new university. The Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group, has signed a grant agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development to act as the new university's fiduciary agent for one year. During that time, it will develop a set of financial and administrative systems for the new university and help it raise grant money from AID and other donors. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 13 19:56:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:56:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: (Wolfe) Drilling Into the Bedrock of Ordinary Experience Message-ID: Drilling Into the Bedrock of Ordinary Experience The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.4 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26b01001.htm [Tom Wolfe's letter appended.] By ROBERT S. BOYNTON When I began teaching a course on American literary journalism, I was puzzled by the 30-year gap between the end of what was considered the New Journalism and the contemporary writers who were my focus. Was everything written since Tom Wolfe's influential 1973 introduction to The New Journalism -- in which he argued that nonfiction, not the novel, had become "the most important literature being written in America today" -- merely a footnote to that movement? The more I looked into it, the more I came to understand that not only was Wolfe's account inaccurate, but it was also an impediment to appreciating both the distinctively American quality of modern literary journalism and its continuity with its 19th-century predecessors. And since the way writers construct the story of who we are is as important for our culture as it is for the study of journalism, Wolfe's distortions pose a genuine dilemma. For even as Wolfe was celebrating the triumph of the New Journalism, the seeds of an even more formidable stage in American literary evolution were being planted. In the years since Wolfe's manifesto, a group of writers has been quietly securing a place at the very center of contemporary American literature for reportorially based, narrative-driven, long-form nonfiction. These New New Journalists -- Ted Conover, William Finnegan, Jonathan Harr, Alex Kotlowitz, Jon Krakauer, William Lang-ewiesche, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Michael Lewis, Susan Orlean, Richard Preston, Eric Schlosser, Lawrence Weschler, Lawrence Wright, and others -- use the license to experiment with form earned by the New Journalists of the 1960s and 70s to speak to social and political concerns similar to those of 19th-century writers like Stephen Crane, Jacob A. Riis, and Lincoln Steffens (an earlier generation of New Journalists), synthesizing the best of the two traditions. Hence the admittedly clumsy moniker, the New New Journalists. Rigorously reported, psychologically astute, sociologically sophisticated, and politically aware, the New New Journalism may well be the most popular and influential development in the history of American literary nonfiction. Neither frustrated novelists nor wayward newspaper reporters, today's authors tend to write magazine articles or nonfiction books that benefit from both the legitimacy that Wolfe's legacy has brought to literary non-fiction and from the concurrent displacement of the novel as the most prestigious form of literary expression. For today's New Journalists, society is more complex than for their immediate predecessors. They consider class and race, not just Wolfe's "status" (how one dresses, where one lives), to be primary indices of social hierarchy. They view ethnic and ideological subcultures ("terra incognita," as Wolfe called them) as different in degree, not in kind, from the rest of American culture. This movement's achievements tend to be more reportorial than literary. Wolfe's New Journalism was a truly avant-garde movement that expanded journalism's rhetorical and literary scope by placing the author at the center of the story, channeling a character's thoughts, using nonstandard punctuation, and exploding traditional narrative forms. By contrast, the new generation experiments more with the way one gets the story. To that end, its writers have developed innovative strategies to immerse themselves in their topics -- Conover worked as a prison guard for Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (Random House, 2000) -- and they have extended the time they've spent reporting -- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent nearly a decade reporting Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Scribner, 2003). It is ironic, then, that this reportorial movement is exploring the very territory Wolfe once ceded to the novel. "There are certain areas of life that journalism still cannot move into easily, particularly for reasons of invasion of privacy, and it is in this margin that the novel will be able to grow in the future," Wolfe wrote in 1973. What he didn't anticipate was that a new generation of journalists would build upon (and ultimately surpass) his reporting methods, lengthening and deepening their involvement with characters to the point that the public-private divide essentially disappeared. Wolfe said he went inside his characters' heads; the New New Journalists become part of their lives. Finally, theirs is the literature of the everyday. If Wolfe's outlandish scenarios and larger-than-life characters leaped from the page, the New New Journalism goes in the opposite direction, drilling down into the bedrock of ordinary experience into what Gay Talese has called "the fictional current that flows beneath the stream of reality." In that regard, the elder statesmen who have most inspired this generation are John McPhee and Talese, prose poets of the quotidian. McPhee's influence has been twofold. First, a generation of literary journalists has taken his "Literature of Fact" course at Princeton University. Second, he has opened up subject matter. His work has proved that anything -- geology, nuclear weapons, fishing, basketball -- is fair game for the literary journalist, as long as it is prodigiously researched and painstakingly reported. Of course, the New New Journalists do not constitute a coherent group. Some of them know each other, but most do not. They don't live in any one city or part of the country. They write for magazines -- primarily The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone -- but mostly make their living writing books. What they do share is a devotion to close-to-the-skin reporting as the best way to bridge the gap between their subjective perspective and the reality they are observing. How did Wolfe's misleading history of American literary journalism take root? His manifesto has long been considered the New Journalism's bible; and, as with the Bible, it contains a creation story and a set of guiding principles. The principles are fairly straightforward. The New Journalism uses complete dialogue, rather than the snippets quoted in daily journalism; proceeds scene by scene, much as in a movie; incorporates varying points of view, rather than telling a story solely from the perspective of the narrator; and pays close attention to status details about the appearance and behavior of its characters. The creation myth is more involved: "The sudden arrival of this new style of journalism, from out of nowhere, had caused a status panic in the literary community," Wolfe wrote. No longer would journalism function as little more than the "motel you checked into overnight on the road to the final triumph" of the novel. The drama of Wolfe's account was in its headlines -- Status Panic in the Literary World! The Novel Dead! The New Journalism Triumphant! But it rested on two hidden premises. First, because he insisted that the New Journalism sprang forth "from out of nowhere," Wolfe had to explain away the presence of writers whose work bore any similarity to it. Second, because he was smart enough to know that nothing springs forth ex nihilo, he needed to provide the New Journalism a proper pedigree -- something not as base as mere journalism; otherwise, the "new style" would be little more than the next logical stage of the genre. And where was the fun in that? Wolfe's solution to those seemingly contradictory needs was ingenious. What better literary precedent with which to upend the novel, he figured, than the novel itself? Thus he argued that the New Journalism was not a stage in American journalism, but a revival of the European tradition of literary realism -- a tradition unjustly ignored by a generation of navel-gazing M.F.A.'s. In one fell swoop, Wolfe simultaneously "dethroned" the novel, broke from American journalism, and claimed the mantle of 18th- and 19th-century European fiction, particularly the work of Balzac, Dickens, Fielding, and Zola. Wolfe gave grudging acknowledgment to the fact that New Yorker writers like Truman Capote, John Hersey, A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, and Lillian Ross had been experimenting with various New Journalism techniques for years, lumping them along with what he called other "Not Half-Bad Candidates" for historical forerunners of the New Journalism. Critics griped, but largely accepted Wolfe's account. Latching on to his notion of the "journalistic novel," literary theorists set off on a wild postmodern goose chase to divine the line between fact and fiction, producing a rash of scholarly studies on such topics as "fables of fact" and "the novel as history." Most discussed the same six writers (Capote, Joan Didion, Michael Herr, Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson, and Wolfe). The skeptics, for the most part, focused on the question of whether the New Journalism was, in fact, new. Wasn't 18th- and 19th-century English literature -- Addison and Steele's coffeehouse reports, Dickens's Sketches by Boz, Hazlitt's "The Fight" -- bursting with precedents? In that respect, Wolfe's reply was convincing. On close inspection, those writers had entirely different aims and methods, he argued. Addison and Steele were, essentially, essayists who occasionally used scenes and quotations to animate their work. Most of the others weren't writing journalism. They simply hadn't been playing Wolfe's game. As often happens in an age of planned obsolescence, the New Journalism didn't remain new for long. "Whatever happened to the New Journalism?" wondered Thomas Powers in Commonweal, two years after Wolfe's manifesto. By the late 1980s, the consensus was that the New Journalism was dead. On closer examination, however, it is clear that something quite exciting was taking place in American literary journalism. Although indebted to Wolfe's experimentation, the New New Journalism was rehabilitating important aspects of a different set of predecessors. The figure who most forcefully elaborated the principles of that 19th-century genre -- artfully told narratives about subjects of concern to ordinary people -- was Lincoln Steffens, the city editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser. Insisting that the basic goals of the artist and the journalist -- subjectivity, honesty, empathy -- were the same, Steffens (best remembered as the first "muckraker") led the movement to produce "literature" about America's most important institutions (business and politics) by infusing journalism with the passion, style, and techniques of great fiction. Among his contemporaries, the writer who best put Steffens's vision into practice was Stephen Crane, who prided himself on balancing the demands of literature and journalism in a manner that honored both. Crane's favorite journalistic form was the closely observed sketch of city life. Those sketches -- of the poor, of immigrants, of ordinary citizens -- drew readers with the unsentimental, artful way they captured characters and their pedestrian struggles. Crane wrote not as a social commentator or a polemical, muckraking journalist in the style of Jacob Riis, but rather as an observer. "He is not concerned with converting the reader to social sympathy (perhaps distrustful or weary of the condescension of such a stance), but with converting the sheer data into experience," the historian Alan Trachtenberg once wrote. While connected by that sensibility, the New New Journalists range widely over the areas of experience they choose to render. Lawrence Wright's respect for the evangelical impulse, combined with his grounding in psychology and Arabic culture, have made him one of the most insightful commentators on the class of convictions that have led to war and terrorism, as in his New Yorker article from Saudi Arabia last year, "The Kingdom of Silence." Eric Schlosser's muckraking expos?s of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) and Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) are exactly the kind of meticulously reported work I could imagine Steffens or Riis producing. William Langewiesche's American Ground, Unbuilding the World Trade Center (North Point Press, 2002) refashions the popular 19th-century genre of the travel adventure into a journey deep into the bowels of America's foremost symbol of global capitalism. Jon Krakauer, too, builds on that sturdy literary form. His trek into the wilds of Alaska -- Into the Wild (Villard Books, 1996) -- traces the final days of a young adventurer. Even when writing about mountain climbing or Mormon fundamentalism -- Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (Villard Books, 1997) and Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (Doubleday, 2003) -- the terrain Kra-kauer explores is first and foremost psychological. It is not that their 19th-century predecessors have directly influenced these writers. More, I would argue, the New New Journalists are, often unwittingly, dwelling on questions that the genre has been posing since the 19th century: How does a fast-growing society of immigrants construct a national identity? How does a country built by capitalism consider questions of economic justice? How does a nation of different faiths live together? As in the 19th century, America today is rethinking its place in the world. It is questioning whether and how it can absorb the huge number of immigrants who have flocked to its shores. Once again, America's is the story the world wants to read about, although perhaps more out of spite than admiration, and the subjects that the New New Journalists write about are those the world cares about. Ted Conover -- Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens (Vintage Books, 1987) -- and Jane Kramer -- Unsettling Europe (Random House, 1980) -- explore transnational migration. Leon Dash -- Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America (BasicBooks, 1996) -- William Finnegan -- Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country (Random House, 1991) -- and Alex Kotlowitz -- There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (Doubleday, 1998) -- report on race. Michael Lewis -- Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (W.W. Norton, 2003) -- chronicles big business. We are currently experiencing the fascination with "true stories" -- seen also in "drama ripped from the headlines," "reality TV" -- but the stories the New New Journalists care about concern the precarious state of our society and the world. Much as it was in the 19th century, nonfiction today is as prestigious -- if not more so -- as the novel. Ours is an age of nonfiction, "the de facto literature of our time," the critic Seymour Krim once called it. That is as true commercially as it is culturally. There is nothing quaint or marginal about these works of literary journalism, many of which have been enormous best sellers. The New New Journalism is big business on a scale never before seen by serious literary journalism. With their intensive reporting on social and cultural issues, the New New Journalists have revived the tradition of American literary journalism, raising it to a more popular and commercial level than either its 19th- or late-20th-century predecessors ever imagined. Perhaps it is time we give it its due. Robert S. Boynton is director of New York University's magazine-journalism program. His book The New New Journalism: Conversations on Craft With America's Best Nonfiction Writers will be published by Vintage next week. --------------- Tom Wolfe Replies to Robert S. Boynton on 'The New New Journalism' The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32b01701.htm LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Tom Wolfe Replies to Robert S. Boynton on 'The New New Journalism' To the Editor: Is it really true that due to the sheer enormity of the task, college department heads today no longer read books -- and instead rely on "book briefings" by graduate students? When that rumor began circulating four years ago, I dismissed it as absurd. But recent events have caused me to pause, and ponder. For example, in The Chronicle Review's March 4 issue, writing about what he calls "the New New Journalism," Robert S. Boynton, director of New York University's magazine-journalism program, states that the book Moneyball, by Michael Lewis, "chronicles big business" ([3]"Drilling Into the Bedrock of Ordinary Experience"). Inexplicably, the director's statement is not merely inaccurate. It is wildly gibber-gibber ape-shrieking off the wall. Moneyball is about playing a game on a field, baseball. Specifically, it is about how one Billy Beane, office-bound general manager of a woebegone team, the Oakland Athletics, used the findings of a string of baseball-happy amateur statisticians to make a completely objective analysis of which player skills and field strategies work best in that game. The figures showed, for example, that the stolen base, the sacrifice bunt, and the hit and run actually reduce a team's chances of winning at that game. They showed that the hitter who has the knack of forcing the pitcher to a long count, say, 3-1 or 3-2, and then drawing a walk is a team's great invisible batting power, and that a hitter's on-base percentage was more important than his batting average in that game. By using the blind stats and ignoring conventional baseball savvy, over a four-year stretch (1999-2002) the Athletics won more regular season games than any other team in the Major Leagues aside from the Atlanta Braves, made the playoffs three times, and in 2002 won the toughest of the Major League divisions, the American League West, with 103 wins, including a record-breaking 20 straight in September -- despite being so strapped for money, they could afford only two types of players: has-beens and not-yets of that game. In other words, Moneyball is a book about a radical mathematical science for playing a particular game. It is not a book that "chronicles big business." It is a book about a game. How could Director Boynton get the very subject of a book he cites as evidence supporting his thesis so completely wrong? Could it have possibly been a bungled briefing by some underpaid, overworked graduate student who himself couldn't find time to read the book? It is very hard to believe such a thing. But I challenge anyone to come up with a more logical explanation. Or how could Director Boynton be not merely incorrect but, again, astonishingly, brain-numbingly wrong about an essay he chooses to make central to his argument, "The New Journalism" (1973) by Tom Wolfe? According to Director Boynton -- or some grad student who hasn't slept for three days?? -- "Wolfe's New Journalism" involved such "avant-garde" devices as "placing the author at the center of the story" and "exploding traditional narrative." In fact, ego-centered narration is as old as journalism itself, and Wolfe warns against its pitfalls. And far from "exploding traditional narrative," Wolfe recommends the opposite: bringing into nonfiction the traditional structure and narrative of the novel or short story. Director Boynton -- or the voice at his ear? -- says Wolfe uses the sociological term "status" to refer to cosmetic matters, "how one dresses, where one lives," and overlooks the more profound matters of "class and race." In fact, Wolfe uses the term "status" in precisely the way Max Weber, who introduced it to sociology, did; i.e., to refer to the entire range of ways in which human beings rank one another, class and race being two of them -- and he underlines that point in his essay. Not incidentally, the essay served as the introduction to an anthology that included excerpts from two of the most vivid and best-known nonfiction stories ever written about class and race: "Martin Luther King Is Still on the Case," by Garry Wills, and "Radical Chic & Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers," the only chronicle of the thousands of racial "confrontations" minority organizations were compelled to use in order to get money out of the Poverty Program's white administrators. Director Boynton -- or the grad-grind elf on his shoulder? -- says that when Wolfe's essay uses the term "point of view," it is referring to "varying points of view," the narrator's being one. In fact, it refers to something else entirely: point of view in Henry James's technical use of the term, i.e, making the reader feel he is always inside the skin, the eye sockets, the central nervous system of some character as the story unfolds. Director Boynton says that Wolfe thinks of "ethnic and ideological subcultures" as "terra incognita," phenomena that so baffle him, he regards them as different not just in "degree" but "in kind" from "the rest of American culture." Really? Whose hookah has the elf been smoking? The fact is, Wolfe doesn't refer in any way to "ethnic and ideological subcultures" and uses the term "terra incognita" only in reference to the physiology of the brain. Today, just as in 1973 when Wolfe wrote his "New Journalism" essay, neuroscientists are still unable to provide a physiological explanation of consciousness, memory, language, sleep, or the effect of general anesthesia. But they do know what such brain functions are not. They are not "ethnic and ideological subcultures," whatever these 12 poor old tumble-down shabby-genteel abstract syllables may summon up in the mind of the director. If this is the extent of Director Boynton's -- or the homunculus's? -- grasp of the obvious, I'm not sure I want to see how he has -- they have? -- handled the excellent journalists included in his -- their? -- upcoming book, The New New Journalism. Speaking of which, the evidence, as we have seen, indicates that he -- or the little fellow? -- has never read Michael Lewis's Moneyball. It should come as no surprise, then, that he appears oblivious of something else: the "New New" locution of The New New Journalism is a haircut off Michael Lewis's brilliant Silicon Valley story, "The New New Thing." Despite all the foregoing, I still don't believe Director Boynton or any other college department head in America would have graduate students read books for him. But should such a practice exist, it is the strongest argument yet for paying graduate-student T.A.'s professional-level salaries and lowering their workloads. They must be given greater incentive and more time for the important chores they now do for faculty members. Tom Wolfe New York From Euterpel66 at aol.com Thu Apr 14 00:12:58 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:12:58 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Dowd: Recline Yourself, Resign Yourself, You're Through Message-ID: very funny Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk Thu Apr 14 09:09:39 2005 From: n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk (Nicholas Bannan) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:09:39 +0100 Subject: [Paleopsych] Stuff (NZ): Babies are not conscious in the womb References: Message-ID: <004e01c540d1$b0624560$6882e186@.rdg.ac.uk> This view of foetal experience would not seem consisent with the several exciting studies (Woodward; Shetler; Lecanuet; Lamont; etc.) that illustrate that music first experienced in the womb is recognised by infants; and other studies that suggest a similar early priming for language. I am not sure that the environment of slaughterhouses is the lynchpin of this issue. NB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Premise Checker" To: Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 7:10 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Stuff (NZ): Babies are not conscious in the womb > Babies are not conscious in the womb > http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3194905a7144,00.html > 22 February 2005 > By KENT ATKINSON > > Babies - both human and animal - react to touch, sound, and other > external stimuli in the womb, but do not consciously experience them, > says a group researching animal welfare. > > Professor David Mellor, of Massey University, said yesterday that the > embryo and foetus are apparently never conscious, and actually spend > much of their time anaethetised. > > "Consciousness first appears only after birth, associated with first > exposure to air, gravity, hard surfaces, unlimited space and, usually, > to cold ambient conditions," he said. > > Prof Mellor, director of the university's animal welfare science and > bioethics centre, said he had made a fresh evaluation of consciousness > in the womb - particularly in terms of sheep - after meatworkers at a > slaughter plant expressed concern that foetuses of slaughtered animals > might be drowning in their amniotic fluid. > > He said the study used extensive research into sheep which had been > originally intended not for animal welfare purposes, but because sheep > were an excellent large-animal "model" for humans. A collaboration with > Auckland University's foetal physiology and neuroscience group had > produced insights relevant to human foetuses. > > Prof Mellor will present a major paper to a two-day London conference on > animal sentience, starting on March 17, which will examine the ability > of a foetus and newborn to receive sensory information and to "feel" > sensations that cause suffering. > > His paper will argue that the embryo and foetus cannot suffer before or > during birth, and that suffering can only occur in the newborn when the > onset of breathing sufficiently oxygenates its tissues sufficiently. > > Prof Mellor said that many paediatricians were convinced that a foetus > in the womb could feel pain, because they based their judgement on > comparable premature infants born as early as 24 week to 28 weeks. > > Those infants did experience pain, and paediatricians had assumed that > so did an age-equivalent foetus. > > "But the chemical environment in the brain is very different after the > baby is born," he said. Breathing oxygen was a key difference, in > addition to loss of the chemicals produced by the placenta. > > When a baby was born, breathing oxygen caused a critical chemical > messenger, adenosine, to be cleared from the bloodstream in seconds, > allowing it to start experiencing consciousness. > > This indicated that stillborn babies that did not breath did not suffer > pain or distress - they simply went from being asleep in the womb to > profound unconsciousness and death. > > Prof Mellor said future areas of research would look at differences > between foetuses that went through a normal birth and those that were > delivered by caesarian section. > > Early indications were that providing the foetus could breath > sufficiently well to oxygenate its blood, the loss of placental > adenosine, the stimulation of cold air, loss of buoyancy, and > "mechanical" touch would mean a baby from a caesarian birth would not be > different to one which had gone through a normal delivery. > > Prof Mellor said he expected the work with Auckland University to spur > significant discussion. > > In terms of humans, there was no doubt that doubt that babies before > birth reacted to a range of stimuli because the sense organs of foetuses > in the uterus began to work well before birth, he said. > > Touch, sound and other stimuli affected the foetus, and could cause it > to move in the womb. > > "But the evidence, accumulated over the last 25-35 years, is that this > does not occur at the conscious level," he said. Babies born with no > cerebral cortex - the part of the brain essential for consciousness - > could also respond with movements and hormone release and heart rate > changes. > > But Prof Mellor said that though effects from stimulation of touch, > sight, sound, and taste were not at a conscious level," it is possible - > and some evidence suggests that it is in fact likely - that such effects > persist well beyond birth". > > "Some might very well be at least benign, and perhaps even positively > advantageous, depending on what they are," he said. "Playing music and > speaking softly could well have beneficial effects". > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:20:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:20:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ellen Staurowsky: Sports/Giving Non-Correlation Message-ID: Sports/Giving Non-Correlation http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/Sport_Giving_Non-Correlation.asp The Relationship Between Athletics and Higher Education Fund Raising: The Myths Far Outweigh the Facts By Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Sport Studies Introduction Since the formalization of intercollegiate athletics within institutions of higher learning in the late 1800s/early 1900s, college presidents, legislators, alumni/nae, faculty, athletic directors, and average citizens have speculated about the relationship between the success of athletic programs and the generosity of donors. As a matter of first impression, it is easy to understand why most people assume that big-time college sport has a positive influence on donation levels to institutions. Given the multi-billion dollar industry which is college sport and the degree to which the public is exposed to March Madness and the Bowl Championship Series via television, print media, and the Internet, circumstantial evidence reinforces a common sense belief that big-time college sport possesses the potential to generate big-time revenue for colleges and universities. One would be na?ve to deny that substantial amounts of money are generated by football and men's basketball. However, caution should be used so as to avoid reaching a false conclusion based on superficial information alone. The mere fact that some athletic programs generate enormous revenues and a high degree of public visibility should not be construed to mean that success in athletics yields higher rates or levels of philanthropic or charitable donations to colleges and universities. In point of fact, the results of studies examining the relationship between athletic programs and higher education fund raising over a 70-year span of time suggest that there is either no relationship or a very weak relationship at best between the two. The remainder of this paper is organized into three sections. The first will highlight studies that have focused on this question, offering brief summaries of findings for each study. The second section will discuss problems associated with the existing studies and how this impacts the interpretation of the findings. The final section will offer observations about how this information relates to the broader discussion regarding compliance with Title IX in intercollegiate athletic programs. Summary of Studies - Athletics and Its Impact on Giving to Higher Education Marts (1934) - sought to understand if an emphasis on football with the goal of gaining national visibility resulted in a financial benefit for colleges and universities between the years 1921-1930. Marts studied 32 institutions in total, 16 of which had made a commitment to upgrading their football program while the remaining institutions were classified as part of a control group. Schools without an emphasis on football realized a 126 percent increase in their endowments while schools with an emphasis on football realized an increase of 105 percent. Marts did note that several of the schools that opted to build a powerhouse football team were experiencing financial conditions that he described as "pitiful" because of the investment needed in promoting football. Cutlip (1965) - a noted researcher in the area of institutional fund raising, Cutlip examined the impact of athletic program success on endowments, enrollments, contributions, and reputations of schools. He found that these variables were unaffected or negatively affected by the success of athletic programs. Spaeth & Greeley (1970) - concluded that contrary to previous researchers who found a negative impact between athletic success and alumni giving, winning football teams may prompt alumni to raise the level of their contributions. However, Spaeth and Greeley did not test their hypothesis empirically. Rather, they offered speculation that the emotional attachment of alumni to a winning football team would probably predispose them to give more to their alma mater. Amdur (1971) - in a critique of the college sports establishment, Amdur wrote anecdotally about the ebb and flow of alumni contributions as they related to the fortunes of athletic teams, citing a decrease in contributions at the University of Georgia in the wake of mediocre football seasons, increases at the University of Missouri following winning football seasons, a modest decline in an otherwise decade of increasing alumni giving at Amherst in the two years when the college did not win the "Little Three" football crown, and a "dramatic jump" in alumni giving at Wilkes College in years when its football team's performance improved dramatically. Springer (1974) - examined the impact of dropping football at 151 colleges between 1939 and 1974. Springer reported that officials involved in these decisions were originally concerned about the impact cuts would have on alumni giving. According to Springer, almost all the schools suffered no ill effects from cutting football and in some instances the cuts "had considerable positive results." Budig (1976) - analyzing data on alumni giving for 79 colleges and universities during a four-year span of time during the 1960s and 1970s, Budig sought to determine whether total alumni giving was related to the performance records of football and (men's) basketball teams. Budig found that the "significant relationships between athletic success and alumni giving" were so "infrequent" and "random" that no systematic link between athletic success and alumni giving was found. Sigelman & Carter (1979) - examining 138 Division I colleges and universities for the academic year 1975-1976, these researchers tested the validity of the idea that "alumni giving varies according to a school's success on the playing field." Using correlation and regression analysis, Sigelman and Carter related the alumni-giving change figures for a given year with three athletic success measures (basketball record, football record, bowl appearance). They reported no relationship between success or failure in football and basketball and increases and decreases in alumni giving. Brooker & Klastoria (1981) - explored the relationship between the records of football and (men's) basketball teams of 58 major U.S. universities with average contributions from solicited alumni and the per capita gifts to the annual funds. Brooker and Klastoria concluded that team success did correlate highly with alumni generosity for schools within homogeneous groupings. However, they went on to equivocate that the relationship "depends on some institutional factors" and the nature of the institution (public or private). Alumni at private institutions, schools with a religious affiliation, and mid-sized public universities appeared more inclined to be positively affected by the success of athletic teams. In an analysis of all state universities in the sample, they found inconsistent results. They also noted that a major question remained to be answered, that being the cost-benefit relationship of athletics to the trends found. In effect, even in circumstances where there may be a positive relationship between athletic success and alumni contributions, the financial benefit may not be worth the cost associated with fielding and promoting a winning team. Coughlin & Erekson (1984) - focusing on the relationship between athletic success and contributions to athletic programs, Coughlin & Erekson conducted a cross-sectional study of 56 NCAA Division I institutions. Several measures of athletic success, including game attendance, post-season play, and winning percentage were identified as significant determinants of giving to athletic programs. McCormick & Tinsley (1990) - applying a two-equation model to data obtained from Clemson University for a four-year period of time, the authors reported a connection between contributions to the athletic program and to the academic endowment. They identified the success of the football program as a determinant of the level of contributions made to the athletic department while athletic contributions are a determinant of alumni giving to the endowment. According to the authors, an estimated 10 percent increase in the level of donations to the athletic booster club was associated with a 5 percent increase in contributions to athletics. Grimes & Chressanthis (1994) - empirically analyzed the effect of intercollegiate athletics on alumni contributions to the academic endowment using time series data over a 30-year span of time from what they described as a "representative" National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I university, that being Mississippi State University. Based on this case study, the authors concluded that alumni contributions were positively related to the overall winning percentage of the football, (men's) basketball, and baseball programs. Grimes and Chressanthis report the existence of a "spillover benefit" to the university because athletic success appears to influence the level of alumni giving to the academic side of the institution. Television exposure was identified as influencing donors positively, while NCAA sanctions for rules violations appear to have a negative effect on donors. The authors noted that the generalizability of their findings was limited because this was a case study. Harrison, Mitchell, & Peterson (1995) - examined the alumni giving patterns of 18 colleges and universities. Criteria for selection included public/private, large/small, and research/teaching orientation. Whereas fraternity/sorority affiliations were associated positively with alumni giving, having an NCAA Division I athletic program had no significant effect. Rhoads & Gerking (2000) - conducted an empirical examination of the links between athletics, academics, and educational contributions in 87 universities that sponsor Division I football and men's basketball teams (most members of the SEC, Big Ten, Atlantic Coast, Pacific 10, Big 12, and Western Athletic conferences were included as well as representatives from other conferences and major independents). Rhoads and Gerking concluded that total contributions are not affected by year-to-year changes in the success of athletic teams. Total contributions from alumni may be affected by the performance of athletic teams. Further, alumni seem to respond more positively to football bowl wins and negatively to NCAA probation. The estimated impact of athletic success, however, is relatively weak compared to the effect of student and faculty quality on alumni giving. Debunking the Myth That Athletics Success Favorably Influences Alumni Giving Well respected scholars (Frey, 1985; Gerdy, 2002; Zimbalist, 1999, 2000; Sack & Staurowsky, 1998; Shulman & Bowen, 2001; Sperber, 2000; Thelin, 1994) who have intensively studied intercollegiate athletics and its relationship with higher education have examined this body of work in total and concluded that there is little if any empirical support for the notion that athletic success translates into increased levels of alumni support to institutions of higher learning. In 1985, James Frey, a sociologist from the University of Nevada-Los Vegas characterized this as the "winning-team" myth. In offering possible explanations for the lack of a positive relationship between athletic success and general endowment funds, economist Andrew Zimbalist (1999) points out that "the main contributors who seem to respond to athletic prominence are boosters, not the typical alumnus or academic philanthropist" (p. 168). This reliance on contributors who do not have an academic interest in institutions of higher learning started in the first half of the twentieth century (roughly 1910-1946) when men's athletic programs received financial support through the development and emergence of booster organizations, which came to be called athletic associations. Historian and former chancellor at the College of William and Mary, John Thelin (1994) has described the booster phenomenon as "one of the most significant organizational developments during the period between the world wars" because the booster organization or athletic association was a "legal corporation that was a part of, but apart from, university structure" (p. 97). The relative independence of athletic associations and other athletic fund raising groups on college campuses, separated as they are from institutional advancement offices, provides grounds to raise serious questions about the validity of the assertion that athletic success enhances the ability of institutions to raise money for general funds or endowments. Concerns regularly emerge surrounding the inability of institutions to control the behavior of overzealous boosters who act improperly by providing inappropriate benefits to athletes and who attempt to influence the establishment of academic and athletic priorities on their campuses. Former assistant commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and legislative assistant at the NCAA, John Gerdy (2002), provides some insight into this mistaken notion that there is a positive link between the athletic department and the institution when it comes to matters of fund raising. He writes: "... many big-time athletic programs are run as independent, profit-driven, auxiliary enterprises. Despite the claim from athletic fund-raisers that they work closely with the institutional advancement office to raise funds for the university, such cooperation is usually superficial. The separation and mistrust that exists between most academic and athletic communities means that virtually all athletic department fund-raising efforts are directed at raising money specifically for sports, rather than for the institution generally...It is rare when an athletic department donates money to the institution because there is no excess revenue to donate." (pgs. 164-165). Richard Conklin, a top administrator at the University of Notre Dame, has commented similarly about this separation. He observed, "We at Notre Dame have had extensive experience trying to turn athletic interests of `subway alumni' [read booster] to academic development purposes--and we have had no success. There is no evidence that the typical, non-alumnus fan of Notre Dame has much interest in the educational mission." About the myth of athletics contributing to the financial welfare of the academic component of educational institutions, former President of Michigan State University John D. Biaggio stated the "myth of institutional dependency on athletic revenues - therefore on athletic victories - needs to be aggressively refuted" (as quoted in Zimbalist, 2000). If one comes to terms with the fact that athletic programs clearly fund raise for their own needs while providing essentially lip-service to the overall fund raising goals of colleges and universities, one can begin to understand why the notion of a "spillover benefit" from athletics has been questioned as often as it has. First, Andrew Zimbalist (2000) has estimated that "no more than a dozen" of the 300-plus schools in the NCAA Division I generate surplus funds. The average subsidy a Division I-A athletic department receives from the institutional general fund is nine percent, or roughly $1.3 million (Fulks, 2000). Thus, even if one were to concede that indirect benefits in the form of brand name recognition exist, any "spillover" goes back to most athletic programs anyway in the form of institutional subsidies. Second, data that is often times interpreted to be evidence of a "spillover benefit" may actually reflect a temporary response to a winning team or more importantly, a factor that in reality undermines the ability of institutional fund raisers to do their jobs. Consider this data from Central Connecticut State University for the year 1999-2000. In the spring of 2000, Central Connecticut made its first appearance in the NCAA men's Division I tournament. The madness of March resulted in an 88 percent increase in donations to the athletic department and a 24 percent increase in alumni giving (Merritt, 2000). This data set, however, does not distinguish between giving to the athletic fund and giving to the general fund. Whereas there may in fact be occasional upsurges in giving based on the success of individual teams, the meaning of that increase needs to be considered within the context of the overall pattern of giving for an institution. Otherwise, such a report can be misleading by hiding the very real possibility that while donations to the athletic program went up, donations to the institution's general fund remained stable or declined during the same period of time. In the absence of having full disclosure of the entire institutional fund-raising record with a complete breakdown of athletic and general fund donations, the assumed "spillover benefit" may in fact mask the "undermining effect" that occurs when athletic fund-raising creates a clear competing interest with academic and other educational priorities where limited financial resources exist. Beyond the mechanics of financial accounting and interpretation of the data regarding athletic program success and institutional fund raising, there are problems associated with the assumptions that shape the discussion about athletic success and fund raising. The romantic image of undergraduates and alums cheering the team to victory and forming a bond with each other and their alma maters while watching football games has been an enduring one in the marketing of college life and intercollegiate athletics. Regardless of how valid the romantic image is, the question of whether alumni/nae support the current emphasis on sports in colleges and universities yields interesting results. In one of the most comprehensive surveys of college graduates ever done, which was distributed to 60,000 alumni/nae who entered college in the years 1951, 1976, and 1989 and produced a 75 percent rate of return, college graduates thought that there should be less emphasis on intercollegiate athletics (Shulman & Bowen, 2001). Of additional relevance to this discussion, Shulman and Bowen found that the general giving rates of athletes from what they called "high-profile" teams actually dropped substantially within class cohorts. Whereas 64 percent of athletes entering college in 1951 in the high profile sports (football, men's basketball) gave back to their institutions, that figure dropped to 39 percent in the class cohort for 1989. In effect, even those individuals participating in the programs that receive the most emphasis and experience the most success are less inclined to give than they were 50 years ago. These findings lend further credibility to what the data on athletic success and institutional fund raising already shows. Finally, the other major flaw in the studies that have been done on athletic success and institutional fund raising is the failure to include women in the analyses. All of the studies in the second section of this paper focused on what have historically been thought of as the "revenue-producing" sports (i.e., football and men's basketball). Recent work that has addressed women and athletic fund raising reveals that women's sports have the capacity to generate interest and revenue and that institutional fund raisers (whether located in the athletic department or advancement office) need to learn more about specific strategies for appealing to women graduates as legitimate donor constituencies (Curtis, 2000; Staurowsky, 1996; Verner, 1996). This work is part of the expanding base of information about women and philanthropy that is growing in the fields of education, politics, female-owned and operated businesses, and charitable community giving. Conclusions As Sigelman and Carter (1979) so astutely observed almost 25 years ago, "the lack of any relationship between success in intercollegiate athletics and increased alumni giving probably matters less than the fact that so many people believe that such a relationship exists" (p. 293). Former university president James Duderstadt's (2000) thoughts about the construction of athletic financing schemes are particularly illuminating in this regard. In his book, Intercollegiate Athletics and the University: A University President's Perspective, explains in detail how tenuous athletic budgets are. He points out that, "the financing of intercollegiate athletics is also complicated by the fact that while costs such as staff salaries, student-athlete financial aid, and facilities maintenance are usually fixed, revenues are highly variable. In fact, in a given year, only television revenue for regular events is predictable. All other revenue streams, such as gate receipts, bowl or NCAA tournament income, licensing revenue, and private gifts, are highly variable. While some revenues such as gate receipts can be accurately predicted, particularly when season ticket sales are significant, others such as licensing and private giving are quite volatile. Yet many athletic departments (including Michigan of late) build these speculative revenues into annual budgets that sometimes crash and burn in serious deficits when these revenues fail to materialize" (p. 128-129). He goes on to note that, "...this business philosophy would rapidly lead to bankruptcy in the corporate world." The parallel he draws between the corporate world and the institutional financing of some of the major athletic programs around the country is an apt one in light of recent revelations regarding the lack of fiscal accountability in the corporate world and the declining trust the American public has in the U.S. economy. Just as corporate executives at Enron, Worldcom, and Arthur Anderson failed to fully disclose the weaknesses in the financial structures of the businesses they represented, the perceived economic viability and profitability of men's revenue-generating athletic programs has fed from a well-spring of myth that has little foundation in fact. To introduce the issue of athletic success and fund raising into a discussion about Title IX is counterproductive at several levels. Compliance with Title IX will not alter this picture one way or another, regardless of what various individuals may wish to assert. The historical record simply does not bear this out. Second, the fact that institutions claim that they do not have the finances to comply with the requirements of Title IX as stated reveals the essential falsity at the core of the assertion that big-time men's sports programs generate a "spillover effect" that benefits the institution at large. If this were the case, representatives of athletic programs would not then be claiming when the issue of Title IX compliance comes up that they cannot afford to sponsor women's programs. Third, Title IX's focus should, and must, remain on the educational benefits to be derived from athletic participation in a non-sex discriminatory environment. Regardless of the financial arguments made by institutions, thirty years of financial planning ought to have positioned institutions to resolve any funding problems they had in meeting the needs of women students on their campuses. Claiming financial distress as the reason for non-compliance with Title IX at this late juncture is an admission that the legislation has been ignored for three decades. Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D. Professor and Chair, Department of Sport Studies Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY 14850 607-274-1730 (office); 607-274-1943 (fax); staurows at ithaca.edu About the author: Before pursuing a career as a sport sociologist and researcher, Dr. Staurowsky worked for 15 years as a coach and director of athletics at the college/university level. She is co-author of the book, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA Amateur Myth and she has written extensively on the related topics of intercollegiate athletics, gender equity, and athletic fund-raising. References Amdur, N. (1971). The fifth down: Democracy and the football revolution. (New York: Coward, McCann and Geohagen). Brooker, G., & Klastorin, T. (1981). To the victors belong the spoils? College athletics and alumni giving. Social Science Quarterly, 72 (4), 744-750. Budig, J. E. (1976). The relationships among intercollegiate athletics, enrollment, and voluntary support for public higher education. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Illinois State University. Coughlin, C. C., & Erekson, O. H. (1984). An examination of contributions to support intercollegiate athletics, Southern Economic Journal, 51 (1), 180-195. Curtis, M. (2000). A model of donor behavior: A comparison between female and male donors to men's and women's athletics support organizations at Division I NCAA-affiliated institutions within the Big Ten. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Ames, IA: University of Iowa. Cutlip, S. M. (1965). Fund raising in the United States: Its role in America's philanthropy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Duderstadt, J. J. (2000). Intercollegiate athletics and the American University: A university president's perspective. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Frey, J. (1985, January). The winning-team myth. Currents. Fulks, D. L. (2000). Revenues and expenses of Division I and Division II intercollegiate athletic programs - Financial trends and relationship 1999. Indianapolis, IN: NCAA Publishing. Gerdy, J. (2002). Sports: The all-American addiction. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi. Grimes, P. W., & Chressanthis, G. A. (1994). Alumni contributions to academics: The role of intercollegiate sports and NCAA sanctions. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 53 (1), 27-40. Harrison, W. B., Mitchell, S. K., & Peterson, S. P. (1995, October). Alumni donations and colleges' development expenditures: does spending matter? The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 54 (4), 397-413. Marts, A. (1934, July 7). College football and college endowment. School and Society. McCormick, R., & Tinsley, M. (1990). "Athletics and academics: A model of university contributions." In Goff, B. L., & Tollison, R. (Eds.). Sportometrics. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 193-204. Merritt, G. E. (2000, April 23). Centralizing-supporters: Devils' success boosts donations, pride writer. The Hartford Courant, p. B1. Rhoads, T. A., & Gerking, S. (2000, April). Educational contributions, academic quality, and athletic success. Contemporary Economic Policy, 18 (20), 248-258. Sack, A., & Staurowsky, E. J. (1998). College athletes for hire: The evolution and legacy of the NCAA amateur myth. Westport, CT: Praeger Press/Greenwood Publishing. Shulman, J. L., & Bowen, W. G. (2001). The game of life: College sports and educational values. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sigelman, L., & Carter, R. (1979, September). Win one for the giver? Alumni giving and big-time college sports. Social Science Quarterly, 60 (2), 284-293. Spaeth, J. L., & Greeley, A. M. (1970). Recent alumni and higher education. New York: McGraw-Hill. Sperber, M. (2000). Beer and circus: How big time college sport is crippling Undergraduate education. Springer, F. (1974). "The experience of senior colleges that have discontinued football," in George H. Hanford, An inquiry into the need for and feasibility of a national study of intercollegiate athletics (Washington, DC: American Council on Education). Appendix I. Staurowsky, E. J. (1996, October). Women and athletic fund raising: Exploring the relationship between gender and giving. Journal of Sport Management, 10 (4), 401-416. Thelin, J. (1994). Games colleges play: Scandal and reform in intercollegiate athletics. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Verner, M. E. (1996). Developing women as financial donors and philanthropists: A way to enhance intercollegiate athletics opportunities. Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 5(1), 27-49. 55 References 2. http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/Reasons.asp 3. http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/Cost_Analysis.asp 4. http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/Library.asp 5. http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/EADA.asp 6. http://www.bringbacktrack.com/About/Sport_Giving_Non-Correlation.asp From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:26:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:26:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Robert D. Tollison: Sportometrics Message-ID: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Library of Economics and Liberty http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Sportometrics.html [Bob and I went to graduate school together at UVa. He taught at George Mason for many years and we spoke with him on numerous occasions. He was one of the readers of my doctoral disseration in 1985, which I did not do at UVa but rather at George Mason. He has authored or co-authored a fabulous number of papers spanning almost every area of Public Choice economics. He's the principal Founding Father of sportometrics.] Until recently, economists who analyzed sports focused on the such things as the antitrust exemption, the alleged cartel behavior of sports leagues, and the player draft (see [23]Sports). Sportometrics is different. It is the application of economic theories to the behavior of athletes in the real world to see if we can explain what they do, and to see if what they do can help us explain the behavior of people in other professions. Instead of being about the "economics of sports," sportometrics introduces the idea of "sports as economics." In other words, sportometricians view sports as an economic environment in which athletes behave according to incentives and constraints. Economists have, for example, shown how incentives and costs can explain how much effort runners exert in a footrace (see Higgins and Tollison). Using data from sprint events of the modern Olympics from 1896 to 1980, the cited study found that running times were faster when there were fewer contestants in a race. This makes sense. With fewer runners each runner's chance of winning is greater, and therefore, each runner's expected gain from putting out additional effort is greater. This cannot be attributed to decreased congestion: because each runner is given a lane, congestion does not diminish when the number of contestants falls. The study also found that the harder an Olympic record is to break, the less effort contestants will expend to break it. Can any fan ever forget Carl Lewis's pass on a third attempt to break Bob Beamon's long-jump record in the 1984 Olympics? Horse racing is an even better contest to analyze, because there prerace odds were used to control for the differential abilities of the racers. The study found similar results: an increase in the number of competitors leads to an increase in average race times. The economic activity called arbitrage also enters into sports. Arbitrage is what economists call the exploitation of price differences for the same commodity. For example, if wheat sells for $3.00 a bushel in Chicago and $3.30 in Indianapolis, and if it can be transported to Indianapolis for 20% per bushel, then an arbitrageur can make 10% on each bushel he buys in Chicago and sells in Indianapolis. What does this have to do with professional basketball? A lot. Each player has an incentive to build up his individual performance statistics, particularly the number of points he scores. But a good coach enforces a regime in which shots are allocated--arbitraged--among players to maximize the probability that each shot taken will be made. Players who make a higher percentage of their shots should, thus, be given more chances to shoot. Using data from the National Basketball Association, Kevin Grier and I found that coaches who are better at enforcing such an allocation of shots--better arbitrageurs--are more likely to win games and to have longer tenure as head coaches. Among the better coaches, we found, was Cotton Fitzsimmons, the former coach of the Phoenix Suns. He became head coach of the Kansas City Kings in 1977 and, in his first full season, led the Kings to forty-eight wins and a shooting efficiency rating of 66 percent, which is very high. In each case studied, economists gain insight not only on the behavior of athletes and coaches, but also on more general economic problems. The behavior of runners is analogous to that of bidders for a government contract: a bidder will expend more effort--lobbying and the like--the fewer competitors it has for a contract. Coaching a team is analogous to managing a company: within a company, managers "arbitrage" tasks among employees. Analyzing sporting events, moreover, provides insights into the workings of all competition within well-defined rules--just as we see in our economy. Incentives and constraints are spelled out clearly; players behave as rational economic actors; sporting events and seasons can be seen as the operation of miniature economies--and so on. One of the first sportometrics analyses done (see McCormick and Tollison) showed, for example, that basketball players respond rationally when an additional monitor (referee) of their behavior is on the court. Using data on the Atlantic Coast Conference Basketball Tournament, the study found that, other things being equal, adding one referee reduced the number of fouls per game by about seventeen, a reduction of 34 percent! A more general application of this research is to the issue of how we can reduce the number of crimes by adding additional police. Most economic analysis is based on the idea that when the incentive to do something increases, people will do more of it. Kenneth Lehn, formerly chief economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission, showed that this idea applies even to the amount of time baseball players spend on the disabled list. After players were signed to multiyear, guaranteed contracts with no extra pay for each game played, their incentive to play diminished. Sure enough, Lehn found that the amount of time players spent on the disabled list increased from 4.7 days in the precontract period to 14.4 days after--an increase of 206 percent. Sports data have been used to understand other interesting issues. Another study (see Fleisher, Goff, and Tollison), using data on how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) enforces its rules, studied cartel behavior by colleges and universities. Although this study is closer to what I called the "economics of sports," it produced the novel finding that the NCAA apparently enforces its rules to help the old-time football powers that have long controlled the organization. As other teams improve on the playing field, we found, they are put on probation as a way to protect the athletic success of old-time schools such as Notre Dame and Ohio State. Yet another study (see Goff, Shughart, and Tollison) found that the structure of high school basketball competition affects the career longevity of NBA players. "Open" competition refers to situations where all schools compete for the state championship, as in the movie Hoosiers. Under "classified" competition, schools compete in divisions that are based on school size. We theorized that NBA players from the open states should be "fitter" and better "adapted" for survival in the NBA. Using a large sample of NBA players, that is exactly what we found. Players from open competition states, such as Indiana, have careers in the NBA that, on average, are 1 to 1.5 years longer than players from states with classified competition. Given an average tenure for NBA players of about five years, that is an increase of 20 to 30 percent. About the Author Robert D. Tollison is a professor of economics at the University of Mississippi. He is a leader in using economic analysis to explain behavior of politicians and of athletes. Further Reading Fleisher, Arthur A., Brian L. Goff, and Robert D. Tollison. The National Collegiate Athletic Association: A Study in Cartel Behavior. 1992. Goff, Brian L., William F. Shughart II, and Robert D. Tollison. "Homo Basketballus." In Sportometrics, edited by Goff and Tollison. 1990. Goff, Brian L., and Robert D. Tollison, eds. Sportometrics. 1990. Higgins, Richard S., and Robert D. Tollison. "Economics at the Track." In Sportometrics, edited by Goff and Tollison. 1990. Lehn, Kenneth. "Property Rights, Risk Sharing, and Player Disability." Journal of Law and Economics 25 (October 1982): 343-66. McCormick, Robert E., and Robert D. Tollison. "Crime on the Court." Journal of Political Economy 92 (April 1984) [24]Robert D. Tollison [25]Further Reading [26]Sports Robert Tollison [27] References 24. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Sportometrics.html#biography 25. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Sportometrics.html#further 26. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Sports.html 27. http://www.econlib.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?query=Robert+Tollison&book=Encyclopedia&andor=and&sensitive=yes 29. http://www.libertyfund.org/ 30. http://www.econlib.org/ From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 14 13:46:18 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 06:46:18 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Laser beams sort stem cells by springiness Message-ID: <01C540BD.A9F7E7C0.shovland@mindspring.com> 18:22 12 April 2005 NewScientist.com news service Shaoni Bhattacharya Related Articles Human blood cells coaxed to produce insulin 04 April 2005 Do you believe in miracles? 09 October 2004 Optical tweezers pluck out cancer cells 15 March 2003 Search New Scientist Contact us Web Links Josef Kas, University of Leipzig Institute of Physics, UK Optical trapping group, St Andrew's University Sex and cloning, New Scientist Measuring the "stretchiness" of cells using a new laser technique promises to pinpoint human stem cells in blood and distinguish cancerous cells from benign ones, say researchers. Using an "optical stretcher", which pushes and pulls individual cells to measure their elasticity, Josef Kas and Jochen Guck from the University of Leipzig in Germany successfully separated adult stem cells from human blood. They say they can also pick out cancerous cells from biopsies as small as just 50 cells - traditional methods need between 10,000 and 100,000 cells to give a diagnosis. Furthermore, the researchers say this is the first test able to identify metastatic cancer cells - those which are prone to spreading through the body to form secondary tumours - without actually locating any metastatic tumours. "We have developed a very good way to recognise different cells based on something known since the 1950s - that very different cells have very different skeletons," says Kas. He says the optical technique developed by the team is relatively simple and low cost, yet could offer a highly specific way of identifying stem cells, with the added benefit of a high throughput. "Sometimes the simple ideas are the ones people overlook," he told New Scientist, adding that its simplicity is the reason for its broad applications. The new technique could lead to advances in medical treatments, says Michael Watts, a haematology and stem cell expert at University College London, UK. "We could significantly add to our knowledge of stem cell biology, [aiding the search for] cellular therapies," he says. Kicking back "This is really an amazing technique," says Kishan Dholakia, professor of physics at St Andrew's University, UK. He says it might allow diagnoses from very small samples from patients in the future - reducing the need for distressing or damaging tests. Cells from most organisms have an internal scaffolding, called a cytoskeleton, which keeps their shape and helps them move. But this structure is less strong in cells which either have no reason to organise themselves, like primitive stem cells, or because they "de-differentiate", like cancer cells - which lose the special characteristics of the tissues in which they originated. This means that stem cells and cancerous cells are more springy than other cells. And metastatic cells are suppler still. Using the optical technique, cells from a sample are pushed one by one into a gap between two opposing infrared lasers. As the light from each laser beam enters the cell, it changes momentum because the cell has a higher refractive index. This gives the cell a "kick back", explains Kas, and when the beam leaves the cell it gives it a "kick forward". The kicks in opposite directions stretch the cell, and the amount by which the cell extends can be measured and used to identify it from a population of cells. Two beams are needed to keep the cell in a stable configuration. The technique differs from previous "optical tweezers" methods - which use just one focused laser beam to hold a cell in place. However, this could damage or alter the cell, and at higher intensities it could just "fry everything", says Kas. Oral cancers The optical stretcher can already test 3600 cells per minute. And as well as being highly specific, it does not require the use of expensive chemical markers currently needed to identify stem cells, he says. "The real excellence is they have got a good flow rate and throughput," says Dholakia. They have overcome the technical difficulty of channelling cells through the tiny space between two lasers, which he likens to trying to individually catch and squeeze many footballs bobbing in a river. The new technique is currently being used to separate stem cells to treat elderly patients for persistent non-healing wounds and also at a heart clinic in Leipzig where doctors plan to inject a patient's own stem cells back into their heart muscle to aid recovery in the wake of a heart attack. The device will also be trialled for screening cancers. Dentists in Leipzig will take swabs from patients to test for oral cancer, which is normally detected only when a tumour has developed, by which time the effects are devastating. The work was presented by Kas at the Institute of Physics meeting in Warwick, UK, on Tuesday. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:48:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:48:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Auster: How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism Message-ID: How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16157 4.12.3 [Part 2 of 2 appended] [He makes a very good point, namely that if you don't treat god as the Other, you can wind up treating peoples and civilizations very different from your own as the Other. I've gotten used to appeals for a return to true Christianity of the "this is how I want the world to be" sort without producing any evidence even for the existence of god. My own gloss on Christianity, and Judaism, for that matter, is that God is a liberal. He created the world and gave humanity rules to live by, which they promptly disobeyed. God kept making covenants and people kept failing to live up to them. God constantly overestimate human nature, as liberals to. By the time of the Roman Empire, God got so fed up with His creation that He decided to do away with Heaven and Earth (but not Hell) completely. Being merciful as well as just, He offered escape from Hell to those who would accept the offer, namely to ask His son for forgiveness. It seems that God is not obliged to carry out this promise (the doctrine of Grace) and it's unclear what else needs to be done (the doctrine of Works). God remains a liberal still: in the next to the last chapter of the Bible, God promises a second Heaven and a second Earth. What's new to me is Auster's emphasis on what I overlooked, namely that there will be individual nations on the second Earth. I am still concerned with the tiny matter of evidence, though.] By [1]Lawrence Auster According to historian Arnold Toynbee, civilizations grow and survive by overcoming successive challenges, and break down when they fail to meet some new challenge. With regard to mass non-European immigration and its attendant problems of multiculturalism, Islamization, and globalism, America and other Western nations face a challenge unique in history: to save ourselves from open-borders chaos and cultural destruction without becoming, in our own eyes, "racist," "mean," "exclusivist," and "un-Christian." This is a moral and intellectual dilemma that most contemporary Westernersif we bother thinking about it at allfind paralyzing. Unable to solve it, we have opted for a state of active or passive surrendera condition from which we are only intermittently stirred by shocking acts of violence such as the September 11 attack on America or the jihadist slaughter of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. In fact, the moral dilemma described above is illusory. It is based on the false premise, unique to Western and especially modern Western society, that to preserve one's own nation or culture is somehow to be unjust toward other nations and cultures. Whenever this sentiment has gained ascendancy, as under the influence of ancient Stoicism or of modern leftism, it has led men to believe that the only just social order is a world state, in which there is no Other because everyone belongs to the same society. The problem with this idea is that a world state can only exist by depriving individual nations of their right of self-government, indeed of their existence, and by subjecting all mankind to the rule of a distant and unaccountable regime. Therefore, based on all our experience of politics and human nature, a world state could not be just either. Traditional Christianity resolved, or at least managed, this conflict between the particular and the universal by locating true universality in the City of God, while recognizing the limited but real value of distinct societies on earth.^ But a moral tension that remains manageable so long as different peoples with their respective cultures are living in different societies, becomes insoluble when radically different peoples and cultures are living in the same society, especially if it is a democracy. If a democratic country has a large and culturally different immigrant minority, the native majority cannot readily announce that they are against the continuation of more immigration, because if they did so, the immigrant group, who are now the majority's fellow citizens, would feel that the natives regard them as undesirable. As civilized, democratic people, the native majority do not want to insult the immigrant minority, or to deny their equal humanity, or to create even the slightest appearance of doing those things. So instead theymeaning wesurrender to the situation, accept continued mass immigration, and allow their country to be steadily transformed by an ongoing influx of unassimilated peoples and incompatible cultures. Our challengethe Toynbean challenge we must meet if we are to save our civilizationis to understand that the moral assumptions that have led us into this paralysis are false, and to break free of them. But this is extraordinarily difficult for us to do, because these assumptions, which are liberal assumptions, have over the past century become closely bound up with the Christian religion, the spiritual core of Western culture and identity. To work our way out of the present crisis, therefore, it will be necessary to criticize certain aspects of modern Christianity. This may offend some readers, particularly Christian conservatives who have come to identify Christian belief with American political virtue itself. The problem would be lessened if people understood that Christianity is not a governing ideology, and that it is distorted when seen as such. The path and goal of Christianity is life in Christ, not the organization of society according to any particular scheme. Over the last two thousand years, Christianity has been compatible with any number of political forms, ranging from the Roman empire to medieval feudalism to modern democracy, so long as they have been reasonably benign and compatible with a Christian life. And here lies the paradox: though Christian faith is the center of the West's historic being, it cannot by itself provide the enduring structure of Western society or of any other concrete society. As indicated by Jesus in his distinction between the things of Caesar and the things of God, religious faith must work in a proper balance with worldly concernsamong which are considerations of political power and of culture. The balance is delicate and many things can go wrong with the spiritual-secular partnership. For example, if the Christian community breaks free of the surrounding earthly society and ignores the ordinary dictates of political prudence, or if it becomes corrupted by bad ideas emanating from the society itself, such as those of modern liberalism, it can become destructive of the surrounding society and culture. It can easily spin off into utopian universalist notions, such as the open-borders ideology, that spell the death of any culture. In the remainder of this article, we will first recount the process by which Christianity has become liberalized. Then we will look at the doctrines, particularly the "cult of man," that define this liberalized Christianity and help engender the cultural radicalism that so threatens our society. Finally we will consider the role this liberalized Christianity has played in advancing open immigration and one-worldism, especially through its literalist reading of the Scriptures. Confused Christianity When the liberal order was born in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it did not immediately appear, at least in America, as a social force hostile to religion. Far from attacking or banning religion, liberalism marked out a religiously neutral public space where religious conformity would not be demanded and a person's religion could not be used against him. The various Protestant denominations plus Catholicism and Judaism were tolerated, and a genericand rather strictProtestant morality was authoritative throughout the society. In his journey through America in the 1830s, Toqueville was deeply impressed at how in America, more than in any other country in history, religion and liberty worked in harmony. But over the past two centuries, as the demand for individual freedom has become ever more insistent and far-reaching, the respect accorded religion and religious morality in American public life has steadily diminished, a process that has reached an extreme stage in recent years. Education, the arts, entertainment, architecture, public monuments, and many other areas of society in which religion was once honored or deferred to, or which were at least open to a religious sense of life, have become thoroughly secularized, as has the Christmas holiday itself. For the first time in American history, prominent individuals and established political movements, not to mention many movies and television programs, are openly atheistic and hostile to religion, seeking, in the name of liberal tolerance, to drive religion out of the public sphere altogether. Or, to be more precise, they seek to drive Christianity out of the public sphere, while welcoming non-Western religions such as Islam. The only Christianity tolerated by these left-liberals is a desiccated Christianity that keeps up the external forms and formulae of the faith but no longer adheres seriously to any Christian beliefs that are distinct from those of liberalism. Even conservative Christian leaders have given up the traditional idea of America as a basically Christian society and now subscribe to the liberal view of America as a level playing field where different beliefs, including non-Western beliefs, can strive for influence. The effects of this leftward drift on the mainline Protestant churches and on significant parts of the American Catholic Church have been profound. No longer looking for the meaning of life in God and Christ, but in the celebration and achievement of human rights and equality,or, rather, defining God and Christ in terms of human rights and equalitythese liberal Christians tend to look at every issue through the lens of social justice, one-worldism, and U.S. guilt, and are deeply committed to diversity, multiculturalism, and open borders. The liberal belief in the equal freedom of all human beings as the primary political and spiritual datum leads inexorably to the idea that our nation should open itself indiscriminately to all humanity. President Bush's proposal to give a green card to every person on earth who can underbid an American for a job is an example of this utopian attitude, and is plainly motivated, at least in part, by the liberal evangelicalism to which he subscribes. The Church and the cult of man In America, as we've said, a moderate liberalism that deferred to Christianity gradually became more secular and radical over time and brought much of the Church along with it. In Europe, by contrast, the left was in open rebellion against Christianity from the eighteenth century onward, seeking to create a new, materialistic society in which all human needs would be met without reference to anything higher than man. Catholic Popes thundered against these developments. Pope Pius X declared in 1903: "[W]ith unlimited boldness man has put himself in the place of God, exalting himself above all that is called God. He has ... made the world a temple in which he himself is to be adored ... "(1) The Church was fighting a losing battle, however. With the ever-advancing march of secularization and the seeming triumph of human technological power over nature, the belief in man's spiritual and material autonomy had become so well-established by the mid-twentieth century that the Church felt it had to adjust itself to these new developments instead of condemning them. This momentous event was announced by Pope Paul VI in his closing speech at the Second Vatican Council, in December 1965. The Council, the Pope declared, had not been content to reflect on the relations that unite her to God. [The Church] was also much concerned with man, with man as he really is today, with living man, with man totally taken up with himself, with man who not only makes himself the center of his own interests, but who dares to claim that he is the principle and [the] final cause of all reality. Man in his phenomenal totality ... presented himself, as it were, before the assembly of the Council Fathers.... The religion of God made man has come up against the religionfor there is such a oneof man who makes himself God.^ [Emphasis added.] And how did the Council respond to this heretical specter of godless, secular man, of "man who makes himself God"? Far from condemning this monstrous falsehood and asserting the superior claims of the Christian faith, the Council, said the Pope,^ was filled only with an endless sympathy. The discovery of human needsand these are so much greater now that the son of the earth has made himself greaterabsorbed the attention of the Synod.... [W]e also, we more than anyone else, have the cult of man...^ A current of affection and admiration overflowed from the Council over the modern world of man ... [The Catholic religion] proclaims itself to be entirely in the service of man's well-being. The Catholic religion and life itself thus reaffirm their alliance, their convergence on a single human reality: the Catholic faith exists for humanity ...^ [Emphasis added.] Thus, alongside God, the Church seemed to have added a second Lord, man, with everything ultimately focusing on man instead of God.(2) In so doing, the Church adopted the very heresy of modernism that Pope Pius X had warned against sixty years earlier. Pope John Paul II, a twentieth century Christian humanist who is mistakenly believed by many to be a staunch traditionalist, fully subscribed to the Vatican II doctrine, having been one of its leading framers. In his first encyclical after becoming Pope in 1978, he declared that human nature has been permanently "divinized" by the advent of Christa startling departure from traditional Christian understandings of the distinction between God and man. He has repeatedly put man on a pedestal, as when he spoke of his "gratitude and joy at the incomparable dignity of man." While in keeping with the spirit of Vatican II, this extravagant praise of man is very far from the language we would expect to hear from traditional Catholics or Protestants, who adhere to the Augustinian belief in man's basic sinfulness and his continuing need for God's mercy. Under the post-Vatican II Popes, including John Paul II, the cult of man has worked itself into the body and practice of the Church. In place of the Creed, which begins, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," a diocese in France sings a hymn that begins: "I believe in God who believes in Man." In another diocese, instead of the Creed a poem is read which begins:^ I believe in meson of an almighty Father, creator with him of a more human world... I believe in me because he believed in me ... Equally important in lowering Christianity toward the human level are the radical liturgical changes that were initiated in the 1960s. In the traditional Eucharistic service, the priest faces away from the congregation, toward the altar, toward God, so that both congregants and priest are communing with God. In the New Mass, the priest faces the congregation as he consecrates the host and chews it in the sight of all. This democratization of the Liturgy of the Eucharist destroys its sacramental nature, turning it into a celebration of human, instead of divine, community. And, of course, in many Catholic and Protestant churches in the United States, folk songs, "singalongs," electronically amplified contemporary music, and other pop culture manifestations have replaced sacred music and liturgy.^ Cultural radicalism and the cult of man Some readers, especially those who are not religious, may wonder what all the fuss is about. Why is the cult of man a problem, they may ask. Why is it a bad thing to make humanity the ultimate focus of our religious as well as of our secular concerns? What harm does it do if we honor "man who makes himself god," and so free ourselves from the weight of the traditional, judgmental God hanging over us? My answer is that the cult of man is harmful because it does not (as it promises to do) ennoble human beings, but degrades them. It is, in fact, a principal source of the cultural radicalism that is dragging down our whole society and making it incapable of defend itself from evil and from enemies. Three aspects of this cultural radicalism are relevant here: moral liberationism, cultural egalitarianism, and the worship of the Other. - Moral liberationism From the traditional Christian perspective, God is our father, as well as the archetypal "father figure," the source and structuring principle of our existence. Other and lesser "father figures" include our country, our culture, our government and laws, even the laws of nature. These are the biological, cultural, and spiritual givens of our existence. They place limits on what we can be, even as they provide us with the very world in which we can live and realize ourselves. To put man in the place of God implies a rebellion, not just against God as traditionally understood, but against all "father figures" and the structuring order of reality that they represent. If there no reality higher than ourselves, then there is nothing preventing us from releasing our lowest tendencies. Thus the humanistic distortion of religion is only one part of the picture I am describing. The rebellious cult of man may begin with the denial of God's supremacy, but it doesn't end there. It ends with the denial of all things higher than human desirelaw, morality, culture, nation, and even nature itself. - Cultural equality and the double standard Another consequence of the cult of man is radical egalitarianism, particularly in the area of culture. If there is no truth higher than humanity, then there is no objective basis on which to determine the relative value of various human things. All human thingsall culturesmust be of innately equal value. But if all cultures are of innately equal value, how then can we explain the persistently backward state of some cultures? At bottom, there is only one answer to that question: the backward cultures must have been artificially placed in their inferior situation by the better-off and more powerful cultures, namely our own. Thus the denial of higher truth makes all things seem equal, which in turn requires an explanation for why things are not actually equal, which in turn leads to a belief in some all-pervading oppression to account for the actually existing inequalitiesan oppression that is always blamed on the West, or America, or Christianity, or capitalism, or the white race, or white men, or the patriarchal family, or George Bush, or what have you. And the attack on the West does not end there. Since the less advanced condition of certain other peoples and cultures is our fault, we must, in order to raise them up, excuse them from normal standards while subjecting ourselves to the harshest standards. This is the [3]leftist double standard, of which I've written about previously at FrontPage Magazine. - Worship of the Other Finally, and most dangerously, the cult of man leads us, not just to put down our own culture and sympathize inordinately with other cultures, but to worship other cultures. Again, we need to think about why this is so. Central to Western culture, in both its Jewish-Christian and its Greco-Roman forms, is the experience of God or truth as transcendent, beyond the material, beyond man. A similar experience is central to other cultures. Man partakes of, and is perfected by, a truth whose source lies beyond himself. If we lose or reject this experience of transcendence and start to glorify human rights and human desires as our highest value (an attitude that the ancient Greeks would call hubris and that traditional Christians and Jews would call idolatry), we will still feel the need for the divine quality of "beyondness," but, since man has now become for us the highest value, we will inevitably begin to seek that quality in human beings. But what quality do human beings have that can stand in for God's transcendence, his quality as beyond and wholly other? Simply this, that other human beings are other and different from us. If we combine this divinization of man (which is already harmful enough) with the liberal belief in the equal freedom of all persons, or, even worse, if we combine it with leftist notions of Western guilt and multicultural equality, then the more "Other" the others are,that is, the more different, foreign, alien, incomprehensible, or even dangerous and evil they arethe more "transcendent" they will seem to us, and the more we will worship them. In the most extreme form of this attitude (though it is terribly common today), secular or Christian liberals laud a terrorist murderer like Yasser Arafat and cast a sacred glow around everything connected with Islam, while reviling conservative Christians as a monstrous threat, simply because Arafat and Islam are radically Other from America and therefore seem to stand beyond the suffocating confines of our radically secularized society. To put this idea another way, as human beings we are free to deny God, but we are not free to do away with our need (because it is built into our nature) for something that is beyond us, that transcends us and provides the meaning of our existence. So, when people deny God, who is, as it were, the "vertical" transcendent, they start to look for a "horizontal" transcendent as a substitute. This horizontal transcendent is, pre-eminently, other people. Furthermore, as I said, since God is that which is most Other from ourselves, the more different other people are from us, the more they seem like God or fulfill the function of God in our psyches. Thus the worship of man devolves into the worship of other men, other cultures, other peoples, combined with a contempt for our own. This is the mystical cult of multiculturalismthe uncritical identification with the Other, whoever the Other may happen to be. Liberal fundamentalism For Catholics, the ultimate authority for the idea of unconditional openness to foreigners is the pronouncements of Pope and the Church hierarchy. For liberal Protestants, it is the Bible, namely a literalist interpretation of certain scriptural passages. One of the most important of these is Jesus' parable of the Final Judgment in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, when the Son of man comes and gathers all nations before him: Then shall the king say to those who are on his right: Come, you who are the blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom which has been made ready for you from the beginning of the world. For I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. When the just people ask when they did these things, he answers:^ Truly I tell you, inasmuch as you have done it for any one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it for me. As author and immigration reformer Roy Beck has pointed out, a literalist reading of this parable gives Protestants the idea that every prospective immigrant to Americaindeed every needy person in the worldis, literally, Jesus. I myself have seen evangelicals who, on hearing arguments for reasonable immigration controls, replied: "Would you turn away Jesus if he was at the border?" The notion that everyone trying to get into America is Jesus obligates Christians on pain of hell to give every prospective immigrant what he wants, or rather to get the U.S. government and taxpayers to give him what he wants, even though the great majority of immigrants come here not because of persecution or misfortune but simply because they desire the greater opportunities (and the cornucopia of government benefits) available to them here. The parable of Matthew 25, like other difficult passages in the Old and New Testaments, becomes grotesque if taken in a literal sense, without reference to the full context of meaning in which it appears. For example, Jesus is certainly not telling his disciples to help law-breakers, yet liberal Christians take his words as a command to harbor illegal aliensand not just an occasional illegal alien, but an ongoing mass invasion of them. Jesus is also not telling his followers to use the government to advance their ends. The Gospels show the way to eternal life in God through Christ. The supreme commandment is love of God and neighbor. Such love is intrinsically a voluntary, individual act, or the act of a cohesive group of believers, as when, for example, a congregation votes to send money to fellow Christians who have been devastated by a natural disaster. But what today's liberal Christians find in the Gospels is a political platform. Instead of minding their own business and practicing charity to their neighbor, they want to use the power of the state to compel their fellow citizens to hand over their country to foreigners, foreign cultures, and foreign religionsincluding religions and cultures that seek the destruction of Christianity and the West. Another of the liberals' favorite biblical passages is God's command in Leviticus 19 concerning the proper treatment of foreigners: When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. But the stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. While liberals have often quoted this passage to provide support for an open borders policy, it has little to do with immigration. The text refers to one who "sojourns," meaning a temporary resident in the land, not an immigrant. It is telling us to treat such a stranger as a fellow human being, not to vex or persecute him. It is most decidedly not telling us to open our borders to a mass immigration of such strangers, so that they can change our society from what it is into something else. If you, taking a literalist approach, believe that it is telling us that, then you must also believe that Jesus' command, "Give to him who asks of you," means that we should instantly hand over our entire national product to leftist international organizations who are demanding the global equalization of wealth and income. But what about that commandwhich we can't get away fromto "love the stranger as yourself"? The main Gospel authority concerning love of others is the passage in Matthew where Jesus, asked what is the greatest commandment, quotes two verses from the Torah: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." (Matt 22:37-39.) The key to understanding this teaching is that love of God comes first. It is the love of God that disciplines us toward the good and restrains our self-aggrandizing impulses, including the impulse to display conspicuous compassion for others. An unconditional love of neighbor apart from love of God would lead us to mad acts of do-gooderism or self-sacrifice. To this, a liberal literalist might say that since the first commandment is to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind; and since the second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves; and since the second command is "like the first," therefore we're supposed to love our neighbor just as we're supposed to love Godunconditionally, with our whole heart, soul, and mind. In reality, Jesus tells his followers to love the neighbor as one loves oneself, not as one loves God. It would be an absurdity to say that God wants us to love ourselves unconditionally, with our whole heart, soul, and mind. Therefore we are not to love our neighbor that way either. We are commanded to love and follow God, and once we do that, we will feel and behave rightly toward ourselves and our neighbor as well. Ironically, the very words, "you shall love him as yourself," which liberals take as commanding unconditional love for the Other, back up my narrower interpretation. Since it is only possible, at best, to love one person or a few people as one loves oneself, not an entire populace or the entire human race, the passage must be referring to a voluntary, personal relationship, not to some politically coerced process of national self-sacrifice. Furthermore, as the Bible states over and over, God wants mankind to exist in separate nations. Deuteronomy 32:8 says: "When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of men, he fixed the bounds of the peoples ..." Acts 17:26-27 says that God sets "boundaries of their habitation" for every nation of mankind. The Old Testament is filled with admonitions to the Israelites to make distinctions between themselves and strangers. The most extreme instance is in the book of Ezra, Chapters 10 and 11, where the Jews are commanded to disown their non-Jewish wives and children in order to preserve the ethnic purity of the Jewish people (which if they hadn't done, by the way, the Jewish people would have gone out of existence, and there would have been no Jewish people for Jesus to be born into, and there would have been no Christianity). When so much in the Bible counsels national and ethnic exclusiveness, it is dishonest to take isolated scriptural passages as a mandate for open borders. References 1. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/authors.asp?ID=650 2. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=16157 3. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14579 -------------- How Liberal Christianity Promotes Open Borders and One-Worldism (Continued) by Lawrence Auster http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=16159&p=1 Tempting God But liberal fundamentalists are unconcerned with getting a true and balanced understanding of these scriptural passages, just as they are unconcerned with the real-world results of putting their altruistic beliefs into practice. They seem to believe that acting on their religious principles makes it unnecessary to heed ordinary rules of prudencean attitude that Jesus famously rejected. After he has been fasting in the wilderness for forty days, the devil tempts him to throw himself down from a high cliff, so as to prove that God's angels will rescue him, as promised in Psalm 91, which the devil, who evidently reads Scripture, quotes: He shall give his angels charge over thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.^ Jesus answers Satan: "Thou shalt not tempt [that is, test] the Lord thy God." What Jesus is saying here is that you must not apply the words of Scripture mechanically. Having faith in God does not mean that you can ignore physical laws. You cannot jump off a cliff in the expectation that God will come to your rescue. To do so is to "tempt" God. The same analysis applies to liberal fundamentalism and open borders. Liberal Christians argue that since God created all men, therefore all humanity is one, and therefore cultural, ethnic, and national differences don't matter and we should all be mixed into one society. But to believe that such a blending of humanity can be practically and safely achieved in the present stage of human developmentto turn America into an extravagantly multi-ethnic and multicultural society, shorn of its historic majority culture, in the expectation that God will save us from the consequences of this insane experimentis to "tempt God." It is a suicidal act of arrogance. If we ignore the laws of cause and effect that operate in this world, believing that our good intentions will protect us from the operation of those laws, we will only succeed in bringing ruin on ourselves.^ Here is yet another illustration of the literalist fallacy. The highest human state, the goal of Christianity and of all true religion, is self-forgetful love. Yet it would be madness to adopt such love (which even in the best of circumstances is consistently practiced by very few human beings), as the organizing principle of society. James Madison in the Federalist warned against the error of idealizing mankind: government, he said, is designed for men, not angels. Jesus also warned against idealizing mankind when he told his disciples to be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove. To be wise as a serpent means that you guard yourself against the evils in human nature. Unlike the liberal Christians, Jesus did not indulge in vain Rousseauist fantasies about the innate goodness of man, or try to force such fantasies on society. The second chapter of the Gospel of John pointedly tells us that "Jesus did not trust himself to them ... for he knew himself what was in man." [Emphasis added.] But liberal fundamentalists only heed the part of Jesus' message that fits their liberal preconceptions. They tell everyone to be gentle as a dove, while conveniently forgetting the business about being wise as a serpent. They distort the Christian teaching of faith and salvation into a politics of indiscriminate global charity.^ The Christian belief in a common humanity under God should not tempt us to weaken or eliminate national borders. The division of mankind into distinct nations provides indispensable human needs, including stable social settings and systems of shared habit and culture. Equally importantly, national boundaries help keep human hatreds at bay. Common sense tells us that humanity tends to certain vices, and we should therefore not gratuitously remove the obstacles that impede those vices. It tells us that to adopt unconditional love as a political principle and to erase all boundaries on human behavior is to license unlimited aggression. But the liberal fundamentalists, having rejected the doctrine of man's innate sinfulness and even the cautions of ordinary common sense, cannot grasp these obvious facts. They condemn racism, while fanatically spreading the very conditions of unassimilable diversity that increase racial conflict. They have no qualms about the effects of immigration on the host society because they regard openness to immigration as a religious obligation, not as political choice governed by prudence.^ Let us also remember that while both Christian and secular liberals may urge open borders for reasons of love, human motivations are always mixed. Much of the support for open immigration is plainly self-interested. Corporate executives do not want mass immigration in order to spread Christian charity, but to assure the presence of a low-wage work force. Ethnic activists do not call for amnesty to spread compassion, but to increase the power of their own racial group. Democrats and Republicans do not seek open borders out of love, but out of a desire to swell their respective party ranks (a deluded hope in the case of the Republicans) and gain political advantage over the other party. Nevertheless, in this welter of contradictory motivations, by far the most effective remains the moral and altruistic. As far back as 1957, the liberal Protestant journal The Christian Century stated in an editorial:^ We are in danger of preaching freedom and reveling in it ourselves but denying it to those who knock on our doors.... The denial borders on blasphemy in Bethlehem. Fling wide the gates and let some glory in.(3)^ America is not seen here as an earthly society, with earthly responsibilities to its citizens. It is seen as Bethlehema symbol of Heaven. From this perspective, to admit immigrants into our country is not to let in concrete human beings with their concrete good and bad qualities. It is to let in "glory"a divine attribute. By erasing the distinction between the spiritual and temporal realms, and thus the distinctions among relative temporal goods, the liberal Christian view makes rational discussion of the immigration issue impossible. Yet the liberal Christianity of the 1950s was a model of reasonableness compared to the aggressive open-borders policy of the Roman Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II. Like any alienated liberal or one-world capitalist, the Pope sanctified non-Western immigrants while delegitimizing the Western nations he was ordering to include them. He deliberately undermined U.S. law when he came to Texas in 1987 and endorsed the Sanctuary Movement, a network of organizations that transport and hide illegal aliens who come here from Central America. Most appallingly, he repeatedly equated immigration restrictions with abortion, arguing that to refuse to admit a prospective immigrant into your country is as sinful as to kill an unborn child. Both acts, the Holy Father declared, are part of the "Culture of Death," which, he said, also includes such practices as contraception and euthanasia. His proposed "Ethic of Life" enjoined Christians to stand in "solidarity with society's weakest members"the elderly, the infirm, the unborn, and the illegal immigrant.(4) In portraying immigration restriction as a moral crime, but only when it is practiced by Westerners, the Pope would have effectively denied Western countries any control over their own borders. In his trip to the U.S. in October 1995 he further intruded himself into American domestic politics, declaring that any attempt to control legal or illegal immigration or to ban public assistance to illegal aliens was a sin. Speaking of Third World immigrants who want to get into the West, he told American audiences that we must treat our neighbor as ourselves, and that "everyone in the world is our neighbor." As immigration expert David Simcox summed up the Pope's policy, "Church pronouncements now affirm immigration as a virtually absolute right, while they have qualified the regulatory rights of states to the point where they are emptied of any legitimate scope of action." A Church official has written: "Catholic citizens are required to work to see that as far as possible the laws of their countries adhere to this universal norm [of open borders]."(5) We can't help wondering, what does the Church's open-borders posturing have to do with Christianity? Jesus preached the Gospel to the poor in spirit, telling them to open their souls to the love of God. John Paul II preaches liberalism to materially prosperous Western peoples, telling them to open their pockets, their borders, and their national identity to foreign peoples. True, Jesus told a rich young man to give all his wealth to the poor. But he did not give that counsel to everyone he met. He said it to a particular individual, who, it is apparent from the Gospel text, needed that particular advice if he was to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus did not, as John Paul has done, tell an entire political society to sacrifice its goods, which in the modern context would mean the government sacrificing the goods of all the people in that society, whether they wanted their goods to be sacrificed or not. ^ Efforts by Catholic intellectuals to explain the Pope's open borders policy have only revealed how extreme it really is. The Catholic neoconservative George Weigel, after saying he agreed with immigration restrictionists that "national identity is important and that patriotism is a virtue," added the qualifier that "patriotism is not an absolute virtue and national identity is a secondary, if honorable, definition of one's self. Our national identity is subordinate to our identity as members of the Body of Christ, the Church." Weigel's remark that patriotism is not an absolute virtue seems unexceptionable from a Christian standpoint, until we realize that our "identity as members of the Body of Christ," which Weigel upholds as the highest value, translates in practical terms into his preference for open borders. "The general rule [concerning immigration]," he continues, "ought to be generosity." But if the general rule is generosity, what happens to the national identity that Weigel said is important? Under the existing open borders policy that Weigel supports, our national identity is not being properly subordinated to a higher value, it is being steadily eliminated by the mass intrusion of foreign cultures. Thus Weigel pretends to subsume the secular value of nationhood under the spiritual value of membership in the body of Christ, an idea to which no Christian could object. But what he is really doing is subsuming the secular value of nationhood under his own secular valuemass Third-World immigration. Weigel, as a devout Catholic, speaks of the Body of Christ. But what he really has in mind is Ben Wattenberg's Universal Nation.(6) Contrary to the liberal and neoconservative strands of Catholicism which regard the nation as dispensable, traditional Church teachings acknowledge the desirability of organizing mankind into subsidiary units, the largest of which is the nation. The writings of the Church Fathers say nothing about an obligation of a national community to sacrifice itself for other national communities. As the Catholic historian Thomas Molnar points out, Catholic doctrine has long recognized that the nation, like the family, is an entity possessing inherent rights and serving indispensable functions. Like the family, the nation has special claims on the individual's love and loyalty, and promotes important virtues that can be promoted in no other way. And the nation, like the family, needs protection. The sovereign's first duty is the care of his own people. He must attend to the good of his own subjects before he concerns himself with foreigners. The idea that there is some unlimited right of foreigners to immigrate into a country is not in Christianity. "Unconditional love"particularly unconditional love for all foreignersis strictly a New Age concept.^ Babel The above thoughts lead to a surprising conclusion. Most liberal Christians today affirm that creating culturally diverse societies is the moral, Godly, and just thing to dothe more diverse, the more just and Godly. But if it is our purpose to discern God's purpose, doesn't it seem far more likely that God would oppose the creation of multicultural, majority-less societies? He would oppose them, first, because they rob human beings of the stable cultural environments and the concrete networks of belonging that are essential conditions of personal and social flourishing; and, second, he would oppose them because they lead to unresolvable conflict and disorder. In opening America's borders to the world, our political leaders are not following any divine scheme, but are indulging an all-too-human conceit: "We can create a totally just society," they tell themselves. "We can stamp out cultural particularities and commonalities that have taken centuries or millennia to develop. We can erect a new form of society based on nothing but an idea. We can ignore racial and cultural differences and the propensity to inter-group conflict that has ruled all of human history. We can create an earthly utopia, a universal nation." All of which brings us to the biblical account of Babel. The comparison of multicultural America to the Tower of Babel has become such a clich? in the hands of conservative columnists over the last 20 years that a true understanding of this parable has been lost. Indeed, as I will show, the conservative, or rather the neoconservative, understanding of this parable is the exact opposite of its true meaning. As told in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, the human race, in a burst of arrogant pride, attempts to construct a perfect human society purely by their own willa tower "with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Mankind hopes that this one-world society will prevent them from being divided into separate societies. But this is not what God wants. "The Lord came down to look at the city and tower which man had built, and the Lord said, 'If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.'" God does not want man to build a universal city, because that would lead man to worship himself instead of God. So God confusesthat is, he diversifiesmen's language so that they cannot understand one another, and then he "scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth." It becomes clear that the Tower of Babel is not, as neoconservatives have often said, a multicultural society which breaks down because it lacks a common culture based on universalist ideals. On the contrary, the Tower of Babel represents the neoconservatives' own political idealthe Universal Nation. And the moral of the story is that God does not want men to have a single Universal Nation, he wants them to have distinct nations. "That is why it was called Babel," Genesis continues, "because there the Lord confounded the speech of the whole earth." But that's not all. Having divided men's language into many different languages, God does not want these many languages to co-exist in the same society: "And from there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth." Thus God rejects the universal society, where the whole human race lives together speaking the same language, and he also (implicitly) rejects the multicultural society, where the whole human race lives together speaking different languages. God wants the human race to belong to a plurality of separate and finite societies, each with its own culture and language. This providential system for the organization of human life allows for the appropriate expression of cultural variety, even as, by demonstrating that human things are not absolute, it restrains and channels man's self-aggrandizing instincts. And this view of mankind is not limited to the Book of Genesis, as a supposedly primitive account of an early, tribal period of history when mankind presumably needed a more rudimentary form of social organization. If we go from the first book of the Bible to its last book, The Revelation of John, we find, to our astonishment, that God's plan still includes separate nations. In Chapter 21, after the final judgment on sinful humanity has occurred, after the first heaven and the first earth have passed away and a new heaven and a new earth have appeared, after the holy city, New Jerusalem, has come down out of heaven, a dwelling for God himself on earth, and after the total transformation of the world, when even the sun and moon are no longer needed to light the city because the glory of God is the light of it, and the Lamb is the lamp of it, even then ... the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.... And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. In the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, there are still distinct nations, and kings of nations, and these are the glories of humanity which are brought before the throne of God, and there transfigured in the light of Christ. Mankind, following the end of the world, is still providentially constituted of separate nations, which give it its character and distinctiveness, even as, for example, our earth is constituted of separate continents, islands, mountain ranges, and valleys, which give it its shape and its meaning. The physical earth is not a homogenous mass consisting of nothing but "equal" individual particles, and neither, in the biblical view, is mankind. The Bible and the American Founding Coming back to earth after that visit to the New Jerusalem, we realize that we do not need to rely only on the Bible to establish the importance of nationhood. The Scriptural view of God's plan for human society turns out to be in accord with the natural rights tradition that underlies our own Declaration of Independence. Before we conclude this article, let us look at how nationhood is supported by philosophy as well as by revelation. As Locke wrote in his Second Treatise of Government, man receives his existence from God, and therefore has a natural right to preserve his existence, as well as a natural right to the liberty that is needed in order to preserve it. The Declaration of Independence took these Lockean rights of man in his individual capacity and applied them to man in his social or national capacity, when it affirmed that the American people are endowed by God with the rights of liberty and sovereignty, such rights being necessary for their collective preservation as a political society. In our hyper-individualism, we modern Americans have lost sight of the idea that the universal rights of man are not just individual but social. As the philosopher Leo Strauss observed, it is the hierarchical order of man's "natural constitution"the order of man's natural wants and inclinations as a being created in God's imagethat supplies the basis for natural rights such as liberty and property.(7) Furthermore, since man is not only an individual being, but a social being, the hierarchy of man's natural wants includes his need for membership in a coherent political community. Among other requirements, such a community cannot exist without organic links joining the members to each other and to the past; in other words, it cannot exist without a degree of cultural homogeneity. There is therefore a universal right, proceeding from divine and natural law, to preserve our own particular society, including its inherited cultural characteristics, the kinds of distinct qualities that, for example, make the Irish different from the Italians, and that make both of those national groups different from Indians or Indonesians. While the right of cultural preservation may not be absolute, it is nevertheless derived from the same transcendent moral order that is the source of our other political and civil rights. Indeed, it is part of what makes it possible for human beings to participate in that order. As C.S. Lewis put it, "If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race."^ When Lewis said "race," he wasn't thinking of biological race in our contemporary, reductive sense of the word, but of the historic fact of the English people, as an extended family sharing a common descent and a common history. In conclusion, whether we look to the Bible or to the American Founding tradition, we find that the dream of erecting a single, undifferentiated global society violates God's plan for humanity. And, as Genesis tells us, God punishes this universalist society by converting it into a Babelthat is, he destroys it. The heart of our civilizational crisis That the Christian churches have nevertheless urged this universalist project on the West leads us to a terrible paradox. On the one hand, Christianity is the historic and spiritual foundation of Western civilization and of the nations that have constituted it. On the other hand, much of organized Christianity as it actually exists todayChristianity infused with liberal One-Worldismis the avowed enemy of the West and its historic peoples. This One-World Christianity is a distortion of true Christianity, it is what Christianity has become under the influence of left-leftist ideology. A more sane and balanced Christianity is possible, which gives due regard to the subsidiary values of culture and nation. An example of this healthier Christian attitude was the reverence that Pope John Paul II expressed toward the Polish nation during his epochal first papal visit to that country in 1979. During that extraordinary journey, which played a key role in the ultimate defeat of Soviet Communism, he spoke of Poland, not as a political and economic project or as an abstract idea, but as a distinct historical and spiritual entity, as a collective personality whose life has extended over centuries. Unfortunately, the Pope throughout the rest of his papacy gave such recognition only to his native Poland, and, apparently, only because Polish culture was struggling to survive under Communist oppression. When it came to the United States, he took the opposite tack. America as the Pope saw it (and indeed as American liberals and mainstream conservatives themselves see it) has no national culture of its own, but exists only as a charity service for the world (the left view) or as the generator of a global democratic-capitalist ideology (the neoconservative view). Nevertheless, John Paul II's magnificent, if too narrowly applied, evocation of national culture as the vehicle through which a historical people express their relationship with God can be seen as the model for a restored, pro-Western Church. Liberal Christianity's denial of the identity and sovereignty of the historical Western peoples has led many Western patriots to be deeply suspicious of Christianity, even to reject it altogether, when what is most needed is a comprehensive renewal of the Christian faith, the religion which glorifies God and his truth, not man and his desires, and which provides a place under God for all peoples.^ [24]Lawrence Auster is the author of [25]Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at [26]View from the Right. References 1. Pope Pius X, E Supremi Apostolatus, 1903. 2. Abb? George de Nante, The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the XXth Century, August 15, 1997, p. 10.^ 3."Fling Wide the Gates," The Christian Century, September 4, 1957, p. 1028.^ 4. David Simcox, "The Pope's Visit: Is Mass Immigration A Moral Imperative?" The Social Contract, Winter 1995-96, p. 107.^ 5. Alfonso Figueroa Deck, S.J., quoted by Simcox.^ 6. George Weigel, "Why the New Isolations are Wrong," American Purpose, January 1992.^ 7. See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 1953, p. 127.^ References 11. http://cspc.org/ 12. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Contact/Contact.asp 13. http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/createcomment.asp?ID=16159 14. http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/createcomment.asp?ID=16159 15. http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/?ID=16159 16. http://www.frontpagemag.com/GoPostal/?ID=16159 17. http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=16159 18. http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=16159 23. http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/authors.asp?ID=650 24. mailto:Lawrence.auster at att.net 25. http://www.aicfoundation.com/booklets.htm 26. http://www.amnation.com/vfr From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:50:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:50:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] John Derbyshire: (Paglia) Poetry's Plum Gone to Hell Message-ID: Poetry's Plum Gone to Hell http://www.olimu.com/Journalism/Texts/Reviews/BreakBlowBurn.htm Book Review by John Derbyshire The Washington Examiner March 27th, 2005 ____________________________ Break, Blow, Burn By Camille Paglia Pantheon Books, $20 What is the use of writing about books?" asked America's greatest poet, "excepting so far as to give information to those who cannot get the books themselves?" I had better confess up front that I am of the same mind as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and that what goes for books in general goes twice over for poetry. I love to read it, but I don't much want to read about it. Break, Blow, Burn therefore fell on stony ground here. I don't say this with any pleasure, as persons I trust have for years been telling me that the celebrated professor Camille Paglia is, on balance, a Good Thing. But I'm sorry to report that her book bored me rigid. Break, Blow, Burn is a collection of 43 poems by 28 poets, with commentary following each poem. It is intended, the author tells us, for "a general audience." The poems are short and the commentaries mostly less than four pages. Only English-language poets are included. I applaud her choice: poetry in, or from, other people's languages has no place in an enterprise of this sort. In fact, of the 20 post-Samuel Coleridge poets she has chosen, 18 are American, the exceptions being Ireland's W.B. Yeats and Canada's Joni Mitchell. The strongest impression I came away with from this book was of the sheer beggared awfulness of modern American poetry. It is simply no good. That is why nobody quotes it, and nobody outside the academy reads it. I do a fair amount of socializing with decently well-educated Americans, and can clearly recall the last three instances in which someone quoted verse at me unprompted, at couplet length or longer. The poets quoted were Kipling, Kipling and Poe. It is, for example, hard to see why anyone would bother to memorize, or even just remember, the opening lines of "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams: "I have eaten/ the plums/ that were in/ the icebox." Perhaps I am missing something. Perhaps Williams' poem has hidden depths. What does Paglia say? "At one level the succulent, fleshy fruit is a makeshift proxy for the opulent female form," she writes. "The first stanza takes us backward into the dark recesses of the icebox, where the plums nest like eggs... the 'delicious' fruitiness of the final images has the tactile lushness of a kiss." Uh-huh. All of Paglia's commentaries are like this: fantastic extrapolations and plonking symbolism, usually of a succulent, fleshy nature, utterly humorless and reeking of estrogen. Theodore Roethke's "The Visitant" ends, she tells us, "with an aching sense of men's incompletion, their anguished separation from the maternal body, to which they vainly try to reconnect through the deceptive medium of sex." In Gary Snyder's "Old Pond": "the bird is the unembellished voice of nature itself Snyder's modest, flute-like substitute for the authoritarian boom of the Judeo-Christian God." And here we are on "Kubla Khan": "If Coleridge is thinking of the cleft or gorge as vulval, then his 'mighty fountain' forced up by the earth with 'fast thick pants' is blatantly ejaculatory." Reading this book was like flipping through one of those pretentious, absurd catalogs you get when visiting an exhibition of the sillier kind of fashionable art. I even had a fleeting suspicion that the whole thing might be a spoof a send-up of ponderous academic over-interpretation. No, the author is in earnest. Paglia has opened a window into the precious, self-referential little world of literary theorizing. For this poetry lover, it was a glimpse of Hell. And what is burning in that hell is our poetry, for a thousand years the greatest glory of the English-speaking people, but now dead, smothered under the horrid rotten mass of literary academicism. We must have done something very terrible to have our birthright taken from us, to see it suffocated in dust like this. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:52:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:52:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: College Students Mix Doubt and Belief in Their Spiritual and Religious Views, Study Finds Message-ID: College Students Mix Doubt and Belief in Their Spiritual and Religious Views, Study Finds News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.14 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005041404n.htm [45]By THOMAS BARTLETT Most college freshmen believe in God, but fewer than half follow religious teachings in their daily lives. A majority of first-year students (69 percent) say their beliefs provide guidance, but many (48 percent) describe themselves as "doubting," "seeking," or "conflicted." Those are some of the results of a national study, scheduled for release today, that is believed to be the first broad, in-depth look at the religious and spiritual views of college students. The study, "Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students' Search for Meaning and Purpose," was conducted by the [61]Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. Last fall 112,232 freshmen were asked how often they attended religious services, whether they prayed, and if their religious beliefs affected their actions. Among the findings was a strong correlation between students' religious beliefs and their views on hot-button political issues. For instance, students who considered themselves religious were more likely to oppose same-sex marriage. Religious students were also less likely to believe that abortion should be legal. On other questions, however, there was little difference between religious and nonreligious students. For instance, a majority of both groups believed that the federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns and that colleges should ban racist and sexist speech on their campuses. The survey also found that while first-year students were not always sure what they believed, most of them were interested in grappling with big questions like the meaning of life. What that pattern suggests, according to Alexander W. Astin, director of the UCLA research center, is that colleges should be seeking ways to incorporate spiritual and religious questions into the curriculum -- even if doing so makes some professors uncomfortable. "There's an unwritten assumption that we just don't talk about these issues," said Mr. Astin. "I don't think we're taking advantage of the opportunity to help students explore those questions with each other and in their course work." That is because higher education is "a little more repressed" when the conversation turns to spiritual matters, according to Claire L. Gaudiani, a former president of Connecticut College who helped oversee the study. "For a lot of intellectuals, religion and spirituality are seen as a danger to intellectual inquiry," said Ms. Gaudiani. She argued, however, that dealing with questions about meaning and purpose "doesn't have to mean indoctrination." She compared what she calls "educating the spirit" to teaching good nutrition or physical fitness. "Right now students get the sense that we don't do spirituality," she said. 'Burning Questions' If most professors do not "do spirituality," then Mark Wallace is an exception. The associate professor of religion at Swarthmore College teaches a first-year seminar called "Religion and the Meaning of Life." In an interview, he agreed that many professors are reluctant to engage in what he calls "meaning teaching" -- which is a shame, he said, because meaning is exactly what students are looking for. "They hunger and crave that sort of conversation in a college environment," Mr. Wallace said. He also agreed with Ms. Gaudiani that it is possible to deal with religious questions without promoting a particular ideology. What his students seem to want is an "open, safe place" for the discussion of universal issues where they will not be "censored or yelled at or ignored." As proof, he cited strong interest in his course: He usually has three times as many students trying to sign up for the seminar as he can accept. "They have burning questions about life issues," he said. "And they feel those kinds of issues get ignored in the classroom." Not in David K. Glidden's classroom. The professor of philosophy at the University of California at Riverside teaches "The Care of the Soul," a course that focuses on how to live a purposeful life. While Mr. Glidden is not sure that students will complete his class knowing how to care for their souls, he thinks such courses are a good start and should be a part of a college's curriculum. "My sense is that the students I've taught are a lot like what T.S. Eliot called 'hollow men,'" he said. "They are living in a world, and they don't know what they're here for -- they don't know how to live their lives." And they want to know how to live their lives, said Richard F. Galvin, a professor of philosophy at Texas Christian University. He is part of a team-taught, freshman-level course called "The Meaning of Life." The course has two sections of 50 students, and the seats are always filled. "I can tell by talking to them in office hours, looking at their faces in class, and in reading their work that it affects them," Mr. Galvin said. "They want to talk about these issues. What I like to tell them is that there is plenty of time to be worried about their careers, but this might be the last time they get to talk about big questions." Readings for the course include Plato's dialogues and works by Friedrich Nietzsche and John Stuart Mill. Jeffrey Sebo took Mr. Galvin's course when he was a freshman. Now a senior philosophy major, Mr. Sebo was intrigued by its title and became fascinated by the discussions -- so much so that he has returned to the class twice as a teaching assistant. "It was the big questions that got me hooked," he said. The results of the UCLA study were heartening to Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which has long advocated a more holistic and less career-centered approach to higher education. "Students are more idealistic than we thought," she said. "But what this data shows us is that we have a long way to go. Students have idealism that can be tapped, but we're not doing all we can to help them connect that idealism to important challenges in the world around us." Figuring out how to do that is not simple, but colleges need to start trying, according to Mr. Astin. "If you want to take seriously the claims we make about liberal learning, this is what you have to do," he said. "There are large numbers of students who are involved in spiritual and religious issues and who are trying to figure out what life is all about and what matters to them. We need to be much more creative in finding ways to encourage that exploration." _________________________________________________________________ Background article from The Chronicle: * [62]Survey Finds Spiritual Leanings Among Most College Students (11/28/2003) References 45. mailto:thomas.bartlett at chronicle.com 61. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri 62. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i14/14a03602.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 13:59:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:59:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Brain Molecule Guides Healthy Eating Message-ID: Brain Molecule Guides Healthy Eating http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-04-12-2 Ancient enzyme acts as an innate nutritionist to influence food choices Betterhumans Staff 4/12/2005 3:42 PM Burger and Fries Credit: Greg Nicholas Meal planner: An ancient enzyme in the brain appears to guide food choices in omnivores to promote a balanced diet If you're having trouble eating healthy, maybe you need to speak with your internal nutritionist. Mammals including humans appear to have such a nutritionist in the form of an ancient brain molecule that regulates food choices. The [8]enzyme and its molecular mechanism are likely to be important for all mammals that eat a varied diet comprising meat and vegetables, say researchers. Called [9]GCN2 kinase, the enzyme initiates events relaying information to the brain about foods' [10]amino acid content. This enables animals to adjust their food intake in favor of a more balanced meal. Researchers have previously identified the molecular mechanism in yeast and rats. [11]David Ron of the [12]New York University School of Medicine and colleagues have now found it in mice, suggesting that it's likely to be conserved in humans. "This ancient pathway in mice recognizes drops in blood amino acid levels that occur following consumption of food with an imbalanced composition," says Ron. "That recognition culminates in a behavioral response that limits consumption of the imbalanced food and favors, by default, a more balanced diet." Balanced diet While most of the 20 amino acids can be synthesized by the body, eight must be obtained from food. Omnivorous animals such as humans are known to consume less of a meal lacking essential amino acids than meals that are nutritionally complete. To determine the role of GCN2 kinase in such behavior, Ron and colleagues inactivated the enzyme in the brains of mice. The mice subsequently had no aversion to imbalanced meals. "There's no reason to believe that the same mechanism isn't at work in humans," says Ron. But cultural influences and an instinctive drive to consume calorie-dense foods, says Ron, might override the molecular nutritionist's ability to promote a balanced diet. The research is reported in the journal [13]Cell Metabolism ([14]read abstract). References 8. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/enzyme 9. http://www.google.ca/search?q=GCN2+kinase 10. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/amino_acid 11. http://www.med.nyu.edu/people/D.Ron.html 12. http://www.med.nyu.edu/ 13. http://www.cellmetabolism.org/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:01:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:01:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] PHXnews: Kyl/ McCain Bill Would Reimburse States For Emergency Care of Illegals Legislation Message-ID: Kyl/ McCain Bill Would Reimburse States For Emergency Care of Illegals Legislation http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=3549 Posted by U.S. Senator Jon Kyl on Thursday February 13, 2003 at 11:14 pm MST Would Help Arizona Hospitals Facing Closure WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), joined by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), today announced their introduction of bipartisan legislation to reimburse states by $1.45 billion per year for the costs of federally-mandated emergency treatment of illegal immigrants. Arizona is expected to get a substantial share of any funding authorized. Kyl, chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health Care and a member of the Senate leadership, said: "This proposal will come to the aid of Arizona and other border states that experience the tremendous costs of providing federally-mandated emergency treatment to illegal aliens - which forces many facilities to close their doors to Arizonans needing help. I am pleased to report that we are making significant progress in getting that message across to my Senate colleagues. In the coming weeks, I will convene hearings to demonstrate the human costs of the federal government's neglect in this area, and will push for prompt consideration of this urgently-needed legislation." McCain, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, added: "As a border state, Arizona's hospitals have been hit especially hard by the cost of medical services provided to immigrants," McCain said. "This legislation would provide Arizona and other states with federal money for immigrant medical care." A recent study requested by Kyl and conducted by the US-Mexico Border Counties Coalition surveyed four border states -- Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. It found that health-care facilities in 28 border counties alone spent more than $200 million in one year alone for emergency medical treatment of undocumented patients, nearly $31 million just for the four border counties in Arizona. Such treatment is required under a federal law known "the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)," which forbids emergency rooms from turning any patient away who is in need of emergency care. The amount of $1.45 billion is the estimated cost for the entire country per year. The estimated costs would have been even higher if non-border counties - such as Maricopa - were included in the study as well, Kyl noted. Some estimates place loss at Maricopa hospitals due to unpaid bills from illegal immigrant as high as $50 million per year. "This bipartisan bill provides critical support to our states and localities, including the medical community, for the costs they incur while providing healthcare ensuring that access to critical services are available for our most vulnerable populations. We must act soon before this crisis deepens," McCain said. "The spirit behind laws requiring emergency medical care to all comers is laudable and welcome," Kyl said. "But it comes at a price. And since this is a federal mandate imposed on local hospitals, we believe the federal government has a responsibility to pay for it." The bill is cosponsored by Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Will ailing Pope John Paul II & Terri Schiavo survive past this weekend? (_) The Pope will survive, but Terri won't (_) Terri will survive, but the Pope won't (_) Both the Pope & Terri will survive the weekend (_) Both the Pope & Terri will pass away this weekend From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:05:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:05:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] ACP-ASIM Observer: Emergency access is mandated-but without money Message-ID: ACP-ASIM Observer, November 2001 - Emergency access is mandated-but without money http://www.acponline.org/journals/news/nov01/mandate.htm American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine. [Note the date.] While legislation requires hospitals to provide basic access to emergency care, physicians say that the law lacks one critical element: any source of funding to pay for the care they must provide. That omission, they say, is helping drive physicians away from taking ER call. Federal legislators passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in 1986 in the wake of the newly implemented diagnosis related groups (DRG) reimbursement system. As hospitals realized that DRGs would eliminate funding that had allowed them to subsidize uncompensated care, some began refusing to give emergency treatment to indigent or uninsured patients or started "dumping" them on public facilities. The new law theoretically put an end to such practices. Under EMTALA, emergency departments must screen all comers. They must treat a patient's condition until it is stable, or arrange a transfer to a facility that can, regardless of the patient's ability to pay. A hospital must also accept transferred patients if it can provide the specialized treatment patients need. And hospitals must maintain a list of on-call physicians who are available to treat emergency patients. The act also requires hospital bylaws to define the responsibilities of on-call physicians and implement policies to guide emergency workers when a specialist is not available or when an on-call physician is not able to respond. Physicians providing emergency care--including those on call--who violate any part of the law are subject to a $50,000 fine and can be excluded from Medicare. Critics say that the act is flawed on several fronts, however. First, they complain, it does not reimburse hospitals or physicians for this mandatory coverage. "The cost of maintaining emergency services has never been accounted for in the American health care system," said Loren A. Johnson, MD, medical director at Sutter Davis Hospital in Davis, Calif., and president of the California chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "It's all based on goodwill, and the care hospitals and physicians provide out of a sense of social contract and civic duty." Physician groups such as the American College of Emergency Physicians are advocating for funds to pay for the universal EMTALA mandate. Among other solutions, they recommend restructuring Medicare's inpatient disproportionate share funding. Critics also say that the law holds hospitals, not doctors, responsible for ensuring on-call coverage. In some cases, for instance, on-call specialists have refused to allow patients who needed their specialty services to be transferred to their hospital. The hospital was fined for violating the law, not the physicians. "The construct of the law places the direct risk and responsibility on the hospital, and indirect responsibility on the medical staff," Dr. Johnson said. "If medical staff refuses to take call and be on a roster, we lose the service but it never gets reported." Physicians don't get reported because emergency physicians do not rat out members of their own medical staff. Instead, they often "go vertical," Dr. Johnson said, calling their way up the chain of hospital administrators to find someone to lean on a specialist to appear. As a result, few physicians get fined for EMTALA violations. According to a report issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO) earlier this year on the law's implementation and enforcement issues (see [29]http://www.gao.gov/daybook/010622.htm), less than 30 physicians have been cited for violations since the law was passed 15 years ago. The same report claimed that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), formerly HCFA, investigates about 400 EMTALA complaints against hospitals every year and cites about half of them. From 1995 to 2000, the report states, the OIG fined more than 190 hospitals nationwide a total of $5.6 million for EMTALA violations. Given the growing attention to the problem of on call panels, however, the regulatory aspect of the law may go into higher gear. "I keep hearing from CMS that significantly more on-call citations are in the pipeline," Dr. Johnson said. But if that happens, the threat of running afoul of the law might further cut the number of physicians willing to take ER call. "Only those physicians who are doing their civic duty place themselves at risk," Dr. Johnson explained. "EMTALA may be a tool to enforce hospital and medical staff responsibility, but it is a perverse incentive for individual physicians to voluntarily take call." [26]Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act links and resources [27]Breaking the law: Unresponsive on-call physicians [28]Hospitals in nearly every state violate federal patient dumping law, study shows References 26. http://www.acutecare.com/emtalalinks.htm 27. http://www.msleader.com/articles/msb200p1.cfm 28. http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=170 29. http://www.gao.gov/daybook/010622.htm From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:06:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:06:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Novosti: Russian Oligardchs Want Immortality Message-ID: Russian Information Agency Novosti http://en.rian.ru/rian/index.cfm?prd_id=160&msg_id=5464269&startrow=1&date=2005-03-16&do_alert=0 2005-03-16 19:03 RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS WANT IMMORTALITY MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Vladimir Simonov) - When life is good, it is especially bitter to admit that it will end some day. And this simple truth encourages nouveaux riches Russians, called oligarchs here, to spend through the nose on all kinds of rejuvenation procedures and on scientific research to create the "elixir of youth." The people who have everything you can dream about, from castles in Scotland to garages with a dozen Ferraris, want absolute, 100% joie de vivre in their own immortality. One of such people is Vladimir Bryntsalov, the pharmaceutical king of Russia who plans to spend $2 million on setting up a personal rejuvenation laboratory. He has had a course of stem cell injections and feels no older than 20, though his biological age is about 60. "My cheeks were deeply lined - now they are smooth as baby's," said Bryntsalov stroking his cheeks. "There were terrible scars on my body since childhood - they have smoothed over, vanished." Stem cells are taken from the patient's fat layers under local anesthesia (autogenous transplant) or from aborted or miscarried human fetuses. In both cases, the substance is blended and put into an incubator, where the cells grow rapidly for several weeks, after which the precious substance is injected into the patient's vein. Or you can have facial injections, which are said to have miraculous effect. This expensive treatment will cost you $10,000-20,000 in Moscow, depending on the length of the course. But members of the financial elite and ranking state officials are lining up at medical centers. In many Western countries, such clinics would not even get the opportunity to open their doors. During a recent speech, President Bush denounced stem cell therapy as "godless." The U.S. administration and the governments of many other industrialized countries refuse to finance such research from the state budget and it is banned altogether in several countries. But more than a score of physicians openly practice this experimental method in Moscow. The sale of eternal youth is nearly as profitable as the oil business. Doctor Alexander Teplyashin, one of the most fashionable rejuvenation specialists, has two clinics in downtown Moscow and on the elite Rublyovskoye Shosse (Highway). Their high-tech architecture would do honor to any European capital. Dr. Teplyashin has a long list of the rich who want to turn the clock back. "I always tell my patients: Spend something on yourself, and not just on your planes and yachts," said Dr. Teplyashin. This is not a problem for many oligarchs. More and more of them can have a private jet, a football club, and the not quite fantastic dream of immortality. Forbes reported recently that Russia has the world's second largest group of billionaires after the U.S. The personal income of 27 Russian citizens is above $1 billion (69 in the U.S.) and their aggregate assets are $90.6 billion. The third man on Forbes Russian rich list is Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate worth $5.5 billion. He would not like to leave behind the results of his hard work when his final hour beckons. In a bid to put off this day, he gave $120,000 for research into "the youth elixir" at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Biology of Moscow State University. Professor Vladimir Skulachev, the Institute director and a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, received the money. His idea may not seem original but he has moved farther ahead in its implementation than many other researchers. Aging is a biological program where oxygen is the main killer of cells, said Skulachev. And any program can be turned off. The idea is to create a powerful antioxidant to protect the organism from destruction. The Deripaska grant and months of brainstorming seem to have brought Skulachev's group to a sensational discovery. There is a tube in the professor's fridge filled to a third with a sticky amber-colored substance. It isthe miracle elixir that may turn some Russians into Peter Pan. "No, I did not promise eternal life to Deripaska," said the professor modestly. "Well, his name may go down in the history of science for giving substantial sums to unique research." According to Skulachev, the task is to "check the hypothesis of aging and the possibility of prolonging life." So far, the elixir is being checked on mice, and the result will become clear in a year. The professor needs another $500,000 for the next five years of research, and his team hopes Mr. Deripaska's enthusiasm will not ebb. The Science of Longevity foundation, created by Russia's most exclusive family club, Monolith, is very enthusiastic. Its members are the cream of the country's financial elite and, not surprisingly, they would like to prolong the benefits of the post-communism era into eternity. The foundation's board, whose trustees are Yuri Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Pokrovsky, president of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, and ex-Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko, has called on Russian scientists to take part in a competition "for the best program of prolonging human life." The board has received over 300 proposals and projects. Russian society, a third of which lives below the poverty line, is divided on the need for immortal oligarchs. Mikhail Rechkin, an expert on the paranormal, thinks that Russia does not need eternally young oligarchs. "There is a gulf between the rich and the poor in the country," he said. "And so, the rich will not be allowed to live eternally. There will be a revolution." Valery Polyakov, a cosmonaut and adviser to the director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, is not so outspoken: "Deripaska did well to invest in research. Maybe this will help scientists find ways to prolong life not only for oligarchs but also for other people. The oligarchs should not think about eternal life but about creating a good name for themselves and cleansing themselves of their dirty deeds." The patients of the Russian Dr. Faust have a somewhat primitive notion of immortality. "I want to live longer so as to earn more money," one of them said in the surgery for stem cells transplant. These people will have to hear and understand yet the prayer of Russia's oldest citizen, Pasikhat Dzhukavleva, a Chechen who turned 124 amid the explosions and ruination of Grozny. "I have had a good life but I have lived too long. I am tired of living. Forgive me for that." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:09:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:09:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Forbes: What Kills Billionaires Message-ID: What Kills Billionaires http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/killsbills_1.html 5.4.9 By Vanessa Gisquet Think trophy wives, boating accidents and feckless dependents are the primary causes of death for billionaires? Think again. Billionaires are killed by the same unglamorous things that kill the rest of us: diseases such as cancer, heart attacks, kidney failure and others. The only difference is they may live a little longer. The average age of death for the 20 billionaires featured in the 2004 and 2005 "In Memoriam" sections of the annual Forbes Billionaires list was 78. (http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bill05.html) We compared this number with the average male life expectancy in the U.S., since all but one of the 20 billionaires on our list that died were males: the billionaires lived 3.5 years longer than average American males. The results would be even more dramatic if we took into account average life expectancies from around the world, since the billionaires on our list are of all different nationalities. Go to Forbes.com to view a slideshow of what kills billionaires. http://www.forbes.com/2005/04/04/cx_vg_0405featslide.html According to a 1999 study in the British Medical Journal, higher income is, in fact, "casually associated with greater longevity." But when it comes to living longer, billionaires may not be that much better off than mere millionaires. "While an extra dollar of income is protective," the study reads, "the amount of protective effect tails off as total income rises." The rich not only tend to live longer, but are healthier as well. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 23% of people below the poverty threshold, defined as "poor," are limited by chronic disease, whereas only 10% of "non-poor," those with an income 200% or greater than the poverty threshold, are. What accounts for these gaps? Traditional theories espouse that greater wealth means greater access to medical care. But as Forbes' Dan Seligman points out in his June 2004 article, "Why the Rich Live Longer," if access was the key, the health gap between the upper and lower classes should have shrunk with the advent of America's Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention employer-sponsored health insurance. Some use the "inequality is a killer" theory, arguing that the health gap between the rich and the poor exists because low social status increases stress and anxiety, which increases susceptibility to disease. It's not entirely clear, though, whether lower-level civil servants suffer less anxiety than, say, chief executives and billionaires. Struggling to pay your bills and having to answer to angry stockholders are both stressful, each in their own way. Some studies contend that rich live longer because of intellectual Darwinism. "Social status," Seligman writes, "correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence, and intelligence correlates strongly with health literacy--the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment." This theory is not without evidence: Seligman cites a 2003 study by psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh that found mortality rates to be 17% higher for each 15-point falloff in IQ. Since most of what kills Americans today is chronic disease, health literacy may, in fact, be a key to longevity. Understanding and monitoring risk factors for the major conditions that predispose us to death--heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure--requires a considerable amount of awareness, discipline and foresight. And when it comes to prevention, being rich certainly doesn't hurt. So-called executive physicals, offered at places like the Princeton Longevity Center, Canyon Ranch and the Mayo Clinic, cost anywhere from $2,000 to $7,000, and most insurers cover only a small percentage of that. These pricey super-physicals get done in one day, in one office, instead of what would normally involve a half-dozen different doctor's appointments with various specialists. Included are usually the latest diagnostic imaging techniques, like CT-scans of the heart, which detect calcium buildup in arteries that can signal heart disease, and virtual colonoscopies, as well as advanced blood tests that might detect early stages of disease, and nutrition and fitness assessments. Many of the facilities that offer executive physicals have on-site labs that provide same-day results, which give "executive" patients the added benefit of being able to discuss the results--and any suggested targeted therapies--with the team of doctors, without any hassle. Enough money can even make an otherwise dreary hospital stay that much more comfortable. A handful of the nation's top hospitals have "luxury" accommodations, an indulgence that must be, of course, paid for out-of-pocket. The rooms and suites in the 16th-floor Shapiro Pavilion at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass., for example, are priced at $325 to $800 out-of-pocket. The 14 rooms feature bidets in all bathrooms, 300-thread-count sheets, kitchenettes, flat-screen TVs and pull-out couches for guests who want to spend the night. The unit has a gourmet chef, and is even locked for high-security. Other hospitals such as Johns Hopkins, Massachusetts General and Cedars-Sinai--just to name a few--all have similar luxury units. Most people don't think of themselves as lucky if their health or mental status require around the clock home health care, but the alternative--being in a nursing home--might make them feel fortunate. Perhaps not surprisingly, home health care costs, on average, more than double what it costs to be in a nursing home. According to the 2004 MetLife Market Survey of Nursing Home and Home Care Costs, the average daily cost of a private room in a nursing home in the U.S. is $70,080 per year, or $192 per day. The study found that the cost of a home health care aide averaged $18 per hour nationally, which turns out to be $432 per day. Three of the billionaires were not included in the list because their causes of death were not specified. Marvin Davis, famous for buying 20th Century Fox and selling it four years later to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., and also for owing Pebble Beach Co., the Aspen Skiing Co., and the Beverly Hills Hotel, for instance, died after a "long illness." Friends say he had long suffered from heart trouble, diabetes and other effects of obesity, but what actually caused his death was not released. Portugal's richest man, Antonio Champalimaud, who passed away in May of 2004, suffered a "prolonged illness," and reportedly died in his home in Lisbon. Saudi billionaire Abdulaziz Bin Hamad Algosaibi's cause of death was also not specified. Around the clock personal nurses and 300 thread-count sheets aside, even all their money can't buy billionaires immortality. To see a list of the leading causes of death among billionaires, click here. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:10:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:10:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dan Seligman: Why the Rich Live Longer Message-ID: Dan Seligman: Why the Rich Live Longer http://www.actwin.com/kalostrader/RichLiveLonger.htm Thursday May 20, 6:35 pm ET There's a stunning new explanation for upscale longevity, and it's quite contrary to what the world's health bureaucrats have been telling us. One of the great mysteries of modern medicine: Why do rich people live longer than poor people? Why is it that, all around the world, those with more income, education and high-status jobs score higher on various measures of health? As stated in a World Health Organization pamphlet: "People further down the social ladder usually run at least twice the risk of serious illness and premature death of those near the top." The traditional answer to these questions has been that greater wealth and social status mean greater access to medical care. But even ten years ago, when this magazine last delved into the topic (FORBES, Jan. 31, 1994), the available answers seemed inadequate. If access was the key, then one would have expected the health gap between upper and lower classes to shrink or disappear with the advent of programs like Britain's National Health Service and America's Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention employer-sponsored health insurance. In fact, the gap widened in both Britain and America as these programs took effect. The 1994 article cited a study of British civil servants--all with equal access to medical care and other social services, and all working in similar physical environments--showing that even within this homogeneous group the higher-status employees were healthier: "Each civil service rank outlived the one immediately below." How could this be? Today the standard answer--or, at least, the answer you are guaranteed to get from the WHO and other large health bureaucracies--is that inequality itself is the killer. The argument is that low status translates into insecurity, stress and anxiety, all of which increases susceptibility to disease. This psychosocial case is lengthily elaborated in Social Determinants of Health, a 1999 publication collectively created by 22 medical specialists and endorsed by the WHO. "Is it plausible," the book asks at one point, "that the organization of work, degree of social isolation and sense of control over life could affect the likelihood of developing and dying from chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease?" The authors' answer is a resounding yes. Pushing their case to the outer limits, the authors supply data indicating that in the world of African wild baboons, those who are socially dominant tend to be most healthy (as mainly evidenced in their higher levels of good cholesterol). This revised standard answer has some plausibility, but also some serious weaknesses. One of its problems is that we lack serious comparative data on tension and anxiety levels in low- and high-status jobs. It is far from clear that barbers, elevator operators and lower-level civil servants suffer more tension than do surgeons, executive vice presidents and higher-level civil servants. Another problem is that psychosocial explanations don't tell us why the health gap would widen when employers and governments provide more health care. Nor do they explain one well-known source of the health gap: the notoriously high rate of smoking in the low-status population. An explanation not presenting these problems has recently been proposed in several papers by two scholars long associated with IQ studies: Linda Gottfredson, a sociologist based at the University of Delaware, and psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh. Their solution to the age-old mystery of health and status is at once utterly original and supremely obvious. The rich live longer, they write, mainly because the rich are smarter. The argument rests on several different propositions, all well documented. The crucial points are that (a) social status correlates strongly and positively with IQ and other measures of intelligence;(b) intelligence correlates strongly with "health literacy," the ability to understand and follow a prescription for disease prevention and treatment; and (c) intelligence is also correlated with forward planning--which means avoidance of health risks (including smoking) as they are identified. The first leg of that argument has been established for many decades. In modern developed countries IQ correlates about 0.5 with measures of income and social status--a figure telling us that IQ is not everything but also making plain that it powerfully influences where people end up in life. The mean IQ of Americans in the Census Bureau's "professional and technical" category is 111. The mean for unskilled laborers is 89. An American whose IQ is in the range between 76 and 90 (i.e., well below average) is eight times as likely to be living in poverty as someone whose IQ is over 125. Second leg: Intelligent people tend to be the most knowledgeable about health-related issues. Health literacy matters more than it used to. In the past big gains in health and longevity were associated with improvements in public sanitation, immunization and other initiatives not requiring decisions by ordinary citizens. But today the major threats to health are chronic diseases--which, inescapably, require patients to participate in the treatment, which means in turn that they need to understand what's going on. Memorable sentence in the Gottfredson-Deary paper in the February 2004 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science: "For better or worse, people are substantially their own primary health care providers." The authors invite you to conceptualize the role of "patient" as having a job, and argue that, as with real jobs in the workplace, intelligent people will learn what's needed more rapidly, will understand what's important and what isn't and will do best at coping with unforeseen emergencies. It is clear that a lot of patients out there are doing their jobs very badly. Deary was coauthor of a 2003 study in which childhood IQs in Scotland were related to adult health outcomes. A central finding: Mortality rates were 17% higher for each 15-point falloff in IQ. One reason for the failure of broad-based access to reduce the health gap is that low-IQ patients use their access inefficiently. A Gottfredson paper in the January 2004 issue of the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology cites a 1993 study indicating that more than half of the 1.8 billion prescriptions issued annually in the U.S. are taken incorrectly. The same study reported that 10% of all hospitalizations resulted from patients' inability to manage their drug therapy. A 1998 study reported that almost 30% of patients were taking medications in ways that seriously threatened their health. Noncompliance with doctors' orders is demonstrably rampant in low-income clinics, reaching 60% in one cited s tudy. Noncompliance is often taken to signify a lack of patient motivation, but it often clearly reflects a simple failure to understand directions. A new Test of Functional Health Literacy of Adults can evaluate the problem in a mere 22 minutes. It measures comprehension of the labels on prescription vials, of appointment slips, of what the patient is expected to do before diagnostic tests, etc. The results turn out to be somewhat horrifying. In a sample of 2,659 clinic patients in two urban hospitals, 42% did not understand the instructions for taking medicine on an empty stomach, and 26% did not understand when the next appointment was scheduled. The problem is maximized for patients with chronic illnesses. Asthma, diabetes and hypertension all require patients to make a lot of decisions daily as well as in emergencies, but many patients are simply not up to it. A study cited in the Gottfredson-Deary paper mentions that a high proportion of insulin-dependent diabetics did not know how to tell when their blood sugar was too high or too low or how to get it back to normal. And then there is the third leg of the IQargument: the lifestyle question. Smoking, obesity and sedentary living are more prevalent among low-status citizens. A 2001 study by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention found that college graduates are three times as likely to live healthily as those who never got beyond high school. Not clear is what the government can do about this. The data on IQ, social status and health present some huge conundrums for policymakers. For years Americans debated what to do for, and about, poor people unable to pay for health care. Ultimately they decided it simply had to be paid for. But now, with money ordinarily not a barrier to medical care, we are discovering another obstacle: "regimen complexity." As this fact of life sinks in, the system will be under pressure to find ways to deliver high-quality care to the low-status population much more simply, understandably--and economically. Not an easy task. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:12:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:12:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Terry Eagleton: The enlightenment is dead! Long live the Enlightenment! Message-ID: Terry Eagleton: The enlightenment is dead! Long live the Enlightenment! Harper's Magazine, March 2005 v310 i1858 p91(5). Discussed in this essay: The Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture, by Louis Dupre. Yale University Press, 2004. 417 pages. $45. Idiot Proof: Deluded Celebrities, Irrational Power Brokers, Media Morons, and the Erosion of Common Sense, by Francis Wheen. Public Affairs, 2004. 327 pages. $25. Imagine having to choose between two different kinds of society. In one, individual freedom and self-determination are cherished values, and the political form that they take is known as democracy. All men and women are seen as fundamentally equal, and tolerance for their different cultures and lifestyles is zealously fostered. Conflicts are to be resolved by recourse to reason and argument, rather than to custom, prejudice, authority, and tradition. Nothing is to be taken on trust simply because it is centuries old or announced by an archbishop. In fact, nothing is to be taken on trust at all. Instead of bowing submissively to custom and authority, we are to have the courage to think for ourselves. And there are no preordained limits to this inquiry. Discovering the truth for this way of life requires a disinterested judgment free of passion, prejudice, and sectarian wrangling. It involves seeing the world as it really is, unclouded by fancy theories or abstruse metaphysics. But the truth is not an end in itself: the point, rather, is to harness it to the use and fulfillment of humankind. This is known as science and technology, which are forces for emancipation rather than enslavement. Truth is a practical, experimental affair, not a dogmatic absolute. Human beings, who stand at the apex of creation, give meaning and value to the world by their actions. This is known as history--and if only men and women can resist the arbitrary authority of priest and king, cast off irrational prejudices, and press knowledge into the service of emancipation, that history is likely to be a narrative of steady progress. [Graphic omitted]Contrast this, then, with the second form of society, in which men and women are solitary creatures locked fearfully within their own private spheres. All they can know with any certainty is their own immediate experience, and even that is alarmingly unreliable. They cannot know enough of other people even to be sure that they exist, or that they have minds like their own. Communication is sickeningly precarious, and friendship, community, and solidarity are less genuine bonds than an interlocking of private interests. In fact, it is self-interest that drives this social order, in which others are seen either as potential predators or as pale replicas of oneself. Reason still plays a major role in this culture, but only in a withered, anemic sense of the term. It no longer provides a foundation to social life. Instead, having scornfully dismissed metaphysical first principles, this society is left hanging in a void. It is a cacophony of colliding values, and reason cannot adjudicate between them. Reason is just a set of mechanical procedures for calculating which means will most effectively secure your self-interested ends. Those ends are not in themselves rational: like the instinct for self-preservation, they are set by appetites that are built into our nature and, as such, are beyond all criticism. Reason becomes a blunt instrument for promoting one's own gratification, rather as science and technology are ways of mastering and dominating Nature (which includes other people and other cultures) so as to press it into the service of one's desires. Torn loose from feeling, custom, and the senses, reason runs riot; in fact, it ends up replacing the despotism of earlier regimes with a tyranny all its own, from which no particle of human life is permitted to escape. Nature is no longer valuable or meaningful in itself; it is just an inert lump of matter to be cuffed into whatever shape takes our fancy. A bleak utility now reigns sovereign in social life, expelling all of those dimensions of existence--art, feeling, humor, imagination, sensuous fulfillment, doing things just for the hell of it--which have a value but no price. A wedge is driven between humanity and Nature, as subjects are ripped from objects, bodies from souls, and values from facts. God is killed off in all but name, and human beings are hoisted into His place at the apex of creation. But exactly because they have the absolute freedom to do what they like, whatever they actually do seems futile and arbitrary. The bad news is that no choice is possible between these two ways of life, since they are one and the same. Both are images of the Enlightenment, that enthusiasm for reason, progress, freedom, science, and secularism that swept Europe from Descartes to Kant, and of which modern capitalist societies are the inheritors. The even worse news is that you cannot easily pick and choose between the two, passing over the less appetizing features for the more alluring ones, because they are bound intricately together. This is not a fact that seems obvious to Louis Dupre, in his impressively scholarly The Enlightenment & the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture, or to Francis Wheen, in his scintillating polemic Idiot Proof. Wheen is a doughty champion of the Enlightenment who only grudgingly admits to its defects; Dupre, also a fan of the movement, is rather more critical but fails to see that its virtues are by and large the flip side of its vices. For a more balanced assessment we need to turn to Karl Marx, of whom Wheen, incidentally, has written a deeply enjoyable study. Marx was an odd hybrid of scientific rationalist and Romantic humanist--that is to say, he was a child of the Age of Reason who also launched an implacable critique of it. In this respect, his true successor was Sigmund Freud, another rationalist with a profound skepticism of reason. There are those who sing the praises of enlightened thought, from Francis Bacon to Francis Wheen, and those who insist that the Enlightenment was all a ghastly blunder on which some merciful soul should have blown the whistle long ago. Many of the latter camp are now known as postmodernists, for whom reason is inherently authoritarian, truth a chimera, and freedom a fiction. For some like Theodor Adorno, there is a direct path from the Enlightenment to Auschwitz. For others like Jurgen Habermas, only staying faithful to the Enlightenment will save us from such horrors. Were the death camps the nadir of a tyrannical technology or the ultimate triumph of a barbarous unreason? Or was fascism as potent as it was because it managed to combine myth and rationality, the archaic and the avantgarde, in a lethal political cocktail? Marxists, with infuriating smugness, have it both ways. This is charitably known as dialectical and less charitably as sitting on the fence. For them, post-Enlightenment culture has been both an exhilarating narrative of human emancipation and one long nightmare. Each story, moreover, must be read through the lens of the other. Freedom is indeed precious, but when it takes the form of economic individualism it means hunger, wretchedness, and unfreedom for others. Equality in the abstract means gross inequality in the concrete. It also means that, as far the marketplace goes, any one individual is interchangeable with any other. Politically speaking, we are equal in the polling booth but not in the business of government or property. Reason protects us from a savage irrationalism, but for all its indispensability it is not, in the end, where human life is at, and the problem is to find a way of saying so that does not sell out to the racists, charlatans, and latter-day barbarians. Other Enlightenment concepts are equally two-edged. We are urgently in need of progress, but not if it means the kind of crass complacency that ignores the fact that history for most men and women to date has meant misery and fruitless toil and instead traces a triumphalist trajectory all the way from Adam to John Ashcroft. Americans are particularly prone to the illusion that everything is steadily getting better, whereas some Europeans would be rather crestfallen if this turned out to be the case. As for the mastery of Nature, this is sometimes essential, not least when the cobra is about to strike or your sailboat is rapidly sinking; but we are now imperiled by the whirlwind that this hubristic doctrine has set loose down the centuries. The techniques that helped us combat plague have turned into one of the most terrifying plagues of all. The idea of universality, along with the notion of a shared human nature, was among the Enlightenment's most vital contributions to human wisdom. Now everyone, however obscure or obnoxious, had to be in on the social and political narrative, and had the right to be so simply because he was a member of the human species, not because he was second cousin to the Archduke of Saxony. In practice, however, middle-class society has for the most part paid only lip service to this ideal, while concealing its highly partisan interests under the cloak of a disinterested universalism. When it prates today of bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqis, rather than tells the truth about U.S. corporate greed and a puppet government, it is up to its old tricks. What began as a revolutionary concept of universality, with Robespierre, Paine, and Jefferson, has dwindled to that bogus version of it known as globalization, in which "universality" no longer means respecting everyone's way of life but demolishing other cultures in the name of your own supposedly universal values. Louis Dupre's study of the Enlightenment, ranging as it does over art, morality, religion, science, philosophy, social theory, and a good deal besides, is a marvel of scholarly erudition. Dupre must be one of the very few people on the planet to have read the almost entirely forgotten French eighteenth-century playwright Nivelle de la Chaussee, and anyone who has read as many of Diderot's dramas as he has deserves both praise and sincere commiseration. Dupre may think that the first name of the eighteenth-century English novelist Richardson was Herbert rather than Samuel, and he may classify the Irish philosopher Francis Hutcheson as a Scot, but these are minuscule blemishes on a formidably well-researched book, which would make an excellent introduction to Enlightenment ideas for the general reader, if it is erudite, it is by no means esoteric. It is, however, more of a compendium than a case. Dupre has an argument of sorts, but it rapidly becomes buried beneath a mass of sometimes rather potted accounts of individual thinkers. The mighty Jonathan Swift, for example, who, like Marx, was both a product of the Enlightenment and a vehement critic of it, is dispatched in a single paragraph. The book sacrifices analysis to description and depth to range. Its prose style is both lucid and lifeless, like Enlightenment reason at its least admirable. Dupre does, however, shed a wondrously clear light on the fiendishly difficult Kant, as well as provide illuminating accounts of a whole host of major Enlightenment intellectuals from Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Hume to Gibbon, Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Herder. What Dupre's exposition really needs is a little more bias. His study is in danger of being hopelessly well balanced. It lacks a narrative, thrust of argument, or critical edge. The Enlightenment has been described as fostering a prejudice against prejudice, meaning that many of its thinkers regarded prejudice, in their rationalist way, as the enemy of truth. Yet, as Dupre himself recognizes, without a prejudice in flavor of truth we would hardly bother to hunt it down; and prejudices can help, as well as hinder, in our pursuit of it. Dupre, however, is reluctant in his civilized way to wield a cutlass or fight his corner, with the result that his book is too often tepidly neutral in tone. It is not that the author is altogether without ideological opinions. As a retired philosopher of religion, he is uneasy with the secular bent of the Enlightenment, disapproves of its rejection of absolute moral foundations, and devotes a rather unfair amount of space to religion and ethics. His predilections betray him at one point into the positively silly statement that the age was one of "moral decline," as though historical periods could be treated like Restoration rakes. He is visibly rattled by the lacerating satire of a Swift, a fact that would no doubt have afforded the sadistic Anglo-Irishman some keen satisfaction. Satire is scarcely the most acceptable of American modes, though chuckleheaded patriotism certainly is. Dupre has, accordingly, no hesitation in commending the U.S. political system as the most balanced in all creation, and upbraids Rousseau for not appreciating "the dynamic potential of a free market economy." A short stint in the Harvard Business School would no doubt have done this Swiss subversive a power of good; perhaps one might also rap Cicero over the knuckles for his casual disregard of supply-side economics. In one sense, Dupre's work makes too much of a single entity out of its subject. He assumes that all cultures display an organic unity, a highly old-fashioned proposition. In another sense, though, he displays the diversity and contradictions of this supposedly singular current of ideas, without doubting for a moment that it represents a distinctive movement. It is true, for example, that many thinkers of the period were bloodless rationalists; but as both Dupre and Wheen point out, the Age of Reason was also the Age of Feeling. If there was Voltaire, there was also Rousseau; if it was an era of utility and calculation, it was also the heyday of sentimentalism, with its cults of the self, the inner light, inward experience, authenticity, and autobiography. As social life grew increasingly feminized, blushing, weeping, swooning, and palpitating grew increasingly de rigueur. It became almost obligatory for men to cry in public. Militarism, dominance, and arrogance, all badges of the aristocracy, were challenged by fashionable middle-class cults of civility, uxoriousness, and sensibility. The middle classes are more stereotypically feminine than the nobility, since rather than living by incessant warfare they need peace and social order in order to pursue their ignoble end of accumulating as much capital as they can. The fact that this process in turn tends to lead to warfare is then particularly unfortunate. Some Enlightenment thinkers championed freedom, whereas others like Diderot were full-blooded determinists. There were even rare birds like Kant who backed both cases at the same time. Some like Condorcet believed in the possibility of infinite progress, whereas others like Montesquieu did not. Some scholars were dualists, seeing mind and body as eternally divided, whereas others were stubborn materialists for whom the mind was just material motion. There were those who trusted the innate goodness of humanity, and those who believed in its inherent crookedness. For every atheist, there was a deist like Voltaire who acknowledged the existence of God as long as He did as little as possible and kept shyly in the shadows. Louis Dupre tells us early on that he is concerned only with the history of ideas. This is a rather convenient move, since if he had put those ideas back in their historical context he would surely have had to recognize that the Enlightenment was the intellectual expression of a capitalist middle class in the ascendant. It is true that the phrase "the rising middle class" is one of the great historical cliches, along with "It was an age of rapid change" and "It was essentially a period of transition." Wherever one looks in history, the middle classes, like bread or the sun, appear to be on the rise. But little can be grasped of the Enlightenment unless it is seen not only as a body of ideas but also as a militant ideology. And this is something Dupre is notably reluctant to do. He also seems rather wary of the idea, touted by some commentators, of the "radical Enlightenment"--of that vibrant, dissenting subcurrent from Spinoza, William Blake, and Tom Paine to Jefferson and Marx--that is firmly committed to the ideas of truth and freedom, but that draws consequences from them that are deeply unwelcome to the middle-class establishment. It is a tradition that is needed more than ever today, confronted as we are by a joint assault on enlightened thought by Texans and Talibans. Francis Wheen, deputy editor of the British satirical journal Private Eye, is also far from a favored son of the middle-class establishment, to judge by the number of times they have dragged his publication to court for alleged libel. His latest book, Idiot Proof, is a robust defense of good sense against what its author sees as a recent onslaught of gobbledygook and superstition, all the way from creationism and deconstruction to UFOs, fundamentalism, New Age twaddle, moral relativism, and Diarrhoea (or the cult of Princess Diana). Wheen, who laces his moral passion with a mischievous wit, is both acerbic and entertaining about a whole series of idiocies: the marriage of mysticism and moneymaking in best-selling American titles like Moses: C.E.O. or If Aristotle Ran General Motors; Tony and Cherie Blair bowing and praying to the four winds in a Mayan rebirthing ritual; Michel Foucault defending the despotic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini by claiming that the Iranians "don't have the same regime of truth as ours"; the fundamentalist belief that the scarlet beast with ten horns of the Book of Revelation is (disappointingly enough) the European Community, or that the mark of the beast refers to Bill Clinton's fiscal policy; the terrifyingly large number of Americans who believe that they have been abducted by aliens. (So they have, but the alien in question is a Texan oilman.) Codes, conspiracies, prophecies, encryptions: in all these ways, a civilization in which everyday life seems increasingly directionless compensates for a lack of sense with an excess of it. Frenetic over-interpretation makes up for a general hemorrhage of meaning. The more crassly materialist modern life becomes, the more it gives rise to pseudo-spiritual claptrap. As social life grows increasingly two-dimensional, it grabs for some spurious sort of depth. The more ruthlessly rationalized the society, the more desperately irrational its members. Capitalism is at once far too rational, trusting in nothing that it cannot weigh and measure, and far too little as well, accumulating wealth as an end in itself. It is shot through with myth and pinned together by collective fictions. No rational animal would spend ten minutes with a junk-bond trader. Wheen is also right to see American voluntarism--the faith, so bemusing to Europeans, that you can do anything if only you put your mind to it--as a form of incipient madness. Much of the book is a superb, remarkably well-informed satire of corporate corruption from Thatcher to Enron, though with admirable evenhandedness Wheen also turns his fire on hypocritical leftist attitudes to the murderous thugs of radical Islam (considered okay, since they're anti-American). He has an extraordinary immunity to bland pieties and a natural allergy to sanctimonious cant. Yet it is questionable whether you can lump together Ronald Reagan, Jacques Lacan, radical Islam, and the worship of the market as instances of the same phenomenon. Nor did all this irrationalism start somewhere in the 1970s, as Wheen seems to imagine. His nostalgia for the good old days before the Fall Into Folly is just the kind of thing that in a different mood he himself might mock. Every age mixes the rational and irrational--Isaac Newton was a devout believer in alchemy--and to see our own times as exceptionally kooky is an example of the apocalyptic style of thought this book rightly deplores. If Idiot Proof lumps different kinds of irrationality too quickly together, it is also a touch too convinced that "reason" always means the same thing. The problem is to cling to reason without making a fetish out of it; and Wheen, to his credit, concedes that the search for absolute objectivity is a myth. What is hard is to distinguish creative challenges to a too narrow notion of reason from irrationalism pure and simple. What are the relative proportions in D. H. Lawrence or the Surrealists? Both fascists and feminists have their objections to the Enlightenment, though their motives are very different. Wheen and Dupre make the point that most criticism of the Enlightenment is unconsciously indebted to it. Some feminists, for example, are understandably uneasy about its notion of scientific rationality, but it is also from the Enlightenment that the modern idea of liberation is derived. Even so, neither author pays much attention to the rich legacy of criticism of Enlightenment thought known as Romanticism, which is hardly to be placed on the same level as prime ministerial rebirthing rituals. Wheen, whose clear, companionable style reflects the finest spirit of the Enlightenment, also needs to distinguish his defense of common sense from the kind of English philistine (usually to be found running a country pub with regimental ties on the wall) who mocks all words of more than two syllables and regards it as plain common sense to keep the blacks out of the country. The trick is to be a skeptic without being an intellectual thug. Several of our greatest apologists for reason--Marx, Freud, Thomas Mann--are conscious that unreason always lurks somewhere at its root. For Freud, the ego draws for its power on the very id that threatens to overwhelm it. Human civilization is wrested laboriously from forces and processes that are not in themselves rational, and that constantly threaten to return it to the Dionysian chaos from which it emerged. It is because this civilization is so fragile that we must pay homage, like Dupre and Wheen, to the reason that stands guard over it. Yet when reason detaches itself from its material roots and grows hubristic, falling prey to a belief in its own autonomy, it becomes simply another form of irrationalism. As Edmund Burke recognized, absolute reason or freedom is a form of insanity, if this was true of the Jacobins he confronted, it is equally true of neoconservatives today. Reason, then, must somehow keep faith with the irrational forces from which it springs, acknowledging their power as the ancient Athenian state paid its dues to the terrible power of the Furies, and in doing so sought to turn them to its advantage. But that is not to surrender to them. Some years ago, I took part in a conference on eighteenth-century literature that ended with a general toast to the Enlightenment. At Oxford or Yale, this might well have been greeted with some sardonically raised eyebrows. But this was in Cape Town, a year or so before the overthrow of apartheid. Terry Eagleton is at work on a book about the philosophy of terror. His last review for Harper's Magazine, "I Am, Therefore I Think," appeared in the March 2004 issue. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:22:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:22:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: William Saletan: Drugstore Cowboys: The strange timidity of liberal bioethics Message-ID: William Saletan: Drugstore Cowboys: The strange timidity of liberal bioethics http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/ et seq. Posted Monday, April 4, 2005, at 12:09 AM PT Mike Gazzaniga taps a button, and five faces appear on the projection screen. Gazzaniga, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, is keynoting a national bioethics convention at the University of Pennsylvania. One face on the screen belongs to the council's chairman, [23]Leon Kass. Another belongs to the director of Penn's Center for Bioethics, [24]Art Caplan. They represent, respectively, the conservative and liberal camps of American bioethics, which have been swept up in the larger war between Democrats and Republicans. A third face on the screen catches my eye: Pope John Paul II. The caption asks: "The pope, the rabbi, the scientist, and the bioethicist: who do you believe?" Four weeks ago, I was at a [25]very different bioethics conference in Rome. The speakers and attendees, mostly Catholic and conservative, were groping for a way to stop the oncoming train of embryo-destructive medical research. Their leader, John Paul, was dying of Parkinson's, one of the diseases such research would most plausibly have cured. As Gazzaniga speaks in Philadelphia on Friday morning, John Paul is in his last hours of life. The men onstage in Philadelphia, the liberals of bioethics, believe they are the future. They see the age of human self-transformation unfolding. Unlike the Luddites in Rome and Washington, they work with agencies and companies leading the revolution. Two of the conference's five underwriting sponsors are [26]pharmaceutical firms. The speakers in Philadelphia know the latest technologies: artificial eyes, memory detectors, implants that let you move a cursor just by willing it. They're armed with sci-fi icons: Jean-Luc Picard, The Terminator, Minority Report. They quote Freud and Lacan. They wear goatees, corduroys, funky blazers, designer frames. Some preach drug freedom. Others tell sex jokes. Gazzaniga, balding with a white fringe, is no hipster. But his proposal is brilliantly audacious: to turn bioethics inside out. Kass, the pope, and President Bush have been trying to restrict embryo-destructive research based on their versions of the ethics of biology. Gazzaniga wants to trump them with the biology of ethics. He clicks through studies and brain scans showing what he calls "emotional interference in moral reasoning." Unlike the chimp brain, the human brain is constantly "trying to figure out life's pattern," he says. We rebel impulsively against harm to another person or to a fetus that looks like a baby. Only afterward do we "develop a theory" that translates that impulse into a principle. The independence of the principle is an illusion. Half an hour later, Greg Pence, a sleepy-eyed philosopher from the University of Alabama, administers a 15-minute bitch-slap to biotech critics. All medical progress has been opposed by religion, he says, and all opposition to biotechnology is religious. Anyone who denies this is just covering it up. All that crap about nature and authenticity is a ruse to control other people, and anyone who gives in to it is a sissy. We're "becoming bioethics wimps," he tells the assembled students. We've lost the "courage" to experiment on ourselves and make better babies. Something about Pence's tough-guy act sets off my B.S. detector. He says once you realize that human enhancement isn't intrinsically evil, "all the other questions are just how-to questions"--who goes first, who decides, how to do it safely, how to fund it. It's all just "calculation and adjustment," he says. Where's the courage in that? It sounds like accounting. In Pence's world, courage is for scientists. The bioethicists are the wimps. This becomes the pattern of the morning: To many of the liberals, bioethics is all about what we can't do. We can't draw lines between therapy and enhancement. We can't restrict a new technology, because we've already accepted an old technology it resembles. We can't defy scientists and industry, because they won't take us seriously. John Paul stood up to communism. These guys won't even stand up to Merck. Gazzaniga's argument would completely neuter the field. If biology explains ethics, how can ethics judge manipulations of biology? Gazzaniga thinks rules will remain: "It is not a good idea to kill because it is not a good idea to kill," he says. But what happens when the military figures out how to adjust brain chemistry so that soldiers think it is a good idea to kill? Change the biology, and you've changed the ethics. Gazzaniga says studies show a global consensus on right and wrong. But in the same speech, he ridicules the belief that an early human embryo is sacred. That belief is the basis on which Bush has restricted funding of embryonic stem cell research. Is it a product of Bush's biology? If so, how can Gazzaniga complain? And why should we care whether Gazzaniga's morality--his brain--differs from Bush's? I saw fiercer arguments among priests in Rome than I see here among the pluralists. On the screen, Gazzaniga projects a photo of Colin Powell next to a white dot representing an early embryo. He derides the idea that anyone could morally equate the dot with the person. He calls the dot a "hunk of cells" and says he'd be happy to harvest them. What about the embryo's potential to become a person? Gazzaniga shrugs that a Home Depot has the potential to make 30 houses, but if a Home Depot burns down, it isn't as though 30 houses have burned down. Nobody in the room challenges these superficial arguments and question-begging analogies. Not all the speakers march in lock step. Anjan Chatterjee, a shy Indian-American neurologist, warns that our winner-takes-all society is driving a culture of Ritalin and amphetamines that enables overwork, ruins mental and physical health, and will eventually force everyone to pop pills. But he sighs, "I don't have the imagination to think of a way that this is not going to happen." Like other liberal worriers, he speaks from doubt, not faith. Unsure of what must be, he is overwhelmed by what is. My favorite speaker, sociologist Paul Wolpe[29]*, comes off like a linebacker from Brooklyn. He's got a broad mind fortified by a very American confidence. He points out that biotech is shaking up political alignments: Some pro-lifers support embryonic stem cell research; some pro-choicers opposed the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. He explains conservative objections to brain enhancement: social modeling, the erosion of the work ethic, the evasion of deep problems through symptom relief. But Wolpe seems paralyzed by what he sees as America's commitment to individualism. You can express a bioethical viewpoint, but you can't impose it on others, he says. Why not? That's "the way we've decided" to treat moral questions, he says. How odd: a liberal straitjacket based on the authority of tradition. The morning wraps up, and we're off to a luncheon speech by Penn's president, Amy Gutmann. She sits down at my table and notices a book lying across from her. It's Gazzaniga's. She jots down its title: [30]The Ethical Brain. Proceeding to the podium, she alludes to the book with cocktail-party familiarity, says she's looking forward to reading it, and reflects on its implications. Her speech is about "sound-bite democracy," which she blames on blogs and mass media "polluting our public discourse." This she contrasts with the wise, careful "deliberative democracy" of "places like this." Gutmann repeats the buzzwords: blogs, mass media, wise, careful, deliberative. Her favorite sound bite is "sound bite." The professors and students applaud as she exits with a young man in a suit. A Penn official tells me excitedly who the young man is: Gutmann's speechwriter. Correction, April 5: This article originally said Paul Wolpe was a psychiatrist. According to the University of Pennsylvania [32]Web site, Wolpe is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and directs the Program in Psychiatry and Ethics at Penn's School of Medicine. However, he is not a psychiatrist. He is a sociologist. [33]Return to the corrected sentence. William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of [34]Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. posted April 11, 2005 William Saletan [37]Natural-Born Killers Biotechnology and the unpleasant alternatives. posted April 4, 2005 William Saletan [38]Drugstore Cowboys The strange timidity of liberal bioethics. posted April 4, 2005 William Saletan [39]Deathbed Conversion The lesson of Tom DeLay's mortal hypocrisy. posted March 28, 2005 William Saletan [40]Se Habla B.S.? The White House lies about Latinos and Social Security. posted March 24, 2005 William Saletan References 23. http://www.bioethics.gov/about/kass.html 24. http://bioethics.upenn.edu/people/?last=Caplan&first=Arthur 25. http://slate.msn.com/id/2114733/ 26. http://www.bioethics.upenn.edu/nubc/sponsors.html 27. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/#ContinueArticle 28. http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/slate.technology/slate;kw=slate;sz=300x250;ord=1234? 29. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/#correct 30. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/155926.ctl 31. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116144/ 32. http://bioethics.upenn.edu/people/?last=Wolpe&first=Paul 33. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/#my 34. http://www.bearingright.com/ 35. http://slate.msn.com/ 36. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116333/ 37. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116144/ 38. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/ 39. http://slate.msn.com/id/2115879/ 40. http://slate.msn.com/id/2115261/ --------------- Natural-Born Killers - Biotechnology and the unpleasant alternatives. By William Saletan http://slate.msn.com/id/2116144/ Posted Monday, April 4, 2005, at 8:35 AM PT This is the second dispatch of a two-part series. To read the first dispatch, click [23]here. Friday afternoon's portion of the [24]bioethics conference at the University of Pennsylvania begins with a panel discussion moderated by Art Caplan, the gregarious director of Penn's Center for Bioethics. The participants repeat complaints we heard at lunch from Penn's president, Amy Gutmann, about the media's sound-bite culture. The panel is a self-caricature of academic diversity: both genders, two colors, several religions, a range of ages, one basic outlook. When Caplan asks about taking brain-enhancing drugs before a college exam, nobody at the table objects in principle. The conference breaks into smaller groups, and I head upstairs to hear a talk on cyborg technologies by Paul Wolpe, one of this morning's speakers. At first, Wolpe seems trapped in the liberal echo chamber. He cites the Terri Schiavo case as evidence of the power of illogic. People who opposed the removal of her feeding tube "were extraordinarily emotional," he says, whereas "the people who were for letting her make the decision, they were completely calm." But Wolpe, the son of a rabbi, recognizes the dogmas of his colleagues. He repudiates as an "incredible oversimplification" this morning's speech by philosopher Greg Pence dismissing moral objections to the alteration of humanity. Wolpe marvels at the prospect, through brain-wave monitors, of mind-to-mind communication between humans. Until now, such communication has occurred only between man and God, he tells the students. It's called prayer. An hour later, we board buses to hear Caplan's evening keynote lecture in a gorgeous wood-paneled [27]hall at Philadelphia's [28]College of Physicians. Caplan is incensed by Holocaust analogies in the Schiavo case. There's no comparison, he says. The gravest error of Nazi doctors in the concentration camps was rationalizing that "you can always sacrifice the few for the many." The Nazis thought some people posed intolerable economic burdens. "Those aren't factors that get much into American bioethical debates," he says. My eyebrows go up. In the Schiavo case, he continues, "Nobody has seriously proposed we should pull her feeding tube because she's a burden on the economic viability of the United States." Nobody? I've heard comments in that direction from two people at my own magazine. Caplan draws a wise lesson from the Nazi doctors: Beware the human weakness for moral rationalization. But part of that weakness is the illusion in each of us that we have escaped it. Caplan, for instance, is a utilitarian. In medical experiments under certain conditions, he's willing to sacrifice the few for the many. He thinks this philosophy is insulated from the Nazi-doctor mentality by a requirement of consent from those whose lives are risked. I think of the priests I met four weeks ago at a [29]bioethics conference in Rome. They would ask how many embryos consented to be destroyed for their stem cells, and how many fetuses for their tissue. But none of those priests is in this room. The only tough question comes from a student who wonders how the growing use of genetic tests to weed out marginally defective in vitro embryos differs from what the Nazis did. German eugenics was "government-based and coerced," Caplan explains. "We have a kind of eugenics, but it's individual choice." That doesn't make it right, he tells the student. "But that's what makes it different." Caplan, like Wolpe, strikes me as a mensch. As a fellow Jew, I trust him to take his own life before he'd do what the Nazi doctors did. But I don't trust utilitarianism, and this is what rattles me about many liberal bioethicists: They fear absolutism so much that they don't see its opposite, utilitarianism, as another ideology. They think subjecting everything to cost-benefit analysis is just common sense. I don't think an embryo is a person, but when I read about healthy embryos being weeded out by genetic tests just because they can't provide tissue for transplants or because they carry an unexpressed gene for deafness, I wonder where the hell we're going--and whether anyone other than the absolutists is paying attention. Just as I'm about to close my laptop and head back to Washington, Wolpe steps to the podium, and the lights dim. Up on the projection screen, horrifying images appear, one after the other. They aren't the work of the concentration camps. They're the work of nature, preserved downstairs in the College's [30]Mutter Museum. A two-headed fetus. A one-headed fetus with two bodies. "They are not excused; they are not explained. They are simply for you to see," Wolpe tells the students. This is the reality we can't stand to look at, he says--"the way our own embodiment can be perverted by nature." I head downstairs. There they are, suspended in jars in glass cases. Two fetuses wrapped in a hug that became a double-faced head. Another pair locked in a kiss that swallowed both faces. A twisted little mermaid whose abdomen disappears into a stump. Collapsed half-heads. Noses protruding where eyes should have been. A child's skeleton with a skull three times too big. They didn't all die in the womb. I think of John Paul II, riddled with Parkinson's and fever, a tube through his nose. A giant of history crumpled into a speechless form waiting to die. He told us to respect nature and human dignity. I wish I could respect what nature did to him. I wish I could see the human dignity in these jars. But I can't. I wrestle with the biotech liberals because I'm one of them. Nature can't always guide us. We will have to guide ourselves. William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of [31]Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. [34]People Watching News from the science and technology of humans. posted April 12, 2005 William Saletan [35]Natural-Born Killers Biotechnology and the unpleasant alternatives. posted April 4, 2005 William Saletan [36]Drugstore Cowboys The strange timidity of liberal bioethics. posted April 4, 2005 William Saletan [37]Deathbed Conversion The lesson of Tom DeLay's mortal hypocrisy. posted March 28, 2005 William Saletan Search for more [38]Human Nature in our archive. References 23. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/ 24. http://www.bioethics.upenn.edu/nubc/ 25. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116144/#ContinueArticle 26. http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/slate.homepage/slate;kw=slate;sz=300x250;ord=1234? 27. http://www.collphyphil.org/virt_tour/rental_9.htm 28. http://www.collphyphil.org/ 29. http://slate.msn.com/id/2114733/ 30. http://www.collphyphil.org/virt_tour/museum_8.htm 31. http://www.bearingright.com/ 32. http://slate.msn.com/ 33. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116672/ 34. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116333/ 35. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116144/ 36. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116141/ 37. http://slate.msn.com/id/2115879/ 38. http://slate.msn.com/?id=3944&cp=2100253 From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:34:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:34:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Life's top 10 greatest inventions Message-ID: Life's top 10 greatest inventions http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg18624941.700 5.4.9 MULTICELLULARITY PONDER this one in the bath. Chances are you've just scrubbed your back with a choice example of one of evolution's greatest inventions. Or at least, a good plastic copy. Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in. Cells have been joining forces for billions of years. Even bacteria can do it, forming complex colonies with a three-dimensional structure and some division of labour. But hundreds of millions of years ago, eukaryotes - more complex cells that package up their DNA in a nucleus - took things to a new level. They formed permanent colonies in which certain cells dedicated themselves to different tasks, such as nutrition or excretion, and whose behaviour was well coordinated. Eukaryotes could make this leap because they had already evolved many of the necessary attributes for other purposes. Many single-celled eukaryotes can specialise or "differentiate" into cell types, dedicated to specific tasks such as mating with another cell. They sense their environment with chemical signalling systems, some of which are similar to those multicellular organisms use to coordinate their cells' behaviour. And they may detect and capture their prey with the same kind of sticky surface molecules that hold cells together in animals and other multicellular organisms. So what started it? One idea is that clumping together helped cells avoid being eaten by making them too much of a mouthful for single-celled predators. Another is that single cells are often constrained in what they can do - for example, most cannot grow flagella to move and also divide at the same time. But a colony can both move and contain dividing cells if each cell in it takes its turn. Researchers are now trying to reconstruct the biology of the first multicellular creatures by studying the genomes of their nearest living relatives. "We're trying to peer back hundreds of millions of years," says Nicole King, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Berkeley. She and her team are studying single-celled protozoans called choanoflagellates to understand how animals came to evolve from them some 600 million years ago. Choanoflagellates and sponges - the only surviving witnesses to this step - share a common ancestor and King has found that choanoflagellates have a surprising number of equivalents to the signalling and cell-adhesion molecules unique to animals. Yet bigger and more complex isn't necessarily better. As King points out, unicellular life still vastly outnumbers multicellular life in terms of both biomass and species numbers. "So you could say unicellular life is the most successful, but that multicellular life is the most beautiful and dramatic." Claire Ainsworth THE EYE THEY appeared in an evolutionary blink and changed the rules of life forever. Before eyes, life was gentler and tamer, dominated by sluggish soft-bodied worms lolling around in the sea. The invention of the eye ushered in a more brutal and competitive world. Vision made it possible for animals to become active hunters, and sparked an evolutionary arms race that transformed the planet. The first eyes appeared about 543 million years ago - the very beginning of the Cambrian period - in a group of trilobites called the Redlichia. Their eyes were compound, similar to those of modern insects, and probably evolved from light-sensitive pits. And their appearance in the fossil record is strikingly sudden - trilobite ancestors from 544 million years ago don't have eyes. So what happened in that magic million years? Surely eyes are just too complex to appear all of a sudden? Not so, according to Dan-Eric Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden. He has calculated that it would take only half a million years for a patch of light-sensitive cells to evolve into a compound eye. "Eyes sparked an evolutionary arms race that transformed the planet" That's not to say the difference was trivial. Patches of photosensitive cells were probably common long before the Cambrian, allowing early animals to detect light and sense what direction it was coming from. Such rudimentary sense organs are still used by jellyfish, flatworms and other obscure and primitive groups, and are clearly better than nothing. But they are not eyes. A true eye needs something extra - a lens that can focus light to form an image. "If you suddenly obtain a lens, the effectiveness goes from about 1 per cent to 100 per cent," says Andrew Parker, a zoologist at the University of Oxford. Trilobites weren't the only animals to stumble across this invention. Biologists believe that eyes could have evolved independently on many occasions, though genetic evidence suggests one ancestor for all eyes. But either way, trilobites were the first. And what a difference it made. In the sightless world of the early Cambrian, vision was tantamount to a super-power. Trilobites' eyes allowed them to become the first active predators, able to seek out and chase down food like no animal before them. And, unsurprisingly, their prey counter-evolved. Just a few million years later, eyes were commonplace and animals were more active, bristling with defensive armour. This burst of evolutionary innovation is what we now know as the Cambrian explosion. However, sight is not universal. Of 37 phyla of multicellular animals, only six have evolved it, so it might not look like such a great invention after all - until you stop to think. The six phyla that have vision (including our own, chordates, plus arthropods and molluscs) are the most abundant, widespread and successful animals on the planet. Graham Lawton THE BRAIN BRAINS are often seen as a crowning achievement of evolution - bestowing the ultimate human traits such as language, intelligence and consciousness. But before all that, the evolution of brains did something just as striking: it lifted life beyond vegetation. Brains provided, for the first time, a way for organisms to deal with environmental change on a timescale shorter than generations. A nervous system allows two extremely useful things to happen: movement and memory. If you're a plant and your food source disappears, that's just tough. But if you have a nervous system that can control muscles, then you can actually move around and seek out food, sex and shelter. The simplest nervous systems are just ring-like circuits in cnidarians - the jellyfish, urchins and anemones. These might not be terribly smart, but they can still find the things they need and interact with the world in a far more sophisticated way than plants manage. The next evolutionary step, which probably happened in flatworms in the Cambrian, was to add some sort of control system to give the movements more purpose. This sort of primitive brain is simply a bit of extra wiring that helps organise the networks. Armed with this, finding food would have been the top priority the earliest water-dwelling creatures. Organisms need to sort out nutritious from toxic food, and the brain helps them do that. Sure enough, look at any animal and you will find the brain is always near the mouth. In some of the most primitive invertebrates, the oesophagus actually passes right through the brain. With brains come senses, to detect whether the world is good or bad, and a memory. Together, these let the animal monitor in real time whether things are getting better or worse. This in turn allows a simple system of prediction and reward. Even animals with really simple brains - insects, slugs or flatworms - can use their experiences to predict what might be the best thing to do or eat next, and have a system of reward that reinforces good choices. The more complex functions of the human brain - social interaction, decision-making and empathy, for example - seem to have evolved from these basic systems controlling food intake. The sensations that control what we decide to eat became the intuitive decisions we call gut instincts. The most highly developed parts of the human frontal cortex that deal with decisions and social interactions are right next to the parts that control taste and smell and movements of the mouth, tongue and gut. There is a reason we kiss potential mates - it's the most primitive way we know to check something out. Helen Phillips LANGUAGE AS FAR as humans are concerned, language has got to be the ultimate evolutionary innovation. It is central to most of what makes us special, from consciousness, empathy and mental time travel to symbolism, spirituality and morality. Language may be a defining factor of our species, but just how important is it in the evolutionary scheme of things? A decade ago, John Maynard Smith, then emeritus professor of biology at the University of Sussex, UK, and Eors Szathmary from the Institute of Advanced Study in Budapest, Hungary, published The Major Transitions in Evolution, their description of life's great leaps forward. They identified these crucial steps as innovations in the way information was organised and transmitted from one generation to the next - starting with the origin of life itself and ending with language. Exactly how our ancestors took this leap is possibly the hardest problem in science, Szathmary says. He points out that complex language - language with syntax and grammar, which builds up meaning through a hierarchical arrangement of subordinate clauses - evolved just once. Only human brains are able to produce language, and, contrary to popular belief, this ability is not confined to specialised regions in the brain such as Broca's and Wernicke's areas. If these are damaged others can take over. Szathmary likens language to an amoeba, and the human brain to the habitat in which it can thrive. "A surprisingly large part of our brain can sustain language," he says. But that raises the question of why this language amoeba doesn't colonise the brains of other animals, especially primates. Szathmary is convinced the answer lies in neural networks unique to humans that allow us to perform the complex hierarchical processing required for grammatical language. These networks are shaped both by our genes and by experience. The first gene associated with language, FOXP2, was identified in 2001, and others will surely follow. So why don't our close evolutionary relatives, chimps and other primates, have similar abilities? The answer, recent analysis seems to suggest, lies in the fact that while humans and chimps have many genes in common, the versions expressed in human brains are more active than those in chimps. What's more, the brains of newborn humans are far less developed than those of newborn chimps, which means that our neural networks are shaped over many years of development immersed in a linguistic environment. In a sense, language is the last word in biological evolution. That's because this particular evolutionary innovation allows those who possess it to move beyond the realms of the purely biological. With language, our ancestors were able to create their own environment - we now call it culture - and adapt to it without the need for genetic changes. Kate Douglas PHOTOSYNTHESIS FEW innovations have had such profound consequences for life as the ability to capture energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis has literally altered the planet's face, transforming the atmosphere and cocooning Earth in a protective shield against lethal radiation. Without photosynthesis, there would be little oxygen in the atmosphere, and no plants or animals - just microbes scratching a meagre existence from a primordial soup of minerals and carbon dioxide. It freed life from these constraints and the oxygen it generated set the stage for the emergence of complex life. Before photosynthesis, life consisted of single-celled microbes whose sources of energy were chemicals such as sulphur, iron and methane. Then, around 3.5 billion years ago, or perhaps earlier, a group of microbes developed the ability to capture energy from sunlight to help make the carbohydrates they needed for growth and fuel. It is unclear how they achieved this feat, but genetic studies suggest that the light-harvesting apparatus evolved from a protein with the job of transferring energy between molecules. Photosynthesis had arrived. But this early version of the process didn't make oxygen. It used hydrogen sulphide and carbon dioxide as its starting ingredients, generating carbohydrates and sulphur as end products. Some time later - just when is uncertain - a new type of photosynthesis evolved that used a different resource, water, generating oxygen as a by-product. In those early days, oxygen was poisonous to life. But it built up in the atmosphere until some microbes evolved mechanisms to tolerate it, and eventually hit on ways to use it as an energy source. That was a pretty important discovery too: using oxygen to burn carbohydrates for energy is 18 times as efficient as doing it without oxygen. Life on Earth became high-powered at this point, setting the scene for the development of complex, multicellular life forms - including plants, which "borrowed" their photosynthetic apparatus from photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria. Today, directly or indirectly, photosynthesis produces virtually all of the energy used by life on Earth. As well as providing an efficient means to burn fuel, oxygen made by photosynthesis helps protect life. Earth is under constant bombardment from lethal UV radiation streaming out from the sun. A by-product of our oxygenated atmosphere is a layer of ozone extending 20 to 60 kilometres above Earth's surface, which filters out most of the harmful UV. This protective umbrella allowed life to escape from the sanctuary of the ocean and colonise dry land. "It has altered the atmosphere and cocooned Earth in a protective shield" Now, virtually every biochemical process on the planet is ultimately dependent on an input of solar energy. Take a deep breath and thank those primordial oxygen-hating microbes for their biochemical inventiveness. Alison George SEX BIRDS do it, bees do it - for the vast majority of species, sexual reproduction is the only option. And it is responsible for some of the most impressive biological spectacles on the planet, from mass spawnings of coral so vast that they are visible from space, to elaborate sexual displays such as the dance of the bower bird, the antlers of a stag and - according to some biologists - poetry, music and art. Sex may even be responsible for keeping life itself going: species that give it up almost always go extinct within a few hundred generations. Important as sex is, however, biologists are still arguing over how it evolved - and why it hasn't un-evolved. That's because, on the face of it, sex looks like a losing strategy. Evolution ought to favour asexual reproduction for two reasons. First, in the battle for resources, asexual species should be able to outcompete sexual ones hands down. And secondly, because sperm and eggs contain only half of each parent's set of genes, an organism that uses sexual reproduction only gets 50 per cent of its genes into the next generation. Asexuals are guaranteed to pass on 100 per cent. Clearly, though, there is something wrong with this line of reasoning. It's true that many species, including insects, lizards and plants, do fine without sex, at least for a while. But they are vastly outnumbered by sexual ones. The enduring success of sex is usually put down to the fact that it shuffles the genetic pack, introducing variation and allowing harmful mutations to be purged (mutations are what eventually snuffs out most asexual species). Variation is important because it allows life to respond to changing environments, including interactions with predators, prey and - particularly - parasites. Reproducing asexually is sometimes compared to buying 100 tickets in a raffle, all with the same number. Far better to have only 50 tickets, each with a different number. However useful sex may be now that we've got it, that doesn't tell us anything about how it got started. It could have been something as mundane as DNA repair. Single-celled, asexual organisms may have developed the habit of periodically doubling up their genetic material, then halving it again. This would have allowed them to repair any DNA damage by switching in the spare set. A similar exchange of DNA still happens during the production of eggs and sperm. Parasites are also in the frame. Parasitic lengths of DNA known as transposons reproduce by inserting copies of themselves into the cell's normal genetic material. Imagine a transposon within a single-celled organism acquiring a mutation that happens to cause its host cell to periodically fuse with other cells before dividing again. The transposon for this primitive form of sex would be able to spread horizontally between many different cells. Once it arose in a population, parasitic sex would catch on pretty quickly. Clare Wilson DEATH COULD evolution have brought the Grim Reaper into being? Yes, indeed. Not in all his guises, of course - living things have always died because of mishaps such as starvation or injury. But there's another sort of death in which cells - and perhaps, controversially, even whole organisms - choose annihilation because of the benefits it brings to some greater whole. In other words, death is an evolutionary strategy. This is most obvious in the many varieties of programmed cell death or apoptosis, a self-destruct mechanism found in every multicellular organism. Your hand has five fingers because the cells that used to live between them died when you were an embryo. Embryos as tiny as 8 to 16 cells - just 3 or 4 cell divisions after the fertilised egg - depend on cell death: block apoptosis and development goes awry. Were it not for death, we would not even be born. Even as adults we could not live without death. Without apoptosis we would all be overrun by cancer. Your cells are constantly racking up mutations that threaten to make your tightly controlled cell division run amok. But surveillance systems - such as the one involving the p53 protein, called the "guardian of the genome" (New Scientist, 18 December 2004, p 38) - detect almost all such errors and direct the affected cells to commit suicide. Programmed cell death plays a central role in everyday life too. It ensures a constant turnover of cells in the gut lining and generates our skin's protective outer layer of dead cells. When the immune system has finished wiping out an infection, the now-redundant white blood cells commit suicide in an orderly fashion to allow the inflammation to wind down. And plants use cell death as part of a scorched-earth defence against pathogens, walling off the infected area and then killing off all the cells within. It is easy to see how an organism can benefit from sacrificing a few cells. But evolution may also have had a hand in shaping the death of whole organisms. The cells of all higher organisms begin to age, or senesce, after just a few dozen cell divisions, ultimately leading to the death of the organism itself. In part that is one more protection against uncontrolled growth. But one controversial theory suggests this is part of an inbuilt genetic ageing program that sets an upper limit on all our lifespans (New Scientist, 19 April 2004, p 26). Most evolutionary biologists reject the idea of an innate "death program". After all, they point out, animals die of old age in many different ways, not by one single route as apoptotic cells do. Instead, they view senescence as a sort of evolutionary junkyard: natural selection has little reason to get rid of flaws that appear late in life, since few individuals are lucky enough to make it to old age. But now that people routinely survive well past reproductive age, we suffer the invention evolution never meant us to find: death by old age. Bob Holmes PARASITISM THE name is synonymous with stealing, cheating and stealthy evil. But the age-old battle between parasites and their hosts is one of the most powerful driving forces in evolution. Without its plunderers and freeloaders, life would simply not be the same. From viruses to tapeworms, barnacles to birds, parasites are among the most successful organisms on the planet, taking merciless advantage of every known creature. Take the tapeworm. This streamlined parasite is little more than gonads and a head full of hooks, having dispensed with a gut in favour of bathing in the nutrient-rich depths of its host's digestive system. In its average 18-year lifespan, a human tapeworm can generate 10 billion eggs. Many parasites, such as the small liver fluke, have also mastered the art of manipulating their host's behaviour. Ants whose brains are infected with a juvenile fluke feel compelled to climb to the tops of grass blades, where they are more likely to be eaten by the fluke's ultimate host, a sheep. "They are really disgusting, but man, are they good at what they do," says Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee and translator of the popular French text The Art of Being a Parasite. "Evolution is in large part probably driven by parasites. It is the main hypothesis for the continuation of sexual reproduction. How much more important can you get?" The parasites that have had arguably the biggest effect on evolution are the smallest. Bacteria, protozoans and viruses can shape the evolution of their hosts because only the hardiest will survive infection. And humans are no exception: the genes for several inherited conditions protect against infectious disease when inherited in a single dose. For example, one copy of the gene for sickle cell anaemia protects against malaria. And it is still happening today. HIV and TB, for instance, are driving evolutionary change in parts of our genome, such as the immune-system genes (New Scientist, 22 November 2003, p 44). Hosts can influence the evolution of their parasites too. For example, diseases which require human-to-human contact for transmission often evolve to be less deadly, ensuring a person will at least live long enough to pass it on. Parasites can also drive the evolution at a more basic level. Parasitic lengths of DNA called transposons, which can cut and paste themselves all over the genome, can be transformed into new genes or encourage the mutation and shuffling of DNA that fuels genetic variation. They have even been implicated in the origins of sex, as they may have driven selection for cell fusion and gamete formation (see opposite). Anna Gosline SUPERORGANISMS LARGE numbers of individuals living together in harmony, achieving a better life by dividing their workload and sharing the fruits of their labours. We call this blissful state utopia, and have been striving to achieve it for at least as long as recorded history. Alas, our efforts so far have been in vain. Evolution, however, has made a rather better job of it. Take the Portuguese man-of-war. It may look like just another jellyfish blob floating on the high seas, but zoom in with a microscope and you see that what seemed like one tentacled individual is in fact a colony of single-celled organisms. These "siphanophores" have got division of labour down to a fine art. Some are specialised for locomotion, some for feeding, some for distributing nutrients. This communal existence brings major advantages. It allows the constituent organisms, which would otherwise be rooted to the sea floor, to swim free. And together they are better able to defend themselves against predators, cope with environmental stress, and colonise new territory. Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish are truly superorganisms. With benefits like these on offer, it should come as no surprise that colonial living has evolved many times. Except that it does come with one big drawback, as the case of the slime bacteria, or myxobacteria, illustrates. These microbes are perhaps the simplest colonial organisms. Under normal circumstances individual bacteria glide along on lonely slime trails. Only when certain amino acids are lacking in their environment do individuals start to aggregate. The resulting superorganism consists of a stalk topped by a fruiting body containing spores. But since only the bacteria forming the spores will get the chance of dispersal and a new life, why should the others play along? How this kind of cooperation evolved, and how cheats are prevented from taking advantage of it remains unclear for some types of colonial life. But in one group of animals, the colonial insects, we do know what the trick is - and it's an ingenious one. Females develop from fertilised eggs, while males develop from unfertilised ones. This way of determining sex, called haplodiploidy, ensures that sisters are more closely related to each other than to their own offspring. And this means that the best chance they can give their own genes of surviving is to look after each other rather than lay eggs of their own. This is what provides the stability at the heart of the beehive and termite mound, and in many other insect colonies where haplodiploidy has evolved at least a dozen times. True sociality, or eusociality as it is technically known, is found in all ants and termites, in the most highly organised bees and wasps, and in some other species, not all of which employ haplodiploidy. And although these mini societies need careful policing to keep cheats at bay, this is probably the closest thing on Earth to utopia. Kate Douglas SYMBIOSIS CROCODILES with gleaming gums, coral reefs, orchids, fish with glow-in-the-dark lures, ants that farm, new directions for evolution. All that from swapping food - for cleaning services, for transport, for sunscreen, for shelter, and of course for other food. Symbiosis has many definitions, but we'll take it to mean two species engaging in physically intimate, mutually beneficial dependency, almost invariably involving food. Symbiosis has triggered seismic shifts in evolution, and evolution in turn continually spawns new symbiotic relationships. Perhaps the most pivotal couplings were the ones that turbocharged complex, or eukaryotic, cells. Eukaryotes use specialised organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts to extract energy from food or sunlight. These organelles were originally simpler, prokaryotic cells that the eukaryotes engulfed in an eternal symbiotic embrace. Without them life's key developments, such as increasing complexity and multicellular plants and animals, would not have happened. "There are only two things that matter in this world: respiration and photosynthesis. Eukaryotes didn't figure out either by themselves, they borrowed them from prokaryotes through symbiosis," says Geoff McFadden of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Symbiosis has popped up so frequently during evolution that it is safe to say it's the rule, not the exception. Angler fish in the deep ocean host bioluminescent bacteria in appendages that dangle over their mouths. Smaller fish lured by the light are easy prey. At the ocean surface, coral polyps provide homes for photosynthetic algae, and swap inorganic waste products for organic carbon compounds - one reason why nutrient-poor tropical waters can support so much life. The algae also produce a chemical that absorbs ultraviolet light and protects the coral. More than 90 per cent of plant species are thought to engage in symbiotic couplings. Orchid seeds are little more than dust, containing next to no nutrients. To germinate and grow, they digest a fungus that infects the seed. "Birds and animals and insects that are adapted to pollination and seed disposal, these are some of the greatest symbioses. Without them we wouldn't have most of our flowering plants," says Ursula Munro, an ecologist at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. "Without symbiosis we wouldn't have most of our flowering plants" Plovers pick leeches from crocodiles' teeth, offering dental hygiene in return for food. Leafcutter ants use chopped-up leaves as a fertiliser for the fungus they grow in underground chambers. The ants cannot digest the leaves but the fungus that feeds on them produces a tasty meal of sugars and starch while breaking down the toxins in the leaves. And there is not an animal out there, including us, that can survive without the bacteria that live in its gut, digesting food and producing vitamins. Rachel Nowak From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:37:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:37:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology News: Technology Challenges for the Next Pope Message-ID: Commentary: Technology Challenges for the Next Pope http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42130.html By Rob Enderle TechNewsWorld 04/11/05 5:00 AM PT While new generations have always grown up differently than the ones before, the speed of change for coming generations will be unprecedented. Organizations which aren't flexible in the face of massive change often break, and that, in the end, may be the biggest problem the new Pope has to face. With the passing of Pope John Paul the II comes an opportunity to look back -- as well as ahead -- at the kinds of technological changes that can occur in 30 years. In the late '70s we didn't have cell phones [29]Latest News about cell phone or GPS [30]Latest News about global positioning system navigation systems; cloning people was the stuff of science fiction stories; and [31]IBM (NYSE: IBM) [32]Get the IBM Storage Resource Management Whitepaper. [33]Latest News about IBM was THE provider of technology to the world. The definition of life had to do with how much time had passed since conception, and, at least at the time, the argument didn't take into account breakthroughs in medical technology. New Times Now we are cloning pets and farm animals, and people are not only in touch on cell phones, they can talk to each other on the Internet -- and, as a result, no public figures, particularly priests, have a private life. In addition, the technology industry isn't just multi-company, it is multi-country. With the ability of technology to replace many, if not virtually all, critical body functions even after the brain fails, the disputes surrounding the definition of life have increased dramatically. That's a lot of change, and looking forward, future change is going to start coming a lot more quickly. As a result, the next 30 years will contain a number of unique challenges for the new Pontiff. Virtualizing the Bible The movie "The Passion of Christ" certainly opened a number of eyes to how real an interpretation of the Bible can be and it lays the groundwork for what is an obvious next step -- the Bible SIM. In ten years, our ability to render to movie-like realities in real-time will have been reached. Already there are sites like [36]www.heavy.com's "Pimp my Weapon" (which is actually rather entertaining in a twisted sort of way) for creating shows using game engines for an audience of young viewers. In 20 years or so, our ability to place ourselves in these virtual worlds will reach unprecedented levels, and it would be natural for someone to virtualize the Bible and create a virtual Bible world. Being able to talk to a virtual Jesus or God is just the beginning, because Christianity is not the only religion out there -- it isn't even the biggest, and that suggests that you could have virtual debates between religious icons who themselves are simulated to various degrees of accuracy. How about a debate between Mohammed and Jesus on the legitimacy of the separation of Church and State? How about the likelihood of virtual reality TV in this vein? Looking at the Upside The positive side for the new Pope could include exciting new ways of educating children about religion in a way that has never been more personal as they experience first-hand the events as described in the Bible. The downside is this could dramatically increase the disagreements around what actually did happen and create a generation of well founded experts who fundamentally disagree with current Church positions -- and feel they know the material far more deeply then any older generation. The competing representations of the events surrounding the birth and life of Jesus could be hard-fought. Some could even feel that a violent response is needed to address what they see as an attack on their fundamental beliefs. We have already seen people get addicted to online games; what level of addiction could result from the ability to talk to a good simulation of God? And what could result if the wrong answer was given to a critical question and that answer resulted in a catastrophe? Expanding on this virtualization idea, could you actually have a virtual church where the Pope spoke to all Catholics directly, and to them, personally? We have drive-through and TV-based ministries, so why not a virtual Vatican? The Pope would always look young and never look sick. If the Pope was on holiday no one would ever need to know, and the Pope could avoid most types of physical risk. But, for a religious order that hasn't changed its dress code for centuries, considering such opportunities may be seen as just short of blasphemy. Nevertheless, ideas like these will come up at an increasing pace, and, looking at the current Cardinals, there will be new ones coming relatively soon, expecting change. Artificial Intelligence If the Church believes strongly that a woman who has lost brain function is still alive and a fetus at its earliest stages is human, what will they think about a virtual something that emulates a person to the highest degree? We have a number of advanced universities and well funded companies working at a feverish pace to be the first to create true artificial intelligence [37]Latest News about artificial intelligence . Creating it in the real world is probably more then 20 years out, due to the size of things, but creating it in the virtual world could start happening as early as next year. Granted, the first attempts will be rudimentary, but they should advance quickly. An obvious product -- given how much people will currently pay to clone a pet -- is a virtual clone of a loved one. Basically, what if we could capture their behaviors to such a degree that the "virtual" person is to most degrees identical to the real one? There are actually some games that do a little of this now. In one racing XBox game you can model another player and race against that model if that other player is not online. This will migrate to more complex characters, and the power we will have in about ten years should be enough to create an amazingly accurate artificial person. It shouldn't be hard to get these constructs to send e-mail, make phone calls, and otherwise behave much like the loved one behaved, perhaps softening the blow of a loss, or maybe to offset the existence of a less-than-ideal real spouse, boss, or child. To some they will look alive, and dealing with that could easily be a very big problem as we move into the 2020s. Now let's take that extra step: We are likely to be able to interface into the human body in a complex way in about 15 years. What if, in the case of catastrophic brain injury, we tie the body into an artificial personality? Is that life? Could the Pope himself continue to live on with such technology, and should he? A Word on Blogs How about in the near term? What about blogs? Companies have quickly found that executives who blog can pre-release products, embarrass their companies, and open the firm up to litigation. On the other hand, blogs can bring people closer together. While short of becoming some sort of e-mail-based confessional, which I'm sure someone has asked about by now, blogging could be a great way for Church officials to stay in touch with the Vatican and with their parishioners. If allowed, however, how should it the forums be recorded, monitored, protected? Those who may be entering the priesthood over the next 20 years will have grown up with blogging, will have experienced higher levels of virtual reality then ever before, will have seen things that were simply not even remotely possible during the last 30 years. While new generations have always grown up differently than the ones before, the speed of change for coming generations will be unprecedented. Organizations which aren't flexible (and the Catholic Church is the antithesis of flexible) in the face of massive change often break, and that, in the end, may be the biggest problem the new Pope has to face. Were I a smart Cardinal, I think I'd support someone other then me as a candidate for Pope, but regardless, I wish whoever does get the job the very best. He'll need it. [end-enn.gif] _________________________________________________________________ Rob Enderle, a TechNewsWorld columnist, is the Principal Analyst for the [38]Enderle Group, a consultancy that focuses on personal technology products and trends. References 29. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/search.pl?query=%22cell%20phone%22%20%22cell%20phones%22&scope=network 30. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/search.pl?query=GPS&scope=network 31. http://www.ibm.com/ 32. http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42130.html 33. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/search.pl?query=IBM&scope=network 34. http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/N815.ectnewsnetwork/B1540300.3;sz=120x600;ord=11134395234911? 35. http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N815.ectnewsnetwork/B1540300.3;abr=!ie4;abr=!ie5;sz=120x600;ord=11134395234911? 36. http://www.heavy.com/ 37. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/search.pl?query=%22artificial%20intelligence%22%20artificial-intelligence&scope=network 38. http://www.enderlegroup.com/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:39:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:39:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Urban Legends Reference Pages: Inboxer Rebellion (Full Faith and Credit Card) Message-ID: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Inboxer Rebellion (Full Faith and Credit Card) http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/credit.htm Claim: E-mail from lawyer gives good advice about preventive steps to protect against credit card theft. Status: True. Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2002] GOOD ADVICE Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine, do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel. Keep the photocopy in a safe place. A corporate attorney sent this out to the employees in his company. I pass it along, for your information. We've all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed using your name, address, SSN, credit, etc. Unfortunately I (the author of this piece who happens to be an attorney) have firsthand knowledge, because my wallet was stolen last month and within a week the thieve(s) ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know. As everyone always advises, cancel your credit cards immediately, but the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them easily. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where it was stolen, this proves to credit providers you were diligent, and is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one). But here's what is perhaps most important: (I never ever thought to do this). Call the three national credit-reporting organizations immediately, place a fraud alert on your name and SSN. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name. The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost 2 weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them in their tracks. The numbers are: Equifax: 1-800-525-6285 Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742 Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289 Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271 We pass along jokes -- we pass along just about everything. Do think about passing this information along. It could really help someone. Origins: With the amount of junk circulating on the Internet, a healthy dose of skepticism about anonymous advice offered through e-mail forwards is appropriate. But given the number of readers who have written to us inquire whether the straightforward, commensensical advice quoted above (which began circulating in January 2002) about how to avoid credit scams is itself a scam, some people are taking this skepticism stuff a bit too far. Keeping a list of one's credit card account numbers and the phone numbers to call to report lost or stolen cards is rather obvious advice no one should need to be told, but even those who have never gotten around to compiling such a list should be able to retrieve the information from any previous credit card statement. Reporting stolen cards as soon as possible limits the cardholder's losses and prevents further purchases, but information gleaned from those cards (and other items commonly found in wallets and purses) can still be used to perpetrate [4]identity theft scams such as obtaining additional credit cards, cell phone service, bank accounts, or lines of credit the victim is unaware of. For this reason, it's a good idea for the holder of lost or stolen credit cards to call all the major credit bureaus and ask them to attach fraud alerts to the cardholder's name and Social Security account number so that any such activity will be flagged. (The phone numbers given in the message above for the top three [5]credit bureaus are correct.) Our advice: Take some good advice. In September 2002 versions of the e-mail quoted above began appearing with the following lead-in. [Collected via e-mail, 2002] Important Safeguards! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company: The next time you order checks have only your initials (instead of first name) and last name put on them. If someone takes your check book they will not know if you sign your checks with just your initials or your first name but your bank will know how you sign your checks. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the "For" line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won't have access to it. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks (DUH!). You can add it if it is necessary, but if you have it printed, anyone can get it. Some of the advice in this added-on preface is worth heeding -- leave your Social Security number off your checks and list your PO box address rather than your home address. But some of the advice is only half right -- rather than providing a work number in place of a home telephone number, we have to ask why either needs to be included. If a merchant requires a phone number, the information can always written on the face of the check at the time of the transaction. Likewise, rather than including only the last four digits of a credit card number in the memo field of the check, a better course of action is to leave that line blank. The preprinted slip the credit card holder returns along with his payment is all the credit card issuer needs to ensure payment is allocated against the correct account. And one bit of the proffered advice is just plain wrong -- listing initials in place of the account holder's first name in the vague hope the issuing bank will spot an improperly signed check is right up there with wishing bread was 39? a loaf. We've seen checks we'd forgotten to sign go through our accounts. If a bank fails to question blank signature lines, it's not up to the task of scrutinizing each signature to see if it matches what it remembers of how that account holder signs his name. Last updated:  10 June 2003 Urban Legends Reference Pages by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson [7]Urban Legends Reference Pages Inboxer Rebellion [8]Inboxer Rebellion References 1. http://www.snopes.com/ 2. http://www.snopes.com/ 3. http://www.burstnet.com/ads/ad1874c-map.cgi 4. http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/ 5. http://www.ckfraud.org/credit.html 6. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/scams.htm#credit 7. http://www.snopes.com/index.html 8. http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/inboxer.htm#inboxer From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:42:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:42:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: Russia's intellectual disasters Message-ID: Russia's intellectual disasters The Times Literary Supplement, 5.2.2 http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2109863 Rachel Polonsky 02 February 2005 MOTHERLAND A philosophical history of Russia Lesley Chamberlain 331pp. | Atlantic Books. ?25. | 1 84354 285 4 Consolation still comes to the political prisoner in the form of Philosophy. Like Boethius in his dungeon at Pavia, out of favour with his ruler, accused of "using unholy means to obtain offices corruptly", and awaiting the "confiscation of [his] property", Mikhail Khodorkovsky has turned to the "remedies of reasoning". Recently, through the internet, the Russian oil billionaire, in prison for over a year facing charges of fraud, conveyed regret that he had not relieved himself of the "tyranny of property" years ago, to enhance his "inner freedom" by "devoting most of [his] time to studying world history and idealist philosophy". In Russia, the contemplation of abstract and ultimate questions has long been a provocation to tyrants as well as a consolation to prisoners. Soon after the French Revolution, Russia's outstanding Enlightenment thinker Aleksandr Radishchev, who had written an ode in defence of tyrannicide and embraced the concepts of natural law, universal rights, and the social contract, was banished to Siberia. Thus ended Russia's "Age of Reason". In the early nineteenth century, where Lesley Chamberlain begins Motherland, her "philosophical history of Russia", Tsar Nicholas I purged the universities of their philosophy departments in response to the Decembrist attempt on his life of 1825: a "touching story", Chamberlain writes, "of idealism wildly miscalculating the effects of reasonable action in an unreasonable country". Repeatedly, throughout the nineteenth century, university courses in philosophy were officially proscribed or censored. Original philosophical speculation took place elsewhere, often in a morally and politically urgent but technically undisciplined fashion, as svobodnoe myslitel'stvo (free thought-mongering) conducted in solitude or in informal kruzhki, intelligentsia discussion "circles". Contemporary Russian historians who have, since 1991, at last been allowed freely to survey their national philosophical tradition, routinely distinguish between universitetskaya and kruzhkovaya philosophy. In the often "underground" milieux of the mid-nineteenth-century discussion circles, philosophical ideas from abroad - French socialism, German metaphysics and English empiricism - took on unique and often toxic Russian forms: obscurantist nationalism, anarchism, revolutionary materialism and "nihilist" terrorism. Dostoevsky evoked the social fruit of the intellectual culture of the "circles" in his novel The Devils (1872) which, in Chamberlain's words, "depicted a moral-intellectual life so highly-charged, so frenetic and so consumed by self-doubt . . . that . . . no man could bear to live there by reason alone". The disjuncture in the nineteenth century between a social life stultified by tsarist autocracy, in which "ideas were not at home", and the "imaginative-speculative visions of the totally-meaningful life [that] loomed from studies of Hegel and Marx", led Russia to what Chamberlain calls its "taste of the . . . end of philosophy". In the years immediately following the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, Lenin and his henchmen initiated a massive and systematic purge, attempting to bring about the end of philosophy in the name of Marxist dialectical materialism which had, for them, the combined value of religious dogma and hard science. At that time, the philosophy departments in Russian universities and the editorial boards of philosophical journals and publishing houses were dominated by idealists, which, in this context, meant religious philosophers such as Nikolai Berdyaev, Semyon Frank, Gustav Shpet, Nikolai Lossky and Pavel Florensky. Those members of that "reactionary professoriate" who were not deported in 1922 met their deaths in the Gulag. These idealist philosophers (in whose notions of what Chamberlain calls "radical inwardness" and freedom from the world a political prisoner might still find comfort) have enjoyed a renaissance since 1991, both in Russian universities and among general readers. For Lenin, "idealism" meant, in Chamberlain's words, "any description of individual minds as free to see the world in their own way". In the Soviet period, Russian philosophical speculation moved underground, submerged in imaginative literature, in "philology" and "culturology", and even in the natural sciences. Contemporary university courses in the history of Russian philosophy are markedly eccentric by Western standards; they typically begin with the Church Fathers, survey a pantheon of nineteenth-century journalists, poets, visionaries, revolutionaries and priests, and culminate with diverse philosophical non-philosophers of the twentieth century, ranging from the cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to the novelist Andrei Platonov, the biologist V. I. Vernadsky, and the rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Like the Russian academics who have reformed the teaching of their nation's philosophical history since the bloodless overthrow of dialectical materialism (diamat) in 1991, Lesley Chamberlain, a distinguished English kruzhkovaya philosopher, is concerned to redeem some philosophical value from the past two centuries of Russian history, which she describes, in a characteristic paradox, as "an intellectual disaster but not an imaginative or moral failure". Her book, with its impressive range of intellectual sympathy and understanding, is an intrepid non-Russian contribution to the familiar quest for a "Russian truth", for some key, in philosophy, to "the mystery of that country and culture". There is no stable algorithm for the relationship of ideas and history; in Russia, which Chamberlain calls "the most philosophical country in the world", the drama of their dialectic has played out in violence. Chamberlain tries to explore Russian philosophy neither as the passive victim of political repression, nor solely as the origin and motor of a ruinous totalitarian ideology, but as "a story of hope and belief" with its own internal impulses, achievements and pathos. She follows self-consciously in the steps of Isaiah Berlin, whose intellectual presence is vivid in her opening and closing pages. In an interpretation of his liberal pluralism that may provoke dissent among his admirers and would perhaps have surprised Berlin himself, she unmasks him as "a Russian anarchist in mild Oxford disguise". His true philosophical identity as "a Russian-style anti-Cartesian" is, she says, "mainly concealed in his writing". Berlin embodies, for her, the similarity between English common sense and Russian anarchism which share a "distrust of the application of abstract universals to real, warm, living life". In keeping with this reverence for "warm, living life", Chamberlain emphasizes in a tortuous preface that her subject is, variously, the Russian "experience of philosophy", "Russia's experience of itself as a different place", and Russia's "self-perception". She has, she says, "tried to recreate in this book the pain of Russia's experience of itself . . ." and to convey the "pathos of two centuries of intellectual disaster". Accordingly, Motherland is not a "series of arguments" but "a story". Nonetheless, like an argument, her book has a "key premise", namely that "the experience over the last two hundred years has been of a piece". By this, she means, I think, that many diverse interests and values often ignored in Cold War accounts of the path to totalitarianism are integral to Russian philosophical history. However, this hazardous premiss necessarily leads her to some unsatisfactory conclusions. To say that "Russia's experience of philosophy", is "of a piece" is to imply that it is uniform and consistent. Russia is a place, though, not a single experiencing subject or choice-making agent. Phrases like "Russia's choice of an anti-Western path" and "Russia's experience of itself" undermine Chamberlain's admirable appreciation of the country's rich and various intellectual history. Philosophy has led masses of individual Russians to experience either one end or the other of the executioner's gun, one side or other of the prison bars. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the freedom of the individual soul are both ideas with philosophical roots; they are neither exclusively Russian nor "of a piece". At times Chamberlain coerces her subject matter into apparent coherence by conflating thinkers and theories. Anarchism, postmodernism, liberalism and deconstruction tend to collapse into one another; Emmanuel Levinas, Bakhtin, Isaiah Berlin, Lev Shestov are made to speak interchangeably in their shared "poetic crusade to save life from cogitation". At times, her fascinatingly subtle "story" loses tension as she relaxes into generalization or, conversely - (to adapt a phrase from Levinas that she admires) - allows the "labour of thought" to win out over "the otherness of things and men". To say that "Russian thinkers wanted to find a moral way of being" does not distinguish them as such from any of the non-Russian thinkers, including the many that Chamberlain invokes, who have, over the millennia, asked the same from philosophy. To remind us, as she does, that the "Communist idea was also, lest we forget, a moral idea" does not make it "of a piece" with any of the other "moral ideas" it so murderously opposed. For all Lesley Chamberlain's sophisticated, sometimes electrifying insights, and her knowing ease with German and Russian philosophical literature, her story would have held together better if she had resisted the desire to make it cohere as an argument. It is not to denigrate its achievement to say of this book that it succeeds in re-creating the painful experience of intellectual self-defeat that it sets out to describe. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 14:43:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:43:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Don't Get Goggle-Eyed Over Google's Plan to Digitize Message-ID: Don't Get Goggle-Eyed Over Google's Plan to Digitize The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.11 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i27/27b02001.htm [I'm sure that, before long, there will have formed a coalition to pressure Congress to modify the copyright laws.] By MARK Y. HERRING If you haven't heard about Google's plan to digitize millions of books, you must live in another galaxy. Hardly a news outlet in the country, digitized or no, missed the story at the end of last year. Most people were pleased by the news. It seemed that books would finally be available at your fingertips. Google had embarked on a grand scheme to digitize the world's greatest works, in cooperation with the world's greatest libraries. Break out the champagne! Not a few bean counters at colleges and universities around the world must have thought, "At long last. We can kick the library in the archives and be done with that financial black hole." Some librarians may have had a similar vision of the future and been dismayed, although most of them were optimistic about Google's plan. Digitization is big news; it's a good idea; and it's inevitable. But let's not get all goggle-eyed over Google right away. Here are five reasons not to tear up your library card quite yet. Copyright. A recent Chronicle article ([3]"Google Will Digitize and Search Millions of Books From 5 Top Research Libraries," January 7) was one of the few early reports to mention copyright. Current copyright law, to say nothing of Congress's continuing interest in increasing the length of time that works are protected by copyright, should give everyone at Google heartburn. At least in the early days, Google plans to rely chiefly on books that are in the public domain -- in general, works published before 1923 -- to avoid paying substantial fees to the copyright holders. The company says that for more-recent books it will provide only a few short excerpts, which it claims would not violate copyright. However, some publishers argue that scanning a book to digitize it constitutes reproduction, for which permission is required by law. That permission can be expensive. Only recently the library where I work encountered the sting of copyright fees on a small scale, when we asked permission to digitize an article from a book. The publisher charged us the same price as it would have if we had been putting together a whole course pack. The rationale was probably that digitization is replacing course packs, or that previous copyright fees were too low. Of course the giant Google will have far more influence over publishers than any one library could. But will Google have so much influence as to make copyright fees too low to matter? That's doubtful. Past failures. Four other companies have tried to do just the sort of digitization that Google is undertaking, and they have had problems. One of them, NetLibrary, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and became, in much-scaled-down form, a subsidiary of the Online Computer Library Center. A second, Questia, remains independent, but it has reduced its work force significantly and is on shaky legs. Each company began with over $80-million in venture capital; neither found that to be enough. The third company, Project Xanadu, is little more than a Web presence now. Project Gutenberg has done better than the other companies, but it still begs for dollars on its Web site from would-be users, foundations, and anyone else who might lend an ear, and a dime. As a free site for digitized texts ([4]http://www.promo.net/pg/index.html), it specializes in public-domain books and includes some of the works that Google is interested in. But Google also wants to digitize books still in copyright. Does it have a better idea than the previous for-profit businesses, or at least more money to make an old idea work this time around? Preserving books. Yes, the new machines that Google has can digitize pages with incredible speed. But no matter how fast (and faster, in this case, may not be better), digitization is not good for books, however good it may be for the reader. Who is going to pay for the books damaged in digitization? What happens when a rare book is damaged? My guess is that Google has underestimated, perhaps substantially, the percentage of books that will be damaged or that cannot undergo rapid digitization. Not only will some books be too fragile, or bound too tightly to lie flat, but even some newer books, owing to rapid manufacture, fall out of their bindings in 12 months or less. Handling -- even by careful digitizers -- will doubtless leave more than a few volumes without covers. Working with both groups of titles will increase Google's costs. Google's future. What would happen to all the digitized books if -- perish the thought -- Google's scheme comes to an unhappy end, like NetLibrary, Questia, or Xanadu? It would be very easy for libraries to become overreliant on Google, with pressures on them from every side to reduce costs. In that case, what would librarians do if Google suddenly vanished or went out of the digitization business? Ecological concerns. Whenever any of us arrives at a Web site that has information we need, what do we usually do after checking out the first or second screen? We hit the print button. Imagine thousands of students, faculty and staff members, and other library patrons all punching that print key. Of course Google wouldn't pay for the printing. But even if the libraries that offer access to Google's digitized material pass the printing costs on to their patrons, will our glorious digitized library come at the expense of the few forests we have left? Other concerns also come to mind. For example, what about the increased potential for plagiarism? What about Google's heavy reliance on material in English? The head of the National Library of France has expressed his worry that the project will be "powerfully marked by the view of Anglo-Saxons" ([5]The Chronicle, March 4). What kind of advertising will Google use to pay at least some of the costs of digitization? Academics tend to be particularly allergic to ads and other distractions on their computer screens. Google already relies on ads to cover its costs; presumably it will do the same for digitization. Would scholars tolerate having an ad about, say, erectile dysfunction pop up as they read Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin, in order to have the work digitized? The digitized "library" would undeniably be for picking and choosing, not really for reading. Is that the attitude toward books that we want to encourage -- the view that sound bites are more important than substantive thought? Those are not necessarily insurmountable obstacles for Google. However, they are formidable. Besides, the portability, convenience, and even comfort of a book are integral components of our intellectual lives. No one has yet made a convincing case that it's time to give up on books -- or libraries. Mark Y. Herring is dean of library services at Winthrop University. His most recent book is Raising Funds With Friends Groups (Neal-Schuman, 2004). References 3. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a03701.htm 4. http://www.promo.net/pg/index.html 5. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a03501.htm From christian.rauh at uconn.edu Thu Apr 14 15:48:24 2005 From: christian.rauh at uconn.edu (Christian Rauh) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:48:24 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] The 25-Year Wait for Immortality In-Reply-To: <01C53F13.EBCB60B0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C53F13.EBCB60B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <425E90C8.9010004@uconn.edu> Will the rich be the ones to benefit from this technology? Will it be withheld from others? Patented? Would there be a clash between mortals vs. immortals? Should immortality be a universal right? Will immortals ever risk their lives for anything? Would life become too valuable to sacrifice for an idea? Christian Steve Hovland wrote: > Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality > By Ker Than > Special to LiveScience > posted: 11 April 2005 > 06:32 am ET > > > > "I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being > biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely." > -- Aubrey de Grey > > Time may indeed be on your side. If you can just last another quarter > century. > > By then, people will start lives that could last 1,000 years or more. Our > human genomes will be modified to include the genetic material of > microorganisms that live in the soil, enabling us to break down the junk > proteins that our cells amass over time and which they can't digest on > their own. People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they > did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get > bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation > therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for > near-immortality. > > This may sound like science fiction, but Aubrey de Grey thinks this could > be our reality in as little as 25 years. Other scientists caution that it > is far from clear whether and for how long science can stall the > inevitable. > > De Grey, a Cambridge University researcher, heads the Strategies for > Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) project, in which he has defined > seven causes of aging, all of which he thinks can be dealt with. > (Senescence is scientific jargon for aging.) > > De Grey also runs the Methuselah Mouse prize for breakthroughs in extended > aging in mice. The purse of the M Prize, as it is called, recently grew > beyond $1 million. > > LiveScience recently spoke with de Gray about his idea of living longer, > and perhaps forever. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > -------- > > > LiveScience: What is your definition of aging? > > > Life Expectancy in America Hits Record High > > Infusion of Young Blood Revives Old Muscles > > Roots of Graying Hair Discovered > > Ray Kurzweil Aims to Live Forever > > > > > Aubrey de Grey: The definition that I like is not very good if you want to > cover all species, but it's pretty good if you want to do something about > it. I define aging as the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism > that eventually kills us. > > Is your goal to just extend the human lifespan substantially or to enable > us to live forever? > > I don't see any inherent limit to how long it would be desirable to live. > If life is fun at the moment, because one is healthy and youthful, both > mentally and physically, then one is not likely to want to die in the next > year or two. And if a year or two down the road, life is still fun because > one is still youthful and so on, then the same will apply, and I can't see > a time when that would cease to be true. > > When did you first come up with idea for your SENS project? > > Well, I've always considered aging to be undesirable, but I didn't begin to > consider that I could make a contribution until about ten years ago. I > suppose the major breakthrough was when I came up with the scheme that I > now describe as SENS, and that happened about four years ago. > > 7 Deadly SENS > Nuclear Mutations/Epimutations > These are changes to the DNA, the molecule that contains our genetic > information, or to proteins which bind to the DNA. Certain mutations can > lead to cancer. > > Mitochondrial Mutations > Mitochondria are components in our cells that are important for energy > production. They contain their own genetic material, and mutations to their > DNA can affect a cell's ability to function properly. > > Intracellular Junk > Our cells are constantly breaking down proteins that are no longer useful > or which can be harmful. Those proteins which can't be digested simply > accumulate as junk inside our cells. > > Extracellular Junk > Harmful junk protein can also accumulate outside of our cells. The amyloid > plaque seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients is one example. > > Cell Loss > Some of the cells in our bodies cannot be replaced, or can only be replaced > very slowly. > > Cell Senescence > This is a phenomenon where the cells are no longer able to divide. They may > also do other things that they're not supposed to, like secreting proteins > that could be harmful. > > Extracellular Crosslinks: > Cells are held together by special linking proteins. When too many > cross-links form between cells in a tissue, the tissue can lose its > elasticity and cause problems. > > > > > What happened was that I was gradually learning a lot of biology because my > wife is a biologist. I was originally trained as a computer scientist, and > I regarded aging as obviously undesirable but not my problem, that someone > else would be working on it. > > But the more biology I learned, the more I also learned about biologist and > about the attitudes toward working on the biology of aging that biologists > tended to have, and basically, I wasn't very impressed. I found that rather > few biologists were interested in the problem at all, and I thought, "Well, > that isn't very good,", so I thought I'd see what I could do. > > Your background is in computer science. How does that qualify you to > spearhead a project on aging? > > My background is enormously beneficial. There are really very important > differences between the type of creativity involved in being a basic > scientist and being an engineer. It means that I'm able to think in very > different ways and come up with approaches to things that are different > from the way a basic scientist might think. > > Could you give me an example of when your background has proven useful? > > Well, I suppose that the whole SENS project is one big example. What I've > done there is I've identified a set of things to fix, a set of aspects of > aging that we have some respectable chance to repair, and I've realized > that if we can do all of these things reasonably well, then we're done. > > Basically, we'll have made the age related problems that we suffer from > these days no longer an inevitable consequence of being alive. What I've > done is basically factored out all the complicated details of how > metabolism causes these things in the first place. It will be many decades > before we understand the way cells and organs work well enough to be able > to describe in detail the mechanism of how these problems actually occur. > > But my way of thinking is that we don't need to know the details of how > they happen. So long as we know what these things are that do happen, we > can figure out ways to fix them. This is counter to the ways that > scientists think, because scientists are interested in knowledge for its > own sake, whereas I'm interested in knowledge as a means to an end. > > Could you give me a timeline for how you envision your project succeeding? > > The first part of the project is to get really impressive results in mice. > The reason that's important is because mice are sufficiently furry and > people can identify with them. If we get really impressive results in mice, > then people will believe that it's possible to do it in humans, whereas if > you double the lifespan of a fruit fly, people aren't going to be terribly > interested. > > Now, what I want to do in mice is not only develop interventions which > extend their healthy lifespan by a substantial amount, but moreover, to do > so when the mouse is already in middle age. This is very important, because > if you do things to the mouse's genes before the mouse is even conceived, > then people who are alive can't really identify with that. > > I reckon it will be about 10 years before we can achieve the degree of life > extension with late onset interventions that will be necessary to prove to > society's satisfaction that this is feasible. It could be longer, but I > think that so long as the funding is there, then it should be about 10 > years. > > Step two will involve translating that technology to humans. And because > that's further in the future, it's much more speculative about how long > that's going to take. But I think we have a fifty-fifty chance of doing it > within about 15 years from the point where we get results with the mice. So > 25 years from now. > > What do you think about the idea that with so much life at stake, people > would be less willing to take risks? > > > The journal of the SENS institute. > > > > > I used to be more pessimistic about this than I am now. Five or six years > ago I wrote a book in which I predicted that driving would be outlawed > because it would be too dangerous to other people, but now I think that > what's actually going to happen is that we'll just throw money at the > problem. Rather than simply avoiding activities that are risky, we'll make > them less risky through technology. For example, it's perfectly possible > already to build cars that are much safer than those which most people > currently drive, and it's also possible to build cars that are safer for > pedestrians-with auto sensors and auto braking to stop from hitting a kid > running out in the road and things like that. > > It's just a matter of priorities. When there isn't that many years of life > to lose, the priority isn't there to spend the money. It's all a matter of > weighing out the probabilities. > > Once the technology is available, nearly everyone is going to want it. Of > course, there's going to be a minority of people who think it's better to > live more naturally in some way or other. We have parallels like that in > society today, like the Amish for example. > > Some would say that death is a part of life. What would be your response to > those people? > > Death will still be a part of life when we haven't got aging anymore. If > you mean that some people would say that aging is a part of life-well, > that's certainly true, but a couple hundred years ago tuberculosis was a > part of life, and we didn't have much hesitation in making that no longer a > part of life when we found out how. > > What do you say to critics who think that this money could be better spent > towards curing diseases like cancer? > > This is a very important point. Because we're going be in a situation where > we can extend lifespans indefinitely, this argument doesn't work. If it > were a case of simply having a prospect of extending our healthy lives by > 20 or 30 years, then one could legitimately argue that this would be money > more ethically spent on extending the lifespan of people who have a below > average lifespan. But when we're talking about extending lifespans > indefinitely, I don't think that really works. The other thing to bear in > mind, is that it's not an either or thing. The reasons why people in Africa > for example, have a low life expectancy is not just because of medical > care, but also because of political problems. > > What kind of life will the immortal or nearly-immortal lead? Will they have > to be on a special diet, or have constant organ transplants? > > Like any technology, when it first starts off, it will be a bit shaky, a > bit risky, it will be very laborious and expensive and so on, but there > will be enormous market pressures that will result in progressive > refinement and improvement to the technology so that it not only becomes > more effective, it becomes more convenient and so on. This will be an > example of that. > > In a very general sort of sense, one could probably think in terms of > having to go in for a refresh every 10 years or so. Exactly what would be > involved in that will change over the years. It might start off as lets say > a month in the hospital, and 10 years down the road, that will turn into a > day in the hospital. > > A good parallel is vaccines. For example, when we take a holiday in Africa > or Southeast Asia or whatever, we get a shot to make sure that we don't get > malaria. And that's all we have to do, and when we get there we can eat Mc > Donald's as much as one likes. > > > Aubrey de Grey > > > > > So you think it'll one day be as easy as getting a vaccine? > > Yes, that's right. A lot of these things, even in the early stages will > amount to vaccines and drugs. Though of course, there will also be a lot of > gene therapy and stem cell therapy and much more high tech stuff. > > Why did you establish both an institute and a prize? > > I think it's very important to have this two-prong approach. The idea here > is that we don't really know what's going to work, but we have a fair idea > of approaches that have a good probability of working. > > If you look at past technological achievements, some of them succeeded by > just throwing serious effort and serious resources at the problem, and > people were pretty sure of what they had to do to make the thing work. The > Manhattan Project is a fine example of that. Everyone basically knew how to > build the atomic bomb, it was just a question of working out the kinks. > > Then we've got things where there were loads of different possibilities > about how the thing might be done, and it was important to motivate people > and give incentives. For example, when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, > that won a prize. And when someone invented a chronometer that worked > properly at sea, that won a prize. Things like that. That was where you > wanted to give incentives for people to follow their hunches, because it > wasn't very clear which approach was going to work. > > I think that when we're talking about life extension, we're sort of halfway > between these two situations. We have a bunch of ideas which one can make a > good case that it's going to work, but we also want to hedge our bets, and > let people follow their hunches as well. > > Of your seven SENS targets, which do you consider to be the most important? > > It's not possible to say. I don't think we will be able to achieve more > than a relatively modest amount of life extension, if any, until we can get > at least five or so of these things working, and we might need to do all > seven before we get more than a decade of life extension. > > Why do you personally want to live forever? > > It's not really a matter of living forever, it's just a matter of not > wanting to die. One doesn't live forever all in one go, one lives forever > one year at a time. It's just a case of "Well, life seems to be fun, and I > don't see any prospect of it ceasing to be fun unless I get frail and > miserable and start declining." So if I can avoid declining, I'll stay with > it really. > > What would you do if you could live substantially longer? > > They say variety is the spice of life, so I don't think I would do the same > things every day. I'd like to be able to spend more time reading, and > listen to music, and all that sort of thing, things that I never get to do > at all at the moment. > > You think this project is going to succeed in your lifetime? > > I think it's got a respectable chance. I'm definitely not relying on it. My > main motivation comes from the thought of how many lives will be saved. > > Your strategy would involve not only preventing aging, but reversing it as > well. Does that mean people will get to choose what age they want to > remain? > > Absolutely. So the idea is that we wouldn't be eliminating aging from the > body. It'll be a case of going in periodically and having the accumulated > damage repaired. So exactly what biological age you actually have at any > point is really just a question of how often you go in for rejuvenations > and how thorough they are. > > So the more treatments you undergo, the younger you can be? > > That's right. I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate > between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 14 18:13:54 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:13:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] "rebellious cult of man" In-Reply-To: <200504141800.j3EI0W200576@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050414181354.28938.qmail@web30807.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Premise Checker quotes: >>The rebellious cult of man may begin with the denial of God's supremacy, but it doesn't end there. It ends with the denial of all things higher than human desire law, morality, culture, nation, and even nature itself.<< --What a bizarre belief. I know plenty of people who don't believe in God but who have very good morals, patriotism and appreciation for nature. Perhaps what the author really means is, "If I didn't believe in my own worthlessness in the eyes of God, I would lose all my other values". Of course, Christianity cannot place nationality or law above the "body of Christ", which is the central metaphor for Christianity in the New Testament. The book does say to obey authorities, but it doesn't say one's allegiance to the state should be supreme. If you're a Christian, you are by nature a globalist, since you believe the community of faith transcends borders and that the earth is meant to be ruled by Jesus rather than by any national law. I don't see that as incompatible with secure borders (any more than making people take tests for driver's licenses is anti-equality), and I seriously doubt Bush's immigration policy has anything to do with Christianity. Perhaps more to do with the Hispanic vote. As far as I can tell, "liberal Christianity" is the saner form, given some of the outrageous statements made by religious conservatives in recent months. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 18:45:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:45:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Study Cautions Runners to Limit Their Water Intake Message-ID: Study Cautions Runners to Limit Their Water Intake http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/health/14water.html April 14, 2005 [An editorial follows.] By [1]GINA KOLATA After years of telling athletes to drink as much liquid as possible to avoid dehydration, some doctors are now saying that drinking too much during intense exercise poses a far greater health risk. An increasing number of athletes - marathon runners, triathletes and even hikers in the Grand Canyon - are severely diluting their blood by drinking too much water or too many sports drinks, with some falling gravely ill and even dying, the doctors say. New research on runners in the Boston Marathon, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, confirms the problem and shows how serious it is. The research involved 488 runners in the 2002 marathon. The runners gave blood samples before and after the race. While most were fine, 13 percent of them - or 62 - drank so much that they had hyponatremia, or abnormally low blood sodium levels. Three had levels so low that they were in danger of dying. The runners who developed the problem tended to be slower, taking more than four hours to finish the course. That gave them plenty of time to drink copious amounts of liquid. And drink they did, an average of three liters, or about 13 cups of water or of a sports drink, so much that they actually gained weight during the race. The risks to athletes from drinking too much liquid have worried doctors and race directors for several years. As more slow runners entered long races, doctors began seeing athletes stumbling into medical tents, nauseated, groggy, barely coherent and with their blood severely diluted. Some died on the spot. In 2003, U.S.A. Track & Field, the national governing body for track and field, long-distance running and race walking, changed its guidelines to warn against the practice. Marathon doctors say the new study offers the first documentation of the problem. "Before this study, we suspected there was a problem," said Dr. Marvin Adner, the medical director of the Boston Marathon, which is next Monday. "But this proves it." Hyponatremia is entirely preventable, Dr. Adner and others said. During intense exercise the kidneys cannot excrete excess water. As people keep drinking, the extra water moves into their cells, including brain cells. The engorged brain cells, with no room to expand, press against the skull and can compress the brain stem, which controls vital functions like breathing. The result can be fatal. But the marathon runners were simply following what has long been the conventional advice given to athletes: Avoid dehydration at all costs. "Drink ahead of your thirst," was the mantra. Doctors and sports drink companies "made dehydration a medical illness that was to be feared," said Dr. Tim Noakes, a hyponatremia expert at the University of Cape Town. "Everyone becomes dehydrated when they race," Dr. Noakes said. "But I have not found one death in an athlete from dehydration in a competitive race in the whole history of running. Not one. Not even a case of illness." On the other hand, he said, he knows of people who have sickened and died from drinking too much. Hyponatremia can be treated, Dr. Noakes said. A small volume of a highly concentrated salt solution is given intravenously and can save a patient's life by pulling water out of swollen brain cells. But, he said, doctors and emergency workers often assume that the problem is dehydration and give intravenous fluids, sometimes killing the patient. He and others advise testing the salt concentration of the athlete's blood before treatment. For their part, runners can estimate how much they should drink by weighing themselves before and after long training runs to see how much they lose - and thus how much water they should replace. But they can also follow what Dr. Paul D. Thompson calls "a rough rule of thumb." Dr. Thompson, a cardiologist at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and a marathon runner, advises runners to drink while they are moving. "If you stop and drink a couple of cups, you are overdoing it," he said. Dr. Adner said athletes also should be careful after a race. "Don't start chugging down water," he said. Instead, he advised runners to wait until they began to urinate, a sign the body is no longer retaining water. The paper's lead author, Dr. Christopher S. D. Almond, of Children's Hospital, said he first heard of hyponatremia in 2001 when a cyclist drank so much on a ride from New York to Boston that she had a seizure. She eventually recovered. Dr. Almond and his colleagues decided to investigate how prevalent hyponatremia really was. Until recently, the condition was all but unheard of because endurance events like marathons and triathlons were populated almost entirely by fast athletes who did not have time to drink too much. "Elite athletes are not drinking much, and they never have," Dr. Noakes said. The lead female marathon runner in the Athens Olympics, running in 97-degree heat drank just 30 seconds of the entire race. In the 2002 Boston Marathon, said Dr. Arthur Siegel, of the Boston Marathon's medical team and the chief of internal medicine at Harvard's McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., the hyponatremia problem "hit us like a cannon shot" in 2002. That year, a 28-year-old woman reached Heartbreak Hill, at Mile 20, after five hours of running and drinking sports drinks. She struggled to the top. Feeling terrible and assuming she was dehydrated, she chugged 16 ounces of the liquid. "She collapsed within minutes," Dr. Siegel said. She was later declared brain dead. Her blood sodium level was dangerously low, at 113 micromoles per liter of blood. (Hyponatremia starts at sodium levels below 135 micromoles, when brain swelling can cause confusion and grogginess. Levels below 120 can be fatal.) No one has died since in the Boston Marathon, but there have been near misses there, with 7 cases of hyponatremia in 2003 and 11 last year, and deaths elsewhere, Dr. Siegel said. He added that those were just the cases among runners who came to medical tents seeking help. In a letter, also in the journal, doctors describe 14 runners in the 2003 London Marathon with hyponatremia who waited more than four hours on average before going to a hospital. Some were lucid after the race, but none remembered completing it. That sort of delay worries Dr. Siegel. "The bottom line is, it's a very prevalent problem out there, and crossing the edge from being dazed and confused to having a seizure is very tricky and can happen very, very fast," he said. Boston Marathon directors want to educate runners not to drink so much, Dr. Siegel said. They also suggest that runners write their weights on their bibs at the start of the race. If they feel ill, they could be weighed again. Anyone who gains weight almost certainly has hyponatremia. "Instead of waiting until they collapse and then testing their sodium, maybe we can nip it in the bud," Dr. Siegel said. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=GINA%20KOLATA&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=GINA%20KOLATA&inline=nyt-per -------------- Editorial: Brain-Dead From Sports Drinks http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/opinion/14thu2.html April 14, 2005 EDITORIAL Brain-Dead From Sports Drinks For years now, we've been hearing about the importance of hydration to avoid heat stroke during prolonged exercise in hot weather. Now, it turns out, too much hydration can kill you. A study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine should give weekend warriors reason to rethink the wisdom of quaffing vast amounts of water or sports drinks while exercising vigorously - at least if they are engaging in such endurance tests as a marathon. The study found that a marathon runner could dangerously dilute the blood with an overdose of liquids, risking a coma and even death. The problem has also been detected during long military maneuvers, extended bike rides and blistering hikes through the desert. An article by Gina Kolata in The Times today describes the slow and belated recognition of the problem. A South African expert who has been warning of the dangers for more than two decades told Ms. Kolata that he had not found a single case when an athlete had died from dehydration in a competitive race, but that some people had sickened and died from drinking too much. Typically, an overdose of water dilutes their blood and reduces the concentration of sodium. Water enters the cells, causing them to swell, and engorged brain cells press into the skull; such pressure can lead to confusion, seizures and a loss of vital functions. All too often, friends, coaches or emergency personnel assume that the problem is dehydration and administer yet more liquid, making the problem worse. The best treatment is a small volume of a concentrated salt solution, given intravenously, to increase blood sodium concentrations. Sports drinks containing electrolytes may not help much as they are mostly liquid themselves. In the 2002 Boston Marathon, for example, a 28-year-old woman found herself exhausted after running for five hours and gulping sports drinks along the way. Wrongly assuming that she was dehydrated, she chugged down 16 more ounces of a sports drink. She promptly collapsed and was later declared brain-dead. The concentration of salt in her blood was found to be lethally low. In the study published today, researchers at various Harvard-affiliated institutions tested 488 of the nearly 15,000 runners who completed the 2002 Boston Marathon. They found that 13 percent had blood with abnormally low sodium levels, and that three runners were in danger of dying. It was not the elite runners who were at risk - it was those who had taken four hours or more to finish the race, allowing plenty of time to imbibe excess fluid. Sports authorities have already issued warnings and tips to avoid excessive drinking, and rescue workers in the Grand Canyon now carry devices to test collapsed hikers for low blood sodium. But the solution is for overly eager endurance runners and hikers to forget the old mantra that they should drink-drink-drink. Too much liquid can be lethal. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 18:50:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:50:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Using Advanced Physics to Find Concealed Weapons Message-ID: Using Advanced Physics to Find Concealed Weapons http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/technology/14sensor.html April 14, 2005 By MATTHEW L. WALD Three companies are racing to market a new form of technology for detecting concealed weapons, using physics borrowed from radio astronomy and manufacturing techniques from cellular phone makers. The technology, called millimeter wave, is a new category of sensing so unobtrusive that it seems like something out of "Star Trek." Unlike conventional systems such as metal detectors, which sense magnetic fields created by certain materials or objects, or X-ray machines, which pass rays through objects, millimeter wave sensors are passive and rely on detecting energy emitted by objects. The energy the sensors look for is in an unfamiliar part of the electromagnetic spectrum, different from the usual visible light or infrared. At wavelengths of two centimeters to one millimeter, the energy is much longer than light or infrared waves, and thus able to pass through clothing and similar material. Human bodies radiate the energy at a rate higher than metal, plastic or composite materials, so those objects can be spotted under clothing, in silhouette. The sensors have been successfully demonstrated in laboratories and have been sold mostly to government agencies for evaluation. With research grants from the National Institute of Justice, the technology arm of the Justice Department, and from the Defense Department and other federal agencies, three small firms - Brijot Imaging Systems, Millivision Technologies and Trex Enterprises - are working to manufacture portable sensor units. "Millimeter wave imagery is remarkably well understood, but no one's been able to build anything cheap enough and small enough to be practical," said Brian Andrews, president and chief executive of Brijot Imaging, which is a partner with Lockheed Martin, the giant contractor. Mr. Andrews says his company has done just that, with a $60,000 box that is supposed to be able to see from 5 to 45 feet, depending on the lens attached. A computer scans the images and looks for anomalies that could be weapons. A second company, Trex Enterprises of San Diego, has a unit that sells for $50,000 (so far only to government customers), and is working on a hand-held version. Its chief technology officer, John A. Lovberg, compared the technology to infrared technology, which is also "passive," meaning that the sensor measures natural emissions rather than bouncing energy off the object being observed, as radar does. Infrared is used in a variety of settings, including military aviation. Mr. Lovberg said that the technology mounted on cars or planes could also help drivers or pilots see through fog or smoke. Millimeter wave sensors, he said, can show "the difference between a road and a tree and a metal street sign." Millivision, of South Deerfield, Mass., is marketing a detector about the size and shape of telescopes used by serious amateurs. The company is partly owned by L-3 Communications, a major manufacturer of scanning equipment. The potential market, said William J. Caragol, vice president for business development, is "any entrance that you pass through where there's a need for security." "It expands," he said, "to every office building, stadiums - fill in the blank." Millivision has a $60,000 device it has sold to government agencies for testing, Mr. Cargol said. With L-3, it is developing a portal with controlled-temperature conditions, for more accurate scanning. The Millivision sensor, he said, can spot a ceramic gun that a metal detector would miss. The Justice Department expects to use the sensors as security tools for courthouses and other buildings, but says they could also have commercial applications. Over the last eight years, the department has given about $7 million in research grants to companies working on millimeter wave technologies. Sara V. Hart, director of the National Institute of Justice, said in an e-mail message: "We want law enforcement and corrections officers to be able to detect any weapon, such as a bomb, gun, knife or nonmetallic weapon, from a safe distance. This would enable officers to make immediate protection decisions to protect themselves and the public." She said that the technology could be "practical for use within the next few years" and that her agency had bought several systems for evaluation. The energy levels detected by millimeter wave sensors are extremely small - mere whispers of energy measured in femto-joules, or quadrillionths of a joule. (A joule is the amount of energy of one watt applied for one second.) Chips, which are used in the sensors to process the data and run at speeds similar to the frequencies involved, 80 to 100 gigahertz, are still quite costly to make. But the machines that manufacture the chips have gotten cheaper because they are closely related to the machines that make chips for cellphones. Mr. Lovberg of Trex said that advances in electronics are making millimeter wave technology more affordable. "Ten years ago, you couldn't buy amplifiers in this spectrum," he said of the amplifiers used in the sensors. But semiconductors made of gallium arsenide or indium phosphide can run in the frequencies required, he said. Those chips have been commercialized for use in other devices, and are now available for use in millimeter wave technology. Tom Byrne, a member of the executive board of the Center for Commercialization of Advanced Technology, a public-private consortium in San Diego that provided a $75,000 grant to Trex, said, "In the past there was a lot of expense in the receiver because the signal is a low-grade, weak signal, and that pushed the price up." But now, the receivers are getting more sensitive, Mr. Byrne said, and that is reducing the price and making the sensors potentially viable. Some companies are working on "active" millimeter wave systems, which are more like radar in bouncing energy off the person being studied, Mr. Byrne said. In fact, low-power radar is already in use at some airports to search arriving passengers. But radar systems raise potential health concerns from exposure to the energy, and also privacy issues because body parts are clearly visible. Active millimeter systems could raise the same worries. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 18:57:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:57:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Hypomanic? Absolutely. But Oh So Productive! Message-ID: Health > Mental Health & Behavior > Hypomanic? Absolutely. But Oh So Productive! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/health/psychology/22hypo.html March 22, 2005 By BENEDICT CAREY "S ometimes when talking to people, I'll tell them that I've just had a lot of coffee, even though it's not true, because I know I fire off in all directions, and I can talk to you about anything - literature, string theory, rock guitar - I once worked for Leo Fender - and one thing I say to people is that, of course, I live near the edge; the view is better." Laurence McKinney, 60, who lives near the edge of Boston, is a business consultant, a Harvard graduate and self-described polymath who has had a career that is every bit as frenzied as his conversational style. Among other ventures, he said, he has started pharmaceutical companies, played in rock bands and helped design electric guitars, and written a book about the neuroscience of spirituality. This month, for the first time, he helped start a Web site for people like himself. They are known as hypomanics. At some point, almost everyone encounters them - restless, eager people, consumed with confident curiosity. Researchers suspect that their mental fever shares some genetic basis with that of bipolar disorder, known colloquially as manic depression, a psychiatric disorder characterized by effusive emotional highs and bouts of paralyzing despair. In recent decades, scientists have found that bipolar disorder is widely variable, and that its milder forms are marked by hypomanias, currents of mental energy and concentration that are less reckless than full-blown manic frenzies, and unspoiled, in many cases, by subsequent gloom. New research helps explain how people with manic or hypomanic tendencies navigate the small triumphs and humiliations of daily life, and provides clues to how some of them quickly shake off the emotional troughs that their ambitious natures should make inevitable. "It kind of goes against the common assumption, but many people who are inclined to hypomanic or manic symptoms have an underlying resilience," said Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. "They may get trashed by their peers, laid low, but they respond very strongly." In a new book, "Exuberance," Dr. Jamison argues that flights of joyous energy similar to hypomanic states frequently accompany scientific and literary inspiration.Psychiatrists have known for more than a century that bipolar disorder, unlike any other mental illness, is often associated with some financial and professional accomplishment. Mania can inspire destructive shopping or gambling sprees, but it can also generate bursts of creative and focused work. Psychiatrists and psychologists have found ample evidence for bipolar tendencies in the life histories of many famous writers and painters. The composer Robert Schumann, for example, experienced extreme mood swings; so, some now argue, did the poet Emily Dickinson. Some studies suggest that first-degree relatives of people with bipolar illness, who are likely to inherit some genetic basis for bipolar disorder, are particularly likely to enjoy high socioeconomic status. Most recently, researchers have turned their attention to the mild end of the bipolar spectrum, and sliced it into many permutations. Bipolar II, III and IV, for example, each include depressive episodes and varieties of hypomania, or exuberant moods. Cyclothymic disorder involves rapid cycling from moderate depressive to manic symptoms, and hyperthymia is a state of elevated mood. "When you look across the entire bipolar spectrum, you find that maybe 10 percent to 15 percent of these people never get depressed: they're just up," said Dr. Ronald C. Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. As one psychiatrist put it, Dr. Kessler said, "The goal in life is constant hypomania: you never sleep too much; you're on; you keep going." With the exception of Bipolar II and cyclothymic disorder, which are accepted as standard psychiatric diagnoses, these permutations of low-level bipolar disorder overlap with each other and with normal ranges of mental function so much that some scientists question how distinct they are. "For some of us, there is a lot of wariness about this tendency to see bipolar disorder everywhere," said Dr. William Coryell, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa School of Medicine, adding that "it's very difficult to determine reliable boundaries between one diagnosis and another" and document the true prevalence of the conditions. Yet even if bipolar disorders can be reliably diagnosed in only 2 percent of the population, some now believe that hypomania or similar charged states are more prevalent than previously imagined. About 6 percent of college students score high on personality tests that measure hypomanic tendencies, some studies find, and about 10 percent of children rate as temperamentally "exuberant," a related quality. Outsized delight in small successes may be central to what kindles hypomanic natures and sustains them. In an effort to learn how the joys and sorrows of daily life affect mania and depression, Dr. Sheri Johnson, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, began surveying men and women in whom bipolar disorder had been diagnosed. Originally, Dr. Johnson was interested in the effect of negative events, like struggles at work or arguments at home. "But the people in the study told us we were getting it wrong, that it was when good things happened that they felt they had their manias," Dr. Johnson said. In two studies involving 149 people, one completed in 2000 and the other a continuing project, Dr. Johnson has found that personal victories like a promotion oran award very often precede or coincide with manic symptoms, though the person may be feeling neither manic nor depressed when life takes a good turn. Even when small successes do not arouse manic symptoms, they appear to prompt exaggerated surges of confidence. In one study, scheduled for publication later this year, Dr. Johnson led a team of psychologists who rated a group of 153 college students on a hypomanic scale, which included items like: "There have often been times when I had such an excess of energy that I felt little need to sleep at night," "I often feel excited and happy for no apparent reason," and "I often feel I could outperform almost anyone at anything." The scale was intended to identify people at risk for developing bipolar disorders. The researchers gave the students a hand-eye coordination test, then told them that they had scored very well, regardless of their true scores. Offered a choice of which test to take next, the hypomanic group selected a significantly more challenging exam than their peers did. These students not only expected to do very well, Dr. Johnson reports, they were more willing than peers to pursue difficult goals after an initial success. Researchers do not know whether this surging confidence and hunger for challenge persists, or for how long, but it is a familiar pattern to some psychiatrists who treat mild forms of bipolar disorder. Dr. John Gartner, a psychiatrist in Baltimore who specializes in treating hypomania, recently published "The Hypomanic Edge," a book that identifies hypomanic symptoms in the lives of American historical figures from Christopher Columbus to the biotech entrepreneur J. Craig Venter. "These are people who are always moving the goal posts," Dr. Gartner said in an interview. "If they do well at one thing, they shoot for the moon." In a footnote in his book, Dr. Gartner recounts the story of how Henry Ford sailed off on a luxury steamer on a whim in 1915 to personally end World War I and bring world peace. "I'll bet this ship against a penny," Ford boasted to the reporters, "that we'll have the boys out of the trenches by Christmas." This grandiosity practically begs for a tragic fall. Difficult goals are by definition less likely to be achieved, even by those with mental power packs, and there is little question that people with hypomanic tendencies feel disappointment deeply. For some, their fevered, scavenging curiosity may overwhelm any excess rumination: new projects beckon before the old ones can be mourned. "I'm not so much smarter than other people as faster," said Mr. McKinney, the polymath near Boston, who contacted Dr. Gartner after hearing of his book. "I swing more often, I make errors, but I make them faster. That's how I sometimes describe it. If you can focus this energy, you can do great things with it. If not, well, I think it can be difficult." And that is one catch. Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of the University of California's Neuropsychiatric Institute in Los Angeles, said that he considered true hypomanic types to be rare and that some of them crashed at midlife, or later. "Usually what happens in the clinical domain," Dr. Whybrow said, "is that these people come in when they've had a business reversal and they're very depressed. They look back on their lives and realize that they were hyperactive, hypomanic, that they started a lot of projects but finished very few of them." The view may be better, but it is easy to lose your balance. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 18:58:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:58:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: One Millionaire's Strange Cry: Tickets, Please! Message-ID: One Millionaire's Strange Cry: Tickets, Please! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/nyregion/14trains.html April 14, 2005 By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI There are train buffs, and there are train buffs - and then there is Walter O'Rourke. On a recent evening in Pennsylvania Station, Mr. O'Rourke, a New Jersey Transit conductor, opened the doors to his train, and a river of elbows and briefcases, knapsacks and newspapers rushed in. His gendarme cap crooked, his glasses bobbing off his nose, Mr. O'Rourke smiled and said, "There's no place else I'd rather be." He wasn't kidding. In fact, there are plenty of other places Mr. O'Rourke, 65, could have been. He could have been at his log cabin in Townsend, Del., which sits on 140 acres. He could have been in one of his two Florida homes, or at his insurance company there. Heck, Mr. O'Rourke could have been off running his own railroad, the one he owns in West Virginia. But there he was, a millionaire from business, real estate and insurance investments, punching tickets on a suburban train full of tired faces, bouncing from shoulder to shoulder like a pinball. No place else he'd rather be. "I don't need the money," Mr. O'Rourke explained. "I need the job." Walter Joe O'Rourke, who never wed, is married to the rails. Despite earning more than what he estimated at $2 million last year from his investments, he chugs along as a conductor, earning a base salary of $52,000 a year. "Pocket change," Mr. O'Rourke said. "But it keeps me doing the one thing I enjoy doing most." Born on Dec. 14, 1939, in Fort Worth, Mr. O'Rourke comes from a family of railway workers. Five of his six uncles worked rail jobs around Texas. Raised in Miami, he joined a workshop at Miami Jackson High School and fell in love with the art of welding, and of cutting steel. "The whole science of machining," Mr. O'Rourke said. "It's somewhat of a dying art these days." As a student at the University of Miami, he volunteered to work at the Gold Coast Railway Museum on campus, spending hours helping to restore equipment and serving as a conductor for the trains that ran on a short piece of track. After three years in the Army, Mr. O'Rourke enrolled in law classes at Little Rock University, now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. "I knew I wanted to start my own business," he said, "so I just took the courses that I felt would help me in dealing with contracts and related issues." Two years later, that strategy paid dividends. Mr. O'Rourke, age 30 then and working for the state of the Arkansas, invested $80,000 to buy H&W Railway Contractors, a small company that repaired railway tracks in Arkansas and Texas. In 1971, Mr. O'Rourke's train came in. His business was bought by a larger company for $1 million. He began investing in real estate. A large farm in Middletown, N.J., proved profitable. "It made a nice mall," he said. By 1978, Mr. O'Rourke was living comfortably on his investments when he noticed an advertisement in a newspaper: the Arabian American Oil Company was seeking an adviser to the Saudi railroads. With a chance to rekindle his first love, at $110,000 a year, Mr. O'Rourke quickly packed. For 10 years, he oversaw a supply line that carried oil from the Dammam Port, on the Persian Gulf, to Riyadh. While in Saudi Arabia, Mr. O'Rourke also helped build a miniature railroad on the oil company compound in Abqaiq. He built a 150-pound locomotive that ran along 2,000 feet of track, attracting children from Abqaiq and neighboring towns. "In a very strict, very closed cultural atmosphere, the trains were a breath of fresh air," Mr. O'Rourke said. In 1988, he returned to Delaware and his log cabin, with its surrounding land that produces corn, soybeans, walnuts and, thus, another stream of income. For 10 years he held a low-paying job as a conductor with the Maryland and Delaware Railroad. During that time, however, he invested in the American Shield Group, a brokerage firm in Punta Gorda, Fla., which he owns with a nephew. Mr. O'Rourke said that last year American Shield netted him a $1.6 million profit. In 1997, Mr. O'Rourke realized his ultimate dream. He became the majority shareholder in Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad, a 112-mile stretch of track that runs along the Cheat River in West Virginia. The railroad, which consists of three trains with a total of 14 cars, is used mostly for tourist travel. Last year, he said, it turned a $300,000 profit. "I'm happy, and I'm comfortable," Mr. O'Rourke said. "But I have a high index of comfort." Mr. O'Rourke came to New Jersey Transit in 1999 as a conductor, a job from which he will retire at the end of this month. Asked why he joined, at age 60 and wealthy, he gave an answer befitting two people: the worldly veteran of the rails he has become, and the high school buff in Miami who fell in love with the workshop. "I've always wanted to work on a real, professional railroad," he said. "And these trains can go really, really fast." Garry Sholtis, a fellow conductor on New Jersey Transit's North Jersey Coast line and a train buff himself, said he could relate to Mr. O'Rourke's enthusiasm. "I once read somewhere that there are three jobs people would do for love and not money," Mr. Sholtis said. "The first is a writer, the second is a circus performer, and the third is a railroad conductor." Sitting in his log cabin in Delaware one recent morning, Mr. O'Rourke studied blueprints to restore a 1929 Solarium Pullman Car that he will add to his fleet. "It'll cost $58,000 to truck her from an Oklahoma train yard to West Virginia, and $350,000 to restore her," he said. "But when we're finished making her up, she'll be a beauty." Mr. O'Rourke soon retreated to his 4,000-square-foot, two-level basement-turned-workshop, where he builds model trains that run along some 300 feet of track around his home. He showed off his latest creation, a model of an 1850's-style Baltimore & Ohio Atlantic engine. The engine, like most things running along the tracks of his life, rested at a junction where one man's passion meets his profession. "I realize that some people, especially some of my co-workers, might see me as a strange duck," Mr. O'Rourke said, feeding his new engine a drop of oil. "But where does it say that a man can't love what he does for a living?" References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=VINCENT%20M.%20MALLOZZI&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=VINCENT%20M.%20MALLOZZI&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 18:58:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:58:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Religion and Natural History Clash Among the Ultra-Orthodox Message-ID: Religion and Natural History Clash Among the Ultra-Orthodox http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/science/22rabbi.html March 22, 2005 By ALEX MINDLIN It was early January when the posters went up in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's largest ultra-Orthodox neighborhood, and they signaled the start of a bad year for Rabbi Nosson Slifkin. Twenty-three ultra-Orthodox rabbis had signed an open letter denouncing the books of Rabbi Slifkin, an ultra-Orthodox Israeli scholar and science writer. The letter read, in part: "He believes that the world is millions of years old - all nonsense! - and many other things that should not be heard and certainly not believed. His books must be kept at a distance and may not be possessed or distributed." Rabbi Slifkin, the letter-writers continued, should "burn all his writings." Fundamentalist Christians have long championed a literal reading of the Bible that suggests the planet is thousands of years old, rather than millions. But the denunciation of Rabbi Slifkin has publicized a parallel strain of thought among ultra-Orthodox Jews, a subset of the Orthodox Jewish community that is deeply skeptical of modern culture, avoiding television and the Web and often disdaining college education. Rabbi Slifkin has made a career of reconciling Jewish Scripture with modern natural history. He teaches a course in biblical and talmudic zoology at Yeshivat Lev HaTorah, near Jerusalem, and gives frequent lectures, sometimes wearing a boa constrictor along with his black hat and jacket. With nine books to his name at age 29, he is a young up-and-comer in the sober world of Jewish scholarship. The controversy surrounding him has pitted Jews who are skeptical of science against their more cosmopolitan brethren, who may follow ultra-Orthodox traditions but hold jobs as doctors or teachers. "My sense is there are literally tens of thousands of people who are upset about the ban," said Dr. Andrew Klafter, an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, who is ultra-Orthodox. "I'm very, very puzzled by it." In the days after the ban, Rabbi Slifkin's publisher and distributor dropped the three books mentioned in the open letter. He himself lost several speaking engagements and saw his own rabbi pressured to expel him from his synagogue. "He was crushed," said a friend, Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, a professor of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "Do you know what it's like to walk through the street and see posters branding you a heretic?" Three of Rabbi Slifkin's books, published from 2001 to 2004, were singled out in the letter or in related materials: "Mysterious Creatures," "The Science of Torah" and "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax." Predictably, the banned books have become hits. A copy of "Science of Torah" recently sold on eBay for $125, or five times its cover price. And Rabbi Gil Student, whose company, Yashar Books, has taken over the distribution of the other two books, said he had done a year's business in a month selling them. Rabbi Slifkin's books seek to reconcile, rather than to contrast, sacred texts with modern knowledge of the natural world. But in the process, he has sometimes cast a critical eye on those texts. In "Mysterious Creatures," Rabbi Slifkin discussed fantastic animals mentioned in the Torah and the Talmud - among them, the unicorn and the phoenix - and suggested that, in reporting their existence, Jewish sages might have relied on the erroneous writings of ancient naturalists. He gently debunked the claim, found in a medieval text, that geese grow on trees, explaining that it was "based on the peculiar anatomy of a certain seashell." And he examined the Talmudic doctrine that lice, alone of all animals, may be killed on the Sabbath because they do not sexually reproduce - a premise now known to be false. In "The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax," Rabbi Slifkin examined the difficult separation of animals into kosher and nonkosher, and discussed apparent exceptions and contradictions to the claims of Jewish law. (The aardvark and the rhinoceros, for example, meet one test for being kosher but not another.) And in "The Science of Torah," he took a scientist's eye to the Torah. Evolution, he wrote, did not disprove God's existence and was consistent with Jewish thought. He suggested that the Big Bang theory paralleled the account of the universe's creation given by the medieval Spanish-Jewish sage Ramban. And Rabbi Slifkin wrote, to quote his own later paraphrase, that "tree-ring chronology, ice layers and sediment layers in riverbeds all show clear proof to the naked eye that the world is much more than 5,765 years old." The latter statement was particularly galling to the rabbi's critics, who support a literal reading of Genesis that they say puts the earth's age at 5,765. The rabbis who signed the letter denouncing Rabbi Slifkin are widely respected Torah authorities; one of them, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 91, is a leader of Israel's United Torah Judaism Party and one of the most respected scholars in Orthodox Ashkenazi Judaism. As a result, the letter has had repercussions far beyond the congregations of those who signed it. Rabbi Slifkin's publisher, Targum Press, and his distributor, Feldheim Publishers, have stopped carrying the books. Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox outreach organization, has removed most of his articles from its Web site. Revered though they are, however, most of the rabbis signing the letter are not known as community leaders or public voices; only one of the Americans, for example, sits on the eight-member Council of Torah Sages at the head of Agudath Israel of America, an influential national Orthodox organization. Rather, they represent the most unworldly segment of the ultra-Orthodox community, in which learning is prized and contact with the secular world, including secular education, is shunned. The letter against Rabbi Slifkin is not the only recent outburst against science among the ultra-Orthodox. Last November, during the annual conference of Agudath Israel, Rabbi Uren Reich, the dean of Yeshiva of Woodlake Village in New Jersey, said, "These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened 65 million years ago - ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks' time." Many science-minded ultra-Orthodox Jews say it is spiritually wrenching to see leaders they revere endorsing views they oppose. Rabbi Adlerstein of Loyola said: "I know rabbis, I know teens in yeshivas who were on the verge of quitting" when the letter first came out. "They look at themselves in the mirror and they say, 'What have I been representing?'" From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:00:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:00:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dowd: X-celling Over Men Message-ID: X-celling Over Men Liberties column by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 5.3.20 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/opinion/20dowd.html Men are always telling me not to generalize about them. But a startling new study shows that science is backing me up here. Research published last week in the journal Nature reveals that women are genetically more complex than scientists ever imagined, while men remain the simple creatures they appear. "Alas," said one of the authors of the study, the Duke University genome expert Huntington Willard, "genetically speaking, if you've met one man, you've met them all. We are, I hate to say it, predictable. You can't say that about women. Men and women are farther apart than we ever knew. It's not Mars or Venus. It's Mars or Venus, Pluto, Jupiter and who knows what other planets." Women are not only more different from men than we knew. Women are more different from each other than we knew - creatures of "infinite variety," as Shakespeare wrote. "We poor men only have 45 chromosomes to do our work with because our 46th is the pathetic Y that has only a few genes which operate below the waist and above the knees," Dr. Willard observed. "In contrast, we now know that women have the full 46 chromosomes that they're getting work from and the 46th is a second X that is working at levels greater than we knew." Dr. Willard and his co-author, Laura Carrel, a molecular biologist at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, think that their discovery may help explain why the behavior and traits of men and women are so different; they may be hard-wired in the brain, in addition to being hormonal or cultural. So is Lawrence Summers right after all? "Only time will tell," Dr. Willard laughs. The researchers learned that a whopping 15 percent - 200 to 300 - of the genes on the second X chromosome in women, thought to be submissive and inert, lolling about on an evolutionary Victorian fainting couch, are active, giving women a significant increase in gene expression over men. As the Times science reporter Nicholas Wade, who is writing a book about human evolution and genetics, explained it to me: "Women are mosaics, one could even say chimeras, in the sense that they are made up of two different kinds of cell. Whereas men are pure and uncomplicated, being made of just a single kind of cell throughout." This means men's generalizations about women are correct, too. Women are inscrutable, changeable, crafty, idiosyncratic, a different species. "Women's chromosomes have more complexity, which men view as unpredictability," said David Page, a molecular biologist and expert on sex evolution at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass. Known as Mr. Y, Dr. P calls himself "the defender of the rotting Y chromosome." He's referring to studies showing that the Y chromosome has been shedding genes willy-nilly for millions of years and is now a fraction of the size of its partner, the X chromosome. "The Y married up," he notes. "The X married down." Size matters, so some experts have suggested that in 10 million years or even much sooner - 100,000 years - men could disappear, taking Maxim magazine, March Madness and cold pizza in the morning with them. Dr. Page drolly conjures up a picture of the Y chromosome as "a slovenly beast," sitting in his favorite armchair, surrounded by the litter of old fast food takeout boxes. "The Y wants to maintain himself but doesn't know how," he said. "He's falling apart, like the guy who can't manage to get a doctor's appointment or can't clean up the house or apartment unless his wife does it. "I prefer to think of the Y as persevering and noble, not as the Rodney Dangerfield of the human genome." Dr. Page says the Y - a refuge throughout evolution for any gene that is good for males and/or bad for females - has become "a mirror, a metaphor, a blank slate on which you can write anything you want to think about males." It has inspired cartoon gene maps that show the belching gene, the inability-to-remember-birthdays-and-anniversaries gene, the fascination-with-spiders-and-reptiles gene, the selective-hearing-loss-"Huh" gene, the inability-to-express-affection-on-the-phone gene. The discovery about women's superior gene expression may answer the age-old question about why men have trouble expressing themselves: because their genes do. E-mail: [2]liberties at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:01:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:01:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Ghosts in the Machine Message-ID: Sunday Book Review > Essay: Ghosts in the Machine http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/020QUEENA.html March 20, 2005 By JOE QUEENAN Ever since I started reading Charles de Gaulle's memoirs as a young man, I have been fascinated by ghostwritten books. Though it was never definitely proved that the celebrated novelist Andre Malraux had collaborated on these works with the equally great French statesman, I was more than willing to believe rumors spread by his detractors, both young and old, because the writing was electrifyingly entertaining, and de Gaulle did not seem like an electrifyingly entertaining kind of guy. By farming out his life's story to a titan of French literature, de Gaulle seemed to be saying, ''I've got the dinero; go fetch the Camaro.'' The de Gaulle-Malraux literary liaison, if it ever existed, is an illustration of ghostwriting at its very best. One dashing figure, who has the brains but not the leisure to write a book, secures the services of a genius with time on his hands. The nominal author provides the relevant facts, figures and anecdotes about those gay old times at L'Ecole Normale Superieure; the ghostwriter does the heavy lifting. But nobody ever officially admits that a ghostwriter is involved because that gets up the public's nose. This was also the template for the manufacture of John F. Kennedy's ''Profiles in Courage,'' which won the callow young senator an image-enhancing Pulitzer Prize for a book that he almost certainly did not write, at least by himself. The underlying philosophy here was clear: Get the book written; let the sticklers worry about who wrote it. But in recent times a cloud has begun to hang over the deliciously vaporous world of ghostwriting. This is because greater transparency about the collaborative process has inadvertently led to greater confusion. Things started to take a bad turn when the basketball legend Charles Barkley complained that he had been misquoted in his own autobiography. This gave rise to a niggling suspicion in some quarters that ghostwriters were churning out books with only minimal input from their nominal authors. Shocking! Then, two years ago, Hillary Rodham Clinton put her name on a vast, unprecedentedly uninteresting [1]autobiography, waiting until page 529 before disclosing that her speechwriter was responsible for many of the words in the book, which, coincidentally, read like the world's longest speech. Newt Gingrich has used all sorts of collaborators, most recently referred to as a team, over the years, including a history professor with whom he has concocted a series of Civil War novels in which he tries to reimagine the past, as if reimagining the present weren't bad enough. This leaves the reader impossibly confused. How much of these books did you write, Mr. Gingrich? Does your sidekick handle the cunning narrative, riveting subplots and nimble prose, and you the jesuitically subtle ideas? Or does he merely write about the North and you about the South? It was precisely to avoid this kind of confusion that de Gaulle probably hired Malraux in the first place -- or at least that's what his enemies say. A perfect example of the shadow looming over the ghostwriting-industrial complex is Tim Russert's memoir, [2]''Big Russ and Me.'' This is the heartwarming 2004 best seller in which the distinguished newsman pays tribute to his wonderful father, a man of great character, grace and common decency who taught Russert all the important things in life -- like how to hire Lee Iacocca's ghost to write a book about how graceful and decent your dad is, but not to put the ghostwriter's name right there on the cover, because that might make it seem less heartwarming. When I read Russert's book, I found his easygoing, straight-talking style entirely irresistible -- and not just because the dust jacket said that his style was easygoing, straight-talking and irresistible. But then, when I got to the very end of the book and found out that Bill Novak was Russert's ''full partner in writing this book,'' I recalled that Novak was also the author of Iacocca's easygoing, straight-talking, heartwarmingly irresistible book. Not to mention the easygoing memoirs of Nancy Reagan. And the Mayflower Madam. This got me to wondering whether the irresistibly heartwarming sentiments expressed in the book were Russert's, Novak's or perhaps some heartwarmingly straight-talking sentiments left over from Iacocca's even more irresistible book. Or, God forbid, the Mayflower Madam's. In saying this, I am not criticizing Russert's decision to hire a ghostwriter, as I understand the time constraints on busy newsmen. Moreover, having written eight books myself, I realize that any idiot can do this kind of work, that there is no disgrace in having a book cranked out for you, that any time needlessly wasted writing a book could be better spent playing checkers. What bothers me is that when I am having the cockles of my heart warmed by the irresistible prose in ''Big Russ and Me,'' I would desperately like to know whether Russert or Novak is doing the cockle-warming. Since Russert is a phenomenally busy man who probably did not have time to write a heartwarming paean to his lovable father all by himself, my suspicion is that Novak wrote most of the difficult sentences during the week and Russert wrote the easy ones on the weekend. Here's an example: ''Baseball. If there's a more beautiful word in the English language, I have yet to hear it.'' I hope for Russert's sake that he wrote that sentence. Otherwise, he overpaid. In calling attention to the literary obstetrics involved in the gestation of ''Big Russ and Me,'' let me confess to a personal bias. As a book reviewer, I find that the current ghostwriting imbroglio puts me in a hopelessly difficult situation. Consider the novel ''1945,'' written by Newt Gingrich, then the speaker of the House, and William R. Forstchen, now a professor of history at Montreat College. This predictably juvenile affair posits an imaginary past in which the Nazis have slaughtered the Russians, Britain has accepted a dictated armistice, and the embattled United States must figure out what to do next. Quite a predicament! Here is a typical passage: ''Donovan maintained a beatific silence. There would be some sore butts in Bureau-land, after Hoover recovered from his own personal humiliation.'' Here is another: ''The sense of the demonic was further enhanced by streamers of the new jellied gasoline smearing across the landscape in long arcs of white-hot annihilation.'' I do not think I am being overcritical by saying that such prose lacks the epic grandeur of a Tolstoy or a Norman Mailer. But what is particularly irksome for the reviewer is that he has no way of knowing who is to blame for these hideous passages. Newt Gingrich is still a powerful voice in the American political community and still young enough to run again for high public office. If William R. Forstchen is the one responsible for the lunkheaded plot and comic-book dialogue of this infantile novel or the more recent ''Gettysburg'' (''He thought of Elizabeth, sweet Elizabeth, wondering what she would say of him if he ever confessed his terror''), that is one thing. But if Gingrich himself is the one firing off these fusillades of malarkey, it could be a portent of some very unnerving stump speeches in years to come. Either way, I think the American people need to know. More to the point, many of us would have greater respect for Gingrich as an author and a public figure if he stepped forward and said: ''Yes, I did write that the sense of the demonic was further enhanced by streamers of the new jellied gasoline smearing across the landscape in long arcs of white-hot annihilation. But I promise not to do it again.'' Mundus ghostwritibus sometimes results in odd bedfellows. Back during the first Bush administration, unidentified ?minences grises arranged for the novelist Thomas Mallon to collaborate on Vice President Dan Quayle's autobiography. Mallon is a truly gifted writer known for his adept turn of phrase. Quayle is not. This unlikely collaboration put the vice president in the awkward situation of having his book written by a man whose literary talents far outstripped his own, while forcing Mallon to write in the voice of a man widely perceived to be a nincompoop. If Mallon wrote a book that was too lofty and cerebral, it would make Quayle seem like a cheater and a fake. But if he wrote a book that was indefatigably dopey, it would make it seem like he was merely cashing a big paycheck and phoning it in. Wisely, Mallon chose to adopt a fundamentally stenographic function, arranging Quayle's banalities in a lucid, plausible sequence that made the author seem neither terribly smart nor terribly dumb, which is almost certainly what he is. In this sense, Mallon probably achieved the ghostwriter's overarching objective: producing a book that sounds like something the author could conceivably have written if he'd only had the time. Say 400 years. Cynics may object that ghostwriters perform a valuable civic function by shielding the public from the authentically dimwitted voices of those they channel. To their way of thinking, no one would actually want to read a book written in Charles Barkley's own words; no one would want to read the unedited David Lee Roth; no one could possibly machete all the way through an unghosted Rush Limbaugh book. I disagree. Had Limbaugh written ''The Way Things Ought to Be'' start to finish, instead of collaborating with the sober John Fund, he might have been just feisty enough to print his unenlightened views on African-American football players years ago and laid all his race cards right on the table. Similarly, by writing his autobiography himself, the madcap Central European actor Klaus Kinski produced the most brutally honest book about the motion picture industry ever. Here is a typical passage: ''No outsider can imagine the stupidity, blustering, hysteria, authoritarianism and paralyzing boredom of shooting a flick for Billy Wilder.'' No ghostwriter would ever have written a passage like that, because ghostwriters are by nature timid, diplomatic, gun-shy. A ghostwriter would almost certainly have persuaded Kinski to leave out the part about puking in someone's face or seducing high school girls, and would probably have deleted the passage about Kinski's wanting to see the director Werner Herzog slowly strangled by an anaconda or bitten by a poisonous spider that would ''paralyze his lungs.'' It is by saddling celebrities with such sober professionals that agents, editors and book packagers come to stand between the public and some truly unforgettable reading experiences; I personally would welcome the unghosted autobiography of Keanu Reeves or Paris Hilton or the unghosted memoirs of Michael Jackson. And, without the mediating force of a ghostwriter, Geraldo Rivera's ''Exposing Myself'' might have been really disgusting, not merely nauseating. By strategically positioning a goodnatured hack between the celebrity and the public, the publishing industry is doing fans of the joyously cretinous a terrible disservice. Let us never forget: by their words ye shall know them. Not by their ghostwriters' words. One of the few ''authors'' who have succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls that increasingly ensnare ghostwritees is Donald Trump. In the past 18 years, Trump has put his name on a steady stream of classics, while using various collaborators. Yet throughout this long literary interlude he has managed to maintain tight quality control. For example, in the seminal ''Trump: The Art of the Deal,'' which appeared in 1987, the ghostwriter Tony Schwartz delivered the Trumpian goods in a clipped, staccato, tough-guy style, opening the book with the words: ''I don't do it for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it.'' Seventeen years later, Trump's new book, ''Trump: Think Like a Billionaire,'' written with Meredith McIver, kicks off: ''In a world of more than six billion people, there are only 587 billionaires. It's an exclusive club. Would you like to join us?'' It has been said that Thomas Mann began writing ''The Confessions of Felix Krull'' as a young man, put it aside for decades, then picked up the narrative exactly where he left off. Similar stylistic seamlessness typifies Trump's work. The intermediaries may come and go, but the Donaldian voice never wavers. This is a truly astonishing achievement. My only criticism is that Trump is at least partly responsible for one of the more extraneous innovations in modern letters: the ghostwriter's acknowledgments. Thus, at the end of ''Think Like a Billionaire,'' after Trump has thanked all the pertinent people, McIver thanks her family, her friends, her minions, the Trump Organization and even Tassos of Patmos. If we have reached the point in our history where ghostwriters find it necessary to thank Tassos of Patmos for his contribution to the making of ''Think Like a Billionaire,'' I shudder to think what is coming next. Whoever Tassos of Patmos is. Joe Queenan's most recent book is ''Queenan Country: A Reluctant Anglophile's Pilgrimage to the Mother Country.'' References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/books/review/29DOWDOT.html 2. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E0D81739F934A15755C0A9629C8B63 From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:03:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:03:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Dark Hero of the Information Age': The Original Computer Geek Message-ID: 'Dark Hero of the Information Age': The Original Computer Geek New York Times Book Review, 5.3.20 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/020THOMPS.html By CLIVE THOMPSON DARK HERO OF THE INFORMATION AGE In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics. By Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Illustrated. 423 pp. Basic Books. $27.50. TO be a truly famous scientist, you need to have a hit single. Einstein had E = mc2. Newton had the apple and gravity. Even the lesser rock-star scientists have one shining achievement for which they're known -- such as Niels Bohr's theory of the atom. But there's another kind of scientist who never breaks through, usually because while his discovery is revolutionary it's also maddeningly hard to summarize in a simple sentence or two. He never produces a catchy hit single. He's more like a back-room influencer: his work inspires dozens of other innovators who absorb the idea, produce more easily comprehensible innovations and become more famous than their mentor could have dreamed. Find an influencer, and you'll find a deeply bitter man. Norbert Wiener -- the inventor of ''cybernetics'' -- is precisely this type of scientist. Odds are that you are only dimly aware of cybernetics, if at all. (A friend asked me, ''Isn't that like Dianetics?'') ''Dark Hero of the Information Age,'' by the journalists Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, intends to correct this, but their book struggles with the circular tautologies of fame: it must continually plead the case of why the guy ought to have been better known. Cybernetics is the science of feedback -- how information can help self-regulate a system. That includes everything from biological mechanisms (like the human immune system) to artificial ones, like thermostats that regulate a building's temperature. Even in the early 20th century, when Wiener did his work, feedback mechanics weren't new; engineers had long been building steam engines that self-regulated their speed. But Wiener's genius was to label the mysterious ghost that powered feedback: information. It's hard to imagine now, in our modern digital world -- where ''cyber'' is a prefix for everything from sex to pets -- but ''information'' as a discrete concept did not widely exist before Wiener. (Early Bell engineers referred to the signal traveling over telephone wires as ''the commodity to be transported by a telephone system.'') By separating out information as a kind of Platonic solid unto itself, Wiener created the idea that scientists could measure information in a system and tweak it for optimal efficiency. The idea resonated in every field. The anthropologist Margaret Mead began studying cultural taboos as flows of self-regulating information inside a society. Wiener used his feedback theory to create an antiaircraft gun that tracked a plane in the air as if it were alive. And neurologists started using cybernetic theory to explain mental diseases as self-reinforcing patterns of behavior -- a brain that gets stuck in a bad biochemical rut. Wiener knew about those ruts himself, tortured as he was by lifelong manic depression. Though he produced his defining works in hypertalkative bursts of productivity, he would regularly plunge into moods of near-suicidal intensity. The authors suggest Wiener's swings were exacerbated by his oppressive upbringing: home-schooled by a scold of a father, Wiener started college at the age of 11 in 1906, earned his Harvard Ph.D. by 18 and, like most prodigies, remained a socially awkward geek forever after. Myopic nearly to the point of blindness, the rotund Wiener was famous for wandering the grounds of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a cigar, buttonholing anyone he met and pouring out his latest theories in a rapid-fire spray. (Some M.I.T. engineers even developed the ''Wiener Early Warning System'' to avoid him by ducking away.) For a while, Wiener seemed destined to be as celebrated as Einstein. Like Einstein, he issued dark social warnings about the misuse of science and technology, including his own. In his two most popular books -- ''Cybernetics'' and ''The Human Use of Human Beings'' -- Wiener warned that mass media were concentrated in too few hands, and were losing their power as a feedback device for society. Appalled by the atom bomb, he defiantly refused to accept any government money for research. (When he visited an M.I.T. professor who accepted military money, he'd hover on the doorstep, refusing to walk into what he called ''federal territory.'') Given that postwar research was increasingly paid for by the military, this is partly why Wiener got sidelined by history: he didn't participate in much of the seminal military-financed work on computation, where his ideas might have been useful. But the real problem, the authors argue, was personal. At the crest of his career, Wiener's life imploded, almost like a feedback system falling out of equilibrium with itself. And this is where the book really shines, because it offers a fascinating account of how a personal crisis can destroy a scientific revolution. The catastrophe emerged from Wiener's German-born wife, Margaret, and their almost gothically weird relationship. Though Wiener was Jewish, Margaret became an outspoken Nazi supporter during World War II. (She kept a copy of ''Mein Kampf'' on a dresser at home.) She was even more hostile to her daughters, and accused the elder of inspiring ''unnatural'' sexual feelings in her father. As Wiener's reputation grew and he crisscrossed the globe on lecture circuits, Margaret attempted to trigger his depressions with undercutting remarks. At the peak of Wiener's fame, she told an audacious lie that destroyed his relationship with his closest scientific collaborators. One of Wiener's daughters had interned for a spring with the colleagues; Margaret told Wiener that their daughter had had sex with several of them. Wiener chose to believe the falsehood. He immediately cut off all contact with his collaborators, never explained the accusation and never spoke to them again. And that, the authors contend, is the real reason cybernetics died. Wiener's colleagues were shattered, and without his participation, their explorations of his ideas quickly atrophied. One of Wiener's former prot?g?s, the young mathematical genius Walter Pitts, was so scarred that ultimately he drank himself to death. By the time of Wiener's death in 1964, there were few proselytizers left; Soviet scientists were interested, but this only served to give cybernetics a ''red'' tinge. Of course, one could also argue that the science simply failed in the court of ideas. Postwar scientists were obsessed with electronics; Wiener's feedback studies, which careered from neurophysics to heavy mechanics, seemed both antiquated and pointlessly ahead of their time. In his final years, Wiener could see his relevance waning, and worried that he was doomed to be remembered only in the footnotes of other people's papers. The authors seem to fret about this too, and they embark on an awkward process common in the biographies of lesser-known scientists: they continually attempt to reverse-engineer Wiener's importance by mentioning the famous thinkers you really have heard of -- Marshall McLuhan, Mead or James Watson and Francis Crick -- and painstakingly noting how they incorporated Wiener's ideas into their own work. It's a bit of a stretch at times. But you sympathize with their project, and their subject. Wiener was both brilliant and personally intriguing, an absent-minded professor straight out of central casting. As a character, he was larger than life; as a scientist, he was smaller than history. Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and also writes for Wired and Slate. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:04:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:04:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Home Sweet Studio Message-ID: Home Sweet Studio http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/arts/music/20pare.html March 20, 2005 By [1]JON PARELES THERE'S a tambourine in Adam Pierce's bedroom, two upright pianos and some Balinese gamelan instruments in his living room, a Celtic harp near his television set. Piled up next to the basement stairs are four drum kits in their cases. Take a left at the laundry room and there's the recording studio, a low-ceiling den where drums, a guitar and a vibraphone are set up and battered amplifiers and reverb units are stacked against a wall. The control room, where Mr. Pierce records nearly everything on an old 16-track reel-to-reel tape recorder - 13 of the tracks still work - is a few steps away. It smells a little dank, since bathroom pipes run behind the mixing board. Here, at the house he shares in Mount Vernon, N.Y., Mr. Pierce has recorded nearly all of the music on the five albums he has made as Mice Parade (an anagram of his name). "Try not to move that microphone," Mr. Pierce said, dodging a stand as he showed a visitor around the studio space. "It was getting a certain sound in that spot." Mr. Pierce is part of a quiet revolution in music-making: the move from professional studios to home recording. Making an album used to mean booking a fixed amount of very expensive time in a well-equipped but unfamiliar room; now, it can be a matter of rolling out of bed and pressing a button. Whether it's Mice Parade's indie-rock, Aesop Rock's underground hip-hop, the twilit ballads of Keren Ann, the mercurial California rock of the Eels or sweeping Top 40 contenders from Moby, more and more music is emerging not from acoustically perfect state-of-the-art studios, but from setups tucked into bedrooms and basements or simply programmed onto a laptop. The growth of home recording is a convergence of technology, thrift and shifting musical tastes that has been building for decades. In 1984 Bruce Springsteen released "Nebraska," with its songs recorded as demos on a four-track cassette recorder. It had a haunted sound that more professionally recorded versions of the same songs could not improve; he had tried. But "Nebraska" was an anomaly. Then along came hip-hop, and hit songs made with two turntables and a microphone, convincing musicians and listeners that lo-fi sound has its uses. And along came digital recording: first in elaborate studio machines and then, as processor speed increased, in home computers. Now a virtual recording console, effects and instrumental sounds are all tucked into software like Pro Tools, the nearly ubiquitous program that was introduced by Digidesign in 1991. It simulates a multitrack studio capable of recording, overdubbing, mixing, editing, even tuning up missed notes or placing a sound on the beat. In the 21st century, homemade recordings can be indistinguishable from studio products. "I avoided the computer generation for a very long time," said Aesop Rock, a rapper who produces most of his own tracks; he made his first albums with a turntable, a sampling keyboard and a few instruments. But after he invested some tour profits in a Pro Tools setup, he was hooked. "The ease of manipulating everything is amazing," he said. Studio costs vary widely, but can easily run hundreds of dollars an hour. A basic 32-track Pro Tools LE system, to interface with a computer, costs about $450. Studios still excel at recording ensembles and making them sound lifelike (or better). Songs with the grandeur of Phil Spector productions or 1960's Motown hits, which had a full studio band chiming away, are unlikely to come out of home studios. And musicians working alone, or mostly alone, can't count on a group's creative friction - or an engineer's involuntary smirk - to sharpen their ideas. But for music that can be built by overdubbing - like the intricate patterns of guitars and drums that Mr. Pierce spins as Mice Parade, or the sampled and looped riffs of hip-hop, or the layers of synthesizers within Moby's songs - a home studio is just the thing. As home studios gain, actual studios suffer. "They're dropping like flies," Mark Oliver Everett of Eels said mournfully. This year such well-known studios as the Hit Factory in New York, Cello Studios in Hollywood (formerly Western Recorders, where the Beach Boys made "Pet Sounds") and a renowned rock and soul crucible, Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Sheffield, Ala., have all closed. Under the same pressures as any commercial real estate, studio rooms that can hold orchestras or big bands in prime acoustics are disappearing. When Jazz at Lincoln Center built its headquarters in the Time Warner Center, it defied that trend, and ensured itself a place to record, by earmarking some of its precious midtown space for a rehearsal room that can accommodate a symphony and a jazz band, effectively building the first large New York City studio in years. It also wired its acoustically isolated theater and its club spaces for recording. Home studios can be shoehorned into tighter quarters. Years ago, Moby moved his bed into a closet and converted the bedroom of his downtown Manhattan loft into a neat, skylighted studio full of keyboards, patch cords and computer gear. Out of it have come million-selling albums like "Play." Aesop Rock's studio is an alcove littered with cigarette packs and running shoes, tucked between the living room and kitchen of his ground-floor apartment in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn. When a musician lives in the studio, family and neighbors have to adapt. "The neighbors prefer I don't do vocals at night," admitted Aesop Rock. "It gets a little iffy when I'm screaming." Songwriters have always recorded tales of their romances. Now, they might be doing it with their subject nearby. Mr. Everett records while his wife, upstairs, tries to ignore what he calls "the constant thumping and banging from the basement." Speaking by telephone from his home in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles, he deadpanned: "She's not even a fan of my music. If the song's not about her, she doesn't care. I've started telling her they're all about her so she'll like them." Home recording is subject to interruptions not generally found in professional quarters. During one Eels session for "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations" (Vagrant), which is due in April, Mr. Everett's dog, Bobby Jr., was sprayed by a skunk. "And I'm the one that has to give him a tomato-juice bath in the recording-studio bathroom," Mr. Everett said. Bobby Jr. actually appears on the album, howling what Mr. Everett called a solo vocal. Mr. Everett works with a recording engineer in his home studio because, he said, "It's too advanced for me - I don't know how to turn some of the stuff on now." But many other home recordists work entirely alone as performer, producer and engineer. "It's so nice not having to wait for other people to show up," Moby said by telephone from Amsterdam. "It's a very lonely process, and you miss the gregarious interaction you'd have with musicians. But the flip side of that is your equipment doesn't argue with you, so it's easier being a megalomanical home studio despot." Working in solitude can nurture more eccentric, more private songs. Keren Ann recorded the hushed ballads of her new album, "Nolita" (Metro Blue), in two private studios: her soundproofed apartment in Paris and one in the downtown Manhattan neighborhood that gave the album its title, often working in the predawn hours when the city was quietest. Guest musicians could drop by after the last set at a jazz club. "Going back and forth, I often arrive here jet-lagged, so I'm awake at 5 a.m.," Keren Ann said in an interview at her loft, where tom-toms sit on a kitchen shelf above pots and pans. "It happens that I have this idea on an instrument or an arrangement, and I'll wake up and turn everything on and record. It's also different when you can record your own vocals and nobody hears you. You can confess more. If I had not done 'Nolita' this way, it would have been less intimate, less naked." When it's easy to record at any time, musicians don't hold back. "Because I work a lot," Moby said, "I figure I've got four or five thousand unreleased songs. A lot of them are not very good. If you're trying out a new idea in front of your friends or your bandmates, if it's a terrible idea they're going to throw stuff at you. I have a lot of terrible ideas. But working at home, you can be as embarrassing as you want, and you'll be the only person who will ever hear it. And sometimes the really dumb idea that you had could be a good piece of music." Home recordists still venture out when they need improved equipment and acoustics: a $10,000 vocal microphone, a specialized guitar setup. It's a relief, they say, to have someone else responsible for the technical details. They also take their songs to full-fledged studios for final mixes to try out the music on speakers and systems that are too big for a basement. While working in a rented studio can mean pressure, working at home can mean procrastination and endless second-guessing, and some home recordists appreciate the sense of urgency that the clock brings. "When I record in a studio," said Aesop Rock, "I know that on Tuesday at 3 o'clock I've got to go be creative." Mr. Pierce said: "At home I don't know what I'm going to record before I'm about to record it, or how the pieces of the song will be put together. But in a studio, the way a transition is going to be made has to be decided in the next 30 minutes." Although computers can mimic the reverberations of anything from a cubicle to a stadium, there's still no substitute for physical space. Mr. Everett compared his basement studio to a vintage keyboard warehouse. "It's so annoyingly small that it's gotten to the point now where I can't even buy another guitar. Every time I want to play an instrument I have to move another five instruments to get to it." So when he needed a string section for an Eels song, he went to a professional studio. "I could fit 32 people in the basement," he said, "but I'd have to stack them all on top of each other, and it's hard to play the violin like that." Moby's new album, "Hotel" (V2), simulates concert halls and pulsating clubs, although nearly all of it came from a space he describes as claustrophobic. "I'm a small person, and the studio is built to scale," he said. "Occasionally I'll invite friends over, but it's a place that I spend so much time in by myself that when anyone's over I feel like the moment they leave, homeostasis has returned." For musicians who record at home, the studio becomes a sanctuary: part sandbox, part confessional. "One of the greatest luxuries is having a permanent small studio space that's always waiting for me," Moby said. "It's secure when I leave, and it sits there waiting patiently for me when I get home. It's the perfect companion." And there's a certain symmetry in the fact that the music that emerges from home recording is increasingly heard by one person at a time, between the headphones of portable music players like the iPod. The sounds musicians have made alone at home end up in an equally private sphere. "It's not about being lonely," Keren Ann said about recording at home. "It's about being apart." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JON%20PARELES&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JON%20PARELES&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:05:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:05:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In Land of Lexicons, Having the Last Word Message-ID: In Land of Lexicons, Having the Last Word http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/arts/19dict.html March 19, 2005 By STRAWBERRY SAROYAN CHICAGO - Erin McKean answered the door to her brick apartment building in the Lincoln Square neighborhood here wearing a casual outfit accented by bright, pink-framed glasses and a pair of beat-up black-and-white Converse sneakers. She led a visitor down the wending stairs to her basement office, where she proceeded to sit down - or rather bounce - on a black exercise ball. "Drink?" she asked. She brought the beverage in a neon-blue glass. Might Ms. McKean be an escapee from a local version of Cirque du Soleil? A young woman in the throes of suspended adolescence? Hardly. She is one of the youngest editors in chief of one of the "Big Five" American dictionaries: At 33, she is in charge of the Oxford American Dictionary. (The others are American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, Webster's New World and Encarta.) She was appointed last year, and the first Oxford dictionary created under her auspices will hit stores next month. And she is not alone. Ms. McKean is part of the next wave of top lexicographers who have already or may soon take over guardianship of the nation's language, and who disprove Samuel Johnson's definition of a lexicographer as "a harmless drudge." They include Steve Kleinedler, 38, who is second in command at American Heritage and has a phonetic vowel chart tattooed across his back; Grant Barrett, 34, project editor of The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, whom Ms. McKean describes as looking as if he'd just as soon fix a car as edit a dictionary; and Peter Sokolowski, 35, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster and a professional trumpet player. Jesse Sheidlower, 36, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, is best known among the group so far, partly because he is also editor of "The F-Word," a history of that vulgar term's use in English. He is known for his bespoke English suits, too. Such personalities are not entirely new in this small but competitive field, which comprises about 200 full-time English-language lexicographers - 400, if academic and scholarly dictionaries are included. Noah Webster cut quite a swath through East Coast society and attracted more than his share of controversy when he invented American spellings of English words like "glamour." (He left out the "u.") But some say today's rise of young, hip lexicographers reflects changes in the culture at large. The computer revolution has given her tech-savvy generation an edge in many arenas, Ms. McKean said, but particularly in a highly digitized profession like lexicography. She added that she regarded people who weren't online as she would "people who didn't have electricity or running water." Sidney I. Landau, a former editor of Cambridge Dictionaries and the author of "Dictionaries: The Art And Craft of Lexicography" (and at 71, a member of an older generation), said a shift in people's interests had also played a part. "In the early part of the 20th century, science and technology were very big in terms of marketing dictionaries, and they'd make claims about having 8,000 words dealing with electricity or mechanics," he explained. But now, he added, "I think there has been a shift in terms of recognizing the importance of youth culture and slang." In other words, people like Mr. Barrett, who marvels at a term like "ghetto pass," which refers to street credibility for nonblacks, are in demand. He can trace its mainstream usage back to the hip-hop artist Ice Cube in 1991. John Morse, the publisher and president of Merriam-Webster, said many young lexicographers had a natural social aptitude that helped them rise in the field. "I think if you go back 20 or 30 years, dictionary editors kind of sat in their office, did what they were supposed to do," he said. "But what we realized - at least what I realized about 10 years ago - is that we needed to put a public face on dictionaries. Editors needed to be engaging with the public. And I think that activity is something younger editors stepped up to." Ms. McKean often appears on public radio talking about words, and she has been dubbed "America's lexicographical sweetheart" by National Public Radio's program "Talk of the Nation." Despite such generational changes, Ms. McKean said the tasks of dictionary editors were basically the same today as they had been throughout history. "Lexicographers are language reporters," she said, and estimated that the "news" entering dictionaries - that is, new words and new meanings of existing words - can number as few as 100 a year or as many as 2,500 if a revision covers five years. To find new words, Ms. McKean said she subscribed to 60 magazines, including The Oldie, a British publication for the elderly; The New Scientist; and Entertainment Weekly. She also watches television shows like "The OC," which she said was known for being linguistically playful. She also relies on her staff, freelancers, a group of four or five people she calls the "friends of the dictionary" and even small talk at cocktail parties. Mr. Sheidlower said the O.E.D. (which shares its databases with the O.A.D.) had a more comprehensive approach. It has several "reading programs," composed of dozens of people, chiefly volunteers, who scout out changes in the language, and hundreds of paid consultants in specialized fields who report on changes in their areas. (Other dictionaries and lexicographers have their own approaches, but they generally echo those of Ms. McKean and Mr. Sheidlower's divisions.) To help decide if a word is ready to be entered into the lexicon, many lexicographers Google new terms. (So popular is this Internet search engine that its name has become a verb in general use - and will appear as such in the new O.A.D. next month.) They also look them up in their company's corpus, a database of citations of new words, and in outside databases like [1]www.americannationalcorpus.org. Each company has its own guidelines for the number and breadth of citations necessary to qualify words for dictionary inclusion, but Ms. McKean said gut feelings sometimes come into play. One big difference for this generation is the computerization of word databases. Before, Mr. Landau said, "Merriam-Webster had a collection of six million slips of paper on which were typed little quotations from language taken from texts, newspapers and magazines, so if a definer wanted to define 'absurd,' he or she could pull these slips of paper from file drawers and spread them out." The downside of the new ease with which citations can be found, Ms. McKean said, is that words sometimes enter the dictionary too quickly. "We occasionally take words out," she said. "We thought they were working, and they just ended up not." She cited the term "information superhighway," which was removed from the new edition of the O.A.D., explaining, "People aren't using it as much, and if they are, they're using it in a jokey way." This generation of lexicographers is also increasingly diverse, and Mr. Landau noted more powerful women in the field in particular. Chief among them is Ms. McKean. After giving a visitor a more complete tour of her office - which included bookshelves lined with titles, among them "The Joy of Lex," and previewing a circle skirt she was sewing of fabric printed with letters - she displayed a touch of anthropomorphism, saying, "I try not to play favorites with words because they get their feelings hurt." But like her peers, she is also well educated and serious about learning itself. And though there is no well-marked path to becoming a dictionary editor, Ms. McKean said she had wanted to be one since she was 8 and read an article about the legendary lexicographer Robert Burchfield, who oversaw the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Mr. Sheidlower said that Burchfield's level of excellence was what he and his peers aspired to, and that if they reached it, it would come from their love for language. "I wear suits," he said, "and Erin wears these funky glasses, but most of the time you are sitting in an office looking at a computer screen. So you have to really like it. Otherwise, you're going to go nuts." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:06:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:06:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of Cold War Message-ID: George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of Cold War http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/18/politics/18kennan.html March 18, 2005 [He died while on my annual Lenten break. Perhaps he has been wholly forgotten already.] By [1]TIM WEINER and BARBARA CROSSETTE George F. Kennan, the American diplomat who did more than any other envoy of his generation to shape United States policy during the cold war, died on Thursday night in Princeton, N.J. He was 101. Mr. Kennan was the man to whom the White House and the Pentagon turned when they sought to understand the Soviet Union after World War II. He conceived the cold-war policy of containment, the idea that the United States should stop the global spread of Communism by diplomacy, politics, and covert action - by any means short of war. As the State Department's first policy planning chief in the late 1940's, serving Secretary of State George C. Marshall, Mr. Kennan was an intellectual architect of the Marshall Plan, which sent billions of dollars of American aid to nations devastated by World War II. At the same time, he conceived a secret "political warfare" unit that aimed to roll back Communism, not merely contain it. His brainchild became the covert-operations directorate of the Central Intelligence Agency. Though Mr. Kennan left the foreign service more than half a century ago, he continued to be a leading thinker in international affairs until his death. Since the 1950's he had been associated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he was most recently a professor emeritus. By the end of his long, productive life, Mr. Kennan had become a phenomenon in international affairs, with seminars held and books written to debate and analyze his extraordinary influence on American policy during the cold war. He was the author of 17 books, two of them Pulitzer Prize-winners, and countless articles in leading journals. His writing, from classified cables to memoirs, was the force that made him "the nearest thing to a legend that this country's diplomatic service has ever produced," in the words of the historian Ronald Steel. "He'll be remembered as a diplomatist and a grand strategist," said John Lewis Gaddis, a leading historian of the cold war, who is preparing a biography of Mr. Kennan. "But he saw himself as a literary figure. He would have loved to have been a poet, a novelist." Morton H. Halperin, who was chief of policy planning during the Clinton administration, said Mr. Kennan "set a standard that all his successors have sought to follow." Mr. Halperin said Mr. Kennan understood the need to talk truth to power no matter how unpopular, and made clear his belief that containment was primarily a political and diplomatic policy rather than a military one. "His career since is clear proof that no matter how important the role of the policy planning director, a private citizen can have an even greater impact with the strength of his ideas." The force of Mr. Kennan's ideas brought him to power in Washington in the brief months after World War II ended and before the cold war began. In February 1946, as the second-ranking diplomat in the American Embassy in Moscow, he dispatched his famous "Long Telegram" to Washington, perhaps the best-known cable in American diplomatic history. It explained to policy makers baffled by Stalin that while Soviet power was "impervious to the logic of reason," it was "highly sensitive to the logic of force." Widely circulated in Washington, the Long Telegram made Mr. Kennan famous. It evolved into an even better-known work, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which Mr. Kennan published under the anonymous byline "X" in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the Western world is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigorous application of counterforce," he wrote. That force, Kennan believed, should take the form of diplomacy and covert action, not war. Mr. Kennan's best-known legacy was this postwar policy of containment, "a strategy that held up awfully well," said Mr. Gaddis. But Mr. Kennan was deeply dismayed when the policy was associated with the immense build-up in conventional arms and nuclear weapons that characterized the cold war from the 1950's onward. His views were always more complex than the interpretation others gave them, as he argued repeatedly in his writings. He came to deplore the growing belligerence toward Moscow that gripped Washington by the early 1950's, setting the stage for anti-Communist witch hunts that severely dented the American foreign service. At the height of the Korean War, he temporarily left the State Department for the Institute for Advanced Study. He returned to serve as ambassador to Moscow, arriving there in March 1952. But it was "a disastrous assignment," Mr. Gaddis said. Mr. Kennan was placed under heavy surveillance by Soviet intelligence, which cut him off from contact with Soviet citizens. Frustrated, Mr. Kennan publicly compared living in Stalin's Moscow to his experience as an internee in Nazi Germany. The Soviets declared him persona non grata. From One Dulles to the Other Mr. Kennan was then pushed out of the Foreign Service in 1953 by the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who took office under the newly elected President Eisenhower. Allen Dulles, the new director of central intelligence, then offered a post to the man his brother had rejected - knowing, as few others did, of Mr. Kennan's crucial role in the formation of the C.I.A. clandestine service. Mr. Kennan had argued for "the inauguration of political warfare" against the Soviet Union in a May 1948 memorandum that was classified top secret for almost 50 years. "The time is now fully ripe for the creation of a covert political warfare operations directorate within the government," he wrote. This seed quickly grew into the covert arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. It began as the Office of Policy Coordination, planning and conducting the agency's biggest and most ambitious schemes, and within four years grew into the agency's operations directorate, with thousands of clandestine officers overseas. A generation later, testifying before a 1975 Senate select committee, he called the political-warfare initiative "the greatest mistake I ever made." Mr. Kennan also played a formative role in the foundation of Radio Free Europe. Seeking ways to use the skills of ?migr?s from the Soviet Union's cold-war satellites, he asked a retired ambassador, Joseph C. Grew, to form an anticommunist group called the National Committee for a Free Europe. Backed by the C.I.A., the committee set up Radio Free Europe, which broadcast news and propaganda throughout Eastern Europe. Two prominent dissidents of their times, Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, praised R.F.E. as highly influential. Mr. Kennan supported the war in Korea, albeit with some uncertainty, but opposed United States involvement anywhere in Indochina long before American troops were sent to Vietnam. He did not include the region in his mental list of areas crucial to American security. In February 1997, Mr. Kennan wrote on The New York Times's Op-Ed page that the Clinton administration's decision to back an enlargement of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to bring it to the borders of Russia was a terrible mistake. He wrote that "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era." "Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking," he wrote. His views, shared by a broad range of policy experts, did not prevail. Mr. Kennan was the last of a generation of diplomatic aristocrats in an old world model - products of the "right" schools, universities and clubs, who took on the enormous challenges of building a new world order and trying to define America's place within it after the defeat of the Nazis and a militaristic Japanese empire. With history as a guide, these worldly-wise policy makers ultimately decided against punitive policies toward the losers, instead helping the defeated countries rebuild as democracies. But the diplomatic establishment had no precedent to fall back on as they wrestled with Soviet Communism and a Maoist revolution in China. Though Mr. Kennan is often grouped among the "Wise Men" who shaped Washington after World War II, he did not share their heritage. "He was not part of the elite East Coast establishment," Mr. Gaddis said. "He was never wealthy. He worked his way through college, and he lost all his money in the Depression. He always felt he was an outsider, never an insider." Mr. Kennan was often a gloomy, sensitive and intensely serious man. Perennially unable to tailor his crisp intellectual views to political necessity in Washington, and lacking the political and bureaucratic skills needed to survive there, Mr. Kennan appeared to those who knew him to be happy to find a long-term home in Princeton, where Albert Einstein and other leading thinkers also honed their ideas. Ever the Policy Maker From that perch in 1993, Mr. Kennan recommended, characteristically, that the United States needed an unelected, apolitical "council of state" drawn from the country's best brains to advise all branches of government in long-term policies. He proposed the council in a very personal book, "Around the Cragged Hill" (Norton 1993), which revealed his core social conservatism as he reviewed the evolution of America. He fretted that the population of the United States was growing too fast and that, environmentally, the country was "exhausting and depleting the very sources of its own abundance." He blamed cars and the suburban sprawl they created for the death of not only a magnificent railway network but also the "great urban centers of the 19th century, with all the glories of economic and cultural life that flowed from their very unity and compactness." But Mr. Kennan was most preoccupied with society's effects on making foreign policy, an increasingly shrunken intellectual field in an age when American diplomacy itself has been driven to penury by a dominant new breed of post-cold-war America-Firsters. He saw American policy by the end of the 20th century as unfocused, adrift and subject to too many (sometimes conflicting) domestic political pressures, with a host of players who have diminished the role of the secretary of state at a moment in history when the United States stood alone in its world power. "It is not too much to say that the American people have it in their power, given the requisite will and imagination, to set for the rest of the world a unique example of the way a modern, advanced society could be shaped in order to meet successfully the emerging tests of the modern and future age," he wrote in "Around the Cragged Hill." Among his other well-known works were "American Diplomacy 1900-1950"; "Russia Leaves the War," winner of the Pulitzer prize for history in 1957 and the Bancroft and Francis Parkman prizes and a National Book Award; and two volumes of memoirs, in 1967 and 1972, the first of which won another National Book Award and another Pulitzer. Mr. Kennan was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, by President George H.W. Bush in 1989. The Modest Beginnings George Frost Kennan was born in Milwaukee on Feb. 16, 1904, the son of Kossuth Kent Kennan, a lawyer who was a descendant of Scotch-Irish settlers of 18th-century America and who was named for the Hungarian patriot. His mother, the former Florence James, died two months after his birth. When he was 8, he was sent to Germany in the care of his stepmother - his father had remarried - to learn German in Kassel, because of the purity of the language there. It was the first of numerous languages he would eventually master: Russian, French, Polish, Czech, Portuguese and Norwegian. Educated at St. John's Northwestern Military Academy in Delafield, Wis., and at Princeton University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1925, he decided to try for the Foreign Service rather than return to Milwaukee. "It was the first and last sensible decision I was ever deliberately to make about my occupation," he said. Mr. Kennan served as a vice consul in Geneva and Hamburg in 1927 and was on the verge of resigning to go back to school when he learned that he could be trained as a linguist and get three years of graduate study without leaving the service. He went to Berlin University and chose to study Russian, partly in preparation for the opening of United States-Soviet relations, which occurred in 1933, and partly because another George Kennan, his grandfather's cousin, had devoted himself to studying Russia. While in Berlin, Mr. Kennan met Annelise Sorensen, a Norwegian, and they were married in 1931. They had four children. He is survived by his wife and their children - Grace Kennan Warnecke of New York, Joan Kennan of Washington, D.C., Wendy Kennan of Cornwall, England, and Christopher J. Kennan of Pine Plains, N.Y. - and by eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In the five and a half years between Mr. Kennan's decision to become a specialist on Soviet affairs and his first assignment to Moscow in 1933, he served in a number of posts on the periphery of the Soviet Union. He was third secretary in the embassy in Riga, Latvia, when he was assigned to accompany William C. Bullitt, the first United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. During his career, he was assigned to Moscow three more times - as second secretary in 1935 and 1936, as minister-counselor from 1944 to 1946, first under W. Averell Harriman, then under Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, and finally for a brief term as ambassador in 1952. When he was appointed to the embassy in Moscow in 1944 as minister-counselor, he described his return after a six-year absence as an unsettling experience because of the hostility and suspicion he found in the official circles of a wartime ally. "Never," he wrote, "except possibly during my later experience as ambassador to Moscow, did the insistence of the Soviet authorities on the isolation of the diplomatic corps weigh more heavily on me. We were sincerely moved by the sufferings of the Russian people as well as by the heroism and patience they were showing. We wished them nothing but well. It was doubly hard in these circumstances to find ourselves treated as though we were the bearers of some species of the plague." Mr. Kennan, convinced that it would be folly to hope for extensive Soviet cooperation in the postwar world, was frustrated by the development in Washington of what he saw as an increasingly na?ve policy based on notions of Soviet friendship. He wrote analytical essays, but these won little or no attention in the State Department. It was not until the United States Treasury, stung by Moscow's unwillingness to support the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, asked the State Department for an explanation of its behavior that Mr. Kennan was able to make his points in the "Long Telegram," which arrived in Washington on Feb. 22, 1946. It was so well-received that "my official loneliness came to an end," he wrote later. "My reputation was made. My voice now carried." Regrettably, in Mr. Kennan's view, the warnings that had fallen on deaf ears for so long found receptive ones partly for the wrong reasons, and he felt that the idea of a Soviet danger became as exaggerated as the belief in Soviet friendship had been. He held that the Soviet Union should be challenged only when it encroached on certain areas of specific American interest, but he did not accept the view that this could be accomplished only by military alliances or by turning Europe into an armed camp. He felt that Communism needed to be confronted politically when it appeared outside the Soviet sphere. Publicly, he was sharply critical of ?migr? propaganda calling for the overthrow of the Soviet system, believing that there was no guarantee that anything more democratic would replace it. In the 1960's and 70's, he concluded that the growing diversity in the Communist world was one of the most significant political developments of the century. But "he missed the ideological appeal of democratic culture in the rest of the world," Mr. Gaddis said, as the slow rot of Soviet Communism undermined the cold war's architectures. The 'X' Article on Containment Mr. Kennan had returned to Washington in 1946 as the first deputy for foreign affairs at the new National War College, where he prepared a paper on the nature of Soviet power for James V. Forrestal, then secretary of the Navy. In July 1947, that paper, drawn largely from his Moscow essays, became the "X" article. The article, advocating the containment of Soviet power, was not signed because Mr. Kennan had accepted a new State Department assignment. But the author's identity soon became known. Mr. Kennan was attacked by the influential columnist Walter Lippmann, who interpreted containment - as did many others - in a military sense. In his memoirs, Mr. Kennan said that some of the language he had used in advocating a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies "was at best ambiguous and lent itself to misinterpretation." He had failed to make it clear, he said, that what he was talking about was not the containment by military means or military threat, but the political containment of a political threat. As chairman of the planning staff at a time when planning still played a large role in policy-making, Mr. Kennan helped shift the United States to political and diplomatic containment. He contributed an overall rationale to a series of actions like Greek-Turkish aid, under what became known as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the creation of the Western military alliance. Taking an active interest in the occupation of Japan and Germany, he incurred considerable criticism by opposing the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, arguing that the United States should not sit in judgment with the Soviet Union, where millions had been killed by their own government. He also argued against basing American troops in Japan under long-range agreements, feeling this would antagonize the Soviet Union, which might feel its eastern flank threatened. In 1950, having left the planning staff to become a counselor to Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Mr. Kennan was at odds with the State Department over the American military role in Korea and other issues. He asked for a leave of absence and moved to Princeton at the invitation of his friend J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the American development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, to join the Institute for Advanced Studies. He and his family divided their time between a home in Princeton and a farm in New Berlin, Pa. Later they added a family home in Norway. After General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was dismissed by President Truman in 1951, Mr. Kennan was asked by the State Department to sound out Yakov A. Malik, the Soviet delegate to the United Nations, about a possible settlement of the Korean War. Secret meetings took place between the two men in June 1951- Russian was spoken - and formal talks leading to a cease-fire followed, a sequence that, in Mr. Kennan's view, underlined the value of secret diplomacy conducted by professionals. Mr. Kennan's entire career had seemed to be preparation for his 1952 appointment as ambassador to Moscow, but his tour ended after five months when he was declared persona non grata - on Stalin's whim, he thought - for a chance remark to a reporter in West Berlin who had asked him what life was like in the Soviet Union. He drew a comparison to his imprisonment earlier by the Nazis, adding, "Except that in Moscow we are at liberty to go out and walk the streets under guard." Left in limbo by the State Department on his return to Washington, and with policy disagreements growing between him and Secretary of State Dulles, who viewed containment as too passive, Mr. Kennan retired from the Foreign Service in 1953. This difficult period was made even more painful by McCarthyism. Many of Mr. Kennan's old colleagues and friends - among them Professor Oppenheimer, John Paton Davies, John Stewart Service and Charles W. Thayer - came under attack. He testified repeatedly in their defense and wrote and spoke against what he termed the malodorous tide of the times. During a pleasant academic year in 1957-58 as Eastman professor at Oxford, he was invited to deliver the BBC's annual Reith Lectures, radio talks to which all intellectual Britain is attuned. A Surprising Offer to the Soviets He attracted great attention by proposing that the time was right to begin negotiating with the Soviet Union for mutual troop withdrawals from Germany. It was an idea acceptable to only a small body of left-wing opinion, as was his further suggestion that the demilitarization be achieved through the guarantee of a neutral, unified Germany. His views came under immediate fire all over Western Europe and in North America. Called back into government service in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennan was named ambassador to Yugoslavia and became embroiled in arguments over the proper role of Congress in foreign affairs. He sought unsuccessfully to dissuade Mr. Kennedy from proclaiming Captive Nations Week in 1961 - as required by a Congressional resolution of 1959 - on the ground that the United States had no reason to make the resolution, which in effect called for the overthrow of all the governments of Eastern Europe, a part of public policy. The next year Congress voted to bar aid and trade concessions to the Yugoslavs, so Mr. Kennan felt he could no longer serve usefully in Belgrade. In 1966 Mr. Kennan, who had returned to Princeton in 1963, was called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Vietnam War, an American involvement he felt should not have been begun and should not be prolonged. In 1967 he took part in a Senate review of American foreign policy. For Mr. Kennan the Vietnam years were what he later characterized as instructive. His views on what he saw as almost entirely negative Congressional interference in foreign affairs altered as Congress moved to curtail the American role in Southeast Asia, an area where he believed the American interest was not at stake. In an interview at the time of his 72nd birthday, he said that he had been "instructed" by Vietnam, and that he now agreed that Congress should help in determining foreign policy. He added that given that reality, the United States would have to reduce its scope and limit its methods because Congressional control of foreign affairs deprives the Government of day-to-day direction of events "and means that as a nation we will have to pull back a bit - not become isolationist, but just rule out fancy diplomacy." Opposed though he was to United States involvement in Southeast Asia, he was critical of the student left in the 60's. In a speech at Swarthmore College in December 1967, he assailed the students' methods of protest and their failure to present a coherent program of reform. Later in life, Mr. Kennan turned his attention to support of Russian and Soviet studies in the United States, feeling that scholarship was one of America's most productive links with Moscow. "They are impressed by our work," he remarked in an interview. "It keeps Russian intellectuals from thinking we are all a nation of flagpole-sitters." In 1974 and 1975, while in Washington as a Woodrow Wilson scholar, he helped to establish the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in the Smithsonian complex. Recalling the ancestor who led him to study Russian, he said, "When my colleagues gave it a name, they had in mind both George Kennans." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIM%20WEINER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIM%20WEINER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:07:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:07:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Can a Virus Hitch a Ride in Your Car? Message-ID: Can a Virus Hitch a Ride in Your Car? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/automobiles/13AUTO.html By [1]TOM ZELLER Jr. and NORMAN MAYERSOHN A VIRUS can wreak havoc on computer files, hard drives and networks, but its malicious effects tend to be measured in wasted time, lost sales and the occasional unfinished novel that evaporates into the digital ozone. But what if viruses, worms or other forms of malware penetrated the computers that control ever more crucial functions in the car? Could you find yourself at the wheel of two tons of rolling steel that has malevolent code coursing through its electronic veins? That frightening prospect has had Internet message boards buzzing this year, amid rumors that a virus had infected Lexus cars and S.U.V.'s. The virus supposedly entered the cars over the Bluetooth wireless link that lets drivers use their cellphones to carry on hands-free conversations through the cars' microphones and speakers. The prospect is not so implausible. A handful of real if fairly benign cellphone viruses have already been observed, in antivirus industry parlance, "in the wild." Still, a virus in a cellphone might muck up an address book or, at worst, quietly dial Vanuatu during peak hours. But malicious code in cars, which rely on computers for functions as benign as seat adjustment and as crucial as antiskid systems that seize control of the brakes and throttle to prevent a crash, could do far more harm. The Lexus tale, based on murky reporting and a speculative statement by Kaspersky Labs, a Moscow antivirus company, seems to have been unfounded. "Lexus and its parent companies, Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan, have investigated this rumor," the carmaker said in a statement last month, "and have determined it to be without foundation." But the question lingers: Could a car be infected by a virus passed along from, say, your cellphone or hand-held computer? Or worse, by a hacker with a Bluetooth device within range of the car's antennas? The short answer is, not yet. "Right now this is a lot of hype rather than reality, the idea that cars could be turning against us," said Thilo Koslowski, a vice president and lead analyst for auto-based information and communication technologies at Gartner G2, a technology research firm. "We won't see John Carpenter's 'Christine' becoming a reality anytime soon." But Mr. Koslowski and others are quick to point out that the elements for mischief are slowly falling into place: First, vehicles are increasingly controlled by electronics - to the point that even the simple mechanical link between the gas pedal and engine throttle is giving way to "drive by wire" systems. Second, more data is being exchanged with outside sources, including cellphones and real-time traffic reports. Finally, the interlinking of car electronics opens up the possibility that automotive worms could burrow into a memory storage area in ways that engineers never imagined. Since the early 1990's, the various computers that manage a car's engine, transmission, brakes, air bags and entertainment systems have been increasingly linked in networks much like the ones that offices use to let workers share printers, scanners and backup storage drives. Benefits of interconnecting the electronic devices include less wiring - a luxury car can contain miles of copper cables - and reduced weight, an important factor in improving performance and fuel economy. Less obvious are the advantages of having the components communicate: an antiskid system, designed to help keep a car from spinning out of control, links sensors in the steering, brakes and throttle, and can effectively seize control from the driver. Other systems in which computers essentially take over, if only for a second, include emergency-brake assist, which provides maximum braking force when sensors detect the need for a panic stop, and "active steering," a feature now exclusive to BMW in which computers can compensate for a driver's recklessness. The latest versions of in-car information systems, known as telematics, include the ability to diagnose vehicle maladies. General Motors' OnStar can forward readings from sensors throughout the car for troubleshooting, a process called remote diagnostics. (All G.M. cars will include OnStar by the end of 2007.) The data, read from the engine-control computer, is transmitted over the OnStar cellphone link. Several automakers have discussed plans to use this conduit to update a vehicle's software or even perform electronic repairs, though no automaker is currently doing this regularly. Microsoft has entered this business, too, having recently signed a deal to provide software for a telematics and diagnostics system to be installed in all Fiats, starting this year. By design, the various controls are not isolated from other in-car processors, since they need to share information to operate effectively and avoid the need for redundant sensors, wiring and microprocessors. Also, automakers have begun to share in-car processing power and memory capacity over the network, said Paul Hansen, the publisher of an industry newsletter, The Hansen Report on Automotive Electronics. In a car with a stand-alone cellphone installation there would be no pathway for pernicious computer code to enter the vital electronic systems. But as automakers work to take advantage of linked processors, ready exchanges of data - and malware - become possible. Possible does not, however, mean easy. Unlike the anonymous and remote world of PC viruses delivered over the Internet, a ne'er-do-well would need, in most cases, a few moments alone with a car to impregnate it with malware - for now. Marko Wolf, a research associate at Ruhr-Universit?t in Bochum, Germany, and co-author of a recent study of security in automotive networks, said a rogue mechanic with under-the-hood access could make short work of planting malicious code. And as internal networking reaches the exposed extremities of a car - its side mirrors, say, or its lights - the number of potential access points increases. "Cars have extended their bus wires and controllers even into their electronic mirrors" and to receivers for global-positioning signals, Mr. Wolf said, conjuring a "Mission: Impossible" plot: "One can easily hack into the internal communication system just by breaking away that outside part and connecting the bare bus wires with a P.D.A. or laptop." (A bus is essentially a collection of wires linking one part of a computer - or a car - to another.) Looking ahead, a proliferation of remote access points - OnStar-type services, for instance, or short-range Bluetooth connections - will raise the odds that virus writers will eventually try to beam a bug across the ether. Just as such services let the car send data to the outside world, malware writers could try to use those wireless conduits to send destructive payloads into cars. Systems like OnStar, known for providing emergency assistance or concierge services (its operators will make restaurant reservations for you), in fact hold deep conversations with the car's networks. Besides the ability to provide engine diagnostics and unlock the doors by remote to rescue forgotten keys, an advanced level of OnStar - now on about a dozen G.M. models - will report detailed data about a collision to emergency medical personnel. Navigation systems, which have used only a time signal from satellites to determine a car's location, are adding traffic information. The Acura RL is the first with this service; updates about congestion or construction delays are sent to the car and displayed on the navigation screen. Despite these potential pathways, creating a virus that would spread within the car would be no small feat. In the Windows-dominated PC universe, "the programmer only has to know the PC processor" to do damage, said Egil Juliussen of Telematics Research Group of Minnetonka, Minn., a firm that tracks the rise of in-car networking. "The auto is a very different environment," he said. "The infotainment system may have multiple processors and operating systems. The navigation system has one processor or operating system, the telematics system may have another one and the radio may have a third one." Getting a virus to propagate from one system to another would be akin to designing malware that could pass from a Windows environment to a Macintosh system and on to a Linux machine - infecting them all. "The point is that the virus writer needs to expand his knowledge by a factor of 10 or more over the PC world," Mr. Juliussen said. Even then, he said, with operating systems - particularly those that control crucial mechanical systems - remaining varied and proprietary, a successful virus could function in only a small fraction of cars. "It's feasible," Mr. Juliussen said, "just a lot harder." Whether virus writers can overcome the hurdles remains an open question, but evidence from the PC world suggests that as on-board networking becomes more widespread and standardized, they will certainly try. Early speculation, like the Lexus rumors, may help focus attention on the potential problem before car malware has a chance to flourish. "I am very happy to see as many rumors of that sort as believable as possible as soon as possible," said Peter B. Ladkin, a professor of computer networks and distributed systems at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. "Because it means that more automakers will pay attention to what they're doing." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TOM%20ZELLER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TOM%20ZELLER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:14:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:14:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Everything's Coming Up Kansas Message-ID: Everything's Coming Up Kansas http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/13mcki.html By JESSE McKINLEY WICHITA, Kan. ABOUT 18 months ago, government, economic and marketing officials from around the state of Kansas gathered in a series of meetings to address what a top tourism official called the "volatile, emotionally charged subject" of the state's national image. Their findings were exceptionally bland. "The image of Kansas wasn't negative, it was blank," said Scott Allegrucci, the state's director of travel and tourism development, who had conducted some very polite focus groups. "The biggest response to Kansas was no response. A lot of Kansans expect people to say Oz, or cowboys, or just being flat, but what it really boiled down to is that as far as image, we don't have one." Well, that was then. For better or worse, Kansas has been claiming a much greater place in the national consciousness lately: through its association with conservative politics, documented in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book "What's the Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America," and through a bushel of headline-hogging news stories that came flying, twisterlike, out of the state over the last month. One was the case of the B.T.K. killer, a chilling serial-murder mystery that reached its movie-of-the-week denouement in late February with the arrest of a part-time dogcatcher and Wichita suburbanite named Dennis L. Rader, who the police say has confessed to murdering 10 people over nearly three decades. Just days before, however, the state attorney general, Phill Kline, made his own headlines when he announced that he would try to force abortion clinics throughout Kansas to turn over private medical records documenting any abortions performed on minors. Like the B.T.K. saga, news of Mr. Kline's efforts rocketed from local papers to cable news and front pages around the world. Then, while those two developments were still percolating, Steve Fossett landed a glider-like aircraft called the Global Flyer (sponsored by the attention-hungry billionaire Richard Branson) in Salina, Kan., and became the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe solo in a single nonstop flight. At the celebration afterward, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius tapped into the rising Kansas-as-the-center-of-the-universe spirit by saying that the world begins and ends in Kansas, a notion that probably alarmed geographers and biblical scholars alike. All of which has left some native Kansans with the feeling that, well, they aren't in Kansas any more. "This time of year, the biggest news would probably be that tornado season is coming and, oh God, did the civil defense sirens get updated?" said Ron Shively, a comic who performs as Mr. Biggs. "But right now, people are really excited. They're like, 'Ooh, we made the big time; we made the national news.' " Of course, not all news is good news, as even Mr. Allegrucci, the tourism chief, concedes. "It's tough to spin B.T.K.," he said, before trying anyway: "At least they got their man." (Or so they say; Mr. Rader has yet to be convicted of anything.) And while it has probably been good for circulation and ratings, the suddenly torrid news cycle here has left many local news people as beat as a cow patty after a rainstorm. "We keep getting calls from people around the country, saying 'What's going on out there?' " said Sherry Chisenhall, the editor of The Wichita Eagle, which broke the B.T.K. news a few days after Boeing announced a huge round of layoffs at the local plant. (Which somehow didn't make it past the CNN crawl.) So thinly stretched was The Eagle's staff, Ms. Chisenhall said, that when Mr. Fossett landed, the only person available to cover the event was the paper's food reporter. For all the excitement, Mr. Frank, who grew up in an affluent suburb of Kansas City, Kan., says that what has traditionally made Kansas exceptional is its amazing ability to be unexceptional. "There is something in the state that creates real geniuses of averageness," said Mr. Frank, citing impressive but plain leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and Bob Dole. "But it's also this weird kind of averageness," he added. "It's definitely the place where test-marketers go, but it's not a normal kind of averageness; it's almost an outraged 'averageness,' an exceptionally determined will to be 'average.' " It's a trait, Mr. Frank said, that winds up undermining any argument that Kansas is an accurate barometer of the country as a whole, because the stereotypical "average" that Kansans pursue is likely to be a good distance to the right of the national average. "It's a myth of the red staters," Mr. Frank said, adding that many Kansans have "a visceral dislike" of liberal politics. Some of that, mind you, might just be a reaction to the nasty little remarks that outsiders sometimes direct at the Sunflower State - even fictional ones like the James Bond movie villain Blofeld, who, learning that his orbiting death ray was currently over Kansas, said, "Well, if we blow up Kansas, the world may not hear of it for years." One coming Hollywood biography may not help. "Capote" is set in the time of the state's most infamous murder case, the slaughter of a family in Holcomb in 1959, which was the subject of Truman Capote's classic study, "In Cold Blood." It won't be the last Kansas murder movie. Film treatments for the B.T.K. case, with its elaborate cat-and-mouse game between the police and the killer, are surely making the Hollywood rounds already. And Mr. Rader's trial, with all its televised trimmings, is scheduled to begin later this year. Until then, though, many Kansans say they'll be quite content to stay out of the public eye for a while, thank you very much. "Between the killer and the abortion case, it's like we're Sin City down here," said Jane Luellen, a former history teacher and lifelong Wichitan. "But it's just because it's all coming to light at the same time. Everything that happens here happens everywhere else." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:15:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:15:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Battle Splits Conservative Magazine Message-ID: Battle Splits Conservative Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/weekinreview/13kirk.html March 13, 2005 By [1]DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK FOR the decade since its founding by the neoconservative thinker Irving Kristol, The National Interest has been a central forum for the most influential conservative foreign policy thinkers of all stripes to hash out their differences. It launched ideas that entered the public policy vernacular, like "the end of history," "the West and the rest," and "geo-economics," and for the last six months it has played host to a closely watched intramural conservative debate over the wisdom of the war in Iraq. Now, however, a philosophical disagreement within its editorial board has put its future in turmoil. On Friday, 10 well-known board members, including the conservatives Midge Decter, Samuel P. Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, announced their resignations, saying they disagreed with the narrowly realist foreign policy of its new owner, the Nixon Center. At issue is the perspective laid out in the most recent issue by Robert F. Ellsworth, vice chairman of the Nixon Center, a "realist" foreign policy research group that acquired sole control of the journal last year, and Dimitri K. Simes, president of the center and co-publisher of the journal. In an editorial headlined "Realism's Shining Morality," they wrote: "Overzealousness in the cause of democracy (along with a corresponding underestimation of the costs and dangers) has led to a dangerous overstretch in Iraq," arguing that United States interests may sometimes require cooperation with undemocratic regimes. The mass resignation is the latest round in a fierce debate on the right over the invasion. It is also the latest high-profile fight picked by Mr. Fukuyama, a prominent neoconservative and the author of "The End of History." Last fall, he helped set off that debate with an essay in The National Interest calling his fellow neoconservatives "strangely disconnected from reality" for their continued celebration of the Iraq occupation as a success. Foreign policy realists, who question the necessity of the war, cheered his apparent defection. In leading the defections from The National Interest, however, Mr. Fukuyama is aiming in the other direction: he is accusing its publishers of squeezing out liberal or neoconservative arguments about the universal appeal of democracy and the importance of spreading democracy to America's self-interest. "What we liked about the old National Interest was the variety of viewpoints that it published," Mr. Fukuyama wrote in a letter signed by all 10 departing board members. "We do not have confidence that this kind of editorial policy can long be retained by a magazine with a mandate to represent the interests of the Nixon Center." Upon receiving the letter, the publishers of the journal sent their own letter dissolving the advisory board, which had two remaining members, the neoconservative columnists Charles Krauthammer and Daniel Pipes. "I think this group, frankly, belongs to the past, and we wanted to have some changes," said Mr. Simes, adding that there was no plan to narrow the range of contributors. Mr. Simes accused Mr. Fukuyama of self-aggrandizement, saying he had previously offered to bring new financing to the journal if he could take control. "To me, it looks like a failed takeover," Mr. Simes said. In an interview, Mr. Fukuyama said that, to carry on the debate about the war in Iraq and American foreign policy, he now planned to start another journal, The American Interest, with three others from the National Interest board: Zbigniew Brzezinski, a liberal and President Carter's former national security adviser; Eliot A. Cohen, a military scholar and neoconservative, and Josef Joffe, a leading German editor. "In the wake of Iraq, I think there is going to be this fight over what a certain conservative foreign policy is, and I personally don't want to see the realists walking about with a lot of moral authority at this point," Mr. Fukuyama said. But he said the new journal would not hew to any ideological line; instead, it will try to look at American actions in a global context. "It's about America in the world, how it ought to behave and what the consequences of its actions are," he said. "Everyone in the world is preoccupied with the United States, and they feel they don't understand it, and we want to help them with that." He said the new journal, which will initially be financed by a Boston venture capitalist, will also publish perspectives on American policies from foreigners who may feel the effects of American actions. William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and son of Irving Kristol, said he welcomed the planned journal. "My father said many times, the more journals, the better," he said. "Soon there are going to be more neoconservative magazines than there are neoconservatives." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:25:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:25:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Can Papers End the Free Ride Online? Message-ID: Business > Media & Advertising > Can Papers End the Free Ride Online? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/business/media/14paper.html March 14, 2005 By [1]KATHARINE Q. SEELYE Consumers are willing to spend millions of dollars on the Web when it comes to music services like [2]iTunes and gaming sites like Xbox Live. But when it comes to online news, they are happy to read it but loath to pay for it. Newspaper Web sites have been so popular that at some newspapers, including The [3]New York Times, the number of people who read the paper online now surpasses the number who buy the print edition. This migration of readers is beginning to transform the newspaper industry. Advertising revenue from online sites is booming and, while it accounts for only 2 percent or 3 percent of most newspapers' overall revenues, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. And newspaper executives are watching anxiously as the number of online readers grows while the number of print readers declines. "For some publishers, it really sticks in the craw that they are giving away their content for free," said Colby Atwood, vice president of Borrell Associates Inc., a media research firm. The giveaway means less support for expensive news-gathering operations and the potential erosion of advertising revenue from the print side, which is much more profitable. "Newspapers are cannibalizing themselves," said Frederick W. Searby, an advertising and publishing analyst at J. P. Morgan. As a result, nearly a decade after newspapers began building and showcasing their Web sites, one of the most vexing questions in newspaper economics endures: should publishers charge for Web news, knowing that they may drive readers away and into the arms of the competition? Of the nation's 1,456 daily newspapers, only one national paper, The Wall Street Journal, which is published by Dow Jones & Company, and about 40 small dailies charge readers to use their Web sites. Other papers charge for either online access to portions of their content or offer online subscribers additional features. The New York Times on the Web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans. In January, The Times's Web site had 1.4 million unique daily visitors. Its daily print circulation averaged 1,124,000 in 2004, down from its peak daily circulation of 1,176,000 in 1993. Executives at The Times have suggested that the paper, which already charges for its crossword puzzle, news alerts and archives online, may start charging for other portions of its content, but would not follow the Journal model, which charges online readers $79 a year for everything. (The Journal charges $39 a year to online readers who also subscribe to the printed newspaper.) "A big part of the motivation for newspapers to charge for their online content is not the revenue it will generate, but the revenue it will save, by slowing the erosion of their print subscriptions," Mr. Atwood said. "We're in the midst of a long and painful transition." Most big papers are watching and waiting as they study the patterns of online readers. Analysts said that the growth in readers was slowing but that readers appeared to be spending more time on the Web sites. "We're always looking at the issue," said Caroline Little, publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online media subsidiary of The [4]Washington Post Company. She said that the online registration process that most papers now require for use of their Web sites, while free, lays the groundwork for charging if papers decide to go that route. "You're getting information from your users and you can target ads to your users, which is more efficient for advertisers," she said. "This has been a dipping of the toe in the water." The Post has no plans to charge now because it would mean too big of a drop-off in readers. "It's just not a strong financial proposition at this point," she said. Executives at other newspaper groups, including the [5]Gannett Company, which publishes USA Today, said they had no plans to start charging either. A report last week from the Online Publishers Association underscored the challenges facing newspapers in selling news. Internet users spent $88 million for general news in 2004, or just 0.4 percent more than they paid in 2003, the report said; by comparison, they spent $414 million on entertainment, up 90 percent. Rob Runett, director of electronic media communications at the Newspaper Association of America, eyed the report ruefully. News, he said, may become an acronym for "Not Ever Willing to Spend." The [6]Tribune Company, which owns The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and other papers, has conducted limited experiments in charging for access, some more successful than others. The Los Angeles Times charges $4.95 a month for its Calendar Live section, which covers entertainment and provides listings and restaurant reviews, but traffic to the site has declined and a spokeswoman said the paper was reviewing the decision to charge for it. The Chicago Tribune offers a "subscriber advantage" program, which gives print subscribers free access to archives and bonuses online. "It's an interesting first step to see how people react in trying to differentiate between the two products," said Alison Scholly, general manager of Chicago Tribune Interactive. The difficulty comes in determining what readers will pay for on the Web. Most executives agree that national news can be found in so many places that it would be self-defeating to try to charge for it. But they are finding that readers will pay for sports, if the Web offers more than the printed page. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel provides in-depth coverage of the Green Bay Packers, along with blogs, fan photos and audio reports, in "Packer Insider" for $34.95 a year. But for the most part, publishers make money on Web sites by selling space to advertisers, and that is a booming business. Mr. Atwood at Borrell said a preliminary analysis of online revenues for about 700 daily newspaper Web sites showed an average increase of 45 percent from 2003 to 2004. But some newspapers want to develop a cadre of paying readers as a second stream of revenue beyond the advertising. Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said of relying on advertising as the sole revenue stream: "My main concern is that, however we distribute our work, we have to generate the money to pay for it. The advertising model looks appealing now, but do we want our future to depend on that single source of revenue? What happens if advertising goes flat? What happens when somebody develops software to filter out advertising - [7]TiVo for the Web?" At the same time, he said, charging for the Web site could alienate both current readers and potential new readers, particularly in growing markets like China and India, and The Times would be limiting its global reach. Perhaps the biggest obstacle for newspapers is that online readers have been conditioned to expect free news. "Most newspapers believe that if they charged for the Web, the number of users would decline to such an extent that their advertising revenues would decline more than they get from charging users," said Gary B. Pruitt, chairman and chief executive of the McClatchy Company, which publishes The Sacramento Bee, The Star Tribune in Minneapolis and other papers, which do not charge for their Web sites. The Wall Street Journal experiment suggests the contrary. About 700,000 people subscribe to its online edition, with 300,000 of them subscribing to the Web edition only and 400,000 subscribing to both the online and print editions. The print edition has 1.8 million subscribers. "If you have strong value, people will pay for it," said Todd H. Larsen, president of consumer electronic publishing for Dow Jones, which owns The Journal. "There is nothing so magical about the Internet that everything has to be free." The Journal's experience may not translate to other papers. It is primarily a financial paper, and analysts said that it is a business expense for many readers buying it. Moreover, charging online brings its own problems. By limiting readership to subscribers, papers also limit the amount of advertising space they can sell. Earlier this year, Dow Jones spent more than $519 million for MarketWatch, the financial news Web site, largely as a way to attract advertising that it was not getting online. When the paper first charged for its Web site in 1996, daily traffic fell by about two-thirds, said Rich Jaroslovsky, who was the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online at the time and is now a managing editor at Bloomberg News. "You have to take the hit some time if you do this," he said of charging for a Web site. "We took the pain because we felt over the longer term, we'd see the gain." Since 1997, The Journal's Web site has grown, although growth has slowed dramatically. Subscriptions jumped 35 percent from the third quarter of 1999 to the third quarter of 2000, for example, but grew by just 2 percent from 2003 to 2004, according to the company. This reflects an industrywide slowdown, said Merrill Brown, the founding editor of MSNBC.com and a media consultant. "There is no question that growth has slowed as the medium has matured," he said. "It's a pretty stagnant business for a variety of reasons," he added. "At a moment when big papers are so financially stressed and their prospects uncertain, they aren't investing at the level they need to grow their alternative distribution platforms." On a smaller scale, another newspaper that charges for its Web site is The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., which has a print circulation of around 100,000. About 20,000 of those print subscribers also get the paper online for no additional fee; just 545 people pay for the Web edition only, at $7 per month. Ken Sands, the online publisher, who until a month ago was the managing editor of the print edition, said the paper decided to charge for the Web in an effort to save the print edition. "We had the sense that a lot of people had canceled their print subscriptions because they could read the paper for free online," he said. He said that as soon as the paper started charging for the Web, in September, new daily traffic, which had been growing by more than 40 percent a year, stopped cold. He said that traffic was 5 percent lower this January than it was in January a year ago. He added that the print circulation had been steadily declining somewhat anyway, and so he could not blame the Web for that. "Print is going the way it's going, which is down, which is unfortunate because it's the revenue engine that keeps this whole thing going," he said. "The online business model won't ever be able to support the whole news infrastructure." Mr. Jaroslovsky, the former editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, said that some publishers were regretting not having charged for the Web back in the 1990's when it was developing, because doing so now will be a bigger shock to their readers. Also, he said, the stakes are higher. "When we did this, we were at the beginning of an investment curve and the amount of money at stake was not as great," he said. "Today, if you make a wrong decision, there's a chance it will be not only embarrassing, but very costly." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=KATHARINE%20Q.%20SEELYE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=KATHARINE%20Q.%20SEELYE&inline=nyt-per 2. http://reviews.cnet.com/Apple_iTunes_46/4505-3513_7-20201986.html&inline=nyt-classifier 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=NYT 4. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=WPO 5. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=GCI 6. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=TRB 7. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=TIVO From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:27:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:27:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: An English Talmud for Daily Readers and Debaters Message-ID: An English Talmud for Daily Readers and Debaters New York Times Daily Book Review, 5.2.10 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/books/10talm.html By JOSEPH BERGER Every day, tens of thousands of yeshiva students sit hunched over dog-eared volumes of the Talmud, arguing the text in an ancient melody they punctuate with raised thumbs. But the about-to-be-completed 73-volume Schottenstein edition, the first full English version in half a century, is not intended for them, its editor, Rabbi Nosson Scherman, explained with Talmudic paradox. "They'll never study on their own if they use a crutch," he said, urging such students to wrestle with the Talmud's original mixture of Aramaic and Hebrew. "It's like any intellectual pursuit, like science. If you're not racking your brain to figure things out, you'll never become a scientist." There is a growing primary audience for the Schottenstein edition, however, one that the Brooklyn-based ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications believes justifies the $21-million investment in the project. Each day, more than 100,000 Jews worldwide use their early-morning, lunchtime or evening hours to study the same two sides of a page of Talmud, fulfilling the Jewish belief in study for its own sake, until all 38 books of the Talmud are completed. The process, known in Hebrew as "Daf Yomi" ("Page a Day"), lasts seven and a half years. And then it begins again. For 14 years, there has been a daily class on the 7:51 a.m. train from Far Rockaway to Penn Station, with 15 to 20 commuters - accountants, lawyers, diamond dealers - taking over a section of the rear car, their lessons interrupted only by the conductor's chant for tickets. The regulars are all men, though a woman sometimes sits nearby and follows along. Many who participate in the daily study have never delved into Talmud before; some others are rusty scholars. For both groups, as well as for yeshiva students pining for an aid, the Schottenstein, with its anthology of classic commentators like the 11th-century Rashi, allows them to penetrate the compilation of rabbinic debates, analyses and parables. The Schottenstein edition is not simply a word-for-word transcription, but also fills in the logical gaps in the clipped, telegram-like Talmudic language, with the insertions rendered in a lighter font. For adjoining "notes," 80 contributing scholars assembled commentaries from a variety of towering authorities. A ceremony to present a virtually complete Talmud set to the Library of Congress was scheduled for yesterday evening. "There's no question in my mind that the expansion of the Daf Yomi today is a great deal due to the Schottenstein," said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, the leader of the bumpy Long Island Rail Road class. Students of the Daf Yomi have repaid the favor; some of the 72 volumes published so far have already sold 90,000 copies. Each volume has a list price of $50, with an entire burgundy-covered set totaling $3,650. The Babylonian Talmud is the record of the rabbinic arguments in the great academies of Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) between roughly A.D. 200 and 500 on laws governing daily blessings, holidays, marriage contracts, kosher slaughter, business transactions, torts, marital relations and dozens of other aspects of observant life. (There is also a shorter Jerusalem Talmud, covering debates among rabbis in ancient Palestine, which ArtScroll is about to publish, too.) The Talmud, or oral law, includes the Mishnah, a six-part Hebrew compilation finished around A.D. 200, but in popular parlance Talmud usually refers to the 38 volumes of the Gemara, in which later rabbinic generations used the Mishnah's bare-bones argumentation as a springboard for more razor-sharp parsing of logic. The Gemara's volumes are known as tractates, with each page containing the text of the Babylonian debates in the center, surrounded by later commentaries. The tractate Bava Metzia (the Middle Gate), for example, opens with an examination of what happens if two people come before a court sparring over a cloak, with each claiming he found it first and saying, "It is all mine." The Gemara rabbis probe what the earlier Mishna rabbis meant by the term "finding." Is it simply seeing the disputed object first, or is physical possession necessary? Like judges analyzing Supreme Court decisions for precedents, they deduce from the Mishna's language that by adding the statement "It is all mine," the Mishna rabbis meant that merely seeing an object is not acquiring it. But since there were no witnesses to the cloak's discovery, how can you prove possession? The rabbis require an oath by each litigant that he owns at least half. Since it is possible that the two litigants picked the cloak up simultaneously, the rabbis do not want to put either one in the position of swearing a false oath. So labyrinthine is the discussion that Rabbi Scherman - when he is not wryly comparing it to Bill Clinton's parsing of the meaning of "is" - likes to compare the Talmud's text to the 14th Amendment, in which two words like "due process" have resulted in hundreds of volumes of interpretation. Some Jews spend their mature lives grappling with Talmud, rendering it virtually the sole subject of their adult learning. They do so not just to hone their intellects but also in the belief that such study, even if the topics themselves are archaic, will teach them principles that can sustain their character and values. The last complete English translation was published between 1935 and 1952 by Soncino Press, a 75-year-old British firm now located in Brooklyn. But the 30-volume Soncino is mostly a translation with footnotes, not a line-by-line commentary that can sustain self-study. The Israeli scholar Adin Steinsaltz is perhaps five years away from completing a 47-volume Hebrew edition aimed largely at secular Israelis. Random House has translated a portion of that in 21 English volumes, but has no plans to publish more. Rabbi Steinsaltz said in an interview that his work is designed to accommodate even beginners with "the lowest level of knowledge." It provides background like biographies of the various rabbinic commentators and explanations of Talmudic concepts. "My idea was that I'm trying to substitute a book for a living teacher," he said. ArtScroll, which primarily serves Orthodox Jews, was started in 1976 by Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, a printer of invitations and brochures, who has built the company into one of the nation's largest publishers of Jewish religious books. It began publishing the Talmud in 1990 with the volume Makkot (Corporal Punishment), a tractate in the middle of the Talmud sequence but among the shortest. "Once Makkot was accepted and people liked the idea, from that point on we decided to publish everything in sync with Daf Yomi," Rabbi Scherman said. (The cycle was started on the Jewish New Year in 1923 and has continued uninterrupted since. On March 1, tens of thousands are expected to pack Madison Square Garden and the Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands to celebrate the completion of the current cycle.) In the Schottenstein edition, the original text is often repeated on three and four pages so the far wordier English translation and commentary on the facing pages can catch up. That explains why the finished set has almost twice as many volumes as the Gemara itself. There are also occasional diagrams, like the anatomy of animals to illustrate kosher slaughtering. The guidelines that governed the translation and commentary were conceived by Rabbi Hersh Goldwurm, a Monsey, N.Y., scholar who died in 1993, three years after the project began. The last volume, Yevamot, about the Biblical custom of having a man marry his dead brother's childless widow, is in galley form and should be ready for the celebration of the conclusion of the Daf Yomi cycle. The publishing process has been costly - $250,000 a volume - and that explains a basic mystery of the undertaking: Why is it called "Schottenstein"? Rabbi Scherman said that ArtScroll realized that sales would never cover the costs, and enlisted donors. Jerome M. Schottenstein, an Orthodox Jew who had studied the Gemara at Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Manhattan in the 1940's and went on to found a department store empire based in Columbus, Ohio, financed a large share of the project; since his death, in 1992, his family has sustained the gift. While the Schottenstein and Steinsaltz Talmuds may be regarded as rivals, a Talmudist will appreciate the apparent contradiction in one additional event: Rabbi Steinsaltz will appear in April at the Yeshiva University Museum to give a memorial lecture honoring Jerome Schottenstein. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:29:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:29:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He's Stopped the Clock Message-ID: Sports > Other Sports > At 73, Marathoner Runs as if He's Stopped the Clock http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/12/sports/othersports/12runner.html ["Other Sports"? It's *the* sport for me!] February 12, 2005 By MARC BLOOM Ed Whitlock, a 73-year-old Canadian marathoner who may be the world's best athlete for his age, rotates his running shoes like the tires of a car. "I have 10 pairs that I alternate," he said. "That way they don't wear out." Neither does Whitlock, who lives in Milton, Ontario, a Toronto suburb. He trains up to three hours a day, about 23 miles, close to the marathon distance of 26 miles 385 yards, and more than 100 miles a week. Most Olympic marathoners do less. But Whitlock has been heralded like an Olympic champion since running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last September in 2 hours 54 minutes 49 seconds. He was 26th among 1,690 finishers and shattered his own world record for a runner 70 or older by more than four minutes. The previous year, in the same race, Whitlock ran 2:59:10, becoming the first person 70 or older to break three hours in a marathon. "Ed is pushing the limits, like Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile," said Bill Rodgers, 57, who won the Boston and the New York City marathons four times each. "I think he should slow down and have some respect for us youngsters." Although Whitlock shuns publicity, his renown has spread, and, for the first time, an effective match race between 70-plus runners is planned at a major marathon. On April 10 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Whitlock will race against Joop Ruter, a 71-year-old Dutchman who ran 3:02:49 last year at Rotterdam. Their achievements come against a backdrop of growing sports participation among older people. Among the United States' 400,000 marathon finishers in 2003, about 500 were 70 or older, compared with about 100 a decade ago, said Ryan Lamppa of the Road Running Information Center in Santa Barbara, Calif. For many of the active elderly, 70 may be the new 50. A recent study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the most comprehensive look at the healthy aging of the human heart, says that older people can achieve more health and fitness gains from exercise than previously thought. The study also sheds light on Whitlock's ability to run a pace of 6:40 a mile for 26.2 miles at 73. Dr. Benjamin D. Levine, a cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, found that a group of people with an average age of 70 who had started exercising in midlife - as Whitlock did at age 41 - and kept it up had "hearts indistinguishable from healthy 30-year-olds." Instead of the heart shrinking and stiffening with age, as it does in sedentary people, and impairing performance, Levine said, those trained 70-year-olds had larger, more elastic heart muscles. The findings were reported in the journal Circulation last September. Exercise, Levine said, would enable someone like Whitlock, who had trained for years, to pump more blood, to feed the working muscles with oxygen levels associated with younger athletes. A colleague of Levine's at Southwestern, Peter Snell, an exercise physiologist, said Whitlock's marathon pace required a level of oxygen consumption that is "what you'd expect for someone around 40 who's a very good runner." Whitlock does not consider himself unique, however. "People underestimate what old people can accomplish," he said in a telephone interview. "Old people are the worst in that respect. They let themselves be inhibited by age." Unlike most younger stars, Whitlock has no team, coach, training partners, massage therapist, nutritionist, sports psychologist, shoe contract or high-altitude training camp. He does no stretching exercises or weight training. He has no special diet. Whitlock, who is 5 feet 7 and 112 pounds, does all of his training in a cemetery. He covers a third-of-a-mile loop on a paved path. He does not count laps, stopping when, for example, his watch indicates three hours. He said he would not run on roads because drivers aim at him. Whitlock's 2:54:49 would have placed him 306th in the 2004 New York City Marathon, or among the top 1 percent of the 33,000 finishers. At New York, only 480 runners broke three hours, the gold standard of marathon excellence and a time few runners beyond middle age approach. Last year, the second-fastest 70-or-older marathoner in North America ran 3:24:28. Yet Whitlock may run faster. The Toronto marathon race director, Alan Brookes, said Whitlock crossed the finish line in his 2:54 effort "looking fresh as a daisy." A native of London, Whitlock was an excellent school and university runner but said he lacked coaching and motivation. He stopped running in 1952 when he moved to Canada to pursue an engineering career. While working all over Canada, and with a wife and two sons, he did not run for 20 years, resuming in 1972 after connecting with a running club. The long break may account for his current success, say experts who have observed injuries that can stem from lifelong running intensity. "The layoff probably saved Whitlock a lot of arthritic effects that impair performance," said David Costill of Ball State University, an exercise physiologist who has done an ongoing study that has tracked top runners for decades. "In the runners we've studied, some for 40 years, cardiac output and muscle mass decline. Those losses represent the aging process." Costill's subjects are premier athletes like Ken Sparks, 60, who had trained intensely since college and once held masters records, running a 2:33 marathon at age 53. But he has not competed in seven years. "I had surgery on both knees," said Sparks, an exercise physiologist at Cleveland State University. "The cartilage was worn out from constant running and had to be removed." Whitlock attributes his success to good genes. He ran his first two marathons in the 1970's with his son, then a teenager, and recorded his best time, 2:31:23, in 1979, when he still considered the marathon "a dalliance." Whitlock focused on shorter distances, winning five world masters track titles at 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters, from 1979 to 2001. By doing middle distances, Whitlock has nurtured his speed, which complements his long training runs. Last year, he ran 15 races at 5, 10 and 15 kilometers in the six months leading up to Toronto. This winter, using the same approach for Rotterdam, Whitlock has been doing indoor track races while logging more than 100 miles a week. He faces a formidable challenge against Ruter, who took up running at 51 and has run 11 marathons. "I've never run head to head against anyone in a marathon," said Whitlock, who has run about 30 of the events. Rotterdam, known for its fast course, has produced a number of world records. Race organizers hope the excitement will spur Whitlock or Ruter to another record, and they are offering prize money in the 70-plus category. Unlike Whitlock, Ruter has a team, runs on park trails and gets massages. In an e-mail interview through a translator, Ruter said that after his 3:02:49 last year, he celebrated by drinking and dancing at a pub. "I will run against Whitlock as though I am a youngster," Ruter said. "I will give him the race of his life." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:31:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:31:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: New Web Site for Academics Roils Education Journalism Message-ID: New Web Site for Academics Roils Education Journalism http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/business/media/14education.html February 14, 2005 [I sent several articles from Inside Higher Ed a few days ago, but I haven't visited it since about this time. It has a good signal/noise ratio.] By LIA MILLER Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman had covered higher education for years but on May 30, 2003, they found out that - in journalism - there's no such thing as tenure. On that day, both Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, the editor and managing editor of [1]The Chronicle of Higher Education, announced they were leaving the paper, where they had both worked for nearly 20 years. They did not explain why. But now they are back on the beat, competing through a start-up with their former employer. Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, along with Kathlene Collins, who worked at The Chronicle for 20 years, introduced last month an online publication, [2]insidehighered.com. In doing so, Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman, who are both editors, and Ms. Collins, who is the publisher, are trying to become the first significant competition in higher education publishing since the intellectual-if-gossipy Lingua Franca folded in 2001. The Chronicle of Higher Education has long been the giant in the field. Founded in 1966 by Corbin Gwaltney, a former editor at Johns Hopkins University who still owns the publication, it quickly established itself as a must-read for college administrators and faculty. The Chronicle now has a print circulation of just over 85,000 and its Web site gets more than 10 million page views per month. Along the way, The Chronicle also earned a reputation for being stodgy and resistant to change. Jeffrey Kittay, the founder of Lingua Franca, now an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, says that The Chronicle regards itself as the paper of record in higher education, and that makes it an easy target. "They fulfill a need," he said. "They aren't lazy; they've taken on a lot of responsibility. But they see themselves with certain constraints, that's why you get this love-hate relationship." When Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman saw their relationship with The Chronicle end in 2003, there was speculation among the remaining staff that they had been forced out over differences with Mr. Gwaltney. Both Mr. Jaschik and Mr. Lederman are circumspect when asked about their departure from The Chronicle. "We had come to the conclusion that we and The Chronicle's owner had different visions about what the publication and company should be," said Mr. Lederman. Mr. Gwaltney was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Phil Semas, the editor in chief of The Chronicle, would only say, "We reached a mutual agreement they should leave." Some of that different vision will be on display on insidehighered.com. The site features news and opinion pieces, plus links to many of the blogs about academia that thrive on the Web. "The impact of the blogs on higher education is huge," said Ms. Collins. And, in contrast to The Chronicle, which is a print publication that publishes its content online, insidehighered.com is an online-only publication. The three founders all cite the desire for their site to be as easily accessible and democratic as possible. [3]Insidehighered.com is free, with no registration required; access to most of The Chronicle's articles requires a password that can only be obtained with a print subscription, which costs $82.50 a year. "A big part of our model is to try and reach everyone in higher ed - it means that everyone can be part of the conversation," said Mr. Jaschik. "We want grad students, young professors, people at institutions without a lot of money, in addition to people at wealthier institutions and senior administrators." Scott McLemee, who worked at Lingua Franca and then at The Chronicle and has been hired to write a column for insidehighered.com, said he thought there was a big market in higher education that was not being served by The Chronicle. "The Chronicle was traditionally oriented towards the administration - there was a brief period where it tried to reach a larger constituency, and then it retrenched," said Mr. McLemee. "They have no particular interest in reaching anyone else." It is still too early to know how much of the market insidehighered.com can capture. According to an estimate in the September 2004 Advertising Age, The Chronicle grossed $33 million in advertising revenues and $7 million in circulation revenues in 2003, although its total number of advertising pages for the year, 3,169, was down 14 percent from 2002. Some of that ad revenue comes from recruitment advertising, and it is there that insidehighered.com and other well-established recruitment sites such as [4]higheredjobs.com could pose a challenge to The Chronicle. Within a couple of weeks, insidehighered.com plans to add a job search database, including some innovative features, like a searchable database of r?sum?s and recommendations for applicants, that Ms. Collins says will facilitate the labyrinthine academic hiring process. "We are part of the entire recruiting process, not just that first step of posting the job," said Ms. Collins. Mr. Semas of The Chronicle said that there was much on The Chronicle's site that was free, including the job search database and some of the chat forums. He also said that he was not alarmed by the new competition. "We think that we already do a good job of covering higher education both in print and online, and provide a very popular job service for people in higher education, and we've been doing it since 1966." From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 14 19:35:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 15:35:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Trying to Strengthen an 'I Do' With a More Binding Legal Tie Message-ID: Trying to Strengthen an 'I Do' With a More Binding Legal Tie http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/national/15marriage.html February 15, 2005 [I am not merely in favor of this but think only responsible parents should have children. I mean parents who can provide a good education, insure themselves against death and disability, and whose offspring will have the genetic wherewithal to lead productive lives. This should be a state and county issue. I parents were responsible, we would no longer need government education, and the efficiency of schooling would go way up. Irresponsible parents having children is by far the greatest negative externality (public bad) that exists.] By RICK LYMAN LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb. 14 - In front of more than 5,000 cheering constituents in a North Little Rock sports arena, Gov. Mike Huckabee took the former Janet McCain to be his lawfully wedded wife Monday night, just as he did nearly 31 years ago, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do them part. This time, although the actual vows were not repeated, the emphasis was clearly on the "until death" pledge. Upgrading their vows to that of a covenant marriage, a legally binding contract available only in Arkansas, Arizona and Louisiana, the Huckabees hope to jump-start a conservative movement that has shown little sign of moving in recent years. A covenant marriage commits a couple to counseling before any separation and limits divorce to a handful of grounds, like adultery or abuse. "I know that some people have thought this whole thing is cynical, that it's some sort of marriage-plus or high-octane marriage," Mr. Huckabee, a Republican and a former Baptist minister, said in an interview before the ceremony. "I think people enter into covenant marriage not because they want a super marriage, but because they understand that marriage is fragile." The Huckabees' ceremony was only the most prominent of a series of events organized over the Valentine's Day weekend by covenant marriage supporters who say they sense that the time is right to reinvigorate their stalled movement. No state has adopted a covenant marriage law since Arkansas in 2001, while two dozen have considered the idea and declined to embrace it. Even in the three states where it is legal, it is not mandatory and only small numbers of couples have opted for it, somewhere from 1 percent to 2 percent, according to studies. "Truth is, it's not been much of a movement," said Steven Mintz, co-chairman of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit organization of academics and clinicians who study family issues. But now, after President Bush won a victory that many attribute, in part, to his championing of traditional family values, proponents of covenant marriage sense an opportunity and say they can bring to the movement the same energy that opponents of same-sex-marriage brought to outlaw it in 11 states last year. "The numbers haven't been real high yet," said Len Munsil, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, a conservative religious group, and a strong supporter of covenant marriage. "It did stall a little bit. The debate over same-sex marriage has taken a lot of attention." Some proponents of covenant marriage say they see the two debates as related, that fighting same-sex marriage is part of a larger effort to strengthen traditional marriage. The event Monday night, held at the Alltel Arena, site of local basketball and hockey games and the occasional concert, was billed as Arkansas's first "Celebration of Marriage." Besides the governor's renewed nuptials there were speeches from national religious leaders and songs by the gospel and pop singer CeCe Winans. Pastors held aloft signs ("New Life Church") and friends waved to one another from across the cavernous room. Mr. and Mrs. Huckabee, who met as children in Hope, Ark., and had three children in their three decades of marriage, the only marriage for both, had undergone the pre-ceremony counseling mandated by covenant marriage. Running across the foot of the stage was a banner reading, "Passion transformation intimacy oneness covenant." At one point, as the governor was telling the crowd how easy it would be to convert their marriages to covenant ones, a whistle sounded and about two dozen protesters for gay rights rose in the back of the hall, unfurling a banner reading, "Queer equality now." Governor Huckabee ignored them, the crowd tried to cheer the governor to drown them out and the police arrived to escort them quickly from the hall. The ceremony itself was quick and bureaucratic. The governor and his wife took the stage along with the Pulaski County clerk, Pat O'Brien. There was no fresh recitation of the wedding vows, just three simple questions: Had they sought counseling before taking this step? Had they had the proper affidavit notarized? Did they have a copy of their marriage license and that affidavit? "Yes," the governor said. Mr. O'Brien reached into his jacket and said, "Well, I just happen to have a stamp here." He clicked the affidavit once, and that was it. The audience roared to its feet. Covenant marriage was born out of growing concern about the rise of single-parent families, especially among the poor, and unease among conservatives about no-fault divorce laws, which they say make it too easy to end a marriage. There is also some embarrassment among religious and political leaders in the Bible Belt that many of its states, including Arkansas, have some of the nation's highest divorce rates. "We really feel the no-fault culture has been destructive," said Dennis Rainey, president of Family Life, a Christian group based in Little Rock. "There's something wrong when it's easier to get out of a marriage than it is to get out of a contract to buy a used car." Governor Huckabee preferred, in an interview, to emphasize the financial impact of broken homes. "If you start adding up the various costs - the costs of child-support enforcement, additional costs in human services, how many kids will go onto food stamps - it all adds up," he said. "With that kind of money, we could pay for a lot of teachers' salaries." The drive for covenant marriage is part of a broader movement to promote marriage and stable families. Mr. Bush, for example, has included in his new budget more than $200 million for programs that "develop innovative approaches to promote healthy marriages," and to promote "family formation and healthy marriage activities." But a White House spokesman said the president had taken no position on covenant marriage, which he considers a state issue. While no one speaks out in favor of more divorces, there are social workers and experts on the family who wonder whether making divorce more difficult will end up hurting children of dysfunctional couples. "It's a kind of common-sense view among many in the field that continuing dysfunction, conflict-riven marriages is not good for children," Mr. Mintz of the Council on Contemporary Families said. The first covenant marriage law passed in Louisiana in 1997. It required county clerks to give a choice to those applying for a marriage license to select either a regular license or a covenant one. Under the covenant, the couples express their intention to remain married for life and agree to premarital counseling from a counselor or member of the clergy, and to seek further counseling before filing for divorce. Also, they are restricted to a handful of legal grounds for divorce; adultery, felony conviction, one year of abandonment, sexual or physical abuse and separation of at least two years. The law applies not only to those just getting married, but also to married couples who want to upgrade. A similar law was enacted in Arizona in 1998, although that one, after lengthy legislative debate, included a provision allowing for a quicker divorce if both partners agreed to it. The Arkansas version, passed in 2001, is similar to the Louisiana one, though it adds to the list of potential grounds for divorce such offenses as habitual drunkenness and "behavior that imposes intolerable indignities." Steven L. Nock, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia who has been studying covenant marriage for five years, has found that those people who go through it are about a third less likely to divorce. But his studies have also shown how few people, when given the choice, are choosing it. "People are definitely not flocking to covenant marriage," Mr. Nock said. Explanations vary. "We've had it here in Arizona for about six years, and it's turned out to be very little used," said Barbara Atwood, a professor of family law at the University of Arizona. "I think people are wary of entering into a relationship that might potentially have difficulties at the far, unknowable end in a way that will keep them in it longer." Proponents of covenant marriage see it differently. "We've had it for four years, but a lot of people are still unfamiliar with it," Governor Huckabee said. "Even some who might have been vaguely aware of it were unclear on the particulars." Mr. Nock's research backs this up. Only 40 percent of Louisiana residents had ever heard of covenant marriage, he found, the same percentage as residents of Utah, a state that has no covenant marriage law. So proponents of covenant marriage have recently shifted their tactics, focusing increasingly on individual pastors and congregations as well as on lawmakers. Proponents say one goal now is to recruit as many pastors as possible who will allow only covenant marriages in their churches. That was a reason so many ministers were invited to take part in Monday night's ceremony in North Little Rock, Mr. Rainey of Family Life said. At the same time, proponents have increasingly formed alliances with other family advocates to strengthen marriages in other ways. According to a 2004 study by the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonpartisan Washington group that studies family issues, 40 states have provided at least some money to provide couples with marriage-related services like premarital counseling, mostly on a pilot basis. Nine states offer welfare recipients a financial incentive to marry. Six are training county extension agents to offer family guidance and marriage-related services. Five will reduce the marriage license fee for those who get premarital counseling. In general, most of this activity has been in the South and the West. Governor Huckabee says that all of this is welcome, but that he still believes in a strong focus on covenant marriage. "Personally, I don't think of this as tied to any political agenda," he said. "I think it has much more to do with recognizing that we as a society are paying a huge human price because of broken families. With the votes on same-sex marriage last year, many states have said what they are against. This is an opportunity to speak out on that which we are for." From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 14 23:34:53 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:34:53 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The 25-Year Wait for Immortality Message-ID: <01C5410F.E2F63BB0.shovland@mindspring.com> As with the current knowledge about longevity, it's more about interest and effort than it is about money. Judging from the pictures I see in the society articles, the rich aren't doing any better than average in taking care of themselves. But having the money and being willing to spend it. Right now if you want to consult one of the few longevity doctors in the San Francisco area you need to cough up $300 per hour out of pocket. And it's not part of your HMO. If there is a clash between mortals and immortals, the immortals will tend to win because they will have more life experience to bring to bear on the conflict. Someone has estimated that if you live 700 years, you will almost certainly die of an accident. A very old person would know that sacrificing their life for an idea is something you can't do if you intend to live for a long time. Do you have any ideas or beliefs you'd be willing to die for? I don't. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Christian Rauh [SMTP:christian.rauh at uconn.edu] Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 8:48 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The 25-Year Wait for Immortality Will the rich be the ones to benefit from this technology? Will it be withheld from others? Patented? Would there be a clash between mortals vs. immortals? Should immortality be a universal right? Will immortals ever risk their lives for anything? Would life become too valuable to sacrifice for an idea? Christian Steve Hovland wrote: > Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality > By Ker Than > Special to LiveScience > posted: 11 April 2005 > 06:32 am ET > > > > "I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being > biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely." > -- Aubrey de Grey > > Time may indeed be on your side. If you can just last another quarter > century. > > By then, people will start lives that could last 1,000 years or more. Our > human genomes will be modified to include the genetic material of > microorganisms that live in the soil, enabling us to break down the junk > proteins that our cells amass over time and which they can't digest on > their own. People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they > did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get > bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation > therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for > near-immortality. > > This may sound like science fiction, but Aubrey de Grey thinks this could > be our reality in as little as 25 years. Other scientists caution that it > is far from clear whether and for how long science can stall the > inevitable. > > De Grey, a Cambridge University researcher, heads the Strategies for > Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) project, in which he has defined > seven causes of aging, all of which he thinks can be dealt with. > (Senescence is scientific jargon for aging.) > > De Grey also runs the Methuselah Mouse prize for breakthroughs in extended > aging in mice. The purse of the M Prize, as it is called, recently grew > beyond $1 million. > > LiveScience recently spoke with de Gray about his idea of living longer, > and perhaps forever. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > -------- > > > LiveScience: What is your definition of aging? > > > Life Expectancy in America Hits Record High > > Infusion of Young Blood Revives Old Muscles > > Roots of Graying Hair Discovered > > Ray Kurzweil Aims to Live Forever > > > > > Aubrey de Grey: The definition that I like is not very good if you want to > cover all species, but it's pretty good if you want to do something about > it. I define aging as the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism > that eventually kills us. > > Is your goal to just extend the human lifespan substantially or to enable > us to live forever? > > I don't see any inherent limit to how long it would be desirable to live. > If life is fun at the moment, because one is healthy and youthful, both > mentally and physically, then one is not likely to want to die in the next > year or two. And if a year or two down the road, life is still fun because > one is still youthful and so on, then the same will apply, and I can't see > a time when that would cease to be true. > > When did you first come up with idea for your SENS project? > > Well, I've always considered aging to be undesirable, but I didn't begin to > consider that I could make a contribution until about ten years ago. I > suppose the major breakthrough was when I came up with the scheme that I > now describe as SENS, and that happened about four years ago. > > 7 Deadly SENS > Nuclear Mutations/Epimutations > These are changes to the DNA, the molecule that contains our genetic > information, or to proteins which bind to the DNA. Certain mutations can > lead to cancer. > > Mitochondrial Mutations > Mitochondria are components in our cells that are important for energy > production. They contain their own genetic material, and mutations to their > DNA can affect a cell's ability to function properly. > > Intracellular Junk > Our cells are constantly breaking down proteins that are no longer useful > or which can be harmful. Those proteins which can't be digested simply > accumulate as junk inside our cells. > > Extracellular Junk > Harmful junk protein can also accumulate outside of our cells. The amyloid > plaque seen in the brains of Alzheimer's patients is one example. > > Cell Loss > Some of the cells in our bodies cannot be replaced, or can only be replaced > very slowly. > > Cell Senescence > This is a phenomenon where the cells are no longer able to divide. They may > also do other things that they're not supposed to, like secreting proteins > that could be harmful. > > Extracellular Crosslinks: > Cells are held together by special linking proteins. When too many > cross-links form between cells in a tissue, the tissue can lose its > elasticity and cause problems. > > > > > What happened was that I was gradually learning a lot of biology because my > wife is a biologist. I was originally trained as a computer scientist, and > I regarded aging as obviously undesirable but not my problem, that someone > else would be working on it. > > But the more biology I learned, the more I also learned about biologist and > about the attitudes toward working on the biology of aging that biologists > tended to have, and basically, I wasn't very impressed. I found that rather > few biologists were interested in the problem at all, and I thought, "Well, > that isn't very good,", so I thought I'd see what I could do. > > Your background is in computer science. How does that qualify you to > spearhead a project on aging? > > My background is enormously beneficial. There are really very important > differences between the type of creativity involved in being a basic > scientist and being an engineer. It means that I'm able to think in very > different ways and come up with approaches to things that are different > from the way a basic scientist might think. > > Could you give me an example of when your background has proven useful? > > Well, I suppose that the whole SENS project is one big example. What I've > done there is I've identified a set of things to fix, a set of aspects of > aging that we have some respectable chance to repair, and I've realized > that if we can do all of these things reasonably well, then we're done. > > Basically, we'll have made the age related problems that we suffer from > these days no longer an inevitable consequence of being alive. What I've > done is basically factored out all the complicated details of how > metabolism causes these things in the first place. It will be many decades > before we understand the way cells and organs work well enough to be able > to describe in detail the mechanism of how these problems actually occur. > > But my way of thinking is that we don't need to know the details of how > they happen. So long as we know what these things are that do happen, we > can figure out ways to fix them. This is counter to the ways that > scientists think, because scientists are interested in knowledge for its > own sake, whereas I'm interested in knowledge as a means to an end. > > Could you give me a timeline for how you envision your project succeeding? > > The first part of the project is to get really impressive results in mice. > The reason that's important is because mice are sufficiently furry and > people can identify with them. If we get really impressive results in mice, > then people will believe that it's possible to do it in humans, whereas if > you double the lifespan of a fruit fly, people aren't going to be terribly > interested. > > Now, what I want to do in mice is not only develop interventions which > extend their healthy lifespan by a substantial amount, but moreover, to do > so when the mouse is already in middle age. This is very important, because > if you do things to the mouse's genes before the mouse is even conceived, > then people who are alive can't really identify with that. > > I reckon it will be about 10 years before we can achieve the degree of life > extension with late onset interventions that will be necessary to prove to > society's satisfaction that this is feasible. It could be longer, but I > think that so long as the funding is there, then it should be about 10 > years. > > Step two will involve translating that technology to humans. And because > that's further in the future, it's much more speculative about how long > that's going to take. But I think we have a fifty-fifty chance of doing it > within about 15 years from the point where we get results with the mice. So > 25 years from now. > > What do you think about the idea that with so much life at stake, people > would be less willing to take risks? > > > The journal of the SENS institute. > > > > > I used to be more pessimistic about this than I am now. Five or six years > ago I wrote a book in which I predicted that driving would be outlawed > because it would be too dangerous to other people, but now I think that > what's actually going to happen is that we'll just throw money at the > problem. Rather than simply avoiding activities that are risky, we'll make > them less risky through technology. For example, it's perfectly possible > already to build cars that are much safer than those which most people > currently drive, and it's also possible to build cars that are safer for > pedestrians-with auto sensors and auto braking to stop from hitting a kid > running out in the road and things like that. > > It's just a matter of priorities. When there isn't that many years of life > to lose, the priority isn't there to spend the money. It's all a matter of > weighing out the probabilities. > > Once the technology is available, nearly everyone is going to want it. Of > course, there's going to be a minority of people who think it's better to > live more naturally in some way or other. We have parallels like that in > society today, like the Amish for example. > > Some would say that death is a part of life. What would be your response to > those people? > > Death will still be a part of life when we haven't got aging anymore. If > you mean that some people would say that aging is a part of life-well, > that's certainly true, but a couple hundred years ago tuberculosis was a > part of life, and we didn't have much hesitation in making that no longer a > part of life when we found out how. > > What do you say to critics who think that this money could be better spent > towards curing diseases like cancer? > > This is a very important point. Because we're going be in a situation where > we can extend lifespans indefinitely, this argument doesn't work. If it > were a case of simply having a prospect of extending our healthy lives by > 20 or 30 years, then one could legitimately argue that this would be money > more ethically spent on extending the lifespan of people who have a below > average lifespan. But when we're talking about extending lifespans > indefinitely, I don't think that really works. The other thing to bear in > mind, is that it's not an either or thing. The reasons why people in Africa > for example, have a low life expectancy is not just because of medical > care, but also because of political problems. > > What kind of life will the immortal or nearly-immortal lead? Will they have > to be on a special diet, or have constant organ transplants? > > Like any technology, when it first starts off, it will be a bit shaky, a > bit risky, it will be very laborious and expensive and so on, but there > will be enormous market pressures that will result in progressive > refinement and improvement to the technology so that it not only becomes > more effective, it becomes more convenient and so on. This will be an > example of that. > > In a very general sort of sense, one could probably think in terms of > having to go in for a refresh every 10 years or so. Exactly what would be > involved in that will change over the years. It might start off as lets say > a month in the hospital, and 10 years down the road, that will turn into a > day in the hospital. > > A good parallel is vaccines. For example, when we take a holiday in Africa > or Southeast Asia or whatever, we get a shot to make sure that we don't get > malaria. And that's all we have to do, and when we get there we can eat Mc > Donald's as much as one likes. > > > Aubrey de Grey > > > > > So you think it'll one day be as easy as getting a vaccine? > > Yes, that's right. A lot of these things, even in the early stages will > amount to vaccines and drugs. Though of course, there will also be a lot of > gene therapy and stem cell therapy and much more high tech stuff. > > Why did you establish both an institute and a prize? > > I think it's very important to have this two-prong approach. The idea here > is that we don't really know what's going to work, but we have a fair idea > of approaches that have a good probability of working. > > If you look at past technological achievements, some of them succeeded by > just throwing serious effort and serious resources at the problem, and > people were pretty sure of what they had to do to make the thing work. The > Manhattan Project is a fine example of that. Everyone basically knew how to > build the atomic bomb, it was just a question of working out the kinks. > > Then we've got things where there were loads of different possibilities > about how the thing might be done, and it was important to motivate people > and give incentives. For example, when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, > that won a prize. And when someone invented a chronometer that worked > properly at sea, that won a prize. Things like that. That was where you > wanted to give incentives for people to follow their hunches, because it > wasn't very clear which approach was going to work. > > I think that when we're talking about life extension, we're sort of halfway > between these two situations. We have a bunch of ideas which one can make a > good case that it's going to work, but we also want to hedge our bets, and > let people follow their hunches as well. > > Of your seven SENS targets, which do you consider to be the most important? > > It's not possible to say. I don't think we will be able to achieve more > than a relatively modest amount of life extension, if any, until we can get > at least five or so of these things working, and we might need to do all > seven before we get more than a decade of life extension. > > Why do you personally want to live forever? > > It's not really a matter of living forever, it's just a matter of not > wanting to die. One doesn't live forever all in one go, one lives forever > one year at a time. It's just a case of "Well, life seems to be fun, and I > don't see any prospect of it ceasing to be fun unless I get frail and > miserable and start declining." So if I can avoid declining, I'll stay with > it really. > > What would you do if you could live substantially longer? > > They say variety is the spice of life, so I don't think I would do the same > things every day. I'd like to be able to spend more time reading, and > listen to music, and all that sort of thing, things that I never get to do > at all at the moment. > > You think this project is going to succeed in your lifetime? > > I think it's got a respectable chance. I'm definitely not relying on it. My > main motivation comes from the thought of how many lives will be saved. > > Your strategy would involve not only preventing aging, but reversing it as > well. Does that mean people will get to choose what age they want to > remain? > > Absolutely. So the idea is that we wouldn't be eliminating aging from the > body. It'll be a case of going in periodically and having the accumulated > damage repaired. So exactly what biological age you actually have at any > point is really just a question of how often you go in for rejuvenations > and how thorough they are. > > So the more treatments you undergo, the younger you can be? > > That's right. I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate > between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely. > > > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 14 23:37:54 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:37:54 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Brain Molecule Guides Healthy Eating Message-ID: <01C54110.4EB27E90.shovland@mindspring.com> Beats me. The new diet regime is: healthy fats, ample protein, complex carbs. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 6:59 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Brain Molecule Guides Healthy Eating Brain Molecule Guides Healthy Eating http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-04-12-2 Ancient enzyme acts as an innate nutritionist to influence food choices Betterhumans Staff 4/12/2005 3:42 PM Burger and Fries Credit: Greg Nicholas Meal planner: An ancient enzyme in the brain appears to guide food choices in omnivores to promote a balanced diet If you're having trouble eating healthy, maybe you need to speak with your internal nutritionist. Mammals including humans appear to have such a nutritionist in the form of an ancient brain molecule that regulates food choices. The [8]enzyme and its molecular mechanism are likely to be important for all mammals that eat a varied diet comprising meat and vegetables, say researchers. Called [9]GCN2 kinase, the enzyme initiates events relaying information to the brain about foods' [10]amino acid content. This enables animals to adjust their food intake in favor of a more balanced meal. Researchers have previously identified the molecular mechanism in yeast and rats. [11]David Ron of the [12]New York University School of Medicine and colleagues have now found it in mice, suggesting that it's likely to be conserved in humans. "This ancient pathway in mice recognizes drops in blood amino acid levels that occur following consumption of food with an imbalanced composition," says Ron. "That recognition culminates in a behavioral response that limits consumption of the imbalanced food and favors, by default, a more balanced diet." Balanced diet While most of the 20 amino acids can be synthesized by the body, eight must be obtained from food. Omnivorous animals such as humans are known to consume less of a meal lacking essential amino acids than meals that are nutritionally complete. To determine the role of GCN2 kinase in such behavior, Ron and colleagues inactivated the enzyme in the brains of mice. The mice subsequently had no aversion to imbalanced meals. "There's no reason to believe that the same mechanism isn't at work in humans," says Ron. But cultural influences and an instinctive drive to consume calorie-dense foods, says Ron, might override the molecular nutritionist's ability to promote a balanced diet. The research is reported in the journal [13]Cell Metabolism ([14]read abstract). References 8. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/enzyme 9. http://www.google.ca/search?q=GCN2+kinase 10. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/amino_acid 11. http://www.med.nyu.edu/people/D.Ron.html 12. http://www.med.nyu.edu/ 13. http://www.cellmetabolism.org/ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 15 13:29:53 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 06:29:53 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The impact of its environment on a quantum computer Message-ID: <01C54184.89364190.shovland@mindspring.com> Scientists have discovered how the performance of a quantum computer can be affected by its surrounding environment. The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, will help engineers to better understand how to integrate quantum components into a standard office computer - moving us one step closer to a future of quantum computing. The collaborative team from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London (UCL), the Paul Scherrer Institute/ETH in Switzerland and the Universities of Chicago and Copenhagen, have shown how its environment can radically alter the behaviour of a quantum computer, an effect which is not present for conventional computers of the type that exist now on our desktops. Professor Gabriel Aeppli of UCL's Dept of Physics and the Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology says: "One of the most important questions in natural sciences is whether quantum mechanics is relevant to everyday experience. The famous puzzle of whether Schroedinger's cat is dead or alive is the most graphic representation of this question, traditionally considered an academic point of no real practical import. "However, the recent demand for secure communications and ultra-high speed computation has made the answer highly relevant to future technology where quantum 'qubits' replace the classical binary bits 0 and 1 on which current digital electronics and communications rely. "To engineer quantum computers it is necessary for the qubits to be stable in realistic settings, such as the integrated circuit packages in a typical office computer. Physicists refer to such settings as the 'environment', or more picturesquely, the 'bath', and the challenge is to control and minimize the interactions of the qubits with the bath. "Quantum engineering will require careful attention to the 'baths' in which the new devices will be immersed, in the same way that we worry about turbulent air conditions when we design aircraft." Baths by their very nature can be difficult to define and therefore the systematic study of interactions between qubits and baths is in its infancy. The new work shows how a well-specified bath affects the qubits in a crystal which behaves as a very primitive quantum computer. For example, the bath will change how the qubits will move in response to stimuli such as radio waves. The work also suggests that the effect can be controlled by radio waves themselves and by the temperature of the bath. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:51:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:51:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: 'The Amityville Horror': Spacious Colonial With Waterfront View, but All That Blood . . . Message-ID: Movies > Movie Review | 'The Amityville Horror': Spacious Colonial With Waterfront View, but All That Blood . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/movies/15amit.html April 15, 2005 [Washington Post review appended.] By [1]MANOHLA DARGIS In a world gone drearily mad with sequels and recycled television shows, it is merely rhetorical to ask why anyone, including the savvy part-time producer [2]Michael Bay, would revisit a stinker like the 1979 flick [3]"The Amityville Horror." The answer, of course, is that these days, even the dumbest horror movie scares up decent big-screen business before being shuttled off to DVD perpetuity. Just as crucial, horror is relatively cheap to churn out, especially when the supporting cast features interchangeable no-name guys and gals, and the real star of the show - in this case, a spacious waterfront Long Island house - doesn't require its own trailer, a piece of the gross or any of the usual perquisites. Still, given the crushing dullness of the first "Amityville Horror," it seems baffling that it had any traction at all. [4]James Brolin, sporting a head and face full of Charles Manson fuzz, and a wild-eyed [5]Margot Kidder play a couple who snap up a palatial Long Island house for a song. Like the audience, the lovebirds already know that their new digs are shrouded in murder and mystery, but what takes them an agonizingly long time to realize - despite all the miscellaneous creaking and escalating weirdness - is that the house is possessed. The movie was the kind of thing beloved by bored teenagers and recreational drug users, two occasionally overlapping demographics, and was followed by a clutch of sequels that mostly went straight to video. This latest visit to Long Island's favorite haunted house was co-produced by Mr. Bay, the director of such [6]Jerry Bruckheimer-engineered blockbusters as [7]"Armageddon," and directed by Andrew Douglas, whose only other credit is for the provocatively titled "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus." Mr. Douglas takes an instrumental approach to the material, meaning he does what he can in as slickly commercial a fashion as possible. The writer this time is Scott Kosar, who also wrote Mr. Bay's equally serviceable remake of [8]"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and more interestingly, [9]Brad Anderson's "Machinist." Mr. Kosar builds on the story arc of the first "Amityville," which shrouded a gruesome real-life multiple murder in a bunch of supernatural hooey, and predictably pumps up the gory violence. Don't get too attached to the family dog. Set in the 1970's, the new "Amityville" stars an effective Ryan Reynolds as George Lutz, the hirsute paterfamilias with an easy smile and an unsettling fondness for chopping wood. Melissa George plays his wife, a widow and mother of three who, having recently married again, is still trying to find the right fit for her young brood and her new man. Despite the jittery realty agent and an ugly stain marring a large swath of ceiling downstairs, and, oh yeah, the nasty revelation about the house being the site of a murderous family meltdown, the Dutch Colonial home looks like the American dream to the young couple. They take the homeowners' plunge, thereupon triggering various unfortunate events and, in time, a serious case of buyer's remorse. Low-key creepy rather than outright scary, the new "Amityville" marks a modest improvement over the original, partly because, from acting to bloody effects, it is better executed; and partly because the filmmakers have downgraded the role of the priest, played in all his vein-popping glory by [10]Rod Steiger in the first film and by a considerably more subdued Philip Baker Hall here. Oddly, with these improvements, the filmmakers have removed "Amityville" from the realm of kitsch, perhaps with unintended results. In 1974, when a Long Island man turned Amityville into a crime scene by killing his family, there was something so novel about this kind of tragedy that it could be spun into a pop-cultural myth. These days, with the tight real estate market, I realized I didn't care one bit about anyone making it out alive - I wanted the house. "The Amityville Horror" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film contains bloody violence, including gruesome images of torture and the murder of a family pet; some viewers may be disturbed by the family dynamics. 'The Amityville Horror' Opens nationwide today. Directed by Andrew Douglas; written by Scott Kosar, based on a screenplay by Sandor Stern and the book by Jay Anson; director of photography, Peter Lyons Collister; edited by Christian Wagner and Roger Barton; music by Steve Jablonsky; production designer, Jennifer Williams; produced by [11]Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Dimension Films. Running time: 89 minutes. This film is rated R. WITH: Ryan Reynolds (George Lutz), Melissa George (Kathy Lutz), Jesse James (Billy Lutz), Jimmy Bennett (Michael Lutz), Chlo? Grace Moretz (Chelsea Lutz), Rachel Nichols (Lisa) and Philip Baker Hall (Father Callaway). References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MANOHLA%20DARGIS&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MANOHLA%20DARGIS&inline=nyt-per 2. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=203853&inline=nyt-per 3. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=2092;296803&inline=nyt_ttl 4. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=8656&inline=nyt-per 5. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=38064&inline=nyt-per 6. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=83309&inline=nyt-per 7. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=160011;178619;145752;2844;158802;168387;180355&inline=nyt_ttl 8. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=284147;49206&inline=nyt_ttl 9. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=201085&inline=nyt-per 10. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=67882&inline=nyt-per 11. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=203853&inline=nyt-per ------------------ This Old House of 'Horror' http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53132-2005Apr14 By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 15, 2005; Page WE39 "THERE'S NO BAD houses, just bad people," says Ryan Reynolds's character in the dumb but fun remake of "The Amityville Horror," that classic of the cheeseball thriller genre about a very, very bad house. How about bad actors? As George Lutz, the hopelessly naive but soon to be demonically possessed man who has just moved his young family into a creaking, cobwebbed "Munsters"-style home that shows signs of possibly being haunted -- during the real estate walk-through -- Reynolds comes across as a low-rent Jack Nicholson in "The Shining," complete with bloodshot eyes and ax suitable for turning the family dog into steak tartare and bashing in doors behind which his terrified family cowers. No, he doesn't shove his leering face through a splintered hole, shouting "Heeere's Johnny!," but he might as well, for all the grimacing, eye rolling and hissing he does. (By the way, look for that deleted scene when the DVD comes out. I'm sure it's sitting on a cutting room floor somewhere.) Despite, or perhaps because of, the histrionics, "Amityville" is a gory lark, a cheap-thrill-packed love poem to the history of the contemporary horror film that borrows as liberally from the 1979 "fact-based" original about a house harboring the spirits of a family that was murdered there as it does from "The Exorcist," "Poltergeist," "Stir of Echoes," "The Sixth Sense," "Hide and Seek," "The Grudge," the entire "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise and a thousand other latter-day fright fests. It hits all the marks: windows and doors that open and close by themselves; a creepy kid (Chloe Grace Moretz) who "sees" and talks to dead people; a nonfatal fall from the roof (watch out, he's still alive!); and angry Native American ghosts. The scariest room in the house? Take your pick: the basement, plagued by voices and mildew; the closet, portal to another dimension; or the bathroom, where bogeymen wait for you in the claw-foot tub. Yes, people were laughing during a recent screening, but it wasn't immediately clear if it was because the movie was so awful or because it was actually spooky, and they were trying to relieve the grip of terror. I'm going with awful and spooky. "But all the scary parts didn't make any sense," whined one amateur critic on the way out of the theater, apparently upset at not being able to distinguish between hallucinatory scenes of a subterranean human abattoir and, you know, realistic stuff like blood dripping out of electrical and plumbing fixtures. He's right, of course, but let's keep focused on that phrase "scary parts." I mean, really, people. What do you want from a movie where the babysitter (Rachel Nichols), a pot-smoking tramp in hip-huggers and blue eye shadow (hey, it's the '70s), offers to French kiss the 12-year-old son (Jesse James)? "Masterpiece Theatre"? Don't worry, she gets hers. As for me, I got exactly what I expected: Scared and tickled, within an inch of my life. THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (R, 89 minutes) -- Contains blood and gore, obscenity, violence, drug use and a sex scene. Area theaters. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:52:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:52:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: 'The Seven Basic Plots': The Plot Thins, or Are No Stories Message-ID: 'The Seven Basic Plots': The Plot Thins, or Are No Stories New? New York Times Daily Book Review, 5.4.15 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/books/15book.html By [1]MICHIKO KAKUTANI THE SEVEN BASIC PLOTS: Why We Tell Stories By Christopher Booker 728 pages. Continuum. $34.95. So what does Steven Spielberg's shark-fest "Jaws" have in common with the Old English epic "Beowulf"? And what do those two stories have in common with "High Noon," "The Guns of Navarone" and most any James Bond movie? What links "David Copperfield," "Jane Eyre" and the legend of King Arthur together with the fairy tale "The Ugly Duckling"? What story line resurfaces in such disparate works as the Grail quest, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Lord of the Rings" and Richard Adams's bumptious bunny tale "Watership Down"? What could Peter Rabbit, Scarlett O'Hara and Alice from Wonderland possibly have in common? Or Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Silas Marner and Scrooge? These aren't trick SAT questions or annoying Trivial Pursuit queries. They are questions that lie at the heart of the thesis that the critic Christopher Booker sets out in his gargantuan, sometimes absorbing and often blockheaded new book. According to Mr. Booker, there are only seven basic plots in the whole world - plots that are recycled again and again in novels, movies, plays and operas. Those seven plots are: 1. Overcoming the Monster, 2. Rags to Riches, 3. The Quest, 4. Voyage and Return, 5. Rebirth, 6. Comedy and 7. Tragedy. The Overcoming the Monster plot lies behind horror movies and thrillers like "Jaws," as well as many war stories, Hollywood westerns and science fiction tales. In this genre, a community dwells under the shadow of a monstrous threat; a hero or band of heroes does battle with the beast (be it a giant white shark, an evil gunslinger or a horde of Nazis); initial dreamlike success is followed by nightmarish setbacks; but a final confrontation results in victory for the hero, the vanquishing of the monster and the restoration of order to the realm. In the Rags to Riches story line traced by works like "Jane Eyre," an immature hero (often an orphan), who is looked down upon by others, has a series of adventures culminating in a terrible crisis, and emerges from those tests a mature person, ready at last to assume his or her place in the world and make a lasting love match. Hazardous journeys filled with physical perils provide the structure both for Quest tales like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Voyage and Return" and for narratives like "Alice in Wonderland," while inner journeys (from na?vet? to wisdom, psychological paralysis to emotional liberation) form the armature of Rebirth tales like "Snow White" and "A Christmas Carol." In laying out these archetypes, Mr. Booker - a British newspaper columnist and the founding editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye - does a nimble job of collating dozens of stories, using the 34 years he says it took him to write this volume to identify and explicate all sorts of parallels and analogies that might not occur to the casual reader. He shows us how "The Terminator" and its sequel "Judgment Day" adhere to traditional narrative tropes, moving inexorably if violently toward the ideas of rebirth and redemption. And he reminds us how the movie "E.T." embodies classic coming-of-age-story patterns: the boy hero Elliott's encounter with E.T., his alien alter ego, helps him to grow up, forces him to demonstrate leadership, and enables him to bring new harmony to his fragmented family. Mr. Booker suggests that five of the seven basic plots (Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, and Rebirth) can really be placed under the larger umbrella of Comedy: in their purest form, all have happy endings, all trace a hero's journey from immaturity to self-realization, and all end with the restoration of order or the promise of renewal. In a sense, these plots all represent variations on Freud's family romance - the process whereby a young person comes to terms with parental authority, ventures out into the wider world, faces assorted tests and eventually achieves independence. Along the way, confusion (be it a case of mismatched couples or a community in disarray) is dispelled, and alienation gives way to a new sense of wholeness and well-being. This is often symbolized, Mr. Booker argues, by a marriage that represents the coming together of masculine and feminine values and the achievement of balance among the four virtues of "strength, order, feeling and understanding." Only in the seventh plot type, Tragedy, he observes, is there a deviation from this fundamental pattern. Here, the hero or heroine also goes on a journey, but is "held back by some fatal flaw or weakness from reaching that state of perfect balance," he writes. "They are doomed to fall short of the goal because in some way they are stuck in a state of incompleteness or immaturity." Despair, destruction or death is often the end result. The problem is that most of Mr. Booker's theories - from his belief that archetypal stories are rooted in the human unconscious to his arguments about Tragedy and Comedy - are highly familiar, lifted in part or whole from a wide spectrum of influential, even canonical works by writers and thinkers as varied as Jung, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Bruno Bettelheim, Sir James George Frazer, the Shakespeare scholar A. C. Bradley and the folklore experts Peter and Iona Opie. Not only is Mr. Booker a voracious magpie (who does not always acknowledge the sources of his ideas), but he also turns out to be an annoyingly biased and didactic one. As "The Seven Basic Plots" progresses, it grows increasingly tendentious. Mr. Booker evaluates works of art on the basis of how closely they adhere to the archetypes he has so laboriously described; the ones that deviate from those classic patterns are dismissed as flawed or perverse - symptoms of what has gone wrong with modern art and the modern world. In the past two centuries, Mr. Booker complains, "a fundamental shift has taken place in the psychological 'center of gravity' from which" stories have been told; as a result, "they have become detached from their underlying archetypal purpose." In fact, when it comes to analyzing classic works from the Romantic and Modernist eras, Mr. Booker proves shockingly narrow-minded and obtuse. He complains that in "Le Rouge et le Noir," Stendhal failed to see his hero as a "monster of egotism." He whines that Chekhov's people are never "strong enough to take control of their own lives" and that they exhibit little growth in the course of their stories. "? la Recherche du Temps Perdu" is denounced as "the greatest monument to human egotism in the history of story-telling," and Joyce's account of Bloom's day in "Ulysses" is dismissed as signifying "defeat, failure, lack of purpose, the trivialized world of the rootless ego divorced from love or any sense of meaning." Such inane readings of modern literature effectively eclipse the more engaging arguments presented in the first portion of Mr. Booker's book. Anyone tackling "The Seven Basic Plots" would be advised to peruse the informative first half and quickly ditch the second half of this 700-plus page tome. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MICHIKO%20KAKUTANI&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MICHIKO%20KAKUTANI&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:52:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:52:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: For Women in Sciences, Slow Progress in Academia Message-ID: For Women in Sciences, Slow Progress in Academia http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/education/15women.html April 15, 2005 By [1]SARA RIMER It has been 12 years since Nancy Hopkins, a senior professor of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was crawling around the floor of her laboratory with a tape measure, intent on proving to a male administrator that she had 1,500 square feet less laboratory space than her male counterparts. But the administrator ignored her data and refused to provide the 200 square feet she needed to expand her cancer research. Since then, women in the sciences and in mathematics have made some highly visible gains. At M.I.T., Professor Hopkins, now 61, says that she and other senior female scientists have laboratories and salaries equivalent to those of their male colleagues. Female scientists now also lead M.I.T., the University of Michigan, Princeton, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and four campuses of the University of California. And yet, as was made clear after remarks by Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, about whether women lag in science and engineering because of "intrinsic aptitude," their overall progress at many of the country's top research universities has been slow, the gains uneven and fragile. Even as the number of women earning Ph.D.'s in science has substantially increased - women now account for 45 percent to 50 percent of the biology doctorates, and 33 percent of those in chemistry - the science and engineering faculties of elite research universities remain overwhelmingly male. And the majority of the women are clustered at the junior faculty rank. At Harvard, for example, there are 149 men with tenure in the natural sciences and just 13 women. Cynthia Friend, the chairwoman of the chemistry department, remains the only woman who has ever received tenure in chemistry at Harvard. (By comparison, women have done better in the humanities departments at Harvard, where 39 women and 98 men have tenure.) Nor is Harvard's record unusual. The faculties of most elite institutions are not only mostly male, they are also overwhelmingly white. According to a 2004 survey by Donna Nelson, a chemistry professor at the University of Oklahoma, there are 13,235 professors on physical sciences and engineering faculties of the 50 top research universities, and only 468 are black or Hispanic. Given the pipeline problems in some fields, as well as the glacial rate of faculty turnover in academia - tenured professors routinely hold their jobs for more than 30 years - the slow increase in the numbers of women is in part understandable, many experts say. But there are also vast differences in the efforts that some universities have made to move women along. Female scientists, and senior female professors in general, have been particularly concerned about Harvard's record in the past decade, including the last four years under Dr. Summers, with the number of tenure offers to women on the faculty of arts and sciences dropping to 4 out of 32 last year from 14 out of 41 in the 1999-2000 academic year. After the firestorm surrounding his remarks, Dr. Summers appointed two study groups to advise Harvard on how to recruit and retain more women. When the panels announce their findings next month, their recommendations will draw heavily from the handful of universities that already have such programs in place, including the Universities of Michigan, Wisconsin and Washington; Princeton; Stanford; and M.I.T. Those campuses have instituted an array of programs, including workshops on unconscious bias, coaching women on how to negotiate for things like salaries, research funds and child-care money. (Such help is also available to men on faculties, but they generally bear much less of these domestic burdens.) Three years ago, the University of Michigan had 55 departments in the sciences and engineering, only one of them headed by a woman. Today, eight are headed by women. In that time, the university has also tripled the number of tenure track offers to women in science and engineering to 41 percent. Mel Hochster, a mathematics professor at Michigan, belongs to a committee of senior science professors that gives workshops for heads of departments and search committees highlighting the findings of numerous studies on sex bias in hiring. For example, men are given longer letters of recommendation than women, and their letters are more focused on relevant credentials. Men and women are more likely to vote to hire a male job applicant than a woman with an identical record. Women applying for a postdoctoral fellowship had to be 2.5 times as productive to receive the same competence score as the average male applicant. When orchestras hold blind auditions, in which they cannot see the musician, 30 percent to 55 percent more women are hired. Professor Hochster said he was not inclined to join the committee until Abigail Stewart, a professor of psychology and women's studies who is leading Michigan's effort, made a presentation on sex bias to his department. "I vastly underestimated the problem," Professor Hochster said. "People tend to think that if there's a problem, it's with a few old-fashioned people with old-fashioned ideas. That's not true. Everybody has unconscious gender bias. It shows up in every study." In the last three years, the mathematics department, regarded as one of the best in the country, has hired two women with tenure and promoted one associate professor to tenure, Professor Hochster said, bringing the number of tenured women to 6, out of a total of 64 tenured and tenure-track professors. Two more women are on a tenure track. Some universities have put pressure on their search committees to broaden their pools of qualified candidates, especially when it comes to graduate students who could apply for junior faculty positions. Jo Handelsman, a professor of plant pathology who is leading Wisconsin's effort to recruit and retain more female science and engineering professors, said that at Wisconsin each member of a search committee was encouraged to come up with a list of 10 respected colleagues and graduate students around the country who would nominate qualified candidates, specifically qualified women and minorities. "If you have a committee of eight people and each one calls 10 colleagues, now you've got 80 people brainstorming," Professor Handelsman said. With widespread concern that only about half the pool of women earning Ph.D.'s in biology and chemistry are even applying for junior faculty jobs at elite research universities, M.I.T. and other institutions are going out of their way to find outstanding young women in unusual places and encourage them to apply. Catherine Drennan, 41, an associate chemistry professor at M.I.T., said she might still be teaching high school chemistry in Iowa, as she used to, were it not for JoAnne Stubbe, a prominent molecular biologist at M.I.T. Professor Drennan was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan when she first met Professor Stubbe at a chemistry conference. She was stunned, Professor Drennan said, when Professor Stubbe later asked if she would be interested in applying to M.I.T. for a faculty job. "I had never thought of myself as someone that a school like that would be interested in," said Professor Drennan, who arrived at M.I.T. five and a half years ago. She is now being reviewed for tenure, and is expected to receive it. Some universities have also taken note of the disadvantage that women face in negotiating salaries, laboratory space and money for research, as well as the importance of building a reputation by publishing in high-profile academic journals and getting invitations to speak at prestigious conferences. Men have naturally picked up such crucial information, as well as speaking invitations, from male colleagues and mentors because of their greater numbers and influence. For example, Columbia University is now bringing in retired senior academics to coach women on its faculty in such areas. Professor Hopkins, who in January walked out of the academic conference where Mr. Summers made his controversial remarks about women in science, said she nearly lost out on a large grant years ago because she had been left out of the information loop by some of her male colleagues. After reading in a newspaper that a biotech company was awarding grants to M.I.T. scientists, she asked a colleague if he knew how to apply for the money, she said. He told her he knew nothing about the grant, she said, though she later learned that he was urging another man in their department to apply for the money. Professor Hopkins said she then went to her dean, who submitted her application to the company, asking for $30,000, The company gave her $8 million, which allowed her to expand her cancer research and led to the discovery of a pair of cancer genes. Experts say they believe one reason women may not be applying for junior faculty positions at elite research universities is that they believe - mistakenly, senior female scientists say - that these jobs are incompatible with having children. In a widely praised speech at Columbia three weeks ago, Princeton's president, Shirley M. Tilghman, a molecular biologist and mother of two, said that universities should do a great deal more to create an environment that "legitimizes the choice" to be a scientist and have a family. The first step, she said, "to paraphrase the political strategist James Carville, is to recognize, 'It's day care, stupid!' " Princeton, like many other universities, offers one-year tenure extensions for each child and workload relief to new parents, men and women. But Princeton found that men were more likely to take advantage of the tenure extension than women, who were afraid that requesting the extra year would be interpreted as a sign of weakness or lack of confidence. Princeton has recently made the tenure extension automatic so that it will have no value judgment attached to it, Dr. Tilghman said. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SARA%20RIMER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SARA%20RIMER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:53:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:53:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: For Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, Was It De-Lovely? Message-ID: For Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, Was It De-Lovely? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/science/15nean.html February 15, 2005 By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD The scientists did not get around to the nitty-gritty question until the fourth hour of a two-and-a-half-day symposium on Neanderthals, held recently at New York University. A strong consensus was emerging, they agreed, that the now-extinct Neanderthals were a distinct evolutionary entity from modern humans, presumably a different species. They were archaic members of the human family, robust with heavy brow ridges and forward-projecting faces, who lived in Europe and western Asia from at least 250,000 years ago until they vanished from the fossil record about 28,000 years ago. Neanderthals may have seen their first modern Homo sapiens some 100,000 years ago in what is now Israel. The two people almost certainly came in contact in Europe in the last centuries before the dwindling Neanderthal population was replaced forever by the intruding modern humans. Taking his turn at the symposium lectern, Dr. James C. M. Ahern, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wyoming, acknowledged: "Neanderthals are different. The degree of difference is relatively vast, but that is not the most interesting question out there." The question was, he continued, "Did Neanderthals and modern humans do it?" There it was, out in the open again, the question that has persisted since the first fossils of these people were discovered in the Neander Valley of Germany in 1856. Could the two people with a shared distant ancestry and family resemblance have interbred? Is there any evidence that Europeans today carry some Neanderthal genes? For the international gathering of scientists, the issue exposed the uncertainty over the definition of species. Its conventional meaning is a group of interbreeding creatures that are reproductively isolated from others. Hybridization of species is rare in mammals. One common example is the mating of an ass and a mare, producing the sterile mule. The conferees debated, but never resolved, the possibility that Neanderthals could have been an evolutionary and anatomical species, distinct from Homo sapiens, but not strictly an isolated biological species. That is, the two species may have been enough alike to mate and produce fertile offspring. Again, Dr. Ahern encapsulated the issue, "How much difference is too much" for viable interbreeding to occur? Dr. Chris Stringer, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, noted that some species apparently less close than Neanderthals and modern humans can interbreed and produce hybrids. Dr. Stringer is a leading proponent of the theory that modern Homo sapiens emerged in Africa as early as 150,000 years ago and then spread to Asia and Europe, replacing the remnants of archaic humans they encountered there. Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a Neanderthal expert at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not at the meeting, contends that the 24,500-year-old skeleton of a young boy found in Portugal appeared to be a Neanderthal-Homo sapiens hybrid. The interpretation has so far been viewed with skepticism. Dr. Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said that he and colleagues had looked for answers in the patterns of genetic variation in contemporary human populations and the analysis of ancient DNA from fossils of Neanderthals and early modern humans. Neither approach, he said, provided any indication of interbreeding between the two species. "That does not rule out some genetic contribution" from Neanderthals to Europeans' ancestry, Dr. Stoneking said. Dr. David Serre of McGill University in Montreal described the analysis of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA found in 24 Neanderthals and 40 early modern human remains. The results seemed to exclude any significant contribution of Neanderthal genes to Homo sapiens, perhaps less than 1 percent. Therefore, he concluded, they were "two distinct biological species." Dr. Katerina Harvati, also of the Planck Institute in Leipzig, recently conducted research applying a "quantitative method" to determine the degree of anatomical difference that justifies classifying specimens as different species. She and colleagues examined the variation of specific parts of the craniums and faces of modern humans and Neanderthals as well as 12 existing species of nonhuman primates. The two living species of chimpanzees, for example, appeared to be more closely related to each other than Neanderthals are to humans. Dr. Harvati and Dr. Terry Harrison, a paleontologist at N.Y.U., organized the symposium, "Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives." More than species differences may have kept Neanderthals and humans sexually apart, if indeed that was the case. Their opportunities may have been limited. Dr. Ahern said in an interview that it was "surprising how little overlap there was" between the two species in Europe." It had been thought that modern humans from Africa began arriving in Europe about 40,000 years ago and so could have competed with and mingled with the local population for at least 12,000 years. But the dating of fossil and archaeological evidence is now being revised, leaving much less time when the two species could have had close contact. "It's a real scientific problem," said Dr. Randall White, an archaeologist specializing in European ice age culture at N.Y.U. "How to interpret the overlap of Neanderthals and modern humans, their interactions and cultural exchanges, the causes of Neanderthal extinction, all depends on what are the real dates of their possible contact." Some of the most solid evidence for overlap, the researchers said, does not appear until toward the end of the Neanderthals' known existence, when their populations were probably sparse. Dr. Stringer said some explanations for Neanderthal extinction were being re-examined. Perhaps the technological superiority of modern humans was "not as clear-cut as some of us thought," he said. Perhaps Neanderthals, though adapted to a cold climate, could not survive the rapid and repeated changes of cold and warm periods of that time. "It was not bad genes but bad luck for the Neanderthals," Dr. Stringer said. "Modern humans may have had no direct effect on Neanderthal extinction. They actually walked into empty spaces where Neanderthals had already disappeared." Dr. Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History was not entirely joking when he suggested that few genes were exchanged because "no self-respecting Neanderthal female would fancy a Homo sapiens male." In making a case for the distinct differences between the two species, Dr. Tattersall showed slides of upright skeletons of the two. But skeletons are unrevealing of Paleolithic desire. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:54:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:54:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: For Mongolians, E Is for English, F Is for Future Message-ID: International > Asia Pacific > For Mongolians, E Is for English, F Is for Future http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/international/asia/15mongolia.html February 15, 2005 By JAMES BROOKE ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - As she searched for the English words to name the razor-tooth fish swimming around her stomach on her faded blue and white T-shirt, 10-year-old Urantsetseg hardly seemed to embody an urgent new national policy. "Father shark, mother shark, sister shark," she recited carefully as the winter light filled her classroom. Stumped by a smaller, worried-looking fish, she paused, frowning. Then she cried out, "Lunch!" Even here on the edge of the nation's capital, in this settlement of dirt tracks, plank shanties and the circular felt yurts of herdsmen, the sounds of English can be heard from the youngest of students - part of a nationwide drive to make it the primary foreign language learned in Mongolia, a landlocked expanse of open steppe sandwiched between Russia and China. "We are looking at Singapore as a model," Tsakhia Elbegdorj, Mongolia's prime minister, said in an interview, his own American English honed in graduate school at Harvard. "We see English not only as a way of communicating, but as a way of opening windows on the wider world." Its camel herders may not yet be referring to one another as "dude," but this Central Asian nation, thousands of miles from the nearest English-speaking country, is a reflection of the steady march of English as a world language. Fueled by the Internet, the growing dominance of American culture and the financial realities of globalization, English is taking hold in Asia, and elsewhere, just as it has in many European countries. In South Korea, six private "English villages" are being established where paying students can have their passports stamped for intensive weeks of English-language immersion, taught by native speakers from all over the English-speaking world. The most ambitious village, an $85 million English town near Seoul, will have Western architecture and signs, and a resident population of English-speaking foreigners. In Iraq, where Arabic and Kurdish are to be the official languages, a movement is growing to add English, a neutral link for a nation split along ethnic lines. Iraqi Kurdistan has had an explosion in English-language studies, fueled partly by an affinity for Britain and the United States, and partly by the knowledge that neighboring Turkey may soon join the European Union, a group where English is emerging as the dominant language. In Chile, the government has embarked on a national program to teach English in all elementary and high schools. The goal is to make the nation of 15 million people bilingual within a generation. The models are the Netherlands and the Nordic nations, which have achieved proficiency in English since World War II. The rush toward English in Mongolia has not been without its bumps. After taking office after elections here last June, Mr. Elbegdorj shocked Mongolians by announcing that the nation of 2.8 million would become bilingual, with English as the second language. For Mongolians still debating whether to jettison the Cyrillic alphabet imposed by Stalin in 1941, that was too much, too fast. Later, on his bilingual English-Mongolian Web site, the prime minister lowered his sights and fine-tuned his program, developing a national curriculum devised to make English replace Russian in September as the primary foreign language taught here. Still, as fast as Mr. Elbegdorj wants the Mongolian government to proceed, the state is merely catching up with the private sector. "This building is three times the size of our old building," Doloonjin Orgilmaa, director general of Santis Educational Services, said, showing a visitor around her three-story English school that opened here in November near Mongolia's Sports Palace. This Mongolian-American venture, which was the first private English school when it started in 1999, now faces competition from all sides. With schools easing the way, English is penetrating Ulan Bator through the electronic media: bilingual Mongolian Web sites, cellphones with bilingual text messaging, cable television packages with English-language news and movie channels, and radio stations that broadcast Voice of America and the BBC on FM frequencies. At Mongolian International University, all classes are in English. English is so popular that Mormon missionaries here offer free lessons to attract potential converts. Increased international tourism and a growing number of resident foreigners explain some developments, like the two English-language newspapers here and the growing numbers of bilingual store signs and restaurant menus. During the first eight months of 2004, international tourist arrivals here were up 54 percent; visits by Americans doubled to nearly 9,000, helped by popular Mongolian movies like "The Story of the Weeping Camel." Foreign arrivals increased across the board, with the exception of Russians, whose visits declined by 9.5 percent. That reflects a wider decline here of Russia's influence and the Russian language. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian was universally taught in Mongolia and was required for admission to universities. "Russia is going downhill very fast," said Tom Dyer, 28, an Australian teacher at the Lotus Children's Center, the orphanage where Urantsetseg was describing the shark family. Russia, leery of immigration from Asia, has imposed visa requirements on Mongolians. China has not. Today, it is hard to find a Mongolian under 40 who speaks better than broken Russian. Within a decade, Mongolia is expected to convert its written language to the Roman alphabet from Cyrillic characters. "Everyone knows that Russian was the official foreign language here," T. Layton Croft, Mongolia's representative for The Asia Foundation, said in an interview. "So by announcing that English is the official foreign language, it is yet another step in a way of consolidating Mongolia's independence, autonomy and identity." So far, Beijing has adopted a laissez-faire stance toward Mongolia's flirtation with English, even though China is now the country's leading source of foreign investment, trade and tourism. Such a stance is easy to maintain because Chinese-language studies also are undergoing a boom here. For a trading people known for straddling the East-West Silk Road, Mongolians have long been linguists, often learning multiple languages. But for many of Mongolia's young people, English is viewed as hip and universal. "Chinese is very boring," Anuudari Batzaya, a fashionably dressed 10-year-old, said in the Santis language lab, pausing an interactive computer program that intoned in crisp British vowels: "When he lands in London, he'll claim his baggage, and go through customs." Stopped on a sidewalk on a snowy afternoon here, Amarsanaa Bazargarid, a 20-year-old management student at Mongolian Technical University, said optimistically: "I'd like English be our official second language. Mongolians would be comfortable in any country. Russian was our second official language, but it wasn't very useful." With official encouragement, the American Embassy, the British Embassy, and a private Swiss group have all opened English-language reading rooms here in the past 18 months. "If there is a shortcut to development, it is English; parents understand that, kids understand that," Munh-Orgil Tsend, Mongolia's foreign minister, said in an interview, speaking American English, also honed at Harvard. "We want to come up with solid, workable, financially backable plan to introduce English from early level all the way up to highest level." After trying in the 1990's to retrain about half of Mongolia's 1,400 Russian-language teachers to teach English, Mongolia now is embarking on a program to attract hundreds of qualified teachers from around the world to teach here. "I need 2,000 English teachers," said Puntsag Tsagaan, Mongolia's minister of education, culture and science. Mr. Tsagaan, a graduate of a Soviet university, laboriously explained in English that Mongolia hoped to attract English teachers, not only from Britain and North America, but from India, Singapore and Malaysia. Getting visas for teachers, a cumbersome process, will be streamlined, he said. Mr. Tsagaan spins an optimistic vision of Mongolia's bilingual future if he can lure English teachers. "If we combine our academic knowledge with the English language, we can do outsourcing here, just like Bangalore," he said. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:55:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:55:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity Message-ID: Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity New York Times Daily Book Review, 5.2.14 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/books/14bull.html By PETER EDIDIN Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house's distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called "On Bull - - - - ." The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity: "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry." The essay goes on to lament that lack of inquiry, despite the universality of the phenomenon. "Even the most basic and preliminary questions about [bull] remain, after all," Mr. Frankfurt writes, "not only unanswered but unasked." The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions - to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none. What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth. "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth," Mr. Frankfurt writes. "A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it." The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is "getting away with what he says," Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] "does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it," he writes. "He pays no attention to it at all." And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting "the possibility of knowing how things truly are." It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal. The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. "All that is solid," as Marx once wrote, "melts into air." Mr. Frankfurt is an unlikely slinger of barnyard expletives. He is a courtly man, with a broad smile and a philosophic beard, and he lives in apparently decorous retirement with his wife, Joan Gilbert, in a lovely old house near the university. On a visit there earlier this month, there was Heifetz was on the stereo, good food and wine on the table. But appearances, in this case, are somewhat misleading. Mr. Frankfurt spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, and still sees himself as a disputatious Brooklynite - one who still speaks of the Dodgers as "having betrayed us." And, in any event, Mr. Frankfurt is not particularly academic in the way he views his calling. "I got interested in philosophy because of two things," he said. "One is that I was never satisfied with the answers that were given to questions, and it seemed to me that philosophy was an attempt to get down to the bottom of things." "The other thing," he added, "was that I could never make up my mind what I was interested in, and philosophy enabled you to be interested in anything." Those interests found expression in a small and scrupulous body of work that tries to make sense of free will, desire and love in closely reasoned but jargon-free prose, illustrated by examples of behavior (philosophers speak of the "Frankfurt example") that anyone would recognize. "He's dealing with very abstract matters," said Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iowa, "but trying not to lose touch with the human condition. His work keeps faith with that condition." Mr. Frankfurt's teaching shares with his prose a spirit Ms. Buss, who was once his graduate student, defines as, "Come in and let's struggle with something." "He was very willing," she added, "to say, 'I just don't understand this.' " The essay on [bull] arose from that kind of struggle. In 1986, Mr. Frankfurt was teaching at Yale, where he took part in a weekly seminar. The idea was to get people of various disciplines to listen to a paper written by one of their number, after which everyone would talk about it over lunch. Mr. Frankfurt decided his contribution would be a paper on [bull]. "I had always been concerned about the importance of truth," he recalled, "the way in which truth is foundational to civilization and the various deformities of it that were current." "I'd been concerned about the prevalence" of [bull], he continued, "and the lack of concern for truth and respect for truth that it represented." "I used the title I did," he added, "because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn't use 'humbug' or 'bunkum.' " Research was a problem. The closest analogue came from Socrates. "He called it rhetoric or sophistry," Mr. Frankfurt said, "and regarded philosophy as the great enemy of rhetoric and sophistry." "These were opposite, incompatible ways of persuading people," he added. "You could persuade them with rhetoric" - or [bull] - "with sophistic arguments that weren't really sound but that you could put over on people, or you could persuade them by philosophical arguments which were dedicated to rigor and clarity of thought." Mr. Frankfurt recalled that it took him about a month to write the essay, after which he delivered it to the humanities group. "I guess I should say it was received enthusiastically," he said, "but they didn't know whether to laugh or to take it seriously." Some months after the reading, the essay, title intact, was published by The Raritan Review, a journal then edited by Richard Poirier, a distinguished literary critic. In 1988, Mr. Frankfurt included it in "The Importance of What We Care About," a collection of his essays. The audience for academic journals and collections of philosophical essays is limited, however, and so the essay tended to be passed along, samizdat style, from one aficionado to another. "In the 20 years since it was published," Mr. Frankfurt said, "I don't think a year has passed in which I haven't gotten one or two letters or e-mails from people about it." One man from Wales set some of the text to music; another who worked in the financial industry wanted to create an annual award for the worst piece of analysis published in his field (an idea apparently rejected by his superiors). G. A. Cohen, the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, has written two papers on the subject. "Harry has a unique capacity to take a simple truth and draw from it very consequential implications," Mr. Cohen said. "He is very good at identifying the potent elementary fact." It was Ian Malcolm, the Princeton University Press editor responsible for philosophy, who approached Mr. Frankfurt about publishing the essay as a stand-alone volume. "The only way the essay would get the audience it deserved was to publish it as a small book," he said. "I had a feeling it would sell, but we weren't quite prepared for the interest it got." For Mr. Frankfurt, who says it has always been his ambition to move philosophy "back to what most people think of as philosophy, which is a concern with the problems of life and with understanding the world," the book might be considered a successful achievement. But he finds he is still trying to get to the bottom of things, and hasn't arrived. "When I reread it recently," he said at home, "I was sort of disappointed. It wasn't as good as I'd thought it was. It was a fairly superficial and incomplete treatment of the subject." "Why," he wondered, "do we respond to [bull] in such a different way than we respond to lies? When we find somebody lying, we get angry, we feel we've been betrayed or violated or insulted in some way, and the liar is regarded as deceptive, deficient, morally at fault." Why we are more tolerant of [bull] than lying is something Mr. Frankfurt believes would be worth considering. "Why is lying regarded almost as a criminal act?" he asked, while bull "is sort of cuddly and warm? It's outside the realm of serious moral criticism. Why is that?" From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:56:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:56:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] =?iso-8859-1?q?NYT=3A_Truth=2C_Incompleteness_and_t?= =?iso-8859-1?q?he_G=F6delian_Way?= Message-ID: Arts > Connections: Truth, Incompleteness and the G?delian Way http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/arts/14conn.html February 14, 2005 CONNECTIONS By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Relativity. Incompleteness. Uncertainty. Is there a more powerful modern Trinity? These reigning deities proclaim humanity's inability to thoroughly explain the world. They have been the touchstones of modernity, their presence an unwelcome burden at first, and later, in the name of postmodernism, welcome company. Their rule has also been affirmed by their once-sworn enemy: science. Three major discoveries in the 20th century even took on their names. Albert Einstein's famous Theory (Relativity), Kurt G?del's famous Theorem (Incompleteness) and Werner Heisenberg's famous Principle (Uncertainty) declared that, henceforth, even science would be postmodern. Or so it has seemed. But as Rebecca Goldstein points out in her elegant new book, "Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt G?del" (Atlas Books; Norton), of these three figures, only Heisenberg might have agreed with this characterization. His uncertainty principle specified the inability to be too exact about small particles. "The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively," he wrote, "is impossible." Oddly, his allegiance to an absolute state, Nazi Germany, remained unquestioned even as his belief in absolute knowledge was quashed. Einstein and G?del had precisely the opposite perspective. Both fled the Nazis, both ended up in Princeton, N.J., at the Institute for Advanced Study, and both objected to notions of relativism and incompleteness outside their work. They fled the politically absolute, but believed in its scientific possibility. And therein lies Ms. Goldstein's tale. From the late 1930's until Einstein's death in 1955, Einstein and G?del, the physicist and the mathematician, would take long walks, finding companionship in each other's ideas. Late in his life, in fact, Einstein said he would go to his office just to have the "privilege" of walking with G?del. What was their common ground? In Ms. Goldstein's interpretation, they both felt marginalized, "disaffected and dismissed in profoundly similar ways." Both thought that their work was being invoked to support unacceptable positions. Einstein's convictions are fairly well known. He objected to quantum physics and its probabilistic clouds. God, he famously asserted, does not play dice. Also, he believed, not everything depends on the perspective of the observer. Relativity doesn't imply relativism. The conservative beliefs of an aging revolutionary? Perhaps, but Einstein really was a kind of Platonist: He paid tribute to science's liberating ability to understand what he called the "extra-personal world." And G?del? Most lay readers probably know of him from Douglas R. Hofstadter's playful best-seller "G?del, Escher, Bach," a book that is more about the powers of self-referentiality than about the limits of knowledge. But the latter is the more standard association. "If you have heard of him," Ms. Goldstein writes, perhaps too cautiously, "then there is a good chance that, through no fault of your own, you associate him with the sorts of ideas - subversively hostile to the enterprises of rationality, objectivity, truth - that he not only vehemently rejected but thought he had conclusively, mathematically, discredited." Ms. Goldstein's interpretation differs in some respects from that of another recent book about G?del, "A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of G?del and Einstein" by Palle Yourgrau (Basic), which sees him as more of an iconoclastic visionary. But in both he is portrayed as someone widely misunderstood, with good reason perhaps, given his work's difficulty. Before G?del's incompleteness theorem was published in 1931, it was believed that not only was everything proven by mathematics true, but also that within its conceptual universe everything true could be proven. Mathematics is thus complete: nothing true is beyond its reach. G?del shattered that dream. He showed that there were true statements in certain mathematical systems that could not be proven. And he did this with astonishing sleight of hand, producing a mathematical assertion that was both true and unprovable. It is difficult to overstate the impact of his theorem and the possibilities that opened up from G?del's extraordinary methods, in which he discovered a way for mathematics to talk about itself. (Ms. Goldstein compares it to a painting that could also explain the principles of aesthetics.) The theorem has generally been understood negatively because it asserts that there are limits to mathematics' powers. It shows that certain formal systems cannot accomplish what their creators hoped. But what if the theorem is interpreted to reveal something positive: not proving a limitation but disclosing a possibility? Instead of "You can't prove everything," it would say: "This is what can be done: you can discover other kinds of truths. They may be beyond your mathematical formalisms, but they are nevertheless indubitable." In this, G?del was elevating the nature of the world, rather than celebrating powers of the mind. There were indeed timeless truths. The mind would discover them not by following the futile methodologies of formal systems, but by taking astonishing leaps, making unusual connections, revealing hidden meanings. Like Einstein, G?del was, Ms. Goldstein suggests, a Platonist. Of course, those leaps and connections could go awry. G?del was an intermittent paranoiac, whose twisted visions often left his colleagues in dismay. He spent his later years working on a proof of the existence of God. He even died in the grip of a perverse esotericism. He feared eating, imagined elaborate plots, and literally wasted away. At his death in 1978, he weighed 65 pounds. But he was no postmodernist. Late in his life G?del said of mathematics: "It is given to us in its entirety and does not change, unlike the Milky Way. That part of it of which we have a perfect view seems beautiful, suggesting harmony." That beauty, he proposed, would be mirrored by the world itself. These are not exactly the views of an acolyte devoted to Relativity, Incompleteness and Uncertainty. And Einstein was his fellow dissenter. The Connections column will appear every other Monday. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:57:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:57:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: At Lunch With Warren Farrell: Are Women Responsible for Their Own Low Pay? Message-ID: Business > Your Money > At Lunch With Warren Farrell: Are Women Responsible for Their Own Low Pay? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/business/yourmoney/27lunch.html February 27, 2005 By [1]CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH DO you think that Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard's president, stirred up a hornets' nest by suggesting that women's brains are not genetically wired for math or science? Wait until you hear Warren Farrell on the subject of women's pay. Sure, Dr. Farrell accepts that women, as a group, are paid less than men. But the way he sees it, using pay statistics to prove sex discrimination is akin to using the horizon to prove that the world is flat. Women, he believes, methodically engineer their own paltry pay. They choose psychically fulfilling jobs, like librarian or art historian, that attract enough applicants for the law of supply and demand to kick in and depress pay. They avoid well-paid but presumably risky work - hence, the paucity of women flying planes. And they tend to put in fewer hours than men - no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost twice as much as those who work 34 and are more likely to be promoted. In fact, Dr. Farrell points to subgroups - male and female college professors who have never married, or men and women in part-time jobs - in which women average higher pay than their male counterparts. "Control for all these things, and the women make as much, or more," said Dr. Farrell, 61, whose new book on the shaky myths of pay disparity, "Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap - and What Women Can Do About It" (Amacom), arrived in bookstores in January. "Let's face it: men do a lot of things in the workplace that women just don't do." Ready to brand him a sexist? Wait, there's more. Dr. Farrell says he thinks that the whole debate over gender-linked skills is superfluous. "Men may well be hard-wired to be better at math, and women to excel at verbal skills, but so what?" he asked. He said the human ability to adapt to circumstances and limitations was equally hard-wired, and that fascination with a field could easily trump innate abilities. It's pretty subversive stuff. But then, Dr. Farrell - the doctorate is in political science, "but I walk and talk like a psychologist," he said - is accustomed to flouting convention. In the early 1970's, when the idea of equality for women still had novelty status, he served on the board of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women. In 2003, by then living in San Diego, he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor of California on a platform promoting legislation to force courts to grant divorced fathers equal time with their children. He has a lucrative business as an expert witness in custody cases, and in speaking and consulting on fatherhood issues. (He has no children, but he has served as a stepdad to several.) When a book tour took him to Manhattan recently, he had lunch with a reporter at Eleven Madison Park, on Madison Avenue at East 24th Street, to elaborate on why, as he phrases it, women should stop trying to play off "victim power" and start wielding their true earning power. "Companies like [2]I.B.M. have offered women scholarships to study engineering for years, and women engineers routinely get higher starting salaries than men," he said. Noting that his current and former wives, businesswomen both, make more than he does, he added: "Men have not stacked the decks against women." Even as a child, Warren Farrell had little patience for the gender roles mandated by society. His family was conventional enough: a New Jersey suburban home, three children (he was the oldest), an accountant father who was definitely the primary earner. But the young Warren refused to be pigeonholed by anyone's view of proper behavior for a boy. In seventh grade, he entered - and won - a beauty contest for boys. "I was elected class prince," he recalled with a still-proud laugh. In eighth grade, he was tagged as a math whiz, but he found math too boring to pursue. Although he was tall and athletic, he hated fighting, so, of course, he attracted the taunting of the local bullies in high school. He finally fought one. He won, and the bully clique respected him after that. "It made me sad - winning a wrestling match is such a stupid reason to respect someone," he said. Dr. Farrell always suspected that women tended to undermine themselves. One day, while he was teaching urban politics at Rutgers, he attended a convention at which one attendee, an attractive young woman, wanted to make a point but was beset with stage fright. "I encouraged her to speak up, and when she did, she blew everyone away," he said. She and Dr. Farrell soon married and, after she became a well-known corporate executive, she offered to be primary breadwinner while he pursued a doctorate in political science from New York University. (He asked that her name be withheld to protect her privacy.) He did his dissertation on the women's movement. "My wife's income allowed me to do what I really loved," he said. "I realized that women's liberation is men's liberation, too." After they divorced - they remain friends, he said - Dr. Farrell moved to San Diego, where he still lives. Ten years ago he met, and eventually married, Liz Dowling, a California entrepreneur with two daughters - Alex, now 17, and Erin, 18. Although he has written extensively about issues like sexual harassment and fatherhood, he says he is not spurred on by personal experiences. "I've always been motivated to stop people from doing dysfunctional things," he said. Which, of course, provided a nice segue into his thoughts on how women can stop the self-sabotage that so often leads to low pay. Refreshingly, he steered clear of advice about body language, attitudes, dress and communication skills; women are already better at all of those than men, he said. But he did offer other observations: There can be good jobs in fields you think you hate. So what if you are all thumbs. "A woman with organizing skills can run a construction company without ever picking up a hammer and nail," Dr. Farrell said. Do you like medicine, but can't stand blood? "Pharmacists can make as much as doctors," he said, and can have more control over their lives. Jobs that are hazardous for men can be pretty safe for women. Women in the military are rarely sent to the front lines, Dr. Farrell said. Studies have shown that women who are cabdrivers usually pull daytime hours, female postal workers get safer routes, and male coal miners try to keep their few female colleagues out of danger. "When women need protection, men will compete to give it," he said. Many jobs pay women more than men. Some of them - say, advertising executive, speech pathologist or statistician - are in fields that have long welcomed women. But many are jobs that many women erroneously believe are closed to them, like tool-and- die makers, funeral service workers, automotive mechanics, radiation therapists and sales engineers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides pay comparisons for many jobs. A little extra training can yield a lot more money. Are you good with numbers? "Financial analysts make a lot more than accountants," Dr. Farrell said. Similarly, he notes, a nurse anesthetist makes twice as much as a regular nurse. The "line versus staff" rule applies to women, too. Men have long realized that jobs in manufacturing and sales - line jobs in business parlance - are better for their careers than staff support jobs in human resources and public relations. "C.E.O.'s are selected from among those assuming bottom-line responsibilities for a company," he said, "so these fields pave the way for women who want to break alleged glass ceilings." It is O.K. to trade a fatter paycheck for more time with children and hobbies. Just recognize that society did not force the choice on you. "Feel powerful and happy that you have control over your own life," Dr. Farrell said. "It's better than feeling like an angry victim of discrimination." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CLAUDIA%20H.%20DEUTSCH&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CLAUDIA%20H.%20DEUTSCH&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=IBM From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 13:59:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 09:59:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Bush's Next Target: Malpractice Lawyers Message-ID: Business > Your Money > Bush's Next Target: Malpractice Lawyers http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/business/yourmoney/27mal.html February 27, 2005 [It is the state government failure, specifically the failure of state governments to reign in nation-wide lobbying of trial lawyers, that is prompting this activity at the federal level. This is a structural defect and not just some liberal arguing that the states have "failed" to deliver what he, the liberal, personally prefers.] By [1]STEVE LOHR CHICAGO TODD A. SMITH is one of the nation's leading medical malpractice lawyers, renowned and feared in the courtroom, having extracted a lengthy string of multimillion-dollar settlements and verdicts from doctors, hospitals and insurers over the years. Though wealthy even by the standards of his profession, Mr. Smith, 55, seems to have lost none of the intensity and passion that fuel his 12- to 14-hour workdays and make him a persuasive trial lawyer. Seated in his law firm's conference room, with an Olympian view high above Lake Michigan, Mr. Smith recited the details of his first courtroom victory in the summer of 1977, when he was a $12,000-a-year assistant public defender in the Cook County criminal courts. The defendant, he recalled, was an American Indian who was accused of armed robbery in a case that was based mainly on his race. The man was identified as the robber, for example, in a lineup that included him and a collection of off-duty, white police officers. "It was terribly unfair," Mr. Smith said. What drives Mr. Smith now, he says, is what drove him then: a desire to seek justice for people who need it, whether criminal defendants too poor to hire lawyers or victims of medical lapses whose lives have been ruined and face huge bills for care. "You can make a significant contribution to someone's life, someone who might be in desperate straits," he explained. "That's as rewarding as it gets for me. It's not really, or mostly, about money." The Bush administration wants to make Mr. Smith's profession far less financially rewarding. Medical malpractice lawyers are cast as the marquee villains in the administration's war against what it regards as a litigious culture run amok. If there were a face in the bull's-eye in this political battle, it would be Mr. Smith's. He is not only a big-name medical malpractice lawyer, but he is also serving this year as the president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the principal advocacy and lobbying group for trial lawyers. And within conservative circles and inside the White House, the term "trial lawyer" is an epithet. This month, the administration won the first round in its fight to curb litigation, as Congress passed legislation to sharply restrict class-action lawsuits against companies. Next up is medical malpractice. In his re-election campaign, Mr. Bush repeatedly decried "junk lawsuits" as the bane of the nation's doctors. The issue was deftly framed, and the subtext was clear: greedy lawyers were attacking the Marcus Welbys of America, good doctors doing their best. In a speech last month in Illinois, Mr. Bush again called for strict limits on medical malpractice suits, including "a hard cap of $250,000" on what patients could recover for non-economic damages like physical and emotional pain and suffering. Returning to his election-year themes, Mr. Bush said doctors "should be focused on fighting illnesses, not fighting lawsuits." "We need to fix a broken medical liability system," he said, and he called on Congress to act this year. This month, a medical litigation overhaul bill, mirroring the administration's proposals, was introduced in the Senate by two Republican senators, John Ensign of Nevada and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. THE medical liability system, health care analysts agree, is deeply flawed. But they also generally agree that the solution offered by the administration and the Republican Congress - putting a ceiling on damages - addresses only one aspect of the problem. Medical liability policy, said Dr. William M. Sage, a physician and a law professor at Columbia University, should seek three goals: restraining overall costs, compensating the victims of medical mistakes and providing incentives for doctors and hospitals to reduce medical errors. "There is a strong consensus among people who have really studied the issue that caps on damages would tend to keep costs down and make liability insurance more affordable for doctors," Dr. Sage said. "And there is a universal consensus that caps would do absolutely nothing to reduce medical errors or to compensate injured patients. If anything, caps on damages would make those problems worse." Medical malpractice laws vary state by state. But California offers a glimpse of a future preferred by the administration and many Republicans in Congress. In 1975, California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, which included a cap of $250,000 for damages like pain and suffering in malpractice cases. It did not limit economic damages for things like the cost of continuing care for a person disabled or wages lost because of medical errors. The law also curbed attorneys' fees on a sliding scale that prohibited them from collecting more than 15 percent on award amounts over $600,000, with higher percentages for the amounts below that sum. (In states without limits on fees, contingency payments to malpractice lawyers are typically about one-third of awards.) Research varies on the likely impact of curbs on awards and fees, but a RAND Corporation study last year concluded that the California law had reduced the net recoveries for plaintiffs by 15 percent and had cut attorneys' fees by far more, an estimated 60 percent. Defendant liabilities, it calculated, were trimmed 30 percent because of the law. California malpractice lawyers say the law also discourages them from taking wrongful-death cases if the victims are children or retirees. Those groups have no economic value by the cold logic of the courtroom because they are not earning salaries, so the maximum award would be $250,000. Complex cases, which often require many expert witnesses and years of research, can cost that much to bring to trial. Linda Fermoyle Rice, a medical malpractice lawyer in Woodland Hills, Calif., said she recently told the family of a 14-year-old boy who died unexpectedly in a hospital - apparently from medical negligence, Ms. Rice said - that she could not afford to pursue the case. "The law has made it impossible for many victims to get access to the court," she said. Even plaintiffs who get to court often come away empty-handed. Nationally, defendants prevail in nearly 80 percent of the medical malpractice cases that go to trial. Many malpractice suits, legal analysts say, are filed by personal-injury lawyers, accustomed to handling simpler cases like those involving auto accidents, but not as experienced in medical negligence work. In a 2002 survey by the trial lawyers association, only 11 percent of its 60,000 members said medical malpractice was their primary area of practice; 40 percent replied that medical negligence cases were some part of their practice. Mr. Smith, a partner at Power, Rogers & Smith in Chicago, resides at the top of the medical malpractice mountain. He does some aviation litigation, but medical negligence claims account for 70 percent of his cases; in the last 17 years, he has won more than $300 million in verdicts and settlements for clients. Contingency fees collected by his firm would typically be 20 percent of the total, a limit set by Illinois state law on all awards over $1 million. So how much does he earn? "Far less than you might expect," Mr. Smith replied. His firm employs 11 lawyers - six working on medical malpractice cases, the remainder focusing on other personal-injury claims. It also employs four nurses as full-time researchers. Complex cases can require reams of expert testimony, years of investigation and hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare. Medical malpractice lawsuits are custom work, focusing on one victim at a time, as opposed to large class actions against an entire industry, like the $246 billion tobacco settlement that trial lawyers helped 46 states win in 1998. There are no hourly fees and no well-heeled corporate clients paying for expenses. Trial lawyers are the venture capitalists of the legal system, putting their money on the line and taking upfront risk. The occasional big paydays cover the daily expenses. For all the costs, there is still plenty left over for Mr. Smith. He won't say precisely, but he concedes that his yearly income is routinely in the high six figures, and seven figures in good years, which appear to have been plentiful recently. That would put him on a par with partners at leading corporate law firms. At one time, corporate law would have seemed the natural choice for Mr. Smith. In 1973, he was a freshly minted M.B.A. from Northwestern University's graduate school of business, now called the Kellogg School of Management, and most of his job offers were from banks in the Chicago area. But he says he balked at what struck him as an anonymous career within the crowded managerial ranks of a big bank. He became intrigued by the law and enrolled at the Loyola University law school; while there, he started working for the public defender's office. In that office, Mr. Smith got his first taste of trial work, and he vividly described the thrill of standing in the huge courtrooms of the Cook County criminal court and the exhilaration of presenting cases. "It was real life, and the outcome really mattered to people's lives," he said. The most skilled trial lawyers, legal professionals agree, truly savor the theater of the courtroom, the adrenaline rush of verbal combat, the on-the-fly decisions made in cross-examination and the challenge of winning over an audience. "In the end, it all depends on the judgment of 12 people," Mr. Smith noted. But medical malpractice work requires more than a deft touch in court. According to colleagues and courtroom adversaries, Mr. Smith combines a relentless work ethic - needed to absorb the arcane details of medical science - and an underlying belief that his clients are victims who have suffered grave injustices. "The best plaintiffs lawyers in this field, like Todd Smith, almost have a crusader mentality," said Brian C. Fetzer, a leading malpractice defense lawyer in Chicago, who has represented physicians, hospitals and insurers in cases against Mr. Smith for more than 20 years. "They are true believers." Joseph W. Balesteri, a lawyer who joined Power, Rogers & Smith in 2000, after five years working the defense side of medical negligence cases, said of his colleague: "Todd gets into the medicine. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and listening to him you really see that he believes what he says. It's a credibility that is felt by the jury." Mr. Smith says his success rate is higher than 80 percent - including jury verdicts and settlements - far higher than the national average for medical malpractice plaintiffs' lawyers. Being picky in his selection of cases helps explain the high winning percentage. He says he decides to take fewer than 3 in 100 cases that are brought to his firm. "We say to people right off that a bad outcome does not mean you have a medical negligence case," he said. The plaintiffs' lawyer must argue that a doctor or hospital failed to meet the profession's acknowledged standard of care for a certain operation, test or treatment, and, more important, must be able to prove it. Cases worth pursuing, Mr. Smith said, are typically ones in which the victim has suffered a major injury that results in continuing pain, suffering and disability. Brain damage, loss of a limb and facial disfigurement, he noted, are good candidates. AT his firm, potential cases go through rigorous screening that can take months and cost costs tens of thousands of dollars. The victim's medical records are collected after receiving the authorization of the patient or family. Those records are reviewed, and one of the firm's nurse-researchers assesses the care that the patient received. Next, the case is sent to a consulting specialist - often more than one. If the case still seems promising, the accumulated information is sent to a physician who determines whether the care was negligent enough to write a certificate of merit, required in Illinois and some other states, to be presented to the court. "In his speeches, Bush makes it sound as if every lawsuit that is brought is junk or frivolous," Mr. Smith said. "But we do everything we can to weed out cases that are without merit. We have to. Our own money is at risk." The work, time, risk and potential rewards in complex malpractice suits are illustrated by a $20 million settlement Mr. Smith won last June. The origins of the case go back to 1997, when Huong Nguyen, then a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was experiencing shortness of breath doing ordinary things like climbing stairs. She was diagnosed as having a faulty mitral valve, a pair of triangular flaps that regulate blood flow between two of the heart's chambers. The valve had to be repaired or replaced. The surgery lasted more than eight hours, though the procedure usually takes about half that long, Mr. Smith said. The next morning, Ms. Nguyen could squeeze her right hand, but she was otherwise paralyzed and could not speak. She had suffered severe brain damage. A lawyer referred the family to Mr. Smith, who began investigating. After an initial screening by Mr. Smith's firm, the family filed suit against the surgeon, Dr. Bradley S. Allen. Over the next several years, in preparation for trial, the law firm spent $375,000, much of it for the work of specialists like a cardiothoracic surgeon, neurologists, economists and a forensic videographer. Mr. Smith contended that Dr. Allen did not properly remove air from the patient's heart during the procedure and that the resulting air embolus caused brain damage. Dr. Allen's lawyer, Kevin T. Martin, said Ms. Nguyen's resulting disability was a risk in this kind of surgery and "very unfortunate, but not a medical error." The surgery had been videotaped, but when a court ordered Dr. Allen to produce the tape, there was a lengthy gap that included brief segments of television commercials. Had the case gone to trial, Mr. Smith would have contended that the defendant tampered with evidence, an assertion denied by Mr. Martin, who said the gap in the tape had resulted from a mechanical malfunction. Ms. Nguyen is unable to move her arms or legs and cannot sit up or speak on her own. She communicates by tapping her right forefinger on a special keyboard. She suffers from depression and seizures but is cognitively intact. "She is totally aware of her desperate straits," Mr. Smith said. "This is as bad as it gets and she knows it." Mr. Smith's economists estimated that lifetime care for her would cost up to $20 million. The settlement talks, Mr. Smith said, began a few months before the trial was scheduled to start, with the defense offers starting at $5 million and the Nguyen family deciding to settle at $20 million. "It was entirely the family's decision," Mr. Smith said. "I think we could have gotten more in trial." Indeed, the risk for the defense, legal analysts say, is that the pain and suffering damages in such a heart-wrenching case, handled by a skillful medical malpractice lawyer like Mr. Smith, could lift the total award far higher. "There wouldn't have been a dry eye in the house" if Ms. Nguyen's case went to trial, said Mr. Martin, the surgeon's lawyer, who estimated that a jury award could have gone up to $100 million. In settlements, defendants make no admission of guilt and typically try to add confidentiality agreements to the deal. Mr. Smith's firm, as a matter of policy, does not sign such agreements. In big malpractice cases, the administration's proposed cap of $250,000 for pain and suffering would change the terms of trade in settlement talks. In the case of Ms. Nguyen, for example, there were sizable economic costs - for the care of the disabled patient - though the defense would surely have argued that they were less than $20 million. But it is the prospect of unknown, and potentially astronomic, damages in a trial that can give plaintiffs a powerful hand in settlement negotiations. To Mr. Smith, the administration's battle against medical malpractice lawyers is simple to explain. "It's about politics and money; it's not really about health care," he said. "If you want to address the medical malpractice crisis in this country, do something about the medical errors. That's the real problem." THE quality of medicine across the country is uneven, analysts agree, and that represents a huge problem. Medical errors are estimated to be responsible for 45,000 to 98,000 deaths a year - more than those caused by breast cancer, AIDS or motor vehicle accidents, according to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. So Mr. Smith has a point. But improving the quality of health care raises a separate set of complex issues about incentives for improvement, investment in information technology and changes in the culture of medicine. Pointing the finger elsewhere will not get Mr. Smith and his fellow lawyers off the political hook. There have been calls to overhaul medical malpractice before. But this time the White House, doctors, insurers and other business interests, who see curbs on malpractice suits as one step in reducing their health costs, are pushing hard together. The champions of tort reform are spending heavily. Last year, the Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the Chamber of Commerce, and the American Medical Association, the physicians' advocacy group, spent a total of $33.8 million on lobbying, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks federal lobbying. The trial lawyers' association spent $2.9 million on federal lobbying, PoliticalMoneyLine reported. "We're outgunned financially, and we're being targeted because we have supported candidates who support Americans' rights to access to a jury trial," Mr. Smith said. He has done his part. In the 2003-2004 campaign cycle, he contributed just under $100,000, nearly all of it to Democrats and Democratic political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group. Yet even if the Bush administration prevails and malpractice awards are curbed, the impact on Mr. Smith will probably be limited. It may crimp his style but not change his game. "There will always be plenty of work for people like him, the best litigators on the plaintiffs side," said Dr. Sage, the Columbia law school professor. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=STEVE%20LOHR&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=STEVE%20LOHR&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:00:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:00:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Empty House on the Prairie Message-ID: Empty House on the Prairie http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/opinion/02greene.html 5.3.2 By BOB GREENE Chicago IF you and your family would like to move to Crosby, N.D., not only will the town give you a free plot of land on which to build your house, they'll also throw in a free membership to the Crosby Country Club. If you and your family would like to move to Ellsworth, Kan., not only will the town give you free land, they'll also give you thousands of dollars toward a down payment on the house you build if you have children who will attend the public school. If you and your family would like to move to Plainville, Kan., not only will the town give you free land, they will also drastically reduce the property tax on your house for 10 years, and the first-year tax rate will be zero percent. The logical question, upon hearing all of this, is the one I presented to Plainville's mayor, Glenn Sears: What's the catch? Mr. Sears paused for a good seven seconds before answering, as if the question itself did not make sense. Then he said, "There is no catch." But there is a requirement: that you pack up your life as you now know it, and start again in Crosby (population 1,100) or Ellsworth (population 2,500) or Plainville (population 2,000). The free-land offer is the result of one of the most significant American stories of the last century, one that has received sporadic attention because it has unfolded so gradually: the inexorable population flow out of rural areas, toward larger cities. The tiny towns in the Great Plains and upper Midwest don't want to die. They are trying to keep their young people from departing, to beckon home those who have left, and - more and more - to think of ways to entice outsiders to come and build and stay. Thus, proposed tax breaks in Iowa; loans in Nebraska; land giveaways in Kansas and elsewhere. And although word of these lures is getting out, no one truly knows whether any of it will work. In northwestern North Dakota, they think there is no option but to try: Steve Slocum, of the area's development alliance, said, "You don't get any pheasants if you don't shoot your gun." There may be an inherent problem in the approach: when something is free, it appears to have no value. Playing hard to get has long been more effective than throwing yourself at someone. The jaded big-city negotiating line is: "Desperation is the worst cologne." They're not buying that in the towns giving away the land. When I suggested that the towns might do better by taking the opposite psychological direction - charging hefty initiation fees for the pleasure of living in a quiet, safe, low-stress environment - Anita Hoffhines, head of the effort in Ellsworth County, said, "We've tried coy long enough." Yet there does seem to be a danger that, by all but begging outsiders to come, the rural communities will send a false and counterproductive message: that small-town life is so undesirable that the only way to keep people is to chain them down (or bribe them). It might be better to explain to the world exactly why a placid way of life is preferable to urban cacophony and chaos - and inform the outsiders that this kind of living is so valuable, they're going to have to pay a little extra for the privilege of moving in. Make what's inside the tent seem irresistible - a lesson that should have been learned on the midways of every county fair there ever was. Not that the small towns aren't trying to spell out their qualities. They're doing it earnestly (Lincoln, Kan.: "The Size of a Dime With the Heart of a Dollar"); with a wink (northwestern North Dakota: "We have four distinct seasons - three are absolutely beautiful, one is very distinct"); with exuberant punctuation (Atwood, Kan.: "Where else can you enjoy a cup of coffee at the local cafe, and everyone there is your friend?!!!!!"). In some of these towns, a commute to work is four minutes; crime is all but nonexistent; at night you half-believe you can look toward the soundless sky and see the outskirts of heaven. And isolation, in our age of 500 channels, of easy Internet access and e-mail, does not mean the same thing it did to generations past. So if the giveaway programs fail to bring about a new land rush, maybe it will be no one's fault. The United States is no longer quite so young a country; we've been here a while, and nations, like people, get set in their ways. If the great urban-rural population divide stays the way it is, it may be because we all have chosen to live this way, and are not about to change. With that in mind, I asked Nita Basgall, the city clerk of Plainville, to consider what she would do if the invitation was reversed: if, say, New York City were to offer free plots of land in Midtown Manhattan. Her response was courteous and it was instant: "No, thank you." Bob Greene is the author of "Once Upon a Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen" and, most recently, "Fraternity: A Journey in Search of Five Presidents." From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:02:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:02:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Doctors' Journal Says Computing Is No Panacea Message-ID: Technology > Doctors' Journal Says Computing Is No Panacea http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/technology/09compute.html 5.3.9 By [1]STEVE LOHR The Bush administration and many health experts have declared that the nation's health care system needs to move quickly from paper records and prescriptions into the computer age. Modern information technology, they insist, can deliver a huge payoff: fewer medical errors, lower costs and better care. But research papers and an editorial published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association cast doubt on the wisdom of betting heavily that information technology can transform health care anytime soon. One paper, based on a lengthy study at a large teaching hospital, found 22 ways that a computer system for physicians could increase the risk of medication errors. Most of these problems, the authors said, were created by poorly designed software that too often ignored how doctors and nurses actually work in a hospital setting. The likelihood of errors was increased, the paper stated, because information on patients' medications was scattered in different places in the computer system. To find a single patient's medications, the researchers found, a doctor might have to browse through up to 20 screens of information. Among the potential causes of errors they listed were patient names' being grouped together confusingly in tiny print, drug dosages that seem arbitrary and computer crashes. "These systems force people to wrap themselves around the technology like a pretzel instead of making sure the technology is responsive to the people doing the work," said Ross J. Koppel, the principal author of the medical journal's article on the weaknesses of computerized systems for ordering drugs and tests. Dr. Koppel is a sociologist and researcher at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The research focused on ways that computer systems can unintentionally increase the risk of medical errors. The study did not try to assess whether the risks of computer systems outweigh the benefits, like the elimination of errors that had been caused by paper records and prescriptions. Yet Dr. Koppel said he was skeptical of the belief that broad adoption of information technology could deliver big improvements in health care. "These computer systems hold great promise, but they also introduce a stunning number of faults," he said. "The emperor isn't naked, but pretty darn threadbare." Another article in the journal looked at 100 trials of computer systems intended to assist physicians in diagnosing and treating patients. It found that most of the glowing assessments of those clinical decision support systems came from technologists who often had a hand in designing the systems. "In fact, 'grading oneself' was the only factor that was consistently associated with good evaluations," observed the journal's editorial on computer technology in clinical settings, titled "Still Waiting for Godot." The principal author of the editorial, Dr. Robert L. Wears, a professor in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville, said the message from the research studies was that computer systems for patient records, the ordering of treatments and clinical decision support have not yet shown themselves to be mature enough to be useful in most hospitals and doctors' offices. "These systems are as much experiments as they are solutions," said Dr. Wears, who also holds a master's degree in computer science. The medical journal's articles, according to some physicians and technology experts, tend to be too broad in their criticisms because the technology is still developing rapidly and some of the computer systems reviewed were old. Still, even those experts conceded that the articles raised some good points. "They are absolutely right that the people who design these systems need to be in tune with the work," said Dr. Andrew M. Wiesenthal, a physician who oversees information technology projects at Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest nonprofit managed care company. "But the newer systems are designed more that way." Dr. David J. Brailer, the administration's national coordinator for health information technology, termed the articles a "useful wake-up call," though he said the findings were not surprising. In health care, as in other industries, he said, technology alone is never a lasting solution. "The way health information technology is developed, the way it is implemented and the way it is used are what matter," Dr. Brailer said. But Dr. Brailer did take issue with the suggestion that the Bush administration is encouraging a headlong rush to invest in health information technology. For the next year, he said, his policy efforts will be to try to encourage the health industry to agree on common computer standards, product certification and other measures that could become the foundation for digital patient records and health computer systems. "We're not ready yet to really accelerate investment and adoption," Dr. Brailer said. "We have about a year's worth of work." Dr. David W. Bates, medical director for clinical and quality analysis in information systems at Partners HealthCare, a nonprofit medical group that includes Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, said careful planning and realistic expectations were essential for technology in health care. "But the danger is if people take the view that computerized physician order entry and other systems are a bad idea," said Dr. Bates, who is a professor at the Harvard Medical School. "That would be throwing out the baby with the bath water." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=STEVE%20LOHR&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=STEVE%20LOHR&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:02:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:02:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome Message-ID: The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01eins.html 5.3.1 [An Agenda for Another Einstein appended.] By DENNIS OVERBYE He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He threw a small bowling ball at his little sister and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her. There was in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be "the new Copernicus," proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubblegum. No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T- shirts, coffee mugs, posters and dolls. Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people like me who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring a giant detector in the bowels of a particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality. "Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate," said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. Could it happen again? "Who or where is the next Einstein?" No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for some young researcher to be tagged "the new Einstein," so don't expect to hear any names here. "It's probably always a stupid question," said Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein. Dr. Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author, who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes. A Rare Confluence To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask, as well, about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame. Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated. Dr. David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics last year, said, "Of course there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special." Physics, many scientists like Dr. Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the miles of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors. "Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems," said Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. "It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked." But you never know. "One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise," said Dr. Witten, chuckling. "Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?" In fact, physicists admit, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings. "We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key," said Dr. Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He likes to think, he added, that it will be solved by "a Brazilian kid in a dirt floor village." Dr. Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it. "Einstein has lasted 100 years," he said. "The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years." Looking the Part Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by "Einstein." Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th-century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves? Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry? Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this "great adventure in thought," as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general. The world was exhausted morally, mentally and economically from the Great War, which had shattered the pretensions of Enlightenment Europe. People were ready for something new and Einstein gave them a whole new universe. Moreover, the mark of this new universe - "lights all askew in the heavens," as this newspaper put it - was something everybody could understand. The stars, the most ancient of embodiments of cosmic order, had moved. With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science, the frizzy-headed sage of Princeton, the world's most famous Jew and humanity's atomic conscience. It helped that he wore his fame lightly, with humor and a cute accent. "He was a caricature of the scientist," said Dr. Krauss. "He looked right. He sounded right." When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards, an almost biological need to find order and logical consistency in science and in nature, the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality. Dr. Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario describes it as moral quality. "He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics should explain everything in nature coherently and consistently," he wrote last year in Discover. It was that drive that led him to general relativity, regarded as his greatest achievement. The other discoveries, in 1905, physicists and historians say, would have been made whether Einstein did them or not. "They were in the air," said Dr. Martin Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge University and Britain's astronomer royal. The quest for general relativity, on the other hand, was the result of "pure thought," Dr. Rees said. Dr. Peter L. Galison, professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard, described Einstein as "somebody who had a transformative effect on the world because of his relentless pursuit of what the right principles should be." Others said they were impressed that he never swerved, despite a tempestuous personal and political life, from science as his main devotion. "He fixed his concentration on important problems, he was unvarying in that," Dr. Krauss said. Another attraction of Einstein as an icon is his perceived irreverence, and the legend of his origin as an outsider, working in the patent office while he pursued the breakthroughs of 1905. (Not that he was necessarily humble because of that; letters from his early years show him pestering well-known scientists and spoiling for a fight so much that his girlfriend and future wife, Mileva Maric, was always counseling him to keep a cool head.) "Part of the appeal is that he comes from nowhere and turns things upside down," Dr. Galison said. "That's the fantasy," he explained, saying that science has always represented the possibility that someone without a privileged background could intervene and triumph through sheer ability and brainpower. There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet. In the cozy turn of the century, Dr. Galison said, Einstein was able to be a philosopher as well as a physicist, addressing deep questions like the meaning of simultaneity and often starting his papers by posing some philosophical quandary. But philosophy and physics have long since gone their separate ways. Physics has become separated from the humanities. "Everything tells us science has nothing to do with the ideas of ordinary life," Dr. Galison said. "Whether that is good or bad, I don't know." As a result no one has inherited Einstein's mantle as a natural philosopher, said Dr. Galison. We might have to settle for a kind of Einstein by committee. The string theorists have donned the mantle of Einstein's quest for a unified theory of all the forces of nature. In the last half-century various manifestations of modern science have made their way into popular culture, including chaos theory and the representation of information in bits and bytes, as pioneered by Dr. Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs engineer. The discovery of the double helix of DNA, the hereditary molecule, which laid the basis for the modern genetics, is probably the most charismatic result of modern biology. But the world is not awash in action figures based on James Watson and Francis Crick, the molecule's decoders. Meanwhile Einstein's role of symbolizing the hope that you could understand the universe has at least been partly filled by Dr. Hawking, whose books "A Brief History of Time" and "The Universe in a Nutshell" have sold millions, and who has even appeared on "Star Trek" and "The Simpsons." "People know him," said Dr. Krauss, and his work on black holes has had a significant impact on the study of gravity and the cosmos, but he has not reinvented the universe. The Next Big Idea One reason nobody stands out is that physics has been kind of stuck for the last half-century. During that time, Dr. Witten said, physicists have made significant progress toward a unified theory of nature, not by blazing new paths, but by following established principles, like the concept of symmetry - first used by Einstein in his relativity paper in 1905 - and extending them from electromagnetism to the weak and strong nuclear forces. "It was not necessary to invent quantum field theory," said Dr. Witten, "just to improve it." That, he explains, is collective work. But new ideas are surely needed. Part of Einstein's legacy was an abyssal gap in the foundations of reality as conceived by science. On one side of the divide was general relativity, which describes stars and the universe itself. On the other side is quantum mechanics, which describes the paradoxical behavior of subatomic particles and forces. In the former, nature is continuous and deterministic, cause follows effect; in the latter nature is discrete, like sand grains on the beach, and subject to statistical uncertainties. Einstein to his dying day rejected quantum mechanics as ultimate truth, saying in a letter to Max Born in 1924, "The theory yields much but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that he does not play dice." Science will not have a real theory of the world until these two warring notions are merged into a theory of quantum gravity, one that can explain what happens when the matter in a star goes smoosh into a dense microscopic dot at the center of a black hole, or when the universe appears out of nothing in a big bang. String theory is one, as yet unproven, attempt at such a quantum gravity theory, and it has attracted an army of theorists and mathematicians. But, Dr. Witten speculated, there could be an Einsteinian moment in another direction. Quantum gravity presumes, he explained, that general relativity breaks down at short distances. But what, he asked, if relativity also needed correction at long distances as a way of explaining, for example, the acceleration of the universe? "Relativity field theory could be cracked at long distances," Dr. Witten said, adding that he saw no evidence for it. But when Einstein came along, there was no clear evidence that Newtonian physics was wrong, either. "I would think that's an opportunity for an Einstein," he said. Another Einsteinian opportunity, Dr. Witten later added in an e-mail message, is the possibility that Einstein's old bugaboo quantum mechanics needs correcting, saying that while he saw no need himself, it was a mystery what quantum mechanics meant when applied to the universe as a whole. Dr. Smolin of the Perimeter Institute said it should give physicists pause that their leader and idol had rejected quantum mechanics, and yet what everybody is trying to do now is to apply quantum mechanics to Einstein's theory of gravity. "What if he were right?" asked Dr. Smolin, who said he also worried that the present organization of science, with its pressures for tenure and publications, mitigates against the appearance of outsiders like Einstein, who need to follow their own star for a few lonely years or decades. But as Dr. Krauss said, it only takes one good idea to change our picture of reality. Dr. Smolin said, "When somebody has a correct idea, it doesn't take long to have an impact." "It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein," he went on. "When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know." ------------ The New York Times > Science > An Agenda for Another Einstein http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01quest.html 5.3.1 Albert Einstein achieved scientific fame by asking questions and solving problems that nobody else had realized were problems. The next big revolution will probably also come from an unexpected direction, but here are some of the Big Questions that are haunting physicists today. Did God have a choice? Are all the features of the universe, like the number of dimensions and the masses of elementary particles, predictable and inevitable according to some unknown law, or are some of them environmental accidents, meaning we simply live where conditions are favorable to life the way fish live in the sea? What is the dark energy that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe and pushing the galaxies apart faster and faster? Why do we live at a time when this energy is just beginning to dominate over the gravity of matter in determining the course of cosmic evolution? Will this push continue forever, sucking all the energy and life out of the universe? And what is the dark matter, the mysterious gravitational glue that holds galaxies and clusters of galaxies together? Are four dimensions enough? Or are there additional hidden dimensions to the universe, so small we don't notice them? What happened before the Big Bang? How do space and time emerge from formless eternity? Is quantum mechanics the ultimate description of reality? Or will the paradoxical laws that bedeviled Einstein have to be modified? Is relativity forever? In 1905 Einstein postulated that the laws of physics are the same regardless of how fast you are going or in what direction, but some measurements of cosmic rays suggest this stricture might be violated in some high-energy situations. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:03:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:03:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Can God and Caesar Coexist?': That Old-Time Conundrum Message-ID: The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > 'Can God and Caesar Coexist?': That Old-Time Conundrum http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013NOONAN.html March 13, 2005 [First chapter appended.] By JOHN T. NOONAN JR. CAN GOD AND CAESAR COEXIST? Balancing Religious Freedom and International Law. By Robert F. Drinan. 266 pp. Yale University Press. $30. THIS is a book of questions, not answers. Written by Robert F. Drinan, a former congressman from Massachusetts, a former dean of Boston College Law School and a Jesuit, it reflects the insights and doubts of experience, the convictions of a person conversant with practical politics and the candor of a man capable of speaking his mind. He is committed to religious liberty -- a cause, he acknowledges, belatedly embraced by the Roman Catholic Church in 1965 at the Second Vatican Council and championed by Pope John Paul II in resistance to governmental oppression of religion. Its implications for the interior life of the church have not been worked out or even well articulated. In ''Can God and Caesar Coexist?'' Drinan follows the pope in looking at external pressures against religious freedom. Free exercise of religion is not universally accepted. Several Islamic states do not acknowledge it as a good. Neither does the regime in China, which, Drinan says, has ''the worst record on religious freedom in the world.'' So the rejection of it for religious or ideological reasons has powerful support in the international community. Other nations do not persecute religion, but do extend favor to one or several religions. Among these is the United States, whose tax laws are honeycombed with exceptions for organized religion. No country permits the exercise of religion without restraint or favor. In the face of such diversity, Drinan observes, the United Nations has done little to defend religious freedom. Is it possible, he asks, to design an international standard of free exercise that all nations might agree on and enforce? This is not a matter of simple logic. If you have the power to enforce your beliefs, you should do it, foes of free exercise have repeatedly asserted in contexts from Calvin's Geneva to Mao's China, while devotees of wholly free exercise believe a country's culture does not count -- the logic of liberty should wipe out all restrictions, preferences and differentiations. These friends and foes are equally mistaken. The universe they dispute is one of values, not logic. No single value -- not the sovereignty of a country, not even the sacred liberty of conscience -- can be allowed to eat up all other values; balance is everything, and it evolves. The ideal of free exercise must be approached within historically conditioned contexts. James Madison, deservedly seen as the father of the American invention of free exercise, offered three lines of argument about why what he saw as an experiment should be tried. One reflected on the nature of government: nothing equips the state to decide theological disputes or guide citizens to salvation. The second appealed to history: religious persecution created hypocrites and bigots, and religious establishments created a corrupt clergy. The third was theological: an individual's obligation to the Creator transcends any duty to the state; for Christians, force is repudiated by every page of the Gospels. Madison's arguments are attractive, but compelling only in our cultural context. Rulers of an atheistic state would deride the notion that the state has any theological concerns; it simply gets rid of potential troublemakers whose radical allegiance to something beyond the state is subversive. The safety of the state is supreme. As Drinan points out, a repressive state need not be atheistic but only hostile to religiously motivated criticism; so El Salvador permitted the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, six Jesuits and other Catholic critics of an anti-Communist regime. And one can think of governments run by religious fanatics denying the relevance of the Gospel and holding that their teachings set everyone on the true road to divine fulfillment. A skeptic about what the American experiment proves might add that it wouldn't have worked but for the breadth of our continent; it wouldn't have worked except that traditional orthodoxies were softened by biblical criticism; and it hasn't worked very well because we have in fact a civil religion that is American orthodoxy. Today in the United States, to win space for the exercise of one's religion it's easier to invoke the ideal of freedom of speech, a secular shibboleth, than to rely on constitutional protection of free exercise of religion. The skeptic's observations may, however, augur well for the expansion of religious freedom. The same process of criticism that dissolved many traditional certainties among educated people in the West will eventually affect Islam and other faiths. Atheistic Communism is generally regarded as a failed experiment. The globe itself has taken on the role of the American continent; everywhere, as Drinan points out, commercial contacts are blurring national rigidities. In a global community drenched in information that cannot be easily controlled, the freedom to speak may well work to enlarge expression of faith. Speech may be understood to include thought, belief, prayer, ritual and symbolic gestures. It cannot be stretched to include acts with substantial physical effects. There the freedom to follow one's conscience meets the limitation built into every constitutional recognition of free exercise: requirements of public order. As British and Indian governments concluded, suttee does not fall within free exercise. Polyandry and polygamy, religiously authorized or mandatory, have not survived as legal institutions in the West. Refusing military service because of religious objection to a particular war as unjust has been a punishable offense in the United States. The logic of religious freedom has never served as a solvent of all legal restrictions on conduct. No universal formula exists to cover all conflicts between faith-driven behavior and what a particular society will demand. If the American experience is taken as example, evolution of a global consensus will be slow. In the meantime, believers will suffer the cost of discipleship (the Christian shorthand for the cost is the cross) without support in international law. Drinan's unsparing analysis permits no more optimistic conclusion. John T. Noonan Jr.'s most recent book is ''A Church That Can and Cannot Change.'' ------------ First Chapter: 'Can God & Caesar Coexist?' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/chapters/0313-1st-drinan.html By ROBERT F. DRINAN Scores of constitutions drawn up since the end of World War II have proclaimed religious freedom as one of the most fundamental rights known to humanity. Similarly, international covenants of human rights have exalted the right to religious liberty as a privilege that is so foundational and precious that it should be guaranteed by international law. Support for the right to practice the religion of one's choice is very new in human history, and it prompts dozens of questions. If the new right to religious freedom were accepted and enforced, for example, would the world be spared the savagery of wars prompted at least in part by the clash of religious beliefs? The worldwide spread of national and international commitments to religious freedom also begets a host of questions. Can the governmental and other bodies that support this right believe that the absolutism with which most religious bodies have traditionally promulgated their beliefs is now so diminished that the adherents of most religions would not seek to impose their views on others? Is agnosticism now so widespread that neither believers nor nonbelievers have the certainty that is necessary to seek to impose their religious views by force? Whether or not this is the case, the origins and implications of these unprecedented world commitments to protect religious freedom deserve intense scrutiny and evaluation. Support is not universal, and resistance to ensuring religious freedom must also be evaluated. China and India, for example, are not open to witnesses of religions that are not indigenous to those countries. Similarly, the forty or so nations that contain the world's billion Muslims are not always receptive to religious beliefs or bodies whose teachings are, at least in part, contrary to Islam. In other words, although the vast majority of nations have made a commitment to religious freedom, it is unclear how those nations actually behave in respect to creeds and cults that are at variance with their historic cultural and religious beliefs. One would like to think that wars inspired by religious zeal were safely in the past. Clearly they are now forbidden by customary international law; after all, the 191 nations that have ratified the United Nations covenants on political and economic rights have solemnly pledged to refrain from such wars. But the international machinery to prevent them is very new and still feeble. The ultimate reasons why religious freedom is cherished so widely and so deeply today need to be explored and amplified. At its most superficial level, the right to the free exercise of religion is a rule of expediency that can be traced to 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia restored to Lutherans the free practice of their religion in the Holy Roman Empire and extended it to the Calvinists, while recognizing that the dominant religion of a nation normally forms the core of the church-state relationship in that country. Given the presumptive power of the religious majority, religious minorities are protected by the general right to religious freedom. This rule, with some modifications, may be agreeable to the nations of Europe, the United States, and the Commonwealth, but the concept sometimes lacks legs elsewhere. Of every hundred people on Earth, nearly twenty are Muslim. The fifty-five nations that make up the Islamic Conference are deeply divided over the question of religious freedom. Although most Muslims, if asked, would register disapproval of the Taliban's destruction of Buddhist shrines in Afghanistan in 2001, for example, there is nevertheless a consensus among Muslim nations that the secular state can embrace the full exercise of the rights and duties that derive from the Koran. The uncertainty around the world concerning the extent to which governments should guarantee religious freedom is one of the major reasons why the United Nations has not pursued a covenant or a legally binding instrument on freedom of religion, as it has done with respect to such issues as the rights of minorities, women, and children. Similarly, that uncertainty is one of the principal reasons why it has never considered establishing a world entity to monitor compliance with the demands of religious freedom, as it has done to implement its covenants on political and economic rights. As one contemplates the possibility of a world tribunal competent to adjudicate and penalize denials of religious freedom, one must reflect on Christ's predictions that his followers would be persecuted. Indeed, nothing in the New Testament is clearer. Given this received wisdom, why should Christians now seek assurances that they will not be harmed or treated as second-class citizens? In the early years after the Crucifixion, it never entered a Christian's mind-or anyone else's-to insist on the kind of right to religious freedom now set forth solemnly in several documents of the United Nations. Christians like myself may be asked whether their desire to ensure religious freedom for all who have faith in any religion is at odds with their belief in Christianity. But this suggestion of a conflict of faith is not valid, because central to Christianity is the conviction that no one believes in Christ unless that person receives the grace to believe directly from God. Christ made it clear to his Apostles and to all of us that he chose them, they did not choose him. Faith is not earned or merited; it is a gratuitous gift from God. A Christian may, and indeed must, desire that governments facilitate the rights of all persons who accept the gift of faith as it is offered to them by God. To be sure, the Catholic Church did not always seek religious freedom for every believer. For centuries the Church held to the conviction that governments should be required to discourage and even ban not only non-Christian religions but any version of Christianity that differed from Catholicism. But in 1965 the Second Vatican Council radically altered that doctrine, so that now the Catholic Church strongly states that any governmental coercion of individuals to adhere or not to adhere to any religion is wrong. By this policy, Christians seek to protect from persecution not merely themselves but all followers of all the religions of the world. Christians are well aware of Christ's words: "If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you" (John 15:20). The words Christ uttered just before this prediction are equally foreboding: "Because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you" (John 15:17). People of faith are well aware of the complexity of the task of guaranteeing religious freedom. The second edition of World Christian Encyclopedia, issued in 2001, reports that 84 percent of the world's 6.06 billion persons declare themselves to be adherents of some form of organized religion. Fewer than 2 billion are Christian, and about half of these are Catholic. Muslims number 1.1 billion; Hindus, 812 million; and Buddhists, 359 million. The number of Jews throughout the world is estimated to be 14 million. Animists and others account for most of the rest. The idea of creating some sort of international legal machinery to resolve clashes between these religious groups may seem quixotic. Indeed, some observers may have thought it unnecessary-but the genocide in Rwanda, resulting partly from religious differences, has gone far to change their minds. But there are alternatives. A unique trial in Belgium of persons who had fled from Rwanda drew on the four universally binding Geneva conventions of 1949 and led to the conviction of Rwandan nationals, including two nuns, in a foreign nation. Some could argue that this approach is preferable to the establishment of a world tribunal. Although the approach used in Belgium may be satisfactory in some ways, however, it by no means ensures uniformity, reliability, or predictability. Most persons who speak out for religious tolerance may be vulnerable to a claim that they are biased in favor of their own faith. That charge could be made against me, for that matter: the objectivity of a person who by solemn vow is committed to the advancement of the Catholic faith and the interests of the Holy See can be challenged. But as we have seen, the Second Vatican Council made it clear that the Church does not condone any pronouncement or action that allows any shade of "coercion" for the advancement of the Catholic religion. It is certainly clear beyond question that since 1965, the Catholic Church has repudiated centuries of its customary practices, concluding that no government action that seeks to urge citizens to adhere or not to adhere to any religion may be condoned. The idea of creating a world tribunal that would guarantee the free exercise of religion will elicit a strong reaction from both believers and nonbelievers. The world has welcomed the pronouncements of the United Nations committees that monitor the implementation of the political and economic rights to which the vast majority of nations have pledged their support. But an international entity sitting in judgment on the way these same nations regard religious freedom raises more serious misgivings, questions, and doubts. The feeling is somehow pervasive that government organizations-or even a transnational legal body-should not get involved in the religious practices of 84 percent of the human race. But the world also remembers more and more vividly the tragedies brought about in the name of religion by the Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of the Jews, and the many wars over religion in Europe and elsewhere. Indeed, the contemplation of such transgressions led Pope John Paul II to apologize for the atrocities for which the Catholic Church can be held partly or wholly responsible. The 172 nations that participated in the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna repeated and reinforced the proclamations of world law in favor of religious freedom. But the Vienna Conference made no giant step forward in this area, as the participants felt that the threat to world religious freedom had subsided with the demise of the USSR. Since then the hindrances to religious freedom in Sudan, Northern Ireland, China, Bosnia, and elsewhere have strengthened the position of those individuals, nongovernmental organizations, and nations that want greater global protection for the right to religious freedom. But the cry for the expansion of this right is not universal. Many people remain leery of the interjection of secular forces-however well-meaning-into the beliefs or doings of religious groups. Americans generally share a profound distaste for any governmental ruling that could potentially coerce a religious group in what it will or will not do or may proclaim. Although there is no reason that the U.S. example should necessarily serve as a guide for the rest of the world, it does seem to permeate the global debate about what governments can or should do to maximize the religious freedom of persons who are confronted by open hostility because of their religious beliefs or conduct. It is to be hoped that the general international consensus supporting religious freedom will enable the international community to free itself from the vestiges of a past rife with religious persecutions and move toward a future of true religious freedom. The world faces both obstacles and aids as it embarks on this journey. (Continues...) From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:04:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:04:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: In New Book, Professor Sees a 'Mania' in U.S. for Possessions and Status Message-ID: In New Book, Professor Sees a 'Mania' in U.S. for Possessions and Status http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/books/12happ.html March 12, 2005 [Review of the movie appended.] By IRENE LACHER LOS ANGELES - Aldous Huxley long ago warned of a future in which love was beside the point and happiness a simple matter of consuming mass-produced goods and plenty of soma, a drug engineered for pleasure. More than 70 years later, Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has seen the future, and the society he describes isn't all that distant from Huxley's brave new world, although the soma, it seems, is in ourselves. In his new book, "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough" (W. W. Norton & Company), Dr. Whybrow argues that in the age of globalization, Americans are addictively driven by the brain's pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people. "In our compulsive drive for more," writes Dr. Whybrow, 64, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral science, "we are making ourselves sick." His book is part of a new critical genre that likens society to a mental patient. The prognosis is grim. In "American Mania," he argues that the country is on the downswing of a manic episode set off by the Internet bubble of the 1990's. "It's a metaphor that helps guide us," he said, perched on a chair in the study of his rambling high-rise apartment near U.C.L.A. "I think we've shot through happiness as one does in hypomania and come out the other end, and we're not quite sure where we are. "In fact, I think happiness lies somewhere behind us. This frenzy we've adopted in search of what we hope is happiness and perfection is in fact a distraction, like mania is a distraction." "American Mania" is his fourth book for the general public about meaty psychiatric matters. An expert in manic depression and the endocrinology of the central nervous system, he has dissected depression and its relatives ("A Mood Apart" and "Mood Disorders") as well as the winter blahs ("The Hibernation Response"). Educating the public has been an abiding concern in a long career that began with training in psychiatry and endocrinology in his native London and in North Carolina. In 1970, Dr. Whybrow became chairman of the psychiatry department at Dartmouth Medical School and at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to U.C.L.A. in 1997. While the Gordon Gekkos of the world have long had their critics, Dr. Whybrow sees the Enrons and the Worldcoms - the mess left by unfettered capitalism - not as a moral problem, but as a behavioral one. "The outbreak of greed we've seen, especially in business, is partly a function of the changing contingencies we've given businessmen," he said. "If I say to you, 'You can make yourself extremely rich by holding up the share price until such time that you cash out your shares, which are coming due in another six months,' it takes an incredibly unusual person who'll say: 'The share price is going down? I'm afraid I lost that one.' There is an offer of affluence there which the person cannot refuse. They don't need that extra money, but they want that extra money." People are biologically wired to want it, he contends. We seek more than we need because consumption activates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which rewards us with pleasure, traveling along the same brain pathways as do drugs like caffeine and cocaine. Historically, he says, built-in social brakes reined in our acquisitive instincts. In the capitalist utopia envisioned by Adam Smith in the 18th century, self-interest was tempered by the competing demands of the marketplace and community. But with globalization, the idea of doing business with neighbors one must face the next day is a quaint memory, and all bets are off. Other countries are prey to the same forces, Dr. Whybrow says, but the problem is worse here because we are a nation of immigrants, genetically self-selected to favor individualism and novelty. Americans are competitive, restless and driven to succeed. And we have succeeded. But the paradox of prosperity is that we are too busy to enjoy it. And the competitiveness that gooses the economy, coupled with the decline of social constraints, has conspired to make the rich much richer, he asserts, leaving most of the country behind while government safety nets get skimpier. Dr. Whybrow cites United States government statistics that are sobering. Thirty percent of the population is anxious, double the percentage of a decade ago. Depression is rising too, especially among people born after 1966, with 10 percent more reporting depression than did people born before that year. With the rise of the information age in the 1990's, when the global marketplace began staying open 24 hours a day, American mania reached full flower, Dr. Whybrow said. And now that the nation has retreated from that manic peak, we should stop and survey the damage. "Neurobiology teaches us that we're reward-driven creatures on the one side, which is great," he said. "It's a fun part of life. But we also love each other and we want to be tied together in a social context. So if you know that, why aren't we thinking about a civil society that looks at both sides of the balance rather than just fostering individualism? Because fostering individualism will be great for us and it will last a little bit longer, but I believe it's a powerful negative influence upon this country and it's not what was originally intended. Should we be thinking about whether this is the society we had in mind when we started this experiment 200 years ago or are we perhaps moving too fast for our own good?" Dr. Whybrow's analysis of the mania afflicting contemporary society has been praised as acute, but he has been faulted for failing to prescribe any political or economic action as an antidote. "Whybrow does offer an interesting version of the social and cultural contradictions of capitalism," Michael Roth, president of the California College of the Arts, wrote in a review last month in The San Francisco Chronicle, "but it is one that leaves us without much sense of how we might reconstruct the social and political system to create more meaningful work and a more equitable distribution of wealth and of hope." But for Dr. Whybrow, with globalization here to stay, the solution lies with the individual: It's up to each of us to ruminate on our lives and slow down enough so that we can limit our appetites and find a better balance between work and family. He suggested following the example of a man his friend saw running along the beach: "A high tide washed all the little fish onto the beach where they were all gasping for breath. So here's this fellow scooping up each fish and throwing them back into the sea, and my friend goes up to the fellow and says: 'This is a fruitless task. It's not going to make any difference.' And the fellow picks up a fish, throws it into the sea and says, 'To this one it does.' " ---------------- The New York Times > Movies > Method and Madness: Making Crazy Look Real http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/movies/12craz.html March 12, 2005 By IRENE LACHER LOS ANGELES - [1]Jamie Foxx might have left the Kodak Theater with the best actor award on Oscar night, but in another part of Los Angeles, the kudos went to [2]Leonardo DiCaprio for his portrayal of the obsessive-compulsive Howard Hughes in [3]"The Aviator." Psychiatrists associated with the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, were pulling for DiCaprio because they knew just how authentic his performance was, not least because the institute helped him shape it. "You didn't feel that he was acting the pathology," said Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, director of the institute. "You felt the pathology was part of him. You could look at him and think he was really suffering." Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, an expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder at the institute, said the actor's success in exposing Hughes's inner demons was an achievement worthy of a great writer. "You think of Shakespeare and Faulkner," said Dr. Schwartz, who was hired as a consultant on the film. "The audience is transported into the inner life of the person who is suffering, and at its best, that can happen in the cinema." To bring the script to life line by line, Dr. Schwartz worked closely with Mr. DiCaprio in a dozen meetings at the actor's home, as well as several more with the director [4]Martin Scorsese at the Hotel Bel-Air. After shooting began, one of Dr. Schwartz's patients advised Mr. DiCaprio on the Montreal set for 10 days. Delving into a mentally ill character's inner life with the help of a psychiatrist can be a method actor's dream. [5]Susan Sarandon, [6]Sam Waterston and [7]Jill Clayburgh are some of the actors who have passed through the institute's Imagination Workshop, where they not only hone their skills but also work with patients to create and stage original productions in a form of theater therapy. "Their acting is enhanced by understanding how the mind fragments," Dr. Whybrow said. "What they see in engaging someone whose mind has fragmented - they work with them in trying to put them back together again - is a lot about how the mind works, and they express that in their craft." Margaret Ladd, a stage and television actress who founded the Imagination Workshop in 1969 with her screenwriter husband, Lyle Kessler, said her work there helped her turn a five-episode role as the disturbed daughter of [8]Jane Wyman's character on the television soap "Falcon Crest" into a part that lasted from 1981 to 1989. "I blew everyone away because I knew what it looked like, and I knew the intrinsic dignity of it," Ms. Ladd said. "Instead of playing crazy, I realized what the inner depths of feelings were that were causing it to happen. I wasn't playing a symptom. I knew they were struggling to reintegrate themselves." It is a sore point for many psychiatrists that mental disorders are so often portrayed inaccurately in film. "They make them look like lunatics, but many patients who are mentally ill are not crazy at all, particularly if they have depression or mood disorders," said Dr. Laszlo Gyulai, director of the bipolar disorders program of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who worked with [9]Brad Pitt for the actor's role as a mental patient in the 1995 sci-fi thriller [10]"Twelve Monkeys." "Frequently, with people who aren't experts, that's difficult to grasp, and they may not grasp the human dimension of it either." Nonetheless, it is still fairly rare for psychiatrists to be brought in as consultants. Dr. Schwartz says he believes it is vital that actors' portrayals be accurate, because they help shape popular conceptions of what mental illness is about, especially for people who don't see it in their everyday lives. References 1. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=24604&inline=nyt-per 2. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=18926&inline=nyt-per 3. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=84175;3452;287834;162326&inline=nyt_ttl 4. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=110533&inline=nyt-per 5. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=63158&inline=nyt-per 6. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=74941&inline=nyt-per 7. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=13546&inline=nyt-per 8. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=77721&inline=nyt-per 9. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=56988&inline=nyt-per 10. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=135562&inline=nyt_ttl From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:05:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:05:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] 'Diane Arbus Revelations': The Profound Vision of Diane Arbus: Flaws in Beauty, Beauty in Flaws Message-ID: Arts > Art & Design > Photography Review | 'Diane Arbus Revelations': The Profound Vision of Diane Arbus: Flaws in Beauty, Beauty in Flaws http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/arts/design/11kimm.html March 11, 2005 PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW | 'DIANE ARBUS REVELATIONS' The Profound Vision of Diane Arbus: Flaws in Beauty, Beauty in Flaws By [1]MICHAEL KIMMELMAN A TEENAGER in a straw boater, with big apricot-shaped ears, thin lips and matching bow tie, gazes out from the photograph, whose date is 1967. He is standing beside, and perhaps he's holding (his hands are out of the frame, so it's hard to tell) an American flag. He wears a bowtie-shaped flag pin, too, with buttons affixed on each lapel. "Bomb Hanoi," one says. Presumably the audience Diane Arbus imagined for this picture would have regarded the boy, if not as another of her "freaks," then as somebody different from them. Arbus once said that she wanted to photograph "evil," about which her daughter, Doon, ventured that what Arbus really meant was that she wanted to photograph what was "forbidden." "She was determined," Doon Arbus explained, "to reveal what others had been taught to turn their backs on." Or you might say she wanted to find the humanity in people that others shunned. A contrarian, Arbus could do the opposite - she could revel in flaws in the admired and celebrated. But this boy's gentle, open face, his obvious vulnerability, convey the tenderness and bittersweet melancholy that are Arbus's finest modes of expression, the emotions that reveal themselves after her best pictures leave their first impression, which is often alarm, distrust or unease. "Everybody has this thing where they need to look one way, but they come out looking another way, and that's what people observe," she wrote. "You see someone on the street, and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw." While spotting the flaws, much of the time Arbus transformed them into gifts. Her powerful and moving retrospective, the first full-dress overview in more than three decades and, with the cooperation of the Arbus estate, the most extensive ever organized, has finally arrived at the Metropolitan Museum. It opened more than a year ago at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, trailing in its wake the expected arguments about her work. Last year a separate exhibition at the Grey Art Gallery proffered some of Arbus's commercial work, for Esquire magazine; it included a cache of previously unseen pictures she shot for an affluent Upper East Side family on commission. Tendentious but instructive, that comparatively smallish event revealed what Arbus did when she didn't have her heart in her work. Arbus without heart was heartless. By contrast, this retrospective proves that her memorable work, which she did, on the whole, not for hire but for herself, was all about heart - a ferocious, audacious heart. It transformed the art of photography (Arbus is everywhere, for better and worse, in the work of artists today who make photographs), and it lent a fresh dignity to the forgotten and neglected people in whom she invested so much of herself. In the process, she captured a moment, the anxious 1950's and 60's, and - this probably applies as much to Arbus as to any other photographer of the second half of the last century - she captured New York. Appropriately, she is given the royal treatment at the Met. Put together by Sandra S. Phillips and Elisabeth Sussman in San Francisco, the exhibition is here laid out with leisurely amplitude by Jeff Rosenheim, an associate curator at the Met. Photographs sprawl through huge galleries that on earlier occasions featured Ingres and El Greco. Rooms are specially set aside for letters, cameras, books and other Arbus memorabilia - chapels of relics, maddeningly dark, dense and theatrical but implying the extent to which her photography was connected with her interests in literature, history, art and the photographic traditions that encompassed figures like August Sander, Walker Evans, Weegee and Arbus's teacher, Lisette Model (a Model show is now at Ricco/Maresca in Chelsea; review, Page 39). With more than 175 pictures, the Met retrospective fleshes out that limited core of Arbus photographs canonized by the landmark show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972, a year after her suicide, at 48. By that time she had become a kind of legend and the debate had polarized: Arbus as a compassionate champion of the neglected versus Arbus as exploitative, a narcissist of morbid eloquence. Or as Susan Sontag infamously put it, the photographer of "a single village": "only, as it happens the idiot village is America." Arbus could be both, in retrospect. In another photograph from 1967, she turns a different patriotic young man brandishing his flag into a rabid, pimply fool, leering into the merciless glare of her camera's flash. But even that cruel picture, with his intense, almost otherworldly expression, has an intimacy that breaches the customary space separating subject and viewer, insisting that the people who look at it confront, close up, somebody whom they might not otherwise have met or wished to meet. This was Arbus's project from the beginning. Her work derived partly from Sander's sweeping chronicle of German society but was narrower in scope and less documentary. Arbus looked for secret worlds and the uncanny. Her ambition was both novel and also novelistic. She became a kind of magic realist of photography, and it's no wonder, early on, that she photographed the inside of movie houses with their smoky projector beams and glimmering screens, casting the audience in silhouette - dream palaces where light became fiction. At around the same time, she was sneaking her camera, as Evans had done in the subway, onto a sundeck at Coney Island to photograph naked women sunbathing. She caught a mother in a park carrying her young son, a ready-made Piet?, and she snapped a woman on the street with her eyes closed, like Cartier-Bresson's Spanish boy tossing a ball in the air, as if enraptured. A girl in a cap stares out at us from yet another picture, with the urgency we read into the expression of the woman in "Bishop by the Sea," who looks possessed in her shiny gown and cheap tiara. If the proper word isn't spirituality then it's grace. Arbus touches her favorite subjects with grace. It's in the spread-arm pose of the sword swallower, in the tattooed human pincushion, like St. Sebastian, and in the virginal waitress at the nudist camp, with her apron and order pad and her nicked shin. And it's famously in the naked couple in the woods, like Adam and Eve after the Fall. Above all it's in the young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, a heartbreaking photograph, which nearly harks back to Vel?zquez's "Meninas" or Goya. Mother and father are Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean impersonators, she looking haunted, he staring warily ahead, gently cupping the hand of his retarded son. As Arbus said, everybody concocts versions of themselves for the world, which the world sees through, and in the end we see ourselves in how we see each other. Therein is the delicate tonal balance necessary for Arbus's sensational art to elevate her subjects. She was a tonal craftsman, we're reminded. She achieves phenomenal elegance with the elderly woman in a turban - it's her version of a Rembrandt - the woman in half-shadow, crosslegged on her couch with a dangling cigarette, light pouring in from windows on either side. Likewise, look at what she manages with the familiar triplets in their bedroom: at the periphery, the dizzy pattern of the wallpaper playing against the pattern of the bedspread; the girls physically linked, and our vision slowed down, as we focus on the center of the picture, by the continuous black and white swaths of matching skirts and blouses and by the equally calm but slightly different expressions on the faces. And then there is the naked man being a woman, a Madonna turned in contrapposto, flanked by parted curtains, with his penis hidden between his legs. The curtains are stained, the marks from his brassiere and panties, which he has clearly just taken off, still show; a Schaefer beer can is on the floor and his bed is heaped with junk. But he seems at ease with himself and with Arbus, enough to have let her into his home. "The farther afield you go, the more you are going home," Arbus also wrote. It is, she added, "as if the gods put us down with a certain arbitrary glee in the wrong place and what we seek is who we had really ought to be." Her subjects, like that naked man and the circus performers, had already "passed their test in life," she added. "Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks are born with their trauma. They're aristocrats." Which explains her notorious late photographs of women at a home for the mentally retarded. Everybody notes Goya, of course. But these are loving pictures, and discomfort with them is not shared by the women, who clearly enjoy themselves. The world is full of wondrous things, if our eyes are open enough to recognize them, these photographs imply, and in the end we are all drawn together by our different flaws. "The world is a Noah's ark on the sea of eternity containing all the endless pairs of things, irreconcilable and inseparable," Arbus said in a letter to a friend. "And heat will always long for cold and the back for the front and smiles for tears and mutt for jeff and no for yes with the most unutterable nostalgia there is." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MICHAEL%20KIMMELMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MICHAEL%20KIMMELMAN&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:10:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:10:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] 'Starlet': A Peek at the System in School for Starlets Message-ID: Arts > Television > TV Weekend | 'Starlet': A Peek at the System in School for Starlets http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/arts/television/04tvwk.html March 4, 2005 By [1]ALESSANDRA STANLEY Correction Appended "The Starlet," a WB reality show that applies the "American Idol" formula to would-be Hollywood actresses, begins with a cautionary face: the masklike visage of Faye Dunaway, eyes pulled so tight and jaw so taut that she can show expression only through her voice. Luckily, it is still a fine instrument. When Ms. Dunaway eliminates a contestant in the climactic "You're fired" moment of each episode, she lets the timbre fall into a smoky, menacing whisper. "Don't call us," she says. "We'll call you." The fleeting nature of beauty and stardom is the subliminal lesson in a show that purports to groom young actresses for Hollywood: lilies that fester end up as talent judges on WB or the butt of Showtime's "Fat Actress" reality show. The young women live together in a Hollywood mansionette that once was home to Marilyn Monroe; the winner of each round receives a gold statuette and the right to sleep in the "diva" room, an opulent master bedroom and boudoir. The last one standing after all the coaching and screen tests wins a management contract, a WB talent deal and a role on the WB series "One Tree Hill." But the elimination process is the real role of a lifetime. The show's creators have skillfully fashioned a pedestrian talent show into a harrowing contest that blends the gauzy melodrama of "Stage Door" with the brutality of "Platoon." Most shrewdly, the producers cast 10 young women who all bear a strong resemblance to well-known actresses. Mercedes, 24, is a delicate brunette who could pass for a young Teri Hatcher. Andria, 24, a perky blond former Miss Teen Texas, is a Reese Witherspoon wannabe, and spunky Courtney, also 24, has the short red hair and puffy lips of Molly Ringwald in her Brat Pack days. It's a handy Hollywood mnemonic device: agents hitch their unknown clients to the celebrities they look somewhat like. The only person who looks like absolutely no one, not even her father, Robert Wagner, is the master of ceremonies, Katie Wagner, a television entertainment reporter with the stiff improbably blond hair, snow-white teeth and waxy, factory-cut features of a cosmetic makeover addict. "Starlet" is not a cynical, malicious Fox show, however. WB is a cable network that caters to young people. The show casts the contestants' Eve Harrington fever as a universal quest - and even a noble one. In the introduction, as grainy images of a small child bowing onstage in a ballet tutu fill the screen, a narrator intones, "Every girl dreams of becoming a star." Suddenly, the images shift to movie stars like Scarlett Johansson and Uma Thurman sashaying down a red carpet as their fans scream with delight. The young women express soaring ambition. Donna, a 20-year-old African-American model (the young Tyra Banks), tells the camera, "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind, and there never was, that I will be famous." Cecile, 20, a tall South African blonde (the young Charlize Theron), is even bolder. "I've always thought of myself as larger than life," she says serenely. "I've always known I was going to be a legend." Some of them also have poignant up-from-the-trailer-park stories. Michelynne, 18 (Keri Russell in the first season of "Felicity"), was raised in poverty by a single mother and recalls a childhood Christmas when her presents came from the Salvation Army. Those painful memories come in handy when the contestants are sent to the Hollywood acting coach Bobbie Shaw Chance (a bosomy Konstantin Stanislavski) to learn the method for tapping into their emotions. She gets them started by pointing to a seat in her studio and saying, "By the way, you are sitting where Brad sat." Ms. Shaw Chance urges students to focus on more than their looks. "Its very easy to be a road company Pamela Anderson," she says sternly. "If that's what you want." But their acting skills are put to a preliminary test by having to recite two lines from a classic - a scene from "The Bodyguard." All of them have to mimic Whitney Houston berating Kevin Costner. "I do what I want when I want," is one line. The other is: " You work here. You work for me." Ms. Dunaway has two other judges on her panel, Joseph Middleton, a casting director ("Legally Blonde"), and the actress Vivica A. Fox ("Independence Day"), and their deliberations provide a fascinating peek at the Hollywood system. In front of the contestants, the judges talk a lot about craft and technique and hard work. When they are among themselves, they focus on other things to narrow the selection. "I would like to tone down that blue eye shadow," Ms. Fox says in disgust after one of the contestants recites her lines. She lifts her hands to her eyelids. "Blend," she says. "Blend." The girl is unanimously eliminated. Ms. Dunaway has higher standards, and is just as tough. "This is not the Paris Hilton school of acting," she tells one teary also-ran. But when a contestant turns defensive and talks back to Ms. Dunaway, Ms. Fox leaps to the star's defense and tears the upstart's impudence to shreds. "That is a legend you are speaking to," Ms. Fox says sharply. "Are you listening? You have talent, but there is an arrogance that comes from you that, boy, is such a turnoff to me." "The Starlet" has been packaged as a vehicle for discovering the next Julia Roberts or Hilary Swank, but the real talent lurks behind the camera. Mike Fleiss, who cut his teeth on "The Bachelor" and, most recently, "The Will," teamed up with the comedian and producer Jamie Kennedy ("The Jamie Kennedy Experiment"). Together they have concocted the perfect reality show for the age of celebrity and instant gratification - the Schwab's overnight discovery myth as reality show. 'Starlet' WB, Sunday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Mike Fleiss, Jamie Kennedy, executive producers; Ellen Rapoport, Josh Etting and Scott Einziger, co-executive producers. Next Entertainment Studios in association with Telepictures Productions. WITH: Katie Wagner, host; Faye Dunaway, Joseph Middleton, Vivica A. Fox as the experts. Correction: March 5, 2005, Saturday: The TV Weekend column yesterday, about "The Starlet," referred to the WB network incorrectly. It is a broadcast network, not cable. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ALESSANDRA%20STANLEY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ALESSANDRA%20STANLEY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 14:11:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 10:11:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Online Shopper: Look Sharp. Feel Sharp. Be Sharp. Message-ID: Fashion & Style > Online Shopper: Look Sharp. Feel Sharp. Be Sharp. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/fashion/14online.html April 14, 2005 By MICHELLE SLATALLA MY husband is a suspicious man. Recently, for instance, he decided someone in the house had been sneaking around, using his disposable safety razor. I found him at the sink, draping a hair over the blade. "You can't possibly be doing what I think you're doing," I said. "I was laying a trap," he said. "To catch you red-handed." I spoke slowly and deliberately: "No one is using your razor." "How do you explain this?" he asked, pointing to a scrape on his neck. "That shouldn't happen with a two-day-old razor." It did look as if he had been shaving with a doughnut. Let me reiterate for the record that no one else is using or has ever used his razor. Despite his accusation, I felt moved by his plight. Shaving shouldn't be a chore. Once there was a time, in an era of neighborhood barbershops and soothing mentholated balms, when this task enjoyed the exalted status of a comforting grooming ritual. Drugstore disposables own the market now. But I had heard about a growing subculture of shaving mugs and rich lathers, a world of bristle brushes and razors with a little heft to them. Figuring the Internet might be the place where such a movement thrives, I went online to look. All it took was a Google keyword search for "badger bristles" to arrive at the strange and amazing culture of old-fashioned shaving gear and to learn that, yes, a shaving renaissance was under way. My grandfather would have been at home shopping online. At [1]www.classicshaving.com, I found old-fashioned, no-nonsense shaving gear like straight-edge razors, strops and hones. Sites like [2]www.menessentials.com sold cakes of shave soap, the kind that sits in a shaving mug awaiting lathering. Bricks-and-mortar shops like the Art of Shaving, which has three stores in Manhattan, offered products including brushes with faux ivory handles online at [3]www.theartofshaving.com. Even more fascinating was the accompanying literature. I found articles that read like a male hygiene version of the Bill of Rights, describing why men are entitled to nice-smelling lathers and a smooth shave. At [4]MenEssentials.com, James Whittall, the site's owner, wrote a 10-point "MANifesto." Point No. 7 proclaimed, "Men shouldn't have to buy their skin and grooming products from women's cosmetics counters or girly online 'beauty' stores." "A lot of things have happened to crystallize the shaving renaissance," Mr. Whittall said in a telephone conversation. "Guys are looking for something that feels a little bit better than a disposable razor and a can of shave foam." At [5]www.enchanteonline.com, the owner, Charles Roberts, sells a line of cutting balms ($35 to $65 per bottle), moisturizing creams ($35 apiece) and aromatic spray tonics ($15 for four ounces) that he created while relying on the principles he describes in "Shaving Graces," a collection of essays. "The task of shaving has been reduced to the tedium of a daily misery," Mr. Roberts wrote. I phoned, wondering why the situation had deteriorated so badly. "The onset of mass marketing," Mr. Roberts said. "After World War II there was a generational break, where every man who used a shaving brush got rapidly converted to the exciting concept of shaving cream from an aerosol can." Mr. Roberts said newfangled products will never provide "the grand experience" of "the dance of shave brush and razor across the skin." By now I was armed with arguments for spending money on throwback gear. All I needed to know was what to buy. Ray Dupont, who owns [6]ClassicShaving.com, offers phone consultations. "Can you recommend a basic kit for beginners?" I asked him. "Not really," he said. "That's like trying to buy one-size-fits-all underwear. It might fit, but the odds are it won't. Shaving equipment is a very personal item." I said: "I'll describe my husband. He's kind of paranoid and thinks other people are using his stuff. " Mr. Dupont cut me off. "He should call me himself," he said. "I'll quiz him about his beard and skin conditions and what scent he likes." "He might not have time to phone," I said. "Ask him," Mr. Dupont said. My husband dropped what he was doing and called. Journalist that he is, he took notes. Here is a portion of the transcript of the conversation. Mr. Dupont: "Why do you want to switch?" Husband: "I live among many women, a house full of females, and they will often steal my blade, use it and then nicely put it back. Next thing I know, dull." Mr. Dupont: "You need something they won't use." Husband: "A straight edge?" Mr. Dupont: "Are you a straight-edge kind of guy? Do you change your own oil?" Husband: "No." Mr. Dupont: "Do you wash your own car?" Husband: "No." Mr. Dupont: "You're a safety razor guy. Go with a double-edge, a single blade with an edge on either side. A lot of women find them intimidating to use." Afterward my husband wrote a wish list. On it was the Vision (the top-of-the-line safety razor from Merkur, a European maker, $119.99 at ClassicShaving.com), the Vulfix No. 2236 badger brush, $89.99 (described by Mr. Dupont as "a brush with a little more meat on its bones"), a ceramic mug with an unscented soap cake ($12.99 for both) and blade refills ($4.59 for 10). I bought it all. I wonder how well the fancy razor works on legs. References 1. http://www.classicshaving.com/ 2. http://www.menessentials.com/ 3. http://www.theartofshaving.com/ 4. http://MenEssentials.com/ 5. http://www.enchanteonline.com/ 6. http://ClassicShaving.com/ From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 15 18:55:04 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 11:55:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] realism in foreign policy In-Reply-To: <200504151800.j3FI0N219968@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050415185504.64828.qmail@web30809.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>In an editorial headlined "Realism's Shining Morality," they wrote: "Overzealousness in the cause of democracy (along with a corresponding underestimation of the costs and dangers) has led to a dangerous overstretch in Iraq," arguing that United States interests may sometimes require cooperation with undemocratic regimes.<< --I'm not sure how that's controversial... obviously further military adventures would be costly and likely require a draft, which nobody seems to want. The limits of a volunteer military funded by taxpayer money are being felt out by the administration, which I hope will be honest with itself about the cost. And we're not about to withdraw our involvement with the Saudis or Pakistan if it means the possibility of religious zealots taking over and nationalizing oil or gaining control of Pakistan's nukes. It seems like the real disagreement is over how *honest* to be about our policies. It's one thing for a government to use lofty rhetoric to sell its policies to the public, another thing for an administration to believe its own rhetoric and overextend itself. I don't know whether our current leadership knows the difference, but I don't think most policy analysts would support democracy at any price in the Middle East or unlimited military expansion. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:20:06 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:20:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Center for Bioethics and Culture: Interview with Christine Rosen plus European Union Will not Destroy Embryos Message-ID: Interview with Christine Rosen plus European Union Will not Destroy Embryos http://www.thecbc.org/enewsletter/index.html Interview: CBC National Director Jennifer Lahl interviews Christine Rosen 1. Why did you write Preaching Eugenics? Was there a big overarching questions you were attempting to answer? I wrote Preaching Eugenics because I thought it was important to describe this unknown part of our eugenic past. I took it up not in the spirit of an expose (indeed, I wasn't even sure what I'd find when I started working my way through the archives) but as an effort to contribute to existing scholarship on the subject - a new layer of mortar and brick for the already impressive wall of scholarly work about eugenics in the United States, if you will. If I began with any overarching question in mind, it was a broad one: what was the relationship between religion and science in this time and place (the early twentieth century United States) and what role did eugenics play in that relationship? 2. Who were the religious leaders propagating this growing social movement? Why did they support it? Across denominations and faiths, the Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who supported eugenics were overwhelmingly from the liberal end of the theological spectrum. This did not mean that they were [11] politically liberal, of course, but they did tend to share a commitment to a non-literal reading of scripture and were optimistic about the benefits that modern science might bring to bear on the many pressing social problems they felt the country faced. Most of the religious supporters of eugenics had long ago reconciled their faiths with evolutionary theory, for example, and many of them had considerable experience in charities and corrections work, which colored their views about things such as degeneracy and poverty. Broadly speaking, why did they support it? These were religious leaders who embraced modern ideas first and adjusted their theologies later. Most of them did this because they sincerely believed, with most progressives at the time, that eugenics would alleviate human suffering. 3. What was going on with early feminism at this time? Was there a role the feminists played to support this movement or were there voices speaking out against it? One of the most vigorous supporters of eugenics was birth control activist Margaret Sanger. She lobbied intensely, and ultimately successfully, for the organized eugenics movement and the birth control movement to join forces to improve the human race by preventing reproduction among the "less fit" members of society. At an international eugenics conference in 1921, for example, Sanger said, "The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective." Her periodical, the Birth Control Review, published many supportive articles about eugenics and in her book, Woman and the New Race, she wrote that birth control "is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, or preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives." This certainly places her far outside the mainstream of feminism today, and many feminists are loath to acknowledge Sanger's avid embrace of eugenics, but in the early twentieth century, among self-described progressives such as Sanger, this was an entirely acceptable view to promote. 4. Who were the voices crying out against this early eugenics movement? And to what effect? Some of the most vigorous opponents of eugenics were Catholics and conservative Protestants. In books and periodicals, they registered their complaints about eugenics and its outgrowths--including immigration restriction and compulsory sterilization of the "unfit." Catholic detractors usually cited natural law teaching in their opposition to eugenics, while conservative Protestants (many of whom still resisted evolutionary theory), drew on scripture. They did have some impact; indeed, Catholic lobbying efforts at the state level were successful many times in preventing the passage of state eugenic sterilization laws. Christine Rosen Ethics and Public Policy Center Washington, DC -------------- European Union Will not Destroy Embryos Commission clarifies its ethical framework for research 4/11/2005 [12](cordis news) When the Commission published its proposals for the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) on 6 April, many observers were keen to know how it would deal with ethical issues, such as whether or not to fund embryonic stem cell research. In response, the Commission has published a memo outlining its proposed approach to ethical issues under FP7, and clarifying the situation with regard to embryonic stem cell research under the current programme. According to the Commission, two specific passages in the FP7 proposals sum up its approach to ethical issues. First: 'Research activities supported by this Framework Programme should respect fundamental ethical principles, including those reflected in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The opinions of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technology are and will be taken into account.' Second, the proposals state that: 'All the research activities carried out under the Seventh Framework Programme shall be carried out in compliance with fundamental ethical principles.' As an example of how such an approach could be applied in practice, the Commission outlined its treatment of embryonic stem cell research under the current framework programme. In all cases, the EU strictly forbids funding for research that involves human reproductive cloning, the creation of embryos for research (or therapeutic cloning), or research that would alter the human genetic heritage. Furthermore, the EU will not fund a project in a particular Member State that involves research practices that are forbidden in that particular country. The Commission also refuses to fund projects that involve the derivation of stem cells from embryos directly, which would imply the destruction of a supernumerary embryo for the purposes of EU research. There is no element of FP6 that directly calls for projects involving any type of stem cell research, the Commission points out. When it does receive proposals from researchers wishing to make use of stem cells, priority is always given to those involving adult stem cells, which, it says, pose no ethical problems. The result so far under FP6 is that of the 25 projects involving stem cell research to be selected for EU funding, only two include a component on embryonic stem cells, which together amount to 0.002 per cent of the total FP6 budget. References 11. http://www.thecbc.org/redesigned/resources_genetics.php?category=Genetics%20and%20Eugenics&type=Books 12. http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=EN_RCN_ID:23650 13. http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/05/121&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:23:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:23:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: The Infinite Library Message-ID: The Infinite Library http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_library.asp?p=0 By Wade Roush May 2005 The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in England is the only place you are likely to find an Ethernet port that looks like a book. Built into the ancient bookcases dominating the oldest wing of the 402-year-old library, the brown plastic ports share shelf space with handwritten catalogues of the university's medieval manuscripts and other materials. Some of the volumes are still chained to the shelves, a 17th-century innovation designed to discourage borrowing. But thanks to the Ethernet ports and the university's effort to digitize irreplaceable books like the catalogues--which often contain the only clue to locating an obscure book or manuscript elsewhere in the vast library--users of the Bodleian don't even need to take the books off the shelves. They can simply plug in their laptops, connect to the Internet, and view the pertinent pages online. In fact, anyone with a Web browser can read the catalogues, a privilege once restricted to those fortunate enough to be teaching or studying at Oxford. The digitization of the world's enormous store of library books--an effort dating to the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere--has been a slow, expensive, and underfunded process. But last December librarians received a pleasant shock. Search-engine giant Google announced ambitious plans to expand its "Google Print" service by converting the full text of millions of library books into searchable Web pages. At the time of the announcement, Google had already signed up five partners, including the libraries at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Michigan, along with the New York Public Library. More are sure to follow. Most librarians and archivists are ecstatic about the announcement, saying it will likely be remembered as the moment in history when society finally got serious about making knowledge ubiquitous. Brewster Kahle, founder of a nonprofit digital library known as the Internet Archive, calls Google's move "huge....It legitimizes the whole idea of doing large-volume digitization." But some of the same people, including Kahle, believe Google's efforts and others like it will force libraries and librarians to re?xamine their core principles--including their commitment to spreading knowledge freely. Letting a for-profit organization like Google mediate access to library books, after all, could either open up long-hidden reserves of human wisdom or constitute the first step toward the privatization of the world's literary heritage. "You'd think that if libraries are serious about providing access to high-quality material, the idea of somebody digitizing that stuff very quickly--well, what's not to like?" says Abby Smith, director of programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources, a Washington, DC, nonprofit that helps libraries manage digital transformation. "But some librarians are very concerned about the terms of access and are very concerned that a commercial entity will have control over materials that libraries have collected." They're also concerned about the book business itself. Publishers and authors count on strict copyright laws to prevent copying and reuse of their intellectual property until after they've recouped their investments. But libraries, which allow many readers to use the same book, have always enjoyed something of an exemption from copyright law. Now the mass digitization of library books threatens to make their content just as portable--or piracy prone, depending on one's point of view--as digital music. And that directly involves libraries in the clash between big media companies and those who would like all information to be free--or at least as cheap as possible. Whatever happens, transforming millions more books into bits is sure to change the habits of library patrons. What, then, will become of libraries themselves? Once the knowledge now trapped on the printed page moves onto the Web, where people can retrieve it from their homes, offices, and dorm rooms, libraries could turn into lonely caverns inhabited mainly by preservationists. Checking out a library book could become as anachronistic as using a pay phone, visiting a travel agent to book a flight, or sending a handwritten letter by post. Surprisingly, however, most backers of library digitization expect exactly the opposite effect. They point out that libraries in the United States are gaining users, despite the advent of the Web, and that libraries are being constructed or renovated at an unprecedented rate (architect Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Central Library, for example, is the new jewel of that city's downtown). And they predict that 21st-century citizens will head to their local libraries in even greater numbers, whether to use their free Internet terminals, consult reference specialists, or find physical copies of copyrighted books. (Under the Google model, only snippets from these books will be viewable on the Web, unless their authors and publishers agree otherwise.) And considering that the flood of new digital material will make the job of classifying, cataloguing, and guiding readers to the right texts even more demanding, librarians could become busier than ever. "I chafe at the presumption that once you digitize, there is nothing left to do," says Donald Waters, a former director of the Digital Library Federation who now oversees the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's extensive philanthropic investments in projects to enhance scholarly communication. "There is an enormous amount to do, and digitizing is just scratching the surface." Digitization itself, of course, is no small challenge. Scanning the pages of brittle old books at high speed without damaging them is a problem that's still being addressed, as is the question of how to store and preserve their content once it's in digital form. The Google initiative has also amplified a long-standing debate among librarians, authors, publishers, and technologists over how to guarantee the fullest possible access to digitized books, including those still under copyright (which, in the United States, means everything published after January 1, 1923). The stakes are high, both for Google and for the library community--and the technologies and business agreements being framed now could determine how people use libraries for decades to come. "Industry has resources to invest that we don't have anymore and never will have," points out Gary Strong, university librarian at the University of California, Los Angeles, which has its own aggressive digitization programs. "And they've come to libraries because we have massive repositories of information. So we're natural partners in this venture, and we all bring different skills to the table. But we're redefining the table itself. Now that we're defining new channels of access, how do we make sure all this information is usable?" Breaching the Walls Even for authorized users, access to the Bodleian Library's seven million volumes is anything but instant. If you are an Oxford undergraduate in need of a book, you first send an electronic request to a worker in the library's underground stacks. (Before 2000 or so, you would have handed a written request slip to a librarian, who would have relayed it to the stacks via a 1940s-era network of pneumatic tubes.) The worker locates the book in a warren of movable shelves (a space-saving innovation conceived in 1898 by former British prime minister William Gladstone) and places it in a plastic bin. An ingenious system of conveyor belts and elevators, also built in the 1940s, carries the bin back to any of seven reading rooms, where it is unpacked, and the book is handed over to you. The process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. But once you finally have the book, don't even think about taking it back to your dorm room for further study. The Bodleian is a noncirculating legal deposit library, meaning that it is entitled to a free copy of every book published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, and it guards those copies jealously. The library takes in tens of thousands of books every year, but the legend is that no book has ever left its walls. But a digital book needn't be loaned out to be shared. And Oxford's various libraries have already created digital images of many of their greatest treasures, from ninth-century illuminated Latin manuscripts to 19th-century children's alphabet books. Most of these images can be examined at high resolution on the Web. The only catch is that scholars have to know what they're looking for in advance, since very few of the digital pages are searchable. Optical character recognition (OCR) technology cannot yet interpret handwritten script, so exposing the content of these books to today's search engines requires typing their texts into separate files linked to the original images. A three-person team at Oxford, in collaboration with librarians at the University of Michigan and 70 other universities, is doing just that for a large collection of early English books, but the entire effort produces searchable text for only 200 books per month. At that rate, making a million books searchable would take more than 400 years. That's where Google's resources will make a difference. Susan Wojcicki, a product manager at Google's Mountain View, CA, campus and leader of the Google Print project, puts it bluntly: "At Google we're good at doing things at scale." Google has already copied and indexed some eight billion Web pages, which lends credibility to its claim that it can digitize a big chunk of the 60 million volumes (counting duplicates) held by Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the New York Public Library in a matter of years. It will be a complex task, but one that is in some ways familiar for the company. "It's not just feeding the books into some kind of digitization machine, but then actually taking the digital files, moving those files around, storing them, compressing them, OCR-ing them, indexing them, and serving them up," points out Wojcicki. "At that point it becomes similar to all of Google's other businesses, where we're managing large amounts of data." But the entire project, Wojcicki admits, hinges on those digitization machines: a fleet of proprietary robotic cameras, still under development, that will turn the digitization of printed books into a true assembly-line process and, in theory, lower the cost to about $10 per book, compared to a minimum of $30 per book today. Neither Google nor its partner libraries have announced exactly how the process will work. But John Wilkin, associate university librarian at the University of Michigan, says it will go something like this: "We put a whole shelfful of books onto a cart, keeping the order intact. We check them out by waving them under a bar code reader. Overnight, software takes all the bar codes, extracts machine-readable records from the university's electronic catalogue, and sends the records to Google, so they can match them with the books. Then we move the cart into Google's operations room." This room will contain multiple workstations so that several books can be digitized in parallel. Google is designing the machines to minimize the impact on books, according to Wilkin. "They scan the books in order and return the cart to us," he continues. "We check them back in and mark the records to show they've been scanned. Finally, the digital files are shipped in a raw format to a Google data center and processed to produce something you could use." The Book Web Exactly how readers will be able to use the material, however, is still a bit foggy. Google will give each participating library a copy of the books it has digitized while keeping another for itself. Initially, Google will use its copy to augment its existing Google Print program, which mixes relevant snippets from recently published books into the usual results returned by its Web search tool. A user who clicks on a Google Print result is presented with an image of the book page containing his or her keyword, along with links to the sites of retailers selling the print version of the book and keyword-related ads sold to the highest bidders through Google's AdSense program. Does it bother librarians that Moby-Dick might be served up alongside an ad for the latest Moby CD? "To say we haven't worried about it would be wrong," says Wilkin. "But Google has a `good citizen' profile. The way they use AdSense doesn't trouble me. And if suddenly access were controlled, and there was a cost to view the materials, we could still offer them for free ourselves, or at least the out-of-copyright materials." In fact, Google may put the entire texts of these public-domain materials online itself. In the future, Google could even use those materials to create a kind of literary equivalent of the Web, says Wojcicki. "Imagine taking the whole Harvard library and saying, `Tell me about every book that has this specific person in it.' That in itself would be very powerful for scholars. But then you could start to see linkages between books"--that is, which books cite other books, and in what contexts, in the same way that websites refer to other sites through hyperlinks. "Just imagine the power that that would bring!" (Wojcicki's example shows how history can, indeed, come full circle. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed BackRub, the predecessor to the Google search engine, while working on an early library digitization project at Stanford that was funded in part by the National Science Foundation's Digital Libraries Initiative. And PageRank, Google's core search algorithm, which orders sites in search results based on the number of other sites that link to them, is simply a computer scientist's version of citation analysis, long used to rate the influence of articles in scholarly print journals.) The Michigan library, says Wilkin, may do whatever it likes with the digital scans of its own holdings--as long as it doesn't share them with companies that could use them to compete with Google. Such limitations may prove uncomfortable, but most librarians say they can live with them, considering that their holdings wouldn't be digitized at all without Google's help. Closed Doors? But others are more cautious about the leap Google's partner libraries are taking. Brewster Kahle, who is often described as an inspiring visionary and sometimes as an impractical idealist, founded the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996 under the motto "universal access to human knowledge." Since then, the archive has preserved more than a petabyte's worth of Web pages (a petabyte is a million gigabytes), along with 60,000 digital texts, 21,000 live concert recordings, and 24,000 video files, from feature films to news broadcasts. It's all free for the taking at www.archive.org, and as you might guess, Kahle argues that all digital library materials should be as freely and openly accessible as physical library materials are now. That's not such a radical idea; free and open access is exactly what public libraries, as storehouses of printed books and periodicals, have traditionally provided. But the very fact that digital files are so much easier to share than physical books (which scares publishers just as MP3 file sharing scares record companies) could lead to limits on redistribution that prevent libraries from giving patrons as much access to their digital collections as they would like. "Google has brought us to a tipping point that could define how access to the world's literature may proceed," Kahle says. In Kahle's view, every previous digitization effort has followed one of three paths; with a bit of oratorical flourish, he calls them Door One, Door Two, and Door Three. (Kahle acknowledges up front that his picture is simplified, and that these aren't necessarily the only paths open to libraries today.) Door One, says Kahle, is epitomized by Corbis, an image-licensing firm owned by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Since the early 1990s, Corbis has acquired rights to digital reproductions of works from the National Gallery of London, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and more than 15 other museums. In some cases, it's now impossible to use these images without paying Corbis. "This organization got its start by digitizing what was in the public domain and essentially putting it under private control," says Kahle. "The same thing could happen with digital literature. In fact, it's the default case." Behind Door Two, parallel public and private databases coexist peacefully. Here Kahle cites the Human Genome Project, which culminated in two versions of the DNA sequence of the human genome--a free version produced by government-funded scientists and a private version produced by Rockville, MD-based Celera Genomics and used by pharmaceutical companies to identify new drug candidates. The model has worked well in genomics, and Google seems to be setting out on a similar path, as it keeps one copy of each library's collection for itself and gives away the other. Kahle worries, however, that the restrictions Google imposes on libraries will prevent them from working with other companies or organizations to disseminate digital texts. Libraries might be barred, for example, from contributing material to projects such as the Internet Archive's Bookmobile, a van with satellite Internet access that can download and print any of 20,000 public-domain books. Door Three, Kahle's favorite, hinges on new partnerships in which private companies offer commercial access to digital books while public entities, such as libraries, are allowed to provide free access for research and scholarship. Here his main example is the Internet Archive's collaboration with Alexa, a company founded by Kahle himself in 1996 and sold to Amazon in 1999. Alexa ranks websites according to the traffic they attract, and its servers, like Google's, constantly crawl the Internet, making copies of each page they find. But after six months, Alexa donates those copies to the Internet Archive, which preserves them for noncommercial use. "Jeff [Bezos, Amazon's CEO] was okay with the idea that there are some things you can exploit for commercial purposes for a certain amount of time, and then you play the open game," says Kahle. "Libraries and publishing have always existed in the physical world without damaging each other; in fact they support each other. What we would like to see is this tradition not die with this digital transformation." So which alternative comes closest to Google's plans? Google is no Corbis, says Wojcicki, but is nonetheless limited in what it can share. "Door One was never our intention, nor is it even practical," she says. "And we can't do Door Three, because we're not the rights holders for much of this material. So Door Two is probably where we're headed. We're trying to be as open as possible, but we need to hold to our agreements with different parties." Precisely to avoid questions about copyright, Oxford librarians have decided that only 19th- and early 20th-century books will be handed over to Google for digitization. "Some of the other libraries, including Harvard, have agreed to have some in-copyright material digitized," says Ronald Milne, acting director of the Bodleian Library. "They are quite brave in taking it on. But we didn't particularly want to go there, because it's such a hassle, and we didn't want to get on the wrong side of the book laws." At the same time, though, the American Library Association is one of the loudest advocates of proposed legislation to reinforce the "fair use" provisions of federal copyright law, which entitle the public to republish portions of copyrighted works for purposes of commentary or criticism. And two of Google's partner universities--Harvard and Stanford--are also supporters of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, a website that monitors allegations of copyright infringement brought against webmasters, bloggers, and other online publishers under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998. Mass digitization may eventually force a redefinition of fair use, some librarians believe. The more public-domain literature that appears on the Web through Google Print, the greater the likelihood that citizens will demand an equitable but low-cost way to view the much larger mass of copyrighted books. "I think this will be another piece of good pressure, another factor in the whole debate over the DMCA," says Wilkin. The Mixing Chamber If you're over 30, today's libraries are probably nothing like the ones you remember from childhood. Enter any major library today and you'll find an armory of computers and a platoon of specialists, from the reference librarians who are expert at accessing online resources, to the acquisitions officers who decide which books, CDs, DVDs, and subscriptions to purchase, to the computer geeks who keep the building's network running. Digitization and the growing power of the Internet are making all of these people's jobs more complex. Acquisitions experts, for example, can no longer just rely on the traditional quality filter imposed by the publishing industry; they must evaluate a much larger mass of material, from newly digitized print books to the millions of Web pages, blogs, and news sites that are born digital. "On the Internet, publishing is a promiscuous activity," observes Abby Smith of the Council on Library Information and Resources. "Libraries are confused and challenged about how to collect and select from that material." Then there are the problems of cataloguing and preserving digital holdings. Without the proper "metadata" attached--author, publisher, date, and all the other information that once appeared in libraries' physical card catalogues--a digital book is as good as lost. Yet creating this metadata can be laborious, and no international standard has emerged to govern which kinds of data should be recorded. And considering the limited life span of each new data format or electronic storage medium (have you used a floppy disk lately?), keeping digital materials alive for future generations will, ironically, be much more costly and complicated than simply leaving a paper book on a library shelf. But even if every book is reduced to a few megabytes of 1s and 0s residing on some placeless Web server, libraries themselves will probably endure. "There is no one in the field of librarianship who thinks the library is disappearing as a physical space," says Smith. Seattle's exuberant new Central Library, for example, is built around a four-story spiral ramp that enables an unprecedented immediacy of access to its physical book collection. But at the same time, the library provides 400 public-use computers (compared to 75 in the library that previously occupied the site), buildingwide Wi-Fi access, and a high-tech "mixing chamber" where an interdisciplinary reference team uses an array of print and electronic resources to answer patrons' questions. More than 1.5 million people visited the new library in 2004--almost three times the entire population of Seattle. "The real question for libraries is, what's the `value proposition' they offer in a digital future?" says Smith. "I think it will be what it has always been: their ability to scan a large universe of knowledge out there, choose a subset of that, and gather it for description and cataloguing so people can find reliable and authentic information easily." The only difference: librarians will have a much bigger universe to navigate. Stephen Griffin, the former director of the National Science Foundation's Digital Libraries Initiative (a Clinton-era project that funds a variety of university computer-science studies on managing electronic collections), takes a slightly different view. Ask him how he thinks libraries will function in 2020 or 2050--once Google or its successors have finished digitizing the world's printed knowledge--and he answers from the reader's point of view. "The question is, how will people feel when they walk into libraries," he says. "I hope they feel the same--that this is a very welcoming place that is going to help them to find information that they need. As we bring more technology in, the notion of libraries as places for books may change a bit. But I hope people will always find them a comfortable place for thinking." From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:24:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:24:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: The Death of Libraries? Message-ID: The Death of Libraries? http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/readme_libraries.asp?p=0 By TR Staff May 2005 At most libraries, the hand-typed card catalogues thumbed by generations of patrons have been supplanted by electronic indexes accessed via PCs locally or over the Web. Now that Google has agreed to scan millions of books from five major libraries and to make their contents searchable on the Web--a project that experts say is likely to yield spinoff technologies that drastically lower the costs of digitization and catalyze similar efforts worldwide--can the disappearance of libraries themselves be far behind? Most librarians say no, as our story "The Infinite Library," on page 54, reports. Whatever the form in which book content is stored, librarians believe, people will still come to libraries for expert help finding information, for public access to the Internet, or for the comfortable atmosphere libraries provide for reading and reflection. And there will always be a need, professionals point out, for places that preserve traditional paper books. All of that may be true. But there is still room to wonder how libraries will trump the expediency of being able to download a whole book over the Web, at little or no cost, instead of schlepping to the library. Print-on-demand services are spreading fast (see "The Future of Books," January 2005), and electronic reading devices will continue to improve until they rival the resolution and usability of regular books. At that point, the only burning reason for a physical trip to the library will be to see a copy of a needed book that has not yet been digitized, or that has been digitized but is not downloadable due to copyright restrictions. So in reality, the future of libraries may rest on just two factors: the rate at which digitization and display technologies advance, and the evolution of laws and practices regarding copyrights. In the United States, books published before January 1, 1923, are in the public domain and can be copied and redistributed by anyone, free of charge. At the same time, many books written in the past five to eight years have been published in both print and electronic form, and libraries have arranged with publishers to make some of these new e-books available for loan. (Borrowed e-books typically "expire," becoming unreadable after a certain period.) It's arranging access to the huge number of in-between books--those published between 1923 and the late 1990s--that is the critical issue. If publishers and authors maintain their tight control on these books after they are scanned, public libraries will still have an important place as a free source for them, even if they can loan out only a few electronic copies at a time. On the other hand, if Google and others can arrange with publishers and authors to allow low-cost downloads of whole books--a likely prospect, seeing that it gives publishers a new way to squeeze revenues from their backlists--then libraries will inevitably recede in importance. It's a simple matter of convenience: free or low-cost access to digital books will make libraries more dispensable. Librarianship isn't about to disappear as a profession. But if librarians want a steady supply of patrons, they'll need to find ways to keep their institutions relevant in the digital age. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:25:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:25:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Technology Review: Science Wants to Be Free Message-ID: Science Wants to Be Free http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_science.asp?p=0 By Spencer Reiss May 2005 Publicly funded research belongs in the public domain, says Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Along with Stanford biochemist Patrick Brown and Nobel Prize-winning oncologist Harold Varmus, Eisen founded the Public Library of Science, which is launching three new "open access" scientific journals this year. The publishers of paid-subscription journals such as Science, Nature, and Cell aren't laughing. What's the state of open-access publishing today? Depending on who's counting, 95 percent of research papers in the life sciences are still locked up by the big commercial publishers--Elsevier, Springer, and the rest. It's ludicrous at a time when the Internet has pushed the actual cost of distributing a research paper close to zero. But it's not as if a scientist who really needs a paper can't find it. Isn't that why research libraries pay for subscriptions? For starters, if research were freely available, people would build better tools to sift through and dig things out. And what if you're Joe Guy who's just been diagnosed with cancer? It's ridiculous that you can't read papers that your tax dollars have paid for that might be pertinent to your condition. And often your doctor can't either--we won't even mention the doctor in Uganda. In the first issue of the Lancet--Elsevier's prime medical journal--there was an editorial stating that the aim of the publication was to communicate the findings of science to the widest possible audience. Somewhere along the line, they became a business and lost touch with why they exist. The latest policy from the National Institutes of Health "asks" grant recipients to submit their results for public access within a year of publication but doesn't require it. That's a lot less than some people were hoping for; what happened? The forces of darkness surprised us. "Forces of darkness"? Scientific publishing is a $10 billion global business, growing 10 percent a year. They're not going to let go without a fight. The Association of American Publishers has hired [former congressperson] Pat Schroeder as its president and chief lobbyist--the queen of darkness. They went up to Capitol Hill and said we were socializing scientific publishing. NIH knows where its purse strings are. Any merit to their argument? It's ludicrous. What we have now is an egregiously subsidized industry--they're given content for free and then paid tremendous amounts of money to process and distribute it. Peer reviewers mostly aren't compensated. In a lot of fields, even the people who oversee the peer-review process are volunteers. And of course, the research that went into the papers is already paid for. And then the publishers have the gall to insist that they own a copyright on the results. Other short items of interest [3]Advertisers: Game On [4]All-Access Digital [5]Deciphering DNA, Top Speed [6]Science Wants to Be Free [7]Surgical Frontiersman [8]Wind Power Upgrade [9]Prototypes [10]U.S. Corporate Research [11]U.S. Agricultural Innovation Withers [12]Micro Fuel Cells Go Big [13]25 Years ago in Technology Review References 1. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_science.asp?p=0 2. http://www.technologyreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forumid=1150 3. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_advertisers.asp 4. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_digital.asp 5. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_dna.asp 6. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_science.asp 7. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_surgical.asp 8. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_wind.asp 9. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forwards.asp 10. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forwards.asp?p=2 11. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forwards.asp?p=3 12. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forwards.asp?p=4 13. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forwards.asp?p=5 From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:26:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:26:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Model Minority: Asian Ivies Message-ID: Asian American Empowerment: ModelMinority.com - Asian Ivies http://modelminority.com/printout303.html Date: Monday, February 10 @ 10:00:00 EST Topic: Academia Editor's Note: This article was submitted in garbled form and has been edited somewhat for readability, although some errors of both style and substance remain. Anonymous An Open Email to the Asian American Community January 14, 2003 Asian Americans have come to this country in great numbers for the last 30 years. Over time, they gradually realized that they were enjoying every benefit from the establishment of the Americans great founding father as well as benefits resulting from Martin Luther Kings legendary civil rights work and the continuous efforts of the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union. As the years passed by, most of them became settled in this new country and they and their children became Asian Americans. Collectively these Asian Americans have become a new racial group, regardless of where they came from and whether they like it or not. Eventually, they all have found their place in the society that they now call home. Most Asian Americans, other than refugees, are the cream of the crop from their motherlands. Some have immigrated to the US because of their wealth and others due to their excellent educations. Those from China are within the top 0.1 percent of the Chinese population in terms of education. These newest citizens and immigrants to America have built their new life on the core value of education. Many state universities have benefited from the determination of the Asian Americans search for higher education. California has benefited the most as Asian Americans academic superiority has propelled its state flagship university, Berkeley, to the top spot of American public universities and the private Stanford University into the top ten universities as ranked by US News. Asian Americans constitute about 45% of Berkeleys student body--even with a higher admission requirement imposed on them. The average SAT score for the admitted Asian Americans at Berkeley is approximately 100 points higher than that of white Americans and is two to three hundreds points higher than that of Hispanic and African-Americans. Five California public universities, Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, Irvine and Davis, are ranked in the top 20 public universities as a result of Asian American majorities in these schools. A great number of Asian Americans went to Berkeley and, following in their parents footsteps, became engineers. It is perfectly fine for those less competitive students if they do not attend a name brand college. Many Asian Americans have come to realize that American society is dominated and controlled by non-engineers. Seeking a good and comfortable life as an engineer no long meets the goal and desire for identity of many. In the last twenty years, there have been many Asian Americans who have become successful in the public eye, including An Wang, Charles B. Wang, Jerry Yang, Bill Lann Lee, Margaret Cho, Lucy Liu, Yo-Yo Ma, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michelle Kwan, Michael Chang, Helen Zia, and Hoyt H. Zia, to name a few. Now Asian American broadcast news anchors are everywhere, especially female ones like Connie Chung. Asian Americans now have their first Governor, Gary Lock of Washington State, state representatives, David Wu and Mike Honda, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta. Asian Americans have occasional bright spots on TV, such as George Takei playing Mr. Sulu in the original Star Trek series, Bruce Lee as Kato in The Green Hornet, and the films of Jacky Chan and John Wu. However, many Asian Americans still have been unable to dispel the enduring media image of Asian Americans as Hop Sing, the Cartwrights houseboy on Bonanza. The media still does not provide Asian Americans with heroes or role models that Asian Americans actually could dream of becoming. Other than athletes and entertainers, Asian Americans have seen the success and leadership of Asian Americans who have graduated from highly selective colleges. They learned quickly that there really is no difference between the United States and their native lands; the combination of a good education and connections with those in power is the road to power and success. Asian Americans have come to recognize that Harvard and the Ivy League have been the major access roads to power in America for white Americans and African-Americans alike. Despite many articles questioning the value of an Ivy League school education, Asian Americans are now competing for spots at Ivy League schools in great numbers. Ivy League Educations (an excerpt from the Chicago Sun-Times) The Ivy League Schools provide leadership training and a peer learning environment through a four-year residential college / liberal arts education. The eight Ivy League Schools are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and U Penn. In addition, there are little Ivies such as Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Haverford, and Wellesley. Highly selective schools also include quasi-Ivy schools, such as MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, WASH U (Washington University in St. Louis), Georgetown, Rice, John Hopkins, and Tufts, which do not provide a comparable residential college experience. Top public universities such as Berkeley, Virginia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina provide a solid academic education in specific fields compared to a diverse liberal arts education at elite schools. Many learned that to attend these public schools is as expansive as attending Ivy schools by out-of-state students. For non-residents, the cost of the freshman year at these public universities can reach over $29,000 and the cost at elite schools is approximately $36,000 per year. However, it will cost more to attend Berkeley for the remaining years for non-California residents. The Berkeley dorms can only accommodate students for their freshman year. The annual rents for an off-campus apartment easily can cost another $10,000 a year. Many high school graduates quickly learned from their peers that those admitted to the elite schools are actually paying less than those attending out-of-state public universities or even local state universities due to the generous financial aid and grants offered by the elite schools. Many argue that the halo of attending an elite school may be losing its glow, in part, because increasing numbers of people go on to graduate or professional schools. A master's degree, law degree, or medical degree from a prestigious school can overshadow a bachelor's degree, especially because it's often more relevant to a person's career. Of course, getting into a top-tier graduate or professional school is a challenge all its own, although statistically, a bachelor's degree from an Ivy League institution confers a certain advantage in that competition. Admission officers warn against choosing an elite college for that reason; "We don't assign it an automatic weight in the way people assume we do," said Jean Webb, the director of admissions at Yale Law School. However, Webb and other graduate-level admissions officers acknowledge that applicants from less respected institutions need much higher grades to compete against those who studied at elite colleges. If a student wants to become an MD or lawyer with specialties, graduating from a top medical or law school is almost a requirement to open the door. One would have a better chance of being admitted to a top medical or law school by attending an undergraduate college at Ivy or little Ivy schools. Berkeley is the number one public university and its statistics for matriculation to medical/law schools (as reported by Berkeley) are outstanding, as many who graduate from other public universities cannot even get an admission from a medical or law school. However, it is extremely difficult for Berkeley graduates to be admitted to a top 10-ranked medical or law school, or even a top twenty-ranked. In the year 2001, there were 87 Berkeley graduates who applied to the medical school at John Hopkins University, none were admitted. Harvard Law School matriculated 550 first-year law students in the year 2001; 62 Berkeley graduates applied and resulted in two matriculations. These statistics can be examined on the following web pages. Due to multiple applications, one should only read the matriculation column. [1]UC Berkeley graduate Medical School Matriculation Statistics [2]UC Berkeley graduate Law School Matriculation Statistics "But there's more to it than that, it's the overall record. It's the type of courses. It's so subjective, said Patricia Tobiasen, the admissions coordinator for Columbia University's medical school. Corporate recruiters may be more impressed than graduate schools with Ivy League credentials. When the top investment and consulting firms visit campuses in search of young employees, they go first to the Ivies, said Sheila Curran, the director of career services at Brown University. After landing that first job, Curran said, the Ivy League advantage continues in the form of connections. "Even though the old boy network isn't quite as prevalent as it was before, the ability to get into contact with people who have high-level jobs -- and who can network you into getting an interview -- is something that may be more prevalent at the Ivies than at some of these other places," she said. Cynthia B. Lin plans to use those connections. A 1995 graduate of Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, she turned down a full scholarship to Boston University -- worth about $100,000 -- to attend Princeton. "I think it pays off a hundred-fold in the end," said Lin, now a software engineer in suburban Washington, D.C. "If I go to parties or receptions and I meet Princeton people, of course they're very receptive to helping me out, or giving me their card and trying to stay in touch, because Princeton people can rely on other Princeton people to be interested or good employees." However, Lin said she wasn't thinking of her career when she chose Princeton in the spring of 1995. In fact, she originally intended to accept Boston University's generous offer. Then she got a glimpse of Princeton's tantalizing mix of overachievers, and a decade's worth of debt seemed a small sacrifice. "It mattered more to me the quality of the education I would get and how comfortable I felt in the environment I was in," Lin said. "If I felt that Joe College's environment was even closer to what I was looking for, then I would have chosen that." Krueger, the economics professor at Lin's alma mater, endorses that reasoning. Despite his doubts about the financial payoff of a prestigious degree, he believes there are legitimate reasons for going to a selective school such as Princeton. But a high salary, he said, isn't one of them. "Students need to find the right match," he said. "The world is more complicated than just saying, 'The most selective school is the best for every student.' I think a student and his or her family has to look into what the college offers, what the student's interests are, and how those are aligned." Asian Youngsters Work Much Harder to Get Into Ivy Schools Asian Americans have the lowest Ivy School admission rate among all applicants. At Ivy Schools, the selectivity is at 1 to 10 on average. Asian Americans admission rate to an Ivy School is from 1 to 15 and down to 1 to 25 Asian Americans applied. Asian Americans represent 31% of the total applicants to U PENN and yet only 23% of the matriculated Class of 2005. The numbers are the same for the Class of 2004. Asian Americans are accepted at two-thirds rate when compared to the entire applicant pool's acceptance rate, despite being the most qualified group. Asian Americans must meet higher objective standards such as SAT scores and GPAs, and to meet higher subjective or "holistic" standards such as motivation, overcoming adversities from poverty, prejudice, linguistic and cultural differences from being a racial minority, extracurricular, and character than the rest of the matriculated entering class at Penn. This is due to the upper-limit quota or cap imposed on Asian Americans restricting their numbers at Penn. If not for this imposed quota, their numbers would be much higher at Penn and they would be accepted, at the very least, at the same rate as the rest of the applicants. Yet Penn still has the highest percentage (23%) of Asian Americans of all the Ivy League schools, which average about 14% Asian Americans, in its entering classes. The percentage of White-Jewish students is at 35% at Penn and there is no quota imposed on them. The upper-limit quotas that existed in the Ivies for Jewish-Americans before WW II have been abolished. Now, they exist at Penn and the rest of the Ivy League schools for Asian Americans. Asian Americans have taken the place of the American Jews in this respect. American Jews represent 2.5% and Asian Americans represent 4% of the American population. Excellence is being sacrificed for the sake of racial diversity with the exclusionary upper-limit quotas or caps on the numbers of Asian Americans at Penn and the Ivy League schools. Another common complaint is that the deck is stacked socially against Asian males in a system designed to preserve the princely status quo of the scions of WASP families. The Ivies admit a disproportionate number of attractive Asian American females, some have observed, while far fewer attractive Asian American males are admitted. This subtle bias, critics suspect, is implemented in the screening interviews used by most Ivy League schools. Desire to Attend an Ivy School is Shared By All Races (Excerpt from an article [3]Where are the Baptists at Harvard? by Jonathan Tilove) While Ivy League schools have made their mark around the rallying cry of diversity, their own enrollment reflects a lack of diversity. In short, students at schools like Harvard are far more likely to be Jewish or Asian than to be Southern Baptists, conservative evangelical Christians or Italian-Americans. Right now at Harvard, America's most elite school, an estimated 20 percent of undergraduate students are Jewish, and almost the same percentage is Asian. Although Jews and Asians together account for only 5 percent of the United States population, they make up nearly 40 percent of Harvard's enrollment. That's about the same percentage of Harvard students who are non-Jewish whites, a group that makes up more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. Christian whites are far more under-represented at Harvard, relative to their numbers in the general population, than even blacks and Hispanics. In rough terms, the combined Jewish and Asian representation in Dartmouth's student body is about 18 percent; at Princeton, about 25 percent; at Duke, Cornell and Brown, somewhere in the 30 percent range; at Yale, about 45 percent; and at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, about half. In each case, non-Jewish whites are equally under-represented at the other end of the spectrum. Not all white Christians are underrepresented in the Ivy League. The old white elite--Episcopalians, for example--are bearing up well, abetted a bit by the admissions preference for children of alumni. Moreover, it appears that groups like Italian-Americans and Southern Baptists do not fare so well. "True diversity would look entirely different than it does today," said Brian Burt, who graduated from Harvard Law School last spring after three years as a lonely Christian conservative activist. This hasn't escaped the notice of conservatives like commentator Patrick Buchanan, who wrote in a January column: "Let's make the Ivy Leagues look more like America." The stakes are high because Ivy League schools are the gateway to America's power elite. How these schools define diversity will help determine the diversity of those elite. Bill Clinton, a poor Baptist boy from Hope, Ark., became president, but only after having his ticket punched at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford. Likewise, there is nothing diverse in the law school backgrounds of the nine justices of the Supreme Court--five Harvard, two Stanford, a Yale and a Northwestern. Yet Harvard's admissions director, Marlyn McGrath Lewis, says she has little patience with complaints about representation. "Whatever you are, you feel there are not enough of you," she said. "The Italians are after us. I'm sure the Irish may be too. I'm one. The evangelicals are not ones I think have a bone to pick. They are a growth industry in the country, and that's reflected in what's happening here. But more than that, she said, it is a "foolish notion" even to look at the question of college admissions--and the ambition to assemble a class of diverse backgrounds, intellects and talents--through the prism of group representation. The constitutional limits placed on college admissions decisions were outlined in the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision. The court agreed that race could be a "plus factor" in admissions decisions, as far as it contributes to the school's diversity. But, as Justice Lewis Powell wrote then, "The file of a particular black applicant may be examined for his potential contribution to diversity without the factor of race being decisive when compared, for example, with that of an applicant identified as an Italian-American if the latter is thought to exhibit qualities more likely to promote beneficial educational pluralism." According to a UCLA survey of elite schools, the more selective the school, the more affluent the students are and the more liberal they are. They also tend to be less religious and decidedly less likely to be "born-again" Christians. In other words, if diversity is what these schools want, they ought to be searching out more Christian conservatives. To Queens College sociologist Stephen Steinberg, this is the bind that many defenders of affirmative action find themselves in for resting their case on diversity rather than what he considers the more compelling moral logic of reparations for the history of slavery, Jim Crow and continued discrimination. "As soon as you take this argument outside history, you lose. Only history provides the logic and justification for breaking the ordinary rules of admission and access," said Steinberg, the author of "Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy." The diversity argument may have seemed more politically and legally palatable but it is ill-prepared to defend itself against the advances of newly "underrepresented" groups staking their own claims to diversity's mantle, he said. "The whole thing begins to look like pork barrel." Kamil Redmond, a Harvard junior from Philadelphia who was just elected vice president of the undergraduate council, says she recoils when she hears conservatives on campus describe themselves as Harvard's true minority. As a black woman at Harvard, "I find that so disturbing. The appropriation of the term 'minority' is so powerful." Groups like Christian conservatives are only playing at a victimhood they have not earned, she said. Part of the problem may be reluctance among Southern Baptists, Christian conservatives and Italian-Americans to go far from home for college. Olivia Hunt, a junior from San Antonio who heads the Baptist Campus Ministry at Harvard, said only four of the 600 students in her graduating class from Winston Churchill High School went to Ivy League schools, and few others left Texas. Most folks back home don't understand why her family would want to spend all that money when she could get a good education for less and never have to leave Texas, she said. Over-representation is not new in the Ivy League, of course. For most of Harvard's history, the over-represented were white, male and Protestant. In 1870, Harvard's student body included seven Roman Catholics, three Jews and no blacks. But now, the combined Jewish and Asian presence on Ivy League campuses has become "just too big to ignore," according to Arthur Hu, a Kirkland, Wash., software engineer and writer who has become a sort of Internet pamphleteer on issues of diversity and representation. "This huge sleeping monster, the Christian right, is the most underrepresented group and they don't know it," he said. But, Hu added, it is now only a matter of time until the least represented begins sounding the mantra of diversity. Learning It from American Jews and Those in Power (From [4]Arthur Hu and [5]The American Cause) Jews were 21 percent of the Ivy League vs. 1.5 percent of the college-age population (14 times overrepresentation) and the figure is higher at the graduate level (at Yale, for example, 60 percent of graduate students are Jewish - an astonishing figure). Asians are about 16 percent (4 times overrepresentation) and let's double that for Chinese and maybe Indians as well. (1999 Princeton Review Best 331 Colleges and the Hillel Guide to Jewish Life on Campus.) More than a tenth of college professors are Jewish, and that figure rises to about 30 percent at elite schools. According to Alan Dershowitz in his book, The Vanishing American Jew, 76 percent of the 200 most influential intellectuals are of Jewish background. About 40 percent of the lawyers at the most prestigious New York and Washington law firms are Jewish. In addition, 23 percent of the 500 wealthiest Americans are Jewish and about 85 percent of college-age Jews are in college (this is from Seymour Martin Lipset, a highly respected, but ridiculously centrist and un-innovative, sociologist). George W. Bush opposes "quotas," even though it was fine for him to get into Yale with a C average, so that "rich quota" was fine and it works for his daughter. Bill Clinton, from an Arkansas single-parent family married Hillary Rodham, who attended Yale law School with Bill. Hillary was from a wealthy Illinois family and graduated from Wellesley College. Not to take any credit from President Clinton of his achievements, but Mrs. Clintons family and his roots at Yale and Georgetown contributed significantly to his success throughout his career. Jack Welsh, the retired CEO and Chairman of one of world's largest and most respected companies - General Electric, earned his PhD in chemical engineering from Illinois. He handpicked successor, Mr. Jeff Immelt, who holds a B.S. degree in Liberal Arts with a major in Applied Mathematics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard University. Harvard and the Ivy League have become the major access roads to power in America, and these roads are being closed off to ethnic Catholics and white Christians, cried Pat Buchanan. A few years back, Pat Buchanans view was echoed by a Harvard graduate, Ron Unz, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions policies at his alma mater and the student body it produced: With affirmative action for preferred minorities and set-asides for children of alumni and faculty, foreign students, and athletes, Harvard's student body, said Unz, had begun to look like the Greenwich Village Democratic Club. According to Unz, 15 percent of Harvard's student body is Hispanic or black, 20 percent is Asian, 25 to 33 percent is Jewish, but only 25 percent comes from that 75 percent of America that is white and Christian. Christians are being frozen out of the elite schools that control the access to power in a nation that Christians, primarily, built. However, in challenging this Ivy League bigotry, Republicans have shown all the courage of Larry Summers. Nevertheless, Congress ought to demand that the Department of Education require all Ivy League schools to report annually on the religious and ethnic composition of their faculties and student bodies, and, if Unz's percentages hold, should be asked what they are doing to end this discrimination. After all, if it is illegal for Irish cops to get their kids preferences, why is it OK for Harvard professors? Regardless the fact of 70% white American presence at Ivy schools, Ron Unzs number on Asian Americans Ivy school presence typified todays bashing on Asian Americans. And what really matters here is that he is advocating that Ivy schools to admit student based on % of population and not by merit. There is definitely a confused issue of affirmative action on ivy school admissions. The Trend (References: [6]Attaining Ivy; [7]Asian Americans at Duke; [8]What to Do When "Outstanding" Is Average) These days, kids feel like they have to be veritable Greek gods and goddesses in order to get into college," says Richard Powell, upper school director at the private Oak Hall School in Gainesville, Fla. Zach Clayton, for example, a senior at Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C., is a top cross-country runner and a former intern at the Washington office of Sen. Jesse Helms. He has taken several college-level courses and has served as the chair of the National Student Council and a statewide teen Republicans organization. He gets up at 5 a.m. and goes to bed at 1 a.m., answering e-mails deep into the night. Still, the 16-year-old has no illusions about actually getting into his triumvirate of hope: Harvard, Yale, or Princeton. "Everybody knows that more and more schools are simply impossible to get into," Zach says. "It's pretty intimidating." Like many private high schools, Roxbury Latin High, with 21.1% graduates matriculated at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, strongly encourages its students to apply for early decision or early action. According to graduate Henry Seton, at least two-thirds of his classmates got into college early. For yield reasons, many colleges accept a higher percentage of early applicants than regular applicants; these are usually guaranteed, "Will come. In the year 2000, Harvard accepted about 1,000 students of the 6,100 who applied early, leaving just 1,000 spots for the other 13,500 students who applied during regular admissions. Asian Americans with SAT scores less than 1500 have little chance in gaining a regular admission to Ivy League Schools. Moreover, many Asian Americans with SAT scores higher than 1500 were not admitted by any Ivy School. However, those with SAT scores above 1400 if applied early may have a good chance to be admitted. In addition to applying for [9]early decision, applying to certain schools that traditionally lack Asian American applicants (Chicago, Duke, WashU-STL, Rice, and Tufts) may increase the odds substantially. Duke has difficulty in attracting Asian American students for several reasons, particularly its location in the South. "Most Asians don't pick Duke as their first choice, the most qualified Asian students aren't even bothering to apply." said Patty Chen, president of Asian Student Association at Duke University. Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, agreed that Duke's location might be a detractor. "Many families do have a problem with the fact that we are in the South," he said. Stanford has been a favorite for California Asian Americans. However, more and more Asian Americans start to realize that the good old boy network and the geographic center of culture, education and finance of the northeast are important to highly qualified whites. Stanfords white American ratio is at 45% of its student body, a number somewhat less than the white high school student ratio graduated in California, as compared to 70% white at Ivy Schools. This preference by the white Americans is even worse at Berkeley, where white applicants (no correlation to admission) have dropped 50% in the last ten years. Even with a lower admission standard for the white Americans on SAT requirement (100 points lower than the Asian Americans average scores of 1300), the white students at Berkeley are 31.7% of total students. While the SAT scores required for African and Hispanic Americans are [10]substantially lower than those required for the white Americans, Asian Americans are vital to the achievement of academic excellence at Stanford and Berkeley. Consequently, Asian Americans at those schools [11]are peering with less competitive students. Most Asian Americans cannot forego the temptation of applying to Harvard. Almost all Asian Americans are applying early at Harvard regardless of their real chance in getting into Harvard or other Ivy Schools. The rule of thumb in getting the Harvard admission is pending on the achievement of the 18 year-old high school senior. If the applicant has not won a national title, recognition, or distinguishable accomplishment, the chance of being admitted is almost zero. Asian Americans are slow in learning from WASP to apply early to increase the odds of being admitted by an Ivy school. They have difficult time assessing their qualification and accomplishment realistically. However, some have started to work with the high school counselors closely to formulate college application strategies. Particularly the parents of Asian Americans, in against to their tradition of distancing between the teacher and student, are listening to the suggestions from school consolers. On average, an applicant spent 45 days in filling out their early application form and writing that essay. Applicants completed the remaining 6 to 9 applications in less than two weeks after their first school of choice (Harvard) deferred them. It is evident the quality of the subsequent applications have little chance to win. Those who did met with greater success with the benefit of the experience of the high school counselors, who knows what kinds of students from that high school have been admitted by various highly selective colleges in the past. Determination Those being admitted by a highly selective college know that the application process alone is worth three credit hours of an advanced humanity class. It is actually more than that; it requires years of preparation to be admitted by an Ivy League school. It takes a joint effort of the parents and children. It takes money, planning, determination, and lots of hard work. Most Asian Americans are very academically demanding of their children, but many give up at the very end due to concern for the cost of attending a highly selective college. However, there is no shortage of Asian American parents willing to pay that premium to send their kids to Ivy schools, as they can easily relay the experience of what their parents have done for them to come to America and its relative cost associated with their parents income and wealth. The cost does not scare many Asian Americans and prevent their children from applying to a highly selective college. Some people say, Ivy Schools are not for every child or Ivy Schools are for nobody but rich and spoiled kids. To Asian Americans, this sounds like sour grapes or a strategy to eliminate competitions at precious Ivy school admissions. Many Asian American parents with graduate degrees truly believe that their achievement was limited to lack of Kuan Xi as who you know and concluded that that is where they want to make it up for their children. Moreover, they truly believe it is their responsibility to give their children the opportunity to grow and prosper. Either through their savings, grants, scholarships, or loans, they always seem to find a way to pay. Just look at those in the Ivy Schools, you know who will be running our country tomorrow. We need to ensure the dominance of White Christians at Ivy Schools, said by Pat Buchanan, the conservative Republican and former presidential candidate. Mr. Buchanan may not realize just how much impact that will have on Asian Americans. References 1. http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/19972001top20.stm 2. http://career.berkeley.edu/Law/lawStats.stm 3. http://www.baptiststandard.com/1999/3_10/pages/harvard.html 4. http://www.arthurhu.com/99/17/morejew.txt 5. http://www.theamericancause.org/pathowtoprint.htm 6. http://www.kustav.com/thoughts/attaining_ivy.html 7. http://www.asianam.org/asian_americans_at_duke.htm 8. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1008/p13s01-lehl.html 9. http://www.collegiatechoice.com/myearlydec.htm 10. http://www.capolicycenter.org/ct_0495/ctn1_0495.html 11. http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/09/02/editorial2.html From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:28:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:28:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TLS: What is social construction? Message-ID: What is social construction? The Times Literary Supplement, 1.2.23 (note date) Paul A Boghossian Flaws and contradictions in the claim that scientific beliefs are "merely locally accepted" Social construction talk is all the rage. But what does it mean and what is its point? The core idea seems clear enough. To say of something that it is socially constructed is to emphasize its dependence on contingent aspects of our social selves. It is to say: This thing could not have existed, had we not built it; and we need not have built it at all, at least not in its present form. Had we been a different kind of society, had we had different needs, values, or interests, we might well have built a different kind of thing, or built this one differently. The inevitable contrast is with a naturally existing object, something that exists independently of us and which we did not have a hand in shaping. There are certainly many things, and facts about them, that are socially constructed in the sense specified by this core idea: money, citizenship and newspapers, for example. None of these things could have existed without society; and each of them could have been constructed differently had we so chosen. As Ian Hacking rightly observes, however, in his insightful monograph, The Social Construction of What? (reviewed in the TLS , February 18, 2000), social construction talk is often applied not only to worldly items - things, kinds and facts - but to our beliefs about them. Consider The Social Construction of Women Refugees by Helene Moussa (1992). Clearly, the intent is not to insist on the obvious fact that certain women come to be refugees as a consequence of social events. Rather, the idea is to expose the way in which a particular belief has been shaped by social forces: the belief that there is a particular kind of person - the woman refugee - deserving of being singled out for special attention. Talk of the social construction of belief, however, requires some elaboration of the core idea. For it is uninterestingly true of almost any belief that we have that it is not necessary that we should have had it and that we might not have had it, had we been different from the way we actually are. Consider our belief that dinosaurs once roamed the earth. It is obviously not inevitable that we should have come to this belief. We might never have considered the question. Having considered it, we might have arrived at a different conclusion, for a variety of causes: we might not have been interested in the truth; we might not have been as intelligent at figuring it out; we might never have stumbled across the relevant evidence (the fossil record). These observations supply various boring senses in which any belief might be considered dependent on contingent facts about us. The important question concerns the role of the social, once all of these factors have been taken into account: that is, keeping our skills and intelligence fixed, and given our interest in the question and our desire to learn the truth about it, and given our exposure to the relevant evid ence, do we still need to invoke contingent social values to explain why we believe that there were dinosaurs? If the answer is "Yes" - if it is true that another society, differing from us only in their social values, would have arrived at a different and incompatible belief - then we could say that our belief in dinosaurs is socially constructed. It is crucial, therefore, to distinguish between a constructionist claim that is directed at things and facts, on the one hand, and one that is directed at beliefs on the other, for they are distinct sorts of claim and require distinct forms of vindication. The first amounts to the metaphysical claim that something is real but of our own creation; the second to the epistemic claim that the correct explanation for why we have some particular belief has to do with the role that that belief plays in our social lives, and not exclusively with the evidence adduced in its favour. Each type of claim is interesting in its own way. If a thing were shown to be socially constructed in the first sense, it would follow that it would contravene no law of nature to try to get rid of it (which is not the same as saying that it would be easy to do so - consider Manhattan). If a belief of ours were shown to be socially constructed in the second sense, it would follow that we could abandon it without fear of irrationality: if we have the belief, not because there is adequate evidence in its favour but because having it serves some contingent social purpose, then if we happen not to share the social purpose it subserves, we ought to be free to reject it. Much important work has been done under each of these headings, most significantly, it seems to me, for the topics of gender and race. Simone de Beauvoir ( The Second Sex , 1953), and other feminist scholars since have illuminated the extent to which gender roles are not inevitable but are rather the product of social forces. Anthony Appiah ( Color Conscious: The political morality of race , 1996, with Amy Gutman) has been particularly forceful in de monstrating that nothing physical or biological corresponds to the racial categories that play a pervasive role in our social lives, that these categories owe their existence more to their social function than they do to the scientific evidence. O ther claims are more controversial. Mary Boyle has argued that our belief in schizophrenia is socially constructed ( Schizophrenia: A scientific delusio n? , 1990). Her claim is that there is no adequate reason to believe that the symptoms commonly lumped under this label are manifestations of a single underlying disease, and, hence, that the search for its aetiology by neurochemistry is doomed. Perhaps she is right; our understanding of mental illness is certainly in its infancy. On the other hand, there appears to be increasing evid ence that the symptoms associated with schizophrenia are predictable significantly before their onset and that the condition is highly heritable. These facts point in the opposite direction. In a flourishing research programme, we find the expected mixture of important and debatable work. However, while some particular social- construction claims may be empirically controversial, the templates of which they are instances are in no way philosophically controversial. Both the abstract thought that some things are created by societies, and the thought that some beliefs owe more to social values than they do to the evidence in their favour, are as old as reason itself. Whence, then, the widespread impression that social constructionists are anti-rationalist, anti-realist and anti-objectivist? The answer is that it stems not from the forms of the claims themselves, and not from their application to this or that empirically debatable subject matter. It stems, rather, from the desire of some prominent theorists in this tradition to extend social-construction talk to absolutely everything and, in particular, to every fact studied by, and every knowledge claim emanating from, the natural sciences. If we are to find our way through the muddy battleground on which these now famous science wars are being waged, it will help to observe certain distinctions. To begin with the worldly things, money, citizenship and newspapers are transparent social constructions, because they obviously could not have existed without societies. Just as obviously, it would seem, anything that could have - or that did - exist independently of societies could not have been socially constructed: dinosaurs, for example, or giraffes, or the elementary particles that are supposed to be the building blocks of all matter and that physicists call "quarks". How could they have been socially constructed, if they existed before societies did? Yet when we turn to some of the most pro minent texts in the social-construction literature, we find an avalanche of claims to the effect that it is precisely such seemingly mind- and society independent items that are socially constructed. Take Andrew Pickering's book Constructing Quarks (1984). As his title suggests, Pickering's view seems to be that quarks were socially constructed by scientists in the 1970s, when the so-called "Standard Model" was first developed. And the language of the text itself does not disappoint: ". . . the reality of quarks was the upshot of particle physicists' practice . . . ." But how can this be? If quarks exist - and we are assuming for present purposes that they do - they would have had to have existed before there were any societies. So how could they have been constructed by societies? Perhaps Pickering does not mean what he says; perhaps he intends only to be making a claim about our belief in quarks rather than about the quarks themselves. Whether or not Pickering intended the worldly claim, however, claims like that seem to be all around us. Take, as another example, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar on the subject of the facts studied by natural science ( Laboratory Life: The social construction of scientific facts , 1979): "We do not wish to say that facts do not exist nor that there is no such thing as reality . . . . Our point is that "out there ness" is a consequence of scientific work rather than its cause." But it is not easy to make sense of the thought that facts about elementary particles or dinosaurs are a consequence of scientific theorizing. How could scientific theorizing have caused it to be true that there were dinosaurs or that there are quarks? Of course, science made it true that we came to believe that dinosaurs and quarks exist. Since we believe it, we act as though dinosaurs and quarks exist. If we allow ourselves some slightly florid language, we could say that in our world dinosaurs and quarks exist, in much the way we could say that in the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet , Ophelia drowns. So, still speaking in this vein, we could say that science made it true that in our world there are dinosaurs and quarks. But all we could coherently mean by this is that science made it true that we came to believe that dinosaurs and quarks exist. And this no one disputes. Despite all the evidence in their favour, these beliefs may still be false, and the only thing that will make them true is whether, out there, there really were dinosaurs and there really are quarks. Surely, science cannot construct those things; at best, it can discover them. The views apparently on offer here hark back to the discredited "transcendental idealism" of Immanuel Kant. On Kant's picture (or at least on one influential way of reading it), there is a world that exists independently of human minds, so we do not have to go so far as to say that we created the world. But, in and of itself, this world is structureless; it is not broken up into things, kinds of things, or facts. We impose structure on the world by thinking of it in a certain way, by having one set of beliefs about it rather than another. There are two different ways to understand the Kantian claim that we impose structure on the world. In the first, we literally make it the case that there are certain kinds of things in the world - mountains - by thinking of the world in terms of the concept "mountain", by believing there to be mountains. In the second, the structure remains entirely on our side of the divide: the claim that there are mountains is just a way of talking about what is true according to our conceptual scheme or language game. It is not even to try to make a claim about how things are in some mind-independent reality. The first alternative, the one that Pickering's and Latour's language most closely suggests, is hopelessly bizarre. How could the mind carve the world out there into kinds? How could it create things and give them properties? And what happens when the world is carved up in two incompatible ways by two different societies? Some of us believe in immaterial souls, and others of us do not. Does the world out there then both contain and not contain immaterial souls? However, Richard Rorty has suggested that talk of the social construction of facts and kinds is perfectly cogent, provided it is understood along the lines of the second alternative: One reason the question of mind-independent reality is so vexed and confusing is an ambi guity in the notion of "independence". \ QJ0 sometimes \ as if philosophers who, like myself, do not believe in "mind- independent reality" must deny that there were mountains before people had the idea of "mountain" in their minds or the word "mountain" in their language. But nobody denies that. Nobody thinks there is a chain of causes that makes mountains an effect of thoughts or words . . . . Given that it pays to talk about mountains, as it certainly does, one of the obvious truths about mountains is that they were here before we talked about them. If you do not believe that, you probably do not know how to play the language games that employ the word "mountain". But the utility of those language games has nothing to do with the question of whether Reality as It Is In Itself, apart from the way in which it is handy for human beings to describe it, has mountains in it. No way of talking could be said to be more faithful to the way things are in and of themselves than any other, because there is no way things are in and of themselves. There is just how we talk about how things are and the fact that some of those ways are better for our purposes than others. It is, therefore, correct to say that we do not make the mountains; that is a claim that is licensed by a way of talking that it pays for us to adopt. However, that does not mean that it is just plain true that there are mountains independently of humans; it never makes sense to say that anything is just plain true. All we can intelligibly talk about is what is true according to this or that way of talking, some of which it pays for us to adopt. This, however, is an impossible view, as many critics have pointed out (see especially The Last Word by Thomas Nagel, 1997, and Bernard Williams's review of it in the New York Review of Books , 1998). First, even Rorty doesn't succeed in distancing himself from any commitment to the idea that some claims are just plain true, and not just true relative to this or that way of talking; he simply commits himself to the implausible view that the only kinds of claim that are just plain true are claims about which ways of talking it pays for us to adopt, rather than claims directly about mountains. Otherwise, he could not simply assert, as he does, that it pays for us to talk about mountains, but only that it pays for us to talk about its paying for us to talk about mountains, and so on without end. Second, if we accept his view that there is no higher authority concerning what's true than how it pays for us to talk, and if, as Rorty admits, it pays for us to say that science dis covers a ready-made world, replete with mountains and giraffes, then there is simply no perspective from which he can also say, as he must if he is to express his distinctive view, that there is n't a ready-made world for science to discover, replete with mountains and giraffes. He can't have it both ways; but having it both ways is what his view requires. I f the preceding considerations are correct, social-construction talk does not cogently apply to the facts studied by the natural sciences; does it fare any better when applied to the beliefs about those facts produced by those sciences? The issue is not whether science is a social enterprise. Of course, it is. Science is conducted collectively by human beings who come equipped with values, needs, interests and pre judices. And these may influence their behaviour in a variety of potentially profound ways: they may determine what questions they show an interest in, what research strategy they place their bets on, what they are willing to fund, and so forth. The usual view, however, is that none of this matters to the believability of a particular claim produced by science, if that claim is adequately supported by the factual evidence. Kepler may have become interested in planetary motion as a result of his religious and occult preoccupations, and, for all I know, he may have been anxious to obtain a certain outcome. But so long as his eventual claim that the planets move in elliptical orbits could be justified by the evidence he presented for it, it does not matter how he came to be interested in the question, nor what prior aim he may have had. The view is now there, with a claim on our attention, and the only way to reject it is to refute the evidence adduced in its favour. To put this point another way, we commonly distinguish between what philosophers of science call the "context of discovery" and what they call the "context of justification". And while it's plausible that social values play a role in the context of discovery, it's not plausible that they play a role in the context of justification. Social constructionists about knowledge deny this; for them, it is naive to suppose that while social values may enter into the one context, they need not enter into the other. Well, how could social values enter into the context of justification? There are four distinct ways of articulating the thought a constructionist may have in mind here. To begin with, a constructionist may hold that it is not the factual evidence that does the justifying, but precisely the background social values. It may seem incredible that anyone could have seriously thought anything like this, but there are certainly assertions out there that seem to demand just such a reading. Here is one (Kenneth Gergen, "Feminist critiques of science and the challenge of social epistemo logy", in Feminist Thought and the Structure of Knowledge , edited by Mary Gergen, 1989): "The validity of theoretical propositions in the sciences is in no way affected by factual evidence." However, anyone who really thought that, say, Maxwell's equations could be justified by appeal to Maxwell's, or anyone else's, social or political beliefs would betray a complete incomprehension of the notion of justification. An item of information justifies a given belief by raising the likelihood that it is true. If one were absolutely determined to pursue something along these lines, a slightly better avenue, and the second of our four options, would be to argue that, although social values do not justify our beliefs, we are not actually moved to belief by things that justify; we are only moved by our social interests. This view, which is practically orthodoxy among practitioners of what has come to be known as "science studies", has the advantage of not saying something absurd about justification; but it is scarcely any more plausible. On the most charitable reading, it stems from an innocent confusion about what is required by the enterprise of treating scientific knowledge sociologically. The view in question derives from one of the founding texts of science studies, David Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery (1977). Bloor's reasoning went something like this: If we wish to explain why certain beliefs come to be accepted as knowledge at a given time, we must not bring to bear our views about which of those beliefs are true and which false. If we are trying to explain why they came to hold that some belief is true, it cannot be relevant that we know it not to be true. This is one of the so-called "Sym metry Principles" of the sociology of knowledge: treat true and false propositions symmetrically in explaining why they came to be believed. It is possible to debate the merits of this principle, but on the whole it seems to me sound. As Hacking rightly emphasizes, however, it is one thing to say that true and false beliefs should be treated symmetrically and quite another to say that justified and unjustified ones should be so treated. While it may be plausible to ignore the truth or falsity of what I believe in explaining why I came to believe it, it is not plausible to ignore whether I had any evidence for believing it. For some reason that is never explained, however, Bloor and his colleagues seem to think that the two principles are on a par and are both equally required by the enterprise of treating scientific belief sociologically. Bloor builds both into the very foundation of the subject: would be im partial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure. However, in the absence of an argument for being sceptical about the very idea of a good reason for a belief - and how could there be such an argument that did not immediately undermine itself? - one of the possible causes for my believing what I do is that I have good evidence for it. Any explanatory framework that insisted on treating not only true and false beliefs symmetrically, but justified and unjustified ones as well, would owe us an explanation for why evidence for belief is being excluded as one of its potential causes. And it would have to do so without undermining its own standing as a view that is being put forward because justified. This is not, of course, to say that scientific belief must always be explained in terms of the compelling evidence assembled for it; the hist ory of science is replete with examples of views - phrenology, for example - for which there never was any good evidence. It is simply to insist that scientific belief is sometimes to be explained in terms of compelling evidence, and that the history and sociology of science, properly conceived, need have no stake in denying that. This brings us to a third, milder conception of how social values might be indispensable for the justification of scientific belief. On this view, although evidence can enter into the explanation for why a particular view is believed, it can never be enough to explain it. Any evidence we might possess always underdetermines the specific belief that we arrive at on its basis. Something else must close the gap between what we have evidence for and what we actually believe, and that something else is provided by the thinker's background values and interests. This idea, that the evidence in science always underdetermines the theories that we believe on its basis, has exerted considerable influence in the philosophy of science, even in non- constructionist circles. In its modern form, it originated in the thought of the French physicist and philosopher, Pierre Duhem (1861-1916). Suppose that an experimental observation is inconsistent with a theory that you believe: the theory predicts that the needle will read "10" and the needle does not budge from zero. What Duhem pointed out is that this does not necessarily refute the theory. For the observational prediction is generated not merely on the basis of the theory, but, in addition, through the use of auxiliary hypotheses about the functioning of the experimental apparatus. In light of the recalcitrant observational result, something has to be revised, but so far we do not yet know exactly what: perhaps it is the theory, perhaps it is the auxiliary hypotheses. Perhaps, indeed, it is the very claim that we recorded a genuinely recalcitrant result, as opposed to merely suffering some visual illusion. D uhem argued that reason alone could never decide which revisions are called for, and, hence, that belief revision in science could not be a purely rational matter; something else had to be at work as well. What the social constructionist adds is that this extra element is something social. This is a clever argument that does not long conceal its difficulties. Consider Duhem's example of an astro nomer peering through his telescope at the heavens and being surprised at what he finds there, perhaps a hitherto undetected star in a galaxy he has been charting. Upon this dis covery, according to Duhem, the astronomer may revise his theory of the heavens, or he may revise his theory of how the telescope works. And rational principles of belief fixation do not tell him which to do. The idea, however, that in peering at the heavens through a telescope, we are testing our theory of the telescope just as much as we are testing our astronomical views is absurd. The theory of the telescope has been established by numerous terrestrial experiments and fits in with an enormous number of other things that we know about lenses, light and mirrors. The point is not that we might never have occasion to revise our theory of telescopes: one can certainly imagine circumstances under which that is precisely what would be called for. The point is that not every circumstance in which something about telescopes is presupposed is a circumstance in which our theory of telescopes is being tested, and so the conclusion that rational considerations alone cannot decide how to respond to recalcitrant experience is blocked. Perhaps, however - to come to the fourth and final way in which belief and social values might be intertwined - the correct thought is not that the social must be brought in to fill a gap left by the rational, but simply that the rational itself is constitutively social. A good reason for believing something, according to this line of thought, only has that status relative to variable social factors; a sharp separation between the rational and the social is illusory. This is currently one of the most influential construals of the relation between the rational and the social in constructionist circles. What it amounts to is a relativization of good reasons to variable social circumstance, so that the same item of information may correctly be said to justify a given belief under some social circumstances, in some cultures, but not in others. It is nicely expressed in the following passage (Barry Barnes and David Bloor, "Relativism, rationalism and the sociology of knowledge", 1981): . . . there is no sense to the idea that some standards or beliefs are really rational as distinct from merely locally accepted as such. But this is an impossible construal of reasons for belief, as Plato understood some time ago (see his Theaetetus ). We cannot coherently think of ourselves as believing and asserting anything , if all reasons for belief and assertion are held to be inexorably tied to variable background perspective in the manner being proposed. There are many ways to show this, but perhaps the most telling is this: not even the relativist would be able to adopt such an attitude towards his own view. For, surely, the relativist does not think that a relativism about reasons is justified only relative to his own perspective? If he did, why is he recommending it to us who do not share his perspective? When we believe something, we believe it because we think there are reasons to think it is true, reasons that we think are general enough to get a grip even on people who do not share our perspective. That is why we feel entitled to recommend it to them. Neither a generalized constructionism about the objects and facts investigated by the natural sciences, nor one about the reasons for belief provided by those sciences carries much plausibility. To what does this matter? Here are two contrasting views. Rorty ("Phony Science Wars", Atlantic Monthly , 1999): The science wars are in part a product of deep and long lasting clashes of intuition, but mostly they are just media hype - journalists inciting intellectuals to diabolize one another. Diabolization may be helpful in keeping intellectuals aroused and active, but it need not be taken very seriously. By way of contrast, we have Dorothy Nelkin: Current theories about science do seem to call into question the image of selfless scientific objectivity and to undermine scientific authority, at a time when scientists want to claim their lost innocence, to be perceived as pure unsullied seekers after truth. That is what the science wars are about. I th ink that Nelkin is closer to being right. As social constructionists realize only too well, we would not attach the same importance to science if we came to be convinced by constructionist conceptions of it. I n what does the cultural importance of science consist? This is, of course, a vast subject, but there are, it seems to me, two central elements. First, and most importantly, in matters of belief we defer to science. It would be hard to overestimate the significance of this practice, reflected as it is in what we are prepared to teach our children at school, to accept as evidence in courts of law and to base our social policies on. Second, we spend vast sums of money on basic scientific research, research that does not look as though it will have any immediate practical pay-off. Rorty's laid-back attitude depends on the thought that neither of these practices has any interesting philosophical presuppositions, and so cannot be vulnerable to constructionist critique. But this seems wrong. For deference to make sense, it has to be plausible that science delivers the sort of knowledge that everyone has reason to believe, regardless of their political or more broadly ideological commitments. But this would be directly challenged by a constructionist thesis about reasons for belief, on any of its available versions. If we look at the practice of spending vast sums on basic science, it is arguable that an even greater amount of philosophy is pre supposed, that we have to hold not only that science delivers knowledge that everyone has reason to believe, but that it delivers true or approximately true knowledge of the structure of an independently existing reality. For if we ask why, given the many pressing social problems we face, we should spend tens of billions of dollars to build a super-collider that will smash ever smaller particles into each other in the hope of releasing ones that we have never seen but which our theories predict, what could possibly be a compelling answer if not that doing so will help us to understand the fundamental, hidden constitution of the universe, and that this is worth doing? If it doesn't make sense to think that there is such a hidden constitution to probe, or even if there is, if it doesn't make sense to think that science is capable of probing it, what rationale could there be for spending such vast sums, when that money could equally be spent on AIDS or on poverty? ( To be clear: I am not saying that a search for the fundamental truths automatically trumps all other considerations, only that its coherence as a goal is required to make sense of the import ance we attach to basic science.) At its best - as in the work of de Beauvoir and Appiah - social-constructionist thought exposes the contingency of those of our social practices that we had wrongly come to regard as inevitable. It does so by relying on the standard canons of good scientific reasoning. It goes astray when it aspires to become either a general metaphysics or a general theory of know ledge. As the former, it quickly degenerates into an impossible form of idealism. As the latter, it assumes its place in a long history of problematic attempts to relativize the notion of rationality. It has nothing new to add to these historically discredited views; if anything, social-constructionist versions tend to be murkier and more confused than their traditional counterparts. The difficulty lies in understanding why such generalized applications of social construction have come to tempt so many. One source of their appeal is, no doubt, their efficiency. If we can be said to know upfront that any item of knowledge only has that status because it gets a nod from contingent social values, then any claim to knowledge can be dispatched if we happen not to share the values on which it allegedly depends. There is no need to get into the details, which are often complex. But that only postpones the real question. Why this fear of knowledge? Whence the need to protect against its deliverances? Hacking writes of certain feminists who . . . see objectivity and abstract truth as tools that have been used against them. They remind us of the old refrain: women are subjective, men are objective. They argue that those very values, and the word objectivity, are a gigantic confidence trick. If any kind of objectivity is to be preserved, some argue, it must be one that strives for a multitude of standpoints. Ian Hacking professes not to know whether to side with this thought. But he should know. Whatever legitimate worry may be at work here, it cannot be expressed by saying that objectivity and abstract truth are tools of oppression. At most, what these observations entitle us to say is that there have been occasions when those concepts have been used as tools of oppression; and no one will want to dispute that. But the fact that a concept can be, and has been, abused can hardly be a basis for indicting the concept itself. Are we to be suspicious of the value of freedom because the Nazis inscribed "Arbeit Macht Frei" on the gate at Auschwitz? The intuitive view is that there is a way things are that is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at belief about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on anyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence, regardless of their ideological perspective. Difficult as these notions may be, it is a mistake to think that recent philosophy has disclosed any good reasons for rejecting them. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:29:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:29:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Missing the Boat, or Penny-Wise Caution? Message-ID: Missing the Boat, or Penny-Wise Caution? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.11 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i27/27a03301.htm Few colleges embrace an upgraded Internet system By VINCENT KIERNAN David Lee can do something cool on the Internet that the researchers at your institution probably can't. And it is not that Mr. Lee is smart and hard working, and has a spiffy computer, though he is and does. It's because the University of California at San Diego, where he is an applications engineer, has configured its campus network so that some of its researchers can use an emerging Internet technology, called Internet Protocol version 6, that most American colleges have so far ignored. Using the upgraded network technology, which engineers more commonly call IPv6 or even simply "v6," Mr. Lee helps researchers on the San Diego campus control a giant electron microscope in Osaka, Japan, and see live, ultrasharp images produced by the device. The microscope is connected to Japanese computer networks that use only IPv6 and do not understand its predecessor, Internet Protocol version 4, which computer networks on most American campuses, and in most homes and businesses, use exclusively. "We couldn't do this without IPv6," says Mr. Lee, who has been using the technology since 1998, first with expensive custom-made networks and more recently through networks such as Internet2's Abilene high-speed network. Campus technology managers are facing the latest instance of that all-too-common question of the wired age: Upgrade now, or wait? Sure, their networks can do most everything they need at the moment, but as more research devices like that Japanese microscope require IPv6-ready wires, colleges that fail to embrace the technology could discover themselves effectively cut off from much of the Internet. And unlike so many other problems that bedevil campus IT officials, adding IPv6 to a campus network costs little. At least that's what proponents of the technology say. But critics retort that there is no hurry, and that it will be far cheaper and less disruptive to gradually phase in the upgrade rather than make a crash conversion. Colleges, they say, would be prudent to take a wait-and-see approach. Address Shortage? The central issue in the debate over IPv6 is whether cyberspace is about to run out of addresses. A major feature of the upgraded network is that it allows 80,000 trillion trillion times more Internet addresses than the current system. And those new addresses may soon become necessary, especially as more and more gadgets, like cellphones and home appliances such as refrigerators and laundry machines, have their own identity on the information highway. The situation is reminiscent of the Y2K crisis, in which colleges and businesses scrambled to revise computer programs so that they could handle years after 1999 as the millennium turned. But there is a critical difference: It is harder to tell exactly when having this upgrade will become essential. The debate centers on revisions to the Internet Protocol, the set of rules that govern how data are packaged and transmitted on the Internet. Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, is the version that is commonly used by desktop computers and the computers that run networks. Because of the way that it is set up, IPv4 can accommodate about 4.3 billion Internet addresses. That sounds like a lot, but proponents of IPv6 note that that number is insufficient to give each inhabitant of earth his or her own address, and much less than would be needed to expand the Internet to incorporate devices such as cellphones, home appliances, and climate sensors around the globe. Already, they say, companies and colleges in Asia and the Pacific Rim are unable to get enough addresses. Others, however, say the address shortage is decades away. "V6 is an effort to solve a problem that hasn't happened yet," says Daniel Golding, a senior analyst at the Burton Group, an information-technology consulting company. Using recently developed techniques to share Internet addresses, there may be enough IPv4 addresses until as late as 2028, he says, "so we've got a little while." The address shortage is less of a problem in the United States than it is in other parts of the world. That's because Western countries snatched up many of the IPv4 addresses early in the Internet's development, which IPv6's proponents say created an address shortage for later arrivals such as certain Asian nations. One way around that address shortage is to force several computers (such as those on a campus network) to share a single Internet address. But that creates new headaches. For example, say you want to use an Internet-based telephone to call someone else's computer, but that computer shares an Internet address with hundreds of other machines. Where, exactly, do you send the phone call? IPv6 solves that problem by making room for 340 trillion trillion trillion different Internet addresses -- more than enough, networking experts say, for every conceivable computer or device to have its own unique address, even with the continued explosive growth of the Internet. The upgraded network protocol has other benefits as well, such as improved security features. It also has mechanisms to guarantee that a high-priority Internet activity such as a live video transmission isn't crowded out by other Internet traffic of lesser importance, such as music downloads. And a network can offer both IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time. Little Deployment Although colleges in Asia and Australia have embraced IPv6 enthusiastically, most colleges in the United States have not. Because American institutions got into the Internet early, they have more than enough Internet addresses, and campus computing officials feel no urgency to upend their networking apple carts. Few institutions have an IPv6 connection into the campus network, and even fewer make the technology widely available across the campus network. Few hard data are available on the use of IPv6 in academe. Generally, IPv6 accounts for a small fraction of the traffic on Internet2's Abilene high-speed computer network, says Lauren B. Kallens, a spokeswoman for Internet2. But occasionally the usage jumps. On one recent Monday, for example, almost half of the traffic between Seattle and Sunnyvale, Calif., was in IPv6, possibly due to usage at the University of Oregon, which connects to Abilene in Seattle and is an IPv6 pioneer. "In real life, the amount of v6 deployment is very, very small and mostly limited to research applications," says Mr. Golding, of the Burton Group. The institutions that have waded into IPv6 tend to be research institutions seeking to use the technology to conduct research or as a subject itself of networking research. A few colleges have made IPv6 widely available. Almost every user on the University of Oregon's network has access to IPv6, as do about 95 percent of users at Indiana University. In many cases, institutions have moved to install IPv6 on their network at the behest of researchers. That was the case at Auburn University, which had no plans for using IPv6 until a sole computer-science researcher asked for it. University officials are planning to make it available across the whole network. But such demand from researchers is spotty. Examples like the Japanese microscope notwithstanding, IPv6 is so new that there are few systems or programs to which it alone offers access. Often, an institution with IPv6 has it only for isolated segments of the campus network. At the University of Pennsylvania, only a few engineers can use IPv6. "We're hoping that within the next six to 12 months we'll have a significant deployment," says Shumon Huque, senior network engineer at Penn. The university operates a regional connection point to Abilene through which other institutions will be offered IPv6 connections, he says. Similarly, at the University of Hawaii, IPv6 is available only to network engineers. The university will probably include IPv6 in an upgrade of its core network backbone now being planned, making it more widely available, says Garret T. Yoshimi, information-technology services manager for the University of Hawaii System. "There frankly hasn't been a lot of folks pounding down our doors and saying they really want to have it." Even at Mr. Lee's home base of the University of California at San Diego, IPv6 is available only on selected portions of the network. San Diego will add IPv6 throughout the network late this year or early next year, as part of a general upgrade of its network routers. How to Upgrade Installing IPv6 on a campus network involves three major technical tasks: securing an IPv6 connection from the Internet to the campus network, configuring campus desktop computers to use it, and making sure that the network's controller computers can understand it. The campus network itself need not be rewired. The first step -- connecting the campus network to the rest of the Internet through IPv6 -- can be challenging. Abilene, the high-speed-network backbone that 220 colleges and companies now have access to, does handle IPv6 traffic, but not all Internet service providers do. Configuring desktop computers is surprisingly easy and inexpensive, according to campus computing officials. Computers running the Microsoft Windows XP operating system or Apple's OS X operating system, for example, are already set up to use IPv6. Adding IPv6 to network routers also need not cost much. Most vendors of computer- networking gear now sell equipment that can simultaneously handle IPv4 and IPv6, at least in part because of a Defense Department decision in 2003 that it would refuse to buy networking equipment that cannot handle IPv6 after 2007. Indeed, many colleges' computers may already be ready for IPv6, and the biggest cost for most institutions may be the labor by campus computing technicians to configure and debug the setup. Older equipment that cannot handle IPv6 can be replaced with newer gear through the campus's ordinary network maintenance efforts. Consequently, few college presidents are likely to be presented with a request from the IT department to spend a lot of money specifically on IPv6. "It seems most likely that this will be off the radar of the typical university president," says Dikran W. Kassabian, senior director of networking and telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania. But evocative of the Y2K crisis, in which colleges suddenly discovered that they had to pour money into fixing longstanding problems in their software, the president of a college that does not take steps to introduce IPv6 may be in for a rude shock if at some point officials decide it needs to do so in a hurry. "If it's not done thoughtfully, for some schools it's going to be a big financial bite," warns Eric G. Frost, an associate professor of geological sciences at San Diego State University who uses IPv6 in his research. Proponents say that it is only a matter of time before colleges wake up to the need for IPv6. For example, as faculty members seek to expand their online collaborations with researchers in other nations, or as distance-education programs move to broaden their overseas audiences, colleges will discover that lacking support for IPv6 will leave them at a competitive disadvantage. "If the backward Americans want to be able to technically work with the more advanced Japanese, they'll need to be able to use IPv6," says Larry L. Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a joint venture of the University of California's campuses in Irvine and San Diego. And even those colleges without overseas ambitions will recognize the need for IPv6's extra addresses as domestic uses of the upgraded Internet system expand. For example, Mr. Frost is exploring the use of a huge set of dispersed sensors -- numbering perhaps in the tens of millions -- to monitor climatic conditions. "IPv6 is realistically the only way you can get the address space for that," he says. But Mr. Golding, the consultant, continues to urge caution. "Don't be swayed too much by the Pied Piper of IPv6," he says. "One of the worst reasons to do something in IT is because it seems cool." From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:30:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:30:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Misunderstood Concepts Message-ID: Misunderstood Concepts The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.11 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i27/27b01401.htm We asked four scholars to discuss the most misunderstood concepts in their fields. Religion Kent Greenawalt, a professor of law at Columbia University School of Law and author of Does God Belong in Public Schools? (Princeton University Press, 2005): The most misunderstood, and manipulated, concepts in discussion of the free-exercise and establishment clauses of the First Amendment are religion itself and teaching religion. One problem is that saying just what makes something religious is very hard. The best one can do is look for features that characterize major religions -- such as belief in a spiritual domain, a comprehensive view of the world and human purposes, ritual acts of worship, the use of sacred texts, and corporate aspects of religious practice -- and ask how closely debated instances resemble the undisputed religions. Another problem with the legal concept of religion is how it should relate to nonlegal understanding. What counts as religious for constitutional purposes need not be exactly the same as what a philosopher, a theologian, or an anthropologist would consider religious. But a legal approach to religion should connect fairly closely to its ordinary meanings. These genuine perplexities cannot explain, or excuse, blatant misuses of the concept of religion. Evolution is not religion, teaching it is not religion. The theory of evolution does conflict with some religious views, but it is based on scientific data. Science is an independent field of inquiry that does not even address most major questions that concern religions. When other subjects, such as history and government, are treated without reference to religion, teachers are not propounding "the religion of secular humanism." Few American public-school teachers tell students that God does not exist, and that human beings are the measure of all things. (And, in any event, the ideas of secular humanism are not themselves a religion.) Religion is not everything about which people care deeply. One may contrast these various expansive notions of religion with ideas that are much too narrow -- for example, that religion in law should be limited to belief in a supreme being. Developing a constitutional approach to the concept of religion is difficult, but we could think more clearly about that problem if people restrained themselves from putting forward whatever labels will serve the immediate practical consequences they seek. *** Inertia John S. Rigden, an adjunct professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (Harvard University Press, 2005): Anumber of physics concepts are misunderstood by both students and the general public. The spooky "field" concept is an example: A field exists where there appears to be nothing. However, the concept of inertia is so contrary to our experiences and common sense that I would put it right up there at the top. The concept of inertia equates what seem to be opposites: motionlessness and motion. Standing still and moving uniformly (with no acceleration) are physically equivalent. Since moving and standing still are equivalent, once an object is moving, it would, according to the dictates of inertia, have no reason to stop and would continue moving forever. However, our environment is replete with a variety of forces that conspire to bring moving objects to rest. Thus endless motion is foreign to our experience. A ride on a roller coaster thrills our senses as the rider is subjected to a variety of stomach-wrenching accelerations. By contrast, our much faster ride on planet Earth, as it simultaneously orbits the Sun and spins on its axis, provides no thrill at all because this motion is almost acceleration-free, and thus we think we are at rest. Inertia underlies an understanding of motion and, since it violates common sense, is often the source of confusion. *** Race Mica Pollock, an assistant professor of education in human development and psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of Colormute: Race Talk Dilemmas in an American School (Princeton University Press, 2004): I think that in education (a field made up of many intersecting disciplines -- mine is anthropology), race is the most misunderstood concept. More precisely, it's the fuzziest concept, the vaguest, the most broadly used, and the least openly wrestled with, though it is a concept that we in education must (and do) use daily. The number of researchers who believe in biological differences between races is thankfully dwindling. We understand increasingly that race categories are social realities built upon biological fictions -- that race categories have been constructed and thus organize our daily experiences and life trajectories. But too few of us study how race categories are rebuilt daily in American life. Particularly in education, we tend to treat racial identities as if they are fixed rather than in flux. We also often treat the racially inequitable opportunity system surrounding students as static, rather than as a living structure of opportunity-denial that Americans reproduce and allow on a daily basis. We also tend too often to treat race as a topic that we can simply go ask research subjects about and so get easy answers to our questions, when Americans actually struggle quite actively with both talking and not talking about race. Many educational researchers are particularly concerned with racial patterns of achievement, but often oversimplify the concept of race. First, they often use race in research comparisons as a kind of simple difference, as if different "kinds" of kids have fundamentally different ways of talking and acting and thinking about school, and that if we can just compare each group's behaviors, we'll understand the "achievement gap." Relatedly, too few of us examine racial achievement patterns as orders produced jointly by intertwined adult and young players both inside and outside of schools. Finally, in examining racial inequality, some of us treat race as if it can be neatly delinked from other variables, like class, when class itself is racially organized in the United States, and race involves class dynamics. I think that openly struggling over such complexities of race analysis is essential for producing good research and helping children. *** Objectivity Robert J. Norrell, a professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and author of The House I Live In: Race in the American Century (Oxford University Press, 2005): The most misunderstood concept in history is objectivity. I entered the academic world in the aftermath of 1960s idealism with the faith that the truth would set me, and society, free. I thought, "Let's study the past, identify the wrongs done, and correct them" -- an idea that presumed confidence in both human authority in the world and our ability to objectively establish what was wrong in society. Objectivity as an ideal for historians, however, soon lost favor. In the 1970s, historians began a quest to include those who had been left out of our typical narratives: blacks, women, the working class. Influenced by the countercultural influences of the 60s, those practicing this "new history" often dismissed old history as biased in favor of white, male elites in the West, and tended to celebrate those forgotten people without subjecting them to the same tough-minded criticism that they were applying to the old elites. Postmodernist thought in the 80s continued to undermine historians' notions of objectivity, and for many younger historians, the pursuit of truth held about the same importance as looking for the Loch Ness monster. They presumed instead that all reality is constructed according to internal or group perspective, mainly by class, race, or gender. With reality so fractured by our limited perspectives, they felt, it is therefore impossible to determine an objective truth -- and is, in fact, misguided to even try. The problem was that the academy's dismissal of objectivity set us against the larger public that likes to read history and think historically. The average nonacademic person believes that historical truth can be established, or at least approximated, and that the value of history is its ability to teach us actually what our experience has been. This divide between academic history and what the public understands about the past has resulted from the intellectuals' too-casual dismissal of the human capacity to seek truth, which has undermined our ability to shape understandings of the past outside the academy. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:30:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:30:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Higher laws and the mind-boggling complexity of life Message-ID: Higher laws and the mind-boggling complexity of life http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524891.000&print=true 5.3.5 * Paul Davies is at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology at Macquarie University, Sydney TAKE a bucketful of subatomic particles. Put them together one way, and you get a baby. Put them together another way and you'll get a rock. Put them together a third way and you'll get one of the most surprising materials in existence: a high-temperature superconductor. How can such radically different properties emerge from different combinations of the same basic matter? The history of science is replete with investigations of the unexpected qualities that can arise in complex systems. Shoals of fish and ant colonies seem to display a collective behaviour that one would not predict from examining the behaviour of a single fish or ant. High-temperature superconductors and hurricanes offer two more examples where the whole seems to be greater than the sum of its parts. What is still hotly disputed is whether all such behaviour can ultimately be derived from the known laws of physics applied to the individual constituents, or whether it represents the manifestation of something genuinely new and different - something that, as yet, we know almost nothing about. A new factor could shed light on this most fundamental question. And it comes from an entirely unexpected quarter: cosmology. The standard scientific view, known as reductionism, says that everything can ultimately be explained in terms of the "bottom level" laws of physics. Take the origin of life. If you could factor in everything about the prebiotic soup and its environment - and assuming you have a big enough computer - you could in principle predict life from the laws of atomic physics, claim the reductionists. What has become increasingly clear, however, is that many complex systems are computationally intractable. To be sure, their evolution might be determined by the behaviour of their components, but predictive calculations are exponentially hard. The best that one can do is to watch and see how they evolve. Such systems are said to exhibit "weak emergence". But a handful of scientists want to go beyond this, claiming that some complex systems may be understood only by taking into account additional laws or "organising principles" that emerge at various levels of complexity. This point of view is called "strong emergence", and it is anathema to reductionists. The debate is often cast in the language of "Laplace's demon." Two centuries ago, Pierre Laplace pointed out that if a superintelligent demon knew at one instant the position and motion of every particle in the universe, and the forces acting between them, the demon could do a massive calculation and predict the future in every detail, including the emergence of life and the behaviour of every human being. This startling conclusion remains an unstated act of faith among many scientists, and underpins the case for reductionism. Laplace's argument contains, however, a questionable assumption: the demon must have unlimited computational power. Is this reasonable? In recent years, there has been intense research into the physical basis of digital computation, partly spurred by efforts to build a quantum computer. The late Rolf Landauer of IBM, who was a pioneer of this field, stressed that all computation must have a physical basis and therefore be subject to two fundamental limitations. The first is imposed by the laws of physics. The second is imposed by the resources available in the real universe. The fundamental piece of information is the bit. In standard binary arithmetic of the sort computers use, a bit is simply a 1 or a 0. The most basic operation of information processing is a bit-flip: changing a 1 to a 0 or vice versa. Landauer showed that the laws of physics impose limits on the choreography of bit-flips in three ways. The first is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, which defines a minimum time needed to process a given amount of energy. The second is the finite speed of light, which restricts the rate at which information can be shunted from place to place. The third limit comes from thermodynamics, which treats entropy as the flip side of information. This means a physical system cannot store more bits of information in its memory than is allowed by its total entropy. Given that any attempt to analyse the universe and its processes must be subject to these fundamental limitations, how does that affect the performance of Laplace's demon? Not at all if the universe possesses infinite time and resources: the limitations imposed by physics could be compensated for simply by commandeering more of the universe to analyse the data. But the real universe is not infinite, at least not in the above sense. It originated in a big bang 13.7 billion years ago, which means light can have travelled at most 13.7 billion light years since the beginning. Cosmologists express this restriction by saying that there is a horizon in space 13.7 billion light years away. Because nothing can exceed the speed of light, regions of space separated by more than this distance cannot be in causal contact: what happens in one region cannot affect the other. This means the demon would have to make do with the resources available within the horizon. Seth Lloyd of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently framed the issue like this. Suppose the entire universe (within the effective horizon) is a computer: how many bits could it process in the age of the universe? The answer he arrived at after applying Landauer's limits is 10120 bits. That defines the maximum available processing power. Any calculation requiring more than 10120 bits is simply a fantasy, because the entire universe could not carry it out in the time available. Lloyd's number, vast though it is, defines a fundamental limit on the application of physical law. Landauer put it this way: "a sensible theory of physics must respect these limitations, and should not invoke calculative routines that in fact cannot be carried out". In other words, Landauer and Lloyd have discovered a fundamental limit to the precision of physics: we have no justification in claiming that a law must apply - now, or at any earlier time in the universe's existence - unless its computational requirements lie within this limit, for even a demon who commandeered the entire cosmos to compute could not achieve predictive precision beyond this limit. The inherent fuzziness that this limit to precision implies is quite distinct from quantum uncertainty, because it would apply even to deterministic laws. How does this bear on the question of strong emergence - the idea that there are organising principles that come into play beyond a certain threshold of complexity? The Landauer-Lloyd limit does not prove that such principles must exist, but it disproves the long-standing claim by reductionists that they can't. If the micro-laws - the laws of physics as we know them - cannot completely determine the future states and properties of some physical systems, then there are gaps left in which higher-level emergent laws can operate. So is there any way to tell if there is some substance to the strong-emergentists' claims? For almost all systems, the Landauer-Lloyd limit is nowhere near restrictive enough to make any difference to the conventional application of physical laws. But certain complex systems exceed the limit. If there are emergent principles at work in nature, it is to such complex systems that we should look for evidence of their effects. A prime example is living organisms. Consider the problem of predicting the onset of life in a prebiotic soup. A simple-minded approach is to enumerate all the possible combinations and configurations of the basic organic building blocks, and calculate their properties to discover which would be biologically efficacious and which would not. Calculations of this sort are already familiar to origin-of-life researchers. There is considerable uncertainty over the numbers, but it scarcely matters because they are so stupendously huge. For example, a typical small protein is a chain molecule made up of about 100 amino acids of 20 varieties. The total number of possible combinations is about 10130, and we must multiply this by the number of possible shapes the molecule can take, because its shape affects its function. This boosts the answer to about 10200, already far in excess of the Landauer-Lloyd limit, and shows how the remorseless arithmetic of combinatorial calculations makes the answers shoot through the roof with even modest numbers of components. The foregoing calculation is an overestimate because there may be many other combinations of amino acids that exhibit biological usefulness - it's hard to know. But a plausible guesstimate is that a molecule containing somewhere between 60 and 100 amino acids would possess qualities that almost certainly couldn't have been divined in the age of the universe by any demon or computer, even with all the resources of the universe at its disposal. In other words, the properties of such a chain simply could not - even in principle - be traced back to a reductionist explanation. Strikingly, small proteins possess between 60 and 100 amino acids. The concordance between these two sets of numbers, one derived from theoretical physics and cosmology, the other from experimental biology, is remarkable. A similar calculation for nucleotides indicates that in DNA, the properties of strings of more than about 200 base pairs might require additional organising principles to explain their properties. Since genes have upwards of about this number of base pairs, the inference is clear: emergent laws may indeed have played a part in giving proteins and genes their functionality. Biologists such as Christian de Duve have long argued that life is "a cosmic imperative", written into the laws of nature, and will emerge inevitably and naturally under the right conditions. However, they have never managed to point to the all-important laws that make the emergence of life "law-like". It seems clear from the Landauer-Lloyd analysis that the known laws of physics won't bring life into existence with any inevitability - they don't have life written into them. But if there are higher-level, emergent laws at work, then biologists like de Duve may be right after all - life may indeed be written into the laws of nature. These laws, however, are not the bottom-level laws of physics found in the textbooks. And while we are looking for phenomena that have long defied explanation by reductionist arguments, what about the emergence of familiar reality - what physicists call "the classical world" - from its basis in quantum mechanics? For several decades physicists have argued about how the weird and shadowy quantum micro-world interfaces with the concrete reality of the classical macro-world. The problem is that a quantum state is generally an amalgam of many alternative realities, coexisting in ghostly superposition. The macro-world presented to our senses is a single reality. How does the latter emerge from the former? There have been many suggestions that something springs into play and projects out one reality from many. The ideas for this "something" range from invoking the effect of the observer's mind to the influence of gravitation. It seems clear, however, that size or mass are not relevant variables because there are quantum systems that can extend to everyday dimensions: for example, superconductors. One possible answer is that complexity is the key variable. Could it be that a quantum system becomes classical when it is complex enough for emergent principles to augment the laws of quantum mechanics, thereby bringing about the all-important projection event? To find where, on the spectrum from atom to brain, this threshold of complexity might lie, we can apply the Landauer-Lloyd limit to quantum states of various configurations. One such complex state, known as an entanglement, consists of a collection of particles like electrons with spins directed either up or down, and linked together in a quantum superposition. Entangled states of this variety are being intensively studied for their potential role in quantum computation. The number of up-down combinations grows exponentially with the number of electrons, so that by the time one has about 400 particles the superposition has more components than the Landauer-Lloyd limit. This suggests that the transition from quantum to classical might occur, at least in spin-entangled states, at about 400 particles. Though this is beyond current technology, future experiments could test the idea. For 400 years, a deep dualism has lain at the heart of science. On the one hand the laws of physics are usually considered universal, absolute and eternal: for example, a force of 2 newtons acting on a 2-kilogram mass will cause it to accelerate by 1 metre per second per second, wherever and whenever in the universe the force is applied. On the other hand, there is another factor in our description of the physical world: its states. These are not fixed in time. All the states of a physical system - whether we are talking about a hydrogen atom, a box full of gas or the recorded prices on the London stock market - are continually moving and changing in a variety of ways. In our descriptions of how physical systems behave, these states are as important as the laws. After all, the laws act on the states to predict how the system will behave. A law without a state is like a traffic rule in a world with no cars: it doesn't have any application. What the new paradigm suggests is that the laws of physics and the states of the real world might be interwoven at the deepest level. In other words, the laws of physics do not sit, immutable, above the real world, but are affected by it. That sounds almost heretical, but some physicists - most notably John Wheeler - have long speculated that the laws of physics might not be fixed "from everlasting to everlasting", to use his quaint expression. Most cosmologists treat the laws of physics as "given", transcending the physical universe. Wheeler, however, insisted the laws are "mutable" and in some manner "congeal" into their present form as the universe expands from an initial infinitely dense state. In other words, the laws of physics might emerge continuously from the ferment of the hot big bang. It seems Wheeler's ideas and the Landauer-Lloyd limit point in the same direction. And that means the entire theory of the very early universe could be back in the melting pot. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:33:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:33:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Mathematics and Biology: New Challenges for Both Disciplines Message-ID: Mathematics and Biology: New Challenges for Both Disciplines The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.4 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26b01201.htm By LYNN ARTHUR STEEN For most of the 20th century, mathematics was seen as a close and natural partner of physics and engineering. Secondary and postsecondary mathematics educators channeled the mainstream of their programs to nourish the roots of the physical sciences. From trigonometry through calculus and on into advanced calculus and differential equations, mathematical study from 10th grade through sophomore year in college was designed to support the parallel curriculum in engineering and physics. Now, however, biology has replaced physics as the crucible of innovation -- not only in science, but also in mathematics. The mathematics involved in understanding the folding of proteins, the causes of heart attacks, and the spread of epidemics is as deep, elegant, and beautiful as the mathematics of relativity, quantum mechanics, and subatomic particles. As John H. Ewing, executive director of the American Mathematical Society, has noted, biology is "the next big thing in mathematics." Similarly, some argue that mathematics is the next big thing in biology. Eric S. Lander, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaks of "biology as information," as a vast library filled with the "laboratory notebooks" of evolution, one for every species, with chapters for every tissue, each written in a genetic code that can be deciphered only by means of sophisticated algorithms. In this new biology, evidence is as often mathematical as observational, as often quantitative as descriptive. The relatively sudden emergence of biology as the dominant scientific partner for mathematics in both research and education has created major challenges for both disciplines. Biological research -- and with it the multibillion-dollar biotech industry -- is hampered by the lack of scientists able to work in teams where both biological and mathematical skills are employed. Biology professors need to learn about the new quantitative tools while helping students who may have assumed that biology was a refuge from mathematics. And mathematics professors educated in the physics paradigm face the daunting prospect of learning to teach new cross-disciplinary courses awash in unfamiliar theories, methodologies, and vocabulary. BIO 2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists, a 2003 report from the National Research Council, argued that as biology becomes more quantitative and as connections between the life and physical sciences become deeper, biology itself is being transformed from a disciplinary to an interdisciplinary science. In contrast, however, "undergraduate biology education has changed relatively little," being "geared to the biology of the past, rather than to the biology of the present or future." Meeting the challenges posed by the new biology will require a paradigm shift in undergraduate mathematics. The challenges, which are immense, involve: Students. Most biology students know too little mathematics, and most mathematics students know too little biology. Moreover, career options for both groups are becoming increasingly diverse, with many options requiring specialized preparation. Faculty members. Senior faculty members in mathematics and biology were educated in a monodisciplinary culture. Now they have limited time, resources, and incentives to learn new areas and develop cross-disciplinary professional networks. Curriculum. Few established courses and even fewer curricular programs focus on the new biology, and biological textbooks and curricula generally pay too little attention to the role of mathematical tools. Compounding the problem is a lack of widespread agreement on the kinds of mathematical knowledge that biologists now need. Departments. Most departments lack structural mechanisms to sustain new courses, which are often developed by single professors using one-time grant support. Too often, departmental reward systems reinforce disciplinary boundaries and discourage curricular innovation. Academic institutions. Administrative structures typically bind departments to disciplines, and few mechanisms exist for disseminating successful new programs and courses. Although many of those challenges represent generic problems facing higher education, some are unique to the interface of mathematics and biology. They burden colleges and universities in ways that make it especially difficult for institutions to confront the urgent challenge of educating students for the new biology. And it is indeed urgent. Genomics and proteomics display perhaps the highest profile, based on their potential for curing genetic diseases. Advances on that frontier require computer scientists and mathematicians specially trained in bioinformatics to devise and apply algorithms to solve problems that have never before been attempted or even contemplated. Even more vital -- in this era of mass air travel and virulent strains of flu, to say nothing of bioterrorism -- is the work of mathematical modelers who invent, explore, and evaluate potential strategies for containing epidemics. That is the kind of science possible only with mathematical models: Trial and error is too slow and potentially too lethal. From visualizing subcellular processes like the misfolding of proteins that cause mad-cow disease to studying global environmental issues like the effects of atmospheric warming, mathematics is often the only tool available for developing hypotheses and anticipating consequences. The best way to develop the needed cadre of multidisciplinary experts is to get mathematics and computer-science students hooked on mathematically fascinating biological problems early in their college careers. Fortunately many colleges and universities are beginning to develop special undergraduate courses, research projects, and joint majors to do just that. Many are described in a volume I edited, Math & Bio 2010, and the Web site of the Mathematical Association of America offers useful links to such efforts (see http://www.maa.org/mtc). Case studies and examples contained in (or linked to) those resources suggest strategies that higher-education administrators may find useful in supporting the new biology on their own campuses. The era of biology as a safe haven for math avoiders is over. Whether they study molecules, cells, or ecosystems, future biologists will clearly need to understand and use sophisticated quantitative tools. So too will anyone dealing with the societal impact of biology, like genetically engineered crops, epidemics, antibiotic-resistant path-ogens, and bioterrorism. That includes every college student, not just future life scientists or health professionals. Citizens who elect legislators, police officers who deal with terrorist threats, business leaders who make economic decisions, and school-board members who set educational policy all need a sound, quantitative understanding of 21st-century biology. Lynn Arthur Steen is a professor of mathematics at St. Olaf College. This essay is adapted from Math & Bio 2010: Linking Undergraduate Disciplines (Mathematical Association of America, 2005), which he edited. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:35:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:35:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: 'Thinking With Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism' Message-ID: 'Thinking With Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism' The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.4 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a01801.htm By NINA C. AYOUB Take a class in animal behavior and you'll probably receive a warning: Beware of anthropomorphism. Explaining animals in terms of human motivations, emotions, or mental characteristics invites suspicion in science, note Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman. It's also, they write, wholly natural. As co-editors of Thinking With Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (Columbia University Press), Ms. Daston, director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, and Mr. Mitman, a professor of the history of science, medical history, and science and technology studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, join seven other contributors to explore how anthropomorphism works in cultural, scientific, visual, and other realms. Opening the collection is Wendy Doniger with an essay on ancient Sanskrit literature, a genre rife with both anthropomorphism and zoomorphism, imagining humans as animals. Ms. Daston follows by contrasting forms of anthropomorphism worried about in two very different endeavors: the medieval study of angels and comparative psychology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Anthropomorphism was a theological sin long before it became a scientific one," she writes. Also visiting Victorian labs, Paul S. White explores anthropomorphism and the debates of scientists and antivivisectionists. If anthropomorphizing is seen as an intellectual failing, what, asks Elliott Sober, about the opposite mistake, or what the primatologist Frans de Waal has called "anthropodenial?" Avoid both errors by not embracing an a priori prejudice, argues Mr. Sober. "The only prophylactic we need is empiricism." Sandra D. Mitchell then considers examples of that empiricism in an essay on cross-species modeling between humans and chimpanzees. Moving arguments from lab to home, James A. Serpell explores how anthropomorphism shapes the human-pet relationship. The book closes with three visual takes. The pensive (whoops) mandrill on the cover is a photograph by Tim Flach. In her photo-filled essay, Cheryce Kramer considers anthropomorphic projection in Mr. Flach's stunning and disconcerting studio photography of animals for Getty Images. In an essay on conservation furthered by film, Mr. Mitman shows how such biologists as Iain Douglas-Hamilton bring us into sympathetic intimacy with elephants by personalizing the pachyderms. On a similar note, Sarita Siegel discusses her documentary The Disenchanted Forest about the rehabilitation of formerly captive orangutans in Borneo, and the pressure from her National Geographic backers to cast individual apes as heroes. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:41:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:41:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Cape Argus (S.Af.): Scientists may use mammoth cells for cloning Message-ID: Scientists may use mammoth cells for cloning http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=588&art_id=vn20050319103941354C279683 March 19 2005 at 02:43PM A frozen mammoth dug up from the Siberian tundra has been unveiled in central Japan in a preview of the six-month World Exposition, which is expected to draw millions of tourists. The beast, believed to have lived 18 000 years ago, has been preserved in a giant refrigerator. It is a key exhibit at the Expo, which will open next Friday and largely feature modern wonders such as robots. Full-bodied mammoths have been unearthed in the past, but this exhibit is billed as the most successful attempt yet to display the animal almost fully. The mammoth on display has tusks, a front leg and a nearly intact, soil-coloured head covered with muscle tissue and some woolly hair. This is not a mere pavilion but a laboratory, as we will do scientific research here, Toshio Nakamura, secretary-general of the exposition, told the opening ceremony of the Mammoth Lab. Visitors can view the mammoth, which was excavated in 2002, from windows at the lab, where the temperature and humidity are controlled by computers. A group of Russian and Japanese scientists hope to clone mammoths from the animals remains by using elephant egg cells. The multimillion-dollar project between Russia and Japan to examine the beast is intended to find out why mammoths became extinct in the Ice Age. The sad fact that mammoths became extinct is telling an important thing to us, said Alexander K Akimov, vice-president of the Sakha region in the Russian Federation, which owns the animal. We have to cherish the Earth and we should not forget about fostering all kinds of lives. * This article was originally published on page 13 of [172]Saturday Argus on March 19, 2005 References 172. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=22&click_id=1909 From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:42:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:42:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Moscow Times: Kasparov Quits Chess in Biggest Gambit Yet Message-ID: Kasparov Quits Chess in Biggest Gambit Yet Moscow Times, 5.3.14 Carl Schreck, Staff Writer [Second articlem, Kasparov: From Chess Hero to Political Zero?, appended.] ???Garry Kasparov, the world's top chess player for two decades and considered by many the greatest player in history, has announced his retirement from professional chess in an ambitious gambit and vowed to devote his energy to battling what he called the "dictatorship" of President Vladimir Putin. Kasparov, 41, a former world champion who has been No. 1 in the rankings since 1984, made his announcement Thursday in Spain after winning the annual Linares chess tournament, one of the game's most prestigious events, on a tiebreak despite losing his final-round game to Bulgarian grandmaster Veselin Topalov. ??? "Before this tournament I made a conscious decision that Linares 2005 will be my last professional tournament, and today I played my last professional game," Kasparov said at a news conference. ??? Kasparov, one of Putin's most vociferous liberal critics, released a statement Friday on his web site, kasparov.ru, saying that Russia was "moving in the wrong direction," and that he would "do everything possible to fight Putin's dictatorship." "I did everything that I could in chess, even more," he said in the statement. "Now I intend to use my intellect and strategic thinking in Russian politics." Kasparov has accused Putin of rolling back democracy in the country and creating a police state. In a Wall Street Journal comment last month titled "Caligula in Moscow," Kasparov called Putin's nomination of Anton Ivanov, a senior official at Gazprom-Media from Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg, as the new chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, "a move akin to Caligula's naming a horse to the Senate." Kasparov is chairman of Committee 2008: Free Choice, a group formed by prominent liberal opposition leaders, including former Union of Right Forces leader Boris Nemtsov, independent State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov and Irina Khakamada, who ran against Putin in 2004. ??? Denis Bilunov, Kasparov's assistant in Moscow, said by telephone Friday that Kasparov and Ryzhkov were planning to travel together to at least 10 regions in the coming months to give political speeches. ??? Ryzhkov declined to comment on Kasparov's future plans when contacted by e -mail Friday. ??? Nemtsov said by telephone that he hoped Kasparov would be "as successful in politics as he was in chess." In his chess career, Kasparov never shied away from political battles, going back even to before he became world champion by defeating the Soviet establishment favorite, Anatoly Karpov, in Moscow in 1985. ??? In 1984, the rivals' first world championship match, also in Moscow, broke up in controversy after five months when Florencio Campomanes, president of the international chess federation, FIDE, stopped the match after 48 games when the score stood at 5-3 to Karpov, citing concerns for the players' health. ??? Karpov had led the match 5-0, but after a long series of draws, Kasparov had won two games in a row, prompting speculation that Karpov was on the verge of physical and mental collapse. ??? At a news conference covered by Western television, Kasparov loudly protested the decision, and while a new match was being organized, he angered top Soviet officials by giving interviews to Western media insinuating that FIDE, the Soviet Chess Federation and Karpov's team were conspiring against him. ??? In November 1985, Kasparov won the second match to become the 13th world chess champion, and successfully defended his title against Karpov in 1986, 1987 and 1990. ??? In a 1987 autobiography, "Child of Change," Kasparov, a vocal proponent of perestroika, wrote that he was saved by the intervention of Mikhail Gorbachev's pro-reform ideology chief Alexander Yakovlev. "The (chess) authorities were told in no uncertain terms that our dispute had to be settled at the chess board. There could be no more dirty tricks," Kasparov wrote. " Yakovlev prevented them from attacking me in the Soviet press, trying to ruin my image in the country. It was their last chance, and he stopped them." Kasparov, who later dubbed Gorbachev the "Louis XVI of communism," was aligned with several short-lived liberal movements in the early 1990s, including the Democratic Party of Russia. Infighting in the party prompted Kasparov to help form a breakaway faction, the Liberal-Conservative Union, shortly after the DPR's creation. Kasparov eventually threw his support behind Boris Yeltsin, but later switched allegiances, backing Alexander Lebed's bid for the presidency after Lebed predicted that an ailing Yeltsin would not finish his second term of office. ??? Political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank, said he thought Kasparov would not remain in politics for long, given his previous forays into the political arena. ??? "With the exception of chess, he has never proven himself capable of committing fully to any project," Pribylovsky said. "He will do something very well for one month, and then he'll take a trip abroad and disappear completely." Pribylovsky conceded, however, that Kasparov appeared to be serious about his activities with Committee 2008, which he helped found during last year's presidential election campaign. ??? "It's the longest he's ever stuck with a political movement," Pribylovsky said. ??? Internet chess journalist Mig Greengard, a close friend and associate of Kasparov's, said the fact that he was giving up the game that made him famous was the best indicator of his intentions. ??? "He could have continued being a political dilettante while remaining the No. 1 player in the world," Greengard, editor of chessninja.com, said by telephone from New York on Sunday. "He could have continued using his chess success to bring publicity to his political cause. If there were any questions about how serious he is about politics , his retirement should answer them." Kasparov was as controversial as he was dominant in the world of chess. ??? In 1993, he broke away from FIDE, taking the title of world champion with him. He subsequently staged and won a series of world championship matches, while FIDE, now led by the mercurial president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, refused to recognize Kasparov's claim and held its own championships. ??? In 2000, Kasparov lost a championship match he arranged with Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik. ??? Two years later, the warring factions agreed on a reunification plan to attract sponsors and interest back to the game, but talks repeatedly broke down, and in January, Kasparov announced he was withdrawing from the process altogether. ??? Alexander Roshal, editor of the Russian chess magazine 64, said he was not surprised that Kasparov had retired. ??? "Once he saw that the reunification process was hopeless and that he would not be able to win back his title, he realized there was nothing more for him to accomplish in chess," Roshal said. ??? Born Garrik Vainshtein in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1963 to a Jewish father and an Armenian mother, Kasparov began studying at the Soviet Union's most prestigious chess school, run by former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, at age 10. After the death of his father, Kim Vainshtein, Kasparov adopted his mother's surname. At 12, Kasparov became the youngest player to win the Soviet junior championship, and became a grandmaster on his 17th birthday. ??? Kasparov, famed for his aggressive play built on fearsome calculation skills and deep preparation, was renowned for intimidating and distracting opponents with wild gesticulations and fierce facial expressions during games. ??? Computers, however, proved more difficult to intimidate, and in 1997 he lost a controversial match against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. Kasparov later accused the IBM programmers of interfering with the computer's play. ??? Greengard said it was too early to tell whether Kasparov would eventually make a return to top-level competitive chess, or stick to his promise to play only in speed chess tournaments and exhibition matches. ??? "You can never say never, but he's completely serious about it right now," Greengard said of Kasparov's retirement. "After doing this for 30 years, it must feel strange to give it up. But we'll see how he feels a year or two from now." ------------- Kasparov: From Chess Hero to Political Zero? Tim Wall Moscow Times, 5.3.16 ???To Our ReadersHas something you've read here startled you? Are you angry, excited, puzzled or pleased? Do you have ideas to improve our coverage? Then please write to us. ??? All we ask is that you include your full name, the name of the city from which you are writing and a contact telephone number in case we need to get in touch. ??? We look forward to hearing from you.Email the Opinion Page EditorIn the sometimes genteel, sometimes weird world of professional chess, Garry Kasparov has been the nearest thing to God for years: omnipotent, all-seeing, with a mind like a Pentium processor and the work rate of Hercules on amphetamines. ??? Like many more or less dilettante chess players, I have followed Kasparov's chess career with undisguised awe and at times outright envy. While I spent too many years of my youth trying in vain to climb the greasy pole of English junior chess, Kasparov was conquering the world in his early 20s. When leading Western grandmasters were giving up chess for accounting in the face of a post -Soviet influx of their East European counterparts in the early 1990s, Kasparov was trouncing Britain's geeky challenger Nigel Short without breaking a sweat. ??? In many ways, Kasparov represents the ultimate triumph of Soviet intellectual achievement. Trained by the father of Soviet chess, five-time world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, he went on to pioneer the use of computer programs and databases in analyzing chess, which revolutionized the game during his two decades at the top. ??? But in the bleaker climate of Russian politics, the country's media, political analysts and even some of his fellow liberals see him more as a dilettante who does not understand the rules of the game and who has more than one failed political venture to his name, from the Democratic Party of Russia, to the Liberal-Conservative Union, and now to the risky Committee 2008: Free Choice. Critics and even friends of Kasparov have noted an inability to commit to any one project for a sustained period. In short, everyone seems to be telling Kasparov: Don't dabble with the real world, go back to the safe confines of the 64 squares on the chessboard and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. ??? But if the politicos and media analysts were determined to show that a chess player could not understand politics, they merely managed to demonstrate their aptitude for mangling chess metaphors. The imagery deployed to describe Kasparov 's decision to quit full-time chess for something like full-time politics -- both in the Russian and foreign press -- has been predictably chess-related, conjuring up all of the limited metaphors in editors' half -dozen-word chess lexicon. Some Western newspapers hailed a "stunning move" that was delivering a "check" to President Vladimir Putin, while other writers went even further, predicting imminent "checkmate." The Chicago Tribune showed off its knowledge of chess and French by describing Putin as "en prise," a chess term that means a piece has been left vulnerable to immediate capture. Meanwhile, the editors of Britain's Guardian newspaper headed an otherwise engaging interview with the hoary old epithet "Endgame." Ah, the omnipresent endgame -- as in the Yukos endgame or the endgame in Chechnya, by which the media implies that it's all over, even if it winds up taking months, years or decades. As Kasparov could testify were anyone to ask him, the endgame in chess is one of the most complicated and little-understood parts of the game, which can take grandmasters a lifetime to master. ??? Kommersant, of course, went one better with its typically caustic headline, "Kasparov Slammed the Chessboard," alluding to the world champion's famous temper tantrums. These are less frequent than in his youth, it is true, but Kasparov's recent epithets for Putin, such as "fascist" and "Caligula," can hardly endear him to the Kremlin. ??? It is a paradox, indeed: While chess is often used to describe conflicts of great complexity, and chess players are rated the most clever and logical of intellectuals, most of the time their standing in the practical world is zilch. ??? Want a classic example of chess players' unworldliness? Bobby Fischer, the American world chess champion who beat the Soviets in 1972, now languishing in a Japanese detention center for breaking sanctions in war-torn Yugoslavia. His behavior in retirement, straight after winning the world title, ranks as one of the most bizarre in sporting history, leading most onlookers to conclude -- with more than a little justification -- that he was a total nut case. The image of chess players as inmates of rook-shaped ivory towers is further sustained by the bizarre record of the current president of the international chess federation, the mercurial leader of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. ??? So the idea that Kasparov could help bring some sense of direction to crisis -wracked Russian liberalism does seem far-fetched to many. As political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky pointed out this week, if Kasparov has not been able to bring the warring sides of the chess world together, how can he hope to succeed in building a political coalition from Russia's disparate opposition forces? Kasparov's unreconstructed free-market-and-democracy views, which he likened to those of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's in a Wall Street Journal comment Monday, could also require a little tweaking in presentation if they are to have any effect on Russian public opinion. And yet, for all its improbability, Kasparov's challenge -- if not as a potential presidential candidate, then in his own preferred role as a leading "thinker" -- could be far more successful than Kremlin spin doctors or professional politicians expect. Stranger things have happened, and stranger characters have achieved high political office. ??? Playboy-turned-inheritor of the Bush family legacy, George W. Bush, now has the run of the White House, and ex-Hollywood action hero Schwarzenegger is in charge of the world's fifth-largest economy. And midlife crises can come in very handy for public figures to reinvent themselves, too. With his career as a Texas oil executive going down the drain, George W. turned 40, sobered up, then got himself some old-time Southern religion and never looked back. ??? One of Kasparov's projects over the next year, a book provisionally called "How Life Imitates Chess," could give a clue as to how he plans to apply chess logic to politics. If his preparation for political combat is anything like that for his chess tournaments, Kasparov's opponents should be afraid, if not very afraid. The stereotype of chess players thinking 20 moves ahead is usually just that, but it is all too real in Kasparov's case, as the world's other elite grandmasters can testify from their many losses to him where Kasparov never deviated from home preparation. So instead of working out powerful opening plays, crushing middlegame attacks and subtle endgame strategies, Kasparov could be devising economic programs, working out how to divide his political opponents and probing their psychological weaknesses. ??? Do the skills translate? It's hard to tell, but he certainly could bring something useful to the debate. Does he need a coach to help him hone his message? Maybe not so much as Dubya or Arnie did, and for sure he'll be a quick learner. ??? Kasparov was named earlier this month as a possible contender for president in 2008 by Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's chief lieutenant still at liberty in Israel, along with former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and independent State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov. Although as someone born to Jewish and Armenian parents in Baku, the chances of Kasparov winning might seem remote. Yet there have been precedents of non-ethnic Russian leaders, from Catherine the Great to Stalin. ??? So after the Georgian and Ukrainian revolutions, could black-and-white be the new orange? Tim Wall, night editor at The Moscow Times, is a former editor of British Chess Magazine. He contributed this essay to The Moscow Times. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:42:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:42:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Space.com: Mini Big Bang Created, Puzzling Results Too Explosive Message-ID: Mini Big Bang Created, Puzzling Results Too Explosive http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050321_big_bang.html By [23]Michael Schirber Staff Writer posted: 21 March 2005 06:27 am ET What do you get when you turn the temperature up to a trillion degrees? Quite a heating bill. Actually physicists claim that at this temperature nuclear material melts into an exotic form of matter called a quark-gluon plasma thought to have been the state of the universe a microsecond after the Big Bang. Recreating this primordial soup is the primary purpose of the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. After five years of data, it appears as if RHIC may have succeeded. But a big mystery looms over the detection: the putative plasma explodes more violently than predicted. "We expected to bring the nuclear liquid to a boil and produce a steam of quark-gluon plasma," said John Cramer from the University of Washington. "Instead, the boiler seems to be blowing up in our faces." The explosive result, which goes by the name of the HBT puzzle, may call into question what RHIC is making in its high-speed collisions, or it might mean the theory needs retuning. Cramer and his colleagues have another alternative explanation, too: perhaps the explosion is not as explosive as the data suggests. The scientists use 50-year old physics to reinterpret the measurements at RHIC. "We have taken a quantum mechanics technique, called the nuclear optical model, from an old and dusty shelf and applied it to puzzling new physics results," said Gerald Miller, a coauthor also at the University of Washington. "It's really a scientific detective story." Collecting clues The main suspect in this detective story is the quark-gluon plasma. But how do you know when youve seen it? The plasma cannot be observed directly it disappears in less than a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a second. All that researchers can hope to do is detect the particles that fly out when the plasma freezes back into normal matter. "You cant go in there and directly measure the quarks and gluons," Miller told SPACE.com. "You have to work back from what you measure to what you believe was there." Scott Platt from Michigan State University, who didn't participate in the new research, compares detecting the quark-gluon plasma to what astronomers have to do when studying an exploding star. "They only see the light coming from the stars surface and then try to infer what happened inside. We [physicists] have the same problem," he said. Instead of light, RHIC researchers see thousands of particles mostly pions, which are tiny things weighing about one-seventh as much as a proton, itself subatomic. The pions show up in detectors set up around collision points, where gold nuclei traveling at 99.995 percent of the speed of light hit each other head-on. To see a movie of a gold-on-gold collision click [24]here (note that the gold nuclei look like pancakes because they are traveling so fast). "We cant stick a barometer or thermometer into the collision center," Platt explained, but by a careful reconstruction of the flight paths of all the debris coming out, scientists can extract information about the brief, but intense, furnace created when gold nuclei smash into each other. From the RHIC data, research teams have identified three smoking guns for the quark-gluon plasma: * the collision center is under high pressure * the collision center behaves a lot like a fluid * very high energy particles do not escape Although this evidence appears solid, [25]physicists are hesitant to say they have created the melted nuclear goop. "That debate is going on as we speak," Platt said. One of the reasons for this conservative approach has to do with how fast the supposed plasma appears to freeze back into ordinary matter. Theory assumed this phase transition would take almost twice as long as was measured. "In science, if you have a bunch of things that are right, it wont matter if one thing goes wrong," Miller said. The apparent explosion of pions and other particles coming from the phase transition is the so-called HBT puzzle. "It is the one RHIC observation that deserves the word puzzle or surprise," Platt said. HBT puzzle To measure the duration of the plasmas phase transition, physicists use an astronomy tool, called Hanbury Brown-Twiss (HBT) interferometry, which can find the diameter of stars using the radio signals from two separate telescopes. Insert: Tiny Terms Quark: subatomic particle that is the building block of protons, neutrons and short-lived particles like pions. Gluon: a particle that transmits the strong nuclear force literally gluing quarks together into protons and neutrons and such. Plasma: a separate form of matter often referring to a gas of freed electrons and ions. In the case of the quark-gluon plasma, the quarks and gluons are liberated from their usual bonds, and can interact with one another freely. Pion: Unlike protons and neutrons, which are made of three quarks, the pion is made of just two quarks. Pions eventually decay into photons, electrons and neutrinos. Phase transition: A change between two forms of matter, like when water freezes or boils. There is a phase transition between the quark-gluon plasma and ordinary matter. Michael Schirber, SPACE.com End of insert Instead of comparing radio waves, physicists compare two pions flying out from the collision center. But these measurements require a lot of modeling and approximations, Platt explained. Cramer and Miller and their collaborators have redone the calculations, incorporating something called the nuclear optical model. This dates back to 1950s, when scientists were beginning to understand the strong interactions inside the nucleus. Effectively, this old-school physics accounts for the fact that, as pions form out of the cooling plasma, they will have to climb their way out of an attractive field similar to the gravitational field that a rocket has to overcome to escape a planets clutches. "This is not surprising, since it has already been shown that the medium is very dense," Miller said. "It is as if the pions are trying to leave a crowded room." According to Cramer, this crowded room "distorts" the data, making the transition look more explosive than it really is. In a sense, the HBT puzzle could be a simple misinterpretation of what the data shows. Platt is unsure that Cramer and Millers work, published this month in Physical Review Letters, indeed clears up the HBT puzzle entirely. "They pointed out one of the ways that the calculations can be improved," he said. "But the analysis is ongoing." If the puzzle does end up being solved, will physicists be ready to claim victory? "It is not for me to say that we have found the quark-gluon plasma," Cramer said. "But we have made an important step." This article is part of SPACE.com's weekly Mystery Monday series. Reference 23. http://www.space.com/php/contactus/feedback.php?r=ms From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:43:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:43:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Nature: Music, the Food of Neuroscience? Message-ID: Music, the food of neuroscience? Nature 434, 312 - 315 (17 March 2005); doi:10.1038/434312a ROBERT ZATORRE AND JAMES MCGILL Robert Zatorre is a cognitive neuroscientist and James McGill professor of neuroscience at the Montreal Neurological Institute. Playing, listening to and creating music involves practically every cognitive function. Robert Zatorre explains how music can teach us about speech, brain plasticity and even the origins of emotion. We tend to consider art and culture from a humanistic or historical perspective rather than a biological one. Yet these products of human cognition must have their origin in the function and structure of the human nervous system. As such, they should be able to yield valuable scientific insights. This line of reasoning is nowhere more evident than in the contemporary interest in the neuroscience of music. Music provides a tool to study numerous aspects of neuroscience, from motor-skill learning to emotion. Indeed, from a psychologist's point of view, listening to and producing music involves a tantalizing mix of practically every human cognitive function. Even a seemingly simple activity, such as humming a familiar tune, necessitates complex auditory pattern-processing mechanisms, attention, memory storage and retrieval, motor programming, sensory-motor integration, and so forth ( Fig. 1 ). Figure 1 The processing of sound waves from a musical instrument. Full legend High resolution image and legend (90k) Likewise, the musician does not consider music to be monolithic, but recognizes within it multiple features including melodies, chords, themes, riffs, rhythms and tempos. This complexity - both psychological and musicological - makes music a challenging topic for a scientific research programme. Increasing numbers of investigators are convinced that music can yield valuable information about how the brain works: they believe that the study of the brain and the study of music can be mutually revealing. How does one go about studying this intricate thing called music? Few scientists would accept that such a complex function could be studied, let alone understood, without first identifying and describing its various components. But this raises the thorny problem of deciding which components of music are pertinent, and how these components are shared or distributed among different cognitive functions. Some cognitive functions, such as figuring out pitch interval ratios, may be unique to music, whereas others, such as memory, may be general systems that are used in many different domains. The oldest scientific technique for understanding brain functions is to study the consequences of brain lesions. We have long known that severe damage to the auditory cortex - where information coming from the ear is first analysed and interpreted - disturbs the ability to make sense of sounds in general. But occasionally, lesions of certain auditory cortical regions result in an unusual phenomenon: a highly selective problem with perceiving and interpreting music, termed 'amusia' . People with this type of damage have no problem speaking or understanding speech, or making sense of everyday sounds. But they cannot notice wrong notes inserted into tunes, or recognize even the most familiar melody. Even more surprising is that a minority of otherwise normal individuals appear to be born with the same inability to recognize tunes. In some cases, the deficit seems to run in families, suggesting a genetic component . This extraordinarily selective problem in processing music, whether acquired or inborn, could result from very selective damage or dysfunction in an area of the auditory cortex where fine-grained pitch differences and sound frequency ratios (musical intervals) are processed . Such a specific deficit at one of the earliest steps of music processing could propagate through the perceptual system, resulting in a global disability. The ability to compute pitch relations is critical to music processing, and if the brain is unable to represent pitch, the entire music perception mechanism could easily be destabilized. The study of people with amusia has shown us that music depends on certain types of neural process. Such people provide living examples of what results when these neural processes are disrupted. And they have shown us that music can indeed lend itself to scientific study. Music and speech Scientists would also like to understand why we have evolved a sense for music in the first place, and, in particular, whether musical ability is somehow an extension of speech: many have argued for this on the reasonable grounds that music and speech share several formal similarities. So researchers have tried, using various techniques, to determine the extent to which the processing of music and that of speech share neural resources. The results so far are somewhat conflicting, but also intriguing. One of the striking things about the neurobiological processing of speech is that it mostly takes place in the left half of the brain. It has therefore been natural to ask whether this asymmetry is mirrored in a right-hemisphere predominance for music. There are also many case reports of individuals who have lost their speech functions after extensive damage to speech regions in the left cerebral hemisphere, yet continue to show intact high-level musical function (for example, the Russian composer Vissarion Shebalin ). These data suggest that music and speech processing do not use completely overlapping neural substrates. But neuroimaging studies indicate that some functions, such as syntax, may require common neural resources for both speech and music . In other words, the ability to organize a set of words into a meaningful sentence and the ability to organize a set of notes into a well-structured melody might engage brain mechanisms in a similar way. But the data from which we have drawn these conclusions have limitations. On the one hand, many of the case reports were studied in a descriptive, anecdotal manner. On the other hand, neuroimaging can be notoriously difficult to interpret: similar patterns of brain activity do not necessarily mean that similar neural substrates are involved, because many complexities of neural patterning are beyond our present technology's ability to measure. The key to resolving these questions comes from a more systematic understanding of the different cognitive components involved, and the specific neural circuits associated with them. Fine-grained pitch processing - a highly critical component of music perception - has proven particularly valuable in dissecting the differences between how the brain handles speech and music. Recent evidence from functional brain activation, magnetic recording and lesion studies, suggests that a particular region of the auditory cortex in the right hemisphere is much more specialized for representing detailed pitch information than its counterpart on the left side of the brain. Tones that are close together in pitch seem to be better resolved by neurons on the right. Why should this functional segregation have emerged? It could be related to the requirement to sample sound information from the environment in different ways, according to need: either quickly and roughly, or if time allows, accurately . If the sound energy is changing very rapidly, for example, a quick snapshot may be needed. The perceptual system needs to track these changes online, and hence must sacrifice detail to achieve speed. Such may be the case for speech recognition where detailed temporal information is essential to recover the sounds produced by the rapidly moving articulatory muscles of the lips and tongue. Conversely, some aspects of sounds that are important for perceiving music evolve much more slowly, so the nervous system can take a more detailed look at the structure of the sound. This takes more time, of course, but yields a finer-grained internal representation. Naturally occurring periodic sounds (many vibrating objects, voices or animal calls) contain pitch information that is important to process. Pitch is also a good cue to distinguish one sound from another in a noisy environment. So the postulated pitch processing mechanisms need not have evolved for music per se, but could be part of a general system for using natural sounds from the environment. Thus, the different specializations of the auditory cortex on the two sides of the brain can be seen as different parameter settings on what are essentially two parallel systems. This approach shows us that it is perhaps less interesting to ask, "on which side of the brain is music processing located?" than to set about systematically studying the various subcomponents that contribute to various aspects of musical function. Music and development Another reason music has caught the attention of scientists trying to understand the brain is that the ability to perceive music seems to be present from very early in development. Of course, we learn the specifics of our musical culture from the environment. But the human infant seems to come into the world with a brain already well prepared to figure out its musical world. Any mother can attest to the way an infant will respond to the pitch and rhythm of her voice. But babies are surprisingly sophisticated mini-musicians: they are able to distinguish different scales and chords, and show preferences for consonant over dissonant combinations, for example . They can recognize tunes played to them over periods of days or weeks, and are capable of remarkable feats of statistical learning, being sensitive to regularities in sounds . In other words, babies' nervous systems seem to be equipped with a capacity to sort out the different musical sounds reaching their ears in order to construct a grammar, or system of rules. It could be argued that this is part of a general capacity to make sense of the world - to be able to predict what is coming up next. In some sense this is certainly true. But the notable thing is that this ability endows infants with the capacity expressed later in life to respond to and enjoy music. All this evidence supports the general idea that the ability to perceive and process music is not some recent add-on to our cognition, but that it has been around long enough to be expressed from the earliest stages of our neural development. Music involves not only listening, but also playing and creating, where individual differences are much more evident. Although nearly everyone seems to have sophisticated neural systems that allow them to perceive music, and to reproduce musical patterns by singing, not everyone is able to play the piano like Vladimir Horowitz. This leads to two very interesting scientific questions, which are the subject of active research. How can we explain individual differences in 'native' ability? And what effects does training have on brain function and structure? Little progress has been made on the first question, except in the very specific domain of 'absolute pitch', where interactions between genetic and environmental factors are beginning to be unraveled . It is now clear that absolute pitch cannot develop without some musical training, but critically, the exposure must happen during childhood: past the age of 12 to 15, it is essentially impossible to learn it. From this one can conclude that the brain must be particularly sensitive during a certain time in development. But not all children given music lessons develop this skill, so other factors must also be at play. New evidence suggests that genetics has a role 10 . This is a field to watch in the near future. In contrast, a number of very clear findings are now emerging that help us to understand how the brain is sculpted by musical experience. Most of this work shows that training in music enhances the activity of certain neural systems. For example, areas of the motor cortex corresponding specifically to the fingers of the left hand show an enhanced electrical response among violin players 11 . These changes are directly related to the age at which training is begun: those who began studying music in early childhood show the most extensive modification to brain response, whereas those who waited until after puberty show much less. Similar effects have been described for the auditory cortex's response to sounds produced by specific instruments 11 . Moreover, anatomical changes accompany these enhancements in responsivity. Several studies have reported greater tissue density, or enlargement of motor- and auditory-related structures among musicians, indicating that years of training actually change the underlying structure of the nervous system 12 . These findings should not be taken as evidence that music makes a person's brain bigger and therefore better. The changes are very specific, and it could be that they come at the expense of other functions. But such findings of brain plasticity have very general implications for our understanding of the interplay between the environment and the brain, particularly in the context of development, as the age at which training takes place is so critical. Music and emotion One of the questions that most frequently comes up in discussions of music, and yet has received relatively little attention in the neuroscience community, concerns emotion. Indeed, non-scientists are often puzzled that this aspect has been relatively neglected in favour of more esoteric concerns, given that, for most people, music exists solely to express or communicate emotion. There are some sophisticated treatises in the musicological tradition on this question (for example, the classic volume by Leonard Meyer 13 ), but only recently has the topic begun to attract serious attention from neuroscientists 14 . One thing we do know is that music can elicit not only psychological mood changes, but also physiological changes in heart rate, respiration and so forth, that mirror the changes in mood. Indeed, music's anxiolytic effect is known not only to the specialist, but to anyone who listens to a favourite piece of music to relax after a trying day. What brain responses can explain these effects? At the moment we simply don't know. But plausible hypotheses are guiding research. One notion is that music results in physical entrainment of motor and physiological functions: music drives the body. So, loud, rhythmic, fast music tends to make you feel lively - or even want to dance - whereas slow, soft music leads to calmness, and even sadness. A possible explanation is that these effects could be mediated through sensory-motor feedback circuits, which have been much discussed in neurophysiology; that is, through the so-called mirror-neuron system 15 . Although there is no direct evidence for this idea, it is plausible in that this system is thought to mediate imitative behaviour by linking perception directly to action. A similar mechanism might explain some of the effects of music on physical movement, and so mood induction. But music's emotional undercurrents run deeper than such an analysis might suggest. Studying the very complex and idiosyncratic responses to music is challenging because it depends on so many difficult-to-control factors, not least individual preferences. What is 'music' to one person's ears is often offensive to another's (consider teenagers and their parents as a typical example). So cultural and social factors clearly have important roles in modulating our emotional response to music. Yet there are still likely to be common neural pathways that mediate responses, such as pleasure, to music. One intriguing and very specific emotional response is the 'chills down the spine' effect. Anyone who has experienced this knows exactly what I refer to: for the minority who haven't, it won't do much good to try to explain it. But we are beginning to understand some of the neural mechanisms that underlie these kinds of response. When listeners experience the chills, neuro-imaging shows that the brain areas recruited include regions thought to be involved in mechanisms of reward and motivation. Examples are the basal forebrain and certain brainstem nuclei, along with cortical areas involved in emotional evaluation, such as the orbitofrontal and insular regions 16 . These circuits are similar to those involved in mediating responses to biologically rewarding stimuli, such as food or sexual stimuli. But why should music, an abstract pattern of sound, have any commonality at all with such survival-related systems? It is a stretch to suggest that music is essential for life or reproduction. However, perhaps this research is beginning to illuminate the complex relation between cognitive-perceptual systems that analyse and represent the outside world, and evolutionarily ancient neural systems involved in assessing the value of a stimulus relative to survival and deciding what action to take. Maybe music, and all art in a way, manages to transcend mere perception precisely because it contacts our more primordial neurobiology. To caricature the idea, we can think of the neocortex as being able to analyse relations and notice patterns, but then this processed information interacts with the emotion/evaluation system, which in turn leads to pleasure (or sadness, fear, excitement and so forth). The vagueness of these concepts indicates how far we are from having anything like a model of the processes going on - although an optimist might point out that even being able to talk about it, albeit in unclear terms, shows how far we have come. ------------------ References 1. Ayotte, J., Peretz, I., Rousseau, I., Bard, C. & Bojanowski, M. Brain 123, 1926-1938 (2000). | Article | 2. Drayna, D., Manichaikul, A., de Lange, M., Snieder, H. & Spector, T. Science 291, 1969-1972 (2001). | Article | 3. Peretz, I. et al. Neuron 33, 185-191 (2002). | Article | 4. Luria, A., Tsvetkova, L. & Futer, D. J. Neurol. Sci. 2, 288-292 (1965). | Article | 5. Patel, A. Nature Neurosci. 6, 674-681 (2003). | Article | 6. Zatorre, R. J., Belin, P. & Penhune, V. B. Trends Cogn. Sci. 6, 37-46 (2002). | Article | 7. Trehub, S. E. Nature Neurosci. 6, 669-673 (2003). | Article | 8. Saffran, J. R. in The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music (eds Peretz, I. & Zatorre, R. J.) 32-41 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003). 9. Zatorre, R. J. Nature Neurosci. 6, 692-695 (2003). | Article | 10. Baharloo, S., Service, S., Risch, N., Gitschier, J. & Freimer, N. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 67, 755-758 (2000). | Article | 11. Pantev, C., Engelien, A., Candia, V. & Elbert, T. in The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music (eds Peretz, I. & Zatorre, R. J.) 382-395 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003). 12. Schlaug, G. in The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music (eds Peretz, I. & Zatorre, R. J.) 366-381 (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2003). 13. Meyer, L. B. Emotion and Meaning in Music (Univ. Chicago Press, Chicago, 1956). 14. Juslin, P. N. & Sloboda, J. A. Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 2001). 15. Rizzolatti, G. & Arbib, M. Trends Neurosci. 21, 188-194 (1998). | Article | 16. Blood, A. J. & Zatorre, R. J. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 11818-11823 (2001). | Article From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 15 20:44:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 16:44:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NEJM: Deadweight?: The Influence of Obesity on Longevity Message-ID: Deadweight?: The Influence of Obesity on Longevity Volume 352:1135-1137 March 17, 2005 Number 11 http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/11/1138 Samuel H. Preston, Ph.D. [First, from CHE: A glance at the current issue of The New England Journal of Medicine: Eating into life expectancy For the first time in two centuries, life expectancy in the United States may well drop over the next 50 years, all because of the sharp rise in obesity, write S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and several colleagues. The problem is increasing in all major racial and ethnic groups, all regions of the country, and all socioeconomic strata, but is most pronounced in children and members of minority groups. Unless obesity is reduced, the authors write, "the youth of today may, on average, live less healthy and possibly even shorter lives than their parents." Obesity will kill more people than will cancer or heart attacks, they say, and over time it could shorten the average life expectancy for all Americans by two to five years, and for obese people by 12 to 15 years. Even today's life expectancy is four to nine months shorter than it would be, the researchers say, if the two-thirds of American adults who are obese or overweight would shed the extra pounds. The effects of increased obesity, including rises in the incidence of diabetes, heart attacks, and strokes, are likely to combine with other factors that cut life expectancy, such as AIDS, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and a possible influenza pandemic, they say. Obesity may undermine "dire predictions" about the future health of Social Security, they predict. That is because those predictions have been based on projected large increases in survival past 65 years of age, forecasts that "appear to be premature," they say. The article, "A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century," is available to subscribers, or for sale, at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/352/11/1138 --Peter Monaghan --------------------- Obesity has clearly become a major personal and public health problem for Americans; it affects many aspects of our society. In this issue of the Journal, Olshansky et al. make an important contribution to national discussions of the future of longevity by calling attention to the very substantial increase in the prevalence and severity of obesity since 1980 and its consequences on health and mortality. They estimate that the current life expectancy at birth in the United States would be one third to three quarters of a year higher if all overweight adults were to attain their ideal weight. Although Olshansky et al. put obesity in the foreground of their vision of the future, the background for their vision is at least as bleak. They argue that past gains in life expectancy were largely a product of saving the young, which is unrepeatable. They claim that advances in life expectancy at older ages will be much smaller than in previous decades and that demographers and actuaries fail to recognize the disjunction and blindly continue to extrapolate the past into the future. They add to this concern that AIDS, antibiotic-resistant pathogens, and influenza pandemics represent additional threats to health. In their scenario, our children may have lives shorter than our own. I believe that these background elements are excessively gloomy. Decreases in the rate of death at older ages have been the principal force driving American longevity for at least half a century, and they show no signs of abating. Sixty percent of the 9.23-year increase in life expectancy at birth between 1950 and 2002 is attributable to decreases in mortality among persons above 50 years of age. Although improvements in life expectancy among women have slowed in the past decade, improvements among men have accelerated. The mean of male and female life expectancies at 65 years of age grew by 0.081 year per calendar year between 1950 and 1990, and by an identical 0.081 year per year between 1990 and 2002, the last year for which official U.S. life tables have been prepared. Demographers and actuaries use extrapolation to project the future of life expectancy because it seems to work better than any alternatives. , , The biggest mistake, which has been made repeatedly in projections of mortality in the past, is to assume that life expectancy is close to a biologic maximum. Confidence in the use of extrapolation is increased by the very steady behavior of mortality trends themselves. The mean of life expectancies at birth in 21 high-income countries shows a nearly perfect fit (a coefficient of determination, R2, of 0.994) to a linear time trend during the period from 1955 to 1996. The effect of an increase in the prevalence and severity of obesity on the longevity of U.S. citizens is already embedded in extrapolated forecasts made in recent periods. In fact, these forecasts implicitly assume that the severity of obesity will continue to worsen, and the prevalence will rise, since it is the rate of change in the determinants of mortality, rather than the level, that drives projected changes in life expectancy. Hundreds of factors affect a population's rate of death in any particular period, and it is their combined effect that establishes the trend. Although Olshansky et al. cite threats to future improvements in life expectancy, it is important to recognize that many factors are at work to maintain a steady pace of advance. These include medical research organizations whose products have, for example, been responsible for much of the massive decrease in the rates of death from cardiovascular causes during the past four decades. Public support for the National Institutes of Health remains very strong, and private companies will continue to have incentives to develop new products that enhance health and longevity. Longevity seems to have a strong genetic component, 10 which holds out the possibility that genetic engineering may, sometime within the 75-year projection of the Social Security Administration, begin to enhance longevity. Other positive influences on longevity are embodied in cohorts of young persons who are approaching the ages at which death occurs most commonly and who will presumably enjoy greater protection from many diseases than will the people who have already reached those ages. Younger cohorts are better educated than older cohorts, and mortality is profoundly influenced by education. In 1998, life expectancy at age 25 was 7.1 years higher for men with some college education than for men with only a high-school education. For women, the discrepancy was 4.2 years. 11 Younger cohorts have had lives less scarred by infectious diseases, which influence the development of many chronic diseases of adulthood. 12 , 13 Younger cohorts have consumed fewer cigarettes at a given age than older cohorts, and the effect of smoking is clearly manifested in the rates of death of the general population. In fact, a large fraction of the decrease in the rate of the decline in mortality among older women in recent years is a result of the rising rate of death from lung cancer in this group, which is a reflection of the delayed uptake of smoking among women in comparison with men. 14 , 15 Significant "cohort effects" have been demonstrated in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, emphysema, and arthritis, suggesting that younger cohorts will have lower morbidity from these conditions as they age. 16 Another reason to expect the longevity of U.S. citizens to continue to increase is that some populations have achieved life spans far longer than those of people in the United States, thus demonstrating what is possible even with no further technological advances. Japan has achieved a life expectancy of nearly 82 years, 4.5 years higher than that achieved by the United States and higher than that projected by the Social Security Administration for the United States for 2055. 17 , 18 Some researchers have used a wide variety of data to suggest that within the United States, subgroups with the healthiest lifestyles may have already achieved life expectancies of 90 years or more. 19 But let me be clear. The rising prevalence and severity of obesity are capable of offsetting the array of positive influences on longevity. How likely is that to happen? One promising observation is that the recent increase in the levels of obesity was produced by relatively few excess calories in the typical daily diet. The consumption of a median of 30 excess calories a day produced the observed increase in weight during an eight-year period for Americans 20 to 40 years of age. 20 At the 90th percentile of weight gain, the excess consumed was about 100 calories a day. Reversing the increase in body mass might be accomplished through small behavioral changes that fit relatively easily into most people's lifestyles. The food and restaurant industries would be valuable allies in this effort, and there are recent indications of their willingness to cooperate. 21 The fact that the U.S. population has already shown the ability to shift to healthier lifestyles is encouraging. Forty-two percent of U.S. adults were smokers in 1965, as compared with 23 percent in 2001. 14 The percentage of Americans 20 to 74 years of age with high levels of serum cholesterol fell from 33 percent in 1961 to 18 percent in 1999 and 2000. 14 Primarily because of behavioral changes, the incidence of AIDS has fallen by nearly 50 percent since 1992. 22 The percentage of fatal crashes involving drunk drivers declined from 30 percent in 1982 to 17 percent in 1999. 23 Each of these improvements in risk factors was facilitated by national campaigns that warned of the hazards of particular behaviors. 23 The time has come to consider another major campaign. Even though the requisite behavioral changes may be small, they may be difficult to accomplish. The fact that most health-related behaviors have improved while obesity has worsened may be an indication of just how daunting the prospect of reducing levels of obesity may be. The rising prevalence and severity of obesity are already reducing life expectancy among the U.S. population. A failure to address the problem could impede the improvements in longevity that are otherwise in store. I am indebted to John Wilmoth and Mitch Lazar for suggestions and assistance. Source Information > From the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. References 1. Olshansky SJ, Passaro D, Hershow R, et al. A potential decline in life expectancy in the United States in the 21st century. N Engl J Med 2005;352:1138-1145. [Abstract/Full Text] 2. Arias E. United States life tables, 2002. National vital statistics reports. Vol. 53. No. 6. Hyattsville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, 2002:25, 29. (DHHS publication no. (PHS) 2005-1120 PRS 04-0554.) 3. Arias E. United States life tables, 2002. Vol. 53. No. 6. Hyattsville, Md.: National Center for Health Statistics, 2002:29. (PHS) 2005-1120 PRS 04-0554.) 4. Lee R, Miller T. Evaluating the performance of the Lee-Carter method for forecasting mortality. Demography 2001;38:537-549. [ISI] [Medline] 5. Rosenberg M, Luckner W. Summary of results of survey of seminar attendees. North Am Actuarial J 1998;2:64-82. 6. Tuljaparkar S, Boe C. Mortality change and forecasting: how much and how little do we know? North Am Actuarial J 1998;2:13-47. 7. Oeppen J, Vaupel JW. Broken limits to life expectancy. Science 2002;296:1029-1031. [Abstract/Full Text] 8. White K. Longevity advances in high income countries, 1955-96. Popul Dev Rev 2002;28:59-76. [CrossRef] [ISI] 9. Cutler D. Your money or your life: strong medicine for America's health care system. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 10. Perls TT, Wilmoth J, Levenson R, et al. Life-long sustained mortality advantage of siblings of centenarians. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002;99:8442-8447. [Abstract/Full Text] 11. Molla MT, Madans JH, Wagener DK. Differentials in adult mortality and activity limitation by education in the United States at the end of the 1990s. Popul Dev Rev 2004;30:625-646. [CrossRef] [ISI] 12. Costa DL. Understanding the twentieth-century decline in chronic conditions among older men. Demography 2000;37:53-72. [ISI] [Medline] 13. Zimmer C. Do chronic diseases have an infectious root? Science 2001;293:1974-1977. [Full Text] 14. Freid VM, Prager K, MacKay AP, Xia H. Health, United States, 2003: with chartbook on trends in the health of Americans. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2003:169, 212, 228. (DHHS publication no. 2003-1232.) 15. Pampel FC. Declining sex differences in mortality from lung cancer in high-income nations. Demography 2003;40:45-66. [ISI] [Medline] 16. Reynolds SL, Crimmins EM, Saito Y. Cohort differences in disability and disease presence. Gerontologist 1998;38:578-590. [Abstract] 17. OECD health data 2004. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2004. 18. Board of Trustees. Federal old-age and survivors insurance and disability insurance trust funds: 2004 annual report. Baltimore, Md.: U.S. Social Security Administration, 2004. 19. Manton KG, Stallard E, Tolley DH. Limits to human life expectancy: evidence, prospects, and implications. Popul Dev Rev 1991;17:603-637. [ISI] 20. Hill JO, Wyatt HR, Reed GW, Peters JC. Obesity and the environment: where do we go from here? Science 2003;299:853-858. [Abstract/Full Text] 21. Carpenter D. Food industry push: cater to health needs. Press release of the Associated Press, New York, January 18, 2005. 22. Jaffe H. Whatever happened to the U.S. AIDS epidemic? Science 2004;305:1243-1244. [Abstract/Full Text] 23. Cutler DM. Behavioral health interventions: what works and why? In: Anderson NB, Bulatao RA, Cohen B, eds. Critical perspectives on racial and ethnic differences in health in late life. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2004:643-74. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:06:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:06:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NTYBR: 'H. P. Lovecraft': Unnatural Selection Message-ID: 'H. P. Lovecraft': Unnatural Selection New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17HANDLER.html By DANIEL HANDLER H. P. LOVECRAFT: Tales. Edited by Peter Straub. 838 pp. The Library of America. $35. IT'S impossible to read the work of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) without experiencing a familiar sensation. The throat constricts. The lips purse. A shudder goes through your body, and the hands rise involuntarily to the mouth. But all resistance is futile, and you must succumb -- to a profound case of the giggles. Of course, this is not the effect to which Lovecraft aspires. ''The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind,'' rumbles his famous credo, ''is fear,'' and the author intended from the very start -- his first story, completed when he was 14, was ''The Beast in the Cave'' -- to carry on in the grand literary tradition of making adults wonder if that slight creaking sound is the claw of some sinister beast finding its slimy way into, say, the walk-in closet in my bedroom. This is a fine tradition, and Lovecraft's shadow looms large in it. But like so many seminal influences -- modern practitioners, from Stephen King to Joyce Carol Oates, hail him as a crucial figure -- he's not read nearly as widely as he is regarded, and frankly it's not difficult to see why. Just as Oscar Wilde noted that ''one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing,'' it's tough to venture into a Lovecraft story with a straight face, let alone with chattering teeth. Lovecraft's stories are so overwrought that they make Jules Verne look like a homebody and Edgar Allan Poe a well-adjusted realist; he pushes at the already extreme boundaries of the Gothic, horror and science fiction genres -- not so much in the way that John Ashbery pushes at the boundaries of poetic form but more as Spinal Tap pushes at the boundaries of heavy metal: by turning the volume up to 11. A scientist in a tale by M. R. James might stumble into strange circumstances that grow more and more sinister; in Lovecraft's ''Statement of Randolph Carter'' he lowers himself into a forbidden crypt in the dead of night to discover the source of a ghastly noise. A Wilkie Collins character might find a curious document in a locked drawer; in Lovecraft's ''Dunwich Horror'' the document has been passed between various shadowy figures, all of whom were either driven to death via madness or, it can sometimes seem, vice versa. While watching a John Carpenter movie, you long to ask a character, ''Why are you going outside in your nightgown when you've heard there's a killer lurking nearby?'' In Lovecraft's ''Shadow Out of Time,'' you hardly know what to say to Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, who is suffering from five years of amnesia due to a mental takeover by invisible beings from another, unearthly dimension. This unearthly dimension, appropriately, adds an unearthly dimension to Lovecraft's world. A good deal of space is devoted to concocting and exploring a mythology of his own devising, if ''mythology'' is indeed the term for something so utterly removed from quotidian reason. Whereas Bram Stoker and Poppy Z. Brite made hay with Transylvanian legends of yore, Lovecraft created a mythos out of whole cloth -- or, more precisely, whole fungus. Mi-Go, the Fungi of Yuggoth, is one of the slimier attractions in Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, named after Cthulhu, a sort of dragon-octopus-human combo who skulks around driving men mad. Mi-Go is one of the less maddening creatures in the world of Cthulhu, although Lovecraft's description is hardly reassuring: ''They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membraneous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be.'' Passers-by are ''quite sure that they were not human, despite some superficial resemblances in size and general outline. Nor, said the witnesses, could they have been any kind of animal known to Vermont.'' I should say not. While the notion of an unseen world is hardly unique to Lovecraft -- fantasists from Coleridge to Rowling have enjoyed peeking under earthly rocks -- one can hardly imagine a universe more removed from our own than that of Cthulhu. Biologically impossible, logistically unplumbable and linguistically unpronounceable, it's a world that makes you want to lock up all the wardrobes rather than venturing inside them. It is little wonder that the scarred witnesses of Cthulhan excursions talk to us in language as unspeakably florid as the universe they're attempting to describe. Lovecraft's narrators are all desperate with misery, and it is worth quoting several of these hysterics as they begin their tales, to approximate the accumulated tone of so much hand-wringing: ''Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me -- to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken.'' ''Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. . . . Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.'' ''I saw him on a sleepless night when I was walking desperately to save my soul and my vision. My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyze and annihilate me.'' Have you tried looking in Brooklyn, sir? The level of anguish, just in these few sentences, is so overdone -- a sense of horror and oppression threatening to master, paralyze and annihilate you? -- that when the climax of a story arrives, the narrator seems to be protesting too much. ''There are horrors beyond horrors,'' one such trembler says, just as the beast is arriving at last, ''and this was one of those nuclei of all dreamable hideousness which the cosmos saves to blast an accursed and unhappy few.'' Oh, come on, this reader couldn't help thinking. Tell me what the monster looks like already. Tucked in an anthology, between the cloaks and daggers of Bram Stoker and the ravenous monsters of Dean Koontz, Lovecraft out-cloaks, out-daggers and out-ravenous-monsters them all, but after four or five of these stories the effect is bludgeoning. Lovecraft has mastered, paralyzed and annihilated the reader, and now the reader's ready for a little P. G. Wodehouse, thank you very much. It is here, however -- perhaps 50 pages into this 800-plus page anthology -- that something begins to shift, and what was supposed to be sublime (but is actually ridiculous) becomes something that was supposed to be ridiculous, but is actually sublime. Part of this is simply getting accustomed to so melodramatic a prose style, but there is also, undeniably, a cumulative emotional weight. One hysterical narrator is off-putting; four is a running gag; but 22 is something else entirely, and over the course of this collection -- well chosen by Peter Straub -- Lovecraft's credo becomes quite clear. Arguably, the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind isn't fear. The first emotional state, if you consult the Bible, appears to be loneliness. After a day naming the animals, Adam is willing to give up one of his brand-new ribs for a little companionship, and the heroes of Lovecraft stories are similarly bereft. In Poe, there's usually an innocent young woman who serves both as savior from and victim of the horrors at large, but in Lovecraft the men are isolated students or overdedicated scientists whose families and loved ones have receded in the wake of these men's sinister fixations -- and the Lovecraft chronology tucked at the back of the book gives us a similar picture of their creator. ''Suffers another 'near breakdown,' '' an entry reads, when the author is just 10 years old. ''Develops an interest in the Antarctic.'' His gaze continues to fix on empty, cold horizons; his health continues to fail; so too his brief marriage to a woman whose distinguishing characteristic appears to be a need for a ''rest cure.'' His philosophies on race and immigration, to put it mildly, do not show a great appreciation of other cultures. For all of their professed interest in the sciences, his characters have little faith it will bring the light of reason: ''The sciences,'' one narrator warns, ''have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.'' Indeed, people seem to be fleeing in Lovecraft's stories even before anything unnatural arrives. ''The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there,'' Lovecraft writes, by way of setting the scene. ''French Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined.'' If you spend enough time in Lovecraft's lonely landscapes, fear really does develop: not the fear that you will come across unearthly creatures, but the fear that you will come across little else. And what first seems horridly overdone accumulates a creepy minimalism. Taken as a whole, Lovecraft's work exhibits a hopeless isolation not unlike that of Samuel Beckett: lonely man after lonely man, wandering aimlessly through a shadowy city or holing up in rural emptiness, pursuing unspeakable secrets or being pursued by secret unspeakables, all to little avail and to no comfort. There is something funny about this -- in small doses. But by the end of this collection, one does not hear giggling so much as the echoes of those giggles as they vanish into the ether -- lonely, desperate and, yes, very, very scary. Daniel Handler writes novels under his own name and as Lemony Snicket. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:09:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: (Joyce C. Oates) 'Uncensored': Them and Her Message-ID: 'Uncensored': Them and Her New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17SCOTTL.html By A. O. SCOTT UNCENSORED: Views and (Re)views. By Joyce C. Oates. 370 pp. Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers. $24.95. IT'S almost impossible -- at this point, it seems positively impolite -- to begin a discussion of Joyce C. Oates without marveling at her productivity. Since her first story collection, ''By the North Gate,'' appeared in 1963, she has published more than a hundred books in at least a half-dozen genres and forms. Her latest one, ''Uncensored,'' gathers 39 essays -- more than half from The New York Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement, the rest mainly from other periodicals (including this one) and books -- on a variety of subjects. It's a reminder that her prodigious literary energy isn't limited to fiction, or even to writing. There may be some books out there that Joyce C. Oates hasn't written, but there don't seem to be very many that she hasn't read. She doesn't so much review individual books as assess entire bodies of work, sorting wheat from chaff and finding the point at which talent meets its limits. Among the objects of her careful, passionate scrutiny are Muriel Spark, Sylvia Plath, E. L. Doctorow and Anne Tyler, as well as a host of lesser-known novelists, memoirists and short-story writers. Of course, every serious writer of fiction must also be a serious reader; the only way the art can really be mastered is through a compulsive, self-administered pedagogy of worship, derision, imitation and intimidation. But not every good novelist is also a good critic. Book reviews, for many (perhaps most) fiction writers, offer, along with modest payment, the opportunity to settle a score, repay a favor or fulfill the general obligation of guild solidarity. Reviewing the work of a fellow novelist is a means, at once generous and self-serving, of endorsing the notion that novels should continue to be written and, once written, read -- a notion usually defended with shamefaced piety. The pervasive suspicion that serious reading is becoming a marginal pursuit contributes to the anxious, timid, supportive tone of much of what passes for literary criticism these days, and the timorousness of the enterprise is part of what makes Oates's robust, painstaking and self-assured essays both exemplary and somewhat anomalous. Among novelists of large reputation, only she and John Updike seem to possess the confidence (in themselves and in the novel as a form), not to mention the stamina, to pass frequent judgment on the proliferating work of their precursors, contemporaries and junior colleagues. Like its predecessor, ''Where I've Been, and Where I'm Going,'' published in 1999, ''Uncensored'' makes room for a few nonliterary figures alongside its diverse roster of living and dead writers. Muhammad Ali is the subject of a characteristically thorough and well-informed (if not terribly original) essay, as is the enigmatic painter Balthus. (The earlier volume included pieces on Jeffrey Dahmer and Ren? Magritte.) But to the extent that an assembly of occasional prose can have an organizing theme, this one is preoccupied with English-language fiction -- novels mostly -- principally but not exclusively American, by writers ranging from Ernest Hemingway to Michael Connelly, from Willa Cather to . . . Joyce C. Oates. Inevitably, a novelist's criticism will be read not only for insights into the writers under review but also, to the extent that these writers are influences, rivals and comrades, for clues about the novelist's own work. The exercises in self-criticism that come near the end of the book -- prefaces to new editions of the linked novels ''Them'' and ''A Garden of Earthly Delights'' and an account of the composition of the novella ''I Lock My Door Upon Myself'' -- offer evaluations, unburdened by modesty, of those books, and concise summaries of their author's ideas, then and now, about sex, class, violence, family and other aspects of contemporary American life. But these brief apologias take on a deeper glow of illumination when read against Oates's more impersonal considerations of others, which reveal fascinating affinities and aversions. Her ''homage'' to Emily Bront?, for example, conveys an unmistakable sense of where Oates herself comes from -- a tradition of ''intense, precise, often lyric observation'' that connects Bront? with Thomas Hardy and D. H. Lawrence and dwells in the borderlands between realism and romance. Oates argues, apropos of ''Wuthering Heights,'' that ''all works of art whether 'romantic' or 'realistic' are in fact the products of an intense, interior romance: that of the artist for his or her subject,'' and it's hard not to see this as a confession of her own impulses. If ''Wuthering Heights'' is ''a paean to the beauty and mystery of the real world,'' the same might be said of novels like ''Them'' and ''We Were the Mulvaneys,'' which confer upon 20th-century American social and family life, that sturdy staple of realist fiction, some of the terror and strangeness the century before knew as romance. Oates's dislikes -- gathered in a section called ''Not a Nice Person'' -- can be as self-disclosing as her passions. It is interesting to learn, for instance, that she doesn't think much of Patricia Highsmith, and perhaps a bit surprising, since they might seem to share a taste for the gothic and the grotesque. But with the exception of ''Strangers on a Train,'' there's not much in Highsmith's oeuvre that meets Oates's approval; to her, Highsmith stands ''at the shadowy juncture between entertaining misanthropy and psychopathology.'' Whether or not one shares Oates's revulsion at Highsmith's grisly tales about animals wreaking violence on people, or her disenchantment with the later novels, Oates's brisk debunking of Highsmith's reputation clarifies, by implicit contrast, an important aspect of her own work. Oates has a moral and psychological interest in portraying sadism, while Highsmith takes an aesthetic delight in practicing it. AND Oates is, perhaps to an unfashionable degree, a moralist, gravitating in her criticism, as in her fiction, toward large (sometimes unwieldy) questions of power, honor, domination and exploitation. Given the gravity of these concerns, the almost total absence of humor from her writing shouldn't be surprising. In her sentences, you often hear the heavy tread of what might be called the higher obviousness -- a deadening combination of generalization and ringing portent: ''Ours is the age of what might be called the New Memoir''; ''Twentieth-century Irish literature has been a phenomenon''; ''The short story is a minor art form that in the hands of a very few practitioners becomes major art.'' But if any critic has earned the right to occasional pomposity, surely it's Joyce C. Oates, and in exchange for a few moments of lecture-hall droning, ''Uncensored'' provides ample instruction and welcome provocation. It's good to catch up with Oates's reading, even if you can never hope to keep up with her pace. A. O. Scott is a film critic at The Times. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:10:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:10:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Evening in the Palace of Reason': Being Geniuses Together Message-ID: 'Evening in the Palace of Reason': Being Geniuses Together New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17MORRISL.html By EDMUND MORRIS EVENING IN THE PALACE OF REASON Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment. By James R. Gaines. 336 pp. Fourth Estate/ HarperCollins. $23.95. When geniuses meet, the results are not always incendiary. One thinks of T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx exchanging the lamest of dinner-table conversations, Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders collaborating disastrously on ''Beyond the Clouds'' and Van Gogh spoiling Gauguin's breakfast with something that was definitely not a dried apricot. Yet, every now and again, sparks fly from the odd encounter. Among the oddest -- it surely burst into the purest flame -- was one between Johann Sebastian Bach and Frederick the Great of Prussia. James R. Gaines's ''Evening in the Palace of Reason'' shows us how a challenge by the king prompted the aging composer to produce the ''Musical Offering,'' a contrapuntal achievement that uniquely allies cerebral and auditory beauty. Gaines, a former managing editor of Time, Life and People, is not the first popular writer to make literature of this famous incident. Douglas R. Hofstadter's ''Godel, Escher, Bach'' (1979) is a study of the aesthetic similarities that unite Bach's great work with the mathematics of Kurt Godel and the drawings of M. C. Escher. It deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize, and remains an example of how plain prose can be used to communicate abstruse ideas in ways that are not only revelatory but thrilling. While Gaines is no match for Hofstadter as a thinker or stylist (he tends to be chatty), he writes with admirable erudition. The story he tells is a reminder that there was once a time when heads of state valued high culture as much as high finance, and when artists won fame through mastery rather than media manipulation. He adopts the rather slow form of a double biography, crosscutting for more than 200 pages before returning to the evening of May 7, 1747, when Frederick scanned a list of foreign visitors to Potsdam and agitatedly announced to his musicians, ''Gentlemen, old Bach is here.'' What happened next is the climax of a narrative whose larger purpose is to set the king and the commoner up as exemplars of two contrary tendencies in Germanic traditions: Frederick the expansionist, power-drunk, atheistic Prussian, and Bach the warmhearted Lutheran Pietist, a family man of parochial horizons and unbounded creativity. No author could want a more promising pair of antagonists -- except that the record of Bach's life is slight, compared with Frederick's. Gaines keeps his book balanced with a lot of dry Bach ballast, while fighting the temptation to tell us too much about one of the most fascinating rulers in European history. In a later, more liberated age, Frederick (1712-86) might have been sympathetically known as ''Frederick the Gay.'' Great he no doubt was as king and commander in chief -- at least, until his autocracy degenerated into tyranny -- and he was almost as eminent in his role as a patron and practitioner of the arts. But homosexuality, and the suppression of it forced on him early on, appear to have been the key to his personality. Gay memoirs today offer no scenes of horror comparable to what Frederick was forced to witness, at 18, through the barred window of a prison cell in Kustrin Castle. AS Crown Prince of Prussia, he had been jailed by his father, the maniacal homophobe Frederick William I, ostensibly for plotting to desert the kingdom and seek asylum in Britain with a young lieutenant, Hans von Katte. Although the accusation was true, Frederick's real treason was having grown up as un-Prussian as could be imagined: Frenchified in language, dress and deportment, art-loving, flute-playing, pompadoured, fixated on his mother and sister -- in short, and in his father's eyes, more of a queen than a king in the making. Effeminate as he may have seemed, and openly as he and Katte flaunted their relationship -- within the proprieties of the day -- there was a tough obstinacy about Frederick that no number of fatherly whippings (many in full view of the royal court) could break. His decision to flee paternal persecution rose from pride rather than fear. ''The king has entirely forgotten that I am his son. . . . I have too much honor to submit to such treatment; and I am determined to put an end to it one way or the other.'' Frederick William reacted with similar determination when the youths were betrayed and arrested. (In Gaines's too frequent colloquialism, he was ''beyond angry'' at their disloyalty and ''beyond firm'' in punishing it.) Unmoved by Frederick's apology, the king ordered that Katte be beheaded below Frederick's window. The execution took place at dawn, while grenadiers apologetically held the prince to the bars. Frederick could only scream, ''My dear Katte! Forgive me!'' and receive a hand-blown kiss from his friend before the executioner's sword swung. At that point, Frederick fainted. Gaines reports: ''He returned to consciousness in a delirium. He spent the day weeping and in shock . . . staring at the body below, on which someone (defying the king's instructions) had thrown a black cloth, now caked with Katte's blood. Unable to eat or sleep, Frederick spent the night in a high fever, talking to himself. 'The king thinks he has taken Katte away from me,' someone heard him say, 'but I see him all the time.' '' Frederick was too much a product of the Age of Reason not to think his way out of this trauma, knowing that his father would execute him too if he did not quickly prove himself as much a ''man'' as any warrior in the Prussian Army. He proceeded to do just that, earning Frederick William's respect as a soldier of extraordinary ability and a student of the most minute arcana of political science. He even married the princess chosen for him, Elizabeth of Brunswick-Bevern, resigning himself to ''servicing'' her when necessary (the actual French verb he used was more graphic). In the event, he fathered no children, and spent as much private time as possible with the men he most cared for -- comrades-in-arms and intellectuals of every discipline. His accession to the throne in 1740 allowed him to come out of the cultural closet as the only true ''philosopher-king'' of the German Enlightenment. In the words of his friend Voltaire, Frederick was ''a man who gives battle as readily as he writes an opera. . . . He has written more books than any of his contemporary princes has sired bastards; and he has won more victories than he has written books.'' The best poor Bach could do to compete, biographically speaking, was get himself imprisoned in 1717 after a contractual squabble with the Duke of Weimar. Far from being traumatized by this experience, he used his few weeks of detention to compose Book 1 of ''The Well-Tempered Clavier.'' Gaines strives to dramatize Bach's other clash with authority -- over which official of St. Thomas's Choir School, Leipzig, had the right to appoint prefects -- but its thrill quotient is low. Understandably, therefore, Gaines devotes as much space as possible to the real drama of Bach's life: his advancement of the art of counterpoint to a perfection never surpassed. Theorists are divided as to which late masterpiece best represents the plenitude of his powers: the ''Goldberg Variations,'' the Mass in B minor and the unfinished ''Art of the Fugue'' are all candidates. But Gaines is on strong ground in his advocacy of the ''Musical Offering,'' all 13 movements of which are based on a theme by Frederick the Great. In particular, Gaines cites the suite's concluding [1]ricercar, a six-voice fugue of almost inhuman clarity. It would be an overwhelming achievement even if the king's theme were simple. But Frederick composed (possibly with the naughty connivance of Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel) a subject so jagged and chromatic that only a freak mind could work it out in three voices, let alone six. In his book, Hofstadter compares the latter task to ''the playing of 60 simultaneous blindfold games of chess and winning them all.'' Bach accomplished it with no apparent effort, throwing in a sheaf of canons and other contrapuntal jeux d'?sprit for good measure. Gaines is at his best here, trading a faux-jovial historical style for serious and lucid exegesis. Indeed, the clash between sensibilities that is his book's main topic seems to characterize his own authorial persona. He loves the baroque complexity of religious or philosophical or musical argument, and is uncomfortable with linear storytelling -- that rational progression and development of themes that is the essence of Classical design. He is never happier than when he gives up trying to keep track of Bach's jobs or Frederick's wars, and can write about one of the composer's works: ''Nowhere better than in a perpetual canon like this can you hear so clearly the connection between musical and celestial harmony, the canonic voices weaving in and around one another like so many orbiting planets, eternally in motion and eternally the same.'' What Frederick thought of the ''Musical Offering'' when Bach mailed it to him two months after their meeting is not known. The likelihood is that he tossed it aside unperformed. He was by then well on the way to becoming an arch-reactionary both to the music of the past, exemplified by Bach, and the music of the future, pioneered by Gluck and Haydn. The stony core that had begun to form within him when he saw Katte executed eventually petrified his entire personality. He died a depressive recluse in 1786, 36 years after Bach. Geniuses both, polar opposites the pair of them, king and commoner sharing only a mutual worship of St. Cecilia -- let us hope that, in some heavenly auditorium (M. C. Escher, architect) they are twiddling away together at harpsichord and flute, in endless variations on Frederick's ''right Royal theme.'' Edmund Morris's biography of Beethoven will be published this fall. He is writing the third volume of his life of Theodore Roosevelt. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:12:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:12:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Houellebecq on Lovecraft Message-ID: Houellebecq on Lovecraft http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/17WOLK.html April 17, 2005 Houellebecq on Lovecraft By DOUGLAS WOLK PART biographical sketch, part lofty pronouncement on existence and literature, the caustic French novelist Michel Houellebecq's new book, H. P. LOVECRAFT: Against the World, Against Life (Believer Books/McSweeney's, paper, $18), is an encomium to Lovecraft, a writer whose style couldn't be much less like his own. Houellebecq's novels (''The Elementary Particles,'' ''Platform''), with their deadpan prose and obsession with sordid transactions, scarcely resemble Lovecraft's rococo evocations of ancient gods and immense, dripping creatures. In this book, Houellebecq rhapsodizes over Lovecraft's grandiloquent excesses, his scientific precision in describing his horrors' architecture and biology, and the gale-force tone that makes him a kind of Sade without sex (or, as Houellebecq notes, money; Lovecraft's fiction fastidiously avoids mentioning either). Dorna Khazeni's translation is padded out with two fine Lovecraft stories and an off-the-cuff introduction by Stephen King. Near the end of ''H. P. Lovecraft'' (available early next month), Houellebecq points out the terrified racism for which many of Lovecraft's great themes are metaphors: WASP-y heroes corrupted by aliens, hybrids and half-castes that obviously require destruction. He quotes a Lovecraft letter shuddering at ''monstrous and nebulous adumbrations'' made up of ''degenerate gelatinous fermentation.'' Things from another world? No -- the ''Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid'' population of the Lower East Side. Houellebecq argues that ''there is something not really literary about Lovecraft's work'' -- that it's more like mythology. But Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos operates on a bait-and-switch basis, promising the sublime (as in the famous opening line of ''The Call of Cthulhu,'' about ''the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents'') and delivering the disgusting. In Houellebecq's own fiction, that kind of nihilistic betrayal is the way of the world. He's as obsessed with writing about money and sex as Lovecraft was with repressing them, but toward the same end: finding a corrupting vileness at the heart of everything. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:15:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:15:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'American Traveler': The First Bicoastal American Message-ID: 'American Traveler': The First Bicoastal American New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17WHEELER.html [First chapter appended.] By SARA WHEELER AMERICAN TRAVELER: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World. By James Zug. Illustrated. 286 pp. Basic Books. $25. IN many ways the archetype of the restless explorer, John Ledyard traveled the world when America itself was terra incognita. He was the first American citizen to step on the west coast of the continent. He also served before the mast on the greatest circumnavigation in the age of sail and made an epic solo journey across the sepulchral wastes of Siberia. Ledyard had an elastic imagination, and although his career was chiefly distinguished by its range of failures, his story is gripping, as he had the habit of appearing in the most exciting place at the most interesting time. Born in 1751 in Groton, Conn., into a respectable if unremarkable family, he got a whiff of the high seas from the saltworks on the Thames estuary. The young Ledyard matriculated at the newly fledged Dartmouth College, but abandoned his studies at the end of his freshman year to investigate the wide world beyond. He eventually headed for Europe, joined the British Navy as a marine and maneuvered his way onto the crew of Captain Cook's third voyage. This four-year expedition, which left Plymouth, England, in 1776, inaugurated Ledyard's career, and in his lively new biography James Zug devotes 5 of his 14 chapters to it. We see the men celebrating Christmas in the roaring forties with roast penguin and a double ration of grog, enjoying fricassee of rats off the Oregon coast and carousing with garlanded Polynesian lovelies in the South Seas, an interlude in which Ledyard picked up a tattoo in Tahiti and a venereal disease in Tonga. Before Cook's murder on a Hawaiian beach the expedition had sailed north to look for the Northwest Passage, the geographical grail of the day. (If it existed, it would enable merchant vessels from London and Lisbon to reduce the yearlong haul to the riches of the Orient to a six-week dash.) It was at Nootka Sound, off Vancouver Island, that Ledyard became the first American to walk on the west coast. More significantly from his point of view, he bartered with the Mowachaht Indians for black-gold sea otter pelts. This was the beginning of a vastly lucrative trade. ''By 1790,'' Zug writes, ''all of Europe knew of this little bay off the coast of America and its supply of otter fur, and war nearly broke out between Spain and Great Britain over its sovereignty.'' Later, in Macao, Ledyard was instrumental in setting up the Chinese fur business. Returning home at the end of the Revolution, Ledyard found that the British had burned down most of Groton and, in a single day, killed or wounded 28 members of his family. His energy undiminished, he set about a career as an independent explorer, and while he was at it wrote the only book he published in his lifetime, an account of the Cook expedition. But he failed to secure a patron, and left America for good in 1784. In Europe he marketed himself, 21st-century style, as ''John Ledyard the Traveler.'' He stayed initially in Paris -- a city lovingly described by Zug -- where he made friends with the American ambassador, one Thomas Jefferson, who called him ''a man of genius.'' Ledyard at last had the kind of influential supporter who made things happen, and Zug states baldly that Jefferson changed his life. Desperate to get back to the pelts of Nootka Sound, Ledyard persuaded Jefferson of the need to explore the American continent (it was two decades before Lewis and Clark). To do the job Ledyard decided he would walk around the world, starting from Europe, then proceeding through Asia and across the Bering Strait -- one of the first known attempted circumambulations. He duly slogged across Russia, alone except for two dogs, but in the end went mostly by post office carriages. In eastern Siberia Catherine the Great had him arrested and deported, but the trip made him famous. (''Behold me the greatest traveler in history,'' he wrote to his mother.) Sir Joseph Banks, the celebrated botanist and one of the most powerful figures in Britain, then dispatched Ledyard to Cairo to follow what was thought to be the course of the Niger from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. But in 1789, before he got started, Ledyard perished of a combination of dysentery and exhaustion in a squalid room on the banks of the Nile. He was 37. Zug, the author of ''Squash: A History of the Game,'' paints a convincing portrait, at least insofar as the opaque 18th-century sources allow. Ledyard had remarkable physical and mental stamina, enduring frostbite, lice and ''alternating bouts of mania and depression.'' He was passionate and resourceful. (''I have a heart,'' he wrote, ''as big as St. Paul's church.'') He favored Turkish breeches and was a robust heterosexual, though he never married. Most fascinating, he was a creative thinker, writing detailed notes wherever he went and regularly debunking the theories of the day. He developed the idea that Native Americans had trekked over from Asia, and that all mankind had evolved from one common ancestor -- both mightily odd notions at the time. He was an early ethnologist, more interested in people than landscape, and, unlike many explorers, he perceived indigenous peoples as human beings. This is the fourth biography of Ledyard (the third appeared in 1946). Zug has researched the material with diligence. His prose is clear and sober throughout, and the pace of his narrative never flags. Occasionally he veers toward the purple, and he never really captures the raw, salty flavor of the 18th century. But this is a useful book. Zug has also edited the first single-volume collection of Ledyard's writings, The Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard (National Geographic, paper, $16), which also includes letters, and journals from Siberia and Egypt. Many others on the expedition wrote accounts of the Cook saga, but Ledyard's was a best seller at the time as it was the only one that partly blamed Cook for his own demise. (He had recently tried to repeat a trick he had used elsewhere, and held the king of the island hostage.) As a writer Ledyard is stronger on content than style, but his digressions open a window onto a vanished world, and the text is agreeably spiced with aphorisms. (''Speak kind of Anthony ye who have not seen a Cleopatra.'') Zug reckons that Ledyard's writings ''changed how America viewed itself.'' The country was no longer ''a baker's dozen of struggling British colonies on the Eastern Seaboard, but one nation, immense and inevitably stretching coast to coast.'' The claim that Ledyard ''changed the history of the United States'' is hard to swallow. In fact, in Zug's zeal to rehabilitate his man, he tends to inflate Ledyard's legacy all the way through the biography -- though he is probably right to say that Ledyard was ''America's first great explorer.'' Zug ends the book on a poetic note that would have pleased its subject: ''John Ledyard is in the wilderness of every American explorer's mind, full of passion and hope, burning to see the next horizon.'' Sara Wheeler's books include ''Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard'' and ''Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile.'' ----------------- First Chapter: 'American Traveler' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/chapters/0417-1st-zug.html By JAMES ZUG Ocean's Briny Waves-A Connecticut Childhood * * * He grew up with the sea. Salt was in the air of the first breath he took. Gray-green tidal water lashed rocks within sight of his first house. The sounds of his childhood were the smack of ropes on wood, the rumble of barrels rolling steady across wharves, the hesitating flap of a sail unfurling and the cadence of the tides. The official seal of his town was a full-rigged ship, with sails spread and the motto Mare liberum. As a young boy he unloaded cargo brought from a dozen nations for the family store. Each ship that moored in the harbor brought tantalizing news from distant lands. When his father, a sea captain, died young and his grandfather disinherited him, he turned to the sea, because it was familiar and because it was the way to discovery. John Ledyard was born in Groton and always referred to himself as a Connecticut man, yet his family roots were in Long Island. In 1637 the Reverend John Youngs, a graduate of Oxford who had converted to Calvinism, emigrated from England with his brother Joseph to Salem, Massachusetts. There he married a widow named Mary Gardner, the sister of his brother's wife. Youngs chafed under the Puritan strictures in Salem, and after three years he took his family to a new colony. They landed near the far eastern tip of the North Fork of Long Island. The Corchaugs who lived there called the spot Yennecock or Yennecott; Reverend Youngs named it Southold, after the village of Southwold in Suffolk, England, where his wife was born. Southold was the first English settlement in what would become the state of New York. Situated on a narrow, windswept spit of land, with Peconic Bay and Shelter Island to the south and Long Island Sound to the north, Southold prospered and became an important port in what was then the colony of Connecticut. The reverend's grandson, Benjamin, born in 1689, was the leading judge on the North Fork and a captain in the local militia. Young lawyers came from around the colonies to apprentice under him. They also courted his beautiful, smart daughters. One prot?g?, Robert Hempstead from New London, Connecticut, married Benjamin's daughter Mary, inherited his practice and built a grand house on the northeast corner of Youngs Avenue and Town Road. A younger daughter, Deborah, also fell in love with a visiting apprentice lawyer, John Ledyard, who had recently emigrated from Bristol, England. In 1727 John Ledyard and Deborah Youngs married and moved across the Sound to Groton. The village of Groton lay two miles up the Thames estuary across from the town of New London. Founded by John Winthrop, Jr., the son of the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, New London was one of the major ports in North America. Groton, named after Winthrop's family seat in Suffolk, England, had officially separated from New London in 1705 but was considered more of an outlying industrial district than a separate town. Besides farming and salt works, the main industry for the few hundred people on Groton Bank was the shipping industry. Warehouses and wharves crowded the shoreline, and shipbuilding became Groton's signature industry after an Englishman named John Jeffreys transplanted his shipyard there. On a rainy Tuesday in October 1725, Jeffreys launched a seven-hundred-ton ship, the largest ship ever built in North America. John Ledyard flourished in Groton. He started his own merchant house, became a justice of the peace, represented Groton in Connecticut's General Assembly, was a deacon at the First Church of Christ in Groton and was soon known as Squire John. He stocked his warehouse on the Thames with goods from around the world: Gloucester cheese, Bristol beer and Herefordshire cider from England; cinnamon from India; rum and muscovado sugar from the Caribbean; flour from New York; and coats from Philadelphia. Starting with John, III, in 1729-Squire John had been named after his grandfather John, who upon his death in 1685 willed ?100 to his younger son, Squire John's father, Ebenezer-Deborah Ledyard bore ten children in sixteen years before dying of measles-at age forty-three in March 1747, just days after giving birth to her tenth child. Within months, Squire John married Mary Austin Ellery and moved to Hartford, the capital of the colony. Widowed herself, Ellery had a substantial estate and a position in the upper reaches of Hartford society. With Squire John, she bore five children in rapid succession. Once he moved to Hartford, a two-day horse ride away, the paterfamilias exerted less influence over his Groton brood. This became apparent in the spring of 1750. John, III, had worked in his father's warehouse as a clerk until old enough to sail on Groton merchant ships. He also spent time in Southold and fell in love with his first cousin Abigail Hempstead. Their mothers were sisters, and everyone strongly disapproved of the relationship. One night in early May, John, III, and Abigail, both twenty years old, secretly left Southold together. Abigail's father, Robert, rushed across the Sound to track them down. For three days he and his father and brother looked in vain for the love-crossed couple, visiting churches to "take the evidence" of ministers and talking to neighbors. They finally found the missing couple sailing into Groton in a boat manned by a cousin. They were husband and wife. Instead of crossing to Groton, John and Abigail had traveled to Setauket, a Long Island village nearly halfway to New York City. There a doctor, whose father-in-law was the Southold minister, used an extra marriage license to perform a civil ceremony. Despite eloping, the young couple managed to return into their families' good graces. Soon enough Abigail's grandfather, Joshua Hempstead, who was an assiduous diary keeper, mentioned visiting with his granddaughter and having Sunday dinners with her at his grand house in New London. Joshua was absent, though, on 10 November 1751, when at the little Congregational meetinghouse in Groton, Reverend John Owen wrote in the church ledger, "John, son of John Ledyard, was baptized in infancy." John Ledyard, IV, was probably born in his parents' new home on Broad Street in Groton, and for the first decade of his life he was nestled in a cozy, close-knit family. In the small triangle of Groton, New London and Southold, dozens of cousins, uncles and aunts and in-laws lived, especially as Ledyards had married into extensive New London clans like the Averys and Saltonstalls. John, III, and his brother Youngs Ledyard, with the help of their father, formed a merchant company and piloted ships in the West Indies trade, earning the title Captain. Youngs had four children within three years of John, IV's birth, and so while the fathers were away at sea, the Ledyard cousins ran about Groton Bank. John, IV became particularly close with Benjamin and Isaac, eighteen months and three years younger. "We have a language of our own," John later wrote to his cousin Isaac, "& you so well know my soul that should Language fail in the communication you would still understand me." The boys played in the Ledyard warehouses, peeking out from richly scented sacks and barrels. They prowled for coyote and bear that still lived outside town. They climbed Lantern Hill, the highest spot in the area and the first bit of land that sailors saw coming into the Sound. They spent hours paddling canoes and rowboats, riding ferries and taking day trips in little smacks up the Thames or the Mystic River or out to Fishers Island. In winter they sledded; in spring they fished for smelt that ran in silvery schools up the Thames to spawn; in autumn they lit bonfires on Guy Fawkes Day. They visited the construction site of the New London lighthouse, which when it was finished in 1760 was the first lighthouse on the Connecticut coast. They searched Cedar Swamp for Spanish gold. A year after Ledyard was born a Spanish galleon struck a reef west of the harbor. The town helped unload the ship's chests of gold, but one night the local men guarding it in New London spirited the chests into the swamp outside town. For decades afterwards gold coins materialized in the woods. The Ledyard boys schooled at the meetinghouse in the center of Groton. They studied under Daniel Kirkland, who had replaced Reverend Owen. A graduate of Yale, Kirkland stayed at Groton for just four years. Jonathan Barber, another Eli man, took over and brought the Great Awakening revivalist fervor of Methodist evangelist George Whitefield to the little meetinghouse. Whitefield himself preached twice in Groton to enormous crowds. The Seven Years' War of 1754-1763 (or the French & Indian War, as Americans later called it) was a prosperous time for the Ledyards. The British forced the American colonies to buy high-priced sugar from the British West Indies rather than from the cheaper French West Indies. False papers, sham swearing of goods, fake unloadings, bribing of customs officials and a constant, intricate game of selling and buying-all washed down by the universal solvent of rum-was the order of the day. More than three times as many ships stopped at sugar-producing St. Kitts than at its neighbor Nevis, for example, because St. Kitts specialized in issuing the right paperwork. Captain John profited from the clandestine smuggling and privateering, although in 1757 he got caught while sailing his ship, Greyhound -named for the animal on the Ledyard family crest. In quick succession the French and then the English captured the Greyhound, and Captain John had to ransom the ship in Antigua in order to return to Groton. While young Ledyard considered his cousins Ben and Isaac his brothers, his own family grew apace. His sister Frances arrived in 1754, then Thomas in July 1756, Charles in September 1759 and George in September 1761. Charlie tragically died at just three and a half months old and was buried in the northeast corner of the Groton cemetery. The loss of a baby brother was saddening, but the shattering event of Ledyard's childhood came in the spring of 1762. Within three weeks time, both Captain John and Captain Youngs, on voyages to St. Eustatius, died at sea, John of malaria and Youngs of smallpox. The dangers of the sea were well known to the family, especially after 1753, when a storm blew Captain John's cargo of horses and sheep overboard. But for John, IV, a ten-year-old boy living a charmed life, the death of his father stunned him. With the gulls cawing overhead, the Ledyards laid Captain John to rest in the Groton cemetery in front of his infant son. On a gravestone adorned with a bursting sun, his eloquent epitaph read, "Once did I stand amid Life's busy throng/Healthy and active, vigorous & strong/Oft' did I traverse Ocean's briny waves/And safe escape a thousand gaping graves/Yet dire disease has stop'd my vital breath/And here I lie, the prisoner of Death/Reader, expect not lengthened days to see/Or if thou dost, think, think, ah think of me." Compounding the loss was a rupture in the family. Abigail Ledyard had not completely gotten along with the Ledyard clan since the elopement, and after her husband's death the tensions broke into the open. Captain John's estate, in particular the deed to the Groton house, was thrown into a complicated morass of legal dealings, and the house legally reverted to Squire John, who gave it to his son William. That summer Abigail took her four children and moved across the Sound to Southold. It was not a horrible exile. They lived in the Hempstead family home. Ledyard could still paddle and sail on the Sound, but he missed his cousins and the life he had led. On the Feast of the Epiphany in 1765, Abigail married Micah Moore. The town doctor of Southold, Moore was a fifty-two-year-old widower (Abigail was thirty-five) with a daughter named Jerusha. The new family moved into a saltbox house along the King's Highway at the eastern side of town, and soon added three daughters, Julia, Phebe and Abigail. Ledyard never knew the girls that well, for in 1765 he moved to Hartford. Squire John had invited three of his fatherless grandsons to come to Hartford and prepare for a life in business. Reunited with Ben and Isaac, Ledyard found his third home in three years quite comfortable. The boys lived in a garret on the top floor of Squire John's imposing house on Arch Street. With three aunts, an uncle, numerous cousins and the Squire's five young children from his second marriage all living there, the house burbled with footsteps. The family slaves lived in quarters in the back. The boys went through their arithmetic at the redbrick Hartford Grammar School and learned about business at Squire John's complex of farms, shops and mills along Hartford's Little River. They worked closely with their uncle, Colonel Thomas Seymour, who was a Yale man, lawyer, representative in Connecticut's colonial assembly and later mayor of Hartford for twenty-eight years; Seymour swam every day in the Little River, breaking ice in winter if necessary, and died at age ninety-four. Hartford, with four thousand citizens, was a larger version of New London, but the Ledyard clan was even more prominent. Squire John was the head of an ever-growing family (he had more than seventy grandchildren), a representative in the colonial assembly and one of the wealthiest merchants in the colony. Ledyard worked earnestly at his studies. "Under the tuition of a tender Uncle," he wrote to his mother in December 1767, "I shall be Diligent and in time Be able to make Some proficiency in My business. Uncle Seymour Promises me as far and kindly as an Uncle Can he sayeth that if I will (which I hope I will be steady and mind my business) That he will do well by me & if my life should be spared he will let me be chosen up to the Law Businesses (as Docs) and to follow the Business long and leave room for us." Despite his assurances, Ledyard never felt entirely at home in Hartford, and tragedy struck soon after his arrival. In May 1766 during a celebration at the repeal of the hated Stamp Act, John's uncle Nathaniel Ledyard was killed in a fireworks explosion. Furthermore, Ledyard and his grandfather never saw eye to eye. The great patriarch held decided views on matters of business and politics and considered his grandson a bit of a fool. Ledyard's cousin Henry Seymour later recalled that one day Ledyard met a drover bringing some horses for sale in Hartford: "Being pleased with one of them & ready for sport, he bought the whole drove, & drew on his grandfather for the amount. He came with the horses to Hartford, and, arriving in the night, he drove the horses to his grandfather's yard, where they remained till morning, when the owner called for his money, & found that they had been dealing with a boy, & was glad to receive his horses again." No doubt this stunt did not amuse Squire John. . . . From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:16:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:16:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Forgotten Armies': Their Lousiest Hour Message-ID: 'Forgotten Armies': Their Lousiest Hour New York Times Book Review, 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17SCHWART.html By BENJAMIN SCHWARZ FORGOTTEN ARMIES: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945. By Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. Illustrated. 555 pp. The Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press. $29.95. SEVERAL hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese troops stormed the beaches of southeastern Thailand and northern Malaya. Their goal was Singapore, some 400 miles south, among the world's richest and most cosmopolitan cities, and, along with Gibraltar, the most heavily defended piece of land in the British Empire. Just over two months later that supposedly impregnable fortress was in Japanese hands. A garrison of more than 85,000 troops had surrendered to a Japanese assault force numbering about 30,000. Singapore's capture, Winston Churchill said, was ''the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.'' By April the Japanese were bombing Calcutta, and India was preparing to be invaded. Britain's ''great crescent,'' which had stretched from India's border with Burma down the Malay peninsula, was lost. In ''Forgotten Armies'' Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, two Cambridge historians, explore these events and their intricate and often terrible repercussions from the perspectives of both the British and the Asian peoples of the region. A work at once scholarly and panoramic, it is as precise in dissecting, say, the logistical problems the Japanese Army confronted during the 1944 campaign in northern Burma (''the worst defeat in Japan's military history'') as it is arresting in examining such sweeping events as the 1942 trek of some 600,000 Indian, Burmese and Anglo-Indian refugees from Burma through the high passes of Assam into India, fleeing the advancing Japanese. Hundreds of monographs have examined aspects of this story, but Bayly and Harper's is the only history that matches the scope and nuance of novels like J. G. Farrell's ''Singapore Grip,'' Paul Scott's ''Raj Quartet,'' Anthony Burgess's ''Enemy in the Blanket,'' Orwell's ''Burmese Days'' and Amitov Ghosh's ''Glass Palace.'' Their 70-page prologue is a triumph of scene setting. The great crescent between Calcutta and Singapore was, Bayly and Harper show, a multinational and multiethnic stew. Indians, Chinese, Malays and Burmese toiled in the factories and oil fields of Burma and the rubber plantations and tin mines of Malaya; Chinese merchant princes ruled the trading houses of Penang and Malacca; Japanese owned shops in virtually every small town on the Malay peninsula, controlled Malaya's iron mines and dominated Singapore's fishing fleet. At the apex of this world, of course, the British ruled. ''Forgotten Armies'' artfully evokes their prewar idyll: the string of posh hotels; the mountaintop golf courses carved out of the jungle; the torpor of the hill stations (exacerbated by chronic gin-swilling), where expats speaking an ''outmoded English slang'' saw to it that ''the ova of trout were carted up on ice'' to stock the streams; and, most memorably, what Lady Diana Cooper characterized as the ''Sino-Monte-Carlo'' atmosphere of Singapore -- a strikingly clean and modern city of snobbish clubs, air-conditioned cinemas and a glut of playing fields, populated by Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Parsis and White Russians, as well as Indians, Malays, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese and their British overlords. The ignominious British and Australian rout down the length of the Malay peninsula (the retreating soldiers sardonically adopted the theme from the Hope and Crosby movie ''The Road to Singapore'' as their marching song) and Singapore's subsequent fall have already been described, memorably, in Farrell's novel and in a host of military histories, most notably Alan Warren's ''Singapore 1942,'' but Bayly and Harper's account is both vivid and authoritative. One of their great contributions lies in their stinging appraisal of the debacle -- all but inevitable given Britain's competing strategic priorities, but made worse in every conceivable way by the fecklessness, dithering, incompetence, jealousies and cowardice of commanders on the spot. A second is their chronicle of the nearly complete moral collapse of British colonial society and civil administration throughout the great crescent. That collapse, they convincingly show, began just eight days after the Japanese invasion, with the shameful European evacuation of Penang, in which Britons abandoned the Asians they ruled to an utterly vicious conqueror. British imperialism certainly had its high-minded and responsible aspects, but at the time and place ''Forgotten Armies'' recounts it revealed itself to be selfish, unlovely and, in the parlance of the time, unmanly. This British failure of nerve enormously strengthened the region's national independence movements during and after the war. The Japanese, of course, tried to exploit anti-imperialist sentiment in the name of pan-Asian solidarity, but Bayly and Harper, though plainly unsympathetic to Britain's imperialism, make clear that Japan's was incomparably worse. The Japanese systematically executed 70,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore and southern Malaya. They sexually enslaved well over 50,000 of the great crescent's women, and raped tens of thousands more; 14,000 Allied prisoners of war died as slave laborers on the Thailand-Burma railway (an ordeal made famous in ''The Bridge on the River Kwai''), along with possibly 20 times as many Indians, Burmese, Chinese and Malays, who were starved and worked to death. (Bayly and Harper should be praised for making plain a grim fact of war that nearly always goes unsaid: ''The scale of animal fatality was colossal.'') The British of course temporarily took back their Southeast Asian empire, but only with the help of their erstwhile subjects (Asians and Africans made up 70 percent of the soldiers in William Slim's victorious 14th Army). In the terrible choices war gave the inhabitants of the great crescent, the craven hypocrisy of the British was infinitely preferable to the medieval sadism of the Japanese. Benjamin Schwarz is the literary editor and national editor of The Atlantic Monthly. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:18:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:18:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Speaking Freely': Your Right to Say It Message-ID: 'Speaking Freely': Your Right to Say It New York Times Book Review, 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17ROSENL.html By JEFFREY ROSEN SPEAKING FREELY: Trials of the First Amendment. By Floyd Abrams. 306 pp. Viking. $25.95. IF I were a real lawyer, I'd like to be Floyd Abrams. The most sought-after First Amendment litigator of his generation, he has championed free speech in some of the highest-profile courtroom battles of the past 30 years, several of them on behalf of The New York Times. In ''Speaking Freely,'' his first book, Abrams writes engagingly about the First Amendment dramas in which he played a starring role. By the end of the book, though, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that free-speech conflicts today have less easily identifiable heroes and villains than they once did. The period when American courts vigorously enforced the First Amendment is remarkably short, and Abrams was present at the creation. In 1971, he and his former law professor, Alexander Bickel, persuaded the Supreme Court to reject, 6-3, a heavy-handed effort by the Nixon administration to forbid The Times to publish the Pentagon Papers, a secret account of American involvement in Vietnam. In hindsight, as Abrams notes, historians have concluded that ''all of the government's fears were overstated.'' The administration asserted, among other things, that publishing the names and activities of active C.I.A. agents would harm national security, but no supporting detail was offered. Abrams concludes that judges and government officials are very bad at predicting the likely effects of controversial publications, and that judicial bans on the press are likely to be ineffective (all the more so in the Internet age, when Daniel Ellsberg could have anonymously posted the papers online). Although a giddy victory for free speech, the publication of the Pentagon Papers set into motion a Rube Goldberg-like sequence of events, beginning with the formation of the Watergate plumbers, that culminated in Nixon's impeachment. The case also transformed the relationship between the press and government, causing journalists increasingly to see their role as being that of crusading adversaries rather than trusted confidants. This new ''press militancy,'' as Abrams calls it, did not always lead to better journalism; and in some cases, the targets of the militancy sued for libel, resulting in more work for Abrams. He devotes three chapters of the book to detailed accounts of his successful defenses of NBC, ABC and Newsday against charges of libel and defamation. Involving highly technical questions about who said what to whom, these cases make for less vivid reading than the great constitutional cases that pitted the government against the press. By the end of the 1990's, the First Amendment landscape looked less familiar. With appealing indignation, Abrams confesses that as the decade wore on, ''I was becoming increasingly concerned that political liberals (I considered myself one) were too often trading in their First Amendment beliefs to further political or social causes they favored.'' Liberals were supporting restrictions on hate speech, cigarette advertising, campaign spending, public access to the airwaves and protests of abortion clinics, while conservatives discovered the virtues of the First Amendment. Disappointed in his ideological allies for their ''devil's trade,'' Abrams jumped at the chance to join with Kenneth Starr, the tormentor of President Clinton, in challenging the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act of 2002. Two years later, the Court ruled against Abrams and Starr by a vote of 5-4. Did Justice Clarence Thomas exaggerate when he said the decision was ''the most significant abridgment of the freedom of speech and association since the Civil War,'' Abrams asks with a flourish. (I'd ask, wasn't the imprisonment of World War I dissenters worse?) Today, liberals are especially enthusiastic (and conservatives alarmed) about the Supreme Court's references to international law in its recent decision striking down the death penalty for juveniles. Abrams notes perceptively that in Europe, nearly all of the cases he discusses in his book would have been decided against the press. There is, however, one notable exception: in Europe, journalists are generally not required to identify their confidential sources. By contrast, the United States Supreme Court, in one of Abrams's first significant defeats, held in 1972 that there is no First Amendment right not to reveal confidential sources. And this past February, the federal appeals court in Washington again ruled against Abrams, ordering his clients Judith Miller of The Times and Matt Cooper of Time magazine to reveal the confidential sources who had told them that Valerie Plame was a C.I.A. operative. One of the judges noted that it would be difficult to create a special privilege for journalists not to speak to grand juries now that any citizen with a modem and a blog can claim to be a journalist. The observation was just one more reminder of how hard it is to navigate the new First Amendment terrain. Abrams is surely correct that, as a constitutional matter, the law is almost always too crude and ineffective an instrument to provide a remedy for the genuine harms that speech can cause. (As a technological matter, in the age of the Internet, the harms are real and may continue to grow.) Today, the principled defenders of free speech are a small but hardy bipartisan coalition of civil libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives, while its antagonists include mainstream liberal and conservative politicians who forget their former scruples as soon as they win power. (Abrams is especially scathing about former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's crusade against the Brooklyn Museum.) Happily, liberal and conservative judges today are increasingly libertarian in First Amendment cases. For this improbable and surprisingly recent consensus, Floyd Abrams deserves his share of the credit. Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His most recent book is ''The Naked Crowd.'' From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:30:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:30:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'The Breaking Point' and 'The Tomb in Seville': In Another Country Message-ID: 'The Breaking Point' and 'The Tomb in Seville': In Another Country New York Times Book Review, 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17GALLAGH.html By DOROTHY GALLAGHER THE BREAKING POINT: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jos? Robles. By Stephen Koch. 308 pp. Counterpoint. $24.95 THE TOMB IN SEVILLE: Crossing Spain on the Brink of Civil War. By Norman Lewis. 150 pp. Carroll & Graf. $20. SO what went wrong between Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, the two most famous writers of their generation? As Stephen Koch tells us in ''The Breaking Point'': ''Hem was . . . more famous than Dos. ''Way more famous.'' Still, Hemingway was fighting off ''the hyenas of a pathological depression.'' ''He needed a new grip on his sanity. He needed a new war. He needed a new woman.'' Along came the Spanish Civil War and Hem had what he needed, including the new woman, Martha Gellhorn. And then Dos had to come along and spoil things by making a fuss about some friend who disappeared in the middle of the war. The tangled politics of the Spanish Civil War is at the center of Koch's odd version of the strained and, finally, broken friendship between Hemingway and Dos Passos. As it happened, Dos Passos' old friend Jos? Robles was working with the Loyalist government (which both Hemingway and Dos Passos supported). Robles was highly educated, with Russian among his languages, making him an invaluable asset as liaison and interpreter to the Russians who were soon sending their political and military ''advisers'' to Spain. In March 1937, Robles was arrested, never to be seen again. Robles's murder, which surely followed, has never been officially documented. Koch assumes what few knew at the time and many more know now: Stalin's interest in the war was to prevent social revolution in Spain, and so to keep his options open regarding an alliance with either Hitler or the democracies. In Spain (as in Moscow) he ordered his agents to execute as ''fascist spies'' many antifascists who disagreed with his policies, including the Marxist leader Andr?s Nin, the anarchist Camillo Berneri and, without doubt, Robles. Dos Passos arrived in Spain in the early spring of 1937 and was unable to find Robles. Hemingway, who at that point was in thrall to the Communists, had been told that Robles was executed as a fascist spy. He gave Dos Passos the news. Dos Passos knew Robles, and knew the charge was unthinkable. And that was pretty much the end between him and Hemingway, and of Dos Passos' own flirtation with the Communists. Now, this story has often been told. Indeed, Koch's copious endnotes make it clear that he relies heavily on these secondary sources. So, absent new material, is there a reason to tell it again? Koch may believe his style of narration has freshened the story. In fact, his intrusive comments often seem like comic-strip balloons. And except for Dos Passos, Koch seems to despise all his characters, each one a Soviet agent or a dupe, all of them sinister. Martha Gellhorn is accused of lying and shopping (no doubt she did both). He has particular contempt for the novelist and journalist Jos?phine Herbst, gratuitously commenting on her looks (unattractive) and grading her talent as of ''the second or third rank.'' But although he names her a Soviet agent, he relies on her account when it suits him. Koch is not wrong in his assessment of the tragically devious role played by Stalin in the Spanish Civil War, and of the American writers and journalists who, wittingly or not, assisted his goals. But he lacks a historian's feeling for the times, and he further undermines his material with an unnuanced, prosecutorial style. In the case of history, if you can't trust the teller, can you trust the tale? If it's Spain you want, put your trust in the renowned travel writer Norman Lewis, whose book ''The Tomb in Seville'' begins in 1934, at the moment when the miners of Asturias rose in armed revolt against the government of Spain. With shooting on the streets of Madrid, the government declared a state of alarm: a curfew was imposed and all public transportation came to a halt. But two young travelers -- Lewis and his brother-in-law -- were determined to continue on their journey to Seville. They begin by walking 110 miles to Zaragoza: ''We moved across boundless plains of billowing rock purged of all color by the sun. Distant clumps of poplar seemed to have been drawn up into the base of the sky in an atmosphere of mirage and mist. . . . At our approach an anomalous yellow bloom shook itself from a single tree, transformed into a flock of green singing finches. . . . ''An eagle detached itself from a boulder and flapped away towards the mountains.'' This was Lewis's first journey to Spain, and it became the subject of his first book, one which Lewis came to dislike and allowed to go out of print. But the reader is now in luck. Toward the end of Lewis's long and immensely productive life as a writer and traveler -- ''one of the best writers . . . of our century'' as Graham Greene called him -- his thoughts returned to Spain, and he reworked his first book into ''The Tomb in Seville'' before his death in 2003. There is a plot of sorts, but it hardly matters. What matters is the journey, and that Lewis saw everything: the landscape, the people, the poverty, the intimations of war to come, the medieval strangeness of Spain to modern European eyes. In a style that only seems artless, he tells an entranced and entrancing story, beautifully observed, of a young writer's meeting with the people and the country he loved at first sight. Dorothy Gallagher is the author of a biography of the anarchist Carlo Tresca and, most recently, of a memoir, ''How I Came Into My Inheritance.'' From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:31:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:31:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Evidence of Harm': What Caused the Autism Epidemic? Message-ID: 'Evidence of Harm': What Caused the Autism Epidemic? New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17MORRICE.html By POLLY MORRICE EVIDENCE OF HARM Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. By David Kirby. 460 pp. St. Martin's Press. $26.95. Back in November 2002, when the journalist David Kirby started researching ''Evidence of Harm,'' he couldn't have known how good his timing would be. His book on the contentious issue of whether mercury in vaccines led to an autism epidemic is appearing in the midst of what must be called an autism boom. In the past few months, this unexplained brain disorder -- which skews language and social skills, and can unloose fierce obsessions -- has hit a media trifecta. Television news segments, a magazine cover story and a host of newspaper articles have discussed its symptoms, treatments, effects on families and, most controversially, its apparently soaring incidence. Why so much autism now? In part, the deluge is cyclical, as journalists discover -- apologies to Yeats -- the fascination of what's difficult. Yet this year's coverage has had a particular note of urgency. Beginning in the late 1980's, the number of autism cases started to take off. The latest estimates are that one child in 166 has some form of the disorder, with effects that range from mild to crippling. These figures have raised vital questions. Is the increase in autism real or the result of revised diagnostic criteria and improved awareness? If the syndrome has become epidemic, is some environmental factor partly to blame? Kirby, who has contributed to various sections of The New York Times, personalizes this dispute by introducing us to a collection of parents who began to suspect that genetic tendencies might not have induced their children's autism. Brought together by the Internet, this group soon focused on thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative once used in vaccines, including many that were added to the immunization schedule in the early 1990's. When infants received higher doses of thimerosal, it was suggested, the result was an autism epidemic. Many of Kirby's subjects have had sour encounters with the medical establishment. One such couple, Lyn and Tommy Redwood, struggled to obtain a diagnosis for their son Will, who at 17 months started to lose his language and withdraw socially. When Will turned 4, his latest ''expert'' doctor ran out of options: ''Why don't you just take him fishing?'' Like the Redwoods, the other parents in Kirby's book watched their children develop normally until the second year of life. After receiving measles-mumps-rubella (M.M.R.) vaccines, they regressed, developing symptoms of autism and severe gastrointestinal problems. Initially, the parents wrote off the rumors of a thimerosal-autism connection, even though the idea that vaccines contributed to the disorder wasn't new. In the mid-1980's, an antivaccine activist collaborated on a book linking autism to the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis shot. And the British doctor Andrew Wakefield argued that autism was an immune-system disorder brought on by live measles virus in the M.M.R. vaccine (which does not contain thimerosal). Then, in July 1999, the United States Public Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement calling for vaccines containing thimerosal to be phased out as soon as possible. The document noted that while babies had received cumulative doses of ethylmercury (in thimerosal) that exceeded a federal safety limit for methylmercury, its more toxic chemical cousin, there was no ''evidence of harm.'' After reading the statement, Lyn Redwood toted up the micrograms of mercury Will had received during his first six months and realized that the government had averaged the mercury exposure on a per-day basis rather than acknowledging that infants got potentially more toxic ''bolus'' doses -- large amounts at one time. Meanwhile, other parents, who would join with Redwood to form the Coalition for Safe Minds, researched the similarities between mercury poisoning and autism. They found a striking parallel in acrodynia, a 1930's ailment that occurred in some children exposed to mercury in lotions and teething powders. From here on, Kirby follows the tug of war between government health agencies and the parents and their supporters. At a succession of hearings, the so-called Mercury Moms presented their research on acrodynia and thimerosal, and a neurologist described his research showing that tiny amounts of thimerosal triggered brain-cell death. The federal agencies, in turn, cited seemingly conclusive epidemiological studies. (Denmark, for example, removed thimerosal from vaccines in 1992 but saw a rise in autism cases rather than the expected drop.) The Safe Minds parents went home and picked the studies apart. Despite their efforts, in May 2004 a committee from the Institute of Medicine found no ''causal relationship'' between thimerosal-containing vaccines, or the M.M.R. vaccine, and autism. If this story has a smoking gun, it's the Vaccine Safety Datalink thimerosal study. Based on data collected from H.M.O.'s, this project, financed by the Centers for Disease Control, sought to determine whether there was a correlation between the timing and amounts of thimerosal infants received in vaccines and the emergence of neurodevelopmental disorders, including speech delay, attention-deficit disorder and autism. The Safe Minds statisticians contended that the government analyses of such data were flawed in a way that obscured or eliminated the original findings of statistically significant risks. ''Evidence of Harm'' is filled with abbreviations and statistics, but Kirby does an admirable job of clarifying most of the scientific background -- including an explanation of the complex biochemical process of methylation, which plays a central role in Safe Minds' arguments. (The idea, in its simplest terms, is that in susceptible people thimerosal blocks the ability of cells to regulate their functions; these individuals cannot shed mercury -- or other toxins or heavy metals -- from their bodies.) However, Kirby is less clear on the nature of autism, which he sums up as ''a hellish, lost world.'' In his account of one government hearing, an angry activist denounces ''the traditional brain-and-genetics stuff'' of mainstream research, but readers who aren't familiar with that ''stuff'' might welcome a summary. Some researchers also suspect that thimerosal and the M.M.R. vaccine delivered a one-two punch to the immune system -- the first weakened it, the second finished it off. A fuller explanation of this theory would also have been helpful. KIRBY doesn't offer his own verdict on the debate, although he makes the unassailable point that American health agencies lagged in calculating the amount of mercury being injected into babies. He quotes Rick Rollens, a founder of the MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis, who thinks answers to the thimerosal-autism question may come from his home state, which has the country's most reliable system of tracking new cases. The decline in infants' exposure to thimerosal, Rollens estimates, began in 2001; he predicts the effects ''should start showing up in our system in 2005'' -- in other words, any day now. As for Will Redwood, his parents have tried applied behavioral analysis, vitamin B-12, folinic acid and chelation, the chemical removal of metals like mercury from the body. In third grade Will was admitted to a mainstream private school, and at the age of 10 he was becoming interested in girls. If one certain conclusion can be drawn from ''Evidence of Harm,'' it's that Will's parents made the right decision about going fishing. Polly Morrice has written for Redbook and Salon. She is working on a book about autism. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:32:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:32:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Letters: The Harvard Mess; Conceptual Art; 'Fat Girl'; Norbert Wiener Message-ID: Letters: The Harvard Mess; Conceptual Art; 'Fat Girl'; Norbert Wiener New York Times Book Review, 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/0417books-letters.htm; LETTERS The Harvard Mess; Conceptual Art; 'Fat Girl'; Norbert Wiener The Harvard Mess To the Editor: Regarding Rachel Donadio's [1]essay ''The Tempest in the Ivory Tower'' (March 27): In asking, ''What is the point of a university if not to provide a forum for airing controversial ideas?'' Donadio confuses universities with, say, talk radio. Universities have a few values more important than speech that is merely controversial: for example, speech that is well considered and speech that is well informed. Lawrence H. Summers's now famous remarks were neither of those things: they were ''off the cuff,'' as Donadio says earlier in her essay, and they were uninformed by the decades of hard research that has shown his speculative premise to be false. Donadio may well be right about the other challenges facing Harvard, but as for the jumping-off point of her essay and the background controversy, really, the basic principle Summers didn't grasp isn't that hard: engage mind before engaging mouth. Lots of us, inside and outside the academy, observe that principle all the time. R. A. KASTER Princeton, N.J. To the Editor: After reading Rachel Donadio's thoughtful essay, I found myself asking the following question: why are university professors adamantly defending their right to freedom of speech in class while denying Larry Summers the same right? ANNETTE RATKIN Nashville To the Editor: Commenting on President Summers's accusation that some Harvard colleagues and students have abetted anti- Semitism, Rachel Donadio praises him for ''a clear message, one other university presidents have been notably loath to communicate even as ugly anti-Israel sentiment in the guise of leftist open-mindedness has rippled across their campuses.'' She provides no evidence of presidential dereliction of moral duty at other campuses, or of the ''ugly'' sentiment she deplores. The charge is an invention by a number of organizations claiming (falsely) to speak for American Jewry. They seek to dictate what may be said about Israel at American colleges and universities and to dictate, as well, the identities of those who may say it. Many presidents, in these circumstances, have had to defend academic freedom against those who need reminding of our national traditions. The presidents could take as an acceptable standard the range of debate in Israel's universities. It is admirably broad. That, no doubt, would disturb both Summers and Donadio were they aware of it. NORMAN BIRNBAUM Washington To the Editor: The genetic inferiority of women is not a ''controversial idea,'' as Rachel Donadio would have it, but old-fashioned prejudice. MICHAEL SHUB Toronto Place It, Don't Throw It To the Editor: In his [2]review of Arthur C. Danto's ''Unnatural Wonders'' (March 27), Barry Gewen says that for Danto all art is now conceptual art. Why does ''total freedom'' mean that art's formal qualities no longer matter or are subservient to ideas? When Gewen describes artists who ''throw elephant dung on canvases,'' he presumably alludes to Chris Ofili, who includes large orbs of elephant dung in his paintings. There is no throwing of dung here. The carefully placed dung contrasts powerfully with the paintings' glossy, jeweled surfaces. It is there for sound formal reasons, playing an integral part in beautifully made paintings. In contradiction of Danto's assertion that all art is now conceptual art, Ofili's work, which is among the best contemporary painting, is powerful as a result of its ''physical attributes,'' its exuberance and aesthetic refinement, not its ''philosophical justifications.'' Anybody who has ever seen one of these paintings knows that the dung is not carelessly ''thrown'' by any means. It's easier to deal in stereotypes of wild, dungslinging artists than to find out about artwork and understand it on its own terms. JOHN MINKOFF Evanston, Ill. 'Fat Girl' To the Editor: How refreshing to find someone who acknowledges that ''as the 'obesity epidemic' receives endless press . . . fat haters coast under the radar as dogooders'' (from [3]Jane Stern's review of ''Fat Girl,'' by Judith Moore, March 27). But as a former fat person, I would welcome the long-overdue acknowledgment of another unpopular truth not every fat person fits the stereotype of coming from a ''miserable'' family ''that created a hole'' in her soul ''that she tried to fill with food.'' I came from a happy family. I overate for the deep psychological reason that fattening foods taste terrific and eating them is delightful. FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN Providence, R.I. Negative Feedback To the Editor: This letter is in response to [4]Clive Thompson's review of ''Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics,'' by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman (March 20). Although the reviewer is kind to the authors, I would take issue with his characterization of Wiener as a ''lesser-known scientist'' and as simply a ''backroom influencer.'' I was particularly disturbed by his final sentence, describing Wiener as ''smaller than history.'' The reviewer seems to have missed (or ignored) the main contribution of Norbert Wiener's life effort namely, to promote ''the human use of human beings.'' Conway and Siegelman have produced a superb book that promotes this humanism of the father of cybernetics and that should be required reading in both science and humanities curriculums. And, speaking of cybernetics, the reviewer seems to be out of touch with the current activity in a number of journals and the American Cybernetics Society. Contrary to his appraisal, cybernetics is alive and well one might even say thriving. FRED CROWELL Tacoma, Wash. The Times welcomes letters from readers. Letters for publication should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. Letters should be addressed to The Editor, The New York Times Book Review, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. The e-mail address is books at nytimes.com. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. We regret that because of the large volume of mail received, we are unable to acknowledge or to return unpublished letters. References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/books/books-harvard.html 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/027GEWENL.html 3. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/books/review/027STERNL.html 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/books/review/020THOMPS.html From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:33:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:33:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Mr. Natural's Creator Visits the World of Art Message-ID: Mr. Natural's Creator Visits the World of Art http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/books/16crum.html April 16, 2005 By [1]RANDY KENNEDY The cartoonist R. Crumb has never been sure what to make of praise for his work from the noncomics art world. He once drew a pitiful buck-toothed portrait of himself wearing a beret and a bewildered look, exclaiming in a half-literate word bubble: "Broigul I ain't ... Let's face it." And his view of most fine art is equally dismissive: he calls it a land of "cake eaters," rolling his eyes behind his trademark Coke-bottle glasses. But in a rare public appearance on Thursday night at the New York Public Library, Mr. Crumb took the stage with one of the more famous cake eaters in the art world, the critic Robert Hughes, who has compared Mr. Crumb not only to Bruegel but also to Goya, one of Mr. Hughes's favorite artists and the subject of his latest book. In 1994 Mr. Hughes appeared as a talking head, a kind of lone voice from the establishment art world, in Terry Zwigoff's hit documentary "Crumb," but until Thursday night, the two men had never met. Introduced as "two very naughty boys" before a sold-out crowd, they made an odd couple. Mr. Hughes, 66, barrel-chested and blustery, commanded the stage and in a mostly dogged manner tried to plumb the depths of the funny, disturbing cartoons that have honestly and bleakly chronicled Mr. Crumb's own life. Mr. Crumb, 61, still as thin and gangly as his cartoons portray him, often slumped in his chair, politely made fun of himself, Mr. Hughes and the whole pretense of an art discussion, and occasionally fumbled with his tie, making his clip microphone emit a loud thump that caused him to jump comically. But as different as the men were, they discovered that they had a lot of common ground in their disdain for much of contemporary art. In fact, despite his subversive, counterculture reputation, Mr. Crumb came off as even more conservative in his opinions about art than Mr. Hughes, who generally likes his art "cake" well aged. "I thought that nobody hated Warhol and what he stood for more than me," Mr. Hughes said at one point, "but my, oh my, you do." The discussion was Mr. Crumb's only public speaking appearance in the United States to promote his new book, "The R. Crumb Handbook," a memoir in collaboration with his friend, Peter Poplaski, published this month. While Mr. Crumb, who now lives in southern France, has often shunned popular culture (he famously turned down offers to be the host of "Saturday Night Live" and to design an album cover for the Rolling Stones, saying he hated that band), he has ventured much further into public in recent years, partly because of the urging of his wife, the cartoonist Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Mr. Crumb, who has said he loathes the fashion world, recently helped the designer Stella McCartney make a limited-edition T-shirt with his comics on the front that sells for more than $150. He has appeared at lavish parties for the T-shirt in London and New York. He now has a Web site, [2]www.crumbproducts.com, where fans can buy a Mr. Natural table lamp for $825. And to promote the new book, its publisher, MQ Publications of London, is conducting an R. Crumb look-alike contest in the United States. (The winner gets a "date" with Ms. Kominsky-Crumb.) During the discussion with Mr. Hughes - which did not stint on classic Crumb references to fellatio, beheaded nuns, near-severed penises and throwing up while on LSD - Mr. Crumb often seemed to be of two minds about his fame and increasing acceptance in the gallery-art world, which ignored him for so long. He said that as a disaffected young man, if he had not had the outlet of drawing, he probably would have ended up sketching his lurid, big-bottomed female characters "on some prison wall or in a lunatic asylum someplace, or I'd be dead." "Now I'm better," he said, adding that "getting famous helped." But then he immediately countered that it could be "hell on earth," and in one exchange with the audience - which included his fellow cartoonists Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith - he mocked his contradictory needs. "I want everyone to love me," he said, half-mockingly, after explaining that he was once shocked to learn that the racial stereotypes and violence toward women he portrayed in his work were hurtful to many people. "Please love me," Mr. Crumb added. A woman in the audience then shouted, "We love you!," and Mr. Crumb held up his hands, cringing, to stop the applause. "O.K., you love me," he responded, laughing. "You're killing me, you love me so much. You're choking me. Now back off." After the discussion, Mr. Crumb quickly ducked out of the library, avoiding a throng of fans, and later joined Mr. Hughes for dinner, where they took a while to warm up to each other, but by the end were in a spirited discussion about Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, whom Mr. Hughes interviewed in the late 1970's. Mr. Hughes told about an exchange in which Speer said that architecture was certainly one way to unite a people, but that if the Nazis had had television, there would have been no stopping them. Mr. Crumb, finishing his plate of baked chicken, beamed. "Oh, that's great," he said. "It's true." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=RANDY%20KENNEDY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=RANDY%20KENNEDY&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.crumbproducts.com/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 13:34:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:34:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Who Was Afraid of Andrea Dworkin? Message-ID: Who Was Afraid of Andrea Dworkin? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html April 16, 2005 By CATHARINE A. MacKINNON ANDREA DWORKIN, an inspiration to so many women, died last week at the age of 58. Over the course of her incandescent literary and political career, she also became a symbol of views she did not hold. For her lucid work opposing men's violence against women, she lived the stigma of being identified with women, especially sexually abused women. Instead of being lionized and admired for her genius, instead of being able to earn a decent living as a writer, Andrea Dworkin was misrepresented and demonized. In the words of John Berger, she was "perhaps the most misrepresented writer in the Western world." The range of her literary contribution alone - 13 books spanning fiction, literary criticism, journalism, speeches (no one could move a room like she could), essays, history, political analysis - is exceptional. But there was no Nobel Prize nomination. Her voice was fresh, her ideas original and powerful, her perceptions and moral principles fearless, her eloquence oracular, direct and riveting. "Men have asked over the centuries a question that, in their hands, ironically becomes abstract: 'What is reality?' " she wrote in an essay titled "A Battered Wife Survives." "They have written complicated volumes on this question. The woman who was a battered wife and has escaped knows the answer: reality is when something is happening to you and you know it and can say it and when you say it other people understand what you mean and believe you. That is reality, and the battered wife, imprisoned alone in a nightmare that is happening to her, has lost it and cannot find it anywhere." Her profound abilities only made publishing a constant struggle. She would not be silenced, but her speech was not free. Lies about her views on sexuality (that she believed intercourse was rape) and her political alliances (that she was in bed with the right) were published and republished without attempts at verification, corrective letters almost always refused. Where the physical appearance of male writers is regarded as irrelevant or cherished as a charming eccentricity, Andrea's was reviled and mocked and turned into pornography. When she sued for libel, courts trivialized the pornographic lies as fantasy and dignified them as satire. Andrea Dworkin exposed the ugliest realities of women's lives and said what they mean. For trusting the knowledge of her own experiences of battering, rape and prostitution, for listening to harmed women, for standing up for women with humor - "now the problem with telling you what it means for me, bertha schneider, to be in an existential position is that I dont have Sartres credibility," she wrote in a short story - lyricism and brilliance, she was shunned. Critics and reporters often talked about her ideas without reading them. She was tortured by editors, some of whom she considered censors ("police work for liberals"). Only power did not underestimate Andrea Dworkin. Threatened by this Jewish girl from Camden, N.J., the minions of the status quo moved to destroy her credibility and bury her work alive. Andrea Dworkin saw through male power as a political system - "while the system of gender polarity is real, it is not true," she said - and exposed the sexual core of male supremacy, the heart of the male darkness. She stood with, and therefore for, sexually abused women. So she was treated as they are treated, denigrated as they are denigrated. She was the intellectual shock troops, the artistic heavy artillery of the women's movement in our time. She took its heaviest hits. And she wanted to change the face of this earth. Our idea of empowering harmed women to sue pornographers for civil rights violations they could prove were done to them would stop the pornography industry in its tracks. "Pornographers use our bodies as their language," she said. "Anything they say, they have to use us to say. They do not have that right. They must not have that right." She concluded: "They do benefit from it; and we do have to stop them." Such work is risky to do at all. It costs a woman's life to do it well. Because of her subject, because of the substance of her ideas, and most of all because of her effectiveness at expressing them, Andrea Dworkin faced especially naked misogyny: "woman hating," which is the title of her first book. How she was treated is how women are treated who tell the truth about male power without compromise or apology. It is why few do. This warrior for women was gentle, sweet, loving, raging and deeply vulnerable. "Being stigmatized by sex," she wrote, "is being marked by its meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is indelible." She was well named Andrea. It means "courage." Catharine A. MacKinnon, a law professorat the University of Michigan, is the author of "Women's Lives, Men's Laws." She was an editor, with Andrea Dworkin, of "In Harm's Way." From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 16 17:45:07 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 10:45:07 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C54271.5B290600.shovland@mindspring.com> So they should pay more taxes. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sat Apr 16 21:43:58 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 14:43:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] eugenics and feminism In-Reply-To: <200504161802.j3GI2h232609@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050416214358.53994.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Premise Checker quotes an article which mentions early feminism and liberal Christianity as supporters of eugenics, with Catholics and conservative Protestants against it. I'm wondering what purpose the article serves? It certainly doesn't reflect on modern feminism or liberal Christianity, but is it supposed to be a smear by association? Or just a random bit of history that has no bearing on modern politics? Not sure what conclusion to draw from the article, apart from "people had some pretty stupid ideas a century ago", which isn't exactly news. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 21:57:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 17:57:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'The Outlaw Bible of American Literature': The Rebel Establishment Message-ID: 'The Outlaw Bible of American Literature': The Rebel Establishment New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17COVERGATES.html By DAVID GATES THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Edited by Alan Kaufman, Neil Ortenberg and Barney Rosset. Illustrated. 662 pp. Thunder's Mouth Press. Paper, $24.95. Back in the late 1930's, when Philip Rahv made that famous distinction between American literature's ''redskins'' (yawping Walt Whitman) and ''palefaces'' (finicking Henry James), he was talking about contrasting sensibilities, not armed camps. But in the 50's, all hell broke loose. With the publication of [1]''On the Road,'' ''Howl'' and [2]''Naked Lunch,'' the Beat writers and the establishment (which might have been smug enough not to have realized it was any such thing) declared war on each other, and the Beats were cast -- and certainly cast themselves -- as the rebel-angels of a perpetual insurrection, recruiting from beyond the grave (Blake, Rimbaud), trying to enlist neglected, potentially sympathetic elders (Pound, Williams) and potential fellow travelers (the Black Mountain school), proselytizing the young. Earlier American misfits, from Melville through Robinson Jeffers, had probably figured neglect was just their personal tough luck. Now misfits had a movement, even if they were too cantankerous to sign up: a literary counterculture with an alternative -- at heart, a Miltonic -- reading of literary history. The entrance exam was largely a background check, and nobody graded the written portion. That's a short version of the history behind ''The Outlaw Bible of American Literature,'' a new anthology put together by the writer Alan Kaufman, the editor Neil Ortenberg and the seminal publisher Barney Rosset, whose Grove Press and Evergreen Review gave a brand -- and more important, a home -- to writers once deemed, for whatever reason, too dangerous to handle. Some of the foreigners Rosset supported (Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco) have long since become respectable, if no less formidable. But most of the Americans he published (William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Terry Southern) remain outsiders. In part this is because of the work itself: sometimes semipornographic -- though seldom gamier than passages in John Updike and Philip Roth -- sometimes antiestablishmentarian, sometimes hard to read, sometimes all of the above. But in part it's because the idea of literary outlawry -- any kind of outlawry -- is irresistible to the American imagination, which may never outgrow its Puritan-Manichaean origins. In fact, for two cents, I'd say ''The Outlaw Bible'' is a quintessential document of the Bush Era, but that would hurt everybody's feelings. At any rate, although the Rosset-sponsored rebels of the 50's and 60's center this collection, the editors have opened the countercanon wide to take in a full range of American Unclubbables. Mickey Spillane, Sapphire, Waylon Jennings, John Waters, Greil Marcus, Margaret Sanger, Dave Eggers, DMX: you won't find all of these people together in any other book, ever. (The only folks not invited to the party seem to be the far-right cranks: the militiapersons in ''The Turner Diaries'' may be extralegal, but they're not outlaws.) It's just what an anthology of alternative/outsider literature ought to be: all over the place. You can read Woody Guthrie on hopping freights, Valerie Solanas on cutting up men and Emma Goldman on doing prison time. As long as you're not expecting that all these writers can write, there's no reason you shouldn't have a good time. But ''The Outlaw Bible'' is supposed to be good for you, and that's what changes it from an entertaining miscellany to something worth thinking about. Depending on where you sit, it's either a document recodifying a revolution or a relic recyling an obsolescent controversy. The editors' introduction, of course, argues for its contemporary relevance: ''a revolt against a landscape dominated by a literary dictatorship of tepid taste, political correctness and sheer numbing banality.'' Your reflexive reaction is to leap to your feet, whet your knife and take the tarp off the old tumbrel -- the problem with numbing banality is, it doesn't numb you enough -- but then you remember what year it is. True, goon squads of editors and critics still keep the frightened masses buying superficially quiet fiction about superficially quiet people by Alice Munro and Marilynne Robinson. But some of the writers the regime is now grooming to take power look a lot like insurgents themselves: indecorous, sometimes indecent, not snobby about pop culture. Whatever you think of David Foster Wallace or Michael Chabon, Gary Shteyngart or Jonathan Safran Foer, they're more mermaid than Prufrock. For every current big-name writer who's flatlining, I can name you one who's redlining. (But not here. We'll talk after the show.) Kaufman and his fellow editors seem to be fighting battles that were over with half a century ago -- in romantic-sentimental language that should have been over with half a century ago. ''Some of our best, our fiercest, our most volcanic prose,'' they write, ''is not a tongue-twisted Henry Jamesian labyrinth of 'creative writing' but an outraged American songline of tear-stained revelation.'' I can't sit still for James either -- who the hell can? -- but the editors ought to visit some creative writing classes: these days, both Jamesian maundering and Vesuvian spewing get the red pencil. And the attempt to transplant bebop-era grievances to a hip-hop world -- ''in the grip of Google and Wal-Mart'' -- only makes them sound clueless. This alternative canon, they write, springs ''not from reality shows, Botox or I.P.O.'s, but the streets, prisons, highways, trailer parks and back alleys of the American dream.'' Jeez, why pick on Google, the most useful tool since the stone ax? (That's how I found out it was Rahv and not Lionel Trilling or somebody who'd thought up the paleface/redskin thing. Took me 30 seconds.) And if you're all about the trailer park and the prison, why dis Wal-Mart, which melds the two so perfectly that writers should stop wishing it away and start hanging out there and taking notes? ''The Outlaw Bible'' may be an uneven reading experience -- after reprinting that bit of Bob Dylan's ''Tarantula,'' the editors have their nerve to complain about tongue-twisted labyrinths -- but it makes an absorbing exercise in taxonomy. Who exactly qualifies as an outlaw and why? Let's try a little quiz. Without looking at the table of contents, which two made the grade? A) Bret Easton Ellis B) Norman Mailer C) Grace Paley D) Raymond Carver Time's up: B and C. Mailer qualifies because he's ''walked a tightrope over public opinion, often with a dagger in his teeth'' -- possibly an allusion to his stabbing his wife all those years ago? -- for his ''hipster manifesto 'The White Negro' '' and his ''literary sponsorship of the criminal Jack Henry Abbott'' (who's also in the anthology). Paley has published ''highly acclaimed collections of short fiction,'' but heck, so has Munro. Selling point: her antiwar, antinuke and feminist activism. So what's wrong with Ellis and Carver? If you read carefully the stuff I quoted above -- I can't blame you if you skimmed -- you'll see why they don't belong in the club of those who don't belong in the Club. Patrick Bateman in Ellis's ''American Psycho'' is far more crazed and violent than Stephen Rojack in Mailer's ''American Dream,'' but he's an I.P.O. kind of guy: out. Carver passes the trailer-park test, but his flintlike precisionism doesn't fit the lava-flow aesthetic. Outlaws are not anal. Now that you understand the rules, here's Round 2. None of these writers made it into ''The Outlaw Bible,'' but two of them might have. Again, pick the outlaws: A) Charles Bukowski B) Susan Sontag C) Jim Bouton D) Ernest Hemingway You're catching on: A and C. Sontag's politics are O.K., but she had that mandarin thing happening: forget it. An outlaw can't be a fancy pants. Hemingway gets points for his suicide and his slumming -- check out that story ''A Pursuit Race''; it's got a guy shooting dope -- but precisionism and the Nobel Prize are deal-breakers. Bukowski? Absolutely: working-class boozer, volcanically prolific, neglected except for a cult following. Bouton? A borderline case: I threw him in to make it interesting. In ''Ball Four,'' he admits he was ''too chicken'' to take the acid hippies offered him in Haight-Ashbury. But any writer subversive enough to have the baseball commissioner tell him he'd ''done the game a grave disservice'' -- and then to use the quotation on his book jacket -- ought to get the benefit of the doubt. Mailer himself once did the pans-as-blurbs thing in an ad for [3]''The Deer Park.'' If you believe the editors' introduction, what makes an outlaw writer isn't the writing but the life. ''The authors in this collection are not greeted with book club invitations'' -- take that, Jonathan Franzen -- ''and White House invitations.'' (In fact, by my count, four of the contributors were invited to the White House at one time or another, and they went like lambs; the excerpt from Dick Gregory's autobiography even tells about it.) Rather, these writers ''often lead lives of state pen incarceration'' -- rhymes with quiet desperation -- ''street hustling, exile, martyrdom, and even murder at the hands of strangers. . . . William S. Burroughs . . . traveled to the edge of heroin addiction and preserved in deathless prose what he found there. . . . Iceberg Slim . . . ran whores before turning his hand to books. . . . Ken Kesey . . . captured the American heart in great epic novels before transforming its society through Merry Prankster revolution.'' Understand, I have nothing against heroin addiction, running whores or transforming society -- it's all good -- but I wonder about the tacit assumption that such experiences make your tear-stained prose sing. Wouldn't revision be less time-consuming and involve less wear and tear? And the four writers who get special mention -- Richard Brautigan, Breece D'J Pancake, Donald Goines and F. X. Toole -- are specifically singled out for having died: the first two by suicide, Goines by murder, Toole a year after his only book appeared. This may be too Zen to get your head around, but I'm tempted to think that not living long enough to write anything at all might be a literary outlaw's savviest career move. I'm also tempted to make a really snarky transition here. But let's just say that some of the old obligatories in this anthology -- the canonical noncanonicals -- are starting to show their age. The scene in Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg's ''Candy'' in which the heroine is seduced by a hunchback -- ''With a wild, impulsive cry, she shrieked: 'Give me your hump!' '' -- must have been campy titillation four decades ago. Now it's a museum piece: soft-porn whimsy half a cut above Playboy's ''Little Annie Fanny.'' Better to concede that it used to be a big deal and skip the actual experience. The seven-page excerpt from Henry Miller's ''Tropic of Cancer'' -- in a Paris bordello, a Hindu friend of Miller's na?vely defecates in the bidet -- proves to be an endurance test whose only reward is a grade-B aphorism: ''For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood.'' On the other hand, the two pages of Iceberg Slim's ''Pimp'' still have a blunt force; even the musty slang -- ''swipe'' is not a verb; ''cat'' is not an animal -- doesn't soften the claustrophobic, heartless menace. And familiar passages from Burroughs's [4]''Junky'' (''Bill Lee'' tries to kick morphine but kindly Old Ike helps him backslide) and Kerouac's ''On the Road'' (na?ve Sal Paradise first meets holy motormouth Dean Moriarty) seem as fresh, direct, involving and un-arty as the first time you read them: at their best, these two are redskins fit to go up against the best the palefaces had to show. The more recent outsiders could also give the respectables a run for their money. This may ruin Michelle Tea's Sunday, but how could you improve on this passage from ''The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America,'' with its mix of strangeness and photographic specificity? ''I was up with the sun in the toxic gold of my bedroom. It took 12 cans of spray paint to make the walls glow like that, my trigger finger cramped and sticky and I blew my nose gold for a week.'' And the late Kathy Acker won my heart years ago with the beginning of her 1982 novel ''Great Expectations.'' (''My father's name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Peter.'') This isn't to say I can read her books all the way through -- she once said she never expected it -- but in short takes she can be brilliant. Here's part of the excerpt in ''The Outlaw Bible'' from her novel ''Don Quixote'': ''I think Prince should be president of the United States because all our presidents since World War II have been stupid anyway and are becoming stupider up to the point of lobotomy and anyway are the puppets of those nameless beings -- maybe they're human -- demigods, who inhabit their own nations known heretofore as 'multinationals.' On the other hand: Prince, unlike all our other images or fakes or presidents, stands for values. I mean: he believes. He wears a cross. . . . Prince believes in feelings . . . and fame. Fame is making it and common sense.'' Dreadful writing? Acker is well aware of that -- she's careful to let us know she's done her tour of the literary canon -- and she revels in her transgression against competence and in the Gertrude Stein effects she gets when she's just blurting (''Fame is making it and common sense''). And anyway, this is a persona: a voice brutalized and rendered inarticulate by the same political and cultural mediocrity and mendacity it's railing against. Over the top? Discrediting her own case? Brilliant of you to notice. But it's part of her strategy to affront responsible people. You may not like it -- she doesn't want people like you to like it -- but you can't say it's not sophisticated. Some of the best moments, though, come from the contributors with no literary pretensions at all, just telling yarns, doubtless channeled by ghostwriters. In ''The Godfather of Soul,'' James Brown writes about hearing a knock on the door of his hotel room and finding a grenade with his name painted on it. ''I'd seen enough grenades in prison and in Vietnam to know it wasn't live, but it was the thought that counted.'' And the selection from Waylon Jennings's autobiography has the Platonic country-music anecdote, about Hank Williams: ''Faron Young brought Billie Jean, Hank's last wife, to town for the first time. She was young and beautiful, and Hank liked her immediately. He took a loaded gun and pointed it to Faron's temple, cocked it, and said, 'Boy, I love that woman. Now you can either give her to me or I'm going to kill you.' ''Faron sat there and thought it over for a minute. 'Wouldn't that be great? To be killed by Hank Williams!' '' I'm with the levelers on this one. That's not literature? All right then, I'll go to hell. Maybe in a hundred years, assuming there's anybody left around, people will be amused at their great-grandparents' failure to grasp the self-evident idea that what was called literature was a niche-marketed intellectual property, and that the war between the outlaws and the canonicals was another dispute between Big-Endians and Small-Endians. (Half a dozen people with a taste for the recherch? will even get the allusion.) You can already see the borders getting porous. Final quiz: where do you put A) Mary Gaitskill, B) Nicholson Baker, C) Neal Stephenson, D) Jonathan Lethem? Canonicals or alt.canonicals? Or should we call them, along with Foer, Wallace and so on, postcanonicals? (Just plain ''writers'' would put the taxonomists out of business.) ''Don't join too many gangs,'' Robert Frost advised us back in 1936, but for the past 50 years or so, writers haven't had much choice: who you hang out with, and who watches your back, defines what you are. ''The Outlaw Bible'' still posits a literary East L.A., with palefaces and redskins tagging and throwing up signs. With a little luck, we won't have to live here much longer. David Gates is a senior editor at Newsweek. His most recent book is ''The Wonders of the Invisible World,'' a collection of stories. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 21:59:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 17:59:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: (Hunter S. Thompson) Gonzo Nights Message-ID: Gonzo Nights New York Times Book Review, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/books/review/17COHENRE.html [You'll have to click on the sites to get the java links.] By RICH COHEN Published: April 17, 2005 [16]Hunter S. Thompson Reads From 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' The author reads from a favorite passage: "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave." Recorded during Rich Cohen's interview with Hunter S. Thompson in October 2004. EXCERPTS THE INTERVIEW [17]On the Early Years Growing up in Louisville, Ky.; odd jobs in San Francisco. [18]On the Meaning of Gonzo The etymology of the word and what it means in practice. [19]On Politics The American dream; the Reagan and Bush years; the author's own attempt at running for office. RELATED LINKS [20]Featured Author: Hunter S. Thompson [21]Obituary [22]Photographs Last fall, I traveled to Woody Creek, Colo., to talk to Hunter S. Thompson for what turned out to be one of his final interviews. For years, Thompson had been trapped in the persona he created in his 30's, forever forced to play Hunter S. Thompson. More than drugs, this was the monkey on his back: he was frozen in the role of the insider's outsider, on call for every would-be rebel who wanted to party with the madman. At the end, he was writing a column for ESPN.com and the occasional article, but mostly he was just being Hunter S. Thompson, a show that began each night in his house outside Aspen at around 5 with the first stirrings of bedsheets. A groan. A string of expletives. An assistant who hurries into the kitchen like an emergency room nurse. ''He's awake! He's awake!'' On my first night, the TV was turned to ''Monday Night Football,'' a tall glass was filled with ice cubes and Chivas Regal, and a path was cleared to his chair at the kitchen counter -- the same chair where, a few months later, on Feb. 20, he would kill himself with a pistol shot, bringing to a climax his long relationship with guns. Thompson was among that group of American writers who knew how to be young but never figured out how to grow old: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac and Eugene O'Neill, who died in a Boston hotel, thousands of dollars in debt. (''Born in a hotel room and, goddamn it, died in a hotel room,'' he said.) Appearing in the doorway, Thompson looked less like the pictures on the jackets of his books than like a crazy uncle who has gotten into the vanilla extract. There was something beautiful and almost Asian about his features: when he was young, he was as hard and geometric as sculpture. But at the end his face collapsed and his shoulders slumped and his body was falling in all around him. He was unwinding like yarn. He was tall and skinny, mouth frozen into a sneer. ''Clear a path,'' he shouted. He stumbled across the kitchen and fell into the chair at the counter. He nodded to the man across the room, his friend, the local sheriff, who had shown me the way to the house. He reached out his right hand and the drink was there, just there, ice clinking. Thompson opened the drawer to his left. It was filled with narcotics. As he looked inside, the sheriff said, ''I'll go into the other room while you do your drugs, Hunter.'' He sank a straw into a plastic container and took some cocaine onto his tongue. He returned to the drawer constantly in the course of the night, getting cocaine, pills, marijuana, which he smoked in a pipe -- the smoke was soft and tangy and blue -- chased by Chivas, white wine, Chartreuse, tequila and Glenfiddich. The effect was gradual but soon his features softened and the scowl melted and his movements became fluid and graceful. By midnight, the man who had emerged a bleary-eyed ruin hours before was on his feet and swearing and waving a shotgun and another show had opened in the long run of Hunter S. Thompson. Beginning in the early 1970's, when Thompson wrote[24] ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' and [25]''Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72,'' which both grew out of articles for Rolling Stone, he created an image that became an American icon, like the gunslinger or the big-city gangster -- the bald, paranoid, drug-frenzied journalist, a cigarette holder dangling from the corner of his mouth, doing battle with the straight world. He called it gonzo, a style of journalism in which the reporter, by his antics, becomes the story. (''It's a Portuguese word,'' Thompson told me. ''It means weird, off the wall, Hell's Angels would say. Out there. Gonzo, learning to fly as you're falling.'') At its best, gonzo was exhilarating, and in many of Thompson's stories you glimpse the life the writer made for himself outside the law. The freedom and gun-toting and drug-taking of it were contagious: more than a body of work, he created a code, a way of responding to a nation of rules. In 1967, Thompson moved to Woody Creek, just as his career was taking off. Before that, he lived in San Francisco, Puerto Rico, New York and Louisville, Ky., where he was raised in the years following World War II. His family was respectable but not especially well-to-do; his father, Jack R. Thompson, was an insurance agent. The young Hunter ran with a crowd above his station, debutantes and Gatsby boys riding in open cars and wearing white ducks. You can see this in pictures of him taken at the time, fresh-faced and broad, lost in a sea of 1950's faces, looking more reckless and less comfortable than the others -- close enough to see the good life but not wealthy enough to live it. When Thompson was 17, he went on a bender with friends and was arrested on various charges, including under-age drinking. His friends got off, but Thompson, without money or connections, took the hit. The judge gave him a choice: reform school or the military. In 1956, he enlisted in the Air Force and was shipped to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Even at the end of his life, he spoke of this with real anger. ''I was chased out of Louisville,'' he told me. Thompson was discharged from the service in 1957, honorably, to the surprise of some (''In summary, this Airman, although talented, will not be guided by policy or personal advice and guidance. . . . He has little consideration for military bearing or dress and seems to dislike the service,'' as one personnel report said). He wound up in New York, in an apartment near Columbia University, then in a house downtown, on Perry Street, where he wrote novels he could not sell and stories he could not publish. In the end, he took newspaper and magazine assignments, pouring the energy and ideas of the thwarted novelist into journalism. His first big success came with an article he wrote for The Nation that became the book [26]''Hell's Angels'' (1967). Its language and structure were conventional -- Hunter Thompson was not yet Hunter Thompson -- but the reporting was dangerous. To write it, he had immersed himself in a world that terrified most people. In the epilogue, he is stomped by members of the motorcycle gang and our last image is the writer swerving down the highway, escaping his own story -- ''spitting blood on the dashboard . . . until my one good eye finally came into focus.'' His breakthrough into gonzo came in 1970, when the magazine Scanlan's Monthly assigned him to cover the Kentucky Derby. While reporting the article in Louisville, Thompson met Ralph Steadman, a British artist who had been hired to illustrate it. From that moment on, Steadman was Thompson's sidekick and muse, the fresh eyes through which Thompson could see his own country. Steadman's drawings were stark and crazed and captured Thompson's sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters. But on this first assignment, when Thompson sat down to write, nothing came. He had been so wasted at the Derby: what could he remember? He had his reporter's notebook, though, each page filled with a few sharp sentences. In the end, he simply tore some pages out and sent them over. He was giving up on the idea of creating a traditional narrative. Maybe he was giving up on the idea of writing for magazines. But the editors loved what he gave them and asked for more. When it was set in type and published as ''The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,'' the piece announced a new kind of journalism, raw and unprocessed -- what you tell your friend about the party the moment before you pass out. I don't think it's an accident that Hunter Thompson became Hunter Thompson by returning to the city from which he had been expelled years before. In Louisville, he was able to plug into the old paranoia and anger, into his tremendous instinct for vandalism -- anger he was then able to transfer from the elite of Louisville to the elite of the nation. ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,'' the work that made Thompson famous, was published in two issues of Rolling Stone in November 1971. It gave birth to the legend of Raoul Duke, Thompson's alter ego, who then, as ''Uncle Duke,'' became a regular character in the comic strip ''Doonesbury''; Thompson would also be played in movies by Bill Murray (''Where the Buffalo Roam'') and Johnny Depp (''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''). In these films, it's less the work that's celebrated than the persona. Hunter Thompson is the man who will swallow anything. Give him a pill, he takes it, then asks, ''What was that?'' Drugs played a role for him similar to the role steroids can play in the life of a slugger -- they jacked up his production and made him a hall of fame player, but destroyed him in the end. Which raises the question: Just what place did narcotics have in the life and work of Hunter S. Thompson? Well, he was an addict. No doubt about that. Addicted to cocaine and pills and alcohol. Addicted to being addicted, forever chasing the perfect state of chemical balance in which he could write, in which, for a moment, as at the end of a long drive, the golf ball hangs, not going up, not coming down, and a window opens, and there is clarity. But it was more than that, because Thompson's image and antics will soon fade and only his words will remain. What will the drugs mean then? It seems to me that, starting with ''The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved,'' Thompson used drugs quite deliberately to create a new kind of reportorial voice -- a voice that could be listened to but never trusted, because the reporter was hammered and seeing trails. By bringing narcotics into his prose, he introduced a hallucinatory element into nonfiction writing, his own kind of magic realism. He took the American realist tradition and ran it through a wood chipper. As far as I could tell during the days I spent at the house in Woody Creek, things didn't really get going until around 10 p.m., when the phone started to ring and people began to show up. One night, Ralph Steadman, who was in the country working on a project, came by with his wife and a British writer. Steadman laid some drawings on the counter. They showed George Bush and members of his cabinet stripped to the core, monstrous energies pouring out of skeletal bodies. Thompson looked at each of them and smiled. Steadman went into the living room. A fire had been lit, but the chimney was not drawing. When the wind shifted, the room filled with smoke, though no one seemed to care. Thompson had some colorful wigs and everyone was drinking and trying them on. He came in waving a scimitar, which he told us had been given to him by a pasha. Then he waved a shotgun. Steadman's wife said, ''No, no, I do not like this at all.'' The sheriff said: ''Don't worry. I'm the safety officer.'' At 2 a.m., a neighbor stopped by. His name was Frank. He gave Thompson a gift and the men hugged. Thompson sat in the kitchen, polishing his scimitar. He went at it like an obsessive and you could see his face crazy and warped in the blade. The windows were black screens and the world outside did not exist. ''You're not on the normal clock here,'' Steadman told me. ''Night is day. That is why Hunter calls it Owl Farm.'' Near the end of his life, Hemingway wrote that the worst thing a writer can do is read his own work to strangers. Thompson had gone beyond that, reaching a point where he made strangers read his work, most of it published years before, back to him. Pressing ''The Curse of Lono'' into Frank's hands, Thompson said: ''Read it. Read it out loud.'' Frank stood up and began reading slowly, as if turning over each word. It was the part of the book where Thompson, or one of his alter egos, is in a bar in Hawaii raving about Samoans. At one point, Frank looked at Thompson and said, ''What have you got against Samoans?'' Thompson grunted. ''Keep reading.'' Frank went through a few more paragraphs, looked up and said, ''Did this really happen, or did you make it up?'' Thompson took the book from Frank and gave it to me. He said, ''Come on, read.'' I did my best, but Thompson kept cursing because I was reading too fast. ''Goddamn it! Slow down!'' I tried, but he was soon cursing again. ''Slow down! You're reading it like a goddamn journalist. Don't read it like it's journalism. It's not journalism. It's poetry!'' Frank took a swig of something, then said, ''I've got to leave.'' Then it was just me and Thompson. He rubbed his chin and frowned. His face was craggy and deflated and melancholy and old. I asked him if I could turn on my tape recorder and do an interview. He said: ''Get me the Chartreuse. The green stuff in the bottle.'' His hands trembled. He said, ''Turn it on.'' I asked him what writers he had used as models. Most of the writers he mentioned had bad ends: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. He said, ''Mark Twain has always been one of my basic role models.'' I said, ''Well, I guess Mark Twain had a good end.'' He said: ''No, he was lonely and he lived too long. He was never accepted as a writer in the New York literary circles. He was deemed a primitive.'' Later he slammed his fist on the counter and said, ''Goddamn it, I am the best writer working in America today!'' To make the point, he had me get a copy of ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'' down from the shelf. He took a swallow of Chartreuse to clear his throat, then read his words into my tape recorder -- he read slowly and carefully and not at all like journalism: ''There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . ''And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . ''So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.'' A few hours before, as Steadman was leaving, he stood in the kitchen. He and Thompson hugged, then regarded each other at arm's length. ''You are a good man,'' Steadman said. ''Thank you, thank you and thank you. You've made my life, and you've made my life interesting.'' Thompson looked down and blushed. He said, ''Get the hell out of here.'' Rich Cohen, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, is the author of ''Lake Effect'' and ''Tough Jews.'' References 16. javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/audiopages/2005/04/17/books/20050417_THOMPSON1_AUDIO.html','600_475','width=600, height=475,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'); 17. javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/audiopages/2005/04/17/books/20050417_THOMPSON2_AUDIO.html','600_475','width=600, height=475,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'); 18. javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/audiopages/2005/04/17/books/20050417_THOMPSON3_AUDIO.html','600_475','width=600, height=475,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'); 19. javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/audiopages/2005/04/17/books/20050417_THOMPSON4_AUDIO.html','600_475','width=600, height=475,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'); 20. http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2005/02/21/books/authors/index.html 21. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/books/22thompson.html 22. javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/02/21/books/21THOM.slideshow_index.html','750630','width=750,height=630,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'); From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:03:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:03:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Reach Out and Touch No One Message-ID: Fashion & Style > Thursday Styles > Reach Out and Touch No One http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/14/fashion/thursdaystyles/14cell.html April 14, 2005 [The Times has ditched its separate Thursday Circuit section, though a reduced form of it appears in the Business section (groan button) and has added a separate Thursday Styles section, which is a fond of human foolishness.] By AMY HARMON THE cashier had already rung up Keri Wooster's items when Ms. Wooster realized she didn't have her wallet. She dashed to her car and returned empty-handed to face the line of fidgeting customers she had kept waiting, a cellphone pressed to her ear. "Jordan, did you take my wallet out of my purse?" she asked in parental exasperation, as she made her way back to the checkout counter. "I'm holding up this line! You need to put things back where you find them." Ms. Wooster, who has no children, was not actually talking to a Jordan, or indeed to anyone at all. But her monologue served its purpose, eliciting sympathetic looks from the frustrated crowd at her local Wal-Mart. "My instincts just took over," Ms Wooster, 28, who lives in Houston, said later. "Everyone was like, 'Oh, kids.' " Ms. Wooster is by no means alone in the practice of cellphone subterfuge. As cellular phone conversations have permeated public space, so, it seems, have fake cellular phone conversations. How many? It is hard to say. But James E. Katz, a professor of communication at Rutgers University, says his classroom research suggests that plenty of the people talking on the phone around you are really faking it. In one survey Dr. Katz conducted, more than a quarter of his students said they made fake calls. He found the number hard to believe. Then in another class 27 of 29 students said they did it. "People are turning the technology on its head," Dr. Katz said. "They are taking a device that was designed to talk to people who are far away and using it to communicate with people who are directly around them." Call them cellphonies. Some stage calls to avoid contact, whether with neighbors or panhandlers, co-workers or supervisors, Greenpeace canvassers or Girl Scouts. Some do it to impress those within earshot, others so they don't look lonely. Men talk to their handsets while they're checking out women. Women converse with the air to avert unwanted approaches by men. Camera phone shutterbugs fake being on the phone so they can get a good angle without looking suspicious. And certain cellular vigilantes fake for the benefit of real callers who are oblivious to the rules of common decency. "I fake phone talk to get a point across," said Ty Hammond, of Pullman, Wash., who once forced an apology from a woman spewing excessively personal details into her cellphone in an elevator by shouting (made-up) escapades of his own into his (powered-off) phone. "People need to know phone etiquette and fake phone calling is a great tool for showing them." The fake phone call has an etiquette, or at least a technique, all its own. Inexperienced cellphonies risk exposure with their limited repertoire of "uh-huhs." Sophisticated simulators achieve authenticity by re-enacting their side of an actual dialogue. Or they call voice-activated phone trees, so it sounds like someone is talking on the other end. "I'll take a previous experience and pretend like I'm talking to somebody about it so I'm not just making up something off the top of my head," said John Wilcox, a phone salesman in Albany who often appears to be on his cellphone when a problem customer walks in. "Maybe it's a snowboarding move: 'Remember that back flip with the twist and the somersault?' " Mr. Wilcox used the technique as he waited for the right moment to approach a woman he saw in a store at the mall recently. "I couldn't just stand there looking like an idiot," he said. For Micheal K. Meyer, the key is the look on your face when you "answer." "You grimace a little bit, act really interested in what you're not really hearing on the other end," said Mr. Meyer, an aircraft mechanic in Lake City, Fla., who has feigned hundreds of calls. "You've got to sell it." A lawyer in San Francisco said she frequently pretends to be finishing up a conference call that she took on the road so her colleagues don't give her a hard time about walking in late. "Pretending is very flexible," noted the lawyer, 37, who insisted on anonymity to protect her ability to continue using the ruse. "You can end the conversation whenever you want." On many handsets, pressing the speakerphone button makes a ringing sound that fakers can pretend is a call coming in. But pros counsel to turn the phone off to prevent your cover from being blown. Or at least set it to vibrate. That is a lesson Scott Spector, 15, learned the hard way, when his phone started blasting his "American Idol Theme" ringtone as he was pretending to talk into it in the hall at school last month. "I felt like such a dork," said Scott, of Buffalo Grove, Ill. Dr. Katz of Rutgers said the practice first drew his attention when students in focus groups he had organized to study a wide range of cellphone use began mentioning it, unprompted. The habit, Dr. Katz said, is the latest technological twist in a culture that has long embraced various forms of dissembling in the name of image, from designer knockoff handbags to plastic surgery. Some fakers admit to programming their phones to call them at a certain time to show off their ring tones; others wrap up make-believe Hollywood deals in front of people they want to impress. And phantom callers are often simply trying to cope with social anxiety by showing that they have someone to call, even if they don't. One of Dr. Katz's students said she pretended to use her cellphone when she was out with a group of other college-age women who were all on theirs. Another did it to escape from a fancy boutique where the prices were beyond her means without speaking to a salesperson. In that sense fake callers are may not be so different from a lot of real callers, who are always partly performing for others even as they as they appear to withdraw into their own private space in public. "The cellphone allows people to show strangers that they belong, that they are part of a community somewhere," said Christine Rosen, who studies the social impact of technology at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. "Whether or not it's a fictional call, on some level that's why we're doing it." But the surfeit of counterfeit calls underscores the lengths to which people feel compelled to go to project an image for others. Sometimes the impulse is almost subconscious. Mark Konchar, a network administrator in Canton, Ohio, had just hung up after sitting in his parked car behind a strip mall talking to a friend one afternoon, when he saw people emerging from the employee's entrance to one of the stores. Quickly, he put the phone back up to his ear and pretended to talk. "I guess I thought people might wonder why you're sitting out there in your car; it might look strange," said Mr. Konchar, 33. "It's one of those things where after the situation happens you're wondering, 'Why did I do that?' " Many women rely on fake cell phone calls when they fear for their physical safety. Yessenia Morales, 21, said she recently called a non-existent friend while being followed by a group of men on a train platform. "I'll see you in a few minutes," she promised the ether. But fake calls are often made by people trying to preserve a more psychological remove. Mike Lupiani uses his impersonation of someone on the phone to ignore his chatty next-door neighbors. "They ask how your day is going and stuff," said Mr. Lupiani, of Rochester. "I don't really have time for it." Christina Rohall, 29, said she pretends to use the phone to avoid getting hit on. "I feel awkward just rejecting people," said Ms. Rohall, of San Francisco. How well the fake call works is one of its most appealing qualities , and a testament to how much respect people automatically grant to a cellphone force field. Bartosz Sitarski, 24, said he once pretended to be on a cellphone call for a full 15 minutes when someone he didn't want to speak to was waiting to talk to him at a Milwaukee coffee shop. The other person finally left rather than interrupt the "call." Even security guards seem to respect the cellphone buffer, said Michael McEachern, 16, of San Diego, who has found the fake call a useful way to get to the club level at a Padres game when he doesn't have a pass. Some frequent fakers worry that the wireless charade will be harder to pull off once more people begin to suspect it. But that will not deter Adam Hecht, a radiologist in Berkeley Heights, N.J., whose wife said she is often mortified by his cellphone humor. Mr. Hecht, 40, reserves his fake phoning for places with no reception, like the Tiffany's at the Short Hills, N.J., mall, where cellphones have apparently been rendered unusable to preserve the ambiance: "I usually go through a long medical scenario," he said, "that doesn't exist." From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:04:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:04:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Don't Blame Wal-Mart Message-ID: Don't Blame Wal-Mart http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28reich.html February 28, 2005 By ROBERT B. REICH Berkeley, Calif. -- BOWING to intense pressure from neighborhood and labor groups, a real estate developer has just given up plans to include a Wal-Mart store in a mall in Queens, thereby blocking Wal-Mart's plan to open its first store in New York City. In the eyes of Wal-Mart's detractors, the Arkansas-based chain embodies the worst kind of economic exploitation: it pays its 1.2 million American workers an average of only $9.68 an hour, doesn't provide most of them with health insurance, keeps out unions, has a checkered history on labor law and turns main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers. But isn't Wal-Mart really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Wal-Mart's founder, Sam Walton, and his successors created the world's largest retailer by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to shop there. Instead, Wal-Mart has lured customers with low prices. "We expect our suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain," a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said. "It's good for us and good for them." Wal-Mart may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and data crunching, is "offshored" to India, so our dollars go even further. Meanwhile, many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you? The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities. We can blame big corporations, but we're mostly making this bargain with ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of hourly workers, who make up about 80 percent of the work force, actually dropped for the first time in more than a decade; hourly workers' health and pension benefits are in free fall. The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep clients. The more efficiently we can summon products from anywhere on the globe, the more stress we put on our own communities. But you and I aren't just consumers. We're also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people shouldn't have access to Wal-Mart or to cut-rate airfares or services from India or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of life, is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves. The problem is, the choices we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as workers or as citizens. I didn't want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall) yet I still bought lots of books from [1]Amazon.com. In addition, we may not see the larger bargain when our own job or community isn't directly at stake. I don't like what's happening to airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get. The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer won't like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with an increase in the minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to organize and negotiate better terms. I wouldn't go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble free trade with China and India - that would cost me as a consumer far too much - but I'd like the government to offer wage insurance to ease the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I'd support labor standards that make trade agreements a bit more fair. These provisions might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we aren't even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about economic change take place between two warring camps: those who want the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and communities much as they are. Instead of finding ways to soften the blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change - so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers and citizens - we go to battle. I don't know if Wal-Mart will ever make it into New York City. I do know that New Yorkers, like most other Americans, want the great deals that can be had in a rapidly globalizing high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags don't reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as low as possible. Robert B. Reich, the author of "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America," was secretary of labor from 1993 to 1997. References 1. http://Amazon.com/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:05:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:05:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Public Library Opens a Web Gallery of Images Message-ID: Books > Critic's Notebook: The Public Library Opens a Web Gallery of Images http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/books/03libr.html March 3, 2005 By [1]SARAH BOXER Let the browser beware. The New York Public Library's collection of prints, maps, posters, photographs, illuminated manuscripts, sheet-music covers, dust jackets, menus and cigarette cards is now online ([2]www.nypl.org/digital/digitalgallery.htm). If you dive in today without knowing why, you might not surface for a long, long time. The Public Library's digital gallery is lovely, dark and deep. Quite eccentric, too. So far, about 275,000 items are online, and you can browse by subject, by collection, by name or by keyword. The images first appear in thumbnail pictures, a dozen to a page. Some include verso views. You can collect 'em, enlarge 'em, download 'em, print 'em and hang 'em on your wall at home. All are free, unless, of course, you plan to make money on them yourself. (Permission is required.) Despite the Web site's great richness, sleek looks and fast response to a mouse click, it does feel a bit musty. The digital gallery is modeled on an old-fashioned card catalog, with all the attendant creaks. Doing a search is like going into a library and opening file drawers. For instance, you can't get a list of all the photographers or the printmakers or the artists - only an alphabetical list of every proper name in the digital library. If you type in "photograph*" (the most general search term), you will get more than 11,000 items, organized who knows how. To find out who is in it, you have to go through all of the thumbnail images. If you limit the search by typing in "photograph," you get about 2,200 items. If you type in "photographer," you get only 200. One difference between this Web site and a card catalog is that there's no librarian to help you. That can be both maddening and liberating. Say you start your exploration with one of the two images that open the library's Digital Gallery, a detail from a color woodcut from Kitagawa Utamaro's ukiyo-e prints (pictures of the floating world) depicting the lives of ordinary Japanese women and courtesans. There are 35 images from that series, and you can magnify each one enough to see how the women are doing with their lipstick and mirrors. What other Japanese images are there? Use the search term "Japanese" and you will find 210 assorted items, including a 19th-century photograph of two Japanese girls sleeping, a page showing various kinds of Japanese lacquers, a print showing Japanese alphabets, sheet music for an 1893 song titled "The Jap," a 1727 map of Japan, a menu for a dinner that was held aboard the Kobe in 1900, a picture of a fish called the Japanese grunt, and a cigarette card showing a Japanese plane. Want to know what cigarette cards are? Look and you'll learn that in the late 19th and early 20th century, these small picture cards were tucked into cigarette packets as a promotional device, the cigarette equivalent of bubblegum cards. Exactly 21,206 of them are online now. What? That's right. Cigarette cards now represent nearly one-tenth of the whole digital collection. Maybe, rather than entering the New York Public Library's digital gallery through the ukiyo-e, you go by way of the Web site's other opening image, a 1935 photo of a grouchy-looking man emerging from a basement barbershop on the Bowery. On that path you will find 343 photographs from Berenice Abbott's great work from the 1930's, "Changing New York." You can flip through the pictures and read all about Abbott, her project and how it got to the public library. That's just the tip of the photographic berg. The digital gallery has a big collection from the Civil War, including pictures of the dead taken by Alexander Gardner and pictures of the wounded kept by the United States Sanitary Commission. It has thousands of rare photographs of Russia and the Soviet Union, including funny shots of a day nursery at a Moscow factory, and thousands of color pictures of every block in Lower Manhattan taken in a single year, 1999, by one man, Dylan Stone. The Lewis Wickes Hine photographic collection is online too: 48 pictures (and in some cases his captions, too) of the construction of the Empire State Building, 111 photographs of immigrants at Ellis Island, 138 photographs of child laborers, and 132 pictures of libraries and readers. Speaking of libraries, the New York Public Library's digital gallery has 5,027 assorted images of them, including a photograph of a library in Sebastopol taken during the Crimean War, architectural drawings for a New York library and a few undated typed messages that read like lascivious fortune cookies: "Grown-ups enjoy reading, also." "Come into the booth and ask questions about your libraries." The fetishism of collecting certainly comes through when you browse the library's digital galleries. There are pages upon pages of shoes and slippers, floor plans and elevations, actors and performances. One gorgeous page is a color-combination chart for layering clothes. Another page shows a lock of hair from the friendship book of Anne Wagner, a friend of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Fifteen pictures are from a 1912 book titled "The Fetish Folk of West Africa." This grand, eccentric collection has uncountable strengths, but the late 20th century is not among them. That's the way it has to be for a library that is completely accessible to everyone on earth. Only items that date before 1923 are in the public domain, free for the plucking. That's why there is no image from 2003. And for the year 2004, you will find only one entry, made in error. It's a clothing ad from a page of a 1904 Scribner's Magazine. For the weary wanderer, the library has included a special heading on the opening page of its Web site, "Explore," divided into seven neat subject areas. If you don't know what you're looking for, it's good to start here. But if you feel like burrowing, you might try searching inside the individual collections and libraries within the New York Public Library. Rummage through the rare books division (pausing a moment to reflect how incredible it is to be rummaging in a rare books library) and you will find George Catlin's "North American Indian Portfolio," J.-J. Grandville's "Les Fleurs Anim?es," William Blake's illuminated book "Milton" and Alvin Langdon Coburn's book of portrait photographs, "Men of Mark." Warning: some of the collections follow their own filing systems. The various parts of the digital library have not been fully integrated, so the site has a quirky feel. It's often hard to tell, until you accidentally hit a vein, where the richest parts of the digital library are. But surprises can be nice, though. Who would have guessed that a search of images from the year 2000 would yield only photos of theater marquees? And that a search for the year 1900 would lead to nearly 1,700 menus from the Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection? That's a whole lot of shad and kidney stew. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=SARAH%20BOXER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=SARAH%20BOXER&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.nypl.org/digital/digitalgallery.htm From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:06:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:06:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Looking for Personality in Animals, of All People Message-ID: Looking for Personality in Animals, of All People http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01anim.html 5.3.1 By [1]CARL ZIMMER A team of Dutch scientists is trying to solve the mystery of personality. Why are some individuals shy while others are bold, for example? What roles do genes and environment play in shaping personalities? And most mysterious of all, how did they evolve? The scientists are carrying out an ambitious series of experiments to answer these questions. They are studying thousands of individuals, observing how they interact with others, comparing their personalities to their descendants' and analyzing their DNA. It may come as a surprise that their subjects have feathers. The scientists, based at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, are investigating personalities of wild birds. Until recently, most experts in personality would have considered such a study as nothing but foolish anthropomorphism. "It's been looked at with suspicion and contempt," said Dr. Samuel Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas. But scientists have found that in many species, individual animals behave in consistently different ways. They argue that these differences meet the scientific definition of personality. If they are right, then human personality has deep evolutionary roots. "It's a matter of degree, not of differences," said Dr. Piet Drent of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology. The bird study that Dr. Drent and his colleagues are conducting is considered the most ambitious investigation of personality in wild animals. "They've gone the furthest," said Dr. Sasha Dall, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Exeter in Cornwall. The Dutch researchers are studying the importance of genes to the personalities of the birds, and the effect different personalities have on their survival. They hope next to carry out parallel studies in humans to see whether the same forces behind the evolution of bird personalities are at work in our own species. The science of human personality is about a century old. Psychologists have relied largely on questionnaires and other testing methods to map out its dimensions. One common method is for scientists to ask their subjects how well certain adjectives apply to themselves (or to people they know well). "Certain traits tend to go together," Dr. Gosling said. "We find that people who are energetic also tend to be talkative. It needn't be that way, but that's how it tends to be." The flip side is true as well: less energetic people tend to be less talkative. Psychologists have found they can bundle these traits into just a few personality dimensions. People may be more or less extroverted, for example, which means they are sociable, assertive and tend to have positive emotions. The same dimensions have been documented across the world, from Zimbabwe to the Russian Arctic, suggesting that they are universal in humans. Some studies have suggested that genes are responsible for some of the differences in people's personality ratings. But they have been far from conclusive because scientists cannot do experiments with humans. "Human mothers will not let you just swap their infants at birth, which would be a great study to do," Dr. Gosling said. It has been only in the last decade or so that scientists have investigated whether animals have personalities. In one pioneering study in the mid-1990's, Dr. Gosling studied a colony of 34 hyenas at the University of California, Berkeley. "My goal was simply to say, can we measure personality in animals? It wasn't clear it was going to work," he said. Dr. Gosling asked the four caretakers of the colony to fill out a modified version of the human questionnaire for each animal. "It turned out that they agreed at the level you find in humans," Dr. Gosling said. What's more, the hyena personalities fit some of the dimensions found in humans, like neuroticism and agreeableness. Since then, a number of other studies have documented personalities in animals ranging from chimpanzees to squid. To some biologists, the main question about these animal personalities is why natural selection keeps such a wide range of them. "Why hasn't one personality become the standard in the population?" asked Dr. Drent. If being extroverted offers the best odds for a hyena to reproduce, you might expect that over time, all hyenas would wind up as extroverts. Dr. Drent and his colleagues hope that their study on birds may reveal some clues. They are studying a European relative of chickadees called the great tit (Parus major). Most of the birds spend their entire lives in a single forest, and they are happy to move into comfortable nest boxes provided by the scientists. As a result, the Dutch researchers can track the entire population of birds for years, keeping tabs on their health and their success at reproducing. The scientists can also bring some of the birds into the lab in order to measure their personalities or carry out breeding experiments. "These birds are perfect for these sorts of studies," said Dr. Niels Dingemanse of the University of Groningen, a collaborator Dr. Drent. Instead of questionnaires, the Dutch team tests the behavior of the birds to measure their personalities. In one test, the scientists place a strange object - a penlight battery or a Pink Panther doll - in a bird's cage. Some birds are quick to approach it, while others hang back. In another experiment, the researchers open a cage door, allowing the birds to explore a large room filled with five artificial trees. Some birds are quick to explore the trees, while others prefer to remain in the comforts of their cage. In a third experiment, the researchers place a bowl of tasty mealy worms in the room. When the birds land on the bowl to eat, the researchers startle the birds by lifting up a nearby metal plate. They then see how much time passes before the bird returns to the bowl. The tests revealed that the birds have consistent personalities that remain stable for years. Bold birds, as the scientists call them, are quick to inspect new objects, to explore the trees and to recover from the metal-plate surprise. Shy birds are slow on all three counts. The differences go well beyond these tests. Bold birds are also more aggressive than shy ones and experience less stress when the scientists handle them. Breeding experiments revealed that these traits had a strong genetic basis. Over just four generations, the researchers could produce significantly bolder and shyer birds. "About 50 percent of the variation you find in avian personalities is due to differences in genes," said Dr. Kees van Oers of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. Dr. van Oers is searching for the genes responsible for these differences. He estimates that as many as 10 may play an important role, and he has already pinpointed one strong candidate, known as DRD4. Some studies on the human version of this gene suggest that it influences how much people seek out new experiences. But other studies have failed to replicate the link. "We're still working on the last bits, but it looks promising," Dr. van Oers said. The genes for both bold and shy traits have been preserved by natural selection. To find out how this happens, the researchers have observed how birds with different traits have fared over the years. "We were not sure how the data would turn out because no one had collected them before," said Dr. Dingemanse, who led this part of the study. The researchers found that the personality of birds had a powerful effect on their survival, but that effect changed from year to year as the supply of food fluctuated. "It's quite a complex story," Dr. Dingemanse said. In lean years, for example, bold female birds had a better chance of surviving than shy ones, while shy males did better than bold ones. Those patterns switched during years with abundant food. Over the course of several years, however, birds with intermediate personalities appear to have had more success at bearing young. "Animals in the middle did better," Dr. Dingemanse said. If intermediate birds are better adapted than very bold or shy ones, it is strange that all the birds are not intermediate. One possibility is intermediate personalities arise when birds inherit a "bold" version of certain genes from one parent and a "shy" version from the other. Since a bird has a 50 percent chance of inheriting a gene from its mother or father, it's inevitable that some will wind up with two "shy" genes or two "bold" ones. As a result, they may get extreme personalities. Another idea the Dutch scientists want to explore is that the social life of birds helps bold and shy personalities to coexist. Each year the birds fight for territory where they can feed and breed. Bold birds are more aggressive than shy ones, and that sometimes helps them win territory. But the scientists have found that when bold birds lose, they are slow to recover. They end up at the bottom of the hierarchy, and in many cases just fly away. "They go to other places to try to become No. 1," Dr. Drent said. This struggle might balance the birds between bold and shy personalities. If there are a lot of shy birds, the few bold ones will rise to the top. But if there are a lot of bold birds, they will fight a lot, and that will result in a lot of bold birds flying away. In these cases, the few shy birds will thrive. "So one of the personalities can never disappear completely," Dr. Drent said. He and his colleagues plan to test this hypothesis by altering the ratio of bold and shy birds in the wild. Many of the findings are summarized in the February issue of Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews. Researchers studying animal personality hope that their work will yield some practical benefits. Dr. Gosling and his students, for example, have been focusing much of their research on the personalities of dogs. An accurate test of dog personality may help animal shelters match pets to families. It may also help identify dogs that are especially well suited to jobs like detecting explosives. Studies on animal personality may also illuminate human personality. The Dutch researchers are now beginning to compare their research on birds to research carried out on children. "It was amazing how the way they measured the boldness of the birds resembles tests we have for young children," said Dr. Marcel van Aken, a psychologist at the University of Utrecht. He and the bird researchers plan to measure the personalities of birds and humans with a common set of tests, hoping to find clues to the evolution of human personality. Barely any research has been carried out on the evolution of human personality, but what little there is suggests that it may have some parallels with what's happened in birds. In a survey of 545 people, Dr. Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in England found that the more extroverted people were, the more sex partners they tended to have had. That might give them an evolutionary edge, but Dr. Nettle found that they were also more likely to wind up in a hospital. Dr. Nettle is reporting his findings in a paper to be published in Evolution and Human Behavior. Some experts on human personality remain skeptical. Dr. Daniel Cervone of the University of Illinois at Chicago considers describing animals with terms like extroversion as "extremely risky." The word inevitably means something different when applied to a human or a bird. "There's a whole load of human qualities that simply weren't going into the ratings in the first place," he said. Dr. van Aken agrees that anthropomorphism is a real danger, but he thinks it can be avoided. "I'm not so concerned about it," he says. "You have to define clearly what you are going to measure and then let the data speak." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CARL%20ZIMMER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CARL%20ZIMMER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:11:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:11:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: A Roshanda by Any Other Name - How do babies with super-black names fare? By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Message-ID: A Roshanda by Any Other Name - How do babies with super-black names fare? By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/ Posted Monday, April 11, 2005, at 3:32 AM PT Book cover Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? How much does campaign spending really matter? What truly made crime fall in the 1990s? These are the sort of questions raised--and answered--in the new book [23]Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. In today's excerpt, the first of two, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explore the impact of a child's first name, particularly a distinctively black name. [24]Tomorrow's excerpt shows how names work their way down the socioeconomic ladder. It has been well established that we live in an age of obsessive, even competitive, parenting. The typical parent is led to believe that her every move will greatly influence her child's future accomplishments. This belief expresses itself in the first official act a parent commits: giving the baby a name. Many parents seem to think that a child will not prosper unless it is hitched to the right one; names are seen to carry great aesthetic and even predictive powers. This might explain why, in 1958, a New York City father named Robert Lane decided to call his baby son Winner. The Lanes, who lived in a housing project in Harlem, already had several children, each with a fairly typical name. But this boy--well, Robert Lane apparently had a special feeling about him. Winner Lane: How could he fail with a name like that? Three years later, the Lanes had another baby boy, their seventh and last child. For reasons that no one can quite pin down today, Robert decided to name this boy Loser. Robert wasn't unhappy about the new baby; he just seemed to get a kick out of the name's bookend effect. First a Winner, now a Loser. But if Winner Lane could hardly be expected to fail, could Loser Lane possibly succeed? Loser Lane did in fact succeed. He went to prep school on a scholarship, graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, and joined the New York Police Department, where he made detective and, eventually, sergeant. Although he never hid his name, many people were uncomfortable using it. To his police colleagues today, he is known as Lou. And what of his brother? The most noteworthy achievement of Winner Lane, now in his late 40s, is the sheer length of his criminal record: more than 30 arrests for burglary, domestic violence, trespassing, resisting arrest, and other mayhem. These days, Loser and Winner barely speak. The father who named them is no longer alive. Though he got his boys mixed up, did he have the right idea--is naming destiny? What kind of signal does a child's name send to the world? These are the sort of questions that led to [27]"The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names," a research paper written by a white economist (Steven Levitt, a co-author of this article) and a black economist (Roland G. Fryer Jr., a young Harvard scholar who studies race). The paper acknowledged the social and economic gulf between blacks and whites but paid particular attention to the gulf between black and white culture. Blacks and whites watch different TV shows, for instance; they smoke different cigarettes. And black parents give their children names that are starkly different than white children's. The names research was based on an extremely large and rich data set: birth-certificate information for every child born in California since 1961. The data covered more than 16 million births. It included standard items like name, gender, race, birthweight, and the parents' marital status, as well as more telling factors: the parents' ZIP code (which indicates socioeconomic status and a neighborhood's racial composition), their means of paying the hospital bill for the birth (again, an economic indicator), and their level of education. The California data establish just how dissimilarly black and white parents have named their children over the past 25 years or so--a remnant, it seems, of the Black Power movement. The typical baby girl born in a black neighborhood in 1970 was given a name that was twice as common among blacks than whites. By 1980, she received a name that was 20 times more common among blacks. (Boys' names moved in the same direction but less aggressively--likely because parents of all races are less adventurous with boys' names than girls'.) Today, more than 40 percent of the black girls born in California in a given year receive a name that not one of the roughly 100,000 baby white girls received that year. Even more remarkably, nearly 30 percent of the black girls are given a name that is unique among every baby, white and black, born that year in California. (There were also 228 babies named Unique during the 1990s alone, and one each of Uneek, Uneque, and Uneqqee; virtually all of them were black.) What kind of parent is most likely to give a child such a distinctively black name? The data offer a clear answer: an unmarried, low-income, undereducated, teenage mother from a black neighborhood who has a distinctively black name herself. Giving a child a super-black name would seem to be a black parent's signal of solidarity with her community--the flip side of the "acting white" phenomenon. White parents, meanwhile, often send as strong a signal in the opposite direction. More than 40 percent of the white babies are given names that are at least four times more common among whites. So, what are the "whitest" names and the "blackest" names? Click [28]here for the top 20 each for girls and [29]here for the top 20 each for boys. (For the curious, we've also put together a list of the [30]top 20 crossover names--the ones that blacks and whites are most likely to share.) And how much does your name really matter? Over the years, a series of studies have tried to measure how people perceive different names. Typically, a researcher would send two identical (and fake) r?sum?s, one with a traditionally white name and the other with an immigrant or minority-sounding name, to potential employers. The "white" r?sum?s have always gleaned more job interviews. Such studies are tantalizing but severely limited, since they offer no real-world follow-up or analysis beyond the r?sum? stunt. The California names data, however, afford a more robust opportunity. By subjecting this data to the economist's favorite magic trick--a statistical wonder known as [31]regression analysis--it's possible to tease out the effect of any one factor (in this case, a person's first name) on her future education, income, and health. The data show that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name--whether it is a woman named Imani or a man named DeShawn--does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake. But it isn't the fault of his or her name. If two black boys, Jake Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same neighborhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes. But the kind of parents who name their son Jake don't tend to live in the same neighborhoods or share economic circumstances with the kind of parents who name their son DeShawn. And that's why, on average, a boy named Jake will tend to earn more money and get more education than a boy named DeShawn. DeShawn's name is an indicator--but not a cause--of his life path. Steven D. Levitt teaches economics at the University of Chicago and is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best American economist under 40. Stephen J. Dubner is a New York City journalist and author of two previous books: [32]Turbulent Souls and [33]Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper. References 23. http://www.freakonomics.com/ 24. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/ 27. http://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/qjecon/v119y2004i3p767-805.html 28. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/sidebar/2116453/ 29. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/sidebar/2116469/ 30. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/sidebar/2116470/ 31. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/sidebar/2116471/ 32. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038072930X/qid=1112797298/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-4526857-3682516 33. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380733145/qid=1112797374/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4526857-3682516?v=glance&s=books From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:13:46 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:13:46 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: Trading Up - Where do baby names come from? By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner Message-ID: Trading Up - Where do baby names come from? By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/ Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at 4:35 AM PT Which is more dangerous: a gun or a swimming pool? How much does campaign spending really matter? What truly made crime fall in the 1990s? These are the sort of questions raised--and answered--in the new book [23]Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. In [24]yesterday's excerpt, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explored the impact of a child's first name, particularly a distinctively black name. Today's excerpt shows how names work their way down the socio-economic ladder. The [25]California names data tell a lot of stories in addition to the one about the segregation of white and black first names. Broadly speaking, the data tell us how parents see themselves--and, more significantly, what kinds of expectations they have for their children. The actual source of a name is usually obvious: There's the Bible, there's the huge cluster of traditional English and Germanic and Italian and French names, there are princess names and hippie names, nostalgic names and place names. Increasingly, there are brand names (Lexus, Armani, Bacardi, Timberland) and what might be called aspirational names. The California data show eight Harvards born during the 1990s (all of them black), 15 Yales (all white), and 18 Princetons (all black). There were no Doctors but three Lawyers (all black), nine Judges (eight of them white), three Senators (all white), and two Presidents (both black). But how does a name migrate through the population, and why? Is it purely a matter of zeitgeist, or is there a more discernible pattern to these movements? Consider the [28]10 most popular names given to white girls in California in 1980 and then in 2000. A single holdover: Sarah. So, where do these Emilys and Emmas and Laurens all come from? Where on earth did Madison come from? It's easy enough to see that new names become very popular very fast--but why? Let's take a look at the [29]top five girls' names and [30]top five boys' names given during the 1990s among high-income white families and low-income white families, ranked in order of their relative rarity in the opposite category. Now [31]compare the "high-end" and "low-end" girls' names with the most popular ones overall from 1980 and 2000. Lauren and Madison, two of the most popular high-end names from the 1990s, made the overall top-10 list in 2000. Amber and Heather, meanwhile, two of the overall most popular names from 1980, are now among the low-end names. There is a clear pattern at play: Once a name catches on among high-income, highly educated parents, it starts working its way down the socioeconomic ladder. Amber, Heather, and Stephanie started out as high-end names. For every high-end baby given those names, however, another five lower-income girls received those names within 10 years. Many people assume that naming trends are driven by celebrities. But how many Madonnas do you know? Or, considering all the Brittanys, Britneys, Brittanis, Brittanies, Brittneys, and Brittnis you encounter these days, you might think of Britney Spears; but she is in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the Brittany/Britney/Brittani/Brittanie/Brittney/Brittni explosion--and hers is a name that began on the high end and has since fallen to the low. Most families don't shop for baby names in Hollywood. They look to the family just a few blocks over, the one with the bigger house and newer car. The kind of families that were the first to call their daughters Amber or Heather, and are now calling them Alexandra or Katherine. The kind of families that used to name their sons Justin or Brandon and are now calling them Alexander or Benjamin. Parents are reluctant to poach a name from someone too near--family members or close friends--but many parents, whether they realize it or not, like the sound of names that sound "successful." Once a high-end name is adopted en masse, however, high-end parents begin to abandon it. Eventually, it will be considered so common that even lower-end parents may not want it, whereby it falls out of the rotation entirely. The lower-end parents, meanwhile, go looking for the next name that the upper-end parents have broken in. So, the implication is clear: The parents of all those Alexandras and Katherines, Madisons and Rachels should not expect the cachet to last much longer. Those names are just now peaking and are already on their way to overexposure. Where, then, will the new high-end names come from? Considering the traditionally strong correlation between income and education, it probably makes sense to look at the most popular current names among parents with the most years of education. [32]Here, drawn from a pair of databases that provide the years of parental education, is a sampling of such names. Some of them, as unlikely as it seems, may well become tomorrow's mainstream names. Before you scoff, ask yourself this: Do Aviva or Clementine seem any more ridiculous than Madison might have seemed 10 years ago? Obviously, a variety of motives are at work when parents consider a name for their child. It would be an overstatement to suggest that all parents are looking--whether consciously or not--for a smart name or a high-end name. But they are all trying to signal something with a name, and an overwhelming number of parents are seemingly trying to signal their own expectations of how successful they hope their children will be. The name itself isn't likely to make a shred of difference. But the parents may feel better knowing that, from the very outset, they tried their best. Steven D. Levitt teaches economics at the University of Chicago and is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best American economist under 40. Stephen J. Dubner is a New York City journalist and author of two previous books: [33]Turbulent Souls and [34]Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper. Remarks from the Fray: "Low-end" names are adopted in imitation (conscious or not) of "high-end" names. Then where are the high-end names coming from? The suggestion appears to be that "high-end" families are merely seeking not to use names in favor with "low-end" families. But then, that doesn't tell us anything about which obscure names are chosen. What, if any, is the economic rationale for giving your child a 'sort-of unique' name? Is it any more or less blinkered than the drive to give your child a 'successful' name? (yesterday's column would suggest not) Are there simpler correlative factors (for example, are there strong correlations between name choices and market-leading "Baby Name Guides" released by the publishing industry?)... --Geoff (To reply, click [44]here) I agree with the basic conclusions stated in this article; lots of people are obviously trying to be trendy with their choice of names. I have always scoffed at this, and I prefer names that have stood the test of time. I also paid attention to how the first name sounded with the middle and last names when I named my kids. And I tried to avoid names that seemed to invite nicknames that I didn't like. If a person is going to be stuck with a name for a lifetime, the name should have staying power, not brand the person as belonging to a particular era or lifestyle. --GZ45 (To reply, click [45]here) One thing I don't think that has been covered: what are the shares of the top names? It's all well and good to say that Madison is the top name; but does it garner as high a share as, say, Alice did, all those years ago? Better yet: what share of names are covered by the top 20 in each? My guess is this number has declined, as there is far greater insistence on giving children unique names (note the gimmicky spellings of Jasmine, etc.). Is there are racial component to this, and how does the individualistic/non-traditionalist US compare to other nations? --Leonard_VI (4/13) References 23. http://www.freakonomics.com/ 24. http://slate.com/id/2116449/ 25. http://slate.com/id/2116449/ 28. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116507/ 29. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116508/ 30. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116510/ 31. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116511/ 32. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/sidebar/2116512/ 33. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038072930X/qid=1112797298/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-4526857-3682516 34. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380733145/qid=1112797374/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-4526857-3682516?v=glance&s=books 35. http://slate.msn.com/ 36. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116505/ 37. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116449/ 38. http://slate.msn.com/id/2100251/ 39. http://slate.msn.com/id/2084135/ 40. http://slate.msn.com/id/2082988/ 41. http://slate.msn.com/?id=3944&cp=1905 42. http://slate.msn.com/?id=3936&post=1&tp=Dismal 43. http://slate.msn.com/?id=3936&tp=Dismal 44. http://slate.msn.com/id/3936/m/14372544/ 45. http://slate.msn.com/id/3936/m/14368340/ 46. http://slate.msn.com/id/3936/m/14367255/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:14:59 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:14:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Babies Can Reason at 15 Months Message-ID: Babies Can Reason at 15 Months http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-04-15-1 Betterhumans Staff 4/15/2005 3:14 PM Babies just 15 months old display signs of sophisticated reasoning previously thought to develop at about four years of age. The findings could lead to earlier screening for autism. They also call into question the idea that a large change occurs in early childhood in the understanding of others. "If 15-month-olds can reason about what others believe, it means that psychological reasoning is much more sophisticated than we thought, and begins at a much earlier age than we had thought," says researcher [8]Renee Baillargeon of the [9]University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Violation of expectations Baillargeon and colleagues studied 56 infants who witnessed actors perform unexpected behaviors. In one study, for example, infants sat on a parent's lap and watched an actor place a toy watermelon slice into one of two boxes. The slice was then moved from one box to the other seemingly unbeknownst to the actor. When the actor searched for it in the box where it was, rather than where it was supposed to be, infants expressed surprise in the form of looking longer at the scene. "Infants understood that the actor could have a true or a false belief about the toy's location, and they always expected her to act in a manner consistent with her belief," says Baillargeon. "This is the violation-of-expectation method: Babies look longer at events they view as unexpected. It is a 'whoa' look--a state of heightened attention. It's like it is in everyday life. You expect something and then when it's not what it should be, you tend to look longer, as when we watch a magic show. It's the wow of the unexpected." Baillargeon says it's possible that verbal tasks used in earlier works to gauge children's reasoning skills were overly complex. The research is reported in the journal [10]Science. References 8. http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/people/faculty/baillargeon.html 9. http://www.uiuc.edu/ 10. http://www.sciencemag.org/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:16:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:16:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The National Opinion Survey on Youth and Religion: Are Non-Religious Teenagers Really Deficient in Almost Every Imaginable Way? Message-ID: The National Opinion Survey on Youth and Religion: Are Non-Religious Teenagers Really Deficient in Almost Every Imaginable Way? http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/archives/001109.php March 21, 2005 By Andrew Levison There are some public opinion studies whose conclusions are so easily misinterpreted - and whose effects can be so potentially destructive - that they really ought to have consumer warning labels attached. Here's a prime example. There is a short item that is now showing up in newspapers across the country that says "according to an important new survey": "devout [teens]... are better off in emotional health, academic success, community involvement, concern for others, trust of adults and avoidance of risky behavior [then their nonreligious counterparts]". Now that's a pretty hefty assertion. But it's downright tepid compared with the following summary of the data by one of the survey's authors: "...on every measure of life outcome-relationship with family, doing well at school, avoiding risk behaviors, everything-highly religious teens are doing much better than non-religious kids. It's just a remarkable observable difference...Highly religious American teens are happier and healthier. They are doing better in school, they have more hopeful futures, they get along with their parents better. Name a social outcome that you care about, and the highly religious kids are doing better." Wow. Now that is one humongous whopper of a conclusion. If the data actually demonstrate what this summary seems to be asserting, it could easily be used to argue that secular parents are profoundly and even horribly damaging their teenagers' lives and futures by denying them religion, even if these parents do teach their kids sound moral and ethical principles. It could equally be used to justify allowing public schools to introduce a substantial amount of religious activity and instruction, not for any specifically religious reasons, but simply "in the best interests of the kids." So quick, let's slap on that consumer warning label before this thing gets totally out of hand: Warning: the opinion survey cited above does not contain any data that directly compares a sample of devout American teenagers with a comparable group of non-religious teenagers who have been taught to respect basic American moral and social values but who do not happen to believe in a supreme being or attend church services. As a result, the data cannot be used to draw any conclusions whatsoever about (a) the relative benefits of teaching secular or religious morality as a child-rearing strategy (b) the relative performance of religious and non-religious teen-agers, (as defined above) on any measures of positive social outcomes or (c) the potential benefits of introducing any specifically theological, as opposed to general moral and ethical, instruction in the public schools. There, that ought to help keep things under control until we get this thing straightened out. To the extent that it gets out to the honest editorialists and commentators, this warning label could seriously help to limit the spread of the most blatant and damaging misinterpretations of the Youth and Religion study. But what the heck is actually going on here anyway? What data does the study -- just published as "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Life of American Teenagers" - actually present on this subject and what conclusions can properly be drawn from it? The problem is not that the study was improperly conducted or that it is slanted to further a conservative religious political agenda. Quite the contrary, the survey, part of a 6 year National Project on Youth and Religion funded by the Lilly Endowment and headquartered at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a carefully structured combination of a very large telephone survey of 3,290 teenagers (ages 13-17) conducted over a 9 month period from July 2002 to April 2003 as well as 276 extensive personal interviews. In fact, the study's research design and methodology are far more rigorous then that of many if not most commercial opinion surveys. Equally, the authors of the study -- led by Dr. Christian Smith, Associate Chair of Sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill -- are primarily concerned with understanding and combating what they perceive as a deeply disturbing superficiality and self-involved materialism in modern teenagers' religious outlook. This concern leads them to seriously condemn the corrosive effects of "consumer-driven capitalism" (their words) and modern advertising, bringing them at times close to the views of liberal observers of American religion like Alan Wolfe and even Thomas Frank, author of "What Happened to Kansas?". To be sure, the Youth and Religion study -- like the overall 6 year project itself -- is unabashedly aimed at supporting the work of adult church and religious youth group leaders in their ministry with teen-agers. But it is also clearly not deliberately designed to promote a conservative crypto-theocratic agenda. But what the Youth and Religion study does indeed reflect, however, is a strongly "theocentric" perspective - a point of view that sees religion as central and non-religion as simply its lack or absence. In setting up the categories for the comparison of religious and non-religious teenagers, the study defines four basic "ideal types". The first is of the "devoted" or devout religious teen - one who attends religious service weekly, is actively involved in a religious youth group, prays and reads scripture frequently and feels deep faith and closeness to God. The other three categories - The "regulars", the "sporadic" and the "disengaged", in contrast, are simply defined by the increasing absence of these particular characteristics of the first, "devoted" group. The result is that the most non-religious category - the "disengaged" - does not define a coherent social group of any kind but rather a heterogeneous grab-bag of adolescents whose only shared characteristic is that they are not at all devout. As a consequence, this approach mixes together two kinds of non-religious adolescents who are really quite distinct. One group is the children of secular parents who have been taught and accept American cultures' basic moral and ethical standards but who do not believe in a supreme being or attend church. These teenagers' parents take their kids to soccer practices and scout meetings and themselves attend PTA and neighborhood association meetings but do not show up at Sunday morning services. When asked, these parents will often say that "We seriously thought about joining the church for the kids benefit because they do teach many good values over there. But we just felt it was hypocritical to make the kids accept beliefs and doctrines that we don't really believe or practice ourselves" These parents frequently encourage and participate with their kids in civic voluntarism, from after-school tutoring to Habitat for Humanity, Meals on Wheels and Hands on America. Over the last 30 years, young people from families like these have played a major role in literally tens of thousands of local and national environmental volunteer projects which more conservative religious groups avoided because of the environmental movements' reliance on scientific modes of thought and methods of investigation. These are the kind of teens who grew up watching Sesame Street, Nature, and re-runs of Star Trek starring Captain Jean-Luc Picard. The other, and very distinct, group of teenagers is composed of the vast numbers of "Rebellious" teens who actively reject some or even most of mainstream society's rules, norms and values. These teenagers come in kaleidoscopic variety -- Gangstas, Punks, Goths, Dopers, Drop-outs, Bikers, Slackers, Skinheads, Losers, Ravers, Weirdos, Cokeheads, Junkies, Thrill-seekers, Risk-takers, Pill-poppers, Shit-kickers and dozens of other rebellious subcultures of the teenage social environment. These young people - of whom there are vast numbers - have three basic traits in common: they tend not to be religious, they tend to repeatedly break social rules or violate the laws, and (being teenagers) they tend to constantly get caught, racking up a wildly disproportionate share of all recorded youthful infractions of municipal laws and school regulations. There may be some specific research objectives for which it makes sense to lump these rebellious teens together with the first group into a single catch-all category called the "non-religious". But, for a productive national discussion of the differences between religious and non-religious teenagers, it certainly seems more logical to consider the two groups separately. Combining the two groups simply insures that the rebellious group's extremely low average scores on almost any measure of social adjustment will pull down the overall average of the two groups, making the first group, as well as the rebels, appear to be deeply inferior in comparison to a highly supervised and rigorously socialized group like committed religious teens who are active participants in organized Church youth activities. And this is, of course, exactly what happens in the Religion and Youth survey. On variable after variable measuring obedience to rules, compliance with social norms and general social adjustment- variables like the number of arrests, number of driving tickets, frequency of expulsions, level of sexual activity, use of drugs, quality of self-image, relationship with parents, participation in volunteer activities, level of school grades and so on - the mixed group of "non-religious" teenagers invariably appears inferior to the devout. The obvious question that continually hovers over the proceedings, however, is whether the first group alone might actually score as high or even higher then the religious group on some or all of these measures. But, quite remarkably, there is not one single piece of data in the entire study that is designed to answer that question. On the contrary, in fact, the most troubling feature of the study is the very deeply-imbedded presumption that healthy, productive non-religious teenagers and morally responsible secular parents are so relatively scarce in American society that they need not be considered as a distinct or significant social group. This overall attitude is most dramatically evident in two long personal profiles that are the most vivid and specific portrait the book contains of non-religious teens. One of the two teens portrayed is a drug dealer who smokes marijuana, drinks alcohol, uses crystal meth, has withdrawal symptoms, was expelled from high school, has been in jail and watches porn videos. The teen's father is "a biker who drinks and sends Raymond soft-porn backgrounds for his computer". The other non-religious teenager, on the contrary, is described as an "earnest, caring, hardworking, affable adolescent, the kind most adults would enjoy and admire". But as the profile continues, however, it emerges that he once attempted suicide, and has difficult relations with his parents -- a mother he describes as "really new-age-y, into a lot of weird, crazy things" and a father who is a "hard-ass" who "worked so much I hardly ever saw him." Despite his extreme lack of parental guidance and support, the 17 year-old non-religious teen expresses a wide variety of admirable moral and ethical sentiments. But the interviewer subsequently comments that "lacking recourse to ground his moral commitments in, say, divine command or natural law, Steve finds himself...possessing few coherent, rational grounds for explaining, justifying and defending those standards...Of course, nobody expects a 17 year old to be an articulate moral philosopher. But the apparent lack of clear bearings or firm anchors in Steve's moral reasoning are conspicuous and perhaps worrisome." These two profiles, which the authors refer back to at a number of other points in the study, illustrate an unstated but evident tendency to consistently visualize non-religious teenagers as either mired in delinquency and social pathology or as basically confused and adrift, lacking clear parental moral guidance and unconsciously yearning for the clarity and certainty religious faith would provide. The authors do warn that the two profiles they offer are not actually meant to typify all non-religious adolescents and their parents, but the only broad generalization the book actually does offer about healthy non-religious teens and their families reflects the same basic view: "Although there are certainly many well-adjusted American adolescents who do not attend religious services regularly, as a whole, low-attending American teens, like the non-religious teens, appear to reflect some likely signs of family strain and general civic and organizational disconnection" In fact, in all of the data from the 3,200 telephone surveys, 276 face to face interviews, and scores of regressions and statistical tables, the social categories of morally responsible non-religious parents and decent, law-abiding and successful non-religious teens hover like ghostly, unseen presences. One senses their existence somewhere in the underlying data, but nowhere are their numbers estimated and nowhere can they be directly observed. In a book subtitled "The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" one could be forgiven for thinking that this represents a not inconsequential omission. --- (Note: It is worth noting in advance one incorrect defense of the study that will quickly occur to some readers - namely that it is proper to lump "rebels" and "decent" non-religious teens together because it is the lack of religion that causes the rebelliousness of the non-religious young. As it happens, the authors of the Youth and Religion study themselves provide a quite excellent review of the permissible kinds of inferences their data allows, and they clearly label logic such as that above as fallacious reasoning of the "the presence of many people on the subway platform makes the trains arrive" variety) From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:17:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:17:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: France Plans to Digitize Its 'Cultural Patrimony' and Defy Google's 'Domination' Message-ID: France Plans to Digitize Its 'Cultural Patrimony' and Defy Google's 'Domination' News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.21 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/03/2005032101t.htm President Jacques Chirac of France has asked the head of the country's national library and the minister of culture and communication to plan a French-led project that would make millions of European literary works accessible on the Internet. The move appears to be a response to a warning from Jean-No?l Jeanneney, president of the National Library of France. In an essay in the newspaper Le Monde in January, he said that plans by Google and five leading academic institutions and libraries in the United States and Britain to digitize and make available online the content of millions of volumes posed a "risk of a crushing domination by America in defining the idea that future generations will have of the world" ([63]The Chronicle, March 4). Mr. Jeanneney and Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the culture minister, met last week with Mr. Chirac, who told them to begin laying the groundwork for a European endeavor similar to the Google project. In a statement released by his office, Mr. Chirac said that he had asked Mr. Jeanneney and Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres to "analyze the conditions in which the wealth of the great libraries of France and Europe could be made more widely and quickly accessible on the Internet." Mr. Chirac said that because of their "exceptionally rich cultural patrimony, France and Europe must take a determining role" in such a project. In an essay, "Google Is Not the End of History," that ran in Le Monde the day after his meeting with President Chirac, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres described as "a clap of thunder in the numeric sky" the December announcement "that a powerful, efficient, and popular American search engine was going to digitize and put online 15 million books from the patrimony conserved by some of the most prestigious Anglo-Saxon libraries." "The event comes in an intellectual and cultural climate in which the digitization of documents and works seems to be the key to all problems," Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres went on. He stressed that facilitating online access to such resources is one of his priorities as minister and cited existing projects to digitize artwork in French museums and 19th-century magazines and newspapers in the national library. "We probably have a lot to learn from Google, whose success comes largely from the simplicity and ease of access it offers," Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres acknowledged. Yet French officials insist that their project should be seen not merely as a reaction to Google, but in the context of existing French and European efforts to make information available online. "I really stress that it's not anti-American," said an official at the Ministry of Culture and Communication, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It is not a reaction. The objective is to make more material relevant to European patrimony available." "Everybody is working on digitization projects," the official continued. Google's announcement made a big splash, but it "has not yet digitized one book, to my knowledge," he said. "The French National Library was founded by Charles V in the 14th century. It cannot compare itself with Google, which was founded in 1998. We don't know whether [Google] will be there in five years." But future cooperation between Google and the European project could well occur, the official said. "The worst scenario we could achieve would be that we had two big digital libraries that don't communicate," he said. "The idea is not to do the same thing, so maybe we could cooperate, I don't know. Frankly, I'm not sure they would be interested in digitizing our patrimony. The idea is to bring something that is complementary, to bring diversity. But this doesn't mean that Google is an enemy of diversity." A spokeswoman for Google responded to the French announcement by saying that "we are supportive of any effort to make information accessible to the world." Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, one of Google's collaborators, also welcomed the French project. "It's a fine idea," he said. "The more of this sort of work that can be done around the world, the better off everyone will be. And I certainly wish them the best of luck." The other institutions involved in Google's project are the New York Public Library and the libraries of Stanford University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and the University of Oxford, in England. Mr. Jeanneney and Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres are expected to present a preliminary proposal as early as May 2, when Paris will play host to a European cultural summit, with representatives from the 25 European Union countries. "This subject is one of the key issues in this meeting," the ministry official said, "and there will be some announcement at that point." _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [64]Google Library Project Is Culturally Biased, Says French National Librarian (3/4/2005) * [65]Publishing Groups Say Google's Book-Scanning Effort May Violate Copyrights (2/18/2005) * [66]Google Will Digitize and Search Millions of Books From 5 Top Research Libraries (1/7/2005) References 63. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a03501.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i26/26a03501.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i24/24a03501.htm 66. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a03701.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:19:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:19:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Gerontology: Aubrey de Grey: The unfortunate influence of the weather on the rate of ageing Message-ID: The unfortunate influence of the weather on the rate of ageing: why human caloric restriction or its emulation may only extend life expectancy by 2-3 years. Gerontology. 2005 Mar-Apr;51(2):73-82 de Grey AD. Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Much research interest, and recently even commercial interest, has been predicated on the assumption that reasonably closely-related species--humans and mice, for example--should, in principle, respond to ageing-retarding interventions with an increase in maximum lifespan roughly proportional to their control lifespan (that without the intervention). Here, it is argued that the best-studied life-extending manipulations of mice are examples of a category that is highly unlikely to follow this rule, and more likely to exhibit only a similar absolute increase in maximum lifespan from one species to the next, independent of the species' control lifespan. That category--reduction in dietary calories or in the organism's ability to metabolize or sense them--is widely recognized to extend lifespan as an evolutionary adaptation to transient starvation in the wild, a situation which alters the organism's optimal partitioning of resources between maintenance and reproduction. What has been generally overlooked is that the extent of the evolutionary pressure to maintain adaptability to a given duration of starvation varies with the frequency of that duration, something which is--certainly for terrestrial animals and less directly for others--determined principally by the weather. The pattern of starvation that the weather imposes is suggested here to be of a sort that will tend to cause all terrestrial animals, even those as far apart phylogenetically as nematodes and mice, to possess the ability to live a similar maximum absolute (rather than proportional) amount longer when food is short than when it is plentiful. This generalization is strikingly in line with available data, leading (given the increasing implausibility of further extending human mean but not maximum lifespan in the industrialized world) to the biomedically and commercially sobering conclusion that interventions which manipulate caloric intake or its sensing are unlikely ever to confer more than 2 or 3 years' increase in human mean or maximum lifespan at the most. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:22:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:22:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CBC: (Colson) Human Dignity in the Biotech Century, by Sandra Davis Message-ID: Book Review: Human Dignity in the Biotech Century, by Sandra Davis Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:36:03 -0600 Center for Bioethics and Culture In every era, men and women have been given the responsibility to be stewards of the world and its affairs. In our time, this task, having never been an easy one, has become even more difficult. We not only live in a pluralistic society, but also a highly technological one and the ethical dilemmas we face are, in some ways, unlike any others. In the twenty-first century, often dubbed the ?biotech century?, questions of right and wrong have become inextricably linked to our widening awareness of our technological prowess- our gathering strength to affect mankind at the genetic level. These serious issues require a balanced response, one that supports the harnessing of the incredible capacities our world offers, but as good stewards, advocates the ethical use of those capacities for the benefit of mankind. As biotechnology becomes the new nexus of moral stewardship for our century, our obligation remains to make ethical decisions before God, not only for ourselves, but for every generation after us. Charles W. Colson and Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., have done the Christian community a substantial service by editing a collection of essays, entitled Human Dignity in the Biotech Century, to aid in this process of staying well-informed. These essays present a Christian approach toward biotechnology and its moral concerns. Genetics, cybernetics, cloning and the public policy and legal needs of each area are addressed. The authors are diverse, including physicians, academics, scientists, and lawyers; from both Christian and secular circles who recognize the importance of collaboration as a means of effecting change. The comprehensive range of issues addressed reflects the rapid pace with which biotech has developed, far beyond the early years of the abortion debate in the seventies. A thorough education is greatly needed, especially among Christians who oftentimes, are last to engage in cultural discussions out of a desire to protect the integrity of the faith. The need for action must come out of staying abreast of the current issues and Cameron notes this purpose in his introductory essay, ?Christian Vision for the Biotech Century?: ?The pro-life community needs to upgrade both its understanding of and commitment to questions that go beyond abortion and yet are of equal gravity to our conscience and our civilization in their threat to the sanctity of human life?. Though rightfully engaged in the abortion debate, a more well-rounded defense against newer issues is urgent. Because the issue of cloning is nearest to the public consciousness, a few essays are devoted to describing the process of cloning in layman's terms and outlining its ethical implications. The passage of Prop. 71, a bill designating taxpayer money for embryonic stem cell research, in California in 2004, has unfortunately proved the timeliness of the warnings by those committed to responsible bioethics. Yet the common charge of Luddism by critics is not one that can be substantiated within these pages; ?The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World? states in its manifesto: ?We strongly favor work in biotechnology that will lead to cures for diseases and disabilities, and we are excited by the promise of stem cells from adult donors and other ethical avenues of research...we welcome all medical and scientific research that is firmly tethered to moral truth?. Other essays address the impact of genetics where, among other concerns, the desire to patent genetic material for purposes of research makes men and women objects to be owned rather than autonomous, free individuals. C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., stresses this in his essay ?The New Genetics and the Dignity of Humankind?: ?Genetic technology may be used to relieve human suffering, treat human diseases and thereby protect human dignity; or it may be used in ways that erode our dignity and treat us as mere commodities, or even worse, refashion us in someone else's image?. David Stevens, M.D., in his essay ?Promise and Peril?, celebrates the potential benefits of genetics but also argues for reasonable parameters for an almost completely unregulated field. Since the Christian community is most familiar with the pro-life debate surrounding abortion, a couple of essays discuss how the national discussion has changed since Roe v. Wade, and offer new strategies for the Christian community. Overall, Human Dignity in the Biotech Century is an excellent book for those wanting to familiarize themselves with the current issues, and to gain a sense of the ?big picture?. It is educational, sobering, and uplifting, too- the work that these authors are doing in their various vocations to advocate for responsible bioethics is exactly the right response. Finding the appropriate balance between ethical applications of biotech while not compromising the distinct, inviolable nature of human beings is part of the task of our generation. Sandra Davis, Staff Writer, The Center for Bioethics and Culture From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:31:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:31:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: (Hermann Kahn): Giggling at the Apocalypse Message-ID: Giggling at the Apocalypse http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45469-2005Mar17 Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page BW06 In 1961, Amitai Etzioni said that Herman Kahn "does for nuclear arms what free-love advocates did for sex: he speaks candidly of acts about which others whisper behind closed doors." Kahn, one of the nuclear analysts whom the RAND Corporation paid to think about the unthinkable, did not just stand out from his cold-blooded brethren; he ballooned out from them. This "artless, sweaty man," wheezing and gulping down water, was almost cartoonishly fat, a rotund prophet giggling at the apocalypse. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi's suitably macabre The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War (Harvard Univ., $26.95, forthcoming in April) shows us both the clownish appearance and the deadly serious mind. "I can be funny on the subject of thermonuclear war," he once told a reporter. Much of Kahn's fame and notoriety came from his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War, which Ghamari-Tabrizi notes was "the first widely circulated study that dramatized how a nuclear war might begin, be fought, and be survived." Kahn wrote that prewar preparations could decisively shape a post-nuclear-war world. Like Thomas C. Schelling, Bernard Brodie and the rest of RAND's wizards of Armageddon, Kahn argued that the best way to deter a nuclear war was "to look willing" to fight one -- and that the easiest way to look willing to fight one was "to be willing" to fight one. The reviews were uniformly passionate and decidedly mixed: The future Kennedy and Johnson aide Adam Yarmolinsky admitted that he and other Pentagon officials were living off Kahn's "intellectual capital," while Bertrand Russell raged that the book should shock British politicians into outright neutralism. "Is there really a Herman Kahn?" James Newman famously wrote in Scientific American. "It is hard to believe. Doubts cross one's mind from the first page of this deplorable book: no one could write like this; no one could think like this." Kahn joked that he had gained 10 more pounds to prove that he was real. Kahn expected to see a world awash with some 50,000 missiles by the mid-1970s, and he found it hard to believe that "an occasional button will not get pressed. . . . We may just be going to live in a world in which every now and then a city or town is destroyed." Three decades later, in a world in which the Bush administration and Russia deem it acceptable to wait until some time beyond 2008 to finish securing the nuclear weapons of the former Soviet Union from the grasping hands of al Qaeda, Kahn may seem monstrous, but he does not sound mad. -- Warren Bass From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:32:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:32:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Book World: (Galbraith) Rational Exuberance Message-ID: Rational Exuberance http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45474-2005Mar17?language=printer Reviewed by Geoffrey Kabaservice Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page BW08 JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH His Life, His Politics, His Economics By Richard Parker. Farrar Straus Giroux. 820 pp. $35 John Kenneth Galbraith, now in his 97th year, has had an expansive career. Arguably America's best-known economist, as well as a former government official, journalist, public intellectual, presidential confidante, ambassador, antiwar activist and even a successful novelist, the outsized Galbraith surely deserves a biography almost as long as the one Richard Parker has written. Readers whose patience will be tried by Parker's densely written 820-page tome will nonetheless appreciate the clarity and insight he brings to this portrait of the outsider as insider. For Galbraith's main contribution to politics as well as economics was to be a gadfly in tweed, skeptical of all authority and any system of fixed thought. Anyone too heavily invested in preserving the "conventional wisdom" -- a term he coined in his most famous work, The Affluent Society (1958) -- would feel the sting of his debunking, made more painful by the wit and elegance with which it was delivered. What's surprising in Parker's account is not that Galbraith had so many enemies across the ideological spectrum but that he was tolerated in high places for so long. Galbraith's outsider stance derived partly from his background. Born into unpromising circumstances in rural Ontario, indifferently educated at a local agricultural school that he described as "not only the cheapest but probably the worst college in the English-speaking world," he escaped a potential future as a hog grader by winning a graduate fellowship in economics at Berkeley and then an instructorship at Harvard. There he collided with rigidly conservative professors whose faith in the market was ultimately theological rather than (as they imagined) scientific, and which not even the trauma of the Depression could shake. Public service, in the New Deal and then as director of price control during World War II, gave Galbraith an understanding of real-world economic problems beyond that of most academics. Participation in the postwar U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, in which he determined that neither enemy morale nor production was impeded by Allied bombing of German and Japanese cities, provided an education in the lengths to which powerful figures will go to ensure that their assumptions remain undisturbed by inconvenient truths. Confrontations with red-baiting politicians brought notoriety, while a string of bestsellers (Parker calculates that Galbraith's books have sold more than 7 million copies) propelled him to fame. As a much-interviewed public commentator, he was part of a cultured and cosmopolitan group of action-minded thinkers who briefly made intellect seem glamorous. Harvard connections and experience as a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson brought Galbraith into John F. Kennedy's inner circle and led to his appointment as ambassador to India in 1961. Despite his distance from Washington, he retained a direct connection to the president, who relished his spicily written cables; Galbraith once wrote to Kennedy that attempting to communicate through the State Department was "like trying to fornicate through a mattress." Galbraith was an early and prescient critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and Parker argues persuasively that he moved Kennedy toward restraint in the Cold War as well as Keynesian economic policies at home. When Galbraith proved unable to moderate Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam adventurism, he metamorphosed into one of the most prominent "establishment" critics of the war. Much of this story has been told by Galbraith himself in his journals and autobiography -- and in prose like brandy, where Parker's is more like cold water. What makes Parker's biography valuable, however, is his ability to place Galbraith in a sweeping and comprehensive history of the evolution of economic thought, and to keep sight of his subject's continuing relevance to the present day. Parker, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, points out that Galbraith has been looked down upon (figuratively if not literally) by most members of the economics profession for the past half-century. Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson, for example, described him as "America's foremost economist for non-economists." This reaction reflects not only jealousy but also professional pique over Galbraith's skepticism toward the mathematical modeling and equations that have come to define modern economics. But Galbraith knew that reality was messier than the clean and well-lit universe of the theorists. He battled not only with "rational expectations" conservatives but also with guns-and-butter Keynesian liberals, whose policies fostered the public squalor alongside private affluence that persists to this day. Parker clearly means for Galbraith's example to inspire modern liberals. In 1953, when the energies of the New Deal had faded and Democrats were at nearly as low an ebb as they are today, Galbraith wrote to Stevenson to propose an initiative to "keep the Democratic Party intellectually alert and positive during these years in the wilderness." The subsequent success of Galbraith and his fellow thinkers in providing fresh ideas helped reinvigorate the party and led to a new era of liberal dominance. Whether today's Democratic Party has the courage to bring independent intellectuals of Galbraith's stripe into positions of power remains to be seen. But the dominant conservatives ought to ponder Galbraith's warning: "The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth." Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author of "The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment." He has taught history at Yale University and is a manager at the Advisory Board Company in Washington, D.C. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:33:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:33:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: (Toulouse-Lautrec) Paris's Party Animal Message-ID: Paris's Party Animal http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47390-2005Mar18 Toulouse-Lautrec Delighted in the Demimonde By Paul Richard Special to The Washington Post Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page N01 There's not much yellow sunshine in "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" at the National Gallery of Art. Its glow is greenish. That's partly the gaslight, partly the absinthe, and don't forget the queasiness of the morning-after dawn. This is a show about the club scene. It takes you out all night. There are many oils, posters, prints and party invitations (one suggests you check your fig leaf at the door), 10 connected rooms and 250 pictures of dance halls, nightclubs, bars, circuses and brothels, and the people who hang out in them: artists, drinkers, gawking tourists, whores. The show sweeps you back in time up the steep streets of Montmartre, to the hottest spots in Paris, where women are available and getting stoned is easy and dancing girls kick high. The atmosphere is charged with showbiz glamor, lust, bohemian license, art, scruffiness and slumming. You are not far from the thug life. You meet a lot of painters. Bearded Vincent van Gogh is drinking in the corner; he has four works in the show. Young Pablo Picasso, who has five, is up from Barcelona. There's Finland's Eero J?rnefelt. Erik Satie is on piano. You get to go behind the scenes -- Santiago Rusi?ol takes you to the kitchen of the Moulin de la Gallette -- and every now and then you run into old masters, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, men who understood Montmartre before it got hot. Their pictures aren't alike. It's not style that connects these men -- there are 50 in the show -- but a preference for Montmartre and for living on the edge. The place is rife with painters. They drive each other on. One of the most gifted -- Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), is your sharp-eyed constant guide. Everybody knows him. He's pretty unmistakable. Lautrec is under five feet tall. His torso is a normal size, but his brittle, often-broken legs are as spindly as a boy's. His gait may be unsteady (his walking stick is hollow, he keeps it filled with booze), but his manners are delightful and his banter is exquisite. The man is an aristocrat, but his lips are red and bulbous, and he drools. Unlike his cousins he couldn't ride to hounds. That sort of life was closed to him. But Montmartre's was wide open. Had he not been so odd, he might have been dismissed as yet another well-bred youth going down, but here, among bohemians, where hierarchies of class and taste were overturned with glee, his deformities promoted him. He wore them like a badge. As he hobbled up the cobbles to the Moulin Rouge or the Moulin de la Galette, the Chat Noir or the Mirliton, Lautrec blazed a trail. When Bob Dylan left his home town of Hibbing, Minn., to go to Greenwich Village, or Packards from Park Avenue purred up to the Cotton Club, they were treading the same path. Lautrec was very good. He was fabulous at faces, and at body language, too. His eerie skill for capturing a likeness, swiftly, empathetically, still seems a sort of miracle. His drawing and his painting aren't separate, they're one. And he was heroically productive. Lots of wild people get over the club scene, but he didn't, and it killed him. By the age of 33, when he went to the asylum, he was pretty much a ruin, a paranoid, forgetful, syphilitic drunk, drawing creepy circus scenes for the doctors. Yet he'd managed to produce more than 700 canvases, 360 prints and thousands of sharp drawings. He has 140 pictures on display in this show. Their candor is terrific. "I do not spare the warts," he wrote, "and I enjoy adding the hairs that sprout from them." His painting style is not exceptionally original. The borrowed strands from which he wove it -- naturalist, impressionist, cartoony, Japanese -- are pretty clear to see. Lautrec is hardly shallow, but his oils, seen together, aren't as endless or as deep as those of Manet or Paul Cezanne. Purely as a painter he isn't quite there at the top with the grandest of French masters. What makes him so important, and also so prophetic, is something else about his art. Lautrec put it all together. To read his pictures rightly is to be as hip as he was. Beauty in his pictures is almost incidental. That's not what they're about. What they offer is a joining of rough new music, sex, mass-market promotions, avant-garde delirium, shocking truth, celebrity, decadence and dazzle. That potent combination fuels the art world still. One night in December 1891, 3,000 Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs were pasted up all over Paris. Part ad, part newspaper cartoon, part Japanese wood-block print, "Moulin Rouge: La Goulue" looked like nothing that Parisians had ever seen. La Goulue, "the glutton," was a young and supple dancer. Lautrec's flatly colored picture shows her on the dance floor. It is focused on her bloomers. La Goulue was known for kicking off the top hats of the gentlemen who neared her. Every now and then, to heighten the maneuver, she'd "forget" to wear her underpants. Lautrec's poster of her kicking made her famous, too. They did as much for singer Aristide Bruant. Burant glowered at his listeners. Often he insulted them. Burant half-talked the songs he wrote in a near-impenetrable streetwise Paris slang. Historian Richard Thomson, who with the museum's Philip Conisbee led the team of scholars that put the show together, says Bruant's voice suggests pre-electric Dylan's. Lautrec's posters made Bruant's costume -- the club, the tall black boots, the hat, the working man's black jacket, and the scarf, a bright blood red -- a sort of logo of the man. All the artist needed to summon Yvette Guilbert -- her poignancy, her fragility, her unforgettable stage presence -- was her trademark long black gloves. Slender, red-haired Jane Avril appears often in his lithographs. So does Loie Fuller, who danced with swirling cloths under changing colored lights. (The Fuller room that Mark Leithauser has designed for the exhibit brilliantly evokes her. Its colors shift continually. There's a movie of her, too.) Montmartre's performers welcomed Lautrec. He made them famous. Mary Weaver Chapin, writing in the catalogue, notes that he "developed what he called furias, intense obsessions, with certain performers who would enthrall him for a single season or several years." Lautrec, in his way, was a sort of proto-groupie. To truly make it on the club scene, to get close to the stars, you have to penetrate the circle and become part of the entourage. He understood that, too. No respect or seriousness is granted to the square world, much less to officialdom in the gallery's display. The politics of France had been hopeless for a century. Bourgeois respectability, overstuffed and stifling, wasn't more attractive. No wonder that so many people of all sorts were attracted to the club scene. It was the other side of the coin. As museum shows and motel art testify together, late 19th-century French painting is what Americans like best. Too often what we're shown is anodyne in spirit -- shimmerings of color, shiverings of space, sunlight on fresh flowers, sunlight on fresh fruit, glintings on the Seine. This show is a corrective. The Chat Noir opened in Montmartre in 1882. Bruant's club, the Mirliton, closed in 1897. The intervening years are the period of the show. The world was getting modern. The Eiffel Tower (built in 1889) now ruled the Paris skyline. Electric lights were shining where once there had been gas lamps. Shoppers were exploring the extravagant department stores. The broad and stately avenues that Baron Haussmann had shoved through the old city made urban life in Paris increasingly anonymous. They also made it easier for people of all classes to reach the windmills and the crooked streets and nightclubs of Montmartre. The girls wore floor-length skirts then, and complicated hats. Men affected toppers. But there is something at the core of "Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre" -- an attitude, a pulsing -- that feels as new as now. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:34:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:34:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Conservative Legal Scholar Takes an Unexpected Stance on Religion and Constitutional Rights Message-ID: Conservative Legal Scholar Takes an Unexpected Stance on Religion and Constitutional Rights The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.25 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i29/29a01801.htm By PETER MONAGHAN CHURCH AND STATE: Widely known as a conservative legal scholar, Marci A. Hamilton hardly shrinks from taking what sound like leftist stances on emotionally charged issues of the day. Ban flag burning? Unconstitutional, she says. That much-debated "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Illegal. Legal protection for religious organizations? Sometimes illegal, too, declares the professor of law at Yeshiva University. Or at least overreaching, she argues in God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press), due to be published in May. In her new book, as in her provocative columns on FindLaw.com, she argues that the law affords too many protections to religious figures who commit acts that should be considered, and prosecuted, as criminal. She contends that the Constitution's "no harm principle" -- that anyone who harms another person should be governed by the laws that govern everyone else -- should compel the question: "What does sexual abuse by clergy have to do with the free exercise of religion?" Why, she asks, are priests, ministers, and other religious personnel able to dodge prosecution by arguing that the state has no right to intrude upon church affairs? Similarly, how can it be right that Christian Scientists may permit their children to die rather than receive medical attention? Ms. Hamilton's arguments, which she often presents to federal and state legislatures debating religious-freedom bills, take on an added urgency in a time when courts and politicians commonly accept a "ministerial exception" that allows religions to largely police themselves when questions arise about sexual assaults on minors in church or the firing of employees on grounds of race or religious beliefs. Why? The reasoning goes: If the courts entertained criminal, antidiscrimination, and other claims, they would be interfering with the internal procedures of religious institutions. "For whatever reason, nobody has taken up the point that you can actually go too far in protecting religion," says Ms. Hamilton, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit before entering academe. As a junior professor, Ms. Hamilton argued in an article that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, then recently passed, rode roughshod over the Supreme Court's "core function of interpreting the Constitution" by amending the Constitution by majority vote, thus violating clearly stated procedures for such changes. That article was used by a judge in Boerne, Tex., to rule that a church could not use the concept of religious freedom to circumvent the city's historic-preservation ordinance and replace its building with a much larger one. When the case reached the Supreme Court, Ms. Hamilton represented Boerne, and prevailed. Ms. Hamilton's win was a mighty accomplishment. She has also litigated cases in federal appeals and state supreme courts. She is handling cases on both clergy abuse and zoning laws that are headed for the Supreme Court. But with prominence comes suspicion, a fact of which she has remained keenly aware. Testifying before a Congressional committee in 1998, when Ms. Hamilton decried a successor bill to the legislation she had defeated in the Supreme Court as "a slap in the face of the framers and the Constitution," she added: "For the record, I am a religious believer." "I try not to bring my faith up," Ms. Hamilton says, "but I've found it necessary in certain fora to make it very clear that I'm hardly antireligion, but I am opposed to abuses of power by religion." If most religious Americans knew the extent of those abuses, and how the courts serve to protect them, she says, "they would say, We had no idea that those who said they were guarding our interests were harming others, and that's not part of our set of beliefs." She believes that Americans' attitudes toward abuses of church power may be changing because of the emergence of "pockets in the United States that were not before opposed to religious entities." Homeowners, for example. Since the advent of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000, Ms. Hamilton has been deluged with requests from property owners to help defend them against religious organizations attempting to build large church complexes that transform the character of their neighborhoods. Still, Ms. Hamilton acknowledges, some readers "will be offended that anyone would ever say something in an extended, 500-page book about the problems that religion has caused in society. The response to them has to be, well, if you'd like to take a public position in favor of harming others, be my guest. To me that's just incoherent, but it's precisely what has been argued now for about 35 years." From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:36:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:36:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Harvey Mansfield: The manliness of Theodore Roosevelt Message-ID: Harvey Mansfield: The manliness of Theodore Roosevelt http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/mar05/mansfield.htm The most obvious feature of Theodore Roosevelt's life and thought is the one least celebrated today, his manliness. Somehow America in the twentieth century went from the explosion of assertive manliness that was TR to the sensitive males of our time who shall be and deserve to be nameless. TR appeals to some conservatives today for his espousal of big government and national greatness, and all conservatives rather relish his political incorrectness. As a reforming progressive he used to appeal to liberals, but nowadays liberals are put off by the political incorrectness that conservatives rather sneakily enjoy. Conservatives keep their admiration under wraps because they fear the reaction of women should they celebrate his manliness. Liberals have delivered themselves, in some cases with discernible reluctance (I am thinking of President Clinton), to the feminists. Yet they too are concealing an embarrassment. Nothing was more obvious than Roosevelt's manliness because he made such a point of it not only in his own case but also as necessary for human progress. It was being a progressive that made him so eager to be manly. Here is gristle to chew for liberals and conservatives, both of whom--except for the feminists--have abandoned manliness mostly out of policy rather than abhorrence. With the Library of America's publication of his Letters and Speeches and The Rough Riders, An Autobiography, let's see how Roosevelt's manliness was at the center of his politics.[3][1] We can begin from the pragmatism of William James, who was one of Roosevelt's professors at Harvard. Pragmatism too is favored by both conservatives and liberals today, particularly those conservatives like President Bush the First because they distrust "the vision thing," and liberals like Richard Rorty because they believe in the vision thing but do not want to defend it with reasons. But pragmatism as James presented it was very much a philosophy for the tough-minded, the manly, as opposed to optimistic rationalists with tender temperaments. Roosevelt and James did not get on together. When Roosevelt praised the "strenuous life," James said that he was "still mentally in the Sturm und Drang period of early adolescence." And though Roosevelt took James's course at Harvard, he was not a disciple of James, who might have fallen into the category of "educated men of weak fibre" whom Roosevelt was pleased to excoriate. The point of James's criticism was his distaste for the Spanish-American war, which Roosevelt liked so much. Yet the two agreed on manliness. Roosevelt, had he taken note of pragmatism, would have been happy to begin from James's notion of "tough-minded." Roosevelt's first thought would have been to make James's tough-minded philosophers tougher by emphasizing determination and will-power over opinions about the universe. "In this life we get nothing save by effort," he said, dismissing God and nature by which we have the faculties that make possible our kind of effort. Roosevelt was a sickly, asthmatic child who, by the advice of his father and with constant exercise, made himself fit not only for survival but for feats of manly aggression. His father's advice had been to lengthen the reach of his mind by strengthening his body, using sheer will-power. Roosevelt did just that. He went in for boxing, a skill that enabled him to knock people around, that must have fed his love of rivalry, and that could easily have encouraged him to exaggerate the power of will-power. He spoke frequently of "character," but by this he meant just one character, the energetic character--forgetting other forms of determination to set one's own course in life. He concentrated not so much on the mind as on the instrument of the mind. Today, following James and TR, we are in the habit of calling someone tough-minded if he looks at things empirically--meaning not wishing them to be better than they are--and weak-minded if he reasons or rationalizes things as he wants them to be. Of course, if temperament controls the mind (as James argued), you are more in control when you are tough rather than tender or weak or wishful or wistful; so under that condition the advantage goes to manliness. And it also goes to men rather than women, because will-power in this view requires a stronger, more athletic body. Thus, according to TR, manliness is in the main a construction, an individual construction of one's own will-power. To make the construction, a man should engage in "the manly art of self-defense" against other men, but he should also seek encounters with nature in the form of dangerous animals. He must hunt. "Teddy" got his nickname from all the bears he shot, all the cubs he made orphans. A New Yorker by birth, he went to the Wild West, and became a Westerner by deliberate intent, or sheer will-power. He became a cowboy by impressing the other cowboys, a loner among loners certified with their stamp of approval. In this way the individual construction becomes social: after you have proved yourself. The theorists today who say masculinity is a social construction often give the impression that there's nothing to it; society waves a wand and a nerd is made manly. No, it takes effort to become manly, as Teddy Roosevelt says. The more manliness is constructed, the more effort it takes. The more we admire effort like TR's rather than the beautiful nature and noble ease of Homer's Achilles, the more we admire will-power manliness and the more we depend on it. Will-power manliness can also appear to have an air of desperation or can be said to be desperate underneath despite an air of confidence on the surface. Some would interpret TR's manliness as too emphatic to be true, because true manliness has more quiet in its confidence, less stridency in its assertiveness. Yet if all we know is based on social construction, meaning that all we know is contingently based on how society is now--and so manliness is impermanent and will pass away in our gender-neutral society--then it is reasonable to feel anxiety instead of confidence. And it might be reasonable to cover up one's anxiety with loud bluffing, like TR, because some kind of society is better than nothing. For all that TR may have absorbed from Charles Darwin and William James in favor of will-power and thus against the reliability and reassurance that nature might provide to human designs, he was certainly, we would say today, an environmentalist. He believed as we do that nature left alone is valuable to humans. Though he believed in will-power, he also believed in a nature that deserves to be preserved despite our will-power. He did not use the neutral word "environment," an evasion that does not disclose what the environment surrounds or in what measure it nurtures or harms what it surrounds. He liked to speak of "the Strenuous Life" lived outdoors and testing oneself in situations of challenge and risk. Whereas environmentalists today do their best to exclude human intervention in nature--"nature" for them means what is non-human--and thus to confine human beings to the role of concerned and caring observers, Roosevelt wanted us to live with nature and react to it. He loved birds but he didn't object to shooting them. We should, within limits, be hunters, for hunting adds "no small value to the national character." Nature does need to be protected from depletion, and there must be game wardens, "men of courage, resolution and hardihood"--not lecturers full of moral urgency passing out lists of small prohibitions as one meets in the National Parks today. TR's program of conservation was like William James's moral equivalent of war, quite contrary to environmentalism today, which desires universal peace, seeks no moral equivalent of war, and on its fringe (did you know that TR invented the phrase "lunatic fringe"?) wants to extend the welfare state from needy humans to all the presumed unfortunates of subhuman nature. "Conservation" is for the purpose of conserving nature, which is for the purpose of conserving manliness. Manliness wants risk, not comfort and convenience. Roosevelt had his own, brazenly exclusive moralism; he liked being "in cowboy land" because it enabled him to "get into the mind and soul of the average American of the right type." His democracy satisfies not merely the average American but one of the right type. "Life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living." Who would say now that visiting a National Park is a great adventure? Yellowstone, where TR gave one of his most famous speeches in 1903, is now no more, perhaps less, an adventure than visiting Disneyland with its artificial thrills. Yellowstone, he said, would ensure to future generations "much of the old-time pleasure of the hardy life of the wilderness and of the hunter in the wilderness ... kept for all who have the love of adventure and the hardihood to take advantage of it." To challenge the manliness of average Americans of the right type, nature is not chaotic but scenic. To gaze on it is wondrous or sublime; nature does not coddle you but it is not an abyss you must leap across. TR was tough-minded but not a nihilist because being tough-minded requires that you have the right degree of challenge, enough to give you a charge but well short of inducing despair. The manly reaction to the great outdoors that Roosevelt expected was not to live the life of a woodsman, but to seek positive responsibility for society. His own trip to the Wild West enabled him to become one of the cowboys and then prompted him to return East with energy refreshed. One can certainly question whether it is more manly to be alone and self-sufficient or to be responsible and political. One might make the case that a scholar like William James, however incapable of boxing and hunting, is more manly by himself than is TR with his need to be admired and elected to office by average people of the right sort. In a notable chapter of his Autobiography entitled "Outdoors and Indoors," Roosevelt says that love of books and love of outdoors go hand in hand, both being loners' occupations and neither requiring wealth. He himself loved both, but he seems to regard them as preparation for politics rather than attractive mainly for themselves. TR is at his most emphatic in urging a man to enter politics. Not for him a bland, mollycoddle word like our "participation." Finding no positive term strong enough to please him, he repeats negative verbs, his favorites being shirk and shrink, to show his contempt for those who abstain from politics. To be efficient and practical a man must ready himself "to meet men of far lower ideals than his own" and not be content "to associate merely with cultivated, refined men of high ideals and sincere purpose to do right." Politics is struggle, and "it is sheer unmanliness and cowardice to shrink from the contest." You see what I mean about shrink; and note how vices are magnified with sheer in front of them. Not for TR the use of weasel words, another phrase he coined or made his own. Here is where the professors like William James go wrong; they consort with one another, cherish their ideals, and shirk their duty to join the actual battle that is less pleasant than discussion with friends over tea. The tough-minded manly man not only accepts pain but actually does his best to avoid pleasure. Yet isn't manliness for all its risks and trials pleasant for the manly man? And not only at the end of the day? Roosevelt wants his manly man in politics to accommodate himself to the rough and coarse and the selfish, and this would seem to compromise rather than fulfill his manliness by making it depend on success in his relations with others beneath himself. He might become a team player or an organization man, hardly roles for a manly man. So we must not forget the manly loner and the argument to be made on his behalf. The loner would be contemptuous of bookish professors, but he shares with them a taste for solitude. Roosevelt, however, would insist on the superiority of manly responsibility to manly aloofness, of which one sign is his attitude towards women. As if speaking closer to today, he declares that "women [must be put] on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with men," including "the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as a man." Yet normally, he adds, "the woman must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man must remain the breadwinner." That is because we must not live in a regime of rights abstracted from the performance of duty with "indulgence in vapid ease." In effect, women are not equal to men according to TR, but both above and below them. Women receive the bread won for them by men, and delivered to them with gallantry. But they are models of effeminacy, the very thing a man must avoid. Roosevelt's remarks on American motherhood tell us something about the preference of the manly man for duty over virtue. Impelled by the self-drama of manliness, which posits risk and challenge at every turn, Roosevelt turns away from the American, constitutional notion of rights to embrace a sterner "sense of duty" that appears more Germanic and Kantian. Even virtue might be too undemanding for him, for the virtuous person finds virtue to be pleasantly harmonious with his inclination, does not worry about his will-power, and does not struggle to be good. Roosevelt does speak of manly virtues, but these are habits of the zestful performance of duty. Duty gives shape to will-power, directing and checking it; and society--not the loner--defines duty. TR's manliness appears also in his advocacy of equality of opportunity, a phrase not be found in the founders of liberalism that he and his friend Herbert J. Croly were perhaps the first to use. Today "equality of opportunity" is a conservative slogan opposed to the liberals' "equality of result." For TR, equal opportunity is not the passive policy of a neutral government that watches benignly over the rivalry of talented people as they compete to succeed. Nor is it like the mixture of hard work and shrewd manipulation set forth in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography by which an individual can rise to public esteem without challenging society's prejudices. Neither is it Thomas Jefferson's "aristocracy of talents," which assumes that in a free country talent will find the means to propel itself to the top. Instead, equal opportunity shows both concern for virtue and affirmative action by government. It requires that individuals accept a duty to grasp opportunity and to go as far as they can. Lack of interest in success--goofing off on long vacations, relaxing in early retirement, or indulging in refined leisure of any sort--is not an option. And equal opportunity results from the use of government to equalize opportunity by making things harder for the rich (with a graduated income tax and an inheritance tax) and thus easier for the poor. But Roosevelt would not use government to reduce the effort required of the poor. They should be manly too. Manliness is preferable to any life of ease or riskless routine. TR as president was a great promoter of assertiveness in the exercise of executive power. His notion of the president's duty was not bound to actions authorized in the actual words of the Constitution. In a notable exchange with his Republican rival William Howard Taft, who held that belief, Roosevelt declared that the president is "the steward of the people, bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin." The American founders made an executive power strong enough to stand up to popular opinion and to withstand the temptation to seek popularity, but progressives like Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson made the president into a "leader"--that is, on occasion a follower--of public opinion. TR, for all his promotion of positive merit (in which he borrows words of the Gospel), is still a steward--and how manly is that? Who is more manly: George Washington, a man of dignity not to be trifled with, or Teddy Roosevelt, steward of the people, who sees humiliating constraint in the Constitution but not in popular favor? Here we detect a soft core to TR's blustering, outer toughness. The same might be said of Roosevelt's imperialism. TR was no "chicken hawk," no armchair, theoretical imperialist whose main concern is with the ist or ism at the end of the word, and whose only action is egging others on. Quite the contrary! Having got himself named Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President William McKinley in 1897, he was in office when the U.S. battleship Maine was blown up in the harbor of Havana in February 1898. But of course he was not the Secretary of the Navy. So he waited ten days until his boss took the afternoon off for a massage; then, having been routinely designated Acting Secretary, TR sprang into action--summoning experts, sending instructions around the world for the Navy to be ready for war, ordering supplies and ammunition, and requesting authorization from Congress for unlimited recruitment of seamen. In four hours he created momentum toward war that neither his hapless superior nor the President could stem. After war was declared on April 19, Roosevelt, his alacrity now red-hot zeal, was offered command of a cavalry troop to be formed of frontiersmen, dubbed by him Rough Riders. He declined the command for lack of experience, but took second-in-command as being an office he knew how to work from. In short order Roosevelt formed the troop consisting of cowboys leavened with polo players, having them ready by the end of May. At considerable personal risk, TR led his troops in the famous charge up San Juan Hill and, when he reached the top, shot and killed one of the enemy. After the action he was recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor, America's highest decoration for bravery in battle. When he did not receive the medal, he was not too proud to lobby for it, anxious as he was to prevent the War Department from doing an injustice. In all this Roosevelt grasped his opportunities, or as we would say in his spirit, faced his responsibilities. Responsibilities as we use the word often attach to an office, and they might seem to be particular to it--whether president, assistant secretary, or a nonpolitical office such as parent. But TR's will-power manliness looks at the office as an excuse for action rather than the source of a duty imposed on the officeholder. It was manly of TR to seek the office, which he did eagerly rather than dutifully. Yet we cannot overlook the fact that taking on a responsibility is--nonetheless for its enthusiasm--accepting a duty. And it is a duty to those less competent and willful than oneself, hence a compromise of one's own freedom and independence. Again we can ask whether it is more manly to be a loner or a take-charge guy. It takes will-power to withdraw as well as to commit oneself; either way could be condemned or praised as willful. To be sure, TR tries to make it appear that one who shirks or shrinks from his responsibility lacks the will-power of a man, but that is not necessarily so. Even in the form of an opportunity, responsibility is a constraint on one's will. It is a self-constraint, perhaps, yet still a constraint--and thus not pure will-power. It reflects a desire to meet the legitimate expectations of society. Pragmatism is an idea with this same ambivalence in its dichotomy between the tough-minded who want to be assertive and the tender-minded who want to fit in. These two contrary temperaments reflect two moods in the use of the word. In American English, pragmatism means getting it done ("let's be pragmatic"), implying active energy, and taking satisfaction in less ("you have to be pragmatic"), implying a degree of resignation. To be pragmatic is optimism that our problems can be solved, but how can we solve them, given the doubt we are taught by pragmatism in the efficacy of reason? Reason is disdained by pragmatism as being prompted by the tender wish that things will somehow fit together on their own. Progress under pragmatism requires an addition of will-power, of manly assertiveness, to reason so that reason, in the form of science, does not construct a boring, peaceable civilization that appeals only to mollycoddles and fails to meet the ambition of humans who want dignity more than peace. The trouble is that the manliness needed to express confidence depends on doubt of reason, yet reason is the source of our confidence in better things to come. When you add manliness to reason so as to make reason more capable, you also subtract from the capability of reason. The danger to progress is that manliness, instead of endorsing reason, will get the better of reason. Contrary to what you might first think, pragmatism is a philosophy, not the dismissal of philosophy. And Teddy Roosevelt was more a philosopher than he knew. His advocacy of manliness reflects the difficulties of pragmatism and tells us something about our situation today. We have abandoned--not reason for manliness like the pragmatists, nor manliness for reason like their tender-minded opponents--but both reason and manliness. We want progress without a rational justification and without the manliness needed to supply the lack of a justification. _________________________________________________________________ Harvey Mansfield is a Professor of Government, Harvard University. His essay is excerpted from a book on manliness forthcoming from Yale University Press. Notes [4]Go to the top of the document. 1. Letters and Speeches, by Theodore Roosevelt; Library of America, 915 pages, $35. Rough Riders, An Autobiography, by Theodore Roosevelt; Library of America, 895 pages, $35. [5]Go back to the text. >From The New Criterion Vol. 23, No. 7, March 2005 References 1. http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/mar05/mansfield.htm 2. http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/23/mar05/mansfield-books.htm From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:38:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:38:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] UChiP: Eight ancient Roman recipes from Around the Roman Table Message-ID: Eight ancient Roman recipes from Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome X-URL: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/233472.html [1]Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome "Patrick Faas's Around the Roman Table is a smorgasbord of gastronomic wonders and delights."--Independent on Sunday "There are many misconceptions about the food of ancient Rome that Faas sets out to correct. The result is half cookbook, half history book and is entirely fascinating to both chef and antiquarian alike."--Washington Times Eight recipes from Around the Roman Table Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome by Patrick Faas In addition to a wealth of material about culinary customs and techniques in ancient Rome, Patrick Faas translated more than 150 Roman recipes and reconstructed them for the modern cook. Here are eight recipes from from the book--from salad to dessert. f f f Columella Salad Columella's writings suggest that Roman salads were a match for our own in richness and imagination: Addito in mortarium satureiam, mentam, rutam, coriandrum, apium, porrum sectivum, aut si non erit viridem cepam, folia latucae, folia erucae, thymum viride, vel nepetam, tum etiam viride puleium, et caseum recentem et salsum: ea omnia partier conterito, acetique piperati exiguum, permisceto. Hanc mixturam cum in catillo composurris, oleum superfundito. Put savory in the mortar with mint, rue, coriander, parsley, sliced leek, or, if it is not available, onion, lettuce and rocket leaves, green thyme, or catmint. Also pennyroyal and salted fresh cheese. This is all crushed together. Stir in a little peppered vinegar. Put this mixture on a plate and pour oil over it. (Columella, Re Rustica, XII-lix) A wonderful salad, unusual for the lack of salt (perhaps the cheese was salty enough), and that Columella crushes the ingredients in the mortar. 100g fresh mint (and/or pennyroyal) 50g fresh coriander 50g fresh parsley 1 small leek a sprig of fresh thyme 200g salted fresh cheese vinegar pepper olive oil Follow Columella's method for this salad using the ingredients listed. In other salad recipes Columella adds nuts, which might not be a bad idea with this one. Apart from lettuce and rocket many plants were eaten raw--watercress, mallow, sorrel, goosefoot, purslane, chicory, chervil, beet greens, celery, basil and many other herbs. f f f Soft-Boiled Eggs in Pine-Nut Sauce In ovis hapalis: piper, ligustcum, nucleos infusos. Suffundes mel, acetum; liquamine temperabis. For soft-boiled eggs: pepper, soaked pine nuts. Add honey and vinegar and mix with garum. (Apicius, 329) for 4 small eggs 200g pine nuts 2 teaspoons ground pepper 1 teaspoon honey 4 tablespoons garum or anchovy paste Soak the pine nuts overnight in water. Then drain and grind them finely in the blender or pound them in a large mortar. Add the pepper, honey and garum. Heat the sauce in a bain-marie. Meanwhile put the eggs into a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Let them cook for 3? minutes, then take them off the heat, plunge them into cold water and peel them carefully. The outer edge of the egg white must be firm, but it must be soft inside. Put the eggs, left whole, into a deep serving bowl and pour over the sauce. Serve. This recipe can be adapted easily to other eggs, such as quail's eggs. In that case keep an eye on the cooking-time: a quail's egg will be firm in 1 minute. f f f Lentils with Coriander Aliter lenticulam: coquis. Cum despumaverit porrum et coriandrum viride supermittis. (Teres) coriandri semen, puleium, laseris radicem, semen mentae et rutae, suffundis acetum, adicies mel, liquamine, aceto, defrito temperabis, adicies oleum, agitabis, si quid opus fuerit, mittis. Amulo obligas, insuper oleum viride mittis, piper aspargis et inferes. Another lentil recipe. Boil them. When they have foamed, add leeks and green coriander. [Crush] coriander seed, pennyroyal, laser root, mint seed and rue seed. Moisten with vinegar, add honey, garum, vinegar, mix in a little defrutum, add oil and stir. Add extra as required. Bind with amulum, drizzle with green oil and sprinkle with pepper. Serve. (Apicius, 192) 250g lentils 2 litres water 1 leek, trimmed, washed and finely chopped 75g fresh coriander 5g coriander seed 3g peppercorns, plus extra for finishing the dish 3g mint seed 3g rue seed 75g fresh pennyroyal, or mint 10ml garum 10ml vinegar 5ml honey olive oil Wash the lentils and put them into a saucepan with 2 litres of cold water. Bring to the boil, and skim off the scum. When the water has cleared, add the leek and half of the fresh coriander. Grind the spices and the other herbs, and add them with the garum, vinegar and defrutum to the pan. Let the lentils simmer until they are almost cooked. Check the pan every now and then to ensure that the water has not evaporated. At the last minute add the olive oil, the freshly ground pepper and the remainder of the chopped coriander. f f f Roast Wild Boar Aper ita conditur: spogiatur, et sic aspergitur ei sal et cuminum frictum, et sic manet. Alia die mittitur in furnum. Cum coctus fuerit perfundutur piper tritum, condimentum aprunum, mel, liquamen, caroenum et passum. Boar is cooked like this: sponge it clean and sprinkle with salt and roast cumin. Leave to stand. The following day, roast it in the oven. When it is done, scatter with ground pepper and pour on the juice of the boar, honey, liquamen, caroenum, and passum. (Apicius, 330) For this you would need a very large oven, or a very small boar, but the recipe is equally successful with the boar jointed. Remove the bristles and skin, then scatter over it plenty of sea salt, crushed pepper and coarsely ground roasted cumin. Leave it in the refrigerator for 2-3 days, turning it occasionally. Wild boar can be dry, so wrap it in slices of bacon before you roast it. At the very least wrap it in pork caul. Then put it into the oven at its highest setting and allow it to brown for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 180?C/350?F/Gas 4, and continue to roast for 2 hours per kg, basting regularly. Meanwhile prepare the sauce. To make caroenum, reduce 500ml wine to 200ml. Add 2 tablespoons of honey, 100ml passum, or dessert wine, and salt or garum to taste. Take the meat out of the oven and leave it to rest while you finish the sauce. Pour off the fat from the roasting tin, then deglaze it with the wine and the honey mixture. Pour this into a saucepan, add the roasting juices, and fat to taste. Carve the boar into thin slices at the table, and serve the sweet sauce separately. f f f Ostrich Rago?t Until the 1980s the ostrich was considered as exotic as an elephant, but since then it has become available in supermarkets. Cooking a whole ostrich is an enormous task, but Apicius provides a recipe for ostrich: In struthione elixo: piper, mentam, cuminum assume, apii semen, dactylos vel caryotas, mel, acetum, passum, liquamen, et oleum modice et in caccabo facies ut bulliat. Amulo obligas, et sic partes struthionis in lance perfundis, ete desuper piper aspargis. Si autem in condituram coquere volueris, alicam addis. For boiled ostrich: pepper, mint, roast cumin, celery seed, dates or Jericho dates, honey, vinegar, passum, garum, a little oil. Put these in the pot and bring to the boil. Bind with amulum, pour over the pieces of ostrich in a serving dish and sprinkle with pepper. If you wish to cook the ostrich in the sauce, add alica. (Apicius, 212) You may prefer to roast or fry your ostrich, rather than boil it. Whichever method you choose, this sauce goes with it well. For 500g ostrich pieces, fried or boiled, you will need: 2 teaspoon flour 2 tablespoons olive oil 300ml passum (dessert wine) 1 tablespoon roast cumin seeds 1 teaspoon celery seeds 3 pitted candied dates 3 tablespoons garum or a 50g tin of anchovies 1 teaspoon peppercorns 2 tablespoons fresh chopped mint 1 teaspoon honey 3 tablespoons strong vinegar Make a roux with the flour and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, add the passum, and continue to stir until the sauce is smooth. Pound together in the following order: the cumin, celery seeds, dates, garum or anchovies, peppercorns, chopped mint, the remaining olive oil, the honey, and vinegar. Add this to the thickened wine sauce. Then stir in the ostrich pieces and let them heat through in the sauce. f f f Roast Tuna Ius in cordula assa: piper, ligustcum, mentam, cepam, aceti modicum et oleum. Sauce for roast tuna: pepper, lovage, mint, onion, a little vinegar, and oil. (Apicius, 435) for the vinaigrette 3 tablespoons strong vinegar 2 tablespoons garum, or vinegar with anchovy paste 9 tablespoons olive oil 4 finely chopped shallots 1 teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon lovage seeds 25g fresh mint Put all of the vinaigrette ingredients into a jar and shake well to blend them together. Brush your tuna fillets with oil, pepper and salt, then grill them on one side over a hot barbecue. Turn them and brush the roasted side with the vinaigrette. Repeat. The tuna flesh should be pink inside so don't let it overcook. Serve with the remains of the vinaigrette. f f f Fried Veal Escalope with Raisins Vitella fricta: piper, ligusticum, apii semen, cuminum, origanum, cepam siccam, uvam passam, mel, acetum, vinum, liquamen, oleum, defritum. Fried veal: pepper, lovage, celery seed, cumin, oregano, dried onion, raisins, honey, vinegar, wine garum, oil, defrutum. (Apicius, 335) for the sauce ? teaspoon cumin ? teaspoon celery seed 1 teaspoon peppercorns ? teaspoon dried oregano 1 tablespoon lovage 1 tablespoon dried onion 1 teaspoon defrutum 1 teaspoon honey 2 tablespoons white raisins 300ml dry white wine 1 dash vinegar 1 dash garum Pound the cumin and the celery seed in powder, then grind the peppercorns. Mix all the ingredients together and leave the raisins to macerate for at least a few hours and up to a day. Beat the veal fillets with a rolling-pin or meat-tenderizer, until they are flattened. For Roman authenticity, the escalopes should be cut into small pieces or strips after frying--they didn't use knives at table. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then fry briefly on both sides in a hot pan with a little olive oil. Remove the veal from the pan. Put the sauce mixture, let it reduce, then pour it over veal and serve immediately. f f f Nut Tart Patina versatilis vice dulcis: nucleos pineos, nuces fractas et purgatas, attorrebis eas, teres cum melle, pipere, liquamine, lacte, ovis, modico mero et oleo, versas in discum. Try patina as dessert: roast pine nuts, peeled and chopped nuts. Add honey, pepper, garum, milk, eggs, a little undiluted wine, and oil. Pour on to a plate. (Apicius, 136) 400g crushed nuts--almonds, walnuts or pistachios 200g pine nuts 100g honey 100ml dessert wine 4 eggs 100ml full-fat sheep's milk 1 teaspoon salt or garum pepper Preheat the oven to 240?C/475?F/Gas 9. Place the chopped nuts and the whole pine nuts in an oven dish and roast until they have turned golden. Reduce the oven temperature to 200?C/400?F/Gas 6. Mix the honey and the wine in a pan and bring to the boil, then cook until the wine has evaporated. Add the nuts and pine nuts to the honey and leave it to cool. Beat the eggs with the milk, salt or garum and pepper. Then stir the honey and nut mixture into the eggs. Oil an oven dish and pour in the nut mixture. Seal the tin with silver foil and place it in roasting tin filled about a third deep with water. Bake for about 25 minutes until the pudding is firm. Take it out and when it is cold put it into the fridge to chill. To serve, tip the tart on to a plate and pour over some boiled honey. Copyright notice: Excerpted from Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome by Patrick Faas, published by [2]the University of Chicago Press. ? Patrick Faas. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of both the author and the University of Chicago Press. ______________________________________________________________ [3]Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome Patrick Faas Translated by Shaun Whiteside 2003, 384 pages, 28 halftones, 29 line drawings Paper $18.00 ISBN: 0-226-23347-2 [For sale in Canada and the USA only.] For information on purchasing the book--from bookstores or here online--please go to the webpage for [4]Around the Roman Table. ______________________________________________________________ See also: * [5]A Taste of Ancient Rome by Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa * [6]Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy by Phyllis Pray Bober * Read [7]six recipes from [8]The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi * Our catalog of [9]Medieval and Renaissance titles * [10]Other excerpts and online essays from University of Chicago Press titles * Sign up for [11]e-mail notification of new books in this and other subjects References 1. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/155606.ctl 2. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ 3. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/155606.ctl 4. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/155606.ctl 5. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/7768.ctl 6. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13626.ctl 7. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/706842.html 8. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/13477.ctl 9. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Subjects/virtual_medieval.html 10. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/excerpts.html 11. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/mailnotifier/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:40:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:40:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Minnesota Daily: What if we had a robopope? Message-ID: What if we had a robopope? http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/02/16/63280?print February 16, 2005 Given Pope John Paul IIs fine performance as pontiff, its too bad he cant live forever. By Bobak Haeri With the popes health getting increasingly worse this year, I want to help. This made me think: What if the pope were turned into a cyborg? Now I know the idea is a little bizarre, but I dont mean to stomp on Catholicism. Though Im no longer religious, Ive spent a fair number of my years in different religious schools: Mennonite grade school, Catholic high school, working with a Jewish symphony, etc. Looking across the various world religions, there are several Ive grown a secular respect for. One of those is Catholicism. Probably my favorite part of Catholicism is the pope, whose tremendous compassion overshadows major disagreements I have with him over social policy. So why not do this? Im actually curious whatd happen. The Bible and Catholic doctrine probably dont say a whole lot about it. Im not saying turn him into a human computer, lets just buttress his body with robotic parts so he wont die, or at least not for a while remember, hes a tough pontiff, he survived being shot by an assassin. Making a robopope does open a few interesting spiritual questions: The pope is directly inspired by the word of God, so what he says goes. Would that still apply if he had, say, a cyborg nervous system to remove his Parkinsons disease? If I were an armchair religious scholar, I would think the popes inspiration goes directly to his brain. I know some people say its the soul, but Im fairly sure its located in the brain too. I dont see how having a few robotic parts would affect that. Remember, a cyborg is a human who has certain physiological processes aided or controlled by mechanical or electronic devices. Were not going to turn him into a laptop. Any work would augment his body so the whole person kept on living, no more, no less. Because his body would rely on those parts, he would be part man, part machine: all pope. Think thats going too far? Well it would be perfectly all right for the pope to have a pacemaker, which is a robotic part. How about an electric wheelchair? What about an electric breathing apparatus? Steven Hawking, anyone? Theres already a lot of early cyborg creation going on right now. The problem for most people is they associate it with sci-fi characters such as Robocop, the Borg, et al. (Note: the Terminator was not a cyborg.) In reality, as long as youre not tinkering with a persons mind, the extra hardware is just a form of medical treatment. After all, were trying to make him live longer. The next question is what happens if the pope does, basically, live forever? It seems the cardinals would have an easier job for a while, not needing to select a successor. Assuming the pope doesnt die or retire, his connection with God would not cease. I wouldnt fear turning the pope into some kind of immortal rival of God because (a) hed still be human, albeit an old human and (b) the pope is not going to try and become a false idol himself. Still, any cyborg body is subject to failure. Its likely the pope would eventually pass no matter what the additional part. In that sense, nothing would really change about the pope and his duty, other than hed live longer. Picture this: Pope John Paul II. Currently a man barely alive. Ladies and gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology and the capability to build the worlds first bionic pontiff. JP2 will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. Bobak HaEri welcomes comments at bhaeri at mndaily.com From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:41:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:41:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] APA: How Much Can Your Mind Keep Track Of? Message-ID: American Psychological Society - How Much Can Your Mind Keep Track Of? http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2005/pr050308.cfm News Release March 8, 2005 For Immediate Release [11]Download the Report PDF Contact: Graeme Halford [12]gsh at psy.uq.edu.au Cooking shows on TV usually give a Web address where you can find, read, and print out the recipe of the dish created on that day's show. The reason is obvious: It's too hard to just follow along with what the chef is doing, let alone remember it all. There are too many directions and ingredients -- too many variables and steps in the process to keep track of quickly. New research shows why it doesn't take much for a new problem or an unfamiliar task to tax our thinking. According to University of Queensland cognitive science researchers Graeme S. Halford, Rosemary Baker, Julie E. McCredden and John D. Bain of Griffith University, the number of individual variables we can mentally handle while trying to solve a problem (like baking a lemon meringue pie) is relatively small: Four variables are difficult; five are nearly impossible. Their report, "How Many Variables Can Humans Process?" is published in the January 2005 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society. It's difficult to measure the limits of processing capacity because most people automatically use problem solving skills to break down large complex problems into small, manageable "chunks." A baker, for example, will treat "cream butter, sugar and egg together" as a single chunk -- a single step in the process -- rather than thinking of each ingredient separately. Likewise she won't think, "break egg one into bowl, break egg two into bowl." She'll just think, "add all of the eggs." To keep test subjects from breaking down problems into bite-size chunks, researchers needed to create problems that they weren't familiar with. In their experiment, 30 academics were presented with incomplete verbal descriptions of statistical interactions between fictitious variables, with an accompanying set of graphs that represented the interactions. The interactions varied in complexity -- involving as few as two variables up to as many as five. The participants were timed as they attempted to complete the given sentences to correctly describe the interactions the graphs were showing. After each problem, they also indicated how confident they were of their solutions. The researchers found that, as the problems got more complex, participants performed less well and were less confident. They were significantly less able to accurately solve the problems involving four-way interactions than the ones involving three-way interactions, and they were (not surprisingly) less confident of their solutions. And five-way interactions? Forget it. Their performance was no better than chance. After the four- and five-way interactions, participants said things like, "I kept losing information," and "I just lost track." Halford et al concluded from these results that people -- academics accustomed to interpreting the type of data used in the experiment problems -- cannot process more than four variables at a time. Recognizing these human limitations can make a difference when designing high-stress work environments--such as air-traffic control centers--where employees must keep in mind several variables all at once. [13]Download the article. For more information, contact Graeme Halford at [14]gsh at psy.uq.edu.au. Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. The American Psychological Society represents psychologists advocating science-based research in the public's interest. References 11. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/mind_variables.pdf 12. mailto:gsh at psy.uq.edu.au 13. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/mind_variables.pdf 14. mailto:gsh at psy.uq.edu.au From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:42:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:42:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] More Than Human by Ramez Naam Message-ID: More Than Human by Ramez Naam http://www.morethanhuman.org/ More Than Human Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement "one of those rare books that is both a delightful read and an important statement" - Steven Johnson More Than Human is about our growing power to alter our minds, bodies, and lifespans through technology - the power to redefine our species - a power we can choose to fear, or to embrace. In 1990, a professor at the University of Colorado discovered that changing a single gene doubles the lifespan of tiny nematode worms. In 1999, researchers searching for a cure for Alzheimer's disease genetically engineered a strain of mice that can learn things five times as quickly as their normal kin - super-intelligent mice. In 2002, scientists looking for ways to help paralyzed patients implanted electrodes into the brain of an owl monkey and trained it to move a robot arm 600 miles away just by thinking about it. Over the last decade researchers looking for ways to help the sick and injured have stumbled onto techniques that enhance healthy animals - making them stronger, faster, smarter, longer-lived, even connecting their minds to robots and computers. Now science is on the verge of applying this knowledge to healthy men and women. The same research that could cure Alzheimer's is leading to drugs and genetic techniques that could boost human intelligence. The techniques being developed to stave off heart disease and cancer have the potential to halt or even reverse human aging. More Than Human takes the reader into the labs where this is happening to understand the science of human enhancement. It also steps back to look at the big picture. How will these technologies affect society? What will they do to the economy, to politics, and to human identity? What social policies should we enact to regulate, restrict, or encourage the use of these technologies? Ultimately More Than Human concludes that we should embrace, rather than fear, the power to alter ourselves - that in the hands of millions of individuals and families, it stands to benefit society more than to harm it. _________________________________________________________________ Praise for More Than Human "Ramez Naam provides a reliable and informed cook's tour of the world we might choose if we decide that we should fast-forward evolution. I disagree with virtually all his enthusiasms, but I think he has made his case cogently and well." --Bill McKibben, author Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age "More Than Human is excellent--passionate yet balanced, clearly written and rich with fascinating details. A wonderful overview of a topic that will dominate the twenty-first century." --Greg Bear, author of Dead Lines and Darwin's Children "Sixty years ago, human beings gave digital computers the ability to modify their own coded instructions--sparking a revolution that has now given us the ability to modify our own coded instructions, promising revolutions even more extreme. Whether for, against, or undecided about genetic modification of human beings, you should read this book--a bold, compelling look at what lies ahead." --George Dyson, author of Darwin Among the Machines "More Than Human is one of those rare books that is both a delightful read and an important statement. You'll relish the fascinating stories of physical and mental enhancement that Naam has assembled here, but you'll also come away with a new sense of wonder at the human drive for pushing at the boundaries of what it means to be human. No one interested in the future intersections of science, technology, and medicine can afford to miss this book." --Steven Johnson, author of Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life "Ramez Naam's look at the coming of human enhancement is a major contribution; he shows convincingly that the conceptual wall between therapy and enhancement is fast crumbling." --Gregory Stock, author of Redesigning Humans _________________________________________________________________ Publisher's Weekly says: Imagine a person severely disabled by a stroke who, with electrodes implanted in his brain, can type on a computer just by thinking about the letters. Or a man, blind for 20 years, driving a car around a parking lot via a camera hard-wired into his brain. Plots for science fiction? No, it's already happened, according to future technologies expert Naam. In an excellent and comprehensive survey, Naam investigates a wide swath of cutting-edge techniques that in a few years may be as common as plastic surgery. Genetic therapy for weight control isn't that far off--it's already being done with animals. Countless people who are blind, deaf or paralyzed will acquire the abilities that most people take for granted through advances in computer technology and understanding how the nervous system functions. Naam says the armed services are already investing millions of dollars in this research; they envision super-pilots and super-soldiers who will be able to control their planes and tanks more quickly via thought. Some of the author's prognostications, with their Nietzschean overtones of people being "more than human" may frighten readers, but Naam is persuasive that many of these advances are going to happen no matter what, and that despite the potential for abuses, they offer hope for our well-being and the survival of the species. _________________________________________________________________ Kirkus Reviews says: Wired minds, designer bodies, doubled life spans, a child for every happy couple: an optimistic portrayal of the brave new future of scientifically improved life. The subtitle is apt, as Naam (a computer engineer at Microsoft) makes no attempt to mask his enthusiasm for the drugs, therapies, products, and procedures of cutting-edge biotech. This is not a sage analysis of the immediate feasibility or likelihood of specific changes. Nor does the author claim experience in a biological field or medical training. His book, instead, is a logical and structured explanation of bioengineering projects underway: gene therapy to cure disease, enhance athletic performance, and lengthen life span; brain implants to allow the paralyzed to move, the mute to speak, the blind to see, and the deaf to hear; brain-computer interfaces to mimic telepathy ("Just as we can e-mail our words . . . we'll be able to broadcast the inner states of our minds"). There's little chance that all of these will ever become mainstream, but some certainly will, and that fact alone is both exciting and frightening. Naam doesn't shy away from trumpeting controversial propositions such as human cloning or genetic selection of embryos, and he audaciously sets out game plan and shining new playing field, though he still does address some of the bumps in any road that will lead to universal acceptance. He shows a knack for plain and clear explanations of highly complex and technical concepts without condescension or pedantry. He goes beyond the simple gee whiz and even takes time to address the economics of research (development is expensive, implementation thereafter often cheap). Along the way, he refers to political trends that suggest eventual acceptance of initially controversial practices and ideas, and he investigates large-scale implications of many of the biotechnologies, as, for example, the impact upon world population of life extension techniques. An intriguing presentation by an unabashed advocate of the technological tricking and co-opting of mother nature. _________________________________________________________________ LA Times writes: Scientific and medical advances in the last 150 years have doubled average life spans in advanced countries; made historical curiosities of fearsome epidemic diseases; eliminated childhood scourges; turned fatal adult diseases into chronic illnesses to be "managed"; and changed the way we think about aging. But if you think these changes have pushed at our sense of what it means to be human, just wait for what will happen in the next 20 years. Gene therapy could eliminate genetically based diseases; designer drugs could combat neurological or brain disease, improve intelligence or sculpt personality. A variety of therapies could affect life at its beginning and end, allowing parents to modify the genes that shape an unborn child's mind and physique, or elders to dramatically slow the aging process. Brain implants already let us use thought to control prostheses and robotic devices. In a few years, they could evolve into machine-mediated brain-to-brain connection -- Internet-enabled telepathy and mind reading. Authors as different as Bill McKibben in "Enough" and Francis Fukuyama in "Our Posthuman Future" argue that technologies could so dramatically alter our bodies, or challenge our capacity for self-determination and free will, that we should be wise enough to refuse -- even ban -- them. Stop worrying, Ramez Naam says in "More Than Human." He argues that efforts to ban such enhancements are either folly or futile for several reasons. Prohibition wouldn't destroy the markets for life-extending therapies or genetic redesign of human embryos, he says; it would just drive them abroad or underground. Banning technologies and therapies also constrains the freedoms of individuals and markets. The Declaration of Independence declared that "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are inalienable rights: Denying someone access to cortical implants hits the trifecta. Further, Naam argues, "scientists cannot draw a clear line between healing and enhancing." Banning the latter would inevitably cripple the former. Finally and most provocatively, "far from being unnatural, the drive to alter and improve on ourselves is a fundamental part of who we humans are." This turns the argument of bioethicists like Leon Kass (head of the President's Council on Bioethics, which has been famously conservative in its recommendations) upside down. Our limits don't define us, Naam says; our desire to overcome them does. "More Than Human" is a terrific survey of current work and future possibilities in gene therapy, neurotechnology and other fields. Naam doesn't shy away from technical detail, but his enthusiasm keeps the science from becoming intimidating. But he's less successful in making the case for "embracing the promise of biological enhancement." Yes, people are greedy, regulations are often ineffective and the war on drugs has not gone well. But none of these facts is likely to change the minds of people who oppose gene therapy on moral or theological grounds. Many religions see the body as a prison, not a temple, and illness and death as part of life's natural course. Indeed, the Pontifical Academy of Life recently decried the Western world's "health-fiend madness," arguing that it takes money away from simpler but more potent public health measures -- and denies us the hard-won wisdom that suffering can bring. But in today's borderless high-tech world, if gene therapies and neural implants are banned in the U.S., they'll probably be available somewhere else. Medical tourism is already a growth industry in parts of Latin America and Asia that have low labor costs, attractive locations and good facilities. One can only imagine the money a small tropical nation could make restoring youth to the elderly. Rather than focus on banning them, we'd be better off making sure these therapies are not available only to the super-rich and figuring out how their availability could affect the future. Those efforts might be helped by realizing that "More Than Human" describes two different technologies. Life-extending therapies, despite their likely popularity, probably wouldn't dramatically change our sense of what it means to be human. In contrast, neurotechnologies that allow a prosthetic device to feel like a part of our bodies, or let us directly share thoughts and senses with others, would scramble our basic notions of body and mind, self and other, individual and community. I tend to agree with Naam that the desire to prolong life, acquire new physical powers and extend the mind does not risk making us less human. There's more to life than trying to recapture lost youth, but no one who defends the humanity of the weak, the disabled and the very old should deny the humanity of those who seek to re-engineer their bodies or minds. "More Than Human" maps some of this future, but it probably won't help you decide whether you want to really go there. [10]blog [11]events [12]contact References 10. http://www.morethanhuman.org/blog 11. http://www.morethanhuman.org/events 12. http://www.morethanhuman.org/contact From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:43:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:43:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Humanoids With Attitude Message-ID: Humanoids With Attitude http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25394-2005Mar10? Japan Embraces New Generation of Robots By Anthony Faiola Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, March 11, 2005; Page A01 TOKYO -- Ms. Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university. But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up to Saya and dished out a harsh reprimand. "You're so stupid!" said the professor, Hiroshi Kobayashi, towering over her desk. "Eh?" she responded, her face wrinkling into a scowl. "I tell you, I am not stupid!" Truth is, Saya isn't even human. But in a country where robots are changing the way people live, work, play and even love, that doesn't stop Saya the cyber-receptionist from defending herself from men who are out of line. With voice recognition technology allowing 700 verbal responses and an almost infinite number of facial expressions from joy to despair, surprise to rage, Saya may not be biological -- but she is nobody's fool. "I almost feel like she's a real person," said Kobayashi, an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Science and Saya's inventor. Having worked at the university for almost two years now, she's an old hand at her job. "She has a temper . . . and she sometimes makes mistakes, especially when she has low energy," the professor said. Saya's wrath is the latest sign of the rise of the robot. Analysts say Japan is leading the world in rolling out a new generation of consumer robots. Some scientists are calling the wave a technological force poised to change human lifestyles more radically than the advent of the computer or the cell phone. Though perhaps years away in the United States, this long-awaited, as-seen-on-TV world -- think "The Jetsons" or "Blade Runner" -- is already unfolding in Japan, with robots now used as receptionists, night watchmen, hospital workers, guides, pets and more. The onslaught of new robots led the government last month to establish a committee to draw up safety guidelines for the keeping of robots in homes and offices. Officials compiled a report in January predicting that every household in Japan will own at least one robot by 2015, perhaps sooner. Scientists and government authorities have dubbed 2005 the unofficial "year of the robot," with humans set to interact with their electronic spawn as never before at the 2005 World Expo opening just outside the city of Nagoya on March 25. At the 430-acre site, 15 million visitors are expected to mingle with some of the most highly developed examples of Japanese artificial intelligence, many of which are already on sale or will be within a year. Greeting visitors in four languages and guiding them to their desired destinations will be Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' yellow midget robot, Wakamaru. A trio of humanoid robots by Sony, Toyota and Honda will be dancing and playing musical instruments at the opening ceremony. Parents visiting the World Expo can leave their children in the care of a robotic babysitter -- NEC's PaPeRo -- which recognizes individual children's faces and can notify parents by cell phone in case of emergency. Also on display: a wheelchair robot now being deployed by the southern city of Kitakyushu that independently navigates traffic crossings and sidewalks using a global positioning and integrated circuit chip system. In June, Expo visitors can enter a robot room -- a more distant vision of the future where by 2020 merely speaking a word from your sofa will open the refrigerator door, allowing your personal robot assistant to deliver the cold beverage of your choice. "We have reached the point in Japan of a major breakthrough in the use of robot technology and our society is changing as a result," said Kazuya Abe, a top official at NEDO, the national institute in charge of coordinating science research and development. "People are and will be living alongside robots, which are seen here as more than just machines. This is all about AI" -- artificial intelligence, Abe said -- "about the creation of something that is not human, but can be a complement or companion to humans in society. That future is happening here now." While employing a measure of new technology, many such robots are envisioned merely as new interfaces -- more user-friendly means of combining existing ways of accessing the Internet or reaching loved ones through cell phone networks. In the quest for artificial intelligence, the United States is perhaps just as advanced as Japan. But analysts stress that the focus in the United States has been largely on military applications. By contrast, the Japanese government, academic institutions and major corporations are investing billions of dollars on consumer robots aimed at altering everyday life, leading to an earlier dawn of what many here call the "age of the robot." But the robotic rush in Japan is also being driven by unique societal needs. Confronting a major depopulation problem due to a record low birthrate and its status as the nation with the longest lifespan on Earth, Japanese are fretting about who will staff the factory floors of the world's second-largest economy in the years ahead. Toyota, Japan's biggest automaker, has come up with one answer in moving to create a line of worker robots with human-like hands able to perform multiple sophisticated tasks. With Japanese youth shying from so-called 3-K jobs -- referring to the Japanese words for labor that is dirty, dangerous or physically taxing -- Alsok, the nation's second-largest security guard company, has developed a line of robo-cops. The guard robots, one version of which is already being used by a client in southern Japan, can detect and thwart intruders using sensors and paint guns. They can also put out fires and spot water leaks. It is perhaps no surprise that robots would find their first major foothold in Japan. Japanese dolls and toys, including a moving crab using clockwork technology dating to the 1800s, are considered by some to be among the first robots. Rather than the monstrous Terminators of American movies, robots here are instead seen as gentle, even idealistic creatures epitomized by Astroboy, the 1960s Japanese cartoon about an electronic kid with a big heart. "In Western countries, humanoid robots are still not very accepted, but they are in Japan," said Norihiro Hagita, director of the ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories in Keihanna Science City near Kyoto. "One reason is religion. In Japanese [Shinto] religion, we believe that all things have gods within them. But in Western countries, most people believe in only one God. For us, however, a robot can have an energy all its own." A case in point is the Paro -- a robotic baby harp seal, developed with $10 million in government grants, that went on sale commercially this month for $3,500 each. All 200 units sold out in less than 50 hours. The seal is meant to provide therapy for the elderly who are filling Japanese nursing homes at an alarming rate while often falling prey to depression and loneliness. With 30 sensors, the seal begins over time to recognize its master's voice and hand gestures. It coos and flaps its furry white down in delight at gentle nuzzles, but squeals in anger when handled roughly. Researchers have been testing the robot's effect on the elderly at a nursing home in Tsukuba, about 40 miles northeast of Tokyo. During a recent visit by a reporter, the sad eyes of elderly residents lit up as the two resident robot seals were brought out. Tests have shown that the cute newcomers indeed reduce stress and depression among the elderly. Just ask Sumi Kasuya, 89, who cradled a seal robot while singing it a lullaby on a recent afternoon. "I have no grandchildren and my family does not come to see me very often," said Kasuya, clutching fast to the baby seal robot wiggling in her arms. "So I have her," she said, pointing to the seal. "She is so cute, and is always happy to see me." Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:45:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:45:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WSJ: When Numbers Solve a Mystery Message-ID: When Numbers Solve a Mystery Meet the economist who figured out that legal abortion was behind dropping crime rates. http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006550 BOOKSHELF BY STEVEN E. LANDSBURG Wednesday, April 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. If Indiana Jones were an economist, he'd be Steven Levitt. The most recent winner of the John Bates Clark award for the best economist under the age of 40, Mr. Levitt is famous not as a master of dry technical arcana but as a maverick treasure hunter who relies for success on his wit, pluck and disregard for conventional wisdom. Mr. Levitt's typical quarry is hidden not in some exotic locale but in a pile of data. His genius is to take a seemingly meaningless set of numbers, ferret out the telltale pattern and recognize what it means. It was Mr. Levitt who nailed a bunch of Chicago public-school teachers for artificially inflating their students' standardized test scores. I'm dying to tell you exactly how he did it, but I don't want to spoil any surprises. His account of the affair in "Freakonomics" reads like a detective novel. The evidence is right there in front of you: Mr. Levitt actually reproduces all the answer sheets from two Chicago classrooms and challenges you to spot the cheater. Then he shows you how it's done. He points to suspicious patterns that you almost surely overlooked. Suspicious, yes, but not conclusive--maybe there is some legitimate explanation. Except that Mr. Levitt slowly piles pattern on pattern, ruling out one explanation after another until only the most insidious one remains. The resulting tour de force is so convincing that it eventually cost 12 Chicago schoolteachers their jobs. The Case of the Cheating Teachers would make a fascinating book, but in Mr. Levitt's hands it is compressed into 12 breathtaking pages. Then he is on to his next adventure--the Case of the Cheating Sumo Wrestlers. Here an entirely different kind of data (the win-loss records from tournaments) gets the Levitt treatment: the identification of a suspicious pattern, a labyrinth of reasoning to rule out the innocent explanations and a compelling indictment. Then it's on to another question, and another and another. Were lynchings, as their malevolent perpetrators hoped, an effective way to keep Southern blacks "in their place"? Do real-estate agents really represent their clients' interests? Why do so many drug dealers live with their mothers? Which parenting strategies work and which don't? Does a good first name contribute to success in life? Mr. Levitt is hardly the first to attack these questions; there is no end of books on parenting strategy, for example. The difference is that Mr. Levitt knows what he is talking about. Where other parenting books rely on either puerile psychological theorizing or leaps of logic from haphazard numerical correlations, Mr. Levitt relies on his instinct for analyzing data. As a result, there is more valuable parenting advice in Mr. Levitt's single chapter than in all the rest of Barnes & Noble. And some of it is going to shock you. One example: It turns out that reading to your children has no appreciable effect on their academic success. Back in 1999, Mr. Levitt was trying to figure out why crime rates had fallen so dramatically in the previous decade. He was struck by the fact that crime began falling nationwide just 18 years after the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion. He was struck harder by the fact that in five states crime began falling three years earlier than it did everywhere else. These were exactly the five states that had legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade. Did crime fall because hundreds of thousands of prospective criminals had been aborted? Once again, the pattern by itself is not conclusive, but once again Mr. Levitt piles pattern on pattern until the evidence overwhelms you. The bottom line? Legalized abortion was the single biggest factor in bringing the crime wave of the 1980s to a screeching halt. Mr. Levitt repeatedly reminds us that economics is about what is true, not what ought to be true. To this reviewer's considerable delight, he cheerfully violates this principle at the end of the abortion discussion by daring to address the question of whether abortion ought to be legal or, more precisely, whether the effect on crime rates is a sufficient reason to legalize abortion. He doesn't pretend to settle the matter, but in just a few pages he constructs exactly the right framework for thinking about it and then leaves the reader to draw his own conclusions. Economists, ever wary of devaluing their currency, tend to be stinting in their praise. I therefore tried hard to find something in this book that I could complain about. But I give up. Criticizing "Freakonomics" would be like criticizing a hot fudge sundae. I had briefly planned to gripe about the occasional long and pointless anecdotes, but I changed my mind. Sure, we get six pages on the Chicago graduate student who barely escaped with his life after his adviser sent him into the housing projects with a clipboard to survey residents on how they feel about being black and poor. Sure, there is no real point to the story. But a story that good doesn't need a point. The cherry on top of the sundae is Mr. Levitt's co-author, Stephen Dubner, a journalist who clearly understands what he is writing about and explains it in prose that has you chuckling one minute and gasping in amazement the next. Mr. Dubner is a treasure of the rarest sort; we are fortunate that Mr. Levitt managed to find him. I think I detect a pattern. Mr. Landsburg, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, is the author of "Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Experience." You can buy "Freakonomics" from the OpinionJournal bookstore. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:47:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:47:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wash. Monthly: Taking Liberty: Liberals ignore and conservatives misunderstand America's guiding value: freedom. Message-ID: Taking Liberty: Liberals ignore and conservatives misunderstand America's guiding value: freedom. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0504.galston.html April 2005 By William A. Galston George W. Bush's second inaugural address, with its sweeping rhetoric about the spread of freedom abroad and at home, sparked strong but varied reactions. Most of the president's conservative supporters ranked it with the greatest inaugural speeches, such as John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to bear any burden and pay any price in the service of human freedom and Lincoln's sermonic 1865 meditation on the inscrutable justice of God's judgment on those who deny freedom to others. The president's liberal critics were less laudatory, agreeing instead with former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan's surprising judgment that the speech fell "somewhere between dreamy and disturbing." Whether the speech was a display of visionary statesmanship, or an exercise in hubristic overreach, is something only history can determine. But it is not too early to say that the speech was both a wakeup call to liberals-from whose vocabulary the evocative term "freedom" has been mostly absent in recent years-and a guide to the deep flaws in the modern conservative understanding of freedom. In declaring, "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture," President Bush picked up a rhetorical battle standard of freedom first carried by Woodrow Wilson and later lofted by Cold War liberals and Ronald Reagan. But he went his predecessors one better. In a grand rhetorical stroke, Bush sought to terminate the venerable debate between foreign policy "idealists" and "realists": Not only does the promotion of democracy reflect our values, it also advances our interests. It is the resentment stimulated by tyranny, he argued, that produces terrorism, and the only cure for tyranny is freedom. Thus, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." President Bush's language effectively taps a deep vein of the American psyche. It is the way we like to think of ourselves. Even more, it is the way we wish to understand the world-as an orderly cosmos where our ideals and our interests coincide. If only it were so. International conditions have almost always forced presidents, to one extent or another, to choose between protecting the nation's interests and advancing the borders of freedom-and an unswerving devotion to the latter has often led to disaster. Recall how Wilson's conception of national self-determination helped sow the seeds of an unstable, punitive peace and the most destructive war the world has ever known. Recall also the unsavory alliances Cold War presidents of both parties were forced to make. The hard truth is that it's not always possible to promote the ends of freedom with the means of freedom. To prosecute the global war on terror and to minimize the chances of an even more devastating strike on our homeland, we will often be forced to compromise with the Putins and Musharrafs of this world. We should not assume that democracy will always drain the swamps where terrorism breeds. Sometimes autocratic governments will do more to suppress terrorism than to stimulate it; sometimes elections will empower radically anti-American leaders and create more space in which terrorists can operate. And it is tunnel-visioned to believe, as the president does, that a democratic offense is always the best defense. Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, it is sobering to reflect on its opportunity costs-on the quantity of loose nuclear materials we could have secured around the world and the number of facilities we could have hardened at home with the hundreds of billions of dollars we are spilling in the sands of Mesopotamia. Nonetheless, it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of 8.5 million Iraqis braving threats and violence to vote, or to be heartened by the signs of democratic self-determination in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. President Bush's faith in the transformative power of freedom may be extreme and un-nuanced, but it is not wholly misplaced. Much the same may be said of freedom in the domestic sphere. The president's speech invoked the "broader definition of liberty" he saw at work in historic programs such as the Homestead Act, Social Security, and the GI Bill of Rights. Appealing to classic civic republicanism, he rooted citizenship in the "independence" that stems from "ownership." And he boldly appropriated Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" for his own purposes: "By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny," he declared, "we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear." Whatever may have been the case 70 years ago, he asserted, conservative individualist means are now better suited to serve classic liberal ends than are New Deal programs of social solidarity. Here, as in the international arena, a vast gap exists between President Bush's abstract rhetoric of freedom and real world conditions. In the case of Social Security, for example, the problems are far less severe than the president has suggested. And his proposed cure-private accounts-does nothing to address the solvency of the system, even as it risks plunging millions of retirees into poverty while adding trillions of dollars in transition costs to the government's already mountainous debt. The more voters learn about the president's plan, the less they like it. Still, its core idea-freedom understood as increased individual choice and control over one's own destiny-has an undeniable appeal. After all, the idea of freedom is at the heart of our nation's creed. Edmund Burke famously observed that Americans "sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." Even today, the extraordinary value Americans place on individual liberty is what most distinguishes our culture, and the political party seen by voters as the most willing to defend and expand liberty is the one that usually wins elections. Conservatives have learned this lesson; too many liberals have forgotten it. And as long as liberals fool themselves into believing that appeals to income distribution tables can take the place of policies that promote freedom, they will lose. The questions before us are, what is the meaning of freedom in the 21st century, and what are the means needed to make it effective in our lives? Those of us who oppose the conservative answer cannot succeed by changing the question. We can only succeed by giving a better answer. Free love and free markets For much of the 20th century, progressives took the lead in both defining freedom and advancing its borders. Teddy Roosevelt expanded the 19th century laissez-faire conception of freedom, in which government was seen as the greatest threat, to include the liberties of workers and entrepreneurs to get ahead in the world, freedoms restricted by concentrations of economic power and protected by the exercise of public power. Woodrow Wilson boldly reversed the inherited belief that America's national freedom was best secured by abstaining from foreign entanglements, insisting that the liberty of other peoples would strengthen our own. FDR further redefined the concept to include social protection from the ills of want and fear. JFK invoked service to country in freedom's cause. Martin Luther King Jr. appealed to civil and political freedom that included all Americans, rooted in universalistic concepts that included every human being. Women fought for opportunity by bringing private oppression into public view. What united all these new visions of liberty was the idea that freedom is not necessarily diminished by government but can often be advanced only through the vigorous actions of government. And then, the cause of liberal freedom ran smack into Vietnam and the counterculture. The war in Indochina represented, for too many progressive critics, not just a monumental blunder, but also evidence that the entire enterprise of advancing freedom through an anti-communist foreign policy was suffused with self-delusion and hypocrisy. These critics rejected the belief that, on balance, American influence was a force for good in the world. On the domestic front, what began honorably in the early 1960s as the effort to expand freedom of speech and self-fulfillment was transformed just a decade later into an antinomian conception of freedom as liberation from all restraint. Enthusiasts could no longer distinguish between liberty and license, and so lost touch with the moral concerns of average citizens, especially parents struggling to raise their children in what they saw as a culture increasing inhospitable to decency and self-restraint. As the public reaction to these events shifted the balance of political power toward conservatism, some liberals reacted by relying excessively on the courts as counterweights against democratic majorities. Others, disappointed by what they viewed as the failure of civil rights laws to bolster the economic status of African Americans, tried to redefine the progressive enterprise around values such as fairness and equality of results. Still others, the spiritual heirs of the Port Huron Statement and the New Left, opposed what they saw as the inherently competitive and anti-social individualism of American-style freedom. As progressives abandoned the discourse of freedom, conservatives were more than ready to claim it. They had spent decades preparing for this opening. Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, fired the opening salvo by identifying government intervention in the economy as a threat to individual liberty. A decade later, Hayek pronounced himself puzzled that conservatives had allowed the left to control the definition of liberty, "this almost indispensable term." During the 1950s, says historian Eric Foner, "a group of conservative thinkers began the task of reclaiming the idea of freedom." At a 1956 conference, Milton Friedman argued that a free market was the necessary foundation for societies in which individual liberty flourishes. What had begun as the precondition of freedom soon became its template: Libertarian conservatives redefined freedom as the right to choose and extended this understanding far beyond the market, to social relations and public policy. These thinkers encountered a challenge within the emerging conservative movement, from traditionalists who focused on values such as order and virtue and who questioned the social consequences of the unfettered market. This tension was not in all respects an outright contradiction and thus proved to be manageable. In his classic Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman acknowledged that every form of social organization-including the market-relies on a framework of generally accepted rules, and that "no set of rules can prevail unless most participants most of the time conform to them without external sanctions." Not only must participants internalize rules, he continued, they must also develop certain traits of character. These requirements are especially demanding in systems of liberty: Freedom can be preserved, he concluded, "only for people who are willing to practice self-denial, for otherwise freedom degenerates into license and irresponsibility." This line of argument raised a key question: If virtue was needed for a free society, and if we are not born virtuous, how are we to acquire it? Here entered the second premise of modern American conservatism, the proposition that civil society will generate a virtuous citizenry if only government leaves it alone to do its vital work. Not government, but rather families, neighborhoods, and faith communities sustain the moral foundations of freedom. This conservative synthesis of markets and civil society, which suffused Ronald Reagan's first successful presidential campaign, achieved lapidary statement in George W. Bush's second inaugural. "In America's ideal of freedom," he declared, "the public interest depends on private character-on integrity and tolerance toward others and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people." President Bush's reference to the Sermon on the Mount reminds us that synthesizing the market and civil society does not fully resolve the tension between libertarians and traditionalists. After all, it was on that occasion that Jesus advised his listeners not to heap up earthly treasure because no one can pursue more than one master: "You cannot serve God and mammon." At this point, the third premise of contemporary conservatism comes to the rescue. This is the thesis, developed by American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Novak, among others, that capitalist markets, far from undermining individual virtues and social bonds, actually fortify them. Capitalism, Novak insists, both depends upon and builds virtues such as initiative, enterprise, and social cooperation. A government that minimizes the appropriation of wealth for public purposes maximizes the scope for acts of Christian charity. And more than that: Life in capitalist societies promotes the highest form of freedom-namely, the creativity of the human person. There are also echoes of this argument in President Bush's second inaugural, especially when he claimed that moving from social provision to individual ownership strengthens individuals' moral capacities to meet the "challenges of life in a free society." This is, let us admit, a powerful and evocative conception of freedom, blending a constellation of ideas with deep resonance in American culture. It serves, moreover, as the basis of a powerful coalition between economic interests seeking less regulation and lower taxes and moral traditionalists disturbed by the cultural changes of the past 40 years. Whether we think of ourselves as progressives, liberals, or New Democrats, we cannot evade the challenge posed by these ideas and by the political currents they have set in motion. If we do not meet them head-on, we will prevail only infrequently and accidentally. And when we lose, which will be most of time, we will deserve it. Let "freedom" ring There will be a temptation by many, especially on the left, to think that this fight can be won merely by "reframing" the debate-that is, using the word "freedom" to shift the discussion to other philosophical terrain, like economic fairness and social justice, on which today's left is more comfortable. That temptation should be avoided. Because freedom has its own context and logic, we cannot make it mean whatever we like. As the great British philosopher of freedom Isaiah Berlin reminds us, "Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice." When conservatives promote their tax and fiscal policies as advancing economic freedom, liberals cannot expect to get very far by complaining endlessly that such policies are "unfair." They certainly are, and more scrupulous leaders would be ashamed to propose them. But if we have learned anything since the collapse of the liberal hegemony in the 1960s, it is that the appeal to freedom trumps the appeal to fairness. Instead of dodging the issue, an effective center-left strategy should begin with a critique of the fundamental conservative conception of freedom because that conception is fatally flawed. Experience gives us no reason to conclude that government is the only, or always the gravest, threat to freedom; clerical institutions and concentrations of unchecked economic power have often vied for that dubious honor. Nor has the ideological synthesis of markets and civil society abolished the very real problem at issue between libertarians and traditionalists: The unchecked market regularly produces social outcomes at odds with the moral conditions of a free society. Thus, it is that a conservative FCC chairman pledged to media deregulation ends up imposing new restraints in the name of decency. Nor is it easy to believe that capitalism reliably produces, or rewards, the good character a free society needs: Perceptive observers from Charles Dickens to Tom Wolfe have given us ample evidence to the contrary. And while it may be that long-term dependence on government saps the spirit of self-reliance that liberty requires, there are other forms of dependence-economic, social, and even familial-that can, and often do, damage character in much the same way. At the heart of the conservative misunderstanding of liberty is the presumption that government and individual freedom are fundamentally at odds. At the heart of any liberal counteroffensive must be a subtler but more truthful proposition: Public power can advance freedom as well as thwart it. In the real world, which so many conservatives steadfastly refuse to face, there is no such thing as freedom in the abstract. There are only specific freedoms, which differ in their conditions and consequences. FDR famously enumerated four such freedoms, dividing them into two pairs: freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. The first pair had long been recognized and enshrined in the Constitution. The second were a new formulation, and Roosevelt made them concrete when he signed Social Security into law, justifying it as a way of promoting freedom from want: "We have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family. . . against poverty-ridden old age." Three years later, he declared that Social Security payments will "furnish that minimum necessity to keep a foothold; and that is the kind of protection Americans want." The conservatives of Roosevelt's era disparaged the second pair as "New Deal freedoms" rather than "American freedoms," as do many conservatives today. But those who have experienced the freedoms made possible by the New Deal are not so dismissive. It is often observed, rightly, that Social Security has virtually eliminated poverty among the elderly. But this noble achievement has an equally profound flip side. Throughout human history, those who reached the age where they could no longer work have typically depended on their children or on charity for their basic subsistence. Social Security broke this age-old dependency by giving the elderly a minimum degree of economic self-sufficiency. It is almost impossible to exaggerate how much this independence means to seniors. It is why Social Security has become the third rail of American politics. Seniors react with ferocity to efforts to "reform" the program not merely because they are defending a source of income, but because they are defending their freedom. Liberals seldom talk about Social Security or other programs in terms of freedom. But they should. George W. Bush certainly does. In his second inaugural address, Bush accepted the validity of Roosevelt's concept of Four Freedoms. But he went on to contend that in today's circumstances, his brand of conservatism-his so-called "ownership society"-offers more effective means to traditional New Deal ends: "By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear." In essence, the president was saying that his solution to Social Security's fiscal problems would provide seniors with the freedom from want and fear they had come to expect, but with two additional liberties: freedom of choice, and freedom from government dependence. On the face of it, this is a very appealing promise. But as a matter of actual policy, it is a deeply dishonest one. Allowing individuals to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market necessarily exposes those individuals to greater financial risk, and therefore puts their freedom from want at risk. Yet any attempt to minimize those risks-by having the government pick which funds individuals can invest in, or requiring the annuitization of those investments upon retirement, as the president has suggested-necessarily erodes the freedom of choice and freedom from government control that are the selling points of private accounts. Indeed, the more conservatives add such risk-minimizing features to their proposals to mollify the public's legitimate fears that they may be left penniless in their old age, the more those proposals will come to resemble the traditional Social Security program that conservatives are trying to escape. The president's promises are unsound not just on the level of policy, but on that of principle. "Freedom of" and "freedom from" have distinctly different structures and implications. "Freedom of" points toward spheres of action in which individuals make choices-for example, which faith to embrace, or whether to embrace any faith at all. The task of government is to secure those spheres against interference by individuals, groups, or government itself. By contrast, "freedom from" points toward circumstances that (it is presumed) all wish to avoid. In such instances, the task of government is, so far as possible, to immunize individuals against undesired circumstances. Here government acts to protect not individual agency and choice, but rather individuals' life-circumstances against outcomes that no one would choose, or willingly endure. We do not suppose, for instance, that slavery is a matter of individual choice; rather, after much struggle, we have come to a collective decision that no one in his right mind would prefer slavery to freedom, and we have ordered our laws and institutions accordingly. Similarly, during the New Deal, we made a collective decision that no senior would willingly live in penury and shouldn't have to. It follows that libertarian freedom, the "right to choose," is but a part of freedom in the fuller sense. As a motorist, I am rightly free to choose my own route and destination. But government correctly infers that I also wish to be protected from smashing into other cars, and so restricts which side of the road others and I may drive on. My desire to avoid an accident is no less real than my desire to drive where I please. Similarly, the desire to avoid want and fear is no less real than the desire to speak and worship without interference. The point is that any society that takes freedom from want and fear seriously has made a collective decision: Certain conditions are objectively bad; its citizens should not have to endure them if the means of their abatement are in hand; and individual choice is not a necessary component of and may be a hindrance to attaining these freedoms. In addition to presuming that freedom must always involve individual choice, conservatives tend to mischaracterize and misunderstand many aspects of freedom, in particular, its costs. Freedom from want and fear often requires citizens to contribute some of their individual resources for collective purposes and makes better-off citizens contribute more. Conservatives have a tendency to focus on these costs without factoring in the benefits, and thus they often do not see or acknowledge that the net result is an increase in freedom. It has often been observed, for instance, that freedom for the pike is death for the minnow. Curtailing the freedom of the pike is often the only way of securing the freedom of the minnow. And there are usually far more minnows than pikes. So when government leans against the depredations of the powerful, it is enhancing freedom, not curtailing it. When government acts to ward off, or break up, excessive concentrations of private power, it does not diminish, but rather enhances, liberty rightly understood. Specific freedoms often have conditions for their effective exercise, and government must sometimes act to ensure broad access to those conditions. A familiar but not trivial example: Nothing safeguards liberty more than the rule of law; fair trials are essential to the rule of law; and the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the "assistance of counsel" for every accused is essential to fair trials. Many Americans cannot afford to pay for defense lawyers, and the legal profession does not contribute enough pro bono hours to fill the gap. The government therefore taxes better-off Americans to provide legal counsel for the disadvantaged. In the process, it unavoidably restricts individuals' freedom to use those tax dollars for other purposes. But does anyone seriously doubt that this use of government's taxing power enhances the sum of freedom in our country? Another example: Under modern conditions, the freedom of individuals to participate in the labor market requires the mastery of work-related knowledge and skills, many of which can only be acquired through formal education. The government uses its power of taxation to ensure that this education is within the reach of all families regardless of their private resources. While this policy restricts the ability of wealthier families to use those tax dollars for private purposes, the overall result is to advance freedom within the wider society. A new liberal freedom agenda Undermining the conservative vision of freedom is the essential first step for a liberal recovery. But no movement ever built a governing majority just by criticizing its adversaries. To regain the initiative, liberals must return to their historic mission of modernizing and promoting freedom. In this effort, they should be guided by three principles. First, liberals must recognize that many of their traditional policy goals hold the promise of advancing freedom and should begin to talk about them as such. Consider universal health care. The left typically stresses the social justice side of this issue: In the most prosperous country on earth, it is an avoidable wrong that 45 million citizens lack health insurance. While this point is both accurate and morally admirable, invoking it has not moved the nation any closer to the goal. A more effective argument would focus on the ways in which our current system of employer-provided health care limits individual freedom. Countless Americans today are stuck in unrewarding jobs which they would like to leave-to start a new business or go back to college to upgrade their skills-but dare not, because doing so would deprive themselves and their families of health insurance. A system of universal health care would allow all Americans to pursue their dreams and take more risks. Or consider post-secondary education. During the past three decades, young Americans with no more than a high school education have seen a steadily narrowing range of occupational choices. In that respect, they are less free than were their parents with the same level of schooling. This isn't just an economic growth issue (though it is), or a social justice issue (though it is that, too); it is at its core an issue of individual freedom. While supporting reforms of grant and loan programs to diminish corruption, enhance efficiency, and improve targeting, liberals should insist on unfettered access to post-secondary education and training, regardless of socioeconomic status. This means getting serious about high school dropout rates, which recent studies show are much higher than is generally understood (about 30 percent nationally, and 50 percent in many black, Hispanic, and low income neighborhoods). It means getting serious about the alarming numbers of students who drop out of college by the end of freshmen year because their high school diploma didn't prepare them for entry-level college courses. And it means getting serious about the millions of talented poor and minority kids who don't continue their education after high school because no responsible adult ever told them that they could-and should. If there was ever an area crying out for what FDR called "bold, persistent experimentation," this is it. Just last month, Yale announced a new program: Students from families earning less than $45,000 would be admitted tuition-free. Only a handful of other institutions, public or private, can afford to follow suit. But a new federal-state partnership could offer all colleges and universities substantial support for recruiting, retaining, and graduating students from families below the median income. Or maybe we should move AmeriCorps closer to what its founders intended it to be: A universal opportunity for young people to serve community and country while earning substantial funds for post-secondary education and training. One thing is clear: We can't sit idly by while the educational barrier to individual freedom rises higher and higher for so many Americans. The second principle that liberals should remember as they try to reclaim the mantle of freedom is that individual choice, while not always synonymous with liberty, and sometimes contrary to it, is also highly appealing to most Americans. Liberals should therefore look for opportunities to embrace individual choice in ways that embody their principles and promote their objectives. A good example-one several Democrats have already gotten behind-is individual retirement savings accounts added on to, rather than carved out of, Social Security. Another promising, if treacherous, area in which more choice could be promoted is public education. Liberals recoil at school voucher proposals, in part because conservatives openly favor them as a back-door method of undermining public schools and teachers' unions, but also because of a not-unreasonable belief that such measures really aren't the answer to improving failing urban schools. But there is plenty of room short of vouchers for more personal choice in K-through-12 education. Minnesota, for instance, has long permitted its families to choose among public schools across district lines; Britain does much the same. Moreover, there are ways of structuring vouchers that even liberals might find acceptable. In the pages of this magazine ("Pro Choice," September 2003), Siobhan Gorman has proposed that parents of students from failing public schools be given "accountable vouchers" that could be redeemed for education at private as well as public schools. Every participating school, private or public, would have to adhere to the same mandatory testing regime, to comply with strict anti-discrimination laws, and to accept all voucher-bearers (as long as seats are available) rather than picking among them. Government would have the right to remove from the program private schools whose students fail to meet yearly progress standards, just as it can currently shut down failing charter schools. Such highly-regulated vouchers might, in fact, be anathema to many conservative voucher proponents. But by supporting them, at least for manifestly failing systems such as Washington, D.C.'s, liberals could put themselves on the side of disadvantaged parents eager for better educational choices for their children. The third principle that should guide a center-left freedom agenda is the notion that freedom is seldom without cost. It usually requires sacrifice. Contemporary conservatism, with its free-lunch mentality, has a hard time admitting this. Liberals should embrace it. In his recent inaugural address, President Bush eloquently invoked the sacrifices made by young Americans fighting for freedom abroad. Unfortunately, he asked nothing of the rest of us. By contrast, in his 1941 State of the Union speech, at the threshold of the greatest struggle for liberty in the history of the world, FDR forthrightly stated that "I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes.... I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes." We have never heard that kind of candor from President Bush and his supporters, only the continuing pretense that freedom comes free. Americans are perfectly capable of grasping and agreeing with the proposition (should a leading political leader actually present it) that raising taxes in wartime is a sound way to protect our freedom, and borrowing the money we need to fight from the Chinese government is a good way to put that freedom at risk. Not only do our overseas commitments drain our treasury, they also strain our armed forces almost to the breaking point. Is it responsible leadership to pretend that we can defend freedom with the armed forces we developed in the balmy days after the end of the Cold War? The issue is more than the size of those forces; it involves their structure as well. In his speech, President Bush refers to the idealism of our troops, which "all Americans have witnessed...some for the first time." Can freedom be sustained by a handful of troops cheered on by a nation of spectators? In a country worthy of freedom, all citizens would share the risks and burdens of its defense. And that is what a courageous leader of a free people would propose. Above all, a new agenda of freedom calls for a new patriotism. In recent decades, too many liberals have given up mobilizing effective coalitions of their fellow citizens and have resorted to anti-majoritarian strategies. Too often, liberals whose hopes have been thwarted by the historic individualism of our culture have pined for an alternative culture more akin to French statism or Scandinavian social democracy. Too often, liberals whose hopes have been thwarted by the historic individualism of our culture have pined for an alternative culture more akin to French statism or Scandinavian social democracy. Too often, liberals have reacted to exaggerated claims of American exceptionalism by rejecting the idea outright. These responses are patently self-defeating. We must begin from where we are. We must go with-not against-the American grain. As FDR did three quarters of a century ago, we must mobilize and sustain a popular majority with the freedom agenda our times require. We must love not another country's dream, but our own-the American Dream-and we must work to make it real for every American who reaches for it. William A. Galston is Interim Dean of the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and was Deputy Assistant to President Bill Clinton for Domestic Policy from 1993 to 1995. His most recent book is The Practice of Liberal Pluralism (Cambridge, 2004). From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 16 22:49:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:49:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NSF: NSF Releases "Pathways to the Future" Environment Report Message-ID: NSF Releases "Pathways to the Future" Environment Report http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=103175&org=olpa&from=new Press Release 05-056 Research on human and natural-system links called integral The new report says water should be studied as a system. April 13, 2005 Accelerating environmental changes have presented humanity with significant scientific and engineering challenges, according to the new National Science Foundation (NSF) report, Pathways to the Future: Complex Environmental Systems: Synthesis for Earth, Life and Society in the 21st Century. The changes the report cites are rapid shifts in climate and ecosystems, the degradation of freshwater resources, global spreading of diseases, and the increasing threat of biological and chemical terrorism. Among the research challenges are the need to understand how and why these changes are occurring--especially when multiple stresses are acting on environmental systems simultaneously--and how best to respond to them. "Now more than ever," write the members of the NSF Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education (ACERE), who authored the report, "scientists must address combinations of factors in their research, such as the interactions between human activities and natural cycles at different spatial and temporal scales." The report encourages NSF to maintain its foundation-wide emphasis on investigations of coupled human and natural systems, as currently embodied in the Biocomplexity in the Environment program, and discusses related goals. "Environmental research and education should remain on the forefront of science funding," said David Skole, a geographer at Michigan State University and ACERE chair. "This document is an attempt to address the future of the ERE portfolio at NSF in these budget-constrained times, while continuing to stimulate this important research. A main focal point is research on coupled human and natural systems, which is integral to understanding our environment." The report also focuses on water as a complex environmental system. "All human and natural systems are influenced by the distribution, abundance, quality and accessibility of water," it says. With continued human population growth and the uncertain impacts of environmental change, the report states, ensuring an adequate quantity and quality of freshwater for sustaining all forms of life is a growing challenge. "Integrated, multidisciplinary, and multi-scale water-related research is necessary for meeting the challenge." The authors recommend that NSF focus on water as a unifying theme for research on complex environmental systems. Because water is a critical resource whose availability strongly impacts human health and economic development, this research will advance scientific understanding while addressing urgent societal issues, the report states. "The results could then be applied to other potential focus areas for research on complex environmental systems, such as land use, energy and climate." Media Contacts Cheryl L. Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734 [37]cdybas at nsf.gov Related Websites Pathways report in PDF format: [38]http://www.nsf.gov/geo/ere/ereweb/ac-ere/acere_pathways.pdf The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of nearly $5.47 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 40,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. The NSF also awards over $200 million in professional and service contracts yearly. Receive official NSF news electronically through the e-mail delivery and notification system, MyNSF (formerly the Custom News Service). To subscribe, visit [39]www.nsf.gov/mynsf/ and fill in the information under "new users". Useful NSF Web Sites: NSF Home Page: [40]http://www.nsf.gov NSF News: [41]http://www.nsf.gov/news/ For the News Media: [42]http://www.nsf.gov/news/newsroom.jsp Science and Engineering Statistics: [43]http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ Awards Searches: [44]http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/ From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 17 01:53:13 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:53:13 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C54271.5B290600.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54271.5B290600.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4261C189.60706@earthlink.net> Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic law? I certainly don't. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >So they should pay more taxes. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 17 14:48:41 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 07:48:41 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C54321.E03923B0.shovland@mindspring.com> They have used their money to buy politicians who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax cuts under Bush are of this character. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic law? I certainly don't. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >So they should pay more taxes. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 17 15:21:57 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 08:21:57 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The end of globalism Message-ID: <01C54326.8648BFA0.shovland@mindspring.com> The "globalists" are on top. To suggest otherwise would be silly. Will they stay on top? To assume that they will would be equally silly. The ultimate test of any system of ideas is whether or not most people benefit from it. I would suggest that globalism is failing that test. Quoting improvements in macroeconomic statistics will not make the case. Ask the people. A lot of us, from California to Chiapas, think that globalism is a raw deal. It is so raw for some people that they are taking up weapons and giving up their lives to fight it. The globalists themselves increasingly speak in defensive tones, and they are forced to meet under heavy security. That is not the posture of winners. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:42:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:42:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: An Update on Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps) Message-ID: Business > Your Money > Techno Files: An Update on Stuff That's Cool (Like Google's Photo Maps) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/business/yourmoney/17techno.html April 17, 2005 By JAMES FALLOWS THIS is a "where are they now?" report on some products and innovations previously described in this space. Let's start with Skype. This is the system that allows anyone with a computer and a broadband connection to call mobile or land-line telephones almost anywhere on earth for pennies per minute. When two people are at computers running Skype, they can talk to each other (using a headset or microphone) as long as they want, with sound quality far better than that of telephones, absolutely free. Skype conference calls can include up to five participants - I have used this feature to talk simultaneously, from Washington, with people in England, New Zealand and California, at no cost to any of us. Working out the time zones was the real challenge. Skype resembles [1]Google, the gold standard of modern computing, in several ways. Its adoption rate has been phenomenal. When I wrote about it last September, it had been downloaded a total of 21 million times. Now the total is 100 million, and at any given moment more than two million Skype conversations are under way. Like Google, Skype keeps introducing new features - for instance, "SkypeIn," released two days ago, which allows users to create a local phone number and have all calls to that number forwarded to the user's Skype connection, wherever in the world that might happen to be. As with Google, once you get used to Skype, it's hard to imagine doing without. Also as with Google, Skype's problems mainly arise from its rapidly growing worldwide reach. For Google, the problem has been how much to tailor its results to varying political sensibilities: its versions in Germany and France, for instance, screen out many neo-Nazi sites. Skype has had to cope with the abundance of fraudulent credit cards. For the time being, it declines most credit cards and prefers payment via PayPal. Next, Google itself. In February, it introduced Google Maps, a faster and better-looking alternative to MapQuest and other online mapping sites. Last month it added a touch that made Google Maps different from any competitor: high-resolution aerial photos of the area covered by the maps, which visitors can zoom in on for a closer bird's-eye view. (These photos came from Keyhole, a company Google bought last year.) Go to [2]www.maps.google.com, enter a ZIP code or address, and then click the "satellite" button to switch from map to photo. In either view you can get driving instructions from one point to another, as with other map sites. But when the route is traced in the photos, the turns and waypoints are much more vivid. But don't try this until you have an hour or two to spare. It is difficult to resist the temptation to zoom down to your own house, then your childhood elementary school, then Honolulu, then Disneyland. Not all of the country is shown in super-high-resolution: in general, the greater the population density, the sharper the image. After a lot of prowling around, I've found only part of the American landmass where the aerial view is deliberately obscured - and it's not the White House. (Answer next time.) If you click on the screen, you can pan from place to place, as if flying. A waste of time, perhaps, but fascinating. The real importance of Google's map and satellite program, however, is not its impressive exterior but the novel technology, known as Ajax, that lies beneath. About that, and its implications for Google and other companies, there will be more to say in a future column. Next up, public access to publicly financed data. Previously I mentioned the Bush administration's admirable decision to let the National Weather Service keep distributing its data on free Web sites, rather than funneling it through commercial services. But now the administration is proposing an enormous step in the opposite direction. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, or N.G.A., is the main map-producing office in the Pentagon. Its detailed topographic studies, produced at public expense, have for decades been the basis of many other products; in particular, virtually every chart used by the nation's airlines relies on the agency's data. Citing security concerns and a few other reasons, the administration now proposes to withdraw all of its aeronautical material from public use on Oct. 1. Through June 1, the N.G.A. will accept comments on this proposal at its Web site, [3]www.nga.mil. Check out its arguments, plus the case for continued openness, made at the press-release portion of [4]www.cartographic.com, and let the agency hear from you. Finally, mind mapping software, the focus of last month's column. Most of the correspondence about that column addressed an apparent anomaly: if mind mapping is so great for putting ideas in visual form, why was there no mention of programs designed for the leader in visually intuitive computing, the Macintosh? The narrow answer is that the two programs I praised, MindManager and ResultsManager, will (like most other Windows software) run on the Mac under the Virtual PC utility that [5]Microsoft sells for $129. Also, Robert Gordon, chief executive of the company that makes MindManager, says that it is "seriously considering" producing a native Mac version. (Impatient Mac users: write to him, not me.) BUT the broader answer is that programs to collect information and organize ideas are so numerous, varied and rapidly proliferating that a list of the good ones soon grows very long. Want a mind-mapper designed specifically for the Mac? There's Inspiration ($69 from [6]www.inspiration.com; PC version available too), which is mainly marketed to schools but is also useful for other writing projects. Or FreeMind, which lacks a few advanced features, but is free (from [7]freemind.sourceforge.net). Or ConceptDraw Mindmap ($149, from [8]www.csodessa.com), which runs on the Mac and is made by a company in Ukraine. MindGenius - yes, the names do get sort of creepy - is a mapper for the PC that costs $59 and comes from [9]www.mindgenius.com in Scotland. NoteTaker ($69.95 from [10]www.aquaminds.com) is an attractive and powerful Mac-only data organizer. Axon Idea Processor is an unattractive and powerful PC-only organizer. It is $135, from [11]web.singnet.com.sg/~axon2000 in Singapore.) I hope to say more about these in the future - along with the likes of: BrainStorm ($75, from [12]www.brainstormsw.com in England); ADM or Advanced Data Manager ($129, from [13]www.adm21.net in Canada); Tinderbox ($165, Mac-only, from [14]www.eastgate.com/tinderbox in Massachusetts); Omea Pro ($49 from [15]www.jetbrains.com in the Czech Republic); Zoot ($99 from [16]www.zootsoftware.com in Florida); and whatever promising newcomers have appeared by then, from whatever odd corners of the world. In the meantime, try them yourself. James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. E-mail: tfiles at nytimes.com. References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=GOOG 2. http://www.maps.google.com/ 3. http://www.nga.mil/ 4. http://www.cartographic.com/ 5. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT 6. http://www.inspiration.com/ 7. http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ 8. http://www.csodessa.com/ 9. http://www.mindgenius.com/ 10. http://www.aquaminds.com/ 11. http://web.singnet.com/ 12. http://www.brainstormsw.com/ 13. http://www.adm21.net/ 14. http://www.eastgate.com/tinderbox 15. http://www.jetbrains.com/ 16. http://www.zootsoftware.com/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:42:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:42:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: There's Nothing Deep About Depression Message-ID: Magazine > There's Nothing Deep About Depression http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17DEPRESSION.html April 17, 2005 There's Nothing Deep About Depression Shortly after the publication of my book ''Listening to Prozac,'' 12 years ago, I became immersed in depression. Not my own. I was contented enough in the slog through midlife. But mood disorder surrounded me, in my contacts with patients and readers. To my mind, my book was never really about depression. Taking the new antidepressants, some of my patients said they found themselves more confident and decisive. I used these claims as a jumping-off point for speculation: what if future medications had the potential to modify personality traits in people who had never experienced mood disorder? If doctors were given access to such drugs, how should they prescribe them? The inquiry moved from medical ethics to social criticism: what does our culture demand of us, in the way of assertiveness? It was the medications' extra effects -- on personality, not on the symptoms of depression -- that provoked this line of thought. For centuries, doctors have treated depressed patients, using medication and psychological strategies. Those efforts seemed uncontroversial. But authors do not determine the fate of their work. ''Listening to Prozac'' became a ''best-selling book about depression.'' I found myself speaking -- sometimes about ethics, more often about mood disorders -- with many audiences, in bookstores, at gatherings of the mentally ill and their families and at professional meetings. Invariably, as soon as I had finished my remarks, a hand would shoot up. A hearty, jovial man would rise and ask -- always the same question -- ''What if Prozac had been available in van Gogh's time?'' I understood what was intended, a joke about a pill that makes people blandly chipper. The New Yorker had run cartoons along these lines -- Edgar Allan Poe, on Prozac, making nice to a raven. Below the surface humor were issues I had raised in my own writing. Might a widened use of medication deprive us of insight about our condition? But with repetition, the van Gogh question came to sound strange. Facing a man in great pain, headed for self-mutilation and death, who would withhold a potentially helpful treatment? It may be that my response was grounded less in the intent of the question than in my own experience. For 20 years, I'd spent my afternoons working with psychiatric outpatients in Providence, R.I. As I wrote more, I let my clinical hours dwindle. One result was that more of my time was filled with especially challenging cases, with patients who were not yet better. The popularity of ''Listening to Prozac'' meant that the most insistent new inquiries were from families with depressed members who had done poorly elsewhere. In my life as a doctor, unremitting depression became an intimate. It is poor company. Depression destroys families. It ruins careers. It ages patients prematurely. Recent research has made the fight against depression especially compelling. Depression is associated with brain disorganization and nerve-cell atrophy. Depression appears to be progressive -- the longer the episode, the greater the anatomical disorder. To work with depression is to combat a disease that harms patients' nerve pathways day by day. Nor is the damage merely to mind and brain. Depression has been linked with harm to the heart, to endocrine glands, to bones. Depressives die young -- not only of suicide, but also of heart attacks and strokes. Depression is a multisystem disease, one we would consider dangerous to health even if we lacked the concept ''mental illness.'' As a clinician, I found the what if challenge ever less amusing. And so I began to ask audience members what they had in mind. Most understood van Gogh to have suffered severe depression. His illness, they thought, conferred special vision. In a short story, Poe likens ''an utter depression of soul'' to ''the hideous dropping off of the veil.'' The questioners maintained this 19th-century belief, that depression reveals essence to those brave enough to face it. By this account, depression is more than a disease -- it has a sacred aspect. Other questioners set aside that van Gogh was actually ill. They took mood disorder to be a heavy dose of the artistic temperament, so that any application of antidepressants is finally cosmetic, remolding personality into a more socially acceptable form. For them, depression was less than a disease. These attributions stood in contrast to my own belief, that depression is neither more nor less than a disease, but disease simply and altogether. A udiences seemed to be aware of the medical perspective, even to endorse it -- but not to have adopted it as a habit of mind. To underscore this inconsistency, I began to pose a test question: We say that depression is a disease. Does that mean that we want to eradicate it as we have eradicated smallpox, so that no human being need ever suffer depression again? I made it clear that mere sadness was not at issue. Take major depression, however you define it. Are you content to be rid of that condition? Always, the response was hedged: aren't we meant to be depressed? Are we talking about changing human nature? I took those protective worries as expressions of what depression is to us. Asked whether we are content to eradicate arthritis, no one says, ''Well, the end-stage deformation, yes, but let's hang on to tennis elbow, housemaid's knee and the early stages of rheumatoid disease.'' Multiple sclerosis, acne, schizophrenia, psoriasis, bulimia, malaria -- there is no other disease we consider preserving. But eradicating depression calls out the caveats. To this way of thinking, to oppose depression too completely is to be coarse and reductionist -- to miss the inherent tragedy of the human condition. To be depressed, even gravely, is to be in touch with what matters most in life, its finitude and brevity, its absurdity and arbitrariness. To be depressed is to occupy the role of rebel and social critic. Depression, in our culture, is what tuberculosis was 100 years ago: illness that signifies refinement. Having raised the thought experiment, I should emphasize that in reality, the possibility of eradicating depression is not at hand. If clinicians are better at ameliorating depression than we were 10 years ago -- and I think we may be -- that is because we are more persistent in our efforts, combining treatments and (when they succeed) sticking with them until they have a marked effect. But in terms of the tools available, progress in the campaign against depression has been plodding. Still, it is possible to envisage general medical progress that lowers the rate of depression substantially -- and then to think of a society that enjoys that result. What is lost, what gained? Which is also to ask: What stands in the way of our embracing the notion that depression is disease, nothing more? This question has any number of answers. We idealize depression, associating it with perceptiveness, interpersonal sensitivity and other virtues. Like tuberculosis in its day, depression is a form of vulnerability that even contains a measure of erotic appeal. But the aspect of the romanticization of depression that seems to me to call for special attention is the notion that depression spawns creativity. Objective evidence for that effect is weak. Older inquiries, the first attempts to examine the overlap of madness and genius, made positive claims for schizophrenia. Recent research has looked at mood disorders. These studies suggest that bipolar disorder may be overrepresented in the arts. (Bipolarity, or manic-depression, is another diagnosis proposed for van Gogh.) But then mania and its lesser cousin hypomania may drive productivity in many fields. One classic study hints at a link between alcoholism and literary work. But the benefits of major depression, taken as a single disease, have been hard to demonstrate. If anything, traits eroded by depression -- like energy and mental flexibility -- show up in contemporary studies of creativity. How, then, did this link between creativity and depression arise? The belief that mental illness is a form of inspiration extends back beyond written history. Hippocrates was answering some such claim, when, around 400 B.C., he tried to define melancholy -- an excess of ''black bile'' -- as a disease. To Hippocrates, melancholy was a disorder of the humors that caused epileptic seizures when it affected the body and caused dejection when it affected the mind. Melancholy was blamed for hemorrhoids, ulcers, dysentery, skin rashes and diseases of the lungs. The most influential expression of the contrasting position -- that melancholy confers special virtues -- appears in the ''Problemata Physica,'' or ''Problems,'' a discussion, in question-and-answer form, of scientific conundrums. It was long attributed to Aristotle, but the surviving version, from the second century B.C., is now believed to have been written by his followers. In the 30th book of the ''Problems,'' the author asks why it is that outstanding men -- philosophers, statesmen, poets, artists, educators and heroes -- are so often melancholic. Among the ancients, the strongmen Herakles and Ajax were melancholic; more contemporaneous examples cited in the ''Problems'' include Socrates, Plato and the Spartan general Lysander. The answer given is that too much black bile leads to insanity, while a moderate amount creates men ''superior to the rest of the world in many ways. '' The Greeks, and the cultures that succeeded them, faced depression poorly armed. Treatment has always been difficult. Depression is common and spans the life cycle. When you add in (as the Greeks did) mania, schizophrenia and epilepsy, not to mention hemorrhoids, you encompass a good deal of what humankind suffers altogether. Such an impasse calls for the elaboration of myth. Over time, ''melancholy '' became a universal metaphor, standing in for sin and innocent suffering, self-indulgence and sacrifice, inferiority and perspicacity. The great flowering of melancholy occurred during the Renaissance, as humanists rediscovered the ''Problems.'' In the late 15th century, a cult of melancholy flourished in Florence and then was taken back to England by foppish aristocratic travelers who styled themselves artists and scholars and affected the melancholic attitude and dress. Most fashionable of all were ''melancholic malcontents,'' irritable depressives given to political intrigue. One historian, Lawrence Babb, describes them as ''black-suited and disheveled . . . morosely meditative, taciturn yet prone to occasional railing.'' In dozens of stage dramas from the period, the principal character is a discontented melancholic. ''Hamlet'' is the great example. As soon as Hamlet takes the stage, an Elizabethan audience would understand that it is watching a tragedy whose hero's characteristic flaw will be a melancholic trait, in this case, paralysis of action. By the same token, the audience would quickly accept Hamlet's spiritual superiority, his suicidal impulses, his hostility to the established order, his protracted grief, solitary wanderings, erudition, impaired reason, murderousness, role-playing, passivity, rashness, antic disposition, ''dejected haviour of the visage'' and truck with graveyards and visions. ''Hamlet'' is arguably the seminal text of our culture, one that cements our admiration for doubt, paralysis and alienation. But seeing ''Hamlet'' in its social setting, in an era rife with melancholy as an affected posture, might make us wonder how much of the historical association between melancholy and its attractive attributes is artistic conceit. In literature, the cultural effects of depression may be particularly marked. Writing, more than most callings, can coexist with a relapsing and recurring illness. Composition does not require fixed hours; poems or essays can be set aside and returned to on better days. And depression is an attractive subject. Superficially, mental pain resembles passion, strong emotion that stands in opposition to the corrupt world. Depression can have a picaresque quality -- think of the journey through the Slough of Despond in John Bunyan's ''Pilgrim's Progress.'' Over the centuries, narrative structures were built around the descent into depression and the recovery from it. Lyric poetry, religious memoir, the novel of youthful self-development -- depression is an affliction that inspires not just art but art forms. And art colors values. Where the unacknowledged legislators of mankind are depressives, dark views of the human condition will be accorded special worth. Through the ''anxiety of influence,'' heroic melancholy cast its shadow far forward, onto romanticism and existentialism. At a certain point, the transformation begun in the Renaissance reaches completion. It is no longer that melancholy leads to heroism. Melancholy is heroism. The challenge is not battle but inner strife. The rumination of the depressive, however solipsistic, is deemed admirable. Repeatedly, melancholy returns to fashion. As I spoke with audiences about mood disorders, I came to believe that part of what stood between depression and its full status as disease was the tradition of heroic melancholy. Surely, I would be asked when I spoke with college students, surely I saw the value in alienation. One medical philosopher asked what it would mean to prescribe Prozac to Sisyphus, condemned to roll his boulder up the hill. That variant of the what if question sent me to Albert Camus's essay on Sisyphus, where I confirmed what I thought I had remembered -- that in Camus's reading, Sisyphus, the existential hero, remains upbeat despite the futility of his task. The gods intend for Sisyphus to suffer. His rebellion, his fidelity to self, rests on the refusal to be worn down. Sisyphus exemplifies resilience, in the face of full knowledge of his predicament. Camus says that joy opens our eyes to the absurd -- and to our freedom. It is not only in the downhill steps that Sisyphus triumphs over his punishment: ''The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.'' I came to suspect that it was the automatic pairing of depth and depression that made the medical philosopher propose Sisyphus as a candidate for mood enhancement. We forget that alienation can be paired with elation, that optimism is a form of awareness. I wanted to reclaim Sisyphus, to set his image on the poster for the campaign against depression. Once we take seriously the notion that depression is a disease like any other, we will want to begin our discussion of alienation by asking diagnostic questions. Perhaps this sense of dislocation signals an apt response to circumstance, but that one points to an episode of an illness. Aware of the extent and effects of mood disorder, we may still value alienation -- and ambivalence and anomie and the other uncomfortable traits that sometimes express perspective and sometimes attach to mental illness. But we are likely to assess them warily, concerned that they may be precursors or residual symptoms of major depression. How far does our jaundiced view reach? Surely the label ''disease'' does not apply to the melancholic or depressive temperament? And of course, it does not. People can be pessimistic and lethargic, brooding and cautious, without ever falling ill in any way. But still, it seemed to me in my years of immersion that depression casts a long shadow. Though I had never viewed it as pathology, even Woody Allen-style neurosis had now been stripped of some of its charm -- of any implicit claim, say, of superiority. The cachet attaching to tuberculosis diminished as science clarified the cause of the illness, and as treatment became first possible and then routine. Depression may follow the same path. As it does, we may find that heroic melancholy is no more. In time, I came to think of the van Gogh question in a different light, merging it with the eradication question. What sort of art would be meaningful or moving in a society free of depression? Boldness and humor -- broad or sly -- might gain in status. Or not. A society that could guarantee the resilience of mind and brain might favor operatic art and literature. Freedom from depression would make the world safe for high neurotics, virtuosi of empathy, emotional bungee-jumpers. It would make the world safe for van Gogh. Depression is not a perspective. It is a disease. Resisting that claim, we may ask: Seeing cruelty, suffering and death -- shouldn't a person be depressed? There are circumstances, like the Holocaust, in which depression might seem justified for every victim or observer. Awareness of the ubiquity of horror is the modern condition, our condition. But then, depression is not universal, even in terrible times. Though prone to mood disorder, the great Italian writer Primo Levi was not depressed in his months at Auschwitz. I have treated a handful of patients who survived horrors arising from war or political repression. They came to depression years after enduring extreme privation. Typically, such a person will say: ''I don't understand it. I went through -- '' and here he will name one of the shameful events of our time. ''I lived through that, and in all those months, I never felt this.'' This refers to the relentless bleakness of depression, the self as hollow shell. To see the worst things a person can see is one experience; to suffer mood disorder is another. It is depression -- and not resistance to it or recovery from it -- that diminishes the self. Beset by great evil, a person can be wise, observant and disillusioned and yet not depressed. Resilience confers its own measure of insight. We should have no trouble admiring what we do admire -- depth, complexity, aesthetic brilliance -- and standing foursquare against depression. Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University and the author of ''Listening to Prozac.'' This essay is adapted from his book ''Against Depression,'' which Viking will publish next month. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:43:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:43:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Appreciations: Johnson's Dictionary Message-ID: Opinion > Appreciations: Johnson's Dictionary http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17sun3.html April 17, 2005 By [1]VERLYN KLINKENBORG Two hundred fifty years ago, on April 15, 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first edition of his Dictionary of the English Language, compiled and written almost wholly by himself. It appeared in London in two folio volumes. Like most dictionaries, there is a rigorous serenity in the look of its pages. The language has been laid out in alphabetical order. The etymologies and definitions bristle with italics and abbreviations. The quotations that exemplify the meanings of the words present a bottomless fund of good sense and literary beauty. But I wonder whether anyone has ever had a more dynamic or volatile sense of the language than Johnson did. We tend to remember him as an older man, grown heavy, his face weighed down as much by indolence as industry. But in April 1755 he was not yet 46. With the publication of his dictionary, he returned from his researches into the English language the way an explorer returns from the North Pole, with a sense of having seen a terrain that others can see only through his account of what he found there. Instead of a wilderness of ice, he faced what he called, in his preface to the dictionary, "the boundless chaos of a living speech." Instead of voyages into Arctic waters, he talks of "fortuitous and unguided excursions into books." It's tempting to think of a lexicographer in terms of the dictionary he produces, and Johnson's is certainly one of the great philological accomplishments of any literary era. But it's just as interesting to think of what the dictionary does to the man. Johnson says, quite simply, "I applied myself to the perusal of our writers." But reading "our writers" to find the materials for a dictionary is unlike any other kind of reading I can imagine. It would atomize every text, forsake the general sense of a passage for the particular meaning of individual words. It would be like hiking through quicksand, around the world. Johnson lived in turmoil, and the sense of vigor he so often projected was, if nothing else, a way of keeping order in a world that threatened to disintegrate into disorder every day. And what was the disorder of London to the chaos of the language? "Sounds," he wrote, "are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride." Johnson published his dictionary not as the conqueror of the language but as the person who knew best how unconquerable it really is. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=VERLYN%20KLINKENBORG&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=VERLYN%20KLINKENBORG&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:44:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:44:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Brooks: Public Hedonism and Private Restraint Message-ID: Public Hedonism and Private Restraint Opinion column by David Brooks, The New York Times, 5.4.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/opinion/17brooks.html By [1]DAVID BROOKS You see the febrile young teens in their skintight spaghetti strap tank tops with their acres of exposed pelvic skin. You hear 50 Cent's ode to oral sex, "Candy Shop," throbbing from their iPods. You open the college newspapers and see the bawdy sex columns; at William and Mary last week I read a playful discussion of how to fondle testicles and find G spots. You could get the impression that America's young people are leading lives of Caligulan hedonism. You could give credence to all those parental scare stories about oral sex parties at bar mitzvahs and junior high school dances. You could worry about hookups, friends with benefits, and the rampant spread of casual, transactional sexuality. But it turns out you'd be wrong. The fact is, sex is more explicit everywhere - on "Desperate Housewives," on booty-quaking music videos, on the Internet - except in real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious. Teenage pregnancy rates have declined by about a third over the past 15 years. Teenage birth and abortion rates have dropped just as much. Young people are waiting longer to have sex. The percentage of 15-year-olds who have had sex has dropped significantly. Among 13-year-olds, the percentage has dropped even more. They are also having fewer partners. The number of high schoolers who even report having four or more sexual partners during their lives has declined by about a quarter. Half of all high school boys now say they are virgins, up from 39 percent in 1990. Reports of an epidemic of teenage oral sex are also greatly exaggerated. There's very little evidence to suggest it is really happening. Meanwhile, teenagers' own attitudes about sex are turning more conservative. There's been a distinct rise in the number of teenagers who think casual sex is wrong. There's been an increase in the share of kids who think teenagers should wait until adulthood before getting skin to skin. When you actually look at the intimate life of America's youth, you find this heterodoxical pattern: people can seem raunchy on the surface but are wholesome within. There are Ivy League sex columnists who don't want anybody to think they are loose. There are foul-mouthed Maxim readers terrified they will someday divorce, like their parents. Eminem hardly seems like a paragon of traditional morality, but what he's really angry about is that he comes from a broken home, and what he longs for is enough suburban bliss to raise his daughter. In other words, American pop culture may look trashy, but America's social fabric is in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair. The first lesson in all this is we shouldn't overestimate the importance of the media. People like 50 Cent may produce hit after pornographic hit, but that doesn't mean his fans want to lead the lives he raps about. It's make-believe. What matters is reality. The reality is that we have a generation of kids who have seen the ravages of divorce, who are more likely to respect and listen to their parents and their ministers, who are worried about sexually transmitted diseases and who don't want to mess up their careers. Second, it's becoming clear that we are seeing the denouement of one of the longest and increasingly boring plays on Broadway, the culture war. Since the 1830's, we've witnessed the same struggle. One camp poses as the party of responsibility, lamenting the decadence of culture and the loss of traditional morality. The other side poses as the army of liberation, lamenting Puritanism, repression and the menace of the religious right. No doubt some people will continue these stale kabuki battles on into their graves: the 50's against the 60's, the same trumped-up outrage, the same self-congratulatory righteousness, the same fund-raising-friendly arguments again and again. But today's young people appear not to have taken a side in this war; they've just left it behind. For them, the personal is not political. Sex isn't a battleground in a clash of moralities. They seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right. You may not like the growing influence of religion in public life, but the lives of young people have improved. You may not like the growing acceptance of homosexuality, but as it has happened heterosexual families have grown healthier. Just lie back and enjoy the optimism. E-mail: [2]dabrooks at nytimes.com References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per 2. mailto:dabrooks at nytimes.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:46:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:46:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Beyond Balco: How One Pill Escaped a Place on List of Controlled Steroids Message-ID: Beyond Balco: How One Pill Escaped a Place on List of Controlled Steroids http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/national/17steroid.html April 17, 2005 By ANNE E. KORNBLUT and [1]DUFF WILSON WASHINGTON, April 16 - On the shelves of health stores across the country sits a dietary supplement that advertisements boast can "significantly alter body composition" - by converting to steroids in the bloodstream and, for some, helping pump up muscles like traditional steroids do. But unlike every other substance in the steroid family, the supplement, DHEA, is not classified as a controlled substance. In fact, the chalky white pills and capsules enjoy a special exemption under federal law, thanks to a bill quietly passed by Congress late last year. How DHEA, or dehydroepiandrosterone, came to enjoy special legal protections granted by Congress - at the very moment that steroid abuse was grabbing national headlines, and just months before Congress itself held hearings on body-building drug use in professional baseball - is a study in skillful political maneuvering, according to participants in the deal. Sports officials had favored an overall ban on steroids and related pills, like DHEA, which is banned by the Olympics, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the National Collegiate Athletics Association, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and baseball minor leagues. Major League Baseball is the exception on banning DHEA, and at last month's congressional hearings, the top medical adviser to the league turned the tables on lawmakers, accusing them of failing to write zero-tolerance toward steroids into federal law. Baseball officials complain that the legal loophole has made it harder for them to ban DHEA in their own drug policy, which is already under fire. "It is difficult, from a collective bargaining perspective, to explain to people why they should ban a substance that the federal government says you can buy at a nutrition center," said Rob Manfred, executive vice president for labor relations at Major League Baseball. Nevertheless, Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a Republican who represents a state where many dietary supplements are produced and a longtime champion of herbal remedies, felt strongly last year that DHEA must be kept legal and available as an "anti-aging" pill. Other lawmakers and staff members said he threatened to kill a far-reaching piece of legislation restricting the sale of other steroids, educating children about the dangers of steroids and increasing penalties for illegal use if his colleagues did not agree to include an exemption for it. His son, Scott Hatch, is a lobbyist for the National Nutritional Foods Association, a trade association for the dietary supplement industry, and has represented supplement companies themselves, including Twin Laboratories, which sells DHEA. The elder Mr. Hatch said he did not think he had been lobbied by his son, and cited the legitimate uses for DHEA as his reason for fighting for it. "There is a big argument that DHEA is very beneficial for health and well-being," Mr. Hatch said, noting that he did not believe there was significant opposition to leaving DHEA on the market. "I didn't see much resistance," Mr. Hatch said. "There are always those who are against any dietary supplement or anything not subject to total FDA approval." He was joined in fighting for the exemption by Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, a leading supporter of dietary supplements. Most DHEA is manufactured in China from the dried roots of wild yam. About $47 million worth was sold in the United States in 2003, the most recent year for which sales figures have been compiled, according to Patrick D. Rea, research director for The Nutrition Business Journal. In humans, where DHEA is produced naturally in the adrenal glands, levels of the hormone usually peak by the time a person is age 25. The synthetic version is primarily marketed as an anti-aging drug. The F.D.A. banned over-the-counter sales of DHEA in 1985. It reappeared after Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, releasing a flood of supplements classified as foods rather than drugs, and not requiring the F.D.A.'s approval. Senators Hatch and Harkin also led the push for that bill. Although DHEA advocates say the supplement has a good safety record, there have been only limited studies of its performance and side effects. Its promised benefits, including enhanced mental acuity and slowed aging, have not been proven conclusively, and some scientists say there is still concern it could accelerate cancers. "There isn't any logical reason it should be exempt," said Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen. Utah, the home state of Senator Hatch and his son, is a nexus for vitamin and supplement production and distribution and the father-and-son Hatch team have a history of fighting for herbal remedies. The elder Hatch has played a leading role on two Senate committees that have oversight over the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Senator Hatch has also in the past defended the herbal supplement ephedra, which has been linked with more than 100 deaths. He supported a federal ban of ephedra in April 2004 after the deaths were reported. A federal judge in Salt Lake City overturned the ban last week. Lawmakers in both parties said the unusual exemption for DHEA was created only in order to secure passage of a broader bill, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004. The law, which took effect on Jan. 20, expanded the definition of anabolic steroids to include substances like andro, or androstenedione, which turns into testosterone after it is ingested. Andro was made famous by the former St. Louis Cardinals player Mark McGwire, who admitted taking it around the time of his record-breaking home run season in 1998. Andro and other steroids can enhance muscle growth; if abused, they can cause longterm physical and psychological harm. As the abuse of steroid-like supplements became more widely discovered, athletic and medical groups pressed for stricter legislation, arguing that any substance that turns into a steroid hormone once it is digested should be regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration. But faced with opposition from Mr. Hatch, lawmakers ultimately decided it was not worth sinking the entire bill to ban DHEA, several said. The law, which was passed without objection, gave the Drug Enforcement Administration more power to ban new steroids, with one named exemption, DHEA. "We had to make a practical decision to get it passed," said Representative John Sweeney, Republican of New York. Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, said DHEA was protected "because of the economic pressures from the dietary supplement people that stand to make a lot more money by selling it." Besides the supplement industry and its select advocates in Congress, Mr. Waxman said: "No one else argued it should be given an exemption. The only opposition came from the supplements industry, and they're making millions off the sale of DHEA supplements." According to one congressional aide who worked on writing the legislation, in one particularly intense negotiation with Senator Hatch, the Utah senator's staff members "were adamant that they were not going to take out the exemption." Other current and former congressional staff members - all speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about back-room negotiations - gave similar accounts. One senior congressional aide who helped broker the agreement said: "We had to do an exemption for DHEA not because it was the right thing to do, to be perfectly honest, but because it was the politically necessary thing to do." Congressional aides said they had not dealt directly with Scott Hatch, the senator's son, but had worked with Jack Martin, a partner in his firm, on this and other supplement issues. Mr. Martin is a former longtime aide to Senator Hatch. They did not return calls for comment. Senator Hatch, in an interview, defended the DHEA exemption, calling it "basically a good dietary supplement." "Andro is an anabolic steroid precursor, and DHEA is far removed from that, from everything I've read and everything I've studied," he said. In fact, DHEA is a first cousin of andro: in the body, DHEA metabolizes into andro and then into testosterone. Asked whether his son had lobbied on the exemption, Mr. Hatch replied, "Not that I know of." "In fact, he won't even talk to me. He is that touchy," Mr. Hatch said. "He works the House and does it very honorably. He's very prissy about it, in fact. He doesn't have to be that prissy about it." He added: "His business is his business, not mine." With andro now illegal, athletes who want to try to get a steroid effect from a legal pill are now more likely to turn to DHEA, according to Dr. Gary Green of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. Speaking to high school coaches in Texas about steroids in February, Dr. Green, an adviser to baseball, said coaches should ask why DHEA received a special exemption, which member of Congress was responsible for that, what state he was from and what state DHEA is sold from. But there is no evidence yet, other than chatter on Web sites, that athletes or young people are turning to DHEA as a replacement for traditional steroids and precursors, despite the fears of some medical experts that the trend will begin now that the law banning other substances has taken effect. Susan Trimbo, a scientist with General Nutrition Centers, one of the nation's largest sellers of DHEA, said the drug has a good safety record, with side effects including acne and some facial hair issues in women. The drug affects women more than men because women naturally produce less testosterone. "It's a rather weak steroid, so I don't see it as a good substance for abuse, from my perspective," Ms. Trimbo said. But some advertisements do take aim at athletes, including promotions on the Web sites [2]www.teenbodybuilding.com, [3]www.bodybuilding.com and [4]www.musclesurf.com. One ad says: "DHEA is HOT, and you will see why. As a pre-cursor hormone, as it leads to the production of other hormones. When this compound is supplemented, it has been shown to have awesome effects." Another ad, from AST Sports Sciences, says: "What Can DHEA Do For Me? If you're a bodybuilder, and want to increase in lean body mass at the expense of body fat, studies show this supplement may significantly alter body composition, favoring lean mass accrual." There have been few randomized, double-blind studies of the effects of large doses of DHEA. One, in 1988, found that DHEA decreased body fat and increased muscle mass in five young men given 1600 milligrams a day for 28 days, compared with five men given placebos. "Fortunately, reports of serious side effects to date have been minimal," Patricia D. Kroboth, dean at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, wrote in a review article in 1999. But she noted there have been no large-scale clinical trials gathering information on side effects, concluding, "Until we understand the risks and benefits of DHEA administration, its use in other than an experimental setting is not warranted." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DUFF%20WILSON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DUFF%20WILSON&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/ 3. http://www.bodybuilding.com/ 4. http://www.musclesurf.com/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:46:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:46:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Why Does This Sherpa Climb Everest? Because It's a Job Message-ID: International > Asia Pacific > Why Does This Sherpa Climb Everest? Because It's a Job http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/international/asia/17sherpa.html April 17, 2005 By [1]DAVID ROHDE THAME, Nepal - The dining room of Apa Sherpa's hotel, the Everest Summiteer Lodge, is a testament to his Himalayan triumphs. There is a photocopy of the page declaring him the record holder for successful ascents of Mount Everest, something he has done an astonishing 14 times. There are pictures of him with dignitaries like Justice Sandra Day O'Connor of the Supreme Court and Sir Edmund Hillary, who with the Nepalese climber Tenzing Norgay, first scaled Everest in 1953. But there is also an air of disappointment. His seven-bedroom lodge is rarely full. Though well off by the standards of this poor country, he remains a virtual pauper compared with the wealthy American clients he guides to the summit. For all the magnitude of his achievement, his fame is hardly that of Sir Edmund. "In other countries, someone who had climbed the highest mountain 14 times, he would have received much more praise and acclaim," he said, standing here in his home village, a cluster of 45 stone houses perched on a picturesque plateau surrounded by breathtaking 20,000-foot mountains. Now in his mid-40's, Apa Sherpa, a 5-foot-5, 120-pound block of muscle and sinew, continues to climb, both to hold on to his record and to live. [As of Saturday, Apa Sherpa had reached the Everest base camp with an expedition that was raising money for cancer research. He is preparing for a 15th ascent on May 11.] Though scaling Everest has become a lucrative adventure sport, Apa and other Sherpas, many of whom use their ethnic group as a last name, say they are not getting their fair share of it. Since commercial expeditions began in the early 1990's, wealthy clients have lined up to pay up to $65,000 to companies that organize expeditions. Sherpas can earn $2,000 to $3,000 in the two-month climbing season, securing ladders and ropes and carrying clients' loads. Elite Sherpa climbers like Apa do far more than that, carefully shepherding to the summit Westerners who often have scant mountaineering experience and whose lives may rest in the Sherpas' hands. Apa and other Sherpa climbers, though unfailingly polite and loyal, are gradually demanding a greater share of the profits and becoming more vocal about getting the recognition they say they deserve. In a 2003 article marking the 50th anniversary of the first Everest ascent, Tashi Tenzing explained that his grandfather, Tenzing Norgay, had made seven attempts over 18 years to reach the summit. (Sir Edmund, by comparison, made only three in three years.) He called on the mountaineering world to stop viewing Sherpas as "mere load-carriers and nameless catalysts to Western success." Since that first ascent, 1,584 people have climbed Everest, according to Elizabeth Hawley, a Katmandu-based American journalist who has chronicled mountaineering in the Himalayas. About 180 people have died. Ms. Hawley said that for most Sherpas, climbing remained the best way to make a living beyond subsistence high-altitude potato farming and yak herding. "It's just a job," she said. "Very, very few of them do it because they enjoy it." The 1998 publication of "Into Thin Air," Jon Krakauer's book recounting a failed 1996 expedition that left eight climbers dead, appears to have only increased the mountain's popularity. From 1996 to 2002, the number of people reaching the summit fluctuated between 100 and 180. By 2004, it was 323 people, according to Ms. Hawley. Since 1999, record after record has been set by climbers from wealthy countries. A 70-year-old man, a blind climber and an amputee with one arm all reached the summit. A husband and wife paraglided, and other climbers skied and snowboarded, from the summit to base camp. At the same time, Sherpas have begun competing with one another. Seven other active Sherpa climbers have ascended Everest 10 or more times. In 1999, a Sherpa became the first person to sleep on the summit, spending 21 hours on the peak without oxygen. In 2004, a Sherpa said he had set a new record by climbing from the base camp to the summit in 8 hours 10 minutes. The Sherpa who set the previous record the year before in 10 hours 56 minutes disputed the claim. That sense of competition is new to a culture where the idea of "conquering" mountains was previously unknown. Until the arrival of Western climbers, Sherpas believed the highest Himalayan peaks were the dwelling places of Buddhist spirits and should not be violated. Apa Sherpa, who has climbed the mountain nearly every year since 1990, plays down the competitiveness and says he has no qualms about the growing commercialism. If anything, he would like to see more people come, a more regulated climbing system and more wealth flowing to the Sherpa community. "There should be more people going to Everest," he said. "More people going to the top is welcome." Like several hundred other Sherpa climbers, becoming a guide for Westerners has transformed his life. Apa Sherpa, like many Sherpas, does not know exactly what year he was born. He remembers his father dying when he was "12 or 13" and quitting school to support his mother and four brothers. "That's why I couldn't go to school," he said in broken English. "I had to earn." As a teenager, he followed in the footsteps of many young men from high altitude villages around Everest and began working on expeditions. Mr. Norgay, the Sherpa who ascended Everest with Sir Edmund, lived in the same village when he was a child. Apa Sherpa rose from an expedition cook to become one of several dozen Sherpa climbers who reach Everest's peak each season. His younger brother has reached the summit four times. Once, the two brothers stood on top together. Apa Sherpa has had a remarkably successful run. He has failed to reach the summit only once in his last 15 attempts. More important, no expedition he has been involved in has suffered a death. Apa Sherpa said he first planned to participate in the doomed 1996 expedition that was the subject of Mr. Krakauer's book. But he abided by his wife's wishes and spent the April-May climbing season building his lodge and visiting with his three children who attend boarding school in Katmandu. Despite 14 successful ascents, he speaks reverently of Everest, as if the experience has humbled him. Standing in Apa Sherpa's village it is easy to understand why. Here, a human being looks like a microbe. The mountains and ridges that surround his village soar up to 24,000 feet. The tallest summit, Everest, at 29,035 feet, is twice the height of any peak in the Rocky Mountains. Apa Sherpa said climbing Everest had not grown easier over time. Each ascent and descent is physically and psychologically grueling. On the way up, fears of a fall, or a suddenly approaching storm, build. Prayers and patience carry him up the mountain, he said. Standing on the summit was exquisite and made him feel "closer to God," he said, his face lighting up. "It's a sweet feeling." The way down is even more difficult, with exhaustion and a slippery descent fueling a creeping sense of anxiety, he said. He compared climbing the mountain to flying in a helicopter. "You feel safe when you are on the ground." He refuses to criticize Western guides by name, or the wealthy clients he guides to the summit each year. "I get an immense amount of pleasure to guide people who have come from all over the world to go to the top of the world," he said, then added, "They must have spent a considerable amount of money." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=DAVID%20ROHDE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=DAVID%20ROHDE&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:47:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:47:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Dworkin) Seeing Eye to Eye: A Radical Feminist Who Could Dine With (Not on) Conservatives Message-ID: Week in Review > Seeing Eye to Eye: A Radical Feminist Who Could Dine With (Not on) Conservatives http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17msuh.html April 17, 2005 By THE NEW YORK TIMES It's not surprising that feminists lamented the death last weekend of Andrea Dworkin, the antipornography campaigner and author of such feminist tracts as "Woman Hating." But a few conservatives marked her death, as well. It turns out that Andrea Dworkin and conservatives could agree on at least a couple of issues - Bill Clinton's presidency, for instance, and pornography. Most surprising of all, the fierce feminist in overalls and the conservatives in suits even shared a meal and some tea. A few excerpts: David Frum, columnist for National Review and former Bush administration speechwriter ([1]www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp): I met her once, through the kindness of my friend Christopher Hitchens, who invited my wife and me to meet Dworkin and her husband, John Stoltenberg, over dinner. It was an audacious pairing, and I went to the dinner with some trepidation. I can't say I was charmed. ... But despite myself, I was impressed. Dworkin was a woman of deep and broad reading. When I met her she was increasingly immobilized by illness, but her mind ranged free. ... We talked about her respect for the Christian conservatives who fought against forced prostitution and sex trafficking and her revulsion against Bill Clinton's abuse of women. Politically she belonged to the far, far, far left, but she had little use for an antiwar movement that made excuses for Saddam Hussein or Islamic extremism. And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children - and (ultimately) of men as well. ... Dworkin was grimly entertained by the opportunism of Bill Clinton's feminist supporters. ... I'll just say that although I would never, ever have expected to think so: She'll be missed. Maggie Gallagher, a syndicated columnist ([2]www.uexpress.com/maggiegallagher): I was not alone! Andrea saw it, too. As I wrote in "Enemies of Eros": "What Dworkin observes is essentially true. Sex is not an act which takes place merely between bodies. Sex is an act which defines, alters, imposes on the personhood of those who engage in it...." And as I later learned, to a lesser degree, Andrea Dworkin received the same gift from me. Standing in the local bookstore in Park Slope in Brooklyn (where we both then lived), she thumbed through my first book. "At last, someone who understands my writing!" she shrieked excitedly. Then she, the infamous feminist, invited me, the unknown young conservative, to tea. I found her soft-spoken, pale, intellectual, anxious, motherly. She seemed to me the kind of woman who has the peculiar courage of her fears. Charlotte Allen, of the Independent Women's Forum ([3]www.iwf.org/inkwell): Dworkin actually made a couple of good points. They are: 1) Pornography is degrading to women... 2) Prostitution... is not "empowering"... 3) Those beads-wearing, "peace 'n' love"-spouting flower children of the 60's could be nasty, wife-beating brutes ...4) She supported the death penalty for convicted wife-murderer Scott Peterson. Richard Brookhiser, a senior editor at National Review and author of "Founding Father," a biography of George Washington ([4]http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp): When I was introduced to Andrea Dworkin the first thing she said was how much she had enjoyed "Founding Father," and how much she admired George Washington. I was pleased (as a vain author) and also stunned. Washington was the ur-Patriarch, so much so that he was Father of His Country.... What was the source of her high opinion? Maybe the fact that there is no credible tale of Washington's sleeping with a slave (there is an incredible one), and the second fact that the last act of his life was to free his own slaves. As I point out whenever I talk about G. W., "Founding Father" is 63,000 words long; if I had to rewrite it in four, they would be, "He really meant it." Later on, when N.R. twitted feminists for supporting a later president, Bill Clinton, I got a note from Dworkin pointing out that she didn't.... She really meant it. R.I.P. References 1. http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/frum-diary.asp 2. http://www.uexpress.com/maggiegallagher 3. http://www.iwf.org/inkwell 4. http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/corner.asp From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:48:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:48:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: With His Bells and Curves, Human Growth Science Grew Up Message-ID: With His Bells and Curves, Human Growth Science Grew Up http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01tann.html 5.3.1 By STEPHEN S. HALL DUNKESWELL, England - Dr. Jim Tanner pored over two children's growth charts spread out on the table before him, observing the annual dots, casting an expert eye on where they landed amid the centiles and curves, lingering over the meager data about the 8-year-old girl, but venturing a tentative - and, to her father, namely me, an unnerving - conclusion. "We're already seeing that she is going into early adolescence," Dr. Tanner mused, peering over his glasses. "Eight and a half, hmmm. Well, probably, probably, it's the beginning. That would be slightly early, but for a takeoff for a girl nowadays? I mean, a bit early. But normal, absolutely." We were sitting in a 100-year-old coach house that had once been part of the Stentwood estate in Devonshire, two hours southwest of London by train, and 15 miles farther, by curving one-lane roads, hemmed in by encroaching hedgerows, from the train station in Taunton, the nearest big town. It may seem like a long way to go to ask a doctor to look at a child's growth chart, especially when the doctor has been retired for 20 years. But Dr. James M. Tanner, even in retirement, remains one of the greatest experts on a subject everyone experiences but few think about, human growth. Over a career that spanned half a century, Dr. Tanner helped bring the study of human growth into the era of modern biology. He helped create the first modern growth chart, has demonstrated the surprisingly powerful influence of environment upon the average size of national populations, and was among the first to argue that physical stature can shed enormous light on the quality of life of cultures both modern and ancient, findings that have revolutionized the field of economic history. On top of that, he is that rarest of academic creatures: a serious scientist who can legitimately claim to have been an Olympic-caliber athlete. Although Dr. Tanner is largely unknown to the American public (with the exception of pediatricians familiar with the so-called "Tanner stages" of pubertal development), he is well known to his peers. Dr. David Barker, the British epidemiologist who has studied birth weight and early development, says flatly, "Jim is the god" of the field. Dr. Robert Fogel, the Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist whose research on the lives and health of American slaves was influenced by Dr. Tanner's work, said, "He's been one of the central figures in the biology of human growth, and the books he's written have become the central textbooks in the study of human growth." Now 84, Dr. Tanner still discusses growth, the role of nurture versus nature in achieving maximum height, and a subtle - but, he believes, important - approach to data collection that explains differences between the growth charts that Dr. Tanner and his colleagues pioneered in the 1960's and the charts now in use in the United States. Sophisticated modern statistical approaches to childhood growth, in the form of national growth charts, did not emerge until after World War II. The first government-issued national charts in the United States were released only in 1977 by the National Center for Health Statistics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated those charts in 2000. Dr. Tanner and his colleagues at the Institute for Child Health in London revolutionized growth charts in the 1960's by taking into account variations in a child's tempo of growth. Rather than one-size-fits-all curves, the Tanner-derived charts have separate curves, with a separate set of percentiles, for early-, average- and late-maturing boys and girls. Thus they expand the range of normal growth, using curves that are more forgiving of individual variation, especially around the crucial time of puberty. "At 8, she's dead on the 50th centile," he said of my daughter's growth data, "and what will happen now, dependent on when she has her growth spurt, she'll either go up like this" - his finger tracing an imaginary curve toward one adult height, "or she'll go up like that. But she will not go like that," he added, touching on the dark 50th centile curve on the chart. "I think the deep, fundamental point in all this," Dr. Tanner continued, "is differences in the rate of maturation. A child is small at a certain age. Is he small because he's small and he's going to be small unless he does something about it? Because another child, of the same height and the same age and the same smallness, is just delayed in his maturation. Perfectly normal. And will end up exactly average." These subtle differences derive from the kind of data used to create a growth chart. The American charts (and some modern European charts) primarily rely on cross-sectional data: researchers take a large group of children, separate them by age, measure them one time and then plot the distribution of heights and weights for each age group. In contrast, Dr. Tanner and others believe a more accurate (and flexible) picture of a child's growth emerges from so-called longitudinal studies, where the same children are repeatedly measured over the course of many years of growth, so that individual variations in tempo - those who mature early and those who mature late - can be statistically incorporated into the charts. The data for such charts are more logistically difficult and costly to collect. But some growth experts believe such charts provide a more realistic picture of variation in individual growth patterns. To make the point, Dr. Tanner fetched one of his charts. There were three different curves representing variations on normality. One, in red, showed the trajectory of an early-maturing girl. The second, in black, showed the trajectory of girls maturing "on time." The third, in green, showed the trajectory of late-maturing. "So you see, at age 2 they're pretty much the same," Dr. Tanner said, pointing out a common starting point for three starkly different growth trajectories. "But you get a very big effect later on." At 11 years old, the 50th centile late maturer is nearly seven inches shorter than the early maturer, he said. "But," he added, "a few years later, they're identical." "There are more ways of being normal than are shown here," Dr. Tanner said, nodding toward the American-style charts. This philosophical difference has always been controversial, although other experts agree with Dr. Tanner, to a point. "He's absolutely right" about the limitations of cross-sectional charts, said Dr. Alan D. Rogol, a growth expert in Charlottesville, Va. "You mush things together when you make a growth curve for a population," Dr. Rogol said. "But for clinical work, I think the differences are not all that great. It's a tempest in a teapot." The Tanner-inspired longitudinal charts are still sold and used in England, but he said their use had been overshadowed by cross-sectional charts distributed by drug companies or growth foundations that receive financing from companies that make human growth hormone, the use of which has exploded in recent years. Asked if cross-sectional charts made the use of growth hormone more likely, Dr. Tanner said it would "if you're simple-minded." "You're going to treat late maturers, lots and lots," he said. Born in 1920, Jim Tanner grew up partly in Egypt and China; his father was a career army officer. He attended St. Mary's School of Medicine in London on something like an athletic scholarship, having agreed to teach his fellow students physical education. He was the fastest junior British runner in the 110-meter hurdles in 1939, and trained with Britain's pre-Olympics track team. In all likelihood, he would have competed in the 1940 Olympics, had it not been for the war. He was among a handful of British medical students brought to the United States by the Rockefeller Foundation to complete their studies. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, did his internship at Johns Hopkins and met his first wife, Dr. Bernice Alture, a Brooklyn-born general practitioner who also graduated from Penn. (She died in 1991.) The origins of the modern longitudinal growth chart began in 1948, when Dr. Tanner was approached by the British government and asked to take over a study of childhood growth that began during the war. The study, focused on orphans living in a home in Harpenden, north of London, was initially intended to observe the effects of wartime malnutrition on growth. But it evolved into the Harpenden Growth Study, the earliest of the longitudinal studies in postwar Europe. To develop the methodology of what would become the first modern growth chart, Dr. Tanner traveled to the United States and met with growth experts. In his research, he realized that several prominent American growth experts - including Dr. Franz Boas, the legendary physical anthropologist, and Dr. Nancy Bayley, the psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley - had understood the crucial importance of tempo of growth. But Dr. Tanner also discovered that their work had been largely ignored by their colleagues. "We built this thing up, having just paid attention to what Boas and Bayley were teaching us," Dr. Tanner recalled. He continued to work on the Harpenden survey with his longtime associate, Reginald Whitehouse, until 1971. Once a month, the two researchers traveled to Harpenden, measured the children and took pictures, and later expanded the research to include data from other European surveys. Their first chart came out in the early 1960's. In the same era, he was responsible for choosing the five or six children in Britain who qualified for injections of human growth hormone, then rare and harvested only from human cadavers. In 1985, when several patients in the United States and Britain died from an infectious brain disease spread through cadaveric growth hormone, injections were immediately suspended. Still, some families objected. "Some parents, amazingly, said, 'We'll take the risk.' " Dr. Tanner recalled. "We didn't accede," he added. Treatments resumed only when genetically engineered human growth hormone became available the next year. In the 1990's, Dr. Tanner set out to write a new overview of growth, but soon abandoned the project. "I realized that the time had passed when a single person could write a textbook on growth," he said. "It just is not possible." So his semi-retirement became permanent. "I would not consider myself an expert anymore," he said. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:49:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:49:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: (Norbert Wiener) A Brilliant Mind and an Anguished Life Message-ID: Science > Books on Science: A Brilliant Mind and an Anguished Life http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01book.html 5.3.1 By CORNELIA DEAN "Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics," by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman. Basic Books, 423 pages, $27.50. It is hardly the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th century, but it is a riddle just the same: why did Norbert Wiener - gray eminence of gray matter, inventor of cybernetics, founding theorist of the information age - abandon his closest young colleagues just as they were about to embark on an exciting new collaboration on the workings of the brain? Historians of science, and even some of Wiener's associates, have long puzzled over this question. Now Ms. Conway and Mr. Siegelman offer an answer. In their new biography, they tell a tale of jealousy, false accusations of sexual misconduct and twisted family relations. Their account might be dismissed as a 50-year-old soap opera, were it not for Wiener's stature. He pioneered the study of the ways mechanical, biological and electronic systems communicate and interact. His groundbreaking research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology defined the parameters of what we know today as computer science. His book "Cybernetics" is widely regarded as a major work of 20th century science. And he was already famous, before he even started. Born in 1894, he grew up in eastern Massachusetts under the harsh tutelage of a father whose unorthodox home schooling methods and relentless pushing turned Wiener into a child prodigy. By the time he was 14 he had a diploma from Tufts and by 18 he had earned a doctorate in mathematical philosophy from Harvard. One newspaper called him "the most remarkable boy in the world." But these achievements came at a cost. After a childhood taken up almost exclusively with study, his adulthood was plagued by clumsiness, tubbiness, nearsightedness and absentmindedness so extreme they eventually became the stuff of legend. Years of devastating paternal criticism left him hypersensitive, and he suffered periodic episodes of deep depression. Nevertheless, he married, and the woman he married is the villain of this tale. She was Margaret Engemann, a young immigrant from Germany whom he met through his parents. The younger Wieners had two daughters and initially, it seemed, the marriage was more or less happy. But it was Margaret Wiener's dream, the authors write, to be a high-status professor's wife, presiding over an intellectual salon in the Teutonic mold. Instead, her husband had surrounded himself with a number of imaginative young students and prot?g?s, as intent as he was on figuring out how the brain talks to itself and how machines could be made to perform similar feats. One in particular incited her ire. He was Warren McCulloch, a neurophysiologist and free-wheeling bohemian with a thirst for alcohol and an inventive mind. The authors theorize that she disliked his way of life and at the same time feared he would threaten Wiener's prominence at M.I.T. To prevent that, they say, she tried to quash plans for McCulloch and his associates to move to M.I.T. When that failed, she told Wiener an invented story, that one or more of "the boys," as Wiener called them, had seduced their elder daughter. The authors say this explains why Wiener broke with the boys - immediately, utterly and apparently without a word of real explanation to anyone. Read from a distance of decades, it seems incredible that such a promising collaboration could have collapsed so completely. It is particularly poignant that Wiener, who suffered so much from paternal disdain, would abandon young men who thought of him as a father. The boys waited in vain for Wiener's antipathy to fade. Years later, scientists still wonder what their collaboration might have produced, had they continued to work together. As the book recounts, the rest of Wiener's life was hardly bereft of accomplishment. Among other things, he collaborated on major advances in robotics and automation. In 1964, shortly before he died at age 69, he received the National Medal of Science. But often, the authors say, Wiener missed out on credit he should have had because he was chronically ahead of his time or because he shared his findings readily, allowing less generous colleagues and competitors to capitalize on his insights. Wiener's interest in cybernetics in the Soviet Union and his support of it brought him unwelcome government attention in the anti-Communist 1950's. And his ardent opposition to secrecy and commercialism left him at odds with many scientists. (One can only wonder what he would have said about the commercialization of science today.) Over the years, Wiener has been described again and again as a great mathematician, gifted with imagination and insight that soared over the artificial boundaries that divide disciplines in science. Recent findings in neuroscience, for example, confirmed his early hunches about the workings of the brain, and he is still revered at M.I.T. But in the prosaic realm of real life, he was often disappointed, discouraged and downhearted. His may have been one of the great minds of the 20th century, but in reading this book one can only feel sorry for him. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:50:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:50:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Get a Grip and Set Your Sights Above Adversity Message-ID: Health > Personal Health: Get a Grip and Set Your Sights Above Adversity http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/health/01brod.html 5.3.1 By [1]JANE E. BRODY Resilience. Call it what you will - the ability to weather stresses large and small, to bounce back from trauma and get on with life, to learn from negative experiences and translate them into positive ones, to muster the strength and confidence to change directions when a chosen path becomes blocked or nonproductive. Or you can sum it up as actualization of A.A.'s serenity prayer: "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." Dr. Wendy Schlessel Harpham, a Dallas physician, wife and mother of three, is the epitome of resilience. Struck with a recurring cancer in her 30's that required a decade of debilitating treatments, she was forced to give up her medical practice. She turned instead to writing books and lecturing to professional and lay audiences to help millions of others and their families through the cancer experience. Dr. Jennifer P. Schneider of Tucson is another classic example of resilience. Also a physician, she has a lifelong history of emotional and physical traumas. Her mother left her at age 5. Dr. Schneider weathered two divorces, a child with a mild form of autism, a broken leg that required two operations and took more than two years to heal, and most recently the most horrific trauma of all, the death at 31 of her daughter, Jessica Wing, after a two-year battle against metastatic colon cancer. To cope, Dr. Schneider said, she focused on things she could control, her patients and her writing. Dr. Schneider's recent book "Living With Chronic Pain" was an inspiration to me, as I mentioned in a column last month, during my bout with intense and seemingly endless pain after knee replacement. Growing Up Resilient Until recently, resilience was thought to be an entirely inborn trait, giving rise to the notion of the "invulnerable child," now recognized to be a mistaken idea. Resilient children are not invulnerable to trauma or immune to suffering. But they bounce back. They find ways to cope, set goals and achieve them despite myriad obstacles like drug-addicted parents, dire poverty or physical disabilities thrown in their path. As Dr. Robert Brooks of Harvard and Dr. Sam Goldstein of the University of Utah put it, being resilient does not mean a life without risks or adverse conditions but rather learning how to deal effectively with the inevitable stresses of life. Herein lies an important concept: learning. To be sure, some of what makes up resilience is inborn. But resilience can also be learned, say experts like Dr. Brooks and Dr. Goldstein, psychologists and authors whose newest book, "The Power of Resilience" (Contemporary Books), provides lessons in "achieving balance, confidence and personal strength." They are lessons of considerable importance, as there is no such thing as a life free of losses and setbacks. People who lack resilience are less able to rise above adversity or learn from their mistakes and move on. Instead of focusing on what they can control and accepting responsibility for their lives, they waste time and energy on matters beyond their influence. As a result, the circumstances of their lives leave them feeling helpless and hopeless and prone to depression. When things go wrong or don't work out as expected, they tend to think "I can't do this" or, even worse, "It can't be done." Children learn to be resilient when parents and guardians enable and encourage them to figure out things for themselves and take responsibility for their actions. When Ray Charles lost his sight at age 7, his mother insisted that he use his good brain and learn how to make his way in the world. In the movie "Ray," she watched silently after the newly blind boy tripped over furniture, cried for her help and then struggled to his feet unaided. It's Never Too Late Children need to learn that they are capable of finding their way on their own. Parents who are too quick to take over a task when children cry "I can't do this" or don't insist that children learn from their mistakes are less likely to end up with children who can stand on their own two feet, take responsibility for their lives and cope effectively with unavoidable stresses. The same applies to parents who provide children with everything they want instead of teaching them limits and having them earn their rewards and to those who make excuses for their children and repeatedly defend them against legitimate complaints. But even if these lessons are not learned in childhood, experts like Dr. Brooks and Dr. Goldstein, who also wrote "Raising Resilient Children" and "Nurturing Resilience in Our Children," say it is possible to learn to be more resilient at any age. The trick lies in replacing what they call "negative scripts" that may have been written in childhood, but are not cast in stone, with more positive scripts. People who harbor negative scripts expect that no matter what they do, things will not work out well; they assume that others must change for circumstances to improve. 'Authors of Our Lives' So lesson No. 1, Dr. Brooks and Dr. Goldstein write, is "to recognize that we are the authors of our lives." "We must not seek our happiness by asking someone else to change," they continue. Rather, we should ask, "What is it that I can do differently to change the situation?" Identify your negative scripts and assume responsibility for changing them. Nurture your self-esteem. Be true to yourself rather than trying to be what someone else expects of you. Focus on what you can do, tasks you can achieve, situations you can influence. Take an active role in your community or in an organization or activity that helps others. Develop a new skill: learn a language or a new sport or how to fix a car; take up knitting, cooking or woodworking; join a book club; try out for an amateur production; become a docent at a museum; help organizations that feed the elderly and infirm; volunteer your services at community groups like the local Y, school, library or park. There are myriad opportunities; just look or ask around and you will find them. Take a chance on change if jobs, habits or activities you've long pursued are no longer satisfying or efficient. Change is frightening to people who lack resilience, but those who try it usually find that they land on their feet, and that fosters resilience. And if a new path does not seem to be working out well, change again. Take a long, hard look at the people in your life and consider abandoning friends who drag you down or reinforce your negative scripts. For those - like family members - from whom you can't escape, practice ignoring their put-downs and not taking them so seriously. Seek out activities that elevate your spiritual life and nurture your inner strength: for example, art, music, literature, religion, meditation, the great outdoors. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:53:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:53:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Brooks: (The Public Interest) 40 Years of Character Message-ID: 40 Years of Character Opinion column by David Brooks, The New York Times, 5.3.5 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html [This was the original neocon publication. I've read many articles over the years, but not so much during the last twenty.] The Public Interest will cease publication next month. This may not seem very important, since the magazine has never had more than 10,000 subscribers. But over the past 40 years, The Public Interest has had more influence on domestic policy than any other journal in the country - by far. It didn't discover as much truth as Moses did during his four decades of wandering, but it did pretty well. Like many great magazines, it ended up serving a cause other than the one for which it was created. In 1965, when Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Daniel Bell talked about starting a magazine, Moynihan suggested that they call it Consensus. Their central assumption was that the ideological clashes that had marked politics in, say, the 1930's were over. The chief task now was to design programs pragmatically. They had all voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964. They were confident that government could end poverty. In the first issue, Moynihan celebrated the triumph of macroeconomic modeling: "Men are learning how to make an industrial economy work." James Q. Wilson recommended a negative income tax for the working poor, figuring the way to end poverty was to get money to the needy. Kristol and others believed that with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, blacks would be integrated into society like the immigrant groups the writers had studied. But the war on poverty did not go smoothly. All the indicators of social breakdown rose: divorce, out-of-wedlock births, violence, crime, illegal drug use, suicide. In 1968, Moynihan published an essay called "The Crises in Welfare," lamenting the explosive growth of the welfare rolls and the problem of dependency. So the contributors to The Public Interest tried to figure out what was going wrong. An early piece of evidence was an essay written by James Coleman on education reform. Coleman found that the objective inputs into schools - pupil-teacher ratios, the money spent per pupil, the condition of the buildings - had little effect on student achievement. Instead, what mattered was family background and peer groups. To the extent that schools could change things, it was the ethos of the school that was crucial: Are expectations high? Is there a nurturing - and disciplined - culture? It occurred to several of the editors that they had accepted a simplistic view of human nature. They had thought of humans as economically motivated rational actors, who would respond in relatively straightforward ways to incentives. In fact, what really matters, they decided, is culture, ethos, character and morality. By the 1970's, The Public Interest was publishing as many essays on these things as on quantitative social science. As Wilson wrote in 1985, "At root, in almost every area of public concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers, or voters and public officials." The contributors to The Public Interest could write intelligently about such broad moral subjects because not only were they public policy experts, but they were also careful readers of Jane Austen, Lionel Trilling, Tocqueville, Nietzsche and so on. This was before intellectuals were divided between academic professionals and think-tank policy wonks. It was about this time people started calling The Public Interest a neoconservative magazine. I'm not sure that word still has meaning, but if there was one core insight, it was this: Human beings, or governments, are not black boxes engaged in a competition of interests. What matters most is the character of the individual, the character of the community and the character of government. When designing policies, it's most important to get them to complement, not undermine, people's permanent moral aspirations - the longing for freedom, faith and family happiness. That approach led to welfare policies that encouraged work and responsibility. It also led to what many derided as the overly idealistic foreign policies that are now contributing to the exhilarating revolutions we're seeing across the Middle East. Several of the original players are dead. Kristol, Glazer and Bell are in their 80's. A great young editor, Adam Wolfson, has done much of the heavy lifting, but he and his senior colleagues are calling it a day. The magazine will not outlive all its founders. I read through the back issues this week with growing sadness. The Public Interest will not be around as we reform entitlements and continue our debates on what it means to be American. All we'll have are the archives, at [2]www.thepublicinterest.com. E-mail: dabrooks at nytimes.com References 1. http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:54:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:54:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Way We Live Now: Unintelligent Design Message-ID: Magazine > The Way We Live Now: Unintelligent Design http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/magazine/20WWLN.html February 20, 2005 By JIM HOLT Recently a school district in rural Pennsylvania officially recognized a supposed alternative to Darwinism. In a one-minute statement read by an administrator, ninth-grade biology students were told that evolution was not a fact and were encouraged to explore a different explanation of life called intelligent design. What is intelligent design? Its proponents maintain that living creatures are just too intricate to have arisen by evolution. Throughout the natural world, they say, there is evidence of deliberate design. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer the existence of an intelligent designer? To evade the charge that intelligent design is a religious theory -- creationism dressed up as science -- its advocates make no explicit claims about who or what this designer might be. But students will presumably get the desired point. As one Pennsylvania teacher observed: ''The first question they will ask is: 'Well, who's the designer? Do you mean God?''' From a scientific perspective, one of the most frustrating things about intelligent design is that (unlike Darwinism) it is virtually impossible to test. Old-fashioned biblical creationism at least risked making some hard factual claims -- that the earth was created before the sun, for example. Intelligent design, by contrast, leaves the purposes of the designer wholly mysterious. Presumably any pattern of data in the natural world is consistent with his/her/its existence. But if we can't infer anything about the design from the designer, maybe we can go the other way. What can we tell about the designer from the design? While there is much that is marvelous in nature, there is also much that is flawed, sloppy and downright bizarre. Some nonfunctional oddities, like the peacock's tail or the human male's nipples, might be attributed to a sense of whimsy on the part of the designer. Others just seem grossly inefficient. In mammals, for instance, the recurrent laryngeal nerve does not go directly from the cranium to the larynx, the way any competent engineer would have arranged it. Instead, it extends down the neck to the chest, loops around a lung ligament and then runs back up the neck to the larynx. In a giraffe, that means a 20-foot length of nerve where 1 foot would have done. If this is evidence of design, it would seem to be of the unintelligent variety. Such disregard for economy can be found throughout the natural order. Perhaps 99 percent of the species that have existed have died out. Darwinism has no problem with this, because random variation will inevitably produce both fit and unfit individuals. But what sort of designer would have fashioned creatures so out of sync with their environments that they were doomed to extinction? The gravest imperfections in nature, though, are moral ones. Consider how humans and other animals are intermittently tortured by pain throughout their lives, especially near the end. Our pain mechanism may have been designed to serve as a warning signal to protect our bodies from damage, but in the majority of diseases -- cancer, for instance, or coronary thrombosis -- the signal comes too late to do much good, and the horrible suffering that ensues is completely useless. And why should the human reproductive system be so shoddily designed? Fewer than one-third of conceptions culminate in live births. The rest end prematurely, either in early gestation or by miscarriage. Nature appears to be an avid abortionist, which ought to trouble Christians who believe in both original sin and the doctrine that a human being equipped with a soul comes into existence at conception. Souls bearing the stain of original sin, we are told, do not merit salvation. That is why, according to traditional theology, unbaptized babies have to languish in limbo for all eternity. Owing to faulty reproductive design, it would seem that the population of limbo must be at least twice that of heaven and hell combined. It is hard to avoid the inference that a designer responsible for such imperfections must have been lacking some divine trait -- benevolence or omnipotence or omniscience, or perhaps all three. But what if the designer did not style each species individually? What if he/she/it merely fashioned the primal cell and then let evolution produce the rest, kinks and all? That is what the biologist and intelligent-design proponent Michael J. Behe has suggested. Behe says that the little protein machines in the cell are too sophisticated to have arisen by mutation -- an opinion that his scientific peers overwhelmingly do not share. Whether or not he is correct, his version of intelligent design implies a curious sort of designer, one who seeded the earth with elaborately contrived protein structures and then absconded, leaving the rest to blind chance. One beauty of Darwinism is the intellectual freedom it allows. As the arch-evolutionist Richard Dawkins has observed, ''Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.'' But Darwinism permits you to be an intellectually fulfilled theist, too. That is why Pope John Paul II was comfortable declaring that evolution has been ''proven true'' and that ''truth cannot contradict truth.'' If God created the universe wholesale rather than retail -- endowing it from the start with an evolutionary algorithm that progressively teased complexity out of chaos -- then imperfections in nature would be a necessary part of a beautiful process. Of course proponents of intelligent design are careful not to use the G-word, because, as they claim, theirs is not a religiously based theory. So biology students can be forgiven for wondering whether the mysterious designer they're told about might not be the biblical God after all, but rather some very advanced yet mischievous or blundering intelligence -- extraterrestrial scientists, say. The important thing, as the Pennsylvania school administrator reminded them, is ''to keep an open mind.'' Jim Holt is a frequent contributor to the magazine. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:55:16 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:55:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Essay: The Joy of Federalism Message-ID: Essay: The Joy of Federalism New York Times Book Review, 5.3.6 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/books/review/006FOERL.html By FRANKLIN FOER Nobody would ever confuse the Massachusetts liberal Barney Frank with the South Carolina conservative Strom Thurmond. But when the tart-tongued Frank appeared on Fox News Sunday last winter, it sounded as if an aide had accidentally slipped him some of Thurmond's talking points from the 1950's, when he was a states'-rights segregationist. ''Should the federal government say no state can make this decision for itself?'' Frank asked. He had ventured onto Fox to assert each state's right to marry gay couples. Frank isn't the only supporter of gay marriage to sing the praises of federalism. Last December, Andrew Sullivan argued in The New Republic, ''The whole point of federalism is that different states can have different policies on matters of burning controversy -- and that this is O.K.'' That same month, Paul Glastris, the editor of The Washington Monthly, posed the question, ''Why shouldn't the Democrats become the party of federalism?'' In some respects, they already have. Liberal energies once devoted to expanding the national government are being redirected toward the states. New York's attorney general Eliot Spitzer, declaring himself a ''fervent federalist,'' is using state regulations to prosecute corporate abuses that George W. Bush's Department of Justice won't touch. While the federal minimum wage hasn't budged since the middle of the Clinton era, 13 (mostly blue) states and the District of Columbia have hiked their local wage floors in the intervening years. After Bush severely restricted federal stem cell research, California's voters passed an initiative pouring $3 billion into laboratories for that very purpose, and initiatives are under way in at least a dozen other states. These developments may look like a desperate reaction on the part of some liberals to the conservatives' grip on Washington. But in fact the well-known liberal liking for programs at the national level has long coexisted alongside a quieter tradition of principled federalism -- skeptical of distant bureaucracies and celebratory of local policy experimentation. To understand liberal federalism, however, it is first necessary to understand its nemesis, Herbert Croly. A shy, obscure writer on architecture, Croly rose to fame in 1909 with ''The Promise of American Life,'' a long-winded manifesto calling for a strong national government. The book fell into the hands of Theodore Roosevelt and, with the Bull Moose as its promoter, it attracted a crowd of high-powered admirers, including the benefactors who bankrolled Croly's new magazine, The New Republic. Croly had a tendency to swing wildly and hard. His big target was Thomas Jefferson, a man of ''intellectual superficiality and insincerity.'' The sage of Monticello, Croly argued, had created a government suited for a bucolic era. But modernity, the birth of the corporation, the closing of the frontier and technological advances had reshaped America and rendered Jefferson's governing vision obsolete. What America needed was centralization and efficiency, not antiquated state governments. The inefficiency of state governments, he said, was ''one of the most fundamental of American political problems.'' Croly generally gets lumped together with the early-20th-century progressives, but his book often savaged these supposed comrades as outdated and stupidly old-fashioned. Croly accepted concentrations of power -- corporations, as well as a strong central government -- as immutable facts of modern life. Many of his fellow reformers, he charged, were clinging to an outmoded Jeffersonian affection for competition and equality. They wanted to dismantle the trusts and return to a marketplace dominated by small business. What's more, Croly claimed, these reformers continued to harbor an irrational attachment to state governments; instead of building a modern centralized nation, they focused on renovating the old state machinery. Progressives in the West, for instance, created the referendum, allowing citizens to vote specific laws up or down. Croly, an unabashed elitist, preferred handing power to experts. In his polemical mode, Croly unfairly skewered the reformers' motives. The turn-of-the-century debates over the future of corporate capitalism resembled the current conflagration over gay marriage. There was no national consensus on the regulation of business then, just as there's no national consensus on same-sex unions now. Rather than wasting breath trying to persuade obstreperous Southern congressmen to back federal labor laws, the progressives plunged forward and passed reforms in the Northern and Midwestern state legislatures. Beginning with Robert La Follette's 1900 gubernatorial victory, Wisconsin raced farthest ahead in the nation, slashing railroad rates and passing laws on corruption and conservation. Devout believers in the new social sciences, the progressives invested near mystical power in empirical data, and this faith guided their federalism. As Louis Brandeis wrote in a famous 1932 Supreme Court dissent, states could serve as ''laboratories of democracy,'' control groups to test the value of particular policies. Progressives believed that once the nation saw how successful these state-level reforms were, it would eagerly mimic them. Indeed, La Follete's administration became a trendy model. ''Outside the state, the 'Wisconsin idea' was rapidly becoming a program and inspiration,'' Eric Goldman wrote in his 1952 history of American reform movements, ''Rendezvous With Destiny.'' The Badger State had become a national guinea pig. It's not surprising that Brandeis coined liberal federalism's signature slogan. A Kentucky-born corporate lawyer, whose wealth freed him to pursue progressive causes, Brandeis was the doctrine's sincerest believer -- and, for a time, Croly's intellectual adversary. And just as Croly had said, Brandeis continued to harbor a Jeffersonian aversion to agglomerations of power, or the ''curse of bigness'' as he called it, in both business and government. ''If the Lord had intended things to be big, he would have made man bigger -- in brains and character,'' Brandeis quipped in Congressional testimony in 1911. This abhorrence of bigness led him strenuously to oppose Croly's program, which proposed nationalizing inefficient trusts and tolerating efficient ones. The Croly-Brandeis debate became the central theme of the 1912 election. While Croly was helping to conceive Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism program, Brandeis met with Woodrow Wilson at a low point in his campaign. As the late James Chace described the encounter in his narrative of the election, ''1912,'' Brandeis instantly supplied much-needed ideological direction to the faltering Democratic candidate. ''After his first meeting with Brandeis, Wilson spoke with new fervor.'' For conservatives, ''states' rights'' often seems just another way of asserting their libertarianism, their dislike of government in any form. Liberal federalism, on the other hand, doesn't view the state and federal governments as opposing forces. Brandeis may have celebrated the states but he also stressed the importance of federal antitrust policy, and he became the New Deal's most reliable advocate on the Supreme Court, even meeting privately with Franklin Roosevelt. New Dealers affectionately referred to Brandeis as ''Isaiah.'' That's not to say Brandeis meshed perfectly with the Roosevelt administration. He couldn't abide the president's seemingly boundless ambition to expand executive power. He joined a majority on the court in striking down a handful of New Deal programs, including the National Industrial Recovery Act. He even sent a stern note to Roosevelt's consigliere, Thomas G. Corcoran: ''I want you to go back and tell the president that we're not going to let this government centralize everything. It's come to an end. As for your young men,'' by which Brandeis meant the core of intellectuals assembled around the New Deal, ''you call them together and tell them to get out of Washington -- tell them to go home, back to the states. That is where they must do their work.'' Despite Brandeis's reprimand and the Supreme Court's decisions, Roosevelt's ''young men'' didn't soon leave Washington. World War II -- and then the cold war -- created new engines of government for them to operate. Emerging from the war convinced that America had just fought on behalf of equality and other liberal values, they wanted to transfer that crusading spirit to domestic causes. Eminences like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith celebrated the ''American creed'' and ''national greatness,'' phrases that echoed Croly's call for a ''new nationalism.'' And even if the war hadn't propelled liberals in this nationalistic direction, the segregationist invocations of states' rights would have. ''The time has arrived,'' Hubert Humphrey declared at his party's 1948 convention, ''for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of civil rights.'' Humphrey's party adopted a civil rights platform plank, and in response, Strom Thurmond led a white flight to a newfangled States' Rights Party. Nationalistic postwar liberalism flourished, but a left-wing critique of it arose in the early 1960's. New Left student rebels shared Brandeis's aversion to bigness, though they arrived at their aversion through a very different intellectual tradition. Tom Hayden and other stalwarts of Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.), the defining organization of 60's radicalism, had absorbed the lessons of books like C. Wright Mills's ''White Collar'' and ''Power Elite,'' and Paul Goodman's ''Growing Up Absurd.'' (Hayden even wrote his master's dissertation on Mills.) This literature railed against bureaucracy, centralization and technocrats as agents of mass alienation and conformism. ''Overcentralization is an international disease of modern times,'' Goodman wrote in ''People or Personnel.'' Precisely the same language can be found in S.D.S.'s 1962 manifesto, the Port Huron statement, where the group waxed utopian about ''participatory democracy,'' a governing philosophy it described as the antithesis of managerial liberalism. Over the next two decades, the raw ideas of Port Huron were tamed and refined by communitarian scholars like the Harvard professors Michael Sandel and Robert Putnam. These communitarians didn't particularly like the 60's counterculture ethos, but they assimilated many of the New Left's ideas about community, applauding civic organizations like churches and private charities as essential pillars of democracy. And they bemoaned changes in the political landscape that had blinded mainstream liberalism to the virtues of these institutions. The Washington Post's communitarian-minded columnist E. J. Dionne lamented that liberals ''came to believe that almost all doctrines emphasizing the value of local community were indistinguishable from the phony 'states' rights' arguments used by segregationists.'' A strong trace of Catholic social teachings could be discerned in these views, especially Pope Pius XI's 1931 encyclical on ''subsidiarity'' -- the idea that social ills are best solved by the organizations and people closest to them. Although the communitarians didn't spend much time integrating state governments into their vision, they spoke of them with great respect. Sandel concluded his book ''Democracy's Discontent'' with a call for progressives to discover the ''unrealized possibilities implicit in American federalism.'' By the 1970's, liberal federalist ideas suddenly had an opportunity to break into widespread circulation and shake off the segregationist stigma. Vietnam had stolen the swagger from nationalistic liberalism, a change that could be witnessed most poignantly in the writings of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. After spending decades advocating a strong central government, he wrote ''The Imperial Presidency'' in 1973, warning that the executive branch now possessed dangerous concentrations of power. But liberal federalism didn't fully get a hearing until the emergence of a new champion, Bill Clinton. Prodded by a Republican Congress and a conservative Supreme Court, Clinton actually presided over the revitalized federalism that Sandel imagined, and even spent time in the White House huddling with Sandel and Putnam. Federalism suited his declared ambition to move beyond the era of ''big government.'' In 1995, he signed a law prohibiting the national government from imposing new burdens on the states without first providing funds to cover any costs. The welfare reform package he ushered into law a year later gave states enormous latitude in remaking social policy. George W. Bush didn't give Clinton much credit for these achievements. Like many of his predecessors, he entered office promising to rescue the states from federal pummeling. Yet his administration has greatly expanded federal power, and some conservatives have been complaining. Writing in National Review two years ago, Romesh Ponnuru observed that ''more people are working for the federal government than at any point since the end of the cold war.'' State governments have their own version of this complaint. They say the Bush administration has imposed new demands -- federal education standards, homeland security tasks -- without also providing sufficient cash to get these jobs done. The Republican senator Lamar Alexander recently told The Times, ''The principle of federalism has gotten lost in the weeds by a Republican Congress that was elected to uphold it in 1994.'' This is hardly the first time that self-described federalists have abandoned the cause. Strom Thurmond ran on the States' Rights Party ticket in 1948, but throughout his long career as a senator, he never had qualms about heaving bushels of federal money into his state. In 1982, Ronald Reagan announced his own ill-fated new federalism proposal. But instead of dismantling Washington, his administration imposed a raft of new health and safety regulations on the states. Perhaps federalists have failed to reshape American government because federalism isn't really a governing philosophy. Its proponents describe a world that doesn't exist. In actuality, the states and federal government aren't cut-throat competitors but codependents, with state governments living off federal money and implementing federal programs. Rather, ''states' rights'' can be seen as a subgenre of political rhetoric, part of what the historian Michael Kazin calls the ''populist persuasion.'' And like so much of the language of populism, it proves hollow once its adherents obtain power. One suspects that many if not most of today's liberal federalists haven't converted out of true belief, either. Some have adopted the rhetoric of states' rights because it provides psychic relief from the alienation they feel now that a majority of the nation's voters has returned George W. Bush to office. In its most frustrated form, this alienation has manifested itself in the ubiquitous joking about emigrating to Canada. Liberal federalism provides a more rational outlet. Instead of retreating to Vancouver, liberal federalists would retreat from national politics and focus on effecting change in their own blue states -- passing health care reforms, expanding gay rights. At the height of the liberals' postelection angst, The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly, declared: ''We can secede emotionally, however, by turning our backs on the heartland. We can focus on our issues, our urban issues, and promote our shared urban values.'' It's like the path evangelicals beat after the Scopes trial, when the religious right took a 50-year break from mainstream political activity and quietly tended their own institutions. Some Democratic political strategists are also guiding liberals in this direction. In election postmortems, they have urged the party to follow in the Truman-Reagan-Gingrich tradition and rail against the corrupt interests ruling Washington -- ''an aggressively reform, anti-Washington, anti-business-as-usual party,'' as James Carville described it at a Democratic hand-wringing session last November. Proponents of this strategy now reside in nearly every corner of the party -- from Howard Dean, the new chairman of the Democratic National Committee, to the Democratic Leadership Council. Positioning the Democratic Party as the great modern-day defender of states' rights against imperial Washington jibes neatly with this strategy. Progressives once championed states as laboratories of democracy. Now many of them are hoping these laboratories will produce the Democratic electoral cure. Franklin Foer, a senior editor at The New Republic and a contributing editor for New York magazine, is the author of ''How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization.'' From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:56:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:56:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: The Little Guys Are O.K. Message-ID: The Little Guys Are O.K. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/opinion/07gardner.html 5.3.7 By BRUCE GARDNER College Park, Md. THE increasing size and industrialization of American farms have been decried as responsible for depopulating the countryside and causing economic and social ills. President Bush's proposed budget has encouraged the belief that help is on the way, in the form of more stringent limits on farm program payments. The plan, under which payments to some producers would drop by 5 percent and the current $360,000 annual ceiling on payments would drop to $250,000, has earned praise from rural populists, who see it as a step to reduce the subsidization of large as compared to small farms. However, two questions must be raised: Will the limits on payments really help small farms? And, more fundamentally, is it a good idea to subsidize large farms less than small ones? To answer these questions fairly, one must consider some surprising news: small farms are actually surviving and even flourishing to an extent no one guessed 20 or 30 years ago. The United States had 6 million farms in 1944, and by 1970 that number had declined to 3 million, a rate of loss of almost 3 percent each year. If the pattern had held, we would have just over a million farms today. Instead we have 2.1 million, and the rate of decline has slowed to a trickle, with today's total essentially the same as that of 1990. What made this moderation of the trend possible? In large part, the integration of the farm and nonfarm labor markets. Yes, all the improvements over the last 75 years in rural transportation, communications and education first led to an accelerated movement of people from farm to city. But a more recent trend has seen many people commuting to nonfarm jobs while they remain living on the farm. According to the Agriculture Department, nonfarm jobs now account for more than 90 percent of farm households' incomes. In many cases, one family member focuses on the farming enterprise while others - spouses, siblings, grown children - work off the farm. In other situations, no one works full-time at farming - the operation is a side job for the entire family, in some cases a refuge from urban stresses. While complete statistics are hard to come by, the data indicate that these arrangements are proving viable to an extent far greater than was thought possible 30 years ago. Government statistics show that the rise of these nontraditional farms has been accompanied by a marked improvement in the economic condition of the agricultural population. Until the 1960's, farm household incomes remained stubbornly below those of nonfarm households, averaging about 60 percent of the nonfarm average. But, beginning in the 1960's, relative farm incomes began to rise - and by 1990 they had achieved income parity with the rest of Americans. The Agriculture Department's latest estimate, for 2003, is that farm households had average incomes 15 percent higher than average nonfarm levels. Federal figures show that both large farms and small ones are increasing as a fraction of all farms, with the proportion of mid-size farms decreasing. This would lead one to expect a rise in income inequality among farm households, with the middle-sized farmers falling behind. So perhaps the biggest surprise is that incomes are actually becoming more equal. Consider the relative net income of farmers classified by the Agriculture Department as at the bottom fifth in terms of gross sales and government subsidies. In 1950 they made about a third less than did the average farm household. But by the mid-1990's, those farmers in the bottom fifth were within 10 percent of the national average. Similarly, in 1950 the top 5 percent of farmers had two and a half times the average farm household's income; this figure was reduced to one and a third times as much by the mid-1990's. So how should this good news change our thinking about the proposed changes in federal payments? First, the new limits are unlikely to give any significant boost to small farms. Large farms will likely go on producing just as much as they are producing now, because these payments are almost entirely fixed per farm, and do not vary with the amount the farm produces. So the market conditions facing small farms will not improve. On the other hand, if large farms produce less of the bulk program crops that are subject to the limits (cotton and rice are the main ones affected), they will produce something else on their land, and that something else may well be the high-value crops that are more prevalent on today's small farms than on large ones. As to the question of whether it is good policy to promote small farms, the main reasons advocates give are that small farming makes rural areas more vital by resulting in more people per square mile, and that small farms are closer to the bucolic ideal so many of us grew up with. While that traditional farming image has as much appeal in agriculture as in many other endeavors, and while I share the sentiment, I have to side with those who question the wisdom of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize it. Large farms simply produce commodities at lower cost, and shouldn't be thought the worse for it. After all, special subsidies for smaller stores in country towns would help them compete with Wal-Mart, too, but even the chain's greatest enemies haven't suggested such a policy. The promising trends in terms of farm numbers, increasing incomes and decreasing inequality don't mean there are no economic problems in American agriculture. But they do mean that the industrialization of agriculture has not crowded out small, specialized farm operations. Even in the age of Monsanto and Cargill, there is still a role for Mom and Pop. Bruce Gardner, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland, is the author of "American Agriculture in the 20th Century: How It Flourished and What It Cost." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:57:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:57:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Harold Brooks-Baker, 71, U.S. Royal Watcher, Dies Message-ID: International > Europe > Harold Brooks-Baker, 71, U.S. Royal Watcher, Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/international/europe/08brooks-baker.html 5.3.8 By [1]MARGALIT FOX Harold Brooks-Baker, an American authority on British nobility who was a sought-after commentator on the doings - serious, scandalous or merely ridiculous - of the British royal family, died on Saturday in London. He was 71 and had lived in London for more than 30 years. The cause was complications of post-polio syndrome and a fall he suffered in November, his daughter Natasha said. At the time of his death, Mr. Brooks-Baker was publishing director of Burke's Peerage Partnership, a publishing and genealogy concern. He was previously a managing director of Debrett's Peerage. Regularly quoted by reporters, Mr. Brooks-Baker's opinions on the British monarchy were characteristically American in their no-holds-barred approach. On Diana, Princess of Wales: "She shows herself to be very mentally disturbed and a very sad person who has been badly treated by the world." On Prince Harry: "I think that the difficulty will come a few years from now when there isn't the place for him any more than there was for Princess Margaret." On Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York: "If you sat her next to Henry VIII, you would have an interesting time deciding who was the most vulgar." An adroit publicist, Mr. Brooks-Baker often beat the reporters to the punch, issuing a public statement in response to the slightest royal transgression. This kept him extremely busy. Mr. Brooks-Baker recently gave his blessing to the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, calling Queen Elizabeth's decision not to attend the ceremony "an outrage." He added, "This has got to stop, otherwise they will ruin the whole fabric of the monarchy." Harold Brooks Baker was born in Washington on Nov. 16, 1933, the son of Silas Baker and the former Elizabeth Lambert. He earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford and later went to Europe as a bond trader, settling in London in the late 1960's. There, Mr. Brooks-Baker, who along the way had acquired a hyphen, completed the kind of personal reinvention that recalls the American-born, Europe-besotted heroes of Henry James. Always called Brookie, he was described by The New York Times in 1978 as "European in tastes and speech, American in drive." In 1976, Mr. Brooks-Baker and several partners took over Debrett's Peerage, a competitor of Burke's. A master of marketing, Mr. Brooks-Baker quickly shook things up. In 1978, for instance, Debrett's published "The English Gentleman," a satirical advice book. As paraphrased by The New York Times, the book counseled that a gentleman "does not drive a Rolls-Royce unless it is very old and smells of dogs," and always "speaks to the engineer before a train trip because of an old belief that he owns the railroad." Mr. Brooks-Baker moved to Burke's in 1984. At the time, the company was in poor financial condition. It had already sold the publication rights to its flagship reference work, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, first published in 1826, some years before. (Now in its 107th edition, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage is published by Burke's Peerage and Gentry, which is not connected to Mr. Brooks-Baker's company.) At Burke's, Mr. Brooks-Baker oversaw the company's other titles, among them "Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of America." (The current President Bush, Mr. Brooks-Baker said, is a 13th cousin to the current Queen Elizabeth.) The company also traces ancestries and designs coats of arms for the already titled and the merely wistful. Mr. Brooks-Baker's first marriage, to Ir?ne du Luart de la Rochefoucauld , ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, the former Catherine Neville Rolfe; a brother, Lambert Baker, of DeLand, Fla.; two daughters from his first marriage, Nadia Loudon and Natasha, and a stepdaughter, Arabella Neville Rolfe, all of London; and one grandchild. For very wistful customers with very deep pockets, Mr. Brooks-Baker's company occasionally offered blue blood for purchase. (A Scottish baronial title, land included, costs ?50,000 to ?100,000, according to the company's Web site.) As he told The New York Times in 1990, such a sought-after commodity came on the market only rarely. "There are only three ways titles can be acquired," Mr. Brooks-Baker explained. "Fighting a war, sex or buying." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=MARGALIT%20FOX&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=MARGALIT%20FOX&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:58:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:58:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Six Figures? Not Enough! Message-ID: Fashion & Style > Six Figures? Not Enough! http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/fashion/27200K.html February 27, 2005 By ALEX WILLIAMS MAUREEN SPILLANE, an executive at a shoe and handbag maker in New York, always thought a $100,000 salary equaled serious success. Like many professional people, however, when she finally broke the barrier, she was a bit deflated to learn that it was hardly salvation. It still took her several years of "hoarding away" and avoiding standard Manhattan indulgences - fancy food, fancy clothing - in order to afford a down payment on a one-bedroom fixer-upper on the Upper West Side. "It's not the big shiny number that you think about when you first get out of college," said Ms. Spillane, who is in her mid-30's. "Don't get me wrong, I'm making a nice living, I enjoy what I do. I'm certainly in a better position than a lot of people." "But Melania and I don't shop in the same places, let me tell you," she said, referring to the latest Mrs. Trump, Melania Knauss. "I'm not jetting off to the Bahamas." There was a time not long ago when earning six figures was a significant milestone among upwardly mobile professionals. If you were young and single in one of the nation's big cities, you could live in a building with a doorman, drive a European car, eat at fine restaurants and vacation in Jackson Hole. For married people it meant a suburban home and college savings accounts for the children. Beyond the lifestyle, $100,000 was a psychic achievement; it meant joining the meritocratic elite. The prospect of "six figures" kept white-collar workers toiling for 20 years, confident that hard work would be rewarded and that the American social contract was securely in place. Certainly $100,000, which is more than twice the national median household income of $43,527, is still a princely wage in most of the country, placing you in the top 5.2 percent of American wage earners with full-time jobs, according to the 2000 census. Even in New York City, only 7.5 percent of full-time workers make that much. But $100,000 isn't what it used to be. It has been devalued, in the practical sense by inflation and psychologically because it is now a relatively common salary for newcomers in fields like law and banking. For today's executive strivers in the more affluent cities, there is a new grail: $200,000. "It's the new black," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president in charge of compensation at [1]Salary.com, an online career service based in Needham, Mass., that tracks executive pay. "There's a lot of bunching between $100,000 and $150,000. That's the vast majority of the people who used to aspire to $100,000. Now they are aspiring to $200,000 or $250,000." "It's the players," he added, echoing a common sentiment, "who make $200,000." While a salary of $100,000 is still "rarefied," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington in charge of its living standards program, in many regions "it's not uncommon for households in that range to feel pinched." Housing in cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco can cost three or four times that of the national median, Mr. Bernstein said, to say nothing of the escalating prices of big-ticket items like education and health care. "There are certainly cities in this country where it takes an income of a couple of hundred thousand dollars to start to genuinely feel affluent," he said. Not for nothing did Senator John Kerry propose rolling back tax cuts during the presidential debates on those earning more than $200,000, symbolic of "the rich." Not for nothing did the Nestl? candy company change the name some years back of its $100,000 bar. It is now the 100 Grand bar. It seems $100,000 doesn't summon the old magic. Passing the $200,000 threshold these days appears to be a ticket to the good life much in the same way that crossing the hallowed $100,000 barrier was during the prime yuppie years of the 1980's. About 1.9 million tax filers (or less than 2 percent) reported gross adjusted incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 in 2002, the last year for which the Internal Revenue Service has compiled statistics. The year a similar percent of tax filers had incomes between $100,000 and $200,000 was in 1987. In the 1985 film "Lost in America," Albert Brooks's character was able to build up a big enough nest egg as a $100,000-a-year advertising executive that he could abandon the white-collar life before he turned 40 to travel the country in a luxury motor home with his wife. "Twenty years ago a person would have thought that if they were making $100,000 they were rolling in the dough," said Karen Ramsey, a certified financial planner in Seattle. Now, she said, clients "will be making $100,000, $120,000, and they'll be looking at me and saying: 'We're just getting our kids through school. If we have any left over for a vacation, we're lucky.' " Adjusted for cost-of-living inflation in the New York metropolitan region, a $100,000 income in 1987 would be worth about $170,000 today. And yet it still seems that another $30,000 or more is needed to be a "player." Part of the explanation may be the almost perverse escalation in the price of commodities favored by upwardly mobile professionals: whether $170 Diesel jeans, which have replaced $30 Levis; $3.95 lattes from Starbucks versus 25-cent coffee from a deli; or the must-have $449 iPod that supplanted the must-have $75 Sony Walkman of the Reagan years. When Patricia Belden, a 39-year-old developer of affordable housing in Boston, was a student at Cornell University in the mid-80's, she dreamed of a six-figure income. "I would be satisfied with the life that would buy," she recalled thinking. Ms. Belden passed that milestone and is not complaining. But when she and her husband, a violin maker, recently shopped for a home in Boston for themselves and their newborn son, they settled for a loft in the city's trendy South End. Sounds chic, Ms. Belden allowed, except the family has subdivided a space the size of a large studio into a three-bedroom apartment, what she calls "a ranch house in the sky." The couple's big extravagance was a permanent parking space for $20,000. "My father told me, 'Honey, don't worry, we paid $20,000 for our first parking space,' " Ms. Belden said. "But it came with a house and a garage." Compensation experts said the expectations of many white-collar workers were turbocharged in the late 1990's, during the long run-up in the stock market and the high-tech boom. "Only in the latter half of the 90's did starting salaries break $100,000 a year," explained Hussam Hamadeh, a co-founder of Vault.com Inc., a Web-based career services company. "At that point $100,000 stopped being an eye-popping salary and started to become routine. After all, if 'everyone you know' is making at least $100,000 a year, there's nothing very exceptional about it." By the time professionals in certain high-earning fields are in their mid- or late 30's, they're at least within striking range of the new $200,000 goal. A senior creative executive at a major New York ad agency, for example, earns about $170,000, according to salary statistics compiled by Vault. A senior vice president at a major public relations firm typically earns up to $160,000, with perhaps another $15,000 in bonuses. In the high-technology field the majority of "e-commerce marketing directors" surveyed by Salary.com earned $120,000 to $150,000 in total cash compensation. The top quarter, however, earned an average of $204,800. The legal profession is perhaps the most clear-cut example of changing expectations due to changing pay scales. "There was a time when if you were making $100,000, you were a partner, and that wasn't that long ago," explained Jon Lindsey, a managing partner of Major, Hagen & Africa, a national legal recruiting firm. "In New York they now look at $100,000 as a living wage, but not much more." Last year the median base salary for first-year associates at firms with more than 501 lawyers was $120,000, moving up to $185,000 for eighth-year associates, according to figures from the National Association for Law Placement. Noble Black, 29, hardly considers himself living it up. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia a few years ago, moved to New York and took a job in securities law in the Manhattan office of the firm McKee Nelson. His starting salary, he said, was $135,000. "You think you're going to be making all this money, but it all goes so quickly," said Mr. Black, who left after a few years to work as a consultant to the television show "The Apprentice" (and is now an associate real estate broker for the Corcoran Group in New York). Mr. Black didn't find much sympathy from his family back in Mississippi, where $100,000 is still a country club income. "You go home and tell them how much you're making, and they think you're doing so well, but then you tell them about the rent," he said, recalling the $4,650 monthly rent for the apartment he shared with a friend in Symphony House, near Columbus Circle. It was only when his annual compensation began to approach the new affluence threshold that he began to feel he was building real equity. "A couple of years making close to $200,000 puts you into that good place," Mr. Black said. Robert H. Frank, an economist at Cornell said: "A lot of people think this is about spoiled people who can't keep up with the Joneses, but it's really deeper than that. There's a consumption standard that every group has. If you ask, 'How am I doing?,' it's always, 'Compared to what?' And people hardly ever look down." If they did, it might seem a bit odd to see a number they had spent much of their lives staring up at longingly. Then again, Mr. Coleman of Salary.com is not sure people will ever quite strive for the $200,000 life in quite the specific way they dreamed of a $100,000 one. The latter "is a natural milestone," he said. "It's a power of 10." "One hundred thousand is magical because it is 100 - 100 is perfect, remember when you're in school?" he said. The real point, perhaps, is the dreaming itself, the sense among many professionals that there needs to be some light flickering on the horizon to get you through the long hours and the stress of a career. In that sense, Mr. Coleman said, the dream salary of today is the same as it's always been. "It's beyond reasonable expectation," he said, "but not beyond hope." References 1. http://Salary.com/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 15:58:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:58:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Stars on Diet: Weight Is Limited to 150 Suns, Researchers Find Message-ID: Science > Space & Cosmos > Stars on Diet: Weight Is Limited to 150 Suns, Researchers Find http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/science/space/10star.html March 10, 2005 By [1]WARREN E. LEARY WASHINGTON, March 9 - The universe is full of stars, but there appear to be few really fat ones. Astronomers said Wednesday that there seemed to be a stellar weight limit equivalent to 150 Suns, but no bigger. Using the Hubble Space Telescope to examine one of the densest clusters of stars in the Milky Way, which should have been brimming with fat stars, astronomers said they found a sharp cutoff in the mass of bodies that form in this stellar nursery. In examining hundreds of stars in the dense Arches cluster, Dr. Donald F. Figer and colleagues at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said they could not find any larger than 130 solar masses, or equal to the mass of 130 of our Suns. "We are surprised at this result because we expected to find stars up to 500 to 1,000 times more massive than our Sun," Dr. Figer said. At a telephone news conference organized by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, experts called the findings a step to understanding star formation. Dr. Sally Oey of the University of Michigan said that the findings, published in the March 10 issue of the journal Nature, were consistent with studies of smaller star clusters in our galaxy and observations she and colleagues had conducted of a huge star cluster in a galactic neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The denser a cluster, the better the chance of finding giant stars, Dr. Oey said. The Arches cluster that Dr. Figer examined, she said, "is the richest cluster in our galaxy." Because of this, astronomers said, it is highly unlikely that they would find superheavy stars elsewhere. Astronomers have been uncertain about how massive a star can grow before it cannot hold itself together and blows apart. Consequently, theories have predicted that stars can be 100 to 1,000 times more massive than the Sun. It has been easier to predict a lower weight limit for stars, experts said, because objects less than one-tenth the mass of our Sun are not heavy enough to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores to shine. "These are fantastic findings," Dr. Stanford E. Woosley of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said of Dr. Figer's work. Giant stars, at more than 100 solar masses, are important to galaxies and the universe because their furious combustion produces many important elements to form planets and other bodies like carbon, oxygen, sodium and neon, Dr. Woosley said. The big stars also are short-lived, he said, with no star more than 100 solar masses lasting more than three million years because they consume their fuel so rapidly. The Sun, by contrast, is 4.55 billion years old and expected to last 5 billion more years before running out of fuel. In mass, the Sun is equal to 300,000 planets the size of the Earth. Dr. Figer said that although he found no star bigger than 130 solar masses in his observations, he set the upper limit for a big star at 150 solar masses to be conservative. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=WARREN%20E.%20LEARY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=WARREN%20E.%20LEARY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:00:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:00:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Search Engines Build a Better Mousetrap Message-ID: Technology > Circuits > Search Engines Build a Better Mousetrap http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/technology/circuits/10sear.html March 10, 2005 By [1]TIM GNATEK [2]GOOGLE has so firmly staked out its place as the Internet search-engine leader that it has even earned a place as a verb in the English lexicon. Paradoxically, because of its very popularity, there may be no better time to try something different. Google's success has forced competitors like [3]Yahoo, MSN Search and [4]Ask Jeeves to hustle with releasing new product features, search controls and improved behind-the-scenes programming. The resulting bonanza of tools brings more search capabilities, presented more intuitively than the Web has ever seen. But despite the advances, it may be users' search habits that present the biggest barrier to improving the search experience. The pressure to produce isn't just coming from Google. In April 2003, Ask Jeeves ([5]ask.com) added "Smart Search" to its engine, which tops search results for definitive queries like "Who is George Washington?" with answers - like an encyclopedia citation and a photograph - in addition to Web links. That same month, Yahoo provided shortcuts to its own topic pages on popular subjects. The top result for "weather in New York," for instance, leads to Yahoo's New York City weather page, with current conditions and a five-day outlook. Associating database content with queries caught on. AOL Search now provides information from partners' content and its own; these "snapshots" in fields like entertainment, sports and shopping link to editor-selected information from publications within the Time Warner media universe, including Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated. Likewise, MSN Search returns links to information from its own specialized databases, like MSN Music, [6]msnbc.com and [7]Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia. "Having the trusted data, what we know is a right answer, and not asking them to trawl around, that's a huge advantage for the user," said Ramez Naam, MSN Search's group program manager. Ask Jeeves will introduce technology this spring that will further the question-and-answer abilities of its engine. The new feature, Direct Answers From Search, will search across the entire Web, rather than simply from its own database, to find answers to natural-language queries (that is, those phrased as questions rather than mere search terms). "This allows us to answer far more questions than would be possible using editors or structured databases," said Jim Lanzone, the company's senior vice president for search properties. "When you're diving into structured databases, you're limited in your coverage. We want to harvest the power of the 2.5 billion English-language documents in our index, to more broadly answer people's keywords and questions." In comparison, natural-language queries performed with other engines not matching specialized content yield a list of links closely associated with the phrase - with more consideration for popularity than accuracy. For example, searching for "Who invented the Internet?" on Google, Yahoo and MSN yields a top result exonerating Al Gore, rather than crediting computer scientists like J. C. R. Licklider. Other Google rivals are focusing their improvements on offerings that try to bring simplicity and relevance to the search experience. Microsoft's updated MSN Search tries to make searching easier by complementing Boolean terms like "and," "or" and "not" with slide controls (under "results ranking" in Search Builder) that can be adjusted to determine how broadly or narrowly to search. In addition, a "NearMe" button can return results based on proximity to your location; the company says about a quarter of all searches make reference to geographic information. "You're going to see a lot of work in that area," said Oshoma Momoh, the general manager for program management at MSN Search. "If you're querying a news item, we'll show it to you. Or answers from real people. If we can guess that a person is shopping, maybe we can give you a few simple tools that might help you with that task, rather than guessing, 'Do I click on this?' " Also of recent note, [8]Amazon's A9 search engine builds on the ability to search by supplementing Web data with its own information. For example, the A9 Yellow Pages service, introduced in late January, not only searches for and provides directions to local businesses, but with the "Block View" feature actually displays a photo of the business in the context of its neighborhood, with millions of images up and down the streets of a dozen cities including New York, Atlanta, San Francisco and Seattle. "This is more than the hidden Web; it didn't even exist before," A9's chief executive, Udi Manber, said. All of the search functions appear as tabs on the side of the page, which can be clicked on or off to suit the search at hand. A movie tab displays movie results related to keyword searches or can hide the Web search altogether, making for a visual searching experience unlike any other. Google itself, of course, has been a major innovator, with features like Google Video, which provides searchable transcripts to television programs, and Google Maps, which offers the kind of dynamic, easily navigable charts once reserved for dedicated map programs. Its release of Gmail last year led the field in offering one gigabyte of e-mail storage and encouraged other Web-based mail services to supersize their mailboxes as well. John Battelle, who maintains a Web log about search technology (Searchblog, at [9]battellemedia.com), said innovations like "Block View" showed how dynamically the search companies were taking advantage of new technologies - and new economies. "In 1997 you would have had to spend tens of billions, and it wouldn't have made any sense," Mr. Battelle said. "Now, you can strap a camera and G.P.S. on a computer and drive down the street taking pictures. It's a neat idea, and it didn't cost the farm to try. Now imagine that across the whole Web - that's what's happening." The continuing efforts to improve the search experience are likely to focus on more readily anticipating just what the user is looking for - no more, no less - and making the results easier to navigate. "The top frustrations among searchers are that the results aren't comprehensive enough: the results were difficult to sort through, and, at times, irrelevant," said Dr. Bonny Brown, director of research at [10]Keynote Systems, which tracks Web site performance. "Any time a site thinks for customers, people always appreciate that," Dr. Brown said. "A site that can work with the reality and the psychology of humans, that is really how you're going to please customers." According to another recent report on search conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, it is human behavior that may need to change most before the average Internet user can take advantage of all that search has to offer. Dr. Deborah Fallows, who wrote the Pew report, feels that search can improve across the board when the majority of search users start to pose the kinds of refined queries that services expect. To make her point, Dr. Fallows pointed to the most popular search terms: keywords like "Paris Hilton," "poker" and "taxes," which appear in the top 10 searches at Lycos. What she feels will begin to improve search across the board is a greater concentration on changing the habits of this majority of search users. "They always get an answer because they aren't asking very hard questions," she said. "What is remarkable in the data is that two-thirds of Internet users are quite na?ve and clueless about what they're doing with search engines," Dr. Fallows said. "While so many people use the Internet, only a third are really working with it and using it much more in their daily lives." [11]Copyright 2005 [12]The New York Times Company | [13]Home | [14]Privacy Policy | [15]Search | [16]Corrections | [17]RSS | [18]Help | [19]Back to Top References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIM%20GNATEK&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIM%20GNATEK&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=GOOG 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=YHOO 4. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=ASKJ 5. http://ask.com/ 6. http://msnbc.com/ 7. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT 8. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=AMZN 9. http://battellemedia.com/ 10. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=KEYN From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:01:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:01:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: College Expels Student Who Advocated Corporal Punishment Message-ID: New York Region > College Expels Student Who Advocated Corporal Punishment http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/nyregion/10paddle.html March 10, 2005 By PATRICK D. HEALY SYRACUSE, March 8 - As a substitute teacher in the public schools here, Scott McConnell says students are often annoyed that he does not let them goof off in class. Yet he was not prepared for the sixth grader who walked up to his desk in November, handed in an assignment, and then swore at him. The profanity transported him back to his own days at Robert E. Lee Elementary School in Oklahoma in the 1980's, when there was a swift solution for wiseacres: the paddle. "It was a footlong piece of wood, and hung on every classroom wall like a symbol, a strong Christian symbol," said Mr. McConnell, who is 26. "Nobody wanted that paddle to come down." He said he had been a disruptive student, and routinely mouthed off until his fourth-grade teacher finally gave him three whacks to the backside. Physically, it did not hurt. But he felt humiliated and humbled. "I never wanted that again," Mr. McConnell recalled. "It was good for me." Supporting corporal punishment is one thing; advocating it is another, as Mr. McConnell recently learned. Studying for a graduate teaching degree at Le Moyne College, he wrote in a paper last fall that "corporal punishment has a place in the classroom." His teacher gave the paper an A-minus and wrote, "Interesting ideas - I've shared these with Dr. Leogrande," referring to Cathy Leogrande, who oversaw the college's graduate program. Unknown to Mr. McConnell, his view of discipline became a subject of discussion among Le Moyne officials. Five days before the spring semester began in January, Mr. McConnell learned that he had been dismissed from Le Moyne, a Jesuit college. "I have grave concerns regarding the mismatch between your personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals," Dr. Leogrande wrote in a letter, according to a copy provided by Mr. McConnell. "Your registration for spring 2005 courses has been withdrawn." Dr. Leogrande offered to meet with Mr. McConnell, and concluded, "Best wishes in your future endeavors." If the letter stunned Mr. McConnell, the "best wishes" part turned him into a campaigner. A mild-mannered former private in the Army, Mr. McConnell has taken up a free-speech banner with a tireless intensity, casting himself as a transplant from a conservative state abused by political correctness in more liberal New York. He also said that because he is an evangelical Christian, his views about sparing the rod and spoiling the child flowed partly from the Bible, and that Le Moyne was "spitting on that." He is working with First Amendment groups to try to pressure Le Moyne into apologizing and reinstating him, and is considering legal action as well as a formal appeal to the college. He says Le Moyne misconstrued his views: he believes children should not be paddled without their parents' permission. He said that even then, the principal, as the school's head disciplinarian, should deliver the punishment. "Judges live in the real world, and I think they would see that Scott got an A-minus on his paper and was expressing views on a campus that supports academic freedom," said David French, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group based in Philadelphia that is supporting Mr. McConnell. "It's hard to see a court looking kindly on Scott's expulsion." Dr. Leogrande did not respond to telephone messages. Le Moyne's provost, John Smarrelli, said the college had the right as a private institution to take action against Mr. McConnell because educators had grave concerns about his qualifications to teach under state law. New York is one of 28 states that ban corporal punishment; most of those that allow it are in the South and West. Most states did not ban corporal punishment until the late 1980's, after parents, educators, and other advocates began pressing for the laws. More than 342,000 students received corporal punishment in the 1999-2000 school year, in the most recent figures from the federal Education Department. Because it has an accredited school of education, moreover, Le Moyne officials said that the college was required to pledge that its graduates will be effective and law-abiding teachers who will foster a healthy classroom environment. "We have a responsibility to certify people who will be in accordance with New York State law and the rules of our accrediting agencies," Mr. Smarrelli said. In Mr. McConnell's case, he said, "We had evidence that led us to the contrary." Mr. McConnell said that he had been only conditionally admitted to the graduate program; typically, such students earn full admission by earning good grades and meeting other requirements. Mr. McConnell added that he had earned mostly A's and his fate rested largely on his November paper. Mr. Smarrelli said that the paper itself was "legitimate" and "reasonable," because the assignment sought Mr. McConnell's plan for managing a classroom. Yet Mr. McConnell's views were clearly not in the mainstream of most teachers' colleges. For example, many educators focus on nurturing students' self-esteem, but Mr. McConnell scoffed at that idea in his paper. He said he would not favor some students over others, regardless of any special needs some might have. "I will help the child understand that respect of authority figures is more important than their self-esteem," he wrote. Some professors and college officials were also concerned that Mr. McConnell wrote that he opposed multiculturalism, a teaching method that places emphasis on non-Western cultures. In an interview, Mr. McConnell said he disliked "anti-American multiculturalism," and gave as an example a short story on the Sept. 11 attacks intended for classroom use. The story, published in a teachers' magazine in 2002 by the National Council for the Social Studies, was about young American boys teasing an Iraqi boy named Osama. Mr. Smarrelli said Le Moyne had to ensure that its students had the judgment, aptitude, temperament and other skills to succeed in challenging their students. But Dr. Smarrelli acknowledged that Le Moyne had not warned students like Mr. McConnell that they could be removed for expressing controversial beliefs, nor had the college said that education students must oppose corporal punishment or support multiculturalism. Joseph P. Frey, the assistant commissioner for quality assurance in the New York State Education Department, who monitors colleges and graduate schools, said he could not offer an opinion on the McConnell case because he did not know the specifics. Mr. Frey said: "One valid question is, 'Is the paper an academic exercise in terms of theories of education, or is it a belief that this is how Mr. McConnell will carry out corporal punishment in the classroom no matter what?' " Mr. Frey added, however, that private colleges have broad latitude in accepting or rejecting students. And he said that graduate education schools might face a threat to their accreditation, or legal action by school districts, if they produce teachers who fall into trouble. During an interview at the kitchen table in the comfortable suburban home he shares with his wife, Liz, a dentist, Mr. McConnell said he had wanted to instill civic virtues in students in the same way his teachers had in him. As a child, he moved from Texas to Florida and then to Oklahoma as his mother pursued failed marriages to "bad men," he said. Teachers became a source of stability and life lessons. They taught him to read, to respect others, and to serve his country by inspiring him to join the Army. "Because I didn't talk and think the same way that Le Moyne did, because I didn't drink their Kool-Aid, I received the ultimate punishment," Mr. McConnell said. "Corporal punishment is nothing compared to this." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:02:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:02:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTDBR: An Enigmatic Author Who Can Be Addictive Message-ID: An Enigmatic Author Who Can Be Addictive New York Times Daily Book Review, 5.3.11 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/books/11sala.html By [1]JULIE SALAMON When Gregory Rabassa talks about Clarice Lispector, it is evident that his infatuation with her isn't purely literary. "Those blue eyes, right out of Thomas Mann, 'The Magic Mountain,' " he sighed, during a recent interview. "She was so beautiful." Mr. Rabassa is a renowned translator, of Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, Jorge Amado and Mario Vargas Llosa - and of Lispector, who became, in the mid-20th century, one of Brazil's most influential writers, described as the Kafka of Latin American fiction. Her works have been translated into film and dance and she is famous in literary circles. But she is almost unknown outside of them, particularly in the United States, where all her books combined sell a few thousand copies a year, mainly in Latin American studies courses on college campuses. After her death from cancer in 1977, at 56 (more or less), she acquired the mystique of a character she might have created: a beautiful woman who was intense, philosophical, idiosyncratic, tragic - and murky on mundane facts like her exact date of birth. Like her writing, which is blunt and pungent yet also intellectual and abstract, she is hard to pin down. Mr. Rabassa will be discussing the enigmatic Lispector and her work this Sunday at the Center for Jewish History, along with Earl Fitz, a professor of comparative literature at Vanderbilt University. In his memoir, "If This Be Treason," due out next month from New Directions, Mr. Rabassa, who was born in Yonkers in 1922, describes his first encounter with Lispector, 40 years ago, at a conference on Brazilian literature in Texas. "I was flabbergasted to meet that rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf," he recalls. Lispector was rarefied in other ways. She was born in Ukraine to Jewish parents, but immigrated as a baby to Brazil. Her mother died when she was 9. Though she and her two older sisters were raised as Jews, she identified herself as a Brazilian, and called Portuguese the language of her soul. For years she was a diplomat's wife, traveling the world until the marriage ended and she returned to Brazil with the couple's two sons. She wrote an intimate newspaper column, yet regarded herself as a recluse. She was beautiful, yes, then badly scarred by a fire started when she went to bed smoking a cigarette. By the time she died she had written nine novels, eight collections of short stories, four works for children and a Portuguese translation of Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Lispector grappled with contradictions as she searched for nothing less than the essential meaning of human existence. For her, however, basic facts were no less elusive. "She was an incorrigible liar," said Professor Fitz, a former student of Mr. Rabassa, who says he has been obsessed with the writer and her work since he read her novel "The Apple in the Dark" in the spring of 1971. He has devoted much of his academic career to Lispector, having written two books about her, and is now working on a third in which she figures prominently. "She wanted to be thought of as a writer though she pretended she wasn't a professional," he said. "She told different people different things about what town she lived in and when she was born. She wore a lot of masks, and when she would take one off you'd think she was revealing something, but all she was revealing was another mask." This inability - or refusal - to settle on a single identity is reflected in Lispector's work, which churns with life but offers few resolutions. Her characters are mostly middle-class women contending with unhappy marriages, frustrated love affairs, strong-willed children, stifled ambition, sexual ambiguity. "Her characters lack a certain kind of cohesiveness and even when they have cohesiveness it doesn't lead to happiness," Professor Fitz said. She could also be very funny, most pointedly in her "cr?nicas," newspaper columns (literally "chronicles") that she published in the Saturday edition of a national daily newspaper, O Jornal do Brasil, from August 1967 until December 1973. (A fine sampling is available in English in "Selected Cr?nicas," published by New Directions and translated by Giovanni Pontiero.) This genre is a Brazilian specialty, a newspaper column that allows poets and writers wide latitude. They can write a kind of diary one week, an essay the next, a story or simply a random thought. Think of them as literary blogs, but on newsprint. Lispector began writing cr?nicas to make money, but also thrived in this idiosyncratic form, which gave rise to profound reflection as well as amusing riffs on social convention and family relations. "When mothers of Russian descent start to kiss their children, instead of being content with one kiss they want to give them 40," she wrote. "I tried to explain this to one of my sons but he told me I was just looking for an excuse to justify all those kisses." These newspaper columns frequently offered their readers a more potent brew, as jolting as Brazilian coffee. Lispector's imagery could be intense, mystical and often violent, seeming sometimes like the brilliant ravings of a madwoman. One of her shortest cr?nicas, at least as reprinted in the book, was called "A Challenge for the Psychoanalysts." The entire story went like this: "I dreamed that a fish was taking its clothes off and remained naked." Perhaps it is a fitting paradox for this paradoxical writer to be presented by the Center for Jewish History, given her apparent ambivalence toward the religion of her family. The Lispectors landed not in southern Brazil, where most Jews settled, but in the northeast, the poorest region of the country, moving to Rio de Janeiro only when Clarice was 12. Her parents spoke Yiddish and she attended Hebrew school, but the many spiritual references in her work tend to be Christian or nondenominational. She lived with her diplomat-husband in Europe just after World War II, yet she avoided references to the Holocaust. "She didn't deny her Jewishness, but she didn't push it," said Moacyr Scliar, the Brazilian-Jewish novelist whose work has dealt explicitly with the Jewish Diaspora. "The reason why this happened is still a subject of discussion here in Brazil." Speaking by telephone from his home in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Mr. Scliar speculated on possible reasons for the absence of Jewish characters and themes from Lispector's work. "At that time there was not anti-Semitism in Brazil but some rejection of foreign people, not only in relationship to Jews but also Italians, Germans and Russians," he said. "Also, she was married to a diplomat. It was not very good for this husband of Clarice's to be married to a Jewish woman who was not Brazilian." Yet Mr. Scliar recalled a conversation he had had with Lispector just before she went to a television station for an interview. "I was much younger than she, but she knew my work and asked about my literature, my Jewishness," he said. "I told her I like to write about Jewish subjects and that I didn't feel humiliated or inferior because of this. She said, 'I wish I could write about those subjects.' But she didn't explain what she meant by that." In her final book, a novella called "The Hour of the Star," Lispector named her main character Macab?a, which many scholars believe refers to the Maccabees, the fierce Jewish warriors celebrated for defeating the Hellenizing Syrians. Lispector's Macab?a is hardly heroic by Bible-story standards. She is a poor young woman from the backwoods of Brazil, who comes to the slums of Rio with big dreams but can't avoid the kind of grim fate Lispector writes for so many of her characters. Yet for Lispector, who died the year the novel was published, Macab?a's struggles are part of a lyrical, existential dance between imagination and reality. After Macab?a's story is finished, Lispector offers a quick, meditative postscript on life and death: "And now - now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me? "Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes." In her introduction to a 1989 translation of "Soulstorm," a collection of Lispector's short stories, Grace Paley ruminated on possible connections between Lispector's Ukrainian-Jewish origins and her writing. She concluded: "I thought at one point in my reading that there was some longing for Europe, the Old World, but decided I was wrong. It was simply longing." For Lispector, that longing was bound to language as vitally as plasma to blood. Sunday's program at the Center for Jewish History will include the screening of a television interview with Lispector from February 1977, which she asked not to be broadcast until after her death. She told the interviewer, "When I am not writing, I am dead." Yet as she herself observed so many times, the meaning of death is ephemeral. Lispector died shortly after that interview, but almost 30 years later her work remains in season. "The Cultural Politics of Dislocation: Clarice Lispector and Ways of Being Jewish in Brazil" will take place on Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, Manhattan. Admission: $15; $10 for students, 65+ and members of Yivo, Americas Society and Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. Box office: (917) 606-8200. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JULIE%20SALAMON&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JULIE%20SALAMON&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:45:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:45:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNET: Viagra ruled kosher for Passover Message-ID: Viagra ruled kosher for Passover http://news.com.com/2061-10786_3-5669580.html?part=rss&tag=5669580&subj=news April 13, 2005, 12:54 PM PDT Looks like those who adhere to Passover laws forbidding the consumption of leaven can make an exception when it comes to one type of rising agent--Viagra. According to Wednesday's [75]Jerusalem Post (free registration required), rabbis have found a way to work around the fact that the pills' coating contains leaven, which is to be avoided during [76]Passover to commemorate the story that Jews escaping slavery in ancient Egypt were too hurried to let their bread rise. The Jerusalem Post points out that drugs taken for life-threatening conditions, even if they contain yeast, baking powder or other "hametz," can--and must--be taken during Passover. Since erectile dysfunction can hardly be considered life-threatening, few rabbis approved Viagra's use during the upcoming festival of freedom, which begins on April 23. But after receiving queries from religious men and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals-Israel about whether Viagra can be taken during the holiday, prominent rabbi Mordechai Eliahu ruled that men can take the drug if they purchase special empty capsules made from kosher gelatin before the holiday, then insert the blue pill into the capsule and swallow. Posted by Leslie Katz Leslie Katz is an associate editor who focuses on personal technology. References 75. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpost.com%2Fservlet%2FSatellite%3Fpagename%3DJPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull%26cid%3D1113358703451&siteId=3&oId=2061-10786_3-5669580&ontId=10784&lop=nl.ex 76. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chabad.org%2Fholidays%2Fpassover%2Fpesach.asp%3FAID%3D1827&siteId=3&oId=2061-10786_3-5669580&ontId=10784&lop=nl.ex From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:46:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:46:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LRB: Slavoj Zizek: The Two Totalitarianisms Message-ID: Slavoj Zizek: The Two Totalitarianisms http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n06/print/zize01_.html London Review of Books Vol. 27 No. 6 dated 17 March 2005 A small note - not the stuff of headlines, obviously - appeared in the newspapers on 3 February. In response to a call for the prohibition of the public display of the swastika and other Nazi symbols, a group of conservative members of the European Parliament, mostly from ex-Communist countries, demanded that the same apply to Communist symbols: not only the hammer and sickle, but even the red star. This proposal should not be dismissed lightly: it suggests a deep change in Europe's ideological identity. Till now, to put it straightforwardly, Stalinism hasn't been rejected in the same way as Nazism. We are fully aware of its monstrous aspects, but still find Ostalgie acceptable: you can make Goodbye Lenin!, but Goodbye Hitler! is unthinkable. Why? To take another example: in Germany, many CDs featuring old East German Revolutionary and Party songs, from `Stalin, Freund, Genosse' to `Die Partei hat immer Recht', are easy to find. You would have to look rather harder for a collection of Nazi songs. Even at this anecdotal level, the difference between the Nazi and Stalinist universes is clear, just as it is when we recall that in the Stalinist show trials, the accused had publicly to confess his crimes and give an account of how he came to commit them, whereas the Nazis would never have required a Jew to confess that he was involved in a Jewish plot against the German nation. The reason is clear. Stalinism conceived itself as part of the Enlightenment tradition, according to which, truth being accessible to any rational man, no matter how depraved, everyone must be regarded as responsible for his crimes. But for the Nazis the guilt of the Jews was a fact of their biological constitution: there was no need to prove they were guilty, since they were guilty by virtue of being Jews. In the Stalinist ideological imaginary, universal reason is objectivised in the guise of the inexorable laws of historical progress, and we are all its servants, the leader included. A Nazi leader, having delivered a speech, stood and silently accepted the applause, but under Stalinism, when the obligatory applause exploded at the end of the leader's speech, he stood up and joined in. In Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, Hitler responds to the Nazi salute by raising his hand and saying: `Heil myself!' This is pure humour because it could never have happened in reality, while Stalin effectively did `hail himself' when he joined others in the applause. Consider the fact that, on Stalin's birthday, prisoners would send him congratulatory telegrams from the darkest gulags: it isn't possible to imagine a Jew in Auschwitz sending Hitler such a telegram. It is a tasteless distinction, but it supports the contention that under Stalin, the ruling ideology presupposed a space in which the leader and his subjects could meet as servants of Historical Reason. Under Stalin, all people were, theoretically, equal. We do not find in Nazism any equivalent to the dissident Communists who risked their lives fighting what they perceived as the `bureaucratic deformation' of socialism in the USSR and its empire: there was no one in Nazi Germany who advocated `Nazism with a human face'. Herein lies the flaw (and the bias) of all attempts, such as that of the conservative historian Ernst Nolte, to adopt a neutral position - i.e. to ask why we don't apply the same standards to the Communists as we apply to the Nazis. If Heidegger cannot be pardoned for his flirtation with Nazism, why can Luk?cs and Brecht and others be pardoned for their much longer engagement with Stalinism? This position reduces Nazism to a reaction to, and repetition of, practices already found in Bolshevism - terror, concentration camps, the struggle to the death against political enemies - so that the `original sin' is that of Communism. In the late 1980s, Nolte was Habermas's principal opponent in the so-called Revisionismusstreit, arguing that Nazism should not be regarded as the incomparable evil of the 20th century. Not only did Nazism, reprehensible as it was, appear after Communism: it was an excessive reaction to the Communist threat, and all its horrors were merely copies of those already perpetrated under Soviet Communism. Nolte's idea is that Communism and Nazism share the same totalitarian form, and the difference between them consists only in the difference between the empirical agents which fill their respective structural roles (`Jews' instead of `class enemy'). The usual liberal reaction to Nolte is that he relativises Nazism, reducing it to a secondary echo of the Communist evil. However, even if we leave aside the unhelpful comparison between Communism - a thwarted attempt at liberation - and the radical evil of Nazism, we should still concede Nolte's central point. Nazism was effectively a reaction to the Communist threat; it did effectively replace class struggle with the struggle between Aryans and Jews. What we are dealing with here is displacement in the Freudian sense of the term (Verschiebung): Nazism displaces class struggle onto racial struggle and in doing so obfuscates its true nature. What changes in the passage from Communism to Nazism is a matter of form, and it is in this that the Nazi ideological mystification resides: the political struggle is naturalised as racial conflict, the class antagonism inherent in the social structure reduced to the invasion of a foreign (Jewish) body which disturbs the harmony of the Aryan community. It is not, as Nolte claims, that there is in both cases the same formal antagonistic structure, but that the place of the enemy is filled by a different element (class, race). Class antagonism, unlike racial difference and conflict, is absolutely inherent to and constitutive of the social field; Fascism displaces this essential antagonism. It's appropriate, then, to recognise the tragedy of the October Revolution: both its unique emancipatory potential and the historical necessity of its Stalinist outcome. We should have the honesty to acknowledge that the Stalinist purges were in a way more `irrational' than the Fascist violence: its excess is an unmistakable sign that, in contrast to Fascism, Stalinism was a case of an authentic revolution perverted. Under Fascism, even in Nazi Germany, it was possible to survive, to maintain the appearance of a `normal' everyday life, if one did not involve oneself in any oppositional political activity (and, of course, if one were not Jewish). Under Stalin in the late 1930s, on the other hand, nobody was safe: anyone could be unexpectedly denounced, arrested and shot as a traitor. The irrationality of Nazism was `condensed' in anti-semitism - in its belief in the Jewish plot - while the irrationality of Stalinism pervaded the entire social body. For that reason, Nazi police investigators looked for proofs and traces of active opposition to the regime, whereas Stalin's investigators were happy to fabricate evidence, invent plots etc. We should also admit that we still lack a satisfactory theory of Stalinism. It is, in this respect, a scandal that the Frankfurt School failed to produce a systematic and thorough analysis of the phenomenon. The exceptions are telling: Franz Neumann's Behemoth (1942), which suggested that the three great world-systems - New Deal capitalism, Fascism and Stalinism - tended towards the same bureaucratic, globally organised, `administered' society; Herbert Marcuse's Soviet Marxism (1958), his least passionate book, a strangely neutral analysis of Soviet ideology with no clear commitments; and, finally, in the 1980s, the attempts by some Habermasians who, reflecting on the emerging dissident phenomena, endeavoured to elaborate the notion of civil society as a site of resistance to the Communist regime - interesting, but not a global theory of the specificity of Stalinist totalitarianism. How could a school of Marxist thought that claimed to focus on the conditions of the failure of the emancipatory project abstain from analysing the nightmare of `actually existing socialism'? And was its focus on Fascism not a silent admission of the failure to confront the real trauma? It is here that one has to make a choice. The `pure' liberal attitude towards Leftist and Rightist `totalitarianism' - that they are both bad, based on the intolerance of political and other differences, the rejection of democratic and humanist values etc - is a priori false. It is necessary to take sides and proclaim Fascism fundamentally `worse' than Communism. The alternative, the notion that it is even possible to compare rationally the two totalitarianisms, tends to produce the conclusion - explicit or implicit - that Fascism was the lesser evil, an understandable reaction to the Communist threat. When, in September 2003, Silvio Berlusconi provoked a violent outcry with his observation that Mussolini, unlike Hitler, Stalin or Saddam Hussein, never killed anyone, the true scandal was that, far from being an expression of Berlusconi's idiosyncrasy, his statement was part of an ongoing project to change the terms of a postwar European identity hitherto based on anti-Fascist unity. That is the proper context in which to understand the European conservatives' call for the prohibition of Communist symbols. [14]Slavoj Zizek, a psychoanalyst and dialectical materialist philosopher, is a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana and international co-director of the Centre for Humanities at Birkbeck College in London. References 14. http://www.lrb.co.uk/contribhome.php?get=zize01 From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:47:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:47:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] National Interest: Robert Conquest: Downloading Democracy Message-ID: Robert Conquest: Downloading Democracy http://www.nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=1ABA92EFCD8348688A4EBEB3D69D33EF&tier=4&id=235512C943E7401BA568C1A1CD5F24ED Winter 2004/05, Posted On: 12/22/2004 The common addiction to general words or concepts tends to produce mind blockers or reality distorters. As Clive James has put it, "verbal cleverness, unless its limitations are clearly and continuously seen by its possessors, is an unbeatable way of blurring reality until nothing can be seen at all." "Democracy" is high on the list of blur-begetters--not a weasel word so much as a huge rampaging Kodiak bear of a word. The conception is, of course, Greek. It was a matter of the free vote by the public (though confined to males and citizens). Pericles, praising the Athenian system, is especially proud of the fact that policies are argued about and debated before being put into action, thus, he says, "avoiding the worst thing in the world", which is to rush into action without considering the consequences. And, indeed, the Athenians did discuss and debate, often sensibly. Its faults are almost as obvious as its virtues. And examples are many--for instance, the sentencing of Socrates, who lost votes because of his politically incorrect speech in his own defense. Or the Athenian assembly voting for the death of all the adult males and the enslavement of all the women and children of Mytilene, then regretting the decision and sending a second boat to intercept, just in time, the boat carrying the order. Democracy had the even more grievous result of procuring the ruin of Athens, by voting for the disastrous and pointless expedition to Syracuse against the advice of the more sensible, on being bamboozled by the attractive promises of the destructive demagogue Alcibiades. Even in failure, the thought-fires it set off went on burning. But the views it posed did not really return to Europe and elsewhere until a quarter of a millennium ago. Thus it was not its example but its theory that hit the inexperienced thinkers of the European Enlightenment. Unfortunately, the inheritance was less about the Periclean need for debate than about the need to harness the people (to a succession of rulers). And though the broader forces of real consensual rule began to penetrate, from England and elsewhere (such as the early New England town meetings or those of Swiss rural cantons), they had to compete in the struggle for the vote with inexperienced populations and "philosophical" elites. The revival of the concept of democracy on the European continent saw this huge stress on the demos, the people. They could not in fact match the direct participation of the Athenian demos, but they could be "represented" by any revolutionary regime claiming to do so--often concerned, above all, to repress "enemies of the people." Also, the people, or those of military age, could be conscripted in bulk--the levZe en masse that long defeated more conventional armies. As the 19th century continued, the people could be polled in plebiscites and thus democratically authenticated. Napoleon III, of course, relied on this, and it is clear that he actually had high majority support. In any case, the new orders, democratic or not, had to seek or claim authentication by the people, the masses, the population. Another aspect of premature "democracy" is the adulation of what used to be and might still be called "the city mob" (noted by Aristotle as ochlocracy). In France, of course, in the 1790s, a spate of ideologues turned to the Paris mob, in riot after riot, until the 18th Brumaire, Napoleon's coup of 1799. The ploy was that, as A. E. Housman put it, a capital city with far fewer inhabitants could decide the fate of the country's millions. That democracy is not the only, or inevitable, criterion of social progress is obvious. If free elections give power to a repression of consensuality, they are worse than useless. We will presumably not forget that Hitler came to power in 1933 by election, with mass and militant support. The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 was effected by constitutional intrigues backed by "mass demonstrations." We need hardly mention the "peoples' democracies" and the 90 percent votes they always received. As to later elections, a few years ago there was a fairly authentic one in Algeria. If its results had been honored, it would have replaced the established military rulers with an Islamist political order. This was something like the choice facing Pakistan in 2002. At any rate, it is not a matter on which the simple concepts of democracy and free elections provide us with clear criteria. "Democracy" is often given as the essential definition of Western political culture. At the same time, it is applied to other areas of the world in a formal and misleading way. So we are told to regard more or less uncritically the legitimacy of any regime in which a majority has thus won an election. But "democracy" did not develop or become viable in the West until quite a time after a law-and-liberty polity had emerged. Habeas corpus, the jury system and the rule of law were not products of "democracy", but of a long effort, from medieval times, to curb the power of the English executive. And democracy can only be seen in any positive or laudable sense if it emerges from and is an aspect of the law-and-liberty tradition. Institutions that differ in the United States and the United Kingdom have worked (though forms created in other countries that were theoretically much the same have often collapsed). That is to say, at least two formally different sets of institutions have generally flourished. It seems that the main thing they share is not so much the institutions as the habits of mind, which are far more crucial, and, above all, the acceptance of the traditional rules of the political game. More broadly, in the West it has been tradition that has been generally determinant of public policy. Habituation is more central to a viable constitution than any other factor. Even the Western "democracies" are not exactly models of societies generated by the word, the abstract idea. Still they, or some of them, roughly embody the concept, as we know it, and at least are basically consensual and plural--the product of at best a long evolution. The countries without at least a particle of that background or evolution cannot be expected to become instant democracies; and if they do not live up to it, they will unavoidably be, with their Western sponsors, denounced as failures. Democracy in any Western sense is not easily constructed or imposed. The experience of Haiti should be enough comment. What we can hope for and work for is the emergence, in former rogue or ideomaniac states, of a beginning, a minimum. The new orders must be non-militant, non-expansionist, non-fanatical. And that goes with, or tends to go with, some level of internal tolerance, of plural order, with some real prospect of settling into habit or tradition. Democracy cannot work without a fair level of political and social stability. This implies a certain amount of political apathy. Anything resembling fanaticism, a domination of the normal internal debate by "activists" is plainly to be deplored. And democracy must accept anomalies. As John Paul Jones, the American naval hero, sensibly put it in 1775, "True as may be the political principles for which we are now contending, . . . the ships themselves must be ruled under a system of absolute despotism." The navy, indeed, is an extreme case; no democratization in any real degree makes sense, any more than it does in, say, a university, at the other end of the spectrum. Democratization of undemocratizable institutions is sometimes doubtless the expression of a genuine utopian ideal, as when the Jacobins by these means destroyed the French navy. But more often it is (in the minds of the leading activists, at least) a conscious attempt to ruin the institutions in question, as when the Bolsheviks used the idea to destroy the old Russian army. When this, among other things, enabled them to take power themselves, they were the first to insist on a discipline even more vigorous. In its most important aspect, civic order is that which has created a strong state while still maintaining the principle of consensus that existed in primitive society. Such an aim involves the articulation of a complex political and social order. The strains cannot be eliminated but can be continually adjusted. Political civilization is thus not primarily a matter of the goodwill of leadership or of ideal constitutions. It is, above all, a matter of time in custom. All the major troubles we have had in the last half century have been caused by people who have let politics become a mania. The politician should be a servant and should play a limited role. For what our political culture has stood for (as against the principles of total theorists and abstractionists) is the view of society as a developing and broadening of established liberties and responsibilities, and the belief, founded on experience, that in political and social matters, long-term predictions, however exciting and visionary, seldom work out. Democracy is almost invariably criticized by revolutionaries for the blemishes found in any real example, as compared with the grand abstraction of the mere word. Real politics is full of what it would be charitable to call imperfections. And there are those who, often without knowing it, become apologists and finally accomplices of the closing of society. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist (No. 1), "A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us, that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism, than the latter." But with a civic culture it is more clearly a matter of a basis on which improvements can be made. For a civic society is a society in which the various elements can express themselves politically, in which an articulation exists between those elements at the political level: not a perfect social order, which is in any case unobtainable, but a society that hears, considers and reforms grievances. It is not necessarily democratic, but it contains the possibility of democracy. We cannot predict. The near future teems with urgent problems, with as yet irresoluble balances of force and thought. The law-and-liberty cultures may flourish, and as yet unpromising regions may over a period bring not merely the forms but the habits of consensuality to their populations. Let us hope. Everywhere we always find the human urges to preserve at least a measure of personal autonomy, on the one hand, and to form communal relationships, on the other. It is the latter that tends to get out of hand. To form a national or other such grouping without forfeiting liberties and without generating venom against other such groupings--such is the problem before the world. To cope with it, we need careful thinking, balanced understanding, open yet unservile minds. And this is also why we still need to be careful about the signing of international treaties and the acceptance of international tribunals that appeal to a certain internationalist idealism, but one that needs to be carefully deployed. It is surely right to note that the acceptance of international obligations, and nowadays especially those affecting the policies, interests and traditional rights and powers of the states of established law and liberty, must be preceded by, at the least, negotiation that is careful, skeptical and unaffected by superficial generalities, however attractive at first sight. Permitting international bodies to intrude into the law-and-liberty countries also involves the institutionalization, on purely abstract grounds, of an as yet primitive apparat. A very important trouble with international arrangements of all types has also been that Western governments sign on to policies that have not been properly (or at all) argued or debated by their publics or legislatures. Thus these arrangements are a means of giving more power to their own executive branches and, of course, more power to the international bureaucracies and permanent staff. In particular, the UN, like the EU, approaches "human rights" on the basis of the general high-mindedness of the Continental Enlightenment. Declarations are made, agreements are reached. It is taken for granted that many states--about half the membership of the UN--will not in fact conform. And in the regions where liberty largely prevails, the signatories find their own countries denounced, often by their own citizens. The result is that under abstract human rights definitions, every state in the West that submits to treaties of the human rights sort lays itself open to aggressive litigation. As the late Raymond Aron, who spent so much of his life trying to educate the French intelligentsia, put it, "every known regime is blameworthy if one holds it to an abstract idea of equality over liberty." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:49:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:49:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LRC: Anthony Gregory: The Anti-Revisionist Establishment Message-ID: Anthony Gregory: The Anti-Revisionist Establishment http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory63.html How interesting it is that the mainstream left and neoconservative right are equally appalled by Tom Woods' book, [10]The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. But it makes sense. Unlike many libertarians, I never really thought of the conventional history taught in schools as uniformly "leftist," but rather as simply pro-establishment. Statist liberals and conservatives both have a stake in preserving the historical interpretation that upholds Lincoln, Wilson and FDR as the great heroes in the sweep of American history. Notice one of the frequent critiques you'll hear from the mainstream: So-and-so's view sounds just like the "fringe" right (or the "radical" left)! Those who dare question the conventional wisdom on the Cold War are attacked as being in bed with the "anti-American" left. Those who point out Allied atrocities in World War II are condemned as being sympathetic to the "reactionary" right. A consistent libertarian history will be mischaracterized as being pro-Southern slavery, pro-Kaiser, pro-Nazi, pro-Communist, pro-inequality, pro-racism, pro-"Islamofascist," or pro-anything bad that the U.S. state supposedly expanded to defeat. These attacks often come from people who have adopted the worst possible memes of establishment history. After twelve years of boring, dull and transparently superficial history as taught in the state-school system after learning about the great Christopher Columbus and heroic George Washington many students understandably see leftist revisionism as a refreshing change. Leftist college professors expose many of the crimes of the U.S. military during the 20^th century, vilify various American presidents and big businessmen, attack both American capitalism and the American empire. Its not totally sound analysis, but it is nevertheless more critical and exciting than what is taught earlier. In reaction to leftist academia, a neoconservative historical tradition has blossomed. Offering a treatment of history not nearly as hostile to dead white men, this new interpretation attracts many who, after years of being exposed to leftist revisionism, seek a refutation of the leftism as well as a conceptual restoration of the United States to its unique pedestal of glory and place in the sun. Often, this leads to the worst of all worlds. Coming first from the primary-school mythology and then from leftist revisionism, and therefore never particularly loyal to or even familiar with the classical liberal principles of free markets, individualism, and spontaneous order, leagues of students leave behind the best, most anti-authoritarian and antiwar elements of leftist scholarship, while retaining its essential collectivism, and ultimately come to embrace to U.S. warfare state in all its endeavors in history. Thus we see a vast number of thinkers wield an anti-leftist and yet anti-libertarian view on virtually all American historical events. They end up cherishing the worst Founding Fathers, relishing the violence rather than the libertarian spirit of the American Revolution, making contextual excuses for slavery and the Mexican War in the Antebellum years, adopting Lincoln cultism and praising the defeat of Southern secession, brushing off the massacres of the American Indians, accepting unquestionably the establishment line on Reconstruction, championing both the genuine monopolist robber barons and the Progressive Era politicians with whom they conspired, glorifying Woodrow Wilsons idealism and his "reluctant" propelling of America into World War I, crediting the New Deal for ameliorating the Great Depression and World War II for vanquishing totalitarianism all while slinging mud at Roosevelts detractors, making excuses for such horrors as Japanese Internment, sanctifying the Cold War as an ideological struggle between U.S. democratic capitalism and Communist imperialism, admiring the Great Society, and excusing all recent U.S. military interventions, especially in the Middle East. The neoconservative version of American history sees 230 years of linear progress, with a U.S. state expanding at home and abroad to defeat all manners of evil and tyranny. Mainstream historical conventions are not naturally inclined to bend and adapt in the light of uncomfortable facts, and the New Right interpretation is probably more statist than that of the mainstream left. Whereas the mainstream left is at least somewhat critical of the post-World War II U.S. warfare state, the neoconservative history jumps at the chance to defend every war. And although the mainstream left is certainly more attached to many particulars of the domestic welfare state, the neoconservatives offer no fundamental opposition. The massive regulatory and welfare-state apparatuses that became fastened to the American economy, especially during the New Deal and Great Society, receive louder accolades on the left, but the statist right sees such programs as welfare as needing only tweaking around the edges and new management. Perhaps they see social programs as too robust, but, viewing the state as some sort of paternalistic figure, both for Americans and potentially for the world, cutting welfare programs is seen in the same vein as reducing an allowance to a child, rather than as returning liberty to all those suffering under the system. The New Right historical school is also worse than the mainstream left, in that it poses, much like the New Right in general, as the more politically incorrect, the more patriotic, and the friendlier to the ideas of freedom and free enterprise. But its reactionary political incorrectness is best represented by its willingness to apologize for U.S. crimes that the far left enthusiastically denounces and the mainstream left cautiously questions, and its affinity to "patriotism," "freedom" and "free enterprise" rarely boils down to anything more than an embrace of U.S. nationalism, warmongering and state-capitalism. The New Right scholarship seeks the benefits of positioning itself against the anti-American dogmatism allegedly saturating the left, which in turn allegedly dominates academia, all the while disassociating itself with the less politically correct elements of the right, which supposedly stand in the way of reasonable social engineering and the civilizing "progressive" welfare state. It is quite attractive to those who have rejected the leftist viewpoints, not out of a belief in individualism, but out of a reactionary desire to defend the conservative and militaristic aspects of the U.S. government. The mainstream left historians, if a little better, are not by much. Correctly seeing the enormous potential for social democratic engineering that exists in the framework of the corporate state, they are not nearly as critical of corporatism as those further on the left. They see the Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society as wonderful developments, not as cynical schemes of the ruling class to entrench corporate power and keep the people from revolting, which is how many on the far left regard them. They do not have as much beef with the police state as their "fringe" colleagues on the farther left, nor are they nearly as critical of U.S. wars as they should be and are laughably accused of being by the New Right. So the mainstream forces, both left and right, seek to maintain a story of history most favorable to the status quo. They have small disagreements with each other, but by and large accept the historical case for the expansive U.S. state. It is little wonder that many of the most trenchant and fundamental, however imperfect, critiques of American history, and especially of the largest expansions and projects of the warfare state, appear on the fringes, outside mainstream historical opinion. As truly problematic as the fringes are, with their fair share of kooks and troubling economic and historical theories, they are much less inclined than the mainstream to show enthusiasm for violations of civil liberties, the war on drugs, perpetual warfare, or the corporate-social democratic state as it now functions. You will see the far left and far right more willing to condemn the atrocities at Waco and Ruby Ridge and U.S. military interventions and police-state terror and stand accused of sympathizing with all the views and sins of those enemy regimes and fringe elements pit against the U.S. government. Such accusations are a ruse. Those who seek fundamental change in the system are simply less attached to the conventional myths and legends. When those myths and legends involve the whitewashing of great atrocities, such as the firebombing of Tokyo, the carpet bombing of Cambodia, or the invasion of Iraq, it comes as no surprise that the people who consistently bring attention to such white elephants in American history are branded as extremists and friends of the fringe. Likewise, those who realize the stark depth of propaganda involved in the conventional history are probably more likely than others to move toward the "extreme" wings of political and philosophical thought, searching for fundamental answers to what appear to be fundamental problems in the ways humans have historically organized themselves and they, too, whether or not they deserve it, will be denounced as fringe intellectuals, as if that negates whatever valid ideas they may have. Conventionally accepted wisdom has served as cover for many of the greatest shams and crimes against humanity in world history. Now, it is true that conventionalism has at times been replaced by intellectual movements that were no better or even far worse than what they replaced, and surely many on the fringes would be very dangerous if they enjoyed power and universal, unquestioning obedience. But a principled sensitivity to peace, individualism and liberty, when applied to history, can hardly do evil. Furthermore, if it werent for those willing to stand outside the mainstream and challenge convention, human progress would grind to a halt. Slavery, theocracy, and feudalism were all at one time universally upheld in conventional thought. Today statism of various stripes still enjoys dominance in conventional historical study. When statism falls and liberty triumphs, it will necessarily be due to men and women who stood outside the bounds of what was rigorously defended as acceptable thought, shaking up and making trouble for the establishment. [anthony.jpg] February 23, 2005 Anthony Gregory [[11]send him mail] is a writer and musician who lives in Berkeley, California. He is a research assistant at the [12]Independent Institute. See [13]his webpage for more articles and personal information. [14]Anthony Gregory Archives References 8. mailto:anthony1791 at yahoo.com 9. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260476/lewrockwell/ 10. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0895260476/lewrockwell/ 11. mailto:anthony1791 at yahoo.com 12. http://www.independent.org/ 13. http://www.AnthonyGregory.com/ From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:50:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:50:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: Vatican appoints official Da Vinci Code debunker Message-ID: Vatican appoints official Da Vinci Code debunker http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5148672-99819,00.html Michelle Pauli Tuesday March 15, 2005 With sales of over 18m copies in 44 languages, topping bestseller charts all over the world and earning its author more than ?140m, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a global phenomenon. And now it has become the first book ever to have an archbishop dedicated to debunking its contents. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and a possible successor to the Pope, has been appointed by the Vatican to rebut what the Catholic church calls the "shameful and unfounded errors" contained within The Da Vinci Code. He is organising a series of public debates focusing on the conspiracy theories and what the Vatican sees as the blurring of fact and fiction at the heart of the thriller, the first of which will be held in Genoa tomorrow. The book follows the investigations of a Harvard code expert who is looking into the murder of the curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris. He discovers a series of clues buried in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and, by deciphering riddles and anagrams, uncovers the secrets of the holy grail: that Jesus never claimed to be divine, that he married Mary Magdalene and had a child with her, that his bloodline survived in France and that the grail itself was not a chalice but a woman. It is this, along with the book's characterization of the international Catholic organization Opus Dei as an extremist cult, that has particularly exercised the Vatican. "The book is everywhere," Cardinal Bertone told Il Giornale newspaper, according to a report in The Times today. "There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true. [Dan Brown] even perverts the story of the holy grail, which most certainly does not refer to the descendants of Mary Magadalene. It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies." The 70-year-old cardinal, a former football commentator, has acted as deputy to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The appointment of such a high-profile defender of the church to take up battle against a work of fiction is an indication of how upset the Vatican is about the success of the book, which has spawned a small publishing industry of its own and is currently being made into a film, starring Tom Hanks, to be released next year. According to David Barrett, a writer on religion and expert on The Da Vinci Code, "Members of the Catholic church are particularly upset by what they see as the blasphemous suggestion that Jesus may have had sex - but there is absolutely no reason theologically why Jesus could not have been married and had a family. They are also upset at the way the Catholic church and the Vatican are characterised as having plotted to cover up the 'truth' about Christianity, and they are understandably upset at the characterisation of Opus Dei. "Many people think there are genuine concerns about Opus Dei but the actions ascribed to them in the novel are completely ridiculous. Apart from anything else, they don't have monks." As a result of the book's hold over the public's imagination, Opus Dei has produced its own response: a 127-page statement which sets out the "errors" in the book, and states that "many readers are intrigued by the claims about Christian history and theology presented in The Da Vinci Code. We would like to remind them it is a work of fiction and not a reliable source of information." Barrett is dismissive of the bestseller. "It's basically a hack thriller, a typical airport book," he says. "The Catholic church are overreacting: ultimately, it's only a novel and the controversy will eventually die down. On the other hand, the book raises some serious questions about the origins of Christianity. Even though it makes many glaring historical errors, the fact remains that early Christianity did take many variant forms, including Gnostic Christianity, and there are genuine issues to be examined. But such examinations should be undertaken by competent theologians and historians, not hack thriller writers who are very poor at their research." Greg Watts, a Catholic author, has similar concerns about Brown's credentials. "Dan Brown's concern is to make money rather than teach theology. He has found a gullible audience and has played on their ignorance," he says. "He gives the readers the impression that they understand Christianity when in fact they've been hoodwinked and manipulated." However, Watts also feels that the fact that The Da Vinci Code has appealed to such a broad audience presents a challenge to the church: "There is a lesson for the church in the success of The Da Vinci Code and the lesson is that the church needs to use modern media much more effectively to present the Christian message to the new generation." A spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, said that they had no plans for any similar 'debunking' initiatives. Dan Brown's publishers were unavailable to comment on the appointment of Cardinal Bertone. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:52:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:52:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sunday Times (UK) 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts!' by Martin Pugh Message-ID: 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts!' by Martin Pugh http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2102-1506278,00.html 5.3.6 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts!' by Martin Pugh REVIEWED BY JOHN CAREY 'HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS!': Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars by Martin Pugh Cape ?20 pp400 Why did Britain not become fascist between the wars? The obvious answer is that the British temperament is inhospitable to fascism. Fascism calls for ardour and common purpose, whereas the British are by nature disgruntled, unhopeful, individualistic and suspicious of ideas. They do not like being organised, and they have a keen sense of the ridiculous, which is lethal to fascism. One-man rule has never attracted them. As early as 1649 they were obliged to chop Charles I's head off to bring this point to his attention. Their main interest in human grandeur is watching it come an almighty cropper, as Shakespeare's tragedies testify. None of these answers would satisfy Martin Pugh. That interwar Britain did not become fascist was, he suggests, merely a matter of chance. If the economic depression had bitten deeper, or if the 1926 general strike had not petered out, or if Edward VIII had stuck to his guns instead of abdicating, the consequent political crisis might easily have swept a fascist dictator to supreme power in the person of Sir Oswald Mosley. Far from being alien to British political culture, fascism was, Pugh argues, a home-grown product. In 1923, only four years after Mussolini launched his Italian fascisti in Milan, the first British fascist party came into existence. It aimed to emulate the "lofty ideals" of the Boy Scout movement, and its founder, Rotha Lintorn-Orman, was herself a Girl Scout leader. A more militant breakaway group, the Imperial Fascist League, adopted full Nazi black-and-gold regalia, with an armband depicting the swastika superimposed on the Union Jack. Arnold Spenser Leese, its founder, was an expert on the diseases of camels and something of a recluse, his closest relationship, according to Pugh, being with his bull terrier. Other splinter groups developed throughout the 1920s, among them the National Fascisti, whose most renowned member was Valerie Arkell-Smith, a transvestite who spent years successfully passing herself off as Sir Victor Barker. The appeal of rural life, the Middle Ages and the feudal system drew other fascists to the English Mistery, later renamed the English Array. Its founder, Viscount Lymington, organised "musters" or camps where fascists built compost heaps, drank unpasteurised milk, and lamented the effects of tinned food on the British character. It comes as a surprise, after reading Pugh's account of these organisations, to find him claiming there was "nothing very eccentric about the British fascists". They seem, on the contrary, to be a bunch of inveterate British oddities of a kind that any genuine fascist regime would have speedily wiped out. Their total membership was small and their political influence negligible. Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF), founded in 1932, was, of course, more serious, and Pugh ably lists Mosley's attractions. He had a fine war record, having served in the Royal Flying Corps. He was a spellbinding orator and an immense success with women, who would squeal "Oh Valentino" as he twirled his moustaches at BUF rallies. His Blackshirts are usually remembered as urban and right-wing, dedicated to Jew-baiting in the East End. But, in fact, Pugh points out, the BUF was popular in farming communities, where it campaigned for trade tariffs to stop the home market being swamped by cheap foreign food. Mosley had been converted to socialism in the 1920s and had served in Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government. He cared deeply about poverty and unemployment, and it was the failure of successive governments to remedy these ills that led him to denounce parliamentary democracy as temporising and impotent. The genuineness of his concern was recognised in the industrial towns, where BUF membership had a sizeable working-class component. Where he went wrong was quite simply in becoming a fascist, for this inevitably linked him with Hitler and the Nazis, and as the monstrous nature of their aims became apparent during the 1930s so his following among decent people fell away. The high point for the BUF came in the early months of 1934 when Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail took up the fascist cause with the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!", and a mass rally in London's Olympia gave the public its first view of Mosley's shock-troops. It was not a pretty sight. Hecklers were picked out by spotlights, efficiently beaten up and ejected. Mosley stopped speaking while this was going on so that the audience could concentrate on the bloodshed. The brutality alienated educated opinion and when, only weeks later, Hitler eliminated his opponents and massacred the brownshirts in the Night of the Long Knives, the similarity between the two movements seemed blatant. Rothermere withdrew his support after the Olympia rally, and BUF membership dropped from 50,000 in 1934 to 5,000 in 1935. Fatally, Mosley did nothing to distance himself from his Nazi counterparts. He married his second wife, Lady Diana, in the Goebbelses' drawing room, and the F?hrer sent a silver-framed photograph of himself as a wedding gift. His rallies were plainly a cut-price version of Hitler's vast theatrical parades. At the last of them, in July 1939 at Earl's Court, he entered to a trumpet fanfare and harangued the crowd from atop an enormous plinth like a beleaguered steeplejack. Although the BUF was not markedly anti- semitic in its early days, it became increasingly obsessed with Nazi-style theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy of capitalists and Bolsheviks that aimed to destroy western civilisation. Jews, in BUF rhetoric, were responsible for all the world's evils, whereas each new instance of aggression by the fascist dictators -- Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia -- was portrayed by Mosley as utterly innocent. It is hardly surprising that when the BUF eventually fielded three candidates in by-elections in early 1940 they were humiliatingly defeated, and Mosley came close to being lynched. Shortly after, he was arrested and imprisoned, along with 747 of his followers, which may well have saved his life. In Nazi Germany he would of course have been shot long before for preaching defeatism and appeasement. Pugh's book is not an easy read. It is maddeningly repetitive and recycles its stage army of cranks and fanatics in chapter after chapter. However, it incorporates new research, especially about BUF membership, and puts the English fascist movements into their wider political and economic contexts. Tellingly, he lists Conservative MPs and cabinet ministers who were unashamedly fascist throughout the 1930s. Some of the instances are almost incredible. During the phoney war the chief of the imperial general staff wanted to appoint Major-General "Boney" Fuller, a BUF candidate, as his deputy, and had to be overruled by the war cabinet. When the BUF was eventually rounded up, virtually all the leading aristocratic fascists remained at large. Pugh leaves us in little doubt that had Hitler invaded in 1940 he would have found several figures on the right of the Conservative party ready to welcome him. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:56:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:56:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] JTA: Mormon leaders renew pledge to stop posthumously baptizing Jews Message-ID: Mormon leaders renew pledge to stop posthumously baptizing Jews http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?strwebhead=Mormons%20again%20vow%20to%20stop%20baptizing%20Jews&intcategoryid=4&SearchOptimize=Jewish%20News [23]By Chanan Tigay NEW YORK, April 12 (JTA) They live in different theological universes, but when a group of Mormon leaders sat face to face with a group of Jews to address a church practice the Jews considered insulting, some in the room felt a divine spark uniting them. A delegation of five Jews met Sunday and Monday in Salt Lake City with church leaders and historians and agreed to form a committee to explore issues related to proxy baptisms the Mormon practice of posthumously baptizing non-Mormons, including Holocaust victims and other Jews. We walked in assuming that we were going to be embattled and walked out realizing that we were on the same side of the table, said David Elcott, U.S. director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. Indeed, despite the two sides religious differences, Elcott spoke of experiencing the holy in the encounter. The process is a rite Mormons believe helps clear the baptized persons path into heaven. While members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints view the practice as a gift, it has proven hard for many Jews to swallow, especially when applied to Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Ernest Michel, chairman of the New York-based World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a member of the Jewish delegation, told JTA that concerned Jews had considered launching a widespread publicity campaign against the practice and even had contemplated legal action. But the groups reached detente at Mondays meeting, participants said. They agreed to convene the committee by June 1. At the same time, the church recommitted itself to putting a stop to baptizing dead Jews, except if they were related to Mormons. In 1995, church leaders agreed to halt the proxy baptisms of Jews, but Michel said he and his group had traveled to Utah armed with 5,000 pages of documentation proving that the ceremonies had continued, possibly as recently as this year. According to our information they have not lived up to that agreement, he said. In the new agreement, the church agreed not to list the names of Holocaust victims in its databases, and the recently created Yad Vashem database, which holds the names of 3 million Holocaust victims, will not be mined and posted on Mormon databases, Michel said. The International Genealogical Index, the Mormons primary database, now lists some 1 billion people who have been baptized posthumously. The church also publicizes several other databases including one listing immigrants who passed through Ellis Island with another approximately 1 billion names, for whom proxy baptisms have not necessarily been performed. The recent accord, said Michel whose own parents died in the Holocaust and were baptized posthumously is an honest effort by the church. I have cautious optimism, he continued. They are good people. I have known them now for 10 years. We have a very warm relationship. They are decent people. In proxy baptisms, living members of the Mormon church are immersed in water and baptized as stand-ins for dead people. Among those for whom such rites are reported to have been undertaken are Anne Frank and most popes. According to Mormon practice, the faithful are only to proxy baptize their own dead relatives. According to the new agreement, Mormons with dead Jewish relatives may continue to baptize them. We continue to emphasize to our members that their focus should be on only those who are their own ancestors, D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the churchs Presidency of the Seventy and a member of the Mormon contingent at the meeting, told JTA. There are some of our current members who have Jewish ancestors and I think were all in agreement that its quite appropriate that they would fulfill that religious obligation, he continued. But those who do not have Jewish ancestors should not be forwarding names of deceased Jews, especially Holocaust victims, for proxy baptisms. Elcott said that we would never question a Mormons right to baptize a dead Jewish relative. But Michel said that because Jews sometimes have last names that do not sound Jewish, and some non-Jews have Jewish-sounding names, some Jews still could be found on the database and baptized. It will not be fail-safe, I have to admit, he said. You sometimes have a Jew by the name of McGillicutty and you have a non-Jew named Isadore. Therefore it will not be fail-safe. But there is an intent for them to avoid baptizing Jews, and thats what counts. References 23. http://www.jta.org/page_bio.asp#Chanan Tigay 24. mailto:feedback at jta.org From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:56:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:56:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: Why Einstein may have got it wrong Message-ID: Why Einstein may have got it wrong http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5167664-103690,00.html David Adam, science correspondent Monday April 11, 2005 A century after Albert Einstein published his most famous ideas, physicists will today commemorate the occasion by trying to demolish one of them. Astronomers will tell experts gathering at Warwick University to celebrate the anniversary of the great man's "miracle year" that the speed of light - Einstein's unchanging yardstick that underpins his special theory of relativity - might be slowing down. Michael Murphy, of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, said: "We are claiming something extraordinary here. The findings suggest there is a more fundamental theory of the way that light and matter interact; and that special relativity, at its foundation, is actually wrong." Einstein's insistence that the speed of light was always the same set up many of his big ideas and established the bedrock of modern physics. Dr Murphy said: "It could turn out that special relativity is a very good approximation but it's missing a little bit. That little bit may be the doorknob to a whole new universe and a whole new set of fundamental laws." His team did not measure a change in the speed of light directly. Instead, they analysed flickering light from the far-distant celestial objects called quasars. Their light takes billions of years to travel to Earth, letting astronomers see the fundamental laws of the universe at work during its earliest days. The observations, from the massive Keck telescope in Hawaii, suggest the way certain wavelengths of light are absorbed has changed. If true, it means that something called the fine structure constant - a measure of the strength of electromagnetic force that holds atoms together - has changed by about 0.001% since the big bang. The speed of light depends on the fine structure constant. If one varies with time then the other probably does too, meaning Einstein got it wrong. If light moved faster in the early universe than now, physicists would have to rethink many fundamental theories. His conclusions are based on work carried out in 2001 with John Webb at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. Other astronomers disputed the findings, and a smaller study using a different telescope last year suggested no change. Dr Murphy's team is analysing the results from the largest experiment so far, using light from 143 bright stellar objects. Einstein's burst of creativity in 1905 stunned his contemporaries. He published three papers that changed the way scientists viewed the world, including the special theory of relativity that led to his deduction E=mc?. The Physics2005 conference, set up by the Institute of Physics as part of its Einstein Year initiative, runs until Thursday. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:57:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:57:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: Eureka! Extraordinary discovery unlocks secrets of the ancients Message-ID: Eureka! Extraordinary discovery unlocks secrets of the ancients http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=630166&host=3&dir=505 By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke 17 April 2005 Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world. Among treasures already discovered by a team from Oxford University are previously unseen writings by classical giants including Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging. The Oxford documents form part of the great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. The thousands of remaining documents, which will be analysed over the next decade, are expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 16:58:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:58:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] WP: Writing Women Into a Corner Message-ID: Writing Women Into a Corner http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38563-2005Mar15 By Anne Applebaum Wednesday, March 16, 2005; Page A23 This week I had planned to write a column about Sinn Fein, the political front organization for the Irish Republican Army, whose leaders have recently been linked to acts of murder and grand larceny. I chose the subject because I wrote often about the IRA while living in Britain in the 1990s, because I've worked as a reporter in Belfast, because it's timely -- tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day -- and because there might be lessons in the story for Hamas and Hezbollah, terrorist groups that may or may not be able to make the transition to democratic politics as well. These thoughts arose, in other words, out of work I've done as a journalist and columnist for nearly 20 years. But in the past 72 hours I've discovered that I am not just an ordinary journalist or an ordinary columnist. No. I am a token. That, at any rate, is what I conclude from the bumper crop of articles, columns and blogs that have, over the past few days, pointed to the dearth of women on op-ed pages. Several have pointed out that I am, at the moment, The Post's only regular female columnist. This was not the case when I moved here, just over two years ago. At that time both Mary McGrory, a fixture for several decades, and Marjorie Williams, a witty and accomplished journalist, were writing regularly as well. By tragic coincidence, both died in the past year. Possibly because I see so many excellent women around me at the newspaper, possibly because so many of The Post's best-known journalists are women, possibly because I've never thought of myself as a "female journalist" in any case, I hadn't felt especially lonely. But now that I know -- according to widely cited statistics, which I cannot verify -- that only 10.4 percent of articles on this newspaper's op-ed page in the first two months of this year were written by women, 16.9 percent of the New York Times's op-ed articles were by women, and 19.5 percent of the Los Angeles Times's op-eds were by women, lonely is how I feel. Or perhaps the right phrase is "self-conscious and vaguely embarrassed." This conversation was sparked, as media junkies will know, by a bizarre attack launched on Michael Kinsley, now the editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times, by Susan Estrich, a self-styled feminist. In a ranting, raving series of e-mails last month, all of which were leaked, naturally, Estrich accused Kinsley of failing to print enough articles by women, most notably herself, and of resorting instead to the use of articles by men, as well as by women who don't count as women because they don't write with "women's voices." Here I declare an interest: Michael Kinsley hired me to write an op-ed column when he was the editor of the online magazine Slate. As for Estrich, I don't know much about her at all, except that she's just launched a conversation that is seriously bad for female columnists and writers. None of the ones I know -- and, yes, I conducted an informal survey -- want to think of themselves as beans to be counted, or as "female journalists" with a special obligation to write about "women's issues." Most of them got where they are by having clear views, knowing their subjects, writing well and learning to ignore the ad hominem attacks that go with the job. But now, thanks to Estrich, every woman who gets her article accepted will have to wonder whether it was her knowledge of Irish politics, her willingness to court controversy or just her gender that won the editor over. This is a storm in the media teacup, but it has echoes in universities, corporations and beyond. I am told, for example, that there is pressure at Harvard Law School, and at other law schools, to ensure that at least half the students chosen for the law review are women. Quite frankly, it's hard to think of anything that would do more damage to aspiring female lawyers. Neither they nor their prospective employers will ever know whether they got there as part of a quota or on their own merits. There's nothing wrong with a general conversation about how women can be helped to succeed in law school or taught not to fear having strong opinions. But trust me, in none of these contexts do you want to start calculating percentages. In the paragraph I have remaining (this, girls, is truly the hardest thing about newspaper columns: making the idea fit the space) I'm not going to discuss the thorny question of whether some affirmative action policies do some good, of whether newspapers matter anymore anyway, or even return to the subject of Sinn Fein. Those are complex, gender-neutral issues, and I've now used up my allotted weekly slot on a "women's issue" instead. Happy, Susan Estrich? applebaumanne at yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:00:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:00:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LRC: Brian Wilson: Non Nobis, Sed Aliis - or Else! Message-ID: Brian Wilson: Non Nobis, Sed Aliis - or Else! http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/wilson-brian8.html Epiphany on I-95 Driving back into the oxymoronic "Free State" of Maryland recently, I was struck with the first sign of altruistic tyranny. It had been there for years. Indeed, I had commented on it frequently ridiculed it, actually just not in this new-found context. The unholy marriage of Altruism to Tyranny would produce a union not unlike the late Samuel Francis idea of Anarcho-Tyranny - only nicer. It comes in the exchange of the State telling you in velvet-lined words to sacrifice your rights, freedom, individuality or else. Here is an example: Welcome to Maryland, the Free State Please buckle your seat belt We care about you And its our law The translation is Altruistic Tyranny: We are soooo concerned about you, do as we say or well slap you with a huge fine and expensive points to your license. "Seat belts save lives" is not a slogan to trifle with. Those annoying statistics pretty much conclude lives are indeed saved and injuries reduced when seat belts are fastened in a conscientiously applied program of careful driving and regular use. There is, though, one niggling number in those records thats bothersome. When the propaganda touts "In 72% of all fatal accidents, the deceased were not wearing seat belts," that strongly suggests the remaining 28% who died were buckled up at the time in accordance with State law. This raises a pertinent question: Would those so dearly departed be with us today if they had civilly disobeyed the states Altruistic Tyranny law and just sustained, say, "serious injury"? Unfortunately, we will never know. We certainly cant expect any reputable agency to offer even verifiable conjecture that might significantly contradict the empirical wisdom of the State, now could we? Lets take a peek. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) report on highway fatalities and seat belt use for 2002 showed "48,250 people died in traffic accidents. Of that number, 19,103 were not wearing seat belts." Now imagine the effect of this PSA (Public Service Announcement) played on the radio: "According to the NHTSAs most recent statistics, 60% of highway fatalities were people wearing their seat belts! So buckle up, everybody! Even though seat belts might not save your life, we still care about you - and well ticket you anyway if you dont obey." The NHTSA doesnt offer any figures citing how many of the 29,147 dead seat belt wearers might be tooling around today had they not been forced under penalty of law to buckle up - nor are there figures showing how many of the 19,103 equally dead non-seat belt wearers may have survived had they been wearing their seat belt, voluntarily or not. NHTSA also doesnt number the number of people who are very alive today specifically because they left their seat belt in the Off and Unbuckled position. But the central issue is not whether "seat belts save lives." Available statistics seem to indicate wearing one tends to increase your chances for survival and, maybe, prevent sustaining a serious injury. "Seat belts may save lives" is much more accurate but a lot less motivating (or reassuring) than the current slogan. And it doesnt play well into the Nanny State regulatory mind-set of the imperial government. The same NHTSA report reveals the States condescension and parental position: Convincing the American public to wear seat belts is a top priority for former emergency room physician, Jeffrey Runge. Dr. Runge is now the Administrator for the NHTSA. He is pushing for Congress to give states incentives to pass bills that would make not wearing a seat belt a primary offense. This means that a driver or passenger can be ticketed for not wearing a seat belt. The ticket would not have to accompany another violation, such as a speeding ticket." In an accompanying study by The Reliability Center, Inc, a Virginia based consulting and training outfit, V.P. Robert Latino, Sr. fleshes out the elitist perspective: Wearing a seat belt these days is commonplace. Most of us feel awkward when we do not wear seat belts today. However, there is apparently still 25% of the driving population that feel they do not need to wear safety belts and their conscious decision is costing the rest of us billions of dollars per year. It would also appear that we feel we as a country, need to further regulate in order to enforce compliance to this common sense requirement. (Emphasis mine.) Damn those 25%! Personally, I dont "feel" anything about seat belts or "as a country." I think as an individual and, as such, retain an inalienable freedom to choose with the understanding and acceptance of the consequences good or bad which will result from my decisions. You may have surmised correctly I eschew seat belt use. (I wont bore you with the gory details of being forced into a highway barrier at 70+mph by a weaving 18-wheeler. Suffice to say, my car split in half, did a 360, tossing your humble writer across the highway into a ditch, landing with a neck broken in three places and few other lacerations and contusions. Had I been wearing a seat belt, this article wouldnt be nearly as entertaining since my half of the car stopped quite suddenly, thanks to a conveniently located concrete wall. The impact relocated the drivers seat to the trunk. Had I been buckled in, I would have been a bright red stain on that wall and you would be reading someone elses work in this space. Oh the offending truck driver didnt bother stopping. Thats OK though - I didnt regain consciousness for 6 weeks to express my undying gratitude.) Maryland is among a growing number of states that now make failure to don your seat belt a "primary offense," meaning cops can pull you over and ticket you just for the heinous crime of driving around unbuckled. Luckily, most of our Boys in Blue have better things to do but when did "selective enforcement" become comforting? In [9]Feeling Your Pain, James Bovard reveals we can thank our empathetic President, Bill Clinton who pumped adrenalin and our tax dollars into willing bodies of police departments to make sure you and our wee ones would come to no harm or else! The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) under Clinton awarded tens of millions of dollars annually to local and state police departments and highway patrols to set up roadblocks and fine all violators of mandatory seatbelt laws. DOT s website warned that the feds have "zero tolerance for unbuckled children." DOT gave bonus awards to local and state agencies that inflict the most tickets on citizens. The agency also suggested offering free hats, T-shirts, and coffee mugs to "enthusiastic officers who are personally committed to increasing seat belt and child safety seat use" - i.e., who write the most tickets Naturally, the children were the pretext for this expansion of government power. A press release from the 1998 crackdown on seatbelt violators proclaimed that the campaign "represents the largest coordinated effort by law enforcement to protect children in America's history." Apparently, nothing government has done in the last two centuries is as benevolent as making parents pay $50 for unbuckled kids. Yet, while children are ritually invoked, the vast majority of tickets are written to nail adults not wearing seatbelts. A 1998 DOT report to Congress proclaimed that "highly visible enforcement . . . is more effective because the perceived risk of receiving a seat belt citation is increased, even if the actual risk is only slightly higher." Thus, the federally funded roadblock campaign is an exercise in mass deceit. The feds presume that people are fools who must be continually frightened by government agents or else they will all go plunging over a cliff to their death. Recently, the Maryland legislature made it legal again for motorcyclists to zip about, unfettered by a coif-destroying helmet. When it comes to the possibility of sustaining serious bodily injury, where would you rather be: wrapped inside any make of auto or straddling a 500 cc engine protected only by Wranglers and a "If You Can Read This, My Wife Fell Off"" t-shirt? One is left to conclude that Maryland only "cares" about people already safely tucked inside a car than those enjoying the occasional bumble bee in the teeth. Motorcycle riders are free to make their own decisions about personal safety despite their bodacious exposure. Hmmmmmaybe the repeal of the helmet law was really retribution for all those years of noisy biker rallies during legislative sessions demanding an unencumbered cranium. Parents can also be on the receiving end of tickets, fines, even serious pokey time for not cinching their under-age tax deduction in a (state approved) industrial strength car seat which must then be properly strapped (according to state instructions) in the properly bolted (according to state specifications) back seat. This location is only appropriate since so many children started life back there anyway. The state supersedes parental responsibility without assuming any of the burden should the little tyke make a premature exit from this life as the result of severe Following Too Close and Moms ewe-like obedience to the intrusive law. Curiously, States so concerned about a kids scraped knee or more serious injury also maintain abortion is legal and a matter of choice. Seat beltshelmetscar seatsabortion - apparently not all choices are created equal or left to individual purview. When this subject rears its ugly head on the air, it invariably elicits comments like: "The insurance claims you make for the injuries you get from not wearing your seat belt make my premiums go up so its just fine, fine, fine with me that cops can give idiots like you a ticket for being so stupid." Just as invariably, I tend to reply: Some insurance companies are refusing injury claims if the injured was not wearing a seatbelt at the time said injuries were sustained. Since an insurance policy is merely a contractual agreement to terms and limits between the insurer and the insured, a company could make benefits payable (or not) on any basis upon which both parties agrees. Dont like the terms? Take your business to an insurance company that recognizes your freedom to choose - as well as your right to be stupid. Higher premiums, you say? Well thats the price you pay for this corner of the free market. Now all you have to do is convince your state representatives to change the law to get the cops off your back. On that note, maybe some gutsy, clear-thinking legislator will take a cue from this aspect of the Nanny State, demand repeal of the Anarcho-Tyranny law and introduce the Legislators Responsibility Act. It would work like this: since Congress and states are so quick to pass these in loco parentis type laws, supposedly protecting us from our terribly irresponsible selves, politicians who vote "Aye" will be held personally and financially responsible for the "unintended consequences" of any over-reaching statute. When anyone is killed because, say, state-required seat belt use prevented them from possibly being thrown free from their vehicle before it slammed into a wall, possibly saving their life, all lawmakers who voted in favor of the law would be held personally liable for significant financial damages awarded to the survivors. Large minimums would be established. No longer holding office would not absolve a former legislator from his voting record. Similarly, governors and former governors would be held responsible for signing the stupid bill into law in the first place. Overridden vetoes would exonerate them and automatically double the fine of the representatives who voted accordingly. I wont be holding my breath, having already suggested this brilliant idea to those (allegedly) representing me here in the "Free State." None of these highly skilled elected officials has any intention of introducing my proposed legislation. However, they did seem to like the part about my car slamming into the wall. March 10, 2005 Brian Wilson [[10]send him mail] is a talk show host, author and speaker. He's heard on better talk radio stations across the country through his Vacation Relief Service and most recently vented his libertarian views on KSFO/San Francisco. References 9. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/031224052X/lewrockwell/ 10. mailto:bmw at mindspring.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:01:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:01:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CSM: New research opens a window on the minds of plants Message-ID: New research opens a window on the minds of plants http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0303/p01s03-usgn.htm 5.3.5 By Patrik Jonsson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor RALEIGH, N.C. - Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit decisions on how to approach them. Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off. The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future, based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit the redwoods of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival for millenniums - a journey that, for some trees, precedes the Parthenon. As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even those skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence" acknowledge that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have the smarts of the forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider their environment, speculate on the future, conquer territory and enemies, and are often capable of forethought - revelations that could affect everyone from gardeners to philosophers. Indeed, extraordinary new findings on how plants investigate and respond to their environments are part of a sprouting debate over the nature of intelligence itself. "The attitude of people is changing quite substantially," says Anthony Trewavas, a plant biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a prominent scholar of plant intelligence. "The idea of intelligence is going from the very narrow view that it's just human to something that's much more generally found in life." To be sure, there are no signs of Socratic logic or Shakespearean thought, and the subject of plant "brains" has sparked heated exchanges at botany conferences. Plants, skeptics scoff, surely don't fall in love, bake souffl?s, or ponder poetry. And can a simple reaction to one's environment truly qualify as active, intentional reasoning? But the late Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist Barbara McClintock called plant cells "thoughtful." Darwin wrote about root-tip "brains." Not only can plants communicate with each other and with insects by coded gas exhalations, scientists say now, they can perform Euclidean geometry calculations through cellular computations and, like a peeved boss, remember the tiniest transgression for months. To a growing number of biologists, the fact that plants are now known to challenge and exert power over other species is proof of a basic intellect. "If intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, then, absolutely, plants are intelligent," agrees Leslie Sieburth, a biologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. For philosophers, one of the key findings is that two cuttings, or clones, taken from the same "mother plant" behave differently even when planted in identical conditions. "We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there," says Dr. Trewavas. "But why has no one come to grips with it? Because the prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that it's a simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot." But here at the labs on the North Carolina State campus, where fluorescent grow-rooms hold genetic secrets and laser microscopes parse the inner workings of live plants, there is still skepticism about the ability of ordinary houseplants to intellectualize their environment. Most plant biologists are still looking at the mysteries of "signal transduction," or how genetic, chemical, and hormonal orders are dispersed for complex plant behavior. But skeptics say it's less a product of intelligence than mechanical directives, more genetic than genius. Some see the attribution of intelligence to plants as relative - an oversimplification of a complex human trait. And despite intensifying research, exactly how a plant's complex orders are formulated and carried out remains draped in leafy mystery. "There is still much that we do not know about how plants work, but a big part of intelligence is self-consciousness, and plants do not have that," says Heike Winter Sederoff, a plant biologist at N.C. State. Still, a new NASA grant awarded to the university to study gravitational effects on crop plants came in part due to new findings that plants have neurotransmitters very similar to humans' - capable, perhaps, of offering clues on how gravity affects more sentient beings. The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million research grant to pinpoint the molecular clockwork by which plants know when to grow and when to flower. The new field of plant neurobiology holds its first conference - The First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in May in Florence, Italy. The debate is rapidly moving past the theoretical. In space, "smart plants" can provide not only food, oxygen, and clean air, but also valuable companionship for lonely space travelers, say some - a boon for astronauts if America is to go to Mars. Research on the workings of the mustard weed's statolith, for example, may one day yield a corn crop with 1-3/8 the gravitational force of Earth. Some Earth-bound farmers, meanwhile, see the possibility of communicating with plants to time waterings for ultimate growth. A new gene, Bypass-1, found by University of Utah researchers, may make that possible. Still, it can be hard for the common houseplant to command respect - even among those who study it most closely. "When I was a postdoc, I had a neighbor who watched me buy plants, forget to water them, and throw them out, buy them and throw them out," says Dr. Sieburth. "When she found out I had a PhD in botany, I thought she was going to die." From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:03:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:03:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BH: Cozying Up with Deep Blue Message-ID: Cozying Up with Deep Blue http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/index.aspx?ArticleID=2005-03-02-2 "Advanced Chess" pitting computer-human teams against each other shows how humans can avoid obsolescence through symbiotic relationships with technology By George Dvorsky Betterhumans Staff 3/2/2005 2:47 PM Several weeks ago, while bored on a commuter train, I decided to pull out my Palm Pilot and play a game of chess. Seeing as I had no one to play against, I decided to try my hand against the computer. I was quite confident that I'd have little difficultly keeping up--it's hardly Deep Blue, after all. I arbitrarily picked an average difficultly level and proceeded to get my ass kicked in frighteningly short order. Somewhat discouraged, I then tried at the easiest level. Once again, I suffered an embarrassing thrashing. With my dignity soiled, I vowed to improve my chess skills. I wasn't going to let some puny [8]Palm Pilot beat me at chess. I dusted off an old chess manual and practiced some [9]standard openings and strategies. I can now proudly say that I can beat my handheld at level 5. My goal is to beat it at level 8, maximum difficulty. Playing a computer at chess can be rather humbling. As you're waiting for it to make its move, watching the "thinking" progress bar move from left to right, it's daunting to consider how many moves it's evaluating. I'm happy if I can think three to four moves ahead. The computer can contemplate thousands every second. I'm sure [10]Garry Kasparov felt the same way back in 1996 when pitted against [11]Deep Blue. Now that computer could crunch the numbers. Written in C and running under the AIX operating system, Deep Blue was a massively parallel, 30-node, RS/6000, SP-based computer system enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess processors. Odds are those stats are meaningless to you, but this one shouldn't be: This mother could crunch 100,000,000 positions per second. 100,000,000 positions per second! It's a wonder that Kasparov could play against it at all. Of course, there's more to chess than just raw computation. It's a game of subtlety, nuance and sophisticated psychology and strategy--elements that are far beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful computers. In fact, prior to Kasparov's defeat, some chess experts maintained that computers would never be capable of defeating [12]grandmasters. But thanks to Deep Blue and its successors, we all know that this is in fact possible. Kasparov's loss was indeed a deep shock to the chess world. It was a significant milestone in the history of chess, not just because a reigning world champion finally lost against a computer, but because of the ramifications to the game itself. Did Kasparov's loss signify the beginning of the end for meaningful human interaction in professional chess? Would future tournaments see humans as mere spectators to machines? More broadly, did Deep Blue's intrusion into a previously sanctified human realm represent the beginning of a larger trend? If computers could now defeat even our grandmasters, what else might they be capable of? Indeed, the steady onslaught of [13]Moore's Law and breakthroughs in [14]parallel processing has some fearing the rise of [15]AI and the subsequent delegation of human minds. Are Homo sapiens poised for obsolescence and even replacement? Well, if Kasparov has his way, the answer is no--and not because he feels that humans can continue to compete with computers. Rather, Kasparov believes the future of chess can be advanced through the cooperation of computers with humans. Consequently, Kasparov's idea of [16]Advanced Chess, where human-machine teams compete against other human-machine teams, offers an effective framework for how humanity as a whole should manage its ongoing relationship with its advancing technologies. To avoid replacement, we need to establish a symbiosis with our technologies and create something greater than the sum of its parts. Computer chess vs. human chess In all fairness to Kasparov and other expert chess players, computers still aren't able to consistently defeat their human counterparts. After losing to Deep Blue in the first game, Kasparov rebounded by winning three games and drawing two, defeating it by a final score of four to two. Kasparov lost the 1997 rematch, but managed a draw against its successor, [17]X3D Fritz in 2003. Similarly, grandmaster [18]Vladimir Kramnik tied [19]Deep Fritz in an eight-game tournament a year earlier. As it currently stands, the tables are quite even in terms of what the best computers can do against the best players. But what's interesting is not so much the parity; it's that humans and machines play chess so differently yet still come up even. Computers and humans have unique weaknesses that are clearly offset by their strengths. It's generally acknowledged that computers are superior calculators, while humans are better at long-range planning. Computers cannot be psychologically intimidated (something Kasparov does very well against his human opponents), nor are they capable of suffering from fatigue or other physical problems (during the 1984 [20]World Championships, for example, [21]Anatoly Karpov lost 22 pounds and was hospitalized several times as he battled Kasparov in a protracted tournament that saw them play well over 30 games). Computers are also immune to making silly mistakes (Kramnik lost game five against Fritz after making a severe blunder). Humans, on the other hand, can plan, bluff and, most importantly, adapt. Kasparov, in all his encounters with computers, tends to finish more strongly than he begins. Even in my own clashes against my Palm Pilot, I have noticed that my computer opponent gets quite messed-up when I open with the [22]Queen's Gambit. Consequently, that's now my standard opening against it. The Palm, on the other hand, cannot learn from my mistakes, and has no idea that I fare very poorly in end game scenarios. Computers are also quite poor at recognizing when something is irrelevant. During its [23]first match against Kasparov, for example, Deep Blue eliminated an inconsequential pawn at a critical point in the game. It's thought that Deep Blue sensed no threat from Kasparov at the time and that the move wouldn't detract from the attack it was developing at the other side of the board. It was merely being mindlessly methodical by claiming the material. Assistive devices In consideration of these differences and unique strengths, it's safe to say that the best chess playing entity in existence today is neither a computer nor a human, but rather a computer and a human working together. As [24]Albert Einstein once remarked, "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." Indeed, computers have changed the face of chess--not just because they have proven to be formidable opponents, but because they can also act as potent assistive devices. Grandmasters now use them extensively for planning and practice. Exhaustive hash tables have been generated by computers that map virtually all end game scenarios involving up to five pieces. Scenario analysis is now possible at an unprecedented scale, including backward analysis (starting from a position with a large edge and moving back to a starting position) to find new branches worth analyzing, and multi-variation analysis mode to examine alternate tries worthy of analysis. Simply put, not using computers to assist in chess play would be as silly as not using calculators to help us do math. Further, when looked at as prostheses, computers clearly expand human capacities, helping us take our activities and disciplines to the next level. They enable us to partake in endeavors that were previously cognitively impossible. Recognizing this, Kasparov proposed a new form of competition during the late 90s. Inspired by his matches against computers, Kasparov felt that humans and computers should cooperate instead of contending with each other. Called "Advanced Chess," the new style of play would see human players team-up with a computer and compete against another man-machine unit. Kasparov got the ball rolling by organizing a six-game Advanced Chess match against [25]Veselin Topalov in June of 1998, with Kasparov using [26]Fritz 5 and Topalov using [27]ChessBase 7.0. The match ended in a three-three draw. Kasparov commented afterward, "My prediction seems to be true that in Advanced Chess it's all over once someone gets a won position. This experiment was exciting and helped spectators understand what's going on. It was quite enjoyable and will take a very big and prestigious place in the history of chess." Since this initial match, Advanced Chess tournaments have been scheduled annually in Leon, Spain. Grandmaster [28]Viswanathan Anand, the winner of three titles, is currently considered the world's best Advance Chess player. After losing to Kramnik in 2002, Anand commented, "I think in general people tend to overestimate the importance of the computer in the competitions. You can do a lot of things with the computer but you still have to play good chess...I don't really feel that the computer alone can change the objective true to the position." Expanding on Anand's point, advocates of Advanced Chess argue that the strength of a player does not come from any of the components of the human-computer team, but rather from the symbiosis of the two. The combination of man and machine results in a "player" that is endowed with the computer's extreme power and accuracy and the human's creativity and sagacity. Ultimately, the combined skills of knowledgeable humans and computer chess engines can produce a result stronger than either alone. Advanced Chess has resulted in heights never before seen in chess. It has produced blunder-free games with the beauty and quality of both perfect tactical play and highly meaningful strategic plans, and it has offered chess aficionados remarkable insight into the thought processes of strong human chess players and strong chess computers. Cooperation and merger, not obsolescence With the rise in prominence of computers in the chess world, Kasparov refused to throw up his hands in despair and declare the end of human involvement in the game. Instead, he devised a new activity that would combine the best of what the digital world had to offer with that of the biological. The result was something greater than the sum of its individual parts. The rest of society should learn from this example. Naturally, people are growing increasingly wary of supercomputers and the potential for AI; it's understandable that people fear a future in which humans are replaced by machines. But as the example of Advanced Chess shows, that's not necessarily what's going to happen. The development of AI and other information technologies will continue to advance based on how we choose to adapt to them and how they adapt to us. Further, human control over where and how advanced technologies develop will have a significant impact on the kinds of collaborative and symbiotic systems that emerge. Thanks to human ingenuity, our disciplines, activities and goals will continue to change and evolve, taking the human experience to unprecedented places as we become capable of things never before possible. Like beating my Palm Pilot at level 6. References 8. http://www.palmone.com/ 9. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_opening 10. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kasparov 11. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue 12. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Grandmaster 13. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_Law 14. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_processing 15. http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Encyclopedia/article.aspx?articleID=2002-05-08-1 16. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess 17. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D_Fritz 18. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kramnik 19. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Fritz 20. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship 21. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Karpov 22. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_Gambit 23. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_-_Kasparov,_1996,_Game_1 24. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein 25. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veselin_Topalov 26. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_(chess) 27. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChessBase 28. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viswanathan_Anand From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:04:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:04:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reason: Neal Stephenson's Past, Present, and Future Message-ID: Neal Stephenson's Past, Present, and Future: The author of the widely praised Baroque Cycle on science, markets, and post-9/11 America http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.mg.neal.shtml 5.2 Interviewed by Mike Godwin If you met the novelist Neal Stephenson a decade ago, you would have encountered a slight, unassuming grad-student type whose soft-spoken demeanor gave no obvious indication that he had written the manic apotheosis of cyberpunk science fiction (1992s Snow Crash, in which computer viruses start invading hacker minds). It wasnt his debuthed published two earlier novels in the 1980sbut the book was such a hit that it put his name on the science fiction map in a way the earlier efforts had not. Meet Stephenson today, and youll meet a well-muscled, shaven-headed, bearded fellow whos just published a highly acclaimed, massively popular trilogy of 900-page novels set mostly in the 17th century. Talk to him, though, and you still hear the rigorously humble guy of 10 years ago. Read that trilogyQuicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World, collectively called The Baroque Cycleand youll have the uncanny sense that youre reading some new kind of science fiction. Actually, with every Stephenson book since Snow Crash, you feel that youre reading some new kind of science fiction, regardless of the nominal set and settings of the story. The three parts of The Baroque Cycle were published at six-month intervals in 2003 and 2004; they feature historical figures ranging from Newton and Leibniz to Louis XIV and a very young Benjamin Franklin, bound up in a narrative with the fictional ancestors of the characters in Stephensons similarly huge, cryptology-centered 1999 novel Cryptonomicon. Like Cryptonomicon, the trilogy has attracted praise from mainstream critics as well as Stephensons science fiction fan base. The Village Voice calls the series a work of idiosyncratic beauty whose plots boast tangled, borderless roots. The Independent says it is a far more impressive literary endeavour than most so-called serious fiction. Even a mixed review of Quicksilver in The Washington Post describes it as often brilliant and occasionally astonishing. Stephenson has a substantial libertarian following as well, and not merely because the decentralized, post-statist social systems he describes in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (1995) are so radically different from modern government. The Baroque Cycle is, among other things, a close look at the rise of science, the market, and the nation-state, themes close to any classical liberals heart. Reading it means reading three long, encyclopedic books and maybe spending half a year in an earlier century. Its not the kind of thing the average reader takes on lightly. But once you find you have a taste for Stephensons broad range of obsessive interests, his fine ear for period and modern English prose and speech, and his gift for making the improbably comic seem eminently human, the question no longer is whether youll read his booksits when. Contributing Editor Mike Godwin interviewed Stephenson, primarily via e-mail, in late fall. Reason: In The Baroque Cycle we see two different kinds of nation-states at war with each other: traditional monarchies vs. the modern mercantile state. Some readers see political themes in Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicone.g., that traditional governmental institutions have collapsed or mutated into some less central form. Is this something you see as inevitable? Neal Stephenson: I can understand that if you are the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking about government and commerce, then by reading Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, and The Baroque Cycle through that lens, and by squinting, holding the books at funny angles, and jiggling them around, you might be able to perceive some sort of common theme. But it is a stretch. The themes you mention are so vast and so common to all societies and periods of history that I would find it difficult to write a novel that did not touch on them in some way. In general I try to avoid the easy, the glib, and the oversimplified in my books. I dont always succeed, but that is my goal. A way to approach that goal is to try to see things through the eyes of reasonably well-wrought characters. So, if Im writing a book set 350 years ago, when the old medieval system of titled nobility is losing ground to a new power system based on international trade, then I try to get inside the heads of people who lived in those days and see things their way. Similarly, if I am writing something set in a high-tech world where the nation-state seems to be losing ground as compared to other sorts of entities, such as NGOs or traditional cultural groups, Im going to do my best to reflect that. It is the sort of thing that intelligent people think about from time to time, and it would seem stilted to portray otherwise intelligent and self-aware characters who never think about such topics. Much of what has gone on since 9/11, not only here but in other places, like the Netherlands, looks to me like a reversal of the trends of the previous couple of decades. Government is getting more powerful, and its (perceived) usefulness and relevance to the average person is more obvious than it was 10 years ago. Reason: Snow Crash is almost a parody of a libertarian future. Do you think the affinity-group-based societies you outline in that book are on their way? Do you see that as a warning note, or a natural state were progressing toward? Stephenson: I dreamed up the Snow Crash world 15 years ago as a thought experiment, and I tweaked it to be as funny and outrageous and graphic novellike as I could make it. Such a world wouldnt be stable unless each little burbclave had the ability to defend itself from all external threats. This is not plausible, barring some huge advances in defensive technology. So I think that if I were seriously to address your question, Do you see that as a warning note, or a natural state?, I would be guilty of taking myself a little bit too seriously. Speaking as an observer who has many friends with libertarian instincts, I would point out that terrorism is a much more formidable opponent of political liberty than government. Government acts almost as a recruiting station for libertarians. Anyone who pays taxes or has to fill out government paperwork develops libertarian impulses almost as a knee-jerk reaction. But terrorism acts as a recruiting station for statists. So it looks to me as though we are headed for a triangular system in which libertarians and statists and terrorists interact with each other in a way that Im afraid might turn out to be quite stable. Reason: You gave a speech at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference a few years back in which you suggested that the focus on issues like encryption was too narrow, and that we should give more attention to what theologian Walter Wink calls domination systems. This surprised some of the attendees, partly because it reached outside the usual privacy/free speech issue set and partly because, hey, you were citing a theologian. What brought you to Walter Wink, and what other light do you think theologians can shed on our approaches to government? Stephenson: This probably wont do anything to endear me or Wink to thE typical reason reader, but I was made aware of him by a Jesuit priest of leftish tendencies who had been reading his stuff. Its almost always a disaster when a novelist decides to become political. So let me just make a few observations here on a human levelwhich is within my comfort zone as a novelistand leave it at that. Its clear that the body politic is subject to power disorders. By this I mean events where some person or group suddenly concentrates a lot of power and abuses it. Power disorders frequently come as a surprise, and cause a lot of damage. This has been true since the beginning of human history. Exactly how and why power disorders occur is poorly understood. We are in a position akin to that of early physicians who could see that people were getting sick but couldnt do anything about it, because they didnt understand the underlying causes. They knew of a few tricks that seemed to work. For example, nailing up plague houses tended to limit the spread of plague. But even the smart doctors tended to fall under the sway of pet theories that were wrong, such as the idea that diseases were caused by imbalanced humors or bad air. Once that happened, they ignored evidence that contradicted their theory. They became so invested in that theory that they treated any new ideas as threats. But from time to time youd see someone like John Snow, who would point out, Look, everyone who draws water from Well X is getting cholera. Then he went and removed the pump handle from Well X and people stopped getting cholera. They still didnt understand germ theory, but they were getting closer. We can make a loose analogy to the way that people have addressed the problem of power disorders. We dont really understand them. We know that there are a couple of tricks that seem to help, such as the rule of law and separation of powers. Beyond that, people tend to fall under the sway of this or that pet theory. And so youll get perfectly intelligent people saying, All of our problems would be solved if only the workers controlled the means of production, or what have you. Once theyve settled on a totalizing political theory, they see everything through that lens and are hostile to other notions. Winks interpretation of the New Testament is that Jesus was not a pacifist milksop but (among other things) was encouraging people to resist the dominant power system of the era, that being the Roman Empire. Mind you, Wink is no fan of violence either, and he devotes a lot of ink to attacking what he calls the Myth of Redemptive Violence, which he sees as a meme by which domination systems are perpetuated. But he is clearly all in favor of people standing up against oppressive power systems of all stripes. Carrying that forward to the present day, Wink takes a general interest in people in various places who are getting the shaft. He develops an empirical science of shaftology, if you will. (Of course he doesnt call it shaftology; thats just my name for it.) He goes all over the world and looks at different kinds of people who are obviously getting the shaft, be they blacks in apartheid South Africa, South American peasants, or residents of inner-city neighborhoods dominated by gangs. He looks for connections among all of these situations and in this way develops the idea of domination systems. Its not germ theory and modern antibiotics, but it is, at the very least, a kind of epidemiology of power disorders. And even people who cant stomach the religious content of his work might take a few cues from this epidemiological, as opposed to theoretical/ideological, approach. Reason: The Baroque Cycle suggests that there are sometimes great explosions of creativity, followed by that creative energys recombining and eventual crystallization into new formssocial, technological, political. Are we seeing a similar degree of explosive progress in the modern U.S.? Stephenson: The success of the U.S. has not come from one consistent cause, as far as I can make out. Instead the U.S. will find a way to succeed for a few decades based on one thing, then, when that peters out, move on to another. Sometimes there is trouble during the transitions. So, in the early-to-mid-19th century, it was all about expansion westward and a colossal growth in population. After the Civil War, it was about exploitation of the worlds richest resource base: iron, steel, coal, the railways, and later oil. For much of the 20th century it was about science and technology. The heyday was the Second World War, when we had not just the Manhattan Project but also the Radiation Lab at MIT and a large cryptology industry all cooking along at the same time. The war led into the nuclear arms race and the space race, which led in turn to the revolution in electronics, computers, the Internet, etc. If the emblematic figures of earlier eras were the pioneer with his Kentucky rifle, or the Gilded Age plutocrat, then for the era from, say, 1940 to 2000 it was the engineer, the geek, the scientist. Its no coincidence that this era is also when science fiction has flourished, and in which the whole idea of the Future became current. After all, if youre living in a technocratic society, it seems perfectly reasonable to try to predict the future by extrapolating trends in science and engineering. It is quite obvious to me that the U.S. is turning away from all of this. It has been the case for quite a while that the cultural left distrusted geeks and their works; the depiction of technical sorts in popular culture has been overwhelmingly negative for at least a generation now. More recently, the cultural right has apparently decided that it doesnt care for some of what scientists have to say. So the technical class is caught in a pincer between these two wings of the so-called culture war. Of course the broad mass of people dont belong to one wing or the other. But science is all about diligence, hard sustained work over long stretches of time, sweating the details, and abstract thinking, none of which is really being fostered by mainstream culture. Since our prosperity and our military security for the last three or four generations have been rooted in science and technology, it would therefore seem that were coming to the end of one era and about to move into another. Whether its going to be better or worse is difficult for me to say. The obvious guess would be worse. If I really wanted to turn this into a jeremiad, I could hold forth on that for a while. But as mentioned before, this country has always found a new way to move forward and be prosperous. So maybe well get lucky again. In the meantime, efforts to predict the future by extrapolating trends in the world of science and technology are apt to feel a lot less compelling than they might have in 1955. Reason: Is The Baroque Cycle science fiction? Stephenson: Labels such as science fiction are most useful when employed for marketing purposes, i.e., to help readers find books that they are likely to enjoy reading. With that in mind, Id say that people who know and love science fiction will recognize these books as coming out of that tradition. So the science fiction label is useful for them as a marketing term. However, non-S.F. readers are also reading and enjoying these books, and I seem to have a new crop of readers who arent even aware that I am known as an S.F. writer. So it would be an error to be too strict or literal-minded about application of the science fiction label. Reason: To some of your longstanding readers, it may be a bit of a jolt to find themselves in the 17th- and 18th-century settings of this new trilogy. Is there any clear line connecting your earlier novels to your most recent ones? Stephenson: The progression from my earlier S.F. works set in the future to The Baroque Cycle is easy to explain: The earlier books like Snow Crash and The Diamond Age actually had a lot of historical content in them. Obviously, I was paying a lot of attention to information technology. Historical novels, such as alternate histories, are common in the S.F. world. The Second World War has been, and continues to be, fertile ground for novelists and other artists. Taking into account all of the above, it was reasonable, verging on obvious, to write a historical S.F. novel about the origins of information technology in the Second World War (Cryptonomicon). That book also ended up having a lot to do with money. As I was working on Cryptonomicon I became aware that a) Leibniz had done a lot of work with information technology and b) Newton had done a lot of work on money, and of course I already knew that c) Leibniz and Newton hated each other and had a philosophical war. When I began to study the period of time in which these two men lived I discovered that d) it was a fascinating epoch in many, many ways. So again, it became reasonable, verging on obvious, to write something about that topic. But the complexity of the era was such that I didnt think I could tell the story I wanted to tell in a single book. And yet the excitement and splendor of the times were such that I hoped I might be able to sustain a reasonably interesting narrative over a large number of pages. Reason: One of the things you discover reading The Baroque Cycle is just how much of todays understanding of the worldnot just the physical world, but the social and monetary worldsderives from ideas that were current in the time of Newton and Leibniz. Was that a surprise to you when you were researching the period? Stephenson: The initial surprise was that Leibniz had done so much computer-related work so early. I got that from George Dysons Darwin Among the Machines. When I began to read about the period, I was surprised by the sophistication of the Amsterdam stock market and the complexity of the Lyonnaise financial system. But the greatest single surprise for me was the welter of ideas contained in [Robert] Hookes Micrographia. Hooke talks about an incredibly wide range of topics in that volume. One is how we ought to define thinkingwhat is intelligence? He cites the way that flies are drawn to the smell of meat, which seems like intelligent behavior. But then he cites the counterexample of a trap that kills an animal. To a primitive person who didnt know that the trap had been invented by a person, it might seem that the trap itself possessed intelligence and will. Of course, this isnt really the case; its just a dumb mechanism reflecting the intelligence of him who created it. But, Hooke says, who are we to say that a fly isnt just a more complicated mechanism that is designed to fly toward the smell of meat? In which case it isnt being intelligent at all, only reflecting the intelligence of the Creator. The final surprise Ill mention is that Leibnizs system of doing physics, which is based on fundamental units called monads, has got a few things in common with the modern notion of computational physics, or it from bit. Furthermore, Leibnizs rejection of the concept of absolute space and time, which for a long time seemed a little bit loony to people, enjoyed a revival beginning with Ernst Mach. One could argue that people like Leibniz and the others were able to come up with some good ideas because they werent afraid to think metaphysically. In those days, metaphysics was still a respected discipline and considered as worthwhile as mathematics. It got the stuffing kicked out of it through much of the 20th century and became a byword for mystical, obscurantist thinking, but in recent decades it has been rehabilitated somewhat. At bottom, anyone who asks questions like Why does the universe seem to obey laws? or Why does mathematics work so well in modeling the physical universe? is engaging in metaphysics. People like Newton and Leibniz were as well-equipped for this kind of thinking as anyone today, and so it is interesting to read and think about their metaphysics. Seventeenth-century chemistry may have been rudimentary, and of only historical interest today, but 17th-century philosophy is highly developed and still interesting to read. Reason: The Baroque Cycle is an unusual work of fiction in that it includes an extensive bibliography. Were you pre-emptively answering critics who might not appreciate how much of these books was drawn from life? Stephenson: I didnt anticipate (and so far have not seen) any such line of attack from critics and so made no effort to pre-empt it. It just seemed obvious to me that anyone who actually bothered to read The Baroque Cycle must have an interest in that era and might want to do some further reading, and so as long as I was killing trees I figured Id try to save them some time and hassle by supplying a few pointers on where they might look. Reason: Your Newton and Leibniz (and the fictional Daniel Waterhouse) are remarkable characters because of their deep interest in almost everything around them. Are there modern figures who in your opinion show that range of interests? Stephenson: To be interested in too many things is not conducive to professional advancement in the sciences today. You cant write a general Ph.D. dissertation. You have to pick something very specific. What does happen from time to time is that youll have one scientist working on a very specific problem in one field, and another working on what seems to be an altogether different problem in another field, and somehow a spark will jump between them and theyll end up writing a joint paper. Freeman Dyson and his son George Dyson are two people with extraordinarily broad scope. Beyond that, it is difficult to generalize. One encounters high-tech geeks, lawyers, ministers, businesspeople, soldiers, and construction workers who have made themselves extremely erudite by reading a lot of history, science, and philosophy. In an earlier era, people like these might have gravitated to the Royal Society, and indeed one of the many remarkable things about the early Royal Society was its ability to gather in such people, combined with its ability to identify and marginalize enthusiasts (cranks) while fostering the ones who had something to contribute. Modern-day scientific institutions tend to value specialization. But that is an unavoidable consequence of the advancement that has taken place in all sciences in the last 350 years. Reason: A critic once said of Thomas Pynchon that he was one of the few modern novelists for whom what the characters do for a living is more defining than what their emotional relationships are. It seems to me that you have that same focus. In The Baroque Cycle, the biggest romantic relationship in Daniel Waterhouses life occurs mostly offstage, unless you count his difficult friendship with Isaac Newton. Stephenson: Theres a false dichotomy embedded in that. Its possible to have an emotional relationship with what you do for a living. And this is especially true when you work with other people, because naturally you form emotional relationships with those people, which get all tangled up with your relationship to the work itself. Daniel Waterhouse has all sorts of emotional relationships with people. It is true that his romantic relationships with women play little overt role in the book. But hes got a quite complex web of relationships to his father and to the rest of his family, as well as to people like the Bolstroods, who are so close that they might as well be family. And over the course of the story he develops relationships with people like Wilkins, Hooke, Oldenburg, Newton, and Leibniz. The book is much more about those relationships than what Daniel does for a living. We actually see very little of what Daniel does for a living and much more of his interactions with these other people. The reason he is summoned back from Boston in the opening chapters of Quicksilver is precisely because he is known to have relationships with Newton and Leibniz that no one else has. Reason: In the last decade or two, theres been a surge of fiction set in the 17th century: Tremains Restoration, Pears An Instance of the Fingerpost, Chevaliers Girl with a Pearl Earring. Is there something about the era that speaks with particular significance to the 21st century? Stephenson: The glib answer would be that this is such a broad question that I could only answer it by writing a big fat trilogy set during this era. And if I try to answer this question discursively, thats what its going to turn into. So Ill fall back on saying that it just feels interesting to me. Here are a few specifics. The medieval is still very much alive and well during this period. People are carrying swords around. Military units have archers. Saracens snatch people from European beaches and carry them off to slavery. There are Alchemists and Cabalists. Great countries are ruled by kings who ride into battle wearing armor. Much of the human landscapethe cities and architectureare medieval. And yet the modern world is present right next to all of this in the form of calculus, joint-stock companies, international financial systems, etc. This cant but be fascinating to a novelist. Some older systems have reached a splendid apotheosis. Probably the most splendid is the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. Others mentioned include the Spanish Empire, the Mogul Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. Unfortunately it was not possible to explore all of these in very much detail in these books without making the cycle five times as long as it was already. At the same time, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that all of those great systems were peaking and going into decline. The most conspicuous example, again, is Louis XIVs version of the French monarchy, which held together as long as he was there to run it. But he was one of a kind, and as soon as he died it all began to unravel and ceased to exist in a few decades. Again with hindsight, we can see that the new structures and systems that supplanted the old ones were being established during this period. And they were being established in some unlikely places by some unlikely people. The role of persecuted religious minoritiesJews, Huguenots, Puritans, Armeniansis especially interesting here. Thats all to give some explanation of why the period is interesting to me. Of course, I cant speak for the other writers you have mentioned. Reason: In The Baroque Cycle, with some exceptions, you stick to a modern, comic mode. Since its clear from your parodic passages that you can do period voices when you want to, why did you choose to make the language so modern? Stephenson: The Three Musketeers has a distinctly 19th-century flavor, even though its set in the 17th century. Shakespeares Julius Caesar reads like an Elizabethan play, not like an ancient Roman history. Im hesitant to draw such comparisons because there is always the critic who jumps in with the cheap shot: Oh, look, hes comparing himself to Shakespeare. So as a parenthetical aside to those who think that way, Ill stipulate that Im not a Shakespeare or even a Dumas, but I am capable of learning from them. I could have tried to write the entire Baroque Cycle in Jacobean English, but at some point Id have had to ask myself, Who am I kidding? Everyone knows this was written in the 21st century. The sensibility from which its written is that of the high-tech modern world. To purge the whole cycle of all traces of modern English would have seemed forced and absurd. So I just wrote it in whatever language seemed best to get the story across, which in some places was modern-sounding English and in other places was period English. Reason: There are some mysteries in the trilogy that you dont fully explain. Stephenson: Mysteries and unresolved questions are a part of real life, and so its OK for them to exist in novels. As a matter of fact, Im inclined to be a bit suspicious of any novel in which everything gets tidily resolved at the end. It doesnt feel right for me to do this. So I typically leave some things unresolved. Its not an oversight. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:06:00 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:06:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Prospect: Richard Layard: Happiness is back Message-ID: Richard Layard: Happiness is back http://prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6761 Issue 108 / March 2005 Growing incomes in western societies no longer make us happier, and more individualistic, competitive societies make some of us positively unhappy. Public policy should take its cue once more from Bentham's utilitarianism, unfashionable for many decades but now vindicated by modern neuroscience Richard Layard has been a long-standing adviser to the Labour party on labour market matters, and is a Labour peer. His book "Happiness: Lessons from a new science" is published by Allen Lane on 3rd March ------------------- Over the last 50 years, we in the west have enjoyed unparalleled economic growth. We have better homes, cars, holidays, jobs, education and above all health. According to standard economic theory, this should have made us happier. But surveys show otherwise. When Britons or Americans are asked how happy they are, they report no improvement over the last 50 years. More people suffer from depression, and crime-another indicator of dissatisfaction-is also much higher. These facts challenge many of the priorities we have set ourselves both as societies and as individuals. The truth is that we are in a situation previously unknown to man. When most people exist near the breadline, material progress does indeed make them happier. People in the rich world (above, say, $20,000 a head per year) are happier than people in poorer countries, and people in poor countries do become happier as they become richer. But when material discomfort has been banished, extra income becomes much less important than our relationships with each other: with family, with friends and in the community. The danger is that we sacrifice relationships too much in pursuit of higher income. The desire to be happy is central to our nature. And, following the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, I want a society in which people are as happy as possible and in which each person's happiness counts equally. That should be the philosophy for our age, the guide for public policy and for individual action. And it should come to replace the intense individualism which has failed to make us happier. Utilitarianism has, however, been out of fashion for several generations, partly because of the belief that happiness was too unfathomable. In recent years, that has begun to change. The "science" of happiness, which has emerged in the US in the last 20 years, supports the idea that happiness is an objective dimension of experience. (One of its fathers, Daniel Kahneman, won the 2002 Nobel prize in economics.) At every instant we feel good or bad, on a scale that runs from misery to bliss. Our feeling good or bad is affected by many factors, running from physical comfort to our inner sense of meaning. What matters is the totality of our happiness over months and years, not just passing pleasures. The new science may enable us to measure this and try to explain it. To measure happiness, we can ask a person how happy he is, or we can ask his friends or independent investigators. These reports yield similar results. The breakthrough has been in neuroscience. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin has identified an area in the left front of the brain where good feelings are experienced, and another in the right front where bad feelings are experienced. Activity in these brain areas alters sharply when people have good or bad experiences. Those who describe themselves as happy are more active on the left side than unhappy people, and less active on the right side. So the old behaviourist idea that we cannot know how other people feel is now under attack. The challenge is to work out what this means for political priorities in free societies like ours. If we accept that governments can and should aim to maximise happiness, rather than simply income, how might this affect specific choices in public policy? We must start by establishing the key factors affecting a person's happiness. Family and personal life come top in every study, and work and community life rank high. Health and freedom are also crucial, and money counts too, but in a very specific way. I will start with money-or more specifically with income tax policy. In any society, richer people are happier than poor people. Yet as a western country becomes richer, its people overall do not become happier. The reason for this is that over time our standards and expectations rise to meet our income. A Gallup poll has asked Americans each year: "What is the smallest amount of money a family of four needs to get along in this community?" The sums mentioned rise in line with average incomes. Since people are always comparing their incomes with what others have, or with what they are used to, they only feel better off if they move up relative to the norm. This process can have counterproductive effects. I have an incentive to work and earn more: it will make me happier. So do other members of society, who also care about their relative standard of life. Since society as a whole cannot raise its position relative to itself, the effort which its members devote to that end could be said to be a waste-the balance between leisure and work has been shifted "inefficiently" towards work. To reinforce the case, let me recast it in terms of status, which may derive as much from the earning of income as the spending of it. People work, in part at least, to improve their status. But status is a system of ranking: one, two, three and so on. So if one person improves his status, someone else loses an equal amount. It is a zero-sum game: private life sacrificed in order to increase status is a waste from the point of view of society as a whole. That is why the rat race is so destructive: we lose family life and peace of mind in pursuing something whose total cannot be altered. Or so we would-if we had no income taxes. But income taxes discourage work. Most economists consider this a disadvantage. They say that when someone pays ?100 in taxes, it hurts more than that-it has an "excess burden"-because of the distortion away from work. But without taxes there would be an inefficient distortion towards work. So taxes up to a certain level can help to improve the work-life balance of citizens and thus increase the overall sense of wellbeing in a society. They operate like a tax on pollution. When I earn more and adopt a more expensive lifestyle, this puts pressure on others to keep up-my action raises the norm and makes them less satisfied with what they have. I am like the factory owner who pours out his soot on to the neighbours' laundry. And the classic economic remedy for pollution is to make the polluter pay. People sometimes object to this argument on the grounds that it is pandering to envy or preventing self-improvement. It is true that such measures do reduce some kinds of freedom. But we cannot just wish away the pervasiveness of status comparisons; the desire for status is wired into our genes. Studies of monkeys show how it works: when a male monkey is moved from a group where he is top into a group where his status is lower, his brain experiences a sharp fall in serotonin-the neurotransmitter most clearly associated with happiness. So if the human status race is dysfunctional-from the point of view of the overall happiness in society-it makes sense to reduce freedom a small amount through taxation policy. Those who want to cut taxes should explain why they think we should work harder and sacrifice our family and community life in pursuit of a zero-sum status race. They may say that hard work is good for the consumer. But workers are the same people as consumers. There is no point killing ourselves at work in the interest of ourselves as consumers. And there is another consideration: if we work harder and raise our standard of living, we first appreciate it but then we get used to it. Research shows that people do not adequately foresee this process of habituation, or fully realise that once they have experienced a superior lifestyle they will feel they have to continue it. They will in effect become addicted to it. Once again, the standard economic approach to addictive spending is to tax it. These are arguments for taxation not as a way to raise money, but in order to restrain activity which is polluting and addictive, and to help to maintain a sensible work-life balance. This should become part of the social democratic case against income tax cuts. There is also the issue of equity. The main argument for redistribution has always been that an extra pound gives less extra happiness to a rich person than a poor person. Until recently this was pure speculation; survey evidence now confirms its truth. How else can we dampen the impact of the rat race? We have to start from human nature as it is, but we can also affect values and behaviour through the signals our institutions send out. An explicit focus on happiness would change attitudes to many aspects of policy, including in education and training, regional policy and performance-related pay. In one sense, what people most want is respect. They seek economic status because it brings respect. But we can increase or decrease the weight we give to status. In an increasingly competitive, meritocratic society, life will become tougher for people in the bottom half of the ability range unless we develop broader criteria for respect. We should respect people who co-operate with others at no gain to themselves, and who show skill and effort at whatever level. That is why it is so important to enable everyone to develop a skill. In Britain, this means ensuring that all young people can take up an apprenticeship if they wish, so that those who have not enjoyed academic success at school can experience professional pride and avoid starting adult life believing themselves to be failures. Equally, we should be sceptical of institutions which give greater weight to rank, such as performance-related pay (PRP). The idea of PRP is that by paying people for what they achieve, we provide the best possible system of incentives. Where we can measure people's achievement accurately, we should pay them for it-people like travelling salesmen, foreign exchange dealers, or racehorse jockeys. And where achievement depends on a team effort, we should reward the team, provided their performance can be unambiguously measured. But management gurus are often after something more: they want a year by year alignment between individual pay and individual performance. The problem is that in most jobs there is no objective measure of individual performance, so people must in effect be evaluated against their peers. Even if the scores purport to be objective rather than relative, most people know how many are in each grade. The effect is to put them into a ranking. If everybody agreed about the rankings, it would not be that bad. But studies have shown quite low correlations between one evaluator's rankings and another's. So a lot of self-respect (and often very little pay) is being attached to an uncertain ranking process that fundamentally alters the relationship of co-operation between an employee and his boss, and between an employee and his peers. Some comparisons between people are inevitable, since hierarchy is necessary and unavoidable. Some people get promoted and others do not. Moreover, those who get promoted must be paid more, since they are talented and the employer wishes to attract talent. So pay is important at key moments as a way of affecting people's decisions about occupations or in choosing between employers. Fortunately, promotions and moves between employers are still relatively infrequent for most people. In everyday working life, relative pay rates are not usually uppermost in their thoughts. PRP changes all that. Economists and politicians tend to assume that when financial motives for performance are increased, other motives remain the same. But that is not so, as this example shows. At a childcare centre in Israel, parents were often late to pick up their children, so fines were introduced for lateness. The result was a surprise: more people were late. They now saw being late as something they were entitled to do as long as they paid for it; the fine became a price. The professional ethic should be cherished. If we do not cultivate it, we may not even improve performance, let alone produce workers who enjoy their work. Financial incentives have useful effects on the careers people choose, and the employers they choose to work for. But once someone has joined an organisation, peer respect is also a powerful motivator. We should exploit this motivation. Instead, government over the last 30 years has demoralised workers by constantly appealing to motives which they consider to be "lower." If we want a happier society, we should focus most on the experiences which people value for their intrinsic worth and not because other people have them-above all, on relationships in the family, at work and in the community. It seems likely that the extra comforts we now enjoy have increased our happiness somewhat, but that deteriorating relationships have made us less happy. What should social policy try to achieve, notwithstanding its limited leverage over private life? Here are some examples. Divorce and broken homes are ever more common. Research shows that the children of broken homes are more prone to depression in adulthood. To protect children, the state should act to try to make family life more manageable, through better school hours, flexible hours at work, means-tested childcare, and maternity and paternity leave. Parenting classes should also be compulsory in the school curriculum and an automatic part of antenatal care. Unemployment is as bad an experience as divorce, as research shows. It offends our need to be needed. So low unemployment should be a major objective. Our government has done well, through sensible policies of welfare to work which have avoided generating inflationary pressures. Good policy has also halved unemployment in Denmark and Holland. But Germany and, above all, France, have been slow to adopt these policies. Poor policies towards the unemployed and bad wage policies are causing high European unemployment. Job security is not the main issue. Job security is something people want, and reasonable protection is something a rich society can afford to provide. The same is true of good working conditions, if stress is not to drive many weaker souls into inactivity and dependence on the state. It is absurd to argue that globalisation has reduced our ability to provide a civilised life for our workers. On the contrary, it has increased it-provided that pay rises only in line with productivity. The rise in crime between 1950 and 1980 is the most striking demonstration that economic growth does not automatically increase social harmony. This rise occurred in every advanced country except Japan, and its causes are not completely understood. One cause is anonymity. Crime rates are high when there is geographical mobility. Indeed, the best predictor of crime in a community is the number of people each person knows within 15 minutes of their home: the more they know, the lower the crime rate. So we should try to sustain communities and not rely on "getting on your bike" or international migration to solve our problems, as free-market economists often urge. The case for regional support to help communities prosper is much stronger when you focus on happiness than when GDP alone is the goal. A focus on happiness might also help us to rethink priorities in healthcare. One of the oldest problems afflicting humanity is mental illness. A third of us will become mentally ill at some time in our lives, and at least half of us will have to cope with mental illness in the family. Of the most unhappy 5 per cent in our society, 20 per cent are poor (in the bottom fifth of the income scale) but 40 per cent are mentally ill. So if we want to produce a happier society, the priority for the NHS should be to spend a lot more on mental health. Only 15 per cent of people with clinical depression see a specialist (a psychiatrist or psychologist). For the rest, it is ten minutes with a GP and some pills. Most depressed people want psychotherapy in order to understand what is going on inside them. Clinical trials show that the right therapy is as effective as drugs, and lasts longer. But in most areas, therapy is simply not available on the NHS, or involves an intolerable wait. If we want to reduce misery, the NHS should offer therapy to the mentally ill and then help in getting back to work. Finally, there is the ethos in which our children grow up. One of the most depressing surveys in recent years was conducted for the World Health Organisation. As part of it, 11-15 year olds were asked whether they agreed that "most of the students in my class(es) are kind and helpful." The proportion saying "yes" was over 75 per cent in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany, 53 per cent in the US and under 46 per cent in Russia and England. These findings are in line with surveys in which adults are asked about trust. The question often asked is: "Would you say that most people can be trusted-or would you say that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?" In Britain and the US, those who say: "Yes, most people can be trusted" has fallen from 55 per cent in 1960 to under 35 per cent today. Since the dawn of man, older people have lamented a supposed decline of morals. But there is some evidence that it is actually happening now. At various times, samples of Americans have been asked whether they believe people lead "as good lives-moral and honest-as they used to." In 1952, as many said "yes" as said "no." By 1998, three times as many said "no." We live in an age of unprecedented individualism. The highest obligation many people feel is to make the most of themselves, to realise their potential. This is a terrifying and lonely objective. Of course they feel obligations to other people too, but these are not based on any clear set of ideas. The old religious worldview is gone; so too is the postwar religion of social and national solidarity. We are left with no concept of the common good or collective meaning. Contemporary common sense provides two dominant ideas-derived (erroneously) from Charles Darwin and Adam Smith. From Darwin's theory of evolution is taken the idea that unless you look after your own interests, no one will. From Smith's analysis of the market comes the idea that selfishness is not so destructive because through voluntary exchange we shall all become as well off as is possible, given our resources, technology and tastes. But our tastes are not given, and every successful society has always concerned itself with the tastes of its members. It has encouraged community feelings and offered a concept of the common good. So what should be our concept of the common good? During the 18th-century Enlightenment, Bentham and others argued that a good society was one where its members were as happy as possible. So public policy should aim at producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and private decisions likewise should aim at the greatest happiness of all those affected. In the 19th century, this ideal inspired many social reforms. But in the 20th century it came under attack from two quarters. The first questioned the possibility of knowing what other people felt. According to this "behaviourism," all we can do is to observe people's behaviour. We can make no inference about their inner states. This inhuman idea started in psychology with John Watson and Pavlov, and percolated into economics through Lionel Robbins, John Hicks and others. If we accept this approach, we can no longer think of happiness as the goal. All that can be said about a person is what opportunities are open to him. If he has lost the facility for enjoying them, that is irrelevant. From this it is a short step to defining individual welfare in terms of purchasing power, and national welfare in terms of leisure-adjusted GDP. We desperately need to replace GDP, however adjusted, by more subtle measures of national wellbeing. Fortunately, the tide in psychology has turned, and common sense has returned. We could never have lived together if we had had no idea what others felt. And now our idea is confirmed by solid psychology and neuroscience. So the Benthamite rule provides an increasingly practical yardstick for public policy and for private ethics. I would modify it in one way only-to give extra weight to improving the happiness of those who are least happy, thus ruling out the oppression of minorities. (This also deals with the superficial objection to utilitarianism that it would vindicate the brutal abuse of a small minority if such abuse made the majority happier.) The second line of attack on the greatest happiness rule was philosophical. From the beginning it had its critics, and an alternative philosophy based on individual rights became fashionable. But this has two drawbacks. First, it is difficult to resolve the dilemma when rights conflict. And second, the philosophy is highly individualistic. It tells you what you are entitled to expect, and what you should not do. But it provides little guidance on what you should do-what career you should adopt, or how you should behave when your marriage goes sour. The Benthamite rule provides a framework for thinking about these issues. The philosophy of rights does not: its vision of the common good is too limited to guide us in working for the good of others. But is the Benthamite rule itself solid, and can it include the concept of rights? Let us consider two big objections. First, what is so special about happiness? Why the greatest possible happiness? Why not the greatest possible health, autonomy, accomplishment, freedom and so on? If I ask you why health is good, you can give reasons: people should not feel pain. On autonomy: people feel better when they can control their lives. And so on. But if I ask you why happiness is good, you will say that it is self-evident. And the reason for this is deep in our biology. We are programmed to enjoy experiences that are good for our survival, which is why we have survived. We have also been programmed in part to have a sense of fairness. If a meal has to be divided, most of us accept (sometimes grudgingly) that it should be divided 50:50-on the basis that, in principle, others count as much as we do. If you put this idea together with the fact that each of us wants to be happy, you arrive at the Benthamite principle. It is both idealistic and realistic. It puts others on an equal footing with ourselves, where they should be, but, unlike some moral systems, it also allows us to take our own happiness into account. The second objection is that the rule encourages expediency. Not so. We all know we cannot evaluate every action moment by moment against the overall Benthamite principle. That is why we have to have sub-rules, like honesty, promise-keeping, kindness and so on, which we normally follow as a matter of course. And that is also why we need clearly defined rights embedded in a constitution. But when moral rules or legal rights conflict with each other, we need an overarching principle to guide us, which is what Bentham provides. The rule is also criticised for putting ends before means, for taking only the consequences of actions to be worthy of moral consideration and not the nature of actions themselves. But this is wrong. For the consequences of a decision include the action, and not only what happens as a result of it. A horrible action-imprisoning an innocent in order to save lives, say-would require extraordinarily good and certain outcomes to justify it. The direct effects of an action should be considered when weighing up its morality, just as the results of it are. To become happier, we have to change our inner attitudes as much as our outward circumstances. I am talking of the perennial philosophy which enables us to find the positive force in ourselves, and to see the positive side in others. Such compassion, to ourselves and others, can be learned. It has been well described in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence, and it ought to be taught in schools. Every city should have a policy for promoting a healthier philosophy of life in its youngsters and for helping them to distinguish between a hedonistic addiction to superficial pleasures and real happiness. So my hope is that in this new century we can finally adopt the greatest happiness of humankind as our concept of the common good. This would have two results. It would serve as a clear guide to policy. But, even more important, it would inspire us in our daily lives to take more pleasure in the happiness of others, and to promote it. In this way we might all become less self-absorbed and more happy. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Apr 17 17:07:27 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 10:07:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] teenagers and pop culture In-Reply-To: <200504171602.j3HG2n213306@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050417170727.67139.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>The fact is, sex is more explicit everywhere on "Desperate Housewives," on booty-quaking music videos, on the Internet - except in real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious.<< --Reminds me of the saying, "People who talk a lot about sex aren't having any." I think a lot of adults have the perception that kids are getting worse, and embracing the "boot camp" mentality. I've heard a lot of people saying kids need more spankings, etc. and I wonder how much of that is a reaction to media rather than reality. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:07:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:07:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Washington Monthly: Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Dearth of a Nation Message-ID: Benjamin Wallace-Wells: Dearth of a Nation http://www.alternet.org/story/21400/ March 3, 2005 There is a moment in the lifespan of every cool new gadget ?? two years after Bill Gates buys one, a year and a half after the popular press gets wind of it ?? that its price drops enough to show up in significant numbers on the shelves at Best Buy, the electronic superstore. At this instant, the product becomes accessible for middle-class Americans, something they can imagine themselves buying, and so these electronics stores have become temples to innovation, the place most Americans go to get as close to the cutting edge as most of them dare. On weekend afternoons, Best Buy is as bustling as a souk, full of grandmothers and little kids tooling around with digital video cameras and geeked-out salesmen explaining to the moms that the cell phones in their hands have nearly the computing power of desktop PCs. But it's the men who are the most transported, moving from department to department with gawky reverence. At a Best Buy I visited recently in Alexandria, Va., I watched one dad gaze in wonder at row upon row of giant plasma televisions ?? elegant silver-framed screens that seemed not just to capture the way the world looks, but to improve upon it. He watched bees extract honey from flowers, and spiraling footballs drop into the hands of receivers, and you could almost see a two-part thought process play out over his face: First, If I wait a year, these sets will be half the price. Second, Screw it, I'm buying one now! But there was something else I noticed: Whereas a decade ago the most creative, groundbreaking stuff came from Silicon Valley, now it all seemed to come from overseas. The plasma televisions were from Korea; the computer-like cell phones were from Finland; the feature-packed digital cameras were from Japan. During the last six months, we have begun, quietly, to enter a newly tense moment, with university presidents, business leaders, and columnists delivering ominous-sounding reports and editorials about the threat to American innovation posed by a freshly competitive world ?? the renewed vitality of western Europe, Japan and Korea, and the ravenous growth of China and India. "We no longer have a lock on technology," David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and the current president of the California Institute of Technology, wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times. "Europe is increasingly competitive, and Asia has the potential to blow us out of the water." What worriers like Baltimore are beginning to grasp is that these changes are emerging just as the American economy is being made more vulnerable by the movement of manufacturing and service jobs overseas. As a result, we've become increasingly dependent on maintaining our edge in discovering the new technologies and applications that create whole new industries ?? just as other countries are closing that gap. This is a fundamentally new threat. In the '70s and '80s, Japanese and European firms adopted American technology and made key improvements in process and design to shave cost and increase quality. Now, foreign companies are making many of the most important breakthroughs themselves. This shift is part of a change in strategy: instead of copying our innovations, foreign governments have decided to copy our very model of innovating. They have studied our centers of invention, the Silicon Valleys and Research Triangles, where university scientists, venture capitalists, high-tech entrepreneurs, and educated, creative workers, many of them from overseas, congregate. These creative centers, our competitors have learned, were the result of federal policy ?? decades of investment in basic scientific research; patent law changes that allowed universities to capitalize on discoveries made in their labs; financial reforms that gave rise to the venture capital industry; and immigration laws that opened the door to talented foreigners. Over the last decade, our competitors have implemented similar policies at home: They have built universities, reformed financial markets, invited in immigrants, and made the development and adoption of new technologies national goals. Now, they're reaping the benefits. The technologies behind plasma screens emerged have been refined and expanded in labs under a research partnership between the Korean government and the electronics maker Samsung. Europe established its lead in mobile phones when European countries set a single standard for mobile communications (American firms are hobbled by lower-quality spectrum and three competing standards). Foreign competitors are edging out the United States not just in today's snazzy consumer goods, but in the technologies that will define the marketplace in the years to come. Most economists and new economy thinkers believe that the likeliest candidate for the Next Big Thing is the research being done in nanotechnology, a catch-all term for the manipulation of matter at the molecular level. Nanotechnology could someday be used to repair broken DNA to prevent cancer, create supercomputers the size of pinheads, or fabricate building materials 150 times the strength of steel. American scientists have been tinkering with nanotechnologies for 20 years. But some of the most cutting-edge research today is coming from overseas. Last August, Israeli scientists announced that they'd managed to develop manipulable nano-wires, tiny organic tools they could use to rearrange atoms and conduct electricity over microscopic spaces, a breakthrough a leading MIT nanotechnologist admitted American researchers had been chasing "for many years." In September, Japanese scientists announced that they would soon be able to use nano-engineering to build a computer chip 30 times more powerful than Intel's best. The breakthrough led American analysts to conclude that the United States was beginning to lose the race to bring nanotechnology products to market. The worry of economists and business leaders is not simply that Japan, Israel, or South Korea will beat us, like one football team does to another. It is, more precisely, that we'll only be able to take advantage of rising wages in those countries (and afford our own here) if we continue to create new, cutting-edge products and services to sell to those countries ?? and right now America does not seem to be doing as much of that as we were just a few years ago. This new competition from other developed countries, and the failure of America to fully keep pace, is one cause of our anemic job creation, three years after what was, by historical standards, a brief and fairly light recession. Another reason, of course, is the rise of China and India, where U.S. firms have not only moved manufacturing plants but also "outsourced" service sector jobs. America's employment base is being squeezed by these two pincers ?? China and India from below, and the developed world innovating from above. Over time, those pincers may come together, as China and India also become proficient in high-end innovation. China is already opening universities at a breathtaking clip, while Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Verizon have all opened research labs there ?? the kind that anchored the development of Silicon Valley. "It's become inevitable," says Ross Armbrecht, president of the Industrial Research Institute, which is the think tank for the research arms of America's corporations, "that more and more of the most far-reaching innovations will be going overseas, to India and China, in the near future." Economics is a negotiation in uncertainties, and so nobody's really sure what all of these changes will mean for the well-being of the American middle class. But when you survey economists, policymakers, and business leaders about America's long-term future, it's hard to find many rank optimists; there are the Panicked, and then there are the Merely Tense. Richard Lester, the head of MIT's Center for Innovation, told me he belongs in the latter camp: "Things look somewhat bleak in the long-term, but if you look around Boston, at the incredible concentration of talent and opportunity here, we've still got a head start, and if we're smart we can probably build on it." Among the Panicked are economists such as MIT Nobelist Paul Samuelson, who has recently argued that the rapid spread of innovative capacity to other countries with lower labor costs makes him doubt the whole doctrine of "comparative advantage," on which much of modern economics rests. If there's a way to escape this grim future, economists agree, it is for America to reverse its slowly slumping innovation machine. Perhaps the hottest area of economic research right now centers around technology, trying to figure out what exactly the United States did in the '90s and how we can do it again. In university economics departments and corporate executive suites across the country, the sense that we're in a pivotal fight for continued economic preeminence is already common knowledge. But in Washington, these new economic realities have barely been noticed. The Heroism of the 30-Year Mortgage On an overcast day in mid-December, President Bush assembled a group of CEOs at the Reagan Building ?? a behemoth of a federal office complex that has become the favorite venue for small-government conservatives ?? for a conference to promote his economic agenda. The tone of the conference, so soon after a winning election, was upbeat, cheery, back-slapping, the happy Chamber of Commerce banter of executives who have recognized a problem that they know how to fix. At the end of the day, the president himself took the stage. He said the economy was fundamentally strong and that government's role would be to "create an environment that encourages capital flows and job creation through wise fiscal policy." To do this, he said, he would ask for Congress to privatize Social Security and make his tax cuts permanent. He compared himself favorably to Franklin Roosevelt. He left the stage. During the same conference, two floors up in the very same building, a group called the Council on Competitiveness held another event for the press, in which it laid out a very different vision. This group, comprised of 400 blue-chip business executives (the CEOs of IBM, Pepsi, and General Motors, among others) and university presidents ?? as rough an approximation of the American establishment as you could fit in a single room ?? was nearly as downbeat as the president was buoyant. The astonishingly fast rise of international competitors, they warned, has meant that the American economy has reached an "inflection point," a "unique and delicate historic juncture" at which America, "for the first time in our history ... is confronting the prospect of a reverse brain drain." The report made a point of noting that the United States remains the world's dominant economy, the leader in fields ranging from biotechnology to computers to entertainment, but the CEOs nevertheless cited worrying evidence that this dominance might not last. For decades, the United States ranked first in the world in the percentage of its GDP devoted to scientific research; now, we've dropped behind Japan, Korea, Israel, Sweden, and Finland. The number of scientific papers published by Americans peaked in 1992 and has fallen 10 percent; a decade ago, the United States led the world in scientific publications, but now it trails Europe. For two centuries, a higher proportion of Americans had gone to university than have citizens of any other country; now several nations in Asia and Europe have caught up. "Those competitor countries ... are not only wide awake," said Shirley Ann Jackson, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, "but they are running a marathon ... and we tend to run sprints." While the president's talk focused almost exclusively on the need to free up capital for investment, these CEOs barely mentioned that as a problem. Instead, they stressed various below-the-radar government actions that they felt were undermining America's competitive edge: security arrangements that have crimped the supply of educated immigrants; recent cuts in science funding (the president's 2005 budget sliced money for research in 21 of 24 areas); and the reassigning of what research funding remains to applied research, most of it in homeland security and the military, and away from the basic scientific research that economists say is the essential engine of future economic growth. They also expressed concern about those policies Washington was not pursuing but should be: broadening access to patents; increasing research into alternative fuels; and bringing information technology into the health care market. When the newspapers reported the event the next day, the president's speech got front-page treatment. The CEO's presentation received only a short item on page E3 of The Washington Post, and no mention at all in The New York Times. This gap in media coverage reflected not only the power of a newly elected president to dominate the news, but also what might be called a macroeconomic bias. When the press and most Americans think of economic policy, they think of macroeconomic matters ?? tax rates, budget deficits, trade balances ?? whose fluctuations have instant, tangible effects on interest rates, stock prices, and exchange rates ?? things newspaper readers and casual investors can see, track, and relate to. But there is another set of ways in which Washington has always affected the long-term health of the economy: by making investments, regulatory changes, and infrastructure improvement to spur the economy forward, creating new industries and giving new tools to old ones. This category of policies has not traditionally been given a single name but might best be called "microeconomic policy." Historically, this has been the heroic side of economic policy: The Louisiana Purchase may have been a shrewd maneuver for continental expansion, but it was also a jobs program for landless citizens eager to carve their own farms in the wilderness ?? which is how Jefferson sold the treaty to Congress. The land grant college system, signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, provided the nation's farmers with expert guidance on the latest agricultural techniques to improve their crop yields. No entrepreneur could figure out how to mass produce cars profitably, writes Harold Evans in his excellent new book They Made America, until Henry Ford fought an aggressive bid against restrictive patents. The pharmaceutical, financial, and airline industries blossomed thanks to the creation of the FDA, SEC, and FAA, which gave customers some assurance of safety when they popped pills, traded stocks, or boarded flights. The G.I. Bill provided a generation of veterans with the college educations they needed to build the post-war middle class. The creation of the federally-guaranteed 30-year mortgage proved the decisive tool in the growth of the post-war American suburb. These investments and regulatory changes aren't merely tools of the past; it is impossible to imagine the '90s boom emerging without them. Early investment from the Pentagon helped nurture the internet. The algorithm that powered Google was developed when co-founder Larry Page, then a Stanford graduate student, won a federal grant to write a more efficient sorting and search engine for libraries. The innovative new medicines that have driven the expansion of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries arose from university research largely financed by the National Institutes of Health. The commercialization of these and other discoveries was financed by a venture capital industry that developed only after legislation, sponsored by Republican lawmakers and signed by President Jimmy Carter, enabled an advisory firm to hold significant stock in a start-up. For most of the country's history, both political parties have favored various microeconomic initiatives ?? though Democrats have been more comfortable with using government to intervene in the marketplace, while Republicans have tended towards a laissez-faire approach that stressed lowering the cost of capital. These tensions sparked big debates in the 1980s about "industrial policy," with (mostly) Democrats arguing for various kinds of sector-specific technology investments and relief from Japanese competition and (mostly) Republicans arguing that the federal government should cut taxes, trust the market, and not "pick winners and losers." Still, each party has traditionally played on both the macro and microeconomic policy fields. Kennedy cut marginal tax rates when they were excessively high in the early 1960s. Clinton cut the deficit to reduce interest rates. Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. Reagan gave crucial tariff protection to America's then-ailing semiconductor industry. Under President Bush, however, the GOP's natural economic policy tendencies have been hyper-charged by a grand political vision. Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, and other Republican strategists have argued that massive annual tax cuts and the privatization of Social Security will not only increase the flow of capital into the marketplace, but will also put Democrats at a long-term electoral disadvantage and usher in a new era of GOP dominance. That these policies also require the government to take on trillions of dollars in extra debt, just as the first baby boomers are reaching retirement and trade imbalances are reaching historic levels, is seen by GOP leaders as a risk worth taking. And so the White House and Congress have pursued tax cutting and Social Security privatization with relentless focus, to the exclusion of almost everything else. As The New York Times columnist Daniel Altman has written, the president has chosen economic advisers such as N. Gregory Mankiw, Lawrence Lindsey, and R. Glenn Hubbard who support this singular view. "What you have in Washington now is an inability to get beyond the macroeconomic, to understand that there are so many other investments government needs to be making and actions it ought to be taking, and that our future is going to hinge in large part on what decisions we make there," Michael Mandel, the influential economist and columnist for BusinessWeek, told me in January. "And right now in Washington, they're not even looking at any of that." Even when the Bush administration's leading economists discuss innovation, it is mostly in this light ?? they argue that reducing the cost of capital will lead companies to invest in new technologies. They rely in part on the research of economists such as Dan Sichel of the Federal Reserve and Dale Jorgenson of Harvard, who examined the sources of the '90s boom and found that capital availability played an important role. But not even Jorgenson thinks this was the whole story: "You need something to invest in, and so all those other things you're talking about were crucially important too, in the long run," he told me in January. "If you're looking at Washington today, you have to ask, what are they doing to make those investments now?" Bush v. Newt The same White House that has been bold, and recklessly so, on macroeconomic policy has been timid, and recklessly so, on microeconomic policy. It has made only a few feints at such policies and investments, and compared to the relentless energy with which the administration has pursued tax cuts and Social Security reform, its attention to such microeconomic strategies has been only tepid, intermittent, Potemkin-like ?? done to quiet a constituency or send a political signal. A good example is broadband. Most experts predict that when a critical mass of homes and businesses acquire high-speed internet connections, an explosion of economic growth will follow as whole new industries, such as video-conferencing and online video gaming, become possible. But these new industries are likely to flourish in whichever countries achieve near-universal broadband first, and at the current pace, that won't be the United States. For four years, the FCC has pursued a "deregulatory" telecommunications policy that has effectively blocked competition, giving phone companies little incentive to build out their broadband networks. Over the same period, the United States has dropped from 4th to 10th in the world in percentage of its homes and businesses with broadband. Not surprisingly, South Korea, which is first on the list, is now the world's leader in developing online video games, the fastest-growing segment of an industry that's bigger than movies, and its software companies are beginning to lure top American programmers to Seoul. Early last year, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) began to use a line in his stump speeches that challenged the president on America's declining broadband position. The president responded by proposing the goal of achieving "90 percent broadband access" by 2007. The goal was bold-sounding but empty: By most measures, 90 percent of Americans already have "access" to broadband in the sense that they could, if they wished, sign up for it; the problem is that, compared to other countries, relatively few Americans have done so. A similar inattention has held in wireless ?? a technology that venture capitalists believe would explode if the government would make a simple regulatory change. Since the president came into office, bankers, venture capitalists and economists have been urging the FCC to reassign unused, high-quality spectrum that is now reserved for television broadcasters and the military. "Nobody was using this," says Wharton's Kevin Werbach; reassigning it was "a no-brainer." The FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, did nothing for two years and then delegated the matter to a task force to investigate how best to reassign spectrum. The task force reported two years ago, but the commission has still not begun to reassign spectrum. Meanwhile, the United States has fallen only farther behind in wireless technologies to European and Asian firms. But there is perhaps no economic sector that is undergoing a more profound evolution, or in which government investments could make a bigger difference, than energy. As India and China continue their rapid industrialization, and with it their need for oil, analysts predict that the price of oil, already sky-high, will grow even more prohibitive ?? which means that whichever companies develop the most effective alternative fuels and energy-efficiency technology will revolutionize the industry, and whichever countries can produce those breakthroughs may become rich on it, the Bahrains of the 21st century. Right now, however, the United States is not poised to be one of those countries. Demand in America for electric-gas hybrid cars already outstrips supply, but Ford is so behind the curve that it's leasing its hybrid technology from Toyota. Europe, meanwhile, is setting the pace on the next promising auto technology; clean diesel-electric hybrids. Companies in Europe and Asia have also made more progress than have their American counterparts in developing the technology for crafting energy-efficient appliances, offices, and factories ?? a consequence of higher energy taxes and stricter environmental regulations in those countries. The Bush administration's most vigorous response to all this has been to increase the funding for research into hydrogen-powered cars. Hydrogen technology is promising. But it is also decades away from the market, and even hydrogen buffs believe the administration has gone about its program the wrong way, trying to build fuel cells before figuring out the more daunting challenges of how to extract and transport hydrogen. Moreover, there's a creeping suspicion that hydrogen may end up being far too expensive to compete with other, more feasible, and probably cheaper fuels like biomass ethanol, a technology in which America happens to be a leader. Betting on a single alternative fuel source, hydrogen, at the expense of others is a classic case of "picking winners and losers." The truth is, no one knows yet which technologies or energy sources will define the future. A better strategy, says Harvard's John Holdren, would be for the federal government to raise automobile fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards, impose a carbon cap-and-trade system for factories and power-plants, and let the market decide which new energy sources and technologies are the best. These ideas now have broader backing than they did a decade ago. The bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy issued a report in December calling such measures the most critical to ensure America's energy future ?? and that commission's members includes the CEOs of old-line energy giants such as Exelon and ConocoPhillips. And, Holdren told me, executives at old economy companies from Monsanto to Dow Chemical have signed on. "Five years ago, we didn't have a shot at getting them on board," said Holdren, "but the situation is getting dire enough that now they're leading the charge." Still, many sectors, including the automobile and power industries, vehemently oppose higher CAFE standards and carbon emission limits, and the president has repeatedly rejected them. There is no better example of the administration's Potemkin-style microeconomic policy than the way it has handled the issue of rising medical costs. Here, the administration has talked a good game. During last year's presidential campaign, the president vowed to bring health care out of the "buggy and horse days" by getting the industry to adopt information technologies, such as electronic medical records-keeping and systematic case-management systems, which experts say could save hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. To this end, he promised a new $50 million health care IT initiative. It was an absurdly small amount, and probably no match for the perverse incentives that keep for-profit medicine from investing in these technologies (see "Best Care Anywhere," January/February 2005). But at least it was something. That is, until the president signed his 2005 budget into law, which zeroed out the $50 million program. David Brailer, the economist and physician the White House had put in charge of the program, wound up with no money to do anything to install information technology in hospitals ?? no pilot programs, no cash for education, no seminars for hospital executives. Newt Gingrich, the right's high priest of health IT, told The New York Times that the president's defunding of his own program was a "disgrace." (After Gingrich's hue and cry, the White House put the money back in the proposed 2006 budget it submitted to Congress, though some insiders remain skeptical that the program will survive). Faster, Faster Technology today is diffusing faster than ever. As the Council on Competitiveness has noted, it took 55 years for the automobile to spread to a quarter of the country, 35 years for the telephone, 22 years for the radio, 16 years for the personal computer, 13 years for the cell phone, and only seven years for the Internet. Because technologies are adopted so quickly, it has become more important than ever for a country's industries to be at the cutting edge ?? there's simply much less catch-up time. (Fall five years behind on building car factories in the early 20th century and you lost some profits; fall five years behind on hybrid cars and you may have lost an industry). For this reason, the last four years of drift may have already done significant damage to America's long-term economic prospects. The pity is, there was no good reason for the drift. Finding ways to strengthen border security while still providing enough visas for educated immigrants and graduate students is hardly the world's most difficult public policy challenge, and every Fortune 500 corporation in America would cheer such moves. There are no serious ideological reasons why both parties couldn't support reform of patent laws (though certain powerful interest groups would object). It's hard to find a good excuse for why we're falling behind on broadband, or have failed so far to reassign valuable wireless spectrum. (Indeed, a country which until recently had large budget surpluses should by now have found the money to begin wiring the country with fiber-optics, providing higher-quality streams which can transport large data files far faster than broadband.) And even the most politically difficult actions, such as raising CAFE standards and imposing a flexible carbon emissions cap to spur energy innovation, should have been possible after 9/11, with the nation willing to make sacrifices and dire warnings from all political wings about our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But what worries economists even more than the past four years of drift is the prospect of continued inaction. The speed of technological change is now too fast, and the economic competition too fierce, for America to afford that. There is no law that says the United States will be the world's pre-eminent economic power forever. But neither is there any reason we can't rise to the challenge, as we did in the 1980s and 1990s. Then, as now, becoming more innovative is the solution to our problem. But first, we must recognize that we have a problem. From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sun Apr 17 17:12:09 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:12:09 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C54321.E03923B0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54321.E03923B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426298E9.6030008@solution-consulting.com> Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. Steve Hovland wrote: >They have used their money to buy politicians >who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >cuts under Bush are of this character. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >law? I certainly don't. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>So they should pay more taxes. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:17:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:17:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reason: Ronald Bailey: What is Richard Posner So Afraid Of? Message-ID: Ronald Bailey: What is Richard Posner So Afraid Of? http://www.reason.com/links/links030305.shtml 5.3.3 The high cost of the falling sky High-powered intellectual and federal judge Richard Posner spoke at the Washington, D.C., think tank Resources for the Future (RFF) on Wednesday about his new book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response. Posner aims to look at how policymakers and the public should respond to very low probability, very high cost events such as an asteroid hitting the earth, abrupt global warming, or a bioterrorist attack. Such disasters could just kill tens of millions or even wipe out the human race. In his talk, Posner took a look at four different very low probability catastrophes. The first was a bioterrorist attack on the United States that unleashes a plague that kills 100 million Americans. He calculated the cost of such an attack at $1 quadrillion (100 million lives x $7 million per life + a $300 trillion pain and suffering factor). Since the Feds are spending $2 billion per year on research to avoid such an attack, he calculated that the implied annual probability is .000002 or 1 in 500,000. Posner then asserted that the probability of such an attack is much higher (how much higher he didn't say), therefore he concludes that Americans are underspending on preventing such an attack. But are we woefully underspending? It's my intuition too that the probability of some bioterrorist attack is much higher than 1 in 500,000 annually, but what is the probability that I will be affected by such an attack? Remember that the anthrax attack in 2001 killed just 5 people and made 22 others sick. In that attack each of us faced about a 1 in a million chance of being exposed to the anthrax spores. Of course, future bioterrorist attacks could well involve infectious agents, which in a sense deliver themselves. Posner correctly noted that some day in the not too distant future, keeping smallpox securely locked up in two labs won't do much good because biotechnologists will be able to construct smallpox viruses with off-the-shelf biochemicals. Historically, smallpox has been 30 percent lethal in unvaccinated populations. Posner suggested that bioterrorists might be able to boost smallpox's or some other pathogen's lethality from 30 percent to nearly 100 percent. But why does Posner limit his analysis to the $2 billion being spent directly on biodefense research and monitoring? Wouldn't a fair analysis also include the not-inconsiderable expenditures for intelligence and military activities that are currently disrupting terrorist infrastructure and planning worldwide? More broadly, the billions being spent on advances in biotechnology at universities and corporations aimed at curing and preventing natural diseases also provide spillover technologies that will enable us to counter bioterrorist pathogens. And the vast improvements in our communications systems like the Internet and broadcast facilities can alert people to an attack and provide them with the information needed to protect themselves from it. In addition, although it's possible that people will panic, I suspect that extensive social learning about the importance of maintaining quarantines will also aid us in preventing the spread of any supervirulent pathogens. When you add it all up, I would guess that our total anti-bioterrorism expenditures imply that we are protecting ourselves against the probability of an attack that kills 100 million Americans at somewhere between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10,000. It's a lot harder to argue that that is not enough, especially since Posner did not offer an estimate of how probable such a bioterror plague really is. Posner went through a similar analysis for asteroid strikes wiping out 1.5 billion people at an estimated loss of $3 quadrillion (foreign lives are cheaper than $7 million American lives). He said that astronomers estimate the annual probability of such a strike at 1 in 50 million to 1 in 100 million, whereas the implied probability of our current expenditures is 1 in 769 million. Posner also mentioned that scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory who are running the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC) had initially estimated that there was a 1 in 500,000 chance that the RHIC could create strangelets, which could shrink the earth into a sphere 100 meters in diameter before causing it to explode. Strangely, Posner did not mention that subsequent calculations had shown that the probability of that mishap was far less than that. Posner's final disaster was "abrupt global warming" of 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Posner reasonably noted that the scenarios for gradual warming over the next century actually did not imply the need for measures like the Kyoto Protocol, which would impose limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Why? Because considering the pace of technological progress, such long term problems might well be handled more cheaply and expeditiously by improvements in technology in 50 to 60 years. Nevertheless, Posner estimated the current expenditures on climate change to be $1.7 billion annually and the possible losses of "abrupt global warming" at $66.6 trillion yielding an implied probability of 1 in 388,000. Again, he asserted that the annual probability of abrupt global warming must be higher than that, and therefore we were once again underspending to protect ourselves against this threat. Once more, Posner is looking solely at research expenditures aimed directly at studying climatology. He is apparently ignoring the vast sums spent on improving energy technologies and expenditures on basic research in areas like nanotechnology which are likely to yield solutions to energy production problems in the future. In the final analysis, modern technological society is all about reducing risks-that is why we're living longer and healthier lives. Because of humanity's advancing technological, institutional prowess, we are vastly better positioned to handle plagues, asteroids and climate change than our ancestors even 50 years ago were. Given the trajectory of human progress, it's very unlikely that a Posnerian catastrophe will ever wipe out humanity. Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 17 17:21:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:21:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Courseware That Could Replace Professors Is Inevitable, New York College Official Says Message-ID: Courseware That Could Replace Professors Is Inevitable, New York College Official Says News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.7 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/03/2005030702n.htm [Again, the best teacher I ever had taught themselves, not the subject. So amend this to *most* professors.] [45]By JAMILAH EVELYN Right now an enterprising computer programmer somewhere is probably designing instructional software that could completely eliminate professors as we know them, says John C. Miller, director of the Algebra Courseware Project at the City College, part of the City University of New York. Mr. Miller delivered that threat -- or promise, if you're an administrator rather than an instructor -- on Sunday at Innovations 2005, the annual conference of the League for Innovation in the Community College, which is being held here through Wednesday. His best guess is that the programmer is probably in India, home to what Mr. Miller said are the world's best computer programmers and the world's best technical university, the Indian Institute of Technology. The worldwide cost of "secondary" mathematics instruction -- pre-algebra through elementary calculus -- is somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-billion annually, and most of it goes to instructors' salaries, he said. The enterprising programmer would find a ready market for instructional software among cost-conscious college and school administrators. "The technology is ready," Mr. Miller said. "It's a question of when, not if." Community colleges have in recent years adopted instructional software widely, mostly in developmental English, reading, and math courses, but the software now available commercially is supplemental. In most cases, an instructor still guides students through the course and answers questions that software cannot. Mr. Miller said this approach isn't necessarily the best in every situation. For example, he said, the process by which community-college students are placed in sequential math courses is flawed. If tests place a student in the first course in a sequence, he may nevertheless be familiar with the first third of the course material, which could lead to boredom and bad study habits, which might set him up for failure when the instructor finally gets to the material that the student doesn't know. If the student was taking a course that used self-paced instructional software -- which would allow him to breeze through the first third of the curriculum by proving to the software that he already knew the content -- he would have a better chance of staying engaged. "It's clear to me there's a strong argument for computer-based instruction in sequential math," said Mr. Miller, a retired professor, "because it's nearly impossible for a professor to design an instructional pace that suits all students." Mr. Miller said that math would likely be the harbinger of such technology. "But if it works," he said, "expect to see it spread across the humanities." Many professors who attended the session were doubtful. Nasrin Shafai, an associate professor of math at Montgomery College in Conroe, Tex., argued that such software is more of a threat to advanced, graduate-level courses because more can be assumed of students in those courses. "My students need me," she said. "They need me to motivate them. A computer can't do that." Others pointed out that software publishers would be most interested in basic-level courses that pack in the students, rather than obscure graduate courses. "Adoption may be irresistible," Mr. Miller said. _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [59]Technology Reshapes Universities, Report Says (11/22/2002) * [60]The Promise and Problems of a New Way of Teaching Math (10/8/1999) * [61]Students Dislike Va. Tech Math Classes in Which Computers Do Much of the Teaching (2/20/1998) * [62]Rethinking the Role of the Professor in an Age of High-Tech Tools (10/3/1997) * [63]Computerized Courses Change the Way Mathematics Is Taught (10/25/1996) * [64]Brown U. Offers On-Line Tutorials Instead of Lectures (2/2/1996) Opinion: * [65]At Last, We Can Replace Lectures (7/9/2004) References 45. mailto:jamilah.evelyn at chronicle.com 59. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i13/13a05402.htm 60. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v46/i07/07a03101.htm 61. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-24.dir/24a03201.htm 62. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-06.dir/06a02601.htm 63. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-43.dir/issue-09.dir/09a02701.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-42.dir/issue-21.dir/21a01901.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i44/44b00801.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 17 18:48:28 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 11:48:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <426298E9.6030008@solution-consulting.com> References: <01C54321.E03923B0.shovland@mindspring.com> <426298E9.6030008@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <4262AF7C.1080902@earthlink.net> I am very much in favor of tax cuts since I agree that it benefits all classes of people. I do become suspect when I hear a politician rejecting cuts in favor of increasing taxes.....not unlike what the people of California voted for in the past election. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich > people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because > that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax > cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. > > Steve Hovland wrote: > >>They have used their money to buy politicians >>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>cuts under Bush are of this character. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>law? I certainly don't. >> >>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >> >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >>>So they should pay more taxes. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 17 19:20:47 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:20:47 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C54347.E3063120.shovland@mindspring.com> I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't want us to know how much money they have. The government is part of the economy. Taxes paid to the government do not drain the economy. They merely shift money from one part of the economy to another. This shifting increases the velocity of money, which causes the economy to grow. Many private enterprises get a significant portion of their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. Steve Hovland wrote: >They have used their money to buy politicians >who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >cuts under Bush are of this character. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >law? I certainly don't. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>So they should pay more taxes. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > << File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 17 19:58:13 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:58:13 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes Message-ID: <01C5434D.1E265AA0.shovland@mindspring.com> While the middle class struggles to fulfill its tax obligations, 60 percent of corporations pay no taxes at all. At a time of rising corporate profits, the GAO reports that 95 percent of corporations paid less than 5 percent of their income in taxes, and 6 in 10 paid nothing at all in federal taxes from 1996 through 2000. With corporate tax dodging at a record high, and the percentage of federal tax revenue from corporations approaching record lows, middle class Americans should expect to pick up more of the tab from the Bush administration's skewed tax agenda. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Sun Apr 17 20:07:45 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 13:07:45 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] GAO report on corporate tax liabilities Message-ID: <01C5434E.732C7290.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04358.pdf From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 17 23:32:18 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:32:18 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C54347.E3063120.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54347.E3063120.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4262F202.70008@earthlink.net> You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then what is poor.....income of $100k per year? This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. Gerry Steve Hovland wrote: >I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >want us to know how much money they have. > >The government is part of the economy. Taxes >paid to the government do not drain the economy. >They merely shift money from one part of the >economy to another. This shifting increases the >velocity of money, which causes the economy >to grow. > >Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>They have used their money to buy politicians >>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>cuts under Bush are of this character. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>law? I certainly don't. >> >>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >> >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>So they should pay more taxes. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> >> > << File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Apr 18 01:52:11 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 19:52:11 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes In-Reply-To: <01C5434D.1E265AA0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5434D.1E265AA0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426312CB.20906@solution-consulting.com> The reason for that is that the government has an insane plan of taxing corporations. Any profits are taxed, and then if the corp gives them out as dividends, they are taxed again. People and corporations dodge taxes when they are too high. I disagree with Steve; taxes are in fact a drag on economies, since government spending is inherently inefficient, since it is not constrained by market forces. See Japan as an example of high taxes and a moribund economy; compare Hong Kong or Singapore with vibrant economies and low taxes. Steve Hovland wrote: >While the middle class struggles to fulfill its tax obligations, >60 percent of corporations pay no taxes at all. > >At a time of rising corporate profits, the GAO reports that >95 percent of corporations paid less than 5 percent of their income >in taxes, and 6 in 10 paid nothing at all in federal taxes from 1996 >through 2000. > >With corporate tax dodging at a record high, and the percentage of federal tax >revenue from corporations approaching record lows, middle class Americans >should expect to pick up more of the tab from the Bush administration's skewed >tax agenda. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 18 13:15:43 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:15:43 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes Message-ID: <01C543DE.0D7CA380.shovland@mindspring.com> Why compare the prosperity of the Clinton era with higher taxes to the doldrums of the Bush era with lower taxes? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 6:52 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes The reason for that is that the government has an insane plan of taxing corporations. Any profits are taxed, and then if the corp gives them out as dividends, they are taxed again. People and corporations dodge taxes when they are too high. I disagree with Steve; taxes are in fact a drag on economies, since government spending is inherently inefficient, since it is not constrained by market forces. See Japan as an example of high taxes and a moribund economy; compare Hong Kong or Singapore with vibrant economies and low taxes. Steve Hovland wrote: >While the middle class struggles to fulfill its tax obligations, >60 percent of corporations pay no taxes at all. > >At a time of rising corporate profits, the GAO reports that >95 percent of corporations paid less than 5 percent of their income >in taxes, and 6 in 10 paid nothing at all in federal taxes from 1996 >through 2000. > >With corporate tax dodging at a record high, and the percentage of federal tax >revenue from corporations approaching record lows, middle class Americans >should expect to pick up more of the tab from the Bush administration's skewed >tax agenda. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 18 13:18:26 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 06:18:26 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C543DE.6EB762C0.shovland@mindspring.com> I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle class life. A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less middle class than they think. That's why some of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then what is poor.....income of $100k per year? This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. Gerry Steve Hovland wrote: >I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >want us to know how much money they have. > >The government is part of the economy. Taxes >paid to the government do not drain the economy. >They merely shift money from one part of the >economy to another. This shifting increases the >velocity of money, which causes the economy >to grow. > >Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>They have used their money to buy politicians >>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>cuts under Bush are of this character. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>law? I certainly don't. >> >>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >> >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>So they should pay more taxes. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> >> > << File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From Euterpel66 at aol.com Mon Apr 18 13:28:58 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 09:28:58 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: In a message dated 4/17/2005 1:12:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. Steve Hovland wrote: They have used their money to buy politicians who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax cuts under Bush are of this character. Steve Hovland _www.stevehovland.net_ (http://www.stevehovland.net/) -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [_SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net_ (mailto:SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net) ] Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic law? I certainly don't. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: So they should pay more taxes. Steve Hovland _www.stevehovland.net_ (http://www.stevehovland.net/) _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) _http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych_ (http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, In the meantime, in between time, Ain't we got fun. Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 18 14:16:30 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 07:16:30 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C543E6.8BD972F0.shovland@mindspring.com> I think it's useful to challenge the assumption that the rich are rich because they are more deserving than we are. More powerful perhaps, but not more virtuous. In the old days of England the peasants had associations too, and they occassionally burned down the houses of aristocrats who got too high handed. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Euterpel66 at aol.com [SMTP:Euterpel66 at aol.com] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 6:29 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In a message dated 4/17/2005 1:12:32 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. Steve Hovland wrote: They have used their money to buy politicians who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax cuts under Bush are of this character. Steve Hovland _www.stevehovland.net_ (http://www.stevehovland.net/) -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [_SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net_ (mailto:SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net) ] Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic law? I certainly don't. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: So they should pay more taxes. Steve Hovland _www.stevehovland.net_ (http://www.stevehovland.net/) _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) _http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych_ (http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, In the meantime, in between time, Ain't we got fun. Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html << File: ATT00025.html >> << File: ATT00026.txt >> From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:25:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:25:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stan. L. Rev.: Richard H. Sander: A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools Message-ID: Stan. L. Rev.: Richard H. Sander: A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools [First, a report on the fall out from the article from News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15. Here are two paragraphs from that report: Michele Landis Dauber, an associate professor at Stanford Law School, argues that the staff of her law school's student-run law review does not have the expertise to realize that Mr. Sander's study was filled with errors and unsubstantiated conclusions. "Stanford's name is being tied up with a piece of crap that never should have been published and has no merit of any sort," she said in an interview. "The publication of this article is a clarion call for law professors to get their houses in order and institute a system of peer review" in legal publishing, she said. [I wonder whether she wants the peer reviewers to be especially on the lookout for wickedness. Here's the whole report. The article itself follows.] Combatants Over Affirmative Action in Admissions Await Law-Review Issue That's Their Next Battleground [45]By KATHERINE S. MANGAN Rarely does a student-run journal generate the sort of nervous anticipation and borderline paranoia created by the May issue of the Stanford Law Review. Manuscripts for the forthcoming issue are flying back and forth among legal scholars, many of whom are rebutting a salvo launched at affirmative action in the November 2004 issue of the journal. In that issue, Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, published a study of law students concluding that affirmative-action beneficiaries are more likely than their peers to receive poor grades, flunk out, and fail the bar ([65]The Chronicle, November 12, 2004). He argued that such students are being "mismatched" with top law schools, where they are in over their heads. Critics of that premise will get their turn in the new issue, along with a response from Mr. Sander. He has tried, unsuccessfully, to squelch public discussion about the occasionally testy exchanges until next month, when the articles are published. He has asked his critics not to provide advance copies of their articles to The Chronicle, explaining to a Chronicle reporter that there's "an emerging meeting of minds" on several issues, and that a public airing of their views could lock people into adversarial positions. But given the tenor of the 200-plus pages of commentary obtained by The Chronicle, sparks will continue to fly both in private and in public. Anticipating such a reaction, the law-review editors have posted a question-and-answer section on the review's [66]Web site about the study and the critiques of it, saying they hope the articles will "inspire dialogue rather than division." The arguments against Mr. Sander's paper range broadly. David B. Wilkins, a professor at Harvard Law School, writes that affirmative action has helped transform "a once exclusionary and insular profession into one that is at least tolerably diverse," and that the use of affirmative action in admissions has helped overcome disadvantages that black lawyers face in the job market. He argues that Mr. Sander has ignored factors that might help explain racial achievement gaps, including the possibility that some law professors expect less of black students. "By focusing only on the most negative aspects of the current reality -- i.e., that many black students receive low grades and have difficulty passing the bar -- without giving at least equal time to the positive news that most black lawyers are leading successful and productive careers," Mr. Wilkins writes, "Sander's proposed disclosure is destined to exacerbate the extent to which black law students currently feel alienated and disengaged." Michele Landis Dauber, an associate professor at Stanford Law School, argues that the staff of her law school's student-run law review does not have the expertise to realize that Mr. Sander's study was filled with errors and unsubstantiated conclusions. "Stanford's name is being tied up with a piece of crap that never should have been published and has no merit of any sort," she said in an interview. "The publication of this article is a clarion call for law professors to get their houses in order and institute a system of peer review" in legal publishing, she said. In her article, Ms. Dauber observes that Mr. Sander's article "created unjustified doubt in the minds of black law students about their abilities" and "doubt in the minds of politicians about whether what they are doing is really harming those they wanted to help." The November article also raised doubts, she adds, among legal educators about whether they should support affirmative action. Another critique is offered by a four-person team: William C. Kidder, a researcher at the Equal Justice Society, an advocacy group based in San Francisco; David L. Chambers, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; Richard O. Lempert, a law professor at Michigan; and Timothy T. Clydesdale, an associate professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey. Ending affirmative action, they say, would cut the number of black law students -- especially at the most prestigious schools -- and those who remained would feel conspicuous and isolated. It would also reduce the number of black lawyers produced annually by 30 percent to 40 percent, rather than increasing the number, as Mr. Sander argued. The critique further predicts that with fewer black students attending the most prestigious schools, there would be fewer black lawyers to become law professors, law-firm partners, and judges. The May law review's final article, written by Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School, and Richard Brooks, an associate professor of law at Yale, does agree with Mr. Sander that "the average black law student's grades are jaw-droppingly low." They acknowledge that "attending law school is a very risky proposition for many black law students" and that educators cannot afford to ignore the problem. If Mr. Sander had simply pointed out those disparities, Mr. Ayres and Mr. Brooks argue, his study never would have created a furor. What they vigorously dispute is his assertion that affirmative action is largely to blame for the problems, and that ending the practice would increase the number of black lawyers. Their study tentatively concludes that the opposite would occur: Ending affirmative action would result in fewer black lawyers. Mr. Sander's response to his critics is that their complaints are "surprisingly toothless." Furthermore, he says, none of the authors have offered a better explanation for the achievement gaps, and none have offered a solution. To judge by the arguments to be published next month, a meeting of the minds on affirmative action in America's law schools is a long way off. _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [67]Affirmative Action and Military Recruiting Spur Debate at Law-School Meeting (1/21/2005) * [68]Federal Court Declines to Set New Limits on Affirmative Action (1/7/2005) * [69]Does Affirmative Action Hurt Black Law Students? (11/12/2004) * [70]In Search of Diversity on Law Reviews (9/5/2003) * [71]Affirmative Action Survives, and So Does the Debate (7/4/2003) * [72]White Students Do Better on LSAT Than Minority Classmates With Similar GPA's, Report Says (8/30/2001) References 45. mailto:katiemangan at austin.rr.com 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i12/12a03501.htm 66. http://lawreview.stanford.edu/ 67. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i20/20a01901.htm 68. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i18/18a03401.htm 69. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i12/12a03501.htm 70. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i02/02a04501.htm 71. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i43/43s00101.htm 72. http://chronicle.com/daily/2001/08/2001083003n.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. [The article itself to come. "Intelligence" appears once, in a footnote (143). "Herrnstein," "Murray," "genetic," "biological," and "innate" do not appear at all. "Cognitive," though appears several time, twice in one paragraph in the text and again in two footnotes. Here they are: ???Of course, we sense in our day-to-day dealings with professionals that cognitive skill and subject mastery do matter. We value doctors, lawyers, and engineers who are smart, who can easily explain competing theories, who can remember minutiae about their fields, who are good problem-solvers. But perhaps it is the case that above some basic threshold, variations in these skills are less important to job performance and success than many other things, such as how conscientious, well-spoken, diligent, likable, or ethical someone is - things which possibly are only weakly correlated with cognitive skills and which are almost never measured along the path to becoming a lawyer. ???n143. Claude M. Steele & Joshua Aronson, Stereotype Threat and the Test Performance of Academically Successful African Americans, in The Black-White Test Score Gap 401 (Christopher Jencks & Meredith Phillips eds., 1998). Steele and Aronson theorize that the performance of blacks on tests is worse when they perceive those tests to be measures of "intelligence" or "cognitive skills," because they are aware of the general pattern of lower black performance on such tests. Fear of conforming to the "stereotype" decreases their concentration and confidence during the test. ???n175. In other words, the data show that if blacks were admitted to law school through race-neutral selection, they would perform as well as whites. As I have noted, there is nonetheless a very large black-white credentials gap among those applying to law school, and this gap does not disappear when one uses simple controls for such glib explanations as family income or primary-school funding. Researchers have made great strides over the past generation in accounting for the black-white gap in measured cognitive skills. The dominant consensus is that: (a) the gap is real, and shows up under many types of measurement; (b) the gap is not genetic, i.e., black infants raised in white households tend to have the same or higher cognitive skills as whites raised in the same conditions; and (c) there are a variety of cultural and parenting differences between American blacks and whites (e.g., time children spend reading with parents or watching television) that substantially contribute to measured skill gaps. On these points, see the excellent essays in The Black-White Test Score Gap, supra note 143, particularly chapters one through five. Jim Lindgren has pointed out that in the National Survey data analyzed in Table 5.2, the "race" coefficients become at least weakly significant (and negative) if one does not include those not reporting race with white students. So far as I can determine (from other data provided by some participating schools), students not reporting race were predominantly white or Asian, which supports the approach taken in this table. In any case, the race effects are still extremely weak. Under any formulation, academic outcomes for all racial groups are dominated by academic credentials, not race. [I did not know this about "(b) the gap is not genetic, i.e., black infants raised in white households tend to have the same or higher cognitive skills as whites raised in the same conditions." It is so extraordinary that there should be a flock of confirming studies. It would not have sunk below the waves.] [At last, the article itself: Stan. L. Rev.: Richard H. Sander: A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools Stanford Law Review, 4.11 57 Stan. L. Rev. 367 *Professor of Law, UCLA; Ph.D., Economics, Northwestern University. I owe special thanks to two people who have effectively been collaborators on this project. Patrick Anderson has been my research associate throughout the conceiving and writing of this Article, worked full-time on this project for several months, and will be my coauthor of a forthcoming book on affirmative action. Dr. Robert Sockloskie managed the databases and collaborated on the statistical analyses presented herein. I have received exceptional support from the UCLA School of Law and its Dean's Fund. The Empirical Research Group and its associate director, Joe Doherty, have provided ongoing research support and outstanding technical assistance. The "After the JD" study, which I have helped steer for the past five years and on which I draw in Part VII, received support from the American Bar Foundation, the National Association of Law Placement, the National Science Foundation, the Soros Fund, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), and the National Conference of Bar Examiners. The LSAC also supported earlier empirical research of mine that I draw upon in this Article. I received very helpful, detailed comments on early drafts from Alison Anderson, Bernard Black, Evan Caminker, David Chambers, Roger Clegg, William Henderson, Richard Kahlenberg, Lewis Kornhauser, James Lindgren, Robert Nelson, James Sterba, Stephan Thernstrom, Jon Varat, Eugene Volokh, David Wilkins, and Doug Williams. I also benefited from comments at symposia at the UCLA School of Law, the Rand Institute for Civil Justice, and the 2004 annual meeting of the Law & Society Association, where I presented earlier versions of this Article. Editors and staff at the Stanford Law Review provided exceptional substantive feedback and editorial support. My wife, Fiona Harrison, provided indispensable intellectual and emotional sustenance throughout this effort, and fundamentally reshaped the Introduction and Part II. I, alas, retain full responsibility for any errors that remain. My deep thanks to all who helped make this work possible. SUMMARY: ... Since Bakke, universities have often tended to justify affirmative action for its contributions to diverse classrooms and campuses. ... In addition to providing some context and perspective, I try to make clear how Bakke, while legitimating affirmative action, created distinctions that produced a code of silence among law schools about their racial preference programs, and deterred meaningful research. ... The Somers's D behind the simulated admissions curve shown in Figure 2.4, by contrast, is .35.A logistic regression of the University of Michigan Law School's 1999 admissions, using only an applicant's academic indices and her race (we do not have data on residency) yields a Somers's D of .88. ... The LSAC-BPS collected a wide array of information about the study participants: responses to several questionnaires, data on law school performance, bar passage, and - of immediate relevance here - data on race, LSAT score, and undergraduate GPA. ... The most conclusive way to demonstrate that law school racial preferences cause blacks to learn less and to perform worse would be an experiment comparing matched pairs of blacks admitted to multiple schools, with the "experimental" black student attending the most elite school admitting them and the "control" black student attending a significantly less elite school. ... TEXT: Introduction For the past thirty-five years, American higher education has been engaged in a massive social experiment: to determine whether the use of racial preferences in college and graduate school admissions could speed the process of fully integrating American society. Since Bakke, n1 universities have often tended to justify affirmative action for its contributions to diverse classrooms and campuses. But the overriding justification for affirmative action has always been its impact on minorities. Few of us would enthusiastically support preferential admission policies if we did not believe they played a powerful, irreplaceable role in giving nonwhites in America access to higher education, entree to the national elite, and a chance of correcting historic underrepresentations in the leading professions. ???Yet over the years of this extraordinary, controversial effort, there has never been a comprehensive attempt to assess the relative costs and benefits of racial preferences in any field of higher education. The most ambitious efforts have been works like The Shape of the River and The River Runs Through Law School. n2 These have provided valuable evidence that the beneficiaries of affirmative action at the most elite universities tend, by and large, to go on to the kinds of successful careers pursued by their classmates. This is helpful, but it is only a tiny part of what we need to know if we are to assess affirmative action as a policy in toto. What would have happened to minorities receiving racial preferences had the preferences not existed? How much do the preferences affect what schools students attend, how much they learn, and what types of jobs and opportunities they have when they graduate? Under what circumstances are preferential policies most likely to help, or harm, their intended beneficiaries? And how do these preferences play out across the entire spectrum of education, from the most elite institutions to the local night schools? ???These are the sorts of questions that should be at the heart of the affirmative action debate. Remarkably, they are rarely asked and even more rarely answered, even in part. They are admittedly hard questions, and we can never conduct the ideal experiment of rerunning history over the past several decades - without preferential policies - to observe the differences. But we can come much closer than we have to meaningful answers. The purpose of this Article is to pursue these questions within a single realm of the academy: legal [*369] education in the United States. Several remarkable data sets on law schools and the early careers of young lawyers have recently emerged. Together, they make it possible to observe and measure the actual workings of affirmative action to an unprecedented degree. Here we begin the application of that data to the question of how much affirmative action across American law schools helps and hurts blacks seeking to become lawyers. The results in this Article are not intended to be definitive; they are intended to take us several steps in a new direction. ???My goal in this Article is to be systemic - that is, to analyze legal education as a complete, interlocking system. As we will see, the admissions policies of law schools, as within any discipline, are necessarily interdependent. Individual schools have less freedom of action than an outsider might assume. Moreover, one cannot understand the consequences of racial preferences without understanding the relative trade-offs for students attending schools in different tiers of the education system. In many ways, law schools are an ideal subject for this type of systemic approach. The vast majority of states have fairly uniform educational requirements for lawyers, and the vast majority of law schools are licensed by the same national organizations. Nearly all aspirants to law school go through a similar application process and take a uniform exam, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). First-year law students across the country follow similar curricula and are graded predominantly on a curve. Nearly all graduates of law school who want to practice law must take bar exams to begin their professional careers. n3 These uniformities make comparisons within the legal education system much easier. At the same time, the 180-odd accredited law schools in the United States encompass a very broad hierarchy of prestige and selectivity; like the legal profession itself, legal education is more stratified than most nonlawyers realize. This makes legal education an excellent candidate for the systemic analysis of affirmative action. If racial preferences are essential anywhere for minorities to vault into the more elite strata, they should be essential here. ???My focus in this Article is on the effects racial preferences in admissions have on the largest class of intended beneficiaries: black applicants to law school. The principal question of interest is whether affirmative action in law schools generates benefits to blacks that substantially exceed the costs to blacks. The "costs" to blacks that flow from racial preferences are often thought of, in the affirmative action literature, as rather subtle matters, such as the stigma and stereotypes that might result from differential admissions standards. These effects are interesting and important, but I give them short shrift for the most part because they are hard to measure and there is not enough data available that is thorough or objective enough for my purposes. [*370] The principal "cost" I focus on is the lower actual performance that usually results from preferential admissions. A student who gains special admission to a more elite school on partly nonacademic grounds is likely to struggle more, whether that student is a beneficiary of a racial preference, an athlete, or a "legacy" admit. If the struggling leads to lower grades and less learning, then a variety of bad outcomes may result: higher attrition rates, lower pass rates on the bar, problems in the job market. The question is how large these effects are, and whether their consequences outweigh the benefits of greater prestige. ???My exposition and analysis in this Article focus on blacks and whites. I do this principally for the sake of simplicity and concreteness. Many of the ideas that follow are complicated; to discuss them in the nuanced way necessary to take account of American Indians, Hispanics, and Asians would force me to make the narrative either hopelessly tangled or unacceptably long. And if one is going to choose a single group to highlight, blacks are the obvious choice: the case for affirmative action is most compelling for blacks; the data on blacks is the most extensive; and law school admissions offices treat "blacks" as a group quite uniformly - something that is not generally true for Hispanics or Asians. I concede that any discussion of affirmative action that ignores other ethnic groups (who often make up a majority of the recipients of preferences) is seriously incomplete. I am nearing completion of a larger work (to be published as a book) that, among other things, replicates many of the analyses found in this Article for other racial groups. ???* * * No writer can come to the subject of affirmative action without any biases, so let me disclose my own peculiar mix. I am white and I grew up in the conservative rural Midwest. But much of my adult career has revolved around issues of racial justice. Immediately after college, I worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. As a graduate student, I studied housing segregation and concluded that selective race-conscious strategies were critical, in most cities, to breaking up patterns of housing resegregation. In the 1990s, I cofounded a civil rights group that evolved into the principal enforcer (through litigation) of fair housing rights in Southern California. My son is biracial, part black and part white, and so the question of how nonwhites are treated and how they fare in higher education gives rise in me to all the doubts and worries of a parent. As a young member of the UCLA School of Law faculty, I was deeply impressed by the remarkable diversity and sense of community the school fostered, and one of my first research efforts was an extensive and sympathetic analysis of academic support as a method of helping the beneficiaries of affirmative action succeed in law school. n4 Yet as I began my studies of legal [*371] education in the early 1990s, I found myself troubled by much of what I found. The first student survey I conducted suggested that UCLA's diversity programs had produced little socioeconomic variety; students of all races were predominantly upper crust. n5 Black-white performance gaps were very large, and this had visible effects on classroom interaction. I began to ask myself some of the questions explored in this Article, but for years the lack of data seemed an insuperable barrier to anything more than casual speculation. At the same time, I was somewhat dismayed by the unwillingness of many architects of racial preferences at law schools to be candid about how these preferences operated. It seemed to me that debate and discussion in the area were unduly circumscribed; hard questions about what we were doing were rarely asked within the academy - in part, admittedly, because of the desire to protect the delicate sense of community. ???I therefore consider myself to be someone who favors race-conscious strategies in principle, if they can be pragmatically justified. Racial admissions preferences are arguably worth the obvious disadvantages - the sacrifice of the principle of colorblindness, the political costs - if the benefits to minorities substantially exceed the costs to minorities. n6 By the same token, if the costs to minorities substantially exceed the benefits, then it seems obvious that existing preference programs should be substantially modified or abandoned. Even if the costs and benefits to minorities are roughly a wash, I am inclined to think that the enormous social and political capital spent to sustain affirmative action would be better spent elsewhere. n7 ???What I find and describe in this Article is a system of racial preferences that, in one realm after another, produces more harms than benefits for its putative beneficiaries. The admission preferences extended to blacks are very large and do not successfully identify students who will perform better than one would predict based on their academic indices. Consequently, most black law applicants end up at schools where they will struggle academically and fail at higher rates than they would in the absence of preferences. The net trade-off of higher prestige but weaker academic performance substantially harms black [*372] performance on bar exams and harms most new black lawyers on the job market. Perhaps most remarkably, a strong case can be made that in the legal education system as a whole, racial preferences end up producing fewer black lawyers each year than would be produced by a race-blind system. n8 Affirmative action as currently practiced by the nation's law schools does not, therefore, pass even the easiest test one can set. In systemic, objective terms, it hurts the group it is most designed to help. ???* * * The Article is organized as follows: Part I briefly recounts the development of racial preferences in legal education admissions. In addition to providing some context and perspective, I try to make clear how Bakke, while legitimating affirmative action, created distinctions that produced a code of silence among law schools about their racial preference programs, and deterred meaningful research. In Part II, I try to explicate exactly what we mean by "racial preferences," creating a more concrete vocabulary than the vague and sometimes contradictory terms used by the courts, and applying these concepts to some specific cases, including the University of Michigan Law School admission policies examined in Grutter. n9 Part III examines whether racial preferences are limited to the most "elite" schools, as is often claimed. I find that the current structure of preferences creates a powerful "cascade effect" that gives low-and middle-tier schools little choice but to duplicate the preferences offered at the top. ???Part IV considers the question of whether the numerical predictors heavily used by law schools are either biased against minorities or fairly useless in predicting actual outcomes. If either claim is true, then we would expect racial preferences in admissions to have only minor harmful effects on the performance of beneficiaries. In other words, although we might argue that preferences are unfair, most beneficiaries would perform at levels close to everyone else and the system would work to achieve its intended effects. I find, however, compelling evidence that the numerical predictors are both strong and unbiased. Those unconvinced by statistical predictors may be convinced by Part V, which presents comprehensive data on how blacks and whites actually [*373] perform in law school. In the vast majority of American law schools, median black grade point averages (GPAs) at the end of the first year of law school are between the fifth and tenth percentile of white GPAs; they rise somewhat thereafter only because those black students having the most trouble tend to drop out. The black-white gap is the same in legal writing classes as it is in classes with timed examinations. Because of low grades, blacks complete law school less often than they would if law schools ignored race in their admissions process. ???Part VI explores how affirmative action affects black success on postgraduate bar examinations. At most law schools in most of the United States, ultimate bar passage rates for graduates are very high - generally above eighty percent. If we use regression analysis to predict bar passage, we find that going to an elite school helps a little, but getting good grades is much more important. Blacks and whites at the same school with the same grades perform identically on the bar exam; but since racial preferences have the effect of boosting blacks' school quality but sharply lowering their average grades, blacks have much higher failure rates on the bar than do whites with similar LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs. Affirmative action thus artificially depresses, quite substantially, the rate at which blacks pass the bar. Combined with the effects on law school attrition examined in Part V, many blacks admitted to law school with the aid of racial preferences face long odds against ever becoming lawyers. Part VI ends with an exploration of why "grades" should be more important than "eliteness" in passing the bar. A growing body of evidence suggests that students who attend schools where they are at a significant academic disadvantage suffer a variety of ill effects, from the erosion of aspirations to a simple failure to learn as much as they do in an environment where their credentials match those of their peers. ???Part VII examines the job market for new lawyers. The premise of affirmative action is that elevating minorities to more elite schools will help them secure high-prestige jobs and thus integrate the profession at its highest levels. This proves to be true at the very top of the law school hierarchy: black graduates at Harvard and Yale have their pick of jobs. But in most of the job market, legal employers in both private firms and government seem to attach more weight to grades than school eliteness; so again, the school shuffling involved in affirmative action tends to be a net minus for the typical new black lawyer. Moreover, the data shows that many employers exercise strong preferences for blacks in their own hiring. Blacks who have passed the bar and have good grades from any law school do very well in the job market. ???Part VIII examines the claim that the number of new black lawyers produced each year would drop dramatically without racial preferences. The claim does not survive close scrutiny. Because the cascade effect principally reshuffles black applicants among law schools rather than expanding the pool, about 86% of blacks currently admitted to some law school would still gain admission to the system without racial preferences. Those who would not be [*374] admitted at all have, under current practices, very small chances of finishing school and passing the bar. The 86% admitted to a race-blind system would graduate at significantly higher rates, and pass the bar at substantially higher rates, than they do now. Under a range of plausible assumptions, race-blind admissions would produce an increase in the annual number of new black lawyers. It is clear beyond any doubt that a race-blind system would not have severe effects on the production of black lawyers, and that the black lawyers emerging from such a system would be stronger attorneys as measured by bar performance. ???In the Conclusion, I consider what steps law schools should consider in light of these findings. Despite the serious failings identified here, some good arguments for more narrowly targeted use of affirmative action by law schools remain. There are specific research questions that should be pursued much further. But the need for substantial internal reforms, before courts or legislatures foreclose all room to maneuver, is clear. ???I. A Note on Origins In the academic year that began in the fall of 2001, roughly 3400 blacks were enrolled in the first-year classes of accredited law schools in the United States, constituting about 7.7% of total first-year enrollment. n10 This is very close to the proportion of blacks (8.9% in 2001 n11) among college graduates - the pool eligible to apply to law schools. Although blacks are underrepresented in law school compared to their numbers among all young adults (by a factor of nearly 2:1), n12 law schools compare well with other areas of postbaccalaureate education in their recruitment and enrollment of black students. n13 ??? [*375] It was not always so. In 1964, there were only about three hundred first-year black law students in the United States, and one-third of these were attending the nation's half-dozen historically black law schools. n14 Blacks accounted for about 1.3% of total American law school enrollment, n15 and since blacks also accounted for about 1.1% of all American lawyers, n16 we can infer that their relative enrollment numbers had been flat for quite some time. The story was much the same for Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Asians (though of course the relative numbers of these groups were much smaller at the time). n17 Minorities were generally underrepresented by a factor of five or six in graduate education, but they fared particularly badly in law schools. n18 ???In the South, at least, black underrepresentation was an obvious by-product of deliberate discrimination. Some southern states excluded blacks completely from public law schools; others created Jim Crow law schools with tiny black enrollments. n19 I have found no study that attempts to document the extent of racial discrimination in northern law school admissions. Certainly many northern schools admitted blacks (and produced some famous black [*376] graduates n20), and it is doubtful that many of these schools sought racial information about applicants. But it seems likely enough that a variety of informal barriers helped to keep enrollments quite low - lower than black enrollments in many other types of northern graduate schools. n21 ???The conscience of the legal academy quivered noticeably in the early 1960s, as the civil rights movement swept the nation and many law schools became prominent centers of reform activity. As early as 1962, the American Association of Law Schools's (AALS) Committee on Racial Discrimination in Law Schools was unable to identify any clear practices of admissions discrimination outside the South; n22 by 1964, this group had concluded that there was "no longer any discrimination problem of sufficiently serious proportion to deserve the maintenance of a large committee." n23 Yet at mid-decade, black enrollment was still miserably low and black attrition rates were miserably high (about fifty percent). n24 ???During the 1964-1967 period, when civil rights issues dominated public discourse, but affirmative action programs were still largely unknown, many within the legal education community identified low black enrollment as a problem and began to think systematically about solutions. Most observers agreed that several factors contributed to underrepresentation: a scarcity of black candidates with strong credentials; a perception among black college graduates that law schools and the legal profession were particularly rigid bastions of tradition, and thus less attractive than other routes to the middle class; and the cost of law school and the small supply of financial aid. n25 Several [*377] schools launched outreach programs in the mid-1960s aimed at identifying and recruiting promising blacks. n26 ???Ironically, during the same period when law schools were eliminating the last vestiges of discrimination and finally reaching out to blacks, the schools were also becoming transformed into more selective institutions. As the ranks of college graduates swelled in the late 1950s and 1960s, the number of applicants to law school rose sharply. The LSAT, introduced in the late 1940s, precipitated the development and adoption of more objective admissions practices. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, admission to many law schools had become dramatically more competitive. n27 ???The rise of more competitive admissions placed a new hurdle in the path of blacks just getting a foothold in mainstream American education. It was not hard to deduce that equal access alone would not produce large numbers of black law students. As early as 1964, an AALS report explored early stirrings of the idea of racial admissions preferences: ???Several institutions have either made active efforts to recruit well qualified Negro students or have given consideration to the possibility of adjusting admission standards to accommodate the few Negro applicants whose records approach acceptability ... . ???... ???The suggestion has been made that entrance requirements might be lowered a bit to accommodate the cultural deficiencies so frequently found in the case of the Negro applicant. In favor of this is the occasional experience of the Negro student with a lower aptitude score who nevertheless gives a good or even outstanding performance in law school. The objections, however, deserve serious consideration: (1) Inverse discrimination is unfair to white students; (2) lowering admission standards to help unqualified Negroes is unfair to the Negro student and to the law school; (3) the lack of background and undergraduate training of Negroes generally must be remedied, not in the law schools, but in the elementary schools, high schools and colleges. It is too late when they reach law school. n28 [*378] Although rather patronizing in tone, this early report evidences how quickly the thoughts of law school administrators advanced from the idea of eliminating antiblack discrimination to the idea of instituting black admissions preferences. It also remarkably foreshadows many of the affirmative action debates that emerged more widely in the 1970s. ???Still, there is not much evidence that many law schools actually engaged in preferential admissions until 1968 and 1969. n29 The release of the Kerner Commission Report in March 1968, n30 the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in April, and the renewal of rioting in the inner cities that followed produced a general sense of national crisis in race relations. Gradualism as a philosophy of racial justice seemed discredited; many of those running both private and public institutions felt they had to do something rapid and dramatic to demonstrate progress in black access. A large number of colleges and graduate programs, including law schools, therefore initiated or accelerated racial preference programs in 1968 and succeeding years. n31 Ahead of most other disciplines, a number of leaders in legal education had been laying the groundwork for a large-scale racial preferences program a year before King's death. The Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO), organized by the AALS, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), the American Bar Association (ABA), and the National Bar Association, with funding from the federal Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) and the Ford Foundation, was created in 1967 to develop large-scale summer programs for promising nonwhite students with low academic credentials. Participating law schools would help to host the programs and would agree in advance to admit CLEO students who successfully completed the summer program. ???Fueled by the broader shift in higher education toward racial preferences, the CLEO program took off, expanding from around one hundred students in 1968 to almost four hundred in 1969. n32 Many schools launched their own outreach and summer programs. The effect on enrollments was impressive. The number of black first-year law students outside the historically black schools [*379] rose from about two hundred in 1964-1965 n33 to perhaps five hundred in 1968-1969, eight hundred in 1969-1970, n34 and seventeen hundred in 1973-1974. n35 ???During these early years, no bones were made about the application of different standards to minority applicants. Indeed, it was widely argued that elemental fairness required different standards; the LSAT in particular was regarded as a culturally biased test that substantially understated the academic potential of black students. n36 Moreover, it was believed that conventional standards were most inapplicable to socioeconomically disadvantaged minorities, so black and Latino students from low-income families were admitted under especially relaxed standards. The result was, initially, very high attrition rates and low bar passage rates among the beneficiaries of preferences. The average minority attrition rate at ABA-approved law schools was [*380] approximately thirty percent, and this was despite special efforts to promote retention. n37 As one admissions officer commented in the mid-1970s: ???When the nation's law schools initiated [affirmative action], while readily admitting that the admissions standards to be used for minority applicants were "different" or even lower, the schools also assured the bar that the same rigorous standards applied to white students would be applied to minority students. The schools were saying in effect, that while entrance credentials for minorities might be lower, retention and graduation standards would remain the same ... . [But] the nation's bar watched with some dismay as the schools changed grading systems, altered retention rules, readmitted students dismissed for scholarship, and in some cases graduated students who clearly did not meet the past standards of the school. n38 By 1975, however, law schools had moved into a "second generation" of affirmative action. Admissions officers and deans had concluded that the LSAT and undergraduate grades did, after all, tend to be good predictors of the eventual success of nonwhite students. n39 Many schools moved away from dependence on CLEO to develop their own outreach programs and their own standards for admission. At the same time, the pool of black and other nonwhite college graduates applying to law school had expanded and deepened enough to enable schools to maintain or expand minority enrollments even as they toughened standards. Black enrollment stabilized at around two thousand first-year students; Latino and Asian enrollment grew steadily as the applicant pools grew. n40 ???Despite the heavier reliance on academic indices for minority admissions during the mid-and late 1970s, the great majority of law schools continued to use separate racial tracks to evaluate candidates and applied very different standards to whites than to nonwhites. Perhaps the most complete description of law school affirmative action practices at the time comes in the 1977 amicus curiae brief submitted by the AALS in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, in which the Supreme Court considered the use of racial quotas for [*381] admission to UC Davis's medical school. n41 The brief argued that LSAT score and undergraduate GPA were the best predictors of success in law school, n42 and that they were not biased n43 (so that no alternative indicators would do a better job of assessing minority candidates), but that the number of minority applicants with academic numbers comparable to the best whites was insignificant. "This has led to the creation of "special admissions programs' designed to produce decisions different from those that would be produced if the process were conducted in a racially neutral way." n44 These special admissions tracks had two characteristics: they compared academic strengths among candidates within each racial group, thus insulating them from direct competition with whites; and they looked a little harder at nonnumerical indicia of academic promise. n45 To place all applicants in direct competition with one another, the brief contended, would "exclude virtually all minorities from the legal profession." n46 ???Recognizing that there was legal precedent for temporary race-conscious programs to correct specific conditions of discrimination, the AALS brief emphasized that "the premise of these special admissions programs is that, in time, they will disappear. They are essentially a transitional device to correct a time lag." n47 Boalt Hall, n48 for example, had already eliminated its temporary [*382] preferences for Japanese-Americans; other preferences would be eliminated as the minority pools broadened and deepened. n49 ???The AALS brief is notable for its clarity and honesty; it is the most detailed assessment I have found of law school affirmative action in the 1970s. It concludes its argument that special admissions programs are necessary to maintain a minority presence in law schools with a passage that is hard to read now without some sense of painful irony: ???The suggestion [in the lower court decision in Bakke] that professional schools abandon special minority admissions programs in favor of programs for the disadvantaged or that they seek to maintain minority enrollments by reducing reliance on quantitative predictors of academic performance may rest upon the premise that either of these alternatives would permit race to be taken into account sub rosa. n50 We do not imply that the court below meant to invite such an interpretation of those suggestions, but there are others who have suggested that in the effort to achieve racial equality "we cannot afford complete openness and frankness on the part of the legislature, executive, or judiciary." It need hardly be said in response that a constitutional principle designed to be flouted should not be imposed on schools dedicated to teaching the role of law in our society. n51 The Supreme Court's Bakke decision in June 1978 invited exactly this type of deception. As most readers know, the Supreme Court divided deeply in Bakke. Justices Brennan, White, Marshall, and Blackmun held, as the AALS urged, that racial preferences to correct general societal discrimination should be permitted, temporarily, in higher education; n52 Justices Stevens, Stewart, Burger, and Rehnquist held that any consideration of race violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. n53 The ninth Justice, Lewis Powell, wrote the deciding opinion, drawing on the conservative camp to find the University of California's racial quota illegal, but drawing on the liberal camp to hold that universities were not completely precluded from considering race in admissions decisions. Race, he found, could be used as one of many factors taken into account by a university in pursuit of its legitimate desire to create a diverse student body: ??? [*383] Race or ethnic background may be deemed a "plus" in a particular applicant's file, yet it does not insulate the individual from comparison with all other candidates for the available seats. The file of a particular black applicant may be examined for his potential contribution to diversity without the factor of race being decisive when compared, for example, with that of an applicant identified as an Italian-American if the latter is thought to exhibit qualities more likely to promote beneficial educational pluralism. Such qualities could include exceptional personal talents, unique work or service experience, leadership potential, maturity, demonstrated compassion, a history of overcoming disadvantage, ability to communicate with the poor, or other qualifications deemed important. In short, an admissions program operated in this way is flexible enough to consider all pertinent elements of diversity in light of the particular qualifications of each applicant, and to place them on the same footing for consideration, although not necessarily according them the same weight. n54 All of this seemed to preclude quotas and segregated admissions tracks, but there was a logical flaw at the heart of Powell's opinion. The careful calibration of the "weight" given to membership in a specific racial group could produce highly predictable admission numbers. The lack of any clear test in Bakke to distinguish illegal discrimination from the legal pursuit of diversity left schools free to evade Powell's intent. ???The AALS, which had been forthright in advocating for racial preferences, now faced the task of providing nuanced instruction to member schools in the art of sub rosa preferences. "It is difficult to see how an admissions officer or committee can exercise any degree of preference in a race-conscious program without some notion of how many minority applicants are desired in the final mix of the student body," n55 an AALS report noted, but Bakke seemed to permit schools "extremely broad discretion." n56 The difference between a pre-Bakke quota and a post-Bakke "plus," an AALS lawyer noted, is "nothing more than a smirk and a wink." n57 ???The response of law schools - and indeed, of higher education in general - was to go underground. Racially separate admissions tracks were draped with fig leaves of various shapes and sizes to conceal actual practices, which changed hardly at all. Enrollments also remained constant. An exhaustive study by political scientists Susan Welch and John Gruhl found that Bakke had no noticeable overall effect on minority law school enrollment. n58 A survey of law school admissions officers in the late 1980s found that only 1% of the [*384] respondents felt that Bakke had a "significant" impact on policies n59 (even though a large majority conceded that other law schools had had racial quotas before Bakke and 23% agreed that their own school had had at least racial "goals " before Bakke n60). The number of black first-year law students fell about 2% from 1978 to 1979, but the number of Hispanic first-years grew that year, and black matriculation reached an unprecedented high in 1981. n61 The most concrete practical effect, according to a number of schools, was a broadening of the range of racial and ethnic groups designated to receive "plus" consideration, in line with Justice Powell's emphasis on the value of diversity. n62 ???The UCLA School of Law's response to Bakke was probably more formal and elegant than that of the typical law school, but it captured the general approach. The school created a faculty committee led by distinguished constitutional scholar Ken Karst. The resulting study, which became known as the "Karst Report," discussed Bakke carefully, and, following Powell's controlling opinion, identified ten types of "diversity" which were important to legal education at UCLA, only one of which was race. n63 The report recommended that UCLA split its admissions process in two. Sixty percent of the seats would be awarded based on the academic strength of students (measured primarily with conventional quantitative indices). Forty percent of admissions decisions would blend a consideration of academic strength with the types of diversity each applicant could potentially bring to the school. The Karst Report sounded like a dramatic retreat from the earlier, race-based policies - enough to provoke angry student protests. The students need not have worried; even under the admissions regime inspired by the Karst Report, which was promptly adopted by the faculty and which guided law school admissions policy from 1979 to 1997, race was the preeminent diversity factor, determining 80% to 90% of all admissions under the diversity program. Nonwhite enrollment at UCLA substantially increased in the years after Bakke. n64 But the operation of preferences was invisible to the outside eye. n65 ??? [*385] Other schools, more candid or less artful about what they were doing, occasionally encountered legal difficulties. Boalt Hall preserved racially segregated admissions reviews and waiting lists until an investigation by the first Bush administration's Department of Education forced it to abandon the practices in 1992. n66 Stanford Law School and the law schools at the University of Michigan, University of Texas, and the University of Wisconsin all maintained admissions processes that were racially segmented in one way or another for many years after Bakke. n67 ???What has been consistent since Bakke throughout the world of legal education is a code of silence on preferential policies. Schools have been loath to disclose the degree to which they depend on numerical indicators and have been even more secretive about the extent to which they take racial factors into account. The relatively vibrant research and discussion about affirmative action that characterized the late 1960s and 1970s almost totally disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. n68 When law school deans, in various contexts, have been asked point-blank about the extent of racial preferences, they have suggested that such preferences were either minimal or nonexistent. n69 ??? [*386] As we shall see in Parts II and III, racial preferences in American law schools were quite large during this period. The size of preferences probably changed little after Bakke, or possibly even shrank at some schools; but for other reasons, black law school enrollment began a second period of growth in the mid-1980s. Between 1985 and 1994, the number of first-year black law students doubled, rising from eighteen hundred to thirty-six hundred students (and from 4.4% to 8.1% of total ABA first-year enrollment). n70 The increase reflected several developments: an 8.7% increase in overall law school enrollment over the same period; n71 an increasing acceptance of racial preferences at schools that had previously avoided them (particularly in the South); a growing number of black applicants; and a narrowing of the overall gap in black-white academic credentials. n72 ???The nonblack minority groups, such as Hispanics, Asians, and American Indians, were an even faster-growing presence in law school diversity programs. In 1971, blacks accounted for 67% of all nonwhites enrolled at ABA-accredited schools. By 1991, this had dropped to 42% (and was to fall further, to 36%, by 2001). n73 It was not that black enrollment fell; quite the contrary, as we have seen. The shift instead reflected three trends: the rapidly growing non-European immigrant population of the United States, n74 the rise in Hispanic college enrollment, n75 and the shift of second-generation Asian-Americans away from the "hard" sciences toward "softer" areas like the law. n76 [*387] Asians were rare enough in the 1970s and 1980s that many law schools explicitly included them in preference programs; as time passed and the Asian pool grew, many schools eliminated Asian preferences altogether, while others eliminated preferences for well-established Asian-American groups like Japanese-, Chinese-, Indian-, and even Korean-Americans, but kept preferences for less-prosperous Asian-American groups such as Filipino-, Vietnamese-, and Cambodian-Americans. ???Although racial preferences were no doubt pervasive throughout higher education in the years after Bakke, law schools were unusually vulnerable to legal challenges over what they did. In few areas was the reliance on numerical indices as extreme as in law school admissions, and the schools admitted large enough classes to make disparities easy to demonstrate statistically. And, of course, law schools are uniquely familiar to lawyers and policy advocacy groups. So it is only a little surprising that when affirmative action in higher education reemerged as a potent political issue in the 1990s, law schools were at the center of the debate. ???In Michigan, Texas, and Washington, rejected students (assisted or recruited by more organized opponents of affirmative action n77) brought lawsuits challenging the admissions practices of public law schools. n78 In each case, the plaintiffs contended that race was a predominant factor in admissions, questioned whether Justice Powell's "diversity" goal was a compelling interest under the Constitution, and argued that even if diversity was a compelling goal, the school policies were not narrowly tailored to achieve it in a constitutionally appropriate way. In essence, they argued that the schools were letting race trump other forms of diversity to create de facto racially segregated admissions. ???The three cases followed very different paths. In the 1994 case of Hopwood v. Texas, the district court upheld the use of racial preferences in principle, but found that the law school's 1992 practice of having a separate admissions committee process minority applications violated the Fourteenth Amendment; however, since the school had abandoned this practice at the outset of the litigation, the court found no need for further corrective [*388] measures. n79 On appeal in 1996, the Fifth Circuit went much further, concluding that Justice Powell's diversity rationale in Bakke had been effectively discarded by later Supreme Court decisions, and that it could no longer be used to justify racial preferences. n80 When the Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari on Hopwood that same year, n81 many commentators viewed it as a sign that the Court favored the abolition of racial preferences in admissions. ???A year later, in Smith v. University of Washington Law School, the plaintiffs, again white students denied admission to law school, tried to build upon the Hopwood precedent. n82 Pointing out that the school acknowledged that it used race as a factor in admissions, the plaintiffs sought a summary judgment ruling that the school's consideration of race was per se unconstitutional. Both the district court and the Ninth Circuit rejected this argument, finding that Bakke was still the controlling law and clearly permitted some use of race. n83 The Supreme Court also let this judgment stand. n84 Further proceedings in district court about the actual operation of the law school's practices had been rendered largely moot by Washington voters' adoption of Initiative Measure 200 in 1998, which prohibited the use of race in state programs. n85 ???The last of this trio of cases, Grutter v. Bollinger, was brought against the University of Michigan Law School in 1997, more or less simultaneously with a challenge to the undergraduate admissions process at the University of Michigan (Gratz v. Bollinger). n86 The district court followed Hopwood in finding that Justice Powell's diversity rationale in Bakke was not controlling and that, as a general matter, the use of race to assemble a diverse student body was not a compelling state interest. n87 It further found that, even if it was, the school had not narrowly tailored its use of race in pursuit of the diversity [*389] goal. n88 In 2002, the Sixth Circuit, in a 5-4 en banc decision, reversed on both counts, agreeing with the Ninth Circuit that Bakke was still viable, and sanctioning for the first time a specific, post-Bakke admissions system that took substantial account of race. n89 This time, the Supreme Court decided to take the issue up, granting review to both Grutter and Gratz. ???In June 2003, the Court handed down deeply split opinions in both Grutter and Gratz. n90 Justice O'Connor stepped into the role previously played by Justice Powell, siding with five Justices to rule against the University of Michigan in Gratz, but agreeing with four Justices to rule in favor of the University of Michigan Law School in Grutter. Justice O'Connor found in Grutter that Powell's opinion was still good law: diversity in a university environment was a compelling state interest. n91 The boundary between the acceptable and unacceptable use of race lay in the degree to which race was considered in a "mechanical," or automatic, fashion, as opposed to an "individualized" process in which race was one of many relevant factors. n92 The college's use of race was impermissible because minorities were assigned twenty points for their race in the construction of an admissions scale. n93 The law school, however, did not explicitly factor race into its admissions index at all; instead, according to the school and Justice O'Connor, the school made its race-blind index the starting point of a deeper inquiry into each student's potential contribution to the school's intellectual strength and diversity, a process that included consideration of applicant race. n94 This more nuanced process, Justice O'Connor suggested, was exactly what Justice Powell had had in mind in Bakke. n95 ???So the matter stands. Justice O'Connor agreed that consideration of race was undesirable and should be eliminated in the long run, and she explicitly suggested that the "long run" in this case meant twenty-five years. n96 Only two questions seemed unresolved. First, what exactly was the touchstone of acceptably "individualized" admissions? Was the law school's admissions process, in truth, fundamentally different from the point system used by the college, or was the difference between permissible and impermissible policies [*390] still the difference between "a smirk and a wink"? And second, was the consideration of race producing the good results that had been advanced on its behalf? ???II. Defining the Role of Race in Law School Admissions The Supreme Court's two great examinations of affirmative action in higher education both turned on the views of a single Justice. In each case, a moderate Justice determined that racial preferences were permissible under some circumstances but not others. But these parallels belie a basic difference. In Bakke, all members of the Court fundamentally agreed on what the defendant University of California was doing at the UC Davis Medical School: it had a quota for underrepresented minorities. n97 The Court disagreed not on the facts of the case but on what the law allowed. Four Justices thought the need to overcome the legacy of societal discrimination legitimated a temporary use of racial preferences; n98 four Justices thought that any use of preferences was inappropriate where no history of institutional discrimination justified and could guide a specific, limited remedy. n99 Justice Powell split the Gordian knot with his diversity rationale: universities had a compelling interest in diversity, and race could be a legitimate "plus" factor in that quest. ???In contrast, most of the debate in the Court's 2003 Michigan decisions revolved around empirical questions. A comfortable majority of Justices seemed to subscribe to the diversity rationale (or at least to accept it as the Court's standard), which provides a compelling state interest for the consideration of race. The Michigan debate concerned what use of race is sufficiently narrowly tailored to survive scrutiny. As we have seen, Justice [*391] O'Connor drew a sharp distinction between the undergraduate college's system of assigning "points" to minority applicants (impermissible), and the law school's system of "individualized assessment" that includes a consideration of applicant race among many other factors in the construction of a diverse class (permissible). It seems, though, that Justice O'Connor was the only member of the Supreme Court who thought this difference truly significant. Chief Justice Rehnquist pointed out that the proportion of the law school's admittees from each of three underrepresented groups (blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans) closely tracked the proportion of each group in the law school's total applicant pool. n100 This looked to the Chief Justice a lot like the setting of quotas or "racial balancing" (setting different thresholds for different underrepresented groups), a practice that he notes Justice O'Connor described as "patently unconstitutional." n101 Justice Kennedy thought that the law school's pursuit of a "critical mass" of minorities looked much like a quota, with underrepresented minorities making up between 13.5% and 13.8% of each enrolled class from 1995 through 1998. n102 Justice Thomas observed that the school's heavy reliance on academic credentials to maximize its elite standing among law schools meant that its quest for racial diversity was necessarily heavy-handed. n103 Justice Souter, who was on the side of racial preferences in both cases, gave an equally pointed critique of Justice O'Connor's empiricism: ???Since college admission is not left entirely to inarticulate intuition, it is hard to see what is inappropriate in assigning some stated value to a relevant characteristic, whether it be reasoning ability, writing style, running speed, or minority race. Justice Powell's plus factors necessarily are assigned some values. The college simply does by a numbered scale what the law school accomplishes in its "holistic review" ... . ???... . ???Without knowing more about how the [undergraduate admissions committee] actually functions, it seems especially unfair to treat the candor of the admissions plan as an Achilles' heel ... . ???... Equal protection cannot become an exercise in which the winners are the ones who hide the ball. n104 Justice Ginsburg implicitly agreed that the undergraduate college's admissions system was substantively the same as and ethically preferable to the law school 's: "If honesty is the best policy, surely Michigan's accurately described, [*392] fully disclosed College affirmative action program is preferable to achieving similar numbers through winks, nods, and disguises." n105 ???It is not surprising that the Supreme Court's debate in Gratz and Grutter was an empirical one. After all, as we saw in Part I, Powell's diversity rationale proved so malleable that, after Bakke, law schools were able to pursue nearly any policy they liked, so long as it was correctly named. In dealing with the Michigan cases, the Justices were of course jousting over ways to limit or protect affirmative action, but they were also struggling to find meaningful ways to define permissible and impermissible practices. ???This Part has three goals: first, to suggest a way of thinking rigorously about the operation of racial preferences in an admissions system; second, to evaluate the University of Michigan Law School's system by the implicit standards of Grutter and Gratz; and third, to consider how representative the University of Michigan Law School is of law school admissions systems generally. ???* * * Debates on racial affirmative action always involve heated exchanges on the role of test scores and general academic "numbers" in evaluating candidates. How useful are they? How important should they be in admissions? How heavily are they, in reality, relied upon by admissions officers? The first two questions are fundamental, and I return to them in Part IV. But for now let us focus on the third question. Figure 2.1 shows a simple mechanism for illustrating the role of academic numbers in admissions. ??? [*393] ???Figure 2.1: A Hypothetical Admissions Curve [see org] The horizontal axis of this box is an index that summarizes the academic "numbers" of an applicant in a single number. Most institutions of higher education have an explicit index of this sort - generally a linear combination of an applicant's test scores and GPA. At law schools, a common version of this number is ??? Academic Index = 0.4 (UGPA) + 0.6 (LSAT), with both UGPA and LSAT normalized to a one-thousand-point scale, so that an Academic Index of one thousand would denote a perfect LSAT score and 4.0 GPA, and an Academic Index of five hundred would denote a 2.0 GPA and a midrange LSAT. n106 Even schools that do not have an explicit index of this sort, however, have some implicit method of jointly evaluating the weight of grades and test scores. To facilitate much of the discussion in this Article, I will use the term "academic index," the standard scale from zero to one thousand, and the above formula as uniform shorthand to compare and analyze the credentials of law school students and applicants. ??? [*394] The vertical axis in Figure 2.1 is a candidate's probability of admission. By inspecting any school's admission records, one can calculate the likelihood of an applicant's admission given her academic index. The importance of academic indices varies from one institution to another, and with this simple device, one can get a sense of how much admissions decisions turn on academic credentials. If there is any factor that a university assigns a systematic "plus " value in admissions, applicants who possess that factor will have a separate admissions curve. For example, if a state university favors in-state applicants over those from outside the state, then the admissions curve of in-state applicants will lie to the left of and above the curve for out-of-state applicants. In other words, an in-state applicant will have a higher probability of admission than an out-of-state applicant with the same academic numbers. If the preference is formalized as an award of "points," like the undergraduate admissions system at Michigan, then we will observe a fixed gap between the in-state and out-of-state admissions curves - the two will be a more or less constant horizontal distance apart, as illustrated in Figure 2.2. ???Figure 2.2: Hypothetical Admissions Curves Under a Formalized Point System [see org] Similarly, one can examine the role of race - and racial preferences - in an admissions system by separately plotting out the admissions curves of different [*395] racial groups. The result gives us both vivid illustrations and a quantitative method to capture how different preference systems operate. Let us consider how some hypothetical admissions policies would translate into this sort of analysis. n107 ???Scenario One: A multifaceted admissions process where race is a "tie-breaker. " The more varied the criteria to which an admissions office gives serious attention, the lower will be the slope of its admissions curve. Using race simply as a tie-breaker between otherwise indistinguishable black and white candidates means that at many index levels, the black probability of admission is slightly higher than that for whites, though not necessarily at every point (a gap will show up only when there exists a pool of blacks and whites who are, in nonracial terms, interchangeable). Figure 2.3 illustrates this approach. ???Figure 2.3: Hypothetical Multifaceted Admissions Curves When Race Is a Tie-Breaker [see org] [*396] Scenario Two: A multifaceted admissions process that relies heavily on subjective criteria and considers race, if at all, as one of many diversity factors. If a school relies heavily on letters of recommendation, evidence of community service, work experience, demonstrated leadership ability, and other similar factors, and relies only moderately on academic indices, the index coefficient of its admissions curve will again be relatively low. If, for a given index level, the typical black applicant has stronger nonacademic credentials than the typical white applicant (e.g., better community service, lower socioeconomic status), then we will see a black admissions curve that lies consistently a bit above the white admissions curve. ???If we add to this multifaceted admissions system a preference for blacks based on race, then the gap in the two groups' admissions curves would be even larger. For example, consider Figure 2.4. In this admissions scheme, there is a minimum academic index threshold (approximately one hundred) all applicants must meet to be considered admissible. All groups have a 0% probability of admission below this threshold. Above the threshold, the likelihood of admission rises for both blacks and whites, though an index alone is enough to guarantee admission only at the highest levels. At an index level of six hundred, whites have about a 50% chance of admission and blacks have an 80% chance of admission. Blacks and whites in this range are truly competing with one another for seats in the school; the "plus" given to blacks is enough to substantially improve their chances of admission, but it does not insulate them from the competition of whites with similar academic credentials. ???Figure 2.4: Justice O'Connor's Individualized Assessment Model with Race as the Primary Diversity Criterion [see org] [*397] This seems to be the type of system Justice O'Connor finds permissible, and the type of system she believes the University of Michigan Law School operates. To be constitutional, says Justice O'Connor, "universities [cannot] insulate applicants who belong to certain racial or ethnic groups from the competition for admission." n108 It is permissible to give race greater weight than other nonacademic factors, but not permissible to consider blacks only vis-a-vis one another, or to give them a fixed, predetermined bonus. "[A] university's admissions program must remain flexible enough to ensure that each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant 's race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application." n109 ???Justice O'Connor's guidelines, translated into the logic of the graph, imply three essential features of a constitutional admissions system that incorporates racial preferences. First, while race might be the single most important nonindex factor, other nonindex factors must be given significant weight - enough weight so that race is not the predominant nonacademic qualification for admission. Otherwise, "diversity" would simply be synonymous with "race," and an applicant's race would indeed be the defining nonacademic feature of her application. It follows that the greater the weight given to racial diversity, the more the weight given to other diversity factors must also go up (to avoid having race dominate all other factors). The weight given to academic indices must accordingly go down, and the slope of the admissions curve will therefore become flatter. Second, the probability of admission for blacks cannot be close to 100% at any index level where the probability of admissions for whites is substantially lower than 100%; if it were, this would mean that blacks at that level were not in any meaningful competition with academically comparable whites - for blacks in such ranges, their race alone would be making them indispensable. A third essential feature of the system is the converse of the second: the probability of admissions for whites cannot be close to 0% at any index level where the probability of admission for blacks is substantial - otherwise, again, blacks at that level would not be meaningfully competing with academically comparable whites. Graphically, Justice O'Connor's guidelines for the permissible use of race translate closely into the type of admissions curve shown in Figure 2.4. ???Scenario Three: An admissions program that relies primarily on the academic index and awards substantial "points" to black applicants aimed at offsetting the average lower academic numbers of blacks. There are two obvious ways that an admissions program can clearly be unconstitutional under Justice O'Connor's standards even without the direct use of quotas. One way is to use the method adopted by the undergraduate college at Michigan, which simply awarded points to underrepresented minorities to offset their lower average academic credentials. When graphed as an admissions curve, the black [*398] and white curves will be a nearly fixed horizontal distance apart from one another, since each black applicant will have a fixed number added to her index. This sort of curve is reflected in Figure 2.5 below. ???This method has an obvious appeal for a school where admissions are primarily determined by grades and test scores. Heavy reliance on the academic index (i.e., a high index coefficient) creates two dilemmas for a school: it makes the black-white gap more salient (since the racial gap in academic numbers is presumably greater than the racial gaps in factors like state residence and leadership activities), and it decreases the general role of other diversity factors. It thus makes it doubly hard for a school to achieve racial diversity without giving a unique and very large weight to race. ???Figure 2.5: Admissions System Relying on Adding "Points" to Black Applicants to Equalize Admissions by Race [see org] [*399] ???Figure 2.6: Admissions System Relying on Segregated Black and White Admissions to Equalize Admissions by Race [see org] Scenario Four: An admissions program that relies primarily on academic index but evaluates each racial group separately, admitting similar proportions from each racial pool of applicants. The simplest and most predictable way to achieve racial diversity while maximizing the academic strength of an enrolled class is to simply divide the admissions pool into racial groups and admit the strongest applicants within each group. A school following this method and relying substantially, but not exclusively, on the academic index to determine admissions from each racial group would end up with admissions curves like those illustrated in Figure 2.6. ???The reader may be struck that Figures 2.5 and 2.6 are identical. This is no accident. If the point boost awarded in Scenario Three is roughly equivalent to the average academic gap between white and black applicants, then Scenarios Three and Four are functionally identical systems. This point bears repeating: To an outside observer who can only examine the results of an admissions system - who cannot look inside the minds of the decisionmakers - there is no distinguishable difference between a system that "race-norms" academic scores by adding points to every black applicant and a system that simply segregates applicants within each racial group from competition with the other groups. The exact numbers admitted are likely to vary slightly under the two systems, but the substantive effect - proportional representation - is the same. ???How do either of these approaches compare with a racial quota of the type prohibited under Bakke? They are a little bit different. A predetermined quota creates a good deal of rigidity, especially in an admissions system where large [*400] numbers of people are admitted with no certain knowledge of which admittees will actually choose to enroll. Setting a quota for an entering class of students probably necessitates making some last-minute admissions, once the complexion of the class is clearer; it also means that one cannot vary the representation of a minority group from year to year according to the strength of each year's applicant pool. But these logistical problems are probably not the main reason for the Supreme Court's rulings against quotas. The Court seems instead to focus on the idea that a quota overtly immunizes the minority group from competition with the majority group; a quota suggests either racially segregated admissions processes, or race-norming that puts each racial group primarily in competition with other members of the same group. n110 In this sense, the admissions dynamics captured in Scenarios Three and Four capture the legal essence of a quota as well. ???Unlike an explicit quota, the "racial tracks" and "racial points" systems illustrated in Scenarios Three and Four do not produce exactly the same number of minority admits each year. The actual number will vary a little depending on the relative strength of admissions pools, the number of applicants from each racial group, and yield patterns. Of course, there is no practical reason why a school should care whether the number of underrepresented minorities fluctuates a few points above or below an average of, say, eighteen percent. Quotas are only useful when the party seeking a certain number of minority spots does not trust the party filling the spots - for example, in the context of a settlement agreement between an employer and previously excluded minorities. In the context of a law school, where faculty and deans set policy and admissions officers implement it, quotas per se would hardly make sense even if they were permissible. ???Of course, Scenario Four (racially segregated admissions) is as unconstitutional as Scenario Three (race-norming index scores) under the O 'Connor rules. Schools are not permitted to insulate minority applicants from competition with other candidates. Because of the black-white academic index gap, the only methods available to schools that want to achieve something close to proportional admissions for blacks while allowing a major role for academic factors seem equally barred by Grutter and Gratz. ???* * * Let us now start to consider some real-world admissions systems, beginning with what we know about the University of Michigan systems litigated before the Supreme Court. The "points for race" approach of the undergraduate system is, as we have said, captured by Scenario Three. But what exactly does it look like when charted out? The college's system went [*401] through several iterations during the 1990s. In 1999, according to Justice O'Connor, the system awarded a maximum of 150 points; up to 110 could be awarded for academic performance. n111 Ten points were awarded for Michigan residency, alumni children received four points, outstanding essays could garner their authors three points, and special personal achievements could earn up to five. Twenty points were assigned to blacks and Hispanics. On the one-thousand-point scale of our admissions curve figures, this would translate to a minority boost of something over one hundred points. Graphically, the black and white admissions curves would look like those in Figure 2.5. ???The Gratz litigation disclosed admissions grids for undergraduate admissions for several admissions years. The grids show the distribution of applicants by categories of high school GPA and SAT scores, and also show how many of the applicants in each box of the grid were admitted by Michigan's undergraduate college. For several years, including 1999, the university disclosed separate grids for "underrepresented minorities" and other applicants, and also separated in-state and out-of-state applicants. ???With the data in these grids, it is possible to compute index scores for applicants, assigning each applicant the middle value for the grid she is in and then plugging the assigned GPA and SAT scores into an index formula similar to the one offered earlier. n112 Table 2.1 tabulates the admissions rates for out-of-state applicants, comparing underrepresented minorities (mostly blacks) with all other applicants (mostly whites). ??? [*402] ???Table 2.1: Comparative Undergraduate Admission Cohorts at the University of Michigan, Nonresidents Only, 1999 ???Admission Rate for Nonminority Applicants ???Admission Rate for Underrepresented-Minority Applicants Index???Proportion of Cohort Admitted???Index???Proportion of Cohort Admitted 870 and Above???99.5%???750 and Above???99.3% 810-869???91%???690-749???93% 750-809???52%???630-689???64% 690-749???23%???570-629???29% 610-689???19%???Below 570???2.1% 570-609???10% Under 570???2.6% ???Source: Data disclosed by the University of Michigan Undergraduate College in the course of the Gratz litigation, available at http://www1.law.ucla.edu/ sander/Data%20and%20Procedures/SuppAnalysis.htm. I assigned each applicant to the college an index based on a weighting of high school GPA and SAT I scores. The weights are based on a logistic regression of actual admissions decisions by the college, and give SAT I scores about 50% more weight than high school GPA. In this table, I compare the admissions rate for nonminority applicants across various ranges, setting them alongside index ranges for minority applicants that are, in the first four rows, 120 points lower. Inspection of the table reveals several clear patterns. First, the academic index plays a central role in admissions decisions. Nonminority applicants with index scores of 870 or higher are virtually assured admission; those with scores below 570 have almost no chance of success. Second, the admission rates on the two sides of the table track one another closely. We would expect this result, since the school is adding enough points to each minority application to erase the 120-point gap in index scores. Third, the minority and nonminority admissions rates converge upon one another at the lower ranges. It would seem that the college applies some general numerical cutoff for applicants of all races, so that minorities with scores below 570 have no better chance than others of being admitted. ??? [*403] ???Figure 2.7: Admissions Curves for Underrepresented Minorities and Others for University of Michigan Undergraduate College, 1999 [see org] ???Figure 2.8: Admissions Curves for Blacks and Whites at University of Michigan Law School, 1999 [see org] [*404] We can perform a nearly identical analysis for the University of Michigan Law School's admissions in the same year, 1999. In the case of the law school, the grids are broken down by race (allowing us to compare blacks and whites), but not for residents and nonresidents. I analyzed data on all black applicants and all white applicants for admission in 1999, and summarize the results in Table 2.2. ???As a general matter, most readers should be struck by the general similarity between Tables 2.1 and 2.2. In both cases, admissions are heavily mediated by index score and by race. But closer inspection reveals several important differences. Though blacks in both tables appear to receive a large point boost to equalize their admissions chances with whites, the point boost that equalizes admissions chances is somewhat larger at the law school (140 points) than at the undergraduate college (120 points). Academic factors are even more decisive at the law school than at the college: a swing of one hundred points in the academic index knocks law school applicants of either race from a category where over 90% are admitted to one where 11% or fewer are admitted. And there is no convergence between whites and blacks in the lower academic reaches at the law school, as there is at the college; white law applicants with index scores below 720 had virtually no chance of admission, even though 90% of the black applicants in the 700-719 range received offers of admission. Figures 2.7 and 2.8, illustrating the admissions curves at the two schools, show both that the law school curves are steeper and that the black and white lines for that school are more symmetrical. ???In other words, the law school operated an admissions system that gave greater weight to race, and less weight to nonindex factors, than the college's, and applied the race weights with more uniform results. If one accounts for the fact that the academic index here is based on approximate "ranges," and not exact values for each individual, and for the lack of data in our index on the quality or difficulty of each applicant's undergraduate college (which doubtless factors into the law school's assessment of each candidate's academic strength), then the law school's reliance on purely academic considerations is even more dominant than Table 2.2 implies. n113 ??? [*405] ???Table 2.2: Comparative Admission Cohorts at the University of Michigan Law School, 1999 ???Admissions Rate for White Applicants???Admissions Rate for Black Applicants Index???Proportion of Cohort Admitted???Index???Proportion of Cohort Admitted 850 and Above???97%???710 and Above???96% 830-849???91%???690-709???90% 810-829???70%???670-689???72% 790-809???44%???650-669???38% 750-789???16%???610-649???22% 710-749???5%???570-609???11% Under 710???2%???Under 570???0% ???Source: Data disclosed by the University of Michigan Law School in the course of the Grutter litigation; available at http://www1.law.ucla.edu/ sander/Data%20and%20Procedures/SuppAnalysis.htm. Cells of data based on undergraduate GPA and LSAT scores have been converted to a 0-1000 index using this formula: (LSAT - 120) * 10 + (UGPA * 100). Considered in this light, it is difficult to see how Justice O'Connor could have thought the law school's system passed constitutional muster, or that blacks and whites were in any sense on the same "playing field" in admissions, being judged by a myriad of personal characteristics of which "race" was only one. Race is obviously given far more weight than all other "diversity" factors together. Blacks in any index range are clearly not competing against academically comparable whites. The law school's admissions are functionally identical to either racially segregated admissions or the type of race-norming followed by the undergraduate college. In every respect we can quantify, the law school's admissions process seems more violative of O'Connor's standards than the college's. In trying to interpret the meaning of Grutter, then, we are left with two possibilities: It may be that Justice O'Connor did not understand that the law school and college admissions systems were functionally identical in their treatment of race, due perhaps to weaknesses in the plaintiff's presentation. Or it may be that Justice O'Connor cared only about form, not substance. We should perhaps infer that racially segregated admissions, or large, fixed numerical boosts awarded on the basis of race, are fine so long as they are not specifically identified as such in the admissions office's public pronouncements (or in sworn testimony before a court). ???* * * Admissions curves and tables of admissions rates can provide significant insight into the functional differences among admissions decisions, but they [*406] are, at heart, rather ad hoc tools, unsatisfactory for systematic comparisons. Is it possible to provide more formal and compact yardsticks to assess the role of race in an admissions system? Yes, no doubt it is, and I must plead limitations of space and capacity in not providing as complete a solution as a good mathematician could surely devise. What I present here are some initial steps toward a more thorough analysis of a challenging problem. ???Logistic regression is a tool that allows the researcher to assess the reliability and power of some factors (independent variables) in predicting outcomes, like admissions decisions, that can take on only two "values" (in this case, "yes" or "no"). As we will see in Part V, logistic regression is quite useful in evaluating when some hypothesized causal factor does or does not matter to actual outcomes. Here I use it in a different way: to gauge how much weight is given to particular sets of factors in admissions decisions. We do not know all the contents of the "black box" of law school admissions processes, but we can estimate the importance of the unknown by weighing the importance of the known. ???Thus, for example, we have no systematic information on how the University of Michigan Law School evaluated such diversity factors as work experience, leadership skills, letters of recommendation, hardships overcome, or written essays. We simply know the numerical part of an applicant's credentials and her race. Using logistic regression to "predict" whether an applicant is admitted, we can estimate the proportion of admissions outcomes that can be successfully predicted by knowing the academic index and the race of applicants. n114 A measure called the "Somers's D," produced in logistic regressions, provides this metric of prediction. ???Logistic regression analysis of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions in 1999 shows that when one controls for each applicant's academic credentials, residency status (in-state versus out-of-state) and race ( "underrepresented" minorities versus others), the Somers's D is .82. Knowing these facts about an applicant thus allows us to reduce the guesswork involved in predicting an individual's admission by eighty-two percent. In other words, these three facts about applicants dominate the admissions process. The Somers's D behind the simulated admissions curve shown in Figure 2.4, by contrast, is .35.A logistic regression of the University of Michigan Law School's 1999 admissions, using only an applicant's academic indices and her race (we do not have data on residency) yields a Somers's D of .88. This is consistent with what we can infer from the admissions curves - the law school appears to rely even more heavily on academic factors (and thus less on "diversity" factors) than does the college. Moreover, recall that our estimates of the academic credentials of Michigan applicants are based on ranges, not actual numbers, and that we do not have information on the quality of each applicant's undergraduate college - certainly a factor in the law school's admissions. With [*407] more complete information, academic factors and race would produce a Somers's D even closer to 1. The scope permitted by this regime for "individualized assessment" is slight indeed. ???One can gain insight into how a school treats race in the admissions process with two additional statistics. One of these is the simple admissions rate for blacks and whites. If the rates are very similar, despite the large black-white credentials gap, this is evidence that a school is engaged in race-norming credentials, segregating admissions, or using some other method that makes the racial gap irrelevant. The second tool is to conduct separate logistic regressions for black and white admissions. If a school claims that substantial black admissions result from the strength of black applicants in their "diversity" credentials (socioeconomic background, community service, etc.), then it should be much harder to predict black admissions based on academic factors than would be the case for white admissions. n115 If, on the other hand, blacks are not competing directly with whites for admission, and schools are effectively race-norming black credentials, then we would expect to see a similarly heavy reliance on academic numbers for blacks and whites. ???The undergraduate college at the University of Michigan admitted 82% of the underrepresented minorities for whom we have admissions data, compared to 70% of other applicants. A logistic regression of admissions decisions for majority applicants, based on the academic and residency factors noted earlier, yields a Somers's D of .81. A parallel regression for underrepresented minority applicants yields a Somers's D of .85. Both of these tests thus reinforce what the university concedes - that it added points to minority applications to offset disparities in academic credentials. At the law school, admission rates for whites and blacks are nearly identical (43% and 39%, respectively), and separate logistic regressions for each race produce even more extreme Somers's D measures: .88 for whites, and .90 for blacks. Once again, the law school's admissions look more mechanical and less driven by nonracial diversity factors than the college's admissions. ???Within the law school world, how typical are racially segregated admissions? One cannot learn about this, of course, by a formal poll of schools. As we saw in Part I, many schools were relatively candid about affirmative action in the 1970s, but after Bakke discussions largely went underground. Informally, when admissions officers gather at conferences and chat about what they do, the picture is much clearer. When Boalt was cited by the Justice Department in 1992 for running formal, racially segregated admissions tracks, the common view I heard expressed was not shock at Boalt's practices, but contempt for the school 's stupidity in doing it so brazenly. In the mid-1990s, over a small lunch I attended with the dean of an elite law school (not [*408] Michigan) and the school's chief admissions officer, the discussion worked around to Bakke. The dean turned to the admissions chief and casually observed that the numbers of blacks admitted in recent years had been too nearly identical from year to year. For appearances' sake, the dean went on, it would be best to vary the numbers a bit more. ???As I noted in Part I, the UCLA School of Law, my home institution, established an elaborately justified "diversity" program in 1978-1979 to conform with Bakke. Internally, however, admissions operated on de facto separate racial tracks until the university and the state adopted formal bans on any kind of racial preferences beginning in the 1997 admissions year. The school's 1979-1997 system divided applicants into five racial groups - whites, Asians, Hispanics, blacks, and American Indians - and considered each group largely in isolation from the others. Admissions within each pool were driven overwhelmingly by the academic index (a combination of LSAT score, undergraduate grades, and strength of undergraduate institution), thus admitting the numerically strongest candidates within each racial pool. In one concession to "soft factors," the school allowed student committees (for years in the 1980s and early 1990s, the committees were separated by race) to comment upon and even interview minority applicants. The many other elements described in the school's "diversity" policy - nonracial factors such as socioeconomic disadvantage, disabilities, interesting work experiences, or advanced degrees in other fields - could be fed into the mix. But nonracial "diversity" admissions rarely accounted for more than four or five percent of all admissions. The admissions curves at the UCLA School of Law thus looked just like those at the University of Michigan School of Law, except steeper. n116 ???While conducting research for this Article, my research associate and I submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to thirteen public law schools across the United States. We chose all of the elite public law schools and a random sample of other schools. In all, we collected data on twelve admissions cycles over 2002 and 2003 from seven law schools. ???Table 2.3 summarizes data on the average admissions patterns of these schools, using the numerical techniques I applied to Michigan's undergraduate college and law school admissions. By the three measures I have suggested, all of these schools appear to follow much the same pattern as both Michigan schools. Blacks and whites are admitted at almost exactly the same rates, [*409] academic factors (and, in some cases, residency) drive nearly all admissions decisions, and academic factors are as predominant in black admissions as they are in white admissions. n117 ???Table 2.3: Statistics Concerning Typical Admissions Patterns at Various Higher Education Institutions Institution and Year of Analysis ???Somers's D in Logistic Admissions Model Percentage of Applicants Admitted ???All???Whites???Blacks???Whites???Blacks University of Michigan, Undergraduate College, 1999-2000*???.81???.81???.85 70%???82% University of Michigan, Law School, 1999-2000???.88???.88???.90???43%???39% Seven U.S. Public Law Schools, 2002-2004**???.88???.88???.88???23.6%???24.3% ???Source: Data disclosed by the University of Michigan Law School and Undergraduate College in the course of the Grutter and Gratz litigation, respectively, available at http://www1.law.ucla.edu/ sander/Data%20and%20Procedures/SuppAnalysis.htm; data disclosed by > public law schools in response to FOIA requests from the author (on file with author). ???*For the college, the racial comparisons are between "underrepresented minorities" (mostly blacks and Hispanics) and everyone else. ???**Somers's D values are medians for the twelve admissions cycles at the seven schools. I have thus far been unable to find a single law school in the United States whose admissions process operates in the way Justice O'Connor describes in Grutter. The academic index for applicants - however it might be constructed by individual schools - is always the dominant factor in admissions within each racial group; other "soft" factors play a prominent role only for those relatively few cases that are on the academic score boundary between "admit" and [*410] "reject." n118 And the gap between the black and white curves is quite large, ranging from 100 to 160 index points and averaging about 125 points. The steepness of the curves for both blacks and whites negates the possibility that there is some nonacademic, nonracial factor that is offsetting the black-white score gap. The only logical possibilities are that schools "race-track" admissions or add large boosts to black applications to erase the academic gap. ???Note that when I say "all" of the law schools I examined had substantially disparate racial tracks to admission, I include several law schools outside the highest ranks. The system of racial preferences is not confined to elite schools. It is a characteristic of legal education as a whole. To the pattern behind this phenomenon we now turn. ???III. The Cascade Effect of Racial Preferences The conventional wisdom about university-based affirmative action holds that it is largely confined to the most elite schools. William Bowen and Derek Bok observed that "nationally, the vast majority of undergraduate institutions accept all qualified candidates," estimating that only twenty to thirty percent of four-year colleges and universities are able to "pick and choose" among their applicants. n119 Justice Thomas seems to agree with this assessment. In his [*411] dissenting opinion in Grutter, Thomas argued that a diverse student body does not constitute a compelling state interest justifying racial classifications because it could be achieved without recourse to race. Specifically, he suggested that "with the adoption of different admissions methods, such as accepting all students who meet minimum qualifications, the Law School could achieve its vision of the racially aesthetic student body without the use of racial discrimination." n120 He went on to suggest that Michigan's reluctance to lower its admissions standards indicates that it cares more about its status as an "elite" law school than it does about the ethnic diversity of its student body. Many commentators have offered similar arguments. ???The widespread assumption that racial preferences exist only at elite schools is based on faulty logic and poor empiricism. The logical argument runs something like this: The black-white gap in test scores and grades produces a shortage of blacks at the top of the distribution, so the most elite institutions must use racial preferences to recruit an adequate number of blacks. In the middle of the distribution, in contrast, there are plenty of blacks to go around. The logical misstep is not realizing that if enough midrange blacks are snapped up by elite schools, the midrange schools will face their own shortage of blacks admissible through race-blind criteria. The lack of good empiricism on this issue results from the tendency of researchers, public intellectuals, and the media to focus on the glamorous schools, and to give only passing attention to those in the trenches. ???In fact, the evidence within the law school world shows conclusively that a very large majority of American law schools not only engage in affirmative action, but engage in the types of segregated admissions/racial boosting that I illustrated in Part II. I will also argue that the dynamics of affirmative action in law schools make these practices largely unavoidable. In other words, few American law schools feel that they have any meaningful choice but to engage in covert practices that, if made explicit, would probably not survive judicial scrutiny. ???* * * American higher education relies heavily on quantifiable indicators of academic achievement, and probably nowhere in higher education is this reliance more complete and obvious than in law school. n121 There are both good [*412] and bad reasons for this. The principal good reason is that academic indices based on the LSAT and undergraduate grades can be shown to be far more effective in predicting law school performance (and, for that matter, success on bar examinations) than any other factor that has been systematically tested. n122 The bad side of the focus on numbers is the law school ranking system. Legal academics rank their schools in some of the ways taken for granted in other fields - faculty publication records, peer citations, and so on - but rankings in the law school world have gradually come to be dominated by the annual lists generated by U.S. News and World Report. U.S. News relies on a variety of quantifiable and subjective sources, but the median LSAT scores of a school's students figure prominently in both the calculation of the ranking and the published reports on schools. n123 ???As Russell Korobkin and others have pointed out, legal education in the United States has taken on some of the character of a large-scale signaling and sorting game. n124 High-prestige schools attract stronger students, and elite employers recruit from these schools in the hope of hiring the best students. It is often said that the main function law schools perform is not educating law students, but giving them a brand name, and big-firm employers - who send recruiters to elite schools and do most of their screening of law students when the students are less than halfway through law school - act in ways that confirm this impression. n125 I will argue in Part VI that employers value law school performance at least as much as they value law school prestige, but I have no doubt that most law school faculty and law students believe prestige is the be-and end-all. Prospective students therefore tend to strive to attend the most elite school (measured by the U.S. News rankings) they can get admitted to, and law school deans strive to maximize the median LSAT of their students to increase [*413] their eliteness. A dean who can lift her school's median LSAT a couple of points can not only impress alumni, but may be able to attract still stronger students to the school. n126 ???The rankings game may have led schools to place more emphasis on numbers than they had in the past - in particular, to give more weight to LSAT scores. It has certainly led students to place more emphasis on school ranking. Students seem to attach importance even to trivial differences in prestige (e.g., Stanford versus NYU, or Ohio State versus Tulane), and will almost always uproot themselves to enroll in the highest tier that will have them. n127 The law school admissions market is therefore national, especially at its higher reaches, so much so that elite state schools matriculate most of their student bodies from out of state. When law schools extend admissions offers, applicants with higher numbers tend to turn the offer down (since their numbers got them into another, still higher-ranked school, which they decide to attend) and applicants with lower numbers tend to accept (since they probably do not have offers from more or equally attractive alternatives). n128 ???Now, suppose we add affirmative action into the mix. Suppose that an elite school such as Yale wants to admit an academically strong class, but also wants to enroll a significant number of black students (Yale's student body is regularly around 8% to 9% black n129). Even at the top of the distribution of undergraduate performance and LSAT scores, there is a significant black-white gap. The blacks that Yale admits, on our 1000-point index scale, will tend to have indices of perhaps about 750, while the white admits will tend to have [*414] indices of perhaps about 875. Cornell Law School would be happy to have almost any of the students Yale admits (and does admit them when they apply), but a large majority of these students will choose to attend Yale (or one of the other top ten schools), and Cornell will thus have to admit students with lower numbers to fill its class. For whites, Cornell will admit down into the ranks of the low 800s; for blacks, it will admit down into the high 600s. The enrolled classes at Cornell and Yale will show remarkably little overlap in index numbers - within racial groups. n130 Cardozo School of Law will face the same challenges vis-a-vis Cornell that Cornell faces vis-a-vis Yale, and Syracuse University College of Law will be to Cardozo as Cardozo is to Cornell. ???If the number of blacks admitted to the higher tiers of law schools was substantially smaller than blacks' proportionate number in the applicant pool, then the black-white gap in credentials would narrow as one moved further down the hierarchy of schools. But in fact blacks made up 7.1% of the enrolled first-year classes at the top thirty law schools in 2002 - a percentage that has been quite stable for over a decade. n131 The proportion of blacks in all ABA-approved first-year law school classes in 2001 was 7.7% n132 - also a quite stable figure. As a result, the academic index gap between whites and blacks should, as a matter of logic, tend to remain about the same as one moves down the hierarchy of law schools. ???* * * The admissions data from the handful of law schools examined in Part II tended to confirm this pattern of a nearly constant black-white index gap at different points along the admissions chain. But it would be nice to have some more systematic information. Fortunately, such a source exists. From 1991 through 1997, the LSAC gathered systematic data on one national cohort of law students for its Bar Passage Study (LSAC-BPS). n133 The study is remarkable [*415] because the LSAC secured the cooperation of about ninety-five percent of the nation's accredited law schools and most of the state bar examiners. n134 The LSAC was thus able to track some twenty-seven thousand law students from their entry into law school in the fall of 1991 through their eventual success (or failure) in passing the bar two or three years after graduation. The LSAC-BPS collected a wide array of information about the study participants: responses to several questionnaires, data on law school performance, bar passage, and - of immediate relevance here - data on race, LSAT score, and undergraduate GPA. The disadvantage of the LSAC-BPS data is that it is somewhat disguised to prevent researchers from identifying individual institutions. We can only examine schools within "clusters" that correspond roughly to tiers of law school prestige. n135 ???For each person in the LSAC-BPS data set, I assigned an "admissions index" value using the method outlined in Part II. The index is a linear combination of LSAT (weighted 60%) and undergraduate GPA (weighted 40%) that scales all students on a range from one to one thousand. Table 3.1 presents data on all the students who enrolled at Tier 1 schools (which appear to include the most elite schools in the nation), separated by race. ???Table 3.1: Black-White Academic Indices at Tier 1 Institutions, 1991 Matriculants Student Race ???Number of Enrolled First-Year Students in Sample ???Mean Academic Index ???Median Academic Index???Standard Deviation Black???147???709???705???90 White???1843???864???875???74 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. The racial gap in the mean academic index is 155 points; the gap in the median index is 170 points. The standard deviation of the index is comparatively small - strikingly small, considering that the schools in this [*416] group are spread across the top twenty in rank, ranging perhaps from Yale to Vanderbilt. This means that nearly all of the whites admitted to any of the Tier 1 schools come from a fairly narrow credentials band. Collectively, only about three percent of the whites at these schools have academic indices as low as the median black matriculant. ???Table 3.2 summarizes similar data for the full range of law schools that participated in the LSAC-BPS. It is hard to conclude from this data that the racial gap, or affirmative action, disappears at lower-tier schools. Except for the seven law schools that have historically served minorities - obviously a special case - the black-white gap is nearly constant. ???Table 3.2: Black-White Academic Index Gap in Six Groups of American Law Schools, 1991 Matriculants Law School Group???Median Academic Index???Black-White Gap???Standard Deviation in Index for Whites ???Blacks???Whites Group 1: Very Elite Schools (n = 14)???705???875???170???74 Group 2: Other "National" Schools (n = 16)???631???805???174???89 Group 3: Midrange Public Schools (n = 50)???586???788???202???75 Group 4: Midrange Private Schools (n = 50)???560???725???165???75 Group 5: Low-Range Private Law Schools (n = 18)???493???665???172???73 Group 6: Historically "Minority" Schools (n = 7)???516???641???125???103 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. Affirmative action thus has a cascading effect through American legal education. n136 The use of large boosts for black applicants at the top law schools [*417] means that the highest-scoring blacks are almost entirely absorbed by the highest tier. Schools in the next tier have no choice but to either enroll very few blacks or use racial boosts or segregated admissions tracks to the same degree as the top-tier schools. The same pattern continues all the way down the hierarchy. ???Because of the cascade effect, the only schools that truly benefit from the preferential policies are those at the top - perhaps the top forty law schools. In a race-blind system, the numbers of blacks enrolling in the top twenty schools would be quite small, but the numbers would be appreciable once one reached schools ranked twentieth to thirtieth, and blacks would steadily converge toward a proportional presence as one moved down the hierarchy of schools. n137 At the bulk of law schools, the very large preferences granted to blacks only exist in order to offset the effects of preferences used by higher-ranked schools. n138 ???So what of Justice Thomas's contention that a school can achieve racial diversity simply by lowering admissions standards for whites? In the current regime, this strategy simply would not work. Consider the University of Michigan Law School, where, as we saw in Part II, the school in 1995 admitted most whites with academic indices over 830, and almost no whites with academic indices below 750; for blacks, presumptive acceptance required an index score of 690 and few were admitted with scores below 610. If Michigan started applying its "black" thresholds to all applicants, it would initially be flooded with students. Based on 1995 acceptance patterns, the first class admitted under the relaxed and race-blind standard would grow from 350 students to about 1500. Black enrollment would stay a little above 20 students, n139 so the percentage of black students in the first year would fall from 7% to 1.4%. The school might introduce a lottery to control class size, but if it were race-blind the black presence would still be only 1.4%. And after the first year of the experiment, dynamics would change quickly. Michigan would no longer be seen, by employers and students (and to a lesser extent by other law schools' faculties), as a law school of the highest academic standards. Its brand name would steadily fall in the rankings into a range occupied by other strong, [*418] but not "elite," midwestern law schools, such as Ohio State or the University of Illinois. And its black students - previously among the strongest in the nation - would mostly migrate to other elite institutions still aggressively pursuing affirmative action, such as Cornell, Northwestern, or the University of Virginia. To maintain its former black presence, the now-third-tier Michigan would have to reinstitute racial boosts or segregated admissions - but now at a significantly lower part of the academic spectrum. ???It is important to understand that a nearly identical dynamic process would follow the decision of any but the lowest-tier American law schools to become "race-blind" in admissions. If the school treated all students according to its existing "white" standards, it would lose almost all of its black students because blacks admitted under these standards would have far more attractive offers from higher-ranked schools. If the school treated all students according to its existing "black" standards, it would fall in the rankings and, again, eventually lose its black students to higher-ranked schools. n140 ???In this sense, affirmative action in American law schools is not so much a set of policies adopted by individual schools, but instead a system in which the freedom of action of any single school is largely circumscribed by the behavior of all the others. Nearly any school that switched to truly race-neutral practices would find its number of enrolled blacks rapidly dropping toward zero. n141 And any school that did so voluntarily would not only appear to be racist - how could this school be segregated when every other law school has something approaching proportional representation? - but would also find itself under intense pressure from all of its constituency groups to enroll more blacks and Hispanics. ???IV. An Aside on the Value of Academic Indices Parts II and III effectively demonstrated, I hope, three basic points: (a) law school admissions offices rely primarily on academic indices in selecting their students; (b) because the number of blacks with high indices is small, elite law schools achieve something close to proportional representation either by maintaining separate black and white admissions tracks or by giving black applicants large numerical boosts; and (c) the use of these preferences by elite schools gives nearly all other law schools little choice but to follow suit. The result is a game of musical chairs where blacks are consistently bumped up [*419] several seats in the law school hierarchy, producing a large black-white gap in the academic credentials of students at nearly all law schools. ???Defenders of affirmative action say that the credentials gap has little substantive significance. They are supported by an eclectic band of critics who have attacked the reliance on academic numbers in general, and standardized tests in particular, as misguided and unfair. Let us consider several of their principal criticisms. ???Predictive indices (like the LSAT/UGPA index I have used in Parts II and III) don't predict very well. The correlation (usually denoted by "r") of such indices with first-year law school grades at individual schools ranges from about .25 to .50. The square of the correlation coefficient (the "r[su'2']") describes how much of the variation in the outcome variable (in this case first-year grades) is explained by the measurement variable (in this case the academic index). Since the squares of 0.25 and 0.50 are, respectively, 0.0625 and 0.25, one can argue that these predictive indices are only explaining 6% to 25% of the individual variation in law school performance. If that's as good as the indices are at predicting first-year grades, presumably they are even less able to predict more distant events - third-year grades, bar exam results, or future careers. Why should we take so seriously numbers that provide such crude guides to future outcomes? These arguments can be called the "usefulness" critique. ???American standardized tests are unfair to non-Anglos in general and blacks in particular. It is intrinsically unreasonable to weigh a test taken in a few hours as much as or more than four years of college work. The exams are biased because they largely test knowledge of culture-specific vocabularies. n142 The widespread perception that blacks perform badly on such tests has produced a "stereotype threat" among blacks that further hinders performance. n143 Affluent whites, meanwhile, enroll in expensive coaching [*420] classes to maximize their scores. n144 Actual scores are highly correlated with socioeconomic status. n145 The tests simply perpetuate privilege and are illegitimate. These arguments can be called the "fairness" critique. ???The battlefield staked out by these two critiques is bloody and littered with corpses. For the most part, my approach in this Article is to sidestep the field by presenting new, real, and systematic data on the actual consequences of affirmative action (and impatient readers can move directly to Part V to start digesting the data). n146 If we actually know black-white differences in law school grades, retention rates, and bar passage, theoretical arguments about predictive indices become in some sense moot. However, since many of the arguments just outlined are so widely believed, are so often repeated, and have gained so much apparent legitimacy in recent years, I offer a few comments here on the main points of dispute. ???The usefulness critique. The so-called validation studies that assess the power of academic indices to predict first-year law school grades are intrinsically invalid when used for that purpose. n147 Since the students at any given school are chosen largely on the basis of the academic indices themselves, they represent a seriously skewed sample. Their scores are, as we have seen, fairly compressed (creating the "restriction of range" problem) and, to the extent that nonindex factors are used in admissions, persons with lower academic scores often have offsetting strengths. When a correction is made for these problems, grade correlations with academic indices tend to go up about 20 points, to a range of .45 to .65. n148 ???Another way to avoid the weaknesses of conventional validation studies is to use academic indices to predict performance on bar exams. Bar exams are taken by a broad cross-section of law graduates of many different schools, which greatly reduces the restriction-of-range and biased-selection problems. Little research has been done because bar authorities tend to jealously guard exam data. However, some recent validation studies have succeeded in [*421] matching undergraduate grades and LSAT scores with raw scores on the California bar exam. The studies find the predictive power of the LSAT is quite good. LSAT scores have a .61 correlation with multistate exam scores (even though the tests are usually taken four years apart), and a correlation of .59 with overall exam results (including the eight-hour essay exam and eight-hour practice exam). n149 Adding undergraduate grades to the predictor produces a further, modest increase in correlations. The R[su'2'] of these academic indices with bar results is, therefore, well over 35%. n150 ???Explaining 35% of individual variance may sound mediocre, but I find it impressive for a number of reasons. No other predictor tested for admissions purposes (e.g., interviews) has been able to explain more than 5% of individual variance in school performance. n151 In research I conducted in 1995 with Kris Knaplund and Kit Winter (and the aid of many law schools around the country), thousands of first-year law students completed questionnaires on their school experiences and their schools provided data on their first-semester grades and predictive indices. n152 Although we did not set out to study predictors of academic performance, I was nonetheless struck that the simple LSAT/UGPA index was several times stronger at predicting first-semester [*422] grades than direct information on how much students said they were studying, participating in class, completing the reading, or attending study groups. n153 ???Correlations based on individual behavior almost always sound unimpressive, largely because individuals are extremely complex and their behavior is shaped by a literal multitude of factors. Even though we know cigarette smoking causes cancer and takes years off the average smoker's life, the individual-level correlation between smoking and longevity is only about .2 (generating an r[su'2 '] of 4%). n154 Even though we know that the opportunities we have in life are heavily shaped by the environment in which we grow up (and by our genes), the correlation between the incomes of adult brothers is also only about .2. n155 ???In such cases, the modest strength of the individual correlation belies what is, when applied to large numbers, a powerful and highly predictive association. The fate of individual cigarette smokers is hard to predict, but the comparative fates of large numbers of smokers and nonsmokers can be foreseen with great accuracy. In the same sense, the individual-level correlation of an academic index with first-year grades at a law school may be only .41; but if we make predictions about groups of twenty students based on academic indices, the correlation between predictions and actual performance jumps to .88. If we make predictions about groups of one hundred students, the correlation is .96. n156 ???Just as the predictive power of a correlation increases when it is applied to larger groups, so it increases when it is applied to larger disparities. Predicting outcomes for persons in the middle of a distribution (where people are usually most thickly clustered) is hard; outcomes at the high and low ends follow more regular patterns. For example, consider blacks who took bar exams in the "Far West" region who were captured by the LSAC-BPS during the mid-1990s. n157 [*423] For those whose pre-law school academic index was 720 or higher (out of 1000), the first-time bar passage rate was 97%. For those whose academic index was 540 or lower, the first-time bar passage rate was 8%. n158 ???When a law school admits a class, it is making judgments about large numbers of people - how to select a few hundred students from several thousand applicants. Even though the success of any individual applicant is largely guesswork, the average success of groups of applicants with similar academic credentials is highly predictable. This is why it is legitimate - indeed, essential - for schools to pay attention to academic numbers. n159 ???The fairness critique. There are a number of small answers to arguments that academic indices are unfair to blacks. The available evidence suggests that most students do not take test-preparation courses, blacks are more likely than whites to enroll in such courses, and the courses have very modest effects on performance. n160 Under the most generous assumptions, test cramming could not explain more than one or two percent of the black-white credentials gap. n161 Testing agencies have made substantial efforts to make the verbal and reading portions of their tests more culturally inclusive; but in any case, the racial gaps on mathematical and analytical portions of standardized tests are as large as [*424] those on verbal portions. "Stereotype threat" does appear to exist, but it is hard to pin down how much of the black-white gap proponents believe it explains. ???There is a more fundamental problem with the fairness critique. If it were true that academic indices generally understated the potential of black applicants, then admitted black students would tend to outperform their academic numbers. But this is not the case. A number of careful studies, stretching back into the 1970s, have demonstrated that average black performance in the first year of law school does not exceed levels predicted by academic indicators. n162 If anything, blacks tend to underperform in law school relative to their numbers, a trend that holds true for other graduate programs and undergraduate colleges. n163 ???One might respond that law school exams and bar exams simply perpetuate the unfairness of tests like the LSAT - they are all timed and undoubtedly generate acute performance anxiety. But almost all first-year students take legal writing classes, which are graded on the basis of lengthy memos prepared over many weeks, and which give students an opportunity to demonstrate skills entirely outside the range of typical law school exams. My analyses of first-semester grade data from several law schools shows a slightly larger black-white gap in legal writing classes than in overall first-semester grade averages. n164 ??? [*425] None of this is to deny the value of exploring alternative methods of identifying talent for law school, nor to deny the importance of increasing the class diversity of our meritocracy. n165 The point I suggest here is that academic indices currently used by law school admissions officers are not biased and are far from meaningless. The black-white credentials gap is real. Therefore, admitting law students whose academic credentials vary dramatically by race is likely to have dramatic effects in law school. ???V. Effects of Affirmative Action on Academic Performance in Law School In many discourses, the point of affirmative action is to give someone the chance to prove herself. Individuals who receive preferences, it is said, are being given the opportunity to get a better education than they would receive under a race-blind system. n166 Since many of the beneficiaries of affirmative action suffered from low-quality, underfunded schooling in the past, the second chance provided by affirmative action is an opportunity to blossom. ???Such is the argument, and it is far from implausible. n167 In the preceding Parts, I have pointed out that blacks benefiting from affirmative action receive much larger preferences than are generally acknowledged, and that the academic indices used to sort candidates for admission are both strong and unbiased predictors of law school performance. Nonetheless, one could reasonably argue that those blacks who have received the fewest opportunities in the past might outperform their credentials. ???One could conversely argue, with equal plausibility, that with such large credentials gaps at the outset of law school, it will be particularly difficult for [*426] blacks to stay afloat. The question of how affirmative action beneficiaries actually perform in law school is, therefore, of great practical and conceptual interest. Remarkably, I have been unable to find any study published in the past thirty years that has tried to systematically document an answer. Even researchers who have had access to systematic data have avoided publishing it, or, worse, have given misleading accounts of what the data shows. ???* * * The LSAC-BPS data, which I discussed in Part III, n168 provides a uniquely comprehensive resource for examining law school performance. The 163 schools that participated in the study provided grade data for over twenty-seven thousand 1991 matriculants. n169 Although the data does not identify individual schools, the LSAC converted each student's first-year GPA and graduation GPA into a number standardized for each school, in which the mean GPA at the school has a value of zero and other grades are measured by the number of standard deviations they lie above or below the mean. It is a simple matter, then, to compute any student's class standing. ???Table 5.1 below shows the distribution of first-year grades among black and white students at the "Tier 1" schools in the LSAC-BPS. Students are broken down into "deciles," each representing one-tenth of all first-year students at each school. The data shows that blacks are heavily concentrated at the bottom of the grade distribution: 52% of all blacks, compared to 6% of all whites, are in the bottom decile. Put somewhat differently, this means that the median black student got the same first-year grades as the fifth-or sixth-percentile white student. Only 8% of the black students placed in the top half of their classes. ??? [*427] ???Table 5.1: Distribution of First-Year GPAs at "Elite" Schools, Spring 1992, by Race Class Decile ???Proportion of Students in Each Group Whose First-Year GPAs Place Them in Each Decile n170 ???Black???White???All Others 1st (Lowest)???51.6%???5.6%???14.8% 2d???19.8%???7.2%???20.0% 3d???11.1%???9.2%???13.4% 4th???4.0%???10.2%???11.5% 5th???5.6%???10.6%???8.9% 6th???1.6%???11.0%???8.2% 7th???1.6%???11.5%???6.2% 8th???2.4%???11.2%???6.9% 9th???0.8%???11.8%???4.9% 10th (Highest)???1.6%???11.7%???5.2% Students in Sample???126???1525???305 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. Based on the regression illustrated in Table 5.2 below, low black performance is not a result of test anxiety (the gap is similar or greater in legal writing classes) or some special difficulty blacks in general have with law school. It is a simple and direct consequence of the disparity in entering credentials between blacks and whites at elite schools. If we try to predict grades at law schools based on the entering credentials of students, we get the regression results summarized in Table 5.2. ??? [*428] ???Table 5.2: Predicted Coefficients of Independent Variables Predicting First-Year Law School Grades at a Cross-Section of Law Schools n171 Independent Variable???Standardized Coefficient ???t-Statistic???p-Value ZLSAT???0.38???25.98???< .0001 ZUGPA???0.21???14.92???< .0001 Asian???-0.007???-0.52???.61 Black???-0.007???-0.48???.63 Hispanic???-0.011???-0.79???.43 Other Race???-0.021???-1.49???.14 Male???0.018??? 1.29???.20 ???n for Model: 4258 ???Adjusted R[su'2'] for Model: .19 ???Source: 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. The regression includes all schools in the database that provided complete LSAT and UPGA data on participating students. n172 This is the first of several sets of regression results the reader will encounter in this Article, so a few explanatory comments are in order. n173 "Standardized coefficients" tell us how much a change in an independent variable influences the dependent variable. In the table, the 0.38 coefficient for ZLSAT means that if two students are comparable in all other respects but their LSAT score, the student with the higher score will tend to have first-year grades that are 0.38 standard deviations higher for each standard deviation advantage in the LSAT score (one standard deviation on the LSAT is about ten points). The "t-statistic" tells us how consistent or reliable a relationship is, with a higher t-statistic indicating a stronger, more reliable association. T-statistics generally increase as a function of the standardized coefficient and the [*429] size of the sample. T-statistics above 2.0 are usually taken to signify that the independent variable is genuinely helpful in predicting the dependent variable. A t-statistic of less than 2.0 indicates a weak, inconsistent relationship - one that might well be due to random fluctuations in the data. The "p-value" contains the same information as the t-statistic, but it has a more intuitive, accessible meaning. A p-value of .05 (which corresponds to a t-statistic of 1.96) means, literally, that if one had millions of data points but did regressions with small subsamples of observations, one would get a coefficient as large or larger than the one shown about five percent of the time even if there were, in fact, no systematic relationship between the dependent and independent variables. ???As we saw in Part III, the main criteria used by most law schools are LSAT scores, undergraduate GPA (often adjusted for school difficulty), and the race of applicants. The regression in Table 5.2, which includes these various admissions factors, tells us three things. First, LSAT and UGPA are strongly associated with first-year grades (even though, for the reasons discussed in Part IV, the R[su'2'] for a model like this is low). Second, when we control for the LSAT and UGPA variables, none of the "race" variables (or the gender variable) is even close to being statistically significant (all the p-values are well above .05). This means that when we control for academic credentials, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians all get pretty much the same grades. n174 ???In other words, the collectively poor performance of black students at elite schools does not seem to be due to their being "black" (or any other individual characteristic, like weaker educational background, that might be correlated with race). The poor performance seems to be simply a function of disparate entering credentials, which in turn is primarily a function of the law schools' use of heavy racial preferences. It is only a slight oversimplification to say that the performance gap in Table 5.1 is a by-product of affirmative action. n175 ??? [*430] ???* * * Since, as we have seen, large racial preferences at the top of the law school hierarchy reproduce themselves at the vast majority of other law schools, we would expect to see similar patterns of black performance across most of the spectrum of legal education. Table 5.3 confirms that this is so. In the second, third, fourth, and fifth groups of law schools identified in the LSAC-BPS data, blacks are heavily concentrated at the bottom of the grade distribution. n176 Generally, around fifty percent of black students are in the bottom tenth of the class, and around two-thirds of black students are in the bottom fifth. Group 3, with the largest credentials gap, also has the worst aggregate performance among blacks. Only in Group 6, made up of the seven historically minority law schools, is the credentials gap, and the performance gap, much smaller. ??? [*431] ???Table 5.3: First-Year Grade Performance of Black Students Decile???Proportion of Black Students in Each Decile Within Each Group of Schools ???Group 2: Other "National" Schools???Group 3: Midrange Public Schools???Group 4: Midrange Private Schools???Group 5: Lower-Range Private Schools???Group 6: Historically Minority Schools 1st???44.8%???49.9%???46.3%???51.6%???14.0% 2d???22.1%???19.0%???18.9%???12.6%???12.1% 3d???11.4%???9.3%???11.3%???9.5%???12.8% 4th???4.0%???8.1%???9.2%???8.4%???10.5% 5th???7.8%???5.1%???5.7%???4.2%???12.4% 6th???3.7%???3.6%???2.1%???3.2%???8.2% 7th???1.1%???2.2%???2.6%???2.1%???10.1% 8th???2.6%???1.4%???1.9%???3.2%???6.9% 9th???1.5%???1.0%???1.2%???2.1%???7.5% 10th???1.1%???0.4%???0.7%???3.2%???5.6% Corresponding White Percentile of Median Black Student???7th???5th???8th???7th???24th Black-White Index Gap (from Table 3.2)???174???202???165???172???125 Black Students in Sample???272???505???423???95???306 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n177 These distributions give us a more vivid idea of what the debate over predictive indices means in real terms. If we imagined the distribution of predictive indices among black and white students enrolling at a particular school, we would see two largely separate and only slightly overlapping humps (see Figure 5.1). If we look at the distribution of first-year grades among these same students, the two humps have spread out, in both directions (see Figure 5.2). Some black students (about 5%) will do as well as the median white student because they came with strong entering credentials (the right tail of the left hump in Figure 5.1). Other black students (about 10%) will significantly outperform predictions based on their credentials, and will also be in the middle of the class or higher. Some white students with low credentials, and other [*432] whites who significantly underperform their credentials, will fall into the bottom quarter of the distribution. But the distance between the middle of the two humps - the average gap between blacks and whites - remains essentially unchanged. And the gap is large. When professors talk about what the grades they give mean in terms of actual student understanding, they tend to say that there is a broad middle section in which the distinctions of understanding are relatively minor. There is a top group - perhaps 10-15% of the total - that shows real mastery and goes beyond the material, and a bottom group, again 10-15% of the total, that seems fundamentally to miss the point. In other words, there are likely to be very real educational consequences when the performance gap is as large as what Table 5.1 and Table 5.3 show. As we will discuss more fully in Part VI, the low grades that are a by-product of affirmative action have a deeper significance beyond the ranking game. n178 ??? [*433] ???Figure 5.1: Distribution of Black and White Students at "Elite" Schools by Academic Index, 1991 Cohort n179 [see org] [*434] ???Figure 5.2: Distribution of Black and White Law Students at "Elite" Schools by Standardized First-Year GPA, 1991 Cohort n180 ???* * * During the second and third years of law school, we might well expect the grade gap between blacks and whites to narrow significantly, for a variety of reasons. As we have noted, a common premise of affirmative action programs is that the more time disadvantaged students have to "catch up" with more advantaged peers, the better they will do. And in law school, changes in the environment in the second and third years provide particularly good opportunities for students in academic difficulty to catch up: competition is less intense; n181 fewer courses are curved (which generally means fewer low grades); and students have far more discretion in choosing subjects. Not least, professors' methods of grading students are probably more heterogeneous in the second and third years of law school than in the first, so timed exams probably play a less critical role. n182 ??? [*435] The LSAC-BPS data includes the cumulative GPA of students at the end of their first year and at the time of law school graduation. Comparing the total grade distribution for all students in the data set would be misleading, because many of the weakest students drop out after the first year of school. Table 5.4 therefore includes only black students who actually completed law school, and compares the class standing of these students at the end of the first year and at the end of the third year. ???Table 5.4: GPA Distribution of Black Students at the End of Their First and Third Years, for All Law Schools in the LSAC-BPS Decile???Proportion of Black Law School Graduates with Grades in Each Decile ???1st Year GPA???3d Year (Cumulative) GPA 1st???41.4%???42.5% 2d???17.4%???18.0% 3d???11.3%???11.2% 4th???8.2%???9.0% 5th???6.5%???5.8% 6th???4.3%???5.0% 7th???3.3%???2.5% 8th???3.3%???2.5% 9th???2.3%???1.8% 10th???2.0%???1.7% ???n of Black Students in Sample: 1385 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n183 The universe on which the deciles are calculated is just those students who graduated from law school and had, in the LSAC-BPS data, valid first-year and cumulative third-year GPAs (a total of 22,969 students). The difference between the means of the first-and third-year grade distribution is small but highly significant (p < .001). Because dropouts are excluded from the analysis, this table somewhat overstates the performance of all blacks who complete the first year of law school. [*436] In relative terms, the grades of black law students actually go down a little from the first to the third year. The average drop is a little less than one-fifth of a standard deviation. The weaknesses in black performance engendered by the large gap in entering credentials - in turn engendered by large admissions preferences based on race - are not an artifact of the first year. They do not shrink over time. Indeed, for reasons I will explore more at the end of Part VI, they grow a bit. ???* * * The most immediate danger posed by poor performance in law school is withdrawal or expulsion from law school. As we saw in Part I, attrition was a major problem facing blacks admitted during the early years of affirmative action. Schools sometimes adopted special policies for minority students to minimize attrition, and overall attrition rates at schools dropped sharply between the late 1960s and the 1980s. Over the past fifteen years, overall law school attrition rates (at accredited schools n184) have bounced between 6% and 12%. n185 Much of the attrition these days is voluntary. Consequently, the problem of minority attrition generally, and black attrition in particular, is now rarely discussed. ???Nonetheless, what attrition remains falls disproportionately upon blacks. In the LSAC-BPS data, 8.2% of the white students, but 19.2% of the black students, who started law school in 1991 had not graduated by the end of the study five years later. n186 What role do racial preferences - and the consequently low performance of blacks in law school - play in this disparity? Without the benefit of systematic data, one could make a reasonable argument that preferences actually reduce black attrition. The argument would run like this: More elite schools have higher graduation rates than less elite schools; thus, giving blacks an extra hand into more elite schools puts them at lower risk of attrition. If blacks nonetheless are less likely to graduate, this is because of nonacademic factors like fewer financial resources. ??? [*437] Part of this argument is true: in general, the more elite the law school, the higher the graduation rate. Table 5.5 illustrates this with the LSAC-BPS data. n187 Among the law students matriculating in 1991, 96.2% of the Group 1 students eventually got law degrees, compared to only 87% of the Group 5 students. Black attrition rates are higher than white rates, and the gap grows as one moves down the spectrum of schools. ???Table 5.5: Proportion of Matriculating Students Not Graduating, by Law School Group Law School Group???Proportion of Matriculants in Each Group Not Graduating from Law School Within Five Years ???Whites???Blacks???All Students Group 1: Most Elite Schools???3.3%???4.7%???3.8% Group 2: Other "National" Schools???5.4%???12.1%???6.2% Group 3: Midrange Public Schools???8.6%???19.7%???9.6% Group 4: Midrange Private Schools???9.1%???22.5%???10.3% Group 5: Low-Range Private Schools???11.7%???34.0%???13.0% Group 6: Historically Minority Schools???8.2%???21.8%???15.5% Total for All Law Schools???8.2%???19.3%???9.3% ???n of Students Matriculating in 1991: 27,300 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n188 Figures above are based on all reported cases in the LSAC-BPS study. But as we have seen, the more prestigious addresses provided blacks through racial preferences come at a cost - lower performance in law school. [*438] The question, then, is which is more important in preventing attrition from school: getting respectable grades or going to an elite school? ???Table 5.6 examines this question with another regression analysis. Unlike the regression reported in Table 5.2, where the dependent variable (first-year grades) could take on many values, the dependent variable we are now considering can take on only two values: a one if the study participant graduated from law school, and a zero if she did not. With such dichotomous (i.e., two-value) variables, the proper tool is logistic regression rather than ordinary linear regression. The standardized coefficients in a logistic regression measure the relative strength of the independent variables in predicting the outcome of interest for each individual - in this case, whether they will graduate. The Wald Chi-Square values measure the reliability of each estimate, n189 and the p-statistics put an intuitive gloss on the Wald Chi-Square value, demarcating independent variables into those that have a "significant" or a "nonsignificant" association with the graduation variable. n190 The "Somers's D" is a measure of the model's effectiveness in predicting outcomes. A model has a Somers's D of zero if it does not improve our ability to predict a typical individual's outcome; it has a value of one if it perfectly predicts every individual's outcome. n191 ??? [*439] ???Table 5.6: Relative Power of Alternate Predictors of Law School Graduation, 1991-1996 Factor???Standardized Coefficient???Wald Chi-Square???Chi-Square p-Value n192 Law School GPA (First Year)???0.764???1452.36???< .0001 Law School Eliteness???0.218???156.40???< .0001 Part-time???-0.128???96.95???< .0001 Family Income??? 0.037???5.39???.02 Male???-0.027???2.71???.10 Black???0.019???2.29???.13 Asian???0.004???0.08???.77 Other Nonwhite???-0.007???0.18???.67 Hispanic???0.009???0.36???.55 ???n of Students in Model: 24,809 ???Somers's D: .645 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n193 The dependent variable is whether a matriculating first-year secures a law degree during the five years of the study. Law school eliteness is measured on a scale of 1 to 6, corresponding to the six groupings of schools in the LSAC-BPS data (but I have assigned 6 to the most elite group, 5 to the next most elite group, and so on, so that the coefficient is easier to interpret). For racial variables, whites are the implicit control group. For men, women are the implicit control group. A Wald Chi-Square value over 3.9 is generally considered indicative of "statistical significance," and corresponds to a p-value (reported in the right-hand column) of .05 or less. This table tells us several things. Law school GPA is by far the principal determinant of whether a student in the LSAC-BPS study failed to graduate. School eliteness is a relevant factor, but it is overshadowed by the importance of academic performance. n194 Part-time status is important but affects a relatively small proportion of students; n195 higher family income appears to play [*440] a marginal but measurable role. n196 Race is irrelevant, or nearly so; blacks are no more or less likely to drop out (or to be flunked out) of law school than other students with similar grades in a school of similar prestige. n197 And if race is not a significant predictor of attrition, this implies that there is no correlate of race (e.g., discrimination) that causes blacks to drop out at disproportionate rates. n198 ???This conclusion is borne out by looking at the individual records of students who failed to get a degree. Nearly 90% of black students in the LSAC-BPS data who only completed their first year (and thus presumably failed to graduate) placed in the bottom 10% of their classes. The median class rank of black students leaving law school between the first and third year was between the second and third percentile. ???All of this implies that racial preferences - boosting black applicants into higher-tier schools - ends up hurting the chances that these students will actually get law degrees. Those who receive preferences derive some benefit (in terms of graduation rates) from going to a more elite school, but they get much lower grades because of the preferences, and, on balance, that significantly hurts their chances of graduating. ???To test this idea directly, we can compare attrition rates for black and white students who have similar pre-law school credentials. Table 5.7 makes this comparison. Each row examines the attrition rates of a narrow band of black and white students - students who would, in the absence of affirmative action, attend similar law schools. Black attrition rates are substantially higher than [*441] white attrition rates at all but the very highest academic levels. With this data, we can flesh out a pretty complete picture of what is going on. At the most elite schools (the schools attended by the one-eighth of black students with index scores above 700), the advantages of low institutional attrition entirely offset lower grades. But across most of the range of index scores, black attrition rates are substantially higher than white rates, simply because racial preferences advance students into schools where they will get low grades. Attrition for both races, of course, goes up as index level goes down. Racial preferences appear to have an effect on black attrition roughly equivalent to lowering the index of the typical black student by sixty to eighty points. Put more simply, affirmative action has a moderately negative net effect on the rate at which blacks complete law school. ???Table 5.7: Proportion of White and Black 1991 Matriculants Not Graduating, by Academic Index Level Index Range???Proportion of Matriculants Not Graduating Within Five Years Number of Blacks in LSAC Sample ???Whites???Blacks Under 400???N/A*???39.6%???96 400-460???22.2%???33.1%???139 460-520???19.7%???25.6%???320 520-580???16.4%???21.1%???417 580-640???12.1%???15.4%???370 640-700???9.6%???10.7%???280 Over 700???7.1%???7.5%???239 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n199 ???*There are too few whites at this level to make a meaningful comparison. To be more specific, affirmative action has two separate negative effects on black graduation rates. The first result - our main focus in this discussion - is the boosting of blacks from schools where they would have had average grades (and graduated) to schools where they often have very poor grades. For blacks as a whole, this phenomenon adds four to five points to the black attrition rate. The second result follows from the cascade effect. Lower-tier schools admit blacks who would not be admitted to any school in the absence of preferences. These are the students with very low index scores (low 400s and below), who have very high attrition rates (33% to 40% in Table 5.7). n200 This second phenomenon adds another six or seven points to the overall black attrition rate. [*442] Together, these results account for the eleven-point gap between white and black attrition rates we have seen in the LSAC-BPS data. n201 ???These attrition effects are disturbing, but by themselves they may strike many readers as not all that important. The two effects impact only one black law student in nine. It turns out, however, that these mechanisms merely foreshadow a much larger effect: the consequences of racial preferences for black performance on bar exams. ???VI. Effects of Affirmative Action on Passing the Bar The formal power to license professionals in America resides with the state. In some fields, parts of the licensing process effectively have been turned over to national professional boards, which establish standards and administer examinations. This has gradually happened to a degree in the law. Nearly all states require prospective lawyers to secure a law degree from a law school accredited by the ABA and to take an examination created by the National Commission of Bar Examiners. But to this "multistate" test (which is a multiple-choice exam on general knowledge of legal doctrine), each individual state adds its own exam, usually a series of essay questions and sometimes a simulation of real-life practitioner problems, and each state sets its own threshold for passage and subsequent admission to the bar. ???In most states and for most students during the 1980s and 1990s, passing the bar was regarded as a relatively modest hurdle. In the LSAC-BPS data (covering 1994-1996), about 88% of accredited law school graduates taking the bar for the first time passed it. n202 The eventual passage rate for this cohort was approximately 95%. n203 Since each state has its own threshold, however, these rates vary significantly. n204 ??? [*443] For blacks, the bar exam poses a substantially higher hurdle. Only 61.4% of black takers in the national LSAC-BPS study passed the bar on their first attempt - blacks in this cohort were four times as likely to fail on their first attempt as whites. n205 The pass rate for blacks through five attempts was 77.6%; the black failure rate through five attempts was more than six times the white rate. n206 ???The fact that there are large racial disparities in bar passage rates will not come as news to most observers in legal academia (though the magnitude of the gap may surprise some). Most deans and law professors seem to have rather wearily accepted the idea that blacks "have trouble" on the bar. n207 The evidence in this Part suggests that blacks have trouble with the bar for reasons that have nothing to do with race, and everything to do with preferential policies. ???* * * If we want to predict in advance who will pass a bar examination in a particular state, and who will fail, the overwhelming determinant of success is one's law school GPA. For example, at my own law school (UCLA), students who are in the top 40% of the class upon graduation have a 98% bar passage rate, while those in the bottom 10% of the class have a 40% pass rate. n208 Among students at a single school, law school grades have a higher correlation with bar scores than any combination of the LSAT and undergraduate grades has with law school grades. If we use logistic regression to predict bar passage (using the LSAC-BPS data), we can directly measure the relative effectiveness of a variety of predictors. ??? [*444] ???Table 6.1: Relative Power of Alternate Predictors of Bar Passage, 1991-1996 Factor???Standardized Coefficient???Chi-Square Test Statistic ???Chi-Square p-Value n209 Law School GPA???0.76???808.16???< .0001 LSAT???0.28???158.28???< .0001 Law School Tier???0.17???56.74???< .0001 Undergraduate GPA???0.11???31.00???< .0001 Male???0.05???7.31???.007 Asian???-0.02???1.13???.29 Black???-0.01???0.54???.46 Other Nonwhite???-0.01???0.48???.49 Hispanics???-0.004???0.08???.78 ???n of Bar-Takers in Model: 21,425 ???Somers's D: .763 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. n210 The dependent variable is whether a person passes the bar on one of her first two attempts. For racial variables, whites are the implicit control group. For men, women are the implicit control group. A Wald Chi-Square value over 3.9 is generally considered indicative of some "statistical significance." n211 If we know someone's law school grades, we can make a very good guess about how easily she will pass the bar. If we also know her LSAT score, her undergraduate GPA, and the eliteness of her law school, we can do even better (we could do still better if we knew in which state she took the bar, but this information is not in the LSAC-BPS data). When we control for these other [*445] factors, men have a very slight advantage over women (their pass rate is about one-half of one percentage point higher). But knowing someone's race seems irrelevant - if we know the other information in this table. Blacks qua blacks, and Hispanics qua Hispanics, do no worse on the bar than anyone else. n212 ???The implications of this regression - which hold up consistently under many different formulations n213 - are profound, though they take a while to digest. For most blacks benefiting from affirmative action by law schools, the issue is not whether they will get into a law school but, rather, how good of a law school. Going to a better school, we have seen, carries with it a higher risk of getting poor grades; going to a much better school creates a very high risk of ending up close to the bottom of the class. Prospective law students tend to assume automatically that going to the most prestigious school possible is always the smart thing to do, but we can now see that there is, in fact, a trade-off between "more eliteness" and "higher performance." And the regression results in Table 6.1 mean that, if one's primary goal is to pass the bar, higher performance is more important. If one is at risk of not doing well academically at a particular school, one is better off attending a less elite school and getting decent grades. ???If I am drawing the correct inferences from Table 6.1, then we should observe blacks doing worse on the bar than whites with similar pre-law school credentials. Blacks with an LSAT-UGPA index score of, say, 600 will tend to end up at much more elite schools than will whites with index scores of 600, but as a result the blacks will end up with lower law school grades. When they take the bar, they will get a small lift from going to a more elite school, but a big push down from getting lower grades. The net effect will be a markedly lower bar passage rate. Table 6.2 summarizes the actual bar results for those in the LSAC-BPS. ??? [*446] ???Table 6.2: Bar Passage Rates in the United States for Whites and Blacks, 1991-1996 Index Range ???Proportion of Bar-Takers Failing on the First Attempt (for the Entire United States) ???Whites???Blacks 400-460???52%???71% 460-520???34%???55% 520-580???26%???47% 580-640???19%???34% 640-700???13%???26% 700-760???9%???12% 760-820???5%???12% Bar-Takers in Sample???19,112???1346 ???Source: LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. The actual bar results closely follow the empirical "prediction" from the regression model. At a given index level, blacks have a much higher chance of failing the bar than do whites - apparently, entirely as a result of attending higher-ranked schools and performing poorly at those schools. Indeed, the consequences of affirmative action - in terms of passing the bar - seem to be roughly equivalent to subtracting 120 points from the academic index of the typical black student: blacks in the index range of 580 to 640 have the same bar passage rate as whites in the index range of 460 to 520; blacks in the range of 760 to 820 pass at the same rate as whites in the range of 640 to 700. n214 ???One problem with this analysis is that I am aggregating bar results from fifty different jurisdictions - which, as noted earlier, all have particular idiosyncrasies in exam formats and passage rates. If blacks were concentrated in a few jurisdictions with unusually difficult bars, then the data in Table 6.2 would be misleading. The LSAC-BPS database does not, unfortunately, identify individual states, but it does identify in which of twelve regions each participant sat for the bar. I computed how many blacks would have passed the bar on the first attempt had they been distributed across regions in the same way as whites; the number was essentially identical to the actual reported total. n215 I also examined in detail the data from the "Far West" region, which in [*447] this database is almost synonymous with California. n216 The sample size of blacks in this region is modest (121 bar-takers), so comparisons with whites are less statistically reliable, but the pattern is borne out. The weighted average black-white gap in passage rates for first-time bar-takers with comparable academic indices is 23.7 percentage points in the Far West region, compared to 16.7 percentage points in the nation as a whole, partly because failure rates are generally higher in California and partly because the gap is likely to be more stark when one is making comparisons within a single jurisdiction. ???This data tells a powerful story: racial preferences in law school admissions significantly worsen blacks' individual chances of passing the bar by moving them up to schools at which they will frequently perform badly. I cannot think of an alternative, plausible explanation. If there were any other factor that somehow disadvantaged blacks - e.g., if blacks had more trouble affording bar-preparation classes and were therefore more likely to go it alone - then this would make being black an independently significant causal factor in bar passage rates. But it is not. ???* * * As with attrition rates, the black-white gap in bar passage rates largely seems driven by two by-products of affirmative action. The first is the pattern I just discussed: blacks having lower passage rates because of low GPAs, which in turn are a function of racial preferences. The second is a by-product of the cascade effect: with blacks consistently pulled up the prestige ladder by preferences, low-tier schools must choose between having no blacks at all or admitting blacks with very low numbers. Most of these schools follow the latter course, with the result being that a large number of blacks enter law school with very low academic credentials. In the national LSAC-BPS study, 22% of black students matriculating in 1991 had an academic index of 500 or less; only 0.2% of whites had scores in this range. And among students of all races with scores in this range, over 60% fail the bar on their first attempt (and 42% do not pass after multiple attempts). Since the black students admitted in this range are also usually competing against higher-index peers, they also suffer the disadvantages of low GPAs. In other words, these students face very long academic odds indeed. In the LSAC-BPS study, only 22% of the blacks who started law school with academic indices below 500 ended up getting a law degree and passing the bar on their first attempt. ??? [*448] We can disaggregate the black-white gap in bar passage rates by standardizing the black bar passage rate to the white rate at each index level. Out of the 1346 blacks in the LSAC-BPS sample who took the bar, 516 (nearly 40%) failed at least once - nearly five times the white failure rate. These 516 cases break down as follows: n217 ??? . About 99 blacks in the sample, nearly one-fifth of those who failed, were graduates with very low academic indices (470 or lower), who probably would not have been admitted to a law school in the absence of racial preferences. ???. Another 235 blacks in the sample failed through the mechanism described in this portion of the paper: racial preferences elevated them to a school where they were at an academic disadvantage and performed poorly, lowering their chances of passing the bar. ???. Approximately 107 blacks would have failed the bar one or more times had blacks as a group had the same failure rate as whites as a whole. ???. The remaining 128 black failures on the bar can be attributed primarily to the lower average credentials blacks had in the 1991 cohort, even among those who would have been admitted to some law school in the absence of racial preferences. This group reminds us that the black-white gap on bar passage would not completely disappear in the absence of racial preferences. The gap would narrow dramatically, however. ???* * * Many of the causal mechanisms underlying the findings in Parts V and VI have not been very mysterious. If one believes the regression results and accepts that academic credentials have a lot to do with ultimate performance, it is not hard to understand why admitting students with very poor credentials would lead to lower graduation rates and lower performance on the bar. And it makes sense that if racial preferences lead to lower law school grades for blacks, then they will experience higher attrition in law school. But it may not be obvious to many readers why it should be that black students with good credentials should lower their chances of passing the bar simply by attending a better school. Let us ponder this a little. ???The basic idea is that a black student who, because of racial preferences, gets into a relatively high-ranked school (say Vanderbilt, ranked between fifteenth and twentieth in most surveys) will have a significantly lower chance of passing the bar than the same student would have had if she had attended a school that admitted her on the basis of academic credentials alone (say, [*449] University of Tennessee, ranked between fortieth and sixtieth in most surveys). As we have seen, the evidence shows that a student's race has nothing to do with her chances on the bar; n218 her law school grades have everything to do with it. This seems logical enough within an individual school. But why exactly should the same student have a lower chance of passing the bar if she gets Cs at Vanderbilt than if she gets Bs at the University of Tennessee? ???One theory I have heard a number of times in casual conversation is that less elite law schools take more seriously the task of preparing their students for the bar. The argument goes that since students at these schools have a greater risk of failing the bar, their faculties deliberately focus more on black-letter law and less on theory, providing a better foundation that, other things being equal, helps their graduates on the bar. If this theory is true, it might explain why a student attending the University of Tennessee would have a higher chance of passing the bar than a similar student at Vanderbilt. n219 But the data in Table 6.1 cuts against this theory. When we control as best we can for the incoming credentials of student bodies, students at more elite schools have higher, not lower, success rates on the bar. n220 Something else is going on. ???The hypothesis in the back of my mind when I started this research was that students simply learn less when they are academically mismatched with their peers. I drew on a painful personal experience to flesh out this idea. Foreign languages are my academic Achilles's heel. In my public high school, French was always my poorest subject, but I was a strong enough student generally that I did not labor under any special handicap in French and kept pace with my friends. A few years later, while an undergraduate at Harvard, a misplaced interest led me to sign up for elementary German. Although it was a beginning class, my basic aptitude was weak enough that I had great difficulty keeping up. Most of the class caught on with what seemed to me a nearly supernatural speed, and the teacher was soon racing along. As I fell behind, I felt more and more lost; soon I was attending class only to keep up appearances. My confusion fed upon itself all semester, and I came within a whisker of flunking out - not an easy thing to do in any Harvard course. There [*450] seemed little doubt to me that despite my weak linguistic skills, I would have learned far more German in a class with less talented peers. n221 ???I observe a similar pattern as a law teacher. Students who stumble at the beginning of a course often become progressively more confused as the semester wears on. What is initially just a shaky handle on the course vocabulary becomes a serious handicap in remaining engaged with classroom discussion, and problems feed upon themselves. By the end of the semester, the gap I observe between the C finals and the B finals is more than just a matter of degree - many C students seem to have missed fundamentals. In a less competitive school, the same student might well thrive because the pace would be slower, the theoretical nuances would be a little less involved, and the student would stay on top of the material. The student would thus perform better in an absolute as well as a relative sense. ???This "academic mismatch" hypothesis has struck a number of legal educators as a likely problem for students whose academic credentials are significantly weaker than those of their classmates. Many of these observers have articulated a causal mechanism much like the one I just described: an initial academic disadvantage can produce cumulative effects of substantially less learning. n222 Others have suggested that similar effects might come from slightly different causes. The "stress theory" suggests that students who are at a relative disadvantage in class will experience higher stress, and the stress will get in the way of learning. n223 The "disengagement theory" suggests that students who do poorly in a relative sense will initially be disappointed in themselves, but as they continue to struggle they will tend to blame the system - the professor, the school, or legal education generally - and will [*451] reduce effort. n224 Both the stress and disengagement theories suggest plausible ways that doing worse in a relative sense leads to doing worse in an absolute sense. ???Much of the evidence behind these theories is more anecdotal than systematic, but there are a few helpful studies. Linda Loury and David Garman found that the lower a black student's credentials are relative to the median student at his undergraduate college or university, the lower his grades are likely to be and the less likely he is to graduate. n225 Audrey Light and Wayne Strayer, in a separate analysis, found the same pattern. n226 ???Rogers Elliott's study of minority student enrollment and persistence in science majors provides one of the clearest examples of the mismatch effect. n227 Elliott examined the standardized test scores and academic records of the white, Asian, black, and Hispanic students who enrolled at four Ivy League schools in 1988. His principal finding was that despite an expressed interest in science rivaling that of white and Asian students, non-Asian minority students were less likely to enroll and persist in science majors. n228 This increased attrition among non-Asian minorities, Elliott concluded, was not correlated with ethnicity per se, but rather "it was the preadmission variables describing developed ability - test scores and science grades - that accounted chiefly both for initial interest and for persistence in science." n229 ???However, it was not absolute test scores that mattered, but rather the location of a test score in the distribution of all test scores at a specific institution. To demonstrate this point, Elliott used data from eleven private colleges, some very selective, others less so, to examine the distribution of natural science degrees as a function of graduates' SAT Math scores (SATM). n230 After dividing the SATM distribution into terciles, Elliott found that at the most selective institution in this database, 53.4% of the science [*452] degrees were earned by the top third of the SATM distribution, with an average SATM of 753, while the bottom tercile, with an average SATM of 581, earned 15.4% of the science degrees. n231 The least selective of the eleven, a school with a top-tercile SATM mean of 569, exhibited an almost identical distribution, with the top third earning 55% of the natural science degrees and the bottom third (with a mean SATM of 407) earning 17.8%. n232 In other words, it was not the absolute ability of a student that determined staying power in the traditionally more difficult natural science majors, but rather the student's ability relative to his or her peers. ???Where a student's numbers fall relative to his classmates depends, of course, upon the criteria used by the college admissions office to admit that student, a point Elliott does not hesitate to make: ???The gap in developed ability between the white-Asian majority and non-Asian minorities, especially blacks, especially in science, results from institutional policies of preferential admission from pools differing in measures of developed ability and achievement at the point of entry into higher education ... . That being the case, non-Asian minority students initially aspiring to science will continue for some time to bear a cost in lower grades and in altered academic and vocational goals. n233 Since blacks receive the biggest bump up with respect to admissions, we would expect fewer blacks with an interest in science to persist in studying science beyond a certain amount of time. The breakdown by race for the Ivy League subjects in Elliott's study supports this hypothesis: "the combined effects of persistence, recruiting, and termination left 45.2% of the entire incoming group of Asians, 30.1% of whites, 27.8% of Hispanics, and 16.6% of blacks still majoring in science after 4 years." n234 In other words, being academically mismatched with one's peers has a powerful impact on one's ability to learn and to achieve one's academic goals. ???Stephen Cole and the late Elinor Barber have found a very similar pattern in the academic aspirations of black undergraduates. n235 Their book, Increasing Faculty Diversity, aims to develop strategies to increase the presence of minorities in academia. They find that the use of large racial preferences by liberal arts colleges tends to place black students in schools where they will perform poorly. n236 Low grades, in turn, sap student self-confidence and may produce still lower grades by feeding "stereotype threat." n237 The net result is that "African American students at elite schools are significantly less likely to [*453] persist with an interest in academia than are their counterparts at nonelite schools" n238 - especially when one controls for credentials. ???The 1995 National Survey of Law Student Performance provides some corroboration of the mismatch hypothesis from students' self-reported experiences. n239 In the survey, first-semester black law students reported spending as much time studying as did white students, n240 but found themselves substantially less prepared for class. Seventy-one percent of white students said that they completed the assigned reading before "all or nearly all" of their classes, compared to 52% of black students. n241 In other words, even though black students gave the same effort as their white peers, competing against students with much higher credentials meant that this effort translated into a lower level of class preparation; this in turn plausibly led to greater difficulty following class discussions, and less overall learning. It is not hard to imagine the snowball effect. ???Research on the "academic mismatch" phenomenon has not settled on an exact causal mechanism, but there is a growing consensus that the mismatch problem is real and that it is exacerbated by large racial preferences in admissions. The most conclusive way to demonstrate that law school racial preferences cause blacks to learn less and to perform worse would be an experiment comparing matched pairs of blacks admitted to multiple schools, with the "experimental" black student attending the most elite school admitting them and the "control" black student attending a significantly less elite school. n242 The problem with conducting such research is that just like students of other races, few blacks pass up the opportunity to go to more elite schools. The analysis I report here takes advantage of the fact that affirmative action policies place similar blacks and whites at very different institutions. These policies create an opportunity for a natural experiment on the effects of academic mismatch - an experiment that shows that it has large and devastating effects on blacks' chances of passing the bar. It is clear enough that going to a school where one 's academic credentials are well below average has powerful [*454] effects on performance in law school and on the bar. This seems necessarily to imply that such a student is learning less than she would have learned at a school where her credentials were closer to average. ???* * * We saw in Part V that blacks fail to complete law school at a disproportionate rate, for mostly academic reasons. We have seen in this Part that blacks fail the bar at a disproportionate rate. If we put these two patterns together, the emerging picture is discouraging. Of all the black students in the LSAC-BPS study who began law school in 1991, only 45% graduated from law school, took the bar, and passed on their first attempt. The rate for whites was over 78%. After multiple attempts, 57% of the original black cohort become lawyers. But this still means that 43% of the black students starting out never became lawyers, and over a fifth of those who did become lawyers failed the bar at least once. ???If the systemic goal of affirmative action is to produce as many well-trained minority lawyers as we can, we have now seen several reasons to doubt that the system is working. Taken as a whole, racial preferences in law schools lower black academic performance and place individual blacks at a substantially higher risk of not graduating from law school and of not passing the bar. In the next two Parts, we will consider whether racial preferences in legal education help blacks in the job market or increase the overall number of black lawyers. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we find that the system does work to achieve those goals for blacks in the aggregate; one must in any case pause here and ask, Are racial preferences fair to blacks as individuals? Do the blacks with good credentials understand that affirmative action places them at substantially higher risk? Do the blacks with low credentials understand the long odds against their ever becoming lawyers? Do we at least owe prospective participants in the system fuller disclosure about the bargain they are undertaking? ???VII. The Job Market The most widely presumed benefit accruing to black students from affirmative action is the entree they are given to more (and more elite) employers by virtue of going to higher-tier schools. Students attending Yale instead of Fordham, or Fordham instead of Brooklyn, will have many advantages. They will develop contacts with more fellow students who are going places; they may be befriended by better-known faculty members; more employers will come to interview at their law school. The name-brand status of their school is valuable to their employer and admired by future clients. ???Again, the implicit question posed by a system of large racial preferences is whether the advantages of going to a more elite school offset the [*455] disadvantage of probably not doing well there. Most observers think that the answer to this question is so obvious that it hardly bears asking. Undergraduates expend much sweat and energy to get into the "best" law school they can. Students who ace their first year of law school often try to transfer to a higher-ranked school; seldom, if ever, do they try to transfer to a lower-ranked one. The danger of not doing well once in a strong law school does not seem to trouble many minds. ???Indeed, in a famous paper that probably figured in the Grutter decision, three distinguished academics argued that minorities n243 reap substantial benefits from attending a more elite school like the University of Michigan Law School without paying any obvious price. In The River Runs Through Law School, Richard Lempert, David Chambers, and Terry Adams studied surveys that they and the University of Michigan Law School gathered from decades of school alumni. They looked at three job outcomes - income, satisfaction, and public service - and concluded as follows: ???Perhaps the core finding of our study is that Michigan's minority alumni, who enter law school with lower LSAT scores and UGPAs than its white alumni and receive, on average, lower grades in law school than their white counterparts, appear highly successful - fully as successful as Michigan's white alumni - when success is measured by self-reported career satisfaction or contributions to the community. Controlling for gender and career length, they are also as successful when success is measured by income. n244 Since Lempert et al. also believe that law school prestige matters a lot, n245 the implication of their findings is that brand name means everything. The logical corollary for affirmative action is that it is intrinsically wrong to deny blacks something like a proportionate share of the best name brands, since they will obviously benefit from them as much as whites will. ???The River Runs Through Law School, like its eponymous forebear, The Shape of the River, has had enormous impact because, in dealing with careers rather than test scores and exams, it seems much more grounded in the real world. After all, the supposed purpose of all the tests and all the sorting is to determine the potential contributions and abilities of people in jobs and in the [*456] profession. If career outcomes bear little relation to predictors, then what is the predictors' legitimate value? And what is the justification for using scores and other seemingly worthless indicia to allocate scarce seats in elite schools? ???Of course, we sense in our day-to-day dealings with professionals that cognitive skill and subject mastery do matter. We value doctors, lawyers, and engineers who are smart, who can easily explain competing theories, who can remember minutiae about their fields, who are good problem-solvers. But perhaps it is the case that above some basic threshold, variations in these skills are less important to job performance and success than many other things, such as how conscientious, well-spoken, diligent, likable, or ethical someone is - things which possibly are only weakly correlated with cognitive skills and which are almost never measured along the path to becoming a lawyer. ???The task in this Part is to explore what shapes job outcomes for lawyers. How much does school prestige matter? How much do grades matter? Can any of the "softer" qualities that are poorly captured by conventional credentials be linked to success on the job market? Until very recently, it would have been impossible to say much about any of these questions. But as it happens, we can now say a lot. ???* * * For the past five years, I have been part of a team of researchers and institutions attempting to develop, for the first time, a systematic longitudinal portrait of the legal profession. Our project, known as "After the JD" (AJD), is attempting to track roughly ten percent of those who became lawyers in the year 2000 through the first ten years of their careers. n246 We finished the first wave of data collection in 2002 and early 2003, so the first real fruits of this project are detailed survey data on over four thousand attorneys in their second or third year of practice after law school. As with any large project serving many purposes, the data set has both strengths and limitations for studying a specific topic like affirmative action. People are only in our sample if they actually became lawyers, so law students who did not graduate, and graduates who did not pass the bar, are not visible. The LSAC provided us with approximate data n247 on the undergraduate grades and LSAT scores of [*457] participants, but for law school grades we relied on the participants themselves. Our law school GPA data is, accordingly, self-reported and incomplete, n248 and covers only cumulative grades, not the more standardized and reliable first-year grades. On the other hand, our data set includes the actual law school participants attended (not a general "cluster"), the actual college they attended, and a wealth of concrete data about participants' backgrounds, law school experiences, job histories, hiring processes, work environment, and employers. Most importantly, the AJD project tracks a broadly representative sample of the entire national population of young lawyers, thus fitting with the key goal of this study - to examine affirmative action systemically, and not simply through the lens of elite schools. n249 ???The AJD data is so rich that there are an almost unlimited number of ways to explore the workings of the job market for young lawyers. I will add a number of refinements to the discussion as I proceed, but let me start by examining a very simple question: is there any evidence that higher law school grades help students secure higher-paying jobs? n250 To make it particularly straightforward, let us initially consider only the sixty-five percent of lawyers in the AJD sample that were working in private firms. These firms range from small, two-lawyer offices where new associate salaries are often under $ 50,000, [*458] to megafirms and elite boutiques with starting salaries above $ 120,000. Since the focus is on young lawyers with salaries, I exclude solo practitioners, partners, and others who appear to be nonsalaried employees. ???Table 7.1 shows the results of this basic regression model. The dependent variable is the log of the lawyers' annual earnings. By "logging" earnings, we focus on proportionate rather than absolute differences (so the difference between $ 40,000 and $ 60,000 is equivalent to the difference between $ 100,000 and $ 150,000). n251 Using a logged dependent variable also means that the coefficients for each independent variable represent, in essence, the percentage increase in the dependent variable (in this case, lawyer income) that is associated with a one-increment change in the independent variable. ???Table 7.1: Simple Regression of Earnings of Second-Year Associate Lawyers in Private Firms n252 Independent Variable???Raw Coefficient ???Standardized Coefficient???t-Statistic Market Area???0.134???0.408???21.8 School Prestige (2003 U.S. News & World Report Rank Categories)???0.099???0.237 ???12.8 Law School GPA (4.0 scale)???0.471???0.347???19.1 Asian???0.012???0.007???0.41 Black???0.103???0.056???3.2 Hispanic???0.008???0.005???0.3 Other Nonwhite???-0.030???-0.012???-0.7 Male???0.102???0.11???6.4 ???n of Second-Year Associate Lawyers in Private Firms: 1778 ???Adjusted R[su'2'] of Model: .477 ???Median Income of Respondents: $ 90,000 ???Source: AJD Data, supra note 249 (national sample and minority oversample, unweighted). The model has an R[su'2'] of over .47 - relatively high for an earnings model. The most statistically reliable predictor of earnings variation is the "region" variable. The 0.137 coefficient on this variable means that, other things being equal, young lawyers working in New York earn about 14% more than those working in the next tier of legal markets (i.e., Washington, Los Angeles, [*459] Chicago, and San Francisco); those in the second tier earn about 14% more than those working in the third tier (e.g., Atlanta, Houston, Minneapolis), and so on. n253 We can say it is the single most powerful predictor of earnings both because it has the highest t-statistic (a measure of how reliably the dependent variable fluctuates with that particular independent variable, controlling for other factors) and because it has the highest standardized coefficient. A standardized coefficient of 0.41 means that a single standard deviation change in market prestige corresponds to 41% of a standard deviation change in a respondent's earnings. ???The second-most-powerful predictor of earnings is not school prestige (a distant third), but law school grades. Law school grades are here measured by the box a respondent checked on the survey form (asking about law school GPA, and providing boxes ranging from "below 2.25" to "3.75 to 4.0"). n254 The prestige of a law school in this regression is measured by which of five tiers a school fell into in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of law schools in 2003. The t-statistic and the standardized coefficient of GPA, in this model, are nearly half again as large as the corresponding values for school prestige. Grades seem to be important indeed. ???The model also shows interesting gender and race effects. The men in our law firm sample earn about 10% more than women, when controlling for the other factors in the model. This would not surprise most observers, but should not be taken as conclusive evidence of systemic discrimination without taking into account a number of other factors that might obviously vary by gender, like work sector, child-care leaves from work, average hours, and so on. With the controls in this model, blacks generally also earn about 10% more than whites; n255 the coefficients for Asians and Hispanics are not significant. This suggests that blacks experience significant preferences in the private firm job market, but that other racial groups do not - although again, not too much should be inferred from such a simple analysis. n256 ??? [*460] One can get a more intuitive and accessible sense of the relative job market value of law school prestige and law school GPA through a simple cross-tabulation. Table 7.2 shows the median salary of all lawyers in the AJD who had a given combination of school prestige and GPA. The data show an unsurprising association between school prestige and income, though across the great middle range of schools (rank 21-100 and Tier 3, which extends to rank 149) the differences are modest. The relationship of grades and income is also very clear; in all schools outside the top ten, there is a large market penalty for being in or near the bottom of the class. ???Table 7.2: Grades, Selectivity, and Median Salary Law School GPA???Law School Tier ???Top 10???Top 11-20???Top 21-100???Tier 3???Tier 4 3.75 - 4.00???$ 130,000???$ 135,000???$ 100,000???$ 93,000???$ 79,000 3.50 - 3.74???$ 140,000???$ 127,460???$ 90,000???$ 90,000???$ 79,000 3.25 - 3.49???$ 135,000???$ 105,000???$ 80,000???$ 65,000???$ 57,000 3.00 - 3.24???$ 125,000???$ 100,000???$ 63,000???$ 55,820???$ 60,000 2.75 - 2.99?????????$ 56,000???$ 51,025???$ 55,000???$ 50,000 2.50 - 2.74?????????$ 49,000???$ 51,500???$ 51,000???$ 50,000 ???Source: Dinovitzer et al., supra note 249, at 44 tbl.5.3 (2004). Tiers are from the 2003 U.S. News & World Report rankings. It is clear enough that law school grades are quite important, perhaps more important than law school prestige in determining who gets what jobs. If true, this suggests that affirmative action may pose a bad trade-off for blacks: the better brand names they secure through preferential admissions may not offset the lower grades they get (on average) as a consequence. n257 ???Still, one should not be hasty. On reflection, one can see reasons why this analysis might be deceptively simple. For one thing, law school grades here are measured on an absolute scale - a 3.0 at Stanford is treated the same way as a 3.0 at Southwestern - even though more elite schools give proportionately more As and fewer Cs to their students than do less elite schools. n258 This measure of GPAs is thus subtly conflated with school prestige, and may be [*461] indirectly measuring benefits that are properly attributed to prestige. My measure of prestige is also rather crude - a single, numbered index based on a disputed methodology n259 - that may not be picking up actual patterns of employer preference. ???To deal with the grading problem, I standardized law school GPA among the students at each school - that is, I measured each respondent's GPA by her distance, in standard deviations, above or below the mean reported GPA at her school if the data set contained at least ten valid grades from that school. n260 Since this method tosses out schools with fewer than ten valid observations, and since the procedure significantly modifies the raw data, I include in the next set of regressions one analysis with "raw" GPA and one with "standardized" GPA. ???To better capture the effects of prestige, I used a standard statistical procedure for capturing the differing influences of a variable whose effects may change from one category to another: I used a series of "categorical" prestige variables. I split schools into eight categories, based on their median student LSATs and their academic rankings. n261 The lowest prestige category is omitted as the "control" category; the other categorical variables essentially measure the earnings benefit of being in that category of schools as compared to being in the lowest category. n262 ??? [*462] Finally, I added a number of other variables to try to capture other aspects of the job market: whether a lawyer worked full-time or part-time, whether she had an engineering or "hard science" background, whether she reported that "high earnings" were a very important factor in selecting a job, whether she had served as a federal judicial clerk, and so on. I added a "dummy" variable denoting public sector employment, so that the eighteen percent of new attorneys working at various levels of government would be included as well. Income is again logged in both of the regressions reported in Tables 7.3 and 7.4. The first regression (Table 7.3) uses raw GPA, and the second (Table 7.4) uses my "standardized" GPA. ??? [*463] ???Table 7.3: Regression of Earnings of Attorneys Completing Second Year of Practice, Using Raw GPAs Independent Variable???Standardized Coefficient???Parameter Estimate t-statistic???p-value Tier of Metro Market???0.340???0.115???21.1???< .0001 Private Sector???0.294???0.365???18.3???< .0001 Raw Law School GPA???0.261???0.361???16.6???< .0001 School Prestige???Tier 1 ???0.179???0.296???6.2???< .0001 School Prestige???Tier 2???0.113???0.161???3.5???.0004 School Prestige???Tier 3 ???0.082???0.108???2.4???.02 School Prestige???Tier 4 ???0.018???0.022???0.50???.61 School Prestige???Tier 5 ???-0.043???-0.054???-1.2???.21 School Prestige???Tier 6 ???-0.014???-0.023???-0.51???.61 School Prestige???Tier 7 ???-0.058???-0.080???-1.8???.07 Asian???0.020???0.034???1.3???.19 Black???0.039???0.070???2.6???.01 Hispanic???0.004???0.008???0.29???.77 Other???0.002???0.006???0.17???.87 Male???0.048???0.046???3.2???.001 Has Children???0.021???0.023???1.2???.23 Bar Year of Admission???0.005???0.007???0.32???.75 Moot Court Participation???-0.007???-0.005???-0.45???.65 School Govt. Participant/Leader???0.025???0.021???1.7???.08 Earnings Important as a Goal???0.084???0.051???5.7???< .0001 Working Full-Time???0.095???0.356???6.4???< .0001 Has Other Job???-0.007???-0.020???-0.49???.63 Associate or Staff Attorney???-0.170???-0.163???-7.8???< .0001 General Clerkship???-0.007???-0.032???-0.46???.64 Hours Billed???0.149???0.146???6.8???< .0001 Hours Worked???0.050???0.002???3.4???.0007 Engineering, Physical Science, or Math Undergraduate Major???0.108???0.197???7.4 ???< .0001 Has MBA???0.011???0.039???0.74???.46 Roman Catholic???0.009???0.011???0.56???.57 Jewish???0.025???0.061???1.6???.10 Married Currently???0.024???0.023???1.5???.15 Law in Family???0.025???0.017???1.7???.09 Age???-0.044???-0.028???-2.8???.006 ???n of Attorneys Completing Second Year of Practice: 2013 ???Adjusted R[su'2'] of Model: .595 ???Source: AJD Data, supra note 249 (national sample and racial oversample, unweighted). For definitions of key variables, see text. The median annual income of the respondents is $ 80,000. [*464] ???Table 7.4: Regression of Earnings of Attorneys Completing Second Year of Practice, Using Standardized GPAs Independent Variable???Standardized Coefficient???Parameter Estimate???t-statistic???p-value Tier of Metro Market???0.361???0.122???21.2???< .0001 Private Sector???0.306???0.382???18.2???< .0001 Standardized Law School GPA???0.252???0.123???15.9???< .0001 School Prestige???Tier 1 ???0.258???0.404???5.5???< .0001 School Prestige???Tier 2???0.198???0.266???3.7???.0002 School Prestige???Tier 3 ???0.148???0.194???2.7???.006 School Prestige???Tier 4 ???0.067???0.082???1.2???.24 School Prestige???Tier 5 ???0.008???0.009???0.14???.89 School Prestige???Tier 6 ???0.013???0.023???0.32???.75 School Prestige???Tier 7 ???-0.037???-0.053???-0.76???.45 Asian???0.023???0.041???1.5???.14 Black???0.053???0.094???3.3???.0011 Hispanic???0.004???0.008???0.29???.77 Other???0.016???0.040???1.1???.30 Male???0.038???0.037???2.4???.015 Has Children???0.020???0.022???1.1???.27 Bar Year of Admission???0.001???0.002???0.09???.93 Moot Court Participation???-0.006???-0.005???-0.40???.69 School Govt. Participant/Leader???0.032???0.028???2.1???.03 Earnings Important as a Goal???0.086???0.052???5.6???< .0001 Working Full-Time???0.108???0.397???7.0???< .0001 Has Other Job???-0.007???-0.021???-0.48???.63 Associate or Staff Attorney???-0.163???-0.157???-7.1???< .0001 General Clerkship???-0.004???-0.017???-0.2???.81 Hours Billed???0.147???0.144???6.4???< .0001 Hours Worked???0.046???0.002???3.0???.003 Engineering, Physical Science, or Math Undergraduate Major???0.108???0.198???7.1 ???< .0001 Has MBA???0.012???0.046???0.80???.42 Roman Catholic???0.017???0.021???1.0???.32 Jewish???0.026???0.063???1.7???.10 Married Currently???0.022???0.021???1.3???.20 Law in Family???0.008???0.006???0.54???.59 Age???-0.046???-0.030???-2.8???.005 ???n of Attorneys Completing Second Year of Practice: 1742 ???Adjusted R[su'2'] of Model: .616 ???Source: AJD Data, supra note 249 (national sample and racial oversample, unweighted). For definitions of key variables, see text. The median annual income of the respondents is $ 80,000. Both of these regressions provide a remarkably powerful account of earnings variations among new lawyers. The R[su'2'] values for the two models are [*465] .595 (Table 7.3) and .616 (Table 7.4) - astonishingly high values for models of this kind. The effects of the various independent variables are fascinating and worth discussion in a separate paper. n263 The models are quite helpful in showing the effects of school prestige on market outcomes. Recall that the lowest-prestige schools (Tier 8) are the "omitted" variable; the parameters for prestige are all measured relative to this group. The parameter estimates in the two tables measure the earnings effect of each variable in percentage terms. Thus, alumni of Tier 1 schools, when one controls for the other factors in the table, have earnings that are 29.6% (Table 7.3) to 40.4% (Table 7.4) higher than alumni of the lowest-status schools. Alumni of Tier 2 schools have an earnings gain of 16.1% to 26.6% relative to the lowest-status schools, and so on. Strikingly, the prestige premium essentially disappears by the time one reaches Tier 4 (in Table 7.3) or Tier 5 (in Table 7.4). In other words, there is no measurable earnings dividend from attending a more prestigious school in the bottom half of the law school distribution. ???The key question of interest is whether higher prestige offsets lower grades. It is obvious in both models that law school GPA retains great explanatory power - it has very high standardized coefficients and t-statistics in both models. But what we would like to measure is the actual grade-prestige trade-off. The parameter estimates in Table 7.4 provide a way of doing this. Standardized grades have a parameter value of 0.123; this means that a one-standard-deviation improvement in grades at a school produces, on average, a 12.3% rise in earnings. Currently, black students at a typical law school have a GPA that is about two standard deviations lower than that of their white peers (see Figure 5.2). If race-neutral admissions eliminated that gap, then typical black GPAs should rise two standard deviations, translating to an earnings increase of about 25%. ???A black beneficiary of preferences at a Tier 1 school would be, at worst, in a Tier 3 school without preferences (the average difference in credentials between Tier 1 and Tier 3 schools is somewhat greater than the black-white credentials gap). The earnings premium for Tier 1 students compared with Tier 3 students is 21%. n264 This is not quite as large as the 25% earnings penalty for lower grades. A typical beneficiary of preferences at a Tier 2 school would probably attend a Tier 3 or 4 school without preferences; the difference in Tier 2 and 4 earnings is 18.4% - substantially less than the grade penalty. For the majority of black students who are attending schools, under the current regime, in Tiers 4 and below, the prestige benefit is dwarfed by the grade penalty. ??? [*466] There are other ways to explore empirically the trade-off of grades and prestige, and I have experimented with a number of them. My consistent finding is that the effect of racial preferences in law school admissions for black students upon their job market outcomes is overwhelmingly negative for blacks in middle-and lower-ranked schools. It is a smaller penalty for students at schools near the top of the status hierarchy, and it is nearly a wash - perhaps even a small plus - for students at top-ten schools. But nowhere do I find that the prestige benefits of affirmative action dominate the costs stemming from lower GPA. ???Moreover, the estimates reported here almost surely understate the importance of GPA. This is because my "standardized GPA" variable has three measurement weaknesses: it is based on self-reported data, the data is grouped into eight broad "grade categories," and my efforts to standardize GPA by school are based on only partial samples - sometimes as few as ten students. Measurement error always has the effect of weakening the explanatory power of a variable, since there is more "noise" in the measure. Exact reports by schools of the final class rank of respondents would probably add substantially to GPA's power in the regressions reported here. ???The AJD sample includes nearly four hundred blacks, and about two hundred have sufficiently complete data to include in these analyses. The grade-prestige patterns we see in the overall sample hold for the black subsample as well. Indeed, we can see in particularly compelling form the effects of higher GPA on blacks by examining actual outcomes (see Table 7.5). In the AJD sample, twenty-four black respondents reported law school GPAs of 3.5 or higher. Of these, two worked in public interest law, three worked in government, and nineteen worked in private firms. Of those in private practice, most worked in large firms; the median salary of these nineteen was $ 130,000. Among all twenty-four, there is no observable difference in outcomes based on whether the lawyer graduated from NYU or Northwestern, at the elite end, or such schools as Howard, Texas Southern, or Santa Clara University, on the low-prestige end. ???Sixty-one black respondents reported law school GPAs of 2.75 or lower. Of these, seventeen worked in government, seven were in solo practice, four were unemployed. Of the twenty-two working in private firms, nearly all were in firms with under twenty lawyers; the median income of this group was $ 55,000. There is an observable difference within this group based on school prestige: the three highest-paid attorneys in this group were all from top-twenty schools. However, the median for these elite graduates in this grade range, working at private firms, was only $ 67,000. ??? [*467] ???Table 7.5: Summary of Statistics on Young Black Attorneys, 2002-2003 Issue???Low-GPA Students (< 2.75)???High-GPA Students (> 3.5) % Total in Private Firm???39%???75% % in Firm with < 20 Attorneys???79%???17% % in Firm with > 100 Attorneys???4%???61% % Total Earning > $ 100,000???9%???67% % Total Earning < $ 60,000???66%???17% % Graduated from Tier 1-3 School*???33%**???35%*** Size of Group???61???24 ???Source: AJD Data, supra note 249 (national sample and racial oversample, unweighted). ???*Tiers 1-3 account for approximately the top fifty ABA-accredited law schools. ???**The n for low-GPA students on the tier question is forty-four, as those reporting employment information without law school information were excluded. ???***The n for high-GPA students on the tier question is twenty-three, for the same reason as above. Of course, when we discuss actual cases, we toss aside the elaborate controls of the regressions. The comparisons are cruder. But they probably do make the general point more forcefully: for most students, GPA is more important than law school prestige. And affirmative action by law schools, as we have seen, tends to lower the GPAs of black students systematically and substantially. ???* * * One of the basic premises of affirmative action in law schools is that for blacks to have reasonable prospects in the job market, they need the extra "prestige" boost that preferential admissions provide. The visibility of attending and graduating from a more upscale school, a better brand name, will help overcome the intrinsic reluctance of employers to give good jobs to black candidates. ???Our analysis shows that the assumptions underlying this premise are fundamentally flawed. n265 Even "prestige" employers apparently scan a much [*468] broader range of law schools for strong students than has commonly been thought. And the strong positive coefficient associated with black lawyers in our regression shows that the legal market as a whole is more willing, not less willing, to hire blacks into good jobs. Since employers are already looking closely at lower-tier schools to find and hire blacks with good grades, it seems obvious that they would do this even more without preferential law school admissions. And the absence of preferences would greatly increase the supply of blacks with high grades - the students both elite and ordinary employers are obviously seeking out most vigorously. ???VIII. The Effects of Dropping or Modifying Racial Preferences A reader persuaded by the evidence in prior Parts might concede that affirmative action hurts the intended beneficiaries more as a class than it helps them, but might insist that racial preferences are nonetheless vital. "Without some consideration of race in law school admissions," the argument goes, "the number of minority lawyers would drop precipitously, and the number of black lawyers would fall back to levels unseen since the Civil Rights Act of 1964." This is one of those arguments that is repeated so often that it is taken as an indisputable article of faith throughout most of legal academia. n266 In this Part, we will examine this claim, and attempt to answer a central question: what effect would the elimination or substantial modification of racial-preference policies have upon the number of practicing black lawyers? As we shall see, the paradoxical but straightforward answer is that the annual production of new black lawyers would probably increase if racial preferences were abolished tomorrow. ??? [*469] ???* * * In its 2002 Supreme Court brief for Grutter, n267 the LSAC laid out the familiar case for racial preferences: ???For the 1990-91 applicant pool, as many as 90 percent of black applicants would not have been admitted to any nationally-accredited law school in the United States if grades and test scores were the sole admissions criteria ... . The real-world consequences of these statistics were illustrated by the experience of law schools in Texas and California in the years immediately after affirmative action was prohibited in those states. In 1997, the first year Boalt Hall was legally barred from considering race, it enrolled no African-Americans - not one - and only seven Latino applicants. n268 Although arguments like this are often taken seriously, and probably influenced Justice O'Connor's opinion in Grutter, they lose almost all meaning when examined closely. The main difficulty is that these arguments ignore the cascade effect discussed in Part III. Current racial preferences in law school admissions essentially boost black applicants up one or two tiers of prestige. A black applicant who would be admitted to a fortieth-ranked school in a race-blind process is admitted to a fifteenth-ranked school when race is considered. Black applicants understand this and take it into account when they apply to schools - one might apply to a few schools in the tenth-to-twentieth range of schools, with perhaps a thirtieth-ranked school as a backup. If racial preferences suddenly disappeared and black applicants continued to apply to the same schools as they do now, then of course they would be rejected at a very high rate. But the idea that the applicant in our example could not get into any ABA-approved law school is, of course, ridiculous. ???The case of Boalt's drop from twenty black matriculants in 1996 to essentially zero in 1997, after the passage of Proposition 209, also tells us very little about what would actually happen in the case of a national ban on the use of racial preferences. Proposition 209 only applied to public institutions in California. In observing the ban, Boalt's minimum index threshold for blacks (expressed in the terms used in Parts II-VI of this Article) would have risen from, say, 630 to 800, the level used for whites and Asians. Boalt did in fact admit a number of blacks with high index scores, but all of these candidates would have also had offers from any top-five law school to which they applied, since none of those schools was enjoined from considering race. Admitted blacks would have only attended Boalt if it held some special attraction that outweighed prestige. But in the first year of Proposition 209's implementation, that was not likely - on the contrary, many blacks avoided the UC law schools [*470] because of a perception that Proposition 209 would create an atmosphere isolating and hostile to blacks. n269 ???To accurately assess the impact of eliminating racial preferences upon blacks, we must take into account that the cascade effect forces lower-tier schools to give racial preferences, not because there is any shortage of qualified blacks eligible under the schools' general standards, but because those blacks have been absorbed by higher-tier institutions. As before, we can only see system-wide effects by considering the system as a whole. ???* * * A logical method of looking at the systemic effect on black applicants of eliminating racial preferences was outlined by Franklin Evans in a report to the LSAC in 1977. n270 Evans divided whites who applied for admission to at least one law school in 1976 into ninety-nine categories based on their LSAT score and undergraduate GPA. He then determined what proportion of the applicants in each category received at least one offer of admission. The resulting grid of admission probabilities is, in effect, rather similar to the admissions curve I used in Part II (Table 2.1) to illustrate the relation between applicants' academic credentials and their probability of admission - except that the Evans analysis created a "grand curve" for all law schools in the aggregate. For example, his grid showed that 98.5% of white applicants with an LSAT score between 700 and 749 and an undergraduate GPA of 3.75 or higher received at least one offer of admission, as did 89% of applicants with an LSAT score between 600 and 649 and an undergraduate GPA of 3.25 to 3.49, and 31.2% of those with an LSAT score between 500 and 549 and an undergraduate GPA of 2.5 to 2.74. n271 Blacks with the same credentials had higher chances of admission in nearly every cell of Evans's grid - but the point was that by applying the white percentages to the black applicant pool, one could come up with an estimate of how many blacks would be admitted to at least one law school if blacks applied to schools in the same manner as whites and if law schools evaluated them in the same way they evaluated whites. n272 ??? [*471] Evans's results were sobering. In his simulation, the number of admitted blacks fell 58%, from 1697 to 710, nearly as low as the levels that prevailed in the mid-1960s. n273 This finding, and similar analyses conducted in other fields, was prominently cited in the Bakke briefs. ???The Evans method was replicated, using applicants to the class entering law school in 1991, by Linda Wightman in her well-known 1997 article, The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education. n274 In her grid simulation, n275 she found that race-blind admissions would produce a 52.5% drop in black admissions - a result that seemed only slightly less dramatic than that found by Evans. n276 However, the full picture had improved substantially in some important ways. Between the 1976 and 1991 classes, the number of blacks as a proportion of the total applicant pool had increased substantially, from one black per fifteen white applicants in 1976 to one black per ten white applicants in 1991. n277 The black-white credentials gap had also narrowed somewhat, and the proportion of blacks admitted (in the real world, not the simulation) had increased from 39% to 48% of all applicants. Together, these changes meant that in Wightman's race-blind simulation, the number of blacks receiving at least one offer of admission in 1991 was 1631 - nearly the same number as actually received offers of admission in 1976. ???In an article published in September 2003, a few months after the Supreme Court's decision in Grutter, Wightman repeated the grid simulation once more, this time studying applicants to the class entering law school in 2001. n278 The new grid analysis showed a remarkably improved result: under a race-blind regime, as Table 8.1 shows, the number of blacks receiving at least one offer of admission declined by only 14%. ???What had produced such a dramatic change? It was due in part to a further increase in the ratio of black applicants to white applicants: by 2001, there was [*472] 1 black applicant for every 6.5 white applicants. n279 The credentials of blacks continued to improve slightly relative to those of whites. Together, these effects meant that the number of blacks with good credentials had increased sharply as a proportion of the pool. From 1976 to 2001, the number of blacks in the applicant pool with better-than-average LSAT scores and undergraduate GPAs greater than 3.0 increased from 317 to 1019. n280 ???Table 8.1: Changes in the Black Applicant Pool for Law School Admissions, 1966-2001 (ABA-Accredited Schools Only) Year???Total Black Applicants???Blacks Actually Admitted???Blacks Admitted Under Race-Blind Simulations???Blacks Admitted Under Race-Blind Simulations, as Percent of White Admissions*???Black-White Gap in Mean LSAT** 1966???N/A???400 (est.)???400 (est.)???1.2%???N/A 1976???4299???1697???710???1.8%???1.61 1991???7083???3435???1631???3.9%???1.34 2001???7404???3706???3182???8.5%???1.18 ???Sources: Evans, supra note 46, at 599 tbl.12, 602 tbl.15 (1976 data); Wightman, Threat to Diversity, supra note 274, at 22 tbl.5 (1991 data); Wightman, Race-Blindness, supra note 278, at 234 tbl.1, 240 tbl.5 (2001 data); Linda F. Wightman, Analysis of LSAT Performance and Patterns of Application (LSAC Research Report 94-02, 1994) (1991 LSAT data); author's own calculations from Law Sch. Admission Council, LSAC National Statistical Report, 1997-98 Through 2001-2002, at E13, F13. (2003) (presenting 2001 mean LSAT data). ???*The small improvement between 1966 and 1976 in the column concerning black admissions, under race-blind simulations, as a percentage of white admissions is due to the dramatic increase in white applicants (and the quality of applicants) during that decade. ???Black-white gap is the number of standard deviations separating black and white median LSAT scores. Because of the cascade effect and improvements in both the relative size and relative strength of the black applicant pool, the consequences of race blindness on black admissions to law school have changed dramatically over the past generation. But it is just as important to consider how race blindness would shape the fortunes of blacks once they enter law school. If it is true, as I have argued in Parts V and VI, that large racial preferences place blacks in [*473] schools where they will generally perform badly, and that this leads to both lower graduation rates and lower bar passage rates for blacks than for academically similar whites, then race-blind policies will moderately increase black graduation rates and will dramatically improve their performance on the bar. ???How can we actually estimate these effects? First, we estimate the academic index distribution of blacks who would have been qualified for law school under race-blind policies. Second, we use the analyses summarized in Parts V and VI to measure the difference between white and black rates in attrition and bar passage at each academic index level (recall that differences in school placement appeared to be the only factor that could explain the differences in black and white performance, graduation, and bar passage rates for applicants with otherwise identical academic credentials). Combining these two sets of data, we can estimate a weighted aggregate effect on black matriculants of race-blind policies. The results are summarized in Table 8.2. ???Table 8.2: Estimating the Effects of Eliminating Racial Preferences on Black Admissions to Law School - 2001 Matriculants Stage of the System???Number of Blacks in the System Under Current Policies Number of Blacks in the System with No Racial Preferences???% Change Caused by Moving to No Preferences Applicants???7404???7404 Admittees???3706???3182???-14.1% Matriculants???3474???2983???-14.1% Graduates (2004 or Later)???2802???2580???-8.1% Graduates Taking the Bar???2552???2384???-6.8% Passing the Bar, First Time???1567???1896???+20.1% Passing the Bar, Eventual???1981???2150???+7.9% ???Sources: Wightman, Race-Blindness, supra note 278, at 243 tbl.7 (first two rows in above table); statistics compiled by the author from the LSAC-BPS data (last four rows in above table). n281 [*474] The analysis produces a result that will strike many people as intuitively implausible: the number of black lawyers produced by American law schools each year and subsequently passing the bar would probably increase if those schools collectively stopped using racial preferences. Indeed, the absolute number of black law graduates passing the bar on their first attempt - an achievement important both for a lawyer's self-esteem and for success in the legal market - would be much larger under a race-blind regime than under the current system of preferences. There are two simple reasons for this surprising result. First, the main effect of contemporary racial preferences by law schools is to reshuffle blacks along the distribution of schools; six out of every seven blacks currently in law school would have qualified for admission at an ABA-accredited school under a race-blind system. Second, the elimination of racial preferences would put blacks into schools where they were perfectly competitive with all other students - and that would lead to dramatically higher performance in law school and on the bar. Black students' grades, graduation rates, and bar passage rates would all converge toward white students' rates. The overall rate of blacks graduating from law school and passing the bar on their first attempt would rise from the 45% measured by the LSAC-BPS to somewhere between 64% and 70%. n282 ???Conversely, the black students excluded by a switch to a race-blind system have such weak academic credentials that they add only a comparative handful of attorneys to total national production. Blacks with academic indices of 480 or lower would make up the bulk of those excluded under a race-blind system. In the LSAC-BPS study, only 65% of black students with these scores graduated from law school, and only 19% passed the bar on their first attempt. n283 For the same reasons, this group is, on the whole, most injured by the system of racial preferences. Admitted to the lowest-ranking law schools as part of law schools' effort to compensate for the cascade effect, these students invest years of their lives in an enterprise that usually does not allow them to enter the legal profession - or, if it does, only with the weakest possible qualifications. ???The real world is a very different and more promising place than the world most legal educators have created in their minds to justify affirmative action. It is true, as defenders of preferences have long maintained, that a large majority of the black students at any given law school today depend on racial preferences to be there. But this has led to the unjustified delusion that blacks, system-wide, are equally dependent on racial preferences. In the law school system as a whole, racial preferences no longer operate as a lifeline vital to [*475] preserve the tenuous foothold of blacks in the legal profession. Quite the contrary: racial preferences have the systematic effect of corroding black achievement and reducing the number of black lawyers. ???* * * Still, if the reader suspects that the story I just told sounds too good to be true, she is at least partly right. There are a few assumptions in my argument that should be considered more closely. ???Most seriously, my simulation uses two different sources of data. The top two lines of Table 8.2 come from Wightman's analysis of law students matriculating in the fall of 2001. But the other analyses in that table are based on the LSAC-BPS data, which studied and followed the cohort beginning law school in 1991. This is not ideal, and could lead to an overstatement of black-white differences. After all, as Table 8.1 suggests, one of the reasons more blacks would be admitted under Wightman's 2001 simulation was some narrowing of the black-white gap. If this gap is narrowing, one would expect the much higher attrition rates of blacks in law school and on the bar should moderate as well. ???One could only fully answer this question by replicating the LSAC-BPS study with current students - something that is not likely to happen soon. Instead, I can think of a few types of indirect evidence that bear on this question. First, the 2002 and 2003 admissions data that I have secured from seven public law schools n284 suggests that the black-white credentials gap has indeed narrowed, from about 170 points in the early 1990s to perhaps 130 or 140 points now. This is consistent with the narrowing of the black-white LSAT gap and should have a moderating effect on black attrition. And, indeed, ABA data on minority attrition rates shows a slight decrease in black attrition between the first and third years of law school, from 18.9% in 1991-1993 to 18.4% in 1999-2001. n285 This is a small change, but in the right direction. However, during the same period, average bar passage rates across American jurisdictions dropped as many states raised the passing threshold; nationally, the proportion of first-time takers who passed the bar fell from 82.3% in 1994-1995 to 74.7% in 2002-2003. n286 Increases in bar difficulty disparately affect blacks, because the high black failure rate on the bar implies that there are a disproportionately large number of blacks who barely pass. It is hard to document how seriously this change has affected blacks because very few [*476] states publish racial statistics on bar passage rates, but we can get some idea from a couple of sources. In California (one of the few states that provides bar exam results by race), the first-time bar passage rate for whites fell from 79.3% on the July 1997 bar exam to 70.0% on the July 2003 exam. The first-time pass rate for blacks fell from 47.5% to 32.8% over the same two exams - a much larger absolute and proportionate decline. n287 A corroborating piece of evidence comes from the AJD study, which asked its sample of certified lawyers whether they had failed the bar at least once before passing in the year 2000. Twenty-two percent of the blacks in this national sample said they had failed the bar at least once. n288 In the LSAC-BPS study, only 20% of those blacks who ultimately became lawyers had an experience of failing the bar. n289 This suggests that the bar posed a slightly higher hurdle for a national sample of black law graduates in 2000 than it did in 1994. ???In short, the data suggests that over the past decade blacks have gained on whites in law school credentials; probably the gap in law school performance and law school attrition has narrowed. But the growing difficulty of the bar in many states has probably more than wiped out those gains, so that the overall penalties of affirmative action are still as great for blacks, and quite possibly greater, than they were at the time of the LSAC-BPS study. Considering all of this (admittedly imperfect) data in light of Table 8.2, I can see no reason for revising downward the table's estimate that the production of black lawyers would rise significantly in a world without racial preferences. ???Table 8.2 is premised on two other significant assumptions. First, I assume that blacks will apply to law school in the same numbers without the benefit of affirmative action, and that they will accept admission to lower-ranked law schools than they currently enter instead of simply switching to other fields. This is, of course, debatable. A college graduate attracted to the law but not desperate to have a legal career might have second thoughts if she faced the prospect of attending a fortieth-ranked school instead of one ranked fourteenth. Other careers and other types of graduate study might loom more attractively, particularly if affirmative action still operated in some of those competing spheres. ???On the other hand, there are reasons to think the number of blacks applying to law school in a race-blind regime would increase rather than decline. Surely there is some awareness among prospective black students of the daunting challenge bar exams pose for blacks; surely this discourages some people from applying. In a world where 74% - rather than 45% - of black law students [*477] graduate and pass the bar on their first attempt, law school might be a far more appealing prospect. Moreover, the findings of this Article and a growing body of other research are chipping away at the conventional wisdom that elite schools are the only path to coveted jobs. As those prejudices weaken, blacks may be less perturbed by the prospect of attending a less elite school. Blacks might also be highly attracted to a university environment in which they are not individually or collectively assumed to have weak credentials. ???A second unknown in a race-blind system is the operation and effect of financial aid awards. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many law schools try to minimize the size of their internal black-white gap by competing vigorously for black candidates, both by "wining and dining" strong prospects and by offering those prospects generous financial aid. More systematic data from the AJD study shows that blacks in the 2000 cohort of graduates received about three times as much in grants and aid from their law schools as did students of other races. n290 It is reasonable to suppose that in a race-blind system, race-based financial aid would decline (though I would argue that recruiting more blacks into the system as a whole remains a valid and important goal). It is certainly possible that a decline in aid for blacks, if it occurs, could discourage some black applicants. On the other hand, Hispanic law students currently receive far less scholarship aid than blacks (even though Hispanic law students tend to come from less affluent backgrounds) but apply to law school in very similar proportions to their numbers among college graduates. n291 ???There are, in short, many uncertainties built into any prediction about how a change to race-blind admissions would change the production of black lawyers. There are a couple of conclusions that do seem to me very defensible (and which are the real point of my simulations and attendant discussion). First, the oft-repeated claim that the number of black lawyers would be decimated by the elimination of racial preferences is simply untrue. One can make an argument that the number might decline, but the balance of evidence suggests an increase is more likely. Second, what will change dramatically is the academic preparation of those blacks who become attorneys. Under current conditions, over a fifth of practicing black lawyers have failed the bar at least once, and, given the high failure rate generally, it is a statistical certainty that many blacks who pass the bar pass by very small margins. Sharply raising the first-time pass rate for blacks would be accompanied by a similar rise in the [*478] scores of those who do pass. If we believe that bar exams measure anything relevant to good lawyering, this change would be a very good thing. ???Conclusion I began this Article with a simple question: does affirmative action, as practiced by American law schools, clearly help blacks more than it hurts them? Although I started this project with serious doubts about some things law schools were doing, the answer to the big question turned out to be far less ambiguous than I would have imagined possible. Law school admissions preferences impose enormous costs on blacks and create relatively minor benefits. By looking at law schools systemically, we can see patterns and larger consequences that would be invisible or speculative if we looked at any one school or group of schools in isolation. As it is, the key features of the current system seem very clear. ???For blacks, there are two primary benefits of affirmative action. First, black students widely have the opportunity to attend significantly more elite schools than do white peers with similar credentials. Preferences boost students up the hierarchy of 184 schools by 20 to 50 steps, sometimes more; a very large majority of black students accept these opportunities and attend schools that used preferences to admit them. Second, the system as a whole leads to the admission of an additional five or six hundred black students - about one-seventh of the annual total - who would not otherwise be admitted to any accredited school. Cutting against these benefits are six major costs of the current system of racial preferences. ???1. Black students as a whole are at a substantial academic disadvantage when they attend schools that used preferences to admit them. n292 As a consequence, they perform poorly as a group throughout law school. The median GPA of all black students at the end of the first year of law school lies roughly at the sixth percentile of the white grade distribution. Put differently, close to half of black students end up in the bottom tenth of their classes. This performance gap is entirely attributable to preferences; none of it seems to be attributable to race per se. ???2. The clustering of black students near the bottom of the grade distribution produces substantially higher attrition rates. Entering black law students are 135% more likely than white students to not get a law degree. Part of this is the effect of low grades on academically strong black students who [*479] would have easily graduated from less competitive schools; part of this is the effect of high attrition among the five or six hundred academically weak black students admitted to the low-prestige law schools. But again, virtually all of the black-white gap seems attributable to preferences; virtually none of it seems attributable to race or to any correlate of race (such as income). ???3. Generally low grades among blacks have even larger effects on bar performance. Blacks are nearly six times as likely as whites to not pass state bar exams after multiple attempts. The difference, again, is mostly attributable to preferences. Half of the black-white bar passage gap is traceable to the effects of blacks with good credentials getting low grades at higher-prestige schools; nearly a quarter is due to low-prestige schools admitting blacks with lower credentials than almost any of the other students in the system. ???4. When blacks pass the bar and enter the job market, they encounter a generally positive climate. Blacks earn 6% to 9% more early in their careers than do whites seeking similar jobs with similar credentials, presumably because many employers (including government employers) pursue moderate racial preferences in hiring. Nonetheless, affirmative action by schools hurts blacks in the job market more than it helps. The data in Part VII suggests that employers weigh law school grades far more heavily in evaluating job candidates than most legal academics have assumed. Law school racial preferences give blacks fancier degrees, but also systematically lower their GPAs. For at least two-thirds of black law graduates, the harm preferences do to a student's grades greatly outweighs the benefit derived from the more prestigious degree. Only black students graduating from the top ten law schools even arguably derive net benefits from this trade-off. Racial preferences therefore have not been an indispensable part of credentialing blacks for the job market; overall, they clearly end up shutting more doors than they open. ???5. In 2001, about 86% of all black students who attended accredited American law schools would have been eligible for admission at one or more law schools in the total absence of racial preferences. System-wide, racial preferences expand the pool of blacks in law school by only 14%. These 14% - about five to six hundred students admitted to low-prestige schools - have very low academic credentials and face long odds against becoming lawyers. Only a fifth of this group finishes law school and passes the bar on their first attempt; fewer than a third become lawyers after multiple attempts at taking the bar. ???6. When one takes into account the corrosive effects of racial preferences on the chances of all black law students to graduate and pass the bar, these preferences probably tend, system-wide, to shrink rather than expand the total number of new black lawyers each year. If all preferences were abolished, the data in Part VIII suggests that the number of black attorneys emerging from the class of 2004 would be 7% larger than it is. The number of black attorneys passing the bar on their first attempt would be 20% larger. These numbers are simply estimates, resting on the assumptions I have detailed; but even if the [*480] attrition effects of the current system were much smaller than I have estimated, we would still be producing approximately the same number - and much better trained - black attorneys under a race-blind system. ???These are simply the direct, easily quantifiable effects of law school racial preferences. I have said nothing about the stigma of preferences, about the effect of low grades on student esteem, about the life consequences for hundreds of young blacks each year who invest years of effort and thousands in expense but never become lawyers, or about the loss to communities that could be served by black lawyers but are not because racial preferences have had the effect in recent years of reducing our annual output of qualified black attorneys. ???There are many ironies in this state of affairs, but perhaps the central irony is this: Law schools adopted racial preferences because, soon after they began to seek actively in the 1960s to increase black enrollment, they confronted the black-white credentials gap. The schools conceived of preferential policies to overcome the gap, hoping that by ignoring the differences in credentials they could perhaps make the gap go away. But these very policies have the effect of widening the credentials disadvantage facing individual black students rather than narrowing it. The effect of preferences on black graduation rates is similar to the effect of subtracting 60-odd points from the academic index of every black matriculant. The effect of preferences on black bar passage rates is similar to the effect of subtracting 120 points. Large-scale preferences exacerbate the problems they try, cosmetically, to cover up. ???What can be said about the conduct of law schools in this system? Looking back over the years of the rise and development of the modern system of racial preferences, I think it is fair to say that there was a good deal of honor in what law schools did during the first ten years of this era. From the late 1960s through the time of Bakke, law schools shook off their complacency as overwhelmingly white bastions of prestige. They critically examined old procedures, experimented with new admissions methods, and sponsored summer programs like CLEO that worked hard to broaden and deepen the field of potential minority students. Reports from that period are infused with a degree of honesty and openness. And these policies did transform the image of law school and increased the interest of young minority college students in making law school a goal. ???The era since Bakke has been quite different. Schools have felt hemmed in. The cascade effect of preferences exercised by law schools as a whole meant that any individual school had to choose between either having only a handful of black students or preserving racially segregated admissions procedures. Pressures from students and faculty, and fears of appearing racist, made this seem to be no choice at all. Bakke provided a convenient veil of diversity that could be draped over policies that were substantively hard to distinguish from those the Supreme Court had struck down. Viewing Powell's holding as hypocritical, law school deans joined in the hypocrisy. For most, this probably seemed a small price to pay in the cause of an apparently greater good. ??? [*481] Unfortunately, once law schools had adopted the pretense that students of all races at any institution had essentially the same qualifications, it was difficult for anyone to pursue serious research into the effects of affirmative action, or even for faculties to engage in honest discussion. The entire topic has been largely given over to myth-making and anecdote for an entire generation. It should perhaps not be so surprising, then, that a close look at the emperor today shows such an unflattering nakedness. ???* * * What are the implications of this analysis for the law of affirmative action? There are three. First, the distinction drawn by Justice O'Connor between the admissions systems of the University of Michigan's law school and its undergraduate college is a false one. It is impossible to explain the admissions outcomes at the law school, or at any other law school we have examined, unless the schools are either adding points to the academic indices of blacks or separating admissions decisions into racially segregated pools. ???Second, Justice O'Connor's decision in Grutter is wrong in a broader sense. Her opinion draws heavily on amicus briefs that paint a glowing picture of the benefits of affirmative action and its indispensability as a vehicle of mobility by blacks into the legal profession. The premise accepted by O'Connor is that racial preferences are indispensable to keep a reasonable number of blacks entering the law and reaching its highest ranks - a goal which is in turn indispensable to a legitimate and moral social system. The analysis in this Article demonstrates that this premise is wrong. Racial preferences in law schools, at least as applied to blacks, work against all of the goals that O 'Connor held to be important. The conventional wisdom about these preferences is invalid. ???But a third legal implication of this work is the most important of all. All of the Supreme Court's decisions about affirmative action in higher education presume that the discrimination involved is fundamentally benign. It is tolerable only because it operates on behalf of a politically vulnerable minority - that is, blacks. A preferences program that operated on behalf of whites would be unconstitutional beyond question. ???Yet if the findings in this Article are correct, blacks are the victims of law school programs of affirmative action, not the beneficiaries. The programs set blacks up for failure in school, aggravate attrition rates, turn the bar exam into a major hurdle, disadvantage most blacks in the job market, and depress the overall production of black lawyers. Whites, in contrast, arguably benefit from preferences in a number of ways. Whites have higher grades because blacks and other affirmative action beneficiaries fill most of the lower ranks; whites are the most obvious beneficiaries of the diversity produced by affirmative action programs; it is even plausible to argue that bar passage rates are kept high to avoid embarrassingly high failure rates by minority exam-takers. The [*482] next legal challenge to affirmative action practices by law schools could very plausibly be led by black plaintiffs who were admitted, spent years and thousands of dollars on their educations, and then never passed the bar and never became lawyers - all because of the misleading double standards used by law schools to admit them, and the schools' failure to disclose to them the uniquely long odds against their becoming lawyers. And these plaintiffs, unlike the plaintiffs in Hopwood and Gratz, could be entitled to more than nominal damages. ???* * * What can law schools do to escape this imbroglio? It might seem that there is very little that individual law professors or even law school deans can do, by themselves. As I have suggested, the cascade effect seems to give individual schools little control over their own destinies. This is true so far as it goes, but I believe there are important steps that individual professors and individual schools can take. ???First and foremost, we should begin to be honest about what we are doing. We can disclose how admissions works at our individual schools. We can admit that our schools rely heavily on numerical indices of student credentials, that most of the white matriculants are chosen from a fairly narrow band of credentials, and that there is a big gap between white and black index scores. We can admit that black applicants are treated differently as a group, and that our schools' practices look more like the system described by Justice O'Connor in Gratz than the "individualized assessment" of Grutter. We can disclose to black admittees that, while our schools value them enormously and will work to make them succeed, there is some reason to believe that attending a school where a student 's credentials are weaker than those of most classmates puts the student at greater risk of academic failure. ???More specifically, each law school that takes race into account in its admissions should provide to all applicants a document that lists: (1) the median academic index (or test scores and undergraduate grades, if no index is used) of admitted and enrolled applicants, by race; (2) the median class rank of each racial or ethnic group whose identity is a factor in admissions; and (3) the pass rate of recent graduates from each group on the bar of the school's home state. This information would of course greatly aid applicants (particularly those who receive preferences) in evaluating the potential costs of attending a given school. ???Once some honest conversation about affirmative action practices is underway, it will be much easier to talk about constructive solutions. The most obvious solution is for schools to simply stop using racial preferences. As we have seen, this is not an unthinkable armageddon; by every means I have been able to quantify, blacks as a whole would be unambiguously better off in a system without any racial preferences at all than they are under the current [*483] regime. The most obvious disadvantage of such a solution is that the most elite law schools would have very few black students - probably in the range of 1% to 2% of overall student bodies. Many observers would view this as an enormous cost, for at least two reasons: the diversity at elite schools is thought to be critical in shaping the attitudes of future national leaders, and the sheer numbers of blacks at top schools are thought to be a vital source for future black judges, public intellectuals, and political leaders. I have not explored these specific issues here, and I agree that they merit serious consideration. ???There is an intermediate step that is at least worth considering as a thought experiment. Consider the workings of a system in which law schools only use admissions preferences for blacks to the extent necessary to prevent black enrollments from falling below 4% of total enrollment. n293 Obviously, the preference given to each enrolled student would be smaller. Academic gaps between whites and blacks would thus be narrower at the top. But the real benefit of this approach would be a dampening of the cascade effect. If the top ten schools enroll 150 blacks instead of 300, then the next tier of schools (say, those ranked eleven through twenty) would need to exercise even smaller preferences to reach the 4% target. At some point fairly high in the law school spectrum, no preference at all would be needed to achieve a 4% goal, and from that point on the proportion of blacks (all admitted on essentially race-blind systems) would be greater than 4%. ???This approach would have three significant advantages. First, it would maintain a significant black presence at all schools. Second, it would dramatically narrow the average black-white gap across all schools. And third, the most significant remaining black-white gaps (still much smaller than present-day gaps) would be at the most elite schools, where the data suggest the harmful side effects of a gap are minimized and the positive effects of prestige for blacks are maximized. There are obvious practical problems - the patent illegality of avowed racial targets, the problem of coordination among competing schools - but this proposed solution does illustrate the possibility of "middle ways" that can capture some putative benefits of the current system while greatly mitigating its harms. ???If candid dialogue can begin within the law school world on the subject of affirmative action, it will have positive effects throughout society. We could explore more honestly and systematically the meaning of diversity, the current extraordinary socioeconomic eliteness of law students of all races, the real potential to identify other indicators of academic promise, and the extent to which one can target for admission students who will establish public-service practices in low-and moderate-income communities. The battle for racial inclusion has been fought and largely won. Let us come out of the trenches, look around, take stock, and move forward to challenge injustice anew. ???** FOOTNOTES: ???n1. Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) (plurality opinion). ???n2. William G. Bowen & Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (1998); Richard O. Lempert et al., Michigan's Minority Graduates in Practice: The River Runs Through Law School, 25 Law & Soc. Inquiry 395 (2000). Bowen and Bok do, briefly, consider the question of how students would fare without affirmative action, but their analysis is so superficial as to provide little helpful insight on this question; subsequent work has thrown even their modest conclusions into question. ???n3. There are exceptions. California still allows prospective lawyers to learn the law in a law office and bypass law school; Wisconsin allows graduates of some schools to automatically enter its bar. ???n4. Kristine S. Knaplund & Richard H. Sander, The Art and Science of Academic Support, 45 J. Legal Educ. 157 (1995). ???n5. I explored this and other matters related to law school socioeconomic diversity in Richard H. Sander, Experimenting with Class-Based Affirmative Action, 47 J. Legal Educ. 472 (1997). ???n6. This is especially true in the absence of compelling evidence that whites are substantially harmed. Careful readers will realize that the evidence in this Article suggests that the material harms to whites from affirmative action in law schools are comparatively slight. Indeed, the effects on whites are in many ways a mirror image of the effects on blacks (though more muted by relative numbers), and thus whites probably have higher grades, graduation rates, and bar passage rates than they would in a system totally lacking racial preferences. ???n7. These costs include not only the national competition between Democrats and Republicans, but interracial goodwill, the belief held by whites that they are "already" making sufficient sacrifices for the cause of racial justice, and the credibility of institutions that are often trapped in deceptions by their own policies. ???n8. See infra Table 8.2 and accompanying text (showing how race-blind admissions would produce an 8% increase in the number of blacks passing the bar each year, even though the legal education system would matriculate 14% fewer black students). Like any simulation, my analysis is subject to debatable assumptions. Two fundamental points are beyond doubt, however: (a) because of the effect of preferences, see infra Part III, a general abandonment of racial preferences would have a relatively modest effect on total black admissions; and (b) current preferences cause blacks to be clustered academically in the bottom of their law school classes, see infra Tables 5.1, 5.3, 5.4, greatly increasing black attrition in law school and the bar. These effects combined strongly suggest there would be a net increase in black lawyers under a race-blind system. ???n9. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). ???n10. Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/minstats.html (last visited Nov. 3, 2004) [hereinafter Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002]; Memorandum from David Rosenlieb, Data Specialist, Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar, American Bar Association, to Deans of ABA-Approved Law Schools, Corrected Fall 2002 Enrollment Statistics (May 16, 2003), at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/Fall%202002%20Enrollment.pdf (last visited Nov. 22, 2004) [hereinafter Rosenlieb Memorandum]. ???n11. U.S. Census Bureau, 2003 Statistical Abstract of the United States 191 tbl.299 (2003). ???n12. In 2001, blacks made up 14.5% of U.S. residents between the ages of twenty and twenty-four. U.S. CENSUS BUREAU, 2002 Statistical Abstract of the United States 16 tbl.14 (2002). ???n13. According to the 2002 Statistical Abstract of the United States, blacks secured 8.2% of master's degrees granted in 2001, along with 4.9% of doctoral degrees and 6.8% of "first professional" degrees (including degrees in law, medicine, theology, and dentistry). Id. at 191 tbl.299. According to the American Bar Association's website, blacks earned 7% of all law degrees in that year. Am. Bar Ass'n, J.D. Enrollment and J.D. Degrees Awarded (Total/Women/Minorities), at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/jd.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004); Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Degrees Awarded (by Ethnic Groups 1980-2002), at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/mindegrees.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004) [hereinafter Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Degrees Awarded]. ???n14. Harry E. Groves, Report on the Minority Groups Project, 1965 Ass'n Am. L. Schs. Proc., Part One 171, 172. I infer these numbers from the fact that total black enrollment at ABA-approved law schools for 1964-1965 was 701, with 267 attending the six historically black law schools and 165 at Howard University Law School alone. Because of prevalently high dropout rates at the time, over forty percent of all law students were first-year students. At the time, Howard was by far the largest and most respected of the black law schools. The other law schools were institutions established by southern states to maintain segregated education; these schools had tiny enrollments. ???n15. Id. ???n16. Blacks accounted for about 1.1% of all American lawyers in 1960. U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, U.S. CENSUS OF POPULATION: 1960, SUBJECT REPORTS OCCUPATIONAL ChARACTERISTICS 21 tbl.3 (1963). ???n17. For example, Asians, who have generally been overrepresented in higher education relative to their numbers, made up about 0.7% of the U.S. population in 1970, but only 0.4% of third-year students in law schools in 1971-1972. By 2000, Asians made up 3.8% of the U.S. population but 6.7% of first-year law students. Frank Hobbs & Nicole Stoops, U.S. Bureau of the Census, Demographic Trends in the 20th Century 77 fig.3-4 (2002); Am. Bar Ass'n, Legal Education and Bar Admissions Statistics, 1963-2002, at http://www.abanet.org/legaled/statistics/le_bastats.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004); Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. ???n18. Comparison data for other types of graduate education can be found in Frank Brown et al., Minority Enrollment and Representation in Institutions of Higher Education (1974). In 1960, blacks made up 2.9% of all graduate school enrollment in the United States. Id. at 186. The percentage in 1970 was 3.1%. Id. ???n19. Some of the early litigation against "separate but equal" regimes focused on these southern law schools. See Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938). On black exclusion in the South, see also Richard L. Abel, American Lawyers 100 (1989). ???n20. Examples include Charles Hamilton Houston (the first black editorial member of the Harvard Law Review, in 1921), William Henry Hastie (another black Harvard Law Review member, who became a federal judge in 1937), and Dr. Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander (a black economist who served on the Pennsylvania Law Review). See Many of the Nation's Most Prestigious Law Reviews Have Lily-White Editorial Boards, 19 J. Blacks Higher Educ. 44, 55 (1998). ???n21. See generally Brown et al., supra note 18 (comparing minority enrollment data for different types of graduate education). ???n22. Charles C. Davidson et al., Report of the Committee on Racial Discrimination in Law Schools, 1962 Ass'n Am. L. Schs. Proc. 195, 195. ???n23. Benjamin F. Boyer et al., Report of the Committee on Racial Discrimination: Problem of Negro Applicants, 1964 Ass'n Am. L. Schs. Proc., Part One 159, 160-61. ???n24. The fifty-percent figure is the median ten-year attrition rate calculated from the responses of fifty-four law schools surveyed by the AALS in 1964-1965. See Groves, supra note 14, at 172-73. ???n25. See generally Earl L. Carl, The Shortage of Negro Lawyers: Pluralistic Legal Education and Legal Services for the Poor, 20 J. Legal Educ. 21 (1967-1968) (arguing that blacks viewed law as "white man's business" and had little awareness of the existence of a black bar); Earl L. Carl & Kenneth R. Callahan, Negroes and the Law, 17 J. LEGAL EDUC. 250 (1964-1965) (claiming that blacks felt general mistrust of the law as an instrument of whites); Groves, supra note 14, at 173-74 (presenting survey of law school deans asked to explain low black enrollment). ???n26. Not atypically, it was a program started by Harvard (which beginning in 1965 brought black college students to Cambridge for a summer session) that secured the most publicity. See Robert M. O'Neil, Preferential Admissions: Equalizing Access to Legal Education, 1970 U. Tol. L. Rev. 281, 301; see also Louis A. Toepfer, Harvard's Special Summer Program, 18 J. Legal Educ. 443 (1966). ???n27. Sixty-nine law schools reported the LSAT distributions of their students to both the 1969 and 1980 Prelaw Handbooks issued by the American Association of Law Schools. The proportion of these schools with median LSAT scores higher than 600 rose from 10.2% in 1969 to 71% in 1980. Ass'n of Am. Law Schs. & Law Sch. Admission Test Council, Law Study and Practice in the United States, 1969-70 Pre-Law Handbook B(2)-3, tbl.X (1970); Ass'n of Am. Law Schs. & Law Sch. Admission Test Council, 1980-82 Pre-Law Handbook: Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools 45 (1980). It should be noted that the methodologies used to arrive at the cited figures were slightly different, so the numbers may not exactly correlate. ???n28. Boyer et al., supra note 23, at 159-60. ???n29. One notable exception was Emory University School of Law. In 1965, Emory instituted a summer program for interested black students; any student who completed the program was guaranteed a seat in the first-year class. The program was quite similar to the much-larger-scale Council on Legal Educational Opportunity (CLEO) program begun a few years later. Hardy Dillard et al., Report of the Advisory Committee for the Minority Groups Study, 1967 Ass'n Am. Law Schs. Proc., Part One 160, 166-67. ???n30. The Kerner Commission, charged by President Lyndon Johnson with investigating the causes of the rioting that had rocked many central cities in the mid-1960s, produced a surprisingly harsh assessment of continuing racism in American society and institutions. ???n31. The first federally mandated affirmative action program in the employment arena - the so-called "Philadelphia Plan," affecting construction jobs in federally funded projects - began soon afterwards, in the fall of 1969. ???n32. O'Neil, supra note 26, at 306-07. ???n33. See Groves, supra note 14, at 172. ???n34. An ABA analysis of black enrollments at law schools in 1969-1970 makes plain which schools had launched affirmative action programs and which had not. Considering students in all three years of law school, Columbia in that term was 6.3% black while Fordham was 1% black, UCLA was 6.9% black while Stanford was 2% black, and Yale was 8.5% black while the University of Connecticut was 1.7% black. Almost no southern school during that term was more than 2% black. John Atwood et al., Survey of Black Law Student Enrollment, 16 Student L.J. 18, 36, 37 (1971). Black enrollments today still vary a good deal, but there are few regional disparities (except in the Plains and Rocky Mountain states, which have very small black populations) and virtually all elite schools not operating under legal constraints have significant black enrollments. See generally Law Sch. Admission Council & Am. Bar Ass'n, The ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools: 2004 Edition (2003) (reporting racial compositions for individual law schools) [hereinafter 2004 Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools]. ???n35. The ABA website reports 2066 first-year blacks in law schools in 1973-1974, see Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. Historically black law schools had total minority enrollments of 946 that year, and it is plausible that about 350 of these were first-year students. Am. Bar Ass'n, Law Schools and Bar Admission Requirements: A Review of Legal Education in the United States - Fall 1973, at 12, 18, 26, 33 (1974). The increase was easy for many schools because most of them were increasing their overall enrollments. Sharp rises in the number and quality of law school applicants, and an apparently booming legal market (characterized then, as now, by escalating salaries at the top end) led to a doubling in the number of law school graduates between 1970 and 1975, and the creation of many new law schools. See Richard H. Sander & E. Douglass Williams, Why Are There So Many Lawyers? Perspectives on a Turbulent Market, 14 Law & Soc. Inquiry 431, 445 tbl.8 (1989). ???n36. A good example of the prevailing view was Justice Douglas's opinion in DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974). In that case, a white applicant challenged admissions policies at the University of Washington Law School, contending that the school exercised illegal racial preferences in favor of blacks. Id. at 314. The Supreme Court held, per curiam, that the case had been mooted by DeFunis's impending graduation from law school, id. at 317, but Justice Douglas wrote a dissenting opinion addressing the merits, id. at 320. Justice Douglas expressed serious doubts about racial preferences, but condemned the LSAT as a culturally biased metric that gave many whites an unfair advantage. Id. at 340-41 (Douglas, J., dissenting). See infra Part IV for examples of arguments about LSAT bias, as well as my discussion of the validity of standardized tests. ???n37. Minority attrition rates are based on comparisons of first-and third-year enrollments. During this same period, white retention rates - buoyed by the strengthening of the applicant pool - were rising to average levels of around ninety percent (based on comparison of first-year enrollment and degrees awarded). Am. Bar Ass'n, Section of Legal Educ. & Admissions to the Bar, 51 Law Schools & Bar Admission Requirements: A Review of Legal Education in the United States - Fall 1976, at 47-48 (1977). ???n38. Michael D. Rappaport, The Legal Educational Opportunity Program at UCLA: Eight Years of Experience, 4 Black L.J. 506, 516 (1975). ???n39. Id. at 507; Brief Amicus Curiae for the Association of American Law Schools, Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) (No. 76-811), reprinted in 3 Allan Bakke Versus Regents of the University of California, The Supreme Court of the United States 379, 393-96 (Alfred A. Slocum ed., 1978) [hereinafter AALS Bakke Brief]. ???n40. SUSAN WELCH & JOHN GRUHL, Affirmative Action and Minority Enrollment in Medical and Law Schools 56-58, 56 fig.2.6 (1998). ???n41. AALS Bakke Brief, supra note 39 (submitted for the 1976-1977 Term of the Supreme Court, although the Court did not issue its decision until June 1978). ???n42. Id. at 14-15. ???n43. "We know ... that the test is not racially biased. Five separate studies have indicated that the test does not underpredict the law school performance of blacks and Mexican-Americans." Id. at 13. ???n44. Id. at 20. The brief noted that, of course, all law schools also used "soft" factors (such as letters of recommendation) in admissions. But greater weight on "soft" factors was not a solution to minority underrepresentation unless minority students had stronger "soft" qualifications than whites, and the brief argued that "there is not the slightest reason to suppose that [this is the case]; indeed, there is no reason to suppose that such subjective factors are distributed on other than a random basis among applicants of different races." Id. at 34. This is an overstatement, since certainly measures of socioeconomic disadvantage, for example, are not distributed randomly across racial groups; but it is surely true that no "super-index," based on both academic and nonacademic factors, could select minorities as efficiently, and with so little overall academic cost, as separate admissions tracks. See Sander, supra note 5. ???n45. AALS Bakke Brief, supra note 39, at 22-27. ???n46. Id. at 2. The brief went on to quantify this claim with some specific estimates: if all law schools used race-neutral criteria, black enrollment would fall by 60% to 80% and Chicano enrollment would fall by 40% to 70%. See id. at 28. The estimates were based on comparisons of the LSAT and undergraduate GPA (UGPA) distributions of all law school applicants, as documented in Franklin R. Evans, Applications and Admissions to ABA Accredited Law Schools: An Analysis of National Data for the Class Entering in the Fall of 1976, in 3 Reports of LSAC Sponsored Research: 1975-1977, at 551. I examine these claims more closely in Part VII. ???n47. AALS Bakke Brief, supra note 39, at 26. ???n48. Boalt Hall is the law school of the University of California at Berkeley. ???n49. AALS Bakke Brief, supra note 39, at 27. ???n50. Sub rosa literally translates as "under the rose" from Latin, but is used here to mean "in secrecy." See Black's Law Dictionary 1441 (7th ed. 1999). ???n51. AALS Bakke Brief, supra note 39, at 38 (citation omitted). ???n52. Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 369 (1978) (Brennan, White, Marshall & Blackmun, J.J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (finding that "a state government may adopt race-conscious programs if the purpose of such programs is to remove the disparate racial impact its actions might otherwise have and if there is reason to believe that the disparate impact is itself the product of past discrimination, whether its own or that of society at large"). ???n53. Id. at 413 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (stating that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "stands as a broad prohibition against the exclusion of any individual from a federally funded program "on the ground of race'"). ???n54. Id. at 317 (opinion of Powell, J.). ???n55. Welch & Gruhl, supra note 40, at 63 (quoting Am. Council on Educ., Ass'n of Am. Law Sch., The Bakke Decision: Implications for Higher Education Admissions 33 (Wayne McCormack ed., 1978) [hereinafter ACE-AALS]). ???n56. Id. (quoting ACE-AALS, supra note 55, at 21). ???n57. Id. at 6. ???n58. Id. at 131-32. ???n59. Id. at 61, 75. ???n60. Id. at 70-71. ???n61. Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. ???n62. Welch & Gruhl, supra note 40, at 76-77. ???n63. Report from the UCLA Law School Admissions Task Force, 1978-79, to the Faculty (Nov. 21, 1978) (on file with author). ???n64. Enrolled "Minority Group" students as a percentage of total enrollment at UCLA went from 23% in 1978 to 31% in 1982. Compare Section of Legal Educ. & Admission to the Bar, Am. Bar Ass'n, A Review of Legal Education in the United States, Fall 1978, Law Schools & Bar Admission Requirements 9 (1979), with Section of Legal Educ. & Admission to the Bar, Am. Bar Ass'n, A Review of Legal Education in the United States, Fall 1982, Law Schools & Bar Admission Requirements 6 (1983). I return to the operation of UCLA's diversity system in Part II. ???n65. One distinguished constitutional scholar has suggested to me that shifting from obvious quotas to "invisible" weightings of diversity factors was Justice Powell's real objective all along. In a similar vein, another prominent constitutional scholar suggested to me that Justice O'Connor similarly cared deeply about schools engaging in a ritual of individualized assessment even if the results were identical to those produced by numerical formulas. These observations remind me of a creationist argument I once heard to the effect that God created fossils to fool skeptics into believing in evolution - not a logically impossible argument, but a hard view for an empiricist like me to address. ???n66. Boalt's consent agreement and a description of the offending admissions procedures are contained in its report to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights. Rachel F. Moran et al., Statement of Faculty Policy Governing Admission to Boalt Hall and Report of the Admissions Policy Task Force (1993). ???n67. WELCH & GRUHL, supra note 40, at 154. For example, at the University of Texas, minority applicants were first considered by a special minority subcommittee, which would then offer its recommendations to the full admissions committee. By 1992, minority applicants were no longer selected by the full committee - the minority subcommittee simply delivered its report to the full committee, which chose the number of minorities to admit, but left the individual admissions decisions up to the subcommittee. See the district court opinion in Hopwood v. Texas, 861 F. Supp. 551, 558-60 (W.D. Tex. 1994), rev'd, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996). ???n68. For one of the few comparatively candid discussions of law school affirmative action in the post-Bakke era, see Leo M. Romero, An Assessment of Affirmative Action in Law School Admissions After Fifteen Years: A Need for Recommitment, 34 J. LEGAL EDUC. 430 (1984). ???n69. An associate dean of Washington University School of Law claimed that "test scores and grades are weighed heavily for admission to the [law school]" and that "race, gender, age and family background come into play when students are borderline." Lorraine Kee, Debate Rages over Affirmative Action, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 21, 1997, at 01A. Ronald Hjorth, former dean of the University of Washington School of Law, once denied that his school "maintains a quota, saying instead that race is merely used as a "plus factor' in admissions decisions, considered as part of an applicant's "background and life experiences ' that may add diversity to the student body." Robyn Blummer, Law School Dean Runs from the Truth, Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colo.), Sept. 11, 1998, at 75A. ???n70. Total first-year enrollment figures for ABA-approved law schools for the years 1947-2002 are available from the ABA at Am. Bar Ass'n, First Year Enrollment in ABA Approved Law Schools 1947-2002 (Percentage of Women), at http://www.abanet.org/ legaled/statistics/femstats.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004) [hereinafter Am. Bar Ass'n, First Year Enrollment]. First-year enrollment figures for blacks from 1971-2002 are also available from the ABA in Am. Bar Ass 'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. ???n71. See Am. Bar Ass'n, First Year Enrollment, supra note 70. ???n72. On these last two points, see infra Table 8.1. ???n73. Blacks accounted for 3744 out of 5568 nonwhites enrolled in any year of law school in 1971, 8149 out of 19,410 nonwhites in 1991, and 9412 out of 26,257 nonwhites in 2001. Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. ???n74. In 1970, there were fewer than three million nonwhite immigrants (including Hispanics) in the United States. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1981, at 34 tbl.40 (1981). By 1999 that number had risen to over nineteen million. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001, at 44 tbl.43 (2001) [hereinafter 2001 Census Statistical Abstract]. ???n75. In 1970, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights counted 102,788 "Spanish-surnamed" students enrolled in all American undergraduate colleges and universities. Brown et al., supra note 18, at 17. In 1999, there were 1,300,000 Hispanics enrolled in college, an increase from 2% to 8% of the total student population. 2001 Census Statistical Abstract, supra note 74, at 168 tbl.268. ???n76. See supra note 17. The percentage of doctoral degrees in the physical sciences received by Asians declined somewhat, from 6.9% to 6.6%, between 1980 and 1990. Nat'l Ctr. for Educ. Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2002, at 347 tbl.303 (2003). The percentage of engineering degrees granted to Asians declined from 20% to 17.4%. Id. at 354 tbl.300. Over the same period of time, the percentage of law degrees awarded to Asian students increased from 1.1% to 2.3% (a 112% increase). Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Degrees Awarded, supra note 13. More informal evidence comes from Arthur S. Hayes, Asians Increase at Big Firms, Nat'l L.J., Dec. 18, 2000, at A1 ("Asian-American lawyers say that their disproportionately large numbers at IP firms reflect the choice of more second-and third-generation Asian-Americans to pursue careers outside engineering and science."). ???n77. The Center for Individual Rights provided funding and staff support for all three lawsuits, according to David B. Wilkins, From "Separate Is Inherently Unequal" to "Diversity Is Good for Business": The Rise of Market-Based Diversity Arguments and the Fate of the Black Corporate Bar, 117 Harv. L. Rev. 1548, 1551 (2004). ???n78. Public law schools were more attractive targets for several reasons. First, they were under clear constitutional as well as statutory (Title VI) bans on discriminatory practices; second, they were covered by state "freedom of information acts" (FOIAs) that made it easier to do data reconnaissance before filing suit; and third, there was more public hostility to the use of preferences by public universities than by private ones. ???n79. Hopwood v. Texas, 861 F. Supp. 551, 553-54, 578-79, 582 (W.D. Tex. 1994), rev'd, 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996). ???n80. Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, 944-46 (5th Cir. 1996). The court also found that the school's admissions program went well beyond what would be justified under Powell's diversity rationale even if that still applied. ???n81. Texas v. Hopwood, 518 U.S. 1033 (1996). Justice Ginsburg's concurrence with the denial of certiorari argued that because the 1992 admissions policy contested in Hopwood was no longer being used by the law school, there was no live issue to rule on; she distinguished between the Fifth Circuit's judgment, which found the 1992 policy to be in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifth Circuit's rationale, which rejected the use of race in admissions when based on a diversity rationale, and reminded the petitioners that the Court "reviews judgments, not opinions." Id. (Ginsburg, J., concurring in the denial of certiorari) (quoting Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842 (1984)). ???n82. 233 F.3d 1188 (9th Cir. 2000). ???n83. Id. at 1196, 1200-01. ???n84. Smith v. Univ. of Wash. Law Sch., 532 U.S. 1051 (2001) (denial of certiorari). ???n85. Smith, 233 F.3d at 1192-93. ???n86. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003); Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003). ???n87. Grutter v. Bollinger, 137 F. Supp. 2d 821, 847, 849, 872 (E.D. Mich. 2001), rev'd, 288 F.3d 732 (6th Cir. 2002), aff'd, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). ???n88. Id. at 853, 872. ???n89. Grutter v. Bollinger, 288 F.3d 732 (6th Cir. 2002), aff'd, 539 U.S. 306 (2003). ???n90. Grutter, 539 U.S. 306; Gratz, 539 U.S. 244. ???n91. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 325. ???n92. Id. at 337. ???n93. Gratz, 539 U.S. at 270. ???n94. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 315-16. ???n95. See id. at 337 (equating the law school's "race-conscious admissions program" with the Harvard plan Justice Powell approved of in Bakke, and noting that both "adequately ensure[] that all factors that may contribute to student body diversity are meaningfully considered alongside race in admissions decisions"). ???n96. See id. at 343 ("We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today. "). ???n97. See Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 288-89 (1978) (opinion of Powell, J.) (finding the "semantic distinction" between a goal and a quota to be "beside the point" because "the special admissions program is undeniably a classification based on race and ethnic background"); id. at 374 (Brennan, White, Marshall & Blackmun, JJ., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) ("True, whites are excluded from participation in the special admissions program, but this fact only operates to reduce the number of whites to be admitted in the regular admissions program in order to permit admission of a reasonable percentage ... of otherwise underrepresented qualified minority applicants."); id. at 412 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) ("The University, through its special admissions policy, excluded Bakke from participation in its program ... because of his race."). ???n98. See id. at 369 (Brennan, White, Marshall, & Blackmun, JJ., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (finding that "a state government may adopt race-conscious programs if the purpose of such programs is to remove the disparate racial impact its actions might otherwise have and if there is reason to believe that the disparate impact is itself the product of past discrimination, whether its own or that of society at large"). ???n99. See id. at 413 (Stevens, J., concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part) (finding that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "stands as a broad prohibition against the exclusion of any individual from a federally funded program on the ground of race") (quotation marks omitted) (emphasis omitted). ???n100. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 383 (Rehnquist, C.J., dissenting). For all three groups, the admitted members as a percentage of admittees never diverged by more than one percent from the applicant members as a percentage of applicants over the six admissions cycles from 1995 to 2000. See id. at 383-84, tbls.1-3. ???n101. Id. at 383 (quoting id. at 330 (opinion of the Court)). ???n102. Id. at 389 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). ???n103. Id. at 361 (Thomas, J., dissenting). ???N104. Gratz, 539 U.S. at 295-98 (Souter, J., dissenting). ???n105. Id. at 305 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting). ???n106. I base this claim on analyses of raw 2002 and 2003 admissions data from eight law schools, which I secured through FOIA requests. Logistic regression analysis of admissions outcomes suggests that something close to a 60/40 relative weight of LSAT and UGPA is quite common. ???n107. This approach of graphing the admissions probabilities of blacks and whites by academic index has been used by a number of scholars studying affirmative action, including Bowen and Bok as well as Kinley Larntz (a plaintiff's expert in the Michigan cases). See Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 27; Fourth Supplemental Expert Report of Kinley Larntz, Ph.D. at 25-33 figs.3-10, Grutter v. Bollinger, 137 F. Supp. 2d 821, 847, 849, 872 (E.D. Mich. 2001) (No. 97CV75928-DT). ???n108. Grutter, 539 U.S. at 334 (opinion of the Court). ???n109. Id. at 337. ???n110. See id. at 334; Regents of the Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 317 (1978) (opinion of Powell, J.). ???n111. The data in Justice O'Connor's concurrence can be found in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244, 277-78 (2003) (O'Connor, J., concurring). ???n112. For college applicants, the formula would be Index = [(Combined SAT - 400)/2] + 100 High School GPA, with GPA measured on a 4.0 scale. ???n113. Note, too, that our law school data is not broken down by state residency. Since the law school apparently counts Michigan residency for something, and this something would account for part of the limited attention given to nonacademic factors, this leaves even less scope for nonracial "diversity" factors. ???n114. For more on logistic regression, see supra notes 189-191 and accompanying text. ???n115. Even if these other diversity factors are highly correlated with academic credentials, academic credentials should have less explanatory power in this part of the sample than they would otherwise, and this would be reflected in the Somers's D. ???n116. This picture is a slight oversimplification, in two respects. First, the "Asian track" became more complex and nuanced as the size and strength of the Asian admissions pool increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Japanese, Chinese, and Korean applicants gradually received less of a preference, while Asians from the Philippines and Southeast Asia continued to receive substantial preferences and be viewed as underrepresented minorities. Second, the segregation of admissions decisions by race coexisted with overall comparisons of racial pools. In a given year, the Hispanic pool might be particularly strong and the black pool particularly weak, so more Hispanics and fewer blacks than usual would be admitted. But these cross-racial comparisons were between groups, not individuals. ???n117. One of the seven law schools that responded thoroughly to our FOIA request was Michigan's. It is interesting to note that in quantitative terms, the University of Michigan Law School was less rigidly bound by quantitative factors in its 2002 and 2003 admissions than it was in 1999 (and several earlier admissions cycles I studied). A regression of white admissions at Michigan shows a Somers's D of .80 in 2002 and .82 in 2003 - among the lowest rates of all the schools I studied. Dean Evan Caminker told me that, at least since he became aware of the admissions process several years ago, the school has not used any formal academic index in admissions and has strived to implement the holistic practices it advertised in the Grutter litigation. This notwithstanding, the law school's black admissions are still overwhelmingly driven by numbers (Somers's D of .90 in 2002 and 2003) and it is still not possible to explain the school's racial pattern of admissions without assuming that race is given decisive weight for most matriculating blacks. ???n118. Despite my repeated suggestions that law schools engage in pervasive public dissembling about how their admissions systems operate, I would like to offer a word in defense of admissions officers. The numeric part of what they do - sorting applicants by race and index number, admitting the stronger and rejecting the weaker ones within each group - takes very little time, even if it ultimately accounts for ninety percent of their admissions decisions. The vast majority of an admissions director's time is spent reviewing the relatively small number of intermediate cases, as well as screening out the tiny minority of high-number applicants who will be rejected and the equally small number of low-number applicants who will be admitted. From their perspective, engaging in a "holistic appraisal" of applicants is central to their job. ???Admissions offices also frequently spend a great deal of time and effort on minority outreach, perhaps reasoning that the larger the applicant pool from which they can draw, the smaller the numeric boost they will have to give minority applicants to achieve the requisite racial diversity. ???n119. Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 15. This statement certainly does not apply to law schools, the vast majority of which do use selective admissions. I doubt that it is true even for undergraduate schools. Peterson's Guide to Four-Year Colleges (one of the sources cited by Bowen and Bok) ranks colleges by admissions selectivity. Seventy-five percent of all colleges place themselves in the top three categories ("most difficult," "very difficult," and "moderately difficult"); if the colleges are accurately describing their policies, these are all selective institutions. See Peterson's Guide to Four-Year Colleges 1998, at 51-56 (28th ed. 1997); see also Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 15 n.1. ???Even if the "twenty to thirty percent" claim were true, it would be a highly misleading statistic. There are some three thousand colleges in the United States, but a great many of these are small and local and/or only grant intermediate degrees. A relatively small number of colleges and universities account for a large share of those seeking graduate education. A mere one hundred college-level institutions - about 3% of the total - account for about 40% of all law school applicants; the top two hundred feeder institutions - about 6% of the total - account for 55% of law school applicants. See Law Sch. Admission Council, National Statistical Report 1997-98 Through 2001-02, at A-13 (2003). ???n120. Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 361-62 (2003) (Thomas, J., dissenting) (citation omitted). ???n121. Medical schools widely use interviews in evaluating candidates, a luxury they can afford because of their high faculty-student ratios. Business schools frequently require and assess evidence of real-world organizational or business experience. Graduate schools in the arts and sciences rely heavily on letters of recommendation (which are more meaningful since the network of recommenders is relatively small and specialized) and assessments of prior written and research work - again, a more subjective process that is facilitated by smaller numbers of applicants. ???n122. See Part IV for a substantial elaboration of this point. See too my discussion in the Conclusion about improving admissions methods; my own research suggests that we can and should diversify admissions criteria in law schools beyond the traditional LSAT and UGPA, so long as we can properly validate new methods. ???n123. In their analysis of law school ranking by U.S. News and World Report, Stephen Klein and Laura Hamilton find that ???even by itself, the student selectivity factor explained about 90% of the differences in overall ranks among schools (i.e., percent of total variance). Since LSAT is the major driver of student selectivity (and is highly correlated with UGPA), ranking schools on LSAT alone will do a very good job of replicating the overall ranks U.S. News publishes. Stephen P. Klein & Laura Hamilton, The Validity of the U.S. News and World Report Ranking of ABA Law Schools (Feb. 18, 1998), at http://www.aals.org/validity.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004) (on file with author). ???n124. Russell Korobkin, In Praise of Law School Rankings: Solutions to Coordination and Collective Action Problems, 77 Tex. L. Rev. 403, 409-10 (1998). ???n125. As we shall see in Part VII, the job market for graduates takes at least as much account of a student's performance in law school as it does of her school's brand name. The point here is that both law schools and students behave as though brand name is transcendently important. ???n126. For a deeper discussion of the idea that law students and law school deans often behave as though the main purpose of law school is to create a credentialing "signal" to employers, see Mitu Gulati et al., The Happy Charade: An Empirical Examination of the Third Year of Law School, 51 J. Legal EdUC. 235 (2001), an expanded version of which was reprinted in 2 NYU Selected Essays on Labor and Employment Law (David Sherwyn & Michael J. Yelnosky eds., 2003). ???n127. Korobkin, supra note 124, at 408, 414. The LSAC distributes each year, to any accredited law school that asks for it, a "matriculation" report, which shows how the school fared against other schools in competing for students. The data is striking: ninety percent of students admitted to both a tenth-ranked and a fifteenth-ranked school will choose the more elite school. ???n128. To offer one illustration drawn essentially at random, consider Boalt's 2003 admissions. Boalt assigns each applicant an index (apparently based on UGPA and LSAT); most index figures are between 180 and 260. For whites admitted in 2003 with a Boalt index under 240, 34 of 48 enrolled (71%). For whites with a Boalt index of 250 or higher, 4 out of 107 enrolled (4%). The correlation between an admitted white applicant's index score and his probability of enrolling is -.85. This result emerges from data disclosed by the University of California, Berkeley, in response to a FOIA request; I currently have this data on file. ???n129. 2004 Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, supra note 34, at 820; Law Sch. Admission Council & Am. Bar Ass'n, The ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools: 2003 Edition 812 (2002) (reporting Yale's student body as 8.8% African American); Law Sch. Admission Council & Am. Bar Ass'n, The ABA-LSAC Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools: 2002 Edition 800 (2001) (reporting Yale's student body as 9.7% African American). ???n130. For the entering class of 2002, for example, the twenty-fifth to seventy-fifth percentile range at Yale Law School was 168-174; the twenty-fifth to seventy-fifth percentile range at Cornell was 164-166. 2004 Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, supra note 34, at 227, 821. If one could compute an index for each school, incorporating undergraduate grades and college quality, the ranges would be even tighter and would overlap even less. ???n131. Calculation by the author based on the figures for each school given in 2004 Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, supra note 34. ???n132. See Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10; Rosenlieb Memorandum, supra note 10. ???n133. Linda F. Wightman, LSAC National Longitudinal Bar Passage Study (1998) [hereinafter Wightman, LSAC-BPS]. The LSAC sought participation of all U.S. accredited law schools and all students at those schools. Over 160 law schools agreed to participate, and some eighty percent of the first-year students at those schools signed consent forms and completed the initial questionnaire, creating a sample size of over twenty-seven thousand students. See Wightman, User's Guide: LSAC National Longitudinal Data File 6 (1999) [hereinafter Wightman, User's Guide]. The sample appears to closely resemble the overall law student population (though since it excludes unaccredited schools, the "bottom" of the law school distribution is underrepresented). Id. at 5. Follow-up surveys were administered to a subsample which overrepresented minority students (to preserve an adequate sample size of different races). Id. at 6. The LSAC-BPS data itself is available on the Internet at Law School Admission Council, Bar Passage Study, http://bpsdata.lsac.org/ (last visited Dec. 3, 2004) [hereinafter LSAC-BPS Data]. ???n134. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133, at 5 (stating that "among the 172 U.S. mainland ABA-approved law schools invited to participate in this study, 163 [95%] agreed to do so," and that data from those schools is presented in the study); Wightman, User's Guide, supra note 133, at 1-11. The LSAC and Wightman were fairly successful at getting bar outcome data (from law schools and published lists) even when state bars did not cooperate. ???n135. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133, at 8. ???n136. The theory that a cascade effect should exist was deduced by Clyde Summers at the outset of the affirmative action experiment and advanced by him as an important reason why large-scale racial preferences could be self-defeating. Clyde W. Summers, Preferential Admissions: An Unreal Solution to a Real Problem, 1970 U. TOL. L. REV. 377, 401. In the 1980s, Robert Klitgaard elaborated on similar ideas in his remarkable book on admissions. Robert Klitgaard, Choosing Elites 173-75 (1985). Stephen Cole and Elinor Barber refer to similar ideas in their recent book. Stephen Cole & Elinor Barber, Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students 203-05 (2003). ???n137. In a forthcoming book, Patrick Anderson and I work through detailed simulations of the distribution of students by race across different school strata, under a variety of admissions scenarios. ???n138. More detail on this point is available from the author, and will be published in our forthcoming book on affirmative action in law schools. ???n139. This follows because the admissions standard vis-a-vis blacks does not change at all, so black admissions and matriculations in the first year of the experiment should also remain constant. ???n140. Klitgaard recognized this phenomenon in Choosing Elites. He even constructed a "yield curve" showing the size of the black-white gap in admissions standards necessary to enroll specified black populations of students. Klitgaard, supra note 136, at 172-74. ???n141. Clear examples are provided by Boalt Hall and the University of Texas School of Law, which both saw the number of black matriculants fall to nearly zero after each institution fell under bans on the use of race in admissions (Proposition 209 and Hopwood, respectively). Both schools were able to later raise black enrollments by finding ways around the legal constraints they faced. ???n142. A recent, well-done example of this point is Roy O. Freedle, Correcting the SAT's Ethnic and Social-Class Bias: A Method for Reestimating SAT Scores, 73 Harv. Educ. Rev. 1 (2003). Freedle finds that when one controls for SAT verbal score, blacks tend to do better on hard verbal questions and worse on easy verbal questions than do comparable whites. He argues plausibly that this is because the hard questions measure book learning while the easy questions measure cultural learning, an area where many blacks have a social disadvantage. In spite of very enthusiastic write-ups of Freedle's work in places like the Atlantic Monthly, it is important to keep two points in mind: Freedle's reconfigured scores close the black-white gap by only about five percent for test-takers at the median black score or higher, and the revised scores do not appear to have yet been validated as superior predictors of college performance. ???n143. Claude M. Steele & Joshua Aronson, Stereotype Threat and the Test Performance of Academically Successful African Americans, in The Black-White Test Score Gap 401 (Christopher Jencks & Meredith Phillips eds., 1998). Steele and Aronson theorize that the performance of blacks on tests is worse when they perceive those tests to be measures of "intelligence" or "cognitive skills," because they are aware of the general pattern of lower black performance on such tests. Fear of conforming to the "stereotype" decreases their concentration and confidence during the test. ???n144. For an example of this argument, see David M. White, An Investigation into the Validity and Cultural Bias of the Law School Admission Test, in Towards a Diversified Legal Profession 66, 129-32 (David M. White ed., 1981). ???n145. See Karl R. White, The Relation Between Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement, 91 Psychol. Bull. 461 (1982), cited in Larry V. Hedges & Amy Nowell, Black-White Test Score Convergence Since 1965, in The Black-White Test Score Gap, supra note 143, at 149, 161 n.14. ???n146. As I note in the Conclusion, I have little doubt that law schools and other institutions can improve their admissions criteria by developing other validated measures of capacity, but that opinion is not inconsistent with believing that most of the criticisms of the LSAT are greatly overblown. ???n147. Single-school validation studies can nonetheless be helpful in comparing the performance of groups within a school, or in assessing the effects of other influences on academic performance; they are simply invalid as a way of measuring the total utility of academic measures in predicting academic outcomes. ???n148. Klitgaard, supra note 136, at 201 tbl.A1.3. ???n149. Stephen P. Klein & Roger Bolus, Gansk & Assocs., Report DR-03-08, Analysis of the July 2003 Exam: Report to the Committee of Bar Examiners, State Bar of California 4 (2003). Klein and Bolus's analysis is based on nearly seven thousand cases. I would also note that when an individual law school's index captures important "soft" variables (like the difficulty of the applicant's undergraduate college) and the school's students have a wide range of index scores (limiting the restriction-of-range problem), predictive indices can be powerful even within that school. The UCLA School of Law met both of these criteria, and an analysis I conducted of nine classes of law students found that entering credentials achieved the following R[su'2'] values for subsequent grades: for first-semester GPA, .35; for second-semester GPA, .39; for first-year GPA, .44; for cumulative GPA upon graduation, .44. Note that the predictive power of credentials was as strong for graduation GPA as for first-year GPA. ???n150. The attentive reader may notice that I sometimes capitalize the r in r[su'2']. Formally, an r[su'2'] measures the amount of variation in a dependent variable accounted for by one independent variable, while an R[su'2'] measures the amount of variation in a dependent variable accounted for by multiple independent variable measured simultaneously. ???n151. Klitgaard, supra note 136, at 182-86; see also John Monahan, Risk and Race: An Essay on Violence Forecasting and the Civil/Criminal Distinction (2003) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author). ???n152. Knaplund, Winter, and I have complete data (background data provided by schools as well as questionnaires completed by students) for twenty participating law schools and over four thousand students. This database, known as the 1995 National Survey of Law Student Performance, is available on CD from the author. The overall response rate among first-year students at these schools was seventy-eight percent. Kris Knaplund, Kit Winter & Richard Sander, 1995 National Survey of Law Student Performance CD-ROM [hereinafter 1995 National Survey Data]. ???n153. For the schools collectively, the results were an r[su'2'] of .21 (with the restriction-of-range problem) for LSAT/UGPA alone and an R[su'2'] of .27 when data on studying, participation, etc. was added. See 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. ???n154. One of the earliest and best-known efforts to collect systematic data on the relationship between smoking and life expectancy was published in 1938 by Johns Hopkins biologist Raymond Pearl. If one assigns a large number of nonsmokers, light smokers, and heavy smokers the distribution of life expectancies measured by Pearl, the correlation of the three levels of smoking with life expectancy is -.177, even though the heavy smokers, as measured by Pearl, lived an average of seven years less than the nonsmokers. If one leaves out the category of light smokers (heightening the contrast), the correlation of heavy smoking with life expectancy is -.214. For the original data, see Raymond Pearl, Tobacco Smoking and Longevity, 87 Science 216 (1938). ???n155. Klitgaard, supra note 136, at 89 (citing Christopher Jencks et al., Who Gets Ahead? 57 (1979)). ???n156. These numbers are from actual simulations with data from 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. ???n157. I selected this area because it comes closest, within the LSAC-BPS data, to representing a single bar (California's), thus minimizing the problem of trying to compare a variety of state bar standards within the same statistic. ???n158. Admittedly, the sample sizes are small, but one observes similar patterns throughout the bar data. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n159. Indeed, even small differences in numbers are quite powerful when applied to large numbers of people, a point often overlooked by admissions officers and even by the LSAC, which has officially suggested "banding" LSAT scores to avoid giving an undue impression of precision. "Banding" or otherwise placing applicants in broad index categories simply throws information away. One hundred persons with an LSAT score of 161 are highly likely to have higher law school grades and higher pass rates on the bar than one hundred persons with an LSAT score of 160. ???n160. For example, a methodologically careful study by Donald Powers and Donald Rock found among a large random sample of SAT takers, only twelve percent "attended coaching programs offered outside their schools." Donald E. Powers & Donald A. Rock, Effects of Coaching on SAT I: Reasoning Scores 2 (College Entrance Examination Board, Report No. 98-6) (1998). Whites were significantly underrepresented among coached students, while blacks were mildly overrepresented. Powers and Rock compared a control group of several thousand students who took the SAT twice, without participating in a coaching program, with an experimental group who also took the SAT twice, but participated in a coaching program (for the first time) between the two tests. Students in both groups generally did somewhat better on the second test; for the coached students, the average net improvement over the control students was eight points on the verbal SAT and eighteen points on the math SAT (an overall gain of about one-eighth of a standard deviation). Id. at 13. ???n161. Suppose, for example, that the prep courses were twice as powerful as research suggests - in other words, suppose prepping could increase scores by a quarter of a standard deviation. Suppose further that instead of blacks being more likely to take cramming courses than whites (as the research cited in note 160 finds), whites were twice as likely as blacks to take such courses (say, 16% of whites but only 8% of blacks took the courses). Then the "test prep" disparity could account for 0.25 0.08, or 0.02 of a standard deviation in the black-white SAT gap. Since the actual score gap is around one standard deviation, our "prep gap" hypothetical, generous as it is, would explain only 2% of the black-white gap. ???n162. See, e.g., W.B. Schrader & Barbara Pitcher, Predicting Law School Grades for Black American Law Students, in 2 Reports of LSAC Sponsored Research 451 (1976); W.B. Schrader & Barbara Pitcher, Prediction of Law School Grades for Mexican American and Black American Students, in 2 Reports of LSAC Sponsored Research, supra, at 715; see generally Law Sch. Admission Council, 3 Reports of LSAC Sponsored Research (1977). ???n163. Klitgaard, supra note 136, at 162-64. ???n164. I found this pattern in two different data sets. In the 1995 National Survey of Law Student Performance, four of the twenty schools graded legal writing courses in the first semester; for those schools as a whole, the black-white gap was somewhat larger in legal writing classes than in other first-semester courses. The sample size is small, however, and the finding of a greater gap in legal writing classes is not quite statistically significant. Note, too, that for these four schools, most of the fifty-eight blacks in the sample came from a single school. See 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. The UCLA Academic Support Dataset, which Kris Knaplund and I used in our studies of academic support, contains data on law student performance over a nine-year period, including legal writing grades for two years, 1990-1991 and 1991-1992. If we compare the black-white grade gap for the 362 whites and 49 blacks in those two classes, the gap is 7.1 points in legal writing classes and 6.2 points in overall first-year averages. (At the time, the UCLA School of Law had a 0 to 95 grading system with a mean of 78 and a standard deviation of between 4 and 5 points.) Again, the larger black-white gap in legal writing classes is almost but not quite statistically significant, which is not surprising given the small sample size. Note that legal writing classes are generally not graded anonymously (as other first-year courses normally are), which introduces the added factor of possible bias. While I would not completely discount the influence of personal biases among professors, I believe that in the generally progressive world of law schools the net effect of bias is unlikely to be a net disadvantage for blacks. ???The larger point - that the black-white gap is not simply a function of exams involving time-pressure - is further reinforced by the finding in Part V that the black-white grade gap is slightly larger in the second and third years of law school than in the first year. Since upper-year courses in most schools employ a much wider array of evaluative methods (e.g., clinical exercises, seminar papers) than first-year courses, the fact that the black-white gap remains undiminished suggests that the gap is not a mere by-product of timed examinations. ???n165. My own, unpublished research suggests that a talented young person of any race growing up in a low-to-modest socioeconomic environment has a better chance of reaching the upper-middle class through ordinary capitalism than through a graduate degree, such as a law degree. If this is true, it suggests that a key goal of our public education and university system - to promote opportunity and bring talent to the fore - is not working. For reasons of effectiveness, utility, and fairness, discussed both in this Article and in Knaplund & Sander, supra note 4, simply providing racial preferences in college and graduate school admissions is too simple a fix. ???n166. For a representative example of this attitude, see Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 280-86. ???n167. Indeed, I think this theory is undoubtedly true in many contexts. See, e.g., Leonard S. Rubinowitz & James E. Rosenbaum, Crossing the Class and Color Lines (2000) (showing the educational benefits to black children whose parents are enabled to migrate from inner-city public housing to suburban school districts). ???n168. See supra note 133 and accompanying text. ???n169. The discerning reader may notice that the various n figures in Table 3.2 sum to 155, not to 163. This is because eight of the schools in the LSAC-BPS data were not included in these six clusters. In total, these schools only comprised fewer than two hundred data points out of a data set of over twenty-seven thousand, so their exclusion is not especially troubling. ???n170. Here, and in other tables of this type, some columns do not sum to 100.0% because of rounding. ???n171. It can be problematic to assume that blacks are on the same regression line as whites if a wide gulf separates their credentials. However, Table 5.2, by comparing respondents of all races, bridges the gulf. Moreover, a separate regression using only black respondents produces almost identical - indeed, slightly stronger - results (R[su'2'] of .21, standardized coefficients of 0.41 for ZLSAT and 0.25 for ZUGPA). ???n172. The reader may reasonably wonder why I have used a different data set to test how well entering credentials predict first-year grades. The answer is straightforward: The LSAC-BPS data set standardizes grades for each participating law school, but does not standardize the entering credentials of students according to the law school they attended. Nor does the data set permit the researcher to make such a standardization. Without this standardization, regression results would be meaningless at best and highly misleading at worst. The 1995 National Survey is a smaller database, but all of its variables can be identified by individual law school and the sample size is large enough to provide reliable results. ???n173. For a more detailed explanation of multiple regression, see Knaplund & Sander, supra note 4, at 208-24. ???n174. It is true that other researchers have found that black students' grades are lower than predicted by equations using background credentials. Bowen and Bok, for example, found substantial black "underperformance" in elite colleges. Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 76-78, 383 tbl.D.3.6. Such findings are generally due to three factors: (a) the inadequate measurement of background credentials (e.g., Bowen and Bok use very crude measures of high school grades and no measure of high school quality); (b) misspecification of appropriate statistical forms (depending on grading systems, curvilinear functions may be more appropriate than linear ones); and (c) the omission of factors related to affirmative action itself that depress performance (e.g., discouragement). Since my data does not show any net underperformance by blacks, I will not belabor the potential measurement problems that sometimes show up in other data sets. ???n175. In other words, the data show that if blacks were admitted to law school through race-neutral selection, they would perform as well as whites. As I have noted, there is nonetheless a very large black-white credentials gap among those applying to law school, and this gap does not disappear when one uses simple controls for such glib explanations as family income or primary-school funding. Researchers have made great strides over the past generation in accounting for the black-white gap in measured cognitive skills. The dominant consensus is that: (a) the gap is real, and shows up under many types of measurement; (b) the gap is not genetic, i.e., black infants raised in white households tend to have the same or higher cognitive skills as whites raised in the same conditions; and (c) there are a variety of cultural and parenting differences between American blacks and whites (e.g., time children spend reading with parents or watching television) that substantially contribute to measured skill gaps. On these points, see the excellent essays in The Black-White Test Score Gap, supra note 143, particularly chapters one through five. Jim Lindgren has pointed out that in the National Survey data analyzed in Table 5.2, the "race" coefficients become at least weakly significant (and negative) if one does not include those not reporting race with white students. So far as I can determine (from other data provided by some participating schools), students not reporting race were predominantly white or Asian, which supports the approach taken in this table. In any case, the race effects are still extremely weak. Under any formulation, academic outcomes for all racial groups are dominated by academic credentials, not race. ???n176. Note that I have renumbered the groups so that numbers descend with eliteness. In the LSAC-BPS codebook, our Group 1 is called "Cluster 5," Group 2 is called "Cluster 4," and so on. ???n177. See also Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. Two relevant explanatory notes on Table 5.3: (a) even though the black distribution is much more evenly distributed in Group 6 schools, the black percentile distribution is low relative to the percentile distribution of whites because there are a smaller number of whites and they are concentrated in the higher deciles; and (b) the Group 5 schools seem to be more heterogeneous in affirmative action policies, which would explain why there is a concentration of blacks at the high and low ends at those schools. ???n178. The size of the black-white gap in law school performance closely matches the size of the gap at highly selective undergraduate colleges, as reported by Bowen and Bok in The Shape of the River. They observed that the college grades of black students "present a ... sobering picture." Bowen & Bok, supra note 2, at 72. They report that the average class rank of black matriculants was at the twenty-third percentile. Id. I find that the black average percentile at the most elite law schools was at the twenty-first percentile. Of course, averages are raised disproportionately by a few students with very high grades - hence my general reliance on distributions and medians in reporting grade data. The implication of the statistic reported by Bowen and Bok is that the "typical" or "median" black student at elite American colleges has a class rank close to the tenth percentile and is outperformed by 94-95% of the white students. ???n179. This figure is derived from calculations by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n180. This figure is derived from calculations by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n181. Gulati et al., supra note 126, at 239. ???n182. William Henderson has recently shown that (at least at the two schools he studied) student LSAT scores predict law school performance best on timed, in-class exams; they are significantly poorer predictors of performance when professors use papers or take-home exams. I suspect Henderson is right; indeed, my own data (from 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152) show a similar pattern. I do not find, however, that the widespread use of timed exams in law schools explains the black-white gap. The data in Table 5.4 provides some indirect evidence on this point; my data on the black-white gap in legal writing classes, (discussed supra note 164), shows even more directly that the gap is as large or larger in nontimed classes. My legal writing samples are small, however, and I believe more research on this point is needed. See William D. Henderson, The LSAT, Law School Exams, and Meritocracy: The Surprising and Undertheorized Role of Test-Taking Speed, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 975, 986, 1043-44 (2004). ???n183. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n184. The unaccredited law schools, most of them located in California, have essentially open admissions and far higher attrition rates, partly because California requires students at unaccredited schools to take a "baby bar" at the end of their first year. ???n185. The aggregate ABA data for the entering class of 1991 suggests that about 8.7% of that class did not graduate; the LSAC-BPS data suggests that 9.2% of the students in their sample did not graduate, which I take as further evidence of the comprehensiveness and reliability of the LSAC-BPS data. See LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. Neither estimate, however, is completely reliable. The ABA data does not track individual students, but merely lets us estimate attrition by comparing the number of graduates for a given year (e.g., 1994) with the number of students entering three years earlier. The LSAC-BPS lost track of some students who dropped out of the study. Moreover, if we include non-ABA schools (which are absent from both data sources), attrition rates are somewhat higher. ???n186. Calculations by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n187. The reader should bear in mind that the LSAC-BPS "clusters," from which the six groups used in this analysis are drawn, were not created by the LSAC-BPS investigators simply to measure eliteness. If it were possible to create a more hierarchical ranking with this data, it would presumably show an even stronger association of eliteness with graduation rates. ???n188. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n189. The square root of the Wald Chi-Square value is comparable to the t-statistic in a linear regression. ???n190. As in linear regression, "statistical significance" is generally attributed to independent variables with a p-value under .05, but this is somewhat arbitrary. The lower a p-value (and the higher the Wald Chi-Square value), the more likely it is that the association is more than accidental. ???n191. For example, if 10% of our sample did not complete law school, we could guess any given person's graduation chances with 90% accuracy simply by consistently guessing that each person would graduate. A Somers's D of 0 in a model for predicting whether a person would graduate would thus indicate a model with that same 90% accuracy rate; a Somers's D of 1 would indicate a model with 100% accuracy; a Somers's D of .645, like the actual model above, would indicate a model with an accuracy of approximately 96.45%. ???n192. The meaning of the p-value here is analogous to its earlier definition; specifically, it represents the probability that the Wald Chi-Square test statistic would be as high as this or higher, assuming that there is no relationship between the variable in question and likelihood of passing the bar. ???n193. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n194. A better way of including eliteness as a variable in this regression would be to have a series of dummy variables, each corresponding to a different level of eliteness. But having run such a regression and finding that it produces very similar results, I opted for this simpler regression form to make the results more accessible.. ???n195. The proportion of part-time students in the LSAC-BPS sample is 9.5%. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n196. Admittedly, the LSAC's measure of family income is vague and self-reported. However, if family income were an important factor, we would expect more high-GPA students to drop out, unless the two were very highly correlated. ???n197. I say this because the Wald Chi-Square value for blacks is short of statistical significance. This is also true if we omit part-time status and family income from the regression. It is possible that multicollinearity between the black dummy variable and one or more of the explanatory variables (particularly law school GPA, as a result of affirmative action) may be affecting the variable's standard error, and therefore lowering its apparent statistical significance. However, this seems unlikely to be a problem for two reasons: First, the sample size is large, which compensates for the potentially reduced power of the estimators. Second, we would not expect multicollinearity to bias the estimators, only to increase their standard errors. In both regressions, to the extent that there is a relationship, it appears that blacks may be more likely to remain in law school than other students with similar characteristics. If so, this strengthens the argument that preferences and the consequent low grades are behind the higher black attrition. ???n198. Unless, of course, if discrimination against blacks were already reflected in their law school grades, quality of school, family income, etc. However, by far the most influential explanatory variable in predicting graduation rates is a student's law school grades. If blacks were getting lower grades in law school because of discrimination, we would expect the regression represented in Table 5.2 to have a strongly negative value for the black dummy variable; this is not the case. The quality of a student's school is the next most important factor, and affirmative action systematically raises these values. As such, it seems unlikely that there is some sort of animus-based systemic discrimination causing the elevated dropout rates among blacks. ???n199. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n200. It is true that a few whites are admitted to law schools with index scores below 460, but they are comparatively rare. In the LSAC-BPS database, there are 201 black law students with indices below 460 (11% of all black matriculants), but only 40 white law students (0.2% of all white matriculants). See LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n201. See Table 5.5, supra. ???n202. In the LSAC-BPS data (mostly for students who graduated in 1994) the first-time pass rate was 88.7%. See LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. My own analysis of the first-time bar passage data in the Bar Examiner for the 1994-1995 cycle yielded a lower number: 82.3%. See 1994 Statistics, B. Examiner, May 1995, at 7, 12-14. The discrepancy potentially can be explained by underreporting in the LSAC-BPS sample, varying definitions of "first-time" takers, and the exclusion of graduates of nonaccredited law schools (whose considerably lower passage rates significantly decrease California's overall passage rate) in the Bar Examiner data. Recently, however, bar passage rates have been declining throughout the United States. See discussion infra note 286 and accompanying text. ???n203. The LSAC-BPS data tracked participants' attempts to pass the bar through five bar administrations (summer 1994 through summer 1996). . The proportion of takers passing over this period was 94.8%. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. It is likely that some very small number of additional graduates in the cohort passed the bar later. ???n204. California is widely thought to have the most difficult bar - in 1994-1995 only 74% of first-time takers passed - but this is somewhat misleading, since California permits students from unaccredited law schools to take the bar. Bar-takers from unaccredited law schools accounted for approximately 35% of total bar-takers in California in 1994-1995 and passed the bar at much lower rates. At the other extreme, states such as South Dakota consistently have first-time bar passage rates above 90%. These figures were arrived at by summarizing data presented in issues of the Bar Examiner. See 1994 Statistics, B. Examiner, May 1995, at 7, 12, 14; 1995 Statistics, B. Examiner, May 1996, at 23, 28, 30. ???n205. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n206. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n207. It is a testimony to the importance of diversity goals that law school deans across the country accept much lower bar passage rates for their schools - and consequent losses in prestige - because of racial-preference policies. ???n208. The statistics here are based on data for the July 1998 California bar provided by Sean Pine, Registrar of the UCLA School of Law (on file with author). ???n209. The meaning of the p-value here is analogous to its earlier definition; specifically, it represents the probability that the Wald Chi-Square test statistic would be as high as this or higher, assuming that there were no relationship between the variable in question and likelihood of passing the bar. ???n210. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n211. Because the majority of black law students have significantly lower law school GPAs than the average student (recall that the median black student GPA falls between the fifth and sixth percentile for white students' GPAs), one might expect that multicollinearity between these variables would be a significant problem. To a lesser extent, this issue also arises with respect to the LSAT variable, and perhaps with undergraduate GPA as well. However, multicollinearity should only increase the variance of the parameter estimations, not the estimates themselves. In other words, our estimated coefficients should still be accurate, but they may not be as precise. However, in this case this is not a significant problem for two reasons: First, the sample size is quite large, which counteracts the loss in precision from the multicollinearity. Second, the relative size of the coefficients is so different, particularly for the primary trade-off at issue here (Law School Tier versus Law School GPA) that even if some of the estimators were slightly off, it almost certainly would not meaningfully affect any of the subsequent analysis or conclusions. ???n212. The regression behind Table 6.1 is a robust test of this statement. The same conclusion has been reached by Stephen Klein, of the Rand Institute, in studies of specific bar examinations. See Stephen P. Klein & Roger Bolus, The Size and Source of Differences in Bar Exam Passing Rates Among Racial and Ethnic Groups, B. Examiner, Nov. 1997, at 8, 15; cf. Stephen P. Klein, Law School Admissions, LSATs, and the Bar, Acad. Questions, Winter 2001-02, at 33. ???n213. In particular, I found these results are not affected by including other background variables such as part-time status, family income, or parents' education. ???n214. Summarizing data in tabular form often masks small distortions. Since the overall distribution of blacks by index is lower than the distribution of whites, it is statistically likely that when we categorize blacks and whites by index (as in Tables 6.2 and 5.7), the average index of blacks in each category is a little lower than the average index of whites. Fortunately, this distortion has only a trivial impact on the results I report. In Table 6.2, for example, the average difference between black and white average index scores in each category is under four points. ???n215. The analysis showed that if black bar-takers had been distributed regionally like whites, there would have been 308 blacks not passing the bar after two attempts, compared to 306 in the actual data; this strongly suggests that the analysis in Table 6.2 is not biased (or, if anything, slightly understates the black-white gap). ???n216. The Far West region in the LSAC-BPS definition includes California, Hawaii, and Nevada. Wightman, User's Guide, supra note 133, at 14. However, California bar-takers account for almost all of that region's total. For example, in 2002, the total number of people taking the California bar accounted for 93% of test-takers in the Far West region. See 2002 Statistics, B. Examiner, May 2003, at 6, 6-7. ???n217. Calculations by author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n218. Klein & Bolus, supra note 212, at 15. ???n219. In other words, consider two students who had similar academic indices when applying to law school. One chooses to attend Vanderbilt, the other chooses the University of Tennessee. If each performs similarly well in law school, as measured by their law school GPA, this theory would suggest that the University of Tennessee student would have a higher expected chance of passing the bar than the Vanderbilt student. In Table 6.1, this would manifest itself in a negative coefficient on the Law School Tier variable. Since the coefficient of tier is, in fact, positive, this suggests that otherwise comparable students will do better on the bar if they graduate from more elite schools, so long as they don 't get substantially lower grades at the more elite school. ???n220. I do not view this evidence as dispositive, since it is likely that differences in academic indices between school tiers understate actual differences in student ability. But the evidence of Table 6.1 at least throws substantial doubt on the idea that students at lower-tier schools have some intrinsic "edge" on the bar. ???n221. One might argue that had I stuck with German (or lived in Germany), immersion in a difficult environment would have given me a better command of German in the long run than taking German at a local community college. This might be true where withdrawal or disengagement is not an option. This does not seem to be true, however, for blacks benefiting from affirmative action. As we saw in Part V, the grade gap between blacks and whites increases from the first to the third years, despite the operation of other forces (such as taking fewer curved courses and regression to the mean) that should tend to narrow the gap over time. See also Rogers Elliott's analysis of the ""late bloomer' hypothesis, " Rogers Elliott et al., The Role of Ethnicity in Choosing and Leaving Science in Highly Selective Institutions, 37 Res. Higher Educ. 681, 695-96 (1996). ???n222. Clyde Summers, in his 1970 critique of affirmative action, articulated the problem with his usual clarity. Summers, supra note 136, at 392-93. Thomas Sowell articulated the mismatch problem as well and probably played the leading role in getting the idea into general circulation. See Thomas Sowell, The Plight of Black College Students, in Education: Assumptions Versus History 130, 130-31 (1986); see also Paul T. Wangerin, Law School Academic Support Programs, 40 Hastings L.J. 771, 779 (1989). ???n223. For the relation between stress and learning, see B.A. Glesner, Fear and Loathing in the Law Schools, 23 Conn. L. Rev. 627, 635 (1991). For the relation between low performance and stress, see Alfred G. Smith, Cognitive Styles in Law School 125 (1979) and Robert Stevens, Law Schools and Law Students, 59 Va. L. Rev. 551, 656 (1973). ???n224. See Steve H. Nickles, Examining and Grading in American Law Schools, 30 Ark. L. Rev. 411, 431, 476-78 (1977); Michael I. Swygert, Putting Law School Grades in Perspective, 12 Stetson L. Rev. 701, 702, 712 (1983). ???n225. Linda Datcher Loury & David Garman, College Selectivity and Earnings, 13 J. Lab. Econ. 289, 301, 303 (1995). Thomas Kane argues that Loury and Garman 's graduation rate findings are due to the inclusion of historically black institutions in the data set, since these colleges traditionally "have low mean SAT scores but high graduation rates." Thomas J. Kane, Racial and Ethnic Preferences in College Admissions, in The Black-White Test Score Gap, supra note 143, at 431, 445. Kane's critique, however, does not address Loury and Garman's hypothesis of GPA as a function of the difference between a student's SAT score and the median SAT score of the institution she attends. Loury & Garman, supra, at 300-01. ???n226. Audrey Light & Wayne Strayer, Determinants of College Completion: School Quality or Student Ability?, 35 J. Hum. Resources 299, 301 (2000). ???n227. Elliott et al., supra note 221. ???n228. Id. at 699. ???n229. Id. ???n230. Id. at 701. ???n231. Id. ???n232. Id. ???n233. Id. at 702. ???n234. Id. at 695. ???n235. Cole & Barber, supra note 136, at 187-212 (2003) (discussing the negative effect of academic mismatch on grades, self-confidence, and career aspirations). ???n236. Id. at 193-200. ???n237. Id. at 208-09. ???n238. Id. at 212. ???n239. 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. ???n240. The proportion of students who reported studying thirty or more hours per week was 57.8% for blacks and 58.6% for whites, and the overall mean value for blacks was slightly higher than for whites; neither difference is statistically significant. Calculation by author from 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. ???n241. We also found that student responses to the "class preparation" question strongly predict grades in the first semester. Calculation by author from 1995 National Survey Data, supra note 152. ???n242. Stacy Berg Dale and Alan Krueger have completed a study with this design using undergraduate students of all races matched for the schools that admitted them. They were primarily interested in job outcomes, not academic performance, but they found that attending more elite schools did not produce higher payoffs in the job market. Stacy Berg Dale & Alan B. Krueger, Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College, 117 Q.J. Econ. 1491, 1493 (2002). ???n243. By "minorities," the authors meant blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans - the groups that benefit from preferences in Michigan admissions. Lempert et al., supra note 2, at 399. ???n244. Id. at 496-97. The authors found that law school grades and entering credentials (an index of LSAT and UGPA) did not predict career satisfaction at all. Id. Law school grades were positively associated with income, but they explained less than five percent of the variation in alumni income. Id. at 501. And entering credentials, according to the authors, were actually negatively associated with future income once proper controls were introduced. Id. at 478 tbl.31 (showing a correlation of -.002 in Model 2A). ???n245. "Indeed, we are confident that neither the white nor minority graduates of schools substantially less prestigious than Michigan will do as well financially as Michigan graduates, and we expect from the literature on the legal profession that they will be less satisfied with their careers." Id. at 503 n.74. ???n246. My collaborators on AJD are Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Joyce Sterling, Gita Wilder, Terry Adams, Jeffrey Hanson, Bob Nelson, Paula Patton, David Wilkins, and Abbie Willard. We have been actively supported by the American Bar Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the LSAC, the National Association of Law Placement, the Soros Foundation, the Access Group, and the National Conference of Bar Examiners. ???n247. The LSAC provided the LSAT and UGPA of each person in our sample for whom they had data (about eighty-five percent of all respondents), but expressed the data in terms of standard deviations above or below the mean for the entire sample. We therefore cannot determine any individual's absolute LSAT score or UGPA; we can simply determine how each respondent compared to others in our sample - which, for our statistical purposes, is just as good. ???n248. The self-reported data do seem to be fairly reliable. I say this because we also asked respondents to tell us their undergraduate GPA, and when we compared this with the data provided by LSAC (which was originally collected from the undergraduate institutions themselves), the correlation was .86. ???n249. AJD actually includes two samples. The national sample includes just under four thousand attorneys from eighteen primary sampling areas who, in the aggregate, closely resemble the national population of new attorneys in geographic distribution, job type, gender, and race. A minority oversample added some six hundred black, Hispanic, and Asian attorneys from these sampling areas, so that the two samples combined include around four hundred respondents from each of these three major racial/ethnic groups. All participants were selected from lists of persons passing the bar in 2000 in the sampling areas. Of those located, seventy-one percent participated in either mail, phone, or web survey form. For more on the methods and the AJD sample, see Ronit Dinovitzer et al., After the JD: First Results of a National Study of Legal Careers 89-90 (2004), available at http://www.nalpfoundation.org/webmodules/articles/anmviewer.asp?a=87&z=2 (last visited Nov. 22, 2004). Those who are interested in further information on the AJD data should conctact Paula Patton, CEO and President of the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education, at ppatton at nalpfoundation.org [hereinafter AJD Data]. ???n250. There is an interesting prior question: do entering credentials of law students have any long-term predictive value in the job market? Lempert et al. claimed that an index of LSAT and UGPA was actually negatively correlated with the future income of Michigan graduates. See Lempert et al., supra note 2, at 478 tbl.31 (showing a correlation of -0.002 in Model 2A). The AJD data shows that both LSAT and UGPA are correlated with postgraduate earnings. Of course, these credentials are highly correlated with the eliteness of the school students attend, so the correlation may simply be capturing this eliteness effect. When we run a regression similar to that in Table 7.1, controlling for eliteness, LSAT (but not UGPA) is highly predictive of future earnings. AJD Data, supra note 249; see also regression at http://www1.law.ucla.edu/ sander/Data%20and%20Procedures/StanfordArt.htm. ???n251. I also ran the model without logging income; the results are very similar, but the explanatory power of the model drops a little (as one would expect) and the coefficients are harder to interpret. Moreover, without logging, the influence on the model of those few people with very large salaries becomes unduly great. ???n252. The data in this table includes income from both salary and bonuses. ???n253. The measures of market area and school prestige have a surprisingly low correlation of .243 for the AJD respondents. I therefore believe that the high coefficient for market area is, for the most part, not because those markets are dominated by high-prestige jobs, but because of cost-of-living differences. For example, the living expenses for a typical young attorney working in New York City are probably about 14% higher than the expenses of a comparable attorney working in Chicago or Los Angeles. ???n254. About seventy-five percent of respondents specified a GPA; many of the nonrespondents came from law schools that do not grade on a standard 4.0 scale (e.g., Yale, which uses "low pass," "pass," "honors," and "high honors"). ???n255. When one is attempting to compare outcomes for several mutually exclusive groups (like men and women; north, south, and west; etc.), one leaves out one group (usually the numerically largest group), and that provides an implicit "base" for comparison against all the others. Whites are the excluded group in this model for racial comparisons; women are excluded for gender comparisons. ???n256. The variable "Other Race" is not a very helpful one. It includes American Indians, multiracial persons, and people of various races who declined to identify themselves racially. ???n257. This argument makes sense in terms of economic theory. I say in the analysis of bar results in Part VI that going to a more elite school and getting low grades had the net effect of increasing blacks' chances of failing the bar; indeed, it was as if one had lopped over one hundred points off the entering credentials of the typical black student in predicting her bar performance. See supra Table 6.2. If the bar measures something about future job performance that employers value, then a market operating with perfect information should attach lower value to a more elite graduate with bad grades than a somewhat less elite graduate with higher grades. ???n258. In the actual data, the "top ten" schools had a mean reported GPA of 3.42 in our data, while ten schools pulled from the middle of the distribution had a mean reported GPA of 3.23. ???n259. See Klein & Hamilton, supra note 123; Korobkin, supra note 124, at 403, 405-07; see also David E. Rovella, A Survey of Surveys Ranks the Top U.S. Law Schools, Nat'l L.J., June 2, 1997, at A1; M.A. Stapleton, Push Is on for Unranked Guide to Schools, Chi. Daily L. Bull., Jan. 10, 1997, at 3. ???n260. This is hardly an ideal measure. We don't know the actual mean GPAs at particular schools, and the GPAs we do have are only from those who passed the bar, who participated in our survey, and who answered the question on GPA - all effects that probably bias the mean upward. In addition, the sample sizes for a few schools were small. However, the limitations of this measure are very different from (and do not overlap with) the limits of using raw GPA. So, if similar effects come from this measure, it serves its purpose of providing an effective check. ???n261. I computed rankings for individual law schools by averaging two other rankings: first, the school's academic reputation among other academics, as measured by U.S. News & World Report in 1997 (the last year, I believe, that U.S. News & World Report published a complete listing of this measure); and second, the school's rank in median student LSAT, as measured by averaging the 25th percentile and 75th percentile LSAT figures reported by law schools for the entering class of 2002-03. 2004 Official Guide to ABA-Approved Law Schools, supra note 34, passim; U.S. News & World Report, America's Best Graduate Schools: 1997 Edition 38-40 (1997). There are many other ways to rank law schools, but the results of these various methods tend to be highly collinear. With this ranking, I assigned the top ten schools to Category I, ranks 11-20 to Category II, ranks 21-40 to Category III, ranks 41-70 to Category IV, ranks 71-100 to Category V, ranks 101-130 to Category VI, ranks 131-160 to Category VII, and the remaining schools to Category VIII, which is used as the "omitted" category in the analysis. ???n262. This is not a perfect measure of capturing the effect of prestige; I suspect that no single approach can do the job. I do find that a variety of approaches produce substantially the same results that I report here - the trade-off of eliteness for lower grades is a negative for blacks across much of the range of schools, but is probably a net positive at the very top schools. ???n263. It is particularly relevant to note that, in these more complex regressions, the earnings premiums for blacks (7% to 9%) and men (3% to 5%) are still statistically significant; no premium or penalty is apparent for any of the other ethnic groups. ???n264. The parameter estimate for Tier 1 is 0.404 and for Tier 3 it is 0.194; the difference is 0.21, which corresponds to a 21% difference in earnings. ???n265. Like a number of the ideas that I thought were original at the outset of this project, the effect I describe in this part - lower grade performance offsetting the labor market value of a more elite school - was anticipated and demonstrated by others. Linda Datcher Loury and David Garman, using the National Longitudinal Study, find a very similar pattern for college students benefiting from affirmative action. See Linda Datcher Loury & David Garman, Affirmative Action in Higher Education, 83 Am. Econ. Rev. 99 (1993). Along similar lines, see Dale & Krueger, supra note 242. ???n266. The ABA, in its brief for the respondents in Grutter, argued that "the reduction in minority enrollment that would result from an abandonment of the policies embraced by Bakke, as evidenced by recent experience in Texas and California, would undo much of what has been accomplished in the last several decades." Brief of Amicus Curiae American Bar Association at 20, Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (No. 02-241), available at http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2002/april.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004). Similar claims were made in the briefs submitted by the American Law Deans Association and the AALS. See Brief of Amicus Curiae American Law Deans Association at 5, Grutter, 539 U.S. 306 (No. 02-241), available at http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/ supreme_court/docket/2002/april.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004); Brief of Amicus Curiae Association of American Law Schools at 3, Grutter, 539 U.S. 306 (No. 02-241), available at http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2002/april.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004). ???n267. Grutter, 539 U.S. 306. ???n268. Brief of Amicus Curiae Law School Admission Council at 9-10, Grutter, 539 U.S. 306 (No. 02-241), available at http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/supreme_court/docket/2002/april.html (last visited Nov. 22, 2004). ???n269. Black applications to Boalt fell by 36% from 1996 to 1997, the year Proposition 209 took effect. Black applications to all UC law schools fell by 31% over the same period, while total white applications declined by only 3%. Data Mgmt. & Analysis Unit, Univ. of Cal. Office of the President, University of California Law and Medical Schools Enrollments, http://www.ucop.edu/acadadv/datamgmt/lawmed/ (last visited Dec. 2, 2004). ???n270. Evans, supra note 46. ???n271. Id. at 602 tbl.15. ???n272. This method could underestimate actual black admissions. It might well be that blacks with, say, an index of 650 have more impressive records of leadership, community service, or other qualities than do whites with an index of 650, because the black applicants with those indices stand much higher academically relative to other blacks than is the case with whites. Since schools take such matters into account at the margin, we would expect blacks to have slightly higher admissions rates, within any box of the grid, under a race-blind system. ???n273. See Evans, supra note 46, at 609 tbl.17, 612. Note that this figure, unlike some cited in Part II, includes the historically black law schools. ???n274. Linda F. Wightman, The Threat to Diversity in Legal Education: An Empirical Analysis of the Consequences of Abandoning Race as a Factor in Law School Admissions Decisions, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1, 2 (1997) [hereinafter Wightman, Threat to Diversity]. ???n275. Wightman's article contained a parallel analysis calculating the proportion of blacks who would be admitted to the schools they applied to in 1991 if no racial preferences had been in effect. See id. at 6. This second approach produces more catastrophic results (which have received far more attention), see id. at 14-18, but these results are nonsensical for the reasons discussed at the beginning of this Part. ???n276. See id. at 22 tbl.5. ???n277. This claim is based on a comparison of Evans, supra note 46, at 582 tbl.3, 599 tbl.12 and Wightman, Threat to Diversity, supra note 274, at 22 tbl.5. ???n278. Linda Wightman, The Consequences of Race-Blindness: Revisiting Prediction Models with Current Law School Data, 53 J. Legal Educ. 229, 229 (2003) [hereinafter Wightman, Race-Blindness]. ???n279. Note that the black proportion of total applicants did not improve as dramatically, since the numbers for other nonwhite groups were rising too, but the white number is important because it shapes the size of the preference. ???n280. The 2001 data is from the LSAC's National Statistical Report, which has slightly higher total numbers than Wightman - Wightman does not present enough data in her article to make direct comparisons possible. ???n281. See Wightman, LSAC-BPS, supra note 133. ???n282. Black graduation rates and bar passage rates would still be somewhat lower than white rates in a race-blind system, simply because the average credentials of blacks (in the system as a whole, not at individual schools) would still be lower than those of whites. But something like three-quarters of existing disparities would disappear. ???n283. Twenty-nine percent of this group passed the bar within five attempts. Calculations by author from LSAC-BPS Data, discussed supra note 133. ???n284. See supra Part II. ???n285. For data on enrollment by race at ABA law schools, see Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. My attrition statistics compare black first-year enrollment in 1991 and 1999 with third-year enrollment two years later. ???n286. This data is compiled from the Bar Examiner, which publishes bar passage statistics for the past year in each May's issue. The data is for all first-time bar-takers in the summer and winter administrations for 1994-1995 and 2002-2003. ???n287. See State Bar of Cal., Examination Results/Statistics at http://calbar.ca.gov/state/calbar/calbar_generic.jsp?sImagePath=Examination_Resu lts_Statistics.gif&sCategoryPath=/Home/About%20the%20Bar/Bar%20Exam &sHeading=Examination%20Results/Statistics&sFileType=HTML &sCatHtmlPath=html/Admissions_Old-Statistics.html (last visited Nov. 3, 2004). ???n288. Calculation by the author from AJD Data, supra note 249. ???n289. Calculation by the author from LSAC-BPS Data, supra note 133. ???n290. Dinovitzer et al., supra note 249, at 73 tbl.10.1. ???n291. According to AJD data, aid from law schools covered only 5% of the law school expenses of Hispanics in the Class of 2000, but 14% of the law school expenses of blacks. Id. The size of the Hispanic cohort matriculating in law school in the fall of 2001 was equal to 3.4% of the number of Hispanics graduating from college that year; the comparable figure for blacks was 3.1%. See U.S. Census Bureau, supra note 11, at 191; Am. Bar Ass'n, Minority Enrollment 1971-2002, supra note 10. And, in one of the few available studies on this point, the median parental income for Hispanic applicants to one major law school in 1997 was $ 31,000, compared to $ 38,000 for black applicants. Sander, supra note 5, at 494. ???n292. The "as a whole" qualifier is important. None of the empirical claims applies to every black individually - indeed, we can empirically demonstrate that there are exceptions. Some blacks are not direct beneficiaries of preferences; some buck the odds and excel academically. But since affirmative action policies treat blacks as a single group, we can only sensibly analyze the aggregate effects of those policies by examining consequences on blacks as a whole. ???n293. Such goals, of course, would be floors, not ceilings; schools should not limit their admission of black candidates who satisfy the standards applied to other students. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:31:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:31:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: MIT Students' Program for Generating Phony Computer-Science Papers Produces a Winner Message-ID: MIT Students' Program for Generating Phony Computer-Science Papers Produces a Winner News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005041502t.htm [45]By ANDREA L. FOSTER Fill a paper with gobbledygook, add some fake charts, slap on a title dense with highfalutin scientific jargon, and -- voil?! --- a highfalutin conference may actually accept it. That's what happened when three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology submitted a nonsensical research paper to the ninth World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics, scheduled to be held in Orlando, Fla., in July. The paper, called "Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy," was accepted by the conference organizers late last month. A computer program the students had created in about three weeks to churn out phony computer-science language randomly generated their four-page paper. The conclusion of the paper says, "Here we motivated Rooter, an analysis of rasterization. We leave out a more thorough discussion due to resource constraints." "Rasterization" is a real computer-science term, but is meaningless in the context of the paper's gibberish. Jeremy A. Stribling says he and his co-authors, Maxwell Krohn and Daniel Aguayo, were motivated to design the program after receiving a lot of e-mail messages prodding them to submit research papers to the conference. The three are graduate students in computer science. "We figured out that they probably didn't have a very strong peer-review process for these papers," says Mr. Stribling of the conference organizers. "It's probably just a money-making scheme, so we thought it would be fun to write some software to generate papers." After submitting their paper, the students received an e-mail message from someone identifying himself as Professor Nagib Callaos, of Orlando, who wrote that their manuscript had been accepted as a "non-reviewed paper." He did not comment on the paper's content. But his message to the students said, in part, "Each accepted papers (reviewed and non-reviewed) is candidate for being best paper of its respective session and, consequently, it is candidate for a second reviewing process to be made by the reviewers of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (JSCI)." Mr. Callaos also is listed as the editor-in-chief of the journal. The students submitted a second random paper, "The Influence of Probabilistic Methodologies on Networking," which was rejected. The students then requested a review of the paper, and Mr. Callaos replied, "As you know there are more perspectives and opinions on this issue. Willis & Bobys (1983, Perishing in Publishing: An analysis of rejection letters. Wisconsin sociologist, 20(2-3), 84-91), for example, found that 54% of the rejection letters provided some justification for the rejection, and the most frequent reason (19%) was that the manuscript was 'inappropriate for the journal.'" Conference administrators did not respond to e-mailed or faxed requests for comment Thursday. The conference Web site provides a telephone number in Venezuela, but a call to the number went unanswered. The students describe their sleight-of-hand on a [63]Web site that they are also using to solicit donations so they can attend the conference. Mr. Stribling says he and his friends have raised $2,200 since Monday, but need only $1,300. They might return the extra money or "figure out something really cool to do with it," says Mr. Stribling. Officials at the Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando confirmed that the conference is actually happening there. But Mr. Stribling says he won't be surprised if he and his friends end up speaking to an empty room. Some people have called the conference a "vanity press" for academics who merely want to pad their r?sum?s, says Mr. Stribling. The students plan to videotape their talk and post it online. "We're going to write software to generate a random talk, and we're going to have random slides that come up," says Mr. Stribling. Their Web site also gives Web visitors a chance to generate their own phony computer-science papers. The students' charade is reminiscent of that of Alan Sokal, a New York University physicist whose nonsensical piece about postmodern quantum theory was accepted in 1996 for publication in Social Text, an academic journal about social and cultural trends ([64]The Chronicle, May 31, 1996). References 45. mailto:andrea.foster at chronicle.com 63. http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/scigen/ 64. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-42.dir/issue-38.dir/38a01001.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:38:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:38:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: First clone of champion racehorse revealed Message-ID: First clone of champion racehorse revealed * 11:59 14 April 2005 * NewScientist.com news service * Andy Coghlan The cloned foal, pictured with her mother, was the only live birth from 34 implanted embryos (Image: Giovanna Lazzari) The cloned foal, pictured with her mother, was the only live birth from 34 implanted embryos (Image: Giovanna Lazzari) The first ever clone of a champion racehorse was unveiled on Thursday at a press conference in Italy. The foal was cloned from a skin cell of Pieraz, a multiple world champion in equine endurance races of up to 50 kilometres. Unlike conventional horseracing, which bans the use of non-natural methods of breeding, including cloning, endurance racing is among the half dozen or so equine sports which would allow cloned competitors. Others include dressage, showjumping, three-day-eventing, polo and carriage horse racing. It is the first time an elite racehorse has been cloned, and comes two years after the appearance of Prometea, the first and only other cloned horse. Prometea was just a scientific experiment and, scientifically, theres not much new about the new clone, says Cesare Galli, who produced both horses at the University of Bologna in Cremona, Italy. But from an industry viewpoint, the new horse is the real thing. Recreating testicles Like most endurance racehorses, Pieraz was castrated young and so cannot breed. The idea of cloning him was to recreate his testicles for breeding purposes, says Eric Palmer of Cryozootech, a company based in Paris, France, which supported Gallis latest cloning work. The plan is to make this horse a stallion, says Palmer, and the clone will be mature enough to breed within two years. But although the new clone is Pierazs genetic twin, he says there is no guarantee that it will perform as well as the champion racehorse. Environmental factors could be crucial. The clone is the first of many planned by Cryozootech. We have samples of 33 horses in our genetic bank, says Palmer. They include samples from ET, the worlds top showjumping horse, and from Rusty, a top dressage horse. Galli created Prometea and the latest clone using the same technique - implanting skin cells into eggs emptied of their own genetic material. Galli had improved upon his success rate, with 15% of the embryos created suitable for transplant this time, compared to just 3% with Prometea. But the foal was the only live birth from the 34 embryos Galli implanted into 12 foster mothers, three of which became pregnant. Galli says the foal is healthy: It was born in February and has been very well. Political capitulation A team in the UK, which recently received government approval to clone horses for scientific purposes, welcomed the Italian breakthrough but is frustrated that the British government will not allow cloning for commercial purposes. William Allen, head of the team at the Equine Research Unit in Newmarket, UK, accuses the government of capitulating to animal welfare groups. Animal Aid, a British-based animal welfare lobby group, opposes cloning of horses on the grounds that cloned embryos are often deformed or grossly over-sized, and so should not be created for what they argue is a leisure activity. Allen hopes that the government will change its mind but in the meantime is planning two non-commercial research experiments. In one, he hopes to take DNA from a mare and then implant the cloned embryo into the same horse. In another, he plans to create and implant donkey-horse hybrid embryos to see how much DNA from the egg ends up in the clone. This could be important if it disrupts the transplanted nuclear DNA and thus the traits of an elite horse. Related Articles * [53]World's first cloned horse is born * 06 August 2003 * [54]Mule birth marks equine cloning breakthrough * 29 May 2003 * [55]Cloners press on despite UK nay * 15 May 2004 * [56]Search New Scientist * [57]Contact us Web Links * [58]University of Bologna, Cremona * [59]Cryozootech * [60]Newmarket Equine Fertility Unit * [61]Jockey Club References 53. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4026 54. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3780 55. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18224471.500 56. http://www.newscientist.com/search.ns;jsessionid=BALLINODEEAG 57. http://www.newscientist.com/contact.ns;jsessionid=BALLINODEEAG?recipient=dn 58. http://www.ciz.it/ 59. http://www.cryozootech.com/ 60. http://www.any-uk-vet.co.uk/equine/ 61. http://www.thejockeyclub.co.uk/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:40:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:40:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: (Black Studies) Past Their Prime? Message-ID: Past Their Prime? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33a00901.htm After 35 years on campuses, black-studies programs struggle to survive By ROBIN WILSON Minneapolis The "on air" sign lights up in the recording studio here at the University of Minnesota, and Quintin Brown begins to read from a script in a strong voice, carefully articulating every word. Two professors listen closely, offering pointers from the studio's cramped control room as Mr. Brown -- an African-American high-school student -- narrates a multimedia presentation aimed at attracting undergraduates to the university's black-studies department. By the fifth line of the presentation, Mr. Brown gets to the crucial question: What exactly can you do with a major in African-American studies? He lists several real-life examples of students who majored in black studies and went on to hold jobs in government, academe, the arts, and other fields. But black students on this campus do not seem very interested in the message. Most of the dozen or so students gathered in the Black Student Union at lunchtime one recent day have eschewed black studies for more practical subjects like architecture, chemical engineering, law, and marketing. Alton Robinson, a freshman who stops by the Black Student Union to watch TV and hang out between classes, feels an affinity for black studies. "Since I'm African-American, I should want to study it," he says. But major in it? "I don't think society would take that seriously," he says. "They wouldn't be impressed." Minnesota's black-studies program, founded in 1969, is one of the oldest in the country. But it is facing an identity crisis, and it is not alone. Black-studies programs at many public universities are having trouble attracting students and are suffering from budget cuts that have whittled down their faculty ranks. Meanwhile, classes with African-American perspectives are cropping up in departments like history, women's studies, and English, diluting the need, some say, for separate black-studies departments. "It's a struggle for survival," says Edmond J. Keller, a professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles who teaches African-American studies. To stay alive, black-studies departments at many public universities are scrambling to reinvent themselves. They are changing their names to "Africana" and "African diaspora" studies and broadening their courses from a focus on black Americans to black people in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. A few departments, like Minnesota's, are trying to sell themselves to students by explaining just what they can do with a black-studies major. "We face some daunting challenges," says Keletso E. Atkins, chairwoman of the department of African-American and African studies at Minnesota. "But we're trying to turn this thing around." Some black professors outside the discipline, however, question whether it is worth the effort, and whether black-studies programs have simply grown obsolete. Established in part as a symbolic gesture of academe's commitment to diversity, the programs may have run their course, as multiculturalism and diversity have become concerns throughout higher education. "These programs may have been a victim of their own success," says Carol M. Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. "Other departments now see the need to teach these courses, and we need to assess whether the need today for black-studies programs just isn't as great." Shelby Steele, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, takes an even more critical view. To his mind, universities never had a legitimate reason for establishing black-studies programs. "It was a bogus concept from the beginning because it was an idea grounded in politics, not in a particular methodology," he says. "These programs are dying of their own inertia because they've had 30 or 40 years to show us a serious academic program, and they've failed." Elites Thrive Black-studies programs were established on campuses in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination in April 1968. King's death touched off protests among the growing number of black students at predominantly white institutions. The students accused their universities of ignoring black culture and history, and pressed the institutions to establish black-studies departments, to create scholarships for black students, and to step up efforts to recruit them. Taking their lead from the civil-rights and black-power movements, some of the student protesters staged sit-ins and strikes. At San Francisco State University, protesters shut down the campus for four months. While police arrested hundreds of people during the incident, the university did accede to students' demands and created a black-studies department in 1969. That kind of student activism no longer exists. "The clock has been turned back," says Valerie Grim, interim chairwoman of black studies at Indiana University at Bloomington. "The students we have today don't even know who Martin Luther King is." The number of students seeking degrees in African-American studies nationwide is minute. In the 2001-2 academic year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, just 668 undergraduates earned bachelor's degrees in the field, representing only 0.05 percent of all degrees conferred. That doesn't mean black-studies programs are short on students. In fact, on many campuses the courses are quite popular among students who are majoring in other subjects but want to have a black perspective on history or literature, for example. Within the financial politics of most universities, however, it is still the number of majors in a field that matters. Clearly, not all black-studies programs are in trouble. Those at elite private universities -- like Cornell, Duke, Harvard and Princeton Universities -- are thriving. They are attracting students and hiring new professors because they have plenty of resources and are home to star professors like K. Anthony Appiah and Cornel West. "Fortunately, I don't live in that kind of environment," Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the department at Harvard, says of the problems plaguing black-studies programs at public institutions. But while Harvard's department may be healthy -- it has lost some high-profile professors lately but is planning to hire several new ones this year -- Mr. Gates says it is important that black-studies programs flourish elsewhere. "The field can't take root if there are only a half-dozen sophisticated departments and they're at historically white, elite, private schools," he says. Black-studies departments at some public institutions, including the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- are holding their own. And while programs at many other public universities may be struggling, few have actually been shut down. About 450 colleges and universities offer either an undergraduate or graduate program -- or both. That number hasn't changed much in a decade, says Abdul Alkalimat, who directs the Africana-studies program at the University of Toledo and keeps track of figures nationwide. Still, some programs are barely limping along because administrators have cut support but are reluctant to eliminate them for fear of being accused of bias. "Some are surviving only in name, for political reasons," says Mr. Keller, of UCLA. While many programs are contracting, graduates of the nation's half-dozen Ph.D. programs in African-American studies are still finding faculty jobs -- in part because many of those scholars are marketable not only within African-American studies but also in English, history, political science, and psychology. In better times, Minnesota talked about expanding its course offerings for graduate students by starting a master's degree in African-American studies. But right now all of the focus is on shoring up its undergraduate program. Only 19 students are majoring in African-American studies at Minnesota this year, making it less popular than all but one of the 29 other majors in the College of Liberal Arts -- statistics. In all, 1,282 of the undergraduates at Minnesota's Twin Cities campus are black, or 4.5 percent of the student population. When Ms. Atkins took over as chairwoman of the department of African-American and African studies nearly four years ago, she says, administrators here warned her "we were in serious trouble and had to do something" to increase the number of students majoring in the discipline. While she doesn't believe the university "is going to cut off our head," administrators have made it clear that "if we don't get our numbers up they won't renew our faculty lines, and they will let us die a slow, natural death." That's a painful prospect for John S. Wright, who has been here since the beginning. As a graduate student he helped lead a handful of black students who staged a sit-in at the Morrill Hall administration building in 1969, demanding that the university create a black-studies program. Now, Mr. Wright is an associate professor of African-American and African studies here. "The university is forced to place increasing emphasis on the numbers game -- the number of majors and the number of students enrolled," he says. "We are a bottom-line enterprise now." Since the mid-1980s, Mr. Wright has watched the number of full-time professors in African-American studies slip from a high of 10 to just 6 today. The department has stopped offering Swahili because Ben Pike, the professor who taught the language for about 25 years, is retiring. Minnesota is working on a plan to bring Swahili back, but for now the department points students who want to learn African languages to programs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. At the same time, African-American studies has seen other academic departments at Minnesota encroach on its territory. "Everybody is poaching," says Ms. Atkins. "Women's studies is teaching African-American women's literature. History taught a survey of African history. Where does that leave us?" Steven J. Rosenstone, dean of the college, says the spread of courses with an African-American perspective is just natural. "To have scholars in American studies, in women's studies, who are concerned about race is a very good thing," he says. But that doesn't mean, he adds, that the black-studies program at Minnesota is endangered. "We don't use spreadsheets to make decisions about academic investments." But that is not the message that professors in black studies here seem to be getting. As far as Ms. Atkins is concerned, the department's life is on the line. A 5-foot-tall, straight-talking dynamo with a ready laugh, she is the department's most energetic cheerleader and is not afraid to throw stones. While other departments here may offer a course or two on black issues, Ms. Atkins says, those classes lack the in-depth approach that black studies provides. "It is fashionable to read a number of novels by black writers, but do the professors know the entire context -- the history of black people and of the authors?" she asks. "We have folks in our department who have all of their expertise in these fields." Ms. Atkins and her colleagues even have a name for courses with an African-American perspective that are offered outside her department: "African-American and African studies lite." The black-studies department here uses an interdisciplinary approach. Students who major in the subject take classes in literature, social sciences, economics, political science, and history, for example. They also commonly take courses on research methods. Like other liberal-arts degrees, the program does not train students for a specific career. But it develops "self-knowledge," says Ms. Atkins, and hones students' critical-thinking skills. This year Ms. Atkins is trying to get that message out with an unprecedented campaign to tell black students about careers they could pursue with a major in African-American studies. "They don't see the relevance until it's shown to them," she says. Last November her department started tacking up big posters across the campus featuring 13 prominent black Americans who earned degrees in African-American studies. Among them: Mae C. Jemison, the first black female astronaut to go into space, who majored in chemical engineering and African-American studies at Stanford University; and Aaron McGruder, who pens the cartoon strip The Boondocks and earned a bachelor's degree in African-American studies from the University of Maryland at College Park. The poster lists 65 other careers -- from "ambassador" to "zoo administrator" -- that people have pursued after earning a black-studies degree. The department is also busy assembling a brochure that offers "150 Answers" to the question: "What can you do with a major in African-American and African studies?" It lists short biographies of 150 people who majored in black studies. Some of them gave Minnesota personal testimonies, including Claudia Thomas, the country's first black female orthopedic surgeon, who in the late 1960s changed her major at Vassar College from mathematics to black studies. For her senior thesis, Ms. Thomas -- who knew she wanted to be a doctor -- studied sickle-cell anemia in African-Americans in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area. Clearly, the famous people Minnesota features in its brochure and poster could have become scientists, lawyers, and journalists without an undergraduate major in black studies. But Ms. Atkins contends their black-studies background not only gave them "a knowledge of who they are and where they came from," but also provided "an understanding of the most important issue that confronts all of us in this society, and that is the problem of the color line." Race, she says, is a crucial issue if you are a lawyer who may have black clients, a doctor whose patients are members of minority groups, or a journalist in an urban area. By the end of this academic year, Ms. Atkins hopes to send the brochures and the multimedia CD's to Midwestern high-school students who have indicated an interest in attending the university. She wants to appeal not only to black Americans but also to the huge influx of African students who have migrated to the Twin Cities. "The African population here has grown since 1990 by 620 percent," she says. "It is the fastest-growing immigrant population in the state." That, says Ms. Atkins, presents a "golden opportunity" for the department. She has already tried to capitalize on it by hiring young women from Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Somalia to run the department's office. One of the women -- Hibaq Warsame, an undergraduate who works as the department's part-time secretary -- brought 220 Somali high-school students from the Twin Cities to the campus in February. "A lot of African Somalis don't know the black experience here," she says. "They didn't know about African-American studies." A Tense Relationship Ms. Atkins's own scholarly specialty is South African labor history and the historical connections between South Africa and black Americans. She has painted the cinder-block walls in her office here a bright aqua blue and decorated the space with African treasures, including dolls from South Africa and a West African beaded medicine belt. It isn't clear that her department's efforts to meld African immigrants with black American students will work. The relationship between the groups is sometimes tense, a dynamic that plays out within the Black Student Union. "The African immigrants are the new group in town, and everyone is embracing them at the expense of black students," says Wynfred N. Russell, a graduate student at Minnesota, expressing the feelings he says some African-Americans have. Whenever African-Americans take over leadership of the Black Student Union, he says, African students are less active -- and vice versa. Even as the African-American-studies department here has taken some steps forward, it has suffered setbacks. Last year the department hired Mr. Russell, who is from Liberia, to help recruit students. But after eight months, the university pulled the plug on his position. Now the university says it will pay half of Mr. Russell's salary if the department pays the other half. But, asks Ms. Atkins, "where are we going to get the money?" Gerald L. Early, a professor of English and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, says a shakeout may be coming within the field of black studies that will leave only the programs at elite institutions standing. Undergraduates at those institutions, he says, can afford to major in a field like black studies, one that may be intellectually stimulating but does not necessarily lead to a specific job. Such students, says Mr. Early, "want to go into public policy and be part of the intellectual elite." But students at places like Minnesota come from middle- and lower-income families and "want skills that are going to be immediately useful for them in the job market," he says. That may eventually be the kiss of death for black studies there. Nonetheless, black professors at Minnesota who are not part of the African-American-studies department say it is still important despite the small number of students who chose the subject as their major. "I think African-American studies communicates an institution's commitment to people of African descent," says Guy-Uriel E. Charles, an associate professor of law at Minnesota. "It represents the institution's intention to take these issues of race seriously." The Shrinking Faculty Struggles like those faced by Minnesota's department are playing out at other public universities. At the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, money has dried up for the African-American Research Institute, which awarded $25,000 each year in grants to faculty members studying the American South. The African-American-studies program at the University of Georgia, which at one time had 14 faculty members, is now down to just 8. "The issue is the dominance of the Republican cycle in the country, and how it effects money and student support," says R. Baxter Miller, director of Georgia's program. Even some of the country's more robust programs have seen their faculty ranks thin. Temple University has one of the largest departments of African-American studies in the country, with 75 undergraduate majors and 65 students who have it as part of a double major. It was home to the country's first doctoral program in black studies and since 1988 has granted 125 doctoral degrees. While the department once had 14 tenured or tenure-track professors, it now has just 7. It has hired part-timers and professors on one-year contracts to fill in. Indiana University's department, which has had as many as 100 undergraduates with the subject as their major, now has only about half that many. But the department is forging ahead, introducing new courses that compare the experiences of black people all over the world. The department is also drafting a proposal to begin a Ph.D. program. So far, only six other American universities have one. "When you are in a program that deals with the history and culture of a particular group," says Ms. Grim, the interim chairwoman, "you are constantly having to reorientate with the sense of trying to be more inclusive and expand your intellectual base." Three years ago, the department changed its name from Afro-American studies to African-American and African-diaspora studies. At Minnesota, Jerold W. Wells, Jr., a sophomore who serves on the board of the Black Student Union, is bucking the trend and majoring in African-American studies. When he first came to Minnesota, he planned to pursue a law degree. "That was a brainchild of my parents," he says. After taking a class or two in black studies, he decided "I wanted to do what I want to do." Now he plans to be a journalist. Still, he has had to pacify his parents, who have urged him to declare a double major that he might fall back on. And he has found himself presented with the same question that the department here is trying to answer. "When I told my mom I was majoring in African-American studies, her first question was: 'OK, what are you going to do with that?'" From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:41:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:41:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Knowing When to Log Off Message-ID: Knowing When to Log Off The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33a03401.htm Wired campuses may be causing 'information overload' By JEFFREY R. YOUNG David M. Levy, a computer scientist who loves technology and gets more than 100 e-mail messages a day, makes a point of unplugging from the Internet one day each week to clear his head. Even so, with all the e-mail messages flooding in, with academic blogs bursting with continuous debate, and with the hectic pace set by an increasingly wired world, Mr. Levy says he cannot help but feel an occasional sense of information overload. And that, he says, is something to stop and think about. Mr. Levy, a professor at the University of Washington's Information School, is one of many scholars trying to raise awareness of the negative impact of communication technologies on people's lives and work. They say the quality of research and teaching at colleges is at risk unless scholars develop strategies for better managing information, and for making time for extensive reading and contemplation. "We're losing touch with the contemplative roots of scholarship, the reflective dimension," says Mr. Levy. "When you think that universities are meant to be in effect the think tanks for the culture, or at least one of the major forms of thinking, that strikes me as a very serious concern." At Washington, Mr. Levy is working to create a laboratory to explore those issues, to be called the Center for Information and the Quality of Life. He received a $25,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to help plan the center, though he is still looking for support for its operation. He and other scholars have already started a dialogue on the topic. Last year Mr. Levy organized a conference at the university called "Information, Silence, and Sanctuary" that brought together artists, philosophers, sociologists, and others, and was supported by the university and by grants from MacArthur and the National Science Foundation. Mr. Levy hopes the conversations will grow into a new kind of movement focused on people's informational environments and on reducing data smog. Scholars are beginning to realize "that our information ecology is endangered as well," says Mr. Levy. "We're just at the very beginning of even being clear about the nature of what the problems are." 'Not Anti-E-Mail' Colleges were early in embracing the Internet and other communication technologies, and campuses remain some of the most wired environments anywhere. Although many professors say the Internet has enhanced their teaching and scholarship -- by better connecting them with colleagues around the world, by providing easier access to research materials, and by increasing contact with students -- it has also brought new challenges, such as keeping online tasks from becoming unwieldy. "When I sit down at a conference or lunch with a colleague, there's a pretty good chance we'll talk about being overwhelmed by e-mail and what we're doing about it," says Buzz Alexander, an English professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "I'm not anti-e-mail. I'm advantaged and disadvantaged by e-mail like everybody else." On the syllabus for his course "What Is Literature?" he tells students not to contact him by e-mail. He says he tries to make sure he is available for one-on-one meetings to respond to any questions -- after class, during his office hours, or over coffee. "If they're in my office," he says, "I can say to them, 'How are you liking the course?' or 'How are things going?'" And he worries that he would not be able to keep up with a flood of e-mail questions from students who expect an instant response. Bill McKibben, a scholar in residence in environmental studies at Middlebury College, says the issue is more than just one of time management. "There's the real danger that one is absorbing and responding to bursts of information, rather than having time to think," says Mr. McKibben, author of Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (Times Books, 2003). "What's only gradually becoming clear is not just a pragmatic drawback but an intellectual drawback to having so many trees that there's no possibility of seeing the forest." He says he is not immune from feelings of information overload, and that he has tried to work out strategies for dealing with the flood of communication he gets each day. When he is working on a book or is near a deadline, for instance, he only checks his e-mail messages once a day, in the evening. And he uses a slow dial-up connection at home, even though he could afford a faster broadband service, so that he is less tempted to surf the Web. "I think part of it is that my mind, and perhaps human minds in general, are geared toward novelty, and so it's difficult to discipline yourself to disregard each new incoming e-mail and each new incoming thing that you can instantly track down and print out," he says. Some scholars worry that even tools meant to help home in on specific information could have a negative impact on research. For instance, Michael Gorman, president-elect of the American Library Association and dean of library services at California State University at Fresno, wants to make sure students and professors do not become so enthralled with Google, which plans to scan millions of books and add them to its popular search engine, that they stop reading books the old-fashioned way. "We all know that, in Googleworld, speed is of the essence, but it is not to most scholarly research in the real world," Mr. Gorman wrote in a recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times. "Massive databases of digitized whole books, especially scholarly books, are expensive exercises in futility based on the staggering notion that, for the first time in history, one form of communication (electronic) will supplant and obliterate all previous forms." In an interview, Mr. Gorman stressed that he is not against technology, and that he is a strong supporter of digital-library projects for special collections and rare materials. "I'm all in favor of technology being used wisely," he said. "My basic point is the best thing to do with a scholarly book is to sit and read it," rather than skim an excerpt that is revealed by a search engine. "A book is not just an accumulation of facts, it's an argument, a cumulative piece of knowledge, and is designed to be read sequentially." Stopping to Think Since students are generally even more wired than professors, some college officials think students should be encouraged to take some time away from computers, cellphones, and other communication devices. "The amount of information that goes into a young person's head today is incredible," says David H. Landers, director of the student resource center at Saint Michael's College, in Colchester, Vt. His main concern is that students have replaced face-to-face contact with instant messaging and e-mail. "They're not going to have the same quality of interpersonal relations that will help them in a work environment," he argues. He says colleges should encourage students to get involved in community projects where they see what life is like outside of their high-tech campus bubble. "We recognize technology," he says, "but we can't become slaves to it." David Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, took a novel approach to fighting overload in a class he taught called "Technology and Contemplation." He used a few minutes of each class session to have students meditate. "If you stop talking and have people sit silently for five minutes, that's a good use of time because people are so stressed out," he says. "It really had a positive effect." He says he is no expert on meditation, and that the bulk of the class dealt with texts that looked at the differences and similarities between technical thinking and contemplative thinking. He tried the techniques with the support of a small grant from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, a secular nonprofit group. Mr. Levy says his weekly day off from technology is part of his observation of the Jewish Sabbath (his wife is a rabbi), but that he recommends time away from computer monitors as a practice in itself. "I'm not suggesting that anyone else be Jewish," he says, "but rather if you think about the idea of the Sabbath, which is a time apart, a time to cultivate different qualities, that seems like a very important idea for our culture." He says information overload is one aspect of a larger problem that includes "fragmented attention, busyness, and the speed-up of daily life." "It isn't just the amount of information," he argues. "It's the expectation that we're going to go faster and faster and faster." Arthur G. Zajonc, a physics professor at Amherst College who is also director of the academic program for the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, says many people take pride in replying to e-mail messages instantly, leading them to dash off terse, often uncivil, responses. He says he makes it a point to pause and rethink his outgoing e-mail messages for 30 seconds before sending them, to make sure he hasn't been overly curt. "Everything is so fast and also a little bit anonymous" with e-mail, he says. "So you have to pause to reflect on who this person is" that will be reading the message and how they might perceive it. Broader Issues Academics are not the only ones feeling overwhelmed, of course, and a growing number of researchers are looking at technology's impacts on the quality of life outside of colleges. Norman H. Nie, director of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society, at Stanford University, found in a recent survey that Internet use tends to cut into family time, and can lead to feelings of isolation. For the average respondent, an hour on the Internet reduced face-to-face time with family by 23.5 minutes per day, he says. "It's not whether to use the Internet or not use the Internet," said Mr. Nie in an interview. "It's how much time we really spend on it. Time is a hydraulic system. If you spend two hours doing one thing, you can't spend it doing something else." Mr. Nie admits to a fair amount of Internet use himself, and says he feels it has changed his habits, perhaps cutting into some leisure time. Eric Brende became so fed up with technology that he quit his graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a few years ago to spend 18 months living with his wife in a rural farming community. (He wouldn't say where exactly to protect the identities of the people he wrote about.) He argues that the negative aspects of using technology have become so great that we would all be better off giving up nearly all modern devices -- including washing machines, lawn mowers, and cars. He published a book about his experiences and beliefs, called Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology (HarperCollins, 2004). He argues that living more simply actually yields more leisure time, and forces people to forge greater bonds with neighbors because of a greater need for cooperation (such as for the occasional barn raising). And he notes that not enough people are looking critically at the impact of technology. "Whatever impact it's having," he says, "people are overlooking the negative aspects of it, one of which is, I think, a loss of a sense of leisure and contemplation." Mr. Brende, who now lives in St. Louis, has not completely switched off technology, though. He said in an interview that he occasionally checks e-mail messages at a nearby public library, and that he even has a cellphone, which helps him coordinate his work as a part-time bicycle-rickshaw driver. "You're not being disloyal to progress," he said, "by picking and choosing the kind of technology that best fits your needs." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:42:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:42:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Where Is Liberal Passion? Message-ID: Where Is Liberal Passion? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33b00701.htm By MICHAEL P. LYNCH The day after the presidential inauguration, a coalition of progressives carried a 70-foot replica of a human backbone to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. Their point was well taken. The self-appointed party of the American left could learn from the opposition: Be more upright, less spineless. Yet you might think that the backbone metaphor begs a question. You can't find the courage of your convictions if you lack real conviction in the first place. And as a group, blue-staters have been accused by friendly and not-so-friendly critics alike of being less than red-hot. They typically prize reason and deliberation; they are not gung-ho. They don't shout "bring it on"; they are suspicious of the blind emotion of tent revivals and military parades. They encourage thinking things through, getting a second opinion, and acknowledging the possibility that one can always be wrong. And that, some liberals worry, is just the problem. The issue is consuming not just Democratic Party strategists. Political theorists, too, have begun a major rethinking of liberal theory. Take a look at this year's book catalogs, and you'll see the "L" word in numerous titles. Like as not, it's accompanied by words like "passion," "purpose," or "vision." In different ways, liberals are asking: Could the very values they hold dear rob them of the requisite fire in the belly that conservatives, particularly social conservatives, seemingly have in abundance? Most liberals believe in equality of opportunity and resources, freedom for individuals to pursue their own vision of life, and tolerance toward those whose vision of the world is different from their own. Some of them, however, complain that in their eagerness to venerate their ideals, they too often undercut their ability to be politically effective. To put it in a nakedly partisan way, some liberals worry that Yeats was right: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." No one wrestles with that dilemma more than Michael Walzer. In his intriguing and intelligent Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian Liberalism (Yale University Press, 2005), Walzer takes Yeats's warning as his touchstone as he presses his point from the left. Standard liberalism, he writes, is "an inadequate theory and a disabled political practice." It is inadequate, in part, because its values are not conducive to real conviction. It is disabled "because the social structures and political orders that sustain inequality cannot be actively opposed without a passionate intensity that liberals do not (for good reasons) want to acknowledge or accommodate." As one of the most distinguished advocates of the communitarian critique of liberal theory, Walzer thinks that liberalism has a problem with passion because it ignores the politics of community. A typical picture of a liberal society is one formed on the basis of a rational contract, where social arrangements are made from the standpoint of enlightened self-interest. That, communitarians like Walzer point out, overlooks the fact that human beings' primary sources of value emerge from the communities to which we belong. Moreover, even in the shifting whirl of mobile Western economies, we don't choose most of our communities -- our family, our ethnicity, our religion; we get them handed to us. By overlooking those facts, standard liberalism not only overplays the role of reason and autonomy in our lives, Walzer thinks, but also ends up being less egalitarian. If an individual's passions and values are formed in a community, then it is not just individuals who deserve equal respect and opportunity, but the communities themselves. Only by providing such respect -- and in some cases, actual financial support -- to traditional communities can we hope to encourage their members to fully participate in liberal civil society. In short, if it takes a village to raise a tolerant liberal citizen, then villages, not just villagers, deserve the support and the protection of the state. Lefty communitarians are not alone in making that critique of liberalism. Social conservatives have long argued that progressive liberals, in trumpeting individual rights, ignore traditional communities as a source of value. That, after all, is the reasoning behind the president's faith-based social-services initiatives. The thought is that by supporting programs run by churches and synagogues, which are by nature embedded in communities, the community itself is better supported. Maybe so. But as the neocons are well aware, traditional family values frequently clash with liberal values. That is not a problem for social conservatives, who often argue, for example, that we should ban same-sex marriage on the basis that it offends traditional morality. But it does present a problem for liberal communitarians like Walzer. Some traditional communities are rife with intolerant oppression -- precisely the sort of thing that enlightenment liberalism is presumably meant to combat. Surely liberals needn't tolerate intolerance. Walzer valiantly attempts to deal with that concern. But in the end, his principle argument is resistible. Consider a hypothetical local religious community that does not value equal education for boys and girls. According to Walzer, if we are to compel our traditional community to educate its girls, we shouldn't appeal to individual rights; we should appeal to the pragmatic demands of citizenship. If a community wishes to participate in an egalitarian state, it must ensure that its members can be full citizens; among other things, that means that all of its children must read and write. That argument makes sense as far as it goes. The question is whether it goes far enough. For one thing, it is not clear that the "pragmatic" demands of citizenship -- such as voting -- do absolutely require education, even if they are inestimably enriched by it. But even putting that aside, there are surely harms that an intolerant community can bring upon its members that are independent of the demands of citizenship. Even if we grant that citizenship requires equal literacy for the sexes, it doesn't obviously require that the sexes (or races, or ethnicities) be given equal opportunity to all levels of education -- or that communities recognize same-sex marriages, or that children be taught the theory of evolution instead of creationism. Those sorts of requirements only make sense when one sees the state -- as the liberal does -- as being in the job of ensuring that its citizens are free from explicit harms suffered when a community forces its values upon them. That doesn't deny that our values are shaped by our communities. It just rejects that such values are justified by their origin. In my view, the reason that liberals are sometimes perceived as passionless isn't because liberal values are in need of a communitarian correction. The reason is that some liberals misunderstand, and therefore misrepresent, their own values. In particular, they misunderstand their values in a way that has made them wary of describing their own moral position as true. And that is bad. For once you cease thinking of your values -- your fundamental moral beliefs -- as objectively true, it is hard to even think of them as values at all. And without political values, there simply is no place for political passion. Two important liberal values, for example, are equality and tolerance. Liberals believe the state should treat its citizens with equal respect and therefore that the state -- and the individual citizens within that state -- should tolerate, as much as possible, a wide range of different ways of life. It is largely that emphasis on tolerance that sets liberals apart from social conservatives. Social conservatives believe that treating people with respect means treating them as they should be treated given the one true way people ought to live. If that is the Christian way, for example, then treating people with respect means treating them as equally subject to the values inherent in Christianity. That point was most recently echoed in conservative commentaries on the Terri Schiavo case, but it emerged even more explicitly in the Rev. Bob Jones III's now-infamous open postelection letter to President Bush. As Jones wrote, "In your re-election, God has graciously granted America -- though she doesn't deserve it -- a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet." The letter went on to urge the president to pass "legislation that is defined by biblical norm(s)," "to appoint many conservative judges," and "to leave an imprint for righteousness upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God." In recoiling from that position, some left-leaning thinkers have argued that liberals need to adopt what the philosopher Richard Rorty calls an "ironic" attitude toward our own liberal principles. If we want to be truly tolerant, the thought goes, we need to stop seeing liberal views about equality and tolerance as objective moral truths. Instead, we should see them as morally neutral. Otherwise, we risk being intolerant about tolerance. Tempting as it may sound to some, that line of reasoning is a mistake. It undermines liberalism's ability to galvanize passionate intensity. That is most obvious when liberal tolerance is defended, as it sometimes is in the popular news media, on the basis of na?ve relativism: If different ways of life deserve equal respect, then all ways of life are equally good. The just state must remain neutral with regard to questions of how to live because there are no objectively true or false answers to such questions. So we should live and let live. But relativistic liberalism is clearly a rational and political failure. It is a rational failure because its key inference is invalid. From the fact that many different forms of life deserve equal respect, it doesn't follow that we can't criticize some as being worse than others. It is a political failure because if every way of life is as good as any other, then what motivation does the liberal have for opposing the conservative's and trumpeting his or her own? It is hard to stand up and fight for a view that sees itself as no better than the opposition's. Passion has no foothold. Bloodlessness is also the result of more philosophically sophisticated attempts to understand liberalism as morally neutral. The preeminent architect of contemporary American liberal thought, the late John Rawls, argued over the last decade and a half that tolerance demands that liberalism should be understood as a "political, not metaphysical" doctrine. That is, we should not defend liberal principles, such as the principle of tolerance itself, by asserting that they represent fundamental moral truths. Rather, Rawls said, in defending those principles and whatever follows from them -- for instance, a right to abortion, the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, etc. -- the liberal must appeal only to the uncontroversial popular consensus -- that is, "public reasons" that every reasonable person implicitly accepts. In short, since the liberal state must remain neutral among different conceptions of morality, liberal principles must themselves be justified in a way that is morally neutral and that all reasonable points of view can accept. Rawls's position was complex, and he was certainly no relativist. But his understanding of tolerance was motivated by a related desire: to make liberal values somehow "float free" from any particular moral outlook. And that is troubling, for at least two reasons. The most obvious problem is that the idea that liberal principles are neutral among all "reasonable" points of view only makes sense if "reasonable" is defined in a distinctively liberal way. The less obvious problem is that were I to believe that my foundational liberal principles were already held by all reasonable people -- whether they know it or not -- it is difficult to see why I should bother to vigorously defend my principles. The battle, in effect, would already be won, so there would be little point in getting worked up about it. Again, passion drains away. If we want to rediscover an intellectual foundation for liberal passion, then we need to forget about the beige of moral neutrality and favor the red of moral conviction. We need to remember that moral convictions are just that, beliefs that some political ideals are objectively better for society than others. It is also worth remembering that lots of Americans already view liberals as full of passionate conviction. Take last fall's fight over gay marriage. Eleven states, it turned out, passed bans against same-sex marriage. Liberals -- rightly in my view -- protest that such bans treat citizens unequally and privilege one way of life over others. But to many, it is liberals who are pushing their values into other folks' faces. In the endearing language of talk radio, conservatives across the nation rally to prevent "activist liberal judges" from "imposing liberal values" and "special rights." In short, far from seeing liberalism as value-neutral -- Rawls's "political, not metaphysical" account of fair play -- those on the right see liberalism as a rival comprehensive morality, a rival way of life. Conservatives are right about that. And there is no need for liberals to apologize for it. As philosophers like Joseph Raz have argued, liberalism isn't value-neutral, nor should it be. Liberal values like tolerance and equality are just that -- liberal values, neither merely "true for us" nor ethically inert. Rather, they are part of a particularly liberal ideal of the good life -- an abstract ideal but an ideal nonetheless. The progressive liberal believes that other things being equal, the state should respect our individual rights and tolerate different ways of living that don't violate others' rights. That means that progressive liberalism is not neutral among all ways of life. The progressive liberal is committed to opposing ways of life that value racial and sexual discrimination or collapse the separation between church and state. The progressive liberal believes that societies that sanction torture, or are intolerant toward gays, or allow their citizens to be economically exploited are, in those respects, worse societies. As much as possible, liberals need to argue for their case, as Rawls has emphasized, by appealing to reasons shared by all. But they cannot assume that all of their liberal values will be so shared, even if some are. And that is not surprising -- democratic politics, after all, is aimed at getting others to see things your way. So, much as social conservatives do, we liberals need to stand up for our values and persuade others to share them. And we must do so by defending our theory in the way that one defends any theory: by arguing for its worth on its own terms and for the beneficial consequences it brings. But what of passion? Walzer rightly claims that standard liberal theory has too often ignored the role involuntary associations like family, race, and religion play in shaping our identities and stirring our blood. But we wouldn't share emotional bonds with other group members if we didn't also share values. I've argued that liberals do share a set of values, and that passionate commitment to them -- including the values of equality and tolerance -- requires seeing them as objectively worth defending. But it is also worth remembering that values are not just crystalline principles, sparkling under the light of reason. To talk about my values is to talk about what I care about, what I admire, what I aim for, and what I want others to aim for as well: tolerance for a wide array of lifestyles, compassion for those less fortunate than we, and the moral courage to stand up for our rights and the rights of others. So far from being a cold theory of rational neutrality, progressive liberalism is a theory of value -- and theories of value are theories of what we care about. Liberals favor reason and evenhandedness; they are tolerant; they believe in autonomy, individual rights, and equality. But they can and should be fervent in defending the truth of those ideals. Liberals have no inherent problem with passion. They just need to remember to keep passion alive, and not to waiver in the face of spirited opposition. They just need to remember their backbone. Michael P. Lynch is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut and author of True to Life: Why Truth Matters (MIT Press, 2004). From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:43:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:43:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Passive Is Spoken Here Message-ID: Passive Is Spoken Here The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33b02001.htm By WILLIAM GERMANO Silver spoons, real ones anyway, owe a lot of their charm to the hallmarks on the back of the stem. Academic writing has its own system of validation, its own hallmarks, and one is the passive voice. This is a strange development, considering how vigilant we are about overuse of the passive when we teach writing, and how insistent writing guides can be on this point. "Whenever you come across a passive in your writing, recast the sentence with an active verb instead." The examples tend to feature painful structures followed by why-didn't-I-think-of-that transformations. "When the book had been read by the class, the next lesson was presented by the teacher" becomes "When the students had read the book, the teacher presented the lesson." Yet it's difficult to convince academic writers that avoiding the passive is a piece of advice meant for them. In weak academic writing, passives are everywhere. (I might have said "passives are frequently used," but I wanted an active verb here.) If you were reading a poorly written letter or a grade-school composition, you might think that the writer simply didn't have sufficient command to write in direct and vivid terms. He might even have been aware of his limitations, embarrassed by the idea of expressing his opinion in a naked way, and taking refuge behind the curtain of the passive. By the time a graduate has waded into the thick of a Ph.D. program and is toiling on the dissertation, the student's printer has spit out a lot of term papers. By that point, unlearned writing lessons have become writing habits, and those habits have, in turn, become his characteristic way of expressing ideas. He has grown used to -- even fond of -- them. (I find it unsurprisingly easy to view the weaknesses in my own writing as being part of my style.) For graduate students, however, more is at stake. Years of abusing the passive have encouraged those students to believe that the passive is, after all, the voice of academe. "So," the new scholar reasons, "if this is how the scholarly world speaks -- or rather, if this is the language spoken in the scholarly world -- then that's the way I'll write my first book." And lo, thus is the book written. The passive voice does two things at once, and those two things at first seem contradictory. First, the passive conceals agency, or responsibility for action. "The overthrow of the country's tottering regime was undertaken by the forces of the Army of Liberation in the late spring of 1963." Let's let that Army take responsibility for its actions: "Late in the spring of 1963 the Army of Liberation overthrew the country's tottering regime." Suddenly, the Army of Liberation did it. There's concealment at work here, too. The passive construction distances the writer from the act of making a statement. Take away the passive, and the writer -- like the Army of Liberation -- has suddenly done something of consequence: He's made a declaration. He's said something. You don't have to be an expert in linguistics to know that this is not the same thing as "something was said." But too many dissertations are written in an imaginary world where objects have things done to them and countries are invaded, characters are depicted while results are secured. It's not that the passive is a criminal offense for writers. There are plenty of places where passive constructions feel right. (Use them there.) Prose stripped entirely of passives can feel overly energetic, like a kindergarten class at recess. "Calm down!" you want to say. Of course, it's important to draw a distinction between writing with the passive voice and writing in the passive voice. In the first case, the writer uses the passive when it's necessary. In control of her prose, she enjoys the way the passive voice lends variety to her sentences, yet she remains the boss in her own paragraphs. On the other hand, someone who writes in the passive hopes no one will notice that she's there. The passive is a cozy place to hide. Writing can be like going through customs. "Anything to declare?" asks a flinty-eyed customs officer. Most people rely on a cheerful smile and a shake of the head, hoping there won't be any questions about the extra bottle of wine or the embroidered tablecloth. Most academic writing hopes to slither through customs. Instead of a smile, scholarly writers too often depend on the passive, fearful that a direct statement might open them to equally direct inspection. Yet strangely, the second thing the passive voice does for academic writing is to claim authority. It's an authority based not on accumulated research or the wisdom of experience, at least not in the case of most dissertations, but on an appeal to the power of passivity. To use the passive is to call up the authority of one's discipline and the scholars who have gone before. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do this, but the passive can't get you there all by itself. Academic writers -- particularly young academic writers -- use the passive to lend credibility to their writing. "Domestic arrangements in 16th-century Lancashire households were often made by the eldest daughter." Domestic arrangements are in charge of this sentence, while the writer's point appears to be that the eldest daughter of the household looked after things. In its Olympian calm, the passive asserts -- even demands -- that the reader agree. Nevertheless, this sentence is nervous about its own claims, as the telltale word "often" makes clear. Was the eldest daughter in charge or wasn't she? Is the writer making an important and original claim about family relationships or just serving up someone else's research nugget? If it's an original idea, it's too compressed to be clear, too wimpy to be convincing. A bit better: "My research reveals the surprising fact that the eldest daughter was responsible for domestic arrangements in most 16th-century Lancashire households." ("Most" is quantitative and useful here; "often" is a fudge.) If it's someone else's thought and worth paraphrasing, the point needs sharpening. "As Henry Pismire has pointed out, in almost half the 16th-century Lancashire households for which we have records, the eldest daughter was responsible for domestic arrangements." Better because clearer. The active voice should be a kind of scholarly credo: I did research, I drew conclusions, I found this out. That's rarely what we get. How much more often do we read that research is conducted, conclusions are drawn, findings are found out? I sometimes imagine a scholar sitting down with a great idea, then staring at his laptop and exclaiming "Are you crazy? You can't say that -- " and clicking the toolbar to call up Active-Voice-Replace, instantly turning every "I found" into "It was discovered." The passive is a buffer, not only between the reader and the writer, but between the writer and her own ideas. I wonder if anyone experiences the world as a series of passive engagements. ("Yesterday, as the garden path was being trod by my feet, a beautiful butterfly was seen by my eye." Which sounds like a case for Dr. Oliver Sacks.) Academic writing often places the reader in just such a world, one where no feet cross any paths, no eye sees any butterfly. It's particularly critical for young scholars to understand that all this bother about the passive voice isn't simply a matter of making sentences lively, peppy, or more engaging. Yes, the active voice is stronger. Readers listen more attentively because they can hear another human trying to engage their attention. But for scholars, the active-passive conundrum should be so much more. The active voice says "I have something to say, and I'm going to say it. If I'm wrong, argue with me in print. But take me at my worth." Dickens opens David Copperfield with a question that arrests me each time I come across it. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." He even uses a passive. And he gives us one of the Big Lessons, smack on the first page. All writing -- even the humble dissertation -- is always about the writer. Even in scholarly work, a writer is very much present, more subtly than in Nabokov or Beckett, perhaps, but present nonetheless. Every scholar, even the graduate student writing a dissertation, should strive to be the hero of her or his own work, taking command not only of the details but of the voice that presents them, knowing when to appear and when to step aside, how to attract the reader's attention and how to deflect it. In doing so, the scholarly writer becomes responsible for what "these pages must show," a world of causality and motivation where arguments are logical and evidence is clearly presented, a world where nouns noun and verbs verb. To make writing work, you need to make the parts of writing -- including the bossy, self-denying passive voice -- work for you. If your scholarly project was worth writing, it's because you found a path you had to follow, and on the way you came upon something you want to tell others about. Do that. And just be glad you never had to read a poem that began "Arms and the man are being sung by me" or a novel that opened "Ishmael is what I'm called." William Germano is vice president and publishing director at Routledge. This essay is adapted from From Dissertation to Book, being published this month by the University of Chicago Press. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 14:45:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:45:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: A Hypocritical Oath Message-ID: A Hypocritical Oath The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.22 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i33/33c00201.htm THE FUND RAISER A Hypocritical Oath They spend their days urging donors to give, but do people in advancement contribute to their own alma maters? By MARK J. DROZDOWSKI Are fund raisers also philanthropists and volunteers? Do we contribute money and time to our alma maters? That was the topic of a recent online poll on the Web site of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education ([3]http://www.case.org), a wonderful resource if you don't mind sites as slow as a toddler finishing a plate of Brussels sprouts. When I submitted my answers, only 350 people had participated, which hardly constitutes a significant sample. But the results shed light on a delicate issue. The poll asked two questions: Do you give to your alma mater, and do you volunteer for your alma mater? Just over 76 percent of respondents said yes to the first question, while only 36 percent said yes to the second. Now keep in mind that the council represents the broad spectrum of advancement departments, including communications and alumni relations along with development, so the poll wasn't limited to fund raisers. In fact it was impossible to determine what percentage of respondents worked in development. Yet the "optional comment" section, where survey participants were encouraged to elaborate (anonymously) on their answers, hinted that many did. Let's first look at giving to your alma mater. About three quarters of those surveyed did. Any college would be giddy over such a participation rate. So as a group, we advancement folks are rather philanthropically inclined. The flip side, of course, is that a quarter of us don't give. Several folks commented on the importance of leading by example. "I can't imagine asking others to give ... without being willing to do so myself," wrote one. Another responded that he poses similar questions during interviews to gauge potential employees' commitment. Yet another simply asked, "Don't we all?" Evidently not. And that brings up a key question: As fund raisers, should we feel compelled to support our alma maters? Are we hypocritical if we don't? Call me what you will, but I don't give to my two alma maters. I used to contribute to my undergraduate college, but that was many years ago, right after graduation, when I didn't have much money. I suppose I still had warm fuzzies for the place. But I soon realized I was still paying tuition in the form of student loans, and was racking up more debt in graduate school. I declared a moratorium on further giving until I made tons of money (that doesn't seemed to have happened quite yet). What's more, I don't lie awake at night worrying about the financial solvency of these two universities; last year they raised $873-million between them. So my $50 hasn't been missed. What about volunteering? Here the results of the poll were more sobering. Just over a third of the respondents admitted to assisting their alma maters. Some commented that distance prevented them from volunteering, though one can participate in many ways that don't require proximity. For instance, while living in Boston I helped my college, which is in Philadelphia, by sitting on a panel of recent graduates who had been asked to speak with prospective students and their parents. Other comments should seem familiar to fund-raising professionals. "I want to volunteer for my alma mater," wrote one, "[but] they just won't take me up on the offer -- and I'm especially qualified!" Said another: "have volunteered in the past, but they were ungrateful!" And who hasn't heard this -- "I haven't been asked yet" -- a few hundred times? I can sympathize. Following my stint on the admissions panel, I wasn't invited to participate again. (Maybe my diatribe against the language requirement had something to do with that.) A few years later I called my college's development office and offered my services as a volunteer fund raiser. The woman I spoke with sounded excited but I never heard from her again. So I quit trying. The most intriguing poll comments, however, didn't deal with the questions per se. That is, many people took the debate a bit further afield by suggesting that instead of giving to their alma maters, people in advancement should support the institutions at which they work. So let's consider that third unasked question: Are fund raisers expected to give to the colleges that employ them, even if they're not alums? Here again I don't represent a shining example of propriety. That's right, I don't give to the college where I work. It's not that I harbor ill feelings; I simply have never contributed to any employers. I've worked at four institutions and haven't given a penny. Sure, my job is to prod people for money all the time, to stress how important every gift is. Don't worry about the amount, I say (at least to most folks). Just give something. Participation rates matter -- just ask U.S. News & World Report. And when the plate lands in my lap, I pass it along to the next guy without adding my two bits. Heresy? Not necessarily. That's because I believe I already give, already sacrifice. By working for higher education, fund raisers forgo the opportunity to make more money in other industries. Combine that lower pay with long hours, continual travel, and time away from family, and I'd say we contribute plenty. Also, fund raisers change jobs about as often as they change their socks, so many become mercenaries seeking a higher bidder. Affinity doesn't always come attached to a paycheck. But why not give something just for the sake of appearances? If I take advantage of payroll deduction and ask human resources to lop off a few bucks every month, I won't even feel it. Then I could respond affirmatively when donors ask if I give. And I could even claim it on my tax returns. Maybe someday. For now I'll continue giving modest amounts to other nonprofits, causes about which my wife and I feel strongly. If donors ask if I give to the institution where I work, I can tell them I'm not an alum. And if they ask if I support my alma mater, I'll suggest that's between my college and me. But I will tell them that I support higher education, that I'm dedicating my career to it. I'll tell them I put in long hours raising money for their institution. And I'll remind them that we ask all alums and friends to participate in some capacity, to at least give of their time if they can't swing a financial contribution. Perhaps some of those CASE visitors answering "no" to the giving question feel the same way. I bet there are plenty more. We stand together in stingy solidarity, proud of our hypocritical oath, refusing to bow to the philanthropic pressures we're so eager to apply to others. Are we wrong? Mark J. Drozdowski is a fund raiser at a New England liberal-arts college. For an archive of his previous columns, see [4]http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/advice/fundraiser.htm References 3. http://www.case.org/ 4. http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/advice/fundraiser.htm Let me know if you can't retrive the last item. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 16:51:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:51:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world Message-ID: Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=630165&host=3&dir=505 [Leading article: A second renaissance? independent portfolio attached. I'm not so sure I would want a second renaissance. The first one had the effect of turning the youth of our race into wise old men whose authority was not to be questioned. Mathematicians, instead of pushing on with the purely Western idea of the calculus, went back to Classical geometry. And sailors stopped carrying fruit on their travels since no authority could be found in Galen. Furthermore, the witchcraft hysteria was a product of the Renaissance, not the Middle Ages. The paintings were certainly great, the first real portraits came during the Renaissance. Until modern times, portraits were done poorly, if at all, outside the Occident. I also note that sculpture got caught up with the ancient Greeks around 1450. (I conducted a search to find out the approximate date at the National Gallery of Art when a blockbuster Greek sculpture exhibit was shown around a decade ago. But while the witchcraft frenzy was going on, humanism, the idea that reason can uncover truths and (ultimately) that revelation is not needed, got rolling. What these discoveries portent is a deepening of our knowledge of our sister civilization. I doubt any early MSS of the Gospels will be found, not because they were dictated by the Holy Ghost, but because the first one was a literary construction. See Dennis R[onald] MacDonald (Claremont School of Theology), 1946- , _The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark_ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). We may find some collections of sayings of a certain trouble-making rabbi who railed against the hypocrisy of his day and got the religious establishment to engage in successful rent-seeking, namely to have the (Roman) government do away with the competition, and this would be valuable. Whether the collection talked about the Second Coming is the first thing I'd like to know. More non-canonical Gospels would be welcome, too. I've at least glanced at most of the extant ones. None contain a whole story of Jesus' life like the canonical ones. The few that deal with the Crucifixion differ in small details. The infant gospels sound wholly speculative. Some are quite mystical, like the fascinating Gospel of Mary Magdalene. But all are vastly inferior as literature. And it's the good stuff that tends to survive in multiple copies, though it's just a bare tendency. Think how many copies of Freud's garbarage are around.] Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke 17 April 2005 For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible. Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed. In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament. The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance". Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, described the new works as "central texts which scholars have been speculating about for centuries". Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar, formerly of University College London, now head of classics at the University of Michigan, said: "Normally we are lucky to get one such find per decade." One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the poet Archilocos, of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as "invaluable" by Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics campaign. The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery. Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the surviving body of lesser work - the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day. "The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly," said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. "The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole." The breakthrough has also caught the imagination of cultural commentators. Melvyn Bragg, author and presenter, said: "It's the most fantastic news. There are two things here. The first is how enormously influential the Greeks were in science and the arts. The second is how little of their writing we have. The prospect of having more to look at is wonderful." Bettany Hughes, historian and broadcaster, who has presented TV series including Mysteries of the Ancients and The Spartans, said: "Egyptian rubbish dumps were gold mines. The classical corpus is like a jigsaw puzzle picked up at a jumble sale - many more pieces missing than are there. Scholars have always mourned the loss of works of genius - plays by Sophocles, Sappho's other poems, epics. These discoveries promise to change the textual map of the golden ages of Greece and Rome." When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection. A 21st-century technique reveals antiquity's secrets Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible. Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed. The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to be reassembled. Missing "pieces" can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis. Key words from the master of Greek tragedy Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron. Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep. Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot's rail. These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally "The Progeny"), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week's hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their existence, and this is the first time they have been published. Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age of Greek civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside and competed with Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes. His best-known work is Oedipus Rex, the play that later gave its name to the Freudian theory, in which the hero kills his father and marries his mother - in a doomed attempt to escape the curse he brings upon himself. His other masterpieces include Antigone and Electra. Sophocles was the cultured son of a wealthy Greek merchant, living at the height of the Greek empire. An accomplished actor, he performed in many of his own plays. He also served as a priest and sat on the committee that administered Athens. A great dramatic innovator, he wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven survive in full. Last week's remarkable finds also include work by Euripides, Hesiod and Lucian, plus a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC. -------------- A second renaissance? http://comment.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=630147&host=6&dir=141 17 April 2005 Like explorers mapping the globe in sailing ships, scholars are expanding the known world across the terra incognita of classical literature. As we report today, infra-red technology has enabled hundreds of ancient Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems, composed by classical greats such as Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod, to be deciphered for the first time in 2,000 years. The dramatic increase in great literary works surviving from the ancient Greek world is prompting experts to predict a "second renaissance". The documents, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are also thought to include lost Christian gospels. Of course, this is exciting in its own right, but it could be the shot in the arm that teaching of the classics have needed for so long. Like genealogy, they could come to be more widely perceived as not only interesting but, good heavens, fashionable. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 16:54:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:54:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Der Spiegel: Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay Message-ID: Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-350042,00.html 5.4.4 [You'll want to click on the URL to see the images!] By Matthias Schulz New pornographic figurines from the Stone Age have been discovered in Germany. But researchers can't agree on what the 7,000-year-old sculptures mean. Were our ancestors uninhibited sex fiends, or was reproduction strictly controlled to improve mobility? An increasing number of finds seem to indicate the Stone Age was an orgy of sexual imagination. [4]Beatrixe Klein from the Wiesbaden Women's Museum shows a replica of the "Venus of Saviagno" and of the "Venus of Willendorf." Beatrixe Klein from the Wiesbaden Women's Museum shows a replica of the "Venus of Saviagno" and of the "Venus of Willendorf." The project itself was far from extraordinary. Workers near the Eastern German city of Leipzig were digging a ditch for a new gas line. Hum drum. But what they discovered was far from routine. A backhoe unearthed a 7,200-year-old, Stone Age garbage pit -- and it was filled with refuse from some of the first farmers on the European continent. Moreover, upon rushing to the site, archeologists discovered an 8.2 centimeter (3.2 inches) clay torso buried underground. The legs, abdomen and head were missing, but, according to the lucky archeologists, the figure still had its most important features intact: a "well-shaped behind" and a "short, but impressive" penis. Since its discovery on August 19, 2003, the partially intact "Adonis from Chernitz" -- as it has been dubbed -- has been creating quite a stir at the state office of archeology in Dresden. Sculptors have carefully recreated the curve of the figure's buttocks and other anatomical minutiae are also clearly visible. Archeologist Harald Staeuble is amazed at the detail. He's not the only one. The find is clearly a remarkable one -- and is the oldest clay figure ever found anywhere in the world. And the project is becoming ever more fascinating as archeologists continue uncovering additional fragments while sifting through the Stone Age garbage pit. One fragment, which extends from the left calf to the pelvis, appears to be part of a female statue; Adonis, apparently, had a girlfriend. In fact, in an article soon to be published in the journal Germania, Staeuble speculates on how the pieces could fit together. He writes that "there is strong evidence that this is a copulation scene." According to Staeuble, the fragments show that the man was standing with his pelvis at a slight angle. The woman in front of him was bent forward, almost at a 90-degree angle. Another indication that the two figures belong together is the fact that they are both made to the same scale -- both figures were originally just under 30 centimeters (11.7 inches) tall. [6]The fragments found in Chernitz may fit together like this. The fragments found in Chernitz may fit together like this. The only depictions of sexual activity known until now were Greek paintings, but they were created more than 4,000 years later. Given this enormous difference in time, the Saxony find has created some confusion. Some believe it was a toy. Arch?o, a professional journal, speculates that it may have been "chic" to display these types of sculptures in the "houses of the first farmers between the Saale and Elbe rivers." Researchers speculate that the figure could also be evidence of a "fertility cult" -- a theory that sounds as straightforward as it is vague. When did humans become modest? This seemingly wild speculation is typical. When it comes to the love lives of our diluvial ancestors, scientists quickly start running out of ideas. The social behavior of early human beings was neglected for far too long, complains historian Angelika Dierichs. And there are a number of questions that have yet to be answered. When did man first become embarrassed by sexual activity? Who invented the incest taboo and the concept of monogamy in marriage? Did all the members of an extended family sleep in the same grass hut among the Neanderthals? Anyone able to answer these questions could unlock many of the sexual secrets of primeval times. But instead of finding answers, researchers are discovering more and more gaps, and the bed of Adam and Eve remains shrouded in mystery. But there has been some progress in the study of sexuality among early mankind. An archeological dig on the banks of Lake Constance has produced something just as spectacular as the erotic clay figures from Saxony. Researchers discovered a temple whose walls were once adorned with protruding clay breasts. The "cult temple," uncovered by archeologists from the southern German city of Ludwigshafen, is almost 6,000 years old. The traveling exhibition titled "100,000 Years of Sex," which is currently making its way through Germany, also attempts to shed new light on our more distant ancestors. Some of the items on display include sexy underwear from the Bronze Age, ribald frescoes from Athens and cloth condoms that were dipped in milk. But how should researchers interpret these recent finds? The discoveries have reopened an old rift in the academic world, in which two camps are at odds over a fundamental issue. The question they're quarreling over is this: Did our ancestors live relaxed and uninhibited lives, or was asceticism the order of the day in the primeval age? The two sides of the debate are clearly defined: Socio-biologists believe that the early hominids were basically promiscuous, and that they spent their lives running around the fields and woods of their day, constantly in pursuit of sex, following the genetic dictates of their rampant hormones. The other side of the equation are those -- sometimes referred to as "tabooists" -- who assume that even early man lived under a strict system of sexual abstinence, and that the sex lives of Neanderthal man were everything but orgiastic. Some believe Stone Age humans were prudes It's a dispute in which sharply contrasting worlds collide. The one camp paints scenarios of non-stop mating and cavorting. American anthropologist Helen Fisher believes that Stone Age women "were constantly disappearing into the bushes with different partners." The scenario portrayed by the other camp is quite the opposite. The miniature sex god from Saxony and the clay breasts from Lake Constance can likewise be interpreted in completely different ways, mirroring the differences between the two camps. According to the tabooists, these artworks were part of strictly regulated fertility rituals. Socio-biologists, on the other hand, see them as evidence that the early farmers had only one thing on their minds -- and that they were having sex with one another whenever they felt the urge. [8]A fresco from the public bath in Pompeii. When did humans first start making pornographic art? A fresco from the public bath in Pompeii. When did humans first start making pornographic art? The debate surrounding large, stone, 32,000-year-old, phallic objects from the Stone Age is especially heated. The one side believes they were dildos, to be inserted into the vagina for pleasure. The other interprets them as ritualistic tools that were used in the Ice Age to deflower virgins. The tabooists can turn to some important historical figures to find support for their theories. Charles Darwin, for example, believed that people once lived in "small hordes" led by chiefs who guarded all the women. "Given all that we known about jealousy," he writes, "a general mixing of the sexes in the natural state seems highly unlikely." Only the weak masturbated, Darwin believes Darwin theorizes that instead of lust and eroticism, the Early Stone Age was dominated by constant strife. The strongest men took harems, while the weaker males were homosexual or began (like the chimpanzees) to masturbate. Weaker males, according to the Darwin, could also have taken their revenge and murdered the leaders. Sigmund Freud believes that in order to put an end to permanent unrest and make living within a social community possible, upright man came up with the world's oldest moral law: totemism, a sort of early religion that associated a group with a specific symbol or set of symbols. Although this system helped bring about peace and orderliness, it also tended to impose a restrictive code of sexual abstinence on the individual. Even by as late as the 19th century, many primitive peoples in Africa and Australia still lived in totemistic communities and their interactions with one another were characterized by shyness and shame. In some tribes, a brother was not even permitted to call his sister by her name, and touching her was taboo. Marriage between two individuals in the same village was virtually impossible. The tabooists are convinced that man would never have risen to the top of the food chain if his lust and sexual appetite had not been curbed. They believe that orgiastic sexual behavior was only permitted as part of a ritual, and only on a few special days of the year. The tribes of the day would release the sexual energy and pressure they had accumulated in passionate orgies and feasts. [10]Scientists can't agree: Was the Stone Age a period of wild sex orgies or were they more reserved in their sexuality? Scientists can't agree: Was the Stone Age a period of wild sex orgies or were they more reserved in their sexuality? Exactly how we went from being animals to modest humans is still a subject of debate. Homo Erectus was already building small grass huts big enough to house between four and eight people 370,000 years ago. Clearly, there was no room for intimacy. So what did Homo Erectus do when he became aroused? Did he ask his wife for a quickie while the others were out gathering berries in the forest? Or did the shameless couple simply keep their hut-mates awake at night with their moans? According to Svend Hansen, a Berlin historian specializing in prehistory and early history, "strict sexual rules were already in place 40,000 years ago. In a society of hunters and gatherers, high birth rates were unwelcome." The reason? The fur-clad hunters of the Stone Ages spent their days traveling through the countryside in groups of 15 to 30 people -- for mothers, each baby represented an extra load to carry on their backs. Thus, it was necessary for nomadic groups to restrict fertility. In addition to "plant-based birth control agents and the use of taboos to control sexual activity," says Hansen, nomadic early man also resorted to bloodier means, like "abortion and infanticide." The result was that population levels remained stabile for tens of thousands of years. The only exceptions to tightly controlled sexual behavior happened during territorial disputes with neighboring clans. The "Venus" cult Nevertheless, even the tabooists do not deny that eroticism played a very important role among primitive man. They believe, however, that instead of constantly mating, Stone Age man tamed and "sublimated" his sexual desires, transforming them into art. And there is new evidence to support this theory: the famously buxom "Venus statuettes" from the Paleolithic. This cult was started 35,000 years ago among the first modern humans who advanced into a then cold Europe. They had hardly arrived on the European continent before they invented sculpture. Soon, love-stricken stonemasons began carving and hammering out nude and anatomically-correct figurines. More than 200 Venus statuettes are known today -- all of them plump beauties with ample hips and what would now qualify as double D cups. Some wear armbands or belts, further emphasizing their nakedness. The statues were long considered the equivalent of pin-up girls. Rudolf Feustel, a historian specializing in the prehistoric age, concluded that the artists' goal was to stimulate "raw animal lust." One of the figures -- a woman wearing armbands that look like shackles -- was even thought to represent an S&M slave. This kind of evidence is practically tailor-made for the socio-biologists, who say that these sculptures prove just how uninhibited life around the campfire used to be. But were these Rubenesque dolls really made for pornographic purposes? New studies suggest that the women depicted in the figurines were not merely plump, but pregnant. The Venus of Monpazier, France, has an opened vulva. In another figure, the stomach is arched downward and a small object appears to be emerging from the womb -- the moment of birth. In other words, instead of intending to elicit arousal, the statuettes were apparently objects of worship, earth mothers, symbols of fertility and creators of life. The sculptures are highly detailed. Some even have pubic hair, curly coiffeurs and large navels -- Ice Age masterpieces. Much is known about how Neanderthals hunted. But what were their sex-lives like? Nevertheless, the fact that the men of the Gravettien culture (30,000 to 24,000 years ago) worshipped pregnancy was probably based on a lack of knowledge. The men simply "did not comprehend the biological function of sex," believes Jill Cook of the British Museum in London. To the men of that period, the fact that the female body would periodically swell up until a screaming baby would emerge from the woman's lap was nothing less than astonishing. What a miracle! Aside from the act of procreation itself, the men appeared to be uninvolved in the process, which only enhanced their reverence for mothers. The whole thing, says Cook, had nothing to do with lust. An explosion of sexuality But soon the men did become involved. The Venus cult came to an end about 20,000 years ago, to be replaced by a new motif, that of "mixed images," a term that refers to the mixed portrayal of male and female genitalia. The walls of the La Marche cave in western France are literally blanketed with erotic images, 14,000-year-old drawings reminiscent of the Kamasutra. One image of a head plunging between a woman's thighs seems to portray oral sex. Another shows a standing couple, their bodies entwined, while the man's penis penetrates his partner. But these graffiti-like images can hardly be seen as proof of unbridled love in the Paleolithic Age. They are scribbled onto the walls of the cave with little skill and are reminiscent of bathroom graffiti, almost as if a lonely Fred Flintstone had etched out his erotic fantasies with a primitive chisel. But these cave drawings are still tremendously important. Many researchers see them as the beginning of a new age -- an age in which man, surrounded by slowly melting glaciers and on the verge of become settled, had recognized the connection between conception and birth. This, they believe, explains the emerging focus on the sexual act. The Adonis of Chernitz has only reinforced these theories. The penis of the clay figure, fired at more than 600?C (315?F), is oversized, and triangles are etched into the buttocks -- possibly meant to portray tattoos. The sculptor must have been familiar with the concept of procreation. He lived in an earthy settlement of thatched-roof cottages and the village's animal pens were filled with cows and pigs, which were already being deliberately bred by selection. Wild, drunken orgies Though all that remains of the female figure are the thighs, the fracture line shows that above the legs the figure arched upward into balloon-like buttocks. Harald Staeuble conjectures that the 30-centimeter-tall figures were displayed in an elevated, sacred location. After all, they were deliberately broken and thrown into the trash to destroy their "magical power." But what fertility festival was being celebrated when the statues were broken? Ethnic groups in Africa were known to have copulated in corn fields to encourage the crops to grow. And among the groups that developed band ceramics 7,000 years ago, everything revolved around sowing, growing and harvesting. But perhaps the idols were also the focal point of a sort of carnival, a drunken orgy in which Europe's first farmers would let off steam. The mysterious ancient temple on the banks of Lake Constance proves that special erotic rituals already existed at this early juncture, long before Egypt's pyramids were built. "The cult building stood on pylons directly on the shore," explains archeologist Helmut Schlichtherle. The interior was painted with white dots. But the site's truly unique feature is that eight large clay breasts seemed to grow out of the walls, evoking images of a place devoted to the erotic. There is more evidence that the temple was once a place filled with billowing smoke and ecstasy. Bits of fabric, perhaps parts of priestly robes, were found. Also among the rubble was an imposing ceremonial vessel filled with birch resin, a substance that produces a bewitching scent when heated. Perhaps birch resin was the incense of the Stone Age. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan References 4. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-43515-350042,00.html 5. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-43515-350042,00.html 6. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-456299-350042,00.html 7. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-456299-350042,00.html 8. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-429599-350042,00.html 9. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-429599-350042,00.html 10. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-429603-350042,00.html 11. http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,grossbild-429603-350042,00.html From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 16:59:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:59:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Clever Canines (with Colloquy) Message-ID: Clever Canines The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.15 http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i32/32a01201.htm [Colloquy follows.] Did domestication make dogs smarter? By COLIN WOODARD Budapest, Hungary Vilmos Cs?nyi's department has literally gone to the dogs. Canines have the run of the place, greeting visitors in the hall, checking up on faculty members in their offices, or cavorting with one another in classrooms overlooking the Danube River, six floors below. And, not infrequently, they go to work in the laboratories, where Mr. Cs?nyi and his colleagues are trying to determine just how much canine brains are capable of. There are no cages at Lor?nd E?tv?s University's department of ethology, the study of animal behavior. And why would there be? asks Mr. Cs?nyi, the department's founder and chairman. "The human world is the dog's natural environment," he says, as a gregarious adolescent mutt pokes into the office, wags his tail, and leaves. In adapting to our environment, Mr. Cs?nyi argues, our best friends have acquired a remarkable number of mental traits that closely resemble our own. Mr. Cs?nyi's team has been studying canine cognition for the past decade and, in the process, has built a body of experimental evidence that suggests dogs have far greater mental capabilities than scientists have previously given them credit for. "Our experiments indicate a high level of social understanding in dogs," he says. In their relationship with humans, dogs have developed remarkable interspecies-communications skills, says Mr. Cs?nyi. "They easily accept a membership in the family, they can predict social events, they provide and request information, obey rules of conduct, and are able to cooperate and imitate human actions," he says. His research even suggests that dogs can speculate on what we are thinking. The latest findings to come out of the department suggest that dogs' barks have evolved into a relatively sophisticated way of communicating with humans. Adam Mikl?si, an ethology professor, set out in a recent experiment to see if humans can interpret what dogs mean when they bark. He recruited 90 human volunteers and played them 21 recordings of barking Hungarian mudis, a herding breed. The recordings captured dogs in seven situations, such as playing with other dogs, anticipating food, and encountering an intruder. The people showed strong agreement about the emotional meaning of the various barks, regardless of whether they owned a mudi or another breed of dog, or had never owned a dog. Owners and nonowners were also equally successful at deducing the situation that had elicited the barks, guessing correctly in a third of the situations, or about double the rate of chance. For many dog owners those may not sound like particularly surprising findings, given that people talk to their dogs all the time, expect their instructions to be followed, and apparently receive information back from their pets. But in scientific circles, animal-cognition studies have largely ignored dogs, focusing instead on closer human relatives, like chimpanzees and gorillas. Dogs, as a result, have not been considered very brainy. Until recently, dogs were thought to be intellectually inferior to wolves. A study published in 1985 by Harry Frank, a psychologist at the University of Michigan at Flint showed that wolves could unlock a complicated gate mechanism after watching a human do it once, while dogs remained stumped, even after considerable exposure. This led some in the field to conclude that dogs' intellectual capacity diminished during domestication. The Inhibited Animal That never sat well with Mr. Cs?nyi who, like many in dog-loving Hungary, had dogs of his own. Dogs, he suspected, were simply more inhibited than their wild cousins, requiring permission from their masters before doing something as rash as opening a gate, which they may have regarded as a violation of their master's rules. So eight years ago, he and his colleagues conducted a problem-solving experiment of their own. With their masters present, 28 dogs of various ages, breeds, and levels of training had to figure out how to pull on handles of plastic dishes to obtain meat on the other side of a wire fence. Regardless of other factors, the dogs with the strongest relationship with their owner scored worst, continually looking to their owners for permission or assistance. The best results came from outdoor dogs, who obtained the food, on average, in one-third the time. Most telling, when owners were allowed to give their dogs permission, the gap between indoor and outdoor dogs vanished. That made the researchers wonder what else the dogs could accomplish by taking cues from people. Chimpanzees, our closest relatives, have been shown to follow a human's gaze, but they do very poorly in a classic experiment that requires them to extract clues by watching a person. In that test, a researcher hides food in one of several containers out of sight of the animal. Then the chimp is allowed to choose one container after the experimenter indicates the correct choice by various methods, such as staring, nodding, pointing, tapping, or placing a marker. Only with considerable training do chimps and other primates manage to score above chance. Dogs, however, performed marvelously, and even outdoor dogs with no particular master could solve the problem immediately. (The researchers controlled for the scent of the food.) By 2001 a raft of experiments by Mr. Cs?nyi's team and another led by Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, Germany, showed that dogs were far more skilled then either chimps or wolves at using human social cues to find food. Those results left researchers with this question: If dogs can pick up on human cues, do they turn the tables and put out cues for humans to understand? To find out, Mr. Cs?nyi and R?ka Polg?rdi, a graduate student, went to the homes of Budapest's many dog owners. After introducing the researchers to the dogs, the owners would leave the room. Then the dogs would watch Mr. Cs?nyi hide a piece of food somewhere inaccessible to them. When the owners returned, the dogs would run or glance back and forth from master to hiding place, clearly signaling its location. More-recent experiments substituted nonfood objects and had similar results, which suggests the dogs may be placing themselves in their owner's shoes, and realizing that the humans are ignorant of the object's location. The Hungarian researchers also discovered that dogs excel at imitating humans. In one of the laboratories down the hall from Mr. Cs?nyi's office, Zs?fia Vir?nyi, a post-doctoral researcher, demonstrates with T?dor, an enthusiastic little mutt that she hand-raised to serve as a member of a control group for another experiment. T?dor sits attentively as Ms. Vir?nyi spins around in a circle and comes to a stop. "Csinal!" or "you do it!" she says, at which T?dor does a little 360 on the tiled floor and lets out an enthusiastic bark. He easily imitates Ms. Vir?nyi's bowing and lifting an arm (or paw, in his case). But he gets confused when she produces two buckets each containing a block, and lifts one out, then asks T?dor to do the same. Amid a chorus of yelps and barks, he pokes his nose in and out of the buckets. "Some dogs find the bucket trick very easy; others have a hard time turning around," Ms. Vir?nyi explains as T?dor lies down on the floor and watches the surrounding humans with what appears to be good cheer. "He's very concerned about breaking things, so he doesn't like it when the block or bucket moves because of his actions." In the experiments, some dogs could imitate previously unseen actions performed by a person they hadn't had close contact with. Other dogs could learn how to operate a simple ball-dispensing machine after watching humans do so, a finding that won Mr. Cs?nyi's department one of its two awards from the American Psychological Association. "We thought it would be very difficult for dogs to imitate humans because chimps have great difficulty with it, despite having much larger brains," Mr. Cs?nyi says. "But it turns out they love to do it. This is not a little thing because they must pay attention to the person's actions, remember them, and then apply them to their own body. ... No other animal could do this." Wolves Without Manners So where did dogs acquire the ability and motivation to observe, imitate, communicate with, and behave like people? In the computer lab, Mr. Mikl?si, the ethology professor, shows videos that he believes provide part of the answer. Two years ago, Ms. Vir?nyi and other graduate students began hand-raising a group of wolf cubs. They coddled and hand-fed them, took them for walks and played with them, while other students raised dog puppies of the same age. Dogs descended exclusively from wolves some 15,000 to 135,000 years ago, according to genetic studies, and the researchers wanted to see if wolves could be socialized to communicate with people. At five weeks of age, the wolf cubs were introduced to a room containing their hand-raiser and an adult dog, both sitting motionless, and the human staring into space. Mr. Mikl?si shows a video of what happened: A gawky wolf cub stumbles awkwardly up to the dog, sniffs it a bit, then does the same to the human before climbing into the person's lap and going to sleep. No eye contact is made with its caregiver; the cub appears to treat the person like a comfortable piece of furniture. Mr. Mikl?si's next video shows a dog puppy wandering into the same situation. It too wanders over to the dog for a sniff, but then waddles over to its caregiver, stares it in the face and begins yipping for attention. When the caregiver remains motionless the dog wags its tail, barks, and begins licking the person, trying to establish contact. It then sits down in front of the caregiver, ears up, apparently waiting for contact. A similar pattern emerged in tests of young adult dogs. In one, the subject is given the opportunity to try to remove a piece of meat from under a cage by pulling on a rope in the presence of its caregiver. The dogs and wolves both mastered this promptly. But in experiments where the rope was anchored, the dogs tried a couple of times, then turned to their masters for assistance or cues. The wolves, by contrast, continued yanking on it until exhausted, never once giving their caregivers so much as a glance. "The wolves wouldn't ever figure out if a human's eyes were open or closed, and were only interested in the meat," notes Mr. Mikl?si. "The dogs were of course interested in the meat, but knew that one way to get it might be to figure out what the human wants them to do." Given that both sets of animals were raised in the same fashion, the dogs' interest in communicating with humans to solve problems appeared to be innate, probably an evolutionary byproduct of their domestication, says Mr. Cs?nyi. Further evidence for that theory comes from an experimental fur farm in Siberia, where Russian geneticists have spent the last 50 years breeding a population of tame foxes. The process was simple: Humans would approach a fox cage, and the foxes that showed the least panic or aggression were selected for breeding. After only 18 generations, the foxes displayed remarkably doglike behaviors: sitting on a person's lap and barking for attention -- actions rarely seen in wild canines. A team of researchers led by Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute, in Leipzig, tested the foxes' ability to follow human social cues, using the same classic tests that Mr. Cs?nyi uses on dogs and others use on chimps. The results, published in Current Biology in February, showed the tame foxes' abilities to be entirely comparable to dogs, while ordinary foxes performed as badly as wolves. Mr. Hare calls those findings surprising because the Russian breeders hadn't been selecting their animals for intelligence. "You might just be breeding dogs that are friendlier," he says, "but wind up with a dog that's smarter" because it communicates better with people, making it more able to solve problems. A Challenge to Pet Theories But not everyone will go so far as the Hungarians in crediting dogs with relatively high cognitive skills. Michael J. Owren, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University, says Mr. Cs?nyi's team may be underestimating the flexibility of associative learning, the most basic kind of learning that comes not from "thinking" out the problem, but simply by associating events or objects with one another, as Pavlov demonstrated with his dogs. "Dogs are supremely sensitive to cues being produced by humans and are able to interact with humans very effectively," Mr. Owren says. "The question then becomes to what extent are they showing sophisticated cognitive processing and to what extent is their behavior being molded by this extreme attentiveness to people?" "The Hungarians are using pet-class dogs who have been socialized in a very unique way, but there is no accounting for that," adds Raymond P. Coppinger, a dog cognition specialist at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Mass. "To be talking about dogs in general when you are only referring to this small population of dogs from the Western world that have been bred for all sorts of specific tasks is going to lead us astray about what dogs can do or how they evolved." Mr. Coppinger is also concerned that researchers are failing to properly control for the "Clever Hans effect," named after a horse that tapped out the answers to mathematical problems more than a century ago. Scientists ultimately concluded that the horse was picking up inadvertent cues from the person who posed the question; Hans was clever enough to figure out that he would get a treat if he stopped tapping when the human in front of him subtly reacted to the arrival of the "correct answer"; the horse didn't actually know arithmetic. Dogs have fooled scientists before. In the early 1990s, scientists at the University of Laval, in Quebec City, published studies showing that dogs could locate objects by mentally representing the past locations and movement of the object. The finding caused a stir because dogs had not previously been found to possess such abilities. But last year Emma Collier-Baker and two other researchers at the University of Queensland, in Australia, repeated the experiments and discovered that researchers had inadvertently tipped the dogs off by leaving the tool used to move the target object adjacent to the correct hiding place. When that oversight was corrected, the dogs' performed no better than chance. "If dogs have representational mental abilities, I don't think anyone has demonstrated it yet," says Mr. Coppinger, who suspects dogs are solving most experimental tasks using simple associative abilities. "For a lot of these experiments you may be giving the dog a cue that they are able to pick up on." In response, Mr. Mikl?si says the experiments have, in fact, controlled for the "Clever Hans effect"; he is particularly confident that the dogs are not picking up cues directly from people because in most tests, they have never seen the experimenter before. Moreover, they are fairly slow in understanding gestures, like the lift of an eyebrow to indicate the location of a hidden object. "They can learn it with training, but the dogs we use in most experiments only see the experimenter two or three times, often a week or more apart, and don't get the chance to learn our body language." With training and encouragement, however, the dogs do show remarkable abilities to learn from humans. In a laboratory down the hall, Ms. Vir?nyi shows T?dor two pieces of paper. He watches intently as she taps her foot on the left sheet, then he stares her in the face, tongue wagging. "Csinal," she commands after a moment, and T?dor quickly steps on the paper, wagging his tail and barking excitedly. There's no way to know for sure if T?dor and other dogs are in fact thinking their way around life's problems, but if not then one thing is certain: They're extremely good at fooling people into thinking they are. --------------- The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript http://chronicle.com/colloquy/2005/04/dogs/ How Smart Is Fido? Thursday, April 14, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time The topic Animal behaviorists have largely ignored dogs, choosing instead to study closer human relatives, like chimpanzees and gorillas. Until recently, dogs were not thought, at least in scientific circles, to be highly intelligent. New research out of Hungary, however, suggests that in adapting to our environment, dogs have acquired a remarkable number of mental traits that closely resemble our own. Among other things, they can predict social events, provide and request information, cooperate, and imitate human actions. But are the Hungarian scientists giving too much credit to canines? To what extent are the animals simply associating events or objects with one another, as Pavlov's dogs did, rather than actually "thinking" out problems? Is the Hungarians' research limited by their use of dogs that have been bred as pets? The guest Adam Mikl?si, a research fellow in the department of ethology at Lor?nd E?tv?s University, in Hungary, is part of the team whose research suggests that dogs may have evolved to be particularly attuned to understanding human communication. He has also studied social behavior in fish and rats. _________________________________________________________________ A transcript of the chat follows. _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): Welcome to The Chronicle's live chat with Adam Mikl?si, a research fellow in the department of ethology at Lor?nd E?tv?s University, in Hungary. Mr. Mikl?si has studied social behavior in dogs, as well as in rats and fish. He is part of a research team led by Vilmos Cs?nyi, the chairman of the ethology department and the author of "If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind," which was published in January by North Point Press. Welcome Mr. Mikl?si _________________________________________________________________ Question from Judith Grant, Ohio University: Thank you so much for doing this wonderful research. I wanted to comment that I not only agree with your findings about dogs (based on my ownership of companion animals), but have observed the same thing in particular horses with whom a special bond. My horse can figure out how to open gates after watching me do it, can open gates to let other horses out. Furthermore, I have on several occasions modeled behavior to him that he can then repeat - specifically, I have climbed onto a platform that he was afraid to stand on. He watched me carefully and then did it himself. I think animals learn by relationship - to each other and to us. Adam Mikl?si: I agree with you that in many respects horses share some traits with dogs (and of course us). To some extent this is not a surprise because during their domestication, horses have been selected for their ability to interact with huamns. Your observation that your horse learns by observing humans is very interesting. This has not been described by researchers but I am sure would be worth investigating in the future. We know that dogs learn also by observation but interestingly this method has been used very rarely in dog training. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Karen Tibbetts, Rockford College: Have dogs developed "intelligence" as they have increased their interaction with humans? i.e., my 3rd generation Westie seems much more "human" than my 1st, as do other dogs I observe. Adam Mikl?si: Intelligence is not a good word but I know what you mean. Certainly, dogs (as other animals) change their behaviour over many generations. As present days' westies do not look like the "original" ones, the same could be also true for behaviour. I am not sure whether big changes can take place in a few generations when it comes to "cognition". In addition you should not forget that you have also changed over the years. So it might be that now you can see signs of "intelligence" in your westie that escaped your attention earlier. Only objective testing and observing could answer such questions. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Chris Brown Mahoney; University of MN, Carlson School of Mgmt: Is there any evidence of a difference in "intelligence" between breeds OR difference between dogs of the same breed? I ask this because I have had Pulis for 30 yrs & while I am used to their alertness & problem solving, many who meet them for the 1st time think they are very smart. It seems that way to me, as well. I also notice what seems to be differences in intelligence between the 5 pulis I have had.....Thanks for any insights! Chris Adam Mikl?si: I like to use the word intelligence when it comes to compare individuals within a breed. Of course one should define what is meant by this term, for example one could speak about "social intelligence" (how one deals with social problems) or "mathematical intelligence" (how one can solve problems by the means of mathematics. Some may be good in one but bad in the other etc, and their performance will depend on many things like genetics, experience, enviromental factors, etc. As in humans there are, of course, differences in intelligence among individuals. However note that in spite of the claims of many, there are no good "intelliegence test" for dogs. The problem comes when you want to compare breeds because there are some genetic differences which can seriously hinder performance in a task or thinking about a problem. For example, terriers like to dig. So their first idea about solving any problem is to start with digging a hole. This means that I do not like to compare intelligence of breeds but say how different they are in this or that situation. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Paul, small 4-yr Texas university: I ame fascinated with your research. Besides the Mudi, were Hungarian Vizslas used in your study. Adam Mikl?si: Mudies were used only in some of the experimenents,( not many are living in Budapest). We work also with vizslas of course. In the case of most experiments, we used as many different breeds as we can because we would like to find out what is special about dogs in general and not what kind of breed differences there are. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Dr. Philip R. Breeze, Kutztown University: Can any of this be reliably extrapolated to dolphins? Adam Mikl?si: If one thinks in a comparative persepctive then I would say yes. The BIG question in this field of reseach is what kind of cognitive abilities animals (species) have and how can one compare this to human cognition. During evolution, different species face different task to solve (or they die out). For example, wolves had to evolve the ability to hunt in packs because otherwise they could not get food in winter. It is fascinating to investigate what kind of problems dolphins can solve (and cannot solve). Especially in the case of dolphins, it is very interesting that they seem to be able to solve problems in captivity that we have no idea what they use for in the wild. For example out in the sea, there are not many objects yet they are very skillful with them in captivity. The problem is that dolphins are very expensive to keep and do research on; some of the experiments we did with the dogs have been also done with dolphins by Louis Herman in Hawaii, but I think we can find our more about the cognitive evolution of dogs within a shorter time, and dolphin cognition will remain a mystery for longer. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Sonia Dutton, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A couple of days ago, my new puppy got his first haircut. Being a poodle, he was transformed from poof of wild hair to elegant silhouette. Almost instantaneously the dog whom virtually everyone on the street paid attention to for a "cuteness" factor now occasionally gets an audible whisper. While I have no interest in cultivating the former, it made me think: can dogs perceive how people feel about their appearance? And if so, how are they affected? Adam Mikl?si: We do not know for sure, but in general I would say dogs are not interested in their appearance. In humans we know that appearance is very important in male/female choice but this is not the case in dogs. Dogs seem to habituate very fast to their mirror images. One test to your question could be to see whether your dog looks longer in a mirror after getting his haircut. On the other hand they might learn that after getting haircuts people behave differently. However I have not heard about a dog who would "force" the owner to get his hair cut !(just joking) _________________________________________________________________ Question from Chase Billingsley Kimmel, Hanover College: After reading "Clever Canines - Did domestication make dogs smarter?" by Woodard, it seems that Mr. Hare has associated a form of intelligence with friendliness. This seems to suggest that the friendlier a dog is, the more potential he has for being intelligent because he is more attentive to his caregiver. But when looking at various species of domesticated dogs this does not seem to be the case, for example, the Doberman pinscher is very intelligent but not so friendly and the typical Basset hound is friendly but not very intelligent. But one might say, What actually is the definition of friendly? What would be your explanation of this? It could also be observed that friendliness might be related to low intelligence in some breeds. Some people believe that Dalmatians are one of the bravest and most heroic breeds of dogs. People might think this because they will go into a burning building with their firefighter owners to save people. Is this obedience or just plain stupidity? Stanley Coren has conducted Canine IQ tests to determine breed intelligence. Twelve different areas of intelligence are scored (e.g. problem solving, social learning, attention, etc) and then time and score are totaled to determine the intelligence of a breed. What are your criteria for determining intelligence? What is your definition of intelligence and how do you measure it? There are various types of factors that can affect what we think of as intelligence, such as personality, obedience, instincts, the ability to pay attention, etc. Are any of these factors addressed in your assessment of intelligence? Adam Mikl?si: The relationship between "intelligence" and friendliness is very complex. Dr Hare argues that dogs can display their intelligence with humans because they are not aggressive toward them or do not feel fear. In general it is very problematic to apply human terms to other species without a definition. In our secientific papers we never use the word intelligence. I also do not believe in intelligence tests comparing dog breeds; such questions could be only asked with relation to dogs of the same breed. There is no such thing as "intelligence" you must always say what tests you have used to measure this or that cognitive ability. If you want a general defintion it would be like flexibility of problem-solving but this could be affected by previous experience, evolutionary heritage and learning. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Bob, Professor Emeritus, State University System: Which are smarter--labradors or college deans? Adam Mikl?si: In my view that is a wrong type of question. In biology any type of "intelligence", "cleverness" or similar things do not exists in themselves but only with relation of the environment. So first you should define the environment in which you study them, and only then can I say (after testing) who is smarter (e.g. how would college deans hunt a bird?) _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): We're midway through out time with Dr. Miklosi, so don't wait to send in your questions. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Marilyn Cooper, Michigan Technological University: Marc Hauser (Willd Minds) argues that different animals employ different "mental tools," and that behavior that looks the same in different animals may not involve the same kind of thinking. Have you considered this hypothesis, and how would you say it relates to your work with dogs? Adam Mikl?si: I think that is the correct approach. During domestication dogs got the "mental tools" for how to behave/"manipulate" etc humans, and they use them well because we are contributing a lot to their survival (and doing it without force). For dogs this means that they have abilities for understanding many forms of our gestural and to some extent verbal communication, observe our behaviour and learn from it, etc. Other animals (e.g. wolves) do not do this even if they have the chance _________________________________________________________________ Question from Leslie, small liberal arts univ: I've heard that dogs have learned to make eye contact with humans whereas wolves do not do this. If this is true, have dogs learned that by making eye contact they can get a human's attention and then communicate with that human? My dog will come to me from another room, place herself in front of me and, standing still, stare at me. When I get up she runs to the door but if I don't follow she comes back, and does the same stare. She's taught me that this means she needs to go outside! Adam Mikl?si: I think you are right. Dog-human communication goes both ways. We teach them and they teach us, or they learn from us and we learn from them. That is wonderful because it works so smoothly, and although it can also be done with some other animals (e.g. dolphins) with dogs it is very natural, and no special training is needed for either of the parties. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Rich Monastersky: The article, "Clever Canines," talks about research showing that foxes could be domesticated in as little as 18 generations (50 years). In that short time, the foxes demonstrated a marked increase in their ability to extract information from human cues. Does this research suggest that dog domestication might have happened quite quickly? And if so, might a research project with wolves be able to produce domesticated animals particularly tuned to human communication in just a few decades? Adam Mikl?si: The fox experiment shows that you can get changes is social behaviour very fast. However foxes have not reached the "level" of dogs, there are still important differences. In principle one could try to domesticate wolves but there might be differences depending on what kind of wolf population one starts from. It is believed that our dogs originated from Asian wolves that are very different from the European ones. It is more intresting whether one can domesticate dogs "further"! _________________________________________________________________ Question from Ryan Singer, in Chicago: From the article: << Michael J. Owren, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University, says Mr. Cs?nyi's team may be underestimating the flexibility of associative learning, the most basic kind of learning that comes not from "thinking" out the problem, but simply by associating events or objects with one another, as Pavlov demonstrated with his dogs. >> I wonder how "associating events or objects with one other" differs from "thinking" in the above. It seems that in order for two objects to be associated in a mind, each object must be represented as a concept (it must be something that can be differentiated from everything else from the perspective of the experiencer) and the activation of one concept should give rise to the other (if they are indeed associated). This sounds a lot like thinking to me. Adam Mikl?si: I do not like this debate (in science) about "associate" versus "cognition". Actually we avoid saying anything about the inner processes because there are no proofs for it. There is no mental or cognitive ability without learning, so one cannot debate the existance of "associations" but we have no test for it, and neither can one do control experiments. The dog is not a rat despite of what many think. So I like to speak about "abilities" that are special in dogs, some of which, of course, might emerge by association learning. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Dr. Alka Chandna, University of Western Ontario: I was interested to read about the work of Manuel Berdoy, an animal behaviorist at Oxford University. Berdoy released 75 lab-born rats into a farmyard and documented the quick recovery of wild behaviors in the rats once they were released. The rats found water, food and hiding holes almost immediately. They started to establish social hierarchies within days, and it was only a few weeks before they had established an extensive pattern of paths across the colony. Although the rats had spent their whole lives being fed on pellets, the females immediately prepared for pregnancy by foraging and storing appropriate food. I wonder whether Dr. Mikl?si's work with rats would offer similar insights into rat behavior and cognitive ability. Thanks very much! Adam Mikl?si: Actually, I had only a very limited experience with rats testing their ability to learn by observation of others. On the other hand, if Berdoy had released the rats in the wild, as opposed to the farmyard, none or may be a few would survive there. This is not about cognitive abilities but about experience and genetics because laboratory rats have been selected against living in the wild: e.g. that should not avoid predators (as it would be normal). This way humans (resarchers) can work with them. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Bruce Friedrich, Grinnell College: I see that you are also studying rats and fish--that's extremely interesting. I've read that fish have memories, learn from one another, and can do better on some cognition tests than dogs, and that rats can dream and play and learn, also. It's all so interesting. How would you compare the cognitive capacities of dogs, rats, and fish? What other interesting little tidbits do you have about rats and fish, from your behavioral research with them? Where, in English, might we find some of your studies? Thanks so much--very, very exciting stuff. Thank you for doing it. Adam Mikl?si: I would never compare dogs, rats and fish (actually there is no such thing as a general "fish", but there are individuals belonging to certain fish species). These animals live in different environments so the abilities and challenges are very difficult. When you ask about comparison you want an objective answer but this is impossible. Could you tell me a problem that would be similar for "fish", rats and dogs. Our group has published over 50 papers on dogs, I have another 15 on various animals. They are all in English, and you can get some of them by searching on the web, or looking at [44]our webpage (or write me by [45]email) _________________________________________________________________ Question from Bob Louisell, Professor Emeritus, St. Cloud State University: Some say humans can be distinguished from animals because of their facility with language. Others say mathematics; still others say morality. Do you have any evidence of moral behavior having evolved in dogs? Adam Mikl?si: No or very little. I am not a philosopher but I think of "morality" as a kind of social aggreement among people. This would mean that we should have such kind of aggreement with our dogs which seem to be unlikely. But there are behavioural traits both in humans and dogs that can be the basis of "moral" behaviour, for example "helping" or "cooperating". I think only human social system (with the means of communication, etc) can form such abilities in complex "moral" behaviour. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Debbie Huerta, Colgate University: I certainly concur with Judith's comments and also thank you for your research and papers about dogs. We have had dog's (companions) who initiate interesting behaviors after making a connection between a certain behavior and a desirable outcome. For example, our standard poodle would go to a window and bark with great enthusiasm. Our labrador would join her abandoning her food, bone, toy, spot on couch, etc. Said object or place would then be taken by the poodle. Perhaps it is unfairly easy for a poodle to deceive a labrador, however, I wondered if you or members of your team have had the opportunity to observe or study this sort of behavior? Thank you. Adam Mikl?si: In our class on "animal cognition" this is one of the examples I use, because I can explain that this behaviour ("deceit") can be the outcome of both "learning" and "cognition." However at the moment, it is very difficlult to find out what really goes on here. Such behaviour is also very difficult to test in the laboratory or even at the home of the owners. Neither dogs nor humans "lie" on command but I agree it is a very interesting topic. An interesting question would be whether your poodle would do it also at other places or with other dogs...? _________________________________________________________________ Question from Cecile McKee, U. of Arizona: I'm raising a dog the belongs to an organization that breeds and trains dogs to help people with various disabilities. The experience has helped me appreciate individual variation across dogs in new ways. A couple of questions have already hinted at variation issues. Could you comment more on this, both across individuals in a breed and across breeds? Next, most organizations that train service dogs have a high proportion of dogs that don't make it through the testing. Some of this is of course health issues (a dog that's going to sometimes pull a wheelchair cannot have hip trouble), but a lot of it relates to training and 'attitude' (like gentleness or willingness to 'work'). Can you speculate on what such organizations might do to improve training? Or what puppy raisers might do to improve dogs' chances to do well in the later training? Adam Mikl?si: 1. with regard to breed, the situation is easier because there are certain limits both physical and behavioural for many breeds. As you would not use a small poodle for helping people in wheelchairs, you prefer dog breeds with ceratin characteristics (e.g. retreival abilities) for you goals. The question of individuals is more difficult. At the moment there is no test for young puppies telling us how a dog will behave in the future. In addition, they will experience a lot (and we will not know about most of this because we are not there). Then comes the training experience etc. So I think large variation is the normal situation in most cases. And this brings me to the second point because I have always wondered why people think that dog should pass the training at 100%. At our university we have 160 biology students, and only 10 or 20 of them will be a biologist. Are we doing a bad job as teachers? I think not. Being a biologist or helping a disabled person are very complex things. It is inevitable that only a minority can do it. Of course there is also room for improvement with very early training and selection of the puppies as training proceeds. But there will be no perfect solution partly also because the task for these dogs is also very different depending on the future owner (actually we also train dogs for disabled here in Hungary and have the same problems) _________________________________________________________________ Question from Linda Sommer, U of Indianapolis: Have you done any work with dogs that develop a disability and how that affects their interaction with their environment? I grew up around a blind dog who was quite remarkable at adapting, and as an adult had a dog who went deaf. Both learned to cope quite well without human intervention. That seemed quite an indiction of intelligence to me. Adam Mikl?si: Actually, not but I think this kind of adaptation to loss of senses is based on the flexibility of the nervous system and not "intelligence" as such. The problem is that, in wild animals, such individuals would not survive for long but in captivity they have a better chance. In Budapest in the Zoo we had a blind male wolf living with his son, and the younger wolf brough the meat to his father regularly. _________________________________________________________________ Question from Mary, medium public comprehensive college: Certain breeds are noted for certain traits--hunting, retrieving, pointing, herding, digging. Does your research have any implications supporting or questioning this characteristic? Adam Mikl?si: We try to avoid compapring breeds. In the mind of dog-loving people, breed" is a well-defined category, but in reality, it is not. This is because people think in pictures (the photos of a breed) and not actually in terms of real animals and their behaviour. You can find in all breeds individuals who might dig, retrieve etc. But in some cases, it is very difficult to train a dog for doing such and such a behaviour whilst in other cases it is easier. So breed difference is not a black or white issue! _________________________________________________________________ Question from Ellen Dannin, Wayne State University Law School: J? napot! I saw a positive review of your book in Science News this week. What are the intriguing questions you see out there with regard to canine intelligence? And I have a dog I got when he was 4. I thought was not very bright. So I never tried to train him. But I noticed one day he was trying a trick I had taught my other dog. He learned by watching his canine companion. It helped that treats were involved. Each of my dogs is smart in a different way. Figuring out their strengths is a lot of fun. Adam Mikl?si: First of all it is not my book but my professor's Vilmos Cs?nyi. There are many questions to answer. Actually, I prefer smaller questions to bigger one. We are conducting studies to find out how much really (on an everyday basis, without special training) dogs understand about human's visual and verbal communication. We are running studies to find out what dogs can learn from each other or from humans (just as your example shows). We are looking into issues how the relationship of the dog with different members of the family influences their behaviour. We are also studying dog barking to see whether there is information for other dogs or humans. K?sz?n?m a k?rd?s?t, ?dv?zlettel _________________________________________________________________ Question from Tom Boyer, non-instituted: Have you ever heard of a dog immitating vocal exercizes? As a singer, I sometimes do this descending ooh sound, down an octave. I had a jack russell that copied me,and even could be prompted by a pitch pipe to do the exercize, and pretty in tune too! Adam Mikl?si: I know of stories (anecdotes) about such "singing" dogs, and we have also some around that would start "calling" or howling after listening to some musical instrument. Actually, this is one experiment that we are running now, so I hope to report on this in the next few months. _________________________________________________________________ Rich Monastersky (Moderator): That's about all we have time for. I want to thank Mr. Miklosi for staying up late (in Budapest) and answering these interesting questions. And thanks also go to all of you who participated in today's discussion. References 44. http://etologia.aitia.hu/main.php?folderID=872&articleID=3864&ctag=articlelist&iid=1 45. mailto:amiklosi62 at hotmail.com From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:11:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:11:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Andrea Dworkin Package Message-ID: Andrea Dworkin Package [Not all of this is for family viewing.] Guardian | 'She never hated men' http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5168541-110592,00.html Andrea Dworkin was attacked as much for her personal appearance as for her uncompromising views. But the death at the age of 58 of 'the most maligned feminist on the planet' has deprived feminism of its last truly challenging voice, says Katharine Viner Katharine Viner Tuesday April 12, 2005 Like most, I feel a shudder of shock whenever I read the words of Andrea Dworkin. On crime: "I really believe a woman has the right to execute a man who has raped her." On romance: "In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine." On sexual intercourse: "Intercourse remains a means, or the means, of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her, cell by cell, her own inferior status ... pushing and thrusting until she gives in." Her radicalism was always bracing, sometimes terrifying; and, in a world where even having Botox is claimed as some kind of pseudo-feminist act, she was the real thing. Her death at the age of 58 deprives us of a truly challenging voice. But Andrea Dworkin was always more famous for being Andrea Dworkin than anything else. Never mind her seminal works of radical feminism, never mind her disturbing theorising that our culture is built on the ability of men to rape and abuse women. For many, Dworkin was famous for being fat. She was the stereotype of the Millie Tant feminist made flesh - overweight, hairy, un-made-up, wearing old denim dungarees and DMs or bad trainers - and thus a target for ridicule. The fact that she presented herself as she was - no hair dyes or conditioner, no time-consuming waxing or plucking or shaving or slimming or fashion - was rare and deeply threatening; in a culture where women's appearance has become ever more defining, Dworkin came to represent the opposite of what women want to be. "I'm not a feminist, but ... " almost came to mean, "I don't look like Andrea Dworkin but ... " In 2001, the critic Elaine Showalter said: "I wish Andrea Dworkin no harm, but I doubt that many women will get up at 4am to watch her funeral." A couple of years ago, in an article in this newspaper on hairiness, Mimi Spencer wrote: "The only visibly hairy woman at the forefront of feminism today appears to be Andrea Dworkin, and she looks as though she neither waxes nor washes, nor flushes nor flosses, and thus doesn't really count." She didn't count because of how she looked; she only cared about rape because no man could fancy her. The attacks on Dworkin were not only personal; they also applied to her work. John Berger once called Dworkin "the most misrepresented writer in the western world". She has always been seen as the woman who said that all men are rapists, and that all sex is rape. In fact, she said neither of these things. Here's what she told me in 1997: "If you believe that what people call normal sex is an act of dominance, where a man desires a woman so much that he will use force against her to express his desire, if you believe that's romantic, that's the truth about sexual desire, then if someone denounces force in sex it sounds like they're denouncing sex. If conquest is your mode of understanding sexuality, and the man is supposed to be a predator, and then feminists come along and say, no, sorry, that's using force, that's rape - a lot of male writers have drawn the conclusion that I'm saying all sex is rape." In other words, it's not that all sex involves force, but that all sex which does involve force is rape. She continued the theme in 1981 in Pornography, possibly her most influential book. She wrote: "Pornography is a celebration of rape and injury to women; it's a kind of union for rapists, a way of legitimising rape and formalising male supremacy in our society." She said that pornography is both a cause of male violence and an expression of male dominance, that women who enjoy porn are harming women, and that lesbian porn is self-hating. She had no time for the textual analysis of porn so beloved of academia; what she cared about was the women performing in the films, the harm they suffered, and what other women had to suffer as a result of men watching porn. While much of this was brilliant, there are few who could agree with all of Dworkin's work. Her exhortation to vengeance was unpalatable to many; she said that "a semi-automatic gun is one answer" to the problem of violence against women, and that she supported the murder of paedophiles: "Women have the right to avenge crimes on their children. A woman in California shot a paedophile who abused her son; she walked into the court and killed him there and then. I loved that woman. It is our duty as women to find ways of supporting her and others like her. I have no problem with killing paedophiles." And her 2000 book, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation, suggested that women should follow the same path as Jews did in the 20th century: they were abused and fought back, and so should women. Her analysis of the situation in the Middle East - an analysis which, according to Linda Grant, "many Zionists, non-Zionists, Palestinians, scholars of the Holocaust, pacifists, the left, women, men, are bound to find offensive" - concluded with a call to women to form their own nation state. In an interview with Grant, Dworkin described a Jewish childhood dominated by family memories of the Holocaust. At a time when the subject was simply not mentioned, Dworkin says she was obsessed: "I've been very involved in trying to learn about the Holocaust and trying to understand it, which is probably pointless," she said. "I have read Holocaust material, you might say compulsively, over a lifetime ... I have been doing that since I was a kid." Her mother was often ill, but her childhood in New Jersey was happy, until the age of nine, when she was sexually abused in a cinema. From then on, it was a life full of horrors. After an anti-Vietnam protest when she was 18, she was sent to prison and was assaulted by two male prison doctors: "They pretty much tore me up inside with a steel speculum and had themselves a fine old time verbally tormenting me as well." She bled for 15 days and her family doctor told her he had "never seen a uterus so bruised or a vagina so ripped". She married a Dutch anarchist who beat her savagely; she managed to escape from him, she said, "not because I knew that he would kill me but because I thought I would kill him". She said that she never stopped being afraid of him. Then, in 1999, Dworkin was drugged and raped in a hotel room in Paris. It was an attack that was to devastate her. In 2000 she wrote an account of the rape for the New Statesman, which ended: "I have been tortured and drug-rape runs through it ... I am ready to die." Her account was questioned by some commentators, who wondered why she hadn't told the police, how she could be so sure she was raped since she was drugged at the time (she cited vaginal pain, bleeding, and infection; bruising on her breast; "huge, deep gashes" on her leg). But the undercurrent, tapping into the myths that Dworkin herself had so carefully undermined in her work, was this: how could she be raped? She's old, she's fat, she's ugly. As if anyone still thought that rape was about sex and not about power. This response, though, did not surprise Dworkin. "If the Holocaust can be denied even today," she said, "how can a woman who has been raped be believed?" But the impact of the rape and surrounding controversy was severe, and Dworkin withdrew from public life for several years. Her health was bad: she had a stomach-stapling operation because her obesity had reached a dangerous level, and had severe knee problems which made it difficult to walk. She became invisible in the US except among those for whom her name was what she called "a curse word", and her 2002 memoir, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist, still does not have a publisher in the UK. But she was coming to terms with her disability; she was being taken seriously again by newspapers, at least in this country. In September, she told the Guardian: "I thought I was finished, but I feel a new vitality. I want to continue to help women." She also said: "At first [after the rape] I wanted very much to die. Now I only want to die a few times a day, which is damned good." This black wit is remarked upon by everyone who met Dworkin. During the Clinton/ Lewinsky affair, when Dworkin was vocally opposed to Clinton, she said: "What needs to be asked is, was the cigar lit?" When I asked her if her abusive ex-husband had remarried, she said: "Oh yes, and very quickly. After all, the house was getting dirty." I remember being in a restaurant with her in London when she joked that she really ought to go on a diet, and did I know of any good ones? People were startled by her gentleness and vulnerability; were surprised that her friendships included the British author Michael Moorcock and John Berger as well as feminists Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan. And although she once said she was a lesbian, she lived with the writer John Stoltenberg for three decades, saying: "It's a very deep relationship, a major part of my life which I never thought possible." As Julie Bindel, feminist and Dworkin's friend of 10 years, says: "She was the most maligned feminist on the planet; she never hated men." Dworkin's feminism often came into conflict with the more compromising theories of others, such as Naomi Wolf. "I do think liberal feminists bear responsibility for a lot of what's gone wrong," she told me in 1997. "To me, what's so horrible is that they make alliances for the benefit of middle-class women. So it has to do with, say, having a woman in the supreme court. And that's fine - I'd love a woman, eight women, in the supreme court - but poor women always lose out." She did concede, however, that her radicalism was too much for some: "I'm not saying that everybody should be thinking about this in the same way. I have a really strong belief that any movement needs both radicals and liberals. You always need women who can walk into the room in the right way, talk in the right tone of voice, who have access to power. But you also need a bottom line." It was this bottom line that Dworkin provided. She was a bedrock, the place to start from: even when you disagreed with her, her arguments were infuriating, fascinating, hard to forget. Feminism needs those who won't compromise, even in their appearance; perhaps I'm alone, but I find it pretty fabulous that, as a friend told me, Dworkin would "go to posh restaurants in Manhattan wearing those bloody dungarees". She refused to compromise throughout her life, and was fearless in the face of great provocation. In a world where teenage girls believe that breast implants will make them happy and where rape convictions are down to a record low of 5.6% of reported rapes; in a public culture which has been relentlessly pornographised, in an academic environment which has allowed postmodernism to remove all politics from feminism, we will miss Andrea Dworkin. She once said: "What will women do? Is there a plan? If not, why not?" And indeed, who is left to replace her? ---------------- Andrea Dworkin, 58, Feminist Thinker Wrote Against Pornography, Violence http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=12084 BY STEPHEN MILLER - Staff Reporter of the Sun April 12, 2005 Andrea Dworkin, who died in her sleep at her Washington, D.C., home Saturday night at age 58, was the uncompromising crusader against pornography and violence toward women, whose vituperative writings helped to polarize feminism while casting her in an unattractive light as the woman who said sex was rape. That Dworkin said no such thing did not faze her legion of critics, who picked up on the author's strong suspicion of sex as expressive of male violence. Following the publication of her first book, "Women Hating" (1974), sex, violence, and power would be part of the ground on which a generation or more of feminists would wage their battles, thanks to Dworkin. She was also perhaps the greatest solipsist of the women's movement. Dworkin's sexual politics (as a fellow pioneer, Kate Millet, termed them) emerged directly from her accounts of being violated as a child, raped as a teenager, beaten as a wife, and assaulted as a streetwalker. A prolific essayist and poet, Dworkin also wrote novels concerning a sexually brutalized young woman from New Jersey. Dworkin made headlines in 1980 for collaborating with legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon on behalf of Linda Lovelace, star of "Deep Throat," whose civil rights they were convinced had been violated. Dworkin and Ms. MacKinnon later collaborated on legislation based on the notion that pornography constituted a form of sex discrimination. Women could thus sue for damages. "In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve," the feminist leader Gloria Steinem said in a statement distributed by Dworkin's agent yesterday. "Andrea is one of them." Dworkin was raised in Camden and Delaware Township (now Cherry Hill), N.J., in a leftist-leaning working-class family; her father was a guidance counselor, her mother a secretary. Dworkin credited her Jewish heritage, including relatives who were Holocaust survivors, for making her aware of human suffering and sexism. Her militancy she credited to repeated readings of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's "Guerilla Warfare." She characterized her first experience of oppression as the result, in elementary school, of her refusal to sing Christmas carols, which led to anti-Semitic graffiti and official punishment. It was the first of many formative travails that marked her adolescence and young adulthood. In 1965, while a freshman at Bennington College, Dworkin was arrested at an anti-war demonstration at the United Nations. Lacking the $500 for bail, she was incarcerated at the Women's House of Detention. Her indignant protests against the cavity search and the facility's conditions were covered by New York newspapers and television. Shortly after, the antiquated jail was closed. After graduating from Bennington, Dworkin went to live in the Netherlands, where she married a man she variously described as a "flower child" and "anarchist," but more appositely as a habitual wife-beater who "thought I belonged to him, inside out." She escaped from him after four years. She also credited her time in Europe for helping her to grow as a writer. Returning to America in the early 1970s, Dworkin failed to make a conventional living - "I was too naive to know that hack writing is the only paying game in town" - and turned instead to prostitution. Again and again, in interviews, essays, memoirs, and anywhere she could find a sympathetic publisher, Dworkin told the stories of her sexual victimization. In 1992, in an 1,800-word letter to the editor to the New York Times Review of Books, Dworkin wrote, "And so for 20 years now I have been looking for the words to say what I know." By then, it would be difficult to guess which words had eluded her. She followed "Women Hating" with a book of essays and speeches, "Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses in Sexual Politics" (1976). In short order, she published a collection of stories, "The New Woman's Broken Heart," the major tract "Pornography: Men Possessing Women," as well as "Right Wing Women" (1983), an explanation of what might possess some women to register as Republicans, and her most notorious work, "Intercourse" (1987), which finally brought Dworkin to popular consciousness. In one iconic statement, she held that intercourse "is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women." The gloom was not much relieved by her semiautobiographical first novel, "Ice and Fire," published the same year. Dworkin had already worked with Ms. MacKinnon on the Linda Lovelace case, and in 1983 they co-taught a class on pornography at the University of Minnesota. Soon they drafted anti-pornography legislation and embarked on a campaign that brought them into alliances with such conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly. Dworkin testified before the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography and a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They were vilified by free-speech advocates, and the president of the ACLU condemned "the MacDworkinites' pornocentrism." Dworkin blamed her First Amendment foes for her increasing trouble in finding publishers in America. In England she was still quite popular. There, "Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation" was first published. A work of several years' gestation, it plowed many familiar fields to yield the conclusion that Zionism had turned Israel into a society of wife beaters who feminized the Palestinians in order to oppress them violently. Increasingly pushed to the side in mainstream American feminism, Dworkin could deliver the odd zinger when provoked. "It will probably bring the FBI to my door, but I think that Hillary should shoot Bill and then President Gore should pardon her," she wrote in early 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky affair. Often in ill-health, perhaps be cause of her obesity (she was often estimated to weigh more than 300 pounds), Dworkin appeared to suffer a breakdown in 2000, when in extremely murky circumstances she alleged that she had been raped in a hotel during a tour of Europe. She won few supporters when it was disclosed that she had never reported the incident to authorities, and she later wrote that even her husband abandoned her emotionally. "Now a year has passed and sometimes he's with me in his heart and sometimes he's not," she wrote. That Dworkin, a lesbian, had a husband at all shocked many, but theirs was an unconventional relationship. She sometimes described her husband, the writer and editor John Stoltenberg, as a "nongenital man." He is the author of two books, "Refusing to Be a Man" (1990) and "The End of Manhood" (1993). Nevertheless, it was a conventional enough relationship that when he was named managing editor of AARP The Magazine in 2004, she accompanied him to Washington, D.C. "Who can explain how anyone recognizes that they have fallen in love and that life apart is simply unthinkable?" he once wrote of her. For all her vituperation, interviewers and friends commented on Dworkin's sweetness in person. In 2002, she published "Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant." Reviewers noted that she had not lost her way with invective, and she settled scores with everyone from her ninth-grade English teacher to Allen Ginsberg, with whom she once supposedly had the following exchange: "He said, 'The right wants to put me in jail.' I said, 'Yes, they're very sentimental; I'd kill you.' " Susie Bright, the essayist, filmmaker, and authority on pornography, recalled Dworkin's influence yesterday on her Web log: "She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire. The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions than Miss Dworkin." Andrea Rita Dworkin Born September 26, 1946, in Camden, N.J.; died April 9 at her home in Washington, D.C., of unknown causes; survived by her husband, John Stoltenberg. ---------------- Andrea Dworkin - Obituaries - Times Online http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-45-1566310-45,00.html April 13, 2005 Andrea Dworkin Radical writer who scandalised convention and galvanised feminists with her storming views on pornography and male aggression THE author, lecturer and radical feminist Andrea Dworkin was one of those writers whose own life provided a ceaseless supply of polemical and literary material. With probability-defying regularity, she herself fell victim to the violence, misogyny and bias that supplied the primary theme of her speeches and more than a dozen books. Growing up as a Jew in New Jersey, she refused to sing Christmas carols in elementary school and had an ugly anti-Semitic slur scrawled on her classroom art work. At 18 she was arrested during an antiwar demonstration and subjected to a body cavity search, at a women's correctional facility, that left her bleeding for two weeks. (Throughout this ordeal, she said, her tormentors told dirty jokes about women.) As a speaker and writer in the 1970s and 1980s, she was frequently denounced by the literary establishment, who, she theorised, had a vested interest in suppressing her ideas. In 1999, she was drugged and raped, she believed, by a barman and a waiter in a Paris hotel -- and even that was not the first time she had been raped. Dworkin filtered these experiences through writing, which she called the quintessentially optimistic occupation. "I would rather fail at that," she said, "than succeed at anything else." With her first book, Woman Hating (1974), she aspired to "destroy patriarchal power at its source" by enumerating historical examples of women's subjugation, from foot-binding to witch-hunting to the propagation of sex-role mythology in fairy tales. Also in 1974, she moved to tears and tremors a gathering of 1,000 activists at a National Organisation for Women conference on sexuality and became, at the age of 28, a fiery mainstay of the radical lecture circuit, and a cult heroine of women's studies majors. Andrea Rita Dworkin was born in 1946 in Camden, New Jersey. Her father, a pro-union, anti-segregationist schoolteacher, was at the moral and emotional centre of her early development. Her mother, too, was forward-thinking. She favoured legal birth control (then not established in the US), and sent Andrea to the library with notes allowing her to withdraw books thought inappropriate by many parents of the day. After Dworkin's hometown library had censored "socialist" and "indecent" books, Andrea found one that had been overlooked, Che Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare. "I read it a million times," Dworkin told an interviewer in 2000. "I'd plan attacks on the local shopping mall." In her youth, Dworkin read Dostoevsky, Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and the Bront?s. And growing up Jewish, she later wrote, informed her views on feminism. "Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognise indifference to human suffering as a fact." Dworkin won a scholarship to the progressive Bennington College in Vermont, where she received a BA in 1968. She lived for five years in the Netherlands, where, in 1971, she extricated herself from her marriage to her "abusive" Dutch husband. Distressed by America's Vietnam policy and by racism back home, Dworkin stayed on in Europe to write, but had not yet attracted notice when she returned to the US in the early 1970s. In America she supported herself as a waitress, receptionist, factory worker and teacher, before becoming, in her own words, the "worst assistant in the history of the world", to the poet Muriel Rukeyser. It was with Rukeyser's encouragement that Dworkin completed Woman Hating. In 1976 Dworkin published a collection of her essays and speeches, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics, followed, in 1981, by Pornography: Men Possessing Women. For the latter, Dworkin had immersed herself in the work of the Marquis de Sade, which caused her to suffer nausea, nightmares and intense pessimism about relations between men and women. The book maintained that "Pornography exists because men despise women, and men despise women in part because pornography exists." In Punch, a reviewer called Dworkin a "Leon Trotsky of the sex war . . . She writes -- dare I say it? -- with an aggressive manner, like a man." But though she won praise as a stylist, many saw Dworkin's position as a dangerous form of censorship. In the early 1980s, Dworkin joined the law professor Catharine MacKinnon in developing legislation that would make pornography a form of sexual discrimination, and allow civil action against people who make, sell or distribute it. The group Feminists for Free Expression argued that this crusade only gave credence to the "porn made me do it" excuse for rapists. Local ordinances based on the MacKinnon Bill flourished briefly in some urban centres before being overturned. In 1983 Dworkin published Right Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females, an analysis of a Reagan-era defection of women from the Democrats to the Republicans. While withholding the Equal Rights Amendment and daycare from women voters, Dworkin asserted, the Republicans seduced them with an offer of protection from male violence through "shelter, safety, rules and love . . . if women are obedient and subservient". Her book Intercourse (1987) described the sexual act as "the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women." Erica Jong called the book thrilling, but the London Review of Books reviled it as "a torrent of filthy abuse . . . against sex and men". A reviewer in The New York Times was only slightly kinder: "I'm a feminist too -- that's why this nonsense disturbs me so much." Her next book was Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings on the Continuing War Against Women (1998), a collection of essays, speeches and topical commentary. Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, Elaine Feinstein found Dworkin's case against pornographic depictions of sexual violence "hideously convincing" but argued, given the context of the Holocaust and massacres in Bosnia, that "where human beings suffer such anguish, there seems little point in treating women as a separate category". In two novels, Ice and Fire (1986) and Mercy (1990), Dworkin's female protagonists are both writers who are victims of sexual abuse. The Observer called Ice and Fire an effort to "elevate the temper tantrum to an art form". But Mercy impressed a New York Times critic as "lyrical and passionate -- a cross between the repetition of the early Gertrude Stein and, ironically, the unfettered flights of Henry Miller". The reviewer added, however, that Dworkin's positions were sometimes "intolerant . . . and just as brutal as what she protests. Ms Dworkin advocates nothing short of killing men." In May 1999, while reading a book on "French literary fascism" and sipping a kir royale in a Paris hotel garden, Dworkin was, according to her later account, slipped some kind of drug by a barman. Back in her room, reeling from the narcotic, she was savagely raped by two hotel staff members, she said. She said she did not report the incident to the authorities because she could not piece together the events of the evening, or even determine what had caused her bruises or injuries. Slowly, she said, she worked out what had happened. In the aftermath of this episode, she fell into a deep, long-term depression, "consumed by grief and horror until I was lucky enough to become numb," she told the New Statesman in an interview the following year. For the first time in her life, she sought psychotherapy. In 2000 she published Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation, a study with the premise that the abusive relationship between men and women is analogous to that between Gentiles and Jews. The reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement acknowledged Dworkin's "undoubted rhetorical strengths" but concluded that the book "is too badly put together, and the social categories she claims to be dealing with are all far too complex, for it to carry conviction". An autobiography, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Militant Feminist, appeared in the US in 2002. Dworkin maintained a deliberately raw appearance, wearing overalls and sneakers and letting her hair fall in an uncombed mane. She suffered longterm obesity and osteoarthritis, and underwent several knee operations. Identifying herself as a lesbian and a celibate, Dworkin nevertheless shared a home, in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a man. Her long-time "mate," John Stoltenberg, whom she married in 1998, is the author of two books, Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice and The End of Manhood. At the time of her death Dworkin was busy on her fourteenth book with the working title Writing America: How Novelists Invented and Gendered a Nation -- a study of the contribution by writers such as Ernest Hemingway to American identity. John Stoltenberg survives her. Andrea Dworkin, feminist writer, was born September 26, 1946. She died on April 9, 2005, aged 58. --------------------- Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 By Bidisha Banerjee http://slate.msn.com/id/2116638/ Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 By Bidisha Banerjee Posted Tuesday, April 12, 2005, at 3:35 PM PT Bloggers debate the legacy of pioneering feminist Andrea Dworkin; they also react to the allegations that Spain sold weapons of mass destruction to Venezuela and dissect President Bush's iPod playlist. Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005: Feminist Andrea Dworkin, vehement critic of pornography and author of many polemic works including Intercourse, [23]died over the weekend. "I loved that she dared attack the very notion of intercourse. It was the pie aimed right in the crotch of Mr. Big Stuff. It was an impossible theory, but it wasn't absurd. There is something about literally being fucked that colors your world, pretty or ugly, and it was about time someone said so," [24]writes sexologist Susie Bright, who has [25]claimed that Dworkin called for her assassination. "I'm sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. ... She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her." Creep and Blink, a blog about "sex laws and science," [26]insists, "[D]workin's life was a living testament to the blurry line between leftist and rightist totalitarianism and paranoia, as well as the contempt on both extremes for a genuinely free information market. While her criticisms may have had kernels of truth in the porn market of the 70s and 80s, Dworkin, on the whole, underestimated, infantilized and desexualized women with her overbroad generalizations and her quest to limit their sexual choices in the name of gender liberation." "I could say that every cruelty and every uncharitable swipe taken at her--by the pimps and the pornographers, by self-satisfied liberal men and by critics from within the movement--was a testament to how much she mattered and how important it was that someone was there to tell the truth without flinching, that that someone was her. All of these things would be true. But they don't even begin to touch it. Nothing that I could say would," [27]mourns Radgeek People's Daily's self-described radical feminist Charles Johnson. "It's common, and tempting, to wish peace on the dead, and Andrea Dworkin deserves to be at peace, but I can't imagine her being satisfied with death, or with anything short of an almost unimaginable justice," [28]muses Hopelessly Midwestern. At The Corner, The National Review's Rick Brookhiser [29]recalls Dworkin's admiration for George Washington and compliments her "unrelenting, hard, clean and compelling" writing. [30]View the Andrea Dworkin Lie Detector on Dworkin's Web site. [31]Continue Article [down-caret.gif] _________________________________________________________________ [32][slate;kw=slate;sz=300x250;ord=1234?] _________________________________________________________________ VMD?: Donald Rumsfeld [33]criticized Spain recently for selling war planes and patrol boats to Venezuela. Barcepundit's Franco Aleman thinks it's worse than that: Based on [34]this translation of a Europa Press report, he [35]notes that Spain sold Venezuela "chemical warfare agents and radioactive materials" as well. "All of this happened during the year 2004, when control of Spain shifted from American ally Aznar to socialist Zapatero, int he wake of the 3/11 Madrid train bombing," [36]observes The American Thinker. (In a later post, Aleman [37]pointed out that "the sales were not only during the Zapatero administration, but during Aznar's too.") Venezuelan news blog VCrisis [38]claims that Spain broke European Union regulations [39]and that the European Union has been asked to investigate. "Spain is also selling C-212 cargo planes and is discussing the sales of military helicopters and patrol boats to Colombia. Perhaps this is to aid the fight against drug smuggling, but the big worry in that part of the world is the potentially explosive situation between those two countries," [40]points out "Eurosceptic" blog EU Referendum. Visit Venezuela News and Views for an [41]interview with freelance journalist Francisco Toro, who was in Venzuela during the failed coup of April 2002. iPod One: On Monday, the New York Times [42]revealed that President Bush listens to country music and rock on an iPod while exercising. "If Bush only has 250 songs in his iPod, he should get an iPod Shuffle," [43]recommends law professor Ann Althouse. "The [NYT] article quotes the observation that 'it's interesting' that the President likes the music of artists who don't like him, but actually it's not interesting. It would be interesting if he paid any attention to what old rock stars thought about politics." Surprised by the short length of the presidential playlist, Semioclast, a blog that claims to be "Smashing Signification," [44]huffs, "What a friggin' waste of technology. I'm surprised his born-again, creationism-believing, science-hating ass, non-intelligence-having ass doesn't get scared at the voices in his head. Or maybe he thinks it's just God talking to him again." On Questions and Answers, software engineer Wayne Moran notes that Bush likes "My Sharona" by the Knack, and [45]asks, "GWB, what are you doing listening to raunchy lyrics? Oh, I bet you don't listen to the lyrics? This sounds like a conversation I will have with my kids ...." Wonkette [46]speculated about the contents of Bush's playlist back in January; last year, Mac junkie Larry Angell at Happy Go Larry finally [47]got to the bottom of the mysterious bulge in Bush's jacket back during the debates. Have a question, comment, or suggestion for Today's Blogs? E-mail . Bidisha Banerjee is a Slate editorial assistant. References 23. http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1457224,00.html 24. http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html 25. http://www.susiebright.com/sexpert/dworkin.html 26. http://creepandblink.blogspot.com/2005/04/dworkin.html 27. http://www.radgeek.com/gt/2005/04/10/may_she 28. http://www.livejournal.com/users/comeoneileen/62579.html 29. http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_04_10_corner-archive.asp#060512 30. http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/LieDetect.html 31. http://slate.msn.com/id/2116638/#ContinueArticle 32. http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/slate.news/slate;kw=slate;sz=300x250;ord=1234? 33. http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-06-voa86.cfm 34. http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200504071515 35. http://barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/2005/04/what-else-did-spain-sell-to-venezuela.html 36. http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=1952 37. http://barcepundit-english.blogspot.com/2005/04/aleksander-boyd-has-digged-further-on.html 38. http://vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200504082043 39. http://vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200504120628 40. http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2005/04/selling-arms-to-dictators.html 41. http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/ 42. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/politics/11letter.html 43. http://althouse.blogspot.com/2005/04/presidents-ipod.html 44. http://www.semioclast.com/2005/04/12/i-didnt-know-monkeys-listen-to-music/ 45. http://qandablog.typepad.com/questions_and_answers/2005/04/bush_and_his_ip.html 46. http://www.wonkette.com/politics/media/ws-ipod-playlist-029455.php 47. http://www.happygolarry.com/2004/10/13/bulge ----------------- Yahoo! News - ANDREA DWORKIN AND ME http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=115&u=/ucmg/20050412/cm_ucmg/andreadworkinandme&printer=1 ANDREA DWORKIN AND ME Tue Apr 12, 7:58 PM ET By Maggie Gallagher Andrea Dworkin died this week. Maybe the name means nothing to you, but for women of a certain age, Andrea Dworkin's very name is "fighting words." A fiercely radical feminist, she (along with law professor Catherine Mackinnon) pioneered a blistering feminist attack on pornography and male sexuality in general. As a former battered wife, she fused these concerns with a broadside against male violence against women. Think "intercourse is rape," and you are thinking vintage Dworkin. Andrea Dworkin's book "Intercourse" (which Germaine Greer called "the most shocking book any feminist has yet written") came out in 1987. At the time, I was a young editor, contemplating leaving National Review to write a critique of orthodox feminism, which was eventually published as "Enemies of Eros: How the Sexual Revolution Is Killing Family, Marriage and Sex." To most conservatives, Andrea Dworkin was an expletive to be deleted, demented, dangerous and probably lesbian. By rights, I should have hated her book. Yes, I received a gift from Andrea, the kind of gift which, intellectually speaking, you can receive only from someone with whom you profoundly disagree. From the opposite ends of the political spectrum, we had each glimpsed a piece of the same truth. Against the backdrop of a pornographic Playboy culture that tried to teach us that sex is just a trivial appetite for pleasure, radical feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote that "sexual intercourse is not intrinsically banal." I was not alone! Andrea saw it, too. As I wrote in "Enemies of Eros": "In sex, persons become male and female, archetypically, exaggeratedly, painfully so. And to us, corseted in modern sexual views, femininity appears incompatible with the personhood of women. ... What Dworkin observes is essentially true. Sex is not an act which takes place merely between bodies. Sex is an act which defines, alters, imposes on the personhood of those who engage in it. We wander through the ordinary course of days as persons, desexed, androgynous, and it is in the sexual act in which we receive reassurance that we are not persons, after all, but men and women." And as I later learned, to a lesser degree, Andrea Dworkin received the same gift from me. Standing in the local bookstore in Park Slope in Brooklyn (where we both then lived), she thumbed through my first book. "At last, someone who understands my writing!" she shrieked excitedly. Then she, the infamous feminist, invited me, the unknown young conservative, to tea. I found her soft-spoken, pale, intellectual, anxious, motherly. She seemed to me the kind of woman who has the peculiar courage of her fears. Andrea lived with a man whom she introduced as John. "Every day I wake up and realize that tomorrow John may not be there," she told me. She was describing a kind of unmarital bond, endorsing the special kind of relationship produced when two people know they can leave and yet each morning still choose to be together. Once again, Andrea put her finger on my truth. For as she spoke, it occurred to me that everything I had written about (as everything I've done since) was a deliberate and desperate attempt not to live in her kind of world. I longed to find marriage ties as binding as the ties between mother and child. I wanted not only to get, but to become the kind of person who can give that kind of dependable love, the kind that can be taken for granted because it lasts. According to Reuters, "Dworkin is survived by her husband, John Stoltenberg, also a feminist activist and author." Maybe in the end, she found that kind of love, too. I hope so. Rest in peace, Andrea. (Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at [5]MaggieBox2004 at yahoo.com.) --------------- Telegraph | News | Andrea Dworkin http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/13/db1301.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/04/13/ixportal.html Andrea Dworkin (Filed: 13/04/2005) Andrea Dworkin, the American radical feminist who has died aged 58, campaigned ferociously against pornography and the abuse of women for almost 40 years; the author of several controversial feminist texts, she dismissed men as moral cretins, said that seduction was hard to distinguish from rape, and regarded pornography as akin to terrorism. Although she was lauded by some of her fellow feminists, many felt that her inflammatory writing (and possibly her appearance) did little for the cause; to Dworkin, men were, at best, oafish misogynists, while most were rapists for whom the primary sexual motive was killing. Her own experiences - as a rape victim, a prostitute and a battered wife - only added to the trenchancy of her views, but she reacted with fury to suggestions that such traumas had made it difficult for her to be objective. "I've never heard Solzhenitsyn asked if he can be objective about the gulag," she snarled. "As if not paying attention to rape and wife battery were some kind of objectivity." In America, it was her battle with pornographers that earned her respect from other radicals and the contempt of the multi-million dollar porn industry. To some she was a heroine, but she was demonised not only by pornographers but by many liberals, whom she held in almost equal contempt. Andrea Dworkin's most public attack on pornography began in 1980 when she was approached by the ex-porn actress Linda Lovelace, who said that she had been forced to make the film Deep Throat. With the help of the feminist academic, Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin drafted an ordinance for Minneapolis recognising pornography as sex discrimination and a violation of women's civil rights. Women involved in pornography were called to testify from all over America. The porn industry reacted with fury, and Hustler magazine published a sexually explicit cartoon featuring Andrea Dworkin. She sued, but lost, and found herself portrayed as a national hate figure. Playboy appealed to the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming that her attempt to censor porn ran counter to the constitutional right of every American to a free press. So thorough was her demonisation that the more sympathetic elements of her campaign were overshadowed. The ordinance was eventually overturned by a federal appeals court in 1985, but later upheld by the US Supreme Court. Yet even those who espoused her causes were somewhat perturbed by the fierceness of her enthusiasm for vengeance. When it came to punishment, Andrea Dworkin favoured that most phallic symbol of male oppression, the gun. "I have no problem with killing paedophiles," she once said; and stuck above the desk in the study of her New York home was a picture of an alleged rapist with a rifle at his head and the words: DEAD MEN DON'T RAPE. But while she was irritated by liberal feminists such as Naomi Wolf, she accepted that her views were not palatable to everyone. "I have a really strong belief that any movement needs both radicals and liberals," she explained. "You always need women who can walk into the room in the right way, talk in the right tone of voice, who have access to power. But you also need a bottom line." Andrea Dworkin was born into a Jewish family on September 26 1946 at Camden, New Jersey, where she attended a progressive school. Her father, a teacher and a committed socialist, inspired her political leanings. "It would be hard to overstate," she wrote, "how much he taught me about human rights and human dignity, how to talk and how to think." She later said that her childhood was overshadowed by being raped in a cinema when she was nine. She won a place to read Literature at Bennington College, Vermont, but while still a student there she was arrested outside the US mission to the United Nations during a protest against the Vietnam war. Sent to the Women's House of Detention at Greenwich, New York, she was subjected to several brutal internal examinations. Her graphic description of her ordeal was then reported in newspapers across the world; the "downtown Bastille" was subsequently closed down. Her parents, humiliated by the public scandal, turned against her and in 1968, after graduating from Bennington, Andrea Dworkin moved to Amsterdam and married a Dutch anarchist. Beaten and abused by her husband, after five years she left him, to live, as she put it, "as a fugitive, sleeping on people's floors and having to prostitute for money to live." In 1974, at the age of 27, she published Woman Hating: A Radical Look at Sexuality. Uncompromising and furious, it set the tone for her later work which included Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981). In 2000 she described in the New Statesman how the previous year she had been drugged and raped in a hotel room in Paris. Traumatised by the experience (and by the suggestion by some that her account may not have been true), she withdrew from public life. Recently, however, she had returned to the public eye, announcing: "I thought I was finished, but I feel a new vitality. I want to continue to help women." Andrea Dworkin published 13 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She suspected that her fiction was rejected by publishers who feared the power of Playboy, but her novels were not popular even when published; the Literary Review described one book about sex as "grossly disgusting". Her memoir, Heartbreak: the Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, was published in 2002. Surprisingly softly spoken, she would beguile interviewers with her engaging smile. But she was contemptuous of reactions to her appearance. "When women write about me," she said, "they always talk about how they think I must feel about the way I look. I find all of this close to absurd." Nevertheless, her refusal to make any concessions to feminine beauty was bound up in her philosophy, not least because while some women regarded it as an act of bravery, others saw it as a symptom of her problems. "Dworkin pretends to be a daring truth-teller," wrote the feminist Camille Paglia, "but never mentions her most obvious problem, food." Although regularly referred to as a man-hater, she was particularly close to three men: her father, her brother - whose death in 1992 devastated her - and John Stoltenberg, the civil rights activist, author of Refusing to Be a Man, and her companion for 30 years. She once claimed to be a lesbian, but she described their relationship as "very deep" and they were married in 1998. "I don't hate men," she once said. "Not that they don't deserve it. It's just not in my nature." Andrea Dworkin, who died on April 9, was increasingly frail in recent years. She had undergone several painful operations on her knees which were worn down by years of obesity. She is survived by her husband. --------------- Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20050502&s=pollitt subject to debate by Katha Pollitt Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 [from the May 2, 2005 issue] I first heard of Andrea Dworkin in 1968. She had been arrested in an antiwar demonstration and jailed at the old Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village, where male doctors subjected her to brutal internal exams. Her name was in the news because she had gone public with her story. My good, kind, radical, civil libertarian parents thought this was ridiculous. What did she expect, this privileged white woman, this "Bennington girl"? It wasn't that they didn't believe her, exactly. It was that they didn't see why she was making such a big, princessy fuss. It was like getting arrested and complaining about the food. Andrea Dworkin died on April 9 at 58--she of the denim overalls and the wild hair and wilder pronouncements. Although she denied ever uttering the most famous soundbite attributed to her, that all intercourse is rape, she came pretty close: "Fucking is the means by which the male colonizes the female"; "in seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine." She argued that pornography was an instruction manual for rape, that women had the right to "execute" rapists and pedophiles; toward the end of her life she declared that maybe women, like the Jews, should have their own country. The counsel of despair, and crazy, too--but by then Dworkin was ill, not much in demand as a speaker and several of her major books were out of print. The 1980s were long over: On campus, the militant anti-rape marches and speakouts of Take Back the Night had morphed into cheery V-Day, which marries antiviolence activism to a celebration of women's sexuality. The antipornography feminism Dworkin did so much to promote seems impossibly quaint today, when Paris Hilton can parlay an embarrassing sex video into mainstream celebrity and the porn star Jenna Jameson rides the New York Times bestseller list. But even in its heyday it was a blind alley. Not just because porn, like pot, is here to stay, not just because the Bible and the Koran--to say nothing of fashion, advertising and Britney Spears--do far more harm to women, not even because of the difficulty of defining such slippery terms as "degrading to women," a phrase that surely did not mean the same thing to Dworkin as it did to the Christian conservatives who helped make the antiporn ordinance she wrote with Catharine MacKinnon briefly law in Indianapolis. Like the temperance movement, antiporn activism mistook a symptom of male dominance for the cause. Nor did it have much to do with actually existing raped and abused women. "For God's sake, take away his Nina Hartley videos" is not a cry often heard in shelters or emergency rooms. If by magic pornography vanished from the land, women would still be the second sex--underpaid, disrespected, lacking in power over their own bodies. Rape, battery, torture, even murder would still be hugely titillating to both sexes, just as in Shakespeare's day, and women would still be blamed, by both sexes, for the violence men inflict on them. What made Dworkin's obsession with pornography so bizarre is that she herself should have known it for a diversion. After all, she frequently pointed out that male dominance is entwined with our very notion of what sex is, with what is arousing, with what feels "right." Like Foucault (who, as Susan Bordo pointed out, usually gets credit for this insight), Dworkin showed how deeply and pervasively power relationships are encoded into our concepts of sexuality and in how many complex ways everyday life normalizes those relationships. "Standards of beauty," she wrote in Woman-Hating (1974), "describe in precise terms the relationship that an individual will have to her own body. They prescribe her motility, spontaneity, posture, gait, the uses to which she can put her body. They define precisely the dimensions of her physical freedom. And of course, the relationship between physical freedom and psychological development, intellectual possibility, and creative potential is an umbilical one." Somewhere along the way, she lost interest in the multiplicity and the complexity of the system she did much to lay bare. Dworkin was an oversimplifier and a demagogue. She wouldn't debate feminists who opposed her stance on porn, just men like Alan Dershowitz, thus reinforcing in the public mind the false impression that hers was the only feminist position and that this was a male-female debate. There is some truth to Laura Miller's quip in Salon that "even when she was right, she made the public conversation stupider." But, frankly, the public conversation is usually not very illuminating, and on the subject of women has been notably dim for some time. At least Dworkin put some important hidden bits of reality out there on the table. There is a lot of coercion embedded in normal, legal, everyday sexuality: Sometimes the seducer is a rapist with a bottle of wine. A whole world of sexist assumptions lay behind my parents' attitude back in 1968: This is what happens to women who take chances, male brutality is a fact of life, talking about sexual violence is shameful, "Bennington girls" should count their blessings. Polite, liberal, reasonable feminists could never have exploded that belief system. Andrea Dworkin was a living visual stereotype--the feminist as fat, hairy, makeup-scorning, unkempt lesbian. Perhaps that was one reason she was such a media icon--she "proved" that feminism was for women who couldn't get a man. Women have wrestled with that charge for decades, at considerable psychic cost. These days, feminism is all sexy uplift, a cross between a workout and a makeover. Go for it, girls--breast implants, botox, face-lifts, corsets, knitting, boxing, prostitution. Whatever floats your self-esteem! Meanwhile, the public face of organizational feminism is perched atop a power suit and frozen in a deferential smile. Perhaps some childcare? Insurance coverage for contraception? Legal abortion, tragic though it surely is? Or maybe not so much legal abortion--when I ran into Naomi Wolf the other day, she had just finished an article calling for the banning of abortion after the first trimester. Cream and sugar with that abortion ban, sir? I never thought I would miss unfair, infuriating, over-the-top Andrea Dworkin. But I do. And even more I miss the movement that had room for her. ------------------ Susie Bright's Journal : Andrea Dworkin Has Died http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html "Could Not Be Accused of Shutting Up." -- Rolling Stone April 11, 2005 Andrea Dworkin Has Died [106] Dworkin I received word Sunday morning-- from Doug Henwood, Amber Hollibaugh, Carol Queen, and Rachel Kramer Bussel-- that Andrea Dworkin has died. She was 59. Her partner John Stoltenberg found her near death on Friday, and she passed away peacefully, according to his report, in the evening. There is nothing about Dworkin's death in the news yet but I am sure we will hear a lot more details by the morning. I knew she had been ill for some time, but she was notoriously private about her health problems. I don't know how bad or incapacitating her condition was. Most of us who've seen her in person in the past couple years saw her move about in obvious pain and disability. It wasn't just physical, either. After her father died seven years ago, she had what could only be described as a [107]nervous breakdown. Andrea Dworkin was... I can't do this alone. Let's go to [108]Googlism, that site of randomly-selected found poetry, in which you can inject anyone's name in the "search" box and come up with something like this: Andrea Dworkin is hell Andrea Dworkin is a hardcore Andrea Dworkin is the author of "Scapegoat" Andrea Dworkin is what I have committed my life to now Andrea Dworkin is antisex Andrea Dworkin is a hysterical and puritanical castrator Andrea Dworkin is internationally renowned as a radical feminist activist and author who helped break the silence around violence against Andrea Dworkin is probably the loudest self Andrea Dworkin is just another Zionist Andrea Dworkin is "angry" Andrea Dworkin is known as a relentless scourge of men Andrea Dworkin is the feminist whose supple mind gave birth to the assertion that all sexual intercourse between man and woman is rape Andrea Dworkin is a former prostitute Andrea Dworkin is making sense Andrea Dworkin is one of them Andrea Dworkin is most definitely a militant feminist and beautifully Andrea Dworkin is quoted as saying Andrea Dworkin is part of the feminist camp Andrea Dworkin is a writer Andrea Dworkin is a self Andrea Dworkin is probably the best Andrea Dworkin is a very outspoken individual Andrea Dworkin is the greatest mind of all time Andrea Dworkin is one who does Andrea Dworkin is a lousy writer Andrea Dworkin is a rapist Andrea Dworkin is the Malcolm X of feminism Andrea Dworkin is a saint Andrea Dworkin is Andrea Dworkin is a great pornographer Andrea Dworkin is served a thick Andrea Dworkin is famous for her uncompromising feminism Andrea Dworkin is a maniac Andrea Dworkin is in a committed Andrea Dworkin is analyzing Pauline Reage's literary style in The Story of O Andrea Dworkin is such an "extremist" Andrea Dworkin is one glaring example and there are several more Andrea Dworkin is trying to say Andrea Dworkin is funny Andrea Dworkin is particularly vocal about the "male problem" Andrea Dworkin is trying to ban lap dancing Andrea Dworkin is a sexist pig Andrea Dworkin is one of the weirdest femi-nazis since Solanas Andrea Dworkin is typically held up as the most fanatical of the fanatics Andrea Dworkin is perhaps the sex trade's most ferocious antagonist Andrea Dworkin is? -- Should I know her, or have heard of her? Andrea Dworkin is the reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade Andrea Dworkin is hardly without direct resonance Andrea Dworkin is one of the most dreadful things men do Andrea Dworkin is someone who Andrea Dworkin is hurting You know what? I recognize my words in a couple of those lines. I was the one who said Dworkin was a great pornographer, if what that means is using explicit sex in her art to cause a tremendous sensation. [109]Womanhating Along with Kate Millet in Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin used her considerable intellectual powers to analyze pornography, which was something that no one had done before. No one. The men who made porn didn't. Porn was like a low culture joke before the feminist revolution kicked its ass. It was beneath discussion. Not so anymore! Here's the irony... every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a fan of Andrea Dworkin. Until 1984, we all were. She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire. The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions than Ms. Dworkin. We saw the sexism of the porn business... but we also saw some intriguing possibilities and amazing maverick spirit. We said, "What if we made something that reflected our politics and values, but was just as sexually bold?" Andrea did not like this one little bit. Honestly, when I started On Our Backs and Herotica , I thought all the girls were going to jump on the bandwagon. I had no idea how bad the animosity would get. I mean, I have tape recordings from colleges where I would go listen to Andrea lecture in rapt attention and turn my little cassette over to capture every word. I never dreamed that I would one day become one of the people she vilified. I wondered if she had any close girlfriends or women she considered her intellectual peers. The people she admired most in life were her father, her brother, and partner John Stoltenberg. She was a scholar of great men, and the one she studied the most, the Marquis de Sade, was someone she could quote up one side and down the other. I'm the one who said she was his feminist reincarnation. She rewrote his Juliette when she wrote her novel Ice and Fire. So much for man-hating. It was Andrea's take-no-prisoners attitude toward patriarchy that I always liked the best. Bourgeois feminists were so BORING. They wanted to keep their maiden name and have it listed in the white pages; they wanted to get a nice corner office in the skyscraper. When I was a teenager in the 70s I couldn't relate to those concerns. It was Dworkin's heyday. Andrea presented herself as a street fighter intellectual, a bohemian freedom fighter, and someone who wanted to get to the bottom of things. That quote about Malcolm X is apt. Malcolm pointed out "The problem is WHITE PEOPLE." Dworkin said, "The problem is MEN." And for all the holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt. I loved that she dared attack the very notion of intercourse. It was the pie aimed right in the crotch of Mr. Big Stuff. It was an impossible theory, but it wasn't absurd. There is something about literally being fucked that colors your world, pretty or ugly, and it was about time someone said so. I know it's strange that I have such a tragic affection for her, when she apparently only had loathing for my kind. I've had women come at me with knives who felt they had to do me in, in Dworkin's name. Her passion and activism was classic Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She was a dangerous lady, with no class analysis, no psychological insight-- a scary combination. Her loaded warped pistol was neatly picked up by right wing creeps who took all the femme bullets out of it and never looked back.. Every time you hear some preacher/politician talk about "violence against women" or how something is "degrading to women" tell them to to send a royalty check to Andrea and ask them what they've done lately to empower female sexual authority. I never understood why she didn't attack them the way she attacked feminist pornographers. I could feel the great loss in the messages I read this morning, from the old guard of feminist activists. Her death is going to be a horrible reminder to many that women's place in society today is a cruel rebuttal to many of our dreams of women's liberation. The media image of women today is pathetic; it's Barbie on Steroids. "I Am Bimbo, Hear Me Roar! Tee-hee!" I like the comparison to Valerie Solanas that came up in the Googlism list. The brilliance of a woman who has "HAD IT" is a rock'n'roll beauty to behold: "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex." Maybe it's just My-My-My Generation, but those words still make the hair on my arms stand on end. I'm sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. She never got to see people like me, Carol, and the rest of us little prot?g?es who took her inspiration and flew to a new dimension. She got stuck, and then she got sick, and when you're famous for one thing, no one wants to see you change unless you reject it all, like a pathetic sinner seeking redemption. She was too stubborn and too old-fashioned for that. Andrea Dworkin never would have admitted that she was a SuperStar. She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her. April 11, 2005 in [110]Sex & Politics | [111]Permalink TrackBack TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2222407 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference [112]Andrea Dworkin Has Died : ? [113]Andrea Dworkin is dead from The Pagan Prattle Online I have nothing nice to say, so will say nothing. Instead, read what Susie Bright and Roz Kaveney have to say on the matter. You might be surprised. Feminist icon Andrea Dworkin dies - The Guardian, 11th April 2005.... [114][Read More] Tracked on April 11, 2005 11:33 AM ? [115]Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 from Amorous Propensities : sex is funny, sex is sad I have no patience with haters of porn. Oddly, I'm not a consumer of it. I'm bored by the anti-romanticism of the little porn I've scanned. Maybe one day someone will introduce me to a film that I enjoy. But Baptist or feminist crusad... [116][Read More] Tracked on April 11, 2005 02:14 PM ? [117]Andrea Dworkin (1946 - 2005) from The Left Coaster She made us think. A rare and under-appreciated quality in a world where agreement and consensus are more highly valued. I want to go wherever Andrea has now gone when my time comes. For one reason it will be less... [118][Read More] Tracked on April 11, 2005 07:50 PM ? [119]Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005 from Creek Running North "In blaming and shaming the oppressed, the powerless, the left colludes with the right. There's no reason to look to the left for justice, so people look to the right for order. It's pretty simple. The victory of the right... [120][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 12:06 AM ? [121]This Week's Essential Reading from hiphopmusic.com Adisa Banjoko tells how the Source tried to bring him in for a hatchet job on Jimmy Iovine. "Long story short, they tried to use me to attack Iovine, I would not do it and their new Editor, FAHIYM IS THE REAL SLIM SHADY..." ---------- Susie Bright reme... [122][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 12:21 AM ? [123]Dworkin dies from Harry's Place Andrea Dworkin has died, at the terribly young age of 58. It is difficult to overstate the importance of Dworkin in setting both the agenda... [124][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 02:31 AM ? [125]Andrea Dworkin, RIP from Copyfight Seen first in Susie Bright's blog and today there's a nice AP obit (here on WIRED). Copyfighters may remember her best as the woman who tried (and lost) a case to prevent Hustler from using her name in association with... [126][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 09:15 AM ? [127]on Andrea Dworkin from anti:freeze by karrie higgins From Susie Bright: the most textured, nuanced, and interesting reflection on the death of Andrea Dworkin I have seen yet.... [128][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 12:49 PM ? [129]Susie Bright on Andrea Dworkin from I cite Feminist Andrea Dworkin died yesterday. I disagreed with nearly everything she thought. But her thinking was powerful and innovative. It also is part of a time of feminist action and energy, a feminism that had not yet been remade for [130][Read More] Tracked on April 12, 2005 05:51 PM ? [131]Andrea Dworkin gestorben from Sex, Drugs, Compiler Construction Die bekannte und kontroverse Feministin Andrea Dworkin ist vor wenigen Tagen im Alter von 59 Jahren gestorben. In einem sehr lesenswerten Nachruf legt Susie Bright das gespaltene Verh?ltnis der modernen Feministinnen zu Frau Dworkin dar. Einerseits wa... [132][Read More] Tracked on April 13, 2005 02:59 AM ? [133]Andrea Dworkin, R.I.P. from scribblingwoman Andrea Dworkin was part of the coming-of-age of many women of my generation. With her death, much else has... [134][Read More] Tracked on April 13, 2005 05:21 PM ? [135]Susie Bright eulogizes Andrea Dworkin from Telegraph First of all, I'm glad to have discovered Bright's journal. I've been a fan of her work for over a decade now, and she's never been one to shy away from the entire range of feelings evoked by and with... [136][Read More] Tracked on April 14, 2005 12:48 PM ? [137]Andrea Dworkin links from Sappho's Breathing I'm collecting these links on my site for myself as well as my readers. I'm indebted to many linkers who came before me, most notably Rad Geek. The Andrea Dworkin website. The on-line memorial. Tributes and quotes. Obituaries in the... [138][Read More] Tracked on April 16, 2005 10:18 AM ? [139]This New Thing from Disembodied Thoughts I've been meaning to start a blog for the past year at least - I finally felt inspired to do so today. Susie Bright's blog has been a big inspiration. I'm still not good enough with html to fix the rather generic-looking backdrop, unfortunately. I tr... [140][Read More] Tracked on April 16, 2005 10:55 PM ? [141]About Andrea from el tercer ojo [because a week later, the net really needs another obit.] Sorry friends, I've been away... surgery and recovery requiring the watching of a full season of 24 to bring me back to health. [142][Read More] Tracked on April 17, 2005 07:49 PM Comments This was interesting for me to read because I think you did a good job of giving a balanced perspective on her role in the feminist movement...I think for feminists born in the eighties the role models were sex radicals like you and Carol so there's a kind of knee-jerk resistance to Dworkin, but then I realize I've never even read her... hmmm. The porno-horror analogy is very fitting, though. Posted by: [143]Bianca | April 10, 2005 11:40 PM Well said. Thank you for saying it. I hadn't heard that she had died. Posted by: [144]Jesurgislac | April 11, 2005 12:11 AM I'm glad I got to read your eulogy of Andrea Dworkin first, before I read anyone else's. I didn't know she'd been ill; that would explain why I hadn't heard much about her lately. I came to this entry by chance, after following a link about Spain Rodriguez (what an amazing story!). Thank you for conveying so much of Dworkin's incisive passion, and your long, fraught relationship with her. For what it's worth, I've assumed for years that the cause of the porn culture wars was that so much needed to be spoken about sex, especially the intensely good and the intensely bad, that it's been nearly impossible for people who've focused their efforts on one end of that long spectrum to really hear anyone toiling on the other end. The banquet table stretches too far. Everyone's pistol is warped. And it's not everyone's job to play both sides. For instance, I'm recalling the documentary Live Nude Girls Unite, where Julia Query is doing one kind of feminist work as a stripper union-organizer documentarist, and her mother Joyce Wallace is doing another kind of feminist work as a physician who works with street prostitutes. Query's work stems partly from Wallace's efforts; Wallace's efforts aren't diminished by Query. I personally wouldn't expect anyone whose purpose is radical scrutiny of how sexuality has been turned against women at bone level to see eye to eye with someone whose life work revolves around radical reclaiming of and enumerating varieties of sexual pleasure, or vice versa. Not until we learn to partition our brains like hard drives. Misunderstandings and dislike are unavoidable on both sides. Maybe they're even required: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Your comments that she lacked psychological insight or class analysis puzzle me, since throughout this piece you're kinda describing how she had both of those (in Right-Wing Women alone). My own Dworkin experience: The first time I really began thinking about the class analysis of porn was at a panel discussion at SF State on the Minneapolis porn ordinance, with Dworkin and the local ACLU chair as two of the speakers. That was quite an evening. I'd come as a reporter, and this was my first experience at an event where the tensions ran so high. Nearly everyone in the audience had brought a baggage cart, and audience members frequently stood up to shout at the stage. What particularly impressed me were two things -- the clutches of middle-aged men in suits scattered throughout the crowd who'd loudly mutter, or outright yell, that nobody was going to take their porn away, and the following exchange: during a discussion about censorship, one of the panelists (possibly the ACLU chair, this was maybe 20 years ago, so bear with me) began explaining that censorship was too dull-edged a tool to be used on "questionable content," when other solutions would usually suffice. Why, she said, when she heard about a textbook with some particularly misogynistic passages, she just called up her mother, who knew the publisher, and they were able to work something out so that future editions weren't so offensive. At this point, other audience members (mostly young women with cropped hair, shockingly enough) leapt up to yell in disgust, "Yeah, me too!" and "Sure, just like *my* momma!" Dworkin, way ahead of the hecklers, then gently reminded the speaker that those class privileges probably weren't available to most women. That evening definitely put me on the road to pondering porn consumers, porn producers, sex, and class. ...And now I'm looking for an ending for what's turned from a comment into a novella. How's this: thanks for all the work *you've* done. I consider both you and Dworkin pioneers. Posted by: [145]L.A. | April 11, 2005 05:10 AM Thank you so much for this piece. Posted by: [146]Jennifer B | April 11, 2005 07:44 AM Thank you. Last night, thinking about her death and struggling with how I feel about her, and feeling so annoyed at how the only news I could google on her were the obnoxious quotes of the irrelevant Ms. Paglia, I realized that I most wanted to know what you would have to say about her. Thank you. Posted by: [147]Mandy | April 11, 2005 07:53 AM While I certainly feel something when anyone dies, and I do think that Andrea played a big part in the history of feminism, I also feel as if she's done damage to so many people along the way that may have been different women. Hey, thats a good way of putting it "different"... trans-women, women who were assigned the sex "male" at birth, due to whatever combination of chemicals, were born with a brain and thought patterns of women, and the bodies of men. That in and of itself, with today's societal binary gender system, being hell. While yes, we may have been born with male privilege, we've given it up and then some, time and time again. Men would seek to kill us, and so would the militant separatists, such as Andrea Dworkin was. I know its not polite to speak ill of the dead, but as a transwoman who is also extremely feminist, and speaks on trans issues and feminism pretty often at conferences, group meetings, etc. Andrea Dworkin was the equivalent of Satan to transwomen, and while I don't take that side of the issue, as I support separatist space, I do believe she had so much hate to spread around, that it may have finally eaten her alive. Rest In Peace, Andrea Dworkin, and may the gods have mercy on you in the afterlife. Posted by: [148]Trish Lynch | April 11, 2005 07:54 AM Why is everyone dying right now?? Pope, HST, Dworkin, Derrida... Posted by: [149]Paul Gowder | April 11, 2005 08:32 AM Glorious obit, Susie. May I reprint, or link, your obit to Nina Hartley's board? Boxster Posted by: [150]boxster | April 11, 2005 09:09 AM And Paul, we've forgotten other giants in art and criticism, such as Johnny, Philip Johnson, Susan Sontag, and Saul Bellow. An era is just leaving us, and I am afraid that no one can replace any of those persons. Boxster Posted by: [151]Boxster | April 11, 2005 09:47 AM Even though I am on the absolute opposite ideological pole of Andrea Dworkin on so many subjects concerning sex and feminism, I do find myself deeply saddened at the news of her passing. For all of her antisex myopia, and her complete and total lack of empathy towards men and their suffering, she still was and remains an icon and a significant figure in the name of feminism. After all that she has suffered, I do hope that she is now finally at peace with herself. Otherwise, Susie, that was a wonderful and totally objective tribute to her legacy..both positive and negative. Anthony Posted by: [152]Anthony Kennerson | April 11, 2005 09:54 AM Good morning, everyone... I just had the weirdest dream ever. I dreamed that if I didn't write my name down on a piece of paper I would find myself without an identity in the morning, not knowing who I was, or having the slightest clue where I belonged. My lucky piece of paper with my signature on it was lying on my nightstand when I woke up this morning. I do think that I am in for a prolonged period of mourning, as all my legends come up to the last plate. It's so odd that my mother should die, and ever since, it seems like I've lived in the obituary pages. I never dreamed I'd be spending so much time on my blog talking about the ones that got away. Thanks for fixing my link! It's a link to a story I wrote called "The Baffling Case of Andrea Dworkin," after her very strange rape accusation and postscript appeared in a London newspaper a few years ago. When I say that Dworkin eschewed class analysis or psychological insight, I don't mean that she didn't toy with those things for effect. You're right, she was always zinging people with the politically correct method: "Oh, you're middle class so you're an idiot." What I mean is that she saw the world fundamentally divided by gender, and it was as she'd be some happy capitalist camper if only women ruled the world-- i.e., the elite p.c. women who know how everyone should behave. She couldn't discuss eroticism, desire, fantasy, or human sexuality with any clarity because she firmly rejected the notion of the unconscious, and she didn't think that therapy or personal insights were worth a damn. In her view, the world is fucked, and everyone's difficulties with it are because of THAT-- all craziness and pathology can be understood in terms of patriarchal crimes against humanity. It's almost refreshing to hear now, when everyone's problems with the world are supposed to be vanquished with a pill, but she took the polar opposite position. Posted by: [153]Susie | April 11, 2005 10:22 AM I'd appreciate it if you want to show others my thoughts, just excerpt a little bit, with a link, or link to it here, but don't reprint the whole thing. That's my policy about everything I write here. Fair use! Posted by: [154]Susie | April 11, 2005 10:35 AM Susie, you are an exemplar of so many proper ways to live, and my favorite is your ability to so respectfully disagree, especially disagree with other women. Thank you for turning to googlism to remind us of all who Dworkin was. I, too, am sorry she "started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating" but I hadn't realized that that was why I stopped following her work. Another great memorial. Now, I hope you can stop writing them for a while. Posted by: [155]rosewood | April 11, 2005 10:50 AM Wonderful piece. I think you very eloquently expressed the contradictions so many of us feel when thinking about Dworkin. May she now be able to rest in peace. Posted by: [156]Marie B | April 11, 2005 11:01 AM I was going to write up a bit myself, but now I don't think I can. I'll never top this. Excellent piece of work, thanks. Posted by: [157]Cherie Priest | April 11, 2005 11:19 AM I too am glad that yours was my first reading of Ms. Dworkin's death; even though you have a really hard history with her, and disagree intensely with some of her hypotheses, you have been kind to her in death, as well as life... and that's a helluva generous thing to do/way to be. If only she could have been a little kinder to herself... Posted by: [158]Q | April 11, 2005 11:29 AM Thanks for writing this, Susie. I also have a lot of respect for Dworkin and her incredibly challenging thought-provoking writing and public speaking... What did she actually say about transmen/transwomen? And where did she say it? Can anyone let me know? I don't have all her books. Posted by: [159]badgerbag | April 11, 2005 11:47 AM Susie, I know how you must grieve for your mom. I didn't allow myself the time because of personal circumstances, and now I can see how it set me back. And I have an ill dad and wife to take care of, plus employment and other family situations. I think one thing we are all groping for here is the following: our cultural touchstones in the arts and letters are dying. Who will replace them? Helmut Jahn? Dave Letterman and Jon Stewart? Camille Paglia (okay, I like her in a weird way)? Andrew Sullivan? Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa? MoDo (compared with Mike Royko and Jack Newberg)? MLK or the Jesse Jackson family? Dare I say we are losing our youth. Or are we beginning to see where we lived in an era of giants and we see them replaced by manufactured celebrities and scholars? Boxter Posted by: [160]Boxster | April 11, 2005 11:53 AM >Every time you hear some preacher/politician talk about "violence against women" or how something is "degrading to women" tell them to to send a royalty check to Andrea and ask them where they've done lately to empower female sexual authority. I never understood why she didn't attack them the way she attacked feminist pornographers. Because they elevated her into the popular culture, or at least THEIR popular culture. She hated the people they hated and that was all either of them really cared about. They formed a non-aggression pact with each other like the communists and fascists of old. As long as sex-positive people were between them as a buffer, they never shared a border. Posted by: [161]Roy Kay | April 11, 2005 12:03 PM Wow. What a year this has been. I just returned from Amsterdam where I traveled with my oldest son to eulogize his godfather, David Weiss who passed away last week. David played a pivotal role in my growth as a person and as a producer of erotica. David was Bill Higgins'partner in Drake's Bookstore(s) in L.A. as well as in Amsterdam and Prague... the point being that it seems so many people are departing, or I'm just getting old (44!). As for the oft-villified, sometimes justifiably, Ms. Dworkin: her belief in the anti-female, sexist slant of most men was validated by my assumption that she was anti-sex because she was so physically unattractive. Even I, a man who professes to be an enlightened thinker, have that base prejudice hard-wired to the degree that no amount of surface cognizance can erase it. I can see why Ms. D believed there was something askew in the male psyche. On that point, she was correct. The problem with Andrea's desire to "free" women is the same as all of history's would-be liberators: they merely propose a change of incarceration, not a real liberation. Andrea wanted women to be released from societally imposed demands of female sexual self-image, so that they could now don her bondage wear, i.e. her imposition that the only alternative to casting off the former was to adhere to her asexual or antisexual vision. Andrea was as much a liberator in the long run as Castro, Stalin, Khomeini or Bush. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss... we won't get fooled again!" I will be eternally grateful to Ms. D. Absent her insane lightning rod antics, who will the pro-sex movement have to hold up and demonize? Andrea made it easy to point to the other side as fanatic, crazy and repressive. She was our unwitting ally. It's the silent enemies we must truly fear, the pragmatic agendaists. Wherever Andrea goes next, I hope she's wearing a sexy teddy with lace ruffles, fishnet stockings, garter belt, and lotsa makeup. In my vision of her new gig, she has a 36D-24-36 figure, the boobs are fake and she's being dominated by five well endowed studs. The question is this: in the scenario we just created, is she in heaven or hell? Farewell, Ms. Dworkin. My genuine wish for you is that you may be happy at last. Christian P.S. Susie: thanks for a great eulogy. Posted by: [162]Christian Mann | April 11, 2005 12:03 PM This line has been thrown around by you. Palac and crew since the early nineties. I don't buy it for one second: " every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a freakin' crazed fan of Andrea Dworkin. We all were." The truth as I know it is much closer to what Bianca had to say up above: " I think for feminists born in the eighties the role models were sex radicals like you and Carol so there's a kind of knee-jerk resistance to Dworkin, but then I realize I've never even read her... hmmm. The porno-horror analogy is very fitting, though." Yes, yes, I know the first crew wasn't born in the 80s, but I meet soooo many women who are anywhere from teenagers to 40ish now (teens in the 70s and 80s) who tell me they were taken in by the media-push of pro-exploitation "sex-positive" stuff and then were blown away by reading the work of feminists like Dworkin, and they mean it. That bit about staunch radical feminists later finding their Happy Hooker side, on the other hand, strikes me as PR fluff. Posted by: Claire | April 11, 2005 12:06 PM I am expecting many a "ding dong the witch is dead" type responses to the death of Andrea Dworkin. And I am sure that many of the folks who make them would say some things I'd even agree with since I really didn't like her staunchly anti-porn/anti-sex stance. But your entry was amazing. Honest, balanced and compassiononate. It reminds of me of my graduation ceremony from Sarah Lawrence College in 1997. All of us had been quite upset when our departing school President completely ignored our voting and requests for a speaker at the ceremony (something that had never been done in the past when people selected such amazing speakers as Toni Morrisson, Cornel West, etc.) and gave the honor of speaking to the man who was going to be her boss at her next job. We formally protested days before the ceremony and, the day of, all wore blue ribbons to signify free speech and feeling that ours was being violated. We were also protesting a recent long range plan presented by the faculty that included nothing about diversity as they had promised. When our class president got up and spoke she addressed the faculty and staff members who were angered by our protests and told them that they were the ones who always taught us to speak our minds and stand up for what we believed in. This was their doing as much as it was ours. Your statements about what people like you and Carol Queen took from Dworkin's work were really beautiful to me. It showed me that by seeing her work as totally negative I had never seen the opportunity for it to inspire people to new ideas and frames to work in. The idea that something so awesome could come out of work that seemed so conservative and upsetting rocks my world. Thank you for pointing that out to all of us. Posted by: [163]chriso | April 11, 2005 12:11 PM Thank you, Susie. Posted by: [164]Nalo Hopkinson | April 11, 2005 12:21 PM I'm surprised to find myself listed first in such distinguished company in the lead of this very fine piece. What an odd and amazing character she was - clearly lots of brainpower, but so twisted up about lust and aggression. I guess that's what made her so compelling to read. Somehow all the bottled up lust & aggression came out, despite the best efforts of her ideology to contain it. Posted by: [165]Doug Henwood | April 11, 2005 12:31 PM Chriso I think you are on to something. I went to a prominent liberal arts college (a secondary Ivy, if you will), so I rather have an idea about the philosophical points to which you are alluding. A glorious radio comedian in Chicago once said that that the true radical is the one who takes the arrows in his or her back to advance society. I think Ms Dworikin did. On some issues she was quite correct, especially in those issues expressed in the bedroom with one's SO. My extended family has had problems with spousal rape and beatings and unwanted pregnancies and jerk husbands. I should also say I am of an age where we were all entranced with the late Ms Dworkin Gloria Steinem, Dick Cavett, Alan Alda and Phil and Marlo for advancing knowledge of these sorts of issues. As Susie mentioned in her obit (and I in my cloddish posts above), the times left the woman by. She never understood what the second wave of feminism meant. Whether Susie, Nina. Carol, Susan Block, or Ducky, Andrea took the arrows for the second wave of feminism. Here, think of progressive conservatives such as Ike, JFK and RFK allowing a more progressive society to emerge. Not to mention Eleanor and Franklin and Mr Truman. Even in my prosperous community, I can see female intellectuals who are true feminists explore motherhood and a senior management positions. Imagine! A story kept from the wires getting this much response. I think we all recognize a cultural shift going on and, dare I say, it, folks like us know we are all like the Chicago White Sox....soon to be on the dust heap of history. Let me wax my sports car and listen to Sinatra. boxster Posted by: [166]Boxster | April 11, 2005 01:04 PM I just got off the phone from the obits editor at the New York Sun. He referred me to an excellent interview with Andrea Dworkin, by Will Self, that was published in The Independent in London, but is sadly not available in their web archives. Never fear! I got the NEXUS copy of it, and I've posted it here: [167]http://susiebright.blogs.com/Andrea_Dworkin_interview.pdf It's an interesting story about what Andrea was thinking about in recent years (1999) and how she felt about her legacy. Most interesting thing I've read about her-- aside from her autobiography-- in ages. Posted by: [168]Susie | April 11, 2005 03:09 PM I can't believe I didn't know about your blog till now! I really appreciate this piece. I have long held you and Dworkin in equal esteem for contributions you make/made to feminism. And while that may seem impossible to do for some people - to hold two such disparate views in the same hand - I find it has worked quite well. Dworkin helped pave the way for people to take seriously the violence in the porn industry, but you continue to pave the way for more and more openness about sex and sexuality and porn that doesn't violate people's civil rights to make or demean people. Posted by: [169]Eve | April 11, 2005 03:19 PM Eve, it isn't holding disparate ideas; rather, it is understanding the progression of thought along the left that, sadly, is lacking today. Damn, why am I disturbed by Ms Dworkin's death? Boxster Posted by: [170]Boxster | April 11, 2005 03:32 PM I suppose I have commenter "Imbralio" to thank for an example of what Dworkin-Spin looks like at its worst. The method is to start off by accusing your opponent of something that makes them look like an inhuman piece of shit who doesn't deserve to breathe. To wit, Imbralio begins by saying: "considering you [Susie] once bragged about masterbating yourself to the testimony of rape victims (Carol Queen's 1997 book), I find your comments on Andrea Dworkin... disengenuous." Yeah, and I eat little children's fingers for dessert-- Come off it! Why make up preposterous stories like that? Since I haven't bragged OR masturbated about other people's grief, let alone "rape testimonies," I always have to wonder about how that kind of rumor gets started. I'm sure Carol Queen isn't slandering me, and I don't recognize what title or passage Imbralio is quoting from her book. Here's where I think the origin of the accusation comes from. In 1984, Ronald Reagan's Attorney General released a widely criticized and spoofed "report on pornography." It was highly puritanical and prejudiced; much of it was inadvertently hilarious. "The Meese Report" included, among other things, files from FBI agents who were sent into adult theaters to watch porn movies and then describe the synopses. They're like G-man porn reviews, and as you can imagine, they are salacious and hysterical. Pure J.Edgar Hoover with a little dash of Harold Robbins. At the time, I was editing ON OUR BACKS, a lesbian-made radical sex zine, and I wrote, "I masturbated to the Meese Report until I nearly passed out." I was widely quoted, as part of the ongoing public satire of the Meese Commission. In Los Angeles, some fan even put my quote up on a marquee on Santa Monica Blvd. I have a picture of it in my office that I'm looking at right now. Here's the thing... as someone who spent my earliest years as a young woman organizing Take Back the Night marches, self-defense classes on high school campuses, rape crisis hotlines and domestic violence speak-ins --- I could go on and on --- who the hell do you think you're talking to? I'm a woman, I'm a lifelong feminist, I'm an activist, and if you even spent a few minutes getting to know me you would already know this. I'm someone who knows about sexual assault and vicious sexism first-hand, because, as Sojourner Truth said, "Ain't I a Woman?" I can see why people get mad at the Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly's of the world, because they have really been living such a lie, and their hypocrisy hurt so many people. But to bash women like me, or contine to ignore what activist sex workers have to say about their lives and work? It's inexcuseable. If you ever read "Herotica" or any of my other books, you would find a lot of fearless women who presented a much-needed voice. If you read my work about rape, or Pat Califia, or Gayle Rubin, Carole Vance, Nan Hunter, Lisa Duggan, Carol Queen, Amber Hollibaugh, Annie Sprinkle, Gail Pheterson, Dorothy Allison, -- OH I COULD GO ON AND ON--- you would have a complete revelation. Sexual liberation and women's liberation, gender revolution, are soulmates; you can't pull us apart. I know I always end up sounding so earnest as I beg the Dworkinites to stop Satanizing every feminist they don't understand. I can't respond logically to statements like, "most men still really, really hate most women." Right! I really really hate boiled spinach! It's so childish. Men and women OBVIOUSLY have a much more complicated relationship of loving and hating and interdependency and gender roles that get in the way, and family ties and, AND, AND! I think these kind of views get in the way of understanding how our culture has woken up to the spectre of sexual violence, incest, rape, domestic abuse, and all matters of sexual exploitation and cruelty. We really do live in a different world where consciousness has been transformed, and the dark ages can't easily claim a triumph. I am wearing Birkenstocks today, by the way, and I plan on putting my overalls in a few minutes. Posted by: [171]Susie | April 11, 2005 03:47 PM Ah, Susie, I worn a nice pair of jeans, a nice sweat shirt, Cole-Hahn loafers and a BMW baseball cap, as my wonderful wife came home from her business trip. To your larger point: I was always a feminist, both of my wives were (are0 feminists, and I shall not have it any other way. I became an Episcopalian because they respect the proper place of women in religious life "I think these kind of views get in the way of understanding how our culture has woken up to the spectre of sexual violence, incest, rape, domestic abuse, and all matters of sexual exploitation and cruelty. We really do live in a different world where consciousness has been transformed, and the dark ages can't easily claim a triumph." Cannot agree more. Boxster Posted by: | April 11, 2005 04:13 PM Thanks for writing this, Susie. I'm one of the new generation of feminists who looks up to women like you and Carol and when I have tried to read Andrea Dworkin, I've just gotten angry, frustrated, and put it down. There were some things that really resonated with me, but the militant anti-porn (even feminist porn!) and anti-sex messages were overwhelming. Thanks for giving me a new perspective. Posted by: [172]Rory | April 11, 2005 05:15 PM Another Sheldon siting! "Boxster" huh? Where do I go to get my reward? Posted by: Real Feminist, Not the Fun Kind | April 11, 2005 05:16 PM Rory, would you mind telling me what that "new" perspective is in a sentence or two? Is there some strange world I don't know about in which it's both reprehensible and perfectly okey-dokey that men all over the world masturebate to picture of women being ejacualted upon and anally raped? How DOES that work exactly? Posted by: Mia | April 11, 2005 05:19 PM Before anyone else starts replying to Mia, I just want to wave my editorial warning: No ad hominem attacks. No sinking to the worse argument. I almost feel like deleting Mia's, but we'll see if we can have a civil discussion. Mia's charge makes a few assumptions: Masturbation is disgusting Masturbation to fantasies and pictures is appalling Ejaculating is grotesque Ejaculating upon fantasy is an outrage Men are masturbating (see above) to pictures of women who are being forced to perform for someone's sadistic kicks Women models in such work are universally ejaculated upon, and universally anally penetrated, and this is the typical picture of porn. Women don't masturbate Women don't masturbate to fantasies or pictures Women don't like sex Women are not exhibitionisitic Women do not like semen Women do not like anal sex and would never consent to it Men are not anally raped Men are not anally penetrated Pornography is all one thing, as described, with the same people in each position as producer, actor, voyeur, etc. I dont agree with any of those assumptions. Posted by: [173]Susie | April 11, 2005 05:36 PM Ionce called myself a feminist, but now I just call myself a women's libber. I'm more concerned with advancing liberty than staging a gender conflict -------------- Now Boxter. I would identify Dworkin on the left. She has definite collectivist inclinations as were noted in the fawning interview Susie quoted: "[Freedom of speech is] a brilliant way for people to not have to take responsibility for what's out there." Ahhh, legal intimidation=responsibility. We have a collective mandate to intimidate perspectives we disagree with - or wish to ascribe malice to. "I have come to believe that it's very hard for people to even think that their sexual feelings could ever exist in a context of equality." Actually a free people will recognize that the other person will have autonomous aspirations that may or may not reflect theirs. Some like to lead, some to be led, and some to partner equally. She seems to desire dragooning society to fit only one model of engagement - one of totally calibrated equality in all things. Posted by: [174]Roy Kay | April 11, 2005 06:29 PM BTW..to Ron Kay's comments on Dworkin's ideology: she may be a putative "leftist" because she uses "collectivist" and feminist rhetoric; but she's definitely no genuine humanistic Leftist in my book. In fact, her views on sex and porn alone denote her as nothing less than an authoritarian and a conservative in feminist cloaking. But then again, that's only my cracked, liberationist Leftist view of things..your mileage may vary. Anthony Posted by: [175]Anthony Kennerson | April 11, 2005 06:48 PM Crossposted from my own journal, with a few removals of personal stuff: My first thought reading this post -- and I don't know if this is good or bad -- was surprise that you thought of Dworkin as paving the way for people like you. So much of the snippets of Dworkin I've read mention that the sexual revolution was a lie that I'm surprised you figured other big fans of Dworkin would have been thrilled with feminist pornography, feminist sexworkers, etc. But I also am impressed with what you say about the way Dworkin even inspired the women she seems to me to hate. The way that feminist discussions of sex and sexuality led people like you to question sexuality, to try to refigure it in ways that were exciting and liberating and not made by men. I think that she may well right there, and if she is then even I have my own debts to Dworkin. I could probably never even assert my own lack of interest in certain standard figurations of heterosex without denying my desire for men if someone like Dworkin hadn't said "Look, this kind of interaction is what sexuality is to all these people, and this is what that means." To say nothing of desire for women, though I do wonder if others would have made the room for that just as well. I'm very hurt by some of her remarks about BDSM, the ways she equates it almost exactly with rape and violence in some of her work. But in a funny way I wonder if maybe her influence allowed some of us to go there in the first place. BDSM to me is as much about exploring new ways to eroticize the body that aren't genitally focused (or focused on breasts or any of the other Standard Sexy Body Parts in heterosexist culture) as it is about eroticizing control. Sensation, too -- it's not just "Pain is Fun Because Our Wires Are Crossed Woohoo" (though it is that). It's also an attempt to seek the eroticism in all kinds of experience. (I'm basically quoting Foucault here. Because he's right.) And I think if Dworkin could see it that way, which she probably couldn't because she was always talking about Sade and probably assumed we really are his direct descendants, I wonder if she'd get behind some of the idea. After all, if something like hetero PIV intercourse is problematic, there's the idea that we need new ways of exploring sexuality. Women's ways of doing that. And that's what I find in BDSM culture, in a culture that allows me to be a top, in a culture with a rich history of women, in a culture that allows me to penetrate (or not), that allows me to do the touching and the guiding. I get to know who I am, at least when things go well. And before I found this, I just used to toss and turn waiting for my sexuality to coalesce around BEING TAKEN BY MEN because... I liked men too much to not be ordinary, right? So I suppose even in my own way, though 3/4 of her words that I read sting because they seem aimed at me (or at least, aimed so poorly that they hit me and other women as well as men and patriarchy) I'm indebted to her as well. Posted by: [176]Trinity | April 11, 2005 07:36 PM It's okey-dokey with me that men masturbate to pictures of women being ejaculated upon, just as it's okey-dokey with me that women masturbate to pictures of men being ejaculated upon, men masturbate to pictures of men being ejaculated upon, and women masturbate to pictures of women being ejaculated upon. Heck, I don't care if people of any gender masturbate to pictures of vegetables being ejaculated upon. Now, it's absolutely not okey-dokey with me that anyone masturbate to a picture of anyone of any gender **actually** being raped. If anyone, on the other hand, wants to masturbate to a picture of a staged rape "scene" featuring any combination of adult humans and orifices, I say "de gustibus non disputandum est." As for myself, I'll take vanilla. Having disposed of that particular straw man, I will say that Susie, I find your piece quite thoughtful and actually pretty different from what you wrote in the RE/Search volume. I, too, did not know that Ms. Dworkin had died, and was glad to read your appreciation of her life and work before the anodyne blatherings of the professional obituarists. Dworkin was never a great favorite of mine, but I admired the passion she brought to her work. I think your essay sums up why even those of us who are as far as possible from her in our appreciation of sex, intercourse, erotica, pornography, and even the female body itself nonetheless mourn the passage of an honest and innovative adversary. Posted by: [177]JupiterPluvius | April 11, 2005 08:27 PM As a sex-radical feminist, and the daughter of a radical feminist, I have always had an interesting relationship to Andrea Dworkin and her work. My mother, Mary Atkins, has been, for me, a role model who has tirelessly worked against violence against women for over thirty years. Andrea Dworkin has always been and continues to be one of her greatest (s)heroes. My friends and colleagues have included Carol Queen, Patrick Califia, and Wendy Chapkis as well as Anne Simonton & John Stoltenberg. As a 40-something feminist, I grew up among the "sex wars" and somehow found myself in the position of being able to listen to and learn from amazing people on both sides of the often painfully personal debates. I lived the debates in my own home and family as well. My mother, now lives with me and my sex-radical partners. We have a found a way to respect each others good intentions even when we disagree on our choices. Our discussions often expand as well as sharpen our own ideas. This is a very personal way of saying thank you to both you Susie Bright and to Andrea Dworkin (my mother and many others) for providing a world where I could critically think about sex as well as embrace my own sexuality. Dawn Atkins (author - "Looking Queer" and "Lesbian Sex Scandals") Posted by: [178]Dawn Atkins | April 11, 2005 09:44 PM Here's a lively discussion on Andrea, with the famous letters that she and John Irving exchanged in the Times a few years ago: [179]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/11/142945/190 Posted by: [180]Susie | April 11, 2005 10:03 PM Dawn, I appreciate your post so much... I think there a lot of women like you and your mom out there. The "sex wars" led us to think it was all so cut and dried, like we were two alien races, but it really never was like that. Mia, who IS honoring Dworkin's legacy today in the manner you respect? Where are the memorials you appreciate? Have you written something? Have any of the feminist activists you mentioned posted something? I've been looking on the web, because I'm sure they must all be holding her in their thoughts very closely right now. Posted by: [181]Susie | April 11, 2005 10:17 PM Well written, as always, Susie, and far more charitable than Dworkin would have been to you had, god forbid, the situation been reversed. If she had made any note of your passing at all, it would surely have been derisive. I like your observation that Dworkin rejected the notion of the unconscious. I knew there had to be other areas where she and I disagreed as profoundly as we did about sex and porn. I suppose the rejection of all our unrecognized individual motivations made it easier for her to deny her own. I didn't know Ms. Dworkin had been ill, as I followed her career no more closely than she followed mine. I strive for compassion in the face of suffering wherever I encounter it, but there's no getting past the fact that she despised you, me and everyone like us. I, too, found that some of her observations had resonance, including those regarding porn. However, I got fed up with her one-note approach to the complicated subject of gender relations long, long before the symphony ended. Her ranting hatred of all things male and masculine was the source of more misery and confusion for heterosexual men and women over the past twenty years than all the sins she attributed to porn during that time, by and large wrongly. Her thinking turned the bedroom, which should be a place where people go to be loving and kind to each other and to share pleasure, into a politicized battleground. I knew right away that she didn't speak for me. My sexuality that didn't fit in her box and she had no use for any story that didn't conform to her vision of woman-as-eternal-victim. Indeed, among the many insults she hurled at women like myself, none was more hurtful than her loud insistence that we were incapable of asserting our individual sexual identities because they had been stolen from us by the vast, evil conspiracy of patriarchal domination and that we were just too dumb and brainwashed to know it. And then there was the matter of her undisguised contempt for my friends, yourself included (though she always claimed it wasn't personal, of course). In her skewed universe, we were either cynical pimps who had thrown in with The Enemy or defeated rape victims in the grip of Stockholm Syndrome. She berated us all from the safety of lecture halls packed with supporters and dismissed every challenge to openly debate women who disagreed with her. She hated me and what I stand for as surely as any fundamentalist hates me for what I do and who I am. She hated me and my kind so much that she willingly jumped into bed with those whose number one priority is the eradication of reproductive choice for women, simply because dirty pictures made her that angry. I acknowledge Dworkin's intellect, and the fact that she broke a spade or two of new ground, even as I reject her analysis, root and branch. This is far more validation than any of us would ever have received from her. I take no satisfaction in her passing, but it would be hypocritical to say the least for me to mourn it. Dworkin didn't need therapy, She inflicted her pain and suffering on the rest of us. It was a decades-long tantrum, and I was over it fifteen years ago. Now, at last, so is she. The haunting question that remains: when will the rest of this culture be able to say the same? Nina Hartley Posted by: [182]Nina Hartley | April 11, 2005 11:30 PM I've found one answer to my question to Mia: Nikki Craft, who I met in Santa Cruz in 1978 when we organized the first TBTN march here, has set up a sympathetic memorial site for AD: [183]http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/ And this blog has a zillion sympathetic references and international links: [184]http://www.radgeek.com/ If you want to follow this the memorializing from a fan's point of view, or just want to see the AD-fellow-traveler side of the story, keep checking the RadGeek thread. They seem committed to doing regular updates. And now that I've done my little research project, I see Nina slipped in with a post that is just the tonic I needed. Posted by: [185]Susie | April 11, 2005 11:37 PM I'm so glad Nina Hartley wrote a response here, because she addresses one of the weirdest and most excruciating parts of Dworkin's legacy: she was, by her own account, a former prostitute, who despised and vilified every other prostitute/sex worker who ever spoke out on her own behalf. Dworkin's constant allegiance with beleaguered sex workers only worked as long as the other girls kept their mouth shut, (or had their words ghostwritten, like LInda Lovelace). There has been a MILITANT, international, sex workers' movement for decades now, and Dworkin only ignored them or excoriated them. She was so extreme in her anti-whore rhetoric, that it reminded me of how the Ku Klux Klan go nuts over a "nigger-lover" more than any black person they could think of. Dworkin was more vicious to women she considered traitors to her cause than she was to any individual man. Just as a teensy belive-or-not example, let me tell you the story of how I found out that Andrea Dworkin knew I existed. First of all you have to know a little history... Dworkin and her ally Catherine MacKinnon lobbied, somewhat successfully, for legislation to criminalize "pornography" as an actionable hate crime... i.e., if you felt like your life had been hurt by a particular porn magazine or video, you could sue the makers. Their efforts made a big showing in Minneapolis and Indianapolis, (though ultimately defeated), but where they really scored was in Canada. The Canadian Customs Board adopted their rhetoric as the criteria by which all imported art and media should be judged by. That is why to this day you cannot send anything into Canada that MIGHT by "considered degrading to women." You would not believe the embarrassing list of descriptions that has boiled down to... another yarn! I have to get back to my original encounter. In the mid-eighties, I was publishing ON OUR BACKS and I wrote a regular column, called "Toys For Us"-- which was cheeky but educational sex advice. One issue I wrote a story about how to successfully enjoy vaginal fisting. It was wildly popular in our little milieu, because no one had written about such a thing before... "Fisting" was considered a gay/leatherman/anal thing. The next thing I know, the feminist newspaper "off our backs," which was toting the Dworkin line, had an outraged editorial against my fisting story. The author said that if ANY lesbian tried the barbaric antics I described and suffered injuries or death ( !!! ) they should sue my ass off. They got Andrea on the horn and asked her if she thought my crime against women should be avenged. I wish I could tell you EXACTLY what she replied, but the yellowed copy of this issue is buried in my attic somewhere. I remember that she passionately agreed that I should be prosecuted, that it was another example of female genocide, and something to the effect that I was better off dead. I remember my shock, both at her words and also at the notion that she had read anything of mine at all. For those of you who have tried vaginal fisting, or even four fingers, you have to admit, this is a real LAFF. If she thought fisting was bad, wait `til she found out about childbirth! Of course, it also makes you want to cry. I did both. It was so insane, so ignorant, and yet it scared me because I knew these people were "in charge" of the lesbian feminist party line at the time. You shuddered to imagine them all running the world... and yet a few years later, there was Andrea, working with "The Man," in the form of the rightwing fundamentalists she allied with in the Midwest and Canada. For me, that was the final straw. She was in bed with people who live by the Old Testament-- it was such a corrupt alliance. I really need to go to bed, but I drank all this iced tea at exactly the wrong moment... Posted by: [186]susie | April 12, 2005 01:23 AM Holy crap. I have a newfound respect for Andrea Dworkin. I'm sorry it's come after her death, I'm sorry I've compartmentalized her for so long in the "oh, she's that crazy intellectual who said 'sex is rape'" box in my mind. Thanks, susie, seriously. In honor of her memory, I vow not to jack off to porn for a week ... a day ... an hour ... oh, fuck it, see ya Posted by: [187]Demogenes Aristophanes | April 12, 2005 05:30 AM While Andrea and I diverged wildly on the issue of pornography, as a young feminist, I was energized by the molotov cocktails she was hurling over the wall. "Sex is rape" was a great, hyperbolic soundbite that shook people up, and maybe made them think about issues like consent and personhood, and that's all to the good. We need radical voices to draw the eye to the truths the mainstream is too polite to mention in mixed company. It doesn't mean they're right, but they're necessary. Thanks for a lyric, thought-provoking obit that made me remember what it was like to be young and angry and excited. Good on ya, Susie, and you too Andrea, wherever you are . . . Posted by: [188]Angelle | April 12, 2005 05:44 AM Angelle, your comment reminds me of a situation in Thailand that came to my attention a number of years ago (forgive me for sounding like a pedantic buffoon for a moment), the crux of which was that a number of environmental NGO's were raising an enormous stink over the filming of 'The Beach' on an island in the Andaman Sea. Apparently the filmmakers had shipped in an enormous amount of sand and non-indigenous fauna to make the eponymous 'beach' more 'authentically tropical'. A series of letters to The Nation and Bangkok Post ensued, full of outrage over these environmentalists' kicking up a lot of, well, sand over what was probably a fairly minor environmental indiscretion by the filmmakers. And, as some letter-writers pointed out, there was a far more important environmental destruction going on at the very same time (which also had serious human rights components as well), which was the building of the Yadana natural gas pipeline from Burma through Ratchaburi province in Thailand (to make a boring story short, it involved wild elephant habitat from the environmental side, and slave labor from the human rights side). Why couldn't the NGO's focus laser-like on that issue, wrote the more palatable letter-writers, instead of making a circus out of 'The Beach'? To which view I wrote a letter to the editor of the Post (I worked for the Nation, so couldn't write them), saying that the opponents of the Yadana pipeline could only wish they had an elephant named Leonardo DiCaprio to be the poster boy for their cause. The point being, that tactics are important, and seizing opportunities as they appear is crucial. Your statement that '"Sex is rape" was a great, hyperbolic soundbite that shook people up, and maybe made them think about issues like consent and personhood, and that's all to the good.We need radical voices to draw the eye to the truths the mainstream is too polite to mention in mixed company ...' reminds me of this again. Posted by: [189]Demongenes Aristophanes | April 12, 2005 06:10 AM A great response that recalled the contradictory feelings incided by Andrea Dworkin. In an attempt to draw something positive out of this sad event I hope that the divisiveness and in-fighting that Dworkin helped to spearhead will pass alongside her, while her fighting spirit, no-holds-barred approach, and cutting intelligence continues to inspire activism and scholarship. May the phoenix of a truly inclusive liberation movement rise roaring from her ashes. Posted by: [190]Linda Wayne | April 12, 2005 07:16 AM Of course tactics matter. That's where change is actually fought for and occaisionally won. But so do Big Ideas. That's often where change is started. I don't know why Andrea eventually went so far off the rails, and I think it would be irresponsible to speculate, but some of what she said was absolutely critical for society to hear. Much of it was being said out loud for the first time. My point is not that she was right, but that her voice was needed. Radical voices keep the tacticians honest. And really, without the screaming about Leo, would the larger discussion have made it out of the echo chamber that time at all? Posted by: Angelle | April 12, 2005 07:19 AM Wow. Susie, again, you are a mensch among mensches. Dworkin's death feels personal to me, thought it's been years since I've read her or seen her. I first read Dworkin's work in manuscript in the late 1970s, when I was part of the Motheroot collaborative. I didn't like it, but I couldn't put it down. Boy, did we fight about that one. My hazy memory was that half of us loathed it, half of us wanted to rush it into print immediately. There were no mild feelings. But as Susie and so many others have pointed out, Dworkin's work--even as I disagreed with it--helped define my beliefs more clearly. Then I moved to Brooklyn, and I would see her (and John) on the street. Never spoke to her, but I knew she was there. Sort of scared of her, actually. One of my friends, a bookstore owner, described her...listen to this--as "motherly." He said, "She even offered me her sweater one day, when it was cold in the store." I will probably disagree with most of what Dworkin had to say--and fight its effects, when necessary. But she also loaned people sweaters. RIP, Andrea. Posted by: [191]Martha Garvey | April 12, 2005 07:36 AM Interesting personal observation by someone who saw her in action with people [192]http://www.Theperfectworld.us/thread.php?id=90&postNum=2775. >I used to see her in Park Slope quite often in the late 1980s; she was so huge. She was very rude to shop clerks in front of me several times. My feeling is that Dworkin was an abusive manipulator who accused others of abuse to make herself bullet proof on being called on her shit. She constantly had to manufacter new abuses, because it kept her in the limelight as a victim. I am not surprised that she gets a favorable hearing in Europe. Europe is generally more inclined to authoritarianism. Further, Europe is usually willing to believe the worst about the US, particularly if that is cast in a leftist slant. Posted by: [193]Roy Kay | April 12, 2005 08:27 AM I recall Andrea Dworkin's writings from my university days in the late 80s and early 90s. Then she was just a voice to me - and not one I particularly liked. It was shrill, but not that much shriller than many others in academia. There were so many messages in the university books back then, about the myriad ways in which Western Society Sucked. And when I read an ultra-violent quote from her own novel, I thought: What a hypocrite. Condemning violence against women with one hand, wallowing in degradation of women with the other. Only when I read the obituaries did I actually see a photo of Dworkin. No, I didn't gloat. But, may God forgive me, my first thought upon seeing her photo (do you want honesty or piety?) was "Boy, was she ugly." There, I said it. Please don't get this wrong, but I have a question: would Dworkin's impact on culture have been different if she had been beautiful, but peddled the exact same message? Picture that, if you can: a really gorgeous woman, perhaps with slim long legs, saying the things Dworkin said with the same absolute conviction. Is that even possible? Would a beautiful Andrea Dworkin be taken more or less seriously? By other women? By men? I'm asking because I don't know the answer, and it's maddening. Dworkin wasn't a "lone voice in a wilderness." She was as much part of her period in history as Camille Paglia or Nina Hartley or Phyllis Schlafly. (Perhaps Ms. Hartley had the greatest impact of them all.) If anyone wants to speak out against violence to women today, they should do so. For instance, against forced female circumcision in the Third World. Or against "honor killings" in other cultures, or the systematic murdering and mutilation of women for dowry money in India. These are examples of violent oppression as part of a whole culture, supported by political and economical interests... ...but of course those victims are poor, non-WASP and foreigners, so why should WE care? Do we care? Did she? Posted by: [194]Shy Person | April 12, 2005 08:59 AM For years I've thought of porn as a no-good-guys kind of situation - whom do you back, the power-hungry politicians for whom an anti-smut crusade is a cheap source of votes, the televangelists who watch the money roll in every time they rail against smut (if not sex itself), or the mainstream pornographers who degrade women (and men) and who regularly insult the intelligence of their clientele? I'll tell you, the worst part of being lonely and celibate back in the day was having no sexual outlet but this Atlantic-sized cesspool of brainless, passionless literary and pictorial sludge. Praise "Bob" for people like R. Crumb, Roberta Gregory, Reed Waller and the late Kate Worley, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Susie Bright (why does that name ring a bell?) and all the others who lifted sexual dialogue and media out of the cesspool. As for :"The media image of women today is pathetic; it''s Barbie on Steroids", I don't have much contact with mainstream media these days. It's all propaganda anyway. I'm not talking about the outrightly political stuff like on Fox News and such. I mean the subtle and not-very-subtle cultural stuff that the "entertainment" industry slips to ya under the radar of your consciousness, day in and day out, like it's been doing ever since the first TV sets went on sale half a century ago. Those scumbags have been telling us how to think for longer than I care to recount. What they continue to do to our children's minds is downright criminal. How can we call ourselves a free society when a particularly odious kind of conformity is constantly being high-pressure-marketed to young, impressionable people? For more information check out [195]http://www.adbusters.org. As for Ms. Dworkin, what I remember most vividly about her is her testimony before the Canadian Parliament which resulted in one of the most restrictive censorship laws on this continent. For years, you could not bring sexual literature across the Canadian border without it being seized by customs. Gay and lesbian bookstores were endlessly harassed by authorities while big-box chain bookstores who sold the same kinds of things were basically left alone (I called this law "The Independent Bookstore Extinction Act"). And as for Ms. Solanas' points, I agree with every one of them, except of course the elimination of the male sex! Posted by: [196]C.S. Lewiston | April 12, 2005 09:11 AM Trinity, meet my husband. He has some medical issues that would make it impossible for you to be taken by him, and he would refuse to take or be taken by you. I appreciated reading the post on this fine day. This is a good, humane site. Posted by: [197]leah | April 12, 2005 09:15 AM Not only was Andrea Dworkin not a lone voice in the wilderness, she left thousands of us behind more determined than ever to carry on the work she began. The radical feminist community can be found here: [198]http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/ posting tributes, favorite quotes, and our own memories. This might be a good place to go for anyone unfamiliar with her life and work. Heart Posted by: [199]Heart | April 12, 2005 11:03 AM Andrew Sullivan posted this comment today: FRUM AND DWORKIN: They agreed on one important thing: the need to roll back sexual freedom: "And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children - and (ultimately) of men as well. She understood that all-pervasive pornography was not a harmless amusement, but a powerful teaching device that changed the way men thought about women. She rejected the idea that sex was just another commodity to be exchanged in a marketplace, that strippers and prostitutes should be thought of as just another form of service worker: She recognized and dared to name the reality of brutality and exploitation where many liberals insisted on perceiving personal liberation." And she shared with Frum a deep suspicion of people who believe they are free and act accordingly. The Frum mentioned is David Frum of the National Review Online. He, as you may know, wrote the "Axis of Evil" speech. Boxster Posted by: [200]Boxster | April 12, 2005 11:31 AM Well, that memorial looks for real, thank God. All of this catty disengenuous stuff from the mainstream media sex-capitalist crowd is driving me nuts. Posted by: Markie | April 12, 2005 11:53 AM Thank you, Susie, for initiating this valuable debate, in which at least one side, with its sneering, dismissive and intellectually dishonest flame-throwing, certainly reveals itself once again in all its virulence to those of us who are generally successful in avoiding its splenetic spewing. Particularly nauseating is the attempt to portray Dworkin as a victim of a vast patriarchal conspiracy to suppress her opinions. That, of course, would explain why she enjoyed a well-funded career as a public intellectual for two decades, sold hundreds of thousands of copies of her books, appeared regularly on the op-ed pages of mainstream newspapers and rated a lead obit in the NYT. So effectively were her views stifled and silenced that we're not even discussing them here, right? As a reader of Dworkin's work who found some genuine insights into the hidden links between sex and violence in the better-reasoned of her tracts, I believe that, at the end of her day, she was what she had always been: a hate-monger who advocated violence against men in general and women whose opinions differed from hers. The bigotry that she preached, had it been directed at any minority group other then men, would have been instantly recognizable as belonging to the extreme right, where she always enjoyed far more support and admiration than she ever inspired among leftists, liberals or the vast majority of women and men who identify as feminists. The inability of left-wing ideologues to recognize and reject a cross-dressing reactionary is an enduring weakness that leads to continuing embarrassments of the kind I've been reading all morning. Kinda like when Kate Millet praised the mullahs of post-revolutionary Iran for "freeing women from the tyranny of the male gaze" through the imposition of the chador, even as hundreds of Iranian women were being executed for prostitution and other "immoral" behavior. But then, Dworkin would probably have been an eager trigger-puller for that kind of revolution, had she been able to take time off from the lecture circuit. The ugly truth is that Dworkin, no different from Lou Sheldon or Randall Terry, built a comfortable livelilhood for herself by denouncing those without whom she would have had to figure out some other means of paying the rent. Would that she had. Posted by: [201]Ernest Greene | April 12, 2005 12:29 PM Dear Andrea, I went on to make a film you would have hated (did you see it?) but you were one of my first loves. At 17 years old I was 20 years your junior but your books were so seductive that I didn't have a chance. You were a passion I hadn't known, the passion of Outrage and Fury and Fierce Ethics, of Revolution. You made me see the Truth about the world (a Truth that faded later, but oh, at the time...). You unraveled everything. Gloria Steinem's feminism, my best friend before you, was nothing but a school girl friendship, a couple of book reports and holding hands. Andrea, you spoke so negatively of (het) sex, but you wrote to me like the best top's have fucked me. I wanted your next word, to be knocked to the ground with your next idea, the sweet ways you picked me up and cuddled me and reassured me that I could become like you, that I could fight the patriarchy. I have fought patriarchy, but I didn't become like you. I left you, betrayed you, and you didn't age well. Perhaps all lions do not age well. I love you and will always love you Andrea. Julia Query Live Nude Girls UNITE! Posted by: [202]Julia Query | April 12, 2005 12:44 PM I love underground comix and AVN is really neato! I'd prefer to marry well though. Posted by: Girly Chick | April 12, 2005 12:46 PM Original obit from Washington Post: [203]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45447-2005Apr11.ht ml Posted by: Rudy | April 12, 2005 01:45 PM >Roy, I really do stand corrected. >Boxster Well, we could have a brawl just to prove how violent we, as men, are - on general principles. Of course we should limber up by lifting a few chocolate martinis first. (And thanks to Susie for turning me in to them.) :-P Posted by: | April 12, 2005 02:54 PM thank you susie. i have been walking around all day feeling the loss. andrea and I shared a birthday and a feeling about how anti-semitism and misogyny come from the same place i have the same love/anger towards her as people today ask me who she was, I can direct them here thank you for your perfect, beautiful portrait of what she meant to us Posted by: [204]jill soloway | April 12, 2005 03:02 PM Jill, I didn't know you were a... Libra? I think your and Dworkin's birthdate is the end of September, is that right? Thanks for posting. And on the other side of the gracious divide, I'm afraid I've waved "Buh-Bye" to one of our commenters who wrote a personal attack on someone else who'd been writing here. It was cruel, and very troll-esque. I've deleted that entry and I don't want that poster coming back here again; you're not welcome. It pains me to turn away anyone, because I want my blog to be welcoming to people who might be timid or shy elsewhere. But a big part of what makes a place hospitable is to not tolerate personal, "ad hominem" insults. I won't put up with Troll syndrome developing, where someone snarky is just lying in wait, trying to pick a fight that is designed to go nowhere but insult. I might also add that it is never a good idea to attack someone's mother, which was the final straw in this troll's case. If you post here more than once, I'd appreciate it if you gave your name and your email or personal URL address. It helps create a sense of openess and accountability. Thanks for listening to this message from the Etiquette Lady, and now we return to our normal discussion... Posted by: [205]Susie Bright | April 12, 2005 03:42 PM Gah, that slander from Mia [now deleted] about Julia Query and SEIU is too personal, it's like you're talking about some imaginary union stereotype. The leadership of SEIU local 790 is kind of my idea of what the revolution would be about: 75% female, mostly people of color, 100% badass. I'd encourage you to contact transmen field rep Robert Haaland or sister Exec. President Josie Mooney and tell them what you think they're doing with the Lusty Lady membership... I'm sure listening to their responses to you would be an enjoyable experience. I go back and forth on Dworkin, who I guess I tend to lump in with women more directly focused on opposing lesbian SM or transmen than she is. One one hand, we desperately need the correction to the prevailing sex positivity that an updated Dworkin would represent. We're now at the point where it's very difficult to articulate, say, what's icky about Hooters or what's suspicious (from an SM-positive and feminist position) about images of convention that have dommes dressed in latex and high heels. We need ways of addressing the ickiness, and they need to be no compromise in expression, without apologies to men. On the other hand, there are scores of women from Dworkin's golden days who had the responsibility to sit down for an herbal tea with any number of SM dykes and trannies and all sort of people that didn't fit theory and look them in the eyes and understand the personal truths they were saying. Instead they believed in the precise accuracy of their rhetoric more than real people, and in so doing set back feminism as a movement back, I honestly think, decades. Posted by: [206]Greg Shaw | April 12, 2005 03:48 PM Thanks, Susie, for this post (which I linked to in my post today), and everyone for your comments - I am unaccountably sad about her passing; I honestly hadn't given her much thought in ages, but she woke me up to a lot of truth, one way or another, back in the day. Posted by: [207]alphabitch | April 12, 2005 05:24 PM "And really, without the screaming about Leo, would the larger discussion have made it out of the echo chamber that time at all?" Yeah, Angelle, exactly. That is, no, it wouldn't have. Also the same people talking about Leo were also working on the pipelne issue, and they knew precisely what they were doing. Posted by: [208]Demogenes Aristophanes | April 12, 2005 05:49 PM Laura Miller, mentioned above as the woman who reviewed Dworkin's autobiography for the Times (beautifully, I thought) has written a memorial piece for Salon: [209]http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/04/12/dworkin/index.html Interesting that the critic above who spoke of Laura imagined that she was "assigned" to cover Dworkin as some kind of hit job. Rather, it's because Laura gave a damn, and it wouldn't have been noticed otherwise. Oh, I guess I shouldn't try to rise to the bait... Posted by: [210]Susie Bright | April 12, 2005 08:50 PM You write some great obits, Susie. I'm no fan of most of her work, but AD always made me a little sad. So many of the demons she saw were so much in her own head. She was a smart, talented woman who would have been much more help to the world if she had just conquered herself first. But instead, she ended up lost in a hell of fear, misandrony and weird rape delusions. "The problem is MEN." The problem is US. And there isn't really anybody except US. All else is excuses. I hope she finds some peace. Posted by: [211]Gavagirl | April 12, 2005 09:05 PM You know, I really thought I would never feel for Andrea Dworkin, but Susie, you managed to humanize her in this moving testimony. She was the embodiment of feminist rage, and as you said she got stuck in that, which is a pity. That you could speak so well of her despite her venom against you, and that you could do so with such honesty, is a reminder to us all that we never know the fullness of another human being, and so should be careful in our judgments. I'll never agree with Andrea's opinions on pornography or a lot of other things, and I do think she let her rage get the better of her, but now I know more than this, and will therefore judge less. Thank you so much for that. Posted by: [212]Karen Anne Mitchell | April 12, 2005 09:10 PM Thank you, Susie. I sent my lover (a younger man who may or may not have ever heard of Andrea Dworkin) the New York Times obit and later a link to your blog. What you wrote validated so many of the feelings and assertions I included in my introduction to the NYC obit for him this morning, which I would like to share here: "...this world of both men and women needed Andrea Dworkin, for what she did that was right and maybe even for what she did that wasn't. This is ultimately a most respectful obituary for someone who steadfastly held to her own views, however extreme. I still own "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" and while I don't know where it is, know that I was once given "Heartbreak" as a gift from a friend. By that time, I wasn't so tolerant of Dworkin's stances, but considered pondering them nevertheless. Part of what she speaks of is a world that sadly still exists. Let's not fool ourselves into thinking it doesn't; a world where sex slave trade still subjugates and destroys, where pain and torture of real live female human beings is but the lubricant for some sick men's so-called sexual release. Should it shape our world with negativity and hostility? Our paradigm? How we live our everyday? No, I would hope not. She of course saw threads of such things interwoven into everyday society. But to diminish her thoughts to that of mere rantings would be wrong as well, I think. She was willing to speak up about things that on some level really were hurting women at a time when no one else did--or at least cause people to think about things they hadn't considered. For that, I am thankful." And I'm thankful to you, Susie, for what I feel is a brilliant and relevant contribution to the memory of Andrea Dworkin. Posted by: [213]CJG | April 12, 2005 09:56 PM This post and discussion have had me brooding all day long. "Brooding" isn't perhaps a strong enough word--several times I've been close to tears. I cannot doubt that many of Dworkin's essential insights were essentially true. There is every reason to believe that if anything in ours and other human societies is deeply steeped in the politics of dominance and oppression, sexuality must be one of those things. And one need only barely look at much pornography or observe men in a strip joint to see the soul-sucking, dehumanizing male gaze. And yet, and yet...human sexuality is inherent, it's joyous, and it's delightfully carnal; it should be no more tainted by the politics of oppression than is the carnal joy and vigor of a delicious meal. Suzie and fellow travelers battle the dehumanization and champion the joy while Dworkin et al unwittingly (one hopes) reify the dehumanization and effectively deny the joy. So terribly sad. A close friend just wrote extensively on the incarnation of the divine as represented in "The Bacchae". That her ideas should be churning away in my subconscious as I read of Andrea Dworkin's death seems, to me, to be apt. Posted by: [214]Keith M Ellis | April 12, 2005 10:22 PM I felt bad when my husband told me she'd died this morning, and grateful when I read your piece, Susie. I wanted to mourn her and I'm glad you took the lead. But why, really? She did some damage, after all. Other respondants have talked about the harm she helped cause for small publishers and bookstores; she had no business trucking with the Meese commission. I want to add that while small presses and bookstores were savaged, Kathleen Woodiwiss's rape-fantasy bodice rippers were flying off the shelves (the Flame and the Flower had a first print run of 600,000). Of course the Meese Commission didn't notice. Or maybe they did notice but hey, business is business. But Andrea Dworkin should have noticed -- 600,000+ breathless readers of a rape fantasy should have caught her eye, should have added some breadth and sweep and energy of thought to her unholy alliance with the anti-pornography cause. Of course I don't think Woodiwiss should have been savaged either; you did a good job of understanding the bodice-rippers, Susie, back then. If Andrea Dworkin paid attention to this, I'm sorry I missed it. But I don't think she did. Still, I suppose it was the beauty of her writing, sentence by sentence. that made me mourn her death. She hasn't been quoted enough in what I've read today. Here's a passage I love, from "Pornography: Men Possessing Women" -- "In epics, dramas, tragedies, great books, slight books, television, films, history both documented and invented, men are giants who soak the earth in blood." There's depth and irony here, and perfect pitch and cadence to burn; somehow she could sneer while she was chanting; she was great at deflecting phallic self-importance --she reserved some splendidly-turned "sez who's" for certain a kind of pomposity. I'd love to hear more from other people who found her writing as extraordinary as I did. Yes, she was a great pornographer, and I think that's a key to what she was doing, but it also makes it such a mystery. I think she made up some of the things she said really happened, probably because she refused to believe there was such a thing as a pornographic imagination -- but how can a pornographer deny his or her imagination? I hope someone out there has a deeper understanding of this. I don't know how to end this, except to say that her gifts were awesome and the uses she put them to were sometimes pretty awful. But still to mourn, to sit shiva in cyberspace. Thanks for opening this up, Susie. Posted by: [215]Pam Rosenthal/Molly Weatherfield | April 13, 2005 12:23 AM Even though I often feel older than the hills, at 36 I think I missed the true era of radical feminism. Oh, it was certainly in full force around me in my childhood and teens, but girls my age were already reaping the rewards. We were like the spoiled rich kids whose parents couldn't begin to explain to them what poverty was like, and how fortunate we were to have so much. I was so young when Roe Vs Wade and the feminist movement swung into gear that, for all intents and purposes, I never lived in a world without woman's liberation being a huge part of public discourse. I read Secret Garden in my teens and didn't understand the appeal. Already I couldn't relate to the fantasies of women the generation before. I like the book on men's fantasies more - their fantasies seemed hotter, more vital. The women might as well have been seperated from my by two generations rather than just one. When I first saw Dworkin I was a teen trying to be Madonna. I could see no common ground. I couldn't understand why someone would go on Donahue looking like that! As time went on I realized that being Madonna is only liberating if it is YOUR fantasy, and not a requirement in order to female enough. When I got beyond looks being the sum of what I offered the world, I began to have compassion for Dworkin. I began to feel compassion for all women who commit the crime of not being thin enough or young enough. And now I see the next generation and they don't get it any more than I did when I was them. Looks and flirtations are commodities that come all too easy and you cannot convince them that it's a double-edged sword. And you cannot tell them, the girls who have inherited the riches from the generations before - that there was once a time of poverty. Posted by: [216]Nicolette | April 13, 2005 01:39 AM Thank you for your even-handed take on Dworkin. I only was aware of her 2000 rape incident through your blog and, like you, sense that she had "lost it" in some way. She seemed rather forgotten in US, but had a more sympathetic following in UK --including Michael Moorcock and John Berger as supporters. Sadly, much of feminism went from the streets onto an MLA panel a while back and this made Dworkin's hand-to-hand combat style of activism easy to dismiss. She was a complex person, and maybe, someday, a biography might reveal some of the things in her life that created the public persona. Also, every obit I've read hits upon the "manhater" angle. Not true-- maybe ambivalence, but even if she was, no body ever seems to ever label the non-stop parade of violenece gainst women as the product of "women hating." Or, in the case of people in the public sphere like the late Saul Bellow, it's maybe labeled misogyny. Posted by: Joel Lewis | April 13, 2005 07:02 AM More links: Obituary in the UK Guardian by Julie Bindel (a fan): [217]http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1457325,00.html ; tribute by Katherine Viner (another fan): [218]http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1457329,00.html. With Susie's generous tribute as one key exception, the reports on her death, and the follow-up, have conformed to what I suspected, if not feared. Anti-porn feminists seem to have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since the 1980s: I really ought not to rise to the bait. I did my 'mea culpa' phase about porn/being a man years ago, and I'm still not sure I'm any the better for it, compared to reading, say, 'Pleasure and Danger', 'Caught Looking' or Susie's 'The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon'. When Susie had the old 'Forum' I nominated 'Pornography: Men Possessing Women' as one of the top ten feminist books of all time - as much for it's role in the 'sex wars' as for its impact - but it's not a place I want to revisit in a hurry. Posted by: DC (in UK) | April 13, 2005 07:27 AM Susie! Hi! Whoa, it's like I fell into a time tunnel reading all these comments. Very easy to imagine myself back in my old office in NYC editing something about the Meese Commission. Beautiful eulogy. I linked it in my mundane little livejournal. (I didn't know you even had a blog until today.) Bookmarking you and planning many future visits. Posted by: [219]Liz McKenna | April 13, 2005 08:02 AM Susie, Thank you for such a lovely obit on Andrea. Like many who posted here, I was awed by her prose, her power and passion (sorry for that alliteration). I am a long-time feminist, anti-violence activist, and a lesbian, and yet I disagreed with her on a number of issues. As a civil-libertarian, I was disheartened that she allowed herself to be used by filth like Ed Meese, whose only purpose is to oppress anyone who wasn't of the majority group. And yet, she was inspirational in many respects. She broke new ground, spoke much truth about violence against women when few were willing to do so. And who could not be moved when she exhorted the masses with tears streaming down her face? I was. Even when I disagreed with her. In my mind, she was the bible-thumper of the women's movement, if you can excuse the metaphor. Her speeches took on the character of a revival meeting. Few feminists, or folks on the left (except perhap some great union activists like Cesar Chavez or Richard Trumka) are able to rouse up the masses like she could. It was that gut-level emotion, coupled with her intellectual acuity that boggled me. She was a brilliant writer who broke open the world for women. This was her weakness as well, for she failed to see how she opened new doors for new voices, new ways of being in the world (evidenced by postings here), and consequently she also failed to embrace the kind of change exemplified by women such as you, Susie. It is a difficult dance, I believe, between sexual empowerment and capitulation. I haven't resolved for myself whether or not some women pornographers are not simply repeating the methods of their male predecessors. But I do know that not all are. I also feel that until we have achieved the kind of equality that Andrea hoped for (politically), joined with other forms of racial, class, gender equality, the fundamental question as to whether true choice is possible for women remains unanswered. I would like to add that those who dump on Andrea for not being attractive--that's exactly the kind of petty sexism that feeds the woman-hating legions of the right. We don't need to stoop to that. Not all of us are blessed with the kind of looks that Madison Ave. created. How she appeared did not diminish the power of her work, her words, or her struggle. Posted by: [220]Clairsky | April 13, 2005 08:05 AM Pam, your comments about Dworkin, vis a vis her poetic style, and also comparing her work in the 70s to the heydey of bodice-rippers, is really spot-on. I wish you'd write a whole story about those parallel universes! I think the romanticism of Dworkin's writing and ideals, are both things that got under people's skin, certainly my own included. It's a quality you don't see around much today, replaced by irony in choking amounts. DC, I'm glad you brought up Caught Looking, Pleasure and Danger-- I immediately went to add them to my book lists that appear on the side column of this blog. I was surprised to see them both out of print... good grief. But of course, used copies are available. Posted by: [221]Susie | April 13, 2005 08:09 AM My epiphany came the day in 1983 or so that I accepted that my strong-willed girlfriend really, *really* wanted to be spanked and liked reading porn. I graduated in 1978 with a degree in women's studies, reading Robin Morgan, etc. and later Dworkin's books on pornography. I even had a "pornography is violence against women" bumper sticker on my car. Of course I hadn't seen much porn. And I'd done the equivalent of listening to the student Maoists talk about freeing the oppressed working classes without ever talking to a construction worker. When I paid attention to what the sexually assertive women I knew were actually saying, they saw Dworkin as a threat; her agenda an attack on their freedom. Then I wondered how I could ever have thought that telling women their sexual fantasies and consensual practices were evil and indicative of internalized oppression could be empowering. (And I went to a porn shop and saw that WAP had grossly misrepresented the contents). My friend with the liberal arts degree didn't see going pro as a domme (in spandex and heels -- she started newbies out with lots of foot worship to weed out the cops) as being exploited for her sexuality; she saw it as using her strength of character to get the hell out of working at burger joints. The flip was complete: I no longer saw feminists like Dworkin as having the answers that would free women from oppression. Instead, after asking some useful questions, they had joined forces with Meese and his ilk in an attempt to repress and shame women whose libidos didn't fit their prescription; Dworkin, like Meese, was a dangerous person trying to degrade and (in some cases literally) imprison the strong women I cared about. Posted by: [222]Russell Williams | April 13, 2005 09:40 AM I am moved by Nina Hartley's remarks. A smart brave and beautiful woman who is life-affirming too! My heart bleeds for any victim of sexual abuse and violence, of course. But Dworkin's politicalization of the bedroom and hatred of all things male helps no one and only adds to the multifaceted confusion between the sexes. Posted by: [223]james | April 13, 2005 09:57 AM Dear Suzie, Thanks for yr comments abt/eulogy for Andrea. You cut a refreshing path through pastures of "journalistic" b.s. (The only other comment that I vaguely agreed w/ was Miller's Salon piece, but only vaguely. -- Laying all the failures of feminism at Andrea Dworkin's door was a bit much.) I wasn't at all surprised by Andrea's death, very saddened yes, but surprised, no. She was always off to see a doctor, & when I asked what was wrong she sort of changed the subject -- more out of pride, I suspect. And one of my finest and proudest moments as magazine editor was when (after backing & forthing, to-ing & fro-ing) Andrea sent us a short story for our first issue, A DAY AT THE LAKE (a very Sadeian piece twas too)-- & twas fun to get her in the same issue as Alexander Theroux & Paul Krassner -- one reader commented that it was a wonder the issue did not spontaneously combust, & we reprinted it in our first anniversary double issue. And periodically I got a phone call from Brooklyn, asking how things were going or informing me of her pending move to DC, or giving me her new DC address, & from time to time she sent in an essay, which unfortunately I'd pass on (I somehow felt that attacking the Vargas girls pinups was not the best application of her polemical brilliance, & we had some words abt that). But after she moved to DC I didn't hear from her more than once or twice. And now I guess I'll never get that Diamanda Galas interview with Andrea. But I always found Andrea straightforward & never less than professional. (I cld name some names of the less than professional, but why bother, that sort of nyah-nyah-nyah doesn't solve anything.) & the evolution of feminism that you charted in yr essay was spot-on. As Matthew Brady said, A TREE IS BEST MEASURED WHEN IT IS DOWN. yr obdt svt, rvb Posted by: [224]R. V. Branham | April 13, 2005 10:21 AM Suzie: thank you for your thoughtful comments on Andrea Dworkin (and every other wonderful thing you do!). I was particularly struck by your observation that she repudiated the very idea of the unconscious. That wellspring that fuels our dreams and nightmares--ignored and unexplored it creates its own mischief in an attempt to come to light. Dworkin's legacy hit my little world in Tucson when I was in my mid-twenties. Because of the dialogue in the feminist air, my lover and I marched into the seedy male realm of the local porn shop to claim our share of the space. She also began to talk about doing some activist actions, such as defacing the porn sold in the local bookstores. I balked--that sounded uncomfortably like censorship to me (and wasn't Penthouse forum somehow hotter that Secret Garden?). Later, I discovered Good Vibrations, Toys in Babeland, and much more on the ongoing journey to reclaim my own desire. I love that my cousin, ten years younger, isn't worried about what pronoun is used to define her. Consciousness continues to expand and Dworkin was a part of it. Jennifer Posted by: [225]Jennifer | April 13, 2005 10:27 AM At the height of the anti-porn movement in the mid-eighties, I discovered a hidden stash of porn magazines in a warehouse where I was working. It was all mainstream porn: Penthouse, Hustler, etc. One of the Penthouse pictorials had a goofy Star Wars theme, featuring lasers and Pan Benatar-like women in silver lame outfits. I recognized it as one of the bits of porn Dworkin analyzes in Pornography: Men Possessing Women. Her description of the pictorial invoked the Holocaust, pointing out lasers can be used to burn things and that one of the women looked Jewish. The vast gulf that separated these silly pictures from her analysis of them as an atrocity proved something that I had suspected when reading her work; she felt no obligation to truth, and nothing she said could be trusted. Posted by: [226]tsackett | April 13, 2005 10:38 AM Is anyone here familiar with the work of Norma Hotaling? She's another dynamo who puts prostituted women before pimps and tricks. I wish San Francisco had a clinic in her name. Nope tsackett, Dworkin was speaking of Israeli pornography in that essay she wrote for Ms. in the early nineties. You can find it online, along with the Vargas essay, and if I may say so R.V. Branham, you passed up a good one. Posted by: [227]csha | April 13, 2005 10:48 AM Reading your beautiful tribute to Andrea Dworkin, and some of the rather hyperbolic commentary attached, it reinforces my sense that compassion really does seem to be a lost art form these days. So thank you, Susie, for a compassionate and thoughtful remembrance of a confrontational but important thinker. I always had a rather difficult time with some of Andrea Dworkin's inflammatory statements and her views on the role of sex in the market place (whether sex work or pornography). And her affiliation with Meese and some of the less than appealing right wing censorship brigade riled me up on more than one occasion. But she clearly, directly and forcefully articulated a lot of the issues in the lives of women that my gender were responsible for. I don't think that all heterosexual sex is rape, but her pointed statements made me examine why i believe it isn't, and why some would feel it is, and what behaviour I exhibit that might blur the lines between those two states. Her prodding led me to work on changing those aspects of my behaviour that would encourage people to look at sex (or my gender) with such hostility. I have been blessed in my pursuit of growth. I am surrounded by excellent, feminist, sex-positive folks. Some make porn, some write, all are activist to some extent. But I suspect that none of us would have come this far this fast without prodding from the difficult and demanding voices among us. So thank you Andrea for being tough, demanding, unapologetic and an eternal crusader for equality. I still disagree with you on many things, but my world is a better place because of you. Posted by: steve | April 13, 2005 11:38 AM [A friend forwarded this quote from almost exactly 10 years ago. Thought others might be interested.] [228]http://www.yelah.net/articles/fighting FIGHTING TALK New Statesman & Society - April 21, 1995 [British novelist] Michael Moorcock talks to feminist activist, theorist and author Andrea Dworkin, and finds her keen to sort out a few false rumours. ...Andrea Dworkin: "Both my parents were horrified by US racism, certainly by de jure segregation, but also by all aspects of discrimination-- black poverty, urban ghettos, menial labour, bad education, the lack of respect whites had for blacks. My father was pro-labour; he wanted teachers to be unionised. He refused a management job at the post office. My mother was committed to planned parenthood, to legal birth control (it was criminal then) and to legal abortion. We had immigrant family members who were survivors of the Holocaust, though most of my mother's and father's families had been killed. So I grew up taking hate and extermination seriously. I read all the time, as much as I could. My mother often had to write me notes so that I could have certain books from the library. After the high school board purged the library of all "socialist" and "indecent" books, I found this cute little book they'd missed called Guerilla Warfare by Che Guevara. I read it a million times. I'd plan attacks on the local shopping mall. I got a lot of practice in strategising real rebellion. It may be why I refuse to think that rebellion against the oppressors of women should be less real, less material, less serious." Posted by: [229]Doug Henwood | April 13, 2005 11:41 AM Wow. I LOVED whatyou wrote, Susie. I remember that 1984 moment when I, too, loved her... remember when we voted at Auckland University that "all sex is rape" - a crazy Dworkin-esque idea, but one that oddly passed... anyway, with her passing I revsist those times. xolulu Posted by: [230]lulu | April 13, 2005 12:37 PM A few passing comments: Dworkin's parents' past as Leftists doesn't forgive AD's corrosive and repressive ideology one bit in my view...whatever snippets of Leftist thought she appropriated into her beliefs, her ultimate deeds and words make her out to be a brutal, decisive, and damaging reactionary. And let us not forget that she was more than willing to forge alliances with the most reactionary figures when it suited her goals. (Remember Judith Bat-Ada..aka Judith Reisman??) I still find it quite fascinating that those on the pro-sex feminist side who attempt to show a degree of compassion and dignity towards Ms. Dworkin even in opposition to her base philosophy are continuously trashed and smeared by those who simply can't get off the antiporn microcode. It makes me wonder whether they would be capable of being as compassionate if it was the other way around. Attacking Andrea Dworkin for her appearance and her disabilities certainly is scummy and out of line....but even that pales to the scurrilous abuse that she and her followers have dumped on people (especially women) who dared to call them out correctly on her base bigotries about men and sex. I would say that to label women who disagree with her beliefs "traitors" and who openly calls for her critics to be killed (as Susie has documented over the "On Our Backs" fisting story and the Meese Commision Report) is a bit different than mere bad jokes about her looks. I may give Dworkin her due as an intellectual and an icon, and may acknowledge her brutal upbringing that forged her hatred...but that doesn't absolve her of her basic bigotry or the grave damage that she has done to both genuine feminism or progressive politics. I do hope that she finally finds the peace she never had in real life..for she certainly gave the rest of us no peace or love. The only really good impact that Dworkin had in my life is that she moved me in anger and reaction to discover such wonderful sex-radical and progressive women like Nina Hartley, Carol Queen, and Susie Bright who actually did give a damn about men and women as human beings. Compared to these authentic feminist women, Andrea Dworkin was merely a neo-Puritan crank who bastardized progressive thought with her own self-hate. Just my own personal opinion, as always. Anthony Posted by: [231]Anthony Kennerson | April 13, 2005 12:46 PM "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex." ... To me, that is not "radical", that is just dumb. Why not propose something a little more feasible, like since this planet is so boring, why don't we all move to Saturn? I mean what the heck can we use something like this for? Posted by: [232]Eolake | April 13, 2005 01:17 PM Wow, again! No shortage of proselytizing and polemic. If nothing else, I'm now grateful to her for giving me something to think about. As a producer of commercial pornography, I suspect that she, and many of the people posting here, would look at me and my work as contributory to the societal problem she dedicated her work to eradicating. While it's true that many of my peers produce material that is blatantly misogynistic, and that my products may be even worse because of their more subtle sexual imagery (if one subscribes to Ms. D's thesis), I still maintain that the potential damage caused by sex imagery is, on the whole, the lesser of evils compared to the stifling repression of sexuality that would have to occur in order to achieve that end... in other words, an end not justified by the means. I also believe that Andrea's idyllic world, free of pornography, in fact free of all images she would proscribe, would still be a world filled with rape, anti-woman violence, male dominance, gender discrimination and all the stuff that she was legitimately worried about. By the way, I, the pornographer, am also worried about these things. Even though I disagree with so much of what she stood for, I respect that she stood for something. I'm grateful to all the people whose opinions posted here enlarge my perspective beyond my somewhat limited world. Christian P.S. After discussing the idea that Ms. D. seemingly espoused, namely that all male-female intercourse is rape (did she really say that?), my fiancee suggested that it's just semantics. She furher requested that I continue to rape her, or fuck her or make love to her or whatever we want to call it. She noted correctly that contrary to what is being theorized here, this act empowers her beyond measure. I have to agree with her: she's a very powerful woman indeed. Viva l'egalite! Posted by: [233]Christian Mann | April 13, 2005 03:59 PM I have my disagreements with some of Susie's statements in her obituary, but I have to say I found the Googlism touchingly inspired, and I appreciate those who can disagree sharply with Andrea Dworkin without feeling the need to engage in wildly hyberbolic attacks. Whether you agree with her or not, a little perspective, please. On another note, Christian: "After discussing the idea that Ms. D. seemingly espoused, namely that all male-female intercourse is rape (did she really say that?)" No, she did not say that. There's a reason why this soundbite is being bandied around freely without a citation to any of her work; it's because you can't find it there. (It's commonly presumed to be the thesis of her book Intercourse, but it's nowhere to be found in there and she's explicitly rejected that interpretation when asked about it -- cf. [234]http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MoorcockInterview.html . She says a lot of radical and profoundly challenging things that throw the gauntlet down at the feet of "normal" heterosexual sexuality as it is commonly practiced, but this is not among them.) Posted by: [235]Rad Geek | April 13, 2005 07:17 PM I hear that Elizabeth Wurtzel was just signed to do Dwokin's bio! Posted by: [236]rblue | April 13, 2005 08:29 PM Obviously, anyone who is concerned about violence and rape as significant and urgent problems is going to recognize that Andrea Dworking was an influential thinker who, just like the early philosophers in every field, made her mistakes first and most significantly so that the rest of us might see them and avoid them. Posted by: [237]Jim Marcus | April 13, 2005 08:39 PM Thanks for your thoughtful and generous obituary. I have to say, from Nina Hartley's comments, this disturbed me: "Her thinking turned the bedroom, which should be a place where people go to be loving and kind to each other and to share pleasure, into a politicized battleground." Really? it was Andrea Dworkin who made the bedroom a politicized battleground? So before her, bedrooms all over the world were free of politics and power imbalances? And they are free of them now? Perhaps that was just a poor choice of phrase - it was Dworkin's thinking that helped us be critical about what happens in the bedroom, which is a prerequisite to bringing it closer to a place to be loving and kind to each other. Posted by: [238]ripley | April 13, 2005 10:47 PM Ripley, I 'm sorry you found my comments disturbing. That certainly wasn't my intention. They reflect my own distress at what I see as the destructive legacy of Dworkin's relentless emphasis on hostility and violence in sexual relations. If there's one thing I could never be, it's naive about what goes on in the bedroom or any other room where sex takes place. Power, like it or not, is a permanent component of the complex mechanisms of sexual arousal. It's built into the process, and will inevitably result in imbalances and struggles to correct them. Where I vehemently part company with Dworkin and even her more reserved admirers is over the political interpretation of this undeniable reality. While asserting that the personal is political makes another one of those terrific sound-bites, the truth about sex defies such simplistic reduction. While we all bring our baggage - including our political baggage - to the bedroom, once we're there, the experience is quintessentially personal, and no progress toward enlightenment can be made there until this is recognized and respected. The application of abstract ideologies to individual, human experiences has not brought liberation. It has merely added another layer of conflict and guilt to the inherent risks of physical and emotional intimacy. We did not need Andrea Dworkin's help to be critical about what happens in the bedroom. That's the kind of message we get from the society in which we live, from our history and from the deficits of our own upbringings. What we need in the bedroom is affirmation and acceptance. Posted by: [239]Nina Hartley | April 14, 2005 01:17 AM As first-commenter Bianca said, I'd only read what others said about Andrea Dworkin without ever reading what she wrote. Maybe that says something about her impact, as well as why that impact is needed? Posted by: [240]Chris Q | April 14, 2005 03:21 AM Thank you so much for all your thoughts and memories of AD; this was a fascinating discussion. I'm closing this thread for now, but I'm sure we'll be talking about many of these same issues on postings to come! Posted by: [241]Susie | April 14, 2005 06:04 AM The comments to this entry are closed. 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at hotmail.com 178. mailto:dawn at therabbitwarren.org 179. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/11/142945/190 180. http://susiebright.blogs.com/ 181. http://susiebright.blogs.com/ 182. mailto:loveradical at yahoo.com 183. http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/ 184. http://www.radgeek.com/ 185. http://susiebright.blogs.com/ 186. http://www.susiebright.com/ 187. http://www.newamericanempire.org/ 188. mailto:angelle.oh at netzero.net 189. http://www.newamericanempire.org/ 190. mailto:wayne005 at umn.edu 191. http://askmartha.blogspot.com/ 192. http://www.Theperfectworld.us/thread.php?id=90&postNum=2775. 193. mailto:kayfamily1 at alltel.net 194. mailto:nospam at aol.com 195. http://www.adbusters.org/ 196. mailto:soligor at mail.com 197. http://www.blueenclave.blogspot.com/ 198. http://www.andreadworkin.net/memorial/ 199. http://www.gentlespirit.com/margins 200. mailto:dlapetina at mac.com 201. mailto:ilevine2 at earthlink.net 202. mailto:juliaquery at yahoo.com 203. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45447-2005Apr11.html 204. mailto:pattern67 at aol.com 205. http://www.susiebright.com/ 206. mailto:gshawsanfrancisco at yahoo.com 207. http://www.alphabitch7.blogspot.com/ 208. http://www.newamericanempire.org/ 209. http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/04/12/dworkin/index.html 210. http://www.susiebright.com/ 211. http://gavagirl.blogspot.com/ 212. http://taiyiha.blogspot.com/ 213. mailto:CJGwmn at aol.com 214. http://www.kmellis.com/ 215. http://www.pamrosenthal.com/ 216. http://worsethanmybite.blogspot.com/ 217. http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1457325,00.html 218. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1457329,00.html. 219. http://www.livejournal.com/users/mckennl/ 220. mailto:clairskyk at ntelos.net 221. http://www.susiebright.com/ 222. mailto:galileopan at hotmail.com 223. mailto:crafo at suscom.com 224. http://www.gobshitequarterly.com/ 225. mailto:jennifer at galenpress.com 226. mailto:tsackett at speakeasy.net 227. mailto:ceech at yahoo.com 228. http://www.yelah.net/articles/fighting 229. http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/ 230. http://www.louiserafkin.com/ 231. http://redgarterclub.bravehost.com/ 232. http://domai.com/ 233. http://www.videoteam.com/ 234. http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/MoorcockInterview.html 235. http://www.radgeek.com/ 236. mailto:rrr_bloo at hotmail.com 237. http://www.thesafetynet.org/ 238. http://djripley.blogspot.com/ 239. mailto:loveradical at yahoo.com 240. mailto:cquirkesite at mvps.org 241. http://www.susiebright.com/ 242. http://susiebright.blogs.com/about.html From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:15:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:15:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] National Interest: Alan Dupont: The Schizophrenic Superpower Message-ID: Alan Dupont: The Schizophrenic Superpower http://www.nationalinterest.org/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=1ABA92EFCD8348688A4EBEB3D69D33EF&tier=4&id=BCCA247035BF4F06978D1F6922E96ACB Issue Date: Spring 2005, Posted On: 3/17/2005 When Robert Kagan famously wrote that, in their approach to power and security, Americans are from Mars and Europeans from Venus, what might he have said about Japan? In most respects, post-modern Japan has been more like Europe than America in preferring diplomacy to force, persuasion to coercion and multilateralism to unilateralism. Indeed, it might be said that Japan is even further towards the Venusian end of the celestial spectrum in its aversion to the instruments ofmilitary power. No other country in the world explicitly renounces war as a sovereign right; or eschews the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes; or proscribes land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential. This deeply ingrained pacifism is all the more remarkable when one considers that Japan is not an Asian Costa Rica, but the world's second-largest economy, a major financial power and a favored candidate for a permanent seat on an expanded United Nations Security Council. But there is another Japan--one with a long martial tradition, embodied in the ancient samurai of legend, which in the first half of the 20th century destroyed Russia's Baltic fleet, colonized Korea, invaded China and subjugated Southeast Asia before its eventual catastrophic defeat in 1945. Today, Japan is once again a leading military power, with the world's third-largest defense budget (after the United States and China) and a quarter million men and women under arms. Its Self-Defense Force (SDF) is deployed on peacekeeping operations around the world, for tsunami relief in Southeast Asia and in support of U.S.-led coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. More and more politicians chafe at the self-imposed constitutional restrictions on the military and believe that Japan must be more resolute and assertive in defending its vital interests, including taking pre-emptive military action, when necessary. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has talked up constitutional reform and declared his desire to see Japan become a "normal country." He has even dared to call the SDF what it really is--a modern army, navy and air force. Is this a dangerous reawakening of Japan's martial instincts and desire for hegemony, as critics maintain? Or are we seeing the emergence of a pragmatic new realism that is a natural and long-overdue readjustment to the nation's much altered and more foreboding external environment? And if so, what will be the strategic consequences of a more assertive Japan? Japan is moving away from its pacifist past towards a more hard-headed and outward-looking security posture characterized by a greater willingness to use the SDF in support of Japan's foreign policy and defense interests. This shift is evolutionary, not revolutionary. But it is gaining momentum and represents a watershed in Japan's postwar security policy that will require some new thinking in Washington as well as Tokyo. Pacifism's Denouement Pacifist sentiment has become so entrenched in modern Japan that the country's capacity for change is apt to be discounted, or underestimated, even by long-time Japan watchers. Granted, Koizumi's robust utterances on national security often run ahead of policy, and he is certainly not the first contemporary Japanese prime minister to seem like a hawk among doves, as Yasuhiro Nakasone's tenure in the 1980s reminds us. But the shift away from pacifism is palpable, irreversible and more broadly based than Koizumi's alone. The most compelling evidence of the sea-change underway in Japanese attitudes towards security is the accelerating erosion under Koizumi's stewardship of the constitutional and administrative restraints on the use of force and collective self-defense. The chief cause is that a once-apathetic public is becoming increasingly concerned about the deterioration in Japan's security environment, mainly due to the spread of transnational terrorism, North Korean antipathy, and China's burgeoning economic growth and military power. Recent polls, including one conducted by the authoritative Asahi Shimbun newspaper, show that a clear majority of Japanese people and parliamentarians are now in favor of constitutional revision (kaiken), and nearly half want to abandon the prohibition on collective self-defense. Significantly, younger people are more inclined to support revising the constitution than their parents. A contributing factor is the weakening of the coalition of interests in the Diet that has long defended the constitutional status quo (goken), especially the precipitate decline in influence of the left-leaning and traditionally pacifist Social Democratic Party (SDP). The eclipse of the SDP and its allies on the political Left has increased the probability that the war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution will be rewritten substantially to explicitly recognize the existence of the SDF. Other likely amendments will make it easier for the government to sanction the SDF's deployment in a wide range of contingencies, although these international contributions are likely to be limited to non-combat roles for the time being. As a result, future Japanese governments will no longer be seriously encumbered by constitutional restrictions that have clearly outlived their usefulness. Any decision to dispatch the SDF will henceforth be made, as in all other countries, according to the political judgement of the government of the day and calculations of national interest. However, revision of the constitution is not the only reason for supposing that Japan is shedding more than half a century of embedded pacifism. It is difficult for non-Japanese to appreciate the extraordinarily detailed administrative constraints on what would be considered normal defense activities in most countries. Some of these have bordered on the absurd. One senior Japanese defense official was heard to lament that tanks en route to counter an invasion would never get there in time because they were required to observe the speed limit and stop at red lights. The reason was the almost complete absence of mobilization legislation that would give the government authority to suspend civil law in the event of a military emergency. These impediments have now been largely removed with the June 2004 passage of seven bills in the Diet. These bills augment contingency legislation enacted the previous year and designed to facilitate civil-defense cooperation between the national government and the prefectural and local authorities in the event of an emergency or an attack on Japan. The bills improve military preparedness and mobilization by allowing the Japanese and U.S. military to use seaports, airports, roads, radio frequencies and other public property in an emergency. They also permit the SDF to fire on commercial ships outside Japan's territorial waters if they refuse inspection during a crisis. Koizumi has also steadily whittled away the normative constraints on overseas deployments of the SDF. The U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom to destroy Al-Qaeda's redoubt in the mountains of Afghanistan, supported by Japanese destroyers and supply ships, demonstrated conclusively that the era of checkbook diplomacy is finally over and that henceforth Japan intends to pull its weight militarily within the U.S. alliance. Iraq was an even greater break with tradition. In an unprecedented decision, Koizumi succeeded in gaining parliamentary approval to send some 600 troops to southern Iraq. The troops could only be used in non-combat roles. Samawah was selected because it was notionally free of conflict, but their very presence confirms that Japan has crossed a political Rubicon and that the government is determined to make the SDF a more usable and useful force. Japan's Strategic Intentions What is less clear is how the SDF will be deployed in the future, and for what purposes. There are two diametrically opposed views about Japan's strategic objectives. Those skeptical of its peaceful disposition and benign intentions contend that Tokyo is incrementally acquiring the military capabilities and strategic reach to complement its economic strength and give effect to long-suppressed regional power aspirations. Skeptics argue that Japan's expanding peacekeeping activities, government pressure to revise the constitution, cooperation with the United States in missile defense, and procurement of military platforms and weapons systems that can be used offensively are all evidence of Tokyo's hegemonic intent. Pragmatists, on the other hand, consider the changes in Japan's security policy to be largely illusory and maintain that the government's commitment to defense reform and greater burden-sharing within the alliance is rhetorical, rather than substantive. In their eyes, Koizumi's promise of military support for the United States in Afghanistan fell far short of expectations. And despite the fanfare and flag-waving, Japanese forces dispatched to Iraq are serving in non-combat roles, forbidden to shoot other than in self-defense. Thus, there is very little prospect of Japan becoming more assertive globally or contributing much of real strategic value in East Asia, other than in the defense of Japan. A corollary is that Japan will continue to rely on the United States as a military shield while wielding the sword of mercantilism, cultivating a range of partners, including U.S. adversaries such as Iran, to hedge against economic dangers. Curiously, neither side of this debate has grasped the real significance of the shift in public opinion or the reorientation of security policy that has been under way for more than a decade. A close examination of current Japanese attitudes towards security does not suggest the collective mindset of a resurgent hegemon. There is no political constituency for transforming the SDF into the kind of expeditionary force that would be necessary to sustain a new Japanese hegemony in Asia. With the possible exception of a small group of ultra-nationalists, who continue to harbor delusions of a return to some form of imperium, "normalizers" within the major political parties evince remarkably modest strategic aspirations. Furthermore, the country's aging population and the existence of a resilient, mature democracy works against a revival of militarism. Given its geostrategic vulnerabilities, energy dependence and declining birth rate, Japan is hardly in a position to embark on a policy of military adventurism or expansionism in East Asia, not least because it would be vehemently opposed by China, Japan's principal competitor for regional influence, as well as its major ally, the United States. Those who fear a return of militarism in Japan also fail to appreciate the domestic constraints on defense spending, which is legally capped at 1 percent of GDP, far lower than in most comparable countries. China, for example, spends 4.1 percent of GDP on defense, the United States 3.3 percent, South Korea 2.8 percent, France 2.5 percent, and Australia 1.9 percent. In East Asia, only Laos spends less as a percentage of GDP. Even a comparison by purchasing power parity shows Japan's per capita defense expenditure as around one quarter that of the United States and half that of France. Although this translates into an annual defense budget of $41 billion a year, the third largest in the world, more than 50 percent goes to salaries and personnel costs. So the money available for military hardware and support systems is less than might be expected for a budget this size. Moreover, Japan's defense budget is being stretched by research and development related to the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Program (BMD), which will cost around $1 billion in financial year 2004/05 and an estimated $10 billion this decade, all of which will have to be absorbed within the existing budget. Thus, the scope for order-of-magnitude increases in combat power, particularly force-projection capabilities such as aircraft carriers and long-range bombers, is limited by fiscal as well as political realities. However, eschewing the role of a regional hegemon does not mean that Japan should remain forever a strategically neutered superpower while others are free to configure the world according to their national interests and ideological proclivities. Japan's foreign policy and defense elites envisage playing a more constructive role in regional and global affairs, free of constitutional shackles, by building and shaping institutions and norms according to Japanese values and interests. This is what Koizumi means when he talks about Japan becoming a "normal" state. It also implies a greater willingness to use force and dispatch the SDF on operations beyond Japan's borders in coalitions of the willing, as well as UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operations. These are developments that should be welcomed, rather than being a cause for alarm. What must be remembered is that unlike Europe, where war between states has become virtually unthinkable, Japan inhabits a region where interstate conflict is still a realistic prospect. It would be foolish in the extreme for Japan to emulate Europe's security approach, which emphasizes confidence-building measures to resolve intramural disputes while reserving force for out-of-area operations. The strategic balance in northeast Asia is far less stable and predictable than in Europe, and Japan's alliance obligations mandate the maintenance of a military capable of modern warfighting both at home and abroad. SDF personnel should not be seen as blue-helmeted NGOs. Alliance Implications But how durable is Japan's alliance with the United States, the foundation stone of its security for the past half century? Could the alliance founder, or be fatally weakened, by rising Japanese nationalism or by a reassessment in Washington that Japan matters less? There are some disturbing portents. Fewer than 10 percent of Americans feel close to Japan as a country, and China's emergence as a major trading nation has already eroded Tokyo's influence in the halls of U.S. commerce and industry. The sense of shared strategic interests that once strongly united Japanese and Americans has dissipated. Although opinion surveys show that the Japanese public continues to express support in principle for the alliance, there is strong local opposition to the U.S. presence in areas like Okinawa and Atsugi, fueled by resentment over the sexual misconduct of U.S. servicemen and the occupation of valuable public land by the U.S. military. Even so, it is difficult to envisage the circumstances that would lead to a breakdown or hollowing-out of the alliance. After a period of neglect during the Clinton Administration, President Bush moved decisively in his first term of office to rejuvenate ties with Tokyo, reflecting the administration's assessment that a strong, regionally engaged Japan is crucial to three important U.S. strategic interests in East Asia: balancing China's rising power, providing greater logistic and intelligence support for the U.S. military, and facilitating U.S. deployments to potential trouble spots. The Pentagon knows that for political and strategic reasons it would be virtually impossible to replicate the facilities it enjoys in Japan. Guam is too far away, and the Vietnamese are unlikely to permit the United States to reoccupy its former base at Cam Ranh Bay. Australia and Singapore are useful stopovers for deployments in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, but not the Taiwan Straits, where any conflict with China is most likely to be played out. Furthermore, the global realignment of U.S. military forces announced in August 2004 can only enhance Japan's strategic value to the United States as its principal Asian ally and a key base for troop deployments to the Middle East and Central Asia. A more likely scenario is that Japan will remain within the alliance but that over time it will seek greater autonomy and equality. By any calculation, the alliance is a net strategic benefit for Japan. The U.S. nuclear umbrella still provides an unmatchable level of extended deterrence against an attack from a nuclear-armed state. This is a crucial consideration for Tokyo, since China and Russia are able to strike Japan with nuclear-armed missiles and North Korea may well possess a handful of rudimentary nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Moreover, the United States will be an essential counterweight to China's growing power as demographic, military and economic forces shift decisively in favor of Beijing. Fifty years ago, there was one Japanese for every six Chinese; by 2050 the ratio will be an unprecedented one to 16, based on current demographic trends. While the Japanese economy still dwarfs China's and its military packs a powerful punch, Japan's relative position isdeteriorating. If the alliance disintegrated, Japan would have to double and perhaps triple defense spending to compensate for the loss of the capabilities that the United States provides. Even then it could never replicate the unique military and intelligence assets that the United States brings to the table. The real question for Tokyo is how to create more political and decision-making space for itself in a security partnership that can never truly be one of equals because of the disparities in size and strategic weight. Might the U.S. special relationship with the UK serve as a model, as former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and others have suggested? Despite superficial similarities--both the UK and Japan are maritime trading states anchored off the Eurasian landmass--Japan's vastly different strategic circumstances and the absence of the unique historical, linguistic and cultural ties that underpin the Anglo-American relationship suggest otherwise. More likely is an evolutionary process in which Japan gains a greater say on issues that are central to its security concerns in Asia and looks for opportunities to encourage more collaborative behavior in its American ally. There are increasing signs of independent thinking in Japan's strategic engagement with the United States, which Washington must accept and encourage in the interests of a more mature and enduring partnership. Much of this is being driven by Japan's involvement in BMD and the need to reach agreement with the United States on a complex range of associated political and operational issues. Currently, Japan is not able to detect and intercept incoming ballistic missiles without U.S. assistance, a conspicuous deficiency given the established arsenals of China, Russia and North Korea. In the absence of a countervailing missile capability, which is forbidden under the current interpretation of the constitution, Tokyo has opted to participate in BMD research and development. The central aim of this ambitious and still controversial enterprise is to construct a missile shield able to protect Japan against a limited strike from North Korea (although it is unlikely to be an effective prophylactic against China's or Russia's more numerous and capable missile forces). Joint tests are expected to commence in late 2005, and the proposed system, comprising land- and sea-based interceptors, will be activated in 2007. Aside from lingering doubts about whether the shield will actually work as hypothesized, participation in BMD with the United States poses some real policy conundrums for Tokyo. Neighboring states, particularly China, are concerned that the expertise acquired in sensitive areas of missile technology would be readily transferable should Japan decide to develop its own missiles and arm them with nuclear warheads. Japanese scientists are involved in research on four components of the SM-3 missile--the propulsion system, infrared sensors, lightweight nose-cone technology and the kinetic kill warhead. China worries that Japan might export missile technology to Taiwan, and extending the shield to cover the approaches to the island could negate China's current missile advantage over Taiwan. Over time, the future architecture and modalities of missile defense could significantly alter the power structure of the alliance and reshape Japan's approach to national security planning. Successful collaboration on missile defense would be a powerful reaffirmation of shared U.S.-Japanese strategic interests, accelerating the trend towards greater equality within the alliance and stimulating reform of the SDF's structure, organization and intelligence systems, as well as national security decision-making more generally. Already, Japanese officials have indicated their desire to have greater input into BMD planning and to share data obtained from the new FPS-XX radar system, which will improve the Pentagon's ability to track ballistic missiles targeted against the United States. Prudent self-interest dictates that Washington should be generous in sharing sensitive missile technology with Japan and be prepared to cede a measure of operational control over the system itself, if it expects Japan to cooperate fully. Conversely, Tokyo must accept that any failure to deploy an effective missile defense system or shoot down missiles bound for the United States because of constitutional niceties could rupture or severely weaken the alliance. More fundamentally, Washington and Tokyo both need to pay greater attention to alliance management, policy coordination and addressing the imbalances in their strategic partnership. The best metaphor to describe the way the alliance works in practice is the hub (the United States) and radiating spokes (Japan, Australia, South Korea and Thailand) of a wheel. The critical dialogue is between the hub and the spokes, seldom between the spokes themselves. If the alliance is to adapt and prosper in today's vastly different strategic circumstances, the essentially uni-directional pattern of dialogue has to become more multi-directional and the alliance less dominated by U.S. interests and policy preoccupations. This will mean moving towards a more consultative, European style of alliance, which will provide Japan, Australia and the other allies with enhanced opportunities for ameliorating Washington's unilateralist tendencies and sensitizing U.S. policymakers to Asian security perceptions and political realities. In exchange, the United States should expect greater burden-sharing and collegiality in dealing with common security problems. Calming the Dragon As the alliance is recast, Japanese and U.S. policymakers need to consider how best to reassure a nervous Beijing that a reinvigorated Japan, working in close cooperation with the United States in Asia, is not a threat to China. This will be no easy task because of the widespread view in Chinese policy and military circles that Tokyo's strategic shift foreshadows a more assertive and possibly adversarial Japan. Of course, there is nothing new or surprising in this reaction, as Sino-Japanese rivalry has deep historical roots. It is manifest today in Chinese anxieties about Japan's support for Taiwan and BMD and resentment over legacy issues, notably Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead but in Chinese eyes is a symbol of the country's imperial past. Until recently, these anxieties have been moderated by Japan's constitution and Beijing's recognition that the U.S. alliance has prevented a revival of Japanese military power. But as Japan breaks free from its constitutional shackles and the Red Sun makes its reappearance across the globe on the uniforms and flags of a reconstituted military, Chinese strategists are drawing conclusions that are troubling for future Sino-Japanese relations. Among them is the belief that Japan wants to be a military as well as an economic power; that it is moving from a preoccupation with self-defense to accepting the broader alliance objectives of collective self-defense; that it is developing the capability to intervene militarily in the region; that the Koizumi government is playing up the North Korean threat so that it can break the constitutional taboo on collective self-defense; and that it is concealing its real strategic intentions by using peacekeeping and the War on Terror to desensitize the region to an expanded military presence. Mirroring their neighbor's concerns, Japan is distinctly uneasy about recent double-digit increases in Chinese military spending, the acquisition of advanced fighter aircraft and naval vessels from Russia, the rapid pace of defense modernization, and the build-up of China's missile inventory. Such apprehensions are understandable. China's recently purchased advanced Kilo-class submarines can interdict the main maritime trade routes that are crucial to Japan's economic survival. Since 2000, there has been a dramatic rise in the frequency of Chinese naval incursions into Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Tokyo is particularly concerned about Chinese hydrographic surveys and oil drilling near the EEZ, as well as what appear to be intelligence-gathering operations by Chinese submarines, dramatically illustrated in November 2004 by the highly publicized incursion of a Han-class nuclear-powered submarine into Japanese waters near Okinawa. Tensions have already flared over a number of unresolved territorial disputes at sea, notably the Senkaku Islands (Diaoyu in Chinese), which are located near rich deposits of oil and natural gas in the underlying sea bed. So far, these have been confined to polemical exchanges between Tokyo and Beijing and symbolic protests by Chinese activists. But the potential for miscalculation will increase as an energy-hungry China steps up its oil-exploration activities in the seas around the Senkakus and Japan responds by augmenting its maritime patrols and surveillance of the region. Already there are signs that for the first time the Koizumi government will allow Japanese oil companies to drill in a disputed area of the East China Sea, which would inevitably inflame anti-Japanese sentiment in China. A critical issue for Japan is how a conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan would play out. In the event of hostilities, there is little doubt that the United States would expect Japan to provide intelligence and rear-area support for the U.S. carrier groups that would be dispatched to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. This would expose the SDF to a Chinese counterstrike and risk drawing Japan into direct combat with China for the first time since World War II, the consequences of which would be incalculable for both countries. Thus, paradoxically, mutual mistrust is growing in parallel with deepening economic interdependence. The challenge for Japan is managing relations with China so that bilateral tensions do not lead to open conflict or spill over and infect the wider region. This will require a much higher level of trust between the two Asian powers than has been evident to date and a willingness to consider new mechanisms for mediating and preventing disputes so that major crises can be averted. Unfortunately, with the notable exception of the Six Party Talks on North Korea, neither Japan nor the United States has given sufficient priority to including China in strategies for mitigating existing conflicts and preventing new ones from arising. On the contrary, the impression has been created in Beijing that closer U.S.-Japanese security cooperation is premised on containing China and diluting its military power. Missile defense is illustrative, as is the developing trilateral security dialogue (TSD) between the United States, Japan and Australia, which was established in 2001 at the U.S.-Australian ministerial talks in Canberra. From Beijing's perspective, the TSD looks suspiciously like the first step on the road to forming a new security bloc in Asia aimed at containing China. While Chinese fears that the TSD could evolve into an Asian-style NATO are misplaced and China should not be permitted to exercise a veto over U.S.-Japanese security cooperation, it makes no sense to antagonize Beijing by further institutionalizing the TSD and transforming it into a clubby, de facto trilateral alliance. A far better approach would be to create a security mechanism that allows China to discuss northeast Asia's many intractable security problems directly with Japan and the United States. Such a mechanism already exists in the form of the Six Party Talks, which were established in 2003 to defuse and resolve the North Korean nuclear problem and which include all the northeast Asian states as well as the United States. China has rejected previous attempts to inaugurate a sub-regional security arrangement, fearing that it could be used as a vehicle for foreign intervention and meddling in China's affairs, especially Taiwan. But Beijing is more comfortable with the format of the Six Party Talks and feels some ownership of the process. So there is every prospect that the Chinese would be favorably disposed to broadening the scope and agenda of the talks atsome future date. Enlarging the Six Party Talks would be an important confidence-building measure and would provide strategic reassurance to China that should help soften its opposition to extended U.S.-Japanese defense cooperation. The Way Ahead The principal conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that Tokyo's desire to pursue a more proactive security policy is not an unreasonable response to the more threatening and volatile security environment it faces. After nearly six decades of quasi-pacifism, it is time for Japan to move beyond the ideals of the post-World War II peace constitution and participate more fully in building and sustaining regional order and combating the emerging threats to security. Although fears that Japan might revert to militarism are real, they are ill conceived. Democracy and the rule of law are firmly entrenched, some constitutional restrictions on the use of force will remain, and the U.S. alliance ensures that Japan has no need for the nuclear weapons or major force-projection capabilities that would be inherently destabilizing and set off alarm bells in the region. While the alliance once had been likened to dosho imu--lovers sharing the same bed but dreaming different dreams--Tokyo and Washington are increasingly sharing the same dreams. However, the administration needs to recognize that for all Koizumi's reforming zeal in foreign affairs and defense, domestic and regional realities will continue to circumscribe Japan's capacity to support the United States militarily. For its part, Tokyo must accept that a regression to the lackluster economic performances of the previous decade and a perceived unwillingness to pull its weight militarily could one day force a hard-headed reassessment of Japan's strategic and economic value in Washington and elsewhere. A weakened U.S.-Japanese alliance and the beginning of a long-term decline in Japanese power could foreshadow an extended period of uncertainty and destabilizing strategic change that would be detrimental to both countries' interests. A diminished, less-influential Japan would weaken Washington's voice in Asia's affairs. The best way to preclude this outcome is for the administration to keep relations with Japan at the top of its Asian policy agenda, in recognition of Japan's centrality to the alliance and to East Asia's stability. However, in his eagerness to enlist Japan in the War on Terror and in support of U.S. global security interests, President Bush must be careful not to be too prescriptive or to pressure Tokyo into decisions on military acquisitions and deployments that raise the specter of a resurgent Japanese hegemon. At the same time, Bush must make clear his opposition to Japan acquiring nuclear weapons or major power-projection capabilities such as long-range bombers or aircraft carriers. This would be inherently destabilizing and ultimately antithetical to Japan's own security interests. Finally, Chinese insecurities will have to be addressed. Although the old adage that two tigers cannot live together peacefully on the same mountain no longer holds true in today's global village--where tigers of all kinds coexist to mutual benefit--amicable Sino-Japanese relations cannot be assumed. Some creative new security architecture is required to help manage and alleviate the inevitable tensions ahead. U.S. policy has to be mindful of China's legitimate security concerns but strike an appropriate balance between kowtowing and needless hostility to Asia's rising power. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:18:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:18:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: Henry Blodget: The Empty Village Message-ID: Henry Blodget: The Empty Village - What about the 750 million Chinese who aren't getting rich? http://slate.msn.com/id/2116436/ Posted Friday, April 8, 2005, at 5:14 AM PT When I grow up, I'm going to be an investment banker After a few days in Shanghai, it is easy to think that China has already become the world's leading economic superpower. This illusion is not dispelled in Beijing. When I lug my bags from the train station to the Grand Hyatt, I walk right by the Lamborghini dealer. Of course, as many observers have noted, China is two countries, urban and rural, and they are as different as Los Angeles and Appalachia. The Appalachian part would have remained theoretical for me, but one morning I was invited to ride shotgun in a dusty Jeep Cherokee with Tim Clissold, the author of [24]Mr. China, for a drive to the north. Statistics in China are easy to come by and hard to have faith in. But here goes: About 750 million Chinese are farmers, and about 85 million make less than $75 a year. The average rural per-capita income in Sichuan province in 2002 was $253, less than the fees required to attend a local middle school. Rural incomes have almost doubled since the mid-1990s, but taxes have jumped four to five times. (To register to get married, for example, you have to pay 14 taxes.) Of course, poverty alone doesn't lead to social unrest, which many people cite as one of the biggest threats to the Chinese economic miracle (the others being overinvestment and a fistfight with Taiwan). To trigger the class riots that frequently occur in China these days, you also need a sense of unfairness. There is plenty of that, stemming from corruption, limited opportunities, and income inequality. Experts disagree about exactly how China's rural/urban income gap compares with that of other countries, but the dispute is confined to whether it is the most extreme in the world or merely extreme. In an extraordinary series in the New York Times, Joseph Kahn told the story of Zheng Qingming, a brilliant farmer boy who aced his high-school admission test but couldn't scratch together the $80 necessary to take the college entrance exam--and solved the problem by stepping in front of an express train. In [27]China, Inc., Ted Fishman described a villager, who, after demanding that the spending of local authorities be publicly audited, was taken into custody and beaten to death. Clissold and I drove until the city's superhighways narrowed to single-lane strips and brown mountains appeared. Then, after winding through a dusty town near the Ming Tombs, we parked near a cluster of stuccoed brick buildings and walked. Compared to the poorer parts of China, of course, the village was well-off. Beijing money flows out of the city into the surrounding towns, and many of the brick buildings here had been recently rebuilt. The village's inhabitants, meanwhile, flow the other way, so the town was deserted except for old people, dogs, and kids. The town's dirt lanes were strewn with burned coal ash and garbage, the air smelled of brush smoke, and an ancient farmer pedaled by occasionally on a bicycle overloaded with sticks. We hiked through a field into a walled, unkempt area--the grave of an emperor's concubine--then up the side of a hill. From there, we could see across the valley to an incongruous, nearly flat, snow-covered field, which was apparently a ski area. Now that they have some money, Clissold explained, the Chinese want to do things people with money do, such as skiing and golf. Unfortunately, equipment and skills have yet to catch up with desire, so the broken-leg-repair industry is burgeoning, too. Later, we drove northeast, past an abandoned reservoir project and a military base inside a hollowed-out mountain, and stopped at an empty roadside restaurant for lunch. The menu promised a veritable banquet of foods, but after a long exchange with the excited waitress (Customers! Laowai!), Clissold reported that the only ingredients in the larder were potatoes, chicken, and celery. Then it was another 45 minutes in the Jeep up and down steep hillsides and through tunnels until a familiar ribbon of stone appeared on a distant ridgeline, snaking away as far as we could see. Richard Nixon will forever be ridiculed for his assessment of this architectural wonder, but he got it right: "It sure is a great wall." In fact, when one imagines the labor required merely to haul the massive rocks up to the ridge, let alone carve and fit them into place, it's no wonder people have such respect for the awesome power of the Chinese workforce. Fearful that social unrest will weaken its power--and also because it is the right thing to do--the Chinese government is aggressively addressing the income gap. The answer, for now, is not more-efficient farming but easier migration to cities and the establishment of ever more factories. Like other governments, however, the party is not a single unified entity, and intelligent reforms in Beijing can often be negated by local officials in the countryside. Creating jobs for a billion people, moreover, does not happen overnight. Even with China's frantic rate of growth, the lack of rural opportunities and the death of many state-run enterprises have resulted in mass unemployment. Fishman suggests that China may have more unemployed industrial workers than the rest of the world combined. Which is why, when one has seen the other side of the coin, it is even harder to wave the pompoms in support of U.S. protectionist rhetoric aimed at whipping up fear of the "China threat" and saving "our" jobs. It's easy to have sympathy for those whose jobs disappear across the Pacific, but hard not to also feel excited about the opportunities created for millions of Chinese so desperate to have them. As Thomas Friedman observes unapologetically in a recent New York Times[28] piece, like it or not, the world has changed, and globalization is here to stay. If we fail to react, or resort to whining instead of innovating, China will indeed prove a massive threat (and might regardless). But ultimately, the answer is not tariffs, quotas, or safeguards, but figuring out what we can do better than the Chinese--or with their cooperation. And then helping our companies and workers get on with it. Henry Blodget, a former securities analyst, lives in New York City. References 24. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060761393/qid=1112909800/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/103-9856978-8440619?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:25:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:25:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Telegraph: (Pamuk) The pleasure of ruins Message-ID: The pleasure of ruins http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/04/10/bopam10.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/04/10/botop.html (Filed: 13/04/2005) [Noel Malcolm's review appended. I read Pamuk's novel, Snow, which should get him the Nobel Prize. It is a beautiful tale of a Turkish exile returning from Germany, ostensbily to cover the story of teenage girls committing suicide, but also to find his lost love. There's a conflict within the hero between his secular life and his attraction, nevertheless, to a rigorous form of Islam.] David Flusfeder reviews Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk Europe has its share of melancholy cities: the citizens of Lisbon take each destructive fire as fate's latest grim joke; Warsaw has been regularly ripped apart by foreign invaders; and it's hard to be cheerful in Trieste or, indeed, Cardiff. But the Istanbullu novelist Orhan Pamuk makes a persuasive, if repetitive, case for his city to be ranked as the most melancholy of all. The Turkish word for melancholy is h?z?n; in Pamuk's view, the city is soaked with the stuff, and so are its writers: "For the poet, h?z?n is the smoky window between him and the world." Istanbul is a black and white city, Pamuk says, and in this combination of memoir and sad urban love letter the pages are illustrated with dozens of rather beautiful black and white photographs, whose romantic purpose is to allow the foreign reader to experience the same pangs as the city's inhabitants. In the ruins of Ottoman greatness, there now stands "a pale, poor, second-class imitation of a Western city", where only the mosques and the packs of wild dogs survive from the city visited by rapt or disgusted Orientalists a century and a half ago. Describing cities and city life is one of the things that literature does supremely well, but up until the 20th century all the literature inspired by Istanbul was written by Westerners, usually French visitors in pursuit of the exotic. The influence of Verlaine, Mallarm?, Val?ry and Gide has been disproportionately large, but it was G?rard de Nerval and Th?ophile Gautier who gave Istanbullus their images of the city- "a place where, for the past 150 years, no one has been able to feel completely at home". "To be caught up in the beauties of the city and the Bosphorus is to be reminded of the difference between one's own wretched life and the happy triumphs of the past," writes Pamuk. Of course, the past was never as happy as all that, and the present hasn't always been so bad either, especially if, like Pamuk, you come from a privileged background. With the help of 20th-century Turkish novelists, poets and journalists, Pamuk does a good job picking at lines of received wisdom. It's a difficult task, which requires perhaps too many expository lessons in culture and history along the way, and isn't helped by Pamuk's essayistic technique, which perversely chooses to move from the general to the particular. ("Allow me to illustrate this with a story about Flaubert's penis," is one of the happier versions of this conclusion-to-evidence device.) For the novelist Tapinar, the poor neighbourhoods of Istanbul were symbolic of Turkey's own impoverishment in the modern world. Pamuk tells us this first, rather stealing the thunder of "Turkey's greatest 20th-century novelist", so, when we read Tapinar's words making the same observation, the argument has the diminished power of the already-read. There is plenty, however, to entertain and interest. The story of Flaubert's penis is a good one, with its components of syphilis, hair-loss, mother-love, orientalism and literary history. The account of the obsessive - and failed - encyclopedist Ko?u is fascinating: a life devoted to building literary curiosity chests of city anecdote and homoerotic mutilation fantasy. But the book comes alive in the chapter on first love, when it casts off its didactic purpose to become pure memoir. The overall effect of Istanbul is like being in the melancholy company of a learned, egotistical uncle, who takes you on a slow tour of his photo albums in twilight. This uncle has perfect recall for details, but his memory is almost entirely visual - Pamuk's highest adjective for other writers is "painterly". As we are taken through the sights of ruins, as changes in the light are described to us, the other senses get hungrier. We become pathetically grateful when we are allowed any food, such as when Pamuk mentions the taste of his grandmother's sweet tea, which she always drank with a piece of hard goat's cheese in her mouth. As with any writer's memoir of his early years, the central story here is the making of the writer, the significant events, both internal and external, the movements of sensibility that have sent him on this path. Fans of Pamuk's fiction will be grateful for this book; travellers familiar with Istanbul will be stimulated; those unfamiliar with either may well be wearied. BOOK INFORMATION Title Istanbul: Memories of a City Author Orhan Pamuk Publisher 348pp, Faber & Faber, ?16.99 ------------------ Telegraph | Arts | A boyhood on the Bosphorus http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;sessionid=CYLJ1ZEN15XQDQFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/arts/2005/04/10/bopam210.xml A boyhood on the Bosphorus (Filed: 09/04/2005) Noel Malcolm reviews Istanbul: Memories of a City by Orhan Pamuk "Turkey Welcomes You!" proclaims the website of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. "It is Istanbul's endless variety that fascinates visitors. The museums, churches, palaces, grand mosques, bazaars and sights of natural beauty seem innumerable. You can see why Istanbul is truly one of the most glorious cities in the world." And indeed you can see why: the web page is illustrated with dazzling photographs of palaces and beauty-spots, all of them drenched in golden sunshine. None of which, of course, is untrue; the photos have not been faked. But tourist-brochure images seldom convey the atmosphere of a city, and can give little idea of the texture of ordinary life. And if that is the case with cities that are dominated by their tourist industries (Venice or Florence, for example), how much truer it must be of a huge metropolis where tourism barely scratches the surface. The prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul 53 years ago; with the exception of a brief stint in New York he has never lived away from the city, and today he still lives on the top floor of the building that was his childhood home. He is a passionately loyal Istanbullu (the suffix "-lu" or "-li" is like the "-er" in "Londoner"), and is never happier than when poring over old photographs of the city or reading the faded cuttings of local newspapers. In his new book - part childhood memoir, part extended essay on Istanbul life - he describes, with a marvellously painterly eye for detail, what it is that he loves so much about this city. This is not the sort of detail, however, that the Ministry of Culture and Tourism would have in mind. "I am speaking", he writes, "of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment-house entrances, their fa?ades discoloured by dirt, rust, soot and dust; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ships' horns booming through the fog; of the dervish lodges that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unflinching under the pelting rain; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passer-by; of the fruits and vegetables, garbage and plastic bags and wastepaper, empty sacks, boxes and chests strewn across abandoned street markets on a winter evening..." That is just an extract from a listing that meanders across six pages. Each detail on its own is humdrum and unexceptional, but the cumulative effect is one of lyrical intensity, the performance of a set of virtuoso variations on the themes of cold, decay, neglect, disappearance and abandonment. All these details are, he explains, things that give rise to h?z?n - an untranslatable word for a collective feeling of melancholy and nostalgia. Hasty or hostile readers (including, no doubt, the men from the Ministry) might prefer a less untranslatable term for Pamuk's frame of mind: nostalgie de la boue, a perverse wallowing in dirt. And if all he had produced had been a hymn of praise to decrepitude, they might have a point. But this book does much, much more than that. It sets his fascination with the tumbledown world of backstreet Istanbul in two contexts: that of his own discovery of the city as a child, and that of the cultural history of postOttoman Turkey. There was nothing decrepit about Orhan Pamuk's own childhood home - at least, not in physical terms. His grandfather had made a fortune in business, and although this was gradually frittered away by Orhan's father and uncles, there was plenty of it to fritter. Orhan was brought up in the "Pamuk Apartments", a five-storey block built and owned by the family: all the other inhabitants were uncles and cousins, plus an assortment of maids, cooks and caretakers. From this world of wellfurnished rooms - glass-fronted bookcases, grand pianos laden with silver-framed photographs, and so on - little Orhan would venture forth with his mother to the sweet shop, the bread roll-seller, or the toy shop; sometimes a boatman would row them up the Bosphorus, or sometimes they would ride on the tram. Everything fascinated the boy, whose visual sense was stimulated as much by crumbling stone and decaying wooden buildings as by the coloured lightbulbs on the minarets or the chocolates in silver foil. In his teens, while attending an expensive private school, he thought of becoming a painter, and spent long hours walking these streets, studying the play of light and shade and the effect of those sudden glimpses of the Bosphorus through the gaps between the buildings. His schoolfriends, meanwhile (mostly the sons of the nouveaux riches), spent their time driving their fathers' Mercedes to caf?s where they could drink Scotch whisky and listen to American music. Their aping of a foreign world drew him, by contrast, to cherish more strongly those aspects of Istanbul that they were most keen to reject. A similar dynamic, though a subtler one, was at work in his relations with his own family. Unlike the coarser nouveaux riches, they valued culture and education; but having lost touch with their own Ottoman past, they could think of no content for that culture except a hand-me-down West European one. In this, Pamuk thinks, they were typical of a generation which, even though it benefited in many ways from Atat?rk's Westernising campaign, was nevertheless culturally and spiritually stultified by it. Some people might react to such a situation by longing for a neo-Ottoman cultural revival; but that is not a real option, given the degree to which all modern Turks are now separated from their past. (They cannot even read anything from before the 1920s, since the old Arabic script is unintelligible to them.) Others might turn instead to some form of Islam; this is a real option for many, especially for those who have only recently moved to the big city from village life. For millions of middle-class Turks, however, this solution has no appeal whatsoever. Orhan Pamuk has taken a different path. He accepts the loss of Empire, the decay of grandeur, and the failure, in petty ways, even to imitate competently the Western practices that have become such unquestioned models. For him, this is the authentic Istanbul, and because it is authentic, it deserves to be loved and celebrated. The same is true of his family, which he loves for all its faults - the faults being, as this book delicately insinuates, the same, ultimately, as those of the city itself. This evocative book succeeds at both its tasks. It is one of the most touching childhood memoirs I have read in a very long time; and it makes me yearn - more than any glossy tourist brochure could possibly do - to be once again in Istanbul. Noel Malcolm's books include 'Bosnia: A Short History' and 'Kosovo: A Short History' (Pan)Golden days on the Golden Horn Orhan Pamuk, left, is a passionately loyal Istanbullu and a painterly chronicler of the life of the city From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:27:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:27:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] SF Chronicle: Decrying the West's sins of secularism Message-ID: Decrying the West's sins of secularism / Theologian argues a return to Christian roots will cure U.S. and European ills http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/17/RVG7DC41EK1.DTL Reviewed by John Brady Sunday, April 17, 2005 The Cube and the Cathedral Europe, America and Politics Without God By George Weigel BASIC BOOKS; 202 Pages; $23 _________________________________________________________________ In his latest book, "The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God," Catholic theologian and social critic George Weigel examines the religious underpinnings of modern politics. Noting how deeply imbued secularism is in European and American politics, he worries about the future of Western democracies. Can they sustain themselves, he asks, "absent the transcendent moral reference points for ordering public life that Christianity offers?" This is a burning question. It is at the center of a rancorous debate across the democratic West. Islamic versions of the question are being asked in the emerging democracies of Afghanistan and Iraq. In all of these cases, the discussions are highly charged and increasingly polarized, and there is an urgent need for calm and sober reflection regarding religion's proper role in democratic life. Sadly, Weigel is not up to this task. He has written a shrill sectarian polemic marked by a simplistic analysis. Throughout his book, Weigel, elevating assertion over argument, takes considerable and highly dubious liberties with the historical record and, in the end, exhibits no small amount of moral bad faith. Weigel begins with a political diagnosis: Europe faces a crisis of "civilizational morale." The continent's citizens are cutting themselves off from the culture and traditions that have nurtured their democratic societies and capitalist economies. As a result, they are no longer up to the arduous task of maintaining their civilization. Searching to explain this crisis, Weigel takes an eclectic (or, less generously, scattershot) approach to the evidence. He references everything from Spain's election of a socialist opposed to the Iraq War to Europe's seemingly blind faith in the United Nations to falling rates of economic productivity as clear indicators of Europeans' unwillingness to protect their unique political and cultural heritage. But of the many factors he cites, Weigel concentrates on one he feels is most indicative of Europe's present and future troubles: the region's falling birthrates. There are certainly many explanations for European demographic trends, as Weigel freely admits. But brushing this complexity aside, he concentrates on one factor, namely secularism. As more and more Europeans lose their faith, they lack the motivation provided by Christianity to start and maintain families. Hence, the decline in births. As it turns out, what can be said about secularism and family life can be said about most everything else. In the course of his book, Weigel traces all of the continent's past and present ills: the Terror of the French Revolution, communism, fascism, the appeasement of radical Islam to secularism. By contrast, all that is good in Europe, human rights, representative democracy, respect for human dignity, the democratic revolutions of 1989, Weigel assigns to the ledger of Christianity, by which he often seems to mean Catholicism. Secularism, it appears, has much to answer for. But this is an old argument and a staple of conservative Christian critics of modernity. Take T.S. Eliot for example. Writing in 1939 shortly before World War II, when European democracy faced a much graver threat, Eliot famously argued in "The Idea of a Christian Society" that Great Britain would only survive if it rediscovered its Christian roots. Without this rediscovery, the country would lack the moral fortitude to withstand either Stalinism or Nazism. As he pointedly concluded, "If you will not have God ... you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin." Eliot was wrong, of course, in no small part because he did not understand that people valued and were willing to fight for the principles of democracy independently of their religious faith. A lack of piety does not imply a lack of patriotism. Weigel makes a similar mistake. He overstates the Christian influence on modern democracy and refuses to acknowledge the way in which core democratic principles such as toleration and consent had to be articulated in opposition to Christian doctrine. As a result, he fails to recognize the independent moral content of democracy and secularism. Democrats and secularists support values such as state neutrality, toleration and the freedom to have or not have children not because they are unprincipled atheists but because they are convinced moralists who believe that such principles are proper and good. European and American societies are indelibly marked by such a pluralism of values. If citizens nonetheless want to reach agreement about matters of common concern, they will have to deal with people with whom they fundamentally disagree. Under these conditions, politics is best thought of as a process of trying to convince people of a point of view on an issue, not a process of converting them to a comprehensive view of the world. At times, Weigel seems to understand this. At the start, he writes approvingly of toleration and pluralism. Yet after pages and pages of strident denunciations of his philosophical opponents, one begins to doubt the author's initial generosity and to suspect bad faith. And indeed in the end, Weigel conflates Christianity and morality and argues that only the "reconversion" of Europe to Christianity will avert its demographic and moral crisis. Europe faces many political and social problems; they certainly will not be solved by a new crusade. John Brady is a writer and scholar living in Santa Monica. He currently teaches political theory and the ethics of citizenship at Pomona College. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:28:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:28:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Am Prospect: Noodling Around With Russian Lit Message-ID: Noodling Around With Russian Lit http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=9508 Chinese author Ma Jian is inspired by Gogol in The Noodle Maker. By [2]Christopher Byrd Web Exclusive: 04.15.05 Literature is a form of consolation. Even when its obtuse or wanton in its provocation, literature reminds us of our humanity in its frailty, depravity, and splendor. Since politics is often beset by memory loss, its deducible why from the era of the ancient Greeks to the present, literature has pointed to the human costs that accompany historical activity. Ma Jians novel, The Noodle Maker(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew), is written in this vein. In a series of arch narratives that comment on Chinas push to modernity, Ma writes about the fallout of the governments effort to streamline its citizens behavior. With parabolic flair, he coaxes from the legacy of Premier Deng Xiaopings Open Door Policy a book that is funny, sad, and preoccupied with the idea of consolation. The tension between modernity and nationalism, which captivated many of the Great Russian novelists, provides a launch pad for the book. In December 1978, Premier Deng Xiaoping introduced economic reforms geared toward attracting Western investors. While this Open Door Policy led to an influx of Western culture, the government policed these influences; herein is the seed for The Noodle Maker. The narrative, which is artfully self-conscious, turns around a Sunday dinner between friends whose occupations all but mythically complement one another. The stories told between Sheng (the professional writer) and his friend Vlazerim (the professional blood donor) are the source material for the writers unwritten novel. Aside from the drudgery of writing, a fear of the governments disapproval shadows him. Given that government reprisal includes but is not limited to loss of job, home, and political standing, an atmosphere of consequence quickens the novel, giving the stories culled from the writers immediate surroundings an aura of illicit -- albeit fantastic -- communiqu?s. This samizdat element is accentuated not only by the fact that the writer was once charged by the Chinese government of spiritual pollution (he later emigrated from China to England) but also by literary design. The professional writer cites a love of Gogol, Gorky, and Hans Andersen, authors whose books authorities confiscated from library shelves. While the influence of each of these writers is detectable, what is most conspicuous is the association of The Noodle Maker with that of Russian literature. Confronted with the history of Chinas totalitarian rule -- and here one thinks of Russia -- surely its a guilty thanks one feels for literature born out of political duress; especially when the work so successfully subordinates its political concerns to its aesthetic ones. By not mistaking fiction for reportage, The Noodle Maker, like The Master and the Margarita, uses the imagination -- mans last refuge, and most subversive tool, to create a compelling experience that also undresses a repressive political climate. Commissioned by the Party Secretary of the local Writers Association to write a novel portraying a modern-day successor to the selfless, national hero Lei Feng, the writer is torn between the need to please the authorities and the lure of his imagination. The stories, which he interweaves together, revolve around a crematorium director and his mother, a forlorn actress, a street writer, a philandering editor and his shrewish wife, and a three-legged dog and his sycophantic caretaker. As youve no doubt surmised, they dont exactly mesh with the socialist consciousness, idealized in Lei Feng. The characters from the writers unwritten novel suffer from pressures universals and particular. The crematorium director who uses, among other entrepreneurial skills, an extensive music collection -- pulsing with banned Western songs -- to establish a successful business, feels suffocated in the rinky-dink living space he shares with his mother, whos also his business partner. As a release, hes developed a fondness for kicking dead bureaucrats. A more tangible consolation, possibly, than the music he sells to aggrieved families to be played, not for their own sake, but for the benefit of the deceased. Once involved with the blood donor and the writer, the actress, Su Yun, is a woman on the verge of a breakdown. In love with the owner of the three-legged dog, she pines for his attention and sets up a plan to turn his head: She decides to perform a public suicide. Enlisting the support of a club, which caters to the Western pretensions of its clientele, Su Yun fumbles through a black comedy. The actress, though locked in her despondency, makes some trenchant observations about the modern Chinese womans predicament: She wondered how these poor souls [men] could ever hope to find a graceful companion among a generation of women who had grown up reading Analysis of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and The Fall of Chiang Kaishek. Todays women are corrupted. How can you expect a girl who has grown up reading Selected Writings of Mao Zedong to be cultivated, elegant or refined? This feeling of inadequacy -- of an ill preparedness for modern life -- that Su Yun articulates, reverberates throughout the other stories usually presaging dismal consequences. For the editor, his erstwhile promise as a young, patriotic writer ceases to hold the attention of his wife, a professional novelist, whose Western-inspired taste initially outpaces his own. Unfortunately, her succ?s destime is short lived: When Old Heps wife started sounding off about Hemingways The Old Man and the Sea, the young women drifted to the corner of the room to discuss Heidegger and Robbe-Grillet. Her favorite topic of conversation -- her memories of the Cultural Revolution and life in the re-education camp -- meant nothing to them. They treated her with the detached indifference with which they would treat anyone else of their parents generation. Ma is excellent at rendering the ambivalence shared by people whose lives have been molded by an authoritarian state apparatus. (Indeed, even the writer dreams about his name appearing in The Great Dictionary of Chinese Writers.) Like the crematorium director, the blood donor is an entrepreneur who uses the loopholes of the system to further his interests. This is a good thing for the writer, who partakes of his friends food rations. A man of action, the blood donors ripostes to the writer are formidable: Do you have a motorbike? Do you have tickets for the next weeks concert? Do you have FECs [foreign exchange credits]. Can you take a woman into a hotel where foreigners stay? Your years salary isnt enough to buy one pair of Italian shoes. Not everyone can see things like you do. But if I could write, Im sure Id be a better writer than you. I know about the real world. You just write in order to fill your inner void, you have no experiences to draw from. You see life in terms of tragedy and myth. You are obsessed by your fear of death. But death is something everyone has to go through, theres nothing particularly interesting about it. As their conversation seeps further into the night, so does their inquiry into whether its best to accept the world with its constraints or to follow ones lofty ideas to the end. The conclusion of the novel suggests a synthesis is possible. It seems to say, somewhere, theres a hazy meridian where the mind is engaged and the body reconciled to the demands of its history. Christopher Byrd is a writer living in Maryland. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Believer, The Wilson Quarterly, and Bookforum. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:31:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:31:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] City Journal: Stanley Kurtz: Can We Make Boys and Girls Alike? Message-ID: Stanley Kurtz: Can We Make Boys and Girls Alike? http://www.city-journal.org/html/15_2_boys_girls.html 2005 Spring When Lawrence Summers suggested that biology might be partially responsible for the relative rarity of female mathematics professors, he was provoking an academic giant. Powerful as the president of Harvard may be, his influence is as nothing compared with that of the behemoth that is the women's studies movement. The field of women's studies originated in the heady sixties and grew exponentially through the seventies and eighties. By the mid-nineties, when Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge published Professing Feminism, their searing critique of the field, more than 600 undergraduate and several dozen graduate women's studies programs were up and running at colleges and universities across the country. The intellectual cornerstone of women's studies is "gender," the notion that differences between men and women are not rooted in biology, as Summers had hypothesized some might be, but are cultural artifacts, inculcated by an oppressive patriarchal society. Precisely because the gender idea builds a specific (radical) political orientation into the field, Patai and Koertge point out, women's studies proved intellectually suspect from the start. You can read that radical politics right in the National Women's Studies Association constitution: "Women's Studies . . . is equipping women to transform the world to one that will be free of all oppression . . . [and is] a force which furthers the realization of feminist aims." True justice for these radical feminists means overcoming gender and establishing an androgynous society. So when Summers asserted that something besides artificial cultural roles--something besides "gender"--might account for the distinct positions of men and women in society, he was undermining the intellectual and political foundation of the entire women's studies establishment. The alternatives to feminist orthodoxy don't end with Summers-style invocations of biology as destiny. Take psychiatrist Leonard Sax's new book, Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences, for example. Sax begins by arguing that variations in how boys and girls learn result from brain biology. But, unlike many believers in hardwired sex differences, he goes on to argue that we can triumph over biology through single-sex education. If we teach boys and girls separately and in sync with their biologically based learning styles, he claims, they will perform equally well in all academics, including math. There's also a fourth possible view on the relations between sex and success--one that no one has systematically articulated to date. If those who assert biological differences between the sexes disagree about whether we can overcome them, the same might apply to those who assert the power of cultural differences. Even if we do provisionally hold that virtually all differences between men and women are cultural, might it not also be true that those differences are impossible to overcome? If so, it wouldn't be "gender" but the feminist effort to eliminate it that is truly oppressive. This fourth view suggests that the very same cultural forces that make feminists desire androgyny may actually prevent us from achieving it. The cultural sources of "gender" difference, properly understood, would then inform us not that our gender identities are infinitely malleable but that they're effectively impossible to change. Sociologists have thought long and hard about the cultural "reproduction of society"--the transmission of deeply held cultural attitudes across the generations. Some social thinkers focus on the conscious transmission of cultural messages through religion and custom, while others highlight the influence of deeper social structures, such as economic organization or family forms. The most sophisticated feminist theories of gender--those that offer the most plausible alternatives to biological explanations--take the latter view. To explain the reproduction of gender differences, they zero in on family structure, especially during the first months and years of life, to a time when the way we care for children is far more important than the words we speak. A case in point is the work of psychoanalytic sociologist Nancy Chodorow, a women's studies pioneer who gives flesh to a radically "cultural constructivist" idea of gender. Nearly every feminist plan for engineering a new, androgynous society--from the "egalitarian feminism" of political theorist Susan Okin to the "difference feminism" of developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan--offers a variation on Chodorow's themes, so it's worth considering them closely. Chodorow hypothesizes that the differences between the sexes simply derive from the contingent circumstance that women happen to be the primary caretakers of children. The special, "feminine" empathy required for rearing children, she suggests, becomes indelibly associated in our minds with people who just physically happen to be female. Identifying with their daughters, moreover, mothers tend to stay tightly connected with them for years, drawing them into a circle of mutual dependence and empathy that is the essence of femininity. So it's not television ads or Barbie dolls that turn little girls into caring women, who themselves want to be mothers. It's the emotional closeness of mothers and daughters that perpetuates the conventional female sexual role for generation after generation. Boys learn their gender lessons early, too, Chodorow maintains. Since traditional mothers assume that boys are different from girls, early on they tend to encourage their sons to be independent. As mothers begin to push their sons out of the warm circle of empathy, boys get the message that people with Daddy's kind of body should act differently from the way Mommy acts. If they want to be men, boys learn, they've got to overcome the qualities of emotional empathy of people like Mom. Masculinity thus finds its ground in a rejection of "feminine" qualities. If we could just break the association between gender and child care, thinks Chodorow--if men as well as women could "mother" children--then we might vanquish gender. Men and women would still have a few distinct body parts, of course, but "masculine" and "feminine" personality differences would no longer have anything to do with bodily equipment. No one would assume that only people with a certain kind of body should be caring and empathic. The speed with which a child became independent would no longer depend on whether it was male or female. A new era would dawn. Yet even if this understanding of gender as learned behavior is right, androgyny proponents quickly run into a problem. As Chodorow herself underscores, mothering by women produces women who themselves want to be mothers. The mechanism at work may be social and psychological, rather than biological, but it's no less real for that. How, then, do you get women to mother less and men to mother more, especially when, according to Chodorow, everything in a typical male's early rearing makes him wrong for the job? Plato faced this dilemma when he drew up history's first great plan for a perfectly just society in the Republic--a society that required, among other things, androgyny. His solution: send the members of the old, imperfect city into exile, so that the new, just city could be built from scratch. Otherwise, their recalcitrant mental habits would sabotage the creation of the new order. The fact is, attempts to force a society out of its most deeply held cultural values can be every bit as tyrannical as schemes to override our biological nature. But what if a society actually existed--not just a theoretical utopia--whose inhabitants yearned for androgyny? What if a society existed whose citizens, motivated by a burning passion for perfect justice, committed themselves to a total reorganization of the traditional family system, with the express purpose of eliminating gender? Such a society has existed, of course: the early Israeli kibbutz movement. The movement wasn't just a precursor to modern feminism, it's important to add. The kibbutzniks were utopian socialists who wanted to construct a society where the ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" would govern the production and distribution of goods. It was as part of this larger socialist vision that the kibbutzniks set out to wipe away gender. Kibbutz parents agreed to see their own children only two hours a day, and for the remaining 22 hours to surrender them to the collective, which would raise them androgynously (trying more to "masculinize" women than "feminize" men). Boys and girls would henceforth do the same kind of work and wear the same kind of clothes. Girls would learn to be soldiers, just like boys. Signs of "bourgeois" femininity--makeup, say--would now be taboo. As if they had stepped out of Plato's Republic, the children would dress and undress together and even use the same showers. The experiment collapsed within a generation, and a traditional family and gender system reasserted itself. Why? Those who believe in hardwired natural differences obviously would say that cultural conditioning couldn't remove the sexes' genetic programming. Indeed, in his now-infamous conference remarks, Lawrence Summers invoked the history of the kibbutz movement to help make his case that biology might partially explain sex roles. Feminists, though, say that the kibbutz experiment didn't get a fair chance. However committed to gender justice the kibbutzniks might have been, they were all traditional Europeans by upbringing. Somehow they must have transmitted the old cultural messages about gender to the children. Perhaps, too, those messages came from the larger Israeli society, from which it was impossible to shelter the boys and girls entirely. What's more--and Chodorow would doubtless emphasize this fact--the kibbutz child-care nurses were all women. A 50/50 male-female mix might have done the trick. Yet American androgyny proponents rarely refer to the kibbutz experiment--for understandable reasons. Its failure--even if you accept their own cultural explanation for it--puts a serious damper on the idea of androgynizing America. In the U.S., after all, there's nothing remotely approaching the level of commitment to surmounting gender found among the early kibbutzniks. If androgyny proved unattainable in a small socialist society whose citizens self-selected for radical feminist convictions, how could one bring it about in contemporary America, where most people don't want it? It would take a massive amount of coercion--unacceptable in any democracy--to get us even to the point where the kibbutzniks were when they failed to build a post-gender society. The best account of the experiment's breakdown, offered by anthropologist Melford Spiro in his books Gender and Culture and Children of the Kibbutz, points out an even bigger obstacle to androgyny. Ultimately, Spiro argues, the kibbutzniks didn't succeed because the mothers wanted their kids back. They wanted to take care of their young children in the old-fashioned way, themselves. Two hours a day with their kids wasn't enough. Even among the kibbutz founders, Spiro notes, women often agonized over the sacrifice of maternal pleasure that their egalitarian ideology demanded. He quotes from one mother's autobiography: "Is it right to make the child return for the night to the children's home, to say goodnight to it and send it back to sleep among the fifteen or twenty others? This parting from the child before sleep is so unjust!" Such feelings persisted and intensified, until collective pressure forced the kibbutz to let parents spend extra time with their kids. Spiro holds that a pre-cultural form of maternal instinct subverted the kibbutz's child-rearing approach. But a plausible cultural explanation is even more devastating to feminist hopes for a gender-free America. What really defeated androgyny on the kibbutz, this interpretation posits, was the profound tension built in to the very culture of modern democratic individualism that the kibbutzniks embraced--the tension between liberty and equality. As part of their insistence on their unique individuality, the kibbutzniks recognized the unabridgeable unique individuality of everyone else. Hence, their insistence on radical equality. Full equality meant that everyone had to treat everyone else the same way. Even the differences between my children and the neighbors' kids would have to go. They pretended that their children belonged to the collective--"child of the kibbutz," they would say, not "my child." But the other side of democratic individualism is the idea that each of us is uniquely individual. And inseparable from this individualism are certain aspirations--to express yourself personally, and to treat yourself, your possessions, and your family differently from how you treat everyone else. Child rearing doesn't escape these aspirations. In fact, in modern societies people pay far greater attention to the unique characters of their children than people do in traditional, group-oriented societies. Lavishing intense, personal attention on their kids is a favorite way for modern individuals to exercise personal liberty. Kibbutz mothers who hoped to treat everyone the same thus also wanted to express their individual characters by molding their own kids. The two goals--reflecting the two sides of modern democratic individualism--were finally incommensurable. Eventually, the desire for personal expression trumped the quest for radical equality. The parents decided to raise their own kids in their own way. No one ever got the chance to find out if further tinkering might have eliminated their children's gender differences. The culture of democratic individualism characterizes contemporary America, too, of course, and it still cuts two ways. Feminists insist on radical equality, and androgyny is the logical outcome of that drive for equality. Yet at the same time, especially since the baby boomers came on the scene, many American women have treated the experience of motherhood as an exercise in self-expression--indeed, they do so more fervently than the kibbutzniks. A modern, self-expressive, committed-to-full-equality American mother might know that her child is getting quality care from a relative, a nanny, or a nursery, but she'll often feel dissatisfied, since the care isn't hers. Part of the point of being a parent, she'll feel, is to express one's unique personality through how one cares for and shapes one's children. In practical terms, she'll be reluctant to give up her kids long enough to break the cycle of "gender reproduction." True, the last 40 years have seen tremendous changes in the social roles of men and women--changes that could never have happened were there not significant flexibility in gender roles. From the standpoint of feminism's ideal of androgyny, though, the shift is still very partial. Until the link between women and child rearing completely breaks down, neither corporate boardrooms nor Harvard professorships of mathematics will see numerical parity between men and women. In the meantime, in disproportionate numbers, at critical points in their careers, women will continue to choose mothering over professional work. From either a biological or cultural point of view, then, the feminist project of androgyny is ultimately doomed. But that doesn't mean that it can't do harm in the meantime. In America, many boys are slipping behind in school; their sisters are significantly more likely to go on to college. Yet thanks largely to the influence of academic feminists, legal and educational resources still flow disproportionately to supposedly victimized girls. In the end, gender won't disappear, whatever the mavens of women's studies hope, but the careers of some bright young men probably will. Even if the differences are cultural, rather than biological, they are ineradicable. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:33:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:33:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] TCS: Science, Pseudo-Science, and Architecture Message-ID: Science, Pseudo-Science, and Architecture http://www.techcentralstation.com/041405A.html By Catesby Leigh Published 04/14/2005 A few years back, I wrote a critical survey of Princeton University's architecture for the school's alumni magazine. The article argued that the buildings that had gone up on the campus since the 1950's -- the modernist buildings -- were for the birds. It pointed to the campus's much-loved Collegiate Gothic architecture as an eminently appropriate model for future construction. The response to the article was pretty much what you'd expect. First there were the normal people -- students and alumni alike -- who tended to be quite supportive of my critique. Then there were the architects. In a letter to the alumni magazine's editor, a 50's-vintage architecture grad who had been editor-in-chief of the Architectural Record weighed in with this observation: "I would suggest to the author that he go find a laptop computer with gargoyles, a microwave oven in the shape of an ogee arch, or a multiplex cinema held in place by flying buttresses." This gentleman has my deepest sympathy. He's spent his professional life thinking about architecture, and he's reached the conclusion a building should be designed according to the same criteria as your kitchen toaster. This fallacy boils down to "form follows function." We don't hear that hoary aphorism much nowadays, but it is one of the founding dogmas of modernist architecture. Though it was first enunciated in the 19^th century by romantics like the sculptor-writer Horatio Greenough (a friend of Emerson's) and the gifted Art Nouveau architect Louis Sullivan, its roots are in natural science -- specifically, the fitness of the skeletal structures of animal organisms to the functions they perform. The organic analogy assumed an ideological twist, courtesy of Darwin: Just as organisms evolve, so should architecture. And from the git-go it dovetailed with a rationalist doctrine, itself grounded in scientific progress if not science: Buildings should be designed with the same functionalist efficiency as machines. There was supposed to be a social justification for such ruthless efficiency. The idea was that industrialized, mass-produced housing could shelter all those wretched proletarians consigned to rat-infested tenements. "I consider the industrialization of building methods the key problem of the day," Mies van der Rohe famously proclaimed in 1924. "Once we succeed in this, our social, economic, technical, and even artistic problems will be easy to solveI am convinced that traditional methods of construction will disappear. In case anyone regrets that the home of the future can no longer be made by hand workers, he should remember that the automobile is no longer manufactured by carriage makers." The Princetonian who suggested I find a laptop with gargoyles was basically barking up the same tree. One thing, however, had changed over the 75 years since Mies's pronunciamento. The social justification for the industrialization of architecture had evaporated. Indeed, to modernists of a Nietzchean bent like the late Philip Johnson, altruism was never part of the package. And come to think of it I can't recall any public housing projects Mies designed after emigrating from Nazi Germany to our shores in the late 30's. In fact, the project for which he's best known, the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in Manhattan (designed in association with Johnson), was anything but a product of the assembly line. With its lobby decked out in travertine and its fa?ades given much-needed if altogether decorative and un-functional texture in the form of slender vertical I-beams of bronze, this building required tons of custom fabrication and was extremely expensive. Nevertheless, erection of public housing projects across the country after passage of the United States Housing Act of 1949 put modernist social ideals to the test. The "projects" turned out to be a dreadful welfare-state variant of the Skinner box. They made Skid Row, which the "urban renewers" aspired to eradicate, look like the Waldorf-Astoria. Meanwhile, Mies's vision of factory-made Bauhausian residences for the masses failed to materialize. The vast majority of American homes are still stick-built at the construction site, as has been the case since the 19^th century. The typical new suburban home fulfills the practical necessities of modern life admirably and often offers plenty of creature comforts to boot, but in terms of design it tends to be a low-grade knock-off of one traditional style or other. (We'll return to this issue.) The same applies even to modular houses whose components are shipped to the building site from the factory. What's more, "form follows function" proved a profoundly dysfunctional artistic precept. After all, a boxy steel frame provides all the "fitness" an office building is likely to require. Tack on an exterior panelized cladding, or "curtain wall," that makes no pretense to load-bearing function, let alone any gesture in the way of beauty and dignity, and, strictly speaking, you've filled the bill. This is precisely the kind of structure that proliferated in countless downtowns and suburban office parks after World War II, resulting in an epidemic of visual sterility unprecedented in the annals of civilization. The Rejection of Tradition Why did this happen? Again, modern science's intrusion into a realm where it tends to sow confusion lies at the heart of the matter. Given the wonders science has performed, the intrusion was perhaps inevitable, but it's high time we took stock of the consequences. Some pundits would argue that a big reason the modernist pioneers rejected the Western tradition in architecture is that it was obsolete. (By the Western tradition I mean the classical forms of ancient Greece and Rome that have been continuously employed since the Renaissance, as well as classicism's various tributaries, including the Romanesque, the Gothic, and the baroque; these tributaries also include the many regional "vernaculars," such as the Spanish styles employed in Florida and the American Southwest.) Well, next time you're in Manhattan, take a look at Whitney Warren's majestic Grand Central Terminal, or the brilliant and inventive original fa?ade of the Metropolitan Museum by Richard Morris Hunt, or the Woolworth and Municipal Buildings designed by Cass Gilbert and McKim Mead & White, respectively. You're not likely to take these buildings for symptoms of obsolescence. Indeed, the Municipal and Woolworth are noteworthy for their brilliant integration of traditional architectural forms with the steel-frame construction technology that, along with the elevator's advent, made the skyscraper possible. Traditional architects continued to produce first-rate institutional buildings right into the 30's. No, the grounds for the rejection of tradition lay outside the realm of design. Science was thought to have re-created man, and this new man was entitled to a new architecture. For the likes of Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies, the frontiers of human knowledge had so vastly expanded and the prospects for humanity's material existence so vastly improved as to dispel any notion of a fundamental continuity in the human condition. In the early decades of the 20^th century, a European coterie of Nietszchean ?bermenschen thus went about the business of ushering in a brave new architectural world whose foundations were sunk in the same sort of theoretical quicksand as "scientific socialism." In the "new world order of the machine," as Gropius called it, the classical Orders (i.e., Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns and the entablatures they support) were history, period. But from the ruins of the great tradition no new set of acceptable architectural conventions has emerged. Certainly "form follows function" didn't get us there. Not surprisingly, plenty of new recipes have followed in its train. The history of modernist architecture is thus like a highway whose exits are abstract theories about what contemporary architecture should be. Instead of a home for architecture such as it knew when tradition ruled, each exit leads to a dead end. So the architect gets back on the highway to nowhere and heads for the next exit, and the next dead end. The result has been an extreme stylistic instability involving recurring discoveries of new modes of artistic dysfunction. You can't make a city more beautiful on these terms. Consider the case of Philip Johnson. He was an A-list architect, which is not to say he was a particularly gifted one. After his death at age 98 last January, his obituary in a German newspaper was appropriately headlined, "The Chameleon." His first celebrated work, dating to 1949, was a Miesian glass box -- his own residence in New Canaan, Connecticut. After tiring of such boxes, he moved onto pavilion-like institutional buildings fronted by rudimentary porticos or arcades that are astonishingly banal -- e.g., The New York State Theater at Manhattan's Lincoln Center and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. Then came enormous office buildings whose stark geometries were supposedly justified by their unboxiness. Then came the famous ersatz-classical Manhattan skyscraper with its crowning Chippendale flourish and a glassy, glitzy ersatz-Gothic office tower in Pittsburgh. Later he would dabble in disjointed deconstructionist follies. For Johnson, there was no destination. His way was the highway. The game was simply to get to the next exit before the herd. Johnson wasn't driven by scientific concepts, it's true. He was largely concerned with the use (or abuse) of "historical" elements reduced to crude abstractions, or, depending on the way the wind was blowing, their complete abandonment. And yet scientific or technological "paradigm shifts" akin to the "new world order of the machine" continue to be adduced as justification for new fads. During the 90's, the critic Charles Jencks hailed a new architecture he saw emerging in tandem with a new understanding of the universe capable of rescuing us from our cultural confusion. This was the "jumping universe" of complexity science, of quantum mechanics and chaos theory -- a universe not static or mechanistic nor, least of all, created but rather "self-organizing," unpredictable, creative, and still-evolving. The computer would serve the architecture reflecting this new paradigm as a sort of womb, giving birth to new architectural forms that would somehow embody aspects of the ongoing "cosmogenesis." Hence the waves, blobs, torques, and fractals preferred by our current crop of "starchitects." (Whatever the computer's conceptual role, computer-aided design and digitally-programmed machinery do in fact make the starchitects' crazy geometries possible.) But any number of alternative critical ruminations on the nature of post-industrial "modernity" have been marshaled in justification of the starchitects' endeavors. Moreover, the weird structural eructations produced by the likes of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhass, Thom Mayne, and Steven Holl (whose new dormitory at M.I.T. was inspired by a sponge) cannot serve as the basis of a generalized approach to design. They are both very expensive to build and explicitly "exceptionalist," a sort of viral reaction to the dismal mainstream architectural culture "form follows function" generated. The starchitects thus acknowledge that modernism failed in its crucial mission of providing a new architectural canon that would make man at home in his brave new world. Needless to say, we haven't reached the end of the highway to nowhere. More exits lie ahead. But by now, it should be clear that apart from the baleful influence of science, and to a degree because of it, modernism has been completely hamstrung by its realism. Structural realism lies at the heart of "form follows function." But more to the point, modernists believe architecture's formal vocabulary, not just the practical purposes it serves, must be determined by its immediate cultural context, whether that context be global, national, or regional. That context, in turn, entails some combination or other of the reigning cosmology, religion (or lack thereof), political ideology, and technological and ecological conditions. This is cultural realism. But of course divining the significance of the age is a completely subjective business. The same goes for divining the way architecture should reflect it. The "authenticity" cultural realism extols, therefore, inevitably lies inside the architect's (or the critic's) head. Far from serving as an objective basis for architectural design, it serves as a codeword for inflicting the rarified, ephemeral sensibilities of a tiny elite on the public realm. The Great Tradition In contrast, the great tradition has never relied on the crutch of theory. And it is generally indifferent to realism. It is, rather, unabashedly idealistic, and firmly grounded in human instinct as well as an enormous amount of empirical experience with building acquired over the course of millennia. Nor do classicism and its offshoots conjugate as a "scientific" approach to design. Indeed, far from being an extension of science or politics or some gospel of progress or other, classical architecture forms part of the emotional life that is, as the philosophers say, prior to our intellectual life. In that sense, it is like music. Its development has of course been influenced by particular historical circumstances, but its essential qualities and normative achievements utterly transcend them. That is because classical architecture is, first and foremost, profoundly engaged with our embodied state. It is an expression of man's instinct to compensate for his mortality by projecting his body into abstract, monumental form. We tend to read architecture in terms of our bodies, whether we're conscious of it or not. But classical architecture is uniquely anthropomorphic. Its proportions, its masses, spaces, and abstract lines, its sculptural decoration and ornamental motifs -- all are symphonically, dynamically calibrated to human perceptions and, as the English critic Geoffrey Scott emphasized nearly a century ago, to our unconscious physical memories of bearing weight (think of the columns supporting a pediment), of rhythmic movement, of serene repose. The Greeks and the Romans possessed a profound knowledge of human perception. You can call it scientific knowledge if you like, but that knowledge was wholly subordinated to esthetic aims. In the rotunda of the Pantheon, erected in Rome in the second century A.D., the architects brilliantly manipulated our perceptions to make the building's great dome seem to float above a dematerialized wall-mass of colored marbles. The dome imparts a subtle bodily thrill, because it seemingly expands even as our lungs expand when we breathe. And yet this is a disembodied architecture -- in direct contrast to the vividly embodied architecture of the colonnaded Greek temples. The Romans also displayed a phenomenal mastery of statics. Having developed the technology of concrete vaulting, they made the Pantheon dome span an open space no less than 142 feet in diameter, while the walls that supported it were ingeniously engineered to accommodate the tremendous compressive forces and lateral stresses the dome generates. But to pigeonhole this great structure as an engineering tour de force would be to miss the point. The Pantheon humanizes the universe, recreating it as a harmonious enveloping cosmos. The gilt rosettes that once studded its coffered dome evoked the firmament. Above all, however, the building engages our senses by elevating them to a musical, even spiritual level. You can enjoy a similar experience in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, where the dome spans a mere 95 feet, but feels quite enormous nonetheless. No less than the Pantheon's revolutionary structure, the Capitol dome, which was completed during the Civil War, bears witness to classicism's enduring receptivity to new technologies that can be harnessed to the cause of a humanist architecture. This dome, whose exterior is painted to resemble marble, actually consists of two cast-iron shells fastened to an elaborate, invisible armature of iron trusswork. Classical architecture, then, makes man at home in the world by humanizing the world in a mythic way. It makes man central to the universe, which is of course what philosophers have been telling us he isn't ever since we found out the Earth revolves around the Sun. And yet we know of no other intersection between the material world and the realm of the spirit than man. We know of no other organic being of man's cosmic significance. For this reason, and because there is precious little evidence of an acceptable artistic alternative, there is simply no reason to suppress the humanist architectural tradition embracing classicism and the historic styles that derive from it. Because modernists tend to know little or nothing of traditional design, and at the same time feel threatened by its enduring appeal, they often caricature it as a simple matter of "copying" or "mimicking" old buildings. The truth is that traditional architectural idioms are characterized by an organic complexity akin to that of the human body itself. Designing in the classical or Gothic manner takes a great deal of skill. You couldn't copy even if you wanted to, because the sites and programs of different buildings are rarely identical. And yet the architect can always emulate -- that is, strive to make a building worthy of comparison to one whose beauty has inspired him. But emulation is a challenge. Because traditional design revolves around enduring, objective forms and conventions, it provides the norms by which success or failure can be reliably measured. A classical architect can't mask his incompetence by indulging in novelty for its own sake, as modernists too often do. His inventions must have a sound esthetic justification. Of course, there are good modernist buildings -- that is, there have been modernist designers gifted enough to produce admirable work despite the questionable theories to which they subscribed. I would rank Louis I. Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright among them. The problem is not that all modernist architecture is bad. The problem is that so little of it is good. But the classical threat to the ongoing modernist hegemony in institutional architecture goes deeper than esthetics. For modernism is itself based on a mythology, or a series of mythologies that have as their common denominator the notion that man is the malleable byproduct of his historical circumstances. Classicism rejects these mythologies. The great tradition's secular persistence is predicated precisely on the assumption that what is constant in human nature is of far greater import than what is not. Modernists are deeply aware of this ideological clash, and it fuels their visceral hostility to classicism. Tradition threatens the starchitect's "world," with the autonomous self -- the godlike creative "genius" -- at the center of an eminently subjective universe in which it is beholden to no higher reality than the self. No doubt plenty of classical architects are peacocks, but tradition has a way of getting their egos on a leash where artistic endeavors are concerned. 'New American World' Between May and October 1893, over 27 million people converged on the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where they beheld the Court of Honor, a magnificent architectural ensemble fronting on a great Basin that opened onto Lake Michigan. Buildings and esplanades alike were generously enriched with sculpture -- everything from gods to elks. At one end of the Basin stood Daniel Chester French's towering female figure, Republic, at the other Frederick MacMonnies' Columbian Fountain, with a goddess serving as helmsman of a tremendous barque. Nowadays, even some of our classical architects can't quite fathom the "White City," as the exposition was known. Its grandeur was "over the top," they say. One wonders whether they might be missing something upon encountering the Midwestern writer Hamlin Garland's recollection of how "the wonder and the beauty of it all moved these dwellers of the level lands to tears of joy which was almost as poignant as painStunned by the majesty of the vision, my mother sat in her chair, visioning it all yet comprehending little of its meaning. Her life had been spent among homely small things, and these gorgeous scenes dazzled her, overwhelmed her, letting in upon her in one mighty flood a thousand stupefying suggestions of the art and history and poetry of the world." Sitting on the steps of Hunt's superb Administration Building, situated at the head of the Basin, the patrician intellectual Henry Adams also beheld the "inconceivable scenic display," as he called it in The Education of Henry Adams (1918). The dogma of historical progress had been turned on its head. "Here," he wrote, "was a breach in continuity -- a rupture in historical sequence!" The public's enthusiasm for the White City afforded even the constitutionally pessimistic Adams the hope that "the new American world could take this sharp and conscious twist towards ideals." The Exposition's sound channeling of human endeavor -- the promotion of material progress in exhibits ranging from ocean steamers to explosives combined with emulation of the great artistic achievements of the past -- led Adams to conclude: "Chicago was the first expression of American thought as a unity. One must start there." In the event, the White City exerted considerable influence on the architectural practice of the following decades, encouraging a classically-oriented eclecticism that unquestionably accounts for the vast majority of the high-quality architecture in the United States -- its best courthouses, churches and synagogues, college campuses, office buildings, banks, libraries, and schools. In this "new American world," architecture would idealize the various realms of human endeavor -- governing, worshiping, dwelling, studying, commerce -- allowing the public realm to form a poetic backdrop to our ephemeral lives. Inevitably, many traditional architects simply banked on the sheer visual pleasure afforded by their work in staking their claim on the public realm. Yet a significant number of them responded to the modernist claim on the future by reinterpreting traditional architectural and ornamental forms in a more abstract manner, by emphasizing "stripped," unornamented surface planes, and by integrating sculptural decoration with the masses of their institutional buildings in a primitive, expressionistic manner. Rhetorically, however, the traditionalist camp was tongue-tied in the face of a polemic like Le Corbusier's Vers une architecture (1923), written with the pungency of a political manifesto. Vacuous Corbusian slogans like "The house is a machine for living" and "The [historic] 'styles' are a lie" thus ruled by default. The material evidence that would proclaim their absurdity was still lacking. And once the country was in the throes of the Depression and the New Deal, the wheel-reinventers resolved with religious fervor that this was the great cataclysm from which the new, socially-responsible, machine-efficient architecture -- an architecture which summarily rejected the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years -- must emerge. As we've seen, they succeeded only too well in their crusade. By the time the magnitude of the calamity became evident, the traditionalist ranks had been decimated: not just architects, but an entire architectural culture that had included sculptors, mural painters, ornamental plasterworkers, fabricators of wrought iron and ornamental tile and terra cotta, as well as stone and woodcarvers. And of course there was no cultural establishment to revive the rule of common sense. The architecture schools were all modernist. The architecture critics in the establishment press were all modernist. And the corporate boardrooms -- where the curtain-walled, steel-framed box was much appreciated for facilitating the cost-efficient exploitation of every last square centimeter of available space on a given lot -- had largely been won over. The destruction of this traditional architectural culture, which was of course informed by high-end practice, was bad news for the mainstream building trades, too. A rudderless homebuilding industry would convert the average American home from an artifact into a commodity. Instead of Bauhaus residences in the suburbs, we got ersatz-traditional schlock. The same goes for "traditional" commercial buildings in city and suburb alike -- starting with all those misbegotten brick banks with the ridiculous porticos. But things are changing. In recent years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has torn down high-rise projects across the country, replacing them with pedestrian-scale, traditionally-designed rowhouse developments under its Hope VI program. Historic preservation -- the public's only weapon against our institutionalized "avant-garde" -- has encouraged practice of the traditional decorative arts and crafts (admittedly on a vastly reduced scale), as has a resurgence of classical architectural practice that got underway during the 70's. The Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America, based in New York City, is educating mainstream-market home designers (who are not architects) in classical rules of proportion and detail. And the New Urbanism has generated a counterculture of pedestrian-scale, mixed-use community design that generally involves traditional architecture. It also inspired Hope VI, whose future, alas, is uncertain because the Bush Administration intends to zero it out of the 2006 budget. As for Princeton, I wrote my critique firmly convinced that, apart from the intrinsic interest of the subject matter and the paycheck, it was a complete waste of time. Well, what do you know. It so happened that the trustees' buildings and grounds committee was headed at that time by Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a New Urbanist pioneer. Thanks to her skillful leadership, the university is erecting a new Collegiate Gothic residential college for 500 students designed by the London-based classical architect Demetri Porphyrios. It's also erecting a new science library by Gehry which features the familiar disjointed metallic folds. I guess the good news is that neither of these buildings is designed like a kitchen toaster, or even a multiplex theater. But which of them will stand the test of time -- and I mean centuries, not just a few years? Which of these two projects reflects a sounder notion of building value into architecture? On the issue of quality of construction and durability, Gehry might be a risky bet. Last fall, the Boston Globe called his leaky new computer science building at M.I.T. "the $300 million fixer-upper." As for esthetic value, I would bet on the architect whose project reflects enduring human values in architecture. And I don't mean the starchitect. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 17:34:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:34:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Boston Globe: Why literature matters Message-ID: Why literature matters http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/why_literature_matters?mode=PF Good books help make a civil society By Dana Gioia | April 10, 2005 In 1780 Massachusetts patriot John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, outlining his vision of how American culture might evolve. ''I must study politics and war," he prophesied, so ''that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." They will add to their studies geography, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, he continued, so that their children may enjoy the ''right to study painting, poetry, music . . . " Adams's bold prophecy proved correct. By the mid 20th century, America boasted internationally preeminent traditions in literature, art, music, dance, theater, and cinema. But a strange thing has happened in the American arts during the past quarter century. While income rose to unforeseen levels, college attendance ballooned, and access to information increased enormously, the interest young Americans showed in the arts -- and especially literature -- actually diminished. According to the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a population study designed and commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (and executed by the US Bureau of the Census), arts participation by Americans has declined for eight of the nine major forms that are measured. (Only jazz has shown a tiny increase -- thank you, Ken Burns.) The declines have been most severe among younger adults (ages 18-24). The most worrisome finding in the 2002 study, however, is the declining percentage of Americans, especially young adults, reading literature. That individuals at a time of crucial intellectual and emotional development bypass the joys and challenges of literature is a troubling trend. If it were true that they substituted histories, biographies, or political works for literature, one might not worry. But book reading of any kind is falling as well. That such a longstanding and fundamental cultural activity should slip so swiftly, especially among young adults, signifies deep transformations in contemporary life. To call attention to the trend, the Arts Endowment issued the reading portion of the Survey as a separate report, ''Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America." The decline in reading has consequences that go beyond literature. The significance of reading has become a persistent theme in the business world. The February issue of Wired magazine, for example, sketches a new set of mental skills and habits proper to the 21st century, aptitudes decidedly literary in character: not ''linear, logical, analytical talents," author Daniel Pink states, but ''the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative." When asked what kind of talents they like to see in management positions, business leaders consistently set imagination, creativity, and higher-order thinking at the top. Ironically, the value of reading and the intellectual faculties that it inculcates appear most clearly as active and engaged literacy declines. There is now a growing awareness of the consequences of nonreading to the workplace. In 2001 the National Association of Manufacturers polled its members on skill deficiencies among employees. Among hourly workers, poor reading skills ranked second, and 38 percent of employers complained that local schools inadequately taught reading comprehension. Corporate America makes similar complaints about a skill intimately related to reading -- writing. Last year, the College Board reported that corporations spend some $3.1 billion a year on remedial writing instruction for employees, adding that they ''express a fair degree of dissatisfaction with the writing of recent college graduates." If the 21st-century American economy requires innovation and creativity, solid reading skills and the imaginative growth fostered by literary reading are central elements in that program. The decline of reading is also taking its toll in the civic sphere. In a 2000 survey of college seniors from the top 55 colleges, the Roper Organization found that 81 percent could not earn a grade of C on a high school-level history test. A 2003 study of 15- to 26-year-olds' civic knowledge by the National Conference of State Legislatures concluded, ''Young people do not understand the ideals of citizenship . . . and their appreciation and support of American democracy is limited." It is probably no surprise that declining rates of literary reading coincide with declining levels of historical and political awareness among young people. One of the surprising findings of ''Reading at Risk" was that literary readers are markedly more civically engaged than nonreaders, scoring two to four times more likely to perform charity work, visit a museum, or attend a sporting event. One reason for their higher social and cultural interactions may lie in the kind of civic and historical knowledge that comes with literary reading. Unlike the passive activities of watching television and DVDs or surfing the Web, reading is actually a highly active enterprise. Reading requires sustained and focused attention as well as active use of memory and imagination. Literary reading also enhances and enlarges our humility by helping us imagine and understand lives quite different from our own. Indeed, we sometimes underestimate how large a role literature has played in the evolution of our national identity, especially in that literature often has served to introduce young people to events from the past and principles of civil society and governance. Just as more ancient Greeks learned about moral and political conduct from the epics of Homer than from the dialogues of Plato, so the most important work in the abolitionist movement was the novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin." Likewise our notions of American populism come more from Walt Whitman's poetic vision than from any political tracts. Today when people recall the Depression, the images that most come to mind are of the travails of John Steinbeck's Joad family from ''The Grapes of Wrath." Without a literary inheritance, the historical past is impoverished. In focusing on the social advantages of a literary education, however, we should not overlook the personal impact. Every day authors receive letters from readers that say, ''Your book changed my life." History reveals case after case of famous people whose lives were transformed by literature. When the great Victorian thinker John Stuart Mill suffered a crippling depression in late-adolescence, the poetry of Wordsworth restored his optimism and self-confidence -- a ''medicine for my state of mind," he called it. A few decades later, W.E.B. DuBois found a different tonic in literature, an escape from the indignities of Jim Crow into a world of equality. ''I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not," DuBois observed. ''Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls." Literature is a catalyst for education and culture. The evidence of literature's importance to civic, personal, and economic health is too strong to ignore. The decline of literary reading foreshadows serious long-term social and economic problems, and it is time to bring literature and the other arts into discussions of public policy. Libraries, schools, and public agencies do noble work, but addressing the reading issue will require the leadership of politicians and the business community as well. Literature now competes with an enormous array of electronic media. While no single activity is responsible for the decline in reading, the cumulative presence and availability of electronic alternatives increasingly have drawn Americans away from reading. Reading is not a timeless, universal capability. Advanced literacy is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural, and economic factors. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded. These are not the qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose. Dana Gioia is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Mon Apr 18 18:02:43 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 11:02:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] black test scores In-Reply-To: <200504181651.j3IGpP220647@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050418180243.41780.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Freedle finds that when one controls for SAT verbal score, blacks tend to do better on hard verbal questions and worse on easy verbal questions than do comparable whites.<< --I'm wondering if there are studies on test anxiety in different groups. When I'm anxious, I tend to remember only what I've read and forget things I've learned in the 3D world. Different kinds of information seem more accessible in different states of anxiety/relaxation. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From waluk at earthlink.net Mon Apr 18 18:53:59 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 11:53:59 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes In-Reply-To: <01C543DE.0D7CA380.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C543DE.0D7CA380.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42640247.4010609@earthlink.net> The Clinton era was pre-9-11. That must account for something other than Democrat vs. Republican. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Why compare the prosperity of the Clinton era with >higher taxes to the doldrums of the Bush era with >lower taxes? > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >- > > > From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 18:57:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 14:57:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? Message-ID: NYT: When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18blog.html April 18, 2005 When the Blogger Blogs, Can the Employer Intervene? By [1]TOM ZELLER Jr. There are about 10 million blogs out there, give or take, including one belonging to Niall Kennedy, an employee at Technorati, a small San Francisco-based company that, yes, tracks blogs. Like many employees at many companies, Mr. Kennedy has opinions, even when he is not working. One evening last month, he channeled one of those off-duty opinions into a satiric bit of artwork - an appropriation of a "loose lips sink ships" World War II-era propaganda poster altered to provide a harsh comment on the growing fears among corporations over the blogging activities of their employees. He then posted it on his personal Web log. But in a paradoxical turn, Mr. Kennedy's employer, having received some complaints about the artwork, stepped in and asked him to reconsider the posting and Mr. Kennedy complied, taking the image down. "The past day has been a huge wake-up call," Mr. Kennedy wrote soon afterward. "I see now that the voice of a company is not limited to top-level executives, vice presidents and public relations officers." As the practice of blogging has spread, employees like Mr. Kennedy are coming to the realization that corporations, which spend millions of dollars protecting their brands, are under no particular obligation to tolerate threats, real or perceived, from the activities of people who become identified with those brands, even if it is on their personal Web sites. They are also learning that the law offers no special protections for blogging - certainly no more than for any other off-duty activity. As Annalee Newitz, a policy analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group in Washington, put it, "What we found is there really is quite a bit of diversity in how employers are responding to blogging." A rising tide of employees have recently been reprimanded or let go for running afoul of their employers' taste or temperament on personal blogs, including a flight attendant for [2]Delta Air Lines who learned the hard way that the carrier frowns on cheeky photos while in uniform and a [3]Google employee who mused on the company's financial condition and was fired. Some interpreted these actions as meaning that even in their living rooms, even in their private basement computer caves, employees are required to be at least a little bit worried about losing their jobs if they write or post the wrong thing on their personal Web logs. "I would have expected that some of the louder, more strident voices on the Internet would have risen up in a frenzy over this," said Stowe Boyd, the president of Corante, a daily online news digest on the technology sector. "But that didn't happen." In Mr. Boyd's opinion, everything about what Mr. Kennedy did was protected speech. The use of trademarks was fair use in a satirical work, Mr. Boyd said, and it seemed unlikely that the company would be somehow liable for the off-duty actions of an employee, as Technorati executives argued. It was, in Mr. Boyd's eyes, an indication that corporate interests were eclipsing individual rights. "I don't know what else to say," he declared. "I'm astonished." But Ms. Newitz and others have cautioned that employees must be careful not to confuse freedom of speech with a freedom from consequences that might follow from what they say. Indeed, the vast majority of states are considered "at will" states - meaning that employees can quit, and employers can fire them, at will - without evident reason (barring statutory exceptions like race or religion, where discrimination would have to be proved). "There really are no laws that protect you," Ms. Newitz said. Martin H. Malin, a professor of law and director of the Institute for Law and the Workplace at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, said there were only a few exceptions. "It depends on what the blog is," he said, "what the content is, and whether there's any contractual protection for the employee." Those who work for the United States Postal Service, for instance, or a local sanitation department may have some special blogging privileges. That is because, depending on the circumstances, the online speech of public employees can be considered "of public concern," and enjoys a measure of protection, Professor Malin explained. Employees protected under some union contracts may also be shielded from summary dismissal for off-duty activities, at least without some sort of arbitration. "Lifestyle law" trends of the late 1980's and early 90's - sometimes driven by tobacco and alcohol lobbies - created state laws that protected employees from being fired for engaging in legal, off-duty activities, though no one is likely to be fired simply for blogging, but rather for violating some policy or practice in a blog. And bloggers who are neither supervisors nor managers and who can demonstrate that they are communicating with other workers about "wages, hours or working conditions" may warrant some protection under the National Labor Relations Act, Professor Malin said - even in nonunion enterprises. None of this, of course, answers the question of where the status of employee ends and that of private citizen begins. Some companies, like [4]Sun Microsystems, have wrapped both arms around blogging. Sun provides space for employees to blog ([5]blogs.sun.com), and while their darker impulses are presumably kept at bay by the arrangement, there are hundreds of freewheeling and largely unmonitored diaries supported by the company. [6]Microsoft, too, has benefited from the organic growth of online journaling by celebrity geeks now in its employ, like Robert Scoble, whose frank and uncensored musings about the company have developed a loyal following and given Microsoft some street credibility. But other companies are seeing a need for formalized blogging policies. Mark Jen, who was fired from Google in January after just two weeks, having made some ill-advised comments about the company on his blog (Google would not comment on Mr. Jen's dismissal, but confirmed that he no longer works for it), is now busy helping to draft a blogging policy for his new employer, Plaxo, an electronic address book updating service in Mountain View, Calif. "It was a very quick education for me at Google," Mr. Jen said. "I learned very quickly the complexities of a corporate environment." With Plaxo's blessing, Mr. Jen is soliciting public comment on the new blogging policy at [7]blog.plaxoed.com. Most of the points are the kinds of common-sense items that employees would do well to remember, particularly if they plan on identifying themselves as employees in their blogs, or discussing office matters online: don't post material that is obscene, defamatory, profane or libelous, and make sure that you indicate that the opinions expressed are your own. The policy also encourages employee bloggers to use their real names, rather than attempting anonymity or writing under a pseudonym. Bad idea, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Two weeks ago, the group published a tutorial on "how to blog safely," which included tips on avoiding getting fired. Chief among its recommendations: Blog anonymously. "Basically, we just want to caution people about how easy it is to find them online," Ms. Newitz said, "and that they are not just talking to their friends on their blogs. They're talking to everyone." But does that means that Mr. Kennedy, a short-timer, a product manager and by no means an executive at Technorati, carries the burden of representing the company into his personal blog? Technorati's vice president for engineering, Adam Hertz, responded: "It would be antithetical to our corporate values to force Niall to do anything in his blog. It's his blog." Yet with the spread of the Internet and of blogging, Mr. Hertz said, it would be foolish for companies to not spend some time discussing the art of public communications with their employees, and even train and prepare lower-level staff for these kinds of public relations situations. That said, Mr. Hertz stressed that the company had no interest in formalizing any complicated policies regarding an employee's activities outside the office. "I had a high school teacher," he recalled, "who used to say 'I have only two rules: Don't roller-skate in the hallway and don't be a damn fool.' We really value a company where people can think for themselves." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TOM%20ZELLER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TOM%20ZELLER&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=DAL 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=GOOG 4. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=SUNW 5. http://blogs.sun.com/ 6. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=MSFT 7. http://blog.plaxoed.com/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:03:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:03:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: It's Moore's Law, but Another Had the Idea First Message-ID: It's Moore's Law, but Another Had the Idea First http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/technology/18moore.html By [1]JOHN MARKOFF SAN FRANCISCO, April 17 - One of the cornerstones of Silicon Valley will mark an anniversary Tuesday. Forty years ago, Electronics magazine published Gordon E. Moore's celebrated article predicting that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would continue to double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future. Named Moore's Law several years later by the physicist Carver Mead, that simple observation has proven to be the bulwark of the world's most remarkable industry. Yet Mr. Moore was not the only one - or even the first - to observe the so-called scaling effect that has led to the exponential acceleration of computing power that is now expected to continue at least for the next decade. Before Mr. Moore's magazine article precisely plotted the increase in the number of transistors on a chip, beginning with 1, the computer scientist Douglas C. Engelbart had made a similar observation at the very dawn of the integrated-circuit era. Mr. Moore had heard Mr. Engelbart lecture on the subject, possibly in 1960. Mr. Engelbart would later be hailed as the inventor of the computer mouse as well as the leading developer of many technologies that underlie both the personal computer industry and the Internet. In a 2001 interview, Mr. Engelbart said that it was his thinking about the scaling down of circuits that gave him the confidence to move ahead with the design of an interactive computing system. "I was relieved because it wasn't as crazy as everyone thought," he said. Significantly, the two pioneers represent twin Silicon Valley cultures that have combined to create the digital economy. Mr. Moore, who co-founded [2]Intel, is an icon of the precise and perhaps narrower chip engineering discipline that today continues to progress by layering sheets of individual molecules, one on top of the other, and by making wires that are finer in diameter than a wavelength of light. "Gordon was the classic engineer," said Craig Barrett, Intel's chief executive, who had just begun to teach engineering at Stanford University when Mr. Moore made his famous prediction. The chart that accompanied his article was a plot that showed just five data points over seven years and extrapolated out into the future as far as 1975, when a single chip would be able to hold as many as 65,000 transistors. Forty years later, memory chip capacity has gone far beyond one billion of the tiny switches. Mr. Engelbart, in contrast, was the architect of a passionately held view that computing could extend or "augment" the power of the human mind. His ideas were set out most clearly in 1968, in a famous demonstration in San Francisco of his Pentagon-financed Augment computing system. Many things were shown to the world for the first time, including the mouse, videoconferencing, interactive text editing, hypertext and networking - basically the outlines of modern Internet-style computing. Mr. Engelbart had an epiphany in 1950, in which he imagined what would decades later become today's Internet-connected PC. He set about building it. At the time he had no idea of how he would build such a machine, but it soon became clear that it would require a computer that did not yet exist. Later he was offered a job at [3]Hewlett-Packard, but when he learned that the company had no plans to enter the computer business, he went to work instead at Stanford Research Institute, now SRI International. There he worked with a group of military-funded researchers who were attempting to build magnetic-based computing circuits. The military was interested in the technology because of its potential performance in outer space. With the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, however, the group realized that its work would soon fall by the wayside. Thinking about the idea of miniaturized circuitry, Mr. Engelbart realized that it would scale down to vastly smaller sizes than the current electronic comments. He had that insight because earlier he had worked as an electronics technician in the wind tunnel at the Ames Research Center, a NASA laboratory in Mountain View, Calif. There, aerodynamicists made models and scaled them up into complete airplanes. It was an easy conceptual leap to realize that integrated circuits would scale in the opposite direction. In 1959 he put his ideas into a paper, titled "Microelectronics and the Art of Similitude." In February 1960, he traveled to the International Circuit Conference in Philadelphia. There he explained to his audience that as chips scaled down, the new microelectronic engineers would have to worry about changing constraints, just as aerodynamicists had to worry about the macroworld. One person who has a clear memory of Mr. Engelbart's description is Mr. Moore, although he does not remember whether he heard him speak in Philadelphia or elsewhere. "The thing that I remember from it is his question if we would notice anything different if everything in the room was suddenly 10 times as large," he wrote in an e-mail message. "He answered it by suggesting that the chandelier might fall." Several historians pointed out that Mr. Engelbart's previous observation did nothing to detract from the significance of Mr. Moore's careful plotting of the trend. "It still should be called Moore's Law rather than Engelbart's Law," said Michael Riordan, a historian of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Science is still based on theory and experiment." As for Mr. Engelbart, the 1959 paper convinced him that the Augmentation machine he envisioned would be possible, because computing would be plentiful in the future. He was one of the first to grasp the implications of the new technology. Years later he recalled in an interview that he told his Philadelphia audience, "Boy, are there going to be surprises over there." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JOHN%20MARKOFF&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JOHN%20MARKOFF&inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=INTC 3. http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=HPQ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:05:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:05:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: An Ancient Masterpiece or a Master's Forgery? Message-ID: Arts > Art & Design > An Ancient Masterpiece or a Master's Forgery? http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/arts/design/18laoc.html By [1]KATHRYN SHATTUCK A scholar has suggested that "Laoco?n," a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery - possibly by Michelangelo himself. Her contention has stirred some excitement and considerable exasperation among art historians in the Classical and Renaissance fields. Many other challenges to accepted attributions have faded quickly into oblivion. The scholar advancing the theory, Lynn Catterson, a summer lecturer in art history at Columbia University, presented her argument in a talk at the university's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America on April 6. Maneuvering through a wealth of material - including Michelangelo's drawings, records of his banking activity and his acknowledged reputation as an avid seeker of renown and wealth - she said, "He had the motives and the means." The strikingly naturalistic sculpture, 951/2 inches tall, depicts a deadly attack on the Trojan priest Laoco?n and his two sons by writhing sea snakes dispatched by Athena - or, some say, Poseidon - after Laoco?n warned against admitting the Trojan horse during the siege of Troy. It resides in the Vatican Museums in Rome. In a telephone interview, Dr. Catterson cited a pen study by Michelangelo dating from 1501 depicting the rear of a male torso that resembles the back of the "Laoco?n" - and Michelangelo's documented finesse at copying. "That the Laoco?n was carved by Michelangelo explains why then, and why now, its effect is mesmerizing," she said. Richard Brilliant, Anna S. Garbedian emeritus professor of the humanities at Columbia and an authority on classical antiquities - his works include "My Laoco?n: Alternative Claims in the Interpretation of Artworks" (University of California Press, 2000) - said that Dr. Catterson's contention was "noncredible on any count." For one thing, he said, "she made absolutely no reference to ancient sculptures that could be related to the 'Laoco?n,' " including a large body of ancient fragments found just before World War II at Sperlonga, a site near Rome where Tiberius had a luxurious villa, that refer specifically to episodes of the Trojan war. Some scholars have also found fault in relating the "Laoco?n" to the Michelangelo drawing of a torso, now at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. "To my eye, the Michelangelo drawing does not bear a close resemblance to the torso of the Vatican Laoco?n," said Katherine E. Welch, an associate professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and an expert in Hellenistic and Roman imperial antiquities, in an e-mail message. "The latter is distinguished by a vigorous torsion or twist, which is lacking in the drawing." The "Laoco?n" was placed at the Vatican Museums by Pope Julius II not long after it was discovered on Jan. 14, 1506, on the Esquiline Hill. Upon hearing the news, the pope immediately dispatched the architect Giuliano da Sangallo to view it; Sangallo brought along his colleague Michelangelo Buonarroti. The men identified the statue as that described by the first-century Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History," who called it "a work superior to any painting and any bronze," one "carved from a single block in accordance with an agreed plan by those eminent craftsmen Hagesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus, all of Rhodes." Dr. Catterson, 48, said she did not set out to debunk scholarship on the "Laoco?n" when she settled on a dissertation topic seven years ago: "How come Michelangelo was a sculptor? Who trained him?" Her curiosity was soon aroused. As a young artist under the patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Michelangelo had witnessed the Medici family's willingness to spend considerable sums on ancient Greek or Roman objects, which he would have had ample opportunity to study and perhaps try to recreate, she said. He was an astute forger who earned his Bacchus commission after a carved sleeping Cupid that he had buried in the ground to "age" had been sold to a wealthy cardinal in 1495. Then there was recent scholarship on bank withdrawals and deposits between 1498 and 1501 that suggests that the sculptor was buying chunks of marble while accumulating substantial income that could not be accounted for, Dr. Catterson said, and several letters from Michelangelo to his father that spoke of some marbles but failed to explain how he was using the others. Dr. Catterson suggests that Michelangelo, a manic worker who carved on as few as three hours of sleep a night, would have had the time to create the "Laoco?n" while working simultaneously on the "Piet?," for which he signed a contract in 1498 and which he completed by July 1500. He had his own house, which included ample work space, and a trusted assistant, Piero d'Argenta, she said. He also had access to Greek marble, found in excavations around Rome. That the "Laoco?n" is made of seven pieces of marble may suggest that Michelangelo needed to transport the finished work unnoticed to its point of discovery, where it could have been assembled and joined on the spot, Dr. Catterson added. William E. Wallace, a professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of several books on Michelangelo, was not as quick as other art historians to dismiss Dr. Catterson's claims. "Until I read the full argument in a reputable academic publication, I'm going to reserve a final judgment," he said, noting that since 1996, 17 discoveries of or attributions to Michelangelo have made national news - and then been discredited or forgotten. "My first reaction was: 'Oh, come on. Not another.' However, the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. I think this one has the greatest lasting power." For Dr. Catterson everything was just a little too perfect about the discovery of the "Laoco?n," which was in fairly good shape after presumably some 1,500 years when it was found by a farmer more or less where Pliny had predicted. "It's almost as though it was discovered to order," she said. But to Leo Steinberg, a prominent Michelangelo scholar, the evidence simply does not add up - neither the time nor the bank receipts nor the secretiveness. "We know that at least a dozen different people would have been involved in the process," he said. "And we know that Michelangelo made many enemies who would have been delighted to accuse him of a forgery of that scale. All of this strains credulity that in an Italian community at that time in the 1490's, there was no gossip, no squealing." Professor Wallace agreed that hard proof was lacking but said he was willing to consider Dr. Catterson's argument. "We'll never have the certitude a scientist gets," he said. "It can only be tested by the weight of scholarly opinion and time. "But Lynn is an excellent scholar and well trained. And the intriguing thing is that nobody who studies classical art in a way wants the 'Laoco?n.' They find it kind of a Hellenistic embarrassment, maybe because it really doesn't look like anything else comparable in the history of classical art." "And besides," he added, "we can never prove that Shakespeare really wrote 'Hamlet' at this point. They're still arguing about it." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=KATHRYN%20SHATTUCK&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=KATHRYN%20SHATTUCK&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:11:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:11:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: On the Sidelines of the Most Important Civil Rights Battle Since 'Brown' Message-ID: Opinion > Editorial Observer: On the Sidelines of the Most Important Civil Rights Battle Since 'Brown' http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/opinion/18mon4.html [So the tests are no longer held to be racially biased? Note that closing the gap is still important to this writer.] EDITORIAL OBSERVER By [1]BRENT STAPLES The civil rights establishment was once a fiercely independent force that bedeviled politicians on both sides of the aisle and evaluated policies based on whether those policies harmed or helped the poor. This tradition of independence has disappeared. Over the last two decades, in fact, the old-line civil rights groups have evolved into wholly owned subsidiaries of the Democratic Party. The groups are disinclined to turn on their friends - or to openly embrace even beneficial policies that happen to have a Republican face. This posture has been painfully evident in the debate surrounding the No Child Left Behind education law, a signature Bush administration reform that also happens to be the best hope for guaranteeing black and Latino children a chance at equal education. The law is not perfect and will need adjustments. But its core requirement that the states educate minority children to the same standards as white children breaks with a century-old tradition of educational unfairness. The new law could potentially surpass Brown v. Board of Education in terms of widening access to high-quality public education. The same civil rights groups that sing hosannas to Brown have been curiously muted - and occasionally even hostile - to No Child Left Behind. But the groups have mainly been missing from the debate, according to Dr. James Comer, the educational reformer and Yale University psychiatrist. "They have been absent," Dr. Comer told me last week. "They need to pay attention to what works. They need to be in the middle of the fight because these are our kids." Why are civil rights groups standing on the sidelines instead of fighting to ensure that this law succeeds? The reasons are numerous and complex. One of the most obvious is that civil rights officials and some black lawmakers are wary of embracing a law associated with a conservative Republican president. Like many other Americans, people in the civil rights establishment typically argue that it is unfair to enforce No Child Left Behind - and to require higher achievement from minority children and better performance from their teachers - until the government provides enough money to do the job. There is no question that the law is underfinanced. But how much money is "enough" to proceed? What if the ideal dollar amount takes 25 years to materialize and what if it never arrives at all? In this context, waiting for "enough money" becomes an argument for maintaining the disastrous status quo and sacrificing yet another generation of minority students. Next up is the antitesting argument. Civil rights activists commonly embrace the popular but erroneous view that the reading and math tests associated with No Child Left Behind are culturally biased or unfair to minority children. Paradoxically, those who hold this view are often middle- and upper-class African-Americans who have law degrees and Ph.D.'s, which require rigorous tests and high achievement. The simple achievement tests required under the law are essential to the objective of closing the education gap. By arguing that these tests are inappropriate and culturally biased, these members of the liberal black elite have unwittingly embraced the worst stereotypes about the poor. They have also given cover to politicians who believe that the achievement gap can never be closed and that minority children can never reach the levels attained by their white, affluent counterparts. The most complex and deep-seated objections to No Child Left Behind are clearly emanating from teachers and school administrators, who have come under increasing pressure to improve student performance. They have always wielded an outsized influence in the black community, especially in the days of segregation, when they made up that community's largest, most visible and most respected professional group. Members of the teacher corps have historically played powerful roles in civic organizations, including churches, while forming the backbone of civil rights groups like the N.A.A.C.P. Thanks in part to the civil rights movement, which expanded job opportunities, the teacher corps in the black community is not what it used to be. Many black children now attend school in educational dead zones, where teachers are two or three times more likely to be uncredentialed or unqualified than in the suburbs. It should come as no surprise that minority children lag behind. The educational dead zones have become part of a vicious cycle. As experienced teachers retire, they are replaced by people who were themselves educated in dismal public schools and sent on to teachers' colleges that are often little more than diploma mills. The federal government tried to fix this problem in the late 1990's when it encouraged teachers' colleges to beef up curriculum and student performance in exchange for the federal dollars they get in subsidies and student loans. This effort failed, but it spawned No Child Left Behind, which requires the states to place highly qualified teachers in every classroom. This is a difficult moment for the civil rights movement, which is understandably fearful of taking positions that would discomfit the teachers among its supporters. But standing silently on the sidelines of the debate about teacher preparedness and No Child Left Behind is hardly the answer. Unless the civil rights establishment adopts a stronger and more public position, it will inevitably be viewed as having missed the most important civil rights battle of the last half-century. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=BRENT%20STAPLES&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=BRENT%20STAPLES&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:13:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:13:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Holy Rollers and Papal Perfectas Message-ID: Holy Rollers and Papal Perfectas http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/opinion/18delaney.html By FRANK DELANEY MY mother voiced many moral dismissals in her time, the chief of which ran, "That fellow - he'd bet on two flies going up a wall!" Oh, what in Heaven can she be thinking now, from her ringside seat up there near God, as she watches Paddy Power, Ireland's best-known bookie, run the odds on the papal conclave that begins in the Sistine Chapel today? "Simony," I imagine she'd cry, referring to that rarely discussed sin of "traffic in sacred things." And, in her encyclopedic way, she would then cite a 17th-century papal bull that explicitly forbade betting on the transition between pontiffs. But Mother would evince no surprise; nor, I expect, does anyone in Ireland, a country where, often, to bet is to live. First a piece of Irish wisdom: you should always listen to a bookie. For they have a saying, "Money tells a good story," and somewhere in their odds is a kind of science-fiction existentialism that decrees that we, the people, know everything. In other words, betting patterns often make for good, unconscious soothsaying. Therefore, if the smart money is telling it right, the next pope will be one of the following three men: Joseph Ratzinger, the 77-year-old German who is dean of the College of Cardinals; Carlo Martini, 78, the former archbishop of Milan, perhaps the world's most powerful Roman Catholic archdiocese; and, on their heels, Jean-Marie Lustiger, the 78-year-old former archbishop of Paris who, Mr. Power's helpful Web site says (with questionable historical accuracy), would be "the first converted Jew ever elevated to the papacy." These three eminences have been leading the field for days, with odds quoted along a range from 3-1 to 7-2. Another early favorite, Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, has at last glance dropped back to 8-1; and the money moved to Cardinal Cl?udio Hummes from Brazil - two weeks ago he was 12-1, but now one can get you only eight on the Latin American. So, how did the favorites race to the front? Usually a bookie takes his measure from a combination of recent performance, street smarts and insider information. So far, much of the $200,000 or so Mr. Power has received has gone on Cardinal Ratzinger. His strong showing comes, it seems, from an Internet rumor that the German's kingmakers had already, even in the last days of the ailing John Paul II, collared half of the votes of the 117-member college. Stay with that word "rumor"; that may be as solid as it gets because, for another favorite, Cardinal Lustiger, we need a jab of true faith. This good man surged from long shot to front-runner in a matter of days. The impetus? Well, ahem, it started some time back, in 1139 to be exact, when an Irish saint called Malachy received (in a vision, naturally) the identities of all future popes. And here we have a deeper, more worrying problem. St. Malachy prophesied that only two popes would preside after the pontiff whom his adherents recognize as John Paul II, and that the second-to-last would be born a Jew. "Smart" money? Hmm. Growing up in Ireland, I lived among relics and racehorses, in farms where the limestone bedrock made for beautiful monastery walls and, deposited as calcium in the water, great equine bones. I profoundly understand this bizarre combination of sacred and profane. As a child I watched opportunistic men peddle cigarettes and ice cream where people flocked to see statues that bled, smiled or trembled in local miracles. And every parish priest worth his salt had a horse or a piece of a horse. Today, it seems, all those forces have fused in me to the point where I can scarcely resist a stake. Yet, once a Catholic always a Catholic, and before I step up and put my money down I have to recognize that I'm up against unseen forces. Meaning, how can I consider anything as a safe bet when divine intervention remains a factor in the conclave? Still, were the lure of gambling to overpower the fear of God in me (and, God knows, it might), I'd have a crack at a few of the outsiders. For instance, at 25-1, Angelo Scola is an interesting bet; he's the patriarch of Venice, speaks several languages (including English) and is only 63 years old. And have a look at the Argentine, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also showing strongly at 12-1. And though he is not even given odds (in Irish racing parlance, a "rank outsider"), Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia is a very effective Vatican operator and truly worth a piece of my money; after all, in 1977 Karol Wojtyla was such a long shot he had scarcely left the paddock before the others were round the first bend. In the end, of course, those who want to play Paddy Power's game will have to be careful as to whom they openly fancy; as every Vatican watcher knows, "He who goes in a pope comes out a cardinal." Obviously, mutterings of "sacrilege" and "irreverence" have been heard in old Hibernia. (Even though there may be a fine point of canon law as to whether Mr. Power is actually making bets or merely taking them.) Have no truck with such killing of joy, I say - God may not be a gambler, but isn't that because he never felt the need? And, anyway, who invented forgiveness for human frailty? He hasn't yet struck down, so far as I can tell, any of these holy rollers. But if you still feel it's sacrilegious to bet on these contenders, you can have a theologically safer flutter on the name of the next pope: Benedict (3-1), John Paul (7-2), Pius (6-1), Peter (8-1) and John (10-1) are among the favorites. An 80-1 outsider of outsiders is the name Damian (which would give shudders, I guess, to moviegoers who remember "The Omen"). Or you can bet on the number of days this conclave will take - one day (14-1), three days (5-4) or six days or more at 7-1. THERE may be more to come. On Saturday, in Rome, Mr. Power set up his stall to shout the odds across St. Peter's Square. Soon enough, some men, whom he described to me in a phone conversation as "the undercover police," moved him on; he was, he said, "minutes away from the slammer." He's been taking hundreds of bets, though, from the Italians, and waiting to see how much he eventually will have to pay out on what he calls "holy smoke." Even my mother would, I think, smile at that coinage - but she might not let God see her. Frank Delaney is the author, most recently, of "Ireland: A Novel." From Thrst4knw at aol.com Mon Apr 18 19:13:55 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:13:55 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: <15d.4f1e15b7.2f9560f3@aol.com> http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050418_bactfrm.htm Intelligent bacteria? For the most primitive beings in the web of life, some researchers claim, ? simple? might not mean ?stupid.? Posted April 18, 2005 Special to World Science Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does compared to a sponge. A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some researchers say can organize themselves into different types of extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy Eshel Ben-Jacob, Tel Aviv University, Israel) Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, some researchers have found. The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism. But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence. Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it?a complex system of chemical ?signals? that flit both within and among bacteria, helping them decide what to do and where to go. Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than machine-like. The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to ?learn? tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs?typical sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional computers. The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria have ?a minimal form of intelligence.? Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is that for one of those properties, it?s not clear whether bacteria exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research should focus, he wrote. Cooperation and altruism The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that bacteria might possess a crude intelligence?though few scientists would go as far as to use that word. One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial behavior. This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of environment in which to live and find sustenance. Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus xanthus can bunch up to form a ?predatory? colony that moves and changes direction collectively toward possible food sources. Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection. But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these behaviors reflected intelligence. For instance, bacterial ?altruism? may be a simple outcome of evolution that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the University of Bonn?s Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August?s issue of the research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn?t suggest that any process akin to thinking was at work. But one thing that ties these various behaviors together is that they all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by Hellingwerf. Mousetraps, learning and language These mechanisms work in a way somewhat akin to the American board game Mousetrap. In this game, you try to catch your opponent?s plastic mouse using a rambling contraption that starts working when you turn a crank. This rotates gears, that push a lever, that moves a shoe, that kicks a bucket, that sends a ball down stairs and?after several more hair-raising steps of the sort?drops a basket on the mouse. Molecular signals inside cells work through somewhat similar chain reactions, except the pieces involved are molecules. A typical way these molecular chain reactions work is that small clusters of atoms, called phosphate groups, are passed among various molecules. One example of what such a system could accomplish: a bit of food brushing against the cell could start a series of events that lead inside the cell and activate genes that generate the chemicals that digest the food. A single bacterium can contain dozens of such systems operating simultaneously for different purposes. And compared to the board game, the cellular systems have additional features that make them more complicated and versatile. For instance, some of these bacterial contraptions, when set in motion, lead to the formation of extra copies of themselves. These tricks can lead to phenomena with aspects of learning and language. For example, a shortage of a nutrient in a bacterium?s neighborhood can activate a system that makes the microbe attract the nutrient toward itself more strongly. The system also produces extra copies of itself, researchers have found. Thus if shortage recurs later, the bacterium is better prepared. This is a form of ?learning,? Hellingwerf and colleagues wrote in the August, 2001 issue of the Journal of Bacteriology. Brain cells can operate in an analogous way: a brain cell can grow more sensitive to a signal that it receives repeatedly, resulting in a reinforcement of signaling circuits and learning. The bacterial versions of ?mousetrap? have other tricks as well. For instance, some of them seem to contain components influenced by not just one stimulus, but by two or more. Thus the chain reactions merge. The component receiving these stimuli adds the strength of each to give a response whose strength is proportional to the sum. Although the full complexities of bacterial signaling are far from understood, many researchers believe the systems helps bacteria to communicate. For instance, some bacteria, when starving, emit molecules that serve as stress signals to their neighbors, write Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University and colleagues in last August?s issue of Trends in Microbiology. The signals launch a process in which the group can transform itself to create tough, walled structures that wait out tough times to reemerge later. This transformation involves a complex dialogue that reveals a ?social intelligence,? the researchers added. Each bacterium uses the signals to assess the group?s condition, compares this with its own state, and sends out a molecular ?vote? for or against transformation. The majority wins. Collectively, the researchers wrote, ?bacteria can glean information from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information in a ? meaningful? way, develop common knowledge and learn from past experience.? Some can even collectively change their chemical ?dialect? to freeze out ?cheaters? who exploit group efforts for their own selfish interest, the researchers claimed. Not everyone is convinced by these claims. Rosemary J. Redfield of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, has argued that the supposed communication molecules actually exist mainly to tell bacteria how closed-in their surroundings are, which is useful information to them for various reasons. Inside-out To properly assess if bacterial signals constitute intelligence, whether of a social or individual brand, Hellingwerf and some other researchers work from the inside out. Rather than focusing on the behaviors, which are open to differing interpretations, they focus on the systems of interactions followed by the molecules. These systems, it is hoped, have distinct properties that can be measured and compared against similar interactions in known intelligent beings. For instance, if these bacterial systems operate similarly to networks in the brain, it would provide a weighty piece of evidence in favor of the bacterial intelligence. Hellingwerf has set himself a more modest goal, comparing bacterial signaling not to the brain, but to the brain-like, human-made neural network devices. Such an effort has a simple motivation. Demonstrating that bacterial signaling possesses every important feature of neural networks would suggest at least that microbial capabilities rival those of devices with proven ability to tackle simple problems using known rules of brain function?rather than robot-like calculations, which are very different. To understand how one could do such a comparison requires a brief explanation of how neural networks work, and how they differ from traditional computers. Computers are good at following precise instructions, but terrible at even simple, common-sense tasks that lack definite rules, like the recognition of the difference between male and female. Neural networks, like humans, can do this because they are more flexible, and they learn?even though they can be built using computers. They are a set of simulated ?brain cells? set to pass ?signals? among themselves through simulated ?connections.? Some information that can be represented as a set of numbers, such as a digitized photograph, is fed to a first set of ?cells? in such a way that each cell gets a number. Each cell is then set to ?transmit? all, part or none of that number to one or more other cells. How big a portion of the number is passed on to each, depends on the simulated ?strength? of the connections that are programmed into the system. Each of those cells, in turn, are set to do something with the numbers they receive, such as add them or average them?and then transmit all or part of them to yet another cell. Numbers ricochet through the system this way until they arrive at a final set of ?output? cells. These cells are set to give out a final answer?based on the numbers in them?in the form of yet another number. For example, the answer could be 0 for male, 1 for female. Such a system, when new, will give random answers, because the connections are initially set at random. However, after each attempt at the problem, a human ?tells? the system whether it was right or wrong. The system is designed to then change the strength of the connections to improve the answer for the next try. To do this, the system calculates to what extent a change in strength of each connection previously contributed to giving a right or wrong answer. This information tells the system how to change the strengths to give better results. Over many attempts, the system?s accuracy gradually improves, often reaching nearly human-like performance on a given task. Such systems not only work quite well for simple problems, many researchers believed they capture all the key features of real brain cells, though in a drastically simplified way. The devices also have similarities to the messaging systems in bacteria. But how deep are the resemblances? To answer this, Hellingwerf looked at four properties that neural-network experts have identified as essential for such devices to work. He then examined whether bacterial signaling fits each of the criteria. The four properties are as follows. First, a neural network must have multiple sub-systems that work simultaneously, or ?in parallel.? Neural networks do this, because signals follow multiple pathways at once, in effect carrying out multiple calculations at once. Traditional computers can?t do this; they conduct one at a time. Bacteria do fit the standard, though, because they can contain many messaging networks acting simultaneously, Hellingwerf observes. Second, key components of the network must carry out logical operations. This means, in the case of a neural network, that single elements of the network combine signals from two or more other elements, and pass the result on to a third according to some mathematical rule. Regular computers also have this feature. Bacteria probably do too, Hellingwerf argues, based on the way that parts of their signaling systems add up inputs from different sources. The third property is ?auto-amplification.? This describes the way some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions. Hellingwerf maintains that bacteria show this property, as when, for example, some of their signaling systems create more copies of themselves as they run. The fourth property is where the rub lies for bacteria. This feature, called crosstalk, means that the system must not consist just of separate chain reactions: rather, different chain reactions have to connect, so that the way one operates can change the way another runs. Crosstalk is believed to underlie an important form of memory called associative memory, the ability to mentally connect two things with no obvious relationship. A famous example is the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov?s dog, who drooled at the ring of a bell because experience had taught him food invariably followed the sound. Crosstalk has been found many times in bacteria, Hellingwerf wrote?but the strength of the crosstalk ?signals? are hundreds or thousands of times weaker than those that follow the main tracks of the chain reactions. Moreover, ?clear demonstrations of associative memory have not yet been detected in any single bacterial cell,? he added, and this is an area ripe for further research. If bacteria can indeed communicate, it seems they may be holding quite a bit back from us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:20:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:20:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: With Terror in Mind, a Formulaic Way to Parse Sentences Message-ID: With Terror in Mind, a Formulaic Way to Parse Sentences http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/technology/circuits/03next.html 5.3.5 WHAT'S NEXT By NOAH SHACHTMAN MAYBE sixth-grade English was more helpful than you thought. One of the dullest grammar exercises is being used to help find potential terrorists, and save companies a bundle. Diagramming sentences - picking out subject, verb, object, adjective and other parts of speech - has been a staple of middle and high school grammar lessons for decades. Now, with financing from the Central Intelligence Agency, a California firm is using the technique to comb through e-mail messages and chat room talks, which can be a rich lode of corporate and government information, and a tough one to mine. Figuring out the connections among people, places and things is something computer algorithms do pretty well, as long as that information is structured, or categorized and put into a database. Looking through a company's customer file for a person named Bonds, for example, is fairly simple. But if the data is unstructured - if the word "bonds" hasn't been classified as the name of a ballplayer or as an investment option - searching becomes much more difficult. For people in business or in public service, only 20 percent or so of their information is kept in formal databases, noted Nick Patience, an analyst with the 451 Group, a technology research firm. The rest is unstructured, tucked away in e-mail messages, call logs, memos and instant messages. Attensity, based in Palo Alto, Calif., and financed in part by In-Q-Tel, the C.I.A.'s investment arm, has developed a method to parse electronic documents almost instantly, and diagram all of the sentences inside. ("Moby-Dick," for instance, took all of nine and a half seconds.) By labeling subjects and verbs and other parts of speech, Attensity's software gives the documents a definable structure, a way to fit into a database. And that helps turn day-to-day chatter into information that is relevant and usable. "They take the language that people use every day and compile it in a way that a machine can use," Mr. Patience said. "And that allows people to start using this tremendous amount of intelligence which has gone untapped." Whirlpool, the home appliance manufacturer, is now using Attensity software to help cull information from the 400,000 customer service calls the company receives each month. Tom Welke, a Whirlpool general manager, said the company realized it needed help in March 2002, during a microwave oven recall. The machines were arcing, producing electrical sparks, which caused the food inside to smoke. Mr. Welke decided to pore through records of recent customer calls by searching for the words "arcing" and "smoke." His team found 18,500 records that matched. Six people then spent a weekend reading the results, eventually coming up with 700 calls from customers potentially related to the problem. As a comparison, Mr. Welke then ran the same records through a program from Attensity, which had recently paid him a sales call. "It could tell if the microwave was smoking or if the chicken was smoking hot or if the customer was eating smoked chicken," he said. "It came up with 542 instances in about 10 seconds." Whirlpool is now spending a quarter-million dollars a year on Attensity's expertise, joining companies like John Deere, General Motors and Honeywell as Attensity customers. But wringing profits out of unstructured data for corporate America is only about 40 percent of the software maker's business. The rest is in government work, for groups like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The software helps federal researchers look for clues to terrorist and criminal activities in "the text from the dispatches from around the world, the field reports, the newspaper articles and the chat rooms," said David L. Bean, Attensity's co-founder. "The intelligence community has plenty of systems for doing six degrees of separation, for putting two and two together," Dr. Bean said. "But they need structured data in order to do it. We give them that structure." The intelligence agencies declined to discuss whether they use the software. But Kris Alexander, a former intelligence analyst for the United States military's Central Command, noted that "putting unstructured information into anything that would organize it would be very helpful." "We have guys who can crack hard drives," Mr. Alexander said. "Getting the information out is easy. The hard part is sharing it, and organizing it, so that everybody in an agency, even nonexperts, can use it." Attensity's algorithms can do more than get a document ready to categorize, however. The software ferrets out meaning in sentences as they are being diagramed. If the word "purchase" is used as a verb, the person doing the buying is tagged as a possible customer. If the phrase "plastic explosive" is used as an object, the subject is labeled as a potential enemy. For now, though, Attensity works only with English. That is a weakness the company's competitors in the world of structuring data are quick to point out. Inxight Software, of Sunnyvale, Calif., for example, produces software that turns grammatical relationships into mathematical formulas, allowing it to parse documents in 31 languages. Intelliseek, of Cincinnati, plucks entities - proper names and places - from blog entries as a way to categorize them. The company's software will also characterize a document as positive or negative based on the words it contains. Oracle and the other major database makers also build in some limited functions for extracting information from unstructured texts. But those systems usually rely on the person using it teaching the algorithms what they need to know - that in a legal document, for example, "sued" and "filed charges" are rough equivalents. With Attensity's software, that kind of instruction is often unnecessary. "Attensity shows how the words all relate to one another - all the actors, objects and actions in a document, and how they connect," said Gayle von Eckartsberg, a spokeswoman for In-Q-Tel, which also provides financing for Inxight and Intelliseek. Perfect sentences are not required for the software to work, said Dr. Bean, the son of a high school English teacher. Instead of using strict grammar laws, Attensity relies on constantly reapplying heuristics - rules of thumb - to sort out subject from object. Dangling participles, misspelled words and grammar-mangling slang can all be handled, allowing Attensity to crunch Internet relay chats, instant messenger conversations and other King's English refugees as easily as it would parse a textbook. But that does not mean, Dr. Bean added, that students should stop doing their grammar homework or paying attention in school. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:22:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:22:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: 'Boss Tweed': When the King of New York Was the King of Corruption Message-ID: NYT: 'Boss Tweed': When the King of New York Was the King of Corruption http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/books/11book.html By [1]WILLIAM GRIMES BOSS TWEED: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York By Kenneth D. Ackerman Illustrated. 464 pages. Carroll & Graf Publishers. $27. The imposing marble building at 52 Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan, recently converted into the headquarters for the Department of Education, has long been one of the city's great marvels, and not for its architecture. Built as a courthouse, it was budgeted at $250,000 in 1858, when the first plans were drawn up, but between 1862 and 1870 the city poured as much as $12 million into its construction, or something like $240 million in current dollars. Officially, the building was the New York County Courthouse, but New Yorkers then and now know it as the Tweed Courthouse, in honor of William M. Tweed, the political boss of bosses, who turned its construction into a private enrichment scheme for himself and his cronies and who, in the years after the Civil War, made New York politics a byword for shameless corruption. As the head of Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine, and commissioner of public works, he dispensed patronage, bought and sold political appointments, rigged elections, controlled judges, paid off the press and looted the city treasury. He had a high old time doing it, too. In "Boss Tweed," Kenneth D. Ackerman, a freelance historian who has written two books on the Gilded Age, chronicles Tweed's rise and fall, from his early days as the head of a volunteer fire company to his reign as the city's undisputed political overlord, a position that he abused with gusto until chronic overreaching finally brought him down, undone by a disgruntled former associate who turned over incriminating documents to The New York Times. "Boss Tweed," although erratically narrated and poorly organized, manages to get the job done, in large part because Mr. Ackerman has his hands on a terrific story with compelling characters. Tweed, of course, is worth his weight in gold. He was a natural politician, a gregarious, good-natured backslapper who, by handing out jobs and charity, earned the love and loyalty of the lower orders, especially the Irish immigrants despised by the city's establishment. He was, in one description, "a hearty boon companion, a lover of his friends and generous to 'the boys.' " He stole shamelessly and flaunted his wealth, setting up multiple, richly decorated residences and traveling by private yacht or private railway car. At six feet and nearly 300 pounds, he was physically imposing and a cartoonist's dream. Thomas Nast, whose caricatures in Harper's Weekly helped turn the tide against Tweed, depicted him with an enormous stomach, an oversize diamond pinned to his shirt, and, in one cartoon, a moneybag instead of a head. Mr. Ackerman draws vivid portraits of the inner circle known as the Tweed Ring, a grasping, venal crew led by the mayor, A. Oakey Hall, a man fond of stylish clothes and execrable puns. (After breaking a leg, he wrote in a letter, "In every way I realize I am like poor France - disordered - and especially in the Bonapartes.") "Elegant Oakey," as his friends called him, was a lightweight. The truly dirty work went to Richard (Slippery Dick) Connolly, the city comptroller, and the sullen, publicity-shy parks commissioner, Peter B. Sweeny. The Tweed Ring siphoned off millions from public-works projects and sales of city bonds. Favored contractors kicked back a hefty percentage of the inflated bills that they submitted, often for work that was never done or for materials never purchased. Tweed himself made several fortunes buying real estate on streets scheduled for improvements and by making his own company the city's official printer. The city tolerated Tweed, for a time, because the economy was booming. Manufacturing was up, Wall Street was on a roll and property values, in part because of the city's ambitious public works projects, were soaring. "It seemed like a great free ride, especially for the banks and brokerage houses making huge commissions on the bond sales," Mr. Ackerman writes. "Tweed economics - borrow, spend and keep some for yourself - made sense to New Yorkers. Even the poor benefited." Leo Hershkowitz, in his 1977 revisionist history, "Tweed's New York: A Closer Look," argued that Tweed was in fact a kind of hero who enfranchised the working man, helped create some of the city's greatest public works and institutions and, in the end, took the fall for the crimes of others. It is one of the weaknesses of "Boss Tweed" that Mr. Ackerman, who clearly disagrees with this view, never addresses the argument directly (or, for that matter, ever explains in what way Tweed "conceived the soul of modern New York," as the book's subtitle has it). Eventually, as the Ring grew ever greedier, the city's economy felt the pinch. Between 1869 and 1871, New York's debt tripled, to $97 million from $36.3 million, with interest payments alone approaching $10 million a year. Foreign investors began looking askance at New York bonds, especially when The New York Times, in 1870, began a relentless campaign attacking Tweed and the Ring. Just why the newspaper chose to take on the Ring remains unclear. Initially, it had no damning evidence, only deep suspicions. That changed in July 1871 when a Tammany insider with a grudge dropped off a sheaf of documents at the newspaper's offices on Park Row. They contained the paper trail linking Tweed and his cronies to phony bills and vouchers totaling $6.3 million. The Times presented the information in loving detail, while Nast turned out one acid-etched cartoon after another. The days of the Boss were numbered. Indictment, conviction and prison followed. Even as his cronies fled to foreign parts or cut deals with the prosecution, Tweed remained good-humored and unrepentant. He played the game of New York politics fair and square, which is to say, he stole with both hands but always kept his word when it came time to spread the money around to his followers and flunkies. "The fact is New York politics were always dishonest - long before my time," he said in a jailhouse interview. "There never was a time you couldn't buy the Board of Aldermen." A politician, he added, "takes things as they are." Tweed and his well-oiled political machine provided the model for big-city bosses for generations to come, and, crooked though he was, he remains in many ways a tremendously appealing figure. Mr. Ackerman has it right when he writes, "Except for his stealing, Tweed would have been a great man; but then had he been honest, he wouldn't have been Tweed and would not have left nearly so great a mark." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=WILLIAM%20GRIMES&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=WILLIAM%20GRIMES&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:25:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:25:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: 36 Hours: Middleburg, Va. Message-ID: Travel > Escapes > 36 Hours: Middleburg, Va. http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/travel/escapes/11hours.html By JILLIAN DUNHAM [This is of no particular import, except that Sarah and I have eaten in the famous inn with her parents a few times and that Linda Tripp, the only decent person in the Clinton scandals, has moved there.] JUST 40 miles from the halls of Congress, Middleburg leaves Washington's blue suits and red ties behind for jodhpurs and riding helmets - though on its narrow streets, lined with historic buildings, an 18th-century powdered wig wouldn't look out of place. Olympic equestrians, country squires and political power brokers mingle in the brick and stone downtown while out in the surrounding green hills, thousands of equine residents luxuriate at well-tended stables. Middleburg has long been a retreat from the limelight for public figures. John F. Kennedy spent weekends there during his presidency, and Jackie rode in the local fox hunts. Elizabeth Taylor and Senator John Warner had their low-key wedding at his Middleburg estate (he sold it after the divorce). Linda Tripp fled to Middleburg from her worst-best-friend notoriety and now designs Christmas ornaments for her husband's East Washington Street shop. Like most old-money retreats, Middleburg is a guarded, private place, but visitors can get a glimpse of the horsey life in garden walks and estate tours in spring or at Christmas, at polo games on summer Sundays, and especially at the steeplechase races that draw thousands of spectators in spring and fall. Friday 5 p.m. 1) On the Back Streets You'll come upon no Starbucks or McDonald's in a walk around Middleburg's tidy and tiny downtown, and none are likely to get by the vigilance of its well-financed preservationist guardians. Stroll down Washington Street for a sense of the town's history and character. During the Civil War, the Confederate raider John Singleton Mosby used the town as his base for attacks on the Union Army. According to local legend, a horse was hidden in the basement at 205 East Washington Street to keep Union troops from confiscating it. Vine Hill, on the corner of the Plains Road, is a landmark because of the telescoping design of its three Federal-style wings. Follow a nearby stone path and you'll find a bronze statue of a cavalry horse, honoring the 1.5 million horses and mules lost during the Civil War. The statue is outside the National Sporting Library, a research center for turf and field sports from fox hunting to fly fishing (102 the Plains Road; 540-687-6542), open Saturdays by appointment. Next door are the offices of The Chronicle of the Horse, the principal American journal of English-style riding, which has been published in Middleburg since 1937. 7 p.m. 2) Jazz at Dinner When the sounds of live jazz begin to drift through town, follow them to their source: the Back Street Cafe (4 East Federal Street; 540-687-3122). The owner, Tutti Perricone, is also a singer and actress in local performances who can trace her Middleburg roots to the late 1800's. As you listen to Golder O'Neill's bass, sit on the cozy patio festooned with blue and pink passion flowers and feast on cioppino with fresh linguine and shellfish in a white wine sauce ($17.95), one of Ms. Perricone's many original recipes. Saturday 8 a.m. 3) A Half Century of Breakfast Don't let the outdated interior deter you from sliding into one of the aging half-moon booths at the Coach Stop Restaurant (9 East Washington Street; 540-687-5515). It has been the place for breakfast since 1958, and in that time the drab brown d?cor has remained unchanged. The current owners, Mike and Mark Tate, started here as busboys in high school. Local artworks brighten up the place, as does the strong coffee. Riders come straight from the barn in their dusty boots and britches to order the horseman's special ($6.75), with eggs, bacon and hash browns. 10 a.m. 4) Ornaments and Ratcatchers Although Middleburg thrives on a country state of mind, its collection of stores and galleries, many with an equestrian theme, fill the streets with weekend shoppers. The Christmas Sleigh (5A East Washington Street; 540-687-3665) sells Linda Tripp's White House-themed ornaments ($65 each). Whether you're a rider or not, you can dress the part for the upcoming steeplechase at the Middleburg Tack Exchange (103 West Federal Street; 540-687-6608), a consignment store for high-end English riding gear so well known for its unique stock and rock-bottom prices that it gets calls from riders in England and California. Look over riding accessories from ratcatchers (riding shirts) to antique hunting flasks. Properly accessorized, stop at Market Salamander (200 West Washington Street; 540-687-8011) to pick up a steeplechase picnic of rotisserie chicken ($14), Brussels sprouts with Virginia ham ($7 a pound) and a bottle of the local Chrysalis Vineyards' Virginia viognier ($30). Call ahead to place an order - especially a large one - to avoid waiting. 1:30 p.m 5) Horseflesh Middleburg's main steeplechase venue, Glenwood Park (about a mile north of town on Route 626), holds several races each year, including the Middleburg Spring Races on April 23 this year. In steeplechases and the similar but more informal point-to-point races, thoroughbreds race over varied terrain and have to negotiate obstacles as high as four feet, four inches along the way. At Glenwood, you can watch from a wide ridge as the horses tackle courses as long as four miles; you will want binoculars. Trainers and grooms gossip next to the white-fenced paddock as the entries of each race are saddled, so stand within whisper distance to get the inside scoop. Betting is illegal; the thrills come from the breathtaking equine athleticism. For more information, call 540-687-6545, visit [1]www.middleburgspringraces.com or consult the Virginia Steeplechase Association's Web site, [2]vasteeplechase.com. 7 p.m. 6) Dinner at the Ordinary By now you've noticed the elegant fieldstone Red Fox Inn (2 East Washington Street; 540-687-6301) in the center of town. The innkeeper, Turner Reuter, says the original structure dates from 1728, when Joseph Chinn, George Washington's first cousin, built Chinn's Ordinary, a place for weary stagecoach and horseback travelers to recharge. Today it is on the National Register of Historic Places. President Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger, once held a press conference in its small art gallery (ask for a visit after dinner). Request a cozy fireside table or sidle up to the bar, which Mr. Reuter says was built from a Civil War operating table. Try the house specialty, rich peanut soup ($6.50). Sunday 9 a.m. 7) Meet the Settles About 12 miles west of town, past manicured hedgerows and tidy fencelines, Sky Meadows State Park (540-592-3556; admission on weekends, $2 to $4 per car) is a 1,862-acre retreat created largely by Paul Mellon and tailor-made for a day visit. Mount Bleak House was the home of the Settles, a farming family, 150 years ago and still has the look of a middle-class farmhouse in the mid-19th century. Imagine the Settles looking out at night at Confederate campfires speckled across the distant pastureland. The park has maps for easy loop hikes, one to four miles, in the Blue Ridge foothills. One leads to the Appalachian Trail, near the park's western border. Noon 8) Rest on Your Laurels At the nearby Ashby Inn (692 Federal Street, Paris; 540-592-3900), John and Roma Sherman, the proprietors, stand behind the buffet and serve a Sunday brunch ($24) with made-to-order omelets and inn-cured gravlax. The inn, considered "a restaurant with rooms" by some, is famously popular with weary Washingtonians. If weather permits, you can sit outside near the Shermans' herb and vegetable garden. Even if the weather is chilly, sneak out the back door to admire the spectacular mountain view, and then return inside for strawberries with whipped cream. The Basics Middleburg is 23 miles from Washington Dulles International Airport; you'll want to rent a car. From the airport, head west on Route 50, also known as the John Mosby Highway, which slows and becomes Washington Street in town. The centrally located Red Fox Inn (2 East Washington Street; 800-223-1728) has 16 rooms and suites, six of them in the original 1728 structure. Rooms start at $150 a night. Nine miles south of Middleburg, the Grey Horse Inn (4350 Fauquier Avenue, the Plains; 877-253-7020) has six rooms, all with period furniture. Rates start at $105 a night, breakfast included. The elegantly comfortable Ashby Inn (692 Federal Street, Paris; 540-592-3900) is 12 miles west of Middleburg and wins raves for its hospitality and superior kitchen. Its 10 rooms, some with private balconies, start at $145 a night. References 1. http://www.middleburgspringraces.com/ 2. http://vasteeplechase.com/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:28:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:28:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tribe Lays Claim to 3, 100 Square Miles of New York State, but It Will Settle for Less Message-ID: Tribe Lays Claim to 3,100 Square Miles of New York State, but It Will Settle for Less http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/nyregion/12indian.html By KIRK SEMPLE The Onondaga Nation, an Indian tribe based in upstate New York, filed a lawsuit yesterday claiming that it owns 3,100 square miles of land stretching from the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Pennsylvania border and including Syracuse. The tribe contends that the State of New York illegally acquired the land in a series of treaties between 1788 and 1822 and has asked the Federal District Court in Syracuse to declare that it still holds title to the land, which is now home to hundreds of thousands of people and includes all or part of 11 counties. It is the largest Indian land claim ever filed in the state. The tribe said that it does not want all of that land, however, but that its principal intent is to gain leverage to clean up polluted sites in the land claim area. The lawsuit names as defendants the State of New York, the City of Syracuse and Onondaga County, as well as five corporations that, the nation contends, have damaged the environment in the claim area. Todd Alhart, a spokesman for Gov. George E. Pataki, said late yesterday that the governor's office had not yet received a copy of the claim. "We will take whatever steps may be necessary to protect the interests of property owners and taxpayers in central New York, the Southern Tier and the northern New York region," Mr. Alhart said. Unlike other Indian tribes that have filed land claims against the state, the Onondaga Nation, which has about 1,500 members, is not seeking monetary damages or the right to operate casinos in New York. Instead, tribal representatives said, the Onondagas want a declaratory judgment saying the land, which they consider ancestral territory, was taken illegally. They then hope to use such a ruling to force the cleanup of sites in the claim area, particularly Onondaga Lake, a federal Superfund site and one of the most contaminated bodies of water in the nation. The Onondaga Nation has made the cleanup of the lake, which is 4.5 miles long and one mile wide, one of its priorities. The tribe has lived near the lake for centuries and regards it as sacred land. Tribal representatives said yesterday that the nation would not sue individual property owners or try to evict them. "The nation has said flat-out that individuals have nothing to worry about," said Dan Klotz, a spokesman for the nation. The Onondagas, he said, "will not waver from that." Other pending Indian land claims in New York have not interfered with property transactions, experts on Indian law said. "They don't plan to press for eviction as a remedy and I don't think there's ever been a court that has seriously considered eviction," said John Dossett, general counsel for the National Congress of American Indians, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group for tribal governments. "I think that homeowners can rest easy." At the same time, however, tribal authorities said they were in the market for more land. The nation's reservation is an 11-square-mile parcel south of Syracuse. Joseph J. Heath, an attorney who represents the Onondaga Nation, said if the court rules in the tribe's favor, he expected that settlement talks with the state to follow, including discussions about expanding the nation's reservation and protecting ancestral burial grounds threatened by development. Mr. Heath said the tribe would try to buy land only from "willing sellers" and the government. Still, Mr. Heath and other tribal representatives emphasized that the tribe's main intent was to gain more influence over state environmental policy and push for environmental cleanups in their region. "They're sick of being ignored on environmental issues," Mr. Heath said. The tribe's elders have discussed filing suit for more than 50 years, they said in interviews yesterday. But as the pollution in the lake increased - and their own population expanded - they felt compelled to take legal action. Decades of industrial dumping left a layer of toxic sludge on the lake bottom and drove the federal government to place it on the Superfund list of toxic waste sites in 1994. Last November, state regulators announced a plan to require Honeywell International to conduct a $448 million cleanup of the lake, including extensive dredging of the lake bottom to remove much of the 165,000 pounds of mercury and other toxins that have collected there. Honeywell is one of five companies named in the Onondaga lawsuit. It is responsible for the cleanup because in 1999 it merged with Allied Chemical, which owned a plant that was accused of being one of the lake's main polluters. The Onondagas have called the cleanup plan inadequate and say the state was legally obligated to consult with the tribe's chiefs but did not. Mr. Alhart, the governor's spokesman, rejected the nation's assertion that the state was being lax on the cleanup of Lake Onondaga or that it had ignored the nation. The lawsuit also names four other companies that operate a gravel mine, limestone quarry and coal-burning power plant in the region. In the lawsuit, the Onondagas also named Clark Concrete Company and a subsidiary, Valley Realty Development, which own a gravel mine in Tully, N.Y. The nation has accused the mine of polluting the Onondaga Creek, which runs into the lake. The nation also named Hanson Aggregates North America, the owners of a limestone quarry in DeWitt, and Trigen Syracuse Energy Corporation, a coal-burning power plant in Geddes. Attempts made late yesterday to reach officials with those companies were unsuccessful. Tribal representatives said yesterday that they were not seeking a casino as part of a settlement of the claim. Casinos are a central component of five Indian land claim settlement agreements that Gov. George Pataki announced in recent months. Michelle York contributed reporting from the Onondaga Indian Reservation for this article. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:31:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:31:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: (Fukuyama): The Calvinist Manifesto Message-ID: Essay: The Calvinist Manifesto http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013FUKUYA.html By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA THIS year is the 100th anniversary of the most famous sociological tract ever written, ''The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,'' by Max Weber. It was a book that stood Karl Marx on his head. Religion, according to Weber, was not an ideology produced by economic interests (the ''opiate of the masses,'' as Marx had put it); rather, it was what had made the modern capitalist world possible. In the present decade, when cultures seem to be clashing and religion is frequently blamed for the failures of modernization and democracy in the Muslim world, Weber's book and ideas deserve a fresh look. Weber's argument centered on ascetic Protestantism. He said that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination led believers to seek to demonstrate their elect status, which they did by engaging in commerce and worldly accumulation. In this way, Protestantism created a work ethic -- that is, the valuing of work for its own sake rather than for its results -- and demolished the older Aristotelian-Roman Catholic doctrine that one should acquire only as much wealth as one needed to live well. In addition, Protestantism admonished its believers to behave morally outside the boundaries of the family, which was crucial in creating a system of social trust. The Weber thesis was controversial from the moment it was published. Various scholars stated that it was empirically wrong about the superior economic performance of Protestants over Catholics; that Catholic societies had started to develop modern capitalism long before the Reformation; and that it was the Counter-Reformation rather than Catholicism itself that had led to economic backwardness. The German economist Werner Sombart claimed to have found the functional equivalent of the Protestant ethic in Judaism; Robert Bellah discovered it in Japan's Tokugawa Buddhism. It is safe to say that most contemporary economists do not take Weber's hypothesis, or any other culturalist theory of economic growth, seriously. Many maintain that culture is a residual category in which lazy social scientists take refuge when they can't develop a more rigorous theory. There is indeed reason to be cautious about using culture to explain economic and political outcomes. Weber's own writings on the other great world religions and their impact on modernization serve as warnings. His book ''The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism'' (1916) takes a very dim view of the prospects for economic development in Confucian China, whose culture, he remarks at one point, provides only slightly less of an obstacle to the emergence of modern capitalism than Japan's. What held traditional China and Japan back, we now understand, was not culture, but stifling institutions, bad politics and misguided policies. Once these were fixed, both societies took off. Culture is only one of many factors that determine the success of a society. This is something to bear in mind when one hears assertions that the religion of Islam explains terrorism, the lack of democracy or other phenomena in the Middle East. At the same time, no one can deny the importance of religion and culture in determining why institutions work better in some countries than in others. The Catholic parts of Europe were slower to modernize economically than the Protestant ones, and they took longer to reconcile themselves to democracy. Thus, much of what Samuel Huntington called the ''third wave'' of democratization took place between the 1970's and 90's in places like Spain, Portugal and many countries of Latin America. Even today, among the highly secular societies that make up the European Union, there is a clear gradient in attitudes toward political corruption from the Protestant north to the Mediterranean south. It was the entry of the squeaky-clean Scandinavians into the union that ultimately forced the resignation of its entire executive leadership in 1999 over a minor corruption scandal involving a former French prime minister. ''The Protestant Ethic'' raises much more profound questions about the role of religion in modern life than most discussions suggest. Weber argues that in the modern world, the work ethic has become detached from the religious passions that gave birth to it, and that it now is part of rational, science-based capitalism. Values for Weber do not arise rationally, but out of the kind of human creativity that originally inspired the great world religions. Their ultimate source, he believed, lay in what he labeled ''charismatic authority'' -- in the original Greek meaning of ''touched by God.'' The modern world, he said, has seen this type of authority give way to a bureaucratic-rational form that deadens the human spirit (producing what he called an ''iron cage'') even as it has made the world peaceful and prosperous. Modernity is still haunted by ''the ghost of dead religious beliefs,'' but has largely been emptied of authentic spirituality. This was especially true, Weber believed, in the United States, where ''the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions.'' It is worth looking more closely at how Weber's vision of the modern world has panned out in the century since the publication of ''The Protestant Ethic.'' In many ways, of course, it has proved fatally accurate: rational, science-based capitalism has spread across the globe, bringing material advancement to large parts of the world and welding it together into the iron cage we now call globalization. But it goes without saying that religion and religious passion are not dead, and not only because of Islamic militancy but also because of the global Protestant-evangelical upsurge that, in terms of sheer numbers, rivals fundamentalist Islam as a source of authentic religiosity. The revival of Hinduism among middle-class Indians, or the emergence of the Falun Gong movement in China, or the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and other former Communist lands, or the continuing vibrancy of religion in America, suggests that secularization and rationalism are hardly the inevitable handmaidens of modernization. One might even take a broader view of what constitutes religion and charismatic authority. The past century was marked by what the German theorist Carl Schmitt labeled ''political-theological'' movements, like Nazism and Marxism-Leninism, that were based on passionate commitments to ultimately irrational beliefs. Marxism claimed to be scientific, but its real-world adherents followed leaders like Lenin, Stalin or Mao with the kind of blind commitment to authority that is psychologically indistinguishable from religious passion. (During the Cultural Revolution in China, a person had to be careful about what he did with old newspapers; if a paper contained a picture of Mao and one sat on the holy image or used the newspaper to wrap a fish, one was in danger of being named a counterrevolutionary.) SURPRISINGLY, the Weberian vision of a modernity characterized by ''specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart'' applies much more to modern Europe than to present-day America. Europe today is a continent that is peaceful, prosperous, rationally administered by the European Union and thoroughly secular. Europeans may continue to use terms like ''human rights'' and ''human dignity,'' which are rooted in the Christian values of their civilization, but few of them could give a coherent account of why they continue to believe in such things. The ghost of dead religious beliefs haunts Europe much more than it does America. Weber's ''Protestant Ethic'' was thus terrifically successful as a stimulus to serious thought about the relationship of cultural values to modernity. But as a historical account of the rise of modern capitalism, or as an exercise in social prediction, it has turned out to be less correct. The violent century that followed publication of his book did not lack for charismatic authority, and the century to come threatens yet more of the same. One must wonder whether it was not Weber's nostalgia for spiritual authenticity -- what one might term his Nietzscheanism -- that was misplaced, and whether living in the iron cage of modern rationalism is such a terrible thing after all. Francis Fukuyama is a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author, most recently, of ''State-Building.'' From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:30:02 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:30:02 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Letter From Beijing: The World's Biggest Book Market Message-ID: Letter From Beijing: The World's Biggest Book Market http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013MEYERL.html By MIKE MEYER Here is a red dinosaur that demands our attention. The cartoon character, named Gogo, bounces on a monitor inside China's largest bookstore. ''Do you like doughnuts? Do you like burgers? Do you like sandwiches?'' he sings in English. ''Yes I do!'' the subtitles prompt. But the audience misses its cue. Look at them ignoring Gogo: a seated bundle of green hand-knit sweaters, black pigtails and bowed heads . . . reading. They're poring over cartoons -- translations of ''Calvin and Hobbes'' and of Japanese manga -- and the locally drawn ''Legend of Nezha'' books, which held 10 of the top 11 places on a Chinese best-seller list last year. Others turn the pages of a Garfield English-Chinese dictionary, which contains no entry for lasagna, but one for tofu. Forty focused children crouch on Book City's fourth floor, and 40 more gather at the neighboring nook, and 40 after that. It's calming to reach this pool of prepubescence amid the chaos that is Book City, whose five floors hold 230,000 titles. Downstairs, the crowds are dense and the juxtapositions jarring. ''Monica's Story'' lies between Bill Clinton's and Hillary Clinton's autobiographies. A box set of books about Hermann Goering rubs shoulders with ''What's Behind Jewish Excellence?'' American titles in Chinese translation range from the predictable -- ''The Da Vinci Code'' and the Atkins diet -- to the surprising: Henry Rollins's ''Get in the Van,'' a memoir of his punk years, and a collection of Woody Allen books whose Chinese title promises ''Mensa Whores.'' But translations into Chinese make up only 6 percent of the 190,000 books printed in China in 2003. Instead, the world's fastest-growing book market -- adding an estimated $300 million in sales annually -- is fueled by textbooks, which account for nearly half of all purchases. (This is according to China's statistical yearbook and a definitive book on publishing, which offer the most reliable figures available on the Wild West atmosphere of the Chinese book market.) At Book City, shoppers face an entire floor of English-learning materials. One, ''Love English,'' offers pick-up lines and pillow talk with cultural hints. Among its instructions: that '' 'I'm bored' really means: 'Do you want to have sex?' '' Practice cassettes are included. At the store's entrance, a red banner urges shoppers to ''Maintain Communist Party Members' Advanced Character.'' This is, after all, a state-owned shop. Eighty percent of China's 72,000 booksellers are private, but nationalized stores ring up two-thirds of sales. At Book City, the Communist Party tracts sit neglected. Instead, crowds jostle toward a nearby shelf with business titles like ''Confronting Reality,'' ''New Leadership'' and ''Change the Tape of China.'' Book City is overwhelming. The din, the eager customers, the slippery stacks of oversized paperbacks -- hardcovers are less common -- whose covers call out: ''I Was an American Police Officer,'' ''I'm Only Raising You for 18 Years'' and ''Chinese-Style Divorce.'' There's also the 2000 hit ''Harvard Girl,'' the story of how two dedicated Chinese parents groomed their daughter to get into Harvard. The copyright page reads: 63rd edition, 1.76 million copies. It costs just $2.41, the average price for a general interest text, which illustrates the difficulties both foreign and Chinese publishers face in trying to make a profit. Chinese best sellers often see their themes repeated. ''Harvard Girl'' quickly gave rise to ''Harvard Boy,'' among others. A whole pack of lupine imitators followed the successful novel ''Wolf Totem.'' Even banned books get knocked off. The muckraking ''China Peasant Survey,'' about the plight of China's peasant farmers, has spawned a look-alike called ''China Migrant Worker Survey.'' Outside Book City, the view is pure New Beijing: bigger, wider, flatter, more. The squat buildings still feel new; memories of the old neighborhood linger. A man reminds me that before one of the capital's 44 Starbucks opened across this square of brown grass, before Book City, this was the site of Democracy Wall, where Beijingers posted demands for openness and reform. Now, they shop for books. In fact, Book City has so many customers that it figures into the planning for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Plans call for doubling the existing building so it can accommodate 200,000 shoppers at once. After a decade in China, I thought I'd seen it all: murder, jail, aliens, rodeo. But nothing prepared me for its publishing industry, in puberty. ''Doing business here is like playing ice hockey without referees,'' says Toby Eady, a London-based literary agent who represents several authors who have written on China. They include Jung Chang, who wrote the popular novel ''Wild Swans''; Ma Jian, a dissident who wrote the political travelogue ''Red Dust''; and Tim Clissold, the author of the business memoir ''Mr. China.'' In China, Eady says, ''a contract is good until you step 10 centimeters out of the office.'' Adrian Zackheim, the publisher of the Penguin Group's business imprint, Portfolio, has a similar take. ''When I walked into a Beijing bookstore, I felt like a Russian ?migr? in New York, seeing his first supermarket,'' he says. ''Book publishing in China seems deliciously complicated. Though I might not be so charmed by it if I had to make my living there.'' It's a constant struggle for many Chinese presses. ''My first concern is survival,'' says Yan Ping, publisher of the privately owned Lightbooks, whose catalog includes books by Paul Theroux and Dr. Phil. ''At this point, success is secondary.'' Yan has reason to worry. Technically, his press -- along with all of China's private publishers -- is illegal. ''Chinese publishing is divided into three sectors: publishing, printing and distribution,'' explains Xin Guangwei, a director at the General Administration of Press and Publication, the regulatory body that oversees publishing. ''Printing and distribution are open to private and foreign investment, and beginning this month, so is retail. Publishing, however, remains under the control of the 568 state-owned presses.'' As the author of ''Publishing in China: An Essential Guide'' (Thomson, 2004), Xin is the Chinese industry's foremost bridge to the West, and a sort of effusive Rosetta Stone. Over tea at the private bookstore attached to the national legislature, he did his ambassadorial best to show that the industry was as clean and clear as the diagrams he drew for me on the backs of his press clippings. In reality, the situation is far less defined. At the heart of the state press's power is its control of the nation's market in International Standard Book Numbers, or ISBN's, the bar-code-like number that identifies a book for commercial consumption. Without one, a book can't be published in China, with the exception of party tracts and state-sanctioned religious texts. (Among the religious books on sale at the Xishiku Cathedral in Beijing are Bibles, the catechism and ''God, Country, Notre Dame,'' the autobiography of the university's former president). But as in so many other sectors of China's economy, a parallel, unofficial market in ISBN codes has mushroomed among China's estimated 30,000 private publishers. Known as ''culture houses'' or ''booksellers,'' they act like packagers: finding titles, buying rights, and shopping them to state-owned publishers, who will issue an ISBN for a fee ranging from $1,250 to $2,500, then publish the book under the state imprimatur. Agreements can also include the sharing of production costs, marketing and distribution. It's considered an openly illegal system, tolerated to a point. Officially, the buying and selling of ISBN's is forbidden. In a round of recent speeches aimed at culling pornography and other ''illegal publications jeopardizing social stability,'' government officials vowed to crack down on culture houses, calling them ''malignant tumors that must be excised.'' The question is at what cost. ''Private publishers are doing an extremely valuable job,'' says Andrew Nurnberg, whose London-based literary agency specializes in foreign rights. In the West, packagers are often considered ''hired help,'' he says. But in China, it's the reverse. Although the state ostensibly controls publishing, it relies on the private culture houses to do the heavy lifting. Paul Richardson, the founder of the Oxford International Center for Publishing Studies and a close watcher of the Chinese publishing scene, anticipates that one day the General Administration of Press and Publication will sell book numbers itself, and ''legitimize'' the entire process. There are ''clear messages from officials this is coming,'' he says. For now, culture houses provide private entrepreneurs the only door into the industry. Even then, it's a struggle. Gao Yun, a photographer, and his wife, Cheng Yanbin, an editor, poured their life savings into creating the ''China on Foot'' guidebooks. They found a willing partner in China's largest tourism press. ''We invested $50,000 in our ideas,'' Ms. Cheng says, proudly patting the book's cover. ''This is our car; this is our house.'' The story of Yang Erche Namu, a Beijing author and onetime popular singer, is also telling. Namu has published 12 books in Chinese, and her memoir, ''Leaving Mother Lake,'' was released in 2003 by Little, Brown. After an editor commissioned her first book, Namu was handed a bag with $10,000 in cash -- and no rights. She estimates the book sold two million copies, not counting pirated editions. In China, authors and editors rarely forge a lasting bond. For each of her successive 11 books, Namu has worked with a different publisher. Now they pay advances against royalties, but, given unreliable sales data and piracy, she says she still can't support herself from writing. Instead, she relies on income from guesthouses she owns in her native village. She has also started a lingerie line, for which she is seeking backers. ''I am famous, everyone knows me, but I have no money!'' she says with a laugh. These are the stories that make agents wince. Yet compared with the West, agents play a much smaller role in the Chinese industry. A few dozen cover the entire nation, and only three firms represent translation rights. Agents and American publishers say the average amount they receive for Chinese rights is a paltry $2,500, which is what a Chinese publisher paid for the hugely successful business book ''Who Moved My Cheese?'' It became China's all-time best-selling translated work, with official sales of two million. ''Of our 30,000 contracts, 60 percent are paying,'' says Luc Kwanten, the head of the Big Apple Tuttle-Mori literary agency, which has branches on the mainland and Taiwan. ''Publishers are conscious of the fact that royalties have to be paid. And the publishers do have money,'' he says. ''There is still a trend to view this as a poor country. It's not a poor industry. It's still a wide-open market, like a dry sponge. It senses the water, but isn't there quite yet.'' China's book sales totaled an estimated $5.6 billion in 2003, compared with $23.4 billion in the United States. Web sales are fledgling in China, due in part to a reliance on cash-on-delivery payments, but book-selling Web sites deeply discount the standard 40 percent markup over wholesale prices. Popular portals include [1]dangdang.com and [2]joyo.com, which Amazon bought for $75 million last year. There are also book clubs. The Bertelsmann Group runs one based in Shanghai with 1.5 million members. It has also invested in a bookstore chain. Tracking sales remains a challenge, although most publishers have made a gesture toward transparency by listing print runs on a book's copyright page. The Beijing OpenBook Market Consulting Center tabulates best sellers by genre in the weekly China Book Business Report, and tracks sales data for Chinese retail book purchases. ''I went to a bookstore in London once,'' Zhu Xiaoli, a manager at OpenBook, says. ''It was so calm, with so few people. I asked the saleswoman: 'How can you make any money?' '' Because of piracy, the same question is constantly asked of China. Not everyone answers eagerly. When I asked one publisher about piracy, he plunged into a polemic about my exterminating the American Indians, angrily stabbing his palm with his finger. Xin Guanwei, Chinese publishing's Rosetta Stone, compares the heightened campaign to protect intellectual property rights to America's war on drugs. ''Piracy is our drug problem,'' he says. It's not going to be easy. On my desk sit a pack of fake Marlboros, a knockoff Allen Iverson silver medallion, a bootleg DVD of ''The Aviator'' and a copy of the best seller ''No Excuse!'' whose credited author is Ferrar Cape, West Point graduate and motivational speaker, but who is rumored to be a Chinese invention. Increasingly, however, infringement cases are being heard. In the last two months, the copyright holders of Peter Rabbit and Garfield won piracy suits. One of China's best-known novelists was found guilty of plagiarizing parts of the romance novel ''Falling Blossoms in Romantic Dreams.'' To top it off, last month a Chinese author won his case against a Web site that had illegally posted his material. Its subject? Protecting intellectual property rights. The control of foreign content is also loosening, to a point. Last year, a Chinese publisher offered to buy the rights to ''River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze,'' by Peter Hessler, a Beijing-based writer who contributes to The New Yorker. Hessler passed after learning that unspecified parts would be cut. ''The point is to be honest to the people you write about,'' Hessler says. ''It's condescending to them to allow the material to get softened. I have faith that one day it will be translated directly.'' Indeed, the government has become less restrictive of some genres, among them history and health -- that is, sex -- by Chinese writers, and law and political thought by foreigners. Lindsay Waters, an editor at Harvard University Press, recalls being approached by a former Red Guard in 1998: ''He said, 'Do you know that I used to destroy books? Now I'm helping to bring in John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice.' '' Last year, Waters published ''China's New Order'' by the political scientist Wang Hui, which would probably never have seen the light of day in China. When it comes to exporting culture, not goods, America enjoys a ballooning trade surplus with China. Of the estimated 12,000 translations published here in 2003, nearly half were of American books, a ratio consistent over the past five years. Try naming more than a handful of books by Chinese authors published in America in that time. Lauren Wein, the associate rights director for Grove Atlantic, says she has been surprised at the range of titles the Chinese have bought from Grove, including ''The Hungry Gene,'' about obesity, and a book by the experimental gay writer Dennis Cooper. But for the most part, ''China wants the heavy hitters, like 'Sex and the City' and 'Cold Mountain.' '' After all, she says, ''They still have 'On the Road' to publish.'' In fact, the first Chinese edition of Kerouac's classic appeared in 1989. For years, I had been looking for its translator, the Beats' sole messenger to China. I finally tried Google. Wen Chu'an answered his phone at Sichuan University, where he teaches, among other subjects, Beat Studies. The photo on the jacket of his translation of ''Howl'' -- ''Hao jiao'' -- shows a wan, middle-aged man with a comb-over. Before I phoned, I'd spent the day sifting through all my notes on Chinese publishing, and my eyes were glazing over at the statistics. All this talk about the book business -- potential growth and infrastructure flaws -- had turned texts into a commodity, no different from cars or socks. Then I asked Wen the obvious. Yes, he had seen the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. But why translate Kerouac and Ginsberg? ''Because the impact of these Beat editions on readers is great,'' he said. ''Chinese young people can find something inspiring and encouraging in the Beat lifestyle: the ardent love of freedom in action and speech, the firm stand against everything inhuman, the giving priority to the spiritual life and denying the attitude that money-seeking is everything.'' Both of Wen's Ginsberg titles have an official print run of 20,000. ''On the Road,'' which Wen says is available free online in China, had sold 30,000 copies by 2002. Small potatoes next to Chinese sales of management guides like ''The West Point Way of Leadership.'' But wait. ''I believe there are pirate editions by unofficial private publishers,'' Wen continued. ''So actually, the numbers are much more than that.'' He didn't sound at all upset. Mike Meyer went to China in 1995, via the Peace Corps. He is writing a book about the destruction of historic Beijing, where he lives. References 1. http://dangdang.com/ 2. http://joyo.com/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:32:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:32:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: 'Milk': God and Man in Brooklyn Message-ID: 'Milk': God and Man in Brooklyn http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/books/review/013HEFFER.html By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN MILK By Darcey Steinke. 131 pp. Bloomsbury. $17.95. Darcey Steinke's new novel, ''Milk,'' is a furtive little book, a kinky Christian fable about three Brooklyn outcasts obsessed with God and sex. Mary, an unstable mystic, masturbates with holy ardor, turning a prayer -- ''Come, Lord Jesus, have mercy on me'' -- into a lascivious incantation. Walter, a left-wing Episcopal priest who has been demoted to an outer-borough church for coming on to a teenager at Manhattan's Church of the Heavenly Rest, still desires boys; he spends his nights trolling gay bars and his days visiting Web sites ''for theologically minded adherents of S-and-M.'' And John, an exclaustrated monk who moves to Brooklyn Heights, turns to a prostitute whose number he finds in The Village Voice. When he wonders why God has forsaken him, the answer is, ''So you can know yourself'' -- carnally, in John's interpretation. At 131 pages, ''Milk'' completes its character studies using prayers, sex scenes and hallucinatory descriptions of the characters' shared neighborhood in winter. But if there's something suspicious about so heavy a novel being built on so little, the effect of the transpositions in ''Milk'' is unexpectedly exciting -- a throwback to the sordid religiosity of Jean Genet. Steinke has summoned a state of mind, the one required for both prayer and masturbation, that is abject, asocial, and she does not shy from giving it full representation. The other major character in ''Milk'' is Mary's child, a nameless infant boy. Conceived with a man known only as ''her husband,'' the baby is unweaned; Mary savors the practice of nursing in rarefied terms. But the mystification of mother's milk -- along with the general mystification of motherhood -- is lost on her husband, who is blind to God's ubiquity and concomitantly indifferent to sex. Instead of sex, the husband cares about sexiness. And this, the novel's most prosaic concern -- the horror of being married to a hipster -- is also its most pressing. Steinke's representation of the pot-smoking jackass who can't seem to come home from parties is unsparing, at times gossipy; it definitely dips below the literary tone of the rest of the novel. But it's also tart. At one point, having opened a disappointing Christmas present, the stoned husband appears irritated, and Mary struggles to respond: ''She tried to think of something to say, but with him everything was either Good, i.e., sexy, funny, cool, or Bad, i.e., emotionally painful, boring, a hassle. You either GOT IT or you didn't GET IT. There was no reason to discuss.'' Steinke's use of shouting capitals suggests a fresh argument, as the idea of revealed hipness -- hipness that cannot be arrived at through reason -- maddens Mary. Fragile Mary, after all, is forced to live in a particularly profane house, surrounded by her husband's ''Star Wars'' kitsch and other artifacts, including a ceramic unicorn and a Jesse Ventura figurine. The deployment of this household aesthetic affects Mary the way the lowered lights affect Ingrid Bergman's character in ''Gaslight'': it confounds her sense of what's proper or beautiful, and eventually drives her insane. The contemptuous, forthright representation of the husband can only be appreciated in hindsight, when the character disappears from the narrative altogether and Mary moves on to a heady affair with John, who is more shadowy but less compelling than the terrible husband. No longer infuriated, Mary becomes strange: having suffered on and off from voices in her head, she takes to hiding in closets for long sessions of prayer. Walter worries about her, but he has his own troubles. His church is in financial trouble, and he's suffered his own heartbreak and sexual humiliations. In the best passage of the book, the priest tries to summarize the tragedy of existence, even as he's preoccupied with a cute kid who has just snubbed him. ''That people you loved died was unacceptable,'' he thinks. And that people you slept with ''wanted you to vanish was unacceptable. But really it was mostly that people you loved died -- this was completely unacceptable.'' Walter's distraction from sermonizing is amateurish and sweet, but freewheeling moments like this are rare; this is a very solemn novel, determinedly unwitty. More than once, its emphasis on what it deems sacramental -- blood, tears, milk -- raises the possibility that it contains a Christian allegory. The hermeneutics that informed the literary criticism of the 1950's come to mind: Is there a Via Dolorosa in Walter's path through the gay bars? Is John's prostitute the Magdalene? Who is the Christ figure here? Though sexy and cool in its own way, ''Milk'' risks raising these musty, shameful questions, and the novel is all the more eccentric and enthralling for that. Virginia Heffernan is a television critic for The Times. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:36:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:36:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne Message-ID: Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/technology/24girlfriend.html By KEITH BRADSHER HONG KONG, Feb. 18 - Men, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend? Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one? Eberhard Sch?neburg, the chief executive of the software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, may have found the answer: a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you go. Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars. She loves to be given virtual flowers and chocolates, and she can translate six languages if you travel overseas. She never undresses, although she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease who draws the line at anything beyond blowing kisses. If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right. She may sound like a mixed blessing, decidedly high maintenance and perhaps the last resort of losers. But she is nonetheless a concept that cellphone system operators and handset manufacturers are starting to embrace. Vivienne, the product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages, is meant not only to bring business to Artificial Life (she will be available for a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cellphone operators or the price of virtual chocolates and flowers). But she is also meant to be a lure for the new, higher-tech, third generation, or [1]3G, cellphones. Vivienne, who may soon be joined by a virtual boyfriend for women and, after that, a virtual boyfriend for gay men and a virtual girlfriend for lesbians, is at the leading edge of a wave of services that companies are developing to take advantage of the much faster data transmission rates made possible by 3G technology. These include the ability to download everything from high-resolution television news broadcasts to music videos to trailers of the latest movie releases. Cellphone games are already available in Korea and Japan that allow users to change the clothing, hair style and other features of doll-like images of people. Vivienne - and similar games that are likely to follow from other companies - is distinctive in that she is a figurine who appears to be three-dimensional and moves through 18 different settings like a restaurant, shopping mall and airport. She can converse on 35,000 topics, from philosophy to movies to sculpture. Artificial Life tweaked and reused close to 70,000 questions and answers on banking alone for Vivienne - those questions were developed for an unrelated contract for a Swiss private bank. The cellphone chip cannot manage all of this; instead, the phone merely communicates with servers that run the program. The servers use so-called expert systems for dialogue, a specialty of Mr. Sch?neburg, a former professor of artificial intelligence and neural networks who used to work on expert systems for German military projects. But Artificial Life has already run into delays in introducing Vivienne to men in Asia and Europe. It originally hoped to have her flirting on cellphone screens by last Christmas. The problems have ranged from the cosmetic - Vivienne is being reprogrammed not to bare her navel or display body piercings in conservative Muslim countries like Malaysia - to the technological. "Every cellphone is a little bit different," and the programming must allow for this, said Stephen Leung, the project manager at Artificial Life. She is now scheduled to become available, so to speak, in Singapore and Malaysia by the end of April, in Western Europe by late spring and possibly in a few American cities by the end of the year. The delays are indicative of the broader problems facing 3G technology and the businesses that hope to piggyback on it. Users have complained of batteries that run down quickly, dropped signals while driving or in fog or rain, and phones that cost several times as much as current models unless the cellular service company subsidizes them. Cellphone operators have found that consumers are slow to sign up for costly video services, using 3G phones mostly for voice calls. 3G phones currently account for less than 2 percent of the world's handsets, but that proportion is starting to grow quickly, industry specialists said. The technology allows cellphone system operators to transmit voice as well as data more cheaply than existing systems once the initial investments are made. "It is happening because it's driven by cost savings for the operators, and they've already paid for the spectrum," said Duncan Clark, the managing director of BDA China Ltd., a telecommunications consulting firm in Beijing. At an Internet game parlor here, packed with young men busily shooting or chopping apart a wide variety of villains and monsters, there was no clear consensus on whether people would pay to exchange valentines with Vivienne. "It's a little bit for the losers," said Rick Wong, a 32-year-old off-duty security guard, who nonetheless added that, "even people who have girlfriends, well, girlfriends are not perfect, so they may play anyway." Yet the willingness of companies like Artificial Life to invest in applications for 3G shows the complexity of programming that the new cellphone technology will permit. Vivienne, for instance, will double as a translator for travelers. Type in the desired words in English while traveling and, with additional programming in the next few months, her synthesized voice will coo it back in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Spanish or Italian. "You can say, 'What is chicken soup in Chinese?' and she will say it out loud, so you can give it to someone when you order," Mr. Sch?neburg said. Users must type in their questions as they would a short text message on a cellphone, as the system software does not include voice recognition. Vivienne responds with both a synthesized voice and text. Vivienne's largest database is for processing those difficult conversations about romance and intimacy. "People will see that they can't have sex with her, but they'll try to," and Vivienne has many ways to hold them off, Mr. Sch?neburg said. Vivienne is fairly prudish, partly because Artificial Life is hoping the market will include teenagers from affluent families. Artificial Life has been contacted by companies interested in the development of a racier version, and perhaps even a pornographic version, and may license the technology but will not enter that market itself. Partly to prevent anyone from becoming addicted to Vivienne's charms, the program will limit users to an hour of play time a day. Even an hour could be costly. The monthly fee will not include airtime for the data - a big incentive for cellphone operators to offer the service, notwithstanding recent questions about whether teenagers have been running up excessive cellphone bills even without virtual relationships. Mr. Sch?neburg predicted that most subscribers for Vivienne would be able to entertain her using the free data allowance provided with the initial monthly fee for 3G service. But subscribers who use the basic allowance for other services could end up paying several dollars a month more to the service provider. Users eager to advance quickly toward a virtual kiss or even marriage should know that she has a faintly mercenary appreciation for gifts, from flowers and chocolates to cars and diamond rings. Some virtual gifts are free, but others will require users to make real charges against their monthly phone bills of 50 cents to $2. "The money goes to us," Mr. Sch?neburg said, grinning at the prospect of lovelorn suitors around the world paying real money to woo a computer program. Vivienne does offer a way to test out approaches to a virtual woman before trying them in reality. "If you buy her a membership to a gym, she may take offense and say, 'What, am I too big for you?' " Mr. Sch?neburg said. Artificial Life is not suggesting Vivienne is any substitute for a flesh-and-blood girlfriend. "I hope they think of her as a companion," said MaryAnna Donaldson, the company's creative content editor, "and will see her as a practice round before the real one." References 1. http://tech2.nytimes.com/gst/technology/techsearch.html?st=a&query=3g&inline=nyt-classifier From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:37:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:37:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Chinese Censors and Web Users Match Wits Message-ID: Chinese Censors and Web Users Match Wits http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/international/asia/04censor.html By HOWARD W. FRENCH SHANGHAI, March 3 - For many China watchers, the holding of a National People's Congress beginning this weekend is an ideal occasion for gleaning the inner workings of this country's closed political system. For specialists in China's Internet controls, though, the gathering of legislators and top political leaders offers a chance to measure the state of the art of Web censorship. The authorities set the tone earlier this week, summoning the managers of the country's main Internet providers, major portals and Internet cafe chains and warning them against allowing "subversive content" to appear online. "Some messages on the Internet are sent by those with ulterior motives," Qin Rui, the deputy director of the Public Information and Internet Security Supervision Bureau, was quoted as saying in The Shanghai Daily. Stern instructions like those are in keeping with a trend aimed at assigning greater responsibility to Internet providers to assist the government and its army of as many as 50,000 Internet police, who enforce limits on what can be seen and said. "If you say something the Web administrator doesn't like, they'll simply block your account," said Bill Xia, a United States-based expert in Chinese Internet censorship, "and if you keep at it, you'll gradually face more and more difficulties and may land in real trouble." According to Amnesty International, arrests for the dissemination of information or beliefs via the Internet have been increasing rapidly in China, snaring students, political dissidents and practitioners of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong, but also many writers, lawyers, teachers and ordinary workers. Already the most sophisticated in the world, China's Internet controls are stout even in the absence of crucial political events. In the last year or so, experts say the country has gone from so-called dumb Internet controls, which involve techniques like the outright blocking of foreign sites containing delicate or critical information and the monitoring of specific e-mail addresses to far more sophisticated measures. Newer technologies allow the authorities to search e-mail messages in real time, trawling through the body of a message for sensitive material and instantaneously blocking delivery or pinpointing the offender. Other technologies sometimes redirect Internet searches from companies like Google to copycat sites operated by the government, serving up sanitized search results. China's latest show of growing prowess in this area came in January after a major political event, the death of the former leader Zhao Zhiyang, who had been held under house arrest since appearing to side with students in 1989 during the Tiananmen demonstrations. When the official New China News Agency put out a laconic bulletin about his death, placing it relatively low in its hierarchy of daily news stories, most of the rest of China's press quickly and safely followed suit. On their Web sites, one newspaper after another ran the news agency's sterile bulletin rather than take risks with commentary of their own. What happened on campuses was far more interesting, though. University bulletin boards lit up with heavy traffic just after Mr. Zhao's death was announced. But for all of the hits on the news item related to his death, virtually no comments were posted, creating a false impression of lack of interest. "Zhao's death was the first big test since the SARS epidemic," said Xiao Qiang, an expert on China's Internet controls at the University of California at Berkeley. But if the government is investing heavily in new Internet control technologies, many experts said the sophistication of Chinese users was also increasing rapidly, as are their overall numbers, leading to a cat-and-mouse game in which, many say, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the censors to prevail. At 94 million users, China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users, after the United States, and usage here, most of it broadband, is growing at double-digit rates every year. "What they are doing is a little bit like sticking fingers into the dike," said Stephen Hsu, a physicist at the University of Oregon who formerly developed technologies for allowing ordinary Chinese to avoid government censorship. "Beijing is investing heavily in keeping the lid on, and they've been pretty successful at controlling what appears. But there is always going to be uncontrolled activity around the edges." As with the policing efforts, the evasion techniques range from the sly and simple - aliases and deliberate misspellings to trick key-word monitors and thinly veiled sarcastic praise of abhorrent acts by the government on Web forums that seem to confound the censors - to so-called proxy servers, encryption and burying of sensitive comments in image files, which for now elude real-time searches. For those reasons and others, some Chinese experts have publicly advocated that the government gradually get out of the business of Internet censorship. "All of the big mistakes made in China since 1949 have had to do with a lack of information," said Guo Liang, an Internet expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "Lower levels of government have come to understand this, and I believe that since the SARS epidemic, upper levels may be beginning to understand this, too." The most eagerly watched key word in China today is probably Falun Gong. "I don't know the number, but I would guess every Chinese has received a Falun Gong e-mail," Mr. Guo said. "There is no way to stop it. You can shut down the Web site, but you cannot kill the users. They just go somewhere else online, sometimes keeping the same nickname." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 19:41:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:41:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT Op-Ed: Cruel and Unusual Jurisprudence Message-ID: Cruel and Unusual Jurisprudence http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/04/opinion/04weisberg.html [I cannot decide about capital punishment, since I can't weigh the merits and demerits of the various sides and doubt I'll be getting a weighing instrument any time soon. But this argument is novel. If you're interested in the matter, I commend it.] By ROBERT WEISBERG Stanford, Calif. BOTH the result and the reasoning of the Supreme Court's decision this week in Roper v. Simmons were heartening to opponents of capital punishment. Not only did the court outlaw the death penalty for those who kill before they turn 18, but its analysis could easily lead to additional constitutional constraints on capital punishment. Yet it is doubtful that the court will follow the national trend of skepticism about the death penalty any further. More likely, the case is the last exhausted gasp of a very strange jurisprudence that the court will now be happy to put to rest. The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments," but for much of its history the United States has allowed the death penalty. In 1958, the court ruled that "evolving standards of decency" should define what constitutes "cruel and unusual," and since then it has been forced to confront the legality of capital punishment in various types of cases. Could the death penalty be imposed for nonfatal crimes? When the defendant did not kill intentionally or at least in a manner exhibiting "extreme indifference to human life"? In answering these kinds of questions (in both of these cases, the response was no), the court committed itself to a challenging set of tasks. First, it would examine the patterns of state laws or court decisions to determine by a rough empiricism whether the death penalty in a particular category has become cruel by virtue of being literally unusual. Of course, this approach raises the perfectly reasonable question of how the scope of the Bill of Rights, which was designed to limit the powers of legislative majorities, could depend in part on the decisions of those very majorities. Next, the court would consult various other sources for evidence of some sort of moral consensus. In doing so, the court would refer to philosophical or moral principles or political attitudes outside the realm of law altogether - and even to international expressions of moral value. This strategy provokes the (again perfectly reasonable) complaint that unelected jurists are now acting like pollsters, assessing the public's moral values. Or, worse, they are becoming arbiters of moral value themselves. Three years ago the court used this approach, looking at trends among the states as well as the scientific consensus on the definition and significance of retardation, to strike down executions of the mentally retarded. And this week the court reconsidered how this test applies to the question of age. In 1988, it ruled that defendants who killed before their 16th birthday could not be executed; now the age is 18. As in earlier cases, the court looked at trends among the states and at legal, scientific and philosophical understandings about when people are mature enough to forfeit their lives for their crimes. What was notable was how candid the court was about two factors that influenced its judgment: the justices' own notions about the morality of executing young killers, and the international condemnation of executing people for crimes committed when they were juveniles. Justice Antonin Scalia was practically apoplectic in his exasperated dissent. "This is no way to run a legal system," he wrote, denouncing this latest round of trend-spotting as irrational and unreliable. And indeed, the change in attitudes toward age has been far less evident than the change in attitudes toward retardation. Given Justice Scalia's analytic dexterity and rhetorical brilliance, his dissent is utterly convincing. But it is also completely beside the point. In Roper, the court exposed its somewhat intellectually embarrassing Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. But it did so in order to overcome the greater embarrassment of one last specific, egregious category of capital punishment. Having noted that only the United States and Somalia had refused to ratify a United Nations convention barring the execution of juvenile criminals, the court's decision comes down to this: on matters of criminal punishment, the United States "now stands alone in a world that has turned its face against the juvenile death penalty." Justice Scalia scorns the court's deference to "the so-called international community" and self-appointed role as the "authoritative conscience of the nation." Yet instead of denying the charge, the court revels in it. At any rate, there is little prospect of more tortured Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Executing the mentally ill? The universal availability of some kind of "not guilty by reason of insanity" verdict, and the established constitutional rule that states cannot execute someone "presently insane," mean that this category need not be litigated. Executing those under 21? In Roper, the court was unusually categorical: "The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest." Of course, America retains its outlier status, at least compared with most democratic nations, as a nation that allows the death penalty at all. And the court may issue some further decisions fine-tuning procedures or standards of proof for the use of the death penalty, or requiring enhanced guarantees of adequate representation for capital defendants. It would probably take a truly horrifying event, like a post-execution exoneration through DNA evidence, to sway public opinion so much against the death penalty that the court would consider declaring the practice itself unconstitutional. For now, opponents of capital punishment can hope that state-legislated improvements in criminal procedure and technology, along with political constraints, will address their concerns about wrongful executions. That way, the court will be spared the awkwardness of returning to the cruel and unusual task of assessing America's evolving standards of decency. Robert Weisberg is a professor of law at Stanford. From waluk at earthlink.net Mon Apr 18 19:43:36 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:43:36 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C543DE.6EB762C0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C543DE.6EB762C0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42640DE8.5040007@earthlink.net> San Francisco, like the rest of California, is unreal when it comes to property values. My guess is that no home owner needs to perform "spring clean up and repair" since winter with its break, crackle and peel, never arrives. This means that a second mortgage can go to expansion and updating of existing home rather than necessary repairs. High property values also promote high wages in most industries so that the lure of 6 figures could be reason enough to have a newly minted MBA from a top east coast uni. make the move west. Residents of Brentwood, home to O.J.Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, consider themselves living a middle class life yet most live in homes valued higher than $10.5 million. Not only is the concept of "class" relative, so is geographic location. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as >rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family >needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle >class life. > >A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less >middle class than they think. That's why some >of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then >what is poor.....income of $100k per year? >This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way >below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. > >Gerry > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >>the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >>want us to know how much money they have. >> >>The government is part of the economy. Taxes >>paid to the government do not drain the economy. >>They merely shift money from one part of the >>economy to another. This shifting increases the >>velocity of money, which causes the economy >>to grow. >> >>Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >>their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >>the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >>people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >>that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >>cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>They have used their money to buy politicians >>>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>>cuts under Bush are of this character. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>-----Original Message----- >>>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>> >>>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>>law? I certainly don't. >>> >>>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >>> >>> >>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>So they should pay more taxes. >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland >>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>> >>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >><< File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 20:01:42 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:01:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: On the Sidelines, Catholic Liberals Still Seek a Ray of Hope Message-ID: On the Sidelines, Catholic Liberals Still Seek a Ray of Hope http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/international/worldspecial2/17liberals.html By [1]IAN FISHER [I have not been following Roman Catholic politics very closely. My personal attitude is arch-Protestant, that it is up to me to decide what certain revealed texts mean and, indeed, whether they were revealed. That being the case, I'd as soon the next Roman Catholic pope be an incompetent liberal from an incompetent country. I don't know how many of my readers know that I am the pope. On Reformation Day, 1963, a classmate tried to covert me to Lutheranism from atheism. He proudly showed me his prayer book, which had a tree diagram of the history of the Christian church, with Peter on the Rock of Galilee at the base. The Arians and other heretics went off in separate branches. The Greek Orthodox went off in 1053. I recall that there was a break in continuity, with the Greek branch reorganizing later, so that they could not make an equal claim to be the continuation of the one, true Church as founded by Peter on the Rock of Galilee. In 1517, of course, Martin Luther staged his Reformation. There was also a break and the Lutheran church got going before the Roman Catholics did. So on that same Reformation Day, I extended the tree diagram, decreed a Second Reformation, and set up the Charlottesvillian Catholic Church (I was going to UVa at the time) immediately. So far, the Lutheran Church has not reorganized or even deigned to take notice of the Second Reformation. So far, I have only one faithful follower, my roommate at the time, who is known as Louis the Pious. His financial contributions are meager, I am sad to report, but his faith that I am the true Pope remains high to this day. [At any rate, my claims on Popery are not subject to refutation.] ROME, April 16 - The idea was so preposterous that Sister Christine Schenk's first response was a long and resigned laugh. Would she and other liberal Catholics have any influence in the conclave that chooses a new pope? "Oh, no, not at all," Sister Christine, director of FutureChurch, a coalition of progressive American Catholics, said in a telephone interview from Cleveland, where the group is based. "I think that is one of the difficulties with the conclave. Because you are a Catholic and because it doesn't happen very often, it feels like you are a team. "But to think that there is any way to influence it is a complete fantasy." They may be idealists in general, but on this issue - the essential irrelevance of a liberal voice in this conclave - they are definite realists. Of the 115 cardinals taking part in the conclave, which begins on Monday, almost none of them have been outspoken on matters important to the liberal wing of the Catholic Church, like the ordination of women, more inclusion of laity in church business or easing bans on contraception. Luigi De Paoli, one of the founders of We Are Church, the largest liberal church group in Europe, said his group had no cardinal inside the conclave representing its views. "We know some of them, and we think some of the most 'progressive' are in favor of our positions," he said. "But most of them are really conservative." Still, liberals do not seem to despair (which is, anyway, a mortal sin for all stripes of Catholics). While questions like sexual morality do not appear to be on the table, that of collegiality - allowing bishops a greater say in adapting church doctrine locally - transcends the bounds of liberal and conservative. And many experts believe it will be one of the major issues discussed in the conclave, and could result in more local control, a change liberals would like. Isaac W?st, a liberal Catholic activist from the Netherlands, said that under Pope John Paul II, and especially in his later years, decisions came "from top to bottom, and no voices came from bottom to the top." "Or at least no one was listening at the Vatican," he said. "That is what we want to change most of all," he added. Like many matters facing the church, the liberal-conservative divide is not clear-cut: some liberals make the case that the conservative viewpoint dominating the Vatican and the College of Cardinals does not reflect ordinary Catholic life, and is one reason for declining church attendance in developed countries. But conservatives note that liberals do not represent all Catholics, particularly among the most devout. Liberal groups themselves face contradictions. Although they say they represent Catholics around the world, their movements are based primarily in the United States and Europe, where church attendance is declining. In the third world, where the church is growing fastest, many Catholics remain deeply conservative, especially on sexual morality. But even among the cardinals, easy definitions of liberal and conservative do not always fit. In the third world, many cardinals are conservative on sexual issues. In Latin America, many strongly oppose liberation theology, but are outspoken on poverty and social justice. In Italy, one strong contender for the papacy, Dionigi Tettamanzi, the archbishop of Milan, is by most standards a conservative, especially on sexual morality, and is close to the conservative lay group Opus Dei. But he has sympathized with antiglobalists, and is outspoken on the need to find common ground with Muslims. One progressive cardinal said the real divide in the College of Cardinals was simply between those who favored discussing delicate topics, like bioethics or sexual morality, and those who wanted them declared settled and off limits. Still, several activists said they believed that the reality of the church would force some changes. Sister Christine noted that the dire shortage of priests and seminarians would have to be confronted. She said she hoped support would grow for the idea of married priests, and for allowing the ordination of women as deacons and someday priests. "In the long term, our faith is with the Holy Spirit," said Linda Pieczynski, spokeswoman for Call to Action, based in Chicago, the largest Catholic reform group in the United States. "It's not with the individual men who govern the church." "Jesus said the Spirit will always be with us," she added. "How else could the church have lasted for 2,000 years given the terrible leadership it has had at times?" Daniel J. Wakin contributed reporting for this article. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=IAN%20FISHER&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=IAN%20FISHER&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 20:03:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:03:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy for Themselves Message-ID: Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy for Themselves http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/international/worldspecial2/16italians.html By [1]JASON HOROWITZ [Does Mugabe have any brother?] VATICAN CITY, April 15 - For 455 years, the papacy passed uninterrupted from one Italian to another until the election of the Polish pope, John Paul II. Now, after 26 years, many Italians think it is time to get back in office - for fear that changes in the Roman Catholic Church may close the door on them for good. As 115 cardinals from 52 countries prepare to enter a conclave on Monday to select the next pope, some Vatican historians believe that the election of another foreigner will conclude a historic shift of power away from Italy. According to this school of thought, the papacy needs to mirror Catholicism's growth in the Southern Hemisphere, where the ranks are increasing in Africa and Latin America while shrinking in Europe. Few church experts think that another loss for the Italians will knock them out as papal contenders for good, but it seems sure once and for all to shatter the idea, reinforced by so many centuries of dominance, that Italians are preternaturally the best men for the job. Some here think that would be a mistake. "There is a vocation, an Italian charisma," said Vittorio Messori, an Italian writer who collaborated on John Paul's 1994 book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." "The Italians have a tradition of centuries behind them, they know how to do the job of pope, it's in their DNA." Well, until now, anyway. "Another non-Italian pope would confirm Italy's decline," said Giovanni Maria Vian, a Vatican scholar at La Sapienza University of Rome. "It would mean Italy has lost its central role in papal succession." There are signs that Italy is resisting such a trend, seeking to reclaim its traditional hold and add to the 212 popes it has had in the church's history. The 20 Italians who will enter next week's conclave still constitute the largest bloc of cardinals for any single nation, and a handful have emerged as frontrunners among those being considered for the papacy. In recent years, as the pope's health waned, a number of them maintained a high level of visibility and weighed in on major issues and challenges facing the church. Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, 71, the archbishop of Milan, released his major work on bio-ethics as an e-book. Cardinal Angelo Scola, 63, the archbishop of Venice, started a magazine last month promoting dialogue with Muslims, and Cardinal Camillo Ruini, 74, the vicar of Rome, published a book criticizing secularism. There also seems to be a more subtle campaign, on the part of Italians as a whole, to recast John Paul as one of their own. Cardinal Ruini presided over a memorial Mass for the pope last week, delivering an uncharacteristically charismatic performance in which he noted that John Paul had entered "so deeply into the hearts of Romans, but also Italians." Italy's capital, too, has staked its claim, plastering the streets with posters announcing, "Rome mourns its pope." The College of Cardinals also decided that the pope's final resting place should be in St. Peter's crypt, instead of his native Poland. Regardless of how much Rome may claim John Paul as its own, the fact remains that he was a pope with global appeal, and his enormous personality and long reign left an indelible stamp on the papacy. "Wojtyla became the church himself, people identified him with it," said Pietro Scoppola, an Italian Vatican expert, using John Paul's name before he became pope. "An Italian could step back and let the church step forward." Indeed, some Vatican analysts argue that a shift back to an Italian pope may be necessary to properly govern the Curia, or church government, because few have as intimate a knowledge of the inner workings of the Vatican bureaucracy, which manages the daily operations of the church and which John Paul largely ignored. But an Italian cardinal, Fiorenzo Angelini, who is 88 and too old to vote in the conclave, seemed to disagree in an interview this week with Corriere della Sera of Milan. "Our perception of the church has broadened, to the point of reaching really global dimensions," he said. "You can't reason any more with a national mentality, and not even a Continental one." The largest growth of Roman Catholics in 2003, the last year Vatican statistics are available, was in Africa, followed by Asia and South America. Only in Europe did the number of Catholics fail to rise. "The center of the church, from a sociological point of view, is not in Italy," said Giancarlo Zizola, author of "Conclave: History and Secrets," a study of how popes have been selected. "The world has changed, and it is normal that the church change too. There is good chance now of the first non-European pope in a very long time, and that would be significant." Greek and Syrian popes reigned at the early stages of the nearly 2,000-year history of the church, and the French all but moved the Vatican to Avignon in the 1400's. Since Adrian VI, a pope from Holland, died in 1523, the Italians have held a tight grip on papal power, through the rise and fall of the Papal States and two world wars. But in 1978, the year of John Paul's election, that all changed. Wherever the pope is from, one thing is certain, and it is something that Pope John Paul instantly grasped during that first papal address from the balcony of St. Peter's so many years ago, when he spoke to the Roman crowd in what he called "our Italian language." "Those who don't speak Italian are out," said Mr. Messori, the writer. "It's like wanting to be the secretary general of U.N. and not speaking English." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JASON%20HOROWITZ&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JASON%20HOROWITZ&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 20:10:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:10:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYTBR: Essay: Heloise & Abelard: Love Hurts Message-ID: Essay: Heloise & Abelard: Love Hurts http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/books/review/13NEHRING.html By CRISTINA NEHRING Books Discussed in This Essay HELOISE AND ABELARD: A New Biography. By James Burge. HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95. FAREWELL, MY ONLY ONE By Antoine Audouard. Translated by Euan Cameron. Houghton Mifflin, $24. ABELARD AND HELOISE By Constant J. Mews. Oxford University, cloth, $74; paper, $24.95. THE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND HELOISE Translated With an Introduction and Notes by Betty Radice. Revised by M. T. Clanchy. Penguin, paper, $14. THE LOST LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France. By Constant J. Mews. With Translations by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews. Palgrave Macmillan, cloth, $75; paper, $24.95. ALMOST a thousand years ago, a teacher fell in love with his student. Almost a thousand years ago, they began a torrid affair. They made love in the kitchens of convents and in the boudoir of the girl's uncle. They wrote hundreds of love letters. When the girl bore a child, they were secretly married, but the teacher was castrated by henchmen of the enraged uncle. At her lover's bidding, the girl took religious orders. He took the habit of a monk. They retreated into separate monasteries and wrote to each other until parted by death. The story of Abelard and Heloise hardly resonates with the spirit of our age. Not least, its origins in the classroom offend: teachers, we know, are not supposed to fall in love with their students. Heloise, moreover, is no feminist heroine, despite having been one of the best educated women of her age and writing some of its most affecting prose. Nobody who takes the veil on the command of her husband and swears ''complete obedience'' to him can hope to sneak into the bastion of feminism. Today, even the high romance of the couple's liaison strikes us as foreign: all that sacrifice and intensity! We live in a time of broad antiromanticism when teenagers, according to The Times Magazine, have given up on relationships altogether and adults write to the editor to salute their wisdom. ''Romance?'' scoffed one correspondent. It's just ''an excuse . . . to work off sexual energy.'' Small wonder, in this climate, that the anguish Abelard and Heloise suffered for each other renders them even more suspect. What with safe sex, prenuptial agreements and emotional air cushions of every stripe, we have almost managed to riskproof our relationships. The notion that passion might comprise not only joy but pain, not only self-realization but self-abandonment, seems archaic. To admire, as an early-20th-century biographer of Abelard and Heloise does, the ''beauty of souls large enough to be promoted to such sufferings'' seems downright perverse. And yet there's a grandeur to high-stakes romance, to self-sacrifice, that's missing from our latex-love culture -- and it's a grandeur we perhaps crave to recover. How else to account for the flurry of new writing on these two ill-fated 12th-century lovers? How to explain the publication here, within just a few months of one another, of a French novel (''Farewell, My Only One,'' by Antoine Audouard), a British biography (''Heloise and Abelard,'' by James Burge) and an intellectual study from Australia (''Abelard and Heloise,'' by Constant J. Mews)? To be sure, Abelard wasn't just Heloise's suitor; he was also one of the most notable philosophers of his day. But as anybody who has tried to slog through his theological arguments can attest, they no longer raise many eyebrows. Theories that got him condemned for heresy in his own century -- about the relative power of each member of the Trinity -- are not what nail us to our seats today. Try as an admirable scholar like Mews might to render these disputes colorful -- and try as Abelard himself did to formulate them for posterity -- ''what will survive'' of Abelard, to borrow Philip Larkin's line, ''is love.'' And what a love it was. Until recently, we could read it directly only in eight letters discovered in the 13th century and composed long after the lovers' entry into monastic life. The first, from Abelard, isn't even directed to Heloise. Written for an unnamed monk, it's what a medieval reader would have called a ''letter of consolation,'' meant to comfort a troubled friend by convincing him that your problems are greater than his. This early variant of schadenfreude, the so-called ''Historia Calamitatum,'' is how we learn of Abelard's first arrival in Paris, of his growing renown as a teacher and his encounter with the well-educated young Heloise. Here too we learn of Abelard's rash decision to move into her uncle Fulbert's home and become her tutor, of their love and her pregnancy, of Fulbert's rage, Abelard's attempt to pacify him by proposing marriage and Heloise's resistance -- at least in part because of the damage it would do to her lover's reputation. We learn that Abelard prevailed over his pupil, that the wedding was initially kept secret and that Fulbert ordered a terrible act of vengeance. Days after thugs broke into Abelard's bedroom at night and castrated him, the newlyweds took vows of celibacy and repaired to their respective religious institutions. The letters written after the ''Historia Calamitatum'' are the richest, containing the rash, ringing, reckless and altogether impious declarations of love for which Heloise will always be known. Here is a voice that refuses to stay in the Middle Ages; it reaches through the centuries and catches us at the throat. ''Men call me chaste,'' she writes. ''They do not know the hypocrite I am.'' Even during the celebration of Mass, she confesses, ''lewd visions'' of the pleasures she shared with Abelard ''take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers. I should be groaning over the sins I have committed, but I can only sigh for what I have lost.'' She asserts the primacy of desire, boldly professing the amorous, sacrilegious motives that drove her into the convent: ''It was not any sense of vocation which brought me as a young girl to accept the austerities of the cloister, but your bidding alone. . . . I can expect no reward for this from God, for it is certain that I have done nothing as yet for love of him. . . . I would have had no hesitation, God knows, in following you or going ahead at your bidding to the flames of hell.'' Her bravado, her defiance, her ruthless honesty and her apotheosis of eros over morality are everywhere apparent -- and still today they are shocking. Love is Heloise's religion, even when she's wrapped in the robes of a nun. And in the practice of this religion, she is as uncompromising as she is unconventional. For her, love has no business with the law or money or social safety nets. It is for this reason, more than any other, that she opposes Abelard's desire to wed: ''I never sought anything in you except yourself. . . . I looked for no marriage bond.'' Indeed, she proclaims,''if Augustus, emperor of the whole world, saw fit to honor me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess forever, it would be dearer and more honorable to me to be called not his empress, but your whore.'' The dust will not settle on such words. At once intrepid and idealistic, transgressive and submissive, taboo-busting and sweet-natured, noble and naughty, they have seduced scholars for centuries. This woman, this prioress, who was prepared to sacrifice not just earthly reputation but heavenly salvation for the sake of her secular love, is a literary original. Petrarch couldn't read her without scribbling exclamations in the margins; the three letters to Abelard that have come down to us from her monastic confinement have sufficed to make her name as a writer. Only recently -- and miraculously -- has a new cache of material turned up, fragments of 113 letters that many scholars believe Abelard and Heloise exchanged before Abelard's castration. Copied in the 15th century by a monk named Johannes de Vespria, discovered in 1980 by Constant J. Mews and finally published as ''The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard,'' these short but eloquent missives present two people vying -- with no coyness or gender typecasting whatever -- to outdo each other in expressions of adoration. ''To a reddening rose under the spotless whiteness of lilies,'' the woman addresses the man. ''To his jewel, more pleasing and more splendid than the present light,'' the man addresses the woman. The letters have unleashed a new storm of interest in the couple; it is to this that we owe the British filmmaker James Burge's biography, ''Abelard and Heloise.'' Burge spends much time glossing the new correspondence -- unfortunately, trivializing rather than illuminating it. ''This sounds to modern ears like a promise of sex,'' he tells us at one point, then rushes to explain: ''The question of when exactly they first consummated their love awaits more assiduous scholarship.'' Given that scholars are still arguing about Heloise's birth date (she's been put between 15 and 27 years of age at the time of her encounter with Abelard, who would have been in his late 30's), you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for this golden factoid. But what's really missing in Burge's biography is an ear for the lyricism of his subjects' correspondence, a feel for the mystery of their bond. Antoine Audouard's novel ''Farewell, My Only One'' doesn't draw explicitly on the new letters, but it's substantially truer to their spirit. It also has an ingenious narrative scheme: the story is told from the point of view of a wandering student, William, who falls in love with Heloise at the same time that he becomes Abelard's disciple. When he has outlived both, at the end of the tale, we discover an even closer connection. Audouard, a former director of the French publisher Laffont-Fixot, evokes in gritty and poetic detail the streets of 12th-century Paris (where the narrator tells us he ''stumbled over a pig''). He's also very good at conveying the process of infatuation: William falls for Heloise when she loses consciousness in a crowd: ''I am not strong. I have never carried a woman,'' he marvels. And yet he does, and even lunges after the flower that has fallen from her hair. ''A few crushed petals'' are all that remain, though, when he opens his ''clenched fist'' -- a foretaste of what happens when we grasp what we love too firmly. But Audouard spends too much time alone with William -- building churches, cleaning grates, making friends -- and we resent being taken away from the lovers. Then again, anyone writing about Abelard and Heloise must compete with their own eloquence. The early letters are so clear and beautiful they can be read alone, without anachronistic glossing or fictional superstructures. Like the later letters -- recently reprinted in a volume edited by the British medievalist and Abelard biographer Michael Clanchy -- they glow. Together they preserve the myth of a shining couple, persecuted by authority and hounded by circumstance but true to each other, ready for all sacrifice, passionate even to the grave. It's a potent myth and a necessary one -- but it is a myth. The reality of Abelard and Heloise's story may be no less moving, but it's less than perfect. You could argue, first off, that their relationship was already on the decline by the time Abelard was castrated. And that Fulbert's vengeance was taken because Abelard was insufficiently, rather than excessively, close to his niece. Heloise already lived in a convent at the time of Abelard's mutilation -- not as a nun, but nevertheless under the protection of the nuns. Ostensibly this was a tactic to preserve the secrecy of their marriage; to Fulbert, however, it may have suggested that Abelard was planning to get rid of his wife. Is this what it meant to her? The arrangement, in any case, was neither ideal nor particularly gallant, and Abelard's visits were decreasing in frequency: ''You sadden my spirit,'' Heloise writes in the last of her early letters. Is it possible that Fulbert's crime saved rather than sank the lovers' passion? That by turning Abelard into a romantic martyr at the very moment his interest was flagging, Fulbert reinvigorated Heloise's loyalty and gave Abelard an excuse to ignore her without blame? This is, in fact, what he did for the next 12 years. It wasn't until Heloise had become abbess of her own convent and stumbled upon his ''Historia Calamitatum'' that she was able to draw Abelard back into communication with her. And even then religion had changed him; the passion and warmth of the early letters had fled. In the later letters, Abelard has become pious and self-centered. When Heloise entreats him to take pity on her loneliness, he sends her a set of prayers to say for him. When she serenades their love, he moans about the trouble he's having with the other monks at his abbey. Never an easy man to get on with, he has made blood enemies of men whose well-being he is supposed to preserve: they are, he assures Heloise, relentlessly trying to poison him. Therefore the refrain, ''Pray for me.'' It is Heloise's tact and generosity that allow the dialogue to continue and even attain exemplary dimensions. Seeing that her beloved is no longer capable of the language of passion, she smothers her love song (''the loss,'' as Burge states, ''is history's'') and addresses him on the only terms he still knows and values. Like the star student she once was, she begins to quiz him on every biblical, monastic and moral question she can think of. In doing so, she inspires much of the most valuable -- and satisfying -- work of Abelard's life. Disdained by his own monks as well as by the Vatican (he was twice condemned for heresy), he found an enthusiastic audience in Heloise and her nuns. It is for Heloise that he undertakes what one scholar has called ''the most substantial writings of the 12th century on women's place in Christianity''; it is for Heloise that he writes countless sermons, hymns and disquisitions on spiritual themes. Heloise's convent becomes, in some sense, the couple's joint project, their spiritual child. Their cooperation struck onlookers as a dazzling example of friendship between a man and a woman. If Heloise didn't get what she most wanted from Abelard, she got the very best he had to give. His reflections, his confidences and his final, all-important confession were addressed to her; his most urgent worldly plea was to be buried where she would be near him. Is their story a fraud because Abelard, as Mews has written, was ''tagging along behind'' Heloise in matters of the heart? The love stories that touch us most deeply are punctuated by human frailty. Look at them up close and you see the fault lines, compromises and anticlimaxes. At the beginning of Shakespeare's play, Romeo is just as intemperately in love with a girl called Rosaline as he is later with Juliet. Tristan and Isolde's passion could well be the fruit of substance abuse, of a love potion they drank unknowingly. And Abelard and Heloise? They weren't equally strong or passionate or generous. Still, they put their frailties together and begat a perfect myth, as well as something perhaps even more precious -- a surprising, splendid, fractured reality. ''There is a crack,'' the Leonard Cohen lyric goes, ''a crack in everything: that's how the light gets in.'' Books Discussed in This Essay HELOISE AND ABELARD A New Biography. By James Burge. HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95. FAREWELL, MY ONLY ONE By Antoine Audouard. Translated by Euan Cameron. Houghton Mifflin, $24. ABELARD AND HELOISE By Constant J. Mews. Oxford University, cloth, $74; paper, $24.95. THE LETTERS OF ABELARD AND HELOISE Translated With an Introduction and Notes by Betty Radice. Revised by M. T. Clanchy. Penguin, paper, $14. THE LOST LETTERS OF HELOISE AND ABELARD Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France. By Constant J. Mews. With Translations by Neville Chiavaroli and Constant J. Mews. Palgrave Macmillan, cloth, $75; paper, $24.95. Cristina Nehring writes regularly for The Atlantic. She is the author of the forthcoming ''Women in Love From Simone de Beauvoir to Sylvia Plath: A Feminist Defense of Romance.'' From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 20:11:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:11:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming Message-ID: Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence Behind Effort to Combat Global Warming http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/10/national/10evangelical.html By LAURIE GOODSTEIN A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming. These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God's creation. The Rev. Rich Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and a significant voice in the debate, said, "I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created." The association has scheduled two meetings on Capitol Hill and in the Washington suburbs on Thursday and Friday, where more than 100 leaders will discuss issuing a statement on global warming. The meetings are considered so pivotal that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and officials of the Bush administration, who are on opposite sides on how to address global warming, will speak. People on all sides of the debate say that if evangelical leaders take a stand, they could change the political dynamics on global warming. The administration has refused to join the international Kyoto treaty and opposes mandatory emission controls. The issue has failed to gain much traction in the Republican-controlled Congress. An overwhelming majority of evangelicals are Republicans, and about four out of five evangelicals voted for President Bush last year, according to the Pew Research Center. The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group of 51 church denominations, said he had become passionate about global warming because of his experience scuba diving and observing the effects of rising ocean temperatures and pollution on coral reefs. "The question is, Will evangelicals make a difference, and the answer is, The Senate thinks so," Mr. Haggard said. "We do represent 30 million people, and we can mobilize them if we have to." In October the association paved the way for broad-based advocacy on the environment when it adopted "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," a platform that included a plank on "creation care" that many evangelical leaders say was unprecedented. "Because clean air, pure water and adequate resources are crucial to public health and civic order," the statement said, "government has an obligation to protect its citizens from the effects of environmental degradation." Nearly 100 evangelical leaders have signed the statement. But it is far from certain that a more focused statement on climate change would elicit a similar response. In recent years, however, whenever the association latched onto a new issue, Washington paid attention, on questions like religious persecution, violence in Sudan, AIDS in Africa and sex trafficking of young girls. Environmentalists said they would welcome the evangelicals as allies. "They have good friendships in places where the rest of the environmental community doesn't," Larry J. Schweiger, president and chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said. "For instance, in legislative districts where there's a very conservative lawmaker who might not be predisposed to pay attention to what environmental groups might say, but may pay attention to what the local faith community is saying." It is not as if the evangelical and environmental groups are collaborating, because the wedge between them remains deep, Mr. Cizik said. He added that evangelicals had long been uncomfortable with what they perceived to be the environmentalists' support for government regulation, population control and, if they are not entirely secular, new-age approaches to religion. Over the last three years, evangelical leaders like Mr. Cizik have begun to reconsider their silence on environmental questions. Some evangelicals have spoken out, but not many. Among them is the Rev. Jim Ball of the Evangelical Environmental Network, who in 2002 began a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and drove a hybrid vehicle across the country. Mr. Cizik said that Mr. Ball "dragged" him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England. Among the speakers were evangelical scientists, including Sir John Houghton, a retired Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who was on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a committee that issued international reports. Sir John said in an interview that he had told the group that science and faith together provided proof that climate change should be a Christian concern. Mr. Cizik said he had a "conversion" on climate change so profound in Oxford that he likened it to an "altar call," when nonbelievers accept Jesus as their savior. Mr. Cizik recently bought a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle. Mr. Cizik and Mr. Ball then asked Sir John to speak at a small meeting of evangelical leaders in June in Maryland called by the Evangelical Environmental Network, the National Association of Evangelicals and Christianity Today, the magazine. The leaders read Scripture and said they were moved by three watermen who caught crabs in Chesapeake Bay and said their faith had made them into environmentalists. Those leaders produced a "covenant" in which 29 committed to "engage the evangelical community" on climate change and to produce a "consensus statement" within a year. Soon, Christianity Today ran an editorial endorsing a bill sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, along with Mr. Lieberman, that would include binding curbs on heat-trapping gases. Mr. Ball said the strongest moral argument he made to fellow evangelicals was that climate change would have disproportionate effects on the poorest regions in the world. Hurricanes, droughts and floods are widely expected to intensify as a result of climate change. Evangelical leaders of relief and development organizations had been very receptive, he said. "Christ said, 'What you do to the least of these you do to me,' " Mr. Ball said. "And so caring for the poor by reducing the threat of global warming is caring for Jesus Christ." Among those speaking at the two meetings this week are Sir John and Dr. Mack McFarland, environmental manager for DuPont, who is to describe how his company has greatly reduced emissions of heat-trapping gases. Such an approach appeals to evangelicals, Mr. Haggard said, adding, "We want to be pro-business environmentalists." Mr. Cizik said he was among many evangelicals who would support some regulation on heat-trapping gases. "We're not adverse to government-mandated prohibitions on behavioral sin such as abortion," he said. "We try to restrict it. So why, if we're social tinkering to protect the sanctity of human life, ought we not be for a little tinkering to protect the environment?" Mr. Lieberman added: "Support from the evangelical and broader religious community can really move some people in Congress who feel some sense of moral responsibility but haven't quite settled on an exact policy response yet. This could be pivotal." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 18 20:12:19 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:12:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The School Auction as Economic Indicator Message-ID: The School Auction as Economic Indicator http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/nyregion/17auctions.html By [1]JENNIFER STEINHAUER There are many ways to gauge the economic recovery of New York's most lucrative professions, and everyone has a favorite indicator. The packed dining rooms of $250-a- plate-restaurants. The plethora of luxury hotels being converted into apartments. The mere existence of an $800 haircut offered on Gansevoort Street. But surely one of the best is the $40,000 fetched recently by Columbia Grammar School for a nautical-themed mural panel, made by some of its youngest students and sold at its annual benefit auction. Every spring, schools across the city hold benefit auctions to beef up their coffers, allowing another year of scholarships, school upkeep and general expenses to be met. The affairs range from the folksy - dance parties in the school gym - to the elaborate - a night at Cipriani - and pull in anywhere from just less than $100,000 to more than $600,000, with several Manhattan private schools netting near the top of the range. Often, as goes the stock market, so goes the annual auction take. "I have been here 18 years, and I can say that when things are going well in the economy, we tend to do well, too," said George P. Davison, the head of Grace Church School in Greenwich Village. "That is the reason for the timing of the auctions," Mr. Davison said, "because people don't get their bonuses until after January." Grace Church is still calculating its final tally from last week's auction but is likely to end up 8 percent higher than last year's, when its $460,000 net was 50 percent more than the previous year's. School auctions have come a long way since the late 1970's, when a group of families from the Trevor Day School gathered for a potluck dinner auction in a West End Avenue apartment, taking in $10,000. Today's auctions feature elaborate themes and fancy sites, as well as catalogs filled with summer homes in Greece, floor seats to Knicks games and offers for private time with popular teachers. "There is quite a range in terms of the amount of energy and activity that goes into them," said Patricia Girardi, executive director of the Parents League, an association that helps parents navigate the private school system. "Even nursery schools are able to do very handsomely." Auction catalogs also provide a window into the distinct cultures of each school. Chef parents, for example, often live downtown. So it is that Grace Church pulled in $38,000 for a dinner for 12 in the winning bidder's home, prepared by the fathers Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio. And Mario Batali will be cooking in the home of the winning family from LREI in Greenwich Village. That school, which encompasses the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, holds two auctions. One offers only art, featuring parents like the artist Tom Slaughter and the photographer Sandi Fellman. At the general auction, a family can bid to have a photograph of their child taken with one of William Wegman's dogs. "We are very fortunate being a downtown school," said Pippa Gerard, the director of development at the school. "Many artists have sent their children here." News media people tend to flock uptown, as do random sports celebrities. At the Trinity School on the Upper West Side, parents can win tennis lessons with John McEnroe, at an event with Paula Zahn as the M.C. At the Dalton School, Al Roker auctioned off backstage tours of the "Today Show." The Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn combines the groovy independent film vibe - the "Sopranos" star Steve Buscemi offered a tour of the set - with local color. One family paid $4,000 to have lunch with the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, at Bamonte's in Williamsburg. "The place is quintessential Brooklyn," said Henry Trevor, an assistant head of the school. And what to say, exactly, about the Packer Collegiate Institute, also in Brooklyn, where $100 could get one a gift certificate to a company "dedicated to the spreading of sexual enlightenment through the promulgation of chosen playthings," as well as a guide to good sex? Parents volunteer to do everything from decorating the catering hall to checking the coats at the auctions. But in the city's most expensive schools, some parents squirm in their seats as the wealthiest among them battle with their paddles to win vacations at holiday homes in Italy, chartered sailboat rides, private time with the school director and the science teacher's hazelnut cake recipe. "It is a nice community event," said one Grace Church parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "But you better have money in that community. If you were a family getting any degree of scholarship, who is just scraping by to send your kid here, it would have been a lot to take." At Dalton, several parents say they do not even consider attending the auction, considering that tickets are about $200. Occasionally, bridges are burned, bad karma invited. Sometimes someone drinks too much, overbids and then cannot pay the next morning, one school director said. At an Upper East Side nursery school one year, a group of parents who were officers in their respective companies donated 10 shares of stock each to create a miniportfolio. The buyer, according to one parent, eagerly paid up, and then immediately shorted all the shares, showing a lack of confidence in his peers' companies. Some schools are trying to tone down the auction fever. Trinity, for example, canceled its live auction in 2003 in favor of a benefit with a small silent auction. "We came to the conclusion that the auction, from a fund-raising point of view, was very successful," said Myles Amend, director of development at the school. "But it was not open to the entire community. As we talked among ourselves, there was just a sort of general level of discomfort with the auction process." John McEnroe still auctioned off tennis lessons last week, Mr. Amend said, just silently. "It has made a big difference in bringing the school community together," he said. "You want fund-raisers that are friend raisers." At the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, the auction is now done online, with eBay as a model. And the proceeds from tonight's auction at St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's in Morningside Heights will all be donated tsunami victims in a village in India, the first time the school has ever donated its auction kitty. But some things about auctions may never change. The most coveted items remain the homemade projects fashioned by the school's children. Many schools have children make a quilt of some sort; others do murals like the one at Columbia Grammar. This year, for example, St. David's, the boys' school on the Upper East Side, sold a quilt made by second graders for $30,000, the highest amount ever fetched for a school project, according to Maureen Barry, the director of development there. "Somehow it seems pure to bid on a quilt," said Anne Goldrush, who runs her own real estate company and once was co-chairwoman of the auction at Christ Church Nursery School. "It is almost something about the sentimentality about it that allows people to feel free to go nuts. And on some level, everyone wants to come home and tell their child that they got the quilt." From paul.werbos at verizon.net Sun Apr 17 02:15:32 2005 From: paul.werbos at verizon.net (Paul J. Werbos, Dr.) Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 22:15:32 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.0.20050416221454.01e7db08@incoming.verizon.net> unsubscribe From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 18 23:51:28 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:51:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes Message-ID: <01C54436.DE2F9430.shovland@mindspring.com> I think the economic impact of 911 is vastly overrated by some pundits. It's poor policy that causing the sluggish job market. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 11:54 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes The Clinton era was pre-9-11. That must account for something other than Democrat vs. Republican. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Why compare the prosperity of the Clinton era with >higher taxes to the doldrums of the Bush era with >lower taxes? > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >- > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 18 23:52:32 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 16:52:32 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C54437.04ACA300.shovland@mindspring.com> I spent several hours yesterday photographing the wine cellar of a home in Atherton that is on the market for $10.5 million. It's not middle class :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 12:44 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits San Francisco, like the rest of California, is unreal when it comes to property values. My guess is that no home owner needs to perform "spring clean up and repair" since winter with its break, crackle and peel, never arrives. This means that a second mortgage can go to expansion and updating of existing home rather than necessary repairs. High property values also promote high wages in most industries so that the lure of 6 figures could be reason enough to have a newly minted MBA from a top east coast uni. make the move west. Residents of Brentwood, home to O.J.Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, consider themselves living a middle class life yet most live in homes valued higher than $10.5 million. Not only is the concept of "class" relative, so is geographic location. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as >rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family >needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle >class life. > >A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less >middle class than they think. That's why some >of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then >what is poor.....income of $100k per year? >This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way >below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. > >Gerry > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >>the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >>want us to know how much money they have. >> >>The government is part of the economy. Taxes >>paid to the government do not drain the economy. >>They merely shift money from one part of the >>economy to another. This shifting increases the >>velocity of money, which causes the economy >>to grow. >> >>Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >>their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >>the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >>people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >>that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >>cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>They have used their money to buy politicians >>>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>>cuts under Bush are of this character. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>-----Original Message----- >>>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>> >>>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>>law? I certainly don't. >>> >>>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >>> >>> >>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>So they should pay more taxes. >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland >>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>> >>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >><< File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 19 00:20:16 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 17:20:16 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad Message-ID: <01C5443A.E4590B80.shovland@mindspring.com> The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The SF Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Apr 19 01:12:22 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:12:22 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C54437.04ACA300.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54437.04ACA300.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42645AF6.6030500@solution-consulting.com> Steve, Congratulations on the interesting gig. Hope you were well paid. Thomas Sowell has demonstrated that the inflated home values in your area are an artifact of liberal economic policies that primarily harm the middle classes. By limiting building permits and outlawing high-rise housing, the Bay area has created an artificially high cost of housing. Sowell can be read on: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/archive.shtml A typical take on property rights: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041229.shtml Steve Hovland wrote: >I spent several hours yesterday photographing >the wine cellar of a home in Atherton that is >on the market for $10.5 million. > >It's not middle class :-) > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 12:44 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >San Francisco, like the rest of California, is unreal when it comes to >property values. My guess is that no home owner needs to perform >"spring clean up and repair" since winter with its break, crackle and >peel, never arrives. This means that a second mortgage can go to >expansion and updating of existing home rather than necessary >repairs. High property values also promote high wages in most >industries so that the lure of 6 figures could be reason enough to have >a newly minted MBA from a top east coast uni. make the move west. >Residents of Brentwood, home to O.J.Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, >consider themselves living a middle class life yet most live in homes >valued higher than $10.5 million. Not only is the concept of "class" >relative, so is geographic location. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as >>rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family >>needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle >>class life. >> >>A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less >>middle class than they think. That's why some >>of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then >>what is poor.....income of $100k per year? >>This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way >>below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. >> >>Gerry >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >>>the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >>>want us to know how much money they have. >>> >>>The government is part of the economy. Taxes >>>paid to the government do not drain the economy. >>>They merely shift money from one part of the >>>economy to another. This shifting increases the >>>velocity of money, which causes the economy >>>to grow. >>> >>>Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >>>their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >>>the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>-----Original Message----- >>>From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >>>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>> >>>Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >>>people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >>>that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >>>cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. >>> >>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>They have used their money to buy politicians >>>>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>>>cuts under Bush are of this character. >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland >>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>> >>>> >>>>-----Original Message----- >>>>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>>>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>>> >>>>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>>>law? I certainly don't. >>>> >>>>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >>>> >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>So they should pay more taxes. >>>>> >>>>>Steve Hovland >>>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>><< File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Apr 19 02:31:11 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:31:11 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes In-Reply-To: <01C54436.DE2F9430.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54436.DE2F9430.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42646D6F.7030402@earthlink.net> Sure. That's what Democrats say because the event happened in a Republican administration. So sorry that you select ONE policy and give it aegis to being causal factor in a U.S. sluggish job market. Pundits or no, all of us are still here and WONDERING!!! Certainly hope that you and your group doesn't "do in" the remainder. We need to remain optimistic. Regards, Gerry Steve Hovland wrote: >I think the economic impact of 911 >is vastly overrated by some pundits. > >It's poor policy that causing the >sluggish job market. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 11:54 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes > >The Clinton era was pre-9-11. That must account for something other >than Democrat vs. Republican. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>Why compare the prosperity of the Clinton era with >>higher taxes to the doldrums of the Bush era with >>lower taxes? >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>- >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From waluk at earthlink.net Tue Apr 19 02:35:25 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:35:25 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits In-Reply-To: <01C54437.04ACA300.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54437.04ACA300.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42646E6D.9000004@earthlink.net> Of course a home in Atherton is middle class. That's what the owners wish to think of themselves as. After all, if they were "upper class" then they'd need to deal with issues which plague the upper crust. And frankly, they don't have the spare cash. Wine cellars in Cali simply mean a pipeline to a family vineyard. It's like "magic"....all in the slight of the hand. Gerry Steve Hovland wrote: >I spent several hours yesterday photographing >the wine cellar of a home in Atherton that is >on the market for $10.5 million. > >It's not middle class :-) > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 12:44 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >San Francisco, like the rest of California, is unreal when it comes to >property values. My guess is that no home owner needs to perform >"spring clean up and repair" since winter with its break, crackle and >peel, never arrives. This means that a second mortgage can go to >expansion and updating of existing home rather than necessary >repairs. High property values also promote high wages in most >industries so that the lure of 6 figures could be reason enough to have >a newly minted MBA from a top east coast uni. make the move west. >Residents of Brentwood, home to O.J.Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, >consider themselves living a middle class life yet most live in homes >valued higher than $10.5 million. Not only is the concept of "class" >relative, so is geographic location. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as >>rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family >>needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle >>class life. >> >>A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less >>middle class than they think. That's why some >>of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then >>what is poor.....income of $100k per year? >>This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way >>below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. >> >>Gerry >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >>>the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >>>want us to know how much money they have. >>> >>>The government is part of the economy. Taxes >>>paid to the government do not drain the economy. >>>They merely shift money from one part of the >>>economy to another. This shifting increases the >>>velocity of money, which causes the economy >>>to grow. >>> >>>Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >>>their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >>>the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>-----Original Message----- >>>From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >>>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>> >>>Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >>>people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >>>that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >>>cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. >>> >>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>They have used their money to buy politicians >>>>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>>>cuts under Bush are of this character. >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland >>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>> >>>> >>>>-----Original Message----- >>>>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>>>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>>> >>>>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>>>law? I certainly don't. >>>> >>>>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >>>> >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>So they should pay more taxes. >>>>> >>>>>Steve Hovland >>>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>><< File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 19 02:44:50 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 19:44:50 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Message-ID: <01C5444F.162C8A10.shovland@mindspring.com> I might disown those policies and still consider myself a liberal :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 6:12 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits Steve, Congratulations on the interesting gig. Hope you were well paid. Thomas Sowell has demonstrated that the inflated home values in your area are an artifact of liberal economic policies that primarily harm the middle classes. By limiting building permits and outlawing high-rise housing, the Bay area has created an artificially high cost of housing. Sowell can be read on: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/archive.shtml A typical take on property rights: http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041229.shtml Steve Hovland wrote: >I spent several hours yesterday photographing >the wine cellar of a home in Atherton that is >on the market for $10.5 million. > >It's not middle class :-) > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 12:44 PM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits > >San Francisco, like the rest of California, is unreal when it comes to >property values. My guess is that no home owner needs to perform >"spring clean up and repair" since winter with its break, crackle and >peel, never arrives. This means that a second mortgage can go to >expansion and updating of existing home rather than necessary >repairs. High property values also promote high wages in most >industries so that the lure of 6 figures could be reason enough to have >a newly minted MBA from a top east coast uni. make the move west. >Residents of Brentwood, home to O.J.Simpson and Arnold Schwarzenegger, >consider themselves living a middle class life yet most live in homes >valued higher than $10.5 million. Not only is the concept of "class" >relative, so is geographic location. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>I certainly think that $500,000 and up qualifies as >>rich, but not $100,000. In San Francisco a family >>needs about $80,000 to cover the basics of middle >>class life. >> >>A lot of people are, in money terms, a lot less >>middle class than they think. That's why some >>of us say "they" are trying to destroy the middle class. >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 4:32 PM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >> >>You really mean that rich is over $10 million/yr.? If that's rich, then >>what is poor.....income of $100k per year? >>This does leave me flabbergasted....my family and I must be existing way >>below the poverty level. And yes, our family continues paying taxes. >> >>Gerry >> >>Steve Hovland wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>I think rich is more like over $10 million per year- >>>the Forbes list and a bunch of people who don't >>>want us to know how much money they have. >>> >>>The government is part of the economy. Taxes >>>paid to the government do not drain the economy. >>>They merely shift money from one part of the >>>economy to another. This shifting increases the >>>velocity of money, which causes the economy >>>to grow. >>> >>>Many private enterprises get a significant portion of >>>their revenue from the taxes paid to government. On >>>the right there is a lot of hypocrisy about this. >>> >>>Steve Hovland >>>www.stevehovland.net >>> >>> >>>-----Original Message----- >>>From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] >>>Sent: Sunday, April 17, 2005 10:12 AM >>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>> >>>Actually, the rich already pay most of the taxes, if you call rich >>>people above $100k/yr. So any tax cut will affect them simply because >>>that is where the taxes are. Taxes are a drain on the economy, so tax >>>cuts make all people - even poor and middle class - better off. >>> >>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>They have used their money to buy politicians >>>>who vote tax reductions for them. All of the tax >>>>cuts under Bush are of this character. >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland >>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>> >>>> >>>>-----Original Message----- >>>>From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >>>>Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 6:53 PM >>>>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>>>Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] The rich get more benefits >>>> >>>>Yes they should. Any idea why they find themselves outside the economic >>>>law? I certainly don't. >>>> >>>>Gerry Reinhart-Waller >>>> >>>> >>>>Steve Hovland wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>>>So they should pay more taxes. >>>>> >>>>>Steve Hovland >>>>>www.stevehovland.net >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>>_______________________________________________ >>>>paleopsych mailing list >>>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>><< File: ATT00000.html >> << File: ATT00001.txt >> >>>_______________________________________________ >>>paleopsych mailing list >>>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>_______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > << File: ATT00048.html >> << File: ATT00049.txt >> From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Apr 19 04:13:01 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 22:13:01 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad In-Reply-To: <01C5443A.E4590B80.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C5443A.E4590B80.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4264854D.5090402@solution-consulting.com> Nice humor, steve. Keep it coming. Steve Hovland wrote: >The following is the first communique from a group calling itself >Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The SF Chronicle via an anonymous >spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have >received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to >print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that >the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must >always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at >least not disgusting: > >Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are >Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one >God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, >with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the >possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was >noted with love by the secretary. > >Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long >has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist >thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions >(except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism >subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted >by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right >to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the >IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! > >People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? >Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news >dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be >tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has >told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or >that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, >or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister >Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no >disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to >the committee of the whole for further discussion. > >We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born >again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God >cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother >Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have >a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader >Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of >Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the >minutes. > >Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups >with brains enough to understand the difference between political >belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series >of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, >kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned >discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" >by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- >ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. > >We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require >people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love >suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, >but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a >quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign >managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be >forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all >stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. > >We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." >We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. >Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just >because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. >Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the >birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out >to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get >everyone. > >Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the >world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a >Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone >suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to >the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, >and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday >Flowers and Banners committee. > >People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike >without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear >as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There >will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > > > > Bob Wood, Ph.D., Reference Librarian > > LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport > > > > Tel.: (318) 675-5679 > > Email: trongly that > the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must > always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at > least not disgusting: > > Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are > Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one > God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, > with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the > possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was > noted with love by the secretary. > > Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long > has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist > thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions > (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism > subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted > by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right > to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the > IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! > > People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? > Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news > dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be > tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has > told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or > that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, > or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister > Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no > disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to > the committee of the whole for further discussion. > > We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born > again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God > cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother > Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have > a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader > Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of > Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the > minutes. > > Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups > with brains enough to understand the difference between political > belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series > of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, > kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned > discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" > by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- > ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. > > We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require > people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love > suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, > but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a > quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign > managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be > forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all > stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. > > We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." > We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. > Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just > because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. > Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the > birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out > to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get > everyone. > > Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the > world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a > Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone > suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to > the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, > and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday > Flowers and Banners committee. > > People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike > without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear > as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There > will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 19 04:20:15 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 21:20:15 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes Message-ID: <01C5445C.6AC62E20.shovland@mindspring.com> The incorrect policies are those which are failing to produce the needed increase in consumption. Pressure on wages is one of the main drags on the economy. The Bush tax cuts were investment- oriented, which was not what the domestic economy needed. Actually, I think the money given in tax cuts to the rich was invested- in China. I myself am very optimistic because I feel I am catching the next big wave, which is mainly about biotech in the Bay Area. (Boston is the other major biotech center in the US.) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 7:31 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes Sure. That's what Democrats say because the event happened in a Republican administration. So sorry that you select ONE policy and give it aegis to being causal factor in a U.S. sluggish job market. Pundits or no, all of us are still here and WONDERING!!! Certainly hope that you and your group doesn't "do in" the remainder. We need to remain optimistic. Regards, Gerry Steve Hovland wrote: >I think the economic impact of 911 >is vastly overrated by some pundits. > >It's poor policy that causing the >sluggish job market. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: G. Reinhart-Waller [SMTP:waluk at earthlink.net] >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 11:54 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Corporations that pay no taxes > >The Clinton era was pre-9-11. That must account for something other >than Democrat vs. Republican. > >Gerry Reinhart-Waller > >Steve Hovland wrote: > > > >>Why compare the prosperity of the Clinton era with >>higher taxes to the doldrums of the Bush era with >>lower taxes? >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>- >> >> >> >> >> > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From HowlBloom at aol.com Tue Apr 19 06:06:55 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:06:55 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe Message-ID: <1c6.26dbf7ce.2f95f9ff@aol.com> In a message dated 4/18/2005 3:00:22 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, paul.werbos at verizon.net writes: unsubscribe Paul--Why did we lose you? Howard ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk Tue Apr 19 09:41:59 2005 From: n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk (Nicholas Bannan) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:41:59 +0100 Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy forThemselves References: Message-ID: <00c501c544c4$089098e0$6882e186@.rdg.ac.uk> If the knowledge of being Pope is carried in DNA, how is it passed on, given the celibate nature of the office? NB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Premise Checker" To: Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 9:03 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy forThemselves > Italians Feel They Need the Next Papacy for Themselves > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/international/worldspecial2/16italians.htm l > By [1]JASON HOROWITZ > > [Does Mugabe have any brother?] > > VATICAN CITY, April 15 - For 455 years, the papacy passed > uninterrupted from one Italian to another until the election of the > Polish pope, John Paul II. Now, after 26 years, many Italians think it > is time to get back in office - for fear that changes in the Roman > Catholic Church may close the door on them for good. > > As 115 cardinals from 52 countries prepare to enter a conclave on > Monday to select the next pope, some Vatican historians believe that > the election of another foreigner will conclude a historic shift of > power away from Italy. According to this school of thought, the papacy > needs to mirror Catholicism's growth in the Southern Hemisphere, where > the ranks are increasing in Africa and Latin America while shrinking > in Europe. > > Few church experts think that another loss for the Italians will knock > them out as papal contenders for good, but it seems sure once and for > all to shatter the idea, reinforced by so many centuries of dominance, > that Italians are preternaturally the best men for the job. > > Some here think that would be a mistake. > > "There is a vocation, an Italian charisma," said Vittorio Messori, an > Italian writer who collaborated on John Paul's 1994 book "Crossing the > Threshold of Hope." "The Italians have a tradition of centuries behind > them, they know how to do the job of pope, it's in their DNA." > > Well, until now, anyway. "Another non-Italian pope would confirm > Italy's decline," said Giovanni Maria Vian, a Vatican scholar at La > Sapienza University of Rome. "It would mean Italy has lost its central > role in papal succession." > > There are signs that Italy is resisting such a trend, seeking to > reclaim its traditional hold and add to the 212 popes it has had in > the church's history. > > The 20 Italians who will enter next week's conclave still constitute > the largest bloc of cardinals for any single nation, and a handful > have emerged as frontrunners among those being considered for the > papacy. In recent years, as the pope's health waned, a number of them > maintained a high level of visibility and weighed in on major issues > and challenges facing the church. > > Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, 71, the archbishop of Milan, released his > major work on bio-ethics as an e-book. Cardinal Angelo Scola, 63, the > archbishop of Venice, started a magazine last month promoting dialogue > with Muslims, and Cardinal Camillo Ruini, 74, the vicar of Rome, > published a book criticizing secularism. > > There also seems to be a more subtle campaign, on the part of Italians > as a whole, to recast John Paul as one of their own. > > Cardinal Ruini presided over a memorial Mass for the pope last week, > delivering an uncharacteristically charismatic performance in which he > noted that John Paul had entered "so deeply into the hearts of Romans, > but also Italians." > > Italy's capital, too, has staked its claim, plastering the streets > with posters announcing, "Rome mourns its pope." The College of > Cardinals also decided that the pope's final resting place should be > in St. Peter's crypt, instead of his native Poland. > > Regardless of how much Rome may claim John Paul as its own, the fact > remains that he was a pope with global appeal, and his enormous > personality and long reign left an indelible stamp on the papacy. > > "Wojtyla became the church himself, people identified him with it," > said Pietro Scoppola, an Italian Vatican expert, using John Paul's > name before he became pope. "An Italian could step back and let the > church step forward." > > Indeed, some Vatican analysts argue that a shift back to an Italian > pope may be necessary to properly govern the Curia, or church > government, because few have as intimate a knowledge of the inner > workings of the Vatican bureaucracy, which manages the daily > operations of the church and which John Paul largely ignored. > > But an Italian cardinal, Fiorenzo Angelini, who is 88 and too old to > vote in the conclave, seemed to disagree in an interview this week > with Corriere della Sera of Milan. > > "Our perception of the church has broadened, to the point of reaching > really global dimensions," he said. "You can't reason any more with a > national mentality, and not even a Continental one." > > The largest growth of Roman Catholics in 2003, the last year Vatican > statistics are available, was in Africa, followed by Asia and South > America. Only in Europe did the number of Catholics fail to rise. > > "The center of the church, from a sociological point of view, is not > in Italy," said Giancarlo Zizola, author of "Conclave: History and > Secrets," a study of how popes have been selected. "The world has > changed, and it is normal that the church change too. There is good > chance now of the first non-European pope in a very long time, and > that would be significant." > > Greek and Syrian popes reigned at the early stages of the nearly > 2,000-year history of the church, and the French all but moved the > Vatican to Avignon in the 1400's. > > Since Adrian VI, a pope from Holland, died in 1523, the Italians have > held a tight grip on papal power, through the rise and fall of the > Papal States and two world wars. But in 1978, the year of John Paul's > election, that all changed. > > Wherever the pope is from, one thing is certain, and it is something > that Pope John Paul instantly grasped during that first papal address > from the balcony of St. Peter's so many years ago, when he spoke to > the Roman crowd in what he called "our Italian language." > > "Those who don't speak Italian are out," said Mr. Messori, the writer. > "It's like wanting to be the secretary general of U.N. and not > speaking English." > > References > > 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JASON%20HOROWITZ&fdq=1996 0101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JASON%20HOROWITZ&inline=nyt-per > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Tue Apr 19 09:40:53 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 05:40:53 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Entelechy: Mind & Culture; Spring/Summer issue no.5 Message-ID: <009f01c544c3$e19a1450$6501a8c0@callastudios> Hi paleos! Hope you'll take a look at the new Spring/Summer issue! www.entelechyjournal.com best wishes, alice contributors editors' musings links about entelechy back issues submissions Alice Andrews Bill Bakaitis Celia Bland Howard Bloom Natalie Bronstein James Brody Joseph Carroll Jennifer Cazenave Frank Craig Greg Darms Wyatt Ehrenfels Adrian Flange Miriam Fried Bjorn Grinde Nancy W. Hall Bradley Earle Hoge Elizabeth Insogna John A. Johnson C.L. Jones Robert Kelly Laura Kipnis Sharmagne Leland-St. John P.P. Levine Megan J.Z. Chris Metze Jeff Miller (click on title or scroll down 'zine) spring/summer no.5 poetry The Dark Side | h.d. steklis Three Girls A Comin' | david tucker Ultima Ratio Regum | greg darms Ready to Look | lindsey vona Flores Man | bradley earle hogue stories Future Perfect | miriam fried Puer Aeternus | adrian flange Don't Jump Too Soon | john a. musacchio essays Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance| rupert sheldrake Literature as Social Interaction | joseph carroll The Roots of Omnology | howard bloom reviews In Search of Positivism | pauline uchmanowich Children's Classics for a New Age | nancy w. hall art Green Symphony | jenny nelson Transmission | chris metze Rich Murphy John A. Musacchio Jenny Nelson Jill Parisi Gretchen Primack Irene P?rez Marnia Robinson Jennifer Ryan Natalie Safir E. M. Salle Rupert Sheldrake Joseph Shohan David Livingstone Smith Todd I. Stark H.D. Steklis Jason Stern Iva Spitzer Paula Superti David Tucker George Wallace George Williamson Jannie Wolff John Wymore Pauline Uchmanowicz Lindsey Vona psychological philosophical spiritual scientific political mathematical semiotic memetic postmodern evolutionary Alice Andrews Department of Psychology State University of New York at New Paltz 75 S. Manheim Blvd New Paltz, NY 12561 845.257.3602 andrewsa at newpaltz.edu www.newpaltz.edu/~andrewsa www.entelechyjournal.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 4907 bytes Desc: not available URL: From JanetKBrewer at cs.com Tue Apr 19 11:07:12 2005 From: JanetKBrewer at cs.com (JanetKBrewer at cs.com) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 07:07:12 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe Message-ID: <5C15DCDE.682DE870.1F9D54C4@cs.com> I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: >unsubscribe > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk Tue Apr 19 12:23:57 2005 From: n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk (Nicholas Bannan) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 13:23:57 +0100 Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe References: <5C15DCDE.682DE870.1F9D54C4@cs.com> Message-ID: <019b01c544da$a8ed2400$6882e186@.rdg.ac.uk> I do not intend to unsubscribe at this point, but I do identify strongly with the view that more information is entering the inbox than is fully compatible with the original function of this site as a discussion forum between individuals with an interest in this field. It is impossible to know how to police this without appearing offensive. But I regret that we may see a pattern of valued individuals withdrawing from the group as a consequence of what it has become. Nicholas ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:07 PM Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. > > "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: > > >unsubscribe > > > >_______________________________________________ > >paleopsych mailing list > >paleopsych at paleopsych.org > >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 12:41:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:41:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Supreme Court to Hear Case of Dispute Over Religious Group's Use of Banned Drug Message-ID: Supreme Court to Hear Case of Dispute Over Religious Group's Use of Banned Drug http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/politics/19scotus.html By LINDA GREENHOUSE WASHINGTON, April 18 - The Supreme Court added an important new religion case to its docket on Monday, agreeing to decide whether the government can ban the importation of a hallucinogenic tea that is central to the religious rituals of a small Brazil-based church. The case raises the broader question of how the court will interpret, in the context of an illegal drug, a law that ordinarily requires the federal government to refrain to the maximum extent possible from interfering with religious practices. The tea, known as hoasca, is made from plants that grow in the Amazon region and that produce a chemical listed by both the federal government and an international narcotics trafficking treaty as a controlled substance. The chemical, dimethyltryptamine, usually known as DMT, can also be produced in a laboratory, but followers of the Uniao Do Vegetal religion use only the naturally occurring version, which does not grow in the United States. The case is an appeal by the Bush administration of a federal court injunction won by the 130 members of the church's American branch, who brought a lawsuit five years ago to prohibit the government from invoking the Controlled Substances Act to block the importation of their tea and from seizing the sacred drink. The church, which combines elements of Christianity and indigenous Brazilian religion, opened its American branch in Santa Fe, N.M., in 1993. The Federal District Court in Albuquerque, ruling before trial, issued a preliminary injunction against the government. The order was subsequently affirmed by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, and last November was affirmed again by the full appeals court by a vote of 8 to 5. A trial has still not taken place, a fact that would ordinarily pose an obstacle to Supreme Court review. In fact, on Dec. 10 of last year, the justices denied the administration's request for a stay of the Court of Appeals order until the solicitor general's office could prepare a formal petition for Supreme Court review. The denial of a request for a stay in those circumstances is usually a strong signal that the Supreme Court will not consider the eventual appeal to be worthy of its attention. But in this case, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, No. 04-1084, the justices might have been persuaded, at least to let the administration have its say, by the strongly worded appeal filed by Paul D. Clement, the acting solicitor general. Denouncing the lower courts' handling of the case as "contrary to all precedent," Mr. Clement said that "no court has ever ordered the United States to permit a religious exemption to Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act." Schedule I, on which DMT is listed, along with marijuana and other illicit drugs, is reserved for substances that the government considers to be particularly unsafe and to have no valid medical use. Both the executive branch and Congress, however, have granted a religious exemption for another Schedule I drug, peyote, which is used in religious ceremonies by the Native American Church. In an opinion concurring in the 10th Circuit's decision to uphold the injunction, Judge Michael W. McConnell cited the peyote exemption as evidence that the government was free to exercise discretion in such matters. Rejecting the argument that the district court should have deferred to the other two branches, Judge McConnell said: "If Congress or the executive branch had investigated the religious use of hoasca and had come to an informed conclusion that the health risks or possibility of diversion are sufficient to outweigh the free exercise concerns in this case, that conclusion would be entitled to great weight. But neither branch has done that." Instead, he said, the government had simply invoked the general principle that controlled substances are dangerous. Judge McConnell, a leading scholar on questions concerning the free exercise of religion before he became a judge, is widely seen as a possible Bush administration choice for a future Supreme Court vacancy. In its Supreme Court appeal, the administration is also arguing that the injunction is forcing the government to violate a 1971 international treaty, the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances, which obliges the 160 nations that have signed it to combat international traffic in illicit drugs. The question of whether the convention applies to hoasca is disputed, because Brazil, an original signatory to the treaty, has exempted the tea, and a recent appellate court ruling in France exempted its religious use. The lower courts based their ruling on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 federal law that forbids the government to enforce laws in a way that interferes with religious practice unless the interference is justified by a "compelling interest." The Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that Congress lacked authority to apply the law to the states, but the statute remains in effect for the federal government. The hoasca tea case, which will be argued in the fall, is the third case on the Supreme Court docket that deals with federal drug policy. The court is expected to announce a decision soon in a case argued in November on whether the federal government can block enforcement of California's medical marijuana initiative. And the court recently agreed to hear the Bush administration's challenge to the Oregon law permitting doctors to prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated drugs to assist terminally ill patients in committing suicide. In other action on Monday, the court accepted an appeal by the State of Georgia on a question of criminal law that has long created confusion among the state courts. The issue in Georgia v. Randolph, No. 04-1067, is whether the police can search a home without a warrant if one occupant gives consent but another occupant objects. In this case, a woman involved in a domestic dispute called the police to the home she shared with her husband. In the officers' presence, she complained that her husband was using cocaine and told the police that cocaine was in the house. The husband, Scott F. Randolph, refused to give consent for a search, but his wife led the officers to a bedroom where evidence of cocaine use was apparent. Mr. Randolph, challenging the legality of the search, won a ruling in the Georgia Supreme Court that since both partners had "common control and authority" over the premises, the consent of both was needed to conduct a search without a warrant. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 12:43:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:43:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Strumming the Mystic Chords of Memory Message-ID: Arts > Art & Design > Museum Review: Strumming the Mystic Chords of Memory http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/arts/design/19roth.html By [1]EDWARD ROTHSTEIN SPRINGFIELD, Ill., April 18 - It is not Abraham Lincoln's handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address that is getting all the attention here, nor is it one of his stovepipe hats, still bearing the marks of his fingers where he regularly reached for its brim. Not even the white gloves found in his pocket after he was shot by John Wilkes Booth lure many viewers. These objects may bear the ghostly traces of Lincoln's touch, but would a $90 million museum have been built to house them? Would $54 million of that sum have gone to the design firm BRC Imagination Arts (which describes itself as the creators of "21st-century experience-based attractions"), if the usual museum display cases were the main experience being offered? And would such objects have inspired the fireworks and festivities of this past weekend, let alone the dedication ceremony scheduled for Tuesday morning, with 10,000 seats set up outdoors and President Bush expected to speak after a museum tour? Not likely. Something more is being promised by the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, a building designed by Gyo Obata. It is the centerpiece of a $150 million construction and development project in downtown Springfield that already includes a $25 million Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, housing more 12 million items, 47,000 of them related to Lincoln. (It is also the depository of the Illinois State Historical Library.) The complex will eventually have a park and a renovated 19th-century train station, serving as a parking garage and visitor orientation center. Almost a million people visit Lincoln-related sites every year in Illinois, according to the Convention and Visitor's Bureau in Springfield; the new research library and museum will become what they are calling the city's crown jewel. What is being promised is not just a tourist attraction, but a full Lincoln Experience. As Richard Norton Smith, the museum's executive director, said, "If you want to see marble icons, go to Washington." BRC's founder, Bob Rogers (who once worked at Walt Disney Imagineering), said the goal was to overturn traditional expectations and create an "experience museum." "There is nothing we wouldn't do," he said in a conversation, "to get people in." The strategy is hinted at in a magical stage presentation, "Ghosts of the Library," at which a historian emerges on a set that suggests the research facility next door. Why should we care about all these old objects, he asks. But thanks to technological stagecraft, they seem to come to life as he handles them. A quill pen lifts and writes the Gettysburg Address in midair. A soldier's diary conjures up a battle. In the museum, too, historical documents are meant to bring ghostly history to life. Instead of marble icons posed in Lincolnesque grandeur surrounded by etched texts, there are fiberglass and silicone figures inhabiting lifelike dioramas: a young Abe Lincoln reading Aesop's Fables outside his Indiana log cabin; Lincoln in his general store in New Salem, Ill.; on a couch courting Mary Todd; in the White House with the Emancipation Proclamation; at Ford's theater moments before he was shot. There is also sound: whispered insults like those hurled at President Lincoln by editorialists and cartoonists; vituperation hollered at him by images of actors objecting to the Emancipation Proclamation; voices of black servants in the White House kitchen discussing the latest gossip. There is even video, including a mock television studio in which the newscaster Tim Russert reports on the election of 1860, complete with campaign commercials. We are led through a virtual life of sorts. Even locations not far from the museum are reproduced: the train depot where Lincoln said farewell as he went off to Washington, the Old State Capitol where his body was viewed by 75,000 mourners. The museum literature points out that its goal "is not to fully explain all of the issues that confronted Lincoln but to inspire in the visitor a deep sense of personal connection and empathy with the man." And indeed, there is something almost eerily lifelike about many of the museum's figures, which were created using photographs and computer modeling, to simulate the characters' appearances at different ages. It is difficult not to sense the trauma in the Mary Todd Lincoln figure, sitting isolated in a chair by a window after their son's death in the White House, the raindrops casting shadows on her face like tears. And one doesn't think of Lincoln in the same way after seeing photographs of his increasingly worn face displayed in year-by-year succession during the Civil War. There is also an astonishing use of technology in a four-minute history of the Civil War, as an animated map shows the shifting borders, battles and casualties. The problem is that some of the museum is history, and some of it is not. Some of it is "experience," and some of it is true. At a time when an Academy Award-winning documentary, "Mighty Times: The Children's March," puts invented historical scenes into its narration without warning or notice, this museum does something similar. The words of the insults hurled at Lincoln and the arguments by his opponents are almost all paraphrased or invented. The soundtrack of the assassination of Lincoln omits John Wilkes Booth's declaration from the stage after the murder - "Sic semper tyrannis," Virginia's motto, meaning "thus always to tyrants" - because there was concern about whether it would be understood. The same simplification takes place in the dramatized rhetoric and arguments of Lincoln's critics. But how then do we begin to appreciate the glorious rhetoric and pungent argument of Lincoln himself? How do we understand Lincoln's ideas about slavery, or why the Emancipation Proclamation affected only the Confederacy and not the four slave-holding border states that remained in the Union? And of course, the recent scholarly discussions about Lincoln, some of which were touched on in a two-day conference that ended Monday at the next-door library, are not reflected here at all: debates about his sexuality, about the shifting nature of his religious beliefs, about his view of civil liberties. Here, Lincoln remains an icon: the Suffering Servant of the Union, a martyr for the cause of equality. Complications are shunted aside for a series of psychodramas. Various exhibition rooms have suggestive psychological titles: "Hall of Sorrows," "Whispering Gallery," "Illusion Corridor." Dominating the entrance hall, for example, is a scale model of the White House portico; and within is seen not Lincoln at work, but Mary being fitted for a ball dress, surrounded by dresses worn by her social critics and rivals, the explanatory panel suggesting that for her, as for her husband, "the White House was a war zone." That may also be why figures of Booth, Frederick Douglass and Civil War generals loiter outside the portico. They embody the husband's battles. The personal is the political: that seems to be the motto of this life "experience." And the political becomes personal, represented not by argument but by shouted insults and condensed formulas, as if the sound bites of 2005 really resembled the political debates of the early 1860's. None of this, of course, undermines the entertainment offered, and it will be surprising if Springfield does not realize its ambitions: the museum promises fun, delivered with at least some insight along the way. But there is still something serious being undermined. The blurring of history for the sake of entertainment may not be something new. After all, the village of New Salem, about a 20-minute drive from Springfield, was where Lincoln tended store and began his political career, but the town didn't survive. So in the 1920's and 30's, it was "reconstructed"; it is an invented historical village. But the new museum, because of technological power alone, risks making invention seem like fact. It also enshrines a notion that the best way to know anything about politics and history is to understand personality, and even then only in a simplified fashion. Maybe it will lead to curiosity and further inquiry; maybe not. But it is telling that by the end of the presentation "Ghosts of the Library," the historian ends up turning into a ghost himself, and disappears into thin air. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=EDWARD%20ROTHSTEIN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=EDWARD%20ROTHSTEIN&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 12:46:35 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 08:46:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Married With Problems? Therapy May Not Help Message-ID: Health > Mental Health & Behavior > Married With Problems? Therapy May Not Help http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/psychology/19coup.html By SUSAN GILBERT Each year, hundreds of thousands of couples go into counseling in an effort to save their troubled relationships. But does marital therapy work? Not nearly as well as it should, researchers say. Two years after ending counseling, studies find, 25 percent of couples are worse off than they were when they started, and after four years, up to 38 percent are divorced. Many of the counseling strategies used today, like teaching people to listen and communicate better and to behave in more positive ways, can help couples for up to a year, say social scientists who have analyzed the effectiveness of different treatments. But they are insufficient to get couples through the squalls of conflict that inevitably recur in the long term. At the same time, experts say, many therapists lack the skills to work with couples who are in serious trouble. Unable to help angry couples get to the root of their conflict and forge a resolution, these therapists do one of two things: they either let the partners take turns talking week after week, with no end to the therapy in sight, or they give up on the couple and, in effect, steer them to divorce. "Couples therapy can do more harm than good when the therapist doesn't know how to help a couple," said Dr. Susan M. Johnson, professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa and director of the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute. One couple, in Boonton, N.J., saw two marriage counselors over 13 years. "One therapist hurt our marriage and actually a caused our separation," said the husband, Jim, who did not want his last name used out of concerns for his privacy. "She told my wife, 'You don't have to put up with that,' " referring to his battle with alcoholism, he said. To be sure, many couples credit counseling with strengthening their marriages. And therapists say that they could save more marriages if couples started therapy before their relationships were in critical condition. "Couples wait an average of six years of being unhappy with their relationship before getting help," said Dr. John Gottman, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington and executive director of the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle. "We help the very distressed couples less than the moderately distressed couples." In the last few years, efforts to find ways to save more marriages and other long-term relationships have increased. With an experimental approach called integrative behavioral couples therapy, for example, 67 percent of couples significantly improved their relationships for two years, according to a study reported in November to the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy. Instead of teaching couples how to avoid or solve arguments, as traditional counseling techniques do, the integrative therapy aims to make arguments less hurtful by helping partners accept their differences. It is based on a recent finding that it is not whether a couple fights but how they fight that can destroy a relationship. Especially encouraging, all of the couples in the study were at high risk of divorce. "Many had been couples therapy failures," said Dr. Andrew Christensen, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and the lead author of the study. But some experts who were trained as couples therapists have now become so disillusioned that they question the value of couples therapy in any form. They say that couples are better off taking marriage education courses - practical workshops that teach couples how to get along and that do not ask them to bare their souls or air their problems to a third party. Two large nationwide marriage education programs, Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills and the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program, offer such workshops. "When I was a practicing therapist, I was like a judge listening to each partner tell why the other was ruining the marriage," said Diane Sollee, a former couples therapist who founded Smartmarriages, a clearinghouse of marriage education programs. "There was a lot of crying. Marriage education classes are more empowering." Developed several decades ago mainly to prevent marital problems in newlyweds or engaged couples, marriage education programs are now attracting couples who have not been helped by couples therapy but who want to try one last thing before deciding to divorce. How effective these programs are is unclear. Some studies indicate that couples who take marriage education classes have a lower divorce rate than couples who do not take the classes. But Dr. Gottman, who uses marriage education workshops and couples therapy, has found that workshops alone are insufficient for 20 percent to 30 percent of couples in his research. These couples have problems - like a history of infidelity or depression - that can be addressed only in therapy, he said. Couples therapy, also called marriage counseling and marriage therapy, refers to a number of psychotherapy techniques that aim to help couples understand and overcome conflicts in their relationship. It is conducted by psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, as well as by marriage and family therapists. Three types of couples therapy have been found to improve people's satisfaction with their marriage for at least a year after the treatment ends. The oldest approach, developed more than 20 years ago but still widely used, is behavioral marital therapy, in which partners learn to be nicer to each other, communicate better and improve their conflict-resolution skills. Another, called insight-oriented marital therapy, combines behavioral therapy with techniques for understanding the power struggles, defense mechanisms and other negative behaviors that cause strife in a relationship. With each method, about half of couples improve initially, but many of them relapse after a year. A relatively new approach that studies have found highly effective is called emotionally focused therapy, with 70 to 73 percent of couples reaching recovery - the point where their satisfaction with their relationship is within normal limits - for up to two years, the length of the studies. Dr. Johnson, who helped develop emotionally focused therapy in the 1990's, said that it enabled couples to identify and break free of the destructive emotional cycles that they fell into. "A classic one is that one person criticizes, the other withdraws," she said. "The more I push, the more you withdraw. We talk about how both partners are victims of these cycles." As the partners reveal their feelings during these cycles, they build trust and strengthen their connection to each other, she said. Surprisingly, Dr. Johnson said, until emotionally focused therapy came along, therapists were so intent on getting couples to make contracts to change their behavior that they did not delve into the emotional underpinnings of a relationship. "It was like leaving chicken out of chicken soup," she said. Dr. Johnson's latest research, completed in January, included 24 of the most at-risk couples, people who were unable to reconcile because their trust in each other had been shattered by extramarital affairs and other serious injuries to their relationship. "These injuries are like a torpedo," she said. "They take a marriage down." The study found that after 8 to 12 sessions, a majority of the couples had healed their injuries and rebuilt their trust. Most important, these gains lasted for three years. "It's very satisfying to know that we can make a difference with these couples and that it sticks," Dr. Johnson said. Alice, a library program coordinator in Honesdale, Pa., credits her couples therapy, which focused on emotional issues, with getting her and her husband to reunite after a yearlong separation. "The marriage counselor brought us back together," she said. Alice, who did not want her last name used out of privacy concerns, said an important catalyst for their reunion was the therapist's asking each to think about the ways that the other person wanted to feel appreciated and loved. Gradually, she said, she has come to see that her husband's needs were different from her own. "Going back to this exercise is one thing that has gotten us through hard times," she said. Researchers have begun to identify which qualities in a couple make for a lasting relationship. The findings challenge some common assumptions - that couples who fight a lot are beyond help, for example. Over more than two decades of videotaping and analyzing the behavior of happy and unhappy couples, Dr. Gottman has found that all couples fight and that most fights are never resolved. What is different between happy and unhappy couples is the way they fight. The happy couples punctuate their arguments with positive interactions, he said, like interjecting humor or smiling in fond recognition of a partner's foibles. The unhappy couples have corrosive arguments, characterized by criticism, defensiveness and other negative words and gestures. Of course, even the happiest of couples can get nasty sometimes. But Dr. Gottman has found that as long as the ratio of positive to negative interactions remains at least five to one, the relationship is sturdy. When the ratio dips below that, he says, he can predict with 94 percent accuracy that a couple will divorce. Dr. Gottman says that couples therapists can use this information to help keep couples together. "You can't just teach a couple to avoid conflict," he said. "You have to build friendship and intimacy into the relationship. If you don't, the relationship gets crusty and mean." But not all marriages are salvageable, therapists say. "Some people are fundamentally mismatched, and they can't benefit from therapy," Dr. Gottman said. Others - beyond the scope of couples therapy or marriage education programs - are people with personality disorders and relationships marred by violence and intimidation. "We have nothing to offer them," he said. Couples therapy is designed to be relatively short term: 26 weeks or less. "The vast majority of my patients do better after 5 to 10 sessions and are satisfied. The cycle of blaming is interrupted," said Dr. John W. Jacobs, a psychiatrist in New York and author of the 2004 book "All You Need Is Love and Other Lies About Marriage." But even when a therapist loses hope in a couple's future, the couple may not give up. Many couples, determined to avoid becoming yet another divorce statistic, keep searching for new therapists or programs to help them stay together. After two rounds of couples therapy and one separation, Jim, of Boonton, and his wife, Valerie, decided to try Retrouvaille, a program of intensive weekend workshops and follow-up seminars affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church and geared to couples who are on the verge of divorce or separation. "There are talks on various subjects, like disillusionment, forgiveness and the sacrament of marriage, and then you write about them," Jim said. "The big focus is on feelings. You end up feeling what your partner feels." Another advantage for Jim is that Retrouvaille did not have the stigma of therapy. "Regular people get up and tell their stories about infidelity, overspending and other problems," he said. "There's comfort in numbers. It takes away some of the embarrassment and shame." Six years after their Retrouvaille weekend, Jim and Valerie now lead Retrouvaille sessions, symbols of hope to couples on the edge. But they still struggle with their own marriage. "We both realize that our marriage is something that needs to be worked on," Jim said. "But we're committed to staying together." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:08:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:08:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: As America Gets Bigger, the World Does, Too Message-ID: Health > Fitness & Nutrition > As America Gets Bigger, the World Does, Too http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/nutrition/19obes.html By [1]JANE E. BRODY [My BMI is 19 and so I'm not worried.] It's no secret that Americans are overweight. But obesity is a growing problem worldwide, even in countries whose populations have in the past been enviably lean, as new research reports make clear. In China, for example, about 18 million adults are obese and another 137 million are overweight, according to a study of 16,000 people published last week in The Lancet. Another report, in The New England Journal of Medicine, noted that in developing countries, "as many as 60 percent of households with an underweight family member also have an overweight one." In a recent report, the World Health Organization warned of "an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity - 'globesity.' " "In 1995, there were an estimated 200 million obese adults worldwide and another 18 million under-5 children classified as overweight," the report said. "As of 2000, the number of obese adults has increased to over 300 million." The W.H.O. finds itself struggling to develop a global strategy to counter obesity, even as it tries to combat the hunger and undernutrition that remain a major concern in much of the world. In the next few years, the organization estimates, noncommunicable diseases that are related to diet, physical inactivity and consequent obesity, like heart disease, stroke, diabetes and hypertension, will become the principal causes of disease and death globally. The organization's International Obesity Task Force, whose chairman is Dr. W. Philip T. James of London, maintains that different strategies will be needed in different countries, but that failing to develop effective national strategies will ultimately result in economically disastrous health crises. The obesity issue is not limited to industrialized countries. "In developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems," the W.H.O. has noted. In fact, recently published data suggest that there is hardly a country in the world outside sub-Saharan Africa in which the average body-mass index, or B.M.I., an indication of fatness, has not been rising to levels that increase the risk of serious chronic diseases. In Asia, this rise in fatness, though hardly to the level that has occurred in the United States, is threatening to cause a major epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, according to information presented in Minneapolis last fall at an international symposium on obesity. The Lancet report found high rates of major risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Chinese adults. Worldwide, rising weight is becoming one of the most important risk factors for chronic disease and rising health care costs. In the Britain, for example, obesity now accounts for 18 million sick days, 30,000 deaths a year, 9 lost years of life expectancy and an added annual cost of almost $1 billion to the National Health Service, Dr. Jacob C. Seidell, professor of nutrition and health at the Free University of Amsterdam, reported at the Minneapolis symposium. In many countries, the worst increases in obesity have occurred in young people. While fewer than 1 percent of the children in Africa suffer from malnutrition, for example, 3 percent are overweight or obese, according to Dr. Francine Kaufman, a pediatric endocrinologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Perhaps the most distressing data come from Asia, where the measure of being overweight used in Western counties may underestimate the seriousness of weight-related health problems faced by Asians. In Japan, for example, obesity is defined as an index level of 25 or more, not 30 as it is in Western countries. But Japanese health officials report that a B.M.I. of 25 or more is already causing high rates of diabetes. At a level of 30 or higher, most of the population would have diabetes, Japanese health officials told Dr. Seidell. According to Dr. Kaufman, "By 2010 more than half the people in the world with diabetes will be Asians." Traditionally, in developing countries, the poorest people have been the thinnest, a consequence of hard physical labor and the consumption of small amounts of traditional foods. But when people in poor countries migrate to cities, obesity rates rise fastest among those in the lowest socioeconomic group, Dr. Seidell reported. Dr. Mickey Chopra, public health specialist at the University of Western Cape, South Africa, attributes the rise in obesity in middle-income and lower-income countries to dietary shifts "toward highly refined foods and toward meat and dairy products containing high levels of saturated fats, together with reduced energy expenditure." In other words, as people in developing countries trade their traditional diets, heavily based on vegetables and grains, for processed and animal foods, and expend less energy to move themselves and do their daily work, it is all too easy to overconsume calories. China is a prime example. Urbanization has led to changes in diet and increasingly sedentary lives, replete with sugary soft drinks, cheap vegetable oils, motorized vehicles and televisions in the home. In the last eight years, the proportion of Chinese men classified as overweight, with a body mass index over 25, has risen to 15 percent from 4 percent, and the proportion of overweight Chinese women has doubled to 20 percent from 10 percent. "Dietary transitions that took more than five decades in Japan have occurred in less than two decades in China," Dr. Chopra wrote in The Bulletin of the World Health Organization. He attributed this rapid shift largely to the growth of multinational food companies that have added sugar, fats and oils to agricultural products. The market value of these processed foods is now three times as great as the farm value, and foreign exports to countries like China represent a major source of income and growth for food producers. Similar trends have been noted elsewhere. "Mexicans now drink more Coca-Cola than milk," Dr. Chopra noted. Dr. Adam Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, said, "Food is becoming globally cheaper, and what's becoming cheapest is calories," especially calories from sugar and fat. In Brazil, for example, "It costs a mere 4 cents to produce a pound of sugar," Dr. Drewnowski said. "You can consume 50,000 empty sweet calories for just $1." In Asia, he noted, foods are being "drenched in oil." Oil makes food taste better and people are "naturally predisposed through evolution to select and consume energy-dense foods," he said. Since more nutritious, less energy-dense foods, like salads, fruits and vegetables, tend to be more expensive, to help stem the growing epidemic of global obesity, subsidies for vegetables and fruits and international campaigns to promote their consumption are needed, he said. At the same time that caloric consumption is rising, activity levels are falling. For example, Dr. Drewnowski said: "In Vietnam 20 years ago, people got around on foot. Five years ago they used bicycles. Now they're using motorcycles and scooters, and five years from now these will be replaced by cars." Dr. Shiriki Kumanyika, an epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said not enough attention was being paid to the decline in physical activity, especially in developing countries. As the amount of activity required for daily routines declines, she said, it is easy to miscalculate food intake by as much as 1,000 calories a day, especially for people in developing countries who migrate to urban areas where the cheapest foods are calorically dense. Still, Dr. Kumanyika told the symposium, rising levels of obesity worldwide cannot be blamed on just one or two factors. Certain global factors "are difficult to control even at the national level," like the globalization of markets and industrial development, which changes how people earn a living and who produces foods and prepares meals, she said. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:12:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:12:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Stretch Yourself (Your Joints and Muscles, Too) Message-ID: Health > Personal Health: Stretch Yourself (Your Joints and Muscles, Too) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19brod.html By [1]JANE E. BRODY My biking partner was in his 80's when he traded in his men's bicycle for a women's version because he could no longer swing his leg over the high bar. But at least he could still ride a bike. Others his age have far less physical mobility. Walking, rising from a chair, getting in and out of a car or bathtub, going up and down stairs, reaching for an item on a high shelf, even putting on shoes or an overhead shirt and buttoning a blouse are problems for many older adults who have what physical therapists call limited range of motion. I had given little thought to this until at age 63 arthritis in my knees made downhill movement almost too painful to contemplate. Now, after total knee replacements, range of motion is what I struggle to restore so that I can return to activities like cycling and hiking without pain. The secret, I've learned, is to keep moving, exercising my new joints and stretching and strengthening the muscles that support them. I've also learned that with or without arthritis, none of us can afford to ignore the natural physiological declines that affect range of motion as we age, since such declines can greatly impair the quality of our later years. Range of motion refers to the ability of a joint to flex, or bend, and extend, or straighten. Movement occurs where two bones meet and the muscles that cross over these joints enable them to bend or straighten. Chances are you've seen older people with a shuffling walk because they can no longer fully straighten their knee joints. They may also be unable to flex their knees enough to put on pants, socks and shoes. Different joints have different ranges of motion, but the same kinds of losses can occur in hip, shoulder, elbow, wrist and finger joints. Changes in one part of the body can lead to a host of others. Lisa Jenkins, a physical therapist and instructor for RehabWorks in Heathrow, Fla., describes a common situation: an older woman has forward, rounded shoulders, forcing her to raise her head to see properly. The resulting position of the shoulder joint prevents her from fully raising her arm overhead, and that can make it hard to take clothes from a closet, reach items on a high shelf or even put on an overhead sweater or shirt. How she holds her head to see causes the joints and nerves to compress in the back of the neck, and that in turn can lead to symptoms like headaches and difficulty engaging the nerves and muscles in the arms. Common Causes "People lose about 20 to 40 percent of their muscle mass as they age," Ms. Jenkins says. This is the combined effect of normal age-related changes in the cells and fibers of muscles - and the principle of "use it or lose it," which is related to the fact that most older adults no longer participate in everyday activities requiring muscle power. Probably the single most common cause of lost range of motion is being sedentary. "This lack of use produces a wasting effect on the muscles, decreasing the available range of motion," Ms. Jenkins wrote in The Journal on Active Aging. She described various physiological properties that could influence a decline in range of motion. One is the way electrical impulses through the nerves recruit the muscles used to produce movement and function, or nerve conduction. Another is the ability to recognize how the body is positioned in space, or proprioception. "Aging alters nerve impulse conduction, proprioception and velocity of movement," she explained. "Given these alterations, it is easy to see how it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain balance during functional movements such as walking and changing positions as an individual ages. Often the fear of falling in itself is enough to prevent some older adults from participating in certain activities." In addition, various conditions common among the elderly can increase the loss in range of motion. Injuries, for example, often result in temporary immobility. If, say, someone breaks a leg bone, the muscles that support the knee and hip will begin to atrophy when the injured leg is immobilized to permit the bone to heal. A broken hip leads to even more extensive immobilization. A debilitating disorder like Parkinson's disease or stroke or the wear-and-tear arthritis that I experienced can also limit a person's ability to produce movements that maintain muscle strength and flexibility. In a normal healthy joint, movement increases the flow of blood to the joint capsule, providing the nutrients, oxygen and lubrication that enable the bones of the joint to move smoothly and without pain. When joint mobility is impaired, blood flow declines and the joints become stiff and painful. Stiffness and pain, in turn, prompt people to avoid further movement. The less people move their joints, the greater the chances that they will suffer significant losses in range of motion. A decrease in range of motion not only creates difficulties in performing activities of daily life, it also increases pain when trying to use the affected joints. This, in turn, leads to reduced activity and further loss of range of motion. It is indeed a vicious cycle that can require intensive physical and occupational therapy to reverse. If the process is not interrupted, the joint may become deformed and unable to function at all. As Ms. Jenkins explained: "When a joint remains immobile for an extended time, the muscles that surround the joint become tight and do not slide as easily upon one another to produce movement. Eventually, changes occur at the cellular level. The musculoskeletal components of the joint can actually lose their ability to stretch and become permanently shortened," a condition called contracture. Changes also occur in the skin that covers a contracted joint. If the skin remains folded upon itself for a long time, it eventually breaks down, and as it heals, it reforms to fit the formation of the deformed joint, making it even harder to move that joint. Prevention and Treatment The best remedy is, of course, prevention, and the best preventive is to maintain physical activity as you age. There are many enjoyable programs that can improve strength, stamina, balance and flexibility while you're having fun. They include fitness walking, yoga, water aerobics, line dancing, square dancing, tai chi, golf and bowling. Other helpful activities include swimming, stationary cycling, using an elliptical trainer and walking on a treadmill. Each can be adapted to the needs and limitations of an older user. If noticeable losses in range of motion have already occurred, physical therapy to restore mobility is advisable. Not only will this make it easier to live independently, it can also decrease the risk of a fall or other injury that can lead to immobility and a further loss in range of motion. Speak to your primary care physician, and be sure to obtain insurance clearance before starting therapy. During physical therapy after my knee surgery, I met a number of older men and women who were being helped to walk better, improve their balance and increase their ability to use their arms and shoulders. Some had sustained injuries or illnesses that limited their mobility, but others were just experiencing age-related declines. To a person, all said the therapy was improving their lives. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:15:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:15:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: What Leonardo Could Have Done With a CAT Scan Message-ID: What Leonardo Could Have Done With a CAT Scan http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/science/19anat.html By [1]HENRY FOUNTAIN If art and science mix, then the field of anatomy has long been a thick burgoo. For centuries, the anatomist relied on the artist to record the dry details of the human body, inside and out. There was no other way to do it save through pencil, pen and brush. But photography, X-rays, CAT scans and newer imaging technologies have replaced the artist in helping scientists understand the human form. Artists haven't given up, however; they've moved on. One result is "Visionary Anatomies," an exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington through May 20 (information at [2]nationalacademies.org/arts). It includes paintings, prints, collages and other works by 11 artists who use anatomical and medical concepts to illustrate their own ideas. For these artists, the body is often just a jumping-off point. Many of the works begin with something technical - an old X-ray, perhaps, or an angiogram - but become something else, often a very personal statement, said the exhibition's curator, J. D. Talasek, the director of the academy's office of exhibitions and cultural programs. "Art doesn't require you to be completely rational and logical," Mr. Talasek said. "It allows you to be personal and see how these technologies affect you." A case in point is "Unfathomable Logic," a large mixed-media canvas by Katherine Sherwood, a San Francisco artist. It combines a lithograph of an angiogram taken after a stroke with paint marks that echo symbols from a 17th-century sorcerer's handbook. The effect is made more powerful when you know that the angiogram shows the blood vessels in Ms. Sherwood's own brain. In "Figure 2055," an oil with gold leaf by Tatiana Garmendia of Seattle, it's not the medical element that is personal, but what is added to it. The painting resembles an X-ray of a human skeleton. But the added gold leaf is a symbol of the Santeria religion that Ms. Garmendia, a native of Cuba, was raised in. "It alludes to the religious icons she grew up with," Mr. Talasek said. Not all the works are so personal. Some play tricks with the observer, Mr. Talasek said. "Panorama Paris," a pair of photographs by a Berlin photographer, Stefanie B?rkle, juxtaposes an image of an anatomical model of a man in a room full of other creatures at the National Museum of Natural History with one of a terminal at Charles de Gaulle airport. At first glance, "Blot Out the Sun No. 1," paired inkjet prints on paper with wax and encaustic by Mike and Doug Starn, Brooklyn artists, looks like two enlarged images of capillaries or nerve cells, branching off to nothingness in a very treelike way. In fact, both images are of trees. Sometimes the trick is on scientists. Katherine Du Tiel, photographer in San Francisco, projects images from old anatomy textbooks onto mannequins and real bodies. She makes deliberate errors, like projecting the musculature of the palm on the back of a real hand, that only someone who knows anatomy will notice. "She's taking some artistic liberties," Mr. Talasek said. "I enjoy watching scientists get disgruntled by it. They'll say, 'This is wrong.' But she does this intentionally; it's a kind of playfulness." When he gets that kind of reaction, Mr. Talasek feels he is doing his job. "Our whole mission is to encourage cross-disciplinary discussions," he said. "I find scientists to be very open to what the artists represent. Who's to say whether there's an effective dialogue yet, but we're heading in the right direction." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=HENRY%20FOUNTAIN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=HENRY%20FOUNTAIN&inline=nyt-per 2. http://nationalacademies.org/arts From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:17:30 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:17:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Q & A: Fish Oil Capsules Message-ID: Q & A: Fish Oil Capsules http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/science/19qna.html By [1]C. CLAIBORNE RAY Q. Are fish oil supplements a reliable source of omega-3 fatty acids? If one capsule is beneficial, are two twice as good? A. A single 1,000-milligram capsule of these supplements offers about the same amount of two valuable fatty acids as four ounces of salmon, and in about the same ratio, said Dr. Sheldon S. Hendler, co-editor of the PDR for Nutritional Supplements, the standard reference in the field. He suggested that one was about the right dose for most people seeking health benefits. The Italian Gissi-Prevention study, the strongest study of the two fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), indicated that about one gram of a combination of the two prevented second heart attacks in men who had already had them, suggesting that the dosage is enough for prevention purposes in the general population, Dr. Hendler said. In September 2004, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would allow a qualified health claim for omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, saying there is suggestive evidence that increased intakes may lower the risk of coronary heart disease. The agency recommends consuming no more than three grams daily, with no more than two grams from supplements. More than three grams may lead to excessive bleeding in some. The substances are found naturally in fish oils, particularly those from cold water fish, including salmon, tuna, herring and mackerel. Taking more than suggested may be considered in certain health situations, Dr. Hendler said, but only with a doctor's advice and monitoring. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=C.%20CLAIBORNE%20RAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=C.%20CLAIBORNE%20RAY&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:18:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:18:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Vital Signs: Therapy: Lighting Up a Life, Literally Message-ID: Vital Signs: Therapy: Lighting Up a Life, Literally http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19ther.html By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Exposure to bright artificial light can relieve some cases of depression as effectively as psychotherapy or antidepressant medication, new research suggests. In a statistical review of 20 rigorously designed studies, researchers found strong evidence that exposure to artificial broad-spectrum light was a good treatment not only for seasonal affective disorder, in which people become more depressed in the darker days of winter, but for the more common nonseasonal depression. The review appears in the April issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Robert N. Golden, professor and chairman of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the lead author, said he was once skeptical of such treatments. "I noticed that there were a lot of really bad studies being published" that claimed good results based on weak evidence, Dr. Golden said. "But when you throw out the bad studies and look at the good ones, the data are actually very impressive." Light therapy usually involves sitting in front of white fluorescent lights with eyes open but not looking directly at the light source. Treatment time varies from 15 minutes to 90 minutes a day. Dawn simulation, a variation of the treatment, recreates the timing and intensity of a normal sunrise each morning. Symptoms can start to diminish within weeks. Dr. Golden warns that the studies have not been large and that the standards for what constitutes exactly the right exposure have not yet been established. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:23:48 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:23:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think Message-ID: Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html By DAN HURLEY How many American marriages end in divorce? One in two, if you believe the statistic endlessly repeated in news media reports, academic papers and campaign speeches. The figure is based on a simple - and flawed - calculation: the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people compared with the annual divorce rate. In 2003, for example, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 7.5 marriages per 1,000 people and 3.8 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will. The method preferred by social scientists in determining the divorce rate is to calculate how many people who have ever married subsequently divorced. Counted that way, the rate has never exceeded about 41 percent, researchers say. Although sharply rising rates in the 1970's led some to project that the number would keep increasing, the rate has instead begun to inch downward. "At this point, unless there's some kind of turnaround, I wouldn't expect any cohort to reach 50 percent, since none already has," said Dr. Rose M. Kreider, a demographer in the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau. Two years ago, based on a 1996 survey, she and another demographer at the bureau predicted that if trends then in place held steady, the divorce rate for some age groups might eventually hit the 50 percent mark. But in February, the bureau issued a new report, based on 2001 data and written by Dr. Kreider. According to the report, for people born in 1955 or later, "the proportion ever divorced had actually declined," compared with those among people born earlier. And, compared with women married before 1975, those married since 1975 had slightly better odds of reaching their 10th and 15th wedding anniversaries with their marriages still intact. The highest rate of divorce in the 2001 survey was 41 percent for men who were then between the ages of 50 to 59, and 39 percent for women in the same age group. Researchers say that the small drop in the overall divorce rate is caused by a steep decline in the rate among college graduates. As a result, a "divorce divide" has opened up between those with and without college degrees, said Dr. Steven P. Martin, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. "Families with highly educated mothers and families with less educated mothers are clearly moving in opposite directions," Dr. Martin wrote in a paper that has not yet been published but has been presented and widely discussed at scientific meetings. As the overall divorce rates shot up from the early 1960's through the late 1970's, Dr. Martin found, the divorce rate for women with college degrees and those without moved in lockstep, with graduates consistently having about one-third to one-fourth the divorce rate of nongraduates. But since 1980, the two groups have taken diverging paths. Women without undergraduate degrees have remained at about the same rate, their risk of divorce or separation within the first 10 years of marriage hovering at around 35 percent. But for college graduates, the divorce rate in the first 10 years of marriage has plummeted to just over 16 percent of those married between 1990 and 1994 from 27 percent of those married between 1975 and 1979. About 60 percent of all marriages that eventually end in divorce do so within the first 10 years, researchers say. If that continues to hold true, the divorce rate for college graduates who married between 1990 and 1994 would end up at only about 25 percent, compared to well over 50 percent for those without a four-year college degree. "It's a big wow sort of story," Dr. Martin said. "I've been looking for two years at other data sets to see if it's wrong, but it really looks like it's happening." Still, some researchers remain skeptical about the significance of the small drop in overall divorce rates. "The crude divorce rate has been going down," said Dr. Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of public policy in the sociology department at Johns Hopkins. "But whether the rates will ultimately reach 45 percent or 50 percent over the next few decades are just projections. None of them are ironclad." Dr. Larry Bumpass, an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin's Center for Demography and Ecology, has long held that divorce rates will eventually reach or exceed 50 percent. In an interview, he said that it was "probably right" that the official divorce statistics might fall below 50 percent, but that the rate would still be close. "About half is still a very sensible statement," he said. What all experts do agree on is that, after more than a century of rising divorce rates in the United States, the rates abruptly stopped going up around 1980. Part of the uncertainty about the most recent trends derives from the fact that no detailed annual figures have been available since 1996, when the National Center for Health Statistics stopped collecting detailed data from states on the age, income, education and race of people who divorced. As a result, estimates from surveys have had to fill in the gaps. "The government has dropped the ball on data collection," said Dr. David Popenoe, professor of sociology and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. Joshua R. Goldstein, associate professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton's Office of Population Research, said the loss of detailed government data, coming at a time when divorce rates were at their highest, might have distorted not only public perception, but people's behavior. "Expectations of high divorce are in some ways self-fulfilling," he said. "That's a partial explanation for why rates went up in the 1970's." As word gets out that rates have tempered or actually begun to fall, Dr. Goldstein added, "It could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the other direction." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:26:22 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:26:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Side Effects: Laugh Your Way to Good Health and a Longer Life Message-ID: Side Effects: Laugh Your Way to Good Health and a Longer Life http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19side.html By JAMES GORMAN "Laughing turns to crying." That's what my grandmother used to say when kids got too excited. I guess the idea was if you had too much fun, something bad would happen. Run around the house and you'll fall down. Get giddy on a trampoline, someone will end up in a cast. This was in line with her other pronouncements. Go out with wet hair you'll get pneumonia. Don't wear rubbers on your shoes, you'll get rheumatic fever. Have too much fun, and someone will get irritated and say, "Laughing turns to crying." It just occurred to me in the last day or so that maybe she was wrong. I'm quite late on this because I've had to overcome my distaste for happiness studies. It happened when I was reading a study that's being published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It's called "Positive affect and health-related neuroendocrine, cardiovascular and inflammatory processes." As soon as I saw the title I thought, I know what positive affect means, and nothing good can come of this. You already know how these studies are going to turn out. All the happy people will be healthier, live longer and have more sex than the unhappy people. That's why they're happy. Or the other way round, which means that you, too - you unhappy masses huddled under comforters watching old movies and eating the wrong things instead of exercising with good friends before a vegan dinner and a night at some soul-enriching cultural event - you too, could be healthier and live longer and have more sex. If you would only cheer up. Dr. Andrew Steptoe, Dr. Jane Wardle and Dr. Michael Marmot, of University College London, review some of the previous affirmations of the value of being affirmative at the beginning of their paper. To wit: Negative affect is associated with a greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and disability. Positive affect, as judged by writings of nuns at age 22, is connected to greater longevity - for the nuns. Happy Finns live longer - than unhappy Finns. Even worse, "A lack of positive affect rather than negative affect predicts mortality, stroke and the development of disability in older adults." You don't even have to be depressed to fare worse; a lack of happiness will wreck your golden years. Let a smile be your umbrella - or else. The English researchers continued in this vein. They considered that unhappiness could lead to an unhealthy lifestyle, or that the two could be linked in basic physiological processes. They don't actually pin down cause and effect, but they do say that they are looking at ways "psychosocial factors stimulate biological systems." To investigate these connections, they asked 116 men and 100 women to record how happy they felt at given times during the day. They also tested blood pressure and heart rate, and cortisol levels in saliva. Cortisol is a stress hormone, so the less the better in terms of all sorts of health problems, the researchers say. And they conducted mental stress tests and took blood samples to determine response to that kind of stress. The tests were not too stressful. There were no beds of snakes like in "Fear Factor." The subjects had to do a test on a computer involving words and color, and another one that required them to trace a mirror image. Naturally, the happier people were better off. Even setting aside actual depression, positive affect trumped lack of positive affect. At first I thought more bad news for the unhappy. Then I thought, here's a chance to prove my grandmother wrong. And if she's wrong about one thing maybe I can stop worrying about rheumatic fever. I'm not thinking of happiness, exactly, but laughing. That's a bit like being happy, but it's not quite as high a bar. People with insufficient positive affect can still laugh. I know a lot of unhappy people with great senses of humor. There have been claims for a long time that laughter has health benefits. Unfortunately my vision was blurred by the happiness issue. If we can include laughing though, I think I can get on board, with one small qualification. I need to know what kind of laughter. If it's gentle, warm laughter just because life is wonderful and babies gurgle, I'm out of luck. But, how about laughing when somebody slips on the ice or when Triumph, the insult dog, is really nasty to people? Can that be healthy? I certainly hope so. Then there really may be a way out of the whole negative affect/neuroendocrine complex. Plus, my grandmother would be wrong, at least on one thing. We'd still have to tackle her theory of immunology, "You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die." I'm pretty sure that one's true. What I'm hoping is that you don't have to do it all at once. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:41:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:41:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: The Body Heretic: It Scorns Our Efforts Message-ID: The Body Heretic: It Scorns Our Efforts http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/weekinreview/17kola.html By [1]GINA KOLATA THE promises are everywhere. Sure, you smoked. But you can erase all those years of abusing your lungs if you just throw away the cigarettes. Eating a lot of junk food? Change your diet, lose even 5 or 10 pounds and rid yourself of those extra risks of heart disease and diabetes. Stay out of the sun - who cares if you spent your youth in a state of bronzed bliss? If you protect yourself now, skin cancer will never get you. Maybe it should be no surprise that America's popular and commercial cultures promote the idea of an inexhaustible capacity for self-rejuvenation and self-repair. After all, if America as an idea has meant anything, it has meant just that - the possibility of continual transformation - becoming wealthier, more spiritual, more beautiful, happier and feeling younger. That optimism has helped create a society of unmatched vitality - a source of bewilderment, alarm and envy to the rest of the world. But Americans often forget, or aren't aware, of how unusual they are in this respect, notes Dr. Daniel Haber, director of the cancer center at Massachusetts General Hospital. "I grew up in Europe and I travel in Europe," he said. "And there's an amazing contrast." Europeans are far more fatalistic about their lives, he said. They believe "you need to enjoy life," so they smoke, they bask in a sun, they take pleasure in a leisurely, indulgent meal and they don't feel compelled to go to a gym. Americans, Dr. Haber says, believe in control - of their bodies, their mental faculties and their futures. So shedding some pounds or some unhealthy habits is not merely sensible. It suggests a new beginning, being born again. Maybe that is why people may feel betrayed when Peter Jennings explains that he stopped smoking, at least for a while, and still got lung cancer. Or why, two decades after his death, people still talk about Jim Fixx, the running guru who lost weight, stopped smoking, ran every day and dropped dead of a heart attack. In fact, science is pretty clear on all of this: There are real limits to what can be done to reverse the damage caused by a lifetime of unhealthy living. Other than lung cancer, which is mostly a disease of smokers, there are few diseases that are preventable by changing behavior in midlife. But that is not what most people think, said Dr. Barnett Kramer, the associate director for disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health. Instead, they believe that if you reform you'll erase the damage, in part because public health messages often give that impression. "It is easy to overestimate based on the strength of the messages," Dr. Kramer said. "But we're not as confident as the messages state." Eating five servings of vegetables and fruit has not been shown to prevent cancer. Melanoma, the deadly skin cancer, occurs whether or not you go out in the sun. Gobbling calcium pills has not been found to prevent osteoporosis. Switching to a low-fat diet in adulthood does not prevent breast cancer. At most, Dr. Kramer said, the effect of changing one's diet or lifestyle might amount to "a matter of changing probabilities," slightly improving the odds. But health science is so at odds with the American ethos of self-renewal that it has a hard time being heard. Here, where people believe anything is possible if you really want it, even aging is viewed as a choice. "It's hard to find an American who doesn't believe that, with enough will, he or she can achieve anything - we've been brought up to believe that," said Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California. Health, he emphasized, is no exception: "It's the same whether you're 40, 50 or 80. It doesn't matter whether you are male or female, black or white. " But in matters of health, the strongest willed person simply cannot wipe the slate of life clean and begin again. This is true even with lung cancer and smoking. Those who quit may greatly reduce their risk of lung cancer. But they cannot eliminate it. "The best you can be is a former smoker - you can't be a 'never smoker,' " said Dr. Kramer. "It's not all or none. It's a matter of changing probabilities." In fact, in every area of desired physical self-renewal, the probabilities make it hard to argue that life allows one to start over. At health clubs, pear-shaped people in their 40's and 50's obsessively lift weights, trying for those defined muscles that, even in youth, come only to those with a certain genetic predisposition. But by middle age, the overweight tend to stay that way, and the body has a harder time increasing muscle mass. So even the greatest personal trainer will not produce rippling abs. At the cardiologist's office, middle-age men, learning that their arteries are starting to clog, swear they'll never eat chips and hamburgers again, and that they will take up jogging. Some do and a small percentage even stick with it. But no amount of exercise or diet change will make the plaque in their arteries disappear. Despite common public health recommendations, walking for half an hour a day, five days a week probably won't make most people lose weight. And while a regular regimen of walking or running will likely improve your stamina and cardiovascular fitness, there is no guarantee that it will reverse heart disease, prevent or forestall a heart attack or in any way extend your life. The effects of other measures, like changing lifestyle or switching to a diet rich in raw vegetables, are even less clear when it comes to preventing cancer, said Dr. Kramer. "Even if they do affect the cancer," he said, " it may be that it's over an entire lifetime." So what are Americans, with their faith in starting over, to do? When it comes to making oneself over, said Dr. Glassner, they have two options. One, he said, "is that you can consider yourself inadequate or inferior" for failing to force the years to melt away. The other is to shift the definition of rejuvenation from a arduous restructuring of the self to a paint job. "Now, instead of losing the weight you're going to go for cosmetic surgery," Dr. Glassner said. That is not really an answer. Collagen injections or surgery may give people more youthful looking faces, but only for a while. And liposuction won't help for long if the body restores the fat that was suctioned off the patient's arms or buttocks. Then there is a third possibility for the resourceful, Dr. Glassner said. An overweight person can simply redefine himself as a "food adventurer." There is one group, however, for whom a strong sense of control over the future may be an unalloyed good: the sick. "Protective illusions," says Dr. Shelley Taylor, a psychology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, can be a good thing. In her research, she found that among people with serious diseases, those who felt they still had control over their lives coped better with their illnesses. The optimists fared better psychologically even when they became more ill - shattering the illusion of control. "What you often see is people use something like cancer as an opportunity to discover value in their lives, and meaning," Dr. Taylor said. "They reorder their priorities. They focus on relationships more. Control and optimism shift to things that can be dealt with." For those in good health, there is still another option, though it is decidedly a minority position. This is simply to scale back on one's self-engineering and take more pleasure in simply getting from day to day. The American essayist Joseph Epstein nicely expressed this view in an essay, written when he hit the age of 60, which he gave the mordant title, "Will You Still Feed Me?" In it, Mr. Epstein expresses the virtue of just enjoying the ride. "At 60," he writes, "one probably does well not to expect wild changes, at least not for the better. Probably best not even to expect a lot in the way of self-improvement. Not a good idea, I think, at this point to attempt to build the body beautiful. Be happy-immensely happy, in fact-with the body still functional." Of course, many in midlife will still decide to hit the gym, to eat better, drink less, relax more. And that's a good thing, if only because they will feel better for being fitter. But they shouldn't expect it to erase the effects of all those years that came before. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=GINA%20KOLATA&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=GINA%20KOLATA&inline=nyt-per From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 19 13:42:03 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 06:42:03 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Carbon Nanotubes' Impact on Energy Production and Storage Message-ID: <01C544AA.E6488A90.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=/news/news_single.html?id %3D4425 Cientifica Publishes Study of Carbon Nanotubes' Impact on Energy Production and Storage KurzweilAI.net, April 19, 2005 Cientifica has released a study of the market and technology impact of carbon nanotubes on the energy sector. Among its conclusions: 50% of all lithium batteries now incorporate carbon nanofibers, which double their energy capacity ; this figure will rise to 85% by 2010. Multi-wall carbon nanotubes can enable a tenfold improvement in the performance of fuel cells and a 50% reduction of the cost of catalyst material. Carbon nanotube prices will decrease by a factor 10-100 in the next 5 years. Nanofibers and multi-wall nanotubes will meet price barriers by 2008-2009 for most applications in the Energy market. Carbon nanotube production is shifting from the US and Japan to Asia Pacific (Korea and China). By 2010 the major supplier of all types of nanotubes will be Korea. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:50:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:50:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In Oklahoma, a Week of Remembrance Message-ID: In Oklahoma, a Week of Remembrance http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/18/national/18oklahoma.html [The NYT initial story on the bombing and the capture of the alleged bomber, now taken as a fact appended.] By JOHN KIFNER OKLAHOMA CITY, April 17 - The newest exhibit in the big museum here - the crown jewel, really - is a length of steel about eight feet long, ugly and twisted, its bulbous center rent by a nasty gash. "This is the prime piece we waited for," said Kari F. Watkins, executive director of the museum, the Oklahoma City National Memorial, pausing amid preparations for ceremonies this week marking the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. "It is our prize possession." It is the axle of the Ryder rental truck, a 1993 Ford with a 20-foot body packed with 4,800 pounds of homemade nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil explosives, that Timothy J. McVeigh detonated at 9:02 on the sunny morning of April 19, 1995, killing 168 people, 19 of them children. The nation was stunned; it is still the worst act of domestic terrorism on American soil. "That piece is why we really got McVeigh," Ms. Watkins said, as workers, volunteers and visitors bustled about the memorial of empty bronze chairs on the site of the building - "sacred ground," it is called - and the adjacent museum, which chronicles the dreadful event in gripping detail. It was the vehicle identification number, PVA26077, stamped on the axle found a block away by local police, that led the Federal Bureau of Investigation to arrest Mr. McVeigh only moments before he was to be released from a small town jail 60 miles north on a minor traffic infraction. The bombing was devastating - "Oklahoma City will never be the same," a reporter, Penny Owen, wrote on the front page of the next morning's Daily Oklahoman under a banner headline "Morning of Terror." But this is now a bustling place, with a spruced-up business district packed with new hotels, stadiums and a convention center; a renovated factory area called Bricktown attracting crowds to restaurants, bars and shops; and an annual arts festival, canceled the year of the bombing, now running alongside the weeklong memorial. "We designed this week to send a signal to the world that there is hope," Ms. Watkins said. The symbol of the memorial is the Survivor Tree, a once-scraggly American elm that had stubbornly grown in a parking lot across the street. A car's hood came to rest in its limbs, which were largely stripped by the blast, but a year later leaves reappeared. Today, as one of the centerpieces of the memorial, it is one of the world's most pampered trees, with an elaborate aeration and watering system. Tuesday, the anniversary of the bombing, will be a day of remembrance, with 168 seconds of silence and the reading of the names of the victims at 9 a.m., followed by a reunion and barbecue lunch for family members, survivors and rescuers in Bricktown. There are lectures and other events each day this week, with a concert on Friday night headlined by the country star Vince Gill and the fifth annual memorial marathon on Sunday, attracting some 12,000 runners. The anniversary will also be a national news event. CNN has promised all-day coverage on Tuesday along with other special programs. The network morning shows will have a presence, and Brian Williams is to anchor the NBC news from here. There are already some 600 journalists and technicians registered from 87 news outlets, and on the sidewalk alongside the memorial this weekend workers were banging together risers for television and still cameras. "This is the most we've had, including the execution, which I thought would be hard to top," said Ms. Watkins, speaking of the death of Mr. McVeigh on June 11, 2001. Terry L. Nichols, the other man indicted in the bombing, is serving life sentences on federal and state charges. For many residents here the site is intensely personal. An estimated 387,000 people here, more than a third of the metropolitan area's population, knew someone who was killed or injured in the bombing, and some 190,000 people, 19 percent of the population, attended funerals for the victims. For relatives living here or scattered about the country, the memorial has become a place of pilgrimage. About 50 members of the extended family of Mickey B. Maroney, a Secret Service agent who died in the explosion, were here for a reunion and memorial on Saturday, gathered mostly from Texas by his daughter, Alice Ann, who was tearing but composed as hugs were exchanged. A half-dozen fellow agents, hardly secret in black suits and wraparound sunglasses, stood at the edge of the group, sharing the sorrow. "It's about all of us; it's about the journey we've taken the last 10 years," said Jack O'Brian Poe, chaplain for Oklahoma City's police department at the time and now for the Secret Service field office. "It's not a journey we would have chosen. "It's painful, it's painful to do this," he went on, his right arm draped around the bronze chair bearing Mr. Maroney's name as if it were an old friend's shoulder. "This was some dark times. But we've seen the very best. We've seen America come together. We've seen Oklahoma City come together." It is that mixed message of sadness and hope the memorial is intended to project. The memorial is framed by two 13-ton yellow bronze monoliths called the Gates of Time, with the eastern entrance displaying the time 9:01, symbolizing the innocence before the bombing, and the western gate showing 9:03, the time of hurt and healing. In the center, what had been North Fifth Street has been turned into a shallow black reflecting pool. On the site of the building, a sloping lawn holds the 168 stylized chairs, bronze with frosted glass bottoms etched with the name of each victim, smaller ones for the children, illuminated from the bottom at night. Five of the chairs, for those killed near the Murrah Building, are slightly separate. The rest are arranged in nine rows, for the nine stories of the structure, and are placed roughly where the bodies were found. The area is planted with loblolly pines, which in a decade are expected to grow to 90 feet, symbolizing the nine stories. On the eastern side is the only remaining wall from the Murrah building, with the names of more than 800 survivors etched onto two granite blocks retrieved from the ruins. On the sidewalk outside is a remnant of the original "people's memorial," lengths of the chain-link fence that surrounded the wreckage. Spontaneously, the fence was decked with all manner of memorabilia, still periodically removed, catalogued and stored by museum curators. This weekend was typical: license plates, plastic children's toys, key rings, bandanas, military and police patches, an orange and white cheerleader's pompom, and for this occasion, several wreaths on portraits of victims. Across the street, at St. Joseph's Old Cathedral, stands a nine-foot-tall statue of a weeping Jesus. One block away is a monument of a different sort: the new federal office building, a fortress-like structure of stone walls and blast-resistant glass patrolled by Federal Protective Service officers. Scott Pascoe, a National Park Service official greeting visitors, proudly said the new structure had been ranked by an architectural magazine as "the fourth-safest building in the world." The museum where the Ryder truck axle is housed is in the 82-year old building of The Journal Record, a local business publication that had been across the street and whose damaged exterior, with a broken fire escape and scrawled messages from the rescuers, has been preserved. The exhibit tells how Mr. McVeigh, fleeing the scene, was stopped by an Oklahoma highway patrolman, Charlie Hanger, famous locally as a stickler for traffic rules, who was within a quarter-mile of finishing his patrol on Interstate 35. Mr. McVeigh's rusty old car had dropped its license plate and he was carrying a pistol, so the trooper took him to the Noble County Jail in Perry. The sole judge on duty was busy, and while Mr. McVeigh waited, the F.B.I. was able to trace the vehicle to Elliot's Body Shop in Junction City, Kan., and make an identification. A computer search led to a frantic phone call that held him for arrest in the bombing. The museum also gives a vivid picture of how an ordinary day turned into horror. A tape recording from a machine on a plain office table has the voice of Lou Klaver, an official at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board - its building nearby was destroyed and two people were killed - opening a routine hearing on an application number 95-501 by Roy Wikle to pump and bottle water. "There are nine elements," Ms. Klaver is heard to say, "that I have to receive information regarding -- " The explosion booms, startling even when expected. The room goes dark. Next is videotape from the local Channel 9 news helicopter circling over the carnage. "Wow," exclaims Jesse Gary, a reporter from the helicopter. "Holy cow! About a third of the building has been blown away!" -------------- At Least 31 Are Dead, Scores Are Missing After Car Bomb Attack in Oklahoma City Wrecks 9-Story Federal Office Building http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0419.html#article This event took place on April 19, 1995, and was reported in the The New York Times the following day. _________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ CLUES ARE LACKING _________________________________________________________________ U.S. Officials Scurry for Answers -- Reno to Ask Death Penalty _________________________________________________________________ By David Johnston RELATED HEADLINES 12 Victims Were Children in 2d-Floor Day-Care Center In Shock, Loathing, Denial: 'This Doesn't Happen Here' OTHER HEADLINES Gas Fumes Create Panic in Yokohama Court Upholds Anonymity Lugar Declares Candidacy Mayor Wants to End Relief Washington, April 19 -- The authorities opened an intensive hunt today for whoever bombed a Federal office building in Oklahoma City, and proceeded on the theory that the bombing was a terrorist attack against the Government, law-enforcement officials said. President Clinton appeared in the White House press room this afternoon and somberly promised that the Government would hunt down the 'evil cowards' responsible. 'These people are killers,' he said, 'and must be treated like killers.' Attorney General Janet Reno, speaking to reporters at the White House in early evening, said that casualty figures from the scene were climbing and that of the 550 people who worked in the building, 300 were unaccounted for. Ms. Reno said Federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty against the bombers. 'The death penalty is available,' she said, 'and we will seek it.' But the authorities said they had no suspects, and questions about the identity of the bombers swirled around the case. The only solid fact was the explosion itself. Some law-enforcement officials said the bombing might be linked to the second anniversary today of Federal agents' ill-fated assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., an operation that ended in a fire that killed about 80 people, including many children. Among the offices housed by the Federal building in Oklahoma City was one quartering local agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the agency that Branch Davidians and their sympathizers blamed for the confrontation. But other officials said that neither the Branch Davidians nor right-wing 'militia' groups that have protested the Government's handling of the Davidians were believed to have the technical expertise to engage in bombings like the one today. Some experts focused on the possibility that the attack had been the work of Islamic militants, like those who bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993. But if so, it was unclear why they would have struck in Oklahoma City. Some Middle Eastern groups have held meetings there, and the city is home to at least three mosques. But of the estimated five million Muslims in the United States, 'there's just very, very few out that way,' said Imam Muhammad Karoub, director of the Federation of Islamic Associations, based in Redford, Mich, a Detroit suburb. Several news organizations, including CNN, reported that investigators were seeking to question several men, described as being Middle Eastern in appearance, who had driven away from the building shortly before the blast. There were also reports that the authorities had interviewed employees at a National Car Rental office in Dallas about a recently leased truck. But Federal officials here said they could not confirm those reports. Indeed, investigators said they did not know whether the bombers were domestic or international terrorists. The authorities said the bomb had probably been packed in a vehicle parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where the explosion left a 20-foot-wide, 8-foot-deep crater in the street. Officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said they had not determined the bomb's chemical makeup, which they suspected to be ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, both easily available substances of the type used in the World Trade Center bombing. They said the damage led them to conclude that the bomb, if it was made of ammonium nitrate, might have weighed 1,000 to 1,200 pounds, about the size of the trade center bomb. From offices and bases around the country, Government aircraft carried to Oklahoma City an array of Federal law-enforcement officials, emergency management personnel and military forces, an operation that constituted one of the vastest responses to a crime in American history. The firearms bureau sent national emergency teams to coordinate the examination of the bomb site, the analysis of the explosives and the search for fragments of the vehicle in which the bomb was believed to have been planted. The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent four special agents in charge of field offices in New Orleans, Houston, Phoenix and Dallas to manage the investigative operation. From Fort Sill, Okla., the Pentagon sent two medical evacuation helicopters, Army soldiers trained in bomb disposal and two canine bomb detection teams. The Air Force sent a 66-member rescue squad, along with two ambulances, from Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. It also dispatched 38 trauma-team members from Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio. Military transport aircraft flew 68 civilian firefighters and a 60-member search and rescue team to the site. In addition, the Pentagon said about 80 soldiers from the Oklahoma National Guard's 745th Military Police Company were helping to provide security around the Federal building. A 24-hour F.B.I. command center with 400 telephones was established in Oklahoma to coordinate the work of explosives teams, bomb technicians and portable scientific gear used to analyze chemical residues. Mr. Clinton learned of the explosion about 10:30 A.M. from his press secretary, Michael D. McCurry, just as the President was beginning an Oval Office meeting with the Turkish Prime Minister. The White House chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, left the meeting about 11 with instructions from Mr. Clinton to call Attorney General Reno and make sure that Federal agencies were coordinating their responses and had all the resources they needed. The President later dispatched James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to Oklahoma, and left the Oval Office periodically the rest of the day to watch reports from the scene on a television in his secretary's office. 'Like most Americans,' Mr. McCurry said, 'he was troubled, expecially by pictures of the children' who had been killed. The President also discussed the situation with Oklahoma's Governor, Frank Keating, and members of the state's Congressional delegation. Later he wrote out remarks in longhand, then went to the White House briefing room about 5:15 to deliver them to the waiting reporters. But aides said Mr. Clinton had also felt that it was important to keep up with the rest of his schedule. So he met as planned with representatives of three Iowa television stations who had come to interview him about a conference on rural America that is scheduled for Ames next week. Justice Department officials heard early reports of the blast but said later that they had not realized the extent of the damage until they watched television accounts from the scene. Ms. Reno spent much of the day monitoring developments and sent Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick to the White House to advise officials there. Later, Ms. Reno met with Mr. Clinton, discussing Federal statutes that might apply to the crime and telling him that a standing emergency response plan had been put into effect, sending teams of Federal agents to Oklahoma City. It is unclear whether the Government had received any intelligence indicating that any group had been planning an attack, and also unclear whether there had been any sign of movement like that leading to the explosion at the World Trade Center. In the case of the trade center, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, charged with being the mastermind behind the bombing, entered the United States under an assumed name, recruited local supporters to carry out the detail work and then fled the country within hours of the blast, the authorities say. Several officials said there had been no threats before the Oklahoma City blast and no credible claims of responsibility afterward. The officials added that there were numerous witnesses among occupants of the building and said the site could yield a wealth of clues about the chemical composition of the bomb and the identity of the vehicle that presumably carried it. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 13:56:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:56:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: At One Trillion Degrees, Even Gold Turns Into the Sloshiest Liquid Message-ID: At One Trillion Degrees, Even Gold Turns Into the Sloshiest Liquid http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/science/19liqu.html [CHE writeup appended.] By [1]KENNETH CHANG It is about a trillion degrees hot and flows like water. Actually, it flows much better than water. Scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island announced yesterday that experiments at its Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider - RHIC, for short, and pronounced "rick" - had produced a state of matter that is unexpectedly sloshy. "Every substance known to mankind before would evaporate and become a gas at two million, three million degrees," said Dr. Dmitri Kharzeev, a theoretical physicist at Brookhaven. "So the big surprise here is the matter created at RHIC is a liquid." It even approaches the best of all possible liquids, with almost no viscosity. "It's more fluid than the water in this glass," Dr. Kharzeev said, referring to a glass of water in front of him at a news conference at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Tampa, Fla. Four scientific papers totaling hundreds of pages and analyzing three years of data from the RHIC have been accepted for publication in the journal Nuclear Physics A. But as they have for the last couple of years, the scientists stopped short of announcing that they had created a subatomic soup known as quark-gluon plasma, the impetus for building the $600 million collider. Physicists are interested in quark-gluon plasma because it will help them understand the "strong force" that holds protons and neutrons together, and the RHIC experiment also recreates the state of matter that filled the universe for up to the first ten-thousandth of a second after the Big Bang. The mathematics that describe the strong force are notoriously hard to solve. One reason theorists had focused on the quark-gluon plasma's being a gas was that idea simplified the equations to ones they could calculate. Trying to understand the more fluid state, some theorists have reported progress using mathematical tools from string theory, while others have pulled in cosmology and black holes. "You look for analogies where the mathematics is tractable," Dr. Berndt Mueller, a professor of physics at Duke University, said in an interview. The RHIC accelerates gold nuclei - atoms without their usual shroud of electrons -to 99.995 percent of the speed of light around two 2.4-mile-wide rings and smashes them together. Physicists expect that in the fireballs of these violent collisions, protons and neutrons in the nuclei melt into smaller pieces known as quarks and gluons. In ordinary everyday matter, quarks are too tightly bound together by the gluon particles to pull out a single quark for examination. In 2000, scientists at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland claimed to have created a quark-gluon plasma, but many criticized that announcement as premature. The RHIC scientists say they want all of their experimental data in place before putting in their official announcement. The expectation, though, is that they have been making quark-gluon plasma ever since the collider began running in 2000. "Circumstantially, this is a liquid of quarks and gluons," said Dr. Samuel Aronson, the laboratory's associate director for high energy and nuclear physics. "Circumstantially, that is what fits the data." At the news conference yesterday, participants danced around what to call what they had made and focused instead on its surprising characteristics. When two gold nuclei collide head on, the protons and neutrons dissolve into a tiny droplet. It lasts a fraction of a second before condensing into a shower of ordinary matter particles that fly outward. Protons and neutrons consist of the two most common types of quarks, up and down, but the immense energy of the collisions also produces heavier quarks known as charm, strange and bottom. The pattern of particles recorded by the four detectors at the RHIC tells physicists that the conditions that existed in the droplet were liquidlike. In the last two years, additional experimental runs at the laboratory have looked at collisions of copper nuclei to "make sure what we think we now understand about this liquid is true," said Dr. Timothy J. Hallman, the spokesman for one of the four detectors. The most recent runs have also been testing the prediction that a reduced amount of charmonium - a particle that consists of a charm quark paired with an anticharm antiquark - would be emitted in the presence of a quark-gluon plasma. A definitive quark-gluon plasma announcement could be made this year. But the pace of future discoveries may slow. Proposed budget cuts at Brookhaven would cut the time for the collider experiments, from 30 weeks this year to 12 weeks next year. Brookhaven would also have to lay off some of its staff. "It means," Dr. Aronson said, "that physics will come out, I would say, something like half speed." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=KENNETH%20CHANG&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=KENNETH%20CHANG&inline=nyt-per ------------- The Chronicle: Daily news: 04/19/2005 -- 02 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005041902n.htm 'Perfect Fluid' Emerges in High-Energy Experiments That Mimic Big Bang conditions [45]By RICHARD MONASTERSKY Physicists announced on Monday that they had created a new state of matter, an almost perfect liquid that mimics the hellish conditions just after the Big Bang. At a meeting of the American Physical Society in Tampa, Fla., the researchers announced the results of experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in New York, where physicists have been smashing atoms together to create subatomic fireballs of one trillion degrees. Their experimental facility, known as [59]the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, was built to explore a type of primordial matter called a quark-gluon plasma. Quarks and gluons are the building blocks of ordinary matter. In today's world, they are normally locked up tight within protons, neutrons, and other particles by the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces in nature. But a fraction of a microsecond after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot and dense that quarks and gluons whizzed around freely. Over the past five years, researchers at RHIC have been accumulating evidence that when gold nuclei collide at close to the speed of light, they temporarily create a new state of matter with free quarks and gluons, if only for 10^-23 seconds. The brevity and small size of the collisions ensure that the experiment does not pose a risk to public safety, laboratory officials said. Some of the scientists say that the state of matter is the long-sought quark-gluon plasma, while others have been reluctant to use that term until more evidence comes in. This week, however, the researchers announced that the material created by the collisions is a fluid, not the expected gas. And that fluid has unusual properties. "The state of matter we created behaves like a very-low-viscosity, perfect fluid," said Samuel H. Aronson, the associate lab director at Brookhaven who oversees RHIC. It is the closest thing to a perfect fluid ever observed, he said. Evidence from particles that fly out of the collision zone suggests that the quarks and gluons flow together in a coordinated way, with very little friction between particles. Normal fluids have some viscosity, some sticking friction that absorbs energy and impedes its flow. But the material created at RHIC -- whether it is a quark-gluon plasma or some other quark-gluon matter -- comes extremely close to behaving like a fluid without any viscosity, said the researchers, who will publish their results in a future issue of Nuclear Physics A. Peter Braun-Munzinger, a professor of physics at the Darmstadt University of Technology, in Germany, and one of the directors of the GSI heavy-ion-research laboratory, also in Darmstadt, called the new results surprising. "The apparent viscosity is so low that it behaves almost like an ideal fluid," he said. The results thus far are strong indications, he said, "but this is still theoretical speculations." The hypothesis about a nearly perfect fluid will be the center of the debate at a conference on quark matter in Budapest in August, he said. _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [60]Smashing Gold (3/12/2004) * [61]Crazy for Quarks (4/26/2002) References 45. mailto:rich.monastersky at chronicle.com 59. http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/ 60. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i27/27a01401.htm 61. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i33/33a02001.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:03:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:03:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Dowd: (Gridiron) A Wink and a Fraud Message-ID: A Wink and a Fraud Liberties column by Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 5.3.17 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/opinion/17dowd.html [You will recall what happened when Mr. Mencken attended a Gridiron Dinner, in which FDR read statements about journalists, all negative. It turned out that they were written by Mr. Mencken. It is said that he never forgave Roosevelt for this, but I wonder.] By [1]MAUREEN DOWD At the Gridiron Dinner in Washington on Saturday, where Old Media gently mocked politicians with corny songs, I sat next to a presidential gag writer, Landon Parvin. He was saying jokes work best when Republicans make fun of Republicans and Democrats make fun of Democrats. President Bush, looking spiffy in white tie and tails, swung by to talk to Mr. Parvin. He didn't look my way, but proceeded back up to the dais. Suddenly, W. turned around, stopped and looked right at me. Then he flashed a wink, not a flirty wink but a mischievous Clark Gable "I've got your number and you think you've got mine but I win" wink. Bush had a cold, but he was feeling pretty hot. He started his presidency with a tentative demeanor and a chip on his shoulder. Now, even with the Middle East still roiling and the Democrats still spoiling for a fight over Social Security, W. feels as if he's won a lot of hands and has a big pile of chips. He's confident enough to send two unilateralist hawks who specialize in blowing off the globe - John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz - to run global institutions that epitomize multilateralism. (Wolfie's biggest qualification to run the World Bank? His prediction that Iraqi reconstruction would pay for itself with Iraqi oil revenues.) In The Washington Post, [2]the reporter Mark Leibovich wrote that the president has been almost like a different person since the Iraqi elections, so loosey-goosey as he tries to sell his Social Security agenda and other programs that "he is resembling a Texas auctioneer pitching private accounts on the borscht belt." When a woman at an Arkansas town meeting last month told W. she was from De Queen, he replied, "That is right next to De King." At the Gridiron, Mr. Bush slyly joked that he had the "dangedest puppy" who would roll over on command - but only some of the time. "I renamed him 'John McCain.' " I may have gotten a presidential wink, but I still don't have my regular White House pass back. (Maybe I'd get it back if I became a male escort?) But Bush aides have now decided to let in a blogger. Maybe they're grateful that bloodhound bloggers ran off Dan Rather. But this White House may not like New Media any more than Old Media. It's already moved on to Fake Media. Here is yesterday's headline on the humorist Andy Borowitz's Web site: "[3]White House Reporter Turns Out to Be Cheney. Fake Mustache Falls Off Veep During Press Briefing." The White House isn't backing off its plan to replace real news with faux news. The Bushies created their own reality to convince the country that Iraq was a threat to U.S. security. So even though the war has given birth to some of the very evils it was supposed to fix - like more recruits for Osama, and Saddam's formerly sealed weapons' falling into terrorists' hands - Bushies like the results of their war. Now the White House has its own gulag: C.I.A. agents snatch suspects and fly them to places like Egypt and Syria to be strung up in chains and tortured. And The Times reported yesterday that at least 26 deaths of prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan may be criminal homicides. So it also has its own Soviet-style propaganda campaign. At his news conference yesterday, the president bristled a bit when a reporter reminded him that after it was revealed that his administration was paying columnists to shill for agency programs, Mr. Bush had ordered that such tactics cease. But, as the reporter noted, the administration is still using government money to produce stories about the government that are broadcast with no disclosure that the government is producing them. [4]David Barstow and Robin Stein wrote in The Times on Sunday that at least 20 agencies had made and distributed fake news segments to local TV stations; the administration spent $254 million in its first four years to buy self-aggrandizing puffery from P.R. firms. The president joked that he could tack on an "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this disclaimer." But then he said he wouldn't - that it was up to local stations to reveal the truth. He said his Justice Department had found that the fake news programs are "within the law so long as they're based upon facts, not advocacy." And, of course, this is a White House that never makes up facts to suit its purposes or sell its programs. It serves its propaganda baldfaced, with no hint of its real agenda. At least I got a wink. E-mail: liberties at nytimes.com References Visible links 1. http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32281-2005Mar13.html 3. http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1089&srch= 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:11:12 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:11:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Desks, and How Writers Treat Them Message-ID: Desks, and How Writers Treat Them The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.3.11 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i27/27a01302.htm By PETER MONAGHAN Kevin R. Kopelson, professor of English at the University of Iowa Writers form an accord with their work space that suits them: Some choose obsessive tidiness, others overwhelming clutter, says Mr. Kopelson in Neatness Counts: Essays on the Writer's Desk (University of Minnesota Press). Q. What prompted you to focus on neatness? A. For me, thinking in print feels so chaotic that I need to create order everywhere else around me, so as not to be distracted by any physical disorder. But for others, writing is a process of creating a literary order out of a mental chaos that requires the objective correlative of a literally messy work space. Q. Did you come to understand how slobs can get writing done? A. I did. In fact, I forced myself to work at times in a mess, to try to get a handle on that. To my surprise, I found that creating an incredible mess around me could be very comforting. But I wasn't able to infer any general rules concerning the connections and disconnections between a creative writer's work space and the work produced there, apart from, first, that literary writers tend to reproduce primal comfort zones -- in my case, it's a treehouse; in Proust's, it was a bed -- and, second, desks, like the studies that contain them, are either organized or disorganized so as to minimize distraction. Q. You say that the travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin's relation to his work space was particularly interesting. Why? A. He presented himself as somebody who could work only on the road and not at any desk or even in any room. But, in fact, what he was was somebody who had to work in an obsessively ordered space that was not his own. He could not work in his own home -- he could only appropriate rooms in friends' homes, and then obsessively arrange them. Q. The playwright Tom Stoppard's relation to his desk seems somewhat more metaphorical, doesn't it? A. His imaginary, or metaphysical, desks seem -- to me, if not to him -- to correspond to the dramatic stage. Both are flat surfaces gazed down upon by either writers or audience members, at more or less the same angles. That kind of literal metaphor made everything crystallize for me. ... The way he fantasizes desks and work spaces would seem to me more important than the way he actually works. Q. Last year Diana Fuss's "The Sense of an Interior: 4 Writers and the Rooms That Shaped Them" (Routledge) appeared. Is there a growing awareness of this issue? A. Yes, and that's a wonderful companion volume to my book, treating as it does many of the same issues and one of the same authors -- Proust. The books really are about the poetics of work space. From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:17:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:17:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Did animals sense Tsunami was coming? Message-ID: Did animals sense Tsunami was coming? http://www.animalsentience.com/news/2005-01-15.htm 5.1.15 [This is sensational and grants should certainly be awarded.] The horror of the Asian Tsunami affected everyone, and we extend our sympathies and thoughts to any reader personally affected by this tragedy. There have been many reports about wild and domestic animals sensing the impending tragedy and trying to escape before the giant waves hit the region. According to eyewitness accounts: o Elephants screamed and ran for higher ground. o Dogs refused to go outdoors. o Flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas. o Zoo animals rushed into their shelters and could not be enticed to come back out. We have reported before the belief that animals possess a sixth sense - specifically Rupert Sheldrake spoke about this issue at our 2003 Animal Sentience conference. Wildlife experts believe animals' more acute hearing and other senses might enable them to hear or feel the Earth's vibration, tipping them off to approaching disaster long before humans realize what's going on. Whether it is a sixth sense or other senses we felt it was worth reporting some of the experiences witnessed in South East Asia. Relatively few animals have been reported dead, however, reviving speculation that animals somehow sense impending disaster. Ravi Corea, president of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society, which is based in Nutley, New Jersey, was in Sri Lanka when the massive waves struck. Afterwards, he travelled to the Patanangala beach inside Yala National Park, where some 60 visitors were washed away. The beach was one of the worst hit areas of the 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometer) wildlife reserve, which is home to a variety of animals, including elephants, leopards, and 130 species of birds. About an hour before the tsunami hit, people at Yala National Park observed three elephants running away from the Patanangala beach. Corea did not see any animal carcasses nor did the park personnel know of any, other than two water buffalos that had died, he said. In the southern Sri Lankan town of Dickwella, reports have been received of bats frantically flying away just before the tsunami struck. Along India's Cuddalore coast, where thousands of people perished, the Indo-Asian News service reported that buffaloes, goats, and dogs were found unharmed. It was also reported that Flamingos that breed this time of year at the Point Calimere wildlife sanctuary in India flew to higher ground beforehand. Alan Rabinowitz, director for science and exploration at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, says animals can sense impending danger by detecting subtle or abrupt shifts in the environment. "Earthquakes bring vibrational changes on land and in water while storms cause electromagnetic changes in the atmosphere," he said. "Some animals have acute sense of hearing and smell that allow them to determine something coming towards them long before humans might know that something is there." At one time humans also had this sixth sense, Rabinowitz said, but lost the ability when it was no longer needed or used. Some U.S. seismologists, on the other hand, are sceptical. There have been documented cases of strange animal behaviour prior to earthquakes. But the United States Geological Survey, a government agency that provides scientific information about the Earth, says a reproducible connection between a specific behaviour and the occurrence of a quake has never been made. "What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes," said Andy Michael, a geophysicist at USGS. "Animals react to so many things--being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators--so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal." From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:18:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:18:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Claremont Institute: Cultures of War Message-ID: Cultures of War http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2004/bruscino.html. By Thomas A. Bruscino, Jr. Posted February 28, 2005 A review of [1]Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, by John A. Lynn [2]Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think, by Victor Davis Hanson Over the past twenty years, Victor Davis Hanson, a one-time raisin farmer and now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, has become one of the world's most prominent military historians. Hanson's bestselling books and opinion pieces on culture, warfare, and foreign affairs have become so influential that in the aftermath of September 11, he receives consultation calls from the White House and Pentagon. Not surprisingly, his high profile has brought criticism, ranging from the shrill--in the mid-1990s one critic asserted that he could be the Unabomber--to the professional. Battle, by University of Illinois professor of history John Lynn, belongs in the latter category. Battle is an eclectic study of world military history, tackling a wide array of subjects, from virtue and ethics in ancient Chinese and Indian conflicts to the war on terror. Lynn brings a fresh cultural perspective to a number of long-standing historical arguments. He describes the brutality of medieval Western warfare, dominated not by chivalry in battle but by rape, pillage, and murder in the chevauch?e, the great raids across the countryside. To those who find unchanging truth in the work of Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, Lynn charges that Clausewitz must be understood as a creature of his cultural times. Before World War I, military thinkers studied the Prussian's principles of decisive battle; after World War II, they looked with equal fervor to his ideas on limited war. And contrary to the prevailing wisdom that the strategy and brutality of World War II in the Pacific stemmed from race hatred on both sides, Lynn wisely maintains that geography dictated the strategy and conflicting military cultures created the brutality. Lynn shows that culture can also be an obstacle to battlefield success, using the Egyptian army from 1948 to 1973 as an example. The Egyptians' rigid, top-heavy command structure stifled fresh ideas, tactical flexibility, and honest communication from lower levels, leading to a drubbing by the Israelis in the Six-Day War. In the Yom Kippur War (1973), their preplanned attack--scripted down to the individual soldier--negated any advantage they might have had in surprise and personal initiative; even adjusting for their culture did not lead to ultimate victory. This brings us to our present situation in the Middle East. If you can't beat an enemy on the battlefield, you have two options: you go up, to weapons of mass destruction, or down, to terrorism. Prof. Lynn makes a persuasive case for culture as a driving force in world history in this iconoclastic and learned study. Nevertheless, Battle will disappoint readers who long for broad conclusions and sweeping historical themes. To Lynn, complexity and discontinuity separate history's many ways of war. Victor Davis Hanson begins Ripples of Battle with a personal narrative, describing the death of his father's cousin, and his namesake, in the battle for Okinawa in 1945. This death on a distant island almost sixty years ago has rippled through the Hanson family ever since. The killing and destruction of war, Hanson argues, ripples through human history in much the same way. "Battles," he writes, "are really the wildfires of history, out of which the survivors float like embers and then land to burn far beyond the original conflagration." Hanson examines three battles--Okinawa, Shiloh, and Delium--describing how, in a matter of a few hours or days of fighting, they precipitated changes across entire societies. In the bloody Battle of Shiloh in 1862, Ulysses S. Grant's federal forces barely overcame a surprise rebel attack. A previously disgraced William T. Sherman played a key role in the federal stand, a role that rescued him from despair and obscurity. Shiloh launched him on a course that would end in his decisive march through the heart of the South. His capture of Atlanta two years later saved Lincoln's presidential election, and his partnership with Grant eventually won the war. On the other side, the fluke death of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston on the evening of the first day at Shiloh prevented any further rebel attacks on the wavering federal lines. Whether or not Johnston's survival would have turned the tide is irrelevant; the fact is that many Southerners did and do believe that to be the case. Chance, not the skill of the enemy, destroyed the Confederate cause. This myth would be cemented by the death of Stonewall Jackson and by the missed opportunities at Gettysburg. Yet the effects of Shiloh pale in comparison to the Battle of Delium in 424 B.C., an obscure and strategically unimportant engagement in the Peloponnesian War that changed the course of Western civilization. In the midst of devastating war, the Athenians decided to turn and defeat Sparta's Boeotian allies to the north. Of the thousands of hoplites who took their place in the Athenian line, one was a middle-aged philosopher named Socrates. After being routed by the Boeotians, the Athenians fled in three directions. While others fled to the mountains or their fortress, Socrates headed for the woods; only those who chose the woods escaped slaughter. And so the father of Western political philosophy lived to pass on his wisdom to Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and us. * * * A key idea separates Victor Davis Hanson and John Lynn. Hanson's work has championed a "Western way of war." For Hanson, Greek agrarian culture produced a war method based on civic militarism and decisive battle, and the West has more or less been fighting that way (and winning against the non-West) ever since. Western traditions like consensual government, secular rationalism, and individual ingenuity produced an unparalleled, lethal military dynamism. The Greeks and Macedonians defeated the mighty Persian empire; Rome, not Carthage, conquered the known world; Spanish conquistadors ran wild in Latin America; and gunpowder, a toy for the Chinese elite, became in Western hands the basis for repeating rifles and explosive shells--:not due to superior numbers, higher IQs, guns, germs, or steel, but to a 2,500-year cultural tradition. The success of the Western way of war explains why "the rest of the world copies its weapons, uniforms, and military organization from us, not vice versa." Lynn disagrees. He criticizes Hanson's Western way of war for creating a universal Western warrior, unchanged through time. Lynn maintains that the soldiers and fighting styles from Imperial Rome through the Early Modern period drastically departed from their Greek antecedents, rupturing Hanson's supposedly unbroken tradition. Besides, it is not as if the West has been universally successful against the rest of the world. The Huns, Muslims, Mongols, and Turks each held their own or had their way with Western armies. But Hanson's gift is to summon history in ways meaningful to the present. Whereas John Lynn sees coincidence in the emergence of civic militarism combined with decisive battle, Hanson sees a pattern encoded in the West's culture. Lynn saw terrorists crashing planes into buildings as marking the emergence of a new type of warfare. Hanson does not. In late 1944, the Japanese began kamikaze and banzai attacks against U.S. fleets in the Pacific. They were attempting to frighten the U.S. out of invading the mainland, which would potentially lead to millions of deaths. It was this that persuaded U.S. military planners to drop the atomic bomb. "There was a similar chain of events," Hanson writes, "after the terrible autumn of 2001." Again, the U.S. found itself faced by thousands of suicidal ideologues, convinced their fearlessness would overcome the decadent U.S. Hanson observes, "Romantics may have remembered the kamikazes; realists recalled how they were dealt with.... Okinawa taught the world that the chief horror of war is not the random use of suicide bombers, but the response that they incur from Western powers whose self-imposed restraint upon their ingenuity for killing usually rests only with their own sense of moral reluctance--a brake that suicidal attack seems to strip away entirely." Ideas are tricky things, difficult to track and measure through time. Ripples of Battle demonstrates the lasting and unexpected influence that warfare can have on all aspects of culture. If there is a Western way of war, its path from the Greek hoplite to the American soldier remains at least partially obscured by history's mountains and valleys; hidden among the ideas, prayers, art, and actions of countless souls. John Lynn is right to point this out, because discovering such a path is the essence of the historian's work. But as Victor Davis Hanson so clearly understands, in an uncertain world, history can also tell us who we are and for what, if necessary, we fight. Thomas A. Bruscino, Jr. is a Ph.D. candidate in the history department at Ohio University. References 1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0813333717/theclaremontinst 2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385721943/theclaremontinst From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:23:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:23:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] City Journal: Heather Mac Donald: Feminists Get Hysterical Message-ID: Heather Mac Donald: Feminists Get Hysterical http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon_02_24_05hm.html 20052.2.4 "City Journal is the best magazine in America." Peggy Noonan First it was Harvard vs. Summers--and now Estrich vs. Kinsley. Gee thanks, Susan. Political pundit Susan Estrich has launched a venomous campaign (links [11]here and [12]here and [13]here) against the Los Angeles Times's op-ed editor, Michael Kinsley, for alleged discrimination against female writers. As it happens, I have published in the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages over the years, without worrying too much about whether I was merely filling a gender quota. Now, however, if I appear in the Times again, I will assume that my sex characteristics, rather than my ideas, got me accepted. Estrich's insane ravings against the Times cap a month that left one wondering whether the entry of women into the intellectual and political arena has been an unqualified boon. In January, nearly the entire female professoriate at Harvard (and many of their feminized male colleagues) rose up in outrage at the mere suggestion of an open discussion about a scientific hypothesis. That hypothesis, of course, concerned the possibly unequal distribution of cognitive skills across the male and female populations. Harvard President Larry Summers had had the temerity to suggest that the continuing preponderance of men in scientific fields, despite decades of vigorous gender equity initiatives in schools and universities, may reflect something other than sexism. It might reflect the fact, Summers hypothesized, that the male population has a higher percentage of mathematical geniuses (and mathematical dolts) than the female population, in which mathematical reasoning skills may be more evenly distributed. A feminist gadfly in the audience, MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, infamously reported that she avoided fainting or vomiting at Summers's remarks only by running from the room. And with that remarkable expression of science-phobia, a great feminist vendetta was launched. It has reduced Summers to a toadying appeaser who has promised to atone for his sins with ever more unforgiving diversity initiatives (read: gender quotas) in the sciences. But the damage will not be limited to Harvard. Summers's scourging means that, from now on, no one in power will stray from official propaganda to explain why women are not proportionally represented in every profession. The Harvard rationality rout was a mere warm-up, however, to the spectacle unfolding in Los Angeles, brought to light by the upstart newspaper, the [14]D.C. Examiner. USC law professor, Fox News commentator, and former Dukakis presidential campaign chairman Susan Estrich has come out as a [15]snarling bitch in response to L.A. Times's editor Michael Kinsley's unwillingness to be [16]blackmailed. Estrich had [17]demanded that Kinsley run a manifesto signed by several dozen women preposterously accusing him of refusing to publish females. When Kinsley declined, while offering Estrich the opportunity to write a critique of the Times in a few weeks, Estrich sunk to the lowest rung imaginable: playing Kinsley's struggle with Parkinson's disease against him. Said Estrich: Your refusal to bend to my demands "underscores the question I've been asked repeatedly in recent days, and that does worry me, and should worry you: people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job." It is curious how feminists, when crossed, turn into shrill, hysterical harpies--or, in the case of MIT's Nancy Hopkins, delicate flowers who collapse at the slightest provocation--precisely the images of women that they claim patriarchal sexists have fabricated to keep them down. Actually, Estrich's hissy fit is more histrionic than anything the most bitter misogynist could come up with on his own. Witness her faux remorse at engaging in blackmail: "I really do hate to be doing this. I counted e-mail after e-mail that I sent and was totally ignored. I can't tell you how much I wanted to help quietly. If this is what it takes, so be it." Witness too her self-pitying amour propre: "You owe me an apology. NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did--and you have the arrogance and audacity to say that you couldn't be bothered reading my emails." Add to that her petty insults: "if you prefer me to conduct this discussion outside your pages . . . that makes you look even more afraid and more foolish." And finally, mix in shameless self-promotion: "I hope [this current crusade is] a lesson in how you can make change happen if you're willing to stand up to people who call you names, and reach out to other women, and not get scared and back down. If you recall, I wrote a book about that, called Sex and Power. It's what I have spent my whole life doing." Selective quotation cannot do justice to Estrich's rants. But their underlying substance is as irrational as their tone. Estrich lodges the standard charge in all fake discrimination charges: the absence of proportional representation in any field is conclusive proof of bias. Determining the supply of qualified candidates is wholly unnecessary. For the last three years, Estrich's female law students at USC have been counting the number of female writers on the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages (and she complains that there aren't more female policy writers? Suggestion to Estrich: how about having your students master a subject rather than count beans.). She provides only selective tallies of the results: "TWENTY FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN IN A THREE DAY PERIOD [caps in original]" (she does not explain how she chose that three-day period or whether it was representative); "THIRTEEN MEN AND NO WOMEN" as authors of pieces on Iraq. Several questions present themselves: how many pieces by women that met the Times's standards were offered during these periods? What is the ratio of men to women among experts on Iraq? Estrich never bothers to ask these questions, because for the radical feminist, being a woman is qualification enough for any topic. Any female is qualified to write on Iraq, for example, because in so doing, she is providing THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE. (This belief in the essential difference between male and female "voices," of course, utterly contradicts the premise of the anti-Larry Summers crusade.) Thus, to buttress her claim that Kinsley "refuses" to publish women, Estrich merely provides a few examples of women whose offerings have been rejected: "Carla Sanger . . . tells me she can't get a piece in; I have women writing to me who have submitted four piece [sic] and not gotten the courtesy of a call--and they teach gender studies at UCLA. . . ." It goes without saying, without further examination, that each of those writers deserved to be published--especially, for heaven's sakes, the gender studies professors! Self-centered? Thin-skinned? Takes things personally? Misogynist tropes that sum up Estrich to a T. It is the fate of probably 98 percent of all op-ed hopefuls to have their work silently rejected, without the "courtesy of a call." But when a woman experiences the silent treatment, it's because of sexism. Similarly, it is the fate of most e-mail correspondence to editors to be ignored. But when Estrich's e-mails are ignored ("I sent e-mails to my old friends at the Times. Neither time did they even bother to respond."), it's because the editor is a chauvinist pig. The assumption that being female obviates the need for any further examination into one's qualifications allows Estrich to sidestep the most fundamental question raised by her crusade: Why should anyone care what the proportion of female writers is on an op-ed page? If an analysis is strong, it should make no difference what its author's sex is. But for Estrich, it is an article of faith that female representation matters: "What could be more important--or easier for that matter--than ensuring that women's voices are heard in public discourse in our community?" Her embedded question--"or easier for that matter?"-- is quickly answered. She is right: Nothing is easier than ensuring that "women's voices" are heard; simply set up a quota and publish whatever comes across your desk. But as for why it is of paramount importance to get the "women's" perspective on farm subsidies or OPEC price manipulations, Estrich does not say. She provides a clue to her thinking, however. For Estrich, apparently, having a "woman's voice" means being left-wing. She blasts the Times for publishing an article by Charlotte Allen on the decline of female public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag. Allen had argued that too many women writers today specialize in being female, rather than addressing the broader range of issues covered by their male counterparts. For Estrich, this argument performs a magical sex change on Allen, turning her into a male. After sneering at Allen's article and her affiliation with the "Independent Women's Forum which is a group of right-wing women who exist to get on TV," Estrich concludes: "the voices of women . . . are [not] found within a thousand miles" of the Los Angeles Times. In other words, Allen's is not a "voice of a woman" because she criticizes radical feminism. Estrich does not disclose if she conducted this sex change operation on all conservative women when compiling her phony statistics on the proportion of female writers on the op-ed page. "Women's liberation," for the radical feminists, means liberation to think like a robot, mindlessly following the dictates of the victimologists. But if all bona fide women think alike, then publishing one female writer every year or so should suffice, since we know in advance what she will say. Depressingly, Estrich's crusade, no matter how bogus, will undoubtedly bear fruit. Anyone in a position of power today, facing accusations of bias and the knowledge that people are using crude numerical measures to prove his bias, will inevitably start counting beans himself, whether consciously or not. Michael Kinsley could reassure every female writer out there that Estrich has not cowed him by publishing only men for the next six months. It would be an impressive rebuff to Estrich's blackmail. I'll happily forgo the opportunity to appear in the Times for a while in order to get my pride back. References 11. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/16//OPINION/OP-ED/01aaaafestrichoped.txt 12. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/16/opinion/op-ed/01aaaagkinsleyoped.txt 13. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/18/opinion/op-ed/01aaoped19estrich.txt 14. http://www.dcexaminer.com/ 15. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/18/opinion/op-ed/01aaoped19estrich.txt 16. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/16/opinion/op-ed/01aaaagkinsleyoped.txt 17. http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/16//OPINION/OP-ED/01aaaafestrichoped.txt From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:34:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:34:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Statesman: Review of A Philosohpy of Boredom Message-ID: Review of A Philosohpy of Boredom http://www.newstatesman.com/Bookshop/300000095197 Monday 21st March 2005 A Philosophy of Boredom Lars Fredrik Svendsen; translation by John Irons Reaktion Books, 192pp, ?14.95 ISBN 1861892179 Reviewed by Tom Hodgkinson Lars Svendsen's inquiry is a good, solid practical work of philosophy, in the tradition of Aristotle's Ethics and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. He has a light touch and a playful attitude, and draws on a wide range of texts, from Martin Heidegger and Samuel Beckett to Iggy Pop and the Pet Shop Boys. The opening section is particularly strong. I was fascinated to learn that boredom was invented in 1760; the word is not found in English prior to this, though related concepts such as melancholy and acedia did exist. Acedia is from the Greek akedia, meaning "not to care". Usually translated as sloth, it meant not so much laziness as a betrayal of your duty to observe God. The monk who gave up, who didn't care, was committing possibly the most grievous sin of all, because not caring about God implied not caring about being lustful, avaricious or proud. Svendsen does not really go into the historical circumstances surrounding the emergence of boredom. The date 1760 is surely tremendously significant, because it connects the beginning of boredom with the beginning of the industrial revolution. It was in 1764 that James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny and James Watt invented the steam engine. These two dastardly machines - Blake's "cogs tyrannic" - tore the peasant from his creative self-sufficiency and substituted machine-work for handiwork. Work in the 19th century duly became unbelievably boring and tedious, and has remained so ever since. Modern consumerism provides an arsenal of weapons to alleviate boredom. Adverts for Virgin Megastores, for example, explicitly claim the shop's products will make you less bored. We seek solace from the tedium of toil in manufactured entertainment, and fill our leisure time with ever more lunatic activities (extreme sports spring to mind). I was also fascinated to learn that the concept of "interesting" emerged at roughly the same time. Before 1760, we neither categorised things as being "boring" nor "interesting"; they just were. Perhaps the concept of individualism was not sufficiently developed for man to pre-sume to judge one way or the other. For me, however, this splitting mirrors the modern division between "work" and "leisure". Before the industrial revolution, as E P Thompson argues in The Making of the English Working Class, work and leisure were much more intertwined. The punk movement was a nice, juicy protest against boredom; Svendsen cites the extreme rocker G G Allin and the Buzzcocks, creators of the song "Boredom", with its famous one-note guitar solo. But again, he could have gone further. In Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus places punk in the same tradition as Dada and situationism, which were both attempts to assert the value of living over the bourgeois ideal of mere survival. The situationist Raoul Vaneigem, for example, wrote in The Revolution of Everyday Life (1967) that "people are dying of boredom". Ten years later, the Sex Pistols created some of the least boring music of the modern age out of the experience of being bored. In the end, delightful and important though the book is, I found Svendsen's conclusions a bit wimpy. Boredom, he seems to say, is just something we've got to live with. Some are more prone to it than others. Svendsen sees it as principally a psychological condition, whereas I would put more of the blame on boring governments, boring shops, boring products and the loss of creativity in our daily lives. He seems to admire the Warholian response to boredom, which is to say: "Who cares?" At one point, Svendsen quotes Karl Rosenkranz, who wrote in 1853: "The boring is ugly, or rather: Ugliness to the point of the dead, empty tautological awakens a feeling of boredom in us." But he does not then, like William Morris, relate the rise of ugliness to the rise of capitalism. It is surely the inexorable progress of capitalism towards an ideal of quantity rather than quality that leads to its stifling homogeneity, ugliness and boredom. To become less bored, shouldn't we attempt to reclaim our lives from work, and live them freely and creatively? Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and the author of How To Be Idle (Hamish Hamilton) From checker at panix.com Tue Apr 19 14:45:05 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:45:05 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LAT: (Debbie Tannen) The Feminine Technique Message-ID: The Feminine Technique http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-tannen15mar15,0,140702,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions COMMENTARY The Feminine Technique Men attack problems. Maybe women understand that there's a better way. By Deborah Tannen Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, is the author of "The Argument Culture" (Random House, 1998). March 15, 2005 In asking why there aren't more female newspaper columnists, Maureen Dowd confessed that six months into the job, she tried to quit because "I felt as though I were in a 'Godfather' movie, shooting and getting shot at." "Men enjoy verbal dueling," said Dowd, who is the only female Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times. "As a woman," she explained, "I wanted to be liked -- not attacked." Dowd put her finger on one reason fewer women than men are comfortable writing slash-and-burn columns. But she didn't take her argument to the next level and question the fundamental assumption that attack-dog journalism is the only kind worth writing. That is the blind spot that explains why women are missing from many of the arenas of public discourse, including science (as noted by Larry Summers of Harvard) and opinion writing. (The Los Angeles Times was recently criticized for not running more women on its opinion pages.) No one bothers to question the underlying notion that there is only one way to do science, to write columns -- the way it's always been done, the men's way. There is plenty of evidence that men more than women, boys more than girls, use opposition, or fighting, as a format for accomplishing goals that are not literally about combat -- a practice that cultural linguist Walter Ong called "agonism," from the Greek word for war, agon. Watch kids of any age at play. Little boys set up wars and play-fights. Little girls fight, but not for fun. Starting a fight is a common way for boys to make friends: One boy shoves another, who shoves back, and pretty soon they're engaged in play. But when a boy tries to get into play with a girl by shoving her, she's more likely to try to get away from him. A recent New Yorker cartoon captured this: It showed a little girl and a little boy eyeing each other. She's thinking, "I wonder if I should talk to him." He's thinking, "I wonder if I should kick her." Older boys have their own version of agonism, using fighting as a format for doing things that have nothing to do with actual combat: They show affection by mock-punching, getting a friend's head in an armlock or playfully trading insults. Here's an example that one of my students observed: Two boys and a girl are building structures with blocks. When they're done, the boys start throwing blocks at each other's structures to destroy them. The girl protects hers with her body. The boys say they don't really want their own creations destroyed, but the risk is worth it because it's fun to destroy the other's structures. The girl sees nothing entertaining about destroying others' work. Arguing ideas as a way to explore them is an adult version of these agonistic rituals. Because they're used to this agonistic way of exploring ideas -- playing devil's advocate -- many men find that their adrenaline gets going when someone challenges them, and it sharpens their minds: They think more clearly and get better ideas. But those who are not used to this mode of exploring ideas, including many women, react differently: They back off, feeling attacked, and they don't do their best thinking under those circumstances. This is one reason many women who are talented and passionate lovers of science drop out of the profession. It's not that they're not fascinated by the science, don't have the talent to come up with new ideas or are not willing to put long hours into the lab, but that they're put off by the competitive, cutthroat culture of science. The assumption that fighting is the only way to explore ideas is deeply rooted in Western civilization. It can be found in the militaristic roots of the Christian church and in our educational system, tracing back to all-male medieval universities where students learned by oral disputation. Ong contrasts this with Chinese science and philosophy, which eschewed disputation and aimed to "enlighten an inquirer," not to "overwhelm an opponent." As Chinese anthropologist Linda Young showed, Chinese philosophy sees the universe in a precarious balance that must be maintained, leading to methods of investigation that focus more on integrating ideas and exploring relations among them rather than on opposing ideas and fighting over them. Cultural training plays a big role too. Mediterranean, German, French and Israeli cultures encourage dynamic verbal opposition for women as well as men. Japanese culture discourages it for men as well as women. Perhaps that's why Japanese talk shows rarely include two guests (they'll have one or three or more), to avoid the polarized debates that our talk shows favor. This brings us to our political discourse and the assumption that it must be agonistic in method and spirit. If we accept this false premise, then it is not surprising that fewer women than men will be found who are comfortable writing political columns. But looking for women who can write the same kind of columns that men write is a waste -- exactly the opposite of what should be the benefits of diversity: introducing new and different ways of doing things. In a book about female lawyers, Mona Harrington interviewed successful female attorneys who said they were more successful when they were not being as aggressive and confrontational as possible but instead listened, observed and better "read" opponents. In taking depositions, they got better results by adopting a "quiet, sympathetic approach" (instead of grilling and attacking) so that witnesses tended to forget that the attorney deposing them was their adversary. But, Harrington noted, they couldn't tell this to potential clients, who assumed aggression was the only way. Instead, they had to emphasize that they were seasoned veterans of large aggressive firms who could slug it out with the best of them. Of course a political columnist must be ready to expose wrongdoing, look critically at events and public figures and be ready to offend if necessary. But attack-dog journalism is not the only way to do this, and it probably is not the best way either. As Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, has put it, we tend to think that if you're not an attack dog, you're a lap dog, taking everything politicians say at face value. But the true role of journalism should be a third way: a watchdog. And a dog who is busy attacking is not watching. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Tue Apr 19 16:55:31 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 09:55:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] apology In-Reply-To: <200504191350.j3JDoe230835@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050419165531.23058.qmail@web30814.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I'd like to apologize if I've failed to respond to any conversation here, there are too many articles posted to scroll and find the interactive parts of the digest. Anyone who wishes to converse with me should email me directly. Michael __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides! http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide From kendulf at shaw.ca Tue Apr 19 17:58:11 2005 From: kendulf at shaw.ca (Val Geist) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 10:58:11 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad References: <01C5443A.E4590B80.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <019e01c54509$5a92f5d0$873e4346@yourjqn2mvdn7x> It's nice to be a Canadian! Cheers, Val Geist ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Hovland To: paleopsych at paleopsych. org (E-mail) Cc: PoliticalSpinroom (E-mail) Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 5:20 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The SF Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Wood, Ph.D., Reference Librarian LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport Tel.: (318) 675-5679 Email: trongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.16 - Release Date: 4/18/2005 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 19 23:27:21 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:27:21 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad Message-ID: <01C544FC.A9F43B50.shovland@mindspring.com> When the liberal resurgence is completed, it will be nice to be an American, too :-) Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Val Geist [SMTP:kendulf at shaw.ca] Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 10:58 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad It's nice to be a Canadian! Cheers, Val Geist ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Hovland To: paleopsych at paleopsych. org (E-mail) Cc: PoliticalSpinroom (E-mail) Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 5:20 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] FW: Unitarian Jihad The following is the first communique from a group calling itself Unitarian Jihad. It was sent to me at The SF Chronicle via an anonymous spam remailer. I have no idea whether other news organizations have received this communique, and, if so, why they have not chosen to print it. Perhaps they fear starting a panic. I feel strongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Wood, Ph.D., Reference Librarian LSU Health Sciences Center-Shreveport Tel.: (318) 675-5679 Email: trongly that the truth, no matter how alarming, trivial or disgusting, must always be told. I am pleased to report that the words below are at least not disgusting: Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary. Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic _expression! People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion. We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes. Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non- ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues. We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons. We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone. Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.9.16 - Release Date: 4/18/2005 << File: ATT00020.html >> << File: ATT00021.txt >> From waluk at earthlink.net Wed Apr 20 03:06:32 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:06:32 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] [Fwd: biopoet: The decline of literature [Another Evolutionary Trend?]] Message-ID: <4265C738.9080608@earthlink.net> Just in case anyone is interested. Regards, Gerry Why literature matters Good books help make a civil society By Dana Gioia | April 10, 2005 In 1780 Massachusetts patriot John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, outlining his vision of how American culture might evolve. ''I must study politics and war," he prophesied, so ''that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." They will add to their studies geography, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, he continued, so that /their/ children may enjoy the ''right to study painting, poetry, music . . . " ADVERTISEMENT Adams's bold prophecy proved correct. By the mid 20th century, America boasted internationally preeminent traditions in literature, art, music, dance, theater, and cinema. But a strange thing has happened in the American arts during the past quarter century. While income rose to unforeseen levels, college attendance ballooned, and access to information increased enormously, the interest young Americans showed in the arts -- and especially literature -- actually diminished. _According to the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a population study designed and commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (and executed by the US Bureau of the Census), arts participation by Americans has declined for eight of the nine major forms that are measured. (Only jazz has shown a tiny increase -- thank you, Ken Burns.) The declines have been most severe among younger adults (ages 18-24). The most worrisome finding in the 2002 study, however, is the declining percentage of Americans, especially young adults, reading literature_. That individuals at a time of crucial intellectual and emotional development bypass the joys and challenges of literature is a troubling trend. If it were true that they substituted histories, biographies, or political works for literature, one might not worry. But book reading of any kind is falling as well. That such a longstanding and fundamental cultural activity should slip so swiftly, especially among young adults, signifies deep transformations in contemporary life. To call attention to the trend, the Arts Endowment issued the reading portion of the Survey as a separate report, ''Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America." The decline in reading has consequences that go beyond literature. The significance of reading has become a persistent theme in the business world. The February issue of Wired magazine, for example, sketches a new set of mental skills and habits proper to the 21st century, aptitudes decidedly literary in character: not ''linear, logical, analytical talents," author Daniel Pink states, but ''the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative." When asked what kind of talents they like to see in management positions, business leaders consistently set imagination, creativity, and higher-order thinking at the top. Ironically, the value of reading and the intellectual faculties that it inculcates appear most clearly as active and engaged literacy declines. There is now a growing awareness of the consequences of nonreading to the workplace. In 2001 the National Association of Manufacturers polled its members on skill deficiencies among employees. Among hourly workers, poor reading skills ranked second, and 38 percent of employers complained that local schools inadequately taught reading comprehension. Corporate America makes similar complaints about a skill intimately related to reading -- writing. Last year, the College Board reported that corporations spend some $3.1 billion a year on remedial writing instruction for employees, adding that they ''express a fair degree of dissatisfaction with the writing of recent college graduates." If the 21st-century American economy requires innovation and creativity, solid reading skills and the imaginative growth fostered by literary reading are central elements in that program. The decline of reading is also taking its toll in the civic sphere. In a 2000 survey of college seniors from the top 55 colleges, the Roper Organization found that 81 percent could not earn a grade of C on a high school-level history test. A 2003 study of 15- to 26-year-olds' civic knowledge by the National Conference of State Legislatures concluded, ''Young people do not understand the ideals of citizenship . . . and their appreciation and support of American democracy is limited." It is probably no surprise that declining rates of literary reading coincide with declining levels of historical and political awareness among young people. One of the surprising findings of ''Reading at Risk" was that literary readers are markedly more civically engaged than nonreaders, scoring two to four times more likely to perform charity work, visit a museum, or attend a sporting event. One reason for their higher social and cultural interactions may lie in the kind of civic and historical knowledge that comes with literary reading. Unlike the passive activities of watching television and DVDs or surfing the Web, reading is actually a highly active enterprise. Reading requires sustained and focused attention as well as active use of memory and imagination. Literary reading also enhances and enlarges our humility by helping us imagine and understand lives quite different from our own. Indeed, we sometimes underestimate how large a role literature has played in the evolution of our national identity, especially in that literature often has served to introduce young people to events from the past and principles of civil society and governance. Just as more ancient Greeks learned about moral and political conduct from the epics of Homer than from the dialogues of Plato, so the most important work in the abolitionist movement was the novel /''/Uncle Tom's Cabin." Likewise our notions of American populism come more from Walt Whitman's poetic vision than from any political tracts. Today when people recall the Depression, the images that most come to mind are of the travails of John Steinbeck's Joad family from ''The Grapes of Wrath." Without a literary inheritance, the historical past is impoverished. In focusing on the social advantages of a literary education, however, we should not overlook the personal impact. Every day authors receive letters from readers that say, ''Your book changed my life." History reveals case after case of famous people whose lives were transformed by literature. When the great Victorian thinker John Stuart Mill suffered a crippling depression in late-adolescence, the poetry of Wordsworth restored his optimism and self-confidence -- a ''medicine for my state of mind," he called it. A few decades later, W.E.B. DuBois found a different tonic in literature, an escape from the indignities of Jim Crow into a world of equality. ''I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not," DuBois observed. ''Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls." Literature is a catalyst for education and culture. The evidence of literature's importance to civic, personal, and economic health is too strong to ignore. The decline of literary reading foreshadows serious long-term social and economic problems, and it is time to bring literature and the other arts into discussions of public policy. Libraries, schools, and public agencies do noble work, but addressing the reading issue will require the leadership of politicians and the business community as well. Literature now competes with an enormous array of electronic media. While no single activity is responsible for the decline in reading, the cumulative presence and availability of electronic alternatives increasingly have drawn Americans away from reading. Reading is not a timeless, universal capability. Advanced literacy is a specific intellectual skill and social habit that depends on a great many educational, cultural, and economic factors. As more Americans lose this capability, our nation becomes less informed, active, and independent-minded. These are not the qualities that a free, innovative, or productive society can afford to lose. /Dana Gioia is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts./ http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/why_literature_matters?pg=full Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From hilarleo at cal.berkeley.edu Wed Apr 20 13:01:03 2005 From: hilarleo at cal.berkeley.edu (Leo Sullivan) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 06:01:03 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] paleopsych- worse than useless lately In-Reply-To: <200504191350.j3JDoc230823@tick.javien.com> References: <200504191350.j3JDoc230823@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <8167f05122babd8e1176430bed249b35@cal.berkeley.edu> Hear hear; agreement: Too Much Information. There needs to be _some_ concept of EDITING in truly thoughtful communication among intelligent people. Too many of the articles on paleopsych lately I can recall in their original forms as fossil, 'wire' reports. Too often I've recognized topics -far outside my specialty- as out-of-date, superseded reports. This list is too much becoming the mere documenting of that which passes before the eyeballs of one 'Premise Checker'. What productive individual could read any part of all this? You get a B-L-O-G for your every thought, PC - not my inbox. LEO On Apr 19, 2005, at 6:50 AM, paleopsych-request at paleopsych.org wrote: > > Message: 38 > Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 > From: JanetKBrewer at cs.com > Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > > I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. > "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: >> unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1019 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Thrst4knw at aol.com Wed Apr 20 13:02:37 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:02:37 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe Message-ID: <142.43f12332.2f97aced@aol.com> I like the news feed, but the inbox isn't always the best place for it for some people depending on how they work. Frank, what about setting up your news emails as an RSS feed rather than a listserv? That would let people get the headlines without filling their inbox. Todd In a message dated 4/19/2005 8:20:11 AM Eastern Daylight Time, n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk writes: I do not intend to unsubscribe at this point, but I do identify strongly with the view that more information is entering the inbox than is fully compatible with the original function of this site as a discussion forum between individuals with an interest in this field. It is impossible to know how to police this without appearing offensive. But I regret that we may see a pattern of valued individuals withdrawing from the group as a consequence of what it has become. Nicholas ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:07 PM Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. > > "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: > > >unsubscribe -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thrst4knw at aol.com Wed Apr 20 13:19:13 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:19:13 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] paleopsych- worse than useless lately Message-ID: <7e.67f50c6f.2f97b0d1@aol.com> In a message dated 4/20/2005 9:02:49 AM Eastern Daylight Time, hilarleo at cal.berkeley.edu writes: Hear hear; agreement: Too Much Information. There needs to be _some_ concept of EDITING in truly thoughtful communication among intelligent people. Too many of the articles on paleopsych lately I can recall in their original forms as fossil, 'wire' reports. Too often I've recognized topics -far outside my specialty- as out-of-date, superseded reports. This list is too much becoming the mere documenting of that which passes before the eyeballs of one 'Premise Checker'. What productive individual could read any part of all this? You get a B-L-O-G for your every thought, PC - not my inbox. LEO Sure, this is a problem, but what productive person could edit any part of all this? You're asking for an edited publication rather than a selective news feed, a completely different investment and serving a slightly different purpose. Think of an engineering tradeoff between selectivity and sensitivity. The dilemma of "false negatives" vs. "false positives." The news feed is more sensitive to information of remotely possible value and less selective about it while the email is intended to be more selective and better organized but will neccessarily miss all sorts things of potential interest. The articles chosen are reasonably relevant to the topics discussed on the list (and usually reasonably timely), but given through the same channel they tend to drown out other kinds of discussions. So I suggest that the email channel be edited but that the news feed remain in a form allowing it to be filtered and aggregated. I think "Premise Checker" does a great job finding things of potential relevance to the kind of topics discussed on this list, if we can separate out the channels. It occurs to me that there wasn't much activity at all on this list before the news feed started back up! kind regards, Todd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 20 13:40:48 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 06:40:48 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] DNA Repair Message-ID: <01C54573.E4D38470.shovland@mindspring.com> The link: http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/D/DNArepair.html Agents that Damage DNA Types of DNA Damage Repairing Damaged Bases Direct Reversal of Base Damage Base Excision Repair (BER) Nucleotide Excision Repair (NER) Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP) Transcription-coupled NER Mismatch Repair (MMR) Repairing Strand Breaks Single-Strand Breaks (SSBs) Double-Strand Breaks (DSBs) The Generation of Antibody Diversity Meiosis also involves DSBs Gene Conversion Cancer Chemotherapy From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Wed Apr 20 13:54:46 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:54:46 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] The decline of literature and the rise of unhappiness In-Reply-To: <4265C738.9080608@earthlink.net> References: <4265C738.9080608@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <42665F26.4050608@solution-consulting.com> RE: Gerry's topic, the decline of reading: Concomitantly there has been an alarming increase in the prevelance of depression. Marty Seligman has said the lifetime risk of depression gets higher with each generation, and children today appear to have several times the risk of developing depression than their grandparents. Why? Seligman posits it is the development of the hedonistic values, perhaps originating with the 1960s (my time). The value of "if it feels good, do it" ironically leads to dissatisfaction and depression. Seligman has empirically demonstrated this, and its converse, that self-discipline and service to others lead to greater happiness. Reading was originally taught as a discipline for the mind. We were expected to slog through Shakespeare, Dickens, et al., whereas my children are assigned to read pablum ("literature" from the 1970s) unless supplemented at home. Hedonism argues the children do better if they aren't stressed. Discipline argues that children who read, have to write essays on what they have read, and are expected to intelligently discuss topics are happier. Such children are happier, and grow into happier young adults. The civil society that Gioia argues will result is arguably the outcome of educating self-disciplined people. FYI: Winston Churchill memorized "Lays of Ancient Rome" by Macaulay - over 1300 lines - when he was 13 years old. The key verses that helped shape his iron determination are: Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods, "And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? Lynn G. Reinhart-Waller wrote: > Just in case anyone is interested. > > Regards, > Gerry > > > Why literature matters > > > Good books help make a civil society > > By Dana Gioia | April 10, 2005 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 14:01:08 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 10:01:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe In-Reply-To: <142.43f12332.2f97aced@aol.com> References: <142.43f12332.2f97aced@aol.com> Message-ID: How do you do an RSS feed? I have a UNIX shell account and use Pine for e-mail, Lynx for the Web, and trn or tin for the Newsgroups (which I rarely visit anymore). I'm not sure how I can get these feeds either. Anyhow, I'm cutting down to ten articles a day to this list. After I've sent items to my list, I'll go back and resend to this one, unless it has such obvious relevance that I'll send it out at once. But I would like to know about RSS feeds. I did try them once on my account at work, which uses MS Outlook and Internet Explorer. But I got too much stuff and never went back to learn how to use it. On 2005-04-20, Thrst4knw at aol.com opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:02:37 EDT > From: Thrst4knw at aol.com > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org, checker at panix.com > Cc: HowlBloom at aol.com > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > > I like the news feed, but the inbox isn't always the best place for it for > some people depending on how they work. > > Frank, what about setting up your news emails as an RSS feed rather than a > listserv? > That would let people get the headlines without filling their inbox. > > Todd > > In a message dated 4/19/2005 8:20:11 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk writes: > I do not intend to unsubscribe at this point, but I do identify strongly > with the view that more information is entering the inbox than is fully > compatible with the original function of this site as a discussion forum > between individuals with an interest in this field. It is impossible to > know how to police this without appearing offensive. But I regret that we > may see a pattern of valued individuals withdrawing from the group as a > consequence of what it has become. > > Nicholas > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: "The new improved paleopsych list" > Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:07 PM > Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > > >> I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. >> >> "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: >> >>> unsubscribe > From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 20 14:05:36 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:05:36 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The decline of literature and the rise of unhappiness Message-ID: <01C54577.5AD8F580.shovland@mindspring.com> My shrink says "depression is the common cold of mental health." I think it is so prevalent because of the long fad for low-fat diets. Most people are not getting enough fatty acids, so they are depressed to some degree. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. [SMTP:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 6:55 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: [Paleopsych] The decline of literature and the rise of unhappiness RE: Gerry's topic, the decline of reading: Concomitantly there has been an alarming increase in the prevelance of depression. Marty Seligman has said the lifetime risk of depression gets higher with each generation, and children today appear to have several times the risk of developing depression than their grandparents. Why? Seligman posits it is the development of the hedonistic values, perhaps originating with the 1960s (my time). The value of "if it feels good, do it" ironically leads to dissatisfaction and depression. Seligman has empirically demonstrated this, and its converse, that self-discipline and service to others lead to greater happiness. Reading was originally taught as a discipline for the mind. We were expected to slog through Shakespeare, Dickens, et al., whereas my children are assigned to read pablum ("literature" from the 1970s) unless supplemented at home. Hedonism argues the children do better if they aren't stressed. Discipline argues that children who read, have to write essays on what they have read, and are expected to intelligently discuss topics are happier. Such children are happier, and grow into happier young adults. The civil society that Gioia argues will result is arguably the outcome of educating self-disciplined people. FYI: Winston Churchill memorized "Lays of Ancient Rome" by Macaulay - over 1300 lines - when he was 13 years old. The key verses that helped shape his iron determination are: Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods, "And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame? Lynn G. Reinhart-Waller wrote: > Just in case anyone is interested. > > Regards, > Gerry > > > Why literature matters > > > Good books help make a civil society > > By Dana Gioia | April 10, 2005 << File: ATT00025.html >> << File: ATT00026.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 20 14:14:25 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:14:25 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide Message-ID: <01C54578.96037C10.shovland@mindspring.com> Lipids, depression and suicide by Colin A, Reggers J, Castronovo V, Ansseau M. Assistante Clinique, Universite de Liege, CUP La Clairiere, Bertrix. Encephale 2003 Feb;29(Pt 1):49-58 ABSTRACT Polyunsatured fatty acids are made out of a hydrocarbonated chain of variable length with several double bonds. The position of the first double bond (w; omega) differentiates polyunsatured w3 fatty acids (for example: alpha-linolenic acid or a-LNA) and polyunsatured w6 fatty acids (for example: linoleic acid or LA). These two classes of fatty acids are said to be essential because they cannot be synthetised by the organism and have to be taken from alimentation. The w3 are present in linseed oil, nuts, soya beans, wheat and cold water fish whereas w6 are present in maize, sunflower and sesame oil. Fatty acids are part of phospholipids and, consequently, of all biological membranes. The membrane fluidity, of crucial importance for its functionning, depends on its lipidic components. Phospholipids composed of chains of polyunsatured fatty acids The rest of the story: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/lipidsmood.htm From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Wed Apr 20 14:32:26 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:32:26 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide In-Reply-To: <01C54578.96037C10.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54578.96037C10.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426667FA.60600@solution-consulting.com> Diet: This is a good point, and one I have considered. However, the history of a rise in depression pre-dates the low fat fad. In the 1960s the trend was already appearing, with people of my generation being at higher risk of depression than my own grandparents. Therefore, Seligman argues more in favor of changing values. I think you are correct that diet may also play a role, but it is not the whole picture. I put in the Horatius at the gate segments because the notion is that if nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for. One's willingness to give one's life in service of a higher value is a source of great strength and happiness. This appears to be an empirical finding, and illustrates the role of values and social norms in reducing depression. "and how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods . . ." The man / woman who deeply believes this has something great to live for, knows his/her position in life, and feels a deep connection with forebearers / posterity ('child upon her breast'). This seems to immunize against depression. Lynn Steve Hovland wrote: >Lipids, depression and suicide >by >Colin A, Reggers J, Castronovo V, Ansseau M. >Assistante Clinique, Universite de Liege, >CUP La Clairiere, Bertrix. >Encephale 2003 Feb;29(Pt 1):49-58 > >ABSTRACT >Polyunsatured fatty acids are made out of a hydrocarbonated chain of >variable length with several double bonds. The position of the first double >bond (w; omega) differentiates polyunsatured w3 fatty acids (for example: >alpha-linolenic acid or a-LNA) and polyunsatured w6 fatty acids (for >example: linoleic acid or LA). These two classes of fatty acids are said to >be essential because they cannot be synthetised by the organism and have to >be taken from alimentation. The w3 are present in linseed oil, nuts, soya >beans, wheat and cold water fish whereas w6 are present in maize, sunflower >and sesame oil. Fatty acids are part of phospholipids and, consequently, of >all biological membranes. The membrane fluidity, of crucial importance for >its functionning, depends on its lipidic components. Phospholipids composed >of chains of polyunsatured fatty acids > > >The rest of the story: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/lipidsmood.htm >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 15:00:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 11:00:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Benedict XVI Package Message-ID: Here's a whole bunch of articles, mostly from the New York Times and wire services picked up by the NYT. The view I'd most like to get is that of David Sloan Wilson, the champion of group selection in biology in _Unto Others_ (co-authored with Elliott Sober) and, more recently, of functionalism in religion in _Darwin's Cathedral_. He once called himself "an atheist, but a nice atheist" and holds that religions (at least those that have survived) have on the whole done good. (I'm still dubious.) He has dealt with the apparently odd fact that stricter religions attract more adherents, and Benedict may indeed make Catholicism more strict. We shall see. Watch for increased competition for strictness from Protestants and Mormons. The ethnic angle should we watched carefully. Though Roman Catholicism no longer has a White majority, this is the first time that the possibility of a non-White pope has been broached. It is taboo for Europeans to rejoice in winning the ethnic competition; instead look for an increase in the numbers of European Roman Catholics, or at least a slowing in their erosion. I'll provide more coverage tomorrow. I a single commentator says anything you could not have predicted, let me know at once! ---------------------- The New York Times > International > International Special > In St. Peter's, Concerns Over His Doctrine http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20pope.html April 20, 2005 By IAN FISHER VATICAN CITY, April 19 - Roman Catholic cardinals reached to the church's conservative wing on Tuesday and chose as the 265th pope Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a seasoned and hard-line German theologian who served as John Paul II's defender of the faith. At 5:50 p.m. in Rome, wispy white smoke puffed from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals were meeting, signaling that the new pope had been chosen, only a day after the secret conclave began. His name was not announced until nearly an hour later, after the great bell at St. Peter's tolled, and the scarlet curtain over the basilica's central balcony parted and a cardinal stepped out to announce in Latin, "Habemus papam!" "Dear brothers and sisters," Cardinal Ratzinger, 78, said, speaking Italian in a clear voice, spreading his arms wide over the crowd from the balcony. "After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard." He announced his name as Benedict XVI. The unusually brief conclave seemed to suggest that Cardinal Ratzinger was a popular choice inside the college of 115 cardinals who elected him as a man who shared - if at times went beyond - John Paul's conservative theology and seemed ready to take over the job after serving beside him for more than two decades. It was not clear, however, how popular a choice he was on St. Peter's Square. The applause for the new pope, while genuine and sustained among many, tapered off decisively in large pockets, which some assembled there said reflected their reservations about his doctrinal rigidity and whether, under Benedict XVI, an already polarized church will now find less to bind it together. "I kind of do think he will try to unite Catholics," said Linda Nguyen, 20, an American student studying in Rome who had wrapped six rosaries around her hands. "But he might scare people away." Vincenzo Jammace, a teacher from Rome, stood up on a plastic chair below the balcony and intoned, "This is the gravest error!" Pope Benedict's well-known stands include the assertion that Catholicism is "true" and other religions are "deficient"; that the modern, secular world, especially in Europe, is spiritually weak; and that Catholicism is in competition with Islam. He has also strongly opposed homosexuality, women as priests and stem cell research. His many supporters said they believed that the rule of Benedict XVI - a scholar who reportedly speaks 10 languages, including excellent English - would be clear and uncompromising about what it means to be a Roman Catholic. "It would be more popular to be more liberal, but it's not the best way for the church," said Martin Sturm, 20, a student from Germany. "The church must tell the truth, even if it is not what the people want to hear. And he will tell the truth." While Pope Benedict's views are upsetting to many Catholics in Europe and among liberal Americans, they are likely to find a receptive audience among the young and conservative Catholics whom John Paul II energized. His conservatism on moral issues may also play well in developing countries, where the church is growing rapidly, but where issues of poverty and social justice are also important. It is unclear how much Cardinal Ratzinger, a man with limited pastoral experience, and that spent in rich Europe, will speak to those concerns. Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, he was the son of a police officer. He was ordained in 1951, at age 24. He began his career as a liberal academic and theological adviser to at the Second Vatican Council, supporting many efforts to make the church more open. But he moved theologically and politically to the right. Pope Paul VI appointed him bishop of Munich in 1977 and appointed him cardinal in just three months. Taking the chief doctrinal job in 1981, he moved with vigor to squash liberation theology in Latin America, cracked down on liberal theologians and in 2000 wrote the contentious Vatican document "Dominus Jesus," asserting the truth of the Catholic belief over others. Despite views his opponents consider harsh, he is said to be shy and charming in private, a deeply spiritual and meditative man who lives simply. "He's very delicate, refined, respectful," Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, a retired top Vatican official who had worked closely with Cardinal Ratzinger, said in an interview on Tuesday night. "He's very approachable. He's open to everyone." With their choice, cardinals from 52 countries definitively answered several questions about the direction of the Roman Catholic Church at the start of its third millennium. They did not reach outside Europe, perhaps to Latin America, as many Vatican watchers expected, to reflect the growth of the church there and in Asia and Africa, prompting some disappointed reactions from Latin America on Tuesday. They did not choose a candidate with long experience as a pastor, but an academic and Vatican insider. They did not return the job to Italy, which had held the papacy for 455 years before a Pole, Karol Wojtyla, was elected John Paul II in 1978. They also did not chose a man as young as John Paul II, who was only 58 when elected. Cardinal Ratzinger turned 78 last Saturday, the oldest pope chosen since Clement XII in 1730. This has led to some speculation that cardinals chose him as a trusted, transitional figure. John Paul was virtually unknown when he was selected, but Cardinal Ratzinger's record is long and articulate in a prolific academic career, followed by a contentious tenure as John Paul's doctrinal watchdog. Most cardinals know him well from visits to Rome, and he won admiration among many colleagues for his crucial role in administering the church in the last stages of John Paul's illness. In many ways, the cardinals picked John Paul's theological twin but his opposite in presence and personality. Where John Paul was charismatic and tended to soften his rigid stands with human warmth, Cardinal Ratzinger is bland in public and pulls few punches about his beliefs. President Bush on Tuesday recalled the cardinal's homily at John Paul's funeral, saying, "His words touched our hearts and the hearts of millions." Speaking in Washington, he called Benedict a "man of great wisdom and knowledge." Only on Monday, as the cardinals attended a Mass before locking themselves inside the Sistine Chapel to select a new pope, Cardinal Ratzinger took a moment as dean of the college of cardinals and celebrant of the Mass to repeat his fears about threats to the faith. In retrospect, some observers said, he was laying out what may be the focus of his papacy. "Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as fundamentalism," he said at the Mass. "Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards." Cardinal Ratzinger has often criticized religious relativism, the belief - mistaken, he says - that all beliefs are equally true. "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires," he added. In his brief, first address as Benedict XVI on Tuesday from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, he did not speak of theology or of a specific direction for the church. "I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and act even with insufficient instruments," he said. "And above all, I entrust myself to your prayers." Benedict XVI had dinner on Tuesday night with the other cardinals at the Santa Marta residence, built by John Paul II to provide more comfortable lodgings for cardinals while locked down in the conclave, said Joaqu?n Navarro-Valls, the chief Vatican spokesman. He is to be installed in a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday. The conclave that selected him on the fourth ballot was among the shortest of the last century - the shortest, the election of Pius XII in 1939, took only three - and the speed caught many experts by surprise. Cardinal Ratzinger has been a divisive figure within the church, and reports before the conclave spoke almost unanimously about blocs of more progressive cardinals lining up against him. In theory, cardinals are not allowed to discuss the inner workings of the conclave, but in reality, details seep out later. Several cardinals are expected to give interviews or news conferences on Wednesday, and may provide some limited glimpses in the dynamic that picked Cardinal Ratzinger - and with such speed. But already, there was at least one voice of careful reservation. Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium, one of the most liberal cardinals, who has been critical of Cardinal Ratzinger, skipped the dinner specifically to hold a news conference. He would not disclose his own vote and did not criticize Cardinal Ratzinger directly. But he was not effusive in his praise, either, saying that he had "a certain hope" based on the choice of the name Benedict. Benedict XV, who appealed for peace during World War I, "was a man of peace and reconciliation," Cardinal Danneels said. But, he said, "We have to see what's in a name." He also warned that being the spiritual leader of one billion Roman Catholics was different from parsing out theological matters. "When you are a pope, you have to be the pastor of every one and everything which happens in the church," he said. "You are not specialized." But Cardinal Edward M. Egan, archbishop of New York, said Tuesday that the process involved a "certain amount of tension and concern" but that the conclave made the right choice. "I believe that the Lord has something to do with it," Cardinal Egan said at a news conference here. "This man is going to do a splendid job." Asked if Cardinal Ratzinger would adopt a harsher tone as pope, Cardinal Egan asked a reporter: "Why don't you and I get together in one year and we'll talk about it. I have every hope that the tone is going to be the one of Jesus Christ." Elisabetta Povoledo of The International Herald Tribune and Jason Horowitz contributed reporting for this article. ------------------ The New York Times > International > International Special > News Analysis: An Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20assess.html An Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future By LAURIE GOODSTEIN VATICAN CITY, April 19 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was such a close ally of Pope John Paul II that he could have easily chosen the name John Paul III. But those who expect the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI simply to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor may be in for a surprise, say those who know him. They say that he knows he may have a short papacy and that he intends to move quickly to put his own stamp on the Roman Catholic Church and to reverse its decline in the secular West. As John Paul's alter ego, the new German pope has been training for this role for decades and knows how all the levers of Vatican power work. "This man is not just going to mind the store," said George Weigel, a conservative American scholar who knows both the former and new popes. "He is going to take re-evangelization, especially of Europe, very seriously. I think this represents a recognition on the part of the cardinals that the great battle in the world remains inside the heads of human beings - that it's a battle of ideas." Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian magazine L'Espresso, said he expected a thorough housecleaning not unlike the Gregorian reforms of the church begun under Pope Gregory VII, who ruled from 1073 to 1085. Those reforms led to the end of both the married clergy and the buying and selling of spiritual favors like indulgences. Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken and written forcefully about his sense of the threats to the church, both internal and external. Whether they are dissident theologians, pedophile priests, "cafeteria Catholics" who disregard the ban on artificial birth control, or "celibate" third world clergy who keep mistresses, the new pope's solution is likely to be a more forceful reiteration of the church's creed and the necessity of either living by it, or leaving it. "How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely" to God, he said in Rome on Good Friday last month. He has singled out the spread of "aggressive secularism," especially in Europe and North America. In the homily he gave Monday, just before the cardinals entered the conclave in which he was chosen, he warned about rival forms of belief, from "a vague religious mysticism" to "syncretism" to "new sects," a term that Catholics in Latin America use to refer to evangelical and Pentecostal churches. The new pope is not likely to yield on the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, whether dealing with other Christian denominations or Islam. In a document issued in 2000, "Dominus Jesus," the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Cardinal Ratzinger headed said the Catholic Church was the only true path to salvation and called other faiths "gravely deficient." In choosing the name Benedict, this German theologian linked himself not only to a long line of former popes but also to St. Benedict, the founder of Christian monasticism, who was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to be the "patron and protector of Europe." The monasteries that St. Benedict founded - and for which he wrote the "Rule," the basic guide to monastic living - became the keepers of culture and piety in medieval Europe. Church scholars suggested that Pope Benedict XVI may be positioning himself as the new savior of Europe, rescuing the Continent from what he called in his homily on Monday "the dictatorship of relativism." Cardinal Justin Francis Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said of the new pope at a news conference on Tuesday, "He intends to do everything he possibly can to promote the well-being of Europe," adding that what the Continent most needs is "to prefer nothing to the love of Christ - Christocentrality." Jim McAdams, professor of political science and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame University, said the new pope's form of conservatism should not be conflated with that of American political conservatives. Faith, he said, "is essential to his claims that there is a doctrine of the church, it is clear, Catholics should abide by it, and people who feel that that doctrine is negotiable are wrong." The selection of Cardinal Ratzinger dashed the hopes of those Catholics who had wanted a new pope to adopt a whole slate of different solutions to the problems of the church, perhaps permitting married priests, women as deacons and softer strictures against birth control and divorce. "The election of a new pope is a moment of hope for the church, and this choice is nothing but backwards looking," said Paul F. Lakeland, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Cardinal Ratzinger functioned for years as the purifier of the church's doctrine. For 24 years he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from which he issued condemnations of renegade theologians, of modern reinterpretations of church liturgy and of the idea that all religions have an equal claim to the truth. In recent years, as John Paul grew more and more debilitated by Parkinson's disease and old age, Cardinal Ratzinger increasingly became the power behind the throne. Bishops from every country who visit the Vatican on their regular visits spent more time with him than they did with the pope, according to cardinals and Vatican staff. It may have been this familiarity that led the cardinals to turn to Cardinal Ratzinger as their anchor in this time of transition. The Rev. Joseph Augustine Di Noia, an American priest who serves as under secretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told reporters last week that he often observed the cardinal listening intently to bishops on their visits presenting him with all kinds of conundrums on how to apply the faith in their countries. Cardinal Ratzinger would respond with "remarkable profundity" and "distinctions that are immediately illuminating," Father Di Noia said. But it is already clear that the new pope is likely to deepen the fissures that exist in the church. The reactions from the crowd in the first few minutes after Pope Benedict appeared on the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square suggested the divisions he will have to confront. "As soon as I heard the name, I had a letdown, sinking feeling that this man is not going to be good for the church," said Eileen, a 53-year-old Catholic from Boston. She said she was afraid to give her last name because she was active in her parish and did not want to cause any problems for her priest, or jeopardize her daughter's imminent church wedding. A few steps away, the Rev. M. Price Oswalt, a priest who serves two parishes in Oklahoma City, was exultant about the cardinals' choice. "He'll correct the lackadaisical attitudes that have been able to creep into the lives of Catholics," he said. "He's going to have a German mentality of leadership: either get on the train or get off the track. He will not put up with rebellious children." ------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20crowd.html April 20, 2005 Crowd's Praise Tinged With Questions About Pope's Conservatism By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL International Herald Tribune VATICAN CITY, April 19 - When the great bell of St. Peter's finally rang to confirm that a new pope had been chosen, just after 6 p.m., it seemed that all of Rome ran to the Vatican to see who would appear on the balcony of the basilica. With the bell, Via Della Conciliazione, the boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square, was transformed into a strange kind of work-day marathon, choked with runners in business suits lugging briefcases and young mothers pushing strollers along the stones. "The whole building emptied and we just moved as fast as we could, risking a heart attack," Giovanni Simeone, an architect, said, still panting. Patrizia Maglie, a co-worker, said, "The only thing that makes Romans run this way is a new pope - or a soccer match." Many were relieved that they had made it in time, after watching with uncertainty as the smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel chimney gave confusing signals for 10 minutes on their television screens - seeming to blow white, then grey, then white again. The many networks that had had their cameras trained on the chimney since Monday were at a loss to interpret what they saw. CNN called the smoke black (no new pope), while ANSA, the Italian news agency, called it white (new pope elected). The crowd that had decided to wait out the election in St. Peter's Square alternately cheered and stood silently in confusion, as the mixed signals poured out against the unhelpful gray sky of a drizzly evening. But then, the bell's clarifying ring cut through the confusion - and thousands of Romans took off. It had been the specific order of Pope John Paul II that a bell be added to the traditional announcement to clarify the smoke's sometimes ambiguous message - an important posthumous intervention, it turned out. Forty minutes after the first sign of the late afternoon smoke, the tens of thousands who had answered the bell's call shouted, "Bravo! Bravo!" in response to the announcement from the basilica's balcony by Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Est?vez that a new pope had been chosen. But the reaction was decidedly mixed when the name Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was announced. Some slapped the air and shouted jubilantly. Some stood by silently and listened. Some even shook their heads. A small number of people wandered out of the square, as if in protest, when the new pope spoke. Those who supported the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, tended to see him as a force of continuity with his popular predecessor, John Paul II, even if they were not too enamored or familiar with the new pope himself. "I'm happy because I respect the ideas and ideals of the previous pope, and I think he'll continue just like the old one," said Alberto Napoleone of Rome. Indeed, the most powerful reaction during the new pope's short speech came when he mentioned John Paul II's name, to a chorus of enthusiastic whoops and cheers. The reception for Benedict XVI himself seemed more measured. "This is certainly the most conventional choice, and I would have liked to see more a break with tradition," shrugged Simona Corso, a university teacher in Rome, who said she would have preferred the election of someone from Africa or Latin America. But afterward, some well-known Italian conservatives strode through the crowd with new confidence, clearly overjoyed with the turn that history had taken. "Before, we felt like orphans, but now again we have someone we can look to!" said Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian government minister whose appointment to the European Commission was rejected last year after he called homosexuality a sin. He said he was thrilled with a choice that he saw as bringing the church back to its core moral teachings. Calling the new pope "the greatest living theologian and one of the greatest intellectuals of Central Europe," Mr. Buttiglione said Cardinal Ratzinger had been the "point of reference" in his own intellectual development. But others in the crowd were openly distressed. "I am very, very upset because I was hoping for a more open pope, one who was more open to the problems of the world, and also on things like women's rights," Paolo Tasselli, a retired bank official, said as he listened to the new pope's speech. He said he had loved Pope John Paul II, who he felt was conservative on some issues but "open to the world" in other ways. He said of Benedict XVI, "I don't think this new one can do that." The crowds filed quickly and quietly out of the square after the new pope's short speech - a marked contrast to the raucous pilgrims who remained in St. Peter's for hours and days after John Paul II died, even after he was finally buried. Some here on Tuesday were tourists eager to partake of Rome's other treats. "We were at the Pantheon, and when we heard the bells start ringing and that there was a new Pope, we jumped in the first cab we could find and somehow managed to get over here," said Shelly Charles of Ogden, Utah. "It's been incredible to see history happen." But most were Catholics who, as they shuffled back into their lives, were hard-pressed to explain the silence that fell upon the square on Tuesday night. Beloved John Paul was gone and uncertainty lay ahead. It was partly the rain, but partly also the abrupt news of a new pope. Many said they needed time to digest it all. Elisabetta Povoledo of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting for this article. --------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20germany.html April 20, 2005 New Pope's Birthplace Becomes a Center of Pride, With Muted Misgivings at the Edges By MARK LANDLER MARKTL AM INN, Germany, April 19 - Here in the tiny birthplace of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the townspeople turned out on Tuesday to celebrate his ascension to the helm of the Roman Catholic Church in genuine Bavarian style: with a thumping brass band and frothy glasses of beer. The simple get-together of 150 or so residents could not have been more unlike the majestic ritual at the Vatican, where Cardinal Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI was announced to the world. Only the band members, in their felt hats and feathers, provided any plumage. But people here said their native son would have felt at home among the police officers, carpenters, laborers and homemakers. "He is a highly intelligent man, and kind, but he is also very simple," said Joseph Gassner, 68, the director of a local museum. "He is an old Bavarian, and we are happy that he will rule in Rome." The son of a policeman, Joseph Ratzinger was born in this river town on April 16, 1927. He lived in Marktl for only two years, before his family moved to another village nearer the Austrian border. His father's run-ins with local Nazi officials were said to have kept the family on the move. Still, Marktl seemed determined to stake its claim to the man who had become the first pope of German ancestry in nearly 500 years. Residents were eager to show visitors the house in which Cardinal Ratzinger was born. It is a handsome building with a peaked roof and a plaque next to the front door. The windows were dark on Tuesday night, their lace curtains illuminated by the glare of photographers' flashbulbs. Mr. Gassner said Cardinal Ratzinger visited Marktl occasionally, and in 1998 invited a delegation of 55 residents to visit Rome, where they were his guests for dinner. He also arranged an audience with Pope John Paul II. "He has a strong connection to this place," Mr. Gassner said. "We're in a part of Bavaria that is very Catholic." While the mayor planned the party before any white smoke was spotted, there was general astonishment here that Cardinal Ratzinger was actually selected. Several people said they had expected the College of Cardinals to choose a pope from Latin America or Africa. Others had bet on an Italian. Maria Spuderer, a 48-year-old homemaker, said she had goosebumps as she waited to learn the identity of the new pope. "Our hearts said one thing, but our heads said something else," she said. In the joyful din here, there were few dissenting voices concerning Cardinal Ratzinger or his conservative leanings. "The pope must set a path for the church that he believes in," said Engelbert Feldner, 69, the town's former brew master. "He can't bend with the times." The Bavarian countryside is Germany's Catholic and conservative heartland. Crucifixes can be found on the walls of classrooms here, and the conservative Christian Social Union has ruled for four decades. In other parts of Germany, where the politics are liberal and loyalty to the church is weaker, feelings about Cardinal Ratzinger are far more ambivalent. "A lot of Germans dislike the way he developed as a theologian," said Siegfried Wiedenhofer, a former student of Cardinal Ratzinger's who is a professor of systematic theology at the University of Frankfurt. "His criticism of his German colleagues created an atmosphere of suspicion." Some reformist Catholic groups reacted to Cardinal Ratzinger's election with withering criticism. "We think the election of Ratzinger is a catastrophe," said Bernd G?hring , the head of a group called Church From Below, in remarks reported by Reuters. "In the coming years there would be no reforms. I think that now even more people will turn their back on the church." Even in Munich, where he was archbishop, opinions were divided. While respected as a scholar, he did not win a popular following during his four years as archbishop and later a cardinal. People there recalled Cardinal Ratzinger as an aloof figure. He was known for communicating with the priests in his archdiocese through letters. He did not like conflict, and shied away from personal confrontation, according to people who knew him then. At a requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II at the Munich cathedral two weeks ago, there was little excitement that a hometown prelate was mentioned among the leading candidates for pope. "He would never be able to connect with young people like John Paul," said Christian Schuster, 35. "The pope had humility. Cardinal Ratzinger has a different image. He is a very powerful man." Other people interviewed outside the cathedral said Munich was proud of its former bishop. Some also suggested he might confound expectations that he will be doctrinaire and reactionary. "In his Vatican job, he had to be hard-line," said Martin Holzner, 44. "But as pope, he might take a different line." Among the young people who turned out here, Cardinal Ratzinger's intentions became grist for a lively debate. Rainer Buchmeier, 20, said he was sure the new pope would preach in the same orthodox style as John Paul II. Christof Six, 19, predicted a change in course. Mostly, the young men were jubilant that a German had been chosen for such a lofty office. "Germany in modern times has stood for war," Mr. Buchmeier said. "Now we can start a new history." Geography hangs heavily over Marktl. The town lies only a few miles from Braunau, the Austrian border town where Hitler was born. Asked whether he was relieved that his region would now be known for someone else, Mr. Buchmeier offered a quick response. "Braunau is Austria," he said. "Marktl is Germany." --------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20jews.html Jewish Groups Mostly Praise Pope as a Partner By ANDY NEWMAN Despite his wartime membership in the Hitler Youth movement, the German now known as Pope Benedict XVI won strong praise from Jewish leaders yesterday for his role in helping Pope John Paul II mend fences between Catholics and Jews. "I view him as our most serious partner in the Catholic Church, and he has been for the last 26 years," said Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, which has led the fight for reparations for Holocaust survivors as well as the Jewish community's dialogue with the Vatican. As head of the Vatican office that enforced church doctrine under John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a leading force behind the Vatican's recognition of Israel in 1993 and John Paul II's atonement at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2000, Rabbi Singer said. "I believe that he is the man who created the theological underpinnings for the good relations between Catholics and Jews during the last papacy," Rabbi Singer said. "He writes what's kosher and what's not kosher for Catholics. He said, 'Not only is it kosher to like Jews, but it's kosher to like the state of Israel.' " In his memoirs, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote of being forced into the Nazi youth movement when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory, and of being drafted into the German Army in 1943. "He's never denied the past, never hid it," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "His whole life has been atonement for those few years. His whole life is an open book of sensitivity against bigotry and anti-Semitism." Mr. Foxman cited a column that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote for L'Osservatore Romano in 2000 attacking Christian complicity in the Holocaust. "It cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians," the cardinal wrote. Mr. Foxman said that as a European of the World War II generation, Cardinal Ratzinger would probably be more sensitive to Jewish concerns than many other cardinals who were on the short list for the papacy. Many others expressed similar thoughts. "This pope, considering his historical experience, will be especially committed to an uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism," Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said in a statement. Rabbi David Rosen, the international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, praised Cardinal Ratzinger's elevation as "an obvious confirmation of the ideological orientation of the previous papacy." "I don't think there's one single issue on which the new pope will depart from the previous pope," Rabbi Rosen said, "and that includes a strong commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations." Not surprisingly, more liberal Jews were less impressed with Cardinal Ratzinger, who was the force behind a 2000 church document, "Dominus Jesus," that called for new Catholic evangelization and argued that beliefs other than Christianity were lesser searches for truth. Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote yesterday on the magazine's Web site that the cardinal's criticism of other religions "is a slippery slope toward anti-Semitism and a return to the chauvinistic and triumphalist views that led the church, when it had the power to do so, to develop its infamous crusades and inquisitions." Greg Myre contributed reporting from Jerusalem for this article. ---------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20american.html For U.S. Catholics, a New Disagreement By DEAN E. MURPHY SAN FRANCISCO, April 19 - Roman Catholics poured into cathedrals and parish churches across the United States on Tuesday to celebrate Masses of Thanksgiving for the new pope, Benedict XVI, but the choice of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope prompted strong disagreement over what he would mean for the American church. Some liberal Catholics and interest groups criticized the choice as a lost opportunity to move the church in a less doctrinaire direction because the new pope, a conservative German who was close to the late John Paul II, has long held hard-line positions on many divisive issues, including birth control, homosexuality and the ordination of women. He has also suggested that a vote for a politician who supports abortion rights could be sinful, and that American bishops should deny such politicians Holy Communion. With no less fervor, many conservative Catholics praised Benedict as a strong leader whom they expected to shore up the church's teachings and serve as a formidable steward of traditional values. Some expressed hopes that the new pope would again require that Latin be spoken at Mass. Perhaps the only point not in contention was that at age 78, Benedict was likely to have a much shorter papacy than John Paul, who was 58 when he was selected in 1978, and therefore less opportunity to leave a lasting imprint. "Who could follow an act like that?" said Valerie Lienau of Moraga, Calif., who was among the 100 or so people who celebrated a thanksgiving Mass at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, the seat of the archdiocese here. "This gives people a chance to catch their breath and absorb the legacy of Pope John Paul II. The important thing is who will be the pope after Cardinal Ratzinger." Ms. Lienau, a self-described orthodox Catholic, said she was overjoyed at the selection and drove 25 miles to San Francisco to mark the occasion in the grandeur of the hilltop cathedral. But when she excitedly phoned her son, who is gay, the response was a loud groan. "I'm not blind to the challenges," Ms. Lienau said. "I'm very sympathetic to the disappointment being felt." R. Scott Appleby, a historian on American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, said many Catholics were dismayed, stunned and depressed at the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger. "This is their worst nightmare come true," said Professor Appleby, who predicted that the selection could lead to a "winnowing" of the American church. "There is an idea associated with Cardinal Ratzinger and some American cardinals and bishops," Professor Appleby said, "that if we face a choice as Catholics between a pure, doctrinally orthodox church on the one hand and the current situation, which as they see it is a wide range of practice and belief and a moral laxity, they would choose a smaller, purer, more doctrinally orthodox church." Others were more cautious about making predictions. Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation's largest, said it was dangerous to assume that Pope Benedict XVI would act the same as Cardinal Ratzinger. He said that many popes had moved the church in surprising directions, and that Cardinal Ratzinger might temper his strict views on church teachings when confronted with the wider portfolio of the papacy. "We now know the who - Cardinal Ratzinger," Monsignor Vadakin said, speaking before the ornate doors of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. "The what is yet to unfold." Some groups critical of the church's handling of sexually abusive priests also said it was too early to draw conclusions. Suzanne Morse, communications director for Voice of the Faithful, which advocates a greater role for the laity in church governance, said that even when the new pope was a cardinal, his views on the abuse scandal were evolving. Ms. Morse said that when the first accusations were made against priests, Cardinal Ratzinger "seemed to think the problem was a media creation." She added, "But since then, we have seen small but significant signs that he has some sense of the scope of the clergy sexual abuse crisis." Even so, some victims of abuse by members of the clergy in Boston said they had been hoping for greater change. Bernie McDaid, who said he was abused by a priest from the ages of 11 to 13, said he feared that the selection of another European pope amounted to a circling of the wagons on the abuse problems. Mr. McDaid said an outsider, perhaps from Africa or South America, would have been more likely to shake things up. "They might have fear of what lies ahead, so they're staying with what they know," Mr. McDaid said. "They need drastically to change, now more so than at any point in history." Clem Boleche, 29, an Augustinian brother from the Philippines who is studying to be a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, said his classmates at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology rushed into a room with a television to await the announcement of the new pope. When Cardinal Ratzinger appeared on the balcony, he said, the room grew silent. Brother Boleche said he and many others were hoping for someone less conservative and more open to debating church doctrine. "I'm honestly not surprised, but I think it would have been more exciting, more of a challenge, if he came from a different area," Brother Boleche said. "Latin America is alive. It is open, and is not stifling the spirit like many European churches." German-Americans acknowledge that the church is less vibrant in Europe, but it made them no less proud on Tuesday. Janien Guntermann, 37, a bartender at a German restaurant in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, said she cried when she heard of the election of Cardinal Ratzinger. "I had goose bumps immediately," said Ms. Guntermann, whose parents were born in Germany. "I was a little concerned about his age, but he seems to be in good health. We have to worry about right now, not what's going to happen in 10 years." Jim Glunz, the owner of Glunz Bavarian Haus, a German restaurant in the same neighborhood, said he was impressed with the new pope's name, which he associates with peace and healing. "This is the type of atmosphere we need in the world right now," Mr. Glunz said. "We need a lot of healing; we need a lot of forgiving." For every proud German-American, though, there was at least one Italian-American wondering if Italy's turn at the papacy would ever come again. Inside the Mola Club in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where Italian men gather to play cards and smoke cigars, a big-screen TV was tuned to RAI, a state broadcast from Italy. The room smelled like wet paint, much of the furniture was covered in plastic, and everything was pushed to the center of the room. Most of the men were out in the garden, but Sal Chimienti, 68, sat at a small table in front the TV. "I'm a Catholic," he said, explaining his devotion to the TV broadcast. As the ceremonies in Rome progressed, Mr. Chimienti was joined by Al Sale, 50, who runs a grocery store a block up Court Street. The new pope appeared on the screen, and Mr. Sale clapped, then said, "Still, we have no Italian pope." Reporting for this article was contributed by Michael Brick and Nicholas Confessore from New York, John M. Broder from Los Angeles,Gretchen Ruethling from Chicago, Robin Toner from Washingtonand Katie Zezima from Boston. ------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20watch.html THE TV WATCH White or Black? Maybe Beige? As Smoke Detectors, the Anchors Were All Too Fallible By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Infallibility is expected of popes and television anchors, so there was something arresting about the confused scramble to interpret the first creamy wisps of smoke floating from the Vatican chimney yesterday. "Darned if it doesn't look darker," said Charles Gibson of ABC, trying to square the appearance of white smoke with the absence of confirmation from the Vatican bell tower. All the networks went live at the first puff of smoke and as they waited, watched and deliberated (beige? charcoal?), none of the anchors could be certain of what they were seeing. "Can you hear bells?" Mr. Gibson asked David Wright, an ABC correspondent on the ground at St. Peter's. "I can't hear you," Mr. Wright replied. "Yes, but can you hear bells?" Mr. Gibson asked, more loudly. "I'm trying to tell people just what is going on and I don't have the faintest idea," Mr. Gibson said ruefully. Those long minutes of suspense and clammy uncertainty turned the conclusion of the conclave into a riveting spectacle - no other television event is as rare or as murky. Football announcers may not know which team will win the Super Bowl, but they know the rules, are fairly confident it will take place every year and can draw on previous experience. Oscar presenters have a similar advantage. Perhaps only Election Night in 2000 was as fraught with uncertainty and, even then, there were only two likely presidential candidates and no lifetime tenure. The conclave, moreover, offered the ultimate clash between modern technology and ancient Roman Catholic ritual - and 21st-century television thrives on it. Why else would a Roman Curia capable of announcing the death of John Paul II by text message let the cameras of the world divine that a new pope had been chosen by reading smoke signals and chimes. For years, networks from all over the world have been paying exorbitant rents for Roman terraces with an unobstructed view of the roof of St. Peter's Basilica. Satellite transmission, 24-hour cable news stations, cellular phones and other advancements were supposed to keep guesswork out of the process. As soon as the conclave began, CNN and CNN.com kept a Vatican ChimneyCam, live, on their screens as a multimedia smoke alert. And yet, yesterday, the crowds in St. Peter's Square seemed to know what had happened long before the television experts. Except for the speed with which the cardinals settled on a successor to John Paul II, there was little surprise to the election results. The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was a leading candidate going into the conclave, and one of the best-known cardinals. Or, as Chris Matthews put it on MSNBC, the new pope "is not a new kid on the block." So television reporters were ready and eager to describe what kind of pope the former cardinal was likely to be. Trying to sum up Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a guardian of strict orthodoxy and the leading opponent of dissent, John Roberts of CBS said he was sometimes known as "God's Rottweiler." On CNN, Wolf Blitzer cited descriptions of him as "Cardinal No." Reporters and analysts had boned up on Cardinal Ratzinger's biography, as well as papal history, and easily cited all kinds of Vatican arcana, from the number of previous German popes to the unexpected longevity of Leo XIII, who was elected in 1878 at the age of 68 as a "transitional" pope and instead reigned for 25 years. But many stumbled as they tried to call the pope by his correct new name. One called him "Cardinal Benedict XVI," another said "Pope Ratzinger" and still another referred to him as "John Benedict XVI." Television screens quickly filled with instant Ratzinger experts, priests and biographers who could describe his theology and personality (a good listener, tough on heretics). The words "humble" and "pastoral" quickly became buzzwords on every network. It was those few moments of uncertainty, however, that haunted those who had to hold forth, live, on the air, for minutes with no idea what color smoke was floating to the sky. Mr. Blitzer on CNN kept going back to the tape. "It's clearly white," he said. "In hindsight." ---------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20profile.html From Wartime Germany to the Papacy By DANIEL J. WAKIN ROME, April 19 - The man who has become Pope Benedict XVI was a product of wartime Germany, but also of a deeply Roman Catholic region, Bavaria. As the Nazis strengthened their stranglehold on Germany in the 1930's, the strongly Catholic family of Joseph Ratzinger moved frequently among villages in rural Bavaria. "Unemployment was rife," he wrote in his memoir, "Milestones." "War reparations weighed heavily on the German economy. Battles among the political parties set people against one another." His father, he wrote, was a determined anti-Nazi. The Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger recalled, was his bulwark against the Nazi regime, "a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realm of atheism and deceit." But he could not avoid the realities of the day. In an episode certain to be scrutinized anew, Joseph Ratzinger was briefly and unenthusiastically a member of the Hitler Youth in his early teens, after membership became mandatory in 1941, according to a biography by John L. Allen Jr., who covers the Vatican for The National Catholic Reporter. In 1943, he and fellow seminarians were drafted. He deserted in 1945 and returned home, but was captured by American soldiers and held as a prisoner of war for several months, Mr. Allen wrote. Along his way to the papacy, he built a distinguished academic career as a theologian, and then spent nearly a quarter century as Pope John Paul II's theological visionary - and enforcer of strict positions on doctrine, morality and the primacy of the faith. In addition to his subtle and powerful intellect lies a spiritual, almost mystical side rooted in the traditional Bavarian landscape of processions, devotions to Mary and small country parishes, said John-Peter Pham, a former Vatican diplomat who has written about Cardinal Ratzinger. "It's a Christianity of the heart, not unlike that of the late pope's Poland," he said. "It's much different than the cerebral theology traditionally associated with German theology." His experience under the Nazis - he was 18 when the war ended - was formative in his view of the function of the church, Mr. Allen said. "Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism," he wrote. "In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes." Totalitarianism, indeed, critics might say. They cite a long list of theologians Cardinal Ratzinger has chastised for straying from official doctrine; his condemnation of "relativism," or the belief that other denominations and faiths lead equally to salvation; his denunciation of liberation theology, homosexuality and feminism; his attempt to rein in national bishops conferences; his belief that the Second Vatican Council of the 1960's, which led to a near-revolutionary modernization of the church, has brought corrosive excesses. In effect, he has argued for a purer church at the expense of size. Hans K?ng, one of the theologians who ran afoul of him, has called his ideology a "medieval, anti-Reformation, anti-modern paradigm of the church and the papacy." "To have him as pope will be considered by many Catholics to mean that the church is absolutely unable to reform itself," he said, "and that you are not to have any hope for the great process of the Second Vatican Council." Along with Bavaria and Nazism, a third influence helped shape the new pope: the leftist-inspired student unrest of the 1960's at the dawn of domestic German terrorism. He said it made him realize that, sometimes, there is no room for discussion. Even before becoming the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger wielded immense power. John Paul appointed him prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office. It was a deeply personal choice, made without his usual wide consultation. Their regular Friday discussions were said to be often freewheeling. The cardinal expanded the power of the role, ruling on a wide range of subjects. He was the first professional theologian in the job in more than a century, one equipped with a strong intellect and decisiveness. "This is a man who can deal with a lot of difficult material without becoming upset," said the Rev. Augustine Di Noia, who was the under secretary of the congregation. John Paul was said to have given Cardinal Ratzinger wide latitude; some called him the "vice pope." Other Vatican officials have suggested he served as a lightning rod, diverting criticism from the pope. As dean of the College of Cardinals, he was also the most powerful of them - their leader in the period after John Paul's death, the celebrant of his funeral Mass and their guide during the conclave. Behind his fearsome reputation lies a "a simple person," Father Di Noia said. "He chuckles. There's a simple childlike quality to him." Others speak of his dry sense of humor and modest demeanor. He is a diminutive man with deep-set eyes and white hair, and speaks Italian - the language of the Vatican - with a strong German accent. Unlike John Paul, he had little time for sports or strenuous activity, other than walks in the mountains. Until now, he lived in a small apartment near the Vatican and walked to work. He was perhaps the best-known cardinal, appearing at Vatican news conferences and known to many through his books and profiles of him in newspapers. Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, the youngest of three children. It was a part of a region long within the orbit of Salzburg, in Austria, Mozart's birthplace. A pianist, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed a great love for the composer. Partly because of his father's opposition to the Nazis, he wrote, the family moved four times before Joseph was 10. His mother was a hotel cook. He entered the seminary in 1939. After conscription, he served in an antiaircraft unit. He has said the unit was attacked by Allied forces in 1943, but he did not take part in that battle because a finger infection had prevented him from learning to shoot. After about a year in the antiaircraft unit he was drafted into the regular military, sent home and then called up again before deserting in late April 1945, according to Mr. Allen. He told Time magazine in 1993 that while stationed near Hungary, he saw Hungarian Jews being sent to death camps. In discussing his war experience, Mr. Allen wrote that he publicly expressed little of the explicit horrors that were around him; of the resistance to the Nazis by groups other than Catholics; or of the anti-Semitism of a prominent great-uncle. In the fall after the war ended in 1945, he returned to the seminary, where his brother, Georg - who was soon to be a prominent church music director - was also enrolled. The brothers were was ordained in 1951; two years later Joseph Ratzinger earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. His dissertation was titled "The People and House of God in St. Augustine's Doctrine of the Church." He earned his teaching licentiate in 1957. One of his most influential books was an early work from his university lectures, "Introduction to Christianity." He also wrote "Dogma and Revelation" and "Eschatology." In his view, the church does not exist so that it can be incorporated into the world, but so as to offer a way to live. It is not a human edifice but a divinely created one. And theology is not a dry academic exercise. Theologians should support church teaching to serve the faithful, not depart from it. His career as an academic began immediately after he was licensed. He spent two years teaching dogma and fundamental theology at the University of Freising and 10 years at the University of Bonn. He also had stints at the universities M?nster and T?bingen. Alienated by the student protests at T?bingen, he moved to Regensburg in 1969. In a 1985 interview with The New York Times, he called the protests "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human." Such actions taught him, he said, that to discuss terror was to collaborate with it. "I learned where discussion must stop because it is turning into a lie and resistance must begin in order to maintain freedom." Already in 1962, at 35, he achieved prominence at the highest levels of the church. A mutual acquaintance introduced him to Cardinal Joseph Frings, archbishop of Cologne. Cardinal Frings asked him to serve as his expert assistant at the Second Vatican Council. Father Ratzinger was credited with pushing Cardinal Frings to join French and other German bishops in standing firm against the Vatican Curia members who wanted to hold back council reforms. He also helped write a speech criticizing the Holy Office, the predecessor to his future home, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The speech called it outmoded and a "source of scandal to the world." Yet within a decade he came to express deep worry that the church was drifting to the left and losing its ecclesiastical rigor. In 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed him archbishop of Munich, and made him a cardinal in just three months. That same year, he met the future John Paul II, although some have said that they might have met at the Second Vatican Council. They both spent their youths under totalitarianism, but they also had a feeling that the church was adrift in a permissive sea, and that there was a need to return to the fundamentals. John Paul appointed him to the doctrinal congregation in 1981. Soon, he was taking action against liberation theology, the Marxist-inspired movement of priests in Latin America to help the poor by radical restructuring of society. The congregation denounced the movement in 1984; Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian, was summoned and silenced for a year. Other theologians were chastised. Charles E. Curran, a theologian at Catholic University of America, was barred in 1986 from teaching at a Catholic institution for refusing to recant his challenge to church teaching on sexuality. The Rev. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lanka theologian, was excommunicated in 1997 after being accused of challenging fundamental Catholic tenets like original sin and the Immaculate Conception. More than a dozen others have been disciplined by the congregation. With the end of the cold war, Cardinal Ratzinger turned his attention to fighting "relativism." His congregation's 2000 declaration "Dominus Jesus" - "Lord Jesus" - said other religions could not offer salvation, and were "gravely deficient." An uproar from other religious leaders followed, but John Paul publicly defended the document. Even as he celebrated the Mass leading into the conclave on Monday morning, Cardinal Ratzinger called relativism a "dictatorship" under which the ego and personal desires are paramount. One of his major efforts, which many say has been successful, was to sap national bishops' conferences of power - and even here he harkened back to the war. The German conference issued "wan and weak" condemnations of Nazism; the truly powerful documents, he said, "came from individual courageous bishops." ------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20third.html In Selection of New Pope, Third World Loses Out By LARRY ROHTER RIO DE JANEIRO, April 19 - Not this time, not yet. Though a majority of Roman Catholics now live in Latin America, Africa and Asia, those among the faithful who were openly hoping for a pope from the developing world were disappointed. But that sense of popular disappointment stood in contrast to the notable enthusiasm for the selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger among the episcopal conferences in every country in this region, which speak in the name of Latin America's hundreds of bishops. Dominated by theological conservatives whom Pope John Paul II appointed, the conferences can now expect increased Vatican support in their efforts to counter two important challenges: evangelical Protestantism and the remnants of liberation theology. At the popular level, the initial response to the designation of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope was muted throughout Latin America, where 480 million of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics live. Television networks that had been covering the conclave live from Rome in anticipation that someone from this region might be chosen as pope quickly returned to their normal programming after the announcement. Newspapers and radio stations recalled that the new pope's nicknames include Cardinal No and the Grand Inquisitor, references to his former role as enforcer of church doctrine. "They were never going to elect a pope from Latin America or Africa," Guilherme Marra, a salesman here, lamented Tuesday afternoon. "The church is frozen in time," Mr. Marra, 37, complained. "Imagine electing a radical pope who is against condoms!" But among the church hierarchy, at least here in Brazil, which has the world's largest Roman Catholic population, the prospect of an even more doctrinaire and conservative successor to John Paul II has already emboldened traditionalists. Last week, for example, two cardinals criticized President Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, saying that his beliefs were "not Catholic but chaotic" and that he was "not a model Christian." Like the leaders of several other Latin American countries, Mr. da Silva has taken positions that differ from church teachings on abortion, homosexuality, contraception and stem cell research. Cardinal Ratzinger's support for an unyielding stance on those and other issues would seem likely to increase the prospect of conflicts between church and state. It is not clear how Pope Benedict XVI intends to respond to the growth of Islam in Africa and Asia, where most of the increase in the number of Catholics during the papacy of John Paul II occurred. But the Catholic flock in those places tends to be more doctrinally conservative than in Latin America, and expressed fewer reservations about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger. "You need a man of values," said Alfred Jantjies, a South African truck driver. "It's no good to have a man in the church who lets in wrong ideas, like women priests or priests getting married. A man of God must know he has taken a tough life and stick to it without trying to be all modern. The new pope sounds like a man who understands what worked in the past and won't try and change it." In the days before the conclave, some priests and bishops in Latin America made public their doubts about Cardinal Ratzinger's willingness to bring about the change that they thought the church needed. As John Paul II's right-hand man, he was often seen as the standard-bearer of what some critics in the region are calling "Wojtylism without Wojtyla," a reference to Karol Wojtyla, who became John Paul II. "I don't think he has the charisma of John Paull II with the masses, because he has always been an intellectual," said the Rev. Jes?s Vergara, the director general of Centro Tata Vasco, a Jesuit institution in Mexico City. "For example, the trips of John Paul II throughout Latin America. Well, Latin America is going to feel a lot of grief because I don't think Ratzinger has the personality to win over most of the people in Latin America as John Paul did." As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger has been very much a known quantity to all cardinals and bishops and to many priests. In that capacity, he has played an important role in suppressing liberation theology, which draws on Marxism in its call for the church to follow a "preferential option for the poor" and transform unjust structures that perpetuate social inequality and poverty. "It seems to me that we need not a theology of liberation, but a theology of martyrdom," he said in 1997. In 1984, for instance, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who oversaw the Vatican decree that forced Leonardo Boff, a former Franciscan friar and a leading theoretician of liberation theology, to silence himself for "an opportune period." Dr. Boff, once a student of Cardinal Ratzinger, was deemed to lack "serenity" and "moderation" in his writings, which were said to be guided not by faith but by "principles of an ideological nature." Dr. Boff, who resigned as a cleric in 1992 and now teaches theology and ethics at a state university here, has complained of what he called "the arrogance and doctrinal fundamentalism" of John Paul II. But he has been an even sharper critic of Cardinal Ratzinger, describing him in a recent essay as "the exterminator of the future of ecumenism" and "the petrified expression" of the dominance of the Roman Curia within the church. With Cardinal Ratzinger at the helm of the church, conservatives can expect even greater support for movements like Opus Dei and Communion and Liberation, which are strong in places like Chile and Peru. In 2001, John Paul II appointed the first Opus Dei member to become a cardinal, Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, and seven of that country's bishops belong to Opus Dei. Bishop Raul Vera of Saltillo, who in the 1990's practiced the liberation theology in southern Mexico that was criticized by Pope John Paul II, said the cardinals had made a safe choice and turned a blind eye to the confusion in the Americas about what direction the church was taking. "The cardinals were thinking about security," he said. "And they were also thinking about someone who would complete the papacy of John Paul II." The new pope will also be under pressure from conservative clergy and lay people to act to brake the advance of evangelical Protestantism, which is on the march everywhere in Latin America. Here in Brazil the percentage of people declaring themselves as Catholics has fallen from more than 90 percent in 1970 to barely 70 percent, with a corresponding increase in the number of Protestants. Not only has the new pope criticized Protestantism on a doctrinal basis, he has also accused the World Council of Churches of "harming the life of the gospel" by offering financial assistance to what he called "subversive movements" in Latin America. While that may animate conservatives in the church, it may also increase tensions. "For some who would be looking for strong, centralized control, an orthodox church focused on orthodoxy in the faith, those people I think will be very happy," said Bishop Kevin Dowling, an official of the Southern African Bishops Conference. "For people who were looking for a church that would be open to debate and discussing and reflecting on some of the crucial issues of modern times, those people may have concerns." Michael Wines contributed reporting from Johannesburg for this article, and James C. McKinley Jr. from Mexico City. ----------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20record.html The New Pope on the Issues On Secularism "We have moved from a Christian culture to aggressive and sometimes intolerant secularism," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in November 2004 in an interview with the daily La Repubblica. "A society from which God is completely absent self-destructs. We saw that in the major totalitarian regimes of last century." On Other Religions He has repeatedly condemned "religious pluralism" and relativism, the idea that other religions can hold the way to salvation, and he has been instrumental in blocking the advance of priests who support such views. In 2000 the Vatican document "Dominus Jesus," in which Cardinal Ratzinger was the driving voice, called for a new Catholic evangelism and described other faiths as lesser searches for the truth. "This truth of faith does not lessen the sincere respect which the Church has for the religions of the world," the document said, "but at the same time, it rules out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that 'one religion is as good as another.' " The Sex Abuse Scandal The new pope has often denounced immorality within the church. He wrote the meditations read aloud during the Good Friday procession this year that condemned "filth" in the church. He has been scathing, however, about news coverage of the scandal. In December 2002, Zenit News Services quoted him as saying that fewer than 1 percent of priests were abusers and that American news coverage was a campaign against the church. "One comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church," he said. Women in the Church Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the church statement in August 2004 that repeated the prohibition against women as priests and criticized feminism as ignoring biological differences. It also called on governments to "manage conditions so that women do not need to neglect their families if they want to pursue a job." Sexuality and Marriage He has been a leading voice in the church for enforcing traditional doctrine on homosexuality, extramarital sex and artificial birth control, writing a letter to American bishops in 1988, for example, criticizing their acceptance of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, saying the American view supported "the classical principle of tolerance of the lesser evil." He has condemned efforts to legalize same-sex marriage as "destructive for the family and for society" and as a dangerous separation of sexuality and fertility. A church statement in July 2003 in which he was listed as principal author said: "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law." Abortion and Euthanasia Benedict has insistently spoken out against abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research and cloning. In his book "God and the World," published in October 2000, he painted a grim picture of the results of genetic research, writing, "There is a last boundary that we cannot cross without becoming the destroyers of creation itself." In July 2004, the magazine L'Espresso released part of an unissued memorandum to American bishops in which he gave guidelines for denying Communion to politicians who supported abortion rights. -------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20ptext.html April 20, 2005 TRANSCRIPT The First Words of the New Pope Following is a transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's address yesterday at the Vatican, as recorded and translated from the Italian by Reuters: Dear brothers and sisters: After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and act even with insufficient instruments. And above all, I entrust myself to your prayers. With the joy of the risen Lord and confidence in his constant help, we will go forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary, his most holy mother, will be alongside us. Thank you. ---------------- http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/europe/POPE_CHRONOLOGY.html Key Dates in Papacy By THE NEW YORK TIMES The following articles highlight signifigant events during the papacy of Pope John Paul II going back to 1978. Also, [30]search previous articles on the pope. November 6, 1978 | PDF Format [31]After Two Conclaves, a Polish Pope By THE NEW YORK TIMES The election of Pope John Paul II, a strong-willed, vigorous Polish prelate and the first non-Italian head of the Roman Catholic Church in 455 years, has given a new dimension to the Vatican's global political role. January 27, 1979 | PDF Format [32]Over a Million in Mexico City Excitedly Greet the Pope By ALAN RIDING Pope John Paul II was given an exicted welcome by more than one million Mexicans when he arrived here today to open a crucial Latin American bishops' conference on his first trip abroad since becoming Pope four months ago. June 3, 1979 | PDF Format [33]Pope Gets Big Welcome in Poland, Offers Challenge to the Authorities By DAVID A. ANDELMAN Pope John Paul II returned home to Poland to a tumultuous weklcome today and immediately pledged the Roman Catholic Church to "serve people in the temporal dimension of their life and existence." October 3, 1979 | PDF Format [34]A City Opens Its Heart to John Paul By LAURIE JOHNSTON "Nasza Modlitwa Z Papiezem" (Our Prayer Is With the Pope), read the Polish-language banners and badges, whether from Westchester County or Wauekegan, Ill. "Totus Tuus Papa" (I Am All Yours, Pope), other banners promised in Latin. May 14, 1981 [35]Pope Is Shot in Car in Vatican Square; Surgeons Term Condition Serious By HENRY TANNER Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded yesterday as he was standing in an open car moving slowly among more than 10,000 worshipers in St. Peter's Square. April 14, 1986 [36]Pope Speaks in Rome Synagogue, in the First Such Visit on Record By E.J. DIONNE Jr. Pope John Paul II, embracing the world's Jews as ''our elder brothers,'' today paid the first recorded papal visit to a synagogue and condemned persecution and displays of anti-Semitism ''at any time and by anyone.'' December 2, 1989 [37]Gorbachev Visits Pope at Vatican; Ties Are Forged By CLYDE HABERMAN With an agreement to begin official relations and a pledge of expanded religious freedom for Soviet citizens, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev joined hands today with Pope John Paul II. May 3, 1991 [38]Papal Encyclical Urges Capitalism to Shed Injustices By PETER STEINFELS In a major encyclical addressing the economic questions raised by the upheaval in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pope John Paul II warned capitalist nations yesterday against letting the collapse of Communism blind them to the need to repair injustices in their own economic system. November 1, 1992 [39]Vatican Science Panel Told By Pope: Galileo Was Right By REUTERS Moving formally to rectify a wrong, Pope John Paul II acknowledged in a speech today that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning Galileo 359 years ago for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun. October 6, 1993 [40]Encyclical on Morality Doesn't Stifle Debate, Church Officials Say By PETER STEINFELS Roman Catholic officials at the Vatican and in the United States presented Pope John Paul II's new encyclical, "Veritatis Splendor" ("The Splendor of Truth"), in very conciliatory tones today. They insisted that his statement on fundamental moral theory was intended to encourage reflection and discussion of basic principles of morality, not to cut off debate. December 31, 1993 [41]Diplomatic Pact Signed by Israel and the Vatican By CLYDE HABERMAN Formally recognizing each other after decades of diplomatic aloofness and centuries of frequent Jewish-Catholic rancor, Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement today to establish diplomatic relations. March 27, 2000 [42]Ending Pilgrimage, the Pope Asks God for Brotherhood By DEBORAH SONTAG and ALESSANDRA STANLEY Pope John Paul II approached the Western Wall, reached out to touch its stone, and tucked into a crevice a note to God. April 24, 2002 [43]Pope Offers Apology to Victims of Sex Abuse by Priests By MELINDA HENNEBERGER Pope John Paul II opened meetings with American cardinals on clerical sex scandals with an apology to victims. June 6, 2003 [44]Vatican Traveler in Croatia, Reaching 100, Trips, That Is By FRANK BRUNI Pope John Paul II's visit to Croatia marks the 100th time that he has left Vatican City for a foreign adventure. April 3, 2005 | Obituary [45]Pope John Paul II, Church Shepherd and a Catalyst for World Change By ROBERT D. McFADDEN Pope John Paul II captivated much of humanity and reshaped the church with a heroic vision of a combative, disciplined Catholicism. References 30. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?srcht=s&srchst=&vendor=&query=%22Pope+John+Paul+II%22&date_select=full&submit.x=53&submit.y=11 31. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19781106pope.pdf 32. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19790127pope.pdf 33. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19790603pope.pdf 34. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19791003pope.pdf 35. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/14/international/europe/14POPE.html 36. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/14/international/europe/14POPE.html 37. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/02/international/europe/02POPE.html 38. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/03/international/europe/03POPE.html 39. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/international/europe/01POPE.html 40. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/06/national/06POPE.html 41. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/31/international/middleeast/31POPE.html 42. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/27/international/middleeast/27POPE.html 43. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/24/national/24VATI.html 44. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/europe/06POPE.html 45. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/europe/03pope.html --------------- The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: The New Pope http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/20wed1.html April 20, 2005 EDITORIAL The New Pope Since almost all of the cardinals who met to choose a new pope were appointees of John Paul II, it's probably not all that surprising that they chose someone as close as possible to the late pontiff. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI, worked in close partnership with his predecessor and shared a belief in staunchly defending orthodox Catholic doctrine. There is no reason to expect any change, of course, for the church when it comes to matters like birth control, priestly celibacy or homosexuality. Those are issues of faith, properly left to the faithful. On matters of public policy, however, all of us have reason to be concerned about the opinions of the leader of more than one billion Catholics. For instance, as a cardinal, the new pope inserted himself last year into the political debate over allowing Turkey into the European Union. He was quoted as saying that adding Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million people, would dilute the culture of what he considers a Christian continent and that Turkey should align itself instead with other Muslim nations. At a time when few things are more important than reconciling the Islamic world with the non-Islamic West, it would be extremely disturbing if the pope became an unnecessary wedge. It would also be out of keeping with the heritage of John Paul II - who, for all his doctrinal conservatism, was a man known for his outreach to people of other faiths. Like his predecessor, Benedict XVI is not Italian, but he continues the age-old tradition of European popes at a time when the church's membership is increasingly outside Europe. Its future appears to lie in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, where Pope John Paul II was so beloved for his warm, fatherly personality. At least as a cardinal, Benedict XVI was more courtly than charismatic. He is an accomplished polyglot who is said to speak 10 languages, a theologian of great stature and a man who has had an academic as well as an ecclesiastical career. Anyone who heard his homage at the late pope's funeral had to have been impressed by his eloquence and devotion to John Paul. It is possible that the cardinals who picked him hoped he would protect the church's core from doctrinal corruption at a time when more and more of the faithful live in places where congregations are used to adapting their religions to reflect local customs and beliefs. The new pope is, at 78, not likely to serve long enough to have the kind of impact his predecessor had. But the church has seen men elected as supposedly transitional figures in the past turn into agents for sweeping change. The beloved Pope John XXIII was a recent example. And in an era as fraught with peril as today's, anyone who occupies the throne of St. Peter is given overwhelming power to do good and responsibility to prevent harm. Today, the world can only wish Pope Benedict XVI strength and inspiration as he takes on this extraordinary burden of spiritual, moral and political leadership. ---------------- Op-Ed Contributor: Rome's Radical Conservative http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/20novak.html By MICHAEL NOVAK Washington THE election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as pope was John Paul II's last gift to the Roman Catholic Church. No cardinal was closer to John Paul II, or talked at length with him more often. In his sermon at the memorial for the late pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, with perfect pitch, praised his predecessor's gifts in poetry, drama and art, and the sweep of his vision and accomplishments. The sermon was interrupted many times by hearty applause, especially from the young. Cardinal Ratzinger's selection as pope, however, has been less heartily welcomed by many commentators in Europe and the United States, who have quickly characterized him as an "authoritarian," a "watchdog" and, most peculiarly, a "neoconservative." But this is a severe misreading of the man and shows that his critics paid little attention to that sermon, how he connected with the million or so young people who turned out, led not by enthusiasm, but by a remarkable sense of prayer, devotion and respectful silence. The new pope will not be a clone of the old. I've spoken to him several times over the last 40 years, and he is a much shyer man, quieter, more like a country pastor or a scholar than like an actor striding across all history as his stage. When one approaches him, he seems to back up an inch or two in diffidence. His voice is much softer than one expects. Yet his ideas about the changes needed by church institutions are, on the face of it, more radical than those of John Paul II, who was much more focused on the world at large than on the structure of the church. Benedict XVI learned from the Germany of the 1930's that too much care to preserve Catholic institutions, without powerful intellectual commitment in many souls, brings disaster. He may be much more willing to let go of institutions he considers only tepidly Catholic than people expect. And more serious about the life of the soul. On the other hand, he has written of his joy in those Catholics who may be estranged, but still return at least for Christmas or Easter masses. He is glad that they draw nourishment from the liturgy. He holds that the Catholic church must always be reaching out, far beyond its present ranks, as the first tiny communities of Christians did, caring for the poor and orphans far outside their own small ranks. He does not want a small, closed church, but an expansive, open one - and a serious one. One of the characteristics the new pope much cherishes is "openness to the whole" - to the whole of history, to the whole of the human race. He boasts of never having wanted to start his own "school" of theological thought - though as a renowned professor in Germany he could well have done so - but rather to have opened the minds of his students to whole vast fields of human thought, in all traditions and places and times. He is praised for just such warmth and openness by Protestant and Jewish leaders with whom he has long been in scholarly conversation. (Again, his behavior is the very opposite of the stereotypes invented by his critics.) The world will discover the true man behind the stereotypes soon enough, for Cardinal Ratzinger has been one of the senior churchmen of recent times most open to journalists. He has allowed probing interviews lasting several days, all caught on dictating machines and published as best-selling books, organized by fine journalists like Vittorio Messori and Peter Seewald. We should not be surprised to see more publications from him as pope. Often Cardinal Ratzinger sharply portrayed a crucial parting of the ways: between modernizing the church, so as to seem to appeal to modern men at the expense of fidelity to the word of Jesus Christ; and being faithful to the word, at the expense of losing numbers. He has been quite fearless about choosing the second alternative. But he has also noted, correctly, that the parishes and dioceses that choose "modernization" usually end up losing numbers, while the more serious churches grow mightily. In particular, the churches of Africa and Asia, which have shown the most rapid growth, are the ones most intent on fidelity to the New Testament. One of Cardinal Ratzinger's central, and most misunderstood, notions is his conception of liberty, and he is very jealous in thinking deeply about it, pointing often to Tocqueville. He is a strong foe of socialism, statism and authoritarianism, but he also worries that democracy, despite its great promise, is exceedingly vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority, to "the new soft despotism" of the all-mothering state, and to the common belief that liberty means doing whatever you please. Following Lord Acton and James Madison, Cardinal Ratzinger has written of the need of humans to practice self-government over their passions in private life. He also fears that Europe, especially, is abandoning the search for objective truth and sliding into pure subjectivism. That is how the Nazis arose, he believes, and the Leninists. When all opinions are considered subjective, no moral ground remains for protesting against lies and injustices. Pope John Paul II thought the first issue of his time was the murderous politics that resulted from the separation of Europe into two by the Soviet Union. He saw it as chiefly a political issue, to be defeated by moral means. Pope Benedict XVI, like several of his namesakes back to St. Benedict himself (the founder of Western monasticism and patron saint of Europe), is more likely to take culture as the central issue of the new millennium: What is the culture necessary to preserve free societies from their own internal dangers - and to make them worthy of the sacrifices that brought them into being? Michael Novak is a theologian at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of "The Universal Hunger for Liberty." ------------------ Opinion > Benedict XVI Greets the World (5 Letters) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/l20pope.html April 20, 2005 Benedict XVI Greets the World (5 Letters) To the Editor: With deep joy I offer Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger my warm congratulations and most fervent good wishes on his election to the papacy. Joseph Ratzinger is a man rich in spiritual passion, humility, self-denial and love for the cause of God and of man. As Pope Benedict XVI, he brings to the papacy a brilliant philosophical and, in particular, theological mind that has embraced a vision of broad spiritual and ecclesiastical horizons: personal holiness, missionary outreach combined with constant concern for unity, and the necessary integration of spirituality and institutional ministry. His episcopal motto, "Co-worker of the Truth," has guided him in his tireless and uncompromising efforts aimed at defending and promoting the Catholic faith and its morals against modern errors. The new pope has also worked to encourage studies aimed at increasing knowledge of the faith so that the new problems arising from the progress of science and civilization can be answered in the light of the word of God. The aim for which he has always strived has been to serve the truth, seek to know it ever more thoroughly and make it ever more widely known. Paul Kokoski Hamilton, Ontario, April 19, 2005 To the Editor: The new pope is known as humble but extremely doctrinaire. As a Vatican insider for many years, he will probably be averse to the necessary changes Catholicism needs to give it the dynamism necessary for the new millennium. I think that the cardinals chose this elderly and dogmatic leader as a transitional figurehead because of their tentative desire to adjust to the new global realities. I wish him well and only hope that he realizes that the real world is leaving the church behind. Anthony J. Frascino Audubon, N.J., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: Congratulations are in order to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on becoming Pope Benedict XVI. While he faces many new challenges with his new position, I would argue that there is nothing more important than reaching out to those of different faiths to find common ground. Analysis of most of the world's geopolitical problems can be traced to tensions between and among religions. The papacy brings a powerful microphone with it, I hope that Pope Benedict XVI uses it to advance new cooperation between and among different religions. Steven M. Clayton Ocean, N.J., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: One of the main reasons for the decline of Catholicism not only in Europe but also in Latin America, Canada and the United States and for the abandonment of the priesthood isn't mentioned in "Europeans Fast Falling Away From Church" (news article, April 19): the modernization of the Mass under Pope Paul VI more than 30 years ago. The new Mass simply does not convey spirituality or inspire awe. Let us hope that Pope Benedict XVI will be as assiduous in reinstating orthodoxy to public prayer and the liturgy as he has been in safeguarding doctrine. Marc A. Loera Inglewood, Calif., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: According to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the newly elected pope, "a dictatorship of relativism is being built that recognizes nothing as definite" (front page, April 19). But his insistence that the Catholic Church must defend itself from such moral chaos by adhering to age-old traditional Catholic teaching ignores the fact that the church has changed in many ways since its first incarnation - often wisely and of necessity. The doctrinal rigidity that the new pope has called for, with its selective emphasis on sexuality and sex-based prohibitions, is no less ideological than the secular movements he deplores and no more likely to save the church from the perils of modernity. Edward Cahill New York, April 19, 2005 ----------------- News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.20 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm Election of a Conservative Pope Signals Continuing Push for Orthodoxy, Scholars Say By THOMAS BARTLETT The election of a conservative German cardinal, the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, as the new pope is a sign that the Vatican will continue to rein in theologians with unorthodox views, several Roman Catholic scholars said on Tuesday. But some cautioned against prematurely judging the new pontiff, who will be known as Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict, who has a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Munich, is a longtime academic who has taught at several German universities. And in his most recent role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post to which he was appointed in 1981 by Pope John Paul II, who died this month, Benedict was often involved in issues related to Catholic higher education. "This is a guy who understands the system for Catholic colleges and universities," said J. Patout Burns, a professor of Catholic studies at Vanderbilt University. "I think that's going to be altogether to the good." Dennis M. Doyle, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, said there was "a lot of coherence and sincerity" to Benedict's positions. Mr. Boyle said he expected that the new pontiff's views on most issues having to do with Catholic higher education will be similar to his predecessor's. "I think he's often presented stereotypically and unfairly -- though that's not to say I have the same positions he has," Mr. Doyle said. "I grew up intellectually in an atmosphere where people were telling me that he was the Catholic devil, but I've developed a real respect for him." Some scholars, like the Rev. Charles E. Curran, expressed "disappointment" at the selection. Father Curran was banned from teaching theology at the Catholic University of America in 1986 because of his opinions on topics like artificial birth control. The letter informing him of the Vatican's decision was written by Cardinal Ratzinger. "This is obviously a sign that the papacy will continue in the same general way as the papacy of Pope John Paul II," Father Curran, who is now a professor of human values at Southern Methodist University, said in a written statement. He noted that he continues to believe that "one can disagree with some noninfallible and noncore church teachings and still be a loyal Roman Catholic." For more conservative Catholics, like Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, the election was a cause for rejoicing. "He is certainly not someone who has any hesitancy about telling individuals who are teaching things contrary to Catholic faith that they can no longer teach Catholic theology," Mr. Reilly said of the new pope. "And that's something that I think needs to happen, especially in the United States, and now very likely will." Mr. Reilly said the new pontiff has a reputation of being "more of a man of action" than John Paul II. Others cautioned against reading too much into that reputation. "I'm sure some folks will have doomsday scenarios, but I think that's very premature," said the Rev. Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. "People are not totally a product of their pasts. We should wait and see what this pope says and does." Many saw the choosing of the name "Benedict" as an indication that the new pontiff was interested in healing divisions within the church. Pope Benedict XV, who led the Church from 1914 to 1922, was viewed as a theological moderate. "The selection of the name is a handing out of an olive branch, maybe," said the Rev. David J. Collins, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University. "Although at this point we're just reading the tea leaves." _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [60]Mourning a Pope Who Stressed Orthodoxy (4/15/2005) * [61]A Theological Dissident Examines the Teachings of Pope John Paul II (4/1/2005) * [62]Who Is Catholic? (4/9/2004) * [63]Pulling Back the Veil (3/19/2004) * [64]Silence, Not Confrontation, Over the 'Mandatum' (6/14/2002) * [65]Bishops Approve Guidelines on Church Approval of Catholic Theologians' Teachings (6/29/2001) * [66]Liberal Roman Catholic Theologians Say Vatican Statement Won't Change Their Views (7/10/1998) * [67]Vatican Bars Theologians From Public Dissent on Official Teachings of the Catholic Church (7/4/1990) References 45. mailto:thomas.bartlett at chronicle.com 46. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 47. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 48. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/emailer.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 49. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/emailer.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 60. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32a00101.htm 61. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i30/30a03101.htm 62. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i31/31a02601.htm 63. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i28/28a01201.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i40/40a01001.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i42/42a01201.htm 66. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-44.dir/44a01001.htm 67. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/articles-36.dir/issue-42.dir/42a00102.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. ----------------- Reuters > International > Germans Feel Both Pride and Doubts Over Pope http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pope-germany.html April 20, 2005 Germans Feel Both Pride and Doubts Over Pope By REUTERS Filed at 7:18 a.m. ET BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany reacted uncertainly on Wednesday to the choice of a native son as Pope, as pride mingled with doubts that the arch-conservative theologian reflected its self-image as secular, liberal and progressive. Emotions ranged from joy to outright dismay as the country digested the news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a former archbishop of Munich, had been elected Pope Benedict XVI. ``We are the Pope! It's a thousand-year sensation!'' blared best-selling tabloid Bild, removing the usual bare-breasted model from page one in deference to the new pontiff. But irreverent left-wing daily Tageszeitung took the opposite view, blacking out the entire front page apart from the words: ``Joseph Ratzinger new Pope. Oh, my God!'' The split reflected doubts, in Germany and elsewhere, over whether the Church's chief guardian of traditional doctrine for the past 23 years is charismatic, vigorous and open enough to tackle the social challenges of the 21st century. Ratzinger was elected Tuesday -- at 78, the oldest man to ascend the papal throne for three centuries. ``In my opinion the man is simply too old for this office,'' said Agnes Straubinger, a resident of Munich in Ratzinger's native Bavaria. ``How will the Catholic Church ever progress if it always bases itself in the past?'' The new pope's own brother, Georg, told ARD television he was taken aback by the news. ``I was shocked, that's right ... I'd thought that his age and not very stable health were a reason for the cardinals to choose someone else,'' he said. BREAK WITH PAST That the spiritual and moral authority of the papacy should be wielded by a German, 60 years after the Nazi Holocaust and World War II, is an idea that would once have been unthinkable. ``Many did not believe such a thing possible after the terrible events which began from Germany and which can still be felt,'' German Catholic Cardinal Karl Lehmann said. ``It is therefore an important sign of Germany's ultimate return into the worldwide community of peoples which is also reflected in the Catholic Church ... This can give our country heart in many respects.''anniversaries of the war's end and the liberation of the Nazi death camps have been reminding Germany of the Hitler era. Ratzinger says in his autobiography he was forced to join the Hitler Youth as a boy and was later summoned to the military. He avoided being enrolled into the SS, the Nazis' elite troops, by declaring his intention of becoming a priest. While politicians spoke of their pride at having a German pope, their reactions seemed low-key. Some Germans wonder if Ratzinger, often portrayed as distant and austere, is the right man for the times. He has made clear he sees no room for debate on vexed issues like the Church's opposition to women priests, abortion and homosexuality. That message is alien to many in a country that sees itself as liberal, progressive and open-minded, and where sex and religion are regarded as private individual issues. ``We consider the election of Ratzinger is a catastrophe,'' said Bernd Goehring of German ecumenical group Church from Below. ``It is very disappointing, even if it was predictable. We can expect no reform from him in the coming years.'' Germany's even split between Catholics and Protestants -- there are roughly 27 million of each in a country of 82 million -- further explains why the nation as a whole will not embrace Pope Benedict in the way that Poles did his predecessor, their countryman John Paul II. Catholics are mainly concentrated in the south and west and Protestants in the north -- a legacy of religious wars that swept the country and much of Europe in the 16th century after reformer Martin Luther broke with Rome. -------------- AP > International > New Pope Inspired by Anti - War Pontiff http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Whats-in-a-Name.html April 20, 2005 New Pope Inspired by Anti - War Pontiff By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:52 a.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The last pope named Benedict guided the church during the dark years of World War I, espousing a policy of strict neutrality and pushing for peace through negotiations. To honor him, Joseph Ratzinger chose the same name. Ratzinger told cardinals he wanted to pay homage to Benedict XV, known for tireless efforts to help refugees and reunite a world divided by what was then known as the Great War, an archbishop said. The new pontiff, Benedict XVI, felt his namesake ''had done much for reconciliation among peoples,'' Berlin Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky told reporters Tuesday after attending the conclave. Ratzinger also was close to the late John Paul II -- another peace-loving pontiff. John Paul openly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Choosing a new name is a pontiff's first significant act in office, and it provides clues about the kind of leader he aspires to be. Benedict XV, pontiff from 1914 to 1922, had the difficult task of providing leadership for Roman Catholic countries pitted against each other during World War I, each claiming a just fight and praying for victory. His neutrality, and repeated protests against weapons like poison gas, angered both sides. He worked to help the war's innocent victims and came up with a seven-point peace plan. It failed, but some of his proposals were included in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the U.S. president's wartime call for peace in January 1918. The Italian-born pope was punished for his neutrality by being excluded from 1919 talks at Versailles outside Paris, where a peace treaty was signed. Elsewhere, his work was honored: Muslim Turkey erected a statue to him in Istanbul, honoring him as ''the benefactor of all people, regardless of nation or creed.'' John-Peter Pham, a Vatican expert who worked at the Holy See from 1992 to 2002, said Benedict XV was ''in many respects the first modern pope.'' ''Benedict XV's efforts to mediate the Great War as well as his humanitarian outreach, while also embracing the Orthodox and Muslims, is what was for his time an unprecedented choice,'' said Pham, now a professor at James Madison University. Ratzinger may also have been thinking of St. Benedict, a monk who died in the 6th century. The saint was the founder of Western monasticism. An 18th century saint of the same name, Benedict Joseph Labre, was a wandering pilgrim who ended up destitute. His feast day is April 16 -- Ratzinger's birthday. The newest Benedict turned 78 on Saturday. The Italian version of Benedict, ''Benedetto,'' means one who is blessed, and the name's Latin origin refers to a blessing. The reigns of some of the other Benedicts, however, ended violently. During the 10th century, Benedict V was forcibly deposed by the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, and Benedict VI was imprisoned and strangled by order of a rival pontiff, Boniface VII. Benedict is one of a number of papal names of holy origin such as Clement (''mercy''), Innocent (''hopeful'' as well as ''innocent'') and Pius (''pious''). John is the most popular, with 23 pontiffs taking that name. Two -- John Paul I and John Paul II -- used it in a double name. There have been 16 Gregories and, as of Tuesday, 16 Benedicts. ------ Associated Press Writers Daniela Petroff and Maria Sanminiatelli contributed to this report. --------------- AP > International > Israel Praises Pope Despite Past Nazi Ties http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Israel.html April 20, 2005 Israel Praises Pope Despite Past Nazi Ties By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:27 a.m. ET JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli politicians and rabbis on Wednesday praised new Pope Benedict XVI for his strong condemnations of anti-Semitism despite the pontiff's ties to the Nazi Party as a youth. Benedict's appointment received mixed reactions from Arabs in the Holy Land. Muslim leaders urged him to take a more active role in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while Greek Orthodox officials voiced hope he help unify various Christian denominations. As a German, Benedict sets off alarm bells for many Israelis, whose memories of the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews remain painfully vivid. Many wondered whether he would embrace Jews as warmly as his predecessor. ''There are good relations with him,'' Oded Ben-Hor, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, told Army Radio. ''Israel can certainly coexist with him. But the real test will come over the course of time.'' Israelis widely admired the late Pope John Paul II for his unstinting efforts to promote Jewish-Catholic reconciliation. John Paul won many Israeli hearts during a trip to the Holy Land in 2000 by apologizing for Roman Catholic wrongdoing over the centuries. He also was praised for promoting interfaith dialogue, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and aiding Polish Jews during the Nazi era. As a young man, the new pope served in the Hitler Youth -- compulsory for young Germans at the time -- and during World War II was drafted into a German anti-aircraft unit, although he says he never fired a shot. Though Benedict has been a leading voice in the church in battling anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish-Catholic relations, his past raised suspicions in the Jewish state. ''White smoke, black past,'' said the headline in the mass circulation Yediot Ahronot. ''From the Nazi youth movement to the Vatican.'' Nonetheless, Jewish leaders said they were encouraged by the special interest by the new pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in coexistence. ''Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact,'' said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish group that battles anti-Semitism. Foxman himself was saved during the Holocaust by his Polish nanny, who had him baptized and raised him as a Catholic, until his Jewish parents reclaimed him at the end of the war. Moshe Zimmerman, a professor of German history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, played down the importance of the new pope's membership in the Hitler Youth. ''He was 18 years old when the war ended, so everything that he had to do with the Nazi regime was as a very young man,'' he said. ''I don't believe that there is any room for doubt that (the pope) of today is very different than the days he belonged in the Hitler Youth.'' Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Israeli Meir Lau -- a Holocaust survivor and a former chief rabbi for Israeli Jews of European backgrounds -- said his many meetings with Benedict while he was a cardinal have convinced him of his good record on matters of concern to Israelis. ''(The last meeting) was last year, in New York, in the Museum of Jewish Heritage of all places,'' Lau told Israel Army Radio. ''There was a meeting of two or three rabbis with some 20 cardinals .... His entire speech was given over to a condemnation of anti-Semitism, in the strongest and most unambiguous terms.'' Writer Zvi Gil, also a Holocaust survivor, said he expects Benedict to continue John Paul's favorable attitude toward Jews, precisely because of his German past. ''His attitude to Jews in Israel will to a very significant extent be influenced by that of his predecessor John Paul II, whose steps are well known to us,'' Gil told Army Radio. ''And as a German I don't think he will want to move backward from these steps toward Israeli Jews.'' For some Israelis, the new pope's condemnation of abortion, same-sex marriage and his embrace of other conservative stands has raised concerns of closed-mindedness -- an attitude they fear may be connected to residual anti-Semitism. However, commentators say the new pope's theology mirrors that of many Jewish religious leaders, and should not be seen as a sign of prejudice. ''He's much more traditional, and his positions are a lot tougher than Jewish law,'' said Lau. ''And Jewish law is my law.'' A top Muslim leader, meanwhile, urged Benedict to follow John Paul's efforts to promote interfaith relations and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ''We hope that the new pope will give the church more roles in trying to solve the problems that the world is facing,'' said Adnan Husseini, director of the Waqf, or Islamic Trust. ''We hope that he will continue the policy of John Paul II, who opposed the wall around the Palestinian territories and called for peace between the two peoples.'' Bishop Theophilos, the top Greek Orthodox official at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, called on Benedict to repair relations among Christian denominations, though he said he was skeptical. ''I hope that he can help promote unity of the Christian churches, especially between the Eastern Orthodox and the Latin,'' he said. ''The real obstacle to the unity of the church is the office of the pope,'' he added. ''If ever the pope had the courage or the will to say he is the bishop of Rome, not the vicar of Christ, then the road to unity is opened. As long as the office of the pope remains untouchable, the Christian Church remains divided.'' ------------- AP > International > China Hopes for Better Vatican Ties http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-China.html April 20, 2005 China Hopes for Better Vatican Ties By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:43 a.m. ET BEIJING (AP) -- China on Wednesday congratulated the newly appointed Pope Benedict XVI and said it hoped Beijing's strained relations with the Roman Catholic Church improve under his leadership. ''We hope under the leadership of the new pope, the Vatican side can create favorable conditions for improving the relationship between China and the Vatican,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement. China's officially atheist government broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and has said it will consider opening relations only if the Vatican cuts links with rival Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949 amid civil war. Qin said relations between the two sides could improve under two conditions. ''The Vatican must cut off its so-called diplomatic relations with Taiwan, acknowledging the People's Republic of China is the only sole legal government representing the whole of China,'' he said. Secondly, the Vatican ''must not intervene in China's domestic affairs, including not intervening in domestic affairs in the name of religion,'' Qin said. The official body representing China's Catholics also sent a congratulatory cable to the Vatican and asked its followers to pray for him as a gesture of congratulations, Qin said. The Vatican is the only European government that has official relations with Taiwan. China still claims the self-ruled island as its territory and refuses to have any official contact with governments that recognize its rival as a sovereign country. China demands that Catholics worship only in churches approved by a state-controlled church group that does not recognize the pope's authority. The state-sanctioned China Patriotic Catholic Association didn't send a representative to the pope's funeral, citing the dispute over Taiwan. The China Patriotic Catholic Association regards the pope as a spiritual leader and follows Vatican teachings but rejects the Vatican's role in church operations and appoints its own priests. The association claims 4 million followers, but foreign experts say as many as 12 million more worship in unofficial churches loyal to the Vatican. In some areas, unofficial church members are routinely harassed and their leaders arrested. ---------------- AP > International > The Reigns of All Popes Named Benedict http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Benedicts-List.html April 20, 2005 The Reigns of All Popes Named Benedict By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:52 a.m. ET A list of the reigns of all popes named Benedict: Benedict I, 575-579 Benedict II, 684-685 Benedict III, 855-858 Benedict IV, 900-903 Benedict V, 964-964/965 Benedict VI, 972/973-974 Benedict VII, 974-983 Benedict VIII,1012-1024 Benedict IX, 1032-1044 Benedict X, 1058-1059 Benedict XI, 1303-1304 Benedict XII, 1334/1335-1342 Benedict XIII, 1724-1730 Benedict XIV, 1740-1758 Benedict XV, 1914-1922 Benedict XVI, 2005- -------------- AP > International > Some Cardinals Get Chatty After Conclave http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Talking-Cardinals.html April 19, 2005 Some Cardinals Get Chatty After Conclave By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:58 p.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Whatever happened to the sacred oath of secrecy? Cardinals were sworn to silence about everything that happened during deliberations in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new pope. But within hours of the conclave, some German cardinals -- delighted about the choice of their countryman, Joseph Ratzinger -- spilled some of the secrets. Cardinal Joachim Meisner told reporters Tuesday night that the new Pope Benedict XVI was elected on the fourth ballot -- the first of the afternoon session. He added that Ratzinger got more than the required two-thirds support. ''It was done without an electoral battle, and without propaganda,'' the archbishop of Cologne told reporters at a residence for German priests in Vatican City. ''For me it was a miracle.'' There was spontaneous applause as soon as cardinals realized Ratzinger had won, Meisner said. ''And I burst out crying,'' he added. Meisner and three other German cardinals spent about 45 minutes answering questions about the conclave and didn't seem worried about commenting despite their vow of silence -- which Ratzinger led himself, as dean of the College of Cardinals, when the conclave began Monday. One by one, cardinals filed up to a Book of the Gospels and placed their right hands on it. Ratzinger's admonition read, in part: ''We promise and swear not to break this secret in any way...'' To guard against high-tech leaks by cellular phones, there were even electronic jamming devices under a false floor in the chapel. One query the cardinals wouldn't answer is exactly how many votes Ratzinger garnered. ''We've already said enough,'' said Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky, the archbishop of Berlin. Meisner gave a few clues about the new pope's emotional reaction on being named. He said Benedict XVI looked ''a little forlorn'' when he went to change into his papal vestments in the Room of Tears -- which earned its nickname because many new pontiffs get choked up there, realizing the enormity of their mission. ''I was worried, because when he came back dressed in his white vestments, I thought he had forgotten his skullcap,'' Meisner said. ''But then I realized his hair is as white as his skullcap.'' Meisner added: ''By the time dinner came around, Ratzinger was looking much better and very much like the pope.'' The new pope asked cardinals to dine together on bean soup, cold cuts, a salad and fruit, Meisner said. The nuns who prepare their meals didn't have time to plan a special menu, so there were only two special treats -- ice cream and champagne. Some U.S. cardinals also offered insight about why the vote went to Ratzinger. New York Cardinal Edward Egan, who worked for years in Rome and at the Vatican, was asked whether the new pope had the support of Catholics in Latin America and Africa. ''Obviously, he must have had support from the Third World,'' he responded. Going into the vote, there was much speculation about the possibility of a pope from the developing world, where most Roman Catholics live. Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, who worked for more than two decades in Vatican diplomacy, said the decision to choose Ratzinger was not made in the days leading up to the conclave or as a result of Ratzinger's moving homily at Pope John Paul II's funeral. ''Decisions like this are not made on how a person impresses you in the last five minutes, the last hours, the last days,'' he said. Rigali said the cardinals in the conclave thought about what John Paul had accomplished. Ratzinger was close to the late pope. ''We were looking for a successor of (St.) Peter,'' the first pope, Rigali said. ''We were looking for a successor of John Paul II. All of us were talking about the incredible qualities of John Paul II, knowing the world is calling him 'The Great.''' ------ Associated Press Writer Angela Doland and AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report. -------------- AP > International > No Reports of Benedict Health Problems http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Ratzinger-Health.html April 19, 2005 No Reports of Benedict Health Problems By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:48 p.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The new Pope Benedict XVI has no apparent history of chronic health problems, but the 78-year-old German has been hospitalized at least twice since the early 1990s, according to records and reports. In September 1991, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that temporarily affected his left field of vision, according to the veteran Vatican journalist John Allen in his 2000 book ''Cardinal Ratzinger.'' There is no indication that it left any lingering health difficulties. In August 1992, he cut his head after slipping in the bathroom during a vacation in the Italian Alps, the Italian news agency ANSA reported at the time. Thomas Frauenlob, director of St. Michael's seminary in Traunstein where the pope studied as a youth and still visits annually, said he had never heard of any major ailments. ''He seems healthy,'' said Frauenlob, who last saw him over the New Year's holiday. ''He comes and eats and drinks whatever he wants.'' But the Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on Vatican affairs, believed the new pontiff's health was ''not that good'' during the past year. He gave no specifics. -------------- AP > International > A Look at Some Previous Pope Benedicts http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Name.html?pagewanted=print&position= April 19, 2005 A Look at Some Previous Pope Benedicts By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:50 p.m. ET Benedict, the name of the new pope, is one of the more frequent choices made by pontiffs. A look at some previous Benedicts: --Benedict XV (reigned 1914-1922): He was chosen as a contrast with his predecessor Pius X, whose theological crackdown against ''modernism'' had roiled the church. His accession coincided with the start of World War I. --Benedict XIV (1740-1758): He was a compromise choice after an arduous six-month conclave. Like former professor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was considered a scholar. --Benedict XIII (1724-1730): A rare pope from a religious order, the Dominicans, he remained head of his former Italian diocese as well as the bishop of Rome. --Benedict XII (1335-1342): He was one of the French popes who reigned from Avignon instead of Rome, considered a bleak era for the papacy. --Benedict XI (1303-1304): Also a Dominican, he was considered scholarly and a peacemaker among church factions. --------------- http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-List.html April 19, 2005 Popes Who Have Served Since 19th Century By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:53 p.m. ET Popes who have served since the 19th century: Pius VII -- March 14, 1800-Aug. 20, 1823. Leo XII -- Sept. 28, 1823-Feb. 10, 1829. Pius VIII -- March 31, 1829-Nov. 30, 1830. Gregory XVI -- Feb. 2, 1831-June 1, 1846. Pius IX -- June 16, 1846-Feb. 7, 1878. Leo XIII -- Feb. 20, 1878-July 20, 1903. Pius X -- Aug. 4, 1903-Aug. 20, 1914. Benedict XV -- Sept. 3, 1914-Jan. 22, 1922. Pius XI -- Feb. 6, 1922-Feb. 10, 1939. Pius XII -- March 2, 1939-Oct. 9, 1958. John XXIII -- Oct. 28, 1958-June 3, 1963. Paul VI -- June 21, 1963-Aug. 6, 1978. John Paul I -- Aug. 26-Sept. 28, 1978. John Paul II -- Oct. 16, 1978-April 2, 2005. Benedict XVI -- April 19, 2005- ---------------- Thousands of Gamblers Score on Pope Vote http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Betting.html April 19, 2005 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:00 p.m. ET DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, he was hardly the only winner. Thousands worldwide placed bets on him through the Web -- and an inspired few hundred even correctly guessed he'd take the name Benedict. Among a handful of Internet-based bookmakers who offered odds on the next pope, the biggest player was Paddy Power PLC, the No. 1 bookie in Ireland, which has taken bets on John Paul's successor for the past five years. Minutes after Benedict XVI appeared in St. Peter's Square, Paddy Power was collecting -- or paying out -- on more than 10,000 bets totaling more than $260,000. The biggest winners: Someone who put down $1,050 Saturday on a Ratzinger victory at odds of 6 to 1, which meant a payout of $7,350; and somebody else who waged $260 on the new pontiff's taking Benedict, which at 3-to-1 odds meant $1,050 back. The money kept flowing in until the white smoke appeared. ''We were kind of hoping the conclave would run for two weeks,'' said Paddy Power, spokesman for the firm of the same name, in a telephone interview from Rome, where the company has been promoting its Vatican specials. Paddy Power, fellow Dublin betting site Intrade and three British bookies -- [1]betfair.com, Pinnacle and William Hill -- all rated Ratzinger either as favorite or second-favorite. His victory meant they all still made a profit, because of all the other bets placed on a field of more than 100 other candidates, but only a modest one. ''If a real long shot had won it, we'd have taken home the full 200 grand,'' Power said, referring to his firm's total of bets, in euros, on a field of about 90 cardinals. As it was, he said, the backers of Ratzinger would get more than $162,000, while those who backed other winners -- including the name of Benedict and the successful election on Tuesday -- would take about $13,000 more, leaving the company a profit of more than $85,000. Other betting sites had Ratzinger as clear favorite. At Pinnacle, for instance, he opened two weeks ago at odds of 7 to 1, but those narrowed to just 3 to 1 by Tuesday. At Paddy Power, Ratzinger was once listed at odds of more than 20 to 1. Since John Paul's death, Ratzinger had surged ahead of initial favorite Dionigi Tettamanzi of Italy. But the star then rose of Nigeria's Francis Arinze, pushing Ratzinger back into second; Arinze remained No. 2 on other sites. At the moment white smoke rose in Vatican City, Paddy Power froze betting with the odds on Arinze at 7 to 2 and Ratzinger at 11 to 2. In joint third were Tettamanzi and French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of France at 7 to 1. ''The only worse outcome for us would have been if Arinze won,'' Power said. ''A Lustiger win could have been just as bad for us as Ratzinger because we took some big bets on him at high odds a week or so ago.'' Paddy Power was the only bookmaker to take bets on the papal name. It listed Benedict as favorite, just ahead of John Paul. But Power explained that Benedict was ranked so highly because of its connections to Lustiger, not Ratzinger. He said St. Benedict had predicted that the Catholic church one day would elect a former Jew as pope; Lustiger converted from Judaism. ''Just our luck. Ratzinger got us on that one too,'' he said. Power said the firm's oddsmakers would take a few days to think up some new pope-related bets -- such as the chances of Ratzinger's permitting women into the priesthood. ''It'd be a brave man or woman who'd put money on that one,'' he said. ------ On the Net: [2]www.paddypower.com References 1. http://betfair.com/ 2. http://www.paddypower.com/ ---------------- Events in the Life of Pope Benedict XVI http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Benedict-XVI-Chronology.html April 19, 2005 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:09 p.m. ET Events in the life of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI: ------ April 16, 1927: Born in Marktl am Inn in Germany's southern region of Bavaria near the Austrian border on the day before Easter. Baptized the same day. 1929: Family moves to town of Tittmoning. 1932: Family moves to Traunstein after his father has conflicts with local Nazi Party supporters in Tittmoning. 1941: Enrolled against his will in Hitler Youth. Dismissed shortly afterward because of his intention to study for the priesthood. 1943: Drafted as helper for anti-aircraft unit, serves in battery defending BMW plant. 1944: Dismissed from unit, but returns home to find draft notice for forced labor. 1944: Leaves home to dig anti-tank trenches. 1944: Released from labor force and returns home only to receive army draft notice three weeks later. 1945: Deserts from army and returns home. Captured by Americans as war ends. 1945: Released from U.S. POW camp, hitches a ride home on milk truck. 1945: Begins study for priesthood in Freising. 1951: Ordained a priest along with his brother Georg. 1953: Receives doctorate in theology, University of Munich. 1959: Begins teaching theology in Bonn, first of several appointments in German universities. 1969: Leaves University of Tuebingen concerned about student unrest which had interrupted his lectures with sit-ins. Takes teaching job in Regensburg in native Bavaria, near his brother. 1977: Elected Archbishop of Munich und Freising. 1977: Elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI. 1978: Participated in conclave that elected Pope John Paul II. 1979: Vatican revokes theology teaching license of liberal German theologian Hans Kueng, who helped Ratzinger get a teaching post at University of Tuebingen in the 1960s. Ratzinger was sharply critical of Kueng. 1981: Summoned to Rome as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II. 1985: On behalf of John Paul II, he denounces a work by Leonard Boff, a Latin American pioneer of Liberation Theology. 1985: Publication of ''The Ratzinger Report.'' 1997: Publication of ''Salt of the Earth.'' 1998: Publication of ''Milestones. Memoirs: 1927 to 1997.'' 1999: Travels to Menlo Park, Calif., for meeting with leaders of doctrinal committees of bishops conferences. 2000: Publication of ''God and World,'' ''Spirit of the Liturgy.'' 2001: Attended Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, France. 2002: Named Dean of the College of Cardinals. 2002: Travels to Spain to preside over the ''Christ: Way, Truth and Life'' congress at the Catholic University of St. Anthony. April 13, 2005: Publication of ''Values in a Time of Upheaval.'' April 19, 2005: Elected Pope Benedict XVI. ---------------- AP > Arts > Election of Pope a Hit for TV Networks http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Pope-TV.html April 19, 2005 Election of Pope a Hit for TV Networks By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:03 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- The election of Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday had all the elements of a hit daytime reality show for television networks: some comical confusion, anxiety-laden tedium and finally an exciting payoff. ABC, CBS and NBC interrupted programming shortly before noon at the first appearance of smoke billowing from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the centuries-old signal of whether the cardinals meeting inside had elected a pope. The smoke looked white, meaning Roman Catholics had a new pope. Or was it? Bells were supposed to accompany the appearance of white smoke, and they weren't ringing. It drove the network anchors nuts. ''It continues to amaze me that in this world of high tech ... we have to find out that somebody is about to assume one of the most important offices in the world by reading smoke signals,'' said ABC's Charles Gibson. Recalled NBC's Brian Williams later: ''I think we came up with more ways to characterize the color of smoke than I thought humanly possible before today.'' Gibson couldn't hide his exasperation as the uncertainty stretched beyond 10 minutes. ''I must say, they're going to have to work on this,'' he said. (Pope John Paul II's death was announced by e-mail.) Finally, the crowd in St. Peter's Square roared, noticing the swinging of a large bell even before it began to peal. ''Habemus Papam!'' read the words on Fox News Channel's screen. They had a pope. They just didn't know who. And TV networks filled the time with somewhat aimless talking, with cameras trained on the Vatican window where a new pope would soon emerge. ''We just saw someone peeking behind the curtain,'' said CBS anchor Bob Schieffer. It was a false alarm. Killing time, CBS turned to correspondent Richard Roth in St. Peter's Square, where he interviewed the waiting faithful on who they expected would appear. Finally, the curtains parted, the windows opened and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was revealed as the new pope. It was a thrilling television moment. Guessing correctly in advance, NBC had Martin Savidge stationed in the new pope's German hometown for a live report on the reaction. Williams anchored NBC's coverage from the odd location of a makeshift studio at Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV; he was in the city for commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the federal building bombing. Gibson and Schieffer anchored from New York. Shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern, the broadcast networks left the post-selection analysis to the cable networks. -------------------- International > International Special > Last Pope Benedict Focused on Ending World War I http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/international/worldspecial2/19cnd-bene.html [This is what James J. Martin called "inconvenient history" and has been forgotten.] April 19, 2005 Last Pope Benedict Focused on Ending World War I By [1]TIMOTHY WILLIAMS The last pope who chose the name Benedict was an Italian noble who canonized Joan of Arc and spent much of his papacy trying unsuccessfully to end World War I, which had pitted Europe's Catholics against one another. Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa, Italy, Pope Benedict XV served as pontiff from 1914 to 1922, the second shortest length of time for a pope in the 20th Century. He was elected in early September, less than two months after the outbreak of the war - chosen in part, because he was a trained diplomat who was neutral on the war. Almost immediately, Benedict XV appealed to the warring sides to make peace. He pushed for a Christmas Day truce in 1914 that was initially agreed to by Germany, but rejected by the Allies. His constant calls for ending the war became so unpopular on both sides that a 1915 agreement between Italy and other Allies contained a secret provision to ignore papal peace efforts. By the time he delivered his Plea for Peace in 1917, Benedict XV was believed by each side to secretly favor the other. His plea for the end of the war and international arbitration was ignored by the leaders of the combatants with the exception of President Woodrow Wilson, who rejected it. Benedict XV was successful, however, in having disabled prisoners exchanged via neutral nations and also helped Belgians deported after the German offensive return home. When the war finally did end in 1918, Pope Benedict was excluded from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, despite his entreaties to be made part of the talks. Afterward, the pope expressed dissatisfaction with the terms forced upon Germany. Benedict XV later helped develop a Code of Canon Law and worked on behalf of Armenian refugees. He died of influenza in 1922. Among his last words were, "We offer our life to God on behalf of the peace of the world." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIMOTHY%20WILLIAMS&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIMOTHY%20WILLIAMS&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 15:07:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 11:07:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says Message-ID: Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/health/20fat.html April 20, 2005 By [1]GINA KOLATA People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today. The researchers - statisticians and epidemiologists from the National Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - also found that increased risk of death from obesity was seen for the most part in the extremely obese, a group constituting only 8 percent of Americans. And being very thin, even though the thinness was longstanding and unlikely to stem from disease, caused a slight increase in the risk of death, the researchers said. The new study, considered by many independent scientists to be the most rigorous yet on the effects of weight, controlled for factors like smoking, age, race and alcohol consumption in a sophisticated analysis derived from a well-known method that has been used to predict cancer risk. It also used the federal government's own weight categories, which define fatness and thinness according to a "body mass index" correlating weight to height, regardless of sex. For example, 5-foot-8 people weighing less than 122 pounds are underweight. If they weighed 122 to 164 pounds, their weight would be normal. They would be overweight at 165 to 196, obese at 197 to 229, and extremely obese at 230 or over. Researchers had a full gamut of responses to the unexpected findings, being reported today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Some saw the report as a long-needed reality check on what they consider the nation's near-hysteria over fat. "I love it," said Dr. Steven Blair, president and chief executive of the Cooper Institute, a research and educational organization in Dallas that focuses on preventive medicine. "There are people who have made up their minds that obesity and overweight are the biggest public health problem that we have to face," Dr. Blair said. "These numbers show that maybe it's not that big." Others simply did not believe the findings. Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, which is affiliated with Harvard, pointed to the university's own study of nurses that found mortality risks in being overweight and even greater risks in being obese. (That study involved mostly white women and used statistical methods different from those in the newly reported research.) "We can't afford to be complacent about the epidemic of obesity," Dr. Manson said. In fact, the new study addressed the risk only of death and not of disability or disease. There has long been conclusive evidence that as people move from overweight to obese to extremely obese, they are more and more likely to have diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. But the investigators said it was possible that being fat was less of a health risk than it used to be. They mentioned a paper, also being published today in the journal, in which researchers including Dr. Edward W. Gregg and Dr. David F. Williamson, both of the C.D.C., report that high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels are less prevalent now than they were 30 or 40 years ago, largely because of breakthroughs in medication. As for whether there is truly a mortality risk in being underweight, Dr. Mark Mattson, a rail-thin researcher at the National Institute on Aging who is an expert on caloric restriction as a means of prolonging life, said it was not clear that eating fewer calories meant weighing so little, since some people eat very little and never get so thin. In any event, while caloric restriction may extend life, Dr. Mattson said, "there's certainly a point where you can overdo it with caloric restriction, and we don't know what that point is." Some statisticians and epidemiologists said that the study's methods and data were exemplary and that the authors - Dr. Williamson and Dr. Katherine M. Flegal of the disease control centers, and Dr. Barry I. Graubard and Dr. Mitchell H. Gail of the cancer institute - were experienced and highly regarded scientists. "This is a well-known group, and I thought their analysis and their statistical approaches were very good," said Dr. Barbara Hulka, an emerita professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina. The study did not explain why overweight appeared best as far as mortality was concerned. But Dr. Williamson said the reason might be that most people die when they are over 70. Having a bit of extra fat in old age appears to be protective, he said, giving rise to more muscle and more bone. "It's called the obesity paradox," Dr. Williamson said. But, he said, while the paradox is real, the reasons are speculative. "It's raw conjecture," he said. The new study comes just 13 months after different researchers from the disease control centers published a paper warning that obesity and overweight were causing an extra 400,000 deaths a year and were poised to overtake smoking as the nation's leading preventable cause of premature death. That conclusion caused an uproar, and scientists, particularly those who examine the consequences of smoking, questioned the study's methods. In January, the agency's researchers corrected calculation errors and published a revised estimate of 365,000 deaths. Now the new study says that obesity and extreme obesity are causing about 112,000 extra deaths but that overweight is preventing about 86,000, leaving a net toll of some 26,000 deaths in all three categories combined, compared with the 34.000 extra deaths found in those who are underweight. Dr. Donna Stroup, director of the Coordinating Center for Health Promotion at the C.D.C., noted that the previous study had used different data and different methods of analysis. "Counting deaths is not an exact science," Dr. Stroup said. For now, said Dr. Dixie Snider, the disease control centers' chief science officer, the agency will not take a position on what is the true number of deaths from obesity and overweight. "We're too early in the science," Dr. Snider said. Dr. Stroup said of the new findings, "From a scientific point of view, they are a step forward." But she added that the agency considered illness that is linked to obesity to be just as important as the number of deaths. "Mortality really only represents the tip of the iceberg of the magnitude of the problem," she said. Estimating deaths due to overweight or obesity is a statistical challenge, the study's investigators said. The idea is to determine, for each person in the population, what would be the risk of dying if that person's weight were normal. For people whose weight is already in that range, there would be no change in the risk, of course. But what happens to the risk for people whose weight is above or below the normal range? The idea is to control for factors like age, smoking and gender, and ask what would happen if only the weight were changed. Now that the researchers have done their analysis, Dr. Williamson said, the message, as he sees it, is that perhaps people should take other factors into consideration when deciding whether to worry about the health risks of their weight. Dr. Williamson, who is overweight, said that "if I had a family history - a father who had a heart attack at 52 or a brother who developed diabetes - I would actively lose weight." But "if my father died at 94 and my mother at 97 and I had no family history of chronic disease," he said, "maybe I wouldn't be as concerned." Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, had another perspective. "The take-home message from this study, it seems to me, is unambiguous," Dr. Glassner said. "What is officially deemed overweight these days is actually the optimal weight." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=GINA%20KOLATA&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=GINA%20KOLATA&inline=nyt-per From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 20 15:50:26 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 08:50:26 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Benedict XVI Package Message-ID: <01C54585.FFD6EED0.shovland@mindspring.com> What's the science connection? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 8:01 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; Human Biodiversity Subject: [Paleopsych] Benedict XVI Package Here's a whole bunch of articles, mostly from the New York Times and wire services picked up by the NYT. The view I'd most like to get is that of David Sloan Wilson, the champion of group selection in biology in _Unto Others_ (co-authored with Elliott Sober) and, more recently, of functionalism in religion in _Darwin's Cathedral_. He once called himself "an atheist, but a nice atheist" and holds that religions (at least those that have survived) have on the whole done good. (I'm still dubious.) He has dealt with the apparently odd fact that stricter religions attract more adherents, and Benedict may indeed make Catholicism more strict. We shall see. Watch for increased competition for strictness from Protestants and Mormons. The ethnic angle should we watched carefully. Though Roman Catholicism no longer has a White majority, this is the first time that the possibility of a non-White pope has been broached. It is taboo for Europeans to rejoice in winning the ethnic competition; instead look for an increase in the numbers of European Roman Catholics, or at least a slowing in their erosion. I'll provide more coverage tomorrow. I a single commentator says anything you could not have predicted, let me know at once! ---------------------- The New York Times > International > International Special > In St. Peter's, Concerns Over His Doctrine http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20pope.html April 20, 2005 By IAN FISHER VATICAN CITY, April 19 - Roman Catholic cardinals reached to the church's conservative wing on Tuesday and chose as the 265th pope Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a seasoned and hard-line German theologian who served as John Paul II's defender of the faith. At 5:50 p.m. in Rome, wispy white smoke puffed from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals were meeting, signaling that the new pope had been chosen, only a day after the secret conclave began. His name was not announced until nearly an hour later, after the great bell at St. Peter's tolled, and the scarlet curtain over the basilica's central balcony parted and a cardinal stepped out to announce in Latin, "Habemus papam!" "Dear brothers and sisters," Cardinal Ratzinger, 78, said, speaking Italian in a clear voice, spreading his arms wide over the crowd from the balcony. "After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard." He announced his name as Benedict XVI. The unusually brief conclave seemed to suggest that Cardinal Ratzinger was a popular choice inside the college of 115 cardinals who elected him as a man who shared - if at times went beyond - John Paul's conservative theology and seemed ready to take over the job after serving beside him for more than two decades. It was not clear, however, how popular a choice he was on St. Peter's Square. The applause for the new pope, while genuine and sustained among many, tapered off decisively in large pockets, which some assembled there said reflected their reservations about his doctrinal rigidity and whether, under Benedict XVI, an already polarized church will now find less to bind it together. "I kind of do think he will try to unite Catholics," said Linda Nguyen, 20, an American student studying in Rome who had wrapped six rosaries around her hands. "But he might scare people away." Vincenzo Jammace, a teacher from Rome, stood up on a plastic chair below the balcony and intoned, "This is the gravest error!" Pope Benedict's well-known stands include the assertion that Catholicism is "true" and other religions are "deficient"; that the modern, secular world, especially in Europe, is spiritually weak; and that Catholicism is in competition with Islam. He has also strongly opposed homosexuality, women as priests and stem cell research. His many supporters said they believed that the rule of Benedict XVI - a scholar who reportedly speaks 10 languages, including excellent English - would be clear and uncompromising about what it means to be a Roman Catholic. "It would be more popular to be more liberal, but it's not the best way for the church," said Martin Sturm, 20, a student from Germany. "The church must tell the truth, even if it is not what the people want to hear. And he will tell the truth." While Pope Benedict's views are upsetting to many Catholics in Europe and among liberal Americans, they are likely to find a receptive audience among the young and conservative Catholics whom John Paul II energized. His conservatism on moral issues may also play well in developing countries, where the church is growing rapidly, but where issues of poverty and social justice are also important. It is unclear how much Cardinal Ratzinger, a man with limited pastoral experience, and that spent in rich Europe, will speak to those concerns. Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, he was the son of a police officer. He was ordained in 1951, at age 24. He began his career as a liberal academic and theological adviser to at the Second Vatican Council, supporting many efforts to make the church more open. But he moved theologically and politically to the right. Pope Paul VI appointed him bishop of Munich in 1977 and appointed him cardinal in just three months. Taking the chief doctrinal job in 1981, he moved with vigor to squash liberation theology in Latin America, cracked down on liberal theologians and in 2000 wrote the contentious Vatican document "Dominus Jesus," asserting the truth of the Catholic belief over others. Despite views his opponents consider harsh, he is said to be shy and charming in private, a deeply spiritual and meditative man who lives simply. "He's very delicate, refined, respectful," Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, a retired top Vatican official who had worked closely with Cardinal Ratzinger, said in an interview on Tuesday night. "He's very approachable. He's open to everyone." With their choice, cardinals from 52 countries definitively answered several questions about the direction of the Roman Catholic Church at the start of its third millennium. They did not reach outside Europe, perhaps to Latin America, as many Vatican watchers expected, to reflect the growth of the church there and in Asia and Africa, prompting some disappointed reactions from Latin America on Tuesday. They did not choose a candidate with long experience as a pastor, but an academic and Vatican insider. They did not return the job to Italy, which had held the papacy for 455 years before a Pole, Karol Wojtyla, was elected John Paul II in 1978. They also did not chose a man as young as John Paul II, who was only 58 when elected. Cardinal Ratzinger turned 78 last Saturday, the oldest pope chosen since Clement XII in 1730. This has led to some speculation that cardinals chose him as a trusted, transitional figure. John Paul was virtually unknown when he was selected, but Cardinal Ratzinger's record is long and articulate in a prolific academic career, followed by a contentious tenure as John Paul's doctrinal watchdog. Most cardinals know him well from visits to Rome, and he won admiration among many colleagues for his crucial role in administering the church in the last stages of John Paul's illness. In many ways, the cardinals picked John Paul's theological twin but his opposite in presence and personality. Where John Paul was charismatic and tended to soften his rigid stands with human warmth, Cardinal Ratzinger is bland in public and pulls few punches about his beliefs. President Bush on Tuesday recalled the cardinal's homily at John Paul's funeral, saying, "His words touched our hearts and the hearts of millions." Speaking in Washington, he called Benedict a "man of great wisdom and knowledge." Only on Monday, as the cardinals attended a Mass before locking themselves inside the Sistine Chapel to select a new pope, Cardinal Ratzinger took a moment as dean of the college of cardinals and celebrant of the Mass to repeat his fears about threats to the faith. In retrospect, some observers said, he was laying out what may be the focus of his papacy. "Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as fundamentalism," he said at the Mass. "Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching,' looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards." Cardinal Ratzinger has often criticized religious relativism, the belief - mistaken, he says - that all beliefs are equally true. "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires," he added. In his brief, first address as Benedict XVI on Tuesday from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, he did not speak of theology or of a specific direction for the church. "I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and act even with insufficient instruments," he said. "And above all, I entrust myself to your prayers." Benedict XVI had dinner on Tuesday night with the other cardinals at the Santa Marta residence, built by John Paul II to provide more comfortable lodgings for cardinals while locked down in the conclave, said Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the chief Vatican spokesman. He is to be installed in a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica on Sunday. The conclave that selected him on the fourth ballot was among the shortest of the last century - the shortest, the election of Pius XII in 1939, took only three - and the speed caught many experts by surprise. Cardinal Ratzinger has been a divisive figure within the church, and reports before the conclave spoke almost unanimously about blocs of more progressive cardinals lining up against him. In theory, cardinals are not allowed to discuss the inner workings of the conclave, but in reality, details seep out later. Several cardinals are expected to give interviews or news conferences on Wednesday, and may provide some limited glimpses in the dynamic that picked Cardinal Ratzinger - and with such speed. But already, there was at least one voice of careful reservation. Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Belgium, one of the most liberal cardinals, who has been critical of Cardinal Ratzinger, skipped the dinner specifically to hold a news conference. He would not disclose his own vote and did not criticize Cardinal Ratzinger directly. But he was not effusive in his praise, either, saying that he had "a certain hope" based on the choice of the name Benedict. Benedict XV, who appealed for peace during World War I, "was a man of peace and reconciliation," Cardinal Danneels said. But, he said, "We have to see what's in a name." He also warned that being the spiritual leader of one billion Roman Catholics was different from parsing out theological matters. "When you are a pope, you have to be the pastor of every one and everything which happens in the church," he said. "You are not specialized." But Cardinal Edward M. Egan, archbishop of New York, said Tuesday that the process involved a "certain amount of tension and concern" but that the conclave made the right choice. "I believe that the Lord has something to do with it," Cardinal Egan said at a news conference here. "This man is going to do a splendid job." Asked if Cardinal Ratzinger would adopt a harsher tone as pope, Cardinal Egan asked a reporter: "Why don't you and I get together in one year and we'll talk about it. I have every hope that the tone is going to be the one of Jesus Christ." Elisabetta Povoledo of The International Herald Tribune and Jason Horowitz contributed reporting for this article. ------------------ The New York Times > International > International Special > News Analysis: An Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20assess.html An Evangelizer on the Right, With His Eye on the Future By LAURIE GOODSTEIN VATICAN CITY, April 19 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was such a close ally of Pope John Paul II that he could have easily chosen the name John Paul III. But those who expect the 78-year-old Pope Benedict XVI simply to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor may be in for a surprise, say those who know him. They say that he knows he may have a short papacy and that he intends to move quickly to put his own stamp on the Roman Catholic Church and to reverse its decline in the secular West. As John Paul's alter ego, the new German pope has been training for this role for decades and knows how all the levers of Vatican power work. "This man is not just going to mind the store," said George Weigel, a conservative American scholar who knows both the former and new popes. "He is going to take re-evangelization, especially of Europe, very seriously. I think this represents a recognition on the part of the cardinals that the great battle in the world remains inside the heads of human beings - that it's a battle of ideas." Sandro Magister, a Vatican expert at the Italian magazine L'Espresso, said he expected a thorough housecleaning not unlike the Gregorian reforms of the church begun under Pope Gregory VII, who ruled from 1073 to 1085. Those reforms led to the end of both the married clergy and the buying and selling of spiritual favors like indulgences. Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken and written forcefully about his sense of the threats to the church, both internal and external. Whether they are dissident theologians, pedophile priests, "cafeteria Catholics" who disregard the ban on artificial birth control, or "celibate" third world clergy who keep mistresses, the new pope's solution is likely to be a more forceful reiteration of the church's creed and the necessity of either living by it, or leaving it. "How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely" to God, he said in Rome on Good Friday last month. He has singled out the spread of "aggressive secularism," especially in Europe and North America. In the homily he gave Monday, just before the cardinals entered the conclave in which he was chosen, he warned about rival forms of belief, from "a vague religious mysticism" to "syncretism" to "new sects," a term that Catholics in Latin America use to refer to evangelical and Pentecostal churches. The new pope is not likely to yield on the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, whether dealing with other Christian denominations or Islam. In a document issued in 2000, "Dominus Jesus," the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that Cardinal Ratzinger headed said the Catholic Church was the only true path to salvation and called other faiths "gravely deficient." In choosing the name Benedict, this German theologian linked himself not only to a long line of former popes but also to St. Benedict, the founder of Christian monasticism, who was proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1964 to be the "patron and protector of Europe." The monasteries that St. Benedict founded - and for which he wrote the "Rule," the basic guide to monastic living - became the keepers of culture and piety in medieval Europe. Church scholars suggested that Pope Benedict XVI may be positioning himself as the new savior of Europe, rescuing the Continent from what he called in his homily on Monday "the dictatorship of relativism." Cardinal Justin Francis Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, said of the new pope at a news conference on Tuesday, "He intends to do everything he possibly can to promote the well-being of Europe," adding that what the Continent most needs is "to prefer nothing to the love of Christ - Christocentrality." Jim McAdams, professor of political science and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame University, said the new pope's form of conservatism should not be conflated with that of American political conservatives. Faith, he said, "is essential to his claims that there is a doctrine of the church, it is clear, Catholics should abide by it, and people who feel that that doctrine is negotiable are wrong." The selection of Cardinal Ratzinger dashed the hopes of those Catholics who had wanted a new pope to adopt a whole slate of different solutions to the problems of the church, perhaps permitting married priests, women as deacons and softer strictures against birth control and divorce. "The election of a new pope is a moment of hope for the church, and this choice is nothing but backwards looking," said Paul F. Lakeland, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Cardinal Ratzinger functioned for years as the purifier of the church's doctrine. For 24 years he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from which he issued condemnations of renegade theologians, of modern reinterpretations of church liturgy and of the idea that all religions have an equal claim to the truth. In recent years, as John Paul grew more and more debilitated by Parkinson's disease and old age, Cardinal Ratzinger increasingly became the power behind the throne. Bishops from every country who visit the Vatican on their regular visits spent more time with him than they did with the pope, according to cardinals and Vatican staff. It may have been this familiarity that led the cardinals to turn to Cardinal Ratzinger as their anchor in this time of transition. The Rev. Joseph Augustine Di Noia, an American priest who serves as under secretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told reporters last week that he often observed the cardinal listening intently to bishops on their visits presenting him with all kinds of conundrums on how to apply the faith in their countries. Cardinal Ratzinger would respond with "remarkable profundity" and "distinctions that are immediately illuminating," Father Di Noia said. But it is already clear that the new pope is likely to deepen the fissures that exist in the church. The reactions from the crowd in the first few minutes after Pope Benedict appeared on the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square suggested the divisions he will have to confront. "As soon as I heard the name, I had a letdown, sinking feeling that this man is not going to be good for the church," said Eileen, a 53-year-old Catholic from Boston. She said she was afraid to give her last name because she was active in her parish and did not want to cause any problems for her priest, or jeopardize her daughter's imminent church wedding. A few steps away, the Rev. M. Price Oswalt, a priest who serves two parishes in Oklahoma City, was exultant about the cardinals' choice. "He'll correct the lackadaisical attitudes that have been able to creep into the lives of Catholics," he said. "He's going to have a German mentality of leadership: either get on the train or get off the track. He will not put up with rebellious children." ------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20crowd.html April 20, 2005 Crowd's Praise Tinged With Questions About Pope's Conservatism By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL International Herald Tribune VATICAN CITY, April 19 - When the great bell of St. Peter's finally rang to confirm that a new pope had been chosen, just after 6 p.m., it seemed that all of Rome ran to the Vatican to see who would appear on the balcony of the basilica. With the bell, Via Della Conciliazione, the boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square, was transformed into a strange kind of work-day marathon, choked with runners in business suits lugging briefcases and young mothers pushing strollers along the stones. "The whole building emptied and we just moved as fast as we could, risking a heart attack," Giovanni Simeone, an architect, said, still panting. Patrizia Maglie, a co-worker, said, "The only thing that makes Romans run this way is a new pope - or a soccer match." Many were relieved that they had made it in time, after watching with uncertainty as the smoke rising from the Sistine Chapel chimney gave confusing signals for 10 minutes on their television screens - seeming to blow white, then grey, then white again. The many networks that had had their cameras trained on the chimney since Monday were at a loss to interpret what they saw. CNN called the smoke black (no new pope), while ANSA, the Italian news agency, called it white (new pope elected). The crowd that had decided to wait out the election in St. Peter's Square alternately cheered and stood silently in confusion, as the mixed signals poured out against the unhelpful gray sky of a drizzly evening. But then, the bell's clarifying ring cut through the confusion - and thousands of Romans took off. It had been the specific order of Pope John Paul II that a bell be added to the traditional announcement to clarify the smoke's sometimes ambiguous message - an important posthumous intervention, it turned out. Forty minutes after the first sign of the late afternoon smoke, the tens of thousands who had answered the bell's call shouted, "Bravo! Bravo!" in response to the announcement from the basilica's balcony by Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez that a new pope had been chosen. But the reaction was decidedly mixed when the name Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was announced. Some slapped the air and shouted jubilantly. Some stood by silently and listened. Some even shook their heads. A small number of people wandered out of the square, as if in protest, when the new pope spoke. Those who supported the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, tended to see him as a force of continuity with his popular predecessor, John Paul II, even if they were not too enamored or familiar with the new pope himself. "I'm happy because I respect the ideas and ideals of the previous pope, and I think he'll continue just like the old one," said Alberto Napoleone of Rome. Indeed, the most powerful reaction during the new pope's short speech came when he mentioned John Paul II's name, to a chorus of enthusiastic whoops and cheers. The reception for Benedict XVI himself seemed more measured. "This is certainly the most conventional choice, and I would have liked to see more a break with tradition," shrugged Simona Corso, a university teacher in Rome, who said she would have preferred the election of someone from Africa or Latin America. But afterward, some well-known Italian conservatives strode through the crowd with new confidence, clearly overjoyed with the turn that history had taken. "Before, we felt like orphans, but now again we have someone we can look to!" said Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian government minister whose appointment to the European Commission was rejected last year after he called homosexuality a sin. He said he was thrilled with a choice that he saw as bringing the church back to its core moral teachings. Calling the new pope "the greatest living theologian and one of the greatest intellectuals of Central Europe," Mr. Buttiglione said Cardinal Ratzinger had been the "point of reference" in his own intellectual development. But others in the crowd were openly distressed. "I am very, very upset because I was hoping for a more open pope, one who was more open to the problems of the world, and also on things like women's rights," Paolo Tasselli, a retired bank official, said as he listened to the new pope's speech. He said he had loved Pope John Paul II, who he felt was conservative on some issues but "open to the world" in other ways. He said of Benedict XVI, "I don't think this new one can do that." The crowds filed quickly and quietly out of the square after the new pope's short speech - a marked contrast to the raucous pilgrims who remained in St. Peter's for hours and days after John Paul II died, even after he was finally buried. Some here on Tuesday were tourists eager to partake of Rome's other treats. "We were at the Pantheon, and when we heard the bells start ringing and that there was a new Pope, we jumped in the first cab we could find and somehow managed to get over here," said Shelly Charles of Ogden, Utah. "It's been incredible to see history happen." But most were Catholics who, as they shuffled back into their lives, were hard-pressed to explain the silence that fell upon the square on Tuesday night. Beloved John Paul was gone and uncertainty lay ahead. It was partly the rain, but partly also the abrupt news of a new pope. Many said they needed time to digest it all. Elisabetta Povoledo of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting for this article. --------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20germany. html April 20, 2005 New Pope's Birthplace Becomes a Center of Pride, With Muted Misgivings at the Edges By MARK LANDLER MARKTL AM INN, Germany, April 19 - Here in the tiny birthplace of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the townspeople turned out on Tuesday to celebrate his ascension to the helm of the Roman Catholic Church in genuine Bavarian style: with a thumping brass band and frothy glasses of beer. The simple get-together of 150 or so residents could not have been more unlike the majestic ritual at the Vatican, where Cardinal Ratzinger's election as Pope Benedict XVI was announced to the world. Only the band members, in their felt hats and feathers, provided any plumage. But people here said their native son would have felt at home among the police officers, carpenters, laborers and homemakers. "He is a highly intelligent man, and kind, but he is also very simple," said Joseph Gassner, 68, the director of a local museum. "He is an old Bavarian, and we are happy that he will rule in Rome." The son of a policeman, Joseph Ratzinger was born in this river town on April 16, 1927. He lived in Marktl for only two years, before his family moved to another village nearer the Austrian border. His father's run-ins with local Nazi officials were said to have kept the family on the move. Still, Marktl seemed determined to stake its claim to the man who had become the first pope of German ancestry in nearly 500 years. Residents were eager to show visitors the house in which Cardinal Ratzinger was born. It is a handsome building with a peaked roof and a plaque next to the front door. The windows were dark on Tuesday night, their lace curtains illuminated by the glare of photographers' flashbulbs. Mr. Gassner said Cardinal Ratzinger visited Marktl occasionally, and in 1998 invited a delegation of 55 residents to visit Rome, where they were his guests for dinner. He also arranged an audience with Pope John Paul II. "He has a strong connection to this place," Mr. Gassner said. "We're in a part of Bavaria that is very Catholic." While the mayor planned the party before any white smoke was spotted, there was general astonishment here that Cardinal Ratzinger was actually selected. Several people said they had expected the College of Cardinals to choose a pope from Latin America or Africa. Others had bet on an Italian. Maria Spuderer, a 48-year-old homemaker, said she had goosebumps as she waited to learn the identity of the new pope. "Our hearts said one thing, but our heads said something else," she said. In the joyful din here, there were few dissenting voices concerning Cardinal Ratzinger or his conservative leanings. "The pope must set a path for the church that he believes in," said Engelbert Feldner, 69, the town's former brew master. "He can't bend with the times." The Bavarian countryside is Germany's Catholic and conservative heartland. Crucifixes can be found on the walls of classrooms here, and the conservative Christian Social Union has ruled for four decades. In other parts of Germany, where the politics are liberal and loyalty to the church is weaker, feelings about Cardinal Ratzinger are far more ambivalent. "A lot of Germans dislike the way he developed as a theologian," said Siegfried Wiedenhofer, a former student of Cardinal Ratzinger's who is a professor of systematic theology at the University of Frankfurt. "His criticism of his German colleagues created an atmosphere of suspicion." Some reformist Catholic groups reacted to Cardinal Ratzinger's election with withering criticism. "We think the election of Ratzinger is a catastrophe," said Bernd Gohring , the head of a group called Church From Below, in remarks reported by Reuters. "In the coming years there would be no reforms. I think that now even more people will turn their back on the church." Even in Munich, where he was archbishop, opinions were divided. While respected as a scholar, he did not win a popular following during his four years as archbishop and later a cardinal. People there recalled Cardinal Ratzinger as an aloof figure. He was known for communicating with the priests in his archdiocese through letters. He did not like conflict, and shied away from personal confrontation, according to people who knew him then. At a requiem Mass for Pope John Paul II at the Munich cathedral two weeks ago, there was little excitement that a hometown prelate was mentioned among the leading candidates for pope. "He would never be able to connect with young people like John Paul," said Christian Schuster, 35. "The pope had humility. Cardinal Ratzinger has a different image. He is a very powerful man." Other people interviewed outside the cathedral said Munich was proud of its former bishop. Some also suggested he might confound expectations that he will be doctrinaire and reactionary. "In his Vatican job, he had to be hard-line," said Martin Holzner, 44. "But as pope, he might take a different line." Among the young people who turned out here, Cardinal Ratzinger's intentions became grist for a lively debate. Rainer Buchmeier, 20, said he was sure the new pope would preach in the same orthodox style as John Paul II. Christof Six, 19, predicted a change in course. Mostly, the young men were jubilant that a German had been chosen for such a lofty office. "Germany in modern times has stood for war," Mr. Buchmeier said. "Now we can start a new history." Geography hangs heavily over Marktl. The town lies only a few miles from Braunau, the Austrian border town where Hitler was born. Asked whether he was relieved that his region would now be known for someone else, Mr. Buchmeier offered a quick response. "Braunau is Austria," he said. "Marktl is Germany." --------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20jews.html Jewish Groups Mostly Praise Pope as a Partner By ANDY NEWMAN Despite his wartime membership in the Hitler Youth movement, the German now known as Pope Benedict XVI won strong praise from Jewish leaders yesterday for his role in helping Pope John Paul II mend fences between Catholics and Jews. "I view him as our most serious partner in the Catholic Church, and he has been for the last 26 years," said Rabbi Israel Singer, chairman of the World Jewish Congress, which has led the fight for reparations for Holocaust survivors as well as the Jewish community's dialogue with the Vatican. As head of the Vatican office that enforced church doctrine under John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was a leading force behind the Vatican's recognition of Israel in 1993 and John Paul II's atonement at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2000, Rabbi Singer said. "I believe that he is the man who created the theological underpinnings for the good relations between Catholics and Jews during the last papacy," Rabbi Singer said. "He writes what's kosher and what's not kosher for Catholics. He said, 'Not only is it kosher to like Jews, but it's kosher to like the state of Israel.' " In his memoirs, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote of being forced into the Nazi youth movement when he was 14 in 1941, when membership was compulsory, and of being drafted into the German Army in 1943. "He's never denied the past, never hid it," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "His whole life has been atonement for those few years. His whole life is an open book of sensitivity against bigotry and anti-Semitism." Mr. Foxman cited a column that Cardinal Ratzinger wrote for L'Osservatore Romano in 2000 attacking Christian complicity in the Holocaust. "It cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians," the cardinal wrote. Mr. Foxman said that as a European of the World War II generation, Cardinal Ratzinger would probably be more sensitive to Jewish concerns than many other cardinals who were on the short list for the papacy. Many others expressed similar thoughts. "This pope, considering his historical experience, will be especially committed to an uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism," Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said in a statement. Rabbi David Rosen, the international director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, praised Cardinal Ratzinger's elevation as "an obvious confirmation of the ideological orientation of the previous papacy." "I don't think there's one single issue on which the new pope will depart from the previous pope," Rabbi Rosen said, "and that includes a strong commitment to Catholic-Jewish relations." Not surprisingly, more liberal Jews were less impressed with Cardinal Ratzinger, who was the force behind a 2000 church document, "Dominus Jesus," that called for new Catholic evangelization and argued that beliefs other than Christianity were lesser searches for truth. Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun, wrote yesterday on the magazine's Web site that the cardinal's criticism of other religions "is a slippery slope toward anti-Semitism and a return to the chauvinistic and triumphalist views that led the church, when it had the power to do so, to develop its infamous crusades and inquisitions." Greg Myre contributed reporting from Jerusalem for this article. ---------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20american .html For U.S. Catholics, a New Disagreement By DEAN E. MURPHY SAN FRANCISCO, April 19 - Roman Catholics poured into cathedrals and parish churches across the United States on Tuesday to celebrate Masses of Thanksgiving for the new pope, Benedict XVI, but the choice of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope prompted strong disagreement over what he would mean for the American church. Some liberal Catholics and interest groups criticized the choice as a lost opportunity to move the church in a less doctrinaire direction because the new pope, a conservative German who was close to the late John Paul II, has long held hard-line positions on many divisive issues, including birth control, homosexuality and the ordination of women. He has also suggested that a vote for a politician who supports abortion rights could be sinful, and that American bishops should deny such politicians Holy Communion. With no less fervor, many conservative Catholics praised Benedict as a strong leader whom they expected to shore up the church's teachings and serve as a formidable steward of traditional values. Some expressed hopes that the new pope would again require that Latin be spoken at Mass. Perhaps the only point not in contention was that at age 78, Benedict was likely to have a much shorter papacy than John Paul, who was 58 when he was selected in 1978, and therefore less opportunity to leave a lasting imprint. "Who could follow an act like that?" said Valerie Lienau of Moraga, Calif., who was among the 100 or so people who celebrated a thanksgiving Mass at the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, the seat of the archdiocese here. "This gives people a chance to catch their breath and absorb the legacy of Pope John Paul II. The important thing is who will be the pope after Cardinal Ratzinger." Ms. Lienau, a self-described orthodox Catholic, said she was overjoyed at the selection and drove 25 miles to San Francisco to mark the occasion in the grandeur of the hilltop cathedral. But when she excitedly phoned her son, who is gay, the response was a loud groan. "I'm not blind to the challenges," Ms. Lienau said. "I'm very sympathetic to the disappointment being felt." R. Scott Appleby, a historian on American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, said many Catholics were dismayed, stunned and depressed at the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger. "This is their worst nightmare come true," said Professor Appleby, who predicted that the selection could lead to a "winnowing" of the American church. "There is an idea associated with Cardinal Ratzinger and some American cardinals and bishops," Professor Appleby said, "that if we face a choice as Catholics between a pure, doctrinally orthodox church on the one hand and the current situation, which as they see it is a wide range of practice and belief and a moral laxity, they would choose a smaller, purer, more doctrinally orthodox church." Others were more cautious about making predictions. Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation's largest, said it was dangerous to assume that Pope Benedict XVI would act the same as Cardinal Ratzinger. He said that many popes had moved the church in surprising directions, and that Cardinal Ratzinger might temper his strict views on church teachings when confronted with the wider portfolio of the papacy. "We now know the who - Cardinal Ratzinger," Monsignor Vadakin said, speaking before the ornate doors of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. "The what is yet to unfold." Some groups critical of the church's handling of sexually abusive priests also said it was too early to draw conclusions. Suzanne Morse, communications director for Voice of the Faithful, which advocates a greater role for the laity in church governance, said that even when the new pope was a cardinal, his views on the abuse scandal were evolving. Ms. Morse said that when the first accusations were made against priests, Cardinal Ratzinger "seemed to think the problem was a media creation." She added, "But since then, we have seen small but significant signs that he has some sense of the scope of the clergy sexual abuse crisis." Even so, some victims of abuse by members of the clergy in Boston said they had been hoping for greater change. Bernie McDaid, who said he was abused by a priest from the ages of 11 to 13, said he feared that the selection of another European pope amounted to a circling of the wagons on the abuse problems. Mr. McDaid said an outsider, perhaps from Africa or South America, would have been more likely to shake things up. "They might have fear of what lies ahead, so they're staying with what they know," Mr. McDaid said. "They need drastically to change, now more so than at any point in history." Clem Boleche, 29, an Augustinian brother from the Philippines who is studying to be a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston, said his classmates at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology rushed into a room with a television to await the announcement of the new pope. When Cardinal Ratzinger appeared on the balcony, he said, the room grew silent. Brother Boleche said he and many others were hoping for someone less conservative and more open to debating church doctrine. "I'm honestly not surprised, but I think it would have been more exciting, more of a challenge, if he came from a different area," Brother Boleche said. "Latin America is alive. It is open, and is not stifling the spirit like many European churches." German-Americans acknowledge that the church is less vibrant in Europe, but it made them no less proud on Tuesday. Janien Guntermann, 37, a bartender at a German restaurant in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, said she cried when she heard of the election of Cardinal Ratzinger. "I had goose bumps immediately," said Ms. Guntermann, whose parents were born in Germany. "I was a little concerned about his age, but he seems to be in good health. We have to worry about right now, not what's going to happen in 10 years." Jim Glunz, the owner of Glunz Bavarian Haus, a German restaurant in the same neighborhood, said he was impressed with the new pope's name, which he associates with peace and healing. "This is the type of atmosphere we need in the world right now," Mr. Glunz said. "We need a lot of healing; we need a lot of forgiving." For every proud German-American, though, there was at least one Italian-American wondering if Italy's turn at the papacy would ever come again. Inside the Mola Club in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where Italian men gather to play cards and smoke cigars, a big-screen TV was tuned to RAI, a state broadcast from Italy. The room smelled like wet paint, much of the furniture was covered in plastic, and everything was pushed to the center of the room. Most of the men were out in the garden, but Sal Chimienti, 68, sat at a small table in front the TV. "I'm a Catholic," he said, explaining his devotion to the TV broadcast. As the ceremonies in Rome progressed, Mr. Chimienti was joined by Al Sale, 50, who runs a grocery store a block up Court Street. The new pope appeared on the screen, and Mr. Sale clapped, then said, "Still, we have no Italian pope." Reporting for this article was contributed by Michael Brick and Nicholas Confessore from New York, John M. Broder from Los Angeles,Gretchen Ruethling from Chicago, Robin Toner from Washingtonand Katie Zezima from Boston. ------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20watch.html THE TV WATCH White or Black? Maybe Beige? As Smoke Detectors, the Anchors Were All Too Fallible By ALESSANDRA STANLEY Infallibility is expected of popes and television anchors, so there was something arresting about the confused scramble to interpret the first creamy wisps of smoke floating from the Vatican chimney yesterday. "Darned if it doesn't look darker," said Charles Gibson of ABC, trying to square the appearance of white smoke with the absence of confirmation from the Vatican bell tower. All the networks went live at the first puff of smoke and as they waited, watched and deliberated (beige? charcoal?), none of the anchors could be certain of what they were seeing. "Can you hear bells?" Mr. Gibson asked David Wright, an ABC correspondent on the ground at St. Peter's. "I can't hear you," Mr. Wright replied. "Yes, but can you hear bells?" Mr. Gibson asked, more loudly. "I'm trying to tell people just what is going on and I don't have the faintest idea," Mr. Gibson said ruefully. Those long minutes of suspense and clammy uncertainty turned the conclusion of the conclave into a riveting spectacle - no other television event is as rare or as murky. Football announcers may not know which team will win the Super Bowl, but they know the rules, are fairly confident it will take place every year and can draw on previous experience. Oscar presenters have a similar advantage. Perhaps only Election Night in 2000 was as fraught with uncertainty and, even then, there were only two likely presidential candidates and no lifetime tenure. The conclave, moreover, offered the ultimate clash between modern technology and ancient Roman Catholic ritual - and 21st-century television thrives on it. Why else would a Roman Curia capable of announcing the death of John Paul II by text message let the cameras of the world divine that a new pope had been chosen by reading smoke signals and chimes. For years, networks from all over the world have been paying exorbitant rents for Roman terraces with an unobstructed view of the roof of St. Peter's Basilica. Satellite transmission, 24-hour cable news stations, cellular phones and other advancements were supposed to keep guesswork out of the process. As soon as the conclave began, CNN and CNN.com kept a Vatican ChimneyCam, live, on their screens as a multimedia smoke alert. And yet, yesterday, the crowds in St. Peter's Square seemed to know what had happened long before the television experts. Except for the speed with which the cardinals settled on a successor to John Paul II, there was little surprise to the election results. The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was a leading candidate going into the conclave, and one of the best-known cardinals. Or, as Chris Matthews put it on MSNBC, the new pope "is not a new kid on the block." So television reporters were ready and eager to describe what kind of pope the former cardinal was likely to be. Trying to sum up Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a guardian of strict orthodoxy and the leading opponent of dissent, John Roberts of CBS said he was sometimes known as "God's Rottweiler." On CNN, Wolf Blitzer cited descriptions of him as "Cardinal No." Reporters and analysts had boned up on Cardinal Ratzinger's biography, as well as papal history, and easily cited all kinds of Vatican arcana, from the number of previous German popes to the unexpected longevity of Leo XIII, who was elected in 1878 at the age of 68 as a "transitional" pope and instead reigned for 25 years. But many stumbled as they tried to call the pope by his correct new name. One called him "Cardinal Benedict XVI," another said "Pope Ratzinger" and still another referred to him as "John Benedict XVI." Television screens quickly filled with instant Ratzinger experts, priests and biographers who could describe his theology and personality (a good listener, tough on heretics). The words "humble" and "pastoral" quickly became buzzwords on every network. It was those few moments of uncertainty, however, that haunted those who had to hold forth, live, on the air, for minutes with no idea what color smoke was floating to the sky. Mr. Blitzer on CNN kept going back to the tape. "It's clearly white," he said. "In hindsight." ---------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20profile. html >From Wartime Germany to the Papacy By DANIEL J. WAKIN ROME, April 19 - The man who has become Pope Benedict XVI was a product of wartime Germany, but also of a deeply Roman Catholic region, Bavaria. As the Nazis strengthened their stranglehold on Germany in the 1930's, the strongly Catholic family of Joseph Ratzinger moved frequently among villages in rural Bavaria. "Unemployment was rife," he wrote in his memoir, "Milestones." "War reparations weighed heavily on the German economy. Battles among the political parties set people against one another." His father, he wrote, was a determined anti-Nazi. The Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger recalled, was his bulwark against the Nazi regime, "a citadel of truth and righteousness against the realm of atheism and deceit." But he could not avoid the realities of the day. In an episode certain to be scrutinized anew, Joseph Ratzinger was briefly and unenthusiastically a member of the Hitler Youth in his early teens, after membership became mandatory in 1941, according to a biography by John L. Allen Jr., who covers the Vatican for The National Catholic Reporter. In 1943, he and fellow seminarians were drafted. He deserted in 1945 and returned home, but was captured by American soldiers and held as a prisoner of war for several months, Mr. Allen wrote. Along his way to the papacy, he built a distinguished academic career as a theologian, and then spent nearly a quarter century as Pope John Paul II's theological visionary - and enforcer of strict positions on doctrine, morality and the primacy of the faith. In addition to his subtle and powerful intellect lies a spiritual, almost mystical side rooted in the traditional Bavarian landscape of processions, devotions to Mary and small country parishes, said John-Peter Pham, a former Vatican diplomat who has written about Cardinal Ratzinger. "It's a Christianity of the heart, not unlike that of the late pope's Poland," he said. "It's much different than the cerebral theology traditionally associated with German theology." His experience under the Nazis - he was 18 when the war ended - was formative in his view of the function of the church, Mr. Allen said. "Having seen fascism in action, Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesiastical totalitarianism," he wrote. "In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes." Totalitarianism, indeed, critics might say. They cite a long list of theologians Cardinal Ratzinger has chastised for straying from official doctrine; his condemnation of "relativism," or the belief that other denominations and faiths lead equally to salvation; his denunciation of liberation theology, homosexuality and feminism; his attempt to rein in national bishops conferences; his belief that the Second Vatican Council of the 1960's, which led to a near-revolutionary modernization of the church, has brought corrosive excesses. In effect, he has argued for a purer church at the expense of size. Hans Kung, one of the theologians who ran afoul of him, has called his ideology a "medieval, anti-Reformation, anti-modern paradigm of the church and the papacy." "To have him as pope will be considered by many Catholics to mean that the church is absolutely unable to reform itself," he said, "and that you are not to have any hope for the great process of the Second Vatican Council." Along with Bavaria and Nazism, a third influence helped shape the new pope: the leftist-inspired student unrest of the 1960's at the dawn of domestic German terrorism. He said it made him realize that, sometimes, there is no room for discussion. Even before becoming the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger wielded immense power. John Paul appointed him prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Holy Office. It was a deeply personal choice, made without his usual wide consultation. Their regular Friday discussions were said to be often freewheeling. The cardinal expanded the power of the role, ruling on a wide range of subjects. He was the first professional theologian in the job in more than a century, one equipped with a strong intellect and decisiveness. "This is a man who can deal with a lot of difficult material without becoming upset," said the Rev. Augustine Di Noia, who was the under secretary of the congregation. John Paul was said to have given Cardinal Ratzinger wide latitude; some called him the "vice pope." Other Vatican officials have suggested he served as a lightning rod, diverting criticism from the pope. As dean of the College of Cardinals, he was also the most powerful of them - their leader in the period after John Paul's death, the celebrant of his funeral Mass and their guide during the conclave. Behind his fearsome reputation lies a "a simple person," Father Di Noia said. "He chuckles. There's a simple childlike quality to him." Others speak of his dry sense of humor and modest demeanor. He is a diminutive man with deep-set eyes and white hair, and speaks Italian - the language of the Vatican - with a strong German accent. Unlike John Paul, he had little time for sports or strenuous activity, other than walks in the mountains. Until now, he lived in a small apartment near the Vatican and walked to work. He was perhaps the best-known cardinal, appearing at Vatican news conferences and known to many through his books and profiles of him in newspapers. Joseph Alois Ratzinger was born April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn in Bavaria, the youngest of three children. It was a part of a region long within the orbit of Salzburg, in Austria, Mozart's birthplace. A pianist, Cardinal Ratzinger expressed a great love for the composer. Partly because of his father's opposition to the Nazis, he wrote, the family moved four times before Joseph was 10. His mother was a hotel cook. He entered the seminary in 1939. After conscription, he served in an antiaircraft unit. He has said the unit was attacked by Allied forces in 1943, but he did not take part in that battle because a finger infection had prevented him from learning to shoot. After about a year in the antiaircraft unit he was drafted into the regular military, sent home and then called up again before deserting in late April 1945, according to Mr. Allen. He told Time magazine in 1993 that while stationed near Hungary, he saw Hungarian Jews being sent to death camps. In discussing his war experience, Mr. Allen wrote that he publicly expressed little of the explicit horrors that were around him; of the resistance to the Nazis by groups other than Catholics; or of the anti-Semitism of a prominent great-uncle. In the fall after the war ended in 1945, he returned to the seminary, where his brother, Georg - who was soon to be a prominent church music director - was also enrolled. The brothers were was ordained in 1951; two years later Joseph Ratzinger earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. His dissertation was titled "The People and House of God in St. Augustine's Doctrine of the Church." He earned his teaching licentiate in 1957. One of his most influential books was an early work from his university lectures, "Introduction to Christianity." He also wrote "Dogma and Revelation" and "Eschatology." In his view, the church does not exist so that it can be incorporated into the world, but so as to offer a way to live. It is not a human edifice but a divinely created one. And theology is not a dry academic exercise. Theologians should support church teaching to serve the faithful, not depart from it. His career as an academic began immediately after he was licensed. He spent two years teaching dogma and fundamental theology at the University of Freising and 10 years at the University of Bonn. He also had stints at the universities Munster and Tubingen. Alienated by the student protests at Tubingen, he moved to Regensburg in 1969. In a 1985 interview with The New York Times, he called the protests "a radical attack on human freedom and dignity, a deep threat to all that is human." Such actions taught him, he said, that to discuss terror was to collaborate with it. "I learned where discussion must stop because it is turning into a lie and resistance must begin in order to maintain freedom." Already in 1962, at 35, he achieved prominence at the highest levels of the church. A mutual acquaintance introduced him to Cardinal Joseph Frings, archbishop of Cologne. Cardinal Frings asked him to serve as his expert assistant at the Second Vatican Council. Father Ratzinger was credited with pushing Cardinal Frings to join French and other German bishops in standing firm against the Vatican Curia members who wanted to hold back council reforms. He also helped write a speech criticizing the Holy Office, the predecessor to his future home, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The speech called it outmoded and a "source of scandal to the world." Yet within a decade he came to express deep worry that the church was drifting to the left and losing its ecclesiastical rigor. In 1977, Pope Paul VI appointed him archbishop of Munich, and made him a cardinal in just three months. That same year, he met the future John Paul II, although some have said that they might have met at the Second Vatican Council. They both spent their youths under totalitarianism, but they also had a feeling that the church was adrift in a permissive sea, and that there was a need to return to the fundamentals. John Paul appointed him to the doctrinal congregation in 1981. Soon, he was taking action against liberation theology, the Marxist-inspired movement of priests in Latin America to help the poor by radical restructuring of society. The congregation denounced the movement in 1984; Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian liberation theologian, was summoned and silenced for a year. Other theologians were chastised. Charles E. Curran, a theologian at Catholic University of America, was barred in 1986 from teaching at a Catholic institution for refusing to recant his challenge to church teaching on sexuality. The Rev. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lanka theologian, was excommunicated in 1997 after being accused of challenging fundamental Catholic tenets like original sin and the Immaculate Conception. More than a dozen others have been disciplined by the congregation. With the end of the cold war, Cardinal Ratzinger turned his attention to fighting "relativism." His congregation's 2000 declaration "Dominus Jesus" - "Lord Jesus" - said other religions could not offer salvation, and were "gravely deficient." An uproar from other religious leaders followed, but John Paul publicly defended the document. Even as he celebrated the Mass leading into the conclave on Monday morning, Cardinal Ratzinger called relativism a "dictatorship" under which the ego and personal desires are paramount. One of his major efforts, which many say has been successful, was to sap national bishops' conferences of power - and even here he harkened back to the war. The German conference issued "wan and weak" condemnations of Nazism; the truly powerful documents, he said, "came from individual courageous bishops." ------------------ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20third.html In Selection of New Pope, Third World Loses Out By LARRY ROHTER RIO DE JANEIRO, April 19 - Not this time, not yet. Though a majority of Roman Catholics now live in Latin America, Africa and Asia, those among the faithful who were openly hoping for a pope from the developing world were disappointed. But that sense of popular disappointment stood in contrast to the notable enthusiasm for the selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger among the episcopal conferences in every country in this region, which speak in the name of Latin America's hundreds of bishops. Dominated by theological conservatives whom Pope John Paul II appointed, the conferences can now expect increased Vatican support in their efforts to counter two important challenges: evangelical Protestantism and the remnants of liberation theology. At the popular level, the initial response to the designation of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope was muted throughout Latin America, where 480 million of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics live. Television networks that had been covering the conclave live from Rome in anticipation that someone from this region might be chosen as pope quickly returned to their normal programming after the announcement. Newspapers and radio stations recalled that the new pope's nicknames include Cardinal No and the Grand Inquisitor, references to his former role as enforcer of church doctrine. "They were never going to elect a pope from Latin America or Africa," Guilherme Marra, a salesman here, lamented Tuesday afternoon. "The church is frozen in time," Mr. Marra, 37, complained. "Imagine electing a radical pope who is against condoms!" But among the church hierarchy, at least here in Brazil, which has the world's largest Roman Catholic population, the prospect of an even more doctrinaire and conservative successor to John Paul II has already emboldened traditionalists. Last week, for example, two cardinals criticized President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, saying that his beliefs were "not Catholic but chaotic" and that he was "not a model Christian." Like the leaders of several other Latin American countries, Mr. da Silva has taken positions that differ from church teachings on abortion, homosexuality, contraception and stem cell research. Cardinal Ratzinger's support for an unyielding stance on those and other issues would seem likely to increase the prospect of conflicts between church and state. It is not clear how Pope Benedict XVI intends to respond to the growth of Islam in Africa and Asia, where most of the increase in the number of Catholics during the papacy of John Paul II occurred. But the Catholic flock in those places tends to be more doctrinally conservative than in Latin America, and expressed fewer reservations about the choice of Cardinal Ratzinger. "You need a man of values," said Alfred Jantjies, a South African truck driver. "It's no good to have a man in the church who lets in wrong ideas, like women priests or priests getting married. A man of God must know he has taken a tough life and stick to it without trying to be all modern. The new pope sounds like a man who understands what worked in the past and won't try and change it." In the days before the conclave, some priests and bishops in Latin America made public their doubts about Cardinal Ratzinger's willingness to bring about the change that they thought the church needed. As John Paul II's right-hand man, he was often seen as the standard-bearer of what some critics in the region are calling "Wojtylism without Wojtyla," a reference to Karol Wojtyla, who became John Paul II. "I don't think he has the charisma of John Paull II with the masses, because he has always been an intellectual," said the Rev. Jesus Vergara, the director general of Centro Tata Vasco, a Jesuit institution in Mexico City. "For example, the trips of John Paul II throughout Latin America. Well, Latin America is going to feel a lot of grief because I don't think Ratzinger has the personality to win over most of the people in Latin America as John Paul did." As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger has been very much a known quantity to all cardinals and bishops and to many priests. In that capacity, he has played an important role in suppressing liberation theology, which draws on Marxism in its call for the church to follow a "preferential option for the poor" and transform unjust structures that perpetuate social inequality and poverty. "It seems to me that we need not a theology of liberation, but a theology of martyrdom," he said in 1997. In 1984, for instance, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who oversaw the Vatican decree that forced Leonardo Boff, a former Franciscan friar and a leading theoretician of liberation theology, to silence himself for "an opportune period." Dr. Boff, once a student of Cardinal Ratzinger, was deemed to lack "serenity" and "moderation" in his writings, which were said to be guided not by faith but by "principles of an ideological nature." Dr. Boff, who resigned as a cleric in 1992 and now teaches theology and ethics at a state university here, has complained of what he called "the arrogance and doctrinal fundamentalism" of John Paul II. But he has been an even sharper critic of Cardinal Ratzinger, describing him in a recent essay as "the exterminator of the future of ecumenism" and "the petrified expression" of the dominance of the Roman Curia within the church. With Cardinal Ratzinger at the helm of the church, conservatives can expect even greater support for movements like Opus Dei and Communion and Liberation, which are strong in places like Chile and Peru. In 2001, John Paul II appointed the first Opus Dei member to become a cardinal, Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, and seven of that country's bishops belong to Opus Dei. Bishop Raul Vera of Saltillo, who in the 1990's practiced the liberation theology in southern Mexico that was criticized by Pope John Paul II, said the cardinals had made a safe choice and turned a blind eye to the confusion in the Americas about what direction the church was taking. "The cardinals were thinking about security," he said. "And they were also thinking about someone who would complete the papacy of John Paul II." The new pope will also be under pressure from conservative clergy and lay people to act to brake the advance of evangelical Protestantism, which is on the march everywhere in Latin America. Here in Brazil the percentage of people declaring themselves as Catholics has fallen from more than 90 percent in 1970 to barely 70 percent, with a corresponding increase in the number of Protestants. Not only has the new pope criticized Protestantism on a doctrinal basis, he has also accused the World Council of Churches of "harming the life of the gospel" by offering financial assistance to what he called "subversive movements" in Latin America. While that may animate conservatives in the church, it may also increase tensions. "For some who would be looking for strong, centralized control, an orthodox church focused on orthodoxy in the faith, those people I think will be very happy," said Bishop Kevin Dowling, an official of the Southern African Bishops Conference. "For people who were looking for a church that would be open to debate and discussing and reflecting on some of the crucial issues of modern times, those people may have concerns." Michael Wines contributed reporting from Johannesburg for this article, and James C. McKinley Jr. from Mexico City. ----------------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20record.html The New Pope on the Issues On Secularism "We have moved from a Christian culture to aggressive and sometimes intolerant secularism," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said in November 2004 in an interview with the daily La Repubblica. "A society from which God is completely absent self-destructs. We saw that in the major totalitarian regimes of last century." On Other Religions He has repeatedly condemned "religious pluralism" and relativism, the idea that other religions can hold the way to salvation, and he has been instrumental in blocking the advance of priests who support such views. In 2000 the Vatican document "Dominus Jesus," in which Cardinal Ratzinger was the driving voice, called for a new Catholic evangelism and described other faiths as lesser searches for the truth. "This truth of faith does not lessen the sincere respect which the Church has for the religions of the world," the document said, "but at the same time, it rules out, in a radical way, that mentality of indifferentism characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that 'one religion is as good as another.' " The Sex Abuse Scandal The new pope has often denounced immorality within the church. He wrote the meditations read aloud during the Good Friday procession this year that condemned "filth" in the church. He has been scathing, however, about news coverage of the scandal. In December 2002, Zenit News Services quoted him as saying that fewer than 1 percent of priests were abusers and that American news coverage was a campaign against the church. "One comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church," he said. Women in the Church Cardinal Ratzinger wrote the church statement in August 2004 that repeated the prohibition against women as priests and criticized feminism as ignoring biological differences. It also called on governments to "manage conditions so that women do not need to neglect their families if they want to pursue a job." Sexuality and Marriage He has been a leading voice in the church for enforcing traditional doctrine on homosexuality, extramarital sex and artificial birth control, writing a letter to American bishops in 1988, for example, criticizing their acceptance of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, saying the American view supported "the classical principle of tolerance of the lesser evil." He has condemned efforts to legalize same-sex marriage as "destructive for the family and for society" and as a dangerous separation of sexuality and fertility. A church statement in July 2003 in which he was listed as principal author said: "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law." Abortion and Euthanasia Benedict has insistently spoken out against abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research and cloning. In his book "God and the World," published in October 2000, he painted a grim picture of the results of genetic research, writing, "There is a last boundary that we cannot cross without becoming the destroyers of creation itself." In July 2004, the magazine L'Espresso released part of an unissued memorandum to American bishops in which he gave guidelines for denying Communion to politicians who supported abortion rights. -------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/international/worldspecial2/20ptext.html April 20, 2005 TRANSCRIPT The First Words of the New Pope Following is a transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's address yesterday at the Vatican, as recorded and translated from the Italian by Reuters: Dear brothers and sisters: After the great Pope John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in the Lord's vineyard. I am comforted by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and act even with insufficient instruments. And above all, I entrust myself to your prayers. With the joy of the risen Lord and confidence in his constant help, we will go forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary, his most holy mother, will be alongside us. Thank you. ---------------- http://www.nytimes.com/ref/international/europe/POPE_CHRONOLOGY.html Key Dates in Papacy By THE NEW YORK TIMES The following articles highlight signifigant events during the papacy of Pope John Paul II going back to 1978. Also, [30]search previous articles on the pope. November 6, 1978 | PDF Format [31]After Two Conclaves, a Polish Pope By THE NEW YORK TIMES The election of Pope John Paul II, a strong-willed, vigorous Polish prelate and the first non-Italian head of the Roman Catholic Church in 455 years, has given a new dimension to the Vatican's global political role. January 27, 1979 | PDF Format [32]Over a Million in Mexico City Excitedly Greet the Pope By ALAN RIDING Pope John Paul II was given an exicted welcome by more than one million Mexicans when he arrived here today to open a crucial Latin American bishops' conference on his first trip abroad since becoming Pope four months ago. June 3, 1979 | PDF Format [33]Pope Gets Big Welcome in Poland, Offers Challenge to the Authorities By DAVID A. ANDELMAN Pope John Paul II returned home to Poland to a tumultuous weklcome today and immediately pledged the Roman Catholic Church to "serve people in the temporal dimension of their life and existence." October 3, 1979 | PDF Format [34]A City Opens Its Heart to John Paul By LAURIE JOHNSTON "Nasza Modlitwa Z Papiezem" (Our Prayer Is With the Pope), read the Polish-language banners and badges, whether from Westchester County or Wauekegan, Ill. "Totus Tuus Papa" (I Am All Yours, Pope), other banners promised in Latin. May 14, 1981 [35]Pope Is Shot in Car in Vatican Square; Surgeons Term Condition Serious By HENRY TANNER Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded yesterday as he was standing in an open car moving slowly among more than 10,000 worshipers in St. Peter's Square. April 14, 1986 [36]Pope Speaks in Rome Synagogue, in the First Such Visit on Record By E.J. DIONNE Jr. Pope John Paul II, embracing the world's Jews as ''our elder brothers,'' today paid the first recorded papal visit to a synagogue and condemned persecution and displays of anti-Semitism ''at any time and by anyone.'' December 2, 1989 [37]Gorbachev Visits Pope at Vatican; Ties Are Forged By CLYDE HABERMAN With an agreement to begin official relations and a pledge of expanded religious freedom for Soviet citizens, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev joined hands today with Pope John Paul II. May 3, 1991 [38]Papal Encyclical Urges Capitalism to Shed Injustices By PETER STEINFELS In a major encyclical addressing the economic questions raised by the upheaval in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pope John Paul II warned capitalist nations yesterday against letting the collapse of Communism blind them to the need to repair injustices in their own economic system. November 1, 1992 [39]Vatican Science Panel Told By Pope: Galileo Was Right By REUTERS Moving formally to rectify a wrong, Pope John Paul II acknowledged in a speech today that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning Galileo 359 years ago for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun. October 6, 1993 [40]Encyclical on Morality Doesn't Stifle Debate, Church Officials Say By PETER STEINFELS Roman Catholic officials at the Vatican and in the United States presented Pope John Paul II's new encyclical, "Veritatis Splendor" ("The Splendor of Truth"), in very conciliatory tones today. They insisted that his statement on fundamental moral theory was intended to encourage reflection and discussion of basic principles of morality, not to cut off debate. December 31, 1993 [41]Diplomatic Pact Signed by Israel and the Vatican By CLYDE HABERMAN Formally recognizing each other after decades of diplomatic aloofness and centuries of frequent Jewish-Catholic rancor, Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement today to establish diplomatic relations. March 27, 2000 [42]Ending Pilgrimage, the Pope Asks God for Brotherhood By DEBORAH SONTAG and ALESSANDRA STANLEY Pope John Paul II approached the Western Wall, reached out to touch its stone, and tucked into a crevice a note to God. April 24, 2002 [43]Pope Offers Apology to Victims of Sex Abuse by Priests By MELINDA HENNEBERGER Pope John Paul II opened meetings with American cardinals on clerical sex scandals with an apology to victims. June 6, 2003 [44]Vatican Traveler in Croatia, Reaching 100, Trips, That Is By FRANK BRUNI Pope John Paul II's visit to Croatia marks the 100th time that he has left Vatican City for a foreign adventure. April 3, 2005 | Obituary [45]Pope John Paul II, Church Shepherd and a Catalyst for World Change By ROBERT D. McFADDEN Pope John Paul II captivated much of humanity and reshaped the church with a heroic vision of a combative, disciplined Catholicism. References 30. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?srcht=s&srchst=&vendor=&query=%22P ope+John+Paul+II%22&date_select=full&submit.x=53&submit.y=11 31. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19781106pope.pdf 32. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19790127pope.pdf 33. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19790603pope.pdf 34. http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/19791003pope.pdf 35. http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/14/international/europe/14POPE.html 36. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/14/international/europe/14POPE.html 37. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/02/international/europe/02POPE.html 38. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/03/international/europe/03POPE.html 39. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/international/europe/01POPE.html 40. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/10/06/national/06POPE.html 41. http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/31/international/middleeast/31POPE.html 42. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/27/international/middleeast/27POPE.html 43. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/24/national/24VATI.html 44. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/06/international/europe/06POPE.html 45. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/03/international/europe/03pope.html --------------- The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: The New Pope http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/20wed1.html April 20, 2005 EDITORIAL The New Pope Since almost all of the cardinals who met to choose a new pope were appointees of John Paul II, it's probably not all that surprising that they chose someone as close as possible to the late pontiff. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the new Pope Benedict XVI, worked in close partnership with his predecessor and shared a belief in staunchly defending orthodox Catholic doctrine. There is no reason to expect any change, of course, for the church when it comes to matters like birth control, priestly celibacy or homosexuality. Those are issues of faith, properly left to the faithful. On matters of public policy, however, all of us have reason to be concerned about the opinions of the leader of more than one billion Catholics. For instance, as a cardinal, the new pope inserted himself last year into the political debate over allowing Turkey into the European Union. He was quoted as saying that adding Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation of 70 million people, would dilute the culture of what he considers a Christian continent and that Turkey should align itself instead with other Muslim nations. At a time when few things are more important than reconciling the Islamic world with the non-Islamic West, it would be extremely disturbing if the pope became an unnecessary wedge. It would also be out of keeping with the heritage of John Paul II - who, for all his doctrinal conservatism, was a man known for his outreach to people of other faiths. Like his predecessor, Benedict XVI is not Italian, but he continues the age-old tradition of European popes at a time when the church's membership is increasingly outside Europe. Its future appears to lie in the Southern Hemisphere, particularly in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, where Pope John Paul II was so beloved for his warm, fatherly personality. At least as a cardinal, Benedict XVI was more courtly than charismatic. He is an accomplished polyglot who is said to speak 10 languages, a theologian of great stature and a man who has had an academic as well as an ecclesiastical career. Anyone who heard his homage at the late pope's funeral had to have been impressed by his eloquence and devotion to John Paul. It is possible that the cardinals who picked him hoped he would protect the church's core from doctrinal corruption at a time when more and more of the faithful live in places where congregations are used to adapting their religions to reflect local customs and beliefs. The new pope is, at 78, not likely to serve long enough to have the kind of impact his predecessor had. But the church has seen men elected as supposedly transitional figures in the past turn into agents for sweeping change. The beloved Pope John XXIII was a recent example. And in an era as fraught with peril as today's, anyone who occupies the throne of St. Peter is given overwhelming power to do good and responsibility to prevent harm. Today, the world can only wish Pope Benedict XVI strength and inspiration as he takes on this extraordinary burden of spiritual, moral and political leadership. ---------------- Op-Ed Contributor: Rome's Radical Conservative http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/20novak.html By MICHAEL NOVAK Washington THE election of Cardinal Josef Ratzinger as pope was John Paul II's last gift to the Roman Catholic Church. No cardinal was closer to John Paul II, or talked at length with him more often. In his sermon at the memorial for the late pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, with perfect pitch, praised his predecessor's gifts in poetry, drama and art, and the sweep of his vision and accomplishments. The sermon was interrupted many times by hearty applause, especially from the young. Cardinal Ratzinger's selection as pope, however, has been less heartily welcomed by many commentators in Europe and the United States, who have quickly characterized him as an "authoritarian," a "watchdog" and, most peculiarly, a "neoconservative." But this is a severe misreading of the man and shows that his critics paid little attention to that sermon, how he connected with the million or so young people who turned out, led not by enthusiasm, but by a remarkable sense of prayer, devotion and respectful silence. The new pope will not be a clone of the old. I've spoken to him several times over the last 40 years, and he is a much shyer man, quieter, more like a country pastor or a scholar than like an actor striding across all history as his stage. When one approaches him, he seems to back up an inch or two in diffidence. His voice is much softer than one expects. Yet his ideas about the changes needed by church institutions are, on the face of it, more radical than those of John Paul II, who was much more focused on the world at large than on the structure of the church. Benedict XVI learned from the Germany of the 1930's that too much care to preserve Catholic institutions, without powerful intellectual commitment in many souls, brings disaster. He may be much more willing to let go of institutions he considers only tepidly Catholic than people expect. And more serious about the life of the soul. On the other hand, he has written of his joy in those Catholics who may be estranged, but still return at least for Christmas or Easter masses. He is glad that they draw nourishment from the liturgy. He holds that the Catholic church must always be reaching out, far beyond its present ranks, as the first tiny communities of Christians did, caring for the poor and orphans far outside their own small ranks. He does not want a small, closed church, but an expansive, open one - and a serious one. One of the characteristics the new pope much cherishes is "openness to the whole" - to the whole of history, to the whole of the human race. He boasts of never having wanted to start his own "school" of theological thought - though as a renowned professor in Germany he could well have done so - but rather to have opened the minds of his students to whole vast fields of human thought, in all traditions and places and times. He is praised for just such warmth and openness by Protestant and Jewish leaders with whom he has long been in scholarly conversation. (Again, his behavior is the very opposite of the stereotypes invented by his critics.) The world will discover the true man behind the stereotypes soon enough, for Cardinal Ratzinger has been one of the senior churchmen of recent times most open to journalists. He has allowed probing interviews lasting several days, all caught on dictating machines and published as best-selling books, organized by fine journalists like Vittorio Messori and Peter Seewald. We should not be surprised to see more publications from him as pope. Often Cardinal Ratzinger sharply portrayed a crucial parting of the ways: between modernizing the church, so as to seem to appeal to modern men at the expense of fidelity to the word of Jesus Christ; and being faithful to the word, at the expense of losing numbers. He has been quite fearless about choosing the second alternative. But he has also noted, correctly, that the parishes and dioceses that choose "modernization" usually end up losing numbers, while the more serious churches grow mightily. In particular, the churches of Africa and Asia, which have shown the most rapid growth, are the ones most intent on fidelity to the New Testament. One of Cardinal Ratzinger's central, and most misunderstood, notions is his conception of liberty, and he is very jealous in thinking deeply about it, pointing often to Tocqueville. He is a strong foe of socialism, statism and authoritarianism, but he also worries that democracy, despite its great promise, is exceedingly vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority, to "the new soft despotism" of the all-mothering state, and to the common belief that liberty means doing whatever you please. Following Lord Acton and James Madison, Cardinal Ratzinger has written of the need of humans to practice self-government over their passions in private life. He also fears that Europe, especially, is abandoning the search for objective truth and sliding into pure subjectivism. That is how the Nazis arose, he believes, and the Leninists. When all opinions are considered subjective, no moral ground remains for protesting against lies and injustices. Pope John Paul II thought the first issue of his time was the murderous politics that resulted from the separation of Europe into two by the Soviet Union. He saw it as chiefly a political issue, to be defeated by moral means. Pope Benedict XVI, like several of his namesakes back to St. Benedict himself (the founder of Western monasticism and patron saint of Europe), is more likely to take culture as the central issue of the new millennium: What is the culture necessary to preserve free societies from their own internal dangers - and to make them worthy of the sacrifices that brought them into being? Michael Novak is a theologian at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, most recently, of "The Universal Hunger for Liberty." ------------------ Opinion > Benedict XVI Greets the World (5 Letters) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/opinion/l20pope.html April 20, 2005 Benedict XVI Greets the World (5 Letters) To the Editor: With deep joy I offer Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger my warm congratulations and most fervent good wishes on his election to the papacy. Joseph Ratzinger is a man rich in spiritual passion, humility, self-denial and love for the cause of God and of man. As Pope Benedict XVI, he brings to the papacy a brilliant philosophical and, in particular, theological mind that has embraced a vision of broad spiritual and ecclesiastical horizons: personal holiness, missionary outreach combined with constant concern for unity, and the necessary integration of spirituality and institutional ministry. His episcopal motto, "Co-worker of the Truth," has guided him in his tireless and uncompromising efforts aimed at defending and promoting the Catholic faith and its morals against modern errors. The new pope has also worked to encourage studies aimed at increasing knowledge of the faith so that the new problems arising from the progress of science and civilization can be answered in the light of the word of God. The aim for which he has always strived has been to serve the truth, seek to know it ever more thoroughly and make it ever more widely known. Paul Kokoski Hamilton, Ontario, April 19, 2005 To the Editor: The new pope is known as humble but extremely doctrinaire. As a Vatican insider for many years, he will probably be averse to the necessary changes Catholicism needs to give it the dynamism necessary for the new millennium. I think that the cardinals chose this elderly and dogmatic leader as a transitional figurehead because of their tentative desire to adjust to the new global realities. I wish him well and only hope that he realizes that the real world is leaving the church behind. Anthony J. Frascino Audubon, N.J., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: Congratulations are in order to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on becoming Pope Benedict XVI. While he faces many new challenges with his new position, I would argue that there is nothing more important than reaching out to those of different faiths to find common ground. Analysis of most of the world's geopolitical problems can be traced to tensions between and among religions. The papacy brings a powerful microphone with it, I hope that Pope Benedict XVI uses it to advance new cooperation between and among different religions. Steven M. Clayton Ocean, N.J., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: One of the main reasons for the decline of Catholicism not only in Europe but also in Latin America, Canada and the United States and for the abandonment of the priesthood isn't mentioned in "Europeans Fast Falling Away From Church" (news article, April 19): the modernization of the Mass under Pope Paul VI more than 30 years ago. The new Mass simply does not convey spirituality or inspire awe. Let us hope that Pope Benedict XVI will be as assiduous in reinstating orthodoxy to public prayer and the liturgy as he has been in safeguarding doctrine. Marc A. Loera Inglewood, Calif., April 19, 2005 To the Editor: According to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the newly elected pope, "a dictatorship of relativism is being built that recognizes nothing as definite" (front page, April 19). But his insistence that the Catholic Church must defend itself from such moral chaos by adhering to age-old traditional Catholic teaching ignores the fact that the church has changed in many ways since its first incarnation - often wisely and of necessity. The doctrinal rigidity that the new pope has called for, with its selective emphasis on sexuality and sex-based prohibitions, is no less ideological than the secular movements he deplores and no more likely to save the church from the perils of modernity. Edward Cahill New York, April 19, 2005 ----------------- News bulletin from the Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.20 http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm Election of a Conservative Pope Signals Continuing Push for Orthodoxy, Scholars Say By THOMAS BARTLETT The election of a conservative German cardinal, the Rev. Joseph Ratzinger, as the new pope is a sign that the Vatican will continue to rein in theologians with unorthodox views, several Roman Catholic scholars said on Tuesday. But some cautioned against prematurely judging the new pontiff, who will be known as Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict, who has a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Munich, is a longtime academic who has taught at several German universities. And in his most recent role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a post to which he was appointed in 1981 by Pope John Paul II, who died this month, Benedict was often involved in issues related to Catholic higher education. "This is a guy who understands the system for Catholic colleges and universities," said J. Patout Burns, a professor of Catholic studies at Vanderbilt University. "I think that's going to be altogether to the good." Dennis M. Doyle, a professor of religious studies at the University of Dayton, said there was "a lot of coherence and sincerity" to Benedict's positions. Mr. Boyle said he expected that the new pontiff's views on most issues having to do with Catholic higher education will be similar to his predecessor's. "I think he's often presented stereotypically and unfairly -- though that's not to say I have the same positions he has," Mr. Doyle said. "I grew up intellectually in an atmosphere where people were telling me that he was the Catholic devil, but I've developed a real respect for him." Some scholars, like the Rev. Charles E. Curran, expressed "disappointment" at the selection. Father Curran was banned from teaching theology at the Catholic University of America in 1986 because of his opinions on topics like artificial birth control. The letter informing him of the Vatican's decision was written by Cardinal Ratzinger. "This is obviously a sign that the papacy will continue in the same general way as the papacy of Pope John Paul II," Father Curran, who is now a professor of human values at Southern Methodist University, said in a written statement. He noted that he continues to believe that "one can disagree with some noninfallible and noncore church teachings and still be a loyal Roman Catholic." For more conservative Catholics, like Patrick J. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, the election was a cause for rejoicing. "He is certainly not someone who has any hesitancy about telling individuals who are teaching things contrary to Catholic faith that they can no longer teach Catholic theology," Mr. Reilly said of the new pope. "And that's something that I think needs to happen, especially in the United States, and now very likely will." Mr. Reilly said the new pontiff has a reputation of being "more of a man of action" than John Paul II. Others cautioned against reading too much into that reputation. "I'm sure some folks will have doomsday scenarios, but I think that's very premature," said the Rev. Charles L. Currie, president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. "People are not totally a product of their pasts. We should wait and see what this pope says and does." Many saw the choosing of the name "Benedict" as an indication that the new pontiff was interested in healing divisions within the church. Pope Benedict XV, who led the Church from 1914 to 1922, was viewed as a theological moderate. "The selection of the name is a handing out of an olive branch, maybe," said the Rev. David J. Collins, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University. "Although at this point we're just reading the tea leaves." _________________________________________________________________ Background articles from The Chronicle: * [60]Mourning a Pope Who Stressed Orthodoxy (4/15/2005) * [61]A Theological Dissident Examines the Teachings of Pope John Paul II (4/1/2005) * [62]Who Is Catholic? (4/9/2004) * [63]Pulling Back the Veil (3/19/2004) * [64]Silence, Not Confrontation, Over the 'Mandatum' (6/14/2002) * [65]Bishops Approve Guidelines on Church Approval of Catholic Theologians' Teachings (6/29/2001) * [66]Liberal Roman Catholic Theologians Say Vatican Statement Won't Change Their Views (7/10/1998) * [67]Vatican Bars Theologians From Public Dissent on Official Teachings of the Catholic Church (7/4/1990) References 45. mailto:thomas.bartlett at chronicle.com 46. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chroni cle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 47. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/printable.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com /prm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 48. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/emailer.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/p rm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 49. http://chronicle.com/cgi2-bin/emailer.cgi?article=http://chronicle.com/p rm/daily/2005/04/2005042004n.htm 60. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i32/32a00101.htm 61. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i30/30a03101.htm 62. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i31/31a02601.htm 63. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i28/28a01201.htm 64. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v48/i40/40a01001.htm 65. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v47/i42/42a01201.htm 66. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/art-44.dir/issue-44.dir/44a01 001.htm 67. http://chronicle.com/che-data/articles.dir/articles-36.dir/issue-42.dir/ 42a00102.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. ----------------- Reuters > International > Germans Feel Both Pride and Doubts Over Pope http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pope-germany. html April 20, 2005 Germans Feel Both Pride and Doubts Over Pope By REUTERS Filed at 7:18 a.m. ET BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany reacted uncertainly on Wednesday to the choice of a native son as Pope, as pride mingled with doubts that the arch-conservative theologian reflected its self-image as secular, liberal and progressive. Emotions ranged from joy to outright dismay as the country digested the news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a former archbishop of Munich, had been elected Pope Benedict XVI. ``We are the Pope! It's a thousand-year sensation!'' blared best-selling tabloid Bild, removing the usual bare-breasted model from page one in deference to the new pontiff. But irreverent left-wing daily Tageszeitung took the opposite view, blacking out the entire front page apart from the words: ``Joseph Ratzinger new Pope. Oh, my God!'' The split reflected doubts, in Germany and elsewhere, over whether the Church's chief guardian of traditional doctrine for the past 23 years is charismatic, vigorous and open enough to tackle the social challenges of the 21st century. Ratzinger was elected Tuesday -- at 78, the oldest man to ascend the papal throne for three centuries. ``In my opinion the man is simply too old for this office,'' said Agnes Straubinger, a resident of Munich in Ratzinger's native Bavaria. ``How will the Catholic Church ever progress if it always bases itself in the past?'' The new pope's own brother, Georg, told ARD television he was taken aback by the news. ``I was shocked, that's right ... I'd thought that his age and not very stable health were a reason for the cardinals to choose someone else,'' he said. BREAK WITH PAST That the spiritual and moral authority of the papacy should be wielded by a German, 60 years after the Nazi Holocaust and World War II, is an idea that would once have been unthinkable. ``Many did not believe such a thing possible after the terrible events which began from Germany and which can still be felt,'' German Catholic Cardinal Karl Lehmann said. ``It is therefore an important sign of Germany's ultimate return into the worldwide community of peoples which is also reflected in the Catholic Church ... This can give our country heart in many respects.''anniversaries of the war's end and the liberation of the Nazi death camps have been reminding Germany of the Hitler era. Ratzinger says in his autobiography he was forced to join the Hitler Youth as a boy and was later summoned to the military. He avoided being enrolled into the SS, the Nazis' elite troops, by declaring his intention of becoming a priest. While politicians spoke of their pride at having a German pope, their reactions seemed low-key. Some Germans wonder if Ratzinger, often portrayed as distant and austere, is the right man for the times. He has made clear he sees no room for debate on vexed issues like the Church's opposition to women priests, abortion and homosexuality. That message is alien to many in a country that sees itself as liberal, progressive and open-minded, and where sex and religion are regarded as private individual issues. ``We consider the election of Ratzinger is a catastrophe,'' said Bernd Goehring of German ecumenical group Church from Below. ``It is very disappointing, even if it was predictable. We can expect no reform from him in the coming years.'' Germany's even split between Catholics and Protestants -- there are roughly 27 million of each in a country of 82 million -- further explains why the nation as a whole will not embrace Pope Benedict in the way that Poles did his predecessor, their countryman John Paul II. Catholics are mainly concentrated in the south and west and Protestants in the north -- a legacy of religious wars that swept the country and much of Europe in the 16th century after reformer Martin Luther broke with Rome. -------------- AP > International > New Pope Inspired by Anti - War Pontiff http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Whats-in-a-Name.html April 20, 2005 New Pope Inspired by Anti - War Pontiff By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:52 a.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The last pope named Benedict guided the church during the dark years of World War I, espousing a policy of strict neutrality and pushing for peace through negotiations. To honor him, Joseph Ratzinger chose the same name. Ratzinger told cardinals he wanted to pay homage to Benedict XV, known for tireless efforts to help refugees and reunite a world divided by what was then known as the Great War, an archbishop said. The new pontiff, Benedict XVI, felt his namesake ''had done much for reconciliation among peoples,'' Berlin Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky told reporters Tuesday after attending the conclave. Ratzinger also was close to the late John Paul II -- another peace-loving pontiff. John Paul openly opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Choosing a new name is a pontiff's first significant act in office, and it provides clues about the kind of leader he aspires to be. Benedict XV, pontiff from 1914 to 1922, had the difficult task of providing leadership for Roman Catholic countries pitted against each other during World War I, each claiming a just fight and praying for victory. His neutrality, and repeated protests against weapons like poison gas, angered both sides. He worked to help the war's innocent victims and came up with a seven-point peace plan. It failed, but some of his proposals were included in Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, the U.S. president's wartime call for peace in January 1918. The Italian-born pope was punished for his neutrality by being excluded from 1919 talks at Versailles outside Paris, where a peace treaty was signed. Elsewhere, his work was honored: Muslim Turkey erected a statue to him in Istanbul, honoring him as ''the benefactor of all people, regardless of nation or creed.'' John-Peter Pham, a Vatican expert who worked at the Holy See from 1992 to 2002, said Benedict XV was ''in many respects the first modern pope.'' ''Benedict XV's efforts to mediate the Great War as well as his humanitarian outreach, while also embracing the Orthodox and Muslims, is what was for his time an unprecedented choice,'' said Pham, now a professor at James Madison University. Ratzinger may also have been thinking of St. Benedict, a monk who died in the 6th century. The saint was the founder of Western monasticism. An 18th century saint of the same name, Benedict Joseph Labre, was a wandering pilgrim who ended up destitute. His feast day is April 16 -- Ratzinger's birthday. The newest Benedict turned 78 on Saturday. The Italian version of Benedict, ''Benedetto,'' means one who is blessed, and the name's Latin origin refers to a blessing. The reigns of some of the other Benedicts, however, ended violently. During the 10th century, Benedict V was forcibly deposed by the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, and Benedict VI was imprisoned and strangled by order of a rival pontiff, Boniface VII. Benedict is one of a number of papal names of holy origin such as Clement (''mercy''), Innocent (''hopeful'' as well as ''innocent'') and Pius (''pious''). John is the most popular, with 23 pontiffs taking that name. Two -- John Paul I and John Paul II -- used it in a double name. There have been 16 Gregories and, as of Tuesday, 16 Benedicts. ------ Associated Press Writers Daniela Petroff and Maria Sanminiatelli contributed to this report. --------------- AP > International > Israel Praises Pope Despite Past Nazi Ties http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Israel.html April 20, 2005 Israel Praises Pope Despite Past Nazi Ties By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 8:27 a.m. ET JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli politicians and rabbis on Wednesday praised new Pope Benedict XVI for his strong condemnations of anti-Semitism despite the pontiff's ties to the Nazi Party as a youth. Benedict's appointment received mixed reactions from Arabs in the Holy Land. Muslim leaders urged him to take a more active role in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while Greek Orthodox officials voiced hope he help unify various Christian denominations. As a German, Benedict sets off alarm bells for many Israelis, whose memories of the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews remain painfully vivid. Many wondered whether he would embrace Jews as warmly as his predecessor. ''There are good relations with him,'' Oded Ben-Hor, Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, told Army Radio. ''Israel can certainly coexist with him. But the real test will come over the course of time.'' Israelis widely admired the late Pope John Paul II for his unstinting efforts to promote Jewish-Catholic reconciliation. John Paul won many Israeli hearts during a trip to the Holy Land in 2000 by apologizing for Roman Catholic wrongdoing over the centuries. He also was praised for promoting interfaith dialogue, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and aiding Polish Jews during the Nazi era. As a young man, the new pope served in the Hitler Youth -- compulsory for young Germans at the time -- and during World War II was drafted into a German anti-aircraft unit, although he says he never fired a shot. Though Benedict has been a leading voice in the church in battling anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish-Catholic relations, his past raised suspicions in the Jewish state. ''White smoke, black past,'' said the headline in the mass circulation Yediot Ahronot. ''From the Nazi youth movement to the Vatican.'' Nonetheless, Jewish leaders said they were encouraged by the special interest by the new pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in coexistence. ''Though as a teenager he was a member of the Hitler Youth, all his life Cardinal Ratzinger has atoned for the fact,'' said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish group that battles anti-Semitism. Foxman himself was saved during the Holocaust by his Polish nanny, who had him baptized and raised him as a Catholic, until his Jewish parents reclaimed him at the end of the war. Moshe Zimmerman, a professor of German history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, played down the importance of the new pope's membership in the Hitler Youth. ''He was 18 years old when the war ended, so everything that he had to do with the Nazi regime was as a very young man,'' he said. ''I don't believe that there is any room for doubt that (the pope) of today is very different than the days he belonged in the Hitler Youth.'' Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Israeli Meir Lau -- a Holocaust survivor and a former chief rabbi for Israeli Jews of European backgrounds -- said his many meetings with Benedict while he was a cardinal have convinced him of his good record on matters of concern to Israelis. ''(The last meeting) was last year, in New York, in the Museum of Jewish Heritage of all places,'' Lau told Israel Army Radio. ''There was a meeting of two or three rabbis with some 20 cardinals .... His entire speech was given over to a condemnation of anti-Semitism, in the strongest and most unambiguous terms.'' Writer Zvi Gil, also a Holocaust survivor, said he expects Benedict to continue John Paul's favorable attitude toward Jews, precisely because of his German past. ''His attitude to Jews in Israel will to a very significant extent be influenced by that of his predecessor John Paul II, whose steps are well known to us,'' Gil told Army Radio. ''And as a German I don't think he will want to move backward from these steps toward Israeli Jews.'' For some Israelis, the new pope's condemnation of abortion, same-sex marriage and his embrace of other conservative stands has raised concerns of closed-mindedness -- an attitude they fear may be connected to residual anti-Semitism. However, commentators say the new pope's theology mirrors that of many Jewish religious leaders, and should not be seen as a sign of prejudice. ''He's much more traditional, and his positions are a lot tougher than Jewish law,'' said Lau. ''And Jewish law is my law.'' A top Muslim leader, meanwhile, urged Benedict to follow John Paul's efforts to promote interfaith relations and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ''We hope that the new pope will give the church more roles in trying to solve the problems that the world is facing,'' said Adnan Husseini, director of the Waqf, or Islamic Trust. ''We hope that he will continue the policy of John Paul II, who opposed the wall around the Palestinian territories and called for peace between the two peoples.'' Bishop Theophilos, the top Greek Orthodox official at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, called on Benedict to repair relations among Christian denominations, though he said he was skeptical. ''I hope that he can help promote unity of the Christian churches, especially between the Eastern Orthodox and the Latin,'' he said. ''The real obstacle to the unity of the church is the office of the pope,'' he added. ''If ever the pope had the courage or the will to say he is the bishop of Rome, not the vicar of Christ, then the road to unity is opened. As long as the office of the pope remains untouchable, the Christian Church remains divided.'' ------------- AP > International > China Hopes for Better Vatican Ties http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-China.html April 20, 2005 China Hopes for Better Vatican Ties By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:43 a.m. ET BEIJING (AP) -- China on Wednesday congratulated the newly appointed Pope Benedict XVI and said it hoped Beijing's strained relations with the Roman Catholic Church improve under his leadership. ''We hope under the leadership of the new pope, the Vatican side can create favorable conditions for improving the relationship between China and the Vatican,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement. China's officially atheist government broke ties with the Vatican in 1951 and has said it will consider opening relations only if the Vatican cuts links with rival Taiwan, which split with the mainland in 1949 amid civil war. Qin said relations between the two sides could improve under two conditions. ''The Vatican must cut off its so-called diplomatic relations with Taiwan, acknowledging the People's Republic of China is the only sole legal government representing the whole of China,'' he said. Secondly, the Vatican ''must not intervene in China's domestic affairs, including not intervening in domestic affairs in the name of religion,'' Qin said. The official body representing China's Catholics also sent a congratulatory cable to the Vatican and asked its followers to pray for him as a gesture of congratulations, Qin said. The Vatican is the only European government that has official relations with Taiwan. China still claims the self-ruled island as its territory and refuses to have any official contact with governments that recognize its rival as a sovereign country. China demands that Catholics worship only in churches approved by a state-controlled church group that does not recognize the pope's authority. The state-sanctioned China Patriotic Catholic Association didn't send a representative to the pope's funeral, citing the dispute over Taiwan. The China Patriotic Catholic Association regards the pope as a spiritual leader and follows Vatican teachings but rejects the Vatican's role in church operations and appoints its own priests. The association claims 4 million followers, but foreign experts say as many as 12 million more worship in unofficial churches loyal to the Vatican. In some areas, unofficial church members are routinely harassed and their leaders arrested. ---------------- AP > International > The Reigns of All Popes Named Benedict http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Benedicts-List.html April 20, 2005 The Reigns of All Popes Named Benedict By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:52 a.m. ET A list of the reigns of all popes named Benedict: Benedict I, 575-579 Benedict II, 684-685 Benedict III, 855-858 Benedict IV, 900-903 Benedict V, 964-964/965 Benedict VI, 972/973-974 Benedict VII, 974-983 Benedict VIII,1012-1024 Benedict IX, 1032-1044 Benedict X, 1058-1059 Benedict XI, 1303-1304 Benedict XII, 1334/1335-1342 Benedict XIII, 1724-1730 Benedict XIV, 1740-1758 Benedict XV, 1914-1922 Benedict XVI, 2005- -------------- AP > International > Some Cardinals Get Chatty After Conclave http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Talking-Cardinals. html April 19, 2005 Some Cardinals Get Chatty After Conclave By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:58 p.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Whatever happened to the sacred oath of secrecy? Cardinals were sworn to silence about everything that happened during deliberations in the Sistine Chapel to choose a new pope. But within hours of the conclave, some German cardinals -- delighted about the choice of their countryman, Joseph Ratzinger -- spilled some of the secrets. Cardinal Joachim Meisner told reporters Tuesday night that the new Pope Benedict XVI was elected on the fourth ballot -- the first of the afternoon session. He added that Ratzinger got more than the required two-thirds support. ''It was done without an electoral battle, and without propaganda,'' the archbishop of Cologne told reporters at a residence for German priests in Vatican City. ''For me it was a miracle.'' There was spontaneous applause as soon as cardinals realized Ratzinger had won, Meisner said. ''And I burst out crying,'' he added. Meisner and three other German cardinals spent about 45 minutes answering questions about the conclave and didn't seem worried about commenting despite their vow of silence -- which Ratzinger led himself, as dean of the College of Cardinals, when the conclave began Monday. One by one, cardinals filed up to a Book of the Gospels and placed their right hands on it. Ratzinger's admonition read, in part: ''We promise and swear not to break this secret in any way...'' To guard against high-tech leaks by cellular phones, there were even electronic jamming devices under a false floor in the chapel. One query the cardinals wouldn't answer is exactly how many votes Ratzinger garnered. ''We've already said enough,'' said Cardinal Georg Maximilian Sterzinsky, the archbishop of Berlin. Meisner gave a few clues about the new pope's emotional reaction on being named. He said Benedict XVI looked ''a little forlorn'' when he went to change into his papal vestments in the Room of Tears -- which earned its nickname because many new pontiffs get choked up there, realizing the enormity of their mission. ''I was worried, because when he came back dressed in his white vestments, I thought he had forgotten his skullcap,'' Meisner said. ''But then I realized his hair is as white as his skullcap.'' Meisner added: ''By the time dinner came around, Ratzinger was looking much better and very much like the pope.'' The new pope asked cardinals to dine together on bean soup, cold cuts, a salad and fruit, Meisner said. The nuns who prepare their meals didn't have time to plan a special menu, so there were only two special treats -- ice cream and champagne. Some U.S. cardinals also offered insight about why the vote went to Ratzinger. New York Cardinal Edward Egan, who worked for years in Rome and at the Vatican, was asked whether the new pope had the support of Catholics in Latin America and Africa. ''Obviously, he must have had support from the Third World,'' he responded. Going into the vote, there was much speculation about the possibility of a pope from the developing world, where most Roman Catholics live. Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, who worked for more than two decades in Vatican diplomacy, said the decision to choose Ratzinger was not made in the days leading up to the conclave or as a result of Ratzinger's moving homily at Pope John Paul II's funeral. ''Decisions like this are not made on how a person impresses you in the last five minutes, the last hours, the last days,'' he said. Rigali said the cardinals in the conclave thought about what John Paul had accomplished. Ratzinger was close to the late pope. ''We were looking for a successor of (St.) Peter,'' the first pope, Rigali said. ''We were looking for a successor of John Paul II. All of us were talking about the incredible qualities of John Paul II, knowing the world is calling him 'The Great.''' ------ Associated Press Writer Angela Doland and AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll contributed to this report. -------------- AP > International > No Reports of Benedict Health Problems http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Ratzinger-Health.html April 19, 2005 No Reports of Benedict Health Problems By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:48 p.m. ET VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The new Pope Benedict XVI has no apparent history of chronic health problems, but the 78-year-old German has been hospitalized at least twice since the early 1990s, according to records and reports. In September 1991, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that temporarily affected his left field of vision, according to the veteran Vatican journalist John Allen in his 2000 book ''Cardinal Ratzinger.'' There is no indication that it left any lingering health difficulties. In August 1992, he cut his head after slipping in the bathroom during a vacation in the Italian Alps, the Italian news agency ANSA reported at the time. Thomas Frauenlob, director of St. Michael's seminary in Traunstein where the pope studied as a youth and still visits annually, said he had never heard of any major ailments. ''He seems healthy,'' said Frauenlob, who last saw him over the New Year's holiday. ''He comes and eats and drinks whatever he wants.'' But the Rev. Thomas Reese, an expert on Vatican affairs, believed the new pontiff's health was ''not that good'' during the past year. He gave no specifics. -------------- AP > International > A Look at Some Previous Pope Benedicts http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Name.html?pagewant ed=print&position= April 19, 2005 A Look at Some Previous Pope Benedicts By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:50 p.m. ET Benedict, the name of the new pope, is one of the more frequent choices made by pontiffs. A look at some previous Benedicts: --Benedict XV (reigned 1914-1922): He was chosen as a contrast with his predecessor Pius X, whose theological crackdown against ''modernism'' had roiled the church. His accession coincided with the start of World War I. --Benedict XIV (1740-1758): He was a compromise choice after an arduous six-month conclave. Like former professor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was considered a scholar. --Benedict XIII (1724-1730): A rare pope from a religious order, the Dominicans, he remained head of his former Italian diocese as well as the bishop of Rome. --Benedict XII (1335-1342): He was one of the French popes who reigned from Avignon instead of Rome, considered a bleak era for the papacy. --Benedict XI (1303-1304): Also a Dominican, he was considered scholarly and a peacemaker among church factions. --------------- http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-List.html April 19, 2005 Popes Who Have Served Since 19th Century By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:53 p.m. ET Popes who have served since the 19th century: Pius VII -- March 14, 1800-Aug. 20, 1823. Leo XII -- Sept. 28, 1823-Feb. 10, 1829. Pius VIII -- March 31, 1829-Nov. 30, 1830. Gregory XVI -- Feb. 2, 1831-June 1, 1846. Pius IX -- June 16, 1846-Feb. 7, 1878. Leo XIII -- Feb. 20, 1878-July 20, 1903. Pius X -- Aug. 4, 1903-Aug. 20, 1914. Benedict XV -- Sept. 3, 1914-Jan. 22, 1922. Pius XI -- Feb. 6, 1922-Feb. 10, 1939. Pius XII -- March 2, 1939-Oct. 9, 1958. John XXIII -- Oct. 28, 1958-June 3, 1963. Paul VI -- June 21, 1963-Aug. 6, 1978. John Paul I -- Aug. 26-Sept. 28, 1978. John Paul II -- Oct. 16, 1978-April 2, 2005. Benedict XVI -- April 19, 2005- ---------------- Thousands of Gamblers Score on Pope Vote http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Betting.html April 19, 2005 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:00 p.m. ET DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, he was hardly the only winner. Thousands worldwide placed bets on him through the Web -- and an inspired few hundred even correctly guessed he'd take the name Benedict. Among a handful of Internet-based bookmakers who offered odds on the next pope, the biggest player was Paddy Power PLC, the No. 1 bookie in Ireland, which has taken bets on John Paul's successor for the past five years. Minutes after Benedict XVI appeared in St. Peter's Square, Paddy Power was collecting -- or paying out -- on more than 10,000 bets totaling more than $260,000. The biggest winners: Someone who put down $1,050 Saturday on a Ratzinger victory at odds of 6 to 1, which meant a payout of $7,350; and somebody else who waged $260 on the new pontiff's taking Benedict, which at 3-to-1 odds meant $1,050 back. The money kept flowing in until the white smoke appeared. ''We were kind of hoping the conclave would run for two weeks,'' said Paddy Power, spokesman for the firm of the same name, in a telephone interview from Rome, where the company has been promoting its Vatican specials. Paddy Power, fellow Dublin betting site Intrade and three British bookies -- [1]betfair.com, Pinnacle and William Hill -- all rated Ratzinger either as favorite or second-favorite. His victory meant they all still made a profit, because of all the other bets placed on a field of more than 100 other candidates, but only a modest one. ''If a real long shot had won it, we'd have taken home the full 200 grand,'' Power said, referring to his firm's total of bets, in euros, on a field of about 90 cardinals. As it was, he said, the backers of Ratzinger would get more than $162,000, while those who backed other winners -- including the name of Benedict and the successful election on Tuesday -- would take about $13,000 more, leaving the company a profit of more than $85,000. Other betting sites had Ratzinger as clear favorite. At Pinnacle, for instance, he opened two weeks ago at odds of 7 to 1, but those narrowed to just 3 to 1 by Tuesday. At Paddy Power, Ratzinger was once listed at odds of more than 20 to 1. Since John Paul's death, Ratzinger had surged ahead of initial favorite Dionigi Tettamanzi of Italy. But the star then rose of Nigeria's Francis Arinze, pushing Ratzinger back into second; Arinze remained No. 2 on other sites. At the moment white smoke rose in Vatican City, Paddy Power froze betting with the odds on Arinze at 7 to 2 and Ratzinger at 11 to 2. In joint third were Tettamanzi and French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of France at 7 to 1. ''The only worse outcome for us would have been if Arinze won,'' Power said. ''A Lustiger win could have been just as bad for us as Ratzinger because we took some big bets on him at high odds a week or so ago.'' Paddy Power was the only bookmaker to take bets on the papal name. It listed Benedict as favorite, just ahead of John Paul. But Power explained that Benedict was ranked so highly because of its connections to Lustiger, not Ratzinger. He said St. Benedict had predicted that the Catholic church one day would elect a former Jew as pope; Lustiger converted from Judaism. ''Just our luck. Ratzinger got us on that one too,'' he said. Power said the firm's oddsmakers would take a few days to think up some new pope-related bets -- such as the chances of Ratzinger's permitting women into the priesthood. ''It'd be a brave man or woman who'd put money on that one,'' he said. ------ On the Net: [2]www.paddypower.com References 1. http://betfair.com/ 2. http://www.paddypower.com/ ---------------- Events in the Life of Pope Benedict XVI http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pope-Benedict-XVI-Chron ology.html April 19, 2005 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:09 p.m. ET Events in the life of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI: ------ April 16, 1927: Born in Marktl am Inn in Germany's southern region of Bavaria near the Austrian border on the day before Easter. Baptized the same day. 1929: Family moves to town of Tittmoning. 1932: Family moves to Traunstein after his father has conflicts with local Nazi Party supporters in Tittmoning. 1941: Enrolled against his will in Hitler Youth. Dismissed shortly afterward because of his intention to study for the priesthood. 1943: Drafted as helper for anti-aircraft unit, serves in battery defending BMW plant. 1944: Dismissed from unit, but returns home to find draft notice for forced labor. 1944: Leaves home to dig anti-tank trenches. 1944: Released from labor force and returns home only to receive army draft notice three weeks later. 1945: Deserts from army and returns home. Captured by Americans as war ends. 1945: Released from U.S. POW camp, hitches a ride home on milk truck. 1945: Begins study for priesthood in Freising. 1951: Ordained a priest along with his brother Georg. 1953: Receives doctorate in theology, University of Munich. 1959: Begins teaching theology in Bonn, first of several appointments in German universities. 1969: Leaves University of Tuebingen concerned about student unrest which had interrupted his lectures with sit-ins. Takes teaching job in Regensburg in native Bavaria, near his brother. 1977: Elected Archbishop of Munich und Freising. 1977: Elevated to cardinal three months later by Pope Paul VI. 1978: Participated in conclave that elected Pope John Paul II. 1979: Vatican revokes theology teaching license of liberal German theologian Hans Kueng, who helped Ratzinger get a teaching post at University of Tuebingen in the 1960s. Ratzinger was sharply critical of Kueng. 1981: Summoned to Rome as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under John Paul II. 1985: On behalf of John Paul II, he denounces a work by Leonard Boff, a Latin American pioneer of Liberation Theology. 1985: Publication of ''The Ratzinger Report.'' 1997: Publication of ''Salt of the Earth.'' 1998: Publication of ''Milestones. Memoirs: 1927 to 1997.'' 1999: Travels to Menlo Park, Calif., for meeting with leaders of doctrinal committees of bishops conferences. 2000: Publication of ''God and World,'' ''Spirit of the Liturgy.'' 2001: Attended Fontgombault Liturgical Conference, France. 2002: Named Dean of the College of Cardinals. 2002: Travels to Spain to preside over the ''Christ: Way, Truth and Life'' congress at the Catholic University of St. Anthony. April 13, 2005: Publication of ''Values in a Time of Upheaval.'' April 19, 2005: Elected Pope Benedict XVI. ---------------- AP > Arts > Election of Pope a Hit for TV Networks http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Pope-TV.html April 19, 2005 Election of Pope a Hit for TV Networks By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:03 p.m. ET NEW YORK (AP) -- The election of Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday had all the elements of a hit daytime reality show for television networks: some comical confusion, anxiety-laden tedium and finally an exciting payoff. ABC, CBS and NBC interrupted programming shortly before noon at the first appearance of smoke billowing from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the centuries-old signal of whether the cardinals meeting inside had elected a pope. The smoke looked white, meaning Roman Catholics had a new pope. Or was it? Bells were supposed to accompany the appearance of white smoke, and they weren't ringing. It drove the network anchors nuts. ''It continues to amaze me that in this world of high tech ... we have to find out that somebody is about to assume one of the most important offices in the world by reading smoke signals,'' said ABC's Charles Gibson. Recalled NBC's Brian Williams later: ''I think we came up with more ways to characterize the color of smoke than I thought humanly possible before today.'' Gibson couldn't hide his exasperation as the uncertainty stretched beyond 10 minutes. ''I must say, they're going to have to work on this,'' he said. (Pope John Paul II's death was announced by e-mail.) Finally, the crowd in St. Peter's Square roared, noticing the swinging of a large bell even before it began to peal. ''Habemus Papam!'' read the words on Fox News Channel's screen. They had a pope. They just didn't know who. And TV networks filled the time with somewhat aimless talking, with cameras trained on the Vatican window where a new pope would soon emerge. ''We just saw someone peeking behind the curtain,'' said CBS anchor Bob Schieffer. It was a false alarm. Killing time, CBS turned to correspondent Richard Roth in St. Peter's Square, where he interviewed the waiting faithful on who they expected would appear. Finally, the curtains parted, the windows opened and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was revealed as the new pope. It was a thrilling television moment. Guessing correctly in advance, NBC had Martin Savidge stationed in the new pope's German hometown for a live report on the reaction. Williams anchored NBC's coverage from the odd location of a makeshift studio at Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV; he was in the city for commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the federal building bombing. Gibson and Schieffer anchored from New York. Shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern, the broadcast networks left the post-selection analysis to the cable networks. -------------------- International > International Special > Last Pope Benedict Focused on Ending World War I http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/international/worldspecial2/19cnd-bene .html [This is what James J. Martin called "inconvenient history" and has been forgotten.] April 19, 2005 Last Pope Benedict Focused on Ending World War I By [1]TIMOTHY WILLIAMS The last pope who chose the name Benedict was an Italian noble who canonized Joan of Arc and spent much of his papacy trying unsuccessfully to end World War I, which had pitted Europe's Catholics against one another. Born Giacomo della Chiesa in Genoa, Italy, Pope Benedict XV served as pontiff from 1914 to 1922, the second shortest length of time for a pope in the 20th Century. He was elected in early September, less than two months after the outbreak of the war - chosen in part, because he was a trained diplomat who was neutral on the war. Almost immediately, Benedict XV appealed to the warring sides to make peace. He pushed for a Christmas Day truce in 1914 that was initially agreed to by Germany, but rejected by the Allies. His constant calls for ending the war became so unpopular on both sides that a 1915 agreement between Italy and other Allies contained a secret provision to ignore papal peace efforts. By the time he delivered his Plea for Peace in 1917, Benedict XV was believed by each side to secretly favor the other. His plea for the end of the war and international arbitration was ignored by the leaders of the combatants with the exception of President Woodrow Wilson, who rejected it. Benedict XV was successful, however, in having disabled prisoners exchanged via neutral nations and also helped Belgians deported after the German offensive return home. When the war finally did end in 1918, Pope Benedict was excluded from the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, despite his entreaties to be made part of the talks. Afterward, the pope expressed dissatisfaction with the terms forced upon Germany. Benedict XV later helped develop a Code of Canon Law and worked on behalf of Armenian refugees. He died of influenza in 1922. Among his last words were, "We offer our life to God on behalf of the peace of the world." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=TIMOTHY%20WILLIAMS&fd q=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=TIMOTHY%20WILLIAMS&inline=nyt-per << File: ATT00031.txt >> From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 16:06:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:06:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Benedict XVI Package In-Reply-To: <01C54585.FFD6EED0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54585.FFD6EED0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: The functionality of religion and ethnic conflict, both of which I addressed in my introductory paragraphs. Some of the articles dealt with these. On 2005-04-20, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]: > What's the science connection? > > Steve Hovland > www.stevehovland.net > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] > Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 8:01 AM > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org; Human Biodiversity > Subject: [Paleopsych] Benedict XVI Package > > Here's a whole bunch of articles, mostly from the New York Times and wire > services picked up by the NYT. The view I'd most like to get is that of > David Sloan Wilson, the champion of group selection in biology in _Unto > Others_ (co-authored with Elliott Sober) and, more recently, of > functionalism in religion in _Darwin's Cathedral_. He once called himself > "an atheist, but a nice atheist" and holds that religions (at least those > that have survived) have on the whole done good. (I'm still dubious.) He > has dealt with the apparently odd fact that stricter religions attract > more adherents, and Benedict may indeed make Catholicism more strict. > > We shall see. Watch for increased competition for strictness from > Protestants and Mormons. The ethnic angle should we watched carefully. > Though Roman Catholicism no longer has a White majority, this is the first > time that the possibility of a non-White pope has been broached. It is > taboo for Europeans to rejoice in winning the ethnic competition; instead > look for an increase in the numbers of European Roman Catholics, or at > least a slowing in their erosion. > > I'll provide more coverage tomorrow. I a single commentator says anything > you could not have predicted, let me know at once! [snip rest] From christian.rauh at uconn.edu Wed Apr 20 17:26:04 2005 From: christian.rauh at uconn.edu (Christian Rauh) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:26:04 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe In-Reply-To: <142.43f12332.2f97aced@aol.com> References: <142.43f12332.2f97aced@aol.com> Message-ID: <426690AC.2000207@uconn.edu> That's an excellent idea. Christian Thrst4knw at aol.com wrote: > I like the news feed, but the inbox isn't always the best place for it > for some people depending on how they work. > > Frank, what about setting up your news emails as an RSS feed rather than > a listserv? > That would let people get the headlines without filling their inbox. > > Todd > > In a message dated 4/19/2005 8:20:11 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > n.j.c.bannan at reading.ac.uk writes: > > I do not intend to unsubscribe at this point, but I do identify strongly > with the view that more information is entering the inbox than is fully > compatible with the original function of this site as a discussion forum > between individuals with an interest in this field. It is impossible to > know how to police this without appearing offensive. But I regret > that we > may see a pattern of valued individuals withdrawing from the group as a > consequence of what it has become. > > Nicholas > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: "The new improved paleopsych list" > Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:07 PM > Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] unsubscribe > > > > I would like to unsubscribe. There are way too many emails daily. > > > > "Paul J. Werbos, Dr." wrote: > > > > >unsubscribe > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~ L I B E R D A D E ~ _____________________________________________________________________ ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? From christian.rauh at uconn.edu Wed Apr 20 17:28:09 2005 From: christian.rauh at uconn.edu (Christian Rauh) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:28:09 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide In-Reply-To: <426667FA.60600@solution-consulting.com> References: <01C54578.96037C10.shovland@mindspring.com> <426667FA.60600@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <42669129.4020201@uconn.edu> Could it be that a less predictable future have more to do than the belief in God? Maybe things are changing too fast for us to cope. Christian Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > Diet: This is a good point, and one I have considered. However, the > history of a rise in depression pre-dates the low fat fad. In the 1960s > the trend was already appearing, with people of my generation being at > higher risk of depression than my own grandparents. Therefore, Seligman > argues more in favor of changing values. I think you are correct that > diet may also play a role, but it is not the whole picture. > > I put in the Horatius at the gate segments because the notion is that if > nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for. One's > willingness to give one's life in service of a higher value is a source > of great strength and happiness. This appears to be an empirical > finding, and illustrates the role of values and social norms in reducing > depression. > > "and how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of > his fathers and the temples of his gods . . ." The man / woman who > deeply believes this has something great to live for, knows his/her > position in life, and feels a deep connection with forebearers / > posterity ('child upon her breast'). This seems to immunize against > depression. > > Lynn > > Steve Hovland wrote: > >> Lipids, depression and suicide >> by >> Colin A, Reggers J, Castronovo V, Ansseau M. >> Assistante Clinique, Universite de Liege, >> CUP La Clairiere, Bertrix. >> Encephale 2003 Feb;29(Pt 1):49-58 >> >> ABSTRACT >> Polyunsatured fatty acids are made out of a hydrocarbonated chain of >> variable length with several double bonds. The position of the first >> double bond (w; omega) differentiates polyunsatured w3 fatty acids >> (for example: alpha-linolenic acid or a-LNA) and polyunsatured w6 >> fatty acids (for example: linoleic acid or LA). These two classes of >> fatty acids are said to be essential because they cannot be >> synthetised by the organism and have to be taken from alimentation. >> The w3 are present in linseed oil, nuts, soya beans, wheat and cold >> water fish whereas w6 are present in maize, sunflower and sesame oil. >> Fatty acids are part of phospholipids and, consequently, of all >> biological membranes. The membrane fluidity, of crucial importance for >> its functionning, depends on its lipidic components. Phospholipids >> composed of chains of polyunsatured fatty acids >> >> >> The rest of the story: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/lipidsmood.htm >> _______________________________________________ >> paleopsych mailing list >> paleopsych at paleopsych.org >> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~ L I B E R D A D E ~ _____________________________________________________________________ ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? From Euterpel66 at aol.com Wed Apr 20 20:31:56 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:31:56 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide Message-ID: <1f4.82ab614.2f98163c@aol.com> Depression is a condition where one is without hope, No? I understand the difference between depression and clinical depression, but it is the cure which is different and not necessarily the manifestation. Hope involves the future and for the first time in history (the atomic age) it is possible to eradicate all trace of human history, and in fact life. We do seem to be hard-wired for hope, but even water can wear away stone. Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html In a message dated 4/20/2005 1:32:08 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, christian.rauh at uconn.edu writes: Could it be that a less predictable future have more to do than the belief in God? Maybe things are changing too fast for us to cope. Christian Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > Diet: This is a good point, and one I have considered. However, the > history of a rise in depression pre-dates the low fat fad. In the 1960s > the trend was already appearing, with people of my generation being at > higher risk of depression than my own grandparents. Therefore, Seligman > argues more in favor of changing values. I think you are correct that > diet may also play a role, but it is not the whole picture. > > I put in the Horatius at the gate segments because the notion is that if > nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for. One's > willingness to give one's life in service of a higher value is a source > of great strength and happiness. This appears to be an empirical > finding, and illustrates the role of values and social norms in reducing > depression. > > "and how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of > his fathers and the temples of his gods . . ." The man / woman who > deeply believes this has something great to live for, knows his/her > position in life, and feels a deep connection with forebearers / > posterity ('child upon her breast'). This seems to immunize against > depression. > > Lynn > > Steve Hovland wrote: > >> Lipids, depression and suicide >> by >> Colin A, Reggers J, Castronovo V, Ansseau M. >> Assistante Clinique, Universite de Liege, >> CUP La Clairiere, Bertrix. >> Encephale 2003 Feb;29(Pt 1):49-58 >> >> ABSTRACT >> Polyunsatured fatty acids are made out of a hydrocarbonated chain of >> variable length with several double bonds. The position of the first >> double bond (w; omega) differentiates polyunsatured w3 fatty acids >> (for example: alpha-linolenic acid or a-LNA) and polyunsatured w6 >> fatty acids (for example: linoleic acid or LA). These two classes of >> fatty acids are said to be essential because they cannot be >> synthetised by the organism and have to be taken from alimentation. >> The w3 are present in linseed oil, nuts, soya beans, wheat and cold >> water fish whereas w6 are present in maize, sunflower and sesame oil. >> Fatty acids are part of phospholipids and, consequently, of all >> biological membranes. The membrane fluidity, of crucial importance for >> its functionning, depends on its lipidic components. Phospholipids >> composed of chains of polyunsatured fatty acids >> >> >> The rest of the story: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/lipidsmood.htm >> _______________________________________________ >> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 21:49:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:49:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Newsweek: The Truth About Gender Message-ID: Here are eight more articles, bringing it up to my daily maximum of ten. I think they are all science related. Frank http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7243350/site/newsweek/ The rift between the sexes just got a whole lot bigger. A new study has found that women and men differ genetically almost as much as humans differ from chimpanzees. By Fred Guterl Newsweek International March 28 issue - When it comes to gender differences, everybody's an expert. But George Lazarus is a bit more expert than most. Although he doesn't study the subject formally, as a pediatrician in New York City he sees a lot of children, who are, after all, far better than adults at expressing their essential natures. One girl's parents, for instance, set out to raise her without "gender bias" that might hinder her success later in life. When she turned 3, they eschewed dolls and gave her toy trucks instead. The girl went off to her bedroom to play. When the parents checked up on her, they found her tucking the trucks in bed for the night. "Shhhh!" she said. "They're sleeping." It's a story that Larry Summers, the beleaguered president of Harvard University, might appreciate. Summers caused a firestorm when he suggested several weeks ago that differences in "intrinsic aptitude" might be the principal reason the university has fewer females in the sciences and engineering than males; he lost a vote of no confidence in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last week. Summers may be guilty of social indiscretion, but is he wrong, scientifically speaking? Does biology play no significant role in determining the talents and behaviors of men and women? Considering the importance of the question, few studies have addressed it. Nevertheless, in recent years, scientists have been finding that the biological rift between men and women is larger than previously thought. To an extent few would have believed a few years ago, the center of gravity of scientific opinion on gender has begun to shift-and it's making everybody uncomfortable. One of the most intriguing findings concerns the genetic differences between men and women. A study published last week in the journal Nature puts this difference at about 1 percent. Considering that the genetic makeup of chimpanzees and humans differs by only 1.5 percent, this is significant. "You could say that there are two human genomes, one for men and one for women," says Huntington Willard, a geneticist at Duke University and coauthor of the article. The study did not spell out exactly which genes do what. Rather, its results were like looking at the innards of two almost identical clocks and finding that in fact each has an altogether different arrangement of gears. Scientists have long known that a person's sex is determined by two chromosomes, or bundles of genes-a woman inherits two X chromosomes, one from each parent, while a man inherits an X from -mom and a Y from dad. For the past 40 years, scientists have thought that the extra X chromosome in females shuts down, while the other works alone. The Nature study, though, found that about 20 percent of the genes on the duplicate X chromosome-about 200 genes in all-remain active. Men, by contrast, have only one active X chromosome (plus a few genes on the puny Y chromosome). Not only are women genetically more complex and varied than men, they differ widely from one another. Only a few years ago, scientists used to think that hormones were the primary mechanism of gender. The Y chromosome was assumed to do little but trigger a cascade of genes scattered among the other 22 human chromosomes, which ends with the production of the testes. Hormones still do a lot of the heavy lifting-with one crucial difference. Scientists have found that while hormones wreak havoc on just about every part of adolescent physiology, they have almost no effect on brain development. Studies of girls born in triplets, sandwiched in the womb between two brothers, show that although the girls acquire some masculine traits due to a heavier-than-normal dose of testosterone, their brains are unaffected. Genetic variations, on the other hand, have a huge impact on the brain. Down-syndrome boys, born with extra genes from chromosome 21, are cognitively impaired. When it comes to the brain, genes rule. How, then, do female brains differ from male brains? Scientists are only beginning to address this question. So far, it seems clear that men and women think differently in significant ways. When navigating a maze, men tend to think spatially (go north for 200 meters and then turn left), while women look for landmarks. Brain scans of men and women engaged in rhyming words show that they use different brain circuits to perform the same task. Women also have 15 to 20 percent more gray matter (ordinary neurons) than men. And their white matter (long neurons that help the brain distribute its processing tasks) is concentrated at the juncture between the brain's left and right hemispheres, and may help women use both sides of their brain for language-related tasks. There's also anecdotal evidence. On the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a college entry exam, women consistently score lower than men on the mathematics portion. (They do better on language skills, but still score slightly lower than men.) And then there are things like the makeup of the Harvard faculty. Such real-world evidence, of course, doesn't tell us what is cause and what is effect. To what extent does environment-education, upbringing, nutrition, exposure to stress, chemicals and so forth-play a role? Are boys slower to develop verbal skills because of their genes, or because they spend more time playing with trucks than talking with their friends? Is Larry Summers right or wrong? At the moment, there's too little data to say. Even when scientists eventually come to understand the genetic clockwork, there's a good chance the answer won't be quite so simplistic. Individuals vary so widely in ability that any aggregate difference between men and women won't likely affect the ambitions of any aspiring scientist or playwright. Besides, genes can confer both advantages and disadvantages. The chances are pretty good that we haven't yet measured them all. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 21:49:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:49:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Mae-Wan Ho: The Biology of Free Will Message-ID: Mae-Wan Ho: The Biology of Free Will Bioelectrodynamics Laboratory, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, U.K. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3, 231-244, 1996. [Thanks to Roxanne for this, who did not supply a URL but who remarks: "Hope it's not allready in your archives, really enjoyed the read as a regular folk, hope you do too, nice flowery language, many pictures come to mind and the free style is nice too."] Abstract: According to Bergson (1916), the traditional problem of free will is misconceived and arises from a mismatch between the quality of authentic, subjective experience and its description in language, in particular, the language of the mechanistic science of psychology. Contemporary western scientific concepts of the organism, on the other hand, are leading us beyond conventional thermodynamics as well as quantum theory and offering rigorous insights which reaffirm and extend our intuitive, poetic, and even romantic notions of spontaneity and free will. I shall describe some new views of the organism arising from new findings in biology, in order to show how, in freeing itself from the 'laws' of physics, from mechanical determinism and mechanistic control, the organism becomes a sentient, coherent being that is free, from moment to moment, to explore and create its possible futures. *Based on a lecture delievered at the 6th Mind & Brain Symposium, The Science of Consciousness - The Nature of Free Will, November 4, 1995, Institute of Psychiatry, London. I. Introduction Distinguished neurophysiologist Walter Freeman (1995) begins his latest book by declaring brain science "in crisis": his personal quest to define constant psycho-logical states arising from given stimuli has ended in failure after 33 years. Patterns of brain activity are simply unrepeatable, every perception is influenced by all that has gone before. The impasse, he adds, is conceptual, not experimental or logical. This acknowledged breakdown of mechanical determinism in brain science is really long overdue, but it should not be miscontrued as the triumph of vitalism. As Freeman goes on to show, recent developments in nonlinear mathematics can contribute to some understanding of these non-repeatable brain activities. The traditional opposition between mechanists and vitalists already began to dissolve at the turn of the present century, when Newtonian physics gave way to quantum theory at the very small scales of elementary particles and to general relativity at the large scales of planetary motion. The static, deterministic universe of absolute space and time is replaced by a multitude of contingent, observer-dependent space-time frames. Instead of mechanical objects with simple locations in space and time, one finds delocalized, mutually entangled quantum entities that carry their histories with them, like evolving organisms. These developments in contemporary western science gave birth to organicist philosophy. A key figure in organicist philosophy was the French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1916), who showed how Newtonian concepts - which dominate biological sciences then and now - negate psychology's claims to understand our inner experience at the very outset. In particular, he drew attention to the inseparability of space and time, both tied to real processes that have characteristic durations. The other major figure in organicist philosophy was the English mathematician-philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1925) who saw physics itself and all of nature, as unintelligible without a thorough-going theory of the organism that participates in knowing. Organicist philosophy was taken very seriously by a remarkable group of people who formed the multidisciplinary Theoretical Biology Club.1 Its membership included Joseph Needham, eminent embryologist/biochemist later to be renowned for his work on the history of Chinese science; Dorothy Needham, muscle physiologist and biochemist, geneticist C.H. Waddington, crystallographer J.D. Bernal, mathematician Dorothy Wrinch, philosopher, J.H. Woodger and physicist, Neville Mott. They acknowledged the full complexity of living organization, not as axiomatic, but as something to be explained and understood with the help of philosophy as well as physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics, as those sciences advance, and in the spirit of free enquiry, leaving open whether new concepts or laws may be discovered in the process. A lot has happened since the project of the Theoretical Biology Club was brought to a premature end when they failed to obtain funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. Organicism has not survived as such, but its invisible ripples have spread and touched the hearts and minds, and the imagination of many who remain drawn to the central enigma that Erwin Schr?dinger (1944) later posed: What is Life? In the intervening years, the transistor radio, the computer and lasers have been invented. Whole new disciplines have been created, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, solid state physics and quantum optics to name but a few. In mathematics, nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory took off in a big way during the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps partly on account of that, many nonlinear physical and physicochemical phenomena are being actively investigated only within the past ten years, as physics become more and more organic in its outlook. In a way, the whole of science is now tinged with organicist philosophy, as even "consciousness" and "free will" are on the scientific agenda. Bergson (1916) has made a persuasive case that the traditional problem of free will is simply misconceived and arises from a mismatch between the quality of authentic, subjective experience and its description in language, in particular, the language of the mechanistic science of psychology. In a recent book, I have shown how contemporary western scientific concepts of the organism are leading us beyond conventional thermodynamics as well as quantum theory (Ho, 1993), and offering rigorous insights which reaffirm and extend our intuitive, poetic, and even romantic notions of spontaneity and free will. The new organicism I am making a case for organicist science. It is not yet a conscious movement but a Zeitgeist I personally embrace, so I really mean to persuade you to do likewise by giving it a more tangible shape. The new organicism, like the old, is dedicated to the knowledge of the organic whole, hence, it does not recognize any discipline boundaries. It is to be found between all disciplines. Ultimately, it is an unfragmented knowledge system by which one lives. There is no escape clause allowing one to plead knowledge 'pure' or 'objective', and hence having nothing to do with life. As with the old organicism, the knowing being participates in knowing as much as in living. Participation implies responsibility, which is consistent with the truism that there can be no freedom without responsibility, and conversely, no responsiblity without freedom. There is no placing mind outside nature as Descartes has done, the knowing being is wholeheartedly within nature: heart and mind, intellect and feeling (Ho, 1994a). It is non-dualist and holistic. In all those respects, its affinities are with the participatory knowledge systems of traditional indigenous cultures all over the world. From a thorough-going organicist perspective, one does not ask, "What is life?" but, "What is it to be alive?". Indeed, the best way to know life is to live it fully. It must be said that we do not yet have a fully fledged organicist science. But I shall describe some new images of the organism, starting from the more familiar and working up, perhaps to the most sublime, from which a picture of the organism as a free, spontaneous being will begin to emerge. I shall show how the organism succeeds in freeing itself from the 'laws' of physics, from mechanical determinism and mechanistic control, thereby becoming a sentient, coherent being that, from moment to moment, freely explores and creates its possible futures. II. The organism frees itself from the 'laws' of physics I put 'laws' in quotation marks in order to emphasize that they are not laid down once and for all, and especially not to dictate what we can or cannot think. They are tools for helping us think; and most of all, to be transcended if necessary. Many physicists have marvelled at how organisms seem able to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics, starting from Lord Kelvin, co-inventor of the Second Law, who nevertheless excluded organisms from its dominion: "The animal body does not act as a thermodynamic engine...consciousness teaches every individual that they are, to some extent, subject to the direction of his will. It appears therefore that animated creatures have the power of immediately applying to certain moving particles of matter within their bodies, forces by which the motions of these particles are directed to produce derived mechanical effects."2 What impresses Lord Kelvin is how organisms seem to have energy at will, whenever and wherever required, and in a perfectly coordinated way. Another equally puzzling feature is that, contrary to the Second Law, which says all systems should decay into equilibrium and disorder, organisms develop and evolve towards ever increasing organization. Of course, there is no contradiction, as the Second Law applies to isolated systems, whereas organisms are open systems. But how do organisms manage to maintain themselves far away from thermodynamic equilibrium and to produce increasing organization? Schr?dinger writes: "It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic....What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy, or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive."3 Schr?dinger was severely reprimanded,4 by Linus Pauling and others, for using the term 'negative entropy', for it really does not correspond to any rigorous thermodynamic entity. However, the idea that open systems can "self-organize" under energy flow became more concrete in the discovery of "dissipative structures" (Prigogine, 1967). An example is the B?nard convection cells that arise in a pan of water heated uniformly from below. At a critical temperature difference between the top and the bottom, a phase transition occurs: bulk flow begins as the lighter, warm water rises from the bottom and the denser, cool water sinks. The whole pan eventually settles down to a regular honeycomb array of flow cells. Before phase transition, all the molecules move randomly with respect to one another. However, at a critical rate of energy supply, the system self-organizes into global dynamic order in which all the astronomical numbers of molecules are moving in formation as though choreographed to do so. A still more illuminating physical metaphor for the living system is the laser (Haken, 1977), in which energy is pumped into a cavity containing atoms capable of emitting light. At low levels of pumping, the atoms emit randomly as in an ordinary lamp. As the pumping rate is increased, a threshold is reached when all the atoms oscillate together in phase, and send out a giant light track that is a million times as long as that emitted by individual atoms. Both examples illustrate how energy input or energy pumping and dynamic order are intimately linked. These and other considerations led me to identify Schr?dinger's "negative entropy" as "stored mobilizable energy in a space-time structured system" (Ho, 1994b, 1995a). The key to understanding the thermodynamics of living systems turns out not so much to be energy flow but energy storage under energy flow (Fig. 1). Energy flow is of no consequence unless the energy can be trapped and stored within the system where it circulates to do work before dissipating. A reproducing life cycle, i.e., an organism, arises when the loop of circulating energy is closed. At that point, we have a life cycle, within which stored energy is mobilized, remaining largely stored as it is mobilized. Figure 1 here The life cycle is a highly differentiated space-time structure, the predomi-nant modes of activity are themselves cycles spanning an entire gamut of space-times from the local and fast (or slow) to the global and slow (or fast), all of which are coupled together. These cycles are most familiar to us in the form of biological rhythms extending over 20 orders of magnitude of time, from electrical activities of neurons and other cells to circadian and circa-annual rhythms and beyond. An intuitive picture is given in Figure 2, where coupled cycles of different sizes are fed by the one-way energy flow. This complex, entangled space-time structure is strongly reminiscent of Bergson's "durations" of organic processes, which necessitates a different way of conceptualizing space-time as heterogeneous, nonlinear, multidimensional and nonlocal (see Ho, 1993).5 Figure 2 here On account of the complete spectrum of coupled cycles, energy is stored and mobilized over all space-times according to the relaxation times (and volumes) of the processes involved. So, organisms can take advantage of two different ways of mobilizing energy with maximum efficiency - nonequilbrium transfer in which stored energy is transferred before it is thermalized, and quasi-equilibrium transfer, for which the free energy change approaches zero according to conventional thermodynamic considerations (McClare, 1971). Energy input into any mode can be readily delocalized over all modes, and conversely, energy from all modes can become concentrated into any mode. In other words, energy coupling in the living system is symmetrical, which is why we can have energy at will, whenever and wherever required (see Ho, 1993, 1994b, 1995a,b). The organism is, in effect, a closed, self-sufficient energetic domain of cyclic non-dissipative processes coupled to the dissipative processes. In the formalism of conventional thermodynamics, the life cycle can be considered, to first approximation, to consist of all those cyclic processes - for which the net entropy change balances out to zero - coupled to those dissipative processes necessary for keeping it going, for which the net entropy change is greater than zero (see Figure 3). This representation, justified in detail elsewhere (Ho, 1996a), is derived from the thermodynamics of the steady state (see Denbigh, 1951). Figure 3 here Consequently, the organism has freed itself from the immediate constraints of energy conservation - the First Law - as well as the Second Law of thermodynamics. There is always energy available within the system, which is mobilized at close to maximum efficiency and over all space-time modes. 6 III. The organism is free from mechanical determinism It was geneticist/embryologist C.H. Waddington (1957) who first introduced nonlinear dynamical ideas into developmental biology in the form of the 'epigenetic landscape' - a general metaphor for the dynamics of the develop-mental process. The developmental paths of tissues and cells are seen to be constrained or canalized to 'flow' along certain valleys and not others due to the 'force' exerted on the landscape by the various gene products which define the fluid topography of the landscape.7 This fluid topography contains multiple potential developmental pathways that may be realized as the result of "fluctuations", or if the environmental conditions, the genes or gene products change. This metaphor has been made much more explicit recently by mathematician Peter Saunders (1992) who shows that the properties of the epigenetic landscape are "common not just to developing organisms but to most nonlinear dynamical systems." The polychromatic organism A particular kind of nonlinearity which has made headlines recently is 'deterministic chaos': a complex dynamical behaviour that is locally unpredictable and irregular, which has been used to describe many living functions including the collective behaviour of ant colonies (see Goodwin, 1994). The unrepeatable patterns of brain activities that persuaded Freeman (1995) to declare brain science in crisis are typical of systems exhibiting deterministic chaos. Another putative example is the heart beat, which is found to be much more irregular in healthy people than in cardiac patients.8 Physiologist Goldberger (1991) came to the conclusion that healthy heartbeat has "a type of variability called chaos", and that loss of this "complex variability" is associated with pathology and with aging. Similarly, the electrical activities of the functioning brain, apart from being unrepeatable from moment to moment, also contain many frequencies. But during epileptic fits, the spectrum is greatly impoverished (Kandel, Schwartz and Jessell, 1991). There is much current debate as to whether these complex variabilities associated with the healthy, functional state constitute chaos in the technical sense, so the question is by no means settled (Glass and Mackey, 1988). A different understanding of the complex activity spectrum of the healthy state is that it is polychromatic (Ho, 1996c), approaching 'white' in the ideal, in which all the modes of energy storage are equally represented. It corresponds to the so-called f(l) = const. rule that Popp (1986) has generalized from the spectrum of light or "biophotons" found to be emitted from all living systems. I have proposed that this polychromatic ideal distribution of stored energy is the state towards which all open systems capable of energy storage naturally evolve (Ho, 1994b). It is a state of both maximum and minimum in entropy content: maximum because energy becomes equally distributed over all the space-time modes (hence the 'white' ideal), and minimum because the modes are all coupled or linked together to give a coherent whole, in other words, to a single degree of freedom (Popp, 1986; Ho, 1993). In a system where there is no impedance to energy mobilization, all the modes are intercommunicating and hence all the frequencies will be represented. Instead, when coupling is imperfect, or when the subsystem, say, the heart, or the brain, is not communicating properly, it falls back on its own modes, leading to impoverishment of its activity spectrum. Living systems are necessarily a polychromatic whole, they are full of colour and variegated complexity that nevertheless cohere into a singular being. The organism is a free sentient being and hence able to decide its own fate One distinguishing feature of the living system is its exquisite sensitivity to weak signals. For example, the eye can detect single photons falling on the retina, and the presence of several molecules of pheromones in the air is sufficient to attract male insects to their appropriate mates. That extreme sensitivity of the organism applies to all levels and is the direct consequence of its energy self-sufficiency. No part of the system has to be pushed or pulled into action, nor be subjected to mechanical regulation and control. Instead, coordinated action of all the parts depends on rapid intercommunication throughout the system. The organism is a system of "excitable media" (see Goodwin, 1994,1995), or excitable cells and tissues poised to respond specifically and disproportionately (i.e., nonlinearly) to weak signals because of the large amount of energy stored, which can thus amplify the weak signal into macroscopic action. It is by virtue of its energy self-sufficiency, therefore, that an organism is a sentient being - a system of sensitive parts all set to intercommunicate, to respond and to act appropriately as a whole to any contingency. The organism is indeed free from mechanical determinism, but it does not thereby fall prey to indeterminacy. Far from surrendering its fate to the indeterminacy of nonlinear dynamics (or quantum theory, for that matter), the organism maximizes its opportunities inherent in the multiplicity of futures available to it. I have argued elsewhere that indeterminacy is really the problem of the ignorance of the external observer, and not experienced by the being itself, who has full knowledge of its own state, and can readily adjust, respond and act in the most appropriate manner (Ho, 1993). In a very real sense, the organism is free to decide its own fate because it is a sentient being who has moment to moment, up-to-date knowledge of its own internal milieu as well as the external environment. IV. The organism frees itself from mechanistic control as an interconnected, intercommunicating whole This idea has become very concrete as the result of recent advances in biochemistry, cell biology and genetics. A molecular democracy of distributed control There are thousands of enzymes catalyzing thousands of energy transactions and metabolic transformations in our body. The product of one enzyme is acted on by one or more other enzymes, resulting in a highly interconnected metabolic network. Henrik Kacser (1988) was among the first to realize that once we have a network, especially one as complicated as the metabolic network, it is unrealistic to think that there could be special enzymes controlling the flow of metabolites under all circumstances. He and a colleague pioneered metabolic control analysis, to discover how the network is actually regulated under different conditions. After more than 20 years of investigation by many biochemists and cell biologists, it is now generally recognized that so-called 'control' is invariably distributed over many enzymes (and metabolites) in the network, and moreover, the distribution of control differs under different conditions. The metabolic network turns out to be a "molecular democracy" of distributed control. Long-range energy continua in cells and tissues Recent studies have also revealed that energy mobilization in living systems is achieved by protein or enzyme molecules acting as "flexible molecular energy machines" (see Ho, 1995a), which transfer energy directly from the point of release to the point of utilization, without thermalization or dissipation. These direct energy transfers are carried out in collective modes extending from the molecular to the macroscopic domain. The flow of metabolites is channeled coherently at the molecular level, from one enzyme to the next in sequence, in multi-enzyme complexes (see Welch and Clegg, 1987). At the same time, high voltage electron microscopy and other physical measurement techniques reveal that the cell is more like a 'solid state' than the 'bag of dissolved enzymes' that generations of biochemists had previously supposed (Clegg, 1984). Not only are almost all enzymes bound to an intricate "microtrabecular lattice", but a large proportion of metabolites as well as water molecules are also structured on the enormous surfaces available. Aqueous channels are now thought to be involved in the active transport of solutes within the cell in the same way that the blood stream transport metabolites and chemical messengers within the organism (Wheatley and Clegg, 1991). Joseph Needham (1935) and his colleagues were already aware of all that some sixty years ago. As Welch and Berry (1985) propose, the whole cell is linked up by "long-range energy continua" of mechanical interactions, electric and eletrochemical fluxes and in particular, proton currents that form a "protoneural network", whereby metabolism is regulated instantly and down to minute detail. In addition, the possibility that cells and tissues are also linked by electromagnetic phonons and photons is increasingly entertained (see Popp, Li and Gu, 1992; Ho, 1993; Ho, Popp and Warnke, 1994). As I shall show later, the cell (as well as organism) is not so much a "solid state" as liquid crystalline. Living systems, therefore, possess just the conditions that favour the rapid propagation of influences in all directions, so that local and global can no longer be easily distinguished. Global phase transitions may often take place, which can be initiated at any point within the system or subsystem. Freeman and Barrie (1994) have described abrupt, phase-transition like changes that typically occur in the eeg of whole areas of the brain, recorded simultaneously with a large array of electrodes, for which no definite centre(s) of origin can be identified.9 Organism and environment - a mutual partnership Biology today remains dominated by the genetic paradigm. Genes are seen to be the repository of information that controls the development of the organism, but are otherwise insulated from the environment, and passed on unchanged to the next generation except for rare random mutations. The much publicized Human Genome Project is being promoted on that very basis.10 Yet, the genetic paradigm has already been fatally undermined at least ten years ago, when a plethora of 'fluid genome' processes were first discovered, and many more have come to light since. These processes destabilize and alter genes and genomes in the course of development, some of the genetic changes are so well correlated with the environment that they are referred to as "directed mutations". Many of the genetic changes are then passed on to the next generation. I pointed out at the time that heredity can no longer be seen to reside solely in the DNA passed on from one generation to the next. Instead, the stability and repeatability of development - which we recognize as heredity - is distributed in the whole gamut of dynamic feedback interrelationships between organism and environment, from the socioecological to the genetic. All these may leave imprints that are passed on to subsequent generations, in the form of cultural traditions or artefacts, maternal or cytoplasmic effects, gene expression states, as well as genetic (DNA sequence) changes. The organism is highly interconnected and intercommunicating at all levels extending from within the cell to the socioecological environment. It is on that account that the organism has freed itself from mechanistic controls of any kind. It is not a passive object at the mercy of random variation and natural selection, but an active participants in the evolutionary drama.11 In constantly responding to and transforming its environment, it partakes in creating the possible futures of generations to come. V. The organism as an autonomous coherent whole The concept of coherence has emerged within the past 20 years to describe the wholeness of the organism. The first detailed theory of coherence of the organism was presented by Herbert Fr?hlich (1968; 1980) who argued that as organisms are made up of strongly dipolar molecules packed rather densely together (c.f. the 'solid state' cell), electric and elastic forces will constantly interact. Metabolic pumping will excite macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids as well as cellular membranes (which typically have an enormous electric field of some 107V/m across them). These will start to vibrate and eventually build up into collective modes, or coherent excitations, of both phonons and photons (sound and light) that extend over macroscopic distances within the organism and perhaps also outside the organism. The emission of electromagnetic radiation from coherent lattice vibrations in a solid-state semi-conductor has recently been experimentally demonstrated for the first time (Dekorsy et al, 1995). The possibility that organisms may use electromagnetic radiations to communicate between cells was already entertained by Soviet biologist Gurwitsch (1925) early this century.This hypothesis was revived by Popp and his coworkers in the late 1970s, and there is now a large and rapidly growing literature on "biophotons" that are believed to be emitted from a coherent photon field (or energy storage field) within the living system (see Popp, Li and Gu, 1992). We have indeed found that a single, one minute, exposure of synchronously developing early fruitfly embryos to white light results in the re-emission of relatively intense and prolonged flashes of light, some tens of minutes and even hours after the light exposure (Ho et al, 1992b). This is reminiscent of phase-correlated collective emission, or superradiance, in physical systems, although the timescale is orders of magnitude longer. For phase-correlation to build up over the entire population, one must assume that each embryo has a collective phase of all its activities, in other words, each embryo must be considered a highly coherent domain, despite its multiplicity of activities (Ho, Zhou and Haffegee, 1995). Actually, this is no different from the macroscopic phase correlations that are involved in the synchronous flashing of huge populations of fireflies (Strogatz and Mirollo, 1988), and in many physiological functions, such as limb coordination during locomotion (Collin and Stewart, 1992; Kelso, 1991) and coupling between heart rate and respiratory rate (Breithaupt, 1989). Under those conditions, whole limbs or entire circulatory and respiratory systems must be considered coherent domains which can maintain definite phase relationships with respect to one another. During the same early period of development in Drosophila, exposure of the embryos to weak static magnetic fields also cause characteristic global transformation of the normal segmental body pattern to helical configurations in the larvae emerging 24 hours later (Ho et al, 1992a). As the energies involved are well below the thermal threshold, we conclude that there can be no effect unless the external field is acting on a coherent field where charges are moving in phase, or where magnetically sensitive liquid crystals are undergoing phase alignment globally (Ho, et al, 1994). Liquid crystals may indeed be the material basis of many, if not all aspects of biological organization (Ho et al, 1996). Organisms are polyphasic liquid crystals Liquid crystals are phases of matter between the solid and the liquid states, hence the term, mesophases (DeGennes, 1974). Liquid crystalline mesophases possess long range orientational order (all the molecules pointing in the same direction), and often also varying degrees of translational order (the individual molecules keep to their positions to varying extents). In contrast to solid crystals, liquid crystals are mobile and flexible, and above all, highly responsive. They undergo rapid changes in orientation or phase transitions when exposed to electric or magnetic fields (Blinov, 1983) or to changes in temperature, pressure, pH, hydration, and concentrations of inorganic ions (Collings, 1990; Knight, 1993). These properties are ideal for organisms (Gray, 1993; Knight, 1993). Liquid crystals in organisms include all its major constituents; the lipids of cellular membranes, the DNA in chromosomes, all proteins, especially cytoskeletal proteins, muscle proteins, collagens and other macromolecules of connective tissues. These adopt a multiplicity of different mesophases that may be crucial for biological structure and function at all levels of organization (Ho et al, 1996) from channeling metabolites in the cell to pattern determination and the coordinated locomotion of whole organisms. The importance of liquid crystals for living organization was recognized by Joseph Needham (1935) among others. He suggested that living systems actually are liquid crystals, and that many liquid crystalline mesophases may exist in the cell although they cannot then be detected. Indeed, there has been no direct evidence that extensive liquid crystalline mesophases exist in living organisms or in the cytoplasm until our recent discovery of a noninvasive optical technique (Ho and Lawrence, 1993; Ho and Saunders, 1994; Newton, Haffegee and Ho, 1995). This enables us to obtain high resolution and high contrast coloured images of live organisms based on visualizing just the kind of coherent liquid crystalline mesophases which Needham and others had predicted. The technique effectively allows us to see the whole of the living organism at once from its macroscopic activities down to the phase alignment of the molecules that make up its tissues. Brilliant optical colours are generated which are specific for each tissue, dependent on the molecular structure and the degree of coherent alignment of all the molecules, even as the molecules are moving about busily transforming energy. This is possible because visible light vibrates much faster than the molecules can move, so the tissues will appear indistinguishable from static crystals to the light passing through so long as the movements of the constituent molecules are sufficiently coherent. With this imaging technique, one can see that the organism is thick with activities at all levels, which are coordinated in a continuum from the macroscopic to the molecular. And that is what the coherence of the organism entails. These images also bring out another aspect of the wholeness of the organism: all organisms, from protozoa to vertebrates without exception, are polarized along the anteroposterior axis, so that all the colours in the different tissues of the body are at a maximum when the anteroposterior axis is appropriately aligned, and they change in concert as the organism is rotated from that position. The anteroposterior axis acts as the optical axis for the whole organism, which behaves in effect, as a single crystal. This leaves us in little doubt that the organism is a singular whole, despite the diverse multiplicity and polychromatic nature of its constituent parts. The tissues not only maintain their crystalline order when they are actively transforming energy, the degree of order seems to depend on energy transformation, in that the more active and energetic the organism, the more intensely colorful it is, implying that the molecular motions are all the more coherent (Ho and Saunders, 1994; Ho et al, 1996). The coherence of the organism is therefore closely tied up with its energetic status, as argued in the beginning of this essay: the coherent whole is full of energy - it is a vibrant coherent whole. Quantum coherence in living organisms The above considerations and observations show that the essence of organic wholeness is that it is distributed throughout its constituent parts so that local and global, part and whole are completely indistinguishable - the organism's activities being always fully coordinated in a continuum from the molecular to the macroscopic. That convinces me (as argued in detail in Ho, 1993, also Ho, 1996a) that there is something very special about the wholeness of organisms that is only fully captured by quantum coherence.12 An intuitive appreciation of quantum coherence is to think of the 'I' that each and every one of us experience of our own being. We know that our body is a multiplicity of organs and tissues, composed of many billions of cells and astronomical numbers of molecules of many different kinds, all capable of working autonomously, and yet somehow cohering into the singular being of our private experience. That is just the stuff of quantum coherence. Quantum coherence does not mean that everybody or every element of the system must be doing the same thing all the time, it is more akin to a grand ballet, or better yet, a very large jazz band where everyone is doing his or her own thing while being perfectly in step and in tune with the whole. A quantum coherent system maximizes both global cohesion and local freedom (Ho, 1993). This property is technically referred to as factorizability, the correlations between subsystems resolving neatly into self-correlations so that the subsystems behave as though they are independent of one another. It enables the body to be performing all sorts of different but coordinated functions simultaneously (Ho, 1995b). It also enables instantaneous, as well as noiseless intercommunication to take place throughout the system.13 As I am writing, my digestive system is working independently, my metabolism busily transforming chemical energy in all my cells, putting some away in the longer term stores of fat and glycogen, while converting most of it into readily utilizable forms such as ATP. Similarly, my muscles are keeping in tone and allowing me to work the keyboard, while, hopefully, my neurons are firing in wonderfully coherent patterns in my brain. Nevertheless, if the telephone should ring in the middle of all this, I would turn to pick it up without hesitation. The importance of factorizability is evoked by the movie character, Dr. Strangelove, portrayed by Peter Sellers as a megalomaniac scientist who wanted to rule the world. He was a wheelchair-bound paraplegiac, who could not speak without raising his arm in the manner of a Nazi salute. That is just the symptom of the loss of factorizability which is the hallmark of quantum coherence. The coherent organism is, in the ideal, a quantum superposition of activities - organized according to their characteristic space-times - each itself coherent, so that it can couple coherently to the rest (Ho, 1995b; 1996a). This picture is fully consistent with the earlier proposal that the organism stores energy over all space-time domains each intercommunicating (or coupled) with the rest. Quantum superposition also enables the system to maximize its potential degrees of freedom so that the single degree of freedom required for coherent action can be instantaneously accessed. The freedom of organisms The organism maximizes both local freedom and global intercommunication. One comes to the startling discovery that the coherent organism is in a very real sense completely free. Nothing is in control, and yet everything is in control. Thus, it is the failure to transcend the mechanistic framework that makes people persist in enquiring which parts are in control, or issuing instructions; or whether free will exists, and who choreographs the dance of molecules. Does "consciousness" control matter or vice versa? These questions are meaningless when one understands what it is to be a coherent, organic whole. An organic whole is an entangled whole, where part and whole, global and local are so thoroughly implicated as to be indistinguishable, and each part is as much in control as it is sensitive and responsive. Choreographer and dancer are one and the same. The 'self' is a domain of coherent activities, in the ideal, a pure state that permeates the whole of our being with no definite localizations or boundaries, as Bergson has described. The positing of 'self' as a domain of coherent activities implies the existence of an active whole agent who is free. I must stress that freedom does not entail the breakdown of causality as many commentators have mistakenly supposed. On the contrary, an acausal world would be one where it is impossible to be free, as nothing would be intelligible. Nevertheless, freedom does entail a new kind of organic causality that is nonlocal, and posited with the organism itself. It is the experience of perceptual feedback consequent on one's actions that is responsible for the intuition of causality (Freeman, 1990). However, it must not be supposed that the cause or consciousness is secreted from some definite location in the brain, it is distributed and delocalized throughout the system (c.f. Freeman, 1990). Freedom in the present context means being true to 'self', in other words, being coherent. A free act is a coherent act. Of course not all acts are free, as one is seldom fully coherent. Yet the mere possiblity of being unfree affirms the opposite, that freedom is real, "..we are free when our acts spring from our whole personality, when they express it, when they have that indefinable resemblance to it which one sometimes finds between the artist and his work."14 The coherent 'self' is distributed and nonlocal - being implicated in a community of other entities with which one is entangled (Whitehead, 1925; see also Ho, 1993). Thus, being true to self does not imply acting against others. On the contrary, sustaining others sustains the self, so being true to others is also being true to self. It is only within a mechanistic Darwinian perspective that freedom becomes perverted into acts against others (see Ho, 1996e). The coherent 'self' can also couple coherently to the environment so that one becomes as much in control of the environment as one is responsive. The organism thereby partici-pates in creating its own possible futures as well as those of the entire community of organisms in the universe, much as Whitehead (1925) has envisaged. I venture to suggest, therefore, that a truly free individual is a coherent being that lives life fully and spontaneously, without fragmentation or hesitation, who is at peace with herself and at ease with the universe as she participates in creating, from moment to moment, its possible futures. Acknowledgments An earlier draft of this paper was written for the occasion of the 6th Mind & Brain Conference, and I am grateful to Brian Goodwin and Peter Fenwick for making it happen. Afterwards, I felt so inspired by the discussions with the participants that I decided to write it up for publication. Thanks are also due to Geoffrey Sewell for stimulating discussions on coherence and bioenergetics and for keeping track of my physics; to Peter Saunders, Brian Goodwin, Michael Brown and Michael Clarke for their encouragement and support, and for drawing my attention to crucial publications and preprints. Invaluable suggestions for improving the manuscript came from the reviewers, Walter Freeman and Joseph Goguen. Notes 1. The Theoretical Biology Club was an informal association of academics based in Cambridge University in the 1930s. Its membership was probably more extensive than I have indicated(see Mackay, 1994). Their project continued, to some extent, in a series of meetings organized by C.H. Waddington in the 1960s and 70s. The proceedings, published under the title,Towards a Theoretical Biology (Edinburgh University Press) were very influential among critics of mainstream neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, including myself. Four recent Waddington Memorial Conferences have been organized by Waddington's student, Brian Goodwin, and published as collected volumes (see Goodwin and Saunders, 1989; Stein and Varela, 1992). These helped to keep the project of the Theoretical Biology Club alive, and I count myself among the intellectual beneficiaries. 2. Cited in Ehrenber, 1967, p103. 3. Schr?dinger, 1944, pp.70-71. 4. Schr?dinger was criticized by both Pauling and Perutz over his non-rigorous use of "negative entropy". The exchanges are described by Gnaiger, 1994. 5. I explore the consequences of organic space-time for understanding some of the more paradoxical "states of consciousness" in my book (Ho, 1993) and also in a forth-coming paper (Ho and Marcer, 1996). 6. The present conceptualization, based on thermodynamics, converges with the notion of autopoesis describing the living system as a unitary, self-producing entity, which Maturana and Varela (1987) derived from purely formal considerations. 7. Waddington's ideas in evolutionary theory is reviewed recently by Ho, 1996b. 8. This is comprehensively described by Goodwin (1995) in our Open University Third Level Course and accompanying video. 9. Elsewhere, it is argued that nonlocal intercommunication based on quantum coherence is involved in these simultaneous changes in brain activities (Ho and Marcer, 1996). 10. I have dealt with the socioeconomic implications as well as scientific issues of gene biotechnology and the Human Genome Project elsewhere Ho (1995c). 11. My colleagues and I have written against the reductionist tendencies of mainstream evolutionary theory since 1976, but see in particular, Ho and Saunders (1984); Pollard, J.W. (1984); Ho, M.W. (1986); Ho and Fox (1988). The issue of epigenetic, or Lamarckian inheritance has been thoroughly reviewed and documented recently by Jablonka and Lamb (1995). See also, Ho, M.W. (1996d). 12. Some aspects of brain activity can best be understood in terms of quantum coherence, independently of arguments given by Hameroff and Penrose (1995) who offer a specific mechanism for mediating coherence. The quantum coherence described in the present paper involves the whole system. When the system is coherent, nonlocal correlations can be established instantaneously, i.e., without delay. The largescale spatial coherence of brain activities observed by Freeman and Barrie (1994) may be indicative of such instantaneous intercom-munication. The relationship between quantum coherence, organic space-time and conscious experience is the subject of another paper (Ho and Marcer, 1966). 13. The coherent pure state (which is factorizable) is the prerequisite for instantaneous, lossless intercommunication, because the slightest change will give rise to a 'signal' passing between the uncorrelated factorizable parts. However, during intercommunication, factorizability is temporarily lost. 14. 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(1995). emission of submillimeter electromagnetic waves by coherent phonons. Physical Rev. Letters 74, 738-741. Denbigh, K. (1951). The Thermodynamics of the Steady State, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London. De Gennes, P.G. (1974). The Physics of Liquid Crystals, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Ehrenberg, W. (1967). Maxwell's demon. Scient. Am. 217, 103-110. Freeman, W.J. (1990). On the fallacy of assigning an origin to consciousness. In Machinery of the Mind. Data, Theory, and Speculations About Higher Brain Function (E.R. John, ed.), pp.14-26, Birkhauser, Boston. Freeman, W.J. (1995). Societies of Brains. A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hove. Freeman, W.J. and Barrie, J.M. (1994). Chaotic oscillations and the genesis of meaning in cerebral cortex. In Temporal Coding in the Brain (G. Bizsaki, ed.), pp. 13-37, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Fr?hlich, H. (1968). Long range coherence and energy storage in biological systems. Int. J. Quant. Chem. 2, 641-649. 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(1995a) Bioenergetics, S327 Living Processes, An Open University Third Level Science Course, Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Ho, M.W. (1995b). Bioenergetics and the Coherence of Organisms. Neural Network World 5, 733-750. Ho, M.W. (1995c). Unravelling gene biotechnology. Soundings 1, 77-98. Ho, M.W. (1996a). Bioenergetics and Biocommunication. IPCAT 95 Proceedings (R. Paton, ed.), World Scientific (in press). Ho, M.W. (1996b). Evolution. In Encyclopedia of Comparative Psychology (G. Greenber and M. Haraway, eds.), Garland Publishing, New York. Ho, M.W. (1996c). Holistic Health: how to be a vibrant coherent whole (submitted) Ho, M.W. (1996d) Why Lamarck won't go away. Annal. Human Genetics 60: 81-84, Ho, M.W. (1996e). Natural being and coherent society. InGaia in Action. Science of the Living Earth (P. Bunyard, ed.) pp.286-307, Floris Books, 1995. Ho, M.W., French, A., Haffegee, J. and Saunders, P.T. (1994). Can weak magnetic fields (or potentials) affect pattern formation? In Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunication (M.W. Ho, F.A. Popp, and U. Warnke, eds.) , World Scientific, Singapore. Ho, M.W. and Fox, eds. (1988).Evolutionary Processes and Metaphors , Wiley, London. Ho, M.W., Haffegee, J., Newton, R.. Zhou, Y.M., Bolton, J.S. and Ross, S. (1996). Organisms are polyphasic liquid crystals. Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics (in press). Ho, M.W. and Lawrence, M. (1993). Interference colour vital imaging - a novel noninvasive technique. Microscopy and Analysis, September, 26. Ho, M.W. and Marcer, P. (1966). How organisms can have conscious experience (in preparation). Ho, M.W., Popp, F.A. and Warnke, eds. (1994). Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunications, World Scientific, Singapore. Ho, M.W. and Saunders, P.T. eds. (1984). Beyond neoDarwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionay Paradigm. Academic Press, 1984. Ho, M.W. and Saunders, P.T. (1994). Liquid crystalline mesophases in living organisms. In Bioelectromagnetism and Biocommunication (M.W. Ho, F.A. Popp and U. Warnke, eds.). World Scientific, Singapore. Ho, M.W., Stone, T.A., Jerman, I., Bolton, J., Bolton, H., Goodwin, B.C. , Saunders, P.T. and Robertson, F. (1992a). Brief exposure to weak static magnetic fields during early embryogenesis cause cuticular pattern abnormalities in Drosophila larvae. Physics in medicine and Biology 37, 1171-1179. Ho, M.W. Xu, X., Ross, S. and Saunders, P.T. (1992b). Light emission and re-scattering in synchronously developing populations of early embryos - evidence for coherence fo the embryonic field and long range cooperativity. In Advances in Biophotons Research (F.A. Popp, K.H. Li and Q.Gu, eds.), pp. 287-306, World Scientific, Singapore. Ho, M.W., Zhou, Y.M. and Haffegee, J. (1995). Biological organization, coherence and the morphogenetic field In Physics in Biology (L. Trainor and C. Lumsden, eds.), Academic Press (in press). Jablonka, E. and Lamb, M. (1995). Epigenetic Inheritance - The Lamarkian Dimension, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kacser, H. (1987). On parts and wholes in metabolism. In The Organization of Cell Metabolism (G.R. Welch and J.S. Clegg, eds.), Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York. Kandel, E.R., Schwartz, J.H. and Jessell, T.M. (1991). Principles of Neural Science 3rd ed. Elsevier, New York. Kelso, J.A.S. (1991). Behavioral and neural pattern generation: The concept of neurobehavioral dynamical systems. In Cardiorespiratory and Motor Coordination (H.P. Koepchen and T. Huopaniemi, eds.), pp 224-234, Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Knight, D. (1993). Collagens as liquid crystals, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Chemistry Session: Molecular Self-Assembly in Science and Life, Sept. 1, Keele. Mackay, A.L. (1994). Growth and Form. Introduction to Conference on Form, Tsukuba University, Nov. 1994, preprint kindly provided by the author. Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J. (1987). The Tree of Knowledge, Shambala, Boston. McClare, C.W.F. (1971). Chemical machines, Maxwell's demon and living organisms. J. theor. Biol. 30, 1-34. Needham, J. (1936). Order and Life, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Newton, R., Haffegee, J. and Ho, M.W. (1995). Colour-contrast in polarized light microscopy of weakly birefringent biological specimens. J. Microscopy (in press). Pollard, J.W. ed. (1984). Evolutionary Paths Into the Future, Wiley, London. Popp, F.A. (1986). On the coherence of ultraweak photoemission from living tissues. In Disequilibrium and Self-Organization (C.W. Kilmister, ed.), p.207, Reidel, Dordrecht. Popp, F.A., Li, K.H. and Q. Gu, eds. (1992). Recent Advances in Biophoton Research and its Applications, World Scientific, Singapore. Prigogine, I. (1967). Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes, John Wiley & Sons, New York. Saunders, P.T. (1992). The organism as a dynamical system. In Thinking About Biology (W. Stein and F.J. Varela, eds.), pp.41-63, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. Schr?dinger, E. (1944). What is Life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Stein, W. and Varela, F.J. eds. (1992). Thinking About Biology, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. Strogatz, S.H. and Mirollo, R.E. (1988). Collective synchronisation in lattices of non-linear oscillators with randomness. J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 21, L699-L705. Waddington, C.H. (1957). The Strategy of the Genes, Allen and Unwin, London. Welch, G.R. and Berry, M.N. (1985). Long-range energy continua and the coordination of multienzyme sequences in vivo. In Organized Multienzyme Systems (G.R. Welch, ed.), Academic Press, New York. Welch, G.R. and Clegg, J.S. eds. (1987). The Organization of Cell Metabolism, Plenum Publishing Corp., New York. Wheatley, D. and Clegg, J.S. (1991). Intracellular organization: evolutionary origins and possible consequences of metabolic rate control in vertebrates. Am. Zool. 31, 504-513. Whitehead, A.N. (1925) Science and the Modern World, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth. Legends Figure 1. Energy flow, energy storage and the reproducing life-cycle. Figure 2. The many-fold cycles of life coupled to energy flow. Figure 3. The organism frees itself from the contraints of energy conservation and the second law of thermodynamics. Recent Publications The Rainbow and the Worm Mae-Wan Ho 250 pages, optional cd-rom Buy Now. The Fluid Genome Mae-Wan Ho 220 pages, optional cd-rom Buy Now. The Case for a GM-free Sustainable World - Report by the Independent Science Panel The only radical science magazine on earth Science in Society 25 OUT NOW! Order your copy from our online store. I-SIS is a not-for-profit organisation, depending on donations, membership fees, subscriptions, and merchandise sales to continue its work. The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 OXR telephone: [44 1994 231623] [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20 7272 5636] General Enquiries sam at i-sis.org.uk - Website/Mailing List press-release at i-sis.org.uk - ISIS Director m.w.ho at i-sis.org.uk From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 21:50:46 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:50:46 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sunday Times (UK): The secret life of moody cows Message-ID: The secret life of moody cows http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1502933,00.html February 27, 2005 Jonathan Leake, Science Editor ONCE they were a byword for mindless docility. But cows have a secret mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited over intellectual challenges, scientists have found. Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and even anxiety -- they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right conditions, they can also feel great happiness. The findings have emerged from studies of farm animals that have found similar traits in pigs, goats, chickens and other livestock. They suggest that such animals may be so emotionally similar to humans that welfare laws need to be rethought. Christine Nicol, professor of animal welfare at Bristol University, said even chickens may have to be treated as individuals with needs and problems. "Remarkable cognitive abilities and cultural innovations have been revealed," she said. "Our challenge is to teach others that every animal we intend to eat or use is a complex individual, and to adjust our farming culture accordingly." Nicol will be presenting her findings to a scientific conference to be held in London next month by Compassion in World Farming, the animal welfare lobby group. John Webster, professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden. "People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic," he said. Webster and his colleagues have documented how cows within a herd form smaller friendship groups of between two and four animals with whom they spend most of their time, often grooming and licking each other. They will also dislike other cows and can bear grudges for months or years. Dairy cow herds can also be intensely sexual. Webster describes how the cows become excited when one of the herd comes into heat and start trying to mount her. "Cows look calm, but really they are gay nymphomaniacs," he said. Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also become excited by solving intellectual challenges. In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph was used to measure their brainwaves. "Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment," said Broom. The assumption that farm animals cannot suffer from conditions that would be considered intolerable for humans is partly based on the idea that they are less intelligent than people and have no "sense of self". Increasingly, however, research reveals this to be untrue. Keith Kendrick, professor of neurobiology at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, has found that even sheep are far more complex than realised and can remember 50 ovine faces -- even in profile. They can recognise another sheep after a year apart. Kendrick has also described how sheep can form strong affections for particular humans, becoming depressed by long separations and greeting them enthusiastically even after three years. The Compassion in World Farming conference will be opened with a keynote speech by Jane Goodall, the primatologist who founded the study of animal sentience with her research into chimpanzees in the early 1960s. Goodall overturned the then accepted belief that animals were simply automatons showing little individuality or emotions. It has taken many years, however, for scientists to accept that such ideas could be applied to a wide range of other animals. "Sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are motivated to seek it," said Webster. "You only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English summer's day. Just like humans." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 21:50:56 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 17:50:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: (Wolfram) Revealing order in the chaos Message-ID: Revealing order in the chaos http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524881.300&print=true 5.2.26 WHEN it comes to predicting significant things, you could say that when we're good, we're very very good, and when we're bad, we're useless. We can spot weaknesses in an aircraft wing long before it fails, and foretell an eclipse centuries in advance. Yet we seem totally powerless to predict other events - annoying jam-ups in a manufacturing line, cascading power failures, earthquakes or financial crises. Why? For two decades, researchers have suspected that what makes such events so unpredictable is their inherent complexity. In the Earth's crust and its ecosystems, and in any economy, events depend on the delicate interactions of millions of parts, and seemingly insignificant accidents can sometimes have massive repercussions. Mathematicians have even declared that some complex systems are "computationally irreducible", meaning there is no short cut to knowing their future. The only way to find out what will happen is to actually let it happen. But it now seems that this conclusion may have been unduly pessimistic. Revisiting the mathematics behind this topic, researchers have discovered that if you ask the right kinds of questions, even computationally irreducible systems can be more predictable than anyone thought. So foretelling events like financial meltdowns and earthquakes might just be possible after all. Even better, this new perspective could help to answer some of the deepest questions of science. Much of this breakthrough has come from research into computer programs known as cellular automata. The simplest kind of cellular automaton is a row of cells - each of which can be, say, black or white - along with a set of rules that determine how each cell's colour will change from one row to the next (see Graphic). The simplest automata have "local" rules, meaning that only a cell's immediate neighbours influence its future state. There are 256 distinct sets of rules for such one-dimensional automata. For example, the rule might be that a cell will be black in the next row if either of its neighbours is black now: otherwise, it will be white. Once you have specified the initial state of each cell in the automaton, it will then evolve indefinitely through a sequence of new states. In 1984 mathematician Stephen Wolfram published an exhaustive study of the 256 rules to see what he could learn from them. He found that some led to quite simple behaviour, with the system quickly falling into a static or periodically repeating pattern. Many others, however, generated highly complex and apparently random patterns. Wolfram's analysis led him to suggest that automata in this latter class were computationally irreducible, and subsequent work by others even proved this for one specific automaton - that corresponding to "rule 110". It was a blow to scientists trying to get a handle on complex systems. Far from being an obscure mathematical plaything, cellular automata embody the very essence of physics and engineering. In these systems, influences pass from one point to neighbouring points, just as in real physical processes. Indeed, when researchers simulate physical systems on computers, the equations they use are often based on cellular automata. Wolfram suggested that the computational irreducibility he found in certain cellular automata might also be commonplace in the more complex systems of the real world: it might just explain why so many events, from earthquakes to ecological upheavals, prove hard to predict. Our frustration, he concluded, could be rooted in the very principles of mathematics. Fortunately, however, the story doesn't end there. Physicist Nigel Goldenfeld of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thinks there's a way out. Goldenfeld studies pattern formation in structures as diverse as snowflakes and limestone deposits at geothermal hot springs. During two decades of research, he has reached the view that the best way to study patterns is through "coarse-grained" models: that is, models that leave out most of the details and focus only on the broad-brush description of the pattern-forming process. He and his colleagues have found that completely different situations can have precisely the same logic. The convection patterns produced in a pan of boiling water, for instance, are uncannily similar to the patterns in a shaken tray of sand. Goldenfeld's team has developed mathematical ideas to explain why this might be. "Because of this work," says Goldenfeld, "I became interested in what would happen if the same ideas were applied to cellular automata." Deceptively simple So late last year, he and colleague Navot Israeli, also at Illinois, began exploring the possibility that some cellular automata might actually be simpler than they appeared - even those thought to be computationally irreducible. Perhaps you just had to know which details to ignore and then adopt the appropriate "coarse-grained" perspective. To find out, the pair repeated Wolfram's exhaustive study of the 256 automata. "We hoped to find a few cases where this would work," Israeli says. And they did (Physical Review Letters, vol 92, p 74105). In their scheme, they group the cells of the original system together in "supercells" comprising, say, 8 or 10 cells. Each supercell then corresponds to one cell of a new coarse-grained system, and its state is defined through some scheme; it might be black or white, for example, depending on whether it contains more black or white cells. There are, obviously, many ways to define a coarse graining - choosing groups of different sizes, and using different schemes for determining the states of the new cells. But in general, many specific patterns of cells - each a specific state of the original cellular automata - will correspond to just one state in the new. With supercells of 10 cells each, for example, literally thousands of distinct patterns have more black cells than white - all would give a single black supercell in the coarse-grained system. The coarse-graining also modifies the time-step between applications of the rule that is then applied to the coarse-grained system, effectively skipping through some of the states. For each of Wolfram's 256 cellular automata, Goldenfeld and Israeli explored the consequences of a large number of possible coarse grainings. They then ran their coarse-grained pattern by the original rule. This produced a different pattern from the original. In 240 out of 256 of these cases, rules that produced relatively simple and predictable patterns mimicked the rough behaviour of rules that produce complex, computationally irreducible patterns. They had found a way to make unpredictable outcomes at least roughly predictable. Most surprisingly, this was even possible for automata that are known to be computationally irreducible, such as the infamous rule 110. In every case where the coarse-graining worked, it produced a simpler system that reproduced the large-scale dynamics of the original. "This is a crowning achievement," says physicist Didier Sornette of the University of California, Los Angeles. And it suggests that the situation with complex systems may not be so bleak after all: prediction may simply depend on descriptions at the right level of detail. But of course, that's half the problem: while coarse-graining's success in basic models like this can give researchers hope, it doesn't tell them how to simplify messy real-world systems. However, Sornette and other researchers are making progress in this area, almost by trial and error, and they have had striking success even in some of the most difficult circumstances. Roughing it Two years ago, physicist Neil Johnson of the University of Oxford and his colleagues pioneered a coarse-grained model of real financial markets (New Scientist, 10 April 2004, p 34). They found it was remarkably successful at forecasting the foreign exchange market, predicting the market's daily ups and downs with an accuracy of more than 54 per cent. Getting it right that often can outweigh the transaction costs of trading and turn a profit. Now Sornette and J?rgen Andersen of the University of Paris X have managed to pin down why Johnson's coarse-graining model is so effective, and in the process they have discovered a surprisingly simple way to show that markets should be especially easy to predict at certain times (see "Prediction days"). Perhaps most boldly, physicist Jim Crutchfield of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico has devised a scheme that he believes could predict links between the past and future for virtually any system. Any physical process is a sequence of events - whether it is water flowing down a stream or a colony of bacteria infecting a wound - and prediction means mapping past histories of events onto possible future outcomes. In the late 1980s, Crutchfield began arguing that you could sort the various histories of a system into classes, so that all the histories in each class give the same outcome. Then, as with Goldenfeld and Israeli's coarse-grainings, many details of the underlying system might be irrelevant, making it possible to simplify the description and maybe finding a route to prediction. For 15 years, Crutchfield and colleagues have been seeking mathematical procedures for doing this automatically, a process they call "computational mechanics". They have successfully applied the approach to a number of practical applications, helping to clarify the chaotic dynamics of dripping taps and identify hidden patterns in the molecular disorder of many real materials (New Scientist, 29 August 1998, p 36). "We've shown that there is a kind of order in the chaos," says Crutchfield. The coarse-graining approach might even settle some long-standing scientific puzzles, Crutchfield suggests. After all, when it comes to knowledge, less is sometimes more. "This is what scientists do in their work - they try to strip irrelevant details away and gather histories into equivalent groups, thereby making theories as simple as possible," he says. Goldenfeld agrees: "In physics we only ever ask for approximate answers. I'm pretty sure that this is why physics works at all, and isn't hampered by computational irreducibility." Only by ignoring vast amounts of molecular detail did researchers ever develop the laws of thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and chemistry. But it could go even deeper, Goldenfeld suggests. He thinks that coarse-graining could even have something to do with the laws of physics themselves. "The dream," Goldenfeld says, "is that as long as you look at long enough scales of space and time, you will inevitably observe processes that fit in with relativity, quantum mechanics and so on." There is a new optimism among those in the business of prediction. The prospects for forecasting major events in ecology and economics - and maybe even earthquakes and cancers - suddenly look less bleak. Where we once felt powerless in the face of overwhelming complexity, there is now hope of seizing control. Coarse-graining might never give us a crystal-clear window on the future, but it might just make it clear enough. Prediction days In financial markets there are only two kinds of strategies: those that depend on the immediate past and those that do not. Though this might seem a banal insight, it has enabled J?rgen Andersen of the University of Paris X and Didier Sornette of the University of California, Los Angeles, to begin predicting these markets. It suggests that real markets might sometimes lock themselves into certain futures. For example, if more than half the population came to be using strategies that disregard the immediate past, then the future would be certain as soon as the ideas behind these strategies became clear. Such events would be extremely unlikely if players chose their strategies at random, but real people don't. Instead, they tend to use ideas that have done well recently, and end up acting alike. In a computer simulation of a simplified market, Sornette and Anderson found that this phenomenon turned 17 per cent of the days into "prediction days", when the markets were at their most readable. Moving to real markets, the pair used data for the NASDAQ over 60 days to train a computer model to recognise upcoming prediction days. They then used the model's output to make predictions of the NASDAQ ahead of time. Although the prediction days come with varying levels of statistical certainty, meaning some give more reliable predictions than others, over the next 10 weeks the researchers identified 10 prediction days with a relatively high certainty, and their predictions on these days turned out to be 70 per cent accurate. And three prediction days had very high certainty - all predictions on these proved correct. The growing success of the coarse-graining approach suggests it could eventually tame a vast range of unpredictable systems, from consumer markets to the complex biological processes that underlie human diseases. A number of physicians believe these ideas might be applicable to diseases such as cancer, which ultimately come down to the "cheating" behaviour of rogue cells. By understanding how the diverse strategies of different cells can have collective consequences, it might be possible to design low-impact treatments that target just a few crucial cells to steer the system away from disease. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 22:57:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:57:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Charity begins at Homo sapiens (Genetics of altruism) Message-ID: Charity begins at Homo sapiens http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg18524901.600 * 12 March 2005 * NewScientist.com news service * Mark Buchanan IN THE aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami last year, people from the world's richest countries were falling over each other to make donations to help rebuild the lives of the survivors. Perhaps it was the conjunction of this terrible natural disaster with the consumerist orgy of Christmas that spurred so many of us to greater generosity. Whatever the reason, conspicuous donation suddenly became the vogue. Individuals, and even entire countries, competed to see who could send most money to people on the other side of the world whose identity they did not know and who they were highly unlikely ever to meet. What an odd species we are. Not that Homo sapiens is the only species in which individuals bestow kindness on others. Many mammals, birds, insects and even bacteria do likewise. But their largesse tends to be reserved for their genetic relatives; this makes sense in evolutionary terms, because by helping someone who shares many of your genes you improve the chances of propelling this common DNA into the future. Humans are different, for we cooperate with complete genetic strangers - workmates, neighbours, anonymous people in far-off countries. Why on earth do we do that? For several decades, researchers have had a possible explanation: apparently selfless acts are nothing of the kind, but are instead a clever way of promoting individual self-interest. When rivals meet again and again, for example, the rewards of cooperation can outweigh the costs of conflict, so getting along pays dividends. Scientists have also come to realise what philanthropists such as Getty and Gates have long known: that altruism does wonders for your reputation (see "Why are we so generous? - below"). But does cooperation always have self-interested roots? Some researchers are starting to have their doubts. Over the past decade, experiments devised by Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, among others, have shown that many people will cooperate with others even when it is absolutely clear they have nothing to gain. A capacity for true altruism seems to be a part of human nature. It is a heartening discovery, yet one that has also touched off a firestorm of debate. The experiments at the centre of the controversy are as simple as they are illuminating. They ignore theory-based preconceptions about how individuals ought to behave and focus instead on finding out what they actually do when playing games in which there is real money at stake. One of the most basic of these games is the "ultimatum game". An experimenter gives one of two players some cash, say $20, and asks that person, called the "proposer", to offer a fraction of it to the second player, called the "receiver", whose identity is hidden from the other player. The proposer can offer any amount they choose, from nothing up to the entire $20. The receiver then has the choice of accepting or rejecting the offer. If he or she accepts, the cash is shared according to the original offer. A rejection means that no one gets anything. The game is played just once. For the receiver, self-interest would seem to dictate accepting the offer no matter how small it is, since getting something is better than getting nothing. Knowing this, a similarly self-interested proposer should offer as little as possible. But over the past decade or so, research on student volunteers has shown that proposers in such experiments typically offer anything from 25 to 50 per cent, while receivers tend to reject offers of less than 25 per cent. "People reject low offers," says anthropologist Joseph Henrich of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, "because they view them as unfair." And through their rejection, they show a willingness to punish the unfair offers even at a cost to themselves. A vast number of other experiments illustrate the same point. Last year, for example, Fehr and his colleagues had students play a version of the famous prisoner's dilemma game, in which two people can prosper through cooperation but are also given strong incentives to cheat on one another. In this game, if the participants cooperate, each receives a worthwhile monetary pay-off. But either player can get an even higher pay-off by cheating while their opponent cooperates (see Diagram). In this particular version of the game, the researchers got people to play sequentially: one would go and then the other, fully aware of what the first had done. In theory, anyone thinking only of their own personal gain would always cheat, as this pays more than cooperating. But in the experiments, although many of players who went first did cheat, others cooperated, despite knowing that the second player could sucker them by cheating. What's more, roughly half those who went second rewarded cooperation by treating their opponent fairly, even though that meant forgoing an easy pay-off for themselves (Human Nature, vol 13, p 1). "The facts are clear," Fehr says. "Many people are willing to cooperate and to punish those who don't, even when no gain is possible." This tendency - which researchers call "strong reciprocity" - throws into question the assumption that apparently selfless behaviour must have some selfish explanation. Across disciplines, researchers now agree that people often act against their own self-interest. "This is the most important empirical work on the human sense of justice in many years," says evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers of Rutgers University in New Jersey. But when it comes to explaining the origin of our altruism, matters get a whole lot more contentious. In evolutionary terms it is a puzzle because any organism that helps others at its own expense stands at an evolutionary disadvantage. So if many people really are true altruists, as it seems, why haven't greedier, self-seeking competitors wiped them out? One possibility, Trivers suggests, is that evolution actually is wiping these people out - it just hasn't finished the job yet. He, along with many anthropologists, takes the view that humans evolved to cooperate when our ancestors lived in small, isolated groups of hunter-gatherers. In this setting, they learned through repeated interaction with others that cooperation generally pays because it induces other members of the group to return a favour in the future. Biologists refer to strategic cooperation of this kind as "reciprocal altruism". It cannot directly explain the true altruism found in experiments in which anonymous players meet only once, offering them no hope of future gain. But it is the benefits we gained from reciprocal altruism in our evolutionary past that lead us to behave with "inappropriate" altruism in experiments like Fehr's, Trivers says. "Our brains misfire when presented with a situation to which we have not evolved a response." If Trivers is right, then true altruism is what evolutionary biologists call a "maladaptation". Evolved to respond in a certain way to a given situation, we find it hard to act differently in the changed circumstances of the modern world. That would make strong reciprocity just another in a long list of maladaptations found in modern human behaviour, according to anthropologist John Tooby of the University of California at Santa Barbara. To make his point he gives the example of sexual desire, which most biologists agree evolved to spur the conception of offspring. Today, however, individuals experience sexual desire in many situations in which procreation is clearly impossible, "even when they know the object of their desire is imaginary, or a piece of paper", as Tooby says. Undoubtedly adaptations that evolved to help us cope under specific conditions can backfire when situations change. But not everyone is convinced by the idea that true altruism is such a maladaptation. Henrich disagrees with the theory's central premise. He believes that while our ancestors lived in small, close-knit groups, one-shot interactions with strangers would have been common even then. What's more, these interactions could have been crucial to people's survival, because they would have occurred over shared resources such as water holes and prey animals and, more crucially, in times of catastrophe such as flood or drought. "Environmental shocks would have guaranteed that strangers encountered one another during fitness-critical times," Henrich says. If both one-shot and repeated interactions were routine in ancestral life, Henrich argues, evolution would presumably have prepared us to distinguish between the two with some precision. And that does seem to be the case. Two years ago economists Simon G?chter of the University of St Gallen in Switzerland and Armin Falk of the University of Bonn, Germany, looked at how people alter the way they play the prisoner's dilemma game depending on whether the game involves one-shot or repeated encounters with others. If people treat one-shot encounters as if they were repeated - as the maladaptation idea suggests - then there shouldn't be a difference. But they found that repeated play more than doubled cooperation levels, indicating that we are fully capable of adapting our behaviour to the situation at hand (The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, vol 104, p 1). Further support for the idea that strong reciprocity is an adaptation in its own right comes from the theoretical studies of economist Herbert Gintis of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, anthropologist Robert Boyd of the University of California at Los Angeles, and others. They set up a computer model in which groups of individuals interacted, and watched how their behaviour evolved. Individuals were set up in the model to behave initially either as cheats or as cooperators, and in personal interactions the former came off best. When groups competed with one another, however, cooperation came into its own: groups with more cooperators were likely to flourish. But that was only the start. The individuals, whether initially cooperators or cheats, were also programmed to copy successful behaviour. In simulations with groups ranging from 4 to 256 individuals, the team found that altruism could evolve. The benefits that cooperation conferred on a group outweighed its costs to individuals - but only in groups of less than about 10. Ancestral human hunter-gatherer bands are thought to have numbered 30 or more individuals, so how could cooperative behaviour have evolved and spread in these groups? The answer lies in the fact that strong reciprocity is not simply a matter of cooperation; it also requires punishment of those who fail to toe the line. When the team added punishment to their models, they found it made a huge difference. In a second round of simulations, they included a new kind of individual: the "punishers". These punishers were not only willing to cooperate with others but also to punish cheats. By making cheats pay for their antisocial actions, they tipped the balance towards cooperation. This time, competition between groups led to the emergence of cooperation in groups of up to 50 individuals (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 100, p 3531). Could competition between small groups of our ancestors somehow have turned them into strong reciprocators? Gintis, Boyd and their colleagues believe so. What's more, subsequent research by Fehr, working with economist Urs Fischbacher of the University of Zurich, suggests that as humans came to live in larger groups, their attitudes towards reciprocity may have become even more hard-line. Using a similar model to Gintis and the others (Nature, vol 425, p 785), they found that cooperation can become the default behaviour in large groups provided punishers are willing to punish not only those who cheat, but also those who fail to punish cheats (see Graph). "In this case," Fehr says, "even groups of several hundred individuals can establish cooperation rates of between 70 and 80 per cent." These findings suggest that true altruism, far from being a maladaptation, may be the key to our species' success by providing the social glue that allowed our ancestors to form strong, resilient groups. It is still crucial for social cohesion in today's very different world. "Something like it had to evolve," Gintis says. In the absence of further discoveries, it seems likely that the argument over adaptation and maladaptation will continue. But this controversy is not the most important issue, says anthropologist Laurent Keller of the University in Lausanne, Switzerland. "Working out how humans behave is more interesting than whether it is adaptive or not." Either way, there appears to be something deep within us that drives us to help others - even strangers. And if any of this suggests ways that fund-raisers might appeal to our altruistic tendencies when faced with the next humanitarian crisis, surely that is all to the good. Why are we so generous? 1. JUST FOR KICKS In 2002, a team of researchers led by psychiatrist Gregory Berns from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, used brain imaging to find out what is going on inside our heads when we cooperate. They discovered that when players work together in the prisoner's dilemma game (see Diagram), the active parts of their brain include the orbitofrontal cortex and the striatum - areas associated with processing reward (Neuron, vol 35, p 395). And, last year, economist Ernst Fehr and psychologist Dominique de Quervain of the University of Zurich discovered that we get a similar mental buzz when we punish cheats, even when it means incurring a personal monetary cost (Science, vol 305, p 1254). 2. IT's GOOD FOR THE IMAGE Punishing others who don't toe the line can boost your reputation, as a recent study by anthropologists Rob Boyd and Karthik Panchanathan of the University of California at Los Angeles shows. Using computer simulations, they explored the benefits of a strategy of punishment that entails simply shunning others with a bad reputation and helping those with a good reputation. By doing this, individuals can enhance their own standing, they found. What's more, by altering their behaviour according to people's reputations, these individuals minimise the cost of meting out punishment and gain the edge over indiscriminate cooperators who help anyone regardless of reputation (Nature, vol 432, p 499). 3. TO PLEASE TEACHERS (AND GODS) Despite our altruism, generosity may not be in our genes. If true altruism has evolved through competition between groups, as some researchers maintain (see main story), then it is more likely to be the product of cultural evolution. Genetic evolution works by selecting individuals with traits that are well adapted to their environment, but it has a far weaker grip on traits that benefit the group. So altruism is more likely to be learned. After all, every human culture invests considerable effort in instilling children with moral norms that help further cooperation. Often these are enshrined in powerful religious beliefs and reinforced by promises of salvation and threats of eternal damnation. Printed on Thu Mar 17 13:55:09 GMT 2005 From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 22:57:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:57:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge: The Pancake People, or, "The Gods are Pounding My Head" Message-ID: The Pancake People, or, "The Gods are Pounding My Head" http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html ______________________________________________________________________ But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance--as we all become "pancake people"--spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button. THE PANCAKE PEOPLE, OR, "THE GODS ARE POUNDING MY HEAD" [3.8.05] Richard Foreman vs. THE G?DEL-TO-GOOGLE NET [3.8.05] George Dyson As Richard Foreman so beautifully describes it, we've been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole G?del-to-Google net. Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else? THE REALITY CLUB: [11]Kevin Kelly, [12]Jaron Lanier, [13]Steven Johnson, [14]Marvin Minsky ,[15] Douglas Rushkoff, [16]Roger Schank, [17]James O'Donnell, [18]Rebecca Goldstein. respond to Richard Foreman and George Dyson ___ Introduction In early 2001, avant-garde playwright and director Richard Foreman, called to enquire about Edge's activities. He had noticed the optimism of the Edge crowd and the range of intellectual interests and endeavors and felt that he needed to to begin a process to explore these areas. Then 9/11 happened. We never had our planned meeting. Several years have gone by and recently Foreman opened his most recent play for his Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Marks Church in the Bowery in New York City. He also announced that the play--The Gods Are Pounding My Head--would be his last. Foreman presents Edge with a statement and a question. The statement appears in his program and frames the sadness of The Gods Are Pounding My Head. The question is an opening to the future. With both, Foreman belatedly hopes to engage Edge contributors in a discussion, and in this regard George Dyson has written the initial response, entitled "The G?del-to-Google Net". [19]--JB RICHARD FOREMAN, Founder Director, Ontological-Hysteric Theater, has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays both in New York City and abroad. Five of his plays have received "OBIE" awards as best play of the year--and he has received five other "OBIE'S" for directing and for 'sustained achievement'. [20]RICHARD FOREMAN 's [21]Edge Bio Page _________________________________________________________________ THE PANCAKE PEOPLE, OR, "THE GODS ARE POUNDING MY HEAD" A Statement When I began rehearsing, I thought The Gods Are Pounding My Head would be totally metaphysical in it's orientation. But as rehearsals continued, I found echoes of the real world of 2004 creeping into many of my directorial choices. So be it. Nevertheless, this very--to my mind--elegiac play does delineate my own philosophical dilemma. I come from a tradition of Western culture in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and "cathedral-like" structure of the highly educated and articulate personality--a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. And such multi-faceted evolved personalities did not hesitate-- especially during the final period of "Romanticism-Modernism"--to cut down , like lumberjacks, large forests of previous achievement in order to heroically stake new claim to the ancient inherited land-- this was the ploy of the avant-garde. But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available". A new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance--as we all become "pancake people"--spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button. Will this produce a new kind of enlightenment or "super-consciousness"? Sometimes I am seduced by those proclaiming so--and sometimes I shrink back in horror at a world that seems to have lost the thick and multi-textured density of deeply evolved personality. But, at the end, hope still springs eternal... ___ A Question Can computers achieve everything the human mind can achieve? Human beings make mistakes. In the arts--and in the sciences, I believe?--those mistakes can often open doors to new worlds, new discoveries and developments--the mistake itself becoming the basis of a whole new world of insights and procedures. Can computers be programmed to 'make mistakes' and turn those mistakes into new and heretofore unimaginable developments? ______________________________ As Richard Foreman so beautifully describes it, we've been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole G?del-to-Google net. Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else? [dysong.150.jpg] THE G?DEL-TO-GOOGLE NET George Dyson GEORGE DYSON, science historian, is the author of Darwin Among the Machines. [22]George Dyson's Edge Bio Page ___ THE G?DEL-TO-GOOGLE NET Richard Foreman is right. Pancakes indeed! He asks the Big Question, so I've enlisted some help: the Old Testament prophets Lewis Fry Richardson and Alan Turing; the New Testament prophets Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Lewis Fry Richardson's answer to the question of creative thinking by machines is a circuit diagram, drawn in the late 1920s and published in 1930, illustrating a self-excited, non-deterministic circuit with two semi-stable states, captioned "Electrical Model illustrating a Mind having a Will but capable of only Two Ideas." [dyson.scan.jpg] Machines that behave unpredictably tend to be viewed as malfunctioning, unless we are playing games of chance. Alan Turing, namesake of the infallible, deterministic, Universal machine, recognized (in agreement with Richard Foreman) that true intelligence depends on being able to make mistakes. "If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent," he argued in 1947, drawing this conclusion as a direct consequence of Kurt G?del's 1931 results. "The argument from G?del's [theorem] rests essentially on the condition that the machine must not make mistakes," he explained in 1948. "But this is not a requirement for intelligence." In 1949, while developing the Manchester Mark I for Ferranti Ltd., Turing included a random number generator based on a source of electronic noise, so that the machine could not only compute answers, but occasionally take a wild guess. "Intellectual activity consists mainly of various kinds of search," Turing observed. "Instead of trying to produce a programme to simulate the adult mind, why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child's? Bit by bit one would be able to allow the machine to make more and more `choices' or `decisions.' One would eventually find it possible to program it so as to make its behaviour the result of a comparatively small number of general principles. When these became sufficiently general, interference would no longer be necessary, and the machine would have `grown up'" That's the Old Testament. Google is the New. Google (and its brethren metazoans) are bringing to fruition two developments that computers have been waiting for sixty years. When John von Neumann's gang of misfits at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton fired up the first 32 x 32 x 40 bit matrix of random access memory, no one could have imagined that the original scheme for addressing these 40,960 ephemeral bits of information, conceived in the annex to Kurt G?del's office, would now have expanded, essentially unchanged, to address all the information contained in all the computers in the world. The Internet is nothing more (and nothing less) than a set of protocols for extending the von Neumann address matrix across multiple host machines. Some 15 billion transistors are now produced every second, and more and more of them are being incorporated into devices with an IP address. As all computer users know, this system for G?del-numbering the digital universe is rigid in its bureaucracy, and every bit of information has to be stored (and found) in precisely the right place. It is a miracle (thanks to solid-state electronics, and error-correcting coding) that it works. Biological information processing, in contrast, is based on template-based addressing, and is consequently far more robust. The instructions say "do X with the next copy of Y that comes around" without specifying which copy, or where. Google's success is a sign that template-based addressing is taking hold in the digital universe, and that processes transcending the von Neumann substrate are starting to grow. The correspondence between Google and biology is not an analogy, it's a fact of life. Nucleic acid sequences are already being linked, via Google, to protein structures, and direct translation will soon be underway. So much for the address limitation. The other limitation of which von Neumann was acutely aware was the language limitation, that a formal language based on precise logic can only go so far amidst real-world noise. "The message-system used in the nervous system... is of an essentially statistical character," he explained in 1956, just before he died. "In other words, what matters are not the precise positions of definite markers, digits, but the statistical characteristics of their occurrence... Whatever language the central nervous system is using, it is characterized by less logical and arithmetical depth than what we are normally used to [and] must structurally be essentially different from those languages to which our common experience refers." Although Google runs on a nutrient medium of von Neumann processors, with multiple layers of formal logic as a base, the higher-level meaning is essentially statistical in character. What connects where, and how frequently, is more important than the underlying code that the connections convey. As Richard Foreman so beautifully describes it, we've been pounded into instantly-available pancakes, becoming the unpredictable but statistically critical synapses in the whole G?del-to-Google net. Does the resulting mind (as Richardson would have it) belong to us? Or does it belong to something else? Turing proved that digital computers are able to answer most--but not all--problems that can be asked in unambiguous terms. They may, however, take a very long time to produce an answer (in which case you build faster computers) or it may take a very long time to ask the question (in which case you hire more programmers). This has worked surprisingly well for sixty years. Most of real life, however, inhabits the third sector of the computational universe: where finding an answer is easier than defining the question. Answers are, in principle, computable, but, in practice, we are unable to ask the questions in unambiguous language that a computer can understand. It's easier to draw something that looks like a cat than to describe what, exactly, makes something look like a cat. A child scribbles indiscriminately, and eventually something appears that happens to resemble a cat. A solution finds the problem, not the other way around. The world starts making sense, and the meaningless scribbles are left behind. "An argument in favor of building a machine with initial randomness is that, if it is large enough, it will contain every network that will ever be required," advised Turing's assistant, cryptanalyst Irving J. Good, in 1958. Random networks (of genes, of computers, of people) contain solutions, waiting to be discovered, to problems that need not be explicitly defined. Google has answers to questions no human being may ever be able to ask. Operating systems make it easier for human beings to operate computers. They also make it easier for computers to operate human beings. (Resulting in Richard Foreman's "pancake effect.") These views are complementary, just as the replication of genes helps reproduce organisms, while the reproduction of organisms helps replicate genes. Same with search engines. Google allows people with questions to find answers. More importantly, it allows answers to find questions. From the point of view of the network, that's what counts. For obvious reasons, Google avoids the word "operating system." But if you are ever wondering what an operating system for the global computer might look like (or a true AI) a primitive but fully metazoan system like Google is the place to start. Richard Foreman asked two questions. The answer to his first question is no. The answer to his second question is yes. _________________________________________________________________ [kelly100.jpg] Kevin Kelly: "Can computers achieve everything the human mind can achieve?" Computers can't, but the children of computers will. [23]KEVIN KELLY is Editor-At-Large, Wired; Author, Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. _________________________________________________________________ The only way to deal with other people's brains or bodies sanely is to grant them liberty as far as you're concerned, but to not lose hope for them. Each person ought to decide whether to be a pancake or not, and some of those pre-pancakes Foreman misses were actually vacuous souffl?s anyway. Remember? There are plenty of creamy rich three dimensional digitally literate people out there, even a lot of young ones. There is a lot of hope and beauty in digital culture, even if the prevalent fog is sometimes heavy enough to pound your head. [jaron100.jpg] Jaron Lanier: In the 1990s, I used to complain about the "suffocating nerdiness and blandness" of Silicon Valley. This was how the pioneer days of Richard Foreman's pancake personhood felt to me. I fled to live in New York City precisely for the antidote of being around venues like Foreman's Ontological-Hysterical Theater and his wonderful shows. But computer culture broke out of its cage and swallowed Manhattan whole only a few years later. The very first articulate account of what information technology would be like was written by E.M. Forster in 1909, in a story called "The Machine Stops". The characters have something like the Internet with video phones and the web and email and the whole shebang and they become pancake people, but realize it, and long for a way out, which ultimately involves a left-wing tableaux of the machine smashed. The pancakes walk outside into a pastoral scene, and the story ends. We don't really learn if they leaven. Computer culture's reigning cool/hip wing of the moment, the free software --or "open source"--movement, uses the idea of the Cathedral as a metaphorical punching bag. In a famous essay by Eric Raymond ("The Cathedral and the Bazaar"), the Cathedral is compared unfavorably to an anarchic village market, and the idea is that true brilliance is to be found in the "emergent" metapersonal wisdom of neo-Darwinian competition. The Cathedral is derided as a monument to a closed, elitist, and ultimately constricting kind of knowledge. It's a bad metaphor. All this supports Foreman's pancake premise, but I recommend adding a wing to Foreman's mental cathedral. In this wing there would be a colossal fresco of two opposing armies. One one side, there would be a group led by Doug Englebart. He'd be surrounded by some eccentric characters such as the late Jef Raskin, Ted Nelson, David Gelernter, Alan Kay, Larry Tesler, Andy van Dam, Ben Schneiderman, among others. They are facing an opposing force made up of both robots and people and mechochimeras. The first group consists of members of the humanist tradition in computer science, and are people that Foreman might enjoy. They are not pancakes and they don't make others into pancakes. They are no more the cause of mental shrinkage than the written word (despite Plato's warnings to the contrary) or Gutenberg. The only way to deal with other people's brains or bodies sanely is to grant them liberty as far as you're concerned, but to not lose hope for them. Each person ought to decide whether to be a pancake or not, and some of those pre-pancakes Foreman misses were actually vacuous souffl?s anyway. Remember? There are plenty of creamy rich three dimensional digitally literate people out there, even a lot of young ones. There is a lot of hope and beauty in digital culture, even if the prevalent fog is sometimes heavy enough to pound your head. If Foreman is serious about quitting the theater, he will be missed. But that's not a reason to offer computers, arbiters on their own of nothing but insubstantiality, the power to kick his butt and pound his head. The only reality of a computer is the person on the other side of it. [24]JARON LANIER is a Computer Scientist and Musician. _________________________________________________________________ ...the kind of door-opening exploration that Google offers is in fact much more powerful and unpredictable than previous modes of exploration. It's a lot easier to stumble across something totally unexpected--but still relevant and interesting--using Google than it is walking through a physical library or a bookstore. A card catalogue is a terrible vehicle for serendipity. But hypertext can be a wonderful one. You just have to use it the right way. [Johnson,Steven100.jpg] Steven Johnson: I think it's a telling sign of how far the science of information retrieval has advanced that we're seriously debating the question of whether computers can be programmed to make mistakes. Rewind the tape 8 years or so--post-Netscape, pre-Google--and the dominant complaint would have been that the computers were always making mistakes: you'd plug a search query into Alta-Vista and you'd get 53,000 results, none of which seemed relevant to what you were looking for. But sitting here now in 2005, we've grown so accustomed to Google's ability to find the information we're looking for that we're starting to yearn for a little fallibility. But the truth is most of our information tools still have a fuzziness built into them that can, in Richard Foreman's words, "often open doors to new worlds." It really depends on how you choose to use the tool. Personally, I have two modes of using Google: one very directed and goal-oriented, the other more open-ended and exploratory. Sometimes I use Google to find a specific fact: an address, the spelling of a name, the number of neurons estimated to reside in the human brain, the dates of the little ice age. In those situations, I'm not looking for mistakes, and thankfully Google's quite good at avoiding them. But I also use Google in a far more serendipitous way, when I'm exploring an idea or a theme or an author's work: I'll start with a general query and probe around a little and see what the oracle turns up; sometimes I'll follow a trail of links out from the original search; sometimes I'll return and tweak the terms and start again. Invariably, those explorations take me to places I wasn't originally expecting to go--and that's precisely why I cherish them. (I have a similar tool for exploring my own research notes--a program called DevonThink that lets me see semantic associations between the thousands of short notes and quotations that I've assembled on my hard drive.) In fact, I would go out on a limb here and say that the kind of door-opening exploration that Google offers is in fact much more powerful and unpredictable than previous modes of exploration. It's a lot easier to stumble across something totally unexpected--but still relevant and interesting--using Google than it is walking through a physical library or a bookstore. A card catalogue is a terrible vehicle for serendipity. But hypertext can be a wonderful one. You just have to use it the right way. [25] STEVEN JOHNSON, columnist, Discover; Author: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. _________________________________________________________________ I don't see any basic change; there always was too much information. Fifty years ago, if you went into any big library, you would have been overwhelmed by the amounts contained in the books therein. Furthermore, that "touch of a button" has improves things in two ways: (1) it has change the time it takes to find a book from perhaps several minutes into several seconds, and (2) in the past date usually took many minutes, or even hours, to find what you want to find inside that book--but now, a Computer can help you can search through the text, and I see this as nothing but good. [minsky100.jpg] Marvin Minsky: Mr. Foreman complains that he is being replaced (by "the pressure of information overload") with "a new self that needs to contain less and less of an inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance" because he is connected to "that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button." I think that this is ridiculous because I don't see any basic change; there always was too much information. Fifty years ago, if you went into any big library, you would have been overwhelmed by the amounts contained in the books therein. Furthermore, that "touch of a button" has improves things in two ways: (1) it has change the time it takes to find a book from perhaps several minutes into several seconds, and (2) in the past date usually took many minutes, or even hours, to find what you want to find inside that book--but now, a Computer can help you can search through the text, and I see this as nothing but good. Indeed, it seems to me that only one thing has gone badly wrong. I do not go to libraries any more, because I can find most of what I want by using that wonderful touch of a button! However the copyright laws have gotten worse--and I think that the best thoughts still are in books because, frequently, in those ancient times, the authors developed their ideas for years well for they started to publicly babble. Unfortunately, not much of that stuff from the past fifty years is in the public domain, because of copyrights. So, in my view, it is not the gods, but Foreman himself who has been pounding on his own head. Perhaps if he had stopped longer to think, he would have written something more sensible. Or on second thought, perhaps he would not--if, in fact, he actually has been replaced. [26]MARVIN MINSKY is a mathematician and computer scientist; Cofounder of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Author, The Society of Mind. _________________________________________________________________ We give up the illusion of our power as deriving from some notion of individual collecting data, and find out that having access to data through our network-enabled communities gives us an entirely more living flow of information that is appropriate to the ever changing circumstances surrounding us. Instead of growing high, we grow wide. We become pancake people. [rushkoff100.jpg] Douglas Rushkoff: I don't think it's the computer itself enabling the pancake people, but the way networked computers give us access to other people. It's not the data--for downloaded data is just an extension of the wealthy gentleman in his library, enriching himself as a "self." What creates the pancake phenomenon is our access to other people, and the corresponding dissolution of our perception of knowledge as an individual's acquisition. Foreman is hinting at a "renaissance" shift I've been studying for the past few years. The original Renaissance invented the individual. With the development of perspective in painting came the notion of perspective in everything. The printing press fueled this even further, giving individuals the ability to develop their own understanding of texts. Each man now had his own take on the world, and a person's storehouse of knowledge and arsenal of techniques were the measure of the man. The more I study the original Renaissance, the more I see our own era as having at least as much renaissance character and potential. Where the Renaissance brought us perspective painting, the current one brings virtual reality and holography. The Renaissance saw humanity circumnavigating the globe; in our own era we've learned to orbit it from space. Calculus emerged in the 15th Century, while systems theory and chaos math emerged in the 20th. Our analog to the printing press is the Internet, our equivalent of the sonnet and extended metaphor is hypertext. Renaissance innovations all involve an increase in our ability to contend with dimension: perspective. Perspective painting allowed us to see three dimensions where there were previously only two. Circumnavigation of the globe changed the world from a flat map to a 3D sphere. Calculus allowed us to relate points to lines and lines to objects; integrals move from x to x-squared, to x-cubed, and so on. The printing press promoted individual perspectives on religion and politics. We all could sit with a text and come up with our own, personal opinions on it. This was no small shift: it's what led to the Protestant wars, after all. Out of this newfound experience of perspective was born the notion of the individual: the Renaissance Man. Sure, there were individual people before the Renaissance, but they existed mostly as parts of small groups. With literacy and perspective came the abstract notion the person as a separate entity. This idea of a human being as a "self," with independent will, capacity, and agency, was pure Renaissance--a rebirth and extension of the Ancient Greek idea of personhood. And from it, we got all sorts of great stuff like the autonomy of the individual, agency, and even democracy and the republic. The right to individual freedom is what led to all those revolutions. But thanks to new emphasis on the individual, it was also during the first great Renaissance that we developed the modern concept of competition. Authorities became more centralized, and individuals competed for how high they could rise in the system. We like to think of it as a high-minded meritocracy, but the rat-race that ensued only strengthened the authority of central command. We learned compete for resources and credit made artificially scarce by centralized banking and government. While our renaissance also brings with it a shift in our relationship to dimension, the character of this shift is different. In a holograph, fractal, or even an Internet web site, perspective is no longer about the individual observer's position; it's about that individual's connection to the whole. Any part of a holographic plate recapitulates the whole image; bringing all the pieces together generates greater resolution. Each detail of a fractal reflects the whole. Web sites live not by their own strength but the strength of their links. As Internet enthusiasts like to say, the power of a network is not the nodes, it's the connections. That's why new models for both collaboration and progress have emerged during our renaissance--ones that obviate the need for competition between individuals, and instead value the power of collectivism. The open source development model, shunning the corporate secrets of the competitive marketplace, promotes the free and open exchange of the codes underlying the software we use. Anyone and everyone is invited to make improvements and additions, and the resulting projects--like the Firefox browser--are more nimble, stable, and user-friendly. Likewise, the development of complementary currency models, such as Ithaca Hours, allow people to agree together what their goods and services are worth to one another without involving the Fed. They don't need to compete for currency in order to pay back the central creditor--currency is an enabler of collaborative efforts rather than purely competitive ones. For while the Renaissance invented the individual and spawned many institutions enabling personal choices and freedoms, our renaissance is instead reinventing the collective in a new context. Originally, the collective was the clan or the tribe--an entity defined no more by what members had in common with each other than what they had in opposition to the clan or tribe over the hill. Networks give us a new understanding of our potential relationships to one another. Membership in one group does not preclude membership in a myriad of others. We are all parts of a multitude of overlapping groups with often paradoxically contradictory priorities. Because we can contend with having more than one perspective at a time, we needn't force them to compete for authority in our hearts and minds--we can hold them all, provisionally. That's the beauty of renaissance: our capacity to contend with multiple dimensions is increased. Things don't have to be just one way or directed by some central authority, alive, dead or channeled. We have the capacity to contend with spontaneous, emergent reality. We give up the illusion of our power as deriving from some notion of individual collecting data, and find out that having access to data through our network-enabled communities gives us an entirely more living flow of information that is appropriate to the ever changing circumstances surrounding us. Instead of growing high, we grow wide. We become pancake people. [27]DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF is a media analyst; Documentary Writer; Author, Media Virus. _________________________________________________________________ As to Dyson's remarks: "Turing proved that digital computers are able to answer most but not all? programs that can be asked in unambiguous terms." Did he? I missed that. Maybe he proved that computers could follow instructions which is neither here nor there. It is difficult to give instructions about how to learn new stuff or get what you want. Google's "allowing people with questions to find answers" is nice but irrelevant. The Encyclopedia Britannica does that as well and no one makes claims about its intelligence or draws any conclusion whatever from it. And, Google is by no means an operating system--I can't even imagine what Dyson means by that or does he just not know what an operating system is? [schank100.jpg] Roger Schank: I am constantly astounded by people who use computers but who really don't understand them at all when I hear people talk about artificial intelligence (AI) . I shouldn't be surprised by most folk's lack of comprehension I suppose, since the people inside AI often fail to get it as well. I recently attended a high level meeting in Washington where the AI people and the government people were happily dreaming about what computers will soon be able to do and promising that they would soon make it happen when they really had no idea what was involved in what they were proposing. So, that being said, let me talk simply about what it would mean and what it would look like for a computer to be intelligent. Simple point number 1: A smart computer would have to be able to learn. This seems like an obvious idea. How smart can you be if every experience seems brand new? Each experience should make you smarter no? If that is the case then any intelligent entity must be capable of learning from its own experiences right? Simple point number 2: A smart computer would need to actually have experiences. This seems obvious too and follows from simple point number 1. Unfortunately, this one isn't so easy. There are two reasons it isn't so easy. The first is that real experiences are complex, and the typical experience that today's computers might have is pretty narrow. A computer that walked around the moon and considered seriously what it was seeing and decided where to look for new stuff based on what it had just seen would be having an experience. But, while current robots can walk and see to some extent, they aren't figuring out what to do next and why. A person is doing that. The best robots we have can play soccer. They play well enough but really not all that well. They aren't doing a lot of thinking. So there really aren't any computers having much in the way of experiences right now. Could there be computer experiences in some future time? Sure. What would they look like? They would have to look a lot like human experiences. That is, the computer would have to have some goal it was pursuing and some interactions caused by that goal that caused it to modify what it was up to in mid-course and think about a new strategy to achieve that goal when it encountered obstacles to the plans it had generated to achieve that goal. This experience might be conversational in nature, in which case it would need to understand and generate complete natural language, or it might be physical in nature, in which case it would need to be able to get around and see, and know what it was looking at. This stuff is all still way too hard today for any computer. Real experiences, ones that one can learn from, involve complex social interactions in a physical space, all of which is being processed by the intelligent entities involved. Dogs can do this to some extent. No computer can do it today. Tomorrow maybe. The problem here is with the goal. Why would a computer have a goal it was pursuing? Why do humans have goals they are pursuing? They might be hungry or horny or in need of a job, and that would cause goals to be generated, but none of this fits computers. So, before we begin to worry about whether computers would make mistakes, we need to understand that mistakes come from complex goals not trivially achieved. We learn from the mistakes we make when the goal we have failed at satisfying is important to us and we choose to spend some time thinking about what to do better next time. To put this another way, learning depends upon failure and failure depends upon having had a goal one care's about achieving and that one is willing to spend time thinking about how to achieve next time using another plan. Two year olds do this when they realize saying "cookie" works better than saying "wah" when they want a cookie. The second part of the experience point is that one must know one has had an experience and know the consequences of that experience with respect to one's goals in order to even think about improving. In other words, a computer that thinks would be conscious of what had happened to it, or would be able to think it was conscious of what had happened to it which may not be the same thing. Simple point number 3: Computers that are smart won't look like you and me. All this leads to the realization that human experience depends a lot on being human. Computers will not be human. Any intelligence they ever achieve will have to come by virtue of their having had many experiences that they have processed and understood and learned from that have helped them better achieve whatever goals they happen to have. So, to Foreman's question: Computers will not be programmed to make mistakes. They will be programmed to attempt to achieve goals and to learn from experience. They will make mistakes along the way, as does any intelligent entity. As to Dyson's remarks: "Turing proved that digital computers are able to answer most but not all? programs that can be asked in unambiguous terms." Did he? I missed that. Maybe he proved that computers could follow instructions which is neither here nor there. It is difficult to give instructions about how to learn new stuff or get what you want. Google's "allowing people with questions to find answers" is nice but irrelevant. The Encyclopedia Britannica does that as well and no one makes claims about its intelligence or draws any conclusion whatever from it. And, Google is by no means an operating system--I can't even imagine what Dyson means by that or does he just not know what an operating system is? People have nothing to fear from smart machines. With the current state of understanding of AI I suspect they wont have to even see any smart machines any time soon. Foreman's point was about people after all and people are being changed by the computer's ubiquity in their lives. I think the change is, like all changes in the nature of man's world, interesting and potentially profound, and probably for the best. People may well be more pancake-like, but the syrup is going to very tasty. [28]ROGER SCHANK is a Psychologist & Computer Scientist; Author, Designing World-Class E-Learning. _________________________________________________________________ I have trouble imagining what students will know fifty years from now, when devices in their hands spare them the need to know multiplication tables or spelling or dates of the kings of England. That probably leaves us time and space for other tasks, but the sound of the gadgets chasing us is palpable. What humans will be like, accordingly, in 500 years is just beyond our imagining. [odonnell100.jpg] James O'Donnell: Can computers achieve everything the human mind can achieve? Can they, in other words, even make fruitful mistakes? That's an ingenious question. Of course, computers never make mistakes--or rather, a computer's "mistake" is a system failure, a bad chip or a bad disk or a power interruption, resulting in some flamboyant mis-step, but computers can have error-correcting software to rescue them from those. Otherwise, a computer always does the logical thing. Sometimes it's not the thing you wanted or expected, and so it feels like a mistake, but it usually turns out to be a programmer's mistake instead. It's certainly true that we are hemmed in constantly by technology. The technical wizardry in the graphic representation of reality that generated a long history of representative art is now substantially eclipsed by photography and later techniques of imaging and reproduction. Artists and other humans respond by doing more and more creatively in the zone that is still left un-competed, but if I want to know what George W. Bush looks like, I don't need to wait for a Holbein to track him down. We may reasonably expect to continue to be hemmed in. I have trouble imagining what students will know fifty years from now, when devices in their hands spare them the need to know multiplication tables or spelling or dates of the kings of England. That probably leaves us time and space for other tasks, but the sound of the gadgets chasing us is palpable. What humans will be like, accordingly, in 500 years is just beyond our imagining. So I'll ask what I think is the limit case question: can a computer be me? That is to say, could there be a mechanical device that embodied my memory, aptitudes, inclinations, concerns, and predilections so efficiently that it could replace me? Could it make my mistakes? I think I know the answer to that one. [29]JAMES O'DONNELL is a classicist; cultural historian; Provost, Georgetown University; Author, Avatars of the Word. _________________________________________________________________ The complexity suddenly facing us can feel overwhelming and perhaps such souls as Lugubrioso's will momentarily shrink at how much they must master in order to appropriate this complexity and make it their own. It's that shrinkage that Lugubriosos is feeling, confusing his own inadequacy to take in the new forms of knowing with the inadequacy of the forms themselves. Google doesn't kill people, Rosa admonished him. People kill people. [goldstein100.jpg] Rebecca Goldstein: I admit that I'm of two distinct minds on the question posed by Richard Foreman as to whether the technological explosion has led to an expansion or a flattening of our selves. In fact, a few years ago when I was invited to represent the humanities at Princeton University's celebration of the centenary of their graduate studies, I ended up writing a dialogue to express my inner bifurcation. My way of posing the question was to wonder whether the humanities, those "soul-explorations," had any future at all, given that the soul had been all but pounded out of existence, or in any case pounded into a very attenuated sort of existence. My one character, dubbed Lugubrioso, had a flair for elaborate phraseology that rivaled the Master's, and he turned it to deploring the loss of the inner self's solemn, silent spaces, the hushed corridors where the soul communes with itself, chasing down the subtlest distinctions of fleeting consciousness, catching them in finely wrought nets of words, each one contemplated for both its precise meaning and euphony, its local and global qualities, one's flight after that expressiveness which is thought made surer and fleeter by the knowledge of all the best that had been heretofore thought, the cathedral-like sentences (to change the metaphor) that arose around the struggle to do justice to inexhaustible complexity themselves making of the self a cathedral of consciousness. (Lugubrioso spoke in long sentences.) He contemplated with shuddering horror the linguistic impoverishment of our technologically abundant lives, arguing that privation of language is both an effect and a cause of privation of thought. Our vocabularies have shrunk and so have we. Our expressive styles have lost all originality and so have we. The passivity of our image-heavy forms of communication--too many pictures, not enough words, Lugubrioso cried out pointing his ink-stained finger at the popular culture--substitutes in an all-too-pleasant anodyne for the rigors of thinking itself, and our weakness for images encourages us to reduce people, too--even our very own selves--to images, which is why we are drunk on celebrity hood and feel ourselves to exist only to the extent that we exist for others. What is left but image when the self has stopped communing with itself, so that in a sad gloss on Bishop Berkeley's apothegm, our esse has become percipi, our essence is to be perceived? Even the torrents of words posted on "web-related locations" (the precise nature of which Lugubrioso had kept himself immaculately ignorant) are not words that are meant for permanence; they are pounded out on keyboards at the rate at which they are thought, and will vanish into oblivion just as quickly, quickness and forgetfulness being of the whole essence of the futile affair, the long slow business of matching coherence to complexity unable to keep up, left behind in the dust. My other character was Rosa and she pointed out that at the very beginning of this business that Lugubrioso kept referring to, in stentorian tones, as "Western Civilization," Plato deplored the newfangled technology of writing and worried that it tolled the death of thought. A book, Plato complained in Phaedrus, can't answer for itself. (Rosa found the precise quotation on the web. She found 'stentorian,' too, when she needed it, on her computer's thesaurus. She sort of knew the word, thought it might be "sentorian," or "stentorious"but she'll know where to find it if she ever needs it again, a mode of knowing that Lugubrioso regards as epistemologically damnable.) When somebody questions a book, Plato complained, it just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. It will never, never, be able to address the soul as a living breathing interlocutor can, which is why Plato, committing his thoughts to writing with grave misgivings, adopted the dialogue form, hoping to approximate something of the life of real conversation. Plato's misgivings are now laughable--nobody is laughing harder than Lugubrioso at the thought that books diminish rather than enhance the inner life--and so, too, will later generations laugh at Lugubrioso's lamentations that the cognitive enhancements brought on by computers will make of us less rather than more. Human nature doesn't change, Rosa tried to reassure Lugubrioso, backing up her claims with the latest theories of evolutionary psychology propounded by Steven Pinker et al. Human nature is inherently expansive and will use whatever tools it develops to grow outward into the world. The complexity suddenly facing us can feel overwhelming and perhaps such souls as Lugubrioso's will momentarily shrink at how much they must master in order to appropriate this complexity and make it their own. It's that shrinkage that Lugubriosos is feeling, confusing his own inadequacy to take in the new forms of knowing with the inadequacy of the forms themselves. Google doesn't kill people, Rosa admonished him. People kill people. Lugubrioso had a heart-felt response, but I'll spare you. [30]REBECCA GOLDSTEIN is a philosopher and novelist; Author, Incompleteness. References 11. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#kelly 12. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#lanier 13. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#johnson 14. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#minsky 15. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#rushkoff 16. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#schank 17. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#odonnell 18. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/foreman05/foreman05_index.html#goldstein 19. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/brockman.html 20. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/foreman.html 21. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/foreman.html 22. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/dysong.html 23. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/kelly.html 24. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/lanier.html 25. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/johnson.html 26. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/minsky.html 27. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/rushkoff.html 28. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/schank.html 29. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/odonnell.html 30. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/goldstein.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 23:05:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:05:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] "Battered Women " by Benjamin Wallace-Wells Message-ID: "Battered Women " by Benjamin Wallace-Wells http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.wallace-wells2.html March 2005 Battered Women Female boxing is brutal and hopeless. By [4]Benjamin Wallace-Wells _________________________________________________________________ When I was just out of college I worked as a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia, and we used to go to Friday night boxing fights at a club called the Blue Horizon, on an iffy block of North Broad Street at precisely the point where Center City peters out into a vast ghetto. Like the rest of Philly, the Blue Horizon knows very well what it is selling, a twisted nostalgia for a time when things were tougher. The concession standa fold-up table in the entrance hallsells only $3 cans of Bud and Bud Light. Past the stand, the space opens up into a big, brightly-lit room with a couple of dozen rows of wooden chairs, like those in an elementary school classroom, surrounding a boxing ring four feet above the floor, a theater in the round. These are the cheap seats, 15 bucks, half of them filled with blacks from North Philly, the other half with slumming yuppies like me. Only two in 10 are women, but their catcalls are as rough and fierce as any. For 50 bucks, you can buy yourself an armchair seat on a balcony ringing the room, from which you can peer down over the room. These, however, are always filled with older Italian men, the Unindicted Co-conspirator set, fat and inert in their little chairs, each one looking like a marshmallow stuffed into a shot glass. They spend the evening pretty much unmoved by the drama of the moment, passing assured little nods back and forth: They knew who would win all along. The lights are bright, and the crowd is less drunk and less loud than you'd expect. But they are experts. They know, for instance, that it is no fun to watch heavyweights or lightweights fight because a heavyweight is too big for any but a world-class opponent to knock out, and all but the best of lightweights (135 pounds) don't have enough bulk to hit hard enough to make the fight interesting. So, all the fighters are middleweights and welterweights; the first matches of the night are between the youngest and greenest, and they slowly build to the headliners. The first two bouts are brief snoozers, three-rounders between fighters just good enough to play defense but not good enough to really hit. The crowd focuses on the way the boxers shift weight, issuing idle calls of yes, sir! when a fighter works himself a brief opening with his feet, exhaling slowly when his fists move too slowly to take advantage of it. By the third fight, a six-rounder, the boxers can really hit; as they tire, their defenses loosen, and their heads start to snap back against the fat compress of the other guy's fists. The mafia goons on the balcony are applauding now, and their cigars are out; the antiquated on the floor are calling out adviceleft, move, left, move. When the ring card girlsthird-string, fourth-decade strippers from a South Philly gentlemen's clubcome out between rounds, they are greeted for the first time now with more than an auditorium full of lazy disinterest. You realize that everyone in the room, from the old Philly goons to the homeboys and the yuppies, is invested, against all probability, in the idea that something historic might happen here tonight, that a new welterweight might emerge, that the epic is still possible in Philly. And then, for the first of two last fights before the headliner, they bring out the girls. The girls were ugly and thick, but the crowd didn't care, whistling and hooting for themSweet Ass Angie! junk like that. It seemed almost endearing at first. A scrawny little black girl, a north Philly local named Angie Nelsen, danced around the ring, throwing up her gloves and revving up the crowd. In the red corner, called the ring announcer, was Jessica Flaherty, a corn-rowed white girl from Amish country who couldn't muster the same kind of flamboyance; she just looked scared. Clapping, the crowd leaned forwardhere was something new. The girls shrugged off their robesnow looking young and nervousand charged each other at the bell, wind-milling with both arms. The worst male fighters know how to play defense, but these girls looked like they'd never been trained. They didn't even try to protect themselves. There was no effort to dodge, no shifting of weight, no clever, calculated movement of feet. Both girls just kept charging, swinging both fists at the same time. It was like watching six-year-olds fight before they're old enough to realize that they might be hurt: All you want to do is make it stop. The action in the middle of the ring was an inchoate tangle of limbs and fists. Thirty seconds into the whirling, Angie fell down, striking the mat violently, as if she was attacking it. Jessica waved her arms above her head chaoticallya caricatured Rocky gesturea huge grin on her face. I thought to myself that these two must be the worst girl fighters in the world. But it turned out that six months earlier, Jessica had placed second in her weight class at the National Golden Glovesthis was as good as it got. They never should have let Angie back in the fight, but they did. She wobbled out to the center of the ring, too hurt to lift her hands above her waist. Jessica whacked her right in the nose; Angie went down, a series of limbs hitting the canvas in a successive heap. The nervous white girl from Lancaster started dancing around, and it was Sweet Ass Jessie this time, her reward whistles and hooting. Angie was out for 15 minutes, white-cloaked medical personnel bending ominously over her. They revived her, and the same crowd that had cheered the sophistication of the earlier male boxers gave a perfunctory clap for Angie's health, and then immediately started chanting for the evening's male headliner, a fighter with the nickname Black Gold. Hard knocks Boxing has long existed in a cultural ghetto, revelling in its corruption and violence. Women's boxing operates in a further ghetto still. No one other than the fighters really takes it seriouslynot the audience, not the referees, not the trainers. I've been to more than a dozen women's fights since that first one, and nearly all were just like it, 45-second bloodfests. It's hard to figure what appeals to the girls who fight: You get thrown in the ring with some cretin who is trying to rip your head off, you have no idea how to defend yourself, and all the while a thousand sweaty men are shouting at you, trying to be clever about your rear end. No matter how long you fight or how good you become, you'll never be the headliner, some man will. Nobody cares enough to teach you the craft. The fights are brutal, sexualized, and uncontrollable. What's more, there is not much money in the sportprobably the only female boxers you've ever heard of are the daughters of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazierbecause no significant television audience would ever pay to see this crap. And yet the girls keep signing up, keep coming. A movie (and, it now seems, Oscar favorite) out from Paramount since Christmas, called Million Dollar Baby, traces the pathologies of this sport with a mostly deft touch and only the occasional off-putting bout of fantasy. The storyline is simple: A poor girl from the Ozarks with the ethnically-precise name of Maggie Fitzgerald, moves to Los Angeles. She is 31 and has been a diner waitress since 13, picking half-finished steaks off her customers' plates for her own dinner. She believes she will be a champion women's boxerwhy she wants to fight is never fully explained, though Maggie, who is played by Hilary Swank, seems to think it's the only thing she has ever been good at. Maggie seizes upon a respected, older blue-collar trainer named Frankie Dunn and begs him to make her a champion. He balks. (Because Clint Eastwood plays Dunn, there is also a lot of soulful squinting.) She demonstrates her will, perseverance, brains, and determination. After a lot of gruff I-don't-train-girls talk, Dunn takes her on and Maggie proves to be an outstanding student. Dunn teaches her the pure mechanics of the sport in a long training sequence that is the best explanatory document of boxing I've ever seen or read, Malcolm Gladwell assigned to the ring. To pivot to the left, you press down on your right big toe. Boxing is counter-intuitive, about opposites. To the surprise of no one except the movie's characters, Maggie makes it. Dunn teaches her how to bait younger, stronger girls; he gets her championship fights, and she starts to win. This was the moment when I became nervousit seemed like the story was drifting into fantasy. The crowds Maggie fought in front of were supportive, paternal, interested in the tactics of her fight and not in the rough pornography of watching two women pound one another. She fought in clean, well-lit places. She fought expertly, against expert opponents, and for this mastery of craft she made millions of dollars. This was Rocky, with a second X chromosome. This was the full narrative thrust that the critics had described, and so I went in expecting to be disappointed by a fraud of a movie. But there's an awkward convention that persists among movie critics. They never mention the end of any film, the moment when the director's judgment on all the film's events and themes is finally consummated. It's in some ways a ridiculous stand, like assessing Lincoln's conduct of the Civil War without considering anything that happened after Antietam. And in the case of Million Dollar Baby, it's particularly absurd because the fantasy that has built up dissolves in a ring scene of sickening brutality, and the movie's last 30 minutes (though they feel like a dramatic fraud) end up showing the guilt and tumult that develops in those who back a fighter who has been left near death, and a girl fighter at that. In this, the film doesn't cheat. Boxed in Women's boxing inherits its audience, and therefore its pathologies, from the men's side of the sport. Boxing was always pornography of some kind; it's no accident that the two great novels of black male experience, Invisible Man and Black Boy, both have extended boxing scenes in which muscular, scared black kids fight for the pleasure of fat, white crowds. But things have gotten worse since Ellison and Wright's time. Men's boxing has spent the last half century in decline; what was once one of the country's most popular sports has descended into a subculture that is now wholly dangerous and corrupt; few middle-class people, outside of slummers like me, ever go to fights anymore. Boxing itself is responsible for part of this, with its corrupt regulatory bodies and its decision to relegate the sport to pay-per-view. And it doesn't help that American tastes have dandified; this is a middle-class country now, and boxing simply isn't a middle-class sport. And so for the older gentlemen in the Blue Horizon's balcony, the very presence of women fighting in front of them marks a comedown in the world; what their fathers watched as art is now inescapably exploitation, a catfight. Women's boxing seems to be barely not worth worrying about, another freak show, except that for all the indignities and the lack of reward, the fighters keep coming. There's no shortage of working class girls out there who, when all else fails, rely on their physical selves and swing away, hoping to steal a little celebrity on the side. The fighters themselves seem unable to explain their motivations; when pressed by interviewers, they say only that they should be able to box if boys do. Million Dollar Baby can feel similarly unsatisfying. It takes Maggie's assertion that boxing is the only thing she could ever be famous at, acceptsas movie people tend tothat every human being has an inner yearning to become a celebrity and leaves it there. Or maybe it doesn't, quite. Maggie's career, after all, traces the arc of the sport: What began as a few day-dreamy women in gyms, believing they could punch back as hard and as fast as some of the guys, has devolved into something very ugly, very violent. It documents the cheat run on working-class girls who think they might find liberation in the ring, like Rocky did, like all the guys can. Benjamin Wallace-Wells in an editor of The Washington Monthly. References 4. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.wallace-wells2.html#byline From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 20 23:05:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 19:05:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] International Journal of Motorcycle Studies Message-ID: Well, this is not really science--motorcyclists are not, generally paragons of scientific virtue, *except* when keeping their bikes in good repair!--but they are a significant subculture and hence a fit subject for scientists to study. I'm surprised that this is the first journal to focus on them. End of ten articles today. ----------------- A glance at the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies: Getting serious about cycles The Chronicle of Higher Education: Magazine & journal reader http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/04/2005042001j.htm Wednesday, April 20, 2005 A new publication on motorcycle studies has hit the information highway. The online-only journal, which is aimed at scholars and motorcycle enthusiasts, will be published three times a year. Its inaugural issue includes articles on the iconography of the 1950s biker, motorcycle clubs in Britain between the two world wars, and American off-road motorcycle culture in the 1970s. The journal's managing editors are Suzanne Ferriss, a professor of English at Nova Southeastern University, who rides a 2005 Yamaha FZ1, and Wendy Moon, an assistant lecturer at the University of Southern California, who rides a 1999 Harley-Davidson Sportster 883. For Ms. Ferriss, "the motorcycle's cultural significance is tied up with complex issues of history, consumerism, psychology, design, aesthetics, gender, and sexuality," she writes, in a section of the journal called "Why Motorcycle Studies?" She says she is "particularly intrigued by the ways in which motorcycling culture has either reinforced or subverted traditional assumptions about masculinity and femininity." Ms. Moon writes that although some scholars "may find motorcycles to be too d?class? for serious study," motorcycle culture provides valuable insight into how subcultures work and their role in a larger society. "Subcultures," she says, "safeguard and preserve historically important -- though perhaps not currently prized -- values and keep them 'in the mix.'" The journal is available online at [45]http://ijms.nova.edu --Kellie Bartlett From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Thu Apr 21 00:50:27 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 18:50:27 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide In-Reply-To: <42669129.4020201@uconn.edu> References: <01C54578.96037C10.shovland@mindspring.com> <426667FA.60600@solution-consulting.com> <42669129.4020201@uconn.edu> Message-ID: <4266F8D3.4000806@solution-consulting.com> Barbara Tuchman's well-known A Distant Mirror characterized the 13th Century as a time likewise very high in rate of change. Generally, human societies often change rapidly, and the notion that we change more than others is probably a mistake. That said, it is possible that the structure of belief in the 13th Century did buffer the stress from the changes. Clearly, a belief in God is empirically related to better coping, lower stress, and so forth. Lynn Christian Rauh wrote: > Could it be that a less predictable future have more to do than the > belief in God? Maybe things are changing too fast for us to cope. > > Christian > > Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > >> Diet: This is a good point, and one I have considered. However, the >> history of a rise in depression pre-dates the low fat fad. In the >> 1960s the trend was already appearing, with people of my generation >> being at higher risk of depression than my own grandparents. >> Therefore, Seligman argues more in favor of changing values. I think >> you are correct that diet may also play a role, but it is not the >> whole picture. >> >> I put in the Horatius at the gate segments because the notion is that >> if nothing is worth dying for, then nothing is worth living for. >> One's willingness to give one's life in service of a higher value is >> a source of great strength and happiness. This appears to be an >> empirical finding, and illustrates the role of values and social >> norms in reducing depression. >> >> "and how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes >> of his fathers and the temples of his gods . . ." The man / woman >> who deeply believes this has something great to live for, knows >> his/her position in life, and feels a deep connection with >> forebearers / posterity ('child upon her breast'). This seems to >> immunize against depression. >> >> Lynn >> >> Steve Hovland wrote: >> >>> Lipids, depression and suicide >>> by >>> Colin A, Reggers J, Castronovo V, Ansseau M. >>> Assistante Clinique, Universite de Liege, >>> CUP La Clairiere, Bertrix. >>> Encephale 2003 Feb;29(Pt 1):49-58 >>> >>> ABSTRACT >>> Polyunsatured fatty acids are made out of a hydrocarbonated chain of >>> variable length with several double bonds. The position of the first >>> double bond (w; omega) differentiates polyunsatured w3 fatty acids >>> (for example: alpha-linolenic acid or a-LNA) and polyunsatured w6 >>> fatty acids (for example: linoleic acid or LA). These two classes of >>> fatty acids are said to be essential because they cannot be >>> synthetised by the organism and have to be taken from alimentation. >>> The w3 are present in linseed oil, nuts, soya beans, wheat and cold >>> water fish whereas w6 are present in maize, sunflower and sesame >>> oil. Fatty acids are part of phospholipids and, consequently, of all >>> biological membranes. The membrane fluidity, of crucial importance >>> for its functionning, depends on its lipidic components. >>> Phospholipids composed of chains of polyunsatured fatty acids >>> >>> >>> The rest of the story: http://www.biopsychiatry.com/lipidsmood.htm >>> _______________________________________________ >>> paleopsych mailing list >>> paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> paleopsych mailing list >> paleopsych at paleopsych.org >> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Euterpel66 at aol.com Thu Apr 21 03:11:10 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 23:11:10 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Lipids, depression and suicide Message-ID: <1e5.3aa4be1d.2f9873ce@aol.com> Six of one, half a dozen of another. A belief in God creates a predictable future, at least in an eternal sense. An unpredictable future leads society toward God. "There are no atheists in foxholes." Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html In a message dated 4/20/2005 8:51:56 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: Barbara Tuchman's well-known A Distant Mirror characterized the 13th Century as a time likewise very high in rate of change. Generally, human societies often change rapidly, and the notion that we change more than others is probably a mistake. That said, it is possible that the structure of belief in the 13th Century did buffer the stress from the changes. Clearly, a belief in God is empirically related to better coping, lower stress, and so forth. Lynn Christian Rauh wrote: Could it be that a less predictable future have more to do than the belief in God? Maybe things are changing too fast for us to cope. Christian Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: Diet: This is a good point, and one I have -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 21 12:59:17 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 05:59:17 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Resveratrol: Cutting-Edge Technology Available Today Message-ID: <01C54637.40C58800.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.lef.org/resveratrol/ By Terri Mitchell Wine. No other beverage has attracted the attention of modern medicine like this drink. Although it is most widely known for its benefits for the heart, wine has benefits against cancer, dementia, and other age-related diseases. Researchers in Denmark recently looked at 25,000 people to find out what drinking alcohol does to mortality and discovered that wine drinkers slash their overall risk of dying from any cause by about 40%.[1] Chemists took wine apart years ago to find out what makes it tick. Basically, it contains a host of plant compounds. Unfortunately, resveratrol and some of the other beneficial components got shelved as "toxicants," and nobody paid much attention to them until a scientist tried to figure out why the French can eat so much fat and not get heart disease. It turns out that part of the answer to the "French paradox" is resveratrol found in red wine. Resveratrol is naturally created by certain vines, pine trees, peanuts, grapes, and other plants. One of these plants (Polygonnum cuspidatum) is an ingredient in traditional Asian medicines that are prescribed for liver and heart conditions. Resveratrol is classified as a polyphenol because of its chemical structure. Polyphenols make up a huge group of plant compounds that are further broken down into other classifications such as flavonoids, proanthocyanidins, and the like. From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 21 12:59:29 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 05:59:29 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] ACETYL-L-CARNITINE Message-ID: <01C54637.48807190.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.lef.org/prod_hp/abstracts/php-ab028.html Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 21 12:59:44 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 05:59:44 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Phase 2 detoxification Message-ID: <01C54637.5228D340.shovland@mindspring.com> Dietary risk factors for CA 1. High fat diet (strongly associated with colorectal and prostate cancer, hypothetically related to Breast CA 2. Low fiber diet 3. Processed foods - high fat, bad fat (see below) - antinutrients Chemotherapy - Not !! Rather - Chemoprevention (prevent disease). Able to measure amount of damage to our DNA 1. Free radicals (Reactive Oxygen Species - ROS) a. High dose pesticides b. Tobacco/2nd hand smoke/other carcinogens Cancer develops over many decades 1. We have abnormal cells produced consistently. 2. Several mechanisms to identify and destroy these cells before they cause a tumor. a. Detoxifying enzymes (Phase 1, Phase 2) b. Immune recognition c. Tumor suppressor genes (i.e., P53) d. NK cells-natural killer cells, (non-T, non-B) 3. These systems can break down in the following pattern of carcinogenesis: initiation?promotion?progression. 4. Need to stimulate protective systems. Detoxification - break down carcinogens to prevent DNA damage (liver). 1. Phase 1 Enzymes - Hydroxylation a. Cytochrome P450 system (50-100 enzymes) b. Many toxins are now more carcinogenic (after hydroxylation) and chemically active with DNA so Phase 2 must be active to detoxify these products. 2. Phase 2 Enzymes - Conjugation a. Glutathione-S-transferase, UDP-glucuronyl-transferase, Glutathione peroxidase, Quinone, reductase (all are glutathione dependent). Ageing is associated with a decrease in plasma antioxidants (glutathione) and an increase in oxidative products (lipid hydroperoxide) even in the healthy as demonstrated in the above graph, Lancet 1998. b. Stimulate these detoxifying enzymes: Polyphenols (green tea), Silymarin (milk-thistle), Sulforaphane (broccoli), Tumeric (curry). c. Ellagic acid (strawberries, raspberries, grapes, walnuts) - stimulate Phase 2 enzymes while modulating Phase 1 enzyme activity. http://www.med.und.nodak.edu/depts/surgery/nutrition/dietary.htm From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 21 19:09:25 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:09:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] depression and the future In-Reply-To: <200504211801.j3LI1Q213603@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050421190926.32471.qmail@web30807.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Lorraine says: >>Depression is a condition where one is without hope, No?<< --Depression is a loop that is very hard to get out of. Mindfulness training is supposed to work pretty well, and perhaps with better maps of how minds work, it will become possible to consciously deal with depression more effectively. One would have to recognize both the physical aspects (breathing, posture, eye movement) and the mental (visualization, internal dialogue) and then break into the loop at some point and channel it into some other state. Visualization is especially tricky. Depression can alter the way the future looks, changing the brightness levels, fuzzing out detail, or slicing the images apart. That's all very subtle, and most people are focused on the content (i.e. what they're going to do, where they're going to be) and don't realize that a positive future imagined through a dark lens looks just as pointless as fantasies of disaster. >>Hope involves the future and for the first time in history (the atomic age) it is possible to eradicate all trace of human history, and in fact life. We do seem to be hard-wired for hope, but even water can wear away stone.<< --That's true. At some point, the stress level in the culture may get so high that individuals simply cannot focus on planning for the future, at least not without drugs. Perhaps hyperactivity in kids is an early warning sign. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 21 19:12:12 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:12:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] strategies In-Reply-To: <200504211801.j3LI1Q213603@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050421191212.52571.qmail@web30811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Such events would be extremely unlikely if players chose their strategies at random, but real people don't. Instead, they tend to use ideas that have done well recently, and end up acting alike.<< --That seems like an idea that would apply to culture on all levels. Do people end up imitating the social strategies they see working around them? And what happens if that leads the culture into spiraling feedback as everyone tries to capitalize on strategies that are tolerable in individuals but dangerous if everyone uses them? >>By understanding how the diverse strategies of different cells can have collective consequences, it might be possible to design low-impact treatments that target just a few crucial cells to steer the system away from disease.<< --Might be interesting to apply that idea to society as well. Are there a few individuals who set the tone for the entire social system? Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 21 19:14:27 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:14:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] punishing cheaters In-Reply-To: <200504211801.j3LI1Q213603@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050421191427.60005.qmail@web30814.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Using a similar model to Gintis and the others (Nature, vol 425, p 785), they found that cooperation can become the default behaviour in large groups provided punishers are willing to punish not only those who cheat, but also those who fail to punish cheats (see Graph). "In this case," Fehr says, "even groups of several hundred individuals can establish cooperation rates of between 70 and 80 per cent."<< --Seems like a mechanism that could be easily hijacked to drive the whole system into cooperation in the wrong direction. If the group is primed to punish cheaters, the cheaters may be able to rise in rank and direct that energy toward a scapegoat, marginalizing anyone who defends the scapegoat. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 21 19:18:31 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 12:18:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] god and uncertainty In-Reply-To: <200504211801.j3LI1Q213603@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050421191831.26759.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Clearly, a belief in God is empirically related to better coping, lower stress, and so forth. Lynn<< --Depending on how that belief is expressed in the crowd. If the belief is associated with anxiety and fear of punishment, the whole group can become more and more paranoid, eventually lashing out at a scapegoat ("redirecting God's fury"). If the belief is expressed in a calm, benevolent way, it may have the opposite effect. I would make a distinction between the same belief expressed in different ways by different groups. My wife's Christian church has a *totally* different character from some of the fundamentalist churches I've been to, even though their belief is technically fundamentalist (Biblical infalliblity, etc). The nonverbal characteristics of the group are more important than the belief, I think. It is what would distinguish the sheep from the wolves in sheep's clothing. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 21 20:55:09 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 13:55:09 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] depression and the future Message-ID: <01C54679.BBE373C0.shovland@mindspring.com> Speaking from long experience, depression has a lot in common with being dead. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 12:09 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] depression and the future Lorraine says: >>Depression is a condition where one is without hope, No?<< --Depression is a loop that is very hard to get out of. Mindfulness training is supposed to work pretty well, and perhaps with better maps of how minds work, it will become possible to consciously deal with depression more effectively. One would have to recognize both the physical aspects (breathing, posture, eye movement) and the mental (visualization, internal dialogue) and then break into the loop at some point and channel it into some other state. Visualization is especially tricky. Depression can alter the way the future looks, changing the brightness levels, fuzzing out detail, or slicing the images apart. That's all very subtle, and most people are focused on the content (i.e. what they're going to do, where they're going to be) and don't realize that a positive future imagined through a dark lens looks just as pointless as fantasies of disaster. >>Hope involves the future and for the first time in history (the atomic age) it is possible to eradicate all trace of human history, and in fact life. We do seem to be hard-wired for hope, but even water can wear away stone.<< --That's true. At some point, the stress level in the culture may get so high that individuals simply cannot focus on planning for the future, at least not without drugs. Perhaps hyperactivity in kids is an early warning sign. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From waluk at earthlink.net Thu Apr 21 22:06:28 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:06:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Talk therapy as cure for depression In-Reply-To: <01C54679.BBE373C0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54679.BBE373C0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426823E4.8070701@earthlink.net> Depression is hell on earth yet I don't advocate drugs as a continuous remedy. Drugs are nothing more than a quick fix for the moment elevating the patient to adequate levels of functioning without providing a permanent solution to the problem.... other than taking a stronger dose. Talk therapy has worked in the past and although much more time-consuming for the doctor seems a more amenable solution. Some patients have actually been "cured" from talk. The downside is that both talk and drugs are habit forming. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Speaking from long experience, depression >has a lot in common with being dead. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > > > From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:44:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:44:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Great apes to learn human behaviors Message-ID: Here's today's batch. Great apes to learn human behaviors - Apr 20, 2005 http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/20/ape.research.ap/index.html Kanzi is one of the bonobos taking part in the unique language research study. RELATED [32]The Great Ape Trust external link FACT BOX Bonobos are the most human-like species of ape. The great apes are also known as pygmy chimpanzees. A distinguishing feature of the bonobo is the species black face and red lips, and a prominent tail tuft which is retained by adults. Population estimate: 10,000-50,000 Natural habitat: Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Bonobos existence is threatened by bushmeat hunters and habitat loss. Source: WWF DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh sounds like a proud mother when she speaks about her brood of bonobos, eight ultra-intelligent apes that will take part in unique language research meant to shed light on their nature and maybe our own. The first two bonobos will make the 16-hour road trip from the Language Research Center at Georgia State University to their new $10 million, 13,000-square-foot home near downtown Des Moines later this month. All eight -- three females and five males -- will arrive at the Great Ape Trust of Iowa by mid-May. Bonobos, a species of ape from the Congo, are the most like humans, Savage-Rumbaugh said. They constantly vocalize "as though they are conversing" and often walk upright. "If you want to find a human-like creature that exists in a completely natural state ... that creature is the bonobo," said Savage-Rumbaugh, an experimental psychologist who is one of the world's leading ape-language researchers. If the apes are able to learn language, music and art, once thought to be distinct to humans, then "it strongly suggests that those things are not innate in us," she said. "Those are things that we have created, and create anew and build upon from one generation to the next ..." she said. "Then we have the power to change it and make it any other way. We could have an ideal world, if we but learn how to do it." The bonobos will be able to cook in their own kitchen, tap vending machines for snacks, go for walks in the woods and communicate with researchers through computer touchscreens. The decor in their 18-room home includes an indoor waterfall and climbing areas 30 feet high. The longevity of the project is unlike any other. The animals, which have a life span of up to about 50 years, will be allowed to mate and have families -- and develop cultures that will be studied for generations to come, Savage-Rumbaugh said. Visitors are allowed, but they must understand that the Great Ape Trust is not a zoo, she said. Using a network of cameras and computers, the bonobos can see visitors who ring the doorbell -- and will be able to choose through a computer touchscreen who will be permitted into a secured viewing area. "Only if they want to open the door can you enter," Savage-Rumbaugh said. Karen Killmar, an associate curator at the San Diego Zoo, said the Great Ape Trust is unlike other research programs. "There's studies all over the place in terms of intelligence and learning ability and behavior," she said, "but to be able to sort of pull it all together in one place I think is a wonderful opportunity to give us a much clearer picture of what our closest relatives are." material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. References 32. http://www.iowagreatapes.org/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:46:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:46:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Science News: 'Stuart Little' mouse soon to have a human brain Message-ID: 'Stuart Little' mouse soon to have a human brain http://www.keralanext.com/news/index.asp?id=139686&pg=1 [Science News]: It will look like any ordinary mouse, but for America's scientists a tiny animal threatens to ignite a profound ethical dilemma. In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells. Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells. In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human. Prof Irving Weissman, who heads the university's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology, believes that the mice could produce a breakthrough in understanding how stem cells might lead to a cure for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. The group is waiting for a key American government-sponsored report, due this month, that will decide just how much science can blur the distinction between man and beast. Last week, however, the university's ethics committee approved the research, under certain conditions. Prof Henry Greely, the head of the committee, said: "If the mouse shows human-like behaviours, like improved memory or problem-solving, it's time to stop." He accepted that the project might seem "a little creepy", but insisted: "It's not going to get up and say 'Hi, I'm Mickey'. Our brains are far more complicated." Biologists know such creatures as "chimeras", after the mythical Greek monster that was part-lion, part-goat and part-serpent. Prof Weissman said that there was no way of knowing whether the "human-mice" would develop any human characteristics until after they were born. In previous experiments, pigs with human blood have been developed at a clinic in Minnesota. Last year, the University of Nevada produced sheep whose livers were 80 per cent human and could one day be used for transplants. An inquiry into laying down rules for research using stem cells from human embryos was launched last summer by America's National Academies of Science. The government-sponsored report, said to be in draft form, will govern stem cell research in the private sector. It comes at a time of growing confusion in America over the limits of stem cell research. President George W Bush halted government-funded research during his first term of office but several states, including California, have since passed laws that allow support for stem cell projects from local taxes. At hearings in Washington last October, Prof Weissman argued strongly against a ban on "chimera mice". He believes that the mice would behave like any others, but said that he would monitor the experiment closely and destroy them at the slightest suggestion of human-like brain patterns. Supporters of stem cell research at Stanford University include the actor Michael J Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. Fox provided the voice for Stuart Little, Hollywood's version of the "human mouse'', who talks, has human parents and lives in a New York apartment. Opponents of Prof Weissman's work accept that his mice are unlikely to show such obvious human traits, but voice concerns that the brain cells would begin to organise themselves in a way that was more human than mouse. There is growing unease over whether human stem cells could migrate to other parts of the animals, creating human sperm or eggs in their reproductive systems. Should two such "chimera mice" mate, it could lead to the nightmarish scenario of a human embryo trapped in a mouse's womb. William Cheshire, a neurology professor from the Mayo Clinic in Florida and a Christian activist, has called for a ban on any research that destroys a human embryo to create a new organism. "We must be careful not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life,'' he said. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health and affront species integrity.'' In a recent article for the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, Wesley Smith, a consultant for the Centre for Bioethics and Culture warned that "biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control''. He wrote: "Scientists are engaging in increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition." (Agencies) From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:45:29 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:45:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] James Hughes: Ratzinger on genetic enhancement and germline mods through somatic therapy Message-ID: This is really the most important article about Ben 16. --------------- Ratzinger on genetic enhancement and germline mods through somatic therapy ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:50:05 -0400 From: "Hughes, James J." To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List , mcw-bioethics at post.its.mcw.edu The election of Ratzinger (whose nicknames are apparently 'God's Rottweiler,' 'John Paul III,' 'The Enforcer,' 'Panzerkardinal (Iron Cardinal),' and 'Cardinal No') to Pope doesn't really represent so much a shift to bioconservatism IMHO, as a hardening and consolidation of biocon doctrine that Ratzinger and JPII were codifying together over the last couple decades. Augustine Di Noia is Ratzinger's lieutenant, and he has said that bioethics would be at the top of the agenda for a Ratziger Papacy: "Di Noia, the top aide to Cardinal Ratzinger, said he believes the ethical questions surrounding cloning, fertility technology, embryonic stem cells and other aspects of genetic engineering will be among the most important issues facing the new pope." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/17/POPE.TMP In fact, di Noia and Ratzinger are already at work on a major new bioethics statement: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050413/news_1n13report.html http://www.catholic.org/cathcom/international_story.php?id=13881 Presumably its conclusions are foreshadowed in the 2002 Vatican document "Human Persons Created in the Image of God" that was crafted under the supervision of di Noia, and approved by Cardinal Ratzinger: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_ con_cfaith_doc_20040723_communion-stewardship_en.html One very interesting part of the document is its position on germline genetic modification via somatic gene therapy in vivo sperm (or eggs). The Cardinal/Commission holds out that this might be acceptable, if only used for therapeutic, non-enhancement applications: "Germ line genetic engineering with a therapeutic goal in man would in itself be acceptable were it not for the fact that is it is hard to imagine how this could be achieved without disproportionate risks especially in the first experimental stage, such as the huge loss of embryos and the incidence of mishaps, and without the use of reproductive techniques. A possible alternative would be the use of gene therapy in the stem cells that produce a man's sperm, whereby he can beget healthy offspring with his own seed by means of the conjugal act." My guess is that this will be a pretty big loophole, one that the WTA is committed to protecting: http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/more/636/ But the rest of the 2002 document is pretty consistently Catholic biocon: On enhancement: "Enhancement genetic engineering aims at improving certain specific characteristics. The idea of man as "co-creator" with God could be used to try to justify the management of human evolution by means of such genetic engineering. But this would imply that man has full right of disposal over his own biological nature. Changing the genetic identity of man as a human person through the production of an infrahuman being is radically immoral. The use of genetic modification to yield a superhuman or being with essentially new spiritual faculties is unthinkable, given that the spiritual life principle of man - forming the matter into the body of the human person - is not a product of human hands and is not subject to genetic engineering. The uniqueness of each human person, in part constituted by his biogenetic characteristics and developed through nurture and growth, belongs intrinsically to him and cannot be instrumentalized in order to improve some of these characteristics. A man can only truly improve by realizing more fully the image of God in him by uniting himself to Christ and in imitation of him. Such modifications would in any case violate the freedom of future persons who had no part in decisions that determine his bodily structure and characteristics in a significant and possibly irreversible way." On a right to bodily autonomy and self-determination: "The right fully to dispose of the body would imply that the person may use the body as a means to an end he himself has chosen: i.e., that he may replace its parts, modify or terminate it. In other words, a person could determine the finality or teleological value of the body. A right to dispose of something extends only to objects with a merely instrumental value, but not to objects which are good in themselves, i.e., ends in themselves. The human person, being created in the image of God, is himself such a good." On contraception, sterilization and reproductive technology: "The mutual gift of man and woman to one another on the level of sexual intimacy is rendered incomplete through contraception or sterilization. Furthermore, if a technique is used that does not assist the conjugal act in attaining its goal, but replaces it, and the conception is then effected through the intervention of a third party, then the child does not originate from the conjugal act which is the authentic expression of the mutual gift of the parents." On life extension and anti-aging: "Disposing of death is in reality the most radical way of disposing of life." ------------------------ James J. Hughes Ph.D. Public Policy Studies Trinity College 300 Summit St., Hartford CT 06106 USA james.hughes at trincoll.edu (office) 860-297-2376 Executive Director World Transhumanist Association Inst. for Ethics & Emerging Tech. http://transhumanism.org http://ieet.org director at transhumanism.org director at ieet.org Interim Editor, Journal of Evolution and Technology http://jetpress.org Box 128, Willington CT 06279 USA (office) 860-297-2376 Author: Citizen Cyborg (2004) http://cyborgdemocracy.net/citizencyborg.htm From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:47:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:47:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Yahoo!: U.K. lesbians try for new fertility procedure Message-ID: U.K. lesbians try for new fertility procedure http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=101&e=3&u=/po/20050420/co_po/uklesbianstryfornewfertilityprocedure Tue Apr 19, 8:35 PM ET Ben Townley, Gay.com U.K. SUMMARY: A lesbian couple is looking to have a "shared" baby by combining existing treatments to ensure the resulting baby "has truly come from both of us." A lesbian couple is looking to make a fertility first in the United Kingdom by planning to have a "shared" baby. Vicky Hill, 22, and Hayley Marlow, 29, want to combine existing treatments to ensure the resulting baby "has truly come from both of us." Hill will donate an egg to her partner, while Marlow will have the fertilized egg implanted in her womb. The sperm will be used from a donor. As a result, Hill will be the genetic mother, while Marlow will be the birth mother. Traditionally, lesbian couples have used artificial insemination to have a baby. However, the couple says this method only results in one partner having a direct link to the child. The process of donation, fertilization and implantation is likely to cost the couple thousands of pounds, and only has a slim chance of success. They have already spoken with their physician, press reports suggest, and are likely to be referred to a specialist in the coming months. Although never tried, the method is not against the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) guidelines. A spokesperson for the agency said Tuesday they would not try to block the attempt, although they would warn that the process would be difficult. Far right campaigners, however, say they will protest the case. "Children should not be used as guinea pigs to serve the interests of adults," Martin Foley of the Life charity told The Sun. "Nobody has the right to a child. They are gifts -- and their welfare and rights must come before the parents." But the parents say their baby would help "complete" the family. "A lot of lesbians do have children using male friends as sperm donors, but we want a baby that has truly come from both of us and the only way to do that is by me carrying Vicky's baby," Marlow told the Oxford Mail. From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:48:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:48:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1) April 2005 Message-ID: Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1) April 2005 From: "Hughes, James J." To: transhumantech at yahoogroups.com, World Transhumanist Association Discussion List , Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies [My article, with several small changes is below. I am a published author again! JET is peer-reviewed, but it does not exist in print form. My first publication thus.] Journal of Evolution and Technology Volume 14, Issue 1 - April 2005 Nick Bostrom "A History of Transhumanist Thought" http://jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html Robert Pepperell "Posthumans and Extended Experience" http://jetpress.org/volume14/pepperell.html K. Mark Smith "Saving Humanity?: Counter-arguing Posthuman Enhancement" http://jetpress.org/volume14/smith.html Robert A. Freitas Jr. "Microbivores: Artificial Mechanical Phagocytes using Digest and Discharge Protocol" http://jetpress.org/volume14/freitas.html John Schloendorn "Negative Data from the Psychological Frontline" http://jetpress.org/volume14/schloendorn.html Frank Forman "Transhumanism's Vital Center" Review of James Hughes' Citizen Cyborg http://jetpress.org/volume14/forman.html Non-thematic submissions are welcome at any time. Please refer to the authors' guide: http://jetpress.org/authors.html Call for Papers for Future Theme Issues http://jetpress.org/index.html#call Submission Deadline 06/01/05 Visions of Utopia (Popular Culture) 09/01/05 Global Health & Sustainable Development 12/01/05 Human Rights ------------------------ James Hughes Ph.D. Editor, Journal of Evolution and Technology Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies http://ieet.org Williams 229B, Trinity College 300 Summit St., Hartford CT 06106 (office) 860-297-2376 - director at ieet.org From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 21 22:50:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 18:50:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] AP: Some see Virgin Mary in underpass salt stain Message-ID: Actually, there isn't much today that's science-related. So here's something exactly the opposite. Enough for today. Some see Virgin Mary in underpass salt stain http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0420UnderpassMary20-ON.html Associated Press Apr. 20, 2005 08:30 AM CHICAGO - A steady stream of the faithful and the curious, many carrying flowers and candles, have flocked to an expressway underpass for a view of a yellow and white stain on a concrete wall that some believe is an image of the Virgin Mary. Police have patrolled the emergency turnoff area under the Kennedy Expressway since Monday as hundreds of people have walked down to see the image and the growing memorial of flowers and candles that surround it. Beside the image is an artist's rendering of the Virgin Mary embracing Pope John Paul II in a pose some see echoed in the stain. "We believe it's a miracle," said Elbia Tello, 42. "We have faith, and we can see her face." advertisement Tuesday morning, women knelt with rosary beads behind a police barricade while men in work shirts stood solemnly before the image, praying. A police officer kept the crowd of about three dozen from getting too close to the traffic but didn't stop them gathering around the stain. The stain is likely the result of salt run-off, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation. The agency does not plan to scrub it off the wall. "We're treating this just like we treat any type of roadside memorial," said IDOT spokesman Mike Claffey. "We have no plans to clean this site." The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago had not received any requests to authenticate the image as of Monday, spokesman Jim Dwyer said. "These things don't happen every day," Dwyer said. "Sometimes people ask us to look into it. Most of the time they don't. (The meaning) depends on the individual who sees it. To them, it's real. To them, it reaffirms their faith." But onlooker Victor Robles, 36, said he was skeptical about the stain's Virgin Mary resemblance. "I see just a concrete wall and an image that could happen anywhere," Robles said. "If that image helps more people feel closer to God than maybe that is a good sign." Worldwide, people have been drawn to images believed to resemble the Virgin Mary seen on windows, fence posts and walls. Among the best-known in the United States was an image seen in office windows in Clearwater, Fla. Within weeks, a half million people had been to the site. Glass experts believe the image was created by a chemical reaction and corrosion of the metallic elements in the glass coating, but they could not explain why it took the shape it did. The windows were broken last year. [69]Enlarge Image Reuters Bette Shober, left, and Joanne Vrablik take a closer look at what some people believe to be an image of the Virgin Mary under a freeway underpass in Chicago. References 69. javascript:; From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 22 13:29:57 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 06:29:57 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] New superlens opens door to nanoscale optical imaging, high-density optoelectronics Message-ID: <01C54704.B4873BD0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/uoc--nso041805.php (A) is an image of an array of nanowires 60 nanometers wide created with the silver superlens. The center distance between each nanowire is 120 nanometers. To the right (B) is an image of the same nanowires. In this image, created without the superlens, the individual nanowires are not distinct. The scale bar on both images is 1 micrometer. (Image by Cheng Sun, UC Berkeley) Click here for a high resolution photograph. Berkeley -- A group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, is giving new relevance to the term "sharper image" by creating a superlens that can overcome a limitation in physics that has historically constrained the resolution of optical images. Using a thin film of silver as the lens and ultraviolet (UV) light, the researchers recorded the images of an array of nanowires and the word "NANO" onto an organic polymer at a resolution of about 60 nanometers. In comparison, current optical microscopes can only make out details down to one-tenth the diameter of a red blood cell, or about 400 nanometers. Shown is a drawing of nano-scale imaging using a silver superlens that achieves a resolution beyond the optical diffraction limit. The red line indicates the enhancement of "evanescent" waves as they pass through the superlens. (Image by Cheng Sun, UC Berkeley) Click here for a high resolution photograph. The breakthrough, reported in the April 22 issue of the journal Science, opens the door to dramatic technological advances in nanoengineering that could eventually lead to DVDs that store the entire contents of the Library of Congress, and computer processors that can quickly search through such a huge volume of data, the researchers said. From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 22 13:32:05 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 06:32:05 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] New nanoswitch technology Message-ID: <01C54705.014ED7C0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/wi-stc042105.php Switching to chemistry Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have demonstrated a new kind of electrical switch, formed of organic molecules, that could be used in the future in nanoscale electronic components. Their approach involved rethinking a phenomenon that drives many of today's high-speed semiconductors. Negative differential resistance (NDR), as the phenomenon is called, works contrary to the normal laws of electricity, in which an increase in voltage translates into a direct increase in current. In NDR, as the voltage steadily increases, the current peaks and then drops off, essentially allowing one to create a switch with no moving parts. But until now, those attempting to recreate NDR at the molecular scale had only managed it at extremely low temperatures. Prof. David Cahen of the Institute's Materials and Interfaces Department and graduate student Adi Salomon thought research carried out by Salomon and others in Cahen's lab during her M.Sc. studies on connections between metal wires and organic (carbon based) molecules might hold part of the key to usable nanoscale NDR. They had found that, like people, molecules and metal wires need chemistry between them for barriers to be lowered and the juice to really flow. For a given voltage, if the molecules are held to the wire by chemical bonds (in which the two are linked by shared electrons), the current flowing through them will be many times higher than if they are only touching a mere physical bond. From Thrst4knw at aol.com Fri Apr 22 14:00:16 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 10:00:16 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] RSS news feed info Message-ID: <12f.5bcd9f86.2f9a5d70@aol.com> <<>> The author needs a program that builds an XML file and the subscribers need a program that reads it, and the location of the files they are interested in, which are published on the author's web page and in various directories. An RSS feed is nothing more than the simplest standardized form of web publication scheme, where someone places links and optional descriptions into an XML file, and other people read that XML file and display the headlines to see which ones they are interesting in following up. It is best suited to ongoing publication of recent changes or articles (news) rather than general file transfer. It differs from email in that: (1) subscription is trivial rather than managed, people just point their reader at the files they are interested in (and many web sites have RSS feeds), and (2) you don't send copies to everyone, filling up their inbox, you publish links and they pull the articles they are interested in. The real point of it is "aggregation," which means that the readers use software that knows the locations of a large number of these XML files, and displays a filtered list of just the most recent articles (for example) from each of them in one list they can glance at from time to time to keep up with the news from multiple places at once. >From the reader's perspective, it provides a way to keep track of recent articles published by your selected sources, where the filtering keeps down the total volume. From an author's perspective, it provides a simple way to push new items or new files out to people. ------------------------------------- Some informational links: ------------------------------------- Good intro: http://rss.softwaregarden.com/aboutrss.html A.P. Lawrence on RSS feeds on UNIX ... http://www.aplawrence.com/Basics/rssfeeds.html ------------- Readers: -------------- Some good RSS readers (many of them use an "Outlook-like" interface) : SharpReader (http://www.sharpreader.net/ ), RSS Bandit ( http://www.rssbandit.org/ ), http://www.pluck.com/ has both a desktop version and a web version. ---------------------------------------- Generating your own feeds: ---------------------------------------- Here's a simple free program that I've used. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux and is OpenSource ... http://www.softwaregarden.com/products/listgarden/ One perspective of generating feeds on UNIX ... http://aplawrence.com/Unix/simplerssfeed.html I don't have a lot of info on generating feeds on UNIX platforms, but here are some details on the Microsoft platform ... http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/04/XMLFiles/default.aspx kind regards, Todd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ross.buck at uconn.edu Fri Apr 22 15:28:04 2005 From: ross.buck at uconn.edu (Buck, Ross) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 11:28:04 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: _____ From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Thrst4knw at aol.com Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 3:14 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: ToddStark at aol.com; HowlBloom at aol.com Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050418_bactfrm.htm Intelligent bacteria? For the most primitive beings in the web of life, some researchers claim, "simple" might not mean "stupid." Posted April 18, 2005 Special to World Science Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does compared to a sponge. A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some researchers say can organize themselves into different types of extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy Eshel Ben-Jacob , Tel Aviv University, Israel) _____ Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, some researchers have found. The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism. But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence. Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it-a complex system of chemical "signals" that flit both within and among bacteria, helping them decide what to do and where to go. Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than machine-like. The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to "learn" tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs-typical sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional computers. The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria have "a minimal form of intelligence." Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is that for one of those properties, it's not clear whether bacteria exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research should focus, he wrote. Cooperation and altruism The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that bacteria might possess a crude intelligence-though few scientists would go as far as to use that word. One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial behavior. This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of environment in which to live and find sustenance. Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus xanthus can bunch up to form a "predatory" colony that moves and changes direction collectively toward possible food sources. Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection. But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these behaviors reflected intelligence. For instance, bacterial "altruism" may be a simple outcome of evolution that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the University of Bonn's Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August's issue of the research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn't suggest that any process akin to thinking was at work. But one thing that ties these various behaviors together is that they all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by Hellingwerf. Mousetraps, learning and language These mechanisms work in a way somewhat akin to the American board game Mousetrap. In this game, you try to catch your opponent's plastic mouse using a rambling contraption that starts working when you turn a crank. This rotates gears, that push a lever, that moves a shoe, that kicks a bucket, that sends a ball down stairs and-after several more hair-raising steps of the sort-drops a basket on the mouse. Molecular signals inside cells work through somewhat similar chain reactions, except the pieces involved are molecules. A typical way these molecular chain reactions work is that small clusters of atoms, called phosphate groups, are passed among various molecules. One example of what such a system could accomplish: a bit of food brushing against the cell could start a series of events that lead inside the cell and activate genes that generate the chemicals that digest the food. A single bacterium can contain dozens of such systems operating simultaneously for different purposes. And compared to the board game, the cellular systems have additional features that make them more complicated and versatile. For instance, some of these bacterial contraptions, when set in motion, lead to the formation of extra copies of themselves. These tricks can lead to phenomena with aspects of learning and language. For example, a shortage of a nutrient in a bacterium's neighborhood can activate a system that makes the microbe attract the nutrient toward itself more strongly. The system also produces extra copies of itself, researchers have found. Thus if shortage recurs later, the bacterium is better prepared. This is a form of "learning," Hellingwerf and colleagues wrote in the August, 2001 issue of the Journal of Bacteriology. Brain cells can operate in an analogous way: a brain cell can grow more sensitive to a signal that it receives repeatedly, resulting in a reinforcement of signaling circuits and learning. The bacterial versions of "mousetrap" have other tricks as well. For instance, some of them seem to contain components influenced by not just one stimulus, but by two or more. Thus the chain reactions merge. The component receiving these stimuli adds the strength of each to give a response whose strength is proportional to the sum. Although the full complexities of bacterial signaling are far from understood, many researchers believe the systems helps bacteria to communicate. For instance, some bacteria, when starving, emit molecules that serve as stress signals to their neighbors, write Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University and colleagues in last August's issue of Trends in Microbiology. The signals launch a process in which the group can transform itself to create tough, walled structures that wait out tough times to reemerge later. This transformation involves a complex dialogue that reveals a "social intelligence," the researchers added. Each bacterium uses the signals to assess the group's condition, compares this with its own state, and sends out a molecular "vote" for or against transformation. The majority wins. Collectively, the researchers wrote, "bacteria can glean information from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information in a 'meaningful' way, develop common knowledge and learn from past experience." Some can even collectively change their chemical "dialect" to freeze out "cheaters" who exploit group efforts for their own selfish interest, the researchers claimed. Not everyone is convinced by these claims. Rosemary J. Redfield of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, has argued that the supposed communication molecules actually exist mainly to tell bacteria how closed-in their surroundings are, which is useful information to them for various reasons. Inside-out To properly assess if bacterial signals constitute intelligence, whether of a social or individual brand, Hellingwerf and some other researchers work from the inside out. Rather than focusing on the behaviors, which are open to differing interpretations, they focus on the systems of interactions followed by the molecules. These systems, it is hoped, have distinct properties that can be measured and compared against similar interactions in known intelligent beings. For instance, if these bacterial systems operate similarly to networks in the brain, it would provide a weighty piece of evidence in favor of the bacterial intelligence. Hellingwerf has set himself a more modest goal, comparing bacterial signaling not to the brain, but to the brain-like, human-made neural network devices. Such an effort has a simple motivation. Demonstrating that bacterial signaling possesses every important feature of neural networks would suggest at least that microbial capabilities rival those of devices with proven ability to tackle simple problems using known rules of brain function-rather than robot-like calculations, which are very different. To understand how one could do such a comparison requires a brief explanation of how neural networks work, and how they differ from traditional computers. Computers are good at following precise instructions, but terrible at even simple, common-sense tasks that lack definite rules, like the recognition of the difference between male and female. Neural networks, like humans, can do this because they are more flexible, and they learn-even though they can be built using computers. They are a set of simulated "brain cells" set to pass "signals" among themselves through simulated "connections." Some information that can be represented as a set of numbers, such as a digitized photograph, is fed to a first set of "cells" in such a way that each cell gets a number. Each cell is then set to "transmit" all, part or none of that number to one or more other cells. How big a portion of the number is passed on to each, depends on the simulated "strength" of the connections that are programmed into the system. Each of those cells, in turn, are set to do something with the numbers they receive, such as add them or average them-and then transmit all or part of them to yet another cell. Numbers ricochet through the system this way until they arrive at a final set of "output" cells. These cells are set to give out a final answer-based on the numbers in them-in the form of yet another number. For example, the answer could be 0 for male, 1 for female. Such a system, when new, will give random answers, because the connections are initially set at random. However, after each attempt at the problem, a human "tells" the system whether it was right or wrong. The system is designed to then change the strength of the connections to improve the answer for the next try. To do this, the system calculates to what extent a change in strength of each connection previously contributed to giving a right or wrong answer. This information tells the system how to change the strengths to give better results. Over many attempts, the system's accuracy gradually improves, often reaching nearly human-like performance on a given task. Such systems not only work quite well for simple problems, many researchers believed they capture all the key features of real brain cells, though in a drastically simplified way. The devices also have similarities to the messaging systems in bacteria. But how deep are the resemblances? To answer this, Hellingwerf looked at four properties that neural-network experts have identified as essential for such devices to work. He then examined whether bacterial signaling fits each of the criteria. The four properties are as follows. First, a neural network must have multiple sub-systems that work simultaneously, or "in parallel." Neural networks do this, because signals follow multiple pathways at once, in effect carrying out multiple calculations at once. Traditional computers can't do this; they conduct one at a time. Bacteria do fit the standard, though, because they can contain many messaging networks acting simultaneously, Hellingwerf observes. Second, key components of the network must carry out logical operations. This means, in the case of a neural network, that single elements of the network combine signals from two or more other elements, and pass the result on to a third according to some mathematical rule. Regular computers also have this feature. Bacteria probably do too, Hellingwerf argues, based on the way that parts of their signaling systems add up inputs from different sources. The third property is "auto-amplification." This describes the way some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions. Hellingwerf maintains that bacteria show this property, as when, for example, some of their signaling systems create more copies of themselves as they run. The fourth property is where the rub lies for bacteria. This feature, called crosstalk, means that the system must not consist just of separate chain reactions: rather, different chain reactions have to connect, so that the way one operates can change the way another runs. Crosstalk is believed to underlie an important form of memory called associative memory, the ability to mentally connect two things with no obvious relationship. A famous example is the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov's dog, who drooled at the ring of a bell because experience had taught him food invariably followed the sound. Crosstalk has been found many times in bacteria, Hellingwerf wrote-but the strength of the crosstalk "signals" are hundreds or thousands of times weaker than those that follow the main tracks of the chain reactions. Moreover, "clear demonstrations of associative memory have not yet been detected in any single bacterial cell," he added, and this is an area ripe for further research. If bacteria can indeed communicate, it seems they may be holding quite a bit back from us. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Euterpel66 at aol.com Fri Apr 22 17:55:58 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 13:55:58 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] The perfect liquid Message-ID: <144.4425ffd1.2f9a94ae@aol.com> (http://www.spacedaily.com/) _PHYSICS _ (http://www.spacedaily.com/cosmology.html) RHIC Scientists Serve Up Perfect Liquid These images contrast the degree of interaction and collective motion, or "flow," among quarks in the predicted gaseous quark-gluon plasma state (Figure A, see mpeg _animation_ (http://www.bnl.gov/video/files/anigas_v3.mpg) ) vs. the liquid state that has been observed in gold-gold collisions at RHIC (Figure B, see mpeg _animation_ (http://www.bnl.gov/video/files/aniliquid_v3.mpg) ). The green "force lines" and collective motion (visible on the animated version only) show the much higher degree of interaction and flow among the quarks in what is now being described as a nearly "perfect" liquid. See _larger_ (http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/photos/2005/gas-and-liquid-300.jpg) image.Tampa FL (SPX) Apr 19, 2005 The four detector groups conducting research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) - a giant atom "smasher" located at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory - say they've created a new state of hot, dense matter out of the quarks and gluons that are the basic particles of atomic nuclei, but it is a state quite different and even more remarkable than had been predicted. In peer-reviewed papers summarizing the first three years of RHIC findings, the scientists say that instead of behaving like a gas of free quarks and gluons, as was expected, the matter created in RHIC's heavy ion collisions appears to be more like a liquid. "Once again, the physics research sponsored by the Department of Energy is producing historic results," said Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, a trained chemical engineer. "The DOE is the principal federal funder of basic research in the physical sciences, including nuclear and high-energy physics. With today's announcement we see that investment paying off." "The truly stunning finding at RHIC that the new state of matter created in the collisions of gold ions is more like a liquid than a gas gives us a profound insight into the earliest moments of the universe," said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science. Also of great interest to many following progress at RHIC is the emerging connection between the collider's results and calculations using the methods of string theory, an approach that attempts to explain fundamental properties of the universe using 10 dimensions instead of the usual three spatial dimensions plus time. "The possibility of a connection between string theory and RHIC collisions is unexpected and exhilarating," Dr. Orbach said. "String theory seeks to unify the two great intellectual achievements of twentieth-century physics, general relativity and quantum mechanics, and it may well have a profound impact on the physics of the twenty-first century." The papers, which the four RHIC collaborations (BRAHMS, PHENIX, PHOBOS, and STAR) have been working on for nearly a year, will be published simultaneously by the journal Nuclear Physics A, and will also be compiled in a special Brookhaven report, the Lab announced at the April 2005 meeting of the American Physical Society in Tampa, Florida. These summaries indicate that some of the observations at RHIC fit with the theoretical predictions for a quark-gluon _plasma_ (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/physics-05s.html#) (QGP), the type of matter postulated to have existed just microseconds after the Big Bang. Indeed, many theorists have concluded that RHIC has already demonstrated the creation of quark-gluon plasma. However, all four collaborations note that there are discrepancies between the experimental data and early theoretical predictions based on simple models of quark-gluon plasma formation. "We know that we've reached the temperature [up to 150,000 times hotter than the center of the sun] and energy density [energy per unit volume] predicted to be necessary for forming such a plasma," said Sam Aronson, Brookhaven's Associate Laboratory Director for High Energy and Nuclear Physics. But analysis of RHIC data from the start of operations in June 2000 through the 2003 physics run reveals that the matter formed in RHIC's head-on collisions of gold ions is more like a liquid than a gas. That evidence comes from measurements of unexpected patterns in the trajectories taken by the thousands of particles produced in individual collisions. These measurements indicate that the primordial particles produced in the collisions tend to move collectively in response to variations of pressure across the volume formed by the colliding nuclei. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as "flow," since it is analogous to the properties of fluid motion. However, unlike ordinary liquids, in which individual molecules move about randomly, the hot matter formed at RHIC seems to move in a pattern that exhibits a high degree of coordination among the particles - somewhat like a school of fish that responds as one entity while moving through a changing environment. "This is fluid motion that is nearly 'perfect,'" Aronson said, meaning it can be explained by equations of hydrodynamics. These equations were developed to describe theoretically "perfect" fluids - those with extremely low viscosity and the ability to reach thermal equilibrium very rapidly due to the high degree of interaction among the particles. While RHIC scientists don't have a direct measure of viscosity, they can infer from the flow pattern that, qualitatively, the viscosity is very low, approaching the quantum mechanical limit. Together, these facts present a compelling case: "In fact, the degree of collective interaction, rapid thermalization, and extremely low viscosity of the matter being formed at RHIC make this the most nearly perfect liquid ever observed," Aronson said. In results reported earlier, other measurements at RHIC have shown "jets" of high-energy quarks and gluons being dramatically slowed down as they traverse the hot fireball produced in the collisions. This "jet quenching" demonstrates that the energy density in this new form of matter is extraordinarily high - much higher than can be explained by a medium consisting of ordinary nuclear matter. "The current findings don't rule out the possibility that this new state of matter is in fact a form of the quark-gluon plasma, just different from what had been theorized," Aronson said. Many scientists believe this to be the case, and detailed measurements are now under way at RHIC to resolve this question. Theoretical physicists, whose standard calculations cannot incorporate the strong coupling observed between the quarks and gluons at RHIC, are also revisiting some of their early models and predictions. To try to address these issues, they are running massive numerical simulations on some of the world's most powerful _computers_ (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/physics-05s.html#) . Others are attempting to incorporate quantitative measures of viscosity into the equations of motion for fluid moving at nearly the speed of light. One subset of calculations uses the methods of string theory to predict the viscosity of the liquid being created at RHIC and to explain some of the other surprising findings. Such studies will provide a more quantitative understanding of how "nearly perfect" the liquid is. The unexpected findings also introduce a wide range of opportunity for new scientific discovery regarding the properties of matter at extremes of temperature and density previously inaccessible in a laboratory. "The finding of a nearly perfect liquid in a laboratory experiment recreating the conditions believed to have existed a few microseconds after the birth of the universe is truly astonishing," said Praveen Chaudhari, Director of Brookhaven Lab. "The four RHIC collaborations are now collecting and analyzing very large new data sets from the fourth and fifth years of operation, and I expect more exciting and intriguing revelations in the near future." Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 22 19:48:18 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:48:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] depression In-Reply-To: <200504221800.j3MI0D213707@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050422194818.79117.qmail@web30809.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Stephen says: >>Speaking from long experience, depression has a lot in common with being dead.<< --You've been dead? I'm actually not sure it's like being dead. I think death is probably more liberating. Depression has more to do with frustration in not being able to live, or ambivalence about being alive. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 22 19:51:59 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:51:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] anti-gay arguments In-Reply-To: <200504221800.j3MI0D213707@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050422195159.67149.qmail@web30805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Far right campaigners, however, say they will protest the case. "Children should not be used as guinea pigs to serve the interests of adults," Martin Foley of the Life charity told The Sun.<< --All children are guinea pigs. There is no way to know how any combination of parents will affect their kids, and there's no way to know how future cultural developments will affect kids. If we wanted to be really conservative, *nobody* would have kids. >>"Nobody has the right to a child. They are gifts -- and their welfare and rights must come before the parents."<< --As far as I know, every adult has the right to have children. I'm not sure I'd want government meddling THAT far in people's affairs (sounds almost Communist, really). If there is abuse, it's reasonable for the government to step in, but it's purely conjecture to say that gay parents are inherently abusive to children. The same argument was used against interracial marriage, that it would unfairly harm the children. There is no empirical evidence suggesting gay parents are any more harmful than parents in general. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 22 20:55:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 16:55:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Too Many Articles? Message-ID: I've been cutting down my articles forwarded to this group to at most ten a day. I've been forwarding them after I've sent out twenty to my lists and then selecting the ones most relevant. Yesterday I sent only six. Today, I easily have ten, since I grabbed a whole bunch from New Scientist, but I won't send more than ten of them. Please advise on how many to send. If five is enough, say so. If you want all ten, say that too. I don't want the list to lose members who are overburdened with too many articles. Frank From wtroytucker at yahoo.com Fri Apr 22 21:29:58 2005 From: wtroytucker at yahoo.com (W. Troy Tucker) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:29:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Der Spiegel: Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050422212958.65076.qmail@web40624.mail.yahoo.com> This may be the poorest popular science article I have ever read! Only the weak masterbated?!? To the men of that period, the fact that the female body would periodically swell up until a screaming baby would emerge from the woman's lap was nothing less than astonishing?!? Stone Age women were constantly disappearing into the bushes with different partners?!? I'm speechless. That the author managed to make Helen Fisher sound so dumb gives me hope that the rest of the loonies he quoted might have been similarly misconstrued. Or perhaps his "Socio-biologists" and "Tabooists" are species of hominids unknown to my rustic neanderthal science. Troy. --- Premise Checker wrote: > Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay > http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-350042,00.html > 5.4.4 > [You'll want to click on the URL to see the images!] > > By Matthias Schulz > > New pornographic figurines from the Stone Age > have been discovered in > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From wtroytucker at yahoo.com Fri Apr 22 21:36:05 2005 From: wtroytucker at yahoo.com (W. Troy Tucker) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 14:36:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Der Spiegel: Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050422213605.37886.qmail@web40604.mail.yahoo.com> "Socio-biologists, on the other hand, see them as evidence that the early farmers had only one thing on their minds -- and that they were having sex with one another whenever they felt the urge." Astonishing! I've always found HBES meetings to be rather tame. Wonder what he'd think about some of the primatology conferences I've been to? Troy. --- Premise Checker wrote: > Sex in the Stone Age: Pornography in Clay > http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-350042,00.html > 5.4.4 > [You'll want to click on the URL to see the images!] > > By Matthias Schulz > > New pornographic figurines from the Stone Age > have been discovered in > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 00:39:36 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:39:36 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: <01C54762.416D5AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> Our own intelligence is mediated by neuropeptides and enzymes, so if we find those in bacteria, we find intelligence... Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Buck, Ross [SMTP:ross.buck at uconn.edu] Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 8:28 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria _____ From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Thrst4knw at aol.com Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 3:14 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: ToddStark at aol.com; HowlBloom at aol.com Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050418_bactfrm.htm Intelligent bacteria? For the most primitive beings in the web of life, some researchers claim, "simple" might not mean "stupid." Posted April 18, 2005 Special to World Science Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does compared to a sponge. A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some researchers say can organize themselves into different types of extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy Eshel Ben-Jacob , Tel Aviv University, Israel) _____ Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, some researchers have found. The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism. But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence. Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it-a complex system of chemical "signals" that flit both within and among bacteria, helping them decide what to do and where to go. Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than machine-like. The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to "learn" tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs-typical sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional computers. The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria have "a minimal form of intelligence." Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is that for one of those properties, it's not clear whether bacteria exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research should focus, he wrote. Cooperation and altruism The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that bacteria might possess a crude intelligence-though few scientists would go as far as to use that word. One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial behavior. This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of environment in which to live and find sustenance. Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus xanthus can bunch up to form a "predatory" colony that moves and changes direction collectively toward possible food sources. Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection. But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these behaviors reflected intelligence. For instance, bacterial "altruism" may be a simple outcome of evolution that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the University of Bonn's Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August's issue of the research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn't suggest that any process akin to thinking was at work. But one thing that ties these various behaviors together is that they all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by Hellingwerf. Mousetraps, learning and language These mechanisms work in a way somewhat akin to the American board game Mousetrap. In this game, you try to catch your opponent's plastic mouse using a rambling contraption that starts working when you turn a crank. This rotates gears, that push a lever, that moves a shoe, that kicks a bucket, that sends a ball down stairs and-after several more hair-raising steps of the sort-drops a basket on the mouse. Molecular signals inside cells work through somewhat similar chain reactions, except the pieces involved are molecules. A typical way these molecular chain reactions work is that small clusters of atoms, called phosphate groups, are passed among various molecules. One example of what such a system could accomplish: a bit of food brushing against the cell could start a series of events that lead inside the cell and activate genes that generate the chemicals that digest the food. A single bacterium can contain dozens of such systems operating simultaneously for different purposes. And compared to the board game, the cellular systems have additional features that make them more complicated and versatile. For instance, some of these bacterial contraptions, when set in motion, lead to the formation of extra copies of themselves. These tricks can lead to phenomena with aspects of learning and language. For example, a shortage of a nutrient in a bacterium's neighborhood can activate a system that makes the microbe attract the nutrient toward itself more strongly. The system also produces extra copies of itself, researchers have found. Thus if shortage recurs later, the bacterium is better prepared. This is a form of "learning," Hellingwerf and colleagues wrote in the August, 2001 issue of the Journal of Bacteriology. Brain cells can operate in an analogous way: a brain cell can grow more sensitive to a signal that it receives repeatedly, resulting in a reinforcement of signaling circuits and learning. The bacterial versions of "mousetrap" have other tricks as well. For instance, some of them seem to contain components influenced by not just one stimulus, but by two or more. Thus the chain reactions merge. The component receiving these stimuli adds the strength of each to give a response whose strength is proportional to the sum. Although the full complexities of bacterial signaling are far from understood, many researchers believe the systems helps bacteria to communicate. For instance, some bacteria, when starving, emit molecules that serve as stress signals to their neighbors, write Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University and colleagues in last August's issue of Trends in Microbiology. The signals launch a process in which the group can transform itself to create tough, walled structures that wait out tough times to reemerge later. This transformation involves a complex dialogue that reveals a "social intelligence," the researchers added. Each bacterium uses the signals to assess the group's condition, compares this with its own state, and sends out a molecular "vote" for or against transformation. The majority wins. Collectively, the researchers wrote, "bacteria can glean information from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information in a 'meaningful' way, develop common knowledge and learn from past experience." Some can even collectively change their chemical "dialect" to freeze out "cheaters" who exploit group efforts for their own selfish interest, the researchers claimed. Not everyone is convinced by these claims. Rosemary J. Redfield of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, has argued that the supposed communication molecules actually exist mainly to tell bacteria how closed-in their surroundings are, which is useful information to them for various reasons. Inside-out To properly assess if bacterial signals constitute intelligence, whether of a social or individual brand, Hellingwerf and some other researchers work from the inside out. Rather than focusing on the behaviors, which are open to differing interpretations, they focus on the systems of interactions followed by the molecules. These systems, it is hoped, have distinct properties that can be measured and compared against similar interactions in known intelligent beings. For instance, if these bacterial systems operate similarly to networks in the brain, it would provide a weighty piece of evidence in favor of the bacterial intelligence. Hellingwerf has set himself a more modest goal, comparing bacterial signaling not to the brain, but to the brain-like, human-made neural network devices. Such an effort has a simple motivation. Demonstrating that bacterial signaling possesses every important feature of neural networks would suggest at least that microbial capabilities rival those of devices with proven ability to tackle simple problems using known rules of brain function-rather than robot-like calculations, which are very different. To understand how one could do such a comparison requires a brief explanation of how neural networks work, and how they differ from traditional computers. Computers are good at following precise instructions, but terrible at even simple, common-sense tasks that lack definite rules, like the recognition of the difference between male and female. Neural networks, like humans, can do this because they are more flexible, and they learn-even though they can be built using computers. They are a set of simulated "brain cells" set to pass "signals" among themselves through simulated "connections." Some information that can be represented as a set of numbers, such as a digitized photograph, is fed to a first set of "cells" in such a way that each cell gets a number. Each cell is then set to "transmit" all, part or none of that number to one or more other cells. How big a portion of the number is passed on to each, depends on the simulated "strength" of the connections that are programmed into the system. Each of those cells, in turn, are set to do something with the numbers they receive, such as add them or average them-and then transmit all or part of them to yet another cell. Numbers ricochet through the system this way until they arrive at a final set of "output" cells. These cells are set to give out a final answer-based on the numbers in them-in the form of yet another number. For example, the answer could be 0 for male, 1 for female. Such a system, when new, will give random answers, because the connections are initially set at random. However, after each attempt at the problem, a human "tells" the system whether it was right or wrong. The system is designed to then change the strength of the connections to improve the answer for the next try. To do this, the system calculates to what extent a change in strength of each connection previously contributed to giving a right or wrong answer. This information tells the system how to change the strengths to give better results. Over many attempts, the system's accuracy gradually improves, often reaching nearly human-like performance on a given task. Such systems not only work quite well for simple problems, many researchers believed they capture all the key features of real brain cells, though in a drastically simplified way. The devices also have similarities to the messaging systems in bacteria. But how deep are the resemblances? To answer this, Hellingwerf looked at four properties that neural-network experts have identified as essential for such devices to work. He then examined whether bacterial signaling fits each of the criteria. The four properties are as follows. First, a neural network must have multiple sub-systems that work simultaneously, or "in parallel." Neural networks do this, because signals follow multiple pathways at once, in effect carrying out multiple calculations at once. Traditional computers can't do this; they conduct one at a time. Bacteria do fit the standard, though, because they can contain many messaging networks acting simultaneously, Hellingwerf observes. Second, key components of the network must carry out logical operations. This means, in the case of a neural network, that single elements of the network combine signals from two or more other elements, and pass the result on to a third according to some mathematical rule. Regular computers also have this feature. Bacteria probably do too, Hellingwerf argues, based on the way that parts of their signaling systems add up inputs from different sources. The third property is "auto-amplification." This describes the way some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions. Hellingwerf maintains that bacteria show this property, as when, for example, some of their signaling systems create more copies of themselves as they run. The fourth property is where the rub lies for bacteria. This feature, called crosstalk, means that the system must not consist just of separate chain reactions: rather, different chain reactions have to connect, so that the way one operates can change the way another runs. Crosstalk is believed to underlie an important form of memory called associative memory, the ability to mentally connect two things with no obvious relationship. A famous example is the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov's dog, who drooled at the ring of a bell because experience had taught him food invariably followed the sound. Crosstalk has been found many times in bacteria, Hellingwerf wrote-but the strength of the crosstalk "signals" are hundreds or thousands of times weaker than those that follow the main tracks of the chain reactions. Moreover, "clear demonstrations of associative memory have not yet been detected in any single bacterial cell," he added, and this is an area ripe for further research. If bacteria can indeed communicate, it seems they may be holding quite a bit back from us. << File: ATT00006.html >> << File: ATT00007.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 00:40:43 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:40:43 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] depression Message-ID: <01C54762.693A9060.shovland@mindspring.com> If you have had the experience of waking up from deep, long-term depression you would tend to agree with me, I think. Have you? Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 12:48 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] depression Stephen says: >>Speaking from long experience, depression has a lot in common with being dead.<< --You've been dead? I'm actually not sure it's like being dead. I think death is probably more liberating. Depression has more to do with frustration in not being able to live, or ambivalence about being alive. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From waluk at earthlink.net Sat Apr 23 00:55:34 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 17:55:34 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria In-Reply-To: <01C54762.416D5AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54762.416D5AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <42699D06.2000701@earthlink.net> Bacteria live in groups, communicate and thus must possess intelligence. Genes are on one level but by not including the meme portion of behavior, one is only able to understand a portion of what intelligence actually is. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >Our own intelligence is mediated by neuropeptides >and enzymes, so if we find those in bacteria, >we find intelligence... > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Buck, Ross [SMTP:ross.buck at uconn.edu] >Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 8:28 AM >To: The new improved paleopsych list >Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria > > > > > > _____ > >From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org >[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of >Thrst4knw at aol.com >Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 3:14 PM >To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Cc: ToddStark at aol.com; HowlBloom at aol.com >Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria > > > >http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050418_bactfrm.htm > > > >Intelligent bacteria? > >For the most primitive beings in the web of life, some researchers >claim, "simple" might not mean "stupid." > >Posted April 18, 2005 >Special to World Science > >Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things >generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled >beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does >compared to a sponge. > > > >A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some >researchers say can organize themselves into different types of >extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. >According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy >Eshel Ben-Jacob , >Tel Aviv University, Israel) > > _____ > >Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, >some researchers have found. > >The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of >increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, >including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism. > >But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based >on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence. > >Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the >question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so >much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it-a complex >system of chemical "signals" that flit both within and among bacteria, >helping them decide what to do and where to go. > >Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of >human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These >devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than >machine-like. > >The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals >akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to "learn" >tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs-typical >sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional >computers. > >The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems >are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. >Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. >He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features >that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria >have "a minimal form of intelligence." > >Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural >network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, >Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is >that for one of those properties, it's not clear whether bacteria >exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research >should focus, he wrote. > >Cooperation and altruism > >The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the >only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that >bacteria might possess a crude intelligence-though few scientists would >go as far as to use that word. > >One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial >behavior. > >This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent >years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by >taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly >Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of >animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of >environment in which to live and find sustenance. > >Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on >tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In >a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus >xanthus can bunch up to form a "predatory" colony that moves and changes >direction collectively toward possible food sources. > >Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to >propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some >strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, >thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection. > >But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these >behaviors reflected intelligence. > >For instance, bacterial "altruism" may be a simple outcome of evolution >that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the >University of Bonn's Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August's issue of the >research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn't suggest that any >process akin to thinking was at work. > >But one thing that ties these various behaviors together is that they >all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by >Hellingwerf. > >Mousetraps, learning and language > >These mechanisms work in a way somewhat akin to the American board game >Mousetrap. In this game, you try to catch your opponent's plastic mouse >using a rambling contraption that starts working when you turn a crank. >This rotates gears, that push a lever, that moves a shoe, that kicks a >bucket, that sends a ball down stairs and-after several more >hair-raising steps of the sort-drops a basket on the mouse. > >Molecular signals inside cells work through somewhat similar chain >reactions, except the pieces involved are molecules. > >A typical way these molecular chain reactions work is that small >clusters of atoms, called phosphate groups, are passed among various >molecules. One example of what such a system could accomplish: a bit of >food brushing against the cell could start a series of events that lead >inside the cell and activate genes that generate the chemicals that >digest the food. > >A single bacterium can contain dozens of such systems operating >simultaneously for different purposes. And compared to the board game, >the cellular systems have additional features that make them more >complicated and versatile. > >For instance, some of these bacterial contraptions, when set in motion, >lead to the formation of extra copies of themselves. These tricks can >lead to phenomena with aspects of learning and language. > >For example, a shortage of a nutrient in a bacterium's neighborhood can >activate a system that makes the microbe attract the nutrient toward >itself more strongly. The system also produces extra copies of itself, >researchers have found. Thus if shortage recurs later, the bacterium is >better prepared. This is a form of "learning," Hellingwerf and >colleagues wrote in the August, 2001 issue of the Journal of >Bacteriology. > >Brain cells can operate in an analogous way: a brain cell can grow more >sensitive to a signal that it receives repeatedly, resulting in a >reinforcement of signaling circuits and learning. > >The bacterial versions of "mousetrap" have other tricks as well. For >instance, some of them seem to contain components influenced by not just >one stimulus, but by two or more. Thus the chain reactions merge. The >component receiving these stimuli adds the strength of each to give a >response whose strength is proportional to the sum. > >Although the full complexities of bacterial signaling are far from >understood, many researchers believe the systems helps bacteria to >communicate. > >For instance, some bacteria, when starving, emit molecules that serve as >stress signals to their neighbors, write Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv >University and colleagues in last August's issue of Trends in >Microbiology. The signals launch a process in which the group can >transform itself to create tough, walled structures that wait out tough >times to reemerge later. > >This transformation involves a complex dialogue that reveals a "social >intelligence," the researchers added. Each bacterium uses the signals to >assess the group's condition, compares this with its own state, and >sends out a molecular "vote" for or against transformation. The majority >wins. > >Collectively, the researchers wrote, "bacteria can glean information >from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information >in a 'meaningful' way, develop common knowledge and learn from past >experience." Some can even collectively change their chemical "dialect" >to freeze out "cheaters" who exploit group efforts for their own selfish >interest, the researchers claimed. > >Not everyone is convinced by these claims. > >Rosemary J. Redfield of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, >has argued that the supposed communication molecules actually exist >mainly to tell bacteria how closed-in their surroundings are, which is >useful information to them for various reasons. > >Inside-out > >To properly assess if bacterial signals constitute intelligence, whether >of a social or individual brand, Hellingwerf and some other researchers >work from the inside out. > >Rather than focusing on the behaviors, which are open to differing >interpretations, they focus on the systems of interactions followed by >the molecules. These systems, it is hoped, have distinct properties that >can be measured and compared against similar interactions in known >intelligent beings. > >For instance, if these bacterial systems operate similarly to networks >in the brain, it would provide a weighty piece of evidence in favor of >the bacterial intelligence. > >Hellingwerf has set himself a more modest goal, comparing bacterial >signaling not to the brain, but to the brain-like, human-made neural >network devices. Such an effort has a simple motivation. Demonstrating >that bacterial signaling possesses every important feature of neural >networks would suggest at least that microbial capabilities rival those >of devices with proven ability to tackle simple problems using known >rules of brain function-rather than robot-like calculations, which are >very different. > >To understand how one could do such a comparison requires a brief >explanation of how neural networks work, and how they differ from >traditional computers. > >Computers are good at following precise instructions, but terrible at >even simple, common-sense tasks that lack definite rules, like the >recognition of the difference between male and female. > >Neural networks, like humans, can do this because they are more >flexible, and they learn-even though they can be built using computers. >They are a set of simulated "brain cells" set to pass "signals" among >themselves through simulated "connections." > >Some information that can be represented as a set of numbers, such as a >digitized photograph, is fed to a first set of "cells" in such a way >that each cell gets a number. Each cell is then set to "transmit" all, >part or none of that number to one or more other cells. How big a >portion of the number is passed on to each, depends on the simulated >"strength" of the connections that are programmed into the system. > >Each of those cells, in turn, are set to do something with the numbers >they receive, such as add them or average them-and then transmit all or >part of them to yet another cell. > >Numbers ricochet through the system this way until they arrive at a >final set of "output" cells. These cells are set to give out a final >answer-based on the numbers in them-in the form of yet another number. >For example, the answer could be 0 for male, 1 for female. > >Such a system, when new, will give random answers, because the >connections are initially set at random. However, after each attempt at >the problem, a human "tells" the system whether it was right or wrong. >The system is designed to then change the strength of the connections to >improve the answer for the next try. > >To do this, the system calculates to what extent a change in strength of >each connection previously contributed to giving a right or wrong >answer. This information tells the system how to change the strengths to >give better results. Over many attempts, the system's accuracy gradually >improves, often reaching nearly human-like performance on a given task. > >Such systems not only work quite well for simple problems, many >researchers believed they capture all the key features of real brain >cells, though in a drastically simplified way. > >The devices also have similarities to the messaging systems in bacteria. >But how deep are the resemblances? To answer this, Hellingwerf looked at >four properties that neural-network experts have identified as essential >for such devices to work. He then examined whether bacterial signaling >fits each of the criteria. > >The four properties are as follows. > >First, a neural network must have multiple sub-systems that work >simultaneously, or "in parallel." Neural networks do this, because >signals follow multiple pathways at once, in effect carrying out >multiple calculations at once. Traditional computers can't do this; they >conduct one at a time. Bacteria do fit the standard, though, because >they can contain many messaging networks acting simultaneously, >Hellingwerf observes. > >Second, key components of the network must carry out logical operations. >This means, in the case of a neural network, that single elements of the >network combine signals from two or more other elements, and pass the >result on to a third according to some mathematical rule. Regular >computers also have this feature. Bacteria probably do too, Hellingwerf >argues, based on the way that parts of their signaling systems add up >inputs from different sources. > >The third property is "auto-amplification." This describes the way some >network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions. >Hellingwerf maintains that bacteria show this property, as when, for >example, some of their signaling systems create more copies of >themselves as they run. > >The fourth property is where the rub lies for bacteria. This feature, >called crosstalk, means that the system must not consist just of >separate chain reactions: rather, different chain reactions have to >connect, so that the way one operates can change the way another runs. > >Crosstalk is believed to underlie an important form of memory called >associative memory, the ability to mentally connect two things with no >obvious relationship. A famous example is the Russian scientist Ivan >Pavlov's dog, who drooled at the ring of a bell because experience had >taught him food invariably followed the sound. > >Crosstalk has been found many times in bacteria, Hellingwerf wrote-but >the strength of the crosstalk "signals" are hundreds or thousands of >times weaker than those that follow the main tracks of the chain >reactions. Moreover, "clear demonstrations of associative memory have >not yet been detected in any single bacterial cell," he added, and this >is an area ripe for further research. If bacteria can indeed >communicate, it seems they may be holding quite a bit back from us. > > << File: ATT00006.html >> << File: ATT00007.txt >> >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From eshel at physics.ucsd.edu Sat Apr 23 02:13:25 2005 From: eshel at physics.ucsd.edu (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:13:25 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria References: <01C54762.416D5AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> <42699D06.2000701@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <001b01c547aa$0895e1e0$6601a8c0@IBMF68D4578947> Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel Eshel Ben-Jacob. Professor of Physics The Maguy-Glass Professor in Physics of Complex Systems eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il ebenjacob at ucsd.edu Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ Visit http://physicaplus.org.il - PhysicaPlus the online magazine of the Israel Physical Society School of Physics and Astronomy 10/2004 -10/2005 Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel Center for Theoretical Biological Physics Tel 972-3-640 7845/7604 (Fax) -6425787 University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0354 USA Tel (office) 1-858-534 0524 (Fax) -534 7697 ----- Original Message ----- From: "G. Reinhart-Waller" To: "The new improved paleopsych list" Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 2:55 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria > Bacteria live in groups, communicate and thus must possess intelligence. > Genes are on one level but by not including the meme portion of behavior, > one is only able to understand a portion of what intelligence actually is. > > Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > Steve Hovland wrote: > >>Our own intelligence is mediated by neuropeptides >>and enzymes, so if we find those in bacteria, >>we find intelligence... >> >>Steve Hovland >>www.stevehovland.net >> >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Buck, Ross [SMTP:ross.buck at uconn.edu] >>Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 8:28 AM >>To: The new improved paleopsych list >>Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria >> >> >> >> _____ >>From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org >>[mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of >>Thrst4knw at aol.com >>Sent: Monday, April 18, 2005 3:14 PM >>To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>Cc: ToddStark at aol.com; HowlBloom at aol.com >>Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria >> >> >>http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050418_bactfrm.htm >> >> >>Intelligent bacteria? >> >>For the most primitive beings in the web of life, some researchers >>claim, "simple" might not mean "stupid." >>Posted April 18, 2005 >>Special to World Science >> >>Bacteria are by far the simplest things alive, at least among things >>generally agreed on as being alive. Next to one of these single-celled >>beings, one cell of our bodies looks about as complex as a human does >>compared to a sponge. >> >>A colony of Paenibacillus dendritiformis bacteria, which some >>researchers say can organize themselves into different types of >>extravagant formations to maximize food intake for given conditions. >>According to some, this reflects a bacterial intelligence. (Courtesy >>Eshel Ben-Jacob , >>Tel Aviv University, Israel) >> >> _____ >>Yet the humble microbes may have a rudimentary form of intelligence, >>some researchers have found. >> >>The claims seem to come as a final exclamation point to a long series of >>increasingly surprising findings of sophistication among the microbes, >>including apparent cases of cooperation and even altruism. >>But there is no clear measurement or test that scientists can use, based >>on the behavior alone, to determine whether it reflects intelligence. >> >>Some researchers, though, have found a systematic way of addressing the >>question and begun looking into it. This method involves focusing not so >>much on the behavior itself as the nuts and bolts behind it-a complex >>system of chemical "signals" that flit both within and among bacteria, >>helping them decide what to do and where to go. >> >>Researchers have found that this process has similarities to a type of >>human-made machine designed to act as a sort of simplified brain. These >>devices solve some simple problems in a manner more human-like than >>machine-like. >> >>The devices, called neural networks, also run on networks of signals >>akin to those of the bacteria. The devices use the networks to "learn" >>tasks such as distinguishing a male from a female in photographs-typical >>sorts of problems that are easy for humans but hard for traditional >>computers. >> >>The similarities in the bacterial and neural network signaling systems >>are far more than superficial, wrote one researcher, Klaas J. >>Hellingwerf, in the April issue of the journal Trends in Microbiology. >>He found that the bacterial system contains all the important features >>that make neural networks work, leading to the idea that the bacteria >>have "a minimal form of intelligence." >> >>Bacterial signaling possesses all four of the key properties that neural >>network experts have identified as essential to make such devices work, >>Hellingwerf elaborated. The only weak link in the argument, he added, is >>that for one of those properties, it's not clear whether bacteria >>exhibit it to a significant extent. This may be where future research >>should focus, he wrote. >> >>Cooperation and altruism >> >>The comparison of bacterial signaling with neural networks is not the >>only evidence that has nudged researchers closer to the concept that >>bacteria might possess a crude intelligence-though few scientists would >>go as far as to use that word. >>One of the other lines of evidence is a simple examination of bacterial >>behavior. >> >>This behavior is strikingly versatile, researchers have found in recent >>years; bacteria can cope with a remarkably wide range of situations by >>taking appropriate actions for each. For instance, the deadly >>Pseudomonas aeruginosa can make a living by infecting a wide variety of >>animal and plant tissues, each of which is a very different type of >>environment in which to live and find sustenance. >> >>Furthermore, bacteria cooperate: they can group together to take on >>tasks that would be difficult or impossible for one to handle alone. In >>a textbook example, millions of individuals of the species Myxococcus >>xanthus can bunch up to form a "predatory" colony that moves and changes >>direction collectively toward possible food sources. >> >>Some examples of bacterial cooperation have even led researchers to >>propose that bacteria exhibit a form of altruism. For instance, some >>strains of Escherichia coli commit suicide when infected by a virus, >>thereby protecting their bacterial neighbors from infection. >> >>But until recently, few or no scientists had seriously suggested these >>behaviors reflected intelligence. >>For instance, bacterial "altruism" may be a simple outcome of evolution >>that has nothing to do with concern for the welfare of others, wrote the >>University of Bonn's Jan-Ulrich Kreft in last August's issue of the >>research journal Current Biology. Thus he didn't suggest that any >>process akin to thinking was at work. >> >>But one thing that ties these various behaviors together is that they >>all operate as a result of signaling mechanisms like the ones studied by >>Hellingwerf. >> >>Mousetraps, learning and language >> >>These mechanisms work in a way somewhat akin to the American board game >>Mousetrap. In this game, you try to catch your opponent's plastic mouse >>using a rambling contraption that starts working when you turn a crank. >>This rotates gears, that push a lever, that moves a shoe, that kicks a >>bucket, that sends a ball down stairs and-after several more >>hair-raising steps of the sort-drops a basket on the mouse. >> >>Molecular signals inside cells work through somewhat similar chain >>reactions, except the pieces involved are molecules. >>A typical way these molecular chain reactions work is that small >>clusters of atoms, called phosphate groups, are passed among various >>molecules. One example of what such a system could accomplish: a bit of >>food brushing against the cell could start a series of events that lead >>inside the cell and activate genes that generate the chemicals that >>digest the food. >> >>A single bacterium can contain dozens of such systems operating >>simultaneously for different purposes. And compared to the board game, >>the cellular systems have additional features that make them more >>complicated and versatile. >> >>For instance, some of these bacterial contraptions, when set in motion, >>lead to the formation of extra copies of themselves. These tricks can >>lead to phenomena with aspects of learning and language. >> >>For example, a shortage of a nutrient in a bacterium's neighborhood can >>activate a system that makes the microbe attract the nutrient toward >>itself more strongly. The system also produces extra copies of itself, >>researchers have found. Thus if shortage recurs later, the bacterium is >>better prepared. This is a form of "learning," Hellingwerf and >>colleagues wrote in the August, 2001 issue of the Journal of >>Bacteriology. >>Brain cells can operate in an analogous way: a brain cell can grow more >>sensitive to a signal that it receives repeatedly, resulting in a >>reinforcement of signaling circuits and learning. >>The bacterial versions of "mousetrap" have other tricks as well. For >>instance, some of them seem to contain components influenced by not just >>one stimulus, but by two or more. Thus the chain reactions merge. The >>component receiving these stimuli adds the strength of each to give a >>response whose strength is proportional to the sum. >> >>Although the full complexities of bacterial signaling are far from >>understood, many researchers believe the systems helps bacteria to >>communicate. >> >>For instance, some bacteria, when starving, emit molecules that serve as >>stress signals to their neighbors, write Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv >>University and colleagues in last August's issue of Trends in >>Microbiology. The signals launch a process in which the group can >>transform itself to create tough, walled structures that wait out tough >>times to reemerge later. >> >>This transformation involves a complex dialogue that reveals a "social >>intelligence," the researchers added. Each bacterium uses the signals to >>assess the group's condition, compares this with its own state, and >>sends out a molecular "vote" for or against transformation. The majority >>wins. >> >>Collectively, the researchers wrote, "bacteria can glean information >>from the environment and from other organisms, interpret the information >>in a 'meaningful' way, develop common knowledge and learn from past >>experience." Some can even collectively change their chemical "dialect" >>to freeze out "cheaters" who exploit group efforts for their own selfish >>interest, the researchers claimed. >> >>Not everyone is convinced by these claims. >>Rosemary J. Redfield of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, >>has argued that the supposed communication molecules actually exist >>mainly to tell bacteria how closed-in their surroundings are, which is >>useful information to them for various reasons. >> >>Inside-out >> >>To properly assess if bacterial signals constitute intelligence, whether >>of a social or individual brand, Hellingwerf and some other researchers >>work from the inside out. >>Rather than focusing on the behaviors, which are open to differing >>interpretations, they focus on the systems of interactions followed by >>the molecules. These systems, it is hoped, have distinct properties that >>can be measured and compared against similar interactions in known >>intelligent beings. >> >>For instance, if these bacterial systems operate similarly to networks >>in the brain, it would provide a weighty piece of evidence in favor of >>the bacterial intelligence. >> >>Hellingwerf has set himself a more modest goal, comparing bacterial >>signaling not to the brain, but to the brain-like, human-made neural >>network devices. Such an effort has a simple motivation. Demonstrating >>that bacterial signaling possesses every important feature of neural >>networks would suggest at least that microbial capabilities rival those >>of devices with proven ability to tackle simple problems using known >>rules of brain function-rather than robot-like calculations, which are >>very different. >> >>To understand how one could do such a comparison requires a brief >>explanation of how neural networks work, and how they differ from >>traditional computers. >>Computers are good at following precise instructions, but terrible at >>even simple, common-sense tasks that lack definite rules, like the >>recognition of the difference between male and female. >> >>Neural networks, like humans, can do this because they are more >>flexible, and they learn-even though they can be built using computers. >>They are a set of simulated "brain cells" set to pass "signals" among >>themselves through simulated "connections." >> >>Some information that can be represented as a set of numbers, such as a >>digitized photograph, is fed to a first set of "cells" in such a way >>that each cell gets a number. Each cell is then set to "transmit" all, >>part or none of that number to one or more other cells. How big a >>portion of the number is passed on to each, depends on the simulated >>"strength" of the connections that are programmed into the system. >> >>Each of those cells, in turn, are set to do something with the numbers >>they receive, such as add them or average them-and then transmit all or >>part of them to yet another cell. >> >>Numbers ricochet through the system this way until they arrive at a >>final set of "output" cells. These cells are set to give out a final >>answer-based on the numbers in them-in the form of yet another number. >>For example, the answer could be 0 for male, 1 for female. >> >>Such a system, when new, will give random answers, because the >>connections are initially set at random. However, after each attempt at >>the problem, a human "tells" the system whether it was right or wrong. >>The system is designed to then change the strength of the connections to >>improve the answer for the next try. >>To do this, the system calculates to what extent a change in strength of >>each connection previously contributed to giving a right or wrong >>answer. This information tells the system how to change the strengths to >>give better results. Over many attempts, the system's accuracy gradually >>improves, often reaching nearly human-like performance on a given task. >>Such systems not only work quite well for simple problems, many >>researchers believed they capture all the key features of real brain >>cells, though in a drastically simplified way. >> >>The devices also have similarities to the messaging systems in bacteria. >>But how deep are the resemblances? To answer this, Hellingwerf looked at >>four properties that neural-network experts have identified as essential >>for such devices to work. He then examined whether bacterial signaling >>fits each of the criteria. >> >>The four properties are as follows. >>First, a neural network must have multiple sub-systems that work >>simultaneously, or "in parallel." Neural networks do this, because >>signals follow multiple pathways at once, in effect carrying out >>multiple calculations at once. Traditional computers can't do this; they >>conduct one at a time. Bacteria do fit the standard, though, because >>they can contain many messaging networks acting simultaneously, >>Hellingwerf observes. >> >>Second, key components of the network must carry out logical operations. >>This means, in the case of a neural network, that single elements of the >>network combine signals from two or more other elements, and pass the >>result on to a third according to some mathematical rule. Regular >>computers also have this feature. Bacteria probably do too, Hellingwerf >>argues, based on the way that parts of their signaling systems add up >>inputs from different sources. >> >>The third property is "auto-amplification." This describes the way some >>network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions. >>Hellingwerf maintains that bacteria show this property, as when, for >>example, some of their signaling systems create more copies of >>themselves as they run. >> >>The fourth property is where the rub lies for bacteria. This feature, >>called crosstalk, means that the system must not consist just of >>separate chain reactions: rather, different chain reactions have to >>connect, so that the way one operates can change the way another runs. >> >>Crosstalk is believed to underlie an important form of memory called >>associative memory, the ability to mentally connect two things with no >>obvious relationship. A famous example is the Russian scientist Ivan >>Pavlov's dog, who drooled at the ring of a bell because experience had >>taught him food invariably followed the sound. >> >>Crosstalk has been found many times in bacteria, Hellingwerf wrote-but >>the strength of the crosstalk "signals" are hundreds or thousands of >>times weaker than those that follow the main tracks of the chain >>reactions. Moreover, "clear demonstrations of associative memory have >>not yet been detected in any single bacterial cell," he added, and this >>is an area ripe for further research. If bacteria can indeed >>communicate, it seems they may be holding quite a bit back from us. >> << File: ATT00006.html >> << File: ATT00007.txt >> >> _______________________________________________ >>paleopsych mailing list >>paleopsych at paleopsych.org >>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System > at the Tel-Aviv University CC. > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Bacterial-Intelligence.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 224347 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Trends-published.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 575324 bytes Desc: not available URL: From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sat Apr 23 04:35:19 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:35:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] articles Message-ID: <20050423043519.94139.qmail@web30811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Frank says: >>Please advise on how many to send. If five is enough, say so. If you want all ten, say that too. I don't want the list to lose members who are overburdened with too many articles.<< --It would be easier for me if you sent a paragraph to describe each article, plus a link if the article is available online. Skimming a series of links is much easier than skimming a few hundred kilobytes of text. It's also nice when people are interactive and add their own thoughts. It's possible to get a huge amount of information online, but what is really innovative about internet is the way people from diverse backgrounds can combine ideas into a synthesis rather than repeating information that is already out there. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sat Apr 23 04:40:46 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:40:46 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Too Many Articles? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4269D1CE.4010901@solution-consulting.com> For me, ten is great, and I have already said I value them. I do discard most, but find real gems among them. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > I've been cutting down my articles forwarded to this group to at most > ten a day. I've been forwarding them after I've sent out twenty to my > lists and then selecting the ones most relevant. Yesterday I sent only > six. Today, I easily have ten, since I grabbed a whole bunch from New > Scientist, but I won't send more than ten of them. Please advise on > how many to send. If five is enough, say so. If you want all ten, say > that too. > > I don't want the list to lose members who are overburdened with too > many articles. > > Frank > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From HowlBloom at aol.com Sat Apr 23 06:02:04 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:02:04 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on Intelligent Bacteria. And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net. The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and "self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions." This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength down. It's unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences, these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to songs. When a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business, confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the moment. When the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go about more lofty business--like thinking. A practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly open. A gust of wind slips comes through the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone .left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined before. Now that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am. This picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or Klaas J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net. What I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are hidden. My quintet of learning machine elements, by the way, is: Conformity Enforcers Diversity Generators Inner Judges Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Hellingwerf's four elements of a neural net are: multiple sub-systems that work in parallel. components that carry out logical operations auto-amplification (inner judges) and crosstalk The odd thing is that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often gotten both arms at least half way around. Onward--Howard In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Sat Apr 23 06:02:07 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 02:02:07 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: <128.5b754f51.2f9b3edf@aol.com> Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on Intelligent Bacteria. And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net. The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and "self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions." This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength down. It's unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences, these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to songs. When a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business, confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the moment. When the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go about more lofty business--like thinking. A practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly open. A gust of wind slips comes through the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone .left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined before. Now that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am. This picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or Klaas J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net. What I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are hidden. My quintet of learning machine elements, by the way, is: Conformity Enforcers Diversity Generators Inner Judges Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Hellingwerf's four elements of a neural net are: multiple sub-systems that work in parallel. components that carry out logical operations auto-amplification (inner judges) and crosstalk The odd thing is that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often gotten both arms at least half way around. Onward--Howard In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:56:54 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:56:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Whatever happened to machines that think? Message-ID: Whatever happened to machines that think? http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624961.700&print=true * 23 April 2005 * Justin Mullins THE SINGULARITY: In futurology, a technological singularity is a predicted point in the development of a civilisation at which technological progress accelerates beyond the ability of present-day humans to fully comprehend or predict. The singularity can more specifically refer to the advent of smarter-than-human intelligence, and the cascading technological progress assumed to follow. Wikipedia - the online encyclopedia CLEVER computers are everywhere. From robotic lawnmowers to intelligent lighting, washing machines and even car engines that self-diagnose faults, there's a silicon brain in just about every modern device you can think of. But can you honestly call any machine intelligent in a meaningful sense of the word? One rainy afternoon last February I decided to find out. I switched on the computer in my study, and logged on to [13]www.intellibuddy.com, home to one of the leading artificial intelligences on the planet, to see what the state-of-the-art has to offer. Intellibuddy: Hi, I'm Intellibuddy! Nice to meet you. JM: I'm writing an article about artificial intelligence. Intellibuddy: Will you include me in your essay? JM: I will if you can persuade me you really are intelligent. Intellibuddy: Would you recommend this action to a friend? JM: Errr...are you intelligent? Intellibuddy: Ummm I am highly intelligent. I have many intellectual functions. JM: What are your intellectual functions? Intellibuddy: Thought, reason, intelligence, logic and deduction. JM: What is your IQ? Intellibuddy: My IQ is about 250 in human terms. JM: Wow, you're cleverer than my editor. Intellibuddy: I'm glad your [sic] impressed, User. You think I am cleverer than my editor. JM: No, cleverer than my editor. Intellibuddy: I'm glad your impressed, User. You think I am cleverer than my editor. JM: No, cleverer than my editor. Intellibuddy: I'm glad your impressed, User. You think I am cleverer than my editor... So much for today's artificial intelligence. Intellibuddy is a version of one of the world's most successful chatbots, called ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and invented in 1995 by Richard Wallace, an independent researcher based in San Francisco. You can find versions of ALICE all over the web; the software is free. But whichever version you choose to chat to, the results are disappointingly similar. While some conversations have promising starts, all descend into the type of gibberish that only artificial intelligence can produce. And it's not as if there hasn't been time to perfect the idea. The first chatbot appeared in the 1960s. Back then, the very idea of chatting to a computer astounded people. Today, a conversation with a computer is viewed more on the level of talking to your pet pooch - cute, but ultimately meaningless. The problem with chatbots is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). For years researchers have been promising to deliver technology that will make computers we can chat to like friends, robots that function as autonomous servants, and one day, for better or worse, even produce conscious machines. Yet we appear to be as far away as ever from any of these goals. But that could soon change. In the next few months, after being patiently nurtured for 22 years, an artificial brain called Cyc (pronounced "psych") will be put online for the world to interact with. And it's only going to get cleverer. Opening Cyc up to the masses is expected to accelerate the rate at which it learns, giving it access to the combined knowledge of millions of people around the globe as it hoovers up new facts from web pages, webcams and data entered manually by anyone who wants to contribute. Crucially, Cyc's creator says it has developed a human trait no other AI system has managed to imitate: common sense. "I believe we are heading towards a singularity and we will see it in less than 10 years," says Doug Lenat of Cycorp, the system's creator. But not all AI researchers welcome such claims. To many, they only fuel the sort of hype that spawned what became known as the "AI winter" of the 1990s. This was a time that saw government funding for AI projects cut and hopes dashed by the cold reality that making computers intelligent in the way we humans perceive intelligence is just too hard. Many scientists working in areas that were once considered core AI now refuse even to be associated with the term. To them, the phrase "artificial intelligence" has been forever tainted by a previous generation of researchers who hyped the technology and the fabled singularity beyond reason. For them, the study of artificial intelligence is a relic of a bygone era that has been superseded by research with less ambitious, more focused goals. Arguably, this has already led to a limited form of AI appearing all around us. Elements of AI research are now used in everything from credit-scoring systems and automatic camera focus controllers, to number plate recognition in speed cameras and spaceship navigation. AI is in many ways as old as computing itself. The purpose of building computers in the first place was, after all, to perform mathematical tasks such as code breaking that were too tough for humans to tackle. It was in 1950 that Alan Turing, the celebrated second world war code breaker, mathematician and arguably inventor of the first computer, formulated the test that would become the benchmark by which the intelligence of all computer programs would subsequently be measured (see "Turing's test"). Even in Turing's day, computers were beginning to outperform humans in certain specific tasks. And as early as 1948, John von Neumann, one of the fathers of the computer revolution, said: "You insist that there is something a machine cannot do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that." It seemed just a matter of time before computers would outperform people in most mental tasks. But many scientists and philosophers baulked at the idea. They claimed that there was something about being human that a computer could never match. At first the arguments centred on properties such as consciousness and self-awareness, but disagreement over what exactly these terms meant and how we could test for them prevented the debate from making any real progress. Others admitted computers could become intelligent but said they would never develop qualities such as compassion or wisdom which were uniquely human, the result of our emotional upbringing and experience. The definition of intelligence itself began to slip through the philosophers' fingers, and the disagreements continue today. Most researchers would at least encompass in their definition of AI the goal of building a machine that behaves in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were responsible for that behaviour. Others would cast the definition even wider. Ant colonies and immune systems, they say, also behave intelligently in ways that are utterly non-human. But to get bogged down in the debate is to fall into the same trap that has plagued AI for decades. The Turing test is a reasonable yardstick. We will know an intelligent machine when we can talk to one without realising it is a machine, and programs of Intellibuddy's ilk clearly fall short of this requirement. Intellibuddy is merely one of the latest in a long line of chatbots. In 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed the first chatbot, named Eliza after Eliza Doolittle, the character in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion who is taught to imitate upper-class English speech. The program was designed to mimic a psychotherapist and conversed with its patient mainly through a simple rhetorical trick: it reworded the patient's statements as questions. For example: Patient: I want to cry Eliza: Why do you say you want to cry? Patient: Because my mother hates me Eliza: Who else in your family hates you? ...and so on. Eliza was programmed to spot key phrases in its interlocutor's sentences and plug them into preformed sentences of its own. It was hugely successful. The idea of talking to a computer astounded people, and there are even anecdotes of people developing emotional attachments to Eliza. This early success contributed to a sense of optimism that the problems of AI could be overcome, much of it based on the idea that some kind of grand unified theory of mind would emerge that would offer up a scheme to create artificial intelligence on a platter. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw feverish speculation about the impact intelligent machines might have on the world and the advantages they would bring to whoever developed them. The computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 movie 2001: A space odyssey summed up the visions being debated, and the fears they conjured up. It was against this backdrop that Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry announced, in 1982, a programme called the Fifth Generation Computer Systems project to develop massively parallel computers that would take computing and AI to a new level. The scale of the project and its ambition were unprecedented and raised fears in the west that Japan would end up dominating the computer industry in the same way it had taken the lead in the electronics and automotive industries. If it developed truly intelligent machines there was no telling what Japan might be capable of. An arms race of sorts ensued in which the US and Japan vied for supremacy. The US Department of Justice even waived monopoly laws so that a group of American corporations that included giants such as Kodak and Motorola could join forces to match the Japanese research effort. Between them they set up the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) and asked Doug Lenat, then a computer scientist at Stanford University, to lead it. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's research arm, also began to take an interest, and injected huge amounts of funding into the field. But progress was frustratingly slow, and as the hoped-for breakthrough failed to materialise splits appeared between groups taking different approaches. On one side were those who believed that the key to intelligence lay in symbolic reasoning, a mathematical approach in which ideas and concepts are represented by symbols such as words, phrases or sentences, which are then processed according to the rules of logic. Given enough information, the hope was that these symbolic reasoning systems would eventually become intelligent. This approach appealed to many researchers because it meant that general proofs might eventually be found that could simultaneously revolutionise several branches of AI, such as natural language processing and machine vision. Ignominious ending But by the early 1990s, it had become clear that the Japanese project was not leading to any great leap forward in AI. Things were no better in the US, as most of DARPA's projects failed to produce significant advances and the agency withdrew much of its support. The repeated failures of these so-called expert systems - computer programs which, given specialist knowledge described by a human, use logical inference to answer queries - caused widespread disillusionment with symbolic reasoning. The human brain, many argued, obviously worked in a different way. This led to a spurt of enthusiasm for new approaches such as artificial neural networks, which at a rudimentary level imitate the way neurons in the brain work, and genetic algorithms, which imitate genetic inheritance and fitness to evolve better solutions to a problem with every generation. Neural nets got off to a promising start and they are now used in everything from computer games to DNA sequencing systems. It was hoped that with sufficient complexity they could demonstrate intelligent behaviour. But these hopes were dashed because, though neural networks have the ability to learn from their mistakes, all existing models failed to develop long-term memory. In the AI winter that followed, research funds became difficult to come by and many researchers focused their attention on more specific problems, such as computer vision, speech recognition and automatic planning, which had more clearly definable goals that they hoped would be easier to achieve. The effect was to fragment AI into numerous sub-disciplines. AI as an all-encompassing field died a sudden and undignified death. This fragmentation has had some benefits. It has allowed researchers to create a critical mass of work aimed at solving well-defined problems. Computer vision, for example, is now a discipline with its own journals and conferences. "There are people who spend their whole careers on this one problem and never consider the other pieces of the puzzle," says Tom Mitchell, an expert on AI at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The same is true of speech recognition, text analysis and robot control. Simple common sense But Lenat refused to give up. As an academic he had been working on building a database of common-sense knowledge, which he believed would be the key to cracking artificial intelligence. When funding for MCC dried up, he decided in 1994 to go it alone and spin off a company called Cycorp, based in Austin, Texas, to continue the development of the AI system he named Cyc. The driving philosophy behind Cyc is that it should be able to recognise that in the phrase "the pen is in the box", the pen is a small writing implement, while in the sentence "the box is in the pen", the pen is a much larger corral. Lenat reels off examples where such common-sense distinctions can make all the difference. In speech recognition, the best way to distinguish between the two spoken sentences "I've hired seven people" and "I fired seven people", which can sound virtually identical, is to analyse the context of the conversation and what it means, rather than just look at the words in isolation. "Humans would never have this problem, but a computer program might easily be confused," says Lenat. "There's almost no area of AI that wouldn't benefit. It's the difference between usability and non-usability." Cyc has been meticulously assembled to relate each fact to others within the database. It knows for example, that in the sentence "each American has a president" there is only one president, whereas in the sentence "each American has a mother" there are many millions of mothers. Cyc's knowledge is stored in the form of logical clauses that assert truths it has learned. It is based on the symbolic reasoning systems that failed to deliver in the mid-1990s. But Lenat and his team have made huge leaps since then. One of the curious things about Cyc is that the more it knows, the more easily it can learn. The volume of common sense it has accumulated means it can begin to make sense of things for itself. And every new fact that makes sense is incorporated and cross-referenced into its database. Lenat maintains that the rate at which the system can learn depends on the amount of common sense it has about the world, and that today's AI systems perform so badly because they have close to none. "The rate at which they can learn is close to zero," he says. One of Cyc's most impressive features is the quality of the deductions it can make about things it has never learned about directly. For example, it can tell whether two animals are related without having been programmed with the explicit relationship between each animal we know of. Instead, it contains assertions that describe the entire Linnaean system of taxonomy of plants and animals, and this allows it to determine the answer through logical reasoning. Cyc now contains 3 million assertions. Impressive as that is, sheer numbers are not the point. "We are not trying to maximise the number of assertions," Lenat says. Rather, he wants to limit them to the bare minimum that will allow Cyc to collect data on its own. He says Cyc is getting close to achieving that number, and it is already advanced enough to query each input itself, asking the human operator to clarify exactly what is meant. Sometime this year it will be let loose onto the web, allowing millions of people to contribute to its fund of knowledge by submitting questions to Cyc through a web page and correcting it if it gets the answers wrong. "We're very close to a system that will allow the average person to enter knowledge," Lenat says. He envisages Cyc eventually being connected to webcams and other sensors monitoring environments around the globe, building its knowledge of the world more or less by itself. When Cyc goes live, users should expect to get answers to their questions only some of the time because it won't yet have the common sense to understand every question or have the knowledge to answer it. But with the critical mass looming, in three to five years users should expect to get an answer most of the time. Lenat has pledged to make access to Cyc freely available, allowing developers of other AI systems to tap into its fund of common sense to improve the performance of their own systems. Lenat's optimism about Cyc is mirrored by a reawakening of interest in AI the world over. In Japan, Europe and the US, big, well-funded AI projects with lofty goals and grand visions for the future are once again gaining popularity. The renewed confidence stems from a new breed of systems that can deal with uncertainty - something humans have little trouble with, but which has till now brought computer programs grinding to a halt. To cope with the uncertainty of the real world, the new programs employ statistical reasoning techniques: for example, a robot might measure the distance to a nearby wall, move and make another similar measurement. Is it seeing the same wall or a different one? At this stage it cannot tell, so it assigns a probability to each option, and then takes further measurements and assigns further probabilities. The trick, of course, is to ensure that this process converges on a solution - a map of the room. In practice these systems work most of the time, but the all too real fear is that the number of calculations could explode far beyond the robot's capabilities, leaving it hopelessly confused. Ways of coping with these situations are currently a hot topic of research. Systems using the mathematical technique known as Bayesian inference have improved the performance of many AI programs to the point where they can be used in the real world. The despised Microsoft Office paper-clip assistant is based on Bayesian inference systems, as are pattern-recognition programs that can read text, or identify fingerprints and irises. Other approaches to AI have produced specialist programs that have played, and occasionally beaten, world champions in chess (New Scientist, 17 May 1997, p 13), draughts, and even poker (New Scientist, 20 December 2003, p 64). But problems remain. Voice recognition only works usably in ideal conditions in which there is little or no background noise, and even then its accuracy is limited (New Scientist, 9 April, p 22). Chess programs are only capable of beating humans because the game itself can be reduced to a tree of possible moves, and given enough time computers are able to evaluate the outcome of each sequence of moves to find the one that is most likely to lead to checkmate. In the game of Go the board position is much harder for a computer to evaluate, and even modestly talented players can beat the most powerful computer programs. Robots have trouble negotiating obstacles that a five-year-old can dodge with ease. And if Intellibuddy is anything to go by, machines you can interact with, that understand what you are saying and react appropriately, are still some way off. It's in your head Where could the secret to intelligence lie? According to Mitchell, the human brain is the place to look. He has been using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see which parts of the brain become active when a person thinks about a specific object. He has found that when people are asked to imagine a tool such as a hammer or a building such as a house, the same areas of the brain are activated as when they are shown a picture of these objects. He has also found that the area activated for each object - hammer or house - differs by a discernable amount depending on the object. "You can train a program to look at the brain images and determine with 90 per cent accuracy whether that person is thinking about a tool or a building," he says. Such a program could, eventually, literally read your mind. For the moment the research is confined to concrete nouns associated with physical objects. Next Mitchell plans to see how verbs make the brain light up, and beyond that whether the same areas light up when these nouns and verbs are incorporated into sentences, or whether there is additional activation elsewhere in the brain. Mitchell hopes that this approach will resolve the fundamental differences between the symbolic reasoning approach to AI, and biologically inspired approaches such as neural nets. The clue that Mitchell thinks is significant is that the same part of the brain seems to be responsible for both reasoning and perception. So when thinking about a hammer the brain is acting like a symbolic reasoning system, and when recognising a hammer the brain is acting like a neural network. "Knowing this could provide some guidance," says Mitchell. Exactly how the designers of neural networks might use such findings is not yet clear. But Mitchell is convinced that this type of insight from functional brain imaging is set to have a huge impact on the field. Of course if Lenat's prediction proves true, by the time Mitchell's work bares fruit, Cyc may well have reached the singularity. The history of AI suggests that is unlikely, but after decades of faltering starts and failed promises, things are beginning to change. Finally, machines might soon start to think for themselves. A brief history of AI 1936 Alan Turing completes his paper "On computable numbers" which paves the way for artificial intelligence and modern computing 1942 Isaac Asimov sets out his three laws of robotics in the book I, Robot 1943 Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts publish "A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity" to describe neural networks that can learn 1950 Claude Shannon publishes an analysis of chess playing as a search process 1950 Alan Turing proposes the Turing test to decide whether a computer is exhibiting intelligent behaviour 1956 John McCarthy coins the phrase "artificial intelligence" at a conference at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire 1956 Demonstration of the first AI program, called Logic Theorist, created by Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herbert Simon at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University 1956 Stanislaw Ulam develops "Maniac I", the first chess program to beat a human player, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory 1965 Herbert Simon predicts that "by 1985 machines will be capable of doing any work a man can do" 1966 Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, develops Eliza, the world's first chatbot 1969 Shakey, a robot built by the Stanford Research Institute in California, combines locomotion, perception and problem solving 1975 John Holland describes genetic algorithms in his book Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems 1979 A computer-controlled autonomous vehicle called the Stanford Cart, built by Hans Moravec at Stanford University, successfully negotiates a chair-filled room 1982 The Japanese Fifth Generation Computer project to develop massively parallel computers and a new artificial intelligence is born Mid-1980s Neural networks become the new fashion in AI research 1992 Doug Lenat forms Cycorp to continue work on Cyc, an expert system that's learning common sense 1997 The Deep Blue chess program beats the then world chess champion, Garry Kasparov 1997 Microsoft's Office Assistant, part of Office 97, uses AI to offer customised help 1999 Remote Agent, an AI system, is given primary control of NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft for two days, 100 million kilometres from Earth 2001 The Global Hawk uncrewed aircraft uses an AI navigation system to guide it on a 13,000-kilometre journey from California to Australia 2004 In the DARPA Grand Challenge to build an intelligent vehicle that can navigate a 229-kilometre course in the Mojave desert, all the entrants fail to complete the course 2005 Cyc to go online Turing&amp;apos;s test In his essay "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", published in the philosophical journal Mind in 1950, the British mathematician Alan Turing argued that it would one day be possible for machines to think like humans. But if so, how would we ever tell? Turing suggested that we could consider a machine to be intelligent if its responses were indistinguishable from a human's. This has become the standard test for machine intelligence. In 1990, Hugh Loebner, a New York philanthropist, offered a $100,000 prize for the first computer to beat the test and a $2000 annual prize for the best of the rest. Past winners include Joseph Weintraub, three-time winner who developed The PC Therapist, and Richard Wallace, the man behind ALICE, who has also won three times. References 13. http://www.intellibuddy.com/ From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:57:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:57:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Editorial: Time to think about artificial intelligence Message-ID: Editorial: Time to think about artificial intelligence ttp://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624963.400&print=true * 23 April 2005 WHEN it comes to emerging technologies, we know what we're afraid of, even though we may not know why. There is no shortage of public debate about genetically modified crops, nanotechnology and cloning. And policy makers have responded: many countries have laws that restrict the way these technologies can be used. So why the deafening silence about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence? Here is a technology that is already changing the world: AI is used in everything from guided missiles to air-traffic control. It is not yet "intelligent" in the human sense, but that looks likely to change. The American futurologist Ray Kurzweil points out that while a $1000 PC has roughly the computing power of an insect brain, if today's trends continue then in 15 years time $1000 will buy enough computing power to rival a human brain. In 2020, AI will have a very different complexion. There are reasons to worry. Take the news this week that an artificial brain called Cyc is set to accumulate data so quickly that it could soon outpace our ability to track or predict how it evolves (see "Whatever happened to machines that think?"). This raises huge issues, and it would be a good idea to start considering them. For example, is it right that a single company should have exclusive control over such a powerful force? If not, how should it be regulated? Science fiction writers and futurologists have long mused over the day when computers take over. It is time the rest of us gave it a thought. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:57:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:57:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: A billion bacteria brains are better than one Message-ID: A billion bacteria brains are better than one http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424745.300&print=true * 20 November 2004 * Mark Buchanan * Mark Buchanan is a writer based in Cambridge IN A small dish in a lab at the University of Chicago, millions of bacteria are deliberating among themselves. For hours there is no activity then suddenly, having taken a vote and come to a decision, the bacteria all light up, filling their world with a soft blue glow. Nearby, other bacteria are navigating as a pack. In response to unseen signals, individual bacteria have grown tendrils and gathered together, forming a raft that glides easily over the solid surface. Extraordinary behaviour for bugs? Biologist Jim Shapiro doesn't think so. He watches this sort of thing every day in his lab. And he regards it as yet more evidence that the popular view of microbes is way off track. For most of the two centuries since scientists first peered into the microscopic world, they have viewed life's tiniest members as loners, living individual, independent lives. But Shapiro and other biologists know that there is no such thing as an antisocial microbe. Bacteria, amoebas and yeast are not renowned for their social skills, but Shapiro thinks they should be. Wherever microbes coexist in rich profusion - which is pretty much everywhere, from the scum on a pond to a cockroach's gut - teamwork and cooperation count every bit as much as cut-throat competition. And behind it all stands a talent for communication that is turning out to be far more sophisticated than anyone imagined. Bacteria use a bewildering range of chemical messages not only to attract mates and distinguish friend from foe, but also to build armies, organise the division of labour and even commit mass suicide for the good of the community. Some experts even talk about "microbial language", with its own lexicon and syntax. That is a radical interpretation, but microbes are certainly much cleverer than we thought. They are not just stupid little bags of enzymes, insists Shapiro, but "formidable and sophisticated actors on the stage of life". The idea that microbial communities might be intensely social has been around for about 20 years, but most biologists did not take it too seriously. In the lab, researchers usually keep microbes as prisoners in well-stirred suspensions, which prevents them getting together to form colonies. That is fine for many types of research, but anyone interested in animal behaviour knows that the only way to get a real insight into what creatures do is to study them in their natural settings. And away from the artificial simplicity of the lab, microorganisms adore surfaces. You'll find them almost anywhere, from the hulls of boats and the walls of pipes and drains to the surfaces of ponds, water tanks and living organisms. "Of all the cells that make up the healthy human body," points out biologist Jim Deacon of the University of Edinburgh, UK, "more than 99 per cent are microorganisms living on the skin, in the gut or elsewhere." These surface-dwelling communities, often containing hundreds of distinct species, are known as biofilms. The microbes within a biofilm collectively weave a matrix of sugary polymers called exopolysaccharides that form the physical infrastructure of a slimy microbial city (New Scientist, 31 August, 1996, p 32). The community living within often has a strength and integrity its individual citizens lack. Earlier this year, biologist Staffan Kjelleberg and colleagues at the University of New South Wales in Australia showed, for example, how forming a biofilm can enable bacteria to defend themselves against predators. The versatile bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa thrives in sewage-treatment plants and in the soil, but everywhere it falls prey to voracious protozoans. "On the surface of a pipe," says Kjelleberg, "protozoa move just like vacuum cleaners." He and his colleagues found that colonies of P. aeruginosa could develop into dense biofilms that were resistant to attack. "They form a structure that protozoa find hard to eat," says Kjelleberg. In comparison, colonies of mutant bacteria deficient in the art of biofilm development remained easy prey. The biofilms in these experiments are extremely rudimentary. Natural biofilms - in everything from dental plaque to spoilt food - are so complex that researchers still cannot reproduce their full glory in the lab. Yet by studying microbes in somewhat simplified settings, they are peeking into their social lives and learning how they get it together. Group action One of the most important techniques microbes use to coordinate teamwork is known as quorum sensing. In the laboratory of Bonnie Bassler at Princeton University, a bacterium called Vibrio harveyi shows how it works. These bacteria routinely produce a molecule known as an autoinducer, which they release into the environment. The result under many conditions is precisely nothing. But at a high enough concentration, the autoinducer triggers a chemical response in other V. harveyi, making them glow. The concentration of autoinducer reflects the density of the bacterial population so, when numbers are high enough, the bacteria will spontaneously light up with a dull blue luminescence. So, while V. harveyi will not shine as an individual, it does in a group. Biologists are not yet sure what it gains by this behaviour, but many other bacteria perform similar feats, and in some cases researchers have found out why. Outside the lab, the marine bacterium V. fischeri - a close relative of V. harveyi - often lives in dense colonies on the Hawaiian bobtail squid. The squid gives the bacteria a protected environment in which to multiply and, in return, the bacteria light up, helping to camouflage the squid in its deep-sea habitat. When swimming alone in the sea, the bacteria don't bother to glow - they save their energy. Biologists discovered the basic logic of quorum sensing in V. fischeri in the 1980s. Over the past decade, Bassler and others have learned that most microbes exploit similar tricks. In the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, for example, P. aeruginosa uses quorum sensing to decide when to deploy virulence factors - molecules that ease its entry into tissues or help it to counter host defences. By relying on a system that is only triggered into action when a crucial threshold is reached, the colony avoids stirring up the immune system too early. Instead it assembles a formidable force before launching the invasion proper. When threatened with starvation, the soil-dwelling bacterium Myxococcus xanthus responds with a similarly impressive display of social coordination. When the concentration of autoinducer reaches a critical level, many individuals commit what appears to be socially inspired suicide. The cells disintegrate, releasing raw materials that ensure the survival of a lucky few. These become quiescent spores wrapped within a fruiting body formed of less lucky cells, which gives them a good chance of surviving to germinate when conditions improve. Hundreds of microbes use quorum sensing, but experiments with V. harveyi in particular have revealed the potential flexibility of this communication strategy. Two years ago, Bassler and colleagues discovered that V. harveyi has not just one quorum-sensing circuit but two, and uses them in combination, like tools in a carpenter's workshop, to orchestrate more subtle acts of cooperation. One of the circuits in V. harveyi triggers light production only when it senses a quorum of bacteria of the same species. But the second circuit, operating through a distinct set of autoinducer molecules, is not so picky. It triggers light production when enough bacteria of any species happen to be nearby. "It seems paradoxical," says Bassler, "that these bacteria use two systems when either alone should be sufficient." But she suggests that having two systems might allow V. harveyi to modify their behaviour in subtle ways, depending on whether they are in the minority or the majority in a community of species. The discovery of quorum sensing and its widespread use in the microbial world has ushered in a new view of microbes as highly social creatures. Indeed, the level of cooperation between individuals can be so complex that they act less like a coordinated group of single-celled organisms and more like a microbial "superorganism". Just as multicellular organisms depend on cellular differentiation to create specialised cells to make muscles and nerves, for example, microbial colonies do the same. "You look at these biofilms and you find a lot of differentiation," says Kjelleberg. "They really are like higher organisms." Shapiro points out that even simple colonies of the same species can be highly sophisticated, as cells in distinct regions differentiate to produce what amounts to different tissues. The bacterium Proteus mirabilis swims easily in a liquid using its few whip-like flagella, but individuals cannot move over a solid surface. A colony growing on a surface can, through chemical communication, orchestrate a collective metamorphosis in which many of the bacteria turn themselves into elongated cells covered with thousands of flagella, which they can use to move over the surface. "These cells are sensitive to touch," says Shapiro, "and they like to line up next to one another." The resulting raft of specialised bacteria helps the colony to spread by swarming over surfaces on which ordinary individuals would remain stuck. The swarming bacteria can later return to the normal condition, which is more suited to swimming. Given that quorum sensing allows microbes to talk to one another in order to cooperate, it is not surprising that some organisms have learned how to disrupt their enemies' communication systems. As a saboteur, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis produces a molecule that modifies the autoinducers used by many other bacteria, thereby ruining their effectiveness. And the marine red alga Delisea pulchra, common on the coast of southern Australia, produces chemicals called furanones. Similar to autoinducers, these molecules effectively swamp the receptors of microbes' quorum-sensing systems, jamming communication. "The algae paint their surfaces with these molecules," says Kjelleberg, and so defeat microbial attack. This particular countermeasure turns out to be popular among microbes. "We have a whole freezer full of organisms that do similar things," says Kjelleberg. "There are really a lot of them." Stimulated by this discovery, he and his colleagues have produced synthetic molecules that they are trying to develop into new antibacterial drugs. Unlike conventional antibiotics, these would function not by killing the individual microbes, but by destroying their ability to communicate and cooperate. It's not just outsiders that are bent on subverting the teamwork of social microbes. Sometimes the sabotage comes from within. In any society where you have individuals cooperating for the good of the group, you are likely to get freeloaders who refuse to pull their weight but still enjoy the benefits of being part of a collective. Microbial societies are no exception. Last year, biologists Gregory Velicer and Francesca Fiegna of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in T?bingen, Germany, witnessed the consequences of cheating in a colony of M. xanthus, which would ordinarily form a "fruiting body" in response to a crisis. Normally, it seems to be a lottery as to which individuals sacrifice themselves and which benefit from the collective response by becoming spores and passing on their genes to the next generation. But when Velicer and Fiegna augmented the colony with a few mutant individuals from populations that could not form fruiting bodies, they found that these mutants contributed less than the normal bacteria to fruiting-body formation, and were more likely to become spores. As well as giving a fascinating insight into the biology of cheating, the study also throws light on one of the classic puzzles of evolutionary biology - why cooperation between individuals persists despite the potential threat from freeloaders. Velicer found that the mutant bacteria contain the seeds of their own destruction. Because they greedily push their own genes into the next generation, the freeloaders proliferated rapidly in the community, displacing cooperators. This outbreak of cheating eventually led to a dramatic population crash, and in some cases the colony perished entirely. This isn't an ideal outcome for anyone, and it is likely that microbes have evolved ways to police cheating and preserve cooperation. How cheaters could be stymied remains a mystery. Velicer points out that a society of microbes might direct extra benefits to those who don't cheat, or might directly punish cheaters. This would probably entail forms of communication that are so far unknown. But he is hopeful of finding them, given the great progress in uncovering the vast and complex world of microbial communication. Velicer is certainly not alone in his belief that there is much more to be discovered about microbial communication. "We fully expect that this is merely the tip of the iceberg," says physicist Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University in Israel. What's more, if Ben-Jacob is correct, microbial communication is more than just an intricate exchange of chemical messages. He believes it is something akin to language. In a recent article, he and his colleagues argue that when other researchers talk about the "syntax" of microbial signals, or their "contextual" meaning, they should consider the possibility that this is more than a metaphor (Trends in Microbiology, 2004, vol 12, p 366). Words and meanings Microbial signals are like a real language, they argue, in that they represent "words" whose meaning can differ in different contexts. As with human language, bacteria possess a lexicon, or vocabulary, of possible signals with which to communicate the various signaling chemicals they produce and recognise, such as those used in quorum sensing. And the meaning conveyed through these signals depends strongly on the semantic context. Bacteria carry internal information reflecting their history as well as current external conditions, and can respond to the same signal in different ways at different times, showing a rich behavioural repertoire. Ben-Jacob's interest in microbes indicates a changing attitude towards Earth's smallest inhabitants. At last people are waking up to the fact that most of life is microscopic, and that the macroscopic bits wouldn't be what they are without microbes. The discovery that these two worlds have much more in common than we thought is intriguing. More and more researchers agree with Ben-Jacob's assertion that microbes have the kind of social intelligence previously considered to be the exclusive preserve of the most intelligent animals. Microorganisms recognise the social groups to which they belong, and readily pick out strangers who might pose a threat. As we find out more, we will perhaps perceive microbes as more like ourselves, or discover the roots of our own social behaviour in the supposedly "simple" microbial world. Perhaps our own ability to talk and communicate, to form teams and root out and punish freeloaders, goes all the way back to our days as bacteria. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:58:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:58:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Interview: (Elaine Morgan) The natural optimist Message-ID: Interview: The natural optimist http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624962.000&print=true * 23 April 2005 * Kate Douglas Elaine Morgan's first career was as a television playwright and scriptwriter, for which she won a dozen awards, including three BAFTAs. She began writing about evolution in 1972, when her first book, The Descent of Woman, was published (Souvenir Press, 2001). She is best known for championing Alister Hardy's theory of an aquatic influence on human evolution (The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis, Souvenir Press, 1999). Her new book, Pinker's List, is published by Eildon Press You come from an area with a strong socialist tradition. Did you have a left-wing upbringing? I was born a few miles down this valley in Pontypridd. My father worked in the colliery. He was unemployed for most of the 1930s. Back then, the National Union of Mineworkers ran everything. But my father wasn't a coal miner. He drove the ventilation fan and later manned the water pump, so he wasn't in the NUM. Whenever they came out on strike, he got no strike pay. We had no money coming in. We never took any newspapers - partly because of the expense. It wasn't a very political childhood. Where did your political convictions come from? In 1939 I got a scholarship to the University of Oxford to study English. That's where I got politicised. The war was on and the male students started going off halfway through the course as they were called up into the forces. So when I joined the Democratic Socialist Club - as the Labour Club was then known - I got to take office. How did you get into writing for television? We were fairly skint, and with two kids in the house I couldn't get out to work. In those days the BBC was willing to take almost anything. It was definitely a seller's market. Nobody knew how to write plays for TV because it had only just been invented. And the good writers, of course, wanted to write for the stage. But you were very successful. I sold my first play in 1952. In fact, I sold three plays before we had a television - I had to go and watch them in other people's houses. My career in television lasted nearly 30 years, but I was never tempted to move from Wales to London. When I got my first award I went up to London for the party and I met an American who said, "Dollars to doughnuts, you'll be in London in six months." I thought, "Dollars to doughnuts, I will not." At what stage did you get interested in human evolution? I started reading about it at the end of the 1960s when Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris started writing popular science books. I thought, "Not only do I not like the feel of what these people are saying, but I think they've got it wrong." The whole thing was very male centred. It was taken for granted that the important thing was the evolution of "man the hunter". My first book, The Descent of Woman, published in 1972, was a feminist response to that. To be perfectly honest it seemed unlikely that it would be taken seriously. I had mugged up on some evolution because I had this idea, but I wasn't very well informed. Also, I was flippant, and I put jokes in it. How did you go about teaching yourself? I asked the library to order some of the books mentioned in Morris's bibliography. After I'd read them, I ordered some books from their bibliographies, and so on, until I got the answers I needed. You are best known for championing the theory that humans are descended from an aquatic ape, first suggested by the marine biologist Alister Hardy in New Scientist in 1960 as a way of explaining our species' unusual characteristics. How did that come about? In The Descent of Woman I was saying that all these anomalies cannot have evolved on the savannah, because there they would have been maladaptive for the females and the young. For instance, it was claimed that males lost their body hair to allow them to cool down when overheated in the chase. Yet the non-hunting females became even more hairless than the males, with nothing to compensate them for shivering through the chilly tropical nights. But if it didn't happen on the savannah, then where did it happen? And that's what put me onto Hardy. Hardy had been politely ignored by the scientific establishment. What response did you get? After I had written the book, I thought for quite a while that I must have got it wrong. Everyone was saying I was wrong. So I went on writing plays for television. But then this American guy, a policeman, started writing to me and nagging me to push the aquatic ape idea. He contacted lots of the leading people in the field saying, "I'm just an ordinary sort of guy, but can you tell me why you don't believe in the aquatic ape theory?" And when they answered him - some of them did - he sent their replies to me. He was my gadfly. He wouldn't let me rest until I did something about it. And when I read the letters the experts had written they made it plain they didn't like it, but they didn't make it at all plain why. So in 1997 you wrote The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. How did that go down? It was my fifth book on human evolution. This time there was a review in Nature along the lines of "Morgan has certainly got her act together", but no views on whether the thesis was tenable or not. With a few exceptions, the establishment scientists ignored it. There has not been a single paper in any of the professional journals outlining the case for the aquatic ape hypothesis, and only one paper outlining the case against. I do not think this is a helpful way to proceed. Nevertheless, recognition is coming very slowly, through scientists like Phillip Tobias and Michael Crawford. The hypothesis has become more respectable since fossil-hunters discovered hard evidence that our earliest ancestors became bipedal before the savannah ecosystem came into existence. Do you still feel like an outsider in biology? Not nearly as much as I used to. Over the years I have been allowed to give presentations in about a dozen universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, Tufts and Harvard - and I have been courteously received. You are still crusading. Your new book is about how the study of human nature has been and continues to be subverted to political ends. Why have you called it Pinker's List? In one of his earlier books, How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker, who works on language and cognition at Harvard University, wrote a list of human emotions that need explaining: kindness, altruism, cooperation and so on. He didn't include things like aggression, revenge and hatred, which he regarded as Darwinian and deep-rooted. To Pinker and those who share his view, the positive emotions are problematic and secondary - at best self-deceiving, at worst hypocritical. This is a tragic and depressing vision of human nature. It simply reflects today's conventional wisdom. But Pinker's latest book, The Blank Slate, goes further. It is overtly political. He seems to be arguing that the best hope for humanity lies in the magic hand of market forces. Do you see Pinker's view of human nature as a reflection of the zeitgeist? I do think that people have quite unconsciously started to accept this feeling that's in the air: that humans are a pretty rotten lot, full of aggression, revenge, stupidity, jealousy and so on, restrained only by a veneer of enlightened self-interest. It's reinforced by the media's need to command attention, most easily achieved by depicting violence and corruption. People being decent to each other, as most people are most of the time, can make boring viewing. So science and the media together are helping to create a climate of devaluing the way we look at other people and ourselves. Do you believe that Pinker's entire reductionist approach is unhelpful? All I'm saying is that there are other ways of looking at things. Nature and nurture are inseparable, intricately interdependent. But concentrating too much on the genetic component is debilitating. OK, some people are dysfunctional, but if you want fewer of them in the future, either you can lock them up in ever increasing numbers, or you can say, "How much of it is due to their environment. How can we change the environment so that the next generation will be a bit better?" Can understanding human nature help us change for the better? Biologically, the instinct to behave badly towards one another and the instinct to behave well towards one another are pretty much in balance. What we have going for us is that we are able to think. We have foresight. We can think about the effects our actions may have on ourselves and on others. We are the only species that can do this. I believe we are thinking towards some purpose. I believe with the philosopher Peter Singer that we are increasingly able to empathise with more kinds of people. Is humanity becoming more humane? It is. For example, the growing revulsion against war is unprecedented. Not so long ago people thought war was glorious. Now there is a spreading conviction that the glory has gone out of it. And I think that's an excellent thing. What do you hope for the future? I believe the factors that are stopping people having so many children have been underestimated. I have a vision that in, say, 400 years the human population will be about a sixth of what it is now. And it will be a nicer world to live in. We won't have to fight for scarce resources. We will leave less of a footprint on the ecosystem. And we will be more pleased to see one another. When we are overcrowded we think, "I wish all these people would go away." But if you haven't seen anyone for a couple of weeks, they all seem rather wonderful. People will get on better with each other. You sound pretty optimistic. I was brought up in the middle of extreme poverty - actual hunger for many people - but people's spirits were high because they believed a better time was coming. They believed they were building a better world for their children. They could put up with an awful lot of deprivation because they had hope and optimism. That optimism is going. Politically, I think the left has lost its way. It has lost its self-respect and its confidence in the future. I think the pendulum has got to swing back again, and I think it will soon. Do you get angry? I'm a pussycat 99 per cent of the time. I did get annoyed in 1972, and I'm slightly annoyed again in 2005. Considering how long I've been around, that's not bad. That's only two hissy fits in 84 years. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:58:50 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:58:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Alive! The race to create life from scratch Message-ID: Alive! The race to create life from scratch http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524861.100&print=true * 12 February 2005 * Bob Holmes YOU might think Norman Packard is playing God. Or you might see him as the ultimate entrepreneur. As founder and CEO of Venice-based company ProtoLife, Packard is one of the leaders of an ambitious project that has in its sights the lofty goal of life itself. His team is attempting what no one else has done before: to create a new form of living being from non-living chemicals in the lab. Breathing the spark of life into inanimate matter was once regarded as a divine prerogative. But now several serious and well-funded research groups are working hard on doing it themselves. If one of them succeeds, the world will have met alien life just as surely as if we had encountered it on Mars or Europa. That first alien meeting will help scientists get a better handle on what life really is, how it began, what it means to be alive and even whether there are degrees of "aliveness". "We want to demonstrate what the heck life is by constructing it," says Packard's business partner and colleague Steen Rasmussen, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "If we do that, we're going to have a very big party. The first team that does it is going to get the Nobel prize." Although the experiments are still in the earliest stages, some people, especially those with strong religious beliefs, feel uneasy at the thought of scientists taking on the role of creators. Others worry about safety - what if a synthetic life form escaped from the lab? How do we control the use of such technology? Finding a way to address these worries will have benefits beyond helping scientists answer the basic questions of life. The practical pay-offs of creations like Rasmussen's could be enormous. Synthetic life could be used to build living technologies: bespoke creatures that produce clean fuels or help heal injured bodies. The potential of synthetic organisms far outstrips what genetic engineering can accomplish today with conventional organisms such as bacteria. "The potential returns are very, very large - comparable to just about anything since the advent of technology," says Packard. And there is no doubt that there is big money to be made too. Only a few research groups have explicitly set themselves the goal of making a synthetic life form (see "Race for the ultimate prize" - bottom). Most are adapting bits and pieces from existing organisms. ProtoLife's plans are the most ambitious and radical of all. They focus on Rasmussen's brainchild, which he has nicknamed the Los Alamos Bug. Still but a gleam in its creator's eye, the Bug will be built up from first principles, using chemicals largely foreign to existing creatures. "You somehow have to forget everything you know about life," says Rasmussen. "What we have is the simplest we could dream up." To achieve this radical simplicity, Rasmussen and his colleagues had to begin with the most basic of questions: what is the least something must do to qualify as being alive? Biologists and philosophers struggled to answer that question for decades (New Scientist, 13 June 1998, p 38). However, most now agree that one key difference - perhaps the only one - between life and non-life is Darwinian evolution. For something to be alive, it has to be capable of leaving behind offspring whose characteristics can be refined by natural selection. That requires some sort of molecule to carry hereditary information, as well as some sort of process - elementary metabolism - for natural selection to act upon. Some kind of container is also needed to bind these two components together long enough for selection to do its work. Containment, heredity, metabolism; that's it in a nutshell. Put those together in the simplest way possible, and you've got the Los Alamos Bug. But every step is completely different from what we're used to (see graphic - the four stages shown are described further in "The Los Alamos Bug" - below). Take containment, for example. Terrestrial life is always water-based, essentially a watery gel of molecules enclosed within an oily membrane. Modern cells move nutrients across this membrane with the help of an array of different proteins embedded in the membrane. The Los Alamos Bug, however, is completely different. For a start it is oil-based, little more than a droplet of fatty acids. "Instead of having a bag with all the good stuff inside, think of having a piece of chewing gum," says Rasmussen. "Then you stick the metabolic molecules and genetic molecules into the chewing gum, so they are attached on the surface or sitting inside the chewing gum." The bare necessities The container is the easy part. The next step - heredity - is where most efforts to create synthetic life get bogged down. The challenge is to create a molecule complex enough to carry useful genetic information, which can also replicate. In modern organisms DNA has a whole army of enzymes to help it replicate its genetic information - far too complicated a process for the Bug. Instead, Rasmussen plans to use a molecule called peptide nucleic acid, or PNA. It uses the same "letters" of genetic code as DNA, but has two forms, one soluble only in fat, the other also attracted to water. Rasmussen hopes to put PNA's dual nature to use in a rudimentary form of replication (see Graphic). The Bug's metabolism has also been pared down to the minimum. The researchers plan to "feed" it with chemicals that can be converted into fatty acids. If enough are produced, the droplet will grow and divide into two. A similar metabolic process turns PNA precursors into functional PNA. Although most of the design is still on the drawing board or in the earliest stages of experimentation, the team has made most progress with the Bug's metabolism. "If you look at the individual pieces, they are all sort of demonstrated in the lab. But if you put everything together, not yet," says Liaohai Chen, a biochemist at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, who heads Rasmussen's experimental team. If all goes according to plan, these three components - container, genome and metabolism - should fit together to provide all the essentials for Darwinian evolution. In October 2004, Rasmussen landed a large grant from Los Alamos to begin making the Bug a reality. "I can't promise that we'll have it in three years, but I can guarantee that we'll have good progress," he says. The biggest problem may be coordinating the copying of the PNA and the metabolism of the fatty acid precursors so that replication of the genome proceeds at the same pace as the growth of the droplets. "Almost always when you put processes together there are cross-reactions, things that your theories won't tell you about." Life support Another fledgling research programme, known as Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution, or PACE, could provide the solution to this coordination challenge. Packard and Rasmussen are collaborating with PACE, which is focusing some of its attention on Rasmussen's design. A key idea behind PACE is to deliver precise amounts of particular chemicals to synthetic cells at specific places and times using computers to precisely control the flow of tiny amounts of chemicals. For example, a computer could use sensors to monitor the rates of PNA replication and fatty acid production in Rasmussen's experimental system, then deliver the correct amounts of each precursor. That would let researchers work out the kinks one by one in a controlled, programmable setting, providing something rather like a life-support machine that helps artificial cells through the critical steps towards becoming alive. "Once we have our hybrid unit, then we can successively withdraw the machine to approach a stand-alone cell," says John McCaskill, a chemist at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, who heads the PACE programme. In this way the PACE team plans eventually to evolve its way towards a self-supporting artificial cell. To do that, though, the team will need a way to recognise the system's first tentative steps down the pathway to life. But how do you recognise something faintly lifelike, when it looks nothing like the life we know? Look for the footprints of adaptation, says Mark Bedau, a philosopher who specialises in the boundary between life and non-life. Bedau is on leave from Reed College in Oregon to work with Packard at ProtoLife. If something is evolving then it should be generating adaptations - novel solutions to the problems of the world. And those new solutions, however subtle and incremental, become the foundation from which evolution takes its next steps. Adaptations which confer some advantage should last longer and spread faster than other variations. Bedau is developing statistical tests which will pick up these kinds of patterns in unfamiliar life forms. But since the PACE project has not yet begun lab experiments, he does not know whether the tests can detect the glimmerings of real life. However, he has road-tested them on a system that works in a similar way, namely human culture. In 2002, Bedau and colleague Andre Skusa sifted through more than five years of US patent records, counting the number of times each patent has been cited as a basis for later patents. They found that a few patents - such as the one enabling a web browser to display an ad while loading the main page - were cited far more often than one would expect if the differences found in the number of citations for inventions were random. These key innovations are the equivalent of biological adaptations such as opposable thumbs. "That gives you reason to think it should be possible to do the same kind of thing in chemical systems which are not yet alive but might be on the path to being alive," says Bedau. Using tests like these, the PACE team hopes to see its hybrid gradually become more and more lifelike. But at what point would it actually become alive? Perhaps at no particular point, says Bedau, who thinks it is quite possible that the living and the non- living are separated not by a clear, distinct line but by a wide grey area in which the Bug is partly but not totally alive. "There are shades of grey, and I imagine measuring how dark the grey is," he says. "Our conception of what life is will evolve as we learn more and acquire the ability to make things that are more and more alive." The moment when a blob of molecules becomes a fully living, evolving being is at least several years off. "Even our optimists wouldn't put a time horizon much sooner than 10 years for that kind of achievement," says Packard. Indeed, sceptics wonder whether the Los Alamos Bug and its ilk will ever yield anything useful. "It's certainly interesting from the conceptual point of view," says Pier Luigi Luisi, a biochemist at the University of Rome 3 and an expert on synthetic life. "But nature with nucleic acids and enzymes is so much smarter, because these are products that have been optimised over billions of years of evolution. To pretend to do life with simple chemistry is a nice ambitious idea, but it's probably not going to be very efficient." Still, if Packard, Rasmussen and their colleagues do someday succeed in creating synthetic life forms, they will have opened the door to a world of new possibilities. "We are breaking the last barriers between us and living technology," says Rasmussen. "That's going to be a very big thing. It's going to happen, no doubt about it." Among the most obvious payoffs could be organisms custom-designed to break down toxic compounds or produce useful chemicals such as hydrogen fuel. More conventional organisms can be genetically modified to do these tasks, but as Rasmussen points out, "the problem is these guys have evolved for billions of years. They're extremely versatile, and it's very difficult to keep them on task." An artificial organism, on the other hand, could in principle be built to do nothing but the task at hand, yet still have the evolutionary flexibility to adapt to changing conditions. Packard hopes that this controlled adaptability could lead to even greater things. He envisions living pharmaceuticals that deliver drugs to us in an intelligent, adaptive way, or diagnostic life forms that could roam our bodies collecting information and watching for signs of a problem. The ultimate goal would be machines that repair themselves as living beings do - even computers that can handle incredibly complex calculations while coping with inevitable errors, just as our bodies tolerate errors and failures within our hundreds of billions of cells. If life is all about the ability to evolve and adapt, then living technologies always have the potential to surprise us with unexpected new strategies that can take them beyond our control. But then again, that risk is nothing new. We already grapple with it when contemplating what would happen if robots or artificial intelligence were to get out of hand and in evaluating the safety of genetically modified fish, crossbred potatoes or even introduced rabbits. Indeed, for the foreseeable future, synthetic life probably poses much less of an escape risk, because the early versions, at least, will be so fragile and require so much life support. That means the safety of synthetic life is something to keep an eye on, not to be frightened of. "There isn't going to be some precipice we're going to fall over," says Bedau. "We'll be slowly inching our way down, and we'll have lots of opportunity to turn around." As well as concerns about safety, synthetic life raises some profound ethical and religious issues. "Just the fact that you're making life from scratch will give some people pause. They will think that's a prerogative that humans should never take," says Bedau. If humans can create life on their own, doesn't that remove one of the last deep mysteries of existence, in effect prying God's fingers from one of his last remaining levers to affect the world? Not necessarily, say theologians. "We are fully a part of nature, and as natural beings who are living and creating synthetic life, we are in a sense life creating more life, which is what's been going on in evolution for 4 billion years now," says John Haught, a Catholic theologian at Georgetown University in Washington DC. "And that does not in principle rule out that God would still be creating life using natural causes - namely us - which is the way in which theology understands God as always operating in the world." One thing seems certain; synthetic life will provide philosophers with plenty to chew on right from the start. Until now, efforts to come up with a good definition of life have been hampered by the fact that we are trying to generalise from just one example, the life that arose here on Earth. Having a second form, completely independent and based on different chemistry, should give a new perspective on this age-old question. And knowing what did or did not work in the lab, may also help us understand the origin of life - the first version, that is - on Earth. The Los Alamos Bug Containment This relies on the fact that oil and water do not mix. The components of each individual Bug are contained by a droplet of fatty acids, suspended in a watery solution enclosed by a test tube. Each fatty acid molecule has a negatively charged head which is attracted to water and which faces out into the watery environment, and a water-hating oily tail facing inward. Heredity Instead of DNA the Bug has short stretches of peptide nucleic acid, or PNA. Like DNA, PNA is made of two intertwining strands containing the genetic "letters" A, T, C and G. And like DNA, the sequences of letters on these stands complement each other. A pairs up with T and C pairs with G. The strands have a peptide backbone which does not carry an electrical charge, so will dissolve in fat. This means that the molecules of PNA prefer to face the inside of the fatty acid droplet, like crumbs embedded in the surface of a piece of chewing gum. This gives the molecule unusual mobility. In its usual double-stranded form, with its two peptide backbones facing outwards, a PNA molecule is completely fat-soluble, so it will sink into the oily centre of the Bug's droplet. But above some critical temperature, the two strands of the PNA double helix separate spontaneously. When this happens, the bases, which bear a slight charge, are exposed and attracted to the Bug's watery environment. So these single-stranded PNA molecules should then migrate to the edge of the droplet where the backbone can remain in the oil while the bases interact with the water outside. This mobility provides the handle needed to control replication. The plan is to supply the Bug with short bits of single-stranded PNA precursors, just half the length of its tiny genome. If a single-stranded PNA gene on the Bug's surface encounters two of these "nutrient" PNAs with the right base sequences, it will pair with them to form a double-stranded PNA molecule. This should then sink down into the droplet, where conditions favour the joining-up of the two "nutrient" fragments into a whole strand. Eventually, the double-stranded molecule will dissociate once again and its two strands drift back to the surface where each can pick up new partners - a rudimentary form of replication. Metabolism The third essential part of the Bug's life - metabolism - has also been pared to its barest minimum. The researchers plan to "feed" the Bug with fatty acid precursors. These will have photosensitive molecules attached their charged "head" ends. These photosensitive caps mask the charged head, making the molecules completely fat soluble. This means they will tend to collect within the Bug's droplets. When light strikes the photosensitive cap, it breaks off, exposing the negatively charged fatty acid head, which migrates back to the surface of the droplet. Eventually, so many new fatty acids will be produced that they will not all fit on the surface and the droplet will split in two to create a larger surface area. The Bug will also be supplied with inactive PNA precursors bound to a photosensitive molecule. Once again, when light strikes this photosensitiser, it breaks off to release the active PNA fragment. Effective metabolism also requires one more step to prevent the photosensitive molecule, once broken off, from re-sticking to the fatty acid or PNA and so deactivating it once again. The PNA genetic material prevents this by acting as a rudimentary wire, conducting electrons to neutralise the photosensitiser. In this way, the Bug's "genome" plays an active role in the metabolic process. Evolution If all goes according to plan, these three components - container, genome, metabolism - should fit together to provide all the essentials for Darwinian evolution. As the Bugs grow and reproduce, corralled in a test tube, natural selection should favour PNA base sequences that pair up and split off fastest, and also conduct electrons most efficiently to the photosensitisers. Synthetic slaves Artificial organisms could be custom-built for particular tasks: break down toxic compounds produce useful chemicals such as hydrogen fuel act as "living pharmaceuticals", delivering drugs in the body in an adaptive way be tiny diagnosticians, roaming our bodies, collecting information and checking for problems become part of machines that can repair themselves as living beings do Race for the ultimate prize THE Los Alamos Bug has some stiff competition in the race to be the first artificial life form, especially since some of the entrants are taking much more conventional routes to that goal. At the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland, Craig Venter, leader of the private group that sequenced the human genome, and colleague Hamilton Smith are trying to create a new life form by extracting the genome from an existing bacterium and replacing it with a synthetic genome stripped down to a bare minimum of genes (New Scientist, 31 May 2003, p 28). Because this approach leaves most of the cell's machinery intact, Venter's team is widely expected to be the first to succeed, perhaps within a few months or years. (Uncharacteristically, Venter is not talking to the press about this project.) However, Venter's new organism will end up looking very much like existing life. And at the University of Rome 3, Pier Luigi Luisi is working on the "minimal cell project". Starting with a simple membrane-bound vesicle, Luisi's team plans to gradually add in off-the-shelf enzymes and other cellular components until they assemble the simplest possible working cell. Across the Atlantic at Harvard University, Jack Szostak has been working on a synthetic life form just as simple as Rasmussen's Los Alamos Bug, but using more familiar chemistry. Szostak's design calls for a tiny membrane-bound vesicle containing little more than an RNA or RNA-like molecule with a special talent: that of catalysing its own replication. The problem is that no one has yet developed an RNA capable of replicating more than just a small part of itself. Szostak predicts success is probably 10 or 20 years off. "I've been saying that for the last 10 or 20 years," he says, "and it's still true." From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 08:59:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 04:59:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Organised chaos gets robots going Message-ID: Organised chaos gets robots going http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6582&print=true * 09:45 01 November 2004 * Will Knight A control system based on chaos has made a simulated, multi-legged robot walk successfully. The researchers behind the feat say it may have brought us closer to understanding how people and animals learn to move. Standard robots control their leg motion either through complex computer programs or by using so-called genetic algorithms to evolve a successful walking strategy. Both these options are time-consuming and require a lot of computer power. Roboticists Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Shinsuke Suzuki wondered whether chaotic systems might also generate efficient walking behaviour. Chaotic systems behave in a way that means that small effects are amplified so rapidly that the systems behaviour becomes impossible to predict more than a short time ahead. Such chaotic systems are behind a number of phenomena, including the weather and the performance of financial markets. The Tokyo University pair reasoned that just as the chaotic maths that determines the weather can produce clear patterns such as hurricanes and weather fronts, similar systems might underlie the movement patterns involved in locomotion. We, and animals, seem to be able to work out how to move in different situations without going through thousands of trial-and-error situations like todays robot-control software does, says Kuniyoshi. To test their idea, Kuniyoshi and Suzuki devised a computer simulation of a 12-legged machine in which each leg was controlled by a chaotic mathematical function. The functions were initially fed 12 parameters chosen at random. From then on, sensory information from each limb was fed back into the chaotic function that controlled it. Going nowhere The team found that certain combinations of starting parameters made the robots limbs rapidly adopt walking-on-the-spot behaviour, but the machine did not get anywhere. However, when they placed a weight at one end of the simulated robot (see graphic) they found that four of the legs seized up, allowing the front and back legs to dominate movement and let the robot scamper along. The robot could also negotiate obstacles in its path. After scuttling about for a few seconds, its mode of locomotion would change to allow it to scramble over whatever was in the way. Although it was just a simulation, the software mimicked the robots performance in fine detail. Kuniyoshi is confident that the trick will work in a real robot. Remarkably, the robot performed these tricks without any conventional programming. And its behaviour emerged far more quickly than it would if it had used genetic algorithms. Kuniyoshi suggests that his chaotic approach may have similarities to the way that biological systems learn to move. Many findings point to the presence of chaotic patterns in general in the human brain, says Max Lungarella, who researches artificial intelligence at the University of Tokyo. But Kuniyoshi and Suzukis approach is still unconventional, he says. It diverges radically from the traditional way of thinking about intelligence. Roberto Fern?ndez Gal?n, a biophysicist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also finds the approach intriguing, but he is sceptical about the Japanese teams idea that chaos plays a role in animal locomotion. It is surprising to achieve what they call goal-directedness with a chaotic robot, he says. Related Articles * [14]Walking robot carries a person * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4409 * 21 November 2003 * [16]Nine eyes help robots to navigate * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4322 * 30 October 2003 * [18]Robot spy can survive battlefield damage * [19]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4075 * 20 August 2003 Weblinks * [20]University of Tokyo * [21]http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html * [22]Max Lungarella, University of Tokyo * [23]http://www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~maxl/ * [24]Roberto Fern?ndez Gal?n, Carnegie Mellon University * [25]http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rfgalan/home.htm References 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4409 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4409 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4322 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4322 18. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4075 19. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4075 20. http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html 21. http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index_e.html 22. http://www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~maxl/ 23. http://www.isi.imi.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~maxl/ 24. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rfgalan/home.htm 25. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/rfgalan/home.htm E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 09:01:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:01:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: Welcome to the immortals' club Message-ID: Welcome to the immortals' club http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624941.900&print=true * 09 April 2005 * Greg Klerkx MY BRUSH with immortality began almost by accident. Late last year, rumours began to drift through my email inbox that some of the entrepreneurs who had backed the Ansari X prize - which I had been writing about for years - were working on a new project. They were helping to develop and fund an institute to solve the "problem" of death, called the Institute of Biomedical Gerontology. At first I didn't really give it much thought. True, I have recently turned 40, but generally I feel young and fit enough not to care too much about my mortality. And in any case, the fanciful idea you can actually extend a life by more than a few years is surely best confined to science fiction. It must be bunkum. But then, a few months later, another email arrived. A friend wrote to tell me about a new book by futurologist Ray Kurzweil, a man I had long admired. Back in the 1980s, Kurzweil predicted that the internet, then an obscure government communications network, would rise to global dominance. He went on to invent the flatbed scanner, among many other things, and win the US National Medal of Technology. Impressive credentials indeed. But now it looked as if he had gone too far. In his new book, he was predicting that the next big thing would be nothing less than eternal life. And that's not all: he had a recipe to achieve it. I couldn't help but be struck by the coincidence, and it wasn't a happy one. OK, recent years have been peppered with discoveries that have slowly begun to illuminate the mechanisms of ageing, but I know that most biologists would laugh at the idea of immortality. "It's not science, it's hype," says S. Jay Olshansky, a bio-demographer at the School of Public Health of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Given current trends, the US Census Bureau estimates that life expectancy will on average grow by about six years by 2050. Not to be sniffed at, but not exactly forever. Even so, I couldn't help being intrigued. Kurzweil and the X prize guys together... And so I started to dig. And the more I dug, the more interesting it got. Kurzweil and the X prizers, it turns out, are not alone. In fact, they are part of a movement whose ranks, hitherto populated with fringe groups such as the Betterhumans and the Extropians, are swelling with mainstream researchers prepared to risk their reputations by claiming they could conquer death. To date, gerontology has largely been a cautious and conservative field dedicated to understanding the biology of ageing. The new immortalist movement takes a wholly different perspective. Kurzweil and others, such as Marvin Minsky, professor of artificial intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the MIT Media Lab, Aubrey de Grey, a self-taught biologist, who works as a computer technician in the genetics department at the University of Cambridge, and Gregory Stock, director of the programme on medicine, technology and society at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Redesigning Humans: Our inevitable genetic future, think of ageing not as an immutable fact of life, but as an engineering problem that can be solved. And they don't just sit around talking about it. The immortalists are organising conferences to spread their ideas. They are attracting media coverage, convincing established scientists to endorse their claims, and courting rich businesspeople to fund their research. That doesn't make them right, of course, but it did make me question my scepticism. Could they be onto something? Is it possible to live forever? So I rang Kurzweil to find out. And it's true: the 56-year-old is staking his reputation on the imminence of immortality, or at least a decent approximation of it. I asked him how long he expected to live - 150 years? 200 years? A thousand years? "Let's just say I'm not planning on dying," he says. Kurzweil's confidence is based largely on the fact that biotechnology has at last yielded to the kind of exponential progress that created the information technology revolution. For example, the cost of DNA sequencing is halving roughly every year. "It took 15 years to sequence HIV," says Kurzweil. "We sequenced SARS in 31 days," Other areas of biotechnology are racing ahead at a similar pace, he says. Kurzweil believes that if you take today's knowledge and grow it exponentially, radical life extension becomes not just possible but inevitable. The basic idea is to use whatever is available right now to prolong your life, confident that by the time you've exhausted that avenue, technology will have moved on and you can do it again with the latest new developments in life extension. He calls this strategy "a bridge to a bridge". I see it more like ascending an endless property ladder without ever having to accept the granny flat. Kurzweil and co-author Terry Grossman, a nutritionist and alternative medicine specialist, have even mapped out the first three bridges to eternal life. Number one is to use knowledge available today to keep you in tip-top condition. Kurzweil proudly announces that he takes 250 different dietary supplements a day, including alpha lipoic acid, grapeseed extract, N-acetylcysteine and milk thistle, which are all supposed to boost physical health in a variety of ways, and ginkgo biloba, acetyl-L-carnitine and vinpocetine to increase "brain health". He also has weekly intravenous infusions of phosphatidylcholine 4, which he says "rejuvenates all of the body's tissues by restoring youthful cell membranes". And he avoids all vices, even coffee. Adherence to this rigorous regime keep his body and mind as healthy as that of a 40-year-old, says Kurzweil, an age he anticipates will be his eternal state as he leaps from one bridge to the next. Bridge two involves the realisation of medical techniques already under development, such as genetic tests to detect whether you are more likely to develop cancer, determine its propensity to spread and which therapies it is most likely to respond to. Bridge three advances are more far-fetched. Kurzweil imagines a personalised army of nanoscale robots that would replace his digestive system, extracting the optimum amount of nutrition from the food he eats and delivering it directly to every organ and tissue in his body. He points to recent advances in nanotechnology, such as the 3-millimetre-long swimming robot developed by a group headed by Tao Mei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Mei hopes it will soon be shrunk further and could ultimately be used for drug delivery or artery-clearing. "We're 20 years away from the golden era of nanotechnology," says Kurzweil, adding "I didn't just start making predictions yesterday." Another man with a plan, not to mention a less-than-catchy catchphrase, is Aubrey de Grey. His strategy to "solve" death is called Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence(SENS). De Grey has become the controversial poster child for the new engineers of life extension, while his lanky frame and dramatic, chest-length beard have earned him less-than-flattering comparisons to Rasputin. In person, he is an engaging fast talker who enjoys nothing better than a good chat about the meaning of life extension. And despite his image, he had no problem attracting some of the world's luminaries in reproductive biology, cloning and stem cell research to his inaugural anti-ageing conference at the University of Cambridge in September 2003. The second is scheduled for September this year, again in Cambridge, and the line-up of speakers is similarly impressive. Maverick plan De Grey knows he is outside the mainstream but insists he is on the right track. "Most of my colleagues in gerontology do appreciate that ageing in general is not a good idea, but they're completely convinced that nothing can be done about it in the near term," he says. "They're wrong. If I make it to 110, I reckon I'll have at least a 50:50 chance of making it to 1000 and quite possibly much more." De Grey trained as a computer programmer but became interested in the science of ageing after meeting his wife, Adelaide, a research biologist. De Grey launched himself on a binge of self-teaching, devouring the literature on senescence and ageing. He says he was driven less by a desire for personal immortality than by sheer intellectual curiosity. "Defeating ageing is probably the greatest challenge in biology, and I've always been drawn to the biggest challenges," he says. His studies led him to formulate SENS, which boils down to halting or reversing the damage that leads to ageing. De Grey says these fall into seven rather technical categories, all of which will be conquered in mice inside 10 years, he predicts. His critics point out that he has never conducted an iota of laboratory research and that his work - SENS in particular - is entirely theoretical. "There's only so much you can know without getting into the lab and doing the work," says Olshansky. This doesn't bother de Grey. "I'm a theoretical gerontologist," he says. "In physics, it's understood that it's necessary to have people who are narrowly focused on experimental work, and that it's also necessary to have people who are sitting back thinking, reading a bit more widely. Most of what I do is identify connections that other people don't see." But theorising isn't enough. De Grey wants change and he wants it now, and for that he needs money. Backed by Peter Diamandis, the man who masterminded the Ansari X prize for the first private manned flight into space, de Grey is now pursuing purses to fund a new centre called the Institute of Biomedical Gerontology. It will focus solely on making SENS reality. He says he needs at least $100 million. One confirmed SENS backer is Gary Hudson, another private space travel pioneer. Most mainstream gerontologists, however, are circumspect. "Research on the biology and genetics of ageing is currently at a similar state to cancer research 20 years ago," says Howard Jacobs, a geneticist at the University of Tampere, Finland. Jacobs works on mutations in mitochondrial DNA, which he believes have a major impact on expanding healthy human lifespans. Last year his team won the prestigious Descartes prize for scientists based in Europe. Nevertheless, Kurzweil's pronouncements rankle with Jacobs. "Knowledge does not necessarily translate into technology on a foreseeable timescale," he says. Felipe Sierra, a programme director at the US National Institute of Aging, agrees. "The main problem with the recipes for radical life extension is that they have multiple complex components," he says, "and we are still far from fully understanding any of them, let alone their interaction." Cell senescence is a case in point. Most scientists believe senescence arose as a way to suppress tumours. Remove senescence, and you could remove a key natural barrier to the development of cancer. The trick is to be able to remove only senescent cells, but not senescence itself. "We don't currently know how to do this," says Sierra. But the immortalists are not entirely without support. One of the few biologists to tacitly endorse de Grey's aims is Michael Rose, a biogerontologist at the University of California, Irvine. "The concept of natural death is bogus," he says. Rose has spent the past 30 years studying ageing in fruit flies and believes his work holds the key to understanding the cause of cell senescence. But he concedes that radical life extension may not happen in his lifetime. Rose declined to comment specifically on either de Grey's SENS or Kurzweil's "bridge" scheme. "I'm very confident that some time in this century, the lives of everyday people will be transformed by the slow, methodical work we're doing now," he says. "But Jules Verne science doesn't work." Olshansky thinks there are deeper, more fundamental problems with de Grey's thinking. Treating the human body like a machine is just plain wrong, he says. "Let's say you go ahead and make the seven changes Aubrey suggests, and hypothetically you live to 200 or 300. He assumes the effect will be the same on the mind as on the body." Olshansky points out most gerontology experiments are performed on tiny creatures, such as roundworms and fruit flies. The psychological impact of dramatically altering human life expectancy is completely unknown. Most people live their life in an arc that they expect will last around 70 to 80 years and that splits up into known and manageable phases of life. What would you do if you had 300 years in hand? "You can't ask a fruit fly, 'How do you feel about it?'" says Olshansky. I can't deny that the possibility my life could be extended by a few decades, let alone centuries, is extremely tempting, if only to realise my life-long dream of travelling into space. But I won't be subjecting myself to intravenous infusions, taking any supplements, or giving up on my morning shot of java just yet. Life's too short. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 09:02:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:02:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Introducing the glooper computer Message-ID: Introducing the glooper computer http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524921.000&print=true * 26 March 2005 * Duncan Graham-Rowe MOST of us find a shot of caffeine or a brisk walk does the trick. But when Andrew Adamatzky feels his brain needs a little extra stimulation, he gets a robot to dabble its metal fingers in it. Adamatzky is a computer scientist at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, and his prototype brain is a dish of chemicals sitting on a lab bench. Its "thoughts" are waves of ions that form spontaneously and diffuse through the mix. And occasionally, when things get too sluggish, the brain instructs a robotic hand to dip its fingers into the dish and wiggle them about, literally stirring the creative juices. Designed to do nothing more than mimic the kind of feedback that occurs between our own fingers and brains, this experiment is part of an ambitious programme to develop chemical-based processors that run on ions rather than electrons, and which sit in dishes rather than on circuit boards. Adamatzky calls it gooware: hardware you can store in a bottle. Now, after more than a decade of development, Adamatzky has worked out how to make liquid logic gates, building arrays that he believes could lead to powerful processors that are infinitely reconfigurable and self-healing. Even computing giant IBM has begun to think along similar lines they suspect that much the same technology could power a new breed of processor chips. But that's not to say that chemical computers will replace conventional silicon anytime soon. Besides, for now Adamatzky is focusing his attention on another goal constructing gooware powerful enough to deserve the description "liquid brain". And to help prove the concept's potential, Adamatzky is building the perfect host for his liquid brain - a jelly robot. Equipped with artificial eyes and synthetic hormones, it might one day sense its surroundings and even feel emotions. Welcome to the world of blobotics. Chemical computing owes its power to an intriguing but complex piece of chemistry called the Belousov-Zhabotinsky or BZ reaction. It consists of a repeating cycle of three separate sets of reactions, each with its own characteristic mix of ions and molecules (see "Making waves"). Once you combine the ingredients, any local fluctuation in concentration (or a catalyst) will start the first set of reactions. The products of this trigger the second, which starts the third, which starts the first again, and so on. The reactants also change colour through the sequence, typically from red to blue and back again. And because this reaction is self-propagating - reactions in one place diffuse outwards and prompt neighbouring regions to start reacting - it creates alternating waves of red and blue that diffuse outwards from the point where the reaction starts. Waves in a maze Researchers have already found ways to exploit light-catalysed BZ reactions to solve problems, such as working out the shortest path through a maze. Solving a maze using a conventional computer is complex as the program has to examine all possible routes to work out which is the shortest. Instead, a team of US researchers used the fact that diffusing reactions like a BZ wave always travel by the shortest path. They built a physical representation of the maze with plastic walls and added the reactants, and when they triggered BZ waves at a point, they found that by recording time-lapse images they could work out the shortest route from any other point in the maze back to the spot where the reaction started. On the face of it, BZ-based processing seems to offer significant advantages over silicon-based systems. Firstly, the BZ reaction is a form of parallel processor: every point on a wave front is like a separate calculation - working out how long it takes to get to that point in the maze, for instance. Computation occurs as the wave spreads or interacts with the walls of the container, and the results can be read out in parallel by simply recording the pattern of waves created. In theory, a BZ reaction could solve a class of difficult problems that have large numbers of possible solutions, such as the so-called travelling salesman problem - computing the shortest loop route between several cities. These tasks, known as NP-complete problems, are extremely time-consuming for conventional computers. Unfortunately, chemical computers also have one major drawback: you need to translate your problem into a physical representation, such as a maze, add the reactants and let the waves diffuse through. Simply designing and constructing a maze to solve a complex problem could take months. To most researchers it seemed like a dead end. But in the mid-1990s Adamatzky began to suspect that the BZ reaction might have potential for computing. In 1996 he met Ben De Lacy Costello, a chemist at the University of the West of England, and the pair set out to try something rather ambitious: build their own chemical-based processor. By 1999 they had teamed up with Nicolas Rambidi, a physicist at Moscow State University in Russia, and proved the concept by making a robot controlled by little more than a dish of chemicals (see Diagram). Spurred on, they created a menagerie of strange mechanical-chemical hybrids. One used robotic fingers and a BZ-based "brain" to mimic interactions between human hands and brains - the BZ reaction controlled the fingers, while the fingers themselves were tipped with catalysts that could stimulate the BZ reaction. Another was a bot with two BZ-based brains that could navigate through a furniture-filled room. One brain guided the robot towards its destination while the other steered round obstacles en route. Although the chemical processors worked well enough for relatively simple tasks like these, Adamatzky quickly realised that for more complex processing he would have to find a way to build the chemical equivalent 2333333333of a programmable computer. And for that he needed logic gates. Logic gates perform the operations on which all conventional processors depend. A NOT gate, for example, turns a digital 0 into a digital 1, and vice versa. An OR gate outputs a 1 as long as at least one of its two input numbers is a 1. And if you can build OR and NOT gates, then provided you can link them together, it should be possible to construct all other kinds of logic circuit. Other researchers had already attempted this. They built circuits with physical channels to carry the BZ waves - the equivalent of wires - and junctions between channels where the waves could interact the equivalent of logic gates. But to Adamatzky this represented a return to the problems of the original BZ processors. Miniaturisation would be difficult, and routing one wire over another would be well nigh impossible. "You would simply get a poor imitation of conventional computer architecture," he says. When balls collide Then Adamatzky stumbled across some theoretical work by two American physicists, Tommaso Toffoli and Edward Fredkin from Boston University in Massachusetts. They suggested that you could create a simple form of processor using little more than billiard balls. They set up a scheme in which each ball represents either a digital 1 or 0. Computation occurs when the balls collide, and the exact logical operation performed depends on how the balls collide and the direction in which they rebound. In other words, collisions could create the equivalent of logic gates. Adamatzky began to wonder whether he could collide BZ waves to create a chemical processor. Conventional BZ waves certainly wouldn't do the trick. Instead of moving in a straight line, they radiate out, making it difficult to see how individual waves interact. So Adamatzky started to ask colleagues and experts in BZ systems whether anyone knew how to create the chemical equivalent of a billiard ball. In 2002 his efforts finally paid off. He discovered that a team of Spanish and American researchers had created a light-sensitive BZ mixture containing chemical inhibitors that suppressed the formation of the usual BZ wave patterns. With just the right amount of stimulation - provided by light - the mixture generated wavefront fragments that travelled through the reactor dish in straight lines, without spreading out. Last year Adamatzky tried it himself: he introduced a BZ mixture into a thin layer of gel loaded with silver halide ions. The viscous gel slows the diffusion reaction and the halide ions act as chemical inhibitors. Instead of forming circular waves, it spontaneously generated wave fragments less than a millimetre long that didn't grow or shrink, and which travelled in straight lines. He nicknamed them BZ bullets (see Diagram). Experiments showed that these bullets seem to behave more like quasi-particles than waves, sometimes even bouncing off one another like billiard balls, so he realised they really could be used to create the logic gates. In experiments he found that when two bullets collide at a certain angle, they create a single "output" bullet travelling in a specific direction. With only one input, there was no output in that direction, creating an AND gate - one that outputs 0 unless both inputs are 1. Adamatzky also created other gates called NOT and XOR. Now he plans to begin combining different gates together to create more complex logic circuits. Although his work is still at an early stage, Adamatzky is confident he can control and organise BZ bullets to form circuits, and he already has a good idea of how to construct them. He can create BZ bullets by illuminating a light-catalysed BZ reaction, and is now working on how to steer the bullets and send the output from the gates to specific points such as sensors. He hopes to use fixed impurities in the gel layer to act like mirrors, bouncing the bullets in specific directions. Since there is no need for wires, you can route multiple signals through the same volume by controlling their timing. And you can read out the results of a calculation using a high-resolution digital camera or sensors mounted around the edge of the dish. "Potentially we can pack a very complicated circuit in a very small volume," says Adamatzky. And rather than using simple binary logic, it might be possible to employ a more complex, multi-valued logic, based on the relative sizes of the bullets. Adamatzky compares his chemical controllers to conventional parallel processors such as neural networks, and believes they can perform any function these other systems can. "All algorithms previously implemented in 'conventional' parallel processors can be adapted to liquid chemical processors," he says. But he admits he has a lot of work to do before his chemical computers become useful. They have one big limitation too, he says: they are not suited to real-time processing because the bullets move at just a few millimetres per minute. However, Adamatzky and his colleague Tetsuya Asai, now at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, have come up with a possible solution: they are making waves in silicon. Asai has created silicon chips that generate the solid-state equivalent of BZ waves, and used them to make simple logic gates. The key is a form of diode called a p-n-p-n junction. When there is a voltage across it, a single "seed" electron will trigger the build-up of more and more electrons inside the diode. When the charge accumulates to a critical level, the diode "opens", releasing a flood of electrons. Asai has built a two-dimensional array of these diodes in silicon and shown that the electron cascade at one diode triggers electron avalanches from neighbouring diodes in turn. The result is a wave that sweeps through the array much like a conventional BZ wave, only a million times as fast. It is also far easier to get signals in and out of a silicon processor, so in the long term this work might produce new types of parallel-processing silicon chips, says De Lacy Costello, or perhaps even hybrid silicon-chemical systems. Could they ever replace conventional silicon chips? Perhaps, if researchers can learn how to create waves on a nanoscale, so packing the logic gates close together. And there is no reason why you can't create the equivalent of chemical waves using individual molecules or atoms, says Kenneth Showalter, an expert on BZ systems at West Virginia University in Morgantown. "There are reaction-diffusion waves on a much smaller scale," he says. This idea has already caught the attention of researchers at IBM, who are experimenting with a processor that performs simple calculations using rows of carbon monoxide molecules on a metal surface. When one molecule moves forwards, it knocks into its neighbour and produces a cascade effect "very much like dominoes", says Bernie Myerson, IBM's chief technologist. By altering the way rows intersect, it is possible to create basic logic gates that work in a similar way to Adamatzky's colliding bullets. It's still early days, says Myerson, but future generations of computers could well be chemical-based. Building the blob Adamatzky is not particularly interested in taking on the chip industry, however. He has a far more ambitious plan. He wants to use his gooware to create a hugely powerful parallel processor: a liquid robot brain in which metal and wire are replaced by a blob of jelly. The host material he has in mind is an electroactive gel, a jelly-like polymer. Not only can BZ waves travel through electroactive gel without being slowed down, but the gel also expands and contracts in response to electric fields. The stuff is already used as artificial muscles, and researchers have used it to make a starfish that moves in response to an electric field (New Scientist, 6 July 2002, p 19). The gel also offers another way to create motion. When Osamu Tabata at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto dissolved a BZ mixture in an electroactive polymer he found that the polymer swelled and contracted in response to the waves of charged ions that diffused through it. And when he added 300-micrometre-long hairs to the polymer's surface, he found the BZ reaction set them swaying in unison like miniature Mexican waves. These hairs could manipulate small objects like cells, he suggested. Asai and Adamatzky think electroactive polymers are the perfect host for their BZ brain, not least because reactants won't spill out if the robot makes sudden movements - a problem Adamatzky experienced with some of his earliest designs. They plan to copy Tabata's BZ-impregnated electroactive polymer, and by giving their blob a hairy coat they hope the Mexican waves could propel the blob along, just as starfish walk using small "legs". The hairs could even help it sense its surroundings, avoid obstacles or find things. And Rambidi has used a light-sensitive BZ reaction to create a kind of artificial retina that can perform basic image-processing - in particular, edge-detection, one of the fundamental abilities of the human retina. Gooey on the inside yet rigid enough to keep its shape, their robot would be a double for the creeping, wobbling monster in the 1950s B-movie The Blob, a film that Adamatzky admits he watched with great interest. Without a rigid skeleton, this robot could squeeze into tight spaces or change its shape. "It will be completely flexible," says Adamatzky - an intelligent, shape-changing, crawling blob. And almost every component they need is in place. The challenge now, Adamatzky says, is bringing these elements together, a task he and his colleagues have begun in earnest. They estimate it will take them about five years. And beyond that? Could his liquid brain ever become sentient? Adamatzky believes so. He has even begun work on computer simulations of emotional states created by reagents in chemical solutions. So far the results are impressive, he says. Insert a set of synthetic hormones into a powerful parallel processor and a machine might even feel or express emotions, he suggests. Peter Bentley, an expert in artificial intelligence at University College London, thinks that Adamatzky's plans for a chemical brain might be over-ambitious - but not completely crazy. "I'm not sure you could get the same sort of complexity within a gel," says. "But there's a lot of potential here." Even if Adamatzky doesn't succeed, he's likely to uncover new ideas that could help create better processors or reveal something about the way our brain works. After all, says Showalter, BZ-based chemistry is one of the best models we have for the processing that goes on inside our heads. "Chemistry seems to be somewhere between electronic hardware and living tissue," he says. "That's part of the appeal - it is moving closer to biology." Making waves The most common recipe for the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction uses bromide and bromate ions, malonic acid, and a cerium catalyst that also acts as a visual indicator for the reaction. Mix the ingredients together and three separate sets of reactions start. First, bromate ions oxidise bromide ions, forming bromine: BrO[3]^- + Br^- + 2H^+ HBrO[2] + HOBr HBrO[2] + Br^- + H^+ 2HOBr HOBr + Br^- + H^+ Br[2] + H[2]O As the bromide ion concentration drops, the second set of reactions kicks in, creating BrO[2] radicals that oxidise the cerium and change the mixture's colour from red to blue: BrO[3]^- + HBrO[2] + H^+ 2BrO[2] + H[2]O BrO[2] + Ce(III) + H^+ HBrO[2] + Ce(IV) Then the third set of reactions begins: malonic acid, cerium and bromine react to create bromomalonic acid and bromide ions. The cerium is reduced, the blue mixture turns red and the cycle begins again:6 MA + Br[2] BrMA + Br^- + H^+ Ce(IV) + MA + BrMA Br^- + Ce(III) (other products are formed but this reaction set is still being investigated) From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 09:02:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:02:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: New twist in wrangle over changing physical constant Message-ID: New twist in wrangle over changing physical constant http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7285&print=true * 15:33 19 April 2005 * Maggie McKee A new study of distant galaxies is adding a fresh perspective to the debate over whether a fundamental physical constant has actually changed over time. The work suggests the number has not varied in the last 7 billion years, but more observations are still needed to settle the issue. The controversy centres on the fine-structure constant, also called alpha, which governs how electrons and light interact. Alpha is an amalgam of other constants, including the speed of light. So any change in alpha implies a change in the speed of light - and indeed in the entire standard model of physics - with string theories touting extra spatial dimensions stepping in to fill the breach. So it caused a sensation in 2001 when a team led by John Webb, an astrophysicist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, announced the constant had changed by about one part in 100,000 over 12 billion years. Webb's team studied about 140 clouds of gas and dust that absorb light from distant, bright quasars. Subtle changes in the relative position of absorption lines from elements in the clouds' spectra suggested alpha had changed over time. But another team using higher-quality quasar absorption data, though fewer observations, failed to find any change in 2004. And different researchers studying a [12]natural nuclear reactor in Oklo, Gabon in Africa have also come to opposing conclusions about alpha's constancy. Slippery customer John Bahcall, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, US, helped pioneer quasar absorption studies in the 1960s, but he says this method can be slippery to interpret. "The absorption line data is subject to misidentification of the lines and to the introduction of theoretical assumptions which may not be correct," he told New Scientist. He adds that the spectral lines may be faint and can overlap, making it difficult to tell the lines' source, and that astronomers must assume that all of the clouds share the same basic composition. Similarly, he says, interpreting the Oklo data involves making assumptions about other physical constants that might be subject to change. Now, astronomers have used another method Bahcall developed to probe alpha. Rather than using absorption lines from clouds in space, a team led by Jeffrey Newman of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, has focused directly on a pair of emission lines from ionised oxygen in the galaxies themselves. "With emission lines, you can choose systems that have a very strong, characteristic appearance and are isolated to be sure you have the right objects," says Bahcall. And because the average wavelength of the light emitted by the oxygen ions is a direct measurement of alpha, he says, "the fine-structure constant pops out without any interpretation". Clean and simple However, the new study cannot yet claim the precision of Webb's result. Newman's group used observations of 300 galaxies, lying between 4 billion and 7 billion light years away, to find that alpha has changed by no more than one part in 30,000 - the resolution limit of the data - in 7 billion years. But Newman says the method is superior to the absorption line alternative, telling New Scientist: "It's simpler, it's cleaner, and to date people haven't gotten contradictory results from it." Bahcall says the team has done an "absolutely superb job" and adds that more observations - including more distant galaxies - will improve the precision of the measurement still further. Newman presented the results, from a survey of distant galaxies called DEEP2, at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Tampa, Florida, on Monday. Related Articles * [13]13 things that do not make sense * [14]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600 * 19 March 2005 * [15]Speed of light may have changed recently * [16]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092 * 30 June 2004 * [17]Disputed 'building block' of physics is constant * [18]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4844 * 02 April 2004 Weblinks * [19]DEEP2 survey, UC Berkeley * [20]http://deep.berkeley.edu/ * [21]John Bahcall, Institute for Advanced Study * [22]http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/ * [23]American Physical Society meeting * [24]http://www.aps.org/meet/APR05/ References 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524911.600 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6092 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4844 18. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4844 19. http://deep.berkeley.edu/ 20. http://deep.berkeley.edu/ 21. http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/ 22. http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/ 23. http://www.aps.org/meet/APR05/ 24. http://www.aps.org/meet/APR05/ E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 09:05:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:05:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Computer generates verifiable mathematics proof Message-ID: These were left over from yesterday. Quite a trove from New Scientist. More later today. I hope you find these worthwhile and are not overburdened. Frank Computer generates verifiable mathematics proof http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7286&print=true * 18:27 19 April 2005 * Will Knight A computer-assisted proof of a 150-year-old mathematical conjecture can at last be checked by human mathematicians. The Four Colour Theorem, proposed by Francis Guthrie in 1852, states that any four colours are the minimum needed to fill in a flat map without any two regions of the same colour touching. A proof of the theorem was announced by two US mathematicians, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken, in 1976. But a crucial portion of their work involved checking many thousands of maps - a task that can only feasibly be done using a computer. So a long-standing concern has been that some hidden flaw in the computer code they used might undermine the overall logic of the proof. But now Georges Gonthier, at Microsoft's research laboratory in Cambridge, UK, and Benjamin Werner at INRIA in France have proven the theorem in a way that should remove such concerns. They translated the proof into a language used to represent logical propositions - called Coq - and created logic-checking software to confirm that the steps put forward in the proof make sense. "It is a landmark," says Randy Pollack, from Edinburgh University in Scotland, who wrote one of the first logic-checking programs using Coq. "Mainly because it is such well known theorem and because there was such a row in 1976." Changing thought patterns Pollack says many other computer-assisted proofs could be made more credible using the approach. But he notes that it could take years to adapt very complicated proofs in this way. And he says those which require extremely intensive computation might take far too long to check logically. Gonthier says more mathematicians will be encouraged to use computers if they know they can demonstrate the logic behind their calculations. And he suggests this could eventually change the way many mathematicians think. "I've found instances where I'm doing things in a completely different way simply because I'm using a computer," he told New Scientist. But the research could also have an impact beyond mathematics. Microsoft hopes to develop a similar system for checking the logic used in computer programs, which could pre-empt some unforeseen bugs that cause programs to crash. "The discovery has great implications for the future of computing," says Andrew Herbert, managing director at Microsoft Research Cambridge. "Advances we make into self-checking software have the potential be incorporated into software development tools to make computing in general more reliable and trustworthy." Related Articles * [12]Taming the fourth dimension * [13]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324565.000 * 17 July 2004 * [14]Primal dream * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18024225.500 * 22 November 2003 * [16]Mathematics unravels optimum way of shoe lacing * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3136 * 04 December 2002 Weblinks * [18]Microsoft Research Cambridge * [19]http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/cambridge/default. aspx * [20]INRIA * [21]http://www.inria.fr/index.en.html * [22]Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh University * [23]http://www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk/index.html * [24]Coq * [25]http://pauillac.inria.fr/coq/ References 12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324565.000 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324565.000 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18024225.500 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18024225.500 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3136 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3136 18. http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/cambridge/default.aspx 19. http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/cambridge/default.aspx 20. http://www.inria.fr/index.en.html 21. http://www.inria.fr/index.en.html 22. http://www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk/index.html 23. http://www.lfcs.inf.ed.ac.uk/index.html 24. http://pauillac.inria.fr/coq/ 25. http://pauillac.inria.fr/coq/ E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 09:46:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 05:46:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: The 21st-Century Brain: Explaining, mending and manipulating the mind by Steven Rose Message-ID: The 21st-Century Brain: Explaining, mending and manipulating the mind by Steven Rose http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624962.300&print=true * 23 April 2005 * Mike Holderness * Mike Holderness is a science writer STEVEN Rose is scathing about attempts to explain the mind's ills in terms of genes, as though they were just like one of the rare one-gene diseases. He equally abhors simple-minded accounts of how experiences happen. In The 21st-Century Brain he goes so far as to assert that to "interpret a particular pattern of neural activity as representing my experience of seeing a red bus...you need my entire neuronal and hormonal life history". I respond to this as I did to many of Edward Wilson's proposals in Consilience: why? To answer that would be an interesting research programme - because the oft-presumed answer that a snapshot will do the trick is no more certain to be right than is Rose's determined holism. This similarity is ironic because Rose, director of the brain and biology research group at the UK's Open University, has devoted a significant part of his career to opposing Wilson. Like Consilience, though, The 21st-Century Brain is consciously a late-career book. The first half summarises and updates Rose's thinking on what having a brain and being a mind is about. It is written clearly, if readers are prepared to learn many terms as they go. His description of what happens to a brain (and the mind that inhabits it) with ageing cannot but be poignant. His warnings against the fashion for medicalising discontent and ability alike, with a pill for every skill, are necessary. Rose roots these warnings in Marxism, and thus attracts hostility and disbelief that one can do science while holding an ideology. I should note, therefore, that I am not his co-conspirator: I regard Marx as just another bourgeois economist. No one needs an ideology to insist, as Rose does, on looking at social context. In examining "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" or "oppositional defiant disorder", for example, it is important to ask not just what happens to the neutotransmitter dopamine or why the drug Ritalin has an effect, but "attention to what?" and "defiance of what?" And why would the genes that allegedly cause those disorders be expressed so much more often in the US than elsewhere? If anything is ideological, it is the refusal to ask such glaring questions. Even if you disagree with every word in The 21st-Century Brain, including "but", if you are interested in brains or having a mind you must read it - precisely for the ifs and buts in it. From waluk at earthlink.net Sat Apr 23 15:01:20 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:01:20 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria In-Reply-To: <001b01c547aa$0895e1e0$6601a8c0@IBMF68D4578947> References: <01C54762.416D5AE0.shovland@mindspring.com> <42699D06.2000701@earthlink.net> <001b01c547aa$0895e1e0$6601a8c0@IBMF68D4578947> Message-ID: <426A6340.1070108@earthlink.net> I very much appreciate that you've sent along your references on Bacterial intelligence. We propose that bacteria use their intracellular flexibility, involving signal transduction networks and genomic plasticity, to collectively maintain linguistic communication: self and shared interpretations of chemical cues, exchange of chemical messages (semantic) and dialogues (pragmatic). Meaning- based communication permits colonial identity, intentional behavior (e.g. pheromone-based courtship for mating), purposeful alteration of colony structure (e.g. formation of fruiting bodies), decision-making (e.g. to sporulate) and the recognition and identification of other colonies ? features we might begin to associate with a bacterial social intelligence. Much more involved than simply neuropeptides and enzymes. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Independent Scholar Eshel Ben-Jacob wrote: > Hi to all, > The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is > limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our > paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. > He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. > Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel > > Eshel Ben-Jacob. > Professor of Physics > The Maguy-Glass Professor > in Physics of Complex Systems > > eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il ebenjacob at ucsd.edu > Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ > Visit http://physicaplus.org.il - PhysicaPlus > the online magazine of the Israel Physical Society > > School of Physics and Astronomy 10/2004 -10/2005 > Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel Center for Theoretical > Biological Physics > Tel 972-3-640 7845/7604 (Fax) -6425787 University of California San Diego > La Jolla, CA 92093-0354 USA > Tel (office) 1-858-534 0524 (Fax) -534 7697 > > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "G. Reinhart-Waller" > > To: "The new improved paleopsych list" > Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 2:55 AM > Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria > > >> Bacteria live in groups, communicate and thus must possess >> intelligence. Genes are on one level but by not including the meme >> portion of behavior, one is only able to understand a portion of what >> intelligence actually is. >> >> Gerry Reinhart-Waller > > From christian.rauh at uconn.edu Sat Apr 23 15:10:49 2005 From: christian.rauh at uconn.edu (Christian Rauh) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 11:10:49 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] depression In-Reply-To: <01C54762.693A9060.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54762.693A9060.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426A6579.8000703@uconn.edu> I have had that experience and I agree that it *feels* like coming back from the dead. But only after being dead would one really know if that feeling is accurate. That's an empirical question. Christian Steve Hovland wrote: > If you have had the experience of waking > up from deep, long-term depression you > would tend to agree with me, I think. > > Have you? > > Steve Hovland > www.stevehovland.net > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] > Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 12:48 PM > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] depression > > Stephen says: > >>>Speaking from long experience, depression > > has a lot in common with being dead.<< > > --You've been dead? I'm actually not sure it's like > being dead. I think death is probably more liberating. > Depression has more to do with frustration in not > being able to live, or ambivalence about being alive. > > Michael > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~ L I B E R D A D E ~ _____________________________________________________________________ ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:22:20 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:22:20 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] alpha-lipoic acid Message-ID: <01C547DD.922C79E0.shovland@mindspring.com> In the late 1980s, scientists realized that alpha-lipoic acid, a compound initially classified as a vitamin when it was discovered three decades earlier, possessed potent antioxidant properties that could prevent healthy cells from getting damaged by unstable oxygen molecules called free radicals. In fact, this vitaminlike compound has proved to be many times more potent than such old guard antioxidants as vitamins C and E. As a perk, it even recycles C and E (as well as other antioxidants), enhancing their effectiveness. http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/substances_view/1,1525,10002,00.html From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:23:34 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:23:34 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] DMAE Message-ID: <01C547DD.BE36BCD0.shovland@mindspring.com> DMAE, or dimethylaminoethanol, is a compound found in high levels in anchovies and sardines. Small amounts of it are also naturally produced in the human brain. Health-food outlets sell it in capsule form to "boost brain power." It probably won't make you smarter, but some evidence suggests it may have benefits against the impulsive and disruptive behaviors caused by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It may also have a role in treating memory lapses and Alzheimer's disease, as well as some troubling movement disorders. The supplement has an interesting history. Initially, drug makers were interested in selling the product as a medication for attention deficit disorder when studies in the 1970s showed that deanol, the chemical name for DMAE, reduced hyperactivity and improved concentration in schoolchildren with learning disabilities and behavior problems. However, when further testing was deemed too expensive, it was packaged as a nutritional supplement, since this substance is naturally found in fish. Health Benefits Because it steps up production of brain chemicals essential for short-term memory, concentration, and learning capacity, DMAE may aid in the treatment of ADHD and other disorders affecting the brain and central nervous system. http://www.wholehealthmd.com/refshelf/substances_view/1,1525,10023,00.html From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:24:21 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:24:21 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] phosphatidyl choline Message-ID: <01C547DD.DAA1D2B0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://www.naturalfacts.com.au/phosph.html From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:25:17 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:25:17 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] ascorbyl palmitate Message-ID: <01C547DD.FB94E1B0.shovland@mindspring.com> - oil soluble vitamin C- good for cells, which have phosphlipids in cell walls http://www.pdrhealth.com/drug_info/nmdrugprofiles/nutsupdrugs/asc_0334.shtml From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:48:08 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:48:08 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] depression Message-ID: <01C547E1.2D1A28F0.shovland@mindspring.com> True. Being actually dead might be be better. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Christian Rauh [SMTP:christian.rauh at uconn.edu] Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 8:11 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] depression I have had that experience and I agree that it *feels* like coming back from the dead. But only after being dead would one really know if that feeling is accurate. That's an empirical question. Christian Steve Hovland wrote: > If you have had the experience of waking > up from deep, long-term depression you > would tend to agree with me, I think. > > Have you? > > Steve Hovland > www.stevehovland.net > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com] > Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 12:48 PM > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] depression > > Stephen says: > >>>Speaking from long experience, depression > > has a lot in common with being dead.<< > > --You've been dead? I'm actually not sure it's like > being dead. I think death is probably more liberating. > Depression has more to do with frustration in not > being able to live, or ambivalence about being alive. > > Michael > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -- ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ~ L I B E R D A D E ~ _____________________________________________________________________ ???????????????????????????????$o$??????????????????????????????????? _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 15:55:55 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 08:55:55 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: <01C547E2.436A2D20.shovland@mindspring.com> I can't say why, but I am uncomfortable with trying to use the neural net model to describe bacterial communication/intelligence. I hope that the people doing this work will approach the problem in a model-free state of mind, absorb the information, and then generate a new purpose-built model for this part of reality. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 11:02 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on Intelligent Bacteria. And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net. The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and "self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions." This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength down. It's unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences, these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to songs. When a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business, confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the moment. When the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go about more lofty business--like thinking. A practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly open. A gust of wind slips comes through the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone .left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined before. Now that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am. This picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or Klaas J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net. What I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are hidden. My quintet of learning machine elements, by the way, is: Conformity Enforcers Diversity Generators Inner Judges Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Hellingwerf's four elements of a neural net are: multiple sub-systems that work in parallel. components that carry out logical operations auto-amplification (inner judges) and crosstalk The odd thing is that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often gotten both arms at least half way around. Onward--Howard In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net << File: ATT00054.html >> << File: ATT00055.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 16:00:00 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:00:00 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Message-ID: <01C547E2.D52945C0.shovland@mindspring.com> If we must use computer metaphors, it may be something more like a combination of neural, massively parallel, and fuzzy logic approaches. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Friday, April 22, 2005 11:02 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on Intelligent Bacteria. And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net. The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and "self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions." This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength down. It's unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences, these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to songs. When a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business, confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the moment. When the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go about more lofty business--like thinking. A practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly open. A gust of wind slips comes through the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone .left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined before. Now that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am. This picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or Klaas J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net. What I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are hidden. My quintet of learning machine elements, by the way, is: Conformity Enforcers Diversity Generators Inner Judges Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Hellingwerf's four elements of a neural net are: multiple sub-systems that work in parallel. components that carry out logical operations auto-amplification (inner judges) and crosstalk The odd thing is that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often gotten both arms at least half way around. Onward--Howard In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net << File: ATT00054.html >> << File: ATT00055.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Sat Apr 23 16:29:41 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 09:29:41 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Scope of bacterial intelligence Message-ID: <01C547E6.FAC323B0.shovland@mindspring.com> Within cells. Between cells. Within colonies. Between colonies. Etc. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net From eshel at physics.ucsd.edu Sat Apr 23 17:00:52 2005 From: eshel at physics.ucsd.edu (Eshel Ben-Jacob) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:00:52 +0200 Subject: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria References: Message-ID: <006301c54826$02853a90$6601a8c0@IBMF68D4578947> Howard, Thanks for the complements and the thoughtful messages. I do agree with Hawking. Currently we are in the process of quantifying the ideas of 1. Latent information embedded in the complexity of the environment. Attached is one of our paper that quantifies the notion of structural complexity and regularity. The idea is that in daily life we intuitively mix the notions related to order vs. disorder and complexity in the sense of capacity for information. In regularity we refer to the axis from pure random sequence to purely periodic one. In terms of complexity both corresponds to the limit of vanishing complexity. Maximum complexity is usually at the crossing from disorder to order ( some refer to it as the edge of chaos) but on the regular side. So you have nested structure of variations ( variations within variations or variations on all time scales) but embedded within some level of regularity. The idea of the definition came from our study of real (not modelled) neural networks and recorded brain activity. We also learned from the networks ( and my own experience during my years in the Navy intelligence) that to extract the latent information by searching for hidden correlations one uses the following principle: 2. The correlation for correlation principle. In analogy of using periodic signal for detecting periodic signal ( like in radio - a word you like) you have to be able to generate a spectrum of possible frequencies until you overlap with the external one. In a similar manner to identify hidden correlations you have to generate a large spectrum of possible correlations. Passing by I should mention that the ability to find hidden correlations is what we do in science. To quote Einstein : "It is a glorious feeling to recognize the unification of a complex of phenomena that appear to direct sense experience as completely separate things". (In many cases we refer to a genius as one who can reveal hidden correlations that other overlook. Well at times they cross the edge and find correlations that do not exist but this is another story.) The next principle I proposed for the bacteria (and any other system) is: 3. The principle of matched complexity. The system needs an internal level of complexity which is sufficiently high in order to extract latent information from the external complexity. I view this matched complexity principle the driving force of evolution that explain the ever increasing level of complexity. In a nutshell the idea is: A single bacterium needs some level of complexity to detect the complexity of the surrounding environment and over the time window between replication. To glean more information the bacteria form cooperative behaviour and generate complex colonies. However for that each individual bacterium needs a higher level of internal complexity for communication and to cope with its external environment which is now has higher level of complexity - the environment becomes both the outside and the rest of the colony. To solve the paradox self-organization leads to the formation of functional modules and spatio-temporal patterns. And than .. (for next time). Additional essential point in my mind which is missed both in the new paper and in hawking book and most of the research on neural networks is the fact that organisms are beyond computers!. A simple statement that refers to the fact that man made computers are subject to the limitation of Godel theorem. And they are based on the idea of digital (Turing machine) computation. I suggest (as is now starts to be realised) that also the brain uses analogue computation provided by the glia cells that are 90% present of the cells in the cortex. We now know that they regulate the synaptic connections the soma excitability and correlations between the neurons by generation of chemical waves. I would argue that the distributed information processing (that includes also self-reference elements - the system changes its self according to the computation) is what sustains the cognitive functions of the brain. This brings us back to the bacteria. As Steve said they do a different kind of information processing (distributed) than the current models of neural networks. I would add that the brain does similar kind as well as the immune system (which is the other cognitive functioning system of our body). There is much more but I do not have time to write it all down in papers ( we also do experiments in recording of brain activity using fMRI EEG and ECoG and it takes much effort to analyse and draw conclusions. Happy Passover, Eshel Eshel Ben-Jacob. Professor of Physics The Maguy-Glass Professor in Physics of Complex Systems eshel at tamar.tau.ac.il ebenjacob at ucsd.edu Home Page: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/ Visit http://physicaplus.org.il - PhysicaPlus the online magazine of the Israel Physical Society School of Physics and Astronomy 10/2004 -10/2005 Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel Center for Theoretical Biological Physics Tel 972-3-640 7845/7604 (Fax) -6425787 University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093-0354 USA Tel (office) 1-858-534 0524 (Fax) -534 7697 ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 8:02 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Intelligent Bacteria Eshel--Thanks for the papers. And you're very, very right. You didn't get the credit you deserve for your work, which in many ways is light years beyond most of the research that's cited in the World Science article on Intelligent Bacteria. And, Todd, many thanks for posting the article. It supports the underlying arguments of The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain--that all of us individual social animals from bacteria to humans are modules in a collective intelligence that follows the laws of a neural net. The article you posted even supports the notion of "inner judges" and "self-destruct mechanisms" when it says, "some network elements can boost the strength of their own interactions." This vaguely implies that network elements can also turn their strength down. It's unfortunate that Jeff Hawkins' model of the way the brain works hasn't been added to the concept of the neural net. Hawkins says that individual modules and groupings of modules in a learning machine have to extract the repeating patterns in their environment. They have to spot repeating themes, repeating strings of signals that come in one note at a time like music. Hawkins compares these temporal sequences, these strings of beads strung out on the thread of time, to songs. When a neuron or a neural grouping gets the hang of one of these songs, it names that tune, sends the name upward to higher layers of cells, then watches out for weirdness, for signs in the stream of inputs flowing past that hint that the tune it called out was not the right one after all. As long as the melody goes the way it should, the grouping of cells keeps quiet and lets the higher layers of cortical cells go about their business, confident that their inferiors have got a handle on the key facts of the moment. When the tune shows signs that it's NOT the one the lower cells named, then the mistaken cells send up distress signals and bring the higher cortical elements in to help figure out just what tune it is. Once that puzzle is solved and the tune has been properly re-identified, the higher level cells are free to go about more lofty business--like thinking. A practical example. You're laying in bed with the lights out and the window open, pondering Descartes and Pascal. You know the room well, so there's norhing going on to distract you. The closet door is slightly open. A gust of wind slips comes through the window. You suddenly notice a really weird shadow moving where the shadow of the closet door should be. But it looks nothing at all like the proper shadow of a closet door. You're alarmed. You drop your airy thinking and try to figure out just what in the world may be intruding on you-- a break-in artist, a Munster, a monster, or any of a dozen other frightening possibilities that flick through your brain. Your hair stands up on the back of your neck. You are scared witless, but you force yourself to go over to the closet door to check. It turns out that someone .left a bathrobe on a hanger dangling from the top of the closet door and a bag you've never seen before leaning against the door's edge. The bag and the wind-swayed bathrobe have made the shadow of a very strange creature, of a bizarre bigfoot or worse, of something you've never seen or even imagined before. Now that you've named that tune (bag, bathrobe, wind, and door), the lower levels of your cortex can go back to silently looking for other potential oddities, leaving the upper layers of your cortex free to agonize over how powerless mankind seems in the face of Pascal's immense, empty universe. And other brain bits can try unsuccesfully to console you with the meager fact that you think, therefore you am. This picture, badly as I've put it, adds a bit more depth to the elements of the neural net that were first explicated back in the 1980s, the model I've used since 1986. Hawkins can upgrade your view of learning machines whether you're using my quintet of learning machine elements or Klaas J. Hellingwerf's quartet of properties of a neural net. What I've left out is something Hawins mentions only in passing--lateral inhibition, the competition that uptweaks some elements and down-tweaks others. Lateral inhibition is important because it's one of the wrinkles of Hawkins' system in which I suspect the inner judges and resource shifters--the windfalls that hit those who've got a handle on the problem and the horrors that descend on those who don't get it--are hidden. My quintet of learning machine elements, by the way, is: Conformity Enforcers Diversity Generators Inner Judges Resource Shifters and Intergroup Tournaments. Hellingwerf's four elements of a neural net are: multiple sub-systems that work in parallel. components that carry out logical operations auto-amplification (inner judges) and crosstalk The odd thing is that these lists of characteristic are not mutually exclusive, they're additive. Each grabs a handful of the skin of a very big elephant. It's an elephant I suspect Eshel has often gotten both arms at least half way around. Onward--Howard In a message dated 4/22/2005 7:13:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, eshel at physics.ucsd.edu writes: Hi to all, The new paper in trends in microibiology is quite interesting but is limited in scope (and references) it does not give a reference to our paper on Bacterial intelligence published in Trends just 8 months ago. He also does not give reference to any of Bassler papers. Attached are both papers. All the best, Eshel ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This Mail Was Scanned By Mail-seCure System at the Tel-Aviv University CC. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Functional-Holography-Published.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 597169 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CELLCOM_Hulata_ver2.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 431060 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Hidden-Manifolds-Warwick.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1028902 bytes Desc: not available URL: From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 19:27:28 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 15:27:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] articles In-Reply-To: <20050423043519.94139.qmail@web30811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050423043519.94139.qmail@web30811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I don't understand how it would be easier for you to just an opening paragraph and a link instead of the entire article. Most e-mail software downloads the entire message before you open it, and the cost of storage on a hard disk is trivial, now on the order of 40 cents per Gigabyte. Even so, you are asking me to do a lot of extra work, and those that would just as soon have the whole article will have to click on the link and wait for the article to appear on their browser. This can take 30 seconds or so, depending on how clogged one's machine is and on how clogged the Internet is. Besides, many articles expire after a week, and you have to pay to get them. If you do view the article and want to keep it, you'll have to save it to a special folder. Unless you type in the subject line of the article as the file name, you'll have problems finding it again. All this takes a great deal of time. As it is now, I can just search my Paleopsych folder for a string somewhere in the subject line. So I think what you are asking me to do creates difficulties for me and for the others, and I cannot see how it would help you. I await input from others. Frank On 2005-04-22, Michael Christopher opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 21:35:19 -0700 (PDT) > From: Michael Christopher > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] articles > > Frank says: > >>> Please advise on how many to send. If five is > enough, say so. If you want all ten, say that too. > I don't want the list to lose members who are > overburdened with too many articles.<< > > --It would be easier for me if you sent a paragraph to > describe each article, plus a link if the article is > available online. Skimming a series of links is much > easier than skimming a few hundred kilobytes of text. > > It's also nice when people are interactive and add > their own thoughts. It's possible to get a huge amount > of information online, but what is really innovative > about internet is the way people from diverse > backgrounds can combine ideas into a synthesis rather > than repeating information that is already out there. > > Michael From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:41:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:41:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Mess with the body clock at your peril Message-ID: Here are some articles for today. Frank Mess with the body clock at your peril http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624964.900&print=true * 23 April 2005 * Helen Phillips THE way patterns of shift work are organised could be causing major health problems, according to a pair of reports commissioned by the UK government body that regulates workplace safety. The reports, prepared for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), show that offshore oil workers adopting the most popular shift pattern have a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes. This pattern also makes workers more tired and inattentive, increasing the chance of accidents and mistakes. Chronobiologist Josephine Arendt and her team at the University of Surrey in Guildford and psychologist Andrew Smith and colleagues at Cardiff University in Wales separately studied the physiological and psychological health of a group of 45 men working on offshore oil rigs. Both teams compared the two main shift schedules operated on a two-week tour of duty. One was a simple 12-hour shift, with workers staying on night shifts or day shifts for the full two weeks. The other was a split rota of seven night shifts followed by seven day shifts. This was more popular with the workers because they were already adapted to night sleeping when they returned home. But it proved worst for their health. Urine tests from workers on the split shift revealed that levels of melatonin, the sleep-regulating hormone normally secreted at night, did not become synchronised to the new sleep times after shift changes. As well as being more tired and less attentive on the job, these unadapted workers showed signs of being at risk of long-term health effects. The men had abnormally high levels of fatty acids circulating in their blood after meals, compared with the day shift or adapted workers. This increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes and other metabolic disorders. "The swing shift is the killer," says Arendt. The obvious conclusion is that workers should try to avoid split shifts and other schedule changes that put their body clocks out of kilter, but Smith points out that the there will be exceptions. "A one-size-fits-all approach is a mistake," he says. The HSE plans to publicise the findings to employers, and to issue recommendations for minimising the dangers, for example by avoiding fatty or sugary snacks at night. But legislation forcing companies to adopt particular shift schedules is unlikely. "It won't change overnight," says Smith. "But it would be rather foolish not to take this on board." Related Articles * [12]Body rhythms set a dangerous beat * [13]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 * 02 April 2005 * [14]Sleep. who needs it? * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 * 06 November 2004 * [16]Night light cancer theory gets new support * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 * 17 February 2003 Weblinks * [18]Josephine Arendt, University of Surrey * [19]http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jare ndt.htm * [20]Andrew Smith, Cardiff University * [21]http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ * [22]Health and Safety Executive * [23]http://www.hse.gov.uk/ References 12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 18. http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jarendt.htm 19. http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jarendt.htm 20. http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ 21. http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ 22. http://www.hse.gov.uk/ 23. http://www.hse.gov.uk/ E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:41:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:41:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Knowledge of gravity hard-wired in the brain Message-ID: Knowledge of gravity hard-wired in the brain http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624965.300&print=true * 23 April 2005 NEWTON may have discovered the laws of gravity while relaxing under an apple tree, but his brain knew about them all along, according to an imaging study. It suggests that our brains have an internal model of gravity that helps us understand how objects move under its influence. Francesco Lacquaniti at the Santa Lucia Foundation and the University of Rome, and his colleagues came up with this idea after observing how poor astronauts are at predicting the motion of objects in zero gravity. Now, using brain imaging, they have pinned down the brain region involved to the vestibular cortex, which handles information from the balance organs in the inner ear. It lit up when subjects saw objects moving normally under the influence of gravity, but was much less active when the movements were unnatural. So the region must be responding to gravity, not just movement. The vestibular cortex seems to build up an internal model of gravity to help predict an object's motion. This is much more efficient than mentally running through thousands of possible types of motion, when most objects move in quite predictable ways, says Lacquaniti. And links to the balance organs may "calibrate" the gravity model. From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:45:15 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:45:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist Special Report on Nanotechnology Message-ID: I think several of these nanotech developments, esp. those connected to bacteria, should be relevant to this list. New Scientist Special Report on Nanotechnology http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology 22 April 2005 [Too many articles to post! E-mail me if you have problems getting any of them.] [61]TOP STORY [62]Building nanomachines out of living bacteria [63]Building nanomachines out of living bacteria Live bacteria could one day act as reconfigurable components for nanoscale electronic circuits 02 April 2005 EXPERT GUIDE Instant Expert: Nanotechnology Imagine a world where microscopic [64]medical implants patrol our arteries, diagnosing ailments and fighting disease; where [65]military battle-suits deflect explosions; where computer chips are no bigger than [66]specks of dust; and where clouds of miniature [67]space probes transmit data from the atmospheres of Mars or Titan. Many incredible claims have been made about the future's nanotechnological applications, but [68]what exactly does nano mean, and why has [69]controversy plagued this emerging technology? Nanotechnology is science and engineering at the scale of atoms and molecules. It is the manipulation and use of materials and devices so tiny that nothing can be built any smaller. [70]more... [71]FAQ [72]FAQ [73]Pick of the Archive [74]Pick of the Archive * [75]Halting nanotech research 'illogical', says pioneer * [76]Invasion of the nanonukes * [77]Fantastic plastic * [78]small wonder [79]more... [80]Briefing notes [81]Briefing Notes * [82]Small is great! * [83]Scratching the surface [84]more... [85]Web Links [86]Web Links * [87]Nanotech issues, Royal Society * [88]US National Nanotech Initiative [89]more... [90]Bookworm [91]Bookworm * [92]Nanotechnology and Homeland Security by Mark Ratner and Dan Ratner * [93]Nanotechnology by Mark Ratner and Dan Ratner [94]more... ARTICLES [95]Recharging a battery in three minutes flat Premium The new lithium-ion battery can recharge 80% of its power in just 1 minute, and be fully charged after 3 - without losing its original capacity Technology - 09 April 2005 [96]Mechanical chip promises huge data storage The "Millipede" works at the nanoscale and boasts thousands of cantilevers that read and write data - one chip could store 25 DVDs' worth Breaking News - 14 March 2005 [97]Is nanotechnology "the next GM"? Nanotechnology has its critics, while others say it offers huge benefits. Who is right? Unless governments fund it properly, we will never know, says Ann Dowling Comment - 12 March 2005 [98]Light microscope sees the nanoworld Premium Take one light microscope, add lasers, a metal coating and water, and what do you see - nanoparticles. And they said it could not be done Technology - 12 March 2005 [99]Charge a battery in just six minutes A rechargeable battery that can be fully charged incredibly fast and lasts 10 times as long as today's models is showing promise in the US Breaking News - 07 March 2005 [100]Gold cure for heavy industry's hangover Premium Gold may hold the key to cleaning up a persistent toxic pollutant from groundwater much faster and cheaper than is possible today Technology - 05 March 2005 [101]Plastic pimples make better hard discs Premium A coating of microscopic polystyrene beads dramatically increases the memory capacity of hard discs, as well as cutting computing time Technology - 26 February 2005 [102]Nanoscopic 'ruler' could provide microchip benchmark Atomic lattices of silicon can be used to gauge tiny distances with great accuracy, leading to standardisation in nano-engineering Breaking News - 25 February 2005 [103]Nanotubes get to grips with the 'burger bug' Premium Stripping potentially fatal bacteria from drinking water supplies could be the first real-world job for carbon nanotubes Technology - 19 February 2005 [104]'Bio-barcoding' promises early Alzheimer's diagnosis Combining magnetic and gold nanoparticles with strands of DNA could allow early detection - and possibly treatment - of the disease Breaking News - 31 January 2005 [105]Stuffed buckyballs could mean clearer MRI scans Premium A carbon buckyball has been opened, stuffed with a foreign molecule, and then "stitched up" again - revolutionary new materials could follow Technology - 22 January 2005 [106]'Smart bombs' to deliver fatal blast to tumours Exploding capsules could one day be used to deliver cancer drugs with pinpoint accuracy, using nanoscale polymer capsules and lasers Breaking News - 07 January 2005 [107]Buckets of bacteria may grow optical computers Premium Semiconducting nanocrystals have been grown inside bacteria - the innards of future optical computers could be made inside microbes Technology - 18 December 2004 [108]One drip could save our microchips Premium Using a drop of water, IBM etches a chip more finely than is possible with existing technology, meaning chips can get even smaller Technology - 18 December 2004 [109]Colour-coded tags show DNA damage Premium A molecular machine that can attach different-coloured glowing molecules to damaged DNA may offer new ways to track cell death Technology - 11 December 2004 [110]DNA 'Velcro' binds nanoparticles The ability to fasten and then separate nanoparticles could lead to the production of "self-constructing" materials, say researchers Breaking News - 02 December 2004 [111]Nano-drug may starve tumours Gold nanoparticles might one day help treat cancer by cutting off the blood supply to tumours, starving them of oxygen News - 27 November 2004 [112]Smallest 'test tube' scoops world record Scientists have produced a stable chemical reaction within an inert carbon nanotube - the smallest "test tube" in history Breaking News - 23 November 2004 [113]Molecular piston shuttles into life Premium The molecule-scale machine could be used to drive future nano-scale devices or form part of a molecular memory Technology - 20 November 2004 [114]Magnetic catalysts work like a dream Premium Chemists have discovered a neat trick to recycle expensive catalysts Technology - 13 November 2004 [115]Drug-delivering contact lenses revealed The nano-engineered lenses contain channels and pores that allow the gradual release of medication Breaking News - 29 October 2004 [116]Drugs delivered by robots in the blood A tadpole-sized swimming robot may eventually be used to ferry drugs to particular parts of the body or unblock arteries Breaking News - 01 October 2004 [117]Harmful bacteria shown up by nanoparticles An ultrasensitive nanoparticle test for E. coli can detect a single bacterial cell in just minutes, beating current tests by up to 48 hours Breaking News - 11 October 2004 [118]Buckyballs made safer for humans The soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules, which hold promise for nanotechnology - but cause brain damage in fish - could be neutralised Breaking News - 28 September 2004 [119]Give it to us straight Premium There is only one way to make sure that new technologies are safe Comment - 11 September 2004 [120]Nickel 'nanodots' could mean tiny hard drives Terabytes of data could be stored on a computer drive the size of a postage stamp using the minuscule magnetic dots Breaking News - 07 September 2004 [121]Most nanotech poses 'no new risks' But new regulations are needed to ensure nanoparticles do not damage public health, urges a UK government study Breaking News - 29 July 2004 [122]Nanotubes offer solution to one of life's mysteries Squeezing water through carbon nanotubes could shed light on how it moves with ease across cell membranes News - 24 July 2004 [123]The Prince and the particles Prince Charles now denies that he ever believed that the world would be reduced to an amorphous mess by an army of self-replicating nanobots Comment - 17 July 2004 [124]How to build a nanomachine Premium You can create nanoscale machines by copying the way the immune system latches onto invading microbes Technology - 10 July 2004 [125]Controllable nano-diode created The tiny carbon nanotube diode is the most efficient yet - it could be a step forward in making minuscule electronic circuits Breaking News - 08 July 2004 [126]U-turn on goo The futurist who dreamed up the vision of self-replicating nanomachines spreading across the planet has publicly renounced his idea News - 12 June 2004 [127]Insuring nanotech After suffering as a result of climate change, the insurance industry has turned its attention to the possible risks posed by nanotechnology News - 22 May 2004 [128]DNA robot takes its first steps A microscopic biped with legs just 10 nanometres long and fashioned from fragments of DNA is being hailed as a breakthrough Breaking News - 06 May 2004 [129]Buckyballs cause brain damage in fish Exposure to the nanoparticles caused significant brain damage, raising concerns over possible environmental harm from nanotechnology Breaking News - 29 March 2004 [130]What's in a nano? Despite ongoing controversy, a survey shows that most people haven't even heard of nanotechnology News - 20 March 2004 [131]Tiny 'elevator' most complex nanomachine yet A molecular elevator powered by chemical reactions could one day deliver drugs or be used to tightly control reactions Breaking News - 18 March 2004 [132]Nanopulses tweak the innards of cells The non-invasive technique is still in its infancy, but initial experiments suggest it might one day be useful in treating cancer or tackling obesity Breaking News - 06 February 2004 [133]Nano-economies A moratorium on the commercial development of nanotechnology, will damage poor nations, according to a survey of nanotech research worldwide News - 31 January 2004 [134]Nanotech spy eyes life inside the cell Premium Biochemists are hoping to deploy viruses as "nano-cameras" to get a unique picture of what goes on inside living cells Technology - 31 January 2004 [135]Why fighting nanotech is anti-globalisation's new cause Premium Environmentalists concerns may relate more to world order than to the safety of the science News - 20 December 2003 [136]Nano-transistor self-assembles using biology For the first time, a functional electronic device creates itself by harnessing the construction capabilities of DNA, proteins and antibodies Breaking News - 20 November 2003 [137]Nanoparticles clearly finger the culprit Tiny oil-seeking glass spheres could give police the best fingerprints yet, suggests new research Breaking News - 08 November 2003 [138]Confusion reigns in the nanoworld Premium Significant discrepancies have emerged in the way European labs measure nanometre-sized features Technology - 08 November 2003 [139]No nanotech ban, says Greenpeace Premium The environmental group acknowledges that nanotechnology may not be all bad News - 26 July 2003 [140]Small stuff, big questions Premium Douglas Parr accepts that nanotechnology cannot be labelled universally good or bad. But neither should it be foisted on an unsuspecting world Comment - 26 July 2003 [141]Nanotechnology may create new organs Tiny polymer structures can be used as a skeleton to build an intricate network of blood vessels - crucial to creating complex organs for humans Breaking News - 08 July 2003 [142]Tiny terrors Premium Nano-robots have been striking fear into royalty and governments. Robert L. Park wonders what all the fuss is about Comment - 05 July 2003 [143]Anti-nanotech campaigners declare war on tiny things Premium If environmental activists have their way, nanotechnology will become as much of a social pariah as genetically modified foods News - 21 June 2003 References 61. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/nanotechnology/mg18624936.900 62. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg18624936.900 63. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg18624936.900 64. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17223114.200 65. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/dn2043 66. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg16622374.300 67. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg16922721.900 68. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17122998.200 69. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17924023.100 70. 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137. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/dn4348 138. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg18024202.800 139. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17924051.000 140. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17924053.500 141. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/dn3916 142. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17924023.100 143. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nanotechnology/mg17824000.900 From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:46:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:46:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Last rights: The battle for a dignified death Message-ID: Does anyone know about the attitudes toward death in paleolithic times? Was there a single attitude? I doubt it. Last rights: The battle for a dignified death http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624967.000&print=true * 23 April 2005 * Laura Spinney * Laura Spinney is a writer based in London [13]Assisted dying and the law [14]Enlarge image Assisted dying and the law LAST December Alayne Buckley, a 61-year-old former receptionist from Wakefield in the north of England, told New Scientist about the dilemma she was facing. Buckley had been diagnosed with motor neuron disease, also called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive paralysing condition that is almost always fatal. By Christmas, Buckley needed a ventilator to help her breathe, and she was spending most of her time sitting in a chair, or occasionally shuffling short distances using a Zimmer frame. She knew that within a few months she would most likely be completely paralysed and unable to communicate, while still being able to see, hear and feel pain. Buckley wanted to die before reaching this "glass coffin" stage, as she called it. So she faced a choice: either she could switch off her ventilator and suffocate to death, or she could travel to Switzerland, where a doctor could legally mix up a lethal cocktail for her to drink. Suffocation is not a pleasant way to die. But the trip to Switzerland would also throw up problems. In the UK it is illegal for anyone to aid a suicide, so she would have to make the journey on her own. But her mobility was dwindling fast. "The ridiculous thing is that I will have to go while I'm still able to move, which may be before I'm ready to die," she said. Euthanasia and similar end-of-life issues are rarely out of the news these days. A succession of patients keep making headlines in the UK as they fight for what they see as their right to a dignified death. And the US has recently witnessed an unedifying public battle over the removal of a feeding tube from Terry Schiavo, the 41-year-old woman from Florida, who suffered brain damage after a heart attack in 1990 and died at the end of March. It seems that rather than helping people at the end of their lives, some advances in medical technology have made dying a more prolonged and undignified business. But there are signs that around the world the tide of public opinion is turning in favour of what is sometimes called mercy killing. Switzerland is not the only country where assisting dying is legal: in the past decade, the Netherlands, Belgium and the US state of Oregon have legalised the act in some form. And there are campaigns to follow in their footsteps elsewhere, including the UK, other US states and South Australia. In Britain a proposed right-to-die law won tentative support this month from a parliamentary committee. The Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill would enable a dying adult who was suffering unbearably to receive medical assistance to die. After considering the experiences of other countries, the committee recommended that the bill should be further debated in parliament. "I believe the problems and the suffering caused by the present laws will become increasingly difficult for parliament to ignore," says Joel Joffe, the House of Lords member who is championing the bill. Assisted dying is not a particularly modern controversy. When taking the Hippocratic oath, a pledge dating from 400 BC, trainee doctors had to swear to "give no deadly medicine to any one". This was despite the relatively permissive attitude to suicide in ancient Greece. The Bible is not generally seen as frowning on suicide, with Christian disapproval of the act dating from about the 4th century, after St Augustine interpreted "thou shalt not kill" as condemning suicide as well as murder. Switzerland has the longest history of allowing assisted suicide - although not euthanasia (see "Terminology"). A law dating from 1942 states that it is only illegal to help someone to commit suicide "with a selfish motive", which is widely interpreted to mean that disinterested helpers are safe from prosecution. Because Switzerland is the only place in the world that allows such help for non-residents, sick people from all over Europe and occasionally the US have trekked there to receive help in dying. Assisted dying seems to be most prevalent in the liberal Netherlands, where the courts have tolerated both assisted suicide and euthanasia since the early 1970s. They were specifically legalised only in 2002, however, after lobbying by the Royal Dutch Medical Association, which argued that doctors needed legal protection. In the US, doctor-assisted suicide has been mooted in several states, including California and Michigan, but it is only in Oregon that this act has been legalised, since 1997. The federal government has made several attempts to overturn this law, but so far it has been unsuccessful. And in 2002 Belgium legalised euthanasia by doctors, but not assisted suicide. In the rest of the world, however, it remains illegal for anyone - doctor, nurse, friend or relative - to help someone commit suicide or carry out euthanasia, no matter how ill the patient. The law generally distinguishes between "active" euthanasia, when a doctor administers a lethal drug, and what is sometimes called passive euthanasia, when a life-saving treatment is rejected or withdrawn. Such treatment withdrawal is completely legal, although sometimes a patient's relatives disagree with the decisions of medical staff - or with each other, as in Schiavo's case. So what kind of circumstances might lead someone to try to hasten their own death? According to Exit, a Swiss organisation that helps in around 100 suicides a year, about 70 per cent have cancer. Other common conditions are heart disease, AIDS and neurological disorders such as motor neuron disease. Patients seek relief from symptoms such as unremitting severe pain, breathing difficulties such as choking and suffocating, and nausea and vomiting. Get-out clause Drugs can relieve some symptoms, of course, but most strong painkillers have unpleasant side effects, points out Michael Irwin, a retired general practitioner and former chairman of the UK's Voluntary Euthanasia Society. For example, at high doses, opioids such as morphine can cause nausea, vomiting, severe constipation and sedation to the point of unconsciousness. High doses of opioids can also hasten death, because they depress activity in the brain's respiratory centre, slowing down the breathing rate. In many countries doctors may legally give a dose of painkillers high enough to accelerate death, as long as their primary goal is pain relief. This get-out clause is sometimes called the doctrine of double effect. Estimates of the proportion of terminally ill patients whose pain cannot be relieved range from 3 to 7 per cent. "The 5 per cent or so who remain with severe pain can only be helped by being placed in a coma, not just made sleepy," says Irwin. Not all doctors believe the answer for these patients is to legalise assisted dying. Nigel Sykes, medical director of St Christopher's Hospice in London, argues that pain relief is improving all the time. He points out that in the past 10 years several new opioids have become available, giving patients more chance of finding a drug that suits them. There are also new therapies to combat the side effects of the painkillers, such as anti-nausea medicines. "We are gradually whittling away at that group of patients who didn't do well on the long-standing drugs," says Sykes. But just because drugs are available does not necessarily mean patients receive them. A report published in 2001 by the US Institute of Medicine in Washington DC found that a quarter of cancer patients die in severe pain. There are numerous practical and financial obstacles to patients getting the drugs they need, ranging from inexperienced medical staff to lack of resources. Palliative care, the branch of medicine devoted to helping dying patients, has only recently been recognised as a distinct specialty. Generally things are improving; the number of countries with some form of palliative care service has doubled from 60 in 1994 to roughly twice that today. But even in the US only about a third of academic medical centres have palliative care programmes. Overall, expertise remains patchy. "There are definitely places where you would rather not die," says Timothy Quill, a palliative care specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. Opponents of assisted dying argue that the priority instead should be to overhaul palliative care services and provide more practical help so the terminally ill do not feel they are a burden. Not only would it be unsafe to introduce euthanasia before good palliative care is available to everyone, says Sykes, "but it would be unsafe to do so before we make all social and nursing care free". Experience suggests that the two goals are by no means mutually exclusive. Since 1997 Oregon has seen increased hospice referrals and high attendance of doctors at palliative care conferences. In the Netherlands too, the founding of hospices and the development of palliative care as a separate specialty has only seriously begun in the past three years. What other insights can be gained from looking at areas where assisted dying is legal? A major fear of opponents is that no matter how tightly it were initially controlled, it would gradually become increasingly common - the so-called slippery slope argument. "In euthanasia there are two choices: you either open the door or leave it shut," says Peter Hildering, chairman of the Dutch Physicians' League, a group of about 450 mainly Christian doctors who strongly oppose their country's law. "It is impossible to set this door ajar." Some of the most vociferous campaigners against assisted dying are disabled rights groups, who argue that if assisted dying were legalised, the criteria would broaden until disabled people came under pressure to end their lives. Hildering believes that the Netherlands is already sliding down the slippery slope. "The discussion has now reached the people who cannot decide for themselves: people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, newborns with a defect," he says. Slippery slope? Certainly the official surveys of assisted dying in the Netherlands suggest there are about 1000 cases a year where euthanasia is carried out without a patient's explicit request. Dutch doctors say these are mainly cancer patients who are suffering terribly in their final days but are not conscious enough to make the request, or severely disabled newborn babies who seem certain to die. But the surveys also show that rates of euthanasia and assisted suicide have remained stable at 2.7 per cent of all deaths. And the latest set of figures, from 2003, show doctors are actually getting stricter in their judgements on whether or not patients meet the official criteria for assisted dying (The Lancet, vol 362, p 395). The figures do not seem to support the slippery slope argument. In Oregon, surveys suggest that so far the law is being used with restraint. Doctor-assisted suicide accounted for only 0.1 per cent of deaths in Oregon in the three years to 2000. "Cases are relatively rare," says Quill. "People are using the system as it was intended." The findings from Oregon also suggest that not all patients who request assisted suicide go through with it. Almost half of those who get a prescription for the lethal cocktail of barbiturates do not take the 200 millilitres of bitter liquid. Rob Jonquiere, managing director of the Netherlands Right to Die Society, says that tallies with his experiences. To know they have control of their death is an enormous relief for people, he says, and sometimes that is enough. "No longer obsessed by their fear of death, they can spend their energy on living the life that is left to them." So what is the likelihood that people in other countries will one day be able to receive help in dying? In fact they already do. In the UK, for example, estimates of the proportion of doctors who have helped patients die range from 4 to 12 per cent. According to a 1998 survey of nearly 2000 US doctors, 16 per cent of those who had received a request to hasten death had done so (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 338, p 1193). Irwin believes that many UK doctors carry out euthanasia while claiming their primary motive is pain relief. "Doctors hide behind the hypocrisy of the double effect," he says. The last attempt to legalise assisted dying in the UK was in 1994, when the parliamentary bill was thrown out. Joffe's new bill has had a warmer reception. The House of Lords committee that investigated it gathered a huge volume of evidence, visiting the Netherlands, Oregon and Switzerland to gain insights from their experience ([15]www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldasdy.htm). Earlier this month the committee recommended that an amended version of the bill be further debated in parliament. It is by no means certain to become law, especially as the British Medical Association remains opposed. But several other influential doctors' bodies, such as the Royal College of General Practitioners, have shifted to a position of neutrality on the issue. Supporters of euthanasia have interpreted the Lords' report as a tentative first step on the road to legalising assisted dying. Whatever the outcome, it is too late to help Alayne Buckley. New Scientist has learned that she died last month. Her family do not wish to discuss the circumstances, although they agreed to the details of her final interview being published in this article. In future others in Buckley's position may not have to face her agonising dilemma. They could instead face other, equally hard choices - such as who to entrust with their death. Terminology ASSISTED SUICIDE - when someone receives help in taking their own life. DOCTOR-ASSISTED SUICIDE - when a physician helps someone to take their own life, usually by supplying lethal drugs, although the patient must self-administer them or the act is classed as euthanasia. EUTHANASIA - when another party performs the actions that directly end someone's life, sometimes divided into active and passive... ACTIVE EUTHANASIA - when an active step is taken to end life, such as directly administering medication. PASSIVE EUTHANASIA - when drugs or therapy such as a feeding tube are rejected or withdrawn. Also called TREATMENT WITHDRAWAL, this is usually legal. ASSISTED DYING - umbrella term for assisted suicide and active euthanasia. ADVANCE DIRECTIVE - a plan for what kind of medical care someone would like if they become incapacitated, for example if they are in a coma. Can relieve relatives of the responsibility for difficult decisions about treatment withdrawal. An advance directive that comes into effect only when someone is terminally ill is known as a LIVING WILL. References 13. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2496/24967001.jpg 14. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2496/24967001.jpg 15. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldasdy.htm From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:47:33 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:47:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Norman Newell, 96, Scientist Who Studied Dying Species, Has Died Message-ID: Norman Newell, 96, Scientist Who Studied Dying Species, Has Died http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/obituaries/23newell.html By [1]JEREMY PEARCE Dr. Norman D. Newell, an influential paleontologist who challenged opponents of evolutionary theory and helped shape theories explaining the mass extinctions of species, died on Monday at his home in Leonia, N.J., his family said. He was 96. In a wide-ranging career that included scholarship, fieldwork and popular writing, he taught at Columbia and spent four decades as a curator of invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Dr. Newell pursued his interests in the evolution of living and fossil bivalve mollusks, the formation and ecology of coral reefs and the geological history of the Peruvian Andes. His work on mass extinctions began in the 1950's, when he began to look at the disappearance of certain clams and other mollusks from the fossil record in Texas. He compared clams to other marine invertebrates in the Upper Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic periods - about 245 million years ago - and eventually concluded that the extinctions were a result of changes in sea levels and a fatal retreat of warm and shallow seas. Although other scientists had been aware of the marine extinctions, Dr. Newell was an early and dedicated investigator of their causes and the conditions surrounding them. Dr. Niles Eldredge, a curator in the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, and Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the essayist and Harvard paleontologist who died in 2002, were students of Dr. Newell's at Columbia. In the 1970's, they developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in evolution, which is the notion that transitions in species take place periodically, during intense periods of activity and not necessarily as part of a steady and gradual process. Dr. Eldredge said yesterday that Dr. Newell became "a voice crying in the wilderness" in explaining the evolutionary importance of mass extinctions "at a time when no one else in the field was talking about them." "Now, increasingly in evolutionary thinking," he added, "we recognize that extinction triggers what happens with the history of life, and is part and parcel with the evolution of life." In 1947, Dr. Newell led an expedition to the Peruvian Andes, near a region that he had previously helped to map, to collect marine fossils from elevations above 10,000 feet. In 1952, he led a group of scientists from the Museum of Natural History to study South Pacific atolls that were formed by coral reefs. The group landed on the atoll of Raroia, where Dr. Newell examined the ecology and sedimentation of reef systems. In later studies of coral reefs in the Bahamas in the 1960's, Dr. Newell brought "the study of fossils into the realm of ecology and managed to reconstruct what they were like in living communities," Dr. John Imbrie, emeritus professor of paleo-oceanography at Brown University, said yesterday. Later in his career, Dr. Newell contributed to the public debate pitting theories of creationism against evolution. His 1982 book "Creation and Evolution: Myth or Reality?" was intended for a popular audience and became "a ringing defense of Darwinian evolution that makes it very clear that nobody in science disagrees that man has evolved," Dr. Eldredge said. Dr. Newell continued to study extinction and proposed that the earth in the late 20th century was experiencing "one of the greatest of all mass extinctions." He attributed the losses of hundreds of species to ecological disturbances caused by humans. Indeed, a 1987 paper written by Dr. Newell and a museum colleague, Dr. Leslie Marcus, found a nearly direct correlation between an increase in world population and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The paper was published in Palaios, a journal of the Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, and found that emissions of carbon dioxide were "almost wholly dependent on human activities with only very minor contributions from natural causes." Norman Dennis Newell was born in Chicago. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kansas and a doctorate in geology from Yale. He taught at the University of Wisconsin before 1945, when he joined the Museum of Natural History, where he remained for the rest of his career. He was named a curator emeritus in 1977. Dr. Newell was president of the Society for the Study of Evolution in 1949. He was elected president of the Paleontological Society in 1960 and 1961. In 1978 he was awarded the American Museum of Natural History's Gold Medal for Achievement in Science. He is survived by his wife, the former Gillian Wormall. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JEREMY%20PEARCE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JEREMY%20PEARCE&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sat Apr 23 23:49:24 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:49:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNET: Next big step for the Web--or a detour? Message-ID: We'll get a global brain, one way or another. End of articles for today. Next big step for the Web--or a detour? http://news.com.com/2102-1032_3-5605922.html?tag=st.util.print By Paul Festa 2_3-5605922.html Story last modified Wed Mar 09 08:11:00 PST 2005 SAN FRANCISCO--Is the "Semantic Web" the new Internet, or a complex technology in search of a problem to solve? That's a question that advocates attending the [6]Semantic Technology Conference here this week hope to put to rest. Standards advocates, venture capitalists, computer scientists and technology executives are meeting at the three-day conference to discuss enterprise applications for the Semantic Web--the World Wide Web Consortium's growing collection of protocols designed to make a wealth of new information accessible and reusable through the Web. [bernerslee.gif] Attempting to quell widespread skepticism, standards advocates say recent implementations of Semantic Web protocols by large technology companies herald the arrival of the Internet's next evolutionary phase. Backers of the technology--led by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee, an Englishman who was [7]knighted last year for his creation of the Web's first protocols--make big claims for it, comparing its advent to the dawn of the Web 10 years ago. Just as the Web encompassed existing Internet technologies while adding its revolutionary system of hyperlinks, so, they claim, will the Semantic Web give birth to vastly more powerful ways of gleaning information from the world's computer network. News.context What's new: Advocates of the Semantic Web say it will give birth to vastly more powerful ways of gleaning information from the world's computer network. Bottom line: [highimpact.gif] Claims about the technology's potential are being tempered by concerns about personal privacy and technological complexity--and worries that the Semantic Web is no more than pie-in-the-sky artificial intelligence research. Tim Berners-Lee, though, says he heard the same notes of skeptism regard the World Wide Web. [8]More stories on activities of the World Wide Web Consortium Such claims are being measured against concerns about personal privacy and technological complexity, and against perceptions that the Semantic Web activity is pie-in-the-sky artificial intelligence research that's distracting the consortium from its mission of maintaining fundamental "good enough" Web protocols. What's more, some analysts and technologists who follow the W3C's work closely say that even after years of work and the publication of [9]several foundational documents, they still have no idea what the Semantic Web is. "I'm not against any attempts to do more sophisticated knowledge management on the Web," said [10]Peter O'Kelley, an analyst with the Burton Group. "But it's not entirely clearly to me what problem these guys think they're solving. The simplicity and robustness of the Web we have today is one of the things that's made it so successful. The Semantic Web is not going to be as broadly applicable as the technologies we have today. With all due respect to Sir Tim, there's a lot of mileage left in the Web as we know it." Berners-Lee said in an interview that the haze of confusion surrounding the Semantic Web activity has a familiar ring. "It's akin to the responses I got years ago when I was trying to explain this Web thing to people, especially in industry," Berners-Lee said. "The idea of a universal information space with identifiers and one-way links was a paradigm shift. We didn't have the vocabulary then to describe the things we take for granted now with regards to the Web in general. So it is with the Semantic Web." Selling the concept This week's conference is intended, in part, to familiarize the vocabulary of the Semantic Web and sell a business-oriented audience on the idea that applications of the protocols are not only possible, but are already in use by companies including Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia and Oracle. Panels at the conference range from "The Semantic Broker as e-Commerce Enabler" and "Ontological Semantic Cognitive Data Measurement and Business Intelligence." Enterprise and government case studies will also be presented. The Semantic Web protocols aim to let computers distinguish different kinds of data. Armed with those distinctions, applications could more automatically trade information, for example between an online address book and a cell phone. A Web site could automatically reconfigure itself on the fly based on the needs of a particular visitor. Search engines could narrow down results with greater precision. "This is about connecting the data to its definition and context," said [11]Eric Miller, Semantic Web activity lead for the W3C, in a Tuesday [12]keynote address to several hundred conference participants. "We're moving from a Web of documents to a Web of data. The W3C acknowledges that existing technologies already satisfy some of the needs the Semantic Web is designed to fill. One is the consortium's XML recommendation for creating highly descriptive and computer-friendly mark-up languages. Others lie in rapidly evolving database management systems. But Berners-Lee and others developing the new technology envision a comprehensive shift in the way data is exposed to the Web. "When a large enterprise designs lots of database schemas and XML schemas, the designers are making arbitrary design choices about exactly how to build the system," Berners-Lee said. "These choices have no actual connection to the real application, yet they are baked into the system. Anyone who uses the data has to know what these decisions are." Key goals for the Semantic Web architects include reuse of data and what backers call "recombinant effects." They hope that by letting computers digest and exchange information about context and meaning--a word that raises the hackles of artificial intelligence critics--they will allow data to survive the systems where it originated and traverse different applications as easily as browsers traverse the Web's billions of pages today. As that data takes on a virtual life of its own, it could be exploited and combined in unexpected and unexpectedly profitable ways. "The really exciting thing isn't that you can merge your own data between applications--that's like links on your own Web site," Berners-Lee said. "The really exciting thing happens when others have their data in a mergeable format and make it available. When that public information becomes mergeable, we're in for the next, very pronounced stage of Web evolution." Security worries That brave new world of interchangable data--"exposing data hiding in documents, servers and databases," in Miller's words--elicits both skepticism and alarm from critics of the emerging project. One concern is that businesses with a Semantic Web presence may have a new headache in preventing information from being unintentionally shared. "We don't want to have this universal network of knowledge that makes everything accessible to all parties," said the Burton Groups O'Kelley. "Companies need to be circumspect about disclosure." The W3C, acknowledging concerns about corporate and personal privacy, says it plans a Semantic Web rules system for information sharing. The consortium is calling for position papers by March 18 for its April 27-28 [13]workshop on rule languages for interoperability in Washington, D.C. Even though crucial protocols are still in the idea phase, the W3C is insisting that the Web's next big evolutionary shift has already begun. The W3C's Miller devoted much of his keynote address--titled "The Semantic Web is Here"--to existing examples of Semantic Web technologies being developed or rolled out by major companies. Nokia, for example, maintains a long-standing [14]Semantic Web activity of its own and has made its Semantic Web toolkit, known as [15]Wilbur, available on the SourceForge.net open-source development site. Miller hailed the way Nokia has used Semantic Web specifications, particularly RDF (Resource Description Framework), in its Series 60 phones and on its [16]developer forum. In one of Miller's examples, RDF metadata, or data about data, let the phones communicate to Web sites about how much bandwidth they have. In another, RDF lets Nokia automatically serve pages individually tailored for developers of particular applications for particular phones. Miller also cited other examples: [17]HP's use of Semantic Web technologies in its work building an [18]online education resource for the government of Singapore; the [19]IBM Internet Technology Group's development of Semantic Web applications, especially those in the life sciences; Adobe's addition of RDF-based XMP ([20]eXtensible Metadata Platform) in its Creative Suite, which Adobe says sits on more than 700,000 computers; and Oracle's [21]inclusion of the RDF Network Data Model in its Oracle Database 10.2, due later in the year. Miller also laid out plans to spread the Semantic Web religion. He said he plans to ask the W3C membership to endorse a working group devoted to Semantic Web education and communication, and he also plans a Semantic Web symposium for CTOs and CIOs June 22-24 at a yet-to-be-determined West Coast location. After years of being called AI throwbacks with their heads in the clouds, Semantic Web backers point to these real-world implementations with evident satisfaction. "The Semantic Web is starting to take off now," said Berners-Lee. "It is not yet so developed that (implementers) keep bumping into people doing related things yet--we are not yet really seeing the benefit of application areas being connected together in unexpected ways. But in certain areas, the critical mass has been passed. At the recent [22]Semantic Web and life sciences workshop...there was serious excitement about the opportunities in integrating across life science disciplines, like genomics, proteomics, clinical trail and epidemiological data and so on." References 6. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.semantic-conference.com%2F&siteId=3&oId=2102-1032_3-5605922&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 7. http://news.com.com/Call+him+Sir+Tim+Berners-Lee/2100-1028_3-5272437.html?tag=nl 8. http://news.search.com/search?advanced=1&cat=303&q=w3c&subsection=headline&sourceint=1278&start_month=Jan&start_day=1&start_year=2003&end_month=Dec&end_day=31&end_year=2005&x=17&y=14 9. http://news.com.com/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html?tag=nl 10. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fpbokelly.blogspot.com%2F&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 11. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FPeople%2FEM%2F&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 12. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2005%2FTalks%2F0308-semweb-em%2F&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 13. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2004%2F12%2Frules-ws%2Fcfp&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 14. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nokia.com%2Fnokia%2F0%2C%2C5176%2C00.html%2F&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 15. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwilbur-rdf.sourceforge.net%2F&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 16. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.forum.nokia.com%2Fmain.html&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 17. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hpl.hp.com%2Fsemweb%2Fhpl-research.htm&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 18. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2005%2FTalks%2F0308-semweb-em%2F%3Fn%3D14&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 19. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2005%2FTalks%2F0308-semweb-em%2F%3Fn%3D16&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 20. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2005%2FTalks%2F0308-semweb-em%2F%3Fn%3D17&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 21. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2005%2FTalks%2F0308-semweb-em%2F%3Fn%3D18&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex 22. http://dw.com.com/redir?destUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2004%2F07%2Fswls-ws.html&siteId=3&oId=/W3C+recommends+Semantic+Web+specs/2100-1032_3-5156243.html&ontId=1023&lop=nl.ex From kendulf at shaw.ca Sat Apr 23 23:58:12 2005 From: kendulf at shaw.ca (Val Geist) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 16:58:12 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Mess with the body clock at your peril References: Message-ID: <003a01c54860$4ecc0160$873e4346@yourjqn2mvdn7x> Dear Frank, I appreciate your effort. I cannot read every one, but I scan them for nuggets - and I find such! Thanks! Sincerely, Val Geist ----- Original Message ----- From: "Premise Checker" To: Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2005 4:41 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] NS: Mess with the body clock at your peril > Here are some articles for today. > Frank > > > Mess with the body clock at your peril > http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624964.900&print=true > * 23 April 2005 > * Helen Phillips > > THE way patterns of shift work are organised could be causing major > health problems, according to a pair of reports commissioned by the UK > government body that regulates workplace safety. > > The reports, prepared for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), show > that offshore oil workers adopting the most popular shift pattern have > a higher risk of heart disease and diabetes. This pattern also makes > workers more tired and inattentive, increasing the chance of accidents > and mistakes. > > Chronobiologist Josephine Arendt and her team at the University of > Surrey in Guildford and psychologist Andrew Smith and colleagues at > Cardiff University in Wales separately studied the physiological and > psychological health of a group of 45 men working on offshore oil > rigs. Both teams compared the two main shift schedules operated on a > two-week tour of duty. One was a simple 12-hour shift, with workers > staying on night shifts or day shifts for the full two weeks. The > other was a split rota of seven night shifts followed by seven day > shifts. This was more popular with the workers because they were > already adapted to night sleeping when they returned home. But it > proved worst for their health. > > Urine tests from workers on the split shift revealed that levels of > melatonin, the sleep-regulating hormone normally secreted at night, > did not become synchronised to the new sleep times after shift > changes. As well as being more tired and less attentive on the job, > these unadapted workers showed signs of being at risk of long-term > health effects. The men had abnormally high levels of fatty acids > circulating in their blood after meals, compared with the day shift or > adapted workers. This increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes > and other metabolic disorders. "The swing shift is the killer," says > Arendt. > > The obvious conclusion is that workers should try to avoid split > shifts and other schedule changes that put their body clocks out of > kilter, but Smith points out that the there will be exceptions. "A > one-size-fits-all approach is a mistake," he says. > > The HSE plans to publicise the findings to employers, and to issue > recommendations for minimising the dangers, for example by avoiding > fatty or sugary snacks at night. But legislation forcing companies to > adopt particular shift schedules is unlikely. "It won't change > overnight," says Smith. "But it would be rather foolish not to take > this on board." > > Related Articles > > * [12]Body rhythms set a dangerous beat > * [13]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 > * 02 April 2005 > * [14]Sleep. who needs it? > * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 > * 06 November 2004 > * [16]Night light cancer theory gets new support > * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 > * 17 February 2003 > > Weblinks > > * [18]Josephine Arendt, University of Surrey > * [19]http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jare > ndt.htm > * [20]Andrew Smith, Cardiff University > * [21]http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ > * [22]Health and Safety Executive > * [23]http://www.hse.gov.uk/ > > References > > 12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 > 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624935.100 > 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 > 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424725.200 > 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 > 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3400 > 18. > http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jarendt.htm > 19. > http://www.surrey.ac.uk/SBMS/ACADEMICS_homepage/arendt_jo/jarendt.htm > 20. http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ > 21. http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ > 22. http://www.hse.gov.uk/ > 23. http://www.hse.gov.uk/ > > E-mail me if you have problems getting the referenced articles. > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. > Version: 7.0.308 / Virus Database: 266.10.2 - Release Date: 4/21/2005 > > From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Apr 24 00:13:50 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:13:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] list format In-Reply-To: <200504231659.j3NGxJo23561@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050424001350.72958.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Lynn says: >>For me, ten is great, and I have already said I value them. I do discard most, but find real gems among them.<< --Do you get the digest form or individual emails? In digest form, it's difficult to scroll to find articles I want to read, but individual mails are also a problem because they flood my box. It would be *much* easier if online articles were just a link and an explanatory paragraph or excerpt, because I could scroll through more articles and miss less info. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 00:56:40 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 20:56:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] list format In-Reply-To: <20050424001350.72958.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050424001350.72958.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: That's what I suspected, actually. But you may be the only one. I don't go the digest route, since I find it always more time consuming. But this is because I have a text-only UNIX shell account. It takes only a second for a message to appear, not the several seconds in a graphics-based account using, say Outlook or Eudora. I get only a screen at a time. But if a message is of no interest to me (I get lots of spam), it takes me another second to delete it. (I can reduce those two seconds to one by running down the list that gives subjects and deleting away.) Lots of the stuff I send requires subscriptions. It's okay to send them to this list under the "fair use" exemption, and I have access to a university account and can fetch articles from 40,000 serials. I shy away from too much browsing, since there seems to be at least one interesting article in every issue of every journal I peek into! But if a list refers to something in Science or Nature, I can grab it. Takes a lot of work fixing it up, though, esp. when I have to use the professional version of Acrobat to convert a PDF to text. Even so, I seem to spend much of the day finding, converting, and sending things. You, and everyone else, might consider getting a UNIX shell account. Just visit http://www.panix.com. It costs $100 a year and has the advantage that Panix gives you storage space on its mainframe in Manhattan of 75 MB. You can access it from any computer connect to the Net. In Windows, it's just Start|Run||Enter, and you're in! Just give your username/password and type . The text-only Web browser, Lynx, is great, since you can fix it to include the URLs of the links. What you do is e-mail a Webpage to yourself. Then you strip it of unnecessary characters and forward it. You can also store files and read them in to the message body of an e-message. Thus, typing crtl-r enter gives the following, which I have had occasion to use many times: Please redirect to the list, to whom it was intended. Doesn't sound like private e-mail to me. This is very common mistake. (You may have sent it to both the list and me already, in which case it is my mistake.) I have several dozen others, like my street address. One drawback is that you can't open images or Word files. I wish everyone would copy and paste a Word file into the message body. If they don't, I "bounce" it to a graphics-based account (at home or at work) and read it there. THAT is more of a nusiance to me, I am sure, than having to scroll down a few pages is to you. Have yoo thought of using the Find command to move onto the next message? Each message beings with a characteristic string. Oh, yeah, I see that you use Yahoo's web-based e-mail. That's just about the very most awkward way of reading e-mail. I suggest a UNIX shell account post-haste. It's the fastest, by far. Frank On 2005-04-23, Michael Christopher opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:13:50 -0700 (PDT) > From: Michael Christopher > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] list format > > > Lynn says: >>> For me, ten is great, and I have already said I > value them. I do discard most, but find real gems > among them.<< > > --Do you get the digest form or individual emails? In > digest form, it's difficult to scroll to find articles > I want to read, but individual mails are also a > problem because they flood my box. It would be *much* > easier if online articles were just a link and an > explanatory paragraph or excerpt, because I could > scroll through more articles and miss less info. > > Michael From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Sun Apr 24 01:21:14 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 19:21:14 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] list format In-Reply-To: <20050424001350.72958.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050424001350.72958.qmail@web30806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <426AF48A.7070507@solution-consulting.com> I get individual emails, scroll through the first paragraph and either keep or discard. About links, I actually find the whole article a good resource because I don't have to open another window and read something there. It is faster for me to just discard the ones that don't grab me. I don't quite understand Howard's notion about omnology because I am overwhelmed just keeping up with anxiety, depression, positive psychology . . . argh! But Frank's fire hose of info is a positive challenge,a nd I end up reading stuff I would never have guessed was around. Lynn Michael Christopher wrote: >Lynn says: > > >>>For me, ten is great, and I have already said I >>> >>> >value them. I do discard most, but find real gems >among them.<< > >--Do you get the digest form or individual emails? In >digest form, it's difficult to scroll to find articles >I want to read, but individual mails are also a >problem because they flood my box. It would be *much* >easier if online articles were just a link and an >explanatory paragraph or excerpt, because I could >scroll through more articles and miss less info. > >Michael > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >http://mail.yahoo.com >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Sun Apr 24 13:47:09 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:47:09 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] information inflation Message-ID: <143.43f4b79c.2f9cfd5d@aol.com> New ways of interpreting information increase the amount of information?and of information?s consequences?in the cosmos. When photons from a distant star hit the face of an empty planet, they mean just about nothing. Give that planet 3.85 billion years or so to evolve star-gazers, mythmakes, and astrology, and the information gleaned from the same photons goes up exponentially. So do the number of decisions based on the distant star?s trickle of photons. Give the life-forms on that previously empty planet another few hundred thousand years to evolve astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, and the information gleaned from the star?s photon trickle goes up by a factor of ten or more. So do the decisions based on that photon drip. Which means that the cosmos is not just inflating in physical space and time. It?s not just expanding in the intricacy of its structures and its processes. It?s also expanding in its information-content?and in its richness of causes and effects. New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being. And new ways of being lead to new ways of seeing. Information chews on what information spews. And the cosmos fattens as it grows. Howard ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From isaacsonj at hotmail.com Sun Apr 24 15:58:21 2005 From: isaacsonj at hotmail.com (Joel Isaacson) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:58:21 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] information inflation Message-ID: Howard, You echo below certain aspects of Eshel's 3rd principle. Increased complexification in living systems allows for detection of (latent) higher-level complexity both within and without. And this is an ongoing, recursive/dialectical process. -- Joel PS For reference, here is Eshel's 3rd principle. "3. The principle of matched complexity. The system needs an internal level of complexity which is sufficiently high in order to extract latent information from the external complexity. I view this matched complexity principle the driving force of evolution that explain the ever increasing level of complexity. In a nutshell the idea is: A single bacterium needs some level of complexity to detect the complexity of the surrounding environment and over the time window between replication. To glean more information the bacteria form cooperative behaviour and generate complex colonies. However for that each individual bacterium needs a higher level of internal complexity for communication and to cope with its external environment which is now has higher level of complexity - the environment becomes both the outside and the rest of the colony. To solve the paradox self-organization leads to the formation of functional modules and spatio-temporal patterns. And than .. (for next time)." >From: HowlBloom at aol.com >Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: [Paleopsych] information inflation >Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:47:09 EDT > > >New ways of interpreting information increase the amount of >information???and >of information???s consequences???in the cosmos. When photons from a >distant >star hit the face of an empty planet, they mean just about nothing. Give >that >planet 3.85 billion years or so to evolve star-gazers, mythmakes, and >astrology, and the information gleaned from the same photons goes up >exponentially. > So do the number of decisions based on the distant star???s trickle of >photons. >Give the life-forms on that previously empty planet another few hundred >thousand years to evolve astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, and the >information gleaned from the star???s photon trickle goes up by a factor >of ten or >more. So do the decisions based on that photon drip. >Which means that the cosmos is not just inflating in physical space and >time. It???s not just expanding in the intricacy of its structures and >its >processes. It???s also expanding in its information-content???and in its >richness of >causes and effects. >New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being. And new ways of being lead >to >new ways of seeing. Information chews on what information spews. And the >cosmos fattens as it grows. >Howard > >---------- >Howard Bloom >Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces >of >History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to >the >21st Century >Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core >Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute >www.howardbloom.net >www.bigbangtango.net >Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: >Epic >of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: >The >Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American >Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological >Society, >Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, >International >Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; >executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. >For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: >www.paleopsych.org >for two chapters from >The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, >see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer >For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big >Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Apr 24 18:05:25 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:05:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] email issues In-Reply-To: <200504241800.j3OI0Mo27383@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050424180525.63686.qmail@web30815.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>I don't understand how it would be easier for you to just an opening paragraph and a link instead of the entire article.<< --Because the digest emails can reach over 100K, and it takes a lot of time to scroll through the entire thing looking for specific information. A bit like going through the encyclopedia page by page rather than having a direct link to the page I want to read. But if it's too much trouble, go ahead and post as much as you like, it just means I won't be able to read most of what you post and I won't be able to keep track of discussions. I like email lists where people interact and share their own ideas rather than just cutting and pasting, since I can do research online pretty easily when I want articles on specific topics. michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Sun Apr 24 18:10:29 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:10:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] email issues In-Reply-To: <200504241800.j3OI0Mo27383@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050424181029.33990.qmail@web30808.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Frank says: >>I don't go the digest route, since I find it always more time consuming.<< --The problem with individual emails is that I get around 30 emails a day, and with 10 or more articles individually posted, that means a huge email load for me. It's not a bandwidth problem, it's that I have to have time for an actual life apart from doing email. Of course, if an article is from a site that requires a paid subscription, it makes sense to post the entire article. But it's a lot easier if something is online to read it on the original site, since email format (line breaks are all over the place) makes it difficult to read long posts. It's also nice for discussion to happen alongside cut-and-paste postings. There are thousands of email forums where all people do is post articles, and there's no actual social contact going on, no real thinking and discussion. It's not as bad when the articles are scientific rather than political, but it still makes for a much less interesting time. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From Euterpel66 at aol.com Sun Apr 24 18:45:40 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 14:45:40 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] email issues Message-ID: <1ef.3a8fd653.2f9d4354@aol.com> It amazes me that Frank has so much time to find all those articles which he sends. Some of them I would never have seen as their sources are not available or sometimes not even known to me, so I think it's a good thing he does. On the other hand it is a voluminous amount of mail to sort through. It's a very simple fix for those who find it too much. Read the subject line and if you're not interested, hit the little delete button. Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html In a message dated 4/24/2005 2:14:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, anonymous_animus at yahoo.com writes: Frank says: >>I don't go the digest route, since I find it always more time consuming.<< --The problem with individual emails is that I get around 30 emails a day, and with 10 or more articles individually posted, that means a huge email load for me. It's not a bandwidth problem, it's that I have to have time for an actual life apart from doing email. Of course, if an article is from a site that requires a paid subscription, it makes sense to post the entire article. But it's a lot easier if something is online to read it on the original site, since email format (line breaks are all over the place) makes it difficult to read long posts. It's also nice for discussion to happen alongside cut-and-paste postings. There are thousands of email forums where all people do is post articles, and there's no actual social contact going on, no real thinking and discussion. It's not as bad when the articles are scientific rather than political, but it still makes for a much less interesting time. Michael -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Sun Apr 24 19:12:10 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 15:12:10 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Fw: your e-straw poll Message-ID: <027601c54901$92f21220$6501a8c0@callastudios> I concur with Lorraine! Another thing that might be helpful, for some, is to create a 'Premise Checker' folder that Frank's webmails go directly into. (On Outlook Express this can be done by creating a new message rule.) While, of course, it doesn't change the amount of emails, it might provide a sense of order... ----- Original Message ----- From: Alice Andrews To: Premise Checker Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2005 7:39 AM Subject: your e-straw poll Hi Frank, Whatever you end up doing will be just fine w/me...However, I happen (also) to like having the articles in the body of the text (in addition to a link), as you've been doing...Some of them (and not just the science ones) are wonderful and have helped me tremendously in my teaching, writing, and research. So (more) thanks! Have you sent this one in, btw? All best, Alice http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17973 The New York Review of Books: Vive la Diff?rence! By H. Allen Orr Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes Norton, 320 pp., $25.95; $15.95 (paper) Y: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones Houghton Mifflin, 252 pp., $25.00 The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives By David Bainbridge Harvard University Press, 205 pp., $22.95; $14.95 (paper) The human genome is made up of forty-six chromosomes, the rod-like structures that reside in the nucleus of every cell. These chromosomes carry all of our genes, which, in turn, are made of DNA. Two of these chromosomes, called the X and the Y, are different from the rest: they are "sex chromosomes." Men carry one X and one Y chromosome, while women carry two X chromosomes. All the obvious physical differences between the sexes ultimately spring from this humble difference in chromosomal constitution. During the last few years, real progress has been made in our understanding of the sex chromosomes and we now know much more about our X and Y than we did a mere decade ago. In 2003, for example, essentially the entire stretch of DNA carried on the human Y chromosome was decoded, revealing the number and, in many cases, identity of the genes that make up this seat of maleness. More important, owing to a breakthrough that occurred in the early Nineties, biologists now understand just how sex is decided in human beings-geneticists identified the master "switch gene" that determines whether an embryo will develop into a male or a female. These discoveries might seem surprisingly recent. In view of the confident pronouncements in the medical press about all things having to do with sex and gender (homosexuality, for example, was said to be genetically determined), you'd be forgiven for assuming that the biology of how a human being becomes a boy or a girl has long been understood. To be fair, though, there were good reasons for the slow progress. How sex is determined represents a rare problem in which the study of simpler organisms like fruit flies led biologists astray. Sex determination in human beings specifically and in mammals generally doesn't work the way it does in most of the species that geneticists like to study. Moreover, genetic studies in human beings are simply harder to perform than those in species like the fruit fly: a generation is more like two decades than two weeks, and we can't dictate who mates with whom, an ethical constraint that doesn't arise with flies. Although the three books discussed here cover much of the same ground, one stands out from the rest. Bryan Sykes's Adam's Curse is both far more ambitious, and controversial, than Steve Jones's or David Bainbridge's book. Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford University and author of the best-selling The Seven Daughters of Eve, sounds loud alarms about an impending biological crisis involving the Y chromosome. He also makes bold sociobiological claims about the effect of the Y chromosome on our lives. Because Sykes is a leading researcher in the study of sex chromosomes (not to mention a science adviser to the House of Commons), his pronouncements merit special attention. 1. Sykes begins his book with the discovery of the master gene that decides sex in human beings. For decades, biologists understood that human beings have so-called Y-dominant sex determination. Roughly speaking, if you carry a Y chromosome, you're a male, while if you don't carry a Y chromosome, you're a female. As a result, rare individuals born with two X's and a Y are boys, while rare individuals born with one X and no Y are girls. There is therefore something on the Y, not the X, that decides sex. Identifying this something, however, proved extraordinarily difficult. As often occurs in human genetics, the key breakthrough involved extremely rare exceptions to the above rules. In the late 1980s, several people were found whose sex appeared not to match their sex chromosomes. Some were patients who had an X and a Y chromosome and yet were female. Careful study revealed that these patients' Y chromosomes were incomplete-they lacked a small, defined piece of the normal chromosome. Others were patients who carried two X chromosomes and (apparently) no Y and yet were male. Careful study revealed that these patients carried a very small piece of the Y chromosome, typically too small to be seen under a microscope. Remarkably, the small bit of the Y missing from the female patients roughly corresponded to the small piece present in the male patients. This proved that sex does not depend on the presence or absence of an entire Y chromosome and further suggested that whatever gene or genes decide sex reside in the relevant small region of the Y. The race to locate the human "sex determination gene" was on. As Sykes recounts it, the race was filled with false starts. In 1987, a research team at the Whitehead Institute near Boston announced the discovery of ZFY, a gene that sits in the appropriate part of the Y and that had certain molecular features that, the team believed, made it a strong candidate for the sex gene in humans. Soon, however, the ZFY story unraveled (for one thing, ZFY turned out to also sit on the X chromosome, which made little sense) and the race, briefly suspended, began anew. In the 1990s, another research team led by Peter Goodfellow and Robin Lovell-Badge at the Human Molecular Genetics Laboratory and National Institute for Medical Research in London identified another Y chromosome gene which they confidently named SRY, for Sex Determining Region of the Y chromosome. Their confidence was, in this case, well placed. During the following year, the same team performed a critical experiment proving that SRY does in fact determine sex in mammals. Injecting a copy of the SRY gene into mouse eggs, the team produced a mouse that carried two X chromosomes and SRY-and it was male. SRY was able, therefore, to force an embryo otherwise destined to become female to develop instead as male. As Sykes recalls, the "star mouse, swinging on a stick and sporting enormous testicles to prove the point, made the cover of the edition of Nature" that announced the discovery of SRY. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although many details of how SRY works remain uncertain, some things are clear: SRY is a special kind of gene that has the power to switch other genes on or off. Genes exist in two states: on, in which they make a protein product (say, hemoglobin for your red blood cells), or off, in which they sit idly, making no protein product. SRY can switch some genes from one of these states to the other. No one imagines, therefore, that the many physical features that distinguish boys from girls-penises not vaginas, testes not ovaries, and so on-reflect the immediate effects of SRY alone. Rather, SRY sits at the top of a genetic cascade: if present, it switches on a set of other genes, some of which may in turn switch on yet other genes, and so on. (These other genes do not reside on the Y, but are scattered throughout the genome.) The cumulative effect of all this genetic switching is the development of testes; and the testes in turn produce hormones that then complete the development of a male anatomy. As this description implies, it is also now clear that the original state of a human embryo is female. It takes active work by SRY to divert the normal path of development from female to male, a process that, in human beings, starts when the fetus is seven weeks old. Sykes gives an excellent account of the subtleties of human sex determination. Indeed he skillfully leads us through a number of other topics in human genetics, including his own research on the use of Y chromosome "fingerprinting" to reconstruct the movement of men throughout history. Contemporary Polynesian men, for example, often carry Y chromosomes whose DNA clearly derives from Europe, a vestige of the conjugal visits of European sailors in the age of exploration. And an astonishing number of men who live within the borders of the old Mongol Empire carry what is genetically the same Y chromosome. Sykes suggests that this extraordinarily popular Y may descend from Genghis Khan himself, who typically slaughtered the men he conquered and bedded the women he vanquished throughout much of Central Asia. Fascinating as all this is, though, it turns out to be preliminary, a long preamble to Sykes's real purpose: to warn the world of his most important discovery-that human beings face an immense genetic disaster. And here Sykes's book takes a sharp turn for the worse. 2. Although Sykes doesn't describe this impending disaster until fairly late in his book, the subtitle to Adam's Curse gives it right away: we face a future without men. Sykes is convinced that the male of the species is doomed. Unless something is done-and soon- men face an "inevitable eventual extinction." You won't be surprised to learn that the alleged causes of this crisis reside in the Y chromosome. Sykes's publishers have, predictably, latched on to this dire news and the cover of his book speaks in ominous tones of the certain extinction of half of humanity. Also not surprisingly, the press has played along, with pieces in The New York Times and The Guardian warning that men may be a thing of the past.[1] Sykes's case for the extinction of men hinges on an unusual problem plaguing many genes on the Y chromosome-they tend to pick up debilitating mutations and to ultimately degenerate into genetic junk. A couple of hundred million years ago or so, the X and Y were a pair of perfectly ordinary chromosomes that each carried a full complement of the same thousand genes. Since then, however, the Y has been slowly degenerating. As a result, while the human X still carries its thousand genes, the Y carries only about a hundred. Sykes believes that the genes that remain on the Y-including SRY as well as others required for the fertility of men-will also degenerate. The disastrous consequence, he says, will be the disappearance of fertile males. (Sykes sometimes says that males will become sterile, while at other times he suggests they'll disappear. Genetically, at least, the difference doesn't make a difference: if all males are sterile, they may as well not be there.) Sykes even tries to calculate when disaster will strike. He concludes that, given the high rate of mutation on the Y, nearly all men will be almost completely sterile in about 125,000 years. In the meantime, male fertility will steadily fall. Adam's curse is, then, a rather serious affair. Not surprisingly, Sykes suggests some ways to avert this looming disaster. He seems most serious about using biotechnological methods to relocate Y chromosome genes, moving them to kinder, gentler chromosomes, where their continued existence is presumably assured. (Such a transfer is, in principle, possible, though some technical hurdles would have to be cleared.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm afraid that this is all just silly. There are several related theories of why most genes on the Y chromosome degenerate and none of them predicts that men will become extinct. To see why not, we need to understand why Y chromosomes degenerate in the first place. All theories of Y degeneration (full disclosure: one of them is mine) hinge on an unusual feature of the Y: it doesn't "recombine." Recall that half your chromosomes come from your mother and half from your father. When you make sperm or eggs, each of your chromosomes from your mother pairs up with the corresponding one from your father. During this process, the two chromosomes often swap genetic material, an event called recombination. Consequently, any chromosome entering your sperm or egg likely carries some genes from your mother and others from your father. Oddly, though, the Y doesn't play this game: while all other chromosomes (including the X) recombine, the Y does not.[2] This is important because recombination, it turns out, makes it easy for natural selection to get rid of bad mutations. Put conversely, natural selection is somewhat compromised when dealing with chromosomes that don't recombine. All our theories of population genetics thus predict that the Y will slowly but surely accumulate mutations that have slightly bad effects. But the key point is this: the process I have described will not spiral out of control, yielding sterile or absent men, for two reasons. The first is that the evolutionary forces that cause genes on the Y chromosome to degenerate turn out to be very weak; that's why it's taken hundreds of millions of years for our Y to fall into its current state of disrepair. In contrast, the evolutionary forces that maintain male fertility-and that even maintain a 50:50 ratio of males to females in populations-are very strong. The latter, strong forces, overcome the former, weak ones, and males neither become sterile nor disappear. Second, not all genes on the Y chromosome are created equal. Some, indeed the great majority, originally resided on both the Y and X chromosomes. Natural selection will often tolerate loss of this kind of gene from the Y since there's a "backup" copy on the X that can still perform the gene's functions. Other genes, though, now exist only on the Y. Natural selection will most assuredly not tolerate the loss of this kind of gene since no backup copy sits on the X. The critical point is that most of the male fertility genes now residing on the human Y exist only on that chromosome and there's no way that selection will allow their loss. Sykes's calculation suggests otherwise because it's wrong. He seems to assume that Y chromosomes carrying mutations that partially sterilize men will get passed on to future generations as often as normal, unmutated chromosomes. But they won't-that's what it means to be partially sterile. This misstep leads Sykes astray. There are simply no sound evolutionary grounds to support his sensational claims of the extinction of men.[3] This is not to say that Y chromosomes can't be lost from a species. They can and sometimes are. But it is to say that the Y can disappear only after it's become dispensable, i.e., only after genetic changes take place that render Y-less males healthy and fertile. Sykes gets this logic backward. Telling the story of a rodent called the mole vole that's lost its Y, he marvels that these lucky voles made the genetic changes needed to avoid male extinction "only just in time" before their Y disappeared. But this is like saying that you got out of your clothes only just in time before they were thrown in the wash. In reality, the later event is contingent on the earlier. The bottom line is that Sykes's alarmist talk of the extinction of men is just that-alarmist-and I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the possibility. And I certainly wouldn't give much thought (much less funding) to his technological fix to this nonproblem. There are enough real problems out there. 3. Talk of sex chromosomes and of single genes that determine sex naturally raises the specter of genetic determinism. Are certain behaviors and thoughts fundamentally male and others essentially female? To just what extent does recent biological research support the notion that genes determine our identity, sexual or otherwise? The answer to this question depends entirely on the particular trait or character under discussion. If the character of interest is having testes or not, we are confronted with a biological determinism of the first magnitude. Whether an embryo develops testes depends essentially entirely on its genes; indeed you'd be hard pressed to find anything more genetically hardwired. If this brand of biological determinism alarms you, you are destined to be alarmed. But things are considerably less clear if the trait of interest is, say, aggressiveness, or a curiosity about genes. Unfortunately, this (not so subtle) distinction is often lost on Sykes. Sociobiological claims of an almost unbelievably unnuanced sort run throughout Adam's Curse. Sykes's chief claim is that the Y chromosome causes its bearers to do crazy things. Sykes tells his readers that men, violent and sex-crazed, are "driven on by the lash of their Y chromosomes," and that the Y has "claimed the power to force us, men and women alike, to submit...to its will." Indeed it soon appears that the Y is legally liable for war, the subjugation of women, and empire building: Driven on and on by the crazed ambition of the Y-chromosome to multiply without limit, wars began to enable men to annex adjacent lands and enslave their women. Nothing must stand in the way of the Y-chromosome. Wars, slavery, empires-all ultimately coalesce on that one mad pursuit. In places Sykes is so overcome by the power of the Y chromosome that he passes from breathless exaggeration to patent absurdity. In a remarkable passage, he argues that Genghis Khan's Y chromosome was so successful that it's hard to know who was in charge: Is the Khan chromosome's achievement owing to the sexual exploits and military conquests of the Mongol emperor? Or was the Great Khan himself driven to success in war, and in bed, by the ambition of his Y chromosome? Since Sykes tells us-and on the previous page-that 16 million men now carry the Khan Y chromosome, the answer seems painfully clear: if the Y is in charge, the world would now have 16 million Genghis Khans on its hands. Although Sykes's excesses might be excused as the inevitable hyperbole of a popularizer, their cumulative effect is serious and does, I think, do real damage: it's hard to believe that a biologically naive reader could walk away from Adam's Curse with a sensible view of the connection between genes and behavior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In any case, Steve Jones's Y and David Bainbridge's The X in Sex prove that popular books on human genetics-indeed on human sex chromosomes-need not trade in sociobiological excess. Sykes, Jones, and Bainbridge cover much of the same ground -all recount the discovery of SRY, discuss the role of hormones in sexual development, and describe Darwin's theory of sexual selection. But their positions on genetic determinism differ profoundly. Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, and the author of The Language of Genes and Darwin's Ghost, offers his latest book as an update of Darwin's 1871 classic The Descent of Man. Although Darwin was more of a hereditarian than many evolutionists like to admit, Jones himself turns out to be very cautious about attributing human behavior to genes. While he obviously understands that carrying the Y chromosome or not means that men and women will express at least some different genes, his treatment of the consequences of this difference is far more measured than Sykes's. Indeed Jones is, in places, explicitly anti-sociobiological. He reminds us, for example, that the Y chromosome has all too often served as "a useful alibi for man's excesses" and emphasizes that manhood tells a social tale as much as one written in nucleic acids [DNA] and must, with all that it implies, be constructed. Once the foundations of the male state are laid, what rises from them has little to do with DNA. Such sentiments are all too rarely expressed in popular writing about human evolution or genetics and it is to Jones's credit that his smart and informative book bucks the trend. For his part, Bainbridge, a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College, London, and author of Making Babies: The Science of Pregnancy, essentially eschews the entire controversy over evolutionary psychology. He sticks instead to hard science. Although Bainbridge is given to talking about how chromosomes "control our lives" or "become our dictator," he focuses almost entirely on the role of chromosomes in human disease, not in human cognition, emotion, or behavior. And when it comes to disease, there is, of course, little doubt that chromosomes do often control our lives. Bainbridge's book is largely devoted to the X chromosome, not the Y. He spends much of his time on "sex-linked" conditions that affect men more than women; these range from annoyances like baldness to devastating diseases like muscular dystrophy.[4] Bainbridge also devotes many fascinating pages to complex ailments like autoimmune disease that, for reasons which remain unclear, disproportionately afflict women. (Hashimoto's thyroiditis, for instance-a leading cause of underactive thyroids-affects fifty times more women than men.) But Bainbridge's chief concern is with the biology of human sex determination and with the many ways in which it can, and does, go wrong. In the end, his message is that while human beings obviously come in two predominant sexes, both cultural and biological forces give rise to a surprisingly "continuous spectrum of gender." While Bainbridge makes it fairly clear that he wouldn't be surprised if genes sometimes cause men and women to act or think differently, he's largely silent about the nature and extent of any such differences. While it's hard to know for sure, I suspect that this silence reflects the cautious neutrality of a sensible scientist confronted with mixed data and mountains of speculation. For the truth is, of course, that we have little idea how much of the variation in human behavior-whether between the sexes or within them-is caused by genes. While I could defend this claim by pointing to a body of technical literature filled with conflicting assertions about the heritability of human behavior, there's no need for such a thing. The same point is made (albeit inadvertently) by the three books under review. Although all are written by smart male British biologists who read essentially the same scientific literature and who live and work within a hundred miles of each other, their views on the role of genes in human behavior are widely divergent, ranging from enthusiastic endorsement to considerable skepticism to apparent neutrality. This lack of consensus speaks for itself. Notes [1] See Claudia Dreifus, "Is Genghis Khan an Ancestor? Mr. DNA Knows," The New York Times, June 8, 2004. See also Bryan Sykes, "Do We Need Men?" The Guardian, August 28, 2003. [2] This is almost, but not exactly, true. Tiny regions of the Y do in fact recombine with the X. I ignore these "pseudoautosomal regions" here, as they make up a small part of the Y chromosome and play no role in what follows. [3] For a review of how and why Y chromosomes fall apart, see B. Charlesworth and D. Charlesworth, "The Degeneration of Y Chromosomes," Pro-ceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 355 (2000), pp. 1563-1572. [4] Because mutations on the X chromosome, not the Y, cause these conditions, it might not be obvious why they typically affect men, not women. The reason is that women, who carry two X chromosomes, can partly "mask" the effects of a mutated X with their other (and usually unmutated) X chromosome. Men, who have a single X, can't mask mutations in this way. This explanation, however, gets complicated in two ways. First, women randomly "inactivate" (turn off) one of their X chromosomes within each of their cells. So women mask the bad effects of mutated X chromosomes partly because those cells that happen to leave the good X turned on can "cover" for those cells that leave the bad X turned on. Second, recent work shows that this traditional account is somewhat incomplete. It turns out that, while most of the genes on one of a woman's X's are turned off, 15 percent are not. The result is that women, within their cells, express two copies of these X chromosomal genes while men express one. (See L. Carrell and H.F. Willard, "X-Inactivation Profile Reveals Extensive Variability in X-Linked Gene Expression in Females," Nature, Vol. 434, 2005, pp. 400-404.) ******************************************************************************************** Once again, for some reason I don't understand, several people have sent emails that I have absolutely not received. So, if you have sent me an email to which I have not responded at all after an appropriate time (I usually respond within several days but sometimes minutes!), there's a good chance I didn't receive it; and you might want to send again! Thanks! Alice Andrews Department of Psychology State University of New York at New Paltz 75 S. Manheim Blvd New Paltz, NY 12561 845.257.3602 andrewsa at newpaltz.edu www.newpaltz.edu/~andrewsa www.entelechyjournal.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:06:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:06:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] email issues In-Reply-To: <20050424180525.63686.qmail@web30815.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050424180525.63686.qmail@web30815.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: It seems you are quite outvoted--I've gotten quite a number of private messages, too, in praise of the things I dig up--so I'm going to continue to post a maximum of ten articles a day. Have you tried my suggestion to use crtl-shift-F in Outlook Express, or its equivalent in other e-mail programs, to go to the next article in a digest. I'm sure each new article starts with a characteristic string of characters, though I don't know what it is with this particular list. That way, you can read a paragraph of a piece and then decide whether to move on to the next one. Only a minority of the things I find are available indefinitely on the Net. Frank On 2005-04-24, Michael Christopher opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:05:25 -0700 (PDT) > From: Michael Christopher > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] email issues > > >>> I don't understand how it would be easier for you > to just an opening paragraph and a link instead of the > entire article.<< > > --Because the digest emails can reach over 100K, and > it takes a lot of time to scroll through the entire > thing looking for specific information. A bit like > going through the encyclopedia page by page rather > than having a direct link to the page I want to read. > > But if it's too much trouble, go ahead and post as > much as you like, it just means I won't be able to > read most of what you post and I won't be able to keep > track of discussions. I like email lists where people > interact and share their own ideas rather than just > cutting and pasting, since I can do research online > pretty easily when I want articles on specific topics. > > michael From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:09:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:09:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: Ghosts in a machine Message-ID: Ghosts in a machine http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-100-1509923-100,00.html 5.4.5 Body&Soul Ghosts in a machine What is it that triggers the brain to produce a religious experience? Jerome Burne investigates Jim lives in California and he's into an extreme sport. But he's not testing his limits with gravity or exhaustion. His equipment consists of a darkened room, a blindfold, heavy-duty earplugs and eight magnetic coils, linked to a PC and attached to his head with a Velcro headband. Jim's arena is inner space. The envelope he's pushing is consciousness, using a set of experiences more commonly thought of as religious or spiritual. The coils and computer program, known as a Shakti headset, transmit magnetic pulses that stimulate regions of his brain linked with altered states of consciousness. At various times over the past year, Jim claims to have had out-of-body experiences, felt a state of "oceanic bliss" and sensed presences near by. Next weekend the inventor of the Shakti headset, Todd Murphy, will be one of the speakers at the Religion, Art and the Brain festival in Winchester, along with Sufi dancers, the music of John Tavener, psychologists, neuroscientists and pharmacologists. The focus of their talks will be: "The evolution, experience and expression of the religious impulse -- what triggers the brain to produce it and why?" For years brain researchers shied away from exotic experiences such as hallucinations, near-death experiences or "intimations of the divine", on the grounds that there was no way to study them scientifically. But as consciousness has become an academically respectable topic, it has become harder to ignore "altered states". If memory and imagination can be linked to the activity of groups of neurons, couldn 't the experience of being "at one with the universe" just be the result of brain cells firing? Traditionally, one of the ways to stimulate these experiences has been with hallucinatory or psychedelic herbs and drugs -- a route that has been declared legally off-limits for individuals and researchers since the 1960s. But that is changing, too. Recently licences have been granted in the USA to study the medical benefits of using such outlawed drugs as Ecstasy and the peyote mushroom to treat psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It may be a sign of the times that just before Christmas the US Supreme Court ruled that members of the New Mexico branch of a Brazilian church, Uniao Do Vegetal, should be allowed to use the hallucinatory herbal concoction ayahuasca in ceremonies. Ayahuasca has long been used by South American shamans and is renowned for the snake visions it induces. The poet Allen Ginsberg tried it in the 1950s in an attempt to expand his consciousness. "I rushed out and began vomiting," he wrote, "all covered with snakes, like a Snake Seraph, coloured serpents in an aureole around my body, I felt like a snake vomiting out the universe." Uncovering how a complex chemical stew triggers something as specific as serpentine visions would be a daunting scientific challenge, let alone identifying precisely which regions of the brain were involved. But for at least 100 years neurologists have been recording the bizarrely detailed altered states produced by very specific activity in the brains of epileptics. Recently, observations on epileptics have provided clues to the neural mechanism underlying out-of-body experiences (OBEs). "I was in bed and about to fall asleep when I had the distinct impression that I was at ceiling level looking down at my body," began an article in the British Medical Journal last December. According to the author, Olaf Blanke, a the Swiss neuroscientist, 10 per cent of people experience OBEs but because epileptics, who have them as part of their seizures, keep on having them, it is possible to identify the brain regions involved. He concluded that they are the results of "an interference with the tempro-parietal junction of the brain". This is the place, on both sides of the head, where two brain regions controlling vision and spatial awareness meet. The discovery that the uncontrolled firings of neurons in epileptics' brains can trigger a range of altered states inspired Dr Michael Persinger, a neuropsychologist at the Laurentian University in Ontario, to see if he could replicate them in his laboratory by stimulating subjects' temporal lobes with magnetic impulses. He designed and built Room C002B, otherwise known as the "Heaven and Hell" chamber, back in the mid-Eighties , in which over 1,000 subjects have now been induced to experience ghostly presences. Persinger's chamber -- one of whose visitors was the British arch-atheist Professor Richard Dawkins (he experienced nothing) -- is what might be called a "mainframe" version of the portable Shakti equipment that Todd Murphy will be demonstrating at the conference. What others have experienced in Room C002B depended on their cultural or religious beliefs. Some saw Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Muhammad, or the Sky Spirit. Others, with more than a passing faith in UFOs, tell of something that sounds more like a standard alien-abduction story. Page 2: Continues The radical element of the Shakti headset is that it puts brain stimulation back in the hands of the individual rather than being something done to people in a lab. This may be the way of the future. As an American chronicler in this field, John Horgan, has remarked: "Trying to understand mystical experiences without having one, is like a eunuch trying to understand sex." So far Murphy has sold about 100 headsets at about ?130 each, including accessories, mainly to men aged 40 to 60 who are interested in "general consciousness exploration". Most of them are not looking for extreme experiences like Jim. Instead, Murphy says: "They just want to feel better or to deepen regular spiritual practices like meditation." Apparently, this particular route to religious experience isn't so popular with women, who make up only about 15 per cent of his clients. Now that religious experiences are edging into mainstream neuroscience, theories about what is going on are coming thick and fast. Dr Andrew Newberg, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, for instance, believes that the patterns of activity that show up on the brain scans of people praying or meditating fit well with the sort of experiences they report. The deeper the meditation, he says, the more active are the areas involved with both attention and powerful emotions. At the same time, an area at the back of the brain that orients you in time and space quietens down. "The result is that the boundaries of the self fall away, creating an intense feeling of being at one with the universe," he says. So the big question for the conference becomes: Is the whole human range of spiritual and paranormal experiences no more than unusual patterns of brain activity? Persinger and Murphy seem to disagree on this one. Persinger was quoted recently in Time magazine as saying that: "God is an artefact of the brain," while Murphy, interviewed for this article, was keen to emphasise that his aim was to "enhance spirituality, not to replace it". Rita Carter, a scientific advisor to the festival and author of a popular book on neuroscience entitled Mapping the Mind, has described an occasion when she became "at one" with the gas fire and then the whole room and finally the entire universe. So was this no more than unstable temporal lobes in the same way that epilepsy is thought to be caused by instability in the brain -- or was there more to it than that? "What researchers are finding is that there seem to be common brain pathways underlying all transcendental experiences," she says. "It's the cultural interpretations that vary. But what's really challenging is that the research evidence is very strong that what we think of normal everyday reality is actually a construction of the brain. "However, it is quite clear that the brain is also able to construct a version of reality that is quite unlike the survival-orientated `normal', one. Now why on earth should it have evolved to do that and why is our culture so dead set against exploring it?" Religion, Art and the Brain is at Theatre Royal, Winchester, March 10-13; 01962 840440, [3]www.artandmind.org Further reading: Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border between Science and Spirituality, by John Horgan (Mariner Books) [I have read this book and can recommend it. Check Amazon, say, for more about it.] From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:09:49 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:09:49 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Watching TV Makes You Smarter Message-ID: Magazine > Watching TV Makes You Smarter http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/magazine/24TV.html By STEVEN JOHNSON The Sleeper Curve SCIENTIST A: Has he asked for anything special? SCIENTIST B: Yes, this morning for breakfast . . . he requested something called ''wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk.'' SCIENTIST A: Oh, yes. Those were the charmed substances that some years ago were felt to contain life-preserving properties. SCIENTIST B: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or . . . hot fudge? SCIENTIST A: Those were thought to be unhealthy. From Woody Allen's ''Sleeper'' O n Jan. 24, the Fox network showed an episode of its hit drama ''24,'' the real-time thriller known for its cliffhanger tension and often- gruesome violence. Over the preceding weeks, a number of public controversies had erupted around ''24,'' mostly focused on its portrait of Muslim terrorists and its penchant for torture scenes. The episode that was shown on the 24th only fanned the flames higher: in one scene, a terrorist enlists a hit man to kill his child for not fully supporting the jihadist cause; in another scene, the secretary of defense authorizes the torture of his son to uncover evidence of a terrorist plot. But the explicit violence and the post-9/11 terrorist anxiety are not the only elements of ''24'' that would have been unthinkable on prime-time network television 20 years ago. Alongside the notable change in content lies an equally notable change in form. During its 44 minutes -- a real-time hour, minus 16 minutes for commercials -- the episode connects the lives of 21 distinct characters, each with a clearly defined ''story arc,'' as the Hollywood jargon has it: a defined personality with motivations and obstacles and specific relationships with other characters. Nine primary narrative threads wind their way through those 44 minutes, each drawing extensively upon events and information revealed in earlier episodes. Draw a map of all those intersecting plots and personalities, and you get structure that -- where formal complexity is concerned -- more closely resembles ''Middlemarch'' than a hit TV drama of years past like ''Bonanza.'' For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a path declining steadily toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the ''masses'' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies try to give the masses what they want. But as that ''24'' episode suggests, the exact opposite is happening: the culture is getting more cognitively demanding, not less. To make sense of an episode of ''24,'' you have to integrate far more information than you would have a few decades ago watching a comparable show. Beneath the violence and the ethnic stereotypes, another trend appears: to keep up with entertainment like ''24,'' you have to pay attention, make inferences, track shifting social relationships. This is what I call the Sleeper Curve: the most debased forms of mass diversion -- video games and violent television dramas and juvenile sitcoms -- turn out to be nutritional after all. I believe that the Sleeper Curve is the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down. And yet you almost never hear this story in popular accounts of today's media. Instead, you hear dire tales of addiction, violence, mindless escapism. It's assumed that shows that promote smoking or gratuitous violence are bad for us, while those that thunder against teen pregnancy or intolerance have a positive role in society. Judged by that morality-play standard, the story of popular culture over the past 50 years -- if not 500 -- is a story of decline: the morals of the stories have grown darker and more ambiguous, and the antiheroes have multiplied. The usual counterargument here is that what media have lost in moral clarity, they have gained in realism. The real world doesn't come in nicely packaged public-service announcements, and we're better off with entertainment like ''The Sopranos'' that reflects our fallen state with all its ethical ambiguity. I happen to be sympathetic to that argument, but it's not the one I want to make here. I think there is another way to assess the social virtue of pop culture, one that looks at media as a kind of cognitive workout, not as a series of life lessons. There may indeed be more ''negative messages'' in the mediasphere today. But that's not the only way to evaluate whether our television shows or video games are having a positive impact. Just as important -- if not more important -- is the kind of thinking you have to do to make sense of a cultural experience. That is where the Sleeper Curve becomes visible. Televised Intelligence Consider the cognitive demands that televised narratives place on their viewers. With many shows that we associate with ''quality'' entertainment -- ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show,'' ''Murphy Brown,'' ''Frasier'' -- the intelligence arrives fully formed in the words and actions of the characters on-screen. They say witty things to one another and avoid lapsing into tired sitcom cliches, and we smile along in our living rooms, enjoying the company of these smart people. But assuming we're bright enough to understand the sentences they're saying, there's no intellectual labor involved in enjoying the show as a viewer. You no more challenge your mind by watching these intelligent shows than you challenge your body watching ''Monday Night Football.'' The intellectual work is happening on-screen, not off. But another kind of televised intelligence is on the rise. Think of the cognitive benefits conventionally ascribed to reading: attention, patience, retention, the parsing of narrative threads. Over the last half-century, programming on TV has increased the demands it places on precisely these mental faculties. This growing complexity involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows and social networks. According to television lore, the age of multiple threads began with the arrival in 1981 of ''Hill Street Blues,'' the Steven Bochco police drama invariably praised for its ''gritty realism.'' Watch an episode of ''Hill Street Blues'' side by side with any major drama from the preceding decades -- ''Starsky and Hutch,'' for instance, or ''Dragnet'' -- and the structural transformation will jump out at you. The earlier shows follow one or two lead characters, adhere to a single dominant plot and reach a decisive conclusion at the end of the episode. Draw an outline of the narrative threads in almost every ''Dragnet'' episode, and it will be a single line: from the initial crime scene, through the investigation, to the eventual cracking of the case. A typical ''Starsky and Hutch'' episode offers only the slightest variation on this linear formula: the introduction of a comic subplot that usually appears only at the tail ends of the episode, creating a structure that looks like [1]this graph. The vertical axis represents the number of individual threads, and the horizontal axis is time. A ''Hill Street Blues'' episode complicates the picture in a number of profound ways. The narrative weaves together a collection of distinct strands -- sometimes as many as 10, though at least half of the threads involve only a few quick scenes scattered through the episode. The number of primary characters -- and not just bit parts -- swells significantly. And the episode has fuzzy borders: picking up one or two threads from previous episodes at the outset and leaving one or two threads open at the end. Charted graphically, an average episode looks like [2]this. Critics generally cite ''Hill Street Blues'' as the beginning of ''serious drama'' native in the television medium -- differentiating the series from the single-episode dramatic programs from the 50's, which were Broadway plays performed in front of a camera. But the ''Hill Street'' innovations weren't all that original; they'd long played a defining role in popular television, just not during the evening hours. The structure of a ''Hill Street'' episode -- and indeed of all the critically acclaimed dramas that followed, from ''thirtysomething'' to ''Six Feet Under'' -- is the structure of a soap opera. ''Hill Street Blues'' might have sparked a new golden age of television drama during its seven-year run, but it did so by using a few crucial tricks that ''Guiding Light'' and ''General Hospital'' mastered long before. Bochco's genius with ''Hill Street'' was to marry complex narrative structure with complex subject matter. 'Dallas'' had already shown that the extended, interwoven threads of the soap-opera genre could survive the weeklong interruptions of a prime-time show, but the actual content of ''Dallas'' was fluff. (The most probing issue it addressed was the question, now folkloric, of who shot J.R.) ''All in the Family'' and ''Rhoda'' showed that you could tackle complex social issues, but they did their tackling in the comfort of the sitcom living room. ''Hill Street'' had richly drawn characters confronting difficult social issues and a narrative structure to match. Since ''Hill Street'' appeared, the multi-threaded drama has become the most widespread fictional genre on prime time: ''St. Elsewhere,'' ''L.A. Law,'' ''thirtysomething,'' ''Twin Peaks,'' ''N.Y.P.D. Blue,'' ''E.R.,'' ''The West Wing,'' ''Alias,'' ''Lost.'' (The only prominent holdouts in drama are shows like ''Law and Order'' that have essentially updated the venerable ''Dragnet'' format and thus remained anchored to a single narrative line.) Since the early 80's, however, there has been a noticeable increase in narrative complexity in these dramas. The most ambitious show on TV to date, ''The Sopranos,'' routinely follows up to a dozen distinct threads over the course of an episode, with more than 20 recurring characters. An episode from late in the first season looks like [3]this. The total number of active threads equals the multiple plots of ''Hill Street,'' but here each thread is more substantial. The show doesn't offer a clear distinction between dominant and minor plots; each story line carries its weight in the mix. The episode also displays a chordal mode of storytelling entirely absent from ''Hill Street'': a single scene in ''The Sopranos'' will often connect to three different threads at the same time, layering one plot atop another. And every single thread in this ''Sopranos'' episode builds on events from previous episodes and continues on through the rest of the season and beyond. Put those charts together, and you have a portrait of the Sleeper Curve rising over the past 30 years of popular television. In a sense, this is as much a map of cognitive changes in the popular mind as it is a map of on-screen developments, as if the media titans decided to condition our brains to follow ever-larger numbers of simultaneous threads. Before ''Hill Street,'' the conventional wisdom among television execs was that audiences wouldn't be comfortable following more than three plots in a single episode, and indeed, the ''Hill Street'' pilot, which was shown in January 1981, brought complaints from viewers that the show was too complicated. Fast-forward two decades, and shows like ''The Sopranos'' engage their audiences with narratives that make ''Hill Street'' look like ''Three's Company.'' Audiences happily embrace that complexity because they've been trained by two decades of multi-threaded dramas. Multi-threading is the most celebrated structural feature of the modern television drama, and it certainly deserves some of the honor that has been doled out to it. And yet multi-threading is only part of the story. The Case for Confusion Shortly after the arrival of the first-generation slasher movies -- ''Halloween,'' ''Friday the 13th'' -- Paramount released a mock-slasher flick called ''Student Bodies,'' parodying the genre just as the ''Scream'' series would do 15 years later. In one scene, the obligatory nubile teenage baby sitter hears a noise outside a suburban house; she opens the door to investigate, finds nothing and then goes back inside. As the door shuts behind her, the camera swoops in on the doorknob, and we see that she has left the door unlocked. The camera pulls back and then swoops down again for emphasis. And then a flashing arrow appears on the screen, with text that helpfully explains: ''Unlocked!'' That flashing arrow is parody, of course, but it's merely an exaggerated version of a device popular stories use all the time. When a sci-fi script inserts into some advanced lab a nonscientist who keeps asking the science geeks to explain what they're doing with that particle accelerator, that's a flashing arrow that gives the audience precisely the information it needs in order to make sense of the ensuing plot. (''Whatever you do, don't spill water on it, or you'll set off a massive explosion!'') These hints serve as a kind of narrative hand-holding. Implicitly, they say to the audience, ''We realize you have no idea what a particle accelerator is, but here's the deal: all you need to know is that it's a big fancy thing that explodes when wet.'' They focus the mind on relevant details: ''Don't worry about whether the baby sitter is going to break up with her boyfriend. Worry about that guy lurking in the bushes.'' They reduce the amount of analytic work you need to do to make sense of a story. All you have to do is follow the arrows. By this standard, popular television has never been harder to follow. If narrative threads have experienced a population explosion over the past 20 years, flashing arrows have grown correspondingly scarce. Watching our pinnacle of early 80's TV drama, ''Hill Street Blues,'' we find there's an informational wholeness to each scene that differs markedly from what you see on shows like ''The West Wing'' or ''The Sopranos'' or ''Alias'' or ''E.R.'' ''Hill Street'' has ambiguities about future events: will a convicted killer be executed? Will Furillo marry Joyce Davenport? Will Renko find it in himself to bust a favorite singer for cocaine possession? But the present-tense of each scene explains itself to the viewer with little ambiguity. There's an open question or a mystery driving each of these stories -- how will it all turn out? -- but there's no mystery about the immediate activity on the screen. A contemporary drama like ''The West Wing,'' on the other hand, constantly embeds mysteries into the present-tense events: you see characters performing actions or discussing events about which crucial information has been deliberately withheld. Anyone who has watched more than a handful of ''The West Wing'' episodes closely will know the feeling: scene after scene refers to some clearly crucial but unexplained piece of information, and after the sixth reference, you'll find yourself wishing you could rewind the tape to figure out what they're talking about, assuming you've missed something. And then you realize that you're supposed to be confused. The open question posed by these sequences is not ''How will this turn out in the end?'' The question is ''What's happening right now?'' The deliberate lack of hand-holding extends down to the microlevel of dialogue as well. Popular entertainment that addresses technical issues -- whether they are the intricacies of passing legislation, or of performing a heart bypass, or of operating a particle accelerator -- conventionally switches between two modes of information in dialogue: texture and substance. Texture is all the arcane verbiage provided to convince the viewer that they're watching Actual Doctors at Work; substance is the material planted amid the background texture that the viewer needs make sense of the plot. Conventionally, narratives demarcate the line between texture and substance by inserting cues that flag or translate the important data. There's an unintentionally comical moment in the 2004 blockbuster ''The Day After Tomorrow'' in which the beleaguered climatologist (played by Dennis Quaid) announces his theory about the imminent arrival of a new ice age to a gathering of government officials. In his speech, he warns that ''we have hit a critical desalinization point!'' At this moment, the writer-director Roland Emmerich -- a master of brazen arrow-flashing -- has an official follow with the obliging remark: ''It would explain what's driving this extreme weather.'' They might as well have had a flashing ''Unlocked!'' arrow on the screen. The dialogue on shows like ''The West Wing'' and ''E.R.,'' on the other hand, doesn't talk down to its audiences. It rushes by, the words accelerating in sync with the high-speed tracking shots that glide through the corridors and operating rooms. The characters talk faster in these shows, but the truly remarkable thing about the dialogue is not purely a matter of speed; it's the willingness to immerse the audience in information that most viewers won't understand. Here's a typical scene from ''E.R.'': [WEAVER AND WRIGHT push a gurney containing a 16-year-old girl. Her parents, JANNA AND FRANK MIKAMI, follow close behind. CARTER AND LUCY fall in.] WEAVER: 16-year-old, unconscious, history of biliary atresia. CARTER: Hepatic coma? WEAVER: Looks like it. MR. MIKAMI: She was doing fine until six months ago. CARTER: What medication is she on? MRS. MIKAMI: Ampicillin, tobramycin, vitamins a, d and k. LUCY: Skin's jaundiced. WEAVER: Same with the sclera. Breath smells sweet. CARTER: Fetor hepaticus? WEAVER: Yep. LUCY: What's that? WEAVER: Her liver's shut down. Let's dip a urine. [To CARTER] Guys, it's getting a little crowded in here, why don't you deal with the parents? Start lactulose, 30 cc's per NG. CARTER: We're giving medicine to clean her blood. WEAVER: Blood in the urine, two-plus. CARTER: The liver failure is causing her blood not to clot. MRS. MIKAMI: Oh, God. . . . CARTER: Is she on the transplant list? MR. MIKAMI: She's been Status 2a for six months, but they haven't been able to find her a match. CARTER: Why? What's her blood type? MR. MIKAMI: AB. [This hits CARTER like a lightning bolt. LUCY gets it, too. They share a look.] There are flashing arrows here, of course -- ''The liver failure is causing her blood not to clot'' -- but the ratio of medical jargon to layperson translation is remarkably high. From a purely narrative point of view, the decisive line arrives at the very end: ''AB.'' The 16-year-old's blood type connects her to an earlier plot line, involving a cerebral-hemorrhage victim who -- after being dramatically revived in one of the opening scenes -- ends up brain-dead. Far earlier, before the liver-failure scene above, Carter briefly discusses harvesting the hemorrhage victim's organs for transplants, and another doctor makes a passing reference to his blood type being the rare AB (thus making him an unlikely donor). The twist here revolves around a statistically unlikely event happening at the E.R. -- an otherwise perfect liver donor showing up just in time to donate his liver to a recipient with the same rare blood type. But the show reveals this twist with remarkable subtlety. To make sense of that last ''AB'' line -- and the look of disbelief on Carter's and Lucy's faces -- you have to recall a passing remark uttered earlier regarding a character who belongs to a completely different thread. Shows like ''E.R.'' may have more blood and guts than popular TV had a generation ago, but when it comes to storytelling, they possess a quality that can only be described as subtlety and discretion. Even Bad TV Is Better Skeptics might argue that I have stacked the deck here by focusing on relatively highbrow titles like ''The Sopranos'' or ''The West Wing,'' when in fact the most significant change in the last five years of narrative entertainment involves reality TV. Does the contemporary pop cultural landscape look quite as promising if the representative show is ''Joe Millionaire'' instead of ''The West Wing''? I think it does, but to answer that question properly, you have to avoid the tendency to sentimentalize the past. When people talk about the golden age of television in the early 70's -- invoking shows like ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' and ''All in the Family'' -- they forget to mention how awful most television programming was during much of that decade. If you're going to look at pop-culture trends, you have to compare apples to apples, or in this case, lemons to lemons. The relevant comparison is not between ''Joe Millionaire'' and ''MASH''; it's between ''Joe Millionaire'' and ''The Newlywed Game,'' or between ''Survivor'' and ''The Love Boat.'' What you see when you make these head-to-head comparisons is that a rising tide of complexity has been lifting programming at the bottom of the quality spectrum and at the top. ''The Sopranos'' is several times more demanding of its audiences than ''Hill Street'' was, and ''Joe Millionaire'' has made comparable advances over ''Battle of the Network Stars.'' This is the ultimate test of the Sleeper Curve theory: even the junk has improved. If early television took its cues from the stage, today's reality programming is reliably structured like a video game: a series of competitive tests, growing more challenging over time. Many reality shows borrow a subtler device from gaming culture as well: the rules aren't fully established at the outset. You learn as you play. On a show like ''Survivor'' or ''The Apprentice,'' the participants -- and the audience -- know the general objective of the series, but each episode involves new challenges that haven't been ordained in advance. The final round of the first season of ''The Apprentice,'' for instance, threw a monkey wrench into the strategy that governed the play up to that point, when Trump announced that the two remaining apprentices would have to assemble and manage a team of subordinates who had already been fired in earlier episodes of the show. All of a sudden the overarching objective of the game -- do anything to avoid being fired -- presented a potential conflict to the remaining two contenders: the structure of the final round favored the survivor who had maintained the best relationships with his comrades. Suddenly, it wasn't enough just to have clawed your way to the top; you had to have made friends while clawing. The original ''Joe Millionaire'' went so far as to undermine the most fundamental convention of all -- that the show's creators don't openly lie to the contestants about the prizes -- by inducing a construction worker to pose as man of means while 20 women competed for his attention. Reality programming borrowed another key ingredient from games: the intellectual labor of probing the system's rules for weak spots and opportunities. As each show discloses its conventions, and each participant reveals his or her personality traits and background, the intrigue in watching comes from figuring out how the participants should best navigate the environment that has been created for them. The pleasure in these shows comes not from watching other people being humiliated on national television; it comes from depositing other people in a complex, high-pressure environment where no established strategies exist and watching them find their bearings. That's why the water-cooler conversation about these shows invariably tracks in on the strategy displayed on the previous night's episode: why did Kwame pick Omarosa in that final round? What devious strategy is Richard Hatch concocting now? When we watch these shows, the part of our brain that monitors the emotional lives of the people around us -- the part that tracks subtle shifts in intonation and gesture and facial expression -- scrutinizes the action on the screen, looking for clues. We trust certain characters implicitly and vote others off the island in a heartbeat. Traditional narrative shows also trigger emotional connections to the characters, but those connections don't have the same participatory effect, because traditional narratives aren't explicitly about strategy. The phrase ''Monday-morning quarterbacking'' describes the engaged feeling that spectators have in relation to games as opposed to stories. We absorb stories, but we second-guess games. Reality programming has brought that second-guessing to prime time, only the game in question revolves around social dexterity rather than the physical kind. The Rewards of Smart Culture The quickest way to appreciate the Sleeper Curve's cognitive training is to sit down and watch a few hours of hit programming from the late 70's on Nick at Nite or the SOAPnet channel or on DVD. The modern viewer who watches a show like ''Dallas'' today will be bored by the content -- not just because the show is less salacious than today's soap operas (which it is by a small margin) but also because the show contains far less information in each scene, despite the fact that its soap-opera structure made it one of the most complicated narratives on television in its prime. With ''Dallas,'' the modern viewer doesn't have to think to make sense of what's going on, and not having to think is boring. Many recent hit shows -- ''24,'' ''Survivor,'' ''The Sopranos,'' ''Alias,'' ''Lost,'' ''The Simpsons,'' ''E.R.'' -- take the opposite approach, layering each scene with a thick network of affiliations. You have to focus to follow the plot, and in focusing you're exercising the parts of your brain that map social networks, that fill in missing information, that connect multiple narrative threads. Of course, the entertainment industry isn't increasing the cognitive complexity of its products for charitable reasons. The Sleeper Curve exists because there's money to be made by making culture smarter. The economics of television syndication and DVD sales mean that there's a tremendous financial pressure to make programs that can be watched multiple times, revealing new nuances and shadings on the third viewing. Meanwhile, the Web has created a forum for annotation and commentary that allows more complicated shows to prosper, thanks to the fan sites where each episode of shows like ''Lost'' or ''Alias'' is dissected with an intensity usually reserved for Talmud scholars. Finally, interactive games have trained a new generation of media consumers to probe complex environments and to think on their feet, and that gamer audience has now come to expect the same challenges from their television shows. In the end, the Sleeper Curve tells us something about the human mind. It may be drawn toward the sensational where content is concerned -- sex does sell, after all. But the mind also likes to be challenged; there's real pleasure to be found in solving puzzles, detecting patterns or unpacking a complex narrative system. In pointing out some of the ways that popular culture has improved our minds, I am not arguing that parents should stop paying attention to the way their children amuse themselves. What I am arguing for is a change in the criteria we use to determine what really is cognitive junk food and what is genuinely nourishing. Instead of a show's violent or tawdry content, instead of wardrobe malfunctions or the F-word, the true test should be whether a given show engages or sedates the mind. Is it a single thread strung together with predictable punch lines every 30 seconds? Or does it map a complex social network? Is your on-screen character running around shooting everything in sight, or is she trying to solve problems and manage resources? If your kids want to watch reality TV, encourage them to watch ''Survivor'' over ''Fear Factor.'' If they want to watch a mystery show, encourage ''24'' over ''Law and Order.'' If they want to play a violent game, encourage Grand Theft Auto over Quake. Indeed, it might be just as helpful to have a rating system that used mental labor and not obscenity and violence as its classification scheme for the world of mass culture. Kids and grown-ups each can learn from their increasingly shared obsessions. Too often we imagine the blurring of kid and grown-up cultures as a series of violations: the 9-year-olds who have to have nipple broaches explained to them thanks to Janet Jackson; the middle-aged guy who can't wait to get home to his Xbox. But this demographic blur has a commendable side that we don't acknowledge enough. The kids are forced to think like grown-ups: analyzing complex social networks, managing resources, tracking subtle narrative intertwinings, recognizing long-term patterns. The grown-ups, in turn, get to learn from the kids: decoding each new technological wave, parsing the interfaces and discovering the intellectual rewards of play. Parents should see this as an opportunity, not a crisis. Smart culture is no longer something you force your kids to ingest, like green vegetables. It's something you share. Steven Johnson is the author, most recently, of ''Mind Wide Open.'' His book ''Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter,'' from which this article is adapted, will be published next month. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:10:10 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:10:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Why Thin Is Fine, but Thinner Can Kill Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:53:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Premise Checker To: World Transhumanist Ass. Subject: NYT: Why Thin Is Fine, but Thinner Can Kill Why Thin Is Fine, but Thinner Can Kill http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/weekinreview/24kola.html April 24, 2005 By [1]GINA KOLATA IT turns out that the Duchess of Windsor was, at best, only half right when she said a woman couldn't be too rich or too thin. In fact, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute, in a paper about body weight and health risks published last week, concluded that the very thin run about the same risk of early death as the very fat. Their study showed that 33,000 deaths a year could be avoided if the thinnest 2 percent of Americans were of normal weight. That result was a shock; scientists thought they had proved that thin was best, at least for healthy animals. And it was widely held that eating one-third less than the recommended amount for any individual could extend life. Almost as intriguing as the study's result is the fact that no one can explain it. Were the thin people in the study, with a body mass index below 18.5 (a 5-foot-3 woman weighing 104 pounds, for example) simply very ill, unable to eat? Not likely, said Dr. Katherine Flegal, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and the paper's lead author. She and her colleagues looked at thin people whose weight was stable for at least three years, for at least five years and for at least 10 years. The effect persisted. They looked at thin smokers and thin nonsmokers. The effect remained. Dr. Flegal admits she is baffled. "We just don't know the whole story," she said. But she speculates that very thin people have no reserves to tap if they fall ill, making them more likely to die than those with a layer of fat to nourish them. Among other things scientists don't know, said Richard Weindruch, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, is why the people in the study were thin: whether they ate little, for example, or were genetically predisposed to be skinny. Still, the study does suggest that the practice of deliberately starving oneself to live longer, called caloric restriction, might actually have the opposite effect in some people. "If you take lean people and put caloric restriction on them, it will kill them," said Dr. Nir Barzilai, of the institute for aging research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. And while he said it may be safer for the overweight to reduce calories, there is no evidence that it will prolong life. Meanwhile, Dr. Huber Warner, the director of the biology-of-aging department at the National Institute on Aging, said the new findings are just science at work. "Whenever you think you've proved something," he said, "more data comes up and says maybe it isn't so good for you after all." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=GINA%20KOLATA&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=GINA%20KOLATA&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:10:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:10:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NuSapiens: Biology, Technology, Philosophy: Book Review: More Than Human Message-ID: Biology, Technology, Philosophy: Book Review: More Than Human http://nusapiens.blogspot.com/2005/03/book-review-more-than-human.html [I have not seen this book and do not know how it compares with similar books on moving beyond the human condition.] Blogging the next stage in human evolution. What is great in man is that he is a road but not a destination. -Also Sprach Zarathustra Monday, March 07, 2005 Book Review: More Than Human More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement by Ramez Naam In More Than Human, Ramez Naam gives an engaging account of cutting edge technologies that promise to transform life as we know it, along with a reasonable explanation of how they can be used to improve the human condition. Naam uses sound economic reasoning and pertinent historical analogies to construct a framework in which to understand and predict the often staggering technological developments before us. The results are sensible, balanced ethical and policy guidelines based on consumer safety, education, and equal access, with which to handle human enhancement products in a way that collectively benefits society. More Than Human gives an accessible account of new technology that sounds almost like science fiction. Some of the products and techniques described include: gene therapies to cure disease as well as improve memory and athletic ability, drugs that can prolong youth and fend off death and old age, techniques that can allow parents to pre-select and even design their offspring, and brain-computer interfaces that blur distinctions between man and machine. As fantastic as developments sound, they are all either available, in development, or achievable within the foreseeable future. Many of the technologies discussed are under development to cure such devastating diseases as SCID, or severe combined immune deficiency (also known as "bubble boy syndrome"), ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), full-body paralysis, and Alzheimer's. Yet scientists have found that some of the same therapeutic techniques and drugs effective to cure disease also can be used to enhance function in healthy people. For instance, gene therapy used to treat degenerative nervous disorders like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, by preventing muscle loss might also be used to prevent age-related tissue loss in the elderly, or even to enhance strength and muscle mass in healthy young adults. A point emerges that what we define as a disease determines what doctors can treat, and that enhancement products are often medicalized and reinterpreted in terms of disease treatment according to social demand. Newly described disease conditions include Attention Deficit Disorder and age-related erectile dysfunction, conditions once commonly understood as problematic but normal. The distinctions between normalcy and disease, and thus between enhancement and treatment, shift along with society's aspirations and expectations of itself. Modern arguments that enhancement technology is "unnatural" and therefore unethical forget the progressive improvement of human life and changing perceptions of "naturalness" in modern history. Naam points out that medical advancements such as vaccinations and anesthesia were initially met with fear of "unnaturalness," and then gradually accepted as they proved their safety and collective value to society. Naam argues that this process of medicalization is important and that regulation by bodies such as the FDA should be extended to include enhancement products. Government testing of enhancement products would include safety trials of the same type currently done only for disease treatments. This would ensure safety, weed out ineffective products, and give consumers additional information and guidelines on the safe use of effective enhancement products. Furthermore, since high demand for products to enhance memory or athletic ability is guaranteed, sensible government regulation can prevent the emergence of black markets for enhancement products, while prohibition would create such an underground economy. An important part of Naam's argument centers around access. Naam submits that to prevent technological elitism, access to these technologies needs to be distributed around the world and across income brackets. Pharmaceutical and genetic enhancement technologies are essentially intellectual property, and display diminishing returns: they require immense amounts of initial investment to research and develop and are distributed at an initially high cost, but eventually come down in price due to economies of scale. Consumers pay a premium for early access and obtain an initially large benefit, but as the technology improves, it offers only incremental additional returns for individual consumer expenditure. With time, the basic, highly effective technology becomes affordable to a broad base of people, who experience large returns for their small individual investment. Just as penicillin was initially available only to the wealthy but became affordable to all after World War Two, gene therapy and other cutting edge technologies will be accessible to the world after a short period of time. Naam disputes hyperbolic alarmist rhetoric that claims technologies such as enhancement gene therapy threaten to undermine society as we know it, and ought to be regulated out of existence before it's too late. While bioconservatives routinely invoke the bogey of 20th century atrocities, Naam points out that overzealous regulators are the ones who want state control over matters as private as human reproduction. Instead, Naam argues that sensible regulation aimed at ensuring consumer safety, education, and equal access, will allow individual consumers to make informed decisions on their own about the use of these products for themselves and their families. These technologies give people an opportunity to transcend limitations placed on us by nature and history. Alarmist opponents fear that the quest for human biological enhancement will compromise our humanity. With More than Human, Naam makes an eloquent case that the desire to become more than human is the very essence of what it is to be human. Humanity finds not only empowerment through our exploration and investigation of the world and ourselves, but more importantly, meaning. Thus, the embracement of these radical technologies is not a violation of our deepest human dignity, but instead a validation of it. Publisher's information about More Than Human is available [8]here. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind. -[14]Karl Marx References 8. http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?0767918436 14. http://nusapiens.blogspot.com/2004/11/reading-karl-marx-capitalist.html From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:10:44 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:10:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Transterrestrial Musings: Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond! Message-ID: Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond! Transterrestrial Musings http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/004947.html More Than Human That's the title of a book I read recently. No, it's not the [150]classic science fiction tome by Ted Sturgeon. This one is (I think) non-fiction, and new, just having been [151]released this week. A first book by Ramez Naam (a software developer who claims to be one of those responsible for Internet Explorer, though I won't hold that against him), it's a highly readable survey of the current and projected state of the art in various life-extending and life-enhancing technologies, including life extension, cloning, prosthetics and neural implants, most of which are already here, but in their infancy. These are subjects about which he's both enthusiastic and optimistic. Many [152]critics of these technologies, particularly [153]Kassians and other worshipers of ultimate death, will find them quite disquieting. Regardless, whichever camp one is in, as Naam points out (and as I [154]pointed out last week), these technologies are going to happen, because that's the history of such technologies. They are being developed to solve real human problems that are causing real human suffering, and once they become available, there's no sufficiently bright, unambiguous line between their uses for therapy and their uses for what some, like Dr. Kass or Frank Fukuyama, will consider unnecessary enhancement, to a state beyond that which they currently (and subjectively, and arbitrarily) define as human. It's not a new problem. To take a mundane example, a plastic surgeon can do reconstructive surgery on a mastectomy patient, to restore her shattered sense of womanhood at the loss of one of the features that biology and society have defined as a key component of that state. Few argue that there is anything wrong with this. But the same surgery can also change a 32B to a 36D. And some women are naturally unendowed, and would like an artificial solution to what they view as nature's mistake. Who is going to be the arbiter of which are allowed such surgeries? Naam leads off each chapter with similar examples, of radical new therapies currently in work, that have natural potential for non-therapeutic use. Beyond that, the military is developing some of these deliberately for the purpose of enhancing troop performance. Imagine the possibilities of a pilot able to fly an aircraft, and sense hostile activity, directly with her mind, with no need for intermediary appendages. Imagine in particular the utility of such a system in which this can be done remotely. One particular insight from the book that hadn't struck me before is the disingenuousness of the Godwinized argument that many use against proponents of cloning, or life extension, or body enhancement, by accusing them of attempting to revive the [155]eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, offshoots of which were indeed adopted by the Nazis. But such comparisons are ludicrous. It wasn't the goal of the eugenics movement that was necessarily odious (they were, after all, only seeking an improvement of humanity)--it was the means by which they wanted (indeed would have had to employ and, in Germany, in fact did) to achieve it. They could only achieve their goals through government coercion and ultimately totalitarianism. The irony is that proponents of these technologies are seeking them for use by the free choice of individuals, while this time it's the opponents, those who (by their spurious association of them with the eugenicists) wish to implement government policies to prevent the use of such technologies. In Virginia Postrel's formulation, the dynamists are those who want to allow individuals to decide, and the stasists are the King Canutes who want to hold back the tide through the force of government (though, unlike Canute, they don't seem to recognize that the tide won't be held back). Naam's ultimate message is that these technologies are coming, ready or not. If we can't accommodate our definition of humanity to them, then the future will indeed be post human, but I suspect that it will be a future much more free of suffering and pain than the present, with much more opportunity for growth of those things--art, science, love and laughter--that make being human so precious. Posted by Rand Simberg at March 07, 2005 08:05 AM TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-pinger.cgi/3493 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference [156]this post from [157]Transterrestrial Musings. [158]Two New Reviews Excerpt: Two new reviews have posted in the last 24 hours! Yesterday, Rand Simberg posted this review over at Transterrestrial Musings. And today I see that the LA Times has posted their own positive review of the book. Weblog: More Than Human Tracked: March 8, 2005 11:04 PM [159]Why Yes, It Is An Offensive Agenda... Excerpt: This just in from Virginia Postrel, via The Speculist... The WaPost reports that Leon Kass and friends are promoting what they call an "offensive bioethics agenda....it looks like they want to separate their anti-research agenda from the convictions of... Weblog: Classical Values Tracked: March 9, 2005 09:46 PM Comments Its interesting how its mostly the opponents of enhancement that are trying to make this into a political issue (should we enhance or should we not?) as though we are all of single mind. Some will enhance and some will not. Some people will want to make themselves super bright and others won't care about intelligence, they will just want to live forever young in perfectly attractive bodies. Some will not want any personal changes at all and will become the late 21st century equivalent of the Amish. When push comes to shove, this stuff is really a matter of personal choice. These are not "democratic" issues as our detractors would say, they are PERSONAL choices. Is there any reason why we cannot all make our own personal choices on this stuff and continue to co-exist peacefully in an ever expanding economy? Rand, you are correct that it is the luddites (both right and left) that are trying to use the corrupt force of government to enforce a certain range of choices. Their position, not ours, is analogous to the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany. There are two positions on this; pro-choice and pro-force. I am pro-choice. Posted by [160]Kurt at March 7, 2005 09:46 AM Who says that if I engineer my body such that I no longer grow old or make myself super intelligent, that I am "no longer human"? This has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. As long as I can listen to good music and dance, drink a pint of Guiness and have good conversation, I will always be human. Posted by [161]Kurt at March 7, 2005 09:52 AM Rand, I'm glad you enjoyed the book. Kurt, I agree with you. One of the points of the book is that there's no clear dividing line between human and posthuman. We're well advised to take a very broad view of what it means to be human. Posted by [162]Ramez at March 7, 2005 11:35 AM Ramex, thats my point. As a life extensionist who has lived abroad, I do not define myself nor anyone else by them living within a fixed life pattern (a.k.a. the natural life cycle). I define a human being as someone who posesses consciousness and is sentient. It says nothing about your race, religion, or life-style choices. It is the bio-luddites, of whatever flavor, that are trying to narrowly redefine "human" to mean someone with a fixed set of abilities and lives a fixed life pattern. I believe very strongly that we should not allow the bio-luddites to get away with this. Rather, I believe that we should view and present to the general public that "morphological freedom" (or transhuman rights or whatever) as the logical extension of the civil liberties that we take for granted and vigorously defend, at least in Western society. Posted by [163]Kurt at March 7, 2005 03:02 PM Ramez, are you the author of the book? I have just ordered it through a local bookstore in my town. Posted by [164]Kurt at March 7, 2005 03:03 PM "It is the bio-luddites, of whatever flavor, that are trying to narrowly redefine "human" to mean someone with a fixed set of abilities and lives a fixed life pattern. I believe very strongly that we should not allow the bio-luddites to get away with this." Asimov had an excellent template to follow in the story "Bicentennial Man": (paraphrasing) The protagonists instigated a lawsuit against a man with an artificial heart, claiming the mechanical heart made him no longer human (and thus not entitled to certain rights or payments). While intentionally losing the case, they were sure to have the decision written to take the broadest and most lenient view of what it means to be human. They followed with successive cases, 'losing' at each step along the way, until the only remaining legal difference between a robot and a human was the infinite lifespan. You'll have to read the story for the ending... -S Posted by [165]Stephen Kohls at March 7, 2005 04:55 PM Kurt, yes I'm the author. I'm happy to hear you've ordered a copy. The book is officially on sale tomorrow! Posted by [166]Ramez at March 7, 2005 05:29 PM Eugenics didn't just sterilize people in Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany got its laws and eugenics ideology from the US, where eugenics was a major component of the Progessive Movement (Woodrow Wilson signed into law New Jersey's eugenics law, the author of which was later convicted of war crimes, which he committed as an _inmate_ at a Nazi concentration camp. See Black's _War Against the Weak_ for the gory details.) In the US eugenics was fasionable and well funded by the Carnagie people among others. Alexander Graham Bell was a proponent of 'positive' eugenics, and left the movement only after he realized that if they had been in power a century before he would never have been born(his mother was deaf)! I have H. G. Wells's views up on my web site -- go to the Erle Cox page -- from his 1901 book Anticipations. Utterly unreadable, which is why no one put it up at Project Gutenberg. Cox was among the few writers to attack the idea in his book Out of the Silence. Chesterton was another. The Inklings Press website has a lot more information as well. In the US, more than 60K people were mutilated in the 'progressive' states from around 1911 through the seventies. Posted by [167]John H. Costello at March 8, 2005 07:12 AM The fact that Woodrow Wilson supported positive eugenics does not supprise me. When he became president, he fired all of the African American employees of the federal government. He also got us into WWI (the stupidest war in human history) as well as pushed the federal income tax up from 3% up to nearly 70%. Yeah, Woodrow Wilson was a real statist with a capital "S". Funny how statism, positive (coercive) eugenics, and restrictions on allowing people to enhance their own bodies and minds as personal choice seem to run together. The common denominator of all three is STATISM. Posted by [168]Kurt at March 8, 2005 09:47 AM i's down yonder to the funral home tuther nite an sumbodie said, 'at aint ol ned its jes his bodee." i reckin so. Posted by [169]bubba at March 23, 2005 01:47 PM Market forces and social imperatives have been moving biotechnology forward for a number of years. Breast implants, advanced prosthetic devices and other cosmetic and functional equipment are commonplace. Teen-aged girls are getting tummy tucks and facelifts at rates unheard of in past generations. The technology will soon allow for not only brighter students, but for more socially acceptable ones as well. Prozac has partly seen to that. The difference between these various current trends and the eugenics movement of the past is that it is individually motivated and not a result of government coercion. Since the author is participating in this discussion, I would be interested in hearing his predictions about how the personalities and temperaments of people who live 100 years from now will differ from those we see today. In my mind, this is a far more potentially interesting topic than whether blind people are equipped with cybernetic eyes. Posted by [170]JT Michcock at March 23, 2005 02:05 PM References 150. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375703713/qid=1110210300/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0928743-3460934?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 151. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767918436/qid=1110210300/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-0928743-3460934?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 152. http://www.billmckibben.com/ 153. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/001389.html 154. http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/004930.html#004930 155. http://www.notdeadyet.org/eughis.html 156. http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/004947.html 157. http://www.transterrestrial.com/ 158. http://www.morethanhuman.org/blog/2005/03/new-reviews.htm 159. http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/002092.html 160. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 161. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 162. http://www.morethanhuman.org/ 163. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 164. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 165. mailto:STKohls at aol.com 166. http://www.morethanhuman.org/ 167. http://www.FossickerBooks.com/ 168. mailto:kurt2100kimo at yahoo.com.tw 169. http://electronicbubba.blogspot.com/ 170. mailto:jtmichcock at yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:11:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:11:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain Message-ID: Revenge of the Right Brain http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain_pr.html Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion. By Daniel H. Pink When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA. Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment. But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads. Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times. Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent. Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind. To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding. OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect. The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance. Asia Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals. The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go. But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better. Automation Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.) Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams. Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable. Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence. Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres. Abundance Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take. But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence. Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed. As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough. To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning. Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape. Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right. Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, copyright ? by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in March by Riverhead Books. Printed with permission of the publisher. Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dp at danpink.com) wrote about Gross National Happiness in issue 12.12. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:11:20 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:11:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Oscar: Nature or nurture? Message-ID: Nature or nurture? http://oscar.virginia.edu/x5701.xml By Christine Parker Martin (Foreign Affairs '92) Posted 2/17/05 Think back ... way back ...to grade school, when you were given a Styrofoam cup, potting soil and a bean. You took care to deposit your bean in the rich soil and tenderly watered it. Then, names were picked from a hat to decide which cups would get a spot on the windowsill, relegating the others to a shelf inside a cupboard. You might remember the outcome of this simple biology experiment, particularly if your bean plant resided in the dark cupboard. As with bean plants, the development of human traits involves both nature (genes) and nurture (environment). Psychology professor Eric Turkheimer demonstrated this phenomenon as it applies to IQ in a landmark twin study published last year in Psychological Science. Turkheimer's findings diverge from earlier nature/nurture IQ studies, which suggested genes are nearly all-important in determining differences in human intelligence and consequently led to heated debate as to whether publicly funded childhood assistance programs like Head Start can make a difference. "We found that for the poorest twins, IQ seemed to be determined almost exclusively by their socioeconomic status, which is to say their impoverished environment. Yet, for the best-off families, genes are the most important factor to determining IQ, with environment playing a much less important role," Turkheimer explained. Turkheimer's findings may seem intuitive. After all, the bean plant devoid of light not surprisingly emerges stunted. And the toy industry is capitalizing on this idea with best-selling enrichment products like Baby Einstein(TM) videos and black, white and red mobiles. Moreover, who hasn't heard such anecdotal evidence as the inner-city kid who beat all odds and wound up at Harvard thanks to a teacher who provided nurturing, stability and motivation? Yet, earlier nature/nurture IQ studies repeatedly demonstrated that people's genes--not environment--account for variability in individual IQ. And Turkheimer acknowledges, too, the undeniable importance of genes to human traits, including IQ. "We often joke in behavior genetics that everybody is an environmentalist until they have their second child," he said. But the research as it stood didn't satisfy Turkheimer, who felt previous studies told "too simple a story" because lower-income and impoverished families were typically, yet unintentionally, underrepresented in such studies. Said Turkheimer: "I'm a clinical psychologist, and I've seen and tested people raised in poverty whom I knew from observation had suppressed IQs because of their poverty." Turkheimer's study differed from previous twin IQ studies in two important ways. First, he identified a data source comprised of over 600 twin pairs, of which a substantial proportion represented families living near or below the poverty level. Second, Turkheimer relied on fairly recent statistical advances that made it possible to determine the importance of genes as a function of socioeconomic status. The study results show that in the most impoverished families, hereditability of IQ is essentially zero, with environment accounting for almost 60 percent of the differences in IQ among individuals. The impact of environment declines as socioeconomic level improves, playing a nominal role in the most affluent families, for which virtually all variability in IQ is attributed to genes. The study suggests that specific minimal environmental conditions are necessary for a person's genetic potential to be expressed. Socioeconomic status is a complex variable, and Turkheimer doesn't identify these factors, such as prenatal care, nutrition, income or parental involvement, for example, or suggest their relative importance to the results. "I think it's the accumulation of many, many small things that together make poverty, rather than any one thing that matters most," he speculated. Turkheimer recently replicated the study using a different twin sample, a necessary step before he or others can begin to try to understand the phenomenon in detail and look at such questions as "What kinds of intelligence and abilities, aside from IQ, are particularly sensitive to environment?" and, conversely, "What kinds of environmental differences are particularly important to intelligence and abilities?" Yet even without all the answers, Turkheimer is satisfied that his study now provides a theoretical framework in which it would be reasonable to expect that programs like Head Start might work. Noted Turkheimer: "It suggests that if you're going to work with people's environment to try and increase IQ, then the place to invest your money is in taking people in really bad environments and making them OK, rather than taking people in pretty good environments and making it better." _________________________________________________________________ Christine Parker Martin (Foreign Affairs '92) is a freelance writer who lives in Charlottesville with her husband and their son and daughter. From checker at panix.com Sun Apr 24 20:12:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:12:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Edge: A Theory of Roughness: A Talk with Benoit Mandelbrot Message-ID: That's eight for today. You're almost certain to get a full ten tomorrow, since that's when the Chronicle of Higer Education comes out and when I check Arts & Letters daily, my main sources besides the New York Times. A Theory of Roughness: A Talk with Benoit Mandelbrot http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mandelbrot04/mandelbrot04_index.html A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness. Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics. Chemistry is filled with acids, sugars, and alcohols -- all are concepts derived from sensory perceptions. Roughness is just as important as all those other raw sensations, but was not studied for its own sake. . A THEORY OF ROUGHNESS A Talk with Benoit Mandelbrot Introduction During the 1980s Benoit Mandelbrot accepted my invitation to give a talk before The Reality Club. The evening was the toughest ticket in the 10 year history of live Reality Club events during that decade: it seemed like every artist in New York had heard about it and wanted to attend. It was an exciting, magical evening. I've stayed in touch with Mandelbrot and shared an occasional meal with him every few years, always interested in what he has to say. Recently, we got together prior to his 80th birthday. Mandelbrot is best known as the founder of fractal geometry which impacts mathematics, diverse sciences, and arts, and is best appreciated as being the first broad attempt to investigate quantitatively the ubiquitous notion of roughness. And he continues to push the envelope with his theory of roughness. "There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit," he says. "I find that perfectly acceptable. The hammer I crafted is the first effective tool for all kinds of roughness and nobody will deny that there is at least some roughness everywhere." "My book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature," he says, reproduced Hokusai's print of the Great Wave, the famous picture with Mt. Fuji in the background, and also mentioned other unrecognized examples of fractality in art and engineering. Initially, I viewed them as amusing but not essential. But I soon changed my mind. "Innumerable readers made me aware of something strange. They made me look around and recognize fractals in the works of artists since time immemorial. I now collect such works. An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role had remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered." [10] -- JB BENOIT MANDELBROT is Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University and IBM Fellow Emeritus (Physics) at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His books include The Fractal Geometry of Nature; Fractals and Scaling in Finance); and (with Richard L. Hudson) The (mis)Behavior of Markets. [11]Benoit Mandelbrot's [12]Edge Bio Page _________________________________________________________________ A THEORY OF ROUGHNESS (BENOIT MANDELBROT:) There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time. For much of my life, however, there was no place where the things I wanted to investigate were of interest to anyone. So I spent much of my life as an outsider, moving from field to field, and back again, according to circumstances. Now that I near 80, write my memoirs, and look back, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years "ahead of my time." Until a few years ago, the topics in my Ph.D. were unfashionable but they are very popular today. My ambition was not to create a new field, but I would have welcomed a permanent group of people having interests close to mine and therefore breaking the disastrous tendency towards increasingly well-defined fields. Unfortunately, I failed on this essential point, very badly. Order doesn't come by itself. In my youth I was a student at Caltech while molecular biology was being created by Max Delbr?ck, so I saw what it means to create a new field. But my work did not give rise to anything like that. One reason is my personality -- I don't seek power and do not run around. A second is circumstances -- I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable. Besides, creating close organized links between activities which otherwise are very separate might have been beyond any single person's ability. That issue is important to me now, in terms of legacy. Let me elaborate. When I turned seventy, a former postdoc organized a festive meeting in Cura?ao. It was superb because of the participation of mathematician friends, physicist friends, engineering friends, economist friends and many others. Geographically, Cura?ao is out of the way, hence not everybody could make it, but every field was represented. Several such meetings had been organized since 1982. However, my enjoyment of Cura?ao was affected by a very strong feeling that this was going to be the last such common meeting. My efforts over the years had been successful to the extent, to take an example, that fractals made many mathematicians learn a lot about physics, biology, and economics. Unfortunately, most were beginning to feel they had learned enough to last for the rest of their lives. They remained mathematicians, had been changed by considering the new problems I raised, but largely went their own way. Today, various activities united at Cura?ao are again quite separate. Notable exceptions persist, to which I shall return in a moment. However, as I was nearing eighty, a Cura?ao-like meeting was not considered at all. Instead, the event is being celebrated by more than half a dozen specialized meetings in diverse locations. The most novel and most encouraging one will be limited to very practical applications of fractals, to issues concerning plastics, concrete, the internet, and the like. For many years I had been hearing the comment that fractals make beautiful pictures, but are pretty useless. I was irritated because important applications always take some time to be revealed. For fractals, it turned out that we didn't have to wait very long. In pure science, fads come and go. To influence basic big-budget industry takes longer, but hopefully also lasts longer. To return to and explain how fractals have influenced pure mathematics, let me say that I am about to spend several weeks at the Mittag-Leffler Institute at the Swedish Academy of Sciences. Only 25 years ago, I had no reason to set foot there, except to visit the spectacular library. But, as it turned out, my work has inspired three apparently distinct programs at this Institute. ~~ The first was held in the 1980s when the Mandelbrot Set was a topic of a whole year of discussion. It may not be widely appreciated that the discovery of that set had consisted in empowering the eye again, in inspecting pictures beyond counting and on their basis stating a number of observations and conjectures to which I drew the mathematicians' attention. One of my conjectures was solved in six months, a second in five years, a third in ten. But the basic conjecture, despite heroic efforts rewarded by two Fields Medals, remains a conjecture, now called MLC: the Mandelbrot Set is locally connected. The notion that these conjectures might have been reached by pure thought -- with no picture -- is simply inconceivable. The next Mittag-Leffler year I inspired came six years ago and focused on my "4/3" conjecture about Brownian motion. Its discovery is characteristic of my research style and my legacy, hence deserves to be retold. Scientists have known Brownian motion for centuries, and the mathematical model provided by Norbert Wiener is a marvelous pillar at the very center of probability theory. Early on, scientists had made pictures both of Brownian motion in nature and of Wiener's model. But this area developed like many others in mathematics and lost all contact with the real world. My attitude has been totally different. I always saw a close kinship between the needs of "pure" mathematics and a certain hero of Greek mythology, Antaeus. The son of Earth, he had to touch the ground every so often in order to reestablish contact with his Mother; otherwise his strength waned. To strangle him, Hercules simply held him off the ground. Back to mathematics. Separation from any down-to-earth input could safely be complete for long periods -- but not forever. In particular, the mathematical study of Brownian motion deserved a fresh contact with reality. Seeking such a contact, I had my programmer draw a very big sample motion and proceeded to play with it. I was not trying to implement any preconceived idea, simply actively "fishing" for new things. For a long time, nothing new came up. Then I conceived an idea that was less scientific than esthetic. I became bothered by the fact that, when a Brownian motion has been drawn from time 0 to time 1, its two end portions and its middle portion follow different rules. That is, the whole is not homogeneous, exhibits a certain lack of inner symmetry, a deficit of beauty. This triggered the philosophical prejudice that when you seek some unspecified and hidden property, you don't want extraneous complexity to interfere. In order to achieve homogeneity, I decided to make the motion end where it had started. The resulting motion biting its own tail created a distinctive new shape I call Brownian cluster. Next the same purely aesthetic consideration led to further processing. The continuing wish to eliminate extraneous complexity made me combine all the points that cannot be reached from infinity without crossing the Brownian cluster. Painting them in black sufficed, once again, to create something quite new, resembling an island. Instantly, it became apparent that its boundary deserved to be investigated. Just as instantly, my long previous experience with the coastlines of actual islands on Earth came handy and made me suspect that the boundary of Brownian motion has a fractal dimension equal to 4/3. The fractal dimension is a concept that used to belong to well-hidden mathematical esoteric. But in the previous decades I had tamed it into becoming an intrinsic qualitative measure of roughness. Empirical measurement yielded 1.3336 and on this basis, my 1982 book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, conjectured that the value of 4/3 is exact. Mathematician friends chided me: had I told them before publishing, they could have quickly provided a fully rigorous proof of my conjecture. They were wildly overoptimistic, and a proof turned out to be extraordinarily elusive. A colleague provided a numerical approximation that fitted 4/3 to about 15 decimal places, but an actual proof took 18 years and the joining of contributions of three very different scientists. It was an enormous sensation in the year 2000. Not only the difficult proof created its own very active sub field of mathematics, but it affected other, far removed, sub fields by automatically settling many seemingly unrelated conjectures. An article in Science magazine reported to my great delight a comment made at a major presentation of the results, that this was the most exciting thing in probability theory in 20 years. Amazing things started happening and the Mittag-Leffler Institute organized a full year to discuss what to do next. Today, after the fact, the boundary of Brownian motion might be billed as a "natural" concept. But yesterday this concept had not occurred to anyone. And even if it had been reached by pure thought, how could anyone have proceeded to the dimension 4/3? To bring this topic to life it was necessary for the Antaeus of Mathematics to be compelled to touch his Mother Earth, if only for one fleeting moment. Within the mathematical community, the MLC and 4/3 conjectures had a profound effect -- witnessed recently when the French research council, CNRS, expressed itself as follows. "Mathematics operates in two complementary ways. In the 'visual' one the meaning of a theorem is perceived instantly on a geometric figure. The 'written' one leans on language, on algebra; it operates in time. Hermann Well wrote that 'the angel of geometry and the devil of algebra share the stage, illustrating the difficulties of both.'" I, who took leave from French mathematics at age 20 because of its rage against images, could not have described it better. Great to be alive when these words come from that pen. But don't forget that, in the generations between Hermann Well (1885-1955) and today -- the generations of my middle years -- the mood had been totally different. Back to cluster dimension. At IBM, where I was working at the time, my friends went on from the Brownian to other clusters. They began with the critical percolation cluster, which is a famous mathematical structure of great interest in statistical physics. For it, an intrinsic complication is that the boundary can be defined in two distinct ways, yielding 4/3, again, and 7/4. Both values were first obtained numerically but by now have been proven theoretically, not by isolated arguments serving no other purpose, but in a way that has been found very useful elsewhere. As this has continued, an enormous range of geometric shapes, so far discussed physically but not rigorously, became attractive in pure mathematics, and the proofs were found to be very difficult and very interesting. The third meeting that my work inspired at the Mittag-Leffler Institute of the Swedish Academy, will take place this year. Its primarily concern will be a topic I have already mentioned, the mathematics of the Internet. This may or may not have happened to you, but some non-negligible proportion of e/mail gets lost. Multiple identical messages are a pest, but the sender is actually playing it safe for the good reason that in engineering everything is finite. There is a very complicated way in which messages get together, separate, and are sorted. Although computer memory is no longer expensive, there's always a finite size buffer somewhere. When a big piece of news arrives, everybody sends a message to everybody else, and the buffer fills. If so, what happens to the messages? They're gone, just flow into the river. At first the experts thought they could use an old theory that had been developed in the 1920s for telephone networks. But as the Internet expanded, it was found that this model won't work. Next they tried one of my inventions from the mid-1960s, and it wouldn't work either. Then they tried multi fractals, a mathematical construction that I had introduced in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. Multi fractals are the sort of concept that might have been originated by mathematicians for the pleasure of doing mathematics, but in fact it originated in my study of turbulence and I immediately extended it to finance. To test new internet equipment one examines its performance under multi fractal variability. This is even a fairly big business, from what I understand. ~~ How could it be that the same technique applies to the Internet, the weather and the stock market? Why, without particularly trying, am I touching so many different aspects of many different things? A recent, important turn in my life occurred when I realized that something that I have long been stating in footnotes should be put on the marquee. I have engaged myself, without realizing it, in undertaking a theory of roughness. Think of color, pitch, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics. Chemistry is filled with acids, sugars, and alcohols; all are concepts derived from sensory perceptions. Roughness is just as important as all those other raw sensations, but was not studied for its own sake. In 1982 a metallurgist approached me, with the impression that fractal dimension might provide at long last a measure of the roughness of such things as fractures in metals. Experiments confirmed this hunch, and we wrote a paper for Nature in 1984. It brought a big following and actually created a field concerned with the measurement of roughness. Recently, I have moved the contents of that paper to page 1 of every description of my life's work. Those descriptions have repeatedly changed, because I was not particularly precocious, but I'm particularly long-lived and continue to evolve even today. Above a multitude of specialized considerations, I see the bulk of my work as having been directed towards a single overarching goal: to develop a rigorous analysis for roughness. At long last, this theme has given powerful cohesion to my life. Earlier on, since my Ph.D. thesis in 1952, the cohesion had been far more flimsy. It had been based on scaling, that is, on the central role taken by so-called power-law relations. For better or worse, none of my acquaintances has or had a similar story to tell. Everybody I have known has been constantly conscious of working in a pre-existing field or in one being consciously established. As a notable example, Max Delbr?ck was first a physicist, and then became the founder of molecular biology, a field he always understood as extending the field of biology. To the contrary, my fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact, very late in my life. To appreciate the nature of fractals, recall Galileo's splendid manifesto that "Philosophy is written in the language of mathematics and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which one wanders about in a dark labyrinth." Observe that circles, ellipses, and parabolas are very smooth shapes and that a triangle has a small number of points of irregularity. Galileo was absolutely right to assert that in science those shapes are necessary. But they have turned out not to be sufficient, "merely" because most of the world is of infinitely great roughness and complexity. However, the infinite sea of complexity includes two islands: one of Euclidean simplicity, and also a second of relative simplicity in which roughness is present, but is the same at all scales. The standard example is the cauliflower. One glance shows that it's made of florets. A single floret, examined after you cut everything else, looks like a small cauliflower. If you strip that floret of everything except one "floret of a floret" -- very soon you must take out your magnifying glass -- it's again a cauliflower. A cauliflower shows how an object can be made of many parts, each of which is like a whole, but smaller. Many plants are like that. A cloud is made of billows upon billows upon billows that look like clouds. As you come closer to a cloud you don't get something smooth but irregularities at a smaller scale. Smooth shapes are very rare in the wild but extremely important in the ivory tower and the factory, and besides were my love when I was a young man. Cauliflowers exemplify a second area of great simplicity, that of shapes which appear more or less the same as you look at them up close or from far away, as you zoom in and zoom out. Before my work, those shapes had no use, hence no word was needed to denote them. My work created such a need and I coined "fractals." I had studied Latin as a youngster, and was trying to convey the idea of a broken stone, something irregular and fragmented. Latin is a very concrete language, and my son's Latin dictionary confirmed that a stone that was hit and made irregular and broken up, is described in Latin by the adjective "fractus." This adjective made me coin the word fractal, which now is in every dictionary and encyclopedia. It denotes shapes that are the same from close and far away. ~~ Do I claim that everything that is not smooth is fractal? That fractals suffice to solve every problem of science? Not in the least. What I'm asserting very strongly is that, when some real thing is found to be un smooth, the next mathematical model to try is fractal or multi fractal. A complicated phenomenon need not be fractal, but finding that a phenomenon is "not even fractal" is bad news, because so far nobody has invested anywhere near my effort in identifying and creating new techniques valid beyond fractals. Since roughness is everywhere, fractals -- although they do not apply to everything -- are present everywhere. And very often the same techniques apply in areas that, by every other account except geometric structure, are separate. To give an example, let me return to the stock market and the weather. It's almost trite to compare them and speak of storms and hurricanes on Wall Street. For a while the market is almost flat, and almost nothing happens. But every so often it hits a little storm, or a hurricane. These are words which practical people use very freely but one may have viewed them as idle metaphors. It turns out, however, that the techniques I developed for studying turbulence -- like weather -- also apply to the stock market. Qualitative properties like the overall behavior of prices, and many quantitative properties as well, can be obtained by using fractals or multi fractals at an extraordinarily small cost in assumptions. This does not mean that the weather and the financial markets have identical causes -- absolutely not. When the weather changes and hurricanes hit, nobody believes that the laws of physics have changed. Similarly, I don't believe that when the stock market goes into terrible gyrations its rules have changed. It's the same stock market with the same mechanisms and the same people. A good side effect of the idea of roughness is that it dissipates the surprise, the irritation, and the unease about the possibility of applying fractal geometry so widely. The fact that it is not going to lack problems anytime soon is comforting. By way of background, a branch of physics that I was working in for many years has lately become much less active. Many problems have been solved and others are so difficult that nobody knows what to do about them. This means that I do much less physics today than 15 years ago. By contrast, fractal tools have plenty to do. There is a joke that your hammer will always find nails to hit. I find that perfectly acceptable. The hammer I crafted is the first effective tool for all kinds of roughness and nobody will deny that there is at last some roughness everywhere. I did not and don't plan any general theory of roughness, because I prefer to work from the bottom up and not from top to bottom. But the problems are there. Again, I didn't try very hard to create a field. But now, long after the fact, I enjoy this enormous unity and emphasize it in every recent publication. The goal to push the envelope further has brought another amazing development, which could have been described as something recent, but isn't. My book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, reproduced Hokusai's print of the Great Wave, the famous picture with Mt. Fuji in the background, and also mentioned other unrecognized examples of fractality in art and engineering. Initially, I viewed them as amusing but not essential. But I changed my mind as innumerable readers made me aware of something strange. They made me look around and recognize fractals in the works of artists since time immemorial. I now collect such works. An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in "inventing" something. It's an arrogance that some enjoy, and others do not. Now I reach beyond arrogance when I proclaim that fractals had been pictured forever but their true role remained unrecognized and waited for me to be uncovered. _________________________________________________________________ EDGE READING _________________________________________________________________ "Good, narrative history, combined with much fine writing ...quirky, absorbing and persuasive in just the way that good stories are." -- Nature o "Some of the biggest brains in the world turn their lenses on their own lives...fascinating...an invigorating debate." -- Washington Post o "Compelling." -- Disocver o " An engrossing treat of a book...crammed with hugely enjoyable anecdotes...you'll have a wonderful time reading these reminiscences." -- New Scientist o o "An intriguing collection of essays detailing the childhood experiences of prominent scientists and the life events that sparked their hunger for knowledge. Full of comical and thought-provoking stories." -- Globe & Mail o o "An inspiring collection of 27 essays by leading scientists about the childhood moments that set them on their shining paths." -- Psychology Today References 10. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/brockman.html 11. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/mandelbrot.html 12. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/mandelbrot.html 13. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mandelbrot04/images/curious500.jpg From waluk at earthlink.net Sun Apr 24 23:27:13 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 16:27:13 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Fw: your e-straw poll In-Reply-To: <027601c54901$92f21220$6501a8c0@callastudios> References: <027601c54901$92f21220$6501a8c0@callastudios> Message-ID: <426C2B51.3080405@earthlink.net> Apparently I must concur with both Lorraine and Alice since I find Frank's posts very far reaching and containing information I don't readily come across in other places. So far I have no difficulty in keeping up with the numerous webmails that Frank sends....and when no one else has emailed me when I check in, Frank is always there with a smidgen or so for me to read. What I do is scroll down through his posts and press the delete key when I'm either already familiar with the info or it is of no interest to me at present. Usually my webmail hovers around 200 or more per day so what Premise Checker has forwarded is not a problem. Best wishes, Gerry Alice Andrews wrote: > I concur with Lorraine! > Another thing that might be helpful, for some, is to create a 'Premise > Checker' folder that Frank's webmails go directly into. (On Outlook > Express this can be done by creating a new message rule.) While, of > course, it doesn't change the amount of emails, it might provide a > sense of order... > ----- Original Message ----- > *From:* Alice Andrews > *To:* Premise Checker > *Sent:* Sunday, April 24, 2005 7:39 AM > *Subject:* your e-straw poll > > Hi Frank, > Whatever you end up doing will be just fine w//me/...However, I happen > (also) to like having the articles in the body of the text (in > addition to a link), as you've been doing...Some of them (and not just > the science ones) are wonderful and have helped me tremendously in my > teaching, writing, and research. So (more) thanks! Have you sent this > one in, btw? > All best, > Alice > > > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17973 > > > /The New York Review of Books/: > > > Vive la Diff?rence! > > > By H. Allen Orr > > > Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men > > > > by Bryan Sykes > > Norton, 320 pp., $25.95; $15.95 (paper) > > > Y: The Descent of Men > > > > by Steve Jones > > Houghton Mifflin, 252 pp., $25.00 > > > The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives > > > > By David Bainbridge > > Harvard University Press, 205 pp., $22.95; $14.95 (paper) > > The human genome is made up of forty-six chromosomes, the rod-like > structures that reside in the nucleus of every cell. These chromosomes > carry all of our genes, which, in turn, are made of DNA. Two of these > chromosomes, called the X and the Y, are different from the rest: they > are "sex chromosomes." Men carry one X and one Y chromosome, while > women carry two X chromosomes. All the obvious physical differences > between the sexes ultimately spring from this humble difference in > chromosomal constitution. > > During the last few years, real progress has been made in our > understanding of the sex chromosomes and we now know much more about > our X and Y than we did a mere decade ago. In 2003, for example, > essentially the entire stretch of DNA carried on the human Y > chromosome was decoded, revealing the number and, in many cases, > identity of the genes that make up this seat of maleness. More > important, owing to a breakthrough that occurred in the early > Nineties, biologists now understand just how sex is decided in human > beings?geneticists identified the master "switch gene" that determines > whether an embryo will develop into a male or a female. > > These discoveries might seem surprisingly recent. In view of the > confident pronouncements in the medical press about all things having > to do with sex and gender (homosexuality, for example, was said to be > genetically determined), you'd be forgiven for assuming that the > biology of how a human being becomes a boy or a girl has long been > understood. To be fair, though, there were good reasons for the slow > progress. How sex is determined represents a rare problem in which the > study of simpler organisms like fruit flies led biologists astray. Sex > determination in human beings specifically and in mammals generally > doesn't work the way it does in most of the species that geneticists > like to study. Moreover, genetic studies in human beings are simply > harder to perform than those in species like the fruit fly: a > generation is more like two decades than two weeks, and we can't > dictate who mates with whom, an ethical constraint that doesn't arise > with flies. > > Although the three books discussed here cover much of the same ground, > one stands out from the rest. Bryan Sykes's /Adam's Curse/ is both far > more ambitious, and controversial, than Steve Jones's or David > Bainbridge's book. Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford University > and author of the best-selling /The Seven Daughters of Eve/, sounds > loud alarms about an impending biological crisis involving the Y > chromosome. He also makes bold sociobiological claims about the effect > of the Y chromosome on our lives. Because Sykes is a leading > researcher in the study of sex chromosomes (not to mention a science > adviser to the House of Commons), his pronouncements merit special > attention. > > > 1. > > Sykes begins his book with the discovery of the master gene that > decides sex in human beings. For decades, biologists understood that > human beings have so-called Y-dominant sex determination. Roughly > speaking, if you carry a Y chromosome, you're a male, while if you > don't carry a Y chromosome, you're a female. As a result, rare > individuals born with two X's /and/ a Y are boys, while rare > individuals born with one X and no Y are girls. There is therefore > something on the Y, not the X, that decides sex. Identifying this > something, however, proved extraordinarily difficult. > > As often occurs in human genetics, the key breakthrough involved > extremely rare exceptions to the above rules. In the late 1980s, > several people were found whose sex appeared not to match their sex > chromosomes. Some were patients who had an X and a Y chromosome and > yet were female. Careful study revealed that these patients' Y > chromosomes were incomplete?they lacked a small, defined piece of the > normal chromosome. Others were patients who carried two X chromosomes > and (apparently) no Y and yet were male. Careful study revealed that > these patients carried a very small piece of the Y chromosome, > typically too small to be seen under a microscope. Remarkably, the > small bit of the Y missing from the female patients roughly > corresponded to the small piece present in the male patients. This > proved that sex does not depend on the presence or absence of an > entire Y chromosome and further suggested that whatever gene or genes > decide sex reside in the relevant small region of the Y. The race to > locate the human "sex determination gene" was on. > > As Sykes recounts it, the race was filled with false starts. In 1987, > a research team at the Whitehead Institute near Boston announced the > discovery of ZFY, a gene that sits in the appropriate part of the Y > and that had certain molecular features that, the team believed, made > it a strong candidate for the sex gene in humans. Soon, however, the > ZFY story unraveled (for one thing, ZFY turned out to also sit on the > X chromosome, which made little sense) and the race, briefly > suspended, began anew. > > In the 1990s, another research team led by Peter Goodfellow and Robin > Lovell-Badge at the Human Molecular Genetics Laboratory and National > Institute for Medical Research in London identified another Y > chromosome gene which they confidently named SRY, for Sex Determining > Region of the Y chromosome. Their confidence was, in this case, well > placed. During the following year, the same team performed a critical > experiment proving that SRY does in fact determine sex in mammals. > Injecting a copy of the SRY gene into mouse eggs, the team produced a > mouse that carried two X chromosomes and SRY?and it was male. SRY was > able, therefore, to force an embryo otherwise destined to become > female to develop instead as male. As Sykes recalls, the "star mouse, > swinging on a stick and sporting enormous testicles to prove the > point, made the cover of the edition of /Nature/" that announced the > discovery of SRY. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Although many details of how SRY works remain uncertain, some things > are clear: SRY is a special kind of gene that has the power to switch > other genes on or off. Genes exist in two states: on, in which they > make a protein product (say, hemoglobin for your red blood cells), or > off, in which they sit idly, making no protein product. SRY can switch > some genes from one of these states to the other. No one imagines, > therefore, that the many physical features that distinguish boys from > girls?penises not vaginas, testes not ovaries, and so on?reflect the > immediate effects of SRY alone. Rather, SRY sits at the top of a > genetic cascade: if present, it switches on a set of other genes, some > of which may in turn switch on yet other genes, and so on. (These > other genes do not reside on the Y, but are scattered throughout the > genome.) The cumulative effect of all this genetic switching is the > development of testes; and the testes in turn produce hormones that > then complete the development of a male anatomy. As this description > implies, it is also now clear that the original state of a human > embryo is female. It takes active work by SRY to divert the normal > path of development from female to male, a process that, in human > beings, starts when the fetus is seven weeks old. > > Sykes gives an excellent account of the subtleties of human sex > determination. Indeed he skillfully leads us through a number of other > topics in human genetics, including his own research on the use of Y > chromosome "fingerprinting" to reconstruct the movement of men > throughout history. Contemporary Polynesian men, for example, often > carry Y chromosomes whose DNA clearly derives from Europe, a vestige > of the conjugal visits of European sailors in the age of exploration. > And an astonishing number of men who live within the borders of the > old Mongol Empire carry what is genetically the same Y chromosome. > Sykes suggests that this extraordinarily popular Y may descend from > Genghis Khan himself, who typically slaughtered the men he conquered > and bedded the women he vanquished throughout much of Central Asia. > > Fascinating as all this is, though, it turns out to be preliminary, a > long preamble to Sykes's real purpose: to warn the world of his most > important discovery?that human beings face an immense genetic > disaster. And here Sykes's book takes a sharp turn for the worse. > > > 2. > > Although Sykes doesn't describe this impending disaster until fairly > late in his book, the subtitle to /Adam's Curse/ gives it right away: > we face a future without men. Sykes is convinced that the male of the > species is doomed. Unless something is done?and soon? men face an > "inevitable eventual extinction." You won't be surprised to learn that > the alleged causes of this crisis reside in the Y chromosome. Sykes's > publishers have, predictably, latched on to this dire news and the > cover of his book speaks in ominous tones of the certain extinction of > half of humanity. Also not surprisingly, the press has played along, > with pieces in /The New York Times/ and /The Guardian/ warning that > men may be a thing of the past.^[1] > > > Sykes's case for the extinction of men hinges on an unusual problem > plaguing many genes on the Y chromosome?they tend to pick up > debilitating mutations and to ultimately degenerate into genetic junk. > A couple of hundred million years ago or so, the X and Y were a pair > of perfectly ordinary chromosomes that each carried a full complement > of the same thousand genes. Since then, however, the Y has been slowly > degenerating. As a result, while the human X still carries its > thousand genes, the Y carries only about a hundred. Sykes believes > that the genes that remain on the Y?including SRY as well as others > required for the fertility of men?will also degenerate. The disastrous > consequence, he says, will be the disappearance of fertile males. > (Sykes sometimes says that males will become sterile, while at other > times he suggests they'll disappear. Genetically, at least, the > difference doesn't make a difference: if all males are sterile, they > may as well not be there.) > > Sykes even tries to calculate when disaster will strike. He concludes > that, given the high rate of mutation on the Y, nearly all men will be > almost completely sterile in about 125,000 years. In the meantime, > male fertility will steadily fall. Adam's curse is, then, a rather > serious affair. Not surprisingly, Sykes suggests some ways to avert > this looming disaster. He seems most serious about using > biotechnological methods to relocate Y chromosome genes, moving them > to kinder, gentler chromosomes, where their continued existence is > presumably assured. (Such a transfer is, in principle, possible, > though some technical hurdles would have to be cleared.) > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > I'm afraid that this is all just silly. There are several related > theories of why most genes on the Y chromosome degenerate and none of > them predicts that men will become extinct. To see why not, we need to > understand why Y chromosomes degenerate in the first place. All > theories of Y degeneration (full disclosure: one of them is mine) > hinge on an unusual feature of the Y: it doesn't "recombine." Recall > that half your chromosomes come from your mother and half from your > father. When you make sperm or eggs, each of your chromosomes from > your mother pairs up with the corresponding one from your father. > During this process, the two chromosomes often swap genetic material, > an event called recombination. Consequently, any chromosome entering > your sperm or egg likely carries some genes from your mother and > others from your father. Oddly, though, the Y doesn't play this game: > while all other chromosomes (including the X) recombine, the Y does > not.^[2] > > This is important because recombination, it turns out, makes it easy > for natural selection to get rid of bad mutations. Put conversely, > natural selection is somewhat compromised when dealing with > chromosomes that don't recombine. All our theories of population > genetics thus predict that the Y will slowly but surely accumulate > mutations that have slightly bad effects. But the key point is this: > the process I have described will not spiral out of control, yielding > sterile or absent men, for two reasons. The first is that the > evolutionary forces that cause genes on the Y chromosome to degenerate > turn out to be very weak; that's why it's taken hundreds of millions > of years for our Y to fall into its current state of disrepair. In > contrast, the evolutionary forces that maintain male fertility?and > that even maintain a 50:50 ratio of males to females in > populations?are very strong. The latter, strong forces, overcome the > former, weak ones, and males neither become sterile nor disappear. > > Second, not all genes on the Y chromosome are created equal. Some, > indeed the great majority, originally resided on both the Y /and/ X > chromosomes. Natural selection will often tolerate loss of this kind > of gene from the Y since there's a "backup" copy on the X that can > still perform the gene's functions. Other genes, though, now exist > /only/ on the Y. Natural selection will most assuredly not tolerate > the loss of this kind of gene since no backup copy sits on the X. The > critical point is that most of the male fertility genes now residing > on the human Y exist only on that chromosome and there's no way that > selection will allow their loss. > > Sykes's calculation suggests otherwise because it's wrong. He seems to > assume that Y chromosomes carrying mutations that partially sterilize > men will get passed on to future generations as often as normal, > unmutated chromosomes. But they won't?that's what it means to be > partially sterile. This misstep leads Sykes astray. There are simply > no sound evolutionary grounds to support his sensational claims of the > extinction of men.^[3] > > This is not to say that Y chromosomes can't be lost from a species. > They can and sometimes are. But it is to say that the Y can disappear > only after it's become dispensable, i.e., only after genetic changes > take place that render Y-less males healthy and fertile. Sykes gets > this logic backward. Telling the story of a rodent called the mole > vole that's lost its Y, he marvels that these lucky voles made the > genetic changes needed to avoid male extinction "only just in time" > before their Y disappeared. But this is like saying that you got out > of your clothes only just in time before they were thrown in the wash. > In reality, the later event is contingent on the earlier. > > The bottom line is that Sykes's alarmist talk of the extinction of men > is just that?alarmist?and I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the > possibility. And I certainly wouldn't give much thought (much less > funding) to his technological fix to this nonproblem. There are enough > real problems out there. > > > 3. > > Talk of sex chromosomes and of single genes that determine sex > naturally raises the specter of genetic determinism. Are certain > behaviors and thoughts fundamentally male and others essentially > female? To just what extent does recent biological research support > the notion that genes determine our identity, sexual or otherwise? > > The answer to this question depends entirely on the particular trait > or character under discussion. If the character of interest is having > testes or not, we are confronted with a biological determinism of the > first magnitude. Whether an embryo develops testes depends essentially > entirely on its genes; indeed you'd be hard pressed to find anything > more genetically hardwired. If this brand of biological determinism > alarms you, you are destined to be alarmed. > > But things are considerably less clear if the trait of interest is, > say, aggressiveness, or a curiosity about genes. Unfortunately, this > (not so subtle) distinction is often lost on Sykes. Sociobiological > claims of an almost unbelievably unnuanced sort run throughout /Adam's > Curse/. Sykes's chief claim is that the Y chromosome causes its > bearers to do crazy things. Sykes tells his readers that men, violent > and sex-crazed, are "driven on by the lash of their Y chromosomes," > and that the Y has "claimed the power to force us, men and women > alike, to submit...to its will." Indeed it soon appears that the Y is > legally liable for war, the subjugation of women, and empire building: > > Driven on and on by the crazed ambition of the Y-chromosome to > multiply without limit, wars began to enable men to annex adjacent > lands and enslave their women. Nothing must stand in the way of > the Y-chromosome. Wars, slavery, empires?all ultimately coalesce > on that one mad pursuit. > > In places Sykes is so overcome by the power of the Y chromosome that > he passes from breathless exaggeration to patent absurdity. In a > remarkable passage, he argues that Genghis Khan's Y chromosome was so > successful that it's hard to know who was in charge: > > Is the Khan chromosome's achievement owing to the sexual exploits > and military conquests of the Mongol emperor? Or was the Great > Khan himself driven to success in war, and in bed, by the ambition > of his Y chromosome? > > Since Sykes tells us?and on the previous page?that 16 million men now > carry the Khan Y chromosome, the answer seems painfully clear: if the > Y is in charge, the world would now have 16 million Genghis Khans on > its hands. > > Although Sykes's excesses might be excused as the inevitable hyperbole > of a popularizer, their cumulative effect is serious and does, I > think, do real damage: it's hard to believe that a biologically naive > reader could walk away from /Adam's Curse/ with a sensible view of the > connection between genes and behavior. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > In any case, Steve Jones's /Y/ and David Bainbridge's /The X in Sex/ > prove that popular books on human genetics?indeed on human sex > chromosomes?need not trade in sociobiological excess. Sykes, Jones, > and Bainbridge cover much of the same ground ?all recount the > discovery of SRY, discuss the role of hormones in sexual development, > and describe Darwin's theory of sexual selection. But their positions > on genetic determinism differ profoundly. > > Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, and the > author of /The Language of Genes/ and /Darwin's Ghost/, offers his > latest book as an update of Darwin's 1871 classic /The Descent of > Man/. Although Darwin was more of a hereditarian than many > evolutionists like to admit, Jones himself turns out to be very > cautious about attributing human behavior to genes. While he obviously > understands that carrying the Y chromosome or not means that men and > women will express at least some different genes, his treatment of the > consequences of this difference is far more measured than Sykes's. > Indeed Jones is, in places, explicitly anti-sociobiological. He > reminds us, for example, that the Y chromosome has all too often > served as "a useful alibi for man's excesses" and emphasizes that > > manhood tells a social tale as much as one written in nucleic > acids [DNA] and must, with all that it implies, be constructed. > Once the foundations of the male state are laid, what rises from > them has little to do with DNA. > > Such sentiments are all too rarely expressed in popular writing about > human evolution or genetics and it is to Jones's credit that his smart > and informative book bucks the trend. > > For his part, Bainbridge, a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College, > London, and author of /Making Babies: The Science of Pregnancy/, > essentially eschews the entire controversy over evolutionary > psychology. He sticks instead to hard science. Although Bainbridge is > given to talking about how chromosomes "control our lives" or "become > our dictator," he focuses almost entirely on the role of chromosomes > in human disease, not in human cognition, emotion, or behavior. And > when it comes to disease, there is, of course, little doubt that > chromosomes do often control our lives. > > Bainbridge's book is largely devoted to the X chromosome, not the Y. > He spends much of his time on "sex-linked" conditions that affect men > more than women; these range from annoyances like baldness to > devastating diseases like muscular dystrophy.^[4] > Bainbridge also devotes > many fascinating pages to complex ailments like autoimmune disease > that, for reasons which remain unclear, disproportionately afflict > women. (Hashimoto's thyroiditis, for instance?a leading cause of > underactive thyroids?affects fifty times more women than men.) > > But Bainbridge's chief concern is with the biology of human sex > determination and with the many ways in which it can, and does, go > wrong. In the end, his message is that while human beings obviously > come in two predominant sexes, both cultural and biological forces > give rise to a surprisingly "continuous spectrum of gender." While > Bainbridge makes it fairly clear that he wouldn't be surprised if > genes sometimes cause men and women to act or think differently, he's > largely silent about the nature and extent of any such differences. > While it's hard to know for sure, I suspect that this silence reflects > the cautious neutrality of a sensible scientist confronted with mixed > data and mountains of speculation. > > For the truth is, of course, that we have little idea how much of the > variation in human behavior?whether between the sexes or within > them?is caused by genes. While I could defend this claim by pointing > to a body of technical literature filled with conflicting assertions > about the heritability of human behavior, there's no need for such a > thing. The same point is made (albeit inadvertently) by the three > books under review. Although all are written by smart male British > biologists who read essentially the same scientific literature and who > live and work within a hundred miles of each other, their views on the > role of genes in human behavior are widely divergent, ranging from > enthusiastic endorsement to considerable skepticism to apparent > neutrality. This lack of consensus speaks for itself. > > > Notes > > ^[1] See Claudia Dreifus, > "Is Genghis Khan an Ancestor? Mr. DNA Knows," /The New York Times/, > June 8, 2004. See also Bryan Sykes, "Do We Need Men?" /The Guardian/, > August 28, 2003. > > ^[2] This is almost, but > not exactly, true. Tiny regions of the Y do in fact recombine with the > X. I ignore these "pseudoautosomal regions" here, as they make up a > small part of the Y chromosome and play no role in what follows. > > ^[3] For a review of how > and why Y chromosomes fall apart, see B. Charlesworth and D. > Charlesworth, "The Degeneration of Y Chromosomes," /Pro-ceedings of > the Royal Society of London/, Vol. 355 (2000), pp. 1563?1572. > > ^[4] Because mutations on > the X chromosome, not the Y, cause these conditions, it might not be > obvious why they typically affect men, not women. The reason is that > women, who carry two X chromosomes, can partly "mask" the effects of a > mutated X with their other (and usually unmutated) X chromosome. Men, > who have a single X, can't mask mutations in this way. > This explanation, however, gets complicated in two ways. First, women > randomly "inactivate" (turn off) one of their X chromosomes within > each of their cells. So women mask the bad effects of mutated X > chromosomes partly because those cells that happen to leave the good X > turned on can "cover" for those cells that leave the bad X turned on. > Second, recent work shows that this traditional account is somewhat > incomplete. It turns out that, while /most/ of the genes on one of a > woman's X's are turned off, 15 percent are not. The result is that > women, within their cells, express two copies of these X chromosomal > genes while men express one. (See L. Carrell and H.F. Willard, > "X-Inactivation Profile Reveals Extensive Variability in X-Linked Gene > Expression in Females," /Nature/, Vol. 434, 2005, pp. 400?404.) > > > > ******************************************************************************************** > > Once again, for some reason I don't understand, several people have > sent emails that I have absolutely not received. So, if you have sent > me an email to which I have not responded at all after an appropriate > time (I usually respond within several days but sometimes minutes!), > there's a good chance I didn't receive it; and you might want to send > again! > Thanks! > Alice Andrews > Department of Psychology > State University of New York at New Paltz > 75 S. Manheim Blvd > New Paltz, NY 12561 > 845.257.3602 > andrewsa at newpaltz.edu > www.newpaltz.edu/~andrewsa > www.entelechyjournal.com > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Apr 25 00:55:01 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:55:01 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: Ghosts in a machine In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <426C3FE5.5090207@solution-consulting.com> Actually, the ghosts are escaping from the machine. The interesting thing about OBEs is the apparently veridical reports - persons reporting things during the OBE that they shouldn't be able to know if perception / awareness is an 'inside the brain' phenomenon. That is well known in NDE studies, including some interviews of blind persons who reported during the NDE they could "see." Thus Persinger who says "God is an artifact of the brain" probably has it backwards. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Ghosts in a machine > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-100-1509923-100,00.html > 5.4.5 > > Body&Soul > Ghosts in a machine > What is it that triggers the brain to produce a religious experience? > Jerome Burne investigates > > Jim lives in California and he's into an extreme sport. But he's not > testing his limits with gravity or exhaustion. His equipment consists > of a darkened room, a blindfold, heavy-duty earplugs and eight > magnetic coils, linked to a PC and attached to his head with a Velcro > headband. > > Jim's arena is inner space. The envelope he's pushing is > consciousness, using a set of experiences more commonly thought of as > religious or spiritual. The coils and computer program, known as a > Shakti headset, transmit magnetic pulses that stimulate regions of > his > brain linked with altered states of consciousness. At various times > over the past year, Jim claims to have had out-of-body experiences, > felt a state of "oceanic bliss" and sensed presences near by. > > Next weekend the inventor of the Shakti headset, Todd Murphy, will be > one of the speakers at the Religion, Art and the Brain festival in > Winchester, along with Sufi dancers, the music of John Tavener, > psychologists, neuroscientists and pharmacologists. The focus of > their > talks will be: "The evolution, experience and expression of the > religious impulse -- what triggers the brain to produce it and why?" > > For years brain researchers shied away from exotic experiences > such as > hallucinations, near-death experiences or "intimations of the > divine", > on the grounds that there was no way to study them scientifically. > But > as consciousness has become an academically respectable topic, it has > become harder to ignore "altered states". If memory and imagination > can be linked to the activity of groups of neurons, couldn 't the > experience of being "at one with the universe" just be the result of > brain cells firing? > > Traditionally, one of the ways to stimulate these experiences has > been > with hallucinatory or psychedelic herbs and drugs -- a route that has > been declared legally off-limits for individuals and researchers > since > the 1960s. But that is changing, too. Recently licences have been > granted in the USA to study the medical benefits of using such > outlawed drugs as Ecstasy and the peyote mushroom to treat > psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and > obsessive-compulsive disorder. > > It may be a sign of the times that just before Christmas the US > Supreme Court ruled that members of the New Mexico branch of a > Brazilian church, Uniao Do Vegetal, should be allowed to use the > hallucinatory herbal concoction ayahuasca in ceremonies. Ayahuasca > has > long been used by South American shamans and is renowned for the > snake > visions it induces. > > The poet Allen Ginsberg tried it in the 1950s in an attempt to expand > his consciousness. "I rushed out and began vomiting," he wrote, "all > covered with snakes, like a Snake Seraph, coloured serpents in an > aureole around my body, I felt like a snake vomiting out the > universe." > > Uncovering how a complex chemical stew triggers something as specific > as serpentine visions would be a daunting scientific challenge, let > alone identifying precisely which regions of the brain were involved. > But for at least 100 years neurologists have been recording the > bizarrely detailed altered states produced by very specific activity > in the brains of epileptics. Recently, observations on epileptics > have > provided clues to the neural mechanism underlying out-of-body > experiences (OBEs). > > "I was in bed and about to fall asleep when I had the distinct > impression that I was at ceiling level looking down at my body," > began > an article in the British Medical Journal last December. According to > the author, Olaf Blanke, a the Swiss neuroscientist, 10 per cent of > people experience OBEs but because epileptics, who have them as part > of their seizures, keep on having them, it is possible to identify > the > brain regions involved. He concluded that they are the results of "an > interference with the tempro-parietal junction of the brain". This is > the place, on both sides of the head, where two brain regions > controlling vision and spatial awareness meet. > > The discovery that the uncontrolled firings of neurons in epileptics' > brains can trigger a range of altered states inspired Dr Michael > Persinger, a neuropsychologist at the Laurentian University in > Ontario, to see if he could replicate them in his laboratory by > stimulating subjects' temporal lobes with magnetic impulses. He > designed and built Room C002B, otherwise known as the "Heaven and > Hell" chamber, back in the mid-Eighties , in which over 1,000 > subjects > have now been induced to experience ghostly presences. > > Persinger's chamber -- one of whose visitors was the British > arch-atheist Professor Richard Dawkins (he experienced nothing) -- is > what might be called a "mainframe" version of the portable Shakti > equipment that Todd Murphy will be demonstrating at the conference. > > What others have experienced in Room C002B depended on their cultural > or religious beliefs. Some saw Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Muhammad, or > the Sky Spirit. Others, with more than a passing faith in UFOs, tell > of something that sounds more like a standard alien-abduction story. > > Page 2: Continues > > The radical element of the Shakti headset is that it puts brain > stimulation back in the hands of the individual rather than being > something done to people in a lab. This may be the way of the future. > As an American chronicler in this field, John Horgan, has remarked: > "Trying to understand mystical experiences without having one, is > like > a eunuch trying to understand sex." > > So far Murphy has sold about 100 headsets at about ?130 each, > including accessories, mainly to men aged 40 to 60 who are interested > in "general consciousness exploration". Most of them are not looking > for extreme experiences like Jim. Instead, Murphy says: "They just > want to feel better or to deepen regular spiritual practices like > meditation." > > Apparently, this particular route to religious experience isn't so > popular with women, who make up only about 15 per cent of his > clients. > > Now that religious experiences are edging into mainstream > neuroscience, theories about what is going on are coming thick and > fast. Dr Andrew Newberg, of the University of Pennsylvania School of > Medicine, for instance, believes that the patterns of activity that > show up on the brain scans of people praying or meditating fit well > with the sort of experiences they report. > > The deeper the meditation, he says, the more active are the areas > involved with both attention and powerful emotions. At the same time, > an area at the back of the brain that orients you in time and space > quietens down. "The result is that the boundaries of the self fall > away, creating an intense feeling of being at one with the universe," > he says. > > So the big question for the conference becomes: Is the whole human > range of spiritual and paranormal experiences no more than unusual > patterns of brain activity? Persinger and Murphy seem to disagree on > this one. > > Persinger was quoted recently in Time magazine as saying that: > "God is > an artefact of the brain," while Murphy, interviewed for this > article, > was keen to emphasise that his aim was to "enhance spirituality, not > to replace it". > > Rita Carter, a scientific advisor to the festival and author of a > popular book on neuroscience entitled Mapping the Mind, has described > an occasion when she became "at one" with the gas fire and then the > whole room and finally the entire universe. So was this no more than > unstable temporal lobes in the same way that epilepsy is thought > to be > caused by instability in the brain -- or was there more to it than > that? > > "What researchers are finding is that there seem to be common brain > pathways underlying all transcendental experiences," she says. "It's > the cultural interpretations that vary. But what's really challenging > is that the research evidence is very strong that what we think of > normal everyday reality is actually a construction of the brain. > > "However, it is quite clear that the brain is also able to > construct a > version of reality that is quite unlike the survival-orientated > `normal', one. Now why on earth should it have evolved to do that and > why is our culture so dead set against exploring it?" > > Religion, Art and the Brain is at Theatre Royal, Winchester, March > 10-13; 01962 840440, [3]www.artandmind.org > > Further reading: Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border > between Science and Spirituality, by John Horgan (Mariner Books) > > [I have read this book and can recommend it. Check Amazon, say, for > more about it > .] > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > From waluk at earthlink.net Mon Apr 25 01:51:20 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:51:20 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: Ghosts in a machine In-Reply-To: <426C3FE5.5090207@solution-consulting.com> References: <426C3FE5.5090207@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <426C4D18.4050009@earthlink.net> In the 1960s in California I recall person after person on stage giving homily to their very real OBEs . I even recall a class I took in which student were asked to call up their Beta waves for deeper perception. When I then moved to the East Coast all of this purported "nonsense" had disappeared to be replaced by a more academic focus. Are you saying that the brain is an artifact of god? Gerry Reinhart-Waller Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. wrote: > Actually, the ghosts are escaping from the machine. The interesting > thing about OBEs is the apparently veridical reports - persons > reporting things during the OBE that they shouldn't be able to know if > perception / awareness is an 'inside the brain' phenomenon. That is > well known in NDE studies, including some interviews of blind persons > who reported during the NDE they could "see." Thus Persinger who says > "God is an artifact of the brain" probably has it backwards. > Lynn > > Premise Checker wrote: > >> Ghosts in a machine >> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-100-1509923-100,00.html >> 5.4.5 >> >> Body&Soul >> Ghosts in a machine >> What is it that triggers the brain to produce a religious >> experience? >> Jerome Burne investigates >> >> Jim lives in California and he's into an extreme sport. But he's not >> testing his limits with gravity or exhaustion. His equipment >> consists >> of a darkened room, a blindfold, heavy-duty earplugs and eight >> magnetic coils, linked to a PC and attached to his head with a >> Velcro >> headband. >> >> Jim's arena is inner space. The envelope he's pushing is >> consciousness, using a set of experiences more commonly thought >> of as >> religious or spiritual. The coils and computer program, known as a >> Shakti headset, transmit magnetic pulses that stimulate regions >> of his >> brain linked with altered states of consciousness. At various times >> over the past year, Jim claims to have had out-of-body experiences, >> felt a state of "oceanic bliss" and sensed presences near by. >> >> Next weekend the inventor of the Shakti headset, Todd Murphy, >> will be >> one of the speakers at the Religion, Art and the Brain festival in >> Winchester, along with Sufi dancers, the music of John Tavener, >> psychologists, neuroscientists and pharmacologists. The focus of >> their >> talks will be: "The evolution, experience and expression of the >> religious impulse -- what triggers the brain to produce it and why?" >> >> For years brain researchers shied away from exotic experiences >> such as >> hallucinations, near-death experiences or "intimations of the >> divine", >> on the grounds that there was no way to study them >> scientifically. But >> as consciousness has become an academically respectable topic, it >> has >> become harder to ignore "altered states". If memory and imagination >> can be linked to the activity of groups of neurons, couldn 't the >> experience of being "at one with the universe" just be the result of >> brain cells firing? >> >> Traditionally, one of the ways to stimulate these experiences has >> been >> with hallucinatory or psychedelic herbs and drugs -- a route that >> has >> been declared legally off-limits for individuals and researchers >> since >> the 1960s. But that is changing, too. Recently licences have been >> granted in the USA to study the medical benefits of using such >> outlawed drugs as Ecstasy and the peyote mushroom to treat >> psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and >> obsessive-compulsive disorder. >> >> It may be a sign of the times that just before Christmas the US >> Supreme Court ruled that members of the New Mexico branch of a >> Brazilian church, Uniao Do Vegetal, should be allowed to use the >> hallucinatory herbal concoction ayahuasca in ceremonies. >> Ayahuasca has >> long been used by South American shamans and is renowned for the >> snake >> visions it induces. >> >> The poet Allen Ginsberg tried it in the 1950s in an attempt to >> expand >> his consciousness. "I rushed out and began vomiting," he wrote, "all >> covered with snakes, like a Snake Seraph, coloured serpents in an >> aureole around my body, I felt like a snake vomiting out the >> universe." >> >> Uncovering how a complex chemical stew triggers something as >> specific >> as serpentine visions would be a daunting scientific challenge, let >> alone identifying precisely which regions of the brain were >> involved. >> But for at least 100 years neurologists have been recording the >> bizarrely detailed altered states produced by very specific activity >> in the brains of epileptics. Recently, observations on epileptics >> have >> provided clues to the neural mechanism underlying out-of-body >> experiences (OBEs). >> >> "I was in bed and about to fall asleep when I had the distinct >> impression that I was at ceiling level looking down at my body," >> began >> an article in the British Medical Journal last December. >> According to >> the author, Olaf Blanke, a the Swiss neuroscientist, 10 per cent of >> people experience OBEs but because epileptics, who have them as part >> of their seizures, keep on having them, it is possible to >> identify the >> brain regions involved. He concluded that they are the results of >> "an >> interference with the tempro-parietal junction of the brain". >> This is >> the place, on both sides of the head, where two brain regions >> controlling vision and spatial awareness meet. >> >> The discovery that the uncontrolled firings of neurons in >> epileptics' >> brains can trigger a range of altered states inspired Dr Michael >> Persinger, a neuropsychologist at the Laurentian University in >> Ontario, to see if he could replicate them in his laboratory by >> stimulating subjects' temporal lobes with magnetic impulses. He >> designed and built Room C002B, otherwise known as the "Heaven and >> Hell" chamber, back in the mid-Eighties , in which over 1,000 >> subjects >> have now been induced to experience ghostly presences. >> >> Persinger's chamber -- one of whose visitors was the British >> arch-atheist Professor Richard Dawkins (he experienced nothing) >> -- is >> what might be called a "mainframe" version of the portable Shakti >> equipment that Todd Murphy will be demonstrating at the conference. >> >> What others have experienced in Room C002B depended on their >> cultural >> or religious beliefs. Some saw Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Muhammad, or >> the Sky Spirit. Others, with more than a passing faith in UFOs, tell >> of something that sounds more like a standard alien-abduction story. >> >> Page 2: Continues >> >> The radical element of the Shakti headset is that it puts brain >> stimulation back in the hands of the individual rather than being >> something done to people in a lab. This may be the way of the >> future. >> As an American chronicler in this field, John Horgan, has remarked: >> "Trying to understand mystical experiences without having one, is >> like >> a eunuch trying to understand sex." >> >> So far Murphy has sold about 100 headsets at about ?130 each, >> including accessories, mainly to men aged 40 to 60 who are >> interested >> in "general consciousness exploration". Most of them are not looking >> for extreme experiences like Jim. Instead, Murphy says: "They just >> want to feel better or to deepen regular spiritual practices like >> meditation." >> >> Apparently, this particular route to religious experience isn't so >> popular with women, who make up only about 15 per cent of his >> clients. >> >> Now that religious experiences are edging into mainstream >> neuroscience, theories about what is going on are coming thick and >> fast. Dr Andrew Newberg, of the University of Pennsylvania School of >> Medicine, for instance, believes that the patterns of activity that >> show up on the brain scans of people praying or meditating fit well >> with the sort of experiences they report. >> >> The deeper the meditation, he says, the more active are the areas >> involved with both attention and powerful emotions. At the same >> time, >> an area at the back of the brain that orients you in time and space >> quietens down. "The result is that the boundaries of the self fall >> away, creating an intense feeling of being at one with the >> universe," >> he says. >> >> So the big question for the conference becomes: Is the whole human >> range of spiritual and paranormal experiences no more than unusual >> patterns of brain activity? Persinger and Murphy seem to disagree on >> this one. >> >> Persinger was quoted recently in Time magazine as saying that: >> "God is >> an artefact of the brain," while Murphy, interviewed for this >> article, >> was keen to emphasise that his aim was to "enhance spirituality, not >> to replace it". >> >> Rita Carter, a scientific advisor to the festival and author of a >> popular book on neuroscience entitled Mapping the Mind, has >> described >> an occasion when she became "at one" with the gas fire and then the >> whole room and finally the entire universe. So was this no more than >> unstable temporal lobes in the same way that epilepsy is thought >> to be >> caused by instability in the brain -- or was there more to it than >> that? >> >> "What researchers are finding is that there seem to be common brain >> pathways underlying all transcendental experiences," she says. "It's >> the cultural interpretations that vary. But what's really >> challenging >> is that the research evidence is very strong that what we think of >> normal everyday reality is actually a construction of the brain. >> >> "However, it is quite clear that the brain is also able to >> construct a >> version of reality that is quite unlike the survival-orientated >> `normal', one. Now why on earth should it have evolved to do that >> and >> why is our culture so dead set against exploring it?" >> >> Religion, Art and the Brain is at Theatre Royal, Winchester, March >> 10-13; 01962 840440, [3]www.artandmind.org >> >> Further reading: Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border >> between Science and Spirituality, by John Horgan (Mariner Books) >> >> [I have read this book and can recommend it. Check Amazon, say, for >> more about it >> .] >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> paleopsych mailing list >> paleopsych at paleopsych.org >> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Apr 25 02:07:01 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:07:01 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <426C50C5.4000606@solution-consulting.com> I thoroughly disagree with the premise. First, the idea of right-brain / left-brain has been thoroughly discounted. Second, the author is creating a false dichotomy. Most technical people are creative and artistic. Both my brother (Ph.D., chemical engineering) and my son (mechanical engineering) play jazz guitar. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: > Revenge of the Right Brain > http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain_pr.html > > Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. > Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and > emotion. > By Daniel H. Pink > > When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle > of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar > plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and > pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and > perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, > become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a > lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, > become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and > CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math > and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, > thinking that success was spelled MBA. > > Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. > Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an > enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he > wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in > school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What > distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's > greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply > theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their > ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the > meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and > personal fulfillment. > > But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the > grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people > who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It > belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. > Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom > to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. > And it's right inside our heads. > > Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line > cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. > But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional > magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more > precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left > hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right > hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, > and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells > forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two > hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly > everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the > contours of our times. > > Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and > business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the > sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and > deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But > they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, > deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter > most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right > hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing > the transcendent. > > Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow > but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. > Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which > mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks > the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind. > > To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, > sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the > inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds > delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses > exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear > the programmers and lawyers demanding. > > OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using > the mechanistic language of cause and effect. > > The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. > The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance. > > Asia > > Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those > squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China > are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America > and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US > information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's > not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see > chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers > researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for > US hospitals. > > The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped > in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all > going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to > offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor > force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the > globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the > country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing > nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge > workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change > dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can > be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via > fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go. > > But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain > kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of > rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work > such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and > financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why > plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less > routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants > who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies > of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do > left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better. > > Automation > > Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This > century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left > brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work > better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest > IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.) > > Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute > transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do > such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed > from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can > understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the > client's emotions and dreams. > > Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services > are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an > uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a > divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information > monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes > and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download > - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, > contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside > exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 > hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves > and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal > abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding > the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable. > > Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," > legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even > routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true > anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to > machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will > have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than > competence. > > Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a > $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, > TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, > we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres. > > Abundance > > Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's > knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of > living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. > Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. > Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. > Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are > more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which > means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their > own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, > you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our > extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly > double Hollywood's yearly box office take. > > But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has > unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational > sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and > entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, > or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. > In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out > your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a > Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you > bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left > side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was > rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles > are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the > logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate > desire for pleasure and transcendence. > > Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are > searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic > practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the > workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, > the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of > everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of > abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their > lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now > that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain > yearnings will demand to be fed. > > As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and > accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If > the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information > Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on > people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers > to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And > now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and > empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. > > But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in > which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained > and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs > and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, > analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough. > > To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed > high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high > touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and > emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a > satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't > know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to > understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's > self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian > in pursuit of purpose and meaning. > > Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for > everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at > least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are > fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our > caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or > debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, > and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of > what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in > the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have > atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape. > > Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, > do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do > faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent > desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and > woman, go right. > > Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the > Conceptual Age, copyright ? by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in > March by Riverhead Books. Printed with permission of the publisher. > Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dp at danpink.com) wrote about Gross > National Happiness in issue 12.1 > 2. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Mon Apr 25 04:14:13 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:14:13 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve Message-ID: <426C6E95.5020404@solution-consulting.com> In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation. -- Ibn Khaldun, 1332-1406 C.E. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Mon Apr 25 07:00:02 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:00:02 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] information inflation Message-ID: Joel--All thanks. You're absolutely right. The thought, brief as it was, was inspired by Eshel, who asked me roughly four years ago to ponder the nature of information. If I interpreted him correctly, he felt that understanding the nature of information would provide the key to understanding the evolution of the cosmos and of the cosmos' creativity. That led to the following bit of musing: hb: "I?m pondering what value we can derive from regarding time as an information translation and stimulus-and-response process. One instant of time reads the instant that came before it, presumably in the tiny dividing line between Planck units of time. The present translates the previous instant into a new pattern. What are the rules of this grand translation, of this grand interpretation of a previous instant's implications?" Then add this: hb: "evolution is a process in which nature admires herself in a mirror and compresses what she sees, then uses that condensation of herself to produce new realities." And toss in yet another quote from an old posting: "hb: Patterns repeat on many levels because the repetition of old things on new levels is how this cosmos grows new patterns, processes, and things--from singularity to a sheet of time-space expansion, from that sheet of hurried departure from less than a single point to many points, to quarks, then to nucleons, and onward 300,000 years later to atoms and straight-line-traveling photons, then, 700,000 years down the road to galaxies, the ignition of stars, and light. Now we take nearly infinitesimal streams of that light and shift if from one frame of reference to another--from the tiny light-twitches the human eye can't see to the twitching of electrons in a CCD sensor to the image made by luminescent particles on a computer monitor, to the pixels of an image, to the ink of wood pulp of a picture, to the mathematics of an astrophysicist and from there to the technical language of a journal article and the colloquial language of a press release. But that's not the end of the condensations and translations from one from of reference to another, not be any means. If the information officer in charge of the press release makes just the right a bursts of electrons and photons move on the telephone lines and rearranges the neurotransmissions in a New York Times reporter's mind, the numerous translations of the twitch of light can be reconstructed in the minds of millions as a vision of a process that once occurred on the very edges (or at the very center) of this spreading universe. Then prophets, preachers, and politicians can use the resulting genesis tale to change the course of human history. Compression and expansion all over the place. Representation and translation. Why does it all work? Because the original ancestors of stars, of atoms, of photons, and of you and me were a handful of rules that can be expanded and compressed iteratively--folded over and under and upon themselves endlessly." Does a bigger picture begin to emerge, one that comes from an eight-year-long colloquy with Eshel? Or is the bigger picture one I need to be more explicit about, one I need to take the time to write? Onward--Howard ps for more on this line of thought see Eshel's ?Seeking the Foundations of Cognition:From Thermodynamics to Contextual Information and Back? and his paper on linguistics among bacteria. In a message dated 4/24/2005 9:01:14 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, isaacsonj at hotmail.com writes: Howard, You echo below certain aspects of Eshel's 3rd principle. Increased complexification in living systems allows for detection of (latent) higher-level complexity both within and without. And this is an ongoing, recursive/dialectical process. -- Joel PS For reference, here is Eshel's 3rd principle. "3. The principle of matched complexity. The system needs an internal level of complexity which is sufficiently high in order to extract latent information from the external complexity. I view this matched complexity principle the driving force of evolution that explain the ever increasing level of complexity. In a nutshell the idea is: A single bacterium needs some level of complexity to detect the complexity of the surrounding environment and over the time window between replication. To glean more information the bacteria form cooperative behaviour and generate complex colonies. However for that each individual bacterium needs a higher level of internal complexity for communication and to cope with its external environment which is now has higher level of complexity - the environment becomes both the outside and the rest of the colony. To solve the paradox self-organization leads to the formation of functional modules and spatio-temporal patterns. And than .. (for next time)." >From: HowlBloom at aol.com >Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list >To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: [Paleopsych] information inflation >Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:47:09 EDT > > >New ways of interpreting information increase the amount of >information?and >of information?s consequences?in the cosmos. When photons from a >distant >star hit the face of an empty planet, they mean just about nothing. Give >that >planet 3.85 billion years or so to evolve star-gazers, mythmakes, and >astrology, and the information gleaned from the same photons goes up >exponentially. > So do the number of decisions based on the distant star?s trickle of >photons. >Give the life-forms on that previously empty planet another few hundred >thousand years to evolve astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, and the >information gleaned from the star?s photon trickle goes up by a factor >of ten or >more. So do the decisions based on that photon drip. >Which means that the cosmos is not just inflating in physical space and >time. It?s not just expanding in the intricacy of its structures and >its >processes. It?s also expanding in its information-content?and in its >richness of >causes and effects. >New ways of seeing lead to new ways of being. And new ways of being lead >to >new ways of seeing. Information chews on what information spews. And the >cosmos fattens as it grows. >Howard > >---------- >Howard Bloom >Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces >of >History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to >the >21st Century >Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core >Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute >www.howardbloom.net >www.bigbangtango.net >Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: >Epic >of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: >The >Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American >Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological >Society, >Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, >International >Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; >executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. >For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: >www.paleopsych.org >for two chapters from >The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, >see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer >For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big >Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Euterpel66 at aol.com Mon Apr 25 07:17:38 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 03:17:38 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain Message-ID: In a message dated 4/24/2005 10:07:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: I thoroughly disagree with the premise. First, the idea of right-brain / left-brain has been thoroughly discounted. Second, the author is creating a false dichotomy. Most technical people are creative and artistic. Both my brother (Ph.D., chemical engineering) and my son (mechanical engineering) play jazz guitar. Lynn I don't know, Lynn. I've known a number of engineers and they all had tunnel vision, my present boyfriend, a tribology engineer, included. I don't think it is necessarily a right brain/left brain dichotomy, but rather the track that the train was running on didn't stop at literary junction. I think most highly intelligent people are creative, but not necessarily artistic.They are at the top of the food chain, but middle techies are generally lacking in both creativity and artistic appreciation. Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Mon Apr 25 09:00:58 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 05:00:58 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stress disorder? Message-ID: <144.444ac6e5.2f9e0bca@aol.com> If you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), your hippocampus works poorly and you have a lot of trouble storing new memories. It?s your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience that produced your trauma to begin with. Is this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal survival? Or is it helpful to something else?to the survival of society? If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a walking warning of danger to the rest of us? Ted Coons proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember recent events but still hang on to memories of our distant past for a reason. Not a reason that helps us aging elders, but a reason that helps the collective mind, the mass intellect of society. We elders, Ted thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique memories alive not for the sake of our personal survival, but for the sake of the younger folks who?ve had no opportunity to experience or remember the days when we elders were young and vigorous. Those youngsters have had no chance to remember the problems and solutions of our childhoods way back when, the problems and solutions of an earlier generation or two or three. Can PTSD victims serve a similar function, as danger markers for those of us who?ve never experienced the horrors that the past-obsessed and present-challenged PTSD patients remember far, far better than they?d like? Are they walking warning signs to the rest of us? Are they, like all of us, disposable modules in the mass learning machine of culture, in the parallel distributed intelligence of the collective brain? ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Mon Apr 25 12:43:51 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 08:43:51 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder? References: <144.444ac6e5.2f9e0bca@aol.com> Message-ID: <004901c54994$6f7a7150$6501a8c0@callastudios> Howard, I really love this! I had some alternative--or actually, additional thoughts--not ones I necessarily want to champion, but nonetheless I feel like sharing: Perhaps PTSD is adaptive for the individual and ultimately the group. A young hunter is out on the savannah and his brother/kin is savagely destroyed by lions, say. He might experience all sorts of emotions in response to witnessing this, perhaps the symptoms of PTSD. The emotions (as par Randy Nesse et al.) guide his behavior--i.e. staying at 'camp' not going on hunts, ruminating over and over the scene, etc etc. The symptoms like memory loss are maybe just "mind-spandrels." The hippocampus goes into obsessive overdrive on the old memories at the expense of new ones. The hippocampus is still "carrying" the event. So...maybe the memory loss just represents a reorganization of the brain. A traumatic event, of course, can be life-altering. It takes a lot of brain power/energy to restructure neuronal morphology. People literally change after such events. Something new is being learned very quickly: a whole new way of being. "Don't charge at lions. Don't trust men from the neighboring tribe. Don't wear bones when hunting." * For such a thing to happen, the hippocampus can't be bothered with forming new memories. So the symptoms are the means to, and also the signs of, those changes. There's no doubt that a person suffering from the symptoms of PTSD would have garnered support, fear, and elicited a whole host of behavioral responses--as today. And that indeed an individual with the symptoms of PTSD would have been a marker--a reminding factor. Members of the group's physiology wouldn't have gone thrrough such dramatic and intense changes like the individual, but they (and their physiology to some degree) would be influenced in some fashion, surely. Another thought. I don't actually know the statistics or have any data on this stuff, I can only speak from impressionistic observation and experience. But it seems to me that people who suffer with the symptoms of PTSD eventually stop suffering. ** The changes finally get wired--so they're no longer signposts for the group in that way...Though the group will have experienced the person in that state for a while and have their new state as reminding factor, too. Anyway, to answer question: tremendous survival value for individual and group if the symptoms lead to 're-education' and changes in personality, behavioral response, etc etc. *Magical thinking and OCD are related to these things and also were quite adaptive. ** Meds, of course, are very helpful...but I imagine that the change that mother nature has programmed the suffering person to go through doesn't actually happen with meds. And, I actually have no particular feeling on whether one way is better or worse..I don't have a romantic view that suffering through the symtoms of PTSD in today's world could be all that beneficial to the individual. I would look at it on a case-by-case basis, I suppose. (I generally take the view that people (unless they pose a threat in some way to self or others) need to experience such emotions for a tiny little while without meds--even PTSD. (I suffered with such symptoms (and then some!) for about 4-5 years without meds, btw. Not something I would advise everyone to do!!!) More to think about and to write, but have to run! All best, Alice ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder? If you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), your hippocampus works poorly and you have a lot of trouble storing new memories. It?s your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience that produced your trauma to begin with. Is this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal survival? Or is it helpful to something else?to the survival of society? If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a walking warning of danger to the rest of us? Ted Coons proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember recent events but still hang on to memories of our distant past for a reason. Not a reason that helps us aging elders, but a reason that helps the collective mind, the mass intellect of society. We elders, Ted thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique memories alive not for the sake of our personal survival, but for the sake of the younger folks who?ve had no opportunity to experience or remember the days when we elders were young and vigorous. Those youngsters have had no chance to remember the problems and solutions of our childhoods way back when, the problems and solutions of an earlier generation or two or three. Can PTSD victims serve a similar function, as danger markers for those of us who?ve never experienced the horrors that the past-obsessed and present-challenged PTSD patients remember far, far better than they?d like? Are they walking warning signs to the rest of us? Are they, like all of us, disposable modules in the mass learning machine of culture, in the parallel distributed intelligence of the collective brain? ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 25 13:39:00 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 06:39:00 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stress disorder? Message-ID: <01C54961.77661000.shovland@mindspring.com> PTSD is just pointless suffering. Some estimate that 50,000 Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD committed suicide after the war. Like all other depressed people, PTSD sufferers are invisible to the rest of the population, so they serve no purpose unless their condition is successfully treated. And then the only purpose served is that they are able to live something more like a normal life. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 2:01 AM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stress disorder? << File: ATT00016.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00017.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00018.txt >> From Thrst4knw at aol.com Mon Apr 25 13:40:25 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:40:25 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Revenge of the Right Brain Message-ID: <6b.43f29557.2f9e4d49@aol.com> In a message dated 4/24/2005 10:07:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: I thoroughly disagree with the premise. First, the idea of right-brain / left-brain has been thoroughly discounted. Second, the author is creating a false dichotomy. Most technical people are creative and artistic. Both my brother (Ph.D., chemical engineering) and my son (mechanical engineering) play jazz guitar. Lynn First, I agree that overly much had been made of hemisphericity and its supposed role in cultural as well as individual differences. Second, I also suspect that pervasive regional and subcultural differences in thinking patterns are sometimes real and when they *are* real, are indeed loosely related to different ways of using the same cognitive talents present in all of us (that is, using the same human brain in different ways). I don't see these two views as contradictory once we grasp the differences in logical levels between brain function and actually using the mind. The differences in the way the cerebral hemispheres work probably does plays a role in pervasive differences in thinking patterns, although the notion of "drawing on one side of the brain" is surely simplistic and isn't a very practical or accurate way of thinking about the implications of this. It implies that using your brain differently is like flexing your left arm rather than your right arm, which confuses function with neuroanatomy. The fact that some function of the brain has some relationship with a particular part of the brain doesn't tell us as much as one might think because we generally think of it as a mechanical relationship, whereas brain function is a partly a result of organized massive intercommunication, not just mechanical relationships between component parts. Also, the mind in action is structured partly by how it is used rather than (just) how it is wired. As a result, there are a couple of different ideas here that are usually confused together: (1) differences in cognitive patterns that vary in different environments (e.g. "cultural" thinking differences), and (2) cognitive differences related to hemisphericity, the specialization of the human cerebral cortex. In "Geography of Thought," Richard Nisbett does an early but plausible analysis of the factors that lead to pervasive culture thinking differences of the sort we used to associate with being "right" vs. "left" brained. His thesis: the organization of human groups, partly a result of ecological condtions, helps determine the way human beings form and process basic concepts and even influences basic perception in some ways. His thesis is tested in the laboratory and applied to speculations about geographical and cultural differences. Does this link back to the hemispheres? Possibly to some degree. Bob Ornstein, an early adopter of the strong hemisphericity thesis and later skeptic, finally gives a moderate account in "The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres." Essentially he concludes that while the earlier interpretations of "creative" or "mystical" right brains and "logical" left brains were not supported in fact (nor even the idea that the right side is "mute"), it appears to be true that there is a profound evolutionary and developmental division where essentially the brain specializes into providing the context or big picture, and keeping track of the details. It isn't hard to see that keeping track of details would play a large role in Nisbett's Western cultural model of thinking, which emphasizes the properties of individual objects, and that providing context would play a large role in processing complex systemic relationships of the sort that characterize Nisbett's Asian model of thinking. Perhaps Nisbett's differences couldn't be manifested without Ornstein's differences, so we could rightly say they are linked in some way. On the other hand I think it would be wildly inaccurate to say that they are simply the same thing. Ornstein, Robert, (1998). "The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres." Harvest Books. Nisbett, Richard (2003). "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why." Free Press. kind regards, Todd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 25 13:43:42 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 06:43:42 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] 'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana Message-ID: <01C54962.1FD3E410.shovland@mindspring.com> The relentless influx of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages received by modern workers can reduce their IQ by more than smoking marijuana, suggests UK research. Far from boosting productivity, the constant flow of messages and information can seriously reduce a person's ability to focus on tasks, the study of office workers found. Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed. Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women. "If left unchecked, 'info-mania' will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness," says Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at the University of London, UK, who carried out the study, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. "This is a very real and widespread phenomenon." Losing sleep Wilson adds that working amid a barrage of incoming information can reduce a person's ability to focus as much as losing a night's sleep. The study also polled 1100 workers and found many are becoming addicted to modern modes of communications. One in five workers said they would answer messages during a meal or a social engagement, while two thirds admitted to checking emails outside working hours and even on holiday. Christopher Kimble, from the University of York, UK, adds that the quality of information contained in communications can also be a major problem for workers. His own research, carried out within a large multinational company, shows that key employees, such as secretaries and IT support staff, can be particularly affected by misleading or incomplete emails. These increase the time required to complete the task, when a short phone conversation would have been much more efficient. From aandrews at hvc.rr.com Mon Apr 25 13:52:07 2005 From: aandrews at hvc.rr.com (Alice Andrews) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 09:52:07 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Revenge of the Right Brain References: <6b.43f29557.2f9e4d49@aol.com> Message-ID: <00c801c5499e$016cdfe0$6501a8c0@callastudios> I'm beginning to see it more as a continuum of cerebral variation. Chris McManus, in his awards-winning book Right Hand, Left Hand (2002), explains that although there's oddly little research done on the genetics of handedness, and 'brainedness', there is good reason to believe there are genes responsible for hemispheric dominance, lateralization and organization. According to McManus, there is a left-handed gene and it is known as the C gene; the right-handed gene is known as the D gene. Three manifestations of the alleles are possible: CC, DC and DD. Most CC individuals will be left-handed but also may be susceptible to such things as dyslexia, stuttering, autism, and schizophrenia. These individuals make up about 4% of the population. Most DD individuals will be right-handed and make up 64% of the population. And finally the DC individuals (32% of the population), will be right-handed and left-handed. McManus writes: "In looking for an advantage for the C gene-and specifically for the DC genotype-a good starting place is the most striking feature of the C gene: its ability to confer randomness on the organization of the brain, not only for manual dexterity and language.but almost certainly for a host of other cerebral symmetries, such as those for reading, writing, visual-spatial processing and emotion. Although it might seem paradoxical, randomness, at least in small amounts, can benefit complex systems." His theory of random cerebral variation "provides an explanation," he explains, "for the lay belief that some people literally 'think differently' or have their brain 'wired differently.' In a nutshell, McManus characterizes the DD brain/mind as "the standard textbook description" and having the "cold certainty of an ice crystal." For McManus, every DD brain is effectively built the same way and that about 2/3 of the population have such brains/mind. The DCers, in contrast, have modules all over the place, their brains neither lateralized nor compartmentalized the way DD-brainers' are. What this randomness means is that there's a good chance you get a kind of creativity you might not have gotten otherwise. Here are a couple of his examples, but there are many: Say a DC individual has "a module specialised for understanding emotions located in the left hemisphere rather than the right, so that it now sits alongside left-hemisphere modules involved in the production of spoken or written language, that might be beneficial for writing poetry or being an actor....Or "imagine that a module for understanding three-dimensional space is in the left hemisphere rather than the right, so that it is now located alongside modules involved in fast, accurate, precise control of the hand; that might well benefit drawing or the visual arts, or perhaps ball control in sport." (p.231) cheerys, Alice ----- Original Message ----- From: Thrst4knw at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: Euterpel66 at aol.com ; ToddStark at aol.com Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 9:40 AM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Revenge of the Right Brain In a message dated 4/24/2005 10:07:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ljohnson at solution-consulting.com writes: I thoroughly disagree with the premise. First, the idea of right-brain / left-brain has been thoroughly discounted. Second, the author is creating a false dichotomy. Most technical people are creative and artistic. Both my brother (Ph.D., chemical engineering) and my son (mechanical engineering) play jazz guitar. Lynn First, I agree that overly much had been made of hemisphericity and its supposed role in cultural as well as individual differences. Second, I also suspect that pervasive regional and subcultural differences in thinking patterns are sometimes real and when they *are* real, are indeed loosely related to different ways of using the same cognitive talents present in all of us (that is, using the same human brain in different ways). I don't see these two views as contradictory once we grasp the differences in logical levels between brain function and actually using the mind. The differences in the way the cerebral hemispheres work probably does plays a role in pervasive differences in thinking patterns, although the notion of "drawing on one side of the brain" is surely simplistic and isn't a very practical or accurate way of thinking about the implications of this. It implies that using your brain differently is like flexing your left arm rather than your right arm, which confuses function with neuroanatomy. The fact that some function of the brain has some relationship with a particular part of the brain doesn't tell us as much as one might think because we generally think of it as a mechanical relationship, whereas brain function is a partly a result of organized massive intercommunication, not just mechanical relationships between component parts. Also, the mind in action is structured partly by how it is used rather than (just) how it is wired. As a result, there are a couple of different ideas here that are usually confused together: (1) differences in cognitive patterns that vary in different environments (e.g. "cultural" thinking differences), and (2) cognitive differences related to hemisphericity, the specialization of the human cerebral cortex. In "Geography of Thought," Richard Nisbett does an early but plausible analysis of the factors that lead to pervasive culture thinking differences of the sort we used to associate with being "right" vs. "left" brained. His thesis: the organization of human groups, partly a result of ecological condtions, helps determine the way human beings form and process basic concepts and even influences basic perception in some ways. His thesis is tested in the laboratory and applied to speculations about geographical and cultural differences. Does this link back to the hemispheres? Possibly to some degree. Bob Ornstein, an early adopter of the strong hemisphericity thesis and later skeptic, finally gives a moderate account in "The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres." Essentially he concludes that while the earlier interpretations of "creative" or "mystical" right brains and "logical" left brains were not supported in fact (nor even the idea that the right side is "mute"), it appears to be true that there is a profound evolutionary and developmental division where essentially the brain specializes into providing the context or big picture, and keeping track of the details. It isn't hard to see that keeping track of details would play a large role in Nisbett's Western cultural model of thinking, which emphasizes the properties of individual objects, and that providing context would play a large role in processing complex systemic relationships of the sort that characterize Nisbett's Asian model of thinking. Perhaps Nisbett's differences couldn't be manifested without Ornstein's differences, so we could rightly say they are linked in some way. On the other hand I think it would be wildly inaccurate to say that they are simply the same thing. Ornstein, Robert, (1998). "The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres." Harvest Books. Nisbett, Richard (2003). "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why." Free Press. kind regards, Todd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 14:16:37 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 10:16:37 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve In-Reply-To: <426C6E95.5020404@solution-consulting.com> References: <426C6E95.5020404@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: This reminds me of the late Mancur Olson's distinction between roving and stationary bandits. He was one of the few Public Choice scholars who were strong political Democrats. Sarah and I talked with him many times at various get togethers. Great sense of humor. I'll put together a Stationary Bandit Package and send it later. The idea behind the Laffer curve is that, at a tax rate of 0%, the state will get no money. At a rate of 100%, the state will get no money either, since no one will work. The revenue maximizing tax rate is therefore between 0% and 100%. Champions of current tax cut commonly argue that the current rate of taxation is greater than the revenue maximizing rate and should be lowered. I don't know what the evidence says, but I reject that the gov't should rake in as much as possible, that is, act like a stationary bandit. Khaldun was arguing that the state did a poor job of maximizing its take, in that its tax rates were too high. The paleopsych question is what can restrain bandits generally. Howard? On 2005-04-24, Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:14:13 -0600 > From: "Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D." > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: The new improved paleopsych list > Subject: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve > > In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but > fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they > lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and > exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. > Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the > rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of > this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon > discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their > taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation. > -- Ibn Khaldun, 1332-1406 C.E. From ross.buck at uconn.edu Mon Apr 25 15:22:28 2005 From: ross.buck at uconn.edu (Buck, Ross) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 11:22:28 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain Message-ID: Who has discounted right brain/left brain differences, and on what evidence? Anyone with experience with aphasia knows that right brain/left brain differences are powerful: language is organized in the left hemisphere in over 90% of humans (right or left handedness makes little difference: people are right or left footed and eyed as well). And there is considerable evidence that the right hemisphere is associated with emotional expressiveness (facial expression and vocal prosody) as well as spatial abilities. Ross _____ From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2005 10:07 PM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain I thoroughly disagree with the premise. First, the idea of right-brain / left-brain has been thoroughly discounted. Second, the author is creating a false dichotomy. Most technical people are creative and artistic. Both my brother (Ph.D., chemical engineering) and my son (mechanical engineering) play jazz guitar. Lynn Premise Checker wrote: Revenge of the Right Brain http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain_pr.html Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion. By Daniel H. Pink When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA. Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment. But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads. Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times. Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent. Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind. To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding. OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect. The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance. Asia Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals. The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go. But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better. Automation Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.) Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams. Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable. Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence. Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres. Abundance Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take. But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence. Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed. As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough. To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning. Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape. Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right. Adapted from A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, copyright (c) by Daniel H. Pink, to be published in March by Riverhead Books. Printed with permission of the publisher. Contributing editor Daniel H. Pink (dp at danpink.com) wrote about Gross National Happiness in issue 12.1 2. _____ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thrst4knw at aol.com Mon Apr 25 16:43:04 2005 From: Thrst4knw at aol.com (Thrst4knw at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 12:43:04 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] Wired 13.02: Revenge of the Right Brain Message-ID: <62.53b87ea0.2f9e7818@aol.com> Ross, there is some confusion between hemisphere specialization (which no one familiar with neuroscience can reasonably argue) and the strong hemisphericity thesis which says that a particular cerebral hemisphere is neccessary and sufficient for a set of important higher level cognitive functions or properties such as reasoning, creativity, intelligence, suggestibility, and so on. Roger Sperry's remarkable observations on hemisphere specialization led to not only advances in neuroscience and deep insights into the higher cognitive functions but also a predictable glut of speculations about how some cultures or subcultures were only using half of their brain, how the right brain was the unique source of creativity and wisdom and how "drawing on the right side of the brain" was the secret missing element to Western education. These things were based on a radical version of the strong hemisphericity hypothesis that has indeed been widely rejected for good reason. I think that's what Lynn was referring to, and is definitely what I was referring to. It took years for educators to come to grips with the fact that hemisphere specialization didn't neccessarily mean that they should be replacing academic pedagogy wholesale with Zen koans in order to activate the "creative hemisphere." Of course like most misleading ideas it wasn't entirely wrong. The hemispheres are indeed specialized, however they are not individually neccessary and sufficient for particular higher cognitive functions, they are used together for anything resembling normal thinking and behavior, and education crosses their specializations. The specialization is still of great theoretical interes t as well, I think. kind regards, Todd In a message dated 4/25/2005 11:28:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ross.buck at uconn.edu writes: Who has discounted right brain/left brain differences, and on what evidence? Anyone with experience with aphasia knows that right brain/left brain differences are powerful: language is organized in the left hemisphere in over 90% of humans (right or left handedness makes little difference: people are right or left footed and eyed as well). And there is considerable evidence that the right hemisphere is associated with emotional expressiveness (facial expression and vocal prosody) as well as spatial abilities. Ross -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 17:01:39 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 13:01:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Stationary Bandit Package Message-ID: The term was coined by the late Mancur Olson, and it is a powerful way of thinking about the state. I suggest reading the second article closely, as it shows how Public Choice economists think at their most characteristic. We should all move away from the "this is what I want the government to do" mode to that of constitutional design. Though Mancur's work came after I took graduate economics at UVa (1966-9), it's just about the best application of it. -------------------- Book Review by [14]Richard M. Ebeling, September 2000 http://www.fff.org/freedom/0900h.asp Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships, by Mancur Olson (New York: Basic Books, 2000); 233 pages; $28. MANCUR OLSON, who died in 1998 at the age of 62, was one of the most insightful economic analysts of the political process. His most original and important work was The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, published in 1965. He developed an analysis of the political process that focused on the different incentives within and between interest groups of different sizes. He argued that the larger the group attempting to reach a collective consensus, the less likely the effort will be successful. The smaller and more cohesive a group, the easier it would be to agree upon a course of action. For example, suppose that in a society of one million people, 100 are dairy farmers. And suppose that these hundred farmers form an association to lobby the legislature for a minimum price for dairy products that increases the price of, say, a quart of milk by 5?. If it was estimated that each of the one million people in the society purchases two quarts of milk, then an extra $100,000 in revenue would be earned by the members of the dairy association (two million quarts times 5? extra per quart), or on average an extra $1,000 of revenue per dairy farmer. Suppose that it was estimated that it would cost the dairy association $10,000 to have a successful lobbying effort. Then each of the 100 farmers would need to contribute only $100 to obtain a $1,000 return through political plunder. But why would the society at large, the one million people minus the 100 dairy farmers, not counterlobby to resist and prevent this political plundering of $100,000 of their income? Because for each of the one million individuals in the society, the cost of this politically created income transfer of $100,000 is only 10? (two quarts of milk purchased by each of the one million people at an extra 5? per quart equals the $100,000). The amount each individual would save, 10?, by defeating the dairy lobby would not be worth the cost of contributing to an anti-dairy-farm lobbying effort, even if each person's contribution to such an effort were as much as, say, 25? per person. The concentration of benefits towards special-interest groups and the diffusion of the burden or cost of the privileges among the rest of the members of the society, Olson explained, are why it is so difficult either to stop the growth of the interventionist-welfare state or to actually reverse it. Olson devoted much of his efforts in later years to analyzing under what circumstances such networks of special-interest groups might be weakened and defeated. His 1982 book, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities, suggested that only major social upheavals, such as war, were strong enough to shatter the political structures that perpetuate systems of privilege and redistribution once they exist. Power and Prosperity was the last work he finished before his untimely death two years ago. He explains the origin of the state, the limits of plunder under autocratic and communist regimes, the difficulties in transitions from planned economies to market economies, and the political and constitutional institutions essential for both the establishment and preservation of individual freedom and free-market prosperity. The state and plunder He argues that the origin of the state can be seen in the replacement of roving bands of plundering thieves by a stationary bandit who settles down to rule over a territory over a prolonged period. The roving band cares nothing for what happens in the area it has looted and then left behind. But the stationary bandit, who wants to live off the conquered area permanently, has to take into the consideration the conditions and the incentives of his subjects if they are to keep producing and therefore creating something for him to plunder through taxation year after year. Thus, out of the taxes he imposes he must also, in his own interest, to some extent secure his subjects' property rights, enforce their contracts, establish a judicial system to adjudicate their disputes, and even supply some "public goods," such as roads and harbors to facilitate commerce. His goal is to extract the greatest amount of tax revenue for himself at the least cost of respecting and enforcing the property rights of his subjects, but he must offer some degree of such security for his subjects. Otherwise, their incentive to produce the wealth out of which his tax revenues come might be minimized. Olson offers a fascinating analysis of how in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Stalin manipulated people's incentives in such a way that even though all private property in the means of production had been abolished and wages kept low, individuals were motivated to exceed assigned production levels. All extra income earned in the form of bonuses or access to quantities of goods otherwise difficult to acquire, by producing above assigned quotas, were tax-free (or equal to a marginal tax rate of zero). But physical threats and financial bonuses, to extract greater physical output from Soviet workers, could not compensate for the fact that without market prices production decision-making was fundamentally irrational, and over time coalitions of bureaucratic interest groups, along with the senior leadership of the Communist Party, manipulated and plundered the Soviet economy. While democracies have certain fundamental institutional advantages over autocratic or dictatorial regimes, the tendency for the democratic process to degenerate into special-interest-group politics means that often the degree of redistributional plunder can be almost as harmful to the economic well-being of a society as under a nondemocratic regime. Indeed, the difficulty for many of the former socialist societies is that the new democratic political environment is one that makes it easy for the obsolete and unprofitable industries left over from the years of central planning to now form lobbying coalitions to resist privatization and free-market reforms and to extract subsidies to keep their workers employed at jobs making goods that have no positive market value. Markets and market relationships, Olson explains, emerge spontaneously and without government support and enforcement. The discovered potentials for mutual gains from trade create incentives for people to develop and respect various rules of commerce and contract, even without legal delineation and protection. He calls these "self-enforcing markets." Such self-enforcing market rules and relationships pervade all societies in which political regulations, controls, and taxation generate the incentives for people to interact in the "underground economy." But there are many forms of market relationships that are difficult to establish, delineate, and enforce without a formal legal structure in a political community with the police power to protect rights, enforce various types of contracts, and administer justice. Without this legal order, the members of society may not be able to reap all the benefits from a better-defined and more secure set of market associations. The other ingredient essential for men to be free and prosperous is to prevent both private and political plunder. The answer to this problem, unfortunately, is least well-developed in Olson's book. But what is clear is that he believed that to answer the problem of political plunder it was every man's duty to understand why freedom was essential to a healthy human condition and why the fallacies of government interventions and redistributive schemes had to be challenged and overthrown in the arena of political debate. The use of our reason to explain freedom and free markets, he hoped, would be sufficient to eventually defeat the forces of political power and plunder. Professor Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, and serves as vice president of academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation. References 14. http://www.fff.org/aboutUs/bios/rme.asp -------------------------- Constitutional Design: L2: Rational Choice and the Origins of Collective Action and Collective Choice http://rdc1.net/class/BayreuthU/CONSDES2.pdf VII. Rational Choice and the Mutual Gains from Collective Action. A. Ordinary economic exchange is in many respects an ideal model of interactions between individuals. Exchange only takes place when both parties expect to benefit--that is to say when each person values the thing received more than the thing given up. i. In a pure barter economy, exchange requires what is called a coincidence of wants. ii. The usual diagrammatic representation of the mutual gains from trade is the Edgeworth box. a. It bears noting, that accept for agreeing that potential gains to trade exist, trading partners do not really engage in collective action. b. Each "trader" simply maximizes his own utility by attempting to get the best deal possible from the other. c. The decisions remain private, no "cooperative" enterprise takes place. iii. In the abstract models used by economists, the price system is completely sufficient to solve all the coordination problems between individuals. Prices induce sellers to bring products to the market in the pursuit of profit (P). Prices also induce buyers to allocate their money (budget) among goods to maximize their personal gains from trade (CS). iv. Illustration: one can easily show CS and Profit (Psr) on the same diagram, and see that social net benefits are maximized in competitive markets (ignoring externalities). B. However, there are a wide range of situations where individuals face a genuine collective problem. In such cases, achieving a privately desired result will require coordinating several person's activities in a manner that runs counter to their immediate narrow self interests. i. The classic representation of a setting in which private decisions do not achieve the best outcome (in the eyes of the players themselves) is the Prisoner's Dilemma. ii. Since each person has an interest in minimizing their own time spent in jail each has an incentive to testify against the other. a. (Note that regardless of what the other person does, each is privately better off testifying than not testifying.) b. Testifying is said to be the dominant strategy of this game insofar as it is maximizes a "player's" payoffs (minimizes his or her losses) no matter what the other person does. c. The PD-result is said to the Nash equilibrium of this game. Neither player can improve his own position by changing his strategy (from testify to not testify, in this case). iii. The dilemma is that each would be better off if they had cooperated, and neither had testified against the other! iv. Escape from such prisoner's dilemma games will require some method of direct coordination/contract between the parties, or an external enforcer that changes the payoffs to testifying against the other. (The Mafia's enforcers.) the Prisoners Dilemma vi. Of course, the classic prisoner's dilemma is good for society, even though it is bad for the prisoners themselves. a. The greater society benefits from less expensive information about who committed a particular crime. b. (This assumes that the two people caught are actually guilty--note that incentives to "confess" are not necessarily changed if both were actually innocent!) c. In general, it is clear that both participants in a PD-game would be better off if they coordinated their behavior (agreed that neither would testify) rather than acting in their immediate self interest (and testifying against the other). C. However, in the PD-games of most interest for this class the "PD" outcome will not be Pareto optimal for society at large. D. The Pareto Criteria may be defined as: i. Let A and B be "states" of the world (distributions of income, production, locations etc...) A is said to be Pareto Superior to B if and only if at least one person prefers A to B and no one prefers B to A. A Pareto superior move makes at least one person better off and no one worse off. ii. State A is said to be Pareto Optimal (or Pareto Efficient) if and only if no Pareto Superior moves are possible. That is to say, a state of the world is Pareto efficient is there is no way to make one person better off without making someone else worse off. iii. Note that in the PD game, the PD solution (Nash equilibrium) is not Pareto Optimal. The situation where neither testified (where they cooperated with each other) is Pareto Superior to the PD result. Constitutional Design: L2: Rational Choice and the Origins of Collective Action and Collective Choice a. Puzzles: how many Pareto efficient outcomes are there to the PD game? b. Depict a "social opportunity set" in utility terms, and note the Pareto frontier and possibilities for Pareto Superior moves from within the frontier. VIII. Prisoners Dilemmas: Team Production, Externalities and Public Goods A. There are many social dilemmas in which the result of private optimization is less than the best that can be achieved by all affected parties. i. DEF: An activity is said to generate an externality if it imposes costs on third parties not directly involved in determining the activity level in question. An externality is said to be Pareto relevant, if there are external benefits or costs at the margin (at the activity level chosen). B. The PD-type of game matrix can be used to illustrate many of these dilemmas. C. Examples include: i. The shirking problem associated with team production: team members may choose the "shirk" or "work." a. In cases were each person's marginal product is affected by the efforts of other team members, there are often incentives for all to shirk (to work less hard than would be mutually advantageous). ii. The tragedy of the commons, in which a productive communal resource is over utilized in equilibrium. iii. The case of "reciprocal" externalities, in which several persons both bear external costs themselves and impose them on others. a. Illustrate the reciprocal externality problem with a PD game. b. Note that the externality problem can also be illustrated with a continuous strategy set using a MB, MC, and external MB or external MC curves. c. (Social surplus losses or unrealized net benefits exist at the "uncoordinated" private choice equilibrium, because external costs or benefits are ignored by the key decision makers.) d. (The usual result for negative externalities is excessive usage relative to that which would have been , e.g. a greater use level than is Pareto optimal.) iv. DEF: A pure public good is a good that can be simultaneously consumed by many people. A pure public good is perfectly sharable in the sense that no one's satisfaction is reduced if another person shares the good. Examples include national defense, national parks (over some range of use), gravity, broad cast radio and TV, etc. v. The case of producing (unexcludable) public goods is similar to that of engaging in an activity that imposes a positive externality. In such cases, external benefits are conferred on other persons--that need not be accounted for by the person creating them. a. The result tends to be that the pure public goods are under produced. b. Illustrate an abstract public good problem with PD game. c. Illustrate the discrete "free riding" problem using defense of the village, barn building, swamp draining etc. with a PD game matrix. d. Illustrate with a continuous version of the free riding problem. IX. Several governmental policies can solve externality problems. A. Indeed, one theory of the emergence of government is based on the above sorts of problems. The theory of the "productive state" argues that people notice that independent private decision making is not generating as good a result as they can imagine. So they band together and coordinate their activities through some method of collective decision making and enforcement. i. In many cases, the required coordination can be achieved without formal penalties or other sanctions, because informal sanctions--status, honesty and self discipline-- are sufficient to induce cooperative behavior. ii. In other cases, especially those there are many people involved or where the costs are very great compared to individual advantage, some form of collective coercion (punishment) will be necessary to achieve the desired result. B. The social contract theory of collective action argues that individuals may agree to be coerced (taxed, or other wise penalized for free riding) as a necessary part of over coming free riding problems in the team production and in the production of public goods. i. Here a productive joint enterprise is formed by a voluntary agreement of all affected parties. ii. Illustrate the "Den of Thieves dilemma" to show why enforceable property rights might be accepted by all parties (even thieves!). iii. (E.G. theft takes time away from productive activities reducing income for all.) X. Some Quotes on the Emergence of Organization out of Individualistic Anarchy: the Productive State and the Social Contract: A. On the nature of anarchy: from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) i. "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition .. the live of man [will be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. B. From James Buchanan, Limits to Liberty, 1975. i. "The state serves a double role, that of enforcing constitutional order and that of providing "public goods." This duality generates its own confusions and misunderstandings. "Law," in itself, is a "public good," with all the familiar problems in securing voluntary compliance. Enforcement is essential, but the unwillingness of those who abide by law to punish those who violate it, and to do so effectively, must portend erosion and ultimate destruction of the order that we observe. These problems emerge in modern society even when government is ideally responsive to the demands of citizens. When government takes on an independent live of its own, when Leviathan lives and breathes, a whole set of additional control issues cone into being. "Ordered anarchy" remains the objective, but ordered by whom? Neither the state nor the savage is noble, and this reality must be squarely faced. C. From Mancur Olson, "Anarchy, Autocracy and Democracy" (1991) i. "The conqueror of a well defined territory has an encompassing interest in that domain given by the share of any increase in the territorial income that he collects in taxes. This encompassing interest gives him an incentive to maintain law and order and to encourage creativity and production in his domain. Much of the economic progress since the discovery of settled agriculture is explained by this "incentive." XI. The Productive State A. The above model of public goods and collective action provide the basis for a theory of the productive state. i. Individuals voluntarily agree to create an organization with the power to coerce certain forms of behavior to solve various "PD" like problems of collective action and perhaps also coordinatrion problems. a. Collective enforcement of property rights can mitigate "the den of theives" dilemma. b. Taxation can provide the resources necessary to finance the production of desired public goods are produced (national defense, law enforcement, transport system right a ways, etc). c. Regulations backed by sanctions can reduce externality and commons problems (pollution, high way speeds, and so forth). B. Any form of collective action requires a method for making collective decisions. C. Obviously, if a group undertakes to form a state, they must also make some decisions about how collective choices will be made. i. Even if there is unanimous agreement to provide a particular service, or enforce some property right or rule, there may not be unanimous agreement about the level of service or enforcment that is appropriate, or best. ii. Appointing one person--a "leader," king, or dictator--to make decisions in a particular area is one such collective decision procedure. a. However, the person appointed "leader" still has to be chosen. b. And, some method for replacing him or her would, in most cases, be another collective concern. iii. Majority rule is another possible rule for making such choices. iv. We will analyze implications of that rule beginning next lecture. XII. An Alternative Theory: the State as a Stationary Bandit A. Before moving on, it is worth considering another theory of the emergence of the state and state services. B. Mancur Olson notes that a good deal of what we have historically observed as governments have been significantly different than the voluntary model noted above. C. He proposes an alternative model, based on the different incentives of what he calls "roving" and "stationary" bandits. The argument is based as follows: i. Suppose that initially, there are a several roving bandits, each with sufficient power to sweep through a farm, village, or town, and steal what ever they want to. a. This may be thought of as a pleasant life for the travelling bandit: of considerable riches travel and comradery. b. Although their lifestyles might be pleasant or not, the existance of multiple groups of roving bandits creates a number of problems for the bandit groups, themselves, and also for their victems. ii. The victems might organize for their own defense. a. That is to say, potential victems may form a productive state, to errect high walls, and guard the gates, to keep the bandits out. iii. If potential victems do not succeed in protecting themselves (or fail to organize) from roving bandits, incentives for investment and saving are limited. a. Why save if you know that whatever you put asside for the future will be taken by a roving bandit before you get to use it? b. Thus, farmers, merchants, and other productive people, would produce and save less than they would have in the absence of some form of protection from the roving bandits. c. (Show this with an expected benefit expected cost diagram.) d. Life for both bandits and their victems would be poor! iv. Another possible escape from the roving bandit dilemma is suggested by Mancur Olson. a. If no productive state or defense organization can be put together by the victems, it is possible that a very clever Bandit might realize that if he were to take over an area and exclude other groups of roving bandits from that area he or shee would be wealthier. b. Rather than ten bandits "sharing" the "take" from a village in say differnt months of the year, a stationary victem can take it all. c. This reduction in the number of other bandits is the direct advantage of being a stationary bandit. d. There are also indirect advantages associated with being a stationary bandit. e. Note that roving bandits have incentives to take all the wealth that they can lay their hands on. (There is a PD game involving roving banditry.). Anything left behind simply goes to the next bandit that comes through the village. v. A stationary bandit profits by taking less than "all that can be carried away," because because he or she can always return another day and collect it at a later time. Taking less than "all that can be carried away" has a very important incentive affect. a. Letting potential "victems" keep part of their harvest, livestock, gold, and so forth, of course has an effect on their incentives to accumulate such capital. Instead of expecting to lose all of their wealth to roving bandits, they now expect to be able to keep and enjoy at least part of it (at least for a longer time period than before). b. This encourages potential victems to be more productive, to make more long term investments, to work harder, etc. etc. which increases the "tax revenue" that the stationary bandit can obtain. D. Indeed, a clever stationary bandit will realize that he or she should encourage economic growth in "his or her" village as a means of increasing the tax base and his or her personal wealth. i. He or she may invest in a legal system, in roads, and even in education as a method of making his village wealthier and thus a better source of tax revenues. ii. That is to say, the stationary bandit becomes richer becasue his potential victems become richer. a. (Show figure of a Laffer curve, linking tax/take rates with work and output level. ) b. (The incentive to provide public services can be characterized in a diagram that shows the "tax revenue" maximizing service level.) c. (Note that the optimal service level varies with the tax rate.) d. (The greater the tax rate at the margin, the greater is the "encompassing interest" of the dictator in the wealth of his domain.) E. A stationary bandit, has what Mancur Olson calls an encompassing interest in the welfare (at least wealth) of his potential victems because he can profit by making them wealthier. i. Mancur Olson, "Anarchy, Autocracy and Democracy" (1991) argues that: ii. "The conqueror of a well defined territory has an encompassing interest in that domain given by the share of any increase in the territorial income that he collects in taxes. This encompassing interest gives him an incentive to maintain law and order and to encourage creativity and production in his domain. Much of the economic progress since the discovery of settled agriculture is explained by this "incentive." F. (One major problem with the Olsonian model of dictatorship is that it ignores the security problems that dictators face. Sometimes there is a trade off between increasing the wealth and welfare of "his or her" citizenry, and the risk that "he or she" will be over thrown.) G. The idea of an emcompassing interest is very important in other applications as well. Clearly, a person whose own direct interest is advanced whenevery "your" welfare improves will be a better representative/zar/agent than one whose interest runs at cross purposes. i. The elected leader of a democracy may be said to have an encompassing interest in his country if his or her prospects for reelection increase as the nation prospers. ii. A Mafia Don may have an interest in "law and order" within his domain. (Protection fees can be higher when the value of commercial activity increases.) H. Although the smaller one's share in the fruit of a collective enterprise, the smaller is one's encompassing interest, it may also be applied to understand some behavior by individual members of a family, clan, club, interest group, or society. i. Encompassing interest explains, for example, why some forms of employee stock options and other forms of ownership as in a cooperatives may work. (Again the encompassing interest would generally not be complete, so other incentive problems would remain.) ii. Politically, it may partially explain why citizens often care about such abstract ideas as GNP or average income, insofar as their own income is correlated with those macro-economic variables. iii. It may also explain, or at least help explain, some forms of publically oriented behavior by individuals in may walks of life whose interest is somehow tied to the interest of a larger organization. iv. To some extent, voting in a democracy may also be tied to individual perceptions that the welfare of their country is enhanced by thier vote, which in turn makes them better off. ----------------------- Predatory State - The Black Hole of Social Science http://www.ccsindia.org/policy/philo/articles/people_sc_predatorystate.a sp [1]Sauvik Chakraverti [2]Times of India, September 22, 1999 It is very easy to prove that the socialist democratic Indian state is a predator: a kleptocracy. Read on. The term predatory state has been around for quite some time. Deepak Lal probably used it first, intending to classify regimes between two poles: the Platonic Guardians and the Predatory State. George Ayittey has for many years been writing of the vampire states of Africa. But these analyses ran into a stumbling block: the great political economist Mancur Olson ruled out the possibility of predatory states existing. Since Olson is not one to look at states with rose-tinted glasses, his objection to the term is worth recounting in detail. Roving Banditry Olson's analysis begins by looking at how the state emerges out of anarchy. Under anarchy, what happens is 'uncoordinated competitive theft' by groups of 'roving bandits.' This destroys the incentive to invest and produce. It makes sense for one of these roving bandits to destroy the competition, set himself up as dictator, and 'rationalise theft in the form of taxes.' The state as 'stationary bandit.' In Olson's words: In a world of roving banditry there is little or no incentive for anyone to produce or accumulate anything that may be stolen and, thus, little for bandits to steal. Bandit rationality, accordingly, induces the bandit leader to provide a peaceful order and other public goods for its inhabitants, thereby obtaining more in tax theft than he could have obtained from migratory plunder. Thus we have the first blessing of the invisible hand: the rational, self-interested leader of a band of roving bandits is led, as though by an invisible hand, to settle down, wear a crown, and replace anarchy with government. Olson denies that his autocrat, Mr. Stationary Bandit, can be called predatory: (The Stationary Bandit)is not like the wolf that preys on the elk, but more like the rancher who makes sure that his cattle are protected and given water. The metaphor of predation obscures the great superiority of stationary banditry over anarchy and the advances in civilization that have resulted from it. No metaphor or model of even the autocratic state can, therefore, be correct unless it simultaneously takes account of the stationary bandit's incentive to provide public goods at the same time that he extracts the largest possible net surplus for himself. 'Public goods' are those which cannot be priced and sold, or from whose consumption people cannot be excluded like law and order, roads, parks and, in the old textbooks, lighthouses. These are areas where private money will not come in simply because private businessmen cannot charge people for consuming them. Hence it is vital that public investments are made in them. According to Olson, even a stationary bandit would find it 'rational' to invest in public goods. Olson's analysis makes sense to students of Indian history. The career of the Afghan predator, Sher Shah Suri, can undoubtedly be analysed in Olson's terms. He built the Grand Trunk Road (with serais all along it) and provided law and order simply because by doing so he could maximize his revenue: he could tax the trade that would naturally transpire. Although he was a predator, the state he set up was that of a stationary bandit; it was not a predatory state. The Mughal Empire, which followed Sher Shah Suri was also similar in character. Stationary bandits, all. Private Goods The socialist democratic Indian state is very different from its predecessors. Judging by the situation on the ground, what we face is an irrational under supply of public goods, especially roads and law and order. The undersupply of roads has created what urban geographers call primacy: the primary city bloating up while satellite towns do not develop. This is the primary cause of urban overcrowding and astronomically high urban land prices. Good roads would have colonised more space. Roads, after all, are the only way of augmenting the supply of land. Connect Village X to Town Y with a road, and that much land is immediately available for the townspeople. The law and order front is equally appalling. Traffic in India is chaotic. VIPs hog police security while vast stretches of the country face lawlessness: here, there is the uncoordinated competitive theft of roving banditry. Would any stationary bandit countenance a Dara Singh? Saket, an upmarket locality in South Delhi now famous for double murders boasts a cine complex, three markets and three separate residential areas: it still does not have a police station. No stationary bandit would have neglected law and order thus. When we examine the spending priorities of the socialist democratic Indian state, which plans its investments, we see that they prefer to invest in private goods: they make cars but not roads. They invest in hotels, in steel, in civil aviation. They also spend money on rural development, poverty alleviation and employment generation. Indeed, they spend so much money on these things that they cannot control the fiscal deficit. Yet, they cannot set up a roads fund. How do we estimate the character of our rulers? Extreme Prejudice This is a predatory state. This is a kleptocracy. This is the black hole of social science. It does not believe in maximizing revenue by investing public money well and taxing free traders. It believes, instead, in diverting public resources away from public goods to the pet projects of bureaucrats and politicians: the spoils system. What are we to do? We must radically alter the spending priorities of the state. Planning must be done away with. All public enterprises must be sold. The entire public treasure must be taken away from private goods and re-invested in public goods. The roads of India must get top priority. Policing must be drastically reformed and made to deliver. Courts must be invested is so that justice is swift. This socialist democratic state is unfit to perform any other task, least of all educating our young. Ignorant people cannot become educators. We must, instead, teach our children that the state is their enemy, so that they rise against its kleptocratic policies. It is time we terminated Indian socialism with extreme prejudice and ushered in a Second Republic based on free trade, property rights, sound money, public goods and sound reason. Note: Kleptocracy means "rule by thieves". New Delhi, Saturday, September 22, 1999 References 1. http://www.ccsindia.org/policy/philo/articles/people_sc_sauvik.htm --------------------------- http://www.inwent.org/E+Z/content/archive-eng/12-2003/edit_art1.html Editorial: Civil war and intervention 12/2003 Having experienced a long civil war in England (and certainly knowing about the one even worse in Germany) Thomas Hobbes published his book on human nature and the necessity of governments in 1651: Leviathan. The natural state of human beings appeared to him as bellum omnium contra omnes, Man as the most violent of all animals. "In such condition," he wrote, "there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth, ... no Arts, no Letters, no Society." He saw the only way out of barbarism in a contract which transferred the monopoly of power to an absolute sovereign at the head of the state, and irrevocably so: the violent masses must be legally incapacitated. J. S. McClelland has pointed out how unfortunate it was that Hobbes' work, with which the concept of the social contract attained its actual meaning for the philosophical debate on state powers, at the same time devalued this concept: "Hobbes makes out a social contract case for the absolute government which the social contract had been invented to undermine." However, by that McClelland leaves open the question of how else can such barbarian civil wars be ended. What is happening today in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa, is very similar to the civil wars of the 17th century in Europe. And once again it offers a case for theories on the origin of the state. In his last book, published posthumously in 2000, Mancur Olson proposed the metaphor of the roving bandit for the situation of disorder before the stabilisation of a state. Jörg Faust described it so: “The plundering roving bandit strikes ever new areas and therefore is not interested in the well-being of the local people. He becomes a stationary bandit when he realises that it pays better to raise taxes from always the same people. Now he must take a great interest in economic growth because it increases his tax revenues.” So the stationary bandit is the state as a benevolent dictator that guarantees legal security, but by no means the civil freedoms whose emergence Olson describes in a later chapter. But is his metaphor at all suited to portray today's conditions? Olson's stationary bandit is the ruler over the farmers and craftsmen that he taxes and the traders on whom he imposes road tolls. He must set great store in peace prevailing in the land – otherwise there would be fewer taxes and customs duties. But that was in the Middle Ages. The warlord of the 21st century, monopolising the trade in diamonds or coltan for his private profit or to pay his mercenaries, promoting the cultivation of poppies or concluding a contract with a foreign corporation on the exploitation of oilfields, does not need to bother about the rest of the country. He does not need it, and the people are saved from starving by international humanitarian aid. The economic sources from which the actors of today's civil wars finance themselves are not farmers and craftsmen but those of a selective and segmentary economy. That is not how a national economy comes into being, nor a nation or a society. “No Society” – in this respect the present diagnosis tallies with that of Hobbes. Whereas Olson saw self-healing forces as being inherent in his model because a peaceful society yields greater profit for the ruler, there is no question of that amid the reality of today. Rather, an 'intact' society would be inconvenient for the warlord's profit. However, since the civil wars have considerable external impacts and result in unbearable misery for the people affected, these countries cannot simply be left to themselves. The international community must intervene and establish peaceful conditions. They must take over the monopoly of power if no state is in place on the ground. A state cannot be established by a social contract, but only by an intervention from outside. And, equally important, it must be ensured that the international business partners of the warlords – the industrial corporations as well as the drug traffickers – be called to account. If this analysis is right, then it does not help to send troops to end current fighting at the respective places and lay down that they should be withdrawn after a few months. If all these civil wars are about resources they would flare up again the moment the foreign troops have left. Therefore the objective of the intervention must be to establish functioning institutions and a sound economy. But that means that intervention must be designed for the long term and be equipped with more than military means. Lakhdar Brahimi, in his report of August 2000 on UN peacekeeping operations, demanded the Security Council should not authorise any missions until the UN had sufficient troop strengths and money. This demand is significant, but does not go far enough. Funds for the reconstruction of the society must also be provided. Peace, as we can see in Afghanistan and Iraq, is not established by combat and occupation troops. How it can be established, we know not yet. But the attempts to help peaceful reconstruction and allow the people their own responsibility are heading in the right direction. Reinold E. Thiel -------------------------------- http://www.law.msu.edu/lawrev/2000-1/Kovacic.htm HOLDING LEGISLATORS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR REGULATORY PROMISES[1]* William Kovacic[2]** 2000 L. Rev. M.S.U.-D.C.L. 9 I want to speak about approaches for inducing public bodies to keep their regulatory promises. In other words, how to make the commitments that public regulatory authorities make credible. I'd like to go about this by focusing on five discrete topics. First, I want to mention a couple of key features of the regulatory environment and the types of promises that public regulators make. I want to talk a bit about the weaknesses of the state as a promise maker. I want to talk a bit about legal limits that now confine the discretion of public decision makers when they think of straying from the promises they make. I then want to talk about the limits on these legal limits as tools for limiting discretion. Then, I want to focus on some alternatives that go beyond the possibilities for judicial enforcement or reliance on constitutional or other statutory principles for limiting the discretion of government decision makers. Let me start my mentioning two features of the government's promises as a regulator that are important to keep in mind. The first is that when the government promises, especially in the context that Professor Baumol[3]1 has just mentioned, it is often inducing its counterparts to make long-term investments that will carry on over a substantial period of time, the payment for which will only take place in full at a later time in the evolution of the relationship. In technical terms, the parties who are performing in response to the government's commitments are making investments that aren't easily transferable to another area and they are going to make the investments before full payment is made. That is, in effect, what the government is saying is "make substantial investments, we'll pay you for them in full later on." This creates a couple of difficulties. These tend to be long-term contracts so that when conditions change, there is a great temptation to renege on the original commitment. In addition, in different instances there may be a temptation when you know your counterpart has made the large investment that's really only good for the relationship with you, there is a temptation to renegotiate the price that you originally agreed to pay. The second basic characteristic deals with the nature that the regulatory agreement takes. Professor Baumol referred to the regulatory compact. Well, what is the nature of the agreement or contract that the government makes with the parties it regulates? In many instances that contract is not a single fat door-stopping text of the kind we might ordinarily associate with contracts or agreements. This instead has what Victor Goldberg and Oliver Williamson have called "strong relational features." The basic commitments aren't reduced to a text. If anything, the basic commitments are large general principles and the specific operational detail of what people do day in and day out are not established by individual text. They are established as a result of a continuing interaction between the regulator and the regulated enterprise and in many instances the content of those understandings isn't committed to paper. It is the result of conversations, spoken assurances, and ways of doing things. In short, these agreements, these promises tend to be fluid, they tend to be adjustable, and in many respects they are not committed to the type of formal text that courts feel comfortable enforcing. Let me turn to weaknesses that the government encounters in trying to enforce these promises and to fulfill its commitments. The first has to do with the incentives of the government decision makers. Compared to their private sector counterparts, public officials, regulatory agency heads, and professional staffs, tend to have weaker incentives to fulfill their promises than the private sector counterparts. The differences in incentives in particular between those that motivate private decision makers and public decision makers. A problem for all governed institutions is to provide the correct incentives for their agents to make and fulfill promises. So, I am suggesting to you this is a problem whether we were talking about the private sector or the public sector. I simply mean to suggest that in many respects the dilemma for the public sector is somewhat more acute. That is, the public decision maker has, generally speaking, weaker incentives to make optimal choices about the making and the performance of promises. That leads to the second consequence that I had mentioned which is that the reputational effect of breaking promises, and the significance of reputation as a constraint is simply weaker in the public institution because the individual public decision maker isn't going to feel the same effect of reneging on a commitment. What are some of the legal curbs on opportunism that operate in the public arena? We have constitutional controls involving the breaching of contracts involving uncompensated takings of property, a Commerce Clause that at least nominally is designed to prevent individual state jurisdictions from imposing significant externalities on other jurisdictions, and the First Amendment that imposes constraints on the ability of government to limit speech. As a group, these serve the purpose of what Manser Olsen would have called converting a bandit from being a roving bandit to a stationary bandit. The roving bandit simply robs you and robs anyone who comes by, takes what they have. The stationary bandit realizes that a pattern of rampant unmitigated theft causes fewer and fewer people to come and reside in the jurisdiction - and if you aim to stay around for awhile, you don't want to simply take everything they have. You realize that tax rates of 100% or greater tend to discourage investment. You want to use a taxing approach or a regulatory approach that is not so severe. The last item that I've mentioned here, a form of constraint, consists of the application of contract law principles, traditional contract concepts, that would hold the government in violation of its agreements when it breaks its promises. The Windstar litigation is perhaps the most recent formative event, but there is an equally significant case I think before the Supreme Court this term involving Marathon and Mobile Oil, a case that involves the inability of those companies to drill on leases that were acquired from the federal government in which the claim is that the federal government's failure to fulfill a commitment made it impossible for them to drill. The companies are requesting the restitution of the amounts paid. The Court of Federal Claims said "yes," the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said "no," and in the relatively near future, the Supreme Court will decide the extent to which traditional contract principles circumscribe the ability of the state the renege on those types of commitments. Let me mention some limits of these limits. I think that these have greater constraining influence than they did twenty years ago, but I am going to suggest to you that there are respects in which the constitutional controls in many ways are relatively feeble checks upon administrative discretion. The first that I mention here is the role of sovereignty. Imbedded in a number of existing cases is an extraordinarily broad view of the sovereign, and the problem comes up in this instance: Suppose I'm notorious for breaking my promises. How can I go about getting you to do business with me? I have to give you a hostage usually. I have to make and extraordinary commitment to you that in many respects gives you the ability directly to punish me if I stray from the course, because why else will you deal with me? I've developed a notorious reputation for not fulfilling promises. Why should anyone else come to rely on my promise? How do I get you to do that? I give you a hostage. Some notions of sovereignty imbedded in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on this issue, I think effectively preclude or could be interpreted to preclude the federal government from making that kind of promise. In effect it makes, as an immutable principle of contracting with outside parties, it makes it impossible for the government to say "I know I've been bad. I know I'm unpredictable. I know I might change my mind, but to get you to deal with me I simply waive all of the defenses that I've used in the past to avoid being sanctioned for a breach of contract. I give them all away." You can read the case law as saying that the government lacks the ability to make that kind of commitment. A second complicating factor is the extraordinary implication of federalism and the bifurcation and multiplicity of decision making sources that we have seen referred to earlier today. It means that if I want to contract with the state, I have to realize that the state is not a unitary institution. It has federal components. It has state government components. In the case of cable television and the City of Portland, it has local municipalities asserting the right to exercise control over transactions involving cable system operators. It simply means that if I want to contract with the state, I have to contract with a multiplicity of parties that makes it more difficult to invoke this regime. It is also important to note the relational features of the long-term contracts that I referred to before. Suppose I'm a private instrumentality and I want to assert that the government has violated a promise, has breached a promise, especially the kinds of regulatory compacts that Professor Baumol was referring to in his presentation. I simply want to suggest to you that proving the existence of those agreements and proving their content could be extraordinarily difficult in most instances. Why? Because the way in which the so called "agreement" has arisen is a relatively informal process of accretion and adjustment over time, and it may be very difficult to satisfy the comparatively rigorous standards that courts have established over time to prove the fact of the agreement. I might think I have an understanding and I very well might. I might be exactly right in my contention that the public instrumentality has given me assurances, has encouraged me to act in a particular way, but it has taken place in the context of a process of a relational adjustment in which courts have been extraordinarily reluctant to intervene. Yes, those of you who want to think back to happy days of contracts from the past can recall, you can sum into mind specific cases in which courts have intervened to make relational understandings binding requirements, but they tend to be unusual. The simple point here is that proving these agreements to the satisfaction of the court in the context of a breach of contract case in many instances will be perfectly unattainable. I would also mention the fact that adjustment goes both ways. That is, there are instances in which it is the private party, of course, that wants the benefit of the adjustment. Think of experience with price caps in which in some instances, firms that have committed themselves to excessively ambitious productivity targets have come back later and said "we erred, we want a relaxation of the target." The counter point of course is that where the productivity accomplishments are heroic and robust, you have the public party saying "we want some of the money back." In short, it is very difficult in this context to have assurance that the commitments are going to be fulfilled. Let me finish by talking about several alternative strategies, and I want to simply finish by focusing on three of them. What happens if we assume the traditional contract enforcement is not going to be a terribly effective constraint in many instances? That the interactions between the regulated firm and the regulator don't give rise to confidence that a court might have in finding a binding obligation and to put it into place? Let's suppose also that the constitutional constraints that we mentioned before, that I do think are important, far more significant today than they were twenty years ago, are still relatively weak checks upon the discretion of legislatures or individual government bureaus. What might be the alternatives that assume greater significance in governing the relationship between the state and those subject to its oversight? The first suggestion I want to offer is reputation. Those of you who read the literature on contracts are familiar of the work of scholars such as McNeil and McCauley, who in their interviews and analyses of the way in which private business operators behave in the context of private commercial contracts, emphasized that it is not the bare terms of the text that governs their behavior. It is the understanding, the trust, the friendship, the relationship between the parties. It is the trust that goes with the handshake. That's what governs the behavior. It is the reputation of your counterpart, not their fidelity to the precise requirements of each individual text. You might imagine an environment in which individual jurisdictions over time become rated according to their reputation. You could put them in three baskets. You could have a jurisdiction that basically establishes a reputation: "I never renege, I always fulfill my commitments unless I have an extraordinarily good reason for deviating," one that an outside observer would regard as credible. In a second basket would be the regulatory authority or the state institution that says "I always try in good faith to fulfill my commitments. I don't always fulfill them, but you can be confident that I'm always trying to do so." In the third basket you could have a regulator who says, "I break my promises whenever it suits me." That is, "You can deal with me, but if I feel like it, when the temptation is great, the spirit is always willing, but the flesh is weak, I always lapse. I especially lapse, by the way, when you make firm specific transactions, specific investments, and I can appropriate them. I really like to renege then. And, oh yes, if circumstances change and consumers want something else I run for the exits then and leave you holding the bag. That's what I'm like." You could rely on a system in which more rigorously, more systematically over time, individual jurisdictions and authorities are rated according to their fulfillment of commitments over time. To make this work, I think we need a couple of adjustments in the public policy arena. The first is you would need a bit more transparency about the relationship between the regulator and regulated firm in order to fill out the report card. That might take the form of doing ex post audits of individual regulatory episodes. It would require a willingness by both the regulated firm and the regulator to submit themselves to a more probing review of outsiders to evaluate what went wrong, in order that you can assign responsibility. But one way to cope with the contractual uncertainty that accompanies other approaches to fulfilling promises, one would simply be to make, on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis, reputation a more important constraint. A second approach is to exploit the fact of competition and multiplicity across jurisdictions to make the reputation effect important. That is, you can imagine an environment in which certain norms, the kinds of norms that Barbara was offering this morning, are held up as best practices. Individual jurisdictions can opt into the norms. They're not compelled to. This is not a treaty. This is not a statute that commands them. But you might see developed over time, in the work of centers such as the Quello Center, conferences, work by individual academics, trade associations, you might have identified a set of order regarded as best practices. Maybe you look at the experience with stranded costs as being one informing opportunity to see what that code might look like. Where do the norms come from? In part, an assessment of past experience, but the norms are held up for regulators to observe. And where you have mobile capital, and you have opportunities for individual business decision makers, in effect to sanction jurisdictions that ignore best practices, you might see changes in investment pattern. You might have individual jurisdictions saying, "Even though we retain and principle the ability to renege on our commitments, we are not going to do it. We are going to opt in to the norms and the best practices." A related way of accomplishing this is a very informal process of osmosis. In looking at experience with emerging markets and comparing emerging markets to experience with developed market economies, one notices that one of the most crucial mechanisms for gaining acceptance of specific norms is an informal process of absorption adjustment debate - through professional associations, through forums such as this one, other approaches by which individual norms way of doing business gain acceptance. You can't rigorously trace the effect of these activities on the behavior of individual regulators. But simply a process of discussion or debate, gradually over time, I think has a possibility for changing behavior. I'll finish simply by pointing out one other possibility. That's that looking ahead prospectively, that regulated firms insist on much more specific contracts with their regulators. A common approach in common law contract interpretation, interpretation under the UCC, is that when you have an accident where risks have been established, a default rule has been chosen, you then have a process whereby parties in the future contract around that, modify that. Perhaps the solution for many regulated firms in the future, before they make the long term sunk investment, that's idiosyncratic to specific transactions, that isn't easily portable, that's vulnerable to some form of manipulation after the fact, maybe firms contemplating those investments must insist on a much more specific recitation of responsibilities. The cost of doing that is a loss of flexibility, and if you look back again to the Goldberg, Williamson literature on relational adjustment as a key ingredient of the partnership, the virtual partnership, between the regulated firm and its regulated overseer, the more fully specified contract can become an impediment to making adjustments over time that are useful to the firm. But I think in many respects, these possibilities may be every bit as important, may be more important, than the formal legal constraints that we've been discussing today. _________________________________________________________________ * This text is from a speech delivered at the inaugural Telecommunication Policy and Law Symposium, held jointly by The Law Review of Michigan State University-Detroit College of Law and the Quello Center For Telecommunication Management and Law at Michigan State University, on April 18, 2000, in Washington, D.C. ** ** William Kovacic is a Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School. Professor Kovacic received his B.A. from Princeton University and his J.D. from Columbia University. 1.See William J. Baumol, Proper Investment Incentives, Stranded Cost Recovery and Differences Among Industries, 2000 L. Rev. M.S.U.-D.C.L. 139. ------------------------------ http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/pboettke/workshop/archives/f03/ Bergson-Gregory.doc. Bergson'ss Basic Hypothesis and the Soviet Archives: Insights from The Political Economy of Stalinism Paul Gregory November 7, 2003 Abram Bergson's writings on socialism addressed two themes: the performance of the socialist system, primarily of the Soviet Union, and its working arrangements. The most comprehensive attempt "to grasp the nature of working arrangements for resource use in the USSR" was his 1964 monograph The Economics of Soviet Planning.1 Bergson's first monograph, his 1944 The Structure of Soviet Wages, was also devoted to the Soviet labor market.2 Bergson's writings on working arrangements were anchored by his compelling interest in welfare economics, which he applied to judge the "merit" socialism: On this point, he wrote: "in order for resource use to be fully rational economically, theory teaches that a community must realize an U91economic optimum.'"3 Bergson searched for efficiency rules in Soviet working arrangements not because he particularly expected to find them: "After all, one needs some principles even to discover that none prevails."4 To further his evaluation, Bergson's major concession was that "merit" could be judged in terms of the planners' welfare function, which he expected to favor investment and defense. Bergson wrote relatively little on the politics or power relations of the Soviet system, but he did not preclude the pursuit of non-economic goals, such as the furtherance of ideology or "personal satisfactions U85 derive(d) from administering the economy through some procedures rather than others,"5 which means the "fact that U91means' are also U91ends.'"6 Bergson did not delve deeply into the relationship between socialism and dictatorship (as did Hayek),7 but he did comment on more than one occasion that totalitarianism has been predominant under socialism although some of its "advocates sincerely aspire to avoid authoritarianism"8 Bergson wanted to test for decision making rules that would at least "tend towards" or "approximate" economic efficiency within the context of planners' preferences. According to my reading, he found some limited rationality in the Soviet labor market and found, in the short term context of fixed coefficients, some reason for hope for material balances. Bergson was operating on the assumption that a dictator would be loathe to waste resources. Models of Dictatorship The "socialist controversy" in which Bergson played an integral role along with such luminaries as Barone, Mises, Hayek, Lange, and Bergson has subsequently changed from information, computation, and pricing problems to the political economy of rent seeking. The pioneer was Hayek with his 1944 Road to Serfdom, who was subsequently followed by political economists and public-choice theorists. A unifying theme of the political economy discussion has been the effect of rent seeking upon the principles of political governance of socialist systems and the inevitability of totalitarianism. Four models of dictatorship can be derived from this political economy literature: The "scientific planner" is a generally benevolent dictator prepared to turn resource allocation over to planning experts, content to set only general rules and guidelines. The scientific planning model is that heralded in the official Soviet literature. An all-knowing Party (the dictator) plays its "leading role" but leaves the concrete decisions to scientific planners, who use scientific norms and mathematical balances and to achieve the "best results" for society.9 The second model is Mancur Olson's "stationary-bandit," based on Stalin as the exemplar.10 The stationary bandit has a long time horizon and must behave in an economically rational manner. The stationary bandit is, in effect, a "development planner," whose "best" strategy was to aim for rapid industrialization, high investment rates, and the creation of an autarkic economy. The "selfish" dictator's primary goal is political power, which is achieved by strategic gift giving and the buying of political loyalty. When confronted with choices, the selfish dictator allocates resources to maximize political power not to achieve the best economic results. The selfish dictator gains allies by distributing the economic rents extracted from ordinary citizens by coercion.11 The "referee dictator" mediates among the powerful regional or industrial elites that may form quickly in an administrative-command.12 Bergson, Hayek, Lange and other participants in the socialist controversy focused on scientific planning or development planner dictators, paying little attention to power maximizers of dicator-referees. The main thrust of Hayek's and Bergson's writings was the impossibility of scientific planning by ordinary humans (absent a "committee of supermen)."13 Bergson appeared to focus on the stationary bandit, who set a high investment rate, while leaving the consumer goods sector to be guided by lower administrative bodies. It is important to identify the nature of the Soviet dictatorship. Notably, the selfish dicator and referee-dictator imply poor and perhaps unsustainable economic performance. The selfish dictator sacrifices economic decision making for political and the referee-dictator is overwhelmed by narrow interest groups. The Soviet State and Party Archives: What Would have Surprised Bergson? Whereas researchers had to search for tidbits of information during the Cold War, those who continue to study the Soviet economic system are now overwhelmed by an abundance of information from the Soviet state and party archives that were opened in the early 1990s. The archives are particularly rich for the period from the 1917 revolution to the early 1950s. These archives provide the very documents that the Soviet dictator and his administrators used to manage the economy more than sixty years ago and show how the administrative-command system was created and then operated.14 The major findings from this literature,15 provide the behind-the-scenes glimpses of the nature of the administrative-command system and of the dictatorship that ran it. Planners' Preferences: The basic rationale for replacing markets with command is that an enlightened scientific planner or development planner could alter the allocation of resources in an enlightened manner and produce a "better" economic outcome. In the stereotype of the model, planners' preferences are formed by the dictator (Stalin or the Politburo) and are transmitted to a planning agency that constructs a plan that must be fulfilled by enterprises. Bergson's hunch was that the most important indicator of planners preferences would be the investment plan that would set capital formation proportions and the distribution of investment among branches and regions.16 The archives (primarily in the form of reports of Politburo meetings prepared by Stalin's deputies) that the two consistent "control figures" set by the dictator were grain collections and the nominal investment budget distributed among agencies.17 The dictator's other instructions had little practical meaning, even though there was endless discussion among Politburo members on tons of steel, peat, truck designs, freight loadings, and so on. 18 Despite objections to investment targets in nominal rubles, agencies were simply given "investment rubles," and no one appeared to know the "real" investment that these rubles produced.19 Once agencies, such as ministries or republics, obtained their investment budgets U96 after a monumental political "battle for the plan"-- they were largely free to spend them, as long as they appeared on the state's "title list." The investment projects on the title lists lacked, in many cases, cost estimates, despite clear cut rules requiring them. Efforts of the dictator's agents (Gosplan, the finance ministry, or the state bank) to impose some sort of cost discipline were easily rebuffed with charges that planners were sabotaging key state projects. Bergson was correct in his hunch that planners would not be able to look into cost records, but the real reason was not the administrative burden, but the fact that producers could argue that such intrusions diverted them from vital state tasks. Even the defense ministry lacked the right and ability to examine the costs of producers. Devolving Decision Making to Ministries and Regions: Bergson assumed that Hayek's administrative burden problem might be ameliorated by breaking down "the apparatus functionally and geographically; it might even have regional offices to take local conditions more fully into account," stating that "this is, of course, what is actually done in the Soviet Union." Bergson was well aware of the principal agent problems of "branch loyalties" and "regionalism," and presumed that they might be handled "by general directives to guide .. subordinates." 20 Although we knew of serious principal agent problems of the industrial ministries and enterprises since the classic work of Berliner and Granick, we knew less about high-level principal-agent problems between the dictator and the industrial ministries. The archives show their extreme severity and the extent to which Stalin personally recognized their dangers and fought against them. The dictator's dilemma is that the number of trusted associates is limited, but, in the absence of self-disciplining forces (such as markets), major economic decisions must be made by reliable people. But once trusted people were placed in positions for which they were held responsible, they represented narrow interests.21 Stalin insisted on "encompassing" economic decisions and railed against rent seeking activities, especially from within his own circle: "It is bad when we begin to deceive each other."22 Stalin complained bitterly about the "selfishness" of Ordzhonikidze (Minister of Heavy Industry), who pressed "on the state budget on the working class, making the working class pay with its currency reserves for his own inadequacy,"23 and that the "use of [foreign exchange] funds must be discussed in the interests of the state as a whole not only in the interests of [Ordzhonikidze]."24 Stalin particularly loathed the selfish deputy minister of heavy industry (Piatakov), whom he accused of "turning our Bolshevik party into a conglomerate of branch groups."25 Stalin berated trade minister Mikoyan for proposing a grain reserve for his trade ministry: "Why such unlimited faith in the trade ministry and such limited faith in the government?"26 These quotes showing Stalin as a lone stationary bandit fighting vested interests, could conceal the work of a selfish dictator. The Politburo and Central Committee were torn by conflicting interests. With limited investment resources, each distribution of resources had its supporters and opponents within the Politburo and Central Committee. Indeed Stalin's correspondence is full of what could be political payoffs. Kaganovich was called to Moscow as a reward for supporting Stalin's policies in Ukraine.27 Stalin had to referee conflicts, such as between Kazakhstan and Western Siberia over ownership of eight state farms.28 Molotov had to personally resolve conflicts among regional Party bosses over who would get an imported car. Stalin was uncharacteristically concerned in 1931-32 that his native Georgia (and most solid power base) was "on the verge of hunger" and of "bread riots," while In other regions, while he made "feigning hunger" a counter-revolutionary offense. 29 Stalin angrily ordered Mikoyan "to send grain to western Georgia and personally see to its delivery."30 Stalin's anger at Mikoyan was so intense that Mikoyan threatened to resign.31 Stalin listened attentively to the lobbying of regional and local officials32 and delayed the formation of separate union-republican ministries in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan to avoid ruffling the feathers of regional politicians, including his own supporter, L.P. Beria.33 Rules versus Ad Hoc Interventions: Narrow rent-seeking behavior could perhaps be controlled by rules. As stated by Bergson: "Presumably the Board [read: The dictator] would establish general directives to guide its subordinates."34 A major surprise of the archives is the dictator's aversion to general rules. Although the administrative-command economy was a decree-based system, there were few general rules and procedures, and any such rule or procedure was subject to override by a superior. Each year or each quarter's planning process was initiated by new guidelines (rather than the simpler process of a general set of planning rules).35 No "plan" was final; all were tentative and subject to intervention. The few accounting and loan administration rules that existed were easily overridden.36 Ministries operated without any charters that spelled out matters of corporate governance.37 Hayek ruled out a rules-based resolution of the paradox, arguing that an administrative system "cannot tie itself down in advance to general and formal rules that prevent arbitrarinessU85It must constantly decide questions which cannot be answered by formal principles onlyU8538 The Soviet dictatorship constituted a nested dictatorship comprised of multiple hierarchies in which the principal in each hierarchy could intervene into the decision making of agents, while the agents themselves were "dictators" of their own hierarchy of lower level subordinates down through the hierarchy to the enterprise level. If any of these multiple dictators were obliged to follow "rules" their power in a gift exchange economy would be lessened. If valuable resource were allocated based on rules, the rule becomes the dictator not the individual in the nested dictatorship. The general aversion to rules introduced considerable chaos into the system. These dictators at the apex of the nested dictatorship might make enlightened "encompassing" decisions, but those in lower positions would make uncoordinated decisions based on narrow economic and political interests. Moreover, Hayek's prediction about the dangers of decision making without scarcity prices is seen in the fact that each dictator had great difficulty in distinguishing the momentous from the trivial. The fact that a small group of political leaders (the Politburo) or one leader (Stalin) were making the "key" decisions sentenced them to a life of toil, drudgery, and boredom filled with endless meetings, petitions, consultations reading of statistical reports, reviewing plans, distributing products, and, for a change of pace, inspection trips. 39 Absences of Politburo members had to be coordinated so that members were available to deal with official business, and absence threatened the completion of vital work. 40 The pressure of work was so intense that such threats of resignation and pleas for lengthy vacations were commonplace. The Politburo normally considered some 3,000 issues on an annual basis. Numerous other participants were invited to and participated in Politburo meetings as discussants or reporters. A representative Politburo meeting, for example, on March 5, 1932, had 69 participants and 171 points on its agenda.41 The greatest burden of all, however, fell on Stalin as he took over more and more decision making responsibility. Virtually every communication from Kaganovich set out various options and then asked Stalin for his opinion (vashe mnenie). Stalin was even asked to check poetry and essays for their ideological purity. On rare occasions, even Stalin would explode at this torrent of paper work, demanding that his Politburo associates decide something themselves, such as his tirade of September 13, 1933: "I won't read drafts on educational establishments. The paperwork you are throwing at me is piling up to my chest. Decide yourself and decide soon!"42 Yet just a few weeks after this outburst, Stalin berated the Politburo for distributing tractors contrary to his personal instruction. Stalin to Kaganovich: "I insist on my opinion!"43 Stalin's correspondence mixes matters of great import with trivia. In one communication, Stalin would order officials shot, the minister of transport fired , issue instructions on foreign exchange, order vast organizational changes, cut back investment, or order major foreign policy initiatives. In another communication (often the same), Stalin would discuss the production of vegetables near Moscow, whether a particular bridge should have one or two lanes, whether a Soviet author should write books about Soviet industry, giving a Ford automobile to a particular official, the depth of a canal, sending products to send to Baku, which articles published in various journals and newspapers included ideological errors, the prices of bread in various regions, the fact that Pravda must report on a daily basis automobile and truck production, and the renaming of a square in Moscow. In a typical year, 1934 for example, Stalin spent some 1,700 hours in private meetings, the equivalent of more than 200 eight-hour days.44 The dictator's curse was that, having the power to decide all, his most trusted colleagues had the incentive to decide as little as possible. Such a strategy minimized their risks. The less they decided, the less blame they would have when things went wrong. The dictator, meanwhile, could not readily distinguish trivial from significant matters and was reduced to being asked to decide everything. Execution and Control: Bergson wrote that "even if the Board could specify how every sort of resource should be used, the task of controlling the execution of its directive would still remain,"45 a statement that Stalin would have characterized as a gross understatement. Stalin intensely feared that "the center's directives will remain completely on paper" or that key agencies "will not learn about the Politburo's decision, and it will get bogged down in the bowels" of the bureaucracy. The most powerful industrial minister declared that he had to "curse" and "act like an animal" and "drive to hysterics" the ones who have to carry out the directive in order to get things done by subordinates. Stalin dreamed in vain of a "Commission of fulfillment" that would force fulfillment of orders.46 Orders had to be issued through a vertical hierarchy after preparation by agents, such as the State Planning Commission, which was not responsible for bad plans and was staffed by technocrats rather than party loyalists. An elaborate system of monitoring the delivery and execution of orders was established. The ultimate problem of execution, however, was most of the real resource allocation was carried out by the producers themselves. The output and supply balances were prepared by the ministries and their branch administrations. Even in the case of highly centralized goods, such as vehicles, the power of the producer was surprisingly great.47 Decisions were formally made at a centralized level, but the actual producers had the flexibility to make most of society's key resource allocation decisions themselves. If resource allocation decisions are being made by the producers themselves in the absence of market allocation, it is hard to conceive a reasonable result. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, Collegiality, and Brutality: Whether or not anyone will ever wish to repeat the Soviet experiment depends on whether it can be conduct under conditions of democratic socialism. At a minimum, its appeal would require at least a committee of wise men and avoid the dangers of brutality of a single dictator. The "deal" which Stalin implicitly offered his Politburo allies in December of 1930 was a political equilibrium of collective decision making. In the early 1930s, Stalin could dictate decisions, he considered vital but, if he went too far, the Politburo could still rein him in. In violation of this implicit contract, the period 1932 to 1937 saw the marked decline of collective decision making. By 1936, the Politburo was largely a consultative body. Other Politburo members now referred to Stalin as the "master of the house." 48 Stalin's personal secretary (Poskrebyshev) counted among the most powerful figures in Soviet administration. The path from a collective to a personal dictatorship clearly can be explained in part by Stalin's thirst for total power. But there are several theoretical arguments in favor of the evolution to a single dictator: Olson's stationary bandit model implicitly suggests that only a single person (or a very cohesive small group) could prevent the rise of vested interests. Hayek wrote of the tendency for collective decision making to transform into one person rule under conditions of administrative allocation:49 The Arrow Impossibility Theorem provides, surprisingly, a third rationale for the emergence of a supreme leader.50 If we drop Arrow's non-dictatorship conditions, the theorem still applies to a ten-person Politburo that it is impossible to develop rules of social choice (should society choose A, B, or C) that meet necessary conditions such as transitivity (A is preferred to B and B is preferred to C but C is preferred to A) 51 In such a setting, decision making requires some established procedure U96 such as a fixed criterion, a random device (such as the roll of a dice), or recourse to an arbiter -- when two alternatives tie for first place. The Soviet Union, of course, was not a democracy in December of 1930, but it had ten decision makers with differing preferences." The arguments of Hayek and Arrow therefore seem to provide reasons why an administrative-command economy will evolve into a single-person dictatorship. In fact, a collective dictatorship may be unstable and may yield inferior economic results. The archives show Stalin, willingly or forcibly, being thrust into the role of arbiter or tie breaker in clashes within the ruling elite. Three Party leaders nominated themselves to fill the vacant position of transport minister, leaving it up to Stalin to make the final choice.52 Unresolved issues were turned over to Stalin. Kaganovich to Stalin (August 15, 1931): "We put off the question of grain procurements [provides details]. We decided to delay until the 20th in order to receive your opinion."53 When Stalin feared that Kaganovich could not handle the matter, he would suggest a delay until he could be present: "I am against the import of steel pipes. If possible delay the matter until autumn."54 When Ordzhonikidze disputed a Stalin decision, Stalin sent him an ultimatum: "In the case of your disagreement, I propose a special meeting of the Politburo which requires both our presence."55 A "dictator-referee" is unable to control vested interests. The archives provide little support for the revisionist view that Stalin's major actions were decided by "bottom-up" influences of pressure groups.56 Our reading of the archives yields a quite different picture of Stalin as a master of orchestrating interest groups when their support was needed. He relied primarily on placing his own people in responsible positions, where he actively sought mediocre but brutal loyalists. Stalin clearly played the role of stationary bandit U96 particularly his willingness to take on his own rent-seeking allies. Stalin had the insight to understand that the greatest rent-seeking danger came from within rather than from outsiders. Of course, Stalin, as a master politician, distributed "gifts" to insure political support when it was necessary, but the impression is that he sought to limit such gift-exchange activity. ----------------------- http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/hsr.php?id=44&print=1 Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships by Mancur Olson by [1]Tyler Cowen >From [2]Humane Studies Review Vol. 13, No. 2 Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships Mancur Olson New York: Basic Books, 2000, 233 pp. Adam Smith, before he died, supposedly destroyed a good deal of unpublished or incomplete writing. Franz Kafka, before he died, instructed a close friend to burn his manuscripts. Instead the manuscripts were published, and have since accounted for much of Kafka's fame as a writer. The University of Michigan Press has just published a manuscript by Julian Simon, which he had not completed before dying. Now Mancur Olson. These are Olson's final thoughts on liberty, dictatorship, and economic growth, the problems that so preoccupied him in the last few years of his life. But it is not a completed manuscript. Some time ago, Olson started work on the fruitful distinction between a stationary and a roving bandit. A stationary bandit has some incentive to invest in improvements, because he will reap some return from those improvements. A roving bandit will confiscate wealth with little regard for the future. Olson then used this distinction to help explain the evolution of dictatorship in the twentieth century, and going back some bit in time, the rise of Western capitalism. I have never found this approach fully convincing. Is the stationary bandit really so much better than the roving bandit? Much of Olson's argument assumes that the stationary bandit is akin to a profit-maximizer. In reality, stationary bandits, such as Stalin and Mao, may have been maximizing personal power or perhaps something even more idiosyncratic. Second, the stationary bandit might be keener to keep control over the population, given how much is at stake. He may oppose liberalization more vehemently, for fear that a wealthier and freer society will overthrow him. In any case, this volume presents and expands upon Olson's ideas on these topics. Some parts of the book deal with property more generally, or recapitulate Olson's earlier contributions. There is no single rigorous presentation of theory, but rather a discursive treatment, as if these were scattered lecture notes. Nor is the evidence for and against the basic hypotheses presented systematically. So it is a hard book to review and evaluate. As for Adam Smith, we can only imagine what might have been. We are glad for Kafka's friend. Julian Simon's last work is a mixed bag. Had Olson lived he would have won, and deserved, a Nobel Prize in economics. So what are we to make of his last writing, and its publication? Those who know enough to tell the difference will admire Olson sufficiently to avoid serious frustration or disappointment. Those who do not know enough to tell the difference, well, cannot tell the difference. In the meantime, Olson's name is put in front of more people and marketed by a trade press. Surely this is still more interesting than most of what is published. And I do not believe that we can harm the dead through embarrassment. So this book is a Pareto improvement, but a small one. If you are reading this review, you already know enough to look elsewhere, if only to Olson's other writings, for the greatest possible marginal edification. References 1. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/people.php/21.html 2. http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/hsr/index.php#13-2 3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465051960/ 4. http://www.laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=EC8315 ---------------------------- http://www.satribune.com/archives/200502/P1_asa.htm WASHINGTON DC, Feb 20, 2005 | ISSN: 1684-2057 | www.satribune.com Roving vs Stationary Bandits: How Politicians Should Negotiate With the Army Dr Ayesha Siddiqa [INLINE] WASHINGTON, February 20: Pakistan's endemic problem of democracy has created a general impression that there is an inbuilt problem in the nature of the Pakistani state. If one compares the system in Pakistan with that in India, political systems in both countries are authoritarian and evince similar characteristics. Luckily, India has managed to move along the track of electoral democracy because of uninterrupted practice. This, of course, is a functional explanation of the development of democracy. The uninterrupted process of fair elections has long-term benefits and can help improve the quality of democracy even when a system might not have developed a democratic spirit. The process itself helps political systems and states to get out of the medievalism that still infests Pakistan. But the question is: How does one get out of the logjam Pakistan finds itself in? How does one ensure that this time round things will be different? Are there any signs other than the words of the beneficiaries of the current political system that there would be a qualitative shift towards strengthening of democracy? The past army chiefs-turned-presidents were equally persuasive in suggesting that they intended to develop democracy. In fact, some analysts, academics and other people think all army chiefs have actually tried to support the cause of democracy in Pakistan. While this is utter fabrication, it is hard to deny that forces internal to the political process - i.e., political parties - are to be equally blamed for the failure of democracy. Parties have cut `under the table' deals and weakened democracy as much with their irresponsible behavior as the force `external' to the process. Besides the internal forces have contributed equally towards inversing the patron-client relationship. Resultantly, the civilian authorities have neither the power nor the ability to punish the military if it `shirks' from its duty of obeying the political leadership. This is because the military is effectively the patron, not the client. The `under the table' deals are inherently dangerous. This is something that should be avoided at all costs. This is what I meant when I suggested in an earlier article that political parties must not negotiate with the military. Cutting deals only further weakens the political system. Divided, the political and civil society could never get strong. This does not mean, however, that negotiation should not take place at all. In fact, there is need to have a discussion between the military and the political society. This, it must be mentioned, is different from a one-to-one secret deal between a single group and the khakis. Whatever should be demanded has to be on behalf of the political society in which all parties or all major parties have a share. There are four prerequisites to this approach: First, it must be understood that the military enjoys total power and the issue relates to negotiating power sharing. Considering the current weakness of the political system, the military does not have any major incentive to negotiate a power-sharing formula unless there is a concerted effort from the other side to force it to do so. Power sharing is not about the power of a single group but getting relief for the entire system. Second, negotiation would require a common framework to be decided among the major political actors. This has to determine the future flow of power and political norms. Third, political negotiators need to put in an effort to re-invigorate the parties and the political process. Political parties must have the ability to reach out to people at the grassroots. There is a whole list of things that could be recommended starting from holding party elections to increasing the number of paid members, to streamlining fundraising in the parties. But political parties can only be democratized when their leaderships decide to become less medieval in their approach. Finally, political actors must be good at political mathematics. This comprises the ability to do a cost-benefit analysis when negotiating with the khakis. The military is politically well-entrenched. Its to-ing and fro-ing from the barracks to politics has changed its basic psychology, especially of the officer cadre. Today, for it politics is not just an issue of saving the country but also protecting the personal and organizational interests of the generals and the army. Institutionalized power base results in Institutionalized interests that are always an amalgam of personal and organizational interests. The political forces have to know exactly how and what to negotiate in the better interests of the nation and the people. Political leaders might even realize that they would have to allow certain benefits and privileges to the officer cadre in return for greater civilian control in some areas, including transparency and accountability. The military would not allow civilians' involvement in its affairs until it can trust the politicians and can communication with them. Offering a perks package is necessary to win the confidence of the officer cadre. This offer is akin to Mancur Olson's concept of stationary versus roving bandits (Dictatorship, Democracy and Development [1993]). According to Olson, settlements ravaged by roving bandits can have the incentive to encourage a group to become stationary. What the group used to take as loot the people provide by collecting taxes and surrendering part of that money to the stationary bandit. The bandit, on the other hand, realizes that looting the town indiscriminately would ultimately exhaust its financial capacity and becoming stationary would benefit both: the bandit would get a steady supply and the people would get security against other roving bandits. Currently, the net cost of military perks is more than what the government might spend in direct subsidies. In addition, there is the opportunity cost of continued political underdevelopment. The military would not return to the barracks unless it is convinced that its privileges would remain intact. This includes both direct and indirect privileges. An officer cadre threatened by the withdrawal of direct personal privileges and downsizing would never agree even to the rightsizing of the military or greater civilian involvement in the defence sector. However, negotiations cannot begin unless the political leadership has done its homework and built its capacity. The homework includes monetization of the perks of both civil and military bureaucracy, assessment of the money required to pay for the perks and the state's ability to generate such resources. This is a possibility provided the state acquires the right to generate money from all those resources that are now being privately managed by the bureaucracy. A number of models are available in the region where governments have monetized the perks and privileges of the public sector. This has also resulted in lessening medium to long-term financial liabilities. The concerned governments no longer have to spend money on depreciation of assets or the maintenance of assets. A number of state governments in India such as Andhra Pradesh have adopted this approach. Perhaps financial gurus like the current premier-cum-finance minister might initially freak out at this suggestion, but one is looking at a financial trade-off rather than what would require both sides of the book to be evenly balanced. Parallel to this the parties must train its members, perhaps a few to begin with, in issues pertaining to national security, economics and affairs of the state. What one is asking for is more than a `hands-on' approach. Members have to be trained and groomed. Each party could have a core group working on a set of issues. In addition, greater debate within the core group is necessary. For the military it is important to understand that there is greater benefit or profit in (a) strengthening democracy, (b) routing national military-strategic objectives through political process handled by the political leadership, and (c) allowing political agendas to take precedence over purely military objectives. A politically less uptight Pakistan would bring greater economic dividends that could allow the military as well as other groups to reap the financial benefits. Whether one takes the functional or structural approach to address the cause of democracy's failure in Pakistan what is important is to remember that we need to get out of this together. No one player can strengthen Pakistan. But together we can. The writer is currently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. This comment first appeared in The Friday Times. From waluk at earthlink.net Mon Apr 25 18:20:22 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 11:20:22 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stress disorder? In-Reply-To: <01C54961.77661000.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54961.77661000.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426D34E6.6090806@earthlink.net> Any type of suffering whether it serves a purpose or not is inhumane. But whether or not drugs are the answer when compared to "talk therapy", I'd go with the later especially in today's blogging times. I understand that Arianna Huffington is hosting a blog with commentary from famous celebrities including Walter Cronkite: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/technology/25arianna.html Answers to PTSD are still out there but blogging, like journal writing, is a step in the correct direction. Gerry Reinhart-Waller Steve Hovland wrote: >PTSD is just pointless suffering. > >Some estimate that 50,000 Vietnam vets >suffering from PTSD committed suicide >after the war. > >Like all other depressed people, PTSD >sufferers are invisible to the rest of the >population, so they serve no purpose unless >their condition is successfully treated. And >then the only purpose served is that they >are able to live something more like a >normal life. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] >Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 2:01 AM >To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stress disorder? > > << File: ATT00016.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00017.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00018.txt >> >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Mon Apr 25 18:27:00 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 11:27:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] out of body experiences In-Reply-To: <200504251702.j3PH25o28061@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050425182701.81340.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Lynn says: >>Actually, the ghosts are escaping from the machine. The interesting thing about OBEs is the apparently veridical reports - persons reporting things during the OBE that they shouldn't be able to know if perception / awareness is an 'inside the brain' phenomenon.<< --I'm skeptical of that. How does one prove that someone has learned something "out of the body" rather than, say, from accumulated scraps of information learned unconsciously from the environment? Especially in an information-saturated environment, it seems like jumping the gun to think that people gain information from some supernatural channels. I don't assume anything is _literally_ "out of the body" during the experiences (I've had a couple myself). The perception of being in the body is a product of the brain's mapping algorithms which attach visual and kinesthetic perception into bundles. Likely, people start out life without a solid map of the body (more like a stream of disjointed perceptions which gradually coalesce into a body-image) and OBEs involve a dissociation from the parietal lobe and a subjective sense of floating outside the body or merging with the environment. This does not mean one is literally outside the body. It means one's perception of the body is altered or compartmentalized out of awareness. Hypnotherapy can induce similar experiences of watching the body from above. It's common in psychedelic states as well. A lot of people seem to only count OBEs which confirm their view of the soul, rather than looking at experiences of merging with the environment (which is too pantheistic for many Christians or Muslims) and experiences in which one becomes many people. By selectively excluding accounts which differ from the accpeted script, OBEs are assumed to confirm various religious views, but science would go with the simplest explanation, that activating or deactivating parts of the brain changes perception of self, environment and body. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From waluk at earthlink.net Mon Apr 25 18:54:04 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 11:54:04 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] out of body experiences In-Reply-To: <20050425182701.81340.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050425182701.81340.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <426D3CCC.5030607@earthlink.net> Michael Christopher wrote: >>--I'm skeptical of that. How does one prove that someone has learned something "out of the body" rather than, say, from accumulated scraps of information learned unconsciously from the environment? Especially in an information-saturated environment, it seems like jumping the gun to think that people gain information from some supernatural channels. >> OBEs like any other psychological phenomenon is truly in the eye of the beholder....an experience that is local to a certain individual. This is no different from having traditional religious beliefs, being gifted in speaking numerous languages, or in offering harrangue to an eager audience. Like most other etherial concepts, one cannot prove or disprove the ability a person has in undergoing an OBE -- you operate on faith and decide whether or not you believe the individual. Gerry Reinhart-Waller From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:07:41 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:07:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought Message-ID: Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/science/25brain.html By [1]NICHOLAS WADE By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen. The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind. The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called. The improvement lies not in the scanners themselves but in a new analytic technique developed by Dr. Frank Tong, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University. In today's issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, he and a colleague, Dr. Yukiyasu Kamitani, report that they were able with the scanner to distinguish the orientation of a test pattern of lines being observed by their subjects. The scanner was able to furnish the necessary data because it was looking into a region of the brain known as the primary visual cortex, where information from the eye is processed. One of the first relay stations from the retina, an area of the visual cortex called V1, holds columns of neurons that burst into activity when lines or edges are perceived, with each column responding to a specific angle of orientation. Dr. Tong set the scanner to monitor the orientation columns in V1. Though the columns of neurons are too small for the scanner to see directly, he found a way to infer statistically which columns were active and hence which orientation the V1 area was responding to. The existence of the orientation columns was discovered many years ago in cats and monkeys by sticking electrodes directly into their brains. But electrodes are too invasive for routine use in people. The new scanning method makes the V1 columns in humans easily accessible to researchers and should allow them to track visual information as it crosses the border between unconscious and conscious thought. Having established that the orientation columns could be monitored, Dr. Tong had his subjects look at two superimposed grids of lines and told them to focus first on one and then the other. Using the scanner, he was able to tell which grid they were attending to, showing that he could independently infer their state of mind. The finding also shows that conscious attention can feed back into the visual processing system at a very early stage and tell it what to focus on. A team of researchers at University College London has used Dr. Tong's analytical method with somewhat different results. Dr. John-Dylan Haynes and Dr. Geraint Rees gave subjects a brief glimpse of a grid of lines in various orientations and then masked the lines with a second stimulus. Because of a visual illusion that occurs in these conditions, subjects cannot describe the orientation of the grid they first saw, and this was the case with the London subjects. But the V1 area of their brains had nevertheless recorded the information. Dr. Haynes and Dr. Rees report, also in today's Nature Neuroscience, that the V1 columns had correctly detected the orientation of the grid, even though the subjects were unable to say what it was. Does the conscious mind have access to the V1 neurons? Dr. Tong's experiment might suggest that it does and Dr. Rees's that it does not. Perhaps V1 lies in a borderland between the conscious and unconscious mind. Taken together, Dr. Rees said in an e-mail message, the two experiments show that neuronal activity in V1 is necessary but not sufficient for the mind to be aware of the orientation data it holds. Dr. Geoffrey Boynton, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute in San Diego, said the new technique "certainly opens the door to a lot of questions," including V1's involvement with both conscious and unconscious vision. Visual processing may not be a linear sequence of steps, with V1 the first stop after the retina, but rather a continuous loop in which timing is everything. At the stage explored in Dr. Rees's experiment, the mind is unconscious of the orientation information in V1. But Dr. Boynton suggested that one-fifth of a second later - the stage explored by Dr. Tong - the conscious mind had become aware of V1. Magnetic resonance imaging, the scanning technique used by the two research teams, does not directly measure the electrical activity of neurons. Instead, it detects the flow of blood in the brain, down to the tiny changes involved when a local group of active neurons demand more oxygen. The imaging machines can monitor volumes of brain tissue as small as three millimeters a side. But this is not small enough to see the orientation columns, which are typically half a millimeter in length. The achievement of Dr. Tong's statistical technique is that it allows the scanners in effect to infer what is happening just below their level of resolution. "The real breakthrough is getting down to the resolution of the column," Dr. Boynton said, adding that it may eventually be possible to apply the technique to the whole brain to analyze patterns of thought. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:07:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:07:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] =?iso-8859-1?q?NYRB=3A_Vive_la_Diff=E9rence!?= Message-ID: Vive la Diff?rence! http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17973 By H. Allen Orr [Thanks to Alice for this.] Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes Norton, 320 pp., $25.95; $15.95 (paper) Y: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones Houghton Mifflin, 252 pp., $25.00 The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives By David Bainbridge Harvard University Press, 205 pp., $22.95; $14.95 (paper) The human genome is made up of forty-six chromosomes, the rod-like structures that reside in the nucleus of every cell. These chromosomes carry all of our genes, which, in turn, are made of DNA. Two of these chromosomes, called the X and the Y, are different from the rest: they are "sex chromosomes." Men carry one X and one Y chromosome, while women carry two X chromosomes. All the obvious physical differences between the sexes ultimately spring from this humble difference in chromosomal constitution. During the last few years, real progress has been made in our understanding of the sex chromosomes and we now know much more about our X and Y than we did a mere decade ago. In 2003, for example, essentially the entire stretch of DNA carried on the human Y chromosome was decoded, revealing the number and, in many cases, identity of the genes that make up this seat of maleness. More important, owing to a breakthrough that occurred in the early Nineties, biologists now understand just how sex is decided in human beings-geneticists identified the master "switch gene" that determines whether an embryo will develop into a male or a female. These discoveries might seem surprisingly recent. In view of the confident pronouncements in the medical press about all things having to do with sex and gender (homosexuality, for example, was said to be genetically determined), you'd be forgiven for assuming that the biology of how a human being becomes a boy or a girl has long been understood. To be fair, though, there were good reasons for the slow progress. How sex is determined represents a rare problem in which the study of simpler organisms like fruit flies led biologists astray. Sex determination in human beings specifically and in mammals generally doesn't work the way it does in most of the species that geneticists like to study. Moreover, genetic studies in human beings are simply harder to perform than those in species like the fruit fly: a generation is more like two decades than two weeks, and we can't dictate who mates with whom, an ethical constraint that doesn't arise with flies. Although the three books discussed here cover much of the same ground, one stands out from the rest. Bryan Sykes's Adam's Curse is both far more ambitious, and controversial, than Steve Jones's or David Bainbridge's book. Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford University and author of the best-selling The Seven Daughters of Eve, sounds loud alarms about an impending biological crisis involving the Y chromosome. He also makes bold sociobiological claims about the effect of the Y chromosome on our lives. Because Sykes is a leading researcher in the study of sex chromosomes (not to mention a science adviser to the House of Commons), his pronouncements merit special attention. 1. Sykes begins his book with the discovery of the master gene that decides sex in human beings. For decades, biologists understood that human beings have so-called Y-dominant sex determination. Roughly speaking, if you carry a Y chromosome, you're a male, while if you don't carry a Y chromosome, you're a female. As a result, rare individuals born with two X's and a Y are boys, while rare individuals born with one X and no Y are girls. There is therefore something on the Y, not the X, that decides sex. Identifying this something, however, proved extraordinarily difficult. As often occurs in human genetics, the key breakthrough involved extremely rare exceptions to the above rules. In the late 1980s, several people were found whose sex appeared not to match their sex chromosomes. Some were patients who had an X and a Y chromosome and yet were female. Careful study revealed that these patients' Y chromosomes were incomplete-they lacked a small, defined piece of the normal chromosome. Others were patients who carried two X chromosomes and (apparently) no Y and yet were male. Careful study revealed that these patients carried a very small piece of the Y chromosome, typically too small to be seen under a microscope. Remarkably, the small bit of the Y missing from the female patients roughly corresponded to the small piece present in the male patients. This proved that sex does not depend on the presence or absence of an entire Y chromosome and further suggested that whatever gene or genes decide sex reside in the relevant small region of the Y. The race to locate the human "sex determination gene" was on. As Sykes recounts it, the race was filled with false starts. In 1987, a research team at the Whitehead Institute near Boston announced the discovery of ZFY, a gene that sits in the appropriate part of the Y and that had certain molecular features that, the team believed, made it a strong candidate for the sex gene in humans. Soon, however, the ZFY story unraveled (for one thing, ZFY turned out to also sit on the X chromosome, which made little sense) and the race, briefly suspended, began anew. In the 1990s, another research team led by Peter Goodfellow and Robin Lovell-Badge at the Human Molecular Genetics Laboratory and National Institute for Medical Research in London identified another Y chromosome gene which they confidently named SRY, for Sex Determining Region of the Y chromosome. Their confidence was, in this case, well placed. During the following year, the same team performed a critical experiment proving that SRY does in fact determine sex in mammals. Injecting a copy of the SRY gene into mouse eggs, the team produced a mouse that carried two X chromosomes and SRY-and it was male. SRY was able, therefore, to force an embryo otherwise destined to become female to develop instead as male. As Sykes recalls, the "star mouse, swinging on a stick and sporting enormous testicles to prove the point, made the cover of the edition of Nature" that announced the discovery of SRY. Although many details of how SRY works remain uncertain, some things are clear: SRY is a special kind of gene that has the power to switch other genes on or off. Genes exist in two states: on, in which they make a protein product (say, hemoglobin for your red blood cells), or off, in which they sit idly, making no protein product. SRY can switch some genes from one of these states to the other. No one imagines, therefore, that the many physical features that distinguish boys from girls-penises not vaginas, testes not ovaries, and so on-reflect the immediate effects of SRY alone. Rather, SRY sits at the top of a genetic cascade: if present, it switches on a set of other genes, some of which may in turn switch on yet other genes, and so on. (These other genes do not reside on the Y, but are scattered throughout the genome.) The cumulative effect of all this genetic switching is the development of testes; and the testes in turn produce hormones that then complete the development of a male anatomy. As this description implies, it is also now clear that the original state of a human embryo is female. It takes active work by SRY to divert the normal path of development from female to male, a process that, in human beings, starts when the fetus is seven weeks old. Sykes gives an excellent account of the subtleties of human sex determination. Indeed he skillfully leads us through a number of other topics in human genetics, including his own research on the use of Y chromosome "fingerprinting" to reconstruct the movement of men throughout history. Contemporary Polynesian men, for example, often carry Y chromosomes whose DNA clearly derives from Europe, a vestige of the conjugal visits of European sailors in the age of exploration. And an astonishing number of men who live within the borders of the old Mongol Empire carry what is genetically the same Y chromosome. Sykes suggests that this extraordinarily popular Y may descend from Genghis Khan himself, who typically slaughtered the men he conquered and bedded the women he vanquished throughout much of Central Asia. Fascinating as all this is, though, it turns out to be preliminary, a long preamble to Sykes's real purpose: to warn the world of his most important discovery-that human beings face an immense genetic disaster. And here Sykes's book takes a sharp turn for the worse. 2. Although Sykes doesn't describe this impending disaster until fairly late in his book, the subtitle to Adam's Curse gives it right away: we face a future without men. Sykes is convinced that the male of the species is doomed. Unless something is done-and soon- men face an "inevitable eventual extinction." You won't be surprised to learn that the alleged causes of this crisis reside in the Y chromosome. Sykes's publishers have, predictably, latched on to this dire news and the cover of his book speaks in ominous tones of the certain extinction of half of humanity. Also not surprisingly, the press has played along, with pieces in The New York Times and The Guardian warning that men may be a thing of the past.[1] Sykes's case for the extinction of men hinges on an unusual problem plaguing many genes on the Y chromosome-they tend to pick up debilitating mutations and to ultimately degenerate into genetic junk. A couple of hundred million years ago or so, the X and Y were a pair of perfectly ordinary chromosomes that each carried a full complement of the same thousand genes. Since then, however, the Y has been slowly degenerating. As a result, while the human X still carries its thousand genes, the Y carries only about a hundred. Sykes believes that the genes that remain on the Y-including SRY as well as others required for the fertility of men-will also degenerate. The disastrous consequence, he says, will be the disappearance of fertile males. (Sykes sometimes says that males will become sterile, while at other times he suggests they'll disappear. Genetically, at least, the difference doesn't make a difference: if all males are sterile, they may as well not be there.) Sykes even tries to calculate when disaster will strike. He concludes that, given the high rate of mutation on the Y, nearly all men will be almost completely sterile in about 125,000 years. In the meantime, male fertility will steadily fall. Adam's curse is, then, a rather serious affair. Not surprisingly, Sykes suggests some ways to avert this looming disaster. He seems most serious about using biotechnological methods to relocate Y chromosome genes, moving them to kinder, gentler chromosomes, where their continued existence is presumably assured. (Such a transfer is, in principle, possible, though some technical hurdles would have to be cleared.) I'm afraid that this is all just silly. There are several related theories of why most genes on the Y chromosome degenerate and none of them predicts that men will become extinct. To see why not, we need to understand why Y chromosomes degenerate in the first place. All theories of Y degeneration (full disclosure: one of them is mine) hinge on an unusual feature of the Y: it doesn't "recombine." Recall that half your chromosomes come from your mother and half from your father. When you make sperm or eggs, each of your chromosomes from your mother pairs up with the corresponding one from your father. During this process, the two chromosomes often swap genetic material, an event called recombination. Consequently, any chromosome entering your sperm or egg likely carries some genes from your mother and others from your father. Oddly, though, the Y doesn't play this game: while all other chromosomes (including the X) recombine, the Y does not.[2] This is important because recombination, it turns out, makes it easy for natural selection to get rid of bad mutations. Put conversely, natural selection is somewhat compromised when dealing with chromosomes that don't recombine. All our theories of population genetics thus predict that the Y will slowly but surely accumulate mutations that have slightly bad effects. But the key point is this: the process I have described will not spiral out of control, yielding sterile or absent men, for two reasons. The first is that the evolutionary forces that cause genes on the Y chromosome to degenerate turn out to be very weak; that's why it's taken hundreds of millions of years for our Y to fall into its current state of disrepair. In contrast, the evolutionary forces that maintain male fertility-and that even maintain a 50:50 ratio of males to females in populations-are very strong. The latter, strong forces, overcome the former, weak ones, and males neither become sterile nor disappear. Second, not all genes on the Y chromosome are created equal. Some, indeed the great majority, originally resided on both the Y and X chromosomes. Natural selection will often tolerate loss of this kind of gene from the Y since there's a "backup" copy on the X that can still perform the gene's functions. Other genes, though, now exist only on the Y. Natural selection will most assuredly not tolerate the loss of this kind of gene since no backup copy sits on the X. The critical point is that most of the male fertility genes now residing on the human Y exist only on that chromosome and there's no way that selection will allow their loss. Sykes's calculation suggests otherwise because it's wrong. He seems to assume that Y chromosomes carrying mutations that partially sterilize men will get passed on to future generations as often as normal, unmutated chromosomes. But they won't-that's what it means to be partially sterile. This misstep leads Sykes astray. There are simply no sound evolutionary grounds to support his sensational claims of the extinction of men.[3] This is not to say that Y chromosomes can't be lost from a species. They can and sometimes are. But it is to say that the Y can disappear only after it's become dispensable, i.e., only after genetic changes take place that render Y-less males healthy and fertile. Sykes gets this logic backward. Telling the story of a rodent called the mole vole that's lost its Y, he marvels that these lucky voles made the genetic changes needed to avoid male extinction "only just in time" before their Y disappeared. But this is like saying that you got out of your clothes only just in time before they were thrown in the wash. In reality, the later event is contingent on the earlier. The bottom line is that Sykes's alarmist talk of the extinction of men is just that-alarmist-and I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the possibility. And I certainly wouldn't give much thought (much less funding) to his technological fix to this nonproblem. There are enough real problems out there. 3. Talk of sex chromosomes and of single genes that determine sex naturally raises the specter of genetic determinism. Are certain behaviors and thoughts fundamentally male and others essentially female? To just what extent does recent biological research support the notion that genes determine our identity, sexual or otherwise? The answer to this question depends entirely on the particular trait or character under discussion. If the character of interest is having testes or not, we are confronted with a biological determinism of the first magnitude. Whether an embryo develops testes depends essentially entirely on its genes; indeed you'd be hard pressed to find anything more genetically hardwired. If this brand of biological determinism alarms you, you are destined to be alarmed. But things are considerably less clear if the trait of interest is, say, aggressiveness, or a curiosity about genes. Unfortunately, this (not so subtle) distinction is often lost on Sykes. Sociobiological claims of an almost unbelievably unnuanced sort run throughout Adam's Curse. Sykes's chief claim is that the Y chromosome causes its bearers to do crazy things. Sykes tells his readers that men, violent and sex-crazed, are "driven on by the lash of their Y chromosomes," and that the Y has "claimed the power to force us, men and women alike, to submit...to its will." Indeed it soon appears that the Y is legally liable for war, the subjugation of women, and empire building: Driven on and on by the crazed ambition of the Y-chromosome to multiply without limit, wars began to enable men to annex adjacent lands and enslave their women. Nothing must stand in the way of the Y-chromosome. Wars, slavery, empires-all ultimately coalesce on that one mad pursuit. In places Sykes is so overcome by the power of the Y chromosome that he passes from breathless exaggeration to patent absurdity. In a remarkable passage, he argues that Genghis Khan's Y chromosome was so successful that it's hard to know who was in charge: Is the Khan chromosome's achievement owing to the sexual exploits and military conquests of the Mongol emperor? Or was the Great Khan himself driven to success in war, and in bed, by the ambition of his Y chromosome? Since Sykes tells us-and on the previous page-that 16 million men now carry the Khan Y chromosome, the answer seems painfully clear: if the Y is in charge, the world would now have 16 million Genghis Khans on its hands. Although Sykes's excesses might be excused as the inevitable hyperbole of a popularizer, their cumulative effect is serious and does, I think, do real damage: it's hard to believe that a biologically naive reader could walk away from Adam's Curse with a sensible view of the connection between genes and behavior. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In any case, Steve Jones's Y and David Bainbridge's The X in Sex prove that popular books on human genetics-indeed on human sex chromosomes-need not trade in sociobiological excess. Sykes, Jones, and Bainbridge cover much of the same ground -all recount the discovery of SRY, discuss the role of hormones in sexual development, and describe Darwin's theory of sexual selection. But their positions on genetic determinism differ profoundly. Jones, professor of genetics at University College, London, and the author of The Language of Genes and Darwin's Ghost, offers his latest book as an update of Darwin's 1871 classic The Descent of Man. Although Darwin was more of a hereditarian than many evolutionists like to admit, Jones himself turns out to be very cautious about attributing human behavior to genes. While he obviously understands that carrying the Y chromosome or not means that men and women will express at least some different genes, his treatment of the consequences of this difference is far more measured than Sykes's. Indeed Jones is, in places, explicitly anti-sociobiological. He reminds us, for example, that the Y chromosome has all too often served as "a useful alibi for man's excesses" and emphasizes that manhood tells a social tale as much as one written in nucleic acids [DNA] and must, with all that it implies, be constructed. Once the foundations of the male state are laid, what rises from them has little to do with DNA. Such sentiments are all too rarely expressed in popular writing about human evolution or genetics and it is to Jones's credit that his smart and informative book bucks the trend. For his part, Bainbridge, a lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College, London, and author of Making Babies: The Science of Pregnancy, essentially eschews the entire controversy over evolutionary psychology. He sticks instead to hard science. Although Bainbridge is given to talking about how chromosomes "control our lives" or "become our dictator," he focuses almost entirely on the role of chromosomes in human disease, not in human cognition, emotion, or behavior. And when it comes to disease, there is, of course, little doubt that chromosomes do often control our lives. Bainbridge's book is largely devoted to the X chromosome, not the Y. He spends much of his time on "sex-linked" conditions that affect men more than women; these range from annoyances like baldness to devastating diseases like muscular dystrophy.[4] Bainbridge also devotes many fascinating pages to complex ailments like autoimmune disease that, for reasons which remain unclear, disproportionately afflict women. (Hashimoto's thyroiditis, for instance-a leading cause of underactive thyroids-affects fifty times more women than men.) But Bainbridge's chief concern is with the biology of human sex determination and with the many ways in which it can, and does, go wrong. In the end, his message is that while human beings obviously come in two predominant sexes, both cultural and biological forces give rise to a surprisingly "continuous spectrum of gender." While Bainbridge makes it fairly clear that he wouldn't be surprised if genes sometimes cause men and women to act or think differently, he's largely silent about the nature and extent of any such differences. While it's hard to know for sure, I suspect that this silence reflects the cautious neutrality of a sensible scientist confronted with mixed data and mountains of speculation. For the truth is, of course, that we have little idea how much of the variation in human behavior-whether between the sexes or within them-is caused by genes. While I could defend this claim by pointing to a body of technical literature filled with conflicting assertions about the heritability of human behavior, there's no need for such a thing. The same point is made (albeit inadvertently) by the three books under review. Although all are written by smart male British biologists who read essentially the same scientific literature and who live and work within a hundred miles of each other, their views on the role of genes in human behavior are widely divergent, ranging from enthusiastic endorsement to considerable skepticism to apparent neutrality. This lack of consensus speaks for itself. Notes [1] See Claudia Dreifus, "Is Genghis Khan an Ancestor? Mr. DNA Knows," The New York Times, June 8, 2004. See also Bryan Sykes, "Do We Need Men?" The Guardian, August 28, 2003. [2] This is almost, but not exactly, true. Tiny regions of the Y do in fact recombine with the X. I ignore these "pseudoautosomal regions" here, as they make up a small part of the Y chromosome and play no role in what follows. [3] For a review of how and why Y chromosomes fall apart, see B. Charlesworth and D. Charlesworth, "The Degeneration of Y Chromosomes," Pro-ceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 355 (2000), pp. 1563-1572. [4] Because mutations on the X chromosome, not the Y, cause these conditions, it might not be obvious why they typically affect men, not women. The reason is that women, who carry two X chromosomes, can partly "mask" the effects of a mutated X with their other (and usually unmutated) X chromosome. Men, who have a single X, can't mask mutations in this way. This explanation, however, gets complicated in two ways. First, women randomly "inactivate" (turn off) one of their X chromosomes within each of their cells. So women mask the bad effects of mutated X chromosomes partly because those cells that happen to leave the good X turned on can "cover" for those cells that leave the bad X turned on. Second, recent work shows that this traditional account is somewhat incomplete. It turns out that, while most of the genes on one of a woman's X's are turned off, 15 percent are not. The result is that women, within their cells, express two copies of these X chromosomal genes while men express one. (See L. Carrell and H.F. Willard, "X-Inactivation Profile Reveals Extensive Variability in X-Linked Gene Expression in Females," Nature, Vol. 434, 2005, pp. 400-404.) From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:10:58 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:10:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] MSNBC: As autism cases soar, a search for clues Message-ID: As autism cases soar, a search for clues http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947652/ et seq. Today show By Jacqueline Stenson Contributing editor MSNBC Updated: 2:58 p.m. ET Feb. 24, 2005 Once a rare diagnosis, it seems there's now an epidemic of autism sweeping the nation. Many of us know a child with the disorder, and concerned parents are searching for suspicious signs even in young babies. But while more kids are being labeled with autism, whether the condition is truly more common among today's children than past generations of youngsters is largely unclear. There's no question that autism diagnoses are increasing, but it's unknown how much of that is due to greater awareness of the disorder by doctors and the public, a broader definition of it, a true increase in incidence or other factors. "There is a chance we're seeing a true rise, but right now I don't think anybody can answer that question for sure," says Dr. Chris Johnson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio and co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Autism Expert Panel. Parents who believe the disorder is increasing due to some modern threat that is damaging the brains of children have pointed the finger at childhood vaccinations and the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that was once widely used in many of them. There are also suspicions about lead or other toxins in the environment, diet, viruses and medications. Indeed, some experts say it's possible that exposures in utero or in early childhood may play a role. Frustrated parents struggling to cope with a disorder that seemed to appear virtually overnight understandably want answers. But clear insights are hard to come by. Cases skyrocketing Studies done in the 1960s indicated that autism was quite rare, affecting only about one person in every 2,000 to 2,500, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other research in 1970 put the figure at one case per 10,000, Johnson says. Precisely how many people have autism today is unknown. But estimates suggest there are five to six cases of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) per 1,000 people, says Johnson. That roughly equates to as many as one case out of every 166 people. It's important to note that today's figures apply to the whole category of ASDs, which includes autism as well as related conditions like Asperger Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Children with these disorders have varying degrees of impaired communication and social interaction. Diagnostic criteria changed dramatically in 1987, broadening the number of people who could be considered to have ASDs. In decades earlier, only those with severe autistic characteristics would be diagnosed with autism; others might have been categorized as mentally retarded, for example. So making comparisons across decades is difficult. "The frequency of the diagnosis has clearly increased but that doesn't tell you beans," emphasizes Dr. William Barbaresi, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. To get a better picture of autism and its potential causes, Barbaresi and colleagues examined new cases of autism in Olmsted County, Minn., from 1976 to 1997. Using data on every child living in the county during those years, the researchers used modern diagnostic criteria to conclude that the incidence of autism specifically rose dramatically, from 5.5 cases per 100,000 children from 1980 to 1983, to 44.9 cases from 1995 to 1997. A sharp increase started between 1988 and 1991, a period during which broader diagnostic criteria for autism were newly in use and increased awareness of the disorder occurred, Barbaresi says. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6947652/page/2/ Other studies also have failed to link vaccinations to autism, prompting the Institute of Medicine, an independent group that advises the federal government, to conclude there is no connection. But no one knows exactly what causes ASDs, and until they do, much about these disorders will remain a source of great speculation. Many unknowns To say that there's a lot doctors don't know about these conditions is "an understatement," says Dr. Leonard Rappaport, director of the Developmental Medicine Center at Children's Hospital Boston. "Most things we don't know," he says. Rappaport suspects there may be a true rise in ASDs, though he says it's not at all clear why or to what extent. To better understand the causes, and hopefully improve diagnosis and treatment, Rappaport is involved in a new study that is focusing on genetic underpinnings of the disorders that he says may play a role in upwards of 90 percent of cases. The federal government also has organized an international coalition to explore the genetics. Many scientists believe that ASDs are largely caused by genes. Studies have shown, for instance, that if one identical twin has autism the second twin is very likely to also have the disorder. But the risk isn't 100 percent, suggesting that other factors can contribute, even if they aren't the main cause. "I think it's clear that there's a strong genetic predisposition," says Dr. Steve Sommer, chairman of the department of molecular genetics at City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, Calif. One theory behind a cluster of cases of high-functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome in Silicon Valley holds that people who carry the genes gravitate toward high-tech professions like computer science that don't necessarily require a lot of social interaction. And when these people, who may not have the full-blown disorders, meet and have children together, the kids could be fully affected because of the double genetic whammy from both parents. Down the line, scientists suspect they may find many genes involved in ASDs. Sommer's research has shown that a mutation in the neuroligin 4 gene, which is involved in creating healthy connections between neurons in the brain, is defective in about 3 percent of people with autism. But that doesn't mean that everyone who inherits the defective gene will develop autism, he says. And there are likely many more genes that play a role in the condition in certain people. "From a genetic point of view, autism is likely to be many -- perhaps a hundred or more -- diseases," he says. Sleepless nights But if autism spectrum disorders are truly on the rise, genes aren't the reason. "The gene pool doesn't change," explains Rappaport. "It would have to be something that's environmental." That something -- if it does exist -- remains a huge mystery and a source of endless worry for parents, especially given that there is currently no known way to prevent autism. Rappaport says many parents fear they may have done something to trigger the problem, like taking their kids to get regularly scheduled immunizations or exposing themselves to environmental toxins. "Parents are searching for answers, and they're blaming themselves for a million different things," he says. "I can't even imagine all the sleepless nights." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:11:04 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:11:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] spiked-life: Healthier in lungs, poorer in spirit Message-ID: Healthier in lungs, poorer in spirit http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA8B1.htm 5.2.1 A non-smoking New Yorker misses the illicit, adult camaraderie of smoke-filled bars. by George Blecher Eating in a Manhattan midtown restaurant the other night, I happened to glance over at the bar area. People were perched on bar stools, leaning into each other's ears, making conversation; you could hear the pretty bartender's husky laugh halfway to the kitchen. I flashed on to a feeling direct from my teenage years - a longing to be part of that group of cool grownups connected to each other by faint but unmistakable sexual electricity. But then I realised that something was missing: smoke. It used to unwind from the tips of our cigarettes and tie us together, then spread into a sheltering haze that made the tricky acts of flirting or making new friends a little easier. Without cigarette smoke, the people at the restaurant bar that night seemed a little too separate from each other, a little less relaxed than they might have been if the right to smoke in public places hadn't been taken away. Sharing a love of smoking used to unite us in a slightly illicit club whose members all took pleasure in doing something naughty; and now that our wings are clipped, a part of that camaraderie feels like it's lost forever. We always knew that smoking was bad. You didn't need to be a cancer surgeon to feel the shortness of breath, see the stains on your fingers and teeth, the burn-holes in your Izod shirt - not to mention the horrific photos of rotting lungs. But in a way, that was the point. In part we smoked because it was bad - and gaining the right to choose between good and bad, and to know both sides in ourselves, in some sense represented the demarcation line between childhood and adulthood. Children had to be good; adults could choose to be. The fact that teenagers are still the largest group of smokers makes perfect sense: instinctively they know that being grown up involves exploring, and accepting, the good and bad parts of oneself. That knowledge of good and evil was reflected in some of the great moments in smoking, especially the American film noir classics of the 1930s-50s, and in the great smoker/actors like Humphrey Bogart, Edward G Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, Tallulah Bankhead. Surrounded by a comforting, mysterious fog, these people were a complex mixture of good and evil, fear and bravery, arrogance and wisdom. All were capable of cruelty, but also of tenderness. You couldn't exactly call them heroes or villains; they were just people. Indeed, getting past their less honourable qualities and discovering their inner kindness was the arc of most of the movies they made. But whatever qualities they shared, there was one that they all lacked: innocence. They weren't kids. Good or bad, they knew what they were doing. You could extend the adult/smoker theory a bit to understand some of Shakespeare's characters on the basis of who might or might not smoke. Lady Macbeth definitely would ('Out, damned spot!'); Macbeth wouldn't. Polonius wouldn't even allow smoking in the family chambers, but his daughter Ophelia might sneak a few puffs each day in back of the castle; and of course Hamlet wouldn't be able either to enjoy the habit or quit. Iago would smoke and like it; Desdemona would smoke on the sly but never with Othello, who - poor dear - must have had terrible asthma. Shakespeare himself? Undoubtedly a pipe-smoker. But cigarette smoking wasn't only about good and bad; it was also about the awareness of death. (Clean-air fanatics might go much further and insist that smoking isn't about death but murder and suicide. That feels a little overwrought to me.) Though I gave it up years ago, I still miss it, and certainly don't hate those who continue to smoke. Partly thumbing one's nose at death, partly flirting with it, part defiance, part acceptance - each breath of smoke was all of these, and when we smoked together in bars and clubs, at parties or at home, the consciousness of our mortality may even have coaxed us into making the most of the limited time that we knew we had. And now the offices and restaurants of Europe will soon be as smoke-free as those in the USA. In terms of health, of course it's a good thing. A few people may live a little longer (if not necessarily more happily), and some of the nasty side-effects of smoking will be history. It's actually nice not to have to breathe stale cigarette smoke or to empty piles of butts out of ashtrays after a party. And I don't have any problem with the alleged threat to civil liberties: we live with a thousand ordinances, from traffic lights to forced vaccinations to fluoridated water that the state hands down in the name of public health and safety. What worries me is the hum of panic that I sense underneath the public ordinance, a panic engendered by a cult of health that's taken so many forms over the past 30 years that it's become the single religion of much of Western society. You run across it everywhere: in our preoccupation with diet and exercise; the endless ads in the media - in the US at least - promoting new drugs for an increasing number of exotic diseases; and the inclination to turn all eccentric behaviour into a 'syndrome' that can be treated medicinally. While none of these is alarming in itself, they add up to a new Puritanism that turns the old paradigm on its head: now instead of tempting the Fates by being bad, we put all our efforts into being good. If smoking was about being grown up, the new Puritanism is about being a perpetual child, and living in a protected world that has never existed except in fantasy. Maybe all this wouldn't be so terrible, if it weren't also profoundly anti-social. In a society obsessed with personal health, altruism takes a back seat to solipsism, risk a back seat to caution, generosity a back seat to the hoarding of wealth for a rainy day. In such a society, it's less and less likely that people will risk any sort of self-sacrifice to help each other - to help a homeless person out of the gutter, for example, or climb a tree to rescue a neighbour's cat. There's also a grandiosity about the cult of health, which seems to imply that if one stops smoking, eats fruits and vegetables, and slims down to one per cent body fat, one can live forever - or at least until science figures out a way to successfully regenerate us in time for Judgment Day. What's missing is humility, the kind that the attack on the World Trade Towers or the recent tsunami might evoke - a realisation that no matter what we do, most things are out of our control. Smoking or not smoking isn't the issue. It never really was, since as every non-smoking New Yorker knows, he inhales the equivalent of two packs a day just by breathing. What concerns me is the picture of who we perceive ourselves to be: self-involved children pretending that we can escape death by playing God the Doctor and Personal Trainer. Though smoking may not have been good for us, the camaraderie that went along with it made this journey more fascinating, and its end perhaps more bearable. George Blecher is based in New York, and reports for a number of European publications about American politics and culture. A version of this article will appear in Voltaire, a new Swedish cultural magazine, in the spring. From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:13:18 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:13:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CHE: Reproductive Success for Working Scientists Message-ID: Reproductive Success for Working Scientists The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5.4.29 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i34/34c00201.htm CATALYST Reproductive Success for Working Scientists As a female ready to contribute your highly trained brain and your genetic material to society, what can you do to prosper? By GAIL M. SIMMONS Long ago, I found myself pregnant while working as a postdoc at a federal institute. I was blessed with what seemed like the ideal situation for a mammal who wanted to increase her Darwinian fitness while enhancing her chances for tenure. I would be able to give birth and raise the baby past that difficult first year before I had to throw myself into the academic job market in search of a faculty position. Perfect, I thought. My supervisor supported my decision, but neither of us had counted on his division being threatened with elimination. We both concluded that I needed to go on the job market immediately if I didn't want to risk being an unemployed new mother. I began churning out CV's and cover letters that said nothing about my pregnancy. To my delight I soon received a phone call from the chairman of a search committee at a major university. He was someone I knew and respected, and shortly we were arranging for me to fly out for an interview. It turned out, however, that while my colleague was nominally the head of the search, the choice was really up to a newly hired director who got to handpick at least three new faculty members over the next three years. The director and his assistant gave me derisive looks the following week as I waddled down the rickety stairway from the tiny plane to the tarmac. They made it abundantly clear that they knew I had no brain. The well-planned fantasy of my first pregnancy began to unravel during delivery. Up to then my pregnancy had been uncomplicated. Suddenly I was on an operating table being prepped for an emergency C-section. The baby was fine, but once home with my newborn, I confronted the reality of recovering from abdominal surgery and dealing with the Thing That Would Not Sleep. By the time I returned to work, I was more drained (both emotionally and physically) than I had ever been in my life. My research project was woefully behind, and I had calls from two more search committees inviting me for interviews. In the next four months I went on three job interviews with my husband and our infant son in tow. Those experiences made it clear that biologists may find studying mammals worthwhile, but they vastly prefer not to be confronted with the mammalian nature of a job candidate. At one university the faculty members and students were simply dismissive. At another, the powerful chairwoman of the graduate program told me, with venom in her voice, that women in science needed to make choices between family life and science. Apparently I had made the wrong choice. I finished that interview season with no job in hand. From my perspective many years later, as a dean whose favorite part of her job is hiring new faculty members, I am not surprised. No one who read the Berkeley study on the effects of motherhood on academic careers should be surprised, either (The Chronicle, December 5, 2003). It is abundantly clear that, as a society, we have far to go in rethinking how careers for gravid and postpartum academic mammals should proceed. Up to now, all we have really done is modify the protocol followed for decades by the sperm donors. The Berkeley report calls for large institutional and societal changes. Not that it isn't worthwhile to push for radical reforms, but the real question is: What can you do -- as a female ready to contribute both your highly trained brain and your excellent genetic material to society -- to make it possible to succeed at both in the current academic environment? I have some suggestions. Let me start with those who are forced by circumstance to interview for a tenure-track job while obviously pregnant or breastfeeding. What should you do -- and not do? Present yourself as professionally as possible. Don't skimp on your wardrobe. You want to look your best even though you may feel your worst. Your object is to distract your interviewers from what you cannot hide outright. Don't wear anything that makes you look like the infant rather than the adult you really are. Keep your maternal role in the background. Try to deflect illegal questions by turning the subject back to the matter at hand, which is your suitability for a position. Don't be rude, however, if interviewers persist in asking questions. Just politely point out that you never would have gone out of your way to interview in this condition if you weren't dead serious about a job at their institution. Look for cues of sympathetic interviewers. Even while keeping as low a profile as possible about your gravid or lactational state, keep a sharp eye and ear out for those who may harbor secret or even open sympathy and support for your situation. Are there other mothers or fathers among the department's faculty who are willing to discuss their situation? Do you see signs of infants or children in faculty offices (the random stuffed toy, diaper bag, or breast pump on the shelves next to last week's issue of Nature)? Those could be clues that your biological imperative will be respected if you are offered a chance to work there. Once you have an offer in hand, don't relax. Be assertive in asking about campus resources for families. Ask questions of faculty members who may have given clues earlier that they are family friendly. Inquire about day care, family leave, the tenure clock, etc. If the department head (or any senior faculty member) blanches, sputters, or hesitates to offer information, you may want to think twice about the offer. Find out if any other women in the department, or elsewhere in the sciences, have been tenured while of childbearing age. Ask to speak to her if she exists. Once you are hired, look for allies. One thing is certain: You will need help in your goal to get tenure while having or rearing small children. Find others with whom you can collaborate, commiserate, and network. Don't be afraid to cross department lines to do that. Scope out the "enemy." And then look for strategies to neutralize her. I say "her" because in my experience the "hims" are usually easy to spot. Yet the "hers" can be more insidiously dangerous, not only by badmouthing your maternity to others, or voting against you on a tenure committee, but also by saying things that undermine your self-confidence. Comments like, "I was in the lab all weekend but didn't see you; how is that paper of yours coming?" are not designed to be friendly. You probably will never convert the naysayers, but you want to make sure that the voice advocating for your work is louder than the ones denigrating it. Be creative about sleep habits, work habits, household habits. Your baby does not care if your laundry is not folded or your bed is unmade. Your object is to meet your basic needs, your family's basic needs, and your work goals. Be prepared to sacrifice a great deal of less-important things until the child is of school age or beyond. Be sure you are married to the right person. And do that before you begin the process of trying to be a scientist and a mother simultaneously. I'm not being flip here. A passive-aggressive spouse can do more to destroy your career than an army of old-boy faculty members. I would recommend some counseling on this matter even if your relationship seems ideal. Partners who are not in academe may not realize exactly what goes into academic science, tenure, and promotion. Is your partner truly ready to take on half or more of the work while you're trying for tenure? If your husband is in academe but not the sciences, does he truly understand that you can't work from home most of the time and that you can't have an infant in a laboratory? If he's also in science, does he "get it" that the two of you must both be willing to juggle -- not just you? Whose career will come first if one of you has problems on the job? If you are a dean or a department head, you can do a lot to make prospective female faculty members feel welcome. And whether you make the effort will tell candidates a lot about the kind of workplace you run. Here are some of the things you should do both for potential hires and for current faculty members who either have or are about to have children: Introduce job seekers to faculty members with children. Include those professors in a lunch or social hour with the candidate, and prep them to casually share information about their arrangements. That is presuming, of course, that your institution already makes an effort to be family friendly. Offer information about family policies to all job candidates. Discuss child-care options, health insurance, leave policies, tenure-clock modifications, part-time possibilities, flexible teaching schedules. Don't wait to be asked, and don't ask whether the candidate intends to take advantage of those options. Just put the information out there. Share your own experience. If you've "been there, done that," don't keep it a secret. I've seen the look of relief on a candidate's face when I mention my own child-rearing stories. Look for informal solutions to problems. One of the simplest accommodations I ever received was from the scheduling officer in my department. She knew that two of us in the department had small children and lived near each another. So she arranged our teaching schedules so that we taught on different days of the week. That way I could baby-sit her kids if they were ill and could not go to day care, and she could baby-sit mine. It worked very well. Provide parenting space in your building. Faculty offices are often rather too crowded for times when a faculty member must bring an infant or child along, and noises from crying babies may disturb others. Consider whether you can dedicate a small amount of space as a nursery. The bottom line is that everyone from the silverback to the alpha female to the subadults benefits if conditions favor intellectual and reproductive success. So everyone from the president down to junior faculty members should find ways to make that success happen. Gail M. Simmons is the dean of science at the College of New Jersey. For an archive of previous Catalyst columns see [3]http://chronicle/jobs/archive/advice/catalyst.htm From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:13:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:13:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] New Scientist: 'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana Message-ID: 'Info-mania' dents IQ more than marijuana http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7298&print=true * 14:32 22 April 2005 * Will Knight The relentless influx of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages received by modern workers can reduce their IQ by more than smoking marijuana, suggests UK research. Far from boosting productivity, the constant flow of messages and information can seriously reduce a person's ability to focus on tasks, the study of office workers found. Eighty volunteers were asked to carry out problem solving tasks, firstly in a quiet environment and then while being bombarded with new emails and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to any messages, researchers found that their attention was significantly disturbed. Alarmingly, the average IQ was reduced by 10 points - double the amount seen in studies involving cannabis users. But not everyone was affected by to the same extent - men were twice as distracted as women. "If left unchecked, info-mania will damage a workers performance by reducing their mental sharpness," says Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at the University of London, UK, who carried out the study, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. "This is a very real and widespread phenomenon." Losing sleep Wilson adds that working amid a barrage of incoming information can reduce a person's ability to focus as much as losing a night's sleep. The study also polled 1100 workers and found many are becoming addicted to modern modes of communications. One in five workers said they would answer messages during a meal or a social engagement, while two thirds admitted to checking emails outside working hours and even on holiday. Christopher Kimble, from the University of York, UK, adds that the quality of information contained in communications can also be a major problem for workers. His own research, carried out within a large multinational company, shows that key employees, such as secretaries and IT support staff, can be particularly affected by misleading or incomplete emails. These increase the time required to complete the task, when a short phone conversation would have been much more efficient. Related Articles * [12]Software agents give out PR advice * [13]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7210 * 02 April 2005 * [14]Dyslexia slows drivers' reactions * [15]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524854.400 * 05 February 2005 * [16]Video games boost visual skills * [17]http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3775 * 28 May 2003 Weblinks * [18]Institute of Psychiatry, University of London * [19]http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/ * [20]Hewlett-Packard Bristol Research Labs * [21]http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/ * [22]Computer Science, The University of York * [23]http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ References 12. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7210 13. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7210 14. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524854.400 15. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524854.400 16. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3775 17. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3775 18. http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/ 19. http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/ 20. http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/ 21. http://www.hpl.hp.com/bristol/ 22. http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ 23. http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:18:14 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:18:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Sigma Xi: The Soul of Science Message-ID: The Soul of Science http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/40803 American Scientist Online. The Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society see full issue: March-April 2005 Volume: 93 Number: 2 Page: 101 DOI: 10.1511/2005.2.101 MACROSCOPE The Soul of Science [22]Michael Shermer According to Greek legend, Poseidon's son Theseus sailed to Crete to slay the monster Minotaur. After his triumphant return to Athens, his ship was preserved as a memorial. As the vessel aged, decaying planks were replaced with new ones; eventually, all the original timber was replaced. Philosophers know the story of Theseus's ship as a classic example of the problem of identity. What was the true identity of the ship, the shape or the wood? A more contemporary example may be found in the form of my first car, a 1966 Ford Mustang with a 289-cubic-inch engine and a speedometer that pegged at 140 m.p.h. As a young man high in testosterone but low in self-control, by the time I sold the car 15 years later there was hardly an original part on it. Nevertheless, my "1966" Mustang was now considered a classic, and I netted a tidy profit. Like Theseus's ship, its essence--its "Mustangness"--was intact. The analogy holds for human identity. The atoms in my brain and body today are not the same ones I had when I was born. Nevertheless, the patterns of information coded in my DNA and in my neural memories are still those of Michael Shermer. The human essence, the soul, is more than a pile of parts--it is a pattern of information. As far as we know, there is no way for that pattern to last longer than several decades, a century or so at most. So until a technology can copy a human pattern into a more durable medium (silicon chips perhaps?), it appears that when we die our pattern is lost. Scientific skepticism suggests that there is no afterlife, and religion requires a leap of faith greater than many of us wish to make. Whether there is an afterlife or not, we must live as if this is all there is. Our lives, our families, our friends, our communities (and how we treat others) are more meaningful when every day, every moment, every relationship and every person counts. Rather than meaningless forms before an eternal tomorrow, these entities have value in the here-and-now because of the purpose we create. Provisional Purpose In science, a fact is something confirmed to such a degree that it would be reasonable to offer our assent that it is true, provided that the assumptions on which it rests are intact. In life, purpose is provisional for the same reason--there is no Archimedean point from which we can authenticate final Truths and ultimate Purposes. In its stead, we have to validate our own facts and determine our own purposes. The self-correcting machinery of science corroborates provisional facts, and life itself provides the template for provisional purpose. Life's most basic purpose is survival and reproduction, and for 3.5 billion years, organisms from the pre-Cambrian to us form an unbroken continuity. This alone ennobles us, but add the innumerable steps from bacteria to big brains and the countless points at which our lineage could have died and we conclude that human beings are a glorious contingency in the history of life. Humans have an evolved sense of purpose--a psychological desire to accomplish goals--that developed out of behaviors that were selected for because they were good for the individual or the group. The desire to behave in purposeful ways is an evolved trait; purpose is in our nature. And with brains big enough to discover and define purpose in symbolic ways that are inconceivable to millions of preceding and coexisting species, we humans are unique. The Purpose Pyramid With provisional purpose we define our goals, but there is an inherent structure to the human condition that helps delimit our search. By combining psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and ethicist Peter Singer's expanding circle of sentiments, one can depict the 1.5 million years over which such drives and sentiments evolved among humans and our social-primate ancestors. At the bottom of the pyramid, the individual's needs for survival and reproduction--food, drink, safety and sex--are met through the family, extended family and community. Moving up the pyramid, psychosocial needs--security, bonding, socialization, affiliation, acceptance and affection--have evolved to aid and reinforce cooperation and altruism, traits that benefit individuals and the group. About 35,000 years ago, social groups grew larger and cultural selection began to take precedence over natural selection. The natural progression of this upwards trend is to perceive societies as part of the human species and the human species as part of the biosphere. The width of the pyramid at each level reflects the degree to which purposeful sentiment is under evolutionary control. The height of each level indicates the degree to which purposeful sentiment extends beyond us. Thus, the pyramid shows that these two variables are inversely related--the more a sentiment helps a complete stranger, the less it owes to specific evolutionary mechanisms. Selfish genes drive kin altruism, and social relations fuel reciprocal altruism, but to achieve species- and bio-altruism, we need to learn higher-order prosocial behavior. Achieving the upper levels of the pyramid requires social and political action. We evolved in a manner in which our concern for the environment was highly restricted, and global ecology and deep time were inconceivable until recent millennia--too short a time for evolution to expand the fundamental range of our purposeful concerns. The Pleasure of Purpose How can we attain deep-time awareness and global consciousness when our sense of purpose is grounded in an ancient evolutionary heritage? Thomas Jefferson suggested one answer in a letter to Thomas Law in 1814: "These good acts give pleasure, but how it happens that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses." Scientific research supports this proposition. Experiments with the "prisoner's dilemma"--a game in which one person's cooperation or defection elicits a varying payoff depending on whether the other person cooperates or defects--reveal that subjects adopt a cooperative strategy after multiple rounds, particularly when they can interact to establish trust. Usually, the most selfish thing to do--that is, gain the most in the long run--is to begin by trusting and cooperating, and then do whatever your partner does. Trust ... with verification. Our brains reinforce cooperative behavior. In one study by James Rilling and colleagues at Emory University, subjects that played the prisoner's dilemma while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that cooperation activated the same brain areas as desserts, cocaine, beautiful faces and other pleasures. These responsive areas, the anteroventral striatum (the so-called "pleasure center," for which rats will endlessly press a bar to have it stimulated, even foregoing food) and the orbitofrontal cortex (related to impulse control and reward processing), are rich in dopamine, a neurochemical related to addictive behaviors. Tellingly, the cooperative subjects reported increased feelings of trust toward and camaraderie with their game partners. In addition to dopamine, neuroscientists believe that oxytocin--a hormone produced during eating, breast feeding and sexual orgasm--plays a vital role in human bonding and prosocial behaviors. Can we use this knowledge to accentuate purposeful behavior at the personal and global levels? Bootstrapping Purpose Purpose is personal, and people satisfy this deep-seated need in countless ways. Among these are avenues by which we can bootstrap ourselves toward higher goals that have proven to be especially beneficial to individuals and society. These include: Deep love and family commitment--the bonding and attachment to others increases one's circle of sentiments and corresponding sense of purpose: to care about others as much as, if not more than, oneself; Meaningful work and career--the sense of purpose derived from discovering one's passion for work drives people to achieve goals so far beyond their own needs that they lift all of us to a higher plane, either directly through the benefits of the work or indirectly through inspiration; Social and political involvement--as a social species we have an obligation to community and society to participate in the process of determining how best we should live together; Transcendence and spirituality--a capacity unique to our species that includes aesthetic appreciation, spiritual reflection and transcendence through art, music, dance, exercise, meditation, prayer or quiet contemplation, thereby connecting us on the deepest level with that which is completely outside of ourselves. My own journey up the pyramid began with falling in love, parenting a child and making the commitment to place family before self. The immeasurable joy generated by the most quotidian of family functions reinforces this commitment on a daily basis. Even with unlimited wealth, I would continue my career no differently because I have been fortunate enough to find a profession that offers more than just personal gain. As such, my work takes me ever further out of selfhood and toward global goals. Although I have visited many of the grandest cathedrals in the world and sensed a spiritual veneration of the highest order, my greatest transcendent experiences have come through the contemplation of nature in her grandeur, such as the view from Edwin Hubble's chair through the 100-inch telescope atop Mt. Wilson. From that perch, one's picture of the cosmos grows to galactic proportions, dwarfing any prior world view and yielding a perspective transcendent beyond imagination. The Purpose Principle Although purpose may be found in countless activities, is there a principle by which we may generalize its particulars? In The Science of Good And Evil I suggested two principles of morality. First, the happiness principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek happiness with someone else's happiness in mind, and never seek happiness when it leads to someone else's unhappiness. Second, the liberty principle: it is a higher moral principle to always seek liberty with someone else's liberty in mind, and never seek liberty when it leads to someone else's loss of liberty. In this context I would like to suggest a purpose principle: it is a higher moral principle to pursue purposeful thought or behavior with someone else's purposeful goals in mind, and never pursue a purpose when it leads to someone else's loss of purpose. Although purpose is inherent, moral purposes are learned; thus, the highest levels of the purpose pyramid require individual volition, personal effort and social consciousness. Morality and purpose are inextricably interdigitated--you cannot have one without the other. Fortunately, nature grants us the capacity for both morality and purpose, culture affords us the liberty to reach for higher moral purposes, and history brings us to a place where we can employ both for the enrichment of all. Through natural evolution and man-made culture, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on earth. Rather than crushing our spirits, the realization that we exist together for a narrow slice of time and space elevates us to a higher plane of humanity and humility: a proud, albeit passing, act in the drama of the cosmos. References 22. http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AuthorDetail/authorid/224 From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:48:43 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:48:43 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Independent: GM industry puts human gene into rice Message-ID: GM industry puts human gene into rice http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=632444 [Thanks to Joseph for this.] Scientists have begun putting genes from human beings into food crops in a dramatic extension of genetic modification. The move, which is causing disgust and revulsion among critics, is bound to strengthen accusations that GM technology is creating "Frankenstein foods" and drive the controversy surrounding it to new heights. Even before this development, many people, including Prince Charles, have opposed the technology on the grounds that it is playing God by creating unnatural combinations of living things. Environmentalists say that no one will want to eat the partially human-derived food because it will smack of cannibalism. But supporters say that the controversial new departure presents no ethical problems and could bring environmental benefits. In the first modification of its kind, Japanese researchers have inserted a gene from the human liver into rice to enable it to digest pesticides and industrial chemicals. The gene makes an enzyme, code-named CPY2B6, which is particularly good at breaking down harmful chemicals in the body. Present GM crops are modified with genes from bacteria to make them tolerate herbicides, so that they are not harmed when fields are sprayed to kill weeds. But most of them are only able to deal with a single herbicide, which means that it has to be used over and over again, allowing weeds to build up resistance to it. But the researchers at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba, north of Tokyo, have found that adding the human touch gave the rice immunity to 13 different herbicides. This would mean that weeds could be kept down by constantly changing the chemicals used. Supporting scientists say that the gene could also help to beat pollution. Professor Richard Meilan of Purdue University in Indiana, who has worked with a similar gene from rabbits, says that plants modified with it could "clean up toxins" from contaminated land. They might even destroy them so effectively that crops grown on the polluted soil could be fit to eat. But he and other scientists caution that if the gene were to escape to wild relatives of the rice it could create particularly vicious superweeds that were resistant to a wide range of herbicides. He adds: "I do not have any ethical issue with using human genes to engineer plants", dismissing talk of "Frankenstein foods" as "rubbish". He believes that that European opposition to GM crops and food is fuelled by agricultural protectionism. But Sue Mayer, director of GeneWatch UK, said yesterday: "I don't think that anyone will want to buy this rice. People have already expressed disgust about using human genes, and already feel that their concerns are being ignored by the biotech industry. This will just undermine their confidence even more." Pete Riley, director of the anti-GM pressure group Five Year Freeze, said: "I am not surprised by this. "The industry is capable of anything and this development certainly smacks of Frankenstein." From checker at panix.com Mon Apr 25 19:56:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 15:56:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Economist: Sound economics may lie at the heart of humanity's evolutionary success Message-ID: Homo economicus? 5.4.7 Sound economics may lie at the heart of humanity's evolutionary success SINCE the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, advocates of free trade and the division of labour, including this newspaper, have lauded the advantages of those economic principles. Until now, though, no one has suggested that they might be responsible for the very existence of humanity. But that is the thesis propounded by Jason Shogren, of the University of Wyoming, and his colleagues. For Dr Shogren is suggesting that trade and specialisation are the reasons Homo sapiens displaced previous members of the genus, such as Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man), and emerged triumphant as the only species of humanity. Neanderthal man has had a bad cultural rap over the years since the discovery of the first specimen in the Neander valley in Germany, in the mid-19th century. The ?caveman? image of a stupid, grunting, hairy, thick-skulled parody of graceful modern humanity has stuck in the public consciousness. But current scholarship suggests Neanderthals were probably about as smart as modern humans, and also capable of speech. If they were hairy, strong and tough?which they were?that was an appropriate adaptation to the ice-age conditions in which they lived. So why did they become extinct? Neanderthals existed perfectly successfully for 200,000 years before Homo sapiens arrived in their European homeland about 40,000 years ago, after a circuitous journey from Africa via central Asia. But 10,000 years later they were gone, so it seems likely that the arrival of modern man was the cause. The two species certainly occupied more or less the same ecological niche (hunting a wide range of animals, and gathering a similarly eclectic range of plant food), and would thus have been competitors. Bartering for your life One theory is that Homo sapiens had more sophisticated tools, which gave him an advantage in hunting or warfare. Another is that the modern human capacity for symbolic thinking (manifest at that time in the form of cave paintings and carved animal figurines) provided an edge. Symbolic thinking might have led to more sophisticated language and better co-operation. But according to Dr Shogren's paper in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, it was neither cave paintings nor better spear points that led to Homo sapiens's dominance. It was a better economic system. One thing Homo sapiens does that Homo neanderthalensis shows no sign of having done is trade. The evidence suggests that such trade was going on even 40,000 years ago. Stone tools made of non-local materials, and sea-shell jewellery found far from the coast, are witnesses to long-distance exchanges. That Homo sapiens also practised division of labour and specialisation is suggested not only by the skilled nature of his craft work, but also by the fact that his dwellings had spaces apparently set aside for different uses. To see if trade might be enough to account for the dominance of Homo sapiens, Dr Shogren and his colleagues created a computer model of population growth that attempts to capture the relevant variables for each species. These include fertility, mortality rates, hunting efficiency and the number of skilled and unskilled hunters in each group, as well as levels of skill in making objects such as weapons, and the ability to specialise and trade. Initially, the researchers assumed that on average Neanderthals and modern humans had the same abilities for most of these attributes. They therefore set the values of those variables equal for both species. Only in the case of the trading and specialisation variables did they allow Homo sapiens an advantage: specifically, they assumed that the most efficient human hunters specialised in hunting, while bad hunters hung up their spears and made things such as clothes and tools instead. Hunters and craftsmen then traded with one another. According to the model, this arrangement resulted in everyone getting more meat, which drove up fertility and thus increased the population. Since the supply of meat was finite, that left less for Neanderthals, and their population declined. A computer model was probably not necessary to arrive at this conclusion. But what the model does suggest, which is not self-evident, is how rapidly such a decline might take place. Depending on the numbers plugged in, Neanderthals become extinct between 2,500 and 30,000 years after the two species begin competing?a range that nicely brackets reality. Moreover, in the model, the presence of a trading economy in the modern human population can result in the extermination of Neanderthals even if the latter are at an advantage in traditional biological attributes, such as hunting ability. Of course, none of this proves absolutely that economics led to modern humanity inheriting the Earth. But it does raise the intriguing possibility that the dismal science is responsible for even more than Smith and Ricardo gave it credit. http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3839749 From shovland at mindspring.com Mon Apr 25 23:04:04 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 16:04:04 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve Message-ID: <01C549B0.67B60120.shovland@mindspring.com> The main thing that restricts bandits is cops. Face it, the criminals have children too, and raise them in THEIR family values. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com] Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 7:17 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve This reminds me of the late Mancur Olson's distinction between roving and stationary bandits. He was one of the few Public Choice scholars who were strong political Democrats. Sarah and I talked with him many times at various get togethers. Great sense of humor. I'll put together a Stationary Bandit Package and send it later. The idea behind the Laffer curve is that, at a tax rate of 0%, the state will get no money. At a rate of 100%, the state will get no money either, since no one will work. The revenue maximizing tax rate is therefore between 0% and 100%. Champions of current tax cut commonly argue that the current rate of taxation is greater than the revenue maximizing rate and should be lowered. I don't know what the evidence says, but I reject that the gov't should rake in as much as possible, that is, act like a stationary bandit. Khaldun was arguing that the state did a poor job of maximizing its take, in that its tax rates were too high. The paleopsych question is what can restrain bandits generally. Howard? On 2005-04-24, Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 22:14:13 -0600 > From: "Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D." > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: The new improved paleopsych list > Subject: [Paleopsych] Ibn Khaldun and the Laffer curve > > In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but > fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they > lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and > exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. > Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects...[and] sharply raise the > rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of > this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon > discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their > taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation. > -- Ibn Khaldun, 1332-1406 C.E. _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Apr 26 01:23:48 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:23:48 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder? In-Reply-To: <004901c54994$6f7a7150$6501a8c0@callastudios> References: <144.444ac6e5.2f9e0bca@aol.com> <004901c54994$6f7a7150$6501a8c0@callastudios> Message-ID: <426D9824.5000203@solution-consulting.com> As usual, Alice is a great resource. A further view: Who is most / least disabled by PTSD? - preparation reduces PTSD. Special Forces troops in Viet Nam were exposed to worse violence (like when the Cong cut off arms of children the SF medics vaccinated) than grunts but had almost no PTSD. It was because of the extensive training, compared with 16 weeks of Basic / AIT. - story telling: Edna Foa found that repeatedly telling the story reduced PTSD in rape victims. So PTSD may be nature's way of telling us we aren't preparing ourselves and we aren't telling / listening to the story. Imagine a village in africa. To the beat of a drum, a hunter is telling his story: Hunter: Then as I approached the antelope, I saw a lion! Villagers in unison: Boom-chucka, boom chucka boom chucka Hunter: The lion leaped! V: Boom chucka! H: It missed me but it got Steve! V: Aaargh! The youth are prepared (hunting is dangerous, lions are about) and by sharing, in perhaps a ritualistic way, he masters the trauma. My dad, late in life, told his story of being a flight engineer on a B-17 over Europe. While he told the story (as my mother wrote it down) he cried for two days. It puzzled him. "It's been 40 years, it shouldn't still bother me" but after that he was as relaxed and peaceful as I had ever seen him. The storytelling had a ritual quality (tell your story and I will write it down for the kids) and he found some mastery. Lynn Alice Andrews wrote: > Howard, I really love this! > I had some alternative--or actually, additional thoughts--not ones I > necessarily want to champion, but nonetheless I feel like sharing: > Perhaps PTSD is adaptive for the individual and ultimately the group. > A young hunter is out on the savannah and his brother/kin is savagely > destroyed by lions, say. He might experience all sorts of emotions in > response to witnessing this, perhaps the symptoms of PTSD. The > emotions (as par Randy Nesse et al.) guide his behavior--i.e. staying > at 'camp' not going on hunts, ruminating over and over the scene, etc > etc. The symptoms like memory loss are maybe just "mind-spandrels." > The hippocampus goes into obsessive overdrive on the old memories at > the expense of new ones. The hippocampus is still "carrying" the > event. So...maybe the memory loss just represents a reorganization of > the brain. A traumatic event, of course, can be life-altering. It > takes a lot of brain power/energy to restructure neuronal morphology. > People literally change after such events. Something new is being > learned very quickly: a whole new way of being. "Don't charge at > lions. Don't trust men from the neighboring tribe. Don't wear bones > when hunting." * For such a thing to happen, the hippocampus can't be > bothered with forming new memories. So the symptoms are the means to, > and also the signs of, those changes. There's no doubt that a person > suffering from the symptoms of PTSD would have garnered support, fear, > and elicited a whole host of behavioral responses--as today. And that > indeed an individual with the symptoms of PTSD would have been a > marker--a reminding factor. Members of the group's physiology > wouldn't have gone thrrough such dramatic and intense changes like the > individual, but they (and their physiology to some degree) would be > influenced in some fashion, surely. > Another thought. I don't actually know the statistics or have any data > on this stuff, I can only speak from impressionistic observation and > experience. But it seems to me that people who suffer with the > symptoms of PTSD eventually stop suffering. ** The changes finally get > wired--so they're no longer signposts for the group in that > way...Though the group will have experienced the person in that state > for a while and have their new state as reminding factor, too. > Anyway, to answer question: tremendous survival value for individual > and group if the symptoms lead to 're-education' and changes in > personality, behavioral response, etc etc. > > *Magical thinking and OCD are related to these things and also were > quite adaptive. > > ** Meds, of course, are very helpful...but I imagine that the change > that mother nature has programmed the suffering person to go through > doesn't actually happen with meds. And, I actually have no particular > feeling on whether one way is better or worse..I don't have a romantic > view that suffering through the symtoms of PTSD in today's world could > be all that beneficial to the individual. I would look at it on a > case-by-case basis, I suppose. (I generally take the view that people > (unless they pose a threat in some way to self or others) need to > experience such emotions for a tiny little while without meds--even > PTSD. (I suffered with such symptoms (and then some!) for about 4-5 > years without meds, btw. Not something I would advise everyone to do!!!) > > More to think about and to write, but have to run! > All best, > Alice > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: HowlBloom at aol.com > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM > Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic > stressdisorder? > > If you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), your > hippocampus works poorly and you have a lot of trouble storing new > memories. It?s your old memories that prevail, the memories of > the horrid experience that produced your trauma to begin with. Is > this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal > survival? Or is it helpful to something else?to the survival of > society? If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body > inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a > walking warning of danger to the rest of us? > > > > Ted Coons proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember > recent events but still hang on to memories of our distant past > for a reason. Not a reason that helps us aging elders, but a > reason that helps the collective mind, the mass intellect of > society. We elders, Ted thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique > memories alive not for the sake of our personal survival, but for > the sake of the younger folks who?ve had no opportunity to > experience or remember the days when we elders were young and > vigorous. Those youngsters have had no chance to remember the > problems and solutions of our childhoods way back when, the > problems and solutions of an earlier generation or two or three. > > > > Can PTSD victims serve a similar function, as danger markers for > those of us who?ve never experienced the horrors that the > past-obsessed and present-challenged PTSD patients remember far, > far better than they?d like? Are they walking warning signs to > the rest of us? Are they, like all of us, disposable modules in > the mass learning machine of culture, in the parallel distributed > intelligence of the collective brain? > > > ---------- > Howard Bloom > Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the > Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind > From The Big Bang to the 21st Century > Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York > University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute > www.howardbloom.net > www.bigbangtango.net > Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board > member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The > Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New > York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement > of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political > Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International > Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: > Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. > For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: > www.paleopsych.org > for two chapters from > The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of > History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer > For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from > the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > paleopsych mailing list > paleopsych at paleopsych.org > http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Tue Apr 26 01:52:14 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:52:14 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] out of body experiences In-Reply-To: <20050425182701.81340.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050425182701.81340.qmail@web30810.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <426D9ECE.10206@solution-consulting.com> Michael, this is a common reaction. But our assumptions limit what we can see; if we assume that there is no ghost to exit the machine, we are unable to see the evidence. Robert Rosenthal showed that long ago. Be careful of your assumptions. The actual question has been studied pretty thoroughly, and those who have spend a good deal of time investigating NDEs in detail end up convinced that the ghost did escape the machine. Best example: Melvin Morse. If you read his series of books, you see an amazing personal transformation. Michael Christopher wrote: >Lynn says: > > >>>Actually, the ghosts are escaping from the >>> >>> >machine. The interesting thing about OBEs is the >apparently veridical reports - persons reporting >things during the OBE that they shouldn't be able >to know if perception / awareness is an 'inside the >brain' phenomenon.<< > >--I'm skeptical of that. How does one prove that >someone has learned something "out of the body" rather >than, say, from accumulated scraps of information >learned unconsciously from the environment? Especially >in an information-saturated environment, it seems like >jumping the gun to think that people gain information >from some supernatural channels. > >I don't assume anything is _literally_ "out of the >body" during the experiences (I've had a couple >myself). The perception of being in the body is a >product of the brain's mapping algorithms which attach >visual and kinesthetic perception into bundles. >Likely, people start out life without a solid map of >the body (more like a stream of disjointed perceptions >which gradually coalesce into a body-image) and OBEs >involve a dissociation from the parietal lobe and a >subjective sense of floating outside the body or >merging with the environment. This does not mean one >is literally outside the body. It means one's >perception of the body is altered or compartmentalized >out of awareness. Hypnotherapy can induce similar >experiences of watching the body from above. It's >common in psychedelic states as well. > >A lot of people seem to only count OBEs which confirm >their view of the soul, rather than looking at >experiences of merging with the environment (which is >too pantheistic for many Christians or Muslims) and >experiences in which one becomes many people. By >selectively excluding accounts which differ from the >accpeted script, OBEs are assumed to confirm various >religious views, but science would go with the >simplest explanation, that activating or deactivating >parts of the brain changes perception of self, >environment and body. > >Michael > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >http://mail.yahoo.com >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Tue Apr 26 13:24:25 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 06:24:25 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] FUTURE COMPUTER: ATOMS PACKED IN AN "EGG CARTON" OF LIGHT? Message-ID: <01C54A28.98D154D0.shovland@mindspring.com> http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/eggcarton.htm COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists at Ohio State University have taken a step toward the development of powerful new computers -- by making tiny holes that contain nothing at all. The holes -- dark spots in an egg carton-shaped surface of laser light -- could one day cradle atoms for quantum computing . Worldwide, scientists are racing to develop computers that exploit the quantum mechanical properties of atoms, explained Greg Lafyatis , associate professor of physics at Ohio State . These so-called quantum computers could enable much faster computing than is possible today. One strategy for making quantum computers involves packaging individual atoms on a chip so that laser beams can read quantum data. Lafyatis and doctoral student Katharina Christandl recently designed a chip with a top surface of laser light that functions as an array of tiny traps, each of which could potentially hold a single atom. The design could enable quantum data to be read the same way CDs are read today. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Tue Apr 26 22:21:45 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 15:21:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] spirituality and science In-Reply-To: <200504261800.j3QI0ho08614@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050426222145.48328.qmail@web30811.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Lynn says: >>Michael, this is a common reaction. But our assumptions limit what we can see; if we assume that there is no ghost to exit the machine, we are unable to see the evidence.<< --If we assume the opposite, we are unable to see the contradictions. Assumptions should be avoided, in EITHER direction. If someone believes in the tooth fairy, they're going to find SOME evidence for it, they'll just discount all the simpler explanations, finding them unsatisfying on an emotional level. >>The actual question has been studied pretty thoroughly, and those who have spend a good deal of time investigating NDEs in detail end up convinced that the ghost did escape the machine.<< --I doubt ALL the people who experienced them came to the same conclusion. What you mean is, "I focus on those who came to the conclusion that satisfies me." I think there are a variety of views on NDEs. Those who have had the same subjective experiences may have come to different intellectual conclusions about what those experiences meant. >>Best example: Melvin Morse. If you read his series of books, you see an amazing personal transformation.<< --I had some amazing personal transformations with LSD in my 20's. I think just about anything that opens people up to a larger context than their habitual, ordinary life will have a profound effect, regardless of what conclusions they draw about the origin or meaning of the experience. Islam has changed lives, that does not mean Islam is entirely true. Buddhism also changes lives. So does leaving a religion behind. Whether an experience is literally, objectively true has little to do with whether it has an effect on a person's life or not. michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:18:51 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:18:51 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Rushton and Jensen: Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability, with responses. Message-ID: Rushton and Jensen: Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability, with responses. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2005 June, Vol. 11(2), a publication of the American Psychological Association. [First, a EurekAlert!. Second, the announcement from the American Psychological Association, which contains summaries of the article and responses. Third, the Rushton and Jensen article. Fourth till end, the responses.] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/cdri-bai042505.php Public release date: 25-Apr-2005 Contact: Prof. J. P. Rushton [3]rushton at uwo.ca 519-661-3685 [4]Charles Darwin Research Institute Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes A 60-page review of the scientific evidence, some based on state-of-the-art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of brain size, has concluded that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic. The lead article in the June 2005 issue of Psychology, Public Policy and Law, a journal of the American Psychological Association, examined 10 categories of research evidence from around the world to contrast "a hereditarian model (50% genetic-50% cultural) and a culture-only model (0% genetic-100% cultural)." The paper, "Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability," by J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario and Arthur R. Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley, appeared with a positive commentary by Linda Gottfredson of the University of Delaware, three critical ones (by Robert Sternberg of Yale University, Richard Nisbett of the University of Michigan, and Lisa Suzuki & Joshua Aronson of New York University), and the authors' reply. "Neither the existence nor the size of race differences in IQ are a matter of dispute, only their cause," write the authors. The Black-White difference has been found consistently from the time of the massive World War I Army testing of 90 years ago to a massive study of over 6 million corporate, military, and higher-education test-takers in 2001. "Race differences show up by 3 years of age, even after matching on maternal education and other variables," said Rushton. "Therefore they cannot be due to poor education since this has not yet begun to exert an effect. That's why Jensen and I looked at the genetic hypothesis in detail. We examined 10 categories of evidence." 1. The Worldwide Pattern of IQ Scores. East Asians average higher on IQ tests than Whites, both in the U. S. and in Asia, even though IQ tests were developed for use in the Euro-American culture. Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; for Whites, about 100; and for Blacks about 85 in the U.S. and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa. 2. Race Differences are Most Pronounced on Tests that Best Measure the General Intelligence Factor (g). Black-White differences, for example, are larger on the Backward Digit Span test than on the less g loaded Forward Digit Span test. 3. The Gene-Environment Architecture of IQ is the Same in all Races, and Race Differences are Most Pronounced on More Heritable Abilities. Studies of Black, White, and East Asian twins, for example, show the heritability of IQ is 50% or higher in all races. 4. Brain Size Differences. Studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) find a correlation of brain size with IQ of about 0.40. Larger brains contain more neurons and synapses and process information faster. Race differences in brain size are present at birth. By adulthood, East Asians average 1 cubic inch more cranial capacity than Whites who average 5 cubic inches more than Blacks. 5. Trans-Racial Adoption Studies. Race differences in IQ remain following adoption by White middle class parents. East Asians grow to average higher IQs than Whites while Blacks score lower. The Minnesota Trans-Racial Adoption Study followed children to age 17 and found race differences were even greater than at age 7: White children, 106; Mixed-Race children, 99; and Black children, 89. 6. Racial Admixture Studies. Black children with lighter skin, for example, average higher IQ scores. In South Africa, the IQ of the mixed-race "Colored" population averages 85, intermediate to the African 70 and White 100. 7. IQ Scores of Blacks and Whites Regress toward the Averages of Their Race. Parents pass on only some exceptional genes to offspring so parents with very high IQs tend to have more average children. Black and White children with parents of IQ 115 move to different averages--Blacks toward 85 and Whites to 100. 8. Race Differences in Other "Life-History" Traits. East Asians and Blacks consistently fall at two ends of a continuum with Whites intermediate on 60 measures of maturation, personality, reproduction, and social organization. For example, Black children sit, crawl, walk, and put on their clothes earlier than Whites or East Asians. 9. Race Differences and the Out-of-Africa theory of Human Origins. East Asian-White-Black differences fit the theory that modern humans arose in Africa about 100,000 years ago and expanded northward. During prolonged winters there was evolutionary selection for higher IQ created by problems of raising children, gathering and storing food, gaining shelter, and making clothes. 10. Do Culture-Only Theories Explain the Data? Culture-only theories do not explain the highly consistent pattern of race differences in IQ, especially the East Asian data. No interventions such as ending segregation, introducing school busing, or "Head Start" programs have reduced the gaps as culture-only theory would predict. In their article, Rushton and Jensen also address some of the policy issues that stem from their conclusions. Their main recommendation is that people be treated as individuals, not as members of groups. They emphasized that their paper pertains only to average differences. They also called for the need to accurately inform the public about the true nature of individual and group differences, genetics and evolutionary biology. Rushton and Jensen are well-known for research on racial differences in intelligence. Jensen hypothesized a genetic basis for Black-White IQ differences in his 1969 Harvard Educational Review article. His later books Bias in Mental Tests (1980) and The g Factor (1998), as well as Rushton's (1995) Race, Evolution, and Behavior, show that tests are not biased against English speaking minorities and that Black-White-East Asian differences in brain size and IQ belong in an evolutionary framework. J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. Tel: 519-661-3685; Email: [5]rushton at uwo.ca Arthur R. Jensen, School of Education, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94305. Email: [6]nesnejanda at aol.com References 3. mailto:rushton at uwo.ca 4. http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/ 5. mailto:rushton at uwo.ca 6. mailto:nesnejanda at aol.com ---------------------- PsycARTICLES - Browse Psychology, Public Policy, and Law http://content.apa.org/journals/law Editor: Jane Goodman-Delahunty, JD, PhD Volume 11, Issue 2 [63]Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R. _________________________________________________________________ The culture-only (0% genetic-100% environmental) and the hereditarian (50% genetic-50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black-White differences in cognitive ability are compared and contrasted across 10 categories of evidence: the worldwide distribution of test scores, g factor of mental ability, heritability, brain size and cognitive ability, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression, related life-history traits, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. The new evidence reviewed here points to some genetic component in Black-White differences in mean IQ. The implication for public policy is that the discrimination model (i.e., Black-White differences in socially valued outcomes will be equal barring discrimination) must be tempered by a distributional model (i.e., Black-White outcomes reflect underlying group characteristics). [67]There are no public-policy implicatons: A reply to Rushton and Jensen (2005). Sternberg, Robert J. J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (see record 2005-03637-001) purport to show public-policy implications arising from their analysis of alleged genetic bases for group mean differences in IQ. This article argues that none of these implications in fact follow from any of the data they present. The risk in work such as this is that public-policy implications may come to be ideologically driven rather than data driven, and to drive the research rather than be driven by the data. [71]Heredity, environment, and race differences in IQ: A commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005). Nisbett, Richard E. J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (see record 2005-03637-001) ignore or misinterpret most of the evidence of greatest relevance to the question of heritability of the Black-White IQ gap. A dispassionate reading of the evidence on the association of IQ with degree of European ancestry for members of Black populations, convergence of Black and White IQ in recent years, alterability of Black IQ by intervention programs, and adoption studies lend no support to a hereditarian interpretation of the Black-White IQ gap. On the contrary, the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is nil. [75]What if the hereditarian hypothesis is true? Gottfredson, Linda S. J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (see record 2005-03637-001) review 10 bodies of evidence to support their argument that the long-standing, worldwide Black-White average differences in cognitive ability are more plausibly explained by their hereditarian (50% genetic causation) theory than by culture-only (0% genetic causation) theory. This commentary evaluates the relevance of their evidence, the overall strength of their case, the implications they draw for public policy, and the suggestion by some scholars that the nation is best served by telling benevolent lies about race and intelligence. [79]The cultural malleability of intelligence and its impact on the racial/ethnic hierarchy. Suzuki, Lisa; Aronson, Joshua This commentary highlights previous literature (see record 2005-03637-001) focusing on cultural and environmental explanations for the racial/ethnic group hierarchy of intelligence. Assumptions underlying definitions of intelligence, heritability/genetics, culture, and race are noted. Historical, contextual, and testing issues are clarified. Specific attention is given to studies supporting stereotype threat, effects of mediated learning experiences, and relative functionalism. Current test development practices are critiqued with respect to methods of validation and item development. Implications of the genetic vs. culture-only arguments are discussed with respect to the malleability of IQ. [83]Wanted: More race realism, less moralistic fallacy. Rushton, J. Philippe; Jensen, Arthur R. Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there has been no narrowing of the 15- to 18-point average IQ difference between Blacks and Whites (1.1 standard deviations); the differences are as large today as they were when first measured nearly 100 years ago. They, and the concomitant difference in standard of living, level of education, and related phenomena, lie in factors that are largely heritable, not cultural. The IQ differences are attributable to differences in brain size more than to racism, stereotype threat, item selection on tests, and all the other suggestions given by the commentators. It is time to meet reality. It is time to stop committing the "moralistic fallacy" that good science must conform to approved outcomes. References 63. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/235.html 67. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/295.html 71. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/302.html 75. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/311.html 79. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/320.html 83. http://content.apa.org/journals/law/11/2/328.html --------------- Rushton and Jensen: Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Coagnitive Ability, with responses. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law by the American Psychological Association Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 235-294 THIRTY YEARS OF RESEARCH ON RACE DIFFERENCES IN COGNITIVE ABILITY Rushton, J Philippe1,3; Jensen, Arthur R.2 1Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada 2School of Education, University of California, Berkeley 3 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. E-mail: rushton at uwo.ca Outline * Abstract * Section 1: Background * Section 2: The Two Conflicting Research Programs * Section 3: Mean Race-IQ Differences: A Global Perspective * Section 4: The g Factor and Mean Race-IQ Differences * Section 5: Gene-Environment Architecture and Mean Black-White IQ Differences * Section 6: Race, Brain Size, and Cognitive Ability * Section 7: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Transracial Adoption Studies * Section 8: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Racial Admixture * Section 9: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Regression to the Mean * Section 10: The Race-Behavior Matrix * Section 11: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Human Origins * Section 12: How Well Have Culture-Only Theories of Mean Race-IQ Differences Held Up? * Section 13: Evaluating the Culture-Only and the Hereditarian Research Programs * Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Found Worldwide (Section 3) * Race-IQ Differences Are Most Pronounced on the More g-Loaded Components of Tests and Least So on the Most Culturally Loaded Items (Section 4) * Race-IQ Differences Are Most Pronounced on the More Heritable Components of Tests With Little or No Evidence of Race-Specific Developmental Processes (Section 5) * Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Associated With Mean Brain Size Differences (Section 6) * Mean Race Differences in IQ Remain Following Transracial Adoption (Section 7) * Studies of Racial Admixture Reflect Mean Black-White IQ Differences (Section 8) * IQs Show Regression Toward Predicted Racial Means (Section 9) * Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Paralleled by a Matrix of Other Traits and Behaviors (Section 10) * Mean Race-IQ Differences and Human Evolution (Section 11) * Culture-Only Hypotheses Fail to Account for Mean Race-IQ Differences (Section 12) * Section 14: Progressive Research Leads to Provisional Truth * Section 15: Implications for Public Policy * Discrimination or Distribution? * Race Relations * Educational, Vocational, and Psychological Testing * Health, Medical Genetics, and Pharmaco-Anthropology * Conflicting Worldviews * References Graphics * Figure 1 * Table 1 * Figure 2 * Figure 3 * Table 2 * Table 3 * Table 4 * Table 5 * Table 5 The culture-only (0% genetic-100% environmental) and the hereditarian (50% genetic-50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black-White differences in cognitive ability are compared and contrasted across 10 categories of evidence: the worldwide distribution of test scores, g factor of mental ability, heritability, brain size and cognitive ability, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression, related life-history traits, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. The new evidence reviewed here points to some genetic component in Black-White differences in mean IQ. The implication for public policy is that the discrimination model (i.e., Black-White differences in socially valued outcomes will be equal barring discrimination) must be tempered by a distributional model (i.e., Black-White outcomes reflect underlying group characteristics). Section 1: Background Throughout the history of psychology, no question has been so persistent or so resistant to resolution as that of the relative roles of nature and nurture in causing individual and group differences in cognitive ability (Degler, 1991; Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). The scientific debate goes back to the mid-19th century (e.g., Galton, 1869; Nott & Glidden, 1854 ). Starting with the widespread use of standardized mental tests in World War I, average ethnic and racial group differences were found. Especially vexing has been the cause(s) of the 15-point Black-White IQ difference in the United States. In 1969, the Harvard Educational Review published Arthur Jensen's lengthy article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and School Achievement?" Jensen concluded that (a) IQ tests measure socially relevant general ability; (b) individual differences in IQ have a high heritability, at least for the White populations of the United States and Europe; (c) compensatory educational programs have proved generally ineffective in raising the IQs or school achievement of individuals or groups; (d) because social mobility is linked to ability, social class differences in IQ probably have an appreciable genetic component; and tentatively, but most controversially, (e) the mean Black-White group difference in IQ probably has some genetic component. Jensen's (1969) article was covered in Time, Newsweek, Life, U.S. News & World Report, and New York Times Magazine . His conclusions, the theoretical issues they raised, and the public policy recommendations that many saw as stemming directly from them were dubbed "Jensenism," a term which entered the dictionary. Since 1969, Jensen has continued to publish prolifically on all of these issues, and increasing numbers of psychometricians and behavioral geneticists have come to agree with one or more of the tenets of Jensenism (Snyderman & Rothman, 1987, 1988). The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994 ) presented general readers an update of the evidence for the hereditarian position along with several policy recommendations and an original analysis of 11,878 youths (including 3,022 Blacks) from the 12-year National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It found that most 17-year-olds with high scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, regardless of ethnic background, went on to occupational success by their late 20s and early 30s, whereas those with low scores were more inclined to welfare dependency. The study also found that the average IQ for African Americans was lower than those for Latino, White, Asian, and Jewish Americans (85, 89, 103, 106, and 113, respectively; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, pp. 273-278). Currently, the 1.1 standard deviation difference in average IQ between Blacks and Whites in the United States is not in itself a matter of empirical dispute. A meta-analytic review by Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, and Tyler (2001) showed it also holds for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT; N = 2.4 million) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE; N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests for job applicants in corporate settings (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million). Because test scores are the best predictor of economic success in Western society (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998), these group differences have important societal outcomes (R. A. Gordon, 1997; Gottfredson, 1997). The question that still remains is whether the cause of group differences in average IQ is purely social, economic, and cultural or whether genetic factors are also involved. Following publication of The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association (APA) established an 11-person Task Force (Neisser et al., 1996 ) to evaluate the book's conclusions. Based on their review of twin and other kinship studies, the Task Force for the most part agreed with Jensen's (1969) Harvard Educational Review article and The Bell Curve , that within the White population the heritability of IQ is "around .75" (p. 85). As to the cause of the mean Black-White group difference, however, the Task Force concluded: "There is certainly no support for a genetic interpretation" (p. 97). Among the factors contributing to the longstanding lack of resolution of this important and controversial issue are the difficulty of the subject matter, the political issues associated with it and the emotions they arouse, and the different meta-theoretical perspectives of the experimental and correlational methodologies. Cronbach (1957) referred to these conflicting approaches as the two "halves" of psychology because researchers are predisposed to draw different conclusions depending on whether they adopt a "manipulations-lead-to-change" or a "correlations-find-stability" paradigm. Here we review in detail the research that has accumulated since Jensen's (1969) article and compare our findings with earlier reviews and evaluations such as those by Loehlin et al. (1975), P. E. Vernon (1979), Herrnstein and Murray (1994), the APA Task Force (Neisser et al., 1996), and Nisbett (1998) . Facts in themselves typically do not answer scientific questions. For a question so complex as the cause of the average Black-White group difference in IQ, no one fact, one study, nor indeed any single line of evidence, can hope to be determinative. Rather, resolving the issue requires examining several independent lines of evidence to determine if, when taken together, they confirm or refute rival hypotheses and research programs. The philosophy of science methodology used here is guided by the view that, just as in individual studies the principal of aggregation holds that a set of measurements provides a more reliable indicator than any single measure taken from the set (Rushton, Brainerd, & Pressley, 1983 ), so in reviewing multiple lines of evidence, making strong inferences from a number of contending hypotheses is more efficacious than considering only one hypothesis at a time (Platt, 1964). Although strong inference is the method of science, it has, more often than not, been eschewed in this controversial debate. The final section of this article addresses the question of what these conclusions imply for policy, specifically for the issues of educational and psychological testing, health, race relations, and conflicting worldviews about the essence of human nature. It suggests that the distributional model that takes genetic factors into account must temper the discrimination model that explains Black-White differences in socially valued outcomes. Section 2: The Two Conflicting Research Programs Here, we review the research on Black-White difference in average IQ published since Jensen's (1969) now 36-year-old article. We then apply the philosophy of science methodologies of Platt (1964), Lakatos (1970, 1978), and Urbach (1974a, 1974b) to determine if the preponderance of this new evidence strengthens or weakens Jensen's (1969) tentative assertion that it is more likely than not that some part of the cause of the mean Black-White difference is genetic. The data reviewed have been collated from articles in specialist journals and a number of scholarly monographs on the nature of intelligence, behavioral genetics, and social policy issues, as well as recent book-length reviews (Devlin, Feinberg, Resnick, & Roeder, 1997; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jencks & Phillips, 1998; Jensen, 1998b; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002; Rushton, 2000; Sternberg, 2000 ). While we focus on the mean Black-White difference in IQ because it is the topic on which most of the research to date has been conducted, studies of other traits (e.g., reaction times) and other groups (e.g., East Asians) are included when those data are sufficient and informative. Some have argued that the cause of Black-White differences in IQ is a pseudo question because "race" and "IQ" are arbitrary social constructions (Tate & Audette, 2001 ). However, we believe these constructs are meaningful because the empirical findings documented in this article have been confirmed across cultures and methodologies for decades. The fuzziness of racial definitions does not negate their utility. To define terms, based on genetic analysis, roughly speaking, Blacks (Africans, Negroids) are those who have most of their ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa; Whites (Europeans, Caucasoids) have most of their ancestors from Europe; and East Asians (Orientals, Mongoloids) have most of their ancestors from Pacific Rim countries (Cavalli-Sforza, 2000; Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, & Piazza, 1994; Nei & Roychoudhury, 1993; Risch, Burchard, Ziv, & Tang, 2002). Although he eschewed the term race, Cavalli-Sforza's (2000 , p. 70) maximum likelihood tree made on the basis of molecular genetic markers substantially supports the traditional racial groups classification. Of course, in referring to population or racial group differences we are discussing averages. Individuals are individuals, and the three groups overlap substantially on almost all traits and measures. The hereditarian position originated in the work of Charles Darwin (1859, 1871) and then was elaborated by his cousin Sir Francis Galton (1869, 1883) . Based on research models used in behavioral genetics, this view contends that a substantial part (say 50%) of both individual and group differences in human behavioral traits is genetic. It therefore follows that even if all individuals in both groups were treated identically, average group differences would not disappear, though they might diminish. The opposing culture-only position finds no need to posit any genetic causation, stating that if the environments for all individuals could be equalized, the observed group differences in average IQ would effectively disappear, though this might be difficult to achieve. This position has been predominant in the social sciences since the 1930s. It is essential to keep in mind precisely what the two rival positions do and do not say-about a 50% genetic-50% environmental etiology for the hereditarian view versus an effectively 0% genetic-100% environmental etiology for the culture-only theory. The defining difference is whether any significant part of the mean Black-White IQ difference is genetic rather than purely cultural or environmental in origin. Hereditarians use the methods of quantitative genetics, and they can and do seek to identify the environmental components of observed group differences. Culture-only theorists are skeptical that genetic factors play any independently effective role in explaining group differences. Most of those who have taken a strong position in the scientific debate about race and IQ have done so as either hereditarians or culture-only theorists. Intermediate positions (e.g., gene-environment interaction) can be operationally assigned to one or the other of the two positions depending on whether they predict any significant heritable component to the average group difference in IQ. For example, if gene-environment interactions make it impossible to disentangle causality and apportion variance, for pragmatic purposes that view is indistinguishable from the 100% culture-only program because it denies any potency to the genetic component proposed by hereditarians. It is also important to define and interpret heritability correctly. Heritability refers to the genetic contribution to the individual differences (variance) in a particular group, not to the phenotype of a single individual. Heritability is not a constant that holds for all groups or in all environments. A heritability of 1.00 means all the observed differences in that group are due to genetic differences and not at all to their differences in the environment. A heritability of zero (0.00) means the converse. A heritability of 0.50 means the observed variation is equally the result of genetic and of environmental differences. The heritability of height in modern industrial populations, for example, is about 90%, which means that most of the differences in height among the individuals are due to their genetic differences. Behavioral Genetics by Plomin, DeFries, McClearn, and McGuffin (2001) provides a detailed explanation of heritability (see also Jensen, 1973; Miele, 2002 , for general readers). Heritability estimates are true only for particular populations at particular times. They can vary in different populations or at different times. Equalizing environments, for example, produces the counterintuitive result of increasing heritability because any individual differences that remain must be due to genetic differences. The cause of individual differences within groups has no necessary implication for the cause of the average difference between groups. A high heritability within one group does not mean that the average difference between it and another group is due to genetic differences, even if the heritability is high in both groups. However, within-groups evidence does imply the plausibility of the between-groups differences being due to the same factors, genetic or environmental. If variations in level of education or nutrition or genes reliably predict individual variation within Black and within White groups, then it would be reasonable to consider these variables to explain the differences between Blacks and Whites. Of course, independent evidence would then be needed to establish any relationship. Heritability describes what is the genetic contribution to individual differences in a particular population at a particular time, not what could be . If either the genetic or the environmental influences change (e.g., due to migration, greater educational opportunity, better nutrition), then the relative impact of genes and environment will change. Heritability has nothing to say about what should be. If a trait has a high heritability it does not mean that it cannot be changed. Environmental change is possible. For example, phenylketunuria (PKU) is a single-gene disorder that causes mental retardation but that can be prevented by beginning a diet low in phenylaline early in life. (Note that the only effective treatment for PKU is aimed directly at the specific chemical factor that causes it.) The fact that the heritability of IQ is between 0.50 and 0.80 does not mean that individual differences are fixed and permanent. It does tell us that some individuals are genetically predisposed to be more teachable, more trainable, and more capable of changing than others, under current conditions (Jensen, 1973; Miele, 2002). Having defined the terms of the debate, we now discuss approaches for resolving it. Lakatos's (1970, 1978) analytical methodology classifies research programs as being either progressive or degenerating. A progressive program not only explains existing phenomena and theoretical anomalies but also offers novel predictions, some of which can be tested and then either confirmed or rejected. A degenerating program merely accommodates existing anomalies by a series of new, unrelated, ad hoc hypotheses, ignores them, or denies their existence. The philosopher Peter Urbach (1974a, 1974b) applied this methodology and concluded that the hereditarian/culture-only IQ debate is really a conflict of research programs that goes back to their classic proponents-Francis Galton (1869) for the hereditarians and J. B. Watson (1924) for the environmentalists. Each has an underlying set of assumptions, termed its hard core, and a heuristic machinery that generates hypotheses. The hard core of the hereditarian program is that (a) all individuals possess some level of general mental capacity called general intelligence that, to some degree, influences all cognitive activity, and (b) the differences between individuals and between groups in general intelligence are largely the result of genetic differences. The hard core of the culture-only program is that (a) there are a number of different learned mental skills or intelligences, and (b) any observed differences in cognitive performance are the result of environmental factors. Hereditarian heuristics include constructing better tests, developing better techniques for measuring mental abilities, and discovering biological correlates (e.g., heritability, inbreeding depression and heterosis, brain size, brain metabolic rate, brain evoked potentials, brain imaging) of these tests. The process then involves examining the similarities of the scores among people whose varying degrees of genetic resemblance can be predicted from Mendelian theory (Fisher, 1918 ). Culture-only heuristics include searching for the environmental factors that cause differences in intellectual performance and discovering the bias in existing tests. If two groups differ in mean IQ, culture-only theorists conjecture either that the lower scoring group has been exposed to one or more deleterious experience or been deprived of some beneficial environmental stimuli or that the tests are not valid measures of their true ability. Compensatory training might be initiated and the hypothesis confirmed if the groups then obtain more nearly equal scores, or if less biased tests are developed on which the group differences are reduced but still predict outside criteria. Of course, these two programs overlap to some degree, and a given experiment might well combine elements of the heuristics of each. Reviewed here are new data sets for 10 categories of evidence that have become available since Jensen's (1969) article. They include the international pattern of IQ test scores, more and less g -loaded components of tests, heritability, brain-size and cognitive-ability relations, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression to the mean, the race-behavior matrix, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. These findings are then used to evaluate the culture-only and hereditarian models in terms of the methodology proposed by Lakatos (1970, 1978). Section 3: Mean Race-IQ Differences: A Global Perspective The IQ debate became worldwide in scope when it was shown that East Asians scored higher on IQ tests than did Whites, both within the United States and in Asia, even though IQ tests were developed for use in the Euro American culture (Lynn, 1977, 1978, 1982; P. E. Vernon, 1979, 1982 ). Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; that for Whites, about 100; and that for Blacks, about 85 in the United States and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the early research was conducted in the United States, but some was also performed in Canada and the Caribbean (Eysenck, 1971, 1984; Jensen, 1969, 1973; Osborne & McGurk, 1982; Shuey, 1958, 1966; cf. Flynn, 1980; Kamin, 1974; Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin, 1984 ). In the United States, 15% to 20% of the Black IQ distribution exceeds the White median IQ, so many Blacks obtain scores above the White average. This same order of mean group differences is also found on "culture-fair" tests and on reaction time tasks. Hundreds of studies on millions of people have confirmed the three-way racial pattern (Jensen, 1998b; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002; Rushton, 2000). Racial-group differences in IQ appear early. For example, the Black and the White 3-year-old children in the standardization sample of the Stanford-Binet IV show a 1 standard deviation mean difference after being matched on gender, birth order, and maternal education (Peoples, Fagan, & Drotar, 1995 ). Similarly, the Black and the White 2?- to 6-year-old children in the U.S. standardization sample of the Differential Aptitude Scale have a 1 standard deviation mean difference. No data are available for East Asian children at the youngest ages. On the Differential Aptitude Battery, by age 6, however, the average IQ of East Asian children is 107, compared with 103 for White children and 89 for Black children (Lynn, 1996 ). The size of the average Black-White difference does not change significantly over the developmental period from 3 years of age and beyond (see Jensen, 1974, 1998b). Serious questions have been raised about the validity of using tests for racial comparisons. However, because the tests show similar patterns of internal item consistency and predictive validity for all groups, and because the same differences are found on relatively culture-free tests, many psychometricians have concluded that the tests are valid measures of racial differences, at least among people sharing the culture of the authors of the test (Jensen, 1980; Wigdor & Garner, 1982 ). This conclusion was endorsed by the APA Task Force's statement: "Considered as predictors of future performance, the tests do not seem to be biased against African Americans" (Neisser et al., 1996, p. 93). Most disputed is the validity of the low mean IQ scores reported for sub-Saharan Africans. Lynn's (1991) review of 11 studies found a mean IQ of 70. A subsequent review of over two dozen studies by Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) found an average IQ of 70 for West, Central, East, and Southern Africa. For example, in Nigeria, Fahrmeier (1975) collected data on 375 children ages 6 to 13 years in a study of the effects of schooling on cognitive development. The children's mean score on the Colored Progressive Matrices was 12 out of 36, which is at the 4th percentile for 9?-year-olds on U.S. norms, or an IQ equivalent of about 75 (Raven et al., 1990, pp. 97-98). In Ghana, Glewwe and Jacoby (1992) reported a World Bank study that tested a representative sample of 1,736 individuals ranging in age from 11 to 20 years old from the entire country. All had completed primary school; half were attending middle school. Their mean score on the Colored Progressive Matrices was 19 out of 36, which is below the 1st percentile for 15?-year-olds on U.S. norms, an IQ equivalent of less than 70. In Kenya, Sternberg et al. (2001) administered the Colored Progressive Matrices to 85 children ages 12 to 15 years old who scored 23.5 out of 36, which is about the 2nd percentile for 13?-year-olds, an IQ equivalent of 70. In Zimbabwe, Zindi (1994) reported mean IQs for 204 African 12- to 14-year-olds of 67 on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) and of 72 on the Standard Progressive Matrices. In South Africa, Owen (1992) found that 1,093 African 12- to 14-year-old high school students solved 28 out of 60 problems on the Standard Progressive Matrices, which is around the 10th percentile, or an IQ equivalent of about 80 (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998, p. 77). Again in South Africa, Skuy, Schutte, Fridjhon, and O'Carroll (2001) found mean scores 1 to 2 standard deviations below U.S. norms on a wide variety of individually administered tests given to 154 African high school students under optimized conditions. Black university students in South Africa also show relatively low mean test scores. Sixty-three undergraduates at the all-Black universities of Fort Hare, Zululand, the North, and the Medical University of South Africa had a full-scale IQ of 77 on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (Avenant, 1988, cited in Nell, 2000, pp. 26-28). In a study at the University of Venda in South Africa's Northern Province by Grieve and Viljoen (2000) , 30 students in 4th-year law and commerce averaged a score of 37 out of 60 on the Standard Progressive Matrices, equivalent to an IQ of 78 on U.S. norms. A study at South Africa's University of the North by Zaaiman, van der Flier, and Thijs (2001) found the highest scoring African sample to that date-147 first-year mathematics and science students who scored 52 out of 60 on the Standard Progressive Matrices, which is equivalent to an IQ of 100. This higher score may reflect the fact that they were mathematics and science students, specially selected for admission to the university from a pool of 700 applicants on the basis of a math-science selection test. At the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Rushton, Skuy, and colleagues gave the Raven's Progressive Matrices in four separate studies under optimal testing conditions. Rushton and Skuy (2000) found 173 African 1st-year psychology students averaged an IQ equivalent of 84. Skuy et al. (2002) tested another 70 psychology students who averaged an IQ equivalent of 83. After receiving training on how to solve Matrices-type items, their mean score rose to an IQ equivalent of 96. Rushton, Skuy, and Fridjhon (2002, 2003) gave nearly 200 African 1st-year engineering students both the Standard and the Advanced version of the Raven's test and found they averaged an IQ of 97 on the Standard and 103 on the Advanced, making them the highest scoring African sample on record. (The White university students in these four studies had IQs from 105 to 117; East Indian students had intermediate IQs, from 102 to 106.) Many critics claim that Western-developed IQ tests are not valid for groups as culturally different as sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Nell, 2000). The main evidence to support a claim of external bias would be if the test failed to predict performance for Africans. Even if tests only underpredicted performance for Africans compared with non-Africans, it would suggest that their test scores underestimated their "true" IQ scores. However, a review by Kendall, Verster, and von Mollendorf (1988) showed that test scores for Africans have about equal predictive validity as those for non-Africans (e.g., 0.20 to 0.50 for students' school grades and for employees' job performance). The review also showed that many of the factors that influence scores in Africans are the same as those for Whites (e.g., coming from an urban vs. a rural environment; being a science rather than an arts student; having had practice on the tests; and the well-documented curvilinear relationship with age). Similarly, Sternberg et al.'s (2001) study of Kenyan 12- to 15-year-olds found that IQ scores predicted school grades, with a mean r = .40 (p <.001; after controlling for age and socioeconomic status [SES], r = .28, p <.01). In Rushton et al.'s (2003) study of African and non-African engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand, scores on the Advanced Progressive Matrices correlated with scores on the Standard Progressive Matrices measured 3 months earlier (.60 for Africans;.70 for non-Africans) and with end-of-year exam marks measured 3 months later (.34 for Africans;.28 for non-Africans).Figure 1 shows the regression of exam marks on test scores for these university students. [Graphic] [Help with image viewing] [Email Jumpstart To Image] Figure 1. Regression of Raven's scores on university grades for Africans and non-Africans. From "Performance on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices by African, East Indian, and White Engineering Students," by J. P. Rushton, M. Skuy, and P. Fridjhon, 2003, Intelligence, 31, p. 133. Copyright 2003 by Elsevier Science. Reprinted with permission. Although predictive validity is the ultimate pragmatic criterion for absence of bias, critics also suggest that the items have different meanings for Africans than they do for Whites or East Indians (Nell, 2000). This hypothesis of internal bias has been tested. The psychometric studies by Owen (1992) on thousands of high school students, and by Rushton and Skuy (2000; Rushton et al., 2002, 2003 ) on hundreds of university students, found almost identical item structures in Africans, Whites, and East Indians on the Progressive Matrices. Items found difficult by one group were difficult for the others; items found easy by one group were easy for the others (mean rs = .90, p <.001). The item-total score correlations for Africans, Whites, and East Indians were also similar, indicating that the items measured similar psychometric constructs in all three groups. (Section 4 reviews evidence of the similarity of the g factor in Africans and non-Africans.) The only reliable example of bias so far discovered in this extensive literature is the rather obvious internal bias on the Vocabulary components of tests such as the Wechsler for groups that do not have English as their first language (e.g., Skuy et al., 2001 ). Even here, the language factor only accounts for about 0.5 of a standard deviation, out of the overall 2.0 standard deviation difference, between Africans and Whites. Could it make a difference that Africans have less experience in solving problems such as those on the Raven's, are less testwise, and have less access to coaching than non-Africans? Raven (2000) showed that students who were encouraged to engage in complex cognitive tasks increased in self-direction, understanding, and competence. In South Africa, Skuy and Shmukler (1987) applied Feuerstein's (1980) Mediated Learning Experience and raised the Raven scores of Black high school students. Skuy, Hoffenberg, Visser, and Fridjhon (1990) found generalized improvements for Africans with what they termed a facilitative temperament. In an intervention study with 1st-year psychology students at the University of the Witwatersrand, Skuy et al. (2002) increased Raven's test scores in both Africans and non-Africans after intervention training. Both experimental groups improved over the baseline compared with their respective control groups, with significantly greater improvement for the African group (IQ score gains of 83 to 97 in Africans; 103 to 107 in non-Africans). The question remains, however, whether such intervention procedures only increase performance through mastery of subject-specific knowledge or whether they increase g-like problem-solving ability that generalizes to other tests as well (te Nijenhuis, Voskuijl, & Schijve, 2001). Some argue that African students are less interested, more anxious, work less efficiently, or give up sooner on items they find difficult, perhaps because the problems have less meaning for them (e.g., Nell, 2000). Four findings argue against these hypotheses. First, Rushton and Skuy (2000) closely observed the test-taking behavior of Africans and noted that they worked very diligently, typically staying longer than Whites to recheck their answers. Second and third, there are the similar predictive validities and internal consistencies previously discussed. Finally, there is supporting evidence from reaction-time research. Reaction time is one of the simplest culture-free cognitive measures. Most reaction time tasks are so easy that 9- to 12-year-old children can perform them in less than 1 s. But even on these very simple tests, children with higher IQ scores perform faster than do children with lower scores, perhaps because reaction time measures the neurophysiological efficiency of the brain's capacity to process information accurately-the same ability measured by intelligence tests (Deary, 2000; Jensen, 1998b ). Children are not trained to perform well on reaction time tasks (as they are on certain paper-and-pencil tests), so the advantage of those with higher IQ scores on these tasks cannot arise from practice, familiarity, education, or training. For three reaction time tasks (the simple, choice, and odd-man-out tasks), individuals with higher IQ scores average faster and less variable reaction times. For any one task, the correlation between reaction time and IQ normally lies between .20 and .40. A review of several studies concluded that the six measures combined (i.e., the average time and the variability for the three reaction time tasks) produce a multiple correlation of .67 (Deary, 2000 ). This is about the same magnitude as the correlation between two conventional intelligence tests of, say, reasoning ability and vocabulary. Lynn and his colleagues carried out a series of reaction time studies on over 1,000 nine-year-old East Asian children in Japan and Hong Kong, White children in Britain and Ireland, and Black children in South Africa (summarized by Lynn & Vanhannen, 2002 , pp. 66-67). The Progressive Matrices were given as a nonverbal test of intelligence, along with the simple, choice, and odd-man-out tasks. Reaction times and variabilities were measured by computer and hence were not subject to any human error in recording. For details, see Shigehisa and Lynn (1991) for Japan; Chan and Lynn (1989) for Hong Kong and Britain; Lynn (1991) for Ireland; and Lynn and Holmshaw (1990) for South Africa. The correlations between IQ and reaction times for the five countries are summarized in Table 1 . The East Asian children in Hong Kong and Japan obtained the highest IQs, followed in descending order by the White children in Britain and Ireland, and then the Black children in South Africa. The medians for simple reaction time, choice reaction time, and odd-man-out reaction time follow the same descending order as the IQs. Because all the tasks take less than 1 s, all children found them easy. The variabilities in the three reaction time measures for the three groups follow the same general descending trend. [Graphic] [Help with image viewing] [Email Jumpstart To Image] Table 1 Sample Size, Mean IQ Score, and Reaction Time Measures (in Milliseconds) From Five Countries, and the Reaction Time Correlations with IQ The same pattern of average scores on these and other reaction time tasks (i.e., East Asians faster than Whites faster than Blacks) is found within the United States. Jensen (1993) and Jensen and Whang (1994) examined the time taken by over 400 schoolchildren ages 9 to 12 years old in California to retrieve overlearned addition, subtraction, or multiplication of single digit numbers (from 1 to 9) from long-term memory. All of the children had perfect scores on paper-and-pencil tests of this knowledge, which was then reassessed using the Math Verification Test. The response times significantly correlated (negatively) with Raven Matrices scores, whereas movement times have a near-zero correlation. The average reaction times for the three racial groups differ significantly (see Figure 2). They cannot be explained by the groups' differences in motivation because the East Asian children averaged a shorter response time but a longer movement time than did the Black children. Figure 2. Mean response times of 10-year-old Black, White, and East Asian children on the Math Verification Test for Multiplication, Subtraction, and Addition. Redrawn by A. R. Jensen from data in Jensen (1993; Jensen & Whang, 1994). Copyright 2002 by A. R. Jensen. Reprinted with permission. Section 4: The g Factor and Mean Race-IQ Differences Jensen (1998b) showed that a test's g loading (g being the general factor of intelligence) is the best predictor, not just of that test's correlation with scholastic and workplace performance, but of heritability coefficients determined from twin studies, inbreeding depression scores calculated in children of cousin-marriages, brain evoked potentials, brain pH levels, brain glucose metabolism, as well as nerve conduction velocity, reaction time, and other physiological factors. These correlations argue strongly for the heritable and biological, as opposed to the mere statistical reality of g. Because the mean Black-White group difference in IQ is more pronounced on high-g-loaded tests than it is on low-g-loaded tests, it suggests that it is not the result of any idiosyncratic cultural peculiarities of this or that test. Spearman (1927 , p. 379) first proposed the hypothesis that the mean Black-White group difference in IQ would be "most marked in just those [tests] which are known to be saturated with g." Jensen (1980, p. 535) designated it as "Spearman's hypothesis" and developed the method of correlated vectors to test it. This method correlates the standardized Black-White mean differences on a set of cognitive tests with their respective g loadings, a significant positive correlation supporting the hypothesis. The rationale is straightforward. If g is the main source of between- and within-group differences, then there should be a positive relationship between a given test's g loading and the mean Black-White group difference on that test: The more g -loaded the test, the greater the Black-White group difference on that test. A corollary is the prediction that when race (scored as Blacks = 1, Whites = 2) is factor analyzed along with scores from a number of diverse cognitive tests, its highest loading on the resulting correlation matrix will be with the g factor. Jensen (1998b , pp. 369-379) summarized 17 independent data sets of nearly 45,000 Blacks and 245,000 Whites derived from 149 psychometric tests and found that the g loadings consistently predicted the magnitude of the mean Black-White group difference (r = .62, p <.05). This was borne out even among 3-year-olds administered eight subtests of the Stanford-Binet in which the rank correlation between g loadings and the mean Black-White group differences was .71 (p <.05; Peoples et al., 1995). Subsequently, Nyborg and Jensen (2000) analyzed a unique battery of 19 highly diverse cognitive tests from an archival data set of 4,462 males who had served in the U.S. Armed Forces. The g factor was extracted using different methods. Spearman's hypothesis was confirmed, with an average correlation of .81 between the race difference on a test and its g loading. Nyborg and Jensen concluded that Spearman's original conjecture about the mean Black-White difference on the g factor "should no longer be regarded as just an hypothesis but as an empirically established fact" (p. 599). Only one study to date has examined East Asian-White difference on psychometric tests as a function of their g loadings; it confirmed the hypothesis for 15 cognitive tests administered to two generations of Americans of Japanese, Chinese, and European ancestry. In this case, the more g-loaded the test, the greater the mean East Asian-White group difference favoring East Asians (Nagoshi, Johnson, DeFries, Wilson, & Vandenberg, 1984). Studies in Southern Africa have also found the mean Black-White IQ difference is mainly on g. Lynn and Owen (1994) were the first to test explicitly Spearman's hypothesis in sub-Saharan Africa, administering the Junior Aptitude Test to 1,056 White, 1,063 Indian, and 1,093 Black 16-year-old high school students in South Africa. They found a 2 standard deviation difference between the Africans and Whites (yielding an average African IQ of about 70) and a 1 standard deviation difference between the Whites and Indians (yielding an average Indian IQ of 85). They then tested Spearman's hypothesis and found the African-White differences correlated .62 (p <.05) with the g factor extracted from the African sample, but only .23 with g extracted from the White sample. They did not find any White-Indian differences on g. Jensen (1998b, p. 388) noted some problems with Lynn and Owen's (1994) South African study, but their results on Black-White differences have been well corroborated since then and extended to include East Indians and "Coloreds" (the term used to refer to the mixed-race population of South Africa). Thus, Rushton (2001) reanalyzed data on 10 subtests of the WISC-R published on 154 high school students in South Africa by Skuy et al. (2001) and found African-White differences were mainly on g. Rushton and Jensen (2003) compared data on the WISC-R from 204 African 12- to 14-year-olds from Zimbabwe published by Zindi (1994) with the U.S. normative sample for Whites and found 77% of the between-groups race variance was attributable to a single source, namely g. Spearman's hypothesis has been confirmed in South Africa using test item analyses as well. Rushton and Skuy (2000) studied 309 university students at the University of the Witwatersrand and found that the more an individual item from the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices measured g (estimated by its item-total correlation), the more it correlated with the standardized African-White difference on that item. Rushton (2002) analyzed the item data from 4,000 high school students in South Africa on Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices published by Owen (1992) and found the four-way African-Colored-East Indian-White differences were all on g. In two studies of engineering students, Rushton et al. (2002, 2003) found that the more the items from both the Standard and the Advanced Progressive Matrices loaded on g, the better they predicted the magnitude of African-East Indian-White differences. The g loadings showed cross-cultural generality; those calculated on the East Indian students predicted the magnitude of the African-White differences. Spearman's hypothesis was also confirmed when the g factor was extracted from 12 reaction time variables given to the 820 nine- to twelve-year-olds. While all of the children could do the tasks in less than 1 s, the correlations between the g loadings and the mean Black-White differences on the reaction time tasks range from .70 to .81 (Jensen, 1993 ). These results bear out Spearman's hypothesis even more strongly than do those from conventional psychometric tests. The hypothesis that the mean Black-White group difference on these tests reflects a difference in motivation is again disconfirmed by the fact that although Whites averaged faster reaction times than Blacks, Blacks averaged faster movement times than Whites. And again, East Asians typically averaged higher than Whites on the g factor extracted from their (faster) reaction time measures (Jensen & Whang, 1994). Spearman's hypothesis, as demonstrated by the method of correlated vectors, cannot be a chimera or a methodological artifact, as a few critics have claimed (e.g., Gould, 1996, p. 350; Sch?nemann, 1992 ). In the method of correlated vectors, the means and standard deviations of the variables cannot have any mathematical relationship with the factor structure of the correlation matrix because the means and the variances of all the tests in the factor-analyzed correlation matrix are totally removed by the Pearson correlations, which convert all variables to z scores. Therefore, any systematic relationship between factor loadings and standardized group means (or group mean differences) must be an empirical fact, not an artifact (Jensen, 1992). Other claims of artifact are contradicted by Dolan's (1997) technical commentaries on the method of correlated vectors (Dolan, 1997, 2000). Dolan argued that the method of correlated vectors is not incorrect but that it lacks specificity ; that is, it does not incorporate tests of alternative models of the factor structure of group differences or incorporate statistical tests to compare them for goodness-of-fit. In its place, he advocated use of the multigroup confirmatory factor model for testing Spearman's hypothesis. Statistical tests of significance are a built-in feature of this procedure. Dolan and Hamaker (2001) have applied it to two large published data sets (Jensen & Reynolds, 1982; Naglieri & Jensen, 1987 ). The results statistically confirmed the conclusion derived from the method of correlated vectors regarding a "weak form" of Spearman's hypothesis: Black-White group differences were predominantly on the g factor, although the groups also showed differences on some lower order factors (e.g., short-term memory and spatial ability) independent of g. Section 5: Gene-Environment Architecture and Mean Black-White IQ Dozens of twin, adoption, and family studies have confirmed the high heritability of intellectual and behavioral traits, and even reaction time tasks, within a race (Bouchard, 1996; Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001; Deary, 2000; Plomin et al., 2001 ). Most of these estimates have been calculated on White samples. One study of 543 pairs of identical and 134 pairs of nonidentical 12-year-old Japanese twins in Japan reported a substantial heritability of 0.58 for IQ (Lynn & Hattori, 1990). The hereditarian model views race differences simply as aggregated individual differences of this sort. The culture-only model, however, predicts that special factors such as poverty, the history of slavery, and White racism have operated on the Black population and suppressed natural levels of intelligence and so made heritabilities in Blacks substantially lower than they are in Whites. In arguing against Galton's (1869) hereditarian position, Charles H. Cooley (1897) , a founder and first president of the American Sociological Association, was the first to introduce the powerful analogy that corn seeds given a normal environment grow plants of full height whereas seeds given a deprived environment grow plants of stunted height. According to this view, cultural deprivation, not heredity, is the cause of any Black-White IQ differences. It is an empirical question whether heritabilities are the same for Blacks as for Whites. Loehlin et al. (1975 , pp. 114-116) reviewed the literature to that date and found that while there was some evidence suggesting a lower heritability of intelligence for Blacks than for Whites (e.g., Scarr-Salapatek, 1971), a larger body of evidence suggested equal heritabilities in the two groups. Subsequently, Osborne's (1980) Georgia Twin Study compared 123 Black and 304 White pairs of 12- to 18-year-old twins drawn from schools in Georgia, Kentucky, and Indiana, given the Basic Test Battery, along with smaller subsets of twins given the Primary Mental Abilities test and the Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence test. Osborne found heritabilities of about 50% for both Blacks and Whites, all significantly different from zero but not from each other. (The heritabilities of the Basic, Primary, and Cattell tests were, respectively, for Whites, 0.61, 0.37, and 0.71, and for Blacks, 0.75, 0.42, and 0.19; Osborne, 1980, pp. 68-69, 89, 98.) Another way of answering the question is to compare their psychometric factor structures of kinship patterns, background variables, and subtest correlations. If there are minority-specific developmental processes arising from cultural background differences between the races at work, they should be reflected in the correlations between the background variables and the outcome measures. Rowe (1994; Rowe, Vazsonyi, & Flannery, 1994, 1995 ) examined this hypothesis in a series of studies using structural equation models. One study of six data sources compared cross-sectional correlational matrices (about 10 ? 10) for a total of 8,528 Whites, 3,392 Blacks, 1,766 Hispanics, and 906 Asians (Rowe et al., 1994 ). These matrices contained both independent variables (e.g., home environment, peer characteristics) and developmental outcomes (e.g., achievement, delinquency). A LISREL goodness-of-fit test found each ethnic group's covariance matrix equal to the matrix of the other groups. Not only were the Black and White matrices nearly identical, but they were as alike as the covariance matrices computed from random halves within either group. There were no distortions in the correlations between the background variables and the outcome measures that suggested any minority-specific developmental factor. Another study examined longitudinal data on academic achievement (Rowe et al., 1995 ). Again, any minority-specific cultural processes affecting achievement should have produced different covariance structures among ethnic and racial groups. Correlations were computed between academic achievement and family environment measures in 565 full-sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, each tested at ages 6.6 and 9.0 years (White N = 296 pairs; Black N = 149 pairs; Hispanic N = 120 pairs). Each racial group was treated separately, yielding three 8 ? 8 correlation matrices, which included age as a variable. Because LISREL analysis showed the matrices were equal across the three groups, there was no evidence of any special minority-specific developmental process affecting either base rates in academic achievement or any changes therein over time. A nearly identical statistical structure on intellectual variables across ethnic and racial groups has been reported in large-scale studies of military samples. Ree and Carretta (1995) examined a nationally representative sample of young Black, White, and Hispanic men and women who took the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB; N = 9,173). The ASVAB, which is used to select applicants for all military enlistments and assign them to first jobs, consists of 10 separately scored subtests (General Science, Arithmetic Reasoning, Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Numerical Operations, Coding Speed, Auto and Shop Information, Mathematics Knowledge, Mechanical Comprehension, and Electronics Information). Despite the especially wide variety of subtests, Ree and Carretta found the hierarchical factor structure of ASVAB subtest scores was virtually identical across the three groups. Similarly, Carretta and Ree (1995) examined the more specialized and diverse Air Force Officer Qualifying Test, a multiple-aptitude battery that had been given to 269,968 applicants (212,238 Whites, 32,798 Blacks, 12,647 Hispanics, 9,460 Asian Americans, and 2,551 Native Americans). The g factor accounted for the greatest amount of variance in all groups, and its loadings differed little by ethnicity. Thus, the factor structure of cognitive ability is nearly identical for Blacks and for Whites, as was found in the studies by Owen (1992) and Rushton and Skuy (2000; Rushton et al., 2002, 2003 ) comparing Africans, East Indians, and Whites on the item structures of tests described in Section 3. There was no "Factor X" specific to race. Within-race heritabilities have also been calculated using structural equation modeling. Rowe and Cleveland (1996) estimated the genetic architecture for Black and White full- and half-siblings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (106 pairs of Black half-sibs, 53 pairs of White half-sibs; 161 pairs of Black full-sibs, 314 pairs of White full-sibs). Three Peabody Individual Achievement Tests were used (Mathematics, Reading Comprehension, and Reading Recognition). The best-fitting model was one in which the sources of the differences between individuals within race and of the differences between racial means was the same-about 50% genetic and 50% environmental. Similarly, Jensen (1998b , p. 465) used structural equation modeling to reanalyze a subset of the Georgia Twin Study (comprising 123 Black and 304 White pairs of 12- to 18-year-old twins). He broke down the phenotypic mean differences into their genetic and environmental contributions and tested four alternative models: only genetic factors, only environmental factors, neither genes nor environment, and genes plus environment. The model of both genetic and environmental factors best explained the observed Black-White group differences in IQ, whereas both the genetic-only and the environmental-only explanations were inadequate. Heritability data are especially informative when the hereditarian and the culture-only models make opposite predictions. For example, the hereditarian model predicts race differences will be greater on those subtests that are more heritable within races, whereas culture-only theory predicts they will be greater on subtests that are more culturally malleable (i.e., those with lower heritabilities) on which races should grow apart as a result of dissimilar experiences. Analyses of several independent data sets support the genetic hypothesis. Nichols (1972, cited in Jensen, 1973 , pp. 116-117) was the first to apply differential heritabilities in the study of racial-group differences. He estimated the heritability of 13 tests from 543 pairs of 7-year-old siblings, including an equal number of Blacks and Whites, and found a .67 correlation between the heritability of a test and the magnitude of the Black-White group difference on that test. Subsequently, Jensen (1973, pp. 103-119) calculated the environmentality of a test (defined as the degree to which sibling correlations departed from the pure genetic expectation of 0.50) in Black and in White children and found it was inversely related to the magnitude of the Black-White group difference (r = -.70); that is, the more environmentally influenced a test, the less pronounced its Black-White group difference. Prompted by Jensen's approach, Rushton (1989) estimated genetic influence from the amount of inbreeding depression found on the 11 tests of the WISC. Inbreeding depression occurs in offspring who receive the same harmful recessive genes from each of their closely related parents. Rushton found a positive correlation between inbreeding depression scores calculated from 1,854 cousin-marriages in Japan and the magnitude of the mean Black-White group difference in the United States on the same 11 Wechsler tests (.48). This contradicts culture-only theory, which predicts that mean differences between Blacks and Whites should be greater on those subtests most affected by the environment (i.e., those showing the lowest amount of inbreeding depression). We know of no nongenetic explanation for the relation between inbreeding depression scores from Japan and mean Black-White group differences in the United States. Other aspects of the gene-environment architectural matrix also pertain to the question of mean Black-White group differences. First, it is possible to distinguish between two different types of environmental effects. Shared (also called common or between-family ) environmental effects are due to variables all children reared in the same family (whether genetically related or adopted) have in common but that differ between families (e.g., father's occupation, family cultural practice, parents' child-rearing style). Nonshared (also called unique or within-family ) effects are specific to each child in the same family and therefore differ within families (e.g., an accident, illness, or chance friendship that happens to one sibling and not to the other). Twin and adoption studies can be used to measure the two types of environmental effect (Plomin, DeFries, & Loehlin, 1977; see also Plomin & Daniels, 1987; Plomin et al., 2001). Based on within-race data, Figure 3 summarizes the changes with age in the proportions of the total IQ variance attributable to genetic factors and to the effects of the shared and the nonshared environment. It is based on an analysis of 6,370 monozygotic and 7,212 dizygotic twin pairs reared together (McGue, Bouchard, Iacona, & Lykken, 1993 ). As can be seen, the estimated proportion of IQ variance associated with shared environmental factors is relatively constant at approximately 30% for ages up to 20 years but then drops to 0% in adulthood. The estimated proportion of IQ variance associated with genetic factors increases throughout development, but especially after 20 years of age. Figure 3. Estimated proportions of the total IQ variance attributable to genetic and environmental (shared and nonshared) effects. Note that only the nonshared (or within-family) environmental variance remains relatively constant across the entire age range. From "Behavioral Genetics of Cognitive Ability: A Life-Span Perspective," by M. McGue, T. J. Bouchard, Jr., W. G. Iacono, and D. T. Lykken, in R. Plomin and G. E. McClearn (Eds.), Nature, Nurture, and Psychology (p. 64), edited by R. Plomin and G. E. McClearn, 1993, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Copyright 1993 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission. These results are corroborated by studies of monozygotic twins reared apart and of other kinships groups (Plomin et al., 2001 ). Because the variables usually proposed to explain mean racial-group differences are part of the shared family environment (such as social class, religious beliefs, cultural practices, father absence, and parenting styles), and these account for little variance within a race, they are unlikely to account for the differences between races. Rather, mean differences between races are primarily due to nonshared family effects, which include not only genetics but also a range of idiosyncratic environmental events that, within-families, affect one sibling and not the other (Jensen, 1997). Hereditarians have also examined the question of whether group differences occur in shared and in nonshared environmental effects as well as in genetic effects. For example, Rushton and Osborne (1995) reanalyzed 125 Black and 111 White pairs of 12- to 18-year-old twins from the Georgia Twin Study and estimated their cranial capacities from head size measures. They found a lower range of heritabilities for Blacks than for Whites (12% to 31% against 47% to 56%) and a higher range of common environmental (i.e., shared family) effects for Blacks than for Whites (42% to 46% against 28% to 32%). However, these percentage differences between Blacks and Whites were not significant, although all heritabilities within each race were significantly above zero. Also relevant to the question of the mean Black-White group differences are the changes in heritability that occur with increases in age (see Plomin et al., 2001 ). The average correlation of IQ between full siblings reared together reaches .49 in adulthood. The correlation in IQ for siblings reared apart as children is .24, which increases to .49 in adulthood. This shows that siblings grow more similar to each other as they age. In genetically unrelated people reared together, such as adopted children, the correlation for IQ is .25 in childhood but decreases to .01 in adulthood (McGue et al., 1993 ). This shows, conversely, that unrelated people reared together grow less similar over time. Between childhood and adulthood the influence of the shared home environment on IQ decreases, whereas the effect of genetic similarity increases. The diminishing or even vanishing effect of differences due to the shared home environment can best be understood in terms of three components of gene-environment correlation and the change in their relative importance during development (Plomin et al., 1977; Plomin et al., 2001). The passive component of the gene-environment correlation reflects all those things that happen to the phenotype, independent of its own characteristics. For example, children of academically oriented parents may inherit genes for academic ability and also be exposed (through no effort of their own) to stimulating intellectual environments. The reactive component of gene-environment correlation results from the reaction of others to the expression of genetically based abilities, as when children with an unusual curiosity about science are given chemistry sets. The active component of the gene-environment correlation results from children actively seeking experiences compatible with their genotypes, for example, going to science fairs rather than sports events or music concerts. From early childhood to late adolescence the predominant component of the gene-environment covariance gradually shifts from passive to reactive to active. The child's enlarging world is like a cafeteria in which choices become increasingly biased by genetic factors (Scarr, 1996; Scarr & McCartney, 1983). As individuals mature they seek out and even create their own experiential environment. Section 6: Race, Brain Size, and Cognitive Ability Studies on over 700 participants show that individuals with larger brain volumes have higher IQ scores. About two dozen studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the volume of the human brain have found an overall correlation with IQ of greater than .40 (Rushton & Ankney, 1996; P. A. Vernon, Wickett, Bazana, & Stelmack, 2000 ). The correlation of .40 using MRI is much higher than the .20 correlation found in earlier research using simple head size measures, although the .20 correlation is also reliable and significant. Rushton and Ankney (1996) reviewed 32 studies correlating measures of external head size with IQ scores or with measures of educational and occupational achievement, and they found a mean r = .20 for people of all ages, both sexes, and various ethnic backgrounds, including African Americans. The most likely reason why larger brains are, on average, more intelligent than smaller brains is that they contain more neurons and synapses, which make them more efficient. Haier et al. (1995) tested the brain efficiency hypothesis by using MRI to measure brain volume and glucose metabolic rate to measure glucose uptake (an indicator of energy use). They found a correlation of -.58 between glucose metabolic rate and IQ, suggesting that more intelligent individuals have more efficient brains because they use less energy in performing a given cognitive task. Several other studies supporting the brain-size/efficiency model were reviewed in Gignac, Vernon, and Wickett (2003). In any individual, however, energy use increases with the increasing complexity of the cognitive task. Estimates from twin studies indicate that genes contribute from 50% to 90% of the variance to both cranial capacities based on external head size measures and to brain volume measured by MRI (Bartley, Jones, & Weinberger, 1997; Pennington et al., 2000; Posthuma et al., 2002; Rushton & Osborne, 1995; Thompson et al., 2001). Common genetic effects mediate from 50% to 100% of the brain-size/IQ correlation (Pennington et al., 2000; Posthuma et al., 2002). Studies have also shown that correlations between brain size and IQ also hold true within families as well as between families (Gignac et al., 2003; Jensen, 1994; Jensen & Johnson, 1994 ), which also implies shared genetic effects. However, one study that examined only sisters failed to find the within-family relation (Schoenemann, Budinger, Sarich, & Wang, 2000 ). Families with larger brains overall tend to have higher IQs and, within a family, the siblings with the larger brains tend to have higher IQ scores. The within-family finding is of special interest because it controls for most of the sources of variance that distinguish families, such as social class, styles of child rearing, and general nutrition, that differ between families. Race differences in average brain size are observable at birth. A study by Rushton (1997) analyzed recorded head circumference measurements and IQ scores from 50,000 children in the Collaborative Perinatal Project followed from birth to age 7 (Broman, Nichols, Shaugnessy, & Kennedy, 1987 ). Using the head circumference measures to calculate cranial capacity at birth, 4 months, 1 year, and 7 years, at each of these ages, the Asian American children averaged larger cranial volumes than did the White children, who averaged larger cranial volumes than did the Black children. Within each race, cranial capacity correlated with IQ scores. By age 7, the Asian American children averaged an IQ of 110; the White children, 102; and the Black children 90. Because the Asian American children were the shortest in stature and the lightest in weight while the Black children were the tallest in stature and the heaviest in weight, these average race differences in brain-size/IQ relations were not due to body size. External head size measurements (length, width, height) also have been used to estimate cranial capacities in adults. Rushton carried out five studies of large archival data sets. The first (Rushton, 1991 ) examined head size measures in 24 international military samples collated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. After adjusting for the effects of body height, weight, and surface area, the mean cranial capacity for East Asians was 1,460 cm3 and for Europeans 1,446 cm3. The second (Rushton, 1992 ) demonstrated that even after adjusting for the effects of body size, sex, and military rank in a stratified random sample of over 6,000 U.S. Army personnel, the average cranial capacity of East Asians, Whites, and Blacks were 1,416, 1,380, and 1,359 cm3, respectively. The third study (Rushton, 1993 ) reanalyzed a set of anthropometric data originally published by Melville Herskovits (who concluded there were not race differences in cranial capacity) and found Whites averaged a cranial capacity of 1,421 and Blacks, 1,295 cm3. The fourth study (Rushton, 1994 ) analyzed data obtained on tens of thousands of people from around the world collated by the International Labor Office in Geneva, Switzerland. It found that after adjusting for the effects of body size and sex, samples from the Pacific Rim, Europe, and Africa had average cranial capacities, of 1,308, 1,297, and 1,241 cm3 respectively. Finally, Rushton and Osborne (1995) analyzed the Georgia Twin Study of adolescents and found that after correcting for body size and sex, Whites had an average cranial capacity of 1,269 cm3, Blacks 1,251 cm3. Rushton's results, based on calculating average cranial capacity from external head size measures, join those from dozens of other studies from the 1840s to the present on different samples using three different methods (endocranial volume from empty skulls, wet brain weight at autopsy, and high-tech MRI). All show the same strong pattern of East Asians averaging larger and heavier brains than Whites who average larger and heavier brains than Blacks. For example, using MRI technology, Harvey, Persaud, Ron, Baker, and Murray (1994) found that 41 Blacks in Britain averaged a smaller brain volume than did 67 British Whites. The American anthropologist Samuel George Morton (1849) filled over 1,000 skulls with packing material to measure endocranial volume and found that Blacks averaged about 5 cubic inches less cranial capacity than Whites. His results were confirmed by Todd (1923), H. L. Gordon (1934), and Simmons (1942) . The most extensive study of race differences in endocranial volume to date measured 20,000 skulls from around the world and reported East Asians, Europeans, and Africans had average cranial volumes of 1,415, 1,362, and 1,268 cm3, respectively (Beals, Smith, & Dodd, 1984). Using the method of weighing brains at autopsy, Paul Broca (1873) reported that Whites averaged heavier brains than did Blacks, with larger frontal lobes and more complex convolutions. (Broca also used endocranial volume and found East Asians averaged larger cranial capacities than Europeans, who averaged larger than Blacks.) Other early autopsy studies found a mean Black-White group difference in brain weight of about 100 g (Bean, 1906; Mall, 1909; Pearl, 1934; Vint, 1934 ). A more recent autopsy study of 1,261 American adults found that the brains of 811 White Americans in their sample averaged 1,323 g and the brains of 450 Black Americans averaged 1,223 g-a difference of 100 g (Ho, Roessmann, Straumfjord, & Monroe, 1980 ). Because the Blacks and Whites in the study were similar in body size, this was not responsible for the differences in brain weight. Rushton (2000; Rushton & Ankney, 1996 ) summarized the world database using the three methods on which there are a sufficient number of studies (autopsies, endocranial volume, and head measurements), as well as head measurements corrected for body size (see Rushton, 2000, pp. 126-132, Table 6.6). The results in cm3 or equivalents were as follows: East Asians = 1,351, 1,415, 1,335, and 1,356 (M = 1,364); Whites = 1,356, 1,362, 1,341, and 1,329 (M = 1,347); and Blacks = 1,223, 1,268, 1,284, and 1,294 (M = 1,267). The overall mean for East Asians is 17 cm3 more than that for Whites and 97 cm3 more than that for Blacks. Within-race differences due to differences in method of estimation averaged 31 cm3 . Because 1 cubic inch of brain matter contains millions of brain cells and hundreds of millions of synapses or neural connections, these group differences in average brain size may explain group differences in average IQ. Jensen and Johnson (1994) showed that for both Blacks and Whites, the head size by IQ correlation is true within families as well as between families, indicating the intrinsic or functional relationship mentioned earlier. Further, within each sex, Blacks and Whites fit the same regression line of head size on IQ. When Blacks and Whites are perfectly matched for true-score IQ (i.e., IQ corrected for measurement error) at either the Black mean or the White mean, the overall average Black-White group difference in head circumference is virtually nil. (Matching Blacks and Whites for IQ eliminates the average difference in head size, but matching the groups on head size does not equalize their IQs. This is what one would expect if brain size is only one of a number of brain factors involved in IQ.) In another analysis of the Georgia Twin Study, Jensen (1994) showed that the mean Black-White group difference in head/brain size is also related to the magnitude of the mean Black-White group difference in g. The correlation coefficient of each test with the head measurements was correlated with the magnitude of the Black-White group difference on that test, thus forming two vectors. The column vector of IQ test and head size correlations indicated a correlation of .51 (p <.05) with the vector of standardized Black-White group differences on each of the tests. Section 7: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Transracial Adoption Studies "Transracial adoption is the human analog of the cross-fostering design, commonly used in animal behavior genetics research.... There is no question that adoption constitutes a massive intervention" (Scarr & Weinberg, 1976 , p. 726). Studies of Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into White homes show that although as babies many had been hospitalized for malnutrition, they nonetheless grew to have IQs 10 or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. By contrast, Black and mixed-race (Black-White) children adopted into White middle-class families typically have lower average scores than the White siblings with whom they had been reared or than White children adopted into similar homes. The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, the largest and best-known transracial study, was designed specifically by Sandra Scarr and Richard Weinberg to separate genetic factors from rearing conditions as causal influences on the cognitive performance of Black children (Scarr & Weinberg, 1976; Weinberg, Scarr, & Waldman, 1992 ). It is also the only transracial adoption study that includes a longitudinal follow-up, with testing at ages 7 and 17 years. Scarr and Weinberg compared the IQ and academic achievement scores of Black, White, and mixed-race Black/White children adopted into upper-middle-class White families in Minnesota by adopting parents whose mean IQ was more than 1 standard deviation above the population mean of 100 (see Table 2). The biological children of these parents were also tested. Table 2 Comparison of Cognitive Performance Measures at Ages 7 and 17 in Biological and Adopted (White, Mixed-Race, and Black) Children, All Reared in Middle-Class White Families The first testing of 265 children was carried out in 1975 when they were 7 years old and the second in 1986 when the 196 remaining in the study were 17 years old. The 7-year-old White biological (i.e., nonadopted) children had an average IQ of 117 (see Table 2 , 2nd column), similar to that found for children of White upper-middle-class parents. The adopted children with two White biological parents had a mean IQ of 112. The adopted children with one Black and one White biological parent averaged 109. The adopted children with two Black biological parents had an average IQ of 97. (A mixed group of 21 Asian, North American Indian, and Latin American Indian adopted children averaged an IQ of 100 but were not included in the main statistical analyses.) Scarr and Weinberg (1976) interpreted the results of the testing at age 7 as support for the culture-only position. They drew special attention to the fact that the mean IQ of 105 for all "socially classified" Black children (i.e., those with either one or two Black parents) was significantly above the U.S. White mean. The poorer performance of children with two Black biological parents was attributed to their more difficult and later placement. Scarr and Weinberg also pointed out that this latter group had both natural and adoptive parents with somewhat lower educational levels and abilities (2 points lower in adoptive parents' IQ). They found no evidence for the expectancy effects hypothesis that adoptive parents' beliefs about the child's racial background influence the child's intellectual development. The mean score for 12 children wrongly believed by their adoptive parents to have two Black biological parents was virtually the same as that of the 56 children correctly classified by their adoptive parents as having one Black and one White biological parent. Table 2 also presents the results for the 196 children retested at age 17 (Weinberg et al., 1992 ). There were four independent assessments of the children's cognitive performance at this later age: (a) an individually administered IQ test, (b) an overall grade point average, (c) a class rank based on school performance, and (d) four special aptitude tests in school subjects administered by the educational authority, which we averaged. The results are concordant with the earlier testing. The nonadopted White children had a mean IQ of 109, a grade point average of 3.0, a class rank at the 64th percentile, and an aptitude score at the 69th percentile. The adopted children with two White biological parents had a mean IQ of 106, a grade point average of 2.8, a class rank at the 54th percentile, and an aptitude score at the 59th percentile. The adopted children with one Black and one White biological parent had a mean IQ of 99, a grade point average of 2.2, a class rank at the 40th percentile, and an aptitude score at the 53rd percentile. The adopted children with two Black biological parents had a mean IQ of 89, a grade point average of 2.1, a class rank at the 36th percentile, and an aptitude score at the 42nd percentile. (The 12 remaining mixed group of Amerindian/Asian children had an IQ of 96 with no data provided on school achievement.) Because different tests based on different standardization groups were used in the first testing than in the follow-up, the overall average difference of about 8 IQ points (evident for all groups, including the nonadopted group) between the two test periods does not bear on the hypothesis of interest. The relevant comparisons are those between the adopted groups of different races within each age level. The mean of 89 for adopted children with two Black parents was slightly above the national Black mean of 85 but not above the Black mean for Minnesota. Weinberg et al. (1992) interpreted their follow-up results as further support for the culture-only theory. Emphasizing the beneficial effects of the rearing environment, they pointed out that at both age 7 and 17 all groups of adopted children averaged above their expected population means. Their analyses frequently combined the two "socially classified Black" groups with "other" mixed-race children who had one parent of unknown, Asian, Amerindian, or other racial background. In their age 17 breakdowns, Weinberg et al. (1992 , p. 132) stated that "[b]iological mothers' race remained the best single predictor of adopted child's IQ when other variables were controlled," which they then attributed to "unmeasured social characteristics." Their overall conclusion was that "the social environment maintains a dominant role in determining the average IQ level of Black and interracial children and that both social and genetic variables contribute to individual variations among them" (p. 133). Levin (1994) and Lynn (1994) disputed Weinberg et al.'s (1992) culture-only interpretation. They each proposed a straightforward, hereditarian alternative: The mean IQ and school achievement scores of Black children reflected their degree of African ancestry. At both age 7 and 17, the adopted children with two Black biological parents had lower average IQs and school achievement scores than did those with one Black and one White biological parent, and these children, in turn, averaged lower scores than did those with two White biological parents. Waldman, Weinberg, and Scarr (1994) responded to Levin (1994) and Lynn (1994) with further regression analyses that indicated the children's preadoptive experience was confounded with racial ancestry, and so an unambiguous interpretation of the results was not possible. Subsequently, Jensen (1998b) discussed these studies at length and reviewed the evidence showing that age of adoption does not influence children's IQ scores after age 7 (e.g., Fisch, Bilek, Deinard, & Chang, 1976 ). Studies of severely malnourished, late-adopted, East Asian children (see below) provide substantial evidence that age of adoption does not adversely influence IQ in transracial adoptions. More generally, as reviewed in Section 5, dozens of adoption, twin, and family studies of Whites show that although the shared-family environmental component of true-score IQ variance can be quite large at age 7, by late adolescence it is the smallest component. After that age, genetic and within-family (nonshared) environmental effects account for the largest components of variance (see Figure 3). Small sample studies of very young children reared in enriched environments sometimes find an absence of the usual race differences in IQ. In two studies of 2- to 5-year-olds raised in English residential nurseries, Tizard (1974) compared Black (African and West Indian), White, and mixed-parentage children and found no significant differences among the three groups on several language comprehension tests and on the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI); the single significant difference was in favor of the non-White children. Moore (1986) found that at age 7, 23 Black children adopted by middle-class White families had a mean IQ of 117, whereas a similar group of children adopted by middle-class Black families had a mean IQ of 104, both significantly above the national Black mean of 85. To be more informative, future studies need to be supplemented by follow-up testing, as in the Minnesota Study. Behavior genetic studies consistently show that, as people age, their genes exert ever more influence, whereas family socialization effects decrease (see Figure 3). Trait differences not apparent early in life begin to appear at puberty and are completely apparent by age 17. Three studies of East Asian children adopted by White families support the hereditarian hypothesis. In the first, 25 four-year-olds from Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, and Thailand, all adopted into White American homes prior to 3 years of age, excelled in academic ability with a mean IQ score of 120, compared with the U.S. norm of 100 (Clark & Hanisee, 1982). Prior to placement, half of the babies had required hospitalization for malnutrition. In the second study, Winick, Meyer, and Harris (1975) found 141 Korean children adopted as infants by American families exceeded the national average in both IQ and achievement scores when they reached 10 years of age. The principal interest of the investigators was on the possible effects of severe malnutrition on later intelligence, and many of these Korean children had been malnourished in infancy. When tested, those who had been severely malnourished as infants obtained a mean IQ of 102; a moderately well-nourished group obtained a mean IQ of 106; and an adequately nourished group obtained a mean IQ of 112. A study by Frydman and Lynn (1989) examined 19 Korean infants adopted by families in Belgium. At about 10 years of age, their mean IQ was 119, the verbal IQ was 111, and the performance IQ was 124. Even correcting the Belgian norms upward to 109 to account for the increase in IQ scores over time (about 3 IQ points a decade; see Section 13), the Korean children still had a statistically significant 10-point advantage in mean IQ over indigenous Belgian children. Neither the social class of the adopting parents nor the number of years the child spent in the adopted family had any effect on the child's IQ. Section 8: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Racial Admixture In the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study, the IQs of the mixed-race (Black/White) adoptees averaged between those of the "nonmixed" White and the "nonmixed" Black adoptees, as expected under a genetic hypothesis (see Table 2). Results from some other types of studies are also consistent with that hypothesis. In her review, Shuey (1966) found that in 16 of 18 studies in which skin color could be used as a proxy for amount of admixture, Blacks with lighter skin color averaged higher scores than those with darker skin, although the magnitude of the association was quite low (r = .10). The Black American average IQ of 85 (15 points higher than the sub-Saharan African average of 70; see Section 3) is also consistent with the genetic hypothesis, given the approximately 20% White admixture of Black Americans (Chakraborty, Kamboh, Nwankwo, & Ferrell, 1992; Parra et al., 1998 ). The mixed-race "Colored" population of South Africa also has an average IQ of 85, intermediate to the respective African and White means of 70 and 100 (Owen, 1992). Early studies of brain weight data also fit with the genetic hypothesis. Bean (1906) found, as did Pearl (1934) , that the greater the amount of White admixture (judged independently from skin color), the higher the mean brain weight at autopsy in Black groups. More recent data of this nature are not available. The average IQ scores of around 70 for Black Americans in certain areas of the Deep South of the United States where the degree of White admixture is significantly below the general average (Chakraborty et al., 1992; Parra et al., 1998 ) are also consistent with the hereditarian interpretation of the effects of hybridization. An average IQ of 71 was found for all of the Black children in an entire school district from a rural county in Georgia; the average White IQ in the same county was 101 (Jensen, 1977). Similarly, Stanley and Porter (1967) found the scores on the SAT of all-Black college students in Georgia were too low to be predictive of college grades, thereby raising the question of whether test scores on Black Americans are as valid as those for White Americans. However, when Hills and Stanley (1970) gave the School and College Ability Test (a much easier test to pass) to similar students, they found that their scores were normally distributed and did predict college grades, though the average for the Black college students was at about the 50th percentile on eighth-grade national norms. Most recently, Lynn (2002) and Rowe (2002) analyzed data from large, publicly available, archival data sets, which show that groups of mixed-race individuals have mean scores intermediate to unmixed groups of Blacks and of Whites. Lynn examined the 1982 National Opinion Research Center's survey of a representative sample of the adult population, excluding non-English speakers. The 442 Blacks in the sample were asked whether they would describe themselves as "very dark," "dark brown," "medium brown," "light brown," or "very light." The correlation between these self-ratings and a 10-word vocabulary test score was .17 (p <.01). Rowe examined the 1994 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health's survey of a representative sample of youths, with intentional oversampling of Black children of highly educated parents. The mean age for the entire sample (9,830 Whites, 4,017 Blacks, and 119 mixed-race individuals) was 16 years. The Black adolescents averaged a lower birth weight, a lower verbal IQ, and a higher number of sexual partners than did the White adolescents. For each characteristic, the mixed-race mean fell between the means of the other two groups. Rowe found the social class explanation of the group differences "unconvincing" because, of the three variables, only verbal IQ showed a moderate correlation with social class and statistically adjusting for it left the main findings unchanged. He also rejected the "discrimination based on skin tone" hypothesis because it was eliminated by deliberately selecting only those mixed-race adolescents who were judged by their interviewers to be Black, based on their physical appearance. Three studies of racially mixed individuals at first appear to support the culture-only hypothesis against the genetic hypothesis. Eyferth (1961; Eyferth, Brandt, & Hawel, 1960 ) reported IQ data for out-of-wedlock children fathered by soldiers stationed in Germany after World War II and then reared by White German mothers. The mean IQs for 83 White children and for 98 racially mixed children were both about 97 (97.2 for the Whites, 96.5 for the racially mixed). As Loehlin et al. (1975 , pp. 126-128) noted, however, these results are ambiguous for three reasons. First, the children were still very young when tested. One third of the children were between 5 and 10 years of age, and two thirds were between 10 and 13 years. As discussed in Section 5 (see Figure 3 ), behavior genetic studies show that while family socialization effects on IQ are often strong before puberty, after puberty they dwindle, sometimes to zero. Second, 20% to 25% of the "Black" fathers were not African Americans but French North Africans (i.e., largely Caucasian or "Whites" as we have defined the terms here). Third, there was rigorous selection based on IQ score in the U.S. Army at the time, with a rejection rate for Blacks on the preinduction Army General Classification Test of about 30%, compared with 3% for Whites (see Davenport, 1946, Tables I and III). The second study reports a 9-point IQ advantage for the 4-year-old offspring of couples with a White mother and a Black father (mean IQ = 102, N = 101) compared with those from the offspring of a Black mother and a White father (mean IQ = 93, N = 28). Willerman, Naylor, and Myrianthopoulos (1974) , assuming White mothers provide better pre- or postnatal environments for their children than do Black mothers, interpreted their data as more consistent with a cultural than a genetic hypothesis (see also Nisbett, 1998). However, Loehlin et al. (1975 , p. 126) noted that the mixed-race pairs with White mothers averaged almost a year more schooling than did the pairs with Black mothers. Thus the White mothers may have had a higher average IQ than the Black ones. The mid-parent IQs have to be the same for the results to be interpretable. Also, the two sets of mixed-race children averaged an IQ of 98, intermediate to the White and Black children in the sample from whom the mixed-race children had been drawn (IQs = 105 and 91, respectively; Broman, Nichols, & Kennedy, 1975, p. 43). The third study seeming to support the culture-only hypothesis is a subsidiary analysis by Moore (1986 ; see Section 8) of a small number of 7-year-old children adopted by middle-class White parents. Moore found no difference in IQ between those children with only one and those with two Black biological parents. The mean IQ for the group of 9 adopted children with two Black biological parents was 109, and the mean IQ for the group of 14 children with one Black and one White biological parent was 107. Given the young age of these children, a follow-up to adolescence would be informative. Studies of blood groups provide no support for the hereditarian perspective. Both Loehlin, Vandenberg, and Osborne (1973) and Scarr, Pakstis, Katz, and Barker (1977) found that blood groups distinguishing African from European ancestry did not predict IQ scores in Black samples. However, these studies failed to choose genetic markers with large allele frequency differences between Africans and Europeans (Jensen, 1998b, pp. 480, 524 n.64). Molecular genetic technology was unsophisticated in the 1970s. In the future, the issue may be resolved by calculating individual admixture through the use of DNA markers as already occurs in medicine (Risch et al., 2002 ). On the basis of existing surveys, an individual's racial group can be determined by testing his or her DNA at 100 random sites along the genome, or at 30 specifically chosen ones. Even different ethnic groups within a race can be distinguished using some 50 specifically chosen sites. A genetic hypothesis predicts that for those Black individuals who possess more White genes, their physical, behavioral, and other characteristics will approach those of Whites. Although the studies of racial hybrids are generally consistent with the genetic hypothesis, to date they are not conclusive. It may be true, for example, that lighter skinned Cape Coloreds and African Americans have better nutrition, have greater opportunities for learning, or are treated better by their societies. On the other hand, the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (Table 2 ) held many such factors constant and removed the most frequently proposed causal agents such as poverty, malnutrition, poor schools, and dysfunctional neighborhoods. Yet, here too, the mixed-race children had a higher mean IQ than did the children of two Black parents, and the means for each group were very similar to those for their respective counterparts elsewhere in the United States. The discussion in this section is particularly supportive of Loehlin's (2000) conclusion that "Research using larger samples and better techniques for estimating ancestry is called for and quite feasible" (p. 188). Section 9: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Regression to the Mean Regression toward the mean provides still another method of testing if the group differences are genetic. Regression toward the mean is seen, on average, when individuals with high IQ scores mate and their children show lower scores than their parents. This is because the parents pass on some, but not all, of their genes to their offspring. The converse happens for low IQ parents; they have children with somewhat higher IQs. Although parents pass on a random half of their genes to their offspring, they cannot pass on the particular combinations of genes that cause their own exceptionality. This is analogous to rolling a pair of dice and having them come up two 6's or two 1's. The odds are that on the next roll, you will get some value that is not quite as high (or as low). Physical and psychological traits involving dominant and recessive genes show some regression effect. Genetic theory predicts the magnitude of the regression effect to be smaller the closer the degree of kinship between the individuals being compared (e.g., identical twin > full-sibling or parent-child > half-sibling). Culture-only theory makes no systematic or quantitative predictions. For any trait, scores should move toward the average for that population. So in the United States, genetic theory predicts that the children of Black parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the Black IQ average of 85, whereas children of White parents of IQ 115 will regress toward the White IQ average of 100. Similarly, children of Black parents of IQ 70 should move up toward the Black IQ average of 85, whereas children of White parents of IQ 70 should move up toward the White IQ average of 100. This hypothesis has been tested and the predictions confirmed. Regression would explain why Black children born to high IQ, wealthy Black parents have test scores 2 to 4 points lower than do White children born to low IQ, poor White parents (Jensen, 1998b , p. 358). High IQ Black parents do not pass on the full measure of their genetic advantage to their children, even though they gave them a good upbringing and good schools, often better than their own. (The same, of course, applies to high IQ White parents.) Culture-only theory cannot predict these results but must argue that cultural factors somehow imitate the effect theoretically predicted by genetic theory, which have also been demonstrated in studies of physical traits and in animals. Jensen (1973 , pp. 107-119) tested the regression predictions with data from siblings (900 White sibling pairs and 500 Black sibling pairs). These provide an even better test than parent-offspring comparisons because siblings share very similar environments. Black and White children matched for IQ had siblings who had regressed approximately halfway to their respective population means rather than to the mean of the combined population. For example, when Black children and White children were matched with IQs of 120, the siblings of Black children averaged close to 100, whereas the siblings of White children averaged close to 110. A reverse effect was found with children matched at the lower end of the IQ scale. When Black children and White children are matched for IQs of 70, the siblings of the Black children averaged about 78, whereas the siblings of the White children averaged about 85. The regression line showed no significant departure from linearity throughout the range of IQ from 50 to 150, as predicted by genetic theory but not by culture-only theory. Section 10: The Race-Behavior Matrix Around the world, the rate of dizygotic (i.e., two-egg) twinning is less than 4 per 1,000 births among East Asians, 8 among Whites, and 16 or greater among Blacks (Bulmer, 1970 ). Multiple birthing rates have been shown to be heritable, based on the race of the mother, regardless of the race of the father, as found in East Asian-White crosses in Hawaii and White-Black crosses in Brazil (Bulmer, 1970). On average, Black babies are born a week earlier than White babies, yet they are more mature as measured by pulmonary function, amniotic fluid, and bone development. In the United States, 51% of Black children have been born by week 39 of pregnancy compared with 33% of White children. Black African babies, even those born to mothers in the professional classes, are also born earlier than White babies (Papiernik, Cohen, Richard, de Oca, & Feingold, 1986). They are not born premature but sooner, and they are biologically more mature. After birth, Black babies continue to mature faster, on average, than White babies, whereas East Asian babies average an even slower rate. X-rays show a faster rate of average bone growth in Black children than in White children, and a faster rate in White children than in East Asian children (Eveleth & Tanner, 1990 , pp. 154-155). Black babies at a given age also average greater muscular strength and a more accurate reach for objects. Black children average a younger age of sitting, crawling, walking, and putting on their own clothes than Whites or East Asians. The average age of walking is 13 months in East Asian children, 12 months in White children, and 11 months in Black children (Bayley, 1965; Brazelton & Freedman, 1971). Blacks average a faster rate of dental development than do Whites, who have a faster rate than do East Asians. On average, Black children begin the first stage of permanent tooth growth at about 5.8 years, whereas Whites and East Asians do not begin until 6.1 years (Eveleth & Tanner, 1990 , pp. 158-161). Blacks also have an earlier age of sexual maturity than do Whites, who in turn have an earlier average age than do East Asians, whether measured by age of first menstruation, first sexual experience, or first pregnancy (Rushton, 2000, pp. 147-150). Myopia (nearsightedness) is positively correlated with IQ and may be caused by extra myelinization in the eye and so possibly linked to brain size (Miller, 1994). The relationship appears to be pleiotropic (Cohn, Cohn, & Jensen, 1988 ); that is, a gene affecting one trait also has some effect on one or more others. There are significant racial and ethnic differences in the frequency of myopia, with the highest rates found in East Asians, the lowest rates among Blacks, with Whites intermediate (Post, 1982). Not just in the United States but around the world, East Asians and Blacks fall at the two ends of a continuum with Whites intermediate, not only on mean cognitive test scores and brain size measures but also on 60 life-history variables that provide measures of maturation, personality, reproduction, and social organization. It seems unlikely that social factors alone could produce this consistent pattern on so diverse a set of behaviors (see Table 3; Rushton, 2000 , p. 5, Table 1.1 for complete list). This evidence raises the theoretical question of whether single traits such as intelligence are part of a broader "life-history" perspective. Table 3 Worldwide Average Differences Among Blacks, Whites, and East Asians Section 11: Mean Race-IQ Differences and Human Origins The currently most commonly accepted view of human origins, the "Out-of-Africa" theory, posits that Homo sapiens arose in Africa about 150,000 years ago, expanded northward beyond Africa about 100,000 years ago, with a European-East Asian split about 41,000 years ago (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Stringer & McKie, 1996). In Cavalli-Sforza's (2000) maximum likelihood tree devised on the basis of molecular genetic markers, the most distant group was the Africans, with Europeans and Asians being closer. Cavalli-Sforza observed, "All world trees place the earliest split between Africans and non-Africans, which is expected given that all humans originated in Africa" (p. 72). This is also the conclusion of other reviewers (e.g., Risch et al., 2002). Evolutionary selection pressures were different in the hot savanna where Africans lived than in the cold northern regions Europeans experienced, or the even colder Arctic regions of East Asians. These ecological differences affected not only morphology but also behavior. It has been proposed that the farther north the populations migrated out of Africa, the more they encountered the cognitively demanding problems of gathering and storing food, gaining shelter, making clothes, and raising children successfully during prolonged winters (Rushton, 2000 ). As these populations evolved into present-day Europeans and East Asians, the ecological pressures selected for larger brains, slower rates of maturation, and lower levels of testosterone-with concomitant reductions in sexual potency, aggressiveness, and impulsivity; increases in family stability, advanced planning, self-control, rule following, and longevity; and the other characteristics listed in Table 3 . The fact that the three-way pattern in IQ, brain size, and other traits is not unique to the United States but occurs internationally is consistent with a single, general (genetic-evolutionary) theory, whereas culture-only theory must invoke a number of highly localized, specific explanations. As Homo sapiens migrated further away from Africa, the random genetic mutations that occur at a constant rate in all living species accumulated, along with the adaptive changes. The resulting differences in allele frequencies are sufficient for numerous and extensive genetic investigations to yield essentially the same picture and identify the same major racial groupings as did the morphological markers of classical anthropology. The greatest genetic divergence within the human species is between Africans (who have had the most time for random mutations to accumulate) and non-Africans (Cavalli-Sforza 2000; Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Nei & Roychoudhury, 1993). Jensen (1998b, pp. 517-520) carried out a principal-components analysis of data on genetic markers from Nei and Roychoudhury (1993) and found the familiar clustering of races: (a) East Asians, (b) Europeans and East Indians, (c) South Asians and Pacific Islanders, (d) Africans, (e) North and South Amerindians and Eskimos, and (f) Aboriginal Australians and Papuan New Guineans. Howells's (1993) analysis of between-groups variation in craniometric data also revealed a similar population tree. The genetic hypothesis is consistent with the latest findings on human origins and genetic variation, whereas culture-only theory is indifferent to them (Crow, 2002). Section 12: How Well Have Culture-Only Theories of Mean Race-IQ Differences Held Up? Culture-only hypotheses have not explained the mean Black-White group differences in IQ. (They have especially not explained the findings on East Asians.) One early view was that the mean Black-White group difference in IQ was due to the then obvious differences in (segregated) school facilities (Myrdal, 1944). However, despite the U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision striking down segregated schooling, and the consequent nationwide program of school busing, the mean Black-White group difference has not decreased. Moreover, the Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966 ) found that the racial composition of schools per se was not related to achievement in either Blacks or Whites. Most of the variation in IQ scores occurred within schools and less than 20% occurred between schools. Negligible, and in some cases, negative correlations were found between IQ and variables such as pupil expenditure, teachers' salaries, teachers' qualifications, student/teacher ratios, and the availability of other school professionals (see also Coleman, 1990-1991). The most frequently stated culture-only hypothesis is that the mean IQ differences are due to SES. In fact, controlling for SES only reduces the mean Black-White group difference in IQ by about a third, around 5 IQ points. The genetic perspective does not regard this control for SES as being entirely environmental. It holds that the parents' socioeconomic level in part reflects their genetic differences in intelligence. Moreover, according to the culture-only theory, as Black groups advance up the socioeconomic ladder, their children should be less exposed to environmental deficits and therefore should do better and, by extension, close the distance separating the Black mean with the White. In fact, the magnitude of the mean Black-White group difference in IQ for higher SES levels, when measured in standard deviations, is larger (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, pp. 286-289). Other nongenetic hypotheses are that standard IQ tests are culturally biased because the test items are not equally familiar and motivating to all groups or that they only measure familiarity with middle-class language or culture. However, despite attempts to equate items for familiarity and culture-fairness, no "culture-fair" test has eliminated the mean group difference. American Blacks actually have higher average scores on culturally loaded tests than on culturally reduced tests, which is the opposite to what is found for some other groups such as Mexican Indians and East Asians. (The mean Black-White group differences are greatest on the g factor, regardless of the type of test from which g is extracted; see Section 4.) Moreover, the three-way pattern of mean Black-White-East Asian group differences occurs worldwide on culture-fair reaction time measures, which all children can do in less than 1 s (see Section 3). Subsequent culture-only hypotheses have pointed to specific aspects of deprivation as possible determinants of IQ. These include the following: (a) lack of reading material in the home, (b) poor cultural amenities in the home, (c) weak structural integrity of the home, (d) foreign language in the home, (e) low preschool attendance, (f) no encyclopedia in the home, (g) low level of parental education, (h) little time spent on homework, (i) low parental educational desires for child, (j) low parental interest in school work, (k) negative child self-concept (self-esteem), and (l) low child interest in school and reading. However, both within-race kinship studies and across-race adoption studies show that these environmental variables have increasingly smaller effects on the adoptees' IQ as they reach adolescence (see Sections 5 and 7). Moreover, other studies found that American Indians and East Asians averaged higher in IQ than Blacks, even though they averaged lower on these proposed causal factors (Coleman et al., 1966 , p. 20). Another example comes from the Inuit, who live above the Arctic Circle and have higher average IQs than do either American or Jamaican Blacks (Berry, 1966; MacArthur, 1968) even though their socioeconomic conditions are extremely poor and unemployment is high (P. E. Vernon, 1965, 1979). In the 1960s, culture-only theory formed the basis for implementing "Head Start"-type intervention programs as a way to eliminate the group differences in IQ and scholastic achievement. Although federal matching grants were given to improve the learning skills, social skills, and health status of low-income preschool children so that they could begin schooling on an equal footing with their more advantaged peers, the mean Black-White group difference in IQ was not eliminated or permanently reduced. Currie and Thomas (1995) reviewed the literature and carried out a longitudinal study using a national sample of over 4,000 children in which they compared siblings to control for selection bias. They found that although Head Start led to large and significant immediate gains in test scores for both White and Black groups, these gains were quickly lost for Black groups, although some remained for White groups. Even more intensive and prolonged educational interventions than Head Start have not produced lasting effects on IQ or scholastic performance (Jensen, 1998b, pp. 333-344) or that generalize to other measures or criteria. Some culture-only theorists propose that SES should not be assessed in terms of crude material measures but must be seen as a complex of attitudes, aspirations, self-images, and societal stereotypes (Loury, 2002; Ogbu, 2002; Sowell, 1994 ). Some of these types of cultural factors have been tested as well. Matching Black and White children for the geographical areas of their homes, the schools they attend, and other finer grade socioeconomic indicators again reduces the mean group IQ difference but does not eliminate it. Black children from the best areas and schools (those producing the highest average scores) still average slightly lower than do White children with the lowest socioeconomic indicators (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994, pp. 286-289; Jensen, 1998b , pp. 357-360). This is an anomaly for the culture-only theory but is explained by genetic theory through regression to the mean (see Section 10). Other culture-only hypotheses have invoked Black role models, test anxiety, self-esteem, and racial stress as causal agents, but none of these have ever been consistently confirmed (Jensen, 1980, 1998b). Other ideas, such as stereotype threat (Steele, 1997), involuntary-minorities-are-castes (Ogbu, 2002), and race stigma (Loury, 2002 ), do not explain the low IQ of Africans south of the Sahara, where Blacks are in the majority. Nor is there any evidence from analyses of large archival data sets that unique minority-specific factors such as the history of slavery, White racism, lowered expectations, or heightened stress make cultural influences stronger for one group than for another (see Section 5). Neither can racial stigmatization (Loury, 2002 ) explain why East Asians average higher in IQ and brain size than Whites. A progressive theory of racial group differences must address all the known facts. Culture-only theory must offer some explanation why its main variables-poverty, social class, religious beliefs, cultural practices, father absence, and parenting styles-account for so little variance within groups. Given these repeated findings, it is unlikely such variables can account for differences between groups (see Section 5). Adoption and twin studies show that the environmental variables influencing IQ and social behavior are primarily those that occur within families rather than between families (see Figure 3 ). Although the causes of within-group differences are logically separate from the causes of between-groups differences (Section 2), even when the combined set of within- and between-families variables is examined together, there are still no identifiable race-specific variables (Section 5). It is always possible that new data with sharper hypotheses and better controls could require a revision of the finding of no shared family or minority-specific cultural effects on race-IQ differences. There were hints (but no more than that) of a lower heritability and a greater shared environment component in Black adolescents than in White adolescents in Rushton and Osborne's (1995) twin study of cranial capacity (Section 5). Similarly, an epidemiological study of low-birth-weight and normal children, followed from 6 to 11 years of age, reported an IQ decline in mainly Black inner-city children with no similar IQ decline in mainly White suburban children. The authors interpreted their results as a between-community effect and the racial makeup of the schools the children attended, more than to individual and family factors (Breslau et al., 2001 ). Behavioral genetic designs using traditional modeling procedures (Section 5), along with new individual admixture measures on mixed-race participants (Section 8), could provide counterevidence to our conclusions. Unfortunately, behavioral geneticists (who have the most knowledge of the best techniques) have for the most part avoided the racial question. One culture-only hypothesis currently enjoying much support is based on the secular increase in test scores, known as the Flynn effect because of the repeated demonstration by James Flynn (1984, 1987, 1999) that the average IQ in several countries has increased by about 3 points a decade over the last 50 years. Some have suggested that the Flynn effect implies that the 1 standard deviation difference in the mean Black-White IQ difference in the United States will gradually disappear over time (Flynn, 1999). However, one statistical analysis shows that the Flynn effect is not on the g factor, the principal source of the mean Black-White group difference. Table 4 (based on Rushton, 1999 ) shows the results of a principal-components analysis of the secular gains in IQ from the United States, Germany, Austria, and Scotland, along with Black-White IQ difference scores from the United States, inbreeding depression scores from cousin-marriages in Japan, and g loadings from the standardization samples of the WISC-R and WISC-III. The relevant findings are as follows: (a) The IQ gains on the WISC-R and WISC-III form a cluster, showing that the secular trend in overall test scores is a reliable phenomenon; but (b) this cluster is independent of a second cluster formed by Black-White differences, inbreeding depression scores (a purely genetic effect), and g factor loadings (a largely genetic effect). [Graphic] [Help with image viewing] [Email Jumpstart To Image] Table 4 Principal-Components Analysis and Varimax Rotation for Pearson Correlations of Inbreeding Depression Scores, Black-White Differences, g Loadings, and Gains Over Time on the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children (WISC) With Reliability Partialed Out This analysis shows that the secular increase in IQ behaves differently from the mean Black-White group difference in IQ. Flynn's (1999) hypothesis that the IQ gains over time imply a purely environmental origin of mean racial-group differences is not supported. Although the Flynn effect does suggest that improving the environment, especially at the low end of the IQ distribution, can improve test scores, the cluster analysis shows that the g factor is independent of the Flynn effect. Instead, g is associated with inbreeding depression, for which there is no nongenetic explanation, which implies strongly that g is less amenable to environmental manipulation. These findings are consistent with an analysis of adoption data, which shows the IQ gains that result from being adopted into high SES homes do not produce a gain in g but only in non-g factors and in specificity of the various subtests. The adopted children's g factor scores reflected the SES level of their biological parents (Jensen, 1998a). Dickens and Flynn (2001) replied to Rushton's (1999) cluster analysis with a more general statement of having resolved the paradox of how high heritabilities could go along with large secular increases in IQ. Their solution rests on the role of genotype-environment correlation. Recall from Section 5 that this occurs largely through the individual's genetic tendency to encounter, select, or create certain aspects of the environment in preference to alternatives. Genotype-environment correlation is part of the mechanism by which genetic proclivities become realized. Dickens and Flynn hypothesized that the positive feedback effects from even small initial environmental advantages stimulate mental development and lead to an even more favorable environment, stimulating yet more IQ development. Dickens and Flynn's (2001) model, however, appears inconsistent with some empirical evidence. Gene-environment correlation cannot explain the mean Black-White group difference in IQ because it implies that Black groups, in comparison with White groups, become increasingly disadvantaged during the developmental period from early childhood to maturity. With increasing age there would be cumulative unfavorable effects on IQ for Black groups with respect to White groups. Yet national data (reviewed in Section 3) show that the size of the mean Black-White group difference remains approximately constant at 1 standard deviation and shows no significant change throughout the developmental period after about 3 years of age. The follow-up results of the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (Table 2), and the fact that the heritability for IQ generally increases from about 0.40 in early childhood to about 0.80 in later maturity (Figure 3), both contradict the Dickens-Flynn thesis. So too does the fact that both g estimates calculated from East Indians in South Africa and genetic estimates calculated from the Japanese in Japan are able to predict the magnitude of Black-White differences in South Africa and in the United States (see Sections 4 and 5). Such robust generalization implies that the mean Black-White group difference in IQ is sufficiently persistent across cultures as to be unaffected by major changes in gene-environment correlations. Dickens and Flynn (2001) provided no empirical evidence that gene-environment correlation constitutes either a large component of the phenotypic variance or that it increases with age (both of which are required by their model). They also did not provide any other direct empirical evidence. In addition, their models have been criticized for not taking the stability of IQ scores over time into account and for having too many free parameters (Loehlin, 2002; Rowe & Rodgers, 2002), to which Dickens and Flynn (2002) have replied. Because to date Dickens and Flynn have not given the high heritability of IQ any independent causal effect in explaining the mean Black-White group difference, their thesis is best placed in the culture-only camp. Section 13: Evaluating the Culture-Only and the Hereditarian Research Programs Table 5 summarizes the 30-plus-years of research on Black-White IQ differences carried out since Jensen's (1969) Harvard Educational Review article. It compares and contrasts the predictions of the hereditarian and the culture-only theories against the existing data reviewed in Sections 3 through 12, to which we then assigned "scores." We assigned the highest score (++) when, in our opinion, the results confirmed a novel prediction first derived from theory that was then tested and confirmed. We awarded the next highest score (+) when the results were consistent with theory but not predicted from it. We gave a neutral score (0) when the results could not be predicted from theory so that it could be either confirmed or disconfirmed. We assigned a negative score (-) when the predicted results were disconfirmed. Because some diacritical tests have two components, the maximum possible support for either research program would be a score of 12 ? 2 = 24; maximum disconfirmation would be a score of -24. Naturally these scores reflect our particular evaluation of how well the two competing theories predict and explain the evidence. We acknowledge that others might see things differently, and we invite them to assign their scores. Our purpose is to advance the debate. Table 5 Comparison Chart for Evaluating the Hereditarian (50% Genetic) and Culture-Only (0% Genetic) Research Programs Table 5 (continued) Our evaluation of the evidence supports a cumulative score of 17 for the hereditarian model and -7 for the culture-only model. We therefore suggest that the hypothesis of some genetic component in the mean Black-White group difference in IQ should be considered "provisionally true." Naturally, we do not expect everyone to agree with this assessment. Our own perspective is obviously hereditarian (Jensen, 1998b; Rushton, 2000 ). Those working from a different perspective may arrive at alternative tallies or add new dimensions to be tallied that we have overlooked. Before discussing our conclusion, we consider in more detail the data on each of the categories in Table 5. Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Found Worldwide (Section 3) The mean Black-White IQ difference in the United States of 85 versus 100 can be, and has been, explained both by the hereditarian model (in terms of some genetic difference) and by the culture-only model (in terms of nutrition, poverty, SES, family structure, schooling, racism, and the legacy of slavery). Hence, initially we were inclined to give both the hereditarian model and the culture-only model a score of (+). The hereditarian model, however, also predicted that the same pattern would be found worldwide, with lower scores for sub-Saharan Africa than for Black Americans, and that the differences would also be found on culture-fair tests and on reaction time tasks that measure the speed and efficiency with which the brain processes information (and which all children can perform in less than 1 s). These predictions were confirmed. The culture-only hypothesis is disconfirmed by the differences on culture-fair and reaction time tests. Nor can the culture-only model easily explain why the East Asian average IQ of 106 is higher than the average White IQ, including on these same speed-of-processing tasks. Within the United States, the mean Black-White group difference in IQ has not changed significantly over the past 100 years despite significant improvements in the conditions of Black Americans. The same magnitude of difference is observed as early as age 2? years. Our score for Section 3: hereditarian model (+); culture-only model (-). Race-IQ Differences Are Most Pronounced on the More g-Loaded Components of Tests and Least So on the Most Culturally Loaded Items (Section 4) The hereditarian model made the novel prediction that the mean Black-White group difference in IQ is not the result of idiosyncratic cultural peculiarities in this or that test but would be more pronounced on highly g-loaded tests. Because the prediction was confirmed, it counts as evidence for the hereditarian position while also contradicting the prediction from the culture-only model that the differences are due to culturally loaded tests. In South Africa, g loadings calculated on East Indians predicted mean Black-White group differences, showing substantial cross-cultural generalizability. A test's g loading is the best predictor, not just of its correlation with scholastic and workplace performance, but also of its correlation with reaction time measures, heritability coefficients determined from twin studies, inbreeding depression scores calculated in children of cousin-marriages, and neurological variables such as brain size, brain evoked potentials, brain pH levels, brain glucose metabolism, and nerve conduction velocity. Thus, we conclude the evidence reviewed in Section 4 strongly supports the hereditarian model (++) and argues against the culture-only model (-). Race-IQ Differences Are Most Pronounced on the More Heritable Components of Tests With Little or No Evidence of Race-Specific Developmental Processes (Section 5) Research based on this novel prediction from the hereditarian model established that (a) the heritability of IQ among Black groups is around 0.50, not significantly different from that found in White groups; (b) there is no evidence of the effect of any special minority-specific developmental process resulting from the legacy of slavery or of White racism in large sets of archival correlation matrices between background variables and outcome measures, or on relations among subtests; (c) IQ subtests with higher heritabilities predict mean Black-White group differences better than do subtests with lower heritabilities; and (d) the shared environment type of variables usually proposed to explain group differences (e.g., differences in income, schools) decrease in effect size with age. Cross-cultural generality was demonstrated by the fact that the magnitude of inbreeding depression scores on various subtests calculated on the Japanese in Japan predicted the magnitude of Black-White differences in the United States. Because the empirical results confirmed a novel prediction from the hereditarian model (++) but disconfirmed several predictions from culture-only theory (-), we scored Section 5: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-). Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Associated With Mean Brain Size Differences (Section 6) Overall, MRI studies show that brain size is related to IQ differences within race. Moreover, the three-way pattern of group differences in average brain size is detectable at birth. By adulthood, East Asians average 1 cubic inch more cranial capacity than Whites, and Whites average 5 cubic inches more cranial capacity than Blacks. These findings on group differences in average brain size have been replicated using MRI, endocranial volume from empty skulls, wet brain weight at autopsy, and external head size measures. They were acknowledged by Ulric Neisser, Chair of the APA's Task Force on intelligence, who noted that, with respect to "racial differences in the mean measured sizes of skulls and brains (with East Asians having the largest, followed by Whites and then Blacks) ... there is indeed a small overall trend" (Neisser, 1997 , p. 80). The hereditarian model explains these in terms of genetic differences. The culture-only position can explain them in terms of nutrition, SES, or early cognitive stimulation. Adding the East Asian data, however, literally "changes the shape of the table." The hereditarian model posits that if East Asians average higher IQs than do Whites, then they must also average larger brains than Whites, and that perhaps both the higher IQ and the larger brain are most parsimoniously explained in terms of the natural selection experienced in colder climates during human evolution (++). The culture-only position has yet to explain both the higher IQ and the larger brain size of East Asians, given that these groups have also been subjected to prejudice in White societies or severe malnutrition in their homelands. We scored Section 6: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-). Mean Race Differences in IQ Remain Following Transracial Adoption (Section 7) Transracial adoption studies provide one of the best methods for resolving the question of group differences in mean IQ. The above-average IQ scores of Black adoptees at age 7 confirmed the culture-only predictions. The results of the follow-up testing at age 17 were more ambiguous. The hereditarian model predicted that when the longitudinal study was carried out, the Black-White difference would emerge (based on the increasing size of the genetic effect on IQ with age), and this is one interpretation of the data, though a culture-only interpretation is also plausible. However, support for the hereditarian model again comes from adding the East Asian data to the mix. Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into White homes, even though as babies many had been hospitalized for malnutrition, nonetheless grew to have IQs 10 or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. The culture-only model cannot explain that finding. Further, it argues against the culture-only hypothesis that the high performance of East Asian children is due to "trying harder" or other cultural values emphasized by East Asian families. Our score for Section 7: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-). Studies of Racial Admixture Reflect Mean Black-White IQ Differences (Section 8) Both the hereditarian and the culture-only model can explain why groups of lighter skinned African Americans and the (also lighter skinned) mixed-race "Coloreds" of South Africa have average IQs between those of (for the most part) unmixed groups of Blacks and Whites. Both models can also explain the fact that the degree of White admixture is correlated with brain weight at autopsy. The culture-only position does so in terms of societal discrimination based on skin color as well as its possible cascading effects on nutrition and health (+); the hereditarian model does so in terms of the hypothesized genetic difference in average IQ and its correlations with race and skin color (+). Some evidence against the culture-only position comes from studying the misclassified adoptees in the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study (-). The expectancy effects hypothesis, that adoptive parents' beliefs about their child's racial background influence the child's intellectual development, is not supported by the finding that the mean IQ score for 12 children wrongly believed by their adoptive parents to have had two Black biological parents was about the same as that of the 56 children correctly believed by their adoptive parents to have had one Black and one White biological parent. While the number of children is small, this conclusion is supported by Rowe's study in which 119 mixed-race children were selected as "looking African American" but their IQ scores also turned out to be intermediate. Our score for Section 8: hereditarian model (+); culture-only model (0). IQs Show Regression Toward Predicted Racial Means (Section 9) The phenomenon of regression to the mean is predicted from basic genetic theory and has been documented for a number of physical traits in humans and in other species. The hereditarian model applied this reasoning to IQ studies to make a novel prediction about the amount of regression across the whole IQ distribution and various degrees of kinship. The results showed that the children of Black parents of IQ 115 regressed toward the Black average IQ of 85, whereas children of White parents of IQ 115 regressed toward the White average IQ of 100. The converse occurred at the low end of the scale. Even stronger support for the hereditarian position came from sibling data. The regression lines for both Blacks and for Whites showed no significant departure from linearity throughout the range of IQ from 50 to 150. A failure of this prediction would have argued against the hereditarian model but would have been neutral for the culture-only model. The predictions from the hereditarian model were tested and confirmed. The culture-only theory must argue that environmental effects or chance variation mimics the predicted genetic effects. We scored Section 9: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (0). Mean Race-IQ Differences Are Paralleled by a Matrix of Other Traits and Behaviors (Section 10) A suite of over 60 life-history variables, including rate of two-egg twinning, speed of maturation and longevity, personality and temperament, family stability and crime, sexual behavior and fertility, as well as intelligence and brain size, have been identified on which East Asian and African groups consistently average at the two ends of a continuum, with European groups intermediate, regardless of where they presently live. This race-behavior matrix constitutes a series of novel predictions derived from an evolutionary theory of the origin of races that were tested and confirmed. The culture-only model has only partially addressed this race-behavior matrix, with (sometimes contradictory) supplementary hypotheses. Our score for Section 10: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-). Mean Race-IQ Differences and Human Evolution (Section 11) One theory of human evolution argues that the farther north the ancestral human populations migrated out of Africa, about 100,000 years ago, the more they encountered the cognitively demanding problems of gathering and storing food, gaining shelter, making clothes, and raising children successfully during prolonged winters. (This is not the only theory of human evolution, nor do all who endorse it concur with our interpretation.) Ecological pressures selected for larger brains, slower rates of maturation, lower levels of sex hormone, and all the other life-history characteristics. From this perspective, the data from both human genetics and human evolution mesh with the race-behavior matrix (++). Genetic-evolutionary theory acknowledges factors such as East Asian family strength or African poverty, but as effects rather than causes. The consistency of the pattern of traits in Table 3 also supports the argument, as do genetic analyses, against the view that race is only a social construction based on a few salient traits such as skin color (Crow, 2002; Risch et al., 2002). Our score for Section 11: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-). Culture-Only Hypotheses Fail to Account for Mean Race-IQ Differences ( --------------------------------- Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 295-301 THERE ARE NO PUBLIC-POLICY IMPLICATIONS: A Reply to Rushton and Jensen (2005) Sternberg, Robert J.1,2 1Department of Psychology, Yale University 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert J. Sternberg, Department of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208358, New Haven, CT 06520-8358. E-mail: robert.sternberg at yale.edu Outline * Abstract * References J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (2005) purport to show public-policy implications arising from their analysis of alleged genetic bases for group mean differences in IQ. This article argues that none of these implications in fact follow from any of the data they present. The risk in work such as this is that public-policy implications may come to be ideologically driven rather than data driven, and to drive the research rather than be driven by the data. The quest to show that one socially defined racial, ethnic, or other group is inferior to another in some important way, such that "the public must accept the pragmatic reality that some groups will be overrepresented and other groups underrepresented in various socially valued outcomes" (Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , p. 283), has what I believe to be a long, sad history. Since ancient times, cynical political, religious, and other leaders have used such arguments to justify discriminatory ideological positions. Does science want to provide them the ammunition? Scientists might argue that their work is value free and that they are not responsible for the repugnant or even questionable values or actions of opportunistic leaders. Rushton and Jensen (2005) seem to believe, as have others, that they do perform a kind of value-free science and that they merely respect the truth. However, using tests and scoring them in itself represents a value judgment: Taking a test means different things for diverse groups, and the backgrounds of varied groups who take these tests are different (Greenfield, 1997 ). Studying so-called races represents a value judgment because race is a social construction, not a biological concept, and Rushton and Jensen's entire article is based on the false premise of race as having meaning other than in their and other people's imaginations (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005 ). Deciding to study group differences represents a value judgment-that the problem is worth studying. Deciding to show that one group is genetically inferior on an index is a value judgment as to what is worth showing. These decisions, among others, indicate that there is no value-free science. Few of us can hear our own accents when we speak-only other people have accents! In the same way, supposedly "value-free science" reflects the values of investigators who cannot see their own values underlying their research. In our work in Tanzania, for example, we have found that children who do not do well on conventional static cognitive tests do much better when the tests are administered dynamically (Sternberg et al., 2002). Many others have found the same results (see general review of literature in Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002; see also Sternberg, 2004). In some cultures, the act of taking a test in isolation from other people is itself an unfamiliar activity (Greenfield, 1997 ). Indeed, even outside the Mayan cultures that Greenfield has studied, such as in the United States, most significant projects are done collaboratively, not individually. In general, when we use a psychological measuring instrument in assessing people, we are imposing a set of values we often do not realize we are imposing. Ruston and Jensen (2005) make what I believe to be ambiguous references-for example, speaking of biological inequality without defining this term. I also believe they inadvertently create "straw men." These straw men take the form of false dichotomies, such as between the culture-only model and the hereditarian model (as though there is nothing in between), and imaginary oppositions, such as between people who believe in the influence of genetics and people who engage in "denial of any genetic component in human variation." There are probably no such people, at least among serious scientists. What scientist, for example, believes that height or weight is entirely environmental? What good is research of the kind done by Rushton and Jensen supposed to achieve? Only vaguely cloaked behind their words is the purported demonstration that certain groups are, on average, genetically inferior to other groups, at least in that aspect of intelligence measured by IQ. The articles and books reporting on this research inevitably have the seemingly obligatory final public-policy section, which is somehow supposed to justify, in part, the usefulness of the research. The "Implications for Public Policy" section (Rushton & Jensen, Section 15) that is included in works of this kind (see also Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1969 ) seem to have the intention to provide a public-policy rationale for work attempting to show that one group is inferior to another and that not much, if anything, can be done about it. It is therefore worthwhile to examine whether any of the alleged public-policy implications follow from the data. If not, the argument that the research is useful in formulating public policy is impugned. I believe that, as in similar past works, none of the claims regarding "implications for public policy" are justified. As was true of Herrnstein and Murray (1994) and their predecessors, the science risks being used to promote social engineering unsupported by the data. In my response, because of space restrictions, I limit my response to their public-policy claims. Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article is based on the equation of IQ with intelligence. Many psychologists question this equation (see essays in Sternberg, 2000 ), including even those who have designed the most widely used tests of intelligence such as Binet and Wechsler. So in this rejoinder, I talk about IQ, which is the basis for Rushton and Jensen's article, not intelligence in its full sense. According to Rushton and Jensen (2005), The research supporting the role of heredity in human behavior implies that the distributional model is more correct than the discrimination model. It explains some of the mean Black-White group difference in IQ-related outcomes in terms of the differential distribution of the genes for general mental ability. For example, IQ is a significant predictor of such socially disadvantageous outcomes as dropping out of high school, being unemployed, being divorced within 5 years of marriage, having an illegitimate child, living in poverty, being on welfare, and incarceration. (Rushton & Jensen, 2005, p. 282) First, as Rushton and Jensen (2005) realize, these correlations, like heritability coefficients, are all obtained under a given social system. Heritabilities of intelligence differ widely even across social classes (Turkheimer, Haley, Waldron, D'Onofrio, & Gottesman, 2003 ). Moreover, in a social system that has no welfare (e.g., traditionally, Mexico), IQ is not correlated with going on welfare. In a social system in which the state ensures that no one lives in poverty (e.g., traditionally, Sweden), IQ is not correlated with living in poverty. Is divorce heritable? In a system that does not allow divorce (e.g., traditionally, Chile), IQ is not correlated with divorce within the first 5 years of marriage. And in a system that does not allow discrimination, who knows what the heritability of intelligence would be? It is very difficult to find such a truly nondiscriminatory system. Built into any correlation is the contextual backdrop in which the two interrelated variables occur. The correlation of IQ with other variables may stay the same, go down, or go up. No one knows. It would be easy for middle- and upper-middle-class majority-group individuals (presumably, such as Rushton and Jensen) to state that, if they were born into poverty, they or others like them would have achieved socially desirable outcomes in life. But is this so? Many individuals-disproportionately, members of certain minority groups and those in developing countries-grow up in miserable circumstances from which there is no ready exit. Their home life may be bad; their schools may be bad; their economic situation may be bad. It is extremely difficult to escape from these environments because they are members of a socially defined lower caste for which the opportunities for advancement are meager. Ogbu (1978) , for example, found that displaced members of minority groups who are, or are descended from, forced immigrants tend to underperform compared with members of the same group when the group is in an environmental context in which it was not forced to immigrate. Even when African American students live in affluence, some of their prevailing cultural attitudes may prevent them from achieving at the levels of which they are capable. Such attitudes may affect their ability test scores as well as their achievement test scores, because existing ability tests, including tests of nonverbal abilities, all measure achievement, to a greater or lesser extent. Not all the correlates of higher IQ are socially desirable, although Rushton and Jensen (2005) only mention the socially desirable ones. To be fair, we probably ought to list selected undesirable correlates of higher IQ: for example, being able to design and fabricate sophisticated bombs, the capacity to successfully manufacture weaponized anthrax and other biological agents, and planning terrorists attacks without getting caught. In these cases, higher IQ may be correlated with socially devalued outcomes. Arguably, these outcomes do more social harm than divorce (associated, according to Rushton and Jensen, with low IQ). As these examples illustrate, a problem with our society is its emphasis on intelligence and its corresponding lack of emphasis on wisdom. Unfortunately, it is our foolishness that is likely to destroy our society, not our lack of IQ (Sternberg, 1998, 2002). Second, before we ask about distributions of particular attributes, we need to ask ourselves which attributes we want to study to begin with. IQ is one attribute that, in our society, is correlated with success. In many other societies, IQ probably matters as well, although not to the same extent. In a hunter-gatherer society, IQ will still be important, but if a hunter cannot shoot straight, IQ will not bring food to the table. In a warrior society, IQ will still matter, but physical prowess may be equally necessary to stay alive. In a totalitarian society, a high IQ may be the kiss of death. During the reigns of Stalin and Pol Pot, among other such reigns, intellectuals were the first to be shot. In a rapidly changing society, such as modern-day Russia, many high-IQ professors have found their already low pay sinking to even lower levels. Those who are not creatively flexible may find themselves unable to sustain their families. IQ matters, but so do many other qualities. Rushton and Jensen (2005) acknowledge this fact in one sentence, but their sweeping policy generalizations suggest that the acknowledgment does not carry much weight with them. Third, it is not the case that the "research supporting the role of heredity in human behavior implies that the distributional model is more correct than the discrimination model" (Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , p. 282). Their argument incorrectly implies that IQ is the only cause of success. Members of other socially defined racial or ethnic groups might be superior in other attributes correlated with success but still not attain the success of the majority because they find their success blocked by discrimination. Perhaps Rushton and Jensen, like most of us, are not even aware of the extent to which we ourselves discriminate, and would prefer to think that those who do not achieve at high levels fail, not because they are blocked, but because they are incapable of succeeding. This has been the stand of privileged majorities throughout history. And these majorities have routinely provided arguments of various kinds, including so-called scientific ones, to support their positions. Rushton and Jensen (2005) state that "although the distributional model does not rule out affirmative action or compensation-type initiatives, it does reduce the impact of arguments in their favor based on an exclusive adherence to the discrimination model" (p. 283). This argument may not be correct. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and other countries have paid compensation to victims of the Holocaust. The compensation had nothing to do with IQ. Some forms of compensation were monetary, others were not (e.g., return of stolen works of art). They recognized a history of discrimination and wrongs unrelated to intelligence. The United States unquestionably has a history of wrongs toward African Americans through slavery and many other forms of discrimination. Should African Americans be paid compensation for slavery? That is a public-policy issue, not a science issue. It has nothing to do with the average IQs of various groups, or anyone else's. Conflating the issue of past wrongs with group-average differences in IQ does not make sense. Another supposed policy implication is that tests such as the SAT and the General Aptitude Test Battery are about equal in predictive validity for all groups. But Rushton and Jensen (2005) mention and then fail to elaborate on the qualification that this is the case "for all groups who speak the same language and have been schooled in the culture of the test" (p. 283). This is an extremely significant qualification to only mention in passing. First, it simply is not the case that people either are or are not schooled in the culture of the test. People are schooled in this culture in varying degrees. Many inner-city and remote rural schools do not, and in some cases, cannot provide the same schooling in the culture of the test that wealthy suburban or urban schools can provide. Second, in many countries, children are only minimally schooled in the culture of the test (Sternberg et al., 2002 ). In other societies, they are schooled slightly more in the culture of the test but, for economic or social reasons, need to devote most of their attention to nonschool matters (Sternberg et al., 2001 ). In some societies, people have conceptions of intelligence that do not particularly value as intelligent what the tests measure (Grigorenko et al., 2001 ). Yet in others, people are often ill from disease or malnutrition much of the time and find it difficult to absorb the full benefit of the schooling they receive. The assumption should not be made that all children speak the same language even in countries such as the United States. Many children attend schools where students do not all speak the same language. Within a given school, there may be scores of native languages, as is routine in schools in large states such as California. The point, quite simply, is that what appears in Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article to be a minor qualification is actually a significant one. If one examines studies of conventional ability tests, they generally are not biased in a narrow statistical sense. However, the same environmental factors that depress criterion-test scores also lower ability-test scores, as ability tests and achievement tests all measure achievement to some degree. Thus the correlation reflects, in part, that school-based skills predict school-based skills. Changing the environment might change the correlations, although of course we cannot know for sure. Thus the tests are not biased, but they fail to reflect what individuals might be capable of under different circumstances. There is no reason to believe that the failure of what Rushton and Jensen (2005) call "equal opportunity programs to enable all groups in society to perform equally scholastically" (p. 283) is because of "the true nature of individual and group differences, genetics, and evolutionary biology" (p. 283). If height is heritable but modifiable, so is intelligence. It is not clear that any program will fully equalize performance, but programs can raise performance. We, as a society, have not yet determined how most effectively to raise achievement. There are some extraordinarily successful programs, such as those at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, that do seem to be dramatically raising achievement. Jaime Escalante also apparently had great success. But certainly we are less effective than the natural environment (Mathews, 1989). The Flynn effect (Flynn, 1999 ) shows that environmental factors can raise IQs. No one, to my knowledge, has claimed that the effect is genetic, and it is unclear how it possibly could be. So it can be done. Nature apparently knows how; we do not know as well, at least, as of yet. Rushton and Jensen (2005) argue that failure to take ethnicity into account in epidemiological work would be a great mistake. For example, different groups may suffer from different rates of hypertension, prostate cancer, and so forth. This may be true, but it is irrelevant to their arguments regarding the sources of group differences in intelligence. The fact that African Americans have higher rates of hypertension, for example, is not enlightening as to whether African Americans show different IQs from Whites because of genetic factors. So these policy recommendations, like the others, have no clear relation to the alleged scientific argument advanced by their article. According to Rushton and Jensen (2005) , "modern social science has typically ... promoted the idea that all babies are born more or less equally endowed in intelligence and learning ability. It followed therefore that inequalities were the result of social, economic, and political forces" (p. 284). This argument, too, is not correct. Modern social science has not taken the view that all babies are born with equal intelligence or learning ability. Are there any psychologists who seriously study intelligence who believe that genetic factors play no role in individual differences in intelligence? I doubt it. This is yet another of the many examples of straw men created in their article to foster belief in an untenable position by arguing the alternative. Where there is genuine disagreement in the field is not over whether there are individual differences of genetic origins, but rather whether there are group differences of IQ that are genetic in origin (i.e., of what they believe to be biologically defined racial groups). Can one seriously believe that there are not inequalities that foster differences in outcomes? Children growing up in the slums of India, all of low caste, have almost no chance of ever leaving those slums, regardless of their IQs. Children of rural Appalachia or Watts in Los Angeles, or Harlem in New York, or Togiak in Alaska, all in the United States, have opportunities far reduced compared with those children living, say, in Winnetka, Illinois, Scarsdale, New York, or Palo Alto, California. In current-day Somalia and Liberia, the opportunities are even worse. For some of these children, getting to and from school and through a school day safely, having food on the table to eat, and avoiding the random gunfire or drug wars raging around them may consume many more of their mental resources than getting good grades in school. Were Rushton or Jensen or any of us reading this article to have grown up or lived in these environments, what would have become of us? Would we have the luxury of writing such articles, or would we have to spend our time attending to basic food and safety needs? Rushton and Jensen (2005) suggest that "organizations such as the [American Psychological Association (APA)] could play a critical role in changing the zeitgeist" (p. 283). The chances of APA or similar organizations adopting any of the policy recommendations in Rushton and Jensen's article seem remote. My experience during my presidency of the APA is that this organization and others like it are devoted to creating, not restricting, opportunities for growth and advancement. The quality of science is determined not only by the quality of problem solving but also by taste in the selection of problems to solve. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether the problem addressed in Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article represents good taste in the selection of the problems. Would that Rushton and Jensen had devoted their penetrating intellects to other more scientifically and socially productive problems! References Flynn, J. R. (1999). Searching for justice: The discovery of IQ gains over time. American Psychologist, 54, 5-20. [Context Link] Greenfield, P. M. (1997). You can't take it with you: Why abilities assessments don't cross cultures. American Psychologist, 52, 1115-1124. Grigorenko, E. L., Geissler, P. W., Prince, R., Okatcha, F., Nokes, C., & Kenny, D. A., et al. (2001). The organisation of Luo conceptions of intelligence: A study of implicit theories in a Kenyan village. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 367-378. [Context Link] Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. (1994). The bell curve. New York: Free Press. [Context Link] Jensen, A. R. (1969). Intelligence, learning ability and socioeconomic status. Journal of Special Education, 3, 23-35. [Context Link] Mathews, J. (1989). Escalante: The best teacher in America. New York: Holt. [Context Link] Ogbu, J. U. (1978). Minority education and caste: The American system in cross-cultural perspective. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. [Context Link] Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2005). Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 235-294. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J. (1998). A balance theory of wisdom. Review of General Psychology, 2, 347-365. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). (2000). Handbook of intelligence. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J. (2002). Smart people are not stupid, but they sure can be foolish: The imbalance theory of foolishness. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Why smart people can be so stupid (pp. 232-242). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J. (2004). Culture and intelligence. American Psychologist, 59, 325-328. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2002). Dynamic testing. New York: Cambridge University Press. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Kidd, K. K. (2005). Intelligence, race, and genetics. American Psychologist, 60, 46-59. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., Ngrosho, D., Tantufuye, E., Mbise, A., & Nokes, C., et al. (2002). Assessing intellectual potential in rural Tanzanian school children. Intelligence, 30, 141-162. [Context Link] Sternberg, R. J., Nokes, K., Geissler, P. W., Prince, R., Okatcha, F., Bundy, D. A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2001). The relationship between academic and practical intelligence: A case study in Kenya. Intelligence, 29, 401-418. [Context Link] Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D'Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic status modifies heritability of IQ in young children. Psychological Science, 6, 623-628. [Context Link] --------------------------------- Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 302-310 HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT, AND RACE DIFFERENCES IN IQ: A Commentary on Rushton and Jensen (2005) Nisbett, Richard E.1,2 1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard E. Nisbett, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. E-mail: nisbett at umich.edu Outline * Abstract * The Current Difference in Intelligence Between Blacks and Whites * The Effects of Intervention * Direct Tests of Heritability of the Black-White IQ Difference * Skin Color * Self-Reports of European Ancestry * Children in Postwar Germany Born to Black and White American Soldiers * Mixed-Race Children Born to Either a Black or a White Mother * Studies Measuring European Ancestry Through Blood Group Indicators * Adoption Studies * Assignment of Black Adoptees to Families of Different Races * Assignment of Black and White Adoptees to the Same Environment * Assignment of Black and White Adoptees to Different White Families * Conclusion * References J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (2005) ignore or misinterpret most of the evidence of greatest relevance to the question of heritability of the Black-White IQ gap. A dispassionate reading of the evidence on the association of IQ with degree of European ancestry for members of Black populations, convergence of Black and White IQ in recent years, alterability of Black IQ by intervention programs, and adoption studies lend no support to a hereditarian interpretation of the Black-White IQ gap. On the contrary, the evidence most relevant to the question indicates that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is nil. Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article is characterized by failure to cite, in any but the most cursory way, strong evidence against their position. Their lengthy presentation of indirectly relevant evidence which, in light of the direct evidence against the hereditarian view they prefer, has little probative value, and their "scorecard" tallies of evidence on various points cannot be sustained by the evidence. The Current Difference in Intelligence Between Blacks and Whites One of the most serious misrepresentations in Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article is their claim that the current difference in IQ between Blacks and Whites is slightly more than 15 points, or 1 standard deviation. The best evidence we have indicates that that value is out of date and that the Black-White IQ gap has lessened considerably in recent decades (Grissmer, 1994; Grissmer, Flanagan, & Williamson, 1998; Grissmer, Williamson, Kirby, & Berends, 1998; Hedges & Nowell, 1998; Nisbett, 1995, 1998 ). We do not have actual IQ scores available to establish this point but rather various ability tests, most of which are highly correlated with IQ-some as high as .8 to .9. Though IQ scores would be preferable to speak directly to the question of IQ change, such data are unavailable in the form of a national random sample. In contrast, several probability samples of U.S. elementary and high school students are available. These include, over the period 1965-1994, the Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO) survey, the National Longitudinal Study, the High School and Beyond survey, the National Education Longitudinal Study, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress program (NAEP). Hedges and Nowell (1998) found improvement on almost all tests for African American 12th graders compared with other 12th graders over the period 1965-1994. The best estimates in terms of the stability the scores provide, and in terms of their correlations with IQ, are in the form of composites, for example, reading + vocabulary + mathematics for the EEO survey. The Black-White gap on these composites over the period decreased on average by 0.13 standard deviation per decade, yielding an estimate of a reduction of the gap by around 0.39 standard deviation over the period. The largest study, conducted by the NAEP, indicated that, if trends were to continue, the gap in reading scores would be eliminated in approximately 25 years and the gap in science scores in approximately 75 years. Grissmer, Flanagan, and Williamson (1998) found comparably large gains on the NAEP for Blacks in elementary school, junior high, and high school. Whites gained slightly in both math and reading between 1971 and 1996, but Blacks gained much more, narrowing the gap by 0.2 to 0.6 standard deviations. This would yield estimates of obliteration of the gap somewhere between 20 and 60 years from now, except that the gains were concentrated among the students, at all age groups, who entered school in the period between 1968 and 1980. Students entering prior to that period and after that period showed no gains. It would take us far afield to discuss why the gains occurred when they did, but the main relevance is that the old estimate of 1 standard deviation in ability scores no longer applies. The gap is substantially less than that at the present time, probably more like 0.6-0.7 standard deviation or approximately 10 IQ points. The Effects of Intervention A second misrepresentation by Rushton and Jensen (2005) flows from their statement that the Head Start program leads only to immediate and not to long-term gains. Because no other early childhood intervention programs are mentioned, the implication is that such programs are not effective over the long run. But in fact, more ambitious interventions produce very significant gains that last as long as until age 15, the oldest age tested to this point to my knowledge (S. L. Ramey & Ramey, 1999). For example, Campbell and Ramey (1994) provided Black infants with an 8-hr per day intervention involving exercises designed to enhance cognitive, language, perceptual-motor, and social development. Mothers of the children had an average IQ of 85. At age 12, 56% of control children had IQs in the normal range (above 85), about what would be expected based on the mothers' IQ and assuming that the fathers' IQ was in the same vicinity. But 87% of children exposed to the intervention had IQs in the normal range. Only 13% of intervention-exposed children were of borderline IQ, and none were even mildly retarded. In contrast, 37% of control children were of borderline intelligence, and 7% were at least mildly retarded. Other early intervention programs have shown IQ effects of intervention programs in the range of 4-5 points, which are sustained until at least age 8-15 (e.g., S. L. Ramey & Ramey, 1999 ). Effects on academic achievement can also be substantial. Ramey and his colleagues found an intervention program resulted in 12% placement in special education classes at some point by the age of 15 as compared with 48% for control children (C. T. Ramey et al., 2000 ). They found that 30% of children who had participated in an intervention program had been retained in a grade by age 15 as compared with 56% of control children. By now, there are many studies showing significant, sometimes marked and sustained, effects of early intervention programs. But Rushton and Jensen (2005) choose to cite only one failure, and by implication to allow it to stand as the only relevant finding. It should also be noted that it is not merely early intervention that increases IQ and school achievement. Programs at every age level from infancy to college can be effective (Bennett, 1987; Herrnstein, Nickerson, De Sanchez, & Swets, 1986; Selvin, 1992; Steele et al., 2004; Treisman, 1992 ). There is thus very good reason to believe that steps can be taken-some not terribly expensive-to improve test and academic performance of Blacks. Direct Tests of Heritability of the Black-White IQ Difference Most important, Rushton and Jensen (2005) ignore or misrepresent a large literature dealing with the most direct sort of evidence, which relates to the influence of European ancestry on Black intelligence. U.S. "Black" populations contain as much as 30% European genes. This means that an individual who is identified as Black could have anywhere from 100% African ancestry to mostly European ancestry (true of as much as 15% of some U.S "Black" subpopulations; Herskovits, 1930 ). This allows us to identify the extent to which percentage African ancestry, variously assessed, is associated with IQ. Five different types of studies allow for an estimation of the effect of relatively African versus relatively European genes on IQ. I report these below in increasing order of what I take to be their probativeness. Skin Color There are numerous studies of the association between skin color and IQ. Skin color can be used as at least a weak proxy for racial admixture. We can ask whether lighter, presumably more European, skin is associated with higher IQ. Of course, if it were, this would constitute only modest support for the genetic hypothesis because there would be valid grounds for assuming that more social and economic advantages accrued to people with relatively light skin than to people with relatively dark skin and that these advantages would be reflected in higher IQs. In fact, however, the correlation between lightness of skin and IQ, averaged over a large number of studies reviewed by Shuey (1966), is in the vicinity of .10. The average correlation between IQ and judged "Negroidness" of features is even lower. Self-Reports of European Ancestry Another way to determine the genetic origins of the Black-White difference is to examine the tails of the distribution of Black IQ. We can ask whether Blacks having a significant degree of European heritage are more likely to have high IQ scores. The extreme high-end tail of the IQ distribution should be especially telling, because on the hereditarian theory one would expect people at the tail to be particularly likely to have substantial European ancestry. Jenkins (1936) identified 63 children in a sample of Black Chicago schoolchildren with IQs of 125 or above, and 28 with IQs of 140 or above. Degree of European ancestry was assessed on the basis of self-reports about parents and grandparents. Children with IQs of 125 or above, as well as those with IQs of 140 or above, were slightly less likely to have substantial European ancestry than was estimated to be characteristic of the U.S. Black population as a whole at the time. The results are consistent with a model of zero genetic contribution to the Black-White gap. Rushton and Jensen do not mention this study. Children in Postwar Germany Born to Black and White American Soldiers Eyferth (1961) examined the IQs of several hundred German children fathered by Black GIs during the post-1945 occupation and compared them with the IQs of children fathered by White GIs. The children of the Black GIs had an average IQ of 96.5. The children of the White GIs had an average IQ of 97. Because the (phenotypic) Black-White gap in the military was similar to that for the U.S. population, these data imply that the Black-White gap in the U.S. population as a whole is not genetic, even in part (Flynn, 1980 , pp. 87-88). The results seem particularly telling because it seems highly likely that environmental conditions were inferior for Black children. How do Rushton and Jensen (2005) treat this study, so telling on the face of it? They give it only two sentences of description and then proceed to critique it on two main grounds. First, 20% to 25% of the "Black" fathers were North African. But one would have to assume preposterously high IQ scores on the part of the North African portion of the Black population to make up for the substantial difference between offspring of Blacks and Whites predicted by their hereditarian theory. Second, Rushton and Jensen assume that Black soldiers were more rigorously selected than Whites and so might have had IQs nearly as high as those of the White soldiers. Blacks in the military did indeed have higher IQs than did Blacks in the general population, but the same was true of White soldiers compared with the general White population. Flynn (1980) has argued that the evidence indicates that the gap in IQ between Black and White soldiers was the same as that in the U.S. population at large. Mixed-Race Children Born to Either a Black or a White Mother If the Black-White IQ gap is largely hereditary, then children having one Black and one White parent should have the same IQ on average, regardless of which parent is Black. But if one assumes that mothers are particularly important to the intellectual socialization of their children and if the socialization practices of Whites are more favorable to IQ development than those of Black mothers, then children of White mothers and Black fathers should have higher IQs than children of Black mothers and White fathers. This could of course not have a plausible genetic explanation. In fact, it emerges that children of White mothers and Black fathers have IQs 9 points higher than children with Black mothers and White fathers (Willerman, Naylor, & Myrianthopoulos, 1974 ). This result in itself suggests that most of the Black-White IQ gap is environmental in origin. But because mothers are not the only environmental influence on the child's IQ, the 9-point difference might be regarded as a very conservative estimate of the environmental contribution to the gap. What do Rushton and Jensen (2005) have to say about this study? Because the White mother-Black father pairs averaged 1 year more of education than the Black mother-White father pairs, they conclude the study is uninterpretable! Of course, there can be no basis for assuming that 1-year's difference in education on the part of the parents could possibly translate into an expected 9 IQ point difference for the children. Studies Measuring European Ancestry Through Blood Group Indicators Different races have different frequencies of various blood groups. If the hereditarian model is correct, Blacks having more blood groups characteristic of Europeans should have higher IQs. But Sandra Scarr and her colleagues (Scarr, Pakstis, Katz, & Barker, 1977 ) found that the correlation between IQ and "European" heritage among Blacks as measured by blood groups was only .05 in a sample of 144 Black adolescent twin pairs. They found a typical correlation of .15 between skin color and IQ, which suggests that the comparable correlations between skin color and IQ in other studies are due not to more European genes on the part of light-skinned Blacks but to social and economic advantages accruing to individuals with lighter skin. Another blood-group study, by Loehlin, Vandenberg, and Osborne (1973), also examined the association between Europeanness and IQ in a sample of Blacks. In this study, the estimated Europeanness of blood groups (rather than the Europeanness of individuals, estimated from their blood groups) was correlated with IQ in two small samples of Blacks (Loehlin et al., 1973 ). A .01 correlation between IQ and the extent to which blood group genes were more characteristic of European than African populations was found. In another small sample, they found a nonsignificant, -.38 correlation, such that blood groups associated with Europeanness predicted lower IQ scores. How do Rushton and Jensen (2005) deal with these data, so apparently damning of an even partially hereditary model? They report that "these studies failed to choose genetic markers with large allele frequency differences between Africans and Europeans" (p. 262). Of course, on the hereditarian hypothesis, the markers would have to have been worthless to yield a zero difference between the populations studied. Rushton and Jensen (2005) add only a few studies to the list above concerned with racial admixture, and those have extremely weak findings, poor methodology, tangential relevance, or a combination of the three. For example, they cite one study by Lynn (2002) , which found a correlation of .17 between self-report of skin color as "very dark," "dark brown," "light brown," or "very light" and a 10-word vocabulary test score. Another study, by Rowe (2002) , is merely yet another showing that Blacks have lower IQ scores than Whites. Still other studies ask us to believe that average IQ scores of 70 (in the retarded range) for samples of Africans and for the Black children in a particular Georgia county could possibly be an accurate reflection of genotypic IQ in pure African populations. This would mean that an individual 2 standard deviations from the mean would only manage to reach an IQ of 100, which is average for Western White populations. Rushton and Jensen (2005) end the empirical part of their article with a scorecard. The scorecard results: hereditarian model (+); culture-only model (0). But any sensible reading of the directly relevant research would have to conclude that there is no support whatever in these studies for an even partially hereditarian model. On the contrary, the converging methodologies provide strong evidence that the genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ gap is close to zero and do not even suggest a direction for any possible genetic contribution. Adoption Studies There are three major adoption studies that address the question of genetic contribution to the Black-White IQ difference. The first two reported below receive one sentence each of description from Rushton and Jensen (2005); the third receives seven paragraphs. Assignment of Black Adoptees to Families of Different Races Under the hereditarian model, it should make relatively little difference whether Black children are adopted by Black families or by White families. Under an environmental model that assumes that White families are especially likely to intervene in their children's socialization in ways that result in their having high IQs, it should make a substantial difference whether the Black child is raised with a Black or White family. And in fact, it does. Moore (1986) found that Black children raised by Black middle-class families had mean IQs of 104, whereas Black children raised by White middle-class families had mean IQs of 117. Though it is possible that self-selection of some kind might have operated to produce this difference, it could only have happened if genotypically less intelligent children were more likely to be assigned to the Black families than to the White families. But there is no reason to assume that this was the case, or at least that it could possibly account for the results by itself. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that adoption agencies could have engineered IQ differences in placement on the order of 13 points. Moore's (1986) study also provides some evidence about socialization for intelligence. White mothers were more supportive of their children's intellectual explorations and more forgiving of mistakes than were Black mothers, who tended to be highly critical. Assignment of Black and White Adoptees to the Same Environment Tizard, Cooperman, and Tizard (1972) studied Black and White children assigned to a highly enriched institutional environment. At age 4 or 5, the White children had IQs of 103, the Black children IQs of 108, and mixed-race children IQs of 106. The Black children were West Indian and the White children were English, and though it is possible that the Black children were born to more intelligent parents than the White children, Flynn (1980) has argued that the difference could have been only enough to eradicate the Black advantage in IQ score, not to turn the advantage to the Black children. Assignment of Black and White Adoptees to Different White Families The study to which Rushton and Jensen (2005) allocate so much space is the single adoption study that provides any support whatever to the hereditarian position. This is a study by Scarr and Weinberg (1976; Weinberg, Scarr, & Waldman, 1992 ), which examined adoptees into White families who had two White biological parents, two Black biological parents, or one Black and one White parent. The study is more difficult to interpret than the other two, one of which assigns Black children, who were probably equivalent in expected IQ, to either Black or White middle-class families and the other of which assigns both Black and White children to the same environment. The Scarr and Weinberg study held neither race nor expected IQ nor adoptive setting constant. An additional problem with the Scarr and Weinberg study is that the Black children were adopted at a later age than the others, which would prompt an assumption of lower initial IQ for them. In addition, the Black children's mothers had lower educational levels than did those of the other two groups, which also would prompt an assumption of lower initial IQ. Finally, the "quality of placement" was higher for White children than for other children. All of these facts combined mean that it is not possible to know what to predict under either a hereditarian model or a pure environmental model. The average IQ of the White children at age 7 to 8 years was 112, that of mixed-race children 109, and that of Black children 97. The results are consistent with the assumption that the middle-class family environment resulted in a substantial gain in IQ for all groups. They do not rule out a genetic contribution to explain the gap because the Black children had lower IQs than those of either of the other two groups. Because of the likelihood that the Black children had lower IQs to begin with, for both genetic and nongenetic reasons, however, the results do not give strong support to the hereditarian model. At age 17 the White children had IQs (as measured by another test) of 106, the mixed-race children 99, and the Black children 89. These results are not materially different, in terms of size of the gap, from those at age 7 to 8. The Black children at the earlier point had IQs 15 points lower than those of the White children and at the later point had IQs 17 points lower. The gap was 3 points at age 7 to 8 between White children and mixed-race children and 7 points at age 17. Rushton and Jensen (2005) , however, wish to emphasize the relative difference at the two ages. Because the genetic influence on IQ asserts itself progressively over the life span, they maintain that the greater gap at the later age is reflective of a genetic contribution to the gap. In fact, Rushton and Jensen give as one of their main reasons for reviewing the Scarr and Weinberg study in such depth is that it continues out to the older ages (the other two reasons being that it is the "largest" and "best-known"). There are several flaws with the developmental argument. First, the relative magnitude of differences at the two ages are slight, and second, and more important, the life span data that Rushton and Jensen themselves cite do not support the claim that more of the IQ variance at age 17 is genetically driven than at earlier ages. Evidence of a greater genetic contribution to IQ occurs only after the age of 20 (see their Figure 3). Finally, Weinberg et al. (1992) noted that the scores of the adolescent Black and mixed-race children have to be interpreted in light of the fact that these children as a group had severe adjustment problems, a fact that Rushton and Jensen do not mention. The Scarr and Weinberg study thus provides nothing more definite than the likelihood that middle-class environments raise the IQs of children of all racial combinations. Many aspects of design weakness have to be overlooked to infer any support at all for the hereditarian model. How do Rushton and Jensen (2005) assess the adoption results across the two studies showing unambiguous lack of support for the hereditarian model and the one study showing at most ambiguous support for it? Their scorecard results: hereditarian model (++); culture-only model (-)! The rest of Rushton and Jensen's (2005) article consists of reports of brain size and reaction time correlates and other indirect evidence. If the direct evidence were not so strongly supportive of a purely environmental explanation of the Black-White difference in IQ, then such findings would have relevance to an understanding of the difference. But when direct evidence points so clearly to the conclusion that there is no hereditary basis for the difference, indirect correlational evidence has little meaning. Conclusion In short, Rushton and Jensen (2005) ride roughshod over the evidence concerning the question of whether the Black-White IQ gap has a hereditary basis. The most directly relevant research concerns degree of European ancestry in the Black population. There is not a shred of evidence in this literature, which draws on studies having a total of five very different designs, that the gap has a genetic basis. Adoption studies give scarcely more support to the heritability position. Finally, Black and White IQ scores have converged in recent decades, and in addition, we know that intervention programs can produce substantial and lasting effects on Black IQ. The most obvious policy relevance of this set of findings is that at-risk children--those born to impoverished women, especially those likely to be unable to provide a stimulating environment, and in particular children who have low birth weight or other factors predisposing to low IQ--should be exposed to the most extensive intervention programs that it is practical to provide. This group happens to include a disproportionate percentage of Black infants, but race need not, and perhaps should not, be made a criterion for inclusion. References Bennett, W. J. (1987). Schools that work. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. [Context Link] Campbell, F. A., & Ramey, C. T. (1994). Effects of early intervention on intellectual and academic achievement: A follow-up study of children from low-income families. 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Skin color and intelligence in African Americans. Population and Environment, 23, 365-375. [Context Link] Moore, E. G. J. (1986). Family socialization and the IQ test performance of traditionally and transracially adopted Black children. Development Psychology, 22, 317-326. [Context Link] Nisbett, R. E. (1995). Race, IQ and scientism. In S. Fraser (Ed.), The bell curve wars (pp. 36-57). New York: HarperCollins. [Context Link] Nisbett, R. E. (1998). Race, genetics, and IQ. In A. Phillips (Ed.), The Black-White test score gap (pp. 86-102). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. [Context Link] Ramey, C. T., Campbell, F. A., Burchinal, M., Skinner, M. L., Gardner, D. M., & Ramey, S. L. (2000). Persistent effects of early childhood education on high-risk children and their mothers. Applied Developmental Science, 4, 2-14. [Context Link] Ramey, S. L., & Ramey, C. T. (1999). Early experience and early intervention for children "at risk" for developmental delay and mental retardation. 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New York: Social Science Press. [Context Link] Steele, C. M., Spencer, S., Nisbett, R. E., Hummel, M., Harber, K., Schoem, D., & Carter, K. (2004). African American college achievement: A wise intervention. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University. [Context Link] Tizard, B., Cooperman, A., & Tizard, J. (1972). Environmental effects on language development: A study of young children in long-stay residential nurseries. Child Development, 43, 342-343. [Context Link] Treisman, U. (1992). Studying students studying calculus: A look at the lives of minority mathematics students in college. College Mathematics Journal, 23, 362-372. [Context Link] Weinberg, R. A., Scarr, S., & Waldman, I. D. (1992). The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study: A follow-up of IQ test performance at adolescence. Intelligence, 16, 117-135. [Context Link] Willerman, L., Naylor, A. F., & Myrianthopoulos, N. C. (1974). Intellectual development of children from interracial matings: Performance in infancy and at 4 years. Behavior Genetics, 4, 84-88. -------------------- Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 311-319 WHAT IF THE HEREDITARIAN HYPOTHESIS IS TRUE? Gottfredson, Linda S.1,2 1School of Education, University of Delaware 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Linda S. Gottfredson, School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. E-mail: gottfred at udel.edu Outline * Abstract * The Hereditarian Hypothesis: What Is It? * Scientific Foundations of the Hereditarian Hypothesis: How Sound? * Rushton and Jensen's 10 Bodies of Evidence: How Pertinent? How Complete? * Contrasting Predictions * Additional Evidence * The Totality of Available Evidence: How Compelling? * Replication * Consilience * The g-based hereditarian theory * The culture-only theory * Rushton and Jensen's Policy Recommendations: Are They Warranted? * Does the Hereditarian Hypothesis Leave Us Without Hope? * References J. P. Rushton and A. R. Jensen (2005) review 10 bodies of evidence to support their argument that the long-standing, worldwide Black-White average differences in cognitive ability are more plausibly explained by their hereditarian (50% genetic causation) theory than by culture-only (0% genetic causation) theory. This commentary evaluates the relevance of their evidence, the overall strength of their case, the implications they draw for public policy, and the suggestion by some scholars that the nation is best served by telling benevolent lies about race and intelligence. Rushton and Jensen (2005) review the last 30 years of evidence on an important but spurned question: Is the average Black-White difference in phenotypic intelligence partly genetic in origin? Much relevant scientific evidence has accumulated since Jensen first asked the question in 1969, but openly addressing it still seems as politically unacceptable today as it was then. Taking the question seriously raises the possibility that the answer might be yes, which for some people is unthinkable. It is therefore no surprise that such research and researchers are often evaluated first against moral criteria and only secondarily, if at all, against scientific ones. My commentary therefore examines the Rushton-Jensen article against both the scientific and moral criteria typically applied to such work. The Hereditarian Hypothesis: What Is It? Rushton and Jensen's (2005) hereditarian hypothesis is that Black-White differences in general intelligence (IQ, or the general mental ability factor, g ) are "substantially" genetic in origin, which they quantify as 50% genetic and 50% environmental. They specify 50% genetic because they hypothesize that race differences are simply aggregated individual differences and because researchers commonly summarize within-group IQ heritability as 50%. Rushton and Jensen do not attempt to prove conclusively a genetic component but to show that their hypothesis is more plausible than the culture-only hypothesis long favored by social scientists, which entails 0% genetic and 100% environmental causation. Scientific Foundations of the Hereditarian Hypothesis: How Sound? The hereditarian hypothesis becomes scientifically plausible only after five evidentiary prerequisites have been met: IQ differences among same-race individuals represent (a) real, (b) functionally important, and (c) substantially genetic differences in general intelligence (the g factor), and mean IQ differences between the races likewise reflect (d) real and (e) functionally important differences on the same g factor. A century of research strongly supports all five. It has provided a vast, interlocking network of evidence that g is the backbone of all broad mental abilities in all age, race, sex, and national groups studied to date; that higher levels of g confer practical advantages in many realms of life; that within-group variability in phenotypic g has strong genetic roots and many physiological correlates in the brain; and that between-groups differences in g are large and pervasive enough to have broad social significance (e.g., see the journal Intelligence; Brody, 1992; Deary, 2000; Gottfredson, 1997; Hartigan & Wigdor, 1989; Lubinski, 2004). This is hardly the picture of intelligence research that the media and many social scientists paint (e.g., Fish, 2002 ). Both often suggest that the entire area of measurement of mental abilities, psychometrics, is fundamentally flawed and morally suspect. As Snyderman and Rothman (1988) demonstrated almost two decades ago, however, media portrayals of accepted wisdom on intelligence tend to be the opposite of what experts have actually concluded (e.g., Carroll, 1997 ). Thus, despite public lore to the contrary, there is already a deep and vast nomological network of evidence that can be called g theory. Rushton and Jensen's 10 Bodies of Evidence: How Pertinent? How Complete? The most general difference between g theory and culture-only theory is that the former sees both individual and group differences in g as embedded substantially in biology, whereas the latter theory looks only to culture, at least when it involves race. Contrasting Predictions First, although both theories predict ubiquitous race differences in observed abilities, g theory predicts that the gaps between any two particular races will be similar over time and place regardless of cultural circumstances (unless frequency of interbreeding changes markedly). Culture-only theory predicts that the gaps will expand or contract depending on similarity in cultural environments, regardless of genetic heritage. The uniformity of the IQ gaps between African Blacks, American Blacks, Whites, and East Asians over time and place (Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , Section 3) and the parallel ordering of race differences on simple reaction/inspection time tests in the United States and elsewhere (Section 4) are both consistent with g theory. Contradicting culture-only theory, the IQ gaps fail to shift in tandem with cultural variation. Both theories can explain the Black-White IQ gaps seen in studies of transracial adoption (Section 7) and racial admixture (Section 8). However, the above-average mean IQ of even severely malnourished East Asian infants adopted into White European homes is more consistent with those infants having a genetic than a cultural advantage over their White European peers. Second, unlike culture-only theory, g theory predicts that IQ differences will correlate with variation in "hardwired" aspects of brain structure and function. Therefore, only g theory can account for the nexus of correlations among the following outcomes: the g loadedness of IQ and reaction time tests (their ability to measure g ); the tests' heritability and susceptibility to inbreeding depression; Black-White-East Asian mean differences in performance on them; and the correlations of various physiological traits (brain size, evoked potentials in the brain, brain pH levels, and brain glucose metabolism) with IQ and reaction time (Sections 4 and 6). Third, the two theories predict different degrees of change in individuals' IQs when their socioeducational environments change substantially: g theory predicts little or no lasting change, but culture-only theory predicts relative responsiveness. Jensen's 1969 conclusion about the failure of socioeducational interventions to raise low IQs substantially and permanently still stands (Section 12). Natural variation in environments likewise fails to alter the common developmental processes by which abilities are assembled in different races. This commonality in cognitive architecture is indicated, for instance, by cross-race identity of g factors and input-output achievement covariance matrices (Section 5). This commonality also contradicts predictions that different cultures create different intelligences. Additional Evidence Rushton and Jensen (2005) do not discuss one body of evidence that many social scientists believe undermines the hereditarian hypothesis: a narrowing of Black-White gaps in standardized reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which critics see as a narrowing (if not the irrelevance) of the IQ gap (e.g., chapters in Jencks & Phillips, 1998). Recent analyses (Gottfredson, in press) show the critics to be mistaken. First, nationally representative data on racial and ethnic IQ differences during the 20th century provide no evidence that the IQ gap has narrowed. Standardized effect sizes were 1.0 ? 0.2 for both children and adults and for all ages and decades, averaging 1.02 across 20 samples. Second, Black-White achievement gaps in the 1971-1999 NAEP Trend Series were no larger or smaller than g theory would predict. The maximum expected is 1.20 standard deviation (the size of the Black-White g gap itself), and the minimum is 0.80 ? 0.04 standard deviation (1.20 multiplied by the IQ-achievement correlations in core subjects). NAEP gaps narrowed from 1.07 standard deviation in the 1970s to 0.89 in the 1990s when averaged over all three subjects and ages. Degree of narrowing stalled by the mid-1980s and differed by subject: 25% in reading (1.06-0.79), 20% in math (1.07-0.87), and 15% in science (1.22-1.04). As of 1999, all gaps for 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students were still near or above the minimum expected (reading--0.80, 0.73, 0.73; math--0.82, 0.93, 1.06; and science--0.97, 1.06, 1.07). The Totality of Available Evidence: How Compelling? Which theory explains the totality of evidence more consistently and coherently? Replication The following major facts from Rushton and Jensen's (2005) Sections 3-6 and 10-12 have been replicated many times, and all with independent sources of data. All are consistent with hereditarian theory but contradict culture-only theory: * Worldwide Black-White-East Asian differences in IQ (Section 3), reaction time (Section 4), and brain size, with Whites having the intermediate scores (Section 6); * An inverse correlation between the foregoing race differences in brain attributes and Black-White-East Asian differences in body maturation (Section 6); * Small (.2) and moderate (.4) correlations of IQ, respectively, with skull size and in vivo brain volume (Section 6); * A moderately high correlation (usually.6-.7) of different IQ subtests' g loadings, not only with the magnitude of Black-White-East Asian mean differences on those subtests (Section 6) but also with measures of those subtests' rootedness in biological and genetic processes (e.g., heritability; Section 4); * The rising heritability of IQ with age (within races) and the virtual disappearance by adolescence of any shared environmental effects on IQ (e.g., parental income, education, child-rearing practices; Section 5); * Worldwide Black-White-East Asian mean differences in a large suite of biological variables (e.g., twinning, gestation time, sex ratio at birth) and social variables (e.g., law abidingness, marital stability), with the three races always in the same rank order (Section 10); * A genetic divergence (quantitative, not qualitative) of world population (i.e., racial) groups during evolution (Section 11); and * Evidence contradicting the culture-only theory's prediction that group differences in cognitive ability should, in essence, track group differences in identifiable cultural practices and socioeconomic advantage (Section 12). The threads of supporting evidence in Sections 5 (race-common mental architecture) and 9 (regression to the mean) tend to be less well replicated. The most direct individual tests of genetic versus environmental effects on mental ability--transracial adoption (Section 7), racial admixture (Section 8), and behavior genetic modeling of mean group differences (Section 5)--have either been uncommon or fraught with ambiguity. They clearly need to be replicated, as Rushton and Jensen (2005) suggest. Being the most direct tests of the hereditarian hypothesis, however, they are also the most politically sensitive to conduct and thus the least likely to be replicated. The more anomalous findings either require replication (e.g., training helped narrow Black African-White gaps on the Raven Matrices in some South African samples) or constitute a paradox for both theories (the Flynn effect). Consilience The g-based hereditarian theory connects g -related phenomena at the genetic, physiological, psychometric, and socioeconomic levels to form a coherent pattern that yields novel predictions subsequently confirmed; it is consilient. In contrast, culture-only theory has become increasingly tattered over time, patched over by disconnected ad hoc speculation. The g-based hereditarian theory Beginning at the psychometric level, g theory has successfully predicted not only when Black-White IQ differences will remain the same in magnitude but also when they will differ markedly. First the predicted uniformity: Black-White differences are essentially the same in the West (about 1 standard deviation) across decade, age, and country, and they are not substantially or permanently changed by interventions intended to do so (the point of Jensen's 1969 article). This uniformity of gaps extends to three-way comparisons among Blacks, Whites, and East Asians, with East Asians outscoring Whites. Additionally, there is growing evidence for a four-way contrast, with a 1-standard deviation IQ difference--85 versus 70--always favoring Western Blacks (who average around 20% White admixture) over Black Africans. Regarding differences in gaps for a given race, g theory successfully predicts that gaps are successively larger on more g -loaded tests and among children in higher social classes (in which there is more regression to the mean). The gaps thus contract and expand according to shifts in--not culture--but the cognitive demands of the tasks and individuals' genetic relatedness. Next, this systematic patterning of Black-White-East Asian differences in performance can be traced downward from complex IQ tests, to quite elementary cognitive tasks, then to biological processes. So far, the three-way race pattern for IQ/g differences has been replicated with reaction/inspection time and brain size, both of which are highly heritable and correlated with g, as well as with a large collection of purely physical attributes (e.g., twinning). The g factor is highly heritable within races and also has replicated metabolic, electrical, and structural correlates in the brain, most of them also known to be heritable (these studies are mostly with Whites). Although Rushton and Jensen (2005) do not discuss the fact, the nexus of results for g also extends outward into the social realm. For instance, the g factor (indeed, the entire hierarchical structure of mental abilities; Gottfredson, in press) is the same in all races at all ages yet studied. The most g -loaded tests predict school and job performance best, and they predict performance equally well for Blacks and Whites in both the United States and South Africa. These findings have been replicated, but in fewer studies, for other racial and ethnic groups. The g nexus goes full circle, from the social back to the genetic, because major life outcomes such as level of earnings, occupation, and education are also moderately heritable (respectively, about 40%-50%, 50%, and 60%-70%), with half to two thirds of their heritability being joint with g (see Gottfredson, 2002, for a review; studies limited so far to European Whites). The culture-only theory One might be able to interpret many of the individual threads of evidence differently, but it is not clear how culture-only theory could coherently reinterpret the entire interconnected web of evidence. In fact, culture-only theory is notable for retreating from its previous failed explanations into ever-less plausible ones. For example, an early claim, plausible at the time, was that Blacks' mental abilities are underestimated because mental tests are biased against them. Research disconfirmed that claim decades ago. Although some culture-only theorists have never relinquished that belief, others began to press more vigorously the claim that any confirmed cognitive deficits among Blacks result from Blacks having suffered more than Whites from deleterious, IQ-depressing cultural conditions. However, no such factors have been identified in genetically sensitive research. Virtually all social science claims that parental rearing and socioeconomic resources influence IQ rest on studies that confound genetic and nongenetic influences (Scarr, 1997 ). In fact, behavior genetic research suggests that relatively little, if any, of the Western Black-White difference in mature IQ could be due to the shared family factors that the culture-only theory has long presumed important (e.g., poverty, parents' education). In studies that include a broad range of family environments in Western nations, variation in such shared family factors does not create permanent within-race differences in IQ. This does not rule out the possibility that extraordinarily deleterious shared family environments permanently depress IQ, but relatively few children of any race in the West experience such extremes. As the studies of malnourished East Asian adoptees illustrate, extreme deprivation of the sort that humans have always had to contend with (e.g., starvation, infectious disease) seldom permanently impairs cognitive ability to any substantial degree once conditions are rectified. The failure of socioeconomic resources and parenting behavior to have the influence long claimed for them led culture-only theorists to begin stressing more subtle and more race-specific psychological factors as the root cause of group differences in cognitive performance. Examples include racism-depressed motivation, racial stress, race-based performance anxiety ("stereotype threat"), and low self-esteem. All are generally posited to result in some manner from White racism and to disadvantage Blacks at all socioeconomic levels. However, there is no evidence that any of the factors causes either short- or long-term declines in actual cognitive ability. Not all of them (e.g., self-esteem) are lower for Blacks, and none can begin to explain the large array of relevant nonpsychological facts, including why the races also differ in brain size and speed (in milliseconds) of performing exceedingly simple cognitive tasks, such as recognizing which of several buttons on a console has been illuminated (a reaction time task). Because the American Black-White IQ gap has not narrowed since it was first measured in the early 1900s, the psychic injury must also be just as deleterious now as it was during that earlier, more hostile era for Blacks. This seems implausible. Thus, while the proposed psychic insults may temporarily mend some rips in the culture-only theory, they would seem to hold even less promise than the failed socioeconomic ones for explaining the long-standing, worldwide pattern of racial IQ differences and their links to the biological correlates of g. The newly popular assertion that races "don't exist" is a straw man (no one believes that racial groups are biologically distinct entities), which does nothing to nullify the evidence it would have us ignore. In summary, Rushton and Jensen (2005) have presented a compelling case that their 50%-50% hereditarian hypothesis is more plausible than the culture-only hypothesis. In fact, the evidence is so consistent and so quantitatively uniform that the truth may lie closer to 70%-80% genetic, which is the within-race heritability for adults in the West. The case for culture-only theory is so weak by comparison--so degenerated--that the burden of proof now shifts to its proponents to identify and replicate even one substantial, demonstrably nongenetic influence on the Black-White mean difference in g . Any such demonstration must be with genetically sensitive research because most "environments" are partly genetic in origin (different genotypes create and evoke different environments for themselves and their children; Scarr, 1997). Rushton and Jensen's Policy Recommendations: Are They Warranted? Rushton and Jensen (2005) make no recommendations for specific policies and correctly argue that the hereditarian hypothesis implies none in particular. For example, proof that the Black-White IQ gap is partly genetic could, depending on one's goals, be used to justify banning all racial preferences in employment and college admissions or, from a Rawlsian perspective (that genetic advantages are undeserved and unfair), require substantial and permanent racial preferences. As Rushton and Jensen (2005) suggest, g theory can predict fairly accurately how large the racial disparities in achievement will be in different settings, depending on their demands for g and the IQ distributions of the groups involved. It can also provide the menu of tradeoffs between racial parity and aggregate levels of performance under different scenarios for selecting individuals into those settings, and also predict the likely pattern of effects and side effects, by race, of different interventions in education and training (e.g., Sackett, Schmitt, Ellingson, & Kabin, 2001). In short, g theory can detail the challenge before us, and the likely costs and benefits of opting for different goals or means of achieving them. Currently, racial parity in outcomes is often treated as the ultimate standard for fairness and lack of parity as a measure of White racism. For instance, disparate impact in hiring is prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination in the United States, with employers, if sued, then needing to prove themselves innocent. By undermining culture-only explanations of racial inequality, the "provisional truth" of Rushton and Jensen's (2005) hereditarian hypothesis thereby undermines the moral legitimacy of all rationales for racial equalization that posit White misbehavior as its cause. That it might persuade the public to temper or abandon its efforts to close all racial gaps in success and well-being is surely what inflames critics most. Rushton and Jensen (2005) themselves acknowledge that open discussion of genotypic ability differences between the races might harm race relations. Their most vocal critics predict far worse. Widespread acceptance of the hereditarian hypothesis would, they say, put us on the slippery slope to racial oppression or genocide. They do not explain how this would happen but usually imply that because the Nazis were hereditarians, hereditarians must be Nazis at heart. But we can no more presume this than that IQ-environmentalists are Communists because the Communists were IQ-environmentalists. One might note, in addition, that regimes with environmentalist ideologies (Stalin and Pol Pot) exterminated as many of their citizens as did the Nazis, and virtually all the victim groups of genocide in the 20th century had relatively high average levels of achievement (e.g., German Jews, educated Cambodians, Russian Kulaks, Armenians in Turkey, Ibos in Nigeria). The critics' predictions of mass moral madness, like their frequent demonization of scientists who report unwelcome racial differences, seem mostly an attempt to stifle reasoned discussion. But might society be better off not knowing that races differ in g, whether genetic or not? As Glazer (1994, p. 16) asked, "For this kind of truth, ... what good will come of it?" Summing up his argument against candor, he stated: Our society, our polity, our elites, according to Herrnstein and Murray, live with an untruth: that there is no good reason for this [racial] inequality, and therefore society is at fault and we must try harder. I ask myself whether the untruth is not better for American society than the truth. (Glazer, 1994, p. 16) But we must also ask, What harm might the untruth cause? Should we really presume that denying the existence of average racial differences in g has only benefits and the truth only costs? Lying about the enduring Black-White difference in phenotypic g would seem to be both futile and harmful in the long run. It is futile because the truth--and attempts to suppress it--will become increasingly obvious to the average person. Phenotypic differences in cognitive ability have relentless real-world effects that are neither ameliorated nor hidden by claims to the contrary. They also have more obvious effects in more cognitively demanding settings, such as high-level jobs and educational programs, and when entry standards differ by race. Lying about race differences in achievement is harmful because it foments mutual recrimination. Because the untruth insists that differences cannot be natural, they must be artificial, manmade, manufactured. Someone must be at fault. Someone must be refusing to do the right thing. It therefore sustains unwarranted, divisive, and ever-escalating mutual accusations of moral culpability, such as Whites are racist and Blacks are lazy. Does the Hereditarian Hypothesis Leave Us Without Hope? Given what we know about g's nature and practical importance, Black-White genetic differences in g render the goal of full parity in either IQ or achievement unrealistic. This does not rule out the possibility of reducing the disparities, especially in achievement, nor does it provide any reason to "give up" on anyone or conclude that some people "can't learn." In fact, rather than seeking racial parity in all outcomes, we might do better by helping lower-IQ individuals of all races. The weaker learning and problem-solving abilities of people in the lower part of the IQ distribution make their daily lives much more difficult and hazardous. We might especially target individuals below IQ 80 for special support, intellectual as well as material. This is the cognitive ability ("trainability") level below which federal law prohibits induction into the American military and below which no civilian jobs in the United States routinely recruit their workers. It includes about 10% of Whites and a third of Blacks in the United States and the segment of both groups most at risk for multiple health and social problems, regardless of family background and material resources (Gottfredson, 1997, 2002 ). Moreover, the risks that lower-IQ people face in relation to more able individuals have been growing as the complexity of work, health care, and daily life has increased. The g theory suggests that their relative risk might be lowered if (a) education and training were better targeted to their learning needs (instruction is more narrowly focused, nontheoretical, concrete, hands-on, repetitive, personalized, and requiring no inferences); (b) they were provided more assistance and direct instruction in matters of daily well-being that we expect most people acquire on their own (e.g., learning how best to avoid various kinds of illness and injury); and (c) health care providers, social service agencies, and other institutions removed some of the unnecessary complexity (e.g., inadequate or overly complex labeling, instructions, and forms) that often impedes full and effective use of services, medical regimens, and preventive care by the less able. Less favorable genes for g impose constraints on individuals and their helpers, but they certainly do not prevent us from improving lives in crucial ways. References Brody, N. (1992). Intelligence (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. [Context Link] Carroll, J. B. (1997). Psychometrics, intelligence, and public perception. Intelligence, 24(1), 25-52. [Context Link] Deary, I. J. (2000). Looking down on human intelligence: From psychometrics to the brain. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. [Context Link] Fish, J. M. (Ed.). (2002). Race and intelligence: Separating science from myth. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Context Link] Glazer, N. (1994, October 31). The lying game. The New Republic, 15-16. [Context Link] Gottfredson, L. S. (Ed.). (1997). Intelligence and social policy [Special issue]. Intelligence, 24(1) [Context Link] Gottfredson, L. S. (2002). g: Highly general and highly practical. In R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Eds.), The general factor of intelligence: How general is it? (pp. 331-380). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Context Link] Gottfredson, L. S. (in press). Implications of cognitive differences for schooling within diverse societies. In C. L. Frisby & C. R. 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[Context Link] Sackett, P. R., Schmitt, N., Ellingson, J. E., & Kabin, M. B. (2001). High-stakes testing in employment, credentialing, and higher education: Prospects in a post-affirmative-action world. American Psychologist, 56, 302-318. [Context Link] Scarr, S. (1997). Behavior-genetic and socialization theories of intelligence: Truce and reconciliation. In R. J. Sternberg & E. L. Grigorenko (Eds.), Intelligence, heredity, and environment (pp. 3-41). New York: Cambridge University Press. [Context Link] Snyderman, M., & Rothman, S. (1988). The IQ controversy, the media and public policy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press. [Context Link] Accession Number: 00043965-200506000-00004 ---------------------------- Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 320-327 THE CULTURAL MALLEABILITY OF INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE RACIAL/ETHNIC HIERARCHY Suzuki, Lisa1,2; Aronson, Joshua1 1Department of Applied Psychology, New York University 2 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Lisa Suzuki, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, East Building 239 Greene Street 409, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: las1 at nyu.edu We would like to thank John Kugler, Leo Wilton, Jacqueline Mattis, and Muninder Ahluwalia for their feedback on earlier versions of this commentary. Outline * Abstract * Problematic Assumptions Underlying Definitions * Intelligence * Psychometric definition of g * Full scale IQ (FSIQ), g, and racial/ethnic group differences * Genetics and Heritability * Culture * Race * Historical, Contextual, and Testing Issues * Stereotype Threat * Effects of Mediated Learning Experiences * Relative Functionalism * Test Development Practices * Implications * References Abstract This commentary highlights previous literature focusing on cultural and environmental explanations for the racial/ethnic group hierarchy of intelligence. Assumptions underlying definitions of intelligence, heritability/genetics, culture, and race are noted. Historical, contextual, and testing issues are clarified. Specific attention is given to studies supporting stereotype threat, effects of mediated learning experiences, and relative functionalism. Current test development practices are critiqued with respect to methods of validation and item development. Implications of the genetic vs. culture-only arguments are discussed with respect to the malleability of IQ. Rushton and Jensen (2005) review decades of literature to support a genetic basis for the racial/ethnic group hierarchy in intelligence, a position they have held unwaveringly for over 30 years. Their report gives little mention to findings that point to the impact of environment and race (i.e., race as a social construction) on intellectual development or performance--what they term the culture-only perspective. We are not among the culture-only adherents as characterized by Rushton and Jensen. While acknowledging the impact of biological factors on intelligence test performance, we have examined the impact of cultural/environmental factors that affect performance on aptitude and achievement measures. Our work, and that of others (e.g., Aronson, 2002; Sternberg, 1996 ), show us that intellectual performance is much more fragile and malleable than what is often noted in the current literature. The goals of our commentary are to highlight, briefly, assumptions underlying definitions (i.e., intelligence, heritability, genetics, culture, race) and clarify historical, contextual, and testing issues that were only briefly mentioned by Rushton and Jensen. Finally, we comment on the heuristic value and on policy implications of the research. Problematic Assumptions Underlying Definitions Rushton and Jensen's (2005) argument rests on particular definitions of intelligence, genetics (i.e., heritability), culture, and race. It is, in part, differences in definitional assumptions that have allowed researchers to claim support for distinctly different perspectives (i.e., environment vs. genetics) based on the same data (Hayman, 1998). Intelligence Numerous theories of intelligence have been framed and reframed over the years as scholars have ruminated about what constitutes "intelligence." In this section we highlight a few of the issues that complicate the linkage between race and IQ as presented by Rushton and Jensen (2005). As Fagan and Holland (2002) argued, IQ scores represent a composite of how well one does in comparison with one's peers. Test performance is a measure of a person's intellectual ability that is dependent on one's genetic makeup and affected by environment and cultural experiences (e.g., informal learning and schooling). Psychometric definition of g Although different theories of intelligence have been noted throughout the literature, intelligence has been defined to a large extent by the tests designed to measure it. It should be noted that others have challenged the emphasis on measurement and focused on the processing component of intelligence (Fagan, 2000 ). The psychometric definition of intelligence has led to debates about what should constitute the focus of IQ tests. Some have argued that the measurement of intelligence is based primarily on the concept of g (general intelligence) and related subabilities, whereas other researchers have posed that intelligence should be measured as numerous intelligences of more or less equal status (e.g., Gardner, 1999). The focus on g has been predominant in the literature and has proved to be one of the most controversial issues in psychology with respect to race (Deary, 2000). As Rushton and Jensen (2005) concede, researchers have challenged the derivation of g as being a statistical artifact based on factor analysis. Even Spearman's (1927) early work notes the limitations of g as "a hypothetical and purely quantitative factor" (p. 5). Rushton and Jensen cite Spearman's hypothesis indicating that racial group differences would be largest on g-loaded measures. Though they note that particular tasks are more "g saturated" than others, the discussion alludes to g as a unitary construct in relation to various measures of aptitude. This is clearly not the case, given that standardized IQ tests measure multiple abilities and therefore have differential loadings in relationship to g. In response to accusations that g is a statistical "artifact" of factor (or principal-components) analysis, others have noted that "it need not occur. If, in fact, there were mental abilities that were independent of others they would be uncorrelated and they would not load on g" (Hayman, 1998 , p. 9). While this is true in theory, in practice, new IQ tests that do not correlate with popular measures currently in existence are considered to be problematic in terms of validity. It is clear that among the "best sellers" in the testing domain, the way to validate a new test is by correlating it with other well-established cognitive instruments (Valencia & Suzuki, 2001). Based on this practice, it is unlikely that a measure unrelated to g will emerge as a winner in current practice. Thus, it is no wonder that the intelligence hierarchy for different racial/ethnic groups remains consistent across different measures. The tests are highly correlated among each other and are similar in item structure and format. In addition, many predictive validity studies note correlations among IQ, level of education, income, and socioeconomic status. As noted by White (2000), "these are anything but independent variables; they are criteria for one another" (p. 40). Full scale IQ (FSIQ), g, and racial/ethnic group differences The FSIQ is the score that is cited as the basis for the racial/ethnic group hierarchy in intelligence, with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15 (e.g., Wechsler, 1997). As the literature indicates, the FSIQ is not a pure indicator of g. Subtest g loadings for different subtests have been found to vary by racial group. Thus, the order of magnitude for g loadings for Blacks and Whites can be "considerably unique" (Kaufman, 1990, p. 254). Some may argue that this is unimportant, because regardless of whether a test is a pure measure of g, it can still measure something meaningful. Yet given that tests measure more than just g , the psychometric definition of intelligence may be challenged and performance on intelligence tests may be more malleable than assumed in past theories. Genetics and Heritability In support of their genetic arguments, Rushton and Jensen (2005) cite research documenting results of twin and sibling studies, anatomical differences (e.g., brain size, brain metabolism), processing speed differences, as well as other factors that differentiate between racial groups. However, their either-or method of scoring the evidence between the genetic versus culture-only data implies a misleading dichotomy (Deary, 2000 ). There are clear interactions among genetic factors, anatomical structures, culture, and environment. The importance of particular interactions may vary depending on an individual's circumstances and not their racial group membership. The genetic explanation for the racial/ethnic hierarchy of intelligence is also based largely on estimates of heritability. Heritability estimates are based on correlations of traits between biologically related individuals (Lewontin, Rose, & Kamin, 1984 ). Most often, correlations are derived from twin and adoption studies. These are limited given that relatives resemble one another because they share genetic traits and live in similar environments. In addition, research on heritability estimates for minority populations is limited, given small sample sizes and geographic regionalism (Suzuki & Valencia, 1997 ). Thus, the complexities of the culture and genetic interactions make teasing apart the individual contributions of each difficult, if not impossible. Culture Over the years, culture has been assigned various definitions. The complexities and ambiguities of the definition of culture are extensive and incorporate multiple levels of meaning across generations (Geertz, 1973). According to Rushton and Jensen (2005) , there are four data sources that are believed to remove the cultural component in support of the genetic argument. These include neurological studies (e.g., reaction time), physiological studies (e.g., anatomical), inheritance studies, and adoption studies. Limitations in these research bases from a cultural-environmental perspective have also been noted in the literature (Hayman, 1998 ) but are not mentioned by Rushton and Jensen. In particular, the major assumption that differences in culture do not affect these supposedly culture-free measures is questionable. Physiological measures in this case are being used to approximate psychological variables (i.e., intelligence). Evidence supports that culture affects nearly all psychological phenomena; therefore, it is entirely possible that biological indicators of intelligence are also affected. Race Although Rushton and Jensen (2005) adhere to a biological definition of race, other theorists such as Loury (2001) have emphasized the important social underpinnings of this construct. In this view, although race refers to physical characteristics, the emphasis is placed on the social meanings or interpretations of these features made in society. If race is, therefore, as much a social category as a biological one, then it would follow that race differences in intellectual performance are not simply mediated by genetics to the exclusion of cultural and environmental factors. The reality is, "under the skin, there is very little order to real human genetic variation" (Cohen, 2002, p. 211). Cohen (2002) noted that of the 15,000 to 20,000 gene pairs that exist, only 6, or 0.03%, are linked to skin color. In addition, it should be noted that skin color and other phenotypic markers are only grossly related to race (Cohen, 2002). Therefore, the associations made by Rushton and Jensen (2005) between race and IQ are questionable. A related issue with respect to racial group differences in intelligence has been the consistent finding that the variance within racial groups is much greater than that found between racial groups (Valencia & Suzuki, 2001). "Average group differences in g are simply aggregated individual differences in g, so the composition of racial group differences and individual differences are of the same essential nature" (Jensen, 2000, p. 124). This conclusion, however, has been challenged by Fagan and Holland (2002) , whose research suggests that the "average difference of 15 IQ points between Blacks and Whites is not due to the same genetic and environmental factors, in the same ratio, that account for differences among individuals within a racial group in IQ" (p. 382). These results indicate the need to seek further explanations for intelligence differences and to look beyond racially aggregated intelligence test data. Historical, Contextual, and Testing Issues Ruston and Jensen (2005) acknowledge in a few sentences the contribution of other theoretical and empirical work supporting an environmental-cultural perspective. These include stereotype threat, mediated learning, and the impact of relative functionalism with respect to particular marginalized groups. Stereotype Threat Stereotype threat is defined as anxiety regarding one's performance in a particular domain (e.g., intelligence) based on negative stereotypes that exist in reference to one's group (e.g., racial/ethnic group; Aronson, 2002; Steele & Aronson, 1995 ). This anxiety is not related to the individual's ability but rather to the situation in which a negative stereotype (e.g., "Blacks are unintelligent") may be confirmed by one's performance. Evidence for stereotype threat's effects is now abundant. Numerous studies show that it can depress the standardized test performances on a variety of groups for whom stereotypes allege inferior abilities in some domain (see Aronson, 2002, for a review). Rushton and Jensen (2005) minimize the stereotype threat evidence, arguing that it cannot account for cases in which Blacks are in the majority, such as in the sub-Sahara, where despite outnumbering Whites, Blacks perform less well on IQ tests. This work demonstrates that Blacks and Whites experience testing situations differently, often in ways that have a meaningful impact on scores. This effect does not require numerical minority status. Studies have replicated the stereotype threat effect even in all-Black colleges (Aronson, 2002 ), so it is certainly conceivable that sub-Saharan Blacks could be affected. In addition, Rushton and Jensen ignore the fact that people exist in sociopolitical contexts that have a profound impact on their experience and worldview. Sub-Saharan Blacks operate within a context of racism and colonialism that, in turn, creates and shapes stereotypes. Therefore, when one applies tests constructed by Whites within one cultural context (i.e., American) and then applies them to Blacks and Whites in another, the tests do not mysteriously lose their bias. Stereotype threat may therefore partly explain why any group alleged to be inferior may underperform groups thought to be superior, regardless of their numerical representation in a classroom, in a community, or in a country. Effects of Mediated Learning Experiences Studies have also indicated that performance on highly g -loaded tasks can be affected through intervention such as exposure to information and dynamic assessment procedures. For example, Skuy et al. (2002) indicated that performance on a highly g -loaded task (i.e., Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices [RSPM]) can be improved significantly through mediated learning experiences. Skuy et al. concluded that "African students, by virtue of their sociopolitical history, are especially likely to have been deprived of mediated learning experience" (Skuy et al., 2002 , p. 230). Thus, scores on the RSPM may be "more related to schooling, literacy, and the cognitive demands imposed by the environment, and, thus, they may vary more from culture to culture" (Skuy et al., 2002 , pp. 230-231). Other studies also indicate that mediated learning interventions were effective in raising the measured indicators of cognitive ability for Black children (see Fagan & Holland, 2002; Sternberg et al., 2002). Relative Functionalism Rushton and Jensen (2005) also report findings indicating the relatively high intelligence of Asians in comparison with other racial/ethnic groups. They fail to mention explanations such as relative functionalism that have been used to explain the high achievements of Asians in terms of the educational achievement and the intelligence hierarchy. Relative functionalism suggests that groups will pursue opportunities for achievement in particular contexts (e.g., academic, social, vocational) when it is perceived that other avenues to success are closed. Sue and Okazaki (1990) refuted the notion that Asians are genetically superior to other racial/ethnic groups. On the contrary, they cited relative functionalism as accounting for the high achievement of Asian Americans beyond their measured IQ. This theory posits that Asian Americans experience opportunities for upward mobility in educational areas and exclusion from other noneducational pursuits (e.g., entertainment, politics) because of social discrimination or limited English language skills. Though relative functionalism has been difficult to test empirically, anecdotal evidence in terms of the experiences of Asians in the United States seems to support this explanation. Arguments based on relative functionalism could also be made with respect to the limited educational achievements of African Americans due to slavery and historically little access to educational opportunities. Test Development Practices Current test development practices have served to maintain the racial/ethnic group hierarchy of intelligence test scores. Strategies used to address issues of cultural bias are limited to expert review panels and various statistical formulations. However, these practices have been criticized on the basis of their conceptual limitations (Valencia & Suzuki, 2001). Sternberg (2000) criticized current methods of establishing test validity. He noted that intelligence can be represented in terms of a person's talents and the abilities that are valued in a particular sociocultural context. To the extent that one's behavior is discrepant from that valued by society, these individuals will be viewed as less successful and intelligent. Sternberg stated, "tests are validated almost exclusively against the societally approved criteria, giving tests an appearance of validity that they may not have within a given sociocultural group" (Sternberg, 2000, p. 165). Issues of how one adapts to particular environmental contexts that may differ from the status quo are not considered. With respect to specific tests, accusations of "cultural" and "statistical" bias are still noted for popular tests such as the SAT (Freedle, 2003). Freedle (2003) contended that a corrective scoring method, the Revised-SAT (R-SAT), be used to address the "nonrandom ethnic test bias patterns found in the SAT" (p. 1) by focusing on the "hard" items of the SAT. These hard items are often dependent on "rare vocabulary" (Freedle, 2003 , p. 2). Freedle cited work using differential item functioning, which reflects a "small" but "highly patterned nature; that is many easy items show a small but persistent effect of African Americans' underperformance, while many hard items show their overperformance" (Freedle, 2003, p. 3). Freedle referenced the cultural unfamiliarity hypothesis that "many easy verbal items tap into a more culturally specific content and therefore are hypothesized to be perceived differently, depending on one's particular cultural and socioeconomic background" (Freedle, 2003, p. 7). Hard items are less ambiguous given that they are most often used in an academic setting. The R-SAT has reduced the Black-White test gap by one third. Verbal scores are particularly affected as Freedle noted that scores on the Verbal R-SAT are increased by as much as 200 to 300 points for individual minority test takers. Further challenges to the SAT are noted by Rosner (2003) , executive director of the Princeton Review Foundation. His research on the 1998 version of the SAT indicates that the percentage of White students answering questions correctly was higher than the percentage of Black students for all 138 items. Items with higher percentages of Black students answering correctly in comparison with Whites were "systematically" rejected during the pretesting phase of the instrument development (Rosner, 2003). Implications It is evident that to reach Rushton and Jensen's (2005) position on the meaning of the race differences in test performance, one has to accept a particular definition of intelligence and believe in the validity of IQ tests to measure it. There is also growing documentation of the powerful effects of context on intellectual performance (e.g., stereotype threat) and learning (e.g., mediated learning). Even admitting the possibility of racially based differences in intelligence, there appears to be considerable research supporting environmental/cultural justification for race differences--enough at least to make one question a steadfast belief in a biological explanation. It appears that the culture versus genetic debate will continue despite the fact that most would adhere to an interactionist perspective (Reynolds, 2000 ). As noted in the beginning of this article, our concerns focus on the implications of the genetic argument. Where society stands on the malleability of intelligence will affect the allocation of resources (e.g., affirmation action) and the promotion of particular methods of intervention (e.g., educational programs like Head Start). Our commentary has only briefly highlighted the literature with respect to possible cultural and environmental explanations for the racial/ethnic group hierarchy on intelligence tests. The theoretical and empirical work appear promising in this area. In addition, questions may be raised regarding current test development practices (from item selection to validation). There appears to be many opportunities to think "outside the box" in our examination of what constitutes an intelligence measure and how we examine issues of bias (White, 2000). In addition, given growing concerns regarding the usage of intelligence tests for selection purposes, Jensen (2000) suggested using criteria that go beyond standardized measures and the inclusion of indicators of past performance (e.g., work history). The goal for all of us is to discover "truth" in whatever form it may take. Reynolds (2000) called for members of the profession to base interpretations of racial differences on mental tests on empirical data and continually challenge assumptions about the meaning of these differences. 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Intelligence testing and minority students: Foundations, performance factors and assessment issues. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Context Link] Wechsler, D. (1997). Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Third edition. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation. [Context Link] White, S. H. (2000). Conceptual foundations of IQ testing. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6, 33-43. [Context Link] Accession Number: 00043965-200506000-00005 ---------------------- Psychology, Public Policy, and Law Volume 11(2) June 2005 p 328-336 WANTED: MORE RACE REALISM, LESS MORALISTIC FALLACY Rushton, J Philippe1,3; Jensen, Arthur R.2 1Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada 2School of Education, University of California, Berkeley 3 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. E-mail: rushton at uwo.ca Outline * Abstract * Are Black-White IQ Differences Narrowing? * Racial Admixture Studies: Direct Versus Indirect Evidence of Heritability * African IQ Scores * Brain-Size Differences * The Moralistic Fallacy and Public Policy * Conclusion * References Abstract Despite repeated claims to the contrary, there has been no narrowing of the 15- to 18-point average IQ difference between Blacks and Whites (1.1 standard deviations); the differences are as large today as they were when first measured nearly 100 years ago. They, and the concomitant difference in standard of living, level of education, and related phenomena, lie in factors that are largely heritable, not cultural. The IQ differences are attributable to differences in brain size more than to racism, stereotype threat, item selection on tests, and all the other suggestions given by the commentators. It is time to meet reality. It is time to stop committing the "moralistic fallacy" that good science must conform to approved outcomes. In our target article (Rushton & Jensen, 2005 ), we proposed a hereditarian model--50% genetic-50% environmental--to explain the 15- to 18-point average IQ difference (1.1 standard deviations) between Blacks and Whites. We reviewed the worldwide distribution of test scores, the g factor of mental ability, the heritability of within- and between-groups differences, the relation of brain size to intelligence and of race differences in brain size, regression to the mean, cross-racial adoption studies, racial admixture studies, and data from life-history traits and human origins research. We were unable to identify (in Section 12 of Rushton & Jensen, 2005) any reliable environmental contribution to the Black-White IQ difference, including the non-g Flynn effect (i.e., the secular rise in IQ scores). We also found that on many dimensions, East Asian-White differences were a mirror image of Black-White differences. In Section 14, we concluded in favor of an even stronger hereditarian model--80% genetic-20% environmental--based on Jensen's (1998 , p. 443) "default hypothesis" that, by adulthood, genetic and environmental factors carry the same weight in causing group differences as they do in causing individual differences. Gottfredson (2005) is the only commentator who confronted head-on all the empirical, theoretical, and moral issues. The other commentators (Nisbett, 2005; Sternberg, 2005; Suzuki & Aronson, 2005 ) sidestepped the totality of the three-way race-behavior matrix shown in our Table 3. They invoked one or other of the culture-only refrains, that "race" is only "skin deep"; if not, then any difference is too small to matter; if not, then it is due to cultural factors such as statistical artifacts, insensitive tests, racism, stereotype threat, and poverty; if not, then it is poor form to talk about it. They also offered the usual culture-only promissory notes that the Black-White IQ gap can be reduced by economic improvements, interventionist programs, culture-friendly assessment systems, and nonweighted models of gene-environment interaction. Their examples only confirm what we described in Sections 2, 13, and 14: Culture-only theory is a degenerating research paradigm. Are Black-White IQ Differences Narrowing? Nisbett (2005) provided the most empirically forceful of the rebuttals. He claimed that the Black-White IQ difference had decreased to only 10 points in magnitude (<0.70 standard deviations) and that it could be eliminated altogether within 20 to 60 years. He based this assertion on a purported narrowing of the Black-White difference on school achievement tests (reading, vocabulary, and mathematics), which he then extrapolated to the IQ differences. Reality, however, is stubborn. Jensen (1998, pp. 375-376, n. 33, 407-408, 494-495) showed that gains in scholastic achievement do not equal gains in g, and the Black-White differences in g are as large as ever, even for measures of reaction time. Jensen's conclusion dovetails with a meta-analysis by Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, and Tyler (2001) that we cited at the opening of our target article. They found a mean effect size of 1.1 standard deviations that ranged from 0.38 to 1.46 (based on a sample of 6,246,729 from corporate, military, and higher education samples) depending on the g loading of the test. On the question of whether the difference was diminishing, they suggested any reduction was "either small, potentially a function of sampling error ... or nonexistent for highly g loaded instruments [italics added]" (Roth et al., 2001, p. 323). In her commentary, Gottfredson (2005) underscored this message with evidence that no narrowing had taken place in average Black-White differences. She contrasted Black-White differences on highly g-loaded "IQ tests" with those on less g -loaded "school achievement tests." Gottfredson found that Black-White differences on IQ tests remained constant at 1.0 standard deviation throughout the 20th century. She agreed that the differences on school achievement tests did narrow slightly from 1.07 to 0.89 standard deviations from the 1970s to the 1990s when the National Assessment of Educational Progress collected data on 9- to 17-year-olds. However, as she then pointed out, even this 20% reduction in educational achievement (a) had occurred by the mid-1980s and no longer continues, (b) is compatible with the group differences in g, and (c) does not contradict the hereditarian hypothesis. These variable Black-White differences are explained by Spearman's (1927) hypothesis, which states that Black-White IQ differences are "most marked in just those [tests] which are known to be saturated with g" (p. 379; see Section 4 of Rushton & Jensen, 2005 ). The differences are lower on specific tests of memory, or arithmetic and spelling, than they are on general reasoning and transforming information. One implication is that test constructors could in principle reduce the Black-White difference to zero (or even reverse it) by including only non-g items (or those negatively loaded on g). However, they would then be left with a test that had little or no predictive power. Roth et al.'s (2001) meta-analysis concluded: "Overall, the results for both industrial and educational samples provide support for Spearman's hypothesis. That is, black-white differences on measures of cognitive ability tended to increase with the saturation of g in the measure of ability" (Roth et al., 2001, p. 317). There is in fact no good evidence, contrary to Nisbett (2005; and Suzuki & Aronson, 2005), that g is malleable by nonbiological variables. That would require not just evidence that training produces higher scores but evidence of broad transfer of training effects to other highly g-loaded tasks. Extrapolation of the trends into the future may be like extrapolating the non-g secular rise in IQ scores (the Flynn effect; see Section 12). That the Flynn effect is not a Jensen effect (i.e., did not have a loading on the g factor) was corroborated by Wicherts et al. (2004). This is consistent with the lack of convergence of White and Black means across decades despite the overall rise in IQs. Two recent monographs show just how wide the achievement gap between Blacks and Whites remains. First, Thernstrom and Thernstrom (2003) comprehensively documented the scale of the Black deficiency: For example, in reading, history, geography, and mathematics, 12th-grade Black students do not do as well as eighth-grade White students. The authors showed, moreover, that despite numerous, often well-publicized, countywide projects (such as the $2 billion program in affluent Montgomery County, Maryland, as well as the Kansas City, Missouri, school district, under judicial supervision since 1985), no plan has yet made a replicable dent in the Black-White achievement gap (despite low student-teacher ratios and computers in every classroom). Second, Ogbu (2003) studied the persistent underachievement of Black children in the well-to-do suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, as a result of concern raised by their (Black) parents, often highly paid professionals who had moved to the area specifically for its schools. The Black students did better than Black students elsewhere, but there were huge gaps between the Blacks and their non-Black counterparts. Instead of genetic differences in intelligence, both books offer variations on the usual culture-only explanations: poor schools, prejudice, stereotyping, low expectations, and alienation from White cultural domination. Nor do they consider regression to the mean (Section 9) or other genetically influenced traits that differentiate the races and affect attitudes to schoolwork (Section 10). Racial Admixture Studies: Direct Versus Indirect Evidence of Heritability Nisbett (2005) cited seven empirical studies on people of mixed race (based on self-reported ancestry, skin color, and blood groups) as "direct evidence" for the "nil" heritability of Black-White differences. He claimed these outweighed those we had presented (in Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , Sections 7 and 8). It should be noted that Nisbett's studies are peculiarly old, the mean year of publication being 1960 (median year 1966; range = 1930 to 1977). Most are actually very weak and nondecisive, not having been replicated even once. Some are so old and recycled that Jensen (1973 ; see also 1998, pp. 478-483, 612) dealt with them 30 years ago! The blood-group studies could be repeated with better sampling and methods of analysis, but probably never will be because a more powerful tool, DNA analysis, is now available for this purpose. In Section 8, we discussed the DNA methods that can ascertain degree of White ancestry in Black populations. Many other DNA markers identify Black-White differences regardless of how divergent the African ancestry. They have been recommended for evaluating admixture in genetic studies of disease (Collins-Schramm et al., 2002), and we recommend them for genetic studies of IQ. More generally, we do not share Nisbett's contention that "direct" evidence is more relevant than "indirect" evidence unless, of course, the quality, quantity, and consistency of the direct evidence are also stronger than the indirect evidence. Much of evolutionary theory, genetics, chemistry, and physics are essentially based on what Nisbett would call indirect evidence. The hereditarian model of an 80% genetic-20% environmental weighting for the Black-White IQ difference is based on the hypothetico-deductive method (Sections 2 and 14), not a patchwork of narrow, often inconsistent or unreplicated facts. Our "indirect" evidence includes the fact that (a) the gene-environment architectural matrix is the same for both races (Section 5); (b) inbreeding scores from Japan predict mean Black-White differences in the United States (Section 5); (c) regression to the mean operates consistently in both races (Section 9); (d) psychometric g is one and the same factor in both Whites and Blacks (Section 4); and (e) race differences are greatest on the g factor extracted from both IQ tests and reaction time tasks (Section 4). How do the critics explain the fact that the Black-White difference is greater on backward than on forward digit span memory, or on the more complex rather than simple reaction time measures--exactly as predicted by Spearman's (1927) hypothesis? How do they explain the fact that Black students from families with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000 score considerably lower on the SAT than White students from families with $20,000 to $30,000 incomes? How do they explain why social class factors, all taken together, only cut the Black-White achievement gap by a third? Culture-only theory cannot predict these facts; often its predictions are opposite to the empirical results. African IQ Scores Sternberg's (2005) and Suzuki and Aronson's (2005) commentaries about IQ studies from sub-Saharan Africa are written as though we are not aware that African children suffer from parasitic illnesses and malnutrition, speak languages other than English, grow up in cultures of violence, or that mediated learning interventions show increases in African IQ scores. We cited three studies on mediated learning (Section 3), including the one by Skuy et al. (2002) that Suzuki and Aronson referred to in detail, on which Rushton was a coauthor! Rushton's series of studies in South Africa (see Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , Section 3) sought to examine further the well-replicated reports of an African population mean of IQ = 70. He tested to see if IQ scores from highly select students at the prestigious University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg were consistent with the mean IQ of 70 reported for the general African population (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002 ). The results from seven studies conducted at universities in South Africa, including those by other investigators, yield a median IQ of 84 (range = 77 to 103). Assuming that African university students are 1 standard deviation (15 IQ points) above the population mean, the finding of a median IQ of 84 corroborates the general population mean of 70. Although Rushton's mediated learning study with Skuy et al. (2002) on first-year psychology students did raise the IQ of the African students from 83 to 97, this is still low for students at a leading university. Moreover, as we mentioned in Section 3, evidence shows that "coaching" or "teaching-to-the-test" has the effect of denuding the test of its g loading (te Nijenhuis, Voskuijl, & Schijve, 2001). There can be little doubt about the replicability of the mean African IQ of 70, or the impartiality of the investigators, for studies continue to report low scores. In Kenya, Sternberg et al. (2001; see also Sternberg, 2005 ) administered the Colored Progressive Matrices to 85 children ages 12 to 15 years who scored 23.5 out of 36, an IQ equivalent of about 70. In Tanzania, Sternberg et al. (2002; also Sternberg, 2005 ) gave the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task to 358 children ages 11 to 13 who received a perseverative error score of 18.53. Although procedural differences may make the normative comparison problematic, as it stands, this score is equivalent to the fifth percentile on American norms for 12-year-olds (IQ = 75). After training on how to sort attributes, the children's scores went up to 16.5 (lower scores meant fewer errors), but this was still only at the ninth percentile on American norms (IQ < 80). We accept as nonarguable that intervention strategies in Africa such as the elimination of tapeworms, improved nutrition, and provision of electricity, schools, and hospitals will raise test scores. However, we predict they will not remove the substantial differences in average IQ between Africans and Europeans, and that African Americans and other mixed-race populations will continue to average between these "pure" types because of White admixture. As regards Suzuki and Aronson's (2005) reference to "a context of racism and colonialism that, in turn, creates and shapes stereotypes" (p. 324), it should be noted that many of the African countries showing a mean IQ = 70, such as Nigeria and Ghana, have been independent for half a century (and the Caribbean Island of Haiti for one and a half centuries), with no documented improvement in cultural achievement or IQ scores. Around the world, mean IQs differ much less within major population groups than between them. Whites have IQs close to 100 whether they live in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, whereas Blacks in sub-Saharan Africa have IQs closer to 70 regardless of whether they live in East, West, Central, or Southern Africa--or whether the data were collected in the 1920s or the 2000s (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002 ). The IQ of Blacks in the United States is around 85 and hence substantially higher than the IQs of Blacks in sub-Saharan Africa. There are two explanations for this. The first is that American Blacks have about 25% White ancestry. According to genetic theory this would raise their IQs above the level of Blacks in Africa. The second is that American Blacks enjoy much higher standards of living, nutrition, education, and health care than they have in societies run by Blacks. Living in a White society has raised rather than lowered the IQs of American Blacks. Genetic factors explain the worldwide pattern in a way that culture-only theory has not. The worldwide pattern contradicts the hypothesis that the low IQ of American Blacks is due to "White racism." For instance, Mackintosh (1998) wrote, "it is precisely the experience of being black in a society permeated by white racism that is responsible for lowering black children's IQ scores" (p. 152). The IQs of Blacks in Africa is compelling evidence against this theory. The theory that White racism has been responsible for the low IQ of American Blacks always had an ad hoc quality to it because "racism" has had no adverse impact on the intelligence of East Asians and Jews, who average higher scores than do Europeans (Section 1). Brain-Size Differences Brain size and its relation to intelligence are crucial for an evolutionary understanding of the origin of race differences in behavior. Both magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and external head size measures show that brain size is related to IQ within race. Moreover, the three-way pattern of East Asian-White-Black differences in brain size that is found in adulthood (1,364 cm3, 1,356 cm3, and 1,267 cm3, respectively; see Rushton & Jensen, 2005 , Section 6) is detectable at birth. The findings on race and brain size have been repeatedly replicated and found to be robust across variations in measures, methods, and subject samples. How do our critics handle this evidence? Rather than refuting or challenging this evidence, our critics completely ignore it. If two groups differ by 1 standard deviation in brain size and the correlation between brain size and IQ is 0.40, then they will differ by 6 IQ points! Sarich and Miele (2003) estimated the Black-White difference in brain size as 0.8 standard deviations, hence a 5-point IQ difference is attributable to brain size alone. When purer measures of g are used (Jensen, 1998) or a larger standard deviation for brain size (Rushton, 2000), the regression of brain size on g comes to over half the g difference. The Moralistic Fallacy and Public Policy The naturalistic fallacy, identified by philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), occurs when reasoning jumps from statements about what is to prescription about what ought to be . An example of the naturalistic fallacy would be to support warfare if scientific evidence showed that it was to some degree part of human nature. (Warfare may or may not be supportable; the point is only that it is not logical to derive "ought" from "is.") The converse of the naturalistic fallacy is the moralistic fallacy, which occurs when reasoning jumps from prescriptions about what ought to be to statements about what is. It was coined by Harvard University microbiologist Bernard Davis (1978) as a response to calls for ethical guidelines for studying what could purportedly become "dangerous knowledge," such as the genetic basis of IQ. Davis reasoned that chilling an area of inquiry on moral grounds fixes our knowledge in that area, so it becomes, in effect, an illogical effort to derive an "is" from an "ought." An example of the moralistic fallacy is to claim that because warfare is wrong, it cannot be part of human nature. One corollary of the moralistic fallacy is the demonizing of those who refuse to observe it. Another is that someone must be blamed whenever Nature stubbornly refuses to conform. Because Blacks and Whites ought to be equal in IQ and educational outcome but still are not, some who adopt a moralistic position hold, in effect, that White people's attitudes are largely to blame (e.g., Ogbu, 2003; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2003 ). Both fallacies are conjoined when it is argued that whereas minority dislike of Whites is "natural" (because of mistreatment, or because of feeling "culturally dominated"), White prejudice is inherently bigoted and "unnatural." Sternberg (2005) questioned whether we showed "good taste" (p. 300) in researching the hereditarian hypothesis in place of culture-only alternatives such as poverty and racism, and he asked, "What good is research of the kind done by Rushton and Jensen supposed to achieve?" (p. 296). This is worth discussing if only because we will never make progress in race relations if we operate on the belief that one segment of society is responsible for the plight of another segment and that belief is false (see also Gottfredson, 2005). Ever since Gunnar Myrdal's (1944) An American Dilemma was cited in footnote 11 of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (which outlawed racial segregation in the schools), it has become prevalent to attribute the underachievement of Black people to prejudice and discrimination by White people. Myrdal's "Theory of the Vicious Circle" stated: "White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually 'cause' each other" (Myrdal, 1944 , p. 75). Myrdal rejected the idea that heredity had anything to do with "low Negro standards," instead praising anthropologist Franz Boas for subverting the up-to-then accepted hereditarian perspective. Myrdal's (1944) tome (1,500 pages comprising 50 chapters and appendices) identified White people's "attitudes" as the main cause of Black people's problems. He contended, "the scientific facts of race and racial characteristics of the Negro people are only of secondary and indirect importance ... the beliefs held by white people ... are of primary importance" (Myrdal, 1944 , p. 110, emphasis in original). Although Myrdal himself acknowledged the facts that Blacks averaged a "head slightly longer and narrower; cranial capacity slightly less; ... pelvis narrower and smaller" (Myrdal, 1944 , p. 139), he worried that these findings would lead Whites to conclude that Blacks had "lower reasoning power," which would be an "incorrect interpretation" because "no connection has been proved between cranial capacity and mental capacity" (Myrdal, 1944, p. 140). He also alleged there had been "expos?s" of the "distorted ... measurements" (Myrdal, 1944, p. 91) of racial differences in brain size (cf. Jensen, 1998; Rushton, 2000). Conclusion Discussing the totality of the evidence with those who, for whatever reason, refuse to adopt the behavioral genetic or evolutionary perspective, at least when it comes to the nexus of race, intelligence, and genetics, is little more than arguing past each other. There is not space to respond in detail with the data and analyses that refute each and every criticism raised by the commentators. For more information on the g factor as the largest common factor in any battery of diverse cognitive tests, see Jensen (1998, chap. 4); on the scientific definition of race, see Sarich and Miele (2003, chap. 8); on whether the Flynn effect is a Jensen effect, see Wicherts et al. (2004); on transracial adoption studies, see Jensen (1998, pp. 472-478); on Ogbu's class-as-caste hypothesis, see Jensen (1998, pp. 511-513); and on stereotype threat, which is a type of test anxiety, see Jensen (1998, pp. 513-515; see also Sackett, Schmitt, Kabin, & Ellingson, 2001 ). We reviewed all of the relevant evidence on Black-White IQ differences and concluded that hereditarian models of from 50% genetic-50% environmental (Section 2) to 80% genetic-20% environmental (Section 14) provide a far better fit than the culture-only model of 0% genetic-100% environment. Expanding on the application of his "default hypothesis" that Black-White differences are based on aggregated individual differences, themselves based on both genetic and environmental contributions, Jensen (2003) proposed "two laws of individual differences": (a) Individual differences in learning and performance increase as task complexity increases, and (b) individual differences in performance increase with practice and experience (unless there is a low ceiling on proficiency). Consequently, the more we remove environmental barriers and improve everybody's intellectual performance, the greater will be the relative influence of genetic factors (because the environmental variance is being removed). However, this means that equal opportunity will result in unequal outcomes, within families, between families, and between population groups. The fact that we have learned to live with the first, and to a lesser degree the second, offers some hope we can learn to do so for the third. References Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). [Context Link] Collins-Schramm, H. E., Kittles, R. A., Operario, D. J., Weber, J. L., Criswell, L. A., Cooper, R. S., & Seldin, M. F. (2002). Markers that discriminate between European and African ancestry show limited variation within Africa. Human Genetics, 111, 566-569. [Context Link] Davis, B. (1978, March 30). The moralistic fallacy. Nature, 272, 390. [Context Link] Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). 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Black American students in an affluent suburb: A study of academic disengagement. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [Context Link] Roth, P. L., Bevier, C. A., Bobko, P., Switzer, F. S., III, & Tyler, P. (2001). Ethnic group differences in cognitive ability in employment and educational settings: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 54, 297-330. [Context Link] Rushton, J. P. (2000). Race, evolution, and behavior: A life history perspective (3rd ed.). Port Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute. [Context Link] Rushton, J. P., & Jensen, A. R. (2005). Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 235-294. [Context Link] Sackett, P. R., Schmitt, N., Kabin, M. B., & Ellingson, J. E. (2001). High-stakes testing in employment, credentialing, and higher education: Prospects in a post-affirmative-action world. American Psychologist, 56, 302-318. [Context Link] Sarich, V., & Miele, F. (2003). Race: The reality of human differences. 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From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:19:27 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:19:27 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Prospect: (UK) Learning the Thai sex trade Message-ID: Learning the Thai sex trade http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6889 [No. 110 / May 2005] Thailand generates fantasies, both for tourists in search of sex and for aid workers peddling lurid tales of trafficking. The tsunami created more false horror stories. What are the facts of the trade? Alex Renton _________________________________________________________________ Alex Renton is a contributing editor of "Prospect" January was ugly in our part of Bangkok. We live near Soi Nana, off Sukhumvit Road, a famous tourist site catering for a specific sort of visitor: middle-aged western men. They come to Nana for one reason--to have sex cheaply. November to January is high season in Thailand for holidaymakers from northern nations, and the bars and pavements of Nana are packed with hundreds of people buying and selling sex. January was busier than ever this year. It took a struggle every evening to get through the ranks of skinny Thai women and the pale men in shorts picking them over. It was the tsunami, of course. Patong beach, one of the worst hit parts of Phuket island, is among Thailand's best known destinations for tourists seeking sex. So the men transferred their holidays to Bangkok. Happily for them, there was a drought in northeastern Thailand at the end of 2004. The poor rice crop that resulted sent more young girls than usual down from their impoverished villages on the plains of Isaan to harvest the tourists in the big city. This seasonal migration goes back, historians of the sex trade will tell you, to the Vietnam war and the establishment of Thailand as a brothel for American GIs on leave. Prostitution for foreign visitors developed into a major industry, although official Thailand shrouds its economic and social significance in misinformation and a variety of interesting hypocrisies. For a start, no one knows how many foreigners come to Thailand every year to buy sex. Many people have opinions on the matter--not least Thailand's government, which understandably resists the label "brothel of the world." It has threatened to expel journalists who impugn the honour of Thai womenfolk, and forced Longman's dictionary to change its 1993 edition, the entry for Bangkok which included the line "a place where there are a lot of prostitutes." Thailand, in its turn, has been considerably abused by statisticians and NGOs. Claims that there are 2m or more prostitutes in the population of 64m, as was once stated in a Time cover story, are absurd. This much-quoted figure was drawn from the statistics of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an international NGO. If true, it would mean that one in four Thai women between the ages of 15 and 29 in Thailand was a prostitute. Another anti-trafficking organisation, Ecpat (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes), claimed in the mid-1990s that there were up to 800,000 Thai child prostitutes--a lunatic figure that still circulates in the US state department. The trade in humans across the borders of southeast Asia is a real and ugly story, but it continues to throw up incredible statistics--perhaps because it is an issue that generates large amounts of aid dollars. There are 21 UN agencies and NGOs based in Bangkok which concern themselves with trafficking. The Boxing day tsunami predictably generated a trafficking angle. Within a few days, aid agencies led by Unicef were issuing grim warnings of orphans being sold for adoption or the sex trade. The western media got particularly excited by the picture of an angelic Nordic child, supposedly stolen from a Thai hospital. This proved baseless, and there has yet to emerge a single credible example of a tsunami child, blond or brown, being sold. But the story has flourished in the global consciousness, leaving the few facts from which it seeded far behind. The sex industry in Thailand generates fantasies. There are the fantasies of pliant girls which draw the western sex tourists, and then there are the fantasies of lurid exploitation which draw the western moralisers and NGOs. But what is the actual scale of prostitution in Thailand? And how serious is the trafficking problem? Selling sex has been illegal in the kingdom since 1960, but Longman's was right--there are a lot of prostitutes. Ask most sensible analysts in Thailand and you will be told that the number of women employed in prostitution, though a long way short of 2m, is between 150,000 and 220,000 (male prostitutes are a tiny fraction of that). You will also hear that western sex tourism is not economically significant, that most prostitution in Thailand is for local men, and that most of the people who do come from abroad for sex are Asian. There is some truth in this. Sixty per cent of Thailand's 10m visitors in 2003 were from elsewhere in east Asia, and certainly the brothel-lined towns on Thailand's Malaysian border, and the entire streets in Bangkok that are devoted to sex clubs for "Japanese only," are evidence of the sex trade designed for the region. But the proof is there--in Pattaya, in Phuket and on my own street in Bangkok--that huge numbers of non-Asian visitors buy sex in Thailand. But how many? Sex tourism is notoriously difficult to measure. How can you ask at immigration if tourists have arrived in Thailand primarily for the prostitution? How do you know if a man on a business trip is likely to visit a sex venue with his Thai colleagues? Yet while the government, and the tourist and aviation industries, resist attempts to measure the significance of the sex trade, there is one way to gauge the extent of sex tourism, even if in fairly crude terms. A look at the Thai immigration department's statistics, culled from the cards foreigners must fill in on entry, reveals an interesting discrepancy: 60 per cent of visitors are male and only 40 per cent female. The gap grows when you look at arrivals from the rich countries who come to Thailand on holiday in large numbers--the US, Japan, Britain, France. For these places, nearly two males arrived for every female in 2003. More British citizens visit Thailand than those of any other non-Asian country. In 2003 (the last year for which full figures are available) some 545,000 British residents arrived on visits. If you remove the children, and the British citizens visiting for business or reasons other than a holiday, you arrive at about 489,000--314,000 men and 175,000 women. That is 139,000 more British men than women coming to Thailand for a holiday--a gap of 28 per cent. The French gender disparity--60,500 more men than women--is 32 per cent, about the same as that of visitors from the US. The Japanese, at 35 per cent, is the highest--over 300,000 more men. If you take Europe as a whole (though there are some countries, like Finland and Sweden, with virtually no disparity) the gap is 25 per cent--494,000 more men than women. A look at the major rich-nation visitors--those from the US, Australia, Europe and Japan--shows that 952,000 more men than women visited Thailand on holiday in 2003, a disparity of 28 per cent. (The 2004 statistics, not yet complete, will show a slight narrowing of this gap, but a leap of overall numbers of around 20 per cent.) This pattern is unique among major tourist destinations. Take, for example, the Caribbean, another popular tropical destination for economy tourism. Here, the disparity runs at 2 or 3 per cent--the only country with a significant gap in favour of men, nearly 11 per cent, is Cuba, the Caribbean country most notorious for sex tourism. Do nearly a million men from the rich world come to Thailand to buy sex every year? The proposition deserves challenge. Men are capable of holidaying for reasons other than fornication with strangers. There is golf, after all. I asked Sasithara Pichaichannarong, director general of the Thai government's office of tourism development, how she accounted for the discrepancy. "Businessmen!" she said promptly. "They're counted as tourists in the statistics." But I had factored them out--and in any case, only 31,000 Britons stated business rather than holiday as the purpose of their visit in 2003, less than 6 per cent of the total. So did sex explain the extra 950,000 men that arrive from wealthy countries? "Probably," she said. "But sex tourism exists everywhere, not just in Thailand." Not in such numbers, however. These extra men represent 10 per cent of all international arrivals in Thailand. So what are these men doing in Thailand? I took the problem to John Koldowski, managing director for strategic intelligence at the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association. He was understandably cagey: Pata is funded by government, airlines and the hotel industry. But yes, he confirmed, the gender discrepancy is unusual for the global tourist destinations. So these extra men are coming here for sex? "It's that, or the golf," said Koldowski. And why so many Brits? He thought that the backpacker tourists might account for the gap--young British males, following the traditional trail through southeast Asia to see mates or relatives in Australasia. But the average British arrival is aged 40, I pointed out. "Backpacking is a state of mind, not an age thing," pronounced Koldowski. That's an advertising slogan, not an explanation, I said. He became tetchy. "Look, if you are really researching the social factors of this, you should consider if men might come here because they're fed up with the ball-breaking females they have to deal with at home. Maybe they want to meet the sort of gentle, beautiful, kind-hearted women they'll find here." This seemed to answer my question. The men are here for sex and, of course, golf. Or both. Female golf caddies who double as prostitutes are, anecdotally, one of the special features of the courses of Thailand. Sex tourism is a significant part of Thailand's economy. Tourism overall has been the country's major foreign currency earner since 1982. In 2003, international tourism alone accounted for 309.26bn baht (?4.56bn) in receipts--about 6 per cent of GDP--ranking Thailand 15th in the world. That year, the extra adult male holidaymakers from around the world probably generated almost ?1bn--over 1 per cent of Thailand's GDP. But prostitution in Thailand is much bigger than just the trade for tourists. There is no official measurement of the economics, but the clues are there. Many Thai men are habitual users of prostitutes, and the trade, while illegal, carries less stigma than in most countries and is acknowledged by the government as a source of revenue. In January, the Thai excise department announced that it was going to seek a larger take in the so-called "sin tax" from massage parlours, a common brothel front. But Thai tax collection is notoriously inefficient. A better indicator of the money around in the prostitution business came last year from Chuwit Kamolvisit, who was employing 2,000 prostitutes in six luxury massage parlours in Bangkok (which he liked to refer to as "semen collection centres"). Chuwit, the "Tub Tycoon," is an amusing rogue--"very un-Thai," they say here--who in February 2005 became an opposition member of parliament with an anti-corruption agenda. During his campaign he opened his books to the press, revealing to a largely unsurprised nation that his monthly bill for bribes and payoffs to the Bangkok authorities came to ?160,000. Separately, Thailand's National Economic and Social Advisory Council (Nesac) said that massage parlour owners pay ?62m a year in police bribes. The income directly generated by prostitution was estimated at 100bn baht (?1.5bn) by the respected Thai economist Pasuk Phongpaichit in a 1998 study. This is about a third of the value of the agriculture sector, which employs more people than any other in Thailand. Westerners form an important--albeit not the major--part of this economic picture. A few have settled here because of it, calling themselves "sexpatriates." In towns like Pattaya on the Gulf of Thailand, on Phuket island and in the sex trade districts of Bangkok, they run bars, hotels and brothels, mediating the transactions between male tourists and Thai women. They are vocal on websites and in local publishing ventures, churning out guides for sex tourists. Some of these men see themselves as exiles, refugees from the "feminazis" who are crushing the spirit of the western male. Here, the old order of the sexes still reigns. Women know their place, they wash your feet before they have sex with you, they say thank you and help you in the shower afterwards. And, of course, westerners' savings and pensions go a long way. Beer is a dollar a bottle, and a woman for the night available for ?10 or less. It's the "last place you can be a white man," says one bar-owning sexpat on his website. Their guidebooks picture a world of grasping, stupid peasant girls, known as "LBFMs" (little brown fucking machines), out to entrap and rip off the honest, randy male visitor, who must treat them firmly and be sure to stamp out any nonsense for the sake of the next bloke who comes along. Books like Sex, Lies & Bar Girls are available in mainstream shops, including at Bangkok airport. They are full of robust advice on "scrogging" as many Thai women in as short a time and for as little money as possible. One of the self-justifications put forward by the sexpats is that the business makes everyone happy--the exploitation is two-way. It is not like normal prostitution, you hear. All the girls are smiling! ("All smile, all the time!" is an official tourism slogan). But you don't have to be a feminazi to see that the power relationship is grossly unbalanced. The real choices lie with the man with the wallet. The famous Thai smile hides a lot. The women of rural Thailand who descend on the tourist areas are driven by poverty. Around a third of the Thai population lives on less than $2 a day; in the agricultural northeast, where farmers are beset by drought and collapsing prices (chiefly because of the dropping of trade barriers with China), one in six people lives on less than $1 a day. A high proportion of prostitutes--over 60 per cent, according to some surveys--have left children at home in the countryside. In traditional Thai society, a girl's first duty is the support of her family. Seventy-five per cent of prostitutes, according to one study, entered the trade after the failure of a relationship--"damaged goods" in a society that still puts a high premium on female virginity. Another common reason given for entering prostitution is the pressure of family debts. And the gains to be had are fabulous. The price of sex from a street prostitute in Nana starts at perhaps 500 baht, a little over ?7. That is a fortnight's living costs in the countryside, or half a week's salary for a Thai police constable. There is little doubt that the sex trade is vital to the economy of the poor northeast, which is another of the well-rehearsed justifications of the sexpats. Tales of bar girls who retire rich and happy to their home villages--some of them with a farang (foreign) husband--are many, and there is no social disgrace attached. "The land a girl child ploughs lies between her legs," goes a saying from rural Thailand. But some women are broken in the process, and on my street, occasionally, you can see the damage that results. Still, there is a grain of truth in the sexpat argument. Soi Nana is not like the grim red light districts of London or New York, with their backdrop of organised crime, violence, and drug use. The only fight I have seen on Nana was between drunken Englishmen. Amphetamines are widely used by the prostitutes, it is said, but not heroin. I have spotted one used syringe in the gutter in our four years here: there was worse to be seen nightly on the crack-infected street in west London where we used to live. Most women soliciting rich-world foreigners are relatively free agents. Their worst affliction appears to be the corrupt Bangkok police. In Thailand, the industry is not generally pimp-driven and, although technically illegal, its openness undoubtedly provides some protection for women. The sex tourist is more likely to visit a bar or a massage parlour than a traditional "closed" brothel (these appear to be more common for the domestic sex trade). NGOs say that condom use is close to 100 per cent, and HIV infection has been in decline in Thailand for a decade. My family and I have become blas? about the street over the four years since we rented a house off Nana. We used to stare, transfixed by the grotesque Beauty and the Beast scenes: slender girls being slobbered over by beery skinheads, the doddery grandfathers being escorted to hotels by tiny teenagers. But you come to realise these objections are chiefly aesthetic. The tourists, as opposed to the sexpats, are not so bad--often ignorant, yes, but lonely and innocent too. We have only once on our street seen a girl who was plainly underage. She was being bundled into a car by two western men--we tried to get the police to stop the vehicle but they were not interested. (Of the 21 agencies and NGOs working from Bangkok on the trafficking problem, not one has managed to set up a 24-hour hotline where foreign visitors can report it actually happening.) On my street you get snapshots of sadness--the look of a woman as she turns her face from her elderly male escort, her smile slipping to reveal what she is really thinking; the desperate patience of the older women, not pretty enough any longer to be attached to a bar, who must patiently wait in line under the glaring lights of the Nana Hotel sign. These can make you feel like crying for humanity, but, rationally, you must think, this is what globalised tourism and the laws of supply and demand will produce. What specifically should we object to? To stamp out the sex trade would cause enormous harm in a country that fails abjectly, despite its relative wealth, to provide for its poor. After four years, I find that the only aspect that can get me really heated about sex tourism in Thailand is the hypocrisy, from both the trade's apologists and its enemies. There is another sex-related industry in Bangkok--run by those who survey and lobby, preach and analyse and argue endlessly with each other about how to stop or curb prostitution and human trafficking. There is a harvest here, too, for cultural anthropologists and social historians. The books on why people have sex in Thailand line the bookshop shelves next to those on how to have sex in Thailand. There are socioeconomists analysing the "incomplete dialectic between tourist and prostitute"; anthropologists on the Foucaultian relationship between a Thai prostitute and her body; social historians on the growth of the myth of the exotic Orient, as promulgated by Puccini, Gauguin or the young British men who ran the trading posts of the East India Company. There are, as Pasuk Phongpaichit points out, many people beyond the prostitutes themselves who make a living on the back of Thailand's sex trade. And there is one aspect about which everyone agrees something must be done: "trafficking," the sale of women and children into the sex trade. Worrying about trafficking is another business, employing its own community of expats in Bangkok, which is the southeast Asian hub for many international NGOs. Thirteen UN agencies and eight international NGOs are involved in anti-trafficking work, so many that a further UN body (Uniap, the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region) was established in 2000, employing 18 people, to co-ordinate them and all the international NGOs (Save the Children, Oxfam and so on) which run programmes or policies on trafficking in the six countries through which the Mekong river flows. Donors--particularly the US and British governments--throw millions of dollars at trafficking every year. Spending on the issue has shot up during the Bush administration--it was $50m in 2003--for which the trafficking of women and children for sex is an ideal target for foreign aid. "It fits the demands of an ideological morality that says that in essence all sex issues should be dealt with by abstinence. And it's about defenceless kids and teenagers," said one former Unicef worker. Another who was involved in the agency's anti-trafficking programmes in east Asia told me that within Unicef they are seen as "a great collecting bucket," a reliable method of raising funds that can then be spent on less donor-thrilling projects, like education or immunisation. Thus hardly a fortnight in Bangkok goes by without another seminar, conference or children's forum, organised by Uniap or others. In November, I dropped in on the "post-Yokohama mid-term review of the east Asia and Pacific regional commitment and action plan against commercial sexual exploitation of children," held by Unescap (UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific), Unicef and Ecpat. This three-day meeting, attended by delegates from more than 20 countries, was to report on what had happened since the last such meeting three years earlier in Yokohama. The only concrete development, it seemed, was the signing in Burma a month earlier by ministers from Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam of a "memorandum of understanding to co-ordinate action to prevent trafficking." This was being hailed as a big achievement. But it was also noted that "a lack of reliable data remains a major hindrance to the implementation of well-targeted and effective measures to stop the commercial sexual exploitation of children." That is an understatement. Everyone in the anti-trafficking industry is painfully aware that there is no real data at all. There are gruesome anecdotes and a few unimpressive figures for arrest and prosecution, but hard facts do not exist. You are told that each year many Thai women are sold into the sex trade in Japan, that they arrive thinking they are going to work as nannies or waitresses and find themselves saddled with "debts" of $25,000-45,000 and forced to work them off by yakuza gangsters in brothels known as "black jails." Such was the report of human rights lobbyist Kinsey Dinan, published by the Harvard Asia Centre in 2002. But that article, like so many others, made no attempt to attach numbers to the stories. Dinan's "several-year long research project" with Human Rights Watch merely says she "found that thousands of women from Thailand were being trafficked into... Japan each year." That is it. The truth is there are no useful statistics on this issue in Japan, other than some on the female visa overstayers (10,000 from Thailand in 2001). But the NGO lobbyists need better than that to tickle the donors. There are much more frightening ones around, and they are widely quoted: Unicef's estimate, for example, that 1.2m children (meaning under-18 year olds) are trafficked every year, a third of them in Asia. At a recent anti-trafficking meeting of international NGOs, I met a woman from Oxfam India who told the meeting that in Delhi alone child-trafficking was a business worth $1m a day. No one raised an eyebrow. Another agency claims the child sex trade has a $7bn annual turnover in Asia (a figure the US state department gives as the global value of the human trafficking trade). These numbers are endlessly parroted by lobbyists and journalists, and never, it seems, challenged. The trade in humans is an area where anyone seems pretty much able to say anything. David Feingold, international co-ordinator on HIV and trafficking for Unesco, analyses the statistics on these issues, but even he has not been able to get Unicef to explain its figure of 1.2m children. "Trafficking is a dangerous word," Feingold says. "It stops the brain working." If you ask the agencies how they get these figures, you get a weary response: "Why are you journalists so obsessed with statistics?" At the post-Yokohama mid-term review, I put the question to Anupama Rao Singh, regional director of Unicef for east Asia. She replied that she understood the journalistic "compulsion" for figures, but added, "I must make one point: the trafficking of children for sexual exploitation is one of the worst and most abhorrent abuses, one that cannot be condoned, irrespective of the numbers!" For this, she earned a cheer from her colleagues. Question the figures and you will be told you are helping the exploiters. A researcher I know who has worked in east Europe and west Africa on trafficking surveys for Unicef and Save the Children says that the problem lies in the fact that the data everyone wants are near impossible to come by. "It's not like measuring HIV infections, or seeing if children have access to safe drinking water. How do you extrapolate from the anecdotes? How do you separate a woman whose uncle gave her a lift to the big city to help her find work from a woman whose uncle paid her mother money to be allowed to put her to work?" But the commissioners of reports demand hard statistics. "The pressure to fudge them is enormous." Feingold has a favourite example: the commonly used figure of 5-7,000 girls trafficked each year from Nepal to India. "It dates from a 1986 NGOs' seminar, when it was, I gather, a wild guess, and it was published in the Times of India in 1989. It has been in use ever since." After we met, I searched for the terms "5,000-7,000 Nepali girls" in Google and got 110 results, most of them relevant and appearing in documents by eminent organisations, including the World Bank and USAid. The most recent references to this 19-year-old "wild guess" were dated February 2005, and appeared in a Unicef paper and on the website of the Catholic aid agency APHD. Bad statistics have a habit of reproducing and mutating. "The US government," says Feingold, "recently revised its figure of 700,000-2m people trafficked worldwide--a figure which no one could possibly know. On the state department website, this is now down to 600-800,000. Then they say that 80 per cent of these are female and 50 per cent minors. How could anyone possibly know that? I've been given a private explanation of their methodology and it's ludicrous." I asked Anne Horsley for statistics. She is project co-ordinator for the International Organisation for Migration, working on "long-term recovery and reintegration assistance to trafficked women and children." Based in Phnom Penh, Horsley seemed more hands-on than most trafficking lobbyists. Cambodia to Thailand is meant to be a big export route for women and children. There is migrant labour going, legally and illegally, across these borders in the hundreds of thousands. Horsley, though, was also reluctant to be specific. Her rehabilitation project dealt with "a few hundred" Cambodian children each year, repatriated from Thailand. Some 25 per cent had had sexual experience, and two per cent said they had been involved in prostitution. If "a few hundred" were, say, 400, then 2 per cent would amount to eight under-18 year olds. Shortly after the tsunami, Unicef started raising the spectre of orphans from the disaster being preyed upon and sold for sex, quoting "reports" of this having already happened. This was seized on by other agencies, and doubtless brought more money into appeal funds that were, as some organisations will admit, already subscribed beyond the organisations' ability to spend the cash. (Privately, the agencies are staggered at the success of their appeals. One international NGO says it will take eight years to spend the money donated in the first month after the wave hit.) No one at Unicef has come up with a credible example of a tsunami orphan being sold for sex--despite journalists' repeated requests. A British aid agency worker returning from the devastation in Aceh said to me: "Well, I heard that only one case of that actually having happened has been proved. But the good thing about that story is that it made the Indonesians wake up to the fact that there could be a problem, and that their people needed training to look out for it." The statistics are seductive: a powerful tool for raising money, but also, as in Aceh, for embarrassing complacent governments whose women and children are demonstrably vulnerable. Some shocking stats and opprobrium in the media have got the Thai government to beef up its laws and policing, and in Thailand, arrests on trafficking or child abuse charges have risen a little. In May 2004, Thailand's autocratic prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced a "war on trafficking and prostitution," shortly after the International Labour Organisation (ILO) announced that 200-300,000 children were trafficked for sex into Thailand annually (though it is hard to see how they would fit into an existing population of 200,000 prostitutes), and shortly before the US state department released a report putting Thailand on its "watch list" of countries not working adequately to prevent human trafficking. Special police squads now exist to track the trafficking gangs, which are said to number about 30 in Thailand, and to have links to 70 or 80 in other countries; and in April 2005 a deputy prime minister was put in charge of a new human trafficking control board. But arrests and prosecutions remain few. In December 2004, in a report on one of the special 36-man anti-trafficking squads now patrolling 1,165km of the northern Thai-Burmese border, it was revealed that not a single arrest had been made, nor any victim rescued. In fact, in the first year of operation, on the entire Burmese border only four arrests had been made and four suspected trafficking victims freed. Many things can be deduced from this--not least the inefficiency of the Thai police. But a worrying question remains: how can you stop the trafficking of children for sex if you cannot find out where or how or in what numbers they are being trafficked? Some of the agencies are beginning to admit that bad numbers can undermine their credibility. Ecpat, the child prostitution agency, does impressive work at the "demand side," including the training of hotel staff in Thailand to report on customers who may be using underage prostitutes. Formerly one of the worst offenders with exaggerated numbers, Ecpat now bases its statistics on figures provided by national governmental bodies, which are likely to be underestimates. In 2003, the ILO started a $10m, five-year project to combat trafficking in Thailand and four neighbouring countries, largely funded by Britain's department for international development. Allan Dow, communications officer for the project, partially disowns that ILO figure of 200-300,000 children trafficked into the region. "We've stopped using numbers now. We know the problem is serious: there's no point coming up with unreliable statistics. Not having numbers doesn't mean we don't know what we're doing... but we have to admit that the current methodology for getting statistics doesn't work." Trafficking is a real problem and, though there is little prospect of it being measured accurately, circumstances suggest that it will grow. Tourism into southeast Asia is forecast to increase by 14 per cent a year. Even after the tsunami, 13m people are expected to visit Thailand during 2005, and the kingdom plans to push that to 20m by 2008, which would make it the world's seventh most popular destination, just after Britain. And sex is demonstrably one of Thailand's major tourist attractions. What must concern those who, like me, take a liberal view of the sex trade is that underage prostitution is an inevitable part of it. Teenagers, research shows, are brought into the trade not principally because of the dedicated paedophiles we read so much about, but because youth is a valuable commodity. Men like to buy sex with young women: the young poor are the most easily obtained for them. A few in the anti-trafficking community admit they have to reassess their approach. Amid the self-congratulation of the post-Yokohama meeting, there was one note of caution sounded. Vitit Muntarbhorn, a law professor and former special rapporteur for the UN secretary general on child prostitution and trafficking, told the meeting: "We've focused a lot on supply issues. It's time we placed as much focus on demand." The professor is a Thai, but his own country is set, if anything, to increase the demand for prostitutes. "The Thai government is committed to quality tourism," said Sasithara Pichaichannarong of the office of tourism development, "and that includes being anti-sex tourism." She gave no details of exactly what the kingdom is doing to oppose sex tourism--though if you tried to set up a sex tourism business today you would probably be discouraged. It was not always thus. In the 1980s, overt sex tourism flourished with considerable government encouragement. Doctors were even asked to play down the threat of Aids in order not to put off tourists. Quietly, though, Thailand appears to have accepted its role as provider of sexual services to the rest of the planet. All that can be realistically asked is that it sets about doing it as cleanly and kindly as possible: that means tackling poverty in the rural north and corruption in the police force, as well as properly addressing the problem of the trafficked and the underage. The country would be aided in the latter by more honesty from the NGOs who have been given so many millions of aid dollars to tackle these problems. Travelling to Thailand for sex will continue. The brand is established. The beautiful young woman wrapped in silk with her demure but inviting smile is a feature of Thai travel posters across the world. The promise is of "happiness on earth"--the delights of paradise just a cheap flight away. Most of the traditional tourist attractions are disappearing. The country's beaches are overexploited, its forests shrinking and the islands poisoned by tourists' waste. But Thailand and its neighbours retain one renewable resource for the tourists that is not in danger of running out--the supply of poor, smiling women. End of the article Related Subjects [38]Southeast Asia (21), [39]NGOs and charities (12), and [40]Love and sex (36). [41]Southeast Asia, [42]NGOs and charities, and [43]Love and sex. By this Author [45]Out of order [46]Alex Renton Some parts of Iraq face not merely political chaos but long-term social breakdown Jul 2003 [47]Press mess [48]Alex Renton References 38. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=137&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 39. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=186&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 40. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=167&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 41. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=137&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 42. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=186&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 43. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?subject=167&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 44. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=6889#contactForm 45. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5634&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 46. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?author=12&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 47. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=3363&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 48. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/list.php?author=12&AuthKey=88f209b9fb2e6c89f92dd8e7c037ca91&issue=505 From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:19:45 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:19:45 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NY Press: Matt Taibbi column about Thomas Friedman's Flattening Message-ID: Matt Taibbi column about Thomas Friedman's Flattening http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=12841 5.4.20 I think it was about five months ago that Press editor Alex Zaitchik whispered to me in the office hallway that Thomas Friedman had a new book coming out. All he knew about it was the title, but that was enough; he approached me with the chilled demeanor of a British spy who has just discovered that Hitler was secretly buying up the worlds manganese supply. Who knew what it meantbut one had to assume the worst "It's going to be called The Flattening," he whispered. Then he stood there, eyebrows raised, staring at me, waiting to see the effect of the news when it landed. I said nothing. It turned out Alex had bad information; the book that ultimately came out would be called The World Is Flat. It didn't matter. Either version suggested the same horrifying possibility. Thomas Friedman in possession of 500 pages of ruminations on the metaphorical theme of flatness would be a very dangerous thing indeed. It would be like letting a chimpanzee loose in the NORAD control room; even the best-case scenario is an image that could keep you awake well into your 50s. So I tried not to think about it. But when I heard the book was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. I'll give you an example, drawn at random from The World Is Flat. On page 174, Friedman is describing a flight he took on Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Hartford, Connecticut. (Friedman never forgets to name the company or the brand name; if he had written The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa would have awoken from uneasy dreams in a Sealy Posturepedic.) Here's what he says: I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for space in the overhead bins. Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that hunts. Name me one. This would be a small thing were it not for the overall pattern. Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses. On an ideological level, Friedman's new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we're not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we're not in Kansas anymore.) That's the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that's all there is. It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case. Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese. And that's basically what he's doing here. The internet is speeding up business communications, and global labor markets are more fluid than ever. Therefore, the moon is made of cheese. That is the rhetorical gist of The World Is Flat. It's brilliant. Only an America-hater could fail to appreciate it. Start with the title. The book's genesis is conversation Friedman has with Nandan Nilekani, the CEO of Infosys. Nilekani causally mutters to Friedman: "Tom, the playing field is being leveled." To you and me, an innocent throwaway phrasethe level playing field being, after all, one of the most oft-repeated stock ideas in the history of human interaction. Not to Friedman. Ten minutes after his talk with Nilekani, he is pitching a tent in his company van on the road back from the Infosys campus in Bangalore: As I left the Infosys campus that evening along the road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: "The playing field is being leveled." What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened... Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat! This is like three pages into the book, and already the premise is totally fucked. Nilekani said level, not flat. The two concepts are completely different. Level is a qualitative idea that implies equality and competitive balance; flat is a physical, geographic concept that Friedman, remember, is openly contrastingironically, as it werewith Columbus's discovery that the world is round. Except for one thing. The significance of Columbus's discovery was that on a round earth, humanity is more interconnected than on a flat one. On a round earth, the two most distant points are closer together than they are on a flat earth. But Friedman is going to spend the next 470 pages turning the "flat world" into a metaphor for global interconnectedness. Furthermore, he is specifically going to use the word round to describe the old, geographically isolated, unconnected world. "Let me... share with you some of the encounters that led me to conclude that the world is no longer round," he says. He will literally travel backward in time, against the current of human knowledge. To recap: Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman "had Lufthansa business class." When he reaches IndiaBangalore to be specifiche immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: "Gigabites of Taste." Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: "No, this definitely wasn't Kansas." After golf, he meets Nilekani, who casually mentions that the playing field is level. A nothing phrase, but Friedman has traveled all the way around the world to hear it. Man travels to India, plays golf, sees Pizza Hut billboard, listens to Indian CEO mutter small talk, writes 470-page book reversing the course of 2000 years of human thought. That he misattributes his thesis to Nilekani is perfect: Friedman is a person who not only speaks in malapropisms, he also hears malapropisms. Told level; heard flat. This is the intellectual version of Far Out Space Nuts, when NASA repairman Bob Denver sets a whole sitcom in motion by pressing "launch" instead of "lunch" in a space capsule. And once he hits that button, the rocket takes off. And boy, does it take off. Predictably, Friedman spends the rest of his huge book piling one insane image on top of the other, so that by the endand I'm not joking herewe are meant to understand that the flat world is a giant ice-cream sundae that is more beef than sizzle, in which everyone can fit his hose into his fire hydrant, and in which most but not all of us are covered with a mostly good special sauce. Moreover, Friedman's book is the first I have encountered, anywhere, in which the reader needs a calculator to figure the value of the author's metaphors. God strike me dead if I'm joking about this. Judge for yourself. After the initial passages of the book, after Nilekani has forgotten Friedman and gone back to interacting with the sane, Friedman begins constructing a monstrous mathematical model of flatness. The baseline argument begins with a lengthy description of the "ten great flatteners," which is basically a highlight reel of globalization tomahawk dunks from the past two decades: the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Netscape IPO, the pre-Y2K outsourcing craze, and so on. Everything that would give an IBM human resources director a boner, that's a flattener. The catch here is that Flattener #10 is new communications technology: "Digital, Mobile, Personal, and Virtual." These technologies Friedman calls "steroids," because they are "amplifying and turbocharging all the other flatteners." According to the mathematics of the book, if you add an IPac to your offshoring, you go from running to sprinting with gazelles and from eating with lions to devouring with them. Although these 10 flatteners existed already by the time Friedman wrote The Lexus and the Olive Treea period of time referred to in the book as Globalization 2.0, with Globalization 1.0 beginning with Columbusthey did not come together to bring about Globalization 3.0, the flat world, until the 10 flatteners had, with the help of the steroids, gone through their "Triple Convergence." The first convergence is the merging of software and hardware to the degree that makes, say, the Konica Minolta Bizhub (the product featured in Friedman's favorite television commercial) possible. The second convergence came when new technologies combined with new ways of doing business. The third convergence came when the people of certain low-wage industrial countriesIndia, Russia, China, among otherswalked onto the playing field. Thanks to steroids, incidentally, they occasionally are "not just walking" but "jogging and even sprinting" onto the playing field. Now let's say that the steroids speed things up by a factor of two. It could be any number, but let's be conservative and say two. The whole point of the book is to describe the journey from Globalization 2.0 (Friedman's first bestselling book) to Globalization 3.0 (his current bestselling book). To get from 2.0 to 3.0, you take 10 flatteners, and you have them convergelet's say this means squaring them, because that seems to be the ideathree times. By now, the flattening factor is about a thousand. Add a few steroids in there, and we're dealing with a flattening factor somewhere in the several thousands at any given page of the book. We're talking about a metaphor that mathematically adds up to a four-digit number. If you're like me, you're already lost by the time Friedman starts adding to this numerical jumble his very special qualitative descriptive imagery. For instance: And now the icing on the cake, the ubersteroid that makes it all mobile: wireless. Wireless is what allows you to take everything that has been digitized, made virtual and personal, and do it from anywhere. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you a Thomas Friedman metaphor, a set of upside-down antlers with four thousand points: the icing on your uber-steroid-flattener-cake! Let's speak Friedmanese for a moment and examine just a few of the notches on these antlers (Friedman, incidentally, measures the flattening of the world in notches, i.e. "The flattening process had to go another notch"; I'm not sure where the notches go in the flat plane, but there they are.) Flattener #1 is actually two flatteners, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the spread of the Windows operating system. In a Friedman book, the reader naturally seizes up in dread the instant a suggestive word like "Windows" is introduced; you wince, knowing what's coming, the same way you do when Leslie Nielsen orders a Black Russian. And Friedman doesn't disappoint. His description of the early 90s: The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever beenbut the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned. How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened? Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God? Volume 18, Issue 16 From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:19:57 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:19:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BBC: Brain scan 'sees hidden thoughts' Message-ID: Brain scan 'sees hidden thoughts' http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4472355.stm 2005/04/25 00:05:47 GMT Scientists say they can read a person's unconscious thoughts using a simple brain scan. Functional MRI scans plot brain activity by looking at brain blood flow and are already used by researchers. A team at University College London found with fMRI they could tell what a person was thinking deep down even when the individual was unaware themselves. The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, offer exiting new ways to probe the subconscious, said experts. In the experiment, Dr Geraint Rees and Dr John-Dylan Haynes measured brain activity in the visual cortex - the part of the brain that deals with information sent by the eyes - while volunteers looked at different test objects on a computer screen. By looking at the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan results, the scientists were able to predict what had been displayed on the computer screen better than volunteers themselves. When two images were flashed in quick succession, the volunteers only consciously saw the second one and were unable to make out the first. But the brain scans clearly distinguished the patterns of brain activity created by the "invisible" images. Mind-reader Similarly, a separate study by Japanese researchers, published in the same journal, found that when people were shown stripes tilted in different directions, there were subtle differences in the pattern of brain activity obtained by fMRI. The scientists built a computer program to recognise these different patterns and found they could predict what direction stripes had been shown with remarkable accuracy. When volunteers were shown a plaid pattern made up of two different sets of stripes but asked to pay attention to only one set, the program was able to tell which one the subjects were thinking about. Dr Rees said: "This is the first basic step to reading somebody's mind. If our approach could be expanded upon, it might be possible to predict what someone was thinking or seeing from their brain activity alone." Dr Adrian Burgess, from the department of cognitive neuropsychology at Imperial College London, said: "The technique is bringing out information that has not been available from MRI scans before. "It could potentially be used to find out people's latent attitudes and beliefs that they are not aware of. "You could use it to detect people's prejudices, intuition and things that are hidden and influence our behaviour." He said it might be possible to dip into people's repressed memories or even see people's hidden fears and phobias. "That's a long way off, but it is exciting." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:20:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:20:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Rock Christianity Message-ID: Rock Christianity When I sent out the Will to Live alternative to a living will yesterday, I should have called to your attention the near absence of any concern about costs or whether the taxpayers would have to foot the bill to keep others alive. Certainly, the entire GDP could be spent on keeping the elderly alive, and so choices do have to be made. It seems, though, that the state of passion in the culture wars has so escalated that details over who pays have been dropped. I should also have added, and not just to this story, that in practice Evangelical Christianity means Rock Christianity, not the rock in Galilee on which Peter supposedly founded the One True Church of Jesus Herman Christ, but Rock 'n' Roll music softened into "Christian Rock." Actually, it is noisier than the early rock of Little Richard and Elvis Presley, as far as loud bass is concerned. The early records sound tinny in comparison with "Christian Rock." I recall a teevee special on the first anniversary of the bombing of Federal bureaucrats in Oklahoma City. Shown was a splendid Roman Catholic church (by their standards, which I have always found too gaudy) but with this godawful "Christian Rock" music and the mourners doing the Twist in the aisles. I should not complain. Chubby Checker claimed to be able to teach the Twist in 30 minutes, but I figured it out for myself in five. All rock "music" is dreadful, from Little Richard (to those of you who remember me from high school and college: I was being satirical about Little Richard the whole time. I was perhaps too subtle. I mocked "Bob Dylan" then, and still do today. My younger daughter has repeatedly tried to argue me out of it, and I have taken on the persona of someone totally close-minded just for this one instance. I do not know if she has caught on. Probably.) I attended one megachurch service, in Colorado Springs. No rock "music" in this one, but a spectacle with massed choirs. The message was about how much Jesus loves you, how Jesus can make your life better, how Jesus can help you if you slide into sin, all upbeat stuff. Nothing about Hell, the escape from which is the central theme of the New Testament. It continues to amaze me when I ask a liberal Christian if he believes in Hell. "I wouldn't go that far," comes the reply! But from this sample of one megachurch service (articles I've read say the same thing), those for whom Hell is a burning issue constitute a small number of Christians (and almost no Jews as all, despite Sheol in the Old Testament). Why the culture wars, then? I'll have to think about it some more. Anyhow, my preference for contemplative and dignified religious services may just reflect an early identification of this kind of service with religion. I was raised an Episcopalian but when to a Presbyterian church with my parents (I have been going voluntarily to a religious service once a year now for about ten years, just in case the Episcopalian vision of the Great Country Club in the Sky, as Miriam put it, is true) and was shocked that there was no kneeling during prayers. Below is a reverend wrestling with important issues. Christian discipleship and the Super Bowl http://www.floridabaptistwitness.com/3820.article Florida Baptist Witness 2005 Publishing Good News since 1884 Volume 122 Number 14 By JAMES A SMITH SR. Executive Editor Published February 10, 2005 [Click the URL to see an image of Rev. Smit.] I could hear the anguish in his voice. Jerry Vines - the most prominent pastor in the Super Bowl XXXIX host city of Jacksonville - told me the morning after the big game how difficult it was to cancel First Baptist Church's Sunday evening services to assist city officials clearing the way for the National Football League's championship game. As anyone who has even casually followed Southern Baptist life would know, Vines is not the sort of Christian leader who bows to cultural trends or bends to the will of politicians. As church after church has moved out of downtown facilities for seemingly more prosperous suburban climes, as Sunday evening worship services have increasingly fallen out of favor with some pastors, Vines has remained steadfast in his traditional commitments in the heart of Jacksonville's downtown. The former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the nation's most prominent Christian leaders for decades and an outspoken defender of the total truthfulness and inerrancy of the Bible is no wimp in today's Culture Wars. Nevertheless, the world's premiere sporting event inescapably clashed with the decades-long commitment of Vines never to cancel an evening worship service to accommodate church members who wanted to see the Super Bowl. Occupying nine downtown blocks, First Baptist Church was asked by city officials to not hold evening services Feb. 6 since the rest of downtown would be closed for the Super Bowl, held less than a mile away at Alltel Stadium. Left with no other choice, Vines was forced to cancel the services. "We did it without rancor; we didn't kick a fuss up about it," Vines told me Feb. 7. "I'm realistic - you can't spit in the wind. We cooperated as best as we know how. We try to be good citizens in Jacksonville." In the wake of Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at last year's Super Bowl, Vines vigorously exercised his Christian citizenship and his considerable influence in Jacksonville to make this year's event as family-friendly as possible. Mayor John Peyton and Vines "were in close communication" throughout the year leading up to this year's game in the hopes of averting a replay of last year debauchery, Vines told me. Vines' criticism of Jackson's performance elicited a letter from NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, promising a "family-friendly" event in Jacksonville. The 62-year-old former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney headlined the Jacksonville half-time show, which most observers credited as being far more subdued than last year's debacle. "I guess it's a commentary on the decadence of entertainment today that a former Beatle is considered family-friendly. But, at least the old guy kept his clothes on," Vines quipped. While thankful for the comparatively mild half-time performance, Vines acknowledged there were still plenty of pre-game activities and commercial messages that were "pretty raunchy" and "pretty tasteless." A sport that is inextricably linked to beer ads featuring scantily clad women and "male performance" messages has a long way to go to family-friendliness, to say the least. While he used his citizenship to try to positively influence the morality of the Super Bowl, Vines spoke candidly of the mounting tension in today's Christian churches concerning how we balance our obligation to be in the world, but not of it. The fact that this American cultural phenomenon falls on a Sunday - "Super Sunday" isn't an accolade for an especially remarkable worship service these days - illustrates the challenge for Christians in relating to an event of the Super Bowl's magnitude. Rather than attempting to compete with the event, many churches use the occasion to host fellowships and to do evangelistic outreach. Vines is not critical of those who choose this path; nor is he critical of those who would choose to even go to a football game or other sporting event on a Sunday. But the readiness of some churches to accommodate the world does concern Vines. Canceling his first Sunday evening worship service in four decades of pastoral ministry because of Jacksonville's first Super Bowl "was uncomfortable for me," even though the city left him no other choice. "I really think it's not about football. I love football, but the church makes it too easy for Christians," Vines said. In our morning-after-the-Super Bowl interview, Vines elaborated at length about his concern for a diminishing passion for discipleship among Christians today which is being encouraged by America's entertainment culture. "I think that there needs to be times when Christians have to decide between activities related to the Lord's work and activities related to the things of the world. If the church just acquiesces and never gives the Christian that opportunity" to make a choice, believers will be harmed, he noted. Vines told me the story of a young, gifted baseball player at his former church in Rome, Georgia, who declined an invitation to the state all star game because it conflicted with a church youth camp. The young man heard the call to ministry at the camp - and today, David Allen is dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. "What if we had just said, `go ahead and play baseball'? I think there needs to be those times when Christians have to decide, difficult times. I think that's a part of growing as a Christian. Churches today, everything that comes along, churches cave in. It's really a sad state of affairs." At the same time, Vines was insistent that I make clear, "I don't come at this from a legalistic, judgmental standpoint. ... I, in no way, am judging others or that I view this as this makes you a better Christian because of what you don't go to or don't do. "I'm just talking about one's personal convictions and I'm talking about commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we just don't have a lot of that today," Vines said. Vines reminded me of the classic movie, "Chariots of Fire," in which a sprinter who is a Scottish missionary refuses to compete for the Olympic Trials because the race is held on Sunday. "That (kind of commitment today) is just like a foreign language to most Christians, isn't it?" Vines asked me. Concluding our interview, Vines said, although the signs are not hopeful, "I long to see a day when Christians will really, really get serious about the Christian life." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:21:01 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:21:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Tiny, Plentiful and Really Hard to Catch Message-ID: Tiny, Plentiful and Really Hard to Catch http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/science/26neut.html April 26, 2005 By [1]KENNETH CHANG An hour north of Duluth, Minn., and a half-mile down, the dim tunnels of the Soudan mine open up to a bright, comfortably warm cavern roughly the size of a gymnasium, 45 feet high, 50 feet wide, 270 feet long. Well hidden from the lakes, pine forests and small towns of northern Minnesota, the mine churned out almost pure iron ore until it closed in 1962. Today, it is a state park, and it houses a $55 million particle physics experiment that is part of a worldwide effort to unravel the secrets of the neutrino, one of the least known and most common elementary particles. Because of discoveries over the past decade, the ubiquitous neutrino, once a curiosity in a corner of particle physics, now has the potential to disrupt much of what physicists think they know about the subatomic world. It may hold a key to understanding the creation of hydrogen, helium and other light elements minutes after the Big Bang and to how dying stars explode. The experiment at Soudan will measure the rate that neutrinos seemingly magically change their types, giving physicists a better idea of the minute mass they carry. An experiment at Fermilab outside Chicago is looking for a particle called a "sterile neutrino" that never interacts with the rest of the universe except through gravity. Astrophysicists are building neutrino observatories in Antarctica and the Mediterranean, which will provide new views of the cosmos, illuminating the violent happenings at the centers of galaxies, distant bright quasars and elsewhere. The particle is nothing if not elusive. In 1987, astronomers counted 19 neutrinos from an explosion of a star in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, 19 out of the billion trillion trillion trillion trillion neutrinos that flew from the supernova. The observation confirmed the basic understanding that supernovas are set off by the gravitational collapse of stars, but there were not enough data to discern much about the neutrinos. The much larger detectors in operation today, Super-Kamiokande in Japan, filled with 12.5 million gallons of water, and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, would capture thousands of neutrinos from a similar outburst. Because neutrinos are so aloof, successful experiments must have either a lot of neutrinos, produced en masse by accelerators or nuclear reactors, or a lot of matter for neutrinos to run into. Given the cost of building huge detectors, scientists are now turning to places where nature will cooperate. In Antarctica, the IceCube project will consist of 80 strings holding 4,800 detectors in the ice, turning a cubic kilometer of ice into a neutrino telescope. Fourteen European laboratories are collaborating on a project called Antares that will similarly turn a section of the Mediterranean off the French Riviera into a neutrino detector. The Soudan experiment takes the other approach, using bountiful bursts of neutrinos generated by a particle accelerator. Shoehorned into the back of the underground cavern is a detector of modest size, a mere 6,000 tons, consisting of 486 octagonal steel plates standing upright like a loaf of bread. Each plate, 1 inch thick and 30 feet wide, weighs 12 tons. On a visit to the cavern last month, William H. Miller, the laboratory manager, pointed at the far rock wall. "Fermilab, that way," he said. This experiment is intended to catch just a few of the neutrinos created at Fermilab, 450 miles away, which gush out of the rock wall, through the cavern, through the steel plates and then through another several miles of rock before emerging out of the earth and continuing into outer space, having no effect on Dr. Miller or the reporter interviewing him. "You need a light-year of lead to reliably stop" a neutrino, said Dr. Alec T. Habig, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Minnesota at Duluth and the operations manager for the neutrino detector. Only occasionally, a neutrino runs into a proton or neutron among the many atoms in the steel plates, and the wreckage of that collision is recorded as tiny bursts of light careering through the detector. When the experiment begins running at full speed later this year, Fermilab will send trillions of neutrinos every couple of seconds flying toward Soudan. The beam will spread out to half a mile wide by the time it reaches Minnesota, so most of the neutrinos will miss the cavern entirely. But even among those that strike the bull's-eye, only one every few hours will actually hit something in the detector and be detected. So far, in the testing phase in the past two months, the Soudan detector has seen just three, maybe four, neutrinos from Fermilab. But then, Wolfgang Pauli thought physicists would never see any. Pauli, a pioneer of quantum theory, contrived the notion of neutrinos in 1930 to explain the disappearance of energy when unstable atoms fell apart. Pauli said the missing energy was being carried away by an unseen particle. "I've done a terrible thing," Pauli wrote. "I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected." Pauli even wagered a case of Champagne that his particle would not be detected. In 1956, Pauli sent a case of Champagne to Clyde L. Cowan Jr. and Frederick Reines, two American physicists who proved him wrong using the flood of neutrinos produced in a nuclear reactor. Physicists later discovered that neutrinos come in three types, whimsically called flavors. The flavor seen first was the electron neutrino, which interacts only with electrons. Heavier electronlike particles known as muons and tau particles are accompanied by their own flavors of neutrinos. In 1998, an experiment at Super-Kamiokande showed that neutrinos change flavors as they travel along. For that to occur, the laws of physics dictate that the neutrinos, which had been thought be massless, must actually carry along a smidgen of weight, less than a millionth as much as an electron, the next lightest particle. Each flavor also has a slightly different mass. In the Fermilab-to-Soudan experiment, the neutrinos are generated from a beam of protons, which are directed down a newly built $125 million tunnel, focused to a very narrow width with powerful electric fields and then slammed into a piece of graphite. That produces short-lived particles called pions, which in turn generate muon neutrinos as they decay. The beam passes through a smaller version of the Soudan detector, allowing the physicists to verify the number of neutrinos. The tunnel, sloped downward three degrees, ends just beyond the detector. The neutrinos keep going, into the earth, to emerge in the Soudan cavern one four-hundredth of a second later. By using neutrinos created in an accelerator, physicists will be able to vary the energy of the neutrinos and see how that changes the number detected at Soudan. "This wiggle has not really been seen," said Dr. Boris Kayser, a physicist at Fermilab. "It is one of the central expectations of our picture of neutrino oscillations." The data from Soudan is expected to refine the Super-Kamiokande results, not overturn the prevailing wisdom. Another experiment at Fermilab may do just that. A decade ago scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico looked at neutrinos traveling a short distance from a nuclear reactor and saw indications of a large oscillation, suggesting a relatively large mass gap between two of the neutrino flavors. The gap was large enough that it could not fit into any theory consisting of just three neutrinos. But other experiments showed that only three flavors of neutrinos that interact with ordinary matter exist. That has led to speculations of a new class of particles called sterile neutrinos. These particles would exert a force on other matter through gravity but would otherwise be completely inert. "If it's really due to oscillations, then it implies physics way beyond the Standard Model," said Dr. William C. Louis of Los Alamos, who worked on the experiment. Dr. Kayser said most theorists "are skeptical, because it doesn't fit," yet no one can point to obvious flaws in the Los Alamos work, either. The new experiment at Fermilab, called MiniBooNE, is looking for the same effect but with a different setup, firing neutrinos into a spherical tank containing 250,000 gallons of baby oil. (The name BooNE is an awkward contraction of Booster Neutrino Experiment. Booster refers to Fermilab's booster ring that accelerates protons, and the project's leaders added the prefix "mini" because they imagined a second, larger stage with a second detector if the current "mini" run confirms the Los Alamos findings.) Dr. Louis, who is also one of the spokesmen for MiniBooNE, said that initial answers could be out by fall and insisted that he was not betting either way. "We're just concentrating on getting the correct result," he said, "and we'll worry about the consequences later." The consequences may include the understanding of atom production in the aftermath of the Big Bang and in supernovas. Because neutrinos are essential to the nuclear reactions that change protons to neutrons and vice versa, they influence which elements form in what relative proportions. "That would have profound implications for our models of the early universe and for supernovas," said Dr. George M. Fuller, a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. "It could change everything." The problem is that current models that include three flavors of neutrinos do a good job of explaining the amount of hydrogen and helium in the universe. The existence of sterile neutrinos would send astrophysicists scurrying to come up with new calculations to produce the same answers. On the other hand, current models of supernovas have trouble producing enough neutrons to form the heavier elements like uranium, and Dr. Fuller said sterile neutrinos could shift the reactions toward producing more neutrons. Future experiments should aim at understanding other aspects of neutrinos, said Dr. Kayser, who was co-chairman of a committee that just released recommendations for future neutrino study. For one, the neutrino oscillation findings say only that a difference in mass between the different flavors exists, but not the exact mass of any of them. The presumption is that because an electron is lighter than a muon and a muon is lighter than a tau that the same pattern should be true of the three neutrino flavors, with the electron neutrino the lightest and the tau neutrino the heaviest. But that does not have to be the case. "It could be the other way around," Dr. Kayser said. Physicists are also trying to learn whether an antineutrino is actually a neutrino. (Other antiparticles have opposite electrical charge. Because neutrinos are electrically neutral, nothing would prevent a neutrino from being its own antiparticle.) Another open question is whether neutrinos play a role in the imbalance of matter and antimatter. If the early universe had contained equal amounts of the both, everything would have been annihilated, leaving nothing behind to form stars and galaxies. Among quarks, which form protons and neutrons, physicists have observed a subtle matter-antimatter imbalance, called CP violation, in the behavior of particles known as mesons. "That CP violation is completely inadequate to explain the universe that we see," Dr. Kayser said. So physicists suspect that there must be CP violation elsewhere and that the oddity of neutrinos suggest they could be a source. That, in turn, leads to speculation of yet more new types of neutrinos - very heavy ones that existed only in the very early universe - and the decay of those heavy neutrinos created the preponderance of matter. Then come even wilder ideas - that neutrinos play a role in the mysterious dark energy that is pushing the universe apart or that neutrinos could be used for interstellar communication. "Most of these ideas are of course probably wrong," said Dr. Louis of Los Alamos. "But if even one of them is right, it would be a tremendous breakthrough." References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=KENNETH%20CHANG&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=KENNETH%20CHANG&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:21:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:21:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Making the Universe a Little Closer and Brighter Message-ID: Science > Space & Cosmos > Making the Universe a Little Closer and Brighter http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/science/space/26lens.html By DENNIS OVERBYE In a kind of belated birthday present to Albert Einstein, whose theory of relativity is 100 years old this year, astronomers say they have confirmed an essential but previously unconfirmed prediction of general relativity, namely that the entire universe can act as a magnifying lens. The light from distant quasars, enigmatic and violent galaxy-birthing events on the shores of time, some 10 billion light-years away, has been magnified by the gravitational force of lumps and irregularities in the structure of the nearby cosmos. So the quasars appear slightly brighter in telescopes than they actually are, according to a multinational team of researchers led by Dr. Ryan Scranton of the University of Pittsburgh. They reached that conclusion after sifting a mountain of data about 13 million galaxies and other celestial objects, obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a continuing effort to remap the heavens. The magnification, they said, confirms the dark picture cosmologists have built up in the last few years, in which the atoms that make up stars and people are overwhelmed by clouds of mysterious dark matter and that matter is in turn overwhelmed by something even stranger, so-called dark energy, which seems to be wrenching space and time apart faster and faster, taking the galaxies for a potentially fatal ride into endless cold and loneliness. "This is all hanging together," said Dr. Scranton, lead author of a paper that will be published in The Astrophysical Journal and is being posted today on the physics Web site, [1]www.arXiv.org. The astronomers said that cosmic magnification gave them a new way to weigh the universe and to investigate its evolution. Dr. Robert Nichol, a member of the team from the University of Portsmouth in England, said, "In this year of Einstein, it is a wonderful demonstration of the power of general relativity as it shows that light travels to us on a very 'bumpy road' from these quasars." Dr. Tony Tyson, a gravitational lensing expert at the University of California, Davis, said: "It is nice to close the loop on Einstein here. This all traces back to Einstein's prediction of light bending." Einstein's theory, promulgated in 1915, and spectacularly supported by observations during a solar eclipse in 1919, ascribes the effect we call gravity to the warping of space-time geometry by matter or energy. As one consequence, the theory says, lumps of mass, like a star, a galaxy or a whole cluster of galaxies with their attendant clouds of dark matter, can act as a gravitational lens, magnifying very distant objects. In recent decades astronomers have recorded instances in which the images of galaxies or quasars have been distorted into arcs or rings or even split into multiple images by the gravity of intervening galaxies, so-called gravitational lenses. And they have seen individual stars appear to flare as their light is magnified by the gravity of a passing star. Astronomers have observed a distortion in the shapes of distant background galaxies, known as cosmic shear, because of the large-scale structure of the universe, but until now they have not been able to make a reliable measurement of the cosmic magnification factor. Now, in the Sloan survey, said Dr. Nichol, "we see the summed magnification of all quasars by the intervening masses in the universe." He estimated that mass, the contents of the universe out to about 2.5 billion light-years, as roughly equivalent to 100 billion billion Suns. "This is a measurement that's been hanging around in the background," said Dr. Scranton, who added that earlier attempts at the measurement had resulted in "a huge mess" because data about the heavens lacked the needed precision. The results, he said, did not match the standard cosmological theory or one another. The present calculation was based on a sample of 13 million galaxies and 200,000 quasars derived from the mammoth Sloan survey. Begun in 1998 with a custom built telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, the survey was created to measure the colors and brightnesses of several hundred million objects over a quarter of the sky and map the distances to a million galaxies and quasars. "We have the biggest set of quasars ever assembled," Dr. Scranton said. The quasars, thought to be black hole fireworks in young galaxies, are all out about 10 billion light-years away, their light has been on the way to us since the universe was 4 billion years old. The Sloan galaxies are in front of them, roughly 2.5 billion light-years away. Because quasars are wildly erratic and far, far away, there is no way to tell by how much any one of them has been magnified. As a result astronomers resorted to statistical methods, looking for correlations between the numbers of quasars and the locations of galaxies on the sky. Quasars too faint to show up normally should pop into view near galaxies that have amplified the quasars' light, swelling the counts. But, as Dr. Scranton explained, there is a competing effect at work. The bending of light rays by those same galaxies will also cause the quasars to appear to be displaced outward slightly from the galaxy lowering their apparent density on the sky. The two effects can only be separated and the magnification confirmed after the quasars and galaxies have been sifted and resifted according to their colors and apparent brightnesses by powerful computer codes. The detection of the magnification is a triumph of computer science as well as astronomy, the astronomers say. Because both dark and visible matter contribute to gravity and thus to the cosmic magnification, Dr. Scranton said, astronomers can use the effect to investigate the dark side of the universe, looking into questions like how galaxies form and whether galaxies and dark matter coincide. So far, he said, "The galaxies basically trace the dark matter very clearly." He added, "It would be nice if it were more exotic, but its pretty much another brick in the structure," he added, referring to the so-called concordance cosmology of dark matter and dark energy. Dr. Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called the detection of cosmic magnification "a big deal," and said, "I think it will emerge as a powerful cosmological tool." Dr. Tyson, however, said he doubted that cosmic magnification would emerge as an important cosmological tool. It might be easier, he said, to get information from cosmic shear, the distortion of distant galaxies, noting that there are many more of those than of quasars. Dr. Tyson heads a group that is planning to build a large telescope and camera, known as the Large Synoptic Survey telescope, to do just that. But, he added, referring to the prospects for cosmic magnification, "I would be very pleased to eat my hat on that one." The Sloan survey, he said, shows what you can do with a large well-controlled astronomical survey. "The sky's the limit," he said. References 1. http://www.arXiv.org/ From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:25:13 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:25:13 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Christianity Today: The "Virtue" of Lust? Message-ID: The "Virtue" of Lust? http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/003/4.18.html May/June 2005, Vol. 11, No. 3, Page 18 So says philosopher Simon Blackburn. by W. Jay Wood Lust by Simon Blackburn Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, 144 pp., $17.95 Middle-aged male philosophers aren't, perhaps, the first persons one consults about sexual pleasures and pursuits, but they have certainly written a lot about the morality thereof. Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn's book Lust, a volume in Oxford University Press' series on the Seven Deadly Sins, is a self-consciously contrarian contribution to that venerable genre. Blackburn is a prolific writer of both popular and professional philosophy, an outstanding essayist, and an insightful reviewer of books, whose sparkling prose customarily displays philosophical skill and evident wit. Lust doesn't lack in stylistic grace and wit, but its ground note is a smirking satisfaction with its own provocations, and its treatment of opposing views falls well below Blackburn's usual standard. At least the reader is forewarned. Blackburn announces at the outset that he has no intention of writing a book about the sin of lust, an intention he admirably fulfills--which may be all to the good, since he appears to lack any developed notion of sin and, even if he has one, he doesn't think lust qualifies as a sin. He knows quite well, of course, what reputation religious tradition, common sense, and ordinary language have assigned to his subject: "Lust is furtive, ashamed, and embarrassed"; "Lust pursues its own gratification, headlong, impatient of any control, immune to reason"; "Lust looks sideways, inventing deceits and stratagems and seductions, sizing up opportunities"; "Lust subverts propriety" and is "like living shackled to a lunatic." Given this indictment, Blackburn says, it is his task "to speak up for lust," as a kind of attorney for the defense: So the task I set myself is to clean off some of the mud, to rescue [lust] from the echoing denunciations of old men of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessors of Rome and the disgust of the Renaissance, to destroy the stock and pillories of the Puritans, to separate it from the other things that we know drag it down. ... and so lift it from the category of sin to that of a virtue. What exactly does Blackburn mean by lust, and why does he think it qualifies as a virtue? His formal account describes lust as "the active and excited desire for sexual activity." In fact, however, his discussion encompasses far more than this, ranging widely over the entire spectrum of matters pertaining to human sexuality, including ancient theories about the division of the sexes, courtship customs, birth control and, a little closer to the topic, sexual attraction, romantic ardor, sexual desire, sexual excitement and arousal, sexual pleasures, sexual acts, eros, and more. Indeed, the book is mistitled; it might more appropriately have been called something like "Philosophical Meditations on Sex" or "Simon Blackburn's Guide to Good Sex." The irony, of course, is that Blackburn thinks he is rescuing these pleasures from the Christians, when in fact most Christians don't see anything wrong with anything in the above list, when pursued appropriately. Christians don't think it was an accident that God created us male and female, with nerve-laden genitalia, and made most pleasurable our obedience to his command to "go forth and multiply." While Blackburn claims that his book "is not a history of lust or even ideas about lust," the book's 15 chapters (which include photographs and color plates of erotic art) nevertheless unfold in roughly historical order, treating an array of views on various aspects of sexuality offered by Pre-Socratic Greeks, Plato, the Cynics, the Stoics, the Manichees, Augustine, various medieval views culminating in Aquinas, then on to Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Kant, before moving on to moderns such as Freud, Sartre, and Nussbaum. Blackburn is right to resist the label of history for his work, for a genuine history of lust would not be so unrepresentative in the passages it selects for comment nor so blatant in what it ignores. Blackburn's anti-religious treatment of the topic makes no mention of the Song of Solomon's erotic poetry, the sanctity of the marriage bed (Hebrews 13), or the biblical commands for husbands and wives not to deprive one another of sexual intimacy (1 Cor. 7). Had he made the least effort to read some of the Puritans he is so eager to denounce, he would have discovered that they were no prudes. Quite the contrary: with St. Paul's admonition in mind, they regarded a spouse's neglect of his partner's sexual needs as grounds for excommunication! References to contemporary Christian writing about sex are also signally absent. The longest chapter in the book, tendentiously titled "The Christian Panic," discusses Augustine's struggles with his own powerful sexual drives and habits, the tensions created by his Neo-Platonist and gnostic intellectual background, and the Christian faith he embraced as an adult. Some of Augustine's views may strike us today as strained or severe, but when they are viewed in historical context they offer moderating elements. After the debauched excesses of the Roman Empire--modern sexual libertines have nothing on Caligula and Nero--the ancient world witnessed an opposite swing of the pendulum. As Blackburn correctly notes, the Stoics were skeptical of sexual pleasure, and the Manichees, with whom Augustine associated for nine years, along with some gnostic Christian cults, preached total abstinence from sex. Tertullian and Augustine's Christian mentor, Ambrose, sometimes sounded as though they'd prefer the extinction of the human race to its propagation through intercourse. Augustine strikes a moderating position amidst these extremes, his Christian faith and fidelity to Scripture proving a corrective to the philosophical and sectarian extremes of his day. Augustine couldn't deny Scripture's teaching that creation is good, including God's provision for propagation through sexual intercourse. Moreover, our Lord having assumed a physical body, and his having been raised from the dead and preserved from corruption, were proof that the physical world is not evil. Jesus' blessing of the wedding at Cana, and Scripture's other teachings about the honor of the marriage bed and conjugal obligations between spouses, combined to correct some of the excesses of his day. While Augustine acknowledged the good of marriage, he certainly denied that it was the highest good, and he remained suspicious of sexual pleasure. He counseled married couples capable of it to abandon sexual intimacy and instead to pursue spiritual communion with each other and with God. Christianity and natural reason have long taught that our appetites for food, drink, sleep, sex, and the other natural pleasure associated with the body can be out of whack, ill-tuned, excessive, or deficient. The unprecedented abundance of food, leisure, drink, and sexual stimulation that contemporary Americans enjoy has neither increased our fulfillment nor decreased the number and degree of dysfunctions associated with these goods, as any talk show or bestseller list will attest. Moreover, Christianity has never regarded lust, or the other sins of appetite, as the worst of sins--though they may be among the most common, arising as they often do in the "heat of the moment" and without the full consent of the will (see Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q. 154, art. 3). Lust can't compare in seriousness with envy, anger, and the many species of pride, culminating in the satanic desire to supplant God. Rather, Christianity has always taught that our appetite for sexual pleasure, just like those for food, drink, and sleep, needs to be tutored, trained with bit and bridle, sensitive to the slightest touch of command, lest it rampage out of control, dragging us helter-skelter after it. Blackburn thinks that the highest state of sexual desire and activity occurs amidst what he calls "Hobbesian unity," after Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher famous for describing life in the state of nature as "poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short." Hobbes wrote of sexual intimacy, which Blackburn elaborates on as a state in which sexual partners are in a communion of body and mind, reciprocally sensitive to each other, "responding and adjusting to each other delicately for the entire performance," much like musicians who more or less unconsciously adjust to each other's playing. Blackburn seems not to grasp that the attentive reciprocity lovers achieve in Hobbesian unity not only does not qualify as lust, it is a most happy aspect of conjugal bliss, as those "repressed" Puritans pointed out using the same musical metaphors long before Blackburn. One Puritan writer wrote that married couples "may joyfully give due benevolence one to the other; as two musical instruments rightly fitted do make a most pleasant and sweet harmony in a well tuned consort"^[53]1 But if Hobbesian unity is not identical to lust, neither is it necessarily virtuous, since it might be achieved in sexual encounters with minors, siblings, another person's spouse, sadomasochistic and homosexual activity, and other sexual relationships Christians consider immoral. Much as he relishes lust, Blackburn himself acknowledges that sexual activity can go awry, and in chapter 11, "Disasters," he chronicles some of the ways he thinks that happens. Here, he borrows heavily, but not without some reservations, from Martha Nussbaum's paper "Objectification," in which she lists a variety of harmful forms of sexual involvement, including treating the other merely as a tool, regarding the other as lacking self-determination, as lacking agency, as something that can be bought or sold, or swapped for an object of similar type, or as someone whose feelings needn't be taken into account.^[54]2 Nussbaum's list is obviously meant to exclude rape, prostitution, pornography, and unequal power relations between partners as legitimate forms of sexual involvement. While Blackburn acknowledges problems with producing pornography, he is not much troubled by its consumption; if the fantasies that it stimulates "may not be of sex at its best, ... there is little reason to deny that they can be." He is also less condemning of prostitution than Nussbaum, regarding it as sometimes "sad and touching rather than wicked and sinful." Throughout the book Blackburn praises the loss of self that occurs in the climax of sexual ecstasy--a "frenzy" which, as he says, "drives out thought," "takes over other cognitive functionings," and in which the lovers, though "lost to the world," nevertheless experience one of the highest "pleasures of exercising lust." Curiously, and I think inconsistently, Blackburn's high regard for the loss of reason and the self works against the very Hobbesian unity he extols as the epitome of "good lust." Contrary to his claim that the lovers are "responding and adjusting to each other delicately for the entire performance" (emphasis mine), Hobbesian unity is at that "marvelous moment" abruptly broken, the lovers now no longer mindful of each other but utterly captive to their own bodily pleasure. Reverting to his musical metaphor, Blackburn says, "the player is sufficiently lost in the music to become oblivious even to the other players." At precisely the moment their coordinated efforts should coalesce to climax, the lovers break off their duet to go solo. Just here Blackburn must face the criticisms of Aquinas, whose chief objection to sexual intercourse was precisely its customary loss of reason and self. It wasn't sexual pleasure per se Aquinas was against, as Blackburn suggests. Indeed, Thomas writes in the Supplement to the Summa Theologiae that just as it is not sinful to take food for pleasure, neither is it a "mortal sin" for a husband to seek sexual congress with his wife for pleasure (Supplement Q 49, art. 6). According to Thomas, we do not escape venial sin, however, precisely because reason is momentarily abandoned: "we become flesh and nothing more" (Q 49, art. 6). Interestingly, Thomas thought this wouldn't have happened before the Fall, where body and mind working in perfect harmony would have made sexual pleasure even greater than it currently is (St II-II Q 153, art. 2). Hobbesian unity, if you will, would not have been broken, but the lovers would have been united both in body and mind, giving and receiving with all their faculties to wonderful climax. Once again, in delicious irony, Christians have anticipated and upstaged their secular counterparts in treating of sexual topics. One won't learn much about the vice of lust by reading Blackburn's book. One would do better to consult any of the past masters of moral character--John Cassian, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Dante, Richard Baxter--or contemporary authors such as Joseph Pieper, Peter Kreeft, and Robert C. Roberts. All these authors agree that the vice of lust, as opposed to an isolated episode thereof, is an abiding disposition to disordered sexual appetites and behavior, typically structured by the thought "I can be whole or happy only if I indulge and satisfy my sexual appetites and preferences as they suit me." It is marked by emotions such as shame, boredom, longing, aggression, and loneliness, and finds expression in physical abuse of oneself and others, manipulation and deceit of others for sexual gratification, predatory and domineering behaviors, and other actions that oppose genuine love of the other. To paraphrase Aristotle's remarks about generosity, sexual gratification must be pursued with the right person, for the right reason, at the right time, and in the right way, and to the right degree. In-house disagreements remain among Christians regarding the appropriateness of sex that is not open to conception, between divorced persons, or even between members of the same sex, among other controversies. Christians also need to think carefully to determine when healthy sexual desires and amorous inclinations veer off into unhealthiness and sin. Unfortunately, they'll get little or no help toward thinking Christianly about these tough and timely issues by reading Blackburn's Lust. W. Jay Wood is professor of philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (InterVarsity). 1. Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were (Zondervan, 1986), p. 44. 2. Martha Nussbaum, "Objectification," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 24 (1995), pp. 249-91. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:25:47 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:25:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] LA Weekly: The Mortal Storm: The Deaths of the 20th Century Message-ID: The Mortal Storm: The Deaths of the 20th Century http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/21/on-powers.php 5.4.15-21 by JOHN POWERS These are heady days to be an obituary writer. Ever since Americas best-known critic, Susan Sontag, died in late December, theres been a startling slew of Important Deaths. The greatest talk-show host, Johnny Carson. The most famous playwright, Arthur Miller. The most gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. The most legendary diplomat, George F. Kennan. The most lavishly celebrated novelist, Saul Bellow. The most career-savvy (and politically reprehensible) architect, Philip Johnson. The most irrelevant monarch, Prince Rainier. Not to mention the most infallible pope at least until the next one. So many big names have passed away so quickly that people have taken to joking about it. When The Daily Show flashed an image of Fidel Castro honoring John Paul II, Jon Stewarts comment was, Hes next. If the new century began for most of us on September 11, 2001, the 20th century may well finally have ended with all these high-profile funerals. One by one, the individuals who defined the last sixty years of American culture have been vanishing from the landscape. And this sudden sense of an ending has been reinforced by the equally abrupt disappearance of the men who once read us the headlines about our national life: Brokaw is retired, Rather was chased from his chair, Jennings has lung cancer and Koppel is calling it quits at ABC. Small wonder that you now hear yearning for the supposedly good old days when the anchorman was a colossus. George Clooney is even directing a movie about Edward R. Murrow. Predictably, the loss of so many celebrated touchstones has set off an epidemic of Cultural Declinism. You know the drill. None of todays diplomats is as worldly as the mandarin Kennan. None of todays late-night hosts boasts Johnnys immaculate poise. None of todays playwrights equals the towering Miller (he even married Marilyn Monroe, for crying out loud). None of todays journalists matches the gleeful fear and loathing of Thompson. And naturally, none of todays novelists can match Bellows exuberant blend of high and low, the references to Heraclitus and the streetwise similes born in Chicago, that somber city. Ah, back then there were giants! Now, Im not mocking their achievements. Kennans famous Long Telegram and 1947 Foreign Affairs article (published under the groovy pseudonym X) laid down a blueprint for what became the U.S. side of the Cold War for better and worse. Nor would I claim not to miss things from our recent past, like the 60s iconoclasm that meant a national magazine would spend the money and show the audacity to publish the reporting that became Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 72. Thompson didnt come cheap or give a hoot how a focus group might react to his call for Hubert Humphreys castration. Still, its not as if we live in a culture where all the Shaqs have been replaced by Chucky Atkinses. Yet that was the subtext of many of the appreciations inspired by Bellows recent death. The Washington Posts fine literary critic Jonathan Yardley began by saying, The void left in the American literary landscape by the death yesterday of Saul Bellow is too large to map or describe. He was the last giant of our literature when it still had giants, when it ruled the world, when it spoke to and about this country its people, its history, its character in ways that connected not to the little world of the literati but to the people themselves. At one level, Yardley is absolutely right, and not only about Bellows brilliance. Forty years ago, a difficult literary novelist such as Thomas Pynchon might sell millions of copies in paperback. Today, the very Idea would be a pipe dream just ask William T. Vollmann or David Foster Wallace. But like the current fondness for video games or reality TV, the marginality of serious fiction doesnt mean that the cultures swan-diving into the trash can. (Heck, Norman Rush does better by Africa than Bellow.) It does mean that we need to rethink our old ideas of what it means to be central to American life. After all, even if a new Saul Bellow came along and a novelist of that stature, male or female, will emerge he wouldnt have the same impact or meaning. Nor would a new Johnny Carson or Hunter Thompson (as Uncle Duke was painfully aware). We now live at a time when our big-box culture lets almost everyone follow his or her own bliss. Were still sorting out how things will look in the globalized 21st century. In a recent column about Bellow, The New York Times David Brooks addressed this issue. Where Bellows work was a pas de deux between Europe and America, Brooks argued, were now living in a unipolar culture, and its lonely at the top. (Spoken like a true neoconservative.) This claim might be more persuasive if Brooks hadnt identified himself as one of those who dont pay attention to what is being written and said in Europe because it doesnt seem that exciting. (Quick, what book is the talk of Berlin? Who is the Francois Truffaut of our moment?) What Brooks seems not to realize is that world culture hasnt stood still over the two decades since he graduated from the University of Chicago. Only his thinking about it has. Contemporary American culture seems unipolar only if you arent paying attention. These days Berliners are talking about Orham Pamuks novel Snow a labyrinthine look at the pressures of Islamic fundamentalism while our moments Truffaut (since you ask) comes with names like Wong Kar-Wai, Alfonso Cuar?n, Satoshi Kon and Jafar Panahi. You wont hear them bemoaning decline. Of course, its precisely the desire to find or put events at the very heart of American culture that makes our news media so relentless about belaboring The One Big Story. This was infuriatingly obvious in the coverage of Pope John Paul IIs funeral, an orgy of redundancy and histrionics that, I must confess, gave even me a pang of Declinism. I felt nostalgic for the days when the three broadcast networks wouldve given the whole damn burial about an hour, tops. But this is a new century ruled by the ironclad laws of entertainment. Asked why so many civilians and politicians turned up in Rome, a BBC reporter replied, This is the main event in the world. There hadnt been this kind of funereal overkill since the media herniated itself milking, er, mourning the death of Ronald Reagan. This was fitting, for if Pope John XXIII was the JFK of popes a 60s charmer who won the heart of the world John Paul II was the Gipper of the Holy See, the first show-biz pontiff. He realized (albeit decades after the American evangelicals) that the modern pulpit is the TV screen. And he took care to give a good performance; indeed, in The New Republic, Andrew Sullivan accuses him of showboating. Aware that canonization is always a sure-fire crowd pleaser, John Paul II set a papal record for dispensing holy honors, handing out sainthoods like celebrity gift bags at the Oscars. Who cared if some Croatian cardinal (Stepinac was his name) played footsie with the Nazis? Loyal to the church, the bastard could still be beatified. Not that you would have known this from watching TV. The cable networks were so busy showing the crowds in Rome or trotting out another cheerleading priest that they couldnt be bothered to delve into why the popes tenure was so controversial. This wasnt surprising, for ever since The Passion of the Christ, our media have been terrified that theyre out of touch with the Christian heartland, bending over backward (or is it forward?) to prove theyre down with religion. You could watch for hours, make that days, without anyone mentioning that John Paul IIs Culture of Life included medieval ideas of contraception that may well spell the death of millions from AIDS. Nor did anyone look into the churchs vast sexual-abuse disgrace, which the pope took so unseriously that he gave one of its villains, Cardinal Bernard Law, a sinecure in Rome. The true horror of this didnt really get covered until Law, incredibly, was allowed to give Mondays memorial mass at St. Peters Basilica. (The Vatican issued a gag order prohibiting cardinals from talking about this.) As the bracingly anticlerical Christopher Hitchens accurately noted in Slate, the pontiff who supposedly toppled the Kremlin actually presided over a Vatican whose own authoritarian workings would be right at home on Red Square. No wonder church attendance among U.S. Catholics dropped during his reign. As often happens these days, the popes death and funeral took on a ghastly reactionary tinge. The right tried to hijack everything from John Paul IIs most conservative ideas you didnt exactly hear Fox News analysts talking up his criticisms of capitalism or the Iraq war to his aura of unassailable rectitude. President Bush was especially eager to wrap himself in the papal robes. Whereas Bill Clinton said that John Paul II had been right about some things and wrong about others, Dubya said he couldnt think of a case where the pontiff had been wrong. That seems reasonable to me. After all, if one infallible leader cant spot another, who the hell can? From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 01:28:25 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:28:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Can Bob Dole Save Your Life? Ask Your Doctor Message-ID: That's all for today, folks. Health > Personal Health: Can Bob Dole Save Your Life? Ask Your Doctor http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/health/26brod.html By [1]JANE E. BRODY I'm not normally much of a television viewer, but while I was recovering from painful surgery, watching TV for several hours a night was a welcome distraction, though not always enough. Every 10 or 15 minutes, it seemed, some screen personality was urging me to ask my doctor about one drug or another. In two months of watching programs from 9 to 11 p.m., I was treated to scores of advertisements for about two dozen prescription drugs intended to treat ailments common to 21st-century Americans. Among them were drugs to fight blood clots, cholesterol, allergies, diabetes, stomach acid, eczema, depression, erectile dysfunction, urinary urgency, insomnia, irritable bowel, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, genital herpes, arthritic pain and the symptoms of menopause. Since the Pandora's box of direct-to-consumer (D.T.C.) televised ads for prescription drugs was opened in 1997, pharmaceutical companies have spent billions telling consumers to "ask your doctor" about various patent-protected prescription drug. The Learning Curve Presumably, if you did discuss these drugs with your doctor, you'd learn much more than a 30- or 60-second commercial could possibly relate about the potential benefits and risks of the medication, not to mention the nondrug alternatives. I say "presumably" because in some cases, viewers learn about new drugs faster than doctors. And when doctors are aware of new or even not-so-new medications, they may not know any more about them than their TV-watching patients. But even well-informed doctors may not have the time to go into the details demanded by patients convinced that certain advertised drugs are an answer to their prayers. If, say, patients wish to fully discuss one or two of these drugs with their doctors in an ordinary office visit, the conversations could easily consume the 7 to 15 minutes that insurance plans allot to each patient, with no time left for the main reason for the visit. Consumer ads for prescription drugs initially appeared only in newspapers and magazines accompanied by a federally required page-long list of indications, risks and precautions that few without a medical education could hope to understand. In 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration loosened its reins in the name of free speech and conceded that it could not block prescription drug ads on radio and television, the detailed lists of warnings fell to broadcasting time constraints. Contrary to what many consumers think, the drug agency does not screen these commercials, though it does insist on a balanced presentation of benefits and risks and has forced some companies to modify or discontinue their ads. All such ads are required to contain a "brief summary" of the drug - side effects, effectiveness and the conditions that make its use inadvisable. Unless an ad mentions only the name of the drug and makes no benefits claim, it must disclose all major risks associated with it or tell consumers exactly how they can get such information. Thus, you may hear that a given drug is unsafe for pregnant women or people with diabetes, or may cause blood clots or dangerous bleeding, or may interact badly with other medications. Only the United States and New Zealand now permit direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs. So far, the European Union has resisted, seeing more risks than benefits. Too often, the ad conveys unrealistic benefits or distracts viewers from the risks and warnings. So before you are swayed by the ads to "ask your doctor" about a prescription drug, consider what experts say about the pros and cons of direct-to-consumer advertising. Drug makers have stated repeatedly that a major goal of direct-to-consumer advertising is educating potential customers. In theory, when people hear a brief description of symptoms and learn that a treatment may be available to reverse them, some may be prompted to ask their doctors about conditions they might otherwise have ignored or thought of as untreatable. Finding Another Ailment Seeing a doctor about a symptom described in an advertisement sometimes also results in the diagnosis of another, perhaps more serious, health problem. The commercials for Viagra are a classic case in point. Of course, men with erectile dysfunction nearly always know they have it, but they are often too embarrassed to discuss the matter, even with their doctors. Or they may have thought that nothing as simple as taking a drug could be done about it. But when someone as prominent as former Senator Bob Dole came right out and said he had been helped by this drug, millions of men likewise afflicted came forth. Through their medical visits, some of these men learned that the underlying cause of their impotence was diabetes, a heart disorder, depression or some other serious health problem that needed treatment. For them, the Viagra ads were especially beneficial and possibly lifesaving. For those without a treatable underlying cause of their lost potency, simply being able to function sexually was reward enough. (Now a new drug, Cialis, unlike short-acting Viagra, remains effective for about 36 hours; the ads depict a romantic scene and ask men, "When the time is right, will you be ready?") Likewise, advertisements for cholesterol-lowering statins, which studies have shown can cut cardiac deaths by about one-third, bring undeniable benefits. Millions of men and women who may gain from statins, however, have yet to be treated, and televised pleas to ask their doctors about these drugs could indeed be lifesaving. Patients swayed by glossy advertising, however, may turn a deaf ear to the risks involved with a drug. Doctors afraid to disappoint patients can also be negatively influenced by drug advertisements. The doctor may recommend that other approaches - like changing habits to lower blood pressure or controlling high cholesterol - are preferable to taking drugs. But patients hoping for prescriptions may pressure their doctors to write them. We are already a highly medicated society, and the costs of prescriptions are rising faster than any other aspect of medical care. The price companies pay to market prescription drugs directly to consumers certainly adds significantly to their costs, even though the costs of consumer-directed advertisements still pale next to the amounts spent on marketing to doctors. New drugs are among the most heavily advertised, and these ads can greatly increase their popularity before the risks are fully known. For example, direct-to-consumer advertising of the so-called cox-2 inhibitors Vioxx, Bextra, Celebrex and the like to treat arthritis and other pain problems turned these drugs into mega-billion blockbusters before it was known that some users were at risk of potentially fatal heart attacks and strokes. This widely publicized problem prompted the Food and Drug Administration's acting commissioner, Dr. Lester M. Crawford, to announce last month that his agency would be more aggressive in monitoring ads that made unrealistic promises with scant mention of the risks. Meanwhile, let the consumer be wary. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JANE%20E.%20BRODY&inline=nyt-per From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Wed Apr 27 02:47:46 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 22:47:46 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? References: <144.444ac6e5.2f9e0bca@aol.com> <004901c54994$6f7a7150$6501a8c0@callastudios> <426D9824.5000203@solution-consulting.com> Message-ID: <008e01c54ad3$7fba5540$6501a8c0@callastudios> I love this, too, Lynn! It fits so perfectly with my experience and with some of what I know... Telling and writing stories (the story) can be healing to those suffering the symptoms of PTSD (and other forms of mental unease) and the stories can also be useful to the group... For the person suffering, the 'new knowledge' eventually gets incorporated and the new way of being eventually happens, but perhaps it all happens sooner (and relief sooner, too) if the sufferer's experience is encoded in the group's system/collective knowledge/culture. Hence yet another reason, maybe, why some intensely creative writers have such burning desire to be read by 'the group'. The validation closes the circuit... Also, no question that an 'unprepared brain' with a particular neurochem profile deals with shock and terror and stress less well than a prepared one....And aside from meditation, exercise, a happy, meaningful life with good relationships and not too many economic worries, etc. (things that help keep brain prepared for major stressors), having the collective wisdom of the group, i.e., stories/narratives which take many forms, e.g., gossip, fiction, news, etc., can also help prepare... all the best! Alice PS I'm afraid I was not quite able to articulate what I was getting at, but I'm sending anyway... ----- Original Message ----- From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. To: The new improved paleopsych list Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 9:23 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? As usual, Alice is a great resource. A further view: Who is most / least disabled by PTSD? - preparation reduces PTSD. Special Forces troops in Viet Nam were exposed to worse violence (like when the Cong cut off arms of children the SF medics vaccinated) than grunts but had almost no PTSD. It was because of the extensive training, compared with 16 weeks of Basic / AIT. - story telling: Edna Foa found that repeatedly telling the story reduced PTSD in rape victims. So PTSD may be nature's way of telling us we aren't preparing ourselves and we aren't telling / listening to the story. Imagine a village in africa. To the beat of a drum, a hunter is telling his story: Hunter: Then as I approached the antelope, I saw a lion! Villagers in unison: Boom-chucka, boom chucka boom chucka Hunter: The lion leaped! V: Boom chucka! H: It missed me but it got Steve! V: Aaargh! The youth are prepared (hunting is dangerous, lions are about) and by sharing, in perhaps a ritualistic way, he masters the trauma. My dad, late in life, told his story of being a flight engineer on a B-17 over Europe. While he told the story (as my mother wrote it down) he cried for two days. It puzzled him. "It's been 40 years, it shouldn't still bother me" but after that he was as relaxed and peaceful as I had ever seen him. The storytelling had a ritual quality (tell your story and I will write it down for the kids) and he found some mastery. Lynn Alice Andrews wrote: Howard, I really love this! I had some alternative--or actually, additional thoughts--not ones I necessarily want to champion, but nonetheless I feel like sharing: Perhaps PTSD is adaptive for the individual and ultimately the group. A young hunter is out on the savannah and his brother/kin is savagely destroyed by lions, say. He might experience all sorts of emotions in response to witnessing this, perhaps the symptoms of PTSD. The emotions (as par Randy Nesse et al.) guide his behavior--i.e. staying at 'camp' not going on hunts, ruminating over and over the scene, etc etc. The symptoms like memory loss are maybe just "mind-spandrels." The hippocampus goes into obsessive overdrive on the old memories at the expense of new ones. The hippocampus is still "carrying" the event. So...maybe the memory loss just represents a reorganization of the brain. A traumatic event, of course, can be life-altering. It takes a lot of brain power/energy to restructure neuronal morphology. People literally change after such events. Something new is being learned very quickly: a whole new way of being. "Don't charge at lions. Don't trust men from the neighboring tribe. Don't wear bones when hunting." * For such a thing to happen, the hippocampus can't be bothered with forming new memories. So the symptoms are the means to, and also the signs of, those changes. There's no doubt that a person suffering from the symptoms of PTSD would have garnered support, fear, and elicited a whole host of behavioral responses--as today. And that indeed an individual with the symptoms of PTSD would have been a marker--a reminding factor. Members of the group's physiology wouldn't have gone thrrough such dramatic and intense changes like the individual, but they (and their physiology to some degree) would be influenced in some fashion, surely. Another thought. I don't actually know the statistics or have any data on this stuff, I can only speak from impressionistic observation and experience. But it seems to me that people who suffer with the symptoms of PTSD eventually stop suffering. ** The changes finally get wired--so they're no longer signposts for the group in that way...Though the group will have experienced the person in that state for a while and have their new state as reminding factor, too. Anyway, to answer question: tremendous survival value for individual and group if the symptoms lead to 're-education' and changes in personality, behavioral response, etc etc. *Magical thinking and OCD are related to these things and also were quite adaptive. ** Meds, of course, are very helpful...but I imagine that the change that mother nature has programmed the suffering person to go through doesn't actually happen with meds. And, I actually have no particular feeling on whether one way is better or worse..I don't have a romantic view that suffering through the symtoms of PTSD in today's world could be all that beneficial to the individual. I would look at it on a case-by-case basis, I suppose. (I generally take the view that people (unless they pose a threat in some way to self or others) need to experience such emotions for a tiny little while without meds--even PTSD. (I suffered with such symptoms (and then some!) for about 4-5 years without meds, btw. Not something I would advise everyone to do!!!) More to think about and to write, but have to run! All best, Alice ----- Original Message ----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder? If you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), your hippocampus works poorly and you have a lot of trouble storing new memories. It?s your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience that produced your trauma to begin with. Is this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal survival? Or is it helpful to something else?to the survival of society? If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a walking warning of danger to the rest of us? Ted Coons proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember recent events but still hang on to memories of our distant past for a reason. Not a reason that helps us aging elders, but a reason that helps the collective mind, the mass intellect of society. We elders, Ted thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique memories alive not for the sake of our personal survival, but for the sake of the younger folks who?ve had no opportunity to experience or remember the days when we elders were young and vigorous. Those youngsters have had no chance to remember the problems and solutions of our childhoods way back when, the problems and solutions of an earlier generation or two or three. Can PTSD victims serve a similar function, as danger markers for those of us who?ve never experienced the horrors that the past-obsessed and present-challenged PTSD patients remember far, far better than they?d like? Are they walking warning signs to the rest of us? Are they, like all of us, disposable modules in the mass learning machine of culture, in the parallel distributed intelligence of the collective brain? ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From HowlBloom at aol.com Wed Apr 27 05:26:26 2005 From: HowlBloom at aol.com (HowlBloom at aol.com) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 01:26:26 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? Message-ID: <45.270e22dd.2fa07c82@aol.com> The need to tell the tale of the horrors you've seen and the relief you get when you tell the tale a hundred times tends to support the hypothesis that the symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder are disabling to the victim but beneficial to society, beneficial to the social group. This need to blurt out the worst tends to support the idea that the post traumatic stress disorder victim becomes a marker of danger, a "do not go here" sign. And Alice, I believe, is right. Most adaptive things start out as accidents, as side effects of something else. But once these traits prove useful, evolution favors their retention. Then they take on a life of their own. However if what I've said above is true and most adaptive things start out as accidents, how do we account for the smart evolution, the guided evolution, the evolution-that-has-intelligence-built-in that Eshel has chronicled in bacterial colonies? Does an agglomeration of cells in something as simple as a volvox have a collective intelligence? It must. If I remember my Lynn Margulis rightly, early multicellular organisms--Carchesium and Zoothamnium-- were wired together via something that preceded a nervous system. If a Carchesium or Zoothamnium has roughly the number of cells in a volvox, that would make a community of roughly 65,536 interconnected individuals, far more than enough microprocessors to make a supercomputer. Let's put it differently. A cell is a collective of roughly 300 million macromolecules, smart molecules. In it is a genome which Eshel says is a sophisticated central processor. That central processor, like a supercomputer, is also set up as a parallel processor. Between 400 and 35,000 genes work simultaneously to solve the problems of the cell. One of the simplest multicellular organisms we know is the Volvox, which, as I just mentioned, has 65,536 cells. That gives even a volvox a total of 19,660,800,000 smart elements sharing their opinions. That could make for quite a collective intelligence. It could even make for what Eshel sees in bacteria--a purposeful intelligence. An intelligence wired to overcome obstacles and survive. An intelligence made from a team that participates in larger teams. An intelligence designed for survival of the group and for survival of itself simultaneously. An intelligence smart enough to feel that in times of crisis, you have to make a sacrifice. If you want the traits of your tribe or of the organism you're a part of to survive, sometimes you have to make small sacrifices, sometimes you have to make big ones. An intelligence smart enough to sense that when you've hit something dangerous or something simply confusing, your job is to share it with the group. Your job is to raise a warning even if you suffer from becoming an ambulating signboard. Your job is to alert the group to a new problem. By advertising the problem, you, in fact, become a vital starting point to the solution. There's more. Remember Jeff Hawkins nested hierarchies? Nested hierarchies, by the way, showed up in E.O. Wilson's 1976 Sociobiology. Knowing what a great idea-collector and synthesizer Wilson is, I'm sure he got the term and the idea from a previous source. Meaning Wilson and Hawkins wors the way the cells in you and me or in a bacterial colonies operate. They operate the way Alice Andrews, Lynn Johnson, and I operate in this dialog--as gatherers of threads of information that we twiddle with, we knit with, we make new knots and stitches with, and in the raggedy-ended new weave made with our sewing, knitting, and knotting, we pass a swatch of half-made fabric along to you and back to me. But I digress. Hawkins' basic principle is that a group of things work together to detect a tune and name it. Then they pass that name upward to the five cortical layers above them and to the cell assemblies they gossip with horizontally in the brain. Smart groups of cells work in a similar nesting of hierarchies. 400 genes laboring together form something greater, a genome. 300 million macromolecules working together form a cell. 65,536 cells working together and competing with each other form a simple organism. A group of organisms working together and competing with each other form a colony. A group of colonies of different species working together and warring with each other form an ecosystem. A group of ecosystems working and warring together form a planetary system, a Gaian system. At every level the elements working and warring are likely to make a collective intellect. And the goal of that collective intellect is to survive. How do we know this? Every form of organism, colony, and ecosystem on this planet today has managed to make it through many a woe and many a difficulty, yet has managed to reproduce itself successfully, whether it's done so for a mere 100,000 years, as in the case of Homo sapiens, or for 3.5 billion years, as in the case of cyanobacteria. How have life-forms pulled this off? There's a good chance that they've done it with purposive intelligence, one of nature's best survival mechanisms. Compare the idea that post traumatic stress disorder makes us modules in a collective intelligence, makes us warning signals on the dashboard of life, with the following quote from Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence. Keep something interesting in mind--the way that the post traumatic stress disorder sufferer keeps rerunning his or her traumatic memories. The way he has to repeat those memories to others to get relief. On to the quote: "Instead of only passing information forward...auto-associative memories fed the output of each neuron back into the input.... When a pattern of activity was imposed on the artificial neurons, they formed a memory of this pattern. ...To retrieve a pattern stored in such a memory, you must provide the pattern you want to retrieve. ....The most important property is that you don't have to have the entire pattern you want to retrieve in order to retrieve it. You might have only part of the pattern, or you might have a somewhat messed-up pattern. The auto-associative memory can retrieve the correct pattern, as it was originally stored, even though you start with a messy version of it. It would be like going to the grocer with half eaten brown bananas and getting whole green bananas in return. ...Second, unlike mist neural networks, an auto-associative memory can be designed to store sequences of patterns, or temporal patterns. This feature is accomplished by adding time delay to the feedback. ...I might feed in the first few notes of 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' and the memory returns the whole song. When presented with part of the sequence, the memory can recall the rest." Jeff Hawkins, Sandra Blakeslee. On Intelligence. New York: Times Books, 2004: pp 46-47 Give me a choir of post-traumatic stress disorder victims of different generations--Korean War Vets, Viet Nam War Vets, Desert Storm War Vets, and our current Iraq War Vets, and I bet you this. It is very likely that we get a melody, a variation on a theme, a temporal sequence available to you and me. Especially when many of these vets decide to write their novels and those novels are turned into films. What is the tune they are singing? What is the sequence they're alerting us to? The horrible way in which war is cyclical. The horrible way in which war is endemic to our species. The nightmare that war makes, the living hell. For some it means the call to glory in the name of a great or a truly crappy cause. But to others it is a call to do something new, something attempted many a time but never accomplished before--to stop the bleeding and to bring an end to war. Is this purposive memory made from the cries of modules holding their scarred and tortured memories and never letting go? Is this the sign of a multi-generational community working on a problem, working toward a goal? Is this an example of teleology--of the future drawing us forward rather than mere prior cause pushing us to the present and stranding us there? Is it a sign that vision is the beckoning of futures yet to be? Does it mean that some evolution is smart evolution? That some evolution is evolution driven by a future-projecting intelligence, even when that intelligence, as in the case of bacteria, doesn't have consciousness, daydreams, or a brain? Yes, I think the hints are there that the future hooks and beckons us, that it makes us chew on ways to triumph over problems and to turn them into opportunities, to triumph over losses and turn them into victories. Eshel Ben-Jacob and Joel Isaacson have been hinting that they see this teleonomy in the worlds they study--in Joel's computer science and in Eshel's study of bacteria, of self-assembling neurons, and of adaptive neural chips. Are they right? I suspect that they may be more on target than we know. Howard Several forms of cilia-powered protozoans_*_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ftn1) _[i]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_edn1) produced a second generation which, unlike their unicellular parents, did not totally wall themselves off at birth. Their direct connection to each other allowed one cell to sense an obstacle or an opening and to flash the data so fast that the multitude could react almost instantly and in total coordination. This "wiring" between cells prefigured neural components. It was composed of remodeled spirochetic microtubules_[ii]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_edn2) --the same construction materials from which nerve cells would evolve. The odds are good, then, that in the two billion years_[iii]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_edn3) now blank to us, numerous further elements of primal nervous systems evolved through trial, error, and if the University of Tel Aviv's Eshel Ben-Jacob's suspicions are correct, purposeful invention._[iv]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_edn4) ____________________________________ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ftnref1) * Carchesium and Zoothamnium ____________________________________ _[i]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ednref1) .. For wonderful photos of carchesium, see: Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan. Protist Information Server. "Oligohymenophorea: Peritrichia: Sessilida: Vorticellidae: Carchesium," http://taxa.soken.ac.jp/WWW/PDB/Images/Ciliophora/Carchesium /index.html, February 1999. _[ii]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ednref2) .. The spirochetic legacy would prove vital to the elaboration of nervous system components, eventually contributing to neurons, balance sensors, and the rods and cones of eyes. (Lynn Margulis. Symbiosis in Cell Evolution: Microbial Communities in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, Second Edition: 233, 260; Lynn Margulis and Michael F. Dolan. "Swimming Against the Current." The Sciences, January/February 1997: 20-25..) _[iii]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ednref3) .. Niles Eldredge. The Pattern of Evolution. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1998: 38; Graham Bell. "Model Metaorganism": 248. _[iv]_ (aoldb://mail/write/template.htm#_ednref4) .. Taken together, the following articles sketch an intriguing prehistory of the nervous system. Among other things, they indicate that we inherited the progenitors of our neurotransmitters from bacteria and the basics of our brain from multicellular creatures as primitive as planarians: J.C. Venter, U. di Porzio, D.A. Robinson, S.M. Shreeve, J. Lai, A.R. Kerlavage, S.P. Fracek Jr, K.U. Lentes, C.M. Fraser. "Evolution of neurotransmitter receptor systems." Progress in Neurobiology, 30:2-3 1988: 105-69; H.B. Sarnat, M.G. Netsky. "The brain of the planarian as the ancestor of the human brain." Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, November 1985: 296-302. In a message dated 4/26/2005 7:48:57 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, andrewsa at newpaltz.edu writes: I love this, too, Lynn! It fits so perfectly with my experience and with some of what I know... Telling and writing stories (the story) can be healing to those suffering the symptoms of PTSD (and other forms of mental unease) and the stories can also be useful to the group... For the person suffering, the 'new knowledge' eventually gets incorporated and the new way of being eventually happens, but perhaps it all happens sooner (and relief sooner, too) if the sufferer's experience is encoded in the group's system/collective knowledge/culture. Hence yet another reason, maybe, why some intensely creative writers have such burning desire to be read by 'the group'. The validation closes the circuit... Also, no question that an 'unprepared brain' with a particular neurochem profile deals with shock and terror and stress less well than a prepared one....And aside from meditation, exercise, a happy, meaningful life with good relationships and not too many economic worries, etc. (things that help keep brain prepared for major stressors), having the collective wisdom of the group, i.e., stories/narratives which take many forms, e.g., gossip, fiction, news, etc., can also help prepare... all the best! Alice PS I'm afraid I was not quite able to articulate what I was getting at, but I'm sending anyway... ----- Original Message ----- From: _Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D._ (mailto:ljohnson at solution-consulting.com) To: _The new improved paleopsych list_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 9:23 PM Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? As usual, Alice is a great resource. A further view: Who is most / least disabled by PTSD? - preparation reduces PTSD. Special Forces troops in Viet Nam were exposed to worse violence (like when the Cong cut off arms of children the SF medics vaccinated) than grunts but had almost no PTSD. It was because of the extensive training, compared with 16 weeks of Basic / AIT. - story telling: Edna Foa found that repeatedly telling the story reduced PTSD in rape victims. So PTSD may be nature's way of telling us we aren't preparing ourselves and we aren't telling / listening to the story. Imagine a village in africa. To the beat of a drum, a hunter is telling his story: Hunter: Then as I approached the antelope, I saw a lion! Villagers in unison: Boom-chucka, boom chucka boom chucka Hunter: The lion leaped! V: Boom chucka! H: It missed me but it got Steve! V: Aaargh! The youth are prepared (hunting is dangerous, lions are about) and by sharing, in perhaps a ritualistic way, he masters the trauma. My dad, late in life, told his story of being a flight engineer on a B-17 over Europe. While he told the story (as my mother wrote it down) he cried for two days. It puzzled him. "It's been 40 years, it shouldn't still bother me" but after that he was as relaxed and peaceful as I had ever seen him. The storytelling had a ritual quality (tell your story and I will write it down for the kids) and he found some mastery. Lynn Alice Andrews wrote: Howard, I really love this! I had some alternative--or actually, additional thoughts--not ones I necessarily want to champion, but nonetheless I feel like sharing: Perhaps PTSD is adaptive for the individual and ultimately the group. A young hunter is out on the savannah and his brother/kin is savagely destroyed by lions, say. He might experience all sorts of emotions in response to witnessing this, perhaps the symptoms of PTSD. The emotions (as par Randy Nesse et al.) guide his behavior--i.e. staying at 'camp' not going on hunts, ruminating over and over the scene, etc etc. The symptoms like memory loss are maybe just "mind-spandrels." The hippocampus goes into obsessive overdrive on the old memories at the expense of new ones. The hippocampus is still "carrying" the event. So...maybe the memory loss just represents a reorganization of the brain. A traumatic event, of course, can be life-altering. It takes a lot of brain power/energy to restructure neuronal morphology. People literally change after such events. Something new is being learned very quickly: a whole new way of being. "Don't charge at lions. Don't trust men from the neighboring tribe. Don't wear bones when hunting." * For such a thing to happen, the hippocampus can't be bothered with forming new memories. So the symptoms are the means to, and also the signs of, those changes. There's no doubt that a person suffering from the symptoms of PTSD would have garnered support, fear, and elicited a whole host of behavioral responses--as today. And that indeed an individual with the symptoms of PTSD would have been a marker--a reminding factor. Members of the group's physiology wouldn't have gone thrrough such dramatic and intense changes like the individual, but they (and their physiology to some degree) would be influenced in some fashion, surely. Another thought. I don't actually know the statistics or have any data on this stuff, I can only speak from impressionistic observation and experience. But it seems to me that people who suffer with the symptoms of PTSD eventually stop suffering. ** The changes finally get wired--so they're no longer signposts for the group in that way...Though the group will have experienced the person in that state for a while and have their new state as reminding factor, too. Anyway, to answer question: tremendous survival value for individual and group if the symptoms lead to 're-education' and changes in personality, behavioral response, etc etc. *Magical thinking and OCD are related to these things and also were quite adaptive. ** Meds, of course, are very helpful...but I imagine that the change that mother nature has programmed the suffering person to go through doesn't actually happen with meds. And, I actually have no particular feeling on whether one way is better or worse..I don't have a romantic view that suffering through the symtoms of PTSD in today's world could be all that beneficial to the individual. I would look at it on a case-by-case basis, I suppose. (I generally take the view that people (unless they pose a threat in some way to self or others) need to experience such emotions for a tiny little while without meds--even PTSD. (I suffered with such symptoms (and then some!) for about 4-5 years without meds, btw. Not something I would advise everyone to do!!!) More to think about and to write, but have to run! All best, Alice ----- Original Message ----- From: _HowlBloom at aol.com_ (mailto:HowlBloom at aol.com) To: _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 5:00 AM Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumatic stressdisorder? If you have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), your hippocampus works poorly and you have a lot of trouble storing new memories. It?s your old memories that prevail, the memories of the horrid experience that produced your trauma to begin with. Is this fixation with a danger in the past helpful to your personal survival? Or is it helpful to something else?to the survival of society? If you suffer from PTSD, does your brain and body inflict that suffering every day to turn you into a signboard--a walking warning of danger to the rest of us? Ted Coons proposes that us old folks lose our ability to remember recent events but still hang on to memories of our distant past for a reason. Not a reason that helps us aging elders, but a reason that helps the collective mind, the mass intellect of society. We elders, Ted thinks, are storage jugs keeping antique memories alive not for the sake of our personal survival, but for the sake of the younger folks who?ve had no opportunity to experience or remember the days when we elders were young and vigorous. Those youngsters have had no chance to remember the problems and solutions of our childhoods way back when, the problems and solutions of an earlier generation or two or three. Can PTSD victims serve a similar function, as danger markers for those of us who?ve never experienced the horrors that the past-obsessed and present-challenged PTSD patients remember far, far better than they?d like? Are they walking warning signs to the rest of us? Are they, like all of us, disposable modules in the mass learning machine of culture, in the parallel distributed intelligence of the collective brain? ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute _www.howardbloom.net_ (http://www.howardbloom.net/) _www.bigbangtango.net_ (http://www.bigbangtango.net/) Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: _www.paleopsych.org_ (http://www.paleopsych.org/) for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see _www.howardbloom.net/lucifer_ (http://www.howardbloom.net/lucifer) For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see _www.howardbloom.net_ (http://www.howardbloom.net/) ____________________________________ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) _http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych_ (http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych) ____________________________________ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list _paleopsych at paleopsych.org_ (mailto:paleopsych at paleopsych.org) _http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych_ (http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych) ____________________________________ _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych ---------- Howard Bloom Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute www.howardbloom.net www.bigbangtango.net Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series. For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org for two chapters from The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 27 13:58:16 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 06:58:16 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? Message-ID: <01C54AF6.7D585B80.shovland@mindspring.com> "Preparation" for combat related stress most likely consists of emotional numbing, which is not very healthy. Most people are not prepared in any way for combat, and perhaps cannot be. They will be ptsd, and large parts of their life will be wasted because of it. They will also damage the lives of people around them. I have heard that Iraq vets are being given multiple prescriptions for anti-depressants and are being told not to say anything on pain of proscecution. There will be no relief for them. Nothing valuable is learned from being raped. Telling the story may reduce the pain but it never goes away completely. And our society has little interest in going to the root cause of the anger against women that motivates rape. So we learn nothing from it, any more than we do from the suffering of war. A part of us loves suffering, and loves to inflict it on others. Pleasure is fleeting, but pain can go on forever- a much more reliable source of energy for those who feed on it. Creative people constantly learn from the "accidents" in their work. But although an accident in a painting can be useful, an accident in a car is useless. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:26 PM To: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu; paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: gradientor at yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? << File: ATT00007.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00008.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00009.txt >> From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 27 14:13:03 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 07:13:03 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] TNF-alpha(Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha) Message-ID: <01C54AF8.8E7ED9F0.shovland@mindspring.com> TNF-alpha is a member of a family of cytokines which also includes LIF , CNTF , Oncostatin M , ILI1 , and CT-1 . All known members of the TNF-alpha cytokine family induce hepatic expression of Acute phase proteins . http://www.grt.kyushu-u.ac.jp/spad/account/ligand/tnf-a.html From ljohnson at solution-consulting.com Wed Apr 27 16:18:46 2005 From: ljohnson at solution-consulting.com (Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:18:46 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? In-Reply-To: <01C54AF6.7D585B80.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54AF6.7D585B80.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <426FBB66.10006@solution-consulting.com> Steve makes interesting points, but doesn't understand the preparation of a special forces soldier. We were not 'numbed' so much as taught to improvise and to "expect the unexpected" (contradictory as that is). I felt the opposite of numbing; I felt the most alive I had up to that time. I recently spent a couple of days once with a lieutenent colonel who was a fellow psychologist and had spent much time at Ft. Bragg working with the special forces. He found they could induce a lot of confusion and trauma into Air Force pilots who took the Escape and Evasion course there, but when they put the SF guys through the same course, they were calm. The 'field expedient' training gave us the feeling that we could cope. That is what prevents PTSD, not numbing. Throughout evolutionary history, humans have endured violence and death as a matter of course. Howard's works are beautiful recaps of this. It is doubtful they had PTSD at least to the extent we do, probably because a person from a warrior culture accepts his own death. Like Alice's point about narrative, the warrior has symbolically enacted his own death and the deaths of others and views it as a normal course of events. Similarly, my great-great grandparents (I have the diaries) accept deaths of children, for example. They are sad, but death is not unexpected. It has become unexpected to us. Thank God, yet depression is higher than ever (a cohort born in 1925 has a 4% lifetime incidence of depression, someone born around 1975 has between 10 - 20%), anxiety is higher, divorce is higher . . . hummm . . . We have denied this side of ourselves, we deny death (except perhaps to those judged to not have a high enough quality of life) and suppress it. A child is expelled from school for bringing knitting needles. Another child is expelled because he forgot a water pistol was in his backpack. Where I grew up I was never more than a dozen steps away from unsecured .30 caliber hunting rifles in my home (small house!) as were most of my friends. Our recreation was carrying .22 rifles and shooting dangerous cans and bottles. I never heard of any school shootings. So I think perhaps the more we try to deny and suppress violence the more it becomes unmanageable, both internally and externally. Lynn PS: I have consulted with VA hospitals, done therapy with PTSD vets, and I don't believe anyone is told not to say anything. That is not the VA way. The therapists want the vets to open up, talk about it. We don't have the rituals to allow that, so the symptoms continue. I think the notion that PTSD vets lives are wasted is a mistake. My dad had a form of PTSD yet was very successful, great contribution to our small town. When he died, there were 2,000 people at his funeral. Bombing german cities was an awful job, and it left some scars, but his was not a wasted life. (hardly a scientific argument) Lynn Steve Hovland wrote: >"Preparation" for combat related stress most likely >consists of emotional numbing, which is not very >healthy. > >Most people are not prepared in any way for combat, >and perhaps cannot be. They will be ptsd, and large >parts of their life will be wasted because of it. They >will also damage the lives of people around them. > >I have heard that Iraq vets are being given multiple >prescriptions for anti-depressants and are being >told not to say anything on pain of proscecution. >There will be no relief for them. > >Nothing valuable is learned from being raped. >Telling the story may reduce the pain but it never >goes away completely. And our society has little >interest in going to the root cause of the anger >against women that motivates rape. So we >learn nothing from it, any more than we do from >the suffering of war. > >A part of us loves suffering, and loves to inflict it >on others. Pleasure is fleeting, but pain can go >on forever- a much more reliable source of >energy for those who feed on it. > >Creative people constantly learn from the >"accidents" in their work. But although an >accident in a painting can be useful, an accident >in a car is useless. > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > >-----Original Message----- >From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] >Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:26 PM >To: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu; paleopsych at paleopsych.org >Cc: gradientor at yahoo.com >Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? > > << File: ATT00007.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00008.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00009.txt >> >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > > > From shovland at mindspring.com Wed Apr 27 17:19:35 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:19:35 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] One solution to high gas prices Message-ID: <01C54B20.0CE07340.shovland@mindspring.com> Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 41307 bytes Desc: not available URL: From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:25:09 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:25:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Annual Meeting: Association for Politics and the Life Sciences Message-ID: Association for Politics and the Life Sciences Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting The Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC August 31 - September 4, 2005 http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/2005conference/default.html [This is very much worth attending. We were there in 2000 and will be going again.] The 2005 Annual Meeting of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) will be held at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, August 31 - September 4, 2005. The APLS meeting will be held simultaneously with the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. PREREGISTRATION FORMS [1]General Preregistration [2]Preregistration for Newcomers [3]Preregistration for Science Journalists HOTEL RESERVATIONS Be sure to enter this plsplsa in the group code box to receive the APLS special rate. [4]http://www.renaissancehotels.com/wassh Individual presentation, panel, and roundtable proposals are welcome on any topic that pertains to: *Bioterrorism: communications, preparedness, arms control, agricultural biosecurity, bioweapons, origins of war. *Biobehavior: evolutionary psychology, criminal behavior, ape language, dolphin sociobiology; feminist thought, gender politics, chaos theory; *Biopolicy: cloning, reproductive strategies, stem cells, AIDS, policy analysis, health policy, aging policy, assisted suicide; *Bioethics: euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, reproductive ethics, medical ethics, philosophy; *Biotechnology: genetically modified foods, plant made pharmaceuticals, pest control, nutraceuticals, genomics, antibiotic resistance, proteomics; *Environment: climate change, regulation, sustainability, coral reef depletion, population problems; species invasion, international treaty law, biodiversity, risk and uncertainty. *Science journalism: media and biopolicy, media and bioterrorism, academics and the media. To accommodate the varying norms of the many disciplines represented in APLS, printed papers are not required. Emphasis is placed instead on carefully prepared oral presentations. Papers are certainly welcome, however, and will be made available to participants in the exhibit area. In lieu of discussants, session chairs play an active role as facilitators of discussion among panelists and between panelists and the audience. Program The last seven meetings of APLS were highlighted by keynote speakers: E.O. Wilson, Frans de Waal, Lionel Tiger, Francis Fukuyama, Matt Ridley, Arthur Caplan, and Gary Marcus. Napolean Chagnon, will be the keynote speaker in Washington this year. Dr. Chagnon is a Professor Emeritus of Sociobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is recognized for his pathbreaking studies of tribal warfare among the Yanomamo tribes in the Amazon Basin. His book, Yanomamo, is a classic and one of the most widely read texts in the field of anthropology. Napoleon Chagnon joins an exciting group of plenary speakers and a formidable set of panels and roundtables on politics and the life sciences. In addition, there will be a welcoming reception, and poster session, morning and afternoon coffee breaks, a banquet, and a book exhibit. Hotel Accommodations The 2005 APLS Meeting will be held August 31 - September 4 in Washington at The Mayflower Hotel. The Mayflower Hotel 1127 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Tel: 1-800-hotels1 or 1-800-408-3571 For information on submitting proposals for individual presentations, roundtables, or panels click on: [5]PROPOSAL FORMS The deadline for receipt of proposals is May 1, 2005. References 1. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/2005conference/prereglinks.html 2. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/2005conference/preNClinks.html 3. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/2005conference/prejornlinks.html 4. http://www.renaissancehotels.com/wassh 5. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/2005conference/proposals.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:25:21 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:25:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Syllabi of APLS Members Message-ID: Syllabi of APLS Members http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/default.html As a way of promoting the development of new, interdisciplinary courses in politics and the life sciences, we present here a selection of course syllabi from APLS members. More syllabi will be added as this site develops further. Instructor Class Arnhart, Larry [1]Biopolitics and Human Nature Asch, Adrienne [2]Ethical and Policy Issues in Reproduction [3]Ethical and Social Issues in Genetics [4]Introduction to Reproductive Issues [5]Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Abortion [6]Women and Motherhood Bonnicksen, Andrea [7]Seminar in Biomedical Policy Johnson, Gary [8]The Origins of Human Nature Kleinman, Daniel [9]Technology and Society [10]Science Studies: Historical Approaches Masters, Roger [11]Human Nature and Politics Orbell, John [12]Evolution, Cooperation, and Ethics Schubert, James [13]Politics and the Life Sciences Sprinkle, Robert [14]Motivation in Public Affairs Strate, John [15]Biopolitics _________________________________________________________________ Association for Politics and the Life Sciences Political Science Department Utah State University Logan, UT 84322-0725, USA Telephone: +1-435-797-8104 Fax: +1-435-797-3751 _________________________________________________________________ Direct comments or questions to: [16]DGOETZE at HASS.USU.EDU. References 1. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/arnhart.html 2. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/asch300.html 3. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/asch203.html 4. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/asch103.html 5. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/asch202.html 6. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/asch204.html 7. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/bonnicksen.html 8. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/johnson.html 9. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/kleinman2084A.html 10. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/kleinman8121.html 11. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/masters.html 12. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/orbell.html 13. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/schubert.html 14. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/sprinkle.html 15. http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/syllabi/strate.html 16. mailto:dgoetze at hass.usu.edu From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:26:23 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:26:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Guardian: Myths and corrections Message-ID: Myths and corrections http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4966888-99939,00.html [Something else worth recycling, so as to get refutations.] Will Hutton analyses two very different approaches to the globalisation debate in Martin Wolf's Why Globalisation Works and David Held's Global Covenant Saturday July 10, 2004 The Guardian Why Globalisation Works Martin Wolf 398pp, Yale, ?19.99 Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus David Held 216pp, Polity, ?12.99 It was not long ago that every international economic gathering was punctuated by fierce protests at the sins of globalisation; famously the World Trade talks at Seattle got nowhere in part because of the teargas and mayhem outside the conference. Who was prepared to advance the cause of globalisation when so many people found it offensive? At the Genoa G8 summit in 2001, protester Carlo Giuliani was killed by the Italian police - a martyr to the cause. A small cottage industry emerged of authors decrying the sins of the turbo-charged capitalism that globalisation was creating. It seemed that having won the battle of ideas against communism, the west was having a crisis of ideas about its own economic organisation. Those who believed in the virtues of markets and capitalism were on the retreat. Not Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of the Financial Times. There is something of Wayne Rooney about Wolf. You would not want to defend any but a rock-solid economic position against his absolute self-confidence, his honesty and almost joyous marshalling of economic data; if there is a chink in your armour he will find it. His book is a swaggering assertion that the antiglobalisers are wrong. This is not a man to suffer those he considers fools, and plenty of reputations are the worse after this. He attacks the antiglobalisation brigade in all its manifestations - and early on lists the charges. Globalisation is allegedly impoverishing peasants and workers worldwide, empowering faceless corporations and destructive finance, brutalising our environment, promoting inequality and destroying democracy and the state structures through which it works. The emergence of a single global market with ever lower tariffs, ever greater capacity to produce and distribute goods (and increasingly services) wherever there is economic advantage, and ever easier movement of capital in and out of whichever country, has unleashed the capitalist tiger, say the critics. It must be resisted or we all face perdition. Wolf will have none of this. He shows how trade and foreign direct investment are engines not of poverty but of wealth-creation; the problem for too many of the world's peasants and workers is not too much globalisation but too little. There is a rich man's club of western nations that largely invest in and trade with each other, ratcheting up their incomes by specialising in what they are good at and exploiting their exponentially expanding stock of physical, human and intellectual capital. What the rest of the world wants and needs is not to resist this process but to share in more of the action itself - and those countries that join in on the right terms can do astonishingly well. Wolf cites China as an example - in a way perhaps the most extraordinary convert to the principles in which he believes. China's economic growth is already the stuff of legend, and for those critics who accuse the country's export processing zones and burgeoning industrial belts of being new bywords for exploitation, Wolf has a ready reply: it was even worse living on the land on less than a dollar a day. Infant mortality has fallen dramatically; numeracy and literacy are rising sharply; food consumption is climbing. The 10 million peasants who leave the countryside every year looking for work in the cities are proof positive that they regard what is happening as an improvement - and one born of opening up to the very trade, investment and financial flows that the antiglobalisers decry. Western corporations are the crucial handmaidens of this transformation; the idea that western consumers and third-world workers have become slaves to the tyranny of brands, logos and their callous production methods as they move production offshore is complete baloney to Wolf. He shows how they pay better wages than local producers, how their investment is essential for development and how the trade they foster benefits all parties. And so it goes on. The financial markets as a source of instability? Yes, crisis runs on currencies have been costly and sometimes poorly managed by the IMF - but better this than no global financial market at all. Governments undermined by the newly powerful footloose companies? Government spending and taxation in the west have been rising over the past 20 years, and even taxation on companies is up. Inequality on the march? Among individuals maybe, but the big story is hundreds of millions being lifted off the breadline. Environmental degradation? Standards are rising, not falling, and where there are problems they are due not to trade but to authoritarian political regimes impervious to complaints about pollution and toxicity - often produced by domestic manufacturers protected from global competition. Wolf is convinced and convincing, but to a degree he is tilting at easy targets; the argument is moving on from where it was even two or three years ago. David Held is a gold-carat social democrat and man of the liberal left, and intriguingly he begins his book with almost the same list of myths about globalisation as Wolf and consigns them to the dustbin with no less enthusiasm. But while Wolf believes that globalisation works, Held has profound reservations. It certainly has the potential to produce the opportunity and sustained wealth-generation in which Wolf believes - but only if the politics and governance are right. The argument migrates to new ground, where Wolf's certainties and mastery of economic data are less secure. Held's position is that globalisation is undermining national social settlements. Tensions between capital and labour, whose past resolution on a national basis led to social democratic bargains - legitimising capitalism, promoting the rule of law and underwriting the circumstances and opportunities of ordinary people - are, he argues, re-emerging in the global framework. While Wolf can only explain the ability of totalitarian fascism and communism to check the last great beneficent, liberal global opening in the late 19th century as the triumph of bad ideas and power-grabbing authoritarians, Held is not puzzled at all. Rather he is worried that economic instability, inequality and palpable unfairness were recruiting-sergeants for massive political dissent, and that the only way to head them off now is to ensure that a global system of governance is developed on social democratic principles to govern globalisation. He calls this a New Global Covenant. Held may be dismissed as an idealist; to achieve either a representative UN or even to establish a global financial authority as part of his covenant seem very distant dreams - but perhaps the darker side of globalisation will provoke this response as a necessity. In his recent Financial Times columns, Wolf has pointed to the unsustainability of the growth of the US's international debts and the likelihood of a painful adjustment - an analysis that is little ventilated in his book. This unsustainability is due to the willingness of Asian central banks to acquire an endless supply of dollars - a willingness that is driven by political as much as economic judgment. Globalisation is not just created by the invisible hand of the market and its viability ensured by the law of comparative advantage; its success so far has depended on a series of fragile political bargains, notably between Asia and the US. Wolf seems most ill at ease in his ho-hum judgment on the IMF's record managing currency crises and on the way corporate lobbying is undermining democracy. Scratch a bit and in these areas he is not so far away from those he criticises. Wolf may have set the bar high for those who want to attack the economics of globalisation - but he has not engaged with what governance structures will be needed to organise any adverse fall-out from the processes at work, for example a potentially colossal run on the dollar. For that we have to turn to Held. If you want to understand globalisation you need to read both. Will Hutton is chief executive of The Work Foundation. To order Why Globalisation Works for ?17.99 or Global Covenant for ?10.99, both plus p&p, call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875. From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:27:26 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:27:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] CNN: Girls are abusing steroids, too Message-ID: Girls are abusing steroids, too http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/04/25/girls.steroids.ap/index.html An alarming number of American girls, some as young as 9, are using bodybuilding steroids -- not necessarily to get an edge on the playing field, but to get the toned, sculpted look of models and movie stars, experts say. Girls are getting their hands on the same dangerous testosterone pills, shots and creams that have created a scandal in Major League Baseball and other sports. Often, these are the same girls who have eating disorders, according to some research. "There's been a substantial increase for girls during the 1990s, and it's at an all-time high right now," said Charles Yesalis, a professor of health and human development at Pennsylvania State University. Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan professor who heads an annual government-sponsored survey on risky behavior by young people, said: "Other than pedophilia, this is the most secret behavior I've ever encountered." Overall, up to about 5 percent of high school girls and 7 percent of middle-school girls admit trying anabolic steroids at least once, with use of rising steadily since 1991, various government and university studies have shown. Researchers say that most girls are using steroids to get bigger and stronger on the playing field, and they attribute some of the increase in steroid use to girls' rising participation in sports. But plenty of other girls are using steroids to give themselves a slightly muscular look, they say. "With young women, you see them using it more as a weight control and body fat reduction" method, said Jeff Hoerger, who runs the staff counseling program at Rutgers University in New Jersey. In the past couple of years, he has helped two young women using steroids -- one an 11th-grader with "an average figure" whose swimmer friend suggested steroids would help with weight loss. "She was just looking for quick results," Hoerger said. The sports medicine division at the Oregon Health and Science University found that two-thirds of Oregon high school girls who admitted using steroids were not athletes and that girls who were considering taking steroids had tried other, risky ways to get thin. "They were more likely to have eating disorders and to abuse diuretics, amphetamines and laxatives," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, head of the division. In teenage girls, the side effects from taking male sex hormones can include severe acne, smaller breasts, deeper voice, irregular periods, excess facial and body hair, depression, paranoia and the fits of anger dubbed "roid rage." Steroids also carry higher risks of heart attack, stroke and some forms of cancer. Researchers say youngsters generally get illegal anabolic steroids on the black market from relatives or friends, from the local gym and over the Internet. At least one study indicates some parents and coaches supply steroids to teen athletes. Dr. Eric Small, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on sports medicine, said adults should gently ask youngsters about possible steroid use. "Talking about supplements and steroids needs to start in the third grade," Small said. "If you wait till ninth grade, it's too late." From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:28:52 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:28:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] USELESS PEOPLE: Japan is filled with useless people Message-ID: USELESS PEOPLE: Japan is filled with useless people http://www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/useless.htm USELESS PEOPLE Japan is filled with workers who do almost nothing. You probably haven't needed a crossing guard to help you across the street since you were five years old, but you can find crossing guards on quiet streets far away from schools and playgrounds here. Operating an ATM should be the simplest thing in the world, but almost every bank has a "lobby lady" to help you with your transaction and in case you find the task of pushing an elevator button too overwhelming, there are elevator girls in a lot of the big department stores. Flag men do, of course, play an important role in directing traffic around construction sites on busy roads, but do drivers on back streets really need three or four old men to direct them, when there are already 5000 pylons around the site? The reason for all the useless people is that these jobs are giving retired people with small pensions a way to earn some extra money, and, depending on how you look at it, the dignity of having a job (even if it is a useless one). It also keeps the unemployment rate down. CROSSING GUARDS In the city of Himeji one Sunday afternoon, there were a pair of old men directing traffic at every street corner in the downtown area. I had to wait about two minutes for a car to come by so that I could get an "action shot". CROSSING GUARDS AT TRAFFIC LIGHTS This guy is directing traffic even though there is a working traffic light right behind him. They actually inconvenience people by preventing them from crossing when there are no cars coming. ELEVATOR GIRLS Did you know that an elevator girl bows an average of 2500 times a day? ARROW FETCHERS At a Kyuudo exhibition these women sat patiently behind the male archers, helping them to pull their kimono off their shoulders before they made their shots, and fetching their arrows. Come on guys. Pick up your own arrows! MUSEUM LADIES Go to any museum in Japan, and you will see an elegant looking lady sitting in one corner of almost every room. They don't do anything, they don't say anything, and they don't seem to know anything about, or be particularly interested in, the art around them. These human scarecrows just sit their calmly for hours and hours without moving, their laps covered by a little blanket. ELECTION WAVERS These useless people are also some of the most annoying in Japan. During elections you are sure to be the victim of an audio assault as campaign vans cruise through the neighbourhoods pumping out political rhetoric at volumes that leave you with ringing ears and the feeling of having been physically attacked. The vans are filled with volunteers who lean out the windows waving at anyone who catches their eye, like bored kids on a long car trip. When they drive by you, cover your ears with your hands and look angry to show them how annoying they are being. Haven't they ever heard of lawn signs? REAL ESTATE AGENTS The Japanese real estate agent is the king of useless middlemen. If you want to make some easy money, just become a real estate agent and you will be entitled to one month's rent (any where from US$500 to $2000) from your customers for doing nothing more than showing them a few housing plans and then, if you're really on the ball, maybe driving them to take a look at the apartment (but usually just giving them a key and telling them to go look for themselves). It is very difficult to find accomodation in Japan without going through a real estate agency, causing something that should as easy as looking through the classified ads or walking around looking for 'For Rent' signs to become a long, involved, and ridiculously expensive process. Even if you contact a building owner directly, you generally have to pay the real estate agent's fee. If you simply must go through a real estate agent, be careful of the free magazines that you see in all the major shopping districts and near big stations. They are filled with great looking apartments at too-good-to-be-true prices. And they are too good to be true. They are never available when you call, but the agency always has a similar one that's just "a little more expensive". If you are interested in finding [2]alternative, long-term accomodation in Japan, click here. This is not a useless person, but it was obviously thought up by one. 99% Of ELECTRONICS STORE WORKERS You always hear about how good the service is in Japan, and in some ways its true. Employees are unfailingly polite, come running when you call, routinely go the extra-mile to help customers, and will give you the deepest, most respectful bows you have ever seen in your life. If however, you define service as being knowledgeable about the products they sell, or as being capable of making sure that a customer goes home with the merchandise that is right for him or her, then you may be disappointed. Electronics store workers in particular are notorious for their lack of knowledge about the products they sell. At the famous discount electronics retailer, Yodobashi Camera, for example, you will find people in the computer department who have never used any of the software they are selling, do not own their own computer, and cannot answer simple questions without calling in two or three other employees who inevitably have no more idea than the first one did and usually end up calling in the manager or telephoning the product's manufacturer. CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT DEPOT GUARDS a close relative to the crossing guards, these guys are a real treat to watch "in action." Construction crews generally leave with their equipment in the morning, and return in the evening. So what exactly does a pensioner wearing a powder blue jumpsuit and fancy multicolored helmet reminiscent of "Buck Rogers" or "Kamen Rider" have to do in the interim? Sit upright in a foldable deck chair placed at the entrance to the storage lot, under the guise of being the guy who directs equipment on and off the road in a full-time capacity. And wait around for 7 and a half hours until the crew comes back at quitting time.--Kindly submitted by Justin Thorne UNIVERSITY GATE GUARDS These are the guys that wave to important school dignitaries, and give directions to the 2 or 3 people a day who ask them. They stay on in the guard shack until the wee hours, presumably just in case the faculty has an unannounced emergency planning meeting at 10:30 PM in the library, and the gate needs to be open.--Kindly Submitted by Justin Thorne DOOR TO DOOR MOP HEAD SALESMEN I'm staying with my wife's family in Nagano prefecture and I've been reminded of a perfectly useless job in Japan: door-to-door mop head replacers. Here in the Japan Alps it's pretty inaka (country)... total hick town. They have a cool koi (carp) pond but no flush toilets. I was just using the phone in the genkan and some man came and announced himself. He was giving a mop head replacement to her grandmother who had ordered one. Why hasn't the fact that people can buy these mop heads easily at any store made this useless job a thing of the past? Truly a useless person.--Kindly submitted by Greg Bower MOBILE LAUNDRY POLE SALESMAN I'd like to nominate those people that drive around every Sunday in their vans, blaring their megaphones, selling laundry poles. How often do people really need to buy a new laundry pole? I think once every 5 years would be sufficient, but these people somehow feel the need to drive by at 8 in the morning EVERY Sunday in my neighbourhood. - Kindly submitted by Michael Louie References 2. http://www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~edjacob/house.html From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:24:34 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:24:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: Group of Scientists Drafts Rules on Ethics for Stem Cell Research Message-ID: Group of Scientists Drafts Rules on Ethics for Stem Cell Research http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/health/27stem.html April 27, 2005 [Adults do not seem to realize how many science fiction and movie enthusiasts very much WANT "to create some nightmarish menagerie of half-human animals." It will happen, whatever laws the United States passed, since God created off-shore islands for a reason. The United States has, so far as we know, been able to prevent atomic bombs from falling into the hands of anyone outside governments, but labs to create chimera are far easier to set up. [I don't remember any passages in the Bible having to do with chimera. There were "giants in the earth" (Gen. 6), but I don't know about chimera.] By [1]NICHOLAS WADE Citing a lack of leadership by the federal government, the National Academy of Sciences proposed ethical guidelines yesterday for research with human embryonic stem cells. Scientists have high hopes that research with those all-purpose cells, which develop into all the various tissues of the adult body, will lead to treatments for a wide variety of diseases by enabling them to grow new organs to replace damaged ones. But because of religious objections - human embryos shortly after fertilization are destroyed to derive the cells - Congress has long restricted federal financing of such research; President Bush has allowed it to proceed, but only with designated cells. As a result, the government has not played its usual role of promoting novel research and devising regulations accepted by all players. The academy, a self-elected group of scientists that advises the government, recommends setting up a system of local and national committees for reviewing stem cell research. It also tackles a new set of ethical problems raised by creating organisms composed of cells from two different species, and in this case animals that include human cells. The academy hopes its proposals, which are nonbinding, will be accepted in the private and public sectors, particularly in states like California that are creating ambitious stem cell programs. Its report is also likely to influence the debate in Congress, where some lawmakers wish to allow new human stem cell lines to be derived and other lawmakers are seeking tighter restrictions. Heightened and universal oversight "is essential to assure the public that such research is being conducted in an ethical manner," the academy's report says. The guidelines were drawn up by a committee led by Dr. Richard O. Hynes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dr. Jonathan D. Moreno of the University of Virginia. The report paves the way for research involving animals called chimeras that have been seeded with human cells. The purpose of such experiments is not to create some nightmarish menagerie of half-human animals, but to test first in animals the human organs that could be grown from embryonic stem cells. Foreseeing that such research will be required for tests of effectiveness and safety, the academy says most chimeras should be permitted. But it places certain types of experiments out of bounds, at least for now. These involve inserting human embryonic stem cells into an early human embryo, a technically promising method of genetic engineering, or into apes and monkeys. The academy's guidelines would impose limits on three kinds of experiment that involve incorporating human embryonic stem cells into animals. Undesired consequences could follow if human cells were to become incorporated into the sex cells or the brains of animals. In the first case, there is a remote possibility that an animal with eggs made of human cells could mate with an animal bearing human sperm. To avoid human conception in such circumstances, the academy says chimeric animals should not be allowed to mate. A second possible hazard is that the human embryonic stem cells might generate all or most of an animal's brain, leading to the possibility of a human mind imprisoned in an animal's body. Though neuroscientists consider this unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, particularly with animals closely related to people, like monkeys and apes. The academy advises that human embryonic stem cells not be injected into the embryos of nonhuman primates for the time being. Third, like many previous committees, the academy says human embryos should not be grown in culture for more than 14 days, the time when the first hints of a nervous system appear. The academy advises that all institutions conducting human embryonic stem cell research set up local committees, including scientific experts and members of the public, to review all experiments. And it says a national committee should be formed to update regulations and relax the constraints if warranted by new evidence. The academy also says that donors, including women who donate unfertilized eggs, should not be paid. The academy's guidelines could be widely followed if adopted by leading institutions, funding agencies and journals. Scientists at Rockefeller University, the Burnham Institute in California and Stanford University said the academy's rules were similar to their in-house versions and could probably be adopted with ease. "It relieves a lot of pressure on the scientist in the absence of any advice or policy," said Dr. Ali H. Brivanlou, a researcher at Rockefeller who has been waiting for guidance about an experiment with human embryonic stem cells. The system of scientific self-regulation proposed by the academy is modeled after the approach to recombinant DNA research, a technique for transferring genes between organisms that seemed at first to hold possible hazards. In that case, scientists themselves first drew attention to the hazards, and in 1975, they held a conference that recommended oversight. Their recommendation was then put into practice by the National Institutes of Health, the principal federal supporter of biomedical research, and the N.I.H.'s guidelines were voluntarily followed by the private sector as well. The agency has been prevented from playing a similar role with human embryonic stem cells because of the Bush policy and the Congressional ban. Many scientists regret the forced absence of the health institutes' leadership. "This shows how far this country has gone toward being controlled by religious precepts rather than scientific opportunity," said Dr. David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology and an architect of the decisions about recombinant DNA. It "is a terrible omen for our being able to maintain our position as the country that leads in biomedical technology," Dr. Baltimore said. Dr. Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and a former director of the health institutes, said the academy's proposed rules "offer what the government cannot: reasonable guidelines for the several kinds of research being conducted with various sources of non-federal funds." Dr. Varmus said he thought that nearly all researchers would sign on to the new rules. Michael Werner, chief of policy for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said biotech companies were likely to adopt the academy's guidelines, at least in principle. "What I hope the administration would see," Mr. Werner said, "is that leading scientists in our country believe very much that this is an area of research that needs to go forward quickly and aggressively but with proper oversight." Dr. Leon R. Kass, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, declined through a spokeswoman to comment on the academy's guidelines. Dr. Richard Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that the guidelines were drafted by scientists who favored "creating embryos just to destroy them," and that the Roman Catholic Church had not changed its opposition to stem cell research. "But it would be harder to sustain that policy for the U.S. government if it had been shown that embryonic stem cells were the only way to cure certain disease," Dr. Doerflinger said, noting that that burden "has not been met at present." The academy's advice is more permissive than previous recommendations in some respects, more stringent in others. President Clinton in 1994 shot down a panel's suggestion that human embryos should be created, from chosen donors, for research purposes - a ban that would still apply to federal researchers if they were allowed to derive new cell lines. The academy committee, however, says such embryos should be generated, subject to review. But it seems to be the first panel to say human embryonic stem cells should not be inserted into early human embryos, also known as blastocysts. This might in principle be a technically efficient way of correcting genetic defects. But neither the scientific nor the ethical groundwork has been laid for such a development, Dr. Hynes said, so the committee has decided to prohibit it for the time being. The new guidelines are expected to clarify doubts held by many researchers who have held off experiments that ventured into controversial territory. Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University has long planned to insert human neural stem cells into the brain of a mouse embryo whose own neural stem cells are dysfunctional. Even though neural stem cells are adult in form and belong to different category than embryonic stem cells, he asked Stanford to convene a group to advise him on the ethics of the experiment. The committee chairman, Dr. Hank Greely, said they advised Dr. Weissman to go ahead with the first part of the experiment and to see whether the architecture of the mouse's brain was mouse-like or human-like; if the latter, the panel would discuss whether to proceed. Dr. Weissman has not started the experiment because of difficulty breeding the required kind of mouse, Dr. Greely said. In the Senate, Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, are proposing to expand the president's policy by allowing research on leftover embryos. At a press conference last week, Senator Specter, who is undergoing chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin's disease, made reference to his "new hairdo" as he argued for more studies. "It is just, in my opinion, scandalous, scandalous that we do not use all of the resources available to us to fight these maladies," Mr. Specter said. President Bush has given no indication that he will sign legislation changing his 2001 executive order. And opponents of the research say they will aggressively fight any attempt to change Mr. Bush's policy. Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting from Washington for this article. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=NICHOLAS%20WADE&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=NICHOLAS%20WADE&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:26:07 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:26:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Reason: 10 Truths About Trade: Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs Message-ID: 10 Truths About Trade: Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs http://www.reason.com/0407/fe.bl.truths.shtml July 2004 [I sent this before, but it's worth reading again, since I'm still looking for a refutation.] Hard facts about offshoring, imports, and jobs. [6]Brink Lindsey Is globalization sending the best American jobs overseas? If you get your news from CNNs Lou Dobbs, the answer is "of course" and the only real issue is how many trade restrictions should be applied to stem the bleeding. But the recent scare about "offshoring" is just the latest twist on an inaccurate, decades-old complaint that global trade is stealing jobs and causing a "race to the bottom" in which corporations relentlessly scour the world for the lowest wages and most squalid working conditions. China and India have replaced 1980s Japan and 1990s Mexico as the most feared foreign threats to U.S. employment, and the old fallacy of job scarcity has once again reared its distracting head. The truth is cheerier. Trade is only one element in a much bigger picture of incessant turnover in the American labor market. Furthermore, the overall trend is toward more and better jobs for American workers. While job losses are real and sometimes very painful, it is important -- indeed, for the formulation of sound public policy, it is vital -- to distinguish between the painful aspects of progress and outright decline. Toward that end, and to counter protectionist "analysis" masquerading as fact, here are 10 core truths about global trade and American jobs. 1. The Number of Jobs Grows With the Population As Figure 1 shows vividly, the total number of jobs in the American economy is first and foremost a function of the size of the labor force. As the population grows, the number of people in the work force grows; then market forces absorb that supply and deploy labor to different sectors of the economy. Consider all the major events that have increased the supply of labor during the last half-century: the baby boom, the surge in work force participation by women, and rising rates of immigration after decades of restrictionist policies. Consider as well the key developments that have slashed demand for certain kinds of labor: the growing competitiveness of foreign producers and falling U.S. barriers to imports; the shift by American companies toward globally integrated production and the consequent relocation of many operations overseas; the deregulation of the transportation, energy, and telecommunications industries and the wrenching restructuring that followed; and, most important, the many waves of labor-saving technological innovations, from the containerization that replaced longshoremen to the dial phones that replaced switchboard operators to the factory-floor robots that replaced assembly-line workers to the automatic teller machines that replaced bank tellers. Yet in the face of all this flux, no chronic shortage of jobs has ever materialized. Over those tumultuous five decades, a growing economy and functioning labor markets were all that was needed to accommodate huge shifts in labor supply and demand. Now and in the future, sound macroeconomic policies and continued flexibility in labor markets will suffice to generate increasing employment, notwithstanding the rise of China and India and the march of digitization. 2. Jobs Churn Constantly The steady increase in total employment masks the frenetic dynamism of the U.S. labor market. Gross changes -- total new positions added, total existing positions eliminated -- are much greater in magnitude. Large numbers of jobs are being shed constantly, even in good times. Total employment continues to increase only because even larger numbers of jobs are being created. According to economist Brad DeLong, a weekly figure of 360,000 new unemployment insurance claims is actually consistent with a stable unemployment rate. In other words, when the unemployment rate holds steady -- that is, total employment grows fast enough to absorb the ongoing increase in the labor force -- some 18.7 million people will lose their jobs and file unemployment insurance claims during the course of a single year. Meanwhile, even more people will get new jobs. More detailed and dramatic evidence of job turnover can be found in Table 1. According to data compiled by the Department of Labors Bureau of Labor Statistics, total private-sector employment rose by 17.8 million between 1993 and 2002. To produce that healthy net increase, a breathtaking total of 327.7 million jobs were added, while 309.9 million jobs were lost. In other words, for every one net new private-sector job created during that period, 18.4 gross job additions had to offset 17.4 gross job losses. In light of those facts, it is impossible to give credence to claims that job losses in this or that sector constitute a looming catastrophe for the enormous and dynamic U.S. economy as a whole. It is as inevitable that some companies and industries will shrink as it is that others will expand. Localized challenges and problems should not be confused with national crises. 3. Challenging, High-Paying Jobs Are Becoming More Plentiful, Not Less The ongoing growth in total employment is frequently dismissed on the ground that most of the new positions being created are low-paying, dead-end "McJobs." The facts show otherwise. Managerial and specialized professional jobs have grown rapidly, nearly doubling between 1983 and 2002, from 23.6 million to 42.5 million. These challenging, high-paying positions have jumped from 23.4 percent of total employment to 31.1 percent. And these high-quality jobs will continue growing in the years to come. According to projections for 2002-12 prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, management, business, financial, and professional positions will grow from 43.2 million to 52 million, increasing from 30 percent of total employment to 31.5 percent. 4. "Deindustrialization" Is a Myth Opponents of open markets frequently claim that unshielded exposure to foreign competition is destroying the U.S. manufacturing base. That charge is flatly untrue. Figure 2 sets the record straight: Between 1980 and 2003, American manufacturing output climbed a dizzying 93 percent. Yes, production fell during the recent recession, but it is now recovering: the industrial production index for manufacturing rose 2.2 percent in 2003. It is true that manufacturings share of gross domestic product has been declining gradually over time -- from 27 percent in 1960 to 13.9 percent in 2002. The percentage of workers employed in manufacturing likewise has been falling, from 28.4 percent to 11.7 percent during the same period. But the primary cause of these trends is the superior productivity of American manufacturers. As shown in Figure 3, output per hour in the overall nonfarm business sector rose 50 percent between 1980 and 2002; by contrast, manufacturing output per hour shot up 103 percent. In other words, goods are getting cheaper and cheaper relative to services. Since this faster productivity growth has not been matched by a corresponding increase in demand for manufactured goods, the result is that Americans are spending relatively less on manufactures. Accordingly, manufacturings shrinking share of the overall economy is actually a sign of American manufacturing prowess. Exactly the same phenomenon has played out over a longer period in agriculture. In 1870, 47.6 percent of total employment was in farming. By 2002 the figure had fallen to 1.7 percent. In the future, manufacturing will in all likelihood continue down the trail blazed by agriculture. People who bemoan this prospect dont recognize economic progress when they see it. International trade has had only a modest effect on manufacturings declining share of the economy. It is true that imports displace some domestic production. On the other hand, exports boost sales for American manufacturers. The U.S. has been running a manufacturing trade deficit in recent years, but even if trade had been in balance between 1960 and 2002 the manufacturing share of GDP still would have fallen sharply, down to an estimated 16 percent (as opposed to the actual 13.9 percent). Innovation creates a steady, relentless drop in manufacturings share of economic activity. 5. Imports Have Not Been a Major Cause of Recent Manufacturing Job Losses Employment in the manufacturing sector has taken a beating in recent years. Between 1965 and 1990, the total number of manufacturing jobs fluctuated in a stable band between 16 million and 20 million; during the 1990s, the upper limit dropped to around 18 million; but between July 2000 and October 2003 jobs plummeted 16 percent, from 17.32 million to 14.56 million. Although the losses have been severe, the charge that those jobs were eliminated by foreign competition simply doesnt square with the facts. As shown in Table 2, manufacturing imports rose only 0.6 percent between 2000 and 2003. By contrast, manufacturing exports fell by 9.6 percent. In other words, during this period the drop in exports accounted for 91 percent of the growth in the manufacturing trade deficit. Accordingly, imports played at best a trivial role in the recent sharp decline in manufacturing employment. The main culprit was the worsening domestic market for manufactures during the recent recession -- in particular, a big drop in business investment. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the third quarter of 2002, total fixed nonresidential investment fell by 14 percent. Looking abroad, it was softening overseas markets, much more than stiffening import pressure, that added further downward pressure on domestic manufacturing jobs. Consequently, anti-trade activists who cite manufacturing job losses as a reason to turn away from trade liberalization couldnt be more wrong. Expanding overseas markets and commercial opportunities for American exporters would be a shot in the arm for manufacturing employment. 6. "Offshoring" Is Not a Threat to High-Tech Employment In recent months, historical fears about vanishing manufacturing jobs have been compounded by growing anxiety about trade-related job losses in the service sector. Advances in information and communications technologies now make it possible for many jobs -- from customer service calls to software development -- to be performed anywhere. In particular, the offshoring of information technology (I.T.) jobs to India and other low-wage countries has received a flurry of attention. According to a survey of hiring managers conducted by the Information Technology Association of America, 12 percent of I.T. companies already have outsourced some operations abroad. As for future trends, Forrester Research predicted in a widely cited study that 3.3 million white-collar jobs -- including 1.7 million back-office positions and 473,000 I.T. jobs -- will move overseas between 2000 and 2015. Adding to the fear, I.T. employment has experienced a significant recent decline. In 2002, according to the Department of Commerce, the total number of I.T.-related jobs stood at 5.95 million, down from a 2000 peak of 6.47 million. Although some of those jobs were lost because of offshoring, the major culprits were the slowdown in demand for I.T. services after the Y2K buildup, followed by the dot-com collapse and the broader recession. Moreover, it should be remembered that the recent drop in employment took place after a dramatic buildup. In 1994, 1.19 million people were employed as mathematical and computer scientists. By 2000 that figure had jumped to 2.07 million -- a 74 percent increase. As of 2002, the figure had decreased only slightly to 2.03 million, still 71 percent higher than in 1994. Despite the trend toward offshoring, I.T.-related employment is expected to see healthy increases in the years to come. According to Department of Labor projections, the total number of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations will jump from 3.02 million in 2002 to 4.07 million in 2012 -- a 35 percent increase. Of the 30 specific occupations projected to grow fastest during those 10 years, seven are computer-related. (See Figure 4 for the fastest-growing computer-related occupations.) Thus, the recent downturn in I.T. is likely only a temporary break in a larger trend of robust job growth. The wild claims that offshoring will gut employment in the I.T. sector are totally at odds with reality. I.T. job losses projected by Forrester amount to fewer than 32,000 per year -- relatively modest attrition in the context of 6 million I.T. jobs. These losses, meanwhile, will be offset by newly created jobs as computer and mathematical occupations continue to boom. The doomsayers are confusing a cyclical downturn with a permanent trend. 7. Globalization of Services Creates Enormous Opportunity for American Industry Offshoring of I.T. services to India and elsewhere has been made possible by ongoing advances in computer and communications technologies. If those advances indeed pose a threat to domestic I.T. services industries, then it should be possible to trace the emergence of that threat in trade statistics, since offshoring registers as an increase in services imports. Yet the fact is that the U.S. runs a trade surplus precisely in the I.T. services most directly affected by offshoring. In the categories of "computer and data processing services" and "database and other information services," American exports rose from $2.4 billion in 1995 to $5.4 billion in 2002, while imports increased from $0.3 billion to $1.2 billion. Thus, the U.S. trade surplus in these services has expanded from $2.1 billion to $4.2 billion. Meanwhile, the same technological advances that have given rise to offshoring are facilitating the international provision of all kinds of services -- banking, accounting, legal assistance, engineering, medicine, and so on. The United States is a major exporter of services generally and runs a sizable trade surplus in services. In 2002, for example, service exports accounted for 30 percent of all U.S. exports and exceeded service imports by $64.8 billion. Accordingly, the increasing ability to provide services remotely is a commercial boon to many U.S.-based service industries. Although some jobs are doubtless at risk, the same trends that make offshoring possible are creating new opportunities, and new jobs, throughout the domestic economy. 8. Offshoring Creates New Jobs and Boosts Economic Growth Although offshoring does eliminate jobs, it also yields important benefits. To the extent that companies can reduce costs by shifting certain operations overseas, they are increasing productivity. The process of competition ultimately passes the resulting cost savings on to consumers, which then spurs demand for other goods and services. Whether caused by the introduction of new technology or by new ways to organize work, productivity increases translate into economic growth and rising overall living standards. In particular, offshoring encourages the diffusion of I.T. throughout the American economy. According to Catherine Mann at the Institute for International Economics, globalized production of I.T. hardware -- that is, the offshoring of computer-related manufacturing -- has accounted for 10 percent to 30 percent of the drop in hardware prices. The resulting increase in productivity encouraged the rapid spread of computer use and thereby added some $230 billion in cumulative additional GDP between 1995 and 2002. Offshoring offers the potential to take a similar bite out of prices for I.T. software and services. Those price reductions will promote the further spread of I.T. and new business processes that take advantage of cheap technology. As Mann notes, health services and construction are two large and important sectors that today feature low I.T. intensity (as measured by I.T. equipment per worker) and below-average productivity growth. Diffusion of I.T. into these and other sectors could prompt a new round of productivity growth such as that provoked by the globalization of hardware production during the 1990s. 9. The Digital Revolution Has Been Eliminating White-Collar Jobs for Many Years The attention now being paid to offshoring creates the impression that it is an utterly unprecedented phenomenon. But the very same technological advances that are making offshoring possible have been eliminating large numbers of white-collar jobs for many years now. The diffusion of I.T. throughout the economy has caused major shakeups in the job market during the last decade. Voicemail has replaced receptionists; back-office record-keeping and other clerical jobs have been supplanted by computers; layers of middle management have been eliminated by better internal communications systems. In all these cases, jobs are not simply being transferred overseas; they are being consigned to oblivion by automation and the resulting reorganization of work processes. The increased churn in white-collar jobs shows up in the Department of Labors statistics on displaced long-tenured workers, defined as workers who have lost jobs they held for three years or more (Figure 5). During the 1981--82 recession blue-collar workers bore the brunt of long-tenured displacement, but by 1991-92 more than half of the long-held jobs lost were white-collar. Even in the better years that followed, innovation and job churn continued to displace white-collar workers at a higher rate than during the 1981-82 recession. Offshoring is merely the latest manifestation of a well-established process. The only difference is that, with offshoring, I.T. is facilitating the transfer of jobs overseas. In either case, domestic jobs are lost to technological progress and rising productivity. Why is this downside taken in stride when jobs are eliminated entirely yet considered unbearable when the jobs are taken as hand-me-downs by Indians and other foreigners? 10. Fears That the U.S. Economy Is Running Out of Jobs Are Nothing New Because of the recent recession, the U.S. economy has suffered from a shortage of jobs, as evidenced by the rise in the unemployment rate. There is a natural temptation under these conditions to fear that this temporary setback is the beginning of some permanent reversal of fortune, that the shortage of jobs is here to stay and will only grow worse. To calm such fears, it is useful to recall that similar anxieties have surfaced before. Again and again, over many decades, cyclical downturns in the economy have prompted predictions of permanent job shortages. And each time, those predictions were belied by the ensuing economic expansion. Back in the 1930s, the brutal and persistent unemployment caused by the Great Depression gave rise to theories of "secular stagnation." A number of leading economists -- including, most prominently, Harvards Alvin Hansen -- argued that declining population growth and the increasing "maturity" of the industrial economy meant that we could no longer rely on private-sector job creation to provide full employment. The stagnationist thesis eventually fell out of fashion once the postwar economic boom gathered steam. The return of higher unemployment in the late 1950s and early 60s led to a revival of the stagnationist fallacy, this time in the guise of an "automation crisis." The ongoing progress of factory automation, combined with the growing visibility of electronic computers, led many Americans to believe, once again, that the economy was running out of jobs. During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy, who ran on a pledge to "get the country moving again," warned that automation "carries the dark menace of industrial dislocation, increasing unemployment, and deepening poverty." The American Foundation on Automation and Unemployment, a joint industry-labor group created in 1962, claimed breathlessly that automation was "second only to the possibility of the hydrogen bomb" in its challenge to Americas economic future. For the record, U.S. employment in 1962 stood at 66.7 million jobs -- roughly half the current total. In the early 1980s, the coincidence of a severe recession and a string of competitive successes by Japanese producers at the expense of high-profile American industries sparked predictions of the imminent "deindustrialization" of the American economy. As financier Felix Rohatyn complained, in a fashion typical of the time, "We cannot become a nation of short-order cooks and saleswomen, Xerox-machine operators and messenger boys....These jobs are a weak basis for the economy." Along similar lines, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) fretted that "American workers will end up like the people in the biblical village who were condemned to be hewers of wood and drawers of waters." It should be noted that U.S. manufacturing output has roughly doubled since 1982. In the early 1990s, another recession resulted in yet another job shortage scare. Ross Perot won 19 percent of the presidential vote in 1992 with a campaign that, among other things, railed against the "giant sucking sound" of jobs lost to Mexico and other foreign countries. That same year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele published a widely discussed jeremiad, America: What Went Wrong?, about the decline and fall of the countrys middle class. That hand wringing was followed in short order by one of the most remarkable expansions in American economic history. Again and again, serious and influential voices have raised the cry that the sky is falling. It never does. The root of their error is always the same: confusing a temporary, cyclical downturn with a permanent reduction in the economys job-creating capacity. In recent years, many Americans have lost their jobs and suffered hardship as a result. Many more have worried that their jobs would be next. There is no point in denying these hard realities, but just as surely there is no point in blowing them out of proportion. The U.S. economy is not running out of good jobs; it is merely coming out of a recession. And regardless of whether economic times are good or bad, some amount of job turnover is an inescapable fact of life in a dynamic market economy. This fact cannot be wished away by blaming foreigners, and it cannot be undone by trade restrictions. The innovation and productivity increases that render some jobs obsolete are also the source of new wealth and rising living standards. Embracing change and its unavoidable disruptions is the only way to secure the continuing gains of economic advancement. ------------------------------------- Brink Lindsey is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and director of its Center for Trade Policy Studies. He is the author of Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism (John Wiley & Sons). This article is based on a longer paper published by the Cato Institute, available [7]online (PDF) . Sources for all the figures in this article are available in the original Cato study. References 6. mailto:blindsey at cato.org 7. http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/briefs/tbp-019.pdf From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:26:55 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:26:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In Japan Crash, Time Obsession May Be Culprit Message-ID: In Japan Crash, Time Obsession May Be Culprit http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/27/international/asia/27japan.html By NORIMITSU ONISHI AMAGASAKI, Japan, April 26 - Anywhere else in the world, a train running 90 seconds late would perhaps be considered on time. But in Japan, 90 seconds would foil commuters who depend on trains' connecting to one another with balletic precision, often with only a couple of minutes to spare. And so to make up for a lost 90 seconds, a 23-year-old train driver, it became increasingly clear on Tuesday, was speeding when his train jumped off the tracks on Monday morning at a curve here in western Japan and hurtled into a nine-story apartment building. In this rusting industrial town just outside Osaka, rescue workers continued to try to free other passengers trapped inside the twisted and crumpled cars. Across the country, the accident has already caused much soul-searching over Japan's attention - some would say obsession - with punctuality and efficiency. To many, the driver's single-minded focus on making up the 90 seconds seemed to reveal the weak points of a society where the trains really do run on time, but where people have lost sight of the bigger picture. "Japanese believe that if they board a train, they'll arrive on time," said Yasuyuki Sawada, a 49-year-old railway worker, who had come to look at the crash site. "There is no flexibility in our society; people are not flexible, either." Mr. Sawada was one of many people who came to stand and watch behind the yellow police line here, and who saw deeper problems hidden in the accident. "If you go abroad, you find that trains don't necessarily arrive on time," Mr. Sawada said. "This disaster was produced by Japanese civilization and Japanese people." [The death toll in the accident, the deadliest in Japan in four decades, rose Wednesday to 91, Japanese news media reported.] The Japanese search for rail perfection is relentless, from the humble commuter train to the country's most famous tracks. In 2004, on the 40th anniversary of the bullet train, there was much hand-wringing over the fact that a year earlier the trains on that line had registered on average a delay - of six seconds. In Tokyo, the Yamanote line, which loops around the city core, has been making that trip ever more quickly thanks to better trains, down to 62 minutes in 1988 from 70 minutes in 1964 and 75 minutes in 1946, and, train officials project, under 60 minutes by the end of next year. Train companies are secretive about delays. But any regular rider notices that they tend to be caused not by engineering mishaps but by events beyond human control, like typhoons and people jumping in front of trains. So confident is Japan in its trains' safety that there are no restrictions on how close residential buildings can be erected next to tracks: it is not rare to see them only three feet apart. Keeping to increasingly packed and tight schedules has become all-important, not only for trains, but also for airlines. Japan Airlines said this month that a recent series of mishaps had been caused by its excessive focus on keeping to schedule. The pressure to stay on schedule is so great, conductors apologize profusely even over a one-minute delay. In the United States and Europe, "late" often means a delay of six minutes or more. "No question about it - there is no other rail system more punctual than Japan's," said Shigeru Haga, a professor of transportation and industrial psychology at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. "It's No. 1 in the world for its punctuality and safety. "I personally think Japanese should relax more and think that two- to three-minute delays are no trouble. But you see people rushing up and down the station stairs to catch a train even if there's another one coming in two minutes." This month, the West Japan Railway Company, the operator of the train involved in the crash, for the first time issued a statement to its employees saying that delays would betray customers' confidence. It was perhaps with this statement in mind that the driver, Ryujiro Takami, directed a train heading into Osaka on Monday morning. Mr. Takami, whose body has yet to be recovered, had only 11 months of experience, and had been reprimanded once for overshooting a platform by 328 feet. On Monday morning, at Itami station outside Osaka, Mr. Takami overshot the platform again, forcing him to back up and lose 90 seconds. Apparently aware that he would be reprimanded again, he persuaded the conductor at the back of the train to report that he had overrun the platform by 26 feet. On Tuesday, officials said that the length was actually 131 feet, the equivalent of two cars. The authorities, investigating possible negligence, raided West Japan Railway offices in the Amagasaki area on Tuesday for documents relating to the crash. They also recovered the train's data recorder. It is believed that the train approached the curve at more than 62 miles an hour, well over the limit of 44 m.p.h. The train, carrying about 580 passengers, began running abnormally fast after leaving Itami station, passengers reported. The train was scheduled to arrive at Amagasaki station at 9:20 a.m., in time for many passengers to connect to another train leaving at 9:23. The driver had made up 30 seconds, so the train was running only 60 seconds late when it derailed at a curve here and slammed into the building a dozen or so feet away. "The Japanese people are responsible for this accident, too," said Toshinami Habe, 67, a chief of sales at a company here in Amagasaki. "This is a society of free competition; there's no flexibility. That's why with even a one-and-a-half-minute delay, he had to try to make up the time." Standing behind the yellow police line, Mr. Habe said that he had been thinking about the accident all night long and that he had found it hard to sleep. He criticized the lack of regulations that allows residential buildings to stand so near the tracks. "I knew this would happen one day," he said. "Although it's said that Japan is No. 1 in punctuality, the most important thing is safety." Dozens Dead in Sri Lanka Crash COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, April 27 (AP) - A passenger train collided Wednesday with a bus in northwestern Sri Lanka, and a police spokesman said he had received reports of at least 50 people dead. The bus apparently ignored warning signals and tried to cross the tracks near the town of Alawwa when it was hit by the train, the spokesman, Rienzie Perera, said. In addition to those believed dead, at least 30 others suffered serious injuries, he said. The train had been traveling from Colombo to the temple city of Kandy. From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Wed Apr 27 19:46:16 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 12:46:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] war and mental health In-Reply-To: <200504271800.j3RI0Ro24175@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050427194616.42583.qmail@web30812.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Stephen says: >>"Preparation" for combat related stress most likely consists of emotional numbing, which is not very healthy.<< --I think soldiers experience a range of emotions, some are able to fully acknowledge their emotions without falling apart, others need to crush their feelings in order to function, later taking them out on loved ones or numbing further with alcoholism or some other outlet. Some lose their humanity, some don't. War, like incest or family violence, is dehumanizing to the degree that one is forced to hide one's true feelings to reconcile the public and private self. One problem is that soldiers who witness or participate in atrocities (or are simply disturbed by callous attitudes or incongruity between heroic talk and questionable behavior) are not likely to speak up, given the way Kerry was trashed for reporting on war crimes in Vietnam. His testimony was consistent with what was documented at My Lai, but he was still accused of betraying veterans and slandering the military. Not a great way to encourage the unburdening of toxic secrets in returning soldiers, which means soldiers who see or do things they cannot reconcile with their moral code will more likely take it out on their family or through addiction, promiscuity etc. What's really damaging, I think, is when one has to reconcile two moral codes, the one at home and the one at war. If those codes diverge too much, it can destroy a person's soul. It is only when the stories of soldiers are fully heard that people get a real picture of what war does to the mind, and that usually doesn't happen until a decade or two after the war is over. It also makes a huge difference whether one trusts one's friends. A soldier whose friends are racist or enjoy gratuitous violence (shooting animals along the road, etc) will have a very different experience from one whose friends uphold a more honorable code of behavior. Dissonance between one's public morality and one's private actions is always a source of anguish, and dramatically affects one's experience of a traumatic situation. But in order to keep a high standard of behavior, it's necessary to hear all the stories and get feedback. Otherwise, war really is hell, the loosening of moral restraints and the corrosion of human values to the point where individuals cannot stay sane and cannot keep their war stress from bleeding into peacetime life. Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From Euterpel66 at aol.com Wed Apr 27 19:52:20 2005 From: Euterpel66 at aol.com (Euterpel66 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:52:20 EDT Subject: [Paleopsych] One solution to high gas prices Message-ID: <1e2.3ae74468.2fa14774@aol.com> In a message dated 4/27/2005 2:57:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, shovland at mindspring.com writes: Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net Not really a solution to the gas problem, just a different form of gas, especially if the beast had a lot of oats! Lorraine Rice Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ---Andre Gide http://hometown.aol.com/euterpel66/myhomepage/poetry.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Wed Apr 27 20:47:57 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 13:47:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences In-Reply-To: <200504270526.j3R5Qro19721@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050427204757.65817.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> >>Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<< --If this is true, how should society change to deal with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone with a male or female parent of a different race, or for various blends? Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Wed Apr 27 21:07:35 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:07:35 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of posttraumaticstressdisorder? Message-ID: <03da01c54b6d$22e09830$6501a8c0@callastudios> Hi paleos and Steve...I sent this this morning but I don't think it made it. If it eventually shows up 2ce, please forgive. -aa Steve wrote: Nothing valuable is learned from being raped. I think this distorts the question. A better way to put the question is: When rape occurs, a woman (though men are raped, too, but not at such high rate, so I will write re women) will undergo certain emotional responses that are not within her control. Again, the EP/Nesse model that we have emotions for a reason is one that I believe in just as well as I believe I'm sitting here on a rainy day typing away when I should be doing other stuff... There is, as there is with all these types of questions, a proximate cause/goal and an ultimate cause/goal. When writing about the value of something in evolutionary terms there is not an evaluative sense or normative one, either. It is not good when a woman is raped. Nothing good is learned from rape. But a woman through her emotional response to the terror and horror of such an event will learn something! Her chemistry will change, and depending on where she is developmentally (her life-history), her personality may actually change! (Pre, say, 25 years of age). She will approach people and situations in a different way. None of this may be valuable in the sense of good--but from mother nature's eye view (ultimate), it is valuable. And, again, as Howard, Lynn and I have been discussing, there is 'value' for the group. Finally, I have to say, I teach a class called "Psychology of Women" and last night some students presented some statistics on rape....Those statistics are also warning signs...and they have been amassed by the brave women who report and tell their stories. (Students were quite intrigued and glad to learn of fact that a good amount of rapes that happen 'outside', happen in parking garages.) It is not good to be raped. There is no value in being raped. But the chemical and emotional responses women have after such an event are probably adaptive--and 'valuable' for them and 'valuable' for the group. -Alice Telling the story may reduce the pain but it never goes away completely. And our society has little interest in going to the root cause of the anger against women that motivates rape. So we learn nothing from it, any more than we do from the suffering of war. A part of us loves suffering, and loves to inflict it on others. Pleasure is fleeting, but pain can go on forever- a much more reliable source of energy for those who feed on it. Creative people constantly learn from the "accidents" in their work. But although an accident in a painting can be useful, an accident in a car is useless. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:26 PM To: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu; paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: gradientor at yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? << File: ATT00007.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00008.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00009.txt >> _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aandrews at hvc.rr.com Wed Apr 27 21:18:00 2005 From: aandrews at hvc.rr.com (Alice Andrews) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 17:18:00 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences References: <20050427204757.65817.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <040a01c54b6e$9792e740$6501a8c0@callastudios> Michael, are you on EP-Yahoo list? I very recently queried the 3,000+ membership about something similar to this and got back some interesting replies...Here are ones from Charles Murray and Herbert Gintis ( in case you're not member of EP-yahoo): Message: 1 Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:19:04 -0000 From: "Alice Andrews" Subject: BG studies with progressive social policy implications? dear group, Just read about a BG IQ/SES twin study that supports a progressive social policy. In his 'landmark' study of 600 twins last year, Eric Turkheimer showed that "in the most impoverished families,hereditability of IQ is essentially zero, with environment accounting for almost 60 percent of the differences in IQ among individuals. The impact of environment declines as socioeconomic level improves, playing a nominal role in the most affluent families, for which virtually all variability in IQ is attributed to genes." And Turkheimer says: "It suggests that if you're going to work with people's environment to try and increase IQ, then the place to invest your money is in taking people in really bad environments and making them OK, rather than taking people in pretty good environments and making it better. " Now, I've had some pretty intense arguments with sociologists here at my university about this stuff, and it would be nice to know of some more studies to back up the position that, in addition to the fact that such biological etiology studies (with their bad history) should be supported because as humans we have a need 'to know'; that such studies can actually support progressive ideology/policy. Can anyone point me toward such studies? Thanks! Alice Message: 1 Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 10:10:40 -0400 From: Charles Murray Subject: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications? ALL studies showing high heritability in traits important to success in life, whether IQ or any other important trait, have a natural interpretation supporting Rawlsian redistributive social policies (If it's not your fault that you lack smarts, charm, industriousness, or whatever, it is just that the state compensate for nature's unfairness.) The reluctance of the left to use this implication of high heritability of important traits has always puzzled me. The left's standard position instead is that people and groups can differ only for reasons that the right policy intervention can fix at the source. Innate equality of abilities trumps equality of outcomes. Not only is this the standard position; it is usually infused with enormous emotional commitment. I'm trying to think through why this should be, for an article I'm writing, and welcome any thoughts on the subject. Charles Murray Message: 7 Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:36:19 -0400 From: Herbert Gintis Subject: Re: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications? What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think is genetic (i.e., is wired in so you can't do anything about it)? I can only think of homosexuality. What socially relevant difference does the Left treat impartially as genetic or environmental (the idea of dividing the phase space into genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but totally common except for experts)? Mental illness, athletic ability, beauty, physical maladies, many other. What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think is environmental (again, the idea of dividing the phase space into genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but totally common except for experts)? Racial differences in everything and gender differences in everything except for the physiology of reproduction. You argue that if blacks are "genetically inferior" (same caveat), they should get compensatory income transfers because "it's not their fault." Why does the Left (by which I simply mean liberals in the American meaning of the term) not use this argument? It is certainly used to support transfers to the mentally or physically incapacitated, and this is also accepted by the Right as legitimate. Why not to lower IQ for blacks? I think that the answer is very simple. The evidence is far too weak to be overwhelming (our models of IQ determination are not great, the Flynn Effect, the effect of aspirations on performance, the effect of self-esteem on performance, and so on), and there is probably a strong self-fulfilling prophecy: a social ideology of inferiority for a race is very likely to lead to statistical discrimination against its members. I am not a liberal (or a conservative, or a member of any other easily categorized ideological political grouping), but I think the liberal position is correct on this point. Most experts in the field (I am not one, but I have a fairly solid track record in the field of social inequality, and know the experts) are scientists, not politically motivated hacks, and they would agree with me. Categorizing a group as intellectually inferior changes their status from that of equal to that of inferior. We can treat inferiors nice (like our dogs and cats) or nasty (like our chickens and steer), but they lose the status of being fully and functionally human. We are happy to label those with Down's syndrome as intellectually inferior and we can respect their humanity, but we still are treating them as inferiors to which charity and paternalism must be applied. To do this for those of African decent would be a gross, gross, gross (repeat the term 100 more times) injustice. Or so I believe, and many who are not "liberals" would agree. Of course, I have considerable contempt for those who would try to silence the debate and cast aspersion on those who try to show that there is a genetic basis for the inferiority or superiority of a group (I defended Larry Summers in this group, and was assailed for ding so). People who "want to throw up" when they hear an argument they don't like should go into theology, not science. Best, Herb Gintis > Herbert Gintis Professor, Central European University, Budapest Visiting Professor, University of Siena, Italy External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute 775-402-4921 (USA Fax) Recent papers are posted on my web site. Get Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, 2000) at Amazon.com Look for Moral Sentiments and Material Interests (MIT Press, 2005) Get Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success (Princeton UP, 2005) Get Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies (Oxford UP, 2004). Quote of the week: There is no sorrow so great that does not find its background in joy. Niels Bohr (1938) [This message contained attachments] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 18:11:24 -0400 From: Charles Murray Subject: Re: Re: BG studies with progressive social policy implications? This is interesting, but the point I was making is much broader than race or, for that matter, gender, and much broader than IQ. My experience is that there is passion about denying the heritability of traits that contribute to success in life, period. Thus to say that (for example) white people below the poverty line have higher genetically-based impulsivity than whites above the poverty line, and are poor partially for innate reasons would be distasteful to most people on the left for some deep-seated but (to me) mysterious reasons. Charles Murray PS I assume that when you talk about people categorizing blacks as "genetically inferior" you were referring to some hypothetical person, not me. On Apr 26, 2005, at 5:36 PM, Herbert Gintis wrote: > What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think > is genetic (i.e., is wired in so you can't do anything about it)? I > can only think of homosexuality. > What socially relevant difference does the Left treat > impartially as genetic or environmental (the idea of dividing the > phase space into genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but > totally common except for experts)? Mental illness, athletic ability, > beauty, physical maladies, many other. > What socially relevant difference does the Left like to think > is environmental (again, the idea of dividing the phase space into > genetic vs. environmental is a monumental error, but totally common > except for experts)? Racial differences in everything and gender > differences in everything except for the physiology of reproduction. > You argue that if blacks are "genetically inferior" (same > caveat), they should get compensatory income transfers because "it's > not their fault." Why does the Left (by which I simply mean liberals > in the American meaning of the term) not use this argument? It is > certainly used to support transfers to the mentally or physically > incapacitated, and this is also accepted by the Right as legitimate. ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Christopher To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 4:47 PM Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences >>Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<< --If this is true, how should society change to deal with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone with a male or female parent of a different race, or for various blends? Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ursus at earthlink.net Wed Apr 27 21:27:28 2005 From: ursus at earthlink.net (Greg Bear) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:27:28 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences In-Reply-To: <20050427204757.65817.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Must intrude here. This sort of nonsense is so unscientific as to be laughable. Major undefined terms: IQ (what is it really measuring?) Intelligence: In what environment does your IQ give you an advantage? Nature, society, Mad Max country? "Genetic"--where is the gene for intelligence, or the set of genes? Do these genes differ between the races? We do not know. This general belief system, expressed with the utmost arrogance in THE BELL CURVE, is generally held by a class of mathematically adept middle-aged and older white males with pretensions to an understanding of some of the major biological issues of our time. Their ignorance of genetics is profound. Most of their language and conceptual structure refers to outmoded genetics of forty to fifty years ago--and they've never heard of epigenetics, the study of how genes are switched on and off, activated and deactivated. Indeed--not only do we now know that "defective" genes can be corrected in non-Mendelian ways, having little to do with one's parentage, but even "perfect" genes can be switched off in certain environments, after development and birth. Population groups put under pressure--through war, prejudicial treatment, incarceration, or outright persecution--are likely to witness major differences in the EXPRESSION of certain (possibly) genetic traits, which could statistically help them adapt to a dangerous and stressful environment. These adaptations may result in a skewing of IQ results, even should such tests be culturally neutral--which they are not--by focusing their nervous reaction to stimuli and deemphasizing their ability to focus on tasks of less immediate importance--that is, a written test. Fight or write, so to speak. We cannot test the Irish in 1840's Ireland or New York, or the Hungarians pressed over centuries by various contending hordes, or poor white trash in the American South before the Civil War. Supposedly honorable white men in their day referred to these populations as "low" and cretinous, and believed that intermarriage would not be advantageous. IQ matters most among equal populations in a fair and civilized society, all things being equal socially; any other circumstance is skewed to those raised with various spoons of precious metals and family tradition firmly thrust into their mouths. 'Twas ever thus. So my questions of these researchers would be: "Which fifty percent of the genome would you blame? The right half, or the left? The one in the middle? Which genes are you pointing to? Are you speaking of generalities, or specifics? If the latter, what specifically are you trying to say? "And why does this sound so much like the same sort of ignorant, prejudicial crap promulgated throughout the ages by people of influence, to maintain their status through any means possible, fair or unfair?" White mathematically educated males of tested high IQ, trying to prove that IQ is inbred and important... hm. Sounds like a class in search of justification to me. I'd challenge these folks to a duel on the public commons any day of the week. Easy money. Facts and native charm versus their almighty IQs. Greg Bear -----Original Message----- From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Michael Christopher Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 1:48 PM To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences >>Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<< --If this is true, how should society change to deal with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone with a male or female parent of a different race, or for various blends? Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From checker at panix.com Wed Apr 27 19:25:32 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 15:25:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] APLS's Links Page Message-ID: APLS's Links Page Association for Politics and the Life Sciences http://www.hass.usu.edu/~apls/links.html [This is a superb set of links. 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Johnson, Ph.D.) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 19:11:26 -0600 Subject: [Paleopsych] One solution to high gas prices In-Reply-To: <01C54B20.0CE07340.shovland@mindspring.com> References: <01C54B20.0CE07340.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4270383E.6040907@solution-consulting.com> Ha! Good one, Steve. Thanks, I will forward it to scientists I know. Steve Hovland wrote: > > >Steve Hovland >www.stevehovland.net > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >_______________________________________________ >paleopsych mailing list >paleopsych at paleopsych.org >http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 41307 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrewsa at newpaltz.edu Wed Apr 27 15:04:32 2005 From: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu (Alice Andrews) Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:04:32 -0400 Subject: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of posttraumaticstressdisorder? References: <01C54AF6.7D585B80.shovland@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <016001c54b3a$6b9b66a0$6501a8c0@callastudios> Steve wrote: Nothing valuable is learned from being raped. I think this distorts the question. A better way to put the question is: When rape occurs, a woman (though men are raped, too, but not at such high rate, so I will write re women) will undergo certain emotional responses that are not within her control. Again, the EP/Nesse model that we have emotions for a reason is one that I believe in just as well as I believe I'm sitting here on a rainy day typing away when I should be doing other stuff... There is, as there is with all these types of questions, a proximate cause/goal and an ultimate cause/goal. When writing about the value of something in evolutionary terms there is not an evaluative sense or normative one, either. It is not good when a woman is raped. Nothing good is learned from rape. But a woman through her emotional response to the terror and horror of such an event will learn something! Her chemistry will change, and depending on where she is developmentally (her life-history), her personality may actually change! (Pre, say, 25 years of age). She will approach people and situations in a different way. None of this may be valuable in the sense of good--but from mother nature's eye view (ultimate), it is valuable. And, again, as Howard, Lynn and I have been discussing, there is 'value' for the group. Finally, I have to say, I teach a class called "Psychology of Women" and last night some students presented some statistics on rape....Those statistics are also warning signs...and they have been amassed by the brave women who report and tell their stories. (Students were quite intrigued and glad to learn of fact that a good amount of rapes that happen 'outside', happen in parking garages.) It is not good to be raped. There is no value in being raped. But the chemical and emotional responses women have after such an event are probably adaptive--and 'valuable' for them and 'valuable' for the group. -Alice Telling the story may reduce the pain but it never goes away completely. And our society has little interest in going to the root cause of the anger against women that motivates rape. So we learn nothing from it, any more than we do from the suffering of war. A part of us loves suffering, and loves to inflict it on others. Pleasure is fleeting, but pain can go on forever- a much more reliable source of energy for those who feed on it. Creative people constantly learn from the "accidents" in their work. But although an accident in a painting can be useful, an accident in a car is useless. Steve Hovland www.stevehovland.net -----Original Message----- From: HowlBloom at aol.com [SMTP:HowlBloom at aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:26 PM To: andrewsa at newpaltz.edu; paleopsych at paleopsych.org Cc: gradientor at yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] What's the survival value of post traumaticstressdisorder? << File: ATT00007.txt; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00008.html; charset = UTF-8 >> << File: ATT00009.txt >> _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 28 13:50:03 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 06:50:03 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Carbon Nanofibers Message-ID: <01C54BBE.8278A020.shovland@mindspring.com> (CNF) The term "carbon nanofiber" summarizes a large family of different filamentous nanocarbons. They can be distinguished according to either the arrangement of the graphene layers (see carbon nanostructures: "platelet-like" or "fishbone" substructure) or the growth morphologies and modes: The HRTEM image shows a "fishbone" carbon nanofiber with the graphene sheets arranged in an angle of about 30 degrees with respect to the fiber axis (the orientation is difficult to see because of the poor crystallinity of the nanofiber). http://www.zae-bayern.de/a2/englisch/nano/carbon_nanofibers.html From shovland at mindspring.com Thu Apr 28 17:23:26 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 10:23:26 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Photovoltaic cells made by printing nanotech materials on substrate Message-ID: <01C54BDC.50D609E0.shovland@mindspring.com> Nanosolar, Inc., is focused on making solar electricity ubiquitous through new solar-cell technology with profitable customer economics and unprecedented production volume scalability. Unprecedented cost advantages result from its solar cells being two orders of magnitude thinner than those commonly found on the market today as well as the economics of simply being able to print them using the company's proprietary nanostructured semiconductor paint. Unprecedented production volume scalability results from the high throughput possible with inexpensive non-vacuum roll-to-roll printing processes. Nanosolar's products are designed to streamline integration, distribution, and installation. Depending on a customer's system configuration, this can realize significant further total-system cost savings. http://www.nanosolar.com/ From checker at panix.com Thu Apr 28 17:31:11 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:31:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hold on a moment, Greg. What is the issue being addressed? It's why the trillions of dollars taken from the taxpayers and spent on uplifting Blacks has not been very successful and whether innate racial differences constitute a large part of the explanation. Let me ask you, how much do you think it would cost to get a good answer? (I have worked in the program evaluation section of the U.S. Department of Education, and this is one question we dare not address.) And if you don't think a good answer can be had at a reasonable cost, do you think that no more money should be spent on this uplift and either returned to the taxpayers or spent on something that can be reliably evaluated? I am not sure what Mr. Mencken called the Uplift is an appropriate function of the government. Certainly not for the Federal government, since it is not among the 18 powers granted to Congress under the Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 8.: The United States Constitution: Article I, Section 8: Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; Clause 4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; Clause 6: To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads; Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; Clause 9: To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; Clause 10: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations; Clause 11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; Clause 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; Clause 13: To provide and maintain a Navy; Clause 14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; Clause 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; Clause 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; Clause 17: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, byCession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. Perhaps you think the Constitution should be amended or ignored. The amazing thing is that http://www.ed.gov contains a statement that its activities are unauthorized! Frank On 2005-04-27, Greg Bear opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:27:28 -0700 > From: Greg Bear > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: 'The new improved paleopsych list' > Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences > > Must intrude here. This sort of nonsense is so unscientific as to be > laughable. > > Major undefined terms: IQ (what is it really measuring?) > Intelligence: In what environment does your IQ give you an advantage? > Nature, society, Mad Max country? > > "Genetic"--where is the gene for intelligence, or the set of genes? Do these > genes differ between the races? We do not know. > > This general belief system, expressed with the utmost arrogance in THE BELL > CURVE, is generally held by a class of mathematically adept middle-aged and > older white males with pretensions to an understanding of some of the major > biological issues of our time. Their ignorance of genetics is profound. Most > of their language and conceptual structure refers to outmoded genetics of > forty to fifty years ago--and they've never heard of epigenetics, the study > of how genes are switched on and off, activated and deactivated. Indeed--not > only do we now know that "defective" genes can be corrected in non-Mendelian > ways, having little to do with one's parentage, but even "perfect" genes can > be switched off in certain environments, after development and birth. > > Population groups put under pressure--through war, prejudicial treatment, > incarceration, or outright persecution--are likely to witness major > differences in the EXPRESSION of certain (possibly) genetic traits, which > could statistically help them adapt to a dangerous and stressful > environment. These adaptations may result in a skewing of IQ results, even > should such tests be culturally neutral--which they are not--by focusing > their nervous reaction to stimuli and deemphasizing their ability to focus > on tasks of less immediate importance--that is, a written test. Fight or > write, so to speak. > > We cannot test the Irish in 1840's Ireland or New York, or the Hungarians > pressed over centuries by various contending hordes, or poor white trash in > the American South before the Civil War. Supposedly honorable white men in > their day referred to these populations as "low" and cretinous, and believed > that intermarriage would not be advantageous. > > IQ matters most among equal populations in a fair and civilized society, all > things being equal socially; any other circumstance is skewed to those > raised with various spoons of precious metals and family tradition firmly > thrust into their mouths. 'Twas ever thus. > > So my questions of these researchers would be: "Which fifty percent of the > genome would you blame? The right half, or the left? The one in the middle? > Which genes are you pointing to? Are you speaking of generalities, or > specifics? If the latter, what specifically are you trying to say? > > "And why does this sound so much like the same sort of ignorant, prejudicial > crap promulgated throughout the ages by people of influence, to maintain > their status through any means possible, fair or unfair?" > > White mathematically educated males of tested high IQ, trying to prove that > IQ is inbred and important... hm. Sounds like a class in search of > justification to me. > > I'd challenge these folks to a duel on the public commons any day of the > week. Easy money. Facts and native charm versus their almighty IQs. > > Greg Bear > > -----Original Message----- > From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org > [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Michael Christopher > Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 1:48 PM > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences > >>> Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least > 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<< > > --If this is true, how should society change to deal > with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone > with a male or female parent of a different race, or > for various blends? > > Michael From anonymous_animus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 28 18:29:31 2005 From: anonymous_animus at yahoo.com (Michael Christopher) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:29:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] useless people In-Reply-To: <200504281801.j3SI1V014557@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <20050428182931.40793.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> On the subject of "useless people", It's been intersting (and a little scary) to watch almost fascist attitudes creep into mainstream culture. The idea of "useless people" is taken seriously by a lot of people now, it's as if we've lost our humanity and are working on becoming an efficient machine that casts off everyone who doesn't fit. TV shows are often based on the theme of 'throwing someone off the island', usually a person whose loss increases the fitness of the remaining members. Often this means casting off the more qualified people so that others can stay safely included. I see this as a widespread pattern, turning our culture into a funnel that sucks people downward, even those who are well qualified in work terms but unable to play the social games that keep a person included in a group. This is certainly true of high schools, and from friends who have been involved in corporate culture, it's true there too. Where are our human values going? It seems to me we've lost any sense of what human beings are FOR, beyond building and maintaining an efficient economic machine. Meaning is reduced to productivity. Are people machines that are judged solely by their ability to "carry their weight", or are they inherently meaningful? Do people have a need for employment alone, or for employment that contributes meaning to their lives, makes them feel they're doing something of value beyond serving a machine that drives the species off a cliff? And can these questions be related to Howard's notion of capitalism with soul? Michael __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From waluk at earthlink.net Thu Apr 28 19:58:58 2005 From: waluk at earthlink.net (G. Reinhart-Waller) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 12:58:58 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] useless people In-Reply-To: <20050428182931.40793.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20050428182931.40793.qmail@web30801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42714082.1070403@earthlink.net> Useless people in Japan are given "silly" employment like crossing guards on country roads, elevator girls, even museum ladies but most of these make-work jobs are filled by females who lack job skills and training to qualify for positions that are mainstream, usually because they chose to remain at home and care for a child or two. I wouldn't call these jobs examples of Japan losing its humanity but rather an indication that government is providing work for those who are unemployed but wish (and need) something to do. Reality shows aren't only the rage here in America but also fill the programming bill for European countries. Many of the more popular programs are based on "cost/benefit" that fits well into an economic model but pales on the humanistic front. The leader who has a knack for bullying the rest of the group is usually the one who makes it to the end and finishes a winner. Cunning and dishonesty are values promoted by these survivor programs and the one who wins is he/she who is most deceptive. These values are ones NOT taught to children by caring parents. Howard's notion of Capitalism with Soul is a humanistic thrust into an otherwise corrupt world. Yet not all souls are alike. Some are more generous and congenial than others. People who promote less science and more religion are those who are fed up not with Darwinism, but with young bullies who believe in a cut-throat bottom-line rather than producing a caring and thoughtful human being. Gerry Reinhart-Waller From ursus at earthlink.net Fri Apr 29 00:11:41 2005 From: ursus at earthlink.net (Greg Bear) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:11:41 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Frank, what ARE you talking about? The initial discussion mentioned nothing about blacks, but seemed to be about comparisons between the IQs of Asians and so-called Whites--what brings out all this stuff about Uplift and Blacks? And quoting the Constitution! My. The shoe seems to fit so well, it pinches. Are you a white male, middle-aged or older, mathematically adept, and proud of your exceptional IQ? Then DO I HAVE A SCIENTIFIC SCAM FOR YOU! Not only does this scam claim to prove your nagging suspicions that blacks are inferior to whites, but it's COMPLETELY GUILT-FREE, because it's RATIONAL, based on PROVABLE MATHEMATICS! And better than that, it's supported by the nagging suspicions of PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU! People who grew up in a different time. You don't answer any of my scientific objections. For a so-called scientific forum, that's rather sad. I do enjoy Mr. Mencken, but we were talking about the biology of racial differences, not TAXPAYER DOLLARS BEING WASTED ON SPONGING LOW-LIFES WHO HAVEN'T A HOPE IN HELL OF EVER UNDERSTANDING WHY THEY'RE SO INFERIOR TO ANGRY WHITE MALES. So let's not CHANGE THE SUBJECT. Sorry about the caps. In this sort of talk-radio atmosphere, they just seemed appropriate. Greg -----Original Message----- From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Premise Checker Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:31 AM To: The new improved paleopsych list Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences Hold on a moment, Greg. What is the issue being addressed? It's why the trillions of dollars taken from the taxpayers and spent on uplifting Blacks has not been very successful and whether innate racial differences constitute a large part of the explanation. Let me ask you, how much do you think it would cost to get a good answer? (I have worked in the program evaluation section of the U.S. Department of Education, and this is one question we dare not address.) And if you don't think a good answer can be had at a reasonable cost, do you think that no more money should be spent on this uplift and either returned to the taxpayers or spent on something that can be reliably evaluated? I am not sure what Mr. Mencken called the Uplift is an appropriate function of the government. Certainly not for the Federal government, since it is not among the 18 powers granted to Congress under the Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 8.: The United States Constitution: Article I, Section 8: Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; Clause 2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; Clause 4: To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; Clause 6: To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; Clause 7: To establish Post Offices and post Roads; Clause 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; Clause 9: To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; Clause 10: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations; Clause 11: To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; Clause 12: To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; Clause 13: To provide and maintain a Navy; Clause 14: To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces; Clause 15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; Clause 16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; Clause 17: To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, byCession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And Clause 18: To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. Perhaps you think the Constitution should be amended or ignored. The amazing thing is that http://www.ed.gov contains a statement that its activities are unauthorized! Frank On 2005-04-27, Greg Bear opined [message unchanged below]: > Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:27:28 -0700 > From: Greg Bear > Reply-To: The new improved paleopsych list > To: 'The new improved paleopsych list' > Subject: RE: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences > > Must intrude here. This sort of nonsense is so unscientific as to be > laughable. > > Major undefined terms: IQ (what is it really measuring?) > Intelligence: In what environment does your IQ give you an advantage? > Nature, society, Mad Max country? > > "Genetic"--where is the gene for intelligence, or the set of genes? Do these > genes differ between the races? We do not know. > > This general belief system, expressed with the utmost arrogance in THE BELL > CURVE, is generally held by a class of mathematically adept middle-aged and > older white males with pretensions to an understanding of some of the major > biological issues of our time. Their ignorance of genetics is profound. Most > of their language and conceptual structure refers to outmoded genetics of > forty to fifty years ago--and they've never heard of epigenetics, the study > of how genes are switched on and off, activated and deactivated. Indeed--not > only do we now know that "defective" genes can be corrected in non-Mendelian > ways, having little to do with one's parentage, but even "perfect" genes can > be switched off in certain environments, after development and birth. > > Population groups put under pressure--through war, prejudicial treatment, > incarceration, or outright persecution--are likely to witness major > differences in the EXPRESSION of certain (possibly) genetic traits, which > could statistically help them adapt to a dangerous and stressful > environment. These adaptations may result in a skewing of IQ results, even > should such tests be culturally neutral--which they are not--by focusing > their nervous reaction to stimuli and deemphasizing their ability to focus > on tasks of less immediate importance--that is, a written test. Fight or > write, so to speak. > > We cannot test the Irish in 1840's Ireland or New York, or the Hungarians > pressed over centuries by various contending hordes, or poor white trash in > the American South before the Civil War. Supposedly honorable white men in > their day referred to these populations as "low" and cretinous, and believed > that intermarriage would not be advantageous. > > IQ matters most among equal populations in a fair and civilized society, all > things being equal socially; any other circumstance is skewed to those > raised with various spoons of precious metals and family tradition firmly > thrust into their mouths. 'Twas ever thus. > > So my questions of these researchers would be: "Which fifty percent of the > genome would you blame? The right half, or the left? The one in the middle? > Which genes are you pointing to? Are you speaking of generalities, or > specifics? If the latter, what specifically are you trying to say? > > "And why does this sound so much like the same sort of ignorant, prejudicial > crap promulgated throughout the ages by people of influence, to maintain > their status through any means possible, fair or unfair?" > > White mathematically educated males of tested high IQ, trying to prove that > IQ is inbred and important... hm. Sounds like a class in search of > justification to me. > > I'd challenge these folks to a duel on the public commons any day of the > week. Easy money. Facts and native charm versus their almighty IQs. > > Greg Bear > > -----Original Message----- > From: paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org > [mailto:paleopsych-bounces at paleopsych.org] On Behalf Of Michael Christopher > Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 1:48 PM > To: paleopsych at paleopsych.org > Subject: [Paleopsych] Black-White-East Asian IQ differences > >>> Black-White-East Asian IQ differences at least > 50% genetic, major law review journal concludes<< > > --If this is true, how should society change to deal > with it? Also, what is the IQ difference for someone > with a male or female parent of a different race, or > for various blends? > > Michael _______________________________________________ paleopsych mailing list paleopsych at paleopsych.org http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych From shovland at mindspring.com Fri Apr 29 04:17:13 2005 From: shovland at mindspring.com (Steve Hovland) Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 21:17:13 -0700 Subject: [Paleopsych] Very alternative energy: the space tether experiment Message-ID: <01C54C37.A628EF60.shovland@mindspring.com> #25c. The Space Tether Experiment The space tether experiment, a joint venture of the US and Italy, called for a scientific payload--a large, spherical satellite--to be deployed from the US space shuttle at the end of a conducting cable (tether) 20 km (12.5 miles) long. The idea was to let the shuttle drag the tether across the Earth's magnetic field, producing one part of a dynamo circuit. The return current, from the shuttle to the payload, would flow in the Earth's ionosphere, which also conducted electricity, even though not as well as the wire. One purpose of such a set-up might be to produce electric power, generating current to run equipment aboard the space shuttle. That electric comes at a price: it is taken away from the motion energy ("kinetic energy") of the shuttle, since the magnetic force on the tether opposes the motion and slows it down. In principle, it should also be possible to reverse this process: a future space station could use solar cells to produce an electric current, which would be pumped into the tether in the opposite direction, so that the magnetic force would boost the orbital motion and would raise the orbit to a higher altitude. http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/wtether.html From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 29 15:39:03 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:39:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] BBC: GM rice praised in Chinese study Message-ID: GM rice praised in Chinese study http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4495775.stm By Roland Pease BBC Science correspondent Rice growers in Yunnan Province, south-west China GM companies promise higher yields from fields Genetically engineered rice crops can cut costs for poor farmers and improve health, a new Chinese study says. In the study, published in the journal Science, Chinese and US researchers looked at the use of insecticides in small farm trials. They compared normal strains of rice with varieties modified to have innate resistance to pests. Chinese GM rice has been undergoing safety trials for nearly a decade now, but is not yet fully licensed. One of the arguments against genetically engineered crops is that they benefit the seed companies, but not the farmers. Health benefits The authors of the new study disagree. They found that Chinese farmers using rice engineered to resist insect pests made huge savings on insecticides, compared with their neighbours who had planted ordinary hybrid strains. This had nothing to do with any specialist guidance the farmers received, because they were left to manage their crops as they saw fit. As well as cutting costs, the researchers say, the farmers benefited from better health. Pesticides in China are cheap and widely used, but poison an estimated 50,000 farmers a year, up to 500 fatally. Dr Jikun Huang, who led the study, said he hoped it would help persuade the Chinese government to license the commercial use of GM rice. If it does, the impact beyond China's borders would be substantial. The world's largest country would be taking a lead in commercialising a major staple GM food developed in its own labs, which could transform the GM debate across the world. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 29 15:38:53 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:38:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Slate: Someday, There Will Be a Fat Pill Message-ID: Someday, There Will Be a Fat Pill http://slate.msn.com/id/2117332/fr/rss/ The science of hunger management. By Amanda Schaffer Posted Tuesday, April 26, 2005, at 1:32 AM PT Last week, the USDA cast aside its iconic food pyramid for a new design, with color-coded wedges and a stair-climbing stick figure, which was greeted with mostly mediocre reviews. The graphics still don't tell people to avoid junk food, the most obvious factor contributing to national chub. As McDonald's celebrated its 50th birthday with 50-cent cheeseburgers and Domino's promoted a new cheeseburger pizza with the help of Donald Trump, government regulators looked like small fries, as usual. Fortunately, the scientists and drug developers working on appetite and weight loss are better at what they do. As any dieter knows, it is amazingly difficult to trick the body into shedding pounds. From an evolutionary perspective, we have adapted to gorge and store energy in case of famine, not to negotiate a world filled with deep-fried Snickers bars. The molecular pathways that mediate eating urges are cunningly intertwined, with one ready to take over when another is thwarted. Efforts to suppress hunger or promote weight loss with drugs have ranged from not particularly effective (Meridia) to downright disastrous (fen-phen). Still, the list of candidate molecules that may someday prove useful as hunger-curbing and fat-fighting drugs is growing rapidly, and researchers these days dare to get their hopes up-a little. Even if obesity doesn't cause as many deaths as it used to, because of better treatments for heart disease and other related ailments, there will be plenty of reason to cheer if a safe fat pill is somewhere on the horizon. Much of the science of hunger centers on the hypothalamus. Since it's the area of the brain that regulates appetite along with other visceral urges, it's where some researchers are focusing their energies. But eating is also bound up in brain pathways that mediate pleasure and emotional reward. We eat in part because food is delicious. We eat more when with friends and when larger portions are put in front of us, or sometimes to comfort ourselves when we feel bad. Given all these signals, some researchers have chosen to steer clear of the brain's complexities and turn their attention to fighting fat in the digestive tract or the belly. Here's a roundup of the latest scientific approaches to suppressing appetite and promoting weight loss, ranked on a scale of 1 to 10 (from lowest to highest) for potential promise and potential downside. Strategy No. 1: Stimulate brain pathways that decrease appetite. Leptin. Potential promise: 1. Potential downside: 2. High levels of the hormone leptin, which is released by fat cells, tell the brain that the body's reserves are already ample. In 1994, researchers at Rockefeller University found that mice lacking normal supplies of leptin became obese. The biotech company Amgen bet at least $20 million-unwisely-on the hope that leptin could be given to overweight people to help them to eat less. As further research showed, most obese people already have high levels of the hormone; the problem is that their brains are resistant to its appetite-blunting message. The main contribution of leptin-inspired research was to kick off a new era in the basic science of hunger and a surge of interest in other possibly druggable targets in the hypothalamus. Melanocortin-4 receptor agonists. Potential promise: 4. Potential downside: 5. One of those targets is the melanocortin-4 receptor, which helps to pass along the eat-less message that leptin sends to the brain. Unfortunately, drug compounds that bind to and stimulate this receptor also tend to give men unwanted and sometimes painful erections. And molecules in the same chemical family, called melanocortins, make skin darker. So as one researcher joked, drugs aimed at the melanocortin-4 receptor (called agonists) could make men "thin, tan and horny." Which might be less pleasant than it sounds. Serotonin receptor agonists. Potential promise: 6. Potential downside: 9. Drugs that bind to certain serotonin receptors (which transmit their message through the brain's melanocortin system, much as leptin does) are known to suppress appetite. But they can also have unwanted side effects for the heart. Fen-phen, which caused cardiac valve disease in some patients, is a case in point. Now Arena Pharmaceuticals is wagering that a more selective molecule, which acts on one subtype of serotonin receptor, may yield the benefits of weight loss without the heartache. The company's candidate compound, known as APD356, is in Phase 2 clinical trials. Since cardiac ills sometimes do not appear for years, it will take a while to know whether Arena has a winner. PYY. Potential promise: 7. Potential downside: 3. Another molecule that has lately made the rounds is a modified version of the gut hormone, PYY, also an appetite suppressor. Since PYY is a naturally occurring signal from gut to brain, some researchers believe it is likely to make a safe drug. PYY cannot be taken orally because it is a peptide and so would be digested by the stomach and in the process made useless. Nastech Pharmaceutical Co. has formulated it as a nasal spray, however. The company's product, PYY 3-36, is entering Phase 2 trials.* Strategy No. 2: Inhibit brain pathways that make people feel hungry. Ghrelin blockers. Potential promise: 7. Potential downside: too soon to say. The discovery that a gut hormone called ghrelin (rhymes with gremlin) may be the cause of pre-meal hunger pangs has been one of the most exciting of the past few years. A drug that blocked ghrelin might well dampen appetite, and since ghrelin levels rise markedly when dieters begin to shed pounds, might be particularly useful as a means to prevent rebounding. One reason gastric-bypass surgery seems to be so effective in keeping people thin is that the procedure cuts down on the amount of ghrelin released from the stomach. Cannabinoid receptor antagonists. Potential promise: 8. Potential downside: 4. Everyone knows that smoking pot gives people the munchies. Now Sanofi-Aventis has a product called rimonabant in late-stage clinical trials that's designed to decrease appetite by blocking the same brain receptors that marijuana stimulates. In addition to causing weight loss, rimonabant seems to increase patients' levels of HDLs or "good cholesterol" and decrease their insulin resistance, bonuses for staving off heart disease and diabetes. A concern, though, is that by blocking pathways that also mediate pleasure, the drug might have a negative effect on mood. So far, at least, the clinical trials haven't borne this out. Strategy No. 3: Forget the brain. Prevent the body from digesting fat. Drugs that block digestion. Potential promise: 8. Potential downside: 4. Since the fat we eat must be broken down and absorbed in the small intestine in order to affect weight, Roche's Xenical, which blocks the digestion of fat, is relatively effective in helping people to shed pounds. Experimental compounds from Peptimmune and Genzyme as well as others also aim to block fat digestion. The downside is that undigested fat causes diarrhea, flatulence, and other unpleasantness. Strategy No. 4: Target fat cells directly. Drugs that attack fat. Potential promise: 9. Potential downside: too soon to say. To attack fat itself-the number of fat cells and the amount of fat within them-researchers at AdipoGenix are exploring compounds that could arrest the development of these cells. They are also investigating ways to block the formation of triglycerides, to hasten their breakdown, or to stimulate the burning of blubber in general. AdipoGenix has a research advantage: a hefty supply of human fat-acquired through special agreements with surgeons at Boston Medical Center and their patients, many of whom have undergone gastric bypass surgery-on which to test potential fat-busting candidates. (In the past, compounds that stimulated the breakdown of fat in rodents have failed to work in humans.) The company is currently screening compounds for phase-one trials; and while it's too early to know for sure, its approach is highly promising. The quest for fat-fighting drugs is not a winner-take-all competition. More than one drug compound will be needed; and many patients will end up taking a combination of different pills or sprays. The big shift is toward thinking about obesity in most cases as a problem that must be managed over time, rather than cured. This raises the bar in terms of safety, since drugs that are taken for years must be scrutinized more carefully for long-term effects. It also aligns with pharma's general preference for endlessly refillable prescriptions. With the possible exception of rimonabant, as well as Meridia and Xenical, these products won't be available for years. But when they are, a lot more dieters may become pill poppers, for better or worse. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 29 15:38:17 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:38:17 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] NYT: In the Swamp, an 'Extinct' Woodpecker Lives Message-ID: In the Swamp, an 'Extinct' Woodpecker Lives http://nytimes.com/2005/04/29/science/29bird.html [I heard my first woodpecker, not this rare one, just last Winter when walking with Sarah.] By [1]JAMES GORMAN BRINKLEY, Ark., April 28 - The ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird long given up for extinct, has been sighted in the cypress and tupelo swamp of the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge here in Arkansas, scientists announced Thursday. Bird experts, government agencies and conservation organizations involved kept the discovery secret for more than a year, while they worked to confirm the discovery and protect the bird's territory. Their announcement on Thursday brought rejoicing among birdwatchers, for whom the ivory bill has long been a holy grail - a creature that has been called the Lord God bird, apparently because that is what people exclaimed when they saw it. Dr. John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, who led the effort to confirm the sightings, said at a news conference in Washington, "This is really the most spectacular creature we could imagine rediscovering." He was joined by Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, who announced that her agency, along with the Department of Agriculture, had proposed to spend $10 million in federal money for research, habitat protection and law enforcement efforts to protect the bird. The Nature Conservancy and other conservation groups have bought land in the region of the refuge to help preserve a larger area. The bird was seen in thickly forested bottomland near here, the deep, wet woods immortalized by Faulkner. On Thursday, researchers were traveling by canoe down slow-flowing clay-colored bayous hoping for another sighting, and working to finish up surveys of the territory. With its 30-inch wingspan and formidable bill, its sharp black and white coloring, and the male's carmine crest, the ivory bill was the largest of American woodpeckers, described by John James Audubon as "this great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe." Once a dominant creature of great Southern hardwood forest, its numbers dwindled as logging increased. The woodpecker inspired one of the first conservation efforts in the nation's history, but its seeming failure turned the ivory bill into a symbol of loss. The last documented sighting was in Louisiana in 1944. But the ivory bill lived on as a kind of ghost in rumor and in numerous possible sightings. Despite lengthy expeditions, no sighting was confirmed, until Feb. 11, 2004. On that date Gene M. Sparling III sighted a large woodpecker with a red crest in the Cache River refuge. Tim W. Gallagher at the Cornell Lab saw the report from Mr. Sparling on a Web site where he was describing a kayak trip. Within two weeks Mr. Gallagher and Bobby R. Harrison of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., were in a canoe in the refuge, with Mr. Sparling guiding them. Mr. Gallagher said he had expected to camp out for a week, but after one night out, on Feb. 27, he and Mr. Harrison were paddling up a bayou bounded on both sides by cypress and tupelo when they saw a very large woodpecker fly in front of their canoe. When they wrote down their notes independently and compared them, Mr. Gallagher said, Mr. Harrison was struck by the reality of the discovery and began sobbing, repeating, "I saw an ivory bill." Mr. Gallagher felt the same. "I couldn't speak," he said. Once Mr. Gallagher convinced Dr. Fitzpatrick of Cornell, the effort to confirm the sightings began in earnest, and the result, published in the online version of Science, carried the names of 16 people from seven institutions who participated in a search that turned up seven confirmed new sightings and a blurry bit of videotape. An analysis of the video to determine the size and manner of flying of the bird, as well as the other sightings and the detailed reports of experts like Mr. Gallagher, proved convincing. Dr. Edward O. Wilson, the Harvard ecologist and writer who has called the ivory bill the signature bird of the Southern forest, said the question now was whether there was a breeding population. "I'm a little hopeful," he said, given that the previous confirmed sighting was 60 years ago. The birds live about 15 years, so some breeding population had to have survived for some time. Frank Gill, former president of the National Audubon Society, said of the news, "You get so depressed by the state of things, to suddenly have this happen in your backyard" is wonderful, "just the thought that there are places in the world still - deep wilderness - harboring a secret like this." One particularly bright spot, Dr. Fitzpatrick said, is that the place where the bird was seen is already protected. The bayou where the bird was sighted is in thick swamp where even a great blue heron taking off not 20 yards away disappeared immediately. On a paddle through the bayou led by researchers from the Cornell Lab and a representative of the Nature Conservancy, the flat, clay-colored water was broken only by the splashing of turtles and the rapid-fire paddling of a frightened wood duck chick. Birds in the distance were heard but not seen. There was no sign of an ivory bill. As Dr. Fitzpatrick put it, the woodpecker is doing a good job of "protecting itself." He added, "It is really scarce and really wary." Now the effort to protect the bird will continue, as will the search for other individuals. Scott Simon, state director of the Nature Conservancy in Arkansas, said the finding was a validation of the kind of cooperative conservation on the part of private organizations and government that had thrived in Arkansas. Mr. Simon said he hoped it would promote conservation and acknowledged that ecotourism, fed by the ivory bill, could have benefits. But for now, he said, "we would like people to give us a little bit of time." As for the woodpeckers, there is only proof of one bird so far. If there are more, then perhaps, Dr. Gill said, "we can put Humpty Dumpty back together again." Nobody wants to think about the alternative. If the last living ivory bill has been found, the discovery may be more bitter than sweet. John Files contributed reporting from Washington for this article. References 1. http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JAMES%20GORMAN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JAMES%20GORMAN&inline=nyt-per From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 29 15:38:38 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:38:38 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] Utne: Humanity: The Remix Message-ID: Humanity: The Remix http://www.utne.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=utne&story.id=11638 May / June 2005 By Alyssa Ford, Utne magazine Is building a better human the key to utopia or the world's most dangerous idea? With new drugs and medical advances making it ever easier to alter our bodies and minds, many have begun to wonder where the trend could take us. The concern has created some unlikely political alliances as critics warn of the day when the modern mania for self-improvement reaches down into our very cells. Some say we should cling to our imperfections, that our rough edges are the source of our uniqueness. Others would redesign us from the genes up. Whatever the case, we might wish to revisit what it means to be human now that life as we know it could be about to change. -- The Editors Imagine that in the year 2100 the world has become a radically different place. The severely disabled, once totally isolated, communicate telepathically to their computers and other people over special brain implants. Others use the same devices to play CD-quality music in their heads, recall numbers 20 digits long, and relive good feelings from a beach vacation or a hot bath. Health supplements guarantee not only high IQs and low anxiety levels, but also profound spiritual experiences and increased compassion for all living things. Of course, these changes are provided to rich and poor alike -- at least since the outdated nation-state system gave way to a world government led by democratic socialists. This is the future envisioned by a group of tech-friendly liberal "transhumanists." Transhuman, short for transitional human, refers to the day when our species will be a blend of biology and machine. It's a step, some say, toward a "posthuman" era when we could become a different creature altogether. Since it emerged from the fringes of cyberculture in the late 1980s, the transhumanist movement has been known as much for its libertarian leanings as for its belief in the plugged-in, "four-arm" human of tomorrow. While today all the self-proclaimed liberal transhumanists could probably fit in the holodeck of the starship Enterprise, they count a number of influential scientists, bioethicists, and philosophers in their small but growing ranks. Unlike their libertarian peers, who tend to denounce all regulation, these "democratic transhumanists" view societal controls as crucial to realizing their openly utopian dreams. Some argue that the trend is irreversible: As with in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproduction techniques, the public demand for longer lives, prettier children, and better moods will override efforts to stop them. If these powerful new technologies are to be used justly, they say, the time to embrace them is now. Others go even further, heralding the redesigned human as the key to transforming the world along progressive lines. "Today human intelligence, in the form of technology, is about to make possible the elimination of pain and lives filled with unimaginable pleasure and contentment," writes James Hughes, author of Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future (Westview, 2004). The former editor of a zine called EcoSocialist Review who teaches health policy at Trinity College in Connecticut, Hughes, 44, is executive director of the World Transhumanist Association (WTA). His goal, he says, is to convince fellow liberals that a pro-technology, democratic form of transhumanism is the way of the "Next Left." _________________________________________________________________ Hughes says that Western radicals at least as far back as the 18th century saw science as a tool for advancing democracy. He argues that a pro-tech vision actually dominated the American and European left well into the 20th century, personified by the likes of the liberal British biologist J.B.S. Haldane and the writer H.G. Wells. After World War II, with its gas chambers and atomic bombs, a long-dormant "pastoral" left rose to prominence, closer in spirit to romantic thinkers like Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau. Since then, he adds, "any kind of narrative of a radically transformed life through new technologies is immediately dismissed." "Pastoralists are okay with a radically transformed life through yoga or organic gardening," Hughes says, "but once you start a discussion about using tech to end disease, death, poverty, or work, a wall goes up." As he noted in a recent phone interview, Hughes believes that the left must embrace a transcendent vision if it is to succeed. Along with calls for social equity and responsibility, he says, "we also need to give ourselves permission to be excited about new technologies." The author Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of life patenting and the biotech industry, disagrees. "Transhumanism is the ultimate illustration of how Enlightenment rationalism can easily run amok and create extreme pathology," he says. In their faith that they can harness such powerful technologies to achieve their social ends, the transhumanists are falling victim to an old, misguided Western faith in human perfectibility. Rifkin's fear is that under the guise of progress, the public will be seduced by a new technology whose destructive power far exceeds its benefits. Thinkers across the political spectrum share similar concerns. Last year, the conservative scholar Francis Fukuyama, author of Our Posthuman Future (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), spoke out against trans-humanism when the journal Foreign Policy asked him and several other thinkers to list "the world's most dangerous ideas." Fukuyama argues that modern society must learn to respect human nature in the way it now respects the rest of nature. If we don't, he warns, "we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls." On the left, Bill McKibben has argued just as passionately against human bioengineering in his book Enough (Henry Holt, 2003). In recent years, he and other ecologically minded progressives, including Rifkin, have found themselves in agreement with Fukuyama and Leon R. Kass, a conservative appointed by George W. Bush to head the President's Council on Bioethics. All have warned of the social dangers posed by human cloning, whether for making babies or for creating embryos for research purposes. Critics see cloning and embryo-based stem cell science as today's key gateway technologies leading us toward a posthuman world. Better to confront the biotech juggernaut now, they say, before it gets even more menacing. This concern has led to other unexpected alliances and conflicts, presaging the many ethical showdowns we'll face in the years ahead. If we have the know-how to safely cure spinal cord injuries, cheat death, and tint your skin green, why keep it off the market? On the other hand, how do we balance individual desire and freedom against the needs of others, including other creatures? Defining life and death, already touchy issues, will become even more volatile in coming decades. Finally, there's the question that seems destined to haunt the 21st century: Will we control our technologies, or will they control us? _________________________________________________________________ THE WISH TO EXCEED our bodily limits is as old and varied as human myth. Transhumanism in its recent form is often traced back to the curious circle of thinkers who gathered around a guy named Max More, a British cryogenics advocate turned philosophy student who changed his name from Max O'Connor to reflect his personal quest for perfection. More was in graduate school at the University of Southern California in 1988 when he and a fellow student, T.O. Morrow, founded the journal Extropy. (Its title is an invented word that's meant to be the opposite of entropy.) The Extropy Institute followed in 1992. By then, their call for building sleeker, quicker, sexier humans had begun to catch on, especially among young males. Heavily influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand, among others, More decreed that the institute would be virulently libertarian, and it remains so today, even as he himself is said to have become somewhat more moderate. Other groups have sprung up as well. By 1998 a handful of European and American thinkers had coalesced into the kinder, gentler World Transhumanism Association. In contrast to the Extropians, WTA officials like the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, now at Oxford University in England, acknowledged that corruption, accidents, and other forces could thwart their futurist visions and needed to be addressed. In particular, they were concerned about equalizing access to technology across borders and classes. The WTA appears to have veered even more to the left since James Hughes took over as director in 2001. Getting mainstream liberals excited enough to join is perhaps complicated by the fact that there's a little too much excitement among those already on board. Chats about curing cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and mental illness can quickly become fantasies about millennial life spans, eternally youthful bodies, and average intelligence levels that push Stephen Hawking into the bottom 10 percent. There's a grain of truth to Mark Dery's quip in his 1996 book Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (Grove) that transhumanists view their bodies as loathsome "meat puppets" to be shed in their bid to become immortal. The movement's eccentric subchapters include the body-modification transhumanists, who have implanted silicon-based magnets under their skin to create a computer-human chimera effect. The Singularitarians believe we're heading for a genetic point of no return -- the Singularity -- when change in the species will be so great as to make us virtual gods. Nevertheless, the WTA keeps growing. Hughes says it has 3,000 members worldwide and welcomes about 80 new members a month. One possible reason why: Transhumanism's pet technologies have begun crossing over from sci-fi to the lab. Nanotechnology -- manipulating matter on the atomic level -- was far-out stuff back in 1986 when Eric Drexler made it the crucial tool in his cryonics manifesto, Engines of Creation (Anchor).While nobody's using it to "reanimate" frozen heads and bodies just yet, nanotech is now real enough to be used in various products (even as super-tiny particles raise unexpected health concerns). Researchers have engineered mice that are super strong and fast, and live so long that a human equivalent would be at least 200. In Portugal, scientists have implanted cameras connected to electrodes in the brains of blind people. The result? Not only could the subjects see, but they could beam images to each other's minds. In 1998 a neurosurgeon implanted a device into the brain of a "locked-in" patient who couldn't eat, drink, or talk on his own. Before the surgery, the patient could communicate only by blinking his eyes; afterward he could send messages via a computer simply by thinking them out. _________________________________________________________________ Over the past decade, the startling advances in nanoscience, bioengineering, information technology, and cognitive science -- referred to collectively as NBIC -- have mainstream researchers sounding more and more like Singularitarians themselves. In 2002 the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Department of Commerce released a massive report that said, in effect, these converging technologies "for improving human performance" were both inevitable and beneficial. Hughes says the so-called NBIC papers "are essentially, though not explicitly, transhuman documents." A similar spirit pervades the growing popular literature on the topic -- books like Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) by UCLA biophysicist Gregory Stock and Remaking Eden (Avon, 1997) by Princeton biologist Lee M. Silver. In More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement (Broadway, 2005), Ramez Naam, a software engineer turned futurist, catalogs the new developments that could soon put designer bodies, minds, and children within our reach. He sees them as our next step in the human journey from cave art to the stars. "This hunger, this reach that exceeds our grasp, this aspiration to attain something 'which cannot be attained in earthly life' is the force that has built our world," he writes. "Never to say enough, always to want more -- that is what it means to be human." Curiously, Bill McKibben and Francis Fukuyama list the same enhancements in their books to argue against the posthuman future. They also assert a radically different view of human nature. "What makes us unique is that we can restrain ourselves," McKibben writes. "We can decide not do something that we are able to do. We can set limits on our desires. We can say 'Enough.' " _________________________________________________________________ TRANSHUMANISTS LIKE HUGHES dismiss what he calls "bio-Luddite" concerns as just another case of future shock. At any major shift, they say, the change-fearing masses first rebel and then get over it. What's more, with our contact lenses, artificial heart valves, and cell phones, we're already cyborgs anyway. Smallpox vaccine and anesthetics for childbirth pain were once both renounced as insults to God. How is Bush's effort to limit federal funding for stem cell research, and the wider crusade against cloning, any different? Some liberals as well as conservatives insist that these issues are different. In The Biotech Century (Tarcher/Putnam, 1998), Jeremy Rifkin has suggested that modern molecular biology is creating a political order that's beyond left and right. As he noted in a phone interview, the new divide, in his view, falls between those who believe life has "instrinsic" value and those who see it in purely utilitarian terms as "reducible to material for manipulation." Citing respect for life as his motivation, Rifkin says he parts company with many liberals by opposing embryo cloning in all forms, even the "therapeutic" cloning that can be used to generate stem cells. (He is not opposed to research involving adult stem cells, which can be drawn from bone marrow.) Researchers first reported finding stem cells in human embryos in 1998, noting their chameleon-like ability to become any number of the body's specialized cells as they matured. Since then, stem cells have been touted as a source of possible regenerative treatments for spinal cord injuries and many diseases, including diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. "Therapeutic" cloning is one among several ways to produce stem cells for research. In both therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning -- the technique that could lead to cloned babies -- the nucleus of a human egg is removed and replaced with the genetic material from another cell. But instead of implanting the doctored egg in a womb and letting it grow, researchers harvest the newly formed stem cells that bud within it after just four or five days. In theory, therapeutic cloning could provide tissues and whole organs for transplant patients, in a sense turning them into their own donors: Stem cells derived from their genetic material could be coaxed to grow into spare parts their bodies wouldn't reject. Any tampering with the human embryo is a problem for many abortion foes like Bush, but it's also an issue for those hoping to thwart a posthuman future. They particularly dread the idea of "germline genetic engineering" -- that is, giving humans new genetic traits they're able to pass on to future generations. To block that, they hope to stop the nascent technology today with a ban or a moratorium on therapeutic cloning. That means breaking ranks with the many liberals who support such research. It can also mean parting with those who worry about altering the human species but who see the campaign against abortion as a more immediate fear. Indeed, for some liberals, the stem cell debate has triggered a very real philosophical struggle -- with others, and with themselves. "What we can all agree on, whether we're pro-life or pro-choice, is that embryos are potential unique human beings at the early stages of development," Rifkin says. "Nobody can say that's not true. To my mind, the idea that we would propose legislation in the U.S. Congress to clone embryos specifically for the purpose of experimentation, or as research models, or to harvest spare parts and then destroy them, opens the door to a commercial eugenics era." In late 2001 a Massachusetts biotech company announced it had been the first to clone a human embryo. Around that time, Rifkin floated a petition, signed by Fukuyama and other conservatives as well as liberals, in support of a law that would ban all cloning. In 2002 McKibben and others signed a different petition that called for a ban on reproductive cloning and a moratorium on cloning for research purposes. Other unlikely alliances emerged. In Chicago, for instance, progressive tech skeptic Lori Andrews and conservative tech skeptic Nigel Cameron founded the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future. Together they hoped to forge new ties between the anti-biotech left, the Christian right, and secular conservatives. _________________________________________________________________ Still others backed away from a cloning ban, fearing their support would be exploited by pro-lifers. "This is where the situation gets very, very complicated for the deep ecologists," says Hughes. "Roe v. Wade made the issue 'viability' and set an arbitrary standard at six months, a position that the deep ecologists have felt comfortable accepting. But how will they respond when we have developed artificial wombs that can gestate an embryo all the way to term, and viability officially becomes conception? It's a very real conflict for them." His answer is what he calls "personhood theory," a concept from bioethics that would grant rights to self-aware "persons," not humans per se. Babies, adults, the great apes, whales, dolphins, artificial intelligence, and perhaps extraterrestrials are among the entities that deserve personhood rights, he says. Embryos, fetuses, the brain dead -- these beings may be human in terms of DNA, but in this view they are not persons. Hughes uses such concepts to articulate a new political axis of his own -- between what he calls the new "biopolitical right" and people in favor of technological exploration. In September, prominent transhumanists will meet with reproduction-rights advocates, disability-rights advocates, drug-policy reformers, and transgendered activists at a seminar in Berkeley to discuss a possible coalition of their own. Hughes credits transgendered people with "fighting some of the first battles to define their own bodies and lives." "Ultimately, we're working to create a world where people have control over their own bodies and minds," he says. "We want a socially responsible world, a sexy, high-tech, radically democratic world." It's worth noting that efforts in Congress to control cloning in recent years have failed. The conflict over abortion is said to be the major reason why. President Bush's limit on federal funding for stem cell research remains in place, but its effect could be eroding. California, birthplace of the Extropians, has begun building its own stem cell industry with $3 billion in development funds that voters approved last fall. One researcher there says he plans to start human tests on a stem cell therapy for damaged spinal nerves next year. Even as advocates for the ill laud the California initiative, various pro-choice groups recently called for more controls on harvesting human eggs, warning that a market for them could threaten women's health. But that hasn't quelled the public demand for cures or the biotech sector's hope of profit. Driven by such forces, other states are planning research programs of their own. Amid the debate over whether these powerful new tools should be controlled, or even can be, one thing is sure: If we ever find ourselves stepping into a posthuman future, it will be for all the usual human reasons. Alyssa Ford is an intern at Utne. From checker at panix.com Fri Apr 29 15:39:36 2005 From: checker at panix.com (Premise Checker) Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:39:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Paleopsych] The Times: Sleep Mutation Message-ID: Not much of a crop today, which is just as well, as I have a big MS to read. Sleep Mutation [No URL provided. I am not sure this is The Times of London (but it's probable) or the date or that the article is entitled "Sleep Mutation."] A GENE that could explain why some people can get by on just a few hours' sleep each night has been discovered by US researchers. A small mutation in a gene known as the Shaker - also nicknamed the "Thatcher gene" after the former British prime minister who famously needed little sleep - allows fruitflies to thrive on a fraction of the sleep they usually require, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. The Shaker gene controls the flow of potassium into cells, which affects their electrical activity. Several other studies have shown that a similar process affects human sleep: in mammals, potassium channels in nerve cells are important to the generation of "slow waves" that occur in the brain during deep sleep. "Humans have the same kind of genes and potassium channels and we know that slow waves must be generated by changes in the excitability of neuron cell membranes," said Chiara Cirelli, who led the research. Naomi Rogers, a sleep expert and senior research fellow at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney said researchers had suspected for some time that individual genes might determine how much sleep people need. "Often it's been in families that you see these sort of traits where people need little sleep, so it's not surprising that there's a gene or a group of genes that is responsible for this," she said. The study found that a particular mutation in the Shaker gene led Drosophila fruitflies to sleep for a third as long as usual, without impairing performance. Dr Rogers said less than 10 per cent of the population were "short-sleepers" - people who could exist on three or four hours of sleep a night. "People are working longer hours or shift work, they have family commitments, a lot of businesses are global 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so we're getting less sleep," she said. "The military, for example, is quite interested in looking at this."